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Charles01 - you posed a question on my talkpage re geological faults in Essex. I could answer glibly that Essex has no faults! But that wouldn't be true in any sense :-) everwyhere has its faults! The reason that none are (yet) listed is that none of the publications or maps which I have consulted has made any mention of any faults. Now some of those publications cover the whole of England/GB/UK and some are specific to certain areas and it's true that I have no detailed geological maps of Essex nor indeed for the most part of East Anglia and the East Midlands in my possession. Even if I did have those maps I suspect that they would show very few faults - and of those, even fewer would be named - and the lists only contain those that have been given names in any case . It's partly because that part of the country is one of the most stable, geologically and has some of Britain's youngest rocks - so not much has happened to fracture the rocks because they're not under pressure/tension so much as some other areas and, at least in those rocks which are at or near the surface, there has been little time (relatively speaking) to allow that to happen. Add to that the fact that there is a thickish cover of 'superficial deposits' over the bedrock and you've a recipe for an area which would appear to be pretty much fault-free. Does that make sense? cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:51, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. And yes, that makes sense. The correlation between the age of the rocks and the number of faults they've accumulated is not something I'd have thought of, though like many of the best explanations, once you've set it out for me, I feel as though I always knew it. And I'm sure there is a whole study to be written - may be written already - about the way that things without names - in this case presumed faults under a lot of clay - have some kind of a self perpetuating non-propensity to be investigated. I guess one answer to some of this could be to tell them about the hitherhto unexploited Essex oil fields. But before all that I need to get the kids to school. Thanks again for the clear and prompt answer. Regards Charles01 (talk) 07:23, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Spoils
Hi Charles01, thanks for your links. The pile of dirt(?) concerned is near the top of the little range of hills but I suppose they could have used traction engines. If you put this into Google Maps west monmouthshire golf club, Nantyglo, Wales, United Kingdom it should take you to the edge of the golf club carpark, go north-east over the roadway and you are on the (once perfectly conical) heap concerned. Look about and you will see how the sheep tracks are like contour lines for a mini Vesuvius. You will also see that someone has recently opened the top. Do you have a desktop app that can remote-analyse the soil content? Whatever the truth, you will know more of the subject than I. Best regards, Eddaido (talk) 10:15, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Nice link. Thank you. For a mad few seconds I had this idea you were sending me links to websites for spoil tip enthusiasts, but no. Which is good. As for Wales, I've not been there much, but for family reasons I go there a bit more now than I used to. Wales still seems pretty hard to get around, even by the standards of the UK's third world road (and rail) infrastructure, unless your destination is somewhere on or near the Bristol-Swansea axis. (And even then you have to pay through the nose a supplementary tax if you want to cross into the place using the bridge.) I'm learning about google maps and the associated pictures little by little. The variability of what you actually get to see is considerable - I got very stuck over Venice, but I guess it's hard to drive around there with a camera on the roof without getting targeted by all sorts of suspicious characters wanting money, unless you have the necessary contacts (and maybe ... um ... access to a discreet boat). Still, rural Wales shouldn't be such a challenge.
You make me want to get to Streetview Venice and I will, in a minute. For a long time the street frontage where I live was just an orange blur caused by early morning sunrise straight into the camera - luck didn't hold though. Here's the other of the pair of sites, each has a daily article to accompany the two classes of old-car ads. Wonder if the dig in the top of the heap is because someone has, with their machinery, traced Dafydd Gam's lost torque (car pun alert). Putting that address into Google Maps still takes me directly to the heap's location and I can't understand why it might contain the things you suggest in the links when it is up high like that - see the linked (not quite accurate) reconstruction picture on the article. The creators probably didn't realise they were making greens and bunkers. First day of summer today - cool windless and overcast i.e. damp sea-fog just above ground level. Ah, well, tomorrow is another day. Eddaido (talk) 21:20, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
New to me too. It's clear if one looks at the age profiles of populations through the twentieth century just what a drop in birth-rate levels came from those big wars, with partially corresponding compensations afterwards, for the Brits and French especially the 14-18 war and for most of central Europe and eastern Europe both of them. And there certainly seems to be some sort of correlation between economically based "feel-good" and increased birth rates. But it's a complicated business, and with demographics as with economics it's a great mistake to view the relatively linear future extrapolations from so called experts into reliable forecasts. It's like the weather, and the experts themselves know it. It's just the folks who pass it on to the rest of us who wrap it up with all the certainty of old testament prophesy. I'll read it again more lowly after lunch. Fresh baked hot dog rolls in the oven as I type, and sausages well heated thru. Charles01 (talk) 13:06, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Hi Charles01. An editor is going through changing 1½-litres to this: 1+1⁄2-Litres.
I think this is very ugly because a. there is the great gap between 1 and the fraction which gives an instant of puzzlement and b. the fraction itself is too big causing horizontal blank spaces between lines.
But the proselytizer believes the change is a help to people with reading difficulties.
Do you think 1. I should go waste my time in better ways or 2. should I work for a better solution or reversion to the previous arrangement? Yes/No please. Ta Eddaido (talk) 23:27, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Praga?
:I agree with you. I do not think, in the great order of things, that it is the most important issue in the world. And it is possible that if my screen were differently configured it MIGHT look less silly than "1+1⁄2-Litres". Don't know.
This is part of a bigger issue. The wiki-community is disproportionately dominated by computer people. They spend their working lives as "IT Managers" (or whatever the current euphemism is) trying to make the companies for which they work think and operate more like computers and adjust their thinking processes accordingly. I spent much of my working life trying to make IT Managers think and operate more like members of the human race. Looking back at the progress made - above all Micro-Soft's mega-clunky adoption of Apple Mac windows operating interface - I think the human race army is in some ways winning. Or at least is not losing. But the battle will never be over and the IT Managers will not give up. Have you noticed how whenever you use a dash in the text someone diligently comes along and replaces it with something bizarrely odd involving (from memory so could be wrong) the letters "NSP"?
Praga
I think your "Fraction IT Manager" is using some kind of a "template", and these tend to be designed by (otherwise sane and decent. usually) members of the human race whose first language is computer rather than English. It is possible that it would be possible for the "Fraction IT Manager" to design a "template" that does not install that silly gap and that furthermore manages to make the ½ turn up in font the same size as the rest of the text. But English is not his first language so he does not see the point.
Maybe the first thing would be to ask a template guru about designing a template to do the job properly. (No, I am not a template guru.) That way your "Fraction IT Manager" and those of us who start with some version English as a language can both all be satisfied.
For me, there are better ways to use my time and possibly also yours. However, were you to launch a discussion on the project automobile talk page, it might lead somewhere useful. If you do so, you should on no account adopt my carping tone as herein. That's not the wiki way. Also it seems to annoy people including potential allies. Avoid sentences with more than one clause - or two at a maximum. And avoid big words. In short, if you want to win even a small battle, you have to do it in terms that lots of people will follow, understand, and instinctively sympathize with. I am not good at any of this, so why I'm preaching it to you I have no idea.
Anyhow, my eldest son is back from uni for the weekend so now I have to take him to the station. Happy Saturday and regards Charles01 (talk) 09:11, 21 January 2012 (UTC).
Thank you for all that, steadied me up a bit but may have only delayed my reaction, will see. Took mine to the airport on Wednesday after 6 weeks here but its 20 years since it was for that same destination. Please would you tell me what kind of car this is so I can put it into a category but in any case have a good Sunday. Regards, Eddaido (talk) 04:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
I have barely heard of Praga. My car enthusiasm is more all embracing than my car knowledge which tends to become progressively thinner the further back before about 1950 you go. But yes, the car in the picture you have found must be a Praga. Confidence >99%, once I've enlarged the image a little. It's identically fronted to other Pragas depicted in Misplaced Pages (eg Praga Alfa which was apparently manufactured from the late 1920s right up to 1942) except for the bends at the end of the headlight bar, which hardly add up to a total identity switch.
This barnstar is awarded to everyone who - whatever their opinion - contributed to the discussion about Misplaced Pages and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Auto Union 1968
Hi Charles,
My knowledge about cars is almost none. I got the date from the Dutch registration. I leave it up to you to change whatever you think fit.
Regards,
Alf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.122.139.150 (talk) 17:29, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes. I wasn't sure whether the name Opel Olympia was intended as a celebration of the 1936 (Summer) Olympic Games in Berlin or the 1936 (Winter) Olympics in Garmisch-Partekirchen (a double barrelled small town formed from two hitherto separate but adjacent villages pushed together by government decree as part of the Olympic Games process). Or both. Whoever applied the disambiguation evidently knows the answer which is good. Or he/she guessed which isn't! Anyhow, I do not think this is desperately important. Regards Charles01 (talk) 21:52, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Olympian cousins
from 1937 to late 1951
Hi #1, I find there are no articles about Vauxhalls 12 and 14 which seems a pity. I'd also like to take this chance of pointing out that the new monocoque-style hull introduced with the Ten of 1937 survived with re-bent grille and mudguards and bigger boot to 1951 as the Velox and Wyvern. Here to compare and contrast:
I'll admit it might in fact be a 14 size version on the V & W - back doors - but they had 6-light bodies. I didn't ever run a rule over them though. Tapes were for dressmaking.
I agree with you. Wiki-entries for those 1940s Vauxhalls have been informally on my "to do" list for years. One of these days I guess I'll pick up an old copy of Motor or something that will give me enough to make a start. Unless someone else gets in first. I started on the Opels from the 50s because little by little over the past couple of decades, the equivalent German language entries have turned into nice informative coherent articles. I also have the odd German language source here at home that I can dig out. I suspect that my ability to write English AND to understand (more or less) German language sources is a relatively unusual combination among those able and willing to contribute usefully to articles on cars in english-wiki, though. Which is one reason (for me) to do the Opels before the Vauxhalls.
I don't really know enough about the Vauxhall 12/14 to compare and contrast them with the postwar all-new Wyvern. Contemporary reports from the early 50s stressed the newness of the Wyvern but then you would, wouldn't you? I agree the family look from the 30s is unmistakable, and I suppose when they took the Churchill tanks out of the Luton plant and went back to cars, they probably found a lot of the tooling etc had made it safely through the war. More to the point, a lot of the people in their late 30s/early to mid 40s coming back to the Luton plant from the army would have been the same people who were closely involved with prewar production. And in the late 1930s they certainly stressed the extent to which the new monocoque Vauxhalls, in respect of which they had tooled up to produce massive volumes, were the way for the future.
It MIGHT be possible to set up a decent entry on the Vauxhall 12 using stuff on the web. Maybe someone has uploaded images of some old brochures or magazine articles? My problem with web based sources is that you never know which bits are to be believed: an irony, I appreciate, for someone who contributes to Misplaced Pages. However, just because something is wiki-source referenced to the limit, that doesn't always stop it from being ... um .... questionable. When you click on web based source notes they very often take you to broken links. Still, it's hard (and surely not usually remotely worth the hassle) to fudge a web-image of a simple image of something printed fifty years ago.
Charles01: You have posted a picture of my Toyota Celica Liftback on Misplaced Pages website. I have no objection to picture of car being used as taken in a public place, but please remove/blur the registration number from picture to preserve my privacy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.204.109.187 (talk) 13:06, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Dear Sir or (though it seems less likely - or is that a sexist assumption creeping in?) Madam
Thanks for your note. Thanks for exhibiting your car. And I hope you weren't too disconcerted to find a picture of it on wikipedia. I think it's quite a good picture, especially given that I think it was taken between rain showers, but then I guess I'm biased.
Please take a look to see if you like what I've done. You may need to refresh your screen ("F5") to see the way the page in question is shown on wikipedia now (rather than the way your computer may have stored it on a previous visit). I am about 95% confident of having correctly identified the picture that concerns you, but if I'm wrong about that, please provide more info for me to identify the picture in question. Probably it will be one of the two pictures that I've just copied to the right of this message. And thank you.
Hi. When you recently edited Opel Rekord Series D, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Bosch (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Hi Charles
Would it be possible to use your photo of a Gilbern Invader (Colour: Green, License: WVX1F) as a reference for an illustration?
Ultimately, I am hoping that my picture will be used in a children's book I am currently working on.
If you have no objections, please could you let me know how you would like to be credited?
Many thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing from you in due course :)
MrsMcthin (talk) 09:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Yes, of course. I'm glad the picture I took caught your eye. It's not a very wonderful picture, but nor, I think, is it a very awful one. I'm flattered you like it though sad there should be so few suitable pictures around.
Usage is governed by the wikipedia copyright license which, if your interest is commercial, you should probably take the effort to understand more carefully than I ever had the patience to do. (And if you have a publisher, (1) congratulations and (2) that's his/her job.) It is because I was too lazy to master it that I throw in the line on my own account "I took this picture myself and hereby release it into the public domain to the full extent possible in relevant jurisdictions." which means everything and nothing, like so much in the legal world. But yes, I am happy (flattered) for you to use the picture and I do not think wikipedia does anything to restrict that.
In terms of a credit, how about "with acknowledgements to wikipedia contributor Charles01 who provided this image under the terms of the appropriate wikipedia mandated license". However, this is not prescriptive. I have flu and my mind is full of fluff. Feel free to substitute a more appropriate wording if it works better for you.
I wish you success with your project. A few years ago I would have been at the head of the queue for a childrens' book involving cars, but now, with the eldest son at university in Swansea (He takes much inspiration from the "Manic Street Preachers") I think it may be a little too late for us
1 is the longer wheelbase version correctly described as a Daimler Majestic Major? Or not?
2 lurking in one of the subdirectories at "" is there an image of a short wheel base Daimler Majestic Major?
(I'm afraid I do find Daimlers from the middle decades of the twentieth century a tad confusing.)
I should add that you're obviously much more up to speed on this car than I am. And on the entry. Please feel free to remove (or reposition) the image that I uploaded if you think it should not be there. I'm recovering from flu and I've just driven across to the Netherlands and back to England today to bring the family home from the Easter break, so just now I'm really not up to too much analytical thinking about limousine idenfication.
Thank you. Whatever happened to respect? The wannabe Jaguar is based on a Nissan Micra, I think. As for Marcello Dudovich, I'd never heard of him, but he looks like someone who made the world a better looking place. Flu has gone in most of its manifestations, though I suddenly lost my voice a couple of days ago which presumably is part of it. Would be most inconvenient of permanent.... Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 08:00, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Uploading modified versions of your Commons images?
Hi there,
I made a few adjustments to some of your images at Commons a few years back (mainly some minor colour balance tweaks and spot removal- you can see them here). I noticed I still have quite a few with similar tweaks that I never uploaded, as well as a few more recent ones I was experimenting with.
Would it be okay with you for me to upload some, so that you can check that you're okay with them (i.e. artistically and in terms of authenticity), and revert any if necessary?
No problem. A lot of the pictures I uploaded in 2007 / 2008 were from colour slides (Dias) dating back 30 years or more. The slides were not in good condition. Removing dust spots and improving colouor balance where original colours have mutated (unless it was just lousy film and the colour balance was wring even at the start: impossible for me to remember "original" colours) are welcome enhancements. I've done a few myself, now I am more confident that I won't ruin a picture. But if you will have time to work on a few more of these, yes please and thank you. And thank you for the ones you already did. To my eye (and it must always be a personal judgement) the ones on which you worked are all much better, but they still look natural.
Of the ones you did before, I particularly like the Peugeot 205 shot which must have been difficult. It still looks quite natural, but at the same time very clear. Great. (The original was taken in haste with a cheap camera AND cheap film. It wasn't ever a good picture in terms of those technical basics even when I took it. But the angle and background, and the style of the car - before the manufacturer's marketing department started adding unnecessary body-stripes and fancy wheels - I always DID like))
Another thing. IF you like a challenge and have about a week to spare. This picture of a Porsche I spent a long time "correcting" But it was difficult and I don't think I did a good job. And then someone else uploaded another improved version which I think was worse. But mine was bad too and one does not like to waste time arguing, especially where one's own contribution is not good. BUT now some time has passed. IF you have a long time and endless patience, I still think this image is on the casualty list. BUT I do not want to tell you where to find your inspiration. And I do not want to interfere with your day job. And this one may be past recovery.
I've uploaded some stuff- you can see which images I've tweaked via my uploads history.
Can you let me know what you think of them when you have time? I'm not sure about "Renault 19 Utrecht with cones.jpg" and "2012 Toyota Tercel Utrecht.jpg" in particular.
I had a shot at that Porsche image you mentioned (though I'm afraid I didn't have a week to spend on it!!) On closer inspection, it appears that the other person simply reverted to *your* older version because they thought it was better, so it wasn't really his at all. At any rate, you can check my version to see if it's what you had in mind.
(Annoyingly, I've noticed that sometimes the old thumbnail or the old image itself is shown in place of what should be the current version. I assume this is due to caching issues- at any rate, clearing your browser cache and explicitly reloading the page seems to work if you're wondering why the "modified" version looks identical to the old one! :-) ).
Noted. Thank you. I like what you've done overall. Individually I have some more considered comments. I'm VERY glad I pointed you towards the Porsche 928 because (1) it was in need and (2) essentially it's quite a good picture (I think) and (3) your remedial work has worked. Other thoughts mostly positive. One or two of the colours are a bit "surprising", however, especially with a couple of the more shrilly coloured cars. It's very hard to know, when a colour looks inappropriate, whether that is because my eye's memory has changed for the colour at the same speed as the paint on the cars themselves has faded as the cars have grown older (or, in most cases, disappeared). Or whether I have correctly remembered how it looked forty years ago.
It's important for me that you know what I think (though you do not need to agree with all my detailed thoughts) in case you may have time to improve more images. But first I have some family related duties to attend to this morning. Regards Charles01 (talk) 05:52, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
I share here my thoughts on the good work you have done on some of “my” pictures. You have done quite a lot at once. That is not a criticism. But it means I have quite a lot of thoughts to share. The important preliminary is that these are only my opinions. I am not a scientist, but I understand from scientists that what we see it directed more by what our brain does with the picture than by some objective reality. You and I look at the same picture and we each see something different. So there are no right answers here. And no wrong answers. We can discuss whether what I see is closer to what “most people” see than what you see, or whether what you see is closer to what “most people” see than what I see. But that discussion is unlikely to go anywhere useful!
As an aside, I share your issue with old images turning up where I expected new ones, but “F5” (ie screen refresh) often gives the solution.
My biggest (initial) surprise came with this one, the Passat Variant in Wien (I think on the east side of the river). It is nice and clear. I like the shape of the car and the angle of the image. My first reaction was that you have made it “too pink”. Then I looked at another wiki picture of a Passat a few years newer but (I think) the same colour, and I think they are the same colour. So maybe I misremembered. Then I think the “other” Passat has been loved and polished – maybe also resprayed – to within an inch of its life. I am still not sure that’s the colour they were when it was new. But I may misremember. I think “truth” is (1) yes, not an objective reality in matters of colour perception and (2) maybe somewhere between where the Passat Variant was and where it is. But I am not sure what I think. Maybe it’s better now. It’s certainly NOT less good. But I need to get used to the colour.
This is the other one that took my breath a little bit. It was taken in central Rome near the Pza Venezia where the sun is brighter than further north in Europe (where I live - maybe you do too). And in the late afternoon the sun does turn the light a shade of pink (eg the Alfa Arna picture). But when I photographed the Corsa I think it was cloudy and was almost raining. I really think it therefore is too pink. I have less doubt here, now I think more closely, than with the Passat (above). I think the Corsa should be closer in colour to the English badged version (on which you have also worked) that I photographed outside the Freemasons’ building in Cambridge.
This one really needed a miracle. The sun was in completely the wrong place. Anyhow, you’ve done the miracle. Thank you.
I crouched down a bit too low for this picture, but that’s my issue: not yours. As a small picture the colour looks wrong, but when I enlarge it the colour looks ok. I think essentially there was not enough colour in the sky when I took the picture. Utrecht weather can be very grey. So I am not an enthusiast for this picture, but I think you have improved it.
I like what you did on this a lot. And I do not think it was easy.
Looks good to me.
I have forgotten taking this one. Lot’s of rain. I have no idea what shade of red it would have been originally! The flash gun shows the painted inside of the wheel arch so the car must have been very new indeed. Presumably that is why I took this picture despite the rain. To be honest, I do not know why I uploaded this picture. But that’s my issue: not yours. There are several indifferent pictures of the Seat Malaga on wikipedia (in my opinion) but they include a white one that I took which, though not wonderful, I think is a lot better than this one. (Though it has a more interesting Israeli built Autocar in the background which I should have photographed but didn’t. Maybe I was scared of getting run over. The place didn’t feel too safe even then.)
I digress. I think you have improved the red Malaga picture. Thank you.
Yes, that day the sun was in the wrong place again. I agree it’s difficult, and it will never be a perfect picture, but I think you have left it better than you found it. Thank you.
You’ve improved it. I think the red is now on the pink side of how I remember reality, but only a little bit. I wonder why the owner put a stupid luggage label in the back window. And I wonder – now I have more self confidence about GIMP than I did – if I will try and remove the distracting Mercedes rear wing. Nothing I can do about the angle at which the car is photographed. I guess there were too many cars in the way for me to get a better angle.
I like what you did. Thank you.
I like what you did with the Escort. This picture has worried me for a long time, but it’s an unusual car these days and thanks to your improvements now really quite respectable. I originally held the camera at a silly angle and while rotating the image back to something more sensible I’ve lost some corners. Front right I might be tempted to insert more pavement, but top left I do not think I know how to create an Opel Kadett (if that’s what it was).
On the colour, this is a fantastically difficult colour to get “right”. Audi had a (slightly less yellowy) version of the same green at the time and it turns up in many permutations on wikipedia now – not just from me. I do not think this colour likes my film from the 1970s/80s. I do not know the answer. But I think the rendering of it on Ford’s Escort here is ok!
I like what you’ve done. Thank you. I was a student at this time and felt more than usually short of money. I think I may have been excessively using cheap shop brand film (Photo-Porst BRD / Boots GB) which did bad things with the colours even then, and seems to be more prone to fade than Agfa/Fuji/Kodak 30/40 years later.
I like what you’ve done. I do not know (do not remember) if the colour is “truer”, but the colour bias on the slide by the time I uploaded it was clearly wrong before and you’ve made it better. Car is still a slightly strange shape, but I think the angle I chose suits it!
I like what you’ve done. Thank you. I THINK the colour may now contain too little mustard, but it’s hard to remember these “trendy” 1970s “safety” colours forty years later. It should be the same colour as the “saloon/berline/sedan” I took a picture of in Canterbury, but that was on a rainy day and the colour rendition on this example is not good. And I can’t find any other examples of the colour in wikipedia, so maybe outside England and France customers did not like the colour much even then.
The car (in the picture you adjusted) was actually parked on a steep slope and the more I look at the result on the building in the background of having tried to level it a bit, the more I feel sea sick. But that’s not your issue.
Your treatment works very well here. I didn’t think there was a problem with the colour before, but now you’ve corrected it …. Much much better. Thank you.
It looks better now. Thank you.
I’m not totally comfortable with this picture. I should have stood a bit further back, maybe. The lens was a cheap one and the distortion this close is excessive. But these are my issues, and standing in the middle of the road is not always a good idea. On the colour, I’m not sure the Austin 1300 and the VW Beetle were that close in colour when red. But on both cars, there were several different shades of simple red over the years, so it’s almost impossible to remember, forty years later, which was “right” for this picture.
Thank you again for working on all these pictures. I’ve enjoyed surfacing my reactions, but please don’t take my thoughts too seriously. Where your thoughts are different, they are just as valid as mine. There is no such thing as a “correct” memory of how a colour was experienced several decades ago.
Of course, also, I’m flattered that you think it worthwhile to take time working through some of the pictures I uploaded from my Dias collection.
Thanks for the compliments, but most of the your images were quite decent in the first place. If I remember correctly, I chose most of them because they only required some minor colour balance tweaking to look more neutral, and they could all be worked on in the same way. (A significant proportion of the car photos on Misplaced Pages must be yours...!)
My aim was really to create optimal (tweaked) but faithful versions of the originals and *not* "Photoshopped" or explicitly modified or "enhanced"(!) versions. (I don't object to that, it's just that I hadn't set out to do that here).
So I deliberately avoided "touching up" the colours of the cars specifically- which I felt was interfering with the original- and made almost all colour changes using the "grey point" tool to alter the *overall* balance, along with other colour balance tools and some minor shadow/highlight enhancement and noise reduction. To be honest, this doesn't take as long as you might think. (I just make it sound longwinded! :-( )
Opel Corsa:- I've reverted this to the original version, as I'd rather not risk getting it wrong.
My guess is that this is because your image uses the less-common "Adobe RGB" colour space, and since IE8 doesn't support colour spaces, its colour rendition is slightly wonky. (This is IE8's fault, *not* your fault and not your picture's fault!)
Colour space issues are a pain in the... neck. :-(
Interesting. If it's our screens as well as our brains that are showing us the colours differently ... help. I hate IE - something to to with (1) what it does and (2) never having forgiven Micro-Soft for taking good ideas from my 1990s Appril Mac, putting them on the front of a cluinky DOS operating system, generally queering the pitch and using marketing power to push Apple out of the way so I stopped being able to get software for it. Well, that's all ancient history now. But I'm using Firefox 12.0. Any insights into what that might do to the colour? On the Corsa colour, at least the way it shows on my screen, I think it is now closer to the way I remember it. I think it's still at the pink edge of the way I remember it, but too close to worry over. On Mr Choppers comment, I think I remember the dark red he has in mind and I think it was a different colour. Might be wrong, but that's what I think. (My mother had one of these cars, too. Hers was bright red, but it does mean I was more aware of Corsa/Novas when I saw them than I would have been of, f'rinstance, Fiestas.) Vauxhall/Opel's new Corsa brown colour was quite unusual at the time, and when the model was new one did a bit of a "double take" for the brown ones. (I agree that the eggshell blue of the Fiat Panda in front looks right, but I think that's maybe an easier colour for the film people.)
Passat Variant:- Reference 1Reference 2 Hard for me to judge this, though I should be clear that this was a "grey point" correction only with some shadow and highlight retrieval. Maybe the choice of grey point wasn't the best and the colour balance is too warm? I don't know :-/
Of the two references you've put in, I think it was closer to "2" than to "1". Now I look again at it, I'm not quite so shocked as I was, and I think maybe I had gotten used to my faded colour slide (Dias) which may itself not have been the best possible match with the way the car looked. These slightly unusual colours (orange, mustard...) do seem to cause the old folm (or is it my perceptions) more trouble than the calmer colours.
Ford Taunus 1974 Vorarlberg .jpg:- The only changes I made were setting the grey point (via the tarmac) and a *tiny* increase in saturation which- having checked- appeared to have made no difference anyway! (I was going to have another go at this, choosing a different grey point, but I notice you'd made some changes so I didn't want to lose them). Whether that means the end result is correct is something you're probably more qualified to say though. :-)
My "important" latest changes involved removing a Mercedes, but yes, I do seem to have tweaked the colour again. I think the colour is ok now.
Austin Princess:- I'm guessing it's okay going by this image, the original was slightly light, but still had plenty of highlight detail waiting to be retrieved. :-)
I cannot remember with too much certainty how this looked originally. I think Simon G's image to which you have linked was a different colour - a sort of metallic dark bronzeish shade. Simon's car is several years newer than the one in "my" picture. I also think his is not desperately true to the car's oiginal colour. The one I took, shortly after the launch of the car as the Austin 1800 (sometimes Austin 18-22) is a NON-metallic colour. A slightly orangey red. Matallic paint was quite new at this stage. BLMC (Austin, Morris) were not at the forefront of technolgy and I don't think that when this car came out you could buy it with metallic paint. (Ford UK HAD started using metallic paint for popular cars - Cortinas, Escorts...and it quite often peeled off after five years.) Which is a lot to write when I am unsure about the precise original colour of the earlier Austin 1800.
Incidentally, I see that you call this an Austin Princess. No. British Leyland was in a state of headless mental muddle throughout its life and by the 1970s the muddle was becoming terminal. They had too many (by mnow hopelessly devalued) brands, and thought it would help matters if they kept rebranding their cars. Taking my dates from Misplaced Pages, when this one was launched in March 1975 it was the Austin 1800. If it had a six cylinder engine it was an Austin 2200. There was also a Morris 1800 and a Morris 2200. Same body except for a curious extra ridge on the nose for the Morris. It wasn't till near the end of that year - Misplaced Pages says September 1975 - that they started to call it Princess. But my obsession then was to photograph new models, and when I photographed this one during the summer term/semester 1975, it was an Austin (or a Morris).
Austin 1300 with Beetle in background:- Again, I can't really judge this myself. All I can say is that this was basically a straightforward adjustment of overall colour balance via grey point on tarmac. (The tweak to the shadow details had no effect on the colour of the cars). There may have been a difference in the colour of the two cars that was lost on film, at the scanning stage or at the colour balance adjustement stage... all I can say is that this wasn't an explicit choice on my part- they both came out that shade of red. Granted, the colour balance could be adjusted to get a different shade of red, but both cars would still be the same colour, whatever that was :-) I'm happy for you to revert this if you like, it really wasn't a significant job.
Nothing to add. Most of my more significant issues with this picture concern where I stood to take it.
It's an improvement, whether it's good enough, I don't know. The technique I used to get the "mustard" colour without adding a cast was a slight cheat though :-/
MUCH MUCH truer. The "sedan" version was in the rain. This one was shortly after dawn, but on a sunny day albeit in the shade, so one would expect the colours to end up looking different. But you've put back the mustard and I like that. I was very keen on "Schnell Imbiss" sausage stands on my rare visits to West Germany back then. Mustard was an important colour even if I thought (and think) it looked (and looks) a bit odd on a car.
Seat Malaga:- Also, what do you think of this version? I looked at the previous one (that I'd done years ago but not uploaded) and realised that the "grey" point chosen had left the greys looking bluish. This one has more neutral greys/blacks, but maybe it's too warm now? Feel free to revert to the previous version if you like.
Still not sure what to make of this. I hardly saw any others this colour in my entire life, and I think that now Misplaced Pages has (at least one)/a better image of the car. But I think I like it more the way it is. Neither of us can entirely remove the input from the Wettergott.
I've put some heckles in. I don't know how to change text colour so I put them in itallics so they stand out better. I don't think I've come up with any newly earth shattering thoughts, but one way and another I think the brown Corse in Rome is closer to how I remember it. On with Friday. Regards Charles01 (talk) 06:14, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback and commentary.
Sorry for the "Adobe RGB" techie waffle BTW! I only mentioned that because I thought it *might* explain why the Corsa appeared more brown to you. Firefox has half-decent colour profile support, and IE9 actually has the best support of all (ironic given that IE8 had none).
Even on a newer browser, the colours of Commons' thumbnail previews might come out wrong because
"[http://commons.wikimedia.org/Commons:Image_guidelines#Technical_details Currently images in other color spaces will not render correctly except at full resolution, because their color profile information is stripped in the thumbnail. This is Wikimedia bug #19960, and will be fixed"
...implying that it's Commons' fault for removing the information that the browser would need to render the colours accurately.
I wouldn't worry about this to be honest anyway. My only advice is to make sure you're looking at the full-scale (not thumbnail) image in Firefox or IE9.
I uploaded some other stuff (preview thumbnails still appear to be out of date...) I'd meant to upload earlier and/or worked on in the past day or so, but that's pretty much all your stuff I'm going to mess about with for the immediate future. :-)
I probably would have uploaded some of that stuff earlier and/or using one of my other accounts, but I wasn't comfortable with mass-uploading new versions of someone else's images without notifying them (I did this before with a few of your pics then realised I probably should have spoken to you first). So I'd left them for later upload, and ended up with quite a few. :-/
Again, please feel free to revert any if you're not happy. I uploaded the Marina as a new file as it had been "messed about" rather than just tweaked like the others. I hope the colour's accurate. (I used a few refs to check, but this is the only one I can find right now).
I'm happy or very happy with three of the four (of mine - I'm not planning to comment on pictures I don't recall ever having seen before!). I have some doubts on the colour of the fourth. I'll try and come up with slightly more detailed reaction later. But for now, thank you. Regards Charles01 (talk) 15:56, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
I had only recently acquired a 35 mm camera, and I wasn't used to the winter light in Vienna (very colourless) so my memory may play strange tricks. But I really think that this car had more mustard in the colouring. I also don't think the wall behind it had that pink tint. It's not a wall colour I associate with Vienna in 1974. Though I think the whole city may have become a bit more colourful since then. Either that, or people photographing Vienna tend not to release pictures of "Jännerisch Wien" for public consumption....).
I could not find any other "references" on wikipedia for the more mustardy colour I think it was. The colour quickly went out of fashion about that time, and I don't think British Leyland held on to the paint for very long. But I am sure the car was NOT the same colour as the Marina 1300 I photographed at about the same time, but on a sunnier day, and which I think maybe the same colour as the reference shot to which you direct me. (Though the reference shot is indoors under artificial light and without the salty dust that covered most cars in Viena in January/February 1974.) Anyhow, you've left the mustard coloured car under a different name. I do NOT say it was ever a brilliant picture. But I do think the earlier one is closer to the car's original colour.
I like this one - and what you've done to it - a lot. Thank you.
This one just gets better and better. Thank you.
Yes. The thumbnail still looks very sad, but I linked a copy to an article on the car that for some (lucky for me) reason didn't already have a Prisma picture, and it looks good there. And much improved by you. And reassurance that just occasionally one can photograph a car in rain and get a clear picture. I think this one was soon after I got my Olympus OM2 of which I became very fond. Not sure where it is now, which is a pity.
Without getting into the boring details, the Marina image was much more heavily "messed about" with than the others (hence why that version was uploaded under a new name). The wall colour probably isn't 100% accurate, but if the car colour is inaccurate (IMHO) that's more serious.
I've arranged for the modified Marina image (but *not* your original version) to be removed from Commons, as I don't want to risk it being misleading. (For reference purposes, there's a copy here).
Hello Charles, I saw the changes to the Opel Corsa here. While it is indeed possible that it was brown, my parents had an '84 Corsa in almost exactly the color ("dark red", it was called) as achieved by CarbonCaribou in his second to last update. Also, the robin's egg blue of the Panda in front seems correct. Cheers, ⊂| Mr.choppers |⊃ (talk) 23:35, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
Hello, Mr C. I think this may be the colour you have in mind and I think it is not the same colour. But I reserve the right top be wrong! Regards Charles01 (talk) 08:39, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
It's possible, although their car was older than the top photo, and colors may have changed during the Corsa's production - not much else changed, so... But obviously I cannot say for sure what the color of a Corsa in Rome 25 years ago might have been. ⊂| Mr.choppers |⊃ (talk) 15:02, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Austin-Morris merger
Hi Charles01, I've found through Google Books one of their 'snippets' of an article in The Economist about this merger which I thought might throw up some interesting sidelights. I don't expect you will have the issue of December 3 1951 (Vol161 page 1347) readily to hand but do you, by any chance, have free access through a library to The Economist Historical Archive which is one of the Gale databases? Regards and happy Anzac Day, Eddaido (talk) 07:51, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't know. I do have a subscription to The Economist, but till now I have always resisted their blandishments in terms of accessing their stuff on-line. But I'll take a look. If it's easy, I'll be back on this quite soon. If it's not... Well, watch this space either way. It would certainly be interesting to see if, back in 1951, they already exhibited their unbreakable optimism. Probably in 1951 they did. The war was so recent that, by definition, any adult was still alive in Europe had good reason to "feel lucky", even if many also felt cold and hungry! Regards Charles01 (talk) 09:28, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Ok, I have a reply in time for the weekend. Unfortunately it's the wrong reply but I'll paste relevant bits including the link anyway. This is not an invitation to spend money. If you pay people for this type of thing it simply encourages them to charge more next time. But you may be nicer - if only to whoever it is at The Economist who thinks the archive can reinvent itself as an online profit centre - than I am and it didn't seem fair to deprive you of the opportunity. Regards Charles01 (talk) 18:45, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for contacting The Economist. Please be advised that your digital access entitles you to access print editions online dating back to 2000. Should you require access to older editions then you will need The Economist Historical Archive, for further information and to purchase access please visit the following link :
If we can be of any further assistance ..... (standard valedictory)
Thanks for that, worth a try and useful to know subscribers can go back that far. I guess before 2000 they have sold off some rights to Gale who do provide the archive to most institutes of higher learning but not to our local public library. All their records say they have the actual issue concerned but they want me to pay for them to get it in on interloan from another nearby for a small fee. I have a beautiful bright blue satchel by me right now containing another interloan re British Leyland post mortem which I had better deal with as it is due back tomorrow. I am wondering why I have done this. Thanks and Best wishes, Eddaido (talk) 12:34, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Kind comments always welcome, though the burden of your message is more enigmatic than ever, given that nothing downloads (except a blank page) when I click on that link. I do live in England, and the internet connections are commensurate with other key aspects of the UK infrastructure. (...third world rail system at first world + prices, lousy road network at least by European standards. We do have a fine literature and, in many cases, an excellent and necessary sense of humour, though...) Are you able to provide a sentence on what I would have learned if that link had worked for me, please? Happy day. Charles01 (talk) 06:08, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
And there was I thinking you lived in "the world's finest theme park". You recently amended the note about the name of the Bentley R Type which came from the chassis number. The link is to the site of the RR Owners' club of Australia and its list of chassis numbers. I found it by putting bentley chassis-numbers into Google and it was the first (real) result. That's really strange if you still can't see it. Cold and wet here - you have a good day too. Eddaido (talk) 08:20, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
Ford Escort XR3 image
The image of the Mk 3 XR3 you added appears to show a non-standard Escort XR3. Given that the purpose of the images is to show differences between the models, showing a non-standard one defeats the purpose and I have removed the photo. Halsteadk (talk) 10:13, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
You have not bothered to spell out what aspects of the car your regard as non-standard, and I am unfortunately not knowledgable enough to have worked it out for myself. If your judgement is correct then I agree that it supports your action. In any case, this entire subject is one that can quickly become hedged about with subjective judgements, and I have no strong opinion to offer on what you say (write) you have done.
Nevertheless, if you have the time to provide information on what aspects of the car you regard as non-standard, (1) it would be a conventional courtesy and (2) I might learn something which should (3) make both of us happy.
Hi and thanks for the contribution in the "Prices" bebacle. Just wanted advice on how i would compare the prices since i have fine detail of the trims for the C3 Picasso and so the problem i have with comparing with the major competitors is:
UK and Europe prices needed for the 3 main rivals, so 6 citations.
Knowledge of the most basic trim and price of each rival.
A suitable way to compare without being in breach of WP:ADVERTISING.
I'm afraid my own sources here at home tend to involve earlier decades and in many cases non-UK cars, since (or at least partly because) those are the areas where, as far as UK is concrned, I think I am more useful.
Thinking about it a little, I think you should probably start with a Parkers' Price guide (or similar rival publication) from whichever year it is that interests you. According to your user page you live in UK, so if you don't know what a Parker's Price Guide is, then any averagely knowledgable newspaper shop owner should be able to tell you, so you can look at a current copy and see if it tells you the sort of things that might be wiki useful. You may need to look for a couple of minutes: please don't jump in with an instant reaction. It's quite small print, some of it....
If you live near a place with second hand book shops, you should be able to pick up a two or ten year old Parkers' Price Guide in a second hand bookshop. If you ever attend classic car show events, there is often a tent/stall selling old car brochures and magazines and etc. If you don't, www.abe.com is a wonderful website, though for the easily tempted there is a risk of spending more than you've got on stuff you didn't realise you were looking for. It's called, at its best, serendipity.
All this breaks my first rule of wikipedia contributing which is that one shouldn't spend money on it. Well, I break my own rules all the time, but if this rule is important for you, the UK still has a public library service.
Incidentally, and if you're feeling easily annoyed please read no further... But I like what you've done with this article. It's interesting and informative and well written. Well, I think it's well written. Would I have done some bits differently? Well yes, but that's not the point, and in any case the car is not one that appeals to me because (1) I think they stopped making Citroens interesting about thirty years ago and (2) I find this one particularly ugly. But (ah yes, the "but") please remember that wikipedia is by it's nature a collaborative venture. If you take ten minutes out to understand Jimmy Wales, the project front man / icon, I think you will undestand that he is the first to provide reassurance that rules are there to be applied intelligently and to be broken where it makes sense to do so. And on the subject of interpreting often muddled and contradictory wiki-rules and guide-lines, other folks will inevitably have different ideas to you. Or should that be "from you"? Not better, and not worse, but just different. Some of your reactions along the lines that people need to see things your way and haven't read the bits of the entry that they ought to have read look a bit shrill and do risk making wikipedia a less constructive and ultimately less informative place than it can be and should be.
I'm afraid I've not read WP:ADVERTISING. Maybe I will, but I'm not really a rules wonk. Meantime, I reckon that if I see what looks like advertising copy I can sufficiently recognise it.
Very welcome advice Charles. Can you delve a little deeper into what you would have done differently with the article as we may be able to use it to improve the article further?
Also yes, i agree with all your points although i am a stickler for hypocricy when someone applies a rule incorrectly or breaks 1 rule trying to enforce another on me and that is why i was defensive on the talk page. The irony of someone trying to improve an article when they haven't even read it is amusing to me but at least there's some salvageable info there to use for the good of the article.
Well, if you put me on the spot, then it is impossible for me to figure out how I'd approach the entry if someone hadn't already done it. Because now someone has. However, I could easily - in theory - spend the rest of today thinking about this and answering it, but for my own rather obvious reasons I don't intend to do that. But off the top of my head, maybe the engines could have their own para / section. I know they link to little entries on the engines, but those entries themselves are pretty short of beef. Why were the engines chosen and what was good / bad about them in this application? Do they start in the mornings? Maybe a separate "commercial" section on how the car did in the market place. Did it live up to the marketing department's expectations? Was it (at least till now - and the first years are usually the best ones with car sales levels) an abject failure in terms of sales volumes? Left to my own devices, I'd probably go for a less anglo-centric angle. I know we live, now in England, but English is the world's favourite second language, and lots of people consultung wikipedia in English have never been in England, and probably never will. If you ask someone, even in a country with a good education system such as Germany or Swizerland, about the difference between England, and Great Britain (never mind the United Kingdom) they'll very likely go blank on you. Was the C3-Picasso designed in-house in France? Or by some famus Italian or English styling guru? How did it sell in France? After all, it is (at least badged as) a Citroen. I suppose Spain too, since the previous Picasso - at least where Europe is concerned - was built in the Vigo plant on the Spanish coast (much to the vocal displeasure of many in France). I'm intrigued by the Croatian angle. Are Peugeot-Citroen using it to spearhead a push into Croatia, or into all the Balkan countries where, as far as I remember, you didn't traditionally tend to see too many French cars. Or were they simply seduced into Croatia by government subsidies and cheap labour? It would be interesting to know more about the plant. For some plants yuo can link to little basic (or not so basic) entries on the plants but on this Croatian plant I find nothing. Did PSA's Croatian plant used to belong to someone else? Or is it a new (?joint-venture) plant on a greenfield site of the kind that elsewhere in middle Europe Peugeot thought they'd better call in a Japansese expert on how to make small cars profitably.
These are really intended as thought triggers rather than as anything more prescriptive. And I'll stop now because I want to spend a couple of hours in 1950 before the evening meal. But if you want to pick up on any of these thought triggers, good. If not ... your call. Regards Charles01 (talk) 16:00, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Ok...wow! I'm pretty gobsmacked you have so much... I'd better start researching.
Hi Charles01. Have you noticed the Daimler article is suffering a near 50% increase in hit rate? Someone must have made a major link to it in mid April 2012 and it seems to be continuing. Maybe they all come looking for Daimler Trucks. My interest in the cars and article was because the article looked as if it attributed the Coventry business to Daimler-Benz and I wanted to sort that out. Much-loved Daimlers. After months of thought I'm now confident that the only Daimler I've ever ridden in was a V8 250 a friend inherited from an aunt and kept for a while for fun. Otherwise I will admit to being seriously affected (by its sheer size) by a youthful encounter with one of these bearing a VIP. That certainly made a long-lasting impression and its why I want to go on and cover (or see covered) at least the big Daimlers - some day. I suspect some feel the Daimler categorization in Commons could be improved. Any thoughts? Best always, Eddaido (talk) 00:15, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever driven a Daimler, though I may have been a passenger in one at the odd funeral. Daimlers were always quite rare in England when I was growing up here. But in any case, I'm all in favour of people improving articles on much loved Daimlers or much loved anything elses, especially if they come with four wheels and an engine. And the user stats do indeed look to have shot up about a year ago and come back to settle usefully above the earlier base line: the surge in April 2012 is also noteworthy. Is that someone linking to it, or simply someone inadvertently (or even knowingly) adding a word or phrase combination that Google likes? Anyway, the more important point is that it's interesting and intelligently structured. Sometimes that is easier to achieve with articles that don't get so many visitors. In the sense that where lots of people have conflicting ideas about how an entry should look, even where 90% of the ideas, taken in isolation, would count as good ideas, when they all get squashed together into a single entry, the result can be serious incoherence. And in that sense the Daimler entry benefits greatly from one person having taken the time to form it into a coherent whole with a certin unifying thread running through it. On with Saturday. Best regards Charles01 (talk) 07:51, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Dodge Brothers 1927
You're a very generously-minded man Charles01, if I'd taken a totally free rein it would look different and I'm sure should be reduced or divided somehow. Anyway it stands to reason it can't last as it is for much longer now. Wet Sunday afternoon and I was fiddling with Standard in Commons and tried to categorize another excellent photo from your fine camera and I find that its a standard version of the period when it had been only recently said "if you can't afford a Ford then dodge a Dodge. Standard (2 nations divided by 1 . . . ) might account for the painted radiator and no bumpers (and prob no chrome on those headlights) and I think you will find it is a 1927 Dodge Brothers tourer with (cheaper?) artillery wheels. The clue being DB (not Deutsch-Bonnet or David Brown) on the hubcaps. Look at this pic. I can claim no credit for intelligence except that when I was young there were plenty of exactly these cars still about and the bars out the side of the plinth of the temp gauge meant something to me and when I put DB tourer into Google Dodge Bros came up immediately so put it down to local knowledge and I really do think your images are Great. Eddaido (talk) 02:36, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Czech detention and court custody
Hello Charles, how are you doing? Long time since we were in wikicontact... my university years are behind so I've started working and I don't really have much time for anything, including wiki now. Nevertheless, I made a few edits recently.
Hmmm. Well, I took a look at the first one and decided the intro para was confusing pretrial detention with pretrial release on bail. To my mind those two are opposites. Bail is interesting, but surely it deserves only a passing mention in an entry on detention. On the other hand, the law (like the politics) in the UK and US is much more polarised than in mainland western Europe. Maybe in middle Europe you somehow see the difference between the two concepts as more nuanced. Feel free - as ever - to correct what I did here.
I hope the working life is satisfying. The more you can get to do work that you enjoy the better, and as a (hopelessly optimistic) generalisation, the better your edcation, the better your chances of getting a job that is fun. Well, usually... Best Charles01 (talk) 19:42, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I actually worked only on the parts concerning the Czech Republic. I was contributing to Randy Blythe's Manslaughter Charges recently and following the coverage of the case, and the nonsense that may be found on the criminal proceedings in US media was simply too much to bear, so I felt obliged to contribute this to wiki so that anyone interested who can't read the Czech criminal code in Czech language may have a chance to get a grip of the issue.
Yes, I enjoy my work very much... apart from the working hours which average 12-13 a day. But that is the only way to learn how to practice the law in a leading lawfirm :/ I've moved to Prague so should you ever be on trip here, do not hesitate to let me know... if lucky, I might have a free weekend to meet with you and take you around. Thanks once more for taking a look at my contributions to those articlesCimmerian praetor (talk) 20:12, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Well, it's pretty understandable the way you have it. But I made a few changes to make it look a bit more like the sort of thing an English text book might write. Trouble is, that risks introducing anglo-saxon concepts which don't belong in Czechia. If you find places where I did that, probably it makes sense to reverse my changes. Incidently, there was one line I wasn't sure I understood. I rewrote it anyway, but it may now be wrong. That's the bit that runs:
An exception to the time limits above arises in cases of remand due to concern of interfering with witnesses or other frustration of proceedings, in which case the paximum pre-trial detention period may be increased by three months, except where the charged person has already been influencing witnesses or otherwise frustrating the proceedings
It is actually other way around. The time limit is not increased, it is simply 3 months maximum, only in case that the custody is not due to concern, but due to the fact that the influencing of witness (etc) already happened, the standard 1-2-3-4 lengths apply.
Is you work concentrating on civil law or criminal law? Or are you still new enough to the firm not to have decided? When I was at university, the most ambitious law students tended to go off to London to specialise in commercial law when they left uni, I guess because it was reckoned to be better paid. Lots of obscure contracts for goods and services which you'd never have thought existed or needed to exist until you found that they did. That sort of thing is particluarly important in London with it's long-standing commercial traditions. Though I sometimes wonder if the slightly less ambitious ones who went to work in small towns on less specialist matters may have ended up more happy. If less rich. But each one must make for him (or her) self his (or her) own decisions and his (or her) own progress.
Yes, I do mostly civil/commercial law. Here in the Czech Republic there are too many law graduates, which leads to the fact that the only at least a bit decently paid jobs are to be found only by large lawfirms in Prague I can imagine settling down in a smaller town elsewhere (or in other country), but for now it is all about gaining as much experience as I can. Cimmerian praetor (talk) 17:37, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited PSA Trnava Plant, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Škoda and Kia (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Hi Charles, can i see the source you mentioned so i can access which is more reliable for the date? November and December are close but i'd rather have the correct date. Thanks ツ Jenova2016:32, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
If the link doesn't work let me know. Somehow making links work still hasn't made it to the list of things I reckon I can do relatively well. But we try and remember how the Panglossian mantra runs, and live in hope. Regards Charles01 (talk) 16:58, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
"Since November 2011 PSA Peugeot Citroën factory in Trnava is producing Peugeot 208".
Is this the section Charles? I think you may have misread it the first time as it doesn't mention the date of the first C3 Picasso assembly and to be honest it appears to be a translated article and not done too well. Thanks ツ Jenova2017:29, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
That is indeed the line that captured my eye, and I agree that whoever translated it into English does not have English as his/her mother tongue. For you to judge how authoritative it appears when compared to other sources you've looked at. Success Charles01 (talk) 17:45, 29 September 2012 (UTC).
Well, how it's wrote now it's not about the C3 Picasso there so i don't intend to change what i have. I've used maybe 300 references for that article and most are in it somewhere and i'm happy with the accuracy of the dates too. Thanks for pointing this out to me but i can't use it how it is. Thanks again Charles ツ Jenova2018:20, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
Fame and other stuff
Hi Charles01. Please would you read this because I suspect like me you will have a good healthy laugh out loud around page 8. Very best, Eddaido (talk) 08:46, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Nothing amusing about Misplaced Pages being cited as an authoritative source, surely.....but thanks. It was interesting. And one implication seems to be that if the plaintiffs had included some distinctive script as part of their claim, they might have won. Or do I need to have read it more carefully? I'm not sure that I agree that Gottlieb Daimler was not a serious historical figure, but then I guess that's partly a question of the skew of your education, and I was schooled closer to Germany and to the origins of the petrol powered motor vehicle than your average New York lawyer (even though my grandmother was, as far as I remember, born on Staten Island). And the way I read it, we got left with the judge's starting prejudices on the significance of Gottlieb Daimler because the plaintiffs I mean applicants didn't bother to make their case in respect of it. And I suppose they would say that they hadn't realised that the judge would think that this was of the proverbial essence. I'm afraid my lasting reaction is that it is sad that apparently reasonably intelligent people are paid presumably obscenely excessive amounts of cash for getting excited, in a manner that I think some lawyers might regard as a little bit slapdash, about this sort of thing. But then that makes me sound like a dangerous lefty which I didn't think I was. Ah well. Regards Charles01 (talk) 18:59, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Presumably you mean John William Scott Macfie: it's an unusual combination of names and I agree it may very well be he. Most of what I wrote in the wiki entry comes from Who's Who.
I have replied at greater length by email. But alas I do not think, from what you have told me, that I have any eureka moments for you.
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I am moving all these pages to your userspace: they clearly don't belong in article space, but I can see that you have taken trouble over writing the captions!TheLongTone (talk) 09:59, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. I thought they were in my user space, but if they weren't it looks from what you write as if they are now....Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 10:02, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
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Not just any entomologist and he worked in a most important arena. I'll add what I can.Thanks for letting me know and best eshes from Ireland Robert aka Notafly (talk) 14:36, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
A more positive reaction than I had any right to expect. Thank you and I shall look forward to seeing what you come up with. Incidentally I just noticed that our man had an entry in French Misplaced Pages two years before I started one in English which I find pleasing in an indefinable sort of way. The information in that entry seems to come from the same source as "Who's Who". I wonder if someone paid someone else a royalty? Actually I don't think people were so paranoid about copyright issues back then, and even today I am assured you cannot copyright mere facts. In any case, if they both asked JWSM what to write and he sent them both the same answers - which seems more than likely - it's not to be wondered at that they both printed the same info similarly sequenced. A digression too far? Almost certainly. Best wishes not from Ireland but from England, though a recent exchange student visiting from Germany seemed genuinely impressed by the acute greenness of our countryside, so maybe the Dublin government really has found a way to export all that rain to your eastern neighbour. That's certainly how it feels lately, though the cold air seems to be from somewhere further to the north or east Charles01 (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for November 11
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On Oswald, yes. I've been reading him incompletely and indirectly through other people's entries, and it really is great to have my own copies of at least some of the volumes. Far fewer obvious printing errors in the many tables than in Culshaw & Horrobin which is the nearest thing I've found to an English equivalent on the UK auto-industry. And Oswald combines a powerfully factual narrative with the occasional strong judgement call which, because he so obviously knows his subject intimately, I am tempted often to take at face value. He writes that Kurt Lotz who took over from Nordhof at VW was a man in the wrong job who understood nothing about the car business. Well, we all had wondered, but reassuring to see it simply spelled out like that by a man whose opinion I tend to respect. (I don't know anything about German libel laws, but I do know that Werner Oswald died in 1996.) For the sake of balance, while Lotz seems to have employed a scatter gun approach to figuring out how to replace the Beetle, one or two of the ideas initiated on his watch were picked out by Leiding, skilfully pursued, and led to the revivial aka survival of the business. And in the end they both fell on their swords for reasons that seem to have had more to do with the political nature of VW's ownership and internal power structures than on account of the model development policies over which they presided.
It's a good source for lots of M-B models including some that never yet got their own write-up even in German wiki, but yes, I am hoping to stretch gently back through the 1930s and 1920s on M-B. Already started as you doubtless spotted. There's a fellow called Luc who has done a lot for several of the the old German cars on Italian wiki, and he does good pictures too. He comes with nice insights but I don't always agree with them: the Italian approach doesn't translate so directly into my kind of English as the German approach. That's partly because I never lived in Italy and don't have so much Italian, I guess.
I got two volumes of Oswald by driving to Germany and visiting a book shop which I'd previously found on the web. It's a good shop, but of course that's an old fashioned way to do stuff and I just got a third volume without ever rising from my desk by using
www.abe.com .
I wonder if our grandchildren will even bother with legs.
On referencing I am, of course, completely in the soup. Every so often I look at how someone else has done it ad try to copy what they did. You yourself are one from whom I have attempted to learn. But then I look at how someone else did it and they've done it quite differently. I guess it's good to have a choice. But till now I've totally failed to master the underlying strand of how wiki referencing works. Mostly with computer use it works with osmosis or, in my case, thinking back to he Apple Mac I had in the late 1980s where everything was so gloriously intuitive. But these days Apple are unaffordable and have lost their simplicity and while I've picked up quite a lot about the technical side of how wikipedia works by osmosis, referencing is till now a residual gap. As is reprogramming myself not to leave one space after a comma, two after a colon or semi colon and three after a fullstop aka period. And if ever I do learm they'll probably uninvent the computer and I'll have to dig out a typewriter again....
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Not sure if this is where I should be commenting, but your File:Leyland Sherpa ca 1981.JPG is not really a very good one to use as an example on Misplaced Pages as the van has been modified.
The bumper is entirely wrong, may be off a later "Sherpa", but the starting handle hole must have been added.
The wheels are modern, the mirrors are almost certainly off a later "Sherpa" , and it looks like high level lights have been added at the back.
When I say "Sherpa", I'm referring to the line of derivatives starting with the Freight rover 200 through to the LDV Pilot, most of which had many interchangeable parts. (My '78 Sherpa has the entire front axle, brakes, hubs, etc. from one of the last Pilots).
SherpaSam (talk) 02:33, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
In my judgement you're broadly right. The obvious reason for inserting a picture in an entry on a car/van is to show a reader what the car or (in this case) van looked like at the time. Criteria include but are not restricted to (1) the quality of the picture as a picture and (2) whether it is the best (or only) representation of the van in question. (A particular bugbear of mine arises when (no doubt in order to comply with obscure regulations) big ugly orange indicators get retrofitted to 40s and 50s cars and vans which originally depended on (endlessly temperamental) semaphore style flippers/trafficators: but that's a digression you don't need here..) (And obviously one has to avoid using pictures that may trigger copyright issues - which tends to rule out pictures previouosly published in Commercial Motor even supposing it was possible to scan a copy of same into a computer with sufficient clarity.)
When I took the picture we had no other pictures on wikipedia of this age and type of van. That's why I took the picture and that's why I uploaded it. If someone has (or you are about to) since upload(ed) to wikipedia a picture that is of broadly comparable quality but which shows are more representative vision of how the Sherpa looked at the time, you should please replace the picture that is there. On the more general "quality of picture" issue it's probably better that I don't comment. Much. Obviously I take pictures the way I like them. Or try to. But whether you, or anyone else, think a given picture is good in terms of clarity, the angles, the way the light does (or doesn't) help get a view of the lines of the vehicle ... other things which are maybe more important to you ... I cannot really second guess your judgements and probably should not wish to.
A few years back there was a real shortage of pictures on wikipedia of some of these older (well, we all get to feel older...) light vans. It's not restricted to light vans, but light vans seems to be your theme at the moment. The shortage is less acute but still there. Another (now) rare BLMC van of which all examples seem to have rusted away before anyone invented the portable camera is the J250. If you do, possibly via an informal club or network of enthusiast owners, have access to other old (and ideally reasonably well preserved) British vans, a camera and a decent position in terms of the daylight, maybe you could also find and upload a more representative picture of a BMC J250. The present one is nice as a shot of an ice cream van on a rainy day in (apparently) a tourist city and gives a good idea of the front of the van, but there's nothing remotely typical or standard about the bits behind where the driver sits.
Thinking on it (as one does) if you are in England and might get a good picture of a Sherpa or anything else, yes you might, even in winter. But the way the weather looks through my window right now maybe you could also revisit the issue again in six months time when the chances of getting the van into a nicely lit position even on our misty island will be ...um... increased. If you actually own a suitable van .... well, go for it. We'll all be winners. Try (ideally) to get a background that is neither too distracting nor too depressing. Try and angle the van so the sun is relatively high (and, obviously, more behind where you stand to take the picture than in front, and whether or not behind clouds) to avoid funny reflections that you only notice when you get home and look again at the picture(s). I like green backgrounds which argues for a local sports ground or the entrance to a field along a country road. Or do you have access to a stately home with a country park? No, probably not in December. Anyhow, you don't need to share my taste. A disused town gas works could also be an interesting background. (There's nothing wrong with your own front drive, but probably you should avoid that since you - or your nearest and dearest or remoter kinsfolk - may get to feel indefinably uneasy about having your own home pictured in wikipedia, even on a less than frequently consulted page. Hard to explain why, but ...)
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The most obvious difference between a 1940 Buick Special and a 1940 Buick Super are running boards. The Super never had them and the Special didn't lose them until 1941. Thus the 1940 Buick in question is clearly a Super (given that it has hood moldings consistent with the smaller straight-8). Specials and Centurys were built on GM's B-body and Supers and Roadmasters were built on GM's C-body. In 1940 the GM C-body received cutting-edge "torpedo" styling that featured shoulder and hip room that was over 5" wider, the elimination of running boards and exterior styling that was streamlined and 2-3" lower. The GM B-Body didn't get the new look until the following year.
I'm sorry that I didn't notice your question until now.
Many thanks, Sadowski. I do need to try and discipline myself to do more patient research before uploading car pictures of cars about which I know so little, as here. But I'm still learning. (Not sure about the self-discipline bit, though.) Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 09:06, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
IF you are also good on Packards, and have appropriate time and inclination, would you mind taking a look at the 1947 Clipper of which I linked a picture to the Packard Clipper entry. I'm as sure as I can be that it's a Packard Clipper (yes, I know. That way nemesis beckons...) but I was never quite sure about the 1947 bit. BUT if the day job calls, please don't interrupt it on my account. Either way, thanks for thinking about it. Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 09:20, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
It used to upset me when people misidentified uploaded images. But my philosophy now is that at least the images are in the commons. I've become quite adept at locating misidentified automobile images and I am just grateful for their existence. However I'm still occasionally irritated when people replace good images in pages with their own misidentified uploaded images (I'm thinking of one self-promoting editor in particular).
The Packard is challenging, as the 1946s and 1947s are virtually identical. However this appears to be a 1947 Packard Super Clipper. The easiest way to tell that it is a Super is simply the Super script on the hood just forward of the door jamb. And fortunately, for identification's sake, it has a two tone paint scheme. In 1946 the top color was applied to the window frames and the trunk. In 1947 the top color was applied only to the roof as we see here. Sadowski (talk) 00:35, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks. I've been nurturing unease somewhere obscure at the back of my mind about that Packard's year for months.
As to misidentified images, yes it's tiresome when other people do it, but if course when I do it myself it's merely honest error. Once or twice I have raised suspected misidentification of other folks' uploaded pictures on their talk pages, but generally .... not worth the time and effort. As for good images being replaced by worse images, of course I agree. Interesting issues arise where you have a MUCH better image of an unusual bodied car or an adequate but only just image of a more standard bodied car the way we remember them (but maybe cleaner) on the streets when we were kids. Anyhow, I upload too many pictures of cars myself to Commons to be keen to become involved in too many of p***ing contests over the relative merits of one or other picture being linked to a particular article. I'll happily link one of "my" pictures where there seems to be a gap - no picture at all of the car/body type in question - or where I'm "replacing" one of "my" own pictures with one which I judge to be for some reason "better". Otherwise better to let others make the appropriate judgements. On one (or two) self promoting editors in particular, we're probably thinking of the same chap(s) but I think I'll leave it at that.
Too kind. Thank you. I'm not sure that delicious looking cake is on the list of things I'm allowed to eat, but my virtual pleasure is undiminished, and a pleasing chance to reminisce on Budapest. My son just came to tell me the bleeper on the cooker is bleeping and Mom upstairs is not responding to his yells, so I guess I need to go and guestimate what there is on the cooker that needs to be turned up or (more likely) down. Happy Christmas and >2012. Charles01 (talk) 11:08, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
Hello Charles01. Thanks for creating the new Mercedes-Benz W142 article. I nominated the article to be published on the Did you know section of Misplaced Pages's main page, but was informed that all paragraphs need to be sourced in the article (except for the lead) to qualify for DYK (see Misplaced Pages:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines). Another matter at the DYK nomination was that the article is reliant upon a single source. So, if you're interested in the prospect of this being listed at DYK, feel free to add more sources to the article so that all paragraphs have at least one source, and add more sources if they're available. From this point, it can be renominated. The nomination for DYK is located here: Template:Did you know nominations/Mercedes-Benz W142. Cheers, Northamerica100010:34, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for liking it, and indeed for improving the entry as you did.
I'm afraid I'm not really up to speed with DYKs and other wikinominations. Sorry of that makes me sound like some kind of a republican (British English: not American English....Never too keen on dodgy politicians schmoozing other dodgy politicians and journalists with the promises of lordships either...). If a wiki entry communicates information that is interesting and/or useful and as far as possible objectively true, that's good. If not ... not.
The sourcing issue is of course important. I have one book with good information on this car. It's a good book and I believe the information is of good quality. And of course there's German wikipedia which I used as a source. Actually I think he most likely used the same book, but without the same level of "in-line" citations to demonstrate the fact. However, the chap who wrote "my" book also wrote another book dedicated to Mercedes-Benz cars only. Good. But of course he will have recycled his research for Book A when compiling Book B and / or vice versa. How many sources was that? There are also no doubt half a dozen web based sources that could be adduced. Except that many of them will be copied ... or, which is worse, mis-copied ... from the same book. (And when you come back in three years time half the web based sources will have disappeared or died.) Where you have an entry on World democracy there are no doubt hundreds of sources all differently sourced and researched, but when you are looking at a single car from seventy or eighty years ago, ten sources are often actually just one or two sources, going round and round in circles quoting (or misquoting) one another, and risking giving false information driven by some simple transcription error that provided false information the sacred status of something seemingly corroborated from five or ten different directions. So, if you (or anyone reading this) are willing and able to add sources to the entry, and especially of they are reliable and as far as you can tell independent of one another that's great. Strength in diversity. But the objective has to be to improve the quality of the information. Ticking boxes on a check list compiled by folks most of whom who never read the entry ... well, that's nice too, of course. But important more as a means than as an end in itself. Or?
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Hi Charles01. As you seem to be fluent both in English and automotive engineering, I am kindly asking you for a favour. Would you please check through the following article for correct language: Tor Nessling. If its improvement needs excessive efforts or you are not interested in it for another reason, I'm fine with it, I don't want to push work to anyone. --Gwafton (talk) 22:34, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, adequately fluent in English anyhow. Not, alas, familiar with Finnish, and my automotive vocabulary is easily challenged - eg by suspension components. But I'll enjoy looking at the Tor Nessling entry. If I do make any changes, and if you think I have damaged the meaning in doing so, please be sure to reverse/correct the results of my misunderstanding(s). Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:45, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for your contributions so far. I don't know if it is relevant to clarify in this context what vuorineuvos is, one can easily find it out by clicking the link.
Terminal tractor is a vehicle which is used to load and unload roro ferries. There is no article in English yet. There are also alternative names for the vehicle; it is called Ottawa in Northern America according to a famous producer. In Britain it might have been called tugmaster (according to Douglas Tugmaster). Article in Finnish – description on one producer's website. --Gwafton (talk) 23:36, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the reaction. I was indeed waiting to see how you would react before doing any more. "Terminal tractor" probably makes sense to people who live or work near ports, but I live inland. "Terminal" has different meanings and the meaning of "Terminal Tractor" was not immediately obvious to me. I've no idea if that would be a general reaction, but it would indeed be good if someone had the tie to translate the Finnish article into English (assuming the Finnish article is ok).
On what I did with vuorineuvos, it is indeed a judgement how far you rely on people clicking through to linked entries. Trouble is, if you ask them to click through for too many things, and they are short of time, they may lose the will to live or go to bed before going back to the entry where they started. Well, that of course is an exaggeration. You certainly do not need to share my judgement on this one.
(I was also wondering what to do about his other qualification. Clicking on that told me about 300 points which seems to be quite a lot, but it's not immediately clear what it means...)
I think part of the issue is that in the UK and the USA people do not worry so much about these qualifications. Everyone in and above middle management in a big corporation in the USA or India or even the UK seems to have some sort of a Masters' degree these days, and if a guy is running a large chunk of the country's manufacturing industry, the university qualifications of a US equivalent to TN probably wouldn't make it to the intro para / executive summary at all. Though they might still mention WHERE he studied if it was a famous university - Harvard or Berkeley or whatever has become fashionable since I knew what was going on in the world of higher education. In Germany (where I once lived) a man's qualifications are more important and follow him through life. When I was young I was amused that the German auto-industry seemed to be run by a lot of doctors and professors. (In England, if you are a doctor of medicine, everyone knows. If you re a doctor of anything else, nobody knows...If you are a professor, it means you work at a university.) In Italy, too, your qualification(s) follow you prominently through your working life. Same - I guess - in Finland. But in the Anglosphere, the cultural tendency has always been to downplay your educational qualifications. The Americans voted for Bush because they trusted his folksy style and his skill at concealing any sign of intellectual horse-power. In England we used to have a prime minister who was academically brilliant who liked to smoke cigars. When he saw a Television camera coming he put away the cigar, grabbed a pipe to smoke, and put on a curious quasi-regional accent that was meant to remind people of "working class Yorkshire". He was very well qualified in Economics, but as far as I know he never bothered to go for a doctorate.
Anyhow, I think I'll take another look at the TN entry later in the week, now that I know you are not entirely horrified by what I did to it. Please don't hesitate to correct anything I do with which you disagree. I suspect you know a lot more about the guy than I ever will. Regards Charles01 (talk) 12:43, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Happy New Year. Regarding Nessling's diplomi-insinööri degree, it is more or less equivalent with the German Diplomingenieur. A suitable English translation would be MSc in Mechanical Engineering I think. I remain waiting for your contributions. --Gwafton (talk) 18:03, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Tractor unit (far left) with container:recycling equipment, for the use of
Thanks. If these were SAT/SISU vehicles one of the pix might even illustrate the entry on TN, but I don't know what make/type they are. Gwafton included a link to a website for Kalmar trux which seems to be the firm into which SISU (or part of it?) was at one stage subsumed, but SISU still appears to operate as an independent business, so maybe it got unsubsumed (management buy-out of the division?) .... I'm still confused. Happy year. Charles01 (talk) 09:41, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I should have tried a little harder, here's about these one's here. When I go further into Terberg machinery brochures they actually offer in this line (their names):
distribution tractors
roro tractors
seaport tractors
industrial tractors
industrial terminal tractors
all of which look to me only a little different from each other (or much the same) - but I expect there is a logic there. Not helping any am I, sorry!
Going back to SISU. Having read this and this I guess SISU products lost their identity around 1997 and are now represented by these things. But that presumes two things: I have correctly understood what is written and that that which was written corresponds with the facts!! No confidence-builder am I. Maybe your Finnish contact can sort it out and now I'll go off and try to stop being a nuisance! Eddaido (talk) 11:49, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, Kalmar products originate from Sisu terminal tractors. There is a long and messy history behind.
After SAT took over VAT terminal tractor, bus chassis, mobile crane, military vehicle and later also axle production was moved to Hämeenlinna, the former Vanaja factory, whereas the Karis factory focussed on lorries. SAT became gradually fully state owned and it was renamed Sisu-Auto in 1981 when the company celebrated its 50th anniversary.
In early 1990s Sisu-Auto was put together with some parts of Valmet, another state owned company. The new company was called Sisu Corporation and Valmet tractors were badged with Sisu logo for some time. Valmet diesel engine factory was renamed Sisu Diesel. The state separated Sisu Defence to another company Patria, in which it collected also other strategically important production. Nowadays the Patria Hämeenlinna factory's main product is armoured personnel carrier Patria AMV. Sisu Terminal Systems (STS) was moved from Hämeenlinna to Valmet telescopic handler factory located in Tampere in 1996.
In late 1990s Sisu Corporation merged with Partek and the state became a significant owner of Partek. Sisu axle factory in Hämeenlinna was sold to investors. Now the company name is Sisu Axles and belongs to Marmon-Herrington. The state wanted to get rid of the Partek shares and sold their part to Kone. It was the end of Partek; Kone sold Valmet tractors (now called Valtra) together with Sisu Diesel to AGCO. Sisu lorry production in Karis was sold to its management and its name is now Sisu Auto. Kone kept the terminal tractor production and took into use name Kalmar which was taken from a Swedish company it had taken over previously. Then the owners of Kone, Herlin family, divided the company into two parts: the container handling system division became Cargotec and Kone concentrated on lifts. --Gwafton (talk) 20:22, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. My first reaction is that the products themselves must be excellent and / or very well suited to the markets they serve if the business has survived while management were spending all their time and mental space worrying about changes in organisation and ownership structures! But presumably there were some good operational guys managing the business itself through all that. Regards Charles01 (talk) 15:54, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Good work with the language so far, I haven't noted any changes in meanings. I have to think if Nessling should be called a leading Finnish industrialist when SAT was never one of the biggest companies in Finland. I have added a photo of Nessling in Commons. It is quite large and I'll try to find another one. If I won't manage I'll clip off a portrait from this one.
It is a miracle that Sisu still exists. The follower of Nessling, Eric Gillberg, was in a difficult situation and actually treated unfairly. SAT became almost entirely state owned and during the recession of mid 1970s the company was not allowed to fire people because in a difficult economical situation it was politically unacceptable from a state owned company. In the meantime, the state demanded that SAT must make profitable business and finally fired Gillberg because he could not turn the lorry production profitable.
Gillberg changed the company structure to more delegating direction (vs. Nessling's style) and during his era the production was modernised with new machinery. During his era SAT developed the new S series (SK, SL, SM, SR) which was very smartly modulised. The same parts were used in several, very different applications and despite of low volumes SAT/Sisu-Auto could provide a wide range of vehicles for different purposes. The same cabin was used both in long-nosed and forward control models. And you could buy a ready built logging vehicle straight from the Sisu factory; normally one must buy first the vehicle and then order the outfitting from somewhere else.
But Gillberg made mistakes too. He tried to turn the bus chassis production profitable which was an impossible task under the price pressure of bulk producers. The bus chassis production was soon ended after Gillberg left. Another mistake was a contract with Scania and Leyland. One target was to get standard components, such as engines, for a good price from serial producers. Another target was using the sales networks of both companies for exports and therefore to widen their selection. The plan failed because of merger speculations of Scania and Volvo, and bankruptcy of Leyland.
Sisu Auto still lives in Karis (now Raseborg) and builds under 200 vehicles per year. Many of the parts come from the main component supplier Mercedes-Benz (cabin, engines, gearbox...). --Gwafton (talk) 23:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm glad I haven't damaged the meaning with all my changes. (No, I've still got another section to do, but I've been through most of it now for better and worse)
I have no trouble thinking of Nessling as a leading industrialist. He seems almost single handedly to have created the Finnish truck industry. But if you have a better description, feel free to substitute it. What is important, I believe, is that in the executive summary / introduction / whatever you want to call it you include something to make the reader understand why (s)he should be interested. There are various wiki-guidelines about notability, I think, but it's mostly common sense. We're (almost) all interesting to out parents and a lot of us are interesting for quite a lot of the time to our wive(s) (or husband(s)) and children. Maybe also to our friends on a good day. But to qualify for a wiki entry you need to be interesting to more people, and I think it's important to try and tell people why this fellow is of more widespread interest than the fellow they sat next to in the tram today.
Building heavy trucks seems to be a difficult business financially. A high proportion of your costs are fixed. It's hard to get started because it's hard to persuade anyone to lend you the money to kit out the factory. The cash flow management is difficult because a high proportion of your costs are fixed - ie paying back the bank loan. If you budget to amortize your fixed costs (ie pay back the bank loan) with a volume of 50,000 trucks, and you actually produce and sell 60,000 trucks, you make huge profits and you go out and buy a big house. But if you budget for a volume of 50,000 trucks and you actually build and sell only 40,000 trucks, your variable and semi-variable costs may be reduced, but that great big chunk of fixed costs still needs to be met. You run out of cash. That happened again and again with truck makers in the last 100 years. And with trucks and buses the effect is multiplied because many of your customer face the same problem. You buy a bus or truck and your variable costs will be fuel and driver wages (unless you are an owner-driver) but if the economy turns down and your load factors or productive kilometers are lower than budgeted, that will have no effect on the great big chunk of fixed costs - the money you still have to pay back to the bank. I do not think it is an accident that countries where capital intensive engineering based companies do best are countries where banks take a long term view and governments try to manage the economy for stable growth and interest rates. While countries where capital intensive heavy engineering has shrunk to a diminishing fraction of its former size are countries where the governments spend money they don't have then debauch the national currency to try and find a short term fix for their own fiscal incontinence. Ah well, the Brits may not build too many heavy trucks these days, but they seem to be much better than the Germans and Swiss at persuading Japanese automakers to set up here when the national economies are growing.
You made a good point - Nessling set up the Finnish heavy vehicle industry. I don't know if there is any other cluster in Finland that owes so much to one person. Before him there had been just coach works and some experiments about vehicle construction.
There used to be a rule of thumb that a vehicle producer only has to make a black zero result from production, the profit comes from after market. When you operate with a narrow profit it can easily happen that the company gets into trouble from minor disturbances. What effects a lot in heavy vehicle market, is the size of the market area. The Swedish Scania and Volvo realised already in 1960s that they must focus on international markets. Why didn't SAT succeed, I don't know, maybe Nessling was too careful or the vehicles were just too expensive.
I have got a good example about the effect of the market size. Back in socialistic era, the world's biggest bus factory and biggest lorry factory were in East Bloc. The bus factory was Hungarian Ikarus. Sometimes the buses were good enough for even western market. But nowadays there is no Ikarus any more. The lorry factory, however, was Soviet (now Russian) KamAZ. The factory was set up in Tatarstan after a political decision. The products were never good enough for western market. But KamAZ still exists and it still is the world's biggest. What was the difference? When socialistic economy collapsed and Comecon was ended, both companies lost their international markets but Russian market was big enough to keep KamAZ alive. It shows what kind of problems you have when you operate in a small country: you must be very good to succeed. But in a big country and big market it is not so important because the customer base is big enough.
A very robust structure was characteristic to Sisu and Vanaja. Finland lived from paper industry back then and the paper mills consumed a lot of wood that had to be taken from forests where were hardly any roads. The drivers were paid by cubic metres of wood and therefore the logging vehicles were usually very overloaded (there was seldom any road control in the small roads). It happened often that serial produced vehicles stucked in forest because the engines or transmissions were too weak, or the vehicle frame cracked under the load. Sisu and Vanaja were expensive vehicles but sold well in Finland because of their good characteristics.
I read somewhere that when Leyland representatives once visited in Finland they were shocked about the circumstances where their engines were used: temperatures of -40 C sometimes in winter, damaged roads in spring times or no roads at all. --Gwafton (talk) 01:34, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi Charles01. I assume the Nessling article is ready now. I want to thank you for the English lesson. If you got interested about the topic I encourage you to contribute the other Sisu related articles as well. --Gwafton (talk) 09:53, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Glad to have been helpful, and learned something at the same time. "Ready" is a questionable concept. I tend to come back and worry at things six months down the line, but yes, I've certainly done most of what I am able on this entry. And I might indeed follow one or two of those links to related subjects and worry away at them too at some stage... Finnish is a language of which I know nothing, tho I remember a Finnish girl I say next to on a flight many years ago taking great trouble to make sure I knew the key differences between Finnish and Hungarian. A nice introduction to the Finnish sense of humo(u)r. Anyhow, these days the translation programs usually give one a start if one has a bit of background knowledge on some of the aspects covered. Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Your help at checking the grammar would be most appreciated! They say that for a native English speaker Finnish is the second most difficult European language to learn (after Hungarian). If you want to compare these languages you can have a look on the Sisu SA-150 article. It is the same in English, Finnish, German, Estonian and Hungarian. Estonian is closer to Finnish, maybe you can spot similarities between the languages. Hungarian grammar somewhat resembles Finnish but the vocabulary is quite different. The relationship is often too much underlined as Finno-Ugric languages is a small language family compared to Indo-European languages. But in linguistic point of view Russian is much closer to English than Hungarian to Finnish. --Gwafton (talk) 20:54, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Kadett/Chevette
Hello Charles, always appreciate your work and it is nice to see Opel Kadett growing into an article which is finally deserving of its fairly important topic. A fun question: I reckon that the world car section (Kadett C) deserves one single illustrative picture. Any thoughts? Should it be a Latin American, US, Australian, or Japanese product? I would like to illustrate just how far from its origins the car was developed. Over to you, Mr.choppers | ✎ 06:34, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
I think that you need a balance between text and images. Where you have a big block of text then you need a bigger choice of pictures because you need more pictures to stop the thing looking overburdened with wordage. BUT I also think you should only add an extra picture where it is obvious - or you can show with a little caption - that it tells you something that none of the other pictures already there tells you.
Criteria as to which picture(s). Usual stuff, mostly as in my previous para. Plus, I suppose, is it a reasonably good picture? The "world car" section set me thinking about the Argentinian Kadett (from memory T180???) because the text says it appeared several months before they launched the thing in Europe. But I didn't do it. I think we have access to a suitable picture - not wonderful but perfectly ok. But I couldn't find any source for the assertion that it came out x months before the European Kadett. There's a nice web page simply making the assertion to which I think I inserted (or maybe simply found) a link, but the webpage looked like something taken from the creations of someone's marketing department. Do I like marketing folks? Well yes, but do I trust them to get this sort of thing right.....? Hmmm. So it would be nice to have something more persuasive.
If you want one - a T-car picture - with a Chevette label I guess you can make the case for both sides of the Atlantic. For the Vauxhall camp people have already written quite a bit about the Vauxhall Chevette in te Kadett entry with which I haven't presumed to mess. We have several ok pictures of the Vauxhall Chevette and one which borders on quite good. But many of them including the one that borders on quite good are by me so I probably shouldn't presume to arbitrate between pictures of the Vauxhall Chevette. (It's different (eg 4 door Kadett C sedan) where there's really only one picture from which to choose.) Why prefer Vauxhall Chevette to Chevrolet Chevette? I suspect - but cannot prove - that more english speaking European people look at the Opel Kadett entry in English wiki than english speaking American people. Also I think the shovel nose treatment on the Chevrolet was uglier than the shovel nose treatment on the Vauxhall. But others might disagree with me...
Why prefer the Chevrolet Chevette picture to the Vauxhall Chevette picture? Well, you live there. You can make the case. Obviously there is a strong cultural bias in wikipedia overall to the North American side of the map because it's a North American originating project and there are far more mother tongue English language speakers in North America. How many of them know and care about the Opel Kadett enough to read the entry? Well, for you to judge. No doubt round Milwaukkee (sorry I forgot how to spell it) they talk of little else, but through the twentieth century in lots of parts of the US folks were persuaded to loosen their sense of Germanness more than they were encouraged to loosen their sense of Englishness. Sense of Hispanicness? Well, I already put the case for the Argentinian car.
Or someone - you? - might fill out the !"World car" section - currently simply a grouping of other folks' contributions which I grouped together under a new sub-heading - and justify a picture of the Chevrolet AND the Vauxhall AND the T180, albeit with a caption under each explaining what it's doing there and a link in the caption to the longer entry on the car in question.
You'll appreciate that my failure to mention Brazil is down to nothing more biased than the fact that I understand Portuguese even less than I understand Spanish. Mea culpa and no disrespect involved.
Yes, I'm getting to the age - think you may be too - where too long a memory can be a distressing thing in this area. Giving names to cars used to be reserved to those with loud voices aged under 40, but these days I think it may be reserved to computers with loud bleeps aged under 10. And both GM and Ford seem to have a particular preference for names they already have in the box. No doubt that has to do, at least in part, with the cost of litigation when you get into p***ing contests over who owns which names. And in preglobalisation days, if you used in US a name previously used in Australia, or in Germany a name previously used in the US or Aus or vice versa. No one much cared. But these days we all can access other folks' information and some of us (irritatingly for automakers?) like to. Capris Galaxy/ie, Escort... Charles01 (talk) 09:27, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Don't mind at all. It's pleasingly surprising that anyone notices an edit so very quickly. The reason for the discrepancy is, of course, down to roundings. I don't suppose anyone cares, but since you started it ..... My computer actually gave the distance as 90.6 km. I converted that using a rate of 1.609 km per mile to get >56.3 miles. Then I remembered that in Britain we have been undergoing metrification for a mere 40 years and still use miles for our distances .... Though not for our fuel buying. Though yes for computing l/100km / mpg. If I sound confused, there's a reason.
I do sometimes get frustrated by the excessive roundings on some of the wiki-conversion templates, but I don't know this miles/kms template well enough to know if I have any sort of a "roundings issue" with it. The way you used it it looks pretty uncontroversial!
On a slightly serious point, there's probably scope for some of these major roads for a more systematic list - maybe using tabulated format - of distances between major junctions. Big job though. And I see that the last time I worked over a road entry with a table, in celebration of some half remembered trip, I left out the distances. Can't remember why. Happy day. Charles01 (talk) 11:43, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, ever since my son started uni at Swansea (and being myself allergic to the delights queuing for half an hour to pay yet more tax in order simply get into Wales) I've developed an awareness of Chepstow which in earlier lives I wold not have anticipated. At least, I guess you are thinking of something I did to the A48 entry. Regards Charles01 (talk) 12:52, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
G'day Charles01. Some of the people that live near me are quite completely mad: evidence. Mind you, I suppose its old news. The crowd seems every bit as puzzled and underwhelmed as I am. Nice car though. Regards, Eddaido (talk) 07:21, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
Noted. Thank you. Whoever it was has a good camera and a steady hand. Good clear shots. As for the bizarre activities, well, I'll try not to think everyone in NZ carries on like that. And I guess it's relatively harmless when compared to some of the equivalent exercises the car would have encountered in its early years. I don't think many were sold to private buyers when new. They were intended, as I understand, for the senior politicians, on a good day, to parade around in oben ohne (topless - the car, not the politicians). Strange to think there may be people in NZ who still think it's summer. Here we've had 15 cm of the white stuff today which for this end of England is unusually much. Regards Charles01 (talk) 20:15, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
I suspect the museum that owns the car would not have let it out like that without substantial recompense and so the organiser of the car act will have arranged the filming by the crew filming the role playing (advance into France following the Normandy landings) that can be seen in other linked videos. Middle-aged men pretending they have been shot and going down and playing dead, lots of flame and firing of blanks by some real guns and WWII aircraft sweeping low across the field in formation - all the usual stuff - its fun to watch for a few minutes, all the small child memories flooding back. So the car was much too glamorous for serious people like Generals, that makes sense. It looks to be in beautiful order. The car collection arose because after the election of our first Labour govt in 1935 they shut right down on imports but gave people prepared to manufacture locally licences to import raw materials. This man ended up making every car silencer for new and used cars in NZ (unless the vehicle was imported fully assembled) and of of course he made sure they lasted a short time) and he made a very tidy fortune over the 40 years that system applied. The car museum was one little way to spend it, its now a trust. Would you consider taking a look at a discussion on the Jaguar Cars talk page? Sorry about the snow , not so much fun after the first morning. Cheers, Eddaido (talk) 11:51, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
It sounds as though NZ must be well provided with lovingly maintained (or rebuilt) old timers. Well, as long as the air is dry and there's not too much salt around..... There was indeed - maybe still is? - money to be made from short life after-market silencers. Wrapping old aluminium drinks cans round the holey bits and securing the resulting "patches" with copper wire just doesn't cut the mustard with modern consumers and their regulators.
I did take a look at the Jaguar name discussion. There is so much acrimony, aggression, and sheer gratuitous discourtesy in there that it takes quite along time to figure out (you own contribution, of course, the hono(u)rable exception) what those guys are so exercised about. Clearly they have a lot of aggression to off-load, and one wishes they'd find somewhere else to do it. A cross country run, a game of rugby football (or the US alternative) or a very long angry letter to some government functionary paid to receive and pretend to read those things, possibly with copies to the world and his wife or at least to lots of other similarly tasked government functionaries, might be better places for those guys to focus their overflowing anger.
As for the name of the article, I guess there's some merit in both sides of the argument, and the significance (or lack thereof) of name changes may become more evident in the next 12 months. Or it may not. Given the inherently historical nature of the entry, I guess the more important bit in the title is the word "Jaguar", regardless of what it does or doesn't get combined with. The name change may just be the tip of an ice berg of a restructuring involving trying to offset taxable profits more effectively against taxable losses in order to reduce tax payments, in which case I don't imagine we, along with another 99.99% of wikipedia readers, will ever know enough of the matter to know whether or not we should care. It might be a restructuring reflecting the promotion of a senior director whose contribution has hitherto been under reflected in the organisational structure, who has been persuaded that a bigger title is a path to a bigger salary (or a consolation for a smaller one). It might indeed be the prelude to a sale of the business to some ambitious Chinese government controlled corporation, as I think someone suggested. But it hardly seems to justify all the misdirected aggression. So unless I suddenly wake up and realise why I care passionately, I think, with a due respect (though not one cent more....) appropriately distributed, I am happy to abstain on this one. Charles01 (talk) 20:27, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
And there I think almost all the world agrees with you. I don't know that it would save that discussion but I do wish to promote the concept of a business and its owner being two different things. Then the article remains Jaguar Cars, and the infobox contains the name of the current "owner" which may have changed for exactly the reasons supplied by you and it has no significance in any case because the ultimate (so far as we know) beneficial owner remains the same (and Indian) while the business is British I do wish my little dichotomy was recognised. See this. Am I wrong? - please tell me. On that other matter the local fascination with Rommel results from these events (among others) - go here and use Find and Zealand. That's to say it is because they liked him. Thanks, Eddaido (talk) 22:17, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
Are you wrong or right? Well, yes of course you are. I have difficulty answering that question other than from my own perspective. The English have an all-or-nothing mindset which often is the enemy of truth, because truth is almost always nuanced. The english political system is divided between government and opposition, and if the opposition is not 100% against everything government does they are perceived as weak or stupid. Then the government changes and there is pressure for a lot of time wasting reversing what the last lot did, rather than building on it. The criminal justice system requires a man to be guilty or innocent. Sometimes that aligns with truth: sometimes not. Then the lawyers bring the same mind set to a while range of civil disputes and family law - divorces and child custody disputes - where truth is almost always nuanced and the yes:no mind set that gives the legal folks a warm fuzzy chunk of satisfaction is as often as not the larger problem rather than the solution to the lesser problem. You are in a country that has inherited its mindset from the English. Happy we? Fortunately the English mostly understand only their own language and are barely aware that in the rest of Europe the legal system is concerned in the first instance to find the truth. To be sure it doesn't always work like that, but surely looking for truth is a more honest approach to justice than starting with the simplistic preconception than one side of the argument is 100% right and the other aside is 100% wrong. Or that the nation state operates "best" when power is 100% concentrated in (or very grudgingly devolved from) one place: thus the preference of British politicians, also deeply ingrained in the popular culture, of an ever more centralised nation state and the resulting flow of power and the money that follows it to London over many centuries at least since the sixteenth century. That's background.
On what I understand of the Jaguar article name dispute (which may not be all of it) I can certainly buy into the argument that a limited liability company is a legal person in its own right. It has its own identity under law. Where you can very quickly get into difficulties is where legal "de jure" form and de facto substance differ. The company was called Kassboehrer but known as Setra because no one outside Ulm could spell the other one. (Yes, I exaggerate, but still....) Through a long slug of history the company was called Jaguar and the cars were called Jaguar. Fine. At one stage the company was called British Motor Holdings. Then British Leyland Motor Corporation. Well, no one ever put those names on a car. But yes, little Leyland badges started to appear on the wings, and after the company had prostituted the once good names of Morris and Austin beyond reemption, and for certain markets only, the Austin Montego because the Rover Montego. Was it an Austin or a Rover or a Leyland Dog? Depends where you grew up and when you're thinking of. I don't remember thinking in terms of Jaguar Cars. I thought in terms of Jaguars. Cars are widely known and widely enthused over. There is a huge role for what is "customary". It's always been a "Daimler": it's a Daimler (not a rebranded BSA: BSA is a gun...). And then there was the wild cat after which the Jaguar was named, but that was a long way down my consciousness. So while you've not wrong, your not in my judgement so right that, in this, I could confidently go into battle with you.
That'll be nasty, you only now enter the coldest part of your year, right? My anger fades as I think of all the relaxed discretionary spending power to be foregone for the vital business of keeping Charles01 & Co staying comfortable enough. But your tactics are seen through, you may have been wavering in that chill early morning air but you are going to stay sticking to the top of the fence aren't you. Might it be said I try to go a concept too far? Certainly not, it is the only solution to all the little similar squabbles that break out like over are minis British or German. And that's a simple example. Anyway I didn't know the Jaguar discussion would develop the way it did. While we are on that kind of thing, The Daimler Motor Company's business became the property of The Daimler Company in (I think) 1910 so that's another little thing to be negotiated some day. Nuances musances, grumbling Eddaido (talk) 12:09, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Google translate offers alternative translations. I've just done that for myself on your above. I don't mind what the Jaguar article is called, I said Jaguar cars because that is what it is called now (I think) and calling it simply Jaguar is daft because there is a furry thing has a prior claim there. What I want (am lobbying for) is the recognition that a business and its owner are two different entities. i may not have made it clear so suck on that with the gas bill and (more) mineral water. Have a happy day, Eddaido (talk) 12:16, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
No, that's not what I said. Yes it's useful and sometimes revealing, especially where - as here - the relationships between the names and corporates structures have been such a moving target over many decades. Is it necessarily the most important defining concept in an introductory para? Hmmm. The cars are Jaguars. That's critical. The ultimate holding company aka owner - and the folks apparently calling the shots - are Tata. That's critical. In both cases critical enough to be "must haves" for the intro para. Of course the business and its owner are separate entities. Is it critical to spell that out, or is it too obvious to need spelling out? I guess that's where perceptions can differ, and it really has to be judged anew for each individual situation. There is almost certainly scope for a para in the text covering the 2012 name change in the Companies House registry, and highlighting any obvious mismatches between form and substance (though if people are feeling argumentative that bit needs to be well sourced, I guess....). You could probably write a beefy chapter or six on the evolution company structure over the last 80ish years, implicitly including the relationships between the different names, though some of the detail might be considered "too much information" by some. (Myself, I think "too much information" is part of the point of wikipedia. After all, as long as there are proper section headings the reader can easily skim over the bits (s)/he doesn't want to read.) You can certainly make a good case for adding more detail to the intro para.
I'm sorry if you think - as I think you may - that I am missing the point. The real point of all this, for me, is the way that each of us approaches a wikipedia entry - or anything else - through the prism of his/her education and (at least for me) decades of experience on how the world works and expresses itself. Inevitably we have gained our education - formal and informal alike - in different ways in different places from different people. It would be mightily odd, therefore, if we saw the priorities surrounding every issue through the same prism. Regards Charles01 (talk) 20:50, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Ah! My day improves. I was not at all clear why you had misgivings, wondered if it might be my sometimes arguably feral behaviour (yes it still might be). My comment was not related to the Jaguar article except insofar as it would, if not eliminate, reduce the importance to the article of the (technical) change of owner. It just seemed a right moment to dash out there and push my little barrow. The article should be about the business, who or what owns the business is very important I just want ownership to be viewed by editors and written about as a different thing from the business. Its where the tanglings up occur. You know, there's a (fine, British) business making smallish cars and labelling them Mini. OK it belongs to BMW but then BMW may belong to an individual maiden lady (I diverge from reality) or a Russian oligarch and the ultimate beneficial owner with the real control might be the Grand Duke of Luxembourg - who knows. Some like to see BMW as the owner but who actually calls the shots there and does it matter to WP? I do like your idea of "too much info" it is excellent. A weekend is nearly here, Eddaido (talk) 00:43, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
My whinging about people taking up references instead of stonewalling (is that the right term?) is not aimed at Charles01 who does much good work in bringing matters out for fresh air. Best wishes, Eddaido (talk) 00:56, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
C J Barnett
Hi Charles. I returned from "retirement" and found your question. Barnett's date of birth must have been taken from CricketArchive but there is no guarantee it is correct so you should apply consensus of sources. Please let me know what you decide. All the best. ----Jack | 14:00, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
Just realised that the article had 1 October as you said. CA has 31 October and I've amended the article to that for now plus adding the ref. ----Jack | 14:06, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
Hello Charles - I made some minor alterations to Audi Type P as a result of ID'ing some photos whetted my curiosity. I changed the text to stating that the P was built in Spandau as this is implied in my source. Audi's P has also been exhibited in Spandau Zitadelle (along with an Essex, assembled in Spandau) and the chassis plate states the same. This makes me wonder what exactly Hr. Oswald means with his Zwickau references? Toodles, nice work on these oft neglected pre-war Audis. Mr.choppers | ✎ 23:38, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Good to see the entry fleshed out a bit. I just took another look at Oswald's text on this. I may copy it out at some point on this or the car's talk page, but don't have time for that now. The implication is that Rasmussen intended to use Spandau's capacity for - among other things - the Typ P. But he does not actually spell out that, once they actually produced the thing, they were made in Spandau. If your source also merits the word "implies" then I respectfully submit that nobody any longer knows where they were built. Spandau certainly seems to have had the expertise for building car bodies in the traditional way - timber frame with the craftsmen following a drawing and their carriage building fostered experience/insincts/traditions. Body building back then did not involve heavy tooling up in specialist dies etc with the resulting lead times and need for a complex production planning processes. That comes withe he pressed steel bodied which Ambi Budd indroduced to German automakers at the very end of the 1920, but more widely only in the 1930s. Then there's the chassis, which was a pretty rudimentary affair a far as I know for the Type P. And the engines which came from Peugeot. Given the rail networks and the mountains between Sochaux and Zwickau, I would imagine the engines would have been transported from Sochaux to Berlin and not cross country directly to Zwickau in the way you'd maybe do now we have a 21st century Autobahn network, which argues for putting the engines on the chassis in Spandau, but that's pure speculation: I have no reason to know that the chassis was produced in one place or the other. Anyhow, with the Typ P I infer from Oswald that the market was not specially impressed and Rasmussen lost interest (in favour of the more exciting front-drive tiny cars being developed by his formerly Audi engineers in Zwickau Audi badged but DKW badged) by the time that the Typ P was launched. The early fwd DKW cars were fundamentally dire in various respects, but they were cheap and they sold better, I suspect, than Rasmussen had anticipated. The guy was an entrepreneurial spirit with a lot of engineering and marketing flair, but I am not sure he would ever carefully have planned production logistics for the Typ P, and did not need to do so (in the sense we would think "normal") in an age before steel pressings and in a country where the economy was still shattered since the war and craftsman wages were so low that - aside from Opel - production line techniques were not yet at the forefront of automakers' thinking. Which is a long way of saying that I have not seen it spelled out where the Type P was made / assembled. Apart from the engine. But I will try and get to take a longer further look at Owwald Pages 41-42 (my edition) in case this provides further insights. Regards Charles01 (talk) 07:05, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I guess that does look a bit like a clue. Quite a lot of info on that plate.
I'm also wondering how it reconciles with the statement in German wiki (roughly consistent with Oswald's production volume for the Type P of "approx 400") "Bereits im Oktober desselben Jahres wurde die Fertigung nach nur 327 Stück eingestellt." Unless it was Audi number 3,100 - ie all types, whether assembled at Zschopau (ie near Zwickau) or Spandau (Berlin) plant. Actually, in terms of the volumes quoted by Oswald, that could roughly stack up.... (Hard to be sure, partly because at least in my Band 2 he gives no production volumes for Audi before 1922.) Charles01 (talk) 21:58, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
The 327 examples is listed by Audi themselves, the link is on the Audi Type P page. Maybe the chassis number is conjoined with those of the DKW 4=8? Since not much aside from the engine was changed, this would make some sense. The only other early production numbers I have access to say that 1100 type C's were built (1911-1922), 1120 type G (1914-1926), 195 type K (1921-1926). This is from Auto Katalog 1980. Cheers. Also, the differing (1115 cc) displacement is nothing to worry about, it is an effect of the Germans using 3.12 rather than π when calculating engine displacement for tax purposes. They also rounded partial millimeters to 0.5. As an example, the 1,275 cc A-series engine was considered to be 1,256 cc by the German tax authorities. Good to see that Germans can also be completely illogical sometimes! Mr.choppers | ✎ 15:19, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, there are plenty of instances (also in wikipedia) of "Ist" cm and Steuer cm being confused one with the other in English and indeed in German texts, though I've not seen anyone spelling out with such simple clarity the "guilty rounding" by (or at least on behalf of) the Steueramt/Finanzamt, as you do here. If ever you did or will get hold of the Oswald volumes, he spells it all out on pages 532/533 of Band 2. I suppose before the age of pocket calculators you can make a case for these roundings in the interests of simplifying life for the Beamter doing the tax calculations, though from our own perspective methinks it's simply a gratuitous complication too far. Charles01 (talk) 17:51, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Prince Henry Vauxhall
Hi Charkes01 I have just written a note on the talk page for the above article and I thought there is a good chance you are interested and might like to comment. Regards, Eddaido (talk) 09:18, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
I too think of them as Prince Henry Vauxhalls. It will be interesting to see if anyone else reacts. At the very least, I would think it merits a redirect page. I'm in danger of becoming gratuitously wiki-grumpy just now courtesy of tooth ache, which is what seems to happen in England if you visit a dentist. But today for the first time since last Monday the wiki-agony really does seem to be less than before, and I haven't taken as aspirin for about 12 hours. So maybe I can almost trust myself to contribute without becoming wiki-cantankerous..... Regards Charles01 (talk) 09:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your response on the Vauxhall page. A week is a long time to keep faith in one's potential wellness. I hope I write this while you are most comfortably asleep!
The summer heat here is making me feel useless - some people are never satisfied. Try to think kindly of the dentist he only wanted to help, Eddaido (talk) 03:16, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
How long do you have? But your kindness in asking is therapeutic and appreciated.
The agony went and the ache disappeared over the course of a few hours at the end of last week and I've been off aspirin for several days which is good. BUT I crunched on my (temporary) filling at a bad angle at the weekend, and a couple of bits of it fell out which the dentist kindly replaced at no extra cost on Monday. Tuesday I noticed the opposing side feeling a bit unconventional and subsequent prodding has indicated that one side of the tooth enamel coating lump of long standing probably Dutch or German filling that masquerades as a tooth is now loose, held in place only by the gum at the base of the tooth, probably since that badly aimed weekend crunch. Well, there's no air or rot getting through to the nerve for now, so I'm just using other teeth for a few days till NEXT week when I'm due to go back to the dentist to have the temporary filling - beneath which the pain really does seem to have been removed - drilled out and replaced with a (so-called) permanent filling. Then I guess I can either ask him about the potentially flapping bit opposite the sorted tooth or, if I'm feeling particularly feeble, say nothing and wait a couple of months / years / decades till the thing has worked itself out and tooth ache has in due course ensued as, eventually, it generally does. Actually most of my teeth are still fine and dandy, but when I was young I had a few fillings put in, and of course when I went to live near Amsterdam the Dutch dentist was appalled at the quality of the English fillings and drilled them out and replaced them. A few years later the same experience repeated with a German dentist. Three German dentists later and I was back in England where the experience was repeated, and I was so shaken up that I didn't even ask for the return of the gold inlay from the German dentist to which that English dentist helped himself without comment. (There was lots of comment or at least chatter from that one, but somehow mention of the gold inlay never arose.) I have reasonable confidence in the current English dentist possibly because when he talks (which reassuringly he doesn't very much by the standards of most of the English dentists to which I have been subjected) the accent is strongly and in the context of dentistry reassuringly Irish.
Well, that was interesting, no? But thanks again for asking, even if "without complaint" is probably what the kids today would call much too much of a "big ask". Regards Charles01 (talk) 13:07, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
Well now, I must say thanks for sharing though there was gorier detail than I'd expected. May those soft Irish accents steady the troubled nerves. I'd guessed you might have had an early life association with the British Army in Germany but you mention Germany and Holland above as if in adult life. Was there any special reason for being there? (You're allowed to be there because you like it if you see what I mean). Not designing and developing GP cars or anything like that? Regards etc, Eddaido (talk) 10:36, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
Both my parents were in the British army during the war because they were of a generation where you joined the army, and they kept my father on for a couple of years after the war in northern Germany because he spoke German (embarrassingly well - he always had a gift for languages, and in he 20s the family had taken regular ski holidays in Garmisch which was a bit of a honeypot for musical types thanks to Strauss R, and where he later got a job as a tour guide organising charabanc trips for rich Americans, in the 30s). But I have no military connections on my own account. I worked in Nederland and Germany and elsewhere as an accountant in industry. Some of that time was in a US owned multi-national corporation which is wiki-relevant in that it made for a painless introduction to American-English, and some insights into some of the ways that Americans think - at least in the context of office politics. I do have two American grandparents one of whom came to Europe in order to pursue a career as a singer, but the mental processes of a WASP singer and those of an industrialist from the mid-west are somewhat different. Sadly counting beans for me never involved anything as exotic as developing GP cars, though a period as an internal auditor did provide the opportunity to compare and contrast the different ways folks in different countries organized and operated the production process in the metal bashing sector... Quite interesting. Too much information? Must get on with something slightly serious. Ach no, here's my neighbour to signal it's time for the coffee break. Well, that's serious too. Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:52, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
I know there is a much simpler way to do this but I do not understand how its done. I have written a short note to you and put it on my talk page because there is a link there. Happy weekend, Eddaido (talk) 09:07, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
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Hi Charles01. Last time I asked you to check my English you did excellent work with the Tor Nessling article. I made an article about one product of his company, strongly supported by an expert who collected sources for me. If you are interested in heavy vehicles I would be happy if you checked my English in the Sisu K-44 article. Would you help me please? Any improvement is welcome. --Gwafton (talk) 23:49, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, I'll happily take a look. At first blush it looks more difficult because there are technical words that I am not sure I would know in English even if I saw them. Maybe I'll ask you in more detail about a few. Till now just two: I do not know what "grading capacity" means. If you tell me the Finnish words, maybe I can check out a translation program and see something that seems to fit in English....? You refer later to "bogies". I never heard of a standard road truck with bogies. Maybe that's just my ignorance. But "bogies" generally applies to longer rail trucks / carriages in my experience. A traditional rail bogie is a four wheel structure incorporating two axles and linked to the train body at a single hinged central (central on the bogie) point at one end of the rail carriage. Is that what it means on a truck? I can see how it might work on an exceptionally heavy truck used on wide roads (or "off road" on a wide trackway in a forest with a firm dry surface so not too much rain), but for most circumstances I would think it dangerous because of the extent to which the tail would swing - ie travel out of alignment with the front of the vehicle. But again, I am no expert on this and maybe if I read the entry for more than 60 seconds it will already become clear also to me. Not sure.
Anyhow, either way I will take a longer look and maybe have some more thoughts.... But first the diurnal duties must be attended to.
With grading capability I mean gradeability (how steep uphills it can go). In Finnish it is mäennousukyky. In an ideal case bogie means an axle system (including two or three axles) in which the load comes evenly on each axle. But in case of K-44, it is built so that some 2/3 of the load goes on the driven axle of the bogie and the remaining 1/3 on the non-driven axle. Moreover, you can adjust the load depending if you need better traction or a more even axle load. When driving with the rearmost axle lifted up you must mind the extended rear overhang.
Sisu K-44 was made for both on and off-road use. I am sure that you will understand more after reading throught the article. :) --Gwafton (talk) 15:35, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your edits so far. Don't put too much effort on explaining the bogie system here. It is nothing unusual, it is used in many Sisu's and other makes.
Regarding bogies, Veikko Muronen from VAT developed an outstanding bogie lift system in late 1950s. The bogie is equipped with a hydraulically operated mechanism that can lift the rearmost axle up even when the vehicle is fully loaded. This caused problems to SAT, as the bogie system helped VAT to gain a dominant position in the logging vehicle market in the 1960s. As soon as SAT and VAT were merged in end of 1960s, the bogie system was taken to use in Sisu's. And it is still in place: . Note that the company tells about Sisu's legendary bogie lift soultion although it was originally developed by its competitor. :) --Gwafton (talk) 08:42, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I discussed the bogie issue with my neighbor who came round for a coffee this morning. He is more familiar with some of the technical aspects than I am, and we think that there may be a slight difference between American and British English in the use of the word. But you're right. It's not worth worrying about. The nature of the arrangement on the trucks is perfectly apparent already from what you have written and the accompanying diagrams. Time for lunch... Regards Charles01 (talk) 12:19, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I wonder what could a truck bogie be in British English then. Bogie shall not be confused with double axle which is a different thing. It means two axles with a wheelbase of max 1100 mm and separate suspensions. This term is used mainly in legislation - a double axle is regarded as one axle for example in axle load restrictions. --Gwafton (talk) 14:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
As you may have noticed, I've been trying to get my mind round the little section on gradeability. I hope I'm getting it ok. One specific question: You write " A corresponding 6×4-model has a 55% and a 6×2-model just a 29% gradeability." Presumably a 6x2 model has six wheels on three axles, but only one axle (ie 2 wheels) are driven. That (if I'm right) is the easy bit. But then presumably a 6x4 model has six wheels on three axles, but two axles (ie 4 wheels) are driven. If that's right, the thing I have not understood is the difference between the gradeability of a 6x4 model and of the the K-44 with its three axles of which two are driven. Maybe it is because of the uneven split between the proportion of torque delivered to the rear-most driven axle and the front axle, whereas the standard 6X4 simply goes with a 50:50 split? Maybe if I read the entry again I'll understand it better, but in case I can't, can you try and explain it to me, please? And thanks. Regards Charles01 (talk) 20:18, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
I was wondering the same. But the secret is the bogie of which rearmost axle can be lifted. Then just one rear axle is in contact with the ground. The additional load on the axle improves the traction so that the gradeability is even better than with two driven rear axles. I was wondering was it a mistake made by the author but then I saw there also an original drawing by SAT demonstrating the gradeabilities of three-axle Sisu M-series logging vehicles with trailers. According to the drawing the gradeabilities on μ=0.4 with different drivetrain layouts for full laden vehicles are as follows:
6×2 with a trailer bogie down: 8%
4×4+2 with a trailer bogie down: 13%
6×4 with a trailer bogie down: 15%
6×2 with a trailer bogie up: 17%
6×6 with a trailer bogie down: 20%
When comparing the bolded ones to each other you see that the lifted bogie makes a slightly better gradeability than having the rearmost axle down and driven! This also explains why 4×4+2 was famous - you can improve your gradeability with a driven front axle but not with a driven rearmost axle and therefore there is no point to pay extra for having a complete 6×6 instead. I was very surprised that the increased axle load has got a such big effect on the traction. --Gwafton (talk) 21:50, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
I understood that (your explanation). Thank you. I was afraid I was posting another dumb question but it seems I wasn't.
My education to date has left me in no fit state seamlessly to incorporate μ values into my thought processes, but if you tell me about the effect of more weight over the driving wheels improving rear end traction, I think back to my father's Volkswagen in the 60s and how it behaved in snow (and in a country where snow tyres were unheard of) and I need no convincing about the superior traction of a vehicle with most of it's weight over the drive rear axle. Regards Charles01 (talk) 08:16, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
More questions:
I've been looking at the table for the engines of the K-44.
When I have created similar tables, I've usually simply been copying from something in German or French wiki, which in many ways much easier than creating a new table ab initio. But I do find it helpful if there is a line near the top showing the years when the engine was used. That way, in this example, you get a sense of when one engine REPLACED another and when it simply BROADENED the range. I didn't find anything with years from a brief google trawl, but do you know those years from your printed source? And if yes, what do you think about adding that line?
The final line shows fuel consumption. I am not an expert on how fuel consumption is normally expressed for heavy trucks. But for road vehicles the engish and americans use mpg (miles per gallon). (You have to know whether your speaking American or British with this one, because the Brits and the Americans never agreed on the size of a gallon.) In metric continental Europe they mostly go with l/100 km. At the moment the table uses "g/hph" in one column, which is not very much used elsewhere in english language wikipedia. And for the other column, your other source uses "g/kWh" which elsewhere seems to be a measure for carbon emissions: either I'm missing something or your source has got this one wrong. Or? Seriously, I appreciate that if a truck spends its life hauling logs across forests and stones out of quarries, mpg can be very variable. BUT I do not think many english language speakers looking at the g/hph will know what the figure means. At least ... I don't.
No further thoughts. This is an interesting one. I may not be an expert on heavy trucks, but I'm certainly learning and enjoying the experience. Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:58, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
K-44SV replaced K-44SU in Kontio class. In Jyry class K-44ST and K-44SP were available at the same time and K-44SP was later replaced by K-44BP. This is what the enthusiast, who has helped me greatly, knows for sure but as I don't have any written source for this I don't mention it here. It is difficult to say anything about the years as they have not been printed on the brochures and neither in the Sisu book I have. Besides, SV and BP versions were presented at the end of the life cycle of K-44 and it is possible that no brochures have been printed about them.
The fuel consumption figures are brake specific fuel consumption values and they only tell about the engine properties. I guess the data is provided by Leyland. It is not very informative to tell such values as l/100 km when the vehicle is used in forest, driven with various loads and maybe using a hydraulic pump for a crane to lift for example logs. The actual consumption varies a lot depending on driving conditions and in stationary use the vehicle doesn't get any kilometres.
Good that you find the article interesting - I might write later more articles about Sisu K-models and if this article is in order I can utilise it as a basis for the other K-model articles. There are anyway similar components, as the Leyland Engines, Kirkstall front axles, ZF transmissions etc. It is challenging to write about such vehicles as Sisu which are always more or less tailored according the customer needs. The customer just selected a suitable engine, drivetrain, wheelbase, cabin etc. for his needs and SAT built the vehicle accordingly. Sisu Auto works still with the same principle with its Polar models. --Gwafton (talk) 14:29, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
I have searched wikipedia, without success, for entries on those Leyland six cylinder engines written from the English perspective. I was wondering which Leyland trucks used them. But either I am looking in the wrong place or else there is no detailed information in Misplaced Pages on those old Leyland truck engines. We do have truck enthusiasts in England, but maybe these days Leyland is remembered with little love? Maybe those guys are too busy rebuilding their trucks to contribute to wikipedia. Or maybe I'm simply not putting the right word combinations in the search box.
I started putting the engine paragraphs into the PAST tense without thinking too much about what I was doing or why. I think I was trying to make it consistent with the earlier paragraphs. BUT you COULD justify writing the general and historical bit in the past tense and then switching to the present tense when simply describing how the trucks were. Or how the trucks are. Before I go any further with these descriptive bits do you have a strong preference for the present tense for these sections? I know what seems more natural to me, but I do not think there is a right or wrong answer on the question and I don't want to put it all in the past tense if you have thought about it and prefer the present tense. Are there still lots of the trucks around (possibly with the engines replaced....? Or would most Finnish people think of the K-44 in the past tense? I would feel strange writing about the Ford Model T in the present tense. I think would feel strange writing about the Ford Taunus in the present tense. But with a Ford Focus - maybe also with a Ford Escort - using the present tense does not seem so strange. Yet a Volga (car) still feels as though it belongs in the past tense, even though they continued building them for the Russians for years. All this is hard to explain, because I think in the absence of rules it is one of those things where we think a little differently in different countries without having thought about it and without being aware of the differences, and for 99% of the time without needing to be aware of the differences. There are a lot of things like that....
I don't know which Leyland vehicles had these same engine types used in Sisu's. The old Leylands were sturdy and reliable engines and it is sad what happened after. If Power Plus was a clear failure, the V8-diesel O.801 was a catastrophe. Anyway, just one episode in the "engineering suicide" of the British industry.
I have been thinking of the tense question as well and I use the present tense in English Misplaced Pages because a majority of contributors seem to favour that. I am not aware if there is a fixed practice for this. I have used systematically the present tense for the vehicle description, but as this type is not available as new any more, I have told about the optional accessories in past tense ("was available in three colours or whatsoever). At least some K-44's are still up and running (like the one in the infobox) so you can tell about it in present tense for a good reason but it is a bit more complex regarding such models from which there are no existing specimens any more. For example Sisu KB-112 vehicles possibly still do exist somewhere but in bad condition and without number plates (one two-axle variant KB-117 is restored and running). --Gwafton (talk) 21:50, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Noted. And hmmmm. I checked three entries on Mercedes-Benz trucks and all those were in the past tense. (You might want to disqualify one of the three as most of it was written by me, so not strictly independent in this discussion.) I checked two entries on Volvo trucks which were mixtures. Some contributors on the Volvo entry had gone with present tense and others with past tense, leading to indigestion for the reader. I think I will go with my initial instinct for the Sisu K-44 and continue to go with the past tense for now. The only other thought I had was to ask about your printed source / sources? Do they have a consistent approach on whether to write about the K-44 in the past or the present?
New subject. When, in 1962, the middle-weight trucks switched from O.375 to O.400 engines there was a change of transmission from a five speed box to a six speed box. The six speed box was NOT the six speed box already fitted on the heavy-weight trucks, because there we have written in an earlier para that in the heavy truck's six speed box, the top ratio was an overdrive. From my understanding of cars, the ratio of the TOP speed is normally 1:1. "The sixth ratio was an overdrive" I take to mean "The fifth ratio was 1:1 and the sixth ratio was <1:1". (The discussion may be complicated because I am not sure we all always take the ratio in the same direction, but I think you understand what underlies my question.) So my question: You had written something like "the top ratio on the new six speed box was about the same as the top ratio on the old five speed box". My question concerns the word "about". IF I am right in assuming that the top ratio on a truck's gear box (as on a car's gear-box) is 1:1, then the top ratio should be identical. OR is my assumption wrong in respect of trucks? OR ... something else? It may seem a small point. But if you can tell me the answer, you help my understanding and (I hope) improve the usefulness & accuracy of the K-44 entry.
New subject 2. We write that the AVD torque splitter (I think it confuses the reader- this reader anyway - to call it a "second gearbox" in English) splits the power 23:77 when the front axle is engaged. BUT we are silent about the AVV torque splitter. In terms of what is actually written, it looks as if the low speed high load ratio of the two is almost identical which leaves the reader wondering why they bothered to offer a choice or torque splitters. Does that mean the AVV torque splitter simply split the torque 50:50 just like it was done an old fashioned Land Rover? That would have made it cheaper to produce and so maybe cheaper to sell. Fewer moving parts, easier to service, less to go wrong. Justification for offering a choice of torque splitters. OTHERWISE what was the torque split front:back with the AVV? If your sources don't give you the answer, there's not much we can do about it. But at the moment I have the sense we are telling only 50% of the story....
1: The ratio of the fifth gear of the old five-speed box was about the same as the ratio of the sixth gear of the new six-gear box. I'll have to check it out. The straight 1:1 is not standard in cars and heavy vehicles. It was more relevant in the past when many gearboxes included a main shaft and a side shaft. In a such structure the main shaft is connected from its front end to the clutch and from its rear end to the drive shaft. The shaft is not solid but can be connected together with a sleeve. When the sleeve is engaged the ratio is 1:1. The side shaft is used for changing of the ratio; the power is transferred from the main shaft to the side shaft with a gear set and then with another gear set to the other end of the main shaft. But when you drive with the 1:1 ratio you don't need the side shaft and it saves fuel (lower inertia). An alternative way to build a gear box is to use primary and secondary shaft when the power always goes through gear sets. Then there is no benefit at having a 1:1 ratio, or actually you must avoid it, because the ratio between gears should never be 1:1 or any integer but rather some fraction so that the same teeth don't always meet only each other. The Sisu gear box was probably some ZF product and I don't know how it was constructed.
2: Another name I have seen for torque splitter is transfer casing (which could mean basically anything that has got something to do with transmission). I don't know which expression is better. The unit includes the torque splitter and reduction gear. Regarding the differences between the boxes, we should be careful. It is said that one type splits the torques as described but I haven't got any info of the other one (besides the reduction gear ratio).
I'd not heard of a transfer case, but it has a wiki entry so I've used a link. I've also left the phrase torque splitter, because a non expert reader can more or less work out what it does from that name. But yes, you will have to check quite carefully that I have not inadvertently added something that is (or some things that are) incorrect in this text at some stage.
Maybe transfer case/casing is rather American than British word? But if you are not sure about the correct name it doesn't matter - someone who knows it might once read the article and bother to fix it. Torque splitter is descriptive enough that someone who knows basics about automotive terminology easily understands what its function is in the transmission. --Gwafton (talk) 23:21, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
I will have to check the text through at some stage. You should mind that K-44 should not be regarded especially as an independent model. It is actually just a selection of components. The front axles, rear axles, engines, cabins etc. were just parts which were put together and one combination is called Sisu K-44. For example K-34 is the same apart from the front axle (which is not driven) and the torque splitter unit is missing - instead, the reduction gear is integrated into the rear axle differential. I think the different model names only come from that, that the different drivetrain layouts need a separate homologation.
I would think it quite common that as far as an engineering department is concerned several truck ranges are as far as possible using the same components except for the specialist bits. From the perspective of the marketing department, of course, you want to maximise the differences - ie in terms of what the customer actually sees - because that way you can maximise the number of different potential customers whom your sales team can persuade to think of your product as the solution for their particular need. In terms of "objective truth" you see great debates in the wiki automobile section on whether two cars are simply one car with two different badges or whether they really are two quite different cars that just happen to be the same shape. And people are strongly protective of the version with which they grew up. But whether one of those perceptions really is closer to "objective truth" than the other, I would tend to think is an unimportant question, usually not worth the heat that it can generate. Anyhow, with the K-44, having given it its own entry, I guess implicitly we are voting for the idea that it has enough individuality to be written about as a separate model. My own preference with wikipedia entries is generally, when in doubt, to keep different vehicle types separate, simply because I like the entries to be simple. If you try, with 5 or 10 contributors, to have several different, but under the skin near identical vehicles in a single article, the article simply becomes complicated to follow and it becomes very hard for reader or writer to pin down which statements refer to which versions of the vehicle. Anyhow, that's all becoming a bit of a peripheral discussion.
I have been talking about the article naming with the enthusiast who has collected most of the source material (and whose beautiful K-44 specimen is in the infobox). We are planning to write articles about other K-models as well. There will be a lot of same data with this article (the engine data in particular). I thought of making one article "Sisu K-series" but it would be a huge article and full of lists of different wheelbase options, applications etc. It would be heavy to read and you couldn't get an overview about the model. We decided that one article per model is better. There are some types which we will combine - for example K-26 and K-40 are both 4×4 with the same wheelbases etc. and the only difference is that K-26 is the medium size Kontio ("Bear") and K-40 is the heavy Jyry ("Thunder/Roar"). Both models will be included in the same article. --Gwafton (talk) 23:21, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
I never heard of a tandem axle. But after checking in .... wikipedia, I think it may be the more accurate term. TWO problems. Make that THREE: 1. wiki entry itself says that the term is often loosely used. 2. there is no wiki definition spelled out with its own entry that one can link to (you have to go to axle and then search for "tandem"). and 3. I simply don't know how many readers will know what a "tandem axle" is. There's little point in using a correct term if it's not going to communicate any meaning to the reader. I think ... I think I want to think about it more.
I talked about it with one user in the German Misplaced Pages and he is sure that it is Tandemachse. The principle is the same - the load distribution remains the same in rough terrain. So I'm over 90% sure that tandem axle is the right name. --Gwafton (talk) 23:21, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, Tandemachse appears quite a lot more in German wiki than tandem axle appears in english wiki. Though even in German wiki, Tandemachse doesn't have it's own entry (yet) from an expert that I could translate for English wiki.... In British vs American English I, too, am a bit mixed between the two. I am born in England but worked for the Americans for many years. Probably the more significant factor, where I don't recognise/recognize a word in this entry, is that my formal secondary education involved history and accountancy, which is some distance away from engineering. Every state in western Europe (almost every state...) seems to agonise/agonize equally about the lousy quality of its education system, but I really do have the impression that the average German has a much better in-depth understanding of engineering - just as the average Frenchman has a much more in-depth understanding of mathematics - than the average Brit or American. Sad for us anglophones. On with the daily routine. Regards Charles01 (talk) 06:56, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
While I'm here, there's a mention of something - I think the rear axle casings - being made from "formed steel". I do not know that term. But it appears, I think, to be some kind of sheet steel, delivered to the factory in large coils, then cut to length, and the necessary shapes then cut out of the resulting sheets. After that you take the shapes and put them in a heavy press where they are shaped - eg into vehicle body panels. Is that your understanding of what is meant by formed steel? The other way (apart from tube steel) that I know about that steel gets delivered to a factory is as moulded "castings" - delivered to the plant from the steel forger moulded into the correct shape, but then needing to be machined in order to get down to the necessary tolerances - eg for making engine blocks, crankshafts and the other main load bearing components of the engine. Maybe my lack of understanding is down to language differences between British and American English. Maybe it's just that it's a long time since I was in a big steel using factory. But I am interested to try and better understand "The axle housing is welded construction made from formed steel". The front axle casing is described as being made from forged steel which I THINK sounds as though it is machined from a moulded rough casting delivered from the steel forge, which would be quite a different process if my understanding is correct. Maybe the casing for the front axle needs to be more robust because those vicious Finnish trees are likely to jump up and hit it as the truck drive along, while the rear axles are better protected by their position so a slightly less hard casing is for them ok. And thanks.
The most common way to produce an axle housing from steel is as you described. The top and bottom halves are either cold or hot formed steel and joined together by powder arc welding. An alternative way is to make it from straight steel and weld together from corners so that it looks like a box (or coffin). But most likely the description which I took from an original brochure is there to make difference to the other type Sisu axles which consist of a casted differential casing of which sides are bolted spindle pipes made from profile pipe. Such you can see for example under A-45.
I have to check the info about the "forged" front axle because it feels a bit strange when I think of it now. The non driven beams are forged but it is unlike that a housing of a driven axle would have been made with that method.
I don't know if my English looks more British or American or Continental European "un-English" as I have picked up the expressions here and there. Regarding technical vocabulary it is closer to the British I guess, as I used to read Haynes' repairs manuals a lot when I was a teenager and drove cars which were older than myself. I really value your proofreading work because it improves the articles and helps me to learn. --Gwafton (talk) 23:21, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Ok, another question: you had "An engine driven compressor feeds the air brakes and servo of the hydraulic brake circuit". To me that implies that the K-44 had a hydraulic brake circuit (or rather twin hydraulic brakes circuits) AND air brakes. I would have expected that the air brakes REPLACED the hydraulic brakes. Does that mean that the compressor drove (1) the servo-assistance device for the hydraulic brakes and (2) in more recent trucks, the sir brakes? If that's right, I would expect the compressor for (1) to be different (ie smaller and less powerful) from/than the compressor for (2). BUT I am not an expert on air brakes. I reserve the right to be wrong. But I would be grateful for any clarification... ALSO the implication of the sentence at the start of this para is that the same truck came with BOTH hydraulic brakes AND air brakes. I do not understand why the truck should need both, and elsewhere I had assumed that it had one or the other. BUT if it had both at the same time ... again, any available clarification would be much appreciated. And many thanks in anticipation.... Good weekend Charles01 (talk) 13:02, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately, there are no good sources for the brake system and I only wrote according the available, limited sources. What is known, the earlier models were equipped with hydraulic brakes and a pressure assisted servo. The later models are equipped with combined hydraulic and air brakes and the servo was replaced by vacuum type system at some stage. The combined hydraulic/pneumatic system is technically easier for the steering axle because the air actuators would take too much space limiting the turning angle. Therefore the front brakes are hydraulic.
I just couldn't include the detailled info about the brakes into the article because none of the sources tells it. --Gwafton (talk) 13:50, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Another question. But I hope you agree that it is in a good cause if it helps the reader... Anyway, you write "The total permitted laden weights were increased in 1967, after the production of K-44 had ceased. They were increased up to 18 100 kg in the beginning of 1967 ....". Question: WHICH truck? Already, as far as I can make out from the table and the source (produced by Sisu?), the laden weight was MORE than 18 100 kg for the heaviest trucks. If your source(s) do(es) not enable you to answer, I guess we can keep it ambiguous, but if we can pin it down, I think that would be better. And thank you. Regards Charles01 (talk) 20:50, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, now I am a bit confused. The table in Sisu-Uutiset (the producer's magazine for customers) tells about K-44ST, SP and BP, ie. Jyry-class. It says that the maximum permissible weight was 17 500 kg until end of 1966 and increased after up to 18 100 kg. The wheelbase or anything else is not specified. As the source doesn't tell more I think it is better to leave it as it is to avoid of overinterpretation. --Gwafton (talk) 22:06, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Another thing: The curb weights at the top of the entry in the info box for the empty trucks seem to be out of kilter with those given in the more detailed table later on. Should I change the info box values to match the top and bottom kerb weight values in the table? Or is there something subtle going on here that I'm missing? And thank you. Regards Charles01 (talk) 17:04, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
The infobox values are from the table (or should be) and you are right, it looks like I have made a mistake. --Gwafton (talk) 18:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi Charles01. Is the article from your side? If so, I will go it through in detail with the enthusiast who provided me the material. After that versions in other languages will follow.
Adding the imperial units increased the data but it is fine. As an engineer I prefer the metric units in (almost) every context but as the imperial units are still in place in many English speaking countries, or at least many people are more familiar with them even they wouldn't be officially used any more, it is good that you added them in. We non-native English speakers, who use the language just as a lingua franca, sometimes forget that it is a mother tongue for many people. :) --Gwafton (talk) 23:15, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Imperial units are a pain, but if you write in English they are what the reader will most likely understand in the big anglophone population centres UK and USA. (Not sure if India went metric yet, though I imagine fluent English speakers are more numerous there than in USA and UK together.) In Britain they announced a change to metric more than forty years ago and they have been working on it ever since. We now buy fuel in litres but we still quote fuel consumption in mpg. Mpg is a particular pain because the Brits and the Americans cannot agree on the size of a gallon. Oh, and of course we do our distances in miles but the distance markers on the roads are set 1 km apart. So in theory we all understand both systems but of course we don't. I understand that when Australia went metric they did it completely overnight. Well, I don't expect they switched peoples' brains that fast. But it does seem a better way to do that change: it shouldn't need a local rerun of the French revolution to metricate a little faster than, till now, we Brits have managed.
I had intended a final read through of the Sisu K-44 entry but am 99% done with it. Don't wait for me before verifying that I got it right - especially some of the more technical stuff involving steering gear, suspension etc etc. I'm an accountant, not an engineer. Lot's of (mostly good, family related) things have mostly kept me off wikipedia these last few weeks, but to quote Arnold Schawrzenegger (I think), I'll be back. At least, I intend so. Best wishes. Charles01 (talk) 05:08, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the different gallons and miles and whatsoever are very confusing especially to us who were grown together with metric system and only heard about inches when talking about car tyres. But actually it took for a long time for Finland to adopt the metric system. The old system remained obsolete in 1880s but actually metric system was taken into use in timber as late as in 1970s. One big reason might have been the expensive sawmill equipment and another one that UK used to be one of the biggest, if not biggest, export market for the Finnish sawmills. And here we get back to the Leyland engines used in Sisu's: the sterlings earned with timber were used on British engines, cars and especially tractors (McCormicks, Nuffields, Fergusons, David Browns etc used to be common on Finnish fields).
I changed the article back to present tense because all the other Sisu articles are written like that. Would be good to have some official directive for the tenses for such cases.
I want to thank you for the great work you have done with the Sisu K-44 article. It has become very good now and gives a good basis for the other Sisu articles of the same series (K-26, K-34 etc. will follow some time). Your contributions also always help me at improving my English. I wish you a nice weekend! :) --Gwafton (talk) 19:40, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Recognition is always appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to enter this kind note. I wish you a good weekend too, though I think we may be discussing different weekends. I've been to Glasgow and Swansea and ... um ... Aardenburg since you wrote it, but/and so spending little time with wikipedia. Back to the gas/petrol station. Regards Charles01 (talk) 19:01, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
An article that you have been involved in editing, Messerschmitt KR200, has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Sincerely, SamBlob (talk) 23:25, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm still troubled by the way one vehicle can support so many different names, but that did not seem a sufficient reason to leave it out. I suppose the next thing is to set up a lot of redirect pages. Or maybe to decide between 1 000 and 1,000 (and 1.000 ...). Maybe a cup of coffee is indeed the better option. Regards Charles01 (talk) 10:24, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
May 2013
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es bleiben sogar 4,5 Millionen Mark übrig."|accessdate=2013-05-14 |publisher=ZEIT ONLINE|author= [http://community.zeit.de/user/hellmuth-vensky Hellmuth Vensky|date=27 July 2011}}</ref>
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und Goliath, im November Lloyd in Konkurs."|accessdate=2013-05-14 |publisher=ZEIT ONLINE|author= [http://community.zeit.de/user/hellmuth-vensky Hellmuth Vensky|date=27 July 2011}}</ref>
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produced in Turin since 1955 and scheduled for imminent launch as a Heilbronn produced model (with the still smaller ] already in the development pipeline.<ref name=Spiegel361956/>
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launched in 1956, but because of the dispute it was badged not as an NSU-Fiat but as the "Jagst" (shortly thereafter lengthened to "Neckar-Jagst" while one class up, the new Heilbronn built [[Fiat
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Absatz auf das Doppelte.|accessdate=2013-05-18 |publisher=SPIEGEL-ONLINE|author= ] (managinng editor, ] (proprietor & former managing editor)| volume =20/1967 | page
The one about the partisan brigade looks interesting. I'll certainly take a look, though if someone else gets in first I shan't complain. If that sounds half-hearted, it doesn't indicate lack of interest. Merely that it might be quite a big job. I'll see if the muse grabs me. I AM interested in that period of history, very interested, and of course that war looks very different two generations on, depending on whether you live in a European country where you ended up in the Soviet zone or in the western zone. The Brits lost the economic and political heft to retain an empire (which Churchill said we were fighting to save) and our glorious US allies took great care no to let us off our war debts to them (unlike other European countries closer to the Soviet Union which they showered with money) and went to great lengths to ensure that British decolonisation was a one-way street. Yet the British public view on the street is still that the Americans (once the Germans and Japanese had drawn them into the war) were "better" and "more reliable" allies for the Brits than other Europeans. Well, certainly I cannot blame US governments for pursuing US (rather than Churchillian UK) interests, and I am sufficiently a child of my own time to think the British empire probably deserved to be liberated from colonisation just as Hitler's empire and Stalin's empires did. But I do get fed up that the ONLY bit of history they teach the kids at school here is the period 1940-45, and the approach is so crassly distorted that one wonders sometimes why they bother. Yes, I know history teaching is always distorted by subsequent and contemporary political priorities. Anyhow, you didn't deserve this digression. I think I must be overdue for another coffee.
The Skoda one also would be interesting, especially interesting for me since our SEAT Toledo blew up its turbo in 2012 and now we spend quite a bit of time driving a (modern! - well no longer latest model, but still feels modern to me) Octavia. But time is always a constraint, and so if you go to the Project Automobile discussion page you'll find plenty of people who could check it out and one or two who would probably welcome the opportunity and do it well. Never having asked the question myself, I don't know which they are, of course. Still, it would be interesting to find out. If you agree, leave a message and Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Automobiles and see what happens.
Oh that is a very nice idea with throwing Superb to the crowd. I might do the same also with Randy Blythe's manslaughter charges. Also, thank you for taking up the brigade. I thought it is not that bad but my attempt at getting it to DYK seemed to have proven me wrong.
The Czechs have it easy in the direction of colonies since they never had any and never really tried to conquer anyone (fighting off the Germans was enough for 900 years, and then they turned to Habsburg colony). As regards what is taught in schools, I think that the fact that Germans were showered with money after the war while countries like UK had to pay off the debts is very telling. Here in the Czech Republic the issue is complicated by the fact that Germany never agreed to set off war damages against the duty to take care of the expellees.
The new Toledo is completely designed and manufactured by Škoda. Considering that Škoda is recently outperforming even VW as regards reliability, maybe trading in for a new model would not be a bad idea ;)
I sat in a (European: NOT Indian)Skoda Rapide at the Skoda dealer a couple of months back. Not unpleasant, but slightly smaller than (even a 2011) Octavia in the back and the front, and the kids aren't getting any smaller. In an emergency the Octavia still works as a family car for a multi-passenger school run. (Our diesel Previa has MUCH more space, but it is very slow and it broke down four times when still fairly new and is currently on its third turbo in under 200,000 km. So given the choice I still tend to prefer to trust the Octavia as I did (see rather indifferent picture) when I found an oriental Renault at a Peugeot museum over the weekend.) And if ever I can afford another car, I think an Octavia - even a second hand one - would trump a Rapide based Toledo.
On the Czechoslovak partisans, I'm still "on the case", though I've been deflected by going to France and then by the telephone going "down". You are lucky to live in a country with a first world infra-structure... + Saluts Charles01 (talk) 09:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Czechoslovak partisans: request for clarification
I modified a line then wondered if I had got it right. Here's the line:
"...most of them being ethnic Slovaks ...The majority were former members of the Slovak army: some of these had served in the Hungarian army, and then deserted in order to join either Soviet partisans or the Red Army. "
Question 1: Does this mean they were mostly from Slovakia? Or were they part of the Slovak minority that had ended up in the Czech lands when the two had been split in 1939? And how odd that most of the partisans in the Czech lands to the west were ethnically Slovak rather than "ethnic Czechs". OR is the point that Bohemia and Moravia are also predominantly peopled by "ethnic Slovaks". Well, I'm not sure I explain it very well, but at least you can see that I am confused. Again.
Question 2: I'm not clear whether the ones from the Hungarian army had previously served in the Slovak army, or whether they are in addition to (and therefore in terms of where they came from separate from) the ones who had previously served in the Slovak army. ?
"The unit of 21 was divided into.."
Question 3: I cannot find where the article has said what the "Unit of 21" was. Is it a unit of the 1st Czechoslovak Partisan Brigade of Jan Žižka? Is it a unit of 21 men? Is it called this because it was parachuted in on 21 August?
It's a real problem (in terms of trying to come up with an accurate translation) that I know so little of the background, but of course the good news (in terms of my general knowledge) is that I am now learning more. And for better or worse, other English speaking readers of the entry may know even less about the background than I do, so it is important to spell things out.
Hello, sorry for making it such a mess :) The unit was 21 men strong. 14 of them were ethnic Slovaks (the original plan was for them to operate in Slovakia) and 7 were citizens of USSR (I am not sure about ethnicity).
Most of those Slovaks found themselves in Fascist Slovakia in 1939, and served in its army. However, some of the Slovaks who were part of the original unit of 21 men served in Hungarian army - presumably these were ethnic Slovaks who had lived on the southern side of the Slovak-Hungarian border. In any case, all of them have defected in order to join the enemy.
At the part where you are now, it was still known as "Uršiak-Murzin Unit".
Later, the article explains how most Slovaks didn't make it to Moravia and the ethnic mix-up changed with most members being Czechs.
Please feel free to ask as many questions you like, I will be glad to give more information either for your personal gain or for the clarity of article. Cimmerian praetor (talk) 20:54, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Not a mess. Not even a mess with a “ :)”. It’s a fascinating and well presented article. But it does also, I think, give an example of how much we can be affected by differences in unspoken assumptions that usually don’t even get noticed and certainly don’t normally get discussed. You and I both come from Europe, but we nevertheless have our thought patterns defined by different languages and we grew up learning about different places. In the article I have noticed a town – more than one – with a Czechoslovak looking name - that begins with “S”. I do not know, simply from looking at the spelling, how I should pronounce it. Because I cannot instantly say the word to myself I still have not got round to fixing the name in my head. You not merely know without thinking about it how to pronounce the name. You probably even know where it is without having to look at a map. So you are applying maybe 2% of your applied mental space to the issue of location while I am obsessing about it, using up maybe 30% or more of my relevant thinking space. You are writing about who the guys were and what they did while I am still distracted by trying to figure out and then to remember where they were doing it. My brain was desperately trying to follow “Richtlinien” (tram lines) that said these guys were meant to be in the Czech lands while for you that was a minor detail and, by the way, they were in Slovakia at this time. Those differences in unspoken assumptions generally go unremarked, but they help explain the colossal errors of the Blair Gang in Iraq as well as countless lesser mutual misunderstandings between unimaginative political leaders who spent all their energies simply getting to the top. May God help the Americans trying to understand the Chinese or vice versa. Maybe the answer is to spend half a life time spying on the other side before you become a world leader. Or spend half a life time with the other side’s army in town. I sense that that nice Mr Putin and that nice Mrs Merkel maybe understand one another better than is usual between world leaders, even if that does not mean they have to like each other very much. So much for digression. On with Friday. Oh yes, and thank you for these clarifications. Regards Charles01 (talk) 08:22, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
When looking at it, this might also need a clarification: There, the unit made contact with members of partisan group Wolfram, the establishing members of which had been deployed by the Czechoslovak-government in exile and air-dropped to the area from Italy. These soldiers were trained in UK and sent by the Czechoslovak officials based in UK (unlike the Uršiak-Murzin unit, which was de-iure sent also by the London CS government, but de facto by the Reds). Wolfram was first transferred to Italy and then took another airplane from there for airdrop in Moravia. Cimmerian praetor (talk) 21:02, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
This is beginning to look like maybe it's quite a long digression, if you're planning at some stage to give the Wolfram Group it's own entry (after which a lot of the detail can simply be addressed with a link to the more detailed article. I'm wondering about relegating some of it for now to a footnote. Not sure.... Any thoughts?
Yes, Wolfram will definitely get a separate article. They were the most successful of all intelligence units operating in the Czech lands as regards the number and quality of reports they dispatched to London. Unfortunately, having spent some 65 hours at work this week, I really need to try to avoid the keyboard this weekend :) Cimmerian praetor (talk) 20:36, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Czechoslovak partisans: more requests for clarification
"...as regards the original air-drop..."
I don't think we mentioned an air-drop before. I had the impression they crossed into Moravia through the hills/mountains beyond Štiavnik. If there was an airdrop, I think we need to say what and where and who. The first question that comes to me is "who supplied the planes?"
They were parachuted from Soviet plane to ŠtiavnikSklabiňa(sorry for this mistake), Slovakia, then they transfered on land to Moravia. I meant the 21 initial members by the "original airdrop".
Also, a clarification regarding Wolfram: they were transfered from UK to Italy (probably by plane) where they got on another plane, from which they were parachuted to Moravia. They were not parachuted to Italy. I guess flying across Alps was easier to avoid detection than flying across Germany.
As regards the bombardment of their initial position: they fled mostly because they knew that it would draw attention of Germans who would come to check why the hell the airplane bombed a supposedly empty woods in the mountains.
Just one more point: I have read before that Hitler ordered his best forces to be in the Czech lands because he expected the Reds to go through this area due to the strategic importance of Czech industry (by this time the industry in Germany was in ashes). However, Stalin decided to go through Poland. I suppose that one of the aims of organizing the partisan movement in the area was to make the Germans believe that they would indeed go through there to Germany. I will try to find a source for this. Cimmerian praetor (talk) 20:32, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Czechoslovak partisans: another requests for clarification
"...Two groups of partisans were sent further West-East under command of..."
This doesn't work for me. Either they were sent east or they were sent west. (Or they weren't....) I cannot even guess at the intention here. Please help! + Thanks im Voraus! Best wishes Charles01 (talk)
Wow, that is really stupid from me :) it was supposed to say south-west, approximately like this.
Also, as you mentioned in the edit summary that it is not very well understandable: the two groups who went "out" were still part of the unit. Meanwhile, there were other partisan units/groups active in the area already before the Uršiak-Murzin unit came there. These two groups thus reached out to those who were already established. Some of those pre-existing remained independent, some joined the Uršiak-Murzin unit (followed their orders directly, although remained in their original area of operation), some remained loosely connected (did not follow orders but cooperated rather closely). It seemed too detailed to write it in the wiki. Also, these two groups were being joined by Czechs daily. Most Czechs were anti-nazi, but lacked the impetus to come out of their closets ;) before Uršiak's unit started their daring raids and attacks (the before-existing Czech partisan units seem to had toned their activity down in order not to invite German wrath against civilians).Cimmerian praetor (talk) 18:57, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Question on Operation Grouse
We write that the operation was followed by "a string of executions" which implies a lot of execution. Yet in the next para we write that "only 8" partisans were killed (& 13 others captured, who might have been killed later) despite the deployment of 13,000 military etc personnel. On the face of it, those two statements are in conflict even though, for the most part, these two bits seem to come from the same source. I guess the most obvious explanation is that there were a lot more partisans and partisan sympathizers killed later, but if that is the explanation then I am tempted to think it needs to be spelled out. Otherwise the reader stops reading while pondering the contradiction, and I don't think this is necessarily a good place for the reader to stop reading. Any thoughts?
I also tried translating Operation Grouse into German and Czech, because translating merely "Grouse" somehow looked too digressive. But I speak no Czech (and my German, till now, involved very little about birds that live to be shot or other (quasi-)military operations) so you might wish to check what I did here....
The executions were concerning mostly civilians suspected of supporting the partisans. The sources differ with number being between 13 to 40 civilians captured. One of the reasons for this is that some of those captured were transfered elsewhere and executed later (for example, two men arrested for supporting partisans were transfered to Pankrác Prison and executed there as late as 13 March 1945), while those well documented are cases of those who were taken for questioning, and then brought back to their home towns and publicly executed. Moreover, a few committed suicide when the arrest was imminent. Some died during "questioning" or hanged themselves in the cells. Therefore the variation in the sources.
I've found this , it has very detailed description of the Grouse. But I am not sure whether adding too many details would help the article or not. Apparently, as a consequence of the previous attack on the base the unit was too dispersed for Grouse to be effective. Also, the weather was unfavorable with a lot of snow and despite the high numbers, the Germans could not effectively close the blockade of the area. Especially in the night they didn't have sufficient numbers to prevent partisans from leaving the area of operation.
The thesis also alleges that the Germans decided for wrong tactic. They encircled the area, divided it into 9 sectors and started systematic searches. The alternative which was not accepted would be to first search towns and villages and then continue into the woods and pastures. In normal conditions the systematic search would be more effective, but in the winter with high snow it was too exhausting for the soldiers.Cimmerian praetor (talk) 08:06, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Specific conditions
specific aspects of waging partisan warfare in Moravia involved the following factors:
a dense network of military garrisons
military control and protection of military and industrial premises, roads, railway stations, bridges and administrative institutions
a diversified Gestapo network supported by spies in towns, settlements and villages
special penal units of SS, schutzpolizei, Vlasov army and field gendarmes in the mountains and woods, in areas known to contain partisan bases and battalions
Murzin's notes
These were not so much for the Germans, but for the partisans. In Ukraine and Russia they were used to have desolated forests that were hardly accessible to the enemy, enemy did not leave much security forces behind but moved them along towards the frontline, the locals would not tell on partisans and the enemy, mostly, could not use the knowledge of the terrain of the locals since these were uncooperative, unlike the ethnic Germans in the Czech lands.
So Charles, it seems that we´ve got it to DYK :) THank you for your contribution.
On another matter, I am planning to write an article on a mureder case which I reckon will get a lot of attention as the proceedings move forward. I wanted to ask you for your input as native speaker as regards THE name of the article. I have in mind either ′′Murder of Harok family′′ or ′′Harok family murder case′′. What do you think is more suitable? Or do you have any other suggestion? I will be fiddling with it in my sandbox as I find time. Thank you! Cimmerian praetor (talk) 12:16, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
No strong opinion. I think of the two you suggest I prefer ′′Harok family murder′′ (without the case. I took a look at the existing entries on notorious murders and they were mostly named after (1) the place or (2) the victim and NOT (3) the perpetrator. That's logical, because at the time when the case was fixed in the public mind by news coverage, most of which would predate identification of the murderer, no one knew his (or her?) name. The other thing I noticed was that most of the titles have only two or three words. For better or worse, we anglophones use short "snappy" titles. I guess if Brno were smaller you might consider "Brno murders", but probably Brno has too much history for that to work.
If you look at you'll find a number of English language murder titles. If you change the year you'll find more. Before doing any of that I thought about the first two murders that came into my head, and they were both named after the murder location. Anyhow, here they are followed in no particular order by a lot of other entry titles. I do not claim they'll give you inspiration, but they do provide the sort of pattern which I guess you will wish to follow when determining a title for the new entry:
A6 Murder
Moors Murders
Murder of the Aroyo children
Orangeburg massacre
Tochigi patricide case
(I think this entry may have been started - and therefore the title chosen for it - by someone whose first language is not English...)
Thank you. Please feel invited to copy-edit User:Cimmerian_praetor/sandbox in case you find it interesting and worth your while. I don't want to put it out of sandbox before adding some more information in line with the fact that it is a current event concerning a living person, so if it should go out to the wikiworld, it may as well go with clean English. Regards Cimmerian praetor (talk) 21:53, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
Hello Charles, I have added Harok family murder and left there a copy edit needed template. Please feel invited to do it yourself, although I understand if this goes beyond your history and cars interest :) I think that the formal request for extradition will be filed in next couple of weeks and the case will get some spotlight then. Have a nice day! Cimmerian praetor (talk) 10:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
I'll certainly take a look. Thank you. I might (or might not) find irresistable the temptation to change something. I'm quite sure it's interesting. The more effective constraint on whether or not I jump in is, as ever, not something you can not control or influence. How many hours there are in the day and how much energy do I have to use them all? (And, I guess, how much of that time is directed to wiki-activity) Success Charles01 (talk) 10:42, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
I know. Wiki is so damn addictive. The worse yet when I spend over 12 hours a day writing legal briefs at work. Somehow most of them don't satisfy my writing urge the way wiki does. So little time and so many issues to write on :) Thanks for the murder article copy edit!
I took a look and made a few changes. Please make sure I didn't do damage to the meaning! My computer's in hospital so I'm taking turns with my wife's this evening. Screen in the wrong place, mouse on the wrong side..... Maybe I'll take another look at the Harok article again when my own comes back! Best Charles01 (talk) 19:05, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. It seems that only the public tv has went so far as getting the court papers in the US, so my guess is that they will be now for days releasing information from the 300 pages extradition request bit by bit (since there is no other paper that could bring the story before them). Which means that I will be also adding it as it comes and I would be glad if you could c-e it accordingly.
The court should take weeks/months to decide on extradition and then the final decision will be taken by the US Secretary of State, so apart from the information from the extradition request, I don't expect the article to grow considerably any time soon.
This is looking more complicated than I'd expected. Ach well, questions line by line:
1. "...when criminal proceedings may be conducted without the presence of the person charged:" I took out a few words directly after this because I didn't understand what they meant. IF my best estimate of the meaning was correct, it seemed to narrow down the circumstances, but how and when and why wasn't clear. Is it safe to leave it out? Or what? And please. Sorry if I'm being obtuse with this.
You did a great job. I would leave a convict rather than convicted party, since it is always the one person, but if "party" sounds better in English, then its fine.
They both work. Not quite sure why I changed it. Somehow "convict" carries more baggage from novels and history. Maybe I'm thinking of Charles Dickens and the old nineteenth century prison ships where they put convicts when they'd run out of space in the prisons here in England.
2. "...In case that a defendant is unknown:... Before charges against a person were brought...." Again, maybe it's simply my lack of imagination, but I do not understand how you can have a criminal trial before you have identified the suspected criminal. Does your source offer (or can you think of) an example from real life?
This is not concerning the trial itself, but pre-trial proceedings, i.e. from the very beginning of investigation. When I wrote "criminal proceedings" in the article, I meant from charges all the way to enforceable judgment; this rare case touches even time before charges are brought: typically, police find someone shot on the street who may die soon. In order to have a witness statement that could be used in the trial, they need to follow this special rule which is in place to make sure that the rights of the future defendant are not breached (especially in case the victim dies and the defendant will not be able to cross-examine). Please use the line below for the article, subject to your kind copy-edit:
For example, when the police conclude that a crime was committed and that unrepeatable and exigent action needs to be taken in order to find out the perpetrator (such as interrogation of a witness or recognition attempt (i.e. when they line more people up and ask the wittness to show who is the perp)), such an action is taken in the presence of a judge. Normally, the defendant or their attorney would have the right to be present during the interrogation or recognition attempt. In order to secure full legality and impartiality, the judge, who would not normally be present in pre-trial proceedings, is present, and such evidence is then admissable also during trial. Typically, this may concern a dying witness, who may not be later available for cross-examination by the defendant.Šámal, Pavel (2013), Trestní řád I., II., III. (7th ed.), Prague: C. H. Beck, p. 1977 - 1983 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
3. "...When seizing property involved in criminal case from unknown owner." Again, it's a little hard to envisage a case where property is seized without knowing from whom it is seized. I wonder if an example would help? If it is seized (thinking on paper here) from a left-luggage locker at a railway station, then presumably it is seized in the first instance from the person who left it there. You cannot have a trial to authorize the seizure retrospectively if you do not know who he is. If he returns to the left luggage office to request his property, then by definition you have him identified so he is no longer unknown. No, doesn't work. Your example, please...
Maybe the right word would be confiscated? They policemen first take it (seize?) from the locker, but still remains the property of the unknown owner up until the court decides that the thing is (confiscated?) and becomes the property of the state. Real life example: far right wants to march through an area inhabited by a minority (Roma). They know that the cops will search them for guns before entering the district (they can't forbid a demonstration), so they hide some baseball bats within the district a day before. The cops find them and take them away, not knowing who is the actual owner. Until the judge makes a formal ruling on confiscation, the given nazi-skinhead may at any time file a request for return of the baseball bats. For the purposes of the article, please use the following subject to your kind copy-edit (with use of seizing, confiscating, or else, of your linking):
This is possible under the condition that the thing which should be subject to confiscation endangers the safety of people, property or society, or that it may be used for perpetration of a felony crime. Typically, this concerns prohibited weapons or ammunition, explosives, narcotics, poisons, etc., which were seized by the police without knowing who they belong to.Šámal, Pavel (2012), Trestní zákoník (2nd ed.), Prague: C. H. Beck, p. 1195 - 1209 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
What a great photograph of the memorial... do you have a way to locate that on mapquest or some other mapping service? If so, I could decipher the GPS coordinates -- understanding that the memorial's location is not the same location as the accident. Do you have an idea of where the actual accident occurred?842U (talk) 17:01, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for taking the trouble to write something nice about the picture. I, too, thought it was ok+. Sometimes the authorities put the sun in the right place (though usually they do not....
I GUESS the accident occurred about 70 metres to the south of the memorial. The road round the north side of St Dizier now has modern tower blocks along the north side, but in the 1950s I assume it was the then newly/recently/about to be constructed bye-pass. (Since about 2008 there's a newer byepass round the south side of the town, though I think that was closed for repairs at the first weekend in June 2013 when I was there with a camera handy.) The link with the dead straight east-west road THROUGH St Dizier is now, at the town's westside (Paris/Reims side) is now a smoothed out curve which is how the memorial is now further away from the road than (I guess) it was. But the accident was well reported at the time and if you follow the sources on the wiki page about M LeF. Probably also the local Syndicat d'initiatif/Tourist office could direct you to more info. If you want to place reliance on something more reliable than my speculation, therefore, I think that would be a very good idea!
On a location for the image, someone did show me how to do that a year or so ago. I'll see if I can still remember how to do it. I agree that it's a good idea in this case. Success Charles01 (talk) 09:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
PS - out of curiosity, if you enter "Charles01 (talk) 09:29, 5 June 2013 (UTC)" (without the "" bit) it will become possible for me to know who you are without having to dig. Just a minor thought, and not an important one if your actually intended to be anonymous....
I forgot how to insert a location to a wiki page. BUT if you use google maps, go to St Dizier. On the west side of the town is a roundabout (rond point) where D635 (from the east) meets D221 (from the north) meets Av Roger Salengro (from the town). Just to the south of D635 is marked a pub/bar called "Relais des Nations". North of that is an unofficial looking road with "one way/sense unique" arrows pointing more or less west. North of that is a very short L shaped road going first north then west then stopping. From (recent!) memory, I would estimate the LeFacheux monument is at the end of that little L-shaped non-road to nowhere, just south of where the D635 is about to reach the rond point. I tried to check that using google satellite, but the resulting image is too fuzzy to check anything. Here it is, though, in case helpful (don't know if this will work...):
IF you can remember or work out how to add the coordinates for that to the file of the picture, please do it. And thank you. Regards Charles01 (talk) 09:56, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I do not speak French well enough to have located any information on the monument. It's my understanding that the actual spot where Lefaucheux had his accident has been displaced by the rework of the intersection. In either case, I will add the geo-position to the article later today. Thanks! 842U (talk) 13:24, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. Your contribution to French wiki works just fine for me (though it's not my mother tongue...) And the locations are spot on. Charles01 (talk) 19:09, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
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Great to see you help in furthering the Simca articles. I have also noticed that Morgan +4 as well as Morgan Plus 8 are nearly stumps. And why are they titled differently? Would welcome your input and content there (minus crazy spaces!). Cheers, Mr.choppers | ✎ 06:21, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm slightly surprised that there's so little on - in particular - the Morgan +4. You'd think there would be more enthusiasts out there keen to share what they know. There is a little bit of info in Culshaw and Horrobin. Motor magazines from my own youth tend to be about five years too late for the Plus 4. Even though they made it till 1969 (it says here) the focus of media interest had by then switched to the V8 powered Plus 8. I guess that may offer a clue as to where some of the enthusiasts for the +4 have gone, alas. Anyhow, for my part I'll bear it in mind and should the muse strike ..... but please feel free to get in first if ever you should find that your own muse is twitching to go in that direction.
(On the 1950s/60s Simcas I was inspired a couple of years back, as you can doubtless tell, by having found - paid for even - a great source. That and the memories - mostly happy - of having visited France on holiday as a kid with the parents and noticing that the cars were all quite different from the ones back home (or in Germany, or, presumably, in Italy and to a lesser extent in Sweden, though I think for little cars the Swedes were importing from other European countries in relatively large numbers even then). I never mustered quite the same enthusiasm for Morgans, in that I've never known one "personally" and when I was a kid, on the rare occasions that you saw one on the road, there was always a slight frisson of disappointment as it got closer and you realized that it wasn't an interesting car to try and identify from thirty years ago but "only a Morgan". Though of course you can't really blame the cars for that.)
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Hi. I'm frequently writing on Packard themes in the German WP and stumbled upon the fine pics of the Clipper you uploaded. I doubt that it is possible to distinguish 1946 from 1947 Clipper models by paint scheme. To my knowledge, this is only possible by VIN, and there by body style number only, as all 1946 and 1947 Clippers are part of the 21st series. That means that all VINs start with 21xx. The Packard Club encyclopedia states for 1946 and 1947 simultaneously:
The Twenty-First series spanned 1946 and 1947. Packards produced during the 1946 "model year" have body style numbers in the 16XX series, while those produced for sale as 1947 models have body styles numbers in the 21XX series. There are no other differences between 1946 and 1947 Packards.
Food for thought. Thank you. They were good quite pictures in the circumstances. Sometimes - not often - the Weather-god puts the sun in the right place. If ever I see that car again, I'll try and hang around for long enough to find the owner and ask a few questions. There's another old timer show at Schaffen-Diest (between Aachen and Antwerpen) in mid-August 2013, I think. Maybe maybe maybe. (And if you are in or near to NRW, quite accessible from BRD). Those Belgians bought a lot of US cars in the decade 1945-1955. I'm not sure why. They were even assembling Studebakers in what became the Volkswagen Brussels plant.
The car looks in such good condition that MUCH work must have been done on it. That could easily include changing the paint scheme. However, I have the sense that the person who did the work is a person who values authenticity. Dating any US car from these decades is complicated by confusion between "model years" and "production years". In principal we all know the difference, but in practice and when discussing individual cars, confusion can still enter the discussion!
None of which takes the discussion too far further. I need to get on with Tuesday. Have a good day and thanks for the link. I'll take a longer look at that later. Charles01 (talk) 05:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter
Hey Charles01. We've just rolled out a new version of the VisualEditor :). Changes and patches include:
Newly added templates now list their available parameters if TemplateData is available;
The load for the VisualEditor on apages is now 4 KiB, down from 119 KiB;
Feedback dialog is no longer chased off the screen by typing (bug 50538)
Fixed the Monobook issues around z-indexes (bug 50241)
Undoing an image resize doesn't make everything look bad
In the image dialog, "Caption content" is now just "Caption"
Tweaked tooltip references to VisualEditor to instead talk about "source mode"
Those are the big ones; more coming at the end of this week or early next week :). It's a short list, but the load issue took up a lot of time, as did TemplateData, and are both pretty big changes. If you've got any questions, drop them on my talkpage. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:24, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
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Hey Charles01! We've just deployed some fixes to the VisualEditor. These include:
"Edit" will load the latest version, not the version you're looking at (bug 49943)
"Edit" will load the latest version, not the version you edited last time if this is your second edit (bug 50441)
VE edit section links will load the latest, not original, version in diff view preview (bug 50925)
<big><big>Foo</big></big> and similar repeated tags will not get corrupted any more (bug 49755)
In the meantime, testing is proceeding well, and hopefully we can get some more fixes out over the next couple of days. If you're interested in helping out, we have a set of open tasks we'd really appreciate your assistance with :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
VE newsletter
Hey Charles01
We just deployed another VisualEditor release; bugs fixed include:
Firefox 13/14 has been temporarily blacklisted, to avoid the insertion of broken links ] (50720)
Changing a reference in a template should no longer produce the bright red "you don't have a references block!" error (bugzilla:50423)
Notices are now shown if you're editing a protected or semi-protected page (bugzilla:50415)
The template inspector will no longer invite you to insert parameters that are already being used (50715)
Parameter names in the template dialogue now word-wrap (50800)
The link inspector will not show in the top left if you hit the return key while opening it (49941)
Hitting return twice in the link editor will no longer introduce a new line that overwrites the link (51075)
Oddly-named categories no longer cause corruption (50702)
The toolbar no longer occasionally covers the cursor (48787)
Changing the formatting of text no longer occasionally scrolls you upwards (50792)
Not specific bugs, but other things; cacheing is now improved, so people should stop seeing temporary breaking when the VisualEditor updates, and RTL support has received some patches. I hope this newsletter is helpful to people; I'll send out another one with the next deployment :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
VE newsletter
Hey Charles01! Another set of patches :). Today we have:
Required template parameters are now automatically added to new templates (50747)
Templates with piped links now display correctly when you alter them (50801)
If your edit token expires, you're now informed of it (50424).
You still won't be able to save - that's due to be fixed on Monday :).
More on Monday, I suspect. Hope you have a good weekend :). I should also have some news about the IP launch pretty soon. Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:20, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
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Hey Charles01; hope you had a decent weekend :). We've got a pile of patches, some of which went out on Monday, some yesterday:
If you insert wikitext such as links or section headers, you get a notice in the top right corner (over the save button). It doesn't go away until click, though once dismissed you don't get another one that edit. (49820)
If your edit token expires, VE fetches a new one for you so you can save. (50424)
If the page is empty of content but does have something non-content (like a category or an HTML comment), VE no longer crashes on load - (50289)
I saw your work on Bierut Decrees which brought me to Beneš Decrees. I am doing their list in my now. Please feel invited to give me any ideas on what to add or how to make it better (or copy-edit).
On the Beneš Decrees, I'll share any compelling thoughts that come to me. However, it's something about which I know very little so beyond pointing out where you left out a "the" or an "a", I'm unlikely to bring any very penetrating insights to the entries. My interest originates simply because when we lived in Germany we had friends whose parents had left those eastern lands - "Sudetan Germans" in 1945. Inevitably, if that's your family background, you don't quite view the planet from the same set of angles as you do where your family has been living quietly in the same settled German village for five generations. And of course the history of the massive ethnic cleansings (if one may use the phrase without being deemed biased) that followed the Second World War is largely a closed history to the English speaking world, though I guess little by little various resources - including wikipedia - open up the opportunity better to understand history the way she was taught in countries other than the one where one grew up. Or didn't.
Also, as regards Bierut, I think that the article does not address the issue of to what degree they were the basis for the expulsion and to what degree they were "merely" facilitating the Article 12 of the Potsdam Agreement.
I think I probably agree. My motivation for starting this one was simply curiosity and the vague sense that this entry should not be reserved for people wiling and able to read it in German. Thus far I really only trusted myself enough to translate what was already there, so inevitably I tend to copy any unconscious (and conscious?) nuances from the German language text. Whoever translated it for the French-wiki appears to come to the thing with some background knowledge, but in large part what he provides is also a translation from the German text. And I've not yet found on-line (or anywhere else) the texts of the laws and decrees themselves. It would be good to be able to link to those and maybe get a better perspective on how far the bits that do get described and quoted in the German wiki entry are representative of all the (far greater number of) bits that don't get a mention. I only have about 20 words of Polish (and when I used to visit Poland occasionally my 20 words of Polish sometimes used to merge into my 40 words of Russian which I don't think always pleased people) but with google translate one can sometimes get some sort of a limited idea of what is going on even where one does not know the language. And of course in terms of sentence structure, simply watching how you adapt your thought processes (presumably originating in a middle European language) into English provides a (yes, very small) amount of increased insight into word order etc (and the absence of "the" and "a"!).
Anyhow, if you have insights to add on the Bierut Decrees, that would be seriously interesting to see. I'm not expecting to go significantly beyond translation myself, unless I get unexpectedly lucky with some on-line source(s). Maybe if you did a quick translation into Czech (for wiki?) you would be unable to resist checking out Czech language (and other slavic language) sources which might add balance and some source notes which would give the entry authority. Though it is possible that there simply are not too many published Polish language sources available, in view of the situation under the Russians in the decades immediately after 1945.
I am sure there is a sense in which the Potsdam agreement, on these issues, was a face-saving device to try and give legitimacy to what had already happened and preserve the idea that The Allies were allies. Stalin had a plan for Mittel Europa and he had armies in the affected countries. He had had decades in which to think about it. Going back, there was a long tradition of carving up between the surrounding empires Poland (and other countries around it) and then recarving the frontiers half a century later, even if the scale of the forced migrations of ethnic Germans resulting in 1945 was on a vast scale. (Of course there were also under Stalin whole towns in Poland that had their populations picked up and relocated deep in the Soviet heartland / southern Siberia, though in the west we hear even less about that than we hear about the transfers of German populations in '45.) Anyhow, faced with a long standing Russian strategy backed by Soviet troops in all the right places, it's understandable that Harry Truman and Clem Attlee at Potsdam simply signed up to what was. There was also, in the decade 1945-55, understandable concern that the Third World War would take place in Europe between the USSR and the USA, and I guess avoiding that outcome at all costs will have been a major priority for Stalin, Truman and Attlee. And in terms of crude military strategy, while the existence of "buffer" states under soviet control between the Soviet Union and Western Europe during the Cold War certainly would have discouraged any sudden invasion from the west into the Soviet Union, it also served the same function in reverse. It would have been difficult for the Soviets to invade western Europe through the intervening countries without risking military "insurgency" from behind, even if Poland etc were under some sort of Soviet control. I don't think that control was ever entirely unconditional....
I have done my best with the Beneš Decrees article. I will fiddle a bit more with adding sources tomorrow, but otherwise it is ready for copy-edit. I want to put it on the main page at once so that it is eligible for the DYK nomination (expanded five fold within last five days), but anyhow if you consider it interesting enough for your copy-edit, you can start already at the sandbox. It might take me another weekend or two before I am satisfied enough with the outcome to let it out there. F€@k, another Saturday spent on Misplaced Pages instead of writing master thesis which is, by now, clinically dead :(
The worst part of the expulsions took place already by the end of the war and the worst crimes were, at least from what I have read so far as regards the Czech part, often committed by former Czech collaborators who were on one hand trying to erase witnesses of their collaboration or had bestial idea of proving loyalty to the reinstated government (e.g. Massacre at Švédské Šance, the main perpetrator of which falls in both categories). Considering the way the occupation was carried out, I understand that coexistence in the same country was not imaginable in May 1945. And when reading decree No. 16 (see description in the list), I fear that there would be many more people hanged (for treason, etc.) than how many have lost lives in during the expulsion. Being Silesian, from first invaded by Poland and then Germany, I have also interesting family history... suffice to say that had greatgrandfather not fallen serving in Wehrmacht making grandpa an orphan, this part of my ancestors would be also expelled. Best, Cimmerian praetor (talk) 21:04, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
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Featuring your work on Misplaced Pages's front page: DYKs
Thank you for your recent articles, including Bierut Decrees, which I read with interest. When you create an extensive and well referenced article, you may want to have it featured on Misplaced Pages's main page in the Did You Know section. Articles included there will be read by thousands of our viewers. To do so, add your article to the list at T:TDYK. Let me know if you need help, Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here13:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
WikiProject assessment tags for talk pages
Thank you for your recent articles, including Bierut Decrees. When you create a new article, can you add the WikiProject assessment templates to the talk of that article? See the talk page of the article I mentioned for an example of what I mean. Usually it is very simple, you just add something like {{WikiProject Keyword}} to the article's talk, with keyword replaced by the associated WikiProject (ex. if it's a biography article, you would use WikiProject Biography; if it's a United States article, you would use WikiProject United States, and so on). You do not have to rate the article if you do not want to, others will do it eventually. Those templates are very useful, as they bring the articles to a WikiProject attention, and allow them to start tracking the articles through Misplaced Pages:Article alerts and other tools. This can help you too, as the WikiProject members will often defend your work from deletion and try to improve it further. Feel free to ask me any questions if you'd like more information. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here13:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
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I took the liberty of checking out your user page. It looks as though you live in England and once lived in Telford, so I don't need to tell you where Wolverhampton and Telford are. Good. The Weston in question is Weston Park, just off the long mostly straight old road if you turn off at Weston under Lizard and/or Shiffnal. As far as I remember from the rather approximate map in my head, if you travel by road from Wolverhampton to Telford (shunning the motorway) you will drive past / through Weston. In the old days Weston Park was the home of the Earl of Bradford, but I think he runs a posh restaurant in London these days and the house/park are probably operated by quasi-benign publicly funded bureaucrats allegedly for the benefit of all.
The occasion was a "transport fair" (or words to that effect) held normally during the first weekend in May each year (ie Bank holiday weekend - though this year it was defered to celebrate weather). It's a great place for checking out old cars and trucks (unless it rains, in which case the old-timer enthusiasts and their cars/trucks/buses tend to stay away). The cars are gathered on a piece of park land to the south of the big house and the trucks are mostly parked up in a row to the west of the cars - so to the south-west of the house. At least, that's the been the set-up when I've attended.
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It's been almost two weeks since the last newsletter, and a lot of improvements have been made during that time. The main things that people have noticed are significant improvements to speed for typing into long pages (Template:Bug), scrolling (Template:Bug) and deleting (Template:Bug) on large pages. There have also been improvements to references, with the latest being support for list-defined references, which are <ref>s defined inside a <references> block (Template:Bug). Users of Opera 12 and higher have had their web browser removed from the browser black-list, mostly as a result of work by a volunteer developer (Template:Bug). Opera has not been fully white-listed yet, so these users will get an additional warning and request to report problems.
Significant changes were made to the user interface to de-emphasize VisualEditor. This has cut the use of VisualEditor by approximately one-third. You can read about these at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Updates/August 1, 2013, but they include:
Re-ordering links to the editors to put "Edit source" first and VisualEditor second
Renaming the link for VisualEditor to "Edit"
Disabling the animation for section editing.
Changing all labels for the classic wikitext editor to say "Edit source", regardless of namespace.
There have also been many smaller fixes, including these:
Horizontal alignment of images working correctly on more pages (Template:Bug)
Magic JavaScript gadgets and tools like sortable tables will now work once the page is saved (Template:Bug)
Keyboard shortcut for "clear annotations" - now Control+\ or ⌘ Command+\ (Template:Bug)
Fixed corruption bugs that led to duplicate categories (Template:Bug) and improper collapsing when multiple new references were added in a row (Template:Bug).
Improvements to display elements: The save dialog in Monobook is restored to normal size (Template:Bug), pop-up notices on save now look the same in VisualEditor as in wikitext editor (Template:Bug), and the popup about using wikitext has a link to the definition of wikitext that now opens in a new window (Template:Bug)
Most of the Wikimedia Foundation staff is traveling this week and next, so no updates are expected until at least August 15th. If you're going to be in Hong Kong for Wikimania 2013, say hello to James Forrester, Philippe Beaudette, and the other members of the VisualEditor team.
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novels (the other being '']'') by this ]) 1862-1931) better known for his short stories and plays (including ''Reigen'' - "Round Dance" - known to most
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Both VisualEditor and MediaWiki were upgraded recently. For VisualEditor, this is the long-awaited post-Wikimania update with many bug fixes and enhancements. Work also continues on speed at opening and during use, as well as on the bugs reported here and at other Wikipedias. The full report is at Mediawiki.
References are displaying properly, even when nested (Template:Bug) or in image captions (Template:Bug. Reference lists are now always fully populated with references (bug 50094). Firefox users can insert an existing reference in the first paragraph (Template:Bug). Opera users no longer see corruption of categories when a reference was added (bug 50385).
Stray spaces are being stripped from the start of paragraphs to end one of the common <nowiki> problems (Template:Bug). We also fixed a round-tripping bug that caused desirable whitespace in templates (used to make templates more legible, e.g., by putting each parameter in an infobox on a separate line) to get corrupted (bug 51150).
Wikilink handling was improved. Users are not allowed to create internal links to invalid titles (titles that are actually impossible due to limits on acceptable character combinations in titles, not redlinks) (Template:Bug). You can extend wikilinks, but it won't do so over a wordbreak (like a space) (bugs 49931 and 51463).
A handful of fixes to the user interface were made. The toolbar doesn't float over personal tools after opening a dialog or the inspector (Template:Bug). Toolbars were also re-written to be collapsible/expandable, with room for more icons. Buttons in dialogs can now be activated using the Tab ↹ and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ key commands (bug 50047). This saves time for editors, because you don't need to take your hands off the keyboard to click a button. We fixed a handful of bugs that affected only certain articles or certain browsers, including toolbar buttons in Firefox (bug 51986) and dialog panels that didn't always scroll correctly (bug 51739). Bugs with undo/redo getting confused have been fixed (Template:Bug).
Images, in addition to getting references displaying correctly, also saw improvements with a set-empty |link= parameter no longer corrupted (51963). We corrected thumbnail images' display so that they look don't wrong in some contexts (bug 51995). Inserted images no longer explicitly set their alignment, but instead inherit the default position in compliance with the Manual of Style (bug 51851).
More edit notices, warnings, and metadata like information about Pending Changes on an article now appear as appropriate (bug 49699). When new articles are created, users are now shown the <newarticletext> message (bug 51459). VisualEditor now handles templates that set "meta" items (like a category) and nothing else better (bug 51322). If the database is locked when a user tries to save with VisualEditor, they now get a message telling them as such and an opportunity to try again, rather than a silent failure (bug 51636).
When you save the page, having the default preference set to "mark all my edits as minor by default" no longer overrides the setting in the save dialog (bug 51515). If you open VisualEditor from a section edit link, the section's title will be pre-filled in in the edit summary box when you go to save it (bug 50872). The size of the save dialog box in the Monobook skin has been fixed (bug 50058). Also, wikipage content handlers like sortable tables are re-run automatically after saving (Template:Bug).
A very early version of the mathematics equation editor is now available for testing on mw:Mediawiki. If you would like to help improve the user interface for math editor, please test out the extension at mw:Mediawiki:Sandbox and leave your comments directly at the discussion page for the Math Node User Interface at Mediawiki. You should be able to use your regular username and password should to login to Mediawiki.
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Greetings Charles01. I grew up to think of the kind of soft top car with cant rails over the doors and windows (perhaps because so popular in mainland Europe) was a cabriolet rather than a tourer or all-weather car. What is your experience of the use of this word, cabriolet? Best, Eddaido (talk) 21:37, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Cabriolet
Cant rail
Cabriolet
Cabriolet not
small soft-top cabrioletmid-size soft-top cabriolet
Hmmmmm
I think the little Austin can be called a cabriolet, though I'm not sure I'd do it myself. Not sure why. Just too English a car for such a French name, maybe. How about "Austin 7 soft-top convertible"? (Assuming it is an Austin 7.) I see Lars-Göran has called it a cabriolet and I wouldn't get into a fight with him or anyone else over that application of the term. Just wouldn't apply it myself.
The second one looks like part of a train.
With the standard 2CV the idea was to save cost and weight. There were a lot of German cars like that in the 1930s where the soft top saloon was maybe 100 marks less expensive than the hard top saloon - per examples on the right.. It's not really a question of letting the sunshine in to decorate your bikini-clad passenger, though. How about "soft-top saloon" (or soft-top sedan if your readers are predominantly American)?
The fourth one is what I call a cabriolet.
BUT I am not sure that you should expect universal consensus on some of this. I'm pretty sure that until I was about 40 we'd have said "convertible". Then the word "cabriolet" edged across the channel from France, as "coupé" and "couchette" had done a few decades earlier (and "GT" from Italy at some stage). I guess we just like foreign words in our language zones. Happy day. Charles01 (talk) 06:21, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
The first mention I have of Cabriolet in relation to an Austin car is is this : Olympia Prices for Austin motor-cars.
Austin 10-4
saloon de luxe £172.10.0
saloon (fixed head) £158.0.0
cabriolet £178.0.0
four seater £152.0.0 (this means an open tourer)
two-seater £152.0.0
sports tourer £215.0.0
6cwt - 8cwt van £172.10.0
from The Times Tuesday, Aug 15, 1933; pg. 8; Issue 46523
Thereafter it remains in the catalogue until the outbreak of war, latterly as the (10) Conway cabriolet. Its the kind of thing Herbert Austin seems to have been all fussy about. There was an upgrade when the body shape changed which is described here. I know I have switched from a 7 to a 10 but the same applies except that it is a Pearl instead of a Conway.
Important if minor point, a firm called Salmons & Sons made their own cabriolet with a (I think patented so I think "proprietary") wind up and down handle using bowden cables in the cant rails and they called it Tickford after the name of their street and it was very popular.
Good heavens! You're right, my fancied railroad car is but a railway carriage and not set to whip them from Grand Central to SFO in just one day.
I have raised the matter to get it on record. I'm pretty confident that I am correct as far as pre-war British useage is concerned but if my railroad car is just another carriage my vote is just for clarification of all these words used to describe particular types of vehicle allocating them to their localities and periods and not the current consignment to a muddle for which some googling gives a false "authority". The moment a citation is demanded is the moment the required citations all hide. This day has been much nicer than all the four preceding it, thank you. May you be every bit as fortunate - Eddaido (talk) 05:16, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Tickford post & rail (cabriolet) construction
Well I never. I've just looked at this and I see the author (Bill Smith) has expressed confusion over the use of cabriolet in the Armstrong-Siddeley catalogue - there are 15 separate pages to consider. It seems to me that a Salmons all-weather car has cant rails (so I would say is really a cabriolet). Can you see any underlying (Armstrong-Siddeley) logic? Does the word cabriolet lend the product something special in the mind of the copywriter? Regards, Eddaido (talk) 23:28, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Lots of elegant cars. As for the word cabriolet, it looks as though it was common currency in the english speaking world further back than I would confidently have known. But I guess it makes sense. The largest car producing nation by far back around 1900 was France, so it's logical that several of the more important words which became necessary to describe different types and aspect of cars that developed in those early years should have migrated from French to English, often barely digested (eg the use of é in coupé even though I think our language doesn't really reckon to "do" accents). But I still think that at least in England itself, during my childhood, "convertible" was preferred to "cabriolet" if only because you don;t need to take time out to wonder whether to pronounce it as though a French word or as though an english word. But these days I guess the word cabriolet is right back in there and you never hear the word "convertible" in this context. Well, I guess we've all lived long enough to observe how languages mutate and no doubt there are scholarly theses by linguistics professors on the subject. Ho hum. Regards Charles01 (talk) 22:23, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
You seem to have ignored the whole point! In the first half of the 20th century cabriolet, in Britain, was the kind of car illustrated in all those links to elegant cars, the kind like the basic Citroen 2CV with a fence on either side of the passengers when the top was down. What ia now known as a convertible was a simple all-weather car, with a fence then it was an all-wether cabriolet (Freudian slip). Go look again at those "elegant car" pictures, I didn't name them. Ho hum? Spring is here, Happy Sunday, Eddaido (talk) 00:43, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter for September 5
Did you know?
You can search for images directly in VisualEditor. Click the media icon, which looks like this:
Then type a few keywords into the search box. VisualEditor will search Commons for images or other files whose titles or descriptions contain those words, and will display thumbnail pictures of them for your review. Click one time on the image you want to insert in the article.
This Thursday's VisualEditor update was mostly about stability and performance improvements, and some preparatory work for major planned improvements, along with bug fixes for non-English language support and right-to-left text. Everything that the English Misplaced Pages received today has been running on Mediawiki for a week already.
Officially, the problem with the link inspector not linking to a specific section on a page (bug 53219) was fixed in this release, although that critical patch actually appeared here earlier.
A number of bugs related to copy-and-paste functionality were fixed (48604, bug 50043, bug 53362, bug 51538, among others). Full rich copy-and-paste from external sources into VisualEditor is expected "soon".
In other fixes, you can no longer add empty ref tags (<ref/>) (bug 53345). Selecting both an image and some text, and then trying to add a link, previously deleted the selected image and the text. This was fixed in bug 50127. There was another problem related to using arrow keys to move the cursor next to an inline image that was fixed (bug 53507).
Looking ahead: The next planned upgrade is scheduled for next Thursday, and you should expect to find a redesigned toolbar with drop-down menus that include room for references, templates, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, and code formatting. There will also be keyboard shortcuts for setting the format (paragraph vs section headings).
If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being determined at this time. Generally speaking, languages that depend on the input method editor are not going to receive VisualEditor this month. The current target date is Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Misplaced Pages. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Misplaced Pages is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.
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Renault Celtaquatre]] since 1934.<ref name=Automobilia1938/> On the Juvaquatre the cylinder bore (diameter was reduced to 58mm, however, giving rise to an overall engine capacity of just 1003cc.<
You can edit a page's categories in VisualEditor. Click the "Page settings" button (next to Cancel/Save) in the toolbar to open the category tool. It will show you a list of the current categories for that page.
To add a category, type the name of the category you want to add in the search field. To remove an existing category, click on the category in the list and then, in the dialog that opens, click on the "Remove" icon (trash can). "Options" will allow you to set a default sorting key.
VisualEditor has been updated twice in the last two weeks. As usual, what is now running on the English Misplaced Pages had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week.
As announced, the toolbar was redesigned to be simpler, shorter, and to have the ability to have drop-down groups with descriptions. What you see now is the initial configuration and is expected to change in response to feedback from the English Misplaced Pages and other Wikipedias. The controls to add <u> (underline), <sub> (subscript), and <sup> (superscript), <s> (strikethrough) and <code> (computer code/monospace font) annotations to text are available to all users in the drop-down menu. At the moment, all but the most basic tools have been moved into a single drop-down menu, including the tools for inserting media, references, reference lists, and templates. The current location of all of the items in the toolbar is temporary, and your opinions about the best order are needed! Please offer suggestions at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar.
In an eagerly anticipated upgrade to the reference dialog, newly added references or reference groups no longer need the page to be saved before they can be re-used (bugs 51689 and 52000). The 'Use existing reference' button is now disabled on pages which don't yet have any references (bug 51848). The template parameter filter in the transclusion dialog now searches both parameter name and label (bug 51670).
In response to several requests, there are some new keyboard shortcuts. You can now set the block/paragraph formatting from the keyboard: Ctrl+0 sets a block as a regular paragraph; Ctrl+1 up to Ctrl+6 sets it as a Heading 1 ("Page title") to Heading 6 ("Sub-heading 4"); Ctrl+7 sets it as pre-formatted (bug 33512). Ctrl+2, which creates level 2 section headings, may be the most useful.
Some improvements were made to capitalization for links, so typing in "iPhone" will offer a link to "iPhone" as well as "IPhone" (bug 50452).
Copying and pasting within the same document should work better as of today's update, as should copying from VisualEditor into a third-party application (bug 53364, bug 52271, bug 52460). Work on copying and pasting between VisualEditor instances (for example, between two articles) and retaining formatting when copying from an external source into VisualEditor is progressing.
Major improvements to editing with input method editors (IMEs; mostly used for Indic and East Asian languages) are being deployed today. This is a complex change, so it may produce unexpected errors. On a related point, the names of languages listed in the "languages" (langlinks) panel in the Page settings dialog now display as RTL when appropriate (bug 53503).
Looking ahead: The help/'beta' menu will soon expose the build number next to the "Leave feedback" link, so users can give more specific reports about issues they encounter (bug 53050). This change will make it easier for developers to identify any cacheing issues, once it starts reporting the build number (currently, it says "Version false"). Also, inserting a link, reference or media file will put the cursor after the new content again (bug 53560). Next week’s update will likely improve how dropdowns and other selection menus behave when they do not fit on the screen, with things scrolling so the selected item is always in view.
If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being finalized. About two dozen Wikipedias are on the list for Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only, and on Monday, September 30 for unregistered editors. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Misplaced Pages. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Misplaced Pages is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.
I've just had cause to count up the number of images in Wikimedia of Bentley cars built in the new millennium, there are six hundred and forty-nine, 649. Thank you for your recent contributions to Wikimedia and may there be many more. Regards, Eddaido (talk) 23:32, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
Still a bit breathless from driving over to the Netherlands yesterday to collect a couple of beds, but nice to come back to your kind encouragement. And thank you (as before) for noticing! I'd noticed you busily categorising, and indeed found myself moved by that to look again at some of "my" Bentley pix recently. Rather satisfying where they are good, though that sounds a tad smug, and none is perfect. That red on a green background Flying Spur you recategorised yesterday(?) would have been so much better as a picture if the angle had been just slightly different. The angle of the slope on the field where they hold that oldtimer show is good for interesting angles but also ... um ... challenging. Incidently, the Previa behaved impeccably on the bed collecting trip so maybe now we've splashed out on a THIRD replacement turbo he will become a reliable car for a few years. I do hope so. Regards Charles01 (talk) 07:41, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
Hmmm, no, I think that's a typo. Wouldn't the masculine be Previous and that would suggest a poor prior (turbo) record. Sorry, when I started it that line of thinking seemed like a good idea. I'm a bit addled by a more than week-long effort to load up some images generously released by a Dutch Bentley enthusiast, some of which you have noted above. Might there be a link between his generosity and your trip? If so many thanks to you too. I still think Toyota do a good job when making their vehicles but having to rely on Third Time Lucky is not good and I hope they have given a long warranty. Best, Eddaido (talk) 10:13, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Now I understand the reference to "He?" which till now I hadn't. Yes, I suppose using "he" as a pronoun (rather than "it") in that context is indeed a direct translation from the Dutch, though I wasn't aware of it till between the two of you you explained. I don't think the Dutch Bentley enthusiast is anything to do with me, though there is a guy who I guess is most likely Dutch, unless Flemish, called Alfvanbeem who has over several years uploaded a lot of excellent pictures of cars. If he has uploaded a lot of Bentley shots lately, good.
I'm still feeling cautiously affectionate towards the Previa at the moment. The first turbo replacement came just before the expiry of the (3 year) warranty (although by then "he"'d dumped us ingloriously by the roadside a couple of times already in what I think must have been turbo - or possibly fuel feed valve - related issues) but this time it was more than 4 years, so hooorray that the second turbo lasted four years, but still cause for resentment that it didn't last as long as the car (should) and that I had to pay an extra couple of thousand on repairs for which I had not budgeted. Anyhow, all this is a bit outside wiki scope. Happy days. Charles01 (talk) 10:41, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for September 26
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As you may know, VisualEditor ("Edit ") is currently available on the English Misplaced Pages only for registered editors who choose to enable it. Since you have made 100 or more edits with VisualEditor this year, I want to make sure that you know that you can enable VisualEditor (if you haven't already done so) by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable". This will give you the option of using VisualEditor on articles and userpages when you want to, and give you the opportunity to spot changes in the interface and suggest improvements. We value your feedback, whether positive or negative, about using VisualEditor, at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013
Did you know?
You can create and edit multi-level lists in VisualEditor. The first two icons let you set or remove list formatting.
The last two are used to increase or decrease the indentation level. This can also be done from the keyboard, by using Tab ↹ to indent the list and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ to outdent it.
VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Misplaced Pages had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable".
The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Misplaced Pages username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).
There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).
Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.
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List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:
| engine = 1197 cc 4 cylinder air-cooled]]
= 4-speed manual with synchromesh o upper three ratios<br>floor-mounted gear change lever<
VisualEditor's toolbar has a new feature (currently working only in some browsers), "Switch to source editing". By choosing this item, you can move directly into the wikitext source editor without saving. This is particularly useful if you need to make significant changes to tables, image galleries, or other elements that are not currently supported.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some feature changes, major infrastructure improvements to make the system more stable, dependable and extensible, some minor toolbar improvements, and fixing bugs.
A new form parsing library for language characters in Parsoid caused the corruption of pages containing diacritics for about an hour two weeks ago. Relatively few pages at the English Misplaced Pages were affected, but this created immediate problems at some other Wikipedias, sometimes affecting several dozen pages. The development teams for Parsoid and VisualEditor apologize for the serious disruption and thank the people who reported this emergency at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Feedback and on the public IRC channel, #mediawiki-visualeditor.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
Accidental deletion of infoboxes and other items: You now need to press the Delete or ← Backspace key twice to delete a template, reference or image. The first time, the item becomes selected, and the second time, it is removed. The need to press the delete key twice should make it more obvious what you are doing and help avoid accidental removals of infoboxes and similar (bug 55336).
Switch from VisualEditor to the wikitext editor: A new feature lets you make a direct, one-way editing interface change, which will preserve your changes without needing to save the page and re-open it in the wikitext editor (bug 50687). It is available in a new menu in the action buttons by the Cancel button (where the "Page Settings" button used to be). Note that this new feature is not currently working in Firefox.
Categories and Languages are also now directly available in that menu. The category suggestions drop-down was appearing in the wrong place rather than below its input box, which is now fixed. An incompatibility between VisualEditor and the deployed Parsoid service that prevented editing categories and language links was fixed.
File:, Help: and Category: namespaces: VisualEditor was enabled for these namespaces the on all wikis (bug 55968), the Portal: and Viquiprojecte: namespaces on the Catalan Misplaced Pages (bug 56000), and the Portal: and Book: namespaces on the English Misplaced Pages (bug 56001).
Media item resizing: We improved how files are viewed in a few ways. First, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). While you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new, higher resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week. If you hold down the ⇧ Shift key whilst resizing an image, it will now snap to a 10 pixel grid instead of the normal free-hand sizing. The media item resize label now is centered while resizing regardless of which tool you use to resize it.
Undo and redo: A number of improvements were made to the transactions system which make undoing and redoing more reliable during real-time collaboration (bug 53224).
Save dialogue: The save page was re-written to use the same code as all other dialogs (bug 48566), and in the process fixed a number of issues. The save dialog is re-accessible if it loses focus (bug 50722), or if you review a null edit (bug 53313); its checkboxes for minor edit, watch the page, and flagged revisions options now layout much more cleanly (bug 52175), and the tab order of the buttons is now closer to what users will expect (bug 51918). There was a bug in the save dialog that caused it to crash if there was an error in loading the page from Parsoid, which is now fixed.
Links to other articles or pages sometimes sent people to invalid pages. VisualEditor now keeps track of the context in which you loaded the page, which lets us fix up links in document to point to the correct place regardless of what entry point you launched the editor from—so the content of pages loaded through /Foobar?veaction=edit and /search/?title=Foobar&veaction=edit both now have text links that work if triggered (bug 48915).
Toolbar links: A bug that caused the toolbar's menus to get shorter or even blank when scrolled down the page in Firefox is now fixed (bug 55343).
Numbered external links: VisualEditor now supports Parsoid's changed representation of numbered external links (bug 53505).
Removed empty templates: We also fixed an issue that meant that completely empty templates became impossible to interact with inside VisualEditor, as they didn't show up (bug 55810).
Mathematics formulae: If you would like to try the experimental LaTeX mathematics tool in VisualEditor, you will need to opt-in to Beta Features. This is currently available on Meta-wiki, Wikimedia Commons, and Mediawiki.org. It will be available on all other Wikimedia sites on 21 November.
Browser testing support: If you are interested in technical details, the browser tests were expanded to cover some basic cursor operations, which uncovered an issue in our testing framework that doesn't work with cursoring in Firefox; the Chrome tests continue to fail due to a bug with the welcome message for that part of the testing framework.
Load time: VisualEditor now uses content language when fetching Misplaced Pages:TemplateData information, so reducing bandwidth use, and users on multi-language or multi-script wikis now get TemplateData hinting for templates as they would expect (bug 50888).
Reuse of VisualEditor: Work on spinning out the user experience (UX) framework from VisualEditor into oojs-ui, which lets other teams at Wikimedia (like Flow) and gadget authors re-use VisualEditor UX components, is now complete and is being moved to a shared code repository.
Support for private wikis: If you maintain a private wiki at home or at work, VisualEditor now supports editing of private wikis, by forwarding the Cookie: HTTP header to Parsoid ($wgVisualEditorParsoidForwardCookies set to true) (bug 44483). (Most private wikis will also need to install Parsoid and node.js, as VisualEditor requires them.)
Looking ahead:
VisualEditor will be released to some of the smaller Wikipedias on 02 December 2013. If you are active at one or more smaller Wikipedias where VisualEditor is not yet generally available, please see the list at VisualEditor/Rollouts.
Public office hours on IRCto discuss VisualEditor with Product Manager James Forrester will be held on Monday, 2 December, at 1900 UTC and on Tuesday, 3 December, at 0100 UTC. Bring your questions. Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes.
In terms of feature improvements, one of the major infrastructure projects affects how inserting characters works, both using your computer's built-in Unicode input systems and through a planned character inserter tool for VisualEditor. The forthcoming rich copying and pasting feature was extended and greater testing is currently being done. Work continues to support the improved reference dialog to quickly add citations based on local templates.
Hi Charles01! You have created the article Ford Taunus P1 that bases on German Misplaced Pages entry. At this time, the German Misplaced Pages entry included the codenames 'P1' or 'Project 1', so the English Misplaced Pages entry is containing them now, too. In German Misplaced Pages a discussion has started if 'P1' or 'Project 1' are correct codenames, check out here, here and here.
It's very likely that these codenames are no official codenames. On 5 August 2010 a user has added the codenames 'P1' or 'Projekt 1' without citing any sources. Unfortunately a lot of websites have adopted these codenames so that they appear to be established, just do Google queries for:
"ford 12m" p1
"ford taunus" p1
"ford 12m" "projekt 1"
"ford taunus" "projekt 1"
Now do the same Google queries by excluding results after 5 August 2010 (the date the codenames have become added to German Misplaced Pages). Surprisingly you will find almost no results! The only useful result you will find is this article by motor-klassik.de of 19 February 2007 (mentioning 'P1'). But considering this is the only result, it is probably containing a mistake done by the author. German car literature also doesn't know the codenames 'P1' or 'Projekt 1'.
In conclusion I can say that these codenames have very likely become invented by a German Misplaced Pages user on 5 August 2010. Afterwards these codenames have spread on other websites because they trusted Misplaced Pages so much that they didn't check Misplaced Pages articles for accuracy. (Unfortunately this is a phenomena you can see increasingly often in Germany because Misplaced Pages has gained a very high reputation there. As you can see, not always with good reason ...)
So I would like to ask you if you could move the site Ford Taunus P1 to another page name, delete the redirect page Ford P1 and remove the codenames 'P1' and 'Project 1' out of this article and out of other articles, in which these codenames are mentioned? Regards from Germany, --217.227.69.178 (talk) 01:20, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Interesting
The Ford Taunus was not officially sold in Britain, and few made it to North America, so only a few people with (1) interest in cars and (2) knowledge of west European car market are interested in this in English wikipedia. From a Misplaced Pages viewpoint, it makes sense to follow the lead of German language wikipedia.
There are MANY cars that have different names in retrospect from the names they had at the time. The Opel Kadett B (late 1960s) was sold in North America in large numbers badged simply as The Opel. People who read English who remember the car at all are mostly in North America and will have read of the car - or known the car - simply as Opel. But it would be confusing to rename the article for the Kadett B as Opel. Many in Germany remember the Opel Rekord D as the Opel Rekord II because Opel avoided the letter D in case people expected all the cars to have diesel engines. You have Audis from the early 1960s which were known simply as Audi but retrospectively we have learned to call them Audi 75 or Audi F103. If you are older you will remember DKWs from the 1930s - some of the top selling small cars in Germany - that came with a wide range of names, and only became F1, F2, F3 etc./usw. in retrospect. I can give you many examples of similar things with British cars and French cars, but I think you are interested in Germany. You could start with Mercedes Benz where (again) works numbers are used in retrospect (and sometimes inconsistently) that were seldom heard outside the factory (and the manufacturer's suppliers, and the dealers, and those of us who spoke with them, and ... and...) when the car was being produced.
BUT it is a bigger issue than simply the name of the Ford Taunus. Cars acquire names in retrospect that differentiate themselves from earlier and later cars because in retrospect a long line of history becomes available that was not in evidence for Zeitgenossen. The designations P1, P2, P3 are NOT invented by Misplaced Pages: they are created by the manufacturer, Ford. Maybe more people find out about them from wikipedia, because people learn more about the Ford Taunus from wikipedia than they ever knew before. That's good, surely.
But back to my initial point, if I would discuss the matter in German Misplaced Pages I would be a Befürworter for the use of P1, P2, P3 usw unless someone had another idea that was clearly (1) clearer, (2) less ambiguous and (3) more widely agreed. Here I discuss the matter in Enlish wikipedia, and we should not pre-empt changes in the language where FAR more people know what a Ford Taunus is than they do in the Anglosphere (ie where we mostly speak as a mother tongue English)
Well, both captions answer the question "What is it?" which seems to me the most important thing about a caption except, perhaps, where the answer is self evident even for readers who know nothing of the subject.
(I do believe quite strongly that where you write something you should have a reader in mind, and where you write something for wikipedia the reader you have in mind should be intelligent and interested but deeply lacking in relevant background knowledge. The way I, as a reader, might approach an entry on a Japanese railway station (I have never been to Japan) or a medieval bishop.)
The earlier caption also makes a start on the more subtle question "Why has someone put this image here?" That sometimes needs answering, especially (at least in my case) where I'm not entirely sure that adding an image in the first place was a good judgement, and I want to invite others to form a view on that matter.
I suppose the earlier caption also begins to answer the question "What else does this picture tell me?" and that may or may not be important, depending on the context and the importance of the message. In this particular case, if I try as best I can to discount the extent to which it may be part of this desperately depressing mutual hate campaign involving Sam and yourself, I do not have much preference either way, though to the extent that it's a matter of style, I can see that your style and his are very different. Thank God Misplaced Pages is not all written in a single style: that way lies terminal boredom.
I have no great appetite for "Wike-rules" in these cases, and I am sure that the great Jimmy himself would tell you that rules should be applied where they improve the entry, and cheerfully ignored or defied where they do not. (I would probably attempt to be more rule-based if my German or Dutch were better and I was contributing more on German, Dutch or even French wikipedia, but among the anglophones there is a cultural tradition of trusting to one another's judgement in matters of writing style which I like, provided it doesn't lead to total anarchy.)
To the extent that I have a passionate view, I passionately wish that you and Sam would devote your obvious (his too) talents, energies, and enthusiasm to something more constructive and uplifting for the rest of us than passionately hating each other in public.
Good morning Gareth. 1. I am not a literary critic, 2. If I were a literary critic, I'm not sure I'd apply myself to criticism of wiki-photo-captions and 3. I have faith in YOUR judgement, and HIS and HIS. Also it looks fine to me and a reasonable compromise in the context of the different approaches of the previous two contributors to the caption. And they're quite good pix, too (tho I'm not sure about the copyright stuff lurking on the cobbles....but presumably it helps make a necessary message hard to miss)
And yet and yet, if I were being hyper-critical I think I would avoid "over-domesticated". Either spell it out despite making the caption longer as you do it or else don't go there. Why so? If I had read the entire entry, I'd probably see the point of the phrase, but I haven't, at least not recently, though I think in this case I can probably see the point, based on my general knowledge (as a car enthusiast, that is). And lots of people simply like to go to an entry and look quickly at the pictures while the coffee cools down a bit (which I guess is an argument for putting a bit more information in that captions. Sometimes.). Also I've traveled a bit. I can see the phrase working just fine in England or Australia, probably also in New Zealand (where I've never been) and Wales (where most of the folks I meet seem to be English). But I remember my former colleagues in Illinois - the ones who insisted on calling me "Chuck" and laughed mercilessly when being driven by me in Australia and I told them I just loved "hooting my hooter". (They were too chicken to take a turn with the driving themselves because in Australia they drive on the "wrong" side of the road.) I'm not sure how those guys would have handled the concept of "over-domesticated" though they had plenty of rich and vivid syntax of their own, some of which I find I have adopted. Then I think of German and Dutch speakers with whom I've worked, proud of their English, and you'd be ten minutes into the conversation before remembering that English is not their mother tongue. And yet, those guys might have trouble with the concept of "over-domesticated". But this is a very long para concerning what seems to me a vanishingly trivial thought.
Hmmmm. Tks. Which if you're really an old man you'll maybe recognise as being the way we used to sign off on the telex, when every character counted. How constraining it all felt ten years later. And now (from what I hear on Radio 4) message restriction is right back in vogue again. My wife even does something called texting, but I'm afraid I resist mobile telephones: I don't trust the "providers" to invoice me honestly or even comprehensibly, after a bad experience with one of them back around 1999. And if I want to telephone someone I want to do it - preferably at a time of my own choosing - sitting at a table or desk from which I know how to reach a pen. Yikes, I sound about 105 to myself. well, you started the "old man" thing. Best wishes. Charles01 (talk) 17:44, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I like the angle of the picture, too, of that MGB GT. It's a stylish little thing. I think I adhere to the school that says the big wheels and fairground bumpers that they put on in the 70s rather ruined the look of it. That Dutch guy takes very good car picture, I think, or at least he takes many of his pictures more or less the way I'd like to be able to take them. I'm afraid I spent a lot of my life sitting on the "wrong" side of the car. Six months after buying my first ever new car - a Passat (sensible car: I'd just qualified as an accountant) - in Cambridge I relocated to somewhere near Amsterdam, making some ugly discoveries about "Value Added Tax" in the process. And it was only about five years ago that we finally sold our 20 year old lhd Polo, back here in England, by which time he was on his fourth license plate (you get a new one every time you move countries or even, in the case of Germany (or Switzerland and, I suspect, back then also France) towns. Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 17:44, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
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Finally there is an article here: Opel Cam-in-head engine. I haven't finished yet but am going to sleep, I hope you have content and I know that you have at least one excellent source waiting. Cheers, now let's go fix all those links to the German entry... Mr.choppers | ✎ 06:36, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Seriously thank you. That fills a gap that has cried out to be filled for as long as I can remember (probably much longer: it's earlyish here at least for a Sunday). For what it's worth, I like what you've done here, and have no immediate thoughts of anything to add. But no doubt, in the way one does, I'll come back to it over the years and maybe think of things to "improve": maybe not. Savage change of subject: in Britain a switch from blue to red could be taken to imply a swing from the political right to the political left. I suspect you may be too thoughtful to be mindlessly either, but the change nevertheless caught my eye. Parent-taxi duty for one of the kids beckons in ten minutes. Regards. Charles01 (talk) 08:20, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Cheers, I have observed you tangentially wrestling with the absence of this article over the years so I figured you'd like to know. As for blue/red, in Sweden and most of the world red means left, but here in the US they have for some reason decided on the opposite. Go figure. I have always been pretty far on the left (inasmuch as one can be so easily categorized, I hope I have more depth than that) but in this case it simply symbolizes my accentuating my Scanian over my Swedish heritage. Cheers, Mr.choppers | ✎ 19:15, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
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Well, I like it. People all see things in different ways - it's less about how the light hits your retina and more about what the brain does with the resulting image, I am told, than we intuitively understand. So if you try for a consensus on almost anything involving almost any pictures .... probably not worth trying too hard. Be that as it may, for me, some of the pictures wiki-available are too fussy or for other reasons unsuitable for being put on display in a very small "thumbnail" format. The scale of the small picture (and even smaller, I guess, on a telephone screen) is simply too different from what the photographer saw before he even got out his camera, or subsequently through his camera lens (or on his camera screen - though here maybe less so). BUT - and again this a is a personal view but not necessarily a general one - the pictures that look best when info box size are probably also the ones that look best when gallery-thumbnail size. If, however, a reader is then moved to click on the image and blow it up to full screen resolution, some of the ones which looked fantastic when they were info-box size can begin to look a tad blurry.
So you won't get any "rules for all times" from me, but where you use the necessary levels of judgement in what you select and what you do with it - and I think you generally do, as do many of us - I think it a good thing. Which - roughly speaking - goes for all (well, most of) our contributions to wikipedia, be it pictures, text or datatables. Each time one finds a good source (and often, alas, even when one doesn't) one finds huge wads of missing information that need to be added cogently, succinctly, selectively, clearly ... all the usual stuff. Not sure why pictures of cars should be different from anything else in this respect. Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 06:48, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013
Did you know?
VisualEditor's toolbar has a new drop-down menu that contains all character formatting: bold, italics, subscript, superscript, strikethrough, computer code, underline, and the ability to remove all formatting from text.
For more information about how to use VisualEditor, read the user guide.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.
There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:
Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved. This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation. Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings). If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control+⇧ Shift+V or ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V (Mac).
Auto-numbered external links like can now be edited just like any other link. However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here. The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified. If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters. Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally. To do so, append ?veaction=edit to the end of the page name. For example, change https://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Random to https://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Random?veaction=edit to open a random page in VisualEditor. This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.
Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.
I don't disagree with your edit, but you might like to add your thoughts to the article talk page discussion, where the 1956 date and other possible death dates have been considered before. Ghmyrtle (talk) 18:46, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Noted. Thanks. As you presumably inferred, I had not spotted the deliberations on the talk page.
What I thought when I entered the year of death was that it was the right combination of names and dates and so, on the overwhelming balance of possibilities, the "right" EBH. I think I still think that. Evelyn is quite an unusual name in the twentieth century, and if you go back as far as the 1860s it's a very unusual name indeed, especially when given in conjunction with a middle name. I suppose if someone wanted to spend the time and money to order a death certificate, that might (though also it might not) move >98.5% confidence to >99.5% confidence. Though in my rather jaded experience/opinion >99% confidence is as good as it's going to get >99% of the time..... And of course in the wikipedia context you might find that a death certificate is construed as a primary source. Though since any death certificate issued today about a death reported (either verbally and/or else on a separate less formal document) would be a copy of a copy of a copy I guess one could have a (rather tiresome) argument either way on that.
If I find - or think of - anything relevant to contribute on the EBH talk page I will do so. But you appear to have given the matter a lot of thought, and if at present you do not share my judgement of the matter please do feel free to substitute something else.
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To add templates, go to the "Insert" menu and choose the "Transclusion" (puzzle piece) item. Enter the name of the template and click "Add template". If TemplateData exists for the template, then a list of possible parameters will appear. If not, you can add parameters yourself by typing the parameter name under "Add parameter". For unnamed parameters, use numbers ("1" for the first unnamed parameter).
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Misplaced Pages. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.
As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.
The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog – __NOTOC__ and __FORCETOC__ as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and __NOEDITSECTION__ as a checkbox (bug 57166).
The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.
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1927. By October 1928, just twelve months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929|Wall Street Crash]] crystallized a savage downturn for the western economies, three of the four cars offered for 1929
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at Reims with appearances at other aviation meetings in ], ], ] (making the first airplane flight in both ] and ]. Up to this time he had had
[[
* Elliot, B.A. ''Blériot: Herald of an Age''. Stroud< UK: Tempus, 2000. ISBN 0-7524-1739-8.
you were so kind to copy-edit section on self-defense in the Czech Republic way back in 2011. I gave the article quite a large overhaul and nominated it for GA review recently.
I would like to kindly ask you whether you could devote some of your time - only if the topic interests you, of course - just to correct the most horrifying mistakes I made in it. I think that a complete C-E is unnecessary, however I am sure I have left there some stupid Czenglish that I am unable to identify. Thank you very much in advance! Cimmerian praetor (talk) 22:49, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I saw that you had been working on this. I've not gone back and studied or modified it. But I might. (On a more general note, it was fun watching your Enblish improve - or at least become more conventional - the last time. I think the "most horrifying" mistakes are unlikely to be so very horrifying, these days.) Best wishes. Charles01 (talk) 06:56, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
And thanks are due to you. A did my best to track all your past changes and take note. Not literally into a notepad, but as far as my mind could cope with :), so, big thanks there! Cimmerian praetor (talk) 21:36, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi Charles,
I have just edited Drug_liberalization#Czech_Republic. It is nothing long, but it seems to me that my technical legal language may be a bit cumbersome. In case you are interested in knowing what you may legally shoot up your veins when on trip to Prague, could you please C-E it too? :) Thanks, Cimmerian praetor (talk) 22:30, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Well, I might. Thanks for the notification. I jumped in originally on this one without sufficient planning ahead and almost certainly without sufficient easy access to suitable sources. I think - as far as I remember - there were two different time periods involved, and I was trying to provide - basically by translating from German wiki - an entry on one time period, where actually my wiki-source - had a useful introductory bit about the time period with which it was not - from its title - primarily concerned. If I sound confused, there is a very good reason for that. Anyhow, I think I had to go and do something else and sort of gave up, which was a bit feeble. But never say never. Like I wrote, I may find an irresistable urge to go back and have another go at it. Meantime, splitting it as you have makes much sense. Thank you. And if you yourself were be tempted to go in and do more good work on the entry before I (might) do .... I certainly shall not weep. Success Charles01 (talk) 06:56, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
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Yes, it does give a bit of structure to a period in history about which I'm pretty hazy - and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Sure, you will define what really matters by deciding what to include. And what to exclude. You are forced to apply massive simplification. The "Black Death" arrived in 1348 in England, though it was almost certainly overall killing more people in 1349 and 1350. Precisely when - or even whether - the village lost its population varied by village. Some places escaped it completely. No one really knows the overall death toll, though from extrapolation from surviving burial/baptismal records and other clever clever things "population approximately halved over approximately five years" seems to be a sort of consensus for this island. And it kept coming back. But yes, when I was at school, they told me 1348 was the year.....
Not quite sure what reaction you expected from me, but that's my initial one. Also it makes the wiki article on the Black Prince more inviting than it would be if there was nothing there except a long splurge of text broken up (or not) with sub-headings as a necessary aid to digestion.
The Black Prince is like Jack Kennedy in not having lived long enough to have become more than a "might have been..." which is great for a heroic role in history. Maybe the guy himself might have preferred to have lived a little longer, or maybe he would just have assumed whatever will be will be.
And so it was an unfortunate choice of name for their new car when Invicta recommenced production in 1946. Reminds me they used to say VD and a certain Eastern European brand of car were both easy to get and difficult to get rid of. Products seem to have lives like animals or humans. As you suggest Invicta's new Black Prince eventually caught a kind of Black Death.
Thank you for your kind words.
However I am here today to address you on another subject altogether, Tickford and Cabriolets. If you look along the coach line below the back of the car's hood you will see a small chromed cap over a socket. Remove the cap, insert a small version of a starting handle and your car's roof winds down or up. This is Salmons & Son's Tickford patent and I think it dates back to before real coachmen to expensive horse-drawn conveyances were dispensed with. The strong external bars on the sides of the roof that operate a little like scissors tell you this is a cabriolet. They provide vital lateral location as well as support during opening and closing for the two heavy lumps of wood that surround the window which drops into the door. I think I have now used all the time and all your patience I could allocate to this matter today and we can move on to other important concerns. Any questions?
I just liked the appearance of the timeline and wish it was something that could be used for cars and things. Wednesday will be over soon, Eddaido (talk) 08:30, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
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> The other was ] in anticipation for the 1929 ] (which that year was held at the Le Mans circuit on 30th June: however it was not ready in time for
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Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some small changes to the user interface, such as moving the reference item to the top of the Insert menu, as well as some minor features and fixing bugs, especially for rich copying and pasting of references.
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Spring 1934 with the addition of the "Conduite Intérieure Aérodynamique: 5 places" ''23,100 francs)'', the price of which suggested that it was intended for production in relatively large volumes.<
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I'm sure I will have done worse than this. Would you be able to translate? Interesting about the rude tone in Edison's factory. I see you have been very busy. I have been adding a couple of lines about Schuckertwerke to Siemens Bros - English Electric - Coventry Ordnance Works - Mulliners Birmingham. They may have found a certain Malaysian airliner but in bits which is bad. Have a nice Thursday, Eddaido (talk) 05:16, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
It's actually staggering just how good google translate has become in so short a time, even if he still only actually gets the simpler stuff right. Anyhow, I've done a quick and dirty improvement of the first para. Feel free to improve my improvements. I'll probably come back to the rest of it at some stage.
I have been setting up some entries on French automakers from way back when. There are far more French automakers with their own entries in German wiki than in French wiki, thanks to a single dedicated contributor with a trio of good (and I think very large) books. I am choosing ones that I can extend a bit from francophone sources of my own.
Yes, it does begin to sound as if what they're finding a long way to the west of Perth may indeed be an answer of sorts, if not necessarily the one that one would have hoped for. And no doubt, now the media village is so thoroughly engaged, questions and speculation and the sheer mystery of the thing will endure a great deal longer than .... well, than us. Eat your heart out, Marie-Celeste.
I've finished a first pass, and I'm pretty sure it's a whole lot better than it was, but then as Mandy Rice-Davies famously observed.... Anyhow, it still looks somewhat unpolished. If you should feel the urge, please don't hold back on my account.... Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 17:42, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—March 2014
Did you know?Click this image to see the details.
The template dialog has been simplified to make it faster and easier to add parameter data. Read the user guide for more information.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on changes to the template and image dialogs.
The biggest change in the last few weeks was the redesign of the template dialog. The template dialog now opens in a simplified mode that lists parameters and their descriptions. (The complex multi-item transclusion mode can be reached by clicking on "Show options" from inside the simplified template dialog.) Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. With today's update, searching for template parameters will become case-insensitive, and required template parameters will display an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. In addition to making it quicker and easier to see everything when you edit typical templates, this work was necessary to prepare for the forthcoming simplified citation dialog. The main priority in the coming weeks is building this new citation dialog, with the ultimate goal of providing autofill features for ISBNs, URLs, DOIs and other quick-fills. This will add a new button on the toolbar, with the citation templates available picked by each wiki's community. Concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. Please share your ideas about making referencing quick and easy with the designers.
The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. Pages that exist, but are not indexed by the search engine, are treated like non-existent pages (Template:Bug).
Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from the paragraph you are editing.
The page options menu (three bars, next to the Cancel button) has expanded. You can create and edit redirect pages, set page options like __STATICREDIRECT__, __INDEX__ and __NEWEDITSECTION__, and more. New keyboard shortcuts are listed there, and include undoing the last action, clearing formatting, and showing the shortcut help window. If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged.
It is easier to edit images. There are more options and they are explained better. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. You can now set image sizes to the default, if another size was previously specified. Full support for upright sizing systems, which more readily adapt image sizes to the reader's screen size, is planned.
VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. These "slugs" are now smaller than normal blank lines, and are animated to be different from actual blank lines.
You can use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘ Command+⌥ Option+Sshortcuts to open the save window, and you can preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window.
After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed to the Interlingual Occidental Misplaced Pages, the Portuguese Wikibooks, and the French Wikiversity.
Any community can ask for custom icons for their language in the character formatting menu (bold, italic, etc.) by making a request on Bugzilla or by contacting Product Manager James Forrester.
The developers apologize for a regression bug with the deployment on 6 March 2014, which caused the incorrect removal of |upright size definitions on a handful of pages on the English Misplaced Pages, among others. The root cause was fixed, and the broken pages were fixed soon after.
Looking ahead: Several template dialogs will become more compact. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. You will be able to see the Table of Contents change live as you edit the page, rather than it being hidden. In-line language setting (dir="rtl") may be offered to a few Wikipedias soon.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Île Seguin, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Britain (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
You can use VisualEditor to make redirects. First, remove any unwanted content from the page. Then go to the "Page options" menu (next to "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽") and choose the "Page settings" item. Click the box to "Redirect this page to". In the box, type in the name of the page that you want to redirect this page to.
You can also set or remove categories for the redirect in the "Page options" menu. Read the user guide for more information.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on performance improvements, image settings, and preparation for a simplified citation template tool in its own menu.
In an oft-requested improvement, VisualEditor now displays red links (links to non-existent pages) in the proper color. Links to sister projects and external URLs are still the same blue as local links.
You can now open templates by double-clicking them or by selecting them and pressing Return. This also works for references, images, galleries, mathematical equations, and other "nodes".
VisualEditor has been disabled for pages that were created as translations of other pages using the Translate extension (common at Meta and MediaWiki.org). If a page has been marked for translation, you will see a warning if you try to edit it using VisualEditor.
When you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor, the full protection notice and most recent log entry are displayed. Blocked users see the standard message for blocked users.
The developers fixed a bug that caused links on sub-pages to point to the wrong location.
The size-changing controls in the advanced settings section of the media or image dialog were simplified further. VisualEditor's media dialog supports more image display styles, like borderless images.
If there is not enough space on your screen to display all of the tabs (for instance, if your browser window is too narrow), the second edit tab will now fold into the drop-down menu (where the "Move" item is currently housed). On the English Misplaced Pages, this moves the "Edit beta" tab into the menu; on most projects, it moves the "Edit source" tab. This is only enabled in the default Vector skin, not for Monobook users. See this image for an example showing the "Edit source" and "View history" tabs after they moved into the drop-down menu.
After community requests, VisualEditor has been deployed as an opt-in feature at Meta and on the French Wikinews.
The drop-down menu is on the right, next to the search box.
Looking ahead: A new, locally controlled menu of citation templates will put citations immediately in front of users. You will soon be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) is being developed. In-line language setting (dir="rtl") will be offered as a Beta Feature soon. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
Hi Charles01. I have been investigating Humbers and it crossed my mind that it would be useful (to me) to have a nice spreadsheet like on here on this Humber page where at present it says Main models. If you agree, would the columns as used at Austin be appropriate or should there be amendments? yrs etc., Eddaido (talk) 11:54, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
It would be a good thing to do, I think. Certainly when I have attempted this sort of thing in the past (1) sometimes I have given up before daring to go public but (2) yes, copying and then adapting something that someone else has done for another similar job is the way to go. The Austin table on which you landed looks ok. I don't know if there is a better one anywhere, but presumably you already looked. It MIGHT be possible to try and combine the best features of more than one such table.
My only other thought - more time consuming and liable to throw up other questions if you do it, is that a time-line style chart might - or might not - be useful as well or instead. Here are a couple with which I have tampered (though not very recently: memory at a detailed level may be less than total regarding what went wrong along the way...). The Peugeot one in particular highlights how fiddly it gets with too many cars, especially where for some of the early ones only two or three cars ever got built.
Anyhow, reflection tempts me to think that maybe I am dragging you over to a discussion where you have no need (and probably should have no wish) to tread. Better to stick with the simpler table format for the early Humbers, maybe, and worry about any time line exercise (if at all) as a subsequent exercise.
Our Toyota sounds as though it is about to need a fourth turbo in just over 140,000 miles. If ever you were tempted to buy a Toyota.... bad idea.
I like those timeline charts when in full flower with links to articles for each car. All I can expect to achieve for Humbler is a list of the various models they made linked to articles (where they've been written) or to images (where they are are held in Wikimedia). Of course that's just the Humblers, the Super Snips are largely covered aren't they? I fixed on that Austin table because I dreamt it up - not that I think its unique - and now I'm inclined to think the column for body (not my idea anyway) is superfluous which leaves space for diff info or a better way of listing body-types.
About that fourth inadequate turbo it is not long since it was inserted in your machine, is it. I'd want to find out what was going wrong in the opinion of whoever installed it. Do you have a Consumer tv programme? Would that tell you if you were just one of many many unhappy owners of similar vehicles? The other thing I might do is ask Stepho the Toyota expert to suggest ways to get Toyota's attention to the situation in a useful-to-you way. Thanks for your Humber charting thoughts. Eddaido (talk) 05:20, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Rochet Schneider Berliet
I need your assistance, I found this old photo of a Rochet-Schneider car RS 20HP When I checked the stocks of images of this vehicle in Wikimedia I found a lot of Berliet trucks among them. Do you know if this is an accident or are the trucks made by the same people? Should I upload the image? The tyres look stupidly modern to me as if the passengers wanted some minimum level of comfort. Best wishes, Eddaido (talk) 13:50, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Rochet-Schneider and Berliet were two prominent automobile producers in the Lyon area. Lyon was a second automobile industry hub - along much the same lines as Paris - but the Lyon hub was of course much smaller. And there were lots of automobile makers in the area through the 1920s which by the mid-1930s had disappeared. Rochet-Schneider was among the disappeared. Berliet, of course, struggled through the 1930s, albeit with some particularly bitter labour disputes and lock-outs around 1935. By the time war broke out Berliet had given up on cars and were only making trucks. After the war there was that period of recrimination and Marius Berliet was accused of collaboration, but as far as I remember he was not deprived of his factory like Louis Renault.
Anyway, your direct question has a very direct answer. Rochet-Schneider was indeed acquired by Berliet.
The slightly tougher question is when. I can tell you that they had their own stand at the Paris Motor Show in October 1931. There was no Rochet-Schnieder stand at the Paris motor show in October 1933. Logic suggests that this might have been when Berliet acquired the business .... somehow. In fact wikipedia says the acquisition of Rochaet-Schnieder by Berliet only took place in the early 1950s. The date comes from Nick Georgano's admirable compendium of (almost) everything you ever wanted to know. Georgano writes that Rochet-Schneider continued to make commercial vehicles after they gave up on passenger cars, and were acquired by Berliet only in 1951. It would be nice to have some corroboration, but one source is very much better than none.
Now you mention it, the tyres on that well maintained (well rebuilt?) R-S in that picture do look more 1950s than 1920s, but even if that is the case, I'm not sure if, on its own, that's a reason not to value the image. Total authenticity can be pretty elusive. Success Charles01 (talk) 15:23, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
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The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates. If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.
Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.
The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.
There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction. This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Language" tool in the "Insert" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this: <span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "Insert" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field. Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
TemplateData has been expanded: You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones. "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work. There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names. The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency. The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie. As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
In the "Images and media" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData. You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box. If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
There have been multiple small changes to the appearance: External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links. The styling of the "Style text" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin. VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images. Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Misplaced Pages language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Misplaced Pages sites.
Looking ahead: The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard. The "Keyboard shortcuts" link will be moved out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
Coldest May day here since 1976, almost 0 centigrade so changed viewing material, see common or garden smaller person. I cannot decide whether I understand every word he says or absolutely none of them. But its all good, have a look (first one only). Eddaido (talk) 07:14, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Hmmmm. So it is possible to progress without being pushed and it is possible to turn a corner. But it is not possible to do both at the same time. Still, the enthusiasm is engaging. Sorry it's cold. Not exactly warm here, but at least I don't think the weather in England is breaking any records which is good. Slightly depressing election results here, now that the generation of political leaders determined to avoid a rerun of World War II have fallen off their perches to be replaced by a lot of third rate dodgy power cravers, and we are afforded the depressing vision of post democratic western Europe fragmenting into a patchwork of squabbling mini states driven by the old fashioned tribal instincts that already turned everything horrible sour during the first half of the twentieth century. A recipe for peace and prosperity it ain't. NZ sounds almost civilised by comparison, but the word they mostly use here for NZ is "dull". I think for me dull could be rather good, but this is not a universal view. Happy days. Charles01 (talk) 18:50, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Ah, so that's what he was telling me. I watched the Breakfast TV news this morning and there was no mention of those election results. (I know about Nigel, I often watch a BBC tv programme called Dateline London which lets me believe I know some of the issues over that way.) That is interesting in itself, the non-reporting. Not so long ago the main shopping street in this city was only active five days a week and in office hours (that's the hours the shops were open). Now it throbs for almost 24 continuous hours seven days a week filled with Chinese. Our biggest export customer once Britain is now China, for milk products. We are under their sway already as they switch on and off their pipeline from here (more threat than action) sucking the stuff up. Chain-rattling - the one that ties us to them. We aren't going under pig manure, here its cow manure polluting all the streams. If there wasn't an EU . . . Civilised? almost? you're probably right. Its changing too of course. Dull? yeah and I'm not feeling too bright myself (joke!) Must now go see reports on what happened in your election and I only recently suggested you yourself should stand. Best wishes etc Eddaido (talk) 00:53, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
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The character formatting menu, or "Style text" menu lets you set bold, italic, and other text styles. "Clear formatting" removes all text styles and removes links to other pages.
Do you think that clear formatting should remove links? Are there changes you would like to see for this menu? Share your opinion at MediaWiki.org.
The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor.
The VisualEditor team is mostly working to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
They have moved the "Keyboard shortcuts" link out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Within dialog boxes, buttons are now more accessible (via the Tab key) from the keyboard.
You can now see the target of the link when you click on it, without having to open the inspector.
The team also expanded TemplateData: You can now add a parameter type "date" for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format, and "boolean" for values which are true or false. Also, templates that redirect to other templates (like {{citeweb}} → {{cite web}}) now get the TemplateData of their target (bug 50964). You can test TemplateData by editing mw:Template:Sandbox/doc.
Category: and File: pages now display their contents correctly after saving an edit (bug 65349, bug 64239)
They have also improved reference editing: You should no longer be able to add empty citations with VisualEditor (bug 64715), as with references. When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to replace it with another reference instead.
It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor. Remember that inline images cannot display captions, so existing captions get removed. Many other bugs related to images were also fixed.
You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the "Page options" menu, rounding out the full set of page options currently planned.
The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler.
Looking ahead
The VisualEditor team has posted a draft of their goals for the next fiscal year. You can read them and suggest changes on MediaWiki.org.
The team posts details about planned work on VisualEditor's roadmap. You will soon be able to drag-and-drop text as well as images. If you drag an image to a new place, it won't let you place it in the middle of a paragraph. All dialog boxes and windows will be simplified based on user testing and feedback. The VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for citations. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments and adding rows and columns to tables.
Supporting your wiki
Please read VisualEditor/Citation tool for information on configuring the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". This menu will not appear unless it has been configured on your wiki.
If you speak a language other than English, we need your help with translating the user guide. The guide is out of date or incomplete for many languages, and what's on your wiki may not be the most recent translation. Please contact me if you need help getting started with translation work on MediaWiki.org.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Misplaced Pages projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 21:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas and Pacific Islands) or on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 9:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East, Asia).
Hi Charles, I agree "friends' association" is not ideal as a translation of Förderverein - I took it from dict.cc - but even my Langenscheidt Muret-Sanders can't do any better than "society for the promotion of..." --Bermicourt (talk) 06:39, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Well, maybe one of us (or someone else, even?) will wake up one morning with a better translation. I don't think it will be me, though. Sorry to jump all over the Neustadt entry while you're still in the middle of upgrading it. The upgrade is badly overdue. (I used, in another life, to live not too far away so take an interest. My more usual wiki-weakness involves cars.)
Hi Charles! Was editing a bit and realized that there is a great scarcity of pictures of Ford Escort vans - I made a Category but haven't found many pictures that fit in it. Do you perhaps have any good shots, I am particularly looking for Mk II and Mk III Escort Vans. Cheers, Mr.choppers | ✎ 00:24, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
I don't have any to hand. But I'll keep an eye open. This is good (UK) Ford country, but when I've gone to old timer shows I've tended to jump on Anglia vans and overlook any (post 1968) Escort ones. I'll readjust my sensitivities for future reference, though. I guess Mk IIs and maybe Mk IIIs are plenty old enough to count as "classics" these days. It used to be >25 years old in Germany when you could register your car as an old timer and get certain tax privileges in return for certain restrictions, though I think it may have flipped up to >30 years old at some stage since then. I don't think they're so systematic in the UK. We're not so keen on rules here ... especially ones that do no obvious damage and seem to make sense.
For some years there was quite a good picture of an Escort van on the Escort entry, but it got removed. (No, it wasn't one of mine, but it was still fairly good....) I'll see if it is still to be found in Commons somewhere. If someone is going to built on (or set up as a separate entry ... whatever it is you have in mind) maybe it should be quietly returned to ... whereever. I see it's turned up in UK wiki on the Ford Union entry. Which just demonstrates that you never know what you're about to learn when you start clicking around. But now I look at the picture, I think it is probably several "marks" too modern to count as a direct answer to your request.
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Is there none! Look at this—silver paint all over the teeth, rotted out rear sub-frame (aka hip replacement needed) and Look at the licence plate—WUS. People can be so very cruel. 'bye Eddaido (talk) 11:20, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I have conversations like this with my son about Volkswagen Type 2s on "lowered" suspension. (He's too young to share my attachment to Morris Minors.) Regards Charles01 (talk) 12:00, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
July 2014
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The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.
The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.
Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
All references and footnotes (<ref> tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu.
When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.
Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.
Feedback opportunities
The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30.
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).
Good afternoon Charles01. Pleased with my pictures of some Dolomites I decided to renovate the article about them. I've added a section about a straight eight displayed at theMotor Show and then another larger bit of text about a road test by The Times staff. Then I put the existing text in what seemed to me a more sensible order. Because I see you made a big contribution at an early stage I thought you might like to take a look. I'm planning to add an engine infobox about the 1767cc engine. There needs to be some mention of the source of the name (Coupe des Alpes I think, or a predecessor and Cortina d'Ampezzo of the 1920s but I am a bit fuzzy about it) I gather it might be a wet day where you are or are you away, its holiday season isn't it? Best regards, Eddaido (talk) 11:02, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
It all seems to be melding together quite well. I think Malcolm A did quite a lot on this entry and I certainly added stuff when I came across an enthusiastic piece in an old copy of Autocar. Anyhow, it all seems to cohere so that it is not very obvious who added which bits, which is good. The other bits you plan to add are beyond my immediately accessible knowledge, but if you have dug out the sources it sounds as if there is more interesting stuff to add. There is someone (maybe several someones) on German wiki who follows the Triumph pages quit carefully in English wiki, so that if you come back in twelve months it is quite possible you will find the added pictures and added text hijacked into German which is always pleasing.
Yes, it rained today. Overall I'm told it's been a good summer. We didn't get much winter so the wasps are likely to be bad these next few weeks. And the mice are turning up in the traps in the attic which may mean they know - which I did not - that Autumn will be early this year. Usually they stay in the fields till September: but the farmers have harvested quite a lot of the wheat ahead of the latest batch of thunder storms. We're not exactly away, but we did drive over to the Netherlands to see my mother in law a couple of days ago. I need a few days to recover from the early start these days when we do that sort of thing.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Jürg Reinhart, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Croatian. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
If you created the article, please don't be offended. Instead, consider improving the article. For help on inserting references, see Referencing for beginners, or ask at the help desk. Once you have provided at least one reliable source, you may remove the {{prod blp}} tag. Please do not remove the tag unless the article is sourced. If you cannot provide such a source within seven days, the article may be deleted, but you can request that it be undeleted when you are ready to add one. Osarius - Want a chat?15:21, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
Re: Deletion proposal
Consider creating the article on your user page first, or using the {{newpage}} template. That would prevent your draft article from being CSD/PROD tagged whilst "only 10 minutes old" (Please note that I do not care how old an article is - if it doesn't fit the criteria without the {{newpage}} tag, it gets CSD/PROD tagged. If you don't like it, I refer back to the first sentence of this message). I refer you to this very helpful page. Osarius - Want a chat?15:41, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for September 7
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
I wanted to let you know that I just tagged Hugo Dittberner for deletion, because the article doesn't clearly say why the subject is important enough to be included in an encyclopedia.
If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion, but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Gerhard Gepp, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Gent. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Ach, so it WAS me. Well I certainly would not have thrown the magazine out (and it seems vanishingly unlikely that I simply found it online). I don't know where it is, however. Time to start thinking, I guess! Regards Charles01 (talk) 16:29, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
I have just made this new list article. Please would you tell me about them or fix all the things I have done wrong. Thanking you in advance etc, Eddaido (talk) 21:32, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
Looks good to me. The numbers (and the rest) in those tables need a lot of proof reading, but nothing jumped out and triggered my incredulity. Success. Charles01 (talk) 06:32, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, the numbers and the rest are probably accurate because it was an automatic upload from Excel which spreadsheet had been checked thoroughly but . . . there's many a slip twixt cup and lip — or so I've heard. Thanks, Eddaido (talk) 06:55, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014
Did you know?
TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.
With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org.
There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs 69856 and 69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that caused replaced some categories with a link to the system message, MediaWiki:Badtitletext (bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.
Increased support for devices and browsers
Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.
Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (bug 66697, bug 68828, bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Misplaced Pages from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.
TemplateData editor
A tool for editing TemplateData will be deployed to more Wikipedias soon. Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
Other changes
Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.
VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect or mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these in types of links can be created.
Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (bug 60358).
Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir attribute but no lang set (bug 69955).
The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design at Mediawiki.org.
In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.
Supporting your wiki
At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community has been posted here. Thank you all for your work.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Misplaced Pages projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please join the office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at 18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC on IRC.
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Seat Malaga:- Also, what do you think of this version? I looked at the previous one (that I'd done years ago but not uploaded) and realised that the "grey" point chosen had left the greys looking bluish. This one has more neutral greys/blacks, but maybe it's too warm now? Feel free to revert to the previous version if you like.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Container transport vehicles.
An article that you have been involved in editing, Messerschmitt KR200, has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Sincerely, SamBlob (talk) 23:25, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Borgward may have broken the syntax by modifying 7 ""s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.
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Quick tip: Need to wikilink a word in VisualEditor? Select the word and type Control+k or ⌘ Command+k to enter VisualEditor's link tool without taking your hands off the keyboard. See Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Keyboard shortcuts for more time-saving keyboard shortcuts.
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Cant rail
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FYI – Pointer to discussion that may be relevant to you.
