Talk:Flare

Shift this elsewhere?

Hmmm. I can think of at least two potential articles that might take precedence for this article title - signalling flares (the kind you use when your boat's about to sink), and those appalling 70's fashion items. Shift this to "Flare Corporation", perhaps? --Robert Merkel 22:14, 4 February 2002

I just added as many different meanings as I could think of in one sitting. I'm not sure if any of them is large enough to warrant splitting this article up just yet, but if anyone adds to them perhaps the parent directory can be made into a linklist. :) Bryan Derksen 15:43, 25 February 2002

Removed military POV

I have removed the military POV of this article, maybe that will remove some objections. The Hokkaido Crow 17:33, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Merging distress rockets into flares

I saw this new stub and i was pretty sure that distress rockets were the same as flares. Also the story about the titanic seems not correct. Thanks Leah (talk) 17:19, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

distress rockets are not same as flares, to that's a no to the merge--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 00:19, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Distress rockets are a subset of flares, and this article doesn't adequately cover them. However the real problem with Distress rockets is that it is vague, unsourced and in some cases simply wrong (for example, the story about the Titanic). I'd suggest we write a section on this page regarding distress rockets (essentially, flares capable of being fired into the air), then redirect, rather than merge, the other page. Euryalus (talk) 04:53, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Duplication

Why have military use included when there is a separate article on countermeasure flares? --THE FOUNDERS INTENT ^TALK 12:28, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

History of flares in football games?

Do somebody know when the supporters started to use flares to build up the atmosphere? I think the ultras in Italy was first but when did they start? -- Lindberg47 (talk) 11:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Maritime distress signal

The flare kit I bought included pistol with a white flare for practice and five red flares, and two hand-held red flares for use when rescuers are closing in. Instructions for disposal of out-of-date flares included firing the flares horizontal across water under circumstances that precluded mistaking the firing as a distress signal (vertical firing of red flare). How much detail is too much for the article? Naaman Brown (talk) 14:04, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

RfC: Is this article the primary topic of "flare"?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Hi. Two recent edits in flare disambiguation page have lead me to file this RfC. Two editors (OnBeyondZebrax and 98.229.36.30) think this article is the primary topic of "flare", meaning that when a person searches "flare" in Wikipedia, most of the time he or she is looking for this article.

Please note that one of the results of this discussion could be renaming this article to "Flare" and renaming "Flare" to "Flare (disambiguation)". Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 07:17, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Survey

• Support changing flare (pyrotechnic) to primary article: As per discussion below. Samwalton9 (talk) 16:17, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support per discussion below. Nothing new to add. Arathald (talk) 19:29, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support per above: (Moved here from Threaded discussion) Because it is the clear and logical parent article of the other, with proper summary style + hatnoting, I would agree that this is the primary one.Morgan Riley (talk) 17:11, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
• Hmmm... I am sceptical about the change being worth while, but I certainly don't think it is worth a squabble. In case it is not already the intention though, I should want hatnotes in the major articles at least,linking to "Flare (disambiguation)". Otherwise no big deal. JonRichfield (talk) 06:30, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. In a brief unscientific survey of article-space wikilinks to the disambiguation page, a minority of the links (3 out of 13) appeared to be related to pyrotechnics; other prominent meanings included lens flare and countermeasures. I think making flare (and plurals, etc) link to the pyrotechnic article would lead to too high a rate of erroneous links, less easily detectable and less quickly fixed because they wouldn't be to a dab. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:19, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Having the dab page as main is the most neutral and informative thing -other meanings are not so secondary. --Cyclopia^talk 07:31, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support Although I was initially not a proponent of the move, I now think it makes sense to make flare (pyrotechnic) the primary topic. As Samwalton9 showed, this article far outmatches all others in term of the reach. Also my own findings in response to David Eppstein shows that the move would repair some of the inbound links. As for Cyclopia's objection, well, I know it is not true: I work in the computing area and have never seen anyone mistaking Android (operating system) with Android. Apart from that, it is never a good idea to oppose a Wikipedia guideline such as WP:DAB because of our own pet peeves. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 20:52, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support it seems to me that both intuitively and, bearing in mind the below discussion, statistically, a pyrotechnic flare is the primary meaning of the word "flare". Quantum Burrito (talk) 21:47, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

Some statistics to help:

• This month Flare (pyrotechnic) has received ~2600 views, Flare has received ~4000 views.
• Flare (countermeasure) received 2,000 views,
• Flare (comics), flare (aviation), flare (ship), flare (magazine), flare (science fiction novel), flare-up, flare (acrobatic move) and flare (Techno-Cultural Fest) received less than a few hundred views each.

It would seem to me that almost as many people are looking for flare (countermeasure) as flare (pyrotechnic), on which basis alone I would be inclined to think that pyrotechnic should not be the primary topic. Samwalton9 (talk) 13:37, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I checked the same articles over a period of 90 days instead of 30 and I see Flare (pyrotechnic) has received 24606 views while flare (countermeasure) has received 19209 views. So, if another article had received this much coverage instead of flare (countermeasure), I'd have conceded the discussion to you. But flare (pyrotechnics) is a parent article of flare (countermeasure); the former covers the latter through summary style and even links to it. So

So, given that, I think Flare (pyrotechnic) should definitely be the primary topic.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 15:40, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

So it does. Having read the articles properly, I would agree that pyrotechnic is the parent article and should therefore be primary. Samwalton9 (talk) 16:13, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Response to David Eppstein: Hi. You oppose because there are backlinks? By chance, did you know that we can actually fix the backlinks? And it is easy to do that too: There are only 8 pages with incoming links to flare, all from the article namespace, that need fixing. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 19:27, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's easy to fix the ones that are there now, but saying that the existence of the unfixed ones that are there now is my reason for opposition is a distortion of what I intended. I oppose it because there *will be* more links added to flare for the same reason that there are links there now, because it seems likely (from the ones that are there now) that many of these links will be about other meanings, and that (unlike now) if we make the pyrotechnic meaning primary they will be harder to detect and fix. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:53, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. There will be more incoming link, that's right. That is the very philosophy behind the concept of primary topic, exactly the reason I proposed this RfC and exactly why it supporters are supporting it: There will be more incoming links, less DPL bot notices and less work for Dab Solver; and that's good. But where I am lost is: Why do you think there is something wrong with it all? Perhaps you should double check the proposition and then try to paraphrase yourself? Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 06:48, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Because many of those incoming links will not be about pyrotechnics..They will be links to the wrong article. And as they won't be links to a dab, dab solver won't fix them. Why is this so hard to understand? —David Eppstein (talk) 15:32, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. People do not knowingly link to dab pages in the middle of the prose; they do so in hatnotes and sometimes "See also" sections, but not in the middle of the prose. In fact, if you check Special:What Links Here report, you see that the opposite occurs: People mean to link to the primary topic but inadvertently end up linking to a dab page. The margin of error is far lower in hatnote since we have three bots attending to that area. (One of them replaces direct links with redirects ending with "(disambiguation)".)

Overall, you needn't worry. What you fear never happens. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 19:40, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

You are still misunderstanding. People don't *knowingly* link to dab pages instead of the appropriate article, true. The kind of edits I'm concerned about are when people link flare *carelessly* rather than knowingly, thinking without checking that it will be a link to the article they want, when in fact it goes to an article with the same name on a different subject. Having a dab page as the target of that link is helpful, as it calls the error to the attention of people working on disambiguation. Having a real article as the target of an ambiguous name is less helpful. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:27, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello, David. I perfectly understand, but I do not share this concern. Like I said, what you fear never happens. In fact, the opposite happens. (And the reast of the explanations...) Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 20:05, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

• oppose. the disambiguation page is needed,a s there are quite a few articles on other 'flares', which are perhaps commonly viewed. needs the dab page. -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 03:38, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

• Hello. I am demoting this rec. to discussion section due to lack of relevance. This discussion is not a deletion discussion of dab page, or a deletion discussion of any sort. The survey section is only dedicated to deciding whether the subject of this article is the primary meaning of the word "flare" or not. (Technically, we are not even discussing a page move either; that is for an uninvolved admin to decide.) You may submit another rec. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 00:36, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

• yeah... this is what I get for not reading carefully. assuming there is a hatnote, swap seems fine to me. -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 00:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

• Hello again. Yes, I believe that is the most likely outcome. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 01:04, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I'm going to start disambiguating flare (pyrotechnic) to flare using AWB for everyone's information. This may take some time so I'll be doing it as an ongoing thing. Samwalton9 (talk) 20:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Didn't realise quite how many pages linked to this, won't be the quickest of tasks so postponing for now. Samwalton9 (talk) 20:40, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

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