Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 April 6

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April 6

Nazi plunder

Toward the end of the war, where did the Nazis stash their stolen works of art other than at the "big three" storage facilities at Siegen, Merkers and Altaussee? In particular, did they have any stashes anywhere near Prum, Bitburg or Trier -- or did they decide these places were too close to the front line for safety? 2601:646:8E01:515D:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 02:24, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring displayed art works plundered from private collections and museums at his hunting lodge Carinhall northeast of Berlin. AllBestFaith (talk) 17:09, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Ukrainian railways route distances

I am working on an environmental impact statement for an organization in Ukraine. I need to report their train travel passenger-miles for known routes (given origin and destination cities) in 2015. Can anybody find a table of individual route distances? I can't. (If it only lists individual segments instead of all long routes, that's fine.)Hayttom (talk) 06:38, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

There's an app for that, but you'll have to enter each route individually. (Hint: After entering the origin and destination and getting the distance, look to the right of the distance and make sure to change the travel option to "Train" -- the default is "Driving".) 2601:646:8E01:515D:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 07:29, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Fantastic, thanks!

General question: If I feel like getting around to it, would it be OK for me to put a table of major route distances into Ukrainian Railways? (It would be my first article table.) Hayttom (talk) 11:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

First of all, I couldn't get that website to give me a rail distance from Kyiv to Donetsk (two of the biggest cities in Ukraine). Second, we don't know how reliable their algorithm is. Third, these mileages are not published, in the sense that anyone could access them without using that website's app. So, using that website amounts to original research, which is a violation of the Wikipedia:NOR policy. So, no, it wouldn't be okay to create such a table in that way. Marco polo (talk) 18:51, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Presumably because Donetsk Railways is no longer under the control of Ukrainian Railways - there is no Kiev-Donetsk train route (direct or indirect). Smurrayinchester 08:12, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

...which is kind of a shame. Under current policy,I believe Hayttom could compile the table, put it up on a blog, then use that to source the info when put in to WP. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:16, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Self-published blogs are explicitly not reliable sources according to WP:RS--Jayron32 09:53, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Well we don't need to get in to this here, but blogs are certainly reliable sources for some type of claims, and we certainly do currently cite many blogs. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:53, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

We cite blogs, published by reliable organizations, whose content has been vetted by those organizations and whose writers have a reputation for reliability. A well-known scientist, writing a blog hosted by the Nature journal, writing on their field of expertise, would be a reliable blog. Randy from Boise, writing their own self-published blog on a random bloghosting site, with no oversight, no accountability, and no reputation is NOT reliable. If you can't tell the difference between those two situations, I'm not sure you should be the one to give advise to people at Wikipedia. You JUST recommended that the OP do their own original research, publish the unvetted results on their own self-published blog, and that they could then cite that. Absolutely not. That's terrible advise. --Jayron32 17:14, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

WP:RS also says that "A lightweight source may sometimes be acceptable for a lightweight claim." If you think the rail distance from city X to Y requires the absolute highest quality of RS, that's fine. I feel differently. We are also all allowed to apply WP:NORULES and be a little WP:BOLD. Seriously, I'll fight for the strongest of sources and purging the crap for articles related to controversial science, history, etc. But this is a simple distance along a rail line. I'd like to have a better source than this app, but I'd prefer WP:RANDY's data over nothing at all, at least as a stop gap. If you want to discuss further, feel free to use my talk page, I'll stop derailing this tread any further now. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:51, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

The point is, if linking to the website he used to do the calculations, simply moving the calculations to his own self-published site doesn't make the sourcing more reliable; if nothing else it makes it less reliable because it obfuscates the source of the calculations directly. And discussing it in this thread is valid, because if you're going to give someone here bad advice, they should at least be shown that it's bad advice. To usher away discussions of the inappropriateness of your device elsewhere, where the OP may be then misled into thinking there isn't anything wrong with it, is a bad idea. --Jayron32 00:50, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Are you sure that qualifies as original research ? I wouldn't think so, since you are only reporting the info provided by the app. So, if it's considered a reliable source, and always provides the same result, that should be OK. StuRat (talk) 23:40, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

The point is precisely that it's not a reliable source. Nor would a blog from that data be a reliable source. --Viennese Waltz 08:39, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

A better source is probably the railway official website. It's a bit more complicated to use but if you search the booking [1] site for routes between cities/stations, you should get lines that service that route and can get distances.

Interestingly the distances aren't always the same. For example, if I search for Kyiv to Lviv, I find train number 081К, 049К and 357К which starts from Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky at 0 km to Lviv 563 km. But train number 743Ш, 743К and 741К starts from Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky 14 km and ends in Lviv at 586 km meaning an apparent distance of 572 km. This is the same distance for 091К, 043К, 099К which starts at 0 and ends at 572km. Then we have 013K which starts at Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky at 0 and ends at Lvivi at 566km. Then there's 113О which starts at Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky 489 km and ends at Lviv at 1064km i.e. 575km. One of the weirdest of all is 141К which starts at Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky 0 km and ends at Lviv 652 km. And there's also 111О which starts at Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky 489 km and ends at Lviv at 1116km i.e. 627km. These last 3 have long lists of stops, and you can also look at the route on Yandex for all of these routes (not just the 3), so perhaps you can work out what's going on at least for these long ones. I guess thse significantly different distance ones are probably going a somewhat different route.

Not sure what's u with the ones which are close. 013К and 081К for example are called the same route despite the different distances. Perhaps either the stations despite the same names aren't actually the same, they take a slightly different long distance route (I'm not sure what the Ukraine train network is like and the site doesn't seem to make it easy to see), or they take a different route inside the cities, a combination or the data is inconsistent. Possible you can get Yandex to show you the whole railway network, I guess the data there is probably resonably reliable since the operator uses it (without commenting on whether it's a WP:RS.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:57, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Blue Angel Flying Team

This is in reference to the Blue Angels Flying Team. When I was a little girl my parents and I went to watch a flying demonstration. I was born in 1939 so this was in the 1940's. One of the planes came down in a pasture. This happened in south Florida. My father drove by way of various dirt roads to the site of where the plane landed. We were the first ones there and he climbed over a fence to reach the plane . I do not believe the pilot was injured but I am not sure. There might have been an article in a south Florida newspaper about it. Was this during an early demonstration? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.30.2.204 (talk) 15:42, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

The Blue Angels article mentions a crash near Pensacola in 1950. 217.44.50.87 (talk) 15:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

This page shows two 1940s accidents (both in 1946), one fatal but doesn't give locations. Rmhermen (talk) 15:54, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

This page shows that the first Blue Angels accident, on 29th September 1946, was a fatal crash out of Naval Air Station Jacksonville. The next listed accidents in Florida are the 1950 one, 1956 and 1958 out of Pensacola, both fatal and a fatal 1960 accident out of Key West. Rmhermen (talk) 16:00, 6 April 2016 (UTC)