Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports/Archive 5

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Toronto Airports

In the list of destinations in airport articles, shouldn't we seperate the Toronto destinations? (sorry don't know how to explain it I'll give an example instead).

Example:

• American Airlines (Chicago-O'Hare, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco)
  • American Eagle (Baltimore, Toronto, Boston)
• Delta Air Lines (Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco)
  • Delta Connection operated by Comair (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Boston, Toronto)

Shouldn't we change it to the format below?:

• American Airlines (Chicago-O'Hare, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco)
  • American Eagle (Baltimore, Toronto-Pearson, Boston)
• Delta Air Lines (Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco)
  • Delta Connection operated by Comair (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Boston, Toronto-Pearson)

My reason is that another airport in Toronto, which is the Toronto City Centre Airport is already operational and maybe the people who'll look at the airport destinations will be confused which airport will the airline be flying to. Maybe they'll be wondering if it will fly to Toronto City Centre Airport or to Toronto Pearson International Airport. So this is my reason. -chris 06:08, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I would agree. There are 5 airports with the word Toronto in the name (List of airports in the Greater Toronto Area) and Flyglobespan call Hamilton/John C. Munro International Airport Toronto Hamilton International Airport. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:41, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that we should disambiguate Toronto since Toronto has two airports that are operating. So it should be like

• Air Canada
  • Air Canada Jazz (Montreal, Toronto-Pearson, Toronto-City Centre, Victoria, Vancouver) Bucs2004 20:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

How about the one below:

• Flyglobespan (Heraklion, Ibiza, Lanzarote, Las Palmas, Mahon, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, Paphos, Prague, Pula, Orlando-Sanford, Tenerife-South, Toronto-Hamilton)

---or should it be:---

• Flyglobespan (Hamilton, Heraklion, Ibiza, Lanzarote, Las Palmas, Mahon, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, Paphos, Prague, Pula, Orlando-Sanford, Tenerife-South) -chris 06:27, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Hamilton per Airline destinations (Hamilton/John C. Munro International Airport). The master list show 3 Toronto airports. Vegaswikian 06:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikilinking start dates

One user reverted my edits on Miami International Airport for start dates on US Airways. Should those dates be wikinked? Many Thanks! Bucs2004 06:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't think so. The only time I wikilink dates in airport articles is when they have a corresponding article (e.g, 1991 in aviation, but not 2008 in aviation). thadius856_talk 23:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

My take is that any full date (i.e., one that includes month, day, and year) should be wikilinked, only because when a full date is wikilinked, it can then appear to each user in their selected date format preference. There's no real value in linking just a month and day, and generally not much in linking a year, though. —LrdChaos (talk) 23:29, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Linking a month and day does incorporate user preferences.

	[[June 1]]	[[1 June]]
Unlinked	June 1	1 June
Linked	June 1	1 June

—Mets501 (talk) 23:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that it clutters up the list with links. We've been simply listing dates in the local format for the airport's location. It seems to be working pretty well. DB (talk) 21:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that there shouldn't be links, I was just demonstrating that wikilinking does affect the date formats. —Mets501 (talk) 01:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I also agree that start dates shouldn't be wikilinked because it makes the paragraphs look like a mess. There is no reason to link start dates -- Sox23 05:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Esenboga International Airport

Some extra eyes on this would be usefull. I have been reverting this based on the fact that when you follow the esenboga.com link it quite clearly states that it's not associated with TAV. If you go to http://www.tav.aero/ and follow the link provided to Esenboga you get back to the http://www.esenbogaairport.com/esben/index.php site. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 11:12, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I also reverted Turkish page, that link added recently on tr: article too. I also, fount this link. At least it doesn't say not associated with TAV --Ugur Basak 11:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

That's the link that looks like the proper site. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 11:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

While I was editing some airport articles I suddenly came accross this airport and the destination list does not follow the format laid out by WikiProject Airports. So what should we do with this article should we keep it as it is? Or revise it to the correct format? Just inquiring about this, an anonymous user changed the format. -chris 14:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Crew bases

I just reverted a change to McCarran International Airport that added the Southwest crew base to the intro. I don't think we need to have this in the airport articles. I can see including this as a section on the airline articles. Is there any support to start including crew basing information in airport articles? Note, the crew base will not even exit at that location until 2007! Vegaswikian 01:39, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I could see this being useful, but only insofar as a factoid section is concerned. I entirely agree with you that these statements should not appear in leading paragraphs. Otherwise, I'd support readily removaling them from airport articles, though they should arguably be left in articles primarily under the jurisdiction of WikiProject Airlines (ex, Southwest Airlines). As per WP:LEAD:

A significant argument not mentioned after the lead should not be mentioned in the lead.

As you mentioned, the fact that crew base will not be operational until 2007 is further reason to remove it from the lead. I'd be as WP:BOLD as to remove it from the article entirely if it is not more than a handful of sentences. thadius856_talk 21:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Change Format

I have been working in the airport industry for years, both in Europe and the US. I love this business and think it's great wikipedia boasts so many articles about airports. However, the way the destinations are (or should be, according to this project) listed are in my opinion unprofessional. Because: Destinations such as Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard or etc are completely irrelevant to the role, big (+10 million PAX) airports play. These destinations do not generate any significant traffic for an airport and do not contribute to its main function at all, which usually is: connecting one city/airport to another. Therefore, such destinations (in case of a European Airport, for example: Agadir, the Greek Islands, Fuerteventura or Monastir), should not occupy too much space, at least less then they do now. A division should be made between important destinations and irrelevant ones, based on the role they play in the international industry. That way, the importance of the airport would be made clear, which can be measured by the number of intercontinental destinations it serves. Something that now can not be found on any of these articles. Instead, to the professional's eye, completely irrelevant information is given, about what airline departs from what terminal for example, something that constantly changes and is quite uninteresting. What these articles need is: clear and logically ranked information, which make the article useful and "encyclopedia-ready" instead of unimportant and very unclear information which is given now.

For example: Let's compare O'Hare to Hartsfield-Jackson and assume I want to find out which one is more international or offers more destinations. Can I find that information easily? Absolutely not, I have to scroll down numerous airlines and even subsidiaries (WHY?), counting on a scrapbook to find out the number of intercontinental destinations served by either one. Another suggestion: Arrange destinations by continent, and NOT by company or even subsidiaries, that only makes the article look like a mess and I am sure that that is not what it was written for. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beachlife (talk • contribs)

Many people are also interested in who serves what destinations from each airport. A simple list of all destinations served can be obtained from most airport websites. Furthermore, most airlines stay in a specific terminal; they don't change around often at all. The information about the airport's importance can be gathered by reading the article. Furthermore, who's to decide whether or not a destination is important? Agadir isn't according to you, but it has a population of over 600,000, whereas Manchester, UK has just over 400,000. However, Manchester International is important enough for it to be a hub for bmi and a focus city for BA. Besides, if someone wants to fly to Nantucket, then failing to list it simply because it's not "important" would be a disservice. They could wrongly assume it's simply not possible to fly there. DB (talk) 20:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

First of all, airlines definitely do change around all the time. Second of all, a simple list of all destinations served is not that easy to obtain, try and you will see. Furthermore, if you had read the above, you'd know I meant a division should be made based on an airport's importance, not only on the city it serves, although that could be important too. I repeat, my proposal is not to modify the current lists, it is to change them completely. A list should be made, pointing out clearly for example, what airlines serve the LGA - ORD route or LHR - MXP.... Thát is what this kind of list should be used for, if people want to go to Nantucket or Agadir, I don't think wikipedia is the source they use to find out what airline they can travel. I did not say however that these destinations should be removed from the list, because that, as you put it, would be a disservice... They should however be separated from the main cities/important airports, and if you can't figure out how to make that division, I would be glad to do that for you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.77.161.228 (talk • contribs) 09:13, 2 November 2006.

Ok, well they actually don't change terminals "all the time". I've flown quite a bit and few airlines have switched terminals in the airports I've been to. Regardless, it's easy to update. As far as the destinations go, you still didn't answer the question of how it will be decided whether an airport is important. Your opinion doesn't constitute fact; others may have totally different views of which airports are important. Should the size of the city be a factor? Should it only be based on airport traffic? There is no real objective way of deciding which airports should be considered important. DB (talk) 15:03, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

My opinion did not constitute fact as you wisely put it, so I will then state it out clearly again: An airport becomes important when it has international and preferably intercontinental destinations. Is that enough? No it's not, but to point out, for example the twenty most important airports in Europe, well then it really is enough! Please let me Americanize, compare Spokane's airport to Seattle's, now what would be the most important airport in the state of Washington?? The articles should not just make robotlike listings of any operation that's found on websites, because if that were the case, where are the cargo operations then? (There are a lot more than those listed now). They do change all the time, true, but according to you that's not so hard to update.... I see you're a hobbyist and I'm sure you enjoy making those lists, but they should however please wikipedia and not you. Just look at the airlines and destinations that are listed on MXP and LGW for instance, Hurghada, Monastir?? Thomas Cook Airlines??! Do anybody really care about that? (And if they do, are they gonna search for it on wikipedia??!?!) I don't think that should be in the same destinations list as NRT, ORD, JFK, AMS etc. I don't think so...! The idea is to first divide the destinations (by continent could be a good way maybe??) and then decide which ones are the important ones. And that obviously should be based on a combination of factors including the city's size, airport's PAX and the number of international and/or intercontinental destinations served.

PS: Repeat: I have never said those destinations should be deleted, but they shouldn't occupy as much space as they do now, and should just be put somewhere else. Furthermore, the lists right now use the airline company to group destinations, which does not make any sense, and makes the whole look quite confusing. It might be a nice format for flights within the US or within Canada, but not for the rest of the world.

PS 2: I've fought the same battle over the world cities ranking and I won ;-) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Beachlife (talk • contribs) 13:36, 3 November 2006.

Your proposal violates Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. It's not up to Wikipedia to decide which airports and destinations are more important than another. The lists should be kept in a neutral form which they are now. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not trying to start a battle, I'm just saying there's no real objective way of determining which destinations are "important", since the concept of importance is inherently subjective. As CambridgeBay mentioned, it would probably violate NPOV. If someone came up with a statistical formula that factored in number of passengers per year, metro area population, number of passengers traveling to the destination vs connecting there, etc., that might possibly work, but is anyone really going to do that? Furthermore, even that could have some issues, such as deciding how heavily to weight each factor. DB (talk) 20:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to have to agree with both CambridgeBayWeather and DBinder on this one. Deciding importance is a tricky subject and I doubt that we'd ever be able to formulate a reasonable way to test importance, let along come to a consensus on how to weight each aspect of every airport. Furthermore, the fact that not every airport has every statistic available is a fairly large obstacle to overcome.

I don't see this as being needed at all. You are correct that it may be an unfamiliar approach to some professionals in the industry or different from what they are accustomed to. However, the aim of this project is not to conform to industry standards but to represent airpotrs in an encyclopedic fashion. One of the criteria of an {{A-Class}} article (according to WP:1.0 and this project's Assessment Department) is as follows:

A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting.

If you look over the criteria itself, there is no mention of a critera which states that a well-written article should be useful as a resource to knowledgable professionals in the field. In fact, the proposal you are putting forth (as I understand it), describes a criteria for a {{B-Class}} article:

A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic, but a serious student or researcher trying to use the material would have trouble doing so, or would risk error in derivative work.

It seems to me that this would be reckless and not BOLD. Regardless, its not important here if you've "fought the same battle" or "won" elsewhere, especially on world cities ranking. This project is not one in the same or even mildly connected to that topic, except for the fact that most of world's top-ranked cities have major airports.

Lastly, I ask you to please remember to sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) in the future. It's a little hard to read through the proposal if your name doesn't show up consistantly after your messages. Thanks! thadius856_talk 21:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Assessment Department

I just wanted to remind everybody that the project banner was upgraded to meet WP:1.0 specifications earlier this week, as there were no objections to the change itself. I have left the unrated articles showing that they are unrated and I'll let Mets make the aforementioned changes to the template if he still feels that it is important. I'd do it myself, but I'm not all that trusting of my skills with m:ParserFunctions just yet.

There is one thing that I strongly feel is important to let everybody know here: this project only has 1 Featured Article (Montréal-Mirabel International Airport) and one Good Article (San Francisco International Airport). Considering we have over 4,500 {{AirportProject}} banners (at this writing) on airport articles, this number seems quite low, espcially for a WikiProject. On average, something around 1 in 1,200 should be FA and 1 in 900 should be GA. That would put us, if average, with roughly 4 FA- and 5 GA-class articles. (Note that some projects, like WP:MILHIST, have extremely disproportionately high numbers of FA- and GA-class articles!)

I have requested a peer review on Singapore Changi Airport and am in the process of copyediting and doing some cleanup that was noted by an automated bot. I will be adding this article as the first for this project's Peer Review department. Once finished with the peer reviews, I will be proposing the article as a Good Article candidate. When it passes (it already meets all GA criteria), I'll be promoting it to our first {{A-Class}} article for the project. After a little more cleanup, I hope to get it passed as a Featured Article.

The good news is that now we have access to statistics on the rating of our articles through the Assessment page. We also have an importance scale on the same page, which I have tried my best to customize for this project. If anybody disagrees with the criteria or the examples, feel free to state them so we can work towards a consensus.

So, what does it look like our top priorities should be at the moment? I'd think that they would include:

1. Expansion and/or improvement of Top and High importance airport articles until more have achieve at least Good Article status.
2. Creation of stubs for the remaining redlinks regarding public-use airports on our lists. See List of airports in California for one example.
3. Rating the class and importance of a substanial amount of our articles. This should be fairly easy, as a large portion of them are simply Stub class, Low importance airports (ex, Amargosa Airport).

I'd love to get some feedback on this, guys. :) thadius856_talk 22:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Lounges

I don't know if this has ever been brought up before, but perhaps we should start to include information about airline lounges in WikiPedia Airport pages. This information seems to be a bit left out of Wikipedia even though they are a fairly major part of the Airports. I see that there is an incomplete list on the Airport lounge page, but I think by listing them on individual airport pages, they will be more accessible. I'm just interested what others think of this. Thanks. NcSchu 03:09, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not sure if I support this or not yet. However it probably belongs in the template if we decide to add it. Only display the heading if there is at least one lounge. Are there any airports with so many lounges, that this approach would be unreasonable? Vegaswikian 03:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Major international airports such as Kennedy and Heathrow probably have quite a few. DB (talk) 14:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I don't think it will be that hard to manage though. If people use Wikipedia for information we should try to include as much useful information as possible. NcSchu 21:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Suvarnabhumi Airport

On the destination list on Suvarnabhumi Airport an anoynymous I revised an edit made by User:VAIO HK due to incorrect format and today I just found out that an anonymous user reverted my edits. I'll revert it today and here's the format they imputed to the article:

Airlines		Destination
Name	Code
Bangkok Airways	(PG)	(Chiang Mai, Koh Samui, Krabi, Phuket, Sukhothai, Trat, Utapao-Rayong)
Nok Air	(DD)	(Chaing Mai, Hat Yai, Loei, Mae Hong Son, Nakhon Si Thanarat, Phuket, Trang, Udon Thani)
One-Two-Go	(OG)	(Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Hat Yai, Khon Kaen, Krabi, Phitsanulok, Phuket, Surat Thani)
PB Air	(9Q)	(Buriram, Lampang, Mae Hong Son, Nakhon Phanom, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Nan, Roi Et, Sakon Nakhon)
Phuket Air	(9R)	(Ranong)
Thai AirAsia	(FD)	(Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Hat Yai, Krabi, Naratiwat, Phuket, Surat Thani, Ubon Ratchathani, Udon Thani)
Thai Airways International	(TG)	(Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, HatYai, Khon Kaen, Krabi, Mae Hong Son, Nakhon Si Thamarat, Phitsanulok, Phuket, Surat Thani, Trang, Ubon Ratchatani, Udon Thani)

It's wrong isn't it? So I'll revert the changes today. And if it get's reverted once again I'll place it here on the talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PikDig (talk • contribs)

• That's not the accepted format. While having a table might be nice, it would need to be discussed before using it. Including the code is not necessary and this table does not provide an obvious way to indicate DBAs. Vegaswikian 03:48, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Singapore Changi Airport passes GA nomination!

Just wanted to let everybody know that we successfully passed the article along to the Good Article candidate phase and it was accepted! Congratulations to everybody involved, even those who helped with only minor edit. Project participants that contributed include (in descending order of last edit to the article):

1. Thadius856 (myself)
2. Bucs2004
3. Arnzy
4. Physicq210
5. Elektrik blue 82
6. CambridgeBayWeather
7. Wangi
8. Rdore
9. Vegaswikian
10. Dbinder
11. LukaP

I'll be giving all of these users a special barnstar of my own creation when I get around to making it. If I missed anybody, let me know. As the article has just under 1,475 edits, it isn't impossible that I missed somebody. Thanks everybody! thadius856_talk 01:23, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Great news, but I was just wondering what did each of the members above contribute to this particular article to actually deserve a barnstar?--Huaiwei 08:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't only the members of the WikiProject Airports, it was the Wikipedians from Singapore who contributed more to the article. So are we discredited for our works? --Terence Ong _{(C | R)} 16:28, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not a barnstar, per se, that I was planning on giving. Something more along the lines of "Contributing to # of Good Articles within WikiProject Airports". Nothing too fancy, but hopefully a little recognition would help us garner a few more souls to help and keep the ones we already have. :) thadius856_talk 18:11, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Wonderful pat on the back some fellas probably need here, considering the bunch has largely been keeping itself busy enforcing draconian "standardisation" rules (instead of being merely guidelines). If Montréal-Mirabel International Airport is the standard all airport articles are supposed to strive towards, than I must say it is a great disservice to the global aviation community.--Huaiwei 23:29, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Ya, that one is interesting. I'm almost ready to ask for protection on it. Vegaswikian 23:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a big barnstar lover, but most credit's certainly due to folk not on the list above. Anyway, lets move past that... Lets be honest, a GA isn't too hard to achieve - who wants to work together to get the SIA article to featured article status? Thanks/wangi 23:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Wangi. Achievement is not always marked by barnstars, and barnstars are not always marks of achievement. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 00:00, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Wangi is right, barnstars is not always a good way of recognising achievement. I would like to work SIA article and bring it to FA status. I have six weeks to do it, so if you want, let's do it quickly. I can go to the library and research on SIA. --Terence Ong _{(C | R)} 04:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I love collaborative work, and I throughly enjoy the working relationship which has developed amongst the Singaporean community here. But what keeps me wanting to belong and contribute there, is that there is an inclusionist culture open to accepting new members and new ideas for the betterment of Sg-related articles. On the other hand, I do not feel welcome here, and chose not to be part of this project despite my long extensive study and keen interest in aviation-related topics. I arent sure if its due to me being too sensitive, or due to this project being dominated by a small group of exclusionist-minded individuals who are suspicious of anyone stepping out of the line.

I would certainly love to put past experiences behind us, but is there anyone willing to step forth and say they are willing to at least consider the possibility of new ideas? Is there anyone willing to accept members who may adopt a different editing doctrine from dominant project members? If this is not forthcoming, how can they expect anyone else to make the risky plunge of expanding these articles without the fear of seeing their work dissapearing in a flash the next second? I have been relatively "reakless" in the Changi Airport page, and somehow it qualifies for "GA" status. It was even beig nominated as an FAC, a very premature move in my view. Is this supposed to be an endorsement that "reakless" edits are finally being accomodated here?

Will certainly love to hear some views here on this.--Huaiwei 15:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the word "barn star" was used too loosely. I was merely looking to reward those users in the project who contributed to the article. Perhaps the list above should suffice then, for the time being. By no means, Huaiwei, am I not saying that this project contributed the majority of the article by any means—note that I did not mention that previously at all. I just didn't think many non-participants would enjoy a "thank you" message on their talk page entirely unwarranted and that they wouldn't really care how many GA/FA articles they're contributed to that are under the jurisdiction of this project. See my point?

I'm sorry that you saw my nomination of the article under WP:FAC as a premature move. It looks like a great article to me, personally, and I've copy edited and re-read every section multiple times, as well as reworking all of the references by hand. It appears to me to be at least on the same level as Montréal-Mirabel International Airport, so I figured it may pass or at least get us some ideas for what needed to be done.

As far as your other statements go, I'm not sure what they were provoked by, nor am I sure who the in the project is described as "a small group of exclusionist-minded individuals." I don't see exactly how we could exclude anybody, to be honest, given that the participant list and all pages in the project are openly editable. The only conflict I've seen between the project and "locals" would be in relation to the argument over the lead paragraphs on Singapore Changi Airport. I don't see this really as a "WikiProject Airports vs. all" type of battle, as you seem to. As for the "reckless" editing you speak of... are you referring to acting unilaterally? thadius856_talk 22:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Airline destinations AfD

Airline destinations is proposed for deletion. If interested, drop in on the discussion. This is the master list used to list destinations in airline and airport articles. Vegaswikian 20:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

JAL service to MNL

On the Ninoy Aquino International Airport destination page, anonymous users keep on inserting NRT and NGO as JAL destinations, but JAL suspended their MNL-NGO-MNL sector as of 29 October 2006, I saw the press article on the Philippine website of JAL. Now, JAL's flights to NRT are operated by JALways, check timetables. So JAL clearly does not fly to NGO or NRT from MNL. -chris^_^ 13:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

New WikiProject Concerning Defunct Airlines

Hello folks! I have begun a WikiProject on bettering the articles on defunct airlines, most notably regional airlines which got swallowed up by the larger airlines following the Airline Deregulation Act. Also within the scope of this project are airports which were served by these defunct airlines that no longer have scheduled air service such as Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport in Glens Falls, New York, or have limited EAS service such as Massena International Airport in Massena.

The project is in the very beginning stages and I need all the help I can get. Basically, all articles in the end need to have former destinations, and I would like them to have past fleet, logos, and a brief history up to their collapse if possible.

Check out the Defunct Airlines WikiProject. It is in its very early stages. I was also wondering if this could be added to similar to related WikiProjects on here? Thanks so much, hope to see you there! -Jondude11 07:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposal - The Airport Star

The Airport Star This user has been awarded with the WikiProject Airports' Airport Award, in recognition of his or her valued and exceptional contributions to Wikipedia's articles on airports.

I know, it doesn't look that good, yet, though that can be solved. I tried Photoshopping up a better barnstar logo, but I'm a little short on ideas at the moment. Do you guys think its too early to have such an award? thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 18:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Info boxes on USAF bases

Here's why I support and pursue the removal of the "serves" category on the USAF bases airport infoboxes: AF bases do not "serve" their nearest towns in the way municipal or large airports do. Apart from the fact that there is no scheduled passenger service into/out of AF bases (Space-A/rotators do not count for many reasons), the denizens of towns nearest to bases are not able to walk on to base and use the services of the airfield. AF bases are not there to serve the nearest town the way civilian airfields are. For this reason I believe there should be a separate infobox template for AF bases, or simply remove the "serves" line from the current template. Conn, Kit 18:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Airports infobox

User:Conn, Kit is removing the "closest town" argument from Template:airport infoboxes on numerous USAF bases with the reasoning that the text "serves" is not appropriate. Is it possible to change the text of the infobox to allow usage on bases that clearly don't serve a nearby city? Maybe rename serves to Closest town? Maybe create a separate line that will allow inclusion of the closest city in airbase articles? Thanks. --Dual Freq 18:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of changing "serves" to closest town. If there is consensus on this I would go through all the bases I've edited and replace the text with "closest town". Conn, Kit 18:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps something more like the boxes used in Naval Air Stations, see Naval Air Station Brunswick, would be a better idea. However, are there any bases in the US that operate like CFB Bagotville? It's a military base but is also open to the public and thus serves "Bagotville". CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 18:28, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, for any dual-use base I do not endorse the removal of the "serves" line. The "loaction" line in the NAS infoboxes is also more appropriate than the current infoboxes. Conn, Kit 18:34, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

No, "location" is not more appropriate. The important thing is the primary area the airport provides service for, not where it is physically located. If the field were changed to "closest town" then people would start putting in very specific locations, rather than the reality (for example London Luton Airport serves London and the South East primarily, not Luton itself).

I think that if you search through the archives you'll find a past discussion on changing "closest town" to "serves"! Thanks/wangi 01:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, the "closest town" could get overly specific and of dubious encyclopedic value, but that does not change the fact that "serves" is not appropriate for AFBs. Fine for dual use or civilian fields, not for military bases which exist for purposes other than airfield service of any kind to the public.Conn, Kit 02:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for opinions on a Merger

Per the above discussion of dual use facilities, I propose that Scott Air Force Base and MidAmerica St. Louis Airport be merged. This is a dual use airport, both articles refer to the same airfield, the infoboxes are basically identical, and the FAA refers to them both as BLV. I'm not sure which name should be used, but Scott AFB came first and makes up most of the flights from the facility. Both articles are very stubby, and MidAmerica has very little commercial traffic, one airline flying to Vegas and Orlando, I think. Both runways are dual use, and connected by a long taxiway which passes by the USAF ATCT. CFB Bagotville is an example of a dual use airport article as noted above. If anyone has any comments, please add it to Talk:Scott Air Force Base. Thanks. --Dual Freq 21:25, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration!

I was just about to the write collaboration page out when it dawned on me that we don't have any articles we've agreed to collaborate on. Since it's the last redlink (excluding talk pages) in the navigation box on our pages, I figured it would be a great idea to actually get it going. My question is this... what type of collaboration do you guys think we should have?

Should we collaborate on one article, in particular? A group of articles by location? A specified size set of articles, either by importance, class or a mixture of each class and importance? A redlink stub creation drive? How long should our collaboration drive(s) last for?

Personally, I'd like to see a drive for roughly 10 articles to be improved, hopefully Top or High importance articles that are either Stub- or Start-class that lasts roughly two weeks (or fortnight, whatever). A separate redlink creation drive lasting roughly a week would be nice too, and we could focus on redlinks in a particular list (ex, List of airports in Texas).

But seriously, what do you guys think? thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality}

Personally an article of the week seems reasonable. Otherwise you are spreading out a few editors over too many articles. We also need to continue adding articles on missing airports. So maybe one article for improvement and one for creation. Vegaswikian 22:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you on this, at least for the time being. In case nobody's noticed, we've gained about 12 participants in the past 10 days. We're growing quickly, so some day that may change to being more. But for now, yes, I concur.

As for the creation drive, I took the liberty of asking over at Oleg Alexandrov's talk page if there was any way we'd be able to use Mathbot's ability to render progress meters for creation of redlinked articles. Whether or not we use it we can decide later, but I was curious if this functionality was reserved for certain projects or if it was openly available. thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 23:48, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello (and working on Russian department)

I've been on Wikipedia for about 4 or 5 years but I'm pretty new to the Projects thing and was invited here thanks to a very active leadership. Anyhow I run the russianairfields.com site (which I will be taking down soon due to too many pans on the fire) and am working up articles on most of the major Russian airfields using quite a few references I've accumulated over the past 30 years. So far I've managed to fill all of the gaps in the "Airports in Russia" project, adding pages such as Bratsk Airport. I am adding other minor airports, such as Vorkuta Airport and Rzhevka Airport. My goal is to add all paved airfields in the former Soviet Union with runways of 1000 meters or longer.

The WikiProject Airports change log shows some military bases I added, such as Afrikanda and Burevestnik (air base) but I have withdrawn many from the Airports project which are entirely military. I've given them into appropriate categories, and am stubbing them with military rather than airport stubs. However on all airfields I am still making use of the excellent Airport frame and the Airport Codes template; they're useful for runway dimensions and general information.

I didn't add the IATA's for any Russian airports, so if anyone wants to add them, they're available in the List of airports in Russia page.

If anyone has any suggestions feel free to let me know. -Timvasquez 03:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Tim, I see you got my invitation! However, don't get the idea that I'm in any way the part of the "leadership" here. In fact, since we're a wiki, it'd be somewhat against the spirit to have a rigid structure. I'm an overly-active-user with too-much-free-time to spare. ;)

As for the military bases, it's fine to keep the project banner on them so long as they have a runway. It's entirely possible for articles to fall under the scope of multiple projects and having multiple banners is not an issue. Feel free to add them back if you get the chance. I've caught up with your additions as of 3 days ago, fixing small things and assessing the articles, but I'm not up to date just yet. Welcome aboard! thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 03:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

More collaboration!

I put up the framework for the Collaboration of the Fortnight. You can find the link in all project navigation boxes at the top right of every project page. I also added my own nomination to get the discussion started. I'd appreciate it if everybody could head over and leave some feedback. Please nominate an article if you don't agree with my choice. It would be awesome if we had a run-off for our first collaboration!

There's also two new templates, which you can see on that page. One is for the top of the Collaboration page, which states the current article for collaboration. The second is for the top of the article's talk page, so visitors can see why the article is getting so many edits. Lastly, I updated the {{COTWs}} template to add our project. Lastly, there's a parameter for the project banner which expands it a bit. So, what do you guys think so far?

Also, I'm trying to see if Oleg (see above) can have Mathbot update us one of those cool progress bars for the Creation Drive department. It should hopefully keep track of all redlinks in List of airports by IATA code and List of airports by ICAO code, as well as the US airports (for those with only FAA LIDs). I figure anything not listed between all of those isn't particularly noteworthy enough for inclusion, but I may be wrong. Wish us luck! thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 07:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Article list

I am slowing starting a list of articles and categories at Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports/Articles which I hope when finished will help facilitate use of the recent changes function. If the members of this project find such a list either irrelevant or a duplication, please let me know. Thank you. Badbilltucker 20:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I can give you a complete list of every article in Category:Airports and all sub-categories, if you so please. It's not sorted by category, but it was last updated 12-07-06. I can always rebuild the list using AWB if you would like. Doesn't take long. thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 03:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Google earth

Please take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports/Infobox#Google earth and comment on the idea. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 14:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration redux

I've noticed that only two participants have actively contributed to nominating articles for the Collaboration of the Fortnight. It would be nice if there were more feedback or support on the nominations, as this nomination session will close at 00:01 UTC on 2006-12-18, with the winner being the collaboration article for the next two weeks. Thanks! thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 22:07, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

CYYT, CYHZ, CYYR external link reversions of Current Aviation Weather

Hi, I'm curious why these reversions were made by CambridgeBayWeather. I found this information interesting and not available anywhere else within the article. Besides current METAR and TAF information there was also a link to a google earth map and other technical information on the airport.

I've reverted the links back pending an answer.

My error. I rechecked and the links are not spam. Sorry. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 05:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Destination statistics & organization

I was reading the earlier discussion started by Beachlife. It seems to me that it might be useful to list the number of domestic, international, intercontinental, etc. destinations per airline and/or per airport article. Another idea would be to organize by destination instead of by airline, alphabetical order, then list the airlines that fly to that particular destination. Even better, if it's possible, would be to have both destination orders. I believe implementing these ideas would not violate NPOV and may be more useful than the current format to some readers. However, I don't know of a way to do that without dramatically increasing the page sizes, particularly for major airports. I think it kind of sucks you can't easily pull all the destinations from a central database, but given the competitiveness of the airline business, this probably can't be fixed. --BetaCentauri 06:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

By way of contrast, I'd urge the opposite, that is, less emphasis on precise listings of airlines and destinations. I see Wikipedia airport articles as primarily intended to discuss the importance, history, geography, physical plant and infrastructure, economics/statistics, etc., of airports, rather than trying to be a guide to passenger service. There are many, many sources of data on flights from point A to point B; the constantly changing nature of the airline business makes it hard to keep up to date, and consequently editors have to spend a lot of time with something that, to my mind, belongs more in a travel guide or aviation/airline web site, not an encyclopedia. --MCB 20:55, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you in principle. I think the fact that WP's airport articles list destinations is actually an attempt to make up for the fact that there is no other central, free database for such listings. As you say, it's probably best implemented in a dedicated travel site that would presumably have the ability to update such listings dynamically. So, what are the odds that we can convince enough people to stop trying to track destinations? --BetaCentauri 02:28, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Dallas Love Field

Currently on airport articles, they state Dallas Love Field as Dallas-Love, shouldn't it be Dallas-Love Field? Just curious... -chris^_^ 08:40, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

The addition of the name serves as a disambiguation. It short be as short as possible while still getting the point across. There's no other airport in Dallas or Fort Worth with "Love" in the name, so it's fine. DB (talk) 04:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Orlando International Airport

Since the Sanford airport is being enumerated as Orlando-Sanford, How would we enumerate Orlando International Airport? I propose the one below:

1. Orlando-McCoy, McCoy since it stands for the first two letters in MCO. 2. Orlando-Jetport, Jetport since the civilian airport at McCoy Base was called Orlando Jetport at McCoy

Do you guys have any suggestions? If not choose which do you prefer from the above. 141.155.118.39 09:09, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I say leave it as it is. In cities where one airport has the vast majority of traffic and a reference to the city is assumed to refer to that airport, there doesn't need to be a disambiguation. Same goes with Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tel Aviv, Vancouver, and others. Except for Icelandair, flights to Sanford are charters; MCO has virtually all scheduled traffic to the city and is one of the 30 busiest airports in the world. DB (talk) 04:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

"Major airline hubs in bold"

Is this sort of thing a good idea? CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 23:10, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

NO. Vegaswikian 08:51, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Why?--Huaiwei 12:05, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

A better question would be why should that be done? What encylopedic material do we need to convey to the average reader? Would they know what the bold cities mean? Would it be more informative or more confusing? Why is it important to know what hubs are destinations for a particular airport? For a good number of airports, their only service is to hubs. If they want to know the hubs for an airline, they just click on the airline link and it is in the infobox on the first screen, so why do we need to maintain this information in hundreds of articles? Who is going to maintain this level of detail in the articles for every airport? Vegaswikian 03:16, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Retaining this would open it up to also bolding focus cities, which would cause a lot more problems, since there's already enough argument over what constitutes a focus city. DB (talk) 04:09, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with what has been said above. Furthermore, if it is a significant fact that an airline hubs at a given airport then in should be mentioned in the text of the article, not implied through bolding. Also, by bolding some airlines or destinations, we might lead the average reader to think that those airlines or airports might be larger or more important that others listed, which may not be the case, so doing so may mislead the average reader, even though it may make sense to wikipedians involved in the airports project. -- Adz|talk 04:26, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of the controversy over what constitutes a "hub" or "focus city", but I suppose it does make sense. Unless, of course, we could all agree on an all-inclusive source which spells out each in a reasonable manner for every airport in the world, though that seems unlikely. I do like the diagram in the article, though. I'd create as many as possible, if only I knew how the creator did it. thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 18:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

If you are aware of a source for focus cities, please let us know. We have not found one or even a definition. This is a concern for the accuracy of information that we include in this area. As for that destination diagram, I would not care to see those included since they would be difficult to update and maintain? Who has the tools to do that? How many charts would you need for an airport with around the world service? What would that chart liok like for any of the 5 airports with the most destinations? Remember that there should be consistent information across all articles so that they appear to be similar in the way they read and appear. Vegaswikian 21:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Algerian Aviation articles

First off, articles pertaining to Air Algérie are constantly being vandalized by Velentine, Amine2, and 200.122.86.50. These users (or simply, user?) constantly puts unsourced edits, not only on the above article, but also on Air Algérie destinations and Houari Boumedienne Airport. If somebody else puts these on their watchlist then that would be great. Elektrik Blue 82 21:50, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

and "they" have added about 6 pics with no copyright statement to Air Algerie. I constantly remove them and Velentine constantly puts them back. There a bit about it on my Talk Page here - Adrian Pingstone 22:04, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles not related to Air Algerie have also been vandalized with said material. Is there some connection? --²¹⁰physicq (c) 23:05, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The talk page only discusses the image issues. If they are vandalizing articles, then put an appropiate warning on the talk page. If that happens then the ids can be blocked. Without a proper series of warnings, we can not block the accounts. Vegaswikian 23:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, wait...never mind. I blocked the IP because of vandalism. I don't know about the others. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 00:15, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)