Talk:Lancaster Carriage and Wagon Works

A fact from Lancaster Carriage and Wagon Works appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 13 September 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Robert Graves was in charge of aliens at the Lancaster Carriage and Wagon Works?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2011/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Lancaster Carriage and Wagon Works.

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Aliens?[edit]

What, please, is the reason for using the easily misunderstood aliens in place of the far clearer foreign prisoners in the lead of the article? The purpose of an encyclopaedia is to inform, not to confuse with language which, although technically not incorrect, is prone to misunderstanding, sometimes for "comic" effect. Kevin McE (talk) 16:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What is easily misunderstood in "aliens"? Are readers likely to think we mean little green men in the context of this article? Does the tone of the rest of the article suggest the writer was looking for the chance to use phrasing for comic effect? Using the fairly commonplace "internment of aliens" is more precise than using "foreign prisoners" as it establishes the both the class of foreigners and the reason for and nature of the imprisonment. If the phrasing suggested is "internment of foreign prisoners" then that would be a tautology: "internment of foreigners" would be better, but why be less precise? Yomangani ^talk 23:13, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not for comic effect, but to justify a DYK hook. Most people will not be confused by an assumption that it was little green men who were interned, but will have had to make a rapid shift from the first interpretation that the vast majority of casual readers would make of that word to their secondary interpretation. We should not force readers to do that for the sake of a cheap double entendre on the main page for a few hours. Kevin McE (talk) 17:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Aliens is what they were called at the time, and aliens is how they are termed in the source. DYK thrives on teasing readers to encourage them to click on the article (and no harm is done in this case). Anyway, it's all too late; it's been on the main page and is now safely in the archive. And to use the word alien to mean a little green man is a rather silly modern interpretation of the word, which does have a proper historical meaning. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 18:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is the source of recent publication? And the issue of whether it is acceptable to phrase the article so as to accommodate a DYK hook is far from come and gone. It does not matter whether something might be considered a "rather silly modern interpretation" if it is most people's primary interpretation: we write for the reader, not for those in a position to make such a judgement on the reader. Kevin McE (talk) 20:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1995 at the earliest. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 21:49, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The matter of phrasing the article to allow a DYK hook is a non-issue: the hook was suggested after the article was nominated at DYK. Yomangani ^talk 23:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The correct term is enemy aliens. This is the term that was used at the time and is the encyclopedic term used by historians. It would not have been shortened to aliens. Peter I. Vardy's initial hook was absolutely spot on and should not have been changed to make it more quirky (the word 'enemy' was dropped). Having said that, Kevin McE (despite being correct to pull you up on the unecessary quirkiness here) is also missing the boat here with his suggestions of "foreign prisoners". They were called enemy aliens at the time and that is the correct term to use. Foreign prisoners is misleading and incorrect. I'll quote here what I said at the DYK talk page:

"enemy alien" is a term that was commonly used in World War I and World War II relating to internment of foreign nationals living and working in the UK or the imperial dominions. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. It would be nice to link to an article on that, but there isn't one yet. Have a look at this and this if you want to know more about this. Direct quotes from those sources:
"The Isle of Man was used by the British Government for the internment of enemy aliens during both World War One and World War Two" [...] "After Great Britain entered the First World War in August 1914, the government of Canada issued an Order in Council under the War Measures Act. It required the registration and in certain cases the internment of aliens of "enemy nationality". This included the more than 80,000 Canadians who were formerly citizens of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. These individuals had to register as "enemy aliens" and report to local authorities on a regular basis."
In other words, the term 'enemy alien' is an encyclopedic term and is being used absolutely correctly here. The hook should have used the original wording.

Please, next time anyone is uncertain about military terminology or terminology relating to the World Wars, go and ask around at places like the Military History WikiProject or the Reference Desk. Or even simpler, look for the article we had on the topic. Did no-one even think to look that up? Rather than trying to be quirky, link readers to our article on the subject. Tsk. Carcharoth (talk) 23:41, 13 September 2011 (UTC) To be fair, I managed to miss for a long time while reading around this, that we had the article enemy alien, as I was looking for an article on WWI internment instead.[reply]

Nice tsking, but "alien" isn't incorrect, as demonstrated by your quoted source (...the internment of aliens...). "Enemy alien" is just jargon with an added level of precision. There is no disservice to the readers in piquing their curiosity with a quirky hook - most readers don't need to be cosseted quite so closely. Yomangani ^talk 00:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you want to argue the toss, your hook presumed that people know who Robert Graves is. Me, I click on anything to do with World War I, and your hook dropped all reference to World War I and would have made me less likely to click it. But, putting aside the 'quirky' arguments, can you accept at least that a hook linking to and using the term enemy alien would have avoided Kevin's objections and rebutted his suggestions of 'foreign prisoner'? Carcharoth (talk) 00:29, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Railway Rolling Stock made by the Company[edit]

The Weston Clevedon and Portishead Railway (WCPR):

This was a little known short railway linking 3 towns in North Somerset around the 1900's, and which closed in 1940, obtained some short clerestory open veranda coaches from the LC&WW. Basically an American outline coach similar to the prolific type found in American and subsequently imported to the UK and many (then) commonwealth countries.

The WCPR web site reports the LC&WW was due to make open veranda short clerestory coaches for the Argentine Railway, but the vehicles were bought in 1897 "new by the WC&PR when the order fell through. Just like those in a Western cowboy film, they had end platforms with ornate ironwork, clerestory roofs, centre corridors, and passenger steps. Seating was mostly longitudinal. The body was made from mahogany originally painted dark crimson, later dark brown. The last three to survive, Nos 1, 2 and 4 were later painted dark green. They had two four-wheel bogies. Christopher Redwood’s book ‘The Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Railway’ has scale drawings of carriage No 2 for modelling."

Pictures are available: WCPR Home page and Rare photo of 2 of the carriages