Talk:Ambrose Channel pilot cable

Sources to include
Ambrose Channel ships now use the following aids to navigation GPS: Daniello, Vince. "The Perfect Plot." Yachting, July 2006: 34. RADAR: Andrea K. "How this Ship Came in." New York Times: 1. Dec 04 1994. Lighted buoys: "New York's Ambrose Light to be Demolished." Journal of Commerce, July 28 2008 I'll add these in the next 24 hours in order to support a claim that is currently unreferenced. Andrew327 21:14, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Review proposal
Hello, Andrew. I am considering reviewing this article (pretty interesting), but am new at this, so it might be an interactive process. Are you okay with that? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:37, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, I believe that all GA reviews should be interactive with lots of back-and-forth. Andrew327 22:43, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Such enthusiasm! How could I possibly disappoint? Okay, I'll start the review process. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk)

Lead paragraph
As I said in the review, the lead sentence seems awkward, even confusing. So I have been trying formulate an alternative. E.g.:


 * The Ambrose Channel pilot cable ... was a cable laid in Ambrose Channel (entrance to the Port of New York and New Jersey) that provided an audio tone for guiding ships in and out of port at times of low-visibility.

Does that seem clearer, less awkward? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, I would have left the "entrance to ..." bit in parentheses, as that is a subsidiary detail that is there only to give the reader a quick location of the Ambrose Channel. But not an issue.

A detail not cited in the review but still a good thing to have to entice people into reading the article: a lead image. The one image could work, but many folks like the lead illustrations to be smaller. By any chance would you have any candidates? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:12, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Additional sources.
Searching Google ("leader cable admiralty navigation") turned up two good sources: An article in Nature about the Portsmouth cable, and a book (Grant, U-boat Hunters) that describes several cables used by the German U-boats during WWI. These could be useful in providing some context for the Ambrose Channel. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 03:20, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Context is useful, but some of the historical background would be better used to create Underwater navigation cable. This article is about one specific example.  I'm working on adding more detail, but there's no need for a history of the concept and all related engineering projects.  Andrew327 03:35, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure, we don't need a complete history of the concept, etc., but it didn't arrive out of the blue, and there should be some mention of its antecedents. I see you've added Sennett; but it seems that Stevenson is the one who developed this particular use, so he really needs a mention. Similarly, the Ambrose cable was not unique, and mention of some of the other instances, without getting into details, seems appropriate for providing the context.  (And might even encourage articles on the other cables.)

By the way: have you seen the comment at Category_talk:Radio_navigation bemoaning lack of coverage of the Leader Cable concept, and offering some content? The comment is five years past, but there is an e-mail address. Perhaps that could lead to some material. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:17, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * While trolling for some French sources I found an interesting article at http://amitrtlu.free.fr/histoire%20de%20TRT/sipl/sipl.htm ("... câble-guide (« leader cable » pour les Anglos-Saxons)", which says Loth invented the leader cable. Also a mention of a dispute with another fellow, but my French isn't good enough to sort out what that was about. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 17:58, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed reorganization, and offers
I'd like propose a re-organization along the following lines.


 * 1) The "Backgound" section to be revised, limited to the problem the cable addressed, not its development, etc.
 * 2) The "Cable installation and operation" and "Specification" sections to be replaced with a "Description and operation" section.
 * 3) "Research and development" retained, but renamed "Development".
 * 4) "Opening and reception" reorganized as "Installation and opening".

Arranging the material like this would make it more coherent, more logical in presentation.

I also have an offer: to write the proposed "Description and operation" section. With the material at hand I think I could put together something decent, to which you could add such material you've found.

I make another offer: to clean up the references. However, this is subject to two caveats: 1) I do references in templates. (Much easier!) 2) I put all references in a separate section (again: easier), which implies use of harv templates in the notes. Some editors strongly dislike these (they can be a little tricky) but, again, in the long-run I find them easier than the alternatives. (This is not required for GA, but, frankly, the existing references look like crap, which devalues the goodness of the rest of the article.) Indeed, I find it easier to make these kind of changes than to do any kind of work without doing them.

So: a proposal and two offers. What is your preference? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:54, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for asking before fixing the references. I would really appreciate that.  I'd also like it if you contributed content per your offer.  I have one question: do you think it would be worth creating a new article for underwater navigation cables?  Clearly there's enough coverage to make it notable.  Andrew327 01:54, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I hate having to undo work. Okay, you're good with using citation templates, and I presume (??) with harv templates as well; I'll start working on the references (off-line). You didn't mention how you feel about reorganizing, so for the moment I will proceed somewhat cautiously (like a "slow order" in railroad parlance?), being prepared to stop.
 * Good question. Although from my review of the sources I believe "Leader cable" would be more appropriate, as being the more established term, and encompassing the guided autonomous vehicles used in factories as well as landing systems and underwater navigation. I wonder just how much material such an article might have, but short is okay. And if there are to be other related articles describing the basic principle in its own article would avoid repetition. So I am inclining towards "yes", but check with me again in a day or two.
 * I should like that all this work could be done in the seven days the bot grants us (like, tomorrow? I think it does an automatic fail), but that might be overly hopeful. Note that in doing any substantial contributions I may be barred from doing a subsequent review. Time to get to work! ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:48, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Proceed as quickly as you want, I'm excited about the idea of this article being substantially improved! I nominated it for GA, but in no way to I want to own it.  Andrew327 20:19, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * We certainly wouldn't want anyone to think I let you get by easy, eh? :)
 * I just got the word: the bot isn't that automatic, we don't have to sweat the seven days. Also, working on this will preclude my reviewing any subsequent nomination, so we might as well get it right this time. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:13, 15 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I just changed the sections as proposed, except: it occurred to me that "Research and development" might be better as "Development and testing". I leave that to your discretion. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:48, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Have revised the "Description" section. (Though I should tighten up the citations a bit.) ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:01, 16 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I am going to add to the Development section some verbiage that came to me when I was working on the other section. Hopefully that will be useful, but modify as needed to fit in with whatever you come up with. Also, I think this is the only place where Hanson warrants a mention, and I will remove him from the other places.  (As I said before, the LA times may have been over-laudatory, as the more reliable sources barely mention him.)  ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:09, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Notes on converting "named refs" to Harv templates.
I have extracted the citation templates from the article, revised and reformatted them, and put them into the "References" section (needs a little more work, including alphabetization), while moving the {Reflist} to the new "Notes" section. Currently the content in "Notes" largely duplicates that in "References" because full citations were originally put into the footnotes (endnotes); these can now be converted to shorten citations. At the end of "Notes" you will see two footnotes where this has been done (using harv). Note that the specific page where the material cited is found is given in the short cite. Thus each of the cites to (say) Wilhelm (Radio Broadcast) or Crossley can have a specific (and different) page number.

If you open "References" in edit mode you will find each of the references preceded with a Harv template suitable for use in the text. (Well, mostly. Several references, lacking authors, I still need to sort out.) Also included are the corresponding "named refs" from the text which should be replaced with the Harv template. When editing individual sections I find it useful to temporarily add a " " at the bottom to display the notes.

There are a couple of references I didn't work too hard on as it seems the source is not useful, and might not be retained. (E.g., Hanson's articles in Popular Mechanics and Aerial Age Weekly, and the AGS article.)

Questions? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:19, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I converted one of the LA Times citations to show how handle quotes. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:36, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Pointers re citation templates.
A couple of points to note. The citation template will automatically generate a suitable CITEREF if it can find a year (from "year" or "date") and author(s) last name (from "last"). (And also the cite family of templates, but may have to add "refharv".) My copious use of "refCITEREFxxxx" is for unsigned articles, where we do not have the author's name; otherwise an explict CITEREF is usually unnecessary. A couple of places where you added them (Armstrong, ?) I noticed you had date discrepancies. (I believe I have aligned them to the correct date, but you may want to check.) Also, in one case (Davis) you first/last reversed. A trick I have found most helpful: when you encounter problems with citation links not working, get your browser to open the page in "source" mode, then search for the expected link. Or only part of the link, in case something is misspelled somewhere. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:25, 29 August 2013 (UTC)