Talk:List of windmills

Comment
Well, I'm glad that the list was kept. If you care to check, it is developing nicely, and even subbing off lists of its own. How about some assistance? Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden are all well under-represented at the moment. Mjroots (talk) 05:07, 18 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I noted your comment was in response, delayed, to a deletion discussion back in 2002-2004, that i just chose to archive. Rather than to start off the Talk page that way, possibly a turnoff to new editors.  By the way, have all those separate lists of windmills, by region in the Netherlands, been developed since your comment in May?  Well anyhow the list has developed.  User:Swampyank created stub articles for most of the United States ones listed, i noticed, too. doncram (talk) 22:09, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Wind farms
I think the scope of this article needs to be discussed. So far, the list and its various sub-lists have dealt with traditional windmills. Modern wind generators are a kind of windmill too. Question is, do we include all windmills however powered and whatever their function (which would include iron windpumps and modern wind generators) in the one list, or do we have a separate list for iron windpumps (which I think would possibly mostly fail WP:N) and a separate list for modern wind generators / turbines? Mjroots (talk) 08:14, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

'Fake' Windmills?
I just fleshed out the entry previous marked as 'unknown location' (actually located in Setouchi, Okayama, Japan). However, this 'windmill' is not really a windmill, but a public toilet built in the shape of a windmill. Sure, it's tower-shaped and has a wheel turned by wind, but it doesn't function as a mill in any way. Even if it did, I don't think anybody would want what it produces. Should such fake windmills be included in this list at all? 119.241.29.148 (talk) 03:44, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

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Names of windmills, location info, other formatting for non-U.S.
As I noted at Talk:List of windmills in the United States, I have been changing over U.S. table formatting to lead each entry with name of windmill in "Windmill" or "Mill" field, then give all location info including coordinates in 2nd field.

For the U.S., many/most existing windmills have proper noun names. For example any one listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places has a name assigned by that program, which has good guidelines for how NRHP nominators are to choose names. Where a proper noun name is not immediately available, I have just put in "Windmill", or given a descriptive title such as "Windmill at Smith Cottage", which I think is okay. I don't mean for it to appear as if Wikipedia is coining a new proper noun name.

This list system was built using town or village names as the first column, as if that signifies enough. That didn't work well especially for some U.S. towns like Hempstead in New York which have multiple windmills, and it seems wrong to seem to identify them all as the same. Perhaps formal proper noun names are not as widely available in many other nations. But I wonder if names assigned by heritage registers can be found and used in some cases. And, is it okay/good to proceed with putting a name column first, even where just "Windmill" is the generic name, or non-name, being given at least for now? --Doncram (talk,contribs) 22:15, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

must a "traditional" windmill be a gristmill? and what does this list cover?
To User:Mjroots, User:Djflem, User:CaptJayRuffins and others: This list and various sub-lists are to cover what kinds of windmills? And how can that properly be defined and explained. This world-wide list is currently introduced as covering "all" windmills and wind pumps. And the windmill article says, I think accurately, that "windmill" is the term for other wind engines and for wind turbines.

In the lead of the List of windmills in the United States, in [ this version], I have tried to make distinctions using a photo gallery of a (perhaps-"traditional") windmill that is a gristmill, a wind pump, a modern wind turbine, and one odd plow-powering wind engine.

However, I fail to understand what is a "traditional" windmill or how we can define/explain that encyclopedically. In the U.S., "windmill companies" were founded in the 1800s to make wind pumps, and there have only ever been a few ones of the historic Dutch kind, which are imported, or built by immigrants, or are one-off architectural follies (some with moving parts and actually able to grind grains, some not ever functional). And the wind pump ones across the U.S. west are regarded as iconic, as symbols of American hard work and the cowboy life, etc. So "traditional windmills" in the US would naturally be the wind pumps, and the few Dutch-type ones are in fact really unusual and not "traditional" at all, despite some of them being the first and oldest windmills in the U.S. Some wind pump ones look to me a lot like Dutch-type windmills, too.

I wonder, is there a wish here to define "traditional" windmills as wind-powered gristmills?

And, especially in the U.S. and Canada, where companies such as Eclipse Windmill Company (1873) and Aermotor Windmill Company (1888-today) have been the main suppliers of "windmills", I come around to thinking a "List of windmills" should simply allow all kinds. Even modern wind turbines that are notable, e.g. for being the first one of a given design, or e.g. as the first off-shore wind turbine in the U.S. (which may be one in Castine, Maine, I am not sure). So should I start adding a few modern ones, or is there some distinction which can be made (attributed to sources)? I am afraid it can look like we are randomly calling some "traditional" and some not. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 01:14, 11 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I see that Windmills lead gives supposedly Merriam-Webster-sourced assertion that "A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called sails or blades, by tradition specifically to mill grain (gristmills)..." and I just tagged that as not in reference because that is not what M-W says.


 * Historic Dutch windmills may have been mostly NOT gristmills, but rather more sawmills and powder mills (including gunpowder mills) and other, per Boomgaard article I cite in Indonesia section now."In 1630, there were already 86 windmills in Holland for sawing timber alone, of which 53 were along the River Zaan (to the north of Amsterdam). In 1730, the number of sawmills driven by wind in Holland had increased to 448. Beside sawing timber, windmills were also used, among other activities, for the production of flour, vegetable oil, paper, tobacco, paint, and hemp.Footnote 9."
 * And weren't some of the historic ones pumping water to reclaim polders? I am whipsawing, but is the idea that traditional = gristmill simply false, and should we strike that out of Wikipedia articles? -- Doncram (talk,contribs) 04:56, 11 March 2023 (UTC)


 * As covered above, many processes could be performed by windmills. So, the answer to the question is "no". A "traditional windmill" is generally a post mill, smock mill or tower mill (this covers 99%+ of traditional windmills). Mjroots (talk) 05:29, 11 March 2023 (UTC)