Talk:Postage stamp error

Double
It already exists Errors, freaks, and oddities : which one has the best title ? Sebjarod 12:35, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I separated them on the theory that each would get longer (note that I created both). EFO is kind of a blanket term, almost a disambiguator, while this one is only about the "important" errors - constant-type mistakes in the printing process. Merging either way is not ideal terminologywise, but I suppose if there are articles on each specific kind of error, this shrinks down and could become a set of signposts within EFO (I think I expected the list of errors to be longer, but there seem to be only 4-5 major types). Stan 16:51, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I am not an expert of philately, but I do not understand why those articles cannot be merged. If there is a difference, it should be clearly explained in the articles: remember, Wikipedia should make such things understandable to layman. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I support Stan regarding the idea behind creating the two articles. Let's compare it to this example. There is a mother article Automobile describing a general notion of "a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers". And there are daughter articles Classic car, Compact car, Pickup truck, Sport utility vehicle, etc., each referring to a particular type of automobile. Here is the similar approach for understanding a relationship between the two articles. EFO is a general class of philatelic "freaks", so to say, and Postage stamp error is one of its three subclasses. So, I think there is no need in merging the two articles, though some more explanation may be added in both for better clarification. --Michael Romanov (talk) 12:56, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarifying that, but I do not see the reason why the EFO article cannot discuss all the errors. Sure, I see a reason for why individual errors are notable (invert error and so on), but a dedicated article on postage stamp error seems a little over the top, seeing as all of its content can be clearly described in the EFO article. Do you think we should have articles on postal stamp freak and postal stamp oddity too? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 15:25, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Freaks and oddities are by definition one of a kind, and there is not much more to say than that accidents happen in the printing plant. Errors are the main item of interest, since they are avoidable problems that occur at a point in the process where the error is potentially replicated many times, and there is some research involved in determining how many can occur, how the problem was solved, etc.  I note that EFO not a commonly-seen term, it would be a little perverse to prefer it over the much more common "error". Stan (talk) 17:57, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I do know something about philately and I also write professionally about stamps for a leading hobby magazine in the U.S. In my opinion, one article is sufficient. It is true that errors are a subset of EFOs (hence the automobile analogy, above) but it is also true that the term "EFO" is not familiar at all to the layman, and only familiar to a portion of the stamp collecting community. Freaks and oddities garner about one-tenth of the interest (and prices) among collectors compared to proper errors. The combined article can be called "Postage Stamp Errors" and should probably be devoted about 85% to errors, with sections on Freaks and Oddities getting the remaining 10% and 5%, respectively. Tulliux (talk) 01:00, 29 September 2011 (UTC)