Talk:Voestalpine/Archives/2012

Liezen
@TobyJ: Can you tell more about this plant in Liezen? (What kind of plant?) --NeoUrfahraner 14:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC) Well I can say that I went to Liezen in May 2005 and saw it, and was told by a local that it had recently closed. I can't really say much more than that it is a big shed by the railway lines. I was in fact visiting the recycling enteprise GBL located in the small industrial estate that has been huilt on the other side of the railway to provide replacement jobs.TobyJ 11:47, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

This article is a mess
I confess that I made the mess.

It all started because every two weeks I drive past this big empty metal building which used to be a factory. Because the company's name sounds dirty, I thought that might be an incentive to create an article about the company. There was very little on the web about the company except for its takeover by Voestalpine, which, according to newspaper articles still on the web about the factory's troubles, owned 49 percent. That seemed like a good enough reason to add the factory's information to the parent company's article.

The problem is that integrating the various facts related to the company with the naughty name introduced some problems in the article, and in the process of solving those problems, I found opportunities to solve other problems with the article. Different sources give different names for Voestalpine--all capitals for the first part, no capitalization whatsoever, umlaut, CamelCase, hyphen, etc.--and let's not even get into the fancy German words. One source said one company called Voestalpine was doing business with another company called Voestalpine. Some sources say one of those companies is owned by Siemens.

I found a couple of places where the Siemens company could have redirects to Voestalpine. One was a disambiguation page called Vai. Another possibility was creating a redirect from Siemens VAI to Voestalpine, since German Wikipedia has that article. After asking at a library how I could find out about Siemens VAI, I happened to mention that German Wikipedia had an article. The person told me about translation services--well, what I have looks like a Help Desk request from India. I could probably figure that stuff out.

Meanwhile, I seem to have spent approximately six hours on a project that started just because it seemed like fun to write about a company with a dirty name--but because I want to help improve this article to the point where it makes sense. Each name used for voestalpine in my contributions is whatever name appeared in the source. I did take the liberty of not capitalizing Alpine even though the voestalpine web site does so, because VOEST is an acronym but Alpine is not. However, once the Alpine name was added to VOEST I finally concluded neither should be capitalized.

I am currently unable to find proof Siemens owns any part of this company, though something called VA Tech Wabag is hopeless. It seems to be related. I could probably clean up that article but it would require lots of time and a complete overhaul.

I have the time, since I don't have a job, but I would prefer to do other stuff. But you know how some people can't stand it when a picture on the wall is crooked. Wikipedia is similar but you can spend hours and hours fixing something that looked minor. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:12, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I posted the following in what I have been told is the wrong place when I was told to go to the voestalpine web site (it turns out I did get some help, but not really what I needed):


 * Oh, right, the company's web site. But you don't really want me to rely on that, do you? Besides, it's not that clear.


 * I'm sorry, the web site is not helping me with my problem. Nowhere on the web site that I have seen does it state Siemens owns anything. The Siemens VAI web site just tells us what a great company it is and makes no mention of Voestalpine. I'm out of answers. As I said, all I wanted to so was say a dirty-sounding word on Wikipedia, and I've done it. The article is unbalanced now, and quite a mess, as a result, but I guess further discussion of that goes on the talk page. All I wanted was the proper procedure to talk to the Germans.


 * Good news! I asked at a library and was told to use a web translator. By the way, I have since found a third dirty word I need to deal with because the link takes me to a disambiguation page, and because I suspect the dirty word is yet another form of the voestalpine name. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:42, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, after quite a bit of investigation, it turns out VAG does not refer to voestalpine at all, but to "Versova to Ghatkopar via Andheri". I fixed the Siemens and VAG pages accordingly. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Which company is which?
I keep finding references to various companies called Voest-Alpine or Voestalpine followed by English or German words. Whatever name is used in the source, that's what I use here when I add to the article.

Without a source to confrim this, it is not up to me to interpret whether all these different companies really are different companies, or whether one company owned another at one time but doesn't any more, or whether both companies that own company no. 3 are the same company. As I keep searching, I don't seem fo find answers, only new questions.

I did find one person who was willing to expand the company's early history and it looks great. Now, if more people could come in and figure out what's going on with all these companies CALLED Voest-Alpine. And let's not even get started on VA Tech Wabag. I'm not entirely convinced now that ANY of the companies under "American operations" are in fact the subject of this article. They all just happen to be NAMED Voest-Alpine, and there must be a connection because of the name. It's a natural mistake that I made. Fuchs seems to be a big, important company but I just can't find enough to justify an article about it--especially when I can't figure out what company it is. Meanwhile, the big empty building just sits there. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I came this close yesterday. UNC-Charlotte has some additional resources, none of which helped. At any library, though, I could have accessed a Steel News article which said it had a history of what I will abbreviate VAI. FINALLY! Only it didn't. There was no way to get Full Text. I'll keep working on this. Surely in steel country some library has this. Hopefully the story behind VA Tech is in that article too.

I updated one section where I described how VAI became part of Siemens. I did this using the mathematical law if A=B and B=C, then A=C. I knew A=B and A=C but had to conclude (which technically we're not supposed to do) that B=C. But the evidence is there, so this is legal.

I have discovered VAE was part of Voest-Alpine (the real one), then it wasn't, and then it was. So it is justified in being here. Plus it has American operations. So does Roll Forming, which is part of the real voestalpine. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 17:46, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Business Source Premier, an EBSCO service, led me to a magazine article. If anyone wants to verify its existence I can send it as an attachment in an email. That's how I received it, actually. According to this article, the company I've been calling VAI (I'll have to double-check sources to make absolutely certain I did the right thing) once had a connection to Voest-Alpine. Whether it's notable enough for its own article is debatable, but if it's not, it probably belongs here--at least for the reason that people will not realize Voest-Alpine Industries is not Voest-Alpine Stahl. If not, someone please say so. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:49, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I've added some company information about VA Technologie to VA Tech Wabag. . There's actually far more information about Voest Alpine Industrieanlagenbau. I'm not quite certain whether, given the new information I've found, that company deserves its own article. I don't know whether to leave that information in this article or move it to the other article. If I did the latter, I'd have to find a way to balance coverage of VA Tech's four business areas. It doesn't look like VAI is overwhelmingly large compared to the others. Only the coverage is. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 17:31, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * In the German Wikipedia, there are separate articles de:VA Technologie and de:Siemens VAI in addition to the articles for which an English version already exists (de:voestalpine and de:WABAG). In my opinion, such seperate articles are needed, but unfortunately I currently do not have the time to start them. --NeoUrfahraner (talk) 17:00, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I've certainly devoted more than my share of time to this. For all the information I've found about VAI, not much of it really fits in a Wikipedia article. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:57, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I did it. It's 10,000 bytes and definitely better than the German or Russian articles, but certainly not ideal by Wikipedia standards. I also did the interlanguage links for all of them. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 17:34, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Lower case or not?
This discussion seems to suggest the template shouldn't be used. I'll let others decide, but use of the company's name in most sources I've seen show it as lower case. The change took place in 2001, so previous mentions of the company in the article should be capitalized. This is not referring to Voest-Alpine Industries, which seems to be a separate company. If anyone can figure out how that company should be covered in Wikipedia, I'm all ears. It appears the entire "American operations" section refers to that company (now part of Siemens) rather than voestalpine. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - My understanding is that like American English / British English, either is acceptable providing that there's an argument to be made either way. Editors on a page are encouraged to (possibly arbitrarily) pick one and stick to it.  My personal feeling is that it should be capitalised - this is the English Wikipedia, and proper nouns in English are capitalised whether they want to be or not. - DustFormsWords (talk) 00:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think that use of the lowercase "voestalpine" is anywhere near widespread enough for it to be considered an exception to the MOS:TM guideline. Gr1st (talk) 06:07, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay I wasn't aware of that guideline. That seems pretty definitive. Uppercase it is. - DustFormsWords (talk) 06:25, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Is that just for the title or for the company name in general? Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 14:30, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It refers to usage in general. It's not uncommon however for such "unusual" trademarks to be noted (once) within the article (e.g. here, here, here and here). Gr1st (talk) 18:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Do I need to change it in the article? Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:22, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Pennyslvania and WikiProject Pittsburgh
I noticed these wikiProjects were connected with another article I've been working on. Since the Siemens VAI division, which is covered in this article until someone figures out a better way, seems to have its headquarters outside Pittsburgh, I was thinking these two projects also have a connection with this article. As it happens, this is a C-class article too. Not sure of its importance. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 18:13, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Noricum
The article should mention the Noricum scandal.

For help see Maschinenfabrik Liezen und Gießerei, GC-45 howitzer, Alfred Worm and de:Noricum-Skandal - or use google - as I understand it some directors of VOEST ended in prison, along with others including politicians. The company MFL was a subisiary of VOEST at the time.Mddkpp (talk) 05:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Why I started improving the article
In fact, I discovered the factory never had any connection to THIS Voestalpine, but to another company that was once part of it. I pass by the factory every two weeks and assumed it was empty. But one day I saw cars parked out front. I had time to stop in and found out another company is there, though a handful of cars certainly means the 200 jobs weren't replaced. But at least it's not empty. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:19, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
 * My most recent research turned up evidence the factory got a new owner almost immediately after it closed. Six jobs, compared to 230. Oh, well. Better than being abandoned.— Vchimpanzee  ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:01, 10 December 2012 (UTC)