User talk:Andy Dingley/Archive 2009 April

Keep calm etc.
Andy, if you need to revert deletions from Keep Calm and Carry On but are worried of falling foul of email me and I'll do it. JHR's got my mobile if you want to SMS me. I suspect this guy might be a sockpuppet who has an interest in a commercial firm selling KCACO merchandise, as he deletes all references to public domain and Yes No Maybe but not to Barter Books. Definitely something fishy. I'll be AFK between 9am-6pm tomorrow Sat but other than that will be near a console within half an hour or so for the next week. Alternatively, I'd be happy to raise an abuse report on him. Cheers, Andrew Oakley (talk) 14:59, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I've still got one spare, AFAIR and I'd just carry on anyway under the general exception clause for gross vandalism. Otherwise he seems to get rv'ed by others fairly well anyway.
 * The commercial sockage idea is interesting. Think you might be right there. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:05, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

British Rail Class 23
Thanks for expanding the article - is it ok to change

"suffering from vibration in its geartrain and a resonant whirling in the long drive shaft connected to it at particular rpm"

to

"suffering from vibration in its geartrain causing (eventually) destructive resonance in the long drive shaft to it at particular rpm"

(bracket terms optional, I assume the things didn't fail first time?)

The term "reasonance whirling" isn't familar to me, and doesn's sound quite right. You have the book clearly (I don't) so I wouldn't want to change it to something that is not right. Also can you confirm that the drive shaft was a cardan shaft or similar as that would make sense.

Cheers.FengRail (talk) 00:12, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * No, it wasn't destructive resonance. It was a cardan shaft, but is that any clearer to readers here who might not recognise the term? - it's a redir to drive shaft anyway. The shafts weren't even destroyed (always), as that would have stopped the fans and given some obvious warning. What seems to have happened is that the shaft whirled (which is a fairly well-known behaviour in the world of vibration) and bowed excessively, such that it then hit the coolant pipework and damaged that. Cue a rapidly overheated engine, without enough notice to even shut it down before damage. There was argument between EE & the shaft maker as to the failure sequence: EE claimed the shafts whirled and hit the pipework, the shaft maker claimed that the shafts didn't move outside permitted limits, but that they then hit some other incorrectly-located engine part and were bent by the impact. The underlying problem was probably that they were simply too long and thin for that design of shaft. In the short lifetime of the Baby Deltics, no-one really got to the bottom of it.


 * Another question for this article is how much detail to go into regarding the engine failures (there's a good article waiting on Causes of failure in the Napier Deltic engine, but I couldn't face trying to get that past wikipedia's peanut gallery). The Baby Deltic's were mostly cooling failures, caused by the assumption that aerospace engineering approaches were appropriate to the railway engineering working environment! The 55's had something similar, related to differences between assembly quality when BR started doing the rebuilds, compared to when Napiers did them. Although the root cause of the Baby Deltic's cooling problems trace back to incorrect lubricants, this wasn't a "lubrication problem", as the article originally misleadingly said. The pistons were significantly oil cooled and very minor surface corrosion could drastically affect the efficiency of this, hence the overheated pistons. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Causes of failure in the Napier Deltic engine : You could always expand or create a new section of Napier Deltic
 * I assumed the shaft had snapped - thus a cardan shaft could form a scything motion due to its hinges - as it turned out my guess was wrong...
 * I am the average reader! - I need (even deserve) a proper explanation of stuff - not throwaway details.. Not intended as a criticism of you.
 * As per detail - half the problem is that there isn't any info on the actual design - eg stuff like

I think if the article covers the design - then it's a lot easier to expand upon any failures since the "technical problems" section doesn't need to do double the work of actually explaining what the set up was - If you see what I mean. DBAG Class 101 (not a very good example) gives a good example of the amount of detail that can be included.
 * Where is the engine (middle, off centre, slung below main frame)
 * How is the main alternator attached - directly to the engine - via gears, a shaft etc
 * How are the fans / compressors powered - mechanically via a shaft, or via motors - if so is the power from an auxillary generator - how is it powered. - this last piece of information leads naturally to the "severed fuel links" problem.
 * Is there anything that can be said about the switchgear or other electrics - is the tranmission DC, are the motors in parallel - ie the obvious questions.
 * The frame - is the bodywork part of the supporting structure, or just a non load bearing shell.
 * Any other obvious stuff - traction motors are axle hung I assume?
 * Feel free to go into as much detail as you wish in the article. There isn't any real limit to how technical an article can be.


 * So the shaft whirled like a skipping rope - I didn't expect that - the rpm must be around 1000rpm ? Must have been very thin.FengRail (talk) 13:44, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Fly ash — Waste management
Comment found in history: (Waste management - if some editors weren't so over-hasty to delete anything suggesting commercial involvement, they might be able to learn more).

I agree: it is a convincing argument ! You make a good point ;-) I was maybe over-hasty in my clean-up of this section and I realise now I lost the thread of your contribution during different edits separated by one day. Sorry for that. But this section was messy, especially in the last sentences at the end. The general tone was also a little bit "too" commercial (however, it is my personal perception) to preserve the neutral point of view of the topic required for an "encyclopedic" work. But there is no problem for a neutral text with an adequate citation of a commercial company as you recently added. My personal experience learns me also that when I am not sufficiently neutral in some of my edits (often, too enthusiast), their lifetime is shortened and I also do not appreciate over-hasty deletion, nor sectarism. It was certainly not my intention, but the application of the following and difficult principle: Not when you have nothing more to add, But when you have nothing more to take away. (Antoine de Saint Exupery)
 * You know you have achieved perfection in design,

Cheers, Shinkolobwe (talk) 23:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Rollback
Please be aware that rollback should only be used to revert vandalism and not if you disagree with content. BTW Carmarthenshire Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire are classed as West Wales. Agathoclea (talk) 10:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * When Pendine moves to Ceredigion, you'll have a point. This isn't an article on a large region such as Carmarthenshire (which I agree is large enough to count as South-West Wales, or to be included in "West Wales") it's about Pendine and Pendine Sands alone, which is firmly on the South coast. If you'd changed it to "south west Wales" then I'd still disagree (Pendine isn't St Davids, or even Tenby), but I'd be inclined to treat it as a difference of opinion. Describing it in some rigid taxonomy as "West Wales" is just plain wrong and looks too much like vandalism. My apologies if you were acting in WP:AGF here (and I agree, rollback isn't intended for such cases), but it's still misleading and incorrect. Are you planning to propagate this misleading error into the articles for Pendine and Carmarthen Bay too? Andy Dingley (talk) 11:00, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It still is West Wales, but south coast will do fine. Just not South Wales. Agathoclea (talk) 11:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Boiler explosion
From your past experience with the various boiler articles I thought I should draw your attention to boiler explosion (which you haven't yet edited). It has a "re-write needed" banner, and having just looked at the sections again, I agree completely -- it's a right mess! Your name came to mind as I was adding it to my ToDo list -- with your greater familiarity with the subject matter you'll do a better job, more quickly, than I could.

On a similar matter, I have added an example to the 'Magnitude' section of Pounds per square inch regarding loco boilers. Could you check my figures please? (I used the GWR Dean Goods and Castle classes to get basic lower and upper values.)

Have a Happy Easter! -- EdJogg (talk) 08:34, 11 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I hadn't seen that article before, although I had been wondering about boiler explosion as a topic. I happened to read the Hewison book recently - it's a good source for such an article. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:13, 11 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Magnitude looks sensible for GWR practice and the others in general. Bulleid went higher: the Merchant Navies used 280 originally (and of course they were welded), but that was dropped to 250 when they were rebuilt. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:38, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Dust jacket
The recent addition of a large amount of new information was done by an expert on dust jackets who happens to be a WP newbie. I encouraged him to add his two cents, but I can see how it looks oddly dropped in, especially since he is just an IP. But I can vouch for the non-copy-vio of it-- in fact, the author of this new WP content is writing a book at this site. J L G 4 1 0 4 13:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)


 * You mean the site that claims "Copyright 2008©", and thus we can't use that same content? If he posts it to Wikipedia it's either a breach of his (maybe his publisher's) copyright as claimed by that site, or otherwise he's removing the copyright claim by posting it to Wikipedia under an implied GFDL. This will then mean he can no longer claim copyright over that same content any longer (he can still claim it, but it's not longer effectively protected by it). So long as he's aware of the implications of his actions, then his generous contribution is welcomed, but he is waving goodbye to some IP rights that he presently owns, but not if he posts it here.


 * Speaking from my own personal experience, there's a bunch of content that my own editor certainly wouldn't allow me to post here, at least not if I still expect to get paid for writing a book around it!


 * As a minor issue, content like this added to Wikipedia that pre-exists on another site claiming copyright over it (even if they stole it from here) is likely to find itself flagged by some copyvio search-bot, which is some more tiresome work to sort out. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:34, 20 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Good points-- I'll fill him in. Thanks. J L G 4 1 0 4  20:59, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Flag desecration
Hi Andy. I am trying to improve this article. The section which I removed and you put back about the British military did not seem to be to be about the topic at all. In fact it was about the opposite, how flags are honored not desecrated. The material was interesting and I have a great respect for British customs (I'm even a fan of the poetry of Rudyard Kipling!), however it had nothing to do with the article. I wouldn't object to other stuff being removed as well, as you mentioned. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:58, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The first para of this is verbose and I wouldn't object to it being half the length - stressing the military importance of "colours" is one thing, but a history of their capture is another. However I do think it's important to clarify vailing, and how this isn't considered desecration of a flag. Otherwise we have an article that claims one thing, omits the exception, and ignores a very public annual ceremony that would thus appear to be desecration of the flag, according to our then narrowed definitions.
 * As for America, I'd like to see the addition of something on superheroes. If the flag code (and having this as a written document itself seems quite peculiar to a Brit) states that the flag shouldn't be used as part of a uniform, where does this leave Wonder Woman? Was that use ever a public controversy? Andy Dingley (talk) 19:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a good question. I am old enough to remember the hippie era and some people then got upset when flags were used for clothing, seat covers in cars, etc.  Then in the 1970s this kind of thing became accepted. I have never heard of anyone objecting to a superhero's flag costume.  Captain America has one too of course. Steve Dufour (talk) 21:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * p.s. I took out the sentences you mentioned about the capture and defense of flags in battle. That seems to improve the section quite a bit.Steve Dufour (talk) 21:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

File:Robert Goddard 1924.jpg
You'd placed a comment on the talk page of File:Robert Goddard 1924.jpg a few months ago; it looks like your concerns haven't been addressed. You seem more familiar with the matter than I am, so I figured I'd ping you about it. 70.91.178.185 (talk) 22:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I'm not unduly concerned over this - I'd guess it probably is PD, and PD for the same reason, however our internal paperwork seems a bit unclear here. I'm guessing that the NASA PD does extend back to the 1920s, even though our boilerplate statement doesn't clarify it. This is perhaps more of an issue for our licensing labelling template than for individual images. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)