Talk:Unpowered aircraft

See also: Talk:Glider and Talk:Sailplane

Space Shuttle

The text says that the glide ratio of the space shuttle is 1:1, but I thought it was 4:1. Could someone more knowledgeable say anything about this? -- di92jn

NASA's web site gives 18-20 degrees. If my sums are right that is 3:1. Article amended JMcC 11:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Glide angle depends on Mach number. Hypersonic, it's about 1:1. At landing it's about 4:1.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 06:25, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Right name?

It seems to me that the subject matter is listed incorrectly under Gliding rather than Soaring. The opening sentences aptly make the distinction between Gliding and Soaring and then the rest of the article is about Soaring. WPElliott 16:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The world governing body, Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, calls it 'gliding' so I think that is the definitive name and no change seems likely. JMcC 12:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense, thanks WPElliott 15:53, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Inventor of the air glider.

My son has been on this site doing homework about inventors. The problem that he seems to be coming across is well reflected right here. Under the category of inventors, it states that Otto Lilienthal is the inventor of the air glider. When you click on "air glider" by his name, you get a COMPLETELY different answer. Can someone help here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.18.7.141 (talk) 11:22, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I have never heard of an "air glider". The term "glider" is used to describe unpowered aircraft and so the word "air" is superfluous. The article on First flying machine gives a useful list of people who were crazy enough to launch themselves into the air without first understanding aerodynamics. I am not sure that they were inventors, perhaps merely madmen. There is a blurred line between just plummeting less quickly and genuinely controlled flight. The latter needs an understanding of the basics of aerodynamics. Perhaps the Turk, who is listed as one of Turkey's great achievers by another Turk, also achieved controlled flight, but the first person who is recorded as having applied scientific method to the problem of heavier-than-air flight was George Cayley. I think that gives him the right to be called the inventor and he has been called the "father of flight". Cayley's coachman certainly flew his glider and two replicas of his glider have been flown in the recent past to show the practicality of the design. Furthermore Otto Lillienthal knew of Cayley's work and based his designs on it. However he also made great advances and many flights, and so was one of the people who in turn inspired the Wright Brothers. As with many inventions, the answer is not quite so simple as you might think. Penicillin and steam engines are other examples. The French even dispute that the Wright Brothers were the first with powered flight. JMcC (talk) 12:10, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Not sure. Any flight you walk away from is a good flight ;-)- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 06:30, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

We need to embrace the controversy, and describe who says what about who rather than take sides.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 06:33, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Yaw string

Your section on instrumentation should also include the Yaw String. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arydberg (talk • contribs) 17:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. The caption to the picture refers to the yaw string, which is linked to an article about turn & slip. I think that is sufficient and it keeps the article reasonably compact. JMcC (talk) 18:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Among the planes mentioned I could not find the Schweizer 2-33. You have a section on it at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_SGS_2-33

You might consider adding a link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arydberg (talk • contribs) 21:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion. It is impractical to list every type of glider in this article. However there is a link to List of gliders which does contain the redoubtable 2-33 and a link to its article. JMcC (talk) 23:48, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Scope of article

I'm not sure that the scope of the article is very clear. If it's a general article about gliders (which I think it should be), then it probably needs to be beefed up on all the different sorts of gliders there are. If it's mainly about sport gliders/soaring then that needs to be made clear and a new article on gliders in general created. What do others think?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 06:28, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

These days, the term 'glider', when used with a qualification, mainly applies to sailplanes used for sport and recreation. It could be argued that the term is generic but when people wish to refer to other types, they tend to say Military glider, Hang glider and Paraglider. With the exception of the space shuttle, there have been few other types of glider. If this article were broken up, it would have to finish at the end of the history section with the Wright Brothers and then have links to separate articles on sailplanes, Military gliders, hang gliders and paragliders, but I am not sure it would be a great step forward. JMcC (talk) 11:08, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

There's two issues here. There's the page that people get to when they type 'glider' and then there's what this article contains. I'm completely unconvinced that this article should be anything other than a general article on gliders, and sports gliders/sailplanes need to be elsewhere. Possibly at the end of the day most people will end up at sailplanes when they type in glider; but that's a separate question.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, I split the article. I turned the sailplane article into an article on fixed wings sports gliders, and made this the general article. It's still a bit incomplete and messy, but then again it was anyway, and I think that we need to take an eventualistic approach to this article as with all articles in the wikipedia.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:59, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I think there is a reasonably good case to mention birds or mammals that predominately glide here as well; change the definition to be inclusive and add a few paragraphs and perhaps a section or so.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 12:51, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I added it to the disambiguation page instead; currently by editorial choice we're defining the article to be for aircraft only.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:13, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The word "glider" is unfortunately fuzzy. It has at least four increasingly specific major meanings:

1. a thing that glides (including various flying machines. but also animals like the sugar glider)
2. an unpowered flying machine (including fixed-wing, flexible-wing and rotary-wing machines)
3. an unpowered, fixed-wing flying machine
4. a sailplane

This article used to be principally be about definition 4, with nods to definitions 2 and 3; and I'd agree that this probably reflects what most English-speakers think of as a "glider".

It's now been repositioned very firmly at definition 2; with sailplanes split to their own article and lots of material added about flexible-wing machines. I think this is problematic, and my feeling is that it should be positioned at definition 3, with nods to definition 2.

Pragmatically, both in terms of technology and of history, there's a lot of common ground between sailplanes and other fixed-wing gliders (and indeed, the line can be blurry in some cases); but very little common technology or history between these machines and the flexible- and rotary-wing aircraft that could also be described as various sorts of gliders. --Rlandmann (talk) 13:23, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Strongly support Thank you, Rlandmann. It sounds entirely reasonable to me. JMcC (talk) 14:32, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Well we're trying to write an encyclopedia. Historically they evolved from dictionaries. Dictionaries have multiple definitions per entry whereas encyclopedias have just one definition per entry. This means that for a dictionary and an encyclopedia to cover the same ground, the encyclopedia often has a lot more articles on the same word.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that the definition used should be number 1 or 2; or if this article isn't doing that, then we will need another article to cover the general case. It's then a question of consensus what the names of the articles are and which article you get when you type 'glider'.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I thought it would be interesting go through some of the internal links and sample how the term 'glider' is being linked. I suspected that it's frequently being used in the #1 or #2 sense, which you seem to be arguing shouldn't be an article, or perhaps I've misunderstood your position slightly, but here's the results from a random sample:

• Planform #4
• Human-powered_transport unclear, probably 2
• Aviation 2 (presumably a hang glider type thing)
• Combat_engineering 3
• Wing_loading 4
• Llanishen 4
• Birdman Rally 2

I got bored at this point but the range of usage is clearly fairly wide. There's well over 500 links to glider, and it's clear that a fair percentage of them are, if we use the definition #3 incorrectly linked. The implication would be that many users who search for glider every day (about 500 on average) are looking for #2, not necessarily #3 or 4.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, one more:

• Vertical_stabilizer #4 but the text said sailplane(!)

- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:56, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the links you've pointed out, I find a couple of very different results –

• Planform #3 – almost all fixed-wing gliders have high aspect ratio wings, not only sailplanes.
• Human-powered_transport #3 – it is, after all, in a section titled "fixed-wing aircraft" and, by contrast, is set off from a section on rotary-wing types.
• Aviation (link has changed – the context was Armen Firman's glider) 2 (agree)
• Combat_engineering 3 (agree)
• Wing_loading 4 (agree, but note that that the writer specifically qualified this as "modern gliders". I can't think of a modern glider that is not a sailplane. Can anyone else here?)
• Llanishen 4 (note that this link has changed in the meantime) - #3 British wartime gliding activities included training on primary gliders and and operating transport gliders (has since been revised to clarify)
• Birdman Rally 2 - (agree, but has since been revised to clarify)

I fail to see evidence that many users searching for "glider" are expecting to find information on flexible-wing machines. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:38, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Any way you cut it ~3 out of 7 is just under half. That implies that over 200 of the references are using it in the general sense; which probably means that about 30-40% of people are also using it in that way. What are you going to do, go through well over 500 articles and correct or leave each and every one? What about the people that want to know about gliders in the general sense? How does the wikipedia serve these guys? Are there no general principles or general discussions of general gliders to be had? What about the more obscure types of gliders like gyrogliders are you going to disambiguate to those as well in each and every case? It's just not practical to go with #3, and I don't think it's a good idea.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 21:14, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

This is a an article about gliders, I would say that in general useage nobody call a hang glider or flexi wing just a glider. Most gliders are sailplanes so I didnt see what was wrong with the original article, although it is difficult to tell it has been mangled so much. Link to Hang glider and Paraglider in intro is all that is required dont need a separate article on sailplanes. Remember this is a general encyclopedia and the article titles should be what the audience expects. If an unpowered fixed-wing aerial device with a fuselage flies past they would say look a glider the term sailplane in general usage is normally restricted to sports gliding. MilborneOne (talk) 21:02, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I find there's two questions here. Do we want or need a general article on gliders? and what article should appear when you go to glider. They're not the same question.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 21:35, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Both articles are now in a mess and apart from the confusion caused by the split there are inaccuracies in the pre-existing facts (which are unreferenced). The Glider (disambiguation) page covers gliding animals, paragliders and hang gliders etc. which is how it should be, the link is at the top of the article as a hatnote. My view is that this article (Glider) should concentrate solely on soaring un-powered fixed wing aircraft with three axis controls. There is no need for a separate sailplane article as it is just a different word for exactly the same thing, this can be explained in the lead paragraph. I note that the Motor glider article uses an official definition in the lead as I suggested earlier. The Shuttle on approach to land and any other fixed-wing aircraft suffering an engine failure is technically a 'glider' at that time, this could also be mentioned in passing. I notice that Gliding, a featured article, has been proposed to merge with sailplane, I also disagree with that, gliding is the act or sport of flying a glider, sailplanes are objects.

I can see a problem with linking a troop carrier like the Waco Hadrian or the Shuttle to Glider as it is obviously wrong, we could get round this by creating a short article like Gliding (flight) to explain.

The glider/sailplane problem stems from the advent of the word 'sailplane' whenever and whoever coined it many years ago, I for one would like to see where the term began bearing in mind that this is not Wiktionary. It is important to agree the way forward and fix the mess quickly, I would be willing to work on the 'Glider' article to correct and reference the facts, removing very obvious WP:OR and WP:NOTGUIDE sections at the same time. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 01:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

You say:

• There is no need for a separate sailplane article as it is just a different word for exactly the same thing, this can be explained in the lead paragraph.

Sorry, but that's not what the article says and it isn't in general true. Something called a sailplane is sometimes also called 'glider'. That doesn't mean that all things called gliders are sailplanes. All lions are cats, but not all cats are lions. Right? That's historically been the primary structural problem here. And it's particularly acute because sailplanes aren't even the most historically important sort of glider; for many hundreds of years hang-gliders were the only game in town. And one problem is that this is poorly reflected in the old article because of this structural issue in article layout.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• My view is that this article (Glider) should concentrate solely on soaring un-powered fixed wing aircraft with three axis controls.

You're agreeing that the split was a good idea then. The old article was schizophrenic, and that was a problem.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

First and foremost Glider must be separate from the sport of Gliding which is already a big enough subject on its own and a featured article. 'Gliding' is also the official name for the sport given by the FAI. I think that this has been accepted, judging by the lack of further debate, though there has been no concession. What has not been universally accepted is that the term 'glider' has a specific very common meaning in aviation and is used by the FAI, though it also has a more theoretical meaning. Since there is a common usage of term, the glider article should be more than just a disambiguation page. This is consistent with many other Wikipedia articles, eg type in Bomber and you will find the main article on the main meaning, but there is a link to other meanings if you want to find out about suicide attackers or Grenadiers. In the case of glider, the uncommon theoretical meaning can be quickly referred to in the opening paragraph. Few people will be confused or disappointed to find that there are also links to hang gliding and paragliding in this introduction. If interested in either of these types, they will not want to wade through material about the other types of unpowered aircraft. At present the unfinished revamp of glider is trying to combine information on gliders, hang gliders and paragliders in one article. It ends up by being too general or irrelevant to a reader trying to find out about one type. The one exception is the comparison table which I completed in hang gliding and which has now been reproduced in glider. Instrumentation, markings, landing, launching and manufacturers are all different. The article also contains gaps if paragliders and hang gliders are to be covered here in addition to their own articles. The present glider article is neither one thing nor the other. The recent changes may not even make sense to a purist and reduce the usability of these articles for the majority of readers. In summary, the scope should be as it was on 1 December 2008. JMcC (talk) 09:10, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

One further thing Wikipedia:Name#Use_the_most_easily_recognized_name states that "Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." I hope that this principle will guide our discussions and reduce the case for a "purist" title. Most people would not expect to type in the word 'sailplane' to find the article about gliders. JMcC (talk) 13:32, 12 December 2008 (UTC) & JMcC (talk) 13:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Now that the bout of editing seems to have subsided, we can now take stock of what has been gained and lost. There is a curious situation in which links from [[glider]]s are directed to [[sailplane]] while links from [[gliders]] are directed here. You can imagine that throughout wikipedia these slight variations have been used at random. I have therefore been through each in "What links here" to ensure that they at least link to the right article. After some shaky conclusions from the statistics above, I can announce that in reality only a minority of the links from elsewhere refer unpowered aircraft in general. Sailplane used to be re-directed to the common name of 'glider', but now glider is re-directed to the uncommon name of 'sailplane'. The comparison table has moved from hang gliding. It was originally there because there is a blurred line between hang gliders and paragliders. The editors of the hang gliding article will probably want something similar re-instated eventually, whatever we do to this table here. This article also unnecessarily duplicates information about instrumentation and markings giving an impression that these are now fillers to help justify this article's existence. Comparative data about launch and landing can be put into the comparison table. This article now has a tautologous name and so it should be moved to something like Unpowered aircraft. JMcC (talk) 09:36, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry on which one of these pages was a consensus reached to move the articles around ? MilborneOne (talk) 11:06, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

There never was a consensus; User:Wolfkeeper just did it. While radical changes were being made, it was impossible to judge whether the outcome would be beneficial, so it was best to leave it alone until the dust settled. Now the changes have subsided, I posted my evaluation of the net result above. I intend to make the changes that I have proposed above if there is general agreement. The effect of these changes will be to retain the extra article about unpowered aircarft that Wolfkeeper has created, though under a more logical name and without duplicating the glider article. Finally glider will once more be the name of the article that is currently called 'sailplane'. JMcC (talk) 17:33, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

OK thanks for that sounds like a reasonable plan as these recent moves and edits have made a right mess. MilborneOne (talk) 17:36, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Moving sailplane to 'glider' is a thoroughly rotten idea. What happens then is that people will continue to link to the wrong article. Phrases like 'minority' hide the fact that it's a lot of links, it's a big minority, people have won elections with that kind of minority; well over 200 currently, and more in future that go to completely the wrong place. That's because you've been attempting to define 'glider' as (for want of a better term and this term is at least accurate) 'sailplane'. By placing the article at sailplane users and, as or more importantly, editors are alerted to the fact that it is and was not ever a general glider article. But I'm not in any way hung up on that particular term. What I'm hung up on is the article name being accurate.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 20:39, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

If you want to rename it to something else, fine. Not glider.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 20:39, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree that renaming 'sailplane' to 'glider' was a horrible, unconstructive move. Everyone has their own reference for what a glider is. A hang glider pilot looks at a sailplane and says 'Look, a sailplane', a sailplane pilot will likewise ID a weight shift glider as a paraglider or hang glider, while HG pilots will refer to their craft as a 'kite', 'wing', or 'glider'. From outside, the POV of gliders=sailplanes is meaningless and reduces the utility of the article as a reference tool.Mavigogun (talk) 07:21, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Popularity of glider articles

• [1] Space_Shuttle has been viewed 97713 times in 200811.
• [2] gimli_glider has been viewed 17998 times in 200811.
• [3] Glider has been viewed 17255 times in 200811.
• [4] Paper_plane has been viewed 11528 times in 200811.
• [5] Gliding has been viewed 9202 times in 200811
• [6] Hang_glider has been viewed 3848 times in 200811
• [7] Paraglider has been viewed 1468 times in 200811

FWIW articles on non soaring gliders seem to be quite popular both individually as well as in aggregate. - (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:48, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:LEAD

This article currently takes WP:LEAD, tears it into shreds and then stamps on the remains.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 00:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Scope

There is no scope for this article. It used to have one, and one that was referenced, but that has been deleted. Why?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 00:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Mess

The article is a mess, filled with unsupported subjective conditionals. Rather than litter it with fact tags, I suggest we work to improve its encyclopedic quality. Particularly, the space dedicated to arbitrating differences between sail planes and all other gliders is of little merit.Mavigogun (talk) 06:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer 'under development' but all assistance will be gratefully received. The article has only just be created so there will be much scope. I have encountered much confusion between gliders, hang gliders and paragliders, so if the article is about all three, some sort of comparison seems essential. I would like the full list of weasel words; I am prone to using them. JMcC (talk) 10:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Just had a go at the lead section to try and explain the different types and tried to remove emphasis on sport gliders and sailplanes. MilborneOne (talk) 11:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Just to note I removed the bit about the number of glider pilots as it would be more appropriate to the Gliding article not an overview of unpowered aircraft. MilborneOne (talk) 11:32, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that this article is about the subject that dare not speak its name, but apparently some subgroup of editors here have unilaterally decided that an English word is only allowed one meaning in English and It Has Been Decided What It Is (tm).- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Funny that, the wikipedia is supposed to be about popular/common concepts, not words, and doesn't usually define words in a single way. I also wasn't aware that Unpowered Aircraft was the most recognised, popular general term for whatsisname.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Wolfkeeper if you have a problem then you need to make clear points about what that is we are not mindreaders. Also note that article building is consensus nobody makes unilaterral decisions that is not the way it works. So constructive comment would be helpful. Thanks MilborneOne (talk) 15:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I see no consensus, I just see cartel that just does whatever the hell it wants. Apparently it takes two to revert a template to ensure that it duplicates the links to the same articles enough times in every major aircraft article.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

There's no such thing as a consensus in the aviation articles. We have too few experts and too many opinionated know-it-alls. While I don't quite consider myself to be an expert, I at least have enough common sense to avoid making huge edits to an article without any discussion, which is what happened here. In my time in aviation, I have never heard anyone refer to a glider as an "unpowered aircraft", though the term may be technically correct. By that logic a kite is also an unpowered aircraft, but I don't think it really belongs in the same article as sailplanes or hang-gliders. So yes, some consensus would be nice when it comes to organizing and separating articles. Shreditor (talk) 20:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not even correct that gliders are unpowered aircraft. Quite a lot are powered over some or even all of their flight, the term glider is more about the form of the vehicle, rather than whether it is powered or not.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 11:11, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

This talk page is for addressing issues with the subject page content -not debate, dissertations, or soap box rants as to the merit of contributers or speculation as to the likely hood that contributions will be productive. Post plans, suggested contributions, feed back, or explanations of edits- you know, productive stuff. Vent in your own space.Mavigogun (talk) 06:52, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of move of this article to glider

At Talk:Glider#Proposal_to_move_this_article_to_somewhere_else.2C_and_move_unpowered_aircraft_here is a discussion to establish the consensus position as to whether glider should be moved away to somewhere like sailplane and this article moved to glider. If you have a comment please contribute there.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 10:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Why re-open this discussion? JMcC (talk) 00:24, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Mystifying reversal

On the page is a category box with four types of unpowered aircraft. The text says that there are four types of unpowered aircraft and justifies this statement by referring to the category box. This was reversed with the explanation "you have to be kidding". I am totally mystified what this is supposed to mean. JMcC (talk) 15:17, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you are counting differently. Could you both list what you are counting?--Mavigogun (talk) 15:28, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Unpowered

Unpowered flexible-wing

• Hang glider

• Paraglider

Unpowered fixed-wing

• Glider

Unpowered rotary-wing

• Rotor kite

I counted these as four types under three sub-categories under one major category JMcC (talk) 17:56, 8 January 2009 (UTC) Ah! Now I understand. I should have read the next sentence which uses a different categorisation from the one being used than the category box. Much grovelling. JMcC (talk) 18:15, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Which bit of it being unreferenced didn't you understand? Are all flexible wing gliders really 'hang glider' or 'paraglider's? Are all rotary wing glider's rotor kites? Neither is undeniably true, in fact I believe both to be self-evidently false. But whatever, it's uncited.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 11:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I think if you read what I wrote, I apologised to you. JMcC (talk) 14:02, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Illustration of Misnaming Convention

The Largest section in this article is named...? 'Comparison of types of gliders'. Why? Because it is accurate and sensible. 'Comparison of types of unpowered aircraft' would cast a broader net than intended- including errant leaves and flying squirrels and jet passenger aircraft that ran out of gas. The article is about gliders but is names something else. Why?Mavigogun (talk) 15:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Quite right and thank you for pointing it out. I had missed that one in all the changes when I copied it back with this heading from the misnamed glider article. The heading has now been corrected. JMcC (talk) 15:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Think about why you chose the words you did before -perhaps it was because they were accurate and succinct? Why did you rename it?--Mavigogun (talk) 15:32, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

It is not as if I am suppressing a deep instinct to call all unpowered aircraft 'gliders'. I renamed it because it was inconsistent with the title of the article. I should have read the section more carefully before copying it, because I would have spotted it that it used the cladistic naming convention that now seems to have been discarded. JMcC (talk) 18:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I am suggesting (of course) that the name of the article is broken. The point was clear; taking the above as an indicator of a typo is disingenuous. This is typical of the lack of dialog that has taken place during this edit conflict- people talk at each other, not with each other, using the words of peers to bracket their own pontification. The phrasing was natural, accurate, and succinct; the pretext of changing the heading so as no to conflict with the article title is specious, at best. The only conflict it posed was a political one in regard to the naming controversy.--Mavigogun (talk) 09:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree the article name is pretty bad. To me the name of the article is secondary to the scope though, since the article name is relatively easy to change, and once we have the scope right, it will be less arguable anyway.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 11:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The primary concern was to get the names of the individual types right. The names we give to the various groupings is secondary and almost inevitably artificial. Since this article is about categorisation, I used the name for this group of aircraft that was in the category box. I am sure everyone would like to see the suggestions for a better name, though please bear in mind that the word 'glider' is already used elsewhere. cf cat. JMcC (talk) 14:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you'll find that in English and even the wikipedia(!) words have different meanings in different circumstances, even slightly different ones, it's simply not possible to define a word like 'glider' in a single way.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 14:26, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Wolfkeeper makes a good point about the need to agree the scope, ie not just what the article is about but what it is for. The article has to describe the common features of aircraft ranging from a 200,000 euro 850kg mass of carbon fibre, electronics and water to a man hanging from a parachute. They do share some ancient DNA, mainly governed by the FAI/national associations/aviation authorities, and use rising air, but after that the article will be mainly about differences and so should probably be fairly short. Anything longer will start duplicating the articles about the individual types. JMcC (talk) 16:45, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't the introductory sentence mention the title of the article? JMcC (talk) 12:56, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

No, you don't have to if it's a descriptive title, which this seems to be; see Wikipedia:BOLDTITLE- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 14:26, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it was me who gave the title to article in an effort to cover all types, so that the individual articles on gliders, hang gliders and paragliders would not be unnecessarily burdened with information about the other types. If, as you say, the creation of this article on unpowered aircraft is 'very strongly disfavoured', should it be deleted entirely? I would have no objection if it is, after rescuing the history section. JMcC (talk) 17:48, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

If I'm understanding the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policy correctly, then this article should be moved to glider and expanded to include gliding mammals and cover all the (more or less synonymous) definitions of the term 'glider' (the ones involving flying). The article currently at glider in principle should be merged, but in practice I suspect it wouldn't fit, and so we would probably need to move it and refer out to it as a main- it might be reasonable to move it to glider (aircraft). But we'll see what others think, whether my interpretation is judged to be correct, and what the consensus is to do about it.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:43, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments on the merger proposal

I suggest that all comments on this proposal are made on the Talk:Glider page. JMcC (talk) 18:09, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

What is the vaule of this article?

What is, or could be, said here that is not already said in Aircraft#Unpowered and in the articles it links to at Glider, Balloon and Kite? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:39, 17 July 2011 (UTC)