Talk:British Caledonian

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[edit] Cleanup tags

1. The article is now almost 190kB, which is 6x larger than the recommended limit. Editors should either consider trimming material which isn't notable, or splitting the article over several pages.
2. For an article this big to have only six external links and no citations is completely unacceptable. If it can't be verified externally it shouldn't be on Wikipedia. There's a hell of a lot of content here which is in danger of being deleted if it can't be cited elsewhere. No original research!
3. Not tagged, but of concern, is the sub-heading "British Airways' revised bid backed up by bullying tactics carries the day", which probably violates our WP:NPOV policy.

--DeLarge 10:48, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the person who has written this article has included a hell of a lot of facts that have made it very long.

However, I came across several citations that person or somebody else must have included subsequently. I also found that there are now nine rather than only six sources at the bottom of this long article. And, by the way, why do you think that six sources are insufficient if they do happen to contain all relevant information? Therefore, I think you should amend or delete your second comment.

I have got a feeling that the article's author either must have worked for that company, known someone who worked there in an authoritative position very well or conducted several years of extensive research on it. This leads me to another question. What about information the author recalls from his personal experience but for which there are no sources because the event[s] happened a long time ago, especially in the days when there was no internet? I am of the opinion that it would be wrong to say that such information should not be included in an article only because there are no sources in the public domain if what is written is valid and can be verified by someone who was present at the time who had access to the same information.

krishnanr_iyengar@rediffmail.com (12-12-2006)

To take your points in order, the subsequently added citations are still insufficient. The whole point of citing a source is to allow third parties to check your facts. This is not currently feasible...

• They don't follow any of the recommended styles at WP:CITE;
• They're not nearly specific enough - there's numerous huge sections which still don't cite their sources. As an example, take a look at some featured articles. Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) is 43.8kB and contains 27 directly cited notes and nine other references. Ryanair is 43.9kB and contains 43 embedded citations (although that article also doesn't follow any recommended citation styles).

Where books, are cited, we need an ISBN number, author, publisher, date of publication, and if possible a page number as well.

As for the question about personal recollections, these are absolutely forbidden by two of the three basic policies governing Wikipedia's content:

1. Wikipedia:Verifiability ("The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source.")
2. Wikipedia:No original research ("Original research is a term used in Wikipedia to refer to material that has not been published by a reliable source. It includes unpublished facts, arguments, concepts, statements, or theories, or any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that appears to advance a position — or which, in the words of Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales, would amount to a "novel narrative or historical interpretation.")

Please note these problems and try to solve them. Do not simply delete the maintenance tags at the top of the article, as I assure you I will continue to restore them indefinitely. --DeLarge 12:25, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Here is my proposal for splitting this article into several interlinked sub-articles, following the example of the article about the US highway system.

Split it into 4 parts, i.e. The formative era covering the airline's creation until (and inclusive of) plan S (part 1), attaining commercial success covering the company's resurgence from the late 1970s until the mid-1980s - up to (and incl.) changing the game plan (part 2), the firm's decline from the 1986 crisis until its takeover by BA - up to (and incl. end of a tale [part 3]) and the analysis, facts of interest as well as accidents/incidents sections in the final part (part 4).

18-01-2007, 18.40 GMT

Dear moderator,

Please DO N O T re-insert the sections I have removed from the main article because I have just split it further to comply with your maximum length requirements.

Thanks.

Narayanaswamy, 22-1-2007

16.40 GMT

N.B. I am the author of this article.

I suggest trimming rather than splitting it. --Guinnog 16:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)