Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft/Categories

On the military side, I think we've over-categorized.

IMO, we should restrict it to Fighter, Ground attack, Strategic bomber and Support.

The support category would essentially include all military aircraft that are not included in the other categories. This would include transport, trainers, recon, electronic warefare etc. The Category Information Section (CIS) would detail which aircraft served which purpose.

The support category could include sub-categories if there are enough of that type of craft to merit one.

There would also be a higher level category for recon, trainers etc.. This would mean that many aircraft would have several categories (ex. NATION support aircraft (19xx-19xx), NATION recon aircraft, Recon aircraft (19xx-19xx)), but each of them would be substationally more filled out. The would obviously be negated if there are enough in NATION recon aircraft (19xx-19xx)

Ground attack would include tactical bombers and other light aircraft designed to take out specific land-based targets.

Fighter-bombers would be categorized under fighters (again, with the CIS pointing them out) and mentioned in the ground attack category if they were used heavily in that role. The CIS would also indicate which are night fighters, long range escort fighters etc.

We would use the primary role that the aircraft filled as it's basis of categorization, and, in the case of multi-role craft, list it on the CIS of the other categories (ie. The De_Havilland_Mosquito would be categorized as a Strategic bomber, but be mentioned under the Fighter and Support categories.) Oberiko 14:27, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

WP:CfD discussion

Many of the 'US aircraft...' (and similar) categories have been put up on WP:CfD to be moved from 'US' to 'U.S.' (See the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#US_vs_U.S.) Also, at least a few of us believe that many of these categories are too specific. Some categories only have a single article with little hope of adding more, and users are required to navigate through multiple layers of categories to find the articles. Using the Swiss military trainers as an example (because there are so few), I was able to reassign the 5 articles to two categories each and eliminate 10 categories from the structure without any loss of information. See the result at Category:Swiss military trainer aircraft. This is a much simpler structure with no loss of information. —Mike 06:41, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

Additional Category(s) for Civil Aircraft

With the passage of the Sport Pilot rules in the US, there should be an additional category of Light Sport Aircraft as they are legally a new category of aircraft.

Also, there should be some kind of reconciliation of LSA in the US vs. Ultralight/Microlight in the rest of the world. Mcneight 02:35, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Category Overhaul

I am currently working on a category overhaul. Redundant categories may be nominated for category deletion. The goal of this project is to make it fairly easy to categorise aircraft and be able to go to the WP:AIRCRAFT category page to find what categories are needed for a given article. Any help with this would be appreciated! Thanks. Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 13:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I think we're overdoing it a bit on the "Airplane Specific" (should be "Airplane-specific"?) categories. For "power sources", are people really interested in tracking — and maintaining — "Multiple engine aircraft" (should be "Multi-engine[d] aircraft"?) and "Single engine aircraft" (should be "Single-engine[d] aircraft"?)? On the other hand, I could see adding "Rocket aircraft" to this list and perhaps "Ramjet aircraft" or eventually "Hypersonic aircraft" should they employ novel propulsion technologies. Similarly, I see little likely interest in the "wing type" categories. If it is to be used, then "High-wing aircraft" and "Low-wing aircraft" need to be supplemented by "Mid-wing aircraft" and perhaps even "Canard-wing-coupled aircraft". If we have a category for "Biplane aircraft", shouldn't there also be one for "Monoplane aircraft" and "Triplane aircraft" — or perhaps the bipes and tripes combined into "Multi-wing aircraft"? I'd be interested in seeing what others have to say. Askari Mark | Talk 18:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Karl was working on a revamp at Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Categories/Proposed update, but that seems to have become dormant for a few months. Myself, I think it should all be pared down to the basic: Multi/single engine, jet/prop/turboprop, military/commercial aircraft, and a few other basic divisions. The "by year" categories serve very limited roles and should be dropped. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 18:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Those are good points. I think there is a point when it gets to far. I.E, aircraft with 4 engines, aircraft with 6 engines. However, in categorization of airplanes, at least in my opninion and from what I know, there is a major difference between single and multiple engine aircraft. It is really 2 major categories of aircraft. Similar to that of high and low wing. I also would be interested to get others feedback on this. I had not seen much activity on this page recently so i started working on it. I am very willing for more feedback on this though before I continue this. I guess an important question to ask, is how far is too far? At what point is a category of aircraft not realy important enough or even large enough to have its own category. - Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 18:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

oh, yea, the date thing is insane. I copied them to the page and then stepped back and looked at it and realized that it was insane. I think the many many date specific categories should go. When you look at an airplane, you may pay attention to the year but more imporant is the type(single engine, multi engine, high, low wing). If any of these assumotions are wrong, feel free to correct me! - Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 18:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe the "date" categories were intended to permit tracking and listing aircraft by "eras", based on the year of first flight (or service entry?). There is a huge page tracking these, with aircraft of a given era all listed vertically in the same column: List of aircraft by date and usage category. Askari Mark | Talk 21:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I have finalised my proposal and typed up a summary of my proposed changes at Proposed update. Please leave comments. Karl Dickman ^talk 02:45, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Missiles

Why missiles? How do missiles fall under the Aircraft Wikiproject? Understand my questioning-I am new to Wikiproject Aircraft. But I must know why cruise missiles is listed as a catagory.

I also agree with many members above. In my opinion, the sub categories should be organized in a chronological fashion-beginning from the earliest flying machine available to modern aircraft. ChockStock 05:17, 29 December 2006 (UTC)