# Talk:Dicta Boelcke

Bölcke's list of tactics:
1.	Try to secure the upper hand before attacking. If possible, keep the sun behind you. 
2.	Always continue with an attack you have begun. 
3.	Only fire at close range, and then only when the opponent is properly in your sights. 
4.	You should always try to keep your eye on your opponent, and never let yourself be deceived by ruses. 
5.	In any type of attack, it is essential to go for your opponent from behind. 
6.	If your opponent dives on you, do not try to get around his attack, but fly to meet it.
7.	When over the enemy's lines, never forget your own line of retreat. 
8.	Tip for Squadrons: In principle, it is better to attack in groups of four or six. If fights break up into a series of single combats, try to avoid a situation where several go after one opponent.

Can someone tell me why this article keeps referring to planes as 'machines' seems like an odd word to use. If there is no good reason/objections I am happy to replace it to clean the article up. :) --Curuxz (talk) 14:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Its a reasonable point; I know what you mean.  At the time, using 'machine' to describe an aircraft was very common and it seems to have stuck throughout the years in a lot of WW1 Aviation literature, which is a bit odd really - maybe it gives a bit of an 'olde worlde" touch.  I personally wouldn't have thought its worth going to a lot of trouble cleaning up on that basis but that's not to say there's not a lot of editing that could justifiably be done on the article. I'd say it is too wordy. Scoop100 (talk) 17:12, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I have some old storypapers from the 1890's / 1900's in which bicycles are also referred to as "machines". I suppose it was just the style of the times. Oddly i don't think i have ever seen a car referred to in the same way (though in the 1940's the bizarre word "Flivver" was popular!) 82.153.230.147 (talk) 23:36, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
"Maschine" is still contemporary German for airplanes. If that's unusual for English (I cannot tell, really, being native German myself), perhaps this is an issue of too-literal translation? -- 145.228.61.5 (talk) 12:27, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
In English it was originally short for "flying machines" - hasn't been that common (even in England) for many years, but as people have mentioned, this is an historical article. We don't use "planes" (the style manual says it's too colloquial) - "aeroplanes" is frequently objected to by U.S. users, while "airplanes" is regarded as a Yankee illiteracy by non U.S. English speakers. "Aircraft" is of course a "trans-Atlantic" word, but alas, it's ambiguous, especially in an historical context. So what will you? We are divded, alas, by a common language. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:29, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

There is a French Nursery rhyme I learned at a very early age about three chickens going into a yard - the first follows the second and the third comes last. If anything the "detailed" commentary on the dicta is already a bit long-winded and redundant - I really don't think we need anyone to tell us about the three chickens here. (as in Also, only one aircraft can occupy the exact 6 o'clock position with respect to another aircraft, so cross-line firing would have to be required.) In any case most shooting in a dog-fight was deflection shooting to some degree (if that's what "cross-line firing" means). Not sure that this would be worth a major edit war - it is just a little bit silly, that's all. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:39, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I suggested to the IP who added the above that s/he might well get an account to be taken seriously - which produced a "genuine question" on my talk page. I answered thusly:
Why did I say you should get an account? Genuine answer. Wikipedia is a brave experiment. ANYONE can edit it, which is of course enormously fraught. Anyone with even a charitable expectation of humanity would expect MOST editors to be deliberately malicious and/or have an age (mental and/or chronological) of about 10 and/or be suffering from a more or less serious mental illness. And I don't think it is unfair to point out that many edits ARE in fact of this nature, producing what can only be described as graffiti ("vandalism" in wikispeak). "Serious" editors spend a great deal of time that (theoretically at least) could be spent much more productively "reverting vandalism" (scraping graffiti off the wall). The (potentially at least) useful encyclopedia is being built by a relatively small (and incidentally, shrinking) core of "serious" editors - most of whom (at least after the first week or so) get an account. Getting an account does not identify you personally - but it does mean "we" (i.e. not just "management", but more importantly the body of serious editors) "know" who you are in terms of what you do here. An editor with a proper account and a long record of well intentioned ("good faith" in wikispeak) edits that are at least most of the time more or less hit the mark (actually improve articles) will be "taken seriously". His/her edits will not be reverted lightly, fellow editors will tend to read them carefully and mull over them before hitting the "undo" button and racing on to the next item in the mornings work on their "watch list".  Alternatively, of course, a registered editor with a history of graffiti can be "undone" without much thought. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 20:36, 14 December 2013 (UTC)