Talk:Car/Archive 2

message: Can any one tell me Who invented the car
Where they come from
When it was invented
and where it was invented 
and any other facts about the history of the car
 
:You should read the article rather than expecting one of us to spoon-feed you with an answer.  You only have to glance at the first two paragraphs of the History section.  Everything that everyone here knows about the subject is (of course) already in the article.  The truth is that no one person invented the car.  Every single part of what we'd consider to be a car was around before anyone bolted them together. SteveBaker 06:19, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I Need Help with my project on the car 

message: Responding to the request to place a photograph of an automobile at the beginning of the article—I chose one of the first four-wheeled model built by Karl Benz. The Velo model is not the original automobile for which he received the patent—which had three wheels—but it is the next version, closely resembling the original, and, the Velo is the model Karl Benz entered into the first automobile race. Therefore I felt it was appropriate as an honor of his invention, the beginning of motorsport, and more representative of most automobiles that followed. A photograph of the first Benz automobile, the 1885 Benz Motorwagen, already is placed near the photograph of the inventor, appropriately where it is visible while readers encounter its historical significance in the text.---- kb - 2006.05.07    
:I think this looks very nice, and quite appropriate, thanks!  I took the liberty of removing the request notice.  All we need now is some references! Walkerma 08:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leading photograph for the article 

message: Ther is now way that there are only 500 million cars with 220 million in the US. First off lets use logical estimates. Asia has about 3 billion- and the richer countries like japan, taiwan, korea, at least have 100 million cars. Plus china has an additional 25 million at minimum. Europe should have the same number of cars as the US has and South American should have a smiliar number also. There are at least 800 million cars world wide.
I've removed the reference to the number of cars in the USA from the introduction. It makes sense to give the global total, but not for only one country. Markb 12:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  500 million cars worldwide? 

message: The "Pickup Truck" is a purely American and fairly inappropriate name.  The catagory should probably be 'Utility vehicle'.  Along those lines, in the opening sentance under "general" it describes a vehicle that is capable of off road travel as an SUV... This is not really accurate.  It would be a truck or a utility vehicle that is preferable for off road travel. 210.50.30.22 11:44, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Pickup Truck

message: An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Automobile article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add  to this page. — LinkBot 10:28, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:LinkBot/suggestions/Automobile|Link suggestions]] 

message: As "car" is the most common term, and "car" is used throughout in the article - I've suggested on Wikipedia:Requested moves that this page is moved there. jguk 09:23, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: This should be at [[car]]

message: "There are offers to get a new car for free or get paid to drive them in return for displaying advertisement on the cars, and hence only available to individuals of certain profiles."
I have two questions:
*What the heck does this mean?
*Does it belong in an encyclopedia article on automobiles? I think not.
Walkerma 18:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no idea what that's about. I'm generally hesitant to remove information in cases where I might just be ignorant, but this seems suffciently silly that it can be safely removed until somebody can elaborate on it. —HorsePunchKid→龜 20:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Puzzle 

message: The intro paragraph currently states:
:An automobile is a wheeled vehicle that carries its own motor.
Are motorcycles automobiles, then? What about a motorized tricycle? Is there a minimum number of wheels that should be mentioned? — mjb 04:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Can't be four, or else Reliant's would be unjustly excluded... --Kiand 07:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Auto, 4; cyclecar (such as Reliant or Moggie), 3. In the article?  Trekphiler 21:33, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minimum number of wheels? 

message: Explain which car classes there are : A, B, C, and so on --84.153.104.154 17:42, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion

message: Needs examination. I've read there's serious Q his tractor ever actually ran.  Trekphiler 21:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cugnot?

message: I realize some might feel this topic is more proper to pedestrian than automobile, but I recently saw this article on the dangers faced by pedestrians in the United States (and, by extension, the industrialized world), and wondered if anyone knew any particular article that on which it might be appropriate to link to it. (e.g. carfree-themed articles, criticism of cars articles, etc). Thanks for your help! --Dpr 06:47, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not just dangers to pedestrians and not just in the industrialised world. Car drivers are actually killed more often than pedestrians if memory serves me right. And although poor countries have fewer cars, they have their fair share of road kills (partly caused by more chaotic traffic I imagine). The total death toll of cars was 25 million according to a BBC documentary I saw a few years ago. To place this in perspective, in the US, cars take just a few months to equal the death toll of 9-11. And that's every few months. The article says a few things on the subject, but way too little given the gravity. And then there's nonsense like saying that alcohol and other drugs are a major factor. They only play a role in a few percent of the accidents, I believe. That's sort of like blaming something else and ignoring the real danger, which is that almost anyone is allowed to drive a car (after some relatively minor testing) even though it is basically heavy machinerey. If this were done in a company it would get some serious law suits for creating lethal conditions. But under less controlled circumstances (on the road) it is allowed, the obvious result of which is the huge death toll. Cars are the biggest death cause for young people (half the people killed are under 35 years old). At least in the Netherlands, and I assume the US won't be much different. There should be more figures, and not just at the end of the Safety section, but at the beginning. DirkvdM 11:17, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pedestrian dangers

message: I've just noticed, nothing was said about it. Very important advances attrib to Laplace (I think, the gas lamps), electric lights, sealed beams, projector beams. And something I've seen attrib to James A. Ross (Halifax) on 30 Dec 1919, the first backup light.  Trekphiler 05:50, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Lighting

message: The car was inevented by Cral Benz; Why wasn't that added? Gerdbrendel 09:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: Comment:  Exception to the rule:  I noticed much discusion about car's but the title of this article is automobile.  I for example own a power-assisted bicycle, which is considered a motor vehicle, a moped, and sometimes a motorcycle.  I need to get automobile insurance, hence in my jurisdiction of Ontario, it may be considered an automobile.  This example puts into question the title of this page.  user:CyclePat 18:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  CAR vs Automobile 

message: Would any readers like to see vehicle pricing information being incorporated into each model-specific article?  Moreover, would you like to see pricing information in the infobox on each page? (Template:Infobox Automobile generation or Template:Infobox Automobile) There is an discussion here. Shawnc 12:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prices? 

message: Just saw this -- I think that—automobile—is ubiquitously recognized as a motorized vehicle on wheels -- and does not need to be defined further. No one launches into a discussion of planes, sleds (snowmobiles), boats, or trains in discussions of automobiles. Makes no sense to me and makes me realize how much would have to be redefined and rewritten to achieve such a mico-division. I would have to vote against the proposed move. ---- kb 2006.05.06
I think somebody should write about the different kinds of engines: 
-V shaped
-L or in line engine
-Rotary engine
-H or Boxer engine
-quasturbine engine
-Flex fuel engine
-and lets not forget the Hybrid engine
I'm sorry I couldn't write about them. 
Alromaithi 02:59, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  move to [[Automobile on wheels]] 

message: At school, my group is doing a project and out topic is "Stunts in racing movies" (cars. I've been looking everywhere on the internet, but i can't find anything, please help:
How long does it take to film a stunt?
How are stunts filmed?
What safety precautions are required in settung up + preforming stunts?
How long does it take to master a stunt?
What driving skills are involved?
What risks are you taking when doing stunts?
How is music used to heighten stunts preformed in racing movies?
How long does it take to film a stunt
what type of cars are involved on the stunts?
please help any way you can.
Pece Kocovski 03:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You could try our article on car chase for a start.  Beyond that, you might want to get hold of a special-edition DVD for movies that feature car chases.  The director's commentry audio track, and the making-of advertising documentaries that they tack on, will often feature information about how the chase was filmed.  Beyond that, there have periodically been articles in various magazines and newspapers about filming car chases.  But to find them you need access to a library with a subscription to an electronic newspaper archive.  --Robert Merkel 04:18, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I '''seriously''' need help? 

message: Considering the importanc of this article i thought it best to as for a consensus before making an edits to the opening paragraph. 
From An automobile is a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor. The word is mainly used in American English and Canadian English; in British English the term motor car is more commonly used.
To An automobile or car in British English is a wheeled passenger vehicle that is self propelled using an onboard motor.
I ask if this or something along these lines is better as at the moment a automobile is anything that has a motor that onboard but could use another source of propollsion like a horse and can still be considered an automobile.
An i also simplified the whole use of car as i thought it went the long way around things and also have car in opening sentence allows us British people to know straight away that we have the correct page.
I look forward to your constructive comments TheEnlightened 18:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible rewording of opening paragraph 

message: I have added the world country by country production figures for 2003 source OICA - www.oica.net - unfortunately I dont know how to make a table - If somebody can do the honours plaease —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ala.foum (talk • contribs) 18:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: World production figures

message: The lack of sources in this article is a pretty serious issue. A proper application of the verifiability policy would probably remove around 90% of the article. I'm going to try to add a few references and citations and at least tag the claims most in need of work. Could I ask some other interested editors to help do the same? Thanks, Gwernol 14:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lack of Sources 

message: Quite ridiculous that "car" redirects here. Either this article is about more than cars, and car should have its own article as a daughter of this, or this article is about what everyone except old-fashioned Americans call "cars" - and it should be at the most common name.
zoney  ♣ talk 10:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm highly inclined to agree:  even USians don't seem to be entirely sure whether the term includes motorbikes, trucks, and what-have-you.  On CFD I'm told it doesn't, but by the scoping statement of this article, you'd think it was essentially a synonym of motor vehicle.  Non-cars have their own articles, so this really does seem to be the car article, transported to 50s America.  I tried to do a googlefight between "automobile" and "car", but the Boxing Board of Control declared it to be a mismatch.  Alai 07:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Car 

message: This section is particularly egregious in its lack of citations. Again, I've tagged some of the worst bits, but I am going to start mass deleting large parts of this section unless someone starts finding specific citations and adding them soon. Gwernol 12:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed some of the most egregiously unsourced and speculative material from this section. Please do not replace it until there are reliable sources to back up the additions. Thanks, Gwernol 22:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Future of the Car 

message: In one of the Dr. Z commercials Dr. Z says they invented the automobile but the article mentions Rivaz. Ok so maybe we need to be clearer about qualifiers. --Gbleem 01:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Benz invented? 

message: I'm removing the following uncited assertions:
* In fact, its existence mostly was unknown and Beau de Rochas never built a single engine. 
* There is some evidence, although not conclusive, that Christian Reithmann, an Austrian living in Germany, had built a four-stroke engine by 1873 . Reithmann had been experimenting with internal combustion engines as early as 1852.
* Supposedly in the late 1870s, an Italian named Murnigotti patented the idea of installing an internal combustion engine on a vehicle, although there is no evidence that one was built. In 1884, Enrico Bernardi, another Italian, installed an internal combustion engine on his son's tricycle. Although merely a toy, it is said to have operated somewhat successfully according one source, but another says the engine's power was too feeble to make the vehicle move. 
* In addition to rising fuel costs, the fact that cars also drive suburban sprawl is forcing people to reassess the actual social and environmental impact of the car . 
* are driven by electric motors which are more efficient than internal combustion engines and have a much greater power to weight ratio . They also 
* efficiently across the full speed range of the vehicle and develop a lot of torque at zero speed, so are ideal for cars . A 
* Hypothetical driverless cars and flying cars have been proposed for decades , but for now the costs outweigh the benefits (traffic overhaul and control, fuel and operating costs, the development of widely available driverless and flying cars itself, and the technology required for such vehicles which is currently out of reach ).
Fact check 17:37, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uncited Assertions 

message: This article has little to no information about the modern car production process, and a fair amount on the historical production process. As the comment below suggests, along with this section, the article currently has something of a split personality. I may start an article on the automotive production process and supply chain...unless they already exist and I'm missing them. Antonrojo 16:03, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Modern production process

message: We seem to be getting a heck of a lot of vandalism here recently.  I wonder if it's worth requesting semi-protected status for the article?   That's worked out really well for articles like Computer which used to be heavily attacked. SteveBaker 21:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, this seems quite surprising to me (to see all that vandalism), but I would support it. I guess the time the article is appearing vandalised this way or another is currently equivalent to the time it appears as it should. Bravada, talk - 01:01, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK - I just filed a request for semi-protection. SteveBaker 13:33, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

text:  Looks like we're now semi-protected.  That should cut down on the vandalism.  The tricky part is deciding when (if ever) to un-semi-protect.  But for now, the peace and quiet is worth having. SteveBaker 02:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Great to hear that, thanks! I would argue there's no reason to ever unprotect the page, as there is no indication the vandalism was tied to any specific period in time. But do we really have to have this awful template? To me it looks like "something is very wrong with this article" immediately - after people will read it they will find out what it is about, but the impression remains. Bravada, talk - 09:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  There's still some vandalism, about halfway down under "Production statistics".  Anonymous, 02:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ah! Actually, the vandalism was in Template:World Motor Vehicle Production by Country, not this article.  That's kinda nasty!  I didn't have that template on my watchlist - so the vandalism sneaked under the radar.  Those who watch this page need to add the templates it uses to their watchlists too!  SteveBaker 13:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  There seems to be more vandalism in the "Top 15 Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Companies by Volume 2005" chart. Something about "General Motors must make many metal machines to make money". It looks like it should be a link to General Motors, but I can't fix it. - Anonymous
=== Wiki-strike anyone? ===
I'm not happy.
I've analysed the last 1000 or so edits to this page...again.
Did the 19 days of semi-protection we had last month "cure" any of the vandals as the Wikipedia authorities claim?  Well, no.  Not in the least.  The levels of vandalism after semi-protection are about the same as they were before semiprotection was tried.  So a short period (19 days) of semi-protection does nothing to deter vandalism...not a thing.  This means we should either not use it at all in these kinds of situation - or it should be permenant (for the kinds of articles for which it's needed).  I strongly advocate the latter because it works.
During the blissful 19 day period when Automobile had semi-protection, we were never once vandalised - we had 13 valid edits and no reversions whatever.  During the subsequent 19 day period of zero protection, we were vandalised 121 times (always by anonymous users) with the page being screwed up for a total of 47 hours and 20 minutes.  There were 102 separate reverts (17 by 'AntiVandalBot' and 85 done manually by logged in users) to correct these problems.  This was not one single vandal but approximately 87 distinct IP addresses - all from different domains with no vandal being responsible for more than 5 of the attacks.  During the same period, we had 18 valid edits - all by logged in users and no contributions of any kind (other than vandalism) from non-logged in users.  The average time to perform a revert (on a high speed Internet connection) is 3 minutes (including pulling up the history, noticing a likely attack, examining the 'diff', clicking on the older article, hitting edit, adding a reason and hitting 'Save' - if you bother to go to the vandal's 'Talk' page and leave a vandalism complaint, it takes more like 4 or 5 minutes - but let's go with 3 minutes for the sake of statistics) - so the 87 reverts cost our editors a minimum of 4 hours and 20 minutes of their time.
Interestingly, 87% of the vandalism happens between the hours of 7am and 7pm (US central time).
What can we conclude from this?
* Obviously this article gains zero benefit from not-logged-in users. They contributed nothing over those 19 days when they had the opportunity (nor in the 19 days prior to the article being semi-protected).  The argument that "much of Wikipedia content comes from these users" is quite obviously untrue for this kind of article...you can't even argue that "some" content comes that way.  The answer is none.
* The costs of allowing not-logged-in users to edit is:
*# For 47 hours out of the last 19 days, people coming to read about automobiles were presented with lies, disinformation, spam and obscene language (a cursory search reveals mostly the latter).  To put it another way, if you visit Automobile at random times throughout the day you have a 10% chance of seeing crap.  It's actually much worse than that in practice because of the preponderance of vandalism during US daylight hours - which means that if you are a US Wikipedia reader, you have more like a 20% chance of seeing a vandalised article. 
*# We wasted 4 hours and 21 minutes manually fixing the vandalism.  This was time during which this article could have been improved - and you can do a LOT of improvements if you work on an article for that amount of time!
I'm going to go back to whatever level of Wikipedia red tape decides on this stuff and demand PERMENANT semi-protection status for this page.  But I want to go further.  I want the people who contribute to this page (and who revert vandalism) to make a commitment.  I want a strike!!  I propose that if we do not get the permenant semi-protection that this page deserves that we refuse to work on it anymore...let the vandals have their way.  I don't see why we should all waste our valuable time reverting this article for no good reason whatever when a perfectly workable solution exists.
This would be a different matter if this were some politically charged page where some kind of anonymity was valuable - or a very raw, new page that would require a lot of editing (potentially from non-logged in users) - or a sufficiently obscure article that the vandals would rarely think to look there - but it's none of those things.  Remember - over the last several weeks, we got not even one useful contribution from an anonymous user so the price of permenant semi-protection is zero.
If you would agree to participate in a no reverts strike, please indicate below.  Thanks SteveBaker 17:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I get very frustrated by editors, and especially administrators, who stick like glue to their own interpretation of the rules without considering the weight of feeling from the editors who actually contribute to a given article in a given situation. (My experience has been that the majority of administrators – though by no means all – are somewhat less open-minded than I consider appropriate for people in their position.) I didn't follow the debate on this particular partial-protection, but I agree with Steve's points, and so if there is any resistance to further protection, I for one would be prepared to sign up to a "no reverts" protest, for a limited period, to help to make the point. – Kieran T (talk | contribs) 17:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Unconvinced by the idea of industrial action in a co-operative - but I certainly support permanent semi-protection. - Ian Dalziel 19:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: I'm not happy.
I've analysed the last 1000 or so edits to this page...again.
Did the 19 days of semi-protection we had last month "cure" any of the vandals as the Wikipedia authorities claim?  Well, no.  Not in the least.  The levels of vandalism after semi-protection are about the same as they were before semiprotection was tried.  So a short period (19 days) of semi-protection does nothing to deter vandalism...not a thing.  This means we should either not use it at all in these kinds of situation - or it should be permenant (for the kinds of articles for which it's needed).  I strongly advocate the latter because it works.
During the blissful 19 day period when Automobile had semi-protection, we were never once vandalised - we had 13 valid edits and no reversions whatever.  During the subsequent 19 day period of zero protection, we were vandalised 121 times (always by anonymous users) with the page being screwed up for a total of 47 hours and 20 minutes.  There were 102 separate reverts (17 by 'AntiVandalBot' and 85 done manually by logged in users) to correct these problems.  This was not one single vandal but approximately 87 distinct IP addresses - all from different domains with no vandal being responsible for more than 5 of the attacks.  During the same period, we had 18 valid edits - all by logged in users and no contributions of any kind (other than vandalism) from non-logged in users.  The average time to perform a revert (on a high speed Internet connection) is 3 minutes (including pulling up the history, noticing a likely attack, examining the 'diff', clicking on the older article, hitting edit, adding a reason and hitting 'Save' - if you bother to go to the vandal's 'Talk' page and leave a vandalism complaint, it takes more like 4 or 5 minutes - but let's go with 3 minutes for the sake of statistics) - so the 87 reverts cost our editors a minimum of 4 hours and 20 minutes of their time.
Interestingly, 87% of the vandalism happens between the hours of 7am and 7pm (US central time).
What can we conclude from this?
* Obviously this article gains zero benefit from not-logged-in users. They contributed nothing over those 19 days when they had the opportunity (nor in the 19 days prior to the article being semi-protected).  The argument that "much of Wikipedia content comes from these users" is quite obviously untrue for this kind of article...you can't even argue that "some" content comes that way.  The answer is none.
* The costs of allowing not-logged-in users to edit is:
*# For 47 hours out of the last 19 days, people coming to read about automobiles were presented with lies, disinformation, spam and obscene language (a cursory search reveals mostly the latter).  To put it another way, if you visit Automobile at random times throughout the day you have a 10% chance of seeing crap.  It's actually much worse than that in practice because of the preponderance of vandalism during US daylight hours - which means that if you are a US Wikipedia reader, you have more like a 20% chance of seeing a vandalised article. 
*# We wasted 4 hours and 21 minutes manually fixing the vandalism.  This was time during which this article could have been improved - and you can do a LOT of improvements if you work on an article for that amount of time!
I'm going to go back to whatever level of Wikipedia red tape decides on this stuff and demand PERMENANT semi-protection status for this page.  But I want to go further.  I want the people who contribute to this page (and who revert vandalism) to make a commitment.  I want a strike!!  I propose that if we do not get the permenant semi-protection that this page deserves that we refuse to work on it anymore...let the vandals have their way.  I don't see why we should all waste our valuable time reverting this article for no good reason whatever when a perfectly workable solution exists.
This would be a different matter if this were some politically charged page where some kind of anonymity was valuable - or a very raw, new page that would require a lot of editing (potentially from non-logged in users) - or a sufficiently obscure article that the vandals would rarely think to look there - but it's none of those things.  Remember - over the last several weeks, we got not even one useful contribution from an anonymous user so the price of permenant semi-protection is zero.
If you would agree to participate in a no reverts strike, please indicate below.  Thanks SteveBaker 17:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I get very frustrated by editors, and especially administrators, who stick like glue to their own interpretation of the rules without considering the weight of feeling from the editors who actually contribute to a given article in a given situation. (My experience has been that the majority of administrators – though by no means all – are somewhat less open-minded than I consider appropriate for people in their position.) I didn't follow the debate on this particular partial-protection, but I agree with Steve's points, and so if there is any resistance to further protection, I for one would be prepared to sign up to a "no reverts" protest, for a limited period, to help to make the point. – Kieran T (talk | contribs) 17:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Unconvinced by the idea of industrial action in a co-operative - but I certainly support permanent semi-protection. - Ian Dalziel 19:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiki-strike anyone? 

message: I've moved the paragraph on etymology to here for discussion.
:The term automobile is derived from Greek auto- ("self") and Latin mobilis ("movable"), referring to the fact that it "moves by itself".  Earlier terms for automobile include motorwagon (from the German name "Motorwagen",) and horseless carriage. Although the term "car" is presumed to be derived through the shortening of the term "carriage", the word has its origin before 1300 A.D. in English as, "carr"—derived from similar words in French and much earlier Greek words—for a vehicle that moves, especially on wheels, that was applied to chariots, small carts, and later—to carriages that carried more people and larger loads. Note, therefore, that carriage and chariot come from the same root as car, which in a sense predates them.
This, I think, is too much detail, and too much of a distraction, at the start of the article.  The reader wants to be told about automobiles, not the history of the word, and the article is already very long.  If it is deemed desirable, put a link to wiktionary, or if that isn't detailed enough, perhaps write a new article on it. -- de Facto (talk). 09:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree - we should move it down a ways, get the important stuff said first - but I think we need the etymology here someplace. SteveBaker 13:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I believe this is an important part of the article and of course should be included, but summary is not the place for that. The article's summary is currently pretty hopeless, as it is no summary at all, given the length and breadth of the article. But leaving that aside, I believe the paragraph on etymology etc. would be a nice opening to the history of the automobile. Bravada, talk - 14:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: are there articles about Chinese automobile production and Chinese brands please? Shame On You 02:53, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: found this, :Category:Cars of China, is there anything else? Shame On You 02:57, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Chinese industry 

message: From WP:RFPP
Permenant Semi-protection - This page has been granted short-term semi-protection at least once before - but after a period of 19 days, the protection was removed.  I come back to this forum to request permenant semi-protection.  Since I know that this will not be lightly granted, I come prepared with a carefully researched argument backed by statistics created from the last 1000 edits to the page over the last 19 days of zero-protection compared to the preceeding 19 days of semi-protection.  Please do not bother to grant short-term semi-protection because that is of little or no benefit.
Data:
Did the 19 days of semi-protection we had last month "cure" any of the vandals to Automobile? Well, no. Not in the least. The levels of vandalism after semi-protection are about the same as they were before semiprotection was tried. So a short period (19 days) of semi-protection does nothing to deter vandalism...not a thing. This means we should either not use it at all in these kinds of situation - or it should be permenant (for the kinds of articles for which it's needed). I strongly advocate the latter because it works.
During the blissful 19 day period when Automobile had semi-protection, we were never once vandalised - we had 13 valid edits and no reversions whatever. During the subsequent 19 day period of zero protection, we were vandalised 121 times (always by anonymous users) with the page being screwed up for a total of 47 hours and 20 minutes. There were 102 separate reverts (17 by 'AntiVandalBot' and 85 done manually by logged in users) to correct these problems. This was not one single vandal but approximately 87 distinct IP addresses - all from different domains with no vandal being responsible for more than 5 of the attacks. During the same period, we had 18 valid edits - all by logged in users and no contributions of any kind (other than vandalism) from non-logged in users. The average time to perform a revert (on a high speed Internet connection) is 3 minutes (including pulling up the history, noticing a likely attack, examining the 'diff', clicking on the older article, hitting edit, adding a reason and hitting 'Save' - if you bother to go to the vandal's 'Talk' page and leave a vandalism complaint, it takes more like 4 or 5 minutes - but let's go with 3 minutes for the sake of statistics) - so the 87 reverts cost our editors a minimum of 4 hours and 20 minutes of their time. Interestingly, 87% of the vandalism happens between the hours of 7am and 7pm (US central time).
Conclusions
What can we conclude from this?
* Obviously this article gains zero benefit from not-logged-in users. They contributed nothing over those 19 days when they had the opportunity (nor in the 19 days prior to the article being semi-protected). The argument that "much of Wikipedia content comes from these users" is quite obviously untrue for this kind of article...you can't even argue that "some" content comes that way. The answer is none.
* The costs of allowing not-logged-in users to edit is:
*# For 47 hours out of the last 19 days, people coming to read about automobiles were presented with lies, disinformation, spam and obscene language (a cursory search reveals mostly the latter). To put it another way, if you visit Automobile at random times throughout the day you have a 10% chance of seeing crap. It's actually much worse than that in practice because of the preponderance of vandalism during US daylight hours - which means that if you are a US Wikipedia reader, you have more like a 20% chance of seeing a vandalised article.
*# We wasted 4 hours and 21 minutes manually fixing the vandalism. This was time during which this article could have been improved - and you can do a LOT of improvements if you work on an article for that amount of time!
Many thanks for your time SteveBaker 21:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Semi-protected due to heavy vandalism. You bring up some good points, but I don't know if any future admins will see the points you had brought up. In any case, I'm posting your evidence on the article talk page.  Nishkid64 22:32, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you!  This will make a big difference.  SteveBaker 18:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I see the protection notice has been removed by by User:Dorfd1. Does this mean that the protection has gone or just the notice? Dorfd1's user page is just mangled code so I haven't left a query there. Malcolma 09:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I left a note on Nishkid64s talk page asking for clarification.  I suspect that the sprotect template is just decorative - the actual protection must be flagged elsewhere.  On my own MediaWiki on my website (where I have admin status) I can sprotect pages without using any kind of template or other visible notification - it's probably the same here. SteveBaker 15:13, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually - I just realised - I can test this.  I logged out and brought up Automobile - the 'edit' tab is still not there and there is a 'view source' tab instead.  So I guess the sprotect widget is just decorative/informative and we should be able to simply revert Dorfdl's edit - which I'll do now. SteveBaker 15:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's right. We get nonsense all the time in the Kosova article, and it came up once that yes, it's just an informative template, not an automatic part of the protection. – Kieran T (talk | contribs) 15:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

text: You can't keep articles locked up forever. It was a test to see what would happen. Apparently, it failed. Page restoration has been brought back. Nishkid64 15:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for putting back the semi-protection.  But why not keep this kind of article locked up forever?  It's not like we're losing a bunch of great edits from anonymous users.  I don't think I've ever seen a worthwhile anonymous edit to this article.  Locking anonymous edits out forever is precisely what's needed here.  Every time semi-protection is removed, we'll be exactly back to where we were before we had protection.  Nothing in the world is changing the number of random idiots who type "Car" into the search box then type in crap to see what'll happen.  What do you think might change over a three week period of protection to change that?  These problems are NOT caused by one or two habitual vandals of this page whom we might discourage with temporary protection - these are just random passers . SteveBaker 17:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ehh...you can't lock any article forever (unless it's a super high risk, such as the Main Page or ITN). You can have long-term semi-protection, but that's about it. But this is one of those articles that has always been hit bad, so it will probably be semi-protected for a long time. Nishkid64 21:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

text: The protection has been taken off and the vandals are back. Malcolma 16:25, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This really annoys me.  The reasons protection was applied still apply.  Why shouldn't it be protected indefinitely?  I'm sick of writing to admins about this - it makes no sense whatever to unprotect the article after a month and make us continually have to go back and re-request the same thing for the same reasons every time. SteveBaker 18:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

text: One of us from Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles could always stand for adminship, and then at least there would be somebody kinda "on hand" and willing to re-protect as necessary! It'd be a less frequent chore than reverting vandalism currently is. – Kieran T (talk) 04:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFPP for [[Automobile]] 

message: This page was blanked by vandals for almost 30 minutes today.  This is completely unacceptable for an article of this importance.  We have to do something about this.  I can't tolerate admins continually un-protecting the page and causing us all to waste our valuable time reverting vandalism rather than creating content.  We've shown twice now that temporary sprotect doesn't prevent unacceptable levels of vandalism once the article is unprotected.  I've analysed the editing patterns and shown conclusively that we lose nothing by sprotecting because unregistered editors provide a negligable contribution here and very nearly 100% of vandalism is by unregistered users.
I'm taking a moral stand.
From this point on - I refuse to fix vandalism to this article unless it is semi-protected.  It's a waste of my time.  I invite others to support this view.  If those who oppose permenant semi-protection won't recognise our needs as contributors - let them fix the vandalism because I'm not going to. SteveBaker 01:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One of us from Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles could always stand for adminship, and then at least there would be somebody kinda "on hand" and willing to re-protect as necessary! It'd be a less frequent chore than reverting vandalism currently is. – Kieran T (talk) 04:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm taking a stand. 

message: I suggest include a picture of a car  with arrows to its part names --Mac 11:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a great idea - do you have such a picture (copyright-free of course) - or do you plan to make one specially? SteveBaker 20:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture 

message: *Car is derived from the celtic word "carrus," (meaning cart or wagon).  
*The derivation of a modern word from such an ancient source is both interesting and a descent hook/ segway to an exploration of the history of this phenomenon that began with the idea of building a better wagon.
Just a suggestion.  -Mak 19:26, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Car" is actually an old celtic word 

message: I've now twice reverted edits by , wherein they have removed the space from motor car to make it motorcar. I don't believe that there is any etymology to support this term. Anyone? --Athol Mullen 01:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''Motorcar'' ?!? 

message: In the Car Safety section it claims:
* Systematic research on crash safety started in 1958 at Ford Motor Company
This gives the impression that Ford was a leader in Car Safety research in the 50's, but in the main Automobile safety page it states:
* In the 1950´s, Mercedes-Benz made the first crash tests
While in the Volvo and Volvo Cars pages we can see safety features researched and first implemented by Volvo (not all dates in those pages agree):
* 1944 Safety cage
* 1944 Laminated windscreen
* 1959 Three-point safety belts in the front (availible as accessory in 1957?)
* 1960 Padded dashboard (available in Volvo Amazon 1956?)
Is there any real evidence that Ford were leaders in crash safety research in the 1950s? Can we list any models where the results of this research was used, or significant Ford safety inventions in that period?
Otherwise we should remove the statement or amend to show Volvo and Mercedes as leaders in crash safety (research and application?) during that period. --Xagent86 23:15, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Car Safety