Talk:Railfan/Archive 1

message: My wife wouldn't agree that railfans are virgins, especially since that's her (with a mutual friend of ours) in the lead photo.  We are both railfans and we have a son who is also a railfan.  At least half of the railfans that I know are happily married and raising children.  The link to virgin is not appropriate here. The other links that are disputed are also of questionable appropriateness to this article.  Please provide your reasoning here why you think they should be included. slambo 15:43, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
*I've removed it as I agree with you. Thryduulf 16:15, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  link to [[Virgin]] is not appropriate here 

message: What is everyone's thoughts on personal website links in the list of external links?  Right now we have one... the Idiot Railfan.  It's amusing, but I would think if we're going to list one, we might as well list several other personal sites which also have value.   My gut feeling is we should remove this one link and let the list of links remain to discussion sites and other resources rather than plugging personal sites. Ahockley 14:38, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The real question is: does the link add value to the article?  The links list on this article is, IMHO, a bit long and should be reduced to just those that contain information about railfanning/trainspotting itself rather than where to go and what to see.  The links that we have are all relevant to the hobby, they're just not about the hobby.  Using only this criterion, we'd probably end up removing all of the links, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.  I guess my question would be: what other criteria should we use for inclusion in this article's links list?  slambo 15:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I don't see why not. slambo 15:38, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)
Merge with Railbuff? Or is there a subtle difference? Phlebas 21:29, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: That article doesn't suggest any difference. The way I understand it, railfan is an all-encompassing term for stuff like metrophile, though train spotting could be considered outside the normal range of railfan. --SPUI (talk) 21:33, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Merge, thus. Phlebas 00:43, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Personal Website Links

message: There's quite a bit of repetition--for example, the material mentioned in the "Other names" section is repeated in various other places in the article.
Also, someone said railfans tend to be male and homosexual. Source for this? cluth 20:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The homosexual bit is vandalism.  It is patently false; the overwhelming majority of railfans that I know personally (myself included) or that I meet while out railfanning are heterosexual, most are married with children.  Although there are more men railfanning than women, this is slowly changing to a more even count.  Slambo (Speak) 20:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Based on personal observations yesterday at the West Somerset Railway steam gala, I'd say it was about 75% men. Of those who gathered at Taunton railway station to watch a SR Battle of Britain Class loco pass through on a charter London Paddington to the gala, all were men afaict (although just about everybody on the station at the time gravitated towards it during the two minutes it was there!). Thryduulf 21:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repetiveness and Citations 

message: I have my doubts about the latest addition to the Reasons section added by .  The original wording made it sound like railfanning itself is a disease from which we must all be cured, but looking a little further, the addition was the user's very first edit under that username.  Given the nature of some of the vandalism that we've seen on this page, I'm a little suspicious.  A quick Google for "Obsessive Compulsive Railroad Enthusiasts" or for "Southern Ontario Review of Psychology and Neurology" comes up with no exact matches, so I don't know yet if the reference itself is real; do we have an established editor that can verify the reference?  I would venture to guess that the "estimated 78% to 93%" figure could be applied equally well to sports fans (especially the ones who paint their bodies in their favorite team's colors; you know the kind of fans I mean).  Every hobby has practitioners who could be diagnosed with OCD (see Fan (aficionado)), so it is believable, but I want to be certain. Slambo (Speak) 12:25, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see that the controversial addition was restored by  as his very first (and so far only) edit.  Such an edit is not made by a brand new editor, but someone who has changed usernames or who has been editing anonymously for a while and finally created one.  I'm tempted to put in a checkuser request to compare the two logins. Slambo (Speak) 15:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fat guys who paint their upper torsos in various colors and go shirtless at Lambeau Field in below-freezing  temperatures while wearing foam slices of cheese on their heads are normal in their societal function and we affirm them. You railfan types who watch trains while fully clothed are the real freaks! (If I had a way to stick that message board emoticon with the rolling eyes in here, I would.) As for the information, the paper could have been buried in some long-defunct journal that never made it to the current period for electronic reproduction and/or indexing. Google pulls up nothing when any cognizable part of the citation is punched in, so I'm tempted to say that neither journal nor study exists. Unless someone's got access to a specialized psych-profession database and can confirm this citation, strike it. You know, that whole verifiable thing. Unless I just happen to be one of the lucky 7-22%, this thing is bunk.--Foxhound 01:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

text: If that's the appropriate next step, then go for it. I concur that this issue will remain an active one despite an edit/revert war seeming silly in this case. That being said, I wish someone with specialized knowledge could say, up or down, if the Southern Ontario Review and the piece existed/exist. I wouldn't mind reading it.--Foxhound 05:04, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I've invited  to join the discussion here.  I have my doubts as to the validity of the reference even though it sounds plausible.  There is a medical/psych library at the UW Madison campus (about 10 minutes from my house), I just haven't had a chance to go over there to ask about it yet. Slambo (Speak) 11:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, they have got back to me but unfortunately aren't able to help (they just provide support to public libraries, they aren't one themselves). So I'll try contacting some libraries in the area direct. I'll also see if an online friend who lives near London, Ontario can help as well. Watch this space. Thryduulf 19:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After a month nobody has been able to provide any evidence that the journal exists or existed. Thryduulf 16:05, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  OCD connection? 

message: Yes, FRN is a real name that some railroaders use to describe railfans.  I've heard it from some friends of mine who work in the industry.  In an effort to be a little more neutral in POV, I've added it back to the article and included a book reference for it that specifically cites this term as well as foamer. Slambo (Speak) 18:04, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Profanity is the apropriate guideline for this. It basically boils down to, don't censor profanity unless there is a consensus to do so (I'm having a disucssion with another user there about how to quote censored profanity - If Joe Bloggs said "I f*cking hate the b******d" should that be quoted as written or as "I fucking hate the bastard"?). I don't see a reason to censor in this case - especially as there is a cited use. Thryduulf 23:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I had seriously considered asterisking out f*** as I don't much like the word either, but I felt that since that's the meaning that I've heard from industry and since I have found and supplied a verifiable reference, WP's Profanity guideline won.  Personally, I wouldn't mind if it's asterisked, but whatever form it takes, FRN needs to be included because it's a real and verifiable term even if we, as railfans ourselves, don't like the term. Slambo (Speak) 10:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  FRN 

message: We now have a nice big box on the article from someone else who thinks we've got too many External links here.  I've stated above that we need to reduce them, so I'll propose that any link that does not give a further description of what a railfan is should be removed.  In other words we should remove links that cover topics of interest to railfans and list only those that further describe or define railfans.  Slambo (Speak) 16:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me.  I agree that the links are somewhat excessive and something needs to be adjusted.  SchuminWeb (Talk) 21:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I gave it a spin, and sorted the links by country, and removed a number of mailing lists, bulletin boards, not-well-done sites, and very loosely-related sites in two rounds.  I also removed the warning tag.  Hopefully this will clean this up a bit, but further refinements will always help.  SchuminWeb (Talk) 01:32, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reducing external links 

message: A quick google for the new word (check the history; I'm not mentioning it here to prevent false hits on future search results [I don't like FRN either, but that term is in widespread and published use]) shows six hits, with half of them being a username.  I haven't looked at the site mentioned in the latest revert, but I suspect that this new term isn't quite as widespread as it's being made out to be.  I'd rather see more references to the term's use in more widely-read and well-publicized resources (I've seen two links, please list more below) before we include it here.  Slambo (Speak) 13:43, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another neologism 

message: I have sometimes seen the word trainspotter used as an insult for a person diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. After reading this article, indeed, I can understand how many trainspotters and railfans could very well be diagnosable with this condition. Maybe something about this hobby in relation to Asperger's syndrome should be added to the article by someone more intimately familiar with both concepts.--NeantHumain 00:31, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The tricky part is to add such information so that it doesn't make it sound like all railfans are such, because they are not.  Also, make sure to include credible and verifiable references.  Railfanning is not the only hobby with its share of fanboys; the same obsession can be observed in sports, music and theater fans as well as car and motorcycle fans.  Slambo (Speak) 15:58, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is this article was already cluttered up with repeated references trying to connect railfans to some form of mental illness or nerdiness:  an unsourced mention of a French term for "railway disorder"; far too much discussion of the negative implications of "FRN" and "foamer"; repeated attempts to add unsourced material claiming most railfans have obsessive-compulsive disorder; repeated attempts to add links like "geek", "anorak", and "rivet counter" to the links; too much unsourced accusation that railfans are unsafe or disruptive of railroad operations; etc.  Those references have now been removed and it was long overdue.  We need to keep them out of this article.  This isn't an article about other perjorative uses of Train Spotter, it's an article about the railroad hobbyist aspects.  If Train Spotter is used in a perjorative way for Asperger's Syndrome it still doesn't belong in this article, that's what the disambiguation page trainspotting is for.  70.108.115.103 20:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  In relation to [[Asperger syndrome|Asperger's syndrome]] 

message: I have removed external links to discussion forums as they are a violation of WP:EL. -- MakeChooChooGoNow 17:28, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links 

message: The recent edit introduced inconsistencies in the usage of the terms "railway" and "railroad" as well as introduced spellings that were not consistent with the rest of the article. Slambo (Speak) 10:35, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rollback reason 

message: Another editor added the merge tags; please discuss the proposed merge here. Slambo (Speak) 15:11, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge discussion: [[Tram spotter]]