Wikipedia:Peer review/General aviation in the United Kingdom/archive1

General aviation in the United Kingdom

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for June 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This is a new article built from scratch. I'm looking for people's opinion mainly on how well it reads. Have I explained things well? Is the langauge clear, or is there anything that confuses? Does the article flow well? Also, are there any issues with comprehensiveness? Thanks, FactotEm (talk) 12:46, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments

I have done more or less what you have asked for, that is, concentrated on language, clarity, flow. etc. I am not competent to comment on the techinical stuff, but the article certainly seems to be comprehensive. In general, it is clearly and authoritatively written; many of the points listed are suggestions which I think would improve the prose, rather than matters that I'd insist on at GAN or FAC. Some are pure nit-picking. Here are the results of my read-through; I may come back with a few other general issues later.

• Lead
  • 3 "whilsts" ("whilst" is a disapproved word in Wikipedia, and should be replaced by "while". There are numerous occurences throughout the article)

**"The largest 134 aerodromes account for 84% of all GA operations" – both figures slightly odd choices. One of them should perhaps be a round number, e.g 80% of GA operations

These are the figures actually provided by the source, and I'm not sure that I can vary them. --FactotEm (talk) 08:54, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough - it's in the lead. Rounded to "over 80%". --FactotEm (talk) 11:33, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

• Commercial operations
  • Suggest "which normally fall". F/stop at CAT, then: "Some, however, are closely…"
  • whilst again
  • Hyphen required in company-owned
  • You don’t need both "typically" and "include". To avoid a further slight grammatical problem, I suggest reorganising this sentence as follows: "Aircraft used in these operations include business jets, helicopters, and twin-engined piston aeroplanes carrying between six and ten people".
  • Split next sentence at "Silverstone". Then, I suggest: "This involves so many flights that, according to Cranfield Aviation Services, on race day the heliport is temporarily the world’s busiest airport".
  • Final sentence of section, suggest: "Aerial work that does not involve the transport of passengers is a small but important…", and end sentence at "police".

Worded slightly differently to avoid implication that there is Aerial work that does involve passenger transport. --FactotEm (talk) 08:54, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• Flying Schools
  • First sentence: end "…both for recreational and professional flying purposes"

Difficult bit of technical wording for absolute accuracy this one. With few exceptions, flying schools don't train professional pilots. They train pilots to the private licence level, like any recreational pilot, after which some pilots continue their training elsewhere to gain professional qualifications. Hence the tricky but very deliberate wording. I'll have to think further on this one. --FactotEm (talk) 09:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • "School-owned”" requires hyphen
  • This sentence is awkward: "Between 60 and 70 per cent of professional pilots are claimed to have trained…etc". Try: "It is claimed by (whoever) that between 60 and 70 per cent of professional pilots self-financed their flight training at GA schools…etc".
  • What does it mean : "…pilots can be trained anywhere"? Anywhere? I assume it to mean that there are training facilities within the airline industry, or abroad, but this should be made clear.

• Private flying
  • First para: as the results of the survey date from six or seven years ago, they should be presented in the past tense.
  • Why is traditional in quotes? Also, "four seat" should be "four-seater" (with hyphen), and a comma is required after "touring aircraft". You might actually consider spitting this long sentence.

"Traditional" is an informal term, and is always in quotes in the source. --FactotEm (talk) 09:23, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • Suggest US$ conversions for the £sterling amounts, given the balance of the readership

Thought about this, but wouldn't it become irrelevant as the exchange rate fluctuates? --FactotEm (talk) 09:23, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • Whilst again!
  • redundant "as well" at sentence end
  • "self-assembly" might be preferable to "amateur built"

I suspect "self-assembly" might be confusing. "Amateur built" is used throughout the article and comes from the sources.

• • "numerous" Spitfires? I thought the number actually flying was very small. Can you amplify on numerous?
  • Suggest "many", not "many more" (post WWII aircraft)

• Sports
  • There is a link to air racing, but "UK handicapped" is not explained.

There is no wikilink I can use for "handicapped air racing", though I have wikilinked "handicapped", and the paragraph does explain what this sport is all about. Does that address this point? --FactotEm (talk) 13:15, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • Should metric distances be given priority over miles?
  • By "Eire" do you mean the Republic of Ireland? (Eire is confusing, it can mean one of two things, and should anyway be Èire)

Not sure. The source states "Eire", and the wikipedia article at least says the "Republic of Ireland" is a descriptive rather than official name. I have however changed it to the accented version. --FactotEm (talk) 13:24, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • The information on aerobatics is perhaps over-detailed and could be pared down.

• Scale
  • "47,000, of whom…", not "of which"
  • "aviation-related" should be hyphenated
  • "Eighty per cent" (words) and "45 per cent" (numerals) in same sentence. (Actually I don’t understand the sentence)

I've removed the "80%" stat to try remove the source of confusion. Unlike the surviving stat, it is not really all that important to statements elsewhere in the article. --FactotEm (talk) 13:44, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• Trends
  • (second para) Too many "spectrums" - suggest simplify. Begin the para with: "GA business aviation has remained strong..", and replace "At the other end" with a simple connector like "However,…"
  • Is it "pressures in" or "pressures on"?

• Safety
  • Captionless image; speaking for itself, perhaps?

That's the intention. Couldn't really think of anything relevant or appropriate to add. --FactotEm (talk) 13:56, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • Text says 2630 accidents between 1994 and 2005, 139 fatal with loss of 317 lives. Table says 2551, 129 and 269.

Those are the figures for non-public transport accidents. The total adds in the figures for public transport flights. I've amended the accompanying narrative to try and make this clear. --FactotEm (talk) 13:56, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually there's no valid reason for separate figures for public and non-public transport operations, other than that's how the source presents them. I've removed any potential for confusion by removing the distinction. --FactotEm (talk) 14:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • I suggest that the opening sentence of this para should be placed after the table, to provide the correct chronology.

• Regulation
  • Comma after "on these issues" (penult. sentence)
  • another "whilst"
• Devolved and self regulation
  • Suggest self-regulation in section title needs hyphen
  • Also, "UK-specific" needs hyphen
  • "whilst" in final sentence
• Airworthiness
  • Suggest: "…in order to fly safely and legally". End sentence there, then : "Aircraft that…etc"
  • cannot is one word
  • Suggest "such as" rather than "which includes" (better sentence flow)
• Pilot licensing
  • Suggest begin: "The pilot qualification most relevant to GA is…"
  • "UK-specific" again
  • Also, "British-registered" (hyphen)
  • Whilst

• Aerodromes
  • The figures in the preamble are a bit confusing. The GASAR study analysed 687 aerodromes, but only classified 374? What about the other 300-odd?

Their fate is detailed in the footnote. --FactotEm (talk) 14:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• GASAR aerodrome classification
  • Would it be possible to simplify/shorten this section? There is perhaps a bit too much detail, compared to the rest of the article.

• Issues
  • I’ve forgotten what CAT means by now – could it be spelled out again? There are rather a lot of acronyms in the article, and it’s hard to remember what they all mean.

I've done a cull of acronyms, keeping only the most important and most frequently occuring, and re-iterating CAT when it re-appears after a long absence. --FactotEm (talk) 15:13, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • Last sentence could be split.
• Access to aerospace
  • Awkward prose (use of "transit" as a verb)

Standard aviation phraseology, but changed to "enter" anyway. --FactotEm (talk) 14:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • Final sentence: "…have also resulted" (not has)
• Aerodrome access
  • Sorry, what is meant by "crucial nodes"?

Expanded sentence and added explanatory text to the footnote. --FactotEm (talk) 11:53, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

• Planning system
  • Suggest change title to "Planning policy"

I want to keep this as is, because policy is only part of the issue. The system itself tends to cause difficulties for GA. --FactotEm (talk) 14:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• • "With many city pairs…etc" What does "city pairs" mean?
  • A slight hint of POV enters with the sentence beginning "The difficulty is…" This reads like editorial opinion. This sentence should have a separate citation, and/or perhaps some rewording.

I hope these suggestions are helpful

Brianboulton (talk) 15:16, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm just adding a couple of general points.

• Images: They are very good, but possibly too many - two in the short Trends section may be overdoing it, and the purpose of one or two others isn't clear. It may be worth paring down - but not by many.

Removed one from the trends section, and another that didn't really add anything to the article. I might also remove one of the historic illustrations, but not sure yet. --FactotEm (talk) 15:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• Reference list: This is very lengthy, mainly because you are not combining references. One example where this could be done is with refs [81] to [86], all to the GA small aerodromes survey report, and all to a page range of 5-10. A single combined reference would cover these. There are many opportunities, too, to combine groups of references to the Strategic Review, where clusters of references are to short page ranges (incidentally, the Strategic Review crashed my computer both times I visited it, so maybe it needs a danger signal). Combinations could reduce the extremely long list by at least half. Also, you could put the reflist into 2-colummn form by {{reflist|2}}

Other than adding the reflist columns, and addressing the specific aerodromes example when that section gets pruned, I don't really want to do this. I think detailed referencing is vital to an article, and I like to cite my sources down to the paragraph where possible. If for no other reason, it makes it easier for me to track down why I included a fact/statement as I work on an article. --FactotEm (talk) 15:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Brianboulton (talk) 11:39, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Response. Excellent and very helpful review. I'm making a start on amending the article and will strike out/add comments as I go. It will take a while, but I will address every point. Thanks. --FactotEm (talk) 08:49, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I've addressed all that I can easily address now. There are still some points that are going to take a little longer to fix, such as the pruning of the aerobatics paragraph and aerodromes section. I'll work on them in due course. The use of "whilst" and "while" is a singularly unimportant issue on which to make a stand, yet I always want to. Perfectly acceptable British English as far as I'm concerned. Give me a few days to accept defeat gracefully and I'll make the necessary changes. --FactotEm (talk) 15:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

All done now. Thanks again. Extremely helpful. --FactotEm (talk) 18:52, 3 July 2008 (UTC)