Talk:Pilot licences

Pilot licences/licenses

I noticed you had renamed these pages to the British spelling, and made some other edits. I admit I had terminology problems creating this group of pages, much of which I inherited, and did consider breaking them up into separate pages for the different detailed requirements of English-speaking nations, but that didn't seem right given the amount of material available. I did also strongly consider renaming the articles "xxx certificate", but that would not have been right in countries other than the US (in the US people often say license, but they are correctly certificates, and there is a legal distinction between the terms).

My wish was that pages would have a generic introduction and then country-specific details but they haven't really separated out that cleanly. I have no idea what the requirements are for the CAA Commercial either.

Incidentally, I'm British myself and I do recognize the annoyance caused by the difference in spelling. But "licence" and "aeroplane" are simply wrong in American English.

I don't want to be too combative, but consider:

The plurality of pilot licenses/certificates are US certificates (650,000 with Private or higher).
You put the British spelling, and the term "driving licence" in paragraphs that refer uniquely to American certifications, most notably the Sport Pilot. That just looks wrong.
You changed "airplane" to "aeroplane", again in contexts that purely talk about American requirements.

Incidentally, you didn't change everything (look at the 4th word of Commercial Pilot Licence) and there are still some bizarre spellings of "privileges" inherited; I usually spellcheck long articles so I don't know how they got missed.

On second thought, I think Lommer created the "privileges" mis-spellings after my last edit.

I don't want to revert without debate, so I'd like to understand your motivations. Is it time to create separate pages for each national system? (US, Canadian, and UK anyway: the Aussies and Kiwis haven't chimed in yet).

Finally, I thought I remember seeing a style guide that "U.S." is preferred to "US" when used adjectivally, but can't remember it. Are you sure "US" is preferred? David Brooks 07:46, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It seemed odd to have an article called "pilot licenses" and then mention right at the start that they are called either "pilot licences" or "pilot certificates". That was my motivation in changing it. It just seemed more sensible to move the page to "pilot licences". Having done that, and preferred British English over American English, the rest followed.

After reading your comments, and on reflection, I think perhaps this is one of the few pages where Canadian English is best. I think this would restore "airplane" and "driver's licence", though I may be wrong, and leave the spelling "licence" intact. For the bits I didn't change - apologies, that was an error on my part.

I don't like the stops in U.S. and U.K. from an aesthetic point of view. The only argument stated in favour of them on WP:MOS is that "U.S." is easier to search for than "US", but this appears to be a fallacy, so I go for the prettier form I see in the newspapers everyday (and when copyediting, I just find it easier to convert everything to a form I'm familiar with). Kind regards, jguk 20:00, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Reorganization proposal

When recasting this group of articles I intended to write an introduction that was fairly culture neutral, but I got behind the airplane (as I did in my lesson today, ouch). I propose the following restructuring. It's partly driven by the almost trivial desire to smooth over the license/licence ugliness, but also because it's a chance to do what I think is the right thing. I'll leave this here for comments. What I propose is a fairly simple cut-and-paste, but it may leave the door open for too much fragmentation. Comments welcome.

New articles

Pilot licencing and certification: A general introduction to the topic, avoiding anything that is country-specific. Introduces that each country recognizes, at least, Private, Commercial, ATP, and Instrument certifications, for specific categories of aircraft. A general idea about what each level lets you do. Add a note that even the FAA is ambiguous about the term license or certificate.
Pilot certification in the US: The "training" and "certification" sections of the current Pilot Licences article. Points to some of the below.
Pilot licencing in Canada: The "training" and "certification" sections of the current Pilot Licences article. I'll leave it to others whether to break out articles like "Private Pilot Licence in Canada"
Pilot licencing in the United Kingdom: A stub. I'll leave it to others whether to break out articles like Private Pilot Licence in the UK
Sport Pilot Certificate: Unchanged, except to explain it is currently US only
Private Pilot Certificate in the US: New name for the existing Private Pilot Licence, with minor edits.
Commercial Pilot Certificate in the US: New name for the existing Commercial Pilot Licence, with minor edits.
Instrument rating in the US: New name for the existing Instrument rating

Potential other articles

This could lead to a plethora of other articles: Private/Commercial/ATP/IMC ratings in UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand. Does this multiply out too much?

Redirects

Pilot Licences and Pilot Licenses redirect to Pilot licencing and certification
Commercial Pilot Licence will be a stub pointing to the country-specific articles, and Commercial Pilot License and Commercial Pilot Certificate will redirect to it
Private Pilot Licence will be a stub pointing to the country-specific articles, and Private Pilot License, PPL and Private Pilot Certificate will redirect to it

David Brooks 04:53, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Verb form

On re-reading this, I realized the error I had made on this talk page, but not in the articles themselves. The verb form is licensing in both US and Commonwealth English David Brooks 17:02, 15 May 2005 (UTC).[reply]

Comments

I think the above sounds reasonable - though the form of English used needs to be decided if the articles are going to look OK. From a UK perspective - we would refer to a pilot's licence, and pilot licensing. Americans go for pilot certificates and pilot certification, so their spelling of "license" is unnecessary. Clearly for the country-specific articles, the form of English can be consistent with that used in the country under discussion.

(above was by Jguk) Two comments on that. First, in the various discussions of the MoS you seemed to agree with the "first come first served" policy when writing about a topic that is not about a specific locality, as the Pilot License articles were until last week. So I still don't understand your original changes. Second, I had a shot at the first (overview) article last night, and it's awkward to avoid the word. The attempt at culture-neutrality hobbles the writing style, just like trying to write a sentence without the letter T. It shouldn't be the primary determining factor on what we write. So I'm still a little stuck. David Brooks 21:38, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, the Manual of Style says "When referring to the United States, please use "U.S."; that is the more common style in that country, is easier to search for automatically, and we want one uniform style on this." Chicago MoS seems to agree. I intend to change back to the MoS version. David Brooks 18:03, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The MOS merely states a preference - most articles written about non-US subjects pay no regard to it. Also, I have a feeling that this guidance in the MOS will get replaced shortly. There are moves afoot to change the MOS so that it permits any standard form of English to be used, as long as it is used consistently - and if an article is based on a topic particular to one part of the English-speaking world, a form of standard English used in that English-speaking world is used instead. After all, most Wikipedians think that's what the Wikipedia style is anyway.

I read all the MoS comments. I too thought that was policy already. David Brooks

In summary - use "U.S." in articles about American pilot certificates (although "United States" may be preferable), and use "US" otherwise, jguk 18:56, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just chiming in with my comments overall - I think that breaking this up into multiple articles is a great idea - one overview article and multiple country-specific articles. That will clear up a lot of language issues and I think makes more sense overall. I don't really support breaking down into articles that are country and licence-specific (i.e. private pilot licencing in the U.S.) as I think that's too fragmentary and good writing style should be able to cram most country-specific licence info into one article. However, I am willing to go with it if others think it's neccesary/easier. In all, I fully support this move and I think it'll be cleaner, more focused, and better for wikipedia overall. -Lommer | ^talk 03:10, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

P.S. - I support using "U.S." over "US", and I think the MoS does hold significant precedent. My vote is to have it with the periods. -Lommer | ^talk 03:10, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Okay, my half-shilling: U.S. is preferable -- just my opinion as a newbie. Other: Is there an ICAO standard meaning for "license" (i.e., approved) and "certificate" (i.e., trained)? I know my Italian textbook was called "La Licenza Del Pilota Privato," and you could get a "brevetto" for different "categorie" of machines. Lupinelawyer 05:22, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I just uploaded a massive change (23 articles). This page became a redirect so you may have trouble finding it :-) David Brooks 07:43, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)