User talk:Charles01/Archive 7

Re:In pursuit of knowledge

Hi, I've read your message and I started to search which kind of Fiat could be the one you have sent to me. I think that, if it is really a Fiat, it should be a 50/60 HP, also known as Fiat Tipo 5, and built between 1910 and 1916 in 457 units. It featured a 9 litres engine and the maximum power was 75 HP at 1500 rpm. I think it's that model because I've seen some characteristics in common between the picture you have sent and the pictures I've seen on my book. That's all. Bye bye. --Luc106 (talk) 08:59, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks. Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 17:19, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Charles

Patting myself on the back here: over the last two days I organized all of the Allard photos, often renamed misidentified cars, and also uploaded 30 new pictures I found on Flickr. I would now like to create entries for all of the various Allard cars on WP, but am a bit daunted. Anything I can interest you in? You might also have lots of nice sources lurking on your shelves. mr.choppers (talk)^-en- 06:28, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I saw you organising the Allard pix. Back pats well deserved. I don't really have any inside track in terms of knowledge. Somehow the UK motor magazines from way back when that might form the basis of my "knowledge" didn't ever seem to have a lot to say about Allards. Maybe Allard marketing efforts were more fixated on the North American markets, and one of us needs to try and get hold a a job lot of old Car and Driver mags? Still, I see that Allard do get a couple of pages in Culshaw & Horrobin.

I think some years back I did start one Allard entry which is maybe why you thought of me in this context. I think that arose from photographing a car, wondering what it was, finding out, and thinking it sad that such investigatory effort should not be shared around - in this instance - the wiki community. I guess I might become seduced by a spare few hours into starting another one, but if someone better versed than I in the Allard basics were to get in first, I should not weep.... Meantime the next priority is getting the kids to school, so I need to get dressed. Happy days. Charles01 (talk) 07:08, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Big Brother

I'd no idea you were writing things all over My photographs! I was going to write This is The Uploader speaking and get into it but I couldn;t find anything worth saying. Now on reflection I can confirm from my own memory that until the 1950s there was a tradition for high performance pur sang cars to have their steering wheel on the (correct) right side of the car be the car's source Spanish, Italian, French, Austrian etc. Date of first registration. Would you please take up the matter of fraudulent statements to DVLA with a Mr Clive Barker aka Austin7nut. Once you join Flickr its easy to email each other. Clive's always been friendly and I'm not going to tell him he's made a mistake at the local DVLA terminal or whatever. Talk to you later, Eddaido (talk) 03:00, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

On writing all over your photographs, you're welcome. Or am I missing something?

Thanks, that's nice of you. No, nothing.

On Big brother, he's only a great big database, and ALL databases are vulnerable to the rule of Gi-Go (Garbage in - Garbage out). ANY line in the database may be wrong. (Though I know that there is some feeling in wikipedia that it is more important that something has a source than that it be true: me? I think it should be true AND have a source.) The highest risk of error arises with the older cars, because the data all had to be input from manual records. I've no idea how this was organised, but they probably recruited a lot of temporary agency typists for the job (so as to avoid having to increase the reported headcount of the civil service) and I imagine they were all nice girls, but even nice girls are not immune to the risk of the odd stray finger thumping on an inappropriate button/key. Maybe the data were copied over between different sets of record more than once, especially for the older cars. At one point the work of first registration was probably delegated to local offices across the country (as it still is, in those European states where "federalism" is seen as a good idea rather than as a term of abuse) and in the precomputer days it would have been hard to enforce standard procedures. I have a strong impression that some clerks simply asked the car owner for the year of manufacture and the engine size and wrote down what they were told. For cars from before the 1950s you get plenty of examples of (presumed) roundings in terms of engine capacity, especially if a car is imported back to the UK having thirty years earlier been sold somewhere else. So if a man importing a 1955 Vauxhall Velox in 1995 ends up with the engine capacity on the database as 2300 cc, it may mean that he has a unique engine, but it may just be that in his mind he has rounded up from the "official" 2275 cc in the hand book. Or maybe he remeasured the insides of the cylinders at the last decoke and got to exactly 2300 cc.... Given the large tolerances applied in the UK auto-industry back then, I imagine that there will have been some variance between the official 2275 cc and many of the "actuals" in any case. I'm sure I remember someone saying that on the assembly line if a piston cylinder didn't want to fit easily into a cylinder bore, you simply went to the parts bin and grabbed another cylinder, anticipating that the misfit cylinder would fit just fine in another block. Or have I been victim of a wind-up? Ach, time for a meal. Happy days. Charles01 (talk) 12:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

mystery

Thank you too for this short article, I am afraid we (you and me) remain (as beforehand) of the same opinion on this matter. Going back to the Vauxhall described as a 20-60 (and wearing that kind of body) but with an engine that is from the following model, I don't see why it might not have sat about in a showroom for some long time and anyway maybe when they put it together they put in the new bigger engine (because they'd run out of the old smaller one) or just thought it might sell faster. I expect they will have been prodded from Detroit with something very sharp. The photos seem to have been taken at some VSCC gathering. I thought Clive might have taken the detail from the owner and then again he might not have. Have you thought of putting pictures in Flickr? Breakfast next, Eddaido (talk) 21:53, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Image problem

Rolls-Royce 10HP de 1904

Hi Charles01. Please tell me what you think about these two images, I think they are not of a 1904 car and I also doubt if the car in the pictures is really a Rolls-Royce but then I can be very cynical. What do you think? Eddaido (talk) 10:58, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

First reaction: I agree it looks a bit odd. The proportions at the front are seriously not what one would expect. And yet, going back to a period when every man could be his own body builder. And bearing in mind the amount of rework that might have gone on in someone's back yard.... authentic faithfulness to the way it looked originally might not always have been the Number 1 priority throughout more than 100 years. (Same style of comment for the boxy number parked next door if you ask me which I appreciate you didn't.)

The license plate says Darmstadt, but after that I can't see what it says. IF the final character were an "H" it would qualify the car as an official "oldtimer" under German law, which translates into seriously favourable tax treatment and which would tell us, if we need to be told, that IF it's a replica then it is a replica at least 30 years old. The absence of crudely wide late twentieth century wheels tells us that IF it's any sort of replica, then at least it's not that sort of replica. But I'm tending to think that it may have started out as a real 1904 Rolls-Royce, but have undergone a level of subsequent reworking that nasty purists like me (us) might think in doubtful taste.

The English cars do not change license plate every time you move house, so the English license plate under the German one at the back could well be the one with which the car was born (first registered). I tried checking out P1266 and R1266 on the English car tax office website (that's at ...https://www.taxdisc.direct.gov.uk/EvlPortalApp/app/enquiry?execution=e1s5... ) but that didn't take me anywhere. Hardly surprising. Why should the fellow wish to pay car tax in two countries? Still, from memory (not totally reliable in this context) the configuration of letter and number MIGHT be consistent with 1904. The Brits started with license plates (it says in wikipedia) in 1903 and I know the first one was A1. I guess they'd have got to P1266 quite quickly, though I've not idea how they ran their sequences.

I wonder if an expert on Rolls Royce suspension configurations might be able to look at those front leaf springs (I think that's what they are) and form a view.

MartinHansV (who uploaded this picture) contributes a large quantity of material to wikipedia. Lots of entries on old cars (in German wiki) and lots of pix. I guess we could try asking him. As far as I remember he comes from somewhere near Ulm, but I might be completely wrong about that. Last time I asked him something in my rather artless German he came back in fluent English which is what those Germans love to do. Trouble is, if he knew more about the car than appears in the picture, I suspect he'd already have provided the information in a note on the image file when he uploaded it. Still, I don't have a better idea (except that it's lunch time half an hour ago). If I acquire one (a better idea, that is) I'll come back and share it here.

Success Charles01 (talk) 11:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Here the same editor and photographer gives a more credible id to the same car in shots taken 2 years later so I have re-categorised the older pair to match. Maybe I don't mind very much if 40/50 is also wrong because there are so many others labelled Silver Ghost. So I now stop complaining. I see I may have damaged yr lunch, sorry. Thanks and regards, Eddaido (talk) 23:44, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

More images

Healey Westland?

I see you have been busy again (migosh how I wish I could follow you along and see the vehicles in the flesh / metal). I liked the Healey Tickford (from both ends) a lot. As part of that I changed the category system a little bit and was left puzzling about an image you uploaded a while ago called Healey Westland mid-Atlantic woody. I read the note that 106 chassis (you feel it is necessary to be ecumenical and let them roll out loud) were sent to Southampton. You say Westland, is that not the name of a coachbuilder? Wouldn't these cars be Healey Dobbs or Healey estates? I see in the Donald Healey Motor Co article there is mention of a Sportsmobile. What is that, do you know? PS what about the numbers in the table in that article - no category is big enough to contain the 106 estates by Dobbs. Regards, Eddaido (talk) 04:52, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Not for the first time, I fear you have found out the extent of my ignorance. Here I simply copied what appeared to be the relevant bit from a wiki-conversation which was initiated by me in an effort to find out what I had photographed. It's here: en:Talk:Donald Healey Motor Company. To which I can only add that this is not the only time that Chief Tin Cloud has come to my rescue with pieces of information, and I think of him as reliable. But of course he is not a citable source of the kind you could put in a wiki-source note: he's a wiki contributor like thee and me. So on how the image should or could be further categorised...I resist the temptation to opine. When I took the picture I assumed it was simply a fellow with a rather superior carpentry workshop who had purchased a chassis and used his imagination, so I was pleasantly surprised when Chief T C came up with the reassuring news that actually it was an identified body type with a named body producer. If your researches do lead you to a more positive and certain identification, I shall be interested. Meantime, your questions are outside the scope of what I am pleased to think of as my "knowledge".

On the basic mathematical inferences from the Donald Healey page, (1) it doesn't say anywhere (that I can see) that ALL the chassis/cars produced during a given period between 1946ish and 1954ish are included in the unsourced table. I'm not obsessive about source notes, but sometimes it would be of practical use to have a clearer idea of where bits of wiki-stuff come from and (2) I don't see any suggestion that 106 Riley powered Healeys were all delivered to a single coach builder in rolling chassis form. And might there have been another lot that were delivered in what a Bedford CA / Ford Transit maker might see as front-cab only form? - ie leaving to a coachbuilder the question of what happens beyond the B-pillar.

I'm glad you spotted the more recently uploaded pictures I took of the Tickford bodied Healey. I couldn't decide if there was a seriously loose panel fit at the front or if the bonnet/hood had simply been left not quite closed as a marginal contribution to preventing an overheat on the drive home. (It was a very hot day: we evidently rediscovered summer in England a week or two back). It is a seriously elegant car, and partly by luck I seem to have got a picture of it from a good angle. It's the sort of car that when we were at our most impressionable ages we would have wandered over and wondered about. Maybe also drooled over, though that sounds rather disgusting from the differently sober perspective of late middle age.

Need to go for that shower. Daughter got into the bathroom ahead of me this morning. School holidays. Best Charles01 (talk) 08:00, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I need help with this page, I've banged in some more images and destroyed the layout and got short tempered. Can you do a bit of level-headed reconstruction, please. I need to apologise for not comprehending that there were just 16 Breaks not 106, typically careless. Happy school holiday weekend. Eddaido (talk) 11:09, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I just took another look at the page. I'm sorry to report that I've still not been able to work out what you think is wrong with it. I'll happily jump in if you can spell out in appropriately idiot-proof words where there's something that you think I can usefully do, but speculatively messing around aimlessly with it I'm unlikely to make it a whole lot better. (I don't bring any special knowledge to the subject of Donald Healey, though I agree that from the perspective of sixty years later, some of the cars are seriously elegant.)

On a separate matter, I've made a start on Georges Richard. I think it's looking a bit more coherent and the nature of the Unic link is suitably harder to miss. Not sure about the Unic entry itself, but I guess there's scope for converting aspects of the bullet point format into something slightly more conventionally wiki-encyclopaedic Regards Charles01 (talk) 19:22, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

My trouble with the Donald Healey page is just that I have added more images and now when the window size is 15 inches they form the letter T and take up a whole screen. A part of the reason for this and it is only a part is the long caption to the Woody. I thought a fresh mind to that layout problem with all those images might come up with a solution to please visitors. Will now have a go but would be pleased if you would adjust to suit the wider community, and that's nice about Unic too. Eddaido (talk) 00:10, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, that’s interesting. You set up various thought triggers which I’ve been crunching through with breakfast. It’s Sunday, so breakfast this “early” (8 o’clock early?) is almost guaranteed to be a solitary feast. Donkerbrood met kwark en kaas. Met koffie en enige stukje kersen. Heel gezond… I guess that might be pumpernickel with kwark and cheese. Healthy or what? With coffee and a some chunks of cherries. Too much info? Like you I value succinct. I’m just not very good at it.

I did NOT get the same issue as the one you report on my screen. And I did NOT (despite much temptation) go into my control panel and start messing with my screen defaults in order to try and recreate it. Because what if the wind changes and I get stuck with something unfamiliar? BUT you describe the issue very clearly. So I wonder….

Why do we give pictures captions? To tell people (where it isn’t obvious) what they are of. Why do we give pictures longer captions? Because if you want to describe an aspect of a subject (aka motor car), you can often do it more succinctly AND more clearly with a well chosen picture and 100 words of caption than you would achieve with no picture and a 1,000 word paragraph. But is there a risk that a lengthy caption will end up dominating the picture rather than elucidating it (if you see what I’m trying to write)? And yes. That’s a particular risk where the wiki-layout-default format – as in the gallery format – tends to give you a very small version of the picture at the best of times. SO, especially where the picture is one of a series in a gallery, you need a better than usual reason to put a loooong caption under a “gallery picture”.

Why does the Woody Healey Wagon picture get such a long caption. I don’t know. It is a text that I pasted into the image file itself because I did not want to lose it. I thought it was interesting and might one day support better support text in a wiki entry. Might even support a good informative caption. BUT as far as I remember (and of course I might misremember) it was not I that pasted the text over again as a caption when installing the Healey Woody image in the gallery on the Healey page. So I have no “pride of ownership” in the positioning of that caption in the caption in the gallery in the Healey entry. (I know pride of ownership is at best a questionable motivation in the context of wiki judgement, but hell, I’m human too.)

SO I am intending to remove or massively truncate the caption on the Woody Healey.

I will be interested to learn if this remedy addresses the lay-out issue which you describe (and presumably would affect lots of people whose screen defaults are set in the same way.

I MIGHT try reducing the number of gallery images per line as well, to be sure to change – preferably improve – the way the gallery looks. I’ll see how that works (albeit using MY screen configuration defaults) and think about it.

Meantime the info currently in the caption is still accessible for anyone (1) interested enough in the Woody Healey picture to look at the picture itself in full screen format on the wiki-commons file and for anyone (2) thinking that the Healey entry needs a full para on Woody Healeys (or some equivalent subject) into which the info I’m removing from the caption might usefully be incorporated. That is NOT a hint that such a para should be composed. I don’t know too much about Healeys, but I suspect that there may be other paras of more mainstream information that might need to be introduced before getting down to the level of detail that would justify a para dedicated to the Woody Healey Wagon. BUT I repeat, I simply don’t know enough about the subject to judge this.

So much thinking before half-past eight feels a bit excessive. Family still unanimously asleep, to judge by the continuing silence from the water pipes. Long live Sunday. I’m off to do what I wrote before I change my mind. Feel free (as ever) to reverse or improve upon my wiki-deeds with this. Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 07:42, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry the last week(! I see) has been awkward and distracting and flashed past but I'm here now and sorry about that. There are signs I'd like the chance to graze on your family's 'frig (should that be fridge?). Anyway, Please put back the long caption for the Woody, my concern was that I'd moved it to a position the author might not like and I did not want to seem to have been offensive. May your summer continue so very warm and pleasing and may your Sunday water pipes stay peaceful for every bit as long this coming Sunday! No dashing about and getting heat-stroke or anything. Eddaido (talk) 11:41, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Knebworth House Classic Motor Show 2013

Hello Charles, I wanted to let you know that I've created Category:Knebworth House Classic Motor Show 2013. So you might want to add it to your new uploads. I like the shots you took at Knebworth today, and thanks a lot for sharing them immediately. De728631 (talk) 17:44, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Noted. Thank you much.

I've been going to this oldtimer show at Knebworth for several years so that I have already, in previous years, uploaded to wikipedia many of the pictures of old English cars that were previously "missing". That means that this year I really am in most cases able to limit myself to cars that were painted in clear colours and were well positioned in relation to the sun (and in most cases well positioned in relation to the other cars), so it's more about trying to improve the quality of what is there (always a VERY subjective matter!) than about filling in gaps.

I see you've also picked up on the pictures I took last week at Schaffen-Diest. (Schaffen is a Vorort of Diest.) I got many more pictures at Schaffen-Diest in 2012, when the light was more consistently good (though 2013 the light was quite good some of the time: kept changing though....) In my file names I concentrate on identifying the car in the file name and I am not consistent (though I guess I need to be) about whether or not I include "where" in the file name of cars I photograph, but any picture of a car that I uploaded between 12 August 2012 and 27 August 2012, especially where the license plate is Belgian or Dutch (and NOT where it's an older picture which I simply changed by cropping it more or something) probably deserves to be in a Schaffen-Diest autoshow 2012 category if there will be one. That classification can be a job for me for the long winter evenings, though of course if you do get in first I will be grateful and happy!

Thanks again for noticing - and noticing so quickly - the batch I uploaded today, and for bothering to let me know and categorise the pictures.

Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 19:14, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I think including the location in the filename is not that important, and it would only make them longer and unhandy. But I see you've found Category:Schaffen Fly and Drive In 2012 Cars. That said, do you also happen to have photos of planes from this year's event in Schaffen? De728631 (talk) 15:41, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Sadly no plane pictures 2012, no. That would need several of me (and I don't really have much of an eye for the planes, nor a fast enough repeating camera to photograph them coming and going on the bumpy grass strip on the north side of the car park).

On file names, I guess my priority is (1) to describe what the file contains and (2) to avoid inadvertently using a name someone else already used. That's the thinking behind preferring "Ford Escort May 1995 1098cc.jpg" over "Ford Escort.jpg". I'm afraid I tend always to use image file names with "copy and paste" so I'm not really aware of the "longer and unhandy" issue. Maybe I should be.... Regards Charles01 (talk) 16:59, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Ownership and change of license on File:Vauxhall Viva HB cropped.jpg

Hi again,

I notice that you added some licensing and attribution information (*) to File:Vauxhall Viva HB cropped.jpg, which is apparently a straightforward crop and minor contrast tweak of File:Vivahb.jpg by GRAHAMUK.

As far as I'm aware, very straightforward changes like these fall under the threshold of originality and are very unlikely to confer any additional ownership or copyright to the person making the changes. Thus, though you specifically disclaimed these rights anyway, I don't think it's necessary in this case. :-)

However, I notice that the license on the cropped version was changed to "Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication" rather than the original work's dual GFDL-1.2/CC-BY-SA-3.0 licensing terms. I assume that this was only meant to refer to your changes (since, of course, one can't change the original's licensing without permission from the original owner), but it was misleading since no mention was made of the original license.

Since this wasn't necessary anyway, I've removed these to avoid confusion and copied over the licensing terms from the original.

I'm sure this was done in good faith, so please don't take this as a criticism of your work or your decision to crop the image. On the contrary, I'm in agreement with the latter- having separate cropped versions of images is good if it helps us make substantially better use of limited space, e.g. for Wikipedia thumbnails.

(*) (See here for original version of these).

All the best, CarbonCaribou (talk) 16:31, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Noted. I feel a bit uneasy cropping other peoples' images, but this one just screamed to be cropped - at least with my screen set up, and given that people now try and look at websites on a little telephone (must be mad....). BUT I have now got into a more systematic routine for when I do do it (I think), and I always try and simply copy the copyright category used in the original shot by the original uploader. If I didn't do that here, it was a mistake. Which you say you have corrected. So thank you. And best wishes. Charles01 (talk) 19:01, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

If it was a mistake then no problem- I just felt it was something I should point out.

Personally, I usually add the creditable author's name to the existing license templates- by default those normally refer to "I", which is okay for the original upload by the author, but somewhat misleading if the uploader of the derived version isn't that person. This normally makes clearer who should be credited (and I've still seen images incorrectly attributed to me or "Wikimedia Commons"!). This is something that even the 'derivativeFX' upload facility doesn't do, though IMHO it should...

Anyway, like I said, I've no problem with your decision to crop itself- quite the opposite, if the cropped version has a clearly worthwhile purpose- as it does here.

I also meant to say last time that if you feel a crop- or other change- alters an image to an extent the original uploader might (conceivably) disagree with or want noted, you can still point out that fact that it has been cropped, even if this wouldn't otherwise warrant a credit. (Like I added your name to the derived version).

All the best, CarbonCaribou (talk) 19:57, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that makes sense to me. I'd not really meant to launch a long discussion about this, but cannot resist adding a link the the last time I "improved" someone else's image. It's here or (from slightly earlier) here. I think the annotations I added "do the job" but if you think anything I did here is plain wrong, maybe you could let me know of any suggested improvement(s) for next time I do something similar. Best wishes Charles01 (talk) 20:25, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

You can see my suggested changes for the first here. I'd say:-

• (i) you definitely need to change the author field to include the original photographer's name- while your changes are certainly an improvement, you're not the main "author" as such.
• (ii) I also updated the license to reflect the fact that the uploader (you) is not the original author (note that this now displays Berthold Werner's name and not "I"), and
• (iii) I added the optional "derived from" template, though that was more to show its use- it's not essential here as you already acknowledged the source.

You can see the changes made to the second here. Again, I changed the author field and attributed name in the license. Note that (annoyingly) that license template doesn't support the "author" field, requiring "attribution" instead. I tend to just put them both in (i.e. ...|author=BLAH|attribution=BLAH|..) anyway, so I don't need to bother remembering which template requires which. :-)

Perhaps you could also clarify what retouching was carried out.

I think "neighbo(u)r" in the first filename is unnecessary; either "neighbour" or "neighbor" would be fine. Commons allows almost any language to be used in filenames as long as it's meaningful (e.g. Arabic), so IMHO you don't need to worry about pandering to US vs. British English. :-) Perhaps even "cropped and modified" is enough for the filename anyway- you can include the rationale with the rest of the file info (as you did).

IMHO the most important thing is that the original author is credited and license retained, though- via the "author" field (at least) and the license template (preferably). If you think your changes are major enough to warrant crediting yourself, you may also wish to add that- to some extent whether this is justified this is a matter of judgement when one goes beyond simple crops and brightness/contrast/colour fixes.

Sorry, that was definitely a long answer. :-( CarbonCaribou (talk) 21:21, 3 November 2013 (UTC)