Talk:United States airmail service

Reason for starting this page

In preparation for posting a complete revision of the airmail article I decided to section off all the United States related information into this article, so I suggest no revising any of the main article as it will only be overwritten with a comprehensive, well sourced revision some time soon. For quite some time I have been very disappointed with the quality and completeness of the "Airmail" article and asked for the German de: Luftpost article, which is a German wiki featured article, to be translated into English. However, many foreign language articles do not use verified citations and if we have any chance of getting "airmail" to become a GA or FA we must include them. To that end the translation has been done, proof-read but it had a German bias to it so is being revised, sourced and expanded here. Likewise airmail has a US bias with nearly half being US info; the current article is so overweight that it could nearly be called "Airmails of the United States".

Indeed this article on US airmails will need expansion with the Pioneer period, FAMs, and much other information, but, and this is a piece of advise especially directed, without prejustice, towards User:Centpacrr, we need to ensure that only verified information is included in the article. Let's start out with a new slate by only adding sourced material to it, in the style I used in this Jean-Pierre Blanchard edit to this page. Let's keep up the standard. If editors use something from the AMMC, American Air Mail Catalog, please ensure you state the edition and pages where you got the info. If you use a Scott catalog, quote the proper references too. We cannot rely on people's say so, no matter their claim of the topic's knowledge. Centpacrr with your philatelic knowledge, I hope that you will help make this into something great. Because I don't have the time, and don't want to go searching for lazy editor's sources, I intend removing unsourced edits with no apologies and without even putting in citation {{cn}} tags. ww2censor (talk) 18:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I am currently on vacation in Maine so do not have my various Postal History collections with me, however references to virtually everything in the sections I wrote on US Air Mail (which were moved over here from the general Air Mail article) can be found in the American Air Mail Catalogue (AAMS, 6th ed. 1998) listed with each specific flight and/or route (which I have already sourced) and/or from contemporary news articles (mostly in the New York Times) all of which I have and am planning to add when I returned from my vacation. I have been collecting, researching, and writing about pre War US domestic, PAA, and Zeppelin Aero Postal History for a very long time and you can be sure that I am extremely careful about the accuracy of the historical details. I have a great deal more that I intend to add in the months ahead which will also be illustrated by a good many more covers and other relevant artifacts from my extensive files and collections on these subjects. To avoid further confusion, I will also delete the US Air Mail section that I wrote from the general Air Mail article as it is now duplicated here. (Centpacrr (talk) 19:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC))

No need to duplicate your reply Centpacrr; here is most appropriate place for this discussion. Unfortunately you still don't really understand the reference I refer to. Giving a general link to a webpage that lists several AAMS books is NOT a citation and not acceptable as such because no one can check a statement with that vague, non-specific information. You need to cite the specific information, so for instance, if you add the text "The first flight made by the U.S. Army Air Corp over the CAM, Contract Air Mail, routes, that president Franklin D. Roosevelt had cancelled, was made on February 19, 1934". So the citation in the edit would look like this
{{cite book | last = AAMC | first = | title = American Air Mail Catalog, Volume One, Fifth Edition | publisher = American Air Mail Society | date = 1974 | location = Washington, D.C. | pages = p. 100 | isbn = }}
Please use this format. As you will see some books can use more parameters that others and because there is no author for the AAMC, I use that in the last name slot. Here is the citation page which shows many templates which also give you examples for newspaper, website, etc. Hope you can follow it. Cheers and have a great vacation. ww2censor (talk) 02:47, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Franked

Using the word franked while the franking article has not yet been revised, because it is still under discussion, is now misleading. Any reader or editor searching for the word franked will not find anything. Why not leave it out for a while until franking has been revised properly? ww2censor (talk) 04:24, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it is pretty clear from the context ("... franked with the first U.S. Air Mail stamp...") which meaning of the word it is, no Wikilink has been attached to it, and "franked" is neither a technical nor obscure term so I don't really see any serious danger of confusion on the part of readers. I will, however, change at least the definition portion of the Franking article tomorrow to mitigate any potential puzzlement this may cause in the unlikely event that anyone might feel a need to go there based on this caption.

I also agree with Mike Cline that there ought to be a completely separate article on "franking privilege" because it is really not the same thing at all as "franking" which primarily refers to the physical presence of stamps, impressions, codings, labels, privileged signatures, and/or any other markings which indicate that an item of mail is qualified to be postally serviced. (Centpacrr (talk) 05:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC))

Under construction

There was an under construction tag on the mainspace page, altered., removed, reinstated as a personal notice, then reinstated and it was removed again, but now a personal under construction notice in bold text is on the top of this talk page. As I put in the edit summary, basically all articles are under construction, even if not actively. Putting a personal note here gives me the impression, which you were told about elsewhere, Centpacrr, that you own the page and don't want other people to edit it. I am sure you would not want to give that impression, would you? So, why is it there, as there is really no need? If you are actively working on a page you may want to use the {{Inuse}} template to avoid getting edit conflicts. A short simple answer would be appreciated. An alternative is to develop the article in a personal sandbox page. ww2censor (talk) 20:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The purpose has nothing to do with "ownership" but to indicate that this article is known to be far, far from complete. I was actually already starting to work on such a page in May which I was going to call U.S. Air Mail but other things intervened for me so I put it off until after I returned from vacation in August when I planned to do a full U.S. Air Mail article in my Sandbox and post it when I had it adequately developed to cover the subject at least chronologically from 1918 to 1977. Those plans were necessarily altered, however, when you moved the portions that I had already written from the Airmail article (where I had been adding them until it seemed that they needed an article of their own) and created Airmails of the United States on which I have now been working instead. I considered doing this in my Sandbox, but I rejected that alternative because I didn't want to be in the position where i was working on a development version while an "online" version that I would later replace was being developed simultaneously. In order to not have to duplicate my efforts in two places, I decided to just work on the "online" version, but unfortunately this also leads to getting sidetracked during the development process in things like the "franked" and "under construction" tag issues.

To indicate that the article as it is now posted is known to be very incomplete, I thought it would be a good idea to add an "under construction" template, but found the "official" one to be stark and frankly off putting. Fortunately (I thought naively) I then found another Wiki "under construction" tag which I felt was much more appropriate and friendly. Someone unknown to me (and who has also made no contributions to the article) decided to replace that with the "official" one after a few days, however, in order to "de-whimsify" the notice. (Curiously this serious fellow selected a picture of himself dressed in a pirate costume for his userpage.) As a compromise, I thought just a simple text notice would be neither stark nor whimsical and tried that. That didn't seem to fly either so I replaced it with the "whimsical" tag again but upon reflection decided to almost immediately remove it and just leave the article as it was in the beginning to avoid going through this circular exercise again. As one last good faith effort to be informative, however, i instead put a simple statement as a comment on the talk page to indicate to anyone who might visit there that the article is known to be nowhere near a complete treatment of the subject as it stands now. As this seems to be "against style" too, however, I guess I'll just remove that as well, state it simply (but quietly) here, and leave it at that:

This article is under long term development with many sections currently under construction and yet to be added.

(Centpacrr (talk) 23:21, 21 July 2008 (UTC))

*Ensifera* (Centpacrr (talk) 16:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC))

...et etiam magis *ensifera* (quoque tardus iam) (Centpacrr (talk) 23:40, 22 July 2008 (UTC))

Image copyright problem with Image:Helicopter air mail, 1947 .jpg

The image Image:Helicopter air mail, 1947 .jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
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This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --12:40, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't the title be "Airmail of the United States?"

My understanding of "airmail" is that the term is a mass noun, like "mail," and therefore is spelled the same in both the singular and plural. Google Ngram Viewer shows that airmail is way more common than airmails. When postal experts need to specifically refer to single or multiple items of mail, they usually say "mailpiece" or "mailpieces." --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:17, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I had been wondering the same thing. Wiktionary has entries for both "mails" and "airmails", though. – voidxor 16:51, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Having copyedited this article a long time ago, I still have it on my watchlist. I have always assumed that "Airmails of the United States" is a proper noun or, at least, was a term of art in the field. However, now when I check back, the phrase has only 1 hit on Google Books... and that one is back-referencing our article. Thus, you discovered an elephant in the room.
The proper name of the original 1918 organization was the U.S. Air Mail Service (redlink, huh), but it ceased operations in 1926, when contracts were given to commercial airlines. Scope of this article is much longer, though, as it ends in 1975. But I guess the title would work in lowercase, too: U.S. air mail service. This one definitively needs changing. No such user (talk) 10:23, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Boldly moved to United States airmail service. No such user (talk) 13:28, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for being bold! My only thought is that the word "services" should arguably be plural, but I'll leave that to those of you who know more about the history. — voidxor 16:07, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks also for taking care of this. The only reason I know anything about mail is that I had to litigate the issue of effectiveness of service by certified mail over seven or eight years ago. That was when I learned about the Domestic Mail Manual and USPS regulations in general. --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:25, 24 December 2021 (UTC)