Talk:Sd.Kfz. 250

mine protection

I removed the following content twice: "The oblique lower body plates' V-shape deflected the energy from anti-tank mines. It was common on many WWII German light armoured vehicles, like Sd.Kfz. 222 and Sd.Kfz. 231 - and perfected in the modern South African CSIR Casspir[citation needed]."

This was removed because:

a) It is uncited and therefore subject to immediate removal even if we believed it was correct.

b) It may not be correct. The 250, 222, 231 etc all had angled plates on the hull sides but flat plates on the hull bottoms. In the absence of any evidence whatsoever that this reduced their vulnerability to mines, the edit cannot stay in the article. This is different from the modern South African designs that feature hull designs specifically intended to minimize mine damage.

c) Tilt-rod and command-detonated mines can go off anywhere under the vehicle, not just under the wheels and tracks.

If someone has cited evidence on this content, terrific, let's put it back in and cite it. Regards, DMorpheus (talk) 16:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Your single-minded deletion of content unknown to you is not according to wikipolicy.

"a) It is uncited and therefore subject to immediate removal even if we believed it was correct." Wrong, only if it's material about living persons.

b) "It may not be correct" is your WP:OR.

c) Nobody claimed they were mine proof.

I'll re-insert the section with a {{Fact|date=June 2009}}. If you haven't heard about it, it's fair enough. But other users can add sources to the article as well as you and me. If all the [citation needed] should be deleted on sight, you'll have a huge job to do. --Regards, Necessary Evil (talk) 16:48, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

May I suggest you take a look at Wikipedia:Verifiability ? And here's a quote:

"I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.–Jimmy Wales [1]"

Removal of the content was absolutely in line with wiki policy.

No one has mentioned "mine proof" except you.

Regards, DMorpheus (talk) 17:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Very well, but can you and Jimbo please explain why on Earth Wikipedia is having the {{Fact|date=June 2009}} template, when uncited material should be aggressively removed anyway. I've been tagging a couple of articles with [citation needed], but that was incorrect or what? --Regards, Necessary Evil (talk) 18:37, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I am new here but look at WP:BURDEN.

“ If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider tagging a sentence by adding the {{fact}} template, a section with {{unreferencedsection}}, or the article with {{refimprove}} or {{unreferenced}}. Alternatively, you may leave a note on the talk page requesting a source, or you may move the material to the talk page. ”

so there is no standard killing procedure for uncited text and BTW Jimmy Wales is not God. and maybe "the oblique lower body plates' V-shape" were for improved wading abilities, huh? --130 .225.204.130 (talk) 18:26, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, fair enough, if it were merely an uncited edit with no other issues, I would not disagree. But that's not the case here.

First, the lower body is not, strictly speaking, V-shaped. The floor is flat.

Second, the statement was not merely uncited, it was also dubious. I've read several books on these halftracks and while I will never claim to be an expert on them, not one of the books I have mentions any mine protection consideration (or effect) in the design. That doesn't mean it that minimizing mine damage wasn't a design consideration - absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. But it's odd that even when other design considerations are discussed (e.g. Perret) it doesn't even get a mention. BTW how thick was the belly armor? 5.5mm ? And we seriously think that was going to slow down an AT mine?

Third, V-shaped, well-armored mine-protected vehicle design began in South African during their wars of the 1980s and later. There are significant tactical disadvantages to this sort of design for conventional force-on-force combat vehicles, which is probably why the idea took hold where it did - a place that faced no conventionally-armed threat.

So I don't think this was *merely* a case of an uncited edit. It was a dubious uncited edit. If someone has sources to prove me wrong, great, seriously, I will have learned something.

Regards, DMorpheus (talk) 19:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)