Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 10

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Request for article creation

I am employed by Porter Novelli, a global public relations network.

My client CSIS does not currently have an entry in Wikipedia. We feel that one would be appropriate, as it is made up of 24 major container shipping lines and exists to raise awareness about the industry.

Please could somebody review the short article that is on my talk page and if it is appropriate, create an entry.


Many Thanks RachelRingstead (talk) 15:21, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Rachel, you may want to cross post your request to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maritime Trades. That project is more specific to shipping companies while this project is more specific to individual ships. If you had some online references to add to the article it would help ease things along so that editors can verify the information. --Brad (talk) 19:29, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Will do, good suggestion, thanks Brad RachelRingstead (talk) 12:17, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Image Exchange

It is proposed that the current image in the surrender of japan section on the page USS Missouri (BB-63) be exchanged for a new image. All interested editers are invited to comment at Talk:USS Missouri (BB-63)#Commodore Perry's flag. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for SS Kroonland now open

The A-Class review for SS Kroonland is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Wandalstouring (talk) 15:14, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Reposted from Milhist talk. --Brad (talk) 00:16, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Could someone look please

Could someone in the know please have a look at the question at Talk:USS Chicago (CA-29). Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 20:45, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for SMS Von der Tann now open

The peer review for SMS Von der Tann is now open. All editors are invited to participate. Any and all input would be appreciated. Thanks! Parsecboy (talk) 21:46, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Dollar Line and Pacific Mail Steamship Co

Been working on the American President Lines article, and most of the articles Robert Dollar (i.e. Dollar Lines) and Pacific Mail Steamship Company is now covered in that. Those two articles aren't exactly amazing examples of articles right now - my two ideas currently are either to merge these into the APL article as I continue to expand (they have a bit of info my sources haven't mentioned, need to check for sources for some of that stuff) or to split up my writing into these two articles (it's already done so within the APL article) and have the APL article focus purely on APL since its formation (I've yet to write that up). Ideas on this, anyone? Danny252 (talk) 23:11, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I think all three articles have enough information to stay as they are now. Before you get much further into the APL article you're going to have to find more third party reliable sources. I was going to give the article a B-Class rating but I noticed that too many of your references are from the company website. --Brad (talk) 03:54, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
I'll get on that one sometime today, the other articles list a few possible sources Danny252 (talk) 12:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for Barbarossa-class ocean liner now open

The peer review for Barbarossa-class ocean liner is now open. All editors are invited to participate. Any and all input would be appreciated. Thanks! — Bellhalla (talk) 23:11, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

FAC - Baltimore Steam Packet Company

This article is now at FAC: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Baltimore Steam Packet Company. Thanks also to Bellhalla for the GA review and helping with various tweaks for FAC. JGHowes talk - 19:10, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Update: promoted to FA today. JGHowes talk - 20:41, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

  • The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
  • The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
  • A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 20:50, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

NOTE: to all members of this project assessing articles, please refer to this discussion. There is a rough consensus not to use C-class and that the MILHIST B-class criteria apply to this project as well. -MBK004 20:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Article for deletion

An article within the scope of this project, Princess Kaguya (ship), is being considered for deletion. Editors from the project may wish to comment here. Benea (talk) 17:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Does WikiProject Ships also cover Naval aircraft?

I noticed a few airships have the Ship project banner on their Talk pages. At first I thought this was an oversight (someone or a bot seeing "ship" in the title maybe), so I may have removed banners from one or two airship articles. Now I am not so sure.

The few US Naval aircraft I looked at were in WikiProject Aviation only. It probably does not matter if an article gets more banners (more the merrier I say), but I would not like to either wrongly include articles or wrongly exclude articles.

To save fruitless work removing banners, would it be Ok just leaving any Ship banners already placed? Alternatively, if this project really does want to watch over Naval airships, then shall I add a banner when I go through the various airship articles?

Meanwhile here are some airship-related articles with Ship banners:

-84user (talk) 21:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I believe there is an archived discussion where the project decided that airships operated by a nation's navy are indeed a part of our scope, but with a low importance assessment. -MBK004 21:17, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I found the discussion you must mean at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 7#USS Akron (ZRS-4), where you tagged ZR1 to ZR5. And I see that I removed the banner from ZR2 (R38). I'll put it back if you like. The Spy basket is not really related to ships though? The US tested them and didn't like them, while the Germans used the devices sporadically. -84user (talk) 23:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem, I've already added the tag back. I'd think we just stick to the airships and blimps, but that's just me. -MBK004 23:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
My presumption is that any ship (regardless of being water or air based) commissioned into service for a national navy would be covered by the scope of this project. However blimps not falling into this rather narrow criteria would probably only be tagged for {{WPAVIATION}} and {{WPMILHIST}}. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Sixth Fleet (United States Navy)

Resolved
 – Consensus-less moves reverted. Kralizec! (talk) 19:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

This article was recently moved. I don't necessarily have a problem with renaming/moving it, but it was done with no apparent discussion by somebody who doesn't seem to have a user page. Not a good way to do it, IMHO. Is there a reason for the move? Lou Sander (talk) 20:55, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

They certainly enjoy moving pages apparently without discussion or fixing double redirects. Over 150 moves in a month, I don't think I've moved that many pages in 2.5+ years. I would think they are leaving a big mess for someone else to clean up. I don't see a problem with the original name of United States Sixth Fleet or any of they other names they saw fit to change. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:12, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the list of moved pages. I see that all of 'em have a revert button. Should it be pushed for some of 'em? Lou Sander (talk) 04:45, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
I just reverted about a hundred consensus-less page moves made by this editor. Thanks for the heads-up on this issue, and please let me know if I missed any or did not get them moved to the correct location (a few had been moved 3 - 5 times in the past 48 hours, so the page histories are somewhat convoluted). --Kralizec! (talk) 19:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

US Coast Guard class articles

I've found some Coast Guard articles that likely should be renamed to a class. Some of them are describing two or more classes per article:

Anyhow, looking for some input on what to do with these. They're a bit confusing at present. --Brad (talk) 19:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 2025 articles assigned to this project, or 10.4%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:06, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Should we use this?

This could be a good way to replace Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Tasks as that page has been a manually maintained page. It would be nice to have as a reference anyway. --Brad (talk) 15:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot has been enabled @ Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Cleanup listing and is a good comprehensive listing. 10% of our articles are tagged for some sort of maintenance. --Brad (talk) 14:44, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for USS Princess Matoika (ID-2290) now open

The A-Class review for USS Princess Matoika (ID-2290) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! — Bellhalla (talk) 23:11, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

FAC now open

The FA review is now open here. --Brad (talk) 17:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Ship article titles

A proposal to alter Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) to mandate titling all ship articles by year of launch rather than pennant number has been made. Interested parties are invited to comment here Benea (talk) 16:54, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

A number of comments have been redacted to avoid accusations of POV, but are available in the page history. Further comments should be addressed at the discussion page. Cheers, Benea (talk) 23:29, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Admin needed for project banner change.

Resolved
 – Done. Kralizec! (talk) 02:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I left a message about DAB_vs_dab on the project banner talk page. If this change can be made it would help. --Brad (talk) 20:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Good catch, Brad! --Kralizec! (talk) 02:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Lightship naming and standardization

This discussion has been moved to Naming conventions (ships), per User:Brad101.
Just a post for the archive bot. --Brad (talk) 21:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed category names changes

I have nominated two sub-categories of Category:Ships by navy for renaming to fit in with the existing naming scheme:

All editors are welcome to participate in the discussions here and here, respectively. — Bellhalla (talk) 03:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Another nomination:
All editors are welcome to participate in the discussion here. — Bellhalla (talk) 23:23, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Italics for Cyrillic ship names?

I'm working on an article on SS Czar, a Russian American Line ship that was known as "Царь" in Russian/Cyrillic. This brought up an interesting question: should Cyrillic ship names put in italics like those in Latin alphabets? I would think so, but I wasn't sure. — Bellhalla (talk) 20:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Sounds logical to me... I'd assume that anyone interested in knowing the Cyrillic version of the name would be aware that certain characters change appearance (quite considerably) when in italics. That's the only potential issue with it I can think of. Martocticvs (talk) 21:50, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments sought on the Hyūga class helicopter destroyer article

Several editors (including myself) are currently discussing whether Japan's new Hyūga class helicopter destroyers should be classified as aircraft carriers or not and whether the article's references are adequete. Interested editors are invited to comment on the article's talk page. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:12, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I proposed to merge Floating storage and offloading unit and Floating Production Storage and Offloading articles. Your comments are appreciated. Beagel (talk) 14:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

HMS Resolution article misnamed?

One of today's selected anniversaries on the Main Page is the 1772 sailing of HMS Resolution under the command of James Cook. However I noticed that the article on the Resolution is named HMS Resolution (Cook) rather than something like our standard HMS Resolution (1770) or HMS Resolution (with the dab page then moved to HMS Resolution (disambiguation)). Can anyone think of a good reason not to rename the ship? As a point of reference, the article on Drake's ship is not named Golden Hind (Drake) and neither is Nelson's named HMS Victory (Nelson). --Kralizec! (talk) 21:20, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The article was created in 2003 and seems to have gone largely unnoticed since then. I don't see any reason not to fit it to our conventions and name it HMS Resolution (1772). It could do with a good overhaul anyway, needs a new infobox, etc so fixing the title would be a first step. Benea (talk) 22:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, HMS Resolution (1772) appears to be the way to go. Parsecboy (talk) 22:22, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
1772? She was launched in 1770... though bought by the navy in 1771. 1772 would be the commissioning date then? Wouldn't we normally go by launch or acquisition date? Martocticvs (talk) 23:34, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Which it seems you did even as I was typing it :) Martocticvs (talk) 23:36, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
(ec) I've just finished some work on the page, amongst other errors it contained was the claim she was purchased in 1772. She was purchased in November 1771 (and commissioned then as well) so I've moved the article to HMS Resolution (1771). She was also HMS Drake originally (for about a month) but I think this is where 'most well known incarnation' comes into play. Benea (talk) 23:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for American Palestine Line now open

An A-Class review for American Palestine Line is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! — Bellhalla (talk) 04:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Note: This article does not fall under MilHist therefore needs attention by this project to pass A-class. Please comment when you have a few minutes. --Brad (talk) 16:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Consolidated category renaming discussion

There is a new, consolidated discussion of the following proposed category renames:

Category:Royal New Zealand Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Royal New Zealand Navy
Category:Imperial Russian Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Imperial Russian Navy
Category:Royal Thai Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Royal Thai Navy
Category:Australian Colonial navy ships → Category:Ships of Australian Colonial navies
Category:Continental Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Continental Navy
Category:Imperial Beiyang Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Imperial Beiyang Navy
Category:Royal Danish Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Royal Danish Navy
Category:Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy
Category:Royal Netherlands Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy
Category:Royal Norwegian Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Royal Norwegian Navy
Category:Royal Swedish Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Royal Swedish Navy
Category:Russian Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Russian Navy
Category:South African Navy ships → Category:Ships of the South African Navy
Category:Spanish Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Spanish Navy
Category:Turkish Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Turkish Navy
Category:Union Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Union Navy

(The first three listed were in separate discussions nominated on 12 July that have been consolidated with the rest of the proposed renames.) The discussion may be found at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 July 15#Ships by navy. All interested editors are welcome to participate. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:39, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

SS/HMS Celtic

SS Celtic was the HQ of Operation Frankton. Was she known as HMS Celtic at the time? Mjroots (talk) 20:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

No ship named HMS Celtic has ever been commissioned with the Royal Navy according to J. J. Colledge. She would not therefore have borne the prefix. Benea (talk) 20:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the photos of the ship, are you sure that it was a steamship? It looks like a sailing vessel to me: no stack(s), no propellor. — Bellhalla (talk) 22:18, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal, George Washington/Catlin

I have proposed a merger of USS George Washington (1908) and USS Catlin (AP-19) into SS George Washington; all three articles describe the same ship. All interested editors are welcome to discuss the proposal here — Bellhalla (talk) 05:11, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Disambig pages trying to be more

I just completed a tag and assess run and came across a few articles which by all accounts should be disambig pages but aren't. There seems to be enough information to warrant individual stubs for each of the ships, but I just don't have the time to make it happen and sort through all the mess. Here is the list:

I would appreciate it if someone would have at this. -MBK004 03:00, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been working on the Stockholms with a plan of creating expanded articles for each ship and eventually turning Stockholm (Ships) into a redirect to Stockholm (disambiguation) (doing a separate ship disambiguation page seems a bit superfluous to me). I can sort that one out at least. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 09:07, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Stockholm (Ships) is now done. I've branched off the first ship into SS Potsdam (which was the original name), the second and third into MS Stockholm (1941) (they were essentially the same ship, so I felt it was pointless to create separate pages for both - most content would have had to be duplicated), the fourth to MS Stockholm (1948) (this was already done earlier), and changed Stockholm (Ships) into a redirect to Stockholm (disambiguation) as detailed above. And I couldn't resist expanding SS Potsdam slightly and SS Stockholm (1941) radically. Both also had military careers, so the people more interested in that side of things might want to take a look - Stockholm especially could use input from someone more experienced than me in that field. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 11:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Gripsholms are also done. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 16:21, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Oslofjords are also done. I chose to ignore the two last ships as there was only one source that mentioned them, with very vague information. The first three can be found at SS Oslofjord, MS Oslofjord (1938) and MS Oslofjord (1949), with a disambiguation at Oslofjord (disambiguation). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 16:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Empress of Britains done — Bellhalla (talk) 12:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
And Empress of Canadas done — Bellhalla (talk) 13:34, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Just found another, right before this was to archive: Spirit of Tasmania if anyone would like to take care of this, I would appreciate it...-MBK004 01:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

And another one, Pride of Le Havre. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 17:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Pride of Le Havre is done. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
...not to be a pain in the butt, but that particular ex-Olau Hollandia was built in 1989, not 1981. I'll make some general fixes into the article, while I'm at it I'll also move it under the correct year. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 13:34, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Dang. I thought I got that right. Thanks for catching it. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:27, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
It's confusing with two very similar ships with the same name built for the same company just eight years apart. Also, I need a life. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 15:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Here's another one in progress - Miss England (Speedboat) - I wonder if we should catch it now, or let the author finish work on it and then split it? Benea (talk) 02:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe one of us should drop a note at his talk page (in the kindest of terms of course), noting that those should be separate articles? This would save trouble all around. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 08:16, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Can it not be me? I came across one of his articles entitled 'Captain George E.T. Eyston'. I moved it to the conventional George E. T. Eyston (as we don't include rank in article titles) and explained my thinking on the talk page. I'm fairly sure I have both convention and consensus on my side, but I've discovered that he's acted very strongly (and garnered accusations of incivility for it) at other attempts to move it. I have a nasty feeling it might kick off, and he might take a note on the Miss England issue the wrong way. Ho hum. Benea (talk) 09:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, that definately doesn't sound nice. I can drop him a note on Miss England (famous last words). On an unrelated note to that subject, an update on Spirit of Tasmania: I've branched off Spirit of Tasmania III into MS Mega Express Four, and the first, non-numbered Spirit of Tasmania has previously been combined into the article of MS Princess of Norway. That leaves just Spirit of Tasmania I and Spirit of Tasmania II to be taken care of. So we're half-way there ;). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 10:13, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Miss England (Speedboat): I have left a (hopefully very diplomatical) note at User talk:Andy Dingley#Miss England (Speedboat) and naming conventions. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 10:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
As noted on my own talk page, I'd prefer it if you let the original creator finish the page, then split it. The problem is that I don't have enough material for three decent pages here, but hopefully do for one. If someone else were to come along later and add to it, then that could obviously change. In particular, I've almost nothing on III. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Here's another - Rainbow Warrior. This is an interesting one, there's a bit about the first ship, a lot on her sinking, and then a bit on the second. Interesting thing is, we already have an article about the Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. I think the way to go is to have a Rainbow Warrior (1978) page for the first ship, and a Rainbow Warrior (1989) for the second. I think it would be OK to keep the 'sinking of...' article. And then spin off all the information to the relevant articles and keep 'Rainbow Warrior' as the disambiguation page. Any objections?

As to the Miss England (Speedboat), I think the user has done a great job putting enough in to qualify for articles on each individual boat, so I'd suggest breaking that up and keeping it as a dab page. I'd rather not do it myself though, I wouldn't want the user to think I was getting at him. Benea (talk) 08:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually hang fire on Miss England, the user appears to still be adding to it. Benea (talk) 08:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

On Spirit of Tasmania, User:Mbruce1 has also brought splitting the article up on the article's talk page (Talk:Spirit of Tasmania#Proposed disambiguation page), and he seems to be in process of splitting it further, so things are progressing on that front. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 11:50, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I've done the Rainbow Warrior and have pointed (hopefully) all the links to the appropriate articles. Benea (talk) 00:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I've found another: Innisfallen with a whopping five ships! After my Pride of Le Havre experience, I'll leave it for others. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
And yet another: NASA recovery ship, about two ships. (See, procrastinating on taxes, can be useful for something... ) — Bellhalla (talk) 14:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
And another: USCGC Greenbrier, two ships. Benea (talk) 14:24, 15 April 2008 (UTC) - Done, Benea (talk) 17:31, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Yet another: SS Orsova (two ships). I have left a note on the articles talk page as the original creator had also been wondering about that (no idea if he's still around). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 11:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
SS Orsova is now done, with content split into SS Orsova (1909) and SS Orsova (1954). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 09:40, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok I have just finished the articles MS Spirit of Tasmania I & MS Spirit of Tasmania II. I hope they are ok as my experience with references etc is limited. Over time I hope to add more info but I hope that they are sufficient for now. I have also turned the Spirit of Tasmania page in to a disambiguation, feel free to change it around if need be. so you can cross Spirit of Tasmania off the list now.:-) Mbruce1 (talk) 10:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Summary

Attempting to summarize the ones still needing attention:

And I've always been of the mindset that if one ship in particular doesn't have enough information that would exceed one paragraph, it might be ok to leave it on a disambig page until the article can be expanded. There are hundreds too many articles of one or two sentences out there with little likelihood of ever becoming larger. --Brad (talk) 21:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The Innisfallen does describe a series of ships, but the all served the same route (served on the Irish Sea route between Cork and Fishguard). I suggest that they should be kept together ClemMcGann (talk) 22:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Found yet another one: Krasin (icebreaker). It seems as though her sisters could also use some help with naming conventions, infoboxes, and copyediting as well. -MBK004 07:00, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

And yet another: MV Abegweit. Every time I think they're all done I find yet another. -MBK004 18:21, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I've placed the {{split}} tag on the remaining articles and suggest that placing the tag in the future would be the best thing to do if we discover more. --Brad (talk) 18:01, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I've created a template {{split ships}} with better wording for our WikiProject, plus a link to our index page guidelines. If we use this, we can see what needs to be split from transclusions of the template. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:53, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Niiice! They should also appear in the automated bot cleanup page as well. --Brad (talk) 01:06, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

An official resource

I was reading this DOD press release, Navy Names Two Virginia Class Submarines, when I happened to notice some hyperlinks ... which turned out to be to Wikipedia!
—WWoods (talk) 20:00, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Cool! I've added it to Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a source. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal, Imperator

I have proposed a merge of USS Imperator (ID-4080) into SS Imperator. All interested editors are welcome to discuss the proposal here — Bellhalla (talk) 16:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The articles have now been merged into SS Imperator. — Bellhalla (talk) 23:42, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

USS Enterprise deletion discussion.

The article USS Enterprise (BLDG 7115) has been nominated for deletion and the discussion is here. Comments welcome. --Brad (talk) 17:05, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I ran into this AfD late last night (actually early this morning), but went to bed because I figured I must be imagining things. I mean, the USN commissioning a building?!? Someone tell me this is all part of a sleep deprivation-induced hallucination! --Kralizec! (talk) 21:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Maybe the USN is copying the RN's Stone frigates? —WWoods (talk) 00:57, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

The deletion discussion is like a horrible train wreck you can't help yourself from slowing down and looking at. I need to take this off my watchlist. --Brad (talk) 03:18, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

From my reading of it, the discussion is one or two editors who want to keep the article versus lots who don't. The closing admin shouldn't have too much trouble determining consensus. Nick Dowling (talk) 03:29, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

This edit made me think that there was a failed attempt at sock puppetry or something. I was going to strike the keep vote because it looked like a duplicate, but the user removed it. --Dual Freq (talk) 11:26, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, an editor has moved the United States Navy Boot Camp article to United States Navy Recruit Training Command without discussion. Would Recruit Training Command Great Lakes [1] be more appropriate here since historically there were several Recruit Training Commands. Also, the article seems tailored to USN boot camp in general, though it's a very weak article at present. Perhaps someone here has a different idea for an article name. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The article is badly named now. It is about the training, not about the command that does the training. Better would be United States Navy Basic Training. IMHO, articles moved without discussion should be moved back to their original places until discussion takes place. Lou Sander (talk) 04:02, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. I attempted to move the article to United States Navy Basic Training, but it now has been moved to Recruit Training Command not even mentioning the US Navy and ignoring that other services and nations might use that term. Could someone with a bit more diplomacy skills than I have please intervene? Apparently my concerns over the title and copyvios in the article are not worth discussion to the two new users taking control of the article. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal, SMS Panther/SMS Leopard

There has been a proposal to merge SMS Panther (1885) into SMS Leopard. This is of especial interest as this is not a case of the same ship with different names at different stages of its career, but two distinct warships. The discussion is here. Benea (talk) 22:54, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

U.S. Navy ships by place of construction

I've come across a string of categories of the form Category:United States Navy ships built in STATE that were untagged and uncategorized. I have placed all 27 (26 states and the District of Columbia) in Category:Ships of the United States Navy by place of construction (which see for the list) for now. (I'm counting Washington, D.C., as a "STATE" for the rest of this comment.) I have two questions:

  1. Are these categories needed?
  2. If the consensus is that these categories are appropriate, shouldn't they be of the form Category:Ships of the United States Navy built in STATE?

— Bellhalla (talk) 00:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I see no problem with "United States Navy ships built in STATE" being transferred to their respective categories under "Ships built in ..." - As for the District of Columbia, numerous ships were previously built at the Washington D. C. Navy Yard. - The problem I see of not having a category to say where the ship is built, is that authors are using the category "Unitged States Navy STATE related ships," for where the ship was built, and this is not that significant for that category. Overall, "Ships built in..." sounds like a winner.Wikited (talk) 00:30, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Regarding your example of the Washington Navy Yard: A category like Category:Ships built at the Washington Navy Yard as a subcategory of Category:Ships built in the District of Columbia might be worth considering. Similarly for other Navy yards and commercial shipbuilders in other states. — Bellhalla (talk) 00:40, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Good point. Categorizing to a particular shipyard -- if known -- is a great idea, but Wiki's record of having pages on commercial shipyards is poor at this point. On the other hand, I would like to know for personal reasons what ships and boats built by Dialogue & Company, which is one page we do have since I authored it. Am open to discussion... There must be a good way of addressing this problemWikited (talk) 02:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Although it would be ideal, we don't actually have to have an article on a notable shipbuilder in order to have a category for that shipbuilder.
As far as ships by Dialogue, see this link at ShipbuildingHistory.com, a great resource for U.S. shipbuilding records. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
After discussion with Wikited, and seeing no other objections posted here, I have nominated all of the "United States Navy ships built in STATE" categories for upmerge into "Category:Ships built in STATE" categories and Category:Ships of the United States Navy by place of construction for deletion since it will no longer be needed. The discussion may be found here — Bellhalla (talk) 13:21, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject notification bot

There is currently a proposal for a bot that would notify WikiProjects when their articles have entered certain workflows, e.g. when they are nominated for deletion or for Good article reassessment.

The question is whether a relevant number of wikiprojects would be interested in using such a bot. You can find details of the functionality, and leave your comments, at the bot request page.

I am posting this message to the 20 largest WikiProjects (by number of articles), since they would be the most likely users. Thanks, --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:10, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like it might be a good way to attract more members to pitch in when an article is in an approval phase... Martocticvs (talk) 23:02, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Iowa class battleship FAR

Iowa class battleship has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:57, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Where to put the cat?

Here's a little dilemma. I expanded an article called Yankee (ferry). During WWI, Yankee served in the US Navy as USS Machigonne (SP-1043). This means it is a WWI Auxiliary vessel of the United States and should be in the corresponding category. But then I had a dilemma, because if I put the article straight into the category, it turns up as "Yankee (ferry)" alongside a bunch of other articles with US Navy names and IDs. So I figured I'd create a redirect named USS Machigonne (SP-1043) and put the WWI Auxiliary cat. on that. It seems to work okay, but is this the usual practice? Or is there no usual practice for this kind of problem? Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 13:21, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd put the WWI cat on the main article in addition to the redirect. I don't think it's a problem if it shows up as "Yankee (ferry)" in the WWI cats, either. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:28, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, after I wrote that I sort of came to the same conclusion. But thanks for confirming it for me :) Gatoclass (talk) 15:36, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
You could also do it as [[Category:World War I auxiliary ships|USS Machigonne (SP-1043)]]. That should have it show up correctly in the category. Parsecboy (talk) 15:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
I believe that format only affects the alphabetizing - it would still show as "Yankee (ferry)", but would appear in the list alphabetized under "U" (for USS...). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Ahh, yes, I believe you are correct. Parsecboy (talk) 16:01, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
If you look at a cat like Category:World War I auxiliary ships of the United States, you can see which are the redirects — they're italicized.
—WWoods (talk) 16:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Putting categories on redirect pages seems a bit pointless, as one of the main reasons for showing the catergory links on an article page is to enable the reader to easily browse to other articles on the same subject - when categories are on the redirect page they obviously do not show up on the real article page, thus breaking that particular feature. Martocticvs (talk) 21:48, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree that putting them only on redirects and not on the original article is not good. But I think in certain cases, it is helpful to have the category also on the redirect. — Bellhalla (talk) 22:31, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

HMS Actaeon (1831)

This article has been created by a new editor - his/her first article. Would any editor care to improve on it as it comprises of extracts from the ship's log only at the moment. As it's the creator's first article, please go easy on him/her, encourage rather than criticise. Remember, it takes a long while to learn all the ins and outs of the Wiki (I'm still learning myself!). Mjroots (talk) 08:53, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I've reworked the article. It was a bit too much like a personal record of this person's ancestor as it stood, but I've added sources, and expanded the article to be more about the actual ship. Benea (talk) 12:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Steamboats of the Mississippi

An IP recently created the article Steamboats of the Mississippi. Its an article that Wikipedia should have, but I noticed that the section on the Natchez was just a cut and paste from the Natchez (boat) article. Not even cut from the wikicode, just cut from the actual appearance on the page. What should we do about this page, in anything? If it's just cutting/pasting rom other Wikipedia articles, is it a valid article?--Bedford Pray 15:56, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Natchez (boat) is currently some form of a bloated ship list page, describing nine civilian Natchezes, three US Navy ones and a Brazilian Navy one. Standard procedure would be to hive off the individual ship information to their own articles. But which article are you concerned about being valid, the Steamboats of the Mississippi or the Natchez (boat) one? Benea (talk) 16:04, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Steamboats of the Mississippi is the one I'm concerned for. It needs wikify, more references, and definitely inline citations. I personally wrote the Natchez article, which was intended to be just one boat (I had just written the Robert E. Lee (steamboat) article at the time) and ballooned. Also, those pictures of boats on the SotM page are rather huge.--Bedford Pray 16:47, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
The previous conversation on Natchez is here. WP articles are open to anyone to do anything with the text they wish. I don't see any problem with grabbing text from one article to fill another. --Brad (talk) 19:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I have no problem with minor copying/pasting. Heck, I do it with a lot of my WNA KY monuments. But a whole page of duplicated information? Why not just make a list?--Bedford Pray 20:57, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Catch a little

This

is evidently supposed to display rather differently... TREKphiler hit me ♠ 17:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

User:Piotrus deleted the template on 31 January 2008, on the grounds that it was apparently 'Redundant to another image'. This image was presumably Template:V-boats. Benea (talk) 17:53, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Copying from Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships

Some people are copying text and articles verbatim from the online Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships and then posting the message: "This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships" in the reference section. While the information is basically good, it seems a bit unencyclopedic in its detail and style – with a bit of military jargon. I don't mind helping to cleanup these types of articles and put them into a more encyclopedic context, but I want to make sure that I won't be stepping on someone's toes, or making efforts at cross purposes to the Ships Project. Any thoughts? --Kevin Murray (talk) 01:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

We do have Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/DANFS conversions which goes about explaining how to convert danfs text. The text is supposed to be worked over so that it makes sense to all readers on WP. Often you have specify US Navy where danfs only says Navy expecting that the reader already knows about the US relation. --Brad (talk) 02:36, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Also, that message comes from {{DANFS}}, and should remain on the article even after the text is cleaned-up. A way to find these articles is to use this category: Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. -MBK004 02:46, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Bot assessment run

Been thinking about another bot run to find ship articles not yet tagged for the project. I'm sure that we've previously concentrated mostly on military ships and likely there are a lot of civilian ships not tagged. In theory it should simply be a matter of starting at Category:Ships and having the bot drill down the tree to find ship articles and place {{WikiProject Ships|class=|importance=}} on the talk pages that don't have the tag. Leaving the assessment fields blank will mean a large chore to assess them all but the advantages are that each article would have "eyes laid" to spot other problems the articles may have. I suppose the only issue is how many articles we should decide to stop at or if we should just go to town and get them all. We have a bit less than 17,000 articles tagged now so I'm wondering how many might be left out there. --Brad (talk) 14:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm always down for a bot run. I'll be around to help empty out the unassessed class and importance categories. Parsecboy (talk) 16:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps another run could start with articles that use any of the ship infobox templates and performing the same comparison might catch some others that might not be categorized? — Bellhalla (talk) 17:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it's far more likely that articles are missing infoboxes and assessment tags than there would be articles missing categories. At least now that I've worked through the US Navy lists from A-L (currently working on M) there hasn't been one case that I can recall of an article not having categories but there have been many, many articles not assessed. --Brad (talk) 22:14, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
Far more likely, indeed. But, you'd be surprised how many articles I encounter using ships templates but that are only tagged for other projects, like, say, WP:MILHIST. A pass through articles starting with "Unterseeboot" I did a while back found around a quarter that were not tagged for WP:SHIPS — Bellhalla (talk) 14:12, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I've had to come up with a list of categories to exclude from the bot run. That list is at User:Brad101/botignore and there is a section of questionable categories that I could use some input on whether we should exclude them from the bot run or not. If you want to see the entire Ships category tree go to the CategoryTree and enter ships. It's a scary sight let me warn you. --Brad (talk) 15:58, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've submitted a botreq @ Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Assessment_run_for_WP:SHIPS for two of the first categories in the tree. We'll see how this goes and continue on through the tree as needed. --Brad (talk) 18:17, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Assessment guidelines

While assessing articles look for other maintenance the article may need:

  1. Does it have an infobox or need an old box replaced? Apply {{Ship infobox request}} or {{newinfobox|type=ship}} to the talk page.
  2. If its a DANFS article is there {{DANFS talk}} on the talk page?
  3. If there will be more than two project banners on the talk page use {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}
  4. Need wikifying, or other maintenance? - WP:FRIENDLY is helpful.
  5. Is the article named correctly? ie USS, MV, FV and not U.S.S, M/V, F/V. Article titles should not be in CAPS for the ship name.
  6. Courtesy tag for Milhist using {{WPMILHIST}}. For MILHIST instructions, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Project banner. Also, the coordinators at WP:MHA-T&A08 are more than willing to answer questions.

Now using AWB

I got tired of waiting and started to use my AWB on assessment runs. It's somewhat tedious but allows an "eye on" each article that needs a tag. Some problems I've seen are redirect pages that have categories in place meaning there really shouldn't be an assessment tag there. It's hard to determine by looking at a talk page whether or not the page is a redirect. I'm not sure how to handle those except maybe using class=NA and importance=low or NA. There are also articles with incorrect categories as in some bio articles with ship categories in place though I've not tagged the ones that have WPBIO tags. Again, it can be hard to determine by seeing only the talk page. I just ran through Category:Destroyers and of 2300 articles only about 200 needed tags so that's less than 10% overall. --Brad (talk) 15:49, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Redirects shouldn't have a banner at all, as they have no content whatsoever. In any case, good job finding those articles, I'm sure it isn't the most fun task :) Keep up the good work! Parsecboy (talk) 16:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with no banner on redirect pages, but one can assess them with "class=redirect" and "importance=NA" which displays appropriately. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:53, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Redirect class is apparently not recognized by our banner? Example would be Talk:USAT Saratoga but using that class does not remove it from the unassessed articles category so this will be a problem. We do need to do something with these redirect pages as they will always be subject to tagging by AWB or a bot run in the future. So, we should either redirect the talk page of the redirect to the talk page of the destination article or find an appropriate way to tag the article. Maybe |class=NA |importance=NA ?--Brad (talk) 15:33, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Also of some relevance, it doesn't seem that we have a Category:Redirect-Class Ships articles. Does anyone see a need for it? Parsecboy (talk) 17:07, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm with you. When I've come across these redirects with talk page banners, I've removed the banners. Should we remove the categories on the redirect as well? -MBK004 17:34, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I see no real reason to track redirects at all; the only purpose they serve is to direct readers to an article they might have the exact title for. There's no possibility of expansion or sourcing, etc. (the reasons we track articles in the first place), so no need to assess and track them. Parsecboy (talk) 17:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Some of the categories on redirects are things like Category:United States Navy ship names on pages like USS Matsonia, where there's only one Navy ship of that name. Are we proposing eliminating those as well? — Bellhalla (talk) 17:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
It would make more sense to me to simply place [[Category:United States Navy ship names|USS Matsonia]] on the actual page instead of on the undabbed redirect, in order to get the plain name in the category (which I think is the question you're asking). Here's a slightly related question; why is the Matsonia article dabbed anyways? Is there another USS Matsonia? And if so, why is the undabbed name not a shipindex page? Parsecboy (talk) 18:04, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Maybe the best thing to do with the redirects is to redirect the talk page to the article or move the tag into a hidden comment so that future bot runs won't tag it again? You could also apply the same idea to articles tagged that don't belong to Ships. --Brad (talk) 18:50, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>That's the practice—whether right or wrong—that I observed when looking at pages like that. When creating similar pages, I have followed that as a de facto consensus, if not an explicitly agreed upon one. In a quick check of Category:United States Navy ship names, I found none that have the hull designation or year, with perhaps as many as 15–20% being redirects (i.e. italicized) and apparently handled in the same manner.

As far as the specific example I gave, there was only one USS Matsonia. I was following WP:NC-SHIPS:

If there is only one article for a given ship name, you should still pre-emptively disambiguate it, creating a redirect from the plain name: There was only one Wilkes-Barre in the US Navy, so USS Wilkes-Barre redirects to USS Wilkes-Barre (CL-103)

(By the way, adding a piped sortkey as "USS Matsonia" would, of course, file it under "U" rather than "M".) — Bellhalla (talk) 21:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as the category above goes, I suppose it's a somewhat unique case, in that it's not tracking individual articles, but the names of ships, so categories on the undabbed redirects are required. Parsecboy (talk) 18:45, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I believe that I've done as much as possible this time around. Probably tagged about 1,800 - 1,900 articles for assessment and assessed about 1000 myself in classes like category, image, template and lists. Many list articles were classed as start or stub and after changing those around we gained about 500 more list articles than before. I'm sure we'll find many new B class articles and I also ran across one FA to add to our list. As I mentioned below, it's doubtful that another AWB/bot run will be needed in the future. --Brad (talk) 20:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Redirect pages

I've been thinking about how to avoid tagging redirect pages and it occurred to me that in all likelihood redirect talk pages will be completely blank of content. Therefore, if I avoid tagging completely blank pages it should cut down on the number of redirect pages being tagged. This still isn't perfect as there are a number of articles out there with blank talk pages but I'd rather leave some untagged than have to clean up hundreds of redirects. In a lot of cases the talk pages have had some content already in place be it other project tags, danfs tags or talk from other editors. I broke the 1000 mark earlier today and fear that a lot of them are actually redirects; I guess we'll see. --Brad (talk) 03:58, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

That's the best idea I've heard with regards to this. I'm about to go on an assessment spree through our backlog and I'm just going to blank the redirect talk pages, although I could be persuaded to redirect them to the talk page of the proper article. -MBK004 01:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
The trouble with blanking the page is that it will get picked up again by a bot or AWB the next time it runs past. As I just discovered this morning, another user decided to help us out by using |auto=yes on hundreds of redirect pages most of them being redirects for LST's. So there are now about 200 more articles in the unassessed importance category than there are in the unassessed class category. This gets worse by the day! We really need to prevent this from happening again and the only way I can see to do that is to either redirect the page as you mentioned or re/place the tag with {{WikiProject Ships|class=NA|importance=NA}} so that they won't get picked up again and they won't be classed. Right now I'm glad that a bot didn't make this run as it wouldn't have caught these problems. I'm trying to repair the damage at the moment --Brad (talk) 14:12, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Just in case I used a special edit summary last night so I could find them again. I'll start to redirect them because that's what I've discovered is the proper thing to do. Are you sure that another AWB run or a bot will not undo the redirect? I've even seen these talk pages of redirects deleted, but a bot run would just create the page again because of the categories. -MBK004 16:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
AWB is supposed to ignore redirect pages, yes. At this point however I think future bot or AWB runs will not be needed as I'm still hovering around a 10% average in the amount of articles that were not tagged. This sort of tells me that after this assessment run all that will be needed is to watch the new articles feed and pick out the few remaining articles that could be unassessed. I'm quite sure that we're at 95% or more of articles that have been assessed. Each time I ran AWB I was able to perfect the tagging and doing the image, category, template and disambig pages myself. The category tree is so full of redundancy that I'm often going over articles 2 or 3 times. --Brad (talk) 01:01, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

(OD) Redirect problem solved I believe. If you happen across one of our banners on a redirect page replace it with {{WikiProject Redirect}}. This may help in the future so as they don't get our banner on them again. --Brad (talk) 02:57, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

C-class?

While we're talking about a minor assessment drive, what are our collective feelings about instituting the new C-class rating? There is a simultaneous discussion going on over at Milhist, and I think Roger Davies has done a pretty good job of outlining both sides' arguments. I myself don't see a need for the new class, as Ships has a pretty clear-cut set of criteria for B-class (essentially the exact same as Milhist's B class criteria), and I don't see any real benefit from re-assessing the 9000+ Start and B class articles to see if they fall into the new C class. What does anyone else think? Parsecboy (talk) 17:14, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I am in general agreement with MILHIST. When I started here I was told that our assessments would be the exact same as MILHIST. That tells me that we use their B-class criteria and thus do not need C-class. -MBK004 17:34, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree. I did not see the need for the C classification at the time it was proposed and see no need for implementing it within this project (or MILHIST, for that matter.) — Bellhalla (talk) 18:01, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
We might want to implement C-class if only to have it available if we ever need it. I'm not so sure that Milhist B-Class standards would always apply to civilian ships. However, I'm not proposing we reassess thousands of articles just because there is a new classification. New articles could use C-class and existing articles could be reclassed if someone happens to run across them and feels like changing them. --Brad (talk) 21:15, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
I was interested to see this development, since I had noticed the history projects have additional somewhat strict criteria for B grading. It had already struck me that article grading is becoming excessively top-heavy in the spread of grades, ie FA GA A and B are all asking for a very high standard. This is self defeating in a grading system intended to distinguish what level articles are at. Hence, I presume, their decision to insert an extra grade to help sort out what is probably the largest number of articles at the lower end of the current scale. Sandpiper (talk) 20:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I can see the same. Ships for example has 9,xxx some articles at Start class and I happen to know the majority of them are only short of one or two items preventing a Bclass rating. Most of those could be a C. I hope that others here who nixed the C-class rating for this project would reconsider. --Brad (talk) 22:22, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I can't see any reason for us not to implement it, to be honest. MilHist's B class requirements, which we follow, are pretty strict, so there is quite a gulf between Start and B at present. Using the new C class would help keep the project organised better. Martocticvs (talk) 22:40, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Apparently C-class is working for this project. The latest update shows 5 articles in that class. --Brad (talk) 01:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
It would appear that an admin not affiliated with either WP:SHIPS or WP:MILHIST boldly added C-class to the {{WikiProject Ships‎}} parser last week without discussing (or informing) anyone. (Sorry, it slipped through without me noticing.) This change has now been reverted. While I personally do not oppose C-class per se, I wholeheartedly agree with both projects sharing the same article assessment criteria. (Even though WP:TRANSPORT may be our parent project and WP:MILHIST is a sister project, for all intents and purposes the exact opposite is true.) --Kralizec! (talk) 02:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I guess I should have kept my mouth shut then. I think C-class would help this project though I've already said that we do not have to reassess all the start class articles just to make a point. With 9,000+ start articles and then only about 400 B-class articles, the C would help smooth out that gap. C-class could simply show that there are only one or two B-class criteria missing. --Brad (talk) 15:53, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

←That being said, what do we do about the article that have been assessed as C-class? Also, if the project doesn't want C-class, we need to delete the category like what has been done at MILHIST per the 1.0 project instructions. That way there won't be any C-class assessments for this project since the required category doesn't exist and the project banner won't support the assessment (at least I believe that the banner will not support it from what Kralizec has said). -MBK004 03:28, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's a matter of "if" but "when" WPSHIPS and MILHIST will adopt C-class ratings. WPAVIATION (including WP:AIR) is now using them. That will eventually to lead to some confusion for people tying to copy assesments from one projct to another, especially those who are just trying to help out, but are novices at assessing on their own. I haven't had a chance to looked at the 5 articles here that are classed as C, but it would not surprise me if it was copied from another project. Contrary to the opponents above, I don't think it would need a huge effort to reclassify articles, but could be worked in slowly (grandfathered), just as the 5 articles were. By the time the next assesment drive is started, people would be familiar enough with the C-class, and it would just be part of the overall assesment effort. - BillCJ (talk) 04:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
And right you are. People are assessing C from other projects and since our C is now disabled the article drops into Category:Unassessed-Class Ships articles even though the C still appears on the talk page. All I can see now is having to follow people around and change the rating back to one that we support. --Brad (talk) 15:08, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Can you change something so that a C-class assessment categorizes them as Start class?
—WWoods (talk) 17:54, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Done! --Kralizec! (talk) 12:34, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like that will end up being as much work as not converting to the C-class system was supposed to save! Is it really worth it to not convert? - BillCJ (talk) 15:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I really don't see the logic in not implementing it now. Wikipedia as a whole is using it, even if various projects have decided for whatever reasons not to at the moment. The C class is part of the Wiki assessment scale so for us not to use it seems rather peculiar. I don't see the need to go on a big reassessment drive with it, but there is no reason why we can't have it available for newly assessed articles. And if anyone happens upon a start-class article that is clearly more than start but not quite B, well, then they can reassess it then if they so choose. There's lots of talk about the Project not wanting the C class, but only a few people are saying this and it seems to be drowning out others... just my opinion on the matter. Martocticvs (talk) 18:37, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Agree; I don't think the C-class rating should have been axed when its still under discussion. I have some ideas on guidelines for assessing an article to C-class but I will post those later on. In the meantime, all those who were opposed aren't commenting. --Brad (talk) 20:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

C-Class criteria

This should be simple enough if we used the B-Class checklist to determine a C. In order to meet a C-class rating the B-Class checklist should be at a minimum of the following:

  1. B-Class-1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations B1=No
  2. B-Class-2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. B2=No
  3. B-Class-3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. B3=Yes
  4. B-Class-4. It is free from major grammatical errors. B4=Yes
  5. B-Class-5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. B5=Yes

So, 1 & 2 both or separately could be No's to get a C rating but 3-5 must be met or it would be a Start. --Brad (talk) 22:21, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this is the way that WP:AVIATION is handling this, but you might want to talk to Kirill about the MILHIST template because there are some parse limits which might affect automatic assessment like it does at MILHIST. -MBK004 22:25, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
I think that's a very sensible solution really - assuming we can get around any technical issues with that proposal. Martocticvs (talk) 22:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
That seems reasonable to me as well. Parsecboy (talk) 23:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
The Aviation banner is working to assess both B and C automatically and their C criteria states 3 out of 5 but does not specify which 3 need to be checked. I played with the banner and it doesn't matter which 3 are checked. IMO, without 3-5 being required the article will look like crap and I think an important part of C should be at least a neat appearing article with sections, wikified and an infobox. I'll find out if certain B-Class criteria can be specified to rate a C. --Brad (talk) 01:57, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
According to Aviation the template can be set to require certain criteria to rate a C so that problem is solved. I guess what remains is a consensus on what we should do. Enable C-Class with 3-5 required or something else? --Brad (talk) 20:37, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
This is what the standard Wiki assessment scale table describes a C-class article as:

The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant issues or require substantial cleanup.

The article is better developed in style, structure and quality than Start-Class, but fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements; need editing for clarity, balance or flow; or contain policy violations such as bias or original research. Articles on fictional topics are likely to be marked as C-Class if they are written from an in-universe perspective.

So, according to that, an article is C class if it fails one or more of the B-class criteria - which is nice and simple and tells us nothing :) OK, so looking at the B-class criteria above; 1. proper referencing and citing is important to a quality article, but this only becomes a requirement at B-class... 2. reasonable coverage, no omissions/inaccuracies - well if it's a step up from start then it's fair to expect there might still be some of these issues, so that's fine.... 3. I definitely think that some structure should be present to lift it above start class so I agree on there as well... 4. major grammatical errors should probably not even be there at start level so that should be there... 5. supporting materials - well it should have one of those to be start I believe so that should also be there. So it looks like I'm in agreement on that - 3, 4 & 5 are essential for it to be a C-class, but 1 & 2 need not be present. 1 & 2 are also perhaps the most significant points there so that still represents a fair amount of work needed to get up to b-class. Martocticvs (talk) 21:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I would agree that 3-5 should be required. I should also point out that enabling the checklist means that unless the checklist is filled out the template won't accept the B or C rating. This would likely cut down on other editors upgrading ship articles to match other project ratings. Without the checklist a B or C would default to Start. If there aren't any objections to this plan I will have it done in a few days. --Brad (talk) 15:20, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
None here. Parsecboy (talk) 16:13, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Pusey and Jones

Pusey and Jones seem to have built a lot of vessels from the mid nineteenth to mid twentieth century; however, there is little information online about them. It seems that we should have a WP article. Does anyone have good source material? --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm planning to do an article about them eventually but it takes time to get the references together. I don't currently have enough source material on them. I could probably do a stub now but I generally prefer to wait until I have a reasonable amount of well-sourced info. Gatoclass (talk) 10:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Gato, I found some good information online and in a few books over the weekend, and started the article. It would be great to share information as there are quite a few holes in the 100 year old hsitory. Thanks! --Kevin Murray (talk) 01:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Okay, go ahead with it then. I currently only have the info on the net for this one, which is probably the same as you have in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 10:40, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

What about a 112-year-old tugboat?

Would a tugboat that is still operational after 112 years be considered notable? Opinions please. Gatoclass (talk) 10:39, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Probably. Have reliable sources been written about the tug? Nick Dowling (talk) 10:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
That's the problem :) All I have is a thread from Yahoo groups (including a useful post by the boat's current owner) and a news item on the Colton Company website. I did write a stub about the ship, I'm just in two minds about whether or not I should move it into mainspace. Gatoclass (talk) 11:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
I read about Tuff E Nuff from the Yankee (ferry) article. If Thomas Cunningham Sr. was an Army vessel, wouldn't that be a claim of notability as well?
Some potentially useful links:
Good find! I wish I was as good at searching the net as some of you guys.
That pretty much confirms notability, in fact I may even be able to squeeze a DYK out of it :p If I can manage it, you can have half the credit for digging up those sources :) Gatoclass (talk) 10:36, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Article is now in mainspace and nominated for DYK :) Gatoclass (talk) 17:54, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

A-Class and peer reviews need closing

There are several articles @ Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Review that need closing and archiving. American Palestine Line should be promoted to A-Class for lack of any further comment and Bulk carrier should be closed as a fail since Haus had to leave prematurely. There are other old peer reviews to close as well. --Brad (talk) 16:54, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Not knowing what I'm doing but I cleared these issues. --Brad (talk) 16:24, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
You want me to do this? -MBK004 16:26, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Nevermind, I just went back and updated {{ArticleHistory}} for those. -MBK004 16:31, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
What had me a bit stumped was the |action1oldid=189180104 Where does that number come from? --Brad (talk) 23:29, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Go into the article's history and find the last time the article was edited before the review was archived. Then click on the date and time of that edit, that number will be in the url. -MBK004 23:42, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Template help

Can anyone lend a hand with this template: {{1719 Establishment ships}}? I put it together earlier and this was the best of a bad choice of a couple of layouts... it is so unwieldy. What I was originally trying to do was to have each of the main sections as nested collapsible groups, and then each of those groups could take on a more normal, and much less ugly appearance, such as with {{1706 Establishment ships}}. I couldn't get it to work for the first group though, only the second onwards... so I abandoned those efforts and went with this method, but it is truly ugly! Martocticvs (talk) 19:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've had a go at it. Is this or this more what you were looking for? — Bellhalla (talk) 19:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Second one I think is spot on - thanks for that ;) Martocticvs (talk) 20:00, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Got another one. This ({tl|convert|173875|USgal|l}}) gives a result at odds with my math, which comes back 658700 liters... TREKphiler hit me ♠ 14:03, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I just worked it out here and I make it 658,188.5 l. Letting the template run produces 173,875 US gallons (658,190 L)... Martocticvs (talk) 14:18, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I got the same result as Martocticvs. Parsecboy (talk) 14:40, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Template:Convert takes into account the number of significant figures. What I get from this:

{{convert|173875|USgal|L}}

is this:

173,875 US gallons (658,190 L)

which maintains the six significant figures of the original. (Not sure where the 658700 came from.) However, if you know, for example, that it was precisely 173,875 U.S. gallons, you can add an optional parameter at the end to add additional significant figures, like this:

{{convert|173875|USgal|L|1}}

which produces this:

173,875 US gallons (658,188.5 L)

(In this case, you could also put in {{convert|173875.0|USgal|L}} for a similar result) But, take a look at Template:Convert/doc for all the specifics. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:22, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Evidently there's some conversion error. I'm going backward from 4.546 liters/UKgal & dividing by 1.2 (which gives 3.788 liters), & the error between an that an "official" 3.785 appears to be enough to throw it off when the numbers get big enough. My mistake. Thanks anyhow. TREKphiler hit me ♠ 16:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Category rename proposal

Category:Boxer Rebellion American ships has been nominated for renaming to Category:Boxer Rebellion naval ships of the United States. All editors are invited to add comments at the category's entry. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:39, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Fish story

This page has had a claim, standing since at least 5 February 2007, of an aircraft carrier contact by Tarpon. I didn't believe it then, & I still don't. Confirmation or refutation is needed. TREKphiler hit me ♠ 16:30, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

HMS Ark Royal (91) now a FAC

HMS Ark Royal (91) is a featured article candidate. The review is here. --Brad (talk) 00:34, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Request for mediation for Hyūga class helicopter destroyer

Please note that another editor has lodged a request for mediation for this article at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Hyūga class helicopter destroyer. Nick Dowling (talk) 01:04, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

HMS Berwick merger

This has been kicking around for a long time with no real developments, and little input, so I thought I'd raise it here. It was suggested by User:Rama that HMS Berwick (1775) might be merged with French ship Berwick (1795)... between the two of us I think we are agreed, but I thought I'd throw it out a bit wider. Martocticvs (talk) 16:38, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Is it French ship Berwick (1795) into HMS Berwick (1775)? If so that would make sense, longer and more notable career and so forth. But I'd be opposed to it being the other way around, for those same reasons, in which case it would make sense not to merge but to follow the convention of having two articles for two careers. Benea (talk) 16:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that way round, for the reasons you say. I'm not opposed to a merger, and I'm also not opposed to it staying as it is... Martocticvs (talk) 18:13, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Bangladeshi Navy edits

I wonder if someone more knowledgeable about image policies could take a look at User:Hatashe, who's been making some ship related edits, such as uploading images like Image:BNS OSMAN Hasan-REN-II.jpg. He's tagged it as himself holding the copyright and releasing it, but since he's indicated 'I created this work entirely by myself with the help of BN website.' and the fact it really doesn't look like he's actually taken it himself (I'm intrigued by the Chinese characters at the bottom) makes me think he's not really got the right to release copyright. (Actually its from here). Since a lot of his contributions have been tagged as copyvios, I don't think he really has a handle on how public domain, fair use, etc work. He's also uploaded Image:BN Hatashe.gif which I'm also not entirely sure about, being a copy (cut out of a background with paint?) of the emblem of the Bangladeshi Navy. Benea (talk) 19:15, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

And Image:SJNizam.jpg appears to be a blatant copyvio of this (as was the entire Sarwar Jahan Nizam article before copyediting). Benea (talk) 19:25, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Done --Rlandmann (talk) 19:51, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Park West Gallery

Participation welcome on this article, which needs careful handling. Ty 06:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

AfD notification of Exploding warships

I've nominated the above article for deletion, as it's an unsalvageable trainwreck of OR and unsourced conjecture. Any and all interested editors are welcome to comment, the discussion can be found here. Parsecboy (talk) 17:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Need help

I've created United States Naval Gunfire Support Debate to try and consolidate the arguement and reduce the size of the Iowa class battleship article (it worked too, trimming the aritcle by 5kbs :-) however I reconginze that I am pro-battleship, so for NPOV compliance I was hoping that someone detached from the issue could take a look at the article and see what it needs insofar as NPOC compliance is concerned. Thanks. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:13, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Should everything be capitalized in the name? I think at least Debate should be in lowercase... — Bellhalla (talk) 09:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Not sure, to be honest. I capitalized everything because I assumed this would a proper name, although I am certainly open to changing the name if we decided to do so. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:39, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I note that Naval gunfire support is lowercased in its article title too. I was just referred to wp:NEO (Avoid neologisms) in another discussion; it seems relevant here. The article looks like it serves a useful role, but unless there is a source for the USNGSD being a term, that shouldn't be the title (or perhaps by a strict reading of the NEO policy the article shouldn't be allowed). The NEO guideline actually suggests going with a long, awkward phrase, to avoid endorsing a neologism. Perhaps "Debate on naval gunfire support in the United States of America"? doncram (talk) 21:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

MS Prince Albert II Article for deletion

MS Prince Albert II has been nominated for deletion as non-notable; nomination is here. --Brad (talk) 23:52, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Table sorting by dates

I just added a table to Wickes class destroyer#Wickes class ships, my intent was to sort by dates, but when I finished I found out the date columns sorted alphabetically instead of chronologically. Does anyone have a solution to sort chronologically? Would I just need to convert them to some other numerical format or something? Maybe the sort is dependent on each user's date display prefs, but I figure someone else must have run into this problem before. Ideas? Thanks in advance. --Dual Freq (talk) 03:33, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Try template {{dts}}. — Bellhalla (talk) 11:57, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
...which uses entries like
{{Dts|1776|July|31}}
. Or use template {{dts2}} which uses entries like 
{{dts2|31|07|1976}}
. doncram (talk) 17:23, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
{{dts2}} has been deprecated in favor of {{dts}}, by the way. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Oh no, that sounds bad, and DTS2 is being used a lot now in new tables in wp:NRHP. As this gets out of ships relevance, I just posted a question at Wikipedia talk:Deprecated and orphaned templates: could you possibly please expand on the issue there? doncram (talk) 19:41, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I just saw the notice thats on Template:dts2/doc. I know nothing more about it than that. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:50, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I just do it manually (|<span style="display:none">2008-08-08</span>[[8 August]] [[2008]] It works for me, and no need to worry about deprecated templates. Woody (talk) 19:47, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
You should be able to just use the format [[2008-12-31]] (no need for the "span" coding). That format automatically uses the user's prefered date format from the "Date and Time" tab of their own "My preferences" settings. I haven't tested it in a sortable table, but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work for correctly sorting by date. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
That is the same thing as manually inputting it per my suggestion: it will work, but for the majority of readers (IPs, those who have no preferences set) it will show up as 2008-08-08 and this doesn't read well. As an article has to be consistent per WP:MOSNUM, in the text the dates would have to be written like that as well, which certainly wouldn't read well for the majority. Woody (talk) 20:18, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks like some interesting ideas came up. I'm not sure which to apply, the one with span will add more than 14,600 characters to the table and both will require a significant amount of time to convert the 333 dates. I kind of like the simple 1917-06-26 method, but I agree that it will make it harder to understand for IP users. It looks like dts2 would be the best solution for the table in question despite that it is deprecated. It would take hours to convert to use dts since I initially used with month day year format. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:11, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Oops, dts2 doesn't work after all. Guess I shouldn't have used month day year, or I need to make a dts3 template to handle those.--Dual Freq (talk) 22:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I made a dts3 template based on the dts2 that does the trick. Once I sorted by launch date I noticed 14 destroyers were launched on the same day, July 4, 1918, with 8 of them launched at Union Iron Works. That must have been some ceremony. Is there any way to convert without making a custom template that's called 333 times from the same table? --Dual Freq (talk) 23:15, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Off topic, but it looks like those destroyers were only the tip of the iceberg, "July 4, 1918, On a single day, 95 ships were launched from shipyards nationwide..."[2][3] --Dual Freq (talk) 23:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Peer Review for Protection of Military Remains Act 1986

Peer Review of Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 opened at MilHist, please comment Viv Hamilton (talk) 17:52, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

B-Class checklist for Project Banner

We could really use a B-Class checklist for our template to use on those articles that don't fall under Milhist. We can just adopt the same checklist that Milhist uses. Yes? No? --Brad (talk) 22:08, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that would be great. I think Kirill Lokshin is the one who has been maintaining {{WPMILHIST}} lately. He might have some pointers, suggestions, etc., if we decide to adopt the feature. — Bellhalla (talk) 22:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Definitely I think it would be an excellent addition to our banner - and if we can have it with your proposed modification to enable c-class support as well, doubly so. Martocticvs (talk) 23:03, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
Makes sense to me. Parsecboy (talk) 23:15, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

It would appear that we certainly want the B checklist but need to solve the issue of C ratings which is being discussed way above here ^. Since C rating would work in conjunction with the B checklist there is not much sense enabling the checklist til we know what we want.

The way this is done in {{WPMILHIST}} is through {{WPMILHIST/Class}}; that sub-template automatically assigns a rating based on the B-Class parameters. It should be fairly trivial to have it also assign a C-Class rating if only certain ones are met, if that's what you're looking to do. Kirill (prof) 14:19, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
Can you foresee any potential trouble our checklist options might cause with the Milhist template on the same article? I can't think of any myself since they're separate operations. --Brad (talk) 16:22, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
It shouldn't cause direct interference, no. The only potential issue I can see is parser limits—the spread of more complex template code will eventually hit those—but that's not really a project-specific issue. Kirill (prof) 15:42, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Trevor MacInnis (talk · contribs) will be making the template changes over the next few days. Just FYI in case you've the template on watchlists. --Brad (talk) 20:20, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I have updated the doc template with the checklist code. Martocticvs (talk) 15:05, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Sandbox template

Resolved
 – Done! --Kralizec! (talk) 22:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

There is now a sandbox template @ {{WikiProject Ships/sandbox}} and I've been using Talk:USS Nutmeg (AN-33) to experiment with it. All seems to be in order but now is the time to wring out any problems. Please experiment with the template if you have some spare minutes. --Brad (talk) 18:47, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Even though that article is rated C class, it is still being placed in the Start class category - looks like that hasn't been sorted yet (the category does exist though). Martocticvs (talk) 18:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC) Ah.. yes... I see why now :D Martocticvs (talk) 18:03, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I had changed it back to the regular template; btw, you can start assessing with the checklist for B and C now and it should show up correctly once the template is changed. --Brad (talk) 21:00, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Done! --Kralizec! (talk) 22:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Great! All it needs now is for the documentation to be updated with the new features. Martocticvs (talk) 22:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Corfu Channel Incident

Is the Corfu Channel Incident article within the scope of this WikiProject? Mjroots (talk) 07:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it's been previously agreed that articles about naval battles and similar events are not officially part of the project, so it would seem not, but I don't have any particularly strong feelings either way. Benea (talk) 15:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I've never really agreed with that idea. This project should cover battles that involved ships. The Battle of Hampton Roads for example, was all about ships not to mention a very important start of wooden ships being obsoleted. If we continue to use our importance rating, these type of articles would fall under the Low rating. --Brad (talk) 20:35, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
The previous discussion (incidentally taking Hampton Roads as a case in point) is here. One of the arguments against was in order to differentiate us from Milhist's Maritime warfare task force, but again I don't have strong feelings either way. Benea (talk) 22:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

HMS Centurion (1732)

Does anyone have any sources to hand to help this article out? It's in desperate need of some references (not to mention a bit of butchery to get it down to the point more). Martocticvs (talk) 16:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I've got several to hand, and I'll give it a go in a bit. Currently at least half is copied verbatim from a book, so no wonder it's not been referenced. Benea (talk) 16:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Slight problem with the B-class checklist

In that once the checklist is activated it will downgrade all existing B ship articles to start since we would then be requiring a checklist. Options are limited here; we either let them downgrade and eventually the list would build back up or we make a list of the existing ones just prior to the banner change and then go back and fill out the checklist. The checklist is on hold until we figure out what to. --Brad (talk) 12:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I would personally favor manually adding the list before it's implemented, as in that case, we'll have a distinct list of what is already rated as B class. We'll have a more accurate picture of the articles within our scope. Parsecboy (talk) 15:55, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
We have 468 B class articles at present; I don't think that's a massive amount to go over... Out of interest, are we not able to add the checklist to them before we activate the new code? At least that way when we hit the go button, everything is as we have it now, essentially... Martocticvs (talk) 17:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
I think that's the idea (or at least my understanding of it). We could simply copy the B-class category onto a subpage, and cross them off as we go. Perhaps something similar to the recent Milhist TA08, but not necessarily as formal a process (I don't know that we need to reserve sections of work lists and such). That way, we'll have a clear finishing point, as opposed to a category that would require someone to check every B-class article to ensure they all have the checklist before actually hitting "go" on the new code. Parsecboy (talk) 19:19, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
We could also put in a request to have an existing bot splice the code into the template for us. --Kralizec! (talk) 19:47, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
That's true; since we use the same criteria as Milhist to rate B-class, there shouldn't be a need for a human editor to actually check the article. Parsecboy (talk) 19:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
I like the bot idea since it would save us the trouble but OTOH assessing them manually would give us the opportunity to flush out B articles that don't meet the standard. Bleh, we have enough to do around here besides having to go through 500 articles so the bot sounds like a better idea. Let me look into the particulars of having that done. In the meantime, in case anyone missed my message above, please give the template some working out. --Brad (talk) 02:03, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(od) Bot request was submitted here. I looked through the category briefly this morning and already spotted several articles that don't meet the standards; most especially the non-milhist ones. We should go through those eventually. --Brad (talk) 17:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

From the looks of my watchlist, it looks like Maelgwnbot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) churned through the whole list yesterday. Good job taking the bull by the horns and putting the bot request in! With a little luck I should be able to review and implement your changes to the template later today. Thanks again, Kralizec! (talk) 15:22, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Looks like we're ready to go then. The changes made to the sandbox template should carry over to the real template quite easily. You might want to coordinate with Trevor as he was waiting on our OK to proceed. --Brad (talk) 17:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Good news then - my watchlist was also filled with the bot's activity so hopefully they are all done now. Martocticvs (talk) 17:25, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) It looks like the project banner code works doesn't work properly for A-class articles. See American Palestine Line, for example. The nested project banner says (A-class) in the heading, but the banner itself has the orange "Start" and the article is categorized into Category:Start-Class Ships articles. A spot check of Featured Articles shows no such problem, even though there's no checklist. Perhaps a reversion of the project banner, a bot run, and a re-instatement of the project banner would take care of such problems? — Bellhalla (talk) 01:25, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI, there are no articles in Category:A-Class Ships articles right now. — Bellhalla (talk) 01:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Right you are; at least we didn't lose the FA and GA articles. Likely this could be fixed with only a banner parameter change of some sort as the A rating still shows. When I filled in the checklist it assessed B class so something is amiss. Let me see who I can harass at this time of night to fix it. --Brad (talk) 01:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed another problem: if any criterion is left unchecked, it keeps it at start class, even if that criterion is one of the ones that may be entered as a no for C class (eg Talk:HMS Kent (1746)). Seems to me that 'unchecked' is no different from 'no' in these things - treating unchecked as no certainly wouldn't promote an article when it shouldn't be if it was taken as a no... Martocticvs (talk) 19:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Need help at CSL Regina#Sinking...I'm confused.

Where did someone get this account of the sinking? If there were survivors from the Regina, why is there a debate about the sinking???????????? (Wouldn't they know what happened?)Doesn't that not make any sense? Thanks! the_ed17 00:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

According to the Great Lakes Vessels Online Index, she went down with all hands. The crew presumably evacuated, but were drowned before they could reach shore, hence the question over whether she had collided with something or not. As to where the description of her sinking comes from, you'd probably have to look at the cited source, Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. But I suspect it has been pieced together at least partially from an examination of the wreck (i.e. anchor out, damage from hitting shoal, etc). Benea (talk) 01:25, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I added that source. =) the_ed17 02:02, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure who added that section, but I tried to check on it previously and could only turn up a article from a Canadian newspaper from the area of the sinking. If I remember correctly, the article claimed that the information was written from the captain's logbooks that his family has. However, I could find no supporting information and I no longer have the link to the article. When I get a chance, I'll try to find the website and post the link here. Shinerunner (talk) 11:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I found it after a couple of hours searching its [4]. Shinerunner (talk) 00:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your time!!!! That has been bugging me. the_ed17 02:02, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Project banner problems - discussion

Trying to consolidate the various issues we're having with the project banner. I've pointed out @ Template talk:WikiProject Ships and think this would be the best area to list problems so they can be looked into. --Brad (talk) 19:39, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Style change?

Is it just my imagination, or has something changed in the infobox css info... or is there just something weird happening my end? :D All of a sudden infoboxes are looking all crushed up... though not all of them. For example, HMS Victory's looks just like it always did... whereas HMS Victory (1737) suddenly looks all crushed, whereas it didn't when I was working on it the other day... Martocticvs (talk) 21:20, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Even stranger, if I hit edit on HMS Victory, it suddenly becomes crushed up as well... but reverts to normal if I back out of it... sounds like it's me! Martocticvs (talk) 21:21, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
... no, not just me - seems the line height in the MILHIST style template the infobox template references was reduced... makes it less readable in my opinion and have said so over there. Martocticvs (talk) 21:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
FYI, the relevant discussion is here — Bellhalla (talk) 23:52, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Japanese warship Hōō Maru

I'm not sure about the naming convention for Japanese warship articles. Is it ok as is, or should it be changed to Hōō Maru (Japanese warship) or Hōō Maru? --Rosiestep (talk) 03:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The article is correctly titled as it is. Benea (talk) 03:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

US presidential yachts

I've post this message on the Desk about US presidential yachts but maybe it's a better place here. I've just created a stub on the Frenh Wikipedia (for those whose read french fr:Yachts des présidents des États-Unis), I do not find similar general article on the English Wikipédia but few articles on differents presidential yachts and I'm looking for more informations :
I found four offical US presidential yachts :

Few questions :
1. No others official US presidential yacht after 1953?
1.1 The famous photos with JFK on a yacht in the early 1960s have been shoot on a private yacht ? Not seems to be USS Sequoia, too small.
1.2 No others president use a personal yacht wich could be consider (like for the Western White House) as a nearly presidential yacht ?
2. No others official US presidential yacht before 1905 ?
2.1 A 1945 Time article speaks about Grover Cleveland cruising aboard the gunboat Dolphin and William McKinley on the Sylph. The first one seems to be a US Navy boat (or US Coast Guard boat) and i know nothing on the second one ? Could they be consider as official presidential boats ?
2.2 An channel documentary]about this USS Sequoia speaks about 19th century presidential yachts but only mentions a boat name Dispacth. I find this one, USS Despatch (1852) who looks likes in the documentary but nothing about a presidential use...
3. Photos on navsource.org suggests that the Mayflower ended in the Israeli navy as INS Maoz (K 24). The USS Mayflower (PY-1) article on the english Wikipedia give the link to this website but not this information.
Thanks a lot for the help. TCY (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Answering what I can:
  • The Kennedy family owned a few yachts and I believe the reference you make is JFK on on of them.
  • Many US presidents have owned their own yachts or have sailed on yachts of influential businesspeople.
  • Many US Navy ships have carried presidents to various overseas meetings with other leaders but that doesn't make the ship a presidential yacht for that short a period.
  • The Sequoia was sold in 1977 but I believe that a few years later a private group purchased the boat and now allows the US President to use it when he wants to.
--Brad (talk) 21:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
I searched a database of the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and find just the Sequoia and Potomac mentioned above, when search for "yacht" and "president". All other eight yachts found by searching on just "yacht" are:
  • HELIANTHUS III (yacht), Hilton Inn dock, Annapolis, MD, built 1920
  • ELF, THE (yacht), Sassafrass River, Fredericktown, MD, built 1888
  • DORIS (Sailing yacht), Connecticut River off River Rd., Deep River, CT, built 1905
  • WENDAMEEN (Yacht), Camden Harbor, Camden, ME, built 1912
  • SPINDRIFT SAILING YACHT, Area: Bridgeton, NJ, built 1882
  • KESTREL (steam yacht), S end of River Rd., West New York, NJ, built 1892
  • SIELE (motor yacht), Tides Inn, Carter Creek, Irvington, VA, built 1926 (pics here and document by following link here
  • CORONET (Wooden Hull Schooner Yacht), 449 Thames, Newport, RI, 1885

The Siele document mentions that it was also known as Miss Ann, Sea Wolf, and in the U.S. Navy as USS Aquamarine, and that it "was used as special tender to the Presidential Yachts Potomac and Williamburg for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Harry S. Truman." (page 10). (What does being a "special tender" mean?) No guarantees any others have presidential association. Extensive documentation in the form of NRHP applications and photos for each of these is available, although not necessarily on-line. Hope this helps or at least is of interest to you. doncram (talk) 22:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Coronet (yacht) appears to be the Rhode Island one above, appears not to have any presidential association. I can't find wikipedia articles on any others, though they all would be notable. doncram (talk) 23:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Image in Ship article

Can someone on the project take a look at Talk:Ship#Image illustrating "Prehistory and antiquity"? An anon continues to insert a specific image, and I would like some informed input on the image change rather than get into an edit war on it. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Non-national flags

Hi! Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns has lots of national flags. Is there a list of others, say cruise ship lines? Thanks, Saintrain (talk) 18:34, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... no, we don't have a page for house flags at the moment. Though we only place the civil ensign of the country of registration on articles... Martocticvs (talk) 18:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Found an ancient set at Maritime_flag#House_flag. I would think White Star Line would be more significant than Liberia? Saintrain (talk) 19:11, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
It's a good point - putting ensigns of the country of registration usually bears little relation to the nationality of the owners/operators... modern vessels are registered where its cheap usually. Perhaps it would make more sense to use house flags for such ships? The problem there is that there are currently very few uploaded. Martocticvs (talk) 19:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
This is a large chunk of the reason that the template for {{Infobox Ship Begin}} shows not to use the "flag=" tag in commercial ship articles. Instead, standard practice is to use a smaller flag icon in the "Ship registry=" field. See the MS Queen Elizabeth or MS Freedom of the Seas articles for examples. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:02, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Peer reviews open

There are two peer reviews open at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Review.

Input from all editors is invited and welcome. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Article importance ratings

Since I'm refitting the project banner I started to wonder if our importance ratings are all that, well, important. We have almost 20,000 articles now and of those about 15,000 are at the mid-importance level. I'm not seeing the value of giving articles an importance rating any longer. One main reason is the amount of time we spend figuring out what they should be rated at and having to fix the articles when other editors don't assign a rating or assign a rating that is far out of line. I haven't seen any trend where articles of Top or High importance receive more attention from editors based on the importance rating as most of us work on articles that interest us the most and the average reader likely doesn't read our articles based on the importance. So me thinks that like MilHist did sometime ago we should discontinue the importance ratings and that will be one less thing to deal with. Comments? --Brad (talk) 02:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah likewise, it doens't seem to make any difference... people will edit the articles they're interested in at the end of the day. I think I'd support a move to do away with importance ratings now - as far as we're concerned anyway, all our articles are probably of near equal importance, with a handful of exceptions. Martocticvs (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
That does seem to be the case; people edit what interests them. At least I don't edit articles based on importance ratings, anyway. I see no problem with deactivating it. It will simplify assessing articles. Parsecboy (talk) 17:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't have strong feelings about deactivating the importance assessments but I think it would simplify our work and have one less thing to fuss over. Deactivating the ratings won't cause us any more work as once the banner is adjusted, the ratings for importance on existing articles will just be ignored. I'll see if there are any further comments here before proceeding. --Brad (talk) 22:22, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I say that we hold off on deactivating it right now. Perhaps we could try to implement a program to concentrate on improving higher importance articles? — Bellhalla (talk) 23:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Not a bad idea but I have to point out that there are:
  • Over 1,800 articles needing infoboxes.
  • Over 2,100 articles needing infobox replacement.
  • Over 1000 articles needing assessments.
  • A gigantic Cleanup list.
So I guess it's a matter of priorities though right now I'm not sure what is what. --Brad (talk) 17:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't really see what the problem is. No-one is under any obligation to rate them after all. If you can't bothered doing it, just don't do it. I dare say someone else will get around to it eventually. Gatoclass (talk) 10:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
The current importance ranking system is both logical and intuitive, plus it makes a lot of sense that 75% of our articles are of mid-level. Our importance rankings probably match up nicely on a bell curve ... though I admit that I am always more than a little suspicious of projects where 50% or more of their articles are of high importance (you can almost hear them evaluating each article: "Omg! This article is SO important to us!!"). --Kralizec! (talk) 12:34, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Notability guidelines?

See also: Wikipedia_talk:AIR#Wikipedia:Notability_.28aircraft.29, Wikipedia:Notability (aircraft).

The WP:AIR project has drafted some notability proposals that have not had a lot of discussion but are generally followed. One of the concerns that came up in actually implementing these guidelines was that they were too specific. I was considering whether or not it would make sense to have a unified transport notability guideline, since planes, trains, and automobiles have similar boundaries for notability (i.e. notability of broad types, individually notable vehicles, etc...). Ships are a little different, because individual craft are more often notable than individual aircraft. Note that airships like the USS Akron are an overlap between the two projects.

Does this project have any notability rules that could be rolled into making a unified "notability for vehicles guideline?" Would this kind of guideline be helpful or appropriate? SDY (talk) 19:35, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

We occasionally have to battle an AfD but usually enough of us participate in that nomination where the article is kept. We consider just about every large ship worthy of inclusion but Uncle Fred's bass boat would likely not be notable. Likewise, there were thousands of Higgins Boats manufactured during WWII but a large majority wouldn't be notable enough for inclusion. We decided to include airships only if they were militarily operated as in the case of Akron which was a commissioned US Navy ship. --Brad (talk) 17:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Do mass-produced ships like the Higgins Boat, "Uncle Fred's salmon ship", or your average British fourth rate similar enough to be considered a homogenous group (like a "type" of aircraft) or are they all considered unique vessels? SDY (talk) 17:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
The first two examples are generally homogeneous enough to not warrant separate articles. However, a British fourth rate would always warrant an article, as it would have been a commissioned ship in a navy. Those ships are inherently notable. Parsecboy (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've drafted an essay (Wikipedia:Notability (vehicles)) derived from the aircraft guideline. Still needs work, obviously, and the "individual vehicle" section needs some better criteria for how to handle ships. SDY (talk) 21:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Ships and gender

Is there any guideline on assigning gender to ships? I feel that WP does not need to follow this tradition. HMCS Ontario (C53) is referred to in the female gender a number of times in the article. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:08, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a relevant guideline, you can find it here. It's been discussed to death in the past, perhaps someone knows what archive(s) those discussions are? Parsecboy (talk) 12:30, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't know where to point as conversations on this topic are everywhere but the consensus is you either use she or it but not mix them both into an article. --Brad (talk) 22:53, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
This comes up periodically, here are some links: Wikipedia:MILMOS#Pronouns and Gender-specific pronoun#Ships and countries, or you can take a look at some of the prior discussions - these are just two of the many that exist:
--- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:02, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Not this again, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Archive_74#Military History Manual of Style amendment for the most recent discussion; this led to its inclusion into the MOS at Wikipedia:MILMOS#Pronouns (January 2008). Regards. Woody (talk) 23:04, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
After some sort of missed edit conflict, there are links within the above discussion that go to ancient discussion on the issue. Woody (talk) 23:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Marine Hospital Service

According to USS Jamestown (1844), the ship was transferred after its Navy career to the Marine Hospital Service where it functioned as a quarantine ship. While it was serving in that capacity, would it have been given a new name? (Perhaps just remove the USS-prefix?) Is there a separate naming convention for quarantine ships? (USMHS Jamestown?) I suspect they aren't particularly high on the list of important US government ships and I know absolutely nothing about this service. Just curious. JRP (talk) 14:19, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Likely she retained the name Jamestown but as a decommissioned ship would not have carried the USS prefix. Not recommended that we invent prefixes to cover a decommissioned end of service life career. --Brad (talk) 22:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
No, I was just asking if there was already a prefix which should be given for "Alternate Name" in the infobox. JRP (talk) 23:01, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Another sub infobox

I have just found Template:U-Boat Infobox. Should this be converted to the Infobox ship template or are there parameters that aren't accepted in the Ship one? Thanks Woody (talk) 12:17, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, this is one of the most convoluted templates I have seen. It is comprised of:
Should we try and convert these? It won't be simple like the last set as they have lots of separate templates which all need amalgamated. Woody (talk) 12:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
If nothing else, they should all be consistently named, beginning with either U-Boat or U Boat. Beyond that, I think they all should be made to match the style of the Ship boxes. You can look at Unterseeboot 552, which uses all of the above, for how they all work together. The bigger question is do we need that level of detail in infoboxes about U boats? — Bellhalla (talk) 12:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
While you are looking at the U-boats. Could something be done about the term "victories". Consider Unterseeboot 38 (1938) shells an unarmed neutral fishing trawler ST Leukos killing all 11 crew. Could we not have a term other than "victories" for that? ClemMcGann (talk) 15:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
The U-boat boxes above are a result of trying to integrate all the information on these submarines from Uboat.net. See their entry on U-51 for example. By contrast Unterseeboot 101 (1940) for example uses Infobox Ship Begin, and integrates (most) of the information in the box textually in the article. I think that this would be the way to go, we shouldn't be trying to create an identical mirror of Uboat.net on wikipedia. On the subject of 'victories', I notice that Uboat.net instead uses the term 'successes', which seems more neutral, and is still accurate. U-38 set out to sink the Leukos and was successful in that aim. But technically 'victories' is not inaccurate. In the battle between ST Leukos and U-38, U-38 was victorious. Benea (talk) 15:59, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree that "successes" would be a bit more neutral. I also agree that the infobox should be a quick summary and this infobox is anything but that. We should try and integrate as much as possible into the text.
On another note, we have {{Submarine}} as well. I distinctly remember that it has a few parameters not yet available on the current ship infobox though I can't remember what they are. Woody (talk) 16:05, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
The U boat templates need attention from more than one angle:
  • Content overlap with the Ship Infobox - no need for duplicated effort
  • reusing work already done - however while letting Ship infobox take the strain of build, specification etc, there is no reason why patrol, commanders, and sinkings can't stand and as the data is already templated it saves rewriting it so they shouldn't be just dumped
  • Style - I wouldn't be surpised that the red and the small type makes it was eye-watering to others as it does for me.
  • documentation - nuff said
GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Actually the colour and font size are realtively easily fixed. Done part of it already. GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:13, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Template:Service record seems to be set up to incorporate this information anyway, see Unterseeboot 155 (1941) for an example of how it interacts with Infobox Ship Begin. It'd be a way of keeping the information tabulated and to hand, but losing some of the extraneous detail like the dates of the patrols. I'd suggest replacing Template:U-Boat Infobox and all its components with Template:Service record, and tweaking Template:Service record to use 'successes' rather than 'victories'. Benea (talk) 16:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Our goal should be to eliminate all infobox type templates until we have one main template that can cover everything. Infobox Ship Begin is an excellent template and should be our ultimate goal for all ship articles. Template:U-Boat Infobox should be replaced along with its siblings. {{Submarine}} is nothing but a duplicate of what Infobox Ship Begin can do already and should be replaced. Template:Service record seems to be more specific to submarines and works well with Infobox Ship Begin and should be part of the documentation of Infobox Ship Begin. --Brad (talk) 23:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I've converted the articles which used {{Submarine}}. —WWoods (talk) 01:40, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I've nominated {{Submarine}} and {{Submarine/doc}} for speedy deletion under T-3. --Brad (talk) 02:25, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
They've been nuked. Parsecboy (talk) 02:30, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Question about categorization

A ship article on my watchlist, USS Lenape (ID-2700), was recently added to Category:Algonquian loanwords. In looking at that category there are quite a few ships articles included in it, mostly U.S. Navy ships that were named after place names that are themselves from Algonquian languages. My opinion is that the editor(s) adding ships to the category is perhaps a little overzealous in trying to populate the category. After all, they are ships not words. Before taking any action on removing ships from the category, I thought I'd get other WP:SHIPS editors opinions. Is it a proper category or not? (By the way, I think a good example of an article in a "Foobian loanwords" category is Robot in Category:Czech loanwords.) — Bellhalla (talk) 14:37, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Moccasin and raccoon may be loanwords, but Lenape, Saugus, Absegami, etc. do not meet the definition of loanword at all - these are not words taken into English. Maralia (talk) 14:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
  • While I agree with Belhalla that this is a little overzealous and with Maralia that the term loanword may be a stretch, I do see a historical value to identifying the origin of the words. Perhaps the category should be re-titled? --Kevin Murray (talk) 15:02, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
I would agree that the ships shouldn't be in the category. It's not a loanword, in the normal meaning of the word. It would be equally wrong to put HMS Temeraire into the French loanwords category. If there was to be any sort of category for ships named after Native American places/people/etc., it would be something along the lines of Category:Ships named after Native American places/people/etc. of the US Navy. Parsecboy (talk) 16:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
(ec) It is potentially a proper category, but it seems to be being misused at the moment. It is populated with large numbers of things (schools/a ferry route, etc) that take their name or part of their name from an Algonquin word, but not necessarily a loanword. A better title might be 'Objects taking at least part of their name from Algonquin words' - that's not a zippy title, and doesn't even cover everything now in the category, the ferry route for example. But I suspect that a better way would be to trim it down to actual loanwords. As to identifying the origin of the words, for ships at least that's usually done anyway in the article without the need of a category, e.g. HMS Elk. The reader can click on '...named for the European moose', go to the moose article and see '...The name moose is derived from the Algonquian Eastern Abnaki name moz, meaning "he trims, shaves"'. (Parsecboy's come up with a far better title, and one more appropriate to ships at least. If we were intent on retaining the link to the origin of the words, the way to go would be to create seperate subcategories rather than trying to force them into a category that doesn't fit). Benea (talk) 17:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
If you take a look at User talk:CJLippert, especially here, you'll see that someone with a fair amount of linguistic knowledge related to the topic is involved. I'd be willing to bet he knows far more than I do about toponyms vs eponyms vs ethnonyms vs loanwords, etc. However, despite this summary of their categorization scheme, I still feel that 'loanword' is not an appropriate label for ships named after Algonquian words. USS Moccasin is a namesake of a loanword, but is not itself a loanword; USS Lenape (ID-2700) is a namesake of an ethnonym. If namesake categories are applied, I'd like to see them more accurately named. Maralia (talk) 17:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
I posted at the category to invite discussion, but, receiving no replies, I removed all ships and ship classes from the category. — Bellhalla (talk) 11:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

S.S. City of Miami

Anybody ever heard of the above ship? I am looking at a passport from the 1920's with the ship leaving out of the Port of Miami and I would like to know about the vessel. Any ideas where I could look or anybody who could help? Thanks! KnightLago (talk) 02:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, it looks like I answered my own question. See here and here. If someone wants create an article feel free or I will try and get to it in the next few days. KnightLago (talk) 02:26, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
The DANFS entry for that ship is here. --Brad (talk) 02:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, I went ahead and created USS City of South Haven (ID-2527) for it. Any and all help would be appreciated as ships aren't really my area. KnightLago (talk) 03:24, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Dispensing with date autoformatting?

Dear colleagues

I come here as one who has enjoyed reading many of your articles at FAC and elsewhere. I should announce at the start that I'm writing this post to persuade you of the benefits of dispensing with low-value links in your articles. Over the past year, there has been a steady move at the styleguides, particularly MOSNUM, away from the use of DA. You can peruse a standard information package at my talk page, and a gathering together of consensus for such a move in more than 50 statements by users over the past two months.

It is, in fact, because I want to make wikilinking work better that I seek your support. Ship articles already have a high density of high-value links, and thus stand to gain more than most by the removal of the blue-linking of dates. DA seems to involve a lot of emotion, far beyond a cool analysis of its problems and benefits. I'm keen to hear your comments, feedback and queries. Tony (talk) 01:45, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Fix it so that the code when date autolinked shows the correct formatting without showing it as a link and/or draw an inference from the originating IP as to the appropriate formatting. the authors and editors are probably the biggest readers consistent group of readers and I for one hate seeing Month before Day when scanning through articles.

PS your concensus notes include one statement that isn't a comment about DA (though it may be about your script that removes it)GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:26, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, Graeme. Getting the developers at WikiMedia to take remedial action is like trying to move an ocean liner with your bare hands. Wanna see the failed, two and half year old page there, together with a huge petition of WPians? [5] Don't say we didn't try! To give them their due, developers are nervous when there are multiple suggestions for syntax and technical solutions; and they have to navigate around the technicalities of a large number of sites that use their software, not just WP.
But after all that, I'd sooner go simple, for both editors and readers. Your reaction to seeing the other format ("hate seeing [month-day rather than day-month]") is one of the more extreme I've seen. Most folk are fine with either, as long as consistent within an article. Tony (talk) 14:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
For some reasonm my English understatment switched off and some reactionary element of my subconciousness kicked in devoid of the modulation of tone of voice - hate is definitely the wrong word to use in print. The use of Month day in UK-centric topics is jarring and I dislike it. GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree, and so does MOSNUM. Where there are strong national ties to a topic, the date format that is predominant in that country should be used. Canada-related articles may use either. This has always been important, since our readers see the raw format that we key in, not the preferenced display some of us see. So, for example, if the removal of date autoformatting uncovers an inappropriate raw format (occasionally it does, but not often), it should be changed. If it's in a grey area (Roman Catholic Church, for example, could be either), we go back to the first editor's preference, in the edit history. On a slightly different issue, inconsistencies within an article are more likely than the completely wrong format; my advice is for all serious WPian editors to select "No preference", so they can detect these inconsistencies easily in display mode and fix them for our readers. Tony (talk) 00:15, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I was going to have the dates unlinked in Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, but then because I wanted the table to be sortable I had to use dts, so with the linked dates in the table, the dates in the rest of the article had to be linked too. So unless there is a technical solution, we will be stuck with linking dates Viv Hamilton (talk) 06:26, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate your aim for within-article consistency, but guess what: MOSNUM dispensed with the requirement for that last week (wasn't my doing, but I agree with it). Like Lightmouse, who did it, I agree that we've been a little obsessed with it, and in reality the previous insistence at MOSNUM was ignored, certainly by the citation template developers. What we have now in MOSNUM is an insistence that all square-bracketed (manually entered) dates in an article (basically, the main text and footnotes) be consistent with each other, and that dates generated by citation templates be consistent with each other. Now this is not ideal, but at least recognises the reality that many editors feel strongly about having ISO dates in refs. I don't agree, but it's something the community will need to sort out over the next while. At the same time, there's a strong feeling against allowing ISO dates in running prose, by the way.
None of this really impinges on the issue of whether to use square-bracketed autoformatting in the main text, though. The community is clearly moving away from that. I hope this clarifies things, and I'm sorry that the guidelines have lacked stability; however, please bear with us and I think the project will be much improved in this respect. Tony (talk) 07:28, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Just to answer Viv's point about the 'dts' template. The template was updated recently. Try adding 'link=off'. Lightmouse (talk) 08:39, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Lightmouse, please do not refactor other user's comments. We've had this discussion before, and it's still considered poor form to change comment threading and spacing for your own personal reasons. — Bellhalla (talk) 10:59, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that a change to the copy is bad form. A change to indents supports my need for accessibility. Moving text left by a few mm causes you no harm but helps me a lot. Please reconsider your objection to my needs. Lightmouse (talk) 11:18, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I see any change as out of line. I could empathize with your situation if we were talking about something that's indented with 14 colons or something ridiculous like that, but three and four levels of indent is not unusual or out of line, in my opinion. I know Wikipedia strives to be accessible to a wide variety of computer setups and resolutions, but do we really have to make sure that everything is accessible for viewing on what you identify as your "2 cm screen"? That would be a bit extreme, I think. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

HMT/HMS Suffolk

Just doing some research on the Australian 11th Battalion which was sailed from Alexandria to Lemnos on the "HMT Suffolk" in 1915. Looking at Wikipedia, there's a HMS Suffolk (1903) which fits the time period but has the wrong suffix (i.e. HMS instead of HMT). Is this the same ship, converted to a troop transport some time during World War 1? Where would I go to confirm/disprove this? Lawrencema (talk) 01:13, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, HMS Suffolk never served in the Mediterranean during the war; the ship was in the Atlantic with the IV Cruiser Squadron, and then to the North American station, and later on to the China station. There are only 5 hits in Google for "HMT Suffolk", and zero in Google Scholar, as well as in Google Books. It seems HMT Suffolk is just an obscure troop transport. Parsecboy (talk) 02:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
It might be this ship, built in 1902. It's of a large enough size that it might have been a troop transport. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
This site has a paragraph on the 1902 ship above. You might also try searching for "SS Suffolk" in addition to "HMT Suffolk" — Bellhalla (talk) 04:29, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. I'm afraid I can't match photos to descriptions/specifications, but does this look like the correct vessel? Lawrencema (talk) 04:33, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
According to the miramar link (in my 04:17 post), the 1902 Suffolk was about 140 meters and 7,000 tons, which looks about right for the ship in the picture. — Bellhalla (talk) 05:07, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes - try googling "HMAT A23" - lots of hits relating to military service in WWI Viv Hamilton (talk) 16:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Thank you both. Great help. Lawrencema (talk) 06:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

U-boats in italics?

In various ships articles I come across, I don't see a consistency in using italics for U-boat names. What I have seen most often is that when the name is written out in full, i.e. Unterseeboot 90, it tends not to be italicized, but when written in the shorter form, i.e. U-90, it's italicized (but with plenty of exceptions, though). It seems like it should be italics for both (or neither) rather than a mix. What does everybody else think? — Bellhalla (talk) 13:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The problem is I suppose is that 'Unterseeboot' is the type of ship, rather than the name - so by the logic that we write "...the sloop Amethyst...", we ought perhaps to use Unterseeboot 90, taking the 90 to be the ship name. But then in the English language the U-boats are widely referred to as just U-foo, suggesting that that is considered to be the name, so U-90. Perhaps italicise all of U-90, but when writing Unterseeboot (which happens rarely in the text), don't italicise the Unterseeboot, but italicise the following designating number? Benea (talk) 22:17, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
To make it even less clear, aren't non-English words "supposed" to be italicized anyway? - BillCJ (talk) 22:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
So which should we write in the lead?
  • Unterseeboot 535 or U-535 was a … (per Benea, since Unterseeboot is the ship type)
or:
  • Unterseeboot 535 or U-535 was a … (per BillCJ, since Unterseeboot is a German word)
— Bellhalla (talk) 11:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
How about Unterseeboot U-535? Gatoclass (talk) 13:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
That seems a little tautological for my tastes. I note that the German Wikipedia titles U-boat articles simply as U number, like U 534, and refers to it by the same name, i.e. "U 534", throughout the article. From what I looked at, it appears they do not italicize U-boat names, but not speaking German or knowing German-language traditions about ship names, I don't know if that's significant or not. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:40, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
I concur about the "tautological", it should be used either Unterseeboot (which looks like an overkill to me) or U-### (my preferred option, as is how I had seen it used in quite a few books related to this topic).
As for the use of italics, the question is if the U-boat number was used as a "name" (hence it should be italicised) or as a "pennant number" (in which case should not be italicised), following the current conventions (eg: the USS Iowa (BB-61) battleship). Probably further research using specialized bibliography would shed some facts, rather than opinion?
Kind regards, DPdH (talk) 23:54, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
A couple of data points:
  • Morrison refers to the boats as U-### (in italicized form) in History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II.
  • Another book I recently read, Winthrop Haskell's Shadows on the Horizon: The Battle of Convoy HX-233 refers to them the same way. — Bellhalla (talk) 17:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Prod on MV Claymore

MV Claymore has been prodded for only containing one sentence. If someone wants to make the save here you go. --Brad (talk) 02:28, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I added some links and somewhat of an infobox. Ferries in Scotland are not exactly in my expertise, but it should be enough to contest the prod. I did check the Commons for an image since there are so many other CalMac images there, but I found nothing. I'll let someone else finish the tweaking. --Dual Freq (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Sloop ambiguity

I've been casually categorizing sailing vessels by rig as I come across them, and I've come up against a bit of difficulty in the sloop department. Currently, there is no differentiation between sloop and sloop-of-war in Category:Sloops. The differentiation is made more clear in certain sub-categories (for instance, vessels listed in Category:Royal Navy sloops are, by implication, sloops-of-war), but other sub-categories perpetuate the ambiguity (Category:Sloops of the United States, for instance, is reserved for sloops-of-war).

I'd propose two completely separate hierarchies of categorization for sloops-of-war and sloop rigged, single-masted sailboats (be they mercantile, civilian, or military). Sloops-of-war which are also sloop rigged would, of course, be placed in both categories. I don't think this is a contentious proposal, but it might require a massive recategorization of everything currently listed as a sloop. There's obviously no need to constantly write out "sloop-of-war" in the context of an article about a sloop-of-war, but for clarity's sake, it should always be written out in the titles and descriptions of relevant categories, in my opinion. Thus, Category:Royal Navy sloops would be moved to Category:Royal Navy sloops-of-war, and Category:Royal Navy sloops would be either deleted or reserved for Royal Navy vessels with a single-masted sloop rig.

Thoughts? --Fullobeans (talk) 19:12, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Just so you don't think you're being ignored. When it comes to categorization I tend to curl up in a ball and block out the world. Its too messy for my small brain to comprehend. --Brad (talk) 18:45, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, as long as nobody's going to come flailing at me with a tire iron, I'll proceed as stated. Presumably my proposal makes sense, and, while I'll doubtless regret it after two hours of recategorizing, I'm happy to take this project upon myself so long as nobody fields any objections. --Fullobeans (talk) 07:44, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Displacement = weight?

For SS George Washington I have a period source that says the ship weighed twice as much as HMS Dreadnought. From reading the displacement article, it looks like that if a someone is talking about the "weight" of a ship that they are speaking of the displacement. Would it be safe to paraphrase the source to say that GW had a displacement of twice Dreadnought? On a side note, does anyone have access to a source from which I can cite Dreadnought's displacement? — Bellhalla (talk) 10:39, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Jane's gave it as 17,900 "normal" and 20,700 full load; Archibald's The Metal Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy also lists it at 17,900. Kablammo (talk) 12:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Here are different figures from Conway's: [6]. Does anyone know what Colledge has? Kablammo (talk) 01:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Colledge = 17,900. van der Vat's Standard of Power also has '17,900 tons (20,700 fully loaded)'. Benea (talk) 02:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
To answer your first question, it would be safe to compare the displacements. Keep in mind however that whatever figure you have for the merchant vessel may well be full-load displacement, which should be compared with 20,700 for Dreadnought. Kablammo (talk) 19:30, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Photo help?

After looking around WP and not finding a good place to post the question, I'll do it here. I've found some ship photos that would be really nice to have and they would fall under public domain but the photos are part of an old magazine article therefore are combined with page text. I hoping they could be extracted from the articles but they would likely need cleaning up. The site is online so if anyone thinks they can do this I'll post the relevant info. Thanks. --Brad (talk) 20:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

No problem at all - where's the article? --Rlandmann (talk) 21:07, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Ok.. The Library of Congress has an article that was done in OCR and the photo scans of the article are hosted at Cornell University. Article starts at page 263 and on page 264 I'd like the launching pic. Page 265 the Preble Medal. Page 267 the Hull Medal. Page 274 the Portsmouth pic. Page 276 the upper photo. Page 278 the Navy-Yard announcement.
Others should look in that article and see if they need anything. Most of the pics I want are for USS Constitution but likely these should be hosted on commons. --Brad (talk) 22:27, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Images for cleanup has some info on tagging after the fact to help skilled image tweakers find images that need cleanup. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:35, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
The "Upper photo" on p 276 contains two images "dovetailed" together - did you want both of these kept in the one image? Or do you only want the "upper-upper photo"? --Rlandmann (talk) 01:09, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
The other images are now in here --Rlandmann (talk) 02:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Damn. I just fainted! This is a dream come true. Thanks so much. Page 276 upper, I just noticed is two different decks of the ship so they should be separated. --Brad (talk) 02:57, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Done. Actually - trimming these was really easy. May I recommend the GIMP? --Rlandmann (talk) 03:27, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Ok, did you put those on commons? I'll look at gimp but most photo programs and I don't get along well; I gave up years ago. --Brad (talk) 14:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Yep - in the same Commons cat as the others. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:55, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

S/Y Ocean Star

A new article by a new editor. I'll sort out the infobox and point the editor towards this project. The name of the article needs sorting out, as Ocean Star is a redirect currently. Mjroots (talk) 19:16, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Article now at Ocean Star (Schooner). Mjroots (talk) 19:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
I've made a start on the article. Still needs more work though. Mjroots (talk) 19:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Replica canal boats

FYI, "The Volunteer" Canal Boat at LaSalle Illinois, is an article about a replica canal boat that gives tours on the Illinois and Michigan Canal. It has been nominated for deletion. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:31, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Image:Empire_Galahad.jpg listed for deletion

This image has been listed for deletion. Personally I feel that it should stay in the article, but if it is to go then I'd prefer it to be with a lot more input into the discussion than currently exists. There is no free image existing that can be used to replace it otherwise I'd use a free image. Mjroots (talk) 14:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

This is one of the main reasons why I dislike having to use a fair-use image. There will always be somebody picking away at it for reasons seen in the IfD. --Brad (talk) 18:45, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
If I could find a free image I'd use it. Unfortunately, she was built too late for a postcard to be fair game if one exists. Mjroots (talk) 20:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
An editor has made a drawing of the ship based on the painting used and a photograph. The drawing has been freely licenced therefore there can be no grounds for the opposition of the deletion of the Empire Galahad painting now. I've added an External links section to the article with a link to the painting and also a photo of the ship under a later name. Mjroots (talk) 18:54, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
The drawing, regretfully, is not nearly as good a representation of the ship. The number of cargo booms is wrong and the booms themselves are drawn incorrectly (not attached to the mast), the funnel shows no indications of any markings, and the line of the bow has too much curve. Since the deletionists seem to be on their way to another "victory", the article is better off with no image than an inaccurate one. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:45, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I totally agree about the picture. Maybe another editor can do a better drawing and replace the image. At least there are links to pictures showing the real ship so readers can have a better idea of what she looked like. Mjroots (talk) 10:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

FYI problems using apostrophe after an italicized name

I am new to this project. This is an FYI relating to a somewhat arcane and infrequent problem: the use of apostrophe + s to show possessive case involving titles which have been italicized. This may have been discussed in the past, but I am here to add a new solution for the issues involved. It arises from a situation I found earlier this week at USS Ticonderoga (CV-14). Ticonderoga is used throughout the article when talking about the ship. However, possessives were inconsistent and in a few instances coded incorrectly causing text following the possessive to be wikibolded.

Examples (paraphrased and condensed from the actual article):

Incorrect:    Ticonderoga's winter deployment … on patrol with Maddox. (Ship's name not italicized)
Incorrect: Ticonderoga 's winter deployment … on patrol with Maddox. (Ship's name italicized but space added before apostrophe)
Incorrect: Ticonderoga's winter deployment … on patrol with Maddox. (Ship's name and following apostrophe + s italicized)
Correct: Ticonderoga's winter deployment … on patrol with Maddox.

Compare the current version with this version to see the wikibolding problem in the fourth and fifth paragraphs of the "Philippine campaign" section. Here is a copy of that problem passage (since fixed):

+++++++(start of example)+++++++

On 22 November, the aircraft carrier departed Ulithi once more and steamed back toward the Philippines. Three days later, she launched air strikes on central Luzon and adjacent waters. Her pilots finished off the heavy cruiser Kumano, damaged in the Battle off Samar. Later, they attacked an enemy convoy about 15 miles southwest of Kumanos not-so-safe haven in Dasol Bay. Of this convoy, cruiser Yasoshima, a merchantman, and three landing ships went to the bottom. Ticonderogas air group rounded out their day of destruction with an aerial rampage which cost the Japanese 15 planes shot down and 11 destroyed on the ground.

While her air group busily pounded the Japanese, Ticonderogas ship's company also made their presence felt. Just after noon, a torpedo launched by an enemy plane broached in the wake of Langley (CVL-27), announcing the approach of an air raid. Ticonderoga's gunners raced to their battle stations as the raiders made both conventional and suicide attacks on the task group. Her sister ship Essex (CV-9) erupted in flames when one of the kamikazes crashed into her. When a second suicide plane tried to finish off the stricken carrier, Ticonderoga's gunners joined those firing from other ships in cutting his approach abruptly short. That afternoon, while damage control parties dressed Essexs wounds, Ticonderoga extended her hospitality to that damaged carrier's homeless airmen as well as to Intrepid (CV-11) pilots in similar straits. The following day, TF 38 retired to the east.

+++++++(end of example)+++++++

Possessives of italicized titles should end with a normal apostrophe + s, as in King Lear's, Newsweek's and USS Ticonderoga's. An editor inadvertently caused the above formatting errors by using three apostrophes in a row, which opened wikibolding that was then closed by another three apostrophes in a row later in the paragraph. The appearance of the apostrophe can be done safely by using a typographer's apostrophe ( ’ ) after italicization, but the use of this within edit boxes is not always apparent to all editors. So, in order to make the "possessive of italicized title" issue easier to spot, and fix or add to articles, I created a template: {{'s}}. Using the coding ''Shipname''{{'s}} to show a possessive will always be safe and easy to see when making edits.

Another reason I added this template is that the Manual of Style recommends the use of "straight quotes" in articles. My solution may not solve all of the problems listed there or in this recent discussion, but at least it will allow the use of an MoS recommended quote mark that won't break wikicode, and won't do undue harm to searches since the form is only for infrequently used possessives. Knowing that I've bored a few people, I hope someone will find this information useful. Sswonk (talk) 04:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

  • Question: How would this template work with our linking templates (e.g.: {{USS}}, {{HMS}}, etc.)? As for everything else, I'm clueless... -MBK004 04:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
    • It shouldn't effect them at all. Here is a sample sentence: USS Essex's sister ship Ticonderoga came to her aid. That works, with both templates in use. It's just that the apostrophe + s is being handled by a template rather than type. The main reason to use the new template is to avoid problems caused when possessive is used after the ship's name is italicized in unlinked form like ''Ticonderoga''{{'s}} (yielding Ticonderoga's). It will also work after linking templates but isn't necessary to keep the three apostrophe problem mentioned above from happening. Sswonk (talk) 04:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like quite a good idea really. I resorted to using Victory's because it was the only acceptable solution, but with the template it can be correct... Victory's. A bit more typing but nothing catastrophic ;) Martocticvs (talk) 10:31, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I had created the template {{spo}} (actually a shortcut for {{ship possessive}}) that outputs much same thing, but wouldn't work in conjunction with {{USS}}, etc. as this one does. One problem I had in my original version was that I used a Unicode thinspace character, which ended up causing problems for some older browsers still in use: the thinspace character showed up as a box. Does anyone know if the html &thinsp; has any such limitations? — Bellhalla (talk) 13:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Well wiki is encoded in UTF-8, so as long as the browser supports that standard, then it should display fine. But really you don't want to be adding in a space (even a thin one) before an apostrophe... Martocticvs (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
The reason I asked is that {{'s}} uses the same idea and the &thinsp; character. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
(ec)I tested browser support for this method at [7] which allows you to type in a URL at the top of the page and choose a browser to be tested. The site will render the page and present a screen shot of its result. I am on a Mac so this is how I have to test this. The bad news is that testing {{'s}} using IE6 the thin space is rendered as a full space in the text of the template description and as a box in the actual code rendering (under the words "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"). I think MediaWiki is serving the regular space based on a browser recognition function in the text body but it serves the actual code at the top without modification. Firefox and Safari have supported ISO10646 for some time, and IE7 does as well. The thin space is there just to keep the apostrophe from crashing into the previous letter, see the template page:{{'s}}. It will still work without the thin space but definitely will crash on some names. I will try to redo the template using a CSS hack. I will be testing this so the template may do some weird things to this thread on occasion today. I will revert USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) back to typographer's apostrophe for now. Sswonk (talk) 15:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
OK, I fixed the template to work without using any space character, just a little CSS padding. This should be better all around because it not only works on older browsers - I tested IE6 and it's fine - but it I also tested it with a screen reader and the pronunciation was perfect. Unfortunately I have a bit of an emergency to take care of and need to log out for a few hours. I think the latest template will be fine everywhere, but please just test it for now. Thanks for all the input. Sswonk (talk) 15:51, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
There's already {{'}}, which lets you type "''Ticonderoga''{{'}}s" to get "Ticonderoga's".
—WWoods (talk) 17:39, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Multiple solutions - can we standardize?

There are several solutions now that all work - here are the ones I know, and I'm sure there are others:
  1. {{USS|Ticonderoga||2}}'s = Ticonderoga's (not yet tested in all browsers)
  2. {{spo|Ticonderoga}} = Ticonderoga's
  3. ''Ticonderoga''{{'}}s = Ticonderoga's
  4. ''Ticonderoga''{{'s}} = Ticonderoga's
Personally, I would like to see agreement and some documenting of just one or two as the prefered solution(s), so we can maintain some level of consistency between articles. My preference is for options 1 and 3, but I'm sure others will have their own preferences. My reasons are that option 1 is consistent with our existing linking methodology for ship names, while option 3 is already a standard used in hundreds of other articles. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
As far as a consistent way of handling it, we ought to look at some apostrophe-crash examples with all of the options, plus another hybrid:
  1. {{USS|Kroonland||2}}'s = Kroonland's (not yet tested in all browsers)
  2. {{spo|Kroonland}} = Kroonland's
  3. ''Kroonland''{{'}}s = Kroonland's
  4. ''Kroonland''{{'s}} = Kroonland's (a hybrid of 1 and 3 above)
Also, FWIW, when I've used {{spo}}, I've always subst it, which generates ''Ticonderoga''<nowiki>'s</nowiki>. — Bellhalla (talk) 18:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
First in response to WWoods above, this template is not the same as {{'}} because it adds code to move the apostrophe right to avoid crashing into the italicized text, and it includes the s after as well. See the documentation at the 's template page.
Second, I think option #4 by Barek and option #5 by Bellhalla (actually a hybrid of #1 and #4) is best because I did the template to work with all italicized titles, not just ship names, to fix the crashing issue across the board. I will try to do an exhaustive list of samples in the next hour or two to show the differences. Again, the main reason for this is to work with non-linked names to avoid three apostrophes in a row in coding – but it still works tacked on to the end of any other template, be it {{USS}}, {{HMS}}, {{USCGC}} and the others, plus solves the crashing problem with other titles like books, magazines and so on. Give me a little time and I will generate some samples. Sswonk (talk) 21:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I see the crashing issue now, thanks Bellhalla. Still, given that {{'}} is in broad use already ... wouldn't it be better to get that template fixed by adding the crash-avoidance code? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes that would be best in my opinion, but there are problems. I can't edit {{'}} because it is protected and only admins can edit. Also, it is in use by hundreds of non-ship articles. I am contacting the admin who protected it to have him look at our discussion here. I will hold off on doing a bunch of samples because I think we are all clear on the crashing issue. I'll get back when I here from the admin. Sswonk (talk) 21:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I've already contacted the admin, and have submitted the suggestion to WP:VPM. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
The {{'}} template has been fixed, and I am logging off for the night. Good work! Sswonk (talk) 02:15, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

So, the {{'}} template now contains code which adds padding between an apostrophe and an italicized name or link. As proposed by Barek, here is a sample subsection of the "Guidelines" section of the project's Guidelines subpage:

Possessives of ship's names

When using the possessive form of a ship's name in articles, use the {{'}} template to provide proper styling and avoid coding problems that can occur when an apostrophe follows italicized text. The apostrophe and "s" should not be italicized:

Linked names: {{USS|Kroonland||2}}{{'}}s displays as Kroonland's
Regular names: ''Ticonderoga''{{'}}s displays as Ticonderoga's

- (end of proposed wording). I will be away for several hours but I am sure I will agree with whatever is decided. My cat walked across and sat on my keyboard while I was typing this, so if there are stray characters I missed somewhere in this thread, thank Dino. Sswonk (talk) 20:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I added the guideline, edit there if needed. Sswonk (talk) 05:15, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! Martocticvs (talk) 10:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good to me too. Thanks for updating the guideline. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Constitution expanded

USS Constitution Just finished a major expansion and I'm now blind of most faults left in prose, flow and composition. The ultimate goal will be to climb the GA - FA ladder. Please feel free to slam me with {{fact}} tags where applicable. The current lead section is the pre-expansion lead section and needs a complete overhaul. If anything please go for the fact tags first. --Brad (talk) 18:01, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Bluenorway#Vessel_Full_Form_Naming_Convention

There are still major problems with your templates, see above. Bluenorway (talk) 17:59, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Bluenorway spam

Would you please stop spamming talk pages of projects and editors with this? There is no need to post on this forum, three times the same subject. Most of your questions can be answered at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships). --Brad (talk) 18:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I've already warned them. A block is next. -MBK004 18:02, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I meant this post to go on his talk page but he's on such a rampage I can't keep up. He apparently understands little of how WP works. I'll have to make several redirects of duplicate and triplicate articles he created. --Brad (talk) 18:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I Strongly Suggest, then, children, to do the job correctly. A parser class for vessels should include standardization of vessel name as well as its TITLE (USS/etc) as separate from the GIVEN NAME and typically bound only to the ID when not under major revision. Superset should include VESSSEL template with a TITLE variable {USS,USNS,etc} and then the ID or name which needs to be confirmed from an index (exists) of full formal names (does not include title). Obviously the template should include the preferred text representation {extremely full title name, title name, name, etc} and should guarantee resolution to the fully validated vessel name of form (no title) name_name_(ID-ID-ID) where formatting is accurate. (You still have multiple records for the same vessels. Sending the parserbot through to isolate and inventory all titles should give a majority of the records, then go back through and move everything to the correct initial given name and ID and correct the text formatting using the template. Why can you not do this yourselves? Bluenorway (talk) 18:27, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Frankly, I find both your above paragraph and the screed on your userpage utterly incomprehensible. Maralia (talk) 18:32, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Barging in and declaring us idiots will not likely gain any support for whatever proposal you're trying to make, which is not understandable in the least. --Brad (talk) 18:36, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

move to : Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(ships)#User:Bluenorway.23Vessel_Full_Form_Naming_Convention —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bluenorway (talk • contribs) 18:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

B-Class demotions

Earlier today I perused our B-class category and found about 8 articles that didn't meet the criteria and demoted them. This was all in a span of 20 minutes. I also noticed that MBK004 had been demoting articles recently. I guess their in worse shape then I thought. --Brad (talk) 18:29, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been slowly going through my watchlist and have demoted quite a few, but I've also promoted a few (but not enough to counteract the demotions). I have a feeling that that C-class category will become quite large rather soon. -MBK004 18:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Some of the articles I demoted were promoted by you earlier this year. Any idea why that might be? --Brad (talk) 21:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Boats or amusement park rides?

I'm curious if Mark Twain Riverboat and Sailing Ship Columbia should be tagged for WP:Ships. Twain is 105 ft long and Columbia looks to be just under 100 ft. Skimming the articles, they appear to be self propelled, but travel on a track in a "river" that looks like its less than a mile around. I can't find anything that's 105 ft long with Twain in the name in the USCG database, so maybe they don't rate as boats to the Coast Guard (or because they never leave private property?). I tried searching for Columbia, but that's a pretty popular name. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Ummm.. no. Essentially these are replica objects and amusement park rides that do not have any capability to head out on their own on the high seas or carry passengers to any destination besides the ticket booth and overpriced concession stands. --Brad (talk) 21:46, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I guess the reason I asked was the reception Volunteer (canal boat) received. It's a 75 ft replica that seems to fill a similar role ferrying people on a set route. It is registered with the Coast Guard though. I thought I'd ask to see where the line is between a 105 ft river boat replica and a canal boat replica. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The Volunteer seems to have the distinction of being able to navigate anywhere it wants even though it spends its life on one route. Maybe that's why its registered with the Coast Guard when the others aren't. --Brad (talk) 06:39, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Brad; I believe that these two articles do not belong as part of WP:SHIPS. The most telling sign is that they are not registered with the Coast Guard. Granted, I'm making assumptions here that they are physically supported underwater by the track (ie: not self-bouyant) and that they would not be sea-worthy if they were ever removed from the ride environment and moved to a traditional ship-going location (be it a river, lake, or ocean). But, considering the likelihood of budget controls in their construction (ie: why invest to make it sea-worthy if it will always be supported by a track), I consider this a safe assumption until a reliable source says otherwise.
To me, the relationship between this project and these "ship" rides is pretty much the same as that which exists between WikiProject Space and the rides Mission to Mars and Mission: SPACE. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I think the fact that I can't find the Disney boats in the USCG db does it for me. I would like to point out that the Mark Twain riverboat came to my attention when it was added to the Todd Pacific Shipyards stub article that the hull was constructed at their yard in San Pedro. The Disney rides are self-propelled, and the track appears to only provide guidance, not buoyancy. The hull was built at a major shipyard that constructed many ocean worthy ships and some of the OHP frigates. A canal boat is basically a barge, and The Volunteer canal boat is pulled by mules one way and self propelled by two 4 hp electric (trolling?) motors the other direction, while the replica Mark Twain has a steam engine / boiler / paddle wheel. The Illinois and Michigan Canal is 6 ft deep and the Disney river is up to 8 feet deep. I guess my point is that there isn't a whole lot of difference between a replica towed barge and a self propelled replica river boat. If the Disney river boat is not applicable to the project, then a replica canal boat must certainly be on the fringe. --Dual Freq (talk) 04:49, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
As far as the Volunteer was concerned, I put a project tag on it because it was up for deletion. There isn't any other wiki project that covers smaller watercraft that I'm aware of. I would say that ships of that nature should assess as low importance with our ratings. Either way, they're borderline inclusions. --Brad (talk) 18:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Launch (boat)

Seems to me that our articles on Launch (boat) and Motor launch are seriously lacking-- the former, because it omits the history of the craft entirely (surely there was a "launch" before motors); the latter because it states that the term applies exclusively to the British navy. This isn't my field at all, and I have tried and failed to find sources to improve the articles. I'm hoping someone would take this on? TIA, -- Mwanner | Talk 13:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

And Steam launch would seem a worthwhile article-- such an article could immediately be linked to from 65 existing articles. -- Mwanner | Talk 14:52, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Well noted. The launch (boat) article ought really to cover three sorts of craft. The first was a type of small gunvessel used in the 18th and 19th centuries by the French, Spanish, Italian and Turkish navies. The second was the largest ship's boat carried by men-of-war, and later battleships, large cruisers, etc. The third is the development of this, carried as tenders to yachts and so forth. Both of the latter two could be powered by steam/motors in the later stages of their development. The Motor Launch article is an interesting case as the article deals purely with it as a military unit, whereas a motor launch per se is simply a launch powered by a motor. I'd suggest moving that article to a more descriptive title about their usage in the British military, and redirect motor launch to launch (boat), and then expand that article to cover its entire history. Benea (talk) 15:19, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Ships

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:55, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I started copyediting these articles about a week ago, working from a table I created here: User:Maralia/0.7 Release. I don't know how much we can get done, with only a month's time to work on this. Anyone care to help clean up these articles and/or identify any that may be too poor for inclusion in the DVD? Maralia (talk) 02:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
USS Constitution should be at GA by October 20 if I can get someone to copyedit for me :) --Brad (talk) 05:18, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Homeport templates

A user has been substing {{Ship Homeport SD}} on numerous articles. They have removed nearly all uses Are these templates now deprecated? Should we be using them and the others like it? --Dual Freq (talk) 21:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about contemporary US Navy usage, etc., but is the homeport a city, like San Diego, California, or is it a base, like Naval Base San Diego? If it's the latter, it would certainly have been easier to change the template rather than to change the articles. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Seems to me "homeport" refers to the base. Kings Bay, Little Creek, Mayport, Pearl Harbor, etc. are homeports which aren't really cities.
—WWoods (talk) 18:58, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually I didn't notice that part of it. I thought they were just replacing the template. Do we want to use the template for this? I think the base vs city discussion has come up before, but I can't recall the outcome. FWIW, I think the template is fine and they can be changed to the base if that's what the project wants. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:08, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
And I just noticed that the San Diego part points to Naval Station San Diego not San Diego, California. I guess I don't see the point in removing the template which points to the base and the state and replacing it with just the base name. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:30, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
It seems like the user in question is a new one, who may not have understood the purpose and functionality of the templates, but perhaps wanted to change the nested link to the naval base into an overt one. While that may be a reasonable approach, the state the homeport's in seems useful information to have as well, especially for international readers. The problem is that he seems only to have done this to the San Diego base. Thus if we want to make a change to all of these templates' styles, such as {{Ship Homeport KB}}, {{Ship Homeport BW}}, etc, San Diego is now out of the loop. Perhaps we should revert for now, and then discuss with the user what he wants to see in that field, create a new standard if it seems appropriate, then update all the templates accordingly, rather than going round each ship individually. Benea (talk) 09:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Displaying Flag States in Infoboxes

When I create an infobox for a ship's wiki page, I tend to put the relevant flag (such as the Red Ensign) in the header, rather than in the port of registry section, which seemed to me to be the logical thing to do. However, on such articles as the Queen Mary 2 this is different. Surely there should be some uniformity between ships, and the flag state should appear in the header bar of all ship infoboxes? Xtrememachineuk (talk) 11:21, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Logical for the QM2 perhaps, in that both her port of registry and her company are British. But often ships will fly flags of convenience, that is to say their owners will be in one country, but will register the ship in a different country to take advantage of lower taxes, less restrictive regulations etc. Under this rule, ships won't fly the flag they to all intents and purposes would be expected to, but simply happen to fly one based on their port of registry, but other than that they have no connection with, and probably will never even visit in their lifetimes. Liberia for example has 1,465 ships registered, but only 73 owned. For these sorts of ships it probably doesn't make much sense to have the flag in the header, as for one it means very little to the actual ship, and for another it can change quickly, particularly if the ship is sold to another company, which happens often. The result is you get a little list of flags in the infobox next to the different ports of registry. I'm not expressing a particular opinion on how right or wrong this is, but this has I think, previously been the reason for omitting the flag from the header in some cases. Benea (talk) 11:34, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Ah, I understand. I can imagine a ship that has been under numerous FoCs would have a rather cumbersome infobox. I was thinking that in this case, the infobox could be changed/edited so that it includes a previous flag state box, or something similar. Maybe the header could be used for its current flag state or the flag the corresponds with the name of the ship's article (i.e. if the ship has changed name in the past, the flag displayed in the header is that which was flown when the ship had the name indicated by the article's title). Xtrememachineuk (talk) 12:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
There was a discussion here about this sort of thing. Like the infoboxes we use for military ships, the usage could be similarly adapted, with the career infobox used to carry the information about the time spent with that company, and the country of registration's flag used in the header, like the ensign for the country's navy is, for example, on BRP Miguel Malvar (PS-19). The possible objection that I can see would be that more modern merchant ships change owners a considerable number of times over their careers, which might lead to long infoboxes. Benea (talk) 15:05, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm late to this conversation ... but just adding a few more comments. Due to prior discussions on this, {{Infobox Ship Begin}} has been specifically defined to not show the "Ship flag" and "Ship country" field as part of the standard template for commercial ship infoboxes.
This was partly because of many ships flying a flag of convenience where the flag flown frequently is an accident of tax laws rather than anything to do with where the ship is actually homeported. It's not uncommon for a commercial ship to be registered in one country, sail its entire career out of ports in another country, and have corporate ownership based or financially registerred in a third country.
It's also due to the flag in the header box being so prominent because the infobox was originally designed by those who were looking mainly at military vessels where the flag usually indicates the country that owns the vessel. For military ships this works great; but for commercial ships that's usually not the case - although many militaries reserve the right to conscript ships that fly the flag of that country in case of war or a national emergency. I have stumbled accross occasional comments or requests to use the flag field on commercial ships to show the company flag - but no where that I've seen that idea suggested has it gained much traction, so the issues around it haven't really been discussed. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:19, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
The use of the house flag would seem to make sense, serving as it does a similar purpose to the naval ships' ensigns, and would be a more useful identifier than a flag of convenience. In the case of the Titanic, which I suspect is what has caused this issue to be raised, the use of the blue ensign seems less controversial than a lot of cases, one owner, one captain, one country, etc. But if we had the house flag of the White Star Line, would that be more acceptable and appropriate for the header? I think the only reason that this has never been taken up more enthusiastically is that we don't have very many free versions of house flags on wikipedia that we could use. Benea (talk) 15:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Barek beat me to posting this (plus he said it better)... and Benea caused another edit conflict. It seems I can never actually post this reply.
For the company flag in the flag field, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but it would require for someone to actually make the flags needed, which I guess is the main reason for this not gaining momentum. In many cases I don't even know if it's possible to discover what the company flag looks like, as it's very often not the same as the company logo.
As for the imagive for the BRP Miguel Malvar (PS-19) -like method (with the national flag or company flag): for instance, if the infobox on MS Wasa Queen was adapted as described, it would lead to a massively long infobox—four career fields for the nationality-based system (five if you do separate boxes for the two stints under Finnish flag), ten career boxes for the company-based system (a whopping 15 if you do separate boxes for separate stints under one company!). And bear in mind that in terms of different flags she hasn't even had particularly many. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 15:50, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
An example of the idea I had w.r.t. the ship infobox was this, taking the BRP Miguel Malvar (PS-19) as an example:
History
NameUSS PCE(R)-852
Port of registrylist error: <br /> list (help)
 United States of America (1943)-(1966)
 Vietnam (1966-1975)
 Philippines (1975-present)
BuilderPullman Standard Car Manufacturing Co., Chicago, IL
Laid down28 October 1943
Launched1 March 1944
Commissioned26 May 1944
Decommissioned1 November 1965
RenamedUSS Brattleboro (EPCER-852)
ReclassifiedExperimental Patrol Craft Escort (Rescue)
FateSold to Republic of Vietnam Navy on 11 July 1966.

Would this be a sensible compromise? It would be good to have some uniformity between ships whether merchant or military. Xtrememachineuk (talk) 21:16, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd be opposed to this to be honest, I think the system we have for military ships works fine, and the problem with doing this is that it reduces the amount of information in the infoboxes and creates the possibility of confusion. Under the US flag for example USS PCE(R)-852 was commissioned, renamed, reclassified, decommissioned and eventually sold. Then under her next incarnation she was acquired, commissioned, decommissioned, sold, then under the next, and so on. With a wide range of information that repeats this can be dealt with in the stages that the Miguel Malvar article currently does, with each new career with a different country covered in its own sub-infobox, and no possibility of confusing the events. With the altered infobox there's no information on her Vietnamese or her Philippine career, which is especially odd since that is what the article is titled as. If there were, then readers might wonder whether she was decommissioned from the US Navy in 1965, or the Vietnamese Navy, or the Philippine Navy. I think if anything we should try the bring the merchants more in line with the military with the use of house flags, such as with USS Siboney (ID-2999), where this approach seems to work well. If there are no houseflags available yet, then perhaps that heading should be left blank until one is created. Benea (talk) 21:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, this is more confusing than I originally anticipated. Maybe we could write to the governments of each country so that they can change their taxation laws and thus end the confusion here on Wikipedia of multiple flag-states? Joking aside, maybe the route of including an expandable infobox would be useful. The only boxes that are automatically expanded are the ship's characteristics and the title/image block. W.r.t. the rest, only the headers are shown with the relevant country/company and flag.
(The above posted by Xtrememachineuk who forgot to sign).
As much as I like having common standards for everything, I don't think in this case there's any particular reason to change the systems we have. The system currently used for naval vessels works extremely well for naval vessels, and the system current in use for merchant vessels works well for mechant vessels. They are different, but there is a practical reason for this difference as outlined above. Obviously this arrangement does have it's problems in case of ships with both merchant and naval careers, but at least from my purely subjective point-of-view these are not as great as the problems caused by massively bloated infoboxes on merchant vessels that would result from the other option proposed. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 21:52, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree - I don't think there is any benefit to changing away from the way we currently do things. We have, after all, discussed these issues in the past, and the way we are doing things now is as a result of those discussions. This way works well, complete standardisation, though a laudable goal in general, fails in this case as the differences between military and civilian ships on this point are significant. Martocticvs (talk) 21:58, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
I like the idea of standardization; but with the fundamental differences between commercial and military ships, I doubt it can be achieved. As it is if you look at the documentation at {{Infobox Ship Begin}}, there are several differences besides just the flag and country fields that are specific for one that's not relevant to the other.
Although, I would be interrested in discussion of your suggestion for having the option of collapsable sections within the infobox. Some ships that have had colorful lives under multiple owners or governments tend to end up with fairly long infoboxes that then force non-optimal placement of images in the body of the article. But, then you end up with even more variation where some might be collapsed while others would not - so maybe best to leave consistently not collapsed. But I would love to hear other opinions on that option. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:17, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
With reference to infoboxes of ships that have sailed under various flags, MV Empire Galahad is a good example of this. I think the infobox works well in this instance, no doubt there are others who disagree but I can't see a better way of conveying the information than the current infobox. User:Mjroots (talk) 05:44, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
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