Talk:SS Great Northern

Revert

I boldly made an edit that was needed. I had no idea there was a guardian editor. The edits I made was reverted by User:Palmeira with a summary of "Move of MILITARY history before construction and earlier civilian service broke time line.". The timeline is in disarray as it is currently written.

It is advisable, in the interest and spirit of (among other things) collaboration to not revert an entire article edit, that included certain definite improvements (the bold names, links, etc...), because one or two parts are not liked, then doing a series of re-edits that added back content from the reverted material. This can be seen as exhibiting ownership over guardianship. All that aside there are issues.

Names :We list all the other names, in articles that contains them, at the top behind the bold title name. That is per WP:BOLDTITLE that states, If an article's title is a formal or widely accepted name for the subject, display it in bold as early as possible in the first sentence . Then it states, Only the first occurrence of the title and significant alternative titles are placed in bold.. Wikipedia:MOSBOLDSYN goes further If the subject of the page has a common abbreviation or more than one name, the abbreviation (in parentheses) additional names should be in boldface on its first appearance.. Of course nothing is written in stone but this is the current practice by community consensus.

One reason to list other names in the opening of the lead is for search engines.

• A Google search of "Great Northern (1914)" and Wikipedia currently shows:

Great Northern was a passenger ship built at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by William Cramp & Sons under supervision of the Great Northern Pacific Steam Ship ....

Title: We have two "sister" ships with two different styled titles. Both were designated SS, which seems to stand for Steam ship, that would be in line with ship prefix designation. Next we have a ship's name that according to the naming convention; should be in italics. This ship was decommissioned directly from military service to the scrap yard. This was a long time after the sister ship was sold (from the military) and destroyed in-route. It would be nice if there was one naming or the other for consistency. It is also a source of wonderment why this article is named "Great Northern (1914)" instead of SS Great Northern, of course the main question would be why it is not named "SS H. F. Alexander".

Lead: The lead starts out under supervision of the Great Northern Pacific Steam Ship Company for the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company, itself a joint venture of the Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railway.";

1. None of the railroad links above list ANYTHING to do with shipping except a small mention of two ships. The James J. Hill article has nothing on Shipping. He reportedly owned the spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway" and that article (with reference) states "where a connection was made with Hill's steamships Great Northern and Northern Pacific to San Francisco." Well there you go! Old J.J. Hill apparently owned the two ships, one the subject of this article. He also owned the railroad company and the shipping company. It might be a small world that J.J. was also a principle owner in the Canadian Pacific Railway. With all this, and Canadian ties, a person might wonder if Hill had some interested in the other Great Northern Railway, in Great Britain? A man that was a member in a club that included 100 of the most influential and richest men of the time.
2. The lead is not correct. The ship was built for the Great Northern Pacific Steamship Company that was owned by the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company, and both were owned by James J. Hill.

The ship was built in 1914 and scraped in 1948 which is 34 years. Out of that J.J Hill owned it (or the company that owned it) for a whopping two years. With all the worry about the "parentage" giving the ship names" we avoid that the shipping company actually owned the ships, that was a link for the railroad, that the same person just happened to own.

Timeline: I want to link these articles better. This would not only be a good thing it would be encyclopedic. Did you know that Britain owned this ship briefly?

While the fine points of policies and guidelines can be argued as important or not, consensus does carry weight, and sometimes those involved do actually make decisions based on those arguable policies and guidelines. I do not ruffle easy, so as long as someone does not make it appear they bought an article, and I can be agreeable to a point. That point is article improvement.

Since you are on an editing roll, please add the links that you reverted back to the article. Unlike the lead (confusing and misinformed) the purpose of linking is; "Internal links can add to the cohesion and utility of Wikipedia, allowing readers to deepen their understanding of a topic by conveniently accessing other articles.".

This article is a start class. Redundancy is a problem and needs to be solved. Look at the first two paragraphs in the "Construction and design" section. The "worry" of breaking a "timeline" would not be a concern if the first paragraph was moved to a history section.

Other corrections (like history), adding content for cohesion, and properly linking articles together. With these improvements the article can be elevated to "C" class. None of this usually happens when there is attempted edit warring over a "start class" article. It will just hinder improvements that this article needs. Thank you, Otr500 (talk) 23:46, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Huh? There is a timeline with ships, one conventionally used in ship articles. Construction and design take place before any service history—and you moved military service history before construction. The cites are there and if you follow the links you will find the actual articles. Both Great Northern" and Northern Pacific were built "to the order" and to be operated in the service of a railroad that was a joint venture of the Great Northern Railroad and Northern Pacific Railroad—read the references!

The ships were launched and went into commercial service, as described and cited, for about two years before being taken over for wartime service, the "history" you moved before construction. The timeline is now quite clear, headings with year ranges, for service (and there is a bit more in the interwar years to be added). You seem to be highly offended your rather odd move of history, military service history, before the construction or commercial service in the years before that batch of history you moved, was reverted. Now you seem to be questioning very clearly referenced stuff. I'm not the "guardian editor" at all, I just find the references and summarize them with full linkage. I also follow a rather standard 1) construction & characteristics with 2) service history following launch and trials and then 3) a fate when known. That is the timeline I mentioned.

As for the name, I'd agree with a move to SS Great Northern (1914) and have considered it after I dig up more for the interwar section. So, I'll do that now as it makes it easier in other articles to form a direct link. As for which of several names to use the general practice here seems to be use an original name unless notability is so predominant under a later name that it it can trump the first. These two ships were very notable themselves on launch and under none of the later names gained enough notability in my opinion to warrant promoting that name above any of the other secondary names for a title change. Subsequent name are bold in their first appearance as well as being in chronological order.

As for this: "The lead is not correct. The ship was built for the Great Northern Pacific Steamship Company that was owned by the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company, and both were owned by James J. Hill." Check the citations again. The linking of companies is interesting and the construction company was apparently the creature of the railroad company that was a joint venture between the two railroads that gave the ships their names. The whole thing, and if you read this you will find some secrecy on the railroad venture, was a creature of two great railroads, Hill, and others to make sure transcontinental rail in the Northwest could link to California. That is quite clear in advertising I've also cited. Palmeira (talk) 02:01, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

• Links you put in are back. Palmeira (talk) 02:20, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I was not "highly offended", in fact not offended at all. I was perplexed of the events of the edit being reverted and then a series of edits that effectively reinstated a lot of the content from that edit.

That is not of concern anymore as apparently we can discuss things and you have already implemented changes that are improvements. By-the-way in my mind there is nothing wrong with being a "guardian editor". That is likely why we can watch pages right? If someone don't keep a watch out an article can either face vandalism or just bad edits. Some edits may be good but not implemented right. I have no problem with that or you being the major contributor. I like these ship articles and the history but you have to admit that, like railroads, the organizational set up is such that following ownership is sometimes hard. I plan on moving this up to C-class as I stated. We can discuss some more things, my reasoning, and see about compromises with any differences. I like the name of both articles as they are now and current edits keep a need of tagging.

The part about the history; I did break the time line. My idea was to have a history section, that I like for putting a lot of the historical information such as owners, etc... (that usually goes after the lead) and the rest in a Service history section. The first paragraph "could" have been used for this but I was trying to move up the alternative names and screwed that up.

1. If you will kindly move SS H. F. Alexander up as an alternative (synonym) because the ship was named this for two decades and the naming involves other ships bearing "<other names>Alexandria" of the Admiral Line. The military naming is good. I plan to expand or merge Pacific Steamship Company and Pacific-Alaska Navigation Company, owned by H.F. "Bert" Alexander.
2. I also want James J. Hill somewhere in the lead as he is the "owner" of all mentioned in the article and I plan to see about tying his shipping interests into his article for cohesion.

I am not trying to "nit-pick" about ownership but right--is right--right? There was a lot of secrecy concerning railroads. From the beginning and railroad monopolies, to the forming of the ICC, to the Congressional rulings concerning railroads "combining" interests with the result of controlling freight prices. Add to this other rulings (From circa 1912; Congressional and ICC and the Panama Canal Act) prohibiting ships owned (controlled, leased, etc..) by railroads from using the Panama Canal, and rulings that also prohibited "illegal industrial combinations" from using the canal. Your reference above, page 19, paragraph 3, shows they knew about the law from the 1908 purchased property (river steamers) they ran until having to sell them before the law came into effect July 1, 1914. You can bet, without me really showing more, that the ships could not have been titled under the railroad as actual owner, being delivered the year after a federal law was implemented. It is interesting to note the law shows how a trickle down effect can change things. The law was pushed as meaning ships intending to cross the Panama but after it became law the wording made it enforceable as meaning "all" railroads with ships, that does or that could compete, had to divest that even included river.

Also, the references states to the order of. Accordingly, with a stipulation (or assertion) meaning "ownership" you would need to include the US Navy. No, they didn't have anything to do with owning the ship at the time it was built, but an American ship (after 1913) had to also be built "to the order of" certain US Navy specifications. This stipulation was to give American companies the ability to use the Panama Canal, for free then later at reduced prices, as well as the agreement that the military "might" take over a ship in case of a war, and any other "perks". This is why there were Navy engineers present during the building of a lot of ships. Both of the "floating palaces of the Pacific" were built for the shipping company as they had the authority to run the ships. If that were not true then there would be no need to have a shipping company except for the law. The "title" would reflect the operators or "owners". This means the shipping company either leased or owned a ship and would be in "control" as the ship "belonged" to them here, that did happen, as the case of when SP&S, GN, and NP merged to form BNSF Railway in 1970. SP&S remained separate until 1979 until a complete merger. Other sources show "for the Great Northern Pacific Steamship Co.", "The company operated two ships", and there are others. I am sure I have shown why stating that a shipping company was "supervising" construction of a ship for a railroad company could not be accurate. If that happened we would likely be able to find reports that principles of the railroad company were arrested for breaking a fairly new federal law. Otr500 (talk) 21:52, 4 January 2015 (UTC)