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Proposed guideline update for shipindex pages

In 2006 we reclassified our ship dab pages from being tagged as generic {{disambig}} pages to our own {{shipindex}}. As index pages have less stringent content guidelines than true disambiguation pages, it also effectively let us write our own rules to govern their content and construction (see WikiProject Ships/Guidelines#Index pages). In the two years since, editors have gone crazy on these pages, often linking every other word, adding references, and even images. Instead of working on actual ship articles, editors fuss and argue over which of the nine Foo ships should be pictured on its dab page, or link all nine instances of third-rate.

As such, I propose that we update our guidelines for shipindex pages. I really like WikiProject Ships/Guidelines#Index pages, and wholeheartedly agree that each dab page entry should continue to include information on important dates, class and type, etc. However I feel that WikiProject Ships/Guidelines#Index page outline should be updated to be a lot closer to Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). Specifically I think we should only link the actual words being disambiguated (so all the Foo ships have links, but not the nine instances of third-rate). Likewise we should drop images and references from our shipindex dab pages, as these all belong on the articles themselves. Examples of pages that already look like this (or very nearly so) include USS Enterprise, HMAS Penguin, USS New Orleans, and Chilean ship Almirante Latorre.

How do you all feel on the issue? --Kralizec! (talk) 18:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, I see what you're getting at and I do agree that standardisation would be useful. Some pages (like HMS Newcastle) become so choked with mini ship summaries as to be neither use nor ornament. But linking some things is still a good idea I feel. eg, HMS Panther, with ship classes, ship types and perhaps what these ships are named for, as these pages can be quite interesting in themselves, especially for the origin of the name which doesn't really fit on a particular ship. But limiting what we put in the disambiguation pages is definitely a good idea. I tend to put ship type, years of entry and exit from service and things such as a change in use, name, or something like that. Pictures and references I'm not in favour of at all. And I wrote that in a very odd way. A bit like Yoda. Hmmmm. Benea (talk) 18:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Benea on this issue. HMS Newcastle is a mess; it's impossible to scan. However, I really like HMS Panther and I feel USS New Orleans would be improved if it had a similar level of wikilinking. TomTheHand (talk) 19:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I've been doing a lot of these lately, and I was recently put on the disambig linking, example: User:Brad101/shipindex where the ship name is brought out in the open instead of hiding it behind second or shipname. USS Columbia is likely the best example of a complete mess that I have cleaned up. I agree there should be some info on name origin, if possible and short descriptions of the ship with service dates. Sources I have been placing on index pages simply because I found it rather difficult to claim there had been X number of ships without having the source you got it from. And in a lot of cases the actual ship count was wrong until I corrected it. --Brad (talk) 22:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Have to agree with most of this - a lot of ship index pages are a complete mess. Besides the points already noted, there is a distinct lack of consistency in the presentation as well. Just take, for example, HMS America, which is one I started, and compare it with HMS Agincourt, and then with HMS Nelson. The first lists the prefix and the name; the second, how many ships into the lineage it is, and then the name, and the third the prefix, the name and the year of launch (or pennant number). Personally, this is something I think we need to agree a standard format on. My own opinion is that just the prefix and the name are all that is required (and perhaps the pennant/hull number for modern ships). Older ships will have their year of launch mentioned in the brief sentence about them, so repeating it in the link is unnecessary. I don't like indices that state very definitively that such and such a ship was 'the first ship to bear the name' - just this evening I was able to insert a ship into such a list above the so-called 'first' ship to bear the name. And that sort of information belongs on the article page itself, anyway. Martocticvs (talk) 23:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Benea and Tom about the wikilinks, I see no reason why only ship names should be wikilinked on dab pages, but like any page, it should not be overdone. If people are wikilinking every example of "third-rate" they are already violating existing style guidelines.
As far as keeping dab pages brief, might I suggest a guideline stating that entries should consist of a single sentence only, apart from in the most exceptional circumstances. That would give support to users removing excessive content. Gatoclass (talk) 00:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
One exception I've been allowing on shipindex pages is when a ships' description is a paragraph or less, I'll allow the information to remain on the index page rather then create a new article. In some cases a ships history from DANFS is only a sentence or two long. --Brad (talk) 18:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

After cleaning up USS Boxer [1] I can see that we really need to put something together on this. I suppose all of the comments made so far are about all we'll see on this subject? --Brad (talk) 10:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you pruned the namesake info a bit too much. At least, links to HMS Boxer (1812) and Capture of HMS Boxer seem appropriate. And the fates of the ships should be included.
—WWoods (talk) 16:15, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, if we want to draw up some new guidelines, it's probably best to take this all from the beginning. What info do we want on these pages? I would say as a bare minimum:

  • Ship name
  • Type/class
  • Launch date
  • Current status or fate + date

I don't really think these pages need an awful lot more than that - they are disambig pages after all. Martocticvs (talk) 00:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Apparently some recent adjustments to WikiProject Ships/Guidelines#Index page outline are more of what I had in mind. I think we all agree the purpose is trying to get the index page to bare essentials with just the facts; and everything else should go into the article. If we keep the guideline to mean brief, then we don't have to bother listing all the things that shouldn't be on the page.
What I'm finding as I travel alphabetically through the lists is that most index pages haven't been seriously changed since they were first created several years ago. It's now just a matter of getting through the list and making the necessary cuts and having some standard to back up my changes with. Admittedly, I do get too choppy sometimes and need to ease up a bit. --Brad (talk) 11:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I've worked up HMS Superb into what I think a good Royal Navy dab page would look like. I agree it's very important to have the years of launch and end of service clearly shown, as when other people come to the dab page when writing an article that's the sort of information they often need. For example, they know Admiral so and so commanded HMS XXX in 1895, and it couldn't have been the fourth HMS XXX, because she had been broken up 12 years earlier, and it couldn't have been the sixth HMS XXX because she wouldn't be launched for another 28 years, so it must have been the fifth HMS XXX which would have been in service in 1895. On another note, I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to have HMS Superb (1798) (i.e. with the year included in the link) because that wasn't the ship's name, she was simply HMS Superb, and we might be implying that her name as she served included the year of launching. I can see the logic for pennant numbers though, but not necessarily for the year. With the dab page set out as I've suggested, the year of launch is mentioned in the accompanying entry. It's also helpful to it that way, as sometimes it isn't the year of launch, but the year she was captured, first listed or the only date we actually have for that ship, and we can make this clear in the text. Just my tuppenny bit. Benea (talk) 12:15, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Very good point re: showing USS Bonhomme Richard (1765) vs USS Bonhomme Richard when the point could be made that Bonhomme Richard was built in 1765 and commissioned in 1779 and sunk the same year. I can certainly see where WP naming conventions could appear to mean the ship had an official 1765 in its title. --Brad (talk) 04:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the year should probably not be in the link (I don't include them anymore, and have been removing them from pages I have cleaned up). As for pennant/hull numbers, well I have been leaving those in for the time being... but if we decide on a blanket name only rule then that's fine with me also. Martocticvs (talk) 18:32, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm yes. It takes my brain awhile to catch onto the concept. Hiding the year for those articles using it would be fine, as the years of commission - decommission etc are explained in the text that follows. A pennant number however, like (BB-65) or (T-AGOS-227), is much more difficult to explain in text, and showing it as a method of disambiguation would be much easier. (I'm getting tired of typing 'disambiguate'; its almost like typing antidisestablishmentarianism). --Brad (talk) 08:36, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to chime in as being in favor of only a single wikilink per hull. While we may decide to have a few more details than meet than are common in a disambig page, I strongly feel the ship articles are the place for all the other links. The reasons laid out in MOS:DAB still apply. I think the only exception should be a ship that was renamed if, and only if, the new name has its own article. Also, any facts on the shipindex page should meet the criteria for the article lead in, and in fact be there. I'm not sure I've seen an example that would violate that, but probably worth putting in the guidelines. --J Clear (talk) 19:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

US ships' prefixes doubt

I wonder, if US Army's rams of the Civil War era (United States Ram Fleet), like "Queen of the West", should have USS prefix. Ellet's ram fleet was technically owned and operated by the Army even after the transfer of the Western Gunboat Flotilla to the Navy and was always somewhat independent of Navy command (info from NHC). Note, that NHC lists them without USS prefix, and refers to them like: "U.S. Ram Queen of the West".

Secondly: why should Confederate Army ships of River Defence Fleet, like CSS General Earl Van Dorn have CSS prefix?.. NHC titles them with prefixes on individual pages, eg. CSS General Bragg, but here lists them as: "C.S. River Defense Fleet Ram".

Third thing: is there a reason to give CSS prefix to Luisiana state vessels, like CSS Governor Moore? NHC titles them with CSS on individual pages, but it seems doubtful. According to Mississippi gunboats... from Osprey / New Vangaurd, Louisiana vessels remained under separate command from the Army and Navy. Pibwl ←« 18:12, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The USS prefix is only for ships that were commissioned in the US Navy; so you're correct that using that prefix for an Army operated ship is incorrect. The Army also operated some troop transports which have been referred to as USAT. I think that for wikipedia purposes we could call them USARS = United States Army Ram Ship ? Let me think about the other two questions you had --Brad (talk) 20:21, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
If we think CSS = Confederate States Ship then it might be able to be used on ships regardless of who operated them. I don't believe the CSA existed long enough to set a precedence for CSS referring only to Confederate Navy ships. --Brad (talk) 17:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Maybe we should make an exception for Louisiana ships. Even our article CSS Governor Moore starts with "LSNS Governor Moore...". In a quoted Osprey book, the author titles River Defense Fleet ships with CSS, and US War Departament ships with USS (possibly not thinking about it too much), but Louisiana vessels with LSNS, and writes on Governor Moore: she was not officialy a Confederate naval vessel as she remained part of the Louisiana Provisional Navy until her destruction. Pibwl ←« 20:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I can agree there. It seems fairly well documented that Louisiana had their own Naval ships in operation. Somewhere the explanation has to be made on the difference of how ships are prefixed in the military vs what we have had to do here on WP; the differences can be quite confusing at times. I think I see a project page on the horizon that explains all the differences. Did you have plans to move the articles to the proper name? --Brad (talk) 14:44, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I had no plans to move yet (which ones? Ellet's rams and LSNS?) - I just wanted to consult problem. Pibwl ←« 00:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Our conversation points out there are Army Ram ships using a USS prefix and some LSNS using the CSS prefix as the article name, which means they will have to be renamed eventually. --Brad (talk) 16:43, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

"Plunger" or "Adder" class?

Hey guys, I could use some help with an issue. Should the Plunger class submarines actually be called the Adder class? I have sources that go either way. The first one in the numbering sequence, SS-2, was USS Plunger, but she was the last laid down and the last completed; the first boat completed was USS Adder. Later, they were all renamed to the A class, with Plunger being A-1. Friedman refers to them as the Adder or A-1 class, the Registry of Ships of the U.S. Navy refers to them as the Plunger class. History.navy.mil seems to use "Plunger" or "A-1". TomTheHand (talk) 21:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I would stick with "Plunger", given that that's what the USN calls them. It can always be mentioned in the introduction that they're sometimes referred to as the Adder class, and state why. If there's not already a redirect for Adder class submarine, one could be created as well. Parsecboy (talk) 22:10, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, and then just do a redirect from "Adder class", I think that would probably do it. Gatoclass (talk) 02:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I created a redirect for Adder class submarine, and also added a line explaining the Adder class name to the article. Is there anything else that should be done? Parsecboy (talk) 04:31, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, I guess you could do a redirect for A-1 class submarine too :) Gatoclass (talk) 20:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Done :) Parsecboy (talk) 01:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Ships at Japanese Surrender

I am starting to have doubts about the primary reference for List of Allied ships at the Japanese surrender and the associated Category:Ships at the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, namely the NHC list of Allied Ships Present in Tokyo Bay During the Surrender Ceremony, 2 September 1945. I was trying to do some category sorting for HMS Pheasant (U49) to get it in the right place, when I noticed it isn't on the list, but USS Pheasant (AM-61) is. Since I couldn't confirm it with other sources, I removed that statement from the Pheasant article. But then I started to check the other Commonwealth craft in the category, and found that there are other sources that state HMAS Bataan (I91) was there, and the DANFS entry for USS Bataan (CVL-29), who is on the NHC list, is ambiguous on her presence in Tokyo Bay at the time. A search of Naval-History.net yields other Commonwealth craft that were supposedly there, but are not on the NHC list (but not HMS Pheasant). Other than feeling more research is needed, I haven't reached any conclusions. Ideas? --J Clear (talk) 18:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Geoff Mason's ship histories is one of the most detailed day-to-day references for the World War Two British and Commonwealth ships I know of. It firmly places HMAS Bataan at the surrender, but not HMS Pheasant, which it says was operating off Hong Kong after the surrender. I have previously noticed other ships which are reported at the surrender, but are not on the list. Benea (talk) 19:45, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

A question about scope

In working through the unassessed importance backlog, I've come across a few articles about navies that had class assessments but not importance. I wasn't (and still am not) sure as to what level of importance they should get, so I checked some more prominent navies for precedent. It turns out that the Royal Navy, the French, German, Indian, and Russian Navies aren't listed under this project, but the US Navy is, listed as High importance. Are navies best left to WP:Maritime under MILHIST, or do they fall within our scope as well? Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 21:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I tagged the US Navy article but that skimming over it quickly led me to believe the article was discussing ship classes. A second look shows that ships are only mentioned in brief so I guess if the tag remains it should at least be a low importance. I suppose the same might apply to other Navies of the world. --Brad (talk) 00:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
That's what I was thinking. I'll retag the USN to low importance and add WP:Ships to the untagged navies. Thanks for your comment. Parsecboy (talk) 14:19, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Help with first-hand info

I am having problems with getting a user at USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) to understand why we can't allow personal fisrthand persoanl accounts. Please see the discussion at Talk:USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70)#References?. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 23:58, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

3 sloops, 1 lightship, 1 shipwreck

3 sloops, 1 lightship, 1 shipwreck are stub-rated articles within List of National Historic Landmarks in New York, holding back advancement of list to Featured List. Stubs, but with detailed sources identified and linked. Could anyone help develop these?

Thanks for considering. doncram (talk) 04:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Looking at Priscilla (sloop) and Christeen (sloop), my first thought is to ask why the photos of both show nothing but a tarped up shape floating near a dock? Even if those two articles were expanded, the photos alone would be a huge downer. --Brad (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Well those pics were garnered by a hardworking fellow wikipedian who made the drive to go take pics of them, along with other NYS NHLs out in that area. Sure, tarp-free pics would be nice. Can you make the trip and cut the tarps off first, please?  :) The request I made was to improve the articles, say to high Start or to B-level is what i am hoping for. The List of NHLs is what we are trying to bring to Featured List now. doncram (talk) 03:59, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

RE that last question: see gaff rig. Maralia (talk) 05:45, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Source of info on shipwrecks

I've been working on the MS Riverdance article, and found this on the Blackpool Gazette website. Looks like enough info to start an article or two for those who are interested. Mjroots (talk) 21:23, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I've created an article for the Abana. Ref #1 on that article is a good source of info too. Mjroots (talk) 09:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

MilHist peer review for HMAS Melbourne (R21) in progress

The article HMAS Melbourne (R21), which I've spent the past few months working on, us undergoing a peer review under the auspices of the Military History WikiProject. Curious/concerned editors from here might like to drop in... I'd appreciate the critiques. -- saberwyn 10:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Ship table multiple careers

Template:Ship table multiple careers has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Dual Freq (talk) 20:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Ships infobox question

Is there a way of adding a ships IMO number other that under "notes"? Mjroots (talk) 21:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

You can use "Ship identification=", which shows up as "Identification:" and is intended as a catchall for IMO numbers, callsigns, etc, etc. TomTheHand (talk) 21:05, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

RfD nomination of Template:Ship Table

I've nominated {{Ship Table}} for deletion at the template's entry on the Redirects for Deletion page. It's a redirect to a deprecated template, and all articles that once had transclusions of this redirect have been cleaned up to now use {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}}. Note: the template nominated for deletion is a different redirect from {{Ship table}}, which still has several articles using it as an inclusion. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 01:25, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Deleting obsolete templates?

What would you guys think about an effort to eliminate and delete obsolete templates? It'd make things less confusing, and keep people from putting them onto new articles or forking them. {{Infobox Ship}} certainly isn't going anywhere, but I was thinking we could possibly do something about the contents of Category:Defunct WikiProject Ships templates, as well as templates with only a few dozen uses like {{Infobox Ferry}}, {{WAFerry}}, {{Infobox ship}} (note lowercase "s"), {{Infobox Hellenic Navy}}, {{Infobox Commercial Ship}}, and any others that might be out there. Does this idea sound alright, and if so, are there any templates I'm missing? TomTheHand (talk) 01:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I used to welcome new ship article creators with a note directing them to use of the commercial ship template. Perhaps "what links here" should be checked before deleting. Or should there be redirects to the new template(s)? Kablammo (talk) 01:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, these templates can't be deleted outright, as they're still used by a small number of articles. I'm proposing that if we agree about it, we make an effort to convert them to a newer template and then delete them. Redirects are a good idea, to make sure that links on talk pages still direct someplace. TomTheHand (talk) 01:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
That makes sense. It might also be the opportunity to correct errors (tonnage v. displacement). Kablammo (talk) 01:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Definitely. I'm looking over the fields used, and it seems the multi-template ship infobox might benefit from fields for cost and maiden voyage, but other than that I think it's up to the task. TomTheHand (talk) 01:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

(outdent)I'd like to get these cleaned up. I've just tagged as deprecated {{Infobox ship}} and {{Infobox Hellenic Navy}}, and categorized them into Category:Defunct WikiProject Ships templates. I haven't messed with the two ferry templates and {{Infobox Commercial Ship}}, as I'm guessing those may have been created by Maritime Trades folks. Maralia (talk) 03:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about {{Infobox Commercial Ship}}; it was created with participation from four people (including me) and its supercession by the general template was previously discussed on this page. I also posted a notice of the discussion on the Infobox Commercial Ship talk page. Kablammo (talk) 17:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that the deprecation note on {{Infobox ship}} says to use {{Infobox Ship}} (not {{Infobox Ship Example}}). I'm guessing it's a typo, but wanted to point it out. (I know, I know - WP:BOLD ... I'll still leave it for someone else to sort out). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I've fixed it now. Maralia (talk) 17:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I've converted the two articles that were using {{Navyships}} and nominated it for deletion here. Maralia (talk) 18:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Maralia! I'm eager to jump in and work on this, but I'm very busy today and probably won't be able to get to it until tomorrow evening. Rest assured that I didn't bring this up expecting others to take care of it! I just wanted to make sure everyone was alright with the idea of getting rid of these old templates before I did anything.TomTheHand (talk) 20:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I tried to convert RMS Queen Elizabeth to Ship from "ship" but "Infobox Ship" doesn't support maiden voyage, owner operator and tonnage. I just left them out, is there something better to do with those fields in the replacement template? I thought I'd try to help convert, but I figured I'd double check here before I did any more. --Dual Freq (talk) 00:17, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Use {{Infobox Ship Example}}, which supports tonnage, owner, and operator, and allows an in-service date (not the same as maiden voyage, but the start of regular service-- maiden voyage could go in the article text). Kablammo (talk) 00:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, I re-did RMS QE with that one, I guess I'm still one template behind and just trying to save same effort by simply changing the name and adding Ship in front of the line items. --Dual Freq (talk) 00:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Why are we keeping {{Infobox Ship}} as an active template anyway? Should it not be deprecated? Obviously it is currently in use by a very large number of articles, but all of our up-to-date material directs people to use the three-stage template in {{Infobox Ship Example}}, which is a great deal more versatile than its predecessor, and seems to be being continually revised and improved so that it is suitable for use on all types of ship. Martocticvs (talk) 00:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I've tagged/categorized {{Infobox Commercial Ship}} as deprecated per Kablammo, and {{Infobox Ship}} too, because I'm feeling ballsy. Maralia (talk) 01:04, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Good luck with that, I count over 3,200 transclusions to {{Infobox Ship}}. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
And I'll bet almost every time the displacement field is filled for a merchant ship it is erroneous, as a tonnage figure has incorrectly been placed there instead. (A lot of the ferry articles were this way). Last year I went throught the entire List of ocean liners and List of cruise ships and removed displacement figures where I could; I followed up a few times thereafter but have not done it recently. (In these reviews I did not add or change templates, and I cannot be sure that I got them all.)
Another common error is the filling of a launch date with the date of entry into service, naming, maiden voyage, etc.
So the process of substituting templates cannot be just a mechanical one, otherwise errors in the old will be continued with the new. If the {{Infobox Ship}} has been used for an MV or SS, passenger ship, or other merchant ship, we have to be careful when filling the fields in a new template. Kablammo (talk) 01:24, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
It looks like the majority of the transclusions are for naval vessels, so at least they are not perpetrating systemic errors. Some the merchant vessel uses fill in the displacement figures with [number] gt or something similar; others are empty, and of course some are simply wrong in using gross (or other) tonnage figures for displacement. Kablammo (talk) 01:37, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I would like it if we could stop using Infobox Ship on new articles, but if there's debate about it I'm not interested in fighting it out. I'm definitely not interested in trying to eliminate it and delete it. I think the others are easily eliminated, though.
I'll add "maiden voyage" to Infobox Ship Career. When I started typing this, I ended the sentence with "tomorrow", but I have no good reason for waiting. I'm adding that field as soon as I hit "submit".
I also saw some ships using a "cost" field, but before I add it, I want to ask where it belongs. I was thinking of putting it at the very end of "Characteristics", but I'm not married to that. I could even see putting it in "Career". Any thoughts? TomTheHand (talk) 01:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
FWIW, I think it would look good near the builder and award area of the Career section since cost would be related to construction / builder and contract information. --Dual Freq (talk) 04:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
We have to make sure that Infobox Ship is not used for merchant vessels. And the exisiting misuses need to be corrected. Is there any reason to use Infobox Ship at all for any type other than naval vessels? If not can a warning be added to the template? Kablammo (talk) 01:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Well I tagged it as deprecated and categorized it as defunct, so hopefully no one will use it for anything new, naval or merchant. Maralia (talk) 03:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Two of the Infobox ship ones I've tried to convert used a field called IMO number. I put it in the ship notes field on those two, but wondered if we need it or if it needed to be added to the official template. Maybe it could be linked somewhere like the airport templates link to Airnav etc. Maybe http://www.vesseltracker.com/ or something similar, (try 8519837 as the IMO number). http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/index.html doesn't take IMO numbers it uses call-signs, UCKZ is 8519837 (Akademik Fyodorov). I only spent about 5 minutes looking at this, maybe someone knows of better links that could be added to the template, or maybe we don't need the IMO or call-signs at all. I see the call sign stuff on lots of pages, might be worth adding. --Dual Freq (talk) 04:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Minor note on the "cost" field: the field should probably be called "original cost" or something along those lines, to avoid people putting in the price for every sale of the ship for commercial vessels that have been sold several times. -- Kjet (talk) 14:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Hmm... yes, I can definitely understand that. However, I feel like a field labeled "original cost" on a vessel that has only one cost looks odd. What would you think of having the row in the code called "Ship original cost", but having it display as "Cost:"? That might dissuade people from using it improperly, while still keeping what's displayed simple. I'm not insisting on this. I'm willing to display "Original cost:" if you want, but what do you think about this idea? TomTheHand (talk) 23:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Coding the template's field as "ship original cost" and having it display as "cost" sounds like a great compromise solution to me! --Kralizec! (talk) 00:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm willing to go with that, a good compromise between practicality and ... practicality. ;) -- Kjet (talk) 00:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

There are no more transclusions of {{Infobox ship}} in the mainspace. You may delete when ready Gridley. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well done, sir! Nominated for deletion here. Maralia (talk) 02:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I've eliminated and nominated {{USN jack}}, a fork of {{USN flag}}. See the discussion here. I'll work on the proposed improvements to the ship infobox tomorrow, but for now I'm headed to bed. Good night! TomTheHand (talk) 06:51, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I added "Ship original cost", which displays as "Cost:", right below "Builder:". I only added it to the commercial ship copy-and-paste code, but you can manually stick it into any code. I don't know how common cost figures are for other kinds of vessels, but I think that they're very useful and interesting information. About IMO number and callsign, can anyone think of one generic field we could add to cover any information like that? It's not something I know enough about, but if they're sufficiently distinct pieces of information that they need separate fields we can do that too. TomTheHand (talk) 20:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

{{Infobox Commercial Ship}}'s done, and the TFD's here. TomTheHand (talk) 21:07, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Tom, I don't know much about templates. Would it be possible to simply blank it and convert the page to a redirect? I think you could just go ahead and do it. Then if one of the editors I had directed to the old template were to go looking for it, s/he would find the proper one. Kablammo (talk) 21:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Creating a redirect after the template's deleted sounds like a good idea. TomTheHand (talk) 01:11, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

{{Infobox Hellenic Navy}} is done and the TFD is here. On the subject of the ferry templates, if you check out Template_talk:Infobox_Ferry you'll see a discussion about merging that template and Template:WAFerry into {{Infobox Ship}}. There weren't a ton of comments, but four people were in favor of a merge with none opposed, so I think we should be good to go with eliminating those. TomTheHand (talk) 01:11, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I missed your comment here. Earlier today, I had posted on both template:Infobox Ferry and template:WAFerry about the merger proposals. I agree that we should be okay with proceeding with deprecating both of those, but now that I've re-posted the question on those talk pages, should we give a chance for a reply first, or go ahead and mark them both as deprecated and pointing users to {{Infobox Ship Example}}? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:02, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I've replaced all instances of {{Naval ship}} and nominated it for deletion here. Maralia (talk) 05:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

update re: Template:Infobox Ferry

After some discussion on it's talk page, {{Infobox Ferry}} has been marked as deprecated and all relevant transclusions converted to the current template. I haven't submitted it for deletion yet - I wasn't sure if that was appropriate or if it should be converted to a redirect to the current template. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:02, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Summary of obsolete template issue

Let's see if we can single out the templates that still need to be removed. Based on the above, the following still need to be worked on:

And I think there was one named 'Military submarine' but I can't find the reference atm. Are there any others we haven't seen? --Brad (talk) 17:37, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

  • {{Ship table}}, which also redirects to Infobox Ship.
—WWoods (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
And {{Ship Table}} (note the different capitalization points to a different template), which is also a redirect to Infobox Ship. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:36, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Ok, both of those are redirected properly now to {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}} --Brad (talk) 23:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I reverted the changed redirect. Any articles using those older templates require the old redirect for now - those will need to be cleaned up before the redirects can be revised. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm confused as to why some templates are deleted outright, others redirected and others still standing? I know that most of the standing templates still have articles attached to them so what is the difference between delete or redirect? --Brad (talk) 00:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Some are kept as redirects, rather than being deleted outright after all instances have been converted, because the template name is ingrained in people's minds already, or likely to be guessed by newer users looking for the right infobox. The deprecated ones that are 'still standing' simply must remain until we've converted instances; then they too will be either deleted or redirected. Maralia (talk) 01:02, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
In the case of the two above ({{Ship table}} and {{Ship Table}}), there were still articles that used those template names as inclusions - the redirect then causes the article to use the code from the target in the article. While I prefer avoiding these situations, it does exist - sometimes it's done when a template is renamed, or when two templates similar purpose templates are merged and the coding of the new one is compatible.
For the above templates, after the revert, Wwoods cleanup up all articles which had an inclusion of Ship Table so that none remain. As it's no longer in use, I went ahead and tagged it as a Redirect for Deletion. I should have posted the RfD notice here, but forgot. I'll start a new thread below for the RfD now. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 01:17, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)Would it be too crazy of an idea that all of the template deletion and whatnot could be broken off as a project page? Seems like it could be a place to keep track of what is done and why, and what templates still have to be worked on? --Brad (talk) 18:36, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

NS Savannah

Can someone go ahead and work on the infobox on this article. Another user just recently added the new infobox, but there was too many problems. I blanked most of the data inside the box because it was either identical, not supported by the text, or implausible. Thanks, -MBK004 02:12, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I have moved the info from the bottom of the article to the infobox, added some missing fields, removed country and flag fields as we haven't been using them for commercial ships, and put in some information from this site. Some of new stuff added contradicts the body text - I've found the site I used as a source extremely reliable in the past but didn't have the time to start fiddling with the body text. Someone should probably look into the sources of the article to see which information is correct. I won't have time to look into it myself right now - I can do it in a few days, but if someone wants it done sooner... -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 13:10, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of template:WAFerry

I've nominated {{WAFerry}} for deletion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. The template has been deprecated for a few weeks now, and I completed converting all transclusions of it over to {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}} earlier today. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:16, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Lists of ship commissionings issue

I am an editor with the Military History WikiProject, working on some assessment for that project when I encountered the series Category: Lists of ship commissionings. I was under the impression that commissioning was an exclusively military term and was removing civilian vessels from the list when I was informed that several other editors had interpreted those lists to include all ships entering into active service. Therefore, I am asking editors here and at MilHist to weigh in with their thoughts and comments at Category talk:Lists of ship commissionings. Thank you. Cromdog (talk) 00:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

What is going on with the ship infoboxes?

I am getting more and more confused. Just now I pasted the new code for ship classes into an article, and got halfway through filling out the fields when I noticed there are no longer "commissioned/decommissioned" fields in the infobox. So I went back to the infobox page and copied the old code into the new infobox, but it doesn't recognize it.

Who decided the ship class infobox shouldn't have commissioned/decommissioned dates? I think these fields are very informative, I use them to indicate the commission/decommission range (a rough example of which can be seen at the Bayfield class attack transport page. Gatoclass (talk) 14:21, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Please see the discussion on adding class support to the infobox, where we talked about what fields we thought it should include. "Built range" is intended to be used for the range of years from the start of construction of the first ship to the end of construction of the last, and "In service range" is intended to be used for the range of years from the start of the first ship's service to the end of the last ship's.
We can certainly discuss changes, but the above discussion went on for nearly three weeks, then I waited a few more days before implementing anything. There was a ton of time for comment. TomTheHand (talk) 14:43, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Unfortunately I wasn't available to do much at that time, because I got involved in a ludicrous fracas with some East European editors that landed us all at AE. The experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth and a disinclination to do much at all on Wiki for some time afterwards, although I'm through that now.
I'll have to take a careful look through what's been done so I'm up to speed. If I have any comments to make after that, I'll let you know. But struggling with technicalities is really not my thing. I just prefer to write articles and make my contributions in other ways. Gatoclass (talk) 19:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Tom, now that I've thought about it, I could see adding a commissioned range and decommissioned range for military vessels - although those could be left out of the class templates for commercial vessels. My comments in the original discussion were primarilly focussed on commercial ships, and left the military vessel concerns to others.
After looking back at the initial discussion again, the "In service range" replaced the four fields that initially were in the template: "First commissioned date", "Final decommissioned date", "First in service date", and "Final out of service date". The In service range does a good job of replacing the last two - but I can see Gatoclass' point on a benefit of also including ranges for commissioned/decommissioned. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
I feel like the difference between "Built range" and "Commissioned range" is so subtle that it's not a good idea to have separate fields. I also feel like a "Decommissioned range" is sort of an odd field, and I think that "In service range" conveys much of the same information in a more intuitive fashion. One of the things I specifically wanted to accomplish was to simplify the infobox by figuring out exactly what fields provide the most important information and getting rid of all the rest. I really think all class infoboxes should look similar, and we shouldn't have a ton of fields, each of which convey a slightly different shade of meaning.
I do realize that "Built range", "commissioned range", "in service range", and "decommissioned range" each have slightly different meanings, but I'm skeptical about actually needing all of them. TomTheHand (talk) 21:18, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
But what exactly does "in service" mean? It's not very clear. Whereas commissioned/decommissioned range tells you exactly when the vessels were fit for service.
Just to give you one quick example - I recently did a bunch of articles on the Gilliam class. The entire 32 ships were built and commissioned in 44/45 and out of commission by January 1947. But one of them was using as a training ship for a further 20 years, even though it was out of commission. But if you include that one on the grounds it was still "in service" it gives a very skewed picture of just how quickly this class of ships was mothballed. Gatoclass (talk) 21:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Ah... now I'm definitely starting to see. Yes, you're right, it's necessary to be able to specify when warships were in commission. However, I still find the idea of specifying the range of commission dates and the range of decommission dates to be unintuitive, and I think it would be better to have a range from the first commission date to the last decommission date. I feel like trying to specify a range of commissioning dates and a range of decommissioning dates really falls apart on something like the Iowa class, while specifying a range during which any member of the class was in commission gives a good picture: 1943-1955, 1968-1969, 1982-1992.
I do realize that you can't express exactly the same information with a "In commission range" field as you would with a commissioned range and a decommissioned range, but I think it's more intuitive and applies to complex situations better. What do you think? TomTheHand (talk) 21:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

(ec)(reset) An example where the multiple specific ranges would be useful is with the Essex-class aircraft carrier because most of the class retired in the '70s, but the Lexington stayed until '91. This also seems like a good idea for the Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carrier with multiple ships in different status, and for future use with the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier because of the longevity of the class (first commissioning in the '70s and one still building). I haven't been following this closely, so I may be off in right or left field. -MBK004 21:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

That's not exactly what we're discussing here. It won't be possible to have separate date fields for each ship of a class, though you could list each ship's date range in a single field if desired. What we're trying to work out is what kind of ranges we need to be able to specify. TomTheHand (talk) 21:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
An "In commission range" seems a good solution. As you said, it's more intuitive for filling out the infoboxes, and it supplies comparable (although marginally less complete) data. It seems a good balance between informative and simplicity to me. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, I don't know, the more I think about this problem, the more complicated it gets.
We probably don't need both an "in service" field and an "in commission" field because "in service" can be readily interpreted to mean "in commission" anyhow, and probably should be interpreted thus. But I do think that whether we use "in service" or "in commission", we should have an "out of service/out of commission" field to complement it. The reason is that I think it's useful to see both the range of time when the ships were receiving their first commissions/entering service and the range of time over which they were receiving their last commissions/exiting service. If you only have an "in commission/in service" field you only have a range between the first ship commissioned/in service and the last ship decommissioned/out of service, and that can be highly misleading.
With the classes I'm most familiar with, for example, the WWII auxiliaries, you often see the overwhelming majority of vessels being retired shortly after WWII and a small number continuing maybe into the 1970's. But if you only have an "in commission" range and not an "out of commission" range, there is no way to convey to the reader when the ships first started being retired.
I think Tom also made a good point about the Iowa class and their pattern of commission, my comment in relation to that is that one doesn't necessarily need to employ the "out of commission" field where there's a better way to describe the ships' service. So that when you have a class that has several discreet periods of service, you can list those separate periods under the "in service" or "in commission" field, and just ignore the "out of service/out of commission" field altogether. But for classes with different patterns of service, I think retaining the "out of commission/out of service" field is important. Gatoclass (talk) 08:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
As a minor note, if we are going to have only one field for "in commission"/"in service", it would have to be "in service" to make the infobox usable for commercial ships as they are not commissioned in the military sense of the word (or we could have an "in service" field for commercial ships and "in commission" for naval ships, but that would probably be redundant). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 08:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Don't forget that we are talking about the ship class infobox here. Is there such a thing as a class of commercial vessels? Gatoclass (talk) 08:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, there is. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 10:00, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
In that case my initial response would be to go back to having "in service/out of service" and "in commission/out of commission" fields, and use the service fields for commercial ships and the commission fields for warships. Gatoclass (talk) 18:56, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Alright, I can do that. Here's what I propose for display text:
Built: range from the beginning of construction of the first ship to the end of construction of the last ship, for both commercial and military vessels
In service: range from the first ship entering service to the last ship leaving service, for commercial vessels
In commission: range from the first ship commissioning to the last ship decommissioning, for military vessels
Left service: range from the first ship leaving service to the last ship leaving service, for commercial vessels
Decommissioned: range from the first ship decommissioning to the last ship decommissioning, for military vessels
This may be slightly different from what you're suggesting, Gatoclass, but I think it's important to have a field for the range of dates that a class was in service/commission, not just a range of dates when they entered and a range when they left. Does this work? TomTheHand (talk) 20:14, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
(Outdenting) I think I can live with an In commission field, showing either the total period of commission from the first ship commissioned to the last decommissioned - or alternatively the periods of commission (if more than one for the class as a whole). However, I would still want the Commissioned field for showing the period of time in which ships were first entering commission.
So for an Iowa class battleship you might have:
In commission: 1941-46
1950-58
1990-95
While for a Bayfield you might have:
Commissioned: 1941-43
Decommissioned: 1946-70
Either way, you can easily see when the ships first entered service and when they last left, but you have a lot of other useful info there as well. Gatoclass (talk) 02:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Although when I think about it, maybe we should drop both the "Commissioned" and "Decommissioned" fields, and just have an "In commission" field? You wouldn't have as much info, but it might be less confusing to the reader. And I guess one can always add a table somewhere in the article itself to give more detailed information. Gatoclass (talk) 02:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm strongly in favor of just an "In commission" field. I'll add it, plus fields for "Cost" and "Name", right now. We can reapproach this issue later if it doesn't work out and we need more fields. TomTheHand (talk) 20:11, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Well actually, that wasn't meant to be a concrete proposal, just thinking out loud. I'd like you to leave the "Commissioned" and "Decommissioned" fields in for now, but I have no objection to you adding an "In commission" field along with it. That way, we can use whichever fields are most appropriate for a particular class of ships.
There is one other issue I've been meaning to raise though, which is the lack of documentation (or difficulty in finding it) re the infoboxes. I really think we ought to add comment fields in the infoboxes themselves explaining exactly what each field is designed to display. I've been working on ship articles for a long time now, and I still don't know what half the fields are supposed to represent, for a beginner it must be a nightmare. Gatoclass (talk) 20:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
The thing is, it's much easier to add fields than remove them. If I were to add all three fields, and then later we decided we didn't want "Commissioned" and "Decommissioned", we'd have to edit every article they were used in to remove them. That's why I always resist adding new fields: I think it's important to control the growth of infoboxes, because it's not practical to remove fields later. I've just added "In commission", and I'm still open to adding the other two, but I haven't done so yet.
Template talk:Infobox Ship Begin/doc has some documentation on the infobox; at one time, I started to draw up documentation on every single field, but it was hard to scan and some of the fields were really obvious. Instead I just described some of the fields that I thought were less intuitive. Could you tell me about specific questions you have, so I can write up documentation for them? TomTheHand (talk) 20:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
{{Infobox Ship/doc}} could be copied and adapted for {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}}.
—WWoods (talk) 23:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
You could say exactly the same thing about not having them in. If we decide later the commissioned/decommissioned fields are worth keeping, we would have to edit lots of old articles to add them in again.
I don't see why we can't have all three fields in the infobox, it provides more information to the reader and I really don't understand your reluctance to include them. Gatoclass (talk) 21:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm reluctant because they seem, to me, to be superfluous and confusing. The difference between "Built" and "Commissioned" is very small. Supplying all three fields, "Commissioned", "In commission", and "Decommissioned", is redundant. Supplying "Commissioned" and "Decommissioned" is far less intuitive to a reader than just a range of dates the class was in commission. TomTheHand (talk) 14:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't know, I can see that just having an "In commission" field is simpler, but it also provides less info. I like being able to see the range of time over which a class entered service and the range over which the ships left service.
I'm also a little bothered by the proposed "Built" field. In my experience, there is usually no date provided for when ships are finally built, or even when they are first acquired by the Navy, so this field doesn't seem very practical to me. On the other hand, the date of first commission is almost always provided, so it seems to me that a "Commissioned" or "First commission" field or something along those lines is more practical. Gatoclass (talk) 18:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
On the "commissioned/demommissioned range" vs. "in commission range" I would go with the latter. Any additional information should be covered in the article body text - putting in every possible tidbit in the infobox seems highly redundant to me. And on the "built" field, it would be needed for commercial ships anyway, even if we do decide to go with a "commissioned" field (I think I've said that before. But repetition is the mother of learning as we say in Finland). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 09:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Kjet. Does anyone else have an opinion? It'd be great if we could try to hammer out a consensus based on the opinions of more people. TomTheHand (talk) 14:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes it would be nice to see more people joining in this debate, because this is an important issue that needs resolution! Gatoclass (talk) 22:24, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
I've been hesitant to post more than I have already on this, as my primary focus is commercial cruise and ferry vessels. I have some interest in military ships, but so far I haven't been very focussed on doing much with those articles - as a result, I had been leaving the discussion up to those with a more vested interest.
With that disclaimer out of the way, my personal preference would be to use the "in commission range" instead of both the "commissioned/demommissioned range". As I mentioned above, to me it's more intuitive for filling out the infoboxes, and it supplies comparable (although marginally less complete) data. It seems a good balance between informative and simplicity to me. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:56, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
I rarely comment on the infoboxes as it seems there are enough people interested in making them work correctly and most new topics related to infoboxes soon grow gigantic in size were it becomes difficult for me to keep track of the conversation. With that said, I rarely experience any problems with the infoboxes outside of trying to get people to stop using the old ones!! I think the latest incarnation of infoboxes are very flexible and adaptable for all sorts of ship articles and learning to use them only requires some few minutes of reading in most cases. Tom is correct in trying to limit the amount of entries into the box where it makes the most sense without making the boxes too lengthy and hard to maintain. Yet it seems that Tom is the only one who makes alterations and changes to the boxes which apparently puts too much of a strain on persons wanting changes or discussion faster than he is able to keep up. Maybe this is why infobox topics grow huge and menacing and no doubt my little note only makes it worse! --Brad (talk) 00:46, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Clarification

Let me try to elucidate my position one more time.

For classes with multiple commission periods, an In commission field is best. So for Iowa class battleships you might have something like:

In commission: 1941-46
1950-58
1990-95

But for classes with only one commission period, the "Commissioned/Decommissioned" fields offer a means of providing more information, but still in a straightforward and succinct way. So instead of using the In commission field you have:

Bayfield class:
Commissioned: 1941-43
Decommissioned: 1946-70

The point I'm making is that we can use the fields in a mutually exclusive way to avoid confusion. For classes with multiple commission periods, we can use the "In commission" field and ignore the "Commissioned/Decommissioned" fields. For classes with only one commission period, we ignore the "In commission" field and just use the "Commissioned/Decommissioned" fields, which allows for more information.

A system like that shouldn't be in the least confusing for the reader. The only potential problem I see with it is that editors have to understand how the system works. But that is by no means an insurmountable obstacle. New editors can usually be quickly corrected when they are getting something wrong, so in essence I see no need to delete the old fields. By all means add the new "In commission" field, yes, that's a good idea. But I see no need to delete the old fields at the same time, they still have a useful place in the scheme of things. Gatoclass (talk) 02:31, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the clarification. My overall position is that infoboxes should look as similar as possible, minimizing specialized fields and avoiding having different ways to convey the same or similar information. I feel pretty strongly about this and it influences all of my arguments on infobox topics. There have to be some differences, especially in commercial vs. military vessels, but I think it's best to keep differences to a minimum. I don't think it's a good idea for some articles to have an "In commission" range while others have a range of commission dates and a range of decommission dates. I think they should all have the same information, and since an "In commission" range is the simpler and more universally applicable solution, that's what I think we should go with. TomTheHand (talk) 03:28, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Alas, I still agree with Tom. Plus in my experience users will try to fill in every field they can, hence if we add both "in commission" and "commissioned/decommissioned" fields, I don't believe they would end up being used in a mutually exclusive way - many articles would end up having both. But this is only a minor concern, my main reasoning still remains that having just one field with the range is simpler and easier to read - the infobox isn't meant to display every possible piece of information available about a class (or individual ship). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjet (talk • contribs) 11:22, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Since I'm sure we all want to wind up this discussion ASAP, I've taken the liberty of canvassing a few veterans Wikishippers to ask them to contribute their views. Gatoclass (talk) 12:39, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm lost in the length of this thread, frankly. If I understand correctly, there is a widely accepted proposal to add an "In Commission" field to take a date range, and the issue now is whether to retain the old "Commissioned" and "Decommissioned" fields. I think "In Commission" is a fine replacement for the other two, but as it's wholly redundant with the old fields, I would not want to see it added unless it was to replace them. Maralia (talk) 21:35, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Not quite ... this has to do with the new class template (outlined as a sub-template within {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}}). It's not a change to the "Infobox Ship Career" subsection, but rather a question of how to best implement the data within the "Infobox Ship Class Overview" subsection. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:40, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Summary

Here's a summary for people who haven't been following this thread. We've been working on a brand new ship class infobox that uses portions of {{Infobox Ship Begin}}. I tried to cut down on the number of fields, because I feel like {{Infobox Ship Class}} has too many and they're confusing.

The point that we're debating, which we really need more input on, is whether the new infobox should just have a "In commission:" field for the range of dates a class was in commission, or if we should also have fields where you can specify a range of commissioning dates and a range of decommissioning dates. Since we're writing a new infobox from scratch we don't have to worry about removing the old fields; none of them are in at the moment, and we're working out whether to include them in the new box. TomTheHand (talk) 21:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I am in principle against an 'also' when it comes to infobox fields—it should be either or—and my preference is for the range "In commission". Maralia (talk) 22:05, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Tom's summary above doesn't quite sum the debate up comprehensively from my POV, so I've added a header entitled "Clarification" above so that latecomers can read exactly what my position is in regards to this question. Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 23:53, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Hey ho everyone. I've hung back from entering the debate thus far as I don't have particularly strong opinions on the matter. I would tend to agree with Maralia though, in that extra fields can be confusing. When writing articles about ships captured from the French say in the Napoleonic Wars, I'm never entirely sure whether to put the date of capture in the 'ship acquired field' or the 'ship in service field'. Or should I put it in the 'ship captured field', or does that refer to if and when the ship was captured from the Navy rather than captured into it. More variations on a theme when discussing service dates would I think only add to the uncertainty. But that said, if a valid case can be made where two alternatives would be more helpful and informative, I wouldn't be opposed. Benea (talk) 23:23, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
You can also add me to the been-following-the-debate-and-not-possessing-especially-strong-opinions-but-not-real-excited-about-adding-additional-potentially-confusing-fields pack. --Kralizec! (talk) 01:00, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I think at this stage I'll drop it. As Tom says, I guess we can always add new fields later if we want to, and I have more than enough on my plate right now without taking on an extended discussion to try and convince folks I'm right about this :). Maybe I'll take it up again some other time, but I guess we can manage with the current version for now. Gatoclass (talk) 03:46, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

add cost field for class template?

Latching onto the above discussion; does anyone have a strong opinion on if a "vessel original cost" field could be added to the class template? Or should that information be left in the individual ship infoboxes? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:17, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Probably no harm in adding it to the class template IMO. I guess you'd have to call it "cost per ship" or something just to make clear it's the cost of individual ships in the class and not of the class as a whole.Gatoclass (talk) 08:26, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Once we fully hammer out the service/commission fields, I will also add cost and name fields to the template. TomTheHand (talk) 20:14, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

USS Tennessee (BB-43)

Hello

Can somebody merge USS Tennessee (BB-43), USS Tennessee (BB-43) 1945, USS Tennessee (BB-43) 1944, USS Tennessee (BB-43) 1941-1943 ? PMG (talk) 16:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, there's no need to have sub-articles for years. From a cursory inspection of the main articles and its daughters, it appears there really isn't much in the daughters that isn't already in the parent, with the exception of information relating to battles and so forth that isn't directly relevant to the Tennessee. I likely won't have any time this weekend, but I should have time next week to take a fine tooth comb over the subs to see if there actually is relevant info that could be merged. Given that the main article is only 33kb, and it contains 90% or greater of the information in the sub articles, there's really no reason to branch them in the first place. Parsecboy (talk) 16:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Looking at Talk:USS Tennessee (BB-43), there apparently was some agreement to split the sections but I'd agree that the manner in which they were split really made no difference in shortening the length of any of the articles. --Brad (talk) 17:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Battle of Lake Erie

There's a bit of a tête-a-tête going on here about the differences between rating systems, sails plans, etc, and how we describe them. Do we use the terms that those involved at the time used? Or what scholars use? (my preference) Or try and work a rating system backwards and apply it to them (very dangerously close to OR in my book). The situation seems to be getting a bit out of hand with an ip determined to press one view, so some extra knowledge and opinions would be good to establish a workable consensus. ttfn, Benea (talk) 00:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Help with SS-361 to SS-364

The submarines SS-361 through SS-364 appear, due to their hull numbers, to be members of the Balao class, and many sources, including DANFS, list them as such, but according to the Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, "SS 361-364 were built to the Gato design because Manitowoc built to Electric Boat plans and Electric Boat's Balao class plans were not ready when these boats were begun." UBoat.net says the same thing. It seems to me that this is most likely correct, given that they've gone out of their way to state something unusual and explain why it's the case. However, LukeFF (talk · contribs) is changing their articles to state that they're Balaos. I've explained the situation, but he's said that DANFS is more reliable and must be correct and is revert warring with me. Could I get another set of eyes on the situation? TomTheHand (talk) 02:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

If he reverts you again, let me know and I'll block for edit warring and disruption. -MBK004 03:12, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks MBK. I don't really want to block him; I'm sure he's acting in good faith and he obviously has an interest in ship topics. He just apologized, so it seems to be over. TomTheHand (talk) 03:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, that does make sense. Maybe we should invite him to join using {{invite ships}}? -MBK004 03:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
But then I worry about him seeing this embarassing conversation ;-) TomTheHand (talk) 03:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
It will archive soon enough, and in my experience new editors don't usually read every thing on these talk pages immediately. -MBK004 03:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for USS Constitution now open

The peer review for USS Constitution is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 04:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well there goes the rest of my Saturday, but I can't do less for the "family boat". --J Clear (talk) 18:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

There are several areas that could still be expanded on, but I've stalled on this article somewhat badly. Eventually I will pick up on it again. --Brad (talk) 18:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

NPOV help

Guys, I've just blocked Middim13 (talk · contribs) for a month for repeated OR and NPOV violations. Some of you may be familiar with him; apparently his grandfather(?) worked for Electric Boat in its early days. Middim is dedicated to the noble task of securing his grandfather's place in history by making sure the world knows how invaluable his contributions are, and how much more he would be recognized if not for Freemason-hating Jewish financiers. If anyone has some time, could you look over his contributions, as well as those of his IPs (208.29.67.36 (talk · contribs) and 208.39.172.36 (talk · contribs)), and give his favorite articles a nice cleanup and POV cleansing? TomTheHand (talk) 02:00, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed him as well, and was about to block as well. I'll lend a hand. -MBK004 02:22, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
I'd like a second opinion on some of the articles he has either created or worked on, before I do anything.
  • Charles A. Morris - he created this one and it is just barely notable (can this be saved and expanded?)
  • Crescent Shipyard - long history of IP and registered editing dating back to April 2007 (how much is NPOV and salvageable?)
  • Frank Taylor Cable - again a long history of editing (how much is NPOV and salvageable?)
  • Arthur Leopold Busch - again how much is NPOV and salvageable?
  • USS Holland (SS-1) - the entire first page of the history is just him and us trying to clean-up
Anyone? -MBK004 02:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Wow. These articles are in serious need of improvement. Clarity, coherence, referencing an removal of personal attacks for a start. I've made a start on Frank Taylor Cable and removed some original research from General Dynamics Electric Boat but there's plenty more to do. Euryalus (talk) 02:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
They're all notable enough as topics but the articles need rewriting from scratch. Most of the sources are unverifiable and most of the content is commentary and/or original research. Euryalus (talk) 02:44, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
That's what I thought. I've got quite a lot on my plate for the next week or so school wise along with the long-term projects I already have and can't dive into clean-up. If anything requiring administrative action regarding this needs to be done, let me or Tom know. -MBK004 03:20, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
No worries. I'll redo them all over the next few days unless someone beats me to it. I even found some free images for the Cable article, so there's potential for some reasonable pages with enough work. Euryalus (talk) 03:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) He's also worked on these:

Thanks for the attention! I'll block the IPs if they edit, but I don't think I'll protect right now. TomTheHand (talk) 03:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Good call on not protecting, since we know it is the same person, and know most if not all of the IPs he has access to. Unfortunately, somehow I can foresee this going to ArbCom down the road. I hope I'm not correct. -MBK004 04:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Middim made some edits from 208.29.67.36 (talk · contribs) and 208.29.67.33 (talk · contribs) a little while ago. I blocked them. TomTheHand (talk) 03:12, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Which class do these subs belong to?!?

In my above post, I discuss the issue of SS-361 to SS-364, and what class they belong to: the Gato class, which started with SS-212, or the Balao class, which started with SS-285. From the hull number, they would appear to be Balaos, and that's what DANFS says they are, but I have a reliable source (Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy) which says that they were Gatos and gives a reason why.

Well, now I've got the same problem in reverse. SS-292 through SS-294 appear to be Balaos from their hull number, but they were laid down before Balao herself. By the dates it seems like they must be Gatos. That's what DANFS says, but the table in the Register lists them as Balaos.

The reason for all this confusion is that the USN fleet boats were built by many different yards, and each yard was allocated a block of hull numbers, so they weren't built strictly chronologically. For example, Electric Boat got the contract for SS-212 to SS-227, while Portsmouth Navy Yard built SS-228 to SS-235; as a result, SS-212 was laid down at about the same time as SS-228.

To confuse things further, when a new design would come out, sometimes some boats that hadn't started construction yet would get reordered to the new design, but apparently in at least one case the new plans didn't get to the yard in time and they had to lay down some late boats to an early design.

So what I want to say is "Well, the Register says SS-361 through SS-364 were Gatos and gives a plausible explanation. Because of the explanation (it's not just data in a table), they're probably right, even though they contradict DANFS. DANFS just assumed they were Balaos by their hull numbers. However, the Register probably just assumed SS-292 through SS-294 were Balaos by their hull numbers, but that's probably impossible by their dates and so the Register's wrong in this case and DANFS is right: those three are Gatos."

Is that... ok? Or is it original research? How do I handle this? TomTheHand (talk) 22:16, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Globalsecurity.org says
"The first boat, Devilfish (SS-292) was laid down in March 1942; ... Balao (SS-285) was the first to commission in February 1943. ..."
But its list of ships includes 361–364, so who knows.
Navsource makes 361–4 Gatos and 292–4 Balaos.
I don't know what NVR is using a definition of "class"; they include SS-220, 363, 302, 285, 342, 328, 340, 343, 346, 370, 385, 381, 403, 416, 420, 425, 484, 563. Some subclassification, or reclassification with GUPPY upugrades?
—WWoods (talk) 01:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who has faced this sort of problem :)
In circumstances like this, I think you can only go with your best guess. Then just put your reasoning in the class article itself, so that readers know the classification isn't certain. You can always update it later if you get more information. Gatoclass (talk) 01:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the input, guys! I'm looking at Friedman right now, and it says the following, in reference to the Balao design, which was essentially a thicker-skinned Gato: "The change to thicker skin could be made relatively easily in Navy Yards; by mid-December 1941, Portsmouth had redesigned the FY 42 boat. Its design also applied to boats built at Mare Island and to those planned for Cramp."
Though it seems odd to me that Cramp (which built 292-294) would start on the Balao class several months before Portsmouth (the yard that actually designed them), I've just noticed that 292-294 were Cramp's first fleet boats. It seems unlikely to me that they'd produce just three late Gatos, then switch to Balaos, especially if the Balao plans were finished in December 1941. It seems like Portsmouth drew up the design, but needed to finish up some Gatos, so Cramp was the first yard to lay down boats to the new design. Last night I thought DANFS must be right on this matter, but now I'm thinking they're wrong again. 292-294 are Balaos. TomTheHand (talk) 14:31, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

List of Admins in the Project

Is this something we would want for ease of reference on the project main-page? For example, take a look at WikiProject Scouting. -MBK004 20:47, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. --Kralizec! (talk) 13:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
That's all I needed to hear. I'll implement the section in a couple of hours. I may miss someone though, so feel free to double-check. -MBK004 17:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I've finished compiling the list. There were more admins than I thought (20). This was compiled from the active participants portion of our list of participants. I did not check the inactive ones, nor the last time the active participants list was checked for inactive members. I also took the opportunity to be bold and modify the layout a little bit. -MBK004 21:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Admin help request

Could someone please move USS Neville (AP-16) to USS Neville (APA-9) for me? I can't do it because the APA-9 page already exists as a redirect with a history. Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 03:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. You might want to fix up the redirects from USS Neville --Nick Dowling (talk) 03:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I'll do that, no problem. Thanks :) Gatoclass (talk) 07:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Shipboard Standard missiles

I'm not sure if this is a ships item, but I get involved in shipboard radar and missile articles and WP:Ships is always very helpful with this sort of thing. I'm trying to split Standard Missile into several articles: RIM-66 Standard missile medium range, RIM-67 Standard missile extended range, AGM-78 Standard ARM and RIM-161 Standard missile 3 but I'm having some trouble. I've created the disambiguation page, Standard missile and split most of the material, but there is still some information left to split and I don't know where to put it. The RIM-156 SM-2 Bk IV info seems to be a follow on for the RIM-66 and used only on Aegis platforms. However, it replaces the RIM-67 ER since and uses a booster like the RIM-67. The problem with putting it in the RIM-67 article is the RIM-67 was not used on Aegis platforms and the -156 was used only on Aegis VLS ships. I also don't know what to do with the ERAM SM-6 info. It's sketchy and developmental and I'm not sure if either missile is worth its own article. There is also some question on naming convention as well as traceability of contributions since the information could not be moved directly the edit history will be broken. --Dual Freq (talk) 19:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

:Another problem is RIM-67 is linked in many Aegis VLS ship articles, but RIM-67 is too big for VLS and they would use a mix of RIM-66 III/A/B, RIM-156 (blk IV) for AAW and SM-3 for those BMD capable. I'm planning to redirect those to RIM-66 since that is what is primarily used on Aegis VLS ships. --Dual Freq (talk) 19:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC) Fixed Aegis RIM-67 links. I still need some opinions on Standard Missile vs Standard missile and where to put RIM-156 info as noted above. Thanks. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:44, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Brain...hurts! (Buries self in age of sail armaments, but is swept away by references to 32-pdr carronades, 18pdr guns, 9pdr long guns, chase guns, pivot guns, swivel guns arrrrrrrghhhhhh!) Propose new renaming convention - all military ordnance to be renamed 'things that go bang and hurt people'. Pip pip! Benea (talk) 21:51, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for the alphabet soup, there is a discussion on Talk:RIM-161 Standard missile 3 about the naming convention as well. Maybe the idea of splitting the articles was wrong, but I think it improves wikipedia's coverage of the missiles over the previous single article and dozens of articles incorrectly stating -67 missiles were on VLS ships. The former article was a confusing mess of specs sheets copied from Global Security or fact file. Now they are split into medium range and extended range. It affects a number of ship articles, so I thought it would be worth bring up here. -Dual Freq (talk) 22:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've placed a note on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Weaponry task force#Standard missiles as well. Maybe Talk:Standard Missile is the best place for the discussion, but there is a related naming issue on Talk:RIM-161 Standard missile 3 that has been caused by the split. --Dual Freq (talk) 00:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

SS Gothenburg

An editor has proposed a deletion of a section of this article, but I can't find any formal notification under AfD that it has been done. So far the only discussion is on the talk page of the article. Are the correct proceedures being followed here? Mjroots (talk) 10:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

IFAIK the deletion of a section of an article would not come up at AfD, only the deletion of the whole article itself, which doesn't seem to be the case here. As to whether the section should be kept, that comes as the result of discussion and eventual consensus, there isn't a particularly formal review procedure for that. Benea (talk) 10:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Any experienced editors that can spare a minute, please take a look at this article and comment on the inclusion of the passenger list section, as there's not clear consensus yet about the way forward. Once this issue is resolved, the article should be of GA quality. Thanks. Socrates2008 (Talk) 09:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Class precedence

How do other people handle ship class precedence (ie, which class comes before/after another class of the same type)? I've been going on the date that the first ship in each class was commissioned, but I'm not sure if that's how others do it. Gatoclass (talk) 06:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That's how I've been doing it as well. Oftentimes, naval ships are incremental designs, and in my experience, sources will usually somewhere reference the previous class, and state how the newer was an improvement, which makes it easy to determine order. Another thing to consider (but I don't know how universal this is), for example, with the German Kaiserliche Marine, ships were ordered in yearly building programs (i.e., the battlecruiser Von der Tann was the BC ordered for fy1906, Moltke for fy1907, and so forth). Again, I don't know if other navies operate in a similar fashion, so that might not be of help to you. Parsecboy (talk) 13:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Documentation for {{navsource}}

I have (finally!) added documentation to {{navsource}}, a shortcut template for creating an external link to a ship’s page at NavSource, a site which bills itself as containing a "Photographic History Of The U.S. Navy". Though often containing the same public domain images available from the Naval Historical Center, ship’s pages there are often augmented with other non-free images. — Bellhalla (talk) 21:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

US Army, Air Force ships

What are appropriate infobox flags to use in articles about US Army and US Air Force ships?
—WWoods (talk) 23:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I've just been using {{USN flag}} on articles I've worked on, because I don't know if there was a different flag (as with the U.S. Coast Guard), but figure that all surely would have flown the U.S. flag. But that brings up another question: what about a U.S. Navy ship crewed by the Coast Guard? In ship articles I've worked on where that's the case (USS General R. L. Howze (AP-134) and USS General W. M. Black (AP-135) for example), I've noted it in the article, but should it be noted in the infobox, too? And is {{USN flag}} still the appropriate for those? — Bellhalla (talk) 16:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
For Military Sealift Command ships I've been using the |owner=US Navy and |operator=MSC lines within the infobox. It seems to work well. --Brad (talk) 22:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Sealift Command and current flag

Since the subject of flags has come up I thought I would throw in here for these ships. Somewhere I saw a mention that MSC operated ships are still using the Naval Jack? Also, if currently commissioned US Navy ships are using the Don't Tread On Me flag then why isn't {{USN flag}} or {{USN flag|2008}} giving the appropriate flag? Or am I misunderstanding something about the DTOM flag usage? --Brad (talk) 22:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

{{USN flag}} displays the ensign instead of the jack because it's more representative of what the ship is flying most of the time. Doing it in a template lets us change to the jack if consensus changes, but right now it's considered more appropriate to display the ensign. TomTheHand (talk) 14:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Malformed infobox

I don't know how or have the time to fix this, but I'm sure someone can... HMS Prince of Wales (53) -MBK004 00:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

done. Benea (talk) 00:29, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Flamingo/Guide/Viking merger proposal

I've made a merge proposal to combine USS Flamingo (AM-32), USC&GS Guide, and USS Viking (ARS-1), which are three articles on the same ship. Nothing in any of them seems to justify separate articles, and I've proposed moving them all to the Flamingo article, because it was the original name. Please feel free to discuss. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:24, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a good call to me. You might get one decent article out of that lot instead of three messy ones :)
Not sure about adopting the original name though. IMO ships should be listed by the name under which they are best known, the ship was only Flamingo for 3 years, was USC&GS Guide for about 19, and Viking for about eleven. So I'd say one of the latter two names would be more appropriate, I guess it would depend on whether you think her 19 years of peacetime service was more notable than her eleven of WWII and postwar service. I think I'd probably go with the latter though because it's also the last name she was known by. Gatoclass (talk) 14:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I support merging the articles. I also agree with Gatoclass in that my preference would be to use the name the ship was last known under as the article name (ie: Viking), with redirects from the other names. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Agreed with Gatoclass and Barek on both points. Merge the first two into Viking and leave redirects from Flamingo and Guide. Parsecboy (talk) 19:08, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
checkY Done. Articles have been combined at USS Viking (ARS-1) and redirects created at the other two. I'll work on the article some more to get it in a little better shape. — Bellhalla (talk) 03:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, I think I can see why you were thinking of putting it under Flamingo now - because you had more text for that one! That's always a consideration too. In fact I think you probably had enough text for two separate articles - one on Flamingo/Guide and another on Viking. I assumed the only text you had was what was already in the articles :)
It can be hard sometimes working out the best course of action for these ship articles. Gatoclass (talk) 04:57, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Deletion

I forgot that some time ago I created Template:Battleship, and now its been nominated for speedy deletion. I have no plans to contest the deletion, but if anyone here wants to keep this template then feel free to do so. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Automated archiving

Is this something worth considering for this page now? In the last couple of months we have become much chattier here and the size of this page seems now to be permanently immense... User:Wwoods has been doing a fantastic job of maintaining the archives - I just thought I'd suggest it and see what people think. Martocticvs (talk) 17:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be worth an experiment. Maybe a 30 day archive would cut down on page size. I agree though, that this talk page is getting difficult to wade through lately. --Brad (talk) 21:31, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Looking around a bit more at archiving guidelines, I'd say that this page is archived as much as it can be for the moment. If you use 30 days as a time period then any section without comments for more than 30 days can be archived. The assessment section at the top may have been started in September but it has been getting new comments up to the present, so it remains on this page. In another week or so, the barnstar section will be dropping off; etc. The only solution for now would be to reduce the time period; maybe 21 days? --Brad (talk) 20:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I have archived a lot of talk today but we're still long in the tooth here. All topics started in November are archived unless they've had comments past December 2nd or 3rd. I will look at starting a December archive and possible bot archiving later on. --Brad (talk) 21:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that archive pages are arranged by topic count rather than actual hard dates. Seeing as conversations from 2004 - 2006 are probably not worth much more than a historical perspective, I could reduce the number of archive pages by extending the topic count for those years. I may just grow bold and fix them all up to a dated archive but I've been waiting for a few more comments here. --Brad (talk) 21:19, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I have been wanting to create some topical archives (in addition to the existing archive format, of course). Let me know if you're feeling that bold and crazy. Maralia (talk) 21:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
User:HBC Archive Indexerbot might help with your idea. --Brad (talk) 22:36, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Topical? Sounds interesting and I suppose that it could serve as more of a FAQ than anything else. Plans? Currently I'm trying to decide topic count vs date. Maybe 2004 - 2006 could be packed into dated pages and then 2007 by topic count until a year has passed; then packed away by date. I just found it bulky that looking for say, April 2007 talk and it's on two pages etc. --Brad (talk) 01:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
  • 2004 - 2005 is done --Brad (talk) 21:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
  • 2006 is now on two pages by date; in the meantime while I shuffle things around I'm using a dash - to keep the blank pages in order. --Brad (talk) 02:43, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Bleh.. I've worked up 2007 but I'm not totally pleased with the result. You either end up with a huge page size or too many archive pages. But at least from this point I can look into bot archiving and hopefully we can all forget about it afterwards. --Brad (talk) 08:55, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
The way you've done it looks fine to me. There was a lot of chatter last year so 3-4 pages for it is not unreasonable really. Great work too! Martocticvs (talk) 18:41, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
  • And double Bleh..Our Archive pages aren't correctly named. Instead of /Archive01 we should be using /Archive 1 /Archive 2 /Archive 10 /Archive 100 and etc. That's easy enough to fix though by using the move function. And then the left over pages I will have speedy deleted. Then it should be ready for a bot! --Brad (talk) 23:04, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
All sounds good to me - great work getting it all sorted out as well! Martocticvs (talk) 22:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

um just skimming over the page but if we can cross refrence through date and topic the person searching should be able to find stuff a lot easier when our archive becomes really big. oh im back for now anyway--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 19:50, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Some consensus needed

Looking at: User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo there are several options to use for this. I think our best choice would be the archive by size, 250k. But then we're left with the question of how long comments should stay on this page. We have to think like a bot and determine how many days they can remain. For one month you get 28 days (4 weeks) or 35 days (5 weeks). If no one has any preference then I will pick something; probably 28 days. --Brad (talk) 20:03, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

28 days sounds like a good number to start with - I guess we can always revise it later if we find it's too long. But I'd definitely say a month is long enough to wait before archiving. Martocticvs (talk) 21:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I've set the code like this:

{{User:MiszaBot/config |algo = old(28d) |archive = Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 7 |minthreadsleft = 5 }}

Which means that Archive 7 will indefinitely fill up until someone changes the code to Archive 8. Minthreadsleft = is so that this page will never have less than 5 topics on it no matter how old they are to avoid the 'abandoned' look. I wanted to get fancier but this is a good start and experiment setting. --Brad (talk) 16:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Auto-archiving after 28 days sounds good to me ... much less than that and I end up digging in the archive all day when looking for stuff. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:18, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
What about manually archiving the older monthly subsections of the Assessment section? It seems like the section itself and the table at the top should remain, but September through December could probably go.
—WWoods (talk) 18:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
How about they archive to: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Assessment ? It's an assessment related topic and they won't get lost in the main archive. We can put links at both places pointing out the origins. --Brad (talk) 17:56, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
And I should point out that I'm bracing myself for the damage that might result once the bot hits this page in a few hours. I left questions with the Bot owner but didn't get any answer. So I guess it will be trial and error. --Brad (talk) 23:37, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
So far so good. Last night took out 5 topics without pain. --Brad (talk) 17:56, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Everyone happy so far? Should we experiment with a 21 day time period? At least with 21 days the topics that were resolved quickly will be gone faster leaving the topics getting steady comments remaining. --Brad (talk) 01:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I think 21 days would probably be long enough. IMO not many threads get revived after 3 three weeks. Gatoclass (talk) 02:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
So done; changed to 21 days. We'll see how that goes. --Brad (talk) 18:41, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Apparently, by including a maxarchivesize, you can set this to increment the archive number automatically.
—WWoods (talk) 08:39, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes but we want a dated archive by size and those instructions were for a numbered archive by size. Since we also use our own archive template, there are additional setup instructions which I don't understand yet. Additional concerns were over the archive pages that were created but are now unused since I condensed the archives. These were all issues I asked of the bot owner but received no response. Maybe I wasn't specific enough or my questions were too stupid.. I don't know. At least for now I've changed the page number and it will be at least a month or more before that one fills up. In the meantime I will try and find the answers I need. --Brad (talk) 05:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

1.1" gun

I have a problem with the name of this article. The name is 1.1 inch (28 mm)/75 gun. Not only is this a heck of a string to try and remember to type in, but it's also inconsistent with names for similar articles, like the 5"/38 caliber gun and the 3"/50 caliber gun.

I'm not actually that crazy about the names of the last two pages either but I think there should at least be a consistent naming pattern. So I'm proposing the 1.1" page be moved to 1.1"/75 caliber gun. Any comments? Gatoclass (talk) 15:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally I prefer not to use the " for inches and the MoS goes against its use in article text. Does the caliber refer to the 1.1 inch or the /75 in this case? Either way I would drop it though I see it is used for the other US gun articles. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the current name is really artificial, and I think the article should be given the name officially used by the USN for the gun. I think that's along the lines of 1.1"/75. I agree with Graeme that " should be avoided in article text, but assuming it's actually used in the official designation (which I think it is), I think it should appear in the title and introduction sentence. I'm not actually sure if the word "caliber" is used in the official designation; I want to say 1.1"/75 gun would be the best title and similar renames might be appropriate for the 5"/38 and 3"/50. I want to emphasize that I don't have a source for this, and I think it needs to get looked up. TomTheHand (talk) 18:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I think if you have an abbreviation for one unit of measure, you ought to have an abbrev. for the other.
So it should be
5"/38 cal gun
3"/50 cal gun
1.1"/75 cal gun
But as Tom says, the best thing to do is try to look it up to see what the usual nomenclature for these weapons is. Gatoclass (talk) 18:23, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Taking the metric conversion out of the title would be good, at least.
—WWoods (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
In view of the very limited success of the weapon in question, I suggest we consider the naming convention of the only service to adopt it -- the United States Navy. Diameters greater than 75 mm used the #"/## convention suggested previously; but the smaller diameters were referred to as machine-guns and typically used only the diameter. Guns adopted from countries using the metric system were identified as 20 mm (Oerlikon) and 40 mm (Bofors) and the old 1 pdr was identified as 37 mm. United States designs were identified as the .30-caliber, .50-caliber, and 1.1-inch. The Navy identified the 40 mm and 1.1-inch as "heavy machine-guns" while the .30-caliber, .50-caliber, and 20 mm were "light machine-guns." Would 1.1-inch or 1.1-inch machine-gun or 1.1-inch heavy machine-gun cause ambiguity? (The hyphens are optional. Modern publications use them through editorial convention; but that convention is less comprehensive in publications of the era of the 1.1-inch.)
* Friedman, Norman (1983). U.S. Aircraft Carriers. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-739-9.
* Brown, David (1977). Aircraft Carriers. Arco Publishing Company. ISBN 0-668-04164-1.
* Johnson, Melvin M., Jr. (1944). Rifles and Machine Guns. William Morrow and Company.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
* Wilson, R.K. (1943). Textbook of Automatic Pistols. Small Arms Technical Publishing Company.
Thewellman (talk) 08:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Help request

Hello. I've just categorized the article Sampo (icebreaker) and tried to clean it up. I started adding the infobox until I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I'd be grateful if somebody from the project can spend 10 minutes working on the article. Thanks, Pichpich (talk) 04:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for letting us know. Maralia (talk) 04:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Always good to let competent people do the job right. Pichpich (talk) 15:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

A little admin help is required

User:Barek and I had uncovered a problem that affects at least a few dozen articles within our scope: articles named, for example, like M/S Estonia. The backslash subordinates the page to M. We're well into the process of moving the affected pages; what I need is an admin to move the aforementioned M/S Estonia to MS Estonia, because there's already a redirect there, and I can't do it myself. As a side note, anyone else who's interested in helping to fix the rest of them, you can find some here, here, and here. Thanks for your help. Parsecboy (talk) 17:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I've done M/S Estonia. I'm rather busy this afternoon, so I won't be able to help work through the others, but I'll check in on this thread periodically to see if there are more that need admin help. TomTheHand (talk) 17:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, I don't anticipate there being many more, but if I do encounter more, I'll post them here. Parsecboy (talk) 17:59, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Hey Tom, I noticed that MS Estonia was still showing up in the category page as M/S. It's because the talk page wasn't moved along with the main space page. Can you move that one as well, to keep the discussion history paired with the article? There is a line on Talk:MS Estonia, so I don't know how you want to incorporate that. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 20:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Oooops. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:23, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Oops indeed! Kralizec and I tried to move the talk page at the same time and nearly destroyed the universe. TomTheHand (talk) 20:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
It appears that my move of your move ... moved the content of the talk page into the bit bucket. Sorry about that! I am going to go back to pretending to work now ... --Kralizec! (talk) 20:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm glad the destruction of all existence was averted. I do have another one for you: M/S Peter Wessel. Thanks again. Parsecboy (talk) 20:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I've got dibs on this one! TomTheHand (talk) 20:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Wwoods snatched it out from under me! He broke the eternal law of dibs! TomTheHand (talk) 20:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
:-) —WWoods (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
This is going pretty well; all of the M/S, M/V B-class articles have been corrected now. On to the Start classes! Parsecboy (talk) 20:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
It appears we're all done. Good job everyone! Parsecboy (talk) 22:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

To avoid this in the future, it might be a good idea to also go through the links to not-yet-existing articles on the pages of various shipping companies and remove the backslashes from pipe links. This probably affects shipping company/ship articles related to the Nordic Countries in particular, as the convention here is to always write the prefic with a blackslash. And sorry for not helping out with this, but I've been busy. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 20:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a pretty good idea. I've fixed a couple as I've been fixing redirects, but have been largely ignoring them thus far. Parsecboy (talk) 20:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Maybe adding notes at the top of the pages that, for technical reasons, the name of the article doesn't match the name of the subject of the article?
—WWoods (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how I feel about that; it might be fine for most, but I think that for articles that already have other notes at the top (i.e., for the ship of the same name, etc.), it might get a little messy. Parsecboy (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
You know, the more I think about it, I think that might be the best option. Maybe something along the lines of For technical reasons, the forward slash has been omitted from the article name or something similar. Better wording? Thoughts? Parsecboy (talk) 00:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I've modified Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) to clarify that slashes and other punctuation aren't used in ship prefixes on article names. Maralia (talk) 00:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Just to be clear, are we talking about avoiding slashes or punctuation in article names only, or should we avoid using slashes and punctuation in ship prefixes in general? TomTheHand (talk) 14:21, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I would only consider it addressed in terms of article names; are other people concerned about this in general? Maralia (talk) 15:24, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I came across a whole spate of "Research Vessel" articles that were styled "R/V Shipname" and have moved all to "RV Shipname"
Also, I modified {{MS}} and {{MV}} to allow optional formatting of the piped link to include the slash in the prefix; the link generated will have the correct non-slashed prefix in the article name. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:02, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Update of {{SS}}

I've updated {{SS}} so that it accepts a disambiguation/year/hull number parameter, and also allows it to use the same optional control parameters that the other shortcut templates — {{HMS}}, {{HMAS}}, {{HMCS}}, {{USS}}, {{USNS}}, {{USCGC}} — use. (I also added documentation to match.) — Bellhalla (talk) 20:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Geez, I didn't even know those options existed! And I was just thinking about asking someone if it would be possible to do this, LOL.
This is going to save me a lot of typing time, thanks for pointing that out B. Gatoclass (talk) 13:47, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
You aren't the only ones who didn't know about the existance of these - using them will indeed save a lot of time. But, since we're on the subject, a similar template for MS would also be extremely useful. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 13:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
OK. There's now an {{MS}} shortcut template and, for good measure, an {{MV}} one as well. Both use the same parameters as all of the above, and documentation is pending for both. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:54, 20 February 2008 (UTC) (Documentation complete) — Bellhalla (talk) 15:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Can you add the cat Category:WikiProject Ships templates and tag them on the talk pages as well? Maralia (talk) 15:27, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I added the cat to the doc pages for both and tagged both on the talk page. Does the category need to be added elsewhere for it to show up? — Bellhalla (talk) 15:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Nope, looks good now. I'm updating our tools & templates page to include the new templates. Maralia (talk) 16:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Excellent. Thank you. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 15:34, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
By the way, per the previous discussion about slashes in prefixes in article titles, I've modified {{MS}} and {{MV}} to allow optional specification of a slash in the piped link; the real link generated will go to the proper, non-slashed-prefix article. (To specify the optional slash, add a value of 8 to the optional control value. See the documentation for each template for the specifics.) — Bellhalla (talk) 16:07, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Shiver me timbers, I've created a monster! I guess it must be somewhat useful.  ;-) Seriously though, I was going to try to make meta templates for both the template and doc page, because this going to be a bear if we need to make a basic change. To create a new one you'd just insert the actual prefix name and then feed a list of appropriate examples to the doc template. Maybe if it rains this weekend. I'll have to test it out with NSS (No Such Ship). Hmm, but the "/" feature may be better off as a separate instance. Still, maintaining two is better than dozens. --J Clear (talk) 02:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Phoenix (ships with this name)

I came across the Phoenix (ships with this name) article today. Besides the mishmash of naming styles going on with the various ships listed, what would be a better name for this dab/index page? Phoenix (ship) (disambiguation) or Phoenix (ship disambiguation) seem to be silly to me. Any ideas? — Bellhalla (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The merge proposal currently given isn't too bad of an idea but with that many ships named Phoenix, Phoenix (ship disambiguation) would fit and have at least some semblance of a naming convention for disambig pages. --Brad (talk) 02:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
What about moving Phoenix (ship) to Phoenix (whaler) or Phoenix (1821), and then moving the index page to Phoenix_(ship)?
—WWoods (talk) 16:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I like your idea of moving Phoenix (ship) and putting the dab page at that name, WWoods. But since several ships listed were whalers, how about Phoenix (Nantucket whaler), Phoenix (London whaler), Phoenix (New London whaler), etc. for those? — 16:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bellhalla (talk • contribs)
Isn't "Phoenix (date)" the preferred schema, or is that just for pre pennant number warships? What ever we do, update Phoenix. --J Clear (talk) 00:54, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Oil tanker GA run?

I've been banging hard on Oil tanker and am considering trying to get it up to GA status. Any assistance with critiques, copyediting and so forth would be appreciated. My current to-do list is on the talk page. Cheers. HausTalk 02:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

First of all, it's got a deprecated template. You'll want to convert it to one from Template:Infobox Ship Begin/doc. From a quick scan, everything seems to be sourced pretty well. I removed the forced image sizes to be compliant with the images MoS, along with some other minor tweaks. Parsecboy (talk) 02:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

USS Enterprise

On the issue of cleaning up disambiguation pages for ships, USS Enterprise is out of control and needs to be redone. I've done a first version in my user space: User:Brad101/USS Enterprise but seeing as how popular of a ship this is, I think we should gain a bit of consensus before I make the changes. Feel free to edit or comment in the user space. --Brad (talk) 15:40, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I like the look of it. The only quibble would be the periods at the ends of each entry. Since entries on dab pages are generally phrases rather than sentences, the periods are superfluous. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree that it looks pretty good. No complaints here for substituting it for the current version. Good work. Parsecboy (talk) 16:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, version 2 no longer carries the periods and I restored the link to HMS Enterprise. I also discovered that the Massachusetts Maritime Academy's Enterprise actually has a name TS Enterprise (T-AK-5059) according to the Maritime Commission. Its the former USNS Cape Bon. --Brad (talk) 19:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me! --Kralizec! (talk) 20:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I have a version 3 ready to go: User:Brad101/USS Enterprise with the addition of the Flying Enterprise but now it seems there are arguments about a particular Star Trek ship going on. I'll wait til the smoke clears before changing. --Brad (talk) 21:46, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Page is up now. --Brad (talk) 02:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't leave well enough alone ;-) Started out with a subtle tweak to generate the TOC, using H4 to keep the big lines out. But then I had to put in tweak here and a tweak there. --J Clear (talk) 02:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Right; and right after your changes, someone else made more changes! Soon the page will be right back where it was. The more you make an index page look like an article, the more people want to cram things into it. I'm sure that pondering the expanse of the galaxy is somehow related to a ship named Enterprise. --Brad (talk) 11:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Prefixes and Hull Numbers

  • Primary post is at Milhist, click here to answer.

I noticed a problem and I am not sure how exactly to solve it. When noting other ships in the Iowa class articles some ships are given a mention including there prefixes but not hull numbers, some omit the prefixes but include the hill number, and some omit both and simply report the name of the ship. Do we have a uniform way for presenting this kind of information? TomStar81 (Talk) 18:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) - basically don't put the hull number in (unless immediately relevant, which is rare in an article of the sort you're talking about). Use the prefix on the first mention if it may not be clear what the nationality is, but it then isn't usually needed on subsequent mentions to the same ship. Benea (talk) 19:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Answer copied from Milhist for completeness and archive-icity ;) — Bellhalla (talk) 14:19, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I responded over there and actually disagreed with what you said; I find hull numbers to be pretty useful. I think it merits further discussion and possibly changing the naming conventions. TomTheHand (talk) 14:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Tom's thoughts - Actually, I often find it helpful to include the hull number so that you know what kind of ship it is without having to be familiar with its name. For example, you could refer to Gilligan and I'll have no idea what it is, but Gilligan (DE-508) tells me that it's a destroyer escort without having to click on its article. TomTheHand (talk) 14:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I see what you mean and it's a good point. But I find that sort of formatting terrible in an article. It breaks it up no end to have mention of, for example

"HMS Acheron (H45), HMS Acasta (H09), HMS Ardent (H41), HMS Highlander (H44) and HMS Diana (H49) escorted HMS Glorious (77) and HMS Ark Royal (91)..."

Compare that with

"HMS Acheron, HMS Acasta, HMS Ardent, HMS Highlander and HMS Diana escorted HMS Glorious and HMS Ark Royal..."

Which is another interesting point. The US Navy is unusual in listing its ships so logically with pennant numbers. Most other navies, such as the Royal Navy exampled above didn't for most of their history and in fact continue to not do so. For example, the above is mostly a list of Second World War destroyers, with a couple of aircraft carriers. But other contemporary destroyers might have pennants like HMS Zealous (R39), or HMS Mashona (F59).
Which is why we have the convention of using a date, like USS Constellation (1854). --J Clear (talk) 01:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't think I understand. Are you proposing disambiguating these ships by year of launch rather than pennants? Benea (talk) 09:14, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
In summary I don't disagree that it can be helpful if you have the specialist knowledge already to know what a pennant number is and means, and what its code could tell you, but then again how many of your average readers would know that USS Nimitz (CVN-68) meant a 'nuclear-powered multimission aircraft carrier'? And that's only with one Navy, the problems multiply when other navies which don't take such a consistent approach to pennant numbers are included. I think its better to leave the convention as it stands - Do not give the hull number or other disambiguation information unless it is immediately relevant. Someone who needs to know can follow the link - as this improves readability and text flow and standardises our conventions across navies. The benefit of knowing that Gilligan was an escort destroyer can be easily substituted in a phrase like "the escort destroyer Gilligan...", or the "aircraft carriers Ark Royal and Glorious..." Benea (talk) 16:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that's a good point. I think it depends partly on context. If there's only one or two ships in a phrase, sentence or paragraph it doesn't hurt to use their ID's the first time they are mentioned, if you have a lot of ships, it can become disruptive and you are probably better off using "the escort destroyers A,B,C" etc. Gatoclass (talk) 16:47, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Just an observation but when I hover my cursor over a wiki link, the tool tip shows me the full link regardless of what is appearing in the wiki link. But ship with hull number helps nonetheless. --Brad (talk) 21:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
My USD0.02: Firstly, we're only talking about the information displayed right? Nobody wants to link to a ship list page, I assume. Just making sure. As to displaying the hull/pennant number, I'd go by relevancy to the ship in the article. The article is not about the other ships. While I respect (and share) Tom's curiosity, I think following the link is the wikiway to satisfy it. If the other ship's class is that important to the ship in the article what class the other ship was it ought to be spelled out as in "On such and such date, Kennedy collided with the aluminum hulled cruiser Belknap." Also I think "cruiser" is more likely to be meaningful to a non project member reader than "CG". However if there a legitimate chance of ambiguity such as between contemporary name reuse like: USS Hornet (CV-8) and USS Hornet (CV-12), then display it. As an aside, can anyone confirm if Belknap's is the memorial plaque missing from the list in Wisconsin Square? --J Clear (talk) 01:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Lists of shipwrecks by years

I've added more shipwrecks to the Blackpool page. Should every year have that there is a shipwreck known have a list for that year? If so, then it would seem that there are lots of lists that need to be created! Mjroots (talk) 20:51, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

You probably want to ask that over in User:Esoltas/WikiProject Shipwrecks. In general creating lots of very short list articles is probably not a good thing. Consider using categories instead. As to the Blackpool article: if shipwrecks are that big a part of the culture there, then that should be mentioned in the lead paragraph(s). You probably don't want every shipwreck listed in that article, just the more famous ones. And maybe in this case a single list article for all the ships lost at Blackpool warranted, because as is that article looks pretty ugly. In any case there should not be a section head for every ship, especially if there is only one very short line following. Try using the '*' list instead of "===". Just my two sense, er cents. --J Clear (talk) 00:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I know what you're saying about short lists, but consider what may happen if all shipwrecks were added to the list for the year they were shipwrecked - some of those lists could well grow. The Blackpool shipwrecks will probably form an article of its own in due course, once more research and expansion is done. Mjroots (talk) 06:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
There is (usually) already a page for shipwrecks by year - see List of shipwrecks in 2000 for an example. So your Blackpool shipwrecks could be collected there as well. And I wouldn't worry about these being too short, the shipping industry loses a ship a week on average, which seems to keep our colleagues at WP Shipwrecks busy. There seems to be enough cause to have an article like List of Blackpool shipwrecks, where you can spin off the data and organise it there, replacing that long section in the Blackpool article with a tidy summary of shipwrecks, their history and impact on Blackpool, and a link off the the comprehensive list. Benea (talk) 09:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Benea, I really mean lists of shipwrecks going back to the 1880s and earlier. most years from the 1890s have a list already. I'd say that if all shipwrecks before 1880 were added to a list for their respective years there could be quite an expansion there. Will consider splitting the Blackpool shipwrecks subject to consensus being reached to do that. Mjroots (talk) 19:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm not going to stand in your way. If there are lists going back the 1890s it seems logical to extend it back to the 1880s, if you believe that its a worthwhile exercise. By all means expand away, this is a paperless encyclopaedia. Benea (talk) 19:45, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

SS Gothenburg - ambiguous early history

Have run out of sources to consult to try to establish the early history of this ship. The issue is that we are not 100% sure that the Gothenburg ship that we have a history for until about 1857 is the same ship that was bought in 1862 and sent to Australia. Futhermore, there was a name change at some point to and from Celt(I) in this period that complicates things. Have exhausted the online sources - so if anyone happens to have any reference material about this ship, the info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Socrates2008 (Talk) 10:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey all, I wanted to draw your attention to a situation on the pages for the Gato-, Balao-, and Tench-class fleet submarine pages. I think it's generally considered appropriate for an article for a museum ship to contain a link to the museum's web site, if available. However, yesterday an anonymous user added a full list of Balao-class museum ships to the Balao-class article. This was reverted by a bot on linkspam objections. Now, a new user is adding the list of links to the three fleet boat class articles, and has been reverted in the Balao-class article. What do you think about this? I kind of lean toward a well-formatted neutrally-written list of links to museum ships being a reasonable thing to have, but I would appreciate your opinions. TomTheHand (talk) 15:12, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the link is appropriate for the article on the specific boat, not on the class page, just have the class page have a table or something just listing the museum ships out of the class. -MBK004 18:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
A list of links to museum ships on the class page is fine by me. Gatoclass (talk) 06:29, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thought I would mention that I've been removing links from ship articles that point to either navalhistory.com or a subdirectory at multied.com. In almost all cases, the information found at the link consists of nothing but unedited danfs text along with spamvertising to buy things related to naval history. So imo, these links fail on two counts: One, they add nothing to further the information on the ship in question and they're advertising merchandise under some description of Support Naval History Online!. --Brad (talk) 23:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Infobox

USS Achelous (ARL-1) is apparently using a deprecated infobox, can someone switch out the old infobox with the new one? Thanks in advance. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Tom, look on the talk page of the article. We have a template there saying what you just said {{newinfobox}}. There is quite a backlog of articles without infoboxes and using depreciated ones, see: Category:Ship articles without infoboxes and Category:Ship articles needing infobox conversion. -MBK004 04:56, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 Done --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I was unaware of the backlog, I thought that this article may have simply slipped through the cracks (thats usually the case over at MILHIST anyway), hence the message here. Sorry, I'll be more careful about that in the future. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Don't mention it Tom. I'd also like to apologize, because my reply seems a little bit over-the-top, since you were unaware of the backlog. I may make an announcement in the MILHIST infobox conversion page about this. -MBK004 23:04, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Respectively: Don't worry about it and that sounds like a good idea. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Good deal, I'll make the announcement shortly. -MBK004 23:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Announced on WT:MILHIST and the specific MILHIST conversion talk page. -MBK004 23:23, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

To please us grammar nuts, could we please stop saying depreciated in place of Deprecated, mean different things people!! ;)) Woody (talk) 11:27, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey, Woody, for the benefit of all of us in the U.S., how much can we deduct from our taxes for a depreciated infobox? ;-) — Bellhalla (talk) 13:53, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Quite a bit, depending on how much creative accounting you feel like doing. I would say 1 of your fine American cents should do it. ;) Woody (talk) 15:07, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

NVR error question

Has anyone ever tried to fix an error in NVR? Their FAQ seems to indicate they only accept official requests. Specifically I was looking at the USS Chicago (SSN-721) article and NVR's (SSN-721) commission date says October 27, 1986, but images I've found (Image:Harold Washington at the commissioning of USS Chicago (SSN-721).jpg for example) and the ships history page differ. Normally I would discount the DoD image caption since they've proven unreliable in the past, but the ships page and the dozens of images convinced me that the correct date is 27 September 1986. Google news search for 1986 backs the Sept date as well. Has anyone ever asked them to correct a date and what was the result? Thanks. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:47, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

"Inquiry" may not mean the same thing as "correction". It sounds as though they welcome corrections, so why don't you send them your evidence? No harm trying. Gatoclass (talk) 03:39, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Update, well, no update I guess. I e-mailed shortly after the above post. No response from them and the NVR page still shows the incorrect date. Let me know if anyone else has actually convinced them to change something. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Update 2, I did receive a reply from the webmaster saying the request has been forwarded to the NVR custodian for review. It still hasn't been corrected, but maybe at some point it will be. --Dual Freq (talk) 04:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Ship articles without infoboxes

Category:Ship articles without infoboxes is another maintenance category that is currently bulging with articles. There are a lot of ship class articles and civilian ships without infoboxes. I've been doing a few of the USS per day but the total count keeps growing; currently 790. If we all did 1-2 per day the numbers would hopefully decline. --Brad (talk) 23:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I must admit that I've been tagging about 100 to 200 articles a day with either {{Ship infobox request}} or {{newinfobox}}. -MBK004 23:38, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Here is another category that will keep growing: Category:Ship articles needing infobox conversion. With the unassessed category fluctuating from empty to one or two and the unassessed importance under 300, these infobox categories are next up. -MBK004 00:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
No problem with you tagging; they need to be done. Some of the articles I've fixed have been in WP over two years without boxes. It's also a good time to freshen up the references etc. --Brad (talk) 01:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Both categories are now over 1000 each. --Brad (talk) 02:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

{{Liberty-ship-stub}}

I was looking at the photo included in {{Liberty-ship-stub}} and noticed that it copyrighted but anyone is free to use it "provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed" (quote from image page). It doesn't look to be attributed at all in the stub template. Should this be a concern, or am I being too picky about it? — Bellhalla (talk) 20:45, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the fact that you can click on it and see the source is considered adequate attribution; many other pictures on Wikipedia have similar licenses and don't include attribution at the spot they're used. TomTheHand (talk) 22:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions for naval ship lists

There do not seem to be adequate conventions for the way naval ship lists are named. For example, there is a convention that countries come last. Thus List of ships of Canada rather than List of Canadian ships. I would assume that this would extend to navies as well, thus List of ships of the Canadian Navy, rather than List of Canadian Navy ships. However, because this had not been explicitly set out, the actual naming of navy ship lists is an inconsistent mess.

An exceptionally bold editor has recently renamed many of the world's major navy ship lists in alignment with the second option, for example List of Canadian Navy ships. The issue extends well beyond this to many other navy ship lists, for example List of frigates of the Royal Navy verses List of Royal Navy frigates. --Geronimo20 (talk) 22:31, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I have transferred this discussion point to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships). --Geronimo20 (talk) 00:45, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

List of auxiliaries of the United States Navy

May I get some assistance with List of auxiliaries of the United States Navy? The top few lines in the history should explain what's going on. --Brad (talk) 02:05, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I've left a warning for civility on the IP's talk page, but this needs to be taken to the talk page quickly before 3RR comes into play. -MBK004 02:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Class list in infobox

On the Virginia class cruiser article I had interpreted the "Total ships completed=" field and other like it to mean a number was needed there and not a list of ships. It makes more sense to me that we would not want to list ships in the class in the infobox, especially since there is already a table with all the units listed. Ticonderoga class cruiser is an example of having too many ships listed in an infobox. It doesn't have a fancy table like the Virginia class article, but it has a template at the base of the article linking each ship. The "Total ships active=" and "Total ships retired=" fields should have numbers in them or maybe list one unique ship in the class. They should not be a list of 20+ ship names. I can imagine larger examples like Arleigh Burke class destroyers or Knox class frigates would have to use numbers because of the size. The docs for the template don't say what goes in that field, so I thought I'd ask here. An example of what I recommend is Spruance class destroyer where the units in the class are listed in a table and the infobox lists numbers. A user has taken it upon themselves to replace numbers with names in several class articles and I wanted to make sure we were on the same page before I reverted them to numbers. --Dual Freq (talk) 15:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree the names are inappropriate, it should be numbers. There's generally a template at the bottom of the page with all the ships in the class anyhow - or there should be. Infoboxes are long enough already without listing the individual ships there. Gatoclass (talk) 16:08, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed; I've always interpreted the fields in question to require just a number, not the names of individual ships. As Gatoclass states, that's what the template at the bottom of the article is for. Parsecboy (talk) 16:18, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Also agreed - the infobox should contain counts, not a list. The actual list of ships should be in a navbox template at the bottom of the article. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Agree with all (though I think I may have done it the other way in the past). — Bellhalla (talk) 16:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Tweendeck

I have a reference book (in English) on Norddeutscher Lloyd ships that, in referring to passenger capacity, talks variously of First, Cabin, and Second classes but also 'Tweendeck class. It seems obvious to me that 'Tweendeck is short for Between Deck, but I'm not really sure it means in a passenger context. Would Tweendeck in this case be another name for steerage? Something else? — Bellhalla (talk) 00:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that a tweendeck usually refers to an intermediate level between the floor and ceiling of a deck - but I've only ever heard of it in a cargo ship context, where the tweendeck is used sort of as an intermediate stacking area above the main floor. I suppose if a ship hold (or steerage) area was tall enough to permit it, a tweendeck could be used to increase the occupancy of the deck. But that's just a guess, I have no deffinite understanding of how the term would apply in a passenger setting. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I found several websites mentioning it in a cargo context as well. I did, however, find a website that had information on some of the same ships mentioned in the book, and the website used steerage (rather than tweendeck), so absent any other explanation, I'll just use steerage, the more common term. — Bellhalla (talk) 02:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I've got a book stashed away somehwere that explains how "steerage passengers stored in the 'tweendeck" (not a direct quote obviously), so steerage is probably what is meant with it. Unrelatedly, good to see people working on NDL articles. -- -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 11:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

SS Umatilla? Help invited

I took an interest in this ship name because it figures in one of the tales around Gassy Jack Deighton, who captained a steamboat of this name and various others in the 1860s on the Lower Fraser (Victoria/New West to Yale or Douglas). An illustration in a book by Olga Ruskin, The Gassy Jack Story, shows the steamboat approaching yale, with what looks like Jack in the wheelhouse. So I looked it up on http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca and got a whole bunch of photos....from the salvage of a ship in Esquimalt that was a different kind of vessel; a little more digging on google and it turns out in this period, I'm unsure before or after the salvage/repair, as an immigration vessel to/from Australia - and was the boat that took Jack London to the Klondike....a little more digging yet and it comes up on the T2 Tanker page where it says the SS Umatilla of that period was built by the navy then (World War II). So - three different vessels? Or just one hull? Any marine history detectives out there? Can't really start even a stub until I know how many there were....Skookum1 (talk) 06:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Found this and this which mention the gold rush-era Umatilla, which apparently is the same one that was salvaged at Esquimalt and which must be the immigration vessel for Australia.....so could it still be that later served/ was transformed into a T2 Tanker? Is there a WWII ship resgistry online which could sort this out? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skookum1 (talk • contribs) 07:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

T2 Tanker is not in the same league as the ship you're speaking of. T2 Tankers were built for the Maritime Commission and some of them may have gone to the US Navy but the only US Navy ships even close to that name are USS Unadilla which are listed here and they were tugboats. --Brad (talk) 10:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I think what you've stumbled across is three different vessels (at least). Inconvenient though it may be to us, many ships out there have had similar or duplicate names. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Location of "She"-vs.-"it" style guideline?

Can someone point me to the location where the style guideline for "she" vs. "it" (in reference to ships) is discussed? Thanks. — Bellhalla (talk) 22:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It's 'codified' in the MOS subpage for MilHist at WP:MILMOS#Pronouns. Maralia (talk) 22:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

or see [2] ClemMcGann (talk) 22:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
That discussion dates to 2004, and there have been many since. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 74#Military History Manual of Style amendment is the most recent discussion. Maralia (talk) 22:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. — Bellhalla (talk) 23:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Linkspam

Could someone please handle the external links being added to ship-related articles by the single purpose account Reportpol (talk · contribs · count)? They are links to a blog for reporting pollution from ships; the blog has been in existence for a whole 5 days and has no redeeming value as an external link. Appreciate if someone could deal with this; I'm in the middle of a bunch of FA reviews. Thanks! Maralia (talk) 01:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for HMS Cardiff (D108)

Hi guys, I've recently rewritten HMS Cardiff (D108), I'd like to get it up to an FA standard so I've put it up for a peer review here. I'd greatly appreciate any contributions you guys could make to it, or if not it'd just be nice if you could take some out time to read it and let me know what you thinks :) Ryan4314 (talk) 01:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Marine (military)

Because of a recent cut-and-paste move of Marine (military), I've opened a dicussion on the article's fate. Please comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Maritime warfare task force#Marine (military). Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 07:09, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Deadweight tonnage standardization

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#DWT about standardizing deadweight tonnage usage. In a nutshell, DWT can be used to express deadweight in tons (long tons) and tonnes (metric tons). If this kind of discussion floats your proverbial boat, please chime in. Cheers. HausTalk 14:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

This brings up another issue. The new infobox contains fields for both tonnage and displacement. While that has reduced some of the confusion surrounding gross tons (volume), some displacement fields are now being filled by DWT, and maybe other measures as well (net?). Those also are not displacment. It may be preferable, where figures exist, to put them all in tonnage (e.g., x gross tons, y dwt, z net), and leave displacement out. Kablammo (talk) 15:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Since you mentioned this, I've noticed DWT in the displacement field for well over 100 ship articles. I assume displacement is meant to be "Heavy ship displacement" i.e., displacement when loaded to her draft marks? Cheers. HausTalk 19:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
The displacement field is intended to hold any figure that can be accurately called "displacement", whether that be light, full load, or any other measure; the load figure should be specified with the displacement where available. TomTheHand (talk) 19:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Project tagging questions

  1. Should articles such as Chester W. Nimitz be tagged with the ships project tag albeit with a low importance? Seeing as there was the USS Nimitz and the Nimitz class of aircraft carriers?
  2. Images. Currently there are two images that have been tagged for the project: Category:Unassessed-Class Ships articles but it's clear that we have no class for images.
  3. Convoys or military operations involving ships? Example Convoy ON-154 again with a low importance?

--Brad (talk) 22:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Here are my guesses ... others should feel free to jump in and correct my guesses as applicable.
  1. I am going to say that much like our earlier discussion on naval battles, individual people probably are not covered by the scope of the project. However these ship-related people would no doubt be included in either of our Military history or Maritime Trades sister projects.
  2. Let me get back to you regarding this one.
  3. My best guess is that it would be within our project's scope, though given a "low" importance as you noted. This is due to the fact that the topic is highly specific to ships (much like how the A4W reactor). --Kralizec! (talk) 00:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I just added support for featured list (assessed as "FL", "Fl", or "fl") and image class (assessed as "img", "IMG", "image", or "IMAGE") to the template parser. In theory we should have very few images as all non-fair use photos should already be uploaded to Commons. --Kralizec! (talk) 13:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I would agree with Kralizec on nos. 1 and 3.
And, FWIW, it looks like those two images have been transferred to Commons and are no longer at the English WP. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Whoops, I missed that! Both have been zapped. Thanks! --Kralizec! (talk) 15:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
If I'm understanding the above correctly, we do not tag fair use images as part of the project, nor images that have a corresoinding copy within the commons, correct? So is the category primarily a flag for those non-fair use images that need to be uploaded to the commons? Can someone help clarify, or supply a link that clarifies when the image tag should and should not be used on an image? Thanks! --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:37, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I also agree with Kralizec! on 1 and 3. I might be interpreting incorrectly what he said, but I think Kralizec! meant that only the fair-use/GDFL or CC licensed images on Wikipedia should be tagged, because the PD images should be uploaded to Commons, instead of Wikipedia. Parsecboy (talk) 17:27, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I can see where Nimitz wouldn't warrant a project tag but if we're going to avoid tagging biographies then Joshua Humphreys and Andrew Higgins and others like them get left out of the project, which I think is a mistake. --Brad (talk) 00:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

My guess would be to have Nimitz in MILHIST and put Joshua Humphreys and Andrew Higgins in Maritime Trades (since they were primarily non-mil and made a living at it). Cheers. HausTalk 01:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm still confused as to how those two individuals would have no relevance to the Ships project. --Brad (talk) 19:25, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Hull numbers in nav templates

Is there a policy on the nav boxes, as to whether they should contain hull numbers? Category:Naval navigational boxes has most of these, and looking at a few random ones, I see that a large number of them have the ship name only. Another user is going through some of them adding hull numbers, but there are so many that do not list hull numbers it looks like there was a deliberate decision not to include them. My personal feeling is that it clutters the box up, but I thought I'd run it by the group to see if there was a guideline for these boxes. See Template:Ticonderoga class cruiser for an example. --Dual Freq (talk) 23:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

You are correct. Redjacket3827 (talk · contribs) is responsible, and has been causing some havoc with regards to things like this. I'm tempted to leave a note saying that making these changes without determining consensus will result in an eventual block for disruption. Thoughts? -MBK004 02:09, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I've left the user a note directing them here to make suggestions related to the edits they have been making. Hopefully...-MBK004 02:21, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I would say that in the case of a class template there is no reason to display the hull numbers. --Brad (talk) 02:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Response edited out, that is relevant:

Here is the issue. The pages are very unconsistent in layout and content. All I wanted to do was put hull numbers on the bottom so that someone could see them. Most pages don't have them. I was told not to put them in the info boxes, so I started putting them in the templates. Now I'm being told not to put them there either and that I need a 'consensus. Shouldn't these pages be consistent in content and layout? Aren't these pages public domain that anyone can edit them? I've always been interested in subjects like this and was looking forward to helping out anyway I could. Sorry if I offended anyone. (redjacket3827)
Re-posted by -MBK004 04:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Redjacket3827 (talk) 03:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)Hello everyone! I have joined the group and hope that I can help out. I want to suggest one thing, hull numbers uniformely presented on each page. Can we put them on the bottom in the template?

Inconsistent in layout and content: well, there are so many pages and only a limited number of editors, so help is always appreciated. An example of what we strive for is WP:FA and here is an example: Iowa class battleship. Many of your questions can be answered by looking at how that article and the pages for the ships of the class are constructed. The consistency in content and layout is an ongoing process. You may have noticed different infoboxes in many articles. We are currently working to convert all of them to a standard infobox. There are many different things, they all take time, effort, and dedication. BTW, thanks for taking my advice and joining the project. -MBK004 03:58, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The topic above: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships#Prefixes and Hull Numbers seems to have some relevance to this topic as well. --Brad (talk) 04:32, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The convention is not to put hull numbers in the navboxes, and I think it's a good one, because including them will only clutter up the boxes and make them harder to read.
The ships are usually listed in order of hull number in any case and if you want to find a particular one you only have to hover the mouse over the link and a tooltip will come up giving you the number, so if it's a particular number you are looking for you can find it quickly anyway. Gatoclass (talk) 06:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Concur with Gatoclass, and for the reasons I set out in the above discussion and as currently outlined in our MoS. Benea (talk) 13:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

If we aren't going to put the in the navboxes, can we put them in the templates below? Hovering over them is not a good option.Redjacket3827 (talk) 14:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Our guidelines state "Do not give the hull number or other disambiguation information unless it is immediately relevant. Someone who needs to know can follow the link:" I think we have a consensus that we don't need them in these instances, either in the navboxes or templates. Benea (talk) 15:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed; as Gatoclass points out above, adding hull numbers will make the templates more cluttered and difficult to read. The hull numbers are generally mentioned in the introduction, that should be sufficient. Parsecboy (talk) 15:14, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Would we all agree that each class page needs a boat list, including hull number, ship name, commission date, decommission date and fate? Redjacket3827 (talk) 20:32, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely not. I agree with having the ship name in the nav box, and I'm indifferent on the hull number (I won't debate that one either way). But I feel strongly that the individual commission, decommission, and fate information belongs in the individual ship articles, not in the class summary - that's why the individual articles exist, to provide details on each ship. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll agree that individual ship info (comm. decomm. fate, etc.) does belong on individual pages, I still hold the assertion that hull numbers AND ship names do belong on each ship class page. It doesn't have to be on the template or infobox, but there should be a section for these two pieces of information (see the essex class page for a fine example). 209.12.236.10 (talk) 20:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC) Redjacket3827 (talk) 21:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with adding tables of useful information to ship class articles or any other type of article, and I don't have any problem with a table comparing commission/decommission dates, fates and other statistics which might give a useful thumbnail overview of the class as a whole. In fact I may eventually do a few myself. I don't like to see just naked lists of ship names and/or hull no's though, that is doing little more than duplicating the navbox info. Gatoclass (talk) 12:42, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Just by way of example, here's one Dual Freq did a while ago in the Owasco class cutter article. It lists the ships in a table along with approximate dates of commission and ultimate fate of ship. It looks nice and neat and gives a useful thumbnail sketch of the history of the class.
Compare that to something like, say, the list at Hamilton class cutter which is just a text list, it looks unattractive and it provides very little useful information. In short, it all depends on how it's done. Gatoclass (talk) 12:53, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
This actually spurs an issue that I've been seeing of redundancy in these cases. In Owasco class cutter for example, while the article looks nice and neat I'm not sure of the value of having the list of ships with hull numbers only to have the same information repeated again at the foot of the article by the class template but without hull numbers. So if I was Joe Lookinforaship, I would see a list of all the ships in the class only to find another list of ships in the class at the end of the article. Seems like overkill to me. --Brad (talk) 13:25, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you up to a point, but what I'm trying to say is that if a table includes more data than simply a name and hull number, I think it can add value. There are potentially lots of things one could include in such a table, including commission/decommission dates, hull type, MCV hull numbers, no. of battle stars earned and so on. So I'm not at all opposed in principle to ship tables in class articles. Of course, it has to be done with discretion though, for example if you have a class with a large number of ships, a table listing individual ship characteristics would dominate the article, in which case I think it would be better in an article of its own. Gatoclass (talk) 15:18, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm guilty of adding a few of these unit lists to class articles, Spruance class destroyer and Ticonderoga class cruiser are recent examples of ones I added or modified. These lists are found in a number of classes: Knox class frigate, Charles F. Adams class destroyer, Arleigh Burke class destroyer are a few examples. As mentioned above, I think the unit list gives a good overview of the ships in the class and their fates / builders / in-out of commission dates. The nav templates provide a different purpose, to navigate between ships within the class and be located at the bottom of each article. I can see where it appears redundant with the nav templates in a class article, but the nav template can't provide the overview that the unit lists do since they need to be short and clutter free because they are on each ship page. These unit lists take a bit of work to create, so if we don't want them, I'd appreciate a heads up so I don't waste more time on them. --Dual Freq (talk) 17:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Dual Freq, those lists are AWESOME! That is exactly what I was talking about. Redjacket3827 (talk) 19:49, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I am also a fan of Dual Freq's complete, detailed, sortable lists, though I think that footer templates should be compact and contain only ship names. TomTheHand (talk) 13:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Much like Dual Freq, in recent years I have added similar lists to articles like Forrestal class aircraft carrier, Boston class cruiser, Providence class cruiser, Belknap class cruiser, etc. --Kralizec! (talk) 21:09, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Cut-and-paste move

Need some help from a more experienced admin than myself:
I've discovered a move on the talk page of USS Ranger (CV-61) (talk) and Talk:USS Ranger (CVA-61) (which is now a redirect in article space with a stand-alone talk page). Anyone want to tackle this? -MBK004 23:41, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It took a little searching for the correct procedure, but I've taken care of merging the pages. For future reference, you can find it here: Wikipedia:How to fix cut-and-paste moves. Parsecboy (talk) 16:45, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, I knew there was something out there, but forgot where. -MBK004 19:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

New DANFS section template available

I drafted a new "Template:DANFSsection" to provide a suitable section-leading DANFS notice, now applied in the article USS Pampanito (SS-383). It requires two arguments, the DANFS article name and its URL, and yields a small-size notice for use at the top of a section, and also yields a footnote for the reference list of the article.

I wonder, could anyone comment on the template, as used in the Pampanito article now?

I am just having a little trouble getting the footnote to appear properly, but I am sure this can be fixed. Help from someone more skilled in Mediawiki would be appreciated.

sincerely, doncram (talk) 00:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

When I see an article that started with DANFS material and is now a mixture of both DANFS and anon edited or unsourced material, I figure out what parts are DANFS and add standard reference tags on that material. Most of the time it's just one per paragraph or section if its all DANFS and put {{cn}} next to the unknown material that is not sourced by DANFS. I think I tried this on USS Constellation (CV-64). I don't think it is necessary or appropriate to add a section header such as the one described above. Footnotes are made for this purpose and are non-obtrusive to the reader. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
All due respect, doncram, but what on earth are you thinking here? If I were to visit WP:NRHP, post a page-long braindump describing why I'm still unhappy with longstanding practice and policy after failing to gain a consensus for change, and offer up a new template for NRHP use that sidesteps existing policy because I'm just not happy with the status quo, I imagine I would be directed to the nearest (historic) bridge and encouraged to leap. This is a policy issue, and as such I truly appreciate being advised of relevant discussion taking place in policy venues, but it would be extremely premature to adopt your template as a solution before even a handful of people agree if there is a problem. Maralia (talk) 01:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I have to concur. The use of the DANFS template is in line with current standards and practices. If best practice changes then we can look at different templates. Its premature at best and at the worst seems like using this to subvert the standing conventions over a Point of View to be attempting to submit this for consideration now. On a side note, it think it's somewhat obtrusive and I really can't see any precedent for anything like this anywhere in wikipedia beyond the standard maintenance templates. All the more reason why consensus is needed well before we begin to debate individual templates. Benea (talk) 02:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I concur as well. This is a policy issue, the new template is obtrusive and I cannot think of precedent as well. Also, just because you don't like the outcome of previous conversations, you decide to circumvent policy and make your own, seems rather Pointy to me and I usually AGF to the extreme. -MBK004 02:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Setting aside the appropriateness of such an approach (quite a stretch, in my opinion), the template itself doesn't generate its footnote correctly, anyway. — Bellhalla (talk) 03:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh well, I guess no one likes it. :( I can see why there could be policy issues about broadening attribution template use, to some new non-encyclopedic source, say, but I don't see why a narrower DANFS template would be a policy problem. If the general DANFS template is okay, stating that any text in an entire article might be from DANFS, how could it not be okay to state that any text in just one section is from DANFS? It happens to fit the Pampanito article, where all the DANFS material was in one section, and where there were statements outside that section which were implied to be supported by the general DANFS disclaimer. Obtrusiveness of appearance could be an issue, but perhaps that could be lessened by formatting differently into a box like tags leading articles usually are. Oh well. I have never been referred to that Pointy article before. I'll go read it carefully now though, and contemplate what on earth i have been thinking. Hopefully no real harm is done :) doncram (talk) 05:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

NHC website off the air?

Is it just me, or has the Naval Historical Center's web site (i.e. DANFS) been off the air for a few days? --J Clear (talk) 00:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I can access it perfectly fine right now. I haven't tried to use it in the past day or two, so I can't say for that, but it's definitely working fine for me. Parsecboy (talk) 00:32, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, it didn't occur to me it might be on my end as I could get to the rest of the web. But now I find I can get to it from my ISP's shell machine, and from another ISP, just not from my DSL line. Very odd. --J Clear (talk) 03:43, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I can't access it at all and never have been able to, which is weird considering I can access all the other US military sites, like the USCG site and the army site etc.
I get around it by using the "Cached" button on Google, which gives me a view of the page from usually no more than a month or two ago. Gatoclass (talk) 08:21, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Never had any problem accessing it before, but as of today (10 March), I can no longer get any page at the NHC. All I get is a 403 error. — Bellhalla (talk) 02:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Oddly enough, I'm now getting a permission error, telling me I don't have permissions to access even the main page. How strange. Parsecboy (talk) 03:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm guessing some site admin type messed up. Presumably they're aware of it, makes a good excuse to call them on the phone (get the number from Google cache, ha ha) if someone is interested. Stan (talk) 12:41, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I just got an e-mail from the Public Affairs Officer of the NHC. They're aware of the problem and he says he'll e-mail me when it's back up. No word on how long that'll be. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
The main page doesn't work for me, but DANFS does, although its formatting is all screwy. TomTheHand (talk) 15:28, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I've seen this happen before even to the point where others started to remove the references from articles that referenced DANFS. Eventually it gets fixed but I hope that in the meantime no one starts a removal campaign. I guess we could always point to hazegray if needed. --Brad (talk) 01:06, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Looks like the site’s back up now. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Working for me as well. Parsecboy (talk) 14:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
For the benefit of future readers, it's not a good idea to remove dead links which point to sources. The target page might reappear, the link might be used six months later to find a replacement or archival copy, or the target page might be hidden by a technical problem which affects your machine (such as spam protection software). -- SEWilco (talk) 14:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Just got the promised e-mail from the Public Affairs Officer that everything is back to normal with the site. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Public domain text quarantine

The walling off of public domain text as quotations is again being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Return of PD text style. Forcing public domain text to be wrapped inside quotations would affect many ship articles. -- SEWilco (talk) 15:58, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

SEWilco disagrees with my choice to use quotation marks and footnotes to credit the wording of long copied passages to their author, a one-time Federal employee, Laura Soulliere Harrison, in an article about Bathhouse Row. I don't believe she ever wrote about ships, however, and I don't think there ever were ships in the waters of Hot Springs, Arkansas. :) doncram (talk) 17:44, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
If reused public domain text must be put in quotation marks, that certainly will affect many ship articles. -- SEWilco (talk) 17:52, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, I haven't forgotten this edit, made shortly after it was made clear to you that there was no consensus that material from free sources should be put in block quotes, doncram. TomTheHand (talk) 18:58, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing to specific ship article, I was going to ask for one to focus the discussion here. The "diff" you link to points out that i marked the USS Pampanito (SS-383) with "refimprove", a month ago. Probably I came across the article because it appears on the List of National Historic Landmarks in California, which is a list-article that I have developed a lot. The "refimprove" note could have been justified for a couple reasons. One would be that statements about the NHL designation were not sourced. I just now fixed that by adding references. Also, there are statements about the ship appearing in a movie, which are unsourced. But what i noted in my edit summary was: "Article has sources but also general disclaimer it includes text from DANFS article with an invalid URL. Such text ought to be put in quotes, separately sourced." I see that you responded by checking a DANFS URL link in the article and reporting that it worked for you, and removing the refimprove tag. I suppose it is possible the URL didn't work for me while in fact the URL was okay. Thank you for addressing that. About my opinion that the article would be better if it specifically quoted from the DANFS source, and dropped the general disclaimer, well, yes, I still have that opinion. What's not to agree with, about that? Sincerely, doncram (talk) 19:45, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Seriously, I'm not even going to start with you. Virtually the entire article was copied from DANFS as a starting point, and DANFS was cited as its source. There is widespread consensus that this is an OK thing to do, and that it is not necessary to put the entire article in a block quote. TomTheHand (talk) 19:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
USS Pampanito possible referencing improvements
Oh, i see that now. Well, actually it is only the "History" section of the USS Pampanito (SS-383) article which uses text from the DANFS source. I think more precise referencing of the DANFS material would improve the article. Is there a version of the DANFS template which is section-specific? Perhaps a thin template box, to insert at the beginning of the section, which states "This section is adapted from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships article Pampanito, available here". I would use the phrasing "adapted from" rather than "incorporates text from" because it is no longer an exact quote, given some small wording changes and wikilinks added. And then drop the general disclaimer about the whole article, at the bottom. Why not accurately claim more credit for wikipedia editorship, in that way? And that is better also for isolating what the DANFS source does not support. Currently, a reader might incorrectly expect that a few unsourced statements elsewhere in the article are supported by the DANFS general template. doncram (talk) 23:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
use of DANFS material generally
I think what you anticipated I would say, and what SEWilco wants me to say so that you will react with hatred and vitriol, is that all DANFS material needs to be eliminated from articles, or segregated into block quotes, always. I think i am not unreasonable to believe that the USS Pampanito article would better represent wikipedia, if it was improved in the two ways I suggest above (use narrower, section-specific rather than general article DANFS disclaimer; use disclaimer template appearing with/before the copied/adapted text, rather than at the bottom of the article, so the reader's expectations are calibrated correctly as they read the article). An alternative, employed by featured ship article USS Kentucky (BB-66), is to eventually eliminate all unquoted DANFS material, use DANFS like any non-PD source, and eliminate the general disclaimer. (I do know that some other featured ship articles do retain the general DANFS disclaimer, too.) doncram (talk) 23:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Going and reading more, I see that i misunderstood what happened with Kentucky. Kentucky was not a commissioned ship, it is noted that it should not technically be called USS Kentucky. And the DANFS material is very short, just a sentence or two. So the article was not built upon DANFS text, then edited. I had projected that incorrectly. doncram (talk) 00:00, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
DANFS material is not the only kind of PD text
But, TomTheHand, in the case of the Bathhouse Row article over in the world of historic places, in which I mostly work, and where I think you do not often work, I think it is wrong for SEWilco to seek to eliminate use of block quotes and full attribution of a different kind of authored material. The DANFS material in the Pampanito article is short, condensed, factual, anonymously authored, and encyclopedic. In the Bathhouse Row article, what is contested is the need to quote long, passionate, descriptive passages written by Laura Soulliere Harrison, an eloquent writer who single-handedly elevated about 30 sets of relatively nondescript National Park Service buildings to National Historic Landmark status, while others failed in their more straightforwardly written nominations of sites that were probably more noteworthy. Her nominations material was so well-written that she was invited to repackage it into a very nice on-line book, available at the National Park Service, and in the public domain. I don't think it's the same kind of deal, as with DANFS material, and I think it is not helpful for SEWilco to seek to eliminate quotations and full attribution of the material to its author. Surely you would not say an editor cannot quote from a public domain text? Anyhow, SEWilco wants to enlist you in that battle over there, by conjuring up a spectre of unreasonable impositions to be put upon you with your DANFS material. That's my opinion about what's going on here, anyhow. Sincerely, doncram (talk) 23:00, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I am sorry, I apologize, for being impolite. I also should not have invoked the concept of ownership of types of articles, and I should not have lashed out in a personal way. And I was illogical, too. (If I work on ships sometimes because they are National Historic Landmarks, then i should anticipate that someone who works primarily on ship articles is also sometimes working on historical sites, doh on me. And further I don't know what range of experience TomTheHand has, it is probably broader than mine.) I think i was wrongly lashing out, pre-judging what one person might do or say elsewhere, if they joined the discussion over there, where it happens I was feeling attacked. I apologize. doncram (talk) 00:00, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

This is weird

In an article I just finished, USS Thurston (AP-77), I noticed that the fields in the ship infobox are pushed much further to the right than usual, with a lot of empty space in the middle, making them look squashed against the side of the page. This does not seem to be happening on other ship pages. Anyone know what the problem might be? Gatoclass (talk) 16:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Unless something was done since you posted, I'm not really seeing anything unusual about the infobox here. — Bellhalla (talk) 17:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm not seeing anything unusual either; could be something wrong with your browser or somesuch. Parsecboy (talk) 18:00, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, I suspected it might be something to do with my browser, I've noticed looking back through a number of different articles that the whitespace between the field name and the field itself is varying from article to article, and I've never noticed that before. But I guess if the article is appearing normal to other users, that's the main thing. Hopefully this problem will rectify itself on my PC eventually. Thanks for the feedback guys. Gatoclass (talk) 18:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

USCG Ensign upgraded from GIF to SVG

A WikiGraphist recently upgraded the USCG Ensign from File:CoastGuardEnsign.gif to File:CoastGuardEnsign Sagredo.svg. In addition to being scalable, with better detail, the colors in the USCG seal have been corrected. Compare with official USCG website images (1), (2), (3). Due to superior appearance and corrected color, I've replaced GIF with SVG in this and other pages. JonWee (talk) 01:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

New image is much improved over the old one. Thanks for pointing that out. --Brad (talk) 21:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

U.S. Navy navbox on USN ship articles

Hey all. Bahamut0013 (talk · contribs) is putting {{US Navy navbox}} on many USN ship, class, and list articles. I think it's a little excessive; I think the box is pretty general and it probably shouldn't go onto many of these articles. I was hoping we could start up a little discussion about the box, and where it might be best used. I've invited Bahamut over here to talk about it. Please chip in with your opinions. Thanks! TomTheHand (talk) 01:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

See contributions by this user. I can understand having the navbox on certain articles but it seems like he is determined to label every US Navy ship article with the navbox. My diplomacy skills are bad, otherwise I would drop a note on his talk page. Most US Navy ship articles contain a link to United States Navy so I'm not seeing the point. --Brad (talk) 01:39, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
What I've been doing with all of the service branch templates is adding them to just about every article in the branch's category or subcategory (short stub articles, of course). Considering that I am only really very familiar with the Marine Corps, I'd have less of an idea of what articles are really very relevant to the US Navy. However, considering that the navbox is collapsable, I think that it's not especially intrusive or jarring to most articles.
I do see your point about how generalized the navbox is, however, I feel that since ships are the lifeblood of the Navy, there aren't that many articles that are more relevant to the topic of the US Navy, and that a reader may find it useful to navigate further from there. A similar issue came up at list of U.S. Marines, where most of the individuals on the list were notable for reasons unrelated to thier military service.
If you feel that I really shouldn't add the navbox to every ship, then would you agree that each class-type article and list should indeed have it, as well as those ships without any other type of navbox? bahamut0013♠♣ 01:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Most of our individual ship articles carry templates like Template:Casablanca class escort carrier to link them into a class. If there is currently no class template it either hasn't been added to the article or it hasn't yet been created. Your template is well designed but does not collapse by default nor does it provide links directly related to US Navy ships but other related US Navy topics. If a reader was more interested in other topics besides US Navy ships they can follow links via US Navy or the equivalent. It's also an issue of how many templates are placed in articles where they have little value to the article topic. It's also generally a good idea to gain some consensus before making wholesale changes to many articles. --Brad (talk) 02:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know about this. I certainly don't think it should be on ships or ship class articles. What it should be on exactly, I'm not sure, but I agree with Tom that putting it on ship/ship class articles is overkill. I'm also asking myself if the navbox itself is not trying to cover a little too much ground. Gatoclass (talk) 03:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I noticed a number of the ships don't have any navigational aides (mostly misc class ships). However, the navbox does collapse automatically when paired with any other navigation template, again illustrating my point about intrusiveness. I may be a bit more of an inclusionist bent (if it doesn't hurt and could possibly help, then include it!) than many other editors, but it's hard to argue that a bar about 40 pixels high is going to clutter or hurt the scope of an article.
However, I did take your point about how broad it was. That was the initial idea when I started redoing all of the service branch templates, and then I noticed that Template:US Navy navbox was used very infrequently compared to the other branches. Maybe there was a reason for that... Then I re-read my own comment about ships being the lifeblood of the Navy and it hit me: Both templates barely referenced ships at all. I've edited the template a bit to be a bit less broad, at least concerning the ships. This should make it more relevant to readers who are interested in the branch (which was my point of view) and to those readers interested in ships (and nautica in general, which seemed to be your point of view).
I was also thinking that it might be worth creating navboxes listing each class for every type (for example, List of aircraft carrier classes of the United States Navy lists more than a dozen classes). That way, a person can navigate quickly from type to class to ship and back, which is the whole point of a navbox. That's also why I feel that simply linking to US Navy in each article might be less than sufficient for some readers.
It still may not completely resolve the dispute 100%, so I again offer this compromise: class-based articles, types, lists, and those ships without any sort of navigational aide. bahamut0013♠♣ 15:37, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I was ok with {{US Navy navbox}} going on list articles but that was before you made the latest changes. Now every list article by letter has {{USN ship list header}} at the top and then the expanded {{US Navy navbox}} at the bottom. This makes List of United States Navy ships, X look silly with redundant navigation boxes. The US Navy navbox is now far too large for any article. --Brad (talk) 23:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Still not sure of the Navy navbox, but I very much like the idea of a ship class navbox. In fact, I have been considering the best way to go about implementing this for some time - indeed, I already made one template, for attack transport classes, which you can find here.

The reason I didn't go ahead with putting this template on the articles yet is that I was somewhat dissatisfied with its appearance alongside the ship navbox itself, and wanted to find a way to integrate the two more seamlessly. I was intending to bring the subject up here myself but hadn't got around to it yet. Gatoclass (talk) 16:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I still don't agree. I can really only see the navbox going on list articles. They are the only topic general enough to really use such a general template. Class articles, and articles for ships that belong to a class, should have navboxes to navigate to all other ships in the class and to the relevant list article; articles for ships that don't belong to a class should have a "See also" with a link to the list article. As for type articles, I have trouble imagining types used exclusively by the US Navy, and I wouldn't want to put nav boxes for every navy. I also disagree about navboxes for navigation between classes. WP:SHIPS relies heavily on categorization for navigation, and we have a pretty solid system; check out Category:Aircraft carriers of the United States and similar categories. TomTheHand (talk) 16:24, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but the ship categorization tree is broken. It's incomplete, confused by conflicting systems, full of non-standard and confusing names and is basically just a maze. More often than not it takes ages to find what you're looking for in the categorization tree, and half the time I simply give up in disgust. It is no kind of substitute for a readily navigable template in my view.
So I am strongly in favour of class navboxes, if not on individual ship articles then at least on the class articles themselves. Gatoclass (talk) 16:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the categorization scheme isn't fully applied, but I feel like the solution to that is to... well... apply it! It's no harder to categorize the articles properly than it is to create a navbox and go place it on all of them. If you feel the categorization scheme is flawed, please give details; maybe we can work it out. I thought most people were reasonably satisfied with it. I know the country vs. navy thing is a mess, but at the worst that's overcategorization; you should still be able to find what you need. TomTheHand (talk) 17:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I think this is more of an issue over how many templates and navboxes can one article tolerate? Templates or navboxes in articles that have little relevance to the topic are obtrusive to article appearance. Many ship articles already have more templates and navigation aids than they contain text about the ship! If categorized properly, an article should have many ways of finding other topics and the categories are listed unobtrusively. Essentially I'm agreeing with TomTheHand on this. --Brad (talk) 20:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I just think you haven't noticed how broken the categorization tree is Tom because you have mainly worked with higher profile categories like capital warships. You can't really get a sense of how broken the tree is until you try to use it for some of the more obscure ships, the auxiliaries for example, which are the areas I'm most familiar with.
And as someone said in an earlier conversation, those who have dared look at the full ship categorization tree are rumoured to have gone nuts. It's so complex, I don't see much hope of ever sorting it out. It would certainly take a herculean effort to do so. And I for one feel I can spend my Wikitime more cost effectively on other activities.
I am striking the above because I think I may have been confusing recent experiences with other categorization trees with the ship tree. To be honest I probably haven't taken a detailed look at the ship tree for a while, although I maintain that its complexities alone are probably sufficient to ensure that it will never be complete.
My main point is that the cat. tree is not much of a substitute for a good navbox. There is always a heap of junk in the ship cats, often listed incorrectly, and it often isn't a straightforward task trying to pursue a particular avenue of inquiry within the tree. Also, because cats are constantly edited and added to, their content is unstable and they require regular maintenance to keep them ordered. Maintenance that few people seem interested in doing.
Navboxes by contrast are very rarely edited or added to, so they are very stable, and unlike categories they are not trying to list a whole bunch of different things, so they are much more straightforward and accessible to use. Which is to say that if you don't have a ship class navbox, at least on the class articles themselves, then there simply isn't any straightforward or reliable alternative method of getting an overview of the different classes of ship of that particular type. Gatoclass (talk) 07:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
...Except by going to the appropriate category, like Category:Battleships of the United States, which is an easily navigable overview of all US battleship classes. If you've got a type of ship which doesn't have an easily navigable category, categorize it; it's no harder than creating a nav box and placing it on every ship. Yes, you're correct that only some ship types are well-categorized, but they're well-categorized because I categorized them. It didn't happen by magic. TomTheHand (talk) 14:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah look the cats have definitely improved since I last looked at them - was it you who cleaned up the seaplane tenders? - but I still maintain that class navboxes have their place. It's not as if I'm in any great hurry to go ahead with this though as I have heaps of other things to do, so if you don't mind I would prefer to put this discussion on the backburner for now. Gatoclass (talk) 16:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I may have; a few weeks (months?) ago I was working through Category:World War II ships (which should hardly have any articles directly in it) and properly categorizing its contents. I think I ran into some seaplane tenders along the way. As you can see, I got to the letter H before I moved on to a new task; it was kind of painful work ;-) I plan to return to it eventually, but I'm on a submarine kick right now. TomTheHand (talk) 23:11, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
As for your comment Brad - I quite agree that adding multiple navboxes to articles looks unsightly and only tends to confuse things. That is part of the reason I never added the navbox I made for attack transports to an article, because I was unhappy with the way it integrated with the existing individual ship navbox. However, if one found a method of combining the two navboxes together, it would still look attractive and it would add very little in terms of size but significantly to functionality. So I think it's an idea at least worthy of consideration. Gatoclass (talk) 06:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Using Template:Arthur Middleton class attack transport as an example, I see there is room in the upper and lower borders of the template to add a couple more links to other articles. Maybe Attack transport or the corresponding list article? Maybe even room for a link to List of United States Navy ships? I think that would broaden the use of class templates. --Brad (talk) 21:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
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