Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 7

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What is a "standard ton"?

I hi seen the term "standard ton" or similar used in a couple of articles I've edited recently (like this one and this one). I couldn't find an explanation for this term in ton, so I was wondering what it means. Does anybody know? Thunderbird2 13:21, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Heh, pretty confusing aren't they? Given the context in which these specific examples appear, my guess would be that "standard ton" here means "light displacement", ie the weight of the unladen ship, while "full" or "full load" means the displacement of the ship when fully loaded with its normal cargo, fuel and so on. Gatoclass 13:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I see. So I was misreading it really. Taking USS Wesson as an example, does it just mean 1,240 tons (unladen) then? If so, is "light displacement" a more widely accepted term for this measure? Also, do you know whether these are short tons or long ones, or some other variety? Thunderbird2 13:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, seems I was only half right. The Displacement (fluid) article says (I quote): Vessels such as naval ships and icebreakers are often measured by their displacements. The unit of measure can be long tons or metric tons depending on the country of origin. The ship can be measured in light condition, fully loaded, or normal (usually fully loaded, but with about two-thirds of fuel and unconsumables). For official purposes, the Washington Naval Treaty introduced the standard displacement, which was the displacement fully loaded but with no fuel or reserve feed water.

In other words, standard apparently means somewhere between light and full. Gatoclass 14:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and if they are US ships, then the measurements are probably in short tons, yes. But believe me, ship weight and capacity measurements are a maze of different standards and meanings - there's an article about it somewhere on Wiki - you can end up even more confused after reading it! Gatoclass 14:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Crumbs - sounds like a right pandora's box!. I was thinking of maybe re-wording them to make the text less ambiguous, but I think I'll leave that to an expert. Many thanks for your help and explanations :-) Thunderbird2 14:28, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The articles at Long ton and Tonnage are helpful. Long tons were used for standard displacement under the Washington Naval Treaty. Apply the conversion factors (in both tonne and ton) to the treaty figures. So for treaty purposes all navies would use long ton displacement figures. Kablammo 14:57, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, tonnage, that was the article I was thinking of. I'm still scratching my head over that one :/ Gatoclass 15:30, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

From the treaty:

The word "ton" in the present Treaty, except in the expression "metric tons", shall be understood to mean the ton of 2240 pounds (1016 kilos).

Section II, Part IV, Definitions, Standard Displacement.[1] (toward the end) Kablammo 16:01, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Once you figure out which sort of "ton" an article is talking about, you can add the {{convert}} template to clarify the issue for future readers. --Kralizec! (talk) 16:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem seems to be that some ships (like warships) are measured by their displacement (actual weight in tons) while cargo ships seem to be measured by "tonnage" (amount of stuff they can carry). But then sometimes you find displacement measurements for cargo ships too. And then which measurements are used for ships that, say, are converted from cargo vessels to Naval auxiliaries? It all gets very messy. I'm still not certain about which kind of "tons" I am looking at sometimes. Gatoclass 16:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC):\

You likely will find displacement figures for all commissioned naval vessels, even civilian vessels taken into service, such as SS America/West Point. You will rarely find displacement figures for civilian passenger ships, which has led to a great degree of confusion on Wikipedia or elsewhere, as people wrongly assume that tonnage or gross tonnage is equivalent to displacement when in fact it is a measure of volume. Nor will you typically find displacement figures for cargo vessels, but there are weight measures for some of them, such as lightship and deadweight tons. Kablammo 16:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll state some of the assumptions I make, and see whether I get shot down. Always state what displacement you're using - "standard" in preference to "full", since this is the criterion used in various naval treaties - in infoboxes use both when available. "Short tons" are tonnes (spelt like that), ie 1,000 kilograms, while "long tons" are 2,240 pounds; there is a numeric difference but it's not large enough proportionately to worry about if just giving an indication of ship size. I prefer to use long tons when both are available. To add confusion, ships displace varied volumes of water, depending on its density (thru salinity, temperature, etc), but the weight is unchanged (I think), see waterline. Folks at 137 16:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't comment on the rest, but I thought that a short ton was 2,000 lb (907 kg). Thunderbird2 16:39, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

T-bird is correct; the minor difference is between metric and long tons. Kablammo 16:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to summarize: U.S. naval ships use long tons (2,240 lb), not short tons (2,000 lb) or metric tons (1,000 kg) (except for the very newest ships, which do use metric tons). Metric tons, or tonnes, abbreviated "t", are often used today by European navies, and are not the same thing as "short tons," which are the 2,000-lb tons used in the U.S. civilian world. Standard displacement is displacement ready for sea but minus fuel and reserve feed water. It's intended to provide even ground between powers which don't require long range (Italy) and powers which do (the U.S.). It isn't the same as light displacement, which is defined by the USN here as "The ship is complete and ready for service in every respect, including permanent ballast (solid and liquid), and liquids in machinery at operating levels but is without officers, men, their effects, ammunition, or any items of consumable or variable load." "Liquids in machinery" refer to lubricants, not fuel; light displacement does not include fuel. TomTheHand 16:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Who started this?! (Thanks Tom) Perhaps this info should be in the displacement article with a few comparative figures: is the difference enough to affect the info already published in wiki? Which version of "ton" did the naval treaties use? Do UK ships use "long tons". I have a London edtion of a couple of Whitworth's books - which version would be in there? Folks at 137 17:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The Washington Naval Treaty specifically says that it uses long tons. The text of the London Naval Treaty at Navweaps.com gives figures in tons with figures in metric tons in parenthesis, and through this you can see that it uses long tons, but I don't know if the conversions are in the original. The Second London Naval Treaty specifically says it uses long tons.

UK ships used to use long tons, but I am not sure where the switch to metric occurred. Reading our article on Metrication in the United Kingdom, it seems to me that it could not have occurred before the 1950s. Of course it's possible that modern authors have converted historical figures in long tons to metric tons, but I would consider that a real jerk thing to do. TomTheHand 17:24, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

All new ships designed for the RN use metric measurements - I think this would have been the case from the mid 70s onwards possibly, but probably not much earlier than that (that's the impression I get anyway). Martocticvs 17:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

?

considering that most scifi space movies consider spaceships to be navy (like starwars or halo) should we consider fiction spacecraft and real space shuttles in our articles posted by this page? and maybe we could come up with a better userbox for this project? like a moving one. or better yet an ad plus we need a newsletter or something because theres like only ten people who have a steady posting here or am i just not noticing? and if im right were are all our members? or are we it? and if we are i find that very weird considering this is the internet. oh and my watchlist has been blocked for some reson by my parentel controls (oh they're pain in the @#$%&$) any ideas i think it has something to do with a serirously vandlizied page but i can't seem to find it.ANOMALY-117 18:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC) oh i have like 50 pages watched so its hard to remeber them all so mabye a Vandlism sweep?ANOMALY-117 18:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC) oh and the results comments: um quit harping one my first idea i get the message ok! im saying that if we don't at least tell people that the barnstar is changeable then no one will no. so i suggest we bring up the subject of the chance to change it once a year and it dosen't have to be changed. sorry if i sound a little frustrated. ANOMALY-117 18:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

theres like only ten people who have a steady posting here or am i just not noticing?

One of the funny things about Wikipedia is that although it's said that 5% of the entire online community visits Wikipedia every day, the number of regular editors is remarkably small. There are only about 3,000 or so administrators IIRC and the number of established non-admin editors is probably not a huge amount greater. When CSN was up and running it seemed to be controlled by no more than a couple of dozen admins, if you watch the policy pages you see the same handful of nics turning up everywhere.

I'm always amazed at how difficult it is to get discussions going on important pages because there is only a handful of editors contributing. Even at pages like RFC, you can list a dispute and most of the time get zero response.

Wikiships is actually one of the busiest non-administrative portals on Wiki in my experience, it's part of the reason I like working on this project. Gatoclass 18:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

• Fictional spacecraft are covered by projects like Wikipedia:WikiProject Science Fiction. Real spacecraft are covered by projects like Wikipedia:WikiProject Space. This project is devoted to watercraft.
• If you'd like to come up with a new userbox, or write a newsletter, feel free.
• I'm sorry, I don't know why your watchlist is blocked or how to get around it.
• Everybody already knows that they can discuss the Barnstar and propose changes to it, so there is no need to tell people. TomTheHand 18:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

i fixed the prob no worries :> the idea was mainly to notify newbs. yes but the amount must be more than 3,ooo it took me two three hours to finish my chalenge (for more on the challenge go to user talk willbeback) even then the amount of projects are huge and the members are never the same usually from project to project. but if their are only 3ooo then some must be inactive or the users..uh dead..or something. so maybe a task force shold go through and do a sort of roll call and put anybody who is inactive of ten months unless expressed by a wikileave notification. which means we have to check logs and lots of them. so maybe a modifide vandlism program?ANOMALY-117 20:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC) it is important that we keep a sort of poupulation count to know when we are short handed and have to work over time or recruit edtiors.ANOMALY-117 20:47, 2 December 2007 (UTC) oh and i suck at programing the userboxes on my page are ethier avalibale copies or me cuting and pasting codes togeather. oh and a lot of guess work —Preceding unsigned comment added by ANOMALY-117 (talk • contribs) 20:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think wikipedia works like that. People do what they want, when they want, according to their interests, work in the real world, and so on. Consequently they work with projects that fit what they like to do. I don't think there'd be any real benefit to drawing up a list of who's active or not. What useful information would that tell us? We have ads, userboxes, page templates to inform new users of the project. I'm not sure what you mean by recruiting editors though. Benea 20:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

telling people about wiki editing sort of like a free advertising for wikipedia. to inform new users of the fact that they have the infulence to help change the barnstar. i don't really know what reson we would need to keep tabs on people on active or not but something in my gut tells me that it would be good to have. sockpuppet identifycation maybe i really don't know but i think we need it.ANOMALY-117 21:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Infobox creation

Speaking of ship infoboxes, can someone point me to a tutorial that shows you how to create such infoboxes? I'd like to experiment a bit. Gatoclass 06:49, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The easiest method is to copy and paste one from another article and then edit the details. Some are done from templates - these are meant to be helpful - their only advantage is that they impose common standards. However, templates frequently have unobvious features.--Toddy1 08:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Ship Example has the standard ship infobox available for copy & paste. -- Kjet 12:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but what I'm saying is, how do I create my own infobox, with my own custom features? I don't just want to alter the sequence or delete a few entries in the standard infobox, I want to know how to create an entirely new one from scratch, with my own custom functions. Gatoclass 12:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I learned to edit templates by making copies of existing templates in my user space and messing around with them while reading various help files over at meta. Here are some articles that might help. TomTheHand 12:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much Tom. I'll take a look at those links a little later. Gatoclass 06:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced OR/POV help

I could use some help dealing with a user adding unsourced OR and possibly POV content to the USS Holland (SS-1) and General Dynamics pages, per this diff and this one. This isn't the first time such info has been added to these pages, but the user is being aggresive about reverting today, claiming to be adding "facts". I know absolutely nothing of the history involved here, so I'm only judging these additions on Wiki sourcing policy, the users protests to the contrary. - BillCJ 01:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

HMM... ill see what i can do about it! (finally a case)!209.244.187.181 01:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)sorry im not logged in ANOMALY-117209.244.187.181 02:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC) ok um but if he makes any more edits let him do it ill check his info with a submarine book i have. sorry if my previous comment sounded a like i was a little over-board. Anomaly-117 209.244.187.181 02:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, whoa. It's under control. Please don't do anything. TomTheHand 02:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If he reverts again I will block him under the three revert rule. TomTheHand 02:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

S/He's been reported for sock puppetry here. Parsecboy 02:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

whoa! dude slow down man let me take a look at it. is it obvious vandlism or just unverfibale info? if it might not be vandlelism don't block him just revert and let me see the work to check is information to see if it's fact or crap.ANOMALY-117 02:18, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Whether it's true or not isn't the point. Edit-warring and especially sock-puppetry are not tolerated. Neither is the violation of WP:V, especially with edits that appear to be OR and POV pushing. Parsecboy 02:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Anomaly, please, you're very enthusiastic but I feel that you misunderstand what this project is all about. We are here because we love writing and improving articles about ships. We don't do a lot of centralized planning and we don't have a focus on fighting vandalism. We talk here when we need a second opinion or we disagree about something, but mostly, we work on articles. Please find something you're interested in and write about it. TomTheHand 02:27, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

i will i will but my arm is broken and i don't have a ton of time so im just moornig here and watch learning how stuff works and voiceing my opinion when i have something to say and yes i understand what this website is about but my abilty to do stuff is constricted conssibraly with the way my mom's computer is set up and its really old and slow. i'm acutally suprised at what is getting in to this site. and really right now all i have to do is fight vandlism until i learn a little more on how to tag stuff and program it and other things correctly ANOMALY-117 02:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC) however i a-sure you as soon as i learn what i can and my arm gets out of this cast i will gladly set sail and start doing more for this website. promise ANOMALY-117 02:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear about your arm. I can definitely understand how that could keep you from doing a lot of typing. I've mentioned before that we have a list of tasks that you can help out with. It's located on our front page. I think that there are a couple that might be good for someone who's not able to type a lot. Do you want me to tell you about them in detail? TomTheHand 02:54, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

thank you! :> if you could leave it on my talk page it would help me alot because i may not be able to check this page or my talk page utill tommorow because i might not be on for much longer but i'll see what i can do! i should be out of it in three to four weeks. then i get a brace. this is the second time its been broken this year with almost a month between each brake the first time it was both bones. i tried to turn 90 degreas while running full speed and i sliped but landed on my hand while turning so it kinda just sheard. the second was one bone and a football acident but it only happend because i was being a little rough and my arm wasn't totally better. actually a broken bone dosn't really hurt it's just disgusting and it throbs like alot! but it's not as bad as it sounds it really dosen't hurt that much. but you still can't help but to cry. :> --ANOMALY-117 03:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

yea im fast with two hands plus i can type about twice this no problem. as long as im intrested in it of course!ANOMALY-117 03:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

This same IP / user basically wrote the entire Crescent Shipyard and Arthur Leopold Busch (who they claim as a great grandparent) articles. Somebody should probably take a look at those and check for POV, sources etc. The IPs that were blocked could be proxys for Prince William County, VA county government / library or school based on the whois information. I'm not sure how many users may be affected by blocking them. (update, only one of the three were blocked) --Dual Freq 03:27, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

FAC for USS Illinois (BB-65) needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the FAC for USS Illinois (BB-65); all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! TomStar81 (Talk) 07:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Audit on List of United States Navy ships, A

I have gone through List of United States Navy ships, A and from there followed all the articles to look for conformity. I placed many project templates on talk pages, made various corrections to disambig pages, marked for infobox needed etc. Placed a few other wiki related tags as well. Overall, I would say a large majority of the articles are in nice condition. Don't count on me doing the B list anytime soon :) --Brad (talk) 22:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Category:United States Navy ammunition ships

Category:United States Navy ammunition ships is orphaned. Can anyone here find appropriate parent categories for it, or alternatively (if it doesn't fit the structures) nominate it at CfD? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:22, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I've put it into Category:Auxiliary ships of the United States Navy. Gatoclass (talk) 13:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

i think miltary wwll oilers should go along with them as well as milatary tugs in a sub page called miltary service ships. what do you think?--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 14:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Ships like military oilers and tugs are called auxiliaries, and we have categories for them already. TomTheHand (talk) 19:28, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Confederacy

um i havn't checked but since during the civil-war condfedrates were a seprate country do their ships on wiki have the confedrate flags? and if not why not and how would i change them?--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 18:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

They do, - [[Image:Conf Navy Jack (light blue).svg]]. See CSS Alabama for an example of it in action. Benea (talk) 19:14, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Naming help

Could someone tell me what the article mae for the Buque de Proyección Estratégica class amphibious ship page should be? A new user moved it to Juan Carlos I (ship), but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be the correct name per the conventions. Since I'm new to the project, the conventions are still confusing for me, so any help and intervention on this would be appreciated. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 02:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Buque de Proyección Estratégica class amphibious ship sounds right to me. Juan Carlos I (ship) definitely isn't. It's a class, not a single ship. Benea (talk) 02:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it is just a single ship class, to my knowledge. Principe de Asturias (R11) is also a one-ship class, and coes not have a class page. - BillCJ (talk) 02:16, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

(editconflict) Though it might be a little more complicated than that, since it seems to be a one ship class. Spanish amphibious ship Juan Carlos I would be the alternative, if the article concentrated more on the specific ship. But in that there could theoretically be more ships built in the class, then the use of a class page would be fine, with the individual ship details/history being hived off into their own article as and when she commissions. Benea (talk) 02:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The article is now at Juan Carlos (LHD1). While this seems proper (assuming LHD1 is the correct designation), the move was made after I'd posted a note on the article talk page asking that the user wait until the matter has been discussed. This user and I have been engaging it low-grade edit wars all day, and I have no desire to see his pattern of making unilateral edits without discussion continue. However, I doubt he would listen to me at this point, as I've been pretty quick at reverting his bad edits (some have been good), and seem to be the only user to have done so. - BillCJ (talk) 02:43, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The article is correctly titled now according to our conventions, and should be left where it is. If you wanted to develop a page to cover the ships of the class (since it seems there is talk of there being another two ships), that could be at 'Buque de Proyección Estratégica class amphibious ship', or the more likely 'Juan Carlos I class amphibious ship' (or some variant of amphibious ship). Otherwise it seems to be settled that it is a ship page and not a class page, which seems to have been what was at the heart of the edit war. Benea (talk) 02:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, I actually wanted to move the page to the ship name too, but I didn't know what was the proper name. I only reverted his first move so that there wouldn't be too many redirects. Anyway, I agree that there would need to be a class page if the Spanish Navy were to buy more ships. The RAN is buying two as the Canberra class, and they are covered at Canberra class large amphibious ship. THanks for your help in resolving this, and I'm sorry if my quickness to revert has caused you any dificulty. - BillCJ (talk) 03:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

HullNumber.com

Did we ever reach a decision on putting links to HullNumber.com on the articles for every USN ship? I remember there was some discussion about it, and we generally didn't think it was a good idea, and then Usnht (talk · contribs) swung by and explained that it's a free service to sailors. I think we shuffled our feet guiltily and then didn't say anything else on the matter one way or another. TomTheHand (talk) 14:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that it's a good idea - there are lots of military reunion type websites to chose from, and they're generally not regarded as being suitable external links as they don't cotain any information on the actual subject of the article. I guess it falls under Wikipedia not being a social networking service. --Nick Dowling (talk) 00:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Links to what? Gatoclass (talk) 10:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

See Usnht's contributions; basically what he does is add links on ship articles to that ship's subpage on HullNumber.com. TomTheHand (talk) 16:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay. Strictly speaking, I don't think those links are appropriate for an encyclopedia, since they are only of interest to a tiny percentage of readers, basically the former shipmates themselves. Gatoclass (talk) 23:23, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brigantine Yankee

Shoulld this article be kept? Your inputs would be appreciated. --A. B. ^(talk) 22:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

delete its junk untill somebody does something better to it or you could put it into my sand box its under my name but i have no idea where the link is. but if you iyou give it to me itll be awhile before it is returned like say a couple of years. ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

"its junk" is not a valid reason for deletion. Please read over Wikipedia:Deletion policy when you get a chance. TomTheHand (talk) 22:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Patent nonsense or gibberish, yes i know i did look at patent nonsense. but the document is poorly wrriten and gives little insite to the ship so ether merge with the bio (if there is one) of owners or delete for reason as JUNK. because it dosn't pretain to the ship itself it only mentions the ship like onece. ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:30, 10 December 2007 (UTC) other than that there is no reason so if we don't use the above reason then we have to keep it.ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't originally formatted well, but it was never patent nonsense or gibberish. "Patent nonsense" means that the article makes no sense at all; it doesn't mean "not written well." Read Wikipedia:Patent nonsense. It's been cleaned up very well now, which is the right way to deal with an article about a notable subject that contains sources but was not well-formatted. TomTheHand (talk) 22:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

how-ever you had to basicaly start-over did you not? if so then you pretty-much deleted it and made a new article on the boat. so in the end the information didn't pretain to the topic at all. oh and i knew about the patent nonsense thing when i wrote the comment as i say in the first sentence.ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC) sorry if i come off a little harsh or mean. im just board and i like to argue. but other then that you did a great job on the article so now we don't have to delete it. ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not the one who cleaned up the article. Woody (talk · contribs) is the one who did it, and no, he didn't delete it and start over. He cleaned up and reformatted the existing information and added information of his own. You said that you "knew about the patent nonsense thing", but you didn't; you've heard the phrase before, but I think you've misunderstood it. Please read the patent nonsense guideline. TomTheHand (talk) 22:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

no seriosly i read the thing before i made that comment had i not i would have made my self look stupid. so i read it then i made the comment hoping i could a point. of course it was a huge streach but it was all i had.ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I think to summarise:

• It wasn't 'completely and irredeemably confused' content which no one can understand.
• It was 'poorly written content that can be improved'

Patent nonsense instead tends to be criteria for Speedy delete, not an AFD. Benea (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

um.....................ok i guess i'll agree to that summury. :| ANOMALY-117 (talk) 23:06, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of our disagreements here, I would like to thank A. B. for bringing the issue to our attention, and Woody for beating the article into shape with his WP:MOS-stick. One of the reasons I spend so much of my Wikipedia time at WikiProject Ships is because the members of this project do such excellent, speedy work! --Kralizec! (talk) 02:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Thanks A.B. for bringing it to our attention. I am always happy to wield my stick when needed! Woody (talk) 18:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

USS Ontario (1863) - CSD

I just noticed that this article is a speedy delete candidate due to it being a ship that was never completed. What are people's opinions on that? Martocticvs (talk) 00:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I've placed a rationale that since the ship has a DANFS entry, it is notable enough to have an article here and cited two examples of ships that were never completed that are of a high standard: USS Kentucky (BB-66) and USS Illinois (BB-65). -MBK₀₀₄ 00:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I have declined it, mainly per your rationale. No prejudice against an AFD. Woody (talk) 00:26, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Here is the DANFS article in question. The 1863 ship is listed at the bottom and does not have its own article. I've created a dab page at USS Ontario and I think the line there is sufficient to cover the 1863 ship. It is mentioned similarly at USS New York. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Additional functionality added to the WikiProject Ships banner

List

Category

Working independently of each other, Martocticvs (talk · contribs) and I added additional functionality to the {{WikiProject Ships}} banner yesterday. The two new assessment classes are List and Cat. The project's assessment instructions have been updated to include both new classes. As of right now, our project banner makes full use off all classes included in the standardized {{cat class}} header. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Huzzah! (I actually noticed this by incident yesterday). Since lists are now enabled, someone should probably take a look at the lists of ship launches, commissionings, decommissionings and wrecks, as I classed (most of) them before lists were enabled so they now display the wrong class. Or ideally some tech-wizard could make a bot to fix 'em, which would save a lot of trouble... Anyways, very good job on enabling the missing classes. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 22:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Category:Ship articles without an infobox was deleted!

Just an FYI. Deleted without notification, rationale being empty category, yet I just added the {{Ship infobox request}} to a few articles. The CfD discussion is here, and the deletion review discussion is here. Apparently we were not the only WikiProject affected. What happened? -MBK₀₀₄ 22:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, there is now a red-link related to this in the {{Ships sidebar}}. -MBK₀₀₄ 22:20, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Those cats were renamed—ours was (somewhat bizarrely) renamed from Category:Ship articles without an infobox to Category:Ship articles without infoboxes. The template {{Ship infobox request}} was updated, though, so everything should work fine; I'll look around for any links that need fixing. Maralia (talk) 22:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, that explains that. The renaming was a bit strange, also that we weren't notified at all. Or were we notified and I just forgot? -MBK₀₀₄ 22:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

We weren't notified here. I happened to see it while it was up for rename at CfD, but didn't raise a stink about it since they were only discussing renaming it from 'without' to 'needing'—an immaterial change for our purposes. I didn't notice the CfD had been closed, so thanks for pointing it out so I could fix links. Maralia (talk) 22:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I put a Table of Contents tag on the category so you can click U to see all of the USS ships, for example. --Brad (talk) 23:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Cost of ships

I wonder if someone happens to know the approximate cost of the following WWII ship types:

• Type C2 ship
• Type C3 ship
• Destroyer escort
• LSM [2]
• High endurance cutter [3]
• Bogue class escort carrier?

Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 08:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Not sure which HEC you mean, but USCG Treasury Class Cutter says those cost $2.5 million, but no refs. --Dual Freq (talk) 23:40, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more specific, but I didn't know there was more than one class of WWII-era cutters. I was referring to the Owasco class high endurance cutters, they were 255 footers as opposed to the Treasury class 327+ feet. Gatoclass (talk) 00:47, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, Colton company says $4.24 million each for Owasco WPG's and I started a class article, USCG Owasco Class Cutter, which is shamelessly copied from the USCG article. The colton links don't all have costs, but give other information like this one for Ingalls that shows the Bogue class escort carrier Battler was originally intended to be Mormacmail a type C3-S-A1 freighter. Kind of interesting stuff, though I don't know its sources or reliability. --Dual Freq (talk) 04:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Aargh, pain. Dual Freq went and wrote an article on them. Dammit, I wanted the glory! That'll teach me for mentioning it here :(

Revenge. Gatoclass (talk) 08:24, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

$4.2 million seems a lot (given for example, that a much larger C2 freighter was only $2 million) but then it does say they had a complicated drive mechanism, so maybe it makes sense. Gatoclass (talk) 06:08, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

BTW, is it normal to proceed class articles with the arm of service, ie "USCG"? Shouldn't it just be "Owasco class cutter" (and with small caps)? Gatoclass (talk) 06:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that too, and it's not right to have USCG or caps in the class article name. He was following an already existing bad pattern in Category:USCG high endurance cutters, though, and there are some more in the parent category. Some of those renames will probably be over older redirects, so it will take tools to fix. Maralia (talk) 06:23, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, but there shouldn't be any problem with renaming the Owasco article should there? Since there are very few links to it yet.

I don't want to have to create a bunch of incorrect links that I will have to change later because the article name is wrong, so do you mind if I go and change the article name now? Gatoclass (talk) 08:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Per WP:MOVE: "If the new title already exists but is just a redirect to the old title, with just one line in the page history, the creation of the redirect, then you can rename the page." I'll be happy to make the moves when I settle in later in the morning, but I do want to re-emphasize that moving over a redirect which has never been anything else can be done by anyone with no tools at all. TomTheHand (talk) 12:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of misnamed articles, it seems to me that High endurance cutter is another one. This article appears to be mainly about Hamilton class cutters, although it briefly mentions another class, but it fails to mention the Owasco class at all, which were quite different vessels but which were also known as high endurance cutters.

I was about to say I think it should probably be renamed "Hamilton class cutter" and the info about the Hero class (which is scarcely more than a sentence) removed, but I notice that "Hamilton class cutter" already redirects to this page. So I'm thinking that now we have the Owascos as well, it's time to move the content of this article back to the "Hamilton class cutter" redirect page, does that seem appropriate? Gatoclass 13:50, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Update: It appears the Hamilton class cutters are also referred to sometimes as Secretary class, while three of them are sometimes referred to as Hero class. So it seems the obvious thing to do is to just move the contents of High endurance cutter to Hamilton class cutter and redirect Secretary class cutter and Hero class cutter to Hamilton class cutter. High endurance cutter can then be filled with some generic information about the purpose of this type of ship in general, along with some links to the various classes including the Owascos.

If nobody objects I will shortly go ahead with these moves. Gatoclass 14:07, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to screw up the article name, I took the easy way out and just copied the format used on the others. I should have named it correctly and noted the other bad names. I think I did them correctly in Commons:Category:Cutters of the United States Would the same apply to USCG Medium Endurance Cutter? There are 4 WMECs that aren't Reliance or Famous class though. --Dual Freq 01:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I found another source for C type freighters: "The "C" boats were designed before the outbreak of the war and are regarded by the commission as among the world's finest in their class. The three types will average about 10,000 deadweight tons. The cost was estimated at $2,200,000 to $3,000,000 each." (Two Ships A Day Building Program For U.S. Planned. The Robesonian, Lumberton, North Carolina, Wednesday, August 27, 1941, Page 18.) Another source says "The "American Press," fourth of five C-l typo cargo vessels to be constructed here under a $10,635,000 Federal maritime commission contract..." and "...Work on the fifth C-l type vessel to be constructed at the local plant has already started and with the launching tomorrow. Western (Western Pipe and Steel company) will be able to start work on the first of four C-3 type vessels to be constructed under an $11,960,000 contract. Western has a contract for two other C-3 type vessels for $5,930,000." (Launching Set For Tomorrow. Times, The, San Mateo, California, Monday, March 10, 1941, Page 14) --Dual Freq 03:02, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Well done DF, I appreciate your efforts. So now we've got costs of HEC's and C3's. I think all that's left is cost of the DE's and LSM's, although a more exact price for C2's would be nice, since we really only know they must be priced at somewhere between 2 and 3 million. Oh - still no price for the Bogues either. Gatoclass 04:14, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:Landing Ship Medium for that one, $1 mil each. I haven't had much luck on the Bogues, I guess it would be C3 plus conversion cost, but I haven't found that. I did find a ref from 1948 for USS Long Island to be converted back to cargo for over $1 million, but that wasn't a Bogue but if it costs 1 mil to convert back that might be close to what it cost to make. As for the destroyer escorts, I found an article from February 16, 1943 that doesn't name any ships, but describes an "escort ship" bigger than a 172-ft sub-chaser and smaller than a 2100 ton destroyer. Those cost $3 million and were to be build primarily at Boston Navy Yard, and Bethlehem-Hingham. Maybe that will help. --Dual Freq 04:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

According to Lt. Comdr. F. C. Billing, USNR, "skipper" of a new DE, "The cost of a destroyer escort is roughly $3,500,000—approximately half the price of a destroyer. The building time for an escort is now on a mass production basis, approximately four months, compared to the current average of nine months for a destroyer."(Navy's 'DE' Ships Described By Reporter As 'Remarkable Craft. The Port Arthur News, Port Arthur, Texas, Sunday, August 01, 1943, Page 12) --Dual Freq 04:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Hey, that's great work DF, I really appreciate that :)

I don't know what the Bogues cost either but I do know they took three times as long to build as a standard C3 cargo vessel, so presumably they would cost approximately three times as much, but it would be nice to have an exact figure. Gatoclass 05:01, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

This is the best I can do for now on the Bogue class, an article talking about USS Breton (CVE-23) built at Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding says the following: "Requiring only three weeks from keel to launching, the USS Breton, new type escort carrier, is ready for active service in the fleet." (though this conflicts with the wiki-article. Wartime secrecy / censorship issues?) ... "Such a ship costs eight to nine million dollars" ... "Construction of the carrier took about 3,000,000 man-hours—equivalent to four or five of the well known Liberty ships." (New Carrier Is Ready for Fleet Action. Syracuse Herald Journal, Syracuse, New York, Monday, April 05, 1943, Page 20) --Dual Freq 06:24, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Well that confirms that they are indeed about three times as much as a standard C3. Thanks once again DF. You are pretty good at research! Gatoclass 06:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a note regarding the costs of vessels built by the US Maritime Commission, especially those built for use by the US Navy: I feel the only relevant figures would be those of final cost. Often times figures reported are contract costs but fail to take into account the many adjustments made long after the signing of the original contracts. For instance, prevailing law mandated clauses in all MarCom vessel contracts allowing MarCom to recover excess profits from the builders after the completion of the contract. Furthermore, after the war, the Republicans regained control of Congress and took their own turn hacking away at builder's profits. The Casablanca class carriers contracted between Kaiser Company, Inc. and the US Maritime Commission were originally contracted at a cost of $10 million per vessel for a quantity of fifty vessels. However, the final cost report for these fifty vessels show the total cost paid for all fifty was $300 million - or just $6 million per vessel. A considerable difference between contract cost and actual outlay. The $200 million total difference can only in part be explained by the two rounds of charge-backs for excess profits - roughly $150 million worth. But $50 million of the $200 million dollar difference was due to the poor quality of workmanship produced by the Kaiser organization which the Navy refused to reimburse the Maritime Commission for and in turn MarCom then refused to pay Kaiser. I think for the Bogues, built by a more reputable builder Sea-Tac, there won't likely be found such a great disparity between contracted cost and final cost - at least not for lack of quality purposes. However, even these vessels were subject to the efforts made to recoup excess profits after they were built and contract completed. There are a host of excellent graphs and tables within the book Ships For Victory, a history of the US maritime Commission during WWII. I'm certain one or more of these can more specifically help you zero in on actual final costs for different ship types.

One last point: C-3s, as an example, were built to so many different configurations and each version or variety would have a different cost thanks to anticipated man hour fluctuations due to the differing designs. Even the emergency ships, EC-1, VC-2 etc, were built to numerous different designs suited for certain specialties - hospital ships, ammunition ships, troop ships, etc - that it would seem both impossible and misleading to lump all ships of a common hull type to a single dollar figure representing its cost. five (talk) 09:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Article name changes

Okay, since there have been no objections I've changed the names of the articles as proposed above.

• The content of the USCG High Endurance Cutter page has been moved to Hamilton class cutter. High endurance cutter has been made a disambig page (between the Hamilton and Owasco classes). The "USCG High Endurance Cutter" page should probably now just be deleted since it follows a nonstandard naming convention and is serving no useful purpose. Update: Actually, no it probably shouldn't be deleted yet since there are a number of pages that link to it and they should be redirected to other pages first.
• Secretary class cutter now redirects to Hamilton class cutter and I created a new page, Hero class cutter which also redirects to Hamilton class cutter.
• Renamed USCG Owasco Class Cutter to Owasco class cutter. The prior page should probably now be deleted. Gatoclass 04:35, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Nice work! Renaming articles into compliance with WP:NC-SHIP could almost be a full-time job. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Cost of Ships - Could We Have Template Changes

It would be very helpful if the ship infobox and ship class infobox were changed to include the cost of ships. However suchg data would only be useful if people stated (1) exclusions, and (2) sources - presumably these could be handled by making them items on the template.--Toddy1 09:50, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't know what you mean by exclusions but I think sources could be handled by a footnote couldn't they? Gatoclass 10:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the deprecated {{Infobox ship}} template included an optional "cost" field, however, neither the replacement {{Infobox Ship}} nor the alternate {{Infobox Ship Example}} have a cost. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

On a side note, shouldn't {{Infobox Ship}} be deprecated as well, seeing as the three-stage template shown in {{Infobox Ship Example}} is more useful... also Infobox Ship doesn't look the same as the three-stage one. Martocticvs 17:43, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, there's a slight problem with {{Infobox Ship Example}} in my view and that is that the "Ship class" field is listed under the "General Characteristics" section instead of the "Ship career" section. IMO, the ship class should be listed right at the top of the infobox, before the ship name and the other individual details, as it is in the {{Infobox Ship}} template. I can't imagine why it was changed.

You can change the order in {{Infobox Ship Example}} and it will display correctly, but by default the "Ship class" field is in the wrong place. Gatoclass 12:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

"Ship class" was moved because it is a characteristic, not part of the ship's career. Please do not move it to the career section. That functionality is deprecated and the capability only remains because removing it would break early uses of the template. TomTheHand 16:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The class is a characteristic of the ship - something entirely separate from its career, so it definitely should not be moved back, as it makes no sense under career. Martocticvs 17:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. Ships can change class during their career, but their characteristics do not change. In other words, class is merely a name rather than a physical characteristic, and it should be listed along with all the other more-or-less ephemeral names under "career".

More importantly though, class is an important identifier and I think it should be right at the top of the infobox, not halfway down. Gatoclass 17:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Class changes about as often as any other characteristic. Class isn't part of a ship's career, so it doesn't go in the career section. When we created the new ship infobox we talked about what kind of information should go under Career and what should go under Characteristics and made a number of changes from the old Infobox Ship to make the new one more logically consistent. The Career section is for various milestones in the ship's life, not descriptions of what the ship is. The infobox is now in use on hundreds of articles and moving fields will cause inconsistencies in appearance. TomTheHand 18:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Besides which, characteristics can certainly change from time to time - and that's something the current infobox templates allow for - just see HMS Monmouth (1667) for example... The career section is for things that happened to the ship during it's service with whichever navy is in question... being ordered, launched, fighting in a battle, being wrecked - those are things that happened to the ship during it's lifetime. Being a something-class ship isn't something that happened to it, it's what the ship is, so it belongs in characteristics, just as do things such as length, and armament, etc. Characteristics describe the ship itself, career describes things that have happened to it. Martocticvs 19:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Exclusions - do the costs exclude armament? engines? armour? fitting for sea?--Toddy1 18:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Class isn't part of a ship's career, so it doesn't go in the career section.

But it is a part of a ship's career. When a Bogue class escort carrier becomes an Attacker class escort carrier, what is the logical place to list the change other than in the separate "Career" structures for the two navies?

I think hiding the class characteristic halfway down the article is a bad idea. IMO the previous ship infobox had it right, putting it at the top. Even assuming you were right that class belongs more under characteristics than career, which I'm not persuaded is the case, there are exceptions to most rules and I think class ought to be one of them. Gatoclass 18:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't think that changes in name only need to be listed anywhere in the infobox; they're just not very important. On the other hand, the logical place to put USS Boston (CA-69)'s change from the Baltimore class to Boston class is in the characteristics section. TomTheHand 18:38, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, USS Boston doesn't appear to have any class in its infobox.

I've been using the older infobox that lists class at the top and I've got used to it. I guess from a technical POV, it makes sense to list the class under characteristics, but when I tried it it didn't seem right. Maybe there's another alternative? I might have to think about this issue some more. Gatoclass 03:09, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Categorization of small warships

I'd like to see if we could get a little discussion going about how to categorize small warships. There's a lot of overlap in the terminology here. On the one hand, I don't think we should have separate categories for every name a navy could possibly give a ship. On the other hand, I don't want us making groupings that are really original research.

Some stuff I have issues with are modern (20th century+) frigates, destroyer escorts, torpedo boats, corvettes, sloops, Fast Attack Craft (FACs), patrol boats, and gunboats. And maybe others. Like the littoral combat ship. Many of these terms had very distinct meanings in the Age of Sail, but today it's all very blurry. Some of it's just image; a boat might be called a fast attack craft by a navy that wants to sound aggressive, but the same vessel in the hands of a more defensive navy might be a patrol boat.

Off the bat, I would say that (modern) frigates and destroyer escorts are synonymous. They're the British and American names (respectively) for essentially the same type of ship: an ocean-going ASW craft that's cheaper than a destroyer. "Frigate" is the term that prevailed, and all USN DEs were renamed FFs in the United States Navy 1975 ship reclassification.

However, the others are more murky, as far as I'm concerned. I'm tempted to lump them all into a "small warships" category. TomTheHand (talk) 20:56, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I probably shouldn't have posted this until after we'd made some progress on the obsolete infoboxes, above. We've made really good progress on the infobox issue, though, so I'd like to bring this topic up again. Here's what I'm proposing:

• Merge Category:Corvette classes, Category:Fast attack craft classes, and Category:Patrol vessel classes into one category, like Category:Small combatant classes
• Rename and merge various similar categories, like Category:United States Navy gunboats, Category:United States Navy littoral combat ships, Category:United States Navy corvettes, etc into categories like Category:Small combatants of the United States Navy

I'm proposing this because among small combatants, classification schemes very blurry and arbitrary, and they often have as much to do with politics as they do with logic. TomTheHand (talk) 01:23, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not intimately familiar with all these different classes and types, but my initial response is that I don't think corvettes and patrol boats should be lumped together in the same category. A corvette is a vessel of 1000+ tons, a patrol boat is just that, a little boat of 100 tons or so. Gatoclass (talk) 12:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I can see a certain logic in what you're proposing, but I'm still kind of uncomfortable with the idea of lumping togethr corvettes and patrol boats in the one category. I tend to think of a corvette as a distinct ship type, much like a destroyer escort.

Would it make sense perhaps to have some sort of separate category for coastal patrol vessels, as opposed to oceangoing ships? Gatoclass (talk) 13:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I do see what you're saying. Corvettes range from about 400-2000 tons; I think they should be categorized separately from frigates, which tend to range from 1500-5000 tons. A 500 ton corvette is certainly distinct from a 100 ton patrol boat. However, Category:Patrol vessel classes isn't just 100 ton boats; the vessels we have in there range from 24 tons up to 3200. Clearly a 24-ton Scimitar class patrol vessel is not the same type of ship as a 3200-ton Barentshav class OPV.

There are a number of ships that mess that up an oceangoing/coastal patrol distinction for me. For example, is a 480-ton Tarantul class corvette really oceangoing? Is a 1700-ton River class patrol vessel really restricted to the coast?

I'm not comfortable with us trying to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether a ship is oceangoing or not. It seems like original research to me. That's why I suggested a broad merge; there's a ton of overlap in this area.

However, I think a more limited merge of Category:Fast attack craft classes and Category:Patrol vessel classes, hopefully into a name that lets torpedo boats go there as well, would probably be good enough, and a big improvement over the current situation. As you've said, "corvette" usually has a pretty specific meaning. "Patrol craft", "fast attack craft", and "torpedo boats" are, in my opinion, where logical naming schemes really start to break down. TomTheHand (talk) 16:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

While I have mixed feelings on the issue, I can see the logic in merging Category:Patrol vessel classes and Category:Fast attack craft classes. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, unless anyone has any immediate objections, in a few hours (or tomorrow) I'm going to go propose a merge of Category:Patrol vessel classes and Category:Fast attack craft classes into Category:Small combatant classes. I'll leave corvettes out of this. If anyone has any better name suggestions, please give them now; I'm iffy on "Small warship classes" because some of the contents are really boats, not ships. TomTheHand (talk) 20:20, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Please discuss the merge here. Thanks! TomTheHand (talk) 19:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Greenspun illustration project: requests now open

Dear Wikimedians,

This is a (belated) announcement that requests are now being taken for illustrations to be created for the Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP).

The aim of the project is to create and improve illustrations on Wikimedia projects. You can help by identifying which important articles or concepts are missing illustrations (diagrams) that could make them a lot easier to understand. Requests should be made on this page: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Requests

If there's a topic area you know a lot about or are involved with as a Wikiproject, why not conduct a review to see which illustrations are missing and needed for that topic? Existing content can be checked by using Mayflower to search Wikimedia Commons, or use the Free Image Search Tool to quickly check for images of a given topic in other-language projects.

The community suggestions will be used to shape the final list, which will be finalised to 50 specific requests for Round 1, due to start in January. People will be able to make suggestions for the duration of the project, not just in the lead-up to Round 1.

• General information about the project: m:Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project
• Potential illustrators and others interested in the project should join the mailing list: mail:greenspun-illustrations

thanks, pfctdayelise (talk) 12:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC) (Project coordinator)

Template:Infobox Ship Class

With the Infobox Ship Class template, the class type field replicates on two spots, the title and an item in the list on the infobox. Because of this, it looks wrong in the title when you capitalize it, yet it looks wrong if it's lowercase in the list. Is there anything you can do about it? American Patriot 1776 (talk) 22:10, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, as a side question. Should those articles using Infobox Ship be changed over to Infobox Ship Example? American Patriot 1776 (talk) 22:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It's fixable. I tried to fix it; but it didn't take. Either I coded wrong, or perhaps WP has longer update lag or batches template updates - I haven't worked on templates for larger wikis before, so not sure. But it can be fixed - I'll just let someone else do it. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:23, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Regarding {{Infobox Ship}} → {{Infobox Ship Example}} migration, I would say that because it is now considered to be deprecated, that yes they should be changed, but perhaps at the moment there is no overriding need to do that. More important is getting infoboxes onto articles that currently don't have them at all, or are using a much older version that does not look anything like the current version. Obviously {{Infobox Ship}} should not be used on any new articles, of course... Martocticvs (talk) 23:40, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced edits to submarine articles

An IP, 68.45.128.161 (talk · contribs), is making minor edits to many U.S. fleet submarines, including expanding abbreviated names and adding other very specific details, without citing any sources. I'm not super-comfortable with this; for the most part, the articles are based directly on DANFS and are therefore well-sourced. This new information isn't from DANFS, and it sometimes contradicts it. We all know that DANFS can be wrong, and we've sent them corrections in the past, but we've done so after doing a good bit of research using other reliable sources. I've left two messages on the IP's talk page requesting that sources be cited. There have been no edits after the second message.

So here's where I need help: first, if the edits start up again, what do we do? I certainly don't want to scare off someone with an interest in ships, but we need sources. Second, what do we do with the edits that have already been made, especially the ones that contradict DANFS? TomTheHand (talk) 18:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a potential new member of the project! I went ahead and left a welcome message encouraging them to join. --Kralizec! (talk) 18:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately it looks like they stopped editing. Their last edit was right before your welcome message. What do we do with these edits? I'm especially concerned about the ones that contradict DANFS; as I said, DANFS has been wrong many times in the past, but I prefer DANFS over anonymous, unsourced edits. TomTheHand (talk) 22:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

depending on what and how many i will gladly check his words so don't touch m and let me know what the list is and the number of edits ANOMALY-117 (talk) 01:14, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

USS Akron (ZRS-4)

I was going through Category:Unassessed-Class Ships articles and stumbled on this article that has been tagged for our project. the question is, does it really belong within our mandate? Officially it was commissioned as a "ship", but an airship. So, thoughts? -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 22:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but only because it was commissioned as an official USS vessel? --Kralizec! (talk) 22:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually leaning on no, since even if it was commissioned as an official USS vessel, it wasn't an actual water-going ship. And where to we draw the line? There have been (real) ship companies operating airships, should we then by the same logic include those as they were ships operated by a ship company? (Sorry if I'm sounding rude btw, it's 1 in the morning, I should be in bed and I can't tell if I'm being rude or not). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 22:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it's primarily WP:AVIATION's topic, but we perhaps should take a mild interest in it? Akron was a commissioned vessel in the U.S. Navy and we should be interested in making sure its appearance remains compatible with that of other USN vessels. However, for the most part I don't think it's in our jurisdiction. Perhaps it should have a WP:SHIPS banner, but rated as low importance? TomTheHand (talk) 22:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, while this isn't what our primary focus is on, it is somewhat related and a Low-importance tagging seems justified. The same would go for the three (IIRC) airships the USN had from this time-period as well. -MBK₀₀₄ 22:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I hate project creep, so I almost always lean towards a "no" on these sorts of questions; but I am forced to acknowledge the scope on this projects main page is open to it where it says "We are a group dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to ships of all types and eras." --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I've been wondering the same thing; I've been treating US Navy blimps as aircraft, and formatting articles according to WikiProject Aircraft's guidelines. This, however is a commissioned ship, so a little different from largely anonymous blimps. I wonder if the best solution for these would be to default to WikiProject Aircraft for the bulk of the layout, but incorporate the "career" section of WikiProject Ship's layout? I'm happy to take care of it if others here agree. --Rlandmann (talk) 23:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm convinced enough to give it a complete assessment, since as Barek noted, ship-related articles also belong to our scope. And while not a proper ship imo, it is definately related. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 09:19, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem there, of course, would be that if the WP:Aircraft formatting were to be introduced to the articles, we'd end up with a lot of duplication, with (for example) the length of the aircraft listed in the infobox:ship and the Specifications (aircraft) section... --Rlandmann (talk) 10:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... but it looks like there's already an infobox for use on airships that includes length and stuff: {{Infobox Airship}} TomTheHand (talk) 16:12, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, but I do want to note that if you guys aren't a big fan of that infobox, we can provide just the image and career sections of the ship infobox (completely leave characteristics off) and you guys can give WP:Aircraft-style statistics at the article bottom. Our ship infobox isn't well-suited to displaying characteristics of airships, and the custom infobox currently in use is less than ideal. TomTheHand (talk) 17:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I've found and tagged all the airships that the USN ever put into service according to what we've decided upon in the discussion above:

• USS Shenandoah (ZR-1)
• R38 (ZR-2)
• USS Los Angeles (ZR-3)
• USS Akron (ZRS-4)
• USS Macon (ZRS-5)

-MBK₀₀₄ 22:53, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

mm. if we take those as "ships of the air" what about prarie schooners? but if it is part of the navy or is classifed as a ship we should have some say in it especially in the stats like weight builder ..etc..ANOMALY-117 (talk) 01:17, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Infobox templates

MilHist's infobox conversion page indicates plans to convert usage of old templates {{Infobox Military Submarine}} and {{Submarine}} to "{{Infobox Ship}} and {{Service record}}". Before I go griping about {{Infobox Ship}} being deprecated, I have to admit I didn't even know about the service record template. I wonder if {{Infobox Ship Example}} will match up nicely with {{Service record}} for display. Can anyone play around with them and magically answer this whilst I sleep? Maralia (talk) 05:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't notice this until just now. Yes, you can stick {{Service record}} inside an {{Infobox Ship Example}}. I have only one concern, and it's a tiny one. Because the Career header bar usually contains a flag, it winds up being kind of tall. The General Characteristics header bar was originally just big enough for the text it contains, but in order for it to match the Career bar better, it's now 30 pixels tall. Service Record is only as tall as the text it contains. We could just say "eh, doesn't matter", we could shrink the General Characteristics bar back down again, or we could talk to MILHIST about making the Service Record header 30 pixels tall. TomTheHand (talk) 21:43, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

{{Service record}} is intended to be placed under an infobox (like a campaignbox would be), not inside it; I suspect it wouldn't actually work correctly in the latter case. Kirill 22:43, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Our ship infobox is unusual in that it is four separate templates all enclosed in one table. If you don't put {{Service record}} inside any of the other templates, but simply stick it between or after them (but before the table is closed out), it seems to me to work fine. See User:TomTheHand/test. TomTheHand (talk) 23:32, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see. It should be fairly trivial to change the bar height to 30px; so please let me know if that's what you would like to see happen. Kirill 23:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

If it doesn't cause any problems for you, I would appreciate it. It would make all of our header bars match in size. TomTheHand (talk) 02:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, done. You'll need to set |is_ship=yes when you use it in the ship infobox to get the height to change. Kirill 05:13, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Date linking

Just wanted to give everyone the heads-up: it appears that the folks over at WP:MOSNUM are planning on removing the longstanding "link all dates so that they'll autoformat" guideline; if you have an opinion, they might want to hear from you over there, but if not, be prepared for the possibility of editors and bots sweeping through ship articles and de-linking the dates. We may want to have a discussion about consistent date formatting. Although MM-DD-YYYY is common in U.S. writing, the U.S. Navy seems to use DD-MM-YYYY, so I think we might be using an awful lot of that format. TomTheHand (talk) 22:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Per some of the discussion over there, I would suggest — if this comes to pass — we have the month spelled out. Either "15 December 2007" or "December 15, 2007" is unambiguous. (But I'm sure that's what you were suggesting, too, Tom, right?) — Bellhalla (talk) 21:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Potential crap

Eagle 101 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) noted on the Administrators' noticeboard that an automated scan for "potential crap" articles (aka those with no wikilinks and at least one external link) turned up over 6000 candidates. The following articles on the list appear to fall under the purview of our project and desperately need assistance:

• FACM Class La Combattante IIa
• List of Wickes class destroyers
• USCG 95 foot Cape class patrol boat
• USS Dixon (AS-37) cleaned up a bit
• USS Orion (AS-18) cleaned up a bit
• USS St. Regis River cleaned up a bit

The entire list can be viewed at User:Eagle 101/potential crap 3. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:14, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Should be Crap that has potential. I've wondered why there was no decent La Combattante class article, I've tried to link to one in the past. --Dual Freq 22:16, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

List of Wickes class destroyers was apparently forked off from Wickes class destroyer because it's so big. I would probably lean toward merging it back in, but compacting it into a table that just contains a few key dates. What do you guys think? TomTheHand 00:56, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I could probably go along with that, although I'd like to see a column for the individual shipbuilders as well. I don't think these expanded "illustrated lists" serve much purpose because they are neither an easily scanned summary nor an informative article. Gatoclass 04:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

anything with a real and reliable source should kept and if we have never encournterd the source give it the benifit of the dout and you should sort the list by subject into other lits then send each list to an aporpriate project then those projects will sort through there lists and send what ever they keep to the stub project. unless of course im wrong, they can't all be ships? ANOMALY-117 04:07, 2 December 2007 (UTC) in the event that im wrong we should sort them in manner of my statement above then send them to the stub project for stubingANOMALY-117 04:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC) pardon the spelling and grammerANOMALY-117 04:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I should also add that Hannah Elizabeth (ship) also falls within the scope of this project. I have tried to clean it up a bit, however it could still use some work. Also International Naval Research Organization might be considered within our scope as well. -- malo (tlk) (cntrbtns) 23:14, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Category:Japanese submarines lost during World War II as a child of Category:World War II submarines of Japan

Today I saw that Bellhalla (talk · contribs) was removing Category:World War II submarines of Japan from articles that already have Category:Japanese submarines lost during World War II, because the former is the parent category of the latter. It makes sense, but I'm not a big fan of it, because I think it's useful to be able to look at a single category and see all WWII subs of Japan rather than having to flip through two separate categories to see lost subs and subs that survived the war. I think we should duplicate the articles across both cats. I wanted to bring it up here, because it's an issue we haven't addressed in the past. What does everyone think? TomTheHand (talk) 19:33, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with having both categories on the pages. I was just approaching it from a parent cat/child cat perspective. I can see the utility of having both in the articles. (I come across so many articles that have parent cats that clutter up the bottom of the article — e.g. Category:World War II ships, Category:World War II ships of the United States, Category:World War II auxiliary ships of the United States — that I was just trying to help out.) — Bellhalla (talk) 12:52, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly support removing parent cats in general; I do it myself all the time. I don't think there are many cases where duplication serves any purpose, but I can see a point in keeping both in this case. Maralia (talk) 20:55, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Is it really useful to maintain a child category for those submarines lost during World War II? Why not just move them all into the parent? --Rlandmann (talk) 21:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I think moving articles from cats like Category:World War II ships down to something way more specific is important, but I feel like the Category:Ships by era structure should stop at the (era) (ship type) of (country) level, like Category:World War II submarines of Japan. I think the lost subs cat is interesting, and I think putting it under World War II submarines of Japan is the most logical place, but I don't think of it as a true child category, more like a separate cat that's placed in Ships by era because that's the most logical way to find it. TomTheHand (talk) 22:58, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Category:Ship disambiguation

I've altered {{Shipindex}} so that articles without the "name" parameter are sorted to the top of Category:Ship disambiguation. There are a lot of them; anyone want to help get them properly sorted? It's easy — just add "|name=<Shipname>" to {{shipindex}}.
—wwoods (talk) 19:27, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I have made note of this and will use that from here on and replace ones that I find along the way. Almost seems like a bot task? --Brad (talk) 23:07, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you set a bot to look for "USS " or "HMS " at the beginning of the pagename and remove it? Sounds doable, but I don't know how.

—wwoods (talk) 23:57, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

No, not exactly but I have been reading up about WP:AWB and it seems that one could easily load Category:Ship disambiguation into the AWB and check for instances of {{shipindex}} to be replaced with {{shipindex|name=whatever}}. I'm not ready yet to install the AWB but I know there are others on this project that already use it so maybe they will see this exchange and help out. --Brad (talk) 02:02, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I tried it with AWB, but I couldn't figure out how to get PAGENAME inserted after name=. It's easy to find shipindex and replace it with shipindex|name= but then you have to copy and paste the title manually. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:06, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I can help with this. But I have to ask, is this going to be a permanent or temporary change? Because some pages should just be alphabetized by the whole page name. (Some examples that I've come across include: Fürst Bismarck, Flower class, L15, etc.) It seems silly to have to add the page name, if that is, indeed, how it needs to be sorted. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:41, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I suppose not; I tried it to see if it would work, but the way it was, the nameless articles could be found by looking under "H" and "U". And maybe other places. Want me to revert it?

—wwoods (talk) 18:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced material in articles.

Particularly in these three articles:

• USS McCloy (FF-1038)
• USS Donald B. Beary (FF-1085)
• USS Cascade (AD-16)

Some of the articles have DANFS entries which have then been added to (more like hurled with reckless abandon) with a huge block of text from a source that I haven't been able to locate. The idea was to clean up these articles with wiki links etc but I hardly see why an effort should be made to do this if references cannot be determined and the material should be removed. I've left notes on the talk pages for the exact problems. Any thoughts? --Brad (talk) 23:02, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I've chopped up USS Donald B. Beary (FF-1085), as it was an apparent copyvio of [4]. Maralia (talk) 15:03, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I would have called that a copyvio. If it really is the "Command History", military.com cannot claim copyright over a US Gov't document. Unfortunately, until http://www.history.navy.mil/decomship/index.htm gets properly populated, I guess we have to err on the side of caution that military.com may have written their own summary. --J Clear (talk) 05:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok all is well now. Thanks for the help; I finished Cascade this morning. --Brad (talk) 17:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Career template question for Decommission / Recommission then another Decommission

In {{Infobox Ship Career}} I can't seem to figure out where to put a second decommissioning. It has a place for a first commissioning, then a spot for the decommissioning, and even a spot for recommission, but where do I put the date for the second decommissioning after a ship is recommissioned? I was working on USS Keosanqua (AT-38), but had no where to put all 4 dates. Maybe I missed it in the docs. Any suggestions? --Dual Freq (talk) 23:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've faced the same problem but then I considered exactly how important the dates really were. Unless interim commissioning and decommissioning dates are really important, I've just been entering the first and then the final. Otherwise the box ends up being too long. If someone were that interested in the ship, the information will be in the article regardless. But you should be able to place the info in the box like so:

|Ship decommissioned=

|Ship recommissioned=

by adding your own line within the box: |Ship recommissioned=

--Brad (talk) 02:20, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Dual Freq, in order to repeat fields you need to repeat the Career template. You'll have something like this:

|Ship commissioned=

|Ship decommissioned=

}}

{{Infobox Ship Career

|Hide header=yes

|Ship recommissioned=

|Ship decommissioned=

And so on. See here for a full example, and let me know if you have any other questions. It's a little complicated, but it's the only way I knew how to allow arbitrary numbers of repetitions of fields. TomTheHand (talk) 02:24, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I guess I didn't word the question right, I figured all of that out and there was no need in that case to use a second career box. I was looking for a |Ship decommissioned2= field so that all 4 dates could be used in the same career box. Ship commissioned= then Ship decommissioned=, then Ship recommissioned= and finally Ship decommissioned2=. Its probably not worth adding it to the template, and I usually don't note a recommissioning for an overhaul, but this one was decommissioned for 12 years. I figured if there was a field for recommissioning then there must be one for re-decommissioning. --Dual Freq (talk) 03:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather not add a second decommission field, since the new infobox was pretty much written with the intention of solving the decommission/recommission/decommission issue by using a second career template with a hidden header. I wanted to avoid doing commissioned2, decommissioned2, commissioned3, decommissioned3, etc, because I found that to be really ugly and I wanted to be able to support any number of recommissionings. I was sure that no matter how many numbered sets of fields I put in, there would be one ship article that required one more.

Just to be clear, if you put |Hide header=yes into your second Career infobox, it will look just like one big career from the viewpoint of the reader. The repeated career templates aren't just for showing separate careers for different navies, they're for illustrating complex careers with one navy. Sorry, I linked to the wrong example above; see this one. TomTheHand (talk) 03:46, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

ok here's an idea lets replace our fleet of infoboxes. so basically we need to build newer and more capable boxes and "decomision" our old ones ANOMALY-117 (talk) 01:21, 15 December 2007 (UTC) If I may make a suggestion: If you have multiple fields for decommisioning and recommisiong perhaps you could add a tab like "|reason=" or "|conflict=" or something along those lines so that these fields can be sub devided along conflict lines for warships. Just something to think about. I also like the idea of hide tab. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Shipbucket Drawings

hi folks,

I have been in touch with the chap behind Shipbucket, Mr Martin Conrads to get his permission for the drawings to be used as illustrations for our articles.

I will update all on the status and what sort of attribution is required by him.

http://s90.photobucket.com/albums/k279/shipbucket/

Koxinga CDF (talk) 03:34, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. It would be fantastic if we could use those drawings. --Nick Dowling (talk) 03:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Note that for us to be able to use them, he will have to release them under a GFDL or compatible licence, effectively allowing anyone and everyone to use them: not just Wikipedia. But great if he agrees!! --Rlandmann (talk) 03:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought that it was possible for people to release images for use only on Wikipedia? I'm sure that I've seen images tagged in this way. --Nick Dowling (talk) 03:48, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

No - if you've seen images claiming this, then they're being used incorrectly. There are only two grounds on which we can use images: if they're freely reproducible by anyone and everyone, or if we're invoking "fair use". Even then, "fair use" images are only permitted under very limited and strict conditions. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:47, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

This page explains what terms an image must be licensed under to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The rules are pretty much the same for Wikipedia, except Wikipedia allows fair use images under the limited conditions that Rlandmann mentioned. TomTheHand (talk) 23:04, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I have proposed to used the creative commons license 3.0 after checking over that the image licensing talk page. Do note, I understand that several artists are also working with him and it is not a solo effort.

Koxinga CDF (talk) 03:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, I was confused: the 'ticket' system I was thinking of is a way to designate that previously copyrighted images have in fact been licensed under a creative commons license in which the image's creator is attributed at all times - Image:Belle and Sebastian British Band.jpeg is an example. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

{{Warship}}

Please see a notice about standardizing this template, at Template talk:Warship#Standardization. Maralia (talk) 15:22, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

And I left some comments a few days ago at Template_talk:DANFS_talk and Template_talk:DANFS#Link_parameter_added. Thanks --Brad (talk) 22:21, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I put together a modified form of the Warship template in my user space and posted about it at Template talk:Warship#Standardization. I could really use some feedback; please check it out! Thanks! TomTheHand (talk) 19:09, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Vasa (ship) is back, this time for FAC

The article about the Vasa has now been nominated for FA status. Input and insights from members of this project would be very much appreciated. henrik•talk 13:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Text spacing in infoboxes

This is something that's been bothering me for a while. The spacing between one line of text and the next in ship infoboxes is very wide. I don't think it's very aesthetic, and it makes the infoboxes very long -often longer than the accompanying article! Is there something that can be done about this?

On a more specific note, I've also noticed that the text spacing in ship class infobox image captions is far wider than in ship infoboxes themselves, and it looks wrong to me. Case in point: Owasco class cutter - look how much wider the image caption spacing is there as opposed to a ship in the class, say USCGC Sebago (WHEC-42). Also, does the text in the image captions have to be centre aligned? Wouldn't it make more sense to have it left-aligned? Gatoclass (talk) 00:46, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the text spacing issue differences may be down to using the "small" tag in the Class template but not in the ship infobox template. 82.70.225.100 (talk) 15:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

FAC/patrol vessel merge

I posted about the merge of the FAC and patrol vessel categories, but I think it got buried and nobody made their way over there. Please check it out: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_December_14#Category:Small_combatant_classes. There seem to be a few people in support of "small combat vessels", with opposition to "small combatant classes" because people are under the impression that it can refer to something other than... FACs and patrol boats. Please head over there and chip in. I'm worried that it's going to be renamed to "small combat vessels" instead of "small combat vessel classes", which would be horrendous. TomTheHand (talk) 17:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

YMS category/categories + article

I've been trying to categorize all USS YMS-xxx ship articles and was placing them all in Category:YMS-1 class auxiliary motor minesweepers based on what most of them say in either DANFS (if available) or the Navsource pages. Almost all of them seem to be listed in those sources as YMS-1 class. However, looking at Sanderling at DANFS and the Navsource index page, it seems there were possibly three classes. Before I go back to re-cat some I've already gone through I thought I’d seek some opinions.

According to the Navsource index, the differences between the three "classes" apparently were the number of stacks, 1, 2, or none. My first thought would be to sort them as Category:YMS-1 class auxiliary motor minesweepers, Category:YMS-135 class auxiliary motor minesweepers, and Category:YMS-446 class auxiliary motor minesweepers. But, are the classes that different that they need separate categories?

Also, there is currently one class article (YMS-1 class auxiliary motor minesweeper) and a 'type' article (Auxiliary Motor Minesweepers (YMS)) that seem to overlap. What about merging with a redirect for all three classes?

Thanks in advance. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm okay with keeping them in one class category. I agree that the type article could/should be merged into the class article, as there's really nothing very distinctive about the type. Also, the class article needs a rename from YMS-1 Class auxiliary motor minesweeper to lowercase on the word Class. Maralia (talk) 20:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There’s already a redirect at YMS-1 class auxiliary motor minesweeper. Is there a way, other than copy/paste, to switch them? — Bellhalla (talk) 21:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't YMS-1 class minesweeper be better?

—wwoods (talk) 21:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Belhalla: if it's a simple redirect, a page can be moved over the redirect by anyone. If not, an admin can move it - copy/paste is a no-no, as it loses the article history.

Wwoods: That's not a bad idea. Maralia (talk) 22:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

So I did that. —wwoods (talk) 04:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

And getting an admin to move things should be pretty simple since we have -at least- four admins who are active participants in this project! --Kralizec! (talk) 23:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

So, I've created redirects to sections of YMS-1 class minesweeper at YMS-135 class minesweeper, YMS-135 class auxiliary motor minesweeper, YMS-446 class minesweeper, and YMS-446 class auxiliary motor minesweeper. These can be used in the body of an article where sources indicate. But for the time being, all will go into Category:YMS-1 class auxiliary motor minesweepers.

Also, wwoods, thanks for the idea and the move. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I cleaned up a bunch of redirects, and proposed renaming the category Category:YMS-1 class auxiliary motor minesweepers to Category:YMS-1 class minesweepers. The rename proposal is here. Maralia (talk) 15:58, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure about this, the official name does seem to be "auxiliary motor minesweeper", so it then becomes a matter of deciding whether to use an abbreviated name on the basis that "YMS class" tells you all you need to know. But it seems to me these little wooden motor minesweepers are a lot different to a large oceangoing minesweeper, so maybe the full title should be retained? Gatoclass (talk) 07:35, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm okay with it since we have precedent/convention for slightly reworking class names (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)#Ship classes). Maralia (talk) 15:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm well that would indicate it's okay then. I don't feel strongly about it either way, I was just unsure about it, and I thought I'd wait and see what other people think. Gatoclass (talk) 15:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Minor category renames

I have just proposed renaming Category:Hipper class cruisers to Category:Admiral Hipper class cruisers in accordance with the class article's name. See the proposal here.

Also, in case anyone missed it above, I proposed renaming Category:YMS-1 class auxiliary motor minesweepers to Category:YMS-1 class minesweepers. That proposal is here. Maralia (talk) 20:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

"ß" or "ss" ?

Hello. Erudy (talk · contribs) has moved SMS Friedrich der Große (1911) to SMS Friedrich der Grosse (1911), replacing the "ß" with "ss". Is this in accordance with WP:Ships naming conventions, or should the move and associated edits be reverted? There are quite a few other German ships that have non-standard characters; if a precedent to use only standard English characters is set, they'll all have to be changed. Any thoughts? Parsecboy (talk) 15:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Good question. I like the idea of retaining the original spelling, but on the other hand, we keep Yamato at Japanese battleship Yamato, not Japanese battleship 大和. Where would we draw the line of which foreign characters to retain and which to transliterate? TomTheHand (talk) 15:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), specifically "There is disagreement as to whether German, Icelandic and Faroese names need transliteration for the characters ß, þ and ð." Personally, I consider it a pretty immaterial difference, as long as an appropriate redirect exists at the alternate spelling. Consistency would be wise, though. Maralia (talk) 16:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I would strongly favour retaining the use of ß, ð etc in cases like this. Redirects from expanded spellings can be supplied quite easily enough after all. And there is a pretty huge difference between a latin ligature and Japanese characters... Martocticvs (talk) 19:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I myself would prefer to keep the ligatures and other nonstandard characters, but if it's decided that expanded spelling is preferable, I'll be alright with that too. However, I would like to ensure consistency in our articles. Parsecboy (talk) 03:27, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I have to admit that I'm not an expert on ship naming conventions on wikipedia; I apologize if I have rudely trodden on nautical turf. I don't think that my edit should set a precedent that "only standard English characters be used"--that's too much of a blanket rule which I'm sure will turn up problems (especially since no consensus exists for characters such as ß, þ and ð and others; this is different from 大和, which I think does have consensus). I like consistentcy, but I think we should be consistent about the principle "only general English usage should be used" rather than some algorithmic rule that 'we always use "ß"' or 'only use "ss"'. If we are guided by English usage, as suggested by reference works, academic discourse, contemporary and modern media, google searches, etc. etc. we can be descriptive rather than proscriptive; English usage provide a verifiable and NPOV standard. We don't draw the line about which spelling to use, the larger English speaking community does; our job is just to report the convention.Erudy (talk) 14:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships), a relevant question could also be which spelling is correct under the current German spelling rules. If I'm reading ß#Usage in German correctly, the spelling under correct rules would be "grosse". Following the Wikipedia naming convention of using the modern form for each name, SMS Friedrich der Grosse (1911) would be the correct form to use as it is consistent with modern german spelling. But do notice that this interpretation is entirely dependant on my take on whether the "o" in grosse is a short of long vowel... and it's been ages since I've studied German. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 16:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Correct now, perhaps - but they recently sorted out their spelling rules to correct some misuses and to standardise more. In that vain, preferring Grosse over Große would be no different to renaming HMS Enterprize to HMS Enterprise, as that is the currently accepted spelling. Martocticvs (talk) 17:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The point being that according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) (which claims this to be the common practive, although I failed to locate the same line in other naming convention articles), modern writing form should be the preferred one, with the original form explained in the text. Following this logic, even if the original name was with an "ß", the article name should be with "ss", and the "ß" should be explained in the article text. But then again, as you say, this would mean the 1774 Enterprize should be written Enterprise. Looking at the article in question, the name is consistently written with an "s" in the article text, only the article name uses "z". And, although I'm generally not big on rules, I have to point out that Wikipedia:Naming conventions states that "generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize". I'd say "ss" is definately more recognizable than "ß". -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 20:52, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: USS Burleson (IX-67)

USS Burleson (IX-67) (via WP:PROD on 20 December 2007) Redirected→USS Burleson (APA-67)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

This was an article that Brad prodded because it already exists at USS Burleson (APA-67); I've replaced it with a redirect. Maralia (talk) 00:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

There never was any IX-67 number assigned to that ship so there should not even be a redirect; rather the whole article should be wiped. This was another one of those articles by Mr. Woodruff, who apparently can't read very well. Next time I'll just tag it for speedy with reason. --Brad (talk) 01:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

According to the APA article, which is presumably a verbatim copy of the DANFS entry, the ship was reclassified IX-67 after the war. So I'm not sure on what you are basing your claim that the ship was never reclassified as IX-67, would you care to elucidate? Gatoclass (talk) 02:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Egads! You're right. I will now slink away before anyone notices --Brad (talk) 02:48, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I assumed Brad just missed it in the APA-67 article, since it's relegated to one sentence. It really is there, though—I added a link to the DANFS entry which I looked up to make sure. Maralia (talk) 02:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

But here's the weird bit. Although I can see your diff on the history page, and it definitely shows you made the page a redirect, when I load the page itself it still shows up as the previous diff!

Never struck that before on Wiki, so I don't know what's going on... Gatoclass (talk) 00:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, finally seems to have updated. That took about five minutes, very strange. Gatoclass (talk) 00:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Redirect not showing up to me, although the history shows this action. What the heck is going on? -MBK₀₀₄ 01:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. However, seeing as I just turned a ship's range from nautical miles into nanometers, it's always possible I'm just off my rocker :) Maralia (talk) 01:10, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Fictional ship DDG-182 Mirai has an article but no individual Kongō class destroyer has its own article

There is a fictional ship article for DDG-182 Mirai, does it fall under WP:SHIPS? Also, does it strike anyone as odd that no single ship of the Kongō class or Atago class has its own article, but a fictional ship similar to the two classes has one? If articles were to be created, what is the naming convention for JDS ship articles? Would JDS Kongō (DDG-173) or Japanese destroyer Kongō (DDG-173) be used? Looking at other post WWII Japanese ship class articles reveals that there are very few individual ship articles, which makes DDG-182 Mirai fictional article stand out even further. Anybody up for creating some ship stubs for Japan? --Dual Freq (talk) 15:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd say it falls within our scope as it's a sea-going ship, even if a fictional one. The article name is definately incorrect by our naming conventions though - but then again, we probably shouldn't call it Japanese destroyer Mirai (DDG-182) or people will be thinking it's a real ship. And I can't say I'd be very surprised with a fictional ship having an article over real ones - in my experience of Wikipedia, information on fiction (TV series in particular) is the thing this place is best for. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 16:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Disregard the part about no ship stubs as I made some stub ship articles using the naming convention JDS Kongō (DDG-173). They could use more information, but I can't read Japanese, so someone else may have to do that. If someone wants to tag the pretend Mirai ship go ahead, but if I tagged it, I would use an AFD or merge tag, not a WP:ships tag. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

While I admit the pretend Mirai is pretty useless from our point of view, it might not be from the point of view of WP:Anime. Since we're on the subject, it might be good for us to reach a concensus on how to treat fictional vessels. Looking through Category:Fictional ships, I was able to find two that have been tagged for us. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 23:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I could only find one, but perhaps I missed the other. The one I did find was Theodore Too, which I tagged as it is an actual tug boat, but done up to look like one off children's TV series. I'm fairly sure this one at least is legitimately under our purview. As to fictional ones, I wouldn't object to seeing them under our project, as they technically are representations of watercraft, and should be of at least peripheral interest to us. But perhaps with a low rating. Though I don't have desperately strong feelings either way. Benea (talk) 23:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The other tagged fictional ones are USS Aspen (should probably be merged into Full Fathom Five) and Red October (submarine). I agree that if we do tag fictional ships, they should be low-importance. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 10:26, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Coast Guard categories

There are a couple of cats in category Category:United States Coast Guard ships that don't look right to me. They are Category:USCG high endurance cutters and Category:USCG medium endurance cutters. Since they are already subcats of the Coast Guard cat, why do they need the "USCG" tacked on? Shouldn't these cats just be Category:High endurance cutters and Category:Medium endurance cutters? Gatoclass 10:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

That's my mistake again. I made those cats to match the class articles (which were misnamed). As an aside, I think there was a discussion to rename / delete Category:Famous class cutters because of a perception that some might think it has something to do with truancy. I think all that was resolved, so I certainly have no objection to renaming. --Dual Freq 02:53, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I had to do a double take on that comment about "Famous class cutters", LOL.

Unless there are any objections, I will create the two suggested cats a little later today, and nominate the other two for merging. Gatoclass 06:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. A class category should occur many times at the bottom of articles, which is where most users will encounter it. At the bottom of an article, you would not have the USCG Ships parent category to provide disambiguation (articles should only include the most specific leaf category(s) extant, no parents). While it should be evident from the article that USCG is involved, you wouldn't know from looking at at the shortened category name you propose, if you were going to get to a broader category, perhaps involving other nations. In another case, as an editor trying to improve that article, you might think that some past editor had put the article in too general a category and then waste time trying to fix it. So what may be redundancy from the category tree perspective is useful from the mainspace perspective. Hopefully that made sense. --J Clear (talk) 03:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

FAC pre-review request (was:Help)

I just rewrote USS Illinois (BB-65) to improve her shot at passing FAC, but I need new eyes to correct the sp&g errors and ensure that I didn;t leave anything out. Thanks in advance. TomStar81 (Talk) 13:03, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I went over it twice and caught several calibur vs caliber and other typo things. The only issues I saw left over was spelling like travelling vs traveling. Both are correct depending where you live. --Brad (talk) 15:42, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I took a read. I'm good with most of it. The first para in "Scrapping" needs help though. Starting with the first sentence that seems to imply the scrapping took place immediately. I think you were trying to summarize the entire para in the lead sentence, but it didn't come off right. Also may want to reduce talking about Kentucky a bit, both there and further up. Too far past my bedtime to try to sort it out myself, so I'll leave a note here. --J Clear (talk) 05:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Cruise Ships and use of review links

For those on this project who are active in Cruise Ship (commercial) articles, should we maintain links to site containing reviews of the cruise ships - and if so, which site? I noticed that User:Hu12 was removing a large number of links to Cruise Critic reviews that had been added by User:Splamo due to the site's use of Adsense, and he flagged the site at WT:WPSPAM (with a discussion at WP:AN). I asked him a bit about it on his talk page, where he asked that "these links from this site [cruisecritic.com] may no longer be welcome on the [WP:SHIPS] project" - so I'm bringing it up here.

So the question ... is it even appropriate to use a link to cruise ship reviews? I'm aware that the ship star rating from these reviews are utilized by multiple travel agencies (the local travel agency that I use, and a quick check I did over the weekend showed that Cruise Critic star ratings are also used by web travel sites such as Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia) - so the reviews from Cruise Critic do appear to be a common standardized rating method for the industry. But, do these reviews provide enough value to include on Wikipedia, given the raised concern about the sites use of Adsense? Should WP:SHIPS have a position on the use of these links? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

As I stated the redirects caught my attention and were removed per WP:EL. You failed to mention only the offending redirect links were removed. A pattern emerged as I was going through the links, they all (200+) seem to have been added by one user, Splamo (talk · contribs). This raises several policy issues, WP:SPAM, WP:COI and WP:NOT. On the surface all of this activity seems like it might be good faith, however, all the links added to wikipedia are by Splamo and to the same adsense account (pub-4131962432578484). Sneaky spamming can lead to sitebans and is rooted in precedent^[5][6]. The big picture clearly shows someone who is using Wikipedia to promote their own interests. Question is are there alternative review sites, and if so, has this project implemented any mesure to prevent this sort of singular abuse? Also the quote (which you altered) and description you gave above are completely out of context and incorrect...--Hu12 (talk) 00:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concern, but I do not see the "big picture clearly shows someone who is using Wikipedia to promote their own interests". I reviewed some of the links that were removed (example). The cause of the redirect you mentioned was an incorrectly formatted link here (by leaving off the "www." in the address causes the linked-to article to instead redirect to the main page on Cruise Critic; while inserting the "www." into the address causes the link to go directly to the relevant review). The links do not appear to contain any reference to a specific Adsense account, and Adsense usage appears to be by the site itself, not by linking via a referral link. It could be that Cruise Critic does the redirect for links that aren't correctly formed because they do not want people deep-linking directly to the reviews - I have not investigated that yet, but will do so as that could be another argument to not use the reviews.

I believe that our options are actually to either use the cruisecritic reviews, or to not link reviews at all; given the fact that Cruise Critic reviews and star ratings appear to be widely used in the travel industry (as seen on competing sites such as Orbitz, Hotwire, and Travelocity use the full reviews, Expedia appears to use star ratings on some ships but not the full reviews), and given that they are used as a source for news articles (their site claims others, I'm only familiar with the NY Times referencing them, a search of the Times website turned up this and this, and several others), and the fact that this is the only review site (of which I'm aware) that is not directly owned by a travel agency/site and that provides as many ship reviews as it does. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 01:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be a fairly good candidate for an article, but fails as far as WP:SPAM, WP:COI and WP:NOT are concerned. --Hu12 (talk) 04:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I dispute WP:COI, as the evidence is circumstantial. Personally, I'm willing to AGF of the user, especially given that the user appears to have made contributions to the same articles beyond just the questioned links. Unless I'm missing something, the claims of a WP:SPAM and WP:NOT issue seem to be dependent on the COI claim in order to directly apply - although both of those make a reference to WP:EL, and I can see where WP:EL#Links_normally_to_be_avoided (item #6) could apply as a reason to not use the reviews. To me, the advertising on that site is not intrusive to the contents being viewed; but I am unsure of what WP's consensus of "objectionable amounts". I couldn't find a clear threshold of what amounts to too much advertising.

To me, the question comes down to if reviews in general should be linked from articles? Do ship reviews offer enough unique and useful content-relevant material to even be included in the external links? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 06:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Opinions such as "widely used in the travel industry" do not make for exemption of official Wikipedia policies. This has developed into a fractured discussion and is unproductive. Repeating and duplicating content over several talk pages is unecessary when there is a centralized discussion on the Administrators' noticeboard. thanks--Hu12 (talk) 12:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It is doubtful that Splamo has a conflict of interest. According to his user page he is a high school student. He has contributed a lot of useful content to these articles other than the link in question, and his work is good faith.

CruiseCritic can be a useful site for some purposes and with appropriate care, it perhaps can be used as authority for cited propositions. Some of its content is user-contributed; even the official content can be wrong. (For example, it refers to the date of a ship's entry into service as the "launch" date, which is incorrect; that has led to errors in Wikipedia by editors who rely on it.) It should not be added as an external link. We should allow a link to the ship's operator (the cruise line) but not to review sites. Kablammo (talk) 13:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC) To clarify my comment further: CruiseCritic should not be added as an external link, but where it has been used as a reference, it should not be deleted. In the absence of in-line cites, a general reference which was relied upon by an editor should not be removed unless replaced by other references which support that content. Here the editor did rely on CruiseCritic for ship specs and other information. Kablammo (talk) 13:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, and for the most part I agree with you. I questioned the use of the reviews from the beginning, but had trouble keeping the discussion on the content rather than questions of COI. I still disagree with the site being tagged on WT:WPSPAM, but won't pursue that issue further for now.

The only point of yours on which I would want to clarify is that, to me, only the material generated by Cruise Critic itself should be permitted as a reference (such as their news and expert review sections); while material created in the forums or user-review sections (different from their "expert review" section) should always be purged and replaced with a {{cite}} tag as those fail RS. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you, and your clarification. Kablammo (talk) 15:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Hu12 - sorry for the fractured discussion - I started the one here based on your prompting. However, I will take further conversation to WP:AN. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: List of future Spanish Navy ships

List of future Spanish Navy ships (via WP:PROD on 25 December 2007)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Ski jump

Has anyone ever heard or seen a legitimate explanation from a reliable source as to why the USN does not use forward ski jumps on it's LHAs and LHDs? They vessels are larger than just about any other aircraft-capable ship in service save supercarriers, and yet much smaller carrier-type ships have jumps. Is it soley related to how the USN spots aircraft on flight decks (using every space available), or are there other reasons? I'm really looking for some citeable material, not just informed specualtion, but that would be OK too, as it's always fun to hear other opinions. But I'd really like to put some cited explanations in some articles I've been working on, such as those on the LHA and LHD, as this questions has come up on some of the ship talk pages. (Stating this clearly to hopefully avoid the obnoxious Talk pages are not forums response that some like give to experianced editors as if they were newbies!) - BillCJ (talk) 05:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I've never seen a reliable source explain it, but this thread offers a few random Internet theories. There's a "it's all politics" theory, a "LHAs and LHDs are longer than most foreign carriers, and so don't need a ski jump as badly" theory, and a "they need the space for simultaneously launching as many Marine-filled helicopters as possible" theory, among others. I wonder if Norman Friedman's U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft has anything about it. It was updated in 2002 and apparently goes far enough forward to mention the San Antonio-class LPD, so it probably covers the LHAs and LHDs in good detail. The two closest counties to me don't have it in their libraries, and neither does my alma mater; another university in the area has it, but it's checked out 'til next May (jeez!). Anyone else have any leads? TomTheHand (talk) 18:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I put in an interlibrary loan request back when this came up here, and just got notice that it should arrive in a few days. I'll see what I can dig up. Maralia (talk) 22:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

GlobalSecurity copied an entry from the USN pub ENLISTED AVIATION WARFARE SPECIALIST saying "Because of the desire to maximize the number of deck spots, no ski-jump V/STOL ramp is fitted", GlobalSecurity appears to have added "reducing the potential effectiveness of the Harrier contingent," but I've seen other internet claims that say the ships are long enough for a full load. My question would be, since I'm not to up on the AV-8B, is the AV-8B limited in ordnance or fuel when used on the Wasp class vs used at a normal runway land base? My opinion, though not worth much since I have no special knowledge of this, is that it was more important to be "capable of spotting nine CH-53E helicopters at once" for some tactical reason than to give up two of those spots for a (minimal?) performance increase on the Harriers. Is 9 CH-53's enough to take an entire company of Marines into battle or some other tactical unit? --Dual Freq (talk) 02:39, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

DF, I saw that you added [[:Image:YAV-8B Harrier testing a ski jump.jpg|this image of "A YAV-8B Harrier II tests a ski jump at Naval Air Station Patuxent River". So it seems the USN/USMC have used ski-jumps in testing, so there more than likely have a good reason for not needing them on LHAs and LHDs. Would be interesting to find official word on this. - BillCJ (talk) 03:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

i belive the placement of bigger acraft on the front is a cause but other factors must be included like the magnetic launches (cvn-79 or was it 80?) oh and there rebooting the united states of america class (cvn?)81-85?) but the placement of aircraft and weight plus maybe it's uneconmic to put in considdering we have enough space to take off. um when the uss. kitty hawk is decomishend can we make a special page for decomishend ships under maybe the title of The Kitty Hawk decomisend (page) or project. oh.. why didn't anybody tell me about the SUPER YAMATO CLASS??? that's awsome to bad it was cancelled ugh i hate todays warfare of missle each other form a billion miles away what hapend to dog fights and good old batlleship mono Vs mono engagements. ugh.........--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 01:11, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Cat wierdness

I just applied {{DEFAULTSORT}} to HMS Trincomalee as normal... only it seems to have messed up two of the categories and I cannot understand why, as they are unchanged from their original forms... Martocticvs (talk) 17:12, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

For some reason, some hidden characters were added to the end of the cat names. I edited them to purge the hidden characters, and they seem to work correctly now. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Strange! Thanks for that. Martocticvs (talk) 17:28, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Updated {{sclass}} with optional disambiguation parameter

I have updated {{sclass}} (and its documentation) to allow for disambiguation of the ship type (a problem with "minesweeper"). I tested the changes before implementing them, so I hope there won't be any issues with the changes. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I had been meaning to make that very change for quite some time now—thanks! Maralia (talk) 04:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Excellent thank you! One other addition to the template that would be quite useful would be the ability to disambiguate the class name itself. For example, Boyne class ship of the line (1790) and Boyne class ship of the line (1810). So the year needs to be added to the class article link but not the ship type link. Martocticvs (talk) 14:55, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Stability

• Stability conditions (watercraft)
• Ship stability
• Metacentric height
• Instantaneous stability (redirects to Ship stability now)
• Righting arm (redirects to Metacentric height)

Which articles on these somewhat-neglected but rather important topics do we need? I suggest that at the very least we should merge stability conditions (watercraft) and ship stability, probably at the latter name. We could also merge in metacentric height: one the one hand, metacentric height currently covers a lot of matters to do with stability which are not strictly to do with the metacentric height; on the other the mathematical mechanics might do a bit better in its own article separated from the engineering. Regards, The Land (talk) 17:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Oppose Stability conditions (watercraft) describes stability with respect to insurance etc, Ship stability is a more general article about the physics and history of the concept. Greg Locock (talk) 21:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Stability conditions (watercraft) actually has more physics (though perhaps less engineering); ship stability has the methods of adding stability to a ship, while stability conditions (watercraft) has some more technical definitions. Arguably we could have separate articles for the maths/physics and for the engineering/economics; if so there is nothing in the current names to help. Also don't forget the article on metacentric height. The Land (talk) 16:27, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

In Favor - with conditions First off I would like to point out that this is a massive undertaking as most of the articles are incomplete and a great many ramble on to parallel subjects. What is required more than anything is a rationalization of the various articles. Many of the articles have duplicated information that is often incomplete. May I propose that the layout and content follow the general format of the SNAME "Principles of Naval Architecture", Volume 1, Chapter 2. I suggest the following as a list of articles to cover Stability of Ships & Boats :

• Stability (watercraft) : This article should cover the fundamental principles such as weight, buoyancy, center of gravity, etc. It needs to introduce equilibrium and the difference between static and dynamic stability. It should provide numerous links to other articles that deal with a specific subject in more detail. It should then work through the mathematics involved in calculating a simple Stability Condition. Other articles are :
• Metacentric height : This article is a good example of one that is fundamentally very good but then goes off into areas that should be broken out into new articles.

* Keep : Re-write Basic definition and add links to Center of Buoyancy. Keep the section dealing with Longitudinal Metacenter but re-write it to clarify that these are two completely separate things. Add sections on how these values (GMt & GMl) are calculated. Add a brief introduction to how they are used but link

* Remove and make new articles : Free surface, Righting arm, Roll period, Inclining Experiment, Active roll stabilization has no place in this article at all and should be removed.

• Stability curves : This article should introduce Cross Curves, Gz Curves, Limiting KG Curves, and how these curves are calculated and affected by various changes to the hull form.

• Free surface : This article needs to be completely re-written as there is little substance there now. I would suggest that the effect on GM and Gz needs to be addressed here and the mathematics involved should be presented with examples to show how different tank shapes and sizes change the impact. The effect on trim should also be discussed. Anti-roll tanks should be introduced here with alink to a separate article.

• Effect of changes in weight : This should be a clarifying article dealing with changes in displacement, suspended weights and the effect of moving a weight.

• Stability criteria : This article should introduce the SOLAS requirements along with others such as the US "CFR"s, Canadian "STAB"s, etc.

• Draft (hull) : Another potentially great article that goes off into places it shouldn't. I would suggest the Trim should be re-directed to this article a covered there as draft & trim are ususally dealt with together.

• Inclining experiment : What is written in Metacentric height is a bit mis-leading in that KG & LCG are determined in the experiment. Nonetheless, this should be a completle separate article explaining the process and showing the required analysis.

• Damage satbility : This should be a new article that identifies the impact of damage on stability and trim and how these are calculated. An example should be provided.

• Stability conditions (watercraft) : This article needs to be paired back to what it was originally. All of the additional information on "Effects on Stability" should be relocated to other articles.

• Trim and stability book : A new article to describe the formal reference that must be approved and carried aboard each ship.

These articles should be limited to discussions on the marine use of these terms and avoid any reference to aircraft or other vehicles as this will just confuse the issue. These could be covered with a "See also" section.

I would admit that this is just the beginning and has probably missed important items and may have dealt with others in too little detail. My intention is to point out that the present articles are incomplete and not well structured but have a lot of excellent information that should not be lost. I would like to help resolve these issues however I can. Jmvolc (talk) 13:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment of the current coverage and your proposal seems quite sensible. Would 'stability criteria' be different from 'stability conditions'? And how would 'stability conditions ?(watercraft)' differ from 'stability (watercrafft)'? Best regards, The Land (talk) 14:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the support! Stability conditions are specifically the standard loading conditions found in virtually every Trim + Stability Book. The names are very specific and the make-up of the conditions are recognized internationally and are also very specific. The limiting GM, A/Ao, etc. (ie: stability criteria) are the same for many of these. Regulatory Authorities define what conditions must be checked and documented (Stability Conditions) and what minimum standards must be met for any condition (ie: stability criteria). So ... stability criteria deal with minimum GM, range of stability, area under the Gz curve, A/Ao, etc. Stability Conditions define the range of weights that must be on board to assess compliance with the criteria. Jmvolc (talk) 15:40, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Roll

We have no article at all which deals with the roll of a ship, except possibly flight dynamics. Can someone think of a name for one? Could it be added to the wanted articles list? The Land (talk) 18:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at Ship motions, is that what you are looking for? Jmvolc (talk) 14:06, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah-ha. yes. Thank you! The Land (talk) 14:42, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Here is yet another example of an article (Ship motions) that has had way too much added to it. The whole section on Seakeeping should be off on its own. It is treated too lightly here and is out of place. Jmvolc (talk) 15:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Luckily I had just started seakeeping. ;) The Land (talk) 15:46, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Indian Navy

I'm having a problem getting the importance of using Reliable sources over government propoganda across to an editor who ought to know better, and would rather not fight this battle on my own. Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Maritime warfare task force#Indian Navy for the full explanation. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 19:20, 29 December 2007 (UTC)\

India has a Navy? --Brad (talk) 06:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

They had no choice: Pakistan has one! - BillCJ (talk) 20:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

RfA for Shibumi2

I've nominated Shibumi2 to become an administrator here. He has been working hard for a year, getting Wikipedia articles on Japanese Navy ships to conform to WP:SHIPS standards. Please join me in supporting his nomination. Thank you! Neutral Good (talk) 20:04, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Shipbucket Drawings (update)

hi all, just a update on the status. Things were slow because of the holidays season so here goes.

The following were some of the questions and conditions:

1) Drawings needs to be from the correct versions of the ships and the responsibility to separate them from our varius alternative universe/neverwhere versions rest on your side. No alterations are allowed.

2) It has to be clearly explained that these are only artist impressions, not detailed line-drawings. All the pics are in 1 pixel/two feet scale and that effects on some sort of differences to the actual ships, and eq. many weapon barrels and missiles are overexaggerated by size.

3) The artist of the picture needs to be clearly mentioned.

4)If we agree to this, we expect to have some sort of exclusive role for the illustrations, and sort of gentlemen agreement that you wont acquire similar pics from elsewhere. If you spot someone keen to drawn this way, you will of course direct him to contact us.

Any concerns if Creative Commons could work here?

Koxinga CDF (talk) 03:33, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Some of these conditions would be compatible with certain versions of the CC licence, but not with any version that's compatible with the GFDL that Wikipedia uses. Specifically:

1. We need the copyright owner to freely allow alterations and derivative works. (Some versions of CC allow the artist to disallow this, but we don't).
2. The copyright owner can't put any such limitations on the use of the drawings: Wikipedia can't control and doesn't want to control what anyone else does with the drawing once they've got it from here.
3. Depends what "clearly" means, but CC and GFDL both insist that the artist is credited, so this point is OK.
4. See point 2. Wikipedia can't and won't make any kind of agreement about exclusivity. We will still source pictures wherever we can and wherever we like; conversely, anyone can download the artist's pictures from Wikipedia and freely reuse them for whatever purpose they like, including commercial purposes.

Somehow, I don't think he'll give us that much leeway! --Rlandmann (talk) 05:32, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I concur, point 4 especially would never fly here. I got to the last bit where it said If you spot someone keen to draw this way, you will of course direct him to contact us. and I couldn't shake the image of someone in a black leather chair stroking a white cat, a la Blofeld. I foresee grave danger for anyone who idealistically contacts this shadowy figure, who is determined to secure a monopoly over shipdrawings. A gentleman's agreement? James Bond wouldn't fall for that! Someone quickly hide Emoscopes! Merry Christmas to all, Benea (talk) 05:42, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I think point 1 needs to be clarified with them but I don't see it as a showstopper. Point 4 is the issue. Practically speaking, it is impossible to prevent others from uploading a similar line drawing and illustration.

Koxinga CDF (talk) 09:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

As noted earlier, the GFDL is a very broad licence. The only right that the original creator retains is the right to be credited with the work. They relinquish all other control of the material. Maybe that's the easiest way to explain it to them? --Rlandmann (talk) 11:41, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Kirov class hull question

What is the bump that runs the length of the ship on the hull?

Does anyone have an idea what the stripe or bump is that runs nearly the length of hull above the waterline on Kirov class battlecruisers? See also commons:Category:Kirov class battlecruiser for more images that show same stripe. --Dual Freq (talk) 19:07, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

My guess - and it is only a guess, though somewhat educated - is that it is an external degaussing cable. HMS King George V had one until a refit in 1942, as can be seen in this image Image:HMS King George V in 1941.jpg. Martocticvs (talk) 19:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I never thought of that, it sounds like a very good guess. I was trying to figure if it was some ESM or sonar related device, but the degaussing cable makes more sense. I won't add it to the article, but it makes sense to me. --Dual Freq (talk) 20:01, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

There are indirect references that it is meant for degaussing. Interestingly enough, the website of the Krylov Institute has plenty of information on the Kursk recovery as well as photos of a number of pre-WWII Russian naval vessels. Warrants additional research. Anyone keen?

http://www.enemyforces.com/navy/1144.htm Krylov Institute: http://www.ksri.ru/eng1

Koxinga CDF (talk) 06:30, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Changes to {{Infobox Ship Characteristics}}

An unregistered user added a load of additional length fields to this part of the template earlier - firstly one of them is not correctly implemented, so it is showing up all the time, whether filled or not, and I don't know how to fix that. Secondly, I don't think that it is necessary to have lots of dedicated fields for different length measurements. These infoboxes are meant to keep things simple, and as with the armament field it is quite easy to put (keel) or (gundeck) or (overall) or whatever else you happen to be measuring after the measurement in question. With these extra fields I think it is now unnecessarily bloated. Martocticvs (talk) 11:39, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I did some edit undos that I think have the template back to before the anonymous editor changed them. Perhaps we should consider protection of some sort for these templates? Especially since they are so widely used. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah that's probably not a bad idea - they could possibly be considered as vulnerable due to their extensive use now... Martocticvs (talk) 13:18, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy new year to all

and stuff. As per our Dab guidelines, HMS Amethyst (U16/F116) ought to be moved I think. My preference would be to HMS Amethyst (F116) over the redirect, since that was the pennant number she carried when she got caught up in the Amethyst Incident. But that's a job for an administrator and since I am unaccountably not one, could someone help? Ta muchly, Benea (talk) 12:14, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

One template to use in them all and to a standardized format bind them

Seriously, how many different "Infobox Ship"-type templates are there now out there? 3, 4, 5, 6, more? Not to mention all the infoboxes in free HTML coding. I was trying to create a couple of ship articles here and decided to copy a infobox from an existing article. I became a little suspicious when I ran into one that I hadn't seen before, so off I went to see WikiProject Ships recommendations....*sigh* sadly I found that it seemed like it hasn't even been possible to standardize here, on the project page. The templates section even lists one that one is "discouraged" to use. Please, could we try to fix this thing during 2008? One template for all - or is that too optimistic?. --MoRsE (talk) 13:55, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

We do, in fact, have one standard template for ship infoboxes—{{Infobox Ship Example}}— and we've been systematically deprecating, replacing, and deleting nonstandard ship infobox templates for months now. It sounds like maybe I've forgotten to update some documentation that. . .oh yes, I see it now: Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Tools#Infobox templates must be what's confused you. I'll update that right now to clarify standards. If you've come across any other incorrect/confusing information, or any specific nonstandard ship infoboxes (we're aware of those in Category:Defunct WikiProject Ships templates), please link to them so I can get to work. Thanks. Maralia (talk) 14:32, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

There's {{Infobox_Polish Navy}} thats not been updated since mid-06. has 20-odd ships using it. One less now I've done the Wicher GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that one. We also have {{Submarine}} and {{Infobox Military Submarine}} to convert; for those who didn't know, there's more information here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Infobox conversion. Maralia (talk) 20:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Odd navbox

I just found Template:Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship classes, and it seems a bit off from the format of most current navboxes. There are no built-in edit links at the top, and the whole template isn't boxed in. I know nothing about navbox formatting and codework. Can someone see if they can bring this up to spec? Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 00:17, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Done! --Rlandmann (talk) 01:04, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Requested move:

Gneisenau class battlecruiser to Scharnhorst class battleship

Please discuss at Talk:Gneisenau_class_battlecruiser#Requested_move. The Land (talk) 21:13, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Questions about Category:Korean War aircraft carriers of the United States

I've been trying to look at articles in "Korean War xxx ships of the United States" cats and have a question about whether two three (oops!) ships belong in the Category:Korean War aircraft carriers of the United States. According to their articles/DANFS, USS Cape Esperance (CVE-88), USS Windham Bay (CVE-92), and USS Tripoli (CVE-64) ferried aircraft to Japan in support of the Korean War, but never participated in a combat role. I'm leaning towards including them as Korean War aircraft carriers, but wanted to see what others thought. — Bellhalla (talk) 06:00, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I always have difficulty with cases like this. All three ships served in the Military Sea Transportation Service, the predecessor of the Military Sealift Command, during Korea. That makes me want to call them Category:Korean War auxiliary ships of the United States. It's not just that they didn't happen to see combat; they were actually serving in an auxiliary organization. TomTheHand (talk) 19:26, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I added Category:Korean War auxiliary ships of the United States to all three articles — Bellhalla (talk) 15:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Article patrol

I could use some help keeping an eye on King Sejong the Great class destroyer. It's had a lot of IP traffic of late, many adding what appears to be POV commentary, with no sources - of course. I don't know engough about destroyers in general or this class in particular to recognize outright errors. Thanks! - BillCJ (talk) 03:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

As a side note, it was a member of Category:Ahn Yong-Bok class destroyers, which was a previous proposed name. I've created Category:King Sejong the Great class destroyer to replace it. Maybe someone with the admin bit could make the old incorrect name go away. --Dual Freq (talk) 00:46, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Mos Amendment that affects this project

Click here for details. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:59, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

MS Nindawayma

Hello WP:Ships, I need help from your project with the MS Nindawayma article. I'm not a ship expert, but rather a locak historian. Could someone please review all the recent edits made by an anonymous user for factuality. Thanks. Flibirigit (talk) 22:23, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Category:World War II tankers of the United States

Is there a consensus on what types of articles should populate this category? Is it just civilian tankers, i.e. SS Fort Lee, or Navy tankers, like USS Agawam (AOG-6) or USS Armadillo (IX-111). And what about oilers like, for example, USS Brazos (AO-4) that are already in the category? — Bellhalla (talk) 00:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

"Infobox Ship Example" is a silly, silly name

Ok, so as you know, our new ship infobox is made up of four templates: {{Infobox Ship Begin}}, {{Infobox Ship Image}}, {{Infobox Ship Career}}, and {{Infobox Ship Characteristics}}. It's little confusing, so I created {{Infobox Ship Example}} as a central location for documenting it. I made it a template so that people would transclude it wherever documentation was needed; I had noticed that the old infobox had out-of-date documentation scattered everywhere.

I did this before /doc subpages became popular, or at least before I heard about them. However, /doc pages are a much better way of managing template documentation. Looking at it now, I kind of think we should do something about Infobox Ship Example. That's not the name of the infobox, it's the infobox's documentation template. However, it looks like that's its name, and I've got to assume that people look at it and wonder why the hell we call it that.

Does anyone else agree that we should address this? Perhaps make Infobox Ship Example a /doc subpage? If so, a subpage of what? TomTheHand (talk) 21:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought the same thing when I recently arrived at this project for the first time. Personally, I think that "Infobox Ship Begin/doc" would be the best place to put it, as that template is the first one used on the current infobox formatting. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:44, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. When I was looking into protecting them just now, I saw it was a bit of a complicated mess. I was about to start doc pages for them all but I will wait a bit if needed. Woody (talk) 21:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, any objections to moving {{Infobox Ship Example}} to {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}}, and then protecting them all? TomTheHand (talk) 16:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

None here. The current name caused confusion at one point where people were talking about redirecting defunct templates to this one, so I had to point out that this is just documentation - using the current convention for documentation definitely makes sense to me! Martocticvs (talk) 18:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Update on progress

Right, after quite a bit of work, I have moved Example to Begin/doc, then moved all the documentation of the separate pages to /doc pages and then protected all of the main template pages. The templates affected are {{Infobox Ship Begin}}, {{Infobox Ship Characteristics}}, {{Infobox Ship Career}}, {{Infobox Ship Image}}. I have also created the talk pages for the templates to add {{permprot}} to them although you could create redirects to Template talk:Infobox Ship Begin/doc. What do people think, and did I miss any of the templates? Woody (talk) 19:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Everything looks good to me! Thanks for taking care of this. I think, though, that redirecting all of the talk pages to Template talk:Infobox Ship Begin/doc is probably a good idea. I'm going to do that now. TomTheHand (talk) 14:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

No problem and the talkpages seems sensible. Woody (talk) 21:47, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Category:Turkish Navy ship classes

I just nominated the newly-created Category:Turkish Navy ship classes for deletion here because it does not fit into our categorization scheme. Please weigh in. Thanks! TomTheHand (talk) 21:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

More USS Holland POV

Some of you may have dealt with the user who keeps adding POV info to the USS Holland and Electric Boat articles. If I'm not mistaken, the user has been blocked/banned for these actions. He is now active on the General Dynamics page, as per this diff. If reverted him twice, but am reluctant to revert more, even tho I don't see this as a content dispute. Now, I've been reverted by my stalker, a not-very-bright troll (banned user:Wikzilla) who thinks that by reverting me, and harrassing editors who come to my aid, he will be reinstated. (When the troll reads this, he will get mad, and strike out at me and someone else.) any help would be appreciated. - BillCJ (talk) 00:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the Holland guy was banned from Wikipedia. He just received a two-week block for sockpuppetry. I've blocked the IP that did all of that reverting, but I'll have to look further at the Holland guy. TomTheHand (talk) 00:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Help needed

I've reverted additions to Kitty Hawk class aircraft carrier which removed USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67). I've requested that the editor stop and discuss before making unilateral changes of this nature. I think a discussion is now required, as to if the ship should be considered a member of the class or not. -MBK₀₀₄ 02:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Natchez I

I'm having problems with Natchez (boat). There is supposed to be just one Natchez I, but I see two prior to Natchez II. Both are at http://www.riverboatdaves.com/docs/nat.html . Any ideas to remedy this would be welcomed.--Bedford 03:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks to me like Natchez (boat) is trying to act like a disambiguation page. It may have not been created with that in mind, but that's the way it looks now. Usually for WP we have to list by the year built or year launched to make clear which ship is which. --Brad (talk) 05:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, it started like this:

1. Originally, an article mostly about the current Natchez, briefly discussing a previous Natchez.
2. After writing the article for the steamboat Robert E. Lee, I decide to start a new article on its rival, only to discover there is already one that briefly covers it.
3. White writing about the famous Natchez, I discover that the owner of the famous Natchez owned several steamboats, each named Natchez. I decide to cover eacb one, as they definitely belong in the same article, as each was bought after Leathers no longer had the former
4. I then discover that before Matchez II, Leather's first Natchez, there was no clear Natchez I
5. Plus, I find at least two military vessels also named Natchez, after which someone else finds another

Also, I had discovered that Leathers had at least one son that also captained more Natchezes. I'm at a loss how to proceed.--Bedford 05:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Based on the page you linked to [7] I would name this ships for wikipedia purposes this way: Top to bottom:

Natchez (1823), Natchez (1838), Natchez (1846), Natchez (1849), Natchez (1853), Natchez (1854), Natchez (1860), Natchez (1869), Natchez (1879), Natchez (1891), Natchez (1975) and that's 11 ships right there. You don't have to start a new article for each one unless there is enough information for one. Any Natchez that was part of the United States Navy is going to have the USS prefix in front of it so, USS Natchez (1827) and USS Natchez (PG-102) will not interfere with your articles. --Brad (talk) 05:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Links to USCarriers.net

Bane22 (talk · contribs) has added links from a number of carrier and amphibious assault ship pages to their pages on uscarriers.net. Those are the only edits he's made, which makes me suspect that it's his own web site. It seems to violate the first guideline of WP:LINK's "Links normally to be avoided": it "does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article." I was planning to remove the links and ask him not to add more, but I wanted to see if anyone had any objections first. TomTheHand (talk) 14:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that too. The links are kind of useful in that the site has some operational histories that are more up-to-date than most of our articles, but that's not really clear from the descriptive text he's adding—and someone should point out to him that the way he's adding the links is likely to cause them to be flagged and reverted as spam, regardless of any COI and without consideration of the value of the links. I'm about to head out the door, but I'll do it later if no one else beats me to it. Maralia (talk) 16:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I left a note on his talk page, but that account hasn't had any other activity since, and it doesn't look like any other account is adding those links now. Maralia (talk) 17:04, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Infobox Polish Navy

Resolved

Template:Infobox Polish Navy 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. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:42, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Ship naming RfC: Scharnhorst - battleship or battlecruiser?

I have opened an RfC to try to resolve this issue, which is proving very difficult. Please take a look at: Talk:Scharnhorst_class_battlecruiser#Request_for_Comment:_Battleships_or_Battlecruisers.3F. The Land (talk) 14:57, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

USS Constitution and Bonhomme Richard.

Seeing as how the USS Constitution and the USS Bonhomme Richard (1765) are two very important ships in the story of the US Navy, I'm somewhat disappointed these articles aren't higher up on the scale than B-class. The ships project seems to have a liking towards battleships, with 8 of 15 FA being centered around the subject. Nothing wrong with battleships, but it would seem they're the only important ship the Navy ever sailed.

I'm bringing up the subject of trying to improve these articles yet not having much of an idea what needs to be done in order to bring them up the scale. I did just replace the infobox on the Bonhomme Richard, so that's one step in the right direction. --Brad (talk) 04:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess I shouldn't bring up that I've just completed a major revision on another battleship (currently GA): USS Texas (BB-35)?

To my credit, I did expand Six original United_States frigates quite some time ago, but the Texas has distracted me. Those battleship FAs are also the work of one person: TomStar81 (talk · contribs). (Hint: He doesn't have one of our barnstars yet.) He has written/nominated/expanded Iowa-class battleship, Armament of the Iowa class battleship, USS New Jersey (BB-62), USS Missouri (BB-63), USS Wisconsin (BB-64), USS Kentucky (BB-66), and is currently working on USS Illinois (BB-65) and USS Iowa (BB-61). And, USS Iowa turret explosion is about to be expanded by another user over at MILHIST. Pretty soon every article related to the Iowa class will be Featured and it is planned to be nominated for Featured Topic status. -MBK₀₀₄ 04:53, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Umm ok but how do we make the two articles I mentioned, better? --Brad (talk) 09:31, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I know I started on a little rant. Forgive me. As to improving these two articles, well, I can point you to some review methods over at WP:MILHIST that should give you many ideas and things to improve upon. You can go here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Review#Peer_review and list the two articles by following the directions there and soon thereafter a few editors should review the articles in question and give you ways to improve them. -MBK₀₀₄ 18:41, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

• I've requested a peer review at USS Constitution. Start with that one first and may God save the Queen! --Brad (talk) 04:48, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Deleting obsolete templates - revisit

I've replaced all instances of {{Infobox Ferry}} and nominated it for deletion at WP:TfD. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Was this Vanguard wrecked?

Can someone with appropriate sources check as to whether HMS Vanguard (1678) was really wrecked in 1703? I'm using Brian Lavery's Ship of the Line vol 1 currently, where she is listed as being rebuilt in 1710 - no hint of being caught up in the storm. Martocticvs (talk) 19:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Vanguard - sunk in the Medway during the Great storm of 1703, raised in 1704. Rebuilt at Chatham between 1705-10 as 1,551bm, then as 1,625bm. Renamed HMS Duke on 26 July 1728, broken up in August 1769 at Plymouth. All in Colledge. Benea (talk) 19:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Splendid, thank you. Martocticvs (talk) 19:12, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Templates within the infobox

The OHP frigates use templates within the infobox template for statistics that are common, ie. {{OHP frigate displacement}}, {{OHP frigate length}}, {{OHP frigate beam}}, {{OHP frigate draft}}, {{OHP frigate propulsion}}, {{OHP frigate speed}}, {{OHP frigate range}}. Take a look at the infobox for USS Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7) to get an idea what I'm talking about. I've only seen this done in a couple of classes of ships and I was wondering if it was encouraged / supported by WP:Ships. The main problem I see with it is watchlisting and vandalism. There may be quite a few people who have the OHP frigates in their watchlist, but I'm guessing only one or two people are watching the templates. Another problem might be if individual ships have varying stats, like different propulsion, sensors, armament etc. I was thinking of re-doing the CF Adams class in a similar fashion, but I thought I'd check here before creating all those templates. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Oddly, I picked a class of ships that I actually created the templates on. I'm sure I copied someone else back in 2006. I'd still like to know if this is sanctioned by WP:Ships. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I acknowledge the watchlist/vandalism issue, but I do like templates for this purpose. I'm using some templates on the U.S. fleet subs of World War II, but only for a few characteristics. They're an interesting case because there were a number of engine configurations, depending on who built them; as a result, there are something like ten or twelve propulsion templates and I pick the right one for the individual boat.

One problem I ran into was that when I have ref tags inside the template, they don't show up in the article's reflist unless that same reference is also used somewhere else in the article. TomTheHand (talk) 14:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Considering the potention for vandalism, I went ahead and semi-protected all six eight templates in Category:Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate infobox templates. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:28, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Updates to {{DANFS}} and {{NVR}}

As you may know, in October {{DANFS}} was modified to add an optional parameter: an external link to a DANFS entry. In December, Brad101 (talk · contribs) suggested that {{NVR}} be similarly updated, and that the templates should really take up to two parameters, so that they could link simultaneously to the Navy's copy of DANFS and Hazegray.org's, or link to two names that the ship served under. I made both of those changes today. TomTheHand (talk) 16:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much! Being able to link within the template is helping to clean up article appearance a lot and at the same time provide a reliable reference. --Brad (talk) 06:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

No problem, glad it helps. Um, if there's anything else I've promised to do for anyone, then failed to follow through on over the past few weeks, please remind me about it. Been really busy. TomTheHand (talk) 14:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I am not a WP:SHIPS person, can you provide an example of each of those types of references? I have worked on many WP:NRHP historic site articles, especially National Historic Landmarks, which sometimes are ships, sometimes with that vague DANFS tag. I would like to update those tags on ships that are NHLs so they point to specific texts, and any tip on how to find the DANFS original text if it is not obvious. I would v. much appreciate duplicate response to my talk page, in case i don't get back here. Sincerely, doncram (talk) 00:37, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello Doncram! This is the web site for the Naval Vessel Register. If you click the "Quickfind" link you can search for ships by type or by the first letter of their name. This is the Navy's web site for DANFS. Click on the first letter of the ship's name to work your way to the ship's specific page. This is Hazegray.org's copy of DANFS; it was most useful before the Navy had all of DANFS online, but at this time I think the Navy's is a better resource because it continues to be updated. Please let us know if you have any more questions. TomTheHand (talk) 01:32, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply here and to Brad for helpfully pointing me to more discussion of this. doncram (talk) 17:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

List of Liberty ships by hull number articles

The List of Liberty ships by hull number articles were nominated for deletion on 8 January. Any thoughts can be expressed at the entry at AfD. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:32, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully resolved by consolidation of many separate List of Liberty ships component articles into just 4 chunks that are sortable by name or by hull number. doncram (talk) 08:58, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Navigational footers

Is anyone particularly attached to the behemoth that is Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/footers? It's unbearably large and consequently (at least for me) stops actually displaying the templates less than halfway down the page. I'm sure it served a purpose before the templates were standardized for formatting and categorized in Category:Naval navigational boxes, but at this point it's terribly unwieldy and incomplete. I think it has outlived its usefulness now that footer templates are (largely) properly standardized and categorized. I'd like to go through it section by section, confirming that each template is standardized/categorized, then purging sections as I go, ultimately resulting in deleting the page. We can easily cover footers from a guidelines standpoint by updating Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Tools#Ship class footers to describe standard formatting and include a link to the category. Thoughts? Maralia (talk) 15:37, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Zapping this 37 kB sounds like a good plan to me! --Kralizec! (talk) 16:53, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It's messy all right. If there isn't a way to make the page load with the footer boxes closed then it will only become worse than it is now. I would be concerned about making it easy as possible for those who don't know their way around the ship project to find these footers, however. I recall that I had trouble finding the right footers at one point. --Brad (talk) 16:55, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Ship class template - merge?

Just curious if this has been considered. Would it be reasonable to merge the class template in with the existing ship infobox? I think this could be done by still using {{Infobox Ship Begin}} and {{Infobox Ship Characteristics}}, but where the regular ship articles use Infobox Ship image and Infobox Ship Career, the class one would instead use something like "Infobox Ship Class ID" (or some similar name). The reason I suggest this is that the Characteristics box can easily perform double-duty in both areas, and making this change would improve consistancy in infobox style and usage. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:56, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I think about this often, and I agree that it needs to be done. However, when I've looked at the multiple class templates and tried to figure out which features to take from which, I've always gotten overwhelmed and frustrated.

On the bright side, it appears that a few months ago {{Infobox Class}} was merged into {{Infobox Ship Class}}, so I guess there's reasonably clear consensus on what belongs in a class infobox. Is there anything in Infobox Ship Class that we don't want to use, or anything missing? TomTheHand (talk) 22:21, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The Infobox Ship Class is missing several fields (I recently requested them on its talk page); but if the infobox were merged with the existing Infobox Ship Begin structure, those fields would already be part of the ship characteristics box - so that would resolve that issue. Actually, that's what started me thinking about suggesting such a merge. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:40, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh goodness, let's not start calling it "the Infobox Ship Begin structure"... that's just as bad as "Infobox Ship Example" ;-) I'm happy to come up with a new template that would be used with our multi-template ship infobox to handle classes. Anyone have any objections? TomTheHand (talk) 21:44, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Working on a prototype on my test page: User:TomTheHand/test. Not done with it, but if anyone has suggestions, please fire away. TomTheHand (talk) 15:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It's looking good to me. My one thought on it is that rather than having the "First in service" and "Last out of service" fields, to instead allow ranges for fields such as "Ships built range" and "In service range" where each of those could have a date range such as "1971-1998" or some other applicable date range. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:54, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with the above. Other than that it looks very good. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 17:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I chopped out First commissioned date, Final decommissioned date, First in service date, and Final out of service date, and replaced them with a single field called "In service range" which displays as "In service:". I think that was a really good idea; this is much cleaner. I'm looking hard at the "Total ships..." fields, trying to determine how they're best used and if they need any adjustments. I'm thinking of changing "Total ships in class" to "Total ships completed" or something... or at least adding a "Total ships completed" field. TomTheHand (talk) 15:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks good - though I like being able to list the ships in the class at the bottom of the box as we can at present... Martocticvs (talk) 20:41, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, interesting. I didn't notice that. I sort of think that information is better placed in a footer; it seems redundant to stick it in both the infobox and the footer. See [[Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate for an example. TomTheHand (talk) 20:55, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I was just thinking from the point of view of the sailing warships, where class is less defined - we have class articles but as yet no class navigator templates such as the one on that page. I'm not really sure how far to take it with those ships, but that's probably a matter for a different discussion. Martocticvs (talk) 21:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I was curious on the status of this. I like the change to use the "In service range". I don't have an opinion on the list of ships - I prefer the use of a nav-template, but as I'm unfamiliar with the intricacies of the military ships and classes mentioned above, I don't have a strong opinion on it.

What else needs to be done before making the conversion to this format official and available for use? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, the thing I'm most unsatisfied with is the "Total ships..." fields. Here's what it currently has, along with my concerns:

1. Ships in class - I would prefer "Total ships completed". If this field is intended to be total built + total cancelled, I don't think that's a very good idea... better to list the number completed and the number cancelled separately.
2. Ships active
3. Ships building
4. Ships fitting out - I don't think this is very useful; it's very temporary and should be merged into "building" in my opinion
5. Ships converted - Is this very useful? I'm not sure. Seems like it'd be used rarely and doesn't really need to be in the infobox.
6. Ships laid up - I would prefer "in reserve", as "laid up" is too specific
7. Ships out of service - I think this should be used exclusively for ships that left service peacefully (not sunk), and would like it to be worded in a way that makes that more clear ("retired"?)
8. Ships sunk
9. Ships scrapped - I don't think this is terribly useful, as it's the usual fate for a ship that's retired. I would populate "Total ships retired" and "Total ships preserved" and the difference was obviously scrapped
10. Ships preserved - I assume this means as a museum as opposed to in reserve for future service. I think it's a good idea for a field, but I don't think the wording is clear enough.
11. Ships never completed - I prefer "cancelled"
12. Ships planned

I would also reorder the fields to be more chronological, and maybe drop "Ships" from the display text, as it's repetitive and probably not necessary. I'd probably keep it in the code, to make the purpose of the fields clear. I guess I'm proposing something like this:

1. Building:
2. Planned:
3. Completed:
4. Cancelled:
5. Active:
6. Laid up:
7. Lost:
8. Retired:
9. Preserved:

Any thoughts? It's easy to add fields later, but hard to remove fields once the template is in use. TomTheHand (talk) 23:18, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Please see User:TomTheHand/test. I made my proposed changes to the above fields and would appreciate comments. TomTheHand (talk) 14:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with most points, but a few thoughts: "in reserve" would be a problematic term for commercial ships as it's essentially a military term. There are occasions when all ships of a commercial ship class are not in service, due to lay-ups or other reasons (and usually in those occasions the ships in question are not technically in reserve anyway). Although "laid up" may be too specific, I would prefer it over "in reserve" - the best option would be an entirely different term, but I at least can't think of one. The "sunk" and "retired" fields are also a bit problematic - there are certain cases those two options do not cover, such as onboard fires that didn't involve the ship sinking. Maybe the "sunk" field could be renamed "lost"? -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 14:59, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I see where you're coming from on both points, and I've made both changes. TomTheHand (talk) 15:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess I'm satisfied with the box now. I'm not sure what to name it, though, since Infobox Ship Class and Infobox Class are taken. Infobox Class Overview? TomTheHand (talk) 21:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I like it. My only question is on the date range; I just realized that we have an in-service range, but not a built range. I'm not certain how beneficial that additional range would be, but I wanted to bring it up again before we wrap this up.

As for name, I like either {{Infobox Class Overview}}, {{Infobox Ship Class Info}}, or {{Infobox Ship-Class}} (adding the dash). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I can see built range being very interesting info. I'll add it right now and update the example at User:TomTheHand/test. TomTheHand (talk) 21:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't see any other issues. That just leaves the question of what to call it. The two options I show in my prior post above would be my current preferences, unless someone has another option that hasn't been suggested yet. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

For the name I'd support Infobox Class Overview for the same of clarity. Or {{Infobox Ship Class Overview}} if we want to be pedant and differentiate from potential other class infoboxes. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 17:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Two articles that should be one?

Resolved

 – Articles merged. Kralizec! (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

These two articles, Italian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi (1961) and Italian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi (1936) are intriguing me at the moment. They are the same ship, which was reconstructed as a missile cruiser in the late 50s/early 60s. Ordinarily we would deal with the two incarnations in the same article, and it seems that this logic would apply to this case (same name, navy, role, etc). I guess the rearmament of the Iowas into guided missile platforms rather than big gun ships might be an appropriate comparison. In those cases we have the ship's history in one article, with a section dealing with the refits. Should the same be done here, or not? I don't have desperately strong opinions (a vague preference for a merge) so thoughts and feelings on a postcard please. ttfn, Benea (talk) 18:58, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I think they should be merged, given that it's the same ship, just rebuilt, so the precedent with the Iowas is quite valid. Also, the articles are fairly short; it would be better to merge them and create a decent length article out them. Parsecboy (talk) 19:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Both are pretty short articles, so I'd agree it would make more sense to merge them into Italian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi (1936) and have an additional characteristics section in the infobox. Martocticvs (talk) 19:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I can merge the two. Give me a couple of minutes ... --Kralizec! (talk) 19:12, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Done! I just did a few cosmetic edits after merging the two page histories, so someone should probably give it a closer look. --Kralizec! (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

God bless you sir! Benea (talk) 19:32, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Glad I could help! Seeing the ship split into two articles certainly was different. After all, we certainly have plenty of examples of single-article ships on decommissioned WWII cruisers that were converted into guideded missile cruisers (all of the members of the Boston-class cruiser, Providence-class cruiser, etc.) Regardless, doing my first article merge was very exciting! --Kralizec! (talk) 19:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

And the whole thing took about 5 minutes from the issue being flagged to the final copyedits. Drinks all round! Benea (talk) 20:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

A little help from an admin-type is required

Resolved

The article Aces of the Deep needs to be renamed to List of U-boat aces, however, given that the redirect already exists, I can't do it myself and still retain the article history. The current name is wretchedly melodramatic, not to mention a likely copyvio of the computer simulator of the same name from 1994. Also, the article name as it stands implies that the top scoring aces from all countries, from all time periods, not just Germany during World War II, are included. The proposed name fits in line with present "List of..." standards. Thanks for your help. Parsecboy (talk) 23:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Done ... wow am I on a roll today! Uh oh ... I better stop before my wife finds out and hands me a honey-do list! --Kralizec! (talk) 01:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Style guideline for PD sourced content

• A discussion about the style for PD text is under way at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Style guideline for PD sourced content. (From WP:AVIATION) It seems to apply to this project in that the massive amount of DANFS material would have to be placed in quotations under one user's proposal. --Dual Freq (talk) 03:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Ship infobox again

I've noticed the infobox doesn't have a field for ship type, but only for "type and class". Unless I'm missing something, this becomes a problem IMO when you have an article on a ship that has a type but no class, like say, a schooner, or a sloop etc. Also, I couldn't see a "cost" field in the sailing ship sub-infobox, so if you want to include the cost field you (presumably) have to use the entire infobox (haven't checked the other sub-infoboxes). Can these little problems be fixed? Gatoclass (talk) 13:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll take care of both. Note that anyone can edit the sub-infoboxes themselves by copying fields from the full code if they like, or you can use fields from the full code on a case-by-case basis. There are some rarely used fields that aren't in any of the simplified code, but you don't need to copy the full code to get them, just use the fields you want. TomTheHand (talk) 14:21, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Tom :) Gatoclass (talk) 14:29, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Using Commissioned: field to contain a range instead of a single date

On my talk page, Gatoclass suggested that rather than the current practice of putting dates of commissioning and decommissioning in separate fields (and possibly repeating those fields for ships with complex careers), we specify ranges in the Commissioned field. Quoting him:

So for example you'd have something like:

Commissioned: 1/5/44-20/7/46; 12/6/50-10/8/55.

Or maybe:

Commissioned:

1 May 44 - 20 Jul 46

12 Jun 50 - 10 Aug 55.

I can see where he's coming from. It certainly is cleaner. Can anyone think of why we shouldn't do it that way? The biggest concern I can think of is when we have incomplete information on a ship. For example, say we have a date commissioned and a date struck, but no decommission date. The ship might have decommissioned and been struck on the same day, but maybe not. With our current setup, we specify those two dates in separate fields and avoid implying anything that might be untrue. Another concern is a ship that sank. Do we close the range on the date the ship sank? Is that the way navies look at it?

Should we perhaps specify ranges as above when we have complete information, but when our information is incomplete we do it the old way? TomTheHand (talk) 16:59, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

My 2c - I think the separate commission/decommission fields are okay for ships that have only one commission period, but it looks awful messy when you have a bunch of these separate fields for ships with more than one commission period.

But as to your query about ships with incomplete information, I don't see why one couldn't just use a questionmark to indicate the date of decommission is unknown. Gatoclass (talk) 18:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

AFD Notification

Check it out: USS Illinois (BB-65). TomStar81 (Talk) 08:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The recent test case delete of an article on a USN harbour tugboat might be worth including in that debate. If I remember correctly, that AfD concluded that all commissioned ships are automatically notable enough for their own article, though there was a strong preference for lumping minor ships with routine service histories together in articles on the class. --Nick Dowling (talk) 07:00, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Colledge

Has anyone got a copy of Colledge to hand? If so, could they look over HMS Blanche please. Thanks. Woody (talk) 15:05, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I've given it the once over, filled in missing ships and tweaked the formatting. Benea (talk) 17:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou. Woody (talk) 17:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

No. 1 (yacht)

An editor keeps removing sourced information about the manufacturers of this ship's components, claiming that it's advertising and not relevant. It seems to me that it's perfectly relevant in an article about a particular ship to give the details of its construction, and would appreciate any comments (either pro or con) at Talk:No. 1 (yacht). Thanks, Jfire (talk) 17:19, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I added a comment to the bottom of the talk page. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

No Photo or No Image?

Currently on infoboxes we have a standard graphic reading No Photo Available. This is all well and good for ships from the mid-19th century onwards, when photos started to become more common, but for anything that ended its life before that time its either very unlikely, or simply impossible that a photo would exist, let alone be available - but paintings often are. So 'No Image Available' would seem to make more sense here. Martocticvs (talk) 17:26, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

That seems like an eminently reasonable suggestion. Should we just modify Image:No Photo Available.svg, or create a new one entirely? Parsecboy (talk) 17:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Creating a new image would potentially entail going through changing all current uses of the No Photo image... although having two in active use is not such a major problem. Martocticvs (talk) 17:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Funny you should mention that, because I've been thinking exactly the same thing myself over the last few days (having recently created a bunch of articles on the first ten Revenue Service cutters). In fact I was thinking about making an image myself, although I have very little experience with PC paint programs. But I guess it wouldn't be hard to make such an image, would it? Gatoclass (talk) 17:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I raised it because there is some disagreement over the image's use going on at Talk:HMS Cornwall (1692). Also, changing that image is simply a case of grabbing its source code, changing the word, and resaving - SVG is quite straightforward really. Martocticvs (talk) 17:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I may have found an image that already exists that addresses our concerns: Image:Insert image here.svg. We can always just change the wording to match the other if we want to. Parsecboy (talk) 18:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, please; I beg of you! Whatever you decide, let's not have to change every other existing file already in use. --Brad (talk) 18:49, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Part of the argument against the use of the image on that page is that if there is no image available at all, then the image is going to remain on the page conceivably forever, and they are asking if there isn't a less visible method we could use to keep track of ship articles lacking images. I had a thought about making the template place the article in a category for ship articles lacking images, but then I thought that having that sort of administrative category on a page is not so appealing (though of course it is done frequently enough for articles lacking sources, needing wikifying, etc...) Martocticvs (talk) 21:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

That is a very good point; if there isn't a mechanism we can use to track which articles need images, it's unlikely that we'll be able to fix them, unless we were working on the specific article anyway. Perhaps something like a talk page template, like the Template:Ship infobox request to denote articles that need an infobox. That way, it would place the category on the talk page. Thoughts? Parsecboy (talk) 02:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, there is a mechanism. If you click on (for example) Image:No Photo Available.svg, you'll see a list of articles that are using that particular image. --Rlandmann (talk) 02:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I created the image about a year ago as a result of the 4th wall issues of its predecessor (Insert Image Here). See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships/Archive_4#Insert_image_here and Image talk:IIH.png. Personally, I use those image pages to find articles with no images and then replace it with an image. I don't see any reason to remove or change it in existing articles, unless no image or photo can be reasonably located. In cases, where it is not applicable, simply don't use it. Maybe a todo list item could be find images for the articles listed at Image:IIH.png and Image:No Photo Available.svg, but it seems like a bit of a waste to run through and change or remove them only to replace it with a category or talk page template. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:58, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

New ship class infobox

As a result of the discussion above, we've developed a new template, {{Infobox Ship Class Overview}}, which can be used with the multi-template ship infobox to support classes. I've updated the documentation at {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}}. TomTheHand (talk) 21:12, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Should this one be used at this stage, or do we need to verify consensus first? If okay to start using the new one, should the old one be marked deprecated, or should both be considered acceptable for now? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't see what changes have been made. Where have you documented them?

And now that we're on the subject, can someone please tell me what the "Ship capacity" and "Ship complement" fields are supposed to be used for? When I'm doing a troopship, I usually use "Ship capacity" to mean "troop capacity" and put the ship's cargo capacity in the "tonnage" field, but I don't know if this is what I'm supposed to do. Also, why aren't there just separate "troop capacity" and "cargo capacity" fields for ships? And how does a ship's "complement" differ from a ship's crew? Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 11:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I documented the changes on {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}}. See the section entitled "Code for ship classes".

"Complement" is a warship's crew; "crew" was added because "complement" isn't really appropriate for commercial vessels but is the preferred term for warships. "Capacity" is supposed to be used for... any kind of capacity, really, that isn't well-suited to "tonnage". There are no separate fields for different kinds of capacity because they are all intended to be put in the same field:

Capacity:

300 troops

6 tanks

...and so on. If a ship's cargo capacity is well-suited to be put in the "tonnage" field, then it can be put there, but if it's not, it can go under "capacity" along with troops.

Barek, I would say let's try this new infobox out on a few class articles that lack an infobox or use a non-template infobox, figure out if it works well, add anything we need, and discuss deprecating other boxes later on. TomTheHand (talk) 14:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Tom, thanks - I tried a test use of the new template at Steel Electric class ferry. I still need to cleanup some of the data, but it looks good. The only thing that I noticed which I didn't previously is that the class name is now down in the second section. That works for ship articles, but I think for class articles it should be the first data field in the first section of the infobox. Would it be reasonable when doing class infoboxes to not use the "characteristics" section for "Ship class:", and instead create a "Ship class:" and "Ship type" field in the Class overview section? It would be partly redundant coding, but should never be used in both sections. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

An option to adding a new "Ship class" field within the {{Infobox Ship Class Overview}} box could be to add a header caption where the class could be listed. I have no personal preference on either method, just tossing out options. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm really not a fan of titles at the top of infoboxes; you navigated to the article for Steel Electric class ferry, and it says "Steel Electric class ferry" in big text at the top of the article, so I don't think it's necessary to include the article name in the infobox. However, the "Characteristics" box has a field for "Type" that's intended to be used where "Class and type" wouldn't be appropriate; I had meant to insert it into all of the copy-and-paste code for classes but missed a couple. I've fixed it now, and will replace "Ship class" with "Ship type" in the above article. I can also add a name field similar to that of the ship infobox if you guys want. TomTheHand (talk) 19:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

A "type" field instead of "class and type" would definately be useful for a large number of commercial ships built to a one-off design. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 20:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to use "Ship type" instead of "Ship class" whenever appropriate. TomTheHand (talk) 21:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Looking at Barek's conversion, one issue does spring into mind. On the Steel Electric class the operator is still quite simple, as the whole class has been taken by the same company when the operator has been changed - but for classes that were built for several different operators to start with and have changed hards several times, this could be a problem. For instance, I'm planning on doing an article on Apollo class ferries built between 1970 and 1975 for three different companies, and since then members of the class have been operated by 33 different companies(!)... so maybe some kind of a guideline would be needed on which operators should actually be included in cases like that. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 19:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I definitely see where you're coming from, but I'm not sure what the guideline should be. TomTheHand (talk) 19:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Reminder of the Philip Greenspun Illustration project

Hi. You may be familiar with the Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. $20,000 has been donated to pay for the creation of high quality diagrams for Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Requests are currently being taken at m:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests and input from members of this project would be very welcome. If you can think of any diagrams (not photos or maps) that would be useful then I encourage you to suggest them at this page. If there is any free content material that would assist in drawing the diagram then it would be great if you could list that, too.

If there are any related (or unrelated) WikiProjects you think might have some suggestions then please pass this request over. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 16:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Need help...

I'm dangling dangerously close to 3RR on USS Forrestal (CV-59). An IP is removing mention of an operation with a corresponding article, claiming that they were onboard at the time and the event did not happen. I've asked them to provide a proper citation to prove their assertions, but I don't want to revert again. Can someone help? -MBK₀₀₄ 22:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Statement in question now cited, but keep an eye on the article for a while. -MBK₀₀₄ 23:11, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Depreciated Infoboxes.

I found this little toy today: {{newinfobox}} and I think it could be a deadly weapon in my hands since I'm still doing audits and checking conditions of articles. We of course have our own {{Ship infobox request}} but its more suited for an article that has no infobox at all. I guess the question is whether I should affix one or the other to articles needing the new super improved infobox? I would expect the list to grow very long, very quickly. --Brad (talk) 20:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

It could be useful for tagging articles that have non-template infoboxes, like old hardcoded tables—but it would be redundant to tag articles that use deprecated infobox templates, since 'what links here' is a more accurate way to tackle replacing those. Maralia (talk) 21:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Would it be safe to say that the old hardcoded tables are dark blue in color as opposed to the template ones being light blue? I see light blue templates out there but very few of them look like the intergalactic all-new template :) --Brad (talk) 04:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the dark blue should always be a table. There were a few old dark blue nonstandard templates, but we've done away with them all. Maralia (talk) 04:49, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I've changed that template a bit to put the ship articles in a separate category. {{newinfobox|type=ship}} places the pages in Category:Ship articles needing infobox conversion. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:58, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I like the sound of that - there are loads of articles with the ancient table boxes on and we've been lacking a suitable way of tagging those until now - good find! Martocticvs (talk) 22:04, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Ooohhh, how deliciously Evil! Muuwahaha! I will wait for more comments before I start blasting. The {{Ship infobox request}} already has over 600 articles on the list and this new one will add hundreds more I'm sure. But maybe tagging them will help people find them who aren't aware they could use 'what links here' on the old template page. --Brad (talk) 23:01, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Apparently there are in fact 666 of those... so the evil laughter is quite appropriate! :D Martocticvs (talk) 23:32, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

And I think that tagging the deprecated ones is probably a good idea for that reason. It won't hurt, at any rate. Martocticvs (talk) 14:16, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I was looking at wikipedia guidelines on article length today, and they were concerned about long articles taking too long to serve. The guidelines are clearly obsolete. Articles with lots of templates (e.g. Bristol East (UK Parliament constituency) take much longer to load than long articles with only a few (e.g. Battleship). This is because of all the template calls to the server. If there is someone out there who thinks it a good idea to change perfectly good table infoboxes to template ones, please could he/she go think again.--Toddy1 (talk) 16:16, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. If our infoboxes were a problem, the developers would say something about it. Since they haven't, it's not; you're not in a position to speculate about what is and is not a problem for Wikipedia's servers. TomTheHand (talk) 18:40, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh. I liked this quote: But don't go running around screaming "the servers, the servers!!!" as an excuse to not do stuff, that's stupid. --Brad (talk) 14:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Will someone please think of the servers! :) Benea (talk) 15:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

that would have to be a really long article like say a nine hundred pages maybe. to overload the server bank that wiki would need to run this website with all of the trafic their is. um so this list is a list of infobox requests? well if we made a standerd templte and just one template that asks for a name, weight, commision, decomision, Etc... then genrates an infobox for the page which you would cut copy paste. kinda like cition machine .com but it would have to be a program that is only downloadable by members of the ship project and we would need (obviously) a really good programer. just you know mull it over and let me know what ya think. i might be able to find a programer but... it would be better if someone elese knew someone else to do this. i thank ye --ANOMALY-117 (talk) 20:14, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

We've had a standard template for quite some time. Have you actually looked at any of our project documentation? Your input would be a lot more useful if you familiarized yourself with what already exists. You might want to start at WP:SHIPS, especially the 'Project documentation' section of the box on the right side. Maralia (talk) 20:31, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

um..yea i should do that. however my point was that if we compiled a database of flags and images with a series of questions that asks for the input of the ships name year of commison and decommision and weight, beam, length,draught, and armment,(leave blank if none),and you select flag and picture, ETC... make it into a program that asks for said input it would then make a ship info box/template thing. What this templete/box thing looks like might need to be voted on.

basicly the program asks for input we give said input it gives a ship info box thing that agreed in layout. tada massproduced ship template things. saving tons of time because you wont have to write the code you just cut copy paste the code of the info box that has been made for it to the article. insta-shipbox. the template thing is a minor note the point is the program.ANOMALY-117 (talk) 21:02, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Or if you reverse the order, you have what we already use. Select the drop down for the appropriate ship article from {{Infobox Ship Begin/doc}}, then copy/paste the template code shown to the article, then fill in the relevant fields, leaving blank the ones not needed. Instantly you get a consistently styled infobox for ship articles. No special program needed. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:08, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

yea but id rather cut copy paste once instead of twelve to fifteen times then cheaking it and then filling in the feilds and then search for the flag code and search for the picture code. its time consuming for me i don't know about other people but writing and/or fliping between pages and copying and cuting and pasting is annoying and can be frustrating. im just sayin but it's cool eathier way i think this could be faster though.--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 21:20, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

In regards to: Category:Ship articles without infoboxes I have been picking away at US Navy ships listed there and have managed to remove many of them. In some cases the box had already been laid down but the editor didn't remove the tag from the talk page. As a bonus, I've been able to find a few non-conforming ship articles and fix those too. --Brad (talk) 22:18, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

USS Carlinville (PC-1120) this one smells.

Fishy.. USS Carlinville (PC-1120) Not in DANFS; not in a word search at NHC; not on the NVR; not on a word search at WP except to turn up the same article. Text of article looks like a DANFS entry yet there are some statements that are not DANFS style. Anyone else concur this is fudge? --Brad (talk) 20:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

The article appears to be sourced primarilly from navsource.org. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:23, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) How odd. Navsource does have a page: [8]. This Navy document does list USS Carlinville, PC-1120, and has a date sold that isn't mentioned in the article but that does fit with its story: [9]. The following page lists PC-1120 as one of the ship grounded in the 9 August 1945 typhoon, and it's odd that the article doesn't mention it: [10]. TomTheHand (talk) 21:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if the older history is accurate, but I think that's the right hull number for the ship which was off Berkeley for those time periods. I live in the area and saw it many times. Would be good to find more corroborating sources though. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:29, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Part of the style differences seen in the article could also be due to it being created from a submital at Wikipedia:Articles for creation/2006-06-11#USS_Carlinville_.28PC-1120.29 - so the text could just be dated style-wise. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:34, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Given all the above comments, the text of the article is too much of a rip of the navsource article [11] and if someone associated with Navsource wrote the article then WP can't use it word for word as we do with DANFS. Even the navsource article states there is no DANFS article. So, the ship did exist and had an interesting career but the article as is needs to to stubbed down to the minimum to avoid a copyright issue. I appreciate the help with the searches. --Brad (talk) 22:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, it looks to me like the guy who wrote it has put it in his own words, it's not a copyvio. So I don't see the need to stub it, but Navsource obviously needs to be properly attributed. Gatoclass (talk) 09:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess you're right. At least our author left out the comment For a few years it became a eco-hippie floating flophouse ...lol Apparently someone at navsource is a bit biased. --Brad (talk) 14:52, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed the Navsource account is a tad colourful :) Gatoclass (talk) 18:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Accurate, however. That's pretty much how it was referred to even in the local hippie press... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)