Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships

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Assessment status report

Type	Sept 8	Sept 13	Sept 18	Oct 1	Oct 15	Nov 1	Nov 15	Dec 3	Dec 17	Dec 26	Change
Assessed	3087	4387	6050	7121	8017	9368	9864	10689	11499	11696	8609
Unassessed	2737	1961	1034	492	386	227	225	201	79	120	2617
Total	5824	6348	7084	7613	8403	9595	10089	10890	11578	11816	5992

Thirteen hundred articles assessed in five days - what can I say? Y'all are awesome. Let's keep blasting away at it; we've clearly proven that cleaning this up entirely is an attainable goal. Thanks for all your hard work! Maralia 04:38, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Impressive work, everyone! I keep trying to tackle some of our unassessed backlog, but then I get sidetracked into articles that had not yet received the {{WikiProject Ships}} banner. Of the 150-odd assessments I have performed so far this month, at least a hundred either had just {{ WPMILHIST}} or no project tags at all. --Kralizec! (talk) 05:56, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I've found quite a few that didn't have any project tags. I also went through my watchlist and quite a few of the ships I had there were assessed by class but not importance. I took care of those. Another question, what is the procedure if another wikiproject has rated the article as GA or FA?-MBK004 16:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Generally, take other projects' assessments with a grain of salt - their criteria may differ, and 'B' or 'A' status could have been designated by a single person without a thorough review. The safe exceptions to this are:

• assessments by MILHIST are implicitly accepted by WPSHIPS;
• assessments of FA and GA quality are independent of projects and therefore implicitly accepted as well. Maralia 16:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I've tagged and assessed a combination of about 300 articles over the past 12 hours. I'm extremely tired now.-MBK004 04:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Well done, now go to sleep! The ships will still be there tomorrow :) Maralia 04:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

In the past 6 hours I've tagged and assessed another 125 articles. New ones keep popping up, too. It seems like somebody is tagging but not assessing.-MBK004 21:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

That's probably partly me... I'm not so sure about assessing article's I've created though, which is why I have only been tagging them. I have assessed quite a few other articles in the last few days though. Martocticvs 21:59, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I've updated the status table above - we've improved from almost 3,000 to now 'only' 1,000 tagged articles left to assess. Just as importantly, we've tagged an astounding 1,200 ship articles for the project in just 10 days' time. Amazing work, guys. Maralia 03:33, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Table updated again. We have assessed over 4,000 articles in less than a month's time and only have 500 left to go. The beer is on me when we're done. Maralia 20:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Is it time for another update? (hinta, hinta) --Kralizec! (talk) 17:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep, how many more have we done? The list is looking rather small now.-MBK004 17:37, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Updated table by request. Blah blah, good work, keep it up, rah rah go team, etc. Maralia 04:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

The most staggering statistic for me is seeing how many articles we've tagged that didn't have tags before and the total number of articles. We are close to doubling the total number of articles.-MBK004 17:36, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Very true! It is very telling that while the number of un-assessed articles declined by only 106, the number assessed increased by 896! As Donald Rumsfeld would say, we are doing a great job at decreasing the known unknown articles! --Kralizec! (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I've got a question to which someone here may know the answer. I've come across several list and template type articles that have been rated as "list class" or "template class", but there are no corresponding categories for them. They show up in "list class articles", not "list class ship articles". I created a Category:List-Class Ships articles, but I don't know how to direct the assessment template to this new category. Hopefully someone here can help me figure this out. Parsecboy 22:31, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

It requires ... complicated changes to our banner's template parser. Enabling [1] the dab-class assessment took a good-sized chunk of uninterrupted time, which I probably am not going to have again until late this month or early November. Unless someone else with parser skills wants to take a gander at it, I would suggest we leave them for now. --Kralizec! (talk) 23:33, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

That sounds fine to me. I don't have the necessary skills to do it myself. Parsecboy 01:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe I can tackle that project. My only concern is that I don't know if it's a good idea to class lists separately. I think they should be evaluated based on the same criteria of comprehensiveness, good sourcing, and organization as articles. I have no problem with creating a "template" class, though. Is there an abbreviation for "template" we'd like to use, or should we just type it out? I'm a little iffy on using "temp", since I immediately think "temporary" when I see it. TomTheHand 13:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

So should we just rate them as stub or start class articles? I don't think it's really necessary to rate them B or higher. I agree with your reservations about using "temp" for templates, though. Parsecboy 15:10, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Should we be doing anything with ship disambiguation pages like HMS Benbow, to mark them as part of the project? Some projects have a 'non-article' catagory, that might be adapted for them I suppose. Benea 15:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The Disambig class is enabled and I have been tagging them as 'Disambig' for class and 'NA' for importance. See Talk:HMS Vanguard and [[Category:Disambig-Class Ships articles]].MBK004 15:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Champion! Benea 15:39, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I can give a couple of quick (very quick ... before my kids tear up the place while daddy is distracted) answers on a few of these:

• dab pages were enabled [2] earlier this month [3]
• from my experience with other projects, most list-class pages follow a separate criteria ultimately leading to featured list
• when I labled dab-class, I used {{Grading scheme}} and Category:Articles by quality as resources, and they tend to indicate that template or Template is the magic word used for template-class articles

Ok, back to daddy-daycare. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:15, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

According to our own assessment criteria we should be assessing lists in the same way as other articles - it is just that they proceed to featured list instead of featured article. I rv a couple of assessments back from NA to list, on the grounds that if they were NA we might think they don't need attention, and if they are list they should show as needing assessment. I think they should definately be assessed beyond start and stub class, else we'll never get them to Featured list - and there are some good potential lists - like the battleships ones. Viv Hamilton 17:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've added "Template" as an accepted class for {{WikiProject Ships}}. TomTheHand 20:01, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks great! Thanks for adding it! --Kralizec! (talk) 23:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

How about another status update. Hasn't it been two weeks?-MBK004 14:49, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Updated the table. I've lost my voice from a stupid cold; can someone else give the motivational speech today? Maralia 15:12, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow, we have nearly doubled the number of articles in just two months! I continue to be amazed at all the new articles we have added. While members of this project have taken care of 159 of the unassessed articles in the past two weeks, we tagged and assessed 1192 new articles! --Kralizec! (talk) 14:54, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it is about time for another update. I've identified quite a few new B, GA, and A-class articles that fall under our scope since the last update. I wonder if we've doubled the number of articles yet? If not, we must be extremely close!-MBK004 19:29, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Table now updated. We've passed the 10,000 article milestone!-MBK004 16:21, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the table here! I should have pointed it out earlier, but the most current count is always available on the main project page, in the sidebar template {{Ships sidebar}}, which substs this page: Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Ships articles by quality statistics. It's auto updated by bot every three days. Maralia 17:16, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

We've also got all these to deal with at some point... Category:Unassessed-importance Ships articles Martocticvs (talk) 11:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been doing a few each day. It seems like the job will never end. -MBK₀₀₄ 06:10, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

The list of un-assessed articles never seems to shrink much because the good folks at WP:MILHIST are also adding our project tag to applicable articles as part of Tag & Assess 2007. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

All the ship articles I've tagged thru Tag & Assess 2007 were done correctly as to not add to our backlog. Also, the next update is due within 24 hours when the assessment bot updates. -MBK₀₀₄ 17:53, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Assessment status report updated again. We seem to be slowing down considerably. Importance assessment drive seems to be looming as well. -MBK₀₀₄ 02:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know that we're necessarily slowing down; we did assess some 800 articles between November 15 and Dec. 3. It just seems we can't get the number down to one page. It's been steadily increasing at about the same pace we've been assessing. Parsecboy (talk) 00:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, as of right now, the unassessed list is empty! :D (apart from this page, but I can't work out why its in there yet...) Martocticvs (talk) 12:19, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

That didn't last long! Martocticvs (talk) 14:36, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Brad101 has been on a tagging sweep already this morning—now that he's signed on to the project, someone go post him a quick and dirty 'how to assess'! Maralia (talk) 15:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I've been reading the instructions but so far have not begun to assess articles. I have been doing the disambig pages since those are no-brainers. I've probably put down at least 100 project tags, maybe even 200, so that should give us an idea of how many articles are still out there not tagged. Finding talk pages without the project tag is really easy. People have made a serious mess to the disambig pages, sometimes redirecting the disambig pages to one ship. USS Chesapeake was one good example. Another was USS Challenger where someone had pointed it to the Star Trek universe. --Brad (talk) 16:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

This page started showing as unassessed about the same time as List and Cat classes were enabled for us (because it didn't show there last week when I was clearing up the unassessed, I'm certain of if). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 11:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Fixed! It appears that you inadvertantly added this page to that category manually [4]. Adding a colon [5] fixed the issue.  :-) --Kralizec! (talk) 12:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Good job. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 10:28, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Assessment status update for 17 December now posted. -MBK₀₀₄ 05:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Table updated as of 26 December. Also, for those of you who assess for WP:MILHIST too, note that they have enabled the dab parameter for class assessments. Maralia (talk) 21:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

What is this picture?

Check out Image:Harnett County AGP-821.jpg. The pink water is ... very odd. I presume it is not a red tide or something similar, but I really have no idea what it is. Any thoughts? --Kralizec! (talk) 16:59, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Mud or sand, perhaps, from the landing craft? - BillCJ 17:17, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Could be a sandbar or something similar its defiantly some kind of sediment in the water. MarVelo 21:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Do we know where this is? Could be river outflow, depositing sediment. Or could be she's leaking oil. Trekphiler 08:14, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Bleached coral? Does anyone know her history - Did she ground? Viv Hamilton 11:04, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe the vessel is an LSV designed to beach and then discharge vehicles. It may be aground with the engines running astern waiting for the tide to lift it clear.Jmvolc (talk) 22:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The pink tinge extends to the decks and stern. Something to do with the colour of the photograph itself? Benea (talk) 23:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

yes, beached with two other boats tied on (no offense) not likely ive seen it before somewere its a macherniary fuel or something ,dye , sediment (redclay, or sandrock) but not likly, could be napalm it is a fuel with chemical thickners, but i think it has something to do with macheneray fuel or, oil, grease, or something.ANOMALY-117 21:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC) and definatly not a photographic error because the guy took the pic from a helicopter with the sun to his right or directily behind him and at maybe 12 to 3 o'clock in the day. but your guess is still as good as mine.ANOMALY-117 21:08, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Looking more closely - the pink tinge extends from the decks, down the stern on the port side and into the sea, where it spreads forward and off the starboard, significantly not to her port or stern. Something being washed from her decks, off the starboard of her stern (note the white colour where it enters the water - splashing, rather like a waterfall?) where the current carries it off from the ship, washing it forward and to the right. Sound plausible? Benea 21:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Initially I thought it could be something being washed off, but I could not figure out what (a) would be pink, and (b) that there would be so much of it, the stuff is being washed off the stern and the area forward of the helipad, especially since the ship is over 300 ft long. --Kralizec! (talk) 02:21, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

hehhe.. pepto-bismal. any-way and do we have any information on flip-ships or is their only one of its kind? o and i have to do a 5-page paper on hitler does any-body know anything? yes i tried the page but, the @!!$%@^ parental controls won't let me in! ANOMALY-117 00:45, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Transclusion cost/benefit?

I recently edited the Tribal class destroyer (1936) page to replace many confusing links to vessels with the Template:Warship, however these were reverted shortly afterward and the editor pointed me toward the Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits while noting on my talk page that this template is too taxing for server processing. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? I would argue that the benefits of standardizing and simplifying links to articles on vessels, not to mention the kilobytes saved, would trump any minuscule increase in server effort....Thanks! Plasma east (talk) 15:57, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Well I routinely use the {{HMS}} template for linking to RN ships, but only when making new links - there's not really any purpose to be served by changing extant links in an article to use a template. Martocticvs (talk) 16:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the editor who reverted did the right thing. I cannot see any benefit in changing perfectly serviceable links with the Template:Warship. We should be encouraging people to research and write good new articles. Templates can be a good thing, when they help people to do this.--Toddy1 (talk) 21:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Much like Martocticvs, I generally only use the ship shortcut templates ({{warship}}, {{HMS}}, {{USS}}, {{USNS}}, and {{sclass}}) when creating new articles or adding content to existing pages. That said, I normally do add the templates to ship disambiguation pages since 99% of them fail to follow WP:NC-SHIP and/or WP:MOSDAB. Regardless, I would like to extend my kudos to Plasma east for following the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle on this issue. All too often editors turn up their noses, say something like "WP:TCB is just an essay, not a guideline or policy," and just undo their reverter. Thank you, sir! --Kralizec! (talk) 22:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I have a few thoughts on this subject. I'm a big fan of {{HMS}} and {{USS}}. They make it much easier to write, but just as important, they make articles easier to edit later. I'm not as big of a fan of {{warship}}, but I still think it's handy. I have regular expressions set up in my AWB to automatically apply {{HMS}} and {{USS}} to articles that I'm editing.

I had a conversation with GraemeLeggett here after he reverted some of my template usage. I don't know if it's necessarily a good idea to make edits solely to insert the templates into articles, but I think applying the templates while making other edits is fine, and I don't really agree with editing solely to remove the use of the templates. TomTheHand (talk) 02:02, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the input on this subject as it was the first time that I had considered the processing cost of such templates, having only thought about the reduced disk storage. Plasma east (talk) 23:04, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The don't worry about performance guideline would tell us not to worry so much about server churn or disk space, and instead focus on making the best possible encyclopedia. These templates would appear to work very well in that regard, as they both increase accuracy and decrease the amount of time it takes to type naming convention-compliant ship names. --Kralizec! (talk) 18:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Similarly, I'm a fan of {{convert}}, which provides accurate unit conversions with configurable precision and formatting; I think it's preferable to use the convert template instead of performing a manual conversion. TomTheHand (talk) 18:39, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Ship pronoun usage

At the risk of asking a question discussed many times, what are the guidelines regarding the us of feminine personal pronouns for ships in regualr text (not in quotatations)? I've found no mention in the Project guidelines. I've always understood that formal ENglish used netral pronouns for inanimate objects, including ships. - BillCJ (talk) 18:52, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Here is a lengthy discussion on the subject. There is one suggestion to use it instead of she there. --MoRsE (talk) 19:21, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

That's an enormous can of worms to be opening. Conventional English language use is to refer to inanimate objects as 'it', i.e. "I have a new desk, it is 5ft by 7ft." Ships have long been a historical exception to this, with the argument that bestowing a name, when a ship is christened, bestows a gender, as with children, animals, etc. So, "HMS Victory was Nelson's flagship. She fought at..." I think we take the first use of the pronoun as the guideline for that article, like when deciding on US/British English spelling on articles when there is no national basis for choosing one over the other. Though sometimes the user who makes a major page expansion can set the precedent as well. Following common usage means we tend towards 'she' rather than 'it'. Benea (talk) 20:22, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your personal opinion on common usage, Benea. However, I asked if there were MOS guidleines for formal English usage, ie what would be proper for an encyclopedia. THere are many traditions in common usage of English, both American and UKish, that we do not use for formal writing, which isthe basis for the Wiki MOS. As a user of Southern AMerican English, would you support using "y'all" and "ain't" in an article on the US states of Alabama and Georgia, if that was what the first editor used? I somehow think not. - BillCJ (talk) 20:50, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

There is no MOS mandate for pronoun usage in reference to ships. Benea accurately described the consensus under which we operate here, not his 'personal opinion'. Maralia (talk) 21:09, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Hmm I think I touched a nerve there. I understood what you asked, but I think you misunderstood my reply, which as Maralia has kindly pointed out, is not my personal opinion but what I thought was an accurate description of consensus on a subject that has been a bit too contentious so far to establish a sold MoS guideline. But I'm happy to take correction, if phrased in a slightly more pleasant way than your response was. Benea (talk) 22:15, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

There is no MOS mandate for pronoun usage in reference to ships. is the answer I expected, not not some long, drawn-out rambling about history and usage that I already know. I'll just chalk this up as another case where formal English rules apparently don't apply to Wikipedia because people have emotional attachments to common usage. Or, in the style in which I will now start writing in mainspace, "Y'all don't make no sense!" :) - BillCJ (talk) 00:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:POINT ;-) TomTheHand (talk) 00:27, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

You forgot to add WP:DICK, since you obviously won't allow me the use of sarcasm. :P - BillCJ (talk) 00:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

As another linguistic group might say, "Very bad form sir. That's just not cricket." Benea (talk) 00:43, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

As someone who objected to my unpleasant resonses because of misunderstandings, I see you have no objection to exercising both towards me. I've been around here a lot longer than you, so I'm well familiar with the alphabet soup "experienced" editors like to use to intimidate others who disagree with them. If the rest of you will please refrain from piling on as he has, please stick to the actual discussion at hand, or don't say anything. - BillCJ (talk) 00:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm genuinely a bit confused. At first I thought you were being a bit uncivil. Then I thought you were joking. Now I don't know what to think. Should I be laughing or taking offense? Help! Computerspeak may be all very well but it means we can't use the normal British gestures like facial expressions, winks, or secret handshakes (my personal favourite). I'll admit I'm a bit adrift at the moment. Please insult me slightly more explicitly (references to tea or cricket will do) if that was your intention. pip pip, Benea (talk) 01:06, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I quite like alphabet soup. Is that a bad thing? Benea (talk) 01:08, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Getting involved in a contentious issue such as this is not worth my time anymore. See this diff for an admin's attempt to edit war with me when he changed the pronouns already in the article, prompting my good-faith query here. Given this admin's quickness to edit war wih me on a French carrier article, I am certainly not going to correct the use of "his" on the Light aircraft carrier page for Spanish ships per this diff, even tho I believe it is wrong. Given the lack of clear consensus on the pronoun issue, I will no longer be changing any pronoun usages for ships in any articles, even if they don't match existing usage on that page. - BillCJ (talk) 08:04, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I turned to my bookshelf to try to find out what people writing books about ships used. And I found mixed opinions. 'She' is probably more popular, but some authors use "it", and I found one switching about. Not to mention one author who seems quite happy to say "Its sister-ship". The books I looked at are at: User:The Land/Ship pronouns. The Land (talk) 20:21, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to agree with Benea. British ships, for example, are uniformly referred to as 'she' in my experience. This may be just a quirk of the English language, which doesn't usually have gender in grammar, but our cosmopolitan tongue is made up of nothing but quirks for the most part. I'd certainly say that 'she' should be used for all British ships. To take a hypothetical example, if someone writes an article on a ship of the Royal Navy I wouldn't see any justification for a later editor changing 'she' to 'it' in the piece. Nick mallory (talk) 02:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

German ships are always he.--Toddy1 (talk) 15:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed WikiProject Ships barnstar

The proposal

So that the members of this project may better recognize the outstanding efforts of their fellow members, I would like to propose the creation of a barnstar for WikiProject Ships! Thoughts? Opinions? --Kralizec! (talk) 21:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

---

Unless there are any objections, I propose the following in order to both keep us organized and moving forward:

• The floor is open for barnstar image nominations until 23:59:59 GMT on 24 November 2007. That gives everyone about five days to sharpen their crayons!
• One hour and two seconds after nominations close, at 01:00:01 GMT on 25 November 2007, we will start voting utilizing the following guidelines:
  • Voting will run for seven days and end at 01:00:01 GMT on 2 December 2007.
  • In order to avoid either ties or non-majority winners, we will use instant-runoff voting with each editor ranking their first, second, and third choices.
  • Any registered Wikipedia editor who is a WikiProject Ships member can vote.
• Depending on the amount of "last minute" voting that takes place, I will announce the first ever WikiProject Ships Barnstar prior to 03:00:00 on 2 December 2007.

However I would like to make a request. As the originator of this proposal and the organizer of our selection process, I would like to be the one to issue our first barnstar award. After that, all members of the project are free to use our new barnstar in order to recognize fellow Wikipedia contributors for their hard work and due diligence on WikiProject Ships! --Kralizec! (talk) 17:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Just under four hours remain to submit nominations! Voting will begin in about five hours. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:04, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Nominations

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the nominations. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Nominations complete - The nomination process is now closed. Fifteen images were submitted for consideration as the WikiProject Ships barnstar. Voting will begin shortly. --Kralizec! (talk) 00:31, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

#1 - Barnstar + tall ship

#2 - Propeller

#3 - Barnstar + Propeller

#4 - Barnstar + Anchor?

#5 - Similar to Image:MCPO collar.png.

#6 - Similar to Image:NavyCAS.jpg.

#7 - Wheel + Barnstar.

#8 - Barnstar with polished anchor.

#9 - Wheel

#10 - An attempt at a rotating wheel merged with the rotating barnstar.

#11 - Blue Wheel + Barnstar.

#12 - Blue Barnstar + wheel.

#13 - Barnstar with patina + wheel.

#14 - Barnstar with patina + wheel with the signal flags Bravo and Zulu (indicating Bravo Zulu).

#15 - Barnstar with patina + wheel with the signal flags Bravo and Zulu (indicating Bravo Zulu).

For our first nomination, how about the tall ship from our project banner superimposed on the traditional barnstar? --Kralizec! (talk) 21:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Could it not be a 5-bladed propellor, would make more sense? Woodym555 (talk) 22:00, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

A cropped version of this perhaps: Image:Screw-Konpira.jpg? Just a thought Woodym555 (talk) 22:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

How about this? --Kralizec! (talk) 22:35, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that was what i was thinking. It would be good for some of the editors involved in tagging and assessing and a certain editor who seems to create a featured ship article every week. Woodym555 (talk) 22:49, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Once we have consensus to (A) create a WikiProject Ships barnstar, and (B) what it should look like, I have little doubt that we all have a few recipients in mind.  :-) --Kralizec! (talk) 23:17, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

howa bout a salvage ship on a..? or an anchor? or the navy seal?--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC) but a bronze star with a clipper ship? idon't know about that.--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

While perhaps too simplistic and straight forward, my original idea was for a tall ship superimposed on the usual barnstar picture. However I think option #2 -the cropped Konpira screw that Woodym555 suggested- turned out well. --Kralizec! (talk) 23:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

My vote currently lies with the screw. But, the above idea about having an anchor seems like something that should be looked-into as well. Besides, why do we need to superimpose something over a usual barnstar, why can't we be different? Perhaps we should have an awards tracking page so we can showcase the recipients and their work?-MBK004 (talk) 23:54, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

i agree with MBK004 --ANOMALY-117 (talk) 00:00, 20 November 2007 (UTC) THE BARNSTAR isn't exactly seaworthy--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 00:00, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I asked Emoscopes back in August to draw something up, but he didn't respond and I forgot about it. If I can find my damn Photoshop key I'll take a crack at something. Maralia (talk) 00:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

• WP:AIR doesn't even use the term "Barnstar", but uses "Wikiwings" instead. I like the idea of an anchor, but the ship looks nice too. Perhaps some sort of collage of naval images would work, with a distinctly naval name a la wikiwings. "WIkianchor" really doesn't have a ring to it, while "Wikiscrew" is a more suitable to the Deletionist cabal. "Wikisails" perhaps? - BillCJ (talk) 00:50, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
  • You could have "Wikiprop" if you don't like screws. :) Woodym555 (talk) 00:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe something based on the Marines' Eagle, Globe, and Anchor? Replace the Earth with the wiki thing.

—wwoods (talk) 01:52, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

• The Wiki-globe and anchor sounds good, with or without the eagle. We could also use a seagull, albatross, or some other sea-related bird. - BillCJ (talk) 03:26, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the propeller is a kind of clever idea, but IMO it needs to be directly facing the viewer rather than turned off to an angle so the association with the 5-pointed barnstar is more obvious.

Not that this is an endorsement of the propeller idea, this is just a comment on how that particular submission might be improved. Gatoclass (talk) 01:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

LOVE THE WIKIWINGS but we should use those in an air force project but the anchor is awsome but the barnstar baground looks good but we can do better Wwoods has good idea but this isn't the marines this is the navy so mabey an anchor on the wikigolb with two ships one coming out of the left and right side of the achor at the top. like the latest battle ship logo with bow coming out from the side. yea hard to explain. but anchor plus NAVY something plus wiki world? or maby the navy matto? but the anchor barnstar looks great but needs improvement or diffrent background. so i think we should go with the anchor and some thing else with it? but what?--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 03:48, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

oh! an anchor with the japanese imperial navy seal behind it?! ya know the crisanthamum. its on the front of the yamato battleship.

Woah. It's nice that you are enthusiastic, but could you relax a bit? I think I just burst half a dozen blood vessels reading that last post. As to the topic, the project covers ships of all types - not just military ones - so using a military logo of any kind wouldn't really be ideal. Maralia (talk) 03:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

hm.. still i think the seal and the anchor would look good yea hahahah the post was confusing. all ships you say?... hm now you have my thinktank bubblin.--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 04:02, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The extent of my artistic ability is copying then pasting, but if an actual artist wanted to take Image:Barnstar Anchor.png and change the anchor from black to a similar look as the barnstar has, (ie, the lines, texture and depth etc), I think that would be better. --Dual Freq (talk) 04:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I rather like the idea of a ships wheel with a barnstar superimposed. There's an existing high-quality wheel illustration on Commons that xcould easily be adapted. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 06:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, one more that looks like a wheel since the wheel was so sharp looking. --Dual Freq (talk) 06:24, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The wheel + barnstar combination looks amazing! I'm not normally a fan of the barnstars, but that one looks very good. It's simple and makes it clear what we are about. The anchor + barnstar is also pretty good, but the andchor should probably be of a different colour and more detailed. -- Kjet (talk) 07:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Nah, don't like it. Of all the ones proposed thus far, I think I like the plain propeller, except the grey base needs to go so the propeller is there by itself. Gatoclass (talk) 07:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The wheel-star looks good to me too. I would like to see the wheel and wikiworld together, both with the wheel on top of the world, and vice versa. We keep tweaking things and adding ideas, and we'll soon come up with a winner, or perhaps even two or 3 good designs to use by preference. - BillCJ (talk) 07:23, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

To add more fuel to the fire, what about a design with the wheel in the center, and a ship on each side. We could have a sailing ship on one side, and a modern warship on the other. As a variation, have a passenger liner insted of the warship, then have a submarine below, and a naval carrier aircraft above. Just thinking. - BillCJ (talk) 07:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Edit conflict I'm not a big fan of using the wikiworld in these things, but that's why we should have a few alternative designs so that people could use the one they prefer. I've been thinking I could also lend what little graphic skills I have for this and maybe try my hand on a design with a more detailed anchor, either as a standalone or with a barnstar.

I'm not too keen on BillCJ's idea above... that would be far too much stuff for such a small image, it would look far too cluttered. Although I like the idea of using an actual image of a ship for this - maybe we could do one with a silhouette of a ship superimposed over a barnstar, wheel or anchor. Or actually maybe one or two variances, one with a sailing ship, one with an ocean liner and one with a modern warship, so that everyone could have the kind they want. -- Kjet (talk) 07:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I realized it would be cluttered, but I thought I'd go ahead and mention it. You never know who'll get inspiration from a small part of an idea, and apply it to something else. I like the concept of the wheel as the main symbol, with varying ships to choose from. If you can come up with a good anchor design, we can try some more variations with that too, perhaps the wheel/anchor as an alternative to the wheel/ship of choice design. - BillCJ (talk) 07:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Why not have several? One with sails for sailing ships, one with a screw for steam ships, and a generic one with an anchor. It would be good to have some common theme so that they are all obviously WP:SHIPS awards though. The Land (talk) 08:26, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Just to toss in my two cents, currently I favor the wheel + barnstar as a generic one, but I also like The Land's idea of having a couple to choose from for people with particular focuses. TomTheHand (talk) 14:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject awards, it appears that projects only have one barnstar each. The exception is our parent project, WikiProject Military history, which has a special barnstar for those who have made "contributions of truly incredible quality or importance," and even then it is only "awarded by the project coordinators in the name of the project as a whole." With that in mind, I think we should stick to just one design. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:48, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair enuff. I'd go for the screw then. Preferably animated. That would really stand out. The Land (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps linked to a sound file of a ship's klaxon booming? :) --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 16:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

A rotating barnstar (a la Image:Barnstar-rotating.gif) on #7 or #8 would be freakin` awesome! --Kralizec! (talk) 16:06, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

• Have you no ambition? What about the barnstar and the wheel spinning in opposite directions. Not only would that be really truly freakin' awesome but would probably also make you seasick if you looked at it long enough :)--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 16:30, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not too keen on the prop one... but #7 or particularly #8 would be fine I think... Martocticvs (talk) 16:23, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The wheel and barnstar might work better if the barnstar were in an opposing colo(u)r, blue, for example.--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 14:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Whoops! I meant a BLUE BARNSTAR on a tan-coloured helm: they'd be opposite colours and stand out more from each other. Sorry if that wasn't clear. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 19:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I think Dual Freq outside himself on #11 and #12! Both look great! --Kralizec! (talk) 20:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

1. 13 looks excellent. Martocticvs (talk) 20:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

HMM... A ROTATING barnstar is a good idea but it is to much. so i think one thing most of us agree on is that the wheel with something or by itself should be the barnstar so ...i think mabye five more barnstar picture ideas at the most. then we need to start voting because if we have to many choices or wait to long we will never get anything made. then once we agree on a barnstar we should hold this topic agian in say... oh..a year maybe to make some revisions or chose another image. this allows the barnstar we choose first won't be getting eddited every month. basicaly its an election/revision every year to keep this barnstar current and up to date. --ANOMALY-117 (talk) 20:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC) and then we could archive the previous years barnstar so that way we will rember how this award orginated plus it would so our progress through the year.--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 20:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC) and we should really consider this idea--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 20:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC) and when we vote should we make it to were only members may vote on the barnstar--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 20:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. See my proposal above under #The proposal.  :-) --Kralizec! (talk) 20:03, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

instead of barnstar can we call it the seastar or something?--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 20:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Since "barnstar" is the name used by Wikipedia's community-driven awards since they began in 2003, I guess my preference would be for us to follow a more traditional route. Calling it a barnstar and/or including the traditional barnstar in the graphic also gives our award instant name recognition and documentation (a la WP:BARN), which other more uniquely named awards (Wikiwings, WikiChevrons, etc.) may not always enjoy. --Kralizec! (talk) 19:57, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Number 13 has the nautical wheel combined with the Editors Barnstar, which I think resembles the patina that some metals get when at sea for a while. I suppose it could be confused with the Editors Barnstar though. Also, I think #9 wasn't really a nomination, but a clip art suggestion to combine with other items. As for using the Wikiworld symbol, I kind of stay away from it because of the copyright issues. The rest are public domain or GFDL. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone else noticed that in #10 the wheel seems to change size as the contra-rotation occurs? The Land (talk) 22:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I noted that in my edit summary. Unfortunately the wheel resized on me as it rotated whenever I pasted it into the animation software. I don't know how to correct it so I uploaded what I had as kind of a first attempt. Maybe if there is interest in that one, someone else could properly animate it. I didn't want to spend more time on it since I'd already killed an hour. I tried a couple other methods, but I think the source wheel isn't perfectly symmetrical and those didn't work out either. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:27, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Image:USS Anzio (CG-68) golden anchor.jpg has a golden anchor, in case anyone was looking for anchor clipart. --Dual Freq (talk) 04:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I certainly understand the point of the flags, but I don't thing they add anything to the nominees so far. They just seem out of place. Perhaps hanging at angles of the top left and right handles, maybe on short poles, but I don't know if that would help. - BillCJ (talk) 05:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Bravo Zulu might be too US-centric anyway as I don't know if it holds the same meaning in other countries. Anything besides pasting the square flags on the image would probably be beyond my artistic abilities anyway. Just thought I'd throw out some more ideas incorporating some other nautical symbols. I was thinking of a barnstar made of rope or adding some kind of anchor, but that's beyond my copy and pasting. --Dual Freq (talk) 05:56, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The barnstar and the wheel have just too many pointy bits, it looks messy. Might I suggest shrinking the barnstar so that it fits inside the circle on the wooden wheel.

Also, if there's going to be rotation, I think rotating both the wheel and the barnstar is too much. The wheel alone should turn, but ideally, not just in one direction. It should turn in one direction, gradually gathering speed, then slow down, stop, and start slowly turning in the other direction, gathering speed, slowing and then stopping. This sequence to be repeated to simulate a ship actually being steered. Gatoclass (talk) 00:34, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

General discussion

A question that came into mind when thinking of users who might possibly deserve this barnstar... does a user have to be a WP:SHIPS member in order to recieve "our" barnstar? Or can it be awarded to anyone who improves WP:SHIPS-related articles, even if s/he's not a member? -- Kjet (talk) 08:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I would imagine that anyone could award the barnstar to any editor who has made a significant contribution to ship articles. With very few exceptions, barnstars are awarded on a very informal standing. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:10, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

A little over seven hours remain to place your votes! --Kralizec! (talk) 17:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Election

Guidelines

Voting begins at 01:00:01 GMT on 25 November 2007 utilizing the following guidelines:

• Voting runs for seven days and ends at 01:00:01 GMT on 2 December 2007.
• To avoid any potential ties or non-majority winners, instant-runoff voting is being used with each editor ranking their first, second, and third choices.
• Any registered Wikipedia editor who is a WikiProject Ships member may vote.
• Please be sure to follow canvassing guideline when discussing or courting potential voters.

Depending on the amount of "last minute" voting that takes place, I will announce the first ever WikiProject Ships Barnstar prior to 03:00:00 on 2 December 2007. --Kralizec! (talk) 01:04, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Candidates

• WikiProject Ships barnstar candidates
• 
  #1 - Barnstar + tall ship
• 
  #2 - Propeller
• 
  #3 - Barnstar + Propeller
• 
  #4 - Barnstar + Anchor
• 
  #5 - Similar to Image:MCPO collar.png
• 
  #6 - Similar to Image:NavyCAS.jpg
• 
  #7 - Wheel + Barnstar
• 
  #8 - Barnstar with polished anchor
• 
  #9 - Wheel
• 
  #10 - An attempt at a rotating wheel merged with the rotating barnstar
• 
  #11 - Blue Wheel + Barnstar
• 
  #12 - Blue Barnstar + wheel
• 
  #13 - Barnstar with patina + wheel
• 
  #14 - Barnstar with patina + wheel with the signal flags Bravo and Zulu (indicating Bravo Zulu)
• 
  #15 - Barnstar with patina + wheel with the signal flags Bravo and Zulu (indicating Bravo Zulu)

Voting

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the voting. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Voting complete - calculating results. --Kralizec! (talk) 01:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

After reviewing the election guidelines, please add your vote below in the following format:

* first: #?, second: #?, third: #? --~~~~

• first: #8, second: #15, third: #5 --Kralizec! (talk) 01:12, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #13, second: #8, third: #7 -MBK004 (talk) 01:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #13, second: #15, third: #6 TomTheHand (talk) 01:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #13, second: #8, third: #5 --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 02:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #10, second: #3, third: #4 --Toddy1 (talk) 09:00, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #13, second: #12, third: #7 - BillCJ (talk) 09:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #13, second: #8, third: #11 Martocticvs (talk) 12:51, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #7, second: #13, third: #11 -- Kjet (talk) 18:12, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #13, second: #3, third: #9 -- Woodym555 (talk) 22:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #13, second: #8, third: #7 -- Parsecboy (talk) 22:39, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #4, second: #8, third: #9 --ANOMALY-117 (talk) 15:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
• first: #13, second: #9, third: #12 -- Maralia 18:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Comment. I am not at all satisfied with any of these candidates and I think the discussion was closed prematurely. Gatoclass (talk) 03:10, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The discussion was closed as had been proposed [6] four days prior. --Kralizec! (talk) 04:55, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I didn't closely read the proposal, and if I'd realized you were planning to close the vote after a mere four days I would have objected then. IMO there should be at least a couple of weeks for proposals and arguably three weeks to a month. Gatoclass (talk) 08:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Results

The {{WikiProject Ships Barnstar}}

Tabulating voting results now ... --Kralizec! (talk) 01:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

An easy win for #13! Congratulations Dual Freq (talk · contribs) for submitting the winning design! All of the members of this project should feel free to use our new barnstar to recognize the outstanding efforts of your fellow editors. Usage instructions are on the template page: {{WikiProject Ships Barnstar}}. --Kralizec! (talk) 02:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! but the aqua marine is so ugly (no offense )why??????why??!?!?!?!???? ANOMALY-117 03:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I montion that we PLEASE hold this in a year and elect a new one? oh and a barnstar that is elelcted may only serve one year without some changes to color or design and the changes must be noticeable or a new design may be elected. does anyone second? ANOMALY-117 03:32, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I strongly disagree that we should be required to change the barnstar on a schedule. If a new star is developed in the future and we all agree that it's better, we could certainly change, but we're not going to change every year just for the sake of changing. I'm sorry that you don't like it, but it's the first choice of eight people, and no other star got more than one first choice vote. TomTheHand 03:39, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

and yes i do understand your point and i can live with the selection but all i'm saying is that if we don't re-vote every year then can we at least bring this topic up agian on the day the oringanl proposel was brought up. every year so that way people can put in their input or design a new star and if nothing is posted or discussed of real importance than we will close the subjuct on december2 untill this time the following year. (i myself am haveing a little trouble fowlling myself). if that makes any sense. ANOMALY-117 03:48, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

so now what?ANOMALY-117 03:48, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Tom. I don't like the idea of making an award obsolete. What point would it serve? If we come up with a new version that everyone loves much more than this one, then all well and good, but until then, the people have decided, so to speak. Otherwise it's just change for change's sake. Benea 04:25, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

(Edit conflict). I'm not really into playing around with graphics, but I'm dissatisfied enough with this choice that I might actually try to come up with an alternative myself. Not that I'm planning to do so anytime soon however, as my list of planned Wikiprojects is more than long enough already. Gatoclass 04:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

i understand what im trying to say that instead of my first idea we instead bring up a new section every year giving people the oppotunite to change or talk about it because some people and new members may not know that they can influence the change of the barnstar and im suggesting that every year we let them know that they can .. uh whats the word..influnece?.. the change of the barnstar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ANOMALY-117 (talk • contribs) 04:34, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't see anything to be gained by continually changing it. It would lose any significance it has if we were to do that. Like Tom says, if another one is created that we all agree is better, then we could consider a change then, but otherwise things would start to get very silly. Martocticvs 12:54, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Unrelated to the above... out of curiosity, who was the first person to recieve our new barnstar? As Kralizec! reserved himself the honour of awarding the first one, I'd be rather interested in knowing who got it.

And on the subject above: we voted. The whole point of voting is to find out which one the majority likes best - and the vast majority of those who bothered to vote obviously preferred the one we got. Changing that because two people don't like it seems exceedingly undemocratic. -- Kjet 23:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

My bad; thanks for reminding me to share with everyone! I awarded our first barnstar to Maralia. When she first joined the project, she boldly revised the main page (in retrospect, I have no idea why we kept the old, klunky one for so long), got our current assessment drive started, and kept us going at it with lots of encouragement. Maralia has been a great collaborative force for the project, and has done a lot to really reinvigorate the entire project! --Kralizec! (talk) 02:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I've just come back from a weekend away, and what a lovely surprise to find upon my return! Thank you for recognizing my little efforts to get more done around here by organizing things and cheerleading. It's not as fun and glamorous as writing articles, but I feel it needs to be done, and it's really gratifying to hear that it's appreciated. Thanks for thinking of me :) Maralia 13:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorting class articles

After the discussion above, I've begun putting era categories onto class articles. I like the result. See Category:World War II aircraft carriers of the United States for an example. All the class articles are consolidated at the top and give a nice overview of what was in operation at the time.

I've been working my way along alphabetically, so I just finished Category:Aircraft carrier classes and hit Category:Amphibious assault ship classes. I noticed that Gatoclass has been having class articles sort by type first, and then class name. See Category:World War II amphibious warfare ships of the United States for an example. Note all of the "attack cargo ship"s grouped together, and all the "attack transport"s in a separate group.

I had been sorting by class name only, and I think I prefer doing it that way, so that it's one continuous alphabetical list instead of broken up by ship type. However, I don't have strong feelings about it; I just happen to prefer looking at the information that way. I wanted to bring it here and ask for everyone's two cents. I know most people won't feel strongly, but I don't think this is an issue that needs long, logical, passionate arguments, just a quick opinion off the top of your head.

"Too long, didn't read" version:

• In era categories like Category:World War II amphibious warfare ships of the United States, should we sort class articles alphabetically by name only, or by type and then by name?

I appreciate your input. TomTheHand (talk) 22:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the tl;dr version. I strongly prefer alpha by name; it's easier to remember and easier to browse. Maralia (talk) 22:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

No problem, I'll try to provide a tl;dr in the future :-P I know I tend to go on and on. TomTheHand (talk) 22:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

thats like a six way cross-refrence!!!!!!!?--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 22:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand. TomTheHand (talk) 22:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed with Maralia, alpha by name is the simplest, and easiest to browse. -- Kjet (talk) 22:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd go with alphabetically throughout as well, I think. For the same reason as Kjet. Martocticvs (talk) 23:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

STRONGLY disagree. I tried this in the amphib. section already and it looks very messy. Much better and more logical to have them sorted by alpha AND type. Gatoclass (talk) 01:44, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to note that I'd also like to remove Attack transport, Landing Ship, Tank, and Attack cargo ship from that region of the category, so you'd only be looking at the names of classes. I think that'd look reasonably clean. TomTheHand (talk) 01:56, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Aaaarghh! Gatoclass (talk) 09:11, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

On second thoughts, I don't think I have much objection to that. I don't think I put those articles in there, I just ended up sorting them because they were already there. But when you think about it, it doesn't really make much sense to have the "type" articles there, does it? Gatoclass (talk) 09:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Escort aircraft carrier has been renamed as Escort carrier. In this case the category should be renamed too? I'm also not sure if this affects the names of our other aircraft carrier articles. Benea (talk) 01:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge

Please check out this merge and weigh in. It's related to last week's amphibious warfare vessel merges, but I missed it that time around. Thanks!TomTheHand (talk) 15:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Help please-Sections-article guidelines?

Hello all,

I have been working on articles tagged as needing sections and these articles appear on the list:

• USS Advance (1850)
• USS Barbey (FF-1088)
• USS Blakely (FF-1072)
• USS Crommelin (FFG-37)
• USS Essex (CV-9)
• USS Grampus (SS-207)
• USS Kennebec (1861)
• USS Nahant (1862)
• [[USS Sassacus (1862)]]
• USS Schofield (FFG-3)
• USS Shark (SS-174)
• USS Talbot (FFG-4)
• USS Tom Green County (LST-1159)
• USS Truett (FF-1095)
• USS Volador (SS-490)
• USS Vreeland (FF-1068)

Most of them (but not all, I added the rest) were tagged as being articles relating to the ship project. I would appreciate some help in cleaning them up but first I wanted to ask here if there ares suggestions about what sections would be best (and how they should be organized), sort of a guideline for when future articles are added? Thank you Awotter (talk) 00:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC) Done

I recently did a cleanup along these lines on USS Chandeleur (AV-10). You might want to take a look at that as an example. Basically I do an "operational history" section with logical subsections for various operations, then I have another main section for postwar/commercial activities (where required). If the ships fought in more than one war, I'd probably have main sections for each war, again with appropriate subsections for different operations. Don't forget to do a ship infobox if the article doesn't have one (like I did for Chandeleur). Gatoclass (talk) 01:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! very good suggestion. Awotter (talk) 02:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Looks like Advance needs two sections - to cover each of the two expeditions. I tend to think that summary paragraphs should identify the type and dates of the ship, highlight the notable bits of operational service and state the eventual fate (in this case lost in pack ice) Viv Hamilton (talk) 10:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I guess that's one way of going about it, though I am in two minds about whether it's a good or bad idea to present all the interesting info up front. Doing that sort of thing can suck the joy of discovery out of the article for readers, so I think if it's to be done it has to be done in such a way as to entice the reader rather than deflate his interest.

It's difficult though, to come up with a standard method. Many of the DANFS and government-penned summaries that we rely on are written in a slapdash way, and it's often hard to find appropriate section subheadings for them. It's even harder when you are trying to find a bunch of standardized subheadings you can use across the board for one particular class for consistency. So one has to exercise a little flexibility. Either that or be prepared to do a substantial reorg and rewrite for many of them. Gatoclass 13:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello everyone! I hope that all members of WP:SHIPS from the U.S. had a happy Thanksgiving... and I hope that everyone else had a very nice Thursday :-) TomTheHand (talk) 02:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, your very kind to ask :) My thanksgiving was very good, and I am looking forward to spending time with the family over the long weekend. Happy Thanksgiving, and hears to many more to come :-) TomStar81 (Talk) 10:11, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

My Thursday was very much like any other Thursday, but thanks anyway! :p Martocticvs (talk) 18:03, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanksgiving was lovely, thanks—much more relaxing than the previous four days, which largely consisted of answering the question 'mommy can we eat the fancy pies yet?' Maralia (talk) 18:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Fancy pies ... ? Tell us more! --Kralizec! (talk) 18:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Just visiting, plus a question

I don't belong to this WP, so I thought I would say high, as I've tagged a lot of articles for y'all while doing WP MH's drive, and ask a question. Would Belle of Louisville and Great Steamboat Race fall under WP Ship's concerns?--Bedford (talk) 08:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Belle of Louisville I would say certainly does, the race though I'm not so sure about. Martocticvs (talk) 12:48, 25 November 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 [7]
• High endurance cutter [8]
• 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)

Boredom

i need work not a huge task but i need something to do anbody have any ideas?--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 16:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

On the front page, at the right side, there's a box with a section called "Things you can do". Check that out. TomTheHand (talk) 16:09, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

yea i did but im no good at spelling and right now im a slow typer with the broken arm and all. nor am i good at grammer but i do like to patrol for vandlism but i have to do it manualy page by page because my mom dosn't want me to download onto her computer so i need people to kinda tell me waht to do for right now. oh and i can argue like nobodys bisnes oh yea i can't spell but i can ram facts and vewis on stuff intill the scream uncle!--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 23:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC) oh and i can read like really fast... oh and is possible to get your own bot?--ANOMALY-117 (talk) 23:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC) oh and i like the yamato battleship alot --ANOMALY-117 (talk) 23:24, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Anomaly that wasn't meant as a shot at you, I know some people have trouble spelling, and I never make it an issue, it's just that that particular spelling was so weird it kind of gave me a moment of cognitive dissonance. I knew it was wrong but after seeing it I had trouble remembering what the right spelling was :) Gatoclass (talk) 08:21, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you know anything about hovercraft? I need someone to find some good sources for an article on Air-cushioned landing craft I'm working on. I can take care of the text writing and formatting, but I could use some links of sources to find some material. Interested? - BillCJ (talk) 23:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Good point. There are lots of articles needing sources as well as stubs needing material. Googling for sources on obscure items can take ages. Often the material is there but you get swamped by non-relevant search finds. You could google for suitable references - roughly add the facts that you cull from the sources and add a cleanup template to request someone else to tidy up the spelling afterwards. Viv Hamilton 16:13, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

finding stuff online has never been a problem for me. its just the formating and other things that take work. but im very good at finding plain old raw information on just about anything. and messing with tags and writing code in the document is to frustrating for me. is their any way to get raw information onto pages without email or violating a law?

however if anybody knows were help is needed in a debate or watching something on this site then let me know ANOMALY-117 21:56, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Sources Has anyone thought of buying books and going to libraries?--Toddy1 09:52, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

• Uh, yes, but I have a long-term illness - can't travel, or work, so no disposable money to buy books. I actually do have a fair book collection, but not much current on hovercraft/LCACs. - BillCJ 16:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

LOL! I've bought so damn many books to use as Wikipedia sources that people wonder what I'm up to. So do the librarians in the strange little cubbyholes that I visit looking for old-time ship information. Thank heaven I've got The USS Rankin Association to help finance my habit. Lou Sander 14:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I've got the Sail & Steam Navy List if anyone wants look ups.--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 10:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

and i uh have or can find or know just about anything on everthing ecxept complex math and science (complex, relative to an average 14 year-old) and i know alot about mislianious stuff. pardon the spelling.ANOMALY-117 03:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Copy and Paste Patrol. That is, so many ship articles are missing simple things like templates and info boxes. All you need to do is go around and paste in the missing templates like {{WikiProject Ships}} to talk pages and such. --Brad 11:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Heh, copy and paste patrol, no shortage of work there!

Now that you mention it, something that would be really useful would be for someone to go around and replace the squillions of ship articles that have the old Wikimarkup-constructed infoboxes with the newer purpose designed templates. This is a really labour-intensive project, I know because I've done a bit of it myself. But wait, I have an even better idea! What we could really use is for someone with programming skills to write a little program to automate the job. Gatoclass 12:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to experiment, I went out and found over 20 articles on ships that had no wiki project ship ID. Took only a few minutes to find and label that many. Also found a few more that had no infobox etc. Sometimes the most needed work is the least glamorous and easy work. --Brad 14:28, 2 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)

What is a "standard ton"?

I have 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.[9] (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)

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.

Unles 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)

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)

Deleting obsolete templates?

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

I used to welcome new ship article creators with a note directing them to use of the commercial ship template. Perhaps "what links here" should be checked before deleting. Or should there be redirects to the new template(s)? Kablammo (talk) 01:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, these templates can't be deleted outright, as they're still used by a small number of articles. I'm proposing that if we agree about it, we make an effort to convert them to a newer template and then delete them. Redirects are a good idea, to make sure that links on talk pages still direct someplace. TomTheHand (talk) 01:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

That makes sense. It might also be the opportunity to correct errors (tonnage v. displacement). Kablammo (talk) 01:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Definitely. I'm looking over the fields used, and it seems the multi-template ship infobox might benefit from fields for cost and maiden voyage, but other than that I think it's up to the task. TomTheHand (talk) 01:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

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

I wouldn't worry about {{Infobox Commercial Ship}}; it was created with participation from four people (including me) and its supercession by the general template was previously discussed on this page. I also posted a notice of the discussion on the Infobox Commercial Ship talk page. Kablammo (talk) 17:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that the deprecation note on {{Infobox ship}} says to use {{Infobox Ship}} (not {{Infobox Ship Example}}). I'm guessing it's a typo, but wanted to point it out. (I know, I know - WP:BOLD ... I'll still leave it for someone else to sort out). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I've fixed it now. Maralia (talk) 17:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

Use {{Infobox Ship Example}}, which supports tonnage, owner, and operator, and allows an in-service date (not the same as maiden voyage, but the start of regular service-- maiden voyage could go in the article text). Kablammo (talk) 00:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, I re-did RMS QE with that one, I guess I'm still one template behind and just trying to save same effort by simply changing the name and adding Ship in front of the line items. --Dual Freq (talk) 00:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

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

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

Good luck with that, I count over 3,200 transclusions to {{Infobox Ship}}. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

And I'll bet almost every time the displacement field is filled for a merchant ship it is erroneous, as a tonnage figure has incorrectly been placed there instead. (A lot of the ferry articles were this way). Last year I went throught the entire List of ocean liners and List of cruise ships and removed displacement figures where I could; I followed up a few times thereafter but have not done it recently. (In these reviews I did not add or change templates, and I cannot be sure that I got them all.)

Another common error is the filling of a launch date with the date of entry into service, naming, maiden voyage, etc.

So the process of substituting templates cannot be just a mechanical one, otherwise errors in the old will be continued with the new. If the {{Infobox Ship}} has been used for an MV or SS, passenger ship, or other merchant ship, we have to be careful when filling the fields in a new template. Kablammo (talk) 01:24, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the majority of the transclusions are for naval vessels, so at least they are not perpetrating systemic errors. Some the merchant vessel uses fill in the displacement figures with [number] gt or something similar; others are empty, and of course some are simply wrong in using gross (or other) tonnage figures for displacement. Kablammo (talk) 01:37, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I would like it if we could stop using Infobox Ship on new articles, but if there's debate about it I'm not interested in fighting it out. I'm definitely not interested in trying to eliminate it and delete it. I think the others are easily eliminated, though.

I'll add "maiden voyage" to Infobox Ship Career. When I started typing this, I ended the sentence with "tomorrow", but I have no good reason for waiting. I'm adding that field as soon as I hit "submit".

I also saw some ships using a "cost" field, but before I add it, I want to ask where it belongs. I was thinking of putting it at the very end of "Characteristics", but I'm not married to that. I could even see putting it in "Career". Any thoughts? TomTheHand (talk) 01:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I think it would look good near the builder and award area of the Career section since cost would be related to construction / builder and contract information. --Dual Freq (talk) 04:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

We have to make sure that Infobox Ship is not used for merchant vessels. And the exisiting misuses need to be corrected. Is there any reason to use Infobox Ship at all for any type other than naval vessels? If not can a warning be added to the template? Kablammo (talk) 01:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Well I tagged it as deprecated and categorized it as defunct, so hopefully no one will use it for anything new, naval or merchant. Maralia (talk) 03:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

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

Minor note on the "cost" field: the field should probably be called "original cost" or something along those lines, to avoid people putting in the price for every sale of the ship for commercial vessels that have been sold several times. -- Kjet (talk) 14:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... yes, I can definitely understand that. However, I feel like a field labeled "original cost" on a vessel that has only one cost looks odd. What would you think of having the row in the code called "Ship original cost", but having it display as "Cost:"? That might dissuade people from using it improperly, while still keeping what's displayed simple. I'm not insisting on this. I'm willing to display "Original cost:" if you want, but what do you think about this idea? TomTheHand (talk) 23:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Coding the template's field as "ship original cost" and having it display as "cost" sounds like a great compromise solution to me! --Kralizec! (talk) 00:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm willing to go with that, a good compromise between practicality and ... practicality. ;) -- Kjet (talk) 00:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creating a redirect after the template's deleted sounds like a good idea. TomTheHand (talk) 01:11, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 [10]. 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)

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)

"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)

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)

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)

Proposed guideline update for shipindex pages

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

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

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

Hmmm, I see what you're getting at and I do agree that standardisation would be useful. Some pages (like HMS Newcastle) become so choked with mini ship summaries as to be neither use nor ornament. But linking some things is still a good idea I feel. eg, HMS Panther, with ship classes, ship types and perhaps what these ships are named for, as these pages can be quite interesting in themselves, especially for the origin of the name which doesn't really fit on a particular ship. But limiting what we put in the disambiguation pages is definitely a good idea. I tend to put ship type, years of entry and exit from service and things such as a change in use, name, or something like that. Pictures and references I'm not in favour of at all. And I wrote that in a very odd way. A bit like Yoda. Hmmmm. Benea (talk) 18:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Benea on this issue. HMS Newcastle is a mess; it's impossible to scan. However, I really like HMS Panther and I feel USS New Orleans would be improved if it had a similar level of wikilinking. TomTheHand (talk) 19:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I've been doing a lot of these lately, and I was recently put on the disambig linking, example: User:Brad101/shipindex where the ship name is brought out in the open instead of hiding it behind second or shipname. USS Columbia is likely the best example of a complete mess that I have cleaned up. I agree there should be some info on name origin, if possible and short descriptions of the ship with service dates. Sources I have been placing on index pages simply because I found it rather difficult to claim there had been X number of ships without having the source you got it from. And in a lot of cases the actual ship count was wrong until I corrected it. --Brad (talk) 22:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Have to agree with most of this - a lot of ship index pages are a complete mess. Besides the points already noted, there is a distinct lack of consistency in the presentation as well. Just take, for example, HMS America, which is one I started, and compare it with HMS Agincourt, and then with HMS Nelson. The first lists the prefix and the name; the second, how many ships into the lineage it is, and then the name, and the third the prefix, the name and the year of launch (or pennant number). Personally, this is something I think we need to agree a standard format on. My own opinion is that just the prefix and the name are all that is required (and perhaps the pennant/hull number for modern ships). Older ships will have their year of launch mentioned in the brief sentence about them, so repeating it in the link is unnecessary. I don't like indices that state very definitively that such and such a ship was 'the first ship to bear the name' - just this evening I was able to insert a ship into such a list above the so-called 'first' ship to bear the name. And that sort of information belongs on the article page itself, anyway. Martocticvs (talk) 23:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Benea and Tom about the wikilinks, I see no reason why only ship names should be wikilinked on dab pages, but like any page, it should not be overdone. If people are wikilinking every example of "third-rate" they are already violating existing style guidelines.

As far as keeping dab pages brief, might I suggest a guideline stating that entries should consist of a single sentence only, apart from in the most exceptional circumstances. That would give support to users removing excessive content. Gatoclass (talk) 00:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

One exception I've been allowing on shipindex pages is when a ships' description is a paragraph or less, I'll allow the information to remain on the index page rather then create a new article. In some cases a ships history from DANFS is only a sentence or two long. --Brad (talk) 18:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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^[11][12]. 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)

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)