Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships

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Abbreviation for nautical miles

I usually abbreviate nautical miles as nm, because I feel that it most accurately reflects real usage. For example, navy.mil has 10,700 hits for nm and 1030 for nmi. I acknowledge that nm is the SI symbol for nanometre, but I consider it essentially impossible for someone to be confused because of the massive difference in scale. Thunderbird2 is currently working through articles fixing up units, and one of this fixes is replacing nm with nmi. I was wondering what you guys thought about this, and also wondering if our project should have an official abbreviation for nautical mile that we should strive to use in all articles. TomTheHand 19:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Well there seems not to be an internationally agreed standard for it, though whilst nmi is used, I would say that nm is far more common. To avoid any possibility of confusion, we could make sure all instances are correctly linked, ie nm. Martocticvs 20:43, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I usually strive to link the first usage of nm in an article. I think that's a really good idea. TomTheHand 21:03, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I posted the below comment on Thunderbird2's talk page, but I'd like to continue the discussion here on WP:SHIPS so that others can participate.

Hi! I noticed that you're changing the nm abbreviation for nautical miles to nmi whenever you see it. I asked WP:SHIPS what they thought about it here, but didn't get much of a response. I'd like to ask if you'd be willing to stop making this change, because nm is by far the most common abbreviation for nautical miles. It is essentially impossible to read a range in nautical miles and confuse it for nanometers, because they differ by a dozen orders of magnitude. In addition, I always link my first use of nm to the article for nautical mile and I provide metric conversions following all nautical mile figures. TomTheHand 14:36, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Tom. Thanks for your interest, and for pointing out the brief project discussion in the Ship Project. I was wondering when someone would notice. There are a number of reasons why I disagree with you on this.

1. I don't accept that nm is the most common abbreviation. If you tell me it is common in the USA I believe you. But I live and work in Europe and it is not common here, or at least not in my field of work (sonar).

2. While it may be difficult to confuse a nautical mile with a nanometre, that does not make it impossible. Just the very fact of using the same symbol for two different units is by its nature confusing. I once witnessed a demonstration of radar software that showed detection ranges in units of "nm" and asked (tongue firmly in cheek!) why it was the ranges were so short :-) The response came back straight away "Oh, that's a typo. The nm should read km". To this day I am unsure whether his screen was actually in miles or kilometres. And perhaps the demonstrator is as well.

3. I'm sure you're aware that the nautical mile is accepted for use alongside the SI system, and also that there is no internationally accepted abbreviation for the nautical mile. I believe that one day a symbol will be chosen, and when this day comes, I am certain that symbol will not be nm, because that would never be accepted by SI.

So, where does that leave us? My suggestion is that we both temporarily refrain from changes in either direction and try to find a rational solution to our difference. I know WP is keen on consensus, and you have tried that path already, with little success. Personally I prefer to find a solution that you and I are both comfortable with, as no one else seems to even care. Can we agree on that? Thunderbird2 15:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I definitely won't try to revert your changes; you've got nothing to worry about in that respect. You bring up some good points that I'd like to respond to.

I'm not sure how we can really achieve consensus on which usage is most common. I usually do some Googling to figure this sort of stuff out, but it's difficult to be sure about that method, especially when you're dealing with a symbol that is used for several different units. Google shows 836,000 hits for pages that use both nm and knots, and 96,400 hits for nmi and knots. Similar searches restricted to Navy.mil return 1020 hits and 163 hits, respectively. Searches of mod.uk give 54 results and 0 results, respectively. Searching gov.au gives 940 and 17 hits. Gc.ca shows 2510 hits and 88 hits.

I do still think it's impossible to confuse nautical miles and nanometers. In your example, the person who responded to you didn't think for an instant that the display was showing nanometers, and if he didn't know that nm is a nautical mile then he probably would've been just as confused by nmi. Moreover, as I said, I always link to nautical mile and provide metric conversions; I think doing this eliminates the possibility of confusion.

You bring up a good point about an eventual internationally accepted abbreviation of nautical mile, but even if a standard abbreviation is chosen, it will not necessarily be the most common, and I believe we should use the abbreviation that is most used by the people who use the unit.

I think the biggest issue we need to discuss is which abbreviation is most commonly used. I acknowledge that nm has some problems, but I think that if it's by far the most common abbreviation then it doesn't matter that you could confuse it with nanometers. On the other hand, if it isn't clear that it's used far more often then it would be best to use a less ambiguous abbreviation. Do you think the Google searches above are valid? They seem to show that the largest English-speaking navies use nm far more than nmi. I didn't attempt to check usage among non-English-speaking organizations, as I don't think their usage is relevant to English Wikipedia. TomTheHand 18:06, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I've never seen mi used as an abbreviation for miles. In the UK m is used for miles as well as for meters. nm is intutive for nautical miles - nmi isn't logical as an abbreviation and would make me reach for the book of 3 letter acronyms. Viv Hamilton 18:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I would tend to agree. We get by here with dealing with m being used for both miles and meters, and are used to inferring which is appropriate from the context. And that is with two measures of distance that are much more likely to be confused than nautical miles and nanometers. Furthermore, the context is in most cases going to be clear, and nanometers aren't as well known as meters is to miles. Benea 18:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The symbol used for the mile by the United States Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology is mi. So fortunately there is no ambiguity there with the metre. Returning to the nautical mile, Tom is right in saying that whatever abbreviation is adopted, it should be linked to the nautical mile page on first use. I agree also that only English language usage is relevant. When I am in doubt myself about the correct definition of a unit, or the correct abbreviation for it, I always turn for guidance to Rowlett's Dictionary of Units, an excellent and unbiased repository for all things unitary. Rowlett lists 4 abbreviations: nmi, naut mi, n mile and NM. I also did some googling myself and discovered that the two most popular choices seem to be NM and (despite Rowlett) nm. On balance, my vote goes to NM. Thunderbird2 19:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it's possible to Google based on capitalization; I don't think so, which is too bad. I guess we just have to rely on actually looking at search hits. Surfing through the results of the searches listed above, I do see some use of NM, but the majority of those uses seem to be pages which are in all caps, like this one. Lowercase nm seems to be way more common than uppercase NM. TomTheHand 21:36, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, here are some upper case ones USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide Forsythe et al 2004 Barhydt et al 2002. I don't think you can discount these, and I'm sure I'd find more if I kept looking. More importantly than that, I trust Rowlett on this more than I trust Google. Thunderbird2 22:04, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I won't deny that some sources use NM, but the majority use nm. How many uses of "nm" did you pass by to find those? I don't actually feel like we can trust Rowlett here, as it doesn't list nm in spite of it being an undeniably common abbreviation. If your list of abbreviations doesn't include nm, it's simply incomplete; it's used very often. Moreover, we're not "trusting Google" - we're trusting the largest English-speaking navies in the world, and Google's just giving us a list of all the spots those navies have used nm/NM on their web pages. If you really need me to, I can go through two or three pages of Google hits (or more if necessary) and tally up how many capitalize the abbreviation, but I feel like the difference is evident already; do you need me to do the tally? TomTheHand 22:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The ratio was about 2 to 1 in favour of nm, including (to my surprise) some European documents (mainly from Norway, but written in English). There's no need to "do the tally", because even if I were to be convinced that nm was in majority use (and I admit it's getting that way), I feel unable to support the use of a symbol that so flagrantly conflicts with SI. The clash would be less important if they were used in separate units systems (eg if one were exclusively metric and the other exclusively imperial). It is precisely because the nautical mile is used alongside SI that it needs a new symbol. I expect you will tell me our job is to reflect the current usage of the word, but is that always the case? What about the widespread (almost universal) use of "calorie" to mean kilocalorie? That is a case when majority use is not given precedence. Instead the conflict is spelt out explicitly, with clear guidelines for when such use might be acceptable (and also when it is not). Does that point at a possible way out for us? Thunderbird2 23:16, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Just for the record, I checked the details. There were 7 hits for nm [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6], [7], the 3 already mentioned for NM, one for N mi [8], one for nmile [9] and one :-( for my pre-race favourite nmi [10]

I see your point, but I want to explain the reason I can sleep at night using "kcals" yet I protest against using anything but "nm". It's not just a matter of taking the majority usage. As you've said, "calorie" is an ambiguous unit: do they actually mean calories, or did they forget the capital C and they actually mean "kilocalories?" We're an educational resource, so we don't want to just follow average man-on-the-street's opinion here. We can take a step up from the common usage and use a scientific abbreviation to remove all ambiguity.

The thing is, there's no "step up" for nautical miles. The highest possible authorities (in my opinion) on the "right" way to abbreviate nautical miles (the navies which use them) use the ambiguous abbreviation "nm." If we abbreviate it another way, we're saying "We don't approve of how the primary users abbreviate it, so we'll arbitrarily select a different, less ambiguous abbreviation." I don't feel good about doing that.

What I'd really like at this point is a second round of input from folks like Martocticvs, Viv Hamilton, and Benea, as well as input from people who haven't spoken up yet. I don't think we're going to change each others' minds alone, so we need more opinions so that we can follow the consensus that develops. TomTheHand 19:13, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm still going to give it one more try (not to change your mind, but to get you doubting a little). Firstly, there is an alternative "step-up" to the navies, and that is the scientific community. The scientific literature uses nmi (or minor variants thereof) - hence my original preference for that abbreviation. Secondly, imagine someone writes an article about an optical sensor fitted to a navy frigate. The optical sensor has a wavelength of 800 nm and a range of 20 nm. This page contains a relevant real life email exchange. Think about it :-) Thunderbird2 20:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Are there sources that I could look at to convince myself that the scientific community which deals with nautical issues uses the abbreviation nmi? I understand that you work with sonar in real life, but we would need to cite sources that anyone could verify. TomTheHand 20:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Here are a few. If you click on "back to search query" you can edit the search criteria to see what else you can find. All from the same (acoustics journal) though - there will be some variation between publications. From a historical perspective, I found some uses of nm as well, but all pre 1965. Thunderbird2 21:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

This one defines a standard nomenclature for fisheries. Thunderbird2 21:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I see, I see. In the first link, it was difficult to search for "nm" because most of the references were to nanometers; on the first page of search results, I saw one use of "NM" in an abstract but no uses of "nm" (to refer to nautical miles). I can definitely see what you're saying about nmi being perhaps the most common abbreviation in scientific journals.

WP:SHIPS, what do the rest of you think? TomTheHand 17:30, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've done a bit of research offline - sorry can't give references - this is from asking around and looking at tech manuals. nm is used on radar displays, because the constraint is that you don't want to clutter the screen and NM would 'shout', and since you know from the context what it is, all you really need is to distinguish between nm and km. Since the displays say, nm, that's what they record in the logs. In articles, they always explain the abbreviation on first use anyway, so not a problem, but, if they don't use nm (i.e. what the radar displays say), they use NMi - NMi is more intuitive in that it is obviously an abbreviation of 2 words, not three. Viv Hamilton 07:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

From a personal point of view, I would be content with NMi - after all, there is on recognised standard format so I suppose really we should settle on whatever will cause the reader the least confusion (although it would be really quite an achievement to confuse nanometres with nautical miles, but even so...) Martocticvs 14:57, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I admit to not having seen the NMi used, but I can see its benefits. Can either Martocticvs or Viv come up with a source for this abbreviation? By the way, do you seriously not find the following sentence confusing: "the new optical sensor has a wavelength of 800 nm and a range of 10 nm" Yes, you can work out the meaning from the context, but why make it so hard on the reader? Thunderbird2 15:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I've also never seen NMi (that particular capitalization) and I would be more comfortable with nmi, which I definitely have seen. It looks like consensus may be developing that the less ambiguous abbreviation is the way to go. I'll definitely follow that if it's what we decide. TomTheHand 15:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I found this discussion, listing M, mi., Mi, n. m., NM, n. mi and NMI as possibilities. The list seems endless! Thunderbird2 16:39, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes I forgot to mention I have seen it listed as M before now - although the only place I have seen it like that is in a unit converter application, so it isn't really authoritative in any way. I think n.m. looks clunky, any form of nm/NM is open to ambiguity... re-reading Nautical mile, it seems actually that M is indeed the symbol preferred by the BIPM - but I think that is even more open to ambiguity. I have to admit that nmi/NMi is the least ambiguous of the options available. Martocticvs 17:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to make a NPOV summary of what we have learnt so far:

1. in popular use, the most common abbreviation is nm, followed by NM

2. in scientific use, the most common abbreviation is nmi, followed by NM

3. an objection is made to nm on the grounds that that symbol is reserved by SI for the nanometre. No such objection applies to NM or nmi (The objection also does not apply to nm when used outside SI)

Is that a fair summary?

I also think we should examine our objective here, which so far has not been stated explicitly. I see 3 possible objectives:

A. Agree on wording for the nautical mile article

B. Agree on standard usage for the SHIPS project

C. Agree on standard usage outside the SHIPS project

By the way, have you heard of that new missile, with a yield of 10 kt? It's designed to be launched at a speed of up to 10 kt :-) Thunderbird2 18:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I recently learnt that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a respected international body of scientists and engineers, has come off the fence on this. In their most recent guidelines they quote nmi as the (only) recommended abbreviation. (If the link doesn’t work, go to [11] and select IEEE “Information for authors” kit). Thunderbird2 10:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm reminded of Wikipedia's use of the International Phonetic Alphabet to express the pronunciation of words. IPA is a wonderful thing, with wide acceptance among experts in pronunciation. Its drawback is that it is useless/unintelligible/annoying to readers who haven't learned it (which is most of mankind). IMHO, the best abbreviation is nm. NM is OK, too. Anybody who wants to use anything else should be required also to provide IPA pronunciation guides for all potentially unfamiliar words in the article in which he/she uses it. ;-) 11:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lou Sander (talk • contribs).

Ok, how do we resolve this? It looks like Lou Sanders and I favor nm in spite of the ambiguity, while Viv Hamilton and Thunderbird2 favor nmi/NMi. Martocticvs seemed to be in favor of nm initially, but came around to the nmi side. If we went ahead and said "let's use nmi" I wouldn't be strongly opposed any more. I do not like NMi, as I've never seen it used. Can we say "let's use nmi"? Lou, are you very strongly opposed? It's definitely in use in scientific literature, and it's even sometimes used by the big English-spreaking navies, though less often than nm. Viv, would you be alright with nmi instead of NMi? TomTheHand 14:53, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Well if the consensus is for nmi, I'll go along with that, but as this is not a standard SI abbreviation, we should ensure that it is spelled out on first use in each article. Viv Hamilton 07:39, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I usually link to the nautical mile article on the first use; I consider that to be an adequate substitute to spelling out and it fits better in infoboxes. TomTheHand 12:39, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I also generally use the spelled out and linked nautical mile. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:26, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, to clarify, that isn't what I do. Rather, I use nm, and link it to the article, like so: nm. TomTheHand 17:39, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

request for membership

Can our article, List of world's largest wooden ships be part of your project and get a rating etc?--Filll 22:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely! I've rated it "B" class and "High" importance; if anyone disagrees, please feel free to modify. TomTheHand 18:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

abbreviation for knot

I am aware of three abbreviations in common use for the knot. In alphabetical order these are kn, kt and kts. Are there any others? Thunderbird2 18:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Knot (speed) is the link I think you meant! Emoscopes ^Talk 18:19, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear! Yes you're right. Thanx Thunderbird2 18:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

nm/h (although I think I just made that one up! Emoscopes ^Talk 18:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Haha, good one. I personally prefer kt, and dislike kts... if you saw someone use "kms" for kilometers, you'd replace it on sight. "kt" seems to be used most often by navies, as far as I know. TomTheHand 18:32, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree 100%. Like my old physics teacher used to say; "there are no secs in physics". (if you don't get it, the answer is only "s") Emoscopes ^Talk 01:31, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

"kn" is specified in the US Chart 1 (1972) and in Canada's Chart 1 (1996) - those are the copies I have on hand. The Canadian one also lists "kns" for plural (ugh!). BIPM shows kn on its web site but states "There is no internationally agreed symbol, but the symbol kn is commonly used." Too bad, I kinda like kt too. Michael Daly 06:59, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. If "knot" is sometimes (inappropriately by landlubbers) used as a measure of distance, can "square knot" be similarly used as a measure of area? Would the abbreviation be sqkn? Lou Sander 13:57, 5 September 2007 (UTC) ;-)

The IEEE guidelines for authors define the knot as 1 nmi/h and recommend use of the abbreviation kn. A similar statement is made by the American Institute of Physics. I think we need a very good reason to depart from these guidelines. Thunderbird2 16:19, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Template colour

In Template:Infobox Class etc., there is a problem with #000080 as the choice of background colour. That is, when there is a wikilink on this colour, it is nearly impossible to read, as it uses a similar shade of dark blue. This clearly violates Wikipedia:Accessibility#Color, regarding contrast. I checked at Wikipedia:Infobox colours, but this seems to be dead for the time being. I would suggest that we either lighten up the shade of blue, or, what I find more appealing, is choose a shade of dark grey for our infoboxes etc. For me, grey is the colour of navies and warships, and would be instantly recognizable. The current choice's only relation is only that the colour is called navy!

As these templates are included on hundreds, if not 1000+ pages, I wanted to start a discussion here before I made any changes that would be so obvious. Emoscopes ^Talk 23:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Why would there be any wikilinked text on the colored portion of that infobox? Maralia 00:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The parent country appears next to the flag, in a navy-coloured area. Emoscopes ^Talk 00:45, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't there a conversion to using the MILHIST color scheme at one point? Or was that only for individual ship infoboxes, and not for class ones? Kirill 00:47, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Userbox

Does this project have a userbox? I looked but could not find one. --Thefrood 05:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:User ships Emoscopes ^Talk 12:32, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

List of battleships of the Royal Navy

Bit of a debate going on at this article's talk page over what to do with it. Some users are pointing out ships they don't think should be on there, etc. I've been meaning to look at this since in my opinion it's a very long list for the casual reader. My hope would be to have the information divided up and parcelled out into smaller articles:

• A list of Frigates, sloops, etc that carried fewer than 58 guns.
• A list of ships of the line that carried more than this number.
• A list of what are considered to be battleships (at this page), with necessary overlap, i.e. for those that would consider HMS Warrior (1860) and her ilk a battleship.
• Potentially another list for the section currently titled "Great ships, carracks and galleons (–1640)"

This to me would have the advantage of being more concise in each case, more acurately label ships, and help the reader, if his interest is in Napoleonic era ships of the line rather than World War II battleships, go to where they want to be, as well as preventing loss of information, if as some want, we end up taking the frigates/sloops/etc out. Some people are disagreeing, saying that the current way is better than this proposal, so I thought I'd open it up really and see what people thought. I remember a while back we debated what defined a battleship and what made a ship of the line, and settled for the development of turret warfare as a defining feature. Are people still happy with this? Any further suggestions about how to move forward with this? Kind regards, Benea 07:56, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm all for this, I see little merit including "modern" steam battleships in with galleons or 5th rate ships. What I would suggest is that we make the current page something of an index / disambiguation page for RN battleships, with each of the separate pages a child of that. Emoscopes ^Talk 12:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Request Help with Template for Navy Ensigns

I'm new to templates, and have discovered some of the following useful templates for Navy Ensigns:

• Navy: Royal Navy
• Navy: Kriegsmarine
• Navy: Imperial Japanese Navy
• Navy: France
• Navy: Template:USN 20C
• Navy: United States Navy
• Navy: French Navy

There appears to be a template for the Kriegsmarine but not for the Kaiserlische Marine. How do we create such a template? How does one get an authoritative list of all the possible existing "navy" templates?

Thanks in advance!

Carl Gusler 14:11, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Here is Kaiserlische:

You can find all the ensigns here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns. Maralia 15:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Maralia. However, what you have provided is an image. What I am looking for is a template. (Please edit this page to see the difference.)

How can I tell whether there is already an existing entry in the "navy" template? If not, how can I create a new entryin the "navy" template? For example, for the page full of ensigns that you provided, how do we tell which ones already have corresponding entries in the "navy" template. The US Navy and the Royal Navy do, but I suspect that the Ghanian Navy does not.

Thanks again, Carl Gusler 17:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh - you didn't link them as templates, so I read right past your real question. {{tl|navy|German Empire}} produces it via the conventions of the template {{navy}}, which uses Category:Country data templates. The navy template doesn't require 'entries' per se - it looks in that Category for a country of that name, then checks that country's page (Template:Country data Ghana, to use your example) for a flag variant listed with the label 'navy'. I don't know of a comprehensive list; seems like you would have to go to a country data page to check for a naval flag. As far as adding a missing one: to continue with the same example, you would upload said image, then edit Template:Country data Ghana and, in the list of flags at the top, add as such:

| flag alias-naval = Naval Ensign of Ghana.svg.

I suppose we could modify Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns to actually reference the templates, where they exist, for naval ensigns. I don't know how valuable this would be, though, when it would necessarily require upkeep, and we can check the actual Country data page almost as easily. Maralia 18:36, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Article Request - Sovetskaya Latviya

Could some knowledgeable person(s) please see if there's enough information out there to create an article for the Soviet MV Sovetskaya Latviya (see Soviet Latvia for the details I know). Many thanks! — Zalktis 16:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I've now created a rather amateurish article for MV Sovetskaya Latviya. Please improve upon it! — Zalktis 07:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Article names for ships that were cancelled before commissioning

Ok, so let's say that a ship was cancelled before commissioning. Do we name the article "USS So-and-so" for consistency, even though the "USS" prefix isn't quite proper, or do we just call the article "So-and-so"? For example, wwoods created USS Seaman (DD-791) last September, and then renamed it to Seaman (DD-791) because she was never actually commissioned. 71Demon moved it back in January, but Pmgpgm just notified him that technically that isn't really the correct name.

In my personal opinion, if a ship is probably going to be commissioned, like USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), it should reside at the "USS" name. No need to create an article with a name that will need to change in a couple of years. On the other hand, I'm less sure of how to deal with ships that were cancelled. Should articles like USS Wolffish (SS-434) really be called Wolffish (SS-434), with redirects from the USS names, or is that just being pedantic? TomTheHand 15:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

As the subject is about something that never really transpired, you could perhaps get around this in the introductory sentence, eg.;

USS Homer Simpson (BB-76) would have been the name of a cancelled Donut-class battleship had it been commissioned.

Or is that too cumbersome?

Emoscopes ^Talk 15:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it should still carry the prefix, e.g. as at HMS Thor and HMS Tiara, as if these ships had actually been commissioned they'd have borne those names and that prefix. With Emoscope's suggestion, the article makes it clear that we are referring to something that didn't actually happen. It's no lie to say that it would have been HMS so and so or USS such and such, otherwise we obscure which navy these ships actually would have belonged to. (Gosh, I've got opinions on everything today!) ttfn! --Benea 16:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's a much more convenient way to name the article than Cancelled British submarine Thor etc. Emoscopes ^Talk 14:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Concur USS/HMS, as examples should remain with warships - commissioned or not. What's wrong with the simplest solution? The title would read:

USS Iwasalmostinthenavy (Never Commissioned)

This entirely obviates the scenario where a reader might not ever make it to the first line of body text for an explanation of an unusual or clunky looking title. In this manner, the explanation stays with the ship name at all times - most importantly in a search where just titles appear without the benefit of any body text at all - even that first line as suggested.Xl five lx 09:13, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem that this holds is that it does not really disambiguate the ship in question specifically enough; there is always going to be the chance that we will get a ship name that has been cancelled twice. By sticking with the naming consensus that is already in existence, it allows full disambiguation by date, pennant or hull number. Emoscopes ^Talk 11:44, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

One should note that our de facto standard (at least with the USN) appears to be giving the ship the name it would have received had it been completed. Examples I can think of off the top of my head include USS United States (CVA-58), USS Montana (BB-67), USS Constitution (CC-5), and USS Hawaii (CB-3). --Kralizec! (talk) 17:46, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for project improvement

I would like to see this project cranked up a notch. We have a fascinating topic and some really dedicated, extremely knowledgeable people here. I think you're all doing great work, and I really feel the project could benefit even more from some focus on project coordination, as well as a bigger pool of contributors.

My wish list:

• Update the Project main page to make it more user-friendly and current. Remove some outdated stuff and populate the list of FAs. Add a navigation box and a list of all WP:Ships subpages. Add a todo list for open projects (i.e. category issues that need resolution, long articles that need extensive attention).
• Revamp the Participants page with the goal of making it a resource to other participants. Move extremely inactive people to an Inactive list on the same page. Encourage more expansive information about each participant - it would be valuable to be able to look up someone with expertise or resources in a specific area.
• Create a template for inviting people to join WP:Ships, and start applying it to talk pages of users that show a particular interest in ship articles.
• Create a template for welcoming new WP:Ships participants. This should give them a reference point on their own talk page with links to established standards, templates, important categories, etc.

and then the big one:

• Revisit the goal of the project. The consensus seems to be that the focus should be on better articles, rather than more articles - but Assessment and Review seem to have fallen by the wayside. I would love to see both of these resuscitated; seeing 'your' articles progress through assessment and review can be a big motivating factor to contributors, and we certainly have the material for many more GAs and FAs.

I know I'm awfully new; I'm certainly no expert on ships or the project itself, and this is by no means a criticism of what you all have accomplished so far. I just see the potential for much more. Your comments, please. Maralia 04:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Fow what it's worth, I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything you've said. Especially about the last point; assesment and review aren't used nearly enough - I think this is partially due to there not being clear enough guidelines to these, at least none that I have been able to find.

Personally (I know I have complained about this before) I think that in addition to the changes you've suggested, the project main page should be made more welcoming and more useful for people who aren't here mainly to contribute to articles related to military ships. For instance, the only reference mentioned in the main page is the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and all the material on the Sources is exclusively related to military ships. Similarly most ship infoboxes on offer are more or less biased towards military ships and not very easily usable for civilian ships. And the Guidelines sub-page only uses military ships as examples, which cannot be direclty used as examples on how to write a good article on civilian ships. If this project is really going to (like it claims to) be project about all ships and not just military ships, this subject definately should be adressed. (Of course I'm willing to do my share in making this happen).

And finally, speaking of infobox templates and templates in general, it would be nice to have all the various ship-related templates listed somewhere in an easily accessible place. Right now they seem to be all over the place.

So, my few cents. I hope no-one was offended by my ravings... -- Kjet 07:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Maralia's points. Some time ago, I tried to clean up the project front page, and last month J Clear extensively revised it, but there's definitely more room for improvement. I think a navigation box would be especially useful.

I also tried to make a sort of "You can help!" page where project participants could list things that bored people could help out with. I wasn't able to maintain my motivation, but maybe that could be a start.

One point I would like to make to Kjet is that the reason WP:SHIPS isn't very merchant-ship-friendly is that nobody who's interested in merchant ships has made it so. You have the opportunity here, as the WP:SHIPS member most interested in civilian ships, to shape the guidelines yourself. I'm sure you'll find that everyone else will chip in their $0.02 when you need an opinion. However, nobody who's primarily interested in military ships is going to be able to make the project main page more useful for you. You've got the perspective and the interest, so you can write your own guidelines, add useful references, and improve the infoboxes in ways that are most useful to you. If you need help with, for example, actually editing the infoboxes, please ask. TomTheHand 13:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Revamp the Participants page with the goal of making it a resource to other participants. Move extremely inactive people to an Inactive list on the same page. Encourage more expansive information about each participant - it would be valuable to be able to look up someone with expertise or resources in a specific area.

Brilliant in all regards.

On this point let's take Kjet, for example. If the above plan were fully taken in hand, Kjet would no longer feel he were the proverbial man in the wilderness regarding his love for merchant ships. Instead, he would simply pore over the new incredibly detailed participant resumes to easily identify those that share his passion.

More than likely, this would then cause an explosion of productivity among Kjet and his new confederates resulting in more detailed and complete articles on merchant ships with a greater level of accuracy.

I doubt very seriously that Kjet enjoys pleading for fair and ample representation for merchant ships as frequently as the current situation forces. If for no other reason, this revamp would be an extremely valuable contribution and indispensable tool to the vast area of merchant ships alone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xl five lx (talk • contribs) 10:18, August 24, 2007 (UTC)

Create a template for inviting people to join WP:Ships, and start applying it to talk pages of users that show a particular interest in ship articles.

The Wikiilliterate asks: Why not tag this on the bottom of every ship article? Is this too Wikioffensive? If not, it would sure prove the method to attract the MOST participants. After all, nothing will ever beat a little good old fashioned marketing. Using the softest of soft sells, perhaps it won't breach the pillars of even the most staunch Wiki type. Something light, such as:

If you enjoyed this article and found it in common with interests of your own, perhaps you would like to participate in the Ships Project here at Wikipedia.

Short. Sweet. Followed by a link to the project sign-up page. Xl five lx 09:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, a section of the manual of style, we should avoid making references to WP:SHIPS within ship articles. Templates and categories which are only useful to Wikipedia editors, and which are intended to be used on articles, are regularly deleted. We're going to need to stick to the talk page banner. TomTheHand 13:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Infobox improvements

Yes I strongly support the improvement suggestions. The ship infobox is biased towards military ships, but as a lot of the parameters only display if you enter them, it could serve both civil and military. RMS Titanic uses it already. I am aware of several civil ship articles with handcrafted infotables R.P. Resor (ship), Globe Star (ship), M/S Herald of Free Enterprise, RMS Lusitania, RMS Mauretania from which we can see which extra parameters are needed by civil ships i.e.

• ship owner
• port of registry
• maiden voyage
• ship captain
• passenger capacity
• cargo capacity
• speed (service speed/top speed)
• construction
• number of funnels
• number of masts
• and possibly, regular route

Note that RMS Titanic uses ship class as its (merchant) type e.g. could be RORO ferry, tanker etc (not listed in the table for the example articles but is in the top of the text in each case) - see Template:Ship types for examples. RMS Titanic list the passenger types (first class, second class etc), as well as crew under complement.

The ship template is way too advanced for me, perhaps TomTheHand would amend it for us? However, if anyone wants something simple and non-parameterised, like the military have the class footer templates, and like Template:Ship types, I can do those! Viv Hamilton 14:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

A couple of points I'd like to make on the above suggestions:

1. We already have a "capacity" field; is there a need for separate "passenger capacity" and "cargo capacity" fields, or could the capacity field be used to say "1000 passengers, 100 tons of cargo", possibly on separate lines?
2. We already have a "speed" field.
3. What is the "construction" field intended to be used for?
4. Is "number of funnels" and "number of masts" necessary? It seems that if they are relevant and appropriate to include in an infobox, that information might be better placed in the "propulsion" box.

I would be happy to make any changes to the ship infobox for which there is consensus. I'd like to wait a short while for others to voice objections or suggestions before making changes. TomTheHand 14:54, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

See Template:Infobox_Commercial_Ship and its talk page Template_talk:Infobox_Commercial_Ship. (On the latter, look especially at the comments of User:Jmvolc, an editor who is also a naval architect.) The naval vessel template does not work, as it calls for displacement, and does not allow for substitution of tonnage, which is the relevant measure. It also calls for launch, an increasingly-irrelevant field as passenger vessels are no longer launched, but floated out of drydocks. Use of the naval template perpetuates the common misunderstanding of tonnage as displacement. It similarly leads to editors treating the delivery, naming ceremony, or service entry date as the launch date, which they clearly are not (and in many cases the ship was never actually "launched"). Kablammo 16:34, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The new multi-template infobox, described at {{Infobox Ship Example}}, has no required fields, so if we could add fields to that I see no reason it couldn't be used for all purposes. It would better deal with multiple owners and stuff; you could repeat the Career box as many times as you want for Seawise Giant/Happy Giant/Jahre Viking/Knock Nevis, for example. TomTheHand 17:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Viv (and Kjet), I just want to make it clear that I will make any additions you want to the ship infobox, I just like to play devil's advocate for any change to keep the infobox from getting too bloated. TomTheHand 17:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

::See Template:Infobox_Commercial_Ship and its talk page Template_talk:Infobox_Commercial_Ship. (On the latter, look especially at the comments of User:Jmvolc, an editor who is also a naval architect.) The naval vessel template does not work, as it calls for displacement, and does not allow for substitution of tonnage, which is the relevant measure.

Perhaps you misunderstood your Naval Architect friend regarding how weights are calculated and what each type of measure means along with their unique relevance.

Displacement: What is oft referred to simply as Displacement actually means Displacement Tonnage Light. What Displacement Tonnage Light means is the actual weight of the vessel itself before loading cargo, fuel, or stores. Displacement Tonnage Light is often abbreviated to Displacement Light and at others times shortened still to just Light.

Deadweight: Deadweight Tonnage is the weight of the cargo that a ship can safely carry without overloading. Deadweight Tonnage is most often abbreviated as DW, or DWT.

• NOTE: Both of the above measures of weight based on the long ton of 2,240 pounds.

Total Displacement: The term Total Displacement is simply the weights arrived at once the above two definitions are combined. Displacement + Deadweight = Total. Or, weight of cargo plus weight of vessel light. All this reflects is the weight of the water displaced by the ship when fully loaded.

Gross Tonnage: Gross Tonnage, in stark contrast to Total Displacement, is the measure of the carrying capacity of a vessel. It is the total volume of the closed-in space on the ship measured in cubic feet, using the rule 100 cubic feet to the ton.

Example: A Cargo ship.

Displacement: 4,000 tons.

Deadweight: 10,000 tons.

Gross: 6,000.

All the above measurements are for a single ship. All are correct and useful in that they each convey different information.

A passenger ship, by contrast to the freighter, has enormous Gross compared to Displacement or Deadweight.

In summation, the above four distinct definitions are often bandied about as meaning the very same thing, which they clearly are not. No one measure is more relevant than the next. They simply relate different information. Any template should most certainly take this into account in the design phase to permit any, or all, of these types of measures. Xl five lx 18:07, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The difference in these measures is understood and has been the subject of numerous corrections made necessary by the application a naval template (which calls for displacement) to merchant vessels. As the relevant measure differs by vessel type, a template cannot be "one size fits all". There must either be separate templates for tankers, container vessels, passenger vessels, etc., or a flexible master template with clear instructions on how to adapt it for different vessels (which may be more work than simply having separate templates).

We also need to decide on which template will be used and how that decision will be arrived at, or (by default) allow a multiplicity of templates and discussion on them at a variety of locations, which appears to be the status quo. Kablammo 18:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

The template description at {{Infobox Ship Example}} has several sets of copy-and-paste code for different situations, but all use the same underlying set of templates. You just paste in whatever's relevant to your article. Additional fields could be added to {{Infobox Ship Career}} or {{Infobox Ship Characteristics}} which would only be added to the "civilian ship" copy-and-paste code. People writing about civilian ships don't have to deal with "armor" fields and people writing about military ships don't have to deal with "tonnage", but a single template supports both. TomTheHand 18:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Tom, would you then supercede the commercial ship infobox (which really is an adaption of the naval template to passenger vessels)? Kablammo 18:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Call me lazy, but wouldn't a nice and easy approach to laboring through template designs be easily solved simply by denoting which type of tonnage is indicated on the single existing line? 10,800 DWT, or GT, ie - etc etc etc. Xl five lx 18:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I support this. I personally think that supporting "displacement" and "tonnage" is enough. In a single "displacement" box you can include light, standard, and/or full load displacements, while in a "tonnage" box you can have DWT and DT. TomTheHand 18:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes. But if displacement were to be combined with tonnage you likely would meet with resistance.Talk:Tonnage#More_on_Tonnage Separate fields would be better, as suggested by TomTheHand. Kablammo 18:28, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

A lot has been said since my last comment, I'll try to adress everything in a more or less clear order.

Infoboxes: I've been using a self-made infobox (based it on something or other that I've forgotten). The one MS Christian IV is a good example as it has pretty much all the fields I have had need for. I realise this type of infobox is a bit problematic, there's a lot of information crammed there and not nescessarily in the most informative order. However, I think this arrangement is better than having several different infoboxes for different incarnations of the ship on the same page, as some ships (M/S Wasa Queen, another article of mine as a good example) have had had a dozen names and served for even a larger number of companies. In the Wasa Queen article for instance having seven different infoboxes (or actually eight as the Cruise Ferries Wasa Queen is quite different from the Silja Line Wasa Queen) is not a very informative option.

Personally I think it would be simpler to have separate infoboxes for different ship types (Infobox:Cruise ship, Infobox:Ferry) instead of having a generic Infobox:Ship that would have a horde of fields not needed for certain types of ship. But this is obviously only my opinion and if others feel differently that is no problem for me.

Finally, regarding tonnage, we should not forget the distinction between Gross Tonnage and Gross Register Tonnage which (contrary to the popular belief) are not the same thing. Although Gross Register Tonnage is officially not in use any more, measurements are only avaialble in GRT for almost all civilian ships built before (or even during) the 90s. Xl five lx's idea above is very good imo. -- Kjet 18:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I feel like there's no reason to have a bunch of different infoboxes when we could just have a bunch of sets of copy-and-paste code. Again, please check out the different options at {{Infobox Ship Example}}. A special set of copy-and-paste code could be set up just for oil tankers, and a different one for cruise ships. Since they all rely on the same templates, formatting could be consistent among all of them. As far as having several different infoboxes on a single article goes, it's unnecessary; it's entirely possible to just repeat fields in the same infobox. See USS Entemedor (SS-340), which served with two different navies. TomTheHand 18:43, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

That's fine. Just explain to me why.

TONNAGE: 10,800 DWT

Or better yet:

TONNAGE: 10,000 DWT; 6,000 GT; 4,000 DTL.

That single line now indicates all three calculations from my original cargo ship example. Why break down such similar items. I suspect the hang-up is the word displacement when in the end all you're ever really talking about is a single other word - tonnage. Xl five lx 18:35, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I suspect we're in violent agreement. One field for displacement (not mandatory, as it is often unavailable) and one for tonnage, with the precise type of measure of each in the entry? Kablammo 18:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Which is exactly what we've already got :-) TomTheHand 18:45, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

lol, I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I'm just trying to help. All I'm trying to say is this: Displacement ---IS--- tonnage! "Displacement Tonnage Light" is the full and proper term for what we all call displacement. That's tonnage. So, again, I ask: Why two separate boxes where one would amply suffice for all (five including the old GRT) types of "tonnage?" Know what I mean? I feel we are getting stuck on a convention of semantics while we can call the tonnage kettle black and be done with it. Xl five lx 18:46, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate we are all working toward the same goal. Some people feel that displacement is not "tonnage" in the technical sense of that term. I have no strong feelings but others may. Perhaps more to the point, there are some ships where both values are known. SS America/West Point is one, I believe; and data for both measurements exist for some other passenger vessels which were never naval vessels or army transports. Kablammo 18:52, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes. You can calculate multiple tonnage measurements for ANY vessel. Aircraft Carriers have unusual stats because of their larger closed-in space, etc. That's exactly my point. A cell labled TONNAGE would allow you, the editor, to enter as many TYPES of tonnage calculations as is available from bonafide sources. Displacement just being but one of those five types of tonnage measurements. It makes no more sense to isoalte and devote a separate box for GRT than it does for displacement when up to all five types can easily be indicated on that single line saving both time and space - not to mention the mass of energy otherwise expended on all new templates. Maybe an analogy might help us see through the semantics of this partular issue. If I have five children and I want to brag about their great looks they got from their dad on my myspace page - would I list four of their names after the label marked CHILDREN and the fifth kid under his/her own separate label marked MY FAVORITE KID? As ridiculous as that may sound, and it does, that's what we are doing by breaking out displacement as this holier than thou statistic. It is a measure of tonnage. One of five means. Anything that can be expressed five different ways doesn't deserve it's own stage, IMHO. Xl five lx 19:05, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

My final thought on this (promise). How anyone can read the definition below and walk away with the idea that displacement is NOT tonnage, is just beyond me. It is the weight of the ship expressed in TONS.

Displacement: What is oft referred to simply as Displacement actually means Displacement Tonnage Light. What Displacement Tonnage Light means is the actual weight of the vessel itself before loading cargo, fuel, or stores. Displacement Tonnage Light is often abbreviated to Displacement Light and at others times shortened still to just Light. Xl five lx 19:12, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

That is not the be-all end-all definition of displacement, and many people feel that displacement is a separate topic; therefore, we have separate cells for displacement and tonnage. TomTheHand 19:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Says who, Tom? The definition is not my own. It happens to be the definition given by the United States Maritime Commission in their official history Ships for Victory. I never, repeat never, would have even attempted to define any technical term using only my memory of when I took four years of architecture. I went and got the book and related it here as they do there. Try pages 4 through 6. "That is not the be-all end-all definition of displacement" is the most absurd comment I've read here to date. You're in charge here, right? I would think that the man at the helm would have the background to keep us off the rocks. Xl five lx 19:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not in charge here; I'm just relatively loud ;-) When someone today simply discusses "tonnage" they are generally referring to cargo capacity; people do not usually expect to see the displacement of a ship (especially a warship) called "tonnage". Yes, they were originally synonymous before it was practical to actually figure out what a ship weighs, and yes, "Displacement Tonnage Light" can be considered a subtype of tonnage. However, it's confusing to refer to measures of volume and mass with the same term, and so a distinction is usually made for clarity. I think everyone but you feels it would be best to continue to have separate fields. I don't feel the WikiProject is in any danger of running aground if I refuse to remove the "displacement" field from our infoboxes.

I did not think for a moment that you had just made up the definition. However, this is the second time you've posted a source and said "See? We need to do it like this from now on." There's more to this issue than pulling a book down and saying "This argument is over!" I did phrase things badly when I implied that your definition was incorrect; I apologize for that. However, we have separate fields because "displacement" and "tonnage" are usually used to describe different things, and so we need to make the distinction. TomTheHand 21:14, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I think everyone but you feels it would be best to continue to have separate fields.

Let's wait and see what everyone thinks. It's presumptuous for anyone to think they know how everyone else feels about anything.

I did not think for a moment that you had just made up the definition.

I flat out question your veracity, Tom. If you didn't question the definition, you would have never posted this: That is not the be-all end-all definition of displacement.

Yes, they were originally synonymous before it was practical to actually figure out what a ship weighs, and yes, "Displacement Tonnage Light" can be considered a subtype of tonnage. However, it's confusing to refer to measures of volume and mass with the same term, and so a distinction is usually made for clarity.

What??? Frankly, you have no idea what you are talking about. Try to make a distinction for clarity between your stuff and your shinola because the shinola is clearly transparent and shows how little you actually know about the technicalities of ship design.

However, this is the second time you've posted a source and said "See? We need to do it like this from now on."

Deeper and deeper your pile clogs the bilges. I never once said any such thing, however, you did say such a thing speaking for all without their input, and I quote: therefore, we have separate cells for displacement and tonnage.

The bottom line is you're obviously too young and too inexperienced to given any authority. The proof is this display of trying to prematurely end a discourse on a topic with your definitive end-all "ruling".

Why don't you be man enough to tell these people why you felt compelled to stomp all over the exchange I was having with Kablammo to begin with? Why don't you tell them that the last time you went off on your power trip you were harrassing me via email for three days threatening me with "if you say one more word, I will block you". I never initiated any email to you. Nor did I ever invite you to email me. You even continued to email threats after I asked you to stop emailing me at all. You're a real pro, but I suppose that's what comes from your years and years of hands-on experience with shipbuilding in upper management roles.

Get off your horse, Tom. And while off it, use that time to read up on the very topics you so desperately wish to rule over.

Unlike the last time you came after me, we will do this exchange in public - for all to see. So spare me the emails this time round.

You can go ahead and block me. But know this. No one is going to take to some guy half their age who has never actually done anything in this field beside (maybe, and even this is just a maybe) carry his lunchpail to and fro school.

If you were duly elected to this position that permits you to threaten people with banishment, then perhaps it's time to reconsider the choice. Perhaps it's also time YOU reconsider whether you are ready to oversee an organization that relies upon free exchange of ideas to solve problems and make improvements when these ideas at times will certainly vary from your own opinions. When is the next scheduled mutiny, I mean election anyway? Xl five lx 21:46, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you should really take a look through WP:CIVIL before making a post like that again... Martocticvs 22:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry - was it more civil of Tom to harrass me for three days outside the bounds of Wikipedia where he thought it would escape the bounds of their policies?? Think on that a while. Then get back to me. Xl five lx 22:14, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not going to pass judgement on something I didn't see. The fact remains that your previous post was extremely uncivil. Martocticvs 22:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Yet that's precisely what you did - pass judgement after seeing just half the movie. Xl five lx 22:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Choices of infobox

Just to summarize were we were. We currently have Template:Infobox Ship which is widely used but biased towards military vessels. We also have Template:Infobox_Commercial_Ship, Template:Infobox Ferry and Template:WAFerry (the latter has a merge tag on it). None of the last 3 are advertised on WP:Ships. Commercial ships is used for 4 articles, Ferry for 19 and WAFerry 29. I didn't accurately count the links to Template:Infobox Ship, but it looks like ~2,500. I suspect there are minor field differences which have caused people to want their own template in the commercial ships! Personally I would favour a single template if we can agree on main fields but allow flexibility, especially because as an archaeologist I have odd needs that the rest of you probably don't care about - like construction (for things like clinker built, hybrid hull, copper/muntz clad), and I don't want to have to come up with extra templates to fit different special needs throughout history. Masts and funnels are good for me because that's what you spot on old drawings (or even photos), but funnels could be included in propulsion and perhaps we should have (optional) sailplan which would encompass masts (or perhaps it could default to propulsion, unless sailplan was entered?). I think I agree with you Tom that just speed is Ok - one can enter top and service in it, and capacity can be used for different things, like cargo, passengers, vehicles. Commercial ships has homeport and Ferry has Port of registry - I know homeport works for military ships but for civil ships, shouldn't it be port of registry, so could it default to homeport unless you specify registry? In the case of the above debate about tonnage and displacement, since the military people prefer displacement and the civil people need to have tonnage, can we have a field that defaults to one, unless the other is entered? I leave it to the experts to decide which way - or perhaps pragmatically it will have to default to displacement, simply because ~2,500 military ship articles already use it and assume it will say displacement. Viv Hamilton 14:24, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I favor clearly-defined separate templates for different ship types, even if they are no more than modification of the same basic template. They would be easier to use and more accessible to new users. Ship articles are among the first articles worked on by some users (often youthful fans) and they should have clear direction on what template to use. A lengthy, "one size fits all" template with a myriad of choices would be confusing and lead to errors. (I have made over a hundred corrections of errors on "displacement" vs. "tonnage" (volume) so the problem is real; if there is a default to displacement those errors will continue.) The interest of most of the members of this project appears to be naval vessels, but there are other users, less organized and experienced, whose interests lie elsewhere. And perhaps Wikipedia will eventually have users committed to creating articles on tankers, other bulk carriers, containers ships, and other types of merchant vessels. Let's make it easy for them to do so. Kablammo 14:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why the three-part Template:Infobox Ship Begin, Template:Infobox Ship Career and Template:Infobox Ship Characteristics can't simply be expanded to include the fields that are wanted for the ship types mentioned, and then the appropriate fields listed out in a new section of Template:Infobox Ship Example so the full list isn't unnecessarily copied each time... Making entirely new templates with minimal differences doesn't seem to me to be the logical solution, at any rate. Martocticvs 15:17, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

There already is a template adapted for passenger vessels at Template:Infobox Commercial Ship. Notice was posted on this project talk page asking for comments on that proposal before the template was finalized.[12] I am glad that interest is now being shown in templates for merchant ships, and if there is a better solution than the commercial vessel template already in place, I'm not opposed to it. But I prefer the commercial ship template as it uses terminology and criteria better suited to modern passenger vessels (crew vice complement, tonnage instead of displacement; laid down and completed dates), without the military slant of the general template. This slant leads to confusion; for example, ship articles using a general template which add the passenger capacity to the complement field as the latter term is not generally understood. (See RMS Titanic, RMS Queen Mary, and MS Freedom of the Seas for a few examples of this misunderstanding.) There also are passenger ship pages where the infobox ship template used does not allow for a tonnage field. (See SS Canberra and try to modify displacement to tonnage.) Kablammo 16:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes, but fields that you require can easily be added, that was my point. The way those templates are set up is such that no field is compulsory, so you can pick out the relevant ones for the type of ship in question. The benefit of making it all call from one (well, three, but one if you see what I mean) template of course is that any changes regarding style need only be made once, and it ensures that there is consistency across all ship articles. Martocticvs 16:23, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I understand, but why make each user make those selections? If for example a new user wants to create an article on a new cruise ship, why not provide that user with a ready-made template for such a vessel, where the field selections have already been made? The commercial vessel template is just that. Is there any substantive difference between those articles which use the new commercial vessel template, and how that article would look if a general template was used with appropriate field selections? Kablammo 16:34, 25 August 2007 (UTC) At Template talk:Infobox Commercial Ship I had suggested one common template for merchant ships; another user disagreed (and on balance I think he was right). Please review that discussion in connection with this one. Kablammo 16:59, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I do agree that it is probably easier for users if they have a specific template for their type of vessel - but presumably templates can themselves be built out of templates to maintain commonality? I missed Template:Infobox Ship Begin, Template:Infobox Ship Career and Template:Infobox Ship Characteristics when listing templates - why don't we list these on the tools and resources page? Please also see my previous comment, that if the templates are specific, the minority interests aren't necessarily served Viv Hamilton 17:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

If you'll visit {{Infobox Ship Example}}, which explains how to use the Begin/Image/Career/Characteristics set of templates, you'll see that it lists different sets of copy-and-paste code for different types of ships. A cruise-ship-specific set of code can be created, and a tanker-specific set, and so on, and they would all use the same underlying set of templates. There's no need for each user to think hard about which fields should go on this specific ship. Someone needs to come up with a list of fields just once and add it to the list. From then on, you just go to Infobox Ship Example, click on the type of ship you're dealing with, copy, and paste. You've got exactly the fields you need. TomTheHand 20:55, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

One major thing that bugs me about the three-part ship infobox is that it currently places a lot of emphasis in the nationality of the ship, which is of neglible importance for a civilian ship these days. Plus it's possible (even common) for a ship to have several careers under different companies but the same flag (or several flags during career for one company). It would be very nice to have a civilian-adapted infobox where instead of the country appearing as the header of the career box, it would be the company displayed there. It would be really nice if next to it the flag of the shipping company in question could be displayed, but making the flags for all companies needed would of course be a huge job. -- Kjet 07:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

And some more thoughts... even if the operating company would be displayed in place of the nation, the infobox should still have a separate field for owner as that is not always the same thing as the operator visible to the public (chartered ships, marketing corporations). Additionally a civilian ship infobox would need fields not only for passenger capacity but also passenger berths, number of cabins, car capacity and freight capacity. And ice class. -- Kjet 08:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Funnels & sails

Sorry to be a pedant, but for me, funnels don't form part of the machinery / propulsion, particularly when we often find funnels added for cosmetic reasons as a way to hide unsightly exhaust piping. That's not that I'm against putting it in there, somewhere, I don't see why there shouldn't be a line for funnels. For older ships, funnels were often used as an identifying feature, and the Royal Navy was in the habit of grouping its classes of early torpedo boats and destroyers by simply counting up the funnels. If someone is dead against this in their article, they simply needn't fill in that line in their infobox.

As for sailplan, that to me is another interesting addition. What would be really good, is if we could agree on a set of thumbnails, and if you put, say "square rig" into the infobox, a nice little thumbnail silhouette would come up and would automatically link into the square rig page. I think the sailplan is particularly pertinent as it was the "engines" of sailing ships and determined the vessels' performance Emoscopes ^Talk 14:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about funnels being added for cosmetic reasons. Sail plan performance is more than propulsion of course, it determines navigation capable too - how close to the wind you can sail - as for sail plan thumbnails, a set of images already exist - see Sail plan. I don't know how feasible it would be to get them to automatically add. Viv Hamilton 17:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Technically it would be very easy possible. At least, I know it can be done! I would be happy to do the drawing if I was given the right technical advice, and I'm sure there's enough template knowledge in this project to get the coding done. Emoscopes ^Talk 01:41, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you draw me a gun so I can shoot myself in the head before I get any more bright ideas? :) Maralia 04:32, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions

1) Would it possible to index the various discussions by topic. There seems to be a lot of text that covers multiple subjects making it difficult to agree with one topic and not another. Jmvolc 02:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

2) Nomenclature : There are excellent references available that could be used instead of battling things out. May I suggest "Principles of Naval Architecture" by SNAME and "The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea" edited by Kemp. Jmvolc 02:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

3) Particularization : Different types of vessels use different measures (ex: Offshore Supply Vessel vs. Cruise Ship) so why not have a catalog of standard templates that an individual can use to guide them on the correct terms to use? This should keep people from entering values under the wrong terminology. Something to consider here is that the terminology has changed considerably with time so logically historical vessels should use historical terms and modern vessels should use modern terms. Jmvolc 02:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Something to consider here is that the terminology has changed considerably with time so logically historical vessels should use historical terms and modern vessels should use modern terms. Jmvolc 02:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Excellent point. Applying modern terms, and even modern understanding of technologies these terms define, is often wholly inappropriate when applied to ships of any prior era. I concur that only contemporary terms, and their definitions, should be married to ships from that same precise period. five 02:59, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems that significant progress has been made. If base templates can be adapted for use by merchant ships then suggested standard templates specific to vessel types can be provided. Words like "capacity" and "tonnage" do allow for flexibility; "complement" apparently is confusing and should be replaced with "crew", at least for merchant ships. Other changes may also be appropriate. Is someone willing to work on some standard templates? Should the current infobox commericial ship template be replaced (for passenger vessels) by a modification of the base templates mentioned above? Kablammo 13:15, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Is this a consensus for basing everything on {{infobox Ship}} and using Template:Infobox Ship Example to create particular examples for each type of ship? If so would it be appropriate to move the discussion on particular templates to the Template:Infobox Ship Example talk page, and debate fields that are missing from the 'full code' (e.g. sailplan), and alternative field names e.g. port of registry, on {{infobox Ship}}? Viv Hamilton 14:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

• If someone is willing to make the selections and modifications necessary on the base template to provide a set template for a ship type (e.g, passenger vessel) of equal or greater utility than an existing template (infobox commercial ship), with terminology appropriate to the vessel type, I support it. But if such a passenger ship template uses words like complement instead of crew and launch instead of completion date for modern passenger ships, we are better off with what we have. Kablammo 21:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Hey guys. I was on vacation last week, and then it took a few days for me to settle in enough to get back on Wikipedia. Let's go ahead and add any necessary fields to the general purpose ship infobox, and let's have that discussion on Template talk:Infobox Ship Example. I'll put together some notes there to kick off the discussion. TomTheHand 13:38, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Categorized Comments

- Abbreviation for ship's speed in knots : Officially it is Vk but this will not be understood outside of a small technical circle. In all other references (Including SNAME & RINA) that I have checked it is not abbreviated. I would suggest doing the same as of course "knot" is short for "nautical mile per hour". The potential for confusion is high and we are talking about saving 2 letters. Jmvolc 02:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

- Abbreviation for Nautical Mile : Industry tends towards nm although SNAME has used nmi in the past. I personally have never seen this used outside of their publications. I have seen NM, NMi and a variety of other combinations used but never in publications by any of the primary authorities (SNAME & RINA). I know that the USN has a catalog of approved abbreviations but I had to give mine back after my last Navy job so this is an opportunity for someone to dig out that dusty binder and see what it says. I would use nm as this is the standard adopted by RINA and is recognized in the industry. Jmvolc 02:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

- Displacement vs. Tonnage : This has been beaten to death in the Tonnage Talk page. This one is simple, Tonnage is volume, Displacement is weight or more correctly, mass. Lightship is the term used for commercial (and many Naval) vessels for the mass of the vessel excluding all consumable, stores, cargo, crew, spares, etc. It is not an easy number to get for modern vessels. Actually any Displacement number is tricky. Deadweight is the term used for everything that isn't Lightship. A further definition is Cargo Deadweight which is obviously a subset of Total Deadweight. I would suggest including all three terms with clear instructions to define what Tonnage, Displacement and Deadweight is being reported. Jmvolc 02:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Style Guide?

Is there a style guide for ship articles? See Talk:Christopher Columbus (whaleback) where the she/it question has been raised (I wrote it as "she" but there has been some attempt to change it to "it") ++Lar: t/c 18:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

This is... a pretty hot topic. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (ships as "she"). I think most WP:SHIPS members probably favor "she" (I hope I'm not making an offensive generalization here). I would regard this issue as being similar to issues of British English vs. American English, or BC/AD vs. BCE/CE. I would say that it should be dealt with in a similar fashion to those above issues. If there is a compelling reason to use she or it in a particular context, then use she or it as appropriate. If there is no reason why in this specific case one is better than the other, the article should follow the style of the first person who contributed substantially to it. That is, as you took the time to write this article, and you used "she", nobody should change it to "it". TomTheHand 18:36, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

For posterity's sake, I present a previous discussion within WP:Ships - referring to ships as feminine - that was neither inflated with invented offenses against womankind nor derailed by the ridiculous assertion that npov precludes assigning gender to an inanimate object. Maralia 06:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Petroleum Tankers page

Hi guys, I've merged the Supertankers page into the Petroleum tankers page and given it a pretty thorough kicking adding in history and so on. Please visit and give it s further kicking. Cheers - Jimmec 14:55, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Project improvement

I've been busily working away at drafting project improvement stuff per my post above, and just realized I haven't actually posted anything here since my big wishlist. So, first of all - thanks for all the responses; it's encouraging to see so much interest. I am in the process of creating templates for a navigational sidebar, a todo list, an invitation to join the project, and a welcome to new participants. I'll have bits and pieces to show soon. Maralia 22:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletions (WP:PROD)

• 26 August Double-hulled tanker (PROD by User:Jimmec; "...a large tanker ship used for transporting liquids (usually petroleum).") —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceyockey (talk • contribs) 03:45, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

I have replaced the prod with a merge from double-hulled tanker to petroleum tanker. Maralia 04:27, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Dinghies and AYRS

Is the link to this project from the 420 (dinghy) discussion page correct? Other important dinghies e.g. 49er (dinghy) are not so linked. Is there (or should there be) a more apropriate Wiki Project for sailing related articles? I and some members of the AYRS Yahoo news group are interested in organising contributions based on AYRS archives. GilesW 14:21, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that article does fall within WP:SHIPS, as would 49er (dinghy); the project covers all water vessels. Feel free to add {{WikiProject Ships}} to the discussion page of any articles that are related to ships, to 'bring them in' to the project. We would love to have your assistance, and that of your fellow yacht enthusiasts, in improving related articles. You're welcome to join at our participants page. You might want to read our project guidelines and the Wikipedia page on Copyrights to get started. Maralia 15:12, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I will copy this to the AYRS Yahoo group. Probably more of a winter project, most of us are sailing or doing pre-winter DIY tasks just now. GilesW 16:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Good timing; our documentation of standards, templates available, etc is undergoing a revamp just now, so it should be in better shape by then. Looking forward to having you folks aboard. Maralia 16:48, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

• The "Scope" para says "Ships", but ships has a specific meaning that specifically excludes almost all boats. Particularly yachts, dinghies, canoes, sailboards and many other categories. Please revise the Scope to say ships and boats of all kinds, or water craft of all kinds, or whatever.
• Should other types of sailcraft including ice boats be eligible for inclusion? If so, do we draw the line at the related land yachts (originally developed from ice boats) and other wind propelled land craft such as kite boards? GilesW 22:14, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
• Project guidelines appears not to be relevant to mass produced dinghies etc, new guidelines will be needed. GilesW 22:19, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
• AYRS opinion is that a new WikiProject with new templates is needed, evereything is completely different. Apart from the water. And even that is usually different, come to think of it! GilesW 23:30, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Take the exact language of the project documentation with a grain of salt; it tends to reflect what current participants are most familiar with, and is by no means meant to exclude everything else. You are of course free to operate within or outside this project, but none of the 'differences' you've listed here feels like a dealbreaker to me in terms of relevance - some of them are simply issues that no one has brought up before.

I don't speak for everyone, but I think a template and subset of guidelines specific to dinghy articles would be welcome and considered within scope. As a group, you folks might also benefit from participation in an existing project, with built-in experience in template creation, article structure, article review processes, and other wiki esoterica. Just my thoughts. Maralia 01:24, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Any experts on Ottoman navy?

Ertuğrul is an article both on the founder of the Ottoman dynasty, and a 19th-century vessel named for him centuries after his death. Is there anyone who can split this into two articles and add to the meager text on the ship? Kablammo 01:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. Stubbed: Turkish frigate Ertuğrul. —wwoods 07:23, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Revamp

I have revised the main project page. The prime improvement is the new sidebar, which contains links to all project documentation, a new task list, and our article assessment statistics. In light of the sidebar's functionality - and also in the hopes of making the project page less daunting to a new user - I have seriously cut down the amount of text on the main page.

The sidebar template is located at {{Ships sidebar}}. It can be transcluded on your User page, but don't subst it, or it won't update. A quick summary of the sidebar (with entirely new items/pages in bold text):

• Project documentation largely consists of links to our pre-existing documentation. There is one new page - Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Outreach - which lists the new {{invite ships}} and {{welcome ships}} templates I have created.

• "Things you can do" is a new task list that is (manually) populated off the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Tasks. You can also reach the tasks page by clicking the 'edit' button on the sidebar. The task list is a central place for us to 'advertise' tasks we have come across, so that anyone can complete them. One aspect of the tasks is completely new: I have created a bot feed of new ship-related articles that is updated daily at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/New articles.

• Article statistics is just a transclusion of our assessment statistics.

Please share your comments. I'd like to get a feel for what you all think before I tear into the documentation pages themselves (guidelines, sources, etc). Maralia 05:17, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Nice work! The new main page looks great, and I love the well organized sidebar! My only concern would be with the Consolidate item on the sidebar. Wikipedia's category structure is -on its best days- rather like an M. C. Escher drawing, and for WikiProject Ships it is often nigh-incomprehensible. "Fixing" Category:Patrol vessels, Category:Patrol craft, and Category:Patrol boats is a very complicated and oft mind-numbing issue. This particular case with three different patrol boat categories is, at its core, most likely an outgrowth of our "Ship of country" vs. "Ship of navy" category mess. TomTheHand (talk · contribs), Emoscopes (talk · contribs), myself, and a few others have been trying -with varying degrees of success- to get this straightened out for years. However rather than re-hash it all here, you may wish to go back in the talk archives and read our discussions on the topic. The most recent conversation on the issue was: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive04#Further discussion on categorization of Category:Ships by country. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:53, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. The language of that particular item is a mistake; I meant to list it as 'review for consolidation', like the item directly below it. However, this particular case seems to be just a difference in terminology - vessel vs craft vs boat - which should not be controversial. Maralia 16:12, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyone else have comments? No one but me appears to be using the new tasks page, new articles list, etc so I'm starting to feel like I spent days codifying a group-oriented system that could have been handled just by my own damn local Wordpad file. Grumblemumblegripe. Is the real issue here that everyone is focused on new articles and I'm the only one willing to do much in the way of cleanup/maintenance of articles? Maralia 03:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup? Maintenance? You mean we do those sorts of things?!? Someone once said that trying to organize Wikipedians is like trying to herd cats ...  :-) --Kralizec! (talk) 04:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry no time to actually do anything at the moment, but when I do have time, I'll be able to go straight to your nice new tasks list, so I'm sure it will be more productive. The main page is a big improvement Viv Hamilton 12:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Comments on a suggested new Parent Project?

I am interested in many maritime and boating issues that seem to be outside the real scope of this project or the Wikiproject Maritime Trades. For example, small pleasure-craft and sailing topics (other than sailing during the Age of Sail) don't really belong under either, at least not intuitively. Also articles about authors who have written about the nautical topics, other than a few like Nathaniel Bowditch, don't belong or wouldn't seem to very important to either project. It seems that there is a part of WikiProject Transport and Wikiproject Ships, there is an area which has to do with the sea and boats which falls through the cracks. I've made a suggestion at Portal:Nautical that there may be need for a Nautical Project to pick up everything that this project and Maritime Trades don't cover. Intention is not to step on any toes here, only to short of do some housekeeping in the areas that the two major projects in the area aren't interested much in - but plenty of other people are. Please make any comments at Portal:Nautical to keep them together. I haven't formally proposed the project yet, I wanted to gauge the opinions of other parties first and hopefully find some with interest before posting the proposal.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 20:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

An odd disambiguation

Has anyone got an opinion on this? I came across HMS Decoy (H75) (later HMCS Kootenay), which is a form of disambiguation that I've not seen before, and I'm fairly sure it doesn't fit wih our manual of style. I think the convention is to use the most notable version. And I'd lean towards having it as [[HMS Decoy (H75)]], and a redirect from [[HMCS Kootenay (H75)]], as it spent most time with the Royal Navy, and had a particularly notable career with them. It did serve with the Canadians for a short while, and had some notable exploits with them too though, so its not quite clearcut. Or is the title better as it is? Letters on a postcard please, kind regards...--Benea 01:34, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest splitting it. It wouldn't be the first ship to have two separate pages due to sale or transfer. Maralia 02:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I know what you mean, but I'm not sure that'd be too helpful in this case. There isn't a huge amount of information for the Canadian ship, and I think in this case the information is better off kept together for the sake of clarity. The others in the class have the history in one article and redirects from the other ship names, i.e HMCS Margaree (H49) with a redirect from HMS Diana (H49). I think this would be the way to go. Benea 02:15, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm seems like we've seen opposite precedents, as the USN articles seem to favor splitting if the second career is notable beyond 'sold to x country and renamed y'. If the others in the class are handled that way, of course I can see why you would do choose that method. Decoy does seem the more notable name for the article, as it was in service as such for 10 years, with only 1.5 years as Kootenay. Maralia 02:27, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)As per our naming conventions, the article should be HMS Decoy (H75) with a redirect placed at HMCS Kootenay (H75) until such time as Kootenay has enough information to merit a fork to its own article. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)#Ships that changed name or nationality for more details on this, and other aspects of article naming. --Kralizec! (talk) 02:34, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll shift it and create the redirect, as per Kralizec!. ttfn. Benea 02:39, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Does this logic apply with women? Have one article for their maiden name, and a different article for their married name. Or do you recognise that they are the same person, even though they had a change of name?

Surely a history of a ship should be one article? With married women, there is a convention: Mrs Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts). With ships, if both names are about equally notable, why not quote both in the title?

By the way, it seems very sneaky to have the discussion about changing the article name on this page, instead of having it on the discussion page of the article. This had the effect of excluding people who had the original page on their watch list, and then presenting them with afait accompli.

b.t.w. I will copy this discussion into the discussion page for HMS Decoy (H75) (later HMCS Kootenay). It is what should have been done in the first place--Toddy1 06:42, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Sneaky is my middle name. No wait, its Lionel. But enough about me. I apologise for not posting it to the talk page, but in a number of cases things can get posted to talkpages and are never seen again by anyone else. This was the quickest and easiest way to get some opinions. But thank you for covering the gap. And it was really quite a simple call to make. No the logic doesn't apply to women, yes it does apply to ships, as per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)#Ships that changed name or nationality which is quite clear on the matter. So it is not in keeping with current manual of style. It would perhaps have been best to have discussed any proposed changes to that convention here, rather than sneakily changing it as you did. It is what should have been done in the first place. No, I don't really mean that but you see how things can be interpreted as sneaky that really weren't meant as such. Lots of love, Benea 14:54, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

With married women, there is a convention: Mrs Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts).

Despite the 'real life' convention, you will notice that Margaret Thatcher's article is named Margaret Thatcher, not Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts).

Women, unlike ships, are presumably not sold into other service. Maralia 15:21, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Women, unlike ships, don't usually get married 10 times in their life. Personally I think the convention of splitting an article in two (or more) based on a change nationality or name is a bit odd. Taking for instance M/S Wasa Queen, which which I wrote an article without knowing about the naming convention about a year ago. During it's career the ship has sailed under seven different names (plus one trade name) for ten different companies. Three or four of it's incarnations could be considered "notable" to smaller or larger degree. So if we were to follow the naming convention to the letter, that article should be split into at least three different articles, each of them covering one "notable" owner (& name) and a bunch of less notable owners (& names). Which, in my opinion, would make absolutely no sense.

And just to avoid misunderstandings, I don't support quoting several names in the article name. The first/best known (which admittedly can be debatable) should suffice. But personally I don't see the point in splitting an article into several smaller ones if they're all actually about the same ship. -- Kjet 15:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree in this case. After her transfer the ship was the same vessel (i.e. no modifictions), in the same role, on the same side and operating against the same enemies. The only tangible differences were her name and flag. Another article could be written for her Canadian role, but I think it would end up repeating so much information as to be a bit pointless. I think you have to make a judgement in each individual case. Sometimes it's helpful to split, other times it isn't. And if it is to be kept as the one article, then we should definitely follow the manual of style for the name, and not try and cram in all the variations. Or as you say, your M/S Wasa Queen could be M/S Wasa Queen (formerly M/S Bore Star, M/S Silja Star, M/S Orient Express, M/S Club Sea, M/S Eurosun and M/S Orient Sun) Benea 15:55, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

How is following WikiPedia's naming conventions being either "sneaky" or presenting a "fait accompli"? To be honest, I suspect that most of the long-time WikiProject Ships editors probably would not post any talk messages on a pretty straightforward situation like this, because they would just be bold and fix it. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Continued infobox discussion

I'd like to continue the infobox discussion here, as only Kjet followed it over to Template talk:Infobox Ship Example. I've added operator, completion date, height, and crew to the new ship infobox; see {{Infobox Ship Example}}. It now supports everything that {{Infobox Commercial Ship}} supported and should be able to replace that template. I would be happy to answer any questions on how to use the templates or how to put together your own set of fields for a particular kind of ship. Please ask either here or on my talk page.

What other fields need to be added? Kjet has suggested the following:

1. Passenger capacity
2. Car-carrying capacity - often listed separately from gargo capacity
3. Cargo capacity
4. Number of passenger beds - can be a different number from passenger capacity
5. Number of cabins
6. Ice class
7. Sister ships - very often there is no officially named class, the ship just has one or two similar sister ships, and no class page exists

I would really rather not add a ton of different types of capacity; see here for my opinion on that subject. I'd be happy to add Ice class, as I can't really imagine any existing field that could hold that information. I'm a little iffy on sister ships, as I think that information would be best contained in a footer.

In addition, there was a discussion above about adding "Number of funnels" and "Sail plan". I'm still a little iffy on a "Funnels" field, so I haven't added it yet; do you really, really want it? ;-) I found the discussion about possibly showing thumbnails of different sail plans to be very interesting. I'd like to add a sail plan field, and pictures of different sail plans are already on the sail plan article.

Anyway, I'd like to hear from more people, primarily about the capacity issue. Having many kinds of capacity seems to be a big break from how we've traditionally tried to do things, with general-purpose fields. If we have more than one kind of capacity, I'd like to keep the number to an absolute minimum. Four seems like way too many to me; some information could definitely be consolidated there. TomTheHand 14:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes should be terse not expansive in my opinion. The aircraft specifications template which is used inthe body of an article uses the single field "capacity" which can then be filled out in a multitude of ways eg "40 passengers" or "5 stretcher cases" or "2 Europallets". Very flexible, simpler to code.GraemeLeggett 15:01, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

For the record, I have personally been converted to the one capacity field idea... but I feel obliged to point out that in my experience of Wikipedia, a lot of editors use customised infoboxes that have separate fields of different capacities. Regarding funnels (& sails)... if a funnel field is added, we need to reach some kind of a consensus of what a funnel is. In civilian ships there have been a lot of ships with dummy funnels, which later developed into observation lounges quite different in appearance from the actual funnel(s), and especially during the 1960s many ships were built in which it's quite difficult to say if the construction on the top of the ship is a dummy funnel or an observation lounge.

As for the sister ships, I think they should be there, even if there is a footer (a footer of course would be trés chic). The ship class is there, and the sister ships essentially fill the same function in case there is no officially designated class. -- Kjet 15:16, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

RE capacity: I am of the minimalist persuasion and prefer a single capacity box.

RE funnels: Perhaps an article actually on this topic is in order?

RE sister ships: I prefer them in a footer vs in the infobox; sister ships are not technically information about the ship, and it seems neater and consistent with the military articles style, as a bonus. Examples might convince me otherwise, though. Maralia 16:27, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

One thing worth mentioning: it would be easy to set up a campaignbox-like template for the sister ships using {{military navigation}}. Kirill 17:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Regarding funnels, we used to have a Funnel (ship) stub article, but it was merged into Chimney a couple of years ago. As to sister ships, I agree with Maralia that I prefer to see them in a separate footer template. However that said, if the article is on a ship class, I like having all the ships in listed both in the infobox and the footer template. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw a little info in that article earlier - but nothing cohesive, and not a word about 'dummy' funnels. Other info could include how they were used for identification, perceived as indications of the safety of the ship, etc. Maralia 18:27, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the usage of footers for sister ships (I'm starting to get converted to this idea as well)... the big problem is, how to name the footer if no official name exists for the "class"? For instance, if a footer is created for M/S Amorella, M/S Isabella, M/S Gabriella and M/S Crown of Scandinavia, what should it be called? I have never come across an official class name for these ships, yet the footer certainly needs one.

Relatedly, what about classes owned by several companies that have different names depending on the company? For instance, the ships called the R-class by Renaissance Cruises are now called the Regatta-class by Oceania Cruises, Explorer-class by Princess Cruises (who also include the unrelated Regal Princess in the same class) and operated without a class name by Azamara Cruises. -- Kjet 15:13, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Why not just a generic 'sister ships' footer? It wouldn't be pre-filled, so it wouldn't save a lot of typing like {{Auk class minesweeper}} does, but presumably most merchant ships don't have that many sister ships, either. Maralia 15:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Why not create a generic one 'sister ships' footer, but obviously editors are also free to create a specific pre-populated one. As for what specific sister-ship footers should be called, surely the convention is that the first of the series names the class (as is the case with nuclear submarines)? On other fields - yes please for sail-plan. When I next have some time for editing I will try to add a template to a historic ship or wreck and report back how well it fits Viv Hamilton 16:27, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of a generic sister ships footer (I didn't actually know it was possible to make something like that). As you say, most civilian ships (at least ones notable enough to have an article about them in the first place) don't have that my sisters to start with so typing isn't really a problem. Plus putting them in the infobox as per my original suggestion would have meant the same amount of typing anyway.

Re: class naming conventions, in my experience if a civilian ship class has an actual class name it often isn't the name of the first ship in class (sometimes it isn't the name of any ship in class). Case points: Vista class (no ship in the class is named Vista), Spirit class (first in class was Costa Atlantica), Star class (by convention should be Finnstar class), Vision Class (first in class was Legend of the Seas - although technically this isn't a single class but three separate classes. But none of them would be called Vision class according to the convention). With this in mind I personally at least wouldn't dare to start assigning names to classes without official class designations... that would be dangerously close to WP:OR if you ask me. -- Kjet 20:04, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts:

• One capacity field. We can fill in, for example, that SS Canberra had a capacity of x passengers and y cubic feet/meters of cargo space; that a container ship has a TEU of z, etc.
• One field for installed power and one for propulsion.
• Sisterships-- however you want to handle it. Most cruise ships are members of a class; there were dozens or hundreds of tankers and freighters build to standard designs.
• How do we handle ships which are not launched? Float out was once a significant day for ships built in graving docks, but now means little. We have completion dates, delivery dates, naming ceremony dates, maiden voyage dates, etc. Do we need a multiplicity of fields or is there one we can use for civilian ships (service entry date)?
• When in doubt, Keep It Simple, Shiplovers. We're not a technical resource and don't need infoboxes longer that the articles. Kablammo 20:15, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

There are "In service" and "Out of service" fields which can be used when that's all that's known. TomTheHand 20:35, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I had thought those were status fields (i.e., a ship is either in, or out of service). Should the date be inserted? On a number of existing articles I changed "launched" to "service entry", as typically the latter, or some approximation of it, is known. "Commissioned" seems to be a military term. Kablammo 21:22, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, they're just text fields like the others. I use them for dates when my source is vague. TomTheHand 21:37, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I've added ice class and sail plan. I added them next to each other, not out of laziness, but because I felt like ice class went well with the hull dimensions directly above while sail plan went with propulsion directly below. I can move the fields if needed. If anyone wants to come up with new sets of copy-and-paste code, please go ahead, and ask me if there are any questions... or describe to me what you want and I'll do it. TomTheHand 13:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Tom, it's looking good. I like how you've grouped the metrics. A couple of minor suggestions:

• Start with measurements together (as you have) including hull items, then power items (including sail plan, speed, etc.), then capacity and crew. (Or put capacity and crew before the power items.) Putting crew right after capacity would be helpful for passenger ships.
• Put tonnage before displacement, so that the former is the first of the two fields an editor will come to. Better yet, eliminate displacement entirely. It's really not a relevant field for merchant ships, and it could be added manually for those who have data.
• Our naval architect has suggested differentiating power from propulsion. See RMS Queen Mary 2 for an example.

Thanks for taking on this task-- it should help reduce errors. Kablammo 14:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

A few comments and issues with your suggestions:

• The fields are already arranged in the way you've suggested. "Capacity" was misplaced in the template instructions only, but appears right before complement/crew when actually used in an article; I've fixed the instructions.
• I'll swap displacement and tonnage shortly unless anyone has any objections.
• I don't see why power, an attribute of propulsion, should be listed in a separate field. The Queen Mary 2 article uses the "propulsion" field only to describe the way the power gets to the water; that'd be like using USS Enterprise (CVN-65)'s propulsion field to say "4 propellors". It's supposed to be more than that. The field is intended to describe every attribute of the ship's propulsion plant: "8 x A2W reactor, 4 x steam turbine, 4 shafts, 280,000 shp (210 MW)". TomTheHand 14:35, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll post a message to Jmvolc on the propulsion/power issue. I suspect the reason to differentiate them is to avoid confusion on total power of the prime mover as opposed to power available for propulsion, which is different. One other item: Is range needed for merchant ships? Is it available? For some ships it is (much was made of the range of SS United States) but for most it may not be. Kablammo 14:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I moved tonnage above displacement. I hope this doesn't mess up warship newbies, who might fill in tonnage when they should fill in displacement! We can cross that bridge when we come to it, though. The warship copy-and-paste code leaves off tonnage, so that should remove that temptation. TomTheHand 14:49, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm also thinking it might be best to just remove displacement from the "civilian ships" copy-and-paste code. You're much more experienced in this area than me; when was the last time you had displacement figures for a merchant ship? TomTheHand 15:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Ship decommissioning

Can anyone help flesh out Ship decommissioning with info on how it is handled in countries other than the US? Maralia 04:46, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Linking the first use of common units

I generally try to provide a link to the appropriate article the first time I use a unit, even a very common one. For example, I link ft to Foot (unit of length). Lightmouse has unlinked a few of these. When I asked him about it, he says he doesn't feel it's necessary to link such common units. I see his point, and so I wanted to ask you guys for your opinion. Certainly I think it's important to link specialty units like knot (and Lightmouse is certainly not unlinking those). However, is it a good idea to link the first use of any unit, even if they're as common as feet and inches? I'm not sure, and I'd like to know what WP:SHIPS thinks about it. TomTheHand 19:54, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd think this is very pertinent for tons - quite often it is quoted in tonnes where it should be tons, and the reader is not sure if we mean long tons or short tons etc. Emoscopes ^Talk 20:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It may be unnecessary to have them, it certainly seems unnecessary to remove them though. Bit of an odd argument from Lightmouse. I don't tend to link them, but it could only be useful to have them there, so taking them out when they're already there seems a backward step to me. --Benea 20:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother linking feet and meters, but I wouldn't bother removing links to them, either. Maralia 21:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, Lightmouse does this stuff, along with many other kinds of useful fixes and unit conversions, automatically, so it's not taking him any time to perform this unlinking. So... should we ask him to stop making this particular edit? Are there people on English Wikipedia who look at feet and inches, with a metric conversion next to them, and say "I'd sure like to look at an article and find out just what a 'ft' is"? Or are the links useless to just about anybody, and removing them streamlines the article? TomTheHand 21:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I would go further than Benea and Maralia. It is not just unnecessary to remove links to a unit like the foot, it is even harmful to do so because it adds ambiguity. (Just because it is common does not make it unambiguous). In a nutshell: link all units except those defined by SI. Thunderbird2 21:12, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify, there are about 6 different definitions for the foot listed here. Thunderbird2 21:21, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I almost always link the first use of finite, measuring terms like feet, inch, m, knot, nautical mile, ton, tonne, etc. in articles. Not only are the exact definitions of these terms of integral importance to most naval articles, but I would hazard to say that the majority of casual readers are more than a little fuzzy on what exactly some of these terms mean (especially if they are users of the imperial/metric system, and the article they are reading uses the other system). It would be a different story if we were talking about words like ocean, ship, Tuesday, etc. --Kralizec! (talk) 01:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)