Template talk:Infobox Ship

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[edit] Usage

This template is designed to contain information on all types of ships. It is a centralised version of the table that has been used for ships on Wikipedia for a long time now. It contains a number of rows that will appear regardless of whether anything is filled in for those rows and a number of rows that only appear if they actually contain something. The empty version of the table looks like this:

{{Infobox Ship|
|Ship image=
|Ship caption=
|Ship country=
|Ship flag=
|Ship class=
|Ship ordered=
|Ship builder=
|Ship laid down=
|Ship launched=
|Ship christened=
|Ship purchased=
|Ship commissioned=
|Ship decommissioned=
|Ship in service=
|Ship out of service=
|Ship renamed=
|Ship reclassified=
|Ship captured=
|Ship fate=
|Ship struck=
|Ship reinstated=
|Ship homeport=
|Ship displacement=
|Ship length=
|Ship beam=
|Ship draught=
|Ship propulsion=
|Ship speed=
|Ship range=
|Ship endurance=
|Ship test depth=
|Ship boats=
|Ship capacity=
|Ship complement=
|Ship time to activate=
|Ship sensors=
|Ship EW=
|Ship armament=
|Ship armour=
|Ship armor=
|Ship aircraft=
|Ship motto=
|Ship nickname=
|Ship honours=
|Ship notes=
|Ship badge=
|}}

Using this version of the table will result in the following default being created on the page where the template is used:



Career
Laid down:
Launched:
Status:
General Characteristics
Displacement:
Length:
Beam:
Speed:
Complement:

The rows that will always appear in the template are:

  • Ship image
  • Ship flag
  • Ship laid down
  • Ship launched
  • Ship fate
  • Ship displacement
  • Ship length
  • Ship beam
  • Ship draught
  • Ship propulsion
  • Ship speed
  • Ship complement

They are included as all ships, by definition, have those qualities. If they are empty the text rows default to "Unknown" and the image rows (Ship image and Ship flag) default to displaying Image:IIH.png as a placeholder.

The remaining rows in the table are optional and they only appear if they actually have something in them since not all ships possess these attributes. They are:

  • Ship caption
  • Ship country
  • Ship ordered
  • Ship builder
  • Ship christened
  • Ship purchased
  • Ship commissioned
  • Ship decommissioned
  • Ship in service
  • Ship out of service
  • Ship renamed
  • Ship reclassified
  • Ship captured
  • Ship struck
  • Ship reinstated
  • Ship homeport
  • Ship range
  • Ship endurance
  • Ship test depth
  • Ship boats
  • Ship capacity
  • Ship time to activate
  • Ship sensors
  • Ship EW
  • Ship armament
  • Ship armour
  • Ship aircraft
  • Ship motto
  • Ship nickname
  • Ship honours
  • Ship notes
  • Ship badge

US and UK alternative spellings are available for the variables Ship draught, Ship armour and Ship honours. Simply alter the spelling of the variables to Ship draft, Ship armor and Ship honors respectively and the US spellings will come up rather than the UK spellings. Since Ship draught is a row that always appears in the table if neither variable contains any information the row will default to "Unknown" and the US spelling will be used.

A main configuration parameter is NavyColor which controls the color of the career and general characteristics title bars. The default color is "navy".

The usage of each row is as follows:

  • Ship image — a photo or any other image of the ship in question using standard MediaWiki image markup, which should not be wider than 300 pixels (include an alternate text for those who can't see the image—the name of the ship at least)
  • Ship caption — a caption to the image of the ship in question (if appropriate—e.g. if there's more than one ship in the picture, or if the occasion or activity is noteworthy)
  • Ship country — the country that the ship served, usually presented in brackets
  • Ship flag — the flag/ensign/jack the ship flew, again inserted using standard MediaWiki image markup
  • Ship ordered — the date the ship was first ordered
  • Ship builder - the organisation that built the ship
  • Ship laid down — the date the ship was laid down
  • Ship launched — the date the ship was launched
  • Ship christened — the date the ship was christened
  • Ship purchased — the date the ship changed hands either by purchase or some other means like requisitioning, except for capture by enemy forces which is covered by another variable
  • Ship commissioned — the date the ship was commissioned into a navy or other military service
  • Ship decommissioned — the date the ship was decommissioned from a navy or other military service
  • Ship in service — the date the ship came into service where it was not commissioned (for example ships of the Military Sealift Command of the United States Navy
  • Ship out of service — the date the ship came out of service
  • Ship renamed — the date the ship was renamed and what names it went under before and after the renaming
  • Ship reclassified — the date the ship was reclassified, for example from a gun cruiser to a guided missile cruiser, and what classifications it went under before and after the reclassification
  • Ship captured — the date the ship was captured due to enemy action in wartime or by pirates
  • Ship struck — the date the ship was removed from any register of naval vessels it was on
  • Ship reinstated — the date the was reinstated to any register of naval vessels it was on
  • Ship fate — the current status of the ship if still extant or its final fate otherwise
  • Ship homeport — the home port of the ship
  • Ship displacement — the displacement of the ship, preferably at least full load displacement for warships and deadweight tonnage for merchant vessels
  • Ship length — the length of the ship
  • Ship beam — the beam of the ship
  • Ship draught — the amount of water the ship draws
  • Ship propulsion — the propulsion method used for the ship including details, if appropriate and available, of engine-type, number of shafts and shaft horsepower
  • Ship speed — the speed the ship was capable of
  • Ship range — the range of the ship at a particular speed
  • Ship endurance — how long the ship can stay at sea, and if a diesel submarine its underwater endurance
  • Ship test depth — if the ship is a submarine, the depth to which it was tested during trials
  • Ship boats — details of the smaller craft such as admiral's barges and landing craft that the ship carries
  • Ship capacity — the amount and type of cargo that the ship can carry and the amount of stores that a warship carries
  • Ship complement — the number of officers and enlisted men serving on board the ship including a split into different organisations if appropriate and known, e.g. a carrier's crew and air group
  • Ship time to activate — if the ship is not in active service the time it takes to get the ship in active service from the moment the order to do so is given
  • Ship sensors — the sensors that the ship possess including radar and sonar
  • Ship EW — the electronic warfare and decoy equipment carried by a warship
  • Ship armament — the armament that a ship possess including guns, rockets, missiles and torpedoes and the launching systems for those weapons if appropriate
  • Ship armour — the amount of armour that the ship possess and where it is in the ship
  • Ship aircraft — the aircraft that the ship can support and the aviation facilities that is uses to support those aircraft
  • Ship motto — any motto known for the ship (include English translation if necessary)
  • Ship nickname — any nicknames known for the ship
  • Ship honours — any honours and awards bestowed on the ship, such as campaign awards, unit commendations and prizes (like the Blue Ribband for liners)
  • Ship notes - Anything about the ship that is particularly notable and not covered elsewhere in the table
  • Ship badge - any badge that was commonly associated with the ship

To input information into the table simply insert it after the equals sign on each row as appropriate. If the ship is part of a large class of vessels and each of those vessels share common characteristics such as propulsion equipment then MediaWiki templates can be used to insert that information for each member of the class. Any unique features of a particular ship in the class can then be inserted after the template as appropriate.

For a table of the ensigns and jacks that can be used in the table see Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns.

[edit] Example of Usage

The markup below produces the table seen on the right of the page:

{{Infobox Ship|
|Ship image=[[Image:IIH.png|300px|InsertAltTextHere]]
|Ship caption=caption
|Ship country=(UK)
|Ship flag=[[Image:Naval Ensign of the United Kingdom.svg|60px|Royal Navy Ensign]]
|Ship ordered=[[April 7]] [[1977]]
|Ship laid down=[[April 15]] [[1979]]
|Ship launched=[[July 1]] [[1981]]
|Ship purchased=
|Ship commissioned=[[May 27]] [[1983]]
|Ship decommissioned=
|Ship in service=
|Ship out of service=
|Ship captured=
|Ship fate=active in service
|Ship struck=
|Ship reinstated=
|Ship homeport=
|Ship displacement={{Ship displacement box Trafalgar class submarine}}
|Ship length={{Ship length box Trafalgar class submarine}}
|Ship beam={{Ship beam box Trafalgar class submarine}}
|Ship draught={{Ship draught box Trafalgar class submarine}}
|Ship propulsion={{Ship propulsion box Trafalgar class submarine}}
|Ship speed={{Ship speed box Trafalgar class submarine}}
|Ship range=
|Ship endurance=
|Ship test depth=
|Ship capacity=
|Ship complement={{Ship complement box Trafalgar class submarine}}
|Ship time to activate=
|Ship sensors={{Ship sensors box Trafalgar class submarine}}<br>[[BAE Systems]] SMCS from [[1995]]
|Ship EW={{Ship EW box Trafalgar class submarine}}<br>SAWCS decoys carried from [[2002]]
|Ship armament={{Ship armament box Trafalgar class submarine}}<br>SAWCS decoys carried from [[2002]]
|Ship armour=
|Ship aircraft=
|Ship motto=
|Ship nickname=
|}}



InsertAltTextHere
caption
Career (UK) Royal Navy Ensign
Ordered: April 7, 1977
Laid down: April 15, 1979
Launched: July 1, 1981
Commissioned: May 27, 1983
Status: active in service
General Characteristics
Displacement: Surfaced: 4,740 tons
Dived: 5,208 tons
Length: 280.1 ft (85.4 m)
Beam: 32.1 ft (9.8 m)
Draught: 31.2 ft (9.5 m)
Propulsion: Rolls-Royce PWR1 nuclear reactor
2 × GEC turbines
1 × shaft pump jet 15,000 hp (11 MW)
motor for emergency drive
emergency retractable propellor
2 × W H Allen turbo generators 2 MW
2 × Paxman diesel alternators 2,800 hp (2.1 MW)
Speed: Dived: 32 knots (59 km/h)
Complement: 18 officers
112 enlisted
Sensors and processing systems: Ferranti/Gresham Dowty DCB/DCG
Type 2072 hull-mounted flank array passive sonar
Plessey Type 2020 or Marconi/Plessey Type 2074 hull-mounted active and passive search and attack sonar
Ferranti Type 2046 towed array passive search sonar
Thomson Sintra Type 2019 PARIS or Thorn EMI 2082 passive intercept and ranging sonar
Marconi Type 2077 short range active classification sonar
Kelvin Hughes Type 1007 I band navigation radar
Pilkington Optronics CK34 search periscope
Pilkington Optronics CH84/CM010 attack periscope
BAE Systems SMCS from 1995
Electronic warfare and decoys: 2 × SSE Mk8 launchers for Type 2066 and Type 2071 torpedo decoys
RESM Racal UAP passive intercept
CESM Outfit CXA
SAWCS decoys carried from 2002
Armament: 5 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Spearfish torpedoes (originally Tigerfish torpedoes) with 20 reloads
UGM-84 Harpoon submarine-launched cruise missile
Mines
SAWCS decoys carried from 2002


[edit] Deprecated

Unfortunately, this template makes heavy use of nested templates, which we are actively trying to eliminate per WP:AUM. The several articles using this will need to be converted to Template:Infobox Ship. The parameter names have changed slightly, but overall it's quite close to the same functionality, without using any nested templates. -- Netoholic @ 09:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I edited out as much of the nested meta-template code as I could without changing the functionality or format of the template. This way the pages that use this template will not use as many resources as they would otherwise. The code for the new template (which is what my edit is based on) still seems cleaner than this one's, and as such pages should still switch to the new one. - Nakamura2828 00:30, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NOT DEPRECATED

I have now altered the functionality of this template to get rid of the QIF statements, using exactly the same sort of syntax Netholic used. There is consequently no reason to stop using this template now. David Newton 17:39, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved

I've moved this to Template:Infobox Ship. Those looking to shamelessly increase their edit count can go about modifying articles to use the new name. ;) Meanwhile, the redirect should work fine for now.

We may want to consider simplying the parameter names as Netoholic suggested at the other Infobox Ship's TFD. Any thoughts on that (if not, I'll go about adding code to the template to help transition to the newer names)? For the curious, the code that (right now) looks like this:

{{row|if=|test={{{Ship christened|}}}|label=Christened:|contents={{{Ship christened|}}} }}

Would be made to look like this:

{{row|if=|test={{{christened|{{{Ship christened|}}}}}}|label=Christened:|contents={{{christened|{{{Ship christened|}}}}}} }}

Basically, check for the new variable name, if it doesn't exist, check for the old variable name, and if it doesn't exist, don't display the row. Yes, it's ugly, but it'd (conceivably) be temporary until pages are ported over to the new names. —Locke Cole • tc 01:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] linebreaks and commenting

Right now it looks like the additional #if linebreaks are dealt with by commenting - but there's a better way! Here's how it looks:

}}{{
#if:yadda | foo
}}{{
#if:etc

I don't want to mess with what's there now for fear of bumping something, but I figured you'd want to know. ericg 19:17, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I reformatted it a bit, though not quite how you described. =) In any event, it gets rid of the HTML comments which is good. Being a complete Regex newbie, I used this to replace it:
}}<!--\s*-->{{\#if
With the replacement text being
 
}}{{#if
Oh exciting stuff. :D —Locke Cole • tc 08:05, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{Infobox Ferry}}/Passenger ship template

I created {{Infobox Ferry}} a few days ago (see MV Normandie for an example of usage). It has been suggested that the "Infobox Ship" template be used instead, which is fair enough, but there would need to be some additional fields introduced. The current "Ship" infobox does seem rather geared towards military rather than merchant vessels. For instance, for ferries I'd like to be able to specify the passenger capacity and vehicle capacity. The other issue is nationality: there is the issue of "flags of convenience" (e.g. a British company registering a ship in the Bahamas because it's cheaper) which doesn't arise with naval vessels. What should its "country" be? --RFBailey 14:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

A separate template for passenger vessels is needed. It can be based on the naval, but with appropriate modifications. The use of the naval template for cruise ships and ocean liners has led to numerous instances where the "displacement" field has been filled with the number representing gross tonnage, which often is twice as large. The field should instead read tonnage or "Gross Tonnage". Also, the "complement" field likely should be separated into passenger capacity and crew. And given the propensity of cruise lines to measure beam at the exteme parts of the superstructure, it may be advisable to separate that category as well into wl and extreme, and perhaps also divide length into overall and waterline (or b.p.). But one of you technical gurus would have to do this; it's beyond my skills and confidence level. Kablammo 14:26, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
does seem useful for the table to be able to handle gross tonnage, passenger numbers etc. Also, there is no entry for "completion date", just "commission date" yet most navies and reference books list comp. not comm.. Can this be altered somehow so that the correct one is shown? (for instance, if 1 date is not known, the other could still be entered unambiguously) Also, there seems to be unnecessary space dedicated to ship dimensions - why not put LxBxD in one line? and also propulsion and speed could also be in one line as they are related (eg "5000ihp = 23kts"). This would leave more space for things like "gross tonnage", "net tonnage", "deadweight tonnage" etc. particularly for older merchant ships which may have used different units of measurement. Ideally, my opinion is that we would have ship classes, not indiv. ships, since data for such ships would be more or less identical, and this would save on space and number of pages in Wikipedia, but that seems a minority view. I would suggest, either way, that Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships data format be looked at as an example of what and how to include ship data. It seems to me to present it very concisely and clearly. Some books I've read have large colorful data tables which show almost nothing. Not that the model shown above on this page does that, just saying. for instance ship dimensions would be written "750pp, 800oa x 35 x 20 (same values in metres)". we have to assume some knowledge on the part of the reader of such pages. But I'm glad this project exists and I'll contribute

A lot of the categories mentioned above are already covered by the ship infobox. The Ship capacity variable deals with how much cargo a ship can carry (amongst other things). I have certainly used it that way when dealing with naval auxiliaries and it is noted in the instructions that that is how it is intended to be used. Many naval ships have their extreme and waterline beams both mentioned in the article. All that needs to happen is that the two different values need to be noted for what they are on two separate lines. Again that has happened with naval ships and auxiliaries using the template. When it comes to separating passengers and crew I would suggest that the crew needs to be entered under complement as now, but that the passengers need to be entered under capacity. After all passengers are just another form of cargo for a ferry. When it comes to completion vs commissioning that is pretty much already covered. There are fields for in service and out of service which are effectively cover that need.

As for the ideas about horsepower and dimensions being shrunk down to one cell, I'm not sure what that would really accomplish. The three dimensions of a ship, as noted above, can have various definitions. There is the extreme length, waterline length, extreme beam, waterline beam, average draft and keel draft to name but a few. To assume knowledge of readers of Wikipedia is wrong. The people reading about ships would not necessarily know what 750pp, 800oa × 35 × 20 means. It is also wrong to assume that ihp=speed. Hull form has a very large effect on the speed that a certain shp/ihp will mean.

The one real differences between merchant ships and warships that I don't see as being quite covered in the current table are country of ownership vs country of registration, port of registration and operator. I would suggest that the correct ensign to use in the table would be the country of registration's ensign. However there is certainly scope for adding a row detailing where the ship is owned when that differs from the country of registration and rows detailing port of registration and a ship's commercial operator. David Newton 23:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The one field that clearly is not covered by the warship template is tonnage. Wikipedia contained dozens of examples of gross tonnage listed in the displacement field, and so long as the warship template is used for passenger vessels, that error will continue to be made. So even though other dimensions may be able to be accommodated within the template as you suggest, the displacement category needs to be supplemented by one for tonnage, or better yet, tonnage. As for "complement", why use a technical term at all (particularly one usually used for naval vessels)? Why not two fields, one for "passenger capacity" and one for "crew"? When in doubt, keep it simple. I appreciate the point about capacity, but there were numerous passenger-cargo vessels which carried both.

[edit] Color switch not working?

I just fixed the caption problem where it was starting to the right of the image instead of breaking to the next line, but didn't want to attempt to mess with the code for the NavyColor variable. It says in the instructions you can specify a color but that doesn't appear to work....plange 18:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

There's no code in the template to change the color. --J Clear 21:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Status/Fate Label switch

Also, just noticed the status/fate switch doesn't appear to work? Ship table fate=fate still says status in the left hand side. I also tried leaving it unanswered and also spelling fate with a capital F plange 19:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Noted the "Ship fate" flag not working as advertised yesterday as well. --J Clear 21:42, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Looked at the code, "Status:" is hardcoded as the row header. Makes "Ship status" unused. --J Clear 21:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple career sections

Is there a proper way to handle the USS Mississippi, which was sold to Greece in 1914 and therefore needs two separate career sections? Mackensen (talk) 16:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. Another case is a ship that goes out of commission and is brought back into commission, in the same navy (i.e. has two commissioning dates). And when the recommissioning involves large changes (e.g. Victory ship -> Missile Range Ship or Iowa class sprouting missiles) you need duplicates outside the career section. Back when the table construct was used directly, this wasn't an issue, as the repeated or changed rows got copied over.
Changing the template to add a second set of career dates shouldn't be too hard and be transparent to existing usage. However adding a second set of armament means a second "General Characteristics" section (perhaps a better header...).
Perhaps it would be better to make them stackable and have two concatenated info boxes. This would necessitate less "required" parameters, as you wouldn't have two "laid down" dates. However frequently the laid down date and other "required parameters" aren't available anyway. If items didn't change, they would be left off the second instance of the Infobox and hidden. Stackable would be better for ships that have had 3 lives. Recently edited a DD that had gone Navy, CG, Navy.

Other examples/test cases USS Iowa (BB-61) and USS Sherburne (APA-205). --J Clear 21:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

As a general comment "Ship struck" should be displayed above "Ship fate". Presently it is displayed after, leading to poor flow, such as "Fate: scrapped in 1973" followed by "Struck: 1969". --J Clear 21:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)Not sure where I saw this, but it isn't the current Infobox, perhaps an old Table. --J Clear 21:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes chronological order is one way and sometimes it's the other. When a ship is scrapped, they take care of the paperwork first, but when a ship is lost in action, or loaned to another nation it's struck later. In the latter cases, the strike date may be decades after the ship leaves the US Navy, when someone decides she's never coming back.
—wwoods 20:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stackable

To make multiple Infoboxes seamless it seems like you need to leave the table open between "calls" to the template. A way to do that can be seen in {{Starbox begin}} and {{Starbox end}}. That would require a "sea change" in WikiProject Ships' editors' habits.

Another way is to make the table begin and end conditional within the template. Add a parameter such as "Ship multiuse". If missing you get today's behavior. If set to first, it leaves the table open. If set to middle, it neither begins or ends the table. If set to end, ... well you get the picture. I'm going to go play with that in my user space. Somebody leave a message on my talk page if they see a big headache with that design. I won't touch the live template until I get some feedback. --J Clear 22:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

You can see an example of it working over here User:J Clear/test. Be warned that it still needs to be able to hide all unspecified data, so don't judge it too harsly yet. --J Clear 01:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Class template

Are there separate templates for a ship's class and its own career? For large ship classes, it would be useful to define and use a class template for the class and each ship and then add another template with info specific to each vessel. I'd set it up myself, but the warning against amends warns me off.

I thought the consensus at WP:Ships was not to duplicate all the class details in each ship article, just a few key ones.--J Clear 18:46, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, can anyone help with the layout problems I'm having. See I class destroyer. I want a seamless combination of pic and table template without the use of padding lines. Folks at 137 14:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I got that article in better shape. There is a very narrow row below the image caption that I don't think I can get rid of w/o editing the I class template. I'd try taking out the first "|-" in the template. A better solution may be to have the template take optional image and caption parameters like {{Infobox Ship}}. --J Clear 18:46, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] variable question?

Should the "Ship country" variable put the country name in the same cell as "Career"? As it does here? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 18:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

That's the way it's intended to work, yes. Generally the country name is put into parenthesis and isn't wikilinked, though. TomTheHand 19:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
But the variable description (above) says: "Ship country — the country that the ship served, usually presented in brackets". Doesn't "presented in brackets" mean wikilinked? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 19:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I think it would say "wikilinked" if it meant that. It might be best to update it to say "parenthesis," as that's how it's used as far as I've seen. Our article on brackets refers to parenthesis as "round brackets." Maybe it's a British thing. TomTheHand 20:04, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the country looks pretty silly in the Career cell imo. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I believe it may have come from when we didn't use a template, just copied and pasted a table; at that time it was possible to repeat the Career section, in which case it was helpful to be able to put a small tag in each career section noting which country the career applied to. The template tries to duplicate that appearance but it doesn't have the ability to have multiple career boxes. It's really just meant to be a small note that's usually unnecessary, so writing out "United States" and wikilinking it looks bad. Writing "(US)" looks a lot better.
At WP:SHIPS we've developed a new infobox that's made up of several separate mix-and-match templates, making multiple career sections possible again; look at USS Greenfish (SS-351) to see it in action, and check here for the code. TomTheHand 20:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this a nested template?

How does

"|Ship displacement={{Ship displacement box Trafalgar class submarine}}"

work please?

Thanks, Saintrain 19:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's a nested template. Check out Template:Ship displacement box Trafalgar class submarine. TomTheHand 19:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for getting back so fast Tom.
  • Oh my fur and whiskers! That's a lot of LTTs (little tiny templates)!
  • RFC: A page could have "metadata" attached; e.g. "<<XX-class:Displacement>>" returns the "Displacement" string attached to the "XX-class" article instead of having a whole bunch of LTTs that aren't (necessarily) named consistently between articles. (I sub'ed <> for curly braces 'cause I don't know all the markup yet.)
  • maybe not all that usefull for the bulk of WP articles but really handy for such as Ships
  • how long ago was this idea shot down? And how many times? And where would I look? :->
Thanks again. Saintrain 23:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)