Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive01

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archives
January 2004 to April 2005 April 2005 to January 2006 January 2006 to June 2006 June 2006 to September 2006 September 2006 to November 2006 November 2006 to January 2007

1 List of United States submarine classes
2 List of fleets
3 Templates for ship articles
4 Infoboxes
5 Distinguishing ships of same name
6 Paddle steamer Waverley
7 How to handle templates/messages for 2 classes of Farragut destroyers?
8 Categories
- 8.1 Categories for ships and boats
- 8.2 Proper sorting
9 Renamed/reflagged ships
10 More categorization
11 Navyphotos images
12 Merchant Ships
13 "The" before the ship's name
14 Italian Navy
15 DANFS
16 Ship class footers
17 Existence and naming of disambiguation pages
18 Contents of ship name pages
19 Categorize by name?
20 Flags
- 20.1 Ensign/jack rationalization
21 Old pages
22 Backdating ship prefixes
23 Naming non-military vessels
24 table markup arcana
25 Susan Constant Godspeed, and Discovery at Jamestown
26 FOIA Request
27 Active in service
28 New Table Format
- 28.1 Responses
- 28.2 Tutorial
- 28.3 Going Live
29 French Naming Convention
30 A ship's article stubiness

List of United States submarine classes

I've got a question about the annotation format I'm using at List of United States submarine classes, comments welcome on the talk page. Elde 05:27, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

List of fleets

I added a List of fleets, in imitation of the List of armies. It currently links to the US Navy page (which lists the current fleets), and to a couple of named British fleets of the twentieth century. -- Walt Pohl 17:57, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Good idea, there's a bunch of un-indexed historicals randomly scattered about, like Asiatic Fleet. It wouldn't hurt to repeat the US Navy list either, the article is pretty long and it would be easy to miss the fleet list. Stan 19:46, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Templates for ship articles

Noting the above type of message, I would suggest that creating MediaWiki messages for ship classes would be an excellent idea. I'm going to try it out using the Iowa class ships. David Newton 20:50, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thinking again, DANFS as a source is another very good thing for a custom message. David Newton 20:54, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There are now a couple of MediaWiki message elements for classes of ships. It would be nice if someone listed them all on this page, or a subpage. (See the page for countries for an example of what I mean: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries/Footers.)

There are more than a couple. I've covered every British and American dreadnought battleship class, all British and American fleet and light fleet aircraft carriers, and a few others besides. Still, a list of them doesn't seem unreasonable. David Newton 21:20, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I saw that you added the page. Excellent. How do you feel about actually including the footers themselves? That makes it easy to compare the formatting, etc. Also it lets you admire your handiwork. :-) -- Walt Pohl 22:58, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Is there anywhere where 'official' template ship data tables are kept / discussed? I see them on numerous pages but I can't find the source. —Morven 06:30, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure if i'm too late, but the tables are located at User:David Newton/Tables. SoLando 19:00, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That's not strictly true. It is true that my page has the most blank ship tables around (varying only by the ensign/jack they have at the top, apart from the Military Sealift Command one which has cargo capacity as an additional row). However, I did not create that table design originally. I merely went round various articles and saw the tables, and created templates in one place which is convenient to me. I also saw the table list on the Infobox page. TUF-CAT put it up on there on 4 February. I'm not sure where it came from prior to that. Still, my page does have the templates listed in one place. David Newton 06:20, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Infoboxes

The guys at Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft have come up with a table format. It is now being rolled out on aircraft pages. I think it looks pretty good. Should we make use of it or something similar for ships?
Bobblewik 19:43, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Distinguishing ships of same name

Recommend the following hierarchy for ship name disambiguation:

Designation and hull number (i.e., BB-64)
Launch year (if known)
Purchase year (if known)
Commissioning year (if known)
Year of first action

Paddle steamer Waverley

having come across this missing page, I've put some effort into filling the need and have taken care to use the title Waverley (boat) already on the disambiguation page. The result has an inelegant and inappropriate title at the top - the P.S. Waverley is referred to as a ship, but never as a boat. Ian McCrorie's Clyde Pleasure Steamers uses ship or steamer throughout, with the sole exception (at a quick glance) of "The 'teetotal' boat" Ivanhoe" (1880), and even this he refers to in the text as a ship or as a steamer. As it would also simplify typing links (paddle steamer Waverley instead of paddle steamer Waverley) I propose moving the page accordingly, and will do so in the next few days. Please let me know if this raises any problems, - dave souza 07:23, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The old saw about boats fitting in ships but not ships in boats suggests "ship" rather than "boat". Any of PS Waverley, paddle steamer Waverley, Waverley (paddle steamer), or Waverley (ship) seems fine to me. I've been pondering rules for civilian ship article titling for a while, not ready to write something down yet though. Stan 12:49, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice - page moved to paddle steamer Waverley, linked pages working ok. On reflection afterwards I can see the advantage of PS, TS, SS, RMS, MV etc. for a standard naming scheme, but paddle steamer seemed right.- dave souza 20:13, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How to handle templates/messages for 2 classes of Farragut destroyers?

I've got a list of 8 WWII Farragut-class destroyers (starting with Farragut (DD-348)), but I see there's already a Template:Farragut class destroyer template & Wikimedia Message (starting with Farragut (DDG-37)). All the ships under the existing template are DDG guided missile destroyers, and those ships started life as DL- designations. How should we disambiguate between the two classes of destoyers? I don't want to the class description to get too specific (that is, I'd rather not move the existing one to Template:Farragut class guided missile destroyer, and then create the WWII DD list as Template:Farragut class destroyer), but that seems to be the simplest way to handle it. Recommendations? Scott B 19:59, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Categories win! Checking Category:Ship classes, I see we have a Town class cruiser (1910) and Town class cruiser (1936), so use of date (presumably launch of the first member, or else lead ship), seems like a useful guide. Stan 21:01, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Huh. didn't even know about Category:Ship classes. I followed your suggestion, and we now have Template:Farragut class destroyer (1934) and Template:Farragut class destroyer (1958) templates, as well as entries for Farragut class destroyer (1934) and Farragut class destroyer (1958). Thanks, Stan, for dismbiguating the two class pages. However since I moved the old Template:Farragut class destroyer to point to the (1958) template, there is a redirect at the old template page. How should we disambiguate the templates? Just using a "disambig" message in the Template pages will cause the disambiguation message to be included in every ship page that includes the template, which could be confusing.

I don't think you can disambig the templates, in fact Template:Farragut class destroyer should be deleted once it's not used by any article, so nobody in the future attempts to use it by accident (little chance of it being revived, since the other two already cover all the possible ships). Stan 15:46, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Renamed/reflagged ships

HI I was wondering the best way to name ship pages. Some ships have several pages for themselves because they changed name. This seems rather.... silly really. If a ship spent say, 3 years in a particular navy, and with a particular name, why have a whole page just for that? all the stuff on that page is going to be repeated on the previous name and future name pages for that ship, and users will have to click through 3 pages to read the whole history of the ship, and they'll end up reading parts of it 3 times (maybe even with discrepencies). I don't see the point. If ship name 1 was renamed to ship name 2, put it on page ship name 1 under its original country, and link all mentions of the ship under any name to that. that page will have the whole history of the ship. no repetition necessary :). Is there an actual reason for doing it the current way? It's not like users won't realise that the ship has changed names. SpookyMulder 12:07, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If anybody's interested, I put in my 2c on the subject at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships). Stan 14:05, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

More categorization

A couple fine points of categorization: I'd like us to standardize on "U.S. Navy" for all subcats of (surprise) U.S. Navy ships, because for some types the spelled-out name is unduly long, and it's helpful to editors to be consistent so they can type without doing a lookup first. Also, I'd like to have a general rule that small ship classes don't get their own subcategories, require about a minimum of 8-10 vessels to justify a dedicated category. Stan 14:43, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As I stated earlier, I prefer United States to US. I always end up looking up whether its "US", "U.S." or "U. S." -- Or we could skip this entirely and use "American", but that will only get us into another mess.

On the idea of ship classes, I like using them no matter what the size of the class. It's a useful category even if its small. However, I've been thinking about not using the ship class as mutually exclusive of the larger category. So, for example, USS Wickes would be in both the "Wickes class" category and in the "USN destroyer" category. I know that this type of thing would be helpful to me as I'm looking up a ship - or is that what the list is for? Thoughts? Jinian 15:59, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Category:United States Navy escort aircraft carriers just seems like more of a mouthful vs Category:U.S. Navy escort aircraft carriers. Normally I prefer to spell out, but shorter category names seem better than long ones. The problem with categories for classes is that you can't find a vessel without clicking on every single subcat, which is not very efficient, especially for capital ships with their one-member classes. On cat + supercat, that's actually what the Germans do; their equivalent to Category:People is impressively large, many thousands. But English seems to have a general no-supercat policy, so I think it would be uphill battle to keep random editors from deleting supercats just for ships. I have hopes that someday a category page will have an "also list articles in subcategories" button, which would finesse some of the problems. Stan 21:34, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

So far, Category:United States Navy ships has been preferred over Category:U.S. Navy ships by an enormous margin (the latter contains only four articles). It seems unnecessary to change it this late in the game, especially since the former is the official designation. Would it be acceptable to keep "United States Navy" for the parent category and then abbreviate U.S. for the sub-categories? I don't much like that solution, either—United States is the correct name, and it's already been put into use for most of the sub-cats. Most of the articles in the sub-categories only go in the one category, so it's not like we really need to worry about long names as long as it doesn't get ridiculous. In any case, I really don't like Category:US naval ships—in the U.S., the abbreviation is U.S., not US, and that is, in fact, what the U.S. Navy uses (when it is necessary to abbreviate). [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 23:58, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Start from Category:United States Navy and look at all the subcats recursively; there are lots of articles under both "U.S." subcategories and "United States" subcategories, so sooner or later somebody will need to do a lot of recatting not matter what. My chief goal is to put an end to the random variation of category names; "U.S. Navy xxx" has the advantage of brevity, desirable when "xxx" is long. In any case, I wouldn't want to change Category:United States Navy. Stan 03:57, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also see Category:Members of the U.S. armed forces for cats in other services, and Category:United States itself for amusing indecisiveness about nomenclature. Stan 04:02, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Why keep "United States Navy" and not "United States Navy ships"? It seems to me to be basically the same thing. It's also a question of which is more important: brevity or accuracy? Technically, United States Navy is the correct term, but U.S. Navy is an acceptable abbreviation. Is shortening the category names by nine characters worth the (admittedly small) loss of accuracy in nomenclature?

In many cases, the confusion arises because Americans are expected to use adjectives other than American—but editors do not consistently use United States, U.S., or US, because none of these is the standard designation. (Admittedly, this is not really relevant to the military categories, since the actual names realy are United States Navy, etc., but it does explain some of the confusion under Category:United States.) [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 13:58, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"U.S." is a completely accurate substitute for "United States", in fact the USN style guide mentioned in another discussion below specifically allows "U.S." as an equivalent adjective. So I don't think it's any kind of a tradeoff between brevity and accuracy. If there are no downsides, brevity is preferable, especially for repetitious things like categories, which are gradually creeping across the bottoms of articles... :-) Stan 01:01, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I still prefer United States at least for the parent category Category:United States Navy ships (perhaps with Category:U.S. naval ships as another parent that includes U.S. ships that aren't Navy), but I'm okay with "U.S." so long as:

It is "U.S." and not "US", and
I don't have to do the massive re-categorization that would be necessary.

I tend to prefer Category:United States Navy ships primarily because the benefits seem small compared to the effort that would be required. ;) -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 04:25, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I moved everything to Category:United States Navy ships. Among the subclasses there's only Category:U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, Category:U.S. Navy destroyers and their subcategories that have "U.S." instead of "United States" in the category. Gdr 19:37, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

Navyphotos images

User:Gdr has been placing Template:Copyrighted-navyphotos on images from http://www.navyphotos.co.uk and removing them from articles on the grounds that their permission is too restrictive.

What, exactly, is the permission given for those photos. I had assumed that they were in the category 'Free use if credit is given' since that was how I read the statement in this WikiProject, but he is stating that the permission was Wikipedia-only and thus unacceptable. It states that User:David Newton has the permission letter; could this be obtained to place on Wikipedia and answer definitively?

It seems to me that most of the photos there are expired of copyright anyway. Crown copyright in such photos is 50 years from publication. —Morven 21:14, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

I was only repeating what it says on Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships#Royal Navy. I know no more than you do. I just wanted to be cautious. The copyright in the original photos may have expired, but that in the digital reproductions of the photos may not have done. Gdr 05:38, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC) P.S. In each case I think the replacement is more interesting as well as having a more certain copyright status.

Merchant Ships

As a new contributor I have a few queries and requests.

What category do the WWII MARAD vessels (Liberty ships, Victory ships, Tankers, etc) fall under?
What Ensigns, Jacks, Pennants, and Other Vexillologs would the War Shipping Administration ships use?
On a similar subject how about the Category for the US Navy Armed Guard and the Britishs DEMs
Where would the WWII Merchant Marine medals go?. Some have the same names as military decorations.
I have hardcopy of a great number of the WWII era house flags for various shipping companies, but no talent for producing digital images from them. Any suggestions?
I have put up two pages on Liberty ships, SS John W. Brown and SS Henry Bacon. I would appreciate any comments on style, layout etc before continuing with my notes on about 200 more Libertys.

Thanks Oldfarm 04:09, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You'll need to make new categories for those ships, perhaps something like Category:World War II American merchant ships.

I would like to add my info on the ships built under the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. The vessels include American, British and other WWII allies. The ship were built between 1936 and 1952. Can you suggest a concise Category? Oldfarm 02:17, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Comments on style, layout etc:

No need to use "thumbnail" style images within information boxes.
If you format dates according to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) then they will adapt according to users' preferences.
Give metric conversions for measures in US customary units.
No need to repeat the ship prefix: USS Foo on first mention, thereafter just Foo.
Once you've added something to Category:World War II American ships, there's no need to add it to Category:US ships because the category hierarchy represents the fact that all World War II American ships are American ships

I made these changes for SS John W. Brown; see [1]. I'll leave you to do the same for SS Henry Bacon.

With regard to house flags for shipping companies, Flags of the World has many. See for example [2]. You might not need to scan any of the ones you have. Gdr 05:22, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC)

Any US-flagged ship, whether merchant or naval uses the same jack. British-flagged merchant ships would use the red ensign. David Newton 18:04, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have a couple more questions. Oldfarm 02:17, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have added an article under MS Bloemfontein Castle. I sailed as a crew member and all my documents call it the MV Bloemfontein Castle. I recall that all large British motor ships of that era used the MV designation. Should this be changed ? If so, how do I do it ?
If I create a category, should it be Motorships, Motor Vessels, Diesel Ships, Oil Ships or what?

"The" before the ship's name

Unless merchant ships are fundamentally different from warships, the ship should be referred to as "John W. Brown" not "the John W. Brown". The exception is when an adjective is used, "the first John W. Brown" or "the merchant John W. Brown". Or a noun follows "the John W. Brown commander" or "the John W. Brown hull", although these are more commonly rendered "the commander of John W. Brown". Jinian 20:33, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have been reading about ships for some 40 plus years now. The only time I have seen the rule regarding the use of an article before the ship's name was in a US Navy handbook concerning the proper wording of invitations to launching ceremonies. See: [[3]] Oldfarm 22:02, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The U.S. Navy Style Guide 1 specifically states "Do not use "the" in front of a ship's name: "USS San Jose," not "the USS San Jose." Of course, as I mentioned above, merchant ships might be different. Jinian 23:37, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to know if this is just a USN idea or what - I don't have any style guides that address the subject. We don't actually have to follow USN style, even for articles about USN subjects, because we're a global encyclopedia with our own style guide and not a branch of the US govt - for instance, the USN guide has rules regarding "foreign navies", which is sort of a meaningless concept in WP. Also, check out the USN rules for "Arabian Gulf" vs "Persian Gulf", hee hee. Stan 00:43, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would certainly not put 'the' before the names of RN ships, and I've adopted the same principle when writing here about German and Austro-Hungarian ships (Viribus Unitis class battleship, for example). -- Arwel 01:08, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Seems not to be agreement among the pros - flipping through the Oxford illustrated RN history (written by various specialists ca 1995) in my lap, I see "towing away the Royal Charles" (p. 72), "The Asia, a new and very heavily armed ship" (p. 168), "introduction of the Dreadnought in 1905" (p. 201), "Meanwhile the Emden was pursuing" (p. 300). On the other hand, "Only Tirpitz remained" (p. 372), the WWII section (by Eric Grove) being consistent that way, but then "the Belgrano was sunk" (p. 396). One gets the impression that Oxford's editors were not too concerned about this point of style when assembling the book. :-) Stan 03:09, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Is it okay if I just don't like "the" in front of a ship's name? Do we have to have official style guides from all the nations' navies? After all, only rarely am I called "the Jinian". Jinian 17:57, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I personally don't care much either way, but our options are to define a house rule and allow editors to enforce it on articles at will, or to not define a rule, and leave articles in the style in which they were originally written. I wouldn't want to not define a house rule *and* allow editors to edit to their personal taste, because that makes for silly edit wars. If we have a house rule, it should be WP-wide and not be per-navy, civilian-only, or whatever - consider that it also affects usage in WP articles not primarily on nautical subjects, so everybody will need to be informed of the rule. That's why I asked about style guides - if we go advertising a rule to all editors, we want to forestall debate by saying how it compares with the advice found in the standard style guides. Stan 02:08, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, using "the" before a proper noun sounds funny but before a common noun sounds natural. Thus, I naturally say "I went to sea in Ohio — no, not the battleship, the submarine Ohio." --the Epopt 13:53, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Okay, then, unless anyone objects, let the house rule say "no the". I'll wait a week for objections and then move this to the main page, as well as mention it in the naming conventions article. Jinian 17:54, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Did you do the style guide research then? If Fowler or some such says to use "the", and your defense is the USN style guide, you're risking a huge flamefest about attempts to force "Americopedia", etc etc. It's one thing to discuss with the five people in this little corner of WP, and another to get the attention of the thousand 6th-grade English teachers :-) that make up the main body of editors. Hopefully I'm just being overcautious, but bigger debates have erupted over smaller issues, and an hour in the library should give you the shell-fired guns you need to defend against the slings and arrows of disbelieving editors. (I can get to library myself on 10/31, but not before.) Stan 22:22, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I meant to get to the library and check Fowler tonight, but didn't. The online guides I've found do not address this issue specifically. I'm not in any real hurry, so will either check next week or trust your research on this. Jinian 02:47, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

to the English teacher: "Mrs Grundy, ships are the tool most anthropomorphized by Anglo-Americans. What other inanimate object is so consistently female? Accordingly, she is spoken of as if she were a person. One doesn't use the definite article before a person's name, does one?"

Not unless it's "the Fonz" or "the Donald". :-) Stan 15:19, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I did actually get to the library, but the only statement I found on the subject was in somebody's massive tome on English grammar. The learned discussion of "the" went on for some pages, and was quite entertaining. There are three categories of usage; obligatory, disallowed, and optional, not always obvious why one is one category or the other. For instance, compare "I went to see the Great Salt Lake" to "I went to see Great Salt Lake" - the latter makes it sound like one was at a concert by an obscure band. Conversely "I went to Clear Lake" sounds right, while "I went to the Clear Lake" suggests there are several, and that you have a particular one in mind. Anyway, after all that, ships and planes were put in the "typically used" category, with examples of "the Victory" and "the Spirit of St. Louis", along with a note "especially if they are famous". My takeaway is that we have a free hand to decide on style, and that USN guide is sufficient to tip us towards omitting "the" when possible. Stan 04:15, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule here, the inclusion of the definite article depends on the context of the sentence you are writing. As most ships are named after other things, it is necessary to precede the name with a 'The' in order to make the reference clear. However, you can also make the reference clear by using a Ship prefix. Once you have established the context, you can (optionally) drop the definite article for further references, but would use it again if you had spent a paragraph or two talking about something else. When a ship is named after a person or place you will need the definite article, or another disambiguating phrase, more frequently.

So in the case of HMS Hood, I would open the article with 'HMS Hood was..' later on I might discuss a naval battle as 'Hood sighted the Bismark coming over the horizon and opened fire. Bismark was quick to respond...'. As I haven't discussed the Bismark before it needs the definite article, but after that I can drop it.

Now lets say I go over to the Reference Desk and drop in the question.

What was the length of Hood?

Without a context, the question doesn't make sense. If I ask 'What was the length of the Hood?', there is a chance someone will understand. With 'What was the length of HMS Hood?' I'm nearly in the clear, but since several naval vessels bore that name, I really need further qualification 'What was the length of the WWII battlecruiser HMS Hood'.

For a ship such as The Mary Rose, I will nearly always need the 'The'. Even after referring to the ship several times and staying in a naval context, if I write 'Mary Rose sailed from Southampton to Calais' you can't help but think about a woman making a journey. Similarly, referring to USS Ohio is not a problem, but later writing 'Ohio was torpedoed' will always be confusing whilst 'The Ohio was torpedoed' isn't.

Where a name has become synonymous with a ship, and that ship alone, you can get away with dropping the definite article more often, even on its first use. Back at the Reference Desk I could reasonably ask

What was the length of Titanic?

But I couldn't complain if I got the reply '3 hours 14 minutes'. Even so, I would suggest the Titanic article should go back to using 'The Titanic...' more often.

I suspect the U.S. Navy Style Guide has been taken out of context, making it appear too prescriptive. When it says "Do not use 'the' in front of a ship's name", it is in relation to using the USS ship prefix and to the initial mention of a ship. Note that in almost the next paragraph that manual uses a 'the' to clarify the colloquial name of a ship, "USS LaSalle (AGF 3), the 'Great White Ghost,' sailed into San Diego". -- Solipsist 10:24, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Could it be somehow different in American English than in regular English (just an idea...) ?

At least in French, the names of the ships are always preceeded by "Le" or "La", even though the article is not part of the name itself (for instance, Le Redoutable class submarine is wierd... I'd feel more at ease with "Redoutable class"). Thus, in English, I tend to translate this by, for instance, starting an article with "The Redoutable was bla bla bla"; I don't know how it sounds for an English ear... Rama 13:35, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

First references should always use the prefix (SS George Washington, HMS Hood, HMS Bismarck).

Second references to the ship has the name distinquished either with italics or capitals. So, "Ohio was torpedoed" or "Mary Rose sailed" or (in the case of the USN) "LASALLE entered San Diego harbor". Reading an article about USS Ohio or any naval article, and reading "Ohio was torpedoed" shouldn't cause any confusion.

If we take a look at the dictionary (www.dictionary.com) definition for "the":

1. Used before singular or plural nouns and noun phrases that denote particular, specified persons or things: the baby; the dress I wore.
2. Used before a noun, and generally stressed, to emphasize one of a group or type as the most outstanding or prominent: considered Lake Shore Drive to be the neighborhood to live in these days.
3. Used to indicate uniqueness: the Prince of Wales; the moon.
4. Used before nouns that designate natural phenomena or points of the compass: the weather; a wind from the south.
5. Used as the equivalent of a possessive adjective before names of some parts of the body: grab him by the neck; an infection of the hand.
6. Used before a noun specifying a field of endeavor: the law; the film industry; the stage.
7. Used before a proper name, as of a monument or ship: the Alamo; the Titanic.
8. Used before the plural form of a numeral denoting a specific decade of a century or of a life span: rural life in the Thirties.
Used before a singular noun indicating that the noun is generic: The wolf is an endangered species.
1. Used before an adjective extending it to signify a class and giving it the function of a noun: the rich; the dead; the homeless.
2. Used before an absolute adjective: the best we can offer.
Used before a present participle, signifying the action in the abstract: the weaving of rugs.
Used before a noun with the force of per: cherries at $1.50 the box.

-- AllyUnion (talk) 07:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Whilst checking a range of internet references to compare the frequency of 'Mary Rose' vs 'The Mary Rose', I've noticed a trend that suggests the tendancy to drop the 'the' increases with naval history web sites. The majority, including the BBC and the official www.maryrose.org site prefer 'The Mary Rose'. On the other hand, the Royal Navy site initially tries to stick to 'Mary Rose' but soon reverts to using 'The Mary Rose'. The website for Portsmouth historic dockyard manages to consistently refer to 'Mary Rose' and includes a matching usage from the ship's log. Unfortunately they get so carried away they also say "Visit Mary Rose shop for a superb...", but in that sentence 'Mary Rose' is an adjective for the shop and so its totally wrong drop the 'the'.

If the trend is for more technical or more military sources to loose the definite article, it would explain why some editors here believe it is correct. However, Wikipedia is addressing a more general audience, so I think would be more appropriate to include the 'the' more often, and certainly wrong to remove it systematically. -- Solipsist 08:31, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Italian Navy

Is there a prefix for Italian Navy ships? E.g. INS Whatever?
—wwoods 20: 52, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC); I've seen "RN" used for ships of the Kingdom of Italy, e.g. RN Dante Alighieri, Italy's first dreadnought. Presumably RN stands for something like "Regia Nautica"?. -- Arwel 21:19, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, there's no standard prefix for ships of the Italian navies. Some authors do use "RN" for ships of the Regia Marina and "MM" for ships of the Marina Militare, but I see no evidence that the Italian navies themselves do so (in particular, the Marina Militare has a rather nice index of current ships at [4] and an almanac of historical ships at [5] with no ship prefix in sight). So following Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) we should name articles like Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi. Gdr 22:28, 2004 Nov 7 (UTC)

DANFS

I wrote some notes on DANFS conversions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/DANFS conversions. Please comment. Gdr 14:46, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

I like it. Nice job. Can you include some suggestions for other sources though? I find myself Googling and have no idea as to the veracity of the sources I discover. Jinian 11:47, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ship class footers

These seem to get quite big when ships are sold from one navy to another. I found that I had made Template:Colossus class aircraft carrier today and I'm not sure I like it. But I suppose it's still smaller than Template:Fletcher class destroyer. But Template:Flower class corvette is going to be huge (267 ships, ten navies). Comments? Gdr 22:20, 2004 Nov 18 (UTC)

Why do multiple entries, when the same ship changes navies? You can leave the history to the page or pages about the ship. In some cases the second navy gives the ship a new class as well as a new name, e.g. the Balao-class USS Hawkbill became the Walrus-class HNLMS Zeeleeuw. If some ships have different pages for both careers, maybe put links at the bottom of the footer to the corresponding classes in the other navies? Or just put the alternate links together: "... | Collosus (FS Arromanches) | ..."

—wwoods 00:29, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A good question. I was following what appeared to be the standard format for these boxes, for example Template:County class cruiser where Shropshire appears twice or Template:Dido class cruiser where several ships are repeated. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Footers for other examples. Looking at the histories it seems to be User:David Newton and User:SoLando who are responsible for the design. If we're going to change this format then we should do so consistently and after some thought. Gdr 01:06, 2004 Nov 19 (UTC)

I've tried not to reproduce ships unnecessarily. Where there are vessels that have served in different navies, I only tend to list them only if new. For example, the OHP class frigates have entries for the USN and the Spanish ships [also Australian and Taiwanese, but not Turkish, Egyptian, or Polish — Gdr]. There is a limit to what can be done. However, there is an argument for being complete. I'm just glad that there are many ship classes it doesn't arise for!! David Newton 22:51, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A reason for listing each ship once for each navy it served in is that otherwise it seems very likely that someone will be offended: "My father served on a Colossus-class carrier in the Argentine Navy and I don't see it here." (I don't know whether this is a good enough reason to fully populate these boxes.) Gdr 23:36, 2004 Nov 19 (UTC)

I made some proposals at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Footer proposals. Please take a look and comment. Gdr 18:47, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

I illustrated some of the proposals using the Flower-class corvettes (only the first 215, not the revised ones). I think the lesson is that a ship class box is inappropriate for such large ship classes and that a simple link to an overview article containing a list is fine. As for smaller classes, I'm still not sure. Gdr 00:25, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Existence and naming of disambiguation pages

(I split the discussion that started below into several parts because there are several issues here — Gdr 14:44, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC))

The whole situation is a mess and needs cleaning up. I see we have three pages that list ships of this name: USS Nautilus, Ships named Nautilus and Nautilus (submarine). We should work out a sensible solution before this goes too far. Gdr 22:52, 2004 Nov 20 (UTC)

Ditto. There are just not very many situations where one is interested in the aggregate of vessels that happen to have the same name. I'm all for experiments, but unilateral repudiation of the standard used for what is now hundreds of ship articles is just not a winning strategy. Stan 01:13, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is not as you characterise it a wholesale repudiation of anything. The article Ships named Nautilus is not intended to replace any other article. It includes ships not ever called USS Nautilus, and ships whose article title does not have Nautilus in it... Pedant 08:14, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

I haven't touched Ships named Nautilus because I don't want to get into an edit war, but I did edit all the other Nautilus articles to put them into the currently accepted format for ship articles, and I redirected Nautilus (submarine) to Ships named Nautilus, moved several of the articles to their preferred name according to , and expanded Nautilus (1800). I cut the duplicated material about the origin of the name Nautilus and "see also" list from each ship's article, replacing it with a link to the ovierview article. It's not a good idea to have text duplicated like this between lots of articles because it makes it hard to keep up to date. If you feel that each ship article needs boilerplate, then make a template.

I don't object to having pages disambiguating between all the ships with a name (regardless of nationality or navy), at least for certain famous and notable names like Nautilus. Gdr 14:44, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

I'm only going to address one of these things at a time.

...First (moved to #Contents of ship name pages below)

...Second, what naming convention specifically are you using, when you name articles? People keep referring to naming conventions, but nothing I read in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) says that ships should all be called 'USS'.

...Third (moved to #Contents of ship name pages below)

...Fourth, show me the convention where it says all disambiguation articles are to start with USS.

...Fifth, what is the convention that says ships should be referred by the incorrect prefix, in other words, what is the justification for calling a ship USS Something when the ship didn't exist at any point in time after the prefix 'USS' started being used. (covered at #Backdating ship prefixes below)

I'm not moving on to the next section until we settle what's in this section, since I think that once this is discussed here a lot of the other stuff will be moot. Pedant 06:21, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

There is no convention that all disambiguation articles should start with "USS". This is a misunderstanding on your part (and possibly on the part of some other people). Perhaps this misunderstanding is at the heart of your disagreement with the project?

This is my understanding of the current disambiguation convention and why it is like it is: (1) Many ship names are repeated, hence the need for disambiguation pages. (2) Ship names are generally repeated within a navy and not between navies. So all the Sheffields are in the Royal Navy, all the Samuel B. Roberts are in the United States Navy, all the Karel Doormans are in the Royal Netherlands Navy and so on. (3) Within a navy, some things are passed between namesakes: documents, battle honours, flags, etc. (4) So for most names, it is most appropriate to disambiguate that name in the context of a navy, that is it make sense to disambiguate at USS Samuel B. Roberts and not at "Ships named Samuel B. Roberts" (similarly, it make sense to disambiguate at HMS Sheffield and HNLMS Karel Doorman). (5) This also usefully catches the very common case where someone forgot to disambiguate and just wrote [[USS Samuel B. Roberts]].

However, for famous ship names which are shared between navies, or which are used by notable civilian ships, then I completely agree that a disabiguation page is appropriate. Certainly Nautilus and Enterprise fall into this group, and many other famous names, e.g. Alabama, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, etc etc.

We should work out the best way to do this. I think it would be best to follow the ordinary Wikipedia disambiguation rules, so that the Enterprises would be disambiguated at Enterprise and the Nautiluses at Nautilus (disambiguation). Another possibility would be to have a separate disambiguation page named perhaps Enterprise (ship). Gdr 11:41, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

Contents of ship name pages

(I refactored the section above to separate this issue. Gdr 11:41, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC))

My personal preference is for lists of ships to be short indexes, like USS Nautilus, not one-paragraph biographies, like Ships named Nautilus. Gdr 22:52, 2004 Nov 20 (UTC)

and it is not about ships actually, its about the naval history of the name Nautilus. Yet someone redirected it to a page with LESS ships in it, without moving the content anywhere. Deleting content? Is that ok in anybody's book? Not in mine. That article was written by the curator of the Naval Museum in Groton and the Officer-in-charge of the Historic Ship Nautilus, I think that those two would be a great addition to the team, and I'm trying to recruit them. Blanking the article doesn't help that goal at all. Pedant 08:14, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

I do feel that the current format of Ships named Nautilus is not the way to go. It is a sequence of one-paragraph biographies that duplicates material on the individual ship articles. As far as I can see, there is nothing on this page that doesn't appear in the individual articles. This kind of duplication might be justifiable if it told a coherent story, in the way that similar sequences of short biographies manage to do in some ship class articles. However, it doesn't add up to a coherent story in the case of Nautilus: the only thing the ships share is their name. So I think this article should just be a disambiguation page in the style of USS Nautilus. Gdr 14:44, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

...First, Ships named Nautilus is not a disambiguation page, it wasn't written to be a disambiguation page and isn't intended to replace any other disambiguation page. It's about the Naval history of the name Nautilus.

...Third, "Ships named Nautilus is not the way to go. It is a sequence of one-paragraph biographies that duplicates material on the individual ship articles" several of those articles were copied from Ships named Nautilus, and as for the format, take a look at the original article as I left it. Pedant 06:21, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

You claim that Ships named Nautilus is about the "naval history of the name Nautilus", but I just don't see it. There's nothing there about how the ships got their names, who named them, whether they were named after the mollusc or the Verne submarine or the ancient Greek sailor. It's just a list of facts about ships that happen to share a name. So in what way is the page more than a disambiguation page? What added value does the reader get over having the individual articles? We don't do this with other pages that list several ships, why does Nautilus deserve this special treatment?

Here's my proposal: following normal Wikipedia disambiguation policy (Wikipedia:Disambiguation), ships named Nautilus should be listed on Nautilus (disambiguation). Unless there's a good reason for keeping it, ships named Nautilus can redirect to Nautilus (disambiguation) with no loss of informaton. Gdr 20:39, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

Categorize by name?

A few categories have sprung up "by name". If you'd like to input on this, see Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion to comment.

I've already made my thoughts on this clear, both on this discussion and previous attempts. It's "generally a bad idea" since we already have so many other ways to approach this. Jinian 20:41, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Separate issue: The categories Category:Ships by name, Category:Ships named Nautilus, Category:Ships named Enterprise and Category:Ships named Valiant are only intended for ships whose names have such a long history, have so many ships with the same name, and have ships of that name in multiple countries, and in military and civilian service. In these cases, index pages such as USS Nautilus are not appropriate for all the ships named Nautilus, as there were numerous Nautilus-named vessels that were not USS Nautilus. What harm do these categories do to the existing scheme of categorization? None. Please see the full discussion of why and in what way these categories enhance wikipedia on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion and if you think they should be deleted, vote to delete them. Note that I am not proposing to put ALL ships in this kind of category, only ship names that have been used so often that there is a likelihood of someone having difficulty finding them just using the existing scheme. This is not a replacement for the existing scheme.

From WikiProject Ships: "Within "ships", multiple categories for individuals is both useful and desirable"

From talk:WikiProject Ships: " how to categorize ships and other vessels. By nationality? By type? By function? By period? Category:Ships shows that there isn't yet consistency in this area. Gdr 15:29, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)

Why, all of them, of course!" <--- that was you, Stan.

Look over the categories I've added and see if they are 1)useful; and 2)harmful; -- and vote accordingly. thanksPedant 08:14, 2004 Nov 21 (UTC)

Touche! There is however a developing consensus among categorizers to restrain themselves on picking common attributes, so we don't have Category:Ships commanded by Nelson, Category:Inns where Washington slept, Category:Ships with three first officers in the first three years, etc. :-) Shared names are borderline, because the sharing of name is due to decisions so obscure that they are nearly random (see recent discussion on WWII subs' "fish names"). A few such categories, for heavily-reused names, doesn't seem particularly harmful, but once you've allowed a few, how do you tell someone not to create the useless Category:Ships named Wilmington? Stan 00:16, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Of course as a list rather than a category there's nothing wrong with List of ships commanded by Nelson (or a section in the Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson article). Gdr 09:43, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

I'd like to second the request for people who have an informed (or, hey, slightly-more-informed-than-the-average-person-on-the-street) opinion on the matter to weigh in at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 00:08, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Apparently this was already resolved, as I don't see it on CfD.Pedant 06:25, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

Actually, no, it has not been resolved. As mentioned on the talk page of the "Ships by name" category, see Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Ships_by_name: "No consensus was released." Jinian 20:40, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I meant to say "No consensus was reached". The discussion is somewhat confused, but I count about half for and about half against, depending on what I count, which is problematic. We should probably develop a policy of one listing per issue so as to keep the votes in one place. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 00:56, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Flags

I'm a bit puzzled why some navies get their ensigns and some their jacks for the flag icon. It makes quite a bit more sense to use the ensigns, and most are—except for the U.S. This is particularly odd because the U.S. ensign is probably the most recognizable ensign in the world, while only sailors and ship buffs would ever recognize the U.S. jack. (Show the jack to 100 people in London or Berlin, or even Oklahoma City, and how many would be able to ID it?) Why the inconsistencey, particularly when someone had to go out of his way to do it? —Tkinias 08:17, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The flags were originally added by User:The Epopt back in 2003. There was no discussion as to what principles to adopt. It's not too late to think about this issue now. So what do you propose? Gdr 12:47, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

Back when I was the only one doing this, I chose to use jacks because they are specific symbols; e.g., the various colours of the ensigns of the Royal Navy. Where a given Navy didn't have a jack -- or I had trouble finding a good image of the jack -- I used the ensign. As others joined me in working on ships, they added whatever they felt was appropriate. I do not think we should replace any naval jacks with national ensigns. The jack is the symbol of the Navy; the ensign is the symbol of the entire nation. Precision is valuable. The popularity argument doesn't float for me -- an encyclopedia's job is to be right, perhaps even educational -- not made inaccurate to avoid surprising the ignorant. If anything, we should replace the fifty-star USN jack with the one currently flying on the warships of the US Navy. --the Epopt 15:40, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Um, I'm not sure I follow. You say "Precision is valuable. The popularity argument doesn't float for me -- an encyclopedia's job is to be right, perhaps even educational -- not made inaccurate to avoid surprising the ignorant." I'm suggesting that we be precise and consistent, and use either jacks or ensigns for all navies. Now, we have, as a sampling:

Argentina: jack
Brazil: jack
UK: ensign
US: jack
India: ensign
Poland: ensign
Mexico: jack

I think that the ensign is the appropriate choice for all navies, since it is the ensign which is flown when underway, but if jacks are used, they should be used consistently -- thus, the Union Jack for UK, not the RN and other ensigns. —Tkinias 00:57, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm? How many stars are on the current jack, and what states have been omitted (or anticipated)?

—wwoods 04:02, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The current USN jack is the "Don't tread on me" jack. Authorized in May 2002, it's been flying for years now. Jinian 12:41, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would prefer the jack flown by the ship itself, the most recent jack the subject ship flew for ships which are no longer in existence. I think though, that there should be some explanation as to what the jack is, like: "This ship is in active US Naval service, and flies the above flag on its jackstaff. The 'don't tread on me jack' originated... bla bla and has been flown on USN ships since May. ??, 2002, by order of... " etc. specifying the jack the ship actually uses or used most recently.Pedant 06:35, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

Which jack to use would seem to depend on why we have the jacks in the table in the first place. If it's to place the ship in the proper historical context, then all the jacks the ship ever flew might go there. If it's to identify the navy(ies) with which the ship served, the current jack of each navy might do. The latter seems to be the current practice. I don't have a preference. For consistency, I would like to see/do the research on which navy flew which jack for which dates before we decide to change to the former option.

(As a datapoint, while the new/old jack has been authorized since 31 May 2002, each ship received its issue of the actual jacks at different times and therefore no one date exists for the changeover. Some ships shifted colors on 11 September 2002, others did upon receipt of their issue.)

Whatever we decide, I'd prefer that Pedant's suggested text be on the page of the image or a page like First Navy Jack, rather than on each ship's page, for ease of updating. After all, one day the War on Terrorism may end. When that happens it would be nice to update one page rather than 289. Jinian 21:44, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Use a template for any active ships. For historical ships, use the one at the time...which will be the starred jack for almost all ships that are not currently in commission. -Joseph (Talk) 22:39, 2004 Nov 30 (UTC)

Templates! Duh! Of course, that's the way. However, I don't think it's as simply as all that (star field for decommissioned and snake for active) and would like to see a rule set and some agreed upon way of doing this for all the navies - not only USN.

If we're even going to do this, which I'm neutral on. Jinian 01:43, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm still confused as to why everyone is discussing the U.S. naval jack, when what the pages should display is the ensign, as with the British ships. It is the ensign which is flown from ships underway, and internationally it is the ensign which is associated strongly with the navy in particular. Unless caught in port, no ship fought under her jack; she fought under her ensign.

In the U.K., the jack is the national flag, not the ensign, which is purely naval. Just picking a few countries out more-or-less at random: China, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Israel, India, and Pakistan have distinctive naval ensigns which differ from the national flag (I think they all use the national flag for the jack), while France is like the U.S. in using the national flag for the ensign. Greece also falls in the latter category, because the national flag was changed after the abolition of the monarchy, where the old naval ensign became the new national flag. In general, though, it is the ensign which is the distinctive symbol of the fleet, not the jack.

Or am I the only one who cares about consistency? —Tkinias 14:05, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, we all care about consistency, it's just that no-one has noticed this problem before, probably because most editors work primarily on ships of one navy. Now you've brought the problem to everyone's attention, we can sort out a solution. I suspect that people chose the USN jack and the RN ensign because they are distinct from the country's national flag. What you need to do is to propose a solution, propose wording to put on Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns, get people here to agree on (or modify) your solution, and then when you've achieved consensus, implement it. Good luck! Gdr 20:07, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

(Tkinias moved this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns but I moved it back again to keep discussion in one place and because people are more likely to have this page watched and so more likely to see discussion here. Gdr 23:01, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC))

Ensign/jack rationalization

OK, my proposal, simply put, is to use either ensigns or jacks. I'll compile, when I get a chance, a list of navies and whether the ensign, jack, or both differs from the national flag. Perhaps at that point a vote is in order on whether, when all the (important?) navies are taken together, the purpose is better served by ensigns or jacks. —Tkinias 21:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You could do worse than to correct and fill out the table at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns. Gdr 23:16, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

Sorry about move... I misread your above comment to mean that I should discuss it under /Ensigns (*rubbing eyes*). I was reluctant just to go in and edit the table because there seemed to be strong feelings regarding the U.S. jack in some quarters. I didn't notice you'd separated them already. Will proceed as directed... —Tkinias 23:32, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is there consensus BTW that flags should be {{PD-Flag}}? I'm hazy on copyright for taking flags from Flags of the World... —Tkinias 23:39, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If you tag them and indicate the source, then if the theory that national flags are in the public domain turns out to be wrong then at least they can be found and removed. Gdr 00:20, 2004 Dec 8 (UTC)

OK. —Tkinias 23:05, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've done some cleanup of ensign and jack images (including matching their colours to each other and the national flags), although there remains much to do. I'm going to hit the UK ensigns next to get their colours right (we've got a mishmash of shades now). The list is starting to take shape, though. (Thanks Gdr for your work, too...)

I'd like to suggest building templates for the flag images. This way we can tweak the ensigns/jacks/whatever ultimately gets used, or change file names, or whatever, without having to redo pages. One overhaul to replace hard-coded image links with templates and then it never needs to get looked at again. I'd like to see, therefore, a series like Template:Shipflag_au_pre1967... —Tkinias 23:50, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

When it comes to jacks and ensigns, I would say that one is suitable in some circumstances, and another in others. For example, for Commonwealth nations in general, it is probably the ensign that is suitable, since it tends to be distinct for the navy in question. In the British case, for example, the RN, RFA and RMAS are distinct organisations, and their ensigns are distinct. The British Merchant Navy has another distinct ensign again. On the other hand, where the navy in question uses the national flag as its ensign, it would probably be better to use the jack as a distinct marker for the navy. The US is an example of that. David Newton 16:13, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Old pages

There are a bunch of ship articles on Special:Ancientpages, it would be great if some of these could be categorized to get them off the list. - SimonP 06:05, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Why is it harmful for these pages to be on the list? Gdr 13:11, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)

I think I've been doing this too long, if a page I created is now considered an "ancient page". :-) Being aged is not itself a bad thing (perhaps the article is perfect!), but given that standards and practices have evolved since these were last touched, it's certainly a sign that it's time for a review. Stan 17:48, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Stan on this, there may be nothing at all wrong with having the page listed, it could be perfect... maybe take a peek and see.Pedant 06:37, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

...and add a space somewhere innocuous to take it off the list? ;) —Tkinias 21:36, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Backdating ship prefixes

It's common practice on Wikipedia to backdate the use of the ship prefixes "HMS" and "USS" to refer to ships that were not called by that prefix by their contemporaries. User:Pedant interprets this as introducing errors of fact into articles.

It is my opinion that this backdating (1) is harmless; (2) makes it easy to figure out how to title an article without having to do extensive research in primary sources; (3) matches what many other reference works do; (4) avoids naming disputes over what exactly contemporaries called the ship; (5) makes it possible to title articles where we simply don't know how the ship was called at the time; (6) doesn't preclude editors from adding detail as to how the ship was actually named, pehaps along the lines of "HMS Foo (referred to in a 1767 letter from her captain as "His Britannic Majesty's Armed Sloop-of-War Foo) ..."

However, I think it is worth discussing this issue so that we can get consensus that the current practice is a good one, or consensus that it should be changed. Gdr 13:11, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

As a data point I noticed just last night, The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea uses "H.M.S. Mary Rose" for what we call Mary Rose. Bonhomme Richard does not have a "U.S.S." - but it only mentions the JPJ boat, so from their point of view there was no ambiguity to address. As another data point, [6] explicitly says "Continental frigate Boston" and other earlies, which would fit nicely into our system. I remember seeing some author use "USS" retroactively into Continental period, which is why I started doing it, but can't find the book now, so might have been hallucination. Stan 15:46, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Another data point that I ran across this morning is Capture of CSS Florida by USS Wachusett, 7 October 1864. The commander uses "U.S.S. Wachusett" over 40 years before the 1909 date that the Navy Style Guide suggests as the proper start date. With more digging, it's obvious the Naval Historical Center routinely uses the "USS" prefix in their photo collection. See 1, 2 and 3 for examples.

The Continental period for USS is more troublesome. The Naval Historical Center's website is inconsistent and uses "United States Ship" in its page for Reprisal. If we do go with "Continental frigate...", we'll also have to decide what to do with the ships (if any?) that survived the revolution and were immediately taken into the new US Navy. I don't have strong feelings on either side of the Continental Navy issue.

I concur that the backdating for USS and HMS prefixes is generally useful and harmless. Jinian 16:22, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with using USS to refer to ships prior to 1909, remember that not all users of the encyclopedia would think to add USS to the name when looking it up. I'm dead certain that one of the main guidelines of the wikipedia is factual accuracy. This should include ship's names. The fact that Commander Collins and others used abbreviations of the phrase United States Ship in reports does not mean they were named in that manner, and merely shows where the custom of adding that prefix arose, as an abbreviation, and then later, using the prefix became an official part of ship's names. We should only use that prefix as part of the name if it actually was part of the ship's name. Just because that creates difficulty does not mean we shouldn't do it. If you want to do something that's easy, just don't write encyclopedias. The naming conventions clearly state:

Some authors use invented prefixes for consistency with "USS", "HMS" etc. 
It's not a mistake to do that, but at Wikipedia we choose not to.[7]

Articles about ships that do not have standard prefixes should be titled 
as (Nationality) (type) (Name); for example, Soviet aircraft carrier Kuznetsov[8]

and I think we should either follow the convention or change it, but not have a convention that is ignored. And not have inaccurate articles.Pedant 07:04, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

[9] is useful background reading, and offers a little more insight. I'll have some point-by-point comments later. Incidentally, it seems clear that United States Ship should be its own article instead of a redir; it will be a place to record the facts that we discover, and a handy reference when making decisions. Stan 01:01, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The relevant part of the link Stan cited above seems to be:

   Into the early years of the 20th century there was no
fixed form for Navy ship prefixes. Ships were rather
haphazardly identified, in correspondence or documents,
by their naval type (U.S. Frigate ____), their rig
(United States Barque ____), or their function (United
States Flag-Ship ______). They might also identify
themselves as "the Frigate _____," or, simply, "Ship ______."
The term "United States Ship," abbreviated "USS," is seen
as early as the late 1790s; it was in frequent, but far
from exclusive, use by the last half of the 19th century.

   In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt issued an
Executive order that established the present usage:
       In order that there shall be uniformity in the matter
of designating naval vessels, it is hereby directed that the
official designation of vessels of war, and other vessels of
the Navy of the United States, shall be the name of such
vessel, preceded by the words, United States Ship, or the
letters U.S.S., and by no other words or letters.
       --Executive Order 549, 8 January 1907.

   Today's Navy Regulations define the classification and
status of naval ships and craft:
       1. The Chief of Naval Operations shall be responsible
for ... the assignment of classification for administrative
pur- poses to water-borne craft and the designation of status
for each ship and service craft. ....
       2. Commissioned vessels and craft shall be called
"United States Ship" or "U.S.S."
       3. Civilian manned ships, of the Military Sealift
Command or other commands, designated "active status, in
service" shall be called "United States Naval Ship" or
"U.S.N.S."
       4. Ships and service craft designated "active status,
in service," except those described by paragraph 3 of this
article, shall be referred to by name, when assigned,
classification, and hull number (e.g., "HIGH POINT PCH-1"
or "YOGN-8").
       -- United States Navy Regulations, 1990, Article 0406.

I agree that United States Ship merits its own article, this discussion is sufficient to convince me of that. Pedant 15:52, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

Back-use of ship prefixes seems to be a well-established tradition - "HMS", without the periods, is quite commonly used by professional naval historians for vessels going back into the Middle Ages, so I think the principle has been set that it's not necessarily a factual error to use a known-valid ship prefix for ships prior to the time when it was officially standardized. One way to think of it is as a translation into modern terminology; for instance, we write about ancient Romans using BC/AD dates, not "AUC" which is how they dated things. It makes things easier all around, but classical scholars don't do it out of laziness; they do it because it makes it easier for readers to understand - not just for general readers, but for each other. WP does this a lot; for instance, it doesn't say "Bill Clinton" on the birth certificate, so is arguably incorrect (it's not the official name, right?) but forget trying to move the article to "William Jefferson Clinton".

Now that you mention it, it's going to be difficult to forget... Pedant 16:10, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

Now the case of USS is a little trickier because we have one source, the US Navy style guide, that tells Navy people not to use it pre-1909 (which is odd, because the Roosevelt order dates from 1907). I would be good to know why it says that; for instance, it might have no deeper reason than to avoid confusing older ships with newer ones. (It might also be a mistake.) One strike against the USN guide is that it's intended as a style guide for Navy writers - for instance, it recommends "September 11 terrorist attacks", which by an amazing coincidence just happens to be in line with the current administration's policies calling it part of a "War on Terror", while WP's consensus is to omit the "terrorist" part as POV. Similarly, we have no compunctions about altering old DANFS articles to leave out the ridiculous "communist scourge" stuff, even though it's an official publication of the Navy. So we have a situation where the Navy is deprecating a usage that is common among both professional historians and general readers (randoms typing in content always glue on the USS, expecting to disambiguate later); which authority should we follow? If we follow the Navy's rule, and say things like "United States ship Maine", it's going to look like we're not abbreviating to "USS" out of perversity. That's one of the things that makes me wonder about the style guide; the consequence of following their rule is chaos in a large reference work, as if they hadn't thought through the consequences of the recommendation. Stan 17:18, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I wrote a paragraph about backdating ship prefixes at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)#Military ships, including a brief justification. Please check and comment. In particular, it would be nice if User:Pedant could comment. Gdr 20:01, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

I still note that this page continues to have conflicting information, and feel that this is a problem. If we are going to instruct editors that:

"Some authors use invented prefixes for consistency with "USS", "HMS" etc. It's not a mistake to do that, but at Wikipedia we choose not to. "

then I think we should not also include:

"For ships of navies that have standard ship prefixes, use the prefix in the name of the article: USS Monitor (compare monitor)"

as that seems to me to be conflicting information. I recommend that we get a consensus on just exactly what the policy is, and then go rewrite the above information, so that it reflects the 'One True Policy', policy pages should be thoroughly unambiguous, in my opinion. Pedant 15:48, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

I don't particularly care what the policy is, regardless of the "adding false information issue", if it's the policy to name an article USS Something-that-never-was-a-USS-ship that would be fine because a note could be made in the article for those ships to the effect that "this ship existed prior to the adoption of the U.S.S. prefix, but this article is named in this manner by convention" or something, this could even be a template, but whatever the policy is, it shouldn't be necessary to confer with the Wikiproject:Ships members to inquire as to whether the custom differs from the policy, before writing an article, or correcting one etc... if it is necessary the policy should read: "We don't have an established policy, so please confer with all the other ship writers before you make a dreadful misstep that uses up a whole lot of everyone's time" or similar statement. I mostly think people should be able to come to wikipedia, consult the policy page, read a policy that is understandable and rational and doesn't have internal inconsistencies -- and then go ahead and follow the policy without fear of reprisals. I tried to follow the policy, I don't mind doing an unlimited amount of work to bring articles in line with the policy, as long as there is one policy that has been agreed on and that we don't have arcane, alternate 'customs' that conflict with the stated policy. I think most editors would be more comfortable with a written policy than going through this long discussion after trying to follow what the policy says. This experience has definitely 'turned me off' of my desire to add anything to the ship constellation. I'd hate to think it would do so to another editor at a later date, so I really hope we can clear this up, and be done. Pedant 15:48, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

There's no inconsistency here. "USS" is not an invented prefix, so it doesn't fall under the rubric of at Wikipedia we choose not to [use invented prefixes]. But I can see how you might have misread it to think that it does. So perhaps you can propose alternative wording that would be clearer to you? Gdr 19:22, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)

It would also be nice if we could work out guidelines as to how far to backdate the common prefixes, so that the naming convention can be specific. Can "USS" be backdated to the ships of the Continental Navy? How far back can we use "HMS": the navy of Charles I? Elizabeth I? Henry VIII? before that? Gdr 20:01, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

I agree. it would be best if we could work out guidelines for all of these related issues. Pedant

Naming non-military vessels

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) does a good job of naming military vessels and ships with a prefix. But I don't think it works for non-military ships that lack a prefix. Current practice is to use ordinary Wikipedia naming conventions for ships, thus Cutty Sark, Mayflower (ship), Santa Maria (ship) (not "English ship Mayflower", "Spanish carrack Santa Maria" etc). Several questions need answering and documenting:

Is it OK to have two naming conventions, one for military ships and one for non-military?
Is it OK to have a disambiguation convention that differs from the usual Wikipedia one?
If it's not OK, who's going to do the work of moving German battleship Bismarck to Bismarck (ship) etc and fixing all the links?
How do we disambiguate tricky cases like Nautilus (1800)? (It can't be "Nautilus (submarine)" since that's ambiguous.)

Gdr 13:57, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

Deja vu - I remember having this discussion once before, in connection with Mayflower but can't seem to find a record of it. Anyway, for civilian vessels I'm content to fall back to WP defaults, because "<nationality> <type>" is often ill-defined (is Cutty Sark Scottish, British or Portuguese, and do we have to use a different type name every time she is re-rigged?). Different nomenclature rules for civilian and naval both correspond to the real world, plus it's a quick context-setter when an article comes up. Nautilus disambiguation is easy - use Nautilus (1800 submarine). When things get messy, just keep making the disambiguator longer. :-) Stan 16:50, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Agree with all of Stan's paragraph above. and: Yes it's ok to have two conventions if we stick to them. Yes it's ok to have a different convention on disambiguation, provided that 1)it doesn't conflict with the higher order convention but is an extension of it that logically follows the pattern established by the wikipedia convention. and 2) we stick to the convention we establish. As far as "who does the work?", it's a lot easier to get people to fix things if the convention is plainly stated, then the answer is, we fix it, all the editors on wikipedia. If someone can generate a list of problems, I'd be happy to fix a bunch of them. (if there's a convention and I am not going to keep being attacked for wanting to follow it)Pedant 07:15, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be any disagreement here, so I updated Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) to specify that ordinary Wikipedia naming conventions apply to civilian ships. Gdr 12:38, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

Why is it again that warships do not follow "ordinary Wikipedia naming conventions"? —Tkinias 23:57, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Consistency and predictability. Gdr 19:13, 2004 Dec 10 (UTC)

table markup arcana

[copied from the subpage's talk-page]
In the standard infobox,

{| border="1" align="right" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="300" style="margin-left:5px"
|align="center" colspan="2"|[[Image:IIH.png|300px|INSERT CAPTION HERE]]<br>Insert caption here
|-
 . . .
|-
!align="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: navy no-repeat scroll top left;"|General Characteristics
!align="center" style="color: white; height: 30px; background: navy no-repeat scroll top left;"|[[Image:IIH.png|44px|INSERT ENSIGN HERE]]
|-
 . . .

the < align="center" > is unnecessary, because the initial < ! > makes them captions, which are automatically centered. But what---if anything---does the < no-repeat scroll top left; > do? I've tried taking it out, without apparent effect (in my browser).

Why is the ensign-placeholder sized at 44 pixels, when the header strip is only 30?
—wwoods 17: 06, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Susan Constant Godspeed, and Discovery at Jamestown

I have been working on the article Jamestown, Virginia. I was considering starting ship-stub articles on the Susan Constant Godspeed, and Discovery, the replicas of which are very popular attractions currently at Jamestown. What is the correct way we can link to create articles for the three sailing ships? One of them, Discovery, currently link to a much newer vessel of the same name. Could anyone else here help with these articles? Thanks,. Vaoverland 20:30, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

Here's my suggestion:

Do all the disambiguation on the Discovery page (you may want to break out a sublist for ships; cf. Nautilus (disambiguation) and Akagi) — done
Make Discovery (ship) a redirect to Discovery — done
Name the article about the Jamestown Discovery at Discovery (1602 ship) (1602 being a terminus a quo since I think her launch date is not known [10]). — I put a stub there for you; I look forward to your article.
Fix redirects. — done

Gdr 00:17, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

FOIA Request

Well, I'm giving the UK's new FOIA a test run. It's extremely difficult to get hold of reliable information about exact dates of when ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary changed status. There is, so far as I am aware, no British publically accessible equivalent of the Naval Vessel Register, and there is certainly no UK equivalent of DANFS. So, a few minutes ago I sent the following FOIA request to the Ministry of Defence.

"For all Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships currently in commission I would like the following information:

The date when the ship was ordered
The date when the ship was laid down
The date when the ship was launched
The date when the ship was commissioned into RFA service
For vessels that were not newly built for RFA service, the date when they were purchased for RFA service
For vessels that were not newly built for RFA service the name of the previous owner of the ship"

It'll be interesting how they handle this. They can't claim any exemptions about sensitivity of material which removes one significant potential road block. With that information available it should considerable help the accuracy of our articles about the RFA vessels currently in commission. David Newton 23:23, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've received a reply from the Defence Logistics Organisation asking whether the format they were proposing to send the information in is alright. I should receive it early next week. David Newton 22:12, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Active in service

I've created Template:Active in service to allow us to more easily track which ships are currently in fleet service in the world. It's intended for use in ship tables. David Newton 18:50, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As one who had been dreading going around changing "active as of 2004" to "active as of 2005", I saw this work and thought, "Great idea. Wish I'd thought of that." In other words, well done and thank you. Jinian 01:27, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

New Table Format

We have shifted a good number of the tables across to the wiki markup, rather than sticking with HTML, as the wiki markup is a good deal easier on the eyes to edit. However, I have been struck by how powerful the syntax adopted by the battles WikiProject for their tables is. This evening I have been fiddling with the format of the standard table and the template syntax that is now available with the Wikipedia. The result is that I believe I can reproduce the current standard table format for almost all cases (the Military Sealift Command and ships like the destroyer escorts in their current format perhaps being the exceptions) in a way that is a good deal more maintainable and centralised. It is somewhat an extension of the Template:Active in service that I made and mentioned above.

Each ship class would require a number of templates to be created for it. Those templates would carry the measurements and properties that are common to each ship class. I have also allowed for the variation of each individual ship by including a bit in the table code called Individual ship. In cases where there are single ship classes it may well be useful to create a version of the table for those cases. Please see this copy of the table for the current HMS Invincible as an example of what can be done and let me know what you think:

Career (UK)	Image:Rnensign.png
caption
Laid down:	20 July 1973
Launched:	3 May 1977
Commissioned:	11 July 1980
Status:	active in service
General Characteristics
Displacement:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Length:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Beam:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Draught:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Propulsion:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Speed:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Range:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Endurance:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Test depth:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Capacity:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Complement:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Sensors and processing systems:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Electronic warfare and decoys:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Armament:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Armour:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Aircraft carried:	Invincible class aircraft carrier

Career (UK)	Image:Rnensign.png
caption
Laid down:	20 July 1973
Launched:	3 May 1977
Commissioned:	11 July 1980
Status:	active in service
General Characteristics
Displacement:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Length:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Beam:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Draught:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Propulsion:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Speed:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Range:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Endurance:	none
Capacity:	none
Complement:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Sensors and processing systems:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Electronic warfare and decoys:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Armament:	Invincible class aircraft carrier
Armour:	none
Aircraft carried:	Invincible class aircraft carrier

David Newton 00:55, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is interesting. It would have saved me going through a dozen pages to fix one mistake yesterday. A few questions:

What is the syntax for all these elements? What gets {{}} and what gets {{{}}}? Is there a tutorial, or do you have a page with all the Template:<Characteristic> things that need to be written?
Is there a way to make inapplicable lines not show up; things like "Homeport:" for decommissioned ships, and "Aircraft:" for ships that don't have any? Simply cutting out or commenting out those lines doesn't seem to work. Maybe splitting the table into Ship_Career_Table or Active_Ship_Career_Table, and <Modifier>_Ship_Characteristics_Table:

 {{Ship Table|
 |Ship image=[[Image:IIH.png|300px|InsertAltTextHere]] <br/><center><small>InsertCaptionHere</small></center>
 {{Ship Career Table|
 |Ship ordered=
 :
 }}
 {{Ship Characteristics Table|Invincible class aircraft carrier
 |Ship motto=''Ineffable!''
 }}
 }}

On a more general point, some ships are changed substantially over their careers--e.g. their armament and even their lengths. Should the Ship Characteristics document their original configurations, or final, or modal, or what?

OK, the syntax {{{}}} is used for template variables within the Template:Ship table. You will notice that there is not Template:Ship ordered defined. Ship ordered is defined individually within each use of the ship table as it is different for each ship. The other syntax, ie {{blah {{{blah blah}}} }}, is used for things that are generally common within a class. For example, all Flight 1 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have a common weapons outfit to my knowledge. If you look at, for example, ship displacement, you will find a template Template:Ship displacement defined. At that ship displacement you will find a template variable {{{Ship displacement box}}} defined. Looking at the Invincible-class aircraft carrier, you will find a template Template:Ship displacement box Invincible class aircraft carrier defined. The corresponding version for an Arleigh- Burke-class destroyer might be Template:Ship displacement box Arleigh Burke class destroyer. With that in place all you would need to do to get the displacment of an Arleigh Burke-class vessel instead of an Invincible-class vessel would to substitute "|Ship displacement=Arleigh Burke class destroyer" for "|Ship displacement=Invincible class aircraft carrier" in the table. A good tutorial of how to use this sort of thing can be found on the Battles Wikiproject page.

I've not found a good way to do the second point yet. One possibility would be to alter the templates for things like aircraft, armament, home port etc., to include table markup. That way if they were not included then the table markup would also not appear with them. That will require further experimentation, but it is something I intend to try and get working if I can.

As for your final point, I would think that individual ship could be used for later characteristics. For example, all the short-hull Essex-class ships could have a Template:Ship armament box short hull Essex class aircraft carrier which includes their original configuration. Then the various modifications that got applied to each ship could be covered using the individual ship variables. The individual ship variables was a major change that I needed to make from the battlebox which served as the prototype for this idea.

I'll do some more work on the table template and keep you up to date with what is going on with it. I hope to be able to report success soon. When I'm fiddling with the template please be prepared to see the version on this page be broken occasionally. David Newton 19:55, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, further progress has been made. I've further altered the template to allow optional parts of the table. The problem is that while the yes to them option works fine (as evidenced by the example table on the right), the no to them option isn't quite so good. It produces a table that does not have the lines we don't want, but it does have some ugly spacing issues (as evidence by the example table on the left). They'll have to be sorted out before the table is ready for mainstream useage. I would appreciate some ideas on how they could be dealt with. David Newton 11:54, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Even more progress to report. I appear to have fixed the ugly spacing problem. It was simply a case of creating the correctly styled table row when the optional row not wanted (like say electronic warfare and decoys for USS Constitution or HMS Victory) variable is set to no.

So, in summary, I believe that there are two things needed before the table can go live.

What other features are needed in the ship table to cover permutations I've not thought of?
Writing the instructions on how to use the thing!

David Newton 13:54, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Responses

Can a user include only certain sections of the table, and not the stuff that is inapplicable? Also, I'd add entries for Damage Value (or just Value), and some sort of entries for how and when the ship was destroyed and if the crew survived, all in a separate, includable template. You might want to include sub-dividers with different colors, such as what is used by battleboxes to include a campaignbox in the table. --brian0918 ™ 14:39, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there are certain sections of the table that are optional. I have made those sections that all ships possess as non-optional, so they will appear even if all the optional sections are not in the table. The optional sections are:

Purchased
Commissioned
Decommissioned
In service
Out of service
Struck
Homeport
Range
Test depth
Capacity
Time to activate
Sensors
Electronic warfare and decoys
Armament
Armour
Aircraft

In order to make the optional sections appear or not as necessary the appropriate variable needs to be set to yes or no. For example, in order to make the time to activate cell not appear, which will not be necessary for most ships, the variable "Ship table time to activate" should be set to no. The table markup necessary for the time to activate row of the table will then not appear. Conversely, set it to yes and the markup will appear. The other optional table part variables work in the same way, as would any other optional variables that might get added to the table.

How and when the ship met its end is covered in the fate section of the table. That could be set to active in service, with vessels that are currently active, in reserve, as a mueseum ship, wrecked, sunk by enemy action, scrapped, building, etc. After the variable "Ship fate", the variable "individual ship" allows the global identifier to be elaborated upon. For example, if the variable "Ship fate" gets set to scrapped, then the following variable "individual ship" would then carry information on what firm scrapped the ship, when and where for example. In the case of a sinking, the "Ship fate" variable would be set to being sunk by enemy action or wrecked as appropriate, and the "individual ship" variable would then detail who or what sank the ship, where and when.

As for your points about "damage value" and sub-dividers with different colours, I don't see the point of those. This is meant to duplicate the functionality of the current table for ships, that has been used for a couple of years now, for ships, but to have that functionality in a more easily maintainable and more consistent form. It is particularly applicable for large ship classes where common features of the design will be shown consistently from ship to ship in the class, and also for cases where tables need to be changed, such as when a ship decommissions. Instead of having to add sections to the table, all that needs to happen is that the variable for the decommissioning row needs to be changed from no to yes and the date of the decommissioning added.

The question about the casualties from a sinking is potentially something that could be added to the table, as lots of ships have been lost to enemy action. It might be useful to have information about only 3 Hood crew members surviving. On the other hand, it could just be information overload. I don't know of any of the existing tables where that information is presented. Nonetheless, it certainly is well worth looking at. David Newton 17:55, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How about making "Draught" an optional value--and also "Draft", so we can use one or the other? :-) ("Armour" doesn't bother me the same way, for some reason.)

Also, saying a ship's "Fate" is to be {active in service}} doesn't really make sense. How about "Status" for ships which have been ordered (or awarded) / are under construction / are undergoing trials / are active / are decommissioned in reserve? After that, they have "Fate"s.

For submarines, "[Test ]Depth" is another significant value. And a fair number of ships have "Nickname"s.

However, not everything has to go in the table. The firm that scrapped a ship can go in the text of the page--if it's needed at all. Conversely, the fate of the Hood deserves more than one line in the table.

—wwoods 07:19, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Test depth is certainly something that I hadn't thought of that merits inclusion. I'll sort that out once I've finished this reply. As for fate and status, that is a somewhat semantic distiction, but one probably worth making. Also, given how relatively easily the two different spellings for draught/draft and armour/armor can be put in place that's also worth doing. I'll also add nickname as an optional row. David Newton 10:28, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Tutorial

{{Ship table|
|Ship table purchased=
|Ship table commissioned=
|Ship table decommissioned=
|Ship table in service=
|Ship table out of service=
|Ship table captured=
|Ship table struck=
|Ship table reinstated=
|Ship table homeport=
|Ship table range=
|Ship table endurance=
|Ship table test depth=
|Ship table capacity=
|Ship table time to activate=
|Ship table sensors=
|Ship table EW=
|Ship table armament=
|Ship table armour=
|Ship table aircraft=

|Ship table fate=
|Draught=

|Ship image=
|Ship caption=
|Ship country=
|Ship flag=
|Ship ordered=
|Ship laid down=
|Ship launched=
|Ship purchased=
|Ship commissioned=
|Ship decommissioned=
|Ship in service=
|Ship out of service=
|Ship fate=
|Individual ship 1=
|Ship struck=
|Ship reinstated=
|Ship homeport=
|Ship displacement=
|Individual ship 2=
|Ship length=
|Individual ship 3=
|Ship beam=
|Individual ship 4=
|Ship draught=
|Individual ship 5=
|Ship propulsion=
|Individual ship 6=
|Ship speed=
|Individual ship 7=
|Ship range=
|Individual ship 8=
|Ship endurance=
|Ship test depth=
|Ship capacity=
|Individual ship 9=
|Ship complement=
|Individual ship 10=
|Ship time to activate=
|Ship sensors=
|Individual ship 11=
|Ship EW=
|Individual ship 12=
|Ship armament=
|Individual ship 13=
|Ship armour=
|Individual ship 14=
|Ship aircraft=
|Individual ship 15=
|Ship motto=
|Ship nickname=
|}}

This template is an attempt to reproduce the functionality of each of the different types of table that have been developed for the WikiProject Ships in a more easily maintainable and centrally editable fashion. It has functionality to allow the common specifications of a ship class to be created in one template and then promulgated to all ships of that class, meaning all the information of all the ships of the class is as consistent as possible. It also has functionality to include or exclude certain optional table rows. For example, there would be little point in including the electronic warfare equipment of a sailing frigate, and little point in including the time required to activate a ship from reserve for a vessel already in active service.

Optional Table Rows

The optional rows for the table are as follows:

Purchased
Commissioned
Decommissioned
In service
Out of service
Captured
Struck
Reinstated
Homeport
Range
Endurance
Test depth
Capacity
Time to activate
Sensors
Electronic warfare and decoys (with a variable EW)
Armament
Armour
Aircraft

In order to include or exclude an optional row set the variable "Ship table optional row" to yes or no as appropriate. For example, for a ship without a cargo capacity the value "Ship table capacity=no" would be correct, where a ship with embarked aircraft would need the value "Ship table aircraft=yes". The one slight exception to that rule is the armour variable which is explained below.

Class Feature Templates

A number of the rows allow the common features of a ship class to be reproduced across the whole class from one template. Those rows are:

Displacement
Length
Beam
Draught
Propulsion
Speed
Range
Endurance
Test depth
Capacity
Complement
Sensors
Electronic warfare and decoys (with a variable EW)
Armament
Armour
Aircraft

To use ability of the template to display the common features of a class from one central document, Wikipedia templates covering those variables that apply to the ship need to be created. For example, for the Invincible-class aircraft carrier, templates such as Template:Ship length box Invincible class aircraft carrier and Template:Ship aircraft box Invincible class aircraft carrier have been created.

The templates must use the following name structure:

Template:Variable box XXXX

where variable is the name of the parameter referred to, such as sensors for the sensors of the ship, complement for the complement etc and XXXX is a descriptor of the ship class, such as Invincible class aircraft carrier or Arleigh Burke class destroyer.

Individual Ship Variables

Following many of the template variables will be found a separate section "Individual ship". The intention of that section is to allow variations from the class unique to each ship to be covered in the table. For example, if one ship in a class has half its guns removed at a certain date, then the appropriate number "Individual ship" variable would be the place to cover that change.

Spelling Variants

In order to accomodate the traditions of the Wikipedia, the template can cope with both British and American English. This comes up at two points in the table: draught/draft and armour/armor. In order to tell the template which variant to use, two variables must be set. For the armour variable, the functionality is incorporated into "Ship table armour". To set the armour row not to appear the variable should still be set to "no". To set the armour row to appear with British spelling it should be set to "yes uk", and to set it to appear with American spelling it should be set to "yes us". For the draught variable, the functionality is implemented using "Draught", with the variable simply being set to "uk" or "us" as appropriate.

There is one other variation in the structure of the table: the variable "Ship table fate" can be set in two ways. Set it to status and the ship will have a status row in the table, and set it to fate and the ship will have a fate row instead.

Unique Values

The most simple part of the table covers the following variables:

Ship image
Ship caption
Ship country
Ship ordered
Ship flag
Ship laid down
Ship launched
Ship purchased
Ship commissioned
Ship decommissioned
Ship in service
Ship out of service
Ship struck
Ship homeport
Ship motto
Ship nickname

They are unique to each ship and thus should be entered as in a normal table. "Ship image" is the photo of the ship that appears at the top of the table and should use Wikipedia image markup. "Ship caption" is the caption for that image. "Ship flag" is the ensign/jack of the navy/ies that the ship serve(d) with and again should use the appropriate Wikipedia image markup.

Ship Status Variables

For the variable "ship fate" a variety of templates have been created to provide consistency and linkage for ships. The variables defined include:

active in service
target
sunk enemy action
wrecked
ordered
building
museum ship
scrapped
in reserve
unknown
transferred
exploded
awaiting disposal
sold for commercial service
scuttled

As with the class common feature templates, "ship fate" is followed a by numbered "individual ship" variable which can be used to flesh out the broad categories, such as when a ship was wrecked, where is a muesum ship, who built it etc.

Please let me know how I need to make that tutorial clearer. David Newton 12:10, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Some ships are "Ordered" and some [have contracts for them] "Awarded". The US Naval Vessel Register lists Award Date. I suppose the two are equivalent, but if it's easy to provide for the option, you might as well.

As I understood the guidelines, the caption for the infobox picture is optional, though the image itself should have alternate text.

For ships with multinational careers, is it possible to lay them out? See, e.g., USS Sea Fox (SS-402). Or should each career get its own page, however stubby?

For clarity, how about a List of ship tables, listing all the [[CLASSNAME_class_TYPE ship table]]s done or to be done; each page having a list of all the elements that need to be constructed:

<nowiki>[[Template:Image box CLASSNAME_class_TYPE]]</nowiki>
- [[Template:Image box CLASSNAME_class_TYPE]]
<nowiki>[[Template:Flag box CLASSNAME_class_TYPE]]</nowiki> (See Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Tables)
- [[Template:Flag box CLASSNAME_class_TYPE]]
<nowiki>[[Template:Laid down box CLASSNAME_class_TYPE]]</nowiki>
- [[Template:Laid down box CLASSNAME_class_TYPE]]
:

Put a link to the [[CLASSNAME_class_TYPE ship table]] on the [[CLASSNAME_class_TYPE]] page , and add "See CLASSNAME_class_TYPE ship table" to the instructions on Template:Ship table, so that someone who wants to add or change the information can easily find it.

—wwoods 18:41, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So far as I am aware, it is usual practice to provide ships that had significant careers in two different navies with different pages for each navy. For vessels like destroyer escorts and escort carriers that saw service in both the USN and RN during WWII, but only just with the USN, I have been putting them into one table and on one page. The example you quote above almost certainly deserves two separate pages, since USS Sea Fox had a career of over 20 years in the Turkish Navy. David Newton 22:53, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Going Live

I've made one more small change to the template table. I have inserted a row for a ship's nickname. Since there has been no more feedback for nearly a month, and since I left messages on the talk pages of all those who said they participate in this WikiProject letting them know what I've been planning, I've decided that people must be fairly happy with what I've done. I have therefore started the process of taking the table out of beta stage and live onto the main encyclopedia. I have now started to replace the Nimitz class aircraft carrier tables with a version of the template table. David Newton 21:18, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Looks good. There's some whitespace quirks--space below, or above and below some entries in the table.

Supposing someone wanted to add yet another line to the table, like "Well deck capacity:" for LSDs, to pick an example I've recently been doing. Would that cause an unsightly line with {{CHARACTERISTIC}} to appear in all other pages using the table until someone went through them and set them to "CHARACTERISTIC=no"? It'd be more robust if they were all absent by default.

—wwoods 23:14, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes it would cause something nasty to appear in the table. That's precisely why I wanted to check whether there were any other rows that people wanted to add to the table before taking it live. There actually is a row for capacity already in the table. It was primarily intended for naval cargo ships and the like, but it could be easily adapted for well deck capacity I think. So, please let me know whether there is anything else that needs to be added to it before any more get put up. At the moment it is manageable to change each one, since there are only a few experimental and example tables around, and the 10 Nimitz class examples that I have put up. Go much beyond that, and the job of altering all those tables would be simply impossible.

As for the whitespace, I really don't know why it does that. With the wiki markup I've used it shouldn't do it. One thing I have discovered is necessary is that when putting data into the ship templates, like for example all the radars and sonars that modern vessels have, in order to get rid of whitespace within table cells, it is necessary to make sure that all the entries are on the same line, not separated. It makes editing them a little less good, but it makes the table appear a good deal better.David Newton 21:54, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this. I don't particularly care for some of it. For example, not all ships of the same class share the same characteristics. This is particularly true of early vessels and those built by multiple shipyards. As for adding something to the table, I would like to see an optional "Captured" since many early ships were acquired this way. Bottom line: this simply looks harder than what I'm currently doing. Jinian 23:22, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

I have tried to accomodate this. The main idea of the tables is that major variants in the class could be covered by templates, like say short-hull and long-hull Essex-class carriers or Flight I, Flight II and Flight IIA in the case of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. Beyond that, the individual ship options could be used to fill in things unique to each ship. So, if one vessel ended up fitted with an experimental radar, for example, that could be covered in the individual ship part of the table.

The point about captured as a row is a very good one. It's not applicable to modern vessels, but it certainly is necessary for many sail-powered warships. I am curious as to why you did not reply during the last month? I left a message on your talk page, and judging by your user contributions you have been active during that time. That was after all the whole point of leaving a message on the talk page of all the participants of the WikiProject and developing it on the talk page of the project. I wanted this to be something that others could have an input into and a say in the development of. That doesn't seem to have been the case, with one exception, unfortunately.David Newton 00:10, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If you take a look at the Cassin-class of destroyers, you'll see that every one has different characteristics. Now, granted, it's only four ships, but many early classes of destroyers that have yet to be done are probably like this (6-8 ships, different shipyards, non-standard chars). So, it's not a point of having major variants covered, but rather a change from ship to ship within the class.

I appreciate that this part of the project is a priority for you, but you can hopefully understand that it's not something that is/was high on my list. We all have our pet projects, and I've prefered to spend my time elsewhere. So, sorry for the delay in the input, but I hope it's helpful in any case. Jinian 18:17, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Well, with the Cassin-class destroyers the best way to deal with it inside the framework of this table would be to use the individual ships part of the table. I think I've covered pretty much all the things that are likely to vary majorly from one ship to another with that. So, if you did want to use this sort of construction on those destroyers and other classes like them, the best way to do it would be to go with none for the template to use and then fill in each table individually. Of course you needn't use the new-style markup at all, which would solve matters. ;) I guess that this is more suited to modern ships where standards are more homogenous, but I would contend it is still useful. David Newton 21:59, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

French Naming Convention

Hello ! I have tried to suggest a naming convention for French ships, also addressing the problems which non-French-speaking people (and some French-speaking people, sot that matters... :p) usually meet with the articles and particules. I've tried to do it trying to e consistant with the naming convention which I had observed for the ships of the Royal Navy on Wikipedia. However, since I am not a real member of this project, I would appreciate if someone could give it a quick check, to make sure it is really consistant with what is said here (Talk:French_Navy).

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships)#French Navy. Gdr 13:22, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)

Oh, as for the Free French Forces and modern usage of the flag with the cross of Loraine, I think that the flag is the unit flag, not the national one (uses the regular three-striped blue-white-red flag for the national flag). There is a photograph of the Aconit stealth frigate flying the cross of Lorraine here, if someone would like to link to it for illustration :)

Cheers ! Rama 06:50, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please correct any mistakes at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns. Gdr 13:22, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)

A ship's article stubiness

I've noticed that some ships have been labeled as stubs, but don't meet the traditional definition. Three basic types emerge (1) Some of the articles are missing all but the most basic of information (launch, commissioning, decommission, class type) and, although longer than a paragraph, seem to rate the category "stub". (2) Others, like USS Yorktown (CG-48), were marked as stubs when they clearly had blocks of information, but also clearly missing years of history. (3) Still other ships are marked as stubs while they (the ships themselves) are under construction.

2 seems odd and not fully justified and #3 looks blatantly wrong. If the purpose of labelling a ship's article a stub is to encourage editors to work to expand it, I'd prefer that we focus on those in the first category. After all, how much can you say about a ship that hasn't even been launched? Jinian 14:15, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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