TheBestLinks.com talk:WikiProject Ships

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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)

It has been proposed that every WikiProject choose a single article which represents what the Project members hope each article will eventually look like, so that interested onlookers can see where a Project is heading. If this project is ready to choose such an article, please do so and link to it after the Project name at Wikipedia:WikiProject. If there are no articles ready for this yet, you may wish to focus as a group on an article which is close and/or will be relatively easy to research.

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)

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)

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)

The guys at WikiProject Aircraft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aircraft
(sorry I don't know how to include a link) 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)

Distinquishing 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

Table of contents

1 paddle steamer Waverley

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

3 paddle steamer Waverley

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

5 Categories

5.1 Categories for ships and boats

5.1.1 Proper sorting

6 Renamed/reflagged ships

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)

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)

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

Distinquishing 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

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

Categories

The project page needs some advice on 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! 1/2 :-) Type/function is probably the "main" system of subcategories, nationality is for mainly for naval ships and nicely subdivides some large categories ("US destroyers"). Period I think is a little shakier to define - do you want to list Constitution as a WWII-era ship because she happened to be afloat and in commission at the time? I've not been so keen on categories for each class of warship, that makes for very small and 1-member categories, which isn't so useful. Stan 14:05, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That's sensible advice, but you need some recommendations on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships. Some people like to add an article to a category and all its parent categories: for example there were hundreds of US naval ships in Category:Ships when they should be in Category:US naval ships or maybe some sub-category of that. A set of naming recommendations would prevent anomalies like Category:US naval ships versus Category:U.S. Navy destroyers. Gdr 08:12, 2004 Aug 17 (UTC)

Yup, it's getting to be about time to codify. I'll add something for people to take potshots at. :-)

Another idea - for ship classes that are big enough to have had a Template footer designed for them, the category can be included in the footer and therefore automatically be placed on the relevant pages. I've done this with the Wickes class destroyers template as an experiment. Thoughts? --Rlandmann 03:14, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea of a catagorization in the ship footer template. One less thing to remember to add. Concur that class of ship is a less useful catagory - besides, it's already a class and we have a lot of good info on that already. Prefer not to do the period, as previously noted, some ships are long-lived. Important to remember that some ships will be in multiple catagories as they have been converted (destroyer to tender to transport). What about early vessels, which are schooners, brigs and the like? User:Jinian date

The trouble with putting the category in the template is that the article won't alphabetize in the right place. Gdr 08:12, 2004 Aug 17 (UTC)

Templates can have parameters now... Stan 13:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've added a first draft of a categorization policy - it doesn't cover all the subcategories yet, so needs a little expansion still. Stan 14:08, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So to clarify how the subcategories interact, should Category:Battleships be a subcategory of both Category:Ships by type and Category:Naval ships?

Yes, that seems logical. Stan 05:21, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Also, it seems to me that if there's a Category:US naval ships and Category:Battleships, the articles themselves should best go under Category:US Navy battleships, a subcategory of both of them. --Rlandmann 01:44, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the "little expansion" that I'm now too bleary-eyed to work on tonight. There a couple things to resolve, like whether to prefer "Royal Navy battleships" vs "British battleships" and so forth. Stan 05:21, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Category:Royal Navy battleships would have the advantage of fitting more logically beneath Category:Royal Navy (perhaps with "Royal Navy ships" or "Ships of the Royal Navy" between them.... --Rlandmann 06:05, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yup. Amusingly, we seem to have Category:British naval ships and Category:Royal Navy ships to choose between. Stan 13:46, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Any objections by anyone to my gradually moving all "US naval" subcategories to "United States Navy" and "British" subcategories to "Royal Navy"? --Rlandmann 04:05, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Categories for ships and boats

I'm sure that this has been discussed before, but I think it's worth revisiting. The category hierarchy under Category:Water vessels has separate categories for Category:Ships and Category:Boats. There is a similar dichotomy under Category:Water transport for Category:Ship types and Category:Boat types. This dichotomy is (1) arbitrary, because neither "ship" and "boat" has a single fixed meaning; (2) unhelpful, because it complicates the hierarchy below as you have to figure out what types go in what category (and what types in both). I think the organization would benefit from a single category of vessels, and another of vessel types. Comments? Gdr 08:43, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)

I discussed this with User:Dave souza recently, don't remember exactly where though. For me the overriding concern is to keep category names simple and obvious; "vessel" could mean almost anything, and even "water vessel" includes bathtubs. :-) so while it's fine as a member of the hierarchy, it seems like bureaucratic sadism to make "water vessels" a category that everybody has to use a lot. In practice, 99% of the objects in question are obviously either ships or boats (nobody is going to call an aircraft carrier a "boat", except disparagingly :-) ), and for the remainder, it works to make an arbitrary decision, or put them in both if there's an intractable disagreement. Look around the category system, some of the names are stretching all the way across the page because people are trying to include comprehensive documentation in the category name. Are categories redirectable? That might be one way to cover the options. Stan 16:57, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Categories can't be redirected at present. I agree that "Water vessels" is not the way to go; indeed it would be nice to cut out that layer of the category hierarchy altogether. The Chambers English Dictionary gives "any floating craft" as the third meaning of "ship" so I suggest using Category:Ships for both ships and boats, and Category:Ship types for types of ships and boats. Gdr 17:38, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)

Dinghies as a subcategory of ships? People would look at us funny. :-) But seriously, I think that even though the ship/boat distinction in categories looks untidy, it will correspond better with what editors are thinking when they go to assign categories. Stan 05:21, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What about submarines? I know that they're generally "boats" in the parlance of most (all?) navies, but will people look for them there? --Rlandmann 06:05, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Category:Submarines is a sub-category of both Category:Ships and Category:Boats. If the consensus is to separately classify ships and boats, I'm happy to go along with that. But it would be a shame if the distinction started to replicate itself all the way down the hierarchy: "Museum boats", "British boats", "US naval boats", "US naval boats of World War II", etc. (It might not happen because there are so few notable boats, but it only takes one to make a category.)

Submarines are called "boats" by tradition, probably because the earliest ones were boat-sized - crews of 10, etc. Having them as a subcat of boats isn't critically necessary, but is a handy bit of navigation for someone who's unsure. Stan 13:30, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Anyway, I tidied out Category:Water vessels. Would anyone object if I deleted it and moved Category:Boats and Category:Ships up one level to Category:Water transport? Gdr 09:22, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

OK by me. Stan 13:30, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Agreed: Having tried out Water vessels it's turned out to be an ugly answer to this problem which was discussed under Category talk:Ships. Merging ships and boats is my preferred option; logically Boats might be the better main heading, but Ships is more complete and already has too many layers of sub-sub-categories. Noting that the Chambers' definition supports Ships as the parent category, here are my suggestions:

Delete Category:Water vessels: first re-categorise any pages or categories directed to it.
Change the parent category of Boats to Ships, and add a redefinition of what boats includes - or delete boats as above. Boats could be restricted to be small vessels - but this invites hidden sub-categories, which should be avoided...
Avoid hidden sub-sub-categories. It's not intuitive to look for submarines under Ships by type, especially when other ship types are on the main level. For the uninitiated the category structure is a hindrance: at present you can go layers down to find one article. My preference would be to have all main types on the top layer as a sub-category of ships. A workaround would be to have a list with the heading giving links to hidden categories, but this would have to be manually updated.
Accept that articles can have a use for more than one category. Scottish steamships is useful for relating their history to Category:Scotland, but irrelevant to Category:Ships where they belong in Steamships without further sub-categorisation.
Wherever appropriate, try to get articles off Ships main page and into appropriate sub-categories: there are a whole lot of USS ships which presumably should be under naval ships somewhere.

Take these as ideas from a beginner with a pay-per-minute dial-up connection and a preference for not having to click a lot of times to find what you want - dave souza 12:53, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just want to second about layers of subcategory - to me the ideal size of a category is 30-60 articles, basically a screenful. If the Peruvians only ever had one battleship, say, it's not an affront to national honor just to leave the article in Category:Battleships. A little study and calculation will give us a pretty good idea of how big a category will get in a "complete" WP; if we average 10 subcats and 30 articles in a category, then three clicks get one to 30,000 articles, which is the most awesome nautical encyclopedia in existence. (Comment by User:Stan Shebs)

I'd still make a case for (hypothetical category) "Peruvian battleships". One feature of the Category system that seems sadly under-utilised is the way that Category pages can hold links to provide additional navigation through the tree. So the "Peruvian battleships" Category page could hold links to other nations' battleships - and better still, this could be implemented with a Template. To see an example of what I'm talking about, see Category:Australian aircraft. "Peruvian battleships" could similarly hold direct, one-click links to "Peruvian destroyers" and "Peruvian cruisers" as well... --Rlandmann 23:12, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Responding to Dave souza:

Agree. Done.
Agree. (But not done yet.)
Disagree. We have at least four schemes for categorizing ships: by type (schooners, submarines), by era (American Civil War, World War II), by nationality (French ships, Spanish ships), and by miscellaneous attributes (Museum ships, shipwrecks). It seems wrong to me to lump these schemes together, so that Shipwrecks are next to Spanish ships and Sloops. In particular if they were all moved up to Category:Ships there would be about 60 sub-categories. But I'm willing to be persuaded. See Category:History for another subject area organized like this.
In the particular case of Scottish steamships I am neutral, but I disagree in general. I think it needs to depend on the relative sizes of the categories. If there are only 10 steamships it makes little sense to further categorize them, but if there are 100 steamships I think it does, in which case Scottish might be a sensible sub-category.
Agree. But someone has to do the work! I moved about 50 articles out of Category:Ships and into the right place. Maybe you can help with the rest?

Gdr 15:18, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

Thanks for the progress.

3. this is something I'd like to look at and think about, but to me it's not intuitive at the moment: for example, why naval ships and not merchant ships? I'll have to work at understanding this.

4. in the particular case, Queen Marys (2 of them) are tucked away in Scottish steamships because of relevancy to Scottish history, but other RMS's are on the main list: for general users I'd think RMS, PS etc. are better subdivisions. I didn't set up Scottish steamships, and have wondered if Scottish ships will work better for Category:Scotland. If you don't mind, I'll think it over and perhaps add categories to these articles.

5. will do. The weekend phone rates are cheaper, will tackle some then.

p.s. there may be more boats around than some expect: I'm just thinking about doing articles about some puffers and the Vital Spark - "the smertest boat in the tred" - dave souza 22:03, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

3. Era can sometimes be harder to define, since the career of a naval vessel may span several major conflicts and it might be better to leave this as a "secondary" classification that could be added if and when relevant. On the other hand, it could be arbitrarily set as the decade of the ship's launch or commissioning (French destroyers 1930-1939). In either case, it could converge at "Ships by era" or "Naval ships by era".

I think it's probably best for Miscellaneous attributes to remain directly under ships - it's better than "Ships by miscellaneous attributes" :)

"Merchant ships" would make a logical parallel Category branch. --Rlandmann 23:35, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Better move fast then - Category:Merchant ships exists, but is empty and Gdr listed it for deletion today. I don't have a strong opinion either way; there is parallelism, but its subcats would be under type or nationality also, so not much "value-add". Stan 03:41, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

back to 2. - having looked through the ships sub-categories, I now feel that Boats should become a sub-category of Ships, and should continue to contain sub-categories of anything people might go to Boats for, thus giving an alternative route to the categories for canal boats, submarines, tugs, corvettes etc. as well as dinghies and rowing boats. In addition, Categories: Boat types and Ship types should also appear as sub-categories of Ships. Any comments? By the way, Category:Scottish ships fits nicely into Category:Scotland and Category:British ships (under Ships by nationality), and it's my intention to move the articles over from Category:Scottish steamships shortly. Merchant ships seems well enough covered in Ships by type - dave souza 20:32, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Proper sorting

Since many ships with the same names are also the same types of ships (i.e., all Whipples are destroyers), to ensure they are properly sorted, I suggest that we use the pipe trick and number each ship. So the first Whipple would be Category:U.S. Navy destroyers|Whipple 1. The second Whipple would be Whipple 2. This works even if the names jump ship type, when they are of the same era. Unless anyone objects, I'll add this standard to the Project page.

That's certainly workable. Another trick is to add leading zeros, since lexigographic sort on DD-069 and DD-217 does what you want, when just DD-69 would not. Stan 05:13, 5 Sep 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)

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TheBestLinks.com talk:WikiProject Ships

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paddle steamer Waverley

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

paddle steamer Waverley

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

Categories

Categories for ships and boats

Proper sorting

Renamed/reflagged ships

Related links

Discussion

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