Template talk:Hijacked ship

Table

Why does this template not consist of a whole table, with header row? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Because it is meant to be used multiple times in a list for each entry. -- Cat ^chi? 19:11, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. Thanks. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:19, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

hCalendar microformat

Unresolved

I've added hCalendar microformat mark-up to the template; but trying to use {{Start date}} breaks it. Please can you either make the template accept {{Start date}} as input, or put it in the template's output. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:35, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I can make that with trivial effort. But why do you want to use that? {{Start date}} uses the US dating style which the vast majority of the world does not. The ISO usage lets you modify the date display from your settings. -- Cat ^chi? 19:55, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

For reasons outlined at hCalendar, microformat & {{Start date}}; and as used on thousands of articles already. {{Start date}} did formerly respect user date-display preferences, but the linked dates were removed as part of the on-going war on date formatting, about which I am ambivalent; and waiting for the dust to settle. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:47, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I see. If you do not mind, I also want that dust cloud to settle. I am completely uninterested in that war. That one was fought years ago and a compromise was reached. That is the ISO date formating and user settings. Having said all that, I personally dislike the US way of date writing (mm dd yyyy). It is important for this article to be human readable just as much as it should be machine readable. The default should be the international standard, not the US one.

In addition the template does not create clickable dates. I do not want to loose that functionality.

- Cat ^chi? 22:06, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

If you mean to not implement {{Start date}}/ the microformat; then yes, I do mind. We should go ahead with that, and whatever consensus on date formatting and linking is arrived at (without either of us needing to be involved in that debacle) will be applied to {{Start date}}. To delay doing so because of a preference for one form of formatting (or linking) over another is to become involved in said debacle. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly oppose being forced to use US dates. I also whole heartedly oppose loosing the link function (linking of individual dates). Please do not demand me to remove exiting functionality from this template. -- Cat ^chi? 16:46, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Whoa there! I'm not forcing or demanding anything - but I will ask for a third opinion. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion

I found this question on the WP:3O page. It appears that there are two issues, namely date autoformatting and date linking. Here are my opinions:

• Autoformatting, when it works, is okay, but it doesn't work reliably and articles (and the templates in them) should therefore not rely on it. If improvements cause it to break, then I don't think this is a serious loss. The dates can be typed in pre-formatted. (The ISO/little-endian style is fine with me.)
• Linking all dates without any regard to context is bad. No editor can possibly claim that the fact that a ship was hijacked exactly (for example) one hundred years to the day after Ford Motor Company built the first Model T has anything to do with the highjacking. Mindless, context-free WP:OVERLINKING is very strongly discouraged. I would remove this "feature" from this template no matter what other changes are or are not wanted.

Note that these issues are also directly addressed at MOS:UNLINKDATES, which is widely supported (see the recent RFCs) but opposed by a vocal minority. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes with 10 support votes and 3 oppose ones! On this site the MOS recommended including such linking until late august this year. I do not see a significant community discussion warranting a change in such a long standing feature of this site. I'll be challenging the change to the MOS now. -- Cat ^chi? 21:30, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Have you looked at the Date Linking RfCs, linked to from your watchlist? Our Featured Article and Lists have already integrated this change months ago. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Also note that maintaining the date links would impair the ability of these ship articles to attain Featured status. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:11, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

The RfCs are here (where you will, for example, find five people supporting routine linking of day-month dates, and more than 100 opposing it) and here. A new one, which considers codifying the international date format, will probably interest White Cat more than the first two. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

By using {{Start date}}, as I proposed above, we would put this template outside the debate about which end of the egg to open date formatting; and put the formatting of the article's dates in line with whatever format is finally shown to have achieved consensus. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I am not seeking to get the list article to FLC status. It isn't a stable article by nature (there are developments with each passing day) so a FLC is out of the question.

As for the three RFC's linked.

• The first one would have to be fixed via Mediawiki so it has no bearing whatsoever on this template as is. If links are removed from ISO dates globaly thats fine. I strongly believe devs would make that change entirely optional as they have done so for all similar changes in the past. I want them click-able but others may feel differently. No reason to force either way.
• The second RFC is not even change anything. Each hijacking date is a historic event so there is a very good reason to link to each date.
• The third RFC has no conclusive results yet so it clearly does not apply.

In conclusion, I feel this 3O discussion only exists because Pigsonthewing is unwilling to compromise one bit from the things I am asking. Please do not disrupt the actual article writing process that utilizes this template.

-- Cat ^chi? 06:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Your allegations about my involvement are palpably fallacious and breach the various Wikipedia policies about which you have already been advised. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:46, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Just because the dates are historical does not mean that they are worth linking to. Most month-day and year articles are not much more than a collection of unfocused trivia that have nothing to do with the articles they linked from. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Cat, can you tell me how frequently you've clicked the month-day links in this article (not, of course, counting any links clicked since reading this question.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

As a matter of fact very frequently. It helps to check if any other significant event happened on the same day. -- Cat ^chi? 16:41, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

It helps to know whether something happened in some other year on the same date? Or it helps to know what happened with 24 hours of the hijacking? Can you give me an example of an event on the same date that you think is connected? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Revisiting

Now that date linking is not an issue, can we resolve this? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Flags

Is there any way to get this template to display the correct merchant flag for Bahamas registered ships - i.e. instead of ? Mjroots (talk) 12:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that can be arranged. Do you have a list of flags like that? I am concerned at the cases where a "civil" flag isn't available. -- Cat ^chi? 16:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Flags that know of that are affected are Bahamas, Malta, Singpore, United Kingdom. If a ship is owned and registered in these countries, both flags should be displaid. If a ship is owned elsewhere but registered in one of the above, the correct merchant flag should be displaid, not the flag of the country.

Country	Flag	Merchant
Bahamas
Malta
Singapore
United Kingdom

There may be others too. Mjroots (talk) 08:00, 12 December 2009 (UTC)