Template talk:Infobox ship begin/Archive 6

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Returning to formatting

A while ago there was discussion about formatting of the infobox that is used on so many ship articles; see above and WT:SHIPS archive 34. The discussion was initially about formatting the table that contains the various infobox ship templates, {{Infobox ship begin}}, {{Infobox ship image}}, {{Infobox ship career}}, {{Infobox ship characteristics}}, and even unrelated infoboxes like {{Infobox NRHP}} and {{Infobox lighthouse}}.

The original discussions were the result of a simple change to {{Infobox ship begin}} that added the code |+ {{PAGENAME}}. That change simply copied the text of the article title into the table's caption field (|+). There were complaints about formatting and about the way the change was made and then reverted. I'm hoping to avoid a lot of that.

Since that discussion, I have been adding properly formatted captions to many ship-article infoboxes because the of the accessibility argument. A recent spate of edits undoing that work has led me here.

Several of the complaints about the original were related to the somewhat mindless way the article's title was used as the caption: no formatting, no display options. I think that I have addressed those complaints with changes that I have made to {{Infobox ship begin/sandbox}}.

In the past, {{Infobox ship begin}} has not had any parameters. I have created a new parameter, |infobox caption=, which is used to control the display of a table caption at the top of the infobox. The parameter usage is like this:

• |infobox caption= – When |infobox caption= is empty or omitted, {{Infobox ship begin/sandbox}} does not display a table caption at the top of the infobox (compatibility mode).
• |infobox caption=yes – When |infobox caption= is assigned the value yes, {{Infobox ship begin/sandbox}} copies the article title to the infobox table's caption field. If the article name is a proper ship's name (<prefix> <name> <disambiguator>) then the caption will get the proper ship-name formatting. The article title must begin with a known prefix – see {{ship prefix}}.
• |infobox caption=nodab – When |infobox caption= is assigned the value nodab, {{Infobox ship begin/sandbox}} copies the article title up to the parenthetical disambiguator to the infobox table's caption field. The disambiguator is not included in the infobox table caption. The article title must begin with a known prefix.
• |infobox caption=caption – When |infobox caption= is assigned any other value, that value is copied to the infobox table's caption. Formatting is the responsibility of the editor.

I have tested this with a variety of ship articles. If the article currently requires {{italic title}}, {{italic title prefixed}}, or {{DISPLAYTITLE}} to correctly format the article title then those methods are still required. Because there is a modicum of standardization in the whay ship articles are named, it may be possible to extend this functionality at the least to ship class articles.

So, I think that this template answers the format and display control issues raised in the previous discussion; it answers, at least in part the accessibility issues as well.

Opinions? Questions? Comments?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:10, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

There having been no comments in the last month, I have synched {{Infobox ship begin}} from {{Infobox ship begin/sandbox}}, updated the template skeletons at Template:Infobox ship begin/doc, and documented the new parameter at Template:Infobox ship begin/Usage guide.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:40, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

"struck"

Hi, looking at today's featured article USS Lexington (CV-2), I am puzzled by the field named "Struck". At first I thought it meant struck by a torpedo or air attack or something, but actually the date is six weeks after it sank, so that can't be right. I would like to suggest that the meaning of this word is explained somewhere. 86.160.213.213 (talk) 01:45, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

The term "struck" is the date when the ship was struck from the Naval Vessel Register, which is mentioned in the article in the honors and legacy section. We might be able to link the term "struck" in the infobox to Naval Vessel Register, although there might be a better way to clarify - suggestions? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:03, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I believe that the correct term is stricken. Perhaps the template should be changed to reflect that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:07, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Aha. Would "Struck off register" be too long? 86.160.213.213 (talk) 03:24, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

IMHO yes. However, there's plenty of space in the article body to expand "Struck" into that. Tupsumato (talk) 04:28, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

you could always use {{abbr}} to show the full meaning of the term. Frietjes (talk) 15:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Or we could link the terms in the infobox. Displacement vs tonnage is always a problem.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:18, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

At {{abbr}} the documentation specifically states that the template is not a tool tip generator. <abbr> has specific semantic meaning within html. A little bit of css in a span can produce similar effects without the need for the <abbr> tag:

<span title="Definition goes here" style="border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help">term to be defined</span> → term to be defined

Linking to a definition of the term as I did with stricken is probably the better solution.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:43, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm generally against adding links to the "left" side of the infobox, but since some other infoboxes do it, perhaps it's acceptable. However, the links should be kept to the minimum and only used for very specific shipping terms. Tupsumato (talk) 15:46, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

see here, the abbr tag is the proper way to define abbreviations, but linking to an article may be useful as well if you want the reader to leave the article to find the definition of the term. linking to stricken is not helpful, since the word has multiple definitions without indication as to which of the definitions is being used in this context. you may also be interested in WP:LISTGAP by the way, given the excessive newlines between comments here. Frietjes (talk) 17:13, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Exactly, neither struck or stricken is an abbreviation so {{abbr}} shouldn't be used.

It would be nice if there were a way to have our cake and eat it too. I find that when editors include white space in their writings on a talk page, the writing is easier to understand. Not all talk-page writing is short terse comments. Sometimes editors go on at length on some topic. If editors are precluded from adding white space then we end up with a wall of text that is difficult to read so the writing doesn't get read.

We could all do as I have done here and wrap what we have to say in <p style="margin-left: 140px">...</p> tags but it's much easier to to simply indent with colons. Perhaps some clever developer can find another prefix character that would take the place of the colon and apply appropriate markup that doesn't violate WP:LISTGAP?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:53, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Infobox caption

Trappist the monk (talk · contribs) made an undiscussed change to the ship infobox by adding infobox caption as a suggested parameter to the infobox headers. He's started to add it to a number of French warships and, frankly, it looks like crap. Furthermore it's redundant to the name of the ship and moves the infobox a little bit down the page. As our infoboxes are already long enough to get the occasional complaint that they're too long and dominate the page, that's not a good thing. I'll be reverting his changes to the articles that I've watchlisted, but I'll leave French cruiser Sully alone so people can see what it looks like with the caption.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:37, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

It's not as though I've been silent and sneaky about this. I have done all of those things that Editor Sturmvogel 66 accuses me of doing and more. See the Returning to formatting topic above. There, I mentioned previous discussions, now archived here and here. I posted a notice of the above 'conversation' at WT:SHIPS.

None of these changes have been made without attempts at discussion. The accusation of undiscussed change is patently false.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:11, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

• Trappist is right, this was brought up last August, and nobody commented. I'm not sure it's necessary (now that I'm aware of it), and agree it looks a little awkward, but the premise of disputing it is indisputably (ha!) wrong. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:59, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I sit corrected, but I still think that it looks like crap.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:19, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Moved from Ship Infobox Revisions

Moved from Undiscussed change to Template:Infobox ship begin

One conversation in one place please.

On my talk page, Editor Sturmvogel 66 wrote, in part: I question the necessity or even the advisability of doing so as I believe that it does nothing to improve the article. I think that you believe that because you can see it. Were you visually impaired, you might believe otherwise. The change to add a caption to the table that encloses the series of templates that make up a ship article infobox is relatively benign to those of us who are sighted. Yep, it pushes the infobox down a few pixels (on my monitor and Sully, it moves the upper infobox boarder down until it's about in line with the top of the tall characters in the second line of lede text).

Adding the caption puts the ship infobox into compliance with MOS:INFOBOX. Here's the important bit:

• The template should have a large, bold title line. Either a table caption or a header can be used for this. It should be named the common name of the article's subject but may contain the full (official) name; this does not need to match the article's Wikipedia title, but falling back to use that (with the {{PAGENAME}} magic word) is usually fine. It should not contain a link. – (fourth bullet point under Consistency between infoboxes)

In this archive discussion, a couple of editors pointed out that the caption, and not the header, is the correct mechanism for allowing those who use screen readers to go directly to any of the tables in a page. And, the ship info box is nothing more than a table.

MOS:INFOBOX suggests using the article title for infobox captions. That idea was peremptorily dismissed for use on ship infoboxes. That got me to |infobox caption= as part of {{Infobox ship begin}} with its several options. Now editors can add captions without knowing anything about wikitable syntax; editors are happy, MOS:INFOBOX is happy, screen reader users are happier, and the general reading public is oblivious.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:31, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I just checked a couple of dozen recent GAs and a couple of FAs and not one of those articles uses infobox caption. That's from Biology, Architecture, Video Games, Aviation, TV, Sports, and Music. What is common in all of the infoboxes used by these projects is that the name field is above the picture or logo and is very prominent. Our name field is below the picture and is much less prominent. So adding a caption to the infobox is duplicating information already present which is probably my biggest reason for disliking this change. Then there's the look of the caption. Many of our ship names are short, only 4-6 characters long, and they leave a lot of extra whitespace above the infobox that unbalances the article to my eyes. This is not a problem in the infobox because the name is balanced by the name header to its left. So do we delete the name field entirely in favor of the caption, or do we keep both? Thoughts, comments?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:26, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm absolutely against removing the name field as it is also used to indicate former names. Tupsumato (talk) 06:46, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Depending on the series of names and ownerships involved, I can see that. If you've got a series of ship career infoboxes then you'd need the name field to show the progression. However, should we continue to display it for single-owner ships if we've got an infobox caption? I see no reason to do so as it's redundant and unnecessarily adds an extra line to the infobox. I'd be very curious to see how the other projects are implementing this, if any are doing so at all. My exceedingly cursory check didn't turn up any examples.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 07:55, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Sully

Sully
Sister ship Gloire in 1913
History
France
Namesake	Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully
Builder	Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, La Seyne
Laid down	24 May 1899
Launched	4 June 1901
Completed	June 1904
Fate	Ran aground, 7 February 1905

{{infobox flag}} has a structure similar to infobox ship. As infobox ship does, infobox flag begins and ends with table markup {| ... |}, has caption markup |+ that displays either {{{name}}} or defaults to {{PAGENAME}}, and contains multiple subtemplates. See FA Flag of Japan.

{{Infobox coin}} like most infoboxes that use metatemplate {{infobox}} can display a caption and / or a header. See FA Walking Liberty half dollar.

Richard Cantillon, BAE Systems, Folding@home, Oil shale are other FAs that have infoboxes that use table captions so, while captions are in the minority, they are not all that uncommon.

I think that when the ship has been known by one name for all of its existence, then |name= is redundant when the infobox has a caption that is the ship's name – there is no requirement for the caption to be the ship's name. When a ship has had multiple names, the other names can be listed collectively in |name= of a single {{infobox ship career}} or singly in each additional {{infobox ship career}}.

There is support for a header inside the infobox boarder. I've hacked part of Sully's infobox to illustrate that. However, headers inside the boarder are not captions so they don't benefit screen reader users.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:41, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that most of the other infoboxes generally use the name as a header. I think that the header looks better because the short names like Sully isn't lost in a sea of whitespace in the upper right-hand corner, but I get that it's not as friendly to screen readers, much like the semi-colon that I sometimes see used in lieu of headers for footnotes and bibliographies. Is it possible to provide a background matching the header in the table caption? What do people think?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 11:27, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Sully

empty infobox; caption has background color css.

It isn't clear to me how bold black text gets lost in a field of white. I have no problem seeing the caption at Sully. I could be wrong, but I don't think that it's possible to change the background color of the caption to be different from what it is. It's possible to change the background color of the text itself, but idon't think that's quite what you want. I don't know of a way to stretch the background size so that it's the 300px width of the table cells regardless of the width of the text itself.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:31, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

To state my opinion regarding this change to the infobox, I am not entirely against it — it does not look bad. However, its use has to be agreed and instructed to the project participants. IMHO, with existing ships it should be the current name without any prefixes. However, should we allow USS etc. for commissioned naval ships and such, and perhaps RMS and the like for historical vessels? Certainly not MS/MV or other generic prefixes. Also, no pennant numbers. What about foreign ships that do not use a naval prefix? Or should we just strictly follow the format in the |name= field? For non-existing ships, the name shown in the header should be either the last or the most well-known, depending on the context. That would probably cause some conflicts, but unlikely anything that could not be solved through discussion. Tupsumato (talk) 12:04, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

1. For existing, non-military ships, caption should be current name without prefix: MV Whatever Name → |infobox caption=''Whatever name''
2. military ships whose owner nations use prefixes then caption should include prefixes: HMAS Whatever Name (N03) → |infobox caption=nodab
3. military ships with hull number identifiers then caption should include hull numbers: USS Whatever Name (CVW-27) → |infobox caption=yes
4. military ships whose article title include launch year disambiguator: HDMS Whatever Name (1854) → |infobox caption=nodab
5. military ships whose owner nations do not use prefixes then caption should is just the name: Antiguan aircraft carrier Whatever Name (AAC-34) → |infobox caption=''Whatever Name'' (AAC-34)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:31, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

We do not need it. It leads to articles with the ship name as the article title, followed by the ship name at the top of the infobox, the ship name immediately under the photo, the ship name again as the first line under the career banner, and the ship name in the first line of the article. It is not needed; in no way should it be mandated. Kablammo (talk) 19:22, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Who said anything about mandates? If there is any 'mandate' it comes from MOS:INFOBOX; relevant section quoted above. If a ship's name is used as the infobox caption, there is no need for |Ship name= in {{Infobox ship career}} to have a value except when the ship had multiple names in its career or when the infobox has multiple {{Infobox ship career}} templates; see the Sully example at right. There is no requirement that an infobox caption be the ship's name, you are free to put any text in the caption that you think appropriate.

Display of an article's subject as the title, in first sentence of the lede, and as the infobox's header or caption is common across the whole of en.Wikipedia. If you object to that, this place is probably not the correct forum.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:39, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I have seen someone add the name and take the position it was required. (I have not been able to find the diff yet.) And no doubt someone would make automated edits to add it across thousands of ship articles.

I think you are right about the broader issue. Two articles recently on, or connected to, the main page show how useless (and even ugly) constant repetition of the article name can be: Vannevar Bush and The Psycho Ex-Wife. Kablammo (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

As far as I know, there are no 'required' parameters in any of the ship infobox templates. If there are, we should modify the templates to, at the least, add maintenance categories so that those parameters can be added or repaired.

I would think that if the multiple name issue is considered offensive by the general editor population, then steps are being taken to remedy that. Are such steps being taken?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:41, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I just stumbled across Fairmile H landing craft. This article has two ship class infoboxes. To discover which infobox is which, one must read into the general characteristics section where the identity is listed in |Ship type=. It would be much better if these infoboxes had captions.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:52, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The | Name= parameter also works within the Infobox ship class overview section. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:37, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

{{Infobox ship class overview}}. Yep, |Name= is a possible solution ... for those of us who don't use screen readers.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:41, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Removal of non-breaking spaces in infoboxes

I noticed that User:Trappist the monk has been going around and removing non-breaking spaces from around × in the infoboxes. As a result, for example in the article Finnpusku there is a line break within the parenthesis that indicate the power rating of the main engines. Why is this preferrable to having non-breaking spaces? The infobox usage guide also instructs to put a non-breaking space around the × symbol. Tupsumato (talk) 04:27, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

An unintended edit. The purpose of the AWB rule that did that edit is to replace x with × and to standardize spacing. The vast majority of x or × in ship infoboxes occur near the beginning of a displayed line: they follow the |parameter name=, they follow <br />, they follow bullet points, and, as in this case, they follow a pipe. In these positions the html entity   has no value so the script removes it in favor of editor readability.

Thanks for catching that, I've amended the script so that Xs occuring later in the text are still replaced but   is not. I've reverted that edit and rerun the script on Finnpusku; the script properly ignored the  ×  it had previously changed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. Perhaps you could replace &nbsp; with {{nbsp}} in such instances or throw in that nowrap template... Tupsumato (talk) 17:09, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Ship armor/armour

I've noticed editors using both these fields for the same ship. If possible, make it so only one shows up at a time, to reinforce our intended usage: armor and armour are not to be used for separate kinds of protection, it's used to allow one infobox to cater to both British and American editors.

Example: USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) (before my fix). CapnZapp (talk) 11:43, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

made them now mutually exclusive and add Category:Pages using infobox ship with both armor and amour to see if there are any other instances. Frietjes (talk) 22:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Template:Infobox ship begin

Re Template:Infobox ship begin: How would "Ship tons burthen=" break the template? This must be the only template in which one can not do this. The tedious alternative is to add say "400 tons burthen" each time the template is used in an article. There must be a more elegant and efficient solution to this. Peter Horn User talk 19:09, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

The thing you are editing, the documentation, is a template skeleton. Its purpose is to allow editors to copy the skeleton into an article so that they don't have to retype it. What your changes do is prevent the template from recognizing the |Ship tons burthen= parameter. There is no parameter called |[[Builder's Old Measurement|tons burthen]]=.

To make the change to the parameter that I think you want to make, you must edit the template itself. The correct way to go about that is to propose the change at WT:SHIPS, gain a consensus for the change, and then implement it in the sandbox and when it is proved to be working, make the change to the live template.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:19, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

@Peter Horn: In template parameters, the part before the equals sign is the parameter name; it must be plain text without markup of any kind. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:40, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I think we have discussed wikilinking the parameters and if I recall correctly, editors have been generally against it. Tupsumato (talk) 19:54, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Linking parameters works well and proves use full in template:infobox locomotive, template:infobox train, Template:Infobox German railway vehicle and perhaps others. What is it about the structure of those that makes the linking of parameters possible? Peter Horn User talk 22:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Those infoboxes are no different from the ship infoboxes. But, if you look at the template skeletons at Template:Infobox locomotive#Sample lists of options for example, you will see that none of those parameters are wikilinked. The markup for those parameters that are wikilinked in the templates you mentioned is done in the markup code for the templates themselves, not in their documentation.

Editor Tupsumato is probably correct that editors at WP:SHIPS have chosen to leave infobox parameters unlinked. You might search through the archived talk pages at WT:SHIPS for those discussions.

I'm going to revert your last edit to Template:Infobox ship begin/doc. Please don't add any other markup to the template skeletons.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:29, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, would a markup code be possible or feasible? Peter Horn User talk 00:08, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Of course adding markup to the template is possible. The question, as Editor Tupsumato pointed out, really is: does the WP:SHIPS community want to add markup like the [[Builder's Old Measurement|tons burthen]] wikilink to infobox ship?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:13, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Peter Horn should also be made aware that if such a change were approved, it would be done by editing Template:Infobox ship characteristics so that the lines

}}{{#if:{{{Ship tons burthen|}}}|<tr valign="top"><td>Tons burthen:</td><td>
{{{Ship tons burthen|}}}</td></tr>

became

}}{{#if:{{{Ship tons burthen|}}}|<tr valign="top"><td>[[Builder's Old Measurement|Tons burthen]]:</td><td>
{{{Ship tons burthen|}}}</td></tr>

and not in the manner that he attempted. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:39, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for setting me straight. Peter Horn User talk 16:03, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Depth versus draught

It seems that a common error by editors is to put the hull depth (one of the three principle numbers used in calculating the tonnage) under "draught". An example of this is the infobox for Taitsing (clipper) (yes, it's the same example as above, but there are others). Are there any instructions on exactly what information should go where in the infobox? If there are, how do we get editors to follow these instructions? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:03, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

There are fields for "depth" and "hold depth" in the full code, "hold depth" in the sample for sailing ships, and "depth" for "commercial vessels". (Why can't we just call them merchant ships?) Kablammo (talk) 23:37, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Template:Infobox_ship_begin/Usage_guide?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:59, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Looks like all the problems arise from the "shortened" version of the template for "age of sail" articles. This also explains why I can type in a field for "tonnage" and it works - because it is in the full template. This might solve my problem - but I'd guess there are still going to be a lot of well meaning editors out there who are getting it wrong.

ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 00:21, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Tons Burthen, Gross Registered Tonnage, Net Registered Tonnage, etc.

Am I missing the point, or is the template deficient in how the tonnage of a vessel is described? Tons Burthen became obsolete in 1849. Therefore many ships that have Wikipedia articles about them are measured in Gross Registered Tonnage and Net Registered Tonnage. An example of the incorrect representation of information is in Taitsing (clipper) where the heading says "Tons Burthen" and the entry gives the Net Registered Tonnage. This misuse of terminology provides an apparent invalidation of the information in every article of this type. I appreciate that the subject of tons and tonnage in all the various permutations are confusing (look at The Cutty Sarks's own website [1] for an example of experts getting in a muddle - converting the GRT into tonnes) - but I think this part of the template needs attention.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:56, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Not only GRT, but burthen (both the slighty different UK and US calculations) has been confused with displacement, even by talented and competent writers like Nathaniel Philbrick.[2] I removed the displacement field from dozens of ocean liners (GT or GRT was meant); I and others have removed units of mass from hundreds of articles on RN ships of the Age of Sail (the "burthen" field had conversion templates for metric and imperial tons), with hundreds more to go. (Volunteers, anyone? Start with line-of-battle ships of 1800-09 and work back, and when that is finished, go to frigates and smaller vessels.) Many of our articles on historic merchant ships use the tonnage field to put in gross tonnage, which as defined in that article, was not in general use until 1982. (Where an older source uses gross tonnage, or says that a vessel "grossed" x tons, what it is referring to is gross register tonnage.) But the confusion is with the writer, not the template. Many fine ship editors came to Wikipedia assuming that tonnage was weight, found out otherwise, and no longer confuse the terms. Kablammo (talk) 23:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

OK - got that - but the template for a sailing ship only seems to give you a heading "tons burthen" - there is no heading "tonnage" - though you seem to be able to force the template to show this by just typing it in. After struggling to learn something about the measurement of ships, have I got another battle to learn every wrinkle of templates? It just would be easier if there was a template wizard who also understood ships who could alter the template. Or would that make every info box already completed fall to bits? (Sorry if the exasperation shows through in this!)

ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:54, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

You may be best served by making your own standard template which leaves out unused fields. Wikipedia ship articles are full of templates incorporating fields such as electronic countermeasures, ice class, deck clearance, sensors, etc. which have nothing do with the ship in question.

At one time there was a simpler template. An editor who was a marine architect cautioned against adding too much to the template. But now we have an incredibly detailed template, which has the effect of encouraging incorrect entries and extraneous information. Take the measure of size-- would it not be easier to just use "tonnage" and put after the value the type of tonnage, such as dwt, burthen, displacement, etc.? (Purists may object to a displacement figure being added to "tonnage", but it is not uncommon elsewhere.) And do we really need infoboxes longer than the text? Kablammo (talk) 15:06, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Material/method of Construction

(Hopefully my last comment about this template....)

There seems to be no field for the material that a ship is made out of. This seems to me to be very relevant - obviously it pretty much all started with wood (ignoring leather covered boats, like a Currach, as that is not a ship), then iron, composite, steel, etc. More recently there have been fibreglass (GRP) minehunters and warships with steel hulls and aluminium superstructures.

Then we have the method of construction. For wooden ships that would include carvel, and diagonally planked vessels (I bet there are more methods than that). Steel ships are rivetted or welded.

Relevant to my current interests, I have been looking at the surge in building Composite ships in the second half of the 1860s. Many people seem to think that the only examples were clippers like the Cutty Sark - but there were many more than this class of ship, including quite a few steamships. It would be appropriate if ships of this era could show their construction material in the infobox.

I appreciate that this could grow into one great monster, if we got into copper fastenings below the waterline and galvanised iron above (that's permitted in the Lloyd's rules for composite construction).

Am I alone in thinking that "construction material/method" is an omission? What has to be done to fix it? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:00, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Details like this can best be handled in the article. (But then again I think much of the content of infoboxes can best be handled in text, including service history, renaming, and ownership.) In addition to your example, consider Comus-class corvette and HMS Endeavour (the hull construction of the latter was significantly more complex than the summary in our article). Kablammo (talk) 21:27, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Two ships at the bottom of the... article

I've placed this template on two articles on cy:

• cy:HMS Victory
• cy:Amoco Cadiz

and in both, the infobox is right at the bottom of the page. It's also causing havoc with blank spaces in the article text (eg following the title). Can someone take a look please, and add it to iw. Thanks, Llywelyn2000 (talk) 19:07, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. Ship info boxes are wikitables that include templates; you have to close the wikitable: |}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:26, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

;-) Brilliant! What a quick mover! Many thanks! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 19:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

SS Kroonland

I can't figure out what's wrong with this article: the infobox is split with half on the left and half on the right. DrKiernan (talk) 18:26, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The usual culprit for me is a missing closing pair of brackets, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. I cleaned up the infobox minorly, but I will point out that use of bullets is discouraged as it emphasizes those pieces of info over all others. Use a plainlist template or breaks to put entries on multiple lines. As the infobox is supposed to be a summary of the ship's career and characteristics I'd delete all those changes in route, ports of registry and operators if all that info is in the mainbody, as it should be.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:20, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Some recent change to the infobox (I think) broke how it handles generic bulleted lists. {{plainlist}} works and I have added that to the infobox so that for the time being the page displays correctly. For accessibility, lists are preferred over breaks (<br />).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:31, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! DrKiernan (talk) 19:38, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

DrKiernan and Trappist the monk, basically, it's the HTML tidy backend which is trying to "fix the html". in case you are interested, the other way to fix this (and still have bulleted lists) is to remove the newlines between the subboxes like this. Frietjes (talk) 18:02, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Probably best to leave the lists in the {{plainlist}} templates because bulleted lists are discouraged at Template:Infobox ship begin/Usage guide#Diverse stylistic issues.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:08, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

italic title ignored

The documentation says you can use |italic title=no but this parameter is ignored. In USS Arizona salvaged artifacts I had to place {{DISPLAYTITLE:USS ''Arizona'' salvaged artifacts|noerror}} after the infobox templates to get the wanted result. |noerror prevents an error message when a previous DISPLAYTITLE is overridden. I got the error message twice when I tried to place DISPLAYTITLE at the top, because both {{Infobox ship begin}} and {{Infobox ship career}} add a DISPLAYTITLE. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:21, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

That |italic title=no is, if I understand it, for a particular case for a particular article – RNLB Lord Southborough (Civil Service No. 1) (ON 688). Without there is a sufficient number of those kinds of ships, I think that the parameter should be removed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:48, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Removing italic title from the documentation and instead instruct to use {{DISPLAYTITLE:...|noerror}} after the infobox is OK by me. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:09, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Whats this nonsense in the infobox of several ship articles?

"Failed to render property ship class: Property not found for label 'ship class' and language 'en'"

Tried to find the cause. No success. But text redirects people here.Antiochus the Great (talk) 18:34, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships#Wikidata .E2.80.93 again

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:40, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for the careless renaming of the "ship class" property at Wikidata (now named "vessel class"). I will follow up to ensure this cannot possibly happen again in the future. --Laddo (talk) 22:56, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: As you know, this recent problem occurred because this template obtained the value from the Wikidata property ship class using the text label "ship class" (|WD=ship class in paramline sub-template). Though this makes the template easier to read, it is vulnerable to careless property renaming: Wikidata guarantees that its numerical IDs are stable (see here) while labels, aliases and descriptions may change anytime.

I have no control over the code of the function translating the property label ({{#property}}), I cannot make it scan property aliases and even if it was, I could never prevent aliases from changing.

Thus to prevent re-occurrence of an issue like the one above, I suggest that we change the template using either of these two schemes:

1. (|WD=P289 <!-- vessel class --> - simple but increases the size of the template
2. (|WD=P289 <noinclude><!-- vessel class --></noinclude> - more cryptic, but smaller transclusion

Do you agree with the concept of that change? I would test it carefully, of course. Laddo (talk) 14:22, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate what you are attempting to do but I don't think that either of these is a good solution to the problem. I think that this just shifts the burden of a fix from Wikidata (where it belongs) onto the consumer. The problem is Wikdata's to solve. Neither enwiki nor the other members of the Wikimedia family should be solving this problem.

If labels are so vulnerable to careless renaming, why are they not at least marginally protected? What about aliases? Can we get to P289 by creating an alias to 'vessel class'? Does an alias refer to a wikidata thing regardless of what that thing's label is? Does it maintain its connection if the label changes? I would hope that it does. If the combination of label + description must be unique and alias is another way of referring to that unique combination then we ought be be able to have meaningful aliases in any language that uses the labeled thing. Maybe?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:26, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi again @Trappist the monk:, this event highlighted unforeseen weaknesses in the remote access API. I admit it is my fault, since I got notified of the change of the property name and failed to foresee its predictable impact. Your points are hitting the target. For clarification (sorry for the long explanation):

• Wikidata is a database; it is organized around numerical IDs that cannot change. Their associated subjects represent concepts, whose ID is stable from the moment that the subject gets created.
• Items bearing IDs starting with "Q" are "main space" (often matching WP articles) and can be "merged" into other items (if it is later found that they actually represented the same concept), and a redirect remains behind that will remain forever with the WD ID that ceased to exist.
• However this concept does not apply for "properties" (IDs starting with "P", representing "characteristics" or "attributes"), there a few of these, they are unique and, though their meaning can evolve slightly over time (e.g from "ship class" to "vessel class"), their fundamental purpose does not change and remote users can keep using properties in a stable fashion.
• So a fundamental difference between WD and WP is that WD textual labels are perceived as display-level only, thus not critical: there is no scheme to ensure that labels cannot be changed, or removed, or changed to aliases, or redirects or whatever. The ID stably designates the associated concept, while labels and descriptions can fluctuate without control.

I guess most other users of the WD API had no problem because they are using WD IDs as their access keys. The associated Ship template got hit because it was using a textual label, relying on a service from Wikibase Client to keep locating the right property despite changes to text labels. This is radically outside of the fundamental philosophy of WD access, and likely the main reason why it was not detected earlier.

I will raise the issue to a larger audience at WD, but even if the #property service was looking into aliases, it would still not guarantee that a property could be found persistently from a static text label. I believe that the only coherent and persistent scheme is to use WD IDs; using proper comments would help making them understandable and represent an adequate solution.

I won't push further if you prefer otherwise, but let me know. Thanks - Laddo (talk) 01:56, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that Wikidata must have reliable, natural language access to its data. I can't imagine how that is not possible. Except for you, I get the impression from my few interactions with Wikidata editors, that the concept of a natural language interface is unimportant.

I don't know where to go from here. There have been some concerns voiced at WT:SHIPS regarding the wikidata experiment in {{infobox ship characteristics}}. I'm inclined to allow your experiment to continue and I think that now that the tempest has subsided those editors who did express a concern have gone on to other things.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:40, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Postal addresses

As https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/ says under Military addresses are just like regular addresses, countries may have separate addressing systems for military objects, including navy ships, for example HMS Example has a postal address BFPO, BF1 4FB. Is the template capable to display such data? (I suppose non-military ships may also have their own special addresses, but they might be more conventional, possibly redirecting through the ship owner's office.) --CiaPan (talk) 12:29, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Request for comments on "edit in Wikidata" links, for templates using Wikidata

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Wikidata#Edit in Wikidata links. Thanks. Evad37 [talk] 01:38, 5 June 2015 (UTC)