Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 11

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A Class review for SMS Von der Tann now open

Hi all, the A-Class review for SMS Von der Tann is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Parsecboy (talk) 00:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

This article was promoted on 20 September 2008. Thanks to all editors who participated. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:17, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

A Class review for SS Panaman now open

The A-Class review for SS Panaman is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! — Bellhalla (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

This article was promoted on 22 September 2008. Thanks to all editors who participated. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:17, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Anyone have access to The Times archive?

Does anyone have free access to The Times archive? It recently switched to a pay site after a long (and wonderful) free preview period. I'm interested in two articles that mention the ship SS Empire Simba which was scuttled off the UK in August September 1945 with chemical weapons aboard. Searching for "Empire Simba" (in quotes) at the archive brings up two articles: one from 7 September 1945, and one from 7 September 1970 (which seems to be in a "25 years ago today" type feature). I'm interested in details of Empire Simba's cargo, if available, like types of weapons, quantity, chemicals, etc. Also, were there others scuttled under similar circumstances? If the articles are short, an e-mailed screenshot would be fantastic, otherwise a summary (plus page number!) will be more than sufficient. Thanks in advance. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:30, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I do and can email you both. Can you email me with your email address please? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 14:38, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow. That was fast. E-mail sent. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

And replied to :) --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 14:53, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind doing some for me to fill out USS Constitution ? If The Times goes back to 1780 then likely there could be a lot of articles to look up. I could use some opposing POV's from the other side of the pond. --Brad (talk) 19:39, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Edward M. Cotter (fireboat)

I've done some major work to the content and images of this article and would like to get a review and suggestions for further expansion/improvements. Thanks! Shinerunner (talk) 10:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I rated the article as a B-class as it's nicely done. If you want a formal peer review you can request one @ Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Review. A bit more polishing and it should go GA. --Brad (talk) 17:57, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I've worked on it some more and nominated it for a Good Article review. Shinerunner (talk) 21:51, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The article has had a review for Good Article nomination and I've begun making the suggested changes. If anyone would like to review/contribute, it would be appreciated. Shinerunner (talk) 11:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The article has passed and is now listed as a Good Article! Shinerunner (talk) 00:06, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

A Class review for USS West Bridge (ID-2888) now open

The A-Class review for USS West Bridge (ID-2888) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! — Bellhalla (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

This article was promoted on 25 September 2008. Thanks to all editors who participated. — Bellhalla (talk) 18:01, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

"laid down"

If an article says a ship was "laid down" on a specific day, what specifically happened on that day?

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 05:49, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Well for a wooden ship, it means the day the first piece of the keel was laid down on the blocks, and for a steel/iron ship I believe it denotes the day the first piece of steel/iron was cut. Martocticvs (talk) 10:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

At least on all steel-built passenger ships whose construction I've followed, the date means the day the first section of the keel was laid in the dry-dock, just as it does with wooden ships. There might be some variations about this of course, leading to pleanty of confusion... -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 15:29, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Usually on a slipway, rather than in a dry-dock? David Biddulph (talk) 16:37, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge very few to no ships have been constructed on a traditional slipway during the past 20-30 years. -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 16:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't go that far. For instance, look at these pics: http://www.nassco.com/usn_dac/take3_gallery.html. Also, that shipyard at least makes a distinction between the start of construction — when the first piece of metal is cut, and the keel-laying — when the first pieces are assembled on the building ways, several months later. See http://www.nassco.com/usn_dac/take5_gallery.html for pictures from both ceremonies.

—WWoods (talk) 19:58, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

As said "to the best of my knowledge", which is at best patchy and based on a handful of European shipyards. ^_~ But returning to the proper point at hand, "laid down" as a field name to me sounds like when the keel is laid, be it in drydock or slipway, and not the actual beginning of construction (which can be very difficult to hunt down). -- Kjet (talk · contribs) 21:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Commons:Category:Keel laying has a couple images of some keel laying ceremonies. I've seen some first weld/first cut images, but I can't find them right now. --Dual Freq (talk) 16:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Quality assessment chart not updating ?

Anyone have a clue as to why Wikipedia:WikiProject_Ships/Assessment#Current_status is not updating while the scale on our main project page is? --Brad (talk) 20:13, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be fine now. Maybe it was fixed with PFM. --Brad (talk) 19:15, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Image needs replacement

Hello all...

An image used in the Boat building article, specifically Image:Boatconstruction.JPG, has a little bit of a licensing issue. The image was uploaded back when the rules around image uploading were less restrictive. It is presumed that the uploader was willing to license the picture under the GFDL license but was not clear in that regard. As such, the image, while not at risk of deletion, is likely not clearly licensed to allow for free use in any future use of this article. If anyone has an image that can replace this, or can go take one and upload it, it would be best.

You have your mission, take your camera and start clicking.--Jordan 1972 (talk) 01:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I threw this one on there in its place: Image:Schappledore3.jpg. The article could use more images, though, so the picture-adding needn't end there. --Fullobeans (talk) 05:46, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Royal Navy ship articles request

USS Constitution needs red link fill-ins for quite a few Royal Navy ships. Unlike the convenience of DANFS, I've not a clue as to where information on the ships can be obtained easily. The following ships need articles:

• HMS Levant
• HMS Santa Margaretta
• HMS Maidstone (1797)
• HMS Aeolus (1801)
• HMS Bonne Citoyenne
• HMS Pictou
• HMS Pique (1800)
• HMS Junon
• HMS Tenedos (1812)
• HMS Newcastle (1813)
• HMS Inconstant (1783)
• HMS Queen Victoria
• HMS Cambrian (1841)

In all cases I've tried to pinpoint the (year) of the ship by using the disambig pages when they exist. Now that I've listed them all, this seems almost overwhelming :) --Brad (talk) 19:14, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

HMS Levant (1813), HMS Bonne Citoyenne (1796), HMS Junon (1809), HMS Pictou (1813). The Santa Margaretta is perhaps HMS Santa Margarita (1779), a 38-gun fifth rate? No HMS Queen Victoria has ever served with the Royal Navy though, are you sure she was a commissioned warship? Working up articles shouldn't be a problem, but given the length of the list, may take a while! Benea (talk) 19:25, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

My source for the Queen Vicky says "HMS Queen Victoria, a ketch," and a Captain Parker supposedly was in command of the Santa Margaretta though it would seem to me that Santa Margarita is more likely the name. No hurry on the articles; just that they need to be sometime in the near future. --Brad (talk) 00:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep, Santa Margarita (an ex-Spanish prize) and Captain George Parker is your man. Still nothing on HMS Queen Victoria, but I've come across cases on DANFS where they've slipped up on similar things, and assigned the prefixes to non-commissioned ships, or got the name wrong somehow. Or is it in another source? Benea (talk) 00:48, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

My source for the names is: Martin, Tyrone G. (1980). A Most Fortunate Ship: A Narrative History of "Old Ironsides". The Globe Pequot Press. ISBN 0-87106-033-7. May I have your source on the Santa Margarita? I guess I'm going to have to add another footnote to the article for clarification. I dunno what to do about Queen Victoria other than add another footnote or remove the line completely. --Brad (talk) 01:29, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

J. J. Colledge's Ships of the Royal Navy (Template:Colledge has the details), p. 306 and Rif Winfield, British Warships of the Age of Sail 1714–1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates, pub Seaforth, 2007, ISBN 1-86176-295-X p. 213 for the Santa Margarite. But neither Colledge, nor Lyon and Winfield's The Sail and Steam Navy List has any mention of a Queen Victoria. If she did hit a ship named Queen Victoria, it seems that she wasn't a naval one. Maybe a merchant, or other civilian craft that an overzealous editor has slapped an 'HMS' in front of? Maybe just quietly omitting the prefix is the way to go? Benea (talk) 01:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

An 1800 list of ships I have handy lists Santa Margarita (36), captained by G. Parker, just to drop in another corroborative detail. As for the Queen Victoria, I've searched the archives of the Times and whilst I can find an article from November 1841 mentioning the Constitution and Potomac at Rio, there's no mention of any collision nor of any ship by that name. There were a few merchantmen or East Indiamen by that name, but they don't seem to have been anywhere near Brazil.

Digging further, there's an entry for June 29th 1841 saying that the Princess Victoria, from Liverpool, was reported arrived in Rio - so presumably a couple of months prior to that date. (There was definitely a Princess Victoria on the Calcutta-Cape Town-London run at the time, but this last one won't be her) Shimgray | talk | 16:57, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Martin is the only source I have that even mentions these two ships. Presumably he was referencing the logs of Constitution therefore I could see where misspellings or wording could have been the case. The Queen Victoria collision took place in late August 1841 and I would bet that she was Princess Victoria but was she a merchantmen ship? --Brad (talk) 20:25, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Whatever she was, she wasn't a warship! I'd place good money on her being a British merchantman, though she could well have been Queen Victoria - the Times wouldn't mention anything other than a major ship, so there'd certainly be others not listed. I'd suggest dropping the HMS and just saying "...collided with the Queen Victoria", or something. Shimgray | talk | 21:28, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

U-boats in italics?, again

In response to the discussion in Archive 10 (section 79) on putting U boat designations in italics [1]
I’ve had a look at about a dozen books from the library for this;

• 7 use italics (U-47)
• 5 don’t (U-47)
• No-one uses U- 47
• One (Kemp) uses non-italic for headings (U-47) but italics in the text (U-47), echoing the suggestion for pages here.

I hope that is of use. Xyl 54 (talk) 13:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

So it looks like we should use italics when writing the name of a U-boat in the U-nn style. — Bellhalla (talk) 20:39, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Convoy titles

Even though it's only peripherally related to WP:SHIPS, some editors may find the discussion of naming styles for World War II convoy articles of interest. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Updates to Template:WikiProject Ships

There have been some updates made to Template:WikiProject Ships today. Some improvements that had been discussed on the template's talk page should now be functioning.

• When the template is placed on a talk page in the Category, Image, or Template namespaces, it should auto-assess to the proper class.
• Even though B-Class checklist parameter names could be abbreviated in the template before (b1, B1, B-1, b-1 instead of having to type B-Class-1, for example), the template will now assess as the proper class regardless of the parameter style. (Previously, it would only return a B-Class if the parameters were spelled out in full, B-Class-1=yes, etc.)
• On a related note, when B-Class-3, B-Class-4, and B-Class-5 are set to "yes", the template will assess as C-Class regardless of whether B-Class-1 and B-Class-2 are set to "yes", "no" or undefined, but if all five are "yes", it will, of course, assess as B-Class.
• When using either the nested or small parameters, the template will now properly accept variations on "yes", like "y", "Y", etc.

— Bellhalla (talk) 20:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for getting that fixed when so many others had failed. --Brad (talk) 19:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Warship statistics: tonnage and/or number

Does anybody have good statistics or a good reference for the current number of maval vessels worldwide? These numbers, from the ship article, look like they could have come from Janes Fighting Ships, but I'm having a bear of a time trying to find a reference for them.

In 2002, there were 1,240 warships operating in the world, not counting small vessels such as patrol boats. The United States accounted for 3 million tons worth of these vessels, Russia 1.35 million tons, the United Kingdom 504,660 tons and China 402,830 tons.

By comparison, page 16 of this document gives some similar-ish numbers for 2004/2005.

Thanks,Haus^Talk 03:04, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

A Class review for SS Iowan now open

The A-Class review for SS Iowan is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! — Bellhalla (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The A-Class review for SS Iowan is still open and could benefit from additional reviewers. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:07, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This review closed as promoted. Thanks to all the reviewers who took the time to review. — Bellhalla (talk) 10:31, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for MS West Honaker now open

The A-Class review for MS West Honaker is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Bellhalla (talk) 11:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The A-Class review for MS West Honaker is still open and could benefit from additional reviewers. — Bellhalla (talk) 10:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

U-boat designations (notification)

I have proposed a change of title for all U-boat pages from "Unterseeboot...", as at present, to "German submarine...", for a variety of reasons (listed here and here), viz:

• "Unterseeboot..." effectively loses the page,
• Unterseeboot is a foreign term (the English word is "submarine", or "U-Boat"),
• Other submarine pages use, for example “Italian submarine...” or "French Submarine...",
• And other german warships use the same format, eg “German battleship…”.

The discussion is HERE. (Posted also at WT:MILHIST as suggested). Xyl 54 (talk) 12:21, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

SS Komagata Maru v. Komagata Maru

This article was created recently as the ship article for Komagata Maru incident, which I just re-titled from Komagata Maru as that's what that article is about. I'm not certain about ship designations, but if I'm not mistaken the "SS" and "Maru" are mutually redundant; "Maru" is the Japanese equivalent of SS, HMS, MV etc - isn't that the case? Didn't want to make the change - "SS" is a common addition to shipnames that shouldn't get it; as I understand it it's primarily a US designation though it did show up on CPR shipanmes (e.g. SS Abyssinia.Skookum1 (talk) 14:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Since "SS" refers to a steamship, if Komagata Maru was steam powered it's not wrong, but I don't know if that makes it right, either. Having recently worked on a different Maru article myself, I'd like to know what the general opinion is. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:25, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

See Japanese ship naming conventions. --Tenmei (talk) 17:03, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Interesting raed...but doesn't quite answer the question, which is whether or not Japanese ships are ever referred to with "SS" (esp. if they've already got "Maru"). As far as SS re steamships goes, that's true but it "feels" like an American desigantion: in Canada a civilian freighter (seteam or othwrise() is "MV" (Merchant Vessel" unless it's ever carried the mail 9inwhich case it's RMS). American-registered ships in Canadian rivers/waters were still referrrd to as "SS" however, and in the vernacular a lot of "MV" and "RMS" designated vessels were called the SS-this-or-that. The colloquial convention is one thing, actual proper usage is another, hence my question about the redundancy of SS and Maru.Skookum1 (talk) 17:23, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

MV stands (conventionally at least) for motor vessel. These prefixes are indicators of propulsion, rather than type. Only ships engaged by the Royal Mail to carry the mail are entitled to the prefix RMS, and only when they're carrying it. If they are not, the prefix reverts to MS (motor ship), MV (motor vessel), SS (steam ship), etc. There are a wide range of other prefixes about as well, PS (paddle steamer) TSS (twin screw ship) etc. However how much of this is understood by the layman is debatable,but in the English language, referring to a steam powered ship as SS xxx, whatever the language the name is in, or the flag she is carrying, is technically accurate. Benea (talk) 17:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

From how I read that, Maru is not the equivalent of a ship type prefix, and can easily be applied to non steam/motor etc vessels. Civilian designations are a mixed bag, and can be applied or not when referring to a ship, pretty much on a whim. But as long as 'SS' isn't applied to Motor Vessels, and vice versa, I don't think there's any problem with it, and it can be a handy indicator in the title that this is a ship that's being dealt with. And it's not a specific US designation, but is found throughout the English speaking world. I don't see a problem in applying it to foreign named vessels, as prefixes like that were and are used to indicate propulsion types and since this is the English wikipedia, we are probably justified in using the English designator. Benea (talk)

OK, I've been under the impression taht the standard British empire usage was "MV" (thinking it meant Merchant Vessel, which aparently it doesn't). A lot of the old Fraser steamboats are often mentioend without any "SS" or "MV" in reference to them, no matter where they were from (most were American from the Columbia or Sacremento Rivers). In the case of the Komagata Maru, there are a lot of historical sources....maybe the resolution here is how it was most commonly referred to - if "SS Komagata Maru" turns up most often, fine....it just seems a bit overboiled or vevr-elaborate; looks unfamiliar but then the modern convention in BC is to refer to Japanese shipnames with Maru only, or that's waht seems to be; I don't recall reading material on the Komagata Maru where ""SS Komagata Maru" occurs, but I've mostly read only journalistic rehashes where maybe the editors interest is in brevity/minimizing charadcters??Skookum1 (talk) 17:36, 5 October 2008 (UTC) 17:19, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

(Outdent for slightly less confusion) MV can stand for both "motor vessel" as well as "merchant vessel" - there seems to be two schools for this. But as it can refer to both, IMHO it should not be used for steamships to avoid confusion. There also seems to be regional variances on MV vs. MS—MV seems to be widely-used in (British) English-speaking countries, but I've never seen it used for example in Finnish or the Scandinavian languages. Some companies (for instance DFDS and Tallink) use MV in english-language material but MS in other languages.

Also, I was under the impression that "TSS" stands for "turbine steamship", not "twin screw ship"? — Kjet (talk · contribs) 20:43, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I've heard it used as twin screw ship, which I suppose only goes to prove the point that these civilian prefixes are widely interchangeable on more or less an editorial whim. SS for steamships used to be a widely accepted convention, but now there are few of them left. Most modern vessels use motors so MS and MV are technically applicable. In some areas the type of prefix has been considerably stressed (eg. MS Queen Victoria), but we've never really made any attempts to enforce the use of particular civilian prefixes. I'd stick with our guidelines on this, if there are a majority of sources that demonstrate the ship is best known with or without a particular prefix, then follow that. We can deal with individual queries on a case by case basis. But going back to User:Skookum1's original query, as far as I can tell the Japanese use of the Maru suffix does not have anything to do with the use of prefixes, and does not seem to preclude using one. Whether it's technically correct to use one on a Japanese or non-English named ship, is another matter. Benea (talk) 21:28, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Does Maru not mean something along the lines of 'the ship named...', hence Komagata Maru is really just 'the ship named Komagata'? I don't speak Japanese but I'm sure I read that somewhere... Martocticvs (talk) 21:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

According to Japanese ship naming conventions, it means 'circle', and they have any number of possible explanations as to why. The real reason is lost to the mists of time, but they've been using it since at least the 16th century, so it doesn't have any connection to the modern use of SS, MV, etc, which is what I think Skookum1 was initially wondering. Benea (talk) 21:41, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

As an update, the user who created the article has apparently decided that SS Komagata Maru was a mistake, and has copy and pasted the article over the previous redirect, Komagata Maru. The problem is that we now have two more or less identical articles. I reverted this once, pending the outcome of this discussion, but he's redone it. Perhaps an admin could delete the current Komagata Maru article to clear the way for the SS Komagata Maru to be properly moved to that title, before the situation requires a merge? Benea (talk) 09:27, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Guideline/concensus needed for importance assessment on ship operators?

First off, apologies if this has already been discussed—I could no find anything related to this topic by a quick search.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Assessment#Importance assessment has a clear guideline on how to assess articles on ship types, ship classes, individual ships, and ships that were never completed. However, it does not have a guideline on how to assess ship operators (navies and shipping companies). At the moment the assessment of such articles range between low and high, so a common guideline for this would be highly needed. If a concensus for such has been reached before then the rest of my post can be more-or-less ignored and theinformation should be added to Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Assessment. But if not, I'd like to use this chance to start a discussion on the topic:

In my opinion ship operators should be rated higher than individual ships, following this rationale from the Assessment page: "[the assessment is an] attempt to gauge the probability of the average reader of Wikipedia needing to look up the topic". At least in the case of commercial ships, a person is far more likely to be looking for information on a shipping company (say Carnival Cruise Line) than any of their individual ships. A person actually interested in the individual ships (such as most of us) might look up an individual ship, but a casual visitor looking for information, for instance looking up on different cruise options (don't snicker, I've used wiki for this), is far more likely to look up the company page. Additionally an article on a navy or shipping company covers several ships (often several ship classes)—by the logic that an article on a ship class is more important than one on an individual ship, an article on a ship operator should also be more important than an article on an individual ship.

Thoughts? — Kjet (talk · contribs) 16:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It has been discussed somewhere in the past though I can't find the thread just now. The thoughts were that wp:ships is a project that concentrates on individual ships and ship classes. An article about a cruise line is not exactly an article about a ship or class of ship but it is ship related. Same thing with a US Navy article or something similar. Ship related articles were given the Low importance rating. There are other wikiprojects an article about a cruise line company may fall under. --Brad (talk) 19:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

That's generally my thinking as well; I typically give ship-related articles (i.e., ferry companies, shipyards, navies, etc.) low-importance ratings, as they would be more important to projects like WP:MARITIME, Maritime Trades, or the like. I would agree that our primary focus should be on individual ships and ship classes. Parsecboy (talk) 21:53, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, Carnival Cruise Line would be a high-importance Maritime Trades article, while a topic like Royal Australian Navy would likely be a high-importance WP:MARITIME article. Conversely, I wouldn't be surprised to see Carnival Cruise Line with a WP:SHIPS tag on it, but I would be surprised to see Royal Australian Navy with a WP:SHIPS tag. Cheers. Haus^Talk 01:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, I had quite forgotten about the existence of Wikipedia:WikiProject Maritime Trades as a project covering articles on shipping companies. I withdraw my original proposal, then. Since we're in agreement, I presume no-one would mind if I edit Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Assessment#Importance assessment to include a note that shipping companies (an comparable articles not directly dealing with ships) should should be rated low? — Kjet (talk · contribs) 07:57, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the page. There are a lot of guidelines that are out of date etc. --Brad (talk) 15:59, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

New article feed

I want to know if I'm the only one having a problem with Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/New articles. The page is showing the last article as being from Sept 30 but if you go to User:AlexNewArtBot/ShipsLog the article listing there seems to be updating daily as the new article page should be. I've dumped the cache on my browser but it hasn't made any difference. --Brad (talk) 01:54, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

The lastest I'm seeing is from 05:53, 2 October. Refreshing the cache hasn't worked for me either. Parsecboy (talk) 02:24, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm seeing the top one is "started at 08:05, 4 October 2008", but there is an odd /noinclude html code in the first line of it. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:45, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I'm updated to that point as well, with the same /noinclude bit. Parsecboy (talk) 03:03, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm showing all is updated now too. Since I'm on the page everyday I've noticed that four days pass before the page updates. If you could look again on Monday or Tuesday we can compare again. --Brad (talk) 15:59, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

That's probably my fault that it worked. It might be a combination of browser cache and server cache. I saw the page as updated, but I had never viewed it before, so it wasn't in my cache. After I posted here, I went back and did a null edit to see if the noinclude syntax stayed in there, then you two posted that it was fixed. It was probably the null edit that updated the page date/time stamp or something to that effect. A few minutes ago, I put an opening noinclude into the bot's page and it didn't update the other page until I did another null edit. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:58, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Apparently that did the trick but that strange noinclude tag has been there ever since I can remember. The bot owner never answered me as to what might be wrong. I notice that some pages on WP have a purge option; any idea on how that is arranged? --Brad (talk) 18:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Per WP:Purge, I added a {{purge}} to it. I think the null edit does the same thing. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:00, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. We'll see what happens from here. --Brad (talk) 00:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Article nominated for deletion

An article within the scope of the project, Japanese minelayer Itsukushima, has been nominated for deletion. Interested editors may wish to comment at the discussion here. Benea (talk) 10:21, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Also nominated is a sister article, Japanese minelayer Okinoshima, under discussion here. Benea (talk) 15:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks like both were snowball "keep"s. — Bellhalla (talk) 23:46, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

CFD for Category:Ships by place of construction

The category Ships by place of construction has been nominated for deletion. All interested editors are invited to participate in the discussion here. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:05, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Ship index/Disambiguation

A new change to the software (I'm assuming) means that every time a disambiguation page is opened for editing, a little banner appears at the top reminding you of the guidelines for these sorts of pages. The trouble is, it's appearing on our ship index pages, such as HMS Agamemnon. When these are opened, they sternly declare 'This is not an article; it is a disambiguation page.' Which is unfortunately completely untrue. There are already issues with well-intentioned editors 'cleaning up' these set index pages along the much stricter disambiguation page guidelines, and I worry that this is going to add to the problem. Can anything be done, I wonder, to stop these banners appearing on pages tagged with Template:shipindex? Benea (talk) 15:29, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I popped a note up about this at the Village pump (technical). Cheers. Haus^Talk 15:57, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

This comes from {{Disambig editintro}}, apparently a project of WP:DAB. I've posed the question in a discussion there. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Quiddity asked me to take a look at this.

No worries. I know several easy ways to fix that. I just have to think and test a little which way is the best. I have put all my other work aside since this seems urgent. I think we can have this fully fixed within some hours. :))

I suggest that further discussion on this is done at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Disambig editintro - working, which Bellhalla linked to above. I will publish the solution I recommend at that page, once I have figured out which one is the best.

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

ANOMALY-117 (talk) 20:49, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

IM backANOMALY-117 (talk) 20:49, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok and you were expecting a parade or what? --Brad (talk) 00:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Article Names

I found these articles about crane ships that are part of the United States Navy ready reserve. Should the prefix USNS or USS be used instead of SS? Shinerunner (talk) 01:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

• SS Cornhusker State (T-ACS-6)
• SS Curtiss (T-AVB-4)
• SS Flickertail State (T-ACS-5)
• SS Gopher State (T-ACS-4)

The MSC uses SS for all four. Kablammo (talk) 01:49, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

FAC for SMS Von der Tann now open

The FAC for SMS Von der Tann is now open. All editors are invited to participate. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 16:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

SMS Von der Tann was promoted to featured article status on 7 October. Congratulations to Parsecboy and others who worked on the article! — Bellhalla (talk) 13:45, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone have access to old issues of the journal Mariner's Mirror?

- either the archive issued on CD a few years ago or the publication itself in a reference library.

I'm looking for a copy of an article printed in the 1930s.

Thanks. --Petecarney (talk) 15:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, worldcat.org can show you what libraries nearest you have copies at this link. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried here? Socrates2008 (Talk) 21:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed move

There is a proposal to move List of U-boats to List of German U-boats All interested editors are welcome to participate in the discussion. — Bellhalla (talk) 17:57, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

US Coast Guard vessels and the pronoun "she"

Many of the articles that are about US Coast Guard vessels include the pronoun "she" when referring to the vessel throughout the article. According to the US Coast Guard at this website: http://www.uscg.mil/mag/style.asp , this is considered improper. Coast Guard vessels should be referred to by their name or by the pronoun "it". Interestingly, the US Navy still finds the pronoun "she" as being proper. I would propose that we go through all of the US Coast Guard vessel pages and edit them to edit out the pronoun "she". Thoughts? Pmarkham (talk) 21:06, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Massively changing every article is not how things are done. The current MOS states that she/her is acceptable and should not be changed unless there is a substantial reason to do so. I do not see a reason sufficient to satisfy the MOS to change just because the organization doesn't like us referring to ships in those pronouns. Especially since we use DANFS which uses the she/her pronouns. -MBK₀₀₄ 21:12, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Plus, that style guide you've linked to is for submitting stories to an editorial magazine. With respects, that doesn't state how to present an encyclopedic article. -MBK₀₀₄ 21:14, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The US coastguard has a style guide for articles under their remit, wikipedia has one for ones under its remit. We are not obliged to follow their style guide, just as they are not obliged to follow ours. Wikipedia covers a far wider range of ships, and we have a standardised guide to cover all of them, including US coastguard ones. Benea (talk) 21:27, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

As Benea said, we're no more obliged to follow their guidelines than they are obliged to follow ours. Especially seeing as they don't seem consistent in following it in some of their own publications. See here, here, here, and here for just a few samples that I found. Granted, their guideline may be a relatively new change; but I don't see a substantial reason from that to change our use of pronouns on Wikipedia. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I understand that we're not obliged to do it, but as a measure of respect to the Coast Guard, it seemed like a prudent thing to do since the style guide of an official US Coast Guard publication says that it is proper. Barek, thanks for pointing out the inconsistencies to that style on some Coast Guard press releases. I hadn't seen those before and it is difficult to tell when the current style guide was adopted, so I don't know if those pages were published before or after that style guide was published. Since there doesn't seem to be any consensus to my suggestion, I'll leave it alone. Thanks for the feedback. Pmarkham (talk) 04:48, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for USS Constitution now open

The A-Class review for USS Constitution is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! --Brad (talk) 23:09, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Royal Navy edits

User:Middim13, who has been a previous subject of discussion over POV pushing and edit warring on subjects such as Electric Boat and Arthur Leopold Busch, has returned, this time to the Royal Navy article, and related subjects such History of the Royal Navy. I got suspicious when edit summaries such as 'Much of these transactions were done in secrecy so the information about this subject is not altogether clear. Distorted events taking place at Isaac Rice's Electric Boat Company.' and 'Date keel was laid. This information is true, accurrate, correct and un-biased. The truth will not "always be Kosher" or what they want us to believe! Carry on people of integrity.' began to appear. First of all he's copied and pasted it onto both the above articles, where at most it would seem to warrant an appearance on the 'History' article. But despite claiming to me that it is all 100% factual, he has not provided sources. WP:VER does not seem to have sunk in. More over he declares his intention to edit war until his version is accepted. I wonder if those more experienced and knowledgeable about US submarine history could take a look. Benea (talk) 23:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I've dealt with this user before over the past two years on the GD and related pages. He seems to sincerely believe that Electric Boat/General Dynamics have suppressed the history of Arthur Leopold Busch, but as you've said, he never provide any relaiable sources for any of the claims he makes, other than to assure us it's true. He left a mountain of material on my talk pages if anyone wishes to sort though it (it is in the "circular" archives now, but I can point you to the correct diffs). I was told by another editor (I don't recall who) when I first ran into the user (he was using multiple IPs then) that Middim was related to Busch, who was propably his great uncle. I've never seen Middim admit this, as he probably knows it would be a COI on his part. I don't know what the solution is, other than humoring him, and then cleaning up his uncited claims after he stops editing for awhile. Good luck! - BillCJ (talk) 23:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I know that TomTheHand had some dealings with Middim13 before and he/she continues to post on Tom's talk page even though Tom has not been active on WP lately. — Bellhalla (talk) 03:25, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I've just given Middim13 an ONLY WARNING with regards to his current editing. I will not hesitate to block if this happens again. -MBK₀₀₄ 21:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

He's just responded to me stating that we are "misguided and biased" with regards to his edits. I responded that if continued he would gain a long-term block since he's exhausted our patience with not complying with our requests to properly cite his edits to reliable sources. -MBK₀₀₄ 21:23, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

With this edit, Middim has announced that he is "done with ships". I guess he took my suggestion to step back and find another topic to edit to heart in light of all the events that have transpired with his editing of ship-related articles. -MBK₀₀₄ 22:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I guess the urge was too much. He edited ship articles today. I've left my last warning on his talk page. I'm not sure a topic ban would do any good, but if the rest of you think so, please speak up before my trigger finger gets itchy on the indef block button. -MBK₀₀₄ 01:24, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

ANI

I have opened a discussion at ANI proposing a topic or community ban. Please see WP:ANI##Topic_or_community_ban_needed. -MBK₀₀₄ 02:27, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Should decommissioned ships be removed from a page that lists vessel types?

I've noticed some inconsistencies in whether or not decommissioned vessels are listed on pages that list vessels of specific classes or types. For example, on the USCG Seagoing Buoy Tender page we list the currently commissioned vessels as well as the vessels of that type that have been decommissioned. In contrast, on the USCG medium endurance cutter page, a previous edit removed all of the vessels of that type that are now decommissioned and left only the commissioned vessels. What is your opinion? Should the vessel type pages include decommission vessels or not? My opinion is that they should include both commissioned and decommissioned vessels -- but I'm also the new guy here! Thanks! Pmarkham (talk) 04:57, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

First thing to consider is that most of the USCG articles are suffering badly and are in need of attention. USCG Seagoing Buoy Tender should actually be renamed United States Coast Guard seagoing bouy tender and an article with that sort of title usually means that the content focuses on seagoing bouy tenders and what they do and their history etc. The list of vessels there is far too large for that article and should be broken into List of seagoing bouy tenders of the United States Coast Guard. With the list you can place all the known ships applicable to the title regardless of status. The current style and layout of that article seems to have been ripped from the CG website. Most ship articles don't class by size but rather class name. --Brad (talk) 11:10, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Merge discussion

A proposal to merge US Brig Niagara (museum ship) into USS Niagara (1813) is under discussion here. A background in philosophy would be an advantage. :) Benea (talk) 21:40, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

A Titanic Task Force

I want to make a task force project that covers all areas about the RMS Titanic called, "WikiProject: RMS Titanic Task Force". Toonami Reactor (talk) 20:25, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Did it. Check it out. Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/RMS Titanic TaskForce. Toonami Reactor (talk) 22:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, it would have been better if you had waited and saw if there was sufficient interest to form such a task force. I'm not trying to be mean but I think this may end up at MfD soon. -MBK₀₀₄ 01:17, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree. The current state of the Titanic article suggests that there isn't the interest to really tackle this at the moment. If you feel you want to overhaul the article, you are more than welcome, but that doesn't require a specific taskforce. Currently people are just dipping in and out of the article as things occur to them, and there doesn't seem to be the need to gather people together for a concerted discussion about changes, the talkpage seems to be capably handling this. And despite being an important topic, it's still a very narrow subject for a task force really. Benea (talk) 01:29, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

A task force for Titanic related articles is probably a good idea but a lot of Titanic related articles don't fit into the scope of this project such as biography articles. A Titanic WikiProject would be the solution but there are likely not enough articles in total to warrant starting a new Project. Sort of stuck in between these issues. So maybe you could run this task force from a subsection of your user page? --Brad (talk) 02:05, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I see. Well, what happens happens. If it will end up in the MfD, then that's ok. If that happens, then maby Ill take Brad101's advice.Toonami Reactor (talk) 02:20, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok. I made a subpage of my user page that has the project on it. User:Toonami Reactor/Wikipedia:WikiProjectRMS Titanic Brad, is this what it would look like?Toonami Reactor (talk) 02:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Being picky about the page title it should probably be User:Toonami Reactor/RMS Titanic task force however, I recall that the shipwrecks project originally started out on a users sub-page and then expanded from there. You may want to count up all the Titanic related articles that already exist and think about how many more there might be in the future. Anyway, your user space is more appropriate right now and you can avoid the deletionists. --Brad (talk) 21:47, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for SS Mauna Loa now open

The A-Class review for SS Mauna Loa is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! — Bellhalla (talk) 04:22, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for SS Black Osprey now open

The A-Class review for SS Black Osprey is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! — Bellhalla (talk) 04:22, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured articles/Cleanup listing

This is a bot-generated list of FAs that need some type of cleanup. Battleship and Ironclad warship are listed; there may be others that are relevant to this project. Kablammo (talk) 02:14, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and unfortunately SS Andrea Doria needs citations. Its not even meeting B-Class currently. I just labeled it. --Brad (talk) 20:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, then WP:FAR is looming unless someone wants to take up improving the article. -MBK₀₀₄ 03:45, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Imperial Japanese Navy needs help too. I should stop looking for problems. --Brad (talk) 17:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Others (including non-ship articles where work is needed on ship-related parts of articles):

• Battle of Midway
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel
• Australian Defence Force
• Ehime Maru and USS Greeneville collision
• USS Wisconsin (BB-64)
• Pre-dreadnought battleship

Kablammo (talk) 18:24, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

TomStar81 (talk) will handle USS Wisconsin (BB-64) soon because he is planning a Featured Topic nom: User:TomStar81/Iowa class battleship featured topic work group. -MBK₀₀₄ 18:29, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Wisconsin had a peer review earlier this year in lew of an FAR, suggestions from that peer review have not been implemented in there entirety yet. If anyone would like to add to the PR suggestions on the talk page I would be happy to adress the concerns when I get a moment. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:22, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, how is the bot creating this list? Is it using some sort of criteria, or going on age, or what? TomStar810 (Talk) 21:29, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Wisconsin apparently has a few links that have gone dead, I will have this fixed up over the weekend, which should solve the article problem. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:46, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

United States Navy submarine classes

In updating these articles to the current infobox and I need some help with the eariler submarine classes. For example, I've found that there is an article for V-boat submarines that has it's own ship class infobox while the Cachalot class submarine (part of the V class submarines) also has a ship class infobox. The same type of problem exists with the United States H class submarine article and Holland 602 type submarine aritcle. I'm trying to link them with preceded by and succeded by in the infoboxes and I want to get the order and article links correct. Shinerunner (talk) 11:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Article moves

I wonder if an admin could move a couple of pages, specifically:

• HMS Olympus > HMS Olympus (S12)
• HMS Osiris > HMS Osiris (S13)

As they're currently sitting on titles that should be ship list pages, but the history in the redirects prevent a normal move. Ta muchly, ttfn, Benea (talk) 16:09, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Done, regards. Woody (talk) 16:12, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Before I even had time to draw breath! Benea (talk) 16:34, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for Alaska class battlecruiser now open

The A-Class review for Alaska class battlecruiser is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 17:57, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Shipindex template

I have just updated the {{shipindex}} template to use the {{dmbox}} meta-template for its layout. The dmbox has the option to use a right side image. Personally I don't have a preference on this but I know from the other mboxes like {{ambox}} that in many cases the users preferred to use the right side image instead of putting two images on the left side.

1: This is how {{shipindex}} looks now:

2: And this is how {{shipindex}} could look instead:

Both ways look good to me. But I thought you guys would like to have a say, now that you have the choice.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:19, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

As a matter of personal preference, I've always through the current version looks a bit too massive with both images on the left. Having the ship on the right would definately be an improvement. — Kjet (talk · contribs) 16:47, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Kjet, the current version seems a little cramped on the left side compared to the new version. Parsecboy (talk) 16:54, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer both images on the left. My eyes automatically go to the left to start reading, having the icons next to where the text begins provides a faster queue as to the contents, so I realize quickly that I already know what it says (this is more noticeable on my widescreen monitor, where there's blank space between the text and the image on the right).

But, I guess I don't feel strongly enough about it to object much if others prefer the right. It's personal preference, but not a major issue to me in the grand scheme of things. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:23, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible to have both images to the left, but side-by-side with the ship on the left? That way it would "read" correctly: a ship name with two or more options for specific ships. If that's not possible, either of the above ways would work for me. — Bellhalla (talk) 17:53, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

You know, I don't like how the the ship is sailing off the right edge in the second option. If the second option is chosen, maybe the graphic could be flopped so as to be sailing "into" the box? — Bellhalla (talk) 17:59, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Bellhalla: Ah, good ideas and very doable.

3: Here is your suggestion with the images side-by-side:

That looks pretty good I think, and as you say it is logical. And you are right, if the ship is placed on the right side it should be facing in. That is a basic graphic layout rule-of-thumb. I just didn't think of it this time, since I am mostly used to apply it to human faces. (Now that you pointed it out I tried it locally on my computer, and it does look slightly better. But I didn't upload a mirrored version of the image here, since we haven't decided where we should have the ship yet.)

So we now have three alternatives to choose from. I still don't have a personal preference, they all look good to me.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Change my "vote" to support option three, then. That looks good. — Bellhalla (talk) 11:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me too. Parsecboy (talk) 11:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Thirded, option 3 is the most attractive one. — Kjet (talk · contribs) 16:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I also prefer the third option. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:16, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, it looks like the ship is firing a bowchaser at the text and the projectile is a grey snake. The grey snake should slither off somewhere but I don't have any strong feelings about the topic in general. --Brad (talk) 10:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Y Done - I have now updated the {{shipindex}} template to style three above. That is with the ship in front of the disambig image.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:53, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Project members who are Wikipedia Administrators

On our Main Page there is a list of admins who are part of this project but when I compare them to the list of active members, many are not listed as such. Some admins on that list I've never even seen post here on the talk page. Maybe this should be clarified? --Brad (talk) 17:57, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I would do it more in the way that Milhist do it, where admins list themselves as available to help rather than presuming it. Woody (talk) 16:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

That makes more sense to me as well. Parsecboy (talk) 16:26, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I cleaned the list up to reflect current members only. If some that were removed wish to make corrections they can. --Brad (talk) 17:51, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

japanese escort vessels of WW2

I have noticed that the japanese Shimushu, Etoforu and Mikuru classes are named in their respective articles as "coastal defense ship". this is an error as those ships were escort vessels similar in role to the allied escort destroyers or frigates (they protected convoys etc). the Japanese called them Kaibokan which i believe means something like sea protection vessels. i therefore suggest renaming the following articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimushu_class

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etorofu_class_coastal_defense_ship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikura_class_coastal_defense_ship

i would do it myself but i'm new on wiki and i have no idea how to do it. Loosmark (talk) 19:23, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the remaining question is what name are you proposing the articles be moved to? --Brad (talk) 17:52, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

in my opionion the best would be for example "Etorofu class escort". acceptable is also "Etorofu class kaibokan" or even "Etorofu class frigate". (i've seen all 3 versions in different publications) Loosmark (talk) 18:00, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Featured list potential?

I started a list of schooners a while back-- divided into those which are currently active and currently kaput-- and recently it's started looking kind of pretty. I'm in the process of adding references, expanding the lead section, and, gradually, writing articles for the redlinks, but I'd like some outside opinions. For the sake of my own vanity, I'm wondering if there's some featured list potential here; I'm doubtful, since the list is certainly not complete, but I'm working on it. Meanwhile, I'm looking for opinions on a few specific points.

• Should the "Active schooners" section exist as a separate list from the "Historical schooners" section? This may prove necessary, since the list is already rather long and I haven't even started on the "Historical schooners" table.
• I do think it makes sense to have a list of schooners, since it's a rig which is often studied in and of itself. But should the list of tall ships be (eventually) subdivided into lists of active sailing vessels according to rig? Or should it be by country? Or both? Or neither?
• Is there a better name for "Historical schooners" than "Historical schooners"?

Those are just my current sticking points. Of course I'd be ecstatic if anyone else wanted to work on the list with me, or offer other tips. --Fullobeans (talk) 08:51, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks like a good start.

• Though it's probably already on your to-do list for the article, the lead could certainly stand beefing up a little, explaining more about what a schooner is. You can probably easily copy information from the lead of schooner for this purpose.
• I'm not sure the image gallery is the way to go, or certainly not as prominently placed as it is. Some featured lists I've looked at before have small thumbnails down the right side of tables, which might be a good placement for these.
• For the table, I might suggest ditching the flag column. The homeport (when listed) tells where the ship is based making the flag just decorative, and in other cases, where the flag is not commonly known (like Morocco, for instance), it takes an extra click to find out the information. I'd also, suggest moving the rig column after the year, since that's a key bit of information about what kind of schooner each boat is. The superscripted note in its own column looks a little funny. Perhaps the reference could be placed after the name of the ship, since, presumably, the reference covers all of the information provided?

As far as the ex-schooner heading, maybe "Historic schooners", since, if they are notable enough for inclusion in WP, they are probably historic rather than merely historical. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:21, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

You could also keep the flags in the table by dropping the size to 20px and put them in the same column as the homeport.Shinerunner (talk) 15:05, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll move the rig column and fiddle with the references. I'll see if something better can be done with the flag/port columns. I do think the flags make the table more visually appealing and improve at-a-glance sortability (for countries with easily recognized flags, at least), so I'd hate to ditch them, but I'll resign myself to that possibility. I did have the images stacked vertically at right, but another editor switched it to gallery, so I assume the images must have been aligned incorrectly in browser windows that aren't mine. I'll look into that. The lead's on my to-do list; I figured I'd write it at the same time I overhauled the schooner article, which seems accurate but is mostly unsourced. And "Historic schooners" was what I initially titled the section and then quickly changed it, only because the word is often applied to active schooners which are getting on in years, or are reproductions of historic vessels. So it doesn't clearly distinguish "active/potentially active" from "totally ceased to be/visitation only via SCUBA." Many thanks for the input, keep it coming. --Fullobeans (talk) 20:12, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Northland Steamship Company

Moved from Reference Desk
While writing Central Waterfront, Seattle, Washington I had occasion to mention the Northland Steamship Company. We don't have an article. I don't know much about it. A quick web search doesn't even make clear whether there were one or two companies with this name. I suspect the one in the Alaska trade may have been unrelated to a company of the same name operating on the Great Lakes.

Does anyone know more about this? If so, could I prevail upon you to write at least a stub at Northland Steamship Company (or to disambiguate and write two stubs if they are two different companies)? Thanks. - Jmabel | Talk 20:38, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately I found another one: a 1916 shipping company on the New York- Archangel route[2]. And a modern Auckland brewpub, apparently. Rmhermen (talk) 21:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

You might want to drop by Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships with your request. Saintrain (talk) 01:10, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

End - moved from Reference Desk

Done. The company involved in the 1916 New York- Archangel route was a holding company for one ship belonging to Charles W. Morse and (briefly) operated the ship SS Northland. It apparently had nothing to do with the Seattle-based company. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:01, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! - Jmabel | Talk 20:09, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Zumwalt class destroyer for GA?

Zumwalt class destroyer was in a bit of a mess - people had added political stuff in four different sections, and the old diff just felt a bit disjointed. I've reordered it, and updated the article with some of the recent events, the debate about ABM capability and so on. And I've given it a bit of a clean, converting refs to {{cite}} templates and so on. It can't be that far off GA now, it just needs some different eyeballs on it and a bit of polishing - references for a few of the specs, a bit of tightening of the text, that sort of thing. It would be a good one to GA, since it's a ship that's in the news at the moment. Enjoy.... 82.3.242.144 (talk) 01:04, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I've also done a complete rewrite of CG(X) - it badly needed it. I got a bit bored towards the end, but it's got GA potential - considering that we know almost nothing about the ship at the moment! We don't even know if it will be one class or two, we should know more in the next few weeks. 82.3.242.144 (talk) 04:52, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

If you're so interested in these articles, why don't you register an account and nominate them for GA yourself instead of suggesting someone else do it? -MBK₀₀₄ 04:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I just felt that I'd taken them about as far as one person could, they were at the stage where they needed fresh eyes on them. Wiki-making is meant to be a collaborative activity after all, I'm not sure it's that healthy to have a single viewpoint. And as it happens, I'm not that interested in them to be honest, I was looking for some info on Zumwalt and it was in such a mess I felt I had to try and do a bit of sorting out. I was surprised they were in such a bad state to be honest, given how newsworthy they are, but I figured that more people here than usual might be interested in them. Appears not. ;-/ <shrug> 82.3.242.144 (talk) 20:35, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I've also done a complete rewrite of SC-21 (United States) - it's currently up for DYK (26th) and must be close to GA if anyone fancies taking a look. 82.3.242.144 (talk) 12:30, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

New Recent changes; Sidebar update

I've created lists of all US and UK-related ship articles so anyone can utilize the 'related changes' function to monitor changes to US and UK ship articles. I would've liked to have a single list for all ship articles, but there are far too many for that to be feasible. If there is interest in lists for other subsets of ship articles, let me know. You can access the new recent changes links at:

• Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Articles US
• Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Articles UK

Hopefully these lists will make it easier to watch 'our' articles for vandalism. Since they use a special pages function, you can't add them to your watchlist, so you might want to bookmark them or save a link to them on your userpage. It would be great if everyone would get in the habit of checking the recent changes links in addition to their own watchlists, so we can cast a broader net for vandalism.

I have updated {{Ships sidebar}} to include the new recent changes links. Now that we have the new cleanup listing, the old Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Tasks and {{Ships tasks}} are largely obsolete, so I have reorganized the "Things you can do" section of the sidebar template, as well. Maralia (talk) 04:59, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks very nice! Thanks for making the changes. Any chance we could get our assessment instructions up to date? I tried editing them a couple months ago but they seem to be in templates that confuse me to no end. --Brad (talk) 21:23, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

The assessments page does need some cleaup; I started working on a draft last night. Maralia (talk) 21:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

There was a conversation some months ago about what to look for when assessing articles: here. I think that including those ideas on the revised assessment guidelines would be a good idea. --Brad (talk) 20:50, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Those should come in handy. Would it be possible to create something comparable for the ships listed in Category:Cruise ships? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:32, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Seconded on that. — Kjet (talk · contribs) 22:31, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I'll make it tonight. Maralia (talk) 22:35, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Done: Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Articles cruiseships. Maralia (talk) 23:06, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! I've added it to my 'p-interaction' toolbar portlet, and it works great. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

A great idea! But let's not keep it to ourselves. How about letting other WP's know, like WP:TWP and WP:AVIATION for a start. Mjroots (talk) 06:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but it's not an original idea, really—I saw a similar list for another project. Quite a few projects used to have these sorts of lists maintained by a bot, but the bot and its owner have been inactive for a year. I figured working off static article lists would be better than nothing, so I used AWB to make article lists by recursing through categories. All there is to it is (1) make a page that lists all articles you want to monitor, and (2) use the special pages function Special:RecentChangesLinked/ to view related changes for that page. Maralia (talk) 16:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

To add to Maralia's comment: to simplify maintaining a list (for project that don't want that manual process), instead of creating a manual list, it does appear to work off of categories ... but the limitation of that method is that it won't look into sub-categories. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for Tribal class destroyer (1936) now open

The peer review for Tribal class destroyer (1936) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 04:47, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Columbia (bark) - what cat?

I wasn't sure where to categorize this into, currently it just has Category:Ships. I didn't see a barks subcat in Ships by type....Skookum1 (talk) 15:52, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

You can find it (and other types) in Category:Sailing ships. I've added Category:Barques to the article. Parsecboy (talk) 15:58, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

It was a British ship - should I (or you?) re-dab it to Columbia (barque). On List of ships in British Columbia I'd originally redlinked it as Columbia (HBC).....Skookum1 (talk) 16:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Sailing vessels aren't really my area of expertise, and the Barque article isn't really clear about what spelling was used (at least to me, it seems both were used by the British). Does the source you have in the article use one over the other? It does seem a bit odd that the article is at (bark), and yet the first sentence uses "barque". Are there other sources that mention the ship? Parsecboy (talk) 16:22, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Pennant number for a British/Canadian Flower-class corvette

I've been doing a little work on the footer template {{Flower class corvette}}. Can anyone with a reference verify what the correct pennant number for the modified Flower-class corvette HMS Candytuft was? (This is a different ship than HMS Candytuft (K09), an unmodified Flower-class corvette.) The second Candytuft was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy as HMCS Long Branch (K487). Uboat.net, usually pretty reliable, lists Candytuft with the pennant number K484, but Long Branch with K487. Most of the other Flower-class corvettes transferred between navies (except those to the U.S. Navy) seem to have kept the same pennant number. Is this a case of a source being wrong or did it have two differing pennant numbers? — Bellhalla (talk) 16:05, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Is there where someone brings up the perennial argument to drop pennant numbers ... ? As much as I love my pennant numbers, their inconsistency does drive me a little batty. --Kralizec! (talk) 21:19, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

No, it's where someone brings up the perennial question "how long has it been since Kralizec actually posted at WP:SHIPS?" :) Maralia (talk) 22:36, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Embarrassingly, about two months. Unfortunately for my edit count, you young whipper snappers keep solving things before I can get home from work and get my dial-up intarweb working. Save some of the fun stuff for the rest of us! I am afraid all I do anymore is block vandals (1466 of them to date). --Kralizec! (talk) 22:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I could point out that, except for today, Maralia hasn't been posting here much lately either. What's your excuse, too busy at FAC? As for the fun stuff, I'm pretty sure there are still articles that need assessing :-p Parsecboy (talk) 23:05, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Guess I should stop complaining, `cause it looks like I did some edits last week to Captain class frigate after its peer-review was announced at WT:WikiProject Military history/Maritime warfare task force. --Kralizec! (talk) 23:09, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I have been focusing more on FAC this year, but I'm still busting ass on ship articles :) No one responded to my plea for help with articles selected for the 0.7 release, so I spent weeks working on them by myself, until it got too overwhelming and I gave up. Now I have a stack of library books on ships begging for attention. (Sorry for derailing your thread, Bellhalla!) Maralia (talk) 02:41, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)So, does anyone know about the pennant number? I created redirects for both names and both pennant numbers in case someone comes here looking under either number. — Bellhalla (talk) 17:24, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I looked in my stack of naval reference books but could not find anything either way. --Kralizec! (talk) 02:10, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for USS Nevada (BB-36) now open

The peer review for USS Nevada (BB-36) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 20:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Lists of ship launches and shipwrecks

There are various lists of ship launches and shipwrecks. I'm sure these are underpopulated though. Every ship should be linked from the list of the year it was launched, and all shipwrecks should be linked from the list for that year (a shipwreck doesn't necessarily mean a loss). There are also lists of ship decomissionings too.

These lists all follow the format "List of ship (event) in (year)". Mjroots (talk) 20:42, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

There don't seem to be any launching lists prior to 1862... there a certainly a massive number of ships from the 17th and 18th centuries, not to mention the rest of the 19th century that we know about - that's a lot of lists to create! Martocticvs (talk) 22:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

A possibility for the earlier launches is to a list by decade rather than by year. List can always be split later if it gets too long. Mjroots (talk) 06:22, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The trouble I see with these lists are that few of them have any references. If we're compiling lists based on other articles within WP then it's original research. I had this problem with USS Constitution in that some editors had been counting what active ships had sunk hostile targets and comparing them with the record of Constitution. --Brad (talk) 19:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

If a ship has an article on Wikipedia, then that should be a sufficient reference for the list. Agree there is a problem with the more modern lists, and these should be subject to the same rules re refs as any other articles. See edit history of List of shipwrecks in 2008 to see proof that unreferenced entries have been removed from the list. Mjroots (talk) 05:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I suppose this is one of those gray areas when it comes to references. I've always seen list articles as being presented as some sort of authoritative cross-reference much like our lists of US or Royal Navy ships. I can't think of a way to provide any solid references though. --Brad (talk) 17:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Is NASA recovery ship a class article?

Just ran across the NASA recovery ship today. Is it just me, or does this look like it should be a civilian version of the class or type articles we use with military ships? --Kralizec! (talk) 14:23, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I would say that article qualifies as a class type. I reassessed to High importance, needs infobox and it passed C-class. I wonder if it should be renamed? --Brad (talk) 17:50, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Notability of incomplete U-boats?

I have been working my way through the U-boat set index pages to update the links to the new naming styles (per a discussion recently held at WP:NC-SHIPS). Most of the set index pages are like German submarine U-90 that list all the subs numbered 90 (whatever the series or Wikipedia naming style). In the case of the number 134, however, there was only one boat of that number commissioned, the sub whose article is currently at German submarine U-134 (1941). I think that since there were no other commissioned subs with the number 134, that the WWII sub should just be at German submarine U-134 with no disambiguation. Currently that page is set up as a set index page and includes redlinks to the two uncompleted WWI U-boats that would have been numbered 134. My question: should we have an index/disambiguation page in a case like this where the other subs are only marginally notable (if at all)? — Bellhalla (talk) 17:54, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd say yes; There are articles on warships that weren't completed. Thus if an uncompleted U-boat meets the criteria for verifiability and reliable sources then there is no reason why an article can't be created if an editor wants to do so. Mjroots (talk) 08:21, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I’d say yes also, FWIW; it gives a place for an explanation for what would otherwise be a gap in the lists. There are a couple of disambiguation pages like that (from memory) but this way there is a dab page for each U- number up to U-166, and a sentence at least on each boat with those numbers, even if it never commissioned. Xyl 54 (talk) 13:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll add some of those in when I get to those pages. — Bellhalla (talk) 16:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

One problem is that there isn't going to be much to say about most unfinished U-boats. Maybe make a List of incomplete U-boats? Break it up somehow if there are many many.

—WWoods (talk) 21:43, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've now found that most of the WWI U-boat gaps in numbering are related to whole classes of subs that were begun, but not complete. For example, U-127 through U-138 were all a part of the never-finished "Type U 127" class. I could easily see the link for, say, U-135 going to German Type U 127 submarine to a list entry that tells U-135 was being built in Danzig, launched on 8 September 1918, was 80–90% complete at the war's end, and foundered on the way to be broken up in England in 1919. Certainly not enough at this point for a separate article, but enough info for a link. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:28, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the best way would be an article on the uncompleted U-boats for each of the two World Wars, with individual U-boats being redirects to the relevant article. Mjroots (talk) 07:01, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

IJN cruisers

The articles Japanese cruiser Yodo and Japanese cruiser Mogami (1908), obviously, classify these two ships as cruisers. But the Yodo class is classified by the IJN themselves as aviso, or dispatch vessel; lighter than cruisers. I think these articles should be renamed appropriately but I realize that neither "aviso" nor "dispatch vessel" are classifications commonly used in English, so I'd like to ask for a suggestion.

Also, both of these vessels are prefixed with "IJN" at the beginning of the article. IJN is of course a tag invented by Anglophone writers. I wonder if there's been a consensus for the usage of this prefix in Wikipedia. It seems that at the present some ships are prefixed IJN and some aren't. o (talk) 15:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

According to the naming convention, we only use prefixes when the navies themselves used them, hence we have SMS Bayern, but not DKM Bismarck. As far as aviso is concerned, we do have an article on it: Aviso. However, I have seen the German avisos from the late 19th century referred to as light cruisers occasionally, so that might be an option if "aviso" isn't used. There is also the question of what sources call them, if there are any. I myself would lean towards "aviso", but that's just my opinion. Parsecboy (talk) 23:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

wasn't the term light cruiser "invented" by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921? Loosmark (talk) 00:47, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

More or less, but the type of warship wasn't new; both the Germans and British built dozens of light cruisers during the First World War (although the Germans officially called them "kleine kreuzer" or "small cruiser"). "Light cruiser" was a shortening of "light armored cruiser", as they were technically armored cruisers because they possessed an armored belt, but were much lighter than typical armored cruisers. This was the classification of the Town class, for example (initially rated as "Second class cruisers"). Parsecboy (talk) 01:48, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Jane's Fighting Ships 1914 categorises Mogami and Yodo as "Gunboats". Military Industries of Japan by Ushisaburo Kobayashi (1922), p. 127 describes them as "dispatch boats", and "looks like a large size torpedo-boat destroyer. Being intended for a dispatch boat, she was built with more consideration for her speed than for her arms." FWIW. --Harlsbottom (talk | library | book reviews) 20:20, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, Conway's 1906-1922 has them simply as "Yodo class cruisers", and then in the text states that they were "essentially small cruisers, although rated as dispatch boats." Parsecboy (talk) 22:59, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

So the question is whether to use the original Japanese classification aviso/dispatch boat, or use the anglicised classification. The Russian navy has a "cruiser" classification quite different from the English world, too. How is this done there? o (talk) 15:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

i just checked the technical data for these ships. displacement 1250 tons, main armament 2x4.7inch and 4x3inch. i'd say these were gunboats. Loosmark (talk) 21:30, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

AFD on a future cruise ship

I've just come across this article: Princess Kaguya (cruise ship), the current AFD is here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Princess Kaguya (cruise ship). The concept looks promising but I'm not sure if this article should be saved? -MBK₀₀₄ 04:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for RMS Titanic now open

The peer review for RMS Titanic is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 12:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

SS Mahratta

There were two ships named Mahratta in service with the Brocklebank Line. One was launched in 1892 and the other in 1917. Both foundered on the Goodwin Sands 30 years apart, and within a mile of each other. I'm having trouble creating a meaningful article on the second Mahratta as I can't find much info apart from this, which I think may fail WP:RS. Can I use this source or are we going to be left with a very short stub article? Mjroots (talk) 10:46, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

You could use the entry at the Miramar Ship Index (Main page). It's compiled by Rodger Haworth, who is a coauthor of the Starke/Schell Ship Registers. I currently have an article at WP:FAC in which I used it, and it seems to have been accepted as a reliable source (so far, at least). — Bellhalla (talk) 14:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

That link doesn't give me anything I don't already know. The real detail of the history of the ship is in the link I gave originally. Mjroots (talk) 16:22, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Geez. Just trying to help with an RS... I'll go away and leave you to your search. — Bellhalla (talk) 23:15, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel that way but that link gave the barest detail on the ship. As the purpose of the website I found is history/research I'm going to use the info there. Mjroots (talk) 08:18, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Why not see if there is a copy of the Shipwreck Index of the British Isles Volume Two by Richard and Bridget Larn[3] in a local library. Even if the Mahratta II entry doesn't have any more than the web link, you will then have a reliable (but not online) source that confirms that your web link is reliable. Viv Hamilton (talk) 11:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I've checked my local library catalogue. All they have is the index to volumes 1 and 2. :( Mjroots (talk) 09:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

USS Constitution is now FA; and a request from User:TomStar81

I'm pleased to announce that USS Constitution was promoted to Featured status. Congratulations to Brad101 and everyone that pitched in to help with the article, and thank you to those who participated in the peer review, A-class review, and FAC.

TomStar81 and I have been in touch via email, and he pointed out that February 22 will be the 100th anniversary of the conclusion of the Great White Fleet's trip around the world. He had been planning to work on the article, with the goal of Today's featured article on the centennial. Are there a couple people out there willing to take this on, with my help? Maralia (talk) 21:48, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Constitution was a wild ride. At one point I was having dreams about how to improve the article. FAC went easier than I thought it would. I really expected it to get trounced; it was a nice surprise. As for this Tom situation, if he decided to leave then why is he trying to get others to pick up on the work he left behind? I don't really see the point in creating wikidrama by leaving in a huff and then trying to steer articles through others. Regardless, the GWF would be nice to have featured on the 100th anniversary but I see the article likely needs an entire overhaul and the list of books used had no page numbers referenced which means that all the refs have to be done over again. I've got my sights set on continuing to work on the six frigates and I've started work on Chesapeake already. --Brad (talk) 02:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Many articles come to FAC without going through other review processes first; all the prep work on Constitution—particularly the in-depth GA review and the peer review, and the referencing cleanup we did—really paid off with a smooth FAC. Not sure why you think Tom's trying to 'get others to pick up on the work he left behind'; it's not like Great White Fleet is his article, after all. He merely pointed out an important anniversary—a prime opportunity for a mainpage appearance—and suggested maybe someone would be interested in working on the article. Maralia (talk) 03:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'd be willing to help tackle improvements to the article. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:13, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Russian Navy submarines

These submarines are inconsistently named. Should they be under K-141, Kursk or RFS ? - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:45, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The RFS prefix is mandated against in our guidelines. Following our usual formatting it should probably go 'Russian submarine xxx (pennant number)', so Russian submarine K-456 Vilyuchinsk should be 'Russian submarine Vilyuchinsk (K-456)'. Some surface ships are also incorrectly titled, for example RFS Moskva. Benea (talk) 18:36, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Please move page to be consistent with other Russian submarines from Russian submarine K-141 Kursk to K-141 Kursk. Kittybrewster ☎ 14:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

It got the current title after a discussion at Talk:Russian submarine K-141 Kursk#Move to Russian submarine K-141 Kursk and listing at Wikipedia:Requested moves, so I don't think it should be moved without prior discussion. There are currently also articles like Russian submarine Kursk explosion, Russian submarine AS-34, Russian battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:13, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I see you ignored my discussion advice and moved it to a third title RFS Kursk K-141 which has 3 Google hits, all of them from Wikipedia mirrors. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:44, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense: SS New York, RMS Titanic, etc... - 131.211.151.245 (talk) 15:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• That discussion wasn't particularly highly visited... Was mainly the idea of just one person (based on the talkpage). The whole thing should be in line with other submarine articles. (MacGyverMagic) - 131.211.151.245 (talk) 15:45, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Where is the requested moves discussion? - 131.211.151.245 (talk) 15:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The discussion itself was not at requested moves. The discussion at Talk:Russian submarine K-141 Kursk#Move to Russian submarine K-141 Kursk was just linked from there for 5 days where nobody opposed.[4][5]. Kittybrewster has now started a section at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships#Category:Russian Navy submarines. "SS New York" has 25000 Google hits and "RMS Titanic" has 375000 so I don't think that is a fair comparison to 3 hits in Wikipedia mirrors for "RFS Kursk K-141". PrimeHunter (talk) 16:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• The K-141 bit is probably skewing the results. Why are you relying on Google so much? Most relevant results would be in Cyrillic - Mgm|^(talk) 18:15, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
• A discussion at the WikiProject ships is, in my opinion, the best results. No one opposing the move on the article talk page doesn't necessarily mean consent, as it's quite possible for someone to miss the suggestion between the 2.6 + million articles we have around here. Russian submarine K-152 Nerpa on the main page is named differently. Seems to be part of the whole thing too. - Mgm|^(talk) 18:19, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia generally uses common English names. It is one of the most notable submarines in the world and has a huge number of mentions in English sources. kursk (submarine OR uboat) gets 69500 Google hits and 10100 Google News hits for all dates.[6] The city Kursk is far from oceans so I guess a large part of the hits are on the submarine. It seems significant to me that out of tens of thousands of mentions, nobody else has apparently called it "RFS Kursk K-141". PrimeHunter (talk) 18:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Per naming conventions, the article should be at Russian submarine K-141 Kursk. Problem solved? —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 22:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

How do you get that, as opposed to Russian submarine Kursk (K-141)? Is there some sort of exception for Russian subs I'm not aware of? — Bellhalla (talk) 12:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Heh...I really have to use preview sometimes. I meant to type Russian submarine Kursk (K-141), but I was not thinking. =/ Sorry and cheers, —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 20:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

What about USS Trout (SS-202) ? Kittybrewster ☎ 11:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The article on Trout is named in accordance with the long-established consensus naming style. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

In which case Kursk should be the same. Surely we should have consistency? Kittybrewster ☎ 13:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

That's how I think it should be named, but I'm no expert on Russian submarines. That naming style seems to be supported by WP:NC-SHIPS#Military ships and follows what Benea suggested above. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:51, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

AFD on a future ship

SS Titan (2012), an article concerning a proposed ship, has been nominated for deletion here. Interested editors may wish to comment. Benea (talk) 00:57, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

And in a similar vein, MS America World City has been prodded, as a hoax, but probably fulfils the same criteria as being an unrealistic, unsupported proposal for 'world's largest, most luxurious ship'. Interestingly everyone wants Harland & Wolff to build their dream ships for them! Benea (talk) 02:04, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

In regards to that one, the editor's track record would give a good clue as to what should be done with the article. I passed over it for assessment because I'm sure it will be deleted. --Brad (talk) 02:23, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that one already existed under America World City, so I converted the new one to be a redirect. I question the value of the original article as well ... but at least it has some third party coverage, so that one likely just barely passes the notability threshold. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 04:00, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

MT Stolt Valor

I created this article yesterday. Now I find that the news refers to it sometimes with the prefix MT and other times with MV. What's the appropriate naming convention? --Rosiestep (talk) 20:23, 20 November 2008 (UTC) alor

MT is perfectly fine. I added redirects from MV Stolt Valor and Stolt Valor to help people get to the article.

It might be useful to review what the prefixes mean. The prefix MT specifies that it's a motor tanker. Motor, because it's propelled by an engine, rather than sail or steam. Tanker, because it's an oil, chemical, or liquid gas tanker. MV, for motor vessel, would be perfectly acceptable, too, just a little less specific. For example, other types of ship. such a bulk carriers, car carriers, and containerships also use the MV prefix. Hope that helps. Haus^Talk 20:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for Japanese World War II destroyers now open

The peer review for Japanese World War II destroyers is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 04:17, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Looking at that, I wondered if there's a standard for capitalization of name translations. I'm split between not capitalizing, 'cause they're not proper nouns in Eng, & capitalizing, 'cause they're translations of names. Thoughts? Also, do change it to reflect whatever decision is arrived at (if any... ;D) TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 06:47, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

MV Sirius Star

This oil tanker was just hijacked off the coast of Somalia and so may be of interest to this project. Also there's a discussion on Talk:Sirius Star about whether or not the proper pronouns were neuter or feminine. Input from members of this project would be of assistance. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Interesting fun fact: this article got just under 120,000 hits in 3 days. Haus^Talk 19:47, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Empire ships

The Ministry of War Transport owned many ships during World War II. These all had names prefixed Empire. I've discovered a list on them all online, and using that have started working on a list for Wikipedia. The basic info I have collated contains enough information to enable searches to obtain information to create articles on individual ships. I've put the Empire A— ships on a subpage. Anyone who would like to create individual ship articles from the list is welcome to do so. If you are creating an article on a particular ship, please wikilink the name so that it shows up red, and add an edit note to say who is working on the article. Once created, the link will then turn blue. Mjroots (talk) 16:06, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Project DYKs

With the additions of HMS Mahratta (G23) and SM U-4 (Austria-Hungary) today, WikiProject Ships now has 300 DYK articles listed on our DYK page. (There may be others not on the list, so if you know of any ship DYKs not listed, please add them.) Keep up the good work, everyone! — Bellhalla (talk) 13:41, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I added a few of mine that had been knocking about (thanks for the reminder!). Up to 310 now. Benea (talk) 19:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Found one of mine that wasn't on the list (added). Mjroots (talk) 20:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow,that was quick! SS Empire Abbey created 0815 yesterday, DYK 0056 today! Mjroots (talk) 03:23, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I found five of mine that weren't there, put them in a moment ago. I couldn't help noticing the list is alphabeticed by article names, aka so that all ships with the same prefix are grouped together. Shouldn't they for the sake of consistency be alphabeticed by the actual ship name and not the article name? — Kjet (talk · contribs) 20:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

When I created the subpage, I just copied what had previously been on the main page, order and all, but I thought alphabetical (ignoring prefixes and/or disambiguations) was actually the way to go. I wanted to see if anyone else thought so, too, so I have reordered them now. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Listed below are 44 more. I don't have the time at the moment to format 'em — if someone wants to do it, that'd be great. Otherwise, I'll pick through them over the next couple of days... Haus^Talk 05:38, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

American President Lines

Attack Squadron 46 (United States Navy) Casco class monitor Chester - Hadlyme Ferry Concordia (ship 1696) Factory ship Flyer (steamboat) German submarine U-38 (1938) German submarine U-656 Gondola (steam yacht) Haimun Harry Price (Royal Navy) Herring Buss HMNZS Te Mana (F111) HMS Ontario (1780) HNoMS Honningsvåg HNoMS Kjell Ikazuchi class destroyer Japanese destroyer Matsu (Type D) John Kempthorne (Royal Navy officer) K-1000 battleship Lone Tree Ferry Lynchburg Ferry Lytton (sternwheeler) MF Storegut Millersburg Ferry Monohansett (steamboat) MV Ascension MV Baffin Strait (T-AK-W9519) MV Virginian (T-AK 9205) Nobby (boat) Order of battle for Convoy SC 7 Princess Royal (sloop) SC-21 (United States) Shirakumo class destroyer Sir John Moore, 1st Baronet SS Cheviot SS Pan Kraft SS Pfalz United States lightship LV-58 USS Hawaii (CB-3) USS Sandpiper (AM-51) Valley View Ferry Vorpostenboot

(outdent)All added, except for five already there (but two of those had older names which were corrected). These additions put the number at 355 now. Wow! Almost a 20% expansion in three days ;) — Bellhalla (talk) 12:20, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Iosif Stalin class passenger ship

I've been checking online and have been unable to verify the information on the article page. Does anyone have an alternate source that could be referenced for the Iosif Stalin and the Vyacheslav Molotov ? Shinerunner (talk) 17:35, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

It looks like this article came from the Russian Wikipedia article, which in turn was based on a June 1991 article in the magazine BOKPYT CBETA. A partial google-translation is available here. Hope that helps. Haus^Talk 18:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the research! I'll add the link to the article.Shinerunner (talk) 00:43, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

There's some additional information available at The Soviet Fleet website here. — Kjet (talk · contribs) 20:05, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Kjet! I've added those links to the article as well.Shinerunner (talk) 17:18, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposed moves of some Russian and Soviet submarine articles

In response to the discussion above, I have made a proposal to move several Russian and Soviet submarine articles to match the naming style outlined at WP:NC-SHIPS. Details may be found here. All comments are welcome. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

In response to this proposal, there has been an alternative renaming proposal advanced. Both proposals would benefit from more opinions from all interested editors. The original proposal and the suggested alternative are both found here — Bellhalla (talk) 11:11, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Requesting comment on Cerberus class battleship

Over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Australian military history task force#Cerberus class battleship?, I am asking for views regarding the name and content of the following articles: Cerberus class battleship, HMVS Cerberus, HMS Magdala (1870), and HMS Abyssinia (1870), as well as the template {{Cerberus class battleship}}

Based on various Australian naval history texts, I have found nothing that connects HMVS Cerberus and the concept of battleships beyond the fact that the ship's armoured hull, gun turrets, and superstructure were advances in naval architecture that were then utilised in the proto-battleships and battleships of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, I admit out front that I have not looked deeply into content on Magdala or Abyssinia, as I have little to no access to British or Indian naval histories, and what I have found on either side of the argument is limited to websites of dubious reliability. Based on this, I believe that naming the ships as "Battleships" is a gross exaggeration of their capabilities, design, and role, and am seeking to rename the main article to Cerberus class monitor and edit the articles appropriately.

If anyone has any observations or comments, please raise them here or at the Australian MILHIST task force link above. -- saberwyn 07:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

HMAS Sydney (1934)

The National Archives of Australia has (in the last few days) declassified and released a large number of documents relating to the sinking of the Sydney. Although already rated GA, this new information should be thoroughly digested and included. We should work towards making this the FA for 22 November 2009, the 75th anniversary of her launch. 203.7.140.3 (talk) 04:55, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country

List of aircraft carriers by country

i suggest deleting seaplane carriers from this list or making a separated list for them. opinions? Loosmark (talk) 15:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Several early seaplane tenders and carriers had flying-off platforms, and the seaplane tender article describes them as "the first aircraft carriers". GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:23, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Certainly don't delete them, at the very least retain them as a separate list. But as Graeme has said seaplane tenders/carriers and conventional aircraft carriers overlap in their roles/time periods etc, so there seems to be a reasonable argument there for retaining the two together (though clearly demarcated of course). Why do you want to separate them/delete the seaplane carriers? It would be helpful if you could set out your reasoning so we could have a clearer understanding of your proposal. Benea (talk) 16:49, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

ok i can try to explain. an aircraft carrier by definition is a ship with a FLIGHT DECK and which can LAUNCH and RECOVER aircraft. this is how most dictionary define the type for example:

http://dictionary.die.net/aircraft%20carrier "a large warship that carries planes and has a long flat deck for take-offs and landings [syn: carrier, flattop, attack aircraft carrier]"

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/aircraft+carrier "a large naval vessel designed as a mobile air base, having a long flat deck on which aircraft can take off and land at sea."

i'm aware that at the time early seaplane tenders and carriers were sometimes called aircraft carrier but they are not aircraft carriers under the modern understanding of the word. furthermore whats worse at the moment the list has many merchant ships converted to seaplanders which basicaly only had a derrick to lower a seaplane down. or very small seaplane carriers i have for example never heard of the german vessel "Hans Rolshoven" (which is on the list described as a "light tug type seaplane tender") so i went to check her data: 985 tons. not exactly "a large warship" don't you agree? i believe that people who check this list are interested to see the list of aircraft carriers in the modern understanding of the world. Loosmark (talk) 18:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

• I am a supporter of the view that seaplane carriers are a similar but separate type of ship to what is defined as an aircraft carrier, and a supporter of the definition that an aircraft carrier is "a ship with a flight deck designed for the launch and recovery of multiple fixed wing aircraft". As such, I support the idea that seaplane carriers should be split into a separate list to 'conventional' aircraft carriers, and that this new list should contain ships that were operated primarily as seaplane carriers; for example, a cruiser with a launch platform/catapult and a crane/derrick for recovery of a seaplane is only a seaplane carrier in the most literal definition of the term. -- saberwyn 04:20, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Commissioned Ships

If any editors have some spare time i think theres an article that needs a major revamp.Ship Commissioning appears to be the only article on wikipedia about what a Commissioned Ship is. I was expecting to find an article along the lines of Commissioned Ship but there is nothing. It seems odd that there is no major article on this subject, considering how many lists of Commissioned ships there are and the fact commission dates appear on every ship page. Could someone please take a look at this problem if they have the time, either to try and improve the Ship Commissioning article or create a new page called Commissioned Ship. Even if it was just a stub, i think it would be worthy of an article, im just shocked there isnt one already. Thanks BritishWatcher (talk) 03:03, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

This may be useful: Putting a Ship in commission The London Saturday Journal, February 16 1839 Petecarney (talk) 20:56, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Category rename

I've proposed renaming Category:Bangladesh Navy Ship to Category:Ships of the Bangladesh Navy, in line with our more standard conventions as seen at Category:Ships by navy. The discussion is here, interested editors are welcome to comment. Benea (talk) 18:00, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that the two examples you give use adjective forms of the navy in question, i.e. "Argentine" and "Brazilian." Wouldn't the adjective form Bangladeshi as in Category:Bangladeshi Navy Ship be more consistent? Haus^Talk 18:39, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I wondered that. We have the Argentine Navy and Brazilian Navy, but the article here is at Bangladesh Navy, which is what their official website bangladeshnavy.org terms it. As far as I can make out the demonym is 'Bangladeshi', and to be honest, their grasp of English seems a little suspect ('Equally individuals seek respect, pride and honour are in demands of the Navy.') I wonder if using the term 'Bangladesh Navy' is due to mix-up over the adjectival form of Bangladesh. But then again, we have the articles Bangladesh Army and Bangladesh Air Force, so maybe this runs deeper. Either way, it would be Category:Ships of the Bangladesh(i) Navy, rather than the format in use now, which was created by a user with a slightly flawed grasp of English (he consistently refers to 'Petrol Vassels' for example). Categorising by Navy runs off what the official name for the navy is, rather than using 'Country Navy' , so Category:Ships of the People's Liberation Army Navy rather than Ships of the Chinese Navy, so I guess the important thing to discover is whether the Bangladeshi Navy is officially termed Bangladesh Navy, or whether Bangladesh Navy is a flawed attempt at the adjectival form of Bangladesh. Benea (talk) 19:10, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

"Bangladesh Navy" sounds, to my ears, like "Germany Navy" or "Poland Navy" — which is to say patently incorrect. However, as you point out, the issue goes well beyond SHIPS: perhaps it'd make sense to try to build consensus at WT:MILHIST? Haus^Talk 19:50, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I take it back: apparently "Bangladesh Navy" is the correct term. Anybody want to join me in a fielding a petition to Iajuddin Ahmed to please, please have it changed? Haus^Talk 20:20, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Request rename M/V Biscaglia to MV Biscaglia

Can an admin rename M/V Biscaglia to MV Biscaglia? Haus^Talk 22:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Done. Shimgray | talk | 01:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks much! Haus^Talk 17:55, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

Resolved

 – Move completed by Anthony Appleyard.

Based on the above discussion, I have requested a move of Template:Warship to Template:Ship on the requested moves page, here. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:24, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Template to handle all ship classes

Examples

• USS Cape St. George (CG-71)
• MV Sirius Star

I noticed several uses of templates to link to ships such as the {{USS}} (USS example) or {{MV}} (MV example). Which is nice but some of the abbreviations are already in use such as {{FV}} (). I am creating a {{Ship}} that will handle all ship classes. -- Cat ^chi? 12:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

That seemingly would be redundant, as there is already {{warship}} that handles most prefixes. The USS/HMS et al specific ones are for greater convenience so there would be no benefit in discontinuing those. Martocticvs (talk) 13:17, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Agree. {{Warship}} already does this in a more robust manner (it properly handles, for example, disambiguation terms). Perhaps it might be better if Template:Ship redirected to Template:Warship? This would solve an issue mentioned previously where editors didn't wish to use a template called warship for ships that were not actually warships. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:24, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I have now redirected {{ship}} to {{warship}}. — Bellhalla (talk) 14:07, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Warship cannot handle ships like MVs or FVs as neither are warships. If anything {{warship}} should be moved to {{ship}}. -- Cat ^chi? 15:14, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense: {{warship|FV|Northwestern}} produces FV Northwestern. Yes, it looks silly in the edit window to see a fishing boat called a "warship" but it does work. — Bellhalla (talk) 18:51, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

One problem I can see is that if a ship is disambiguated by year launched, then that is show in the resulting wikilink, which IMO is a) unnecessary and b) ugly. Mjroots (talk) 15:34, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Using the optional display parameters, the disambiguation can be hidden. For example {{ship|SS|Ohioan|1914|2}} produces Ohioan — Bellhalla (talk) 18:51, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Clearly the current template {{ship}} is redundant to {{warship}} in terms of its purpose and functionality, and there's no point having two that do the same. Template:warship could be renamed to Template:ship if deemed appropriate, but there's no reason to replace examples of {{MV}}, or {{USS}} where they appear in articles with {{ship}} or {{warship}}. Benea (talk) 15:43, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I would support renaming {{warship}} to be {{ship}}, leaving the warship template as the redirect. The reason I support this is both for accuracy in terminology (the template can work for all ships, not just warships), and because I'm extraordinarily lazy and support having three fewer letters to type each time I want to use the template. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the "warship" template should be moved to the more generic "ship" template. Parsecboy (talk) 16:12, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I also would have no objections to {{warship}} moving to {{ship}} (though I don't think I've ever used it!) Martocticvs (talk) 17:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree that only one template should do the work. The template warship is a nice one that does the task ship is intended to do. I have an approved bot that can replace all instances of {{USS}} and {{MV}} and any other template with {{Ship}} or {{Warship}}. Do we really need a formal request to move {{Warship}} to {{Ship}}? -- Cat ^chi? 17:13, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I would strongly oppose any move to replace uses of {{USS}} or the other similar short-hand prefix templates. They are much more convenient to use than having to pick the warship template, and then the extra bit of code where you say what prefix you want (and are less confusing to editors not familiar with the templates). So in my opinion {{USS}}, {{HMS}} etc should be left alone, along with all their uses. Martocticvs (talk) 17:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Think about it for a second:

USS shipname (number): {{USS|shipname|number}}

USS shipname (number): {{Ship|USS|shipname|number}}

It doesn't look complicated to me.

A lot of navies do not have a template like the INS. Instead of creating one template per every class of ship and every navy we can do all of that with the current warship template. One only needs to add a single parameter for all that.

-- Cat ^chi? 17:25, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

(ec but saying much the same thing as Martocticvs) Support moving {{warship}} to {{ship}}, oppose deprecating prefix specific templates. They're widely used and convenient. They're also easier for new users to grasp and require less code when writing. {{ship}} would be the fall back if in the rare case the prefix does not have its own template, or if you're formatting a ship which doesn't use a prefix (German battleship Bismarck for example.) It really isn't necessary to change the use of the prefix templates for change's sake. Benea (talk) 17:27, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

It isn't for changes sake. Templates like USS and MV are obsolete with warship template. It seems like the people will oppose what I have to say for the sake of opposing as usual so I will not be paying attention to this thread anymore. Do as you please and please do notify me if you have changed your mind. I sincerely apologize for trying to do something useful, I should have known better. -- Cat ^chi? 17:31, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

It's not being opposed for the sake of opposing it - the reasons for opposition have been given. Seeing as we seem to be agreed that moving warship to ship would be a good idea, it would seem your original suggestion has been agreed, in fact. There's just no purpose to be served in playing with the short-hand templates. Martocticvs (talk) 18:07, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

The reason USS and HMS have their own templates is because they are extremely heavily used. For navies with few ships I agree, this is no sense creating a shorthand template for it if the warship/ship template has the functionality for it. But with USS and HMS, that must each have many thousands of uses by now, it would be counter-productive to remove them. They were introduced while warship existed, for one thing, which should say something. Martocticvs (talk) 17:32, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

As mentioned above, I support moving {{warship}} to {{ship}} ... but I wanted to clarify that I also do not support deprecating the shorthand templates {{USS}}, {{MV}}, {{RMS}}, etc. There's simply no value in it - the existing links serve a useful purpose, especially for newer users.

However, to help simplify maintenance, I would recommend re-writing the shorthand templates to be calls to {{ship}}. That way, should there ever be a need to fix/modify/add an output variable, it can more easilly be done to the single central template - if all the shorthand versions call that template, the additional formatting option/correction would automatically be picked up. Meaning, maintenance only need to be done to a single template, and not manually added to all of them. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:17, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I support moving {{warship}} to the name {{ship}}. I also support recoding the various other shortcut templates into using {{ship}} as a meta-template, similar to the way {{Cite DANFS}} uses {{Cite web}}, but I do not support wholesale removal of existing uses of current shortcuts, per Martocticvs. Several of the existing shortcut templates, however, have extra options that would need to be considered, such as the optional slash for {{MV}} and {{MS}}, and the optional sub parameter for {{SMS}}. — Bellhalla (talk) 18:51, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. Not sure how easy/hard it would be to do though, but certainly redirecting USS, HMS and the others into one all-purpose template is a good idea, so long as all the current functionality is retained. Martocticvs (talk) 19:03, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Converting the templates would be trivial. I was just cautioning that they are currently not all identical. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:22, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Wow, you all move like greased lightening! (Teach me to take a weekend off!) Nice work everyone on quickly hashing this out and coming up with a good consensus decision! --Kralizec! (talk) 00:08, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I've edited {{SS}} and {{HMS}} and requested an edit to the protected {{USS}} so that all will use {{ship}} as a meta-template. I selected these three highly transcluded templates so that if there are any problems they will be noticed sooner. The changes for each were tested in their own sandboxes and testcases pages (Template:[Name]/sandbox and Template:[Name]/testcases). If there are any problems with any of the changes, please let me know. Otherwise I'll start on converting the others tomorrow. — Bellhalla (talk) 05:25, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice work! I was going to ask if we should have the rest of the templates protected, but figured that would be too beansian. As such, I went ahead and fully protected all of the templates transcluded to 100+ pages, then semi-protected the rest. I think I have all of these templates on my watchlist now, but if changes need to be made to any of them, just follow the usual route. Thanks! --Kralizec! (talk) 14:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Template:DANFS

Please join the discussion here: Template_talk:DANFS#Problem_with_category_inclusion —G716 <^T·_C> 02:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

HMS Conqueror (1855)

A new article, needs a bit of work to bash into shape though. Mjroots (talk) 08:04, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Article rename

I ran across this stub Provence II (shipwreck) and wanted to know if it should be renamed? Shinerunner (talk) 23:41, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

 Done Moved to Provence II. Haus^Talk 23:45, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Here's a question: why is the article titled Provence II, but referred to as La Provence in the text? Has anyone the sources in the article to compare? Parsecboy (talk) 23:48, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't La Provence the name prior to wartime service? Shinerunner (talk) 23:50, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I just tweaked the text to focus on the ship as a ship. The article claims La Provence was the name before refitting as an aux cruiser. Haus^Talk 23:51, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. Parsecboy (talk) 00:22, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Naval Historical Center has changed names

The Naval Historical Center has officially changed names to Naval History & Heritage Command according to the main page of the website. I suppose there are some templates in use that will need to be updated. --Brad (talk) 18:50, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for SM U-5 (Austria-Hungary) now open

The A-Class review for SM U-5 (Austria-Hungary) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 22:06, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for USS Liberty incident now open

The peer review for USS Liberty incident is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 22:06, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Empire State V article is bonkers

Empire State V. Can anyone spot what is wrong here? Infobox won't align, text is messed around and uncat tag is into the infobox. I've spent 15 minutes on this already. --Brad (talk) 22:14, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Un-bonked. Kablammo (talk) 22:20, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Dangit. I knew it had to be something simple like that. Thanks. --Brad (talk) 22:37, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Giving a hawsepiper a golden opportunity like this to make fun of SUNY Maritime cadets, yet expecting him to be WP:CIVIL is just mean. :) Haus^Talk 22:44, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I can relate. That's why I stay away from Phil Collins an FA no less. I might need an Airsickness bag. --Brad (talk) 23:26, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Stone Fleet ships

Many of the ships in the Stone Fleet list have articles with the USS prefix. A quick spot check of DANFS (looked at Marcia, Margaret Scott, Peter Demill and Robin Hood) yields no evidence that they were ever commissioned into the US Navy. See also Category:United States Navy Stone Fleet ships. I think unless a citable source can be found to show they were commissioned, the articles need to be renamed (or more likely just absorbed into the Stone Fleet article). Any civil war naval buffs have a source or want to straighten this out? --J Clear (talk) 02:28, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

If they were going to remain as separate articles then we would have to use the prefix for wp naming standards. However, I've long thought that the articles are far too short to warrant articles for each. So I would agree they should be merged into the stone fleet article. --Brad (talk) 03:08, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

There is specific criteria for the title "United States Ship". Being owned by the USN is only one of the criteria, being commissioned and being operated by uniformed navy personnel are two other important ones. DANFS is obsessed with commissioning dates, so the fact that none of these vessels have a commissioning date listed would lead one to at least doubt they were. So USS is not "the prefix" to use here. And outside of naval vessels, prefixes are uncommon for age of sail vessels (e.g. Cutty Sark, Niña). --J Clear (talk) 03:52, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

This issue has been discussed in a lot of places and the consensus was to use USS for any US Navy ship for purposes of WP naming conventions and not US Navy conventions on this issue. By your observation we should begin renaming many ship articles including USS Constitution (CC-5) and USS Kentucky (BB-66) for starters. --Brad (talk) 02:10, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

PFS Polarstern

Is this article using the correct ship prefix? I thought that it would be RV or MV. Shinerunner (talk) 14:11, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Looking through the external links and the German article, I don't see anything to support PFS as a prefix or part of the ship's name. The article's creator only had about 150 edits, and the last one was in 2005. Personally, I'd lean towards renaming it as MV. Haus^Talk 14:27, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Concurred with Haus. — Kjet (talk · contribs) 15:43, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree as well. Parsecboy (talk) 16:42, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Move to MV Polarstern completed. Also, thanks Haus and Kjet for guessing the current value of my 401K plan! Shinerunner (talk) 16:46, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I would guess that PFS is short for Polarforschungsschiff = Polar research vessel. There is a picture on the official site captioned "FS Polarstern", and Google gives about 13,400 hits. Presumably FS is short for forschungsschiff = research vessel. So I'd expect the english transliteration to be "RV" google gives about 23,200 for "RV Polarstern" but only about 138 for "MV Polarstern". That is the evidence which causes me to lean toward RV.--Petecarney (talk) 17:08, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Uncompleted ship class importance level?

I raised a question a while back at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Assessment in regard to the importance of uncompleted ship classes and got no responses, so I thought I'd bring it to a wider audience. What should the importance assessment be for an uncompleted ship class? The importance scale suggests that uncompleted ships should assessed as "Low", but there is no comparable suggestion for an uncompleted ship class. The way I see it there are two approaches suggested by the importance scale:

• Because ship classes are inherently more important than individual ships ("High" vs. "Mid" for typical examples), an uncompleted ship class should be similarly assessed one notch higher than uncompleted ships, i.e. "Mid" vs. Low"
• Anything uncompleted or cancelled is inherently of "Low" importance

I bring this up because uncompleted ship class articles seem to have widely varying importance ratings, ranging from "High" for Montana-class battleship, to "Low" for U-52-class submarine. Any suggestions for what the guideline should be? — Bellhalla (talk) 17:56, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

My guess is that this is one of those borderline cases where you can go either way without ruffling feathers. If you want to keep some wiggle room, you might change the guideline to put "important" uncompleted ship class articles in mid and "less important" uncompleted ship classes in low. Just a thought. Haus^Talk 18:52, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the point is even ship classes that were never completed are still low importance. They may have been important to the Navy at the particular time but in context with WP they aren't adding much to the information stream. I agree that there are varying assessments on some of our unbuilt ship classes but I'm not interested in starting a reassessment campaign. --Brad (talk) 22:27, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Believe me, I'm not trying to create work for anyone :) What if we added in this line:

• Articles for canceled ship classes, like U-101-class submarine

to the "Example" column for "Low" importance, then? — Bellhalla (talk) 22:40, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok I added that into the column. I've been working on updating that page. --Brad (talk) 01:08, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

US BB Class chronology messed up

The preceded by/followed by links in the US BB class are messed up around the South Dakota class Wezelboy (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 20:51, 8 December 2008 (UTC).

No they are not, we include the canceled classes. Therefore the progression is Colorado, South Dakota (1920), North Carolina, South Dakota (1939). -MBK₀₀₄ 20:56, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for Lexington class battlecruiser now open

The A-Class review for Lexington class battlecruiser is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 22:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Two Ships FACs that need attention

There are two ship articles at FAC that could benefit from additional input. The nomination for SS Dakotan is here, and the nomination for SS Washingtonian is here. Both have been open for some time. — Bellhalla (talk) 22:46, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

SS Princess Sophia

I reassessed this to B class today. Does it have the potential to go to GA class? Mjroots (talk) 18:25, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I just left a note for the editor who did the bulk of the work. It's not far off. Maralia (talk) 18:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Help required

Bizzare question time, can anyone identify the ship in this photo please? cheers muchly ^Khukri 16:12, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

SS Normandie. Kablammo (talk) 16:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. ^Khukri 16:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposed guide regarding list of Commanding Officers sections

While working on improving the article USS Alexandria (SSN-757), I found that other articles about warships, both surface and submarine, often included a section listing commanding officers.

Analysis

I sampled the articles by doing the following two searches:

1. list of commanding officers, then opened articles then opened all articles on the 1^st search page about any kind of warship,
2. list of commanding officers submarine, then opened all articles on the 1^st search page about any kind of submarine

Findings

I found that there is a lack of consistency in naming, placement and format of such lists. Here's what I found

Surface ships

• One (1) article, List of Commanding Officers of the USS Nevada (BB-36), was a seperate list, but that list was just a bulleted list
• Two (2) articles, USS Vincennes (CA-44) and USS Vincennes (CG-49), have sections List of Commanding Officers as the 1^st section in the article
• Five (5) articles, Japanese cruiser Katori, German cruiser Admiral Hipper, HMS Duncan (D99) & German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee & HMS Victorious (R38) have subsections listing Commanding Officers as the last section before the References section. However, Japanese cruiser Katori names the section List of Commanding Officers, while German cruiser Admiral Hipper, HMS Duncan (D99) & German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee name it Commanding Officers (the Graf Spee places the section one section above References, just above Popular Culture, while the Victorious places it just above the Bibliography section).

Submarines

• USS Asheville (SSN-758) lists COs, XOs, and COBs as seperate sections of bulleted lists, in that order, near the top of the article (starting as the 3^rd section, named Commanding Officers)
• USS Triton (SSRN-586) (a Good Article), has a Commanding Officers section, as a bulleted list, near the bottom of the article (above the Legacy section)
• USS Indianapolis (SSN-697) has a List of Commanding Officers as the 1^st section of the article, as bulleted list
• USS Tucson (SSN-770) (as an aside, the lead is much too long in this article), has a List of Commanding Officers as the 1^st section of the article, as an unbulleted list
• One other submarine article (sorry, but I misplaced the reference), shows the list as a table

Conclusions and recommended style

# Section naming. Warship articles, whether surface of submarine, should name sections that list Commanding Officers as Commanding Officers, not List of Commanding Officers . This seems to be the most common naming convention

1. List format. The list should be given as a bulleted list, in the form used in the USS Triton (SSRN-586), not an unbulleted list or table
2. Section placement. The list should be the last section of the article, before See also, References, or External links--Joe Sperrazza (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

If anyone has comments and/or other views, please let me know. For the current article I am working on improving, USS Alexandria (SSN-757), I will implement the list of COs using the recommended style noted above. If there is consensus, I'll work through the list of submarines and move/rename/redo the lists of Commanding Officers, if any.--Joe Sperrazza (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC) Thank you, --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 18:14, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Are lists like this really notable? Obviously notable individuals who commanded a particular ship should certainly be linked and acknowledged, but doesn't something like this creep into the realm of indiscriminate information? As a point of comparison, neither Navsource.org nor the online version of DANFS have lists of commanding officers. — Bellhalla (talk) 18:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

This is an excellent question. Let me address it point by point:

• I agree that officers of any ship/boat that are of WP:NOTE should be referenced, if not briefly discussed, in a ship/boat's article
• The lists I saw did not violate the 5 points listed in Wikipedia:INDISCRIMINATE#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information
  • Certainly not every (and, from by brief recollection, few) of the officers listed are notable enough for their own articles, so I believe they are allowed
• As for availability of lists of Commanding officers, the Office of the Director of Naval History, Naval History & Heritage Command, maintains a website that provides the "Command History" of every US Navy Ship currently commissioned - each history is authored and signed by the ship's Commanding Officer:

A Chief of Naval Operations' instruction (OPNAVINST 5750.12J) requires all commissioned ships in the Navy to submit an annual Command Operations Report, formerly known as the Command History Report. This report covers the operational and administrative actions of the command for each calendar year. To provide the crew of the current commissioned ships with a better understanding of its history, and in concert with the histories in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, the annual history/command operational reports are posted for reference purposes.
...Please note the reports listed here are only for current commissioned ships....
THIS IS A LONG RANGE PROGRAM TO SCAN AND POST THESE REPORTS. AT THIS TIME THE "A" through "L" SHIP'S LISTS HAVE BEEN COMPLETED AND AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW. SPECIFIC HISTORY REPORTS FOR L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, V, AND W SHIPS HAVE BEEN POSTED.

Ship History/Command Operations Reports

Thus, it seems to me, your question is "Should any articles list COs or other officers?". That had not been my question., but my refined proposal follows:

Commanding Officers' section.

1. Articles regarding US Navy ships (boats) in this project that are assessed at the level of Good article or better must include a Commanding Officers section, with as complete a list of COs as information is available (see caveat quoted from NavHist website, noted above).
2. Articles regarding other ships (boats) in this project that are assessed at the level of Good article or better should include a Commanding Officers section, with a list of COs (which may be incomplete), if such information exists.
3. Officers subordinate to the CO, NCOs, and Enlisted personnel should not be listed unless they are of of WP:NOTE
4. The format of such lists shall be as follows:

* rank-abbreviation Firstname Mi Lastname, service — from-month from-year to to-month to-year

e.g.,

* FADM Samuel J. Azzarreps, USN — June 1985 to April 1988

5. The section should be the last section of the article, but before See also, References, or External links

As a reminder, the reason I raised this issue was due to:

• a desire to improve the quality of the USS Alexandria (SSN-757) to that of the USS Triton (SSRN-586), a Good Article — the Triton article includes a Commanding Officers section
• a desire to to maintain the consistent, encyclopedic appearance of such articles emphasis added--Joe Sperrazza (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Once again, thanks for your thoughts. I'm eager to hear any further comments you have, as well as those of others.

Cheers, --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 21:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I have no doubt that lists of commanding officers can be found and properly sourced. But perhaps I didn't clearly convey my meaning in regard to the mention of Navsource.org and the online version of DANFS. Both websites provide information on U.S. Navy ships and would properly be considered specialist websites in regard to U.S. Navy ships. In each case, however, an editorial decision was made somewhere along the line to not include commanding officers. It's notable to me that these two websites, specializing in U.S. Navy ship information do not include lists of commanding officers. For Wikipedia, as a general interest encyclopedia and not a U.S. Navy encyclopedia, I'm not sure I see the relevance of lists of commanding officers. — Bellhalla (talk) 21:54, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying your points, Bellhalla^(talk). I understand and agree with your points. --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Bellhalla. I do not see the relevance of a list of commanding officers to an article on the history of a warship in a general encyclopedia. Most of these fine people were simply doing the job assigned to them, and the history of the ship would not be much different if Officer Foo had command instead of Officer Bar. Some of the commanding officers are important to the history of the ship, but these can be mentioned in the text where their presence is relevant to the ship's history. -- saberwyn 22:17, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, saberwyn^(talk). I agree, too. --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Two notions I tend to agree with: if an article has a list of COs:

1. ==Commanding officers== would probably be preferable to ==List of commanding officers==
2. Such a list would probably be best towards the end of the article

There may be some articles in which such a list would be encyclopedic, but the vast majority wouldn't be. These lists would also tend to perpetuate the myth that the CO does anything other than annoy the quartermasters. Cheers. Haus^Talk 22:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Haus^Talk. I agree with all of your points except the last sentance (grin), but I'm a bit biased. --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

To my mind, lists of commanding officers seems superfluous: if a particular officer played a notable role in the history of the ship, then he will be mentioned in the prose of the article. Someone who only appears in a list seems to me to be essentially not notable, and thus probably shouldn't be mentioned. I'm not at all fond of lists inside articles as I feel they generally detract - if something is worth mentioning, it can be mentioned properly in the text. Martocticvs (talk) 22:42, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

In reply to the whole shebang, I will agree that in most cases there is no reason to have a list of commanding officers for any one particular ship. If the CO's aren't notable enough to be included in the article text then there is not much of a reason to list them. USS Constitution has had 70 CO's during her career but I probably mentioned no more than 15 in the article text. An external link in the article leads to an entire listing of CO's if anyone were interested in knowing. --Brad (talk) 02:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Martocticvs^(talk) - you make an excellent point, with which I agree. --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Consensus, with one unresolved question

Thank you, again, all that provided their comments. I believe consensus was reached as follows:

Points of Consensus

• (All agreed) As a general rule, articles should not have lists of Commanding Officers, or other crew. Officers are crew that are of WP:NOTE should be discussed in the body of the article.
• Should a list of Commanding officers be provided in an article:
  • (Two agree, no dissent) It should be titled === Commanding Officers ===, not === List of Commanding Officers ===
  • (Two agree, no dissent) It should be placed "towards the bottom of the article" (I'll interpret that more precisely to meet the location specification I suggested: the section should be the last section of the article, but before See also, References, or External links)
  • (I proposed, no dissent) The sections should be of a consistently format (I'll interpret that more precisely to meet the location specification I suggested: the format of such lists shall be as follows: "* rank-abbreviation Firsttame Mi Lastname, service — from-month from-year to to-month to-year", e.g., "* FADM Samuel J. Azzarreps, USN — June 1985 to April 1988"

Consensus

Note: as no one seems to disagree, I'm changing the title of this section to Consensus from Question, and removed the trailing question mark "?".--Joe Sperrazza (talk) 17:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

This issue was not explicitly addressed by any of the comments. However, interpolating from the comments received, I propose to take the following actions, unless someone objects:

1. In the article on which I'm working, as well as any subsequent articles I edit or author, I will not add a list of officers or crew of any sort. If any such are of WP:NOTE, I'll reference in the main body of the article
2. As an interim measure (because I can do so quickly, easily and with precision), I'll find all articles that contain lists of crew (e.g., === Commanding Officers === or === List of Commanding Officers ===) and make them be of:
   1. Consistent name: === Commanding Officers ===, (Done --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 17:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC))
   2. Consistent format: as described above, and, (In progress --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 16:05, 11 December 2008 (UTC))
   3. Consistent location: as described above. (In progress --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 17:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC))

As I've been working through these articles, I've found some interesting things:

1. There are scores of Ships articles (and I'm far from done - I estimate there will be hundreds) that contain lists of Commanding Officers
2. Only a handful of the entries on these many, many lists point to a Wiki article for one of the COs; the rest of the entries are likely not of WP:NOTE
3. The placement of the articles has been "more or less" consistently near the bottom, but not always
4. The format of the articles is wildly inconsistent
5. Referring to the comments regarding use of "Jargon", or "Jargon-y" entrys (e.g., FADM), each of these articles is chock-full of naval Jargon (in fact, a brief review of these articles themselves, mostly Start-Class, but even at least one B-Class, have plenty of naval Jargon in them, including FADM and VADM

I'm slowly working on editing them, but my findings make me think:

• When I raised my question, I felt a small measure of WP:BITE (even though I'm not a newcomer to Wiki, but am to this project) in the responses - yet at least I asked the question, as I was editing an article, rather than just doing whatever I deemed appropriate, as it appears the authors of these many, many other articles did
• I was disappointed that no one ever addressed the question of "What to do with [all these] articles..." - I hope I'm doing the right thing - it is a lot of work
• I'm wondering how all these articles were authored, and assessed as "Start class" (and one is a B-Class), without the issue of the correctness of having lists of Commanding Officers, address so strongly in response to my question, without the issue being raised for those articles in their assessment.

Note: I raise the points in WP:Good Faith — I genuinely wonder if some improvement to the assessment process is not in order.

I still agree with, and remain committed to, the WP:Consensus reached here, and am not questioning those conclusions

I do apologize if my comments are taken in other than good faith by anyone, especially the respondees who too the time to offer their commentary. I only note, again, I am a newcomer to this project, and so hope for some leeway as I have not yet determined the pecking order here (I do understand I'm at rock bottom - no problem!).

Cheers, --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 15:59, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

The reason for doing so is to quickly attain increased encyclopedic consitency among these articles.

1. As a longer-term measure, I'll re-examine these articles, one by one, and look for evidence of notability of the crew listed (for consistency and ease of review, I'll look for existing Wiki articles, but also do a Google and Google news search). If I find one or more of note, I'll mention in the body of the article. The remainder, and the section/list in which they're contained, I'll remove. This won't be finishd overnight, but I think is a worthy task

Cheers, --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

In response to your "Points of Consensus"/Item 2/sub item 3, beginning "(I proposed, no dissent) The sections…" Using abbreviations, like "FADM", while perhaps making sense to WP:SHIPS members, is probably not going to mean anything to a typical 12-year-old using Wikipedia as a source for a report. If (which is a big if in my view, as stated above) there is a list, let's please not use jargon-y abbreviations. — Bellhalla (talk)

No problem, rather than abbreviations for titles, if there is a list, we'll use fully spelled out tiles (e.g., instead of FADM, use Fleet Admiral.

P.S. I rather liked seeing my example (my last name spelled in reverse, and my first and middle names reversed) having a five-star flag rank. --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 05:22, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll second that; we need to remember that likely a majority of the readers will not be subject-matter experts, and we shouldn't assume they know what these jargon-y abbreviations mean. Parsecboy (talk) 04:40, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

See my comment, above. I agree. --Joe Sperrazza (talk) 05:22, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Help requested

• List of ships attacked by Somali pirates

The list needs to be expanded based on the info from International Maritime Organization. There are a number pf PDFs from the IMO at http://www.imo.org/Circulars/mainframe.asp?topic_id=334

Mind that the IMO info is for piracy world wide. Article is confined only to "Somali pirates".

-- Cat ^chi? 13:06, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:DANFS talk

Template:DANFS talk has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. —G716 <^T·_C> 03:43, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Deprecate {{warship}} now?

Since {{warship}} now redirects to {{ship}}, is there any objection to following the same process we used when consolidating our infobox templates, namely:

1. replace occurences of warship with ship
2. when finished with step 1, deprecate warship, and
3. finally run warship through the WP:TFD process

Cheers. Haus^Talk 00:12, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

We should probably keep the redirect at {{warship}} for some time, as editors may take a while to transition to the new, shorter name. On the topic of replacing the template occurances, currently I am churning through with AWB, but a surprisingly large number of articles need to be manually edited because {{warship}} was used instead of {{HMCS}} and {{SMS}} (no doubt because it predates them) as well as several instances where it was used instead of {{HMS}} and {{USS}} (perhaps due to force-of-habit). --Kralizec! (talk) 02:03, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's quite the same as the infoboxes, since it's a redirect, and, thus, no longer a different template anymore. In looking at reasons to delete a redirect, I don't really see any that apply directly to this situation. I also honestly don't see any advantage to wholesale replacing of instances of {{warship}}, but, conversely, see disadvantages—clogging watchlists with no net benefit to readers, for example, which borders on the trivial. Every editor's manner of spending their wiki-time is of their own choosing, but in my view, it's a waste of time. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:06, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I don't see any harm in keeping that one there, as a redirect. As long as they are both reading off the same... wiki sheet :D... there shouldn't be any issues. Martocticvs (talk) 20:36, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I have engaged my bot to replace each instance of {{warship}} with {{ship}}. The redirect can stay of course... Ideally you do not want multiple references to the same template. People shouldn't learn the wrong way. :) -- Cat ^chi? 12:56, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not wrong if, (a), it redirects to the same template, and, (b), it works. Thanks to your bot run, my watchlist is overflowing with changes that have no net benefit to our readers. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Normally bot edits are exempt from watchlist notification. If you set up your watchlist to see bot edits, you will see bot edits. -- Cat ^chi? 19:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, my watchlist has always included bot edits. (I do know how to exclude them, but have chosen not to.) — Bellhalla (talk) 20:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Then by the very nature of things seeing bot edits is only natural for you and should not bother you as you have chosen to see them. You can easily tell which edit is a bot edit and which one is not. -- Cat ^chi? 15:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I do not mind the changes to article space and feel that replacing the {{warship}} redirects will benefit the project in the longrun. However, changing project and user space pages is annoying at best, while the updates to talk pages may go against the WP:TALK guideline. --Kralizec! (talk) 16:13, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

It was marked as a minor edit. That should not generate a "you have got a new message" box. So nothing has been violated here. You are too easily annoyed. -- Cat ^chi? 19:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I again sincerely apologize from everyone for trying to do something productive. Like always I got what I deserve. Accusations and plenty of yelling... -- Cat ^chi? 19:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel that way, but, as I was trying to point out, the edits weren't really all that productive in the grand scheme of things. — Bellhalla (talk) 20:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

What harm has it done to the site? Seriously? -- Cat ^chi? 15:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

German and Danish readers required

I've expanded the MS Hans Hedtoft article, but a German reader is needed to extract further material from this source and a Danish reader to extract further material from this source. Mjroots (talk) 09:57, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

B-Class FAQ for Ships

I ripped the B-Class FAQ from milhist and updated/adapted it for Ships. I think I covered the main idea of B-Class for this project but alterations are welcome @ Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Assessment/B-class FAQ. --Brad (talk) 17:09, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for SMS Moltke (1910) now open

The peer review for SMS Moltke (1910) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 20:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Reorganisation of Royal Australian Navy-related categories

Over my time editing articles relating to the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), particulary articles relating to the ships thereof, I have become frustrated and confused with the system of categories used to categorise ship articles.

I would like to suggest a reorganisation of the category tree: Category:Naval ships of Australia at the top, with four subcategories; Category:Active naval ships of Australia, Category:Ships of Australian Colonial navies (possibly renamed), Category:Ships of the Royal Australian Navy, and Category:Australian naval ship stubs. The "Ships of the RAN" category would be kept empty of individual ship articles, which will be categorised into subcategories based on type (destroyer, cruiser, submarine, etc) and/or role (training ship, survey ship, etc).

Part of this reorganisation will require the creation of several subcategories based on type/role, the standardisation of category names for the same type/role (we have some that are "Type of the Royal Australian Navy", some "Type of Australia", and some "Royal Australian Navy type") and the removal of overly-specific subcategories, such as Category:Battlecruisers of Australia, (which only contains and only will contain the article HMAS Australia (1911)) or Category:Cold War aircraft carriers of Australia, (which with the exception of HMAS Albatross is identical to Category:Royal Australian Navy aircraft carriers and Category:Aircraft carriers of Australia).

I've drawn up a rough layout at User:Saberwyn/The Grand RAN/New category structure. This page also contains a breakdown of the type/role subcategories that are currently in use, need to be created, and need to have names standardised; a list of "Odd categories out" that I feel need to be merged, have their contents split out into other categories, or don't know what to do with. Some examples of how the new category structure will be applied to various RAN ship articles is provided.

Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated. Particularly, I would like to know if the subcategories should be standardised at "of Australia" or "of the Royal Australian Navy". -- saberwyn 11:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Our category structure is so complicated and convoluted, it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Generally speaking, I support any effort to fix the current cat. mess, however I think we should also keep the category structure consistent across the various nations` navies (a la our WP:SHIPS-CAT project guidelines). Speaking of, I thought I remembered some discussion about updating WP:SHIPS-CAT to address the redundancy between the quasi-parallel ships of nation and ships of navy category structures (using the RAN for example, this would be Category:Naval ships of Australia and Category:Ships of the Royal Australian Navy). While not explicitly addressed in Saberwyn`s proposal, his example appears to do a nice job of eliminating the duplication. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:53, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorting out the navy/nation issue was one of the happy side effects I hoped to achieve with this reorganisation. As for WP:SHIPS-CAT, would it be an idea to use this reorganisation as a test case, then propose alterations to the guideline based on its successes and failures? -- saberwyn 03:37, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

The Navy/Nation problem: Solution?

I'm well under-way with the recategorisation, and based on this think that the easiest way to solve the Navy/Nation issue is to ensure that all military ships are classified under their operating force, not their operation nation. These 'navy' categories would be subcategories of the "Naval ships of foo" cat. Thoughts? -- saberwyn 22:55, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for USS Iowa turret explosion now open

The A-Class review for USS Iowa turret explosion is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK₀₀₄ 22:58, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Interest in a ships portal?

With 36 FAs, 18 featured pictures, and 245-ish DYKs, we certainly have enough material to support a pretty rich portal. I'm curious if a ships portal along the lines of P:USN/P:USMM were to spring into existence, would anybody else be interested in working on it?

Big tasks in initial setup would include:

1. Creating 1000-ish-character capsules of FAs (example)
2. Writing introductory text for the portal header (example)
3. Creating picture captions (example)
4. Locating/transcribing DYK text (example)
5. Design/layout, what to include, where to put it

Getting the skeleton in place would be a matter of a few hours of work. OTOH, creating the capsules would probably take 18-36 hours, and I don't know how long it would take to transcribe the DYKs...

Cheers. Haus^Talk 15:30, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

HMS Agamemnon ready for GA?

As I've never really worked on an article with a view to pushing it up towards the higher end of the assessment scale, I thought I'd just ask for some opinions on whether HMS Agamemnon (1781) is ready to be put up for GA assessment? Martocticvs (talk) 16:05, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Go for it. The Land (talk) 16:44, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Giving it a quick MOS cleanup pass now. I have a couple questions for you when I'm done (will put them on the talk page), but yes, it's certainly ready. Maralia (talk) 17:23, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

That was nice and positive, so I have nominated it! I'll keep an eye open for the questions... Martocticvs (talk) 17:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

HMS Dragon (D35)

Battle honours

If a previous ship (or previous ships) have been awarded battle honours, are those battle honors "owned" by a subsequent ship with that name? If so, is it appropriate to display them in the infobox of the latest ship with that name? Mjroots (talk) 05:33, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the battle honours carry on to other ships of the same name. An example is given on the RN web page for the history of HMS Kent, and you will find similar information for other ships. David Biddulph (talk) 06:27, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

(ec) In a sense they are, and they continue to be displayed by that ship. here are the battle honours displayed by HMS Nottingham. Here the current HMS Trenchant displays the honour gained by the the Second World War submarine. For historic ships I tend to only put on the ones that ship has herself added, but for current naval vessels like Dragon I can see the interest in knowing what honours that ship currently holds and displays, and the infobox seems the sensible place for this. Benea (talk) 06:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Looks like I made an honest mistake in removing them! Mjroots (talk) 08:13, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

The Royal Australian Navy has the same tradition. Nick-D (talk) 08:46, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me there should be a clear distinction between earned and inherited honours.

—WWoods (talk) 17:14, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Although all honours belong to the ship, I'm of the opinion that only the honours earned by a particular ship should be listed in that ship's article. Having said that, I think that the whole list of honours should be available somewhere, maybe the shipindex/disambiguation page? -- saberwyn 22:58, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the template can be changed to show earned honours and inherited honours? Mjroots (talk) 21:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

History
Name	HMAS Sydney V
Honours and awards	Battle Honours inherited: Emdem 1914 CALABRIA 1940 SPADA 1940 MEDITERRANEAN 1940 Kormoran 1941 KOREA 1951-52 VIETNAM 1965-72 KUWAIT 1991 Battle Honours earned: FOOBAR 20** Barfoo 20** Awards earned: Meritorious Unit Citation?
Notes	Taken from: image at [7] and [8]

It wouldn't need a template change, just a bolded heading. The problem is how many honours there will be... see the hupothetical infobox for the fifth HMAS Sydney. I can only imagine that some British ships, whose names have been 'in service' since the formation of the Royal Navy, will have veritable laundry lists. Will having so many honours in the infobox detract from the ones actually earned? And what do we do with the older ships... will they 'inherit' the honours of their younger namesakes?

I would personally prefer something like the setup at HMS Ark Royal, where the battle honours are displayed below the list of ships. All the battle honours are in one central location, and someone wishing to work out which ship earned which honour needs only to look up to the ship list and find the service dates. Also, all of the relevant honours can be listed in the individual articles. -- saberwyn 22:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

(od) Is it just me, or is the infobox appearing at the bottom of this talk page for everyone? Mjroots (talk) 22:11, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It was for everyone. My oops, and hopefully fixed. -- saberwyn 22:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Article assessment

Are you allowed to assess your own articles? Given the new template where you just answer a bunch of questions and get an automatic assessment, I can't see why not, and it saves someone else the trouble of doing so, but I'd like to know if there is an established convention here. Gatoclass (talk) 09:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I think assessing articles for B-class is usually frowned upon but I don't see any problem with partially filling in the checklist if its not meeting B-class. --Brad (talk) 09:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that anything above stub needs to be assessed by an independant editor, not the editor who created the article or has substantially expanded it. That way, any allegations of bias are avoided. Mjroots (talk) 10:42, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, maybe I'll just tag with the wikiships template and let someone else do the assessments.

BTW, while I'm here, anyone know what "R.F." and "E.F." mean in relation to 6 pdr guns from around the turn of the century/WWI period? Gatoclass (talk) 10:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Which is fine if the project has active members (like this one). Some projects need more assessors! Mjroots (talk) 11:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I think wpbio is the leader with over 89,000 unassessed articles. --Brad (talk) 11:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Any editor can asses anything up to B-class. So feel free to assess your own work as B-class if you're sure about it. If someone else disagrees they can always change it back.

Gatoclass - which navy are you talking about? R.F. might easily be 'rapid firing'... The Land (talk) 11:15, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It is, the more widely used acronym is QF (quick fire). Any more context for EF? There have been a number of similar acronyms, but EF seems to be another US variance, and a long gone one at that. Benea (talk) 11:31, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe EF is a mis-typed RF? — Bellhalla (talk) 12:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with The Land on self-assessment. I'm sure I've seen a guideline somewhere which specifically says not to self-assess articles. If you disagree with an assessment you can always ask the assessor, or the relevant WikiProject for reassessment/advice on what needs improving. Mjroots (talk) 12:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Mjroots with the proviso that self-assessment is fine for Stub-Class and Start-Class. B-Class should be assessed by someone else. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

(od)As this issue affects all articles across Wikipedia, I've raised it here. Mjroots (talk) 12:37, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for not responding to the many replies earlier. The "R.F." and "E.F." were in the stats for a DANFS article, specifically, this one. Gatoclass (talk) 13:09, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The QF 1 pounder pom-pom was in service with the US Navy during that time period, and the E is right next to the R on the keyboard...! I think this is probably just what Belhalla suggested, a simple typo. I can't find any reference to EF in gun classifications. Benea (talk) 13:42, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

If it was an AA gun, maybe the EF stands for Elevated Fire? Gatoclass (talk) 15:21, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I reckon it's elevated fire. I get about 400 google hits for the phrase in relation to guns, quite a few of them relating to naval warfare from around this era. Gatoclass (talk) 15:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

HMS Arabis

Anybody know which HMS Arabis this is? It can't be this one and it doesn't seem that this one fits the bill either. Was there a third? Mjroots (talk) 10:42, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It's this one - HMS Arabis (K73). Served with the RN from 1940 to 1942, with the USN as USS Saucy from 1942 to 1945, and with the RN as HMS Snapdragon until being sold in 1946. Benea (talk) 10:55, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, have expanded the disambig page. Mjroots (talk) 11:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Images from pdf books

Anyone know how to extract an image from a google book file? I have been able to DL entire books from google, but I don't know how to separate the images from the text. Gatoclass (talk) 03:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The simplest method is to view the image at the largest size that will fit on your screen, then take a screen shot, and crop the resulting captured image using Paint (Windows) or Preview (Mac). Sswonk (talk) 04:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, that's a method that hadn't occurred to me. I guess I could give it a try, thanks for the suggestion :) Gatoclass (talk) 04:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I realized after posting that that there is a tool in adobe's viewer that allows you to just copy a portion of the pdf and then paste it into a paint program. I'm not sure whether I should upload the image though, although it's nearly 140 years old, because as usual it's impossible to know where it was "first published" as per our ridiculously prohibitive copyright policies. Gatoclass (talk) 05:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

If it's actually 140 years old, it's in the public domain in the United States. Anything published before 1923 in the U.S. is completely PD, even for Commons. If the original publication is outside the U.S. before 1923, it might or might not be PD in its country of origin, but it is still PD in the U.S. and can be freely uploaded to Wikipedia. — Bellhalla (talk) 05:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

But how do you know it wasn't sitting in someone's drawer for sixty years before it was published? Just because a photo is 140 years old doesn't necessarily mean it was first published before 1923. That is how I read the copyright rules anyhow. Gatoclass (talk) 07:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

That won't matter, as the 75 years from creation rule comes into play. 140 - 75 = 65. Once a picture is out of copyright, it subsequent publication cannot impose a new copyright. Mjroots (talk) 07:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with that rule, where did you read that? Gatoclass (talk) 08:13, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

It's in the Copyright article:- Once the term of a copyright has expired, the formerly copyrighted work enters the public domain and may be freely used or exploited by anyone. Mjroots (talk) 09:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

But where does it say the term of a copyright is 75 years from the date of creation? Gatoclass (talk) 12:06, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)Not sure about what Mjroots has said, but it's generally PD 75 70 years after the death of the creator. IANAL, but here are some common examples: Let's say Jane Smith makes a drawing 140 years ago, in 1868.

• If the drawing is first published before 1923 in the U.S., regardless of whether Jane Smith is living or not → PD everywhere
• If first published before 1923 outside the U.S., regardless of whether Jane Smith is living or not → PD in US for certain, may or may not be PD in country of origin
• If first published after 1923, but Jane Smith died before 1933 1938 (more than 75 70 years ago) → PD in US for certain, may or may not be PD in other countries
• If first published after 1923, but Jane Smith is alive or died 1933 1938 or later → not PD yet in US

These guidelines are for images or works that were not done "for hire" (e.g. as an employee of a company), with the caveat that works published pre-1923 are always PD in the US. There are always complications and intricacies of copyright that are best left to lawyers, but if you follow these guidelines, you are generally pretty safe. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The general rule in the United States is indeed protection for 70 years (not 75) after the death of the author for any work first published after 1923. The date of creation is irrelevant. However, you don't always necessarily need to know the date of first publication. If, for example, you know that the image appeared in a book printed in 1921, it doesn't matter whether this was the first publication or not; if it wasn't the first publication, the (unknown) first publication was certainly before 1923.

Gatoclass is right about the "sitting in a drawer somewhere" scenario. An image created in the United States 140 years ago but not published until after 1923 is subject to the same "life of the creator plus 70 years" protection as other materials. There are many historic images in archives that are protected by copyright in perpetuity until they are published. Take a look here for more detail on unpublished works.

It's just possible that a 140-year-old image could still be under copyright. Consider this hypothetical scenario: If the artist were 20 years old when she created the image in 1868, and then lived to be 92 years old (dying in 1940), then her work will only enter the public domain on 1 January 2011 if it remained unpublished by 1923. It's unlikely – the artist would need to be young when she created the image, old when she died, and the image would have had to stay unpublished for over 55 years – but it is possible. What was the date of publication of the book in question? --Rlandmann (talk) 13:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the bit of info. I've updated my response with the new age/dates. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I thought that's how it worked, which is why I call our image policies "ridiculously prohibitive". If you look at other responsible sources, like libraries and museums, they will always just say something like "the copyright of many these old photographs is impossible to determine, so if you see a photo whose copyright you have information on, please let us know." But meanwhile, they are selling copies of these photos to the public! We aren't doing even that much, and we still can't reproduce them! IMO if a photo with no copyright information is available from such sources, we should be able to use it too. We should also be able to use photos that are reproduced in modern publications that have no copyright info (indicating that the copyright is unknown).

As for "what was the date of publication of the book in question" - that's the crux of the problem, it's almost impossible to track down photos to ancient long out of print books and publications. Even libraries and museums with their considerable resources can't do so. Gatoclass (talk) 14:41, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Gatoclass, from what source have you obtained the image in question? — Bellhalla (talk) 15:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I have a whole bunch of images I would love to upload to the 'pedia. But to give you one example - I recently wrote an article on Indiana (1873) and I have a very nice picture of Indiana which I just found on a couple of random websites. But I have also found the same picture published without copyright notice in Flayhart's The American Line 1871-1902 (Norton and Co., 2000) and in a 1998 copy of Cruise Travel magazine, where you can see the image in question here. In the magazine article, the image attribution simply says "Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA".

So here is this image that appears in two recent publications with no copyright notice and I can't upload it here because I don't know when the image was first published. Probably they don't know either, but they can include it in a commercial product and I can't put it in a free encyclopedia. Gatoclass (talk) 15:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at this, and the text and table referenced by footnote 5. Kablammo (talk) 15:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see your point, that only applies to "unpublished works". I have no way of knowing whether or not this photo was published somewhere prior to its appearance in Cruise Travel. That's the conundrum.

It's an either/or test. 17 U.S.C. section 302(e) provides:

(e) Presumption as to Author’s Death.— After a period of 95 years from the year of first publication of a work, or a period of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first, any person who obtains from the Copyright Office a certified report that the records provided by subsection (d) disclose nothing to indicate that the author of the work is living, or died less than 70 years before, is entitled to the benefits of a presumption that the author has been dead for at least 70 years. Reliance in good faith upon this presumption shall be a complete defense to any action for infringement under this title.

So an image published before 1923, or created before 1888, is presumptively out of copyright, if a certification is obtained. That would not help you for an image for the 1890s but may help for earlier images, regardless of what a picture library claims. Kablammo (talk) 17:41, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I guess the only thing one could do is assume that since the photo has been published in these two books without copyright notice, then it must be out of copyright. But then I'm still in the dark as to why it is out of copyright, so I don't actually know which template applies. Gatoclass (talk) 15:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried to contact the Peabody Essex Museum and have them provide you a status of the image? If not, that would be the first step. If you get no response, I would upload the image and tag the image as PD-US. The source of the image would be the Peabody Essex Museum. Be sure to put the date of the image on the description also. -Nv8200p talk 16:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes I have contacted the museum, but no reply yet. Gatoclass (talk) 17:16, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

How about that. Got the reply just now, and here it is in total:

the photo is in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum and thus we hold copyright for this image. Gatoclass (talk) 17:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Although you will probably have to live with this response until it can be proved otherwise, I know from professional experience that museums say that kind of thing for every image they hold, whether or not they actually hold the copyright. Many's the time I've seen a museum lay claim to the copyright of images that were definately published before 1923 and I would not be at all surprised to see that this was the result in this case. I recommend you abide by the answer for now and keep digging to see if you can come across an early published version that disproves their claim.--Jackyd101 (talk) 19:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Claiming copyright when such copyright has expired is copyfraud. Mjroots (talk) 20:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. It would be nice if there were a law against it; and that offenders were dealt with in the same way as people violating copyrights in the other direction. I mean, traditional copyright violations "steal" from one individual or corporation; copyfraud steals from everybody. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

To be perfectly frank, when I got that reply last night my immediate impression was that she'd just taken the easy way out, ie she couldn't be bothered actually finding the photo in question in the archives to check its copyright status so just thought "I'll fob him off by saying we own the copyright". It seems highly unlikely that every item in that museum is copyrighted to the museum itself, so I think her statement is just bull. I'm considering replying to her to inform her that I've already seen the photo in another recent publication without attribution, just to see how she responds. Gatoclass (talk) 05:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

(od) Let's look at a theoretical case. Photo taken in 1868, author unknown. As far as I can tell, copyright if the photograph was unpublished would have expired 75 years after creation in the USA = 1943. The photo was published in a book that was published in 1974. As the photo was already in the public domain by then, no new copyright could be created, thus the photo remained copyright expired and is available for anyone to use for whatever purpose they wish to use it for. Correct me if this is not the case. Mjroots (talk) 20:35, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

• According to this, if the photo was unpublished, the copyright term is life of the author + 70 years or 120 years from date of creation for works for hire or corporate authorship. If the first known publishing of the image is 1974, and the book was published with copyright notice, then the term would be 95 years after 1974. -Nv8200p talk 20:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

• Project Gutenberg has more information on copyrights. Generally, anything created prior to 120 years before last January 1st is presumed to be in the public domain unless there is evidence the creator was alive in the preceding 50 years. The presumption is a safe harbor, if it turns out later that the author was alive those who used the work in good faith and who stop using it immediately when they are notified that it was in fact still under copyright have wide legal protection. This came up with File:Hellen Keller holding doll with Ann Sullivan 1888.jpg/File:Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan in July 1888.jpg, which was created in 1888 but not published until 2008. Note: There was a "special rules" time-window in the 1990s and early 2000s that provided multi-decade copyright extensions on very old items not previously published, provided they had not already lapsed into the public domain. See Talk:Helen_Keller#Newly Discovered Photo for discussion of that photo's status. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:23, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Gatoclass: Personally I would just get on with it and upload the images. There are thousands of images on Wikipedia and Commons where there is no proof they were first published before 1923 but it is a reasonable assumption to make. If the copyright holder challenges the Foundation, they would be deleted immediately, but realistically that is very unlikely to happen. The Land (talk) 21:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)