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Onboard

If your watchlist is filling up with articles where "onboard" is being changed to "on board" by WP:AWB, that seems okay to me. "Onboard" doesn't appear at all in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary or Cambridge Dictionaries, and appears only as an adjective in Oxford Dictionaries. "Onboard" is fine in American English, but we'll probably do ourselves a favor by letting the AWB guys convert it. - Dank (push to talk) 13:45, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

If "Onboard" is fine in American English, then it should not be changed in articles using American English. Since when does AWB set policy and guideleines for WP? - BilCat (talk) 14:01, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Whoa, Bil, it's not about making rules, it's about reducing our workload; "on board" is fine in AmEng and BritEng. People tend to revert edits that look wrong to them, so when we're talking about such a trivial orthographic change, I think it will save us work over the long run to do it in a way that doesn't look wrong to anyone. Is anyone here wedded to "onboard"? - Dank (push to talk) 14:21, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with the word in BritEng onboard, inboard, outboard are all fine. I've noticed the changes being made, but have better things to do than war over the issue. Perhaps we can agree not to change one to the other and vice versa per ENGVAR? Mjroots (talk) 15:30, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

That's really all I was asking for, though AWB doesn't seem to respect ENGVAR at all. If I'm wrong on that opinion, sorry. - BilCat (talk) 15:33, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

As the editor in question, just wanted to chime in. My understanding per both Am and Br dictionaries is that "onboard" is only intended to be an attributive adjective (an adjective that immediately precedes a noun), as in "the ship had an onboard computer." To say that "The ship had forty-four men onboard" or "Onboard were eight torpedoes and a llama" is never correct, and that's what I'm attempting to fix. To see this in practice, you can Google the New York Times for "were onboard" [1] (79 results) vs. "were on board" [2] (33,800 results) and BBC News for the same (87 for "were onboard" [3] and 3,560 for "were on board" [4]. All that said, it's possible that I've "fixed" a few in error, so if you do catch me changing an attributive adjective by mistake, please revert and trout me. Cheers, Khazar2 (talk) 16:05, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

For another explanation, see here: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#New rule "On board". That might be a good place to continue this discussion if the dictionary and news checks aren't evidence enough; we'd need to correct this for all AWB users, and not just for me. Khazar2 (talk) 16:12, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Nice work Khazar. Turns out I'm wrong about "onboard" in AmEng; The Google ngram shows a strong preference for "on board", and Garner's flatly rejects "onboard" except as an adjective (and requires "onboard" as the attributive adjective). - Dank (push to talk) 16:20, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! But the real credit belongs to champion typo hunter User:Chris the speller, who programmed the rule in the first place. Khazar2 (talk) 16:23, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, Khazar2. I stand corrected. - BilCat (talk) 16:31, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, this is not quite correct. Attributive adjectives do not always immediately precede the noun, although they normally do. For example: "onboard computer" the word is clearly attributive, however "the aircraft had 3 people onboard" is also attributive. The important point is whether there is a linking verb between the noun and the adjective, if there is not then the adjective is still attributive. - Nick Thorne ^talk 03:13, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

That's an adverb, Nick. The people were not "onboard" kinds of people, that is, the word doesn't describe the people, it tells you where they were. Adverbs answer the "where" question. Garner's recommends "on board" for that. - Dank (push to talk) 03:44, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

It certainly is describing a property of the people, it is attributing to them the property of location. An adverb is a modifier of a verb, adjective or another adverb, clearly not the case here. - Nick Thorne ^talk 04:11, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Strangely, there are a thousand different grammars of the English language, and people seem reluctant to embrace or reject any of them fully ... so you're probably right, there are probably esteemed linguists that are calling that an attributive adjective. - Dank (push to talk) 10:59, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

If we can't get consensus on the best usage, then it may not be the best word to fix en masse with AWB. bobrayner (talk) 11:47, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Well I don't know about the usage in American English, but being British I know that when I leave the harbour on a diving trip the Coastguard ask "How many souls are 'onboard'." You can also find the use of both phrasings at the same time, for example:- 'When you come on board our ship you may use the onboard cinema's and onboard shopping facilities. Those coming on board as day passengers may also use the baby changing and feeding facilites in the toilets whilst aboard, but the shower facilities are reserved for those living onboard only.' Take a look at the usage on this 'French' Sea ferry website (read the sections down the right hand side) http://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/fleet/onboard/entertainment/summer2012/routes-to-spain/pont-aven-headline-acts . Now; if you can't get AWB to differentiate between the subtle use of each wording then it would be better not to change the wording at all. You will also find the wording 'onboard' on this 'Official' website:- http://www.clydemarinetraining.com/content/roles-merchant-navy Richard Harvey (talk) 23:39, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

On the second webpage you cite, "onboard" is clearly an attributive adjective. I don't believe the AWB rule will change "onboard services", but please let us know if it does. But the main point here is that we generally follow the example of books, news sources, and dictionaries for spelling; so far the searches appear to me overwhelmingly to indicate that "on board" is greatly preferred to "onboard" in both British and American English, but I'm up for seeing counter-searches. I'd suggest that further discussion go to WT:AWB/T, though; persuading me alone won't do much good if the rule remains in AWB overall. Khazar2 (talk) 00:04, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

AfDs

USS Illinois (BB-65) and USS Kentucky (BB-66) have both been nominated for deletion. Mjroots (talk) 19:05, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Kagero class destroyer armament

Template:Kagero class destroyer armament has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. DH85868993 (talk) 09:49, 5 August 2012 (UTC) {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}

Nomination for deletion of Template:Royal Netherlands Navy cruisers

Template:Royal Netherlands Navy cruisers has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. DH85868993 (talk) 12:07, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

It survived deletion, and I've converted it to a classes list per the TfD. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}

More unused Liberty ship templates nominated for deletion

{{Liberty_ship_list_section}}, {{Liberty ship by hull list section close}}, {{Liberty ship class (boxed aircraft transport)}}, {{Liberty ship class (collier)}}, {{Liberty ship class (tank transport)}} and {{Liberty ship class (tanker)}} have been nominated for deletion. You are welcome to comment at the deletion discussion. DH85868993 (talk) 14:40, 8 August 2012 (UTC) {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}

Epirotiki Line

I could use some help at Talk:Epirotiki Line. I can't find if the company is still in business, and there's an underlying issue of (what looks like) a PR person who sanitized the article in December 2011. Thanks, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:12, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Liberty ship by hull number table headings

Template:Liberty ship by hull number table headings has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. DH85868993 (talk) 16:11, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Landing Craft Photos and Title Standardisation

Dear community, I hope this is the proper forum. I have created some pages and cannot find photos to illustrate them: Motor Landing Craft; Landing Barge, Kitchen; and LCM 1. Please would someone be so kind as to offer help or advice? Also, the arena of WW2 Allied landing craft has an unsystematic set of titles - Landing Craft Assault; LCVP; LCPL; LCM 1; LCM (2); Landing Barge, Kitchen. A systematic titling document was published by the US Navy in 1944 ONI 226 Allied Landing Craft and Ships. According to this system, the previous list would be: LCA; LCV(P); LCP(L); LCM(1); LCM(2); and LBK. I imagine changing titles now would present a number of problems. Thanks for any thoughts. Regards,AmesJussellR (talk) 23:26, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

On the subject of titles, we go in most cases by common name tempered with practicality and a preference to spell out abbreviations (acronyms etc - I use the term generally). If an abbreviation is common and not a case of disambiguation then it can be a redirect. As for pictures, does the Imperial War Museum archive hold any photos of the British craft? I seem to recall somewhere seeing pictures of British tanks onboard an early vessel but cannot think which tank it was.GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:16, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Titanic II

We have a new Titanic recreation article, Titanic II -- 70.50.151.36 (talk) 04:09, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

• Relevant prior AfDs. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 04:14, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd say hang fire on an AfD for now. There seems a greater probability that this project may go ahead. Mjroots (talk) 08:33, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Even failed projects can be notable enough to sustain an article; in other areas we have quite a few articles on boondoggles, failures, hoaxes and fantasies - as long as there's substantial enough coverage by independent sources... bobrayner (talk) 09:11, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Steam

FYI, an issue concerning steam has come up, see WT:PHYSICS#Steam -- 70.50.151.36 (talk) 04:42, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

CDC sanitation score

I have noticed that quite many cruise ships have (often dated) CDC sanitation score in the notes section of their infobox. In my opinion, this is not relevant information unless it is related to something else, such as a ship failing CDC sanitation score before or after a ship-wide food poisoning, and even then it should be added to the article body, not the infobox. Can it be safely removed? Tupsumato (talk) 07:15, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd say yes, Wikipedia is not a travel guide. Mjroots (talk) 08:59, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. (Also; an infobox should be summarising key points of an article, not repeating every detail) bobrayner (talk) 10:23, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I concur, this is not what Wikipedia is for. Parsecboy (talk) 13:13, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree. —Diiscool (talk) 13:27, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Should we do something for {{CDCVesselSanitationScore}}? I removed all instances from the infoboxes as none of them seemed relevant. Tupsumato (talk) 21:24, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Books

I have some books on ships. You may already have them but if you do not and need any information from them - just let me know.

• Battle-Winning Tanks, Airplanes and Warships of Wwii - David Miller - ISBN: 1840652020
• Sea Power: A Modern Illustrated Military History - ISBN: 0896730115
• The Encyclopedia of Ships - Chris Marshall - ISBN: 1856052885
• World at War - Robin Cross - ISBN: 0752542923 -- Rain the 1 15:19, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Shell group tankers

I've recently created articles for three tankers that belonged to Royal Dutch Shell subsidiaries, all of which had significant incidents in their careers. Anglo-Saxon Petroleum's MV Daronia survived being hit by two torpedoes in 1944. Anglo-Saxon's MV Dromus was devastated by explosion and fire in 1951. Eagle Oil and Shipping Company's SS San Flaviano was bombed and sunk by the CIA in 1958.

Daronia and Dromus served in the Second World War but I have not found a record of their convoy service. I would be grateful if any fellow-contributor could do so.

There are good photos of all three ships online but I have not yet found non-copyright photos that could be copied to Wikimedia to illustrate these articles. I would be grateful for any help with this.

The Dromus disaster was at Pulau Bukom, Singapore. I have pieced together a narrative from numerous articles in The Straits Times and other newspapers but there is a degree of journalistic error in at least some of them. They don't even agree on the number of people killed: this is variously cited as 24, 25 or 27. In February 1952 the British Singaporean authorities published a judicial report into the incident but I have been unable to find a copy online. I would be very grateful for any help in this regard.

The Dromus disaster was in the small hours of the morning of 20 August 1951. I would be particularly glad to improve the standard of this article in time for this year's anniversary. How might one get it featured in the "On this day..." anniversary section of Wikipedia's main page?

Best wishes Motacilla (talk) 11:55, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

www.convoyweb.org is a good source for convoy info, although it has a strict limit on the number of searches you can do - but for just three ships, it shouldn't be too much of a problem IMO. If it is, you can try one of those IP-hiding websites to continue to access it. I immediately found many entries for a Daronia on it, although I didn't check to see that it was the same ship. Regards, Gatoclass (talk) 14:17, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's as low as three for convoyweb, but there is a limit. One way round this is to switch from Firefox to Google Chrome when limit is reached.

Daronia's and Dromus's wartime voyage records. Mjroots (talk) 19:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Mjroots: that's exactly the data I was after! I forgot to mention that I would like to add Daronia's and Dromus's peacetime and wartime complements and wartime armament. Is there an online source for this level of detail? Best wishes Motacilla (talk) 22:45, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Motacilla, armament is sometimes mentioned on Convoyweb's individual convoy pages. Warsailors is also a useful resource. I take it you have access to the Gale News Vault via you library's website? Mjroots (talk) 05:09, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

It's early and the coffee hasn't kicken in yet As for OTD, add the article and a short blurb in the eligible section of Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 20. Mjroots (talk) 05:14, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Spelling of Russian names and ships in fiction

I know that fictional ships are not in the scope of our project, but how about real ships featured in the work of fiction? Also, is anyone familiar with the transliteration of Russian names?

I am currently engaged in a debate whether the "fictional" Soviet barge carrier Julius Fucik featured in the novel Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy and Larry Bond is the same ship as the Soviet barge carrier Yulius Fuchik. The name of the ship (Юлиус Фучик) can be transliterated in both ways, but apparently only the Soviet GOST transliteration is used in official context (MORFLOT fleet list etc.) while the novel uses the older international ISO transliteration, which is the same as the ship's namesake. The other editor states that as the name of the ship is spelled differently, the ship in the novel is not the same as the actual ship, and therefore it should be included in the list of fictional ships despite the fact that all other details (builder, history, general arrangement of the cargo handling system and operator, to mention a few) match for the real ship. Could anyone help with this issue, or point me to some other project/page where these kind of problems are dealt with?

It feels kind of stupid to include a real ship in an article about fictional ships, especially when the author is known for his emphasis on realism and technical details. Of course I have been unable to find a reliable secondary source to support my claim — everything I have found or expect to find is either user-generated or observations based on the novel itself instead of e.g. interviews with Clancy — so perhaps everything related to the ship's (possible) role in the novel should be removed from the article (as was suggested in the DYK nomination that I later cancelled). Does anyone know Clancy's e-mail address... ;) Tupsumato (talk) 14:11, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I can't answer specifically except that if someone wants to mention a real ship in an article related to fiction, no problem. Otherwise I shoot on sight all of these little trivia piles of fictional appearances that accumulate in real ship articles. Trivia in general is the bane of WP. WP:MILPOP can help back up your claim. Brad (talk) 05:04, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, we all have our little issues^;). Considering the fact that the reason why I wrote the article in the first place is that the ship had a role in an international bestseller, removing the references to popular culture would be rather counter-productive. As for WP:MILPOP, it seems that I should visit the library again in the very near future and try to find a good secondary source. Tupsumato (talk) 05:53, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Category:Ships

Category:Ships has a few individual ship articles that need to be expanded and re-categorised. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:33, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

HMS Namur (1756)

This may be of use in expanding the HMS Namur (1756) article. Mjroots (talk) 17:06, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Crichton-Vulcan and Wärtsilä ships

If anyone of you is interested at ships built in Turku, Finland, here might be an interesting list for you: List of ships built in Crichton-Vulcan and Wärtsilä Turku yards (in Finnish). The list begins from the merger of Crichton and Vulcan in 1924 and continues until bankruptcy of Wärtsilä Marine in 1989. Actually, there are ships from two different yards. Production was progressively moved from the older yard, Crichton-Vulcan (from 1965 Wärtsilä Turku Yard) to a new yard outside of the metropolitan area, Perno yard. First the hulls were built in Perno and they were tugged to CV for outfitting for some years. I don't know exactly when the changeover took place but what I know is that the first hull built in Perno was Gas Rising Sun (NB 1229, handed over in 1978) and the last hull built in CV was MS Rosella (NB 1249, 1980). All shipbuilding was moved to Perno by 1982 and after that in the old CV area remained only Turku Repair Yard and Wärtsilä diesel engine factory (until 2004). Confusingly, Perno yard is nowadays known as Turku shipyard, so you should mind this when you talk about a shipyard in Turku.

I hope the list will be useful to you and perhaps it even inspires someone of you to translate it into English. --Gwafton (talk) 19:50, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Although far down in my to-do list, I've been thinking about compiling lists like that for all Finnish shipyards. So far I've only finished Vuosaari shipyard (which is short enough to be included in the shipyard article instead of a separate article) and gathered some reference material for Helsinki New Shipyard. Also, now that the shipyard has been demolished, I have to take climbing the abandoned cranes one more time off my to-do list... Tupsumato (talk) 20:41, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Nice work with Vuosaari yard. I'd recommend of making a separate list for this yard as well. My display is so small that the table doesn't fit to it from its width and in my opinion some of that info should be included to the ship specific articles and dropped off from the table. Just as an idea for further development.

By the way, I started making of a such table in Finnish Wikipedia: Perno vessels starting from 1989 but haven't finished it. Also this might be useful to someone. --Gwafton (talk) 22:14, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

It's unlikely that every ship will have their own article (although it would be, of course, preferred). Therefore I would like to include a bit more information about the ships to the list, such as former names (not wrapped at the moment — might be the reason why the table won't fit), deadweight tonnage to give an idea about the size, IMO number of recognition, eventual fate and some interesting pieces of information about the career. I admit the picture might be extra, but I like the way they make lists more interesting and "colourful" (like the list of current ships of the Finnish Navy). Also, the (mild) colour coding about the status of each ship is, in my opinion, nice — for example with the Vuosaari shipyard, you'll quickly see that most of the ships have been scrapped already (and yet it's so mild that it's not disturbing).

However, I'm open to suggestions. For example, the pictures could be collected to a separate gallery (akin to having the pictures of each ship framed on a wall, as I have seen for the ships built at Vuosaari). Tupsumato (talk) 04:35, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

SS California (1848)

I need a knowledgeable person to check the information about the above vessel to be found at James_King_of_William#Mining. It seems to be at odds with the Wikipedia article concerning the ship. Thank you. GeorgeLouis (talk) 15:54, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Here is the original Source, which seems to be wrong: http://www.coinfacts.com/pioneer_gold/james_king_of_william/james_king_of_william.html. If King left NY on May 24, 1848, and arrived in Yerba Buena on November 10 of that year, which ships could he have sailed on? GeorgeLouis (talk) 18:21, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Largest Yachts

Is there a list of the largest yachts or a timeline of the yachts that were the largest? I am mainly interested in HMY Britannia's place on either list.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:33, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I found List of large sailing yachts and List of motor yachts by length but there are likely others. Brad (talk) 02:48, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

It appears that those are both lists of the largest active yachts. I am wondering if there is a Timeline of the longest motor yachts article which would include the yacht at issue?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:44, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Cosenz class torpedo boats

I've started an article on the Cosenz class torpedo boat at User:Ryan Vesey/Cosenz class torpedo boat; however, I've discovered that some of these ships have also been classified as La Masa class (see List of Italian destroyers). The La Masa class of destroyers was used during WWI. Is there a possibility that these ships were reclassified between WWI and WWII? If so, what should I do with a ship like Italian torpedo boat Benedetto Cairoli that was lost during WWI? Ryan Vesey 14:34, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, the ship that caused me to create the category, the Enrico Cosenz, is classified by various sources in both the Giuseppe La Masa class and the cosenz class. I'm halting work on it until I can figure out exactly what to do. Ryan Vesey 14:39, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921 treats these ships as the La Masa class and rates them as destroyers, which at 785–851 t seems reasonable. Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1922–1947 states that the class was reclassified as torpedo boats in 1929, when there seems to have been a general reclassification of older, slower destroyers, as does Whitley's Destroyers of World War Two, which states 1 October for the re-classification. Jane's 1931 lists them as the Cosenz class and lists them under a general destroyer heading but as "Torpedineri" rather than "Esploratori". I would probably go with calling them destroyers but note the re-rating.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:53, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Is there any way you can provide me with a PDF of the relevant pages? Otherwise I'll ask at WP:RX. Is it fair to assume that any Cosenz class torpedo boat was also a La Masa class destroyer so that I could just rename the page and continue in the same manner? Ryan Vesey 21:00, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Serial sockpuppeteer at work on ship articles

Hi all, this is to inform the Ships Project about a serial sockpuppeteer who has been active for a couple of years in air crash-related articles, and who has now switched his attention to shipwreck-related articles. User:Ryan kirkpatrick was first blocked 25 months ago and in February this year he was community banned. Despite this he has created sock after sock, now over 100 different named and IP accounts (see Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Ryan kirkpatrick). In recent months those of us working in Aviation have taken a hard line and his work on air crash articles has almost always been deleted under G5 of WP:CSD, regardless of the notability of the subject. He seems to have become sick of this so he has started creating articles where possibly he thinks he will escape notice. Three socks were discovered earlier this week, the most prolific of these three can be viewed here; the following articles were also G5ed and therefore do not appear in the list of contribs:

• St Alban's Head tragedy
• MV Patra fire
• Falmouth disaster
• Tramore disaster

Salient features of the socks are: a 'new' User, often with an alphanumeric name, knowing how to create an article 'straight out of the gate', usually with a very obscure disaster as subject (by which I mean its usually a little-known event, it's always an event involving loss-of-life); also creating categories to be populated by the articles he creates. All of this is done with very bad spelling and grammar, and he never leaves an edit summary. There are a number of Users who are familiar with his work, who can be seen in the SPI revision history. In the past he has basically stated: "as long as my work is kept, I will keep creating sockpuppets", which is one reason why I am posting this message. Cheers YSSYguy (talk) 00:31, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Category:Ships built in Elbing & Category:Ships built in Stettin

These two categories have been proposed to be renamed -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 04:51, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Referring to a ship

I've got an awkward situation with Pandora where it would be ambiguous to refer to her as "she" or "Pandora". Is it acceptable to refer to the ship as N42? Ryan Vesey 21:00, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I've edited the article for a more elegant solution (IMHO); see if you like it. 212.183.140.61 (talk) 11:07, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I like the change, thank you. Where did you get the 9 survivors number for the Olympus? I thought I read 11 somewhere. Ryan Vesey 15:27, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I got the numbers from HMS Olympus (N35), because I felt the article left the question of survivors too open. The number in the Olympus article is, however, unreferenced. 212.183.128.232 (talk) 18:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

HMS Tempest

I have created a page HMS Tempest as we previously only had an article for HMS Tempest (N86) and nothing for the 1917 R class destroyer. She notably repatriated the bodies recovered from the R101 airship crash[5]. Does anyone know of any earlier HMS Tempests?

Those are the only two listed in Colledge and Wardlow, rather to my surprise.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:06, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

It sounds a rather obvious name doesn't it. Thanks for looking. Alansplodge (talk) 01:21, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Notablity of u-boats

There is a request for merger along with a notability note at SM U-115 also affecting SM U-116. Interested parties can contribute on Talk:SM U-115. ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 05:07, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Ship class hyphens

I've noticed that we are very inconsistent with hyphenation of ship classes. Should they be hyphenated or shouldn't they? See Haskell class attack transport for an example. {{sclass}} gives a hyphenated version. Ryan Vesey 04:56, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I think it depends on the context, but as a rule, no. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:16, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Should the template be modified then? I think that is where most of the hyphenation I've seen has come from. Ryan Vesey 05:18, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

The templates should not be hyphenated, I believe. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:53, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

At one point an editor went on a rampage and moved many class articles to -class. There was an uproar here because there weren't supposed to be hyphens in the article title. The template can be manipulated not to show the hyphen by doing:{{sclass|Haskell|attack transport|2}} which gives: Haskell-class attack transport but leaves out a lot of other alternative uses of the template that still show the hyphen. Brad (talk) 06:48, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Note that s-class has been modified. Ryan Vesey 18:01, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

From an English grammar point of view you're missing the point. The hyphen distinguishes between the adjectival and noun forms, and is explained reasonably succinctly in general terms at MOS:HYPHEN. For ship classes, the point used to be explained clearly at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Ships/Guidelines#Referring_to_ship_classes, but the changes to {{sclass}} have made a nonsense of the explanation. 212.183.128.232 (talk) 18:49, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I understand your argument; however, everything I see on the web does not use the hyphen. Ryan Vesey 03:49, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

That's as maybe. For Wiki purposes don't use the hyphen for article titles, but do use it in articles as appropriate. Admiral-class battlecruiser vs battlecruisers of the Admiral class, etc.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:53, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Not using the hyphen for titles but using it for the article is beyond incorrect. Wikipedia bases things on consistency, you can't have an article called Parthian class submarine and refer to it as Parthian-class submarine. One or the other must be moved. Ryan Vesey 04:57, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Pretty sure unhypenated is generally preferred overall. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:02, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict) I do not believe that consistency is one of the five pillars, nor is absolute unthinking consistency in all things a policy requirement anywhere here. Because everywhere anyone may have seen on the web does something means very little since most people creating web sites have a very limited grasp of English grammar. At Wikipedia, we try to be little better than that. We have policy here that specifies no hyphens in article titles for reasons unrelated to grammar and the use of hyphens within the articles themselves when grammatically correct. Is this consistent? No, but then it does not need to be. I don't like it is not a reason to change this. - Nick Thorne ^talk 05:22, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I have no "I don't like it" argument. My argument is we are doing this wrong. The use of the hyphen is either grammatically correct or it isn't. If it is grammatically correct, the titles should follow the same format. (You stated that policy specifies that no hyphens are used in titles for reasons unrelated to grammar, I can't even find this policy but I'll take your word for it). If it is not grammatically correct, then we should not use hyphens at all. Consistency doesn't need to be part of the five pillars to make sense. The precedence for a desired consistency within an article is huge on this site. We require consistency in dates, consistency in english variation, consistency in reference style etc. Ryan Vesey 05:32, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd also like to know which rule specifies that hyphens can't be used in article titles (the closest I can find is MOS:DASH, but that only says that hyphens shouldn't be used in place of an en dash). Even if there is such a rule, I agree that the desire for consistency takes precedent. Both WP:SHIPMOS#Referring to ship classes and WP:SHIPNAME#Ship class articles state that the adjectival form of a ship class name is hyphenated, and the noun form is not; in an article title called, for example, Parthian class submarine, the class name is being used to modify the noun (submarine), so grammatically, it should be hyphenated. That's my understanding of the guidelines, anyway, but I suppose the guidelines might be wrong. DoctorKubla (talk) 06:22, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Agree, standard style, not at all unique to Wikipedia. Dankarl (talk) 21:52, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I too would like to see the policy that states no hyphenated article names. MOS:DASH says:

When naming an article, do not use a hyphen as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title, for example in Eye–hand span.

That does not prohibit the use of hyphens in a title.

MOS:HYPHEN says:

Similarly, article titles with dashes should have a corresponding redirect from the title with hyphens: for example, Michelson-Morley experiment redirects to Michelson–Morley experiment, as the latter title, while correct, is harder to search for.

We are somewhat schizophrenic when it comes to ship-class article titles. Ohio-class submarine is hyphenated with a hyphen (the non-hyphenated version is a redirect). There may be others that I'm unaware of.

Since the adjectival form of class names is hyphenated, and that is grammatically correct, WP:SHIPS should consider renaming or moving or whatever ship-class articles.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:56, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

For me it's a no-brainer that the hyphen should go in the article title, and I was appalled that WP:SHIPS came to the collective decision not to do so. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships/Archive_26#Bot_request for the whole sorry mess we got in last time we talked about it. To my mind, the fact that the proposal keeps coming up to place the hyphen in the article title does at least indicate that it has undeniable merit. 212.183.128.171 (talk) 20:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Jesus, what a mess. It looks to me like there was a consensus to include the hyphen, but the whole conversation was muddied by the bot request and the move-warring. Can't we just hold an RFC to sort this out once and for all? DoctorKubla (talk) 21:07, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Why not just add {{RFC}} to the top of this? I see no reason not to move them all to the hyphenated style. Ryan Vesey 02:27, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I've started the RFC in a new section, for clarity's sake. See below. DoctorKubla (talk) 08:20, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

File rescue!

Can anyone find a source for File:Toronto k538.jpg along with evidence that the image is, in fact, PD? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 06:33, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

What's wrong with the claim of Crown Copyright? As the photo cannot be later than 1956, such copyright would have expired in 2006 at the latest. Is this sufficient?Mjroots (talk) 07:34, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the crown copyright claim is fine, but somebody tagged it for "No Source". That link won't work though as it's the image from Wikipedia (note the credit)! I've removed the deletion tag per WP:COMMONSENSE but without an explict source it's vulnerable to drone-tagging. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 08:15, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

If you keep track of the lacking sources cleanup category, you'll find a few more ships for deletion -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 06:20, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to deprecate Ships Review.

I wouldn't be too surprised if some members here weren't aware that this project has it's own in-house review page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Review. It was designed to cover ships that were not military related therefore not able to utilize the milhist peer and A-class review processes. My observations since late 2007 is that this area is rarely used for non-military ships. Only on three occasions were non-military ships submitted for an A-class review. Two of them struggled to find reviewers and one had no response at all. I passed one of those articles myself after getting tired of waiting and begging for more reviews.

For several years the page was regularly attended to by MBK004 who cross-posted military ship reviews and removed them when finished. Since he stopped editing, the page has become a neglected mess. One or two persons have submitted peer reviews but never had any comments because it seems that everyone ignores the page. There's no sense in having this process if no one is going to participate. Military ships are by far the largest percentage of peer and A-class reviews. I think the Ships Review process certainly warrants deprecation. Brad (talk) 03:26, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Where should we submit non-military ships then if the need ever arises? Tupsumato (talk) 05:35, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

This page is as good as any for publicising reviews. Just because a ship is not a military ship doesn't necessarily mean that MILHIST won't have an interst in it. Mjroots (talk) 18:27, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Are you volunteering to maintain the page? Over the last 30 days its only had 39 page visits and 10 of those are likely mine. It has less than 30 watchers and the page history shows how active it is. I don't see how that qualifies as good publicity. Brad (talk) 03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Nope, not volunteering. When I said "this page", I meant this page. Mjroots (talk) 04:47, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Eeeep. My bad. Brad (talk) 15:22, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Tupsumato, there is always the generalized Wikipedia:Peer review and a post here informing the project of the review can be made. I'm not exactly sure about what to do with an A-class review; but since there have been only 3 in the past 5 years, that's an issue that can be dealt with if and when it happens. Brad (talk) 03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Agree with deprecating the SHIPS A-class review, since almost no one is using it. We're taking a slightly more expansive view these days at Milhist's A-class, so anyone who's considering nominating a borderline case there is welcome to ask at WT:MIL or here. FAC is not a bad choice these days for articles I would have put through A-class a year ago; FAC is a little more flexible and lenient than it was, and you'll get a wider readership than at A-class. Peer Review is always good. - Dank (push to talk) 13:12, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I guess lack of further response means that I'll deprecate the page. Brad (talk) 00:43, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

What form of tons is being used here and what form of milage?

So I'm writing User:Ryan Vesey/La Masa class destroyer and I found this source which says that the class displaces 785 tons. The book was published in America. This source, from the Marina Militare, says that the ship displaces between 840 and 875 tons. If the 785 was long tons and the 875 was short tons, the numbers would be close. In addition, the second source gave the range as 2230 miles. How would I know if that is nautical miles or normal miles? Ryan Vesey 14:09, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The Italian source is most likely to use metric tons (1000kg). I'd be very surprised if any reliable source would ever use statute miles - the global standard is nautical miles. In fact use of any other distance unit would seriously call into question the source's reliability. Roger (talk) 14:16, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

What should the metric tons be converted to in the infobox, metric and long, metric and short, or metric and both? Ryan Vesey 14:20, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother too much about the displacement as it could be anything. There are several standards around and many authors don't bother to specify. As long as there is a reliable source using this or that number, it should be fine until somebody who knows better will correct it. I, for one, use metric tons (or tonnes) when referring to ships of the German navy as quoted in one of the standard catalogues. If you use the convert-template it will automatically put the number in short and long tonnes, unless specified otherwise. When referring to warships, it should be okay just to convert to long tons (lt), as that is the standard used internationally since the Washington naval treaty. ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 15:03, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

File:USSOglethorpe.jpg

File:USSOglethorpe.jpg has been sent for immediate deletion as unsourced -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 20:30, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

This would seem to be the source. Mjroots (talk) 09:55, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Navsource has the same image [6] - clearly a US Navy photo. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 13:54, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

How? I specifically pointed out that source on the talk page and the fact that there was nothing to indicate that it was free. Ryan Vesey 15:51, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Note that an archive of the main page states that images in the public domain are marked with NA, NHHC,or USN. In this case, the image was not given a photo credit. A look at this page shows that it is not marked with any of those. Ryan Vesey 15:57, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Listed at possibly unfree files Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2012 September 13. Ryan Vesey 21:18, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

images up for deletion of old USN ships

File:USS Albany at sea.jpg , File:USS Denver circa 1912.JPG , File:USS Paragua.jpg up for deletion as unsourced -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 21:08, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Milhist coord elections

At WP:WikiProject_Military_history/Coordinators/September_2012, Sturmvogel is stepping down, and I know Parsecboy won't be returning. It will be strange not having any coords who focus on ships ... if anyone wants to run, feel free. Although we're saying tomorrow night is the deadline for nominations, I'm pretty sure that we let anyone nominate themselves at any time. I don't know yet how many coords are returning, so I don't know how hard it will be to get one of the slots ... if you're thinking of running but not sure about the competition, you can always wait till after elections start to see, you'll miss at most a few votes from the early voters. - Dank (push to talk) 18:13, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The_Ed17 just re-upped, so that's one. But there's still room and still time! - Dank (push to talk) 02:48, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Assistance needed

A new editor who has a number of videos of ships has asked for assistance on Commons. He may be willing to post those videos there. Can someone familiar with videos on Commons assist this editor? The relevant discussion is at Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard#links_to_external_forum_site. Thank you. Kablammo (talk) 23:44, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Templates "Class box x" and "Ship class list"

Hi. Following from a discussion at WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 September 17#Template:Class box Oliver Hazard Perry frigate - it's been suggested that 112 "Class box x" templates, and {{Ship class list}}, could possibly be deleted. They were only being used in List of naval ship classes in service which I've attempted to clean up. Please see that short thread for a few more details, and provide feedback there, too. Thanks :) —Quiddity (talk) 19:51, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

infobox captions

I was called unhelpful and regressive for reverting this undiscussed edit, but as with all edits, I'm open to discussion on the pros and cons of that edit here. Can anyone say why the lack of a title is a problem, or where its existence is mandated? Benea (talk) 23:40, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I've replied, there. We're supposed to be bold; discussion prior to editing retards progress, as does the endlessly protection of templates. Captions are are core aspect of html tables and are widely regarded as necessary for proper accessibility. They are also stunningly useful to any reader scanning an infobox. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 23:57, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

And if reverted it is polite to join the discussion, rather than making comments calling the reverting editor unhelpful and regressive. I'm open to discussion of how we have a caption to the infobox, but I think this needs more thought and more detail incorporated than just an aping of the article title, as the orginal edit had it. Benea (talk) 00:06, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

We are in our third generation of ship infoboxes, and prior changes have been done with extensive discussion. That should take place here as well. The present format serves well on numerous articles, and should continue to be used. If in fact changes are "widely regarded as necessary" there should be no reason to fear consensus for proposed changes. And that consensus should not be obtained by canvassing, such as is now going on. Kablammo (talk) 00:27, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

summary="This is a test summary that doesn't work. It gets lost when the page is rendered.";

WikiProject Ships/Archive 34

History
Antigua and Barbuda
Name	WikiProject Ships/Archive 34
General characteristics
Type	Carriacou Sloop
Length	30 ft (9.1 m)

So that we all know what the change being discussed looks like, I've inserted an infobox with the caption placed as I think editor Br'er Rabbit intended it to be placed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

How many pages is this discussion going to take place on? The table caption at right is what I'm after, although it should get proper italics on actual names. I let several editors that I know have an interest in these issues know of these threads, one of whom I was already discussing this with before I edited the template.

This has already been biased by driving the talk to this WIkiProject's turf. I've long commented on WikiProjects having ownership issues. Should I not bother trying to fix this in the face of LOCALCONSENSUS? Br'er Rabbit (talk) 00:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

There's an unwarranted assumption being made here that anyone at wikiproject ships is inherently biased against any changes (and also that anyone with an interest in template structure is inherently unbiased to an issue regarding structure). Personally I was intrigued by the possibility of a name above the image field in the infobox along the lines of milhist's person infobox, but I learn now that their infobox is also heavily unstandardised. But I have many issues with Br'er Rabbit's example above with regard to things like clear and appropriate presentation of information like the ship name, that I think an emphasise to standardise the structure of infoboxes will weaken. I don't think there's any need to rush these changes until we can work out just what they will involve. Benea (talk) 01:13, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Though edits like this smack of an attempt to evade any attempt to get consensus and push through your changes anyway. I was hoping to have good faith here but alongside comments you make like 'Wiki spends far to much time talking instead of fixing.' I can't see how this is conducive to that. You are asked to discuss changes to the template, so you start making changes to the articles to introduce the change de facto. Benea (talk) 01:41, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Those are wiki tables; they, like any other wiki table, may have captions; that's what the |+ syntax is for. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 01:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Data tables and Help:Table caption. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 01:56, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

An alternative might be to implement something akin to {{taxobox}}. Doesn't appear to use the table caption the way editor Br'er Rabbit has suggested but it does put a name in a larger font right at the top of the infobox.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:29, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

That's using an html th-element, as I already discussed in teh other discussion about this: Template talk:Infobox ship begin/doc#Formatting; that's a heading to cells, not a caption to the table in its entirety. {{taxobox}} is complicated as all hell; anyone here up to that scale of template work? ;>

• see: H39: Using caption elements to associate data table captions with data tables and
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Br'er Rabbit (talk) 02:42, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

So here's the question that arises from a reading of H39: Is the infobox a table or is the table that underlies the infobox a layout table?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

The moment you recognise that certain cells are headers - and quite properly use the wiki '!' or html <th>...</th> tags - then you can be absolutely certain you are dealing with data table and H39 applies. The other way of looking at it is: if a blind visitor using a screen reader might want to jump directly to that table, then it's a data table and needs a caption. --RexxS (talk) 12:04, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

• Where is the discussion meant to be taking place? Here or the infobox talk page?Nigel Ish (talk) 10:57, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

It would seem that more editors might see the discussion if it takes place here. The template's talk page is, I think, less frequented. This editor votes for the discussion to take place here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

There appear to be three questions that we have to agree answers:

a) Do ship infoboxes want/need captions? My (albeit probably uninformed quick scan) reading of the W3 guidance is that is not mandatory (although if it isn't specified will we may need to provide more info elsewhere).

b) If we do have a caption, what should it be? The entire article title? This could get very clunky if we have long titles like Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov or Italian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi (1936) Should we just include the name of the ship as used in the article title (i.e Admiral Kuznetsov etc. without the descriptive parts of the article titles)? Do we include pennant numbers HMS Hood (51) or year of construction HMS King George V (1911) if used in the article title? Do we list all ship names?

c)If we have a caption, how do we implement it? We need a solution that meets everybody's needs while minimising the amount of changes to existing articles required and being easy to use. (Heavy markup makes it harder for editors who are not experts in wikimarkup to contribute, and may discourage them from editing - which we don't want).Nigel Ish (talk) 14:35, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

The infobox should have a caption which is the ship name as given in the article title, with no disambiguation; so from your examples: 'Admiral Kuznetsov', 'Giuseppe Garibaldi', 'HMS Hood', 'HMS King George V'. This accords with the use of infoboxes throughout most of Wikipedia. Any "heavy markup" will be in the template, and so will not affect article editors. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:51, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

This discussion is being shoved /here/ to re-enforce the notion that this WikiProject owns these templates, which is not the case. This is a common problem with wilful WikiProjects.

The WCAG and our awn MOS/Accessibility are all strongly in favour of captions. And “|+” is hardly heavy markup ;) NB: it is fine to abbreviate a bit in the case of long titles. AGF that editors will use reasonable judgement. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 23:11, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Of course these discussions do go better if people assume good faith rather than railing on about ownership. Agreeing the scope of what we want to do up front can only help avoid disagreement or problems. My concern about heavy markup is that if it is decided to somehow produce the Infobox caption automatically from the title then it may be difficult to use - ideally the sort of complicated parameters associated with things like {{HMS}} and their equivalents should be avoided. While |+ isn't heavy markup, it cannot be assumed that every user is going to know how it works - this should be some sort of field in the template appropriately explained in the documentation. We should also probably avoid clashes or confusion with existing fields in the infobox templates like Ship Caption (which gives a photo caption), and Ship name (in infobox ship career).Nigel Ish (talk) 23:38, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Ownership issues are real, and common; note how my change to a template was reverted and the discussion routed to the home turf. Calling my concerns 'railing' is BF and abetting that.

These infoboxes are not even implemented as templates; they are plain wiki-syntax tables that have some templates dropped in for the interior. See any of these ship articles and the very first two characters are “{|” — that starts a table.

The params in things like {{HMS}} are nasty. The text above the infobox is properly called a caption because it's emitting an html <caption>...</caption> with whatever inside. FWIW, the usual term on-wiki would be |title=

So, where's this at? I made a useful change that was reverted and a bunch of vague other concerns have bee tossed about and it's been asserted that the status quo serves well... std recipe for no consensus to change; aka OWN 101. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 00:27, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

You know, I'm pretty much on your side here but you are making no friends—of course having me on your side probably won't do you any good either because members of this community did not care for changes I made to something "sacred". Sure, there is no ownership, but virtually every article that has anything to do with boats, with ships, with yachts has a ship info box. This community uses the ship info box a lot, probably more than any other community. For that reason it makes sense to discuss ship info box changes here.

I can easily see adding a line to all of the skeleton "templates" that looks something like this (which I was surprised to learn must be immediately after {{Infobox ship begin}}):

|+ <!--Ship name here for proper infobox caption-->

This seems a simple enough. Copy the name and formatting from |Ship name= in {{Infobox ship career}} and you're done.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:21, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I've no idea who you are or what your history is. Adding “|+” is no big deal; adding support for captions in whatever form this infobox takes /should/ be no big deal; but it is, and that kind of retardation of improvement is toxic to the project, as is the trend toward endless discussion over reasonable changes. At least the ship crowd believes in infoboxes; there are benighted areas that go Pavlovian at the sight of them. The copy-approach you're getting at would be trivial /if/ this infobox scheme were integrated. It's not, however. If it were a proper infobox template the |Ship name= could be used for a <caption> by simply re-using it. But all these fields are passed into disparate templates and there's no sharing across that boundary. That's really poor design. And with something like 25,000 ship articles, it's a massive mess that's been cemented in place, rather like the unfixed mess at Archive 33#Category:Fleet submarine templates. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 04:32, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Br'er' Rabbit, Ownership concerns one or a couple of editors -- not to be confused with time established consensus. IMO the 'be bold' approach is the cause of much trouble in many of the pages and too often flies in the face of 'consensus'. As much as I love WP I don't think I'm the first to note that WP's rules sometimes point in opposite directions. WP needs stability more than it does someone making unusual or radical changes whenever the spirit moves them. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 04:08, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Consensus can change; consensus can be wrong, too, and frequently *is* wrong. There is no stability on this project; never has been and never will be. I've been making radical moves on this project for eight years and have fixed more problems than I could ever list. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 04:32, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

The answer to Trappist the monk's Nigel Ish's question (a) is exactly equivalent to asking if you want blind visitors to be able to go directly to ship infoboxes. Captions are the means by which the commonest screen readers speak a list of tables on a page (see HTML Tables with JAWS and MAGic for a description of the capabilities). Your choice: you want to give visually impaired readers the functionality, you provide captions. If not, then you don't need to - on Wikipedia accessibility is not compulsory (other than for Featured Lists). From an accessibility point of view, the answer to question (b) is anything that would uniquely identify that table to a screen reader - pretty much a free choice for you, I'd say. I'm sorry I can't give you any advice on question (c) until you've decided (a) and (b), but I'd be happy to help if I can once you've reached that point. --RexxS (talk) 12:04, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

For the record, the questions to which editor RexxS refers were asked by editor Nigel Ish.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:08, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I obviously misremembered who was asking when I posted and I've now refactored my comment. Apologies for any offence caused to either party for mistaking one for the other. --RexxS (talk) 16:31, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Glancing through HTML Tables with JAWS and MAGic another thing necessary for proper accessibility is a summary attribute for the table:

<table summary="A summary description of the table's contents">

Where does that go? Can we create a summary that is generic enough to be templated, perhaps as part of {{Infobox ship begin}}? Brief experimentation shows that a summary attribute added to the infobox's first line (either before or after {{Infobox ship begin}}) is lost when the page is rendered. I guess that means that the summary attribute must be part of {{Infobox ship begin}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:46, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

It would be awesome to be able to provide summary information for all of our data tables on Wikipedia. However, I don't believe wikimarkup has a mechanism for including the summary attribute, so we would be forced to code it into an html table:

This is a table

If you look at the page source for that, you can see the summary. Such markup could be wrapped into a template, so it would be possible to integrate it into our editing environment. Nevertheless, the problems of composing good summary text would require significant work on the guidance before it would make sense for us to spend time on the issue. After all, we don't seem able to agree on something as simple as a caption that already has wikimarkup ("|+") designed for it. --RexxS (talk) 17:20, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I brought it up because this topic is about accessibility. If we're going to address one issue of accessibility we might as well address them all. Are there any others that we should be thinking about?

A few more moments of looking and it would seem that for us to have a generic summary for the infobox would require that we modify {{WPMILHIST Infobox style}} which is where the ship infobox gets its style. Might be better to create two new style templates: one for individual ships and one for classes because the summary text might be different for each:

{{WPMILHIST Infobox style ship}}: summary="Table of the ship's history and its specifications."

{{WPMILHIST Infobox style ship class}}: summary="Table of the class's general specifications."

Or perhaps one style template with |style=: {{WPMILHIST Infobox style |style=ship}} and {{WPMILHIST Infobox style |style=sclass}}; default case doesn't produce a summary attribute so wouldn't change how the template is used elsewhere.

Of course there are probably better and more accurate ways to summarize the table data ...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:24, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

• Frankly I am extremely disappointed by this "my way is the only way" attitude of editors like Br'er Rabbit, with an apparent contempt for any attempt to seek a consensus. Is there any point in having any discussion if the opinions of everybody else is so irrelevant?Nigel Ish (talk) 14:06, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Not clear to me why you think that the "opinions of everybody else" in the matter are irrelevant. Yeah, editor Br'er Rabbit has rather forcefully expressed his opinions (perhaps much too forcefully) but to his credit, I don't think that he, or anyone else, has made any statement regarding the relevance of another's opinions.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Well BR has stated explicitly that what we have here is "endless discussion over reasonable changes" and that "consensus frequently is wrong", while you talk about "members of this community did not care for changes I made to something "sacred"". Both of you seem to demand that someone instantly changes the infobox templates and thousands of articles without discussion, while all that will do is produce more and more complex templates that no-one who is not an expert in wikimarkup will be able to use. Many editors will have no idea what ("|+") and its like do, so if it isn't done right you could be substituting one kind of accessibility problem (i.e. screen readers) for another (i.e. only a select few will be able to edit the article at all because it isn't documented and uses the arcane language of markup or HTML. And its people doing stuff without discussion that has resulted in things like {{Fleet-boat-propulsion-early-FM-4-GE}}Nigel Ish (talk) 19:16, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I was under the impression you were talking about templates here? How many folks need to be editing the template that you're now worrying about using the arcane language of markup and html? You don't have to edit the template to edit the article, you know. --RexxS (talk) 20:46, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not going to defend editor Br'er Rabbit. I have said that I thought that he isn't making friends here and that he was probably too forceful in his arguments. As for myself, I am not demanding anything. I think that I have contributed positively to this discussion about accessibility. I have suggested ways in which we can make the infoboxes used by WP:SHIPS better for all of our readers. I have raised issues that we should think about.

The suggestions that I have made are, I think mostly the kind of thing that lies "under the hood". For sure I don't want to be adding a bunch html/css markup to articles nor do I want to maintain articles that have a bunch of html/css markup. Hiding all of that from those of us who don't know or don't want to know about the esoterica of markup is the raison d'être for templating.

In general, editors on Wikipedia are trainable. They can go to the Wikitable help page and learn about "|+" just as they would go there to learn about the other wiki markup that makes a table. It must be possible because there are a lot of tables in Wikipedia.

The {{Fleet-boat-propulsion-early-FM-4-GE}} is a whole other set of issues that I think is outside the scope of this conversation about accessibility.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:03, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Type 21 frigate

The article on the Type 21 Frigate class needs a lot of work, large chunks of it are unreferenced, with lots of what appears to be OR. While I've tried to add some cites, it is difficult for me to see what is just unreferenced but encyclopedic and fixable, what is OR and what is just plain WP:BOLLOCKS. Attention from cold-war British warship experts would be helpful.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:45, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Template:Infobox ship career

Since we're /here/…

SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand 1

History
Austria-Hungary
Name	SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand
General characteristics
Propulsion	2 shafts, 2 vertical triple expansion steam engines 12 Yarrow-type coal-fired boilers

SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand 2

History
Name	SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand
General characteristics
Propulsion	2 shafts, 2 vertical triple expansion steam engines 12 Yarrow-type coal-fired boilers

SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand 3

Austria-Hungary
Name:	SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand
General characteristics
Propulsion	2 shafts, 2 vertical triple expansion steam engines 12 Yarrow-type coal-fired boilers

SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand 4

Career
Country:	Austria-Hungary
Name:	SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand
General characteristics
Propulsion	2 shafts, 2 vertical triple expansion steam engines 12 Yarrow-type coal-fired boilers

SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand 5

History
Austria- Hungary
Name	SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand
History
Italy
General characteristics
Propulsion	2 shafts, 2 vertical triple expansion steam engines 12 Yarrow-type coal-fired boilers

There is a problem I'm seeing with this template. The section header with |Ship country= && |Ship flag= often forces the left column to be too wide when the country name is long, such as Austria-Hungary; see diff of SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand, for example; the left side omitted the country and thus the right column was apportioned a greater chunk of the infobox's width, to good line-wrap effect.

I'm thinking that header should colspan="2" and duck most of the issue. This was probably an attempt to address this issue, but it was reverted.

See the actual article, but the snippets here illustrate the issue. What's occurring is that browsers apportion column width based on the content of cells and in the upper snippet there is a lot of text in the left column and that is forcing browsers to give the left column more space when what should be desired is that the left column be fairly narrow so that the right column with most of the actual data gets the majority of the space so that fewer things line-wrap. The second example shows the effect of omitting the country, which significantly changes the apportioning of the column widths, and the third example mocks-up what this should probably look like. Re-implementing this as a single cell with the flag shoved far-right and the country filling most of the cell would remove this from being specifically on the left side and would cause thousands of infoboxes to allocate more space to the right column resulting in fewer line-wraps and infoboxes that extend a bit less down the page.

Br'er Rabbit (talk) 05:25, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

That's definitely an issue we need to solve, but I kind of like the "career" heading. How about adding the name above, under or on either side of the flag? Tupsumato (talk) 07:00, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Adding the "Career" will entail too much content in the header; it would get crowded quickly, and 'under' would make the damned thing ridiculously tall. It currently has a height="30" in there that's inappropriate; such things should be done by having a bit of padding, not a fixed height. Using only the label "Career" would work, with the country dropping down into a label/data pair like the other items. Mock-up #4. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 07:28, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Adding Career<br /> to the Country cell in mock-up #3 allows both the longer name and the "Career" heading without changing the height of the header. A similar tweak to mock-up #4 causes the header height to change—I don't know if that's a bad thing.

Can all of that wikitable markup and css be hidden? I fear that maintaining complex markup will be quite a headache.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:35, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

New snippet 5 uses this: |Ship country=[[Austria-Hungary|Austria-<br />Hungary]]. Yeah, the header is slightly fat but the left column is narrow and the right column is wide. I don't know why it works.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:53, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

AfD notification

This AfD may be of interest to the project, as not only does it involve a company involved in ship operation, but (at least) three of its ships, bundled into the AfD without being tagged (I have fixed this) as if slipping them in under the radar. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:43, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

RFC: Should ship classes in article titles be hyphenated?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the debate may be found at the bottom of the discussion.

---

Should ship classes in article titles be hyphenated? According to WP:SHIPNAME#Ship class articles and WP:SHIPMOS#Referring to ship classes, ship classes should be un-hyphenated when used as a noun (e.g. Balao class), but hyphenated when used as an adjective (e.g. Balao-class submarine). Should this rule also apply to article titles? Previous discussions on the subject include this one in October 2010, this one in March 2011, and #Ship class hyphens higher up this page. DoctorKubla (talk) 08:20, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

• Support. There's no reason why article titles should be exempt from the normal rules of grammar. DoctorKubla (talk) 08:20, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. Hyphens in article names are ugly, unprofessional, and unencyclopedic in appearance. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 08:36, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
• Mea culpa. What makes hyphens and commas difficult is that fast readers and good writers tend not to remember, and to misremember, seeing them, so for picky little punctuation rules like this one, Wikipedians have generally been willing at GAN and FAC to let the style guides and copyeditors make the call ... and we let you down on this one, I'm afraid, because now I see there's been a recent change: the major style guides now recommend using the same hyphenation in titles as text (Chicago 8.163, for instance). Garner's is insistent (at Punctuation) that omitting a hyphen in a phrasal adjective (like X-class ship) looks really, really wrong (with some exceptions). You'll still see hyphens omitted where you'd expect them in a lot of book titles from 20 years ago and more, and probably some newer books too. If you guys are willing to put hyphens in titles now, that would sure save copyeditors a lot of work; it's really annoying having to insert 25 hyphens in a long ship article because someone was following the hyphenation they saw in the links to page titles ... and it happens a lot. - Dank (push to talk) 12:31, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
• Support There is nothing ugly, unprofessional, and unencyclopedic in appearance about a hyphen in an article title. There is something ugly, unprofessional, and unencyclopedic in appearance about poor grammar in an article title. WP:SHIPMOS#Referring to ship classes which is based on MOS:HYPHEN states that the form used in the titles should be hyphenated. Ryan Vesey 14:21, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
• Support Article titles should follow proper English grammar just like everything else.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:01, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
• Support per my arguments in the last discussion, which means basically per Sturmvogel, I think. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:48, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
• Support as I've already argued here. There is a consensus that ship classes are hyphenated in article text, this accords with MOS:HYPHEN, and it seems perverse to follow the MOS in the text but not in the title. Dank makes an excellent point. 212.183.128.240 (talk) 20:02, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
• Support, as a longtime reporter and copy editor. Except it is not grammar; it is simply punctuation. Thank you. GeorgeLouis (talk) 01:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
• Comment - again? do previous discussions count for nothing. GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:03, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

• You've been here long enough to know that previous discussions do not prohibit future discussions. Consensus can change. Ryan Vesey 12:08, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

• Note: Quoted from one of those previous discussions, with emphasis added by me:

The practice in the publications of the US Naval Institute is to hyphenate in text but not in headings. Jane's Fighting Ships does not hyphenate in headings. Brassey's Naval Annual did not hyphenate in text either. I have consulted various other books and the practice is to not hyphenate this in headings.

In English grammar, rules on hyphens have exceptions. "Admiral class ship" is correct. "Admiral class" is correct. "Admiral-class ship" is correct. But "Admiral-class" is incorrect because the word "class" now stands alone. "Admiral Smith class ship" is correct, but "Admiral Smith-class ship" is wrong because the hyphen is leaving "Admiral" on its own.

There is also a practical problem, which I raised in another forum. In type-setting there are distinctions between hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes. For the most part these distinctions do not exist in normal English (though the Guide to Naval Writing distinguishes between dashes and hyphens). If article or heading names have hyphens (or dashes), we are exposing ourselves to having utterly lame edit wars and disputes (see for example Talk:Mexican-American War#Revisit requested move.--Toddy1 (talk) 17:49, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

• It makes sense that these books would not use hyphenation in the titles. Note Dank's comment that says the major style guidelines have changed. On another note, the guidelines for hyphenation already say that "Admiral class" should not be hyphenated. You may be incorrect on the "Admiral Smith-class ship". MOS:HYPHEN does not add a hyphen in between a proper noun. Admiral Hipper is the name of the lead ship so it is a proper noun. The text of that article uses Admiral Hipper-class ship, which is correct. Finally, we need to continue to remember the need for consistency. We cannot continue to hyphenate in the text and not in the titles. Ryan Vesey 12:08, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The majority of sources appear to not use hyphens in headings. Imposing a Wikipedia-only standard "because it's good grammar" is still imposing something on Wikipedia that is not found in sources - and that's called WP:OR...

...but, to answer Graeme, from my experience with the hyphen issue with regards to aircraft-by-decade categories, when it comes to dashes and hyphens, previous discussions count for precisely bupkis. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 10:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The only way to conclude that this isn't found in sources is to ignore more recent works (as I said, this is a recent change, omitting hyphens in titles and chapter headings used to be quite common), to follow sources that make nonstandard calls in orthography (some of your sources write "10in" and avoid hyphens and periods/full stops in odd ways), and to ignore general as opposed to specialist works (of course you don't need a hyphen for clarity, if everyone in your readership already knows what you mean ... but the general reader may not know). The hyphen usage we're supporting is common and recommended ... but it's not universal even in professionally copyedited text, alas, because commas and hyphens are losing ground every year ... which is a shame, they make things clearer and easier to read when they're used properly, but these days, everyone's a publisher, but not everyone gets how to use commas and hyphens. So one of these days, the style guidelines will start saying it's fine to get rid of a lot of the hyphens and commas, in text as well as headings, since everyone seems to be doing it ... but that day is not today. - Dank (push to talk) 12:49, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

• Comment (ec) - Reliable sources from reputable specialised publishers seem to differ as to whether or not to use hyphens. The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World 1998–1999 (Naval Institute Press) uses them in accordance with the ShipMOS rules (i.e. Foo-class destroyer, but x is a member of the Foo class). The Conways All The World's Fighting Ships series (Conway Maritime Press) does not, neither does Jane's Fighting Ships (have checked 1931, 1962–63 and 1985–86, so this definately seems to be a house style).Nigel Ish (talk) 10:42, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
• Support per all of the good rationales already provided in this WP:SNOWBALL. A work like Conway's or Jane's may be a reliable source on details about ships, but it is emphatically not a reliable source about grammar, much less encyclopedic writing. See WP:SSF for a detailed discussion of why specialist factual sources are almost never reliable about points of style and grammar (unless their specialty is style and grammar, of course ;-). — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 00:22, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Regardless of the rules of grammar, adding the hypen, when it is not used in the sources, is original research. However apparently that's okay when it comes to the MOS. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:55, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
    • Bushranger, have you read WP:OR? It's all explicitly about content, not style. The first sentence: "Wikipedia articles must not contain original research." Nothing in what follows extends the principle to guidelines or policy. How could it? Wikipedia is utterly unique, and must therefore sometimes make policies and guidelines that are unprecedented. That said, MOS is based solidly on reliable sources, which in its case are major style guides, manuals, dictionaries, and the products of the finest publishers. Note these excerpts from a recent ArbCom decision:

"Style guides are used as a means of creating a consistent end result. They do not affect content, but rather how that content is presented. ..."

"The English Wikipedia Manual of Style has been built from a number of pre-existing Manuals from numerous fields. The best practices from these have been combined to create a single, unique MOS that applies to articles on the English Wikipedia."

Do you disagree with that ArbCom decision? I cannot tell if you are being sarcastic in your comment regarding MOS.

Noetica^Tea? 06:02, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm being serious. If Wikipeida creates from whole cloth a name for an article that is a name that is not used in sources, how is that any different than creating content that is unverifiable? But they do it with album and song names all the time already (to many kilobytes of arguing), hence my comment that "if the MOS supports it, even if it's unsourcable it's OK". We shouldn't be naming things with names that are only used in Wikipeida, be the 'created name' a variation on spelling, capitalisation, or punctuation, any more than we should have content in articles that cannot be verified to a reliable source. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 14:53, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

OR applies to content, not style; just as Noetica says. Besides, some sources use hyphens and some don't, so OR wouldn't apply even under your ludicrously strict interpretation, Bushmaster.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:23, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

• Support—but why isn't this located at a central place where a wider range of editors can see it and, if they wish, participate? Like WT:MOS ... Tony (talk) 01:14, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
• Support. There is nothing to exempt the cases discussed here from widely accepted general principles in mainstream publishing. Those principles are reflected in WP:HYPHEN at WP:MOS, as they ought to be. By default there is a hyphen in compound premodifiers of this form: "Balao-class submarine", "first-class assignment". The difference with and without hyphen in that second case is obvious:

Her first class assignment only got a B, but all her next ones got A+.

Her first-class assignment only got a B; the teacher later revealed that he withheld an A to encourage even better work next time.

We simply cannot predict how cases like "Balao class submarine" might strike the naive reader. For example, "class" can be an adjective meaning "classy, of high quality"; and "class" can mean "fleet" etymologically (Latin classis; see the lead of Roman navy), and for some newcomers to English. It is best to stick with the default styling, in the absence of compelling reasons to do otherwise. Nothing is lost.

♫♪

Noetica^Tea? 02:12, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

...I WP:ASSUMECLUE in our readers. This is not the Simple English Wikipeida. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:55, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, again and again we see that people do not read or understand as we expect them to ☺. I have illustrated that. It is one of the reasons for having a consensual, well-articulated manual of style. We have that. Let's apply it.

Noetica^Tea? 06:02, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

• Support per Dank. --John (talk) 06:40, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. I'd broadly support the use of hyphens for adjectival compounds here, but let's not pretend that to not do so would be some egregious breach of the "normal rules of grammar" or punctuation or whatever. It is perfectly acceptable English[-]language practice to miss out a technically required hyphen when the meaning is clear regardless, as it is here despite pedantic attempts to argue otherwise on the basis of alternative meanings of the word "class". Also I don't see the point in denigrating this page as a venue for discussing the issue in this context or in denigrating how reliable and authoritative sources choose to style such descriptions on the basis that they are supposedly not grammar or punctuation experts. N-HH talk/edits 10:15, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

• Nick, it's about coordination of such decision-making in a central place, rather than individual bits of the project going off in their own directions without anyone else knowing (fragmentation, splintering). Tony (talk) 12:22, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

• • Oops, thanks for mentioning this ... after "omitting a hyphen in a phrasal adjective (like X-class ship) looks really, really wrong", I just added "(with some exceptions)". But we're a little off track here ... SHIPS articles have used the hyphen before "class" for a long time, and no one is arguing against that ... we're talking about whether to use the same hyphenation in page titles. On the "denigrating" part, my position is between McCandlish's and Bushranger's: Conway's clearly uses nonstandard styling (generally, a "tabular" styling, even in the main text) throughout, so it doesn't make sense to use it as a style authority; other books intended for readers who know a lot about ships do a good job. - Dank (push to talk) 11:50, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

• For me, it's about consistency. While I prefer hyphens throughout, I wouldn't be incredibly upset if a decision came out to use no hyphens (in the titles or the articles). I just want the hyphenation to be the same in both. Ryan Vesey 14:06, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

• I have to agree with Ryan Vesey; I want what ever is decided on to be consistant. It seems that if I do it one way someone comes along and reminds me (sometimes indignantly) that it should have been the other way. Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things or are we just swatting at gnats? Cuprum17 (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

• Support the normal use of English grammar and punctutation standards, for example as described at Wikipedia:SHIPMOS#Referring_to_ship_classes to distiguish the noun and adjective forms of the classes. A ship class gets a hyphen only when used as an adjective, whether in a title or not. Dicklyon (talk) 03:53, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
• Request Since it appears that change is imminent please please please do not begin moving articles until some rational method is established. The last time this happened it was total chaos. Remember that the article talk pages have to be moved along with the main article and any archived talk pages have to be moved as well. A lot of articles will have to be moved 'over redirect' and some articles have been moved back and forth several times already. Brad (talk) 23:10, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
• Comment:Ohio-class submarine is already named with a hyphen. {{sclass|Ohio}} templates link to the redirect at Ohio class submarine. You can't trick the template by adding a hyphen: {{sclass|Ohio-|submarine}}: Ohio--class submarine (and that would break the formatting options of the template anyway).

Interestingly, except for formatting, you can't make the article title appear different from what it is with {{DISPLAYTITLE:''name''-class shiptype}}. Simply adding a hyphen to the DISPLAYTITLE magic word parameter causes the formatting to be ignored.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:51, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

• • Well, it looks like no one noticed this move in July. It's not technically supposed to be there right now. As for the article title displays, I believe only formatting changes are allowed; no substantive changes can be made. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:03, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but I did. I mentioned the Ohio-class submarine article in the conversation that was the run-up to this RFC.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: Further to my comments about the already-hyphenated Ohio-class submarine article. I just changed {{Ohio class submarine}} because the title of that nav box at the bottom of the Ohio-class submarine article was an active link to the redirect at Ohio class submarine through a {{sclass}} template. So, it was a link from Ohio-class submarine (with the hyphen) back to Ohio-class submarine (also with the hyphen) through the redirect Ohio class submarine (without the hyphen). All such templates will have to be adjusted if this proposal is adopted because links should not be self-referential or circular.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:42, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I've listed this discussion at Requests for Closure. DoctorKubla (talk) 11:46, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Tentative close

I've read over the discussion and am planning to close, but wanted to make sure I haven't missed any nuances. I believe the appropriate close will be: Article titles of ship classes should be un-hyphenated when used as a noun (e.g. Balao class), but hyphenated when used as an adjective (e.g. Balao-class submarine). This would means page titles could be moved to include a hyphen (assuming the article is a discussion of ship class, which it will almost certainly be). MBisanz ^talk 00:38, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly right. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 01:40, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Summary

Article titles of ship classes should be un-hyphenated when used as a noun (e.g. Balao class), but hyphenated when used as an adjective (e.g. Balao-class submarine). This means page titles can be moved to include a hyphen, unless the ship class name is being used as an adjective itself (I'm not sure how to phrase the exception though, it is nearly nonsensical in English). MBisanz ^talk 05:55, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RFC closure and summary

Wait! What? Editor MBisanz has closed the RFC with a summary that s/he admits is less than clear and where the exception stated seems to conflict with the first sentence in the summary: "Article titles of ship classes should be ... hyphenated when used as an adjective" ... "unless the ship class name is being used as an adjective itself". What? I'm wondering if Editor MBisanz should have been the one to close this RFC because that confusing and seemingly contradictory summary is indicative of an incomplete understanding. Can this be reopened to produce a clearly written resolution?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:09, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

I took it to mean that ship class articles get a hyphen when they're in the form Xushma-class cruiser, and if they ever are not, it'd be Xushma class. I'm not sure what the last bit means, but we can easily work with this. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:15, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the gist is... clear enough. So, does anyone have any idea how to implement this? DoctorKubla (talk) 20:35, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, there's the rub, eh? Perhaps we should have figured that out before we took this decision or at least tried to enumerate all of the consequences. We need to think about article titles (obviously), {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic words in articles, {{sclass}} and {{sclass2}} templates, class templates ({{Essex class aircraft carrier}} and the like), guidelines, WP:SHIPMOS, and other related documents. What am I missing?

1. If there isn't an article with the new name (Example-class scow), simply move the article Example class scow to the new name using the Move link in the upper right corner of the page. That makes a redirect page out of Example class scow and Example-class scow becomes the new page.
   1. If there is an article with the hyphenated name (Example-class scow) then admin intervention is required. That process is described at WP:RM/TR.
2. In the new page, change {{DISPLAYTITLE}} magic word to include the hyphen ({{DISPLAYTITLE}} formatting is lost if the parameter doesn't match the article's name).
3. Existing {{sclass}} and {{sclass2}} templates will still find the hyphenated article through the non-hyphenated redirect page. It may be desirable at some point to fix the templates' code so that they point directly to the hyphenated article.
   1. For linking to articles with hyphenated class names, {{sclass-}} template uses same format as {{sclass}} template but inserts a hyphen between "name" and "class" in the link. Ohio-class submarine links to the article Ohio-class submarine, while Ohio-class submarine links to the redirect Ohio class submarine which then links to the article.
4. Class templates should be tweaked to display proper hyphenated titles and to link directly to the hyphenated article.
5. Documentation. Documentation is of paramount importance – especially during this transition.

This list was written mostly to organize my own thoughts. Opinions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:09, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

That looks good. We'll have to change the sclass templates when most of the articles have been moved. With regards to 1.1, you could make a list of those instances (with a bot script or AWB, perhaps?) and an admin here, like me or User:Brad101, could do the required moves. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:47, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

My apologies for being less than clear, I was attempting to be thorough. I was trying to account for the odd situation where a ship class name was being used in an unexpected manner, but since I've slept on it and still can't articulate that part of the result, I've struck that clause. MBisanz ^talk 20:43, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Much more better. Thanks.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:09, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

usefull diagram?

The following diagram is, I think, usefull for explaining some of the differences in sailing rigs on two masted vessels. If required, I can give sources, both historic and modern. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ship_Rigging_differences_in_schematic_view.png — Preceding unsigned comment added by Refundpolitics (talk • contribs) 21:52, 5 October 2012 (UTC)