Talk:USS Tennessee (BB-43)

2003 split talk
Good lord! This isn't an encyclopedia article it is a small book. Any chance of breaking this up in a more natural way? Basing the division only on length is a bad idea because there is no logical organization to the split-up and this makes it difficult for people to contribute to any one part of this ship's history (for example, what happens when somebody adds a bunch of text to the second page - do we carry that over to page three, then cut-off the end of that page and add it to page four...). --mav


 * For some reason the DANFS writer for this one was very enthusiastic and put in lots of extra material that could be pruned or moved elsewhere. It's fairly well written, so not always obvious how to cut down without mangling the good stuff - sectionizing is a reasonable band-aid until someone gets the energy to finish encylopedizing this one. Stan 04:31 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. --mav

I object to the assertion that I based the division only (mav's emphasis) on length. I went to some small trouble to find logical breakpoints. Maybe I should have just left it as a 90-odd kilobyte lump! If you don't like it, well, you can edit this page right now. Go on, I double-dog dare ya! --the Epopt 05:41 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)


 * As I said, fair enough. --mav

Once they learn this article's got 5 parts, I doubt many people will read it anyway... :-\. ugen64 00:10, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)


 * Hee hee, that's the best reason to prune. Does an article exist in the forest if no one ever reads it? :-) Stan 03:27, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Is there really any point in splitting it up? Wiki is not paper, after all. I don't see how having five pages is any better than one very long page, given that there's no technical limit on how long an article can be. If it can be split into logically named sections that's one thing, but "Part X" seems rather pointless. DopefishJustin 03:53, May 8, 2004 (UTC)
 * There is a technical limit on how long a page can be to be editable on some browsers. Hence the warning on long pages. Rmhermen 04:06, May 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * This might have little to do with Wikipedia and might not be useful in any way, but I still have to comment that strangely the USS Tennessee article is longer than, say Democracy. But then again, World_of_Warcraft is longer than Sex, so it's not that weird...

suggestion
May I suggest that this article gets reworked with Summary style in mind? Break out the detailed history into one of more seperate articles and just leave a summary here. At the same time, more references and inline citations (WP:CITE would probaly be a good thing. WegianWarrior 09:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd take that suggestion even further. This is an excellent narrative, and I think it belongs as a free (short) book in Wikimedia, rather than an overly-long article on Wikipedia.  We could replace it with a summary, and include a pointer to the full narrative in its appropriate place.  The argument that Wikipedia isn't paper really applies only to the number of articles &mdash; what limits their length is the function of an encyclopedia (and people's attention spans), which is supposed to summarize rather than narrate. David 15:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge
Per our manual of style, the subarticles should be merged. If there is excessive material, it should be split to subarticles about specific topics. The current division into part is very strange for Wikipedia - as much as I appreciate the interesting 'buttons', it should be retired along with many other ideas from the early days of Wikipedia. This might have been long in 2003. Today, with FAs like USS Wisconsin (BB-64) and USS Missouri (BB-63) it is just a confusing curiosity.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree, I've had a mental note sitting in the back of my head to fix this for quite some time but haven't got around to it yet. Once upon a time Isaac Newton had a biographical article that had been split up like this and I fixed it by renaming each part to cover a specific part of his life or achieviements, perhaps we could do something similar here. Bryan Derksen 05:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The buttons are kind of cool and it is an interesting divide but I guess you guys are right. I'll start to split it up.  I'm going to make subarticles for the years of battle.  Fanra 22:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * In my eyes, the subarticles should not only be merged, the entire text needs drastic shortening. It is way too detailed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a book. It is a shame since the text seems to be well written but it is simply way too long and detailed. A *short* summary of her actions should only be included. If this extended information is available on the web somewhere, it can be linked to in the External links but it should not be integrated.--Fogeltje 13:47, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * This discussion is two years old, but I believe a record should be made of my intentions. There are FAs like USS Wisconsin (BB-64) and USS Missouri (BB-63) that are this long. It's well-written. I believe the article could be cleaned up at its current length or something close to it, and achieve FA status. Breaking up those huge sections into sub-sections would be a good starting point. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 21:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Image
-- Thanks for looking out. Regarding the image, File:USS Tennessee, 1937.jpg, it seemed like there was plenty of room for it, however, if it can be placed elsewhere that would be fine. I figured I'd get some feed back on that beforehand. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:02, 8 May 2024 (UTC).


 * It's probably a display issue - on my screen, it's pushed way down into the Pearl Harbor section. There are a few sub-sections in the WWII section that would fit, but it wouldn't be all that relevant to the text, which the MoS discourages. Maybe in the footnotes section? Parsecboy (talk) 16:31, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * — Thanks for your prompt reply. The letter is dated May 10, 1937, which is why it was placed in the Construction – 1941 section. The footnotes section is meant for citations and source listings, so it would seem sort of odd stuck there and no doubt would be moved somewhere along the line. The Postwar fate section might serve well, bearing in mind that, aside from a few artifacts from the Tennessee, it's mail, processed aboard the ship, is among the only few things remaining from the ship, and sort of serves as a tangible testimony to the ship and its history. Historians often refer to ships mail, which often provide first hand historical information, as it bears names of crew members, ranks, sometimes signatures, along with ship's postmarks and dates, which often serve to further verify ship's locations and names of crew members at a given time. In any case, and as you may know, postal history collectors and naval history buffs are often one in the same, and imo, such items sort of add a personal touch to a given ship's history.  That's just me I guess. If there are no objections, we can place the image in the suggested section. I was about to add some other information for the caption, touching on some of the ideas mentioned here, but needed reliable sources, which I now have at hand. Also, we might want to change the section name from Postwar fate to Postwar fate and legacy, with these things in mind. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:24, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * — Located a better cover, mailed from the Tennessee while on its final assignment in Japan in 1945, placed in an appropriate section. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 23:25, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, my internet went out yesterday afternoon and they didn't get it fixed until after I had gone to bed. That works for me. Parsecboy (talk) 11:54, 9 May 2024 (UTC)