User:Viv Hamilton/Ship notability

This page is intended to document a consensus guideline for the WP:Ships project. At the moment the page is a draft for editors to improve.

Wikipedia has developed consensus guidelines about what should, and should not be the topic of an encyclopaedic article. Notability suggests that a topic should be included. The WP:Ships project has as its aim ensuring that appropriate articles within the project scope are created, and that articles within the project scope are improved. Editors may sometimes have difficulty interpreting what notability means for ships and smaller vessels. The purpose of this guideline is to help guide editing decisions.

In the context of ships (and any other watercraft), this guideline considers inherent notability and notability through events. Inherent notability considers that ships with certain properties are inherently notable, and it is therefore not necessary to explicitly point out the notability. Notability through events occurs when a vessel that might not be inherently notable (such as a small boat) plays a significant role in a notable event (such as a rescue, voyage, battle or shipwreck).

General notability guideline
In a nutshell WP:Notability states that If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.

Editors should aim to ensure that these principles are met. However, individual decisions to delete or merge an article should recognise that an article that lacks sources, may be notable but in need of some work to add those sources (see WP:Verifiability). Decisions to create a stand-alone article, to merge articles or move content are not solely about availability of sources but need judgement about the amount of information, the narture of that information and how the information is best presented in an encyclopaedic form. Other guidelines also need to be considered, including What Wikipedia is not.

Inherent Notability
Inherent Notability, is the idea that certain subjects have a justified existence in the main Wikipedia article space. They must, of course, still be verified and referenced.

From the experience of editors dealing with ships and by analogy to other topics in Wikipedia the following are likely to meet the crietria for notability, so it should be safe to assume that these are valid topics for articles, provided that sufficient content and reliable sources can be found:
 * Large vessels. The biggest ships of an era are generally notable.  The size of the largest ships has increased over time, so guidance on size is dependent on when the ship was built.  For ships currently in use, a large ship is assumed to mean over 20,000 tons.  When dealing with older vessels, lower thresholds may be used, that recognise that the largest ships possible would have been smaller than this.  The following table can be used as a guide for powered ships.  For sailing ships, the threshold is 100 tons.
 * Commissioned naval vessels are generally considered notable.


 * Ferries but this inherent notability applies to the ferry route. Individual sources must be located for individual vessels that have served on that route, otherwise such vessels should be dealt with within one article.
 * Ocean liners (international) and their military equivalent, troopships. Vessels performing a role of transporting people are notable by virtue of their impact upon human lives and communities. Multiple minor references in biographic sources shall be considered to confer notability.  Most such vessels will also satisfy the large vessel criterion.
 * International Cruise ships, by virtue of their impact on human lives and interest to the readership.
 * First of class, and vessels exhibiting technological changes, or other unique features; however notability should be able to be proved through technical references.
 * Historic vessels included in a national register of historic ships or equivalent registers of cultural heritage.
 * Historic vessels that are more than 100 years old, for which sources can be found are also likely to be notable.

Classes of vessel likely to be notable
Based on decisions from AFD, the following classes of vessel are notable:
 * Liberty ships

The following are untested (but likely to be notable): Victory ships, Empire ships

Vessels that are unlikely to be notable
The following are unlikely to be notable, unless they have been involved in a significant event, or have cultural heritage significance, such as the last surviving members of once large classes of working boat. Reliable, independent sources must be provided to protect against decisions to delete or include in other articles:
 * Uncommissioned military vessels, in the sense of vessels that were planned but not built or built but not taken into military service. However, incomplete vessels which have received significant coverage in reliable sources, may be considered notable. Examples of incomplete ships that have been found notable: USS Illinois (BB-65) or USS Montana
 * Unregistered merchant ships i.e. it does not have an IMO number, or Official Number, and has not been entered on a shipping register such as Lloyd's, DNV, etc
 * Small vessels - vessels under the following tonnages are considered small
 * Current motorship:- 1,000 tons.
 * Historic motorship:- 500 tons.
 * Current and historic sailing ship:- 100 tons


 * Vessels used solely on inland waterways and canals (exception:- commercial craft used on large open bodies of inland water such as the Great Lakes, English Lake District Lakes, Scottish Lochs, Rhine, Mississippi, Nile or similar large rivers may be considered notable, subject to minimum weights above).
 * Individually owned and operated pleasure craft.

Notability through events
Many vessels that would not otherwise be notable may be so through what happens to them, or through service history. Examples of events and service history that may confer notability include:
 * Shipwreck. Multiple deaths are generally considered to confer notability. A shipwreck in modern times should be covered by multiple sources, but a historic event may be supported by only a single reliable source.


 * Merchant ships sunk by enemy action in wartime (whether the ship belonged to a belligerent country or not)
 * Participation in a historically recorded voyage. However, an article should not be created for a vessel for which only the name is known. Facts about the vessel, not just the voyage are required. If only the name is known, the article should be about the voyage not the ship.
 * Participation in a notable rescue, winning honours in a yacht race, being the subject of a hijack. Such events should have resulted in the multiple sources necessary for meeting the normal notability criteria
 * Participation in conflict by uncommissioned vessels in military service. Since such vessels would not normally be expected to actively participate in conflict, participation in conflict is almost certainly notable.

This list is not exhaustive. Some vessels acquire notability through a single event; others through the accumulated impact of long service. Merchant vessels taken into military service may be notable by virtue of either their merchant service or their military role or the combination of both. For commissioned military vessels, and registered merchant ships that are currently in service, decisions about deleted articles with few notable events, should err in favour of keeping the article.

Military vessels
Commissioning provides a miniumum set of factual information from a reliable source but commissioning alone is not sufficient criteria for notability: other sources should be available especially to expand the service history.

If individual vessels are not notable, factual information concerning such vessels will normally be best included in an article or list about the class of vessel.

Merchant vessels
Formal registration will provide a miniumum set of factual information from a reliable source, but registration alone is not sufficient criteria for notability: other sources should be available.

A press release or other similar material from the owner/operator of a merchant ship is not an independent reliable source and is therefore not sufficient on its own (or in conjunction with registration details) to prove notability.