Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Operation Majestic Titan/Archive 7

WP:ITN Candidate
Hi all. I dropped by here because I need to check some deleted material, and for that I needed to log in. While logged in I noticed and subsequently nominated USS Iowa (BB-61) for a spot on WP:ITN out on the mainpage; further details can be found at In the news/Candidates (Look for April 30). TomStar81 (Talk) 01:43, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Tablemania....
What's the deal with all these tables in USS Tennessee (BB-43)? I've removed a few that were too far from any probable use, and collapsed the others. What should we do with the others? Buggie111 (talk) 17:07, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Get a Bigger Axe. ;) Br&#39;er Rabbit (talk) 17:49, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * For some reason, Tennessee was fantastically popular with whoever wrote her DANFS entry. The article used to be subdivided into bits like USS Tennessee (BB-43) 1941-1943 because the DANFS entry is so long. That's probably the source of it. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:40, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Pop culture issue
A discussion has been opened on the talk page of the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) centered on the issue of whether or not to include a mention of battleship's appearance in the music video If I Could Turn Back Time, all interested editors are welcome to participate. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:55, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

New article
I just finished the article for French battlecruiser proposals from 1913. If anyone has anything to add to it, go for it. Parsecboy (talk) 21:40, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I have a Warship International article that details the French 1915 battleship proposals, and it gives a little bit on the specifics of the 1912 fleet plan. It also mentions the battlecruisers, albeit only briefly, but mentions two other sources (one's in French, though). Would that help you at all? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:35, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * If either of you have trouble with the French source, I could try to tackle it...Buggie111 (talk) 13:36, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure, Ed, that should probably be useful for background info, and hopefully the other sources won't be too hard to track down. And thanks, Buggie, if I can get ahold of the French source, I'll let you know. Parsecboy (talk) 13:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Showcase
Hey everyone, our showcase is rather out of date. Bahamut used to maintain it, but ... yeah. Seeing as we're all aware of what articles we've written have gotten to FA/A/GA, would you all be able to update your own articles on the list? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:46, 23 May 2012 (UTC)


 * One option that you might want to consider would be to have an automatically updated showcase, similar to what we currently have on the task force pages. It won't necessarily be quite as up-to-date as something that's maintained by hand, but it may be more practical if there isn't someone actually doing the maintenance on a regular basis. Kirill [talk] 14:55, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I actually thought we were already doing that, but if we are not then it may be a good idea to look into this. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:23, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I've updated it as of today. Thurgate (talk) 22:17, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Short term goals
For the short/long term goals bars are they updated by a bot or manually? Thurgate (talk) 23:36, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It's manual, at this page. I'll go update it now. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:22, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah right, I was planning on doing it my self but you beat me to it :) Thurgate (talk) 00:53, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Someone's gotta pick up your slack. ;-) But more seriously, good catch, because they hadn't been updated in about six months! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 01:08, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

List of battlecruisers
What do y'all think of this list? I basically cobbled the tables together from the national lists and wrote a basic summary for the lead - I didn't want to write individual sections, as I feared it would duplicate too much from the national lists. In any case, is there anything missing from the intro section or anything? I'm thinking of putting it through the review process after the protected cruisers list gets finished up.

After this, the only articles left for the BC topic is the Battlecruiser article (which I've begun tinkering with) and the Saratoga article, which I think Sturm has his sights on. Anyone is more than welcome to assist me on the main BC article if you've got the time. Parsecboy (talk) 00:55, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I added and tweaked your intro... hope you don't mind. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:46, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * A certain large country in the southern hemisphere is missing ;) Nick-D (talk) 10:01, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Oops! You know, it occurred to me when I was doing the UK list that Australia wasn't included, but I didn't make the connection with needing to put it in its own section. Parsecboy (talk) 11:12, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Low-hanging fruit
Hey all, if you're interested in knocking off some easy articles, there are a number of British pre-dreadnoughts that aren't in too bad of a shape. I just polished up HMS Magnificent (1894), which didn't take all that long. Just a thought. Parsecboy (talk) 01:24, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

bahamut0013
Its been nine months since bahamut0013 died, and being that our standard practice has been to hide inactive users on the user list, and that this is the accepted consensus for our group, I wanted to ask as a courtesy if there would be any objections to passing a referendum within the OMT community that would keep bahamut0013's name out on the current user list for as long as the project functions as a useful entity to Wikipedia. Since no one has hidden bahamut's name in the time since his passing I think we are all mutually agreed to do this, but being a stickler for due process I thought we might take the extra step to make it official so we can add a hidden note or a ref tab notice or something of that nature to make sure his name remains out for all to see. TomStar81 (Talk) 15:08, 25 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Your idea is okay with me. Another solution is to move his username from the current members list up into the introduction, to make it more prominent. Binksternet (talk) 15:45, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

USS Iowa opens July 7
As a heads up, USS Iowa is currently slated to open up to the public on July 7. When that happens, we can expect a small army of people on here looking at the Iowa-class articles. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:02, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

How much detail is too much?
I'm having a discussion over on the the GAN for the KGV class article for which I would like some opinions. The article has more detailed data on fuel consumption, down to pounds of fuel consumed per shp, than I've seen in most of my sources for any ship. I believe that this level of detail is excessive for Wiki, especially since most naval historians don't go to this level. I don't contest the accuracy of Damwiki1's research, but I believe that it's adding more information than necessary to an already long article. It should be condensed into something like "the ships were very economical on fuel, although the wartime decrease in fuel quality offset that", or some such. Thoughts, opinions?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:40, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I like having too much material my self, the greater the details the more you can learn. Even if the inclusion in the article is judged to be too much we could create a fuel consumption article discussing the long term use of fuels like oil and coal and how they related to the design evolution of the battleships. Food for thought :) TomStar81 (Talk) 00:09, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Bot problem?
Does anyone know why the bot tracking our articles seems to run very sporadically?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Articles needing review
These are the current OMT-related articles that need reviewers. Please take some time and offer your comments and/or thoughts.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * List of battlecruisers of the United States
 * SMS Prinzregent Luitpold
 * HMS Furious (47)
 * SMS König Albert
 * French battleship Mirabeau

While not related to OMT, two other ship articles by OMT participants need some attention:
 * List of protected cruisers of Germany
 * HMS Hermes (95)


 * Hey all, I thought I'd second this request. I know people are enjoying their summers, but it would be helpful to get a wider set of reviews on these articles. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 17:51, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

External Links to Dreadnought Project pages
I have been recently adding links to parallel pages for ships (which are in some cases somewhat thin, but with new information such as lists oftheir captains) and their classes (which are generally extremely rich with details not to be found anywhere else on the web, and referenced with a thoroughnes that exceeds Wikipedia standards) on The Dreadnought Project. Perhaps it was clumsy to use a template that added a double-link (one to the ship page, one to its class page) in a single line, but to have them pulled from a list of other external links that often have a single screenful of information found on the Wikipedia page itself or a few commonly found images seems odd.

One of the reasons for pulling the links was that our site is a Wiki, which makes no sense. We avoid duplicating effort of Wikipedia pages (essential, given our reliance on primary sources) and rely on a "See Also" link at the foot of every page if people want to see the sort of information available to sites restricted by WP:PRIMARY.

It's in no one's interest to provide links in specific cases if we've not yet sufficient value on our pages, but I'd hope that the OMT group would recognize the general value of learning what lay in a ship's transmitting station. DulcetTone (talk) 11:44, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I've removed many of these links as the site doesn't meet criteria 1 and 12 of WP:ELNO. In most cases the pages had far less detail than the articles they were being added to, and this appears to be an open Wiki. Nick-D (talk) 23:15, 20 July 2012 (UTC)


 * My understanding of criterion one suggests that your articles will one day attain extensive information on the installations of data transmitters, voice pipes, navy phones, etc. This would have to be untrue because this information is not recorded except in fare one finds in resources one would deem primary resources and theses not generally available.  We'd be doing this work on WP if we felt it were so.  I think that our plates make that distinction fairly apparent.  The inapplicability of criterion twelve is established as quickly as the search for a registration link fails.  That our site is edited  by two active users is why you will generally see us only link Royal Navy material at the moment.  We are keen to add some more editors, especially those that contribute to OMT.  198.228.201.152 (talk) 11:12, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd say we ought to allow these links, at least where the destination has a substantial amount of content. I agree with the last post that it's difficult to find detailed information about fire control arrangements in reliable secondary sources, and that it's appropriate to link out to it. The Land (talk) 14:09, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Two of the good things about the Dreadnought Project (TDP) are the detailed descriptions of fire-control equipment and the officer biographies, both of which have more detail than Wiki, not least because they have fewer restrictions on use of original sources, etc. So I'm perfectly fine with adding links where ever appropriate. That said, I'm not sure that it's really appropriate if there isn't any significant content, just like The Land said.
 * But this raises a related issue as to the relationship between Wiki, especially OMT, and TDP. The latter has some great content added, but I think that the level of detail is sometimes more than is appropriate for Wiki in general. Forex, numbers of Evershead Indicators on a ship is probably a bit more involved for anybody other than specialists, but an article on them would be nice and I think that the article on naval fire control, once it gets written, could incorporate most of that sort of detail. But I don't really think that its really necessary or even appropriate for a ship article. Maybe a in class article where the technical side of things is explored more thoroughly. I haven't really looked at the licensing of Wiki articles, but my impression is that they can be freely copied, provided it's correctly attributed. I don't know off-hand if TDP uses identical licensing, but we ought to be able to exchange material, provided that all of the appropriate policies are adhered to. So what is TDP in relation to Wiki, more oriented towards the specialist, open to original sources and research, while Wiki is more oriented towards the more casual reader and secondary sources? Thoughts, comments?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:22, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm familiar with TDP, and I've always thought of it as an offshoot of OMT that can do what Wikipedia will not allow us to - that is to say cover the things we would be hard pressed to cover adequetly on site for various reasons. I have no problem treating the site and its members as part of our community, and I for one welcome the presence of their links in our articles as it helps to strength our content and in some cases perhaps reduce the chance of edit waring or content disputes by providing an offsite area that can cover our state area in ways that we can not. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:03, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * @Sturmvogel: Our license is a Creative Commons license of Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs, which is fairly permissive. I'd think our site is at least as citable a source as is, say, Navweaps.com, given our tighter citing of primary sources, our twelve year active and ongoing life with six of them being as a Wiki.  Publishing on the web, we're not constrained by limits of what a publishing entity would feel is worthy, are not limited in terms of length, and we can correct our errors as we go (a flexibility many paper publishers should envy).


 * @TomStar81: OMT effectively has TDP en toto in that our active editors are primarily Simon Harley and myself. We have tried to get about 10 others involved, over the years, but the best we've managed in recruiting is a few very occasional editors.  Recruiting remains a priority.  We'd love to see someone beef up our coverage of navies other than the Royal Navy, or to help better exploit the primary source material we have in hand, a collection which must well exceed 50,000 pages.


 * May I take the sum of this exchange as offering rough consensus that I may reinstate links except as where our present pages are found to be too weak? Should I perhaps instead generally link to our ship class pages (rather than our ship pages), except in cases where we have something well beyond the list of captains for a given ship?  --DulcetTone (talk) 17:22, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I would have no problem with linking generally to your class articles which are usually in better shape than the individual ship articles. So what would you like to have on TDP for a ship article that is lacking in our articles? I gather that y'all like a list of captains, even if they're not notable by our definitions, but what else would you like to see? I know that I would like copies of some of your fire-control stuff made generally accessible as I can then reference it directly without trying to filter it through published books, which usually only have some part of the story. I'd love to have some semi-standard account of a RN dreadnought's fire-control system that I could incorporate into our class articles, making any necessary adjustments to suit. Not too much detail, just something describing the director(s), TS, rangefinders and how everything worked together. Especially since I'm considering starting work on the Queen Elizabeth class soon.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:09, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

What's a predreadnought?
We've skirted around this issue before, but never definitively settled. I've recently gotten some info on the French Marceau-class ironclads and was thinking of working on some of them, but I noticed some naming issues and decided to see if the literature really defined predreadnoughts vs ironclads. Surprisingly I didn't find anything of real use for anything other than the Brits. I went through my library and found that many books didn't even address the issue; either they were more focused on the technological advances or they were too general:
 * Hore-Battleships
 * Beeler-Birth of the Battleship
 * Brown-Warrior to Dreadnought
 * Sandler-Battleships: A History of their Impact
 * Gibbons-The Complete Encyclopedia of Battleships
 * Parkes-British Battleships
 * Gille-Cent ans de cuirassés français
 * Silverstone-Directory of the World's Capital Ships

Several plumped for the Royal Sovereign-class battleships:
 * Conway's Fighting Ships 1860-1905
 * Gardiner-Steam, Steel and Shellfire
 * Burt-British Battleships 1889-1905 (only indirectly; he never outright comes and says it, but the dating of his book is pretty suggestive)
 * Sondhaus-Naval Warfare 1815-1914

Karl Lautenschlager argued for the Majestic-class battleships in a 2-part article on those ships in Warship VII. He subdivided the earlier ships into ironclads and armourclads without defining either. Presumably, the armourclads were those ships that used steel/compound armour instead of wrought iron. This might be a useful distinction that could cover all of the odd-balls of the 1880s that we have a hard time classifying, but I'd like to see somebody else make this distinction.

I have a fairly comprehensive library, but not certainly not nearly everything written on BBs, so who calls the Admiral-class battleships the first predreadnoughts? I'm not necessarily arguing with that classification, but what's our source?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:45, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I've argued before for using the Royal Sovereigns as the cutoff. Conway's 1860-1905 does come out and state that the Royal Sovereigns are the first pre-dreadnought type battleship. The difference they identify between them and the Admirals is that the former are high-freeboard, ocean-going ships. According to our article, Beeler agrees that the Royal Sovereigns were the first pre-dreadnought. The Handbook of 19th Century Naval Warfare also calls the Royal Sovereigns the first pre-dreadnoughts.


 * On the other hand, The Late Victorian Navy refers to the Admirals as the first pre-dreadnoughts (p. 154). Roberts' chapter in Gardiner's Steam, Steel and Shellfire points out that the Majestic-class battleships could be considered the first true pre-dreadnoughts.


 * As for the Marceaus, Conway's doesn't consider them to be pre-dreadnoughts, and Battleships calls Brennus the first French pre-dreadnought. Thankfully, I didn't have to deal with this issue with the Germans, since they very conveniently stopped building capital ships in the 1880s and didn't return until the early 1890s. Parsecboy (talk) 13:01, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd missed the ref in Conways, but I'd disagree about Beeler. I reread the text and he only refers to the Royal Sovereigns as the first truly ocean-going BBs because of their high freeboard. I'd have to reread the info on the Majestics, but I'm not inclined to call them the first pre-dreadnoughts as I don't think that they weren't anything more than improved Royal Sovereigns. So if we decide to follow those that call the Royal Sovereigns the first predreadnoughts, what do we call those ships immediately preceeding them? I dislike lumping them in with the literal ironclads, not least because of the change in armor type, and the gradual concentration on turrets/barbettes over the plethora of gun layouts used by ironclads. I suppose we could use armourclad, but I'd like to find some scholarly support for that idea. A quick scan through Google Books and Google doesn't offer much hope as it was often used during the 19th C. instead of ironclad or armored.
 * Using the Royal Sovereigns as our benchmark would serve us well by allowing us to drop a bunch of the 1880s oddballs like Maine, Texas, Riachuelo, Victoria, etc. and bypass that whole period of emphasis on axial fire that doesn' seem to fit the classic concept of predreadnoughts with at least one turret/barbette each fore and aft.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The fact of the matter is that no-one woke up one morning and decided they were going to invent the "pre-dreadnought battleship". It is a purely retrospective term. And when people started using the term (sometime around 1910), they didn't care at all to define its starting point. So the issue cannot be "definitively settled". You can define where to cut off Operation Majestic Titan - I suggest the Majestics, personally! The Land (talk) 21:45, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Sturm - I don't see that much of a problem with using "ironclad" for them. They belong to the same period of experimentation that characterized the period between Gloire/Warrior and the Royal Sovereigns. Yes, things were trending toward the Royal Sovereigns, but they weren't there yet. That they didn't actually use iron as armor is less relevant - "ironclad" is something of a term of art, and means more than simply a ship clad in iron. Heck, I've seen dreadnoughts referred to as ironclads in some contemporary journals and the like.


 * Yes, pre-dreadnought is a retrospective term (how could they know Dreadnought was coming, right?), but it does refer to a general type of battleship that usually had four main guns in two turrets on the centerline, had a high freeboard, and were generally intended to fight in line-ahead, rather than line-abreast. The other important difference, to my mind, between them and the earlier ironclads is the general uniformity in this configuration. The ironclad period was one marked by extensive experimentation&mdash;a problem with using the Admirals as the cutoff, since subsequent classes (like the Victorias) reverted to earlier, ultimately unsuccessful designs. I've seen numerous books cite the Royal Sovereigns as being the turning point in the period, and that they influenced naval design in most other major navies. For example, Sondhaus in Naval Warfare 1815-1914 makes this argument, and as I recall, also cites them as the first pre-dreadnoughts (I'm away from my library at the moment and can't give you the page number).


 * The only problem I have with using the Majestics as the cut-off is that, in my experience, more historians have chosen the Royal Sovereigns as the first. Apart from Roberts (and he is certainly reputable), I haven't seen any other sources that use the Majestics. I'd certainly change my mind if more sources can be found, of course. Parsecboy (talk) 02:06, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

We've never definitely settled on a definition for dreadnaught for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that due to the multiple countries and their design preferences for constructing a gun ship any attempt to define such a ship by standards like armor, weaponry, battery placement, power plant, or speed would bump up against someone's definition of battleship. The general rule to date has been to go with whatever the country in question classified the vessel as, with the rough arrival of the predreadnaoughts judged to be about 1890-1900. If the boat it the water earlier than that it would generally be regarded as an ironclad, which for our purposes is outside the purview of this particular special project. Any issues related to whether a ship built before 1890-1900 qualifies as a battleship or battlecruiser under our definition can be brought up here for inclusion consideration. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:06, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, the scholarly consensus is the Royal Sovereigns so if we adopt that, here's a tentative list of the ships that we'd drop:


 * USN: USS Maine and USS Texas
 * RN: Admiral, Victoria and Trafalgar classes. (13 articles)
 * Imp Russian Navy: Ekaterin II and Imperator Aleksandr II classes (8 articles)
 * Regia Marina: Re Umberto class (4 articles)
 * Chile: Capitán Pratt
 * Spain: Pelayo

A total of 29 articles. There are some related issues as to nomenclature of the articles as a lot of navies used battleship, or the equivalent term, for all large armored warships and I've already butted heads with some people who objected when I renamed articles from X battleship Y to X ironclad Y. As well as the terminology in the lede. What can we do to avoid silly naming fights like that? So look over the ships that I've listed and see if there's anything that I missed or we should include regardless of date.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe I am thinking to simple but could you not just simply call them Ironclad Battleships? Looks to me everybody is happy that way. (77.250.229.32 (talk) 18:05, 17 July 2012 (UTC))
 * If their official designation was battleship, and most sources (espeically contemporary ones) called them battleship, then they should be named here as battleships. - The Bushranger One ping only 18:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * We'd be going back quite a long way, and we'd also have to include the 'aircraft carrying battleships' that the media sometimes reports on these days, along with ships like Georgios Averof. Our defined scope is all pre-dreadnought and dreadnought warships, not all battleships. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:52, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * We're not trying to define what a battleship is, we're trying to define what a pre-dreadnought is.
 * Probably the best way to describe the late Victorian battleships in the text of their articles is by the type of ironclad battleship they were (so, barbette ship, turret ship, etc.). Article titles for navies without a prefix should still use "battleship", since WP:NC-SHIPS stipulates that the simplest ship type should be used (so French battleship Marceau, not French barbette ship Marceau or French ironclad battleship Marceau). Ships built in the 1870s and earlier should probably just be called ironclads, especially central battery or broadside ships, though given the dynamic state of warship design in the period, we may need a case-by-case approach. For example, SMS Oldenburg (1884), built in the early 1880s, is more properly included with earlier ironclads, while a contemporary, HMS Edinburgh (1882), is better labelled as an ironclad battleship. Parsecboy (talk) 23:02, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, I can work with this. And I think the more detailed description, ironclad battleship, barbette ship, etc., should be used in the first sentence of the lead, which would mirror national practices better.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:25, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Right, especially with things like "central battery ship" vs. "casemate ship", which were used by different navies to describe the same type of ship. Parsecboy (talk) 23:39, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I do think, though, that any ship with turrets/barbettes that has steel or compound armour should be called a battleship and not an ironclad anything. Don't think that it will affect anything other than maybe the French and Italian ships of the 1870s. I'll start deleting the OMT tag from the above-named ships and from our project page shortly, but I'm in absolutely no hurry to start renaming articles and tweaking ledes.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:51, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Finally finished deleted OMT tags from the last of the articles. Filled out a few B-class assessments in the process which ought to make a few people happy.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:31, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Possible Featured Picture?
Hey all - I don't know much about WP:FP, but I stumbled across File:Justice 1909 LOC det 4a16114.jpg while rewriting the article, and it occurred to me that the photo might be a good FP candidate, given the quality and high resolution. Does anyone here have experience with FP? Parsecboy (talk) 02:14, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Its got potential, but I think it needs a little polishing before heading to FPC. I would recommend talking to either or  for their advice on the matter, both have outstanding track records at FPC and would be in a better position to tell you what the image needs to obtain a gold star. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The composition of the photo and its subject matter are fine, but it needs some kind of restoration - when you blow the photo up to full size it's got lots of little black markings (dust?), what appear to be some small hairs, and the upper right corner is slightly crumpled. These can all be fixed though (just don't ask me how it's done!). I think that Durova posted instructions on picture restoration somewhere a while ago, and there are some editors who specialise in this. Nick-D (talk) 07:34, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I had noticed the dust specks, but I wasn't sure how much of a problem that was. I'll give Durova a ping and see what she says. I don't know much about image restoration (nor do I have any software to do it), but maybe she can point me in the right direction. Parsecboy (talk) 13:07, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Durova and Fir have been mostly gone for awhile (though both have made recent edits, apparently...). I'm not sure who does restorations nowadays. Jappalang is gone too. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:07, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I hate to admit it, but the vets are dropping like flies. This is exactly what I was afraid would happen to the wiki in the long run: an overdose of policy, procedure, bureaucracy, etc, would result in a growing number of people leaving due to apathy since its neigh impossible these days do to anything here without getting flack for it on some angle. Its safe to say Wikipedia has officially become a gated community, and I can not say that I like this change very much. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:54, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Featured topic candidates/South American dreadnought race/archive1
Nergaal raised a point I had overlooked. By promoting this topic as-is, we'll lose the MG and Rivadavia topics. Will that mess with the eventual goal of getting all battleships and battlecruisers in a featured topic? (I'm assuming we wouldn't want the dreadnought race article in it -- I'd have to create a "List of dreadnoughts of South America" article, or something). Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:00, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Featured topic removal candidates/Iowa class battleships/archive1
This topic has been nominated for removal as a featured topic as USS Kentucky (BB-66) lost its status as a featured article last November. If this task force would like to take the time, please improve the article to at least GA status or the topic will be demoted.--  十  八  10:16, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * After a read through of the article I removed on sentence with unverifiable information tags and two orphaned references. This removed the dubious citation category from the article, so I went ahead and nominated the article for GA-class status. I'm waiting on the review for the that, but in the mean time I am open to other advice that ya'll may have as to how we can improve the article, keeping in mind that sometimes the best way to improve an article is trim, blast, or gut it. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:31, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I will review the GAN. Binksternet (talk) 20:59, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I regret not having closed the merge discussion back in May and gone ahead with it. I'll review the latest round of comments, if any, and possibly poll the responders to see if any opinions have changed. I stand by my opinion that articles on ships laid down, but not completed, do not deserve an article of their own because all relevant information is best handled in the class article.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:32, 6 August 2012 (UTC)


 * When this is over how about you and I open an RFC on the matter? We can open it up to Wikipedia-wide input and see where it takes us. I believe differently, but since the only thing that is constant in the world aside from death and taxes is change it would be good to see if the community has had a change of mind int he last few years since we first established this as an acceptable means of editorial conduct. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:01, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Do we really need a full RfC? They take time, effort, and bearucracy, all of which are really unneeded for what will be a relatively unimportant merge. Assuming you're both in support, why don't we a local consensus at WT:MILHIST or on this page? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:46, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm concerned about the potential larger consequences of the merge (to be fair, I always seem to be concerned about the larger consequences these days) since a merge of these two articles into the class article could be taken as a green light to merge similar articles into class articles. Thats the reason why I would prefer see an rfc or some other public venue for discussion/debate. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:15, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, I strongly (but respectfully!) oppose Sturm's position on the issue; as the ships meet WP:GNG, they deserve their own articles. I also have the same concern as Tom - WP:OTHERSTUFF is a distressingly common argument... - The Bushranger One ping only 07:16, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm with Ed - I don't think we need to do a full RfC for the merge. At most, there could be a discussion at MILHIST and cross-posted to SHIPS. The best solution IMO would be to have a discussion on the Kentucky talk page with notices of the discussion at the two projects. As to the merge discussion at hand, my general position is there shouldn't be a hard and fast rule, incomplete hulls should be treated on a case-by-case basis. Tosa, for example, is notable for the significance of the armor tests on her hull; nothing significant was done with SMS Mackensen, and so we don't have an article on her. Kentucky comfortably passes the threshold, but I'm not so sure about Illinois - there's a decent amount of material in the former's article about her specifically, while the latter's article is mostly about the Iowa class in general. My 2¢: retain Kentucky and merge Illinois. Parsecboy (talk) 11:39, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * My reading of the recent AfD was that there's no consensus to merge, and a reasonable degree of support to retain stand alone articles on the two uncompleted Iowa class ships. When I had a go at improving the article on Kentucky about this time last year I was impressed by the depth of coverage available on this ship I quickly found (and bear in mind that I live on the other side of the world from the main sources of information on her!). As such, I think that a RfC (formal or informal) would not be a good use of time, as there have already been discussions of this issue and the level of sourcing available isn't at all problematic. Nick-D (talk) 12:18, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Parsec. Kentucky is notable due to all the proposals that were presented in the 50's-60's to turn her into a nuclear ship. Illinois, however, just seems to be an article on a ship that was never completed. 6 rubles: merge Illinois (if there's anything new in there), and keep Kentucky. Buggie111 (talk) 14:27, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, consensus was to keep Illinois, too... - The Bushranger One ping only 21:48, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I Need Help. Badly.
I'm up in Clovis at the moment and the internet connection here is such that my laptop doesn't connect to it at all. I didn't figure this to be a problem when I opened the GAC for Kentucky, but now I am reduced to editing on my brother's laptop and tomorrow that gonna be gone when my brother leaves for his two weeks of vacation. Can someone step up and help out with the GAC? If it clears while I was out then you have my permission to take all the credit.glory for the promotion. Incidentally, this is likely to be the last you'll here from me here until the 24th unless I can figure out a way to jury rigged an internet connection for my computer that actually works. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:41, 12 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I can step outside of my role as reviewer for a bit and work on that GAN for you. My sympathies: not only Clovis, but internetless. ;^)
 * Binksternet (talk) 02:08, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I should only do little fixes, not major writing. Somebody could step up! Binksternet (talk) 02:59, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Questia for y'all
Take a look: Questia. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 09:11, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Random musings
Hi folks.
 * Found Battleship Cabal today; gave me a laugh. Good ol' bahamut.
 * WP:JSTOR is live—if you don't have access and didn't sign up before, do sign up now.
 * I interwiki-linked our main page to ru:Проект:Линкоры, which is relatively inactive but appears to have the same scope as us. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:20, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * On pl.wikipedia we are doing this mainly as two persons project so we focused first on battlecruisers - we are in middle. My articles are translations from en.wiki, but KrzysM99 wrote articles by himself. Sometimes we even find some err... minor mistakes in en.wiki articles :). PMG (talk) 01:42, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Be sure to let us know what mistakes you find so we can fix them.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:44, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Iowa class battleship
We've hit a milestone today: I found a reliable source to address the last uncited tag in the article. With all issues apparently addressed by the community effort in the article I've opened a peer review to get feedback on what still needs done to get the call article back up to FA status. Since this is not so much my article as it is our article I thought I would stop by to invite comments from you all on what we could do better, what we did right, and what we still have to do in order to move on up. Please stop by if you get a moment and leave your two cents on the page. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:49, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Speculative topic
Here's a potential featured topic that I've been thinking about for a while:

As you can see, this currently covers BCs only because I doubted that we'd be able to get Béarn up to GA status, but it would be easy enough to add it and Kaga and cover all ships converted to CVs because of the Washington Treaty if we can. Writing the list article wouldn't be particularly onerous although I'm still struggling to find a concise title and would welcome suggestions.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:36, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Seems like a bit of an obscure main article. Maybe just throw this under Washington Naval Treaty or entirely resist the urge to get more shiny things and forget about the topic? Buggie111 (talk) 05:15, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It's really not about the shiny things because I see some value in doing a compare and contrast kind of thing between nations that would fall outside the Washington Treaty article. Similar topics could be organized around the ships used in a particular conflict like Battleships of World War I or whatever. I'd expect that they could cover different approaches to ship design and various uses during the conflict between combatants. I've been focusing on the BBs of the Russo-Japanese War of late in preparation for such a topic, although I haven't started work on the topic article yet.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 06:23, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
 * When you mention the Russo-Japanese War, everything becomes more interesting and acceptable by a factor of 10. Buggie111 (talk) 14:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Reviewers needed
As usual there are OMT articles at WP:GAN, WP:ACR, WP:FAC and WP:FLC that could use commenters if you find yourselves with a few free minutes over the holidays.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:36, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedian in Residence: Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums
Hi all,

Possibly a little tangential to OMT, but I thought the shipbuilding aspect might appeal! Their scope covers all of Category:Tyne-built ships, among other things...

The Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums are advertising for a Wikipedian in Residence (announcement). It's a funded post, part-time through spring and early summer, based in Newcastle (so may well suit a student). Applications are open until 4th March. They're particularly interested in the prospect of someone wanting to work with the shipbuilding & industrial history collections, and digitising some of the material they have in their archives. Details are available on their website, and there's some details about other upcoming UK residency programs here.

Please pass this on to anyone who might be interested, and feel free to get in touch with me if you've any questions! Andrew Gray (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Missing cats
Hi guys I was working through some red-linked categories, and thought you should know about the following : OK, I know those last couple aren't technically in the scope of OMT, but you might as well have them. I don't mind creating the above myself, but I figured that you guys are normally so thorough that their absence probably meant those topics had other loose threads hanging so you might want to have a poke around. Le Deluge (talk) 16:16, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_Armored_cruisers_of_Germany_featured_content
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_Armored_cruisers_of_Germany_good_content
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_C%C3%B6ln_class_cruisers
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_Command_in_the_South_West_Pacific_Area_featured_content
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_Command_in_the_South_West_Pacific_Area_good_content
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_Hiy%C5%8D_class_aircraft_carrier
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_Petropavlovsk_class_battleships_featured_content
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_Petropavlovsk_class_battleships_good_content
 * Category:Wikipedia_featured_topics_R%C3%A9publique_class_battleships
 * Category:Naniwa_class_protected_cruisers
 * Category:Hisar_class_patrol_boats
 * Category:Vapper_class_gunboats
 * Category:%C5%8Ctori_class_torpedo_boats
 * All of those last four have now been sorted out - three (1, 2, and 4) were misaimed from their proper destinations, while the third isn't a valid category (yet?). Good catches. - The Bushranger One ping only 23:00, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Reviews in need of reviewers
The following OMT-related reviews need people to comment on them:
 * WikiProject Military history/Assessment/USS Kearsarge (BB-5)‎
 * WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Conte di Cavour-class battleship
 * Featured article candidates/Japanese battleship Fusō/archive1

And the following articles are waiting for reviewers at Good_articles/Nominations
 * Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci
 * Eduard von Capelle
 * Hugo von Pohl
 * Italian battleship Dante Alighieri

And not really in our purview, but I'd like to get somebody to finish it off:
 * Featured topic candidates/Monarch-class coastal defense ships/archive1

Thanks in advance.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Just a note
Hey all - I've noticed some discrepancies in dates while reworking USS Utah (BB-31) from the DANFS entry. I don't know if this was accidental, or some form of subtle vandalism, but I thought I should pass along the word so we keep an eye on this kind of thing. Parsecboy (talk) 19:01, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Details?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:36, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * See this edit - "8–30 November 1918" was corrected as "8–30 November 1913", and "18 March 1926" was corrected as "13 March 1925", for instance. Parsecboy (talk) 19:42, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like Sneaky Numbers Vandalism to me. - The Bushranger One ping only 01:29, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * More'n likely. Here's another case, this one on USS Wyoming (BB-32) - supposedly left NYC on 26 January 1926, went to the Pacific and elsewhere, and was back in NYC for an overhaul on...you guessed it, 26 January 1926. Parsecboy (talk) 00:00, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Tosa-class article to FAC
I'm contemplating taking this article to FAC since Breyer actually has a good description of the ship. The Tosa article itself references vol. 4 of Contributions to the History of Imperial Japanese Warships. I have the first three volumes, but not four. I expect to need it for the class article and I'm hoping that one of y'all might be able to send me a copy of the issue.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:01, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Op-ed for the upcoming Bugle
Hi all, Is anyone interested in writing an op-ed article for the upcoming edition of The Bugle providing an update on where this project is up to and the next steps? There's been steady progress in developing articles, and I think that lots of readers would be interested in finding out more. Nick-D (talk) 23:37, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * What's the deadline? I'd be happy to put something together, but I would need to work it in between the three jobs I've got at the moment. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:52, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Great! - if you had something ready by about 16 June it would be much appreciated. Thanks, Nick-D (talk) 03:23, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

tough love of titan
. Hello Titans

I love your work. I truly love it. I translated to Polish many of yours GA and FA. Well - I also translated two full FT. But... But YOU NEEED TO STOP. You need to STOP IGNORING WORLD USING THE METRIC SYSTEM. Examples? Here you go:
 * one of the newest GA: USS New York (BB-34) - USS New York (BB-34) was a United States Navy battleship, the lead ship of her class. Named for New York State, she was designed as the first ship to carry the 14-inch (360 mm) gun. No. It`s not 360 mm - it`s 356 mm. And further it gets even better, i.e. worse. You look at the infobox and you see 10 × 14 in (360 mm) guns, 21 × 5 in (130 mm)/51 cal guns,[3] 4 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes. And then you go to navweps.com and you see 356 mm, 127 mm (and 533 mm).
 * USS Delaware (BB-28) - Armament: 10 × 12 in (300 mm)/45 cal guns. No. It`s 305 mm.
 * USS Kentucky (BB-66) - Armament: (planned) 9 × 16 in (410 mm)/50 cal Mark 7 guns.. No - It`s 406 mm.
 * USS Maryland (BB-46) - Armament: 8 × 16 in (410 mm)/45 cal guns, 12 × 5 in (130 mm)/51 cal guns [...]  2 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes. No. It`s 406 mm, 127 mm and 533 mm.
 * USS Massachusetts (BB-59) - Armament: 9 × 16 in (410 mm)/45 caliber Mark 6 guns 20 × 5 in (130 mm)/38 cal guns - No. It`s 406 mm, 127 mm.
 * USS Florida (BB-30) - Armament: 10 × 12 in (300 mm)/45 cal guns, [...], 2 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes. No. It`s 305 mm and 533 mm.

But maybe the A-class articles are any better? Nope.
 * USS Texas (BB-35) - Armament: 10 × 14 in (360 mm)/45 cal guns (5 × 2)[6], 21 × 5 in (130 mm)/51 cal guns[6],  [...],  4 × 21 in (530 mm) submerged torpedo tubes[6]. No. It`s 356 mm, 127 mm, 533 mm
 * Florida-class battleship - As this gun did not go into service until 1914, the arrangement of ten 12 in (30 cm) Mark 5 45-caliber guns . No. It`s 305 mm

But maybe the FL articles are bit better? Niet.
 * List of battlecruisers of Japan - Kongō class->Main guns->8 × 14.0 in (360 mm)[5]. No - it`s 356 mm.

But maybe the FA articles are slightly better? No.
 * USS Wisconsin (BB-64) - Armament: 1943: 9 × 16 in (410 mm)/50 cal Mark 7 guns, 20 × 5 in (130 mm)/38 cal Mark 12 guns No - it`s 406 mm and 127 mm.
 * USS Arizona (BB-39) - the sides were 9–10 inches (230–250 mm) thick. No - it`s 229 mm and 254 mm.
 * USS Illinois (BB-65) - 9 × 16 in (410 mm)/50 cal Mark 7 guns, 10 × 5 in (130 mm)/38 cal Mark 12 guns. No. It`s 406 mm and 127 mm.

And all those funny articles like USS Wyoming (BB-32), where there is clear info about guns in mm. No. The ship was armed with a main battery of twelve 12 inch/50 Mark 7[b] guns in six twin gun turrets on the centerline. Or the infobox in USS Arkansas (BB-33). Or the infobox in Colorado-class battleship. Or the infobox in South Dakota-class battleship (1939). Or the infobox in Mississippi-class battleship.

And all those funny lists when you force people accustomed to the metric system to search "where this guys last time put conversion to milimeters". You don`t trust me? So lets play a game. Go to List of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy, and then to Admiral class. Do you see that Armour is "12 inches"? So try to find where was the last conversion to mm. Did you find it? Because it`s in "Invincible class". Just like 6 PgUP before. But PMG - for sure metric countries lists look exactly the same and the user needs to do the conversion mentally or jump across the whole page like an angry ferret? Nope. In List of battleships of Germany and List of battleships of Germany and in any other place where centimeters are used, there is a conversion to inches.

Well Titans. I tried once. I tried twice. I even tried a third time, but I hear from an experienced editor that 8 inches is 200 mm, not 203 mm despite navweaps says it`s 203 mm.

And I am not talking about random article about destroyer where half of the class has 102 mm, and the second half has 100 mm guns despite on every ship there was the same type of gun. I am talking about our beloved battleships.

And I really don`t care that it`s a conversion template error. You put that USS undefined HMS undefined family of templates in almost every article about warships. You created and forced people to use some complex infoboxes. You can at least in FA use the correct conversions. Look how little work I am asking you to do. I will go with a smile to the Operation Titans GA and A-class articles with the incorrect conversions and I will be accepting that "yes, for sure the correct conversion to milimeters is too difficult for people who just wrote A-class article that is 89k characters long about an important warship".

I love you Titans. But this love is a tough one. And year after year I expect less and less from you. So please - just FA with correct conversion and especially everywhere where you use inches.

PMG (talk) 20:17, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The main problem is that people need to specify a "|0" in their templates for them to round properly and many of us forget to do that. That said, you misunderstand how conversions in lists work. The measurement is converted on first use, which meant that it was up in the Innvincible-class section, exactly where it was supposed to be, just not where you expected it. And, BTW, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from fixing these trivial issues yourself. See wp:SOFIXIT, just be sure to follow policy on conversions and only convert the first use in the main text or infobox.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:35, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The picture of a ferret is priceless. I don't think I have been as vigilant with this as I could be, so I'll start specifying sigfigs in the {tl|convert}} template. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:37, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Question about battleship lists
The good topic for Russian battleships only needs one article rewritten and its list completed to be finished off. However, there's a real question about its coverage that we need to answer, and it relates to the definition of battleship. We've decided that we only cover pre-dreadnoughts and afterwards, basically starting with the Royal Sovereigns of 1889 or the closest foreign equivalent. Most countries, however, built what were often called battleships before that time, they just weren't ships that we care about because they aren't pre-dreadnoughts. But since the lists are supposed to be comprehensive should they be included in the lists and good topics, even if we don't consider them in our purview? We can narrow the scope of the topics/lists by calling them list/topic of pre-dreadnought and dreadnought battleships, but that's kind of an awkward name and it leaves us in an awkward relationship with the larger, more-encompassing lists of battleships which will generally only have a class or two of ships that are on that awkward line between ironclads and pre-dreadnoughts. This is an issue for Russia and France, at the very least, and both have the potential to be completed in the next several months, so we need to start thinking about this now.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 08:31, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
 * ping--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:46, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Assume you omitted the ships in question but kept the current name, do you envisage the issue being brought up at review time, preventing a pass until it is sorted out. Or do you think other problems lie in hiding? GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:29, 21 July 2013 (UTC) (Fellow traveler)
 * I do think that's a possibility and that questions will be raised if I limit them to what we consider pre-dreadnoughts and dreadnoughts like Parsec says below. And I'd really like those noms to go smoothly.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:11, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess the only way we'll know is when we try the first one. So far, the only lists to have gone to FLC are the ones where there are clean breaks (i.e., the Germans, the Austro-Hungarians, and the Ottomans). I think as long as we start these FLCs with a reasonable answer as to why we made that cutoff, we should be fine. Parsecboy (talk) 20:26, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, it's better to include those ships in question with the ironclads. Capital ship design in the decades between Gloire and Royal Sovereign/Majestic was highly experimental and evolutionary, and the ships of the 1880s fit much more clearly in that period (with the emphasis on end-on fire and ramming, for instance) than with the generally standardized pre-dreadnoughts of a few years later. If we include the ships of the 1880s, why not the capital ships of the 1870s? Or the first ironclads? Or the steam battleships of the 1850s? Is HMS Victoria (1887) as much different from HMS Colossus (1882) as HMS Majestic (1895) is from Victoria? We have to establish a cutoff somewhere, and I submit that Victoria belongs much more in the era of Colossus than she does in that of Majestic. Parsecboy (talk) 14:52, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Possible topics
Presented for your consideration:

Post-Washington Treaty battleships
I think that this organization makes more sense than the post-1930 topic that Ed had mentioned years ago. The post-treaty topic is nearly already finished with only four articles and a list to go. And a couple of upgrades to FAC will qualify it as a FT. Just something to consider when choosing your next ship to work on.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 06:38, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks pretty good to me, although the KGV class link goes to the dab page...? - The Bushranger One ping only 04:43, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Assistance needed for BC article
I'm nearly done revising the battlecruiser article, but I'm having a hard time sourcing the first para of the cruiser-killer section. I've trawled through most everything available to me, but am not having any luck. Can anybody help as I'm not aware of a single source that covers the rationale for these ships.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:55, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I suspect that's culled from a general reading of all the specific histories of the ships. I mean, I when I read, I see B-65, Alaska, who knows, 1047/Alaska, Kronshtadt(?), O-class. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 09:29, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I cut out the parts that I couldn't easily source and dealt with the rest of the para. I'm pretty well done with the article now and I think that it's ready for GAN at the end of the month. Anybody have any thoughts or comments? Anything that I missed or should have covered better? Not sure if I'm going to run it up to FAC in time for the last round of the Cup, but I'd like to have the article ready for that level of detail/writing just in case. So make your comments with that in mind, if you please.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:04, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I left some comments on the article talk page the other day. Don't know if you saw them. Parsecboy (talk) 14:30, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Lists of commanders?
I know that we're not supposed to have lists of commanders, but rather integrate them into the text, but has this ever been formalized as a guideline or policy? I checked both Ships and MilHist MOS, but nada. Is this just an informal thing? And, if so, should we start a mini-RfC to formalize it? I asked because I'm gonna have a fight with an editor over his listing of the ship's officers in the USS Monitor article and I'd like to have more to argue with than, essentially, just cause that's the way that we've been doing it.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:34, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I started a list of commanders of the USS Nevada once, something that I probably need to hunt down and summarily delete as I don't think that would hold up to scrutiny. I don't have a problem with how it's done on the Monitor article, though. It's not a list of commanders as it's a list of original crewmen. Am I missing something? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 16:45, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd argue that most of those guys are neither notable nor important to the ship's history and those that are can be integrated into the text. Is it useful or worthwhile to know the names of some of the junior officers if they did nothing of historical interest other than being assigned to this ship?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:52, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure, but most of them are mentioned in the succeeding section, so is it really worth having a fight over a ten-person columned list? Especially when this is one of the cases where readers might actually be interested in who these people are? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:01, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Lots of those people are listed later in the article as they did interesting things in battle or trying to save the ship. The list seems redundant. I could go for a section discussing the roles and number of the various crewmembers in the ship, much like the existing bit on the turret crew, but the other editor doesn't seem much interested in putting such a thing together.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:07, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * How much value is there in simply listing 3rd Ass't Engineer X as opposed to discussing the fellow's heroic efforts to ungefuck the engines during the ship's maiden voyage? That info comes later which makes the list seem redundant, like a dramatis personae list in a book with only 10 characters or so.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:15, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I put together a category for these lists: Category:Lists of United States military unit commanders. I'd argue that for divisions, corps and battleships most of the names are notable enough to have articles. Mostly it's been a good way to get those lists off the main article page. — Ed! (talk) 17:31, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Good for you. The information is worth keeping as a separate list, but it's really just a sub-page of the main article and clutters up the unit/ship page, IMO. Yeah, most large unit commanders, including battleships or fleet carriers, are either already flag officers or became one, which meets our criteria for notability. Smaller ships, not so much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sturmvogel 66 (talk • contribs)
 * Maybe the policy on this should be something similar to MILMOS/N where these lists are only allowed for large capital ships and military units. Since we base a commander's notability on commanding these units in combat, it's the easiest choice. I have a hard time thinking of a case where the total crew complement of a ship is notable, with the extreme exception of Crew of the RMS Titanic. — Ed! (talk) 06:00, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Operation Tungsten FAC
The FAC for Operation Tungsten, which covers a British carrier raid on the German battleship Tirpitz in April 1944, would benefit from some additional reviewers. I'd appreciate it if editors with an interest in this topic could comment at Featured article candidates/Operation Tungsten/archive1 - please post a negative review if you think that it's not up to scratch. Nick-D (talk) 01:26, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Shinano assistance
I'm pretty much finished with the JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Shinano article, but I'd like to ask for comments as I'm planning on fast-tracking it to FAC. Anything that I missed, need to expand on, or general questions?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:01, 30 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Made a few small tweaks, mostly typos and such. Here are some relatively minor, general comments:
 * Why does the article refer to the ship as a carrier (in the first para of the construction section) before it gets to the point where the conversion is deemed necessary?
 * Any way we can get ahold of the aerial recon photo? It'd be nice to have the two known photos of the ship in the article.
 * Why were the crew quarantined? I'd assume it was to keep her loss a secret.
 * Maybe add a photo of Archer-Fish to minimize the wall-o-text?
 * Why isn't the Nakajima C6N linked?
 * Is it realistic to state that the A7M was the intended fighter, given that all of eight of them were produced by the end of the war?
 * Article appears to be AmEng, but uses "calibre", "centimetre" in the armament section. Please be careful with these. Parsecboy (talk) 18:41, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for responding so quickly. The recon photos are in Garzke & Dulin, but they're barely more than blobs as the B-29 was at 32,000 ft altitude. Intended is what my source says for the A7M; I'm sure that they'd have found a substitute if they wanted one.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:54, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No problem. Damn B-29 pilot, not wanting to get shot down and whatnot. I was hoping it'd be more useful, like this one. Parsecboy (talk) 18:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That would have been really nice if it was as good as that one, but I suspect that nothing but a B-29 could have reached Tokyo at that time since Iwo Jima was still in Japanese hands. And I sure wouldn't have wanted to be as low as that PR Spit that presumably took that photo, even if I was going balls to the wall!--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:57, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * "Sucking many sailors back into the ship"... these should be explained as swimmers who had abandoned ship shortly before, rather than sailors clinging to the sinking ship. My copy of Enright says "mobs" of men were sucked into the deck's elevator opening but it also says "many" men were sucked into a huge port side exhaust vent which was three feet below deck. This part of my Enright paperback edition is not pages 85 to 89 as in the cite but 196 and 198, a few pages from the end of Chapter 13: Extinction.
 * Enright includes more diagrams, maps and photographs. One that I think is very telling is a top and side view showing where all four torpedoes hit. Another is a midship sectional view which shows the anti-torpedo blisters and where a torpedo hit. Something like this should be in the FA version. Binksternet (talk) 19:31, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, those diagrams aren't copyright-free and I doubt that I can claim fair use. I'll clarify the sucking down. Your comment about page numbers made me double-check my copy which is an .epub file. The page numbers change with the size of the screen, so I'm going to have to find a hard copy to correct all those page numbers. Better to know now than during the FAC, though.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:19, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * My copy of the book is as follows:
 * I think the first hardbound edition was published in 1987, 250 pages, ISBN 031200186X. My paperback copy says the text was copyrighted 1987 and that the "first St. Martin's Press mass market edition" (meaning paperback) was published April 1988. It has 250 pages as well, so my pagination is probably the same as the hardbound first edition. Binksternet (talk) 20:39, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, there's a copy in the adjacent library system, so I'll have a copy to hand within a week.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:27, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * What about the possibility of getting someone here to sketch an outline of the ship showing where the torpedoes hit? It does not need the detail of this representation, just a bare minimum. Binksternet (talk) 01:32, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, the equivalent of this illustration would be great if we could find someone to create it. Parsecboy (talk) 19:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Try pinging User:Voytek S over at the commons. He created our SVG 16"/50 gun turret cutaway, and his commons page says he specializes in milhist related stuff (among other things), so he may be able to help. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:23, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Write mail to him (on pl.wiki) because he is not active editor, but he answer my questions on mail. PMG (talk) 19:49, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's OK, I got somebody else to do it.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:21, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's OK, I got somebody else to do it.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:21, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Battleship lists
Hey all, I was looking at the core articles section, and it seems to me that the main battleship lists will need to be overhauled. We currently have List of battleships, List of battleship classes, and List of battleships by country. When the main list is reworked a la List of battlecruisers, the latter two will become redundant (since they will be grouped by class and by nationality). It will, however, become a monstrous list and will probably need to be split. It seems obvious to me to make the cut at List of pre-dreadnought battleships and List of dreadnought battleships, since that is an obvious and non-controversial demarcation, and it mirrors the structure we have for the larger national topics (i.e., List of pre-dreadnought battleships of the Royal Navy, and so forth). It'll probably be a while before we get to this stage, but I thought it was worth bringing up to see if there were other viewpoints. Parsecboy (talk) 17:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That seems like a sensible split. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:06, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing a whole lot of utility to List of battleship classes myself, are there similar lists for other ship types? I think that we should definitely split the overall lists along the lines that Parsec suggests, although I'll note that only the RN has a split between dreadnoughts and pre-dreadnoughts. They built twice as many as any other country and splitting the topic/lists keeps them manageable. That said, each of them is going to be 200+ articles apiece. As we draw nearer to reaching our goal, we're going to be challenging a lot of conceptions about scale and I forsee a lot of arguments about that from the FLC and FTC crowd. We already get arguments at the opposite end when our proposed lists are too small and we're told to fold them into the list of every ship in that navy.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:36, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * So what's the alternative then? List of lists of battleships? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:39, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that that's a bit too meta for me this early in the morning. I don't have any real alternatives to Parsec's suggestion; I just think we need to be prepared for some some heated arguments from some people who value consistency of approach regardless of scale. AFAIK nobody else is dealing with the quantities of articles/subjects in our lists and topics so I think that we're going to be pioneers one way or another.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:06, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, what I'm saying is that we make the battleship lists into a directory for the country lists, leaving just the main article (battleship) to be folded into the FT with all the country topics. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:41, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That could work although I suspect we'd get demands for a comprehensive BB list, just like the one in the BC topic.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:51, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Meritorious Unit Barnstar
In recognition of the featured topic Battlecruisers of the world which includes a record 63 articles after 5 years of commendable work, I bestow this award on those who participated in Operation Majestic Titan and who have served honorably during the preeceding 5 years, bringing great credit on themselves, WikiProject Military History, and English Wikipedia. --Pine✉ 06:57, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Pine! Pinging some other active members of OMT: User:Parsecboy, User:Sturmvogel 66, User:Dank, User:Nick-D, and User:The Bushranger Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:29, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, good work people! Wincent77 (talk) 04:14, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Assessment query
I have been poking around the start class articles looking for work I can do. While looking I saw that HMS Warspite (03) is rated Start; it seems like it should be rated much better than start, am I correct? Wincent77 (talk) 04:17, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, that assessment seems to be obsolete. The two primary criteria in play for the article are 1 and 2; is it fully cited and is it reasonably complete.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:49, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Shipyards
I may be biased because I am improving the Fore River Shipyard article as I write this, but would it be a crazy idea to add shipyards to Phase V? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 06:20, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems like a great idea.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 06:55, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll start adding the ones that built battleships and battlecruisers! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:45, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I just added 46 yards, although there are probably over fifty out there, with some not being created yet. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 21:33, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Barnstar

 * Thanks, Noha! And if you look right now, you'll see another article from one of our editors in the DYK section (though admittedly, it's a bloody bird farm). Parsecboy (talk) 13:10, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

8-ball
In a completely useless post for you all, I rediscovered bahamut's 8-ball today. It's still pretty relevant. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:43, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I found that again a few weeks ago and was looking through it :) Parsecboy (talk) 14:18, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

ONI drawings
This is worth mining - the scans aren't exactly the best, but they are high-res and cover ships that aren't available at the Hyperwar link Nick found a few years back. Parsecboy (talk) 14:19, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Scratch that, this has better scans. Parsecboy (talk) 20:39, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

'Super battleship'?
Take a look at Super battleship (warship)... I'm thinking it should be AfD'd, but not sure. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:39, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yep, AfD is where it should be bound. It's almost all OR as I'm not aware of any RS discussion about these.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:19, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * We can also consider redirecting the page to point to the so called "Super Dreadnought" era of battleship construction, while moving what little material we can salvage from the article to any battleship article discussing battleships that were known to have been in the design or planning stages when the battleship's era ended after WWII. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:05, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * (wow, all two-digit username endings), this page is still out and about, what became of that? Res Mar 23:51, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks for the ping. I've redirected it to Super Battleship. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:34, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

DANFS errors
Hey all - if you're working with DANFS and notice any errors in the entries, please post them here. I've been in contact with the director of the NHHC over some minor issues I found in the DANFS article on USS Michigan (BB-27). They've been working on improving DANFS and they'd appreciate any help we can give them. Parsecboy (talk) 16:02, 24 April 2015 (UTC)


 * A uniform url structure so that we can modify the DANFS templates rather than edit all pages that refer to DANFS. Sort of like how  works would seem ideal.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:54, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Giuseppe Garibaldi-class cruiser
The ten armored cruisers of this class have at least three different types of boilers and 3-4 different armament configurations; rather than try to present all that info in paragraphs, I think it would be easier to add that info to a massive table that would also collect original name, final name, and owning navy as well the standard building data. I'd still cover the usual information in the description, the table would just let me show what exact configuration each ship had rather than have to write it all out. Alternatively, I could add a sentence for each ship covering that info, but that would virtually force me to dedicate a paragraph for each ship rather than lumping similar histories together as I'd prefer to do (if for no other reason than to cut down on repetition). What do y'all think?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:41, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd agree with the table method for simplicity's sake. Trying to write that in prose would be a pretty brutal for a reader. WP:WHENTABLE tends to agree with your preferred approach too. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:02, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think that would probably be the least-cumbersome way to go. Parsecboy (talk) 18:56, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Found a website that I think this project would find useful
I know I'm not part of this project but I saw it and I remembered this website that I found a while ago. I think you all would find it very useful for your project it has the log books of a variety of ships among other things and a lot of other information that I haven't even looked at yet. Anyways I hope you all find this useful here is the link to the website. http://www.naval-history.net/index.htm Shashenka (talk) 22:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

FTC? List of Battlecruisers
Why hasn't anybody nominated the battlecruiser overview topic yet? To me it seems complete. Nergaal (talk) 17:49, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you mean this? Parsecboy (talk) 17:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, nvm. I forgot about it. You guys should probably link it somewhere at the top of phase 1 page. Nergaal (talk) 18:24, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

List of Japanese battleships
I've finally started working on this and am looking for comments, even though it's early days yet. Parsec wrote a decent high-level summary, but I'm not sure how to integrate it, or even if it should be, into my more detailed text pulled from the various class articles. Also wondering if I should expand the background section on the Fuji class with a few more details as it's looking a bit skimpy.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:58, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There's no real need to integrate it - I mostly wrote it as a placeholder until you had time to do a more thorough job. I'd add a bit more on the Fuji section (particularly on the reaction to the Chinese Dingyuans, if only because in my most recent lists, I've been trying to cover as much of what's in the intro as possible in the body, so I don't have to mess around with citations in the lead). Parsecboy (talk) 11:48, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

15th anniversary of WP
Battleship wordmark now available! More info at WT:MILHIST. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 01:26, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Amusing and interesting article
This article by one of Australia's leading defence analysts makes for an interesting read, and makes good use of Wikipedia's warship related content. Nick-D (talk) 09:19, 3 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link, Nick - that was interesting to read, and neat to see our content being used, particularly The Land's chart. Parsecboy (talk) 13:11, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

NavWeaps.com reformatting, likely in 2017
Tony DiGiulian emailed me that he will be reformatting NavWeaps.com in a way that will break all current links to it, but likely not for a year. Here's what he sent me:

Right now, there are about 1,600 links from Wiki English to NavWeaps plus more for those Wikis in other languages. The majority of these may all get broken over the next year or so with the exception of any link on Wiki to www.navweaps.com itself which would still work correctly.

The reason for this is that I am considering upgrading the website from being HTML 4 based to being HTML 5 (php/css) based. This means that my webpages will go from having .htm extensions to having .php extensions. This change would obviously break any existing link to my webpages that point to an .htm extension. My first example of a .php extension would be a new main page found here:

http://www.navweaps.com/NavWeaps.php

The “Contact” and “12”/45 Mark 5 and 6” webpages linked from the above webpage are also in php format. These php pages are not “live” yet, as I am still working out the details of the format and haven’t yet settled on the final form.

In addition, the web designer that I am working with is encouraging me to change my directory structures so as to make it more friendly to mobile users. For example, I use “index_tech” as the directory for my Technology pages, he wants me to change this to be more like “Technology/index.php” which is more user-friendly. Again, this would break existing Wiki links.

I just wanted to give you a “heads up” at this point as I don’t want to create unnecessary problems and extra work at your end. If I decide to go down this path, then I’m looking at a timeframe of something of over a year before the website would be completely converted over as I have 1K+ webpages and it will obviously be a considerable effort to change them all over to the new format.

Sincerely yours, Tony DiGiulian http://www.navweaps.com

RobDuch (talk) 23:16, 28 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the heads up. Is there any way to preemptively work around this, like an automated script to catch this or a way to link to internet archive to keep the links we are going to lose until we find where all the information migrated to? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:13, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

J3 Class Battlecruiser
I just stumbled on this article which covers a design study for the RN for a BC to succeed the Admiral class. But we don't do design studies, with rare exceptions like the Dutch BCs which had an actual chance for steel to be cut. It's well written, but how do we break to the new editor that it's not really worth an article? BTW, he also added a section to the list of British BCs, which is thorough thinking on his part. I'd like to encourage him to direct his talents in a slightly different direction without alienating him entirely. Thoughts?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:24, 12 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I don't want to alienate him either, but we don't really do articles like that. Some of the practices in the article are outdated too (thinking here about citing Navweaps). It might be best to discuss merging in whatever useful material isn't already in the G3 article and see if he has any interest in working on that article to bring it up to FA quality. Parsecboy (talk) 13:43, 18 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Now I've looked at article, most of it seems to be an unattributed cut and paste from the G3 article with a bit of followup to make it specific to the J3. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:29, 18 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Now that you mention it, you're exactly right - I hadn't caught that when I looked at it. In that case, it might be fine to just redirect it and move on. Parsecboy (talk) 15:39, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Mass deletion on Commons
Hello! Please take a look at mass deletion request on Commons. As precedent it may be potential disaster to many valuable battleship pictures uploaded by many authors. --Maxrossomachin (talk) 10:20, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Redirects
Should the redirects that don't deserve their own article's be labeled as such in their notes section? Iazyges  Consermonor   Opus meum  22:56, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * - it might be worth doing to avoid confusion in the future. Anybody else have any opinions? Parsecboy (talk) 12:52, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Seems like a good idea to me, although some already have that(?). Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:13, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the idea is more to clarify that unfinished ships don't generally warrant articles - this has come up a number of times recently. Parsecboy (talk) 18:20, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Right, makes even more sense then. Maybe we should add a hidden note to those too? Or is that too much work for little payoff? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:01, 16 November 2016 (UTC)