Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 46

Demerliac help available
Hello,

Wikimedia France has provided me with the complete collection of Demerliac numenclature of French ships from 1610 to 1871. They contain basic data on virtually all ships afloat at these times (warships, privateers, East indiamen, merchantmen, fishing and whalers, etc.). Do not hesitate to ask me if I can be of any help with this ressource.

Cheers! Rama (talk) 11:06, 3 September 2015 (UTC) PS: If you can forward this annoucement to Wikipedias in a language that I do not speak, or to other interested projets of which I have not thought, I would be grateful. Rama (talk) 12:14, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Good Topic candidate needs more reviews
Hi all, if you have the time, could you take a look at Featured topic candidates/Battleships of Italy/archive1 and post your thoughts? Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 12:28, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Top-cited missing publications/journals
The following journals/magazines are fairly highly cited on Wikipedia (see WP:JCW) Any help on writing these articles would be much appreciated. You can consult our guides at WP:JWG and WP:MWG for help on writing them. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:49, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Contributions to the History of Imperial Japanese Warships
 * The Navy List
 * Ships of the World
 * Hindsight (Semaphore)
 * Anyone? If you need help on writing, just let me know. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:27, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Cut/paste moves
User:Pennsy22 has made several cut-and-paste moves of several ship articles in the past few days. I reverted the one that was on my watchlist, but I'm trying to go to sleep now, so I don't need to try to revert these moves myself. I don't currently have an opinion on whether or not the page names should be changed, just that it shouldn't be by cut-and-paste. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 10:29, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Give me an hour or so and I'll take care of them (unless someone else gets there first). Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 10:39, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I got one. There's also some category additions which might be problematical - adding a cat that the article is already in a subcat of (don't know the 'proper' word for that addition). GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:48, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * They should all be fixed now. Parsecboy (talk) 12:10, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks to both of you. - BilCat (talk) 06:31, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Denver-class Cruisers
Help, I mistakenly copy/pasted the Denver-class cruisers from their "CL" pages to their "C" pages because I thought I had seen somewhere that the ship should be placed on the page that either they were known as for the longest or if they were more famous under a different designation. These cruisers were C-X from 1902-1920 and then changed to CL-X after 1921 until scrapping around 1930. I think they should be moved but I don't know where to find the rule for this. Thanks for any help you can give me. Pennsy22 (talk) 10:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This, from WP:SHIPNAME:
 * "If a ship had several hull numbers in her career, use the best-known for an article title..."
 * uses 'best-known' which may not equate to known as for the longest but likely does if the ship was more famous under a different designation.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Draft of ship naming conventions in progress
Following the conclusion of the ship article titles RFC over four months ago (which was abandoned, bot-archived, then closed with a consensus for the broad idea but no consensus on the specifics or the implementation), the lack of action since, and the ongoing complaining about the issue, I am commencing a draft of proposed ship naming conventions to satisfy the consensus achieved in the RFC. -- saberwyn 02:46, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Link to draft work: User:Saberwyn/WP Ship naming and disambiguation conventions — Huntster (t @ c) 17:13, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I guess it's ok to write comments and proposals to the draft's talk page? Tupsumato (talk) 09:15, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Please don't. I'm trying to draft this based on what appears to me to be the most popular idea(s), based on the RFC and other recent discussions. If people want to argue their own preferences, peeves, or personal interpretations, it can wait until I have something that can be published as a proposed replacement to the existing guideline. -- saberwyn 11:28, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * So we should wait until "your" ideas, based on "your" interpretation of popular ideas, what I feel is a somewhat tainted RFC, and other discussions, are presented as proposed policy, then argue for change. I am not sure I like your idea of collaboration. I might suggest Power point or Word as a beginning to avoid input from others.
 * Now I think (had an edit conflict) that all the below will be just "fighting against the wind", so I might have to just fight this whole idea. Anyway, the following was my comments before the edit conflict. Not that it will mean anything.
 * I am going to be a fierce opponent if there is not changes to the wording about "Pennant/hull numbers are not part of the official or common name of a ship on Wikipedia.".
 * First there is the drive to push that hull numbers were reused, leading to the noted AFC closing including, "that hull numbers are often reused", and that hull numbers are "...completely useless to helping our readers.", and these are absolutely false as a whole. Before some "ship (year)" proponent jumps on this please be aware I stated "as a whole". I was assured that DANFS is a reliable source. "IF" that is true and "IF" an article, usually a stub but I see almost total histories copied as an article sometimes just sectioned and sub-sectioned, then "IF" DANSF is used as an only source, or Naval History and Heritage Command, and these sources use hull numbers then there is a vain argument. Surely this makes sense and a reason there are opponents to a blanket project mandated change to "ship (year)". There is not one person here that will not have problems convincing others that a source is reliable, but only part of it, so we must selectively choose the reliable part and exclude what is not, if the naming from the source specifically identifies the subject that was used as an article title. This may be reasoning why repeated attempts at change has ended in failure to obtain consensus. So we say it is not unreliable but does not help. Come on! If the article name agrees with the source then use links, redirects, and all the other Wikipedia weapons to ensure ease of navigation.
 * I have advocated that I support "ship (year)" when warranted. I just have a common sense issue with someone trying to convince me that a source, that uses "ship (hull number) does not help readers when it is the "ONLY" source. Any problems with this and hull numbers being changed when a ship is re-designation by reclassification (not the same as reusing), can be addressed in several ways.
 * My problem is repeated project drives to make change, in the guise of improvements, that ultimately just results in mass renaming sub-projects. Convince me that "Let's mass change change from a title "ship (hull number)" that has a source to enforce the name, to "ship (year), that excludes the source name, will actually be a benefit to my grandson looking for a ship my father served on.
 * NOW! Since I am not against "ship (year) I would suggest;


 * 1)- Stop making it appear a project is being hi-jacked with mandated changes as a reason to start mass renaming. Alright, maybe that is not the actual intent but attempted mass changes will be a result.
 * 2)- Add that the hull numbers (that have a source for references) "need" to be in the lead as an alternate name for research continuity per policy that will stop implying the source is not reliable. This means as close to the article lead naming as possible and not buried in the middle of the 4th paragraph, and
 * 3)- Advocate that we do not need a new renaming sub-project to correct some "wrong" that is simply not "wrong", just maybe not the best. Make "pennant/hull numbers" a subsection and not buried in the middle to be wikilawyered.
 * Can someone show me examples where ship hull numbers were "reused" on different ships (a hull number on one ship being used on a different ship) and where this is wide-spread to cause confusion, so I can better deduce a clear need for change from that reasoning?
 * By-the-way, the proposal, without relevant subsections, is not an improvement and will just create confusion. I think you may find more support, less failed attempts, and generally less fighting, as many don't support "mandated" project changes that might be against article consensus or reliable source, by implementing the above.
 * An alternate could include convincing me, without attacks, rhetoric, or flimsy reasoning, the "main" benefits of "ship (year)" over "ship (hull number)" that is more than nonsensical "searching for my grandfather's ship" reasoning". This will still not prevent me, assuming we have change, from wanting hull numbers used as alternate naming, especially on source specific naming. I commented here instead of the proposed naming convention to get a better idea concerning my opinions before further comments and I hope they are fruitful but my faith is slightly wavering. Otr500 (talk) 13:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The biggest advantage of using "ship (year)" is that it is something that does not change over the lifetime of the ship. As has been demonstrated, pennant numbers are liable to change. It is accepted that ship names change too, but the year of launch (or month and year of launch / builder and year of launch) are constant. Mjroots (talk) 20:02, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Alright, and as far as I can tell that is correct and previously stated. A few more things and we will be making progress. I am not trying to be difficult but practicality has got to trump change just for change. Guess we will have to see? Otr500 (talk) 01:57, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For an example of hull numbers being reused, see RFA Sir Galahad (1966) and RFA Sir Galahad (1987). In addition, there are many ships that had their hull numbers changed - using the year of launch is much more objective than trying to determine which hull number is more "notable" (see for instance the trouble caused by cut-and-paste moves to "fix" some of these hull numbers in the thread below). Parsecboy (talk) 14:19, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I would suggest the convention "Ship names should be italicised" be changed to "Ship names must be italicised", to give clear direction. Newm30 (talk) 21:45, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * how about "Ship names are always italicised"? Mjroots (talk) 05:19, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Regards Newm30 (talk) 22:49, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I will have to look again but a quick read of the existing proposal looks as if it would help bring Wikipedia into alignment with naval practice ("Ship Naming in the United States Navy" for one) and actual usage in professional works and industry journals. I think it would be a definite improvement in guidance and effective as long as we have thorough index pages and redirects for terms under which average readers will search.


 * With regard to indices and redirects, after decades of ship research and helping people finding details on ships, finding "my dad's ship" is firmly based on near daily requests (peaking with the big WW II flurry of events and books) in which overall 75% had a name and maybe an incident from a diary or other record and nothing else. From experience culling through official records, published sources and such to help I can say it is important to have finding aids with inclusive dates and even hull or pennant numbers for those dates in some form so as to pin down a vague request to a specific vessel in time and place. Perhaps that could be done in the ship name disambiguation pages as a standard practice with a simple textual accounting of inclusive dates for any documented prefix/suffix changes. We would need to do the same for the fairly frequent propulsion changes as when commercial steam powered vessels were refitted with diesels (SS>MS). Palmeira (talk) 11:46, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Another suggestion: For sailing vessels, can we include preferred naming convention, e.g. Minerva (1773 ship) rather than Minerva (1773) which could confuse reader. Regards Newm30 (talk) 22:55, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * A look will reveal, and I am sure others will be on board, that the wording gives the intent to all but do away with hull numbers on Wikipedia. You posted above "it is important to have finding aids with inclusive dates and even hull or pennant numbers" and no (that would be NO!) there is absolutely no reason to just do away with hull numbers (actually a bewildering and concerning suggestion) when covering these in the lead would cover ALL these "finding aids". Of course a bot assisted change to year disambiguation will likely not move the hull numbers into the lead (if it is not there) just remove them from titles.
 * What is this reference to Navy ship naming ("the existing proposal looks as if it would help bring Wikipedia into alignment with naval practice"), with regards to adding (year) and taking out hull numbers?
 * A bot changing a majority (or any large amount) of article title names (a possible majority of 26,000 articles.) with the only consensus being those involved in the renaming proposal. Is the bot going to post to all these affected among the 26,000 ship articles of the proposed name change on the tal page? That should receive great community response. Does this not raise a big red flag to supporters? If the launch date is that big of a deal (and I am not saying it isn't) then the launch date could be moved up in an article's lead that would show up in a search result. That would be less dramatic than flushing consensus down the toilet. Let's not forget that the proposal has two fundamental errors under Summary of changes for proposal: 1)- if consensus is achieved All individual ship articles to be disambiguated by year of launch only., read it again, and 2)- All other forms of disambiguation ...are depreciated.. Will the bot decide what is part of the ship's common name as far as prefixes, or will we still be able to use source and consensus for determination. It has already been well established that a common name as referred to in references is sufficient for article title naming. Surely this project respects that?
 * The above suggestion (Minerva'' (1773 ship)) will pass the bot parameters as "yyyy" is included but "ship" will be depreciated. Otr500 (talk) 05:23, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The proposal will not make finding any ship any harder. Redirects will be in place from pennant number titles The deprecation will be for the article title, not redirects. As for Minerva (1773 ship), that title means a full-rigged ship named "Minerva" launched in 1773. It would differentiate that vessel from Minerva (1789 ship) and Minerva (1773 barque), for example. Mjroots (talk) 05:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * First, why is one discussion being duplicated under another causing such confusion? Now You are persistently misreading me. I fully support ridding article titles of hull and pennant numbers with reclassifications covered in the text and perhaps infobox. I am also strongly recommending a complete and coherent set of ship index pages with inclusive "life" and classification dates. Those would be supported by redirects with hull and pennant numbers included. A reader coming here with no real idea of ships bearing the same name would find an index such as USS Wasp with expanded text following the link so that instead of


 * USS Wasp (CV-18) an aircraft carrier launched in 1943 and served until 1972


 * would see the ship's other hull numbers with dates, something similar to this:


 * USS Wasp (1943) an aircraft carrier laid down as Oriskany 18 March 1942, renamed Wasp on 13 November 1942, launched 17 August 1943; designated CV-18 1943—1 October 1952, CVS-18 1 November 1956—1 July 1972 when decommissioned.


 * From that index anyone with a reference to the ship under the prospective name, the launch name or any of the hull numbers can link directly to the correct ship. A reader (that one with daddy's record showing service on CVS-18 in 1962 for example) entering the name with a particular hull number will be immediately be redirected directly to the correct ship article that is titled simply "USS Wasp (1943)". Palmeira (talk) 11:49, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Palmeira, Thank you. I have been misreading you because I did not know all that you just posted. If it was posted before now you will have to over-look my missing it. What I have had to go on is what I have read.
 * For the record, I have been looking at many ship related articles and those that have worked hard on them (when work allows), with admiration to the dedication. I have also ran up against projects that I feel have gone awry so now keep a watch when I can. Your proposal above is one I will support. My objections have been the possible disappearing of hull numbers not only from the article titles but the lead that now I feel was properly addressed. Otr500 (talk) 17:31, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Merge discussion
Editors may interested to know that I've started a discussion on merging the B-class destroyer article into the A-class destroyer (1929) article, matching how most of our other British interwar destroyer class articles are organized.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:11, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Image donation from the Swedish National Maritime Museums
A batch of images was recently uploaded to Commons under the category Category:Media_contributed_by_SMM:_2015-09. It contains a lot of material relating to maritime history. Might be useful in a wide range of articles.

Peter Isotalo 13:19, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Sobraon (ship) = HMAS Tingira
A couple of days ago the article Sobraon was created. It is on the same subject as HMAS Tingira, but the creator of the Sobraon article appears to argue that the Tingira article is flawed and inaccurate and that a second article on the ship is therefore needed. It seems that the creator of the Sobraon article is also the author of the book used as the main source for that article.

What to do? I don't think we should have two articles on the same ship. The creator of the Sobraon article has opposed a deletion of the article. Manxruler (talk) 17:43, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I doubt that there is sufficient volume of content surrounding the ship's history to justify multiple articles on the subject, particularly 'split' as proposed along the lines of "navy career, including entire history" and "entire history, including navy career". Normally, I'd suggest merging together at what is the best known name (at the moment, HMAS Tingira is used because the vast majority of sources used refer to the ship by that name and emphasise that aspect of the history).
 * The big red flag, however, is that the source the Sobraon article relies almost 100% on, Commanders of Sail, appears to be a WP:self-published source. It is from an author who (as far as Trove can tell) has never published anything else in the field of maritime history, so cannot be considered an expert in the field. By the article editor's own admission, the book contradicts a variety of published sources, which have been authored by established experts, published by reputable publishing companies or organisations, and otherwise proven to be reliable. -- saberwyn 22:07, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I don't think there's enough for two articles on the same ship either. There very rarely is. Your findings regarding the source of the new article lead me to concur with you that a merge isn't the way to go. A redirect should do, then. Manxruler (talk) 06:36, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and redrected Sobraon to Tingira. Manxruler (talk) 18:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have encouraged user BookPOD (for the record, not the actual author of the book in question) to return to the subject, in a correct way. That is partly because I am shocked by the extent to which an acknowledged authority in one field can become so slipshod when wandering into another, well demonstrated in HMAS Tingira - and it says nothing for his publisher that it overlooked crass errors such as a launch date two months after the maiden voyage was supposed to have begun - in reality, both dates were wrong. Davidships (talk) 18:19, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've checked the sources, and Bastock only gives 1866 as the launch year. The November month of launch comes from a different source (the Aberdeen Built Ships website). I have no explanation as to why the book specifies 9 November 1866 instead of 9 September 1866 as the maiden voyage commencement date, but without other reliable published sources to contest it, I had no reason to doubt it. I apologise for not picking up on the disconnect between Aberdeen's launch and Bastock's maiden voyage dates. Thanks to Davidships for finding reliable, published sources to correct the error. -- saberwyn 21:53, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

Proposal for updating Naming conventions (ships)
Following a Request for Comment on the matter of ship article disambiguation, I have drafted an updated version of Naming conventions (ships). The proposed text can be found at User:Saberwyn/Proposed ship naming and disambiguation conventions update. Your project is being notified because the proposal affects a large number of articles in your scope.

The most significant change to the guideline is that the only form of disambiguation for articles on ships is the year of launch, expressed in the format "(yyyy)". All other forms of disambiguation are depreciated, such as pennant/hull number, ship prefix, or ship type. Using ship prefixes in article titles for civilian/merchant ships is also depreciated, unless part of the ship's "common name". Examples have been updated as a result of the RFC and other recent discussions, and in some cases, elaborated on. A list of other changes can be found at User:Saberwyn/Proposed ship naming and disambiguation conventions update.

Discussion and comments are welcomed at User talk:Saberwyn/Proposed ship naming and disambiguation conventions update. -- saberwyn 03:50, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

US Navy renames
See WP:RM/C for several USN ship renames that have showed up -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 04:55, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Good to see that has learnt from earlier mistakes. I can see nothing wrong with the requests, but they might get trumped by the current proposal rewriting WP:NC-S. Mjroots (talk) 06:03, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * "Rename" is correct in terms of article renames. The ships were not renamed. Navy classifications are not a part of a ship's name. All those changes were simply administrative "cataloging" under General Order No. 541, 17 July 1920. The text of that order is worth noting as to purpose of those hull numbers:


 * "a standard system of identification numbers which may be used, where pertinent, in correspondence and for the marking of spare parts and the like"


 * This confusion of those administrative tags, in effect ship "inventory control numbers," with ship's names is a good reason for getting them out of article titles. Palmeira (talk) 13:48, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Even with that (I didn't look) the longevity is not the only factor but references and of course notoriety. If a civilian ship was named for 30 years but was commissioned and became famous, we would likely not use the Civilian name. Anyone care to look at Talk:USS Coronado (AGF-11) with opinions or suggestions?
 * Where a long, routine, not particularly notable merchant "career" is overshadowed by some major military service or event I tend to agree. I do not agree when long merchant service is followed by brief and mundane military service. To be hypotherical, since this particular ship was not strictly speaking a United States Army Transport and was War Shipping Administration during the extraordinary period, take SS Contessa. If that old banana boat had been bareboat chartered or Army owned as USAT Somethingelse—as she was later in SWPA—I would lean toward a title of USAT Somethingelse. The ship is mentioned most recently in several places in Atkinson's An Army At Dawn (I take some exception in his emphasis on being a near derelict, but the ship was not in good shape) and in quite a few histories. Running the Sebou River packed with avgas and munitions while it was still under fire was a pretty extraordinary feat, one for which someone in the forces would be awarded a significant medal. On the other hand, where a ship has a 20 year record deeply intertwined with major events of the shipbuilding and shipping industry, was famous as a liner at the time and has mundane haulage in rear areas as a commissioned Navy transport? No, the civilian name trumps in my view. As for USAT Contessa for the SWPA time? That was pretty mundane and in fact, the most mention is the failure of the conversion to be effective as a refrigerated stores ship when those were urgently needed. Her starring role was as SS Contessa and I've never gotten round to the commercial part that was only a bit more than routine. Palmeira (talk) 21:13, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree that just because a ship was in the armed services does not make it an automatic name clincher. Otr500 (talk) 01:45, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Conflict between italics and templates
I saw a template warning on some ship articles. Examples are Mein Schiff 1 and Mein Schiff 2, but this may effect thousand of articles.
 * Warning: Display title "Mein Schiff 1" overrides earlier display title "Mein Schiff 1''".

The error is related to recent changes to Infobox ship begin. It is now in conflict with Italic title, see Template:Italic title/doc.

I have started a discussion here: Template talk:Infobox ship begin. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 21:00, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This is also being discussed on this talk page, section "automatic ship name formatting". Kendall-K1 (talk) 21:38, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The instructions to editors in the documentation for Template:Infobox ship does not seem to reflect the new changes. If these changes are going to be made, that documentation needs to be updated. —Lowellian (reply) 16:44, 18 September 2015 (UTC)


 * While your were writing here, I was updating there.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:53, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

inappropriate, unused, or rarely used ship prefix templates
We have and. Why? is not used in article space. is used in three articles where all three instances refer to one tugboat article. Both of these templates semantically misuse the prefix template form.

Is there any reason to keep? If not then I propose to subst the instances of either with standard wiki markup or with  which can accomplish the same thing:
 * TUGBOAT Trabajador
 * TUGBOAT Trabajador
 * TUGBOAT Trabajador
 * TUGBOAT Trabajador

(that article should probably be moved to Trabajador – no need for either form of disambiguation)

We can take these templates to TfD or simply delete them. Opinions?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:35, 5 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. Just "worker" in Spanish with no proper name as namesake. Use of "ship" in the first position is an adequate place holder when no standard government/naval prefix or well known, widely referenceed and long used commercial one fits. My one reservation on dropping them in titles is that they do help distinguish ships from their namesakes, but that is mainly a name index problem that can otherwise be covered. On that subject there is a small subset of the cottage industry on that list of ship prefixes combing references for obscure and little used specialty prefixes that are well known to the general reader and sometimes a mystery even to "ship people" (or just redundant such as QSMV—what next? TwSMV for twin screwed or TrSMV for triple screwed motor vessel?). Please, leave those obscure ones in Generic (Merchant Navy) prefixes just in case someone runs across such a thing elsewhere. Palmeira (talk) 12:15, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't see why they can't be deleted if there is consensus here. I would support such deletion.
 * As for Trabajador, as a diesel powered tug the correct title would be MV Trabajador (1931). Mjroots (talk) 19:33, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh please, no more unnecessary prefixes. Not one of the sources refers to the tug as "MV" nor does Google produce a single example related to this vessel; and why the year dab? There aren't any others on here. Davidships (talk) 23:59, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * We could add MV to the disambiguation's to have Tugboat MV Trabajador (1931) or ''MV Trabajador (1931 tugboat) ? Not sure if that helps but for those that love unnecessary disambiguation it would be Christmas. Otr500 (talk) 02:05, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I say just delete them; I also see no need for the MV prefix if it's not used in any RSs.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

and have been nominated for deletion. The WP:TfD nominations are here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:41, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

automatic ship name formatting
We have automatic ship name formatting. We have it in where it controls formatting for article titles and for the infobox caption and also in  where the template takes the article title or an unformatted string and formats the ship name correctly. Well, mostly correctly. In the past week I discovered that was choking on this string: 'USS LSM(R)-190'. renders it like this:

to make the ship name render correctly, I did this:

We shouldn't have to do that.

So, I set about finding a solution. The result of my search is Module:WPSHIPS utilities. Why a module? Because Lua is a much more powerful and flexible tool for doing stuff like ship name formatting. Right now, the code only takes one parameter, the ship name; that could change. Because it is early days, the code is not implemented anywhere yet. Here it is for HMS Victory:
 * – prefix and name
 * – prefix and name

for USS Will Rogers (SSBN-659):
 * – prefix, name, and parenthetical disambiguation

and the problematic one:

One of the long-standing weaknesses of the automatic name formatting as it exists now is the inability to automatically format names for ships in navies that do not use standardized prefixes. This new tool will do that kind of name too:

I have added a call to this code to so that you can experiment with your favorite ship article. To do so, simply comment out (with ) or remove,  or  or   and then change  to  and click Show preview. Or, simply try your favorite ship names in the invocation. Here's a blank one:

Please do this. The code depends on a list of nationalities and a list of ship types. These lists are very incomplete. If you find ship types or nationalities that don't work, it is probably because they are not listed. Feel free to add to the lists. There are instructions on how to do this in the module. Or, leave me a note here and I'll do the work.

The items in the ship types list are limited to one or two words (you could use more words but the results might not be what you expect). This covers the usual cases of 'battleship' and 'aircraft carrier'. Are there ship types used in article titles that are three words or more? Similarly, nationalities are limited to one word. Are there nationalities used in ship article titles that are two words or more?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:38, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Some ship articles, icebreakers and clippers, for example, are disambiguated as. The tool supports this style:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:19, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Another weakness is automatic name formatting for ship-class articles. I'm sure that part of the problem with that is that there are two formats: Italicized-class title and Roman-class title. There are also lingering article titles that are not yet hyphenated as they should be.

To more-or-less automate ship-class formatting, I have assumed that the default case is italicized. So, without any editor intervention, titles in the form -class will render:

If the class name is not in the adjectival (hyphenated) form, the tool does nothing: Because there are two styles of ship-class title, a way must be found to indicate to the tool that a particular title is not to be italicized. It is not possible to know by inspection that the title is or is not to be italicized. We can modify to take a parameter, 2 which is passed along to the formatting tool:
 * (this parameter gets its name from which renders properly formatted, non-italicized links to ship-class articles)
 * (this parameter gets its name from which renders properly formatted, non-italicized links to ship-class articles)
 * (this parameter gets its name from which renders properly formatted, non-italicized links to ship-class articles)

For those articles that provide an infobox caption, it is appropriate to use the class' noun form for the caption. For that, off: We can modify how handles yes to invoke this functionality.

I have made these last two changes to. Because it it used on fewer pages, and because the code supporting it is more complex, I am going to move the info box caption changes to the live infobox with the display title change to follow in a day or two. If you see anything obviously bad, feel free to revert. Do post a note here explaining what, where, and why, please.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:14, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Automatic formatting now supports:
 * <(disambiguator)> where:
 * <(disambiguator)> is a hull of pennant number that is made up of:
 * uppercase letters followed by optional hyphen or space followed by digits (R07, ON 688, YTB-760)
 * digits followed by optional hyphen or space followed by uppercase letters (401B)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:47, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

experiments in
One thing leading to another, as often happens, has led to an experiment in. Yesterday, while reading over the draft WP:SHIPNAME proposal at §Article titles for individual ships, I noticed that we have four ways of controlling how an article title is styled:, , , and. The three templates all use the magic word.

I wondered to myself if all of these are really necessary. Can't we simplify life by making more useful? The template is required if the article will have an infobox. Module:WPSHIPS utilities, described above, can auto format <(dab)>,   <(dab)>, <(dab)> (where dab is recognizable as a hull or pennant number or as a year or contains a recognized ship type), -class <(dab)> (can be told about theme-named classes).

To cover the cases where auto-formatting fails (prefix or nationality not recognized, ship type not recognized, dab not recognized) or for when styling would be inappropriate, we can add a single parameter to customize article title display. This parameter takes these values:
 * |display title=none – does no article-title styling
 * |display title=ital – uses to format the article title
 * |display title=article title with markup – uses  to format the article title
 * |display title= – when empty or missing, attempts to auto-format the article title

For class articles where the article title has the form -class <(dab)>, it is necessary to indicate when the class name is a theme name. To do that, requires another parameter:
 * |sclass=2 – taken from which creates links to theme-named-class articles, this parameter forces unstyled title and also unstyled infobox caption (if enabled by |infobox caption=yes or |infobox caption=nodab).

One last optional parameter:
 * |showerrs=yes – for use when auto-formatting fails, may give a clue why it failed; only applies when |infobox caption=yes or |infobox caption=nodab

The Module:WPSHIPS utilities has been in since 9 September and has been in use in  since 12 September. In a day or so I propose to move to.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:14, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I have updated to use the above described auto-formatting. If you see anything untoward, let me know.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:06, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There is an error with the displaytitle. It is affecting class articles where there is already a displaytitle. Also it is italicizing any and all ship class names whether they need to be italicized or not. For example, French Barracuda-class submarine. Llammakey (talk) 17:05, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It is not possible to for the auto-format code know by inspection of the title that a class name should not be italicized. That determination must be done by humans.  The parameter 2 causes  to render theme-named classes correctly (described above).  You can see that it works at French Barracuda-class submarine.


 * I am aware of the 'Warning display title ...' error message. Most of these appear to be caused because the article title uses a ship prefix that the formatter doesn't recognize or because the formatter can't find a nationality that it recognizes.  I specifically chose to not include every possible 2, 3, 4, 5, letter combination that might represent a prefix.  If the formatter can't find a known prefix or a known nationality, as is commonly the case (New Carissa for example) then it simply returns the article name unformatted.  The error arises because the unformatted version is different from the formatted version provided by existing,  and  .  I have fixed all of the FA articles where this was happening.


 * The error message is searchable. This link is finding about 1300 errors.  I'm working on an AWB script that should help me clear a lot of those.  Of course, other eyeballs can't hurt.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This change, by your admission, has broken over a thousand articles and I do not see any actual consensus to make the change in the first place. This disruptive change should be reverted until it produces NO errors, and should not have been made without consensus.Nigel Ish (talk) 05:48, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm also getting either errors or unwanted functionality (namely, italicization of non-italic ship and class names) in a few articles on my bragging list. Nothing major or anything I couldn't fix with manual override, but I would have preferred to see this change thoroughly tested before going "live" across thousands of ship articles. Tupsumato (talk) 10:53, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Error count is down to about 850 650 400 now.  Yeah, it is a big change.  You will notice that I have not been quiet here about this subject.  I have not been scheming and plotting in my garret hoping to put one over on the WP:SHIPS community.  I have asked for participation from the community and got none.  There are errors because one editor's brain cannot hope to compete with many different brains when the contest is dreaming up new and novel ways of rendering ship names.  There are errors because the auto-formatter is not human and cannot know by inspection that this particular article title should or should not be italicized.  I could help it along by knowing the standard WP:SHIPNAME formats but all of those other brains don't necessarily pay attention to that.


 * Is it a disruption? Yes.  Anything that is new and different is a disruption but that doesn't necessarily connote misconduct.  Is it disruptive in the sense that Editor Nigel Ish is apparently claiming?  No.  Were I not actively working on resolving the errors then such a claim might be made.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:23, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Your changes badly broke thousands of pages in order to 'fix' a minor formatting issue associated with page titles. Essentially the cure is worse than the disruption. There is no need for any such changes to be rushed through.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:14, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you provide simple repair instructions for those of us who are not template specialists? I would like to fix Submarine U-475 Black Widow but can't tell from this discussion how to do it. I considered simply renaming the article, but it's no longer a Soviet Submarine and it seems wrong to rename just because some wikicode isn't working. I've been advised (at Village_pump_(technical)) to "restore the wikicode of the lead section." I don't know exactly what that means. Kendall-K1 (talk) 11:38, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Submarine U-475 Black Widow cannot be auto-formatted because the article title does not comply with WP:SHIPNAME. To repair it:
 * remove
 * to add Submarine U-475 Black Widow
 * For the most common source of the 'Warning: Display title ...' error:
 * remove
 * to add ital
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:23, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I tried that and it didn't work, or maybe the edit preview didn't work (an earlier attempt in which I put the template in the wrong place shows up in the article history). I will look in to renaming the article, as that should happen anyway. I do apppreciate your efforts, the "italic title prefixed" is a very unfriendly template and if we can get rid of it that would be nice. Kendall-K1 (talk) 13:10, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * . I concur with your opinion of.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:20, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I'm sure I tried that same fix. Is it possible that edit preview doesn't always preview the title correctly? Kendall-K1 (talk) 13:43, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I suppose it's possible, but I haven't yet seen a case where preview didn't show exactly what I told it to show (when the display was not as I expected, always it was because I hadn't got something right).


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:11, 17 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Just a heads up to those fixing the issue. When doing class articles, every infobox has to be marked the same as the first. For example the C-class cruiser or the Hunt-class destroyer, where there are multiple infoboxes. Llammakey (talk) 01:25, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * or none for all but the one chosen (should be the first, I think) to format the article title.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 02:21, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah! thanks Trappist. Llammakey (talk) 08:58, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Article name for a Finnish Navy ship
Hi. Anyone familiar with current and perhaps upcoming WP:NC-SHIPS care to share their opinion regarding the proposed change of article name for Finnish pollution control vessel Louhi? Depending on where the debate ends, it may affect a number of other ship articles as well. Tupsumato (talk) 05:06, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * And thanks Tupsumato, I listed some of the ships that would be affected, made some observations, and yes some help certainly would be appreciated. Someone may be familiar with Finnish ship naming as I see they use IMO numbers. Otr500 (talk) 22:36, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've asked you before, but I'm asking you again: Explain me, here and now, what difference does an IMO number make? Tupsumato (talk) 04:54, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I may be able to answer that. If you know a vessel's IMO Number and it has an article on en-Wiki, you should be able to find the article by typing IMO, a space, and the number in the search box. In Louhi's case IMO 9500845 will get you to the article. Mjroots (talk) 19:40, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh well, you learn something new every day. However, I'm not sure if that was what User:Otr500 was referring to. Tupsumato (talk) 20:17, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Regarding my lack of immediate response; I work (a lot) and Wikipedia does not pay me to edit articles so I do this at my on time and leisure, with free time between work, things I have to do around the house, eating, sleeping, and subordinate to times I can chase the wife around the bedroom.
 * I saw the numbers on several ships and commented about IMO's. Concerning Naval ships (bigger than mere vessels which could be anything), and IMO numbers, it depends. Ships like the Halli have these numbers because they were not actually military vessels.
 * Many "vessels" use IMO numbers including yachts. It is required on sea-going merchant "ships", 300gt and up, and passenger ships, 100gt and up. This unique number is put on the hull when it is laid down and remains with that ship for its entire life. That is not the only place it is found.
 * Some ships covered on Wikipedia have this number and it is a 100% accurate and a unique disambiguation. This information should be included in articles on appropriate vessels. The same type of system is used with ENI numbers. Otr500 (talk) 01:38, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No problem - we all are volunteers here. As for IMO numbers, I know what they stand for and that the pollution control vessels operated by the Finnish Navy have them. However, while those ships are not front-line combat vessels like the missile boats or minelayers, they are still commissioned naval ships crewed and operated by the Navy. Perhaps one could call them naval auxiliaries. Tupsumato (talk) 06:13, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds logical. Otr500 (talk) 00:54, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

hnsa
At sometime, Historic Naval Ships Association revamped its website, so a lot of the links to ships there are now broken. They are a bit more consistent in their article link conventions that DANFS but not consistent enough for a machine to accurately predict what the new url ought to be.

Still, stuff like this is a pain. So, I've created a template modeled on that looks like this:

The second positional parameter, ship name, is optional and if not provided will use the article title.

This insource: search string finds articles that use the old-style url:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:42, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

wikidata and ship infoboxes
Remember these conversations? Part of the fallout of the above conversations was some modification to that added a couple of hidden categories which show how the community is or is not using the one supported Wikidata supplied value (Ship class): What can we learn from this?
 * Fall back on Wikidata for Ship class
 * Second try with Wikidata Ship class fallback

It seems that WP:SHIPS has not embraced Wikidata. Why? What do we do now? Keep it? Discard it?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:27, 23 September 2015 (UTC)


 * So, we have two articles which import Wikidata. I looked at the other (MS Viking 1) to see what kind of data is imported and what guess am I seeing? "Papenburg Siblings-class ferry". Sure, I had heard of someone talking about "Papenburg siblings", but never as a ship class. Searching that with Google yields just Wikipedia and its derivatives. This is just the kind of behavior (inventing new ship classes) that we're trying to weed out from WP:SHIPS. Why import ship class data from a project where uses are fine with coming up new ship classes?
 * Personally, I don't have any need for Wikidata import unless all importable data is verified to be correct and in line with our guidelines. Since I'm fine with typing in all details myself from reliable sources, in my opinion any kind of import functionality should be turned off by default or discarted alltogether.
 * Tupsumato (talk) 12:21, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I feel exactly the same way - until this edit earlier today, the article imported this ridiculous class field from Wikidata: Oceanic class transatlantic liner. What limited time I have to spend on Wikipedia is much better spent writing actual articles, not cleaning up someone else's mess on Wikidata. Parsecboy (talk) 12:58, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fair point, our "responsibility" is to get it right on en.wikipedia. And we have methods to check the data we put into the infobox (citing sources directly) and if so remove it. I can envisage a situation - and I may be wrong - where an existing en.wiki infobox is used to populate wikidata, an editor checks and finds one or more data values are not sourced, removes the value, and the blank field is then (re)populated with this value drawn from the uncorrected wikidata entry. Wikidata could re-introduce errors we have removed. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:05, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Equally the wikidata is easy to change. - I just deleted the "Papenburg siblings class" wikidata. After all it was unsourced. GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:42, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikidata should not be used to populate article content ( including infoboxes) period. Nothing there appears to be sourced, and is subject to arbitrary changes without any real concern with what effects it has on other projects - as occurred with the previous issues where changes to field names on wikidata badly broke many articles here. The English Wikipedia should not surrender editorial control to other projects, just as the English language Wikipedia should not dictate the contents of other projects, which is what will happen if different projects with different editorial standards or opinions attempt to change wikidata to suit there own needs.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:15, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikidate should be discarded for reasons stated above. We are quite capable of maintaining our articles within en-Wiki. Mjroots (talk) 19:35, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Is there a consensus for stripping the wikidata functionality from the template, or at least disabling it within the template? Is there anyone with alternate views who will defend the incorporation of (some) wikidata. GraemeLeggett (talk) 08:00, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Removing Wikidata functionality from the template seems sensible to me. I see no reason to incorporate Wikidata. Manxruler (talk) 04:54, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. Please state your opinion regarding this below. Tupsumato (talk) 05:12, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Proposal
Per above discussion, I propose to remove any and all functionality that automatically imports and includes data from Wikidata into. If any data is cited from Wikidata, it should be included manually and cited to a reliable source. Tupsumato (talk) 05:12, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. I went around and tried to fix as many broken infoboxes as I could when I first learned of the wikidata issue. However I ran into the problem of not being knowledgeable enough about certain ship types to know if what wikidata was introducing into the infoboxes was correct or not, so I left them without changing them. If I, a regular contributor have a hard time knowing whether wikidata is correct or not, Joe Blow from the internets may not either. Llammakey (talk) 09:05, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - removal as per my thoughts on reliability above. Plus changes to the wikidata, even if initially valid, would not be visible to page-watchers, opening it up to possibilities of a form of remote vandalism. BUT as to which editor makes the changes to the template, that can be left open. GraemeLeggett (talk) 09:27, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support for reasons stated above. No need to introduce the possibility of remote errors or vandalism to articles. Mjroots (talk) 19:47, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per above. Manxruler (talk) 20:35, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Any more opinions. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:15, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support also as per above. Hammer5000 (talk) 11:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - same as above. Parsecboy (talk) 12:07, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm closing the discussion with pretty clear consensus. Now, if someone could kindly edit the functionality out of. Tupsumato (talk) 15:38, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * We can either roll back the template before it was added, or (from the looks of it) remove the code that draws in wikidata: " |wd= [something] ". GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:47, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Done. If there are any problems, let me know.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:57, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Tupsumato (talk) 16:03, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Hi. Since my latest article was put under your project, I thought to come here with a proposed merger and ask for advice. The articles involved are Spitz barge and Péniche (barge). No comments have been added since the proposal. Ideas anyone? Thanks. Sander1453 (talk) 17:19, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Never mind. Done. Sander1453 (talk) 04:58, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Any Japanese or Chinese reading editors about?
I've created the SS Kuroshio Maru article, which is about a tanker with a rather colourful history. It's lacking in details of her construction, which I suspect that Japanese souces will be able to provide (I'm about ja-minus 3). Chinese sources will likely be able to provide further detail re her requisitoning by Hong Kong in 1951 and the fallout therefrom. Mjroots (talk) 08:56, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Interesting article. I've added a few details from (English) LR. Davidships (talk) 00:45, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Request for Comment
Hi - I've recently requested comment on an article I recently composed (Leschi (fireboat)) here - Talk:Leschi_(fireboat). This is a relatively minor edit so I'm hoping to get rapid feedback (either for or against the RfC) so it can be closed quickly and the article's stability won't be impacted for GA-review. LavaBaron (talk) 07:17, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

lists in infobox parameter values
Another topic that has been discussed before:
 * Infobox ship career: lists in parameter values

Lists are an important part of and. But, there are problems with how they are implemented. The advice at the infobox usage guide reads: The problems as I see them are: Here is a possible solution. The infobox in the corner of this topic is a mock-up. It uses some code that is in Module:WPSHIPS utilities/sandbox to intercept lists using standard asterisk wikimarkup. These lists are rewritten as html unordered lists with appropriate css styling that does not rely on the plainlist class so it supports indenting. If the parameter value isn't a list, the code simply returns it as is; if the list has only one item, the code strips off the asterisk and leading white space and returns that. If the list wikimarkup is broken, a blank line between list items, improper increase in the number of asterisks (* to *** for example) the code returns an error message
 * When listing multiple entries in a single infobox field, use, unbulleted list or, alternatively, plainlist so that each entry is listed on a new line. Avoid bullet points, asterisks, or similar.
 * 1) – use of the html line break to create lists presents an accessibility problem for those who use screen readers.  As I understand it, this construct:
 * First&lt;br />Second&lt;br />Third is read as:
 * "Name: First Name: Second Name: Third"
 * 1) – makes proper lists except when it is desirable to have a sublist because it cannot do second+ level indenting.  At the time of the previous conversation, a fix was made to the plainlist class at Mediawiki:Common.css.  Fairly shortly thereafter, the css fix was reverted because it broke existing use of the plainlist class elsewhere.
 * 2) – uses the same plainlist class as  so suffers from the same problems.

Benefits: Still to do: Required cleanup:
 * 1) standardizes list implementation in ship infoboxes
 * 2) list wikimarkup is easier to read than separated lists
 * 3) proper markup for screen readers
 * 1) sandbox this solution in, , and
 * 2) possibly modify the code to detect separated lists and add that page to a maintenance category to make cleanup easier
 * 1) convert separated lists to wikimarkup
 * 2) convert separated lists
 * 3) remove and  templates

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:40, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

From my list of things to do, all of, , and have been sandboxed. The code detects separated lists and adds pages with that style of markup to.

From my cleanup list, I have written an AWB script that converts and  separated lists to standard * markup unordered list. The script also strips markup from the list it contains. For the time being, I have elected to leave templates in place though may reconsider this decision.

Error messages are currently turned off. List items are now rendered with hanging indents. See the example in the characteristics infobox.

I am testing my AWB script. When I think that it handles most of whatever peculiarities exist in the infoboxes, I'll update the live versions of, , and. It is expected that the only noticeable change when that happens is that the bullets of unordered lists will disappear. Following the update I'll start using the AWB script to do the cleanup work.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:34, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

I have updated, , and to support unordered lists in infobox parameters. You should see no difference in the appearance of an infobox except where the infobox uses unordered lists. Lists previously rendered with bullets in the infobox will have been rendered without bullets (once the article has passed through the MediaWiki job queue).

I will begin running my AWB script today to remove line break, , and formatting.

Some infoboxen use. I have created a sandbox version of that template that supports the same unordered list formatting as the ship infobox templates. Because that template is used across projects, I do not intend to make that template live until I have consulted with WP:MILHIST

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:19, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I have been through the articles in. Of those articles, the AWB script edited 162. A few still need work:
 * parameter values not completely a list are properly ignored by both the AWB script and by the template
 * BRAZILIAN CRUISER Bahia – stray tags in the infobox
 * SS Minnesotan – stray tags in the infobox
 * Nagato-class battleship – missing initial asterisk at 1944 armor
 * SMS Emden – missing last item asterisk at armament
 * description list might better serve this style of lists or a separate infobox template dedicated to the period:
 * Mahan-class destroyer – at armament
 * SMS Prinzregent Luitpold – at displacement
 * USS Iowa (BB-61) – at armament
 * infobox template parameters must be correctly formatted
 * Rivadavia-class battleship – see Cost

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:12, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and fixed Bahia, Nagato class and Emden.

I have submitted the awb script to brfa which see. If approved, Monkbot will do the grunt work.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:24, 4 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Regarding these bot edits, they're doing quite a lot of damage. Not all cases of  can be replaced like that. I'm cleaning up a lot of mess now. Manxruler (talk) 23:41, 11 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Examples?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:43, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Have a look at my recent edits (for example this one). A lot of use of  is for cosmetic reasons, not listing. Even when I change now the bot's edits (the results of which often look ugly), I get a very different representation in the info boxes (I'm starting to believe reverting is the best in several cases, this seems to attempt to solve a non-existent problem). The least bad result for ship weaponry, for example, is a large bluish circle instead of the desired simple line change. In the cases were I've ordered the representation of the builder over several lines, the bot has interpreted this incorrectly. Perhaps some testing before bot launch would have been in order? Manxruler (talk) 00:02, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Use of tags may make rendered parameter values visually attractive, may make lists that appear to be visually correct, but those renderings may not be or are not correct for those who use screen readers.  Screen readers are much more sophisticated and capable than a simple text-replacer bot.  If screen readers have difficulty interpreting the content of an infobox, so too, will the bot.  Neither tool can know the editor's mind.  For these reasons, there are specific markup requirements and limitations imposed on editors; see, for example, MOS:ACCESS §Vertical lists.  The overwhelming majority of  tags in ship infoboxen are used (improperly) to create lists of items.  It is not surprising then that the relatively rare cosmetic use of  tags is mistaken for list markup.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:25, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * So if I understand correctly, the parameter values has to look visually unattractive, because of the capabilities (or lack thereof) of screen readers? That's... nice. And there's nothing whatsoever to do to fix this? I'm not sure how "rare" cosmetic use of br really is, I do it so I suppose others might too. Manxruler (talk) 23:45, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It is not only in the cases of cosmetic use of br that this is an issue. See for example SS Lyonesse (1889), were the word "Company" has been indented in the info box. Manxruler (talk) 00:47, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * So your main objection is that if an entry runs onto a second line, it's indented? I manually redid the infobox for HNoMS Honningsvåg and it looks fine, aside from the indentation issues that you mentioned, which don't bother me at all.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:26, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yessir. That bugs me. And by indentation, I mean it doesn't start at the same point as the line above, but rather further to the right (not that "an entry runs onto a second line", as they often do anyway).
 * You said you manually redid the info box at Honningsvåg, but you didn't fully do that. The bot also edited the |Ship builder= field, making it strange looking. See also the effect of this bot on the "Owner" and "Installed power" fields of SS Bergensfjord. Same goes for the above mentioned SS Lyonesse (1889). Manxruler (talk) 04:32, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This new system is okayish whenever a line starts with "number × ", but that is often not the case. Manxruler (talk) 04:41, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * True and the situation is magnified when too much information is crammed into the infobox like the propulsion field for Bergensfjord.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 07:48, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * When a list item wraps to the next line, it uses a hanging indent to visually separate it from the next list item. Because bullet points are disallowed, this is the only way to avoid the wall of text look along the left margin when multiple list items wrap to a second, third or more lines.  When there is only one list item and that item wraps to a second line, there is no need for the hanging indent so one is not supplied.  If, in SS Lyonesse (1889), you remove the unqualified date range   (why is that there anyway? – it conveys no more information than if it were omitted) from Ship operator you can see that.


 * Editors don't generally write:
 * [Honningsvåg was built by ]G. Seebeck A.G. at Wesermünde (present-day Bremerhaven),
 * part of Deutsche Schiff- und Maskinenbau A-G Werk[, in 1939–1940 for ...]
 * Why do so in the infobox? Readers understand that sentences wrap to the next line when there are too many words to fit the available space on the current line.  The insertion of line break markup to satisfy an editor's aesthetic preference ignores the reality that readers are viewing the page on different devices with different browsers with different font settings so the reading experience is different, reader to reader.


 * I would echo Editor Sturmvogel 66's too much information comment. The infobox is an extension of the article lede so entries should be terse and not overly detailed; detail belongs in the article text.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:17, 13 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay, I see that. Terseness it is. Point taken regarding the different devices. This will require a lot of detail cutting in many info boxes, seeing as tmi is very common. I'll go deal with the info boxes I've written, like that at Honningsvåg.
 * Not too sure I agree with regards to the so-called "wall of text look" being an issue at all, though. It's been a while since bullet points were disallowed (not sure if I ever used them much anyway), and I can't recall there being problems with any "wall of text look" (went and had a look at several articles pre-Monkbot, just to check). I suppose the concept of "the wall of text look" is a subjective thing.
 * Regarding Lyonesse, it seems to me that the editor wanted to convey that ownership changed in 1919. Manxruler (talk) 01:14, 14 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Hey Trappist. Came across a ship article where bullet lists were still being used. Thought you might want to take a look at it, see why it's not formatting properly. The article is here. Llammakey (talk) 00:51, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Because the first line of the Ship propulsion parameter is two  tags, the template sees the parameter value as malformed. Those two  tags probably belong at the end of the first list item.


 * The sandbox versions of the templates will display an error message at the start of the parameter value which may help to explain why the rendered template looks the way it does.  Simply edit the article, change  to  and click Show preview.  There are links in the error messages to  which may be helpful.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:44, 14 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks Trappist. Llammakey (talk) 11:27, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Following the implementation of this change, had some 20,000 articles in it. Monkbot took care of about 18,000 of those. Through a combination of my own manual and semiautomated edits and those edits made by other editors, the category is now down to less than 900 articles. I have turned on error messages so that perhaps the remaining articles can be more quickly cleaned up.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:18, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Down to 473 now! I think that the major problems are the ones where there are references at the starts of lists (as ideally they probably need rewriting to put the ref in the text). It also shows that it's very easy to put far too much stuff into the infobox rather than the body of the article.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:56, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Some articles (for example USS Chauncey (DD-667), USS Chauncey (DD-667) are still appearing in the tracking category after they appear to have been fixed. Also, it looks like causes problems, at least in USS Cushing (DD-985).Nigel Ish (talk) 10:45, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

is processed before. I'm not sure why, but the expanded template content goes to the next line leaving an empty list item:

produces: * To fix the problem, remove the  from Ship armament.
 * 2 x 5 in (127 mm) 54 calibre Mark 45 dual purpose guns
 * 2 x 20 mm Phalanx CIWS Mark 15 guns
 * 1 x 8 cell ASROC launcher (removed)
 * 1 x 8 cell NATO Sea Sparrow Mark 29 missile launcher
 * 2 x quadruple Harpoon missile canisters
 * 2 x Mark 32 triple 12.75 in (324 mm) torpedo tubes (Mk 46 torpedoes)
 * 1 x 61 cell Mk 41 VLS launcher for Tomahawk missiles
 * 1 × 21 cell RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launcher

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:12, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Infobox ship career headers again
First there was this discussion:
 * Template:Infobox ship career (1)

then there was this discussion:
 * Infobox ship career header (2)

and here I am talking about it again.

Ship infoboxes are tables that are two columns wide where the left column is field names and the right column is values associated with the names. The same two column arrangement applies to the header at the top of. The complaint at (1) is illustrated in the live infobox. Note how the Ship name parameter rendering is different between the live infobox and the last example in the sandbox infobox.

The sandboxed versions of answer the complaint at (1) by making the  span both columns. The flag image comes first because I couldn't figure out how to fix its position relative to the right edge of the infobox and keep the text vertically centered in the header. And, I realized that flag templates that render text along with the flag image all render it image left text right right. This format also renders correctly when editors use or.

From the discussion at (2) I have kept the change that created a standalone 'History' header so that there is more space available for Ship country.

Also new with this version of the sandbox is a snippet of code in Module:WPSHIPS utilities/sandbox that initially fixed the size of the flag image to the size specified by (100x35px) so no flag image would be wider than 100px nor taller than 35px. It is quite common with the current infobox for editors to set flag size to a variety of sizes to accommodate long text in Ship country; see for example, FA Vasa where flag width is set to 70px so that its height (40px) fits nicely with the header text.

Because the the css that specifies the header characteristics sets header height to 30 pixels, I reduced the flag image size to 100x30px. I see no reason why the addition of an image to the header should increase the vertical height of the header.

Opinions? Comments?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:02, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

I have further reduced flag image size so that there is a thin gap between the flag and the edges of the header. Within the next days I intend to update the live template to this sandbox version.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:18, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

The list of acceptable values used with Hide header in are now:   and   to hide the header entirely and   to hide the History title bar. title better conveys the purpose of the parameter value than bar did.

I need to figure out how to set title for all but the first when there are multiple templates in a ship infobox.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:07, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

It is done. I have an AWB script that I will use to troll through articles containing and, where there are multiples of the template, in second and subsequent templates set title where that parameter is not already set to something else.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:34, 22 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Looks good Trappist. Saves people like me from having to use nowrap for better presentation. Thank you. Llammakey (talk) 09:00, 23 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Could we omit the blue bar in case of "no flag, no country"? Not sure how common it would be, though, as all ships are flying a flag. Tupsumato (talk) 09:19, 23 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I think that I've already done that. In the case of no-flag-no-country and when Hide header was not set, the template does not display the country/flag header bar.  I think that this is documented at Usage guide §Infobox ship career.  If you are seeing both the history and empty country/flag header bars in a single  template after a purge or null edit, let me know.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:25, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

duplicate parameters
At the bottom of are these parameters (not listed in the template skeleton in the documentation):
 * Ship badge
 * Ship honors
 * Ship honours
 * Ship nickname
 * Ship motto

Do these really belong there? They have been part of since its  in January 2007 and were added to  about a. That addition caused this discussion.

Is it not true that these parameters attach more tightly to the ship's name than to the physical ship itself and so more properly belong in ? Should we deprecate and remove these parameters from ?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:43, 14 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree. They should not be available for which describes the physical ship. Tupsumato (talk) 13:25, 14 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Parsecboy (talk) 14:18, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

About a week ago I modified so that it would add pages with the duplicate parameters to. At present there are about 170 articles listed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:09, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Ships
Is there any recognition for contributing to subjects pertaining to ships in this WikiProject? I feel as though my 27 articles on World War II U.S. Navy vessels and Philippine Navy patrol craft have gone unnoticed, i'm not trying to sound rude or anything, honest. My works can be found on User:Luis Santos24/My Works. All i'm saying is that i simply think my large amount of articles have slipped through the cracks, that's all.

Cheers, --The Haze Master (talk) 01:43, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes and no. There is ; that's the 'yes'.  It's been awarded less than a handful of times; that's the 'no'.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 03:01, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The creation of those articles should be reward enough. Should a barnstar ever come your way, consider it as a bonus. Mjroots (talk) 18:53, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Agree that creation is recognition enough, but it is worth adding that these are a nice set of articles. Hadn't noticed them before this thread (wrong century for me) but well done for putting them together. -- Euryalus (talk) 00:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * As the creator of 117 U.S. Navy ship articles, I have to disagree that their mere creation is any sort of "recognition". There is certainly much "personal reward" in creating them, (and that's why I do it), but there isn't any "recognition", which I would define as an indication that somebody else has noticed. Lou Sander (talk) 01:41, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * If you really must brag about article count, I think my tally stands at 462 ship articles and 44 ship lists (+ 308 shipwreck lists) created. As I said earlier, barnstars are a bonus. Mjroots (talk) 18:59, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Sa'ar 2-class missile boat
Just spotted this article on a relatively significant class of Israeli missile boats. It badly needs fixing up, with large chunks appearing to be a machine translation, the words left untranslated.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

DANFS changes
Somewhere along the way, the Navy's DANFS website has been reorganized. A lot of ship articles have a reference note saying:



As you can see if you click the "here" in the line above, some of those links are now bad. I'm guessing it's a LOT of them. I've corrected the link for a couple of ships, such as this one:



I had to do a bit of searching and clicking to find the new link. I'm wondering if people here are aware of this change, and of the probably very large number of articles it affects. If there isn't one already, there should probably be some sort of tool or BOT that fixes this stuff. I'm not up to creating that myself. Lou Sander (talk) 01:29, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * It happened at the beginning of the year. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 43 Lots have been fixed, probably lots left though. I think I saw Nigel Ish doing a huge amount of them on my watchlist a while back, iirc, but it didn't seem like a bot could do them easily since the convention changed. --Dual Freq (talk) 01:38, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * One thing that a bot probably could to is to tag the old, broken, links, even if it cannot find the new target (if there is a new target - some of the other, non-danfs pages on the NHC website have diappeared without trace). If more people chipped in and just dis the articles on their watchlists, we may be able to clear the backlog before the NHC reorganizes again.Nigel Ish (talk) 10:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * BTW, thanks to you for doing all those and to the others that have been fixing them, too. Wikipedia is largely a thankless job, but things like that are appreciated. I've done a few, but just enough to know it's not easy. --Dual Freq (talk) 14:27, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Shortly after the DANFS cite change, Editor Parsecboy asked for ideas on how we might help NHHS improve DANFS. I suggested a uniform url structure so that if they change again, we could accommodate the change by simply fixing the  template instead of editing every article that uses it.  Did that suggestion get passed on?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:30, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't know about passing it on. I've just updated the DANFS entries for about 25 ship articles that I started. It took about an hour. I had the advantage of using THIS LIST, which made it easy to find the articles, plus two monitors, which made jumping around a lot easier. It was a pain because of the inconsistent URLs in DANFS, but the NHHC people are stuck with using the ship names as they appear in the hard copy DANFS. That was somebody's attempt to make sense out of hundreds of ship names, created over centuries, many of which are duplicated, etc. Lou Sander (talk) 13:22, 25 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Just to give some perspective on how long these corrections take, I just timed myself for 0:30, and I was able to update the DANFS references in 24 articles. The whole operation was much easier than I thought it would be at first. I had the advantage of dual monitors, THIS LIST, and the many helpful comments on this page. I also took clues about the ship names in the URLs from the old ones in the article. In all but two cases, they were exactly the same. Only 66 articles left to fix. ;-) Lou Sander (talk) 14:47, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, it looks like you can find the articles by running them through AWB transcluding Template:DANFS and then skipping all that "Doesn't contain: history.navy.mil/danfs" since all the url's that are dead used that old format. But after that, I had to copy and paste. --Dual Freq (talk) 17:10, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Now that google has the site crawled, you can use search terms like: ship name site:history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs  to find the pages instead of clicking through. Sometimes the name can be guessed by using a similar format as the previous danfs url. I think I was able to do about 100 in 2 hours, but it could be done quicker if there was a bit more automation. --Dual Freq (talk) 17:33, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed that ibiblio.org has an archive of the photo galleries that all show up as dead links since earlier this year. It would be an easy bot substitution for some motivated person: One wrinkle is that I have been going through some pages and linking the web archive for those: https://web.archive.org/web/20120921113514/http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-w/id3171.htm which might screw up a bot run. Would it be better to link the ibiblio mirror or web.archive.org ? --Dual Freq (talk) 12:07, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
 * http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-w/id3171.htm (now a 404 error)
 * http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-w/id3171.htm

USS Norfolk (SSN-714)
She is listed as being part of the Reserve Fleet, but in the notes it states she is "undergoing nuclear deactivation". Does anyone know how far through this process she is? Far enough to de-list her from the reserve? (I can't check the NVR). I want to avoid what happened with the Enterprise (CVN-65)... she was listed as being in reserve even after she was irreversibly cut-up and ripped apart. Thanks. - the WOLF  child  09:48, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * This probably won't help you resolve that issue, but NVR currently says "In Commission, in Reserve (Stand Down), commencement of inactivation availability", "Inactivation Date: 12/15/2014" "Last updated 01/05/2015". NVR defines Stand down as "Start of the inactivation cycle. These hulls are not counted in either the active or inactive fleet counts." NVR also says inactivated, with no decommissioning date, but this says decommissioned December 11, 2014, a few days before the date NVR says Norfolk was inactivated. I don't know much about submarine inactivation, maybe they are considered reserve until the power plant is removed. --Dual Freq (talk) 13:05, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I definitely appreciate the feedback, but (no fault of yours) it doesn't answer my question. We know that, according to the navy, the Norfolk began her nuclear deactivation around last Dec/Jan. I wish we could find out how far she has gone over the last 10+ months. Is she still considered "in reserve" or is she already all cut up? (This happened with Enterprise CV-65, as I'm sure some here remember). It's also happened with other ships. They in reserve forever, then suddenly we find out they were moved to a scrap yard 6 to 12 months past. I wish the navy would be more up-to-date with their status reports. (/end rant). Thanks again. Cheers. - the WOLF  child  17:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It won't help for nuke ships or subs, but NAVSEA has an inactive ship list at right hand side "Inactive Ships Inventory" which currently links to a list from 18 Aug 2015. It's kind of sketchy at times though. I think I saw Ticonderoga and Yorktown listed as for scrap sale with DLA last year, but the sales didn't happen. They have a list of ships being scrapped (though it might not be current as of 2015 since it doesn't list ex-Ranger) and a list of Dismantled ships. As a side note, they also have ship histories online as a part of Historical Evaluations. USNI.org has quite a bit if you search with google site:usni.org for example this list of US Battle force changes for 2014 from May 2015. --Dual Freq (talk) 18:19, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * NVR appears to be pretty much worthless on the nuclear deactivation front, CGN-9 for example was last updated in 2000, still says "Stricken, to be disposed of by recycling", but it's been recycled for a couple years now. File:CGN9Hull.JPG shows just the hull remaining in 2011. You can also look at google earth and see the 700 ft long hull get moved around in recent years until the most recent photo shows the small part of what was left of CGN-9 in a drydock in April 2015. So that shows that NVR isn't really that great at keeping track of ships after decommissioning. --Dual Freq (talk) 18:57, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

We have an answer! Thanks to a fellow editor over at Project Military History, I found the Norfolk listed at the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program. it states there that she is not scheduled to begin her deactivation until next May, so it's safe to say we can keep her on the "Reserve" list until then. This is good, she was the only ship I was unsure of after updating the fleet the other day. Thanks everyone for your replies. - the WOLF  child  23:48, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think that clears it up much. That Wikipedia article cites a May 2007 version of the USNI Battle Force changes article I mentioned above. Those seem to change, for example the May 2011 version says Norfolk will be dismantled 1 Oct 2018 and the May 2009 one said it will be dismantled 1 Sep 2019. Both also mention the lengthy delay of the scrapping of CGN-9 as well. --Dual Freq (talk) 00:51, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * But those are all projected dates. They are usually subject to change. USNI is no different than WP in the respect that they constantly update info as their sources dictate. My concern was 'what is the Norfolk doing now?', and now we know she is waiting to start nuclear fuel deactivation process. Unless we come by another more recent ref that states different, that's what we have to go by. - the WOLF  child  23:34, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * All I was saying is that the information in Ship-Submarine Recycling Program is extremely dated since it is cited with a ref from May 2007. Some of those dates have changed at least 3 times since then. They are not correct, as I cited above in newer 2009 and 2011 citations of the same publication, the USNI's journal, Proceedings. The Norfolk May 2016 inactivation date has never been corrected in the wikipedia article after the 2014 announcement of the planned swap with Dallas. As to where it is right now? All we can know is the most recent reference for the sub is the decommissioning article that states Norfolk was headed to Maine in January 2015 to begin the long process of inactivation, (probably eventually ending up at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at some point for the final scrapping). So right now the submarine is theoretically in Maine and is several months into the inactivation process, if it started as planned. I just wanted to be sure that you understand that the May 2016 definitely not valid and take the rest of those dates with a very large grain of salt. --Dual Freq (talk) 23:43, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Appreciate the update. To honest, that page is just another one of these multiple us-navy-lists pages we have floating around. People love making these pages, but can't be bothered keeping them up to date. - the WOLF  child  00:39, 4 November 2015 (UTC)