Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships

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MV Dali

MV Dali (2015) is the ship involved in the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Currently a redirect, but probably notable enough for an article if anyone wants to write one. Mjroots (talk) 10:25, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Article now created. Kablammo (talk) 12:08, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Nice job! I have not seen any other articles about a modern box ship's design. GGOTCC (talk) 18:32, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

side effects of the campaign to remove hull / pennant number dabs

For the record, I'm indifferent to the removal of hull / pennant number dabs from article titles. To do or not to do those removals is not the topic of this discussion.

There are side effects to dab removal that are most likely being ignored. Many ship articles have nav box templates that list all of the ships of a particular class or whatever. Many of those templates use the {{USS}}, {{HMS}}, etc templates to render correctly formatted links. When displayed on a ship article, links from the nav box to the current article are 'self-links'. Self-links, are supposed to render in bold font; for example links to this page:

[[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships]] → Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships – correct because the title of this page is 'Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships'

But, if you link to a page through a redirect:

[[WT:SHIPS]] → WT:SHIPS – incorrect because the title of this page is not 'WT:SHIPS'

When editors here move a dabbed ship article to its undabbed form, the dabbed title becomes a redirect (unless the mover explicitly suppressed that option). For example, at the bottom of USS Will Rogers the nav box should 'highlight' the boat's name in the nav box; it is not highlighted. This happens because the link created by {{USS}} looks like this:

{{USS|Will Rogers|SSBN-659|2}}

[[USS Will Rogers|''Will Rogers'']]

Will Rogers

which is a link to the redirect. Compare the Lewis and Clark link at the bottom of USS Lewis and Clark (SSBN-644).

So, we can spend a lot of editor hours replacing {{USS}}, {{HMS}}, etc templates in nav box templates across en.wiki, or we can rewrite {{ship}} (the template that underlies all of the {{USS}}, {{HMS}}, etc templates). As a proof of concept, I tweaked a lua module version of {{ship}} in Module:WPSHIPS utilities that I wrote years ago as a possible replacement for the then-existing wikitext {{ship}} template. The tweak fetches the redirect's target name and uses that name as the link portion of the wikilink that the template creates. For Will Rogers:

{{#invoke:WPSHIPS utilities|ship|USS|Will Rogers|SSBN-659|2}}

[[USS Will Rogers|''Will Rogers'']]

Will Rogers

You can prove to yourself that this works by editing {{Benjamin Franklin class submarine}} and replacing the current Will Rogers template with the {{invoke:}} above and then use the Preview page with this template to preview USS Will Rogers. So, what to do? Nothing? Go on a crusade to replace {{USS}}, {{HMS}}, etc templates? Rewrite {{ship}}?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:19, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

If it's not broke, don't fix it. As long as a wikilink gets to the correct article, does it really matter if get there directly or via a redirect? Mjroots (talk) 06:10, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I would not have taken the trouble to write the OP if {{ship}} were not broken. Yes, the links get to the target article but when the link to the target article is on the target article (as it is in a nav box) the 'self-link' is supposed to be rendered in bold font face. My example was the nav box at the bottom of USS Will Rogers which showed that the link to Will Rogers was not bold. Subsequent to (because of?) my post above, Editor Llammakey edited {{Benjamin Franklin class submarine}} which invalidated my example.

As an aside, {{ship}} is broken in other ways not related to the issue described here: see Template:Ship/testcases § up=yes; compare Live version column to Sandbox version column. In those tests, only rows A, B, G, and H should be showing the HMCS prefix and of those, the prefix should not be part of the wikilink in rows B, G, and H; row G should not be showing two prefixes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:46, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

The thing to do with the original issue is when you rename an article, fix the links to it to point to the correct one - the what links here tool is handy here.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:17, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

The thing to do is to make it so that editors don't need to do anything which the new version of the template accomplishes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:34, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

{{Ship}} and related templates {{HMS}} and {{USS}} are now broken, with the |4 option removed. Where is the consensus for this change?Nigel Ish (talk) 17:37, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

There is a new version of {{ship}} (and {{HMS}}, {{USS}}, and the other ship prefix templates). This version uses Module:WPSHIPS utilities to do the rendering. Part of that is to emit error messages when something is not right.

Here is the doc page from 4 January 2008. There, you can see that a display control parameter value of 4 has always been invalid. There is no need to use that value so I have removed |4 from templates that use it. Were we to keep it, the rendering would look something like this:

{{ship|HMCS|Kootenay|H75|4}}

[[HMCS Kootenay (H75)|HMCS]]

HMCS

which is meaningless to the reader. Therefore: the error message:

{{ship|HMCS|Kootenay|H75|4}}

At the time of this writing, I have fixed all of the {{ship}} and ship prefix templates in the article name space that use display control parameter value 4; see this search.

The update fixes the problem initially described at the top of this discussion as well as the |up=yes problem described later. I am about to fix the numerous misuses of display control parameter value 6 in {{ship}} templates that do not include a ship prefix (the first positional parameter). Still to do: documentation fixes and support for a |no-tracking= parameter fix so that the template doc pages won't be added to Category:WPSHIPS: Template Ship parameter errors. If there is anything actually still broken in these templates please tell me about it and provide examples showing the break.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:34, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

So there was no consensus for your changes. You just decided unilaterally to force article content to conform with your preferences.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:39, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Should this title be italicized?

• German Meteor expedition

The section subject is self explanatory, I hope. The expedition was conducted by German survey ship Meteor. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:20, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

As Meteor seems to acting as a qualifier, rather than a straight noun, I tend to think not. - Davidships (talk) 00:34, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Considering the expedition has nothing to do with meteors, then it's a problem as it stands. _Broichmore (talk) 13:25, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

But see also Discovery Expedition, Nimrod Expedition and Terra Nova Expedition which all have the ships' names italicised (sorry, I don't know how the link them preserving the italics). Alansplodge (talk) 16:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Also Southern Cross Expedition and Gauss expedition, the last being a German enterprise. Maybe the "German" adjective is redundant, unless there's another Meteor expedition from another nation? Alansplodge (talk) 16:39, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

OK - I agree that those are better arguments. Davidships (talk) 23:33, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Draft:Theben

Is it possible to take a look at Draft:Theben for me? Came across it through WP:AfC but figured someone here could narrow down notability much quicker than I can. You can ping me here or on the draft page if necessary. Cheers! CNMall41 (talk) 23:20, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

CNMall41 - I think that there will be some useful content from her time in the South American trade. For example, when the British Government contracted in 1880 with Kosmos to provide the first steam mail service to the Falklands, Theben was a mainstay, also carrying passengers (including the Governor). There is a useful bibliography on Kosmos in the deWP article on Kosmos, including an English book on the Falkland contract, which I can access. - Davidships (talk) 02:07, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

@Davidships:, Thanks. I will approve it to the mainspace and tag it with your project tags so you can access further. Thanks for the help. --CNMall41 (talk) 04:19, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

CNMall41 The headline picture at wrecksite might be by John Henry Mohrmann. I have a better copy, but no provenance. There's insufficient source info to enable uploading into commons. Do you have any backup knowledge of this painting? -Broichmore (talk) 13:21, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been absent. I suppose that your better copy is this or that. The first is the site of a private museum at Terschelling (it would seem most unlikely that they would possess the actual painting, but the other is a serious book, and quite likely to give credits for the image, which is used on the front cover (and may well appear inside also). It might also appear in this more recent one. Davidships (talk) 22:47, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

The museum has confirmed to me that the painting came from the aforementioned book by Reinhart Schmelzkopf (1938–2020), a Cuxhaven shipping historian. Can anyone access this book to identify the artist, etc. -Broichmore (talk) 07:12, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

French ship Gapeau (B284)

The French ship Gapeau (B284) has been Nominated for deletion. Please feel free to join the discussion. Mjroots (talk) 10:20, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Talk:USS Arizona#Requested move 13 April 2024

Your input is requested at the above discussion. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 03:06, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

This proposal is gaining traction, it's a radical change affecting 200 or so disambiguation pages that we already have. Are they all to be renamed. If the system is not broken why are we going to fix it. -Broichmore (talk) 07:22, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

That would only be true if every ship index had a clear primary topic; almost none of them do. As per my comment in favor of the move proposal, List of ships named USS Monitor has existed in that location (or the older USS Monitor (disambiguation)) since 2004. This is not a new idea, nor will it cause anything other than the titles of these two pages to change. Parsecboy (talk) 09:48, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:2024 Mozambique boat disaster#Requested move 13 April 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:2024 Mozambique boat disaster#Requested move 13 April 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. RodRabelo7 (talk) 00:08, 22 April 2024 (UTC)