Talk:Flagship

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[edit] sci-fi - capital ship

In the context of sci-fi, wouldn't "flagship" be roughly analagous to today's "capital ship"?

Not necessarily. These two terms are separate now and have remained as such in most works of sci-fi that utilise naval terms. There is usually only one flagship in a fleet - from where the chief officer of the fleet commands the fleet, whereas there may well be many capital ships which have lower-ranked commanding officers than the chief officer on the flagship. For example, today, HMS Ark Royal is the British Flagship, but HMS Illustrious, which is of exactly the same class and firepower, is a capital ship. This system is still implemented in many works of sci-fi. For example, in Star Wars, the Super Star Destroyer Executor is the flagship of Darth Vader, but the other 13 Super Star Destroyers, which are all capital ships and essentially the same as the Executor, are considered capital ships rather than flagships in many situations [apart from where they were employed as a flagship for individual task forces]. Of course - ultimately it depends on how the author utilises these terms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.188.12.180 (talk) 17:21, August 27, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flagship university

I rewrote the lead paragraph of the section.

First, "flagship" used to have a clear meaning: it meant the oldest and original campus in a system. Second, we should not ignore the fact that italways carried a presumption of academic superiority... and lately the meaning has drifted so that the word is sometimes taken to mean superior campus.

This is the reason why there is so much tapdancing around the issue, why there is sometimes an official recommendation to avoid the term, or, conversely why some campuses have sought official designations as "flagship" campuses.

The situation of having more than one "flagship" campus in a system is ludicrous, but if there were a Wobegon University System, all of the universities in it would be flagships. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)