Template talk:Infobox Ship/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Deprecated

Unfortunately, this template makes heavy use of nested templates, which we are actively trying to eliminate per WP:AUM. The several articles using this will need to be converted to Template:Infobox Ship. The parameter names have changed slightly, but overall it's quite close to the same functionality, without using any nested templates. -- Netoholic @ 09:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I edited out as much of the nested meta-template code as I could without changing the functionality or format of the template. This way the pages that use this template will not use as many resources as they would otherwise. The code for the new template (which is what my edit is based on) still seems cleaner than this one's, and as such pages should still switch to the new one. - Nakamura2828 00:30, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

NOT DEPRECATED

I have now altered the functionality of this template to get rid of the QIF statements, using exactly the same sort of syntax Netholic used. There is consequently no reason to stop using this template now. David Newton 17:39, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Moved

I've moved this to Template:Infobox Ship. Those looking to shamelessly increase their edit count can go about modifying articles to use the new name. ;) Meanwhile, the redirect should work fine for now.

We may want to consider simplying the parameter names as Netoholic suggested at the other Infobox Ship's TFD. Any thoughts on that (if not, I'll go about adding code to the template to help transition to the newer names)? For the curious, the code that (right now) looks like this:

{{row|if=|test={{{Ship christened|}}}|label=Christened:|contents={{{Ship christened|}}} }}

Would be made to look like this:

{{row|if=|test={{{christened|{{{Ship christened|}}}}}}|label=Christened:|contents={{{christened|{{{Ship christened|}}}}}} }}

Basically, check for the new variable name, if it doesn't exist, check for the old variable name, and if it doesn't exist, don't display the row. Yes, it's ugly, but it'd (conceivably) be temporary until pages are ported over to the new names. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

linebreaks and commenting

Right now it looks like the additional #if linebreaks are dealt with by commenting - but there's a better way! Here's how it looks:

}}{{
#if:yadda | foo
}}{{
#if:etc

I don't want to mess with what's there now for fear of bumping something, but I figured you'd want to know. ericg ✈ 19:17, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I reformatted it a bit, though not quite how you described. =) In any event, it gets rid of the HTML comments which is good. Being a complete Regex newbie, I used this to replace it:
}}<!--\s*-->{{\#if
With the replacement text being
 
}}{{#if
Oh exciting stuff. :D —Locke Cole • t • c 08:05, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

{{Infobox Ferry}}/Passenger ship template

I created {{Infobox Ferry}} a few days ago (see MV Normandie for an example of usage). It has been suggested that the "Infobox Ship" template be used instead, which is fair enough, but there would need to be some additional fields introduced. The current "Ship" infobox does seem rather geared towards military rather than merchant vessels. For instance, for ferries I'd like to be able to specify the passenger capacity and vehicle capacity. The other issue is nationality: there is the issue of "flags of convenience" (e.g. a British company registering a ship in the Bahamas because it's cheaper) which doesn't arise with naval vessels. What should its "country" be? --RFBailey 14:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

A separate template for passenger vessels is needed. It can be based on the naval, but with appropriate modifications. The use of the naval template for cruise ships and ocean liners has led to numerous instances where the "displacement" field has been filled with the number representing gross tonnage, which often is twice as large. The field should instead read tonnage or "Gross Tonnage". Also, the "complement" field likely should be separated into passenger capacity and crew. And given the propensity of cruise lines to measure beam at the exteme parts of the superstructure, it may be advisable to separate that category as well into wl and extreme, and perhaps also divide length into overall and waterline (or b.p.). But one of you technical gurus would have to do this; it's beyond my skills and confidence level. Kablammo 14:26, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
does seem useful for the table to be able to handle gross tonnage, passenger numbers etc. Also, there is no entry for "completion date", just "commission date" yet most navies and reference books list comp. not comm.. Can this be altered somehow so that the correct one is shown? (for instance, if 1 date is not known, the other could still be entered unambiguously) Also, there seems to be unnecessary space dedicated to ship dimensions - why not put LxBxD in one line? and also propulsion and speed could also be in one line as they are related (eg "5000ihp = 23kts"). This would leave more space for things like "gross tonnage", "net tonnage", "deadweight tonnage" etc. particularly for older merchant ships which may have used different units of measurement. Ideally, my opinion is that we would have ship classes, not indiv. ships, since data for such ships would be more or less identical, and this would save on space and number of pages in Wikipedia, but that seems a minority view. I would suggest, either way, that Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships data format be looked at as an example of what and how to include ship data. It seems to me to present it very concisely and clearly. Some books I've read have large colorful data tables which show almost nothing. Not that the model shown above on this page does that, just saying. for instance ship dimensions would be written "750pp, 800oa x 35 x 20 (same values in metres)". we have to assume some knowledge on the part of the reader of such pages. But I'm glad this project exists and I'll contribute

A lot of the categories mentioned above are already covered by the ship infobox. The Ship capacity variable deals with how much cargo a ship can carry (amongst other things). I have certainly used it that way when dealing with naval auxiliaries and it is noted in the instructions that that is how it is intended to be used. Many naval ships have their extreme and waterline beams both mentioned in the article. All that needs to happen is that the two different values need to be noted for what they are on two separate lines. Again that has happened with naval ships and auxiliaries using the template. When it comes to separating passengers and crew I would suggest that the crew needs to be entered under complement as now, but that the passengers need to be entered under capacity. After all passengers are just another form of cargo for a ferry. When it comes to completion vs commissioning that is pretty much already covered. There are fields for in service and out of service which are effectively cover that need.

As for the ideas about horsepower and dimensions being shrunk down to one cell, I'm not sure what that would really accomplish. The three dimensions of a ship, as noted above, can have various definitions. There is the extreme length, waterline length, extreme beam, waterline beam, average draft and keel draft to name but a few. To assume knowledge of readers of Wikipedia is wrong. The people reading about ships would not necessarily know what 750pp, 800oa × 35 × 20 means. It is also wrong to assume that ihp=speed. Hull form has a very large effect on the speed that a certain shp/ihp will mean.

The one real differences between merchant ships and warships that I don't see as being quite covered in the current table are country of ownership vs country of registration, port of registration and operator. I would suggest that the correct ensign to use in the table would be the country of registration's ensign. However there is certainly scope for adding a row detailing where the ship is owned when that differs from the country of registration and rows detailing port of registration and a ship's commercial operator. David Newton 23:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The one field that clearly is not covered by the warship template is tonnage. Wikipedia contained dozens of examples of gross tonnage listed in the displacement field, and so long as the warship template is used for passenger vessels, that error will continue to be made. So even though other dimensions may be able to be accommodated within the template as you suggest, the displacement category needs to be supplemented by one for tonnage, or better yet, tonnage. As for "complement", why use a technical term at all (particularly one usually used for naval vessels)? Why not two fields, one for "passenger capacity" and one for "crew"? When in doubt, keep it simple. I appreciate the point about capacity, but there were numerous passenger-cargo vessels which carried both.

Color switch not working?

I just fixed the caption problem where it was starting to the right of the image instead of breaking to the next line, but didn't want to attempt to mess with the code for the NavyColor variable. It says in the instructions you can specify a color but that doesn't appear to work....plange 18:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

There's no code in the template to change the color. --J Clear 21:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Status/Fate Label switch

Also, just noticed the status/fate switch doesn't appear to work? Ship table fate=fate still says status in the left hand side. I also tried leaving it unanswered and also spelling fate with a capital F plange 19:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Noted the "Ship fate" flag not working as advertised yesterday as well. --J Clear 21:42, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Looked at the code, "Status:" is hardcoded as the row header. Makes "Ship status" unused. --J Clear 21:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Multiple career sections

Is there a proper way to handle the USS Mississippi, which was sold to Greece in 1914 and therefore needs two separate career sections? Mackensen (talk) 16:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. Another case is a ship that goes out of commission and is brought back into commission, in the same navy (i.e. has two commissioning dates). And when the recommissioning involves large changes (e.g. Victory ship -> Missile Range Ship or Iowa class sprouting missiles) you need duplicates outside the career section. Back when the table construct was used directly, this wasn't an issue, as the repeated or changed rows got copied over.
Changing the template to add a second set of career dates shouldn't be too hard and be transparent to existing usage. However adding a second set of armament means a second "General Characteristics" section (perhaps a better header...).
Perhaps it would be better to make them stackable and have two concatenated info boxes. This would necessitate less "required" parameters, as you wouldn't have two "laid down" dates. However frequently the laid down date and other "required parameters" aren't available anyway. If items didn't change, they would be left off the second instance of the Infobox and hidden. Stackable would be better for ships that have had 3 lives. Recently edited a DD that had gone Navy, CG, Navy.

Other examples/test cases USS Iowa (BB-61) and USS Sherburne (APA-205). --J Clear 21:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

As a general comment "Ship struck" should be displayed above "Ship fate". Presently it is displayed after, leading to poor flow, such as "Fate: scrapped in 1973" followed by "Struck: 1969". --J Clear 21:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)Not sure where I saw this, but it isn't the current Infobox, perhaps an old Table. --J Clear 21:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes chronological order is one way and sometimes it's the other. When a ship is scrapped, they take care of the paperwork first, but when a ship is lost in action, or loaned to another nation it's struck later. In the latter cases, the strike date may be decades after the ship leaves the US Navy, when someone decides she's never coming back.
—wwoods 20:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Stackable

To make multiple Infoboxes seamless it seems like you need to leave the table open between "calls" to the template. A way to do that can be seen in {{Starbox begin}} and {{Starbox end}}. That would require a "sea change" in WikiProject Ships' editors' habits.

Another way is to make the table begin and end conditional within the template. Add a parameter such as "Ship multiuse". If missing you get today's behavior. If set to first, it leaves the table open. If set to middle, it neither begins or ends the table. If set to end, ... well you get the picture. I'm going to go play with that in my user space. Somebody leave a message on my talk page if they see a big headache with that design. I won't touch the live template until I get some feedback. --J Clear 22:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

You can see an example of it working over here User:J Clear/test. Be warned that it still needs to be able to hide all unspecified data, so don't judge it too harsly yet. --J Clear 01:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Class template

Are there separate templates for a ship's class and its own career? For large ship classes, it would be useful to define and use a class template for the class and each ship and then add another template with info specific to each vessel. I'd set it up myself, but the warning against amends warns me off.

I thought the consensus at WP:Ships was not to duplicate all the class details in each ship article, just a few key ones.--J Clear 18:46, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, can anyone help with the layout problems I'm having. See I class destroyer. I want a seamless combination of pic and table template without the use of padding lines. Folks at 137 14:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I got that article in better shape. There is a very narrow row below the image caption that I don't think I can get rid of w/o editing the I class template. I'd try taking out the first "|-" in the template. A better solution may be to have the template take optional image and caption parameters like {{Infobox Ship}}. --J Clear 18:46, 29 October 2006 (UTC)