Template talk:Infobox ship begin/Archive 1

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.

I'm interpreting "Characteristics" as generic to the class of ship and "Career" as specific to a ship. I've copied "motto, nickname, honours, honors, notes and badge" from {{Infobox Ship Characteristics}} to {{Infobox Ship Career}}, and added "sponsor".

I've copied "class" from {{Infobox_Ship_Career}} to {{Infobox Ship Characteristics}}. I haven't removed or reordered anything. To my way of thinking, "class" is a characteristic and "honors" belong to a career.

In addition, where appropriate, a "class" page, e.g. Gilliam class attack transport can include an already-filled-in {{Infobox Ship Characteristics Gilliam ...}} and the articles on individual ships of this class can include the same template in place of the a blank {{Infobox Ship Characteristics}}.

I hope this is acceptable,

--Saintrain 05:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately you can't do it that way. This page is just a way of putting all documentation for the templates into a centralized location; you've changed the instructions for the templates without changing the templates themselves.

Now, I see what you're saying, but the changes you've suggested will not be simple. Let's discuss it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships, because more people will see the discussion and so it'll be easier to get input. TomTheHand 17:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Tom. I changed the templates AND this page all at once so that they would be in agreement. Now they aren't.

Did you mean I "can't do it that way" = "I didn't ask?" or that you didn't notice the changes to the templates?

--Saintrain 19:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I managed to miss the changes to the template, and thought you had only changed this page. Sorry about that! However, it would be preferable to discuss this kind of change before making it, because these templates are used in many different articles so it affects a lot of people at once. TomTheHand 19:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

(We're gonna run out of colons pretty soon!) Re: your edit "if we're going to move these things, we should only document the way we want them to be used, not the backwards-compatibility-only way"; Speaking as a WP user not just a Ship user, I have no problem leaving those attributes in both templates, it's like way more inclusive and stuff. Somebody might want them and now this page doesn't agree with tha current templates. Howsabout leaving everything in "Full" and simplifying "Simplified"? Maybe put Simplified first? --Saintrain 20:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, if someone wants to do it the old way, I say "tough" ;-) Part of the reason for using a template is so that every ship's infobox looks the same, so I really don't think we should document the old way. I don't think people should be able to choose different ways to order fields. I'm still tempted to edit all uses of the infobox to conform to the new arrangement of fields, and then remove the backwards compatibility. TomTheHand 14:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello, the template works quite well; I think it's a very noble effort to try to build a robust and diverse enough template for all ships, naval and civilian. Whoever is very good at the code, I was wondering if my inclusion shown on the template page could be added to the actual template. I'm not quite sure how to make the changes without making big problems. You can see what I'm trying to do on my Sandbox. Thanks. -- Pesco 02:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy to add them. I do have a few suggestions, though. First, the horsepower of the ship's engines is usually put into the "Propulsion" field. For example, USS Essex (CV-9) has the following in its propulsion field:

As designed:
8 × boilers (565 psi., 850ºF)
4 × Westinghouse geared steam turbines
4 × shafts
150,000 shp

Please put horsepower there right after noting what kind of engine the ship has. Second, what do you plan to put into "cargo capacity". If it's the ship's capacity in gross or net tonnage, it should go in the tonnage field, but if you're running into situations where you need other kinds of capacity, I'll be happy to add the field. TomTheHand 13:39, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll use the propulsion field as you suggest and use gross and net tonnage. I do think cargo capacity would be of use to describe capacity in a way other than in tons. For example, container ships measure ship capacity by TEU. Some ro-ro ships measure capacity by square feet or square meters of useful cargo deck space, or in approximate number of vehicles they can carry. For passenger ships, number of passengers should go under "compliment" "complement", correct? Thanks again. -- Pesco 22:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Argh, I'm sorry. Somehow I managed to just lose track of this conversation until it got bumped back up today. Technically "complement" refers only to crew, not passengers, so putting passengers there probably wouldn't be appropriate. If a single field called "capacity" were added, would that suffice for both cargo capacity on cargo ships and passenger capacity on passenger ships, or would you strongly prefer separate fields? TomTheHand 13:21, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Wait, there is already a "capacity" field. Could that be used? Add fields is easy to do, but I prefer to keep the template as simple as possible and have as many multi-use fields as possible. TomTheHand 13:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect, because "compliment" with an "i" and "complement" with an "e" are two different words. Michael Hardy 00:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Apparently you knew what I meant, though. *sigh* --Pesco 02:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that in most instances for military ships, the infobox_ship has the ensign of the country (UK, Poland, Australia, Italy) while for others (USA, Greece, the defunct CSA) the naval jack is used. I am curious if there are historical reasons for this and if we should settle on a standard way to display infoboxes or not. Argos'Dad 15:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that we should generally use the Ensign of the nation because it is much more recognizable than the sea jack to most people. --MarVelo 11:37, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, let's discuss how to bring the functionality from Infobox Commercial Ship over to this set of ship templates. Here's a listing of what Infobox Commercial Ship contains, along with my notes:

1. Ship name - currently supported by Infobox Ship Career as a row, but not as a header for the infobox. There are a few reasons for this. First, I think it's considered unnecessary because you can already read the title of the article for the ship name. Second, the name can change, especially for commercial ships, so you can put the different names in different career boxes - see USS Entemedor (SS-340), which served with the US and then with Turkey and has two different career boxes as a result.
2. Ship image - currently supported
3. Ship caption - currently supported
4. Ship country - currently supported
5. Ship flag - currently supported
6. Ship class - currently supported
7. Ship ordered - currently supported
8. Ship awarded - currently supported
9. Ship builder - currently supported
10. Ship laid down - currently supported
11. Ship completed - not currently supported - we can add this added!
12. Ship status - currently supported
13. Ship homeport - currently supported
14. Ship tonnage - currently supported
15. Ship height - not currently supported - we can add this added!
16. Ship length - currently supported
17. Ship beam - currently supported
18. Ship draft - currently supported
19. Ship draught - currently supported
20. Ship propulsion - currently supported
21. Ship speed - currently supported
22. Ship operator - not currently supported - we can add this, but I would feel more comfortable including it up in the Career box, as it's not a physical characteristic added (but to Career, not Characteristics)
23. Ship crew - not currently supported - we can add this added!
24. Ship capacity - currently supported
25. Ship motto - currently supported in the Career box. I would feel most comfortable keeping it up there.
26. Ship nickname - currently supported in the Career box. I would feel most comfortable keeping it up there.
27. Ship honours - currently supported in the Career box. I would feel most comfortable keeping it up there.
28. Ship honors - currently supported in the Career box. I would feel most comfortable keeping it up there.

In addition, there was discussion on WP:SHIPS talk about adding some additional fields: sail plan and number of funnels. I'd like to have further discussion about these. I'll add them if there's consensus but to me they seem to fit fine under the currently existing "propulsion" row, especially number of funnels. Even if some funnels are decorative, one could certainly explain that in the row. Again, I'm not going to stonewall here. I will add them if there's consensus; let's just all chime in! Also, if I've forgotten some fields that someone wanted to add, please remind me. TomTheHand 14:01, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

"Capacity" is really a rather too general term here I think. Capacity of what? And what about ships that carry more than one type of gargo? For instance a car/passenger ferry needs separate fields for [i]passenger[/i] capacity and [i]car[/i] capacity, often also for gargo capacity (in other words lanematers). Fields that I would have need for that don't currently exist would be:

• Passenger capacity
• Car-carrying capacity - often listed separately from gargo capacity
• Gargo capacity
• Number of passenger beds - can be a different number from passenger capacity
• Number of cabins
• Ice class
• Sister ships - very often there is no officially named class, the ship just has one or two similar sister ships, and no class page exists

Also, like I said in the project discussion page, I would rather prefer to have the company name and flag replace the country name and flag for civilian ships as the nationality of a civilian ship - especially during modern times - is of neglible importance, and a ship's nationality can be changed during it's service for one company. However, if others feel this is needlessly complex, I'm willing to (grudgingly) go with the majority.

And personally I'd really like to have the ship's (current) name as the infobox header - it would make the infobox much clearer and more informative. -- Kjet 15:39, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

History
TomCo
Name	SS TomTheHand
Motto	"Hurray Wikipedia!"
History
Anti-TomCo
Name	SS TomTheHand is a sucker
Motto	"We totally ganked this ship from Tom when he wasn't looking!"
General characteristics
Capacity	list error: <br /> list (help) 400 passengers 200 cars 140 kegs of Guiness

Infobox Commercial Ship only supports one kind of capacity right now. We only have one "Armament" box; we don't have separate rows for "Guns:" "Missiles:" "Torpedoes:". We don't use separate boxes for light, standard, or full load displacement, or overall and waterline length. We have one "Propulsion" box, not "Boilers", "Engines", "Screws", and "Horsepower". We generally combine similar information into one row. I don't see why all of that information can't be listed in a single "capacity" box.

The infobox just displays the flag(s) in the Career header, so you can put any kind of flag(s) you want in there. Similarly, "ship country" just puts whatever name you use next to the word "Career", so you can put anything you want there, or just use the soon-to-be-created "owner" or "operator" rows.

As I said, I feel putting the ship's name in the header is unnecessary. It's already found in big print one inch up and six inches to the left, and you navigated to the RMS Titanic article, so you know that's the name of the ship. I usually don't put the name into an infobox at all, as it's redundant unless the name changed. This infobox and its predecessor (Infobox Ship) are used in thousands of articles already and their general appearance is a product of long-time consensus; I'm pretty against cluttering the box up with redundant info. TomTheHand 18:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Commercial Ship has the problem that a lot of articles aren't using it, even if they should (off the top of my head, M/S Isabella (and other articles on ships of the same company) and Navigator of the Seas). I'm not saying I disagree with the way things are done in these boxes now, but there seem to be people out there who would, considering they've go through the trouble of creating infoboxes with different capacity fields and/or name of the ship on top of the infobox.

But, apart from saying "I agree" in a disagreeable way, about the "ship country" and "ship flag" fields... if it is generally agreed that the company outweights the country for commercial ships, would it be possible to call the "ship country" field something else for the sake of clarity? If it's called "ship country", a lot of people will probably continue to put the nation name and flag there. That said, I've no decent idea on what would be a good replacement phrase that would make it clear either country or company can be put there. -- Kjet 19:31, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you that if we're going to use the "ship country" field as a general-purpose owner field it would be better to name it differently, but it would be technically very difficult to remove "ship country" and replace it with "ship owner" because it would be necessary to replace all existing uses.

I've added all of the fields from Infobox Commercial Ship. However, before making other changes I'd really like to have more people involved in the discussion; I disagree with the idea of creating different capacity fields for every possible type of capacity a ship could have and I think there needs to be more demand for it before the infobox should be edited. It seems totally reasonable to me to list different kinds of capacity in one capacity row, as is done for many other types of fields. In the course of editing and updating ship articles, I've seen a lot of different custom fields, but I consider the elimination of custom fields on each article to be a good thing. Let's take this conversation back to WP:SHIPS, since nobody seems to have followed it here. TomTheHand 14:05, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

A suggestion for new fields related to the Age of Sail code in the infobox. These terms seem be in common use, at least these days, when giving the specifications of a sailing ship. See USCG Eagle and Peking (ship) pages for custom info boxes that use these terms.

1. Displacement. I'm not sure of the exact meaning of tons burthen but I believe it is a measure of cargo capacity which is not the same as displacement. Certainly displacement seems to be a more commonly used term, at least these days.
2. Sail Area. It's commonly used for ships built in the last 200 years or so. It seems to me that sail plan doesn't really cover this.
3. Length Overall
4. Length On Deck
5. Length Waterline
6. Length Between Perpendiculars. It seems to me that the length field is a bit vague and that further fields could be added that are more precise.

I'm not sure if extra fields are needed for height. Once again, height by itself seems a little vague for me. Is a Height of main mast field needed? TeWaitere 11:13, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Displacement is rarely given, and very difficult to work out for a ship from that time. Up until some point in the mid 19th century, the weight of a ship was given according to the Builder's Old Measurement, which ultimately is a measure of the ship's carrying capacity, hence tons burthen. Displacement isn't appropriate to use in most instances, except where it is explicitly known. Sail area has potential, I think, but it is not a figure that is commonly given for ships. Where explicitly known, of course, there's no reason why it can't go in. Overall length is quite difficult to calculate for a ship of this kind - it is a figure that is almost never given for a ship, as it is entirely dependent on knowing the exact position of the mizzen mast, the length of the driver boom, the length of the bowsprit, jibboom and flying jibboom, if carried, and the angle at which the bowsprit is carried, and the proportion of the bowsprit carried inside the ship. Obviously coming up with an accurate figure is not so easy. Length on the deck would be better as length on the gun deck, and this would certainly be useful, however, I don't really think it is necessary to have lots of different length entries. Length as it is now allows you to specify what the length is simply by stating in brackets afterwards, eg HMS Leviathan (1790). As for height, well it's a similar situation as with the overall length - it would be something you would have to calculate, as it is a figure that you are not likely to encounter in contemporary documents relating to a particular ship. Martocticvs 14:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I was adding an infobox to an article on a commercial ship that has spent a sizeable chunk of it's career under charter... I was surprised to notice the the infobox doesn't currently have an "owner" field at all. Such a field would be extremely useful for cases when ship has been under charter to another operator, or that have been owned by a company but operated by one it's subsidiaries. If someone could add this it would be greatly appriciated. -- Kjet 12:51, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Done! TomTheHand 13:26, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you very much. -- Kjet 14:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to add an optional "Ship way number" field to {{Infobox Ship Career}}? For Liberty ships, for example, that's an available bit of information that could be included. Thanks — Bellhalla 18:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. It's right after "Ship yard number". TomTheHand 19:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Can a "Decks: " field be added? This would be primarilly useful on commercial vessels, especially cruise ships. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Where, exactly? Would just above "ice class" be ok, or would there be a more preferable location? TomTheHand 22:32, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

That sounds good - looks like it would fit in with the other stats in that section of the code. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. TomTheHand 23:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Another request ... in the Ship Career section, is it possible to set a condition so that if the header is set to be hidden, then a show for "ship flag" can be shown after "Homeport"? That way, if Ship flag is populated, AND ship header is hidden (normally resulting in the flag no longer showing), then the flag would instead show in the alternate location.
Might need to discuss if this one is worth adding first. I suppose that alternately, the flag could still be shown by using the "flag" template in homeport or similar field. Or maybe better would be adding a "Ship registry" field that could be alternately populated if the flag were not visible via the header. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:49, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The header is intended to be hidden primarily in cases where the owner hasn't changed, but some fields need to be repeated anyway. For example, if a navy decommissioned a ship into reserve for a while, then recommissioned her, then decommissioned her again, you'd want to be able to repeat some fields. If the owner has changed, you should use a second Infobox Ship Career with a header indicating the appropriate flag and new owner.

I would suggest that if you want to show flags in places other than the header, you just manually add the image. For example, in the homeport field, after London, stick a little . TomTheHand 22:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that I'm looking to use this template for cruise ships. For those, their "homeport" may change two or three times per year (winter cruising from southern homeports, summer cruising may be homeported in northern ports). And while placing the flag prominently in the "Career" header is logical for military ships, it's less appropriate for the cruise industry where the flag that the ship flies under may not even be related to any of the ports visited during its cruise schedule (homeport or otherwise).

The more I think about it, the more I think that a "Ship registry" field below the ship name field would be the best way to display these. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, the thing is, the Career header should only be hidden if you're repeating fields. Even if it's a cruise ship, there should still be a bar that says "Career". If I were editing a cruise ship article, I would put the flag that the ship is registered under into the Career field, though possibly smaller than a flag I stick on a naval article. I'd list all the homeports in one homeport field, and I might put a little flag next to each one. However, I don't think it's necessary to add a ship registry field, because the career header is intended to contain the flag. TomTheHand 00:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

For starters, I have to point out that the "homeport" of a ship is the port in which it's registered, not the port where it is based (several cruise companies abuse the term and use it in the latter meaning - never the less that's incorrect). Second - and I know I've stated this before - I find the header section flag to be problematic for cruise ships, which often enjoy careers under several flags, but there's usually just one article on the ship. Leading to the question of which flag should be displayed, and whether the national flag would deserve to be dislayed that prominently at all for ships that usually fly a flag of convinience. Personally I've thus far solved the problem by simply leaving the main flag field blank and putting the flags in the homeport field (Black Watch (ship) as a decent example).

I know Tom isn't going to agree, but I think it would serve a purpose to (re)create a separate infobox for commercial vessels, which wouldn't feature the flag in such a prominent way and feature separate fields for passenger, cabin, car and freight capacities (a "route" field would also be nice). I do remember our earlier argument on this, but I'd argue that these capacities are so important for a commercial ship that they would deserve to be featured more prominently than just lumped together in the "capacity" field. -- Kjet 07:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy to add a route field. If I were to guess, I'd put it right after homeport; would that be alright? However, when we discussed the capacity issue on WP:SHIPS talk, there really seemed to be strong consensus that for the purposes of infobox simplicity there should only be one capacity field. TomTheHand 16:06, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that a "cabin" field would be useful - as most cruiselines only publish the number of passenger cabins, not actual cabins - and even then, the published passenger count usually equal to the number of passenger cabins times two, so having both is somewhat redundant as you can calculate one from the other. I have no opinion on the other capacity fields, as that's not my area of interest. I can see that others may want it, but I have no input on it myself. For cruise ships, I could see a listing of number of restaurants or even number of pools, as that's information frequently searched out by travelers.

Back on the subject of flag ... I can see your point in the need for an alternate commercial ship template. Placing the flag prominently in the header is simply meaningless for the cruise industry and places emphasis on something that should not be emphasized. For Tom, I'll try an examples to illustrate this point:

The Walt Disney Company, which itself is headquartered in California, owns and operates Disney Cruise Lines, based in Florida. This cruise line operates two ships, which are both registered in the Bahamas and fly under that flag. In this case, the country under which the ship is registered is a technicality - an accident of tourism and tax laws. It has nothing whatsoever to do with where the ships are based, homeported, or the country of the owner or operators. I used Disney in this example because of their wide name recognition; but this is not an isolated case, multiple examples of this same situation can be found for other cruise lines.

The current template is great for military and other government owned vessels where the flag under which it flies is of great importance. But for commercial ships, notably cruise ships, this template is not practical without some changes. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If you feel that a big, prominent flag in the header is inappropriate for commercial vessels, use a little one, or don't put one there at all. See Kjet's example. Kjet says that the ship's homeport is where it's registered; if this is correct, then that's a great place to put a little flag, and there's no need for an additional field for a flag. TomTheHand 16:56, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I had already stumbled upon the Black Watch prior to the example being given. While it's a doable although kludgy workaround, it would be far more clear to use the term most frequently used: "Registry". While the actual definition of the word "Homeport" is technically the same as "Registry" - the common usage of the words in the cruise industry is different. This is a fault of the industry itself, which frequently uses the word "Homeport" incorrectly in travel brochures - but because of that, the passenger base also views the terms differently. Here's an example of how the terms are commonly used within the indistry: "Homeport" is most commonly a reference to the port from which the ship has scheduled cruises - if a cruise ship is running repeated cruises from Los Angeles down to the Mexican coast, it's said to be homeported in Los Angeles - the same for ships running cruises from Vancouver, Canada up to Alaska is said to be homeported in Vancouver, or out of Miami into the caribean. Meanwhile, their flag of registry is always the same, and may have nothing to do with where it's sailing from/to. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to need to back away from this one for the moment and let you and Kjet discuss this. I would personally use homeport for registry and use the soon-to-be-created route field for ports that the uses regularly but isn't registered at. I would say that even if the cruise industry uses the term "homeport" in a technically incorrect fashion, we shouldn't do the same here, but it's not something I know enough about. TomTheHand 17:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I had been so focused on the common industry usage of the term, I had failed to consider the potential consequences of perpetuating an incorrect usage of a term here. You are correct that just because an industry uses a term incorrectly, we should not do likewise here ... unless it is already documented in a reliable source that the term is used in an alternate way in a specific industry. For now, I'll also hold off on this until I have time to check other sources - and give Kjet time to provide input as well. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:30, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Finally someone who understands that commercials ships cannot be reated in the same way as military ships! (No offense Tom or anyone else for that matter). The problem with the current way this works is that even though people like Barek and myself will not put big flag in the infobox signifying a flag flown by tax reasons, other people will do it. A good example is the recently sunk Explorer: her career box displays a big flag of Liberia, but when you look at the actual data in the box it covers her entire career, also under the Norwegian and Panamian flags. So essentially what you get is incorrect information displayed because the infobox is geared towards military vessels. I would highly prefer it if we could get a version of "Infobox Ship Career" that is customised for commercial ships, where there is no fields called "flag" or "country" in the header (what is could have is a field for years the ship has been in service).

The homeport field: Since the incorrect usage is actually fairly common in the industry, one thing to consider could be changing the name of the field into "Port of Registry", which would be clearer and possibly technically more correct since the "homeport" is usually just a port in which the ship is registered and has nothing to do with it's home. However, I definately don't want to see the homeport field used incorrectly. The simplest option would be to do as Tom suggest above and use the upcoming "route" field. I realise a cruise ship rarely has an actual fixed route, but for those you could write in something like "cruises out of Los Angeles". Actually the field should probably called "itenary" (or "itenaries") instead, which could be used for either an actual fixed route (for ferries and cruiseferries) or changing cruises with the same port of departure.

Other possible fields: The cabin capacity (and note that I mean capacity, not number of cabins) field idea would mostly be usable for ferries & cruiseferries, where the ships carry a number of "cabinless" passengers and as such the number of passengers carried is different from the number of passengers with a actual bed in a cabin. And there are plenty of other fields that we could consider adding to the infobox - some sources even list the number of elevators. However I'm not sure if these should be listed in the infobox, I'd propagate the usage of a "Decks" or "Facilities" section within the actual article body text to display these details. I hope this won't have too many typos.... I'm writing this in the middle of the night after waking up at 1 AM for no reason. -- Kjet (talk) 23:36, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

(outdent for clarity) I would imagine that if it's agreed that commercial ships should not display a flag or note a country, then the Ship flag and Ship country fields should just be removed from the commercial ship copy-and-paste code. I doubt you'll have problems with people importing it from elsewhere. I've also been thinking about changing the display text of the field, but I do have one concern: ballistic missile submarines have a homeport as well, which would not be accurately described as a port of registry. How about... adding a registry field, as Barek originally suggested, and removing the homeport field from the commercial vessel copy-and-paste code? On the capacity subject, we had an extensive discussion about this a few months ago, and there was strong consensus that we shouldn't have a bunch of different capacity fields. If you'd like to discuss it again on WP:SHIPS, please do so, but forking the infobox because you don't agree with consensus is not an option. TomTheHand (talk) 00:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Removing the flag and country fields from the copy + paste code sounds like a good idea to me. But to clarify, I'm not saying commercial vessels should not note a country or display a flag, but they shouldn't be displayed in such a dominant way. But yeah, if you remove the fields then it should be fine. The registry field idea also sounds like the best solution to this.

And on the capacity discussion... I participated in the original discussion and just reviewed the whole thing. The problem with that discussion was that I was the only person participating in the entire discussion whos main area of interest are commercial vessels. What our discussion here shows is that that there are notable differences between military and civilian vessels that should be taken into account, and quite frankly most WP:SHIPS members are so concentrated on military vessels that they lack the knowledge required to make decisions on these maters. An equilent would be putting me and Barek (OK, I've no idea how much he knows about warships) in charge of decision what fields include on an infobox for military vessels. If his knowledge on them as as slim as mine the result would be a complete disaster.

That said, I also realise that I'm whining against a consensus and blaming other people to be too uninformed to make decisions is not exactly good conduct, so I will shut up about this particular subject now. -- Kjet (talk) 01:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of removing the flag and country from the copy-paste code for commercial vessels, and instead use a registry code ... but the template will need to be adjusted to permit removing the ship flag field from the copy-paste code. I tried removing the line earlier today, and it resulted in some micro-printing of space-holder text where the image would normally go. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to mention ... I'm still looking for an online source; but my copy of the Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language - Deluxe Edition c1996 lists two definitions of "homeport". The first is the port where the ship is registered, the second is the port out of which the ship is operated but not necessarily registered. So there is a source that supports using the two terms for different meanings. Sadly; Webster's online dictionary isn't as verbose on the definition. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so here's what I've done: I've removed country and flag from the commercial vessel copy-and-paste code. I've fixed the problem with the spaceholder text when the flag is omitted (sorry, didn't realize it did that). I've added a field called Ship registry, which displays as "Port of Registry" but which I can change if necessary. I've removed homeport from the commercial vessel code, because it appears to have an ambiguous meaning and we should be clear. I forgot to add "Route", but where do you guys want it to go?

Kjet, I understand your frustration, but in general infoboxes try to use the minimal number of fields to express the information. GraemeLeggett pointed out that aircraft use a single capacity field. We have a single armament field, even though a ship might have three or more different types of guns plus torpedo tubes and even missiles. We have a single armor field that we use to describe armor all over a ship. We have a single propulsion field, which is intended to describe any elements of propulsion necessary. While I admit that commercial vessels are not something I know a whole lot about, I do know how Wikipedia tends to use infoboxes, and I think a single capacity field is in line with that. TomTheHand (talk) 02:52, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, the changes look good to me. I've tried them in four articles that I've been using to learn the template's code. For the text description, I think just saying "Registry" is sufficient, but I have no problem with leaving it as "Port of Registry".

For the "route" field - I'll leave that to others to determine. Other commercial vessels such as freight would likely be on more consistent routes, so a route field is likely more applicable to those types of vessels. But cruise lines frequently change a ship's itinerary each year or even more frequently to better support more popular/profitable ports - and myself, I'm not prepared to begin maintaining the frequent route changes in the cruise line articles. If others want to do so, they can begin implementing it.

I still have no opinion on the capacity fields. While I can see the value in some cases, I also see Tom's point about maintaining info box usage styles compatible with other info boxes on WP. But, as a compromise, I could see having two fields (assuming it's not already there - I didn't search through all fields for this split): one for gross capacity, and the other for types/forms of load capacity. I don't know if that would suffice or not, I'll leave it to others to explore. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The "Tonnage" field is intended for gross capacity, while specific types of capacity would be described in the "Capacity" field. I would be glad to change to just "Registry", but will wait to see if Kjet has a strong opinion. I do think the more descriptive title will make it easier for people to understand how to use the field, and prevent people from misusing it, but brevity has its own advantages. TomTheHand (talk) 04:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Quick reply as I'm in a bit of hurry. "Registry" and "port of registry" are not exactly the same thing to my understanding ("registry" can also refer to the classification society used), hence I'd rather go with "Port of Registry" for the sake of clarity (we might consider putting in a "classification society" field at some point). "Route" field... I agree that maintaining this for cruise ships is too big of a job. Even putting in just the departure port as I proposed above would be a big job (especially if - like me - you attempt to outline the ship's entire career in the box, when the field would get immensely bloated). I'd propose putting in the "route" field and only using it for ferries and freighters - if we call it route people will probably realise it should not be used for cruise ships. I'll shut up about extra capacity fields for the time being - you are probably right anyway. -- Kjet (talk) 14:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Exactly where should the route field go? TomTheHand (talk) 14:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

My initial impulse would be to put it between "operator" and "ordered", as it's a fairly important piece of information and related to the operator. -- Kjet (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. TomTheHand (talk) 15:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you. -- Kjet (talk) 20:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)