Wikidata talk:WikiProject Ships

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Property proposal[edit]

There are still quite a few property proposals that have a nearly empty template and have not been reviewed by the participants of this task force. In order to reduce the size (and load time) of the page I will put them here until they are filled in and/or the number datatype becomes available. I hope this will not cause any hard feelings, but most proposals are currently about ships and airplanes and many of them have been inactive for months. --Tobias1984 (talk) 18:25, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals waiting on datatypes and or filling in of template[edit]

See Wikidata:WikiProject Ships/Properties.

Deletion of some properties proposals[edit]

After the creation of the property significant event (P793) the proposal about the keel laid date, the launch date and the completion date are deleted. Please use significant event (P793) and its talk page to define a correct way allowing to describe the key events of a ship. Snipre (talk) 09:12, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This task force currently has very little activity. You can just move the proposals to this talk page, and the next time somebody has time they can sort through them and see what they still need. --Tobias1984 (talk) 09:15, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ship type item[edit]

Hi @Danrok: or whoever knows the field of ships... I have a question related to properties and classes of ships:

Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano (Q241858) is a ship of ship class (Q559026) Yamato-class battleship (Q554520). The latter is a type of aircraft carrier (Q17205), which in turn is... a subclass of ship. I believe that aircraft carrier (Q17205) should bear a statement instance of (P31) "ship type", similar to all ship types that get categorized in Category:Ship types (Q5827287) or Category:Ships by type (Q9779183). Is there already such an item "ship type", that would be an intermediate subclass between ship (Q11446) and ship class (Q559026)? If not, any objection to me creating such a type item? LaddΩ chat ;) 17:36, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We did have a watercraft type property, but it was deleted after nomination. Danrok (talk) 12:21, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Danrok: I tend to agree with that suppression, property instance of (P31) combined with ship classes (and/or ship types, see next sentence) should be good enough.
I was rather looking for an existing Q-item - and I just found it via the German WP: ship type (Q2235308).
I now plan to:
  1. insert this category type in-between ship and ship class ✓ Done
  2. use it to tag P31 on all sub-classes of ship (Q11446) that do not already derive from ship class (Q559026), such as: aircraft carrier (Q17205), carrack (Q220635)... Actually all those 176 items (excepting ship (Q11446) itself) ✓ Done
  3. create missing ship types listed in Category:Ship types (Q5827287) or Category:Ships by type (Q9779183)
  4. ensure that all ship classes derive from one of the ship types (most should already be fine)
  5. locate all instances of ships that are plain instance of (P31) ship (Q11446) (no instance of (P31) ship class (Q559026)) and associate the right ship type to them, according to field "Ship type" from en:template:Infobox ship characteristics.
Again, comments welcome. LaddΩ chat ;) 15:07, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What s a shipyard?[edit]

Another question: many ships bear P198 (P198) leading to instance of (P31) shipyard (Q190928). I am expecting this property to rather lead to some instance of (P31) company (Q783794). Moreover, I see shipyards as places and thus would rather use location of creation (P1071) to indicate the shipyard.

My question is: shipyards are businesses building ships, or places where ships are built... or both? For info:

LaddΩ chat ;) 18:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ships and shipyards predate company law, so no, not all shipbuilders are or were businesses in the modern sense. Apparently, "The world's earliest known dockyards were built in the Harappan port city of Lothal circa 2400 BC in Gujarat, India.". Also, some modern shipyards might not be businesses, for example Russian yards during the Soviet era, or Chatham Dockyard which built ships for the Royal Navy, funded by the monarchy. So, I would say that primarily shipyards are places, but also consist of workers - a place can't build a ship. But, not all ships are built in shipyards. They could be built by a community, on a beach, without a yard. So, location of creation (P1071) isn't a substitute for P198 (P198), but may be useful for supplemental information, i.e. the place within a large shipyard where the ship was built, or if the P198 (P198) is specified as a company with more than one yard, use location of creation (P1071) to indicate the yard location (sometimes this is the the name of a port city, etc.).

In any case, just specify the ship builder as found in sources, whether it be a yard or some other type of entity. Danrok (talk) 00:55, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Danrok: thanks, clear and neat. I'll resolve this conflict by making shipyard (Q190928) a type of organization (Q43229) and expanding target type from P198 (P198) to include all organizations.
My main problem with P198 (P198) values originated from automatic imports from items like en:Reine-class patrol vessel, where the shipyard is indicated in text (no link) but where a WP link exists to the city where the shipyard is located. The import generated lots of P198 (P198)=cities and discarded the info on the shipyard name. I manually moved the links to cities to property location of creation (P1071) and still need to figure out how to create items from these textual template fields. LaddΩ chat ;) 11:15, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Property proposals: MarineTraffic[edit]

I've just made a pair of related proposals for vessels and port identifiers in the MarineTraffic database. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:28, 28 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of P198[edit]

Just to inform you that the property P198 (P198) will be deleted after move of the statements to manufacturer (P176). A bot will be requested to perform the property change. Snipre (talk) 11:34, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Call sign and Design engineers[edit]

I've suggested that designed by (P287) can also be used for design engineers/constructors and will start applying this to Swedish ships/types/classes with known constructors unless there are any objections.

Also please take a look at the suggestion for a call sign property or the expansion of the scope of callsign of airline (P432) so that this can also be used for ships. /André Costa (WMSE) (talk) 15:24, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it would be a good idea to use designed by (P287) for the ship designers for all types of designer (interior, exterior, ship architect). I'd also recommend using the applies to part (P518) qualifier to indicate which part of the ship the designer was responsible for. So, applies to part (P518) = interior (Q2998430) if they were responsible for the interior design. Danrok (talk) 00:26, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimania 2016[edit]

Only this week left for comments: Wikidata:Wikimania 2016 (Thank you for translating this message). --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:05, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Importing ship data[edit]

Hi @Danrok, Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry: Jason Evans, Wikipedia in residence at National Library of Wales, has obtained some data relating to 19th century commercial shipping from Aberystwyth port, which includes information such as the names of ships, their tonnage, destinations, crew and journey dates. I've already identified that some of the data is useful and some is most likely out of scope of Wikidata, but this is obviously the perfect place to discuss it and make some final decisions on what (if anything) should be imported. Just wanted to send this initial message to check if you are still active here before I start posting in questions and links to the data etc? Best wishes NavinoEvans (talk) 18:38, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@NavinoEvans: I'm interested! Danrok (talk) 18:46, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Great, thanks @Danrok:! Here is a link to the project info on the National Library of Wales side. It's basically a large set of spreadsheets that have been transcribed from paper records by volunteers. Some background about the plans discussed so far:
I've already explained to Jason Evans that the spreadsheets in their current form are not good for any mass importing of data, and that quite a bit will be out of scope. They will be happy to organise the data in a format we can use, so it's just about deciding what is useful for Wikidata.
It will be the data about the ships themselves that will be of use, so the basic aim initially is to:
  • Create a spreadsheet with a row for each ship they have records for, Column 1 being the name of the ship, with any data that we can add for each ship shown in subsequent columns
  • Then match them to Wikidata items where the ships already exists, and create the missing one's if they are deemed valuable to Wikidata.
  • Finally add the statements to each of the ships using the data from the spreadsheet (presumably using Magnus' QuickStatements tool).
So, the questions to resolve before getting them to reorganise the spreadsheets are:
  1. Are all of the ships notable enough to have Wikidata items?
  2. Is the ship master for each ship notable enough to add to Wikidata? (I've already explained that adding all of the crew member data would not be welcome, as we'd need a new item for each of them and it seems out of scope)
  3. What other data can we add for each ship? This may just be the "port of registry" and "Official number" shown in the spreadsheet (property needing creating for the latter I think).
I know absolutely nothing about ships! so I'm hoping you're able to shed a bit of light on these questions :) NavinoEvans (talk) 17:04, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@NavinoEvans: There's no rules regarding notability of vessels for Wikidata. My view is, if we have some good reliable data we have nothing to lose by including it. For each ship the unique ID is the most important data, in this case "official number" which is unique within a country. We don't really need crew lists, but could link to the library website as the source, so the crew lists can be found there if someone wants them. Other data we would want would be the "port of registry", but ideally with start and end dates. If they have any basic specs for the ships then that would be helpful, e.g. length overall, gross tonnage, the shipyard which built it, and vessel type (of some sort, e.g. sail, steamer, etc.). Any of the ship's data that they may have, could be included, we can always discard anything in the spreadsheet which we don't need. Danrok (talk) 21:40, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, that all makes perfect sense. I'll keep you posted on the progress here, and post in a link to some organised spreadsheet data when we reach that stage. Then we we can select the data that will be used and propose any properties (if necessary). All the best, NavinoEvans (talk) 11:44, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely interested, but a little slow of the bat, clearly! Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 16:34, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Great! @Danrok, Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry: This is now being tracked on the new Partnerships and data imports discussion page. I'll report back here if any new questions or discussion point come up. NavinoEvans (talk) 13:06, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Danrok, Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry:. I am ready to upload this collection to wikidata, but i am unsure which property to use to describe each ships 'Official number' - a unique number which was given to every UK merchant ship. Initially i thought to use 'inventory number' but as you will see above, it was suggested that a new property be created. A discussion about this is happening here. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Jason.nlw (talk) 08:17, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Danrok, Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry: Hi. Just to update you, i have recently improved the data for these shipping records, here is an example entry Q24026938. We are planning on a small project to locate and add images for as many of these ships as we can soon, and are also interested in adding ships owners and builders. Would they be considered notable enough for Wikidata? I have the same question about ships masters. I know the rest of the crew would not be relevant to Wikidata, but what about the masters (with start and end times)? I would appreciate any thoughts or feedback on these points and on the shape of the data so far. Cheers Jason.nlw (talk) 09:13, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Jason.nlw: Yes, you should create items for owners and builders, this allows for the data to be more complete and useful. The only issue to consider when creating items for say ship masters, is that you need to have enough data to uniquely identify a person. Otherwise we risk creating 10 Richard Jones items where all of them might be the same person. If the source does not provide enough info, then we could consider going about it another way, e.g. a new property such as "ship master's name" (instead of a linked item). Danrok (talk) 13:02, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

mandatory properties[edit]

We say that it is mandatory to have a short name for an individual ship. I'm confused by this. What is a short name for a ship, compared to the normal name? How do we handle ships that had multiple names? For a ship like this Scottish ferry Q6720023 what should the short name and item name be? Should the item name be something fixed like its ISO number? Secretlondon (talk) 19:58, 20 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about being mandatory but one ship that I've worked on (Angelina the Great N (Q83648624) is often shortened to just ATGN in the company's documents and correspondence. --VileGecko (talk) 09:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

First try for a ship, reviewed needed[edit]

Hi,

I tried to add some data on Abel Tasman (Q20723138), can someone reviewed it? It's loosely based on Wikidata:WikiProject Ships/Properties but I'm not sure to understand everything, for example for length (P2043) and width (P2049), I used qualifiers which seemed more logical to me.

For the context, I intend to improve items about other ship who will be at Brest 2016 (Q20971895) (I'll be there).

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 10:15, 2 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Property proposal[edit]

See Wikidata:Property proposal/sister ship. Amqui (talk) 16:00, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Instance of what?[edit]

Vasco de Gama (Q1829694) is instance of Statendam-class cruise ship (Q19831393), which makes sense since that's the most specific subclass of ships. But most other ships are just instance of a ship type, like cruise ship (Q39804). Which way is best? Ghouston (talk) 22:53, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Flag, nationality[edit]

Hello, I saw there is properties such as port of registry and home port, however I don't see nothing about the countries. Websites such as www.marinetraffic.com give always the "flag" but not always the home port example https://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/7614848, you can read " Flag: Tanzania [TZ] " same thing in Commons; ships are always sailing under flags. Is there currently a property to indicate the registration country of a ship? Christian Ferrer (talk) 08:31, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Q1332978[edit]

I think that deadweight tonnage should be an available property for the ships, it is always given by specialist website such as www.marinetraffic.com, example [1], it is a characteristic of each ships. I wanted to post my request into Wikidata:WikiProject Ships/Properties missing, but I'm not sure to understand how work this page. Christian Ferrer (talk) 09:27, 25 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Property proposal: ENI number[edit]

See Wikidata:Property proposal/ENI number. -- Reise Reise (talk) 20:21, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Same ship by different names[edit]

What is the preferred method for dealing with ships that have multiple items due to being named differently at different points in their lives? Example: Varyag (Q16979335) and Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning (Q129200). It seems we can't rightly merge them since both Commons and some Wikis maintain separate articles for them. Also it doesn't seem appropriate to arbitrarily put one under the other. Should we have one item for the ship overall and then individual items for specific spans of that ship's history? Josh Baumgartner (talk) 23:50, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

tonnage (Q491774)[edit]

Abans de res vull reconèixer que no tinc ni idea de com demanar una propietat nova. Volia preguntar-vos sí és possible crear una nova propietat que representes tonnage (Q491774) para utilitzar-la com a «propietat contenidora». El motiu és que hi ha molts tipus de mesurar la capacitat d'un vaixell que han evolucionat amb el temps: de gross register tonnage (Q752079) s'ha passat a gross tonnage (Q2719498) i de net register tonnage (Q6998519) a net tonnage (Q1781855); amés s'han d'afegir altres sistemes minoritaris com Thames Measurement (Q1032316) o Builder's Old Measurement (Q1394540). Actualment només hi ha dues propietats per aquest mesurament: gross tonnage (P1093) i net tonnage (P2790), el que deixa sense possibilitar pujar a WD dades anteriors a l'entrada en vigor d'aquests sistemes de mesura. Davant d'aquesta mancança només trobo dues solucions, crear una propietat per cada tipus de mesurament o demanar una propietat més genèrica amb possibilitats de servir com a «contenidor» a l'estil de significant event (P793) utilitzant el qualificador criterion used (P1013) amb els possibles sistemes de mesura: gross tonnage (Q2719498), net tonnage (Q1781855), gross register tonnage (Q752079), net register tonnage (Q6998519)... Com ho veieu? Gràcies.--Kette~cawiki (talk) 20:46, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What are the best modelled items for your areas of interest?[edit]

Hi all

Over the past few months myself and others have been thinking about the best way to help people model subjects consistently on Wikidata and provide new contributors with a simple way to understand how to model content on different subjects. Our first solution is to provide some best practice examples of items for different subjects which we are calling Model items. E.g the item for William Shakespeare (Q692) is a good example to follow for creating items about playwright (Q214917). These model items are linked to from the item for the subject to make them easier to find and we have tried to make simple to understand instructions.

We would like subject matter experts to contribute their best examples of well modelled items. We are asking all the Wikiprojects to share with us the kinds of subjects you most commonly add information about and the best examples you have of this kind of item. We would like to have at least 5 model items for each subject to show the diversity of the subject e.g just having William Shakespeare (Q692) as a model item for playwright (Q214917), while helpful may not provide a good example for people trying to model modern poets from Asia.

You can add model items yourself by using the instructions at Wikidata:Model items. It may be helpful to have a discussion here to collate information first.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 15:46, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bulk import from AIS data?[edit]

Hi! I have accumulated a large amount of AIS data while working on an art project. You can see part of that effort on Twitter. Would Wikidata want a bulk import of ships and/or ports based on that data? For example, I could pretty easily extract something like every ship over 100m in length. Thanks, William Pietri (talk) 16:02, 7 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • @William Pietri: That would be very interesting! However, how authoritative is AIS data re static ship properties? And what data does it have about ports? In any case, I'd be interested to help; are you willing to share the raw data? --Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 10:44, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Vladimir Alexiev: It's not totally authoritative; it's whatever somebody typed into the shipboard AIS system. It seems to be pretty solid for larger ships, though. I'm happy to share the raw data, but as it includes a line from each ship every 30 seconds or so, it's in the range of terabytes. It might be better to start with something less raw, like data for every major ship that has passed through the SF Bay in the last 90 days. William Pietri (talk) 00:28, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @William Pietri: Sounds very interesting! We would appreciate it if you could provide us with the data, maybe the less raw version if you think that it is too big. Thanks!

Ship rechristening[edit]

Hi, being a very occassional Wikidata user without expertise in ships I left a question in Wikidata:Project chat#Alternative ship name: qualifier?. The answer was accompanied by an advise to check in with experts for another opinion, so here I am. Anyone willing to comment should feel free to move the text to the Ship project talk if that helps to settle the issue.

Btw, in tandem with my question I have proposed to take the act of renaming as the basic data type, not so much the actual name that a ship has at any given time. That's because of a data analist's love of clean data and not based on any knowledge of naval issues of course, so I will not engage in lengthy discussion on this topic. — bertux 19:15, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maintenance after data import[edit]

Feel free to add yourself to this list. User:Danrok Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) Rama Christian Ferrer Nortix08 Andrawaag Cavernia De728631 Vladimir Alexiev , 7 January 2021 simon.letort ShipIndex vicarage Pmt pfps

Notified participants of WikiProject Ships Thousands of ship items have been created or updated by fetching ship data from external sources. In addition, a new property is introduced to restructure the links to Commons (category for ship name (P7782)).

Detect and merge duplicate items
By running a query I found that 3638 items has a label containing "IMO" without having IMO ship number (P458) set, and when comparing this to the list of all IMO numbers, I found 626 duplicates. Using QuickStatements is appearently the easiest way to merge the items, but in a lot of cases both items have a link to Commons (IMO and ship name). As only one link is allowed, this will not leave the item empty, which eventually makes the redirect fail. Any good idea to a workaround here? --Cavernia (talk) 11:41, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Cavernia: The items linked to via category for ship name (P7782) should be instance of (P31)=Wikimedia category (Q4167836), and probably shouldn't have IMO numbers in the category item. Pi bot will create new category items based on the IMO categories on Commons, so providing the ship name commons category is within the IMO commons category then it should be fine to remove the ship name commons category and merge the items. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:48, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Peel: Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. Yes, removing the links to the ship name categories is the solution here, but I don't know how to make the script to do that. --Cavernia (talk) 15:45, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Cavernia: If you have a list of QIDs, I can run through them with python. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:54, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Peel: As I now have added IMO ship number (P458) to all the unique entries, the query should now only return the duplicates. I can't guarantee there are some entries which only have the link to the IMO category, so maybe your script can skip deletion of these sitelinks? --Cavernia (talk) 17:57, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Cavernia: OK, I'm starting to work through these. There seem to be some complicated cases, so I'm stepping through them slowly, the python script will merge the duplicates as I go. One issue I've spotted is that you seem to be creating new duplicates, e.g. Hanna (Q83557036), please add the information to the existing item rather than creating a new one! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:52, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Peel: Yes, I knew there was a chance that I was going to make some duplicates when running the batch that created about 5.000 new ship items, but since I did not link them to Commons, they should be easy to merge. However, I had underestimated how many Commons Category items there were recently created without IMO ship number (P458) set. Of course, I should have added the IMO numbers first, then imported the rest. --Cavernia (talk) 20:31, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Cavernia, MB-one: Fair enough. Most of the cases should now be fixed, there are 37 that remain and need manual checking. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:17, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Peel: Thanks! I will look into the remaining duplicates. --Cavernia (talk) 22:22, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Remove duplicate entries
Data has been imported to items that already contained data, and when the value is not identical (i.e. 89,0 m instead of 89 m), a new entry is created.
To make it easier to detect the items with duplicate entries, the following queries can be used:

- duplicate entries for length (P2043)
- duplicate entries for width (P2049)
- duplicate entries for draft (P2262)
- duplicate entries for payload mass (P4519)
- duplicate entries for gross tonnage (P1093)

We also have more than 2000 ship items with mass (P2067) set, which is the wrong place for deadweight. My suggestion is to delete all the entries. --Cavernia (talk) 22:22, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Completing existing items with images and data
There are now thousands of ship items linked to a Commons category, but with no image set. This process can't be fully automated as not all images can be used. In 2018 I found a way to do this semi-automated, when I get time I will try to run this process over again. I'm still working on completing other data from external sources, like manufacturer (P176), service entry (P729), yard number (P617) and port of registry (P532). --Cavernia (talk) 22:22, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus about container capasity
twenty-foot equivalent unit (Q488021) is a unit for measuring the capacity of a container ship. When considering adding this to a ship item, I find several properties in use:

The last one is the one I would prefer, but twenty-foot equivalent unit (Q488021) is not an allowed unit for this property. --Cavernia (talk) 10:04, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Mismatches
When matching ship data from external databases to existing items, some mismatches have been detected.
@MB-one‎: Can you check Mackinac Bridge (Q12568), Hyundai Grace (Q623562), Henry Hudson Bridge (Q7718385), Jakarta Tower (Q1431627), Category:Railway companies of the Czech Republic (Q9675779), Quebec Express (Q3062271), San Francisco Bay Bridge (Q60083618), GrandVision (Q15812731), COSCO Shipping Ports (Q5013500), Christopher (Q30601121) and Lotus (Q28220408)? --Cavernia (talk) 18:04, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ship names used more than once
Many ships have been imported with not only the current name, but historical names as well. Some ships have had the same name during several periods, which makes a technical challenge when importing the start and stop date as these qualificators then will be added to the existing entry. Example Ant (Q52329748). Is it better to remove all the entries, then import them again using the new QuickStatement tool? --Cavernia (talk) 17:46, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ship breaking
There are now two different ways to add information about ship breaking:

Which is preferable? --Cavernia (talk) 17:46, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Forms in Cradle[edit]

Hello,

I asked if someone is interested in creating forms in Wikidata:Cradle for a specific topic in the Project Chat. I think that forms are a way to easy create an item. Is someone here interested in creating a form. Please tell me what you think about that. -- Hogü-456 (talk) 20:38, 4 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

IMO numbers and ship names[edit]

(Discussion moved from Talk:Q885761:

@De728631: With the creation of category for ship name (P7782), the idea is that we sitelink the main item to the Commons category for the IMO number (here, c:Category:IMO 9186338), and then have a separate 'category' item for the ship name, here Category:Blue Marlin (ship, 2000) (Q83954886), which links to c:Category:Blue Marlin (ship, 2000) - more can then be added to handle the multiple names the ship has been known under. That way we can have infoboxes in both categories (ideally getting rid of the manual text in the IMO category in this case). Does that make sense? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:10, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Peel: Imho it would make sense if there weren't dedicated WD items for the IMO categories too. These should rather be linked to existing IMO categories at Commons, but it won't work if Commons Category:IMO 6789123 is already linked to another item at Wikidata. Moreover, a ship may change its name while the IMO number is retained throughout the lifetime of the hull. So, I'm sorry but having one name item as "the main item" to sitelink to the IMO number doesn't make sense at all to me. De728631 (talk) 20:06, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@De728631: "if there weren't dedicated WD items for the IMO categories too" - as far as I'm aware there aren't dedicated items for IMO categories? Can you point to an example, please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:09, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Peel: E.g. Q28228009, Q1406414, Q25386771 and so forth. De728631 (talk) 20:29, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@De728631: Thanks. I have questions. Those items seem to be analogous to this one: they are summarising the ship, but the English labels aren't matching what I would call the 'common name' of the ship based on the sitelinks, which seems odd. Should this item be renamed to 'IMO 9186338'? More tomorrow. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:49, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Peel: If the item refers to an IMO number then the label should reflect it and not reference one single name. And the common name may or may not inlude prefixes like MV, MS or some such, if that is what bothers you. Sitelinking is another common issue though with IMO numbers. Some people seem to think that it is a good idea to link Wikipedia articles for a specific ship name to the IMO number. The misconception seems to be that where there is one article on a ship, it is synonymous with the IMO number. I have now fixed this problem for the three items above, and placed the interwiki links into the item of the relevant ship name. Now for this item, I wouldn't rename it to 'IMO 9186338' but rather leave it at the current label and remove the link to the IMO Commons category. I think IMO number items can be used to collect renamed ships, and a ship name item should be an "instance of" 'IMO 9186338'. This is especially useful for renamed ships, and very basic properties that don't change throughout the ship's lifetime, like inception, subclass of, manufacturer, yard number etc. may then be used in the IMO item. Name-specific properties like port of registry, call sign and so on should be put into the named item.
On another note, I think it would be prudent to make Property:P458 fit into the "instance of" class. That way it would not only be an identifier for a specific ship name, but could also serve as a container for the IMO items. Would that be technically possible? De728631 (talk) 22:21, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@De728631: I think there's a few misconceptions there - in particular, article sitelinks should not be on category items, and there's no point creating items for IMO numbers as well as the ships themselves. Would it be OK if we moved this discussion to Wikidata talk:WikiProject Ships to get more views? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:36, 23 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Peel: I haven't seen any article sitelinks on category items yet as in "Category:XYZ (Q12345)", and this also not what I meant above. As to "there's no point creating items for IMO numbers as well as the ships themselves", I have to agree that we don't really need IMO number items – IMO category items will suppposedly be created though to match the categories at Commons. Ships, however, may change their name and purpose throughout the lifetime of the hull, the hull may be elongated or shortened once a ships gets sold and renamed, whereas the IMO No. will remain the same all the time. So ships do need to have their individual WD items which may well share the same IMO identifier. But please feel free to move this discussion as it could benefit from more input. De728631 (talk) 18:02, 23 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@De728631: Moved, I hope others can comment on this, particularly @Cavernia, MB-one: given the thread above. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:24, 23 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
MS Iona (Q28228009) is just an item for the ship, which for some reason has been labelled with the IMO number instead of the current name, as is usually done. Ghouston (talk) 00:19, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The odd thing with the "IMO items" listed above, is that Wikipedia articles have been linked to category items, which is wrong of course. I fixed MS Iona (Q28228009). Ghouston (talk) 00:24, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Home/Registry Port vs City/Country[edit]

Feel free to add yourself to this list. User:Danrok Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) Rama Christian Ferrer Nortix08 Andrawaag Cavernia De728631 Vladimir Alexiev , 7 January 2021 simon.letort ShipIndex vicarage Pmt pfps

Notified participants of WikiProject Ships

Susannaanas
Jura
Lymantria
pmt
Esquilo
Vanbasten_23
Akuckartz
Bluerasberry
MSGJ
PtiBzh

Notified participants of WikiProject Lighthouses

In many cases marine cities or even small marine nations are used as "home port" or "port of registry": https://w.wiki/tVw counts 20.8k such cases. Examples:

  • Q3141 Melbourne instead of Q2038062 Port of Melbourne
  • Q4450503 Tallinn City instead of Q11133776 Tallinn Passenger Port aka Tallinn’s Old City Harbour.
  • Q3306 Panama City instead of Q6092230 Puerto de Balboa
  • Singapore instead of an appropriate port in that country

Eg Panama City is often used as a port. Query https://w.wiki/tVn selects the city plus all ports in Panama, and shows them on a map. 4 of the ports are at the entry and exit of the Panama Canal, and Panama City is distinct from them, and is not a port. Therefore it's incorrect to say that the port of a ship is Panama City. (See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T271403 for a screen-shot of that map).


There are two ways to fix this:

  1. Add the type "Port" to all cities or small countries that are home or registry port of some ships (at least 10)
  2. Change the ship to point to the correct port, but that is hard to impossible:
    • There are 2 ports close to Panama City, but the correct one is Q6092230 Puerto de Balboa (the other one is a US base)
    • Q980219 Port of Tallinn is a *company* that manages five constituent ports, and two of them are in Tallinn. It takes human intelligence to figure out that the first one below is more appropriate as home port of (big) ships:
      • Tallinn Passenger Port / Old City Harbour (Vanasadam) – the main passenger harbour in Estonia; located in the centre of Tallinn; one of the busiest passenger ports of the Baltic Sea
      • Paljassaare Harbour – a small cargo harbour a few kilometres northwest of Tallinn city centre in Paljassaare

Therefore I tend towards the first solution. Do you agree? --Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 10:23, 7 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

BTW Wikidata:Property_proposal/Port_Letter suggests that the "port of registry" isn't necessarily an actual "port". --- Jura 12:26, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There are 401 entity types used as port, but not declared "port" https://w.wiki/tWD. Top 20 (the count is by number of uses as port) --Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 16:41, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • 10543 city
  • 10249 big city
  • 7898 capital
  • 4698 port settlement <<<< but not a port?
  • 4040 city with millions of inhabitants
  • 1813 town
  • 1346 urban municipality of Germany
  • 1232 metropolitan area
  • 1218 Hanseatic city
  • 1209 border town
  • 1116 commune of France
  • 1113 local council of Malta
  • 1089 city-state
  • 1088 administrative territorial entity
  • 933 college town
  • 784 special administrative region of China
  • 739 sovereign state
  • 731 country
  • 728 island nation
  • 706 metropolis
  • 695 independent city of Germany
  • 690 human settlement
  • 608 populated place in the Netherlands
  • 608 community
Yes, that's possible but would it not be better to declare the above geographic entities to be "ports"?
"If it quacks then it's a duck" Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 12:23, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Extraction progress ?[edit]

Feel free to add yourself to this list. User:Danrok Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) Rama Christian Ferrer Nortix08 Andrawaag Cavernia De728631 Vladimir Alexiev , 7 January 2021 simon.letort ShipIndex vicarage Pmt pfps

Notified participants of WikiProject Ships

Is the project keeping a track of what may or may not have been scraped yet from English Wikipedia ?

In connection with the new Wikidata:WikiProject EMEW (Early Modern England and Wales, ca. 1500-1700), I tried this query https://w.wiki/$Vj to see what ships I could identify from the period -- and was surprised at how little I seemed to be able to get back.

Having been pointed to en:Category:1650s ships, and comparing a page like en:English_ship_Antelope_(1651) with what's at Antelope (Q5378637), it looks like very little from the infobox has yet made it to wikidata.

I think this is a job that eg Pasleim's harvest tool can do, maybe also in conjunction with m:Petscan for targeting, but I'm way over-committed already trying to get WikiProject EMEW into some sort of shape before the exciting new external ViaeRegiae.org project kicks into mass-participation mode in about ten days time.

Is there any chance somebody could look into this, and maybe also set up a progress bar for how much has been done? Appreciated, Jheald (talk) 08:39, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Map of watercrafts' home ports[edit]

Feel free to add yourself to this list. User:Danrok Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) Rama Christian Ferrer Nortix08 Andrawaag Cavernia De728631 Vladimir Alexiev , 7 January 2021 simon.letort ShipIndex vicarage Pmt pfps

Notified participants of WikiProject Ships

Hi,

Fyi, I created a map of watercraft (Q1229765) home ports (P504)

It is based on the SPARQL query example Map and list of municipalities in The Netherlands 

#Map of all watercraft (Q1229765) home ports (P504)
#boat = wikidata item id (qid)
#home_portLabel = home port name
#home_port_coord = home port coordinates
#boatLabel = wikidata item name
#boat_name (optional) = boat name
#image (optional) = picture

#defaultView:Map
SELECT DISTINCT ?boat ?boatLabel ?boat_name ?instance_ofLabel ?home_portLabel ?image ?home_port_coord WHERE {
  ?boat wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q1229765; #'?boat' are 'instance of'(P31) and any number of 'subclass of' (P279*) of 'watercraft'(Q1229765)
        wdt:P31 ?instance_of; #'?boat' 'instance of' (P31) are '?instance_of'
        wdt:P504 ?home_port . #'?boat' 'home port' (P504) are '?home_port'
  #filter out home ports that are no longer current (home port (P504) with an 'end time' qualifier (P582))
  ?boat p:P504 ?statement1 .
  ?statement1 ps:P504 ?home_port .
  FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?statement1 pq:P582 ?x }
  ?home_port wdt:P625 ?home_port_coord. #'?home_port' 'coordinate location' (P625) are '?home_port_coord'
  
  OPTIONAL { ?boat wdt:P18 ?image . } 
  
  #'?boat" 'short name' (P1813) are '?boat_name'
  #filter out names that are no longer current (short name (P1813) with an 'end time' qualifier (P582))
  OPTIONAL {
    ?boat wdt:P1813 ?boat_name.
    ?boat p:P1813 ?statement2 .
    ?statement2 ps:P1813 ?boat_name .
    FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?statement2 pq:P582 ?x } 
  }  
  
  #xxxLabel is the label for any variable called xxx
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". }
}
Try it!

Simon.letort (talk) 23:37, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

HMS for A Naval Biographical Dictionary (Q16055052)[edit]

A Naval Biographical Dictionary (Q16055052) includes details of ship appointments of officers it covers (list of entries). The ca. 5000 people served in the Royal Navy (Q172771) between 1769 and 1849.

I added a few member of the crew of (P5096) statements, e.g. Q24036597#P5096 based on s:A_Naval_Biographical_Dictionary/Yule,_Robert. This gives Help:Import_NBD_from_enwikisource/lists/ships.

For 1848/1849, there are also detailed lists: s:A Naval Biographical Dictionary/Appointments to Ships A etc.

I noticed that:

It would be great to generate missing items and complete descriptions based on w:Category:Royal Navy ship names.

Feel free to add yourself to this list. User:Danrok Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) Rama Christian Ferrer Nortix08 Andrawaag Cavernia De728631 Vladimir Alexiev , 7 January 2021 simon.letort ShipIndex vicarage Pmt pfps

Notified participants of WikiProject Ships --- Jura 10:55, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Where to enter properties "port of registry", "home port" and "country of registry"[edit]

Ein Dahmer and I have a discussion about which item to use for information about the port of registry and home country properties. While I think it should be added to the item dealing with the ship name, e.g. MV Blue Marlin, Ein Dahmer thinks that the intention of the coders was to put it at an item for the IMO number like Q197577. As of now, the former method seems to be common practice at Wikidata though. I can see the benefit of using an IMO item as a central registry for all information pertaining to a ship's hull but on the other hand, a port of registry or home port are generally associated with a ship's name and not with an abstract database entry like the IMO number. De728631 (talk) 19:45, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with De728631! All unchangeable data of a ship, like IMO or ENI number, shipyard, year of build, type, ship particulars and at least ship breaking, should be part of the resp. IMO/ENI item. All changeable data in a ships lifetime, like name, flag, port of registry, call sign, owner and/or operator, should be part of the subsequent ship name item. --Ein Dahmer (talk) 16:38, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think there should be multiple items for the same ship.
Q108172409 should only be for a category and labelled accordingly ("Category:Mediterranean Glory (ship, 2004)"). The category will only have a instance of (P31) = Wikimedia category (Q4167836) and two category combines topics (P971) statements, one with the value ship name (Q56351075), the other with the item for the ship. Maybe the description of category for ship name (P7782) should make this clear.
All data about the ship should be on Q1672572 (item that can have several aliases and a label depending on its multiple names). Creating multiple items as instances of oil tanker (Q14928) for the same ship creates substantial database problem.
Two other items seem to duplicate this: Q108332597 (currently labelled "Category:Mediterranean Glory (ship, 2004)") and Q108172363 (labelled "IMO 9285823" as Q1672572).
One shouldn't repurpose category items to instances of Wikimedia category (Q4167836) or the reverse.
@Mike_Peel: there seems to be some confusion around the property you proposed, can you clarify?
Notified participants of WikiProject Ships --- Jura 22:17, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And where do we then link interwiki entries for different ship names of the same hull or categories and articles for the same ship name? "Category:Some Name (ship, 2011)" only makes sense if it is linked to other Wikimedia categories. See e.g. Titanic which has an article for the ship and a dedicated category like Category:RMS Titanic in more than 50 languages. De728631 (talk) 22:44, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. It's currently linked at Q25173#P910. Should it go to category for ship name (P7782)? --- Jura 23:07, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
An example of how it was meant to work was Astrid (Q750516) - this is the main item for the ship, and links to the Commons IMO number, which is the main category for the ship (don't ask me why Commons does that, but as long as they do, we should reflect it here). Then you have Category:Astrid (ship, 1918) (Q83564910), which is just for the category for the name of the ship - which is a subcategory on Commons. All information about the ship should go on the main item, as you can derive it when looking at the category item (which is what the infobox on Commons does). I don't think that Category:RMS Titanic (Q8617195) should be linked to from category for ship name (P7782) - since that's the main category for that ship, but it should link to the IMO category on Commons if available. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:56, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You wrote: "I don't think that Category:RMS Titanic (Q8617195) should be linked to from category for ship name (P7782) - since that's the main category for that ship, but it should link to the IMO category on Commons if available." That is not going to work for ships older than, say, the 1950s, because they don't have any IMO numbers. So the wikilinks should always correspond to the items at Wikidata, i.e. ship name to ship name and IMO category to IMO category. That said, the purpose of IMO categories at Commons is to have a container for ships of the same IMO number while the ship name, call sign, MMSI and so on may change throughout the hull's lifetime. De728631 (talk) 15:07, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That seems to be a good model, every data corresponding to one specific name can be added with qualifiers if needed. The issue being if one Wiki has for various reasons one article for the Irene SL and one for the Gilos. Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:26, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure if this is what you are suggesting, but the three properties above shouldn't be used as qualifier to P1448 statements, but are defined as main statements. --- Jura 11:45, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We should not create multiple items for different names of the same ship. We don't create a new item when a woman gets married and changes her name, and Caitlyn Jenner (Q365144) is still only one item. --Cavernia (talk) 20:18, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We do, however, create new categories at Commons and new articles at Wikipedia for different ship names of the same hull. So this needs to be reflected at Wikidata. De728631 (talk) 15:56, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In the first place, and if we forget Wikimedia Commons, the question is: do we create two different items if e.g. a Wikipedia have two articles for the same ship under two differents names. If yes, how to link those two items to the main IMO item (subclass? a dedicated property?), in all case if it is yes, then the sitelinks issue is resolved. If no, how to link two articles to the same item, impossible with the current sitelink system, so how? a new variety of sitelinks as qualifiers? possible? or maybe dedicated properties such as Commons category (P373) for Commons, and a new one for the articles, to be used of qualifiers for official name (P1448)? Christian Ferrer (talk) 18:16, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The current setup using the sitelinks and category for ship name (P7782) works fine. P373 sucks - it's only one directional, so you can't access it from the Commons category it links to, and remember that Wikidata info is used in the categories there via the infobox. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:56, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please check/fix/… IMO 7516773[edit]

Hi folks, I just spontaneosly wanted to upload 2 older images of a ship with missing images on Commons, and now I'm completely lost with data modeling … would appreciate if somebody had a look at:

I have the impression that Silesia claims the whole history of this ship and that the Wikidata item should not be named Silesia (moved some of the cats@Commons already, but I don't want to break some structure I don't fully understand ;-) So I restrained myself from creating a new item for my new ship reincarnation.

Thanks for help. --Elya (talk) 18:57, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I feel that this is a complete sub-world of data you could get hooked on, but I won't join ;-)

ships with ENI and IMO Commons categories[edit]

What the plan for categories like c:Category:ENI_02335843?

Currently this is linked at Q108744221. --- Jura 15:16, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Summer draft[edit]

I strongly believe that the property summer draft should be used instead of just draft (P2262) as the latter one is not a constant value while the former is considered to be one of the most important of the ship properties. Properties for other load lines (TF, F, T, W, WNA) could also be created. --VileGecko (talk) 09:09, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It would seem the term draft is poorly defined both on Wikidata as well as in the real world. Not only does it change with the cargo and fuel oil load of the ship, but also with the density of the water which is affected by the salinity and temperature of the water as you pointed out. The draft will also change depending on where on the hull you measure it. So it would seem that draft is actually a range, not a particular value. That begs the question, what do people mean when the specify a value anyways? I suspect this is the mean draft for a fully loaded ship, but maybe someone is more familiar with what's the typical measure. Introducing yet another property won't help here, what needs to be done is making the definition on the existing property match better with common usage. Infrastruktur (talk) 14:07, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good chance it's summer draft people mean when they say draft, as it's the worst-case value that is most useful. Infrastruktur (talk) 14:33, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Summer draft is not the deepest allowable draft for a given ship - there are also tropical (T), fresh (F) and tropical fresh (TF) load lines which allow for a greater draft than the summer draft; there also may be timber load lines which allow for even greater drafts when carriyng timber. The point is that the ship's draft should never exceed the set limitations anywhere across her length when traveling within a corresponding climate zone. In other words load lines are limits which are not necessarily reached. But it is the summer draft which is considered the baseline or design draft, all other load lines are derived from the summer load line, and Plimsol mark is located at the same level as the summer load line. Antifouling paint is also in most cases applied up to this line. Also by deadweight (Q1332978) it is the summer deadweight which is always implied unless stated otherwise.
Draft itself is always a definite value and not a range, but fore, middle and aft drafts may and most often are different from each other hence the trim and hogging/sagging. VileGecko (talk) 09:02, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see load lines were introduced around 1870, so I'm guessing the draft property can't be renamed since summer draft would not apply to ships before that date, but I think it can be redefined to say "summer draft implied unless stated otherwise", then the actual type of draft can be given using a qualifier. This way you can reuse the existing draft property for many different draft types. Q-items for the other draft types would have to be made, but that's easy enough. Do you like this approach? It's very similar to your original proposal, except it uses qualifiers instead of new properties. Infrastruktur (talk) 15:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a unsure which generic qualifier to use though, maybe has characteristic (P1552) is appropriate? This will show as Queen Mary 2 (Q191888)draft (P2262)10.3 metrehas characteristic (P1552)summer draft (Q7637478) Infrastruktur (talk) 15:47, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, maybe object has role (P3831) is a better qualifier. Queen Mary 2 (Q191888)draft (P2262)10.3 metreobject has role (P3831)summer draft (Q7637478) Infrastruktur (talk) 15:48, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As i alluded to previously, suggestions for new properties tend to get down-voted when there is an existing property that can be used. However there's no need to ask for permission to create new Q-items to be used with qualifiers, so just go ahead and add those if you like. I already changed the description for the draft property to say that summer draft is implied, unless there's a qualifier saying differently. Infrastruktur (talk) 10:56, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Container capacity[edit]

I was posting this question as a part of a longer discussion 2 years ago, repeating it now:

twenty-foot equivalent unit (Q488021) is a unit for measuring the capacity of a container ship. When considering adding this to a ship item, I find several properties in use:

The last one is the one I would prefer, but twenty-foot equivalent unit (Q488021) is not an allowed unit for this property.

What is the best solution here? Do we need a new property? --Cavernia (talk) 16:56, 20 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I did not check to see if the ones you listed are the only ones yet. For the ones you list, P1083 is intended for people which disqualifies it. P2957 could be used for container ports (TEUs per year @ point in time), but is not really suitable for ships as this measures throughput and not volume, which is different. Both P2234 and P1114 could be used I suppose, of those P2234 seems the more suitable. Ideally we should have a property similar to P1083 but which is intended for cargo instead, but in the meantime "TEU" could be added to the list of allowed volume units for P2234. Infrastruktur (talk) 12:06, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
tonnage (Q491774) could have a linked property, though its description better fits its alias cargo capacity than tonnage. We also have payload (Q7641034) with alias payload capacity. You could have a cargo capacity property that could be 10000 tons or 300 TEU or 1000 cars, and make it broad enough for all modes of transport, then migrate payload mass (P4519) to it. Or if unitised properties should be convertible, then have a payload_volume property. Vicarage (talk) 12:30, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree on the need for a new property. Although P4519 measures mass and not volume. For some modes of transportation like airplanes (which have a maximum takeoff and landing weight) this difference is important. Infrastruktur (talk) 13:03, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, need both mass and volume measures. I guess container ships do check that their container masses, but its just not a common limiting factor. When mentally thinking of transport modes capacities, its people, mass and volume (TEU, barrels) I think of. I don't think other SI units like time, energy come into it. I don't think the other meanings of payload (viruses etc) cause a problem. Specialist vehicles like submarines or ferries can be defined by the number of distinct things they can take (missiles, cars), but you'd not use these general terms for them. Vicarage (talk) 13:26, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Two data schems for ships[edit]

Fig.1
Fig.2

Which of the two data schemes is correct? Fig.1, Fig.2 or both? Thanks --JotaCartas (talk) 01:20, 10 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Categorising hovercraft[edit]

I thought I understood this, but I'm not sure now.

The Griffon Hoverwork 12000TD (Q112775563) is a model of Hovercraft. I set it as instance of ship class, and subclass of Hovercraft.

Island Flyer (Q112775604) has vessel class Griffon Hoverwork 12000TD. Wikidata complains that it needs a short name, and an operator. The operator obviously varies depending on who it was sold to - shouldn't that be on the vessel not the class? I don't know what the short name would be. Secretlondon (talk) 19:12, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed Three Decks ship id[edit]

I've proposed Wikidata:Property_proposal/Three_Decks_ship_ID. Please support it.Vicarage (talk) 15:14, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Created Vicarage (talk) 08:24, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

coordinates for ships[edit]

I'm working on the principle that ships should only have coordinate location (P625) when they have has use (P366) museum ship (Q575727) or are instance of (P31) shipwreck (Q852190). Can anyone think of any other properties we use, for the likes of static ships, before I mark all ships with co-ordinates that are not museum ships as shipwrecks, and try to find then in databases like Wrecksite (Q85816306) Vicarage (talk) 16:16, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

botel (Q1631162) is one Vicarage (talk) 16:36, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Removing conflict property from ship classes[edit]

Currently all 285 ship classes that have a conflict (P607) have an issue because ship class (Q559026) is not on the approved list. I think I agree with that, as only ships, not their classes, can be involved in a conflict. I plan to remove all such statements. Queries could be formulated with service entry/retirement dates to find which classes were around for a particular war. Vicarage (talk) 16:19, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Replica ships[edit]

I'm seeing a fair few museum_ship entries which conflate the replica ship with the original, as they are described by the same wikipedia article. But then the properties are conflated, ships are launched twice, can be shipwrecks in a fixed location or sailing around from a home port. I think the best think would be to create new entries for the replicas. Vicarage (talk) 20:37, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Removing caveats in ship names[edit]

Wikipedia has to have caveats in ship names to keep the articles distinct, so you have HMS Victory (1732), HMS Victory (J12), French ship Victory, ocean liner Victory. This is not needed in wikidata provided the description differs, so I suggest we move the caveat information into the entry as pennant/hull number, operator, launch date etc, and just refer to the ship as their crew would. Anyone wanting the longer form could build it from a combination of name and the other fields. This removes the parochialism of getting the name from a particular language wiki, as the French won't refer to something as "French ship...". I would also remove the caveat versions from the aliases, which should really be reserved for the names of ships at different points in its life when renamed by other navies or companies Vicarage (talk) 07:17, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Participant_in or conflicts[edit]

Both participant in (P1344) and conflict (P607) are uses for ships and people. My inclination would be to have participant in (P1344) for tactical events like operations and battles, and conflict (P607) for strategic ones like campaigns and wars. Vicarage (talk) 08:05, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

IMO-number validator[edit]

Made a little query to validate the IMO-numbers of ships and shipping companies. https://w.wiki/5gyH Wasn't sure where to put it, so I put it here. Have fun with it. Infrastruktur (talk) 02:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is now set up to run at regular intervals, and output a report here: Wikidata:Database_reports/Complex_constraint_violations/P458 . Infrastruktur (talk) 13:40, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wrecksite not interested in working with Wikidata[edit]

I contacted Wrecksite (Q85816306) about working with wikidata, and after a month delay I got a response from Jan Lettens: "Sorry, but we have no time or resources to do that" Vicarage (talk) 07:59, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe there is a possibility to use their database without their effort. What kind of information do you want to include in Wikidata? Cavernia (talk) 11:23, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Initially just a link to their database for every wreck. But with so many duplicate ship names, and their wanting to hide co-ords behind a subscriber wall, co-operation would have been much easier than scraping. But I've plenty of other ideas to work on first. Vicarage (talk) 13:35, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For ships with IMO-number it should be easy to scrap the data and connect it to Wikidata. For the rest I'm afraid the matching must (at least partially) be done manually. --Cavernia (talk) 10:43, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Expounder - a Wikidata ship visualiser[edit]

I am developing http://expounder.info, a site that takes Wikidata that interests me (at the moment ships, forts, SF fandom) and displays it in a friendlier fashion. It could be adapted to any sub-area of WD. Let me know what you think. Vicarage (talk) 07:58, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

country of origin vs country of registry vs country[edit]

Ships often change country and operator and registration. country of origin (P495) seems best for where a ship was built (and the country name as is was at that time), operator (P137) for how its used, with country of origin (P495) to catch all those older ships that were not part of big lines, and obscure merchantmen with naval careers, with country of registry (P8047) reserved for modern (C20th onwards) ships that are actually part of a registry, as the registry changes with its country name. country (P17) should be used for museum ships or notable shipwreck diving sites to tie into their modern use. This proposal would mean a reduction in the often abused country of registry (P8047) for older ships, replaced with country of origin (P495) which can deduced from shipyard location. Vicarage (talk) 08:39, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure adding country of origin (P495) to ship items is needed, as this is indirectly available through manufacturer (P176). A bigger problem in my opinion, is that ships change names all the time. I've generated som list of ships built at one particular yard (example), and most of the ship items have different labels compared to the names the ships had when delivered from the yard. When creating such a list, it would make more sense to use the "christian name", but we don't have a property for that. Cavernia (talk) 12:24, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I did consider having a name list for ships, as the current approach of using the aliases field gets tripped up with other uses like removing accents . I do think we should have one item per ship, unlike some who want a new entry when a ship is sold to a different navy, as can be seen on wikipedia. I'd start with significant_events for transfers that record the new name, and then populate a names list from that to save duplication of change dates. Vicarage (talk) 13:42, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think having one item per ship is only viable for modern ships with an IMO number as common identifier. An IMO number as the Wikidata item may use official name together with start time and end time for each name that was given during the lifetime of the hull. Historical ships, however, that did not have an IMO No. but were e.g. captured in battle and renamed would still need multiple items. De728631 (talk) 01:01, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Some ships changed hands three or more times, even for a few days, and just for that reason should be one entity, else you have big disconnects between launch date and manufacturer and service entry dates, or two item with identical properties bar a date range. You want to tell the story of the ship in one item, not a series of linked ones. Vicarage (talk) 03:07, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree that we only need one item per physical ship. What we need is to establish solid standards of how to put the ship names into the ship items, and - if possible - make functionality to be selective when fetching the ship name from the item. When working with shipyard lists, it makes sense to use the name that the ship got when delivered from the yard. When creating a fleet list for a shipping line, it makes sense to use the name the ship had when it was in the fleet. When making a list of ships being scrapped, it makes sense to use the last ship name. --Cavernia (talk) 10:57, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
See a later thread where I'm implementing my copy from manufacturer. I'm also using official name (P1448) with operator (P137) caveats Vicarage (talk) 11:30, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Manufacturer vs. location of creation[edit]

There are two properties used to indicate where a ship was built, manufacturer (P176) and location of creation (P1071). However, there is a lack of consistancy in the use of the two properties.
Examples:

Until the end of the 20th century, the common situation was that one yard was one company. Today there are big industrial conglomerates buying and selling shipyards, like Damen Group (Q950580), Hyundai Heavy Industries (Q483231) and STX Europe (Q494839). We also have yards (example Kleven Verft (Q1774285)) that went into bankruptcy, and another company bought the premises and continued the operations. Mostly, the Wikipedia articles are about the physical yard, and then describing which companies that owned and operated the yard. As with ships with different names/flags/owners, I don't see a need to split the yard items into separate items per owner. What we should agree on is how to use the current properties. Another confusion occurs when the hull is built one place, and the outfit another place. If we look to DNV (Q18455539), they use Hull yard, Outfitting yard and Contracted builder. Cavernia (talk) 11:33, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For HMS Beagle (Q35926) its the problem of deducing a place from an administrative region. Its hard to predict the size of region people will encode, and in modern terms Woolwich is part of the London borough of Greenwich, but I doubt that was the view when the ship was built, and its not in my head. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#Manufacturing_by_people/places shows the issue of a Manufacturer being a person, a place, or as you say a company with many shipyards. I'd support shipyard (Q190928) becoming a property to clarify that. I think the convoluted route bits of ships now take, with even aircraft carriers built in lumps, is probably to hard to model, so I'd keep it with the yard that actually launched the final hull as being true for all ships, and the keen could add outfitting places.
We could remove location of creation (P1071) and indeed country (P17) and rely on deducing that from a shipyard property but that would be offputting to the casual viewer. In the same way many entries have a country clearly even though that could be deduced, just for convenience when writing queries. Queries are far more likely to filter on country (P17) than location of creation (P1071). Vicarage (talk) 12:29, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I agree with you about connecting manufacturer (P176) to the physical yard. But do we need Contracted builder as a new property? --Cavernia (talk) 13:05, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should always push back against new properties, so no. Buildings have main building contractor (P193), I'd rather broaden that. Vicarage (talk) 13:54, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, it's a good idea to use main building contractor (P193). --Cavernia (talk) 14:43, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

End date of a ship[edit]

There is a consensus to use service entry (P729) to indicate the year a ship was built. However, there is no consensus about how to add information about end date. Personally I have used service retirement (P730) and then the qualifier has cause (P828) to add information about the cause (ship breaking (Q336332), shipwrecking (Q906512), ship collision (Q2192508) etc). I chose service retirement (P730) because it is the complementary property (P8882) of service entry (P729).
More information could be added by using qualifiers, like:

However, other contributors have used significant event (P793), or end time (P582) with qualifier end cause (P1534). We should also keep in mind that some ships are restored after fatal indicents (example: MV Rocknes (Q6720002)), and some ships are only partially scrapped and reused as barges (example: Fri Star (Q83631832)). Cavernia (talk) 13:02, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

service retirement (P730) to me is the end of the period of the ship doing what it was designed for. Which for a warship is the end of its last period of commission, and for commercial ship last cargo voyage. And there can be a long period before its actually scrapped (You could argue for HMS Unicorn (Q489413) its 198 years and counting!). I'd like to have the significant event (P793) being the definitive source, with the other things derived from it. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property_talk:P793 attempted a categorisation, and I have problems with some it, but I'd attempt to get that consistent first. I'd have order (Q566889), keel laying (Q14592615), ship launching (Q596643), (ship commissioning (Q14475832) or ship completed (Q27581330) and at a pinch maiden voyage (Q1501837)), ship reclassification (Q21725151), transfer (Q315364), ship decommissioning (Q7497952) and either destruction (Q17781833) with a range of qualifiers shipwrecking (Q906512), retirement (Q946865), scuttling (Q1786766) ship breaking (Q336332) or the feeble ship disposal (Q7497950). That can leave a shipwreck (Q852190), museum ship (Q575727), botel (Q1631162) or it being a houseboat or wasting away. Add a country (P17) if it still exists. We can have other qualifiers for operator (P137),point in time (P585), has cause (P828), subject named as (P1810). See HMS Minerva (Q5633396). Vicarage (talk) 13:51, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm aware that service retirement (P730) can be interpreted as the year a ship was taken out of the official service it was constructed to do, and the ship can still be in use many years after. However, when using service entry (P729) we have a direct statement about when the ship was built. If using significant event (P793) we will have to add the date/year as a qualifier, which means that we can't use it when generating lists in Wikipedia. My preference is therefore a direct property indicating the date/year the ship ended its existance, and end time (P582) might be an alternative. If so, we will also need to agree where to put information about the cause of the destiny, place of shipwrecking, shipbreaking etc. --Cavernia (talk) 16:06, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure we should constrain WD design by the current abilities of a Wikipedia list generator. Can it be extended to handle qualifiers, or just be replaced by a SPARQL query which can be as clever as needed. The key comparison date for ships for me is the launch date, as fit-out times get ever longer, and we get examples of ships with odd gaps between ships being finished and used, because of mothballing or transfer between navies. A bot that populates missing service entry (P729) from the significant dates if missing would be helpful, but I think it should be viewed as subsidiary. I'd hope we can avoid generics like end time (P582), start time (P580) and inception (P571) just because they are vague. Pragmatically, what we know about most ships is when they were launched. All other dates are vague, as they tend to fade away both in practice and the historical record. Vicarage (talk) 16:21, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the list generator can to a certain extent handle qualifiers, but it will not be able to filter entries, and it will therefore list all significant events in the same field (see example. difference between the last two coloumns). It will be very difficult to fetch the data from an infobox. I agree that using service retirement (P730) can generate questions about which date/year is the correct one, but if the ship is wrecked or breaked, we will mostly have an accurate date/year. --Cavernia (talk) 17:16, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is actually a way to fetch the date in the qualifier (added an extra coloum now in the example list), but then it would be needed with one coloumn per incident. --Cavernia (talk) 17:33, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've asked for help in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#wikipedia_list_generator_handling_multi-value_qualifiers Vicarage (talk) 17:43, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK, after good help I've got the knowledge about how to make this possible by using significant event (P793) and qualifiers.
It would be nice to hear the opinions from Hjart, Infrastruktur and Jura1 about the suggestion:
Continue using service entry (P729) to indicate when the ship was built, but use significant event (P793) to indicate when the ship was scrapped, scuttled, wrecked, torpedoed etc. For items using service retirement (P730) or end time (P582) today, the information will be transferred to significant event (P793). --Cavernia (talk) 20:44, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I won't voice an opinion on this, but I can comment. De facto at least on the nowiki infoboxes they have been been using service entry and service retirement to signal the period for which the ship was operating broadly speaking. However as others have pointed out these have the problem that they are ambiguous, and could mean anything from construction start to when the ship is delivered, there can be a long period in between. I am a big fan of significant event because this lists precisely what we mean. I think I added some of these to the infoboxes on nowiki a while ago. Interestingly, I see MS Scandinavian Star (Q1528996) lists arson as a significant event and not conflagration. This is way more precise. The downside of using significant event is that it makes it harder to determine a start and an end date, when that is all you care about. Very often when you create lists, this is all you really need, so this is a significant use case. I don't see why we can't use both approaches going forward. Infrastruktur (talk) 23:31, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think service entry is very clear that its the start of operational use, after all the construction stages. The one thing ship articles tend to be sure of is the launch date, often you infer that operation started soon after for wooden ships, perhaps a year for steel ships to get fitted out until the 1990s, then 2-3 years for recent complicated ships where the hull was the easy bit. Its lucky that warship commissioning is also notable. But unless ships are wrecked, they do tend to fade away, and while a warship decommissioning is notable, so often they just run out of work, the owners keep them for a bit hopefully, and we are lucky to be told they are scrapped, often they get sold on to ever more dodgy owners who leave them to rot. So I expect for most ships we won't be clear on the details of their fate. I think significant events are the way to go, we just need to ensure a mapping so a query for "start" is "service entry if present else launch date" and "end" is "last date we have recorded if not launched or service entry, else it may still be around".
I'm very conscious we have very large numbers of ships, so tidying will be hard. I'd start with agreeing things we don't want for ships, including the too vague "inception", "start time" and "end time", and ensuring that every "service entry" and "service retirement" has a matching significant event. Vicarage (talk) 21:09, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I believe one of my points was lost, so I will try to rephrase; Relying on a multitude of different events to replace "service retirement" is a bad idea for purely technical reasons. Right now it is easy to request a list of ships under Egyptian flag that was active in the 90s. By having to check a bunch of events you have to do aggregation and the query becomes unnecessarily complicated for what should be a simple task. We really do need a single property or qualifier to specify start and end time, this is the only reasonable way to filter ships based on a timeframe. This doesn't mean you can't also have all sorts of other dates too. Infrastruktur (talk) 23:08, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How about handling the 4 most common date queries about a ship are
with other significant event (P793) detail for order (Q566889), keel laying (Q14592615), ship reclassification (Q21725151), transfer (Q315364)
This has all the information in significant event (P793) but with easy query access for working lifetime. I'd restrict the ship infobox to those 4 things. Fate is messy, but that's just inevitable for ships. There is a separate discussion to be had about ships that are being preserved but not actually open as museums Vicarage (talk) 08:50, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This does sound like a good model to me. Or rather should I say that I belive the broad picture is covered, which is all I frankly care about. I will concede the fine details to people who I consider more knowledgeable about matters maritime. Infrastruktur (talk) 12:07, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
With regards to the discussion on nowiki. One could either retire "status" from the infobox altogether and replace it with a set of significant events that paints the ship's status over time. Or, since four of the sigificant events was added recently by me, you could choose to remove those and just rely on a "status" field that displays the most recent applicable event. Infrastruktur (talk) 15:02, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a fan of extremely big infoboxes (like France (Q546607)), I'd prefer filtering out the most important events. --Cavernia (talk) 20:26, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Significant events ought to be the important ones, though filtering out a few like keel-laying, and transfers as while a short list of qualifiers should allow pithy statements like "1804 captured by Royal Navy and renamed HMS Gotcha" would be too long for an infobox that wanted "launched: 1802", "fate: shipwrecked 1809". The 4 key ones are launched, service entry, service retirement, fate, if we could map significant event to them. Vicarage (talk) 21:19, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have now tested importing Paragon DPDS3 (Q115435005), Kaptan Ibrahim (Q115435593) and Zhukovskiy (Q115435702). Have almost 1000 more scrapped ships to import from the same source. --Cavernia (talk) 09:40, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be better for the ship breaking to be a destruction (Q17781833) with cause of destruction (P770)
of ship breaking (Q336332), as it would be easier to query all types of possible destruction for ships? See HMS Minerva (Q5633396)
Did you create Kaptan Ibrahim (Q115435593) from scratch as the history suggests? If so it would be good to have instance of (P31) to have the detail of cargo ship, and add a launching significant event to match the service entry. Personally I'd never claim the IMO number as an alias, but we have no agreement on that as yet. Vicarage (talk) 10:05, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Shipbreaking is not the cause of the demolition, it's the way. If you consider HNoMS Helge Ingstad (Q3439986), the reason of demolition was not shipbreaking, the reason was the collision.
Mostly, ship items don't use instance of (P31) to define ship type. However, ship type is not (yet) a property, so if we want to define the ship type, instance of (P31) is the only way to do it. I will see if it's possible to change that in my script. As already mentioned, using service entry (P729) is established, and I don't see a good reason to change it now. --Cavernia (talk) 15:17, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The reason for ship-breaking is that its worth more for scrap than anything else, but we can't really code that as a cause. As we don't have a property for method/technique, I think has_cause is as good as any. I do think we want a single interrogation point for the end of life, irrespective of cause. It would be hard to write a general query that spotted the end of life of HNoMS Helge Ingstad (Q3439986) combined with all other ship fates like shipwreck or bombardment. I'd replace recycling with destruction%ship breaking. If you really don't like the term destruction, perhaps we'd need to introduce a new 'fate', but that sounds odd as a significant event.
I always think of WD in terms of the queries I'd write for it, and I'd rather select for destruction than try to think of all the things that people might say stopped something existing.
For ships we have vessel class (P289) and instance of (P31) for frigate (Q161705) etc. I think we want to avoid ship (Q11446) as too vague. My point about Kaptan Ibrahim (Q115435593) was if you assert in the description "general cargo vessel built in 1925", you need a instance of (P31)%cargo ship for the former and significant event (P793)%launching for the latter. Its find to have service entry (P729) as well. Vicarage (talk) 15:49, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Canmore shipwrecks with uncertain identification[edit]

Canmore (Scottish Heritage register) was imported in Nov 2020, adding 4000odd shipwreck sites round Scotland. They should be merged into the actual ship entries (I might do the warships, not doing the commercial ones). I've done it for the Royal Navy ships, but am not sure how to proceed for the sites with uncertain provenance. 

SELECT ?item ?label ?description
WHERE
{
  ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q852190;
         schema:description ?description;
         rdfs:label ?label.
  FILTER(LANG(?description) = "en").
  FILTER(CONTAINS(?description, " imported from Canmore")).
  FILTER(LANG(?label) = "en").
  FILTER(CONTAINS(?label, "HMS")).
}
Try it!

Shows possible/probably entries. If we merge them and add a disputed source caveat, we lose the fact that there is some shipwreck there, even its not fully identified. And should a shipwreck that might be a battleship be an instance of a battleship, or should it merely be a shipwreck, as if the divers can't tell which ship, how can we be sure of its type. Removing the battleship claim stops these things popping up in searches, which seems a good idea. Vicarage (talk) 14:10, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seems that many wrecks have duplicate IDs at Canmore, and then we also have duplicate items. It would be a great help if it was possible to extract the shipwrecking date from the database and import it to Wikidata. --Cavernia (talk) 17:43, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have started changing "Hms Bloggs (possibly)" labels to "shipwreck possibly HMS Bloggs" to make clear what is known, and was is supposition. I think it would be a good idea to remove the instance of (P31) of ship for the uncertains, leaving just shipwreck, so searches for ship aren't polluted. Only confirmed entities where a ship is now known now be a wreck should have both, and we should ensure wreck entries are merged with the ship entry to avoid duplication Vicarage (talk) 10:34, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Should Japanese ship labels be of the form "Japanese battleship Yamato"[edit]

Japanese battleship Yamato (Q215010) like many Japanese ships has both the country and the vessel type in the label. I would argue that is wrong, the label should be the name of the ship, including the prefix (of which there was none for the Imperial Japanese Navy), and the caveats should appear in the description, following the advice in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Label#Disambiguation_information_belongs_in_the_description. But when I changed the label to "Yamato", I had the change reverted without discussion, both by IP users and logged in ones. The discussion on https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User_talk:%E9%9A%90%E4%B8%96%E9%AB%98%E4%BA%BA#Japanese_before_ship_names went like

I disagree. The name of the ship is just the one word, the longer version is a relic of wikipedia article naming which does not apply here. Including Japanese in the description would be a much better way of finding items. A cross country query is distorted badly by this approach. Much better to discuss this on :WikiProject_Ships than revert changes without consultation Vicarage (talk) 17:44, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
The words before the name of the ships should be part of the label in the ship-related items on Wikidata when there haven't official ship prefixes for the ships, the words, then, would serve similar roles with ship prefix. Besides this, adding these words will help to find items easier on Wikidata. 隐世高人 (talk) 18:35, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

I find the argument unconvincing. "Japanese battleship" is in no way equivalent to "USS". The autocomplete fails to find the battleship when Yamoto is typed in WD, and the description is the place for disambiguation. A query for participants at the Battle of Midway should provide a set of equivalent ship names for both sides, and forces a difficult parsing to get the raw name.

Should the same argument apply to other countries without a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_prefix, like France? I am unable to read Japanese to see what the native language mode says, but French ships just use the ship name in French labels. Vicarage (talk) 19:39, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The words should be part of the label in the these ship-related items on Wikidata as I have said above and it is not directly related to the description. The words that should be added before the name of the French ships were missing as you removed them earlier. 隐世高人 (talk) 04:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And in the articles on English Wikipedia, for example USS Gerald R. Ford, the ship prefix isn't always used before the ship names. 隐世高人 (talk) 05:22, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Does the ship label name have to be added to the “Also known as” list for a Wikidata ship-by-name item?[edit]

@Hjart has asked me to post this issue to this forum for clarification.

As I understand it, the “Also known as” list is meant to help disambiguation of different Wikidata items with the same label name when someone is searching. While the policy should apply to any Wikidata item, for a Wikidata ship-by-name item (example at Horizon Arctic – Bourbon Arctic Q52515219), placing the ship label name in the “Also known as” list is illogical and wasteful as it does not serve any alias purpose.

Please clarify. GRDN711 (talk) 18:00, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@GRDN711 I do not understand how that is "illogical". That ship has been known under both names, so it's perfectly logical to use the current name as label and the older one as alias. Hjart (talk) 18:10, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Hjart It is both illogical and wasteful. We do not call you “Hjart also known as Hjart” and this ship should not be called “Horizon Arctic also known as Horizon Arctic”. It just adds confusion for someone trying to disambiguate a ship of this name from other Wikidata items or ships with the same ship-by-name label.
Also, the ship name is already prominently placed in the label. Why make it a redundant entry in the "Also known as" list?
It is also wasteful. Is Wikidata going to implement a policy of placing the item label in the “Also know as” list for all Wikidata items? All Wikidata ship items? Lots of work there, even if you do it with a bot.
Open to clarification by other members of the Wikidata Ships Project. What is the accepted practice here? GRDN711 (talk) 18:49, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(

Feel free to add yourself to this list. User:Danrok Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) Rama Christian Ferrer Nortix08 Andrawaag Cavernia De728631 Vladimir Alexiev , 7 January 2021 simon.letort ShipIndex vicarage Pmt pfps

Notified participants of WikiProject Ships)

Thank you, @Vicarage for your response.

I could comment on your thoughts below but before I invest much time and effort in helping the members of WikiProject Ships on this larger issue of how best to merge records for ship names. can we just do a little test case on this “Also known as” question first?

The “Also known as” list is not unique to ship names but is used any Wikidata item record such as “Elizabeth II” (Q9682) to help someone who is searching Wikidata to know they have found the appropriate item record. Please note that the item label “Elizabeth II” is not in the “Also known as” list as this would be redundant. The main item label and the entire “Also known as” list, function as search terms to aid in disambiguation, and are not properties of the item. A similar ship name example can be found at “Leif Ericson” (Q6719729).

@Hjart says the ship label name should be added to the “Also known as” list for a Wikidata ship-by-name item. I say it is not needed. What is the consensus of the members of WikiProject Ships? --GRDN711 (talk) 03:25, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Aliases are other names for things, and should not repeat the label value. Vicarage (talk) 03:46, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Are Wikidata items for ships-by-different-names to be merged into one Wikidata ship-by-name item?[edit]

Based on a rational that ships-by-different-names are the same ship, @Hjart has been merging Wikidata items for some of my ship images with others into one Wikidata item (example at Horizon Arctic – Bourbon Arctic Q52515219).

While having separate Wikidata items for ships-by-name may not be the most efficient organizational method, this issue has been previously discussed in this forum and found that Wikidata items for ships by different names cannot be merged as separate ship-by-name items are required for use in ship info boxes in Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

In my view, it presents inconsistencies in the images used in Commons info boxes if the Wikidata items are merged the way Hjart is doing it. I do have a potential merging suggestion for that might work for Wikidata but please clarify the current practice first. GRDN711 (talk) 18:34, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we get consensus here on things. Too few people, too much data that is wildly different. I feel strongly that a ship is a physical object that should only have one WD identifier throughout its life. If some wikipedias have multiple entries and we do too you get a very complicated set of different many-to-many and one-to-many connections which makes any automated queries very hard to write. Are the info boxes consistent across wikipedias so that some kind of qualifiers can be used if people really need pictures of a ship when it had a particular owner/name. Its a more general issue that a ship with a single name can be given many images and no preference set, and different images can appeal to different use cases. I think WD ship data quality is a very long way from providing info boxes that are as comprehensive as the English Wikipedia for example. We ought to have a ship name field rather than rely on aliases for multiple names, but that's a long way off too. What idea did you have for controlled merging? Vicarage (talk) 20:53, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
PS Horizon Arctic (Q52515219) has quite a few flaws that would make it hard to use in an infobox, like the aliases repeating and including an IMO number, its type being merely 'ship', and no indication as to when and why the name changed. Vicarage (talk) 21:58, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Vicarage, I agree that just a "mere" rename and change of owner shouldn't lead to a new WD item.
But I'm not so sure about other, bigger, changes. After a massive overhaul, the ship's purpose, outline, owners, flag, call sign, and MMSI identity may change. The IMO is preserved because it's attached to the hull. But is it still the same ship? I'm not so sure.
Or let me push this further: if a ship is scrapped but the scrap is carefully collected and a new ship is made exactly from that scrap (not mixing in parts of other ships), is it still the same ship because it could be claimed it's the "same physical object" slightly rearranged? Obviously not. Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 10:36, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There are so few edge cases like HMS Zubian (Q2579132) that it shouldn't obscure the general principle which the OP wanted clarified. And liners that become merchant cruisers are interesting just because they had 2 aspects to their lives Vicarage (talk) 12:09, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
HNLMS Piet Hein (Q949225) becoming Yas (Q15199025) is like that, I think it's more like recycling parts of an old ship when building a new ship, than really the same ship. Ghouston (talk) 07:04, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage, @Vladimir Alexiev; @Ghouston when you are dealing with large numbers of anything, there will be the odd exception and specialized case. All you can do is make the general rule as broad as possible so that these rarities can be incorporated or become the exception to hte rule. --GRDN711 (talk) 15:35, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GRDN711 It's not unusual for humans to change their names (due to marriage or whatever) either. We don't create new wikidata items for them just because of that. :Hjart (talk) 16:36, 20 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Hjart Humans and ships can have multiple names as long as they can be uniquely identified. Agree with you that Wikidata just has to find an efficient way to handle this if it doesn't want to drown in a morass of data. --GRDN711 (talk) 15:44, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A proposal to minimize the number of Wikidata records for Ships-by-name[edit]

(

Feel free to add yourself to this list. User:Danrok Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) Rama Christian Ferrer Nortix08 Andrawaag Cavernia De728631 Vladimir Alexiev , 7 January 2021 simon.letort ShipIndex vicarage Pmt pfps

Notified participants of WikiProject Ships) @Hjart

While Wikidata was intended to be a fact-based database for all wikis as well as outside resources, from my observation, Wikimedia Commons is the only wiki actively using Wikidata for authority control in providing ship information. To meet the needs of Commons for grouping images and media, Wikimedia Commons categorizes ship images the following way using:

1: A primary identification category that is unique to the ship – IMO #, ENI#, MMSI or Call sign, in that order of preference.

2: A Ship-by-name sub-category under the primary ID number category that makes separate groups for each of the names used by a given ship over its useful life (sometimes one; typically 3 or 4; rarely a dozen). Commons made a policy decision to use Wikidata as the authority control for ship data in the infobox for the “Ship-by-name” sub-category.

For reasons unknown, Wikidata currently creates 3 data records with separate Q numbers – one for the primary ID #, a second for the ship-by-name sub-category (with identification strictly as a Wikimedia category) and a third Q record for the ship name linked to the ship-by-name sub-category Q#. For every additional name that a ship has over its life, 2 more Q data records are required. This can add up to many Q records if a ship has multiple names as is typical.

My suggestion for less Wikidata Q records (as low as 1) is to use a searchable data label in the format of:

Ship-by-Name (ship, year-of-build, primary identification number) Q record #

Example: Horizon Arctic (ship, 2016, IMO 9732838) (Q84186444)

1: Ship-by-name is the name painted on the bow and stern of the ship.

2: The ship primary type must be identified as such per the Wikidata:WikiProject Ships/Classification as opposed to “watercraft” etc. This proposal is only about ships. The other marine and transportation types will have to be defined on their own.

3: Year-of-build is useful but optional. A ship-by-name with a primary ID# like IMO # is sufficient to uniquely identify the ship, but a build data is helpful in easily separating ships with the same name. If the year-of-build was consistently placed in the record description (example: Anchor Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) vessel built in 2016 in Horizon Arctic Q52515219 record), placement in the record name is not necessary.

4: The primary identification number can be IMO #, ENI #, MMSI # or Call sign, in that order of preference. Best and preferred as a unique, sustaining identifier is the IMO hull number assigned when the ship is built; retained through any ship modifications; and never recycled after the ship is scrapped.

If you know the ship-by-name, ship primary type, optional build date and IMO#, this would be sufficient to define a single Wikidata record for that ship that could be used to supply ship data to other wikis, particularly in the ship info boxes used in Commons.

One Wikidata record would be needed for each ship-by-name , a manageable number of Wikidata records for each ship even if there are multiple names.

Comments welcome. GRDN711 (talk) 16:25, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a problem with a datalabel property, but I think we need to get the other records correct first so it can be auto-populated. I agree that type should be specific.
I'd have one WD identifier for a hull, with name being the most common name used for the ship (could be different in French or English of course, with different readerships), and aliases for other names the ship might have had in its life. Those names should include the HMS type prefixes for warships, but not include IMO numbers, years, types, nicknames, have the words "Japanese battlecruiser" appended etc. IMO/Callsign/pennant should all be stored as now as properties. They are not available for all ships, and should play no part in a labelling scheme. Ship creation date should be a significant event (P793) ship launching (Q596643), and P|729}} if possible.
So you know you had the right ship, I'd have a uniform Description as <date> <class> <type>, like 1759 Southampton-class fifth-rate frigate as it was built, with edge cases like when a ship is rebuilt giving a more detailed description. Descriptions should not be potted histories of what a ship did.
In an ideal world I would add official name (P1448) to every ship with all its names, with qualifiers of operator (P137) and date ranges. I would also record name changes as part of significant event (P793), when a name change occurs because of a transfer, capture or whatever. You could set up a preferred name if a ship is best known in one phase of its life, like HMS Jervis Bay (Q1564948). significant event (P793) should be definitive for a ship's history from slipway to breaker's yard that other properties could be derived from but I'm realistic that such completeness is a long way off, so just having label+aliases correct is the best short term goal.
Once this is done an infobox could get exactly what it wanted, until then it would need to put up with variable information.
I'd like ships to be like HMS Minerva (Q5633396) Vicarage (talk) 17:02, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage
Ship-by-Name (ship, year-of-build, primary identification number) Q record #
Example: Horizon Arctic (ship, 2016, IMO 9732838) (Q84186444)
In my proposal, the 4 pieces of information in front of the Q record # would be just part of a descriptive label for the record, just like the ship description and “Also known as” alias. These info pieces may or may not be properties in Wikidata. The purpose of this Q record label is to let a user know they have the correct and uniquely identified Wikidata Q record # for this Ship-by-name.
My proposal of uniquely identifying each Ship-by-name requires just a single record (rather than the 3 currently used) and can be easily integrated into Commons Category infobox where Wikidata ship info has found best use.
Your response on p numbers illustrates that you have a good grasp of the Wikidata database but are waiting for perfection.
Was the ship information in the Wikidata record you like – HMS Minerva (Q5633396) ported over to Wikipedia, or taken from Wikipedia?
From my observation, like people, Wikipedia does not create a topic for every ship, only ships (often historical) felt to merit distinction. All other ships go to the bottom of the ocean or the breakers without mention.
Wikipedia also does not use Wikidata as authority control for their ship info boxes. They rely on creating a limited number of ship topics; their own defined ship info box templates; a well-defined Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships; a small army of dedicated editors for each ship topic (example Queen Elizabeth 2) and use of the Miramar Ship Index and other databases for reference. --GRDN711 (talk) 05:16, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Can you clarify a few things
Are you proposing a new ship-by-name property or changing the existing label or description?
Changing an existing label of the ship's name and dropping the IMO (or primary identifying number > would become a property) and Category records. See Hyart answer below. --GRDN711 (talk) 06:35, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think changing the label this way would be a very bad idea. The label should be how the crew refer to their ship, and not be cluttered this way Vicarage (talk) 07:00, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage When did the ship’s crew come into deciding how to implement a WD record? They call the ship but its Ship-by-name which is in my label proposal. If the ship name is changed, they paint the new one on the bow and stern and refer to the ship by that name.
There are trade-offs in life and you don’t always get what you want. The only purpose of the more elaborate label is that it will allow for the number of WD records for each ship to be reduced to one per Ship-by-name, lowering of complexity and number of WD records needed for each ship and not upset Commons categories who use Wikidata as a resource. --GRDN711 (talk) 16:01, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
do you want one WD item per ship hull or many?
The most efficient and the one everyone would like is one WD item per ship hull, but unless you have some magic way of splitting records I am not aware of, the best I think you can get is one WD record per Ship-by-name. This means as many records as the ship has names over its working life. --GRDN711 (talk) 06:35, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I want one WD item per hull Vicarage (talk) 07:02, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So do I, @Vicarage. However, unless you as a WD database specialist, can split a single WD ship record so that it can accommodate the multiple names a ship may have over its working life, I don't see achieving one WD item per hull without messing with Commons category info boxes as Hjart has done.
Please note that when a ship changes name, there are often other associated changes as well – owners, operators, color schemes are common. Physical changes like conversion of a general cargo ship to a container ship, or lengthening of the hull are less so. --GRDN711 (talk) 16:01, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How would you handle ships with no IMO or unknown launch date?
If they don't have an IMO# as a primary identification number, you go down to the next which is ENI#, MMSI then Call sign, in that order of preference. There will still be the odd historical ship that has none of these in which case, you would drop the primary identificaiton number from the label descriptor. Unknown launch date is extremely rare. If not known, there is usually an historical guess. In the end, you still have the ship name and something to place in the label description describing some key distinction. There are always going to be a few exceptions to the normal. --GRDN711 (talk) 06:35, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I forsee problems with someone wanting to add a ship when they know the name but not the other things. I think we dont id numbers central to labels Vicarage (talk) 07:04, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When a WD record request comes up for the addition of a new ship, a WD bot could summon a WD admin like Hjart who would tune up the format of the record. This is the current WD tidy-up practice so I don’t see it as it an obstacle. --GRDN711 (talk) 16:01, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GRDN711 Please note that I'm not a "WD admin". Hjart (talk) 16:21, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would you use the word ship or a ship type like tanker? How would you deal with mutiple types?
I think you have to use the word "ship" to distinguish between primary types like "boat" and "watercraft". The type of ship would be a property of the ship record. --GRDN711 (talk) 06:35, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Rather pointless having ship then Vicarage (talk) 07:08, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage No, it is not. Unless the WD record is recognized at the primary classification level it would not be expected to have the other pieces of data that would make the label unique to the Ship-by-name.
For their infobox templates, Wikipedia has 5 primary classification levels – warships, submarines, age of sail, commercial ships with a catch-all for any ship that does not fall into one of the other four categories. Wikimedia Commons uses a primary categorization of ship, barges, coast, sailing ships and sail boats. Wikidata seems to use watercraft, ship, boat, submarine, and submersible as primary classification levels.
After the record is known to be a ship, you can have a property for a secondary type classification like “tanker”. --GRDN711 (talk) 16:01, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How would it work for renamed ships? Vicarage (talk) 05:39, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite sure what you mean here. A ship with different names over its working life gets a WD record for each name. If the ship was named "Argus"; then named something else; then re-named "Argus", it probably would be just one record for the ship as "Argus" but some property addition indicating the change history. --GRDN711 (talk) 06:35, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Again I'd want one WD entry per hull Vicarage (talk) 07:09, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage My proposal of one WD record per Ship-by-name would considerably reduce the number of WD records but it will not be perfect… In the meantime, I have yet to hear any proposal from you or Ship Project that would achieve this.
The world merchant fleet is approximately 58,000 ships (growing at 2 - 3% per year) and there are approximately 3400 military ships. Commons continues to collect ship images and Wikidata continues to create multiple records for each. Information costs money in server space but I can’t think this would be an undue burden for the Wikipedia Foundation. What is going to be a problem over time is complexity and duplication of information stored in Wikidata.
I have proposed one option. What is yours? --GRDN711 (talk) 16:01, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My solution: Have one WD item per hull, Get Wikimedia to have one category per hull too, and use subcategories for ship renaming. Ensure all WD ships have official name (P1448) for all the names so the Label/Alias/Description fields are used to aid humans, not be a machine compliant format for a very specific use. Populate IMOs but don't rely on them. I don't know the Wikimedia/Wikipedia politics as to why they might not want one entry per hull, but I think they should have it as a goal. Then expect developers to write queries to find a unique combination of properties to map to their datasets. That might be many-to-one, but WD wants to be the one. Vicarage (talk) 16:44, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage You might want to re-think your many-to-one WD record and consider a one-to-many model.
It's not politics; it's practicality. Wikipedia is only dealing with a limited number of notable ships and will not use Wikidata ship record info until such time as the WD record info becomes more comprehensive, complete and easier to use than what they already have. My observation is that Wikidata is a long way from meeting the needs of Wikipedia.
As described at the top of my proposal, Commons, as the main user of Wikidata info, has an efficient ship category structure of a Ship-by-name sub-category under a primary identifying number category (IMO #, ENI#, MMSI or Call sign, in that order of preference). Wikimedia Commons cannot just throw images of the same ship with multiple names, owners, operators over time, color schemes etc. all together in one category. It would be chaos for the thousands of ship images they have.
Consider how a Wikidata record for a single ship hull might be structured to allow one WD ship record-to be used for-many uses and users. --GRDN711 (talk) 18:03, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GRDN711 I believe that your claim "Wikimedia Commons is the only wiki actively using Wikidata" is incorrect. Yes, a lot of wikipedians are entirely unaware of wikidata, but that does not mean that other wikis do not use wikidata for a variety of purposes in relation to ships. I do a lot of work across Commons, Wikidata and primarily the Scandinavian wikis, and I'm certainly seeing quite a few of the latter wikipedians use Wikidata for ships too.
@Hjart
“…that does not mean that other wikis do not use wikidata for a variety of purposes in relation to ships” is a wonderful aspirational statement but from my observation unsubstantiated.
Only Wikimedia Commons grants authority control for Wikidata ship records to populate info boxes in all Commons Ship-by-name categories. Wikipedia does not allow that. Nor am I aware of any other wiki who grants similar authority control to Wikidata for ship data. If Scandinavian wikis display are using Commons as their info resource for ship images, they may be translating from Commons. If Wikidata ship data is being actively used for significant number of cases elsewhere, there should be some documentation. --GRDN711 (talk) 05:52, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GRDN711 I'm not sure what exactly you think "authority control" is in this context. Hjart (talk) 07:01, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Hjart Authority control is described here and here. What it means is that when a change is made in the Wikidata ship record the Commons infobox is linked to, the change happens in the Commons infobox for that Ship-by-name category a short time later. The controlling authority for ship information placed in the Commons infobox comes from the Wikidata record. Ship image and ship info are kept in separate places but will work fine if the data is correctly linked. It also allows Commons to focus on images and Wikidata on info records, their respective strengths, --GRDN711 (talk) 16:35, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GRDN711 After quickly skimming en:Wikipedia:Authority control, i don't think authority control means what you think it means. Hjart (talk) 16:58, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The reason for the currently minimum 3 wikidata records per ship is not "unknown". It's in Wikidata:Property proposal/Commons category for ship name. Furthermore for each new Commons name category per ship only 1 WD item is required, not 2. Hjart (talk) 15:43, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Hjart We have had this discussion before. I could not find any documentation or template (can you provide?) that clearly describes the current practice of using 3 Wikidata records per Ship-by-name. Like others in Commons, I had to figure it out from Wikidata examples.
The proposal you reference basically says that the current practice of using 3 Wikidata records per Ship-by-name should be consolidated to one. It was just an aspirational proposal from two years ago, with one person strongly in agreement with the proposal and one person strongly against (basically a draw). I am not aware it was discussed at the Wikidata:WikiProject Ships forum, nor ever became documented policy (where?).
However, you have gone ahead and implemented this with some of my ship images. Rather than just consolidate three Wikidata records to one Ship-by-name record, you took a further to consolidate all Wikidata records for a given ship to one Ship record based on the rational that while a ship may have several names, it is all the same ship.
There is a platform ship, IMO 9732838, that has two names to date in its ship life – Bourbon Arctic and Horizon Arctic. You put them both into one record (Q52515219) without regard for how it is used in Commons (Wikidata’s biggest and only customer) which categorizes Ships-by-name. The ship info and images in the Horizon Arctic category are fine. In the Bourbon Arctic category, the image displayed in the info box is the Horizon Arctic and if a user clicks on the image, they will see “Horizon Arctic” on the bow of the ship – why wrong ship misinformation if this single ship record implementation is correct? --GRDN711 (talk) 05:52, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Where would you want that "searchable data label" to go? Please note that I'm fairly familiar with wikidata queries myself.--Hjart (talk) 19:26, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hjart, I am not the Wikidata expert and am open to the views of others, but as I see it, the current ship name record - Horizon Arctic (Q52515219) would modified to the following - Horizon Arctic (ship, 2016, IMO 9732838) (Q52515219). The IMO and Category record info would be merged into it. This Ship-by-name record with all ship properties in it could be used to populate the Commons Ship-by-name category info boxes and reduce the number of Wikidata records neeeded. --GRDN711 (talk) 06:07, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GRDN711 If what I think you are proprosing is what you're actually proposing, then I can tell you that that would make quering wikidata way more cumbersome than it currently is. Hjart (talk) 07:00, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
By analogy a person might be 'Hilary Rodham (human, 1947, 2356783)' with a seperate entry 'Hilary Clinton (human, 1947, 2356783)'. I think your proposal is unworkable, as who would want to parse that on retrieval Vicarage (talk) 07:18, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage @Hjart I am only speaking to ship records and not other cases. While ships may have multiple names, they only have one name at a time. IMHO, I don’t see this as being any different than your current practice of tidying up Wikidata records to minimize duplicates, change label formats to match norms and seek disambiguation. --GRDN711 (talk) 16:53, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Vicarage @Hjart

Feel free to add yourself to this list. User:Danrok Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) Rama Christian Ferrer Nortix08 Andrawaag Cavernia De728631 Vladimir Alexiev , 7 January 2021 simon.letort ShipIndex vicarage Pmt pfps

Notified participants of WikiProject Ships My experience with my proposal appears to be much the same as others at this forum. We have had long conversations but it does not appear that I have changed any minds and I need to move on. While you are waiting for perfection to happen, the tide of data is continuing to roll in and the complexity continues. Good luck with that. --GRDN711 (talk) 16:53, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Hjart Many of the changes you make are fine, but I will revert ship label names in the “Also known as” list and your unofficial all-to-one ship record merges. You and the Wikidata Ship crew need to come up with your own better way of doing this that does not conflict with Commons.--GRDN711 (talk) 16:53, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@GRDN711 Please note that we will need to revert those reverts. Please note that the primary purpose of Wikidata is not to act as way of populating Commons infoboxes. The primary purpose of Wikidata is to have an environment which is fairly easy to query/or and modify using (semi)automatic tools. Hjart (talk) 17:04, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Hjart Please move ahead to revert all of the ship record merges you have made on my images and any others.
If Wikidata records structure can be upgraded to accomodate a single WD record per hull to populate multiple Common Ship-by-name categories without errors, that would be optimal. I personally do not think Commons will change their efficient ship category structure of a Ship-by-name sub-category under a primary identifying number (like IMO#) category. --GRDN711 (talk) 17:25, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@ShipIndex I hesitate to jump in here, as I'm very much a Wikidata newbie and I'm worried about continually stepping on toes. However, I'd like to point out how I use Wikidata identifiers outside of Wikimedia or other wikis. While I guess I see the concerns about Wikimedia storing images under names that aren't found in Wikidata (like Bourbon Arctic), I think that having a single identifier for each hull would be the best way of managing Wikidata content. It would allow users to make connections about a particular vessel that changed its names multiple times in its career, and would allow greater programmatic analysis over time, so that researchers could understand how long a vessel worked in a particular industry, perhaps, or how long a ship served various different navies. Perhaps a question that one might want to ask would be, "does the manner in which a vessel was taken into a new naval service (ie, being captured vs being sold) affect the length of time it served its new masters?" Questions like that could only be answered if each hull was identified with a single Q-identifier.

At ShipIndex.org, I have been using the Wikidata Q identifiers to differentiate between vessels with the same name. So, for Minerva, mentioned above, you can see at https://www.shipindex.org/ships/minerva that we've broken up the 2000 or so citations for ships named 'Minerva' among seven vessels so far. Of course, many citations cannot be easily assigned to a specific hull/Q-identifier, but when we can do it, we do so. And many others don't yet have Q identifiers -- though, occasionally, we've created vessels in Wikidata, so we can add to the wiki. (There are probably hundreds of ships named 'Minerva' represented in these citations. In some cases we may have enough information to create a record about them, but usually not.)

My goal is absolutely to make maritime history research easier to do. Differentiating between vessels with the same name is a critical part of doing that, and we're trying to do that using Q-identifiers. I welcome feedback on how we're doing it, and I'm happy to contribute, as well, when I can.

Good to hear about such an ambitious project using Wikidata. As you are using Q numbers for your index, I don't think we need to plan the mapping between the sites, but I will add an entry for the site itself to give it greater visibility. I am also working on a similar ship site, it will be interesting to compare experiences. I plan to make mine public sometime in January. Vicarage (talk) 20:30, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I support the general proposal and the introduction of a "ship by name" Q parameter. Please note though that the primary type may also change through the lifetime of a hull. Especially smaller vessels like fishing boats may be repurposed or modified quite easily. So that parameter should not be static or somehow be bound to the identifying number. (IMO, ENI, etc.). De728631 (talk) 17:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Shipbucket[edit]

Shipbucket (Q117717762) is a website where they've created 10000 illustrations of ships to a uniform scale and design I think it would be very useful to link to them, to allow thinks like a query of ships present at a battle could create a slick infographic. Vicarage (talk) 14:37, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikidata:Property proposal/Shipbucket drawing ID. I am in discussion with the site maintainers in their Discord server.Vicarage (talk) 19:28, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Property created Vicarage (talk) 06:51, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Adding offical name for all ships with compromised labels[edit]

Various ship labels are compromised with extra information like "Japanese battleship Yamato" (see thread above). I am using the official name (P1448) (mul) to add the clean ship "Yamoto" name to these entries. This could also be used to record how a ship hull changes name (see another thread above) due to sale or capture. To get official name, defaulting to label, run 

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel ?name WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en"}
  {
    SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?name WHERE {
      ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q7642168.
      ?item rdfs:label ?label. FILTER (lang(?label) = "en")
      OPTIONAL {
        ?item wdt:P1448 ?officialname.
      }
      BIND(COALESCE(?officialname,?label) AS ?name)
    }
  }
}
Try it!

Vicarage (talk) 09:55, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

HMS or HSwMS for Swedish ships[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Swedish_Navy#HMS? describes the problem that Swedes prefix their naval ships with HMS, except when those ships are involved in international operations, when they use HSwMS. So what do we do for labels, when we don't know the context the names will be used in? Use en:HMS which will confuse many English speakers, use en-GB:HSwMS which is accurate, but who has en-GB as their language code, use en:HSwMS and expect Swedes to pick up sv:HMS. What about official name (P1448) where the official name is context sensitive based on operational use, mul:HMS or mul:HSwMS?

I think en-GB:HSwMS, en:HSwMS, sv:HMS, mul:HSwMS, as wikidata use is effectively "use in an international context" Vicarage (talk) 10:10, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No dissent, so I've done this Vicarage (talk) 09:47, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ship ontology problems[edit]

I see over 450 cases of superclasses of instances of ship. I used a simpler query than the one on the maintenance page, just 

SELECT DISTINCT ?ship ?shipLabel ?conflictingSuperClassLabel
WHERE
{
 ?ship wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q11446 .
 ?ship wdt:P279 ?conflictingSuperClass .
 SERVICE wikibase:label { 
   bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en,fr,es,it,de,pl".
 }
}

The number of violations of this basic requiremment on ships indicates to me that some work should be done to improve the ontology around ships, or the documentation of ship-related classes, or both. I'm interested in doing some work in this area, is anyone else interested in doing this work? One thing I want to do is to update the maintenance queries and fix as many problems they identify as possible. Another thing I want to do is to improve the documentation on ship, ship type, and ship class, probably using Wikidata usage instructions (P2559). Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 14:28, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have been working on ship classes. I think they should have a instance of (P31) of ship class (Q559026) and a subclass of (P279) of (preferably one) thing that itself is an instance of (P31) of ship type (Q2235308). I fixed a lot, but there are about 200 left which also need English labels derived from reading foreign wiki pages
Individual ships should have a vessel class (P289) of a ship class (and use a no_value if they are unique) and a instance of (P31) of (preferably one) thing which in turn has a instance of (P31) of ship type (Q2235308)
it does seem odd we have a vessel_class and ship_class, but not a submarine_class, boat_class etc, all used in vessel class (P289) though when is a boat a ship... Just vessel_class would be easier
I also like class labels to be of the form LEAD_SHIP-class TYPE, so Flower-class corvette (Q404394) is LEAD_SHIP-class TYPE "Flower-class corvette", with description INCEPTION class of ORIGIN_COUNTRY TYPEs, so "1941 class of British corvettes"
There are so many ships that it seems best to get ship classes in shape first. Vicarage (talk) 15:00, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes for ship type, ship class, vessel class and how they are used for ships except that it is entirely possible to be a direct instance of several ship types (see Titanic (Q25173)). Having more than one _class metaclass isn't ideal, but probably isn't worth fixing as the fix would be to either have only one _class metaclass or have many of them. Neither of these is easy to do.
But this information should be readily available on ship (Q11446), ship type (Q2235308), and ship class (Q559026) without going through several pages to get to this project.
I guess most ship classes have a lead ship and, if so, should have a name based on it but I don't view this as a firm requirement, particularly as some ship class entities are derived from Wikipedia pages that may have different names.
I would indeed like to get ship classes and ship types in good shape, not just because there are fewer of them, but because then the problems with actual ships are easier to detect. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 14:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See below for some thoughts on ship types. I'm going to do the same thing for ship classes. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 09:53, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
BTW We do need to find a better way to apply features like rigging to barque (Q216057), I suppose it could be a subclass of (P279) of rigging.

I fixed a good many of the 450 problems, just not the Japanese ones or the ship types with the rigging complication. Vicarage (talk) 15:11, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm willing to try to put together a mass update to fix the Japanese ships. I've asked in the general chat what is the best way to submit such an update. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 14:56, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I used quickstatements to remove superclasses that duplicated types ad change superclasses to types where they weren't already types. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 14:31, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Rigging[edit]

We need a way of indicating that barque, yawl, square-rigger etc are all rigged differently, using the ship element rigging (Q942890) rather than the rather odd ship type rigging (Q1634158), a German only idea, using terms like fore-and-aft rig (Q1780790). This would fix a range of ontology violations above. Vicarage (talk) 20:15, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

rigging (Q942890) is the concept of the rigging of a boat. I don't think it is the right entity to use to organize ships by rigging type. rigging (Q1634158) appears to the the class of rigging types and should include as instances sloop (Q210223) and yawl (Q1137441), which it does. So the problem is not that rigging (Q1634158) should not be used, it is that rigging (Q1634158) is not correctly placed in the ship ontology. Instead of being an instance of ship type (Q2235308) and a subclass of sailing ship (Q170483), it should just be a subclass of ship type (Q2235308). I've gone ahead and made this change. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 20:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

instance of links to ship classes[edit]

There were a lot of instance of (P31) links to ship classes. The vast majority of these were because ship was incorrectly a ship classes. A bunch more were because warship was a ship class. I fixed both of these but there still remain over 200 P31 links to ship classes, many of which have a vessel class link to the same ship class. Is it worthwhile defending the prohibition of P31 links to ship classes? Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 23:49, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I found lots more ships that have P31 links to ship classes. See the queries in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Ships/Maintenance#Other_type_issues
Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 00:09, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am very familiar with QuickStatements and text processing, so if you can produce a query, I can run a fix quickly. I doubt the mistakes are deliberate, but once fixed we can see how quickly they recur to see whether re--education or adding restrictions to properties is the answer.
We do need to be careful in losing contact with ships as we tidy. So if a ship just has a class as its type, removing the type means a search against type won't find it, and you'd need to copy the type of the class back to the type, if that makes sense. Eg Optimus Prime (Q101660131) Vicarage (talk) 06:59, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think I can figure out how to use QuickStatements but I'll contacct you directly for help. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 08:02, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've fixed
A ship should only refer to a ship class via property vessel class (P289); something is wrong if instance of (P31) also refers to a ship class.
ExpandList defective items with vessel classes in both P289 and P31
Good ship type but ship class (Q559026) mislocated in instance of (P31)
ExpandList defective items with good ship type but also instance of a ship class
ship class (Q559026) as type with no ship type as type
ExpandList defective items that are instance of a ship class but are not an instance of something that is not a ship class
The first 2 manually, the 3rd with the sed script
sed -Ee 's`http://www.wikidata.org/entity/(Q[0-9]*),(.*),http://www.wikidata.org/entity/(Q[0-9]*),(.*),http://www.wikidata.org/entity/(Q[0-9]*),(.*)`-\1|P31|\3\n\1|P289|\3\n\1|P31|\5 /* \2 from \4 to \6 */`'
on results of 
::::SELECT DISTINCT ?ship ?shipLabel ?shipClass ?shipClassLabel ?type ?typeLabel
::::WHERE
::::{
::::  # Instance of some ship class
::::  ?ship wdt:P31 ?shipClass .
::::  ?shipClass wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q559026 .
::::  ?shipClass wdt:P279 ?type.
::::  MINUS {?type wdt:P31 wd:Q559026}
::::  # Not an instance of a ship type that is not a ship class
::::  FILTER NOT EXISTS { 
::::    ?ship wdt:P31 ?shipType .
::::    ?shipType wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q2235308 .
::::    FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?shipType wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q559026 . }
::::  }
::::  SERVICE wikibase:label { 
::::    bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en,fr,es,it,de,pl".
::::  }
::::}
::::LIMIT 500
::::
Try it!
If you know about sed you'll know it produces
-Q60792494|P31|Q2295097
Q60792494|P289|Q2295097
Q60792494|P31|Q174736 /* Soviet destroyer Serdity from Soobrazitelny-class destroyer to destroyer *
clear as mud! Vicarage (talk) 10:25, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 11:27, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is U-boat a ship_type or a ship_class[edit]

U-boat (Q428661) is currently a instance of (P31) of attack submarine (Q4818021), which is wrong anyway as U-boats did many things. But I think it should be a ship_class (not a type), subclass of submarine, and then all Germany U-boat classes should be subclasses of it. Vicarage (talk) 08:40, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that U-boat (Q428661) is too general to be a submarine class. As I understand it, a ship class is to be used for classes that share a specific design, not a general design idea. U-boat (Q428661) includes submarines from both the first and second world wars. But in any case there is no reason that all U-boat classes shouldn't be subclasses of U-boat (Q428661) or some subclass of it - ship classes are supposed to be subclasses of the (most specific) ship type that contains them. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 09:50, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can see why people would want lists of U-boats with a simple query, rather than having to ask for vessels in classes operated by the multiple (and not obvious) names the Germany navy operated under for 30 years. For artillery we have weapon family (Q15142889) and weapon model (Q15142894), but it really needs to be a project they are part of. Vicarage (talk) 10:16, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've changed my mind. If we create submarine_type (see below), make U-boat an instance of it, and all German submarine classes of the period subclasses of both u-boat and optionally attack_submarine etc. Vicarage (talk) 06:44, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

problems with ship types[edit]

I have updated the queries in Wikidata:WikiProject Ships/Maintenance that relate to ship type to use the Wikidata query service. There are a lot of exceptional cases, some of which require fixing. As I looked at the results I found a couple of significant problems that probably require discussion.

  • It seems reasonable to require that all ship types be subclasses of ship (Q11446) but there are some ship types that do not appear to be subclasses of even vessel (Q16391167) because they include small boats, e.g., hydroplane (Q122714) and catamaran (Q190403). What should be done about these ship types? Just allowing them to continue to be ship types will require extra statements for some ships stating directly or indirectly that they are instances of ship (Q11446). But creating subtypes for these ship types, such as hydroplane ship, doesn't seem nice either.
  • There are direct subclasses of ship (Q11446) that appear to contain instances other than ships, e.g., steamboat (Q178193) and catamaran (Q190403). Should these be reclassified as subclasses of watercraft (Q1229765)? Some of these are ship types.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 09:43, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hydroplane and catamaran are really technologies, a sailing catamaran is very different from a fast ferry. The same is true for rigging. WD seems to struggle with technologies, has part(s) (P527) is often used in a clumsy way. Vicarage (talk) 10:53, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The underlying question is what counts as a ship type (Q2235308) (more precisely what should count as a watercraft type (Q16335899)). catamaran (Q190403) is indeed different in kind to some degree from ferry (Q25653). But does that make catamaran (Q190403) unsuitable as a watercraft type (Q16335899)? There is always a tension between being specific (and perhaps making catamaran (Q190403) a hull type), risking making the modelling too hard for many users, and being vague, risking losing valuable information. I think that here it is better to be vague, particularly as the Wikipedia entries for catamarans often treat catamaran as a type (see Naramatac (Q20642434)).
And certainly has part(s) (P527) is a horrorshow. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 11:52, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

watercraft, boat, vessel, submarine, or ship[edit]

we have confusion over these terms. A watercraft is the overall one, below that things are either small and float (boats), large and float (ships), don't float (submarines). Ships go on the sea, riverboats go on rivers. A vessel is a ship, submarine or a large boat. ship type (Q2235308) has alias vessel_type boat_type and submarine_type. We have a separate boat type (Q16103215). We have vessel class (Q19832479), ship class (Q559026) and submarine class (Q1428357) but no boat_class.

I would have the watercraft ontology split on size vessel/boat, change the main label of ship type (Q2235308) to vessel_type, and remove its boat_type alias. And create a boat_class for small watercraft. I'd look at discouraging and then merging ship class (Q559026) and submarine class (Q1428357) into vessel class (Q19832479). Pleasure sailing craft would be boats unless they had multiple masts, midget submarines would be vessels. Vicarage (talk) 12:40, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I mostly agree. I do think that lake freighters like the SS Edmund Fitzgerald (Q1286267) are generally classified as ships, as mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_freighter There are many sailing boats that have two masts that I do not consider to be ships.
I also think that small boats can have a boat type and a class, as does Alf (Q116456002), so using vessel instead of watercraft is not ideal.
Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 16:09, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Size seems key to which way the thing goes, no point getting obsessed with the division. Would prefer that we should have boat_class and boat_type to mirror vessel_class and vessel_type. Would be happy with watercraft_class and watercraft_type if we had a watercraft_class property Vicarage (talk) 16:19, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK with having various _type classes but it should be all or none. That is either just watercraft_type and watercraft_class, or a separate _type and _class class for each of the divisions of watercraft (whether they be ship/submarine/boat or vessel/boat or whatever). But if there is a split then there probably still needs to be watercraft_type for thing like catamaran that cover more than one of the splits. Then there is vessel class (P289), which I suppose could be renamed to watercraft class.
Is there a good place where a proposal for all this could be written down, instead of having it as a discussion?
Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:45, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think its only thee and me who are interested in ships, TBH, so here is as good a place as any Vicarage (talk) 19:24, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a proposal for the various -type and -class classes related to watercraft. A problem with using vessel as a subclass of watercraft (Q1229765) is that it includes more than just instances of watercraft (Q1229765). See vessel (Q16391167). So this proposal doesn't use vessel.
Create as necessary -type and -class classes for the major disjoint subclasses of watercraft (Q1229765), probably ship (Q11446), boat (Q35872), and submarine (Q2811), and for watercraft (Q1229765) itself. (I looked at all the direct subclasses of watercraft (Q1229765) and these appear to be the major ones.) The current existing classes are ship type (Q2235308), ship class (Q559026), boat type (Q16103215), submarine class (Q1428357), watercraft type (Q16335899), and watercraft class (Q18758641).
Make the -type classes for the major subclasses be subclasses of watercraft type (Q16335899), as necessary. Make the -class classes for the major subclasses be subclasses of watercraft class (Q18758641), as necessary.Require that all instances of -type and -class classes for watercraft (Q1229765) be subclasses of watercraft (Q1229765). Require that all instances of -type and -class classes for the major subclasses be subclasses of their major subclass.
Require that all the -type and -class classes for the major subclasses be pairwise disjoint. Require that all instances of the -type classes for the major subclasses have no superclasses from the other major subclasses. Require that all instances of the -type classes for the major subclasses have watercraft type as a superclass.
Require that all instances of the -class classes for the major subclasses have no superclasses from the other major subclasses. Require that all instances of the -class classes have a -type class for the class that they derive from as a superclass.
Continue to use instance of (P31) to relate an instance of watercraft (Q1229765) to the type of watercraft to which it belongs. Continue to use vessel class (P289) to relate an instance of watercraft (Q1229765) to its design class. Add a.k.a. to vessel class (P289) of "boat class".
Discourage direct instance of (P31) links to watercraft (Q1229765), ship (Q11446), boat (Q35872), and submarine (Q2811). Require that no instance of watercraft (Q1229765) has instance of (P31) links to subclasses of more than one of the major subclasses. Require that no instance of watercraft (Q1229765) that is not an instance of any of the major subclasses has instance of (P31) links to subclasses of any of the major subclasses.
Require that any vessel class (P289) of instances of watercraft (Q1229765) be an instance of watercraft class. Require that any vessel class (P289) of instances of any of the major subclasses be an instance of the -class class for the subclass. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 00:44, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds fine. I think we can discount the use of vessel for spacecraft, there is only one WD item for a spacecraft vessel class, and that's fictional, and I doubt its used for land or air vehicles.
I looked at all the watercraft subclasses (and fixed a lot). Apart from technologies and trivia, we are left with hovercraft and fishing vessels. The former probably needs to be added to your master list. Fishing vessels are harder as they really do span from small boats to ships, and there are lots of examples and classes. I'd just let people use the name for the subclass, with alias fishing ship and fishing boat, and pick boat or ship instances depending on size.
I'd have the main label of vessel class (P289) as "vessel class" with aliases for watercraft, boat, ship etc Vicarage (talk) 06:37, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out that hovercraft is defined as "vehicle capable of movement within ground effect at speed or stationary over all surfaces without contact". Although hovercraft in English usually only refers to watercraft, this definition is broader and, in particular, maglev trains are subclasses of hovercraft, even though hovercraft is a subclass of watercraft. There are two ways to proceed: 1/ remove hovercraft as a subclass of watercraft and add in watercraft to hovercraft that actually are watercraft 2/ remove maglev trains from hovercraft and make any fixes required. I'm leaning towards the latter at the moment but there should be some discussion of what to do here. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 14:52, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As maglev is very different from ground effect, it is definite that maglev trains should not be hovercraft so I've remove the connection. I didn't see any resulting problems that need to be fixed. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 15:04, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But this still leaves some air-cushion trains that are hovercraft so something still needs to be done. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 15:08, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Lets make hovercraft a subclass of ground effect vehicle, not watercraft, and then forget about it! Vicarage (talk) 15:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds reasonable. I'll also classify the hovercraft that should be ships as ships if they are not already. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 15:42, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I created the two missing classes. I have also regularized the basic ontology links including instance of, subclass of, is metaclass of, and different from. The twelve classes are watercraft (Q1229765), watercraft type (Q16335899), watercraft class (Q18758641), ship (Q11446), ship type (Q2235308), ship class (Q559026), boat (Q35872), boat type (Q16103215), boat class (Q121289722), submarine (Q2811), submarine type (Q121289744), submarine class (Q1428357). Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 16:45, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Morillot-class submarine (Q1947816) uses ship project (Q16214696), do want to create a submarine_project, or do something else? Vicarage (talk) 18:04, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ballistic missile submarine (Q683570) is a warship (Q3114762) which is in turn a ship_type. We have naval vessel (Q177597), Do we change warship (Q3114762) to use naval_vessel rather than ship or invent a clumsy new term for fighting submarines, or add naval_vessel to all fighting submarine types? Vicarage (talk) 18:14, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warship says "Modern warships are generally divided into seven main categories, which are: aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, submarines, and amphibious warfare ships." so I would take warship out from under ship. This goes against the "ship" part of warship, and might have some consequences, but I don't think there is any great way forward. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:27, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
An alternative would be to put submarines under ships, which might work. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've changed warship (Q3114762) to refer to watercraft, not ships
There are lots of naval vessel types. Some work to tidy them
SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel WHERE {
::::::::::::::::  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE]". }
::::::::::::::::  {
::::::::::::::::    SELECT DISTINCT ?item WHERE {
::::::::::::::::      ?item wdt:P279 wd:Q177597.
::::::::::::::::    }
::::::::::::::::  }
::::::::::::::::
Try it!
Vicarage (talk) 18:35, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think generalizing ship project to include submarines would be the easiest way to go. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:24, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've made hovercraft watercraft_classes. We have surface effect ship (Q14915094) but not surface effect vehicle, hovercraft is a direct subclass of vehicle. Bora-class guided missile hovercraft (Q631148) is a pain Vicarage (talk) 20:44, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No action there, the item doesn't refer to ship items. We could use military project (Q27665152), but I don't like it, perhaps introduce "naval_project"?
Vicarage (talk) 18:37, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Another oddity, merchant submarine (Q5385861) is a merchant vessel (Q848944) which is a ship Vicarage (talk) 18:56, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
vessel class (Q19832479) uses Template:Infobox ship class (Q14411183), beyond my pay grade to change thatVicarage (talk) 19:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We have lead ship (Q2095057), I'm inclined to allow its use for submarines but make it a nautical term (Q66472631) rather than a ship typeVicarage (talk) 19:20, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Vicarage (talk) 16:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
naval vessel (Q177597) is defined in terms of ships, I think it should be defined in terms of watercraft. Vicarage (talk) 19:23, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Vicarage (talk) 16:35, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
state of use (P5817) has a ship constraint, suggest it be watercraft Vicarage (talk) 05:50, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Vicarage (talk) 16:32, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For museum ship (Q575727) which is a ship type and subclass, I suggest changing to watercraft and adding alias museum vessel. Vicarage (talk) 07:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Vicarage (talk) 16:31, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
research vessel (Q391022), auxiliary vessel (Q1286790), service vessel (Q3337312), training vessel (Q660668), merchant vessel (Q848944), passenger vessel (Q2055880) and working vessel (Q628983) changed class/type from ship to watercraft. Vicarage (talk) 16:39, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

problems with ship and submarine classes[edit]

I have updated the queries in Wikidata:WikiProject Ships/Maintenance that relate to ship class and submarine class to use the Wikidata query service. There are a lot of exceptional cases, some of which require fixing. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 16:11, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any way we can get a table of the number of failures for each of the queries easily visible on the page? Vicarage (talk) 19:27, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe. There is some way to see property constraint violations that might be used. I'll dig into this further next week. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 21:03, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage I couldn't find a way of doing this. What I did is to write a shell script that runs copies of the queries on the maintenance page modified to give counts. So far I've only done about 1/3 of the queries. If you think this is useful I can email the script to you. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 03:01, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage I ended up creating a python script that downloads the maintenance page, extracts the queries, modifies them to just produce counts, and runs the queries. The script is at User:Peter F. Patel-Schneider/ship maintenance query script. You may have to fix the script up a bit as I had to put leading spaces on the lines to get it to look OK. The script puts quite a load on the query server so you should only run it occasionally. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 12:44, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reciprocal named_after and lead_ship for ship classes[edit]

I've made sure that the ship_class and the ship its named after have reciprocal named_after and subject_has_role lead_ship properties, using searches like 

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel ?ship ?shipLabel WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE]". }
  {
    SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?namedafter ?class ?ship ?shipLabel WHERE {
      ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q559026;
      rdfs:label ?itemlabel.
      MINUS {?item wdt:P138 ?namedafter.    
      ?namedafter wdt:P289 ?class.}
      ?item wdt:P137 wd:Q172771.
      ?ship wdt:P289 ?item;
      rdfs:label ?shiplabel.
      FILTER(LANG(?shiplabel) = "en").
      FILTER (CONTAINS(?itemlabel, ?shiplabel))
    }
  }
}
Try it!

and 

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel ?ship ?shipLabel WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE]". }
  {
    SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?namedafter ?class ?ship ?shipLabel WHERE {
      ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q559026;
      rdfs:label ?itemlabel.
      ?item wdt:P138 ?namedafter.
      MINUS {?ship p:P289 [ pq:P2868 wd:Q2095057].}
      ?ship wdt:P289 ?item;
      rdfs:label ?shiplabel.
      FILTER(LANG(?shiplabel) = "en").
      FILTER (CONTAINS(?itemlabel, ?shiplabel))
    }
  }
}
Try it!

Vicarage (talk) 10:15, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

cargo ship and passenger vessel[edit]

@Vicarage There are two high-level subclasses of merchant vessel that appear to contain both ships and boats - cargo ship (Q105999) and passenger vessel (Q2055880). Passenger vessel appears to be under control as most of its subclasses are subclasses of either ship or boat. But there are many direct suclasses of cargo ship. All or almost all of them appear to be ships. I'm going to put cargo ship under ship and create cargo vessel as a superclass of it. Then I will go through the direct subclasses of cargo ship and generalize those that are not ships. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 16:33, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see you found coastal cargo vessel (Q11969838) which I named cargo_vessel because I didn't really follow how the 2 wikis that had it used the term. Your solution is fine.
I certainly prefer having cargo_vessel around when its clear the thing is not a ship, eg something small used European rivers, down to some medieval think 20' long.
Are you planning to have cargo_boat? Certainly lots of boats did carry cargo. Vicarage (talk) 16:46, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out that there are not very many cargo boats so I didn't bother to create this class. But it could be created. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:32, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've changed cargo ship (Q105999) so it refers only to ships, not vessels, to get cargo vessel (Q121339495) used for non-ship things, like boats. Vicarage (talk) 09:06, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

cruise ship class[edit]

@Peter F. Patel-Schneider Shouldn't cruise ship class (Q15720785) be a subclass of ship and passenger vessel, not an instance? Vicarage (talk) 16:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Vicarage
Correct. I think I already changed this. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 12:38, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

river ship[edit]

For big watercraft on European rivers, I want to use ship types and riverboat, but that crosses ontologies. How about adding river_ship? Vicarage (talk) 17:00, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Vicarage That sounds good. Go ahead. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 12:39, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
inland waterway vessel (Q121365935) created Vicarage (talk) 09:02, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I merged inland waterway vessel (Q121365935) back to inland waterway vessel (Q863970) because of 1) interwiki links dont match, and 2) no proper, languag independant, reproducible distinction between the classes. Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 14:22, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Shouldn't it be a subclass and type of watercraft, not a pair of boat and ship? @User:Peter_F._Patel-Schneider, what do you think? Vicarage (talk) 15:32, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit behind in replying on related issues, but making a class that is a subclass of both boat and ship doesn't make any sense, as boat and ship are disjoint. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 15:36, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is okay if we find a better solution, but please give response to my arguments: Most important, you are defining a separation between boat and ship without any reproducible criterion to decide whether a given vessel is a boat or a ship?! Just the english language? Just what a user just thinks it is best? That is not a good base for Wikidata. If we do not find a criterion (like (only example!) length less than 30m) it makes no sense to distinguish! - The other problem is that we introduce a separation in Wikidata but not in all the Wikis. How to handle that? --re Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 17:51, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The distinction been boats and ships has never been clear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat shows the confusion in just the English language. But away from edge cases, we know when we see a ship or a boat, and the distinction is useful. Some languages may not make the distinction, but that's true of so many things that it should not constrain our ontology, which aims to subdivide. Having everything a watercraft gets too vague. Vicarage (talk) 17:59, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There already was ship (Q11446) and boat boat (Q35872) and ship type (Q2235308) and boat type (Q16103215). Many classes were marked as belonging to ship type (Q2235308) even though they included modern watercraft that were relatively very small and were not ships. I agree that in some cases it is not obvious which side of the line a particular watercraft falls - a dividing line for modern watercraft is often made at about 300 tons displacement for most motorized watercraft.
One alternative would be to remove the distinction completely, eliminating ship type and boat type for watercraft type and eliminating ship class and boat class for watercraft class. I think there would have to be some other changes if this approach was taken and in my view it would remove an important distinction. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:16, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am not convinced that your work is the right way. But if you decide to split existing classes into new ones like inland waterway vessel (Q121365935) you have to carefully decide which other language Labels, Descriptions and interwiki links match to the new item and which to the old one. This is impossible without international assistance. If you ignore the other languages, you generate wrong Labels, Descriptions and Links and add much more chaos to Wikidata instead of reducing it. So I suggest we keep inland waterway vessel (Q863970) as before, derived from ship. Boats will usually be small enough to operate on rivers, so we need no separation. -- Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 19:09, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We had riverboat, with lots of language links to riverboat wiki articles. river_ship had no wikipedian dependencies, your merging of the two and calling it inland_waterway_vessel has caused the confusion. We have been careful that a XXX_vessel is a watercraft type, because it is applies to both ships and boats, as in fishing_vessel. It would make more sense to have riverboat and river_ship as subclasses of inland_waterway_vessel, as suggested in User talk:Peter F. Patel-Schneider. Splitting the discussion over 3 places is confusing. Vicarage (talk) 19:20, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The original definition of inland waterway vessel (Q863970) was derived from ship, so this is what the content (!) of the Label/Descriptions/Interwikis rely on. Even if some languages name it "boat". If you split boat and ship, you have to make a concept how to deal with Label/Descriptions/Interwikis. - From my language use, a boat is a small ship, that is: a subclass of a ship. I can't find any better definition. -- Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 07:11, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We aren't newly splitting boat and ship, that's been in the ontology from the start, we are fixing errors in its use. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/whats-the-difference-between-a-boat-and-a-ship is a chatty description of the problem, but heavyweight dictionaries and ontologists try to show something is a boat as opposed to a ship and vice versa, not a subclass. As I said originally "For big watercraft on European rivers, I want to use ship types and riverboat, but that crosses ontologies. How about adding river_ship" It might not be used much, but does no harm. Vicarage (talk) 07:57, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It does harm because you have no concept for the Label/Descriptions/Interwikis problem. Should the German interwiki which uses the word "Schiff" (ship) go to river_ship and the English interwiki which uses "boat" go to riverboat just because of describing in other language? That yould be no good ontology, hope you agree. A good ontology must provide a language independent criterion for the distinction. Sorry, I don't see it at your intended riverboat / river_ship distinction. -- Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 08:30, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So the solution is to make inland watercraft vessel a watercraft type, which covers the various interwiki links. That's better than the previous situation where riverboat was subclass of ship, violating the English situation. Most specializations can then be either boat or ship depending on whether they are large or not instead of forcing small riverboats to be ships. There could also be specializations of inland watercraft ship and inland watercraft boat if desired so that it is easier to set up appropriate information for the other specializations. These two new classes would be initially not linked to other Wikis, but the links from inland waterway vessel could be moved over to these classes if it was deemed desirable.
What is incorrect is to have inland watercraft vessel be a subclass of both ship and boat. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 15:18, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Type is changed now. But if we do separation, we would still have the problem of the missing criterion. Seems you have a criterion in your mind but can not put it in words that are reproducible for non-english people. My limit for "boat" is length less than 12 Meters. Yours? Even if we do not move the interwikis: We want to have a language independent ontology, don't we? An unreproducible, Vicarage/Patel-mind-specific criterion is not acceptable. Without such an criterion we should not separate! -- Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 16:36, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is a continuum between ship and boat. Most languages accept its a vague boundary. You wish cannot be satisfied. And ontologies cannot be made independent of language. Vicarage (talk) 17:32, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that both boat and ship exist, and have existed for quite some time. Is just calling everything watercraft a good solution? I don't think so. I had been thinking of putting Wikidata usage instructions on ship, something like:
The distinction between ship and boat largely follows English usage. Ships are large and self-propelled and almost always ocean-going but the very largest inland vessels, like Great Lakes freighters and large river cruise vessels, are ships. Boats are smaller, although some boats can look quite large in isolation, and are generally not designed to routinely cross oceans. The dividing line for size is around 500 tons. [Take from https://www.marineinsight.com/types-of-ships/7-differences-between-a-ship-and-a-boat/ and other sources.]
Historical ships can be smaller. Ships were designed for long-range voyages by the standards of the time or culture whereas boats were smaller than ships and generally made only short voyages. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:07, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we could take such a classification as a base for our ontology. But since the marineinsight definition is quite different to the 12 m limit I wrote (German wikipedia dicusses 14m and 16m limits although stating no consensus and different in time), we should make a reference to a criterion in our definition/description of boat (Q35872) to make sure we at least have a rough criterion and avoid conflicts between 14m and 500 ton users. Either as "smaller watercraft, coarse limit the ships might be about 500 tons" or a weblink to marineinsight or ... ? -- Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 06:21, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

XXXmax[edit]

The German wikipedia is keen on XXXmax entries for ship sizes, sometimes of particular ship types, eg Wafmax (Q2539000). I've been making them a ship_class with subclass of container ship (Q17210) and size (Q322481), but existing Panamax (Q852387) has them as subclass of ship with instance of (P31) of ship and specification (Q2101564) (ship). Which do you prefer? Vicarage (talk) 17:07, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Vicarage I like your way. These are indeed all container ships. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 12:40, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@User:huntster would you have XXXmax as classes or types, as they are design standards too? Vicarage (talk) 21:57, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage: Assuming the XXXmax is a specification from which a given class or classes are based, then it would be a type. That said, I can imagine there being XXXmax ship classes (specific designs) that were named as such to capitalize on the recognizability of Panamax, Seawaymax, etc. I won't claim to be extremely knowledgeable on the ins and outs of these kinds of ships, though. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:24, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

class or type[edit]

@Peter F. Patel-Schneider @User:huntster

Should Gowind 2500 corvette (Q114431188), Gowind 3100 frigate (Q114431189) Gowind 3100 frigate (Q114431189) be ship class or types. I think they are so specific they are classes. Vicarage (talk) 21:15, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They are design standards, which individual classes are tailored around. — Huntster (t @ c) 21:42, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Once we get to that level, the design is very constrained, as much as any ship class is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowind-class_design#Gowind_2500. While there are some classes below that, the specification seems much more of a class than a ship_type like corvette. Peter has done a lot of working thinking about ship ontology, I'd value his input. Vicarage (talk) 21:50, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@VicarageThese all appear to be single designs, with variations to further specialize, so ship class. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 01:34, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ship and boat types[edit]

There are lots of edits with ship and boat classes, I didn't detect that earlier. I think we now have a bad situation e.g. for river vessels, the old inland waterway vessel (Q863970) and the new inland waterway vessel (Q121365935) but all the interwiki links referrring to river vessels remain on inland waterway vessel (Q863970). I suggest we revert so that the old inland waterway vessel (Q863970) remains for all inland vessels. I we discuss a separation for "boat" and "ship" we first need a proper limit to distinquish between them, and please note the different languages or cultures may use different limits. -- Gerd Fahrenhorst (talk) 13:45, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

service entry and inception for ship classes[edit]

There is a lot of discussion above about the vagaries of individual ship dates, but we also need to consider them for ship classes. My preference is to use inception (P571) for the vague year that a ship class started, accepting that this might be design sign-off, or when the lead ship was launched, and use service entry (P729) for when the first ship in the class started operational use. The former need only be accurate to a year (or so), the latter could be an exact commission date for a warship. But its much easier to populate inception (P571) from all our sources than service entry (P729). Vicarage (talk) 22:32, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds reasonable. What is the situation in other domains? Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 00:36, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Muddled, for buildings and weapons. Perhaps we could tighten inception (P571) to match the launching year of the lead ship, as launch dates are well-recorded and it matches the description "time when an entity begins to exist" better than keel_laying or requirement writing. Vicarage (talk) 06:30, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For planned ships, I'm putting the vague inception=2020s. For abandoned projects, 1940s, because that seems better than nothing or <no value> Vicarage (talk) 07:07, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your original proposal seems right. A ship class is more than the ships that belong to it, so making inception (P571) be related to the design or idea, as opposed to the launching of the lead ship, seems right and works for ship classes that do not have a lead ship (yet) or were abandoned. service entry (P729) can then be used for the operational start of the class and shared with the operational start of the lead ship. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 08:19, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree intellectually, but pragmatically no sources will record the date some committee agreed a project. Some projects, especially in wartime, race through, others can be stalled for a decade, or with modern procurement, take two decades by design. Service entry is the most relevant for comparing across ships, I only wish we had fewer gaps. I think we always want a value for inception, however inconsistent, so we've got a sanity check for connecting to other resources, and demand accuracy for service_entry, so expect gaps. Vicarage (talk) 08:37, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Vicarage So we do the best we can. If the inception date for a class is some other (hopefully early) milestone then that should be acceptable. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:42, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

vessel_class warnings[edit]

I'm getting a vessel_class warning on HMS Banterer (Q122073635) saying Banterer-class gunboat (Q4857210) is not a vessel class (Q19832479). Can you fix @User:Peter_F._Patel-Schneider? Vicarage (talk) 14:47, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@VicarageI'm not seeing a warning. Do you still see one? In any case I made watercraft class (Q18758641) a subclass of (P279) of vessel class (Q19832479), which is appropriate and should fix any future warnings. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 18:40, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Warning gone now, thanks Vicarage (talk) 18:42, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Adding country of origin to ships[edit]

I think ships should have operator (P137), country of origin (P495) and country of registry (P8047) (if they really appeared on a register there, using it for warships and pre mid 20th century is a bad idea), and not country (P17) unless they are now a museum ship (Q575727) or shipwreck (Q852190). If missing I've been copying across the country from the manufacturer (P176). At some time I will fix the countries based on the launch date. I'm not assuming people will pick up the country via the manufacturer because a manufacturer can span multiple countries over its life, eg United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Q174193) to United Kingdom (Q145) in 1922, or all the Germanys. Fine tuning can be done for edge cases where country boundaries change with time. So far I will keep to the Royal Navy (Q172771) and United Kingdom (Q145) built warships for other countries, until I'm sure there are no gotchas. Vicarage (talk) 11:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Adding different from for pairs of ships, removing disambiguation pages[edit]

SELECT DISTINCT ?itemLabel ?item WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE]". }
  {
    SELECT DISTINCT ?item WHERE {
      ?item wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q11446.
      ?item wdt:P137 wd:Q172771.
      ?item wdt:P1889 ?confused.
      ?confused wdt:P31 wd:Q4167410.
    }
  }
}
Try it!

shows we have 50odd Royal Navy ships with a different from (P1889) to a disambiguation page. I think it would be more useful to have them refer to the actual ships, pairwise. Before I remove them and run my script that will add 9000odd statements, does anyone have objections? My script handles official name (P1448), which I've been adding Vicarage (talk) 15:31, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds like a good idea. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 15:35, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

watercraft_class, boat_class, submarine_class or ship_class muddle, why not use design_class and functional_class[edit]

We have a muddle of ship class (Q559026), boat class (Q121289722), submarine class (Q1428357), submarine class (Q1428357), and vessel class (Q19832479), and people keep moving things between them. As the property vessel class (P289) widely used for ships and submarines is already called 'vessel' class, why not use {{Q|1428357} for them all, and stop worrying about boats on ships, and big submarines.

If you want to list classes for set of vessels, go down the subclass of (P279) route to pick ships, boats, submarines etc Vicarage (talk) 16:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is one way to go. I think the original setup was that most things used ship class, which was a metaclass for ship, even for vessels that were not ships. Replacing them all might have consequences with sailboats, which use sailboat class. The community might not appreciate having sailboat class replaces by vessel class. Of course, we could leave sailboat class alone. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 23:18, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My vision is to have clear distinctions between 3 things, objects (that you could touch), designs (that you could buy from a named source), and functions (what you were looking do with it).
You could use P31 to ask for things, and either design or functional classes, using P279 to narrow down the type of object you wanted. You could get identical things with "design model", and similar things with "design family".
This would avoid having a chain of functional classification through P279 saying its a boat, and a separate one to decide that its also part a boat/ship/weapon class/model/family chain.
Its a big job doing it for all of WD, but doing it for watercraft should be possible, just having "watercraft design" with alias "vessel class" to replace *_class and "watercraft functional class" to replace *_type.
You could do the same for vehicles and aircraft, with the muddle that some consider vehicles to be land based, and dislike "vehicle design" and "vehicle class" being used for ships.
There is a woolly area with historical designs which are based on the local names for very similar things, but I'd err on having a wherry (Q1964323) as a functional class.
Other examples are
  • gate guardian at Biggin Hill / Spitfire Mark VII - Spitfire / single engined monoplane fighter - fighter - military aircraft
  • The guns outside a museum / 9.2" BL gun Mark VII - 9.2" BL gun / BL gun - cannon
Vicarage (talk) 10:08, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I support this. I think that you should try to get more buy-in before making significant changes. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 19:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't functional class the same as the current ship type? Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 19:46, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, exactly, but it doesn't restrict you to getting ships if your P279 query went down to watercraft. It gives the flexibility to cross the boat/ship/submarine/vehicle boundary. Vicarage (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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