User:Stunteltje/Sandbox/Naming naval ships

Naming categories for individual naval and fishing ships

If an image of a certain naval or fishing ship has to be categorised in Wikimedia Commons, these ships are hard to find if the name of the vessel is not found on the image. Most names of naval and fishing ships have only relatively small carved or painted nameplates, hardly to find on images. However: they have large numbers painted on the hull. By obligation. The pennant number and the fishing license number is painted in big letters/numbers on the hull to serve as a quick recognition marker. We have to realise that we are talking about naming categories, not naming ships. You don't find a ship just in a category named by the pennant number or fishing license only .

It has a name too, so also the name is an identifier. But certain shipnames are used many times, also for naval and fishing ships. The easyest way of making a difference was to add a date in the naming system. The English Wikipedia uses the year of launch, a number of other wikipedias use the year of first commisioning or year of completion. As for very old ships the year of launching is seldom mentioned but the date of first commissioning or completion is. The year of first commisioning or completion the best criterium for this international project.

That is the reason why more and more of these ships are categorised: by the indication (pennant number in many cases, Russian ships have no real pennant number) or "fishing license", "shipname" ("ship", "tugboat" or "submarine", "year of completion (or first commissioning for naval ships)", "place of built") when name and year for the vessel are the same). See Category:Ships by pennant number and Category:Fishing vessels by license number.

Assume you are a user who finds an image like this somewhere, outside Wikipedia. You want to find more images. In commons you start looking for "J315" and you find the ship. That is the system. And if you are familiar with pennant numbers, you go to Category:Ships with pennant number 315 and you find the ship. The other way around: You are looking for HMAS Wagga. The redirect brings you immediately to category J315 Wagga (ship, 1942). In case there were more Waga's, you'll find them by year of first commisioning or completion, depending on naval or civil.

According that simple system most naval and fishing ships were categorised. Recategorised categories were always directing to the old categories, so images of ships could be found by different systems. I am not aware of any comment on the system for fishing ships.

But a problem rises with the names of British Commonwealth naval ships (and I assume also for US naval ships). I realise that inclusion of HMS, HMAS etc. prefix is an important British Commonwealth cultural thing. It is unthinkable to refer to British, Australian Canadian etc. warships as anything else but HMS xyz, HMAS xyz etc. I know that. But: It has nothing to do with this international project of Wikimedia Commons. Here is important that images can be found, in an international way.

It is not more than normal than that the local Wikipedia's follow their own standard. But users of the English Wikipedia want to insist of using their local naming system in this international project. A number of them thinks that the name of a naval vessel includes a prefix. In my opinion that is not correct. If you look at the nameplate of a naval vessel or her ships badge, you don't find a prefix. Of course in literature these prefixes are used, independent of the language. But that is not the case here. Prefixes of shipnames like SS, S/S, MS, M/S and so on are widely used in literature, but language dependent and not used in category names in Commons. Unless in the name, as in M/S RHEINLAND.

As prefixes are not part of the name of a ship, civil, naval, fishing or whatsoever, they must not be used in name categories of ships. The can always be found via redirects, if the majority of the users think this is useful. Recategorised categories have such a redirect already. In my view prefixes like HMS, HMAS and so on are to be left out of the name category of a ship.

Besides: Prefixes of US ships change from time to time, as the function of the ship changes. USS XXX becomes USCGXXX where the XXX in the years can change. Ships are just numbered and during a vast period only the pennant number is painted on the ship. In the case of certain ships, such as some LSTs and submarines, they never received a "name" as such, but are known by the pennant number in the absence of anything better, so the pennant is the de facto name. Furthermore pennant numbers can change without any alterations to the ship or its ownership. This is not different from ships known by name. The only problem is, that no system exist like the IMO system, where a hull always keeps the IMO number and the link between the names can be found via the IMO number. We don't have a coupling mechanism. European barges have a simular system by ENI number, European Number of Identification.

If the conclusion of the discussion is, that we leave out all prefixes and the pennant numbers, the category scheme can allow search-by-pennant number easily enough. To use the "Enterprise example" - it could be in categories with names like "ships with pennant number 65", "US Navy ships with hull classification code CVN" and "US Navy ships with hull classification code CVAN". The pennant information for ships that have a name too doesn't need to be in the category name to allow non-experts to use the categories. These categories allow for appropriate searching by people who are unfamiliar with the ships. Remember also, if the only thing a person knows about a photo of a ship is that it has "65" on its side, they cannot ID it from that alone, but need further information.