• User talk:Wwoods/archive 2004

I noticed that you changed the reference on the National Museum of the United States Air Force page from Bocks Car to Bock's Car. If you go to the actual page for the aircraft or here, you will see that on the nose art, it is spelled without the apostrophie, but there is some dispute as to whether it is spelled with space after the "S". Rogerd 00:09, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the article. I had written a bit on the 6th and the Western Front and this was a biography which needed doing. Philip Baird Shearer 20:21, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The Baen Free Library isn't violating copywrite. All the books are there with the permission of their copywrite-holders.

I apologize for the error. I confused this link with one from the Wikiquote David Weber page that had posted Honor Harrington CD images online. Sloppy of me. I've restored the BFL link to the Honor Harrington article. — Jeff Q 00:39, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with that site either. The "copyright" message on the CDs permits, nay encourages, non-commercial copying: there are several sites where the full content of each CD is available with the full blessing of Baen Books. HTH HAND -- Phil | Talk 09:24, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. I considered reducing the size when I first began, but I wanted people to read the words on the jack clearly. -- 68.100.252.229 05:26, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

BTW, redirects don't work as desired if you have a space between the "#" and "REDIRECT" - might want to doublecheck the USS ones you've been creating. Stan 16:17, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You've inverted your conversion factor for tons, at least in the Perry class stuff. Can you please go back and fix it? 4,100 long tons is 4,170 metric tons, not 4,030 metric tons. Gene Nygaard 13:35, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I used table formatting mainly because the old format was so dull and uninteresting: it looked like someone had simply taken a text file and copied it in, with minimal effort to make it look good to the eye. My personal opinion is that Wikipedia needs to take full advantage of the facilities to present information in an eye-catching manner. Simply looking like an amateur production made with a mimeograph or spirit duplicator is fine for a fan convention if you're short of cash—Wikipedia is a world-class production and should look like it. You're ranting, that'll do. Yeah, enough already! HTH HAND -- Phil | Talk 09:11, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and I forgot, I was also moving them all to Category:Hugo awards in the process. -- Phil | Talk 09:20, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Not nessciarily. Sometimes articles on the site our placed into multiple catagories that seem redundent, like haveing video games classfied as first person shooters and arcade shooter (for an example, check out Time Crisis 3. In this case, I placed the catagory on all the pages in case someone wanted view all the battleships. If you decided to revert the changes I won't complain, I just thought it might make things easier. TomStar81 09:35, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the links to index pages (e.g. "See USS Albacore for other ships of that name.") need to be at the top of the articles.

I disagree: disambiguation is one of their purposes

But if someone types (or follows a link to) "USS Albacore (SS-218)", they presumably know where they intend to go

Two things:

1) When I first started fiddling with the sub articles (long story why, especially since I'm not a naval buff or even have a Navy background), starting with the USS Trout, I didn 't find a disambiguation page. in retrospect, I should have created them, but still immaterial, because

2) either typing the exact name or following a disambiguation link are NOT the only ways to get to such a page -- consider direct links from Google results, or links derived from Google results. In either case, if the searcher says, "this is not the submarine I was looking for," how will they find the submarine they ARE looking for? Requiring someone to scroll to the bottom to find the clarification strikes me as unreasonable.

BTW, part of the reason I started fiddling was that I was offended by the godawful prose and organizational scheme of the DNFSS format as found in the USS Trout article: the most important thing to mention in the first sentence concerning a sub that sank 23 ships, won 11 battle stars, and hauled 20 tons of gold and silver from the Phillippines is that it's the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the trout, any of certain small, fresh-water fishes, highly esteemed by anglers for their gameness, their rich and finely flavored flesh and their handsome (usually mottled or speckled) coloration?!? Say what? -- Calton | Talk 07:59, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

1) "...starting with the USS Trout, I didn 't find a disambiguation page."

Hmm? the index page, USS Trout, is more than a year old.

[3)] "godawful prose" :-) You've got a point about burying the lead--and Trout isn't one of the obscure fishes that need a long description. But most ships don't have a single noteworthy incident to hang an introduction on. For DANFS conversions, I've been using templates like User:Wwoods/Balao class page template. I think it gives an adequate article, at least first-draft quality.

—wwoods 09:26, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I see you're trying to get rid of the blank lines that the new table style has stuck in at the top of the article. I really don't know what on earth is causing the parser to put those in, except that it seems to be something to do with using the extended template format. I'll hold off making any more changes until we can see about getting those fixed, but I'll continue with starting to make the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer templates that I've started. Good luck with your end of trying to get rid of the whitespace. David Newton 17:40, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I notice it's the optional lines which are padded above and below: Commissioned:, Homeport:, Fate/Status:, etc. So it's something about the template box--and the whole ship table has the same padding. By the way, starting off with the Nimitzs definitely qualifies as "be[ing] bold" :-); I'd have started with something obscure.

—wwoods 18:23, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I note that you seem to have found the solution to getting rid of unnecessary white space in the table itself. I'll make the changes to the other templates as appropriate, bear it in mind for the future, and add it to the tutorial for how to write templates for ship classes. David Newton 17:50, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

When I wrote the first version of the article, I checked the name with a search of ".mil" sites and found that "Pacific Ocean Areas" was far more common than "Pacific Ocean Area". Is there another reason why you've moved/changed it? Grant65 (Talk) 03:37, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my recollection, I'd always seen it as Area. But this afternoon I did come across several uses of Area_s_, so... It's an odd uncertainty--go ahead and change it back. Conversely, "South West Pacific" seems to outvoted by "Southwest Pacific". Want to change that one?

—wwoods 07:55, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. "South West" appears to be normal Australian usage whereas "Southwest" is normal for Americans. Both occasionally use the other form. The Brits, New Zealanders and Canadians (none of whom were heavily involved in the SWPA) use both (and "South-west") but appear to lean towards "South West". I'm not sure how we resolve that(?) Grant65 (Talk) 12:53, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

In The Hunt for Red October, you wrote, "The novel was originally published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press—the first nonfiction they ever published". I assume you meant "fiction" instead of "nonfiction"? -- RoySmith 01:39, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oops. —wwoods 01:40, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are you planning to create stubs for these new links or should I do it? Hal Jespersen 22:12, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That was quick. Nice work. Hal Jespersen 23:35, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I salute you for a job well done. Let me explain myself. Before I became interested in Wikipedia, I told my son that we should write an article about Pedro del Valle. I read a book in the library about Gaudacanal and it only contained one sentence which mentioned his name. I found it odd that history books never mentioned this general. Being a Puerto Rican and former Marine, I decided to do some research about him. I told my son to write the little info we had in Wiki and eventually when I became interested in Wiki, I took the project over myself. I wrote to the Marine Corps Museum and hit the books. That's why I wanted to personally thank you for posting the image with his picture. You've made a good article even better. Tony the Marine

You're welcome. It looks like the same picture as on http://hqinet001.hqmc.usmc.mil/HD/Historical/Whos_Who/delValle_PA.htm , only a more reasonable size, so when I came across it on http://www.nps.gov/wapa/indepth/extContent/usmc/pcn-190-003135-00/sec2.htm#senior , I grabbed it. There's still more to do: What's his middle name? And what's the story behind those four Italian medals?

—wwoods 07:02, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How you doing? His middle name was "Antonio", I added it to the article as (born Pedro Antonio del Valle). The Italian medals were awarded to him when he served as the Assistant Naval Attache in the American Embassy in Rome. This is not unusual for military personal overseas who are assigned to their embassy but must work in some degree with the government of the host country. The French have bestowed the Legion of Honor to non-military foreigners. I know that South Vietnam presented my unit with the Vietnam Campaign Medal and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry, and those are considered as foreign military decorations. Another thing and this is only my theory, since Benito Mussolini was in charge of the Italian government, maybe he wanted to look good, like "I'm not such a bad guy" by bestowing medals. That's just a theory. Thanks again. Drop over by my talk page whenever you feel like it for a friendly chat. Tony the Marine

That is essentially what supporters of CBS are claiming, that some Republicans (see in the article allegations of Karl Rove invovlement) knew of Bush's guard service record and sought to discredit it by putting out fraudulent documents ahead of time. The point that the accusations or criticisms contained in the killian documents might still be true is lost, which arguably was the plan. Also, labeling something as a conspiracy theory is POV especially in this case when it can be cited that generic supporters of CBS and Dan Rather do allege Republican involvement. Though you do have a point that it's not entirely clear, it might be more accurate to say that supporters of CBS alleged Republicans preempted the controversy by faking the very documents that might have legitimately criticized Bush. zen master T 19:16, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But for this nefarious scheme to work requires that

1. CBS initially accept the documents as 'too good to check',
2. Outsiders quickly demolish the credibility of the documents, and
3. CBS and everyone else are unable to trace the documents to the true source, despite extreme motivation to do so.
4. (And the whole controversy doesn't bring someone else out of the woodwork with some real evidence of something.)

None of which is in the Machiavellian Rove's control. And the risk of this clever plan not working is very high, and the cost of failure would have been catastrophic for the Bush campaign. Someone motivated solely by hatred of Dan Rather might not care about that, and think it was worth a shot, but Rove is too smart and prudent to try such a dirty trick. There was no need--he had the Guard issue under control: a minor blemish on Bush's record that had already been aired and discounted.

That is a conspiracy theory. Of course it's easy to understand why generic supporters of CBS and Dan Rather, and Bush/Rove-haters, are tempted to believe it might be true.

—wwoods 20:15, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Camp X-Ray is sometimes considered to be a concentration camp because the detainees are not being treated as POWs and have have not been in front of a "competent tribunal" (GCIII) so they are not unlawful combatants. Given they are not POWs or unlawful combatants, and the US administration has detained them using military orders from authorisation granted under the War Powers Resolution, they must be being detaind under GCIV and that would put them under GCIV Section IV Internees. They are therefor being held in an internment camp which is a more modern name for a British Boer war concentration camp.

Legal logic chopping I know, but as good as any other description for Camp X-Ray Philip Baird Shearer 00:30, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Was published in 1899, so it's PD. You have to watch the type carefully because the online version was probably OCRed and there are typos. I plan to convert more of them, but if you do some, try to expand to include first names of the generals. Hal Jespersen 02:06, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I now see why you're citing Civil War High Commands

—wwoods 08:49, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi Wwoods. I nominated you for an admin. Just go to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Wwoods and indicate your acceptance and answer a few questions. -- Darwinek 10:18, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The work is not glamourous, or (I suspect), a lot of fun, but it needed to be done. Thanks for the attention to detail on this. Jinian 10:38, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment regarding List of ships of the United States Navy. However, on that page it currently says "including both past and present vessels." This is why I added USS Fearless there. The page needs to be changed to identify that page as a list of all current vessels only, and how the decommed ships are listed elsewhere. -- Durin 12:58, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Up at the top, I said, "For most initial letters, this page only lists current ships, with links to lists of all ships, past and present." I've added "Current ships:" or "All ships:", as appropriate, to each section. Think that'll do it?

—wwoods 16:41, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't know, it still seems unclear. How about this for the first paragraph:

The following is a list of ships active in the United States Navy. In cases where the name of the active ship has been used before to name a USN vessel, annotations follow the name indicating all vessels in the USN, both past and present, that have borne the name.

I'd also suggest relabeling the links that say "List of all ships of the United States Navy, F" to "All ships of the United States Navy beginning with F". This coincides with the subpages. What do you think? -- Durin 19:43, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh, one other thing: On your comment about adding in mention of the hull of Fearless being wooden. I agree, in part, but my intention was to place this information in the Aggressive-class page which is more appropriate for this sort of information I think, as the construction details are relevant to all members of the class. I don't know when I'll get around to it, but some day. I spent all of two weeks aboard Fearless and think I'm doing pretty good just to get her on Wikipedia, much less the rest of her oft ignored class :) -- Durin 19:52, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'd hate to have this turn into some sort of revert war. I'd like to continue making thumbnails where possible. I've responded in more depth on my talk page. Avriette 01:28, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's something I've been meaning to fix for a while. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. At least with the centralised nature of the table, if I fix it there it will be promulgated to all the examples. BTW, what do you think about my alterations to the text of a couple of the rows? I've put in Propulsion and power instead of just Propulsion; and Sensors and processing systems instead of just Sensors. My logic was that power and propulsion systems go together, as do sensors and data processing systems and there was no point adding yet another row to the table to accomodate the generators for the hotel functions of a ship and the data processing hardware and software like Aegis.

I've also noticed the point on your talk page about thumbnails vs full-width images in tables. I'll chime into that debate myself once I've finished writing this message. David Newton 14:51, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hum. This is a disambiguation page, not an article. Not entirely convinced how the additional information added here by you helps to get the reader to the right article. Wouldn't it have been better to spend the time on the relevant articles?. -- Chris j wood 00:09, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Congrats on becoming an admin. Keep up the good work, -- Zeerus 14:17, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 14:20, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations, and you are very welcome! -- Merovingian (t) (c) 14:01, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Boy you're a nice pest :) Thanks for the continued alertness on various USN articles. -- Durin 00:36, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

:-) —wwoods 00:41, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for reverting the vandalism on my home node. I do know who one of the people is, but it appears there are four or so of them doing it. I'm presently out of town, so it's difficult for me to keep track of it. If you have suggestions as to how to prevent it in the future, I would be much obliged. Avriette 21:48, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I've tried out my new Wiki-Power™, to protect your user page--see if that helps. Let me know when you want it released.

—wwoods 00:02, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'd rather not block people from editing the page if it can be avoided. Is it instead possible to block specific users from editing my page? Can you define "protected"? Thanks again. Avriette 07:00, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

" Protected" means ordinary users can't edit a page; AIUI, protection doesn't affect the associated Talk page. I'll remove the protection if you wish, of course. Let me know, one way or the other.

It's possible to block specific users from editing for a period of time, but checking their edit histories, I see that the vandals have no other edits, which suggests they have a dynamic internet connection, and blocking their old IP addresses won't do much. But, if you wish, I'll give it a go. A learning experience for me, if nothing else.

—wwoods 07:50, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you again. Appears I'm a popular dude. Avriette 01:53, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, again. I know who this user is, even. It's a shame that talking to them and asking them to stop would only give them the attention they want to begin with. Avriette 22:14, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for going through and dethumbing the crew photos for all the manned American space flights. The tables look much better. Evil Monkey∴ Hello 01:28, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

Hi - Any idea why putting the templates in tables messes up the formatting so much? I actually think it would be better to put the edit links in each template. What would you think about reverting the list article to the previous version and over the next few days one or both of us adding edit links to each of the templates? -- Rick Block 02:25, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I figured you were an appropriate choice to mention the ships I find whose pages use the old html-table style instead of the newer, cleaner, mediawiki-style tables.

• USS Salmon (SSR-573)

Avriette 07:26, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

yeah, like that. Mind if I continue to drop little things like that on you? I've been going through trying to find images for all the items listed on [[Image::IIH.png]] and have had moderate success. Some of the older ships are near impossible to find images for, so I'm not really going to see all of them, but I was able to add 9 today. Avriette 17:00, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

Sure. For pictures I mostly go to Navsource.

By the way, is the Salmon picture okay, copyright-wise? http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08573.htm has the same picture, but just says, "Salmon (SS-573), bow view undwerway, date and place unknown / Courtesy of John Hummel.", though it pretty obviously is a Navy photo. http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-s.htm has the other two Salmons, but not 573.

—wwoods 17:34, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, and the majority opinion at the Australian discussion page also disagrees. Adam 09:17, 2 May 2005 (UTC) reply

Should we start a catagory for the facilities that will be effected by BRAC '05? TomStar81 22:05, 14 May 2005 (UTC) reply

I don't know that it's worthwhile, since it's such a temporary status. Come September or thereabouts, we'll have to update articles: "As a result of BRAC 2005, the base was closed/expanded/whatever." The template's "What links here" page will be a handy checklist for that, which seems all that a category would give.

—wwoods 22:22, 14 May 2005 (UTC) reply

Alright then, I'll leave it just the templete. Thanks :) TomStar81 22:54, 14 May 2005 (UTC) reply

If he was not wearing a flight suit, what would you prefer to call it? Are we arguing semantics here? Otherwise I don't understand your objection. The photographs are readily available. · Katefan0 ^(scribble) 21:26, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Umm, a business suit? Check the picture and video; I put in a link to the speech.

—wwoods 21:43, 16 May 2005 (UTC) reply

• Are you kidding? He wore a flight suit for his landing. That's what the paragraph is talking about. · Katefan0 ^(scribble) 13:19, May 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • OK, I see the confusion... landing vs speech; I'll refactor the paragraphs so it's not so confusing. Thanks. · Katefan0 ^(scribble) 13:25, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

No technical reason, purely stylistic. I thought a lighter background and a softer font would make the imageholder less obtrusive/more acceptable. I'm sorry if you're not happy with it, I will not object in any way if you wish to revert to the previous style. Mark 16:52, 17 May 2005 (UTC) reply

Hi, saw your visit to the 7th Fleet page I had edited; now I'm working on USS Pocahontas and USS Despatch and had a question you might be able to answer. The screw steamer Pocahontas was originally commissioned as USS Despatch (which currently has no page). Should there be a separate page for Despatch (it had different characteristics, before renaming the ship was expanded, etc)? And one of the later Despatch vessels was originally a USS Boston that was renamed. Is there some standard for disambiguating and pointing to these vessels? Are they considered the same ship? Kaisershatner 19:31, 31 May 2005 (UTC) reply

All DANFS has to say about the second Despatch is, "a screw steamer, was renamed Pocahontas (q. v.) on 27 January 1860." despatch-ii.htm

pocahontas-i.htm has only a couple of paragraphs on her history as Despatch, and quite a bit more about her Civil War history as Pocahontas. Unless you've got a better source, I suggest following DANFS--making USS Despatch (1852) a redirect to USS Pocahontas (1852), and making a section, "== USS Despatch ==", on that period of the ship's history. Likewise, I suggest making USS Despatch (1884) and USS Despatch (IX-2) redirect to USS Boston (1884).

Whether to make different eras of a ship's history different pages is a judgement call--how different are they, and what information is available? USS Ringgold (DD-500) had three names in three different navies; I put them all on the one page because I didn't have anything to say about the latter two beyond their existence. If anyone comes along who knows more, they can be split easily enough.

—wwoods 22:49, 31 May 2005 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the tip, sounds pretty sensible. Kaisershatner 01:15, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Stadtwappen minden.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in its not being deleted. Thank you. — MetsBot 19:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC) Not linked to any article. reply

Thought you might like to know about some additional resources I found for USN ships. The first one is at the Naval War College in Newport. At that facility, they have the 20th Century Ships History database [1]. If you then go to historical notes/ships notes you get this page [2]. Just type in a hull number, and voila! Missing history on some ships that it is difficult to find histories on (like, not in DANFS for example...which applies to many recent ships).

The other resource I found has ships characteristics, history, namesake info, etc. Can't use it, since it's not free license/PD. But there are photos on each ships page that are, so far as I've seen, always US Navy photos. Here's an example for USS Caron (DD-970) [3]. Note that the site is designed poorly; if you go to subsites on say, destroyers 1-100 you get a list of blue text on blue background. The ships are there, but you'll have to highlight them to see them. Uhg! Anyways, this site is a great resource for photos since they are USN photos.

Enjoy. -- Durin 20:51, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have a favor to ask: I'm trying to bring the USS Missouri page up to featured article statues, and was wondering if you would you take a look at the USS Missouri (BB-63) page and let me know what I can do to further improve it. I'm worried about the reference section's length, among other things, so any imput- positive or negative- would be greatly apreciated. TomStar81 02:26, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I took a pass through the article and made some tweaks, fixed links, and added my usual suspects to the external links. Does that help?

—wwoods 23:21, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that helps. I'm putting the article up for peer review before fomally placing the article in the FAC voting. Thanks for your help. TomStar81 00:26, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Update: Missouri's now on the FAC page. Thought you might like to know. TomStar81 02:31, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

T-AO 204 Rappahannock -- if you have a way to find further information about her history. I saw her last time I was in Hawaii, and only got around to putting a picture up today. Also, please change category if it is incorrect. Avriette 00:13, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

I've checked some dictionaries and taxying is an alternative to taxiing. The only reason I used that spelling is because the doubled letter i looks ugly. However I'm sure using the i is much more common so I'll spell it taxiing in the future. Best wishes - Adrian Pingstone 07:22, 23 July 2005 (UTC) reply

Hey! I'm looking for some outside opinion on some assertions that I removed from the Great Pyramid of Giza article. The anon who inserted them initially, got an account, reinserted them, and produced references. Great, right? Well, the problem is he's using "Fingerprints of the Gods" as a primary reference, and although I know very little about the Great Pyramid, what I've read makes me think it isn't exactly what you'd call "credible" in scientific circles. I'd appreciate comment at the article's talk page.-- Scimitar ^parley 15:27, 19 August 2005 (UTC) reply

Thank you for reverting the anon's recent deletions of material on Katharine Hepburn. He has had some valuable suggestions for fixing some pieces of material that were incorrect, but he also insists on deleting factual material (like quotes, information on the A. Scott Berg book, and information on The Aviator, all of which are relevant and properly written). He's engaged me a tiny bit on the talk page (quite uncivilly I might add), but once I requested sourcing for the changes he was seeking, he stopped talking and started reverting again. Until he comes to talk, and sources his changes (and stops deleting things wholesale), I'm pretty much going to consider him a vandal. So thanks very much for your help. · Katefan0 ^(scribble) 22:16, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Again, thanks. Here's to an eventual resolution. · Katefan0 ^(scribble) 05:20, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Sir, you have George Cavendish as the son of Thomas Cavendish, but how can a guy born in 1500, and died 1562, be the son of a guy born 1555 (died 1592)? When George died in 1562, Thomas, his "father", was SEVEN years old? WikiDon 04:23, 6 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Heh. Presumably the Cavendish family recycled its given names. Let's see:

• Robert de Gernon
  • Sir John Cavendish of Cavendish (c. 1346 – 1381)
    • John Cavendish
      • Thomas Cavendish
        • Thomas Cavendish II
          • George Cavendish (1500 – c.1562)
          • Sir William Cavendish (1505 - 1557)
            • William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire (1552 – 1626)
            • Sir Charles Cavendish
              • William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle (1592 - 1676)
  • Roger Cavendish
    • ---- Cavendish
      • Thomas Cavendish "the Navigator" (1555 - 1592)
  • ---- Cavendish
  • ---- Cavendish

So George is the son of a Thomas, and the second cousin, twice removed, of Thomas "the Navigator". If more of these guys get articles, there'll need to be quite a bit of disambigging. —wwoods 06:09, 6 September 2005 (UTC) reply

No, I figured that, but you have the link going to Thomas Cavendish in the George Cavendish article, I was asking if the link shouldn't be changed? If we remove the link, do you at least have the birth-death years of his father Thomas? WikiDon

George Cavendish says Thomas died 1524. Google mostly finds the famous Thomas. This http://users.legacyfamilytree.com/USPresidents/4896.htm says Thomas Cavendish II, d.1523. And that his father, Thomas Cavendish, d.1477.

http://www.stirnet.com/HTML/genie/british/cc4aq/cavendish01.htm and http://www.peterwestern.f9.co.uk/maximilia/pafg161.htm also say 1523.

—wwoods 18:20, 6 September 2005 (UTC) reply

• Okay, riddle me this Batman. In the article Cavendish Tobacco there was a:

• "Sir Thomas Cavendish (1564-1593), English admiral"

(I removed it.)

I also found:

• Thomas Cavendish (1555-1592), "The Navigator", British explorer

Do you think there are the same two guys? I know that there could be two cousins, both Thomas, both in the Navy, it is possible. The years are fairly close. What do you think?

WikiDon 03:57, 7 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Did you mean Cavendish, rather that Cavendish Tobacco?

Prob-b-bab-b-bly they're the same guy. The web, or at least Google, doesn't seem to be a strongly authoritative source, but... The birthyear seems to vary.

• http://home.swipnet.se/~w-17282/stamps/ship/10p.html "This 50 gun ship under the command of Admiral Thomas Cavendish (the first Englishman to visit St Helena) was sent to the East Indies to add strenght in the face of a Dutch and French build up of power Even as early as 1586 Europeans were realising the value of colonies so far away and snet[sic] powerful shipe to protect trade routes. [picture of HMS Desire, 1588]"
• but http://www.slrkelowna.ca/helena.html "The Portuguese kept St. Helena a secret watering hole until Capt. Thomas Cavendish landed there on June 8, 1588."
• http://www.barron.co.uk/?pgid=140

I did not add them, but fyi, those were Korean characters (not Chinese). 66.235.58.142 20:35, 11 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Also, thank you for reverting the vandalism! 66.235.58.142 20:38, 11 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Hey just wanted to say thanks for the help with the templates. Using your fletcher class templates I made a Sumner class template and linked it to my page. Hope to get a lot of use out of it. Thanks again Malo 08:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the comment, I wasn't sure what to do with them. The reason I chose Long Beach, California is that some of the ship articles have different references some to Long beach (the disambig page) and a different refernce to the Naval base. Unless it makes a big difference I'll just leave them how they are. Reference to the Naval base should probably be added to the disambiguation page. --best, kevin ··· Kzollman | Talk··· 05:12, 18 September 2005 (UTC) reply

You're likley correct in how people would usually stumble upon the individual ship articles. I don't entirely agree that they're not disambiguation type links. Your example seems to imply that you should only use disambig blocks when dealing with words that have multiple meanings. I think that disambiguating over similar objects with the same name is also needed. Especially since it would take readers longer to figure out they are in the wrong place when dealing with similar objects with the same name. Furthermore, if they're interested in the history of the use of the name as you posit, I think that it is immaterial whether they're on the top or the bottom of the article. Whitejay ²⁵¹ 20:40, 22 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Thank you for the touch up -- it's starting to look pretty good. I like the subsections on the year.

Would you mind uploading a photo? There's some photos at http://www.usni.org/Photos/Thumbnail%20Images/1/4729-T.jpg and http://www.usni.org/Photos/Thumbnail%20Images/11/16197-T.jpg you might need permission from the usni.org and this one is really neat: http://photos1.blogger.com/img/256/3276/400/USS%20LAWS%20DD-558-o1.jpg [User:209.178.162.175]/[User:209.178.165.58]

I'd like to have a photo, but my usual sources, http://www.navsource.org and http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usn-name.htm didn't have any which were clearly public domain. The website http://usslaws.blogspot.com/ has some good ones. Can you get permission to use one? In my opinion, #13, #3, #5, or #7 would be best for the infobox, though the article is long enough to add that dramatic top one further down.

Maybe someone at the reunion has a picture he'd be willing to share?

—wwoods 06:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Upon looking at the Usnjack.png image I notice that it has been uploaded to Commons. There's a problem with that since the licensing for the image is not clear. It is not possible to say that it is a public domain image on Commons since its status on the English Wikipedia was unclear. It was one of a number of ship related flag images that I listed on the Wikiproject: Ships talk page as being potentially problematic. I also uploaded a replacement where the licensing conditions were clear since I made the image myself from an SVG which was from a public domain source. I've been trying to get rid of the image on the English Wikipedia for a while, although I've not done anything about it for a couple of months.

I'm going to alter the page for the image to make it clear that its status on the original server was unclear and that it thus should not have been uploaded to Commons in the first place. David Newton 19:37, 27 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Okay. I guess we need to change all the pages that use it to Image:USN-Jack.png. Or can an image be a redirect to another image?

—wwoods 21:02, 27 September 2005 (UTC) reply

I don't know whether it is possible to redirect an image like an ordinary page. That might actually be a very useful functionality to have in situations like this, although I would be rather worried about the potential for vandalism that it might cause as well. David Newton 20:49, 28 September 2005 (UTC) reply

commons:Image:Usnjack.png has been changed, and now claims to be PD. Do we still need to go through the articles using it, changing to commons:Image:USN-Jack.png? At a minimum, we need to fix the size, so we still need to go through them all.

—wwoods 18:33, 29 September 2005 (UTC) reply

Re your message on the SVG USN jack, it looks to be an image with an alright licence, and the quality is alright. I've uploaded a few SVG files to Commons myself since the code to display them was switched on. It took my a few goes to get the files correctly displaying, but the SVG display code really does work.

Since flags like the USN jack are of a diagram sort I would say that it is prefereable to have them linked to an SVG. That way those that have the necessary browser to display an SVG can get a really good and infinitely zoomable vector image, rather than the raster images prevalent at the moment. I certainly know that many of the free ensigns and jacks that I made to replace a number of the problematic ones linked to in the ship tables at the moments were raster images exported from an SVG vector image. In fact that USN-Jack.png is one of those images in and of itself. David Newton 22:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC) reply

It was my understanding (from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Ships/Tables) that any US Navy ship that in active service since May 2002 would use that DTOM jack. And since that ship wasn't decommissioned until 2004, I thought it qualified. I didn't realize that it was a requirement that the vessel still be active to have that jack. But from reading your edit description I assume that is the requirement. Thanks for setting me straight, let me know if there is anything else I might be missing. -- Malo 05:15, 2 October 2005 (UTC) reply

... I had taken it for granted that the First Navy Jack was only borne by active ships. ... Checking around, that was certainly true for 1980-2002, but it doesn't explicitly say that, for ships like O'Brien, which were active after May 2002. Nevertheless, I think that's a reasonable inference. Also, for our purposes, it's probably best to revert to the Image:USN-Jack.png upon decommissioning, as, in our infoboxes having multiple flags indicates service in multiple navies.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq122-1.htm [28 July 2003]:

"A jack is a flag corresponding in appearance to the union or canton of the national ensign. In the United States Navy, it is a blue flag containing a star for each state.

[big snip]

"By an instruction dated 18 August 1980 (SECNAV Instruction 10520.4), the Secretary of the Navy directed that the commissioned ship in active status having the longest total period in active status to display the rattlesnake jack in place of the union jack until decommissioned or transferred to inactive status.

"By an instruction dated 31 May 2002 (SECNAV Instruction 10520.6), the Secretary of the Navy directed the use of the rattlesnake jack in place of the union jack for the duration of the Global War on Terrorism."

—wwoods 07:42, 2 October 2005 (UTC) reply

As a Wikipedia newbie, I put my email address (markt at markturner dot net) in the revision history to the edit I made to USS Elliot (DD-967) yesterday. Is there any way to obfuscate that email address after the fact?

Thanks for your help! Jmturner 01:04, 8 October 2005 (UTC) reply

I marked the image with an "unknown license" after following a link on the description page to a .com website; however, I see you originally uploaded it with a link to a US Navy site and a PD-US-Navy tag, which seems to have disappeared. Is the photo really from such a website? If so, please put the tag back! Also, the image should be shown somewhere on commons, for instance in "category:potato" or "World War II" or something similar. Thanks in advance! -- Ranveig 19:48, 9 October 2005 (UTC) reply

Great! The Google link is a very good source (while it lasts). I just needed to check the origins of the picture with you, since I couldn't do it myself. -- Ranveig 07:39, 10 October 2005 (UTC) reply

WHY DID YOU DELEATE ALL THOSE TRACKING MAPS!!!!!!!! I THOUGHT THERE WERE COOL.

Hey, I noticed you started cleaning up some of those Gleaves class destroyers too. I already started a template for them User:Malo/Gleaves class destroyer template If you'd like to use my template, feel free. Or if you could, I was wondering what you thought of this template, as far as stats, formatting, looks, or anything else I might be missing. I value your opinion.

Also I thought we might pan out a cleanup schedule, just so that we don't get caught too much editting the same article at the same time. I've just been working from the bottom of the Gleaves class up lately. -- Malo 02:25, 2 November 2005 (UTC) reply

I really have to hand ir too you doe your work on the USS Rowe article, much better than what I started the article with, also saved me time writing it up myself today. :P -- Aaron Einstein 18:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC) reply

Thanks. Though I didn't write any of the history; I just lifted it from DANFS. Did you notice the inconsisency about the ship's fate? —wwoods 00:16, 3 November 2005 (UTC) reply

I think some anonymous contributors vandalized the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist article on November 13. However, I can't distinguish the vandalism from legitimate edits because I have no knowledge of the subject. I thought you might be able to revert the vandalism without reverting good edits since you were the creator of the article. Thanks. -- TantalumTelluride 00:40, 14 November 2005 (UTC) reply

You may be interested in reference/citation content/format issues in Talk:Global cooling#Citation format poll (see preceding discussion) and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/SEWilco#Response. ( SEWilco 06:07, 30 November 2005 (UTC)) reply

I have raised them at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Non-standard ordinal abbreviations. Your comments are welcome. Susvolans ⇔ 17:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC) reply

This advance that you have highlighted is extremely important. In my attempt to revise the ship infobox template I did implement IF functionality in a rather clumsy fashion. This seems to be a far more elegant implementation, with the fact of if there is information in the line determining whether it appears at all, rather than a separate declaration of whether the line in the table will appear and then inputting the information to appear there. It still makes the markup of the template itself very complicated and very impenetrable, but it appears to make the markup used in the article itself much more simple. I'll certainly have to have a look into this and see if I can use the IF functionality to redesign my version of the ships infobox to be more user-friendly. David Newton 11:15, 4 December 2005 (UTC) reply

I've taken the IF syntax that has been developed since I wrote the first template version of the table and run with it. The result is a table that is not only more elegant from a coding point of view, but a good deal simpler to input information into. I haven't written a user's guide yet but if you want to have a look at the results go to User:David Newton/New Format Ship Tables/IF Operator Table. If you don't put anything in the optional rows then they simply do not appear in the table at all. If you do not put anything in the non-optional rows you get the row appearing but with a filler entry, ie Unknown for text and the IIH png that is in so many ship articles. I've not got round to dealing with all the articles out there that still use the old cludgy code, but that is something that I can get round to later in the week. Hopefully this version will finally see a standard template-style table for Wikiproject:Ships that is also easy to enter information into (a justifiable criticism of my last effort). David Newton 18:01, 4 December 2005 (UTC) reply

I've implemented a number of your suggestions in the table. The ones I've done include making the order date, motto and nicknames rows invisible when not filled in, adding the ship's boats/landing craft row and putting the fate and struck/reinstated rows in chronological order. As for the multiple careers, that will have to wait until another revision until I can figure out how to do it! On the style question I note the differences between your table and the template are slight, but there does not seem to be a setting that provides a bigger margin between the table and the article text. Am I missing something? David Newton 23:21, 6 December 2005 (UTC) reply

I've now made a separate version of the table which mimics your version with multiple careers. I thought it needed to be separate because of how much more complicated it is with the greater number of variables. You can find it at Template:Ship table multiple careers. I have reproduced your USS Herndon example to show off its capabilities. David Newton 00:28, 7 December 2005 (UTC) reply

Hi there, sorry about the late reply, I'm sure you know what it's like! To be honest I don't really see ships as a special case, and pretty much everything in MoS:DP makes sense - they shouldn't have more than a single line of text. I think the real problem in this specific case is the two list entries for the ships without articles are being used in place of an article - all the information is/was there simply because there is no article to put it in. I think stubs should be created for them, what do you think?

Thanks/ wangi 21:49, 6 December 2005 (UTC) reply

I don't campaign for anyone, especially those I nominate. I just now saw your vote on Malo's RfA and was very glad to see you voted on it. You two have worked closely together, and frankly I was surprised you hadn't nominated him :) Let's hope being an admin doesn't stall his USN work like it stalled mine :) -- Durin 04:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC) reply

Doh! I didn't see the other Juneau before I changed the template. Thanks for fixing my goof! — Bellhalla 22:33, 14 December 2005 (UTC) reply

Talk:Walter Harriman --MeekSaffron ^{(Jaffa, Tree!)} 18:03, 15 December 2005 (UTC) reply

I just created an article on the mark 45 5"/54 Caliber lightweight gun at 5-54 Mark 45. I dug around the Internet long and hard looking for more detailed resources than what I was able to find. If you would, please have a look at this article and see if you can improve it. You, myself, and Malo (and others?) will probably need to work on back-fitting wiki links onto the various classes of ships that use this mount. Uhg. More shipwork :) Thanks, -- Durin 19:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC) reply

Thanks. That's been added to the disambiguation page; I'll go back and fix the links. TimBentley 20:30, 17 December 2005 (UTC) reply