Category Infobox Ship?

Question

We have a lot of ship categories. How about a {{CategoryInfoBox Ship}}? It could contain the following fields (in no particular order)

Prefix (RMS, HMS ...)
Name
Aka (especially when it was renamed like the Cincinnati)
WikidataID
Launch
Tonnage
Fate
Captains
Routes
Builder
IMOnumber
Webpage
Webpagetext
Spacepage
Lang (for the language of the Wikipedia page)
Maybe a category parameter for Category: Ships By Decade Of Launch

It should also automatically add the category to Category: Ships by Name.


PS: There is Template:CategoryInfoBox Migrant Ship, which has a rather unfortunate name, because it actually is used for voyages.

Answer 1

Too many parameters to mess up! I would not add all of the launch, tonnage, Fate, captains, routes, builder etc. That should all be on the spacepage.

I'd go for it for name, aka, startdate (which would be the launchdate), webpage, webpagetext, language, and spacepage.

The migrant ship template is in development, according to the page you linked. "should not be used "

Unfortunately, I see this as an opportunity for lots more template suggestions.....

Comments

I had no idea that CIB was still "under development" and I've been using it since 2019! See my comment on Steve's answer. 

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Tonnage helps like crazy to see if you have the right one, same goes for captain. Creating space pages is additional complexity most of the people would skip, I assume.

If we would request/use that data while creating the category, folks would later not need to look up the information again somewhere, in case they have another potential passenger they might add to the category.

Launch as start date is an idea, but be aware that the infobox at Wikipedia offers "Laid down", "Launched, "Christened", "Maiden voyage" and "in Service", which would make it not intuitive what year exactly to use.

Answer 2

A CategoryInfoBox (CIB) could be created at some point; however, there is no approved structure for the ship categories that I am aware of. This would need to be the first step, since the CIB's are meant to support those approved structures, and there is a ton of inconsistencies in the categories at present. I also think some of the information would be too encyclopedic (such as tonnage). 

PS: There is Template:CategoryInfoBox Migrant Ship, which has a rather unfortunate name, because it actually is used for voyages.

This template was in development and never completed. As noted at the top of the page, it is not supposed to be used. 

Comments

I think 3000+ usages don't qualify as "under development" anymore

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Regardless of the number of usages, this template was not approved or meant to be used.

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Hi Steve, I'd like to clarify our usage of this CIB for voyage categories to Australia. 

Our Voyages structure was approved in November 2019 (after much discussion in both Australia and Categorization projects) and we moved to implementation (involving a lot of renaming of badly named categories, more than 1600) which was completed by June 2020.

 At the beginning of that process, in answer to a request from a member for a template for category content, you said you were working on a CIB for Migrant Ships and we discussed it (2 December 2019).

In the Categorization google group, on 6 Dec 2019, I asked the question:

"My other question, can I now use the CIB that Steve set up for the voyages?"

You replied, on 6 Dec 2019:

"The CIB can be used. Just note that it does not set any parent categories at this time, so it for documentation purposes only."

I then replied, on 6 Dec 2019:

"Thanks Steve, that will be great, I want to use it to get content into many convict voyage categories empty of content."

I have been using it regularly ever since, I haven't had cause to go to the template page so wasn't aware it still had that banner. As far as I knew I was OK to use it. No-one has told me otherwise since that conversation in the google group in December 2019.

Answer 3

oh lord no!  CIB would render these highly UNinformative in my book.  On top of which, just looking at the Ships by Name category, there are over 3k ships already created, that is a whole lot of work.