Template talk:Ship in active service

"As of {{CURRENTYEAR}}"...

...is incorrect usage. E.g. "As of 2008" means that the information was valid in 2008, and until it's checked again in 2009, its validity should not be automatically extended. In fact, a better idea would be to add a year parameter ("valid as of") to this template. GregorB (talk) 15:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. When a ship goes out of service the individual article should be corrected. Since most ships stay in service for years and years there isn't much of a chance that it would change in the next year. Also, with 21,000 ship articles the idea of checking each one every year is a task that would never get completed. --Brad (talk) 12:58, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Edit request

{{editprotected}} Please update this template from the sandbox. The changes are tested on the testcases page.

Summary of changes

I've updated the wording of this template slightly and recoded to optionally allow for prior dates. Instead of reading "Active in service as of 2009" (as of this writing), the default version (i.e. no parameters) will display as "In active service, as of 2009". For the vast majority of uses of this template, these changes will not require any modifications to any articles.

However, for ships where active service is only known up to a prior date, new optional parameters can display the year, month and year, or full date for which the ship's active service is known. Also, since Template:As of, which this template uses, allows for an optional url to provide a way for future editors to verify the information, I've added a provision for that as well. (See Wikipedia:As of for more details and how to enable links from these urls).

If anyone has any objections to the new wording or other changes, please feel free to discuss them here. — Bellhalla (talk) 17:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

No objections to your changes. Another thing that has bothered me for quite some time is the name of the template. "Ship fate box" is often placed in the |Ship fate= parameter of infoboxes. This of course is confusing as there is no "fate" of a ship until it's been turned into scrap or sunk. The proper infobox parameter to use with this template is |Ship status=. I believe the word "fate" in this template leads editors to believe it belongs to |Ship fate= which would be incorrect. --Brad (talk) 22:08, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I would also like to see the {{CURRENTYEAR}} function restored as mentioned above. --Brad (talk) 22:12, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Deactivated for now, as you still seem to be discussing this. Reactivate when ready, cheers. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:51, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

{{CURRENTYEAR}} re-added to sandbox. Agree with you, Brad. In fact in the template doc I wrote (which will show up after the edit is made) specifically mentions that the template should be in the "Ship status" field.

As for the name, I agree with your point about having fate in the title. Personally, I can never remember the name of this template, so I created a redirect under Template:Ship in active service. What would you think about moving the template to that name? A redirect left behind would catch all transclusions under the current name, if moved. (Incidentally, whether moved or not, we could make a bot request to move it to the "Ship status" field.) — Bellhalla (talk) 13:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree on all points and of course the template should remain protected from editing. --Brad (talk) 20:09, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} OK, I think the changes to the template can be made now. Also, since I don't think that moving this protected template over the redirect to Template:Ship in active service will be in any way controversial, can that be accomplished as well? Many thanks in advance. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

 Done —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:47, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Old instances removed

I have removed all the instances where the old template name was being used on articles. It was somewhat tedious but it allowed me to make other mos corrections too. Bellhalla also read my mind as I was about to ask if the case on "In" could be lowered so that the template could be used on disambig pages as text. --Brad (talk) 20:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

"As of {{CURRENTYEAR}}"... again

I know this was discussed back in 2009 by GregorB, Brad101, and Bellhalla, but I feel including {{as of|{{CURRENTYEAR}}}} if no date is provided is really misleading. It implies that the status was checked in the current year, when, as pointed out above, this is usually not the case for most ship articles. If a date is not provided, the template should simply return "in active service". Adding the current year at best adds no additional information and isn't useful to the reader, and at worst is incorrect and misleading. If an editor wants to add the current year, the version in the sandbox allows them to use {{subst:Ship in active service}} to automatically insert the current date. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:19, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that 'in active service, as of {{CURRENTYEAR}}' is pretty much synonymous with 'currently in active service' which is a form that's discouraged by WP:DATED. Allowing the year to rollover unattended and unnoticed year upon year also seems to state fact without sourcing.

Of course, the template does support the hidden reference url, so for US Navy ships, that could hold a link to the NVR. But even that possibly gives the false impression that USS Neversink is still in active service if no one comes around and knows to adjust the template.

That ships will be in active service for years and years is not disputed, nor is it disputed that the there are a lot of articles to maintain (30k+ that use this template). I find the 'checking every year' argument to be unsatisfactory. Who says that it has to be every year? If we must keep {{CURRENTYEAR}}, we could at least make the template more useful. We could make a simple category for those templates that use {{CURRENTYEAR}}; we could add an expire date parameter that would place the article into a special category when that year rolls around – create a new article for the just-launched USS Neversink II; set |Ship status={{ship in active service|expire=2021}}; wait five years until Neversink II lands in [[Category:Ships in active service expired]]; check, if not sunk, editor resets |expire=; else editor sets |Ship fate=Sank. Maybe there are other ideas to make the maintenance easier.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:45, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I like the "expire parameter" idea. I'd vote for that. - ^theWOLFchild 03:47, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

I dislike the way this template is used in the infobox, for the first letter is not a capital one. Any chance of detecting if it's used in the "Ship status" field instead of article body, and acting accordingly? Tupsumato (talk) 05:35, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Not possible, I think without adding a parameter to tell it to capitalize the first letter. Templates are unaware their surroundings so cannot be made to programmatically adapt.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:17, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, thumbs up if you're reading this in 2016. :-) I can't remember having read Brad's reply in 2009, it's possible that I didn't see it. Actually, he made some good points there.

It is one thing to use {{CURRENTYEAR}} in a general "as of" construct; it should never be used with the actual {{as of}} template, though, as it defeats its purpose. So here is a simple proposition:

• If the date parameter is provided, use it with {{as of}}, i.e. no change.
• If the date parameter is not provided, don't use {{CURRENTYEAR}} or {{as of}} at all, just say "in active service", period. Adding the current year to that statement at best provides very little value anyway. Also, this would prevent rather pointless categorization of many articles into "Articles containing potentially dated statements from {{CURRENTYEAR}}."

This is perhaps not ideal in all aspects, but it's certainly better than the current solution. GregorB (talk) 08:51, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

This is currently implemented in the Sandbox. Is there any opposition to implementing it in the main template? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 03:46, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I went ahead and updated the template. Any articles using the template without a year will be added to Category:Ships articles with undated status when the page is next regenerated (probably at the next edit). Pages with old statuses will be added to Category:Ships articles in need of updated status. You can easily add the current year by substituting the template as {{subst:Ship in active service}}, which recursively adds the unsubsted template with the current year inserted. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:56, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Capitalization of "in active service" + necessity of "active"

Since most entries in the ship infoboxes begin with a capital letter, should "in active service..." be replaced with "In active service"?

Furthermore, since being in "active service" is the default condition of any ship in service (as opposed to "limited service" and the like, which should be further elaborated in the article body), should "active" be omitted as redundant? Tupsumato (talk) 08:17, 27 February 2023 (UTC)