Shipbucket

As a person entrusted by Administrators with the task of taking care of the uploads and proper organization of the Shipbucket's Main Archive, I want to ask the Shipbucketeers two questions that relate to that organization, both of which increasingly bother me for some time already.

1) The Coastal Warfare folder

This is a grouping that contains an extremely diverse array of ships, ranging from coastal defence ships, monitors and the like, to fast attack craft and finally to submarine chasers. I admit that the name of this grouping was largely my idea, although what has ended in it isn't exactly what I intended. Already long ago some sentiments were expressed that it would be reasonable to split this assembly, although for long time the matter was not raised again and the status quo was allowed to continue.

If it were, however, to be actually and finally split (and on a side note I want to say that on technical/administrative level it would be a fairly straightforward operation), then it ought to be decided:
- how the category grouping the coastal defence ships, coastal ironclads, monitors and some gunboats that it contains, ought to be named?
(additionaly, some silhouette depicting generic representative of this category would have to be created)
- how the category grouping the remaining ships ought to be named, and if the fast attack craft shouldn't be separated from submarine chasers. In such case, the FAC category could be simply named as such, but then what should be done with submarine chasers - shall they be included in "patrol vessel" category or had their own category created (inclusion in the "patrol vessels" seems most logical, though it's not my personal favourite, but then again there aren't that many classes of sub-chasers to warrant the separate category)?

2) Surface Effect Ships

As of now, there is no standard policy regarding surface effect ships (SES). By their nature, they straddle the line between "normal" (buoyancy) ships and hovercraft, and at least in some languages they are defined as such (for example in Polish the term is "poduszkowiec sztywnoburtowy" - roughly: "rigid-sided hovercraft" or "poduszkowiec bocznościenny" - "side-walled hovercraft") or particular types were formally named as hovercraft (like Russian Pr. 1239 Bora which is formally MRKVP - Malyi Raketnyi Korabl na Vozdushnoi Podushke - Small Missile Ship on Air Cushion, while Russian passenger SES are described typically as "sudo na vozdushnoi podushke se skegami" - "ship on air cushion with skegs"). For that reason, such craft ended up in the Archive both in the Hovercraft folder and in other folders related to their purpose (mine warfare for example).

My question, therefore is: could we agree on some strict policy in this regard, one way or the other?

Thank You in advance for your opinions.

I think we should have the surface effect ships there where their role defines: otherwise we would have to separate hydrofoils as well, for example. And where does that stop? planing hulls? Semisubmersibles?

All other ships are defined by role, hovercrafts are clearly very distinct, in a way that many ground effect ships are not (wing in ground effect and surface effect ships are very different in many ways, for example)

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

I let Colloseum to answer about possible technical issues what it comes to the ability to change the categorisations without much work (meaning us having to again pay for a webengineer to do so), Since this part is really not my speciality.

That in mind, in sense We have to understand that there cannot ever be a "perfect" category, eq there are always going to be oddballs that dont fit properly. Also as you said in your own post, The Coastal Defence category is indeed sort of collection of these oddballs, and I feel, if we
start to break it down, we will be having lots and lots of categories, that sometimes can include only few vessels. I dont think that serves the purpose properly what we are aiming for.
If we decided to break down the categories, I would make them like: "Coastal Defence Vessels" including all armoured big gun artillery vessels from monitor, scandinavic armouredship and heavily armed gunboat gategories, and then perhaps sections for fast and slow boat class vessels. To further breaking them apart, will just lead into endless subtractions.

For SES, I wouldnt mind if we would have "Hovercraft and SES and relatable" category. But I would argue that it could be overally more clearer if the hovercrafts (and SES) themselves would be categorised by their role rather than form, so thus inside the ambph. or minewarfare or the current coastal defence category.

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@Acelanceloet
I understand Your concern about further creation of categorization into hull types etc. But at the moment there is no single policy, and in practical terms most SES (that aren't ekranoplans) that are in the archive do use air cushion effect.

@Gollevainen
Change of categorisation can be done entirely cost-free, except my own expense of time. (You might not know it, because You never actually created an account on Mainsite ) Because - as uploader - I was entrusted with admin credentials there, I can freely create or remove categories and only "external" input I'd need in this operation is creation of the logo silhouette (because when the original ones were created I had no involvement with it). I would just need to create new category, possibly rename existing one and then manually "re-classify" all relevant vessels.

And I meant just having (most likely) 2 categories instead of current 1: the "Huascars and Vainamoinens" and "S-boots and Tarantuls", one of which would be simply renamed from existing one. I don't want to subtract it any further. I don't have that much spare time. ;P

As for total liquidation of "Hovercraft" category, I wouldn't have anything against it too.

Ah, very nice. Then we can iron out the proplems from the categories quite well.
I did! tought Just at the same moment I learned the virtues of synergical managment fragmentation and task-delegation
yea that could work as best overal outcome
Yes in the end that will solve the issue of determing the various special hulls seeking their own category. But I open to hear opposite opinions if anyone has them before we give them the axe

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

I like Gollevainen's idea - rename the folder Coastal Defence and keep it for gunboats and monitors and move out the fast craft to a new FAC.
Maybe submarine chasers should move to patrol craft, to which they are closer too.

I'd welcome renaming hovercraft to "Air Cushion" that covers all hovercraft, SES, WIGs and even hydrofoils (in the sense they have hulls above the water).

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I would be against having an air cushion category, especially if that would include hydrofoils. I'd rather remove the hovercraft category, putting the existing hovercraft drawings under their role (ferry, amphibious, etc).

Maybe a tad harder to implement, but if we'd want no loss of information (so we could still search for hovercrafts or SES etc etc) might be to give each ship a "hull type" option (displacement, planing, semi-planing, hydrofoil, submersible, hovercraft, SES, WIG, maybe even catamaran, trimaran and SWATH and the like) that we could use the advanced search option on.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

Sure, I posted it here with intent that it would hang for a week or two so everybody could voice opinion.
(and if any opinions were to be voiced on Discord, please remember that I won't be aware of them unless somebody tells me about them here )


As for the Question 1 - I'd like to rephrase it now into:

Is everybody in agreement that contents of the Coastal Warfare category should be rearranged into:
- "Coastal Defence Vessels" type/category containing coastal defence ships, monitors, large gunboats etc. etc. large-ish XIX/early XX century coastal artillery vessels" (note: I deliberately used word "vessels" to differentiate it from the term "coastal defence ships" which has more specific meaning, but I'm open to all suggestions);
- "Fast Attack Craft" type/category containing MTB/PT's, MGB's and missile boats;
- while submarine chasers would be moved to "Patrol Vessel" type/category.


As for the Question 2, I'm personally leaning towards Gollevainen's suggestion to drop the "Hovercraft" type/category, and the current contents should be distributed according to their purpose.
That said, I'm not particularly strongly against Hood's suggestion to create a catch-all category for the watercraft that use other than "conventional" buoyancy modes of travelling through/over water, but I see a problem in that it would be hard to name it (after all, hydrofoils are NOT travelling on "air cushion" the way hovercraft do), and that way we would get rid of one "too diverse" category (Coastal Warfare) at the expense of creating another one, so I'd rather remove the "Hovercraft" for simplicity altogether.

@Acelanceloet
Adding "hull type" option, while certainly not a bad thing, don't seem to be an option at this point. I can add/remove/rename categories ("battleship", "submarine", "cargo ship") from the "control panel" level, but what You're asking for would need an intervention of web engineer, and that means huge costs somebody would have to cover.
(In purely abstract sense, having such "hull type", perhaps also other things like, say "propulsion type" (steam, diesel, nuclear, sail etc. etc.) could be a nice thing, but it's not on the table now - at most I can offer to make sure that such "unusual" hull types be mentioned in "subtype" description, but it's unfortunately not searchable)

I am not against improvements that can make the main side easier to use. There are two things I could think about:

1. This one might take some time to do and are perhaps for some time in the future, but could help with cleaning it up a little, it can perhaps also help with hull-type-identification: It is to have subcategories.

2. I have been thinking about it for a long time: There should be a link to the archive/main-side directly from the forum. With those many conversation I have had with "newcomers". some many people ignore or are not helping (people have their reasons and they are allowed to have so). I have come to the relation, that most of them some come to shipbucket, comes trough the forum and not the main side. They have never heard about the main side and the archive/wiki/etc., so if it isn't accessible from the forum as well, then what is the point of the archive, except for storage of drawings. There is one thing that the main side links to the forum, but it should also be the other way as well.

@Heuhen
Not sure what You mean in point 1)
As for the point 2) - indeed, some very conspicuous link to main site here on forum would be very handy (but that would have to be done by somebody with mod/admin powers on forum - which is not me).

@Hood
Actually, ALVAMA suggested to me that such catch-all term for all "ekranoplans, SES, hovercrafs and hydrofoils" could be "Surface Skimmers" - and he based this suggestion on certain fairly prominent publication...


(though probably, the category would be rather dropped altogether anyway)