Talk:List of naval battles

message: As an experiment, I've copied over entries from the main list more-or-less verbatim, but left most of the existing ones as-is. They can be made consistent once we decide which format we like better (the main list format is objectively more informative but verges on the verbose). Stan 15:26, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formatted (2004) 

message: This page is very long. I was going to remove some of the smaller fleet battles and reclassify them as single ship if they have fewer than 6 participating ships. Several famous "single ship" battles had up to 2 or 3 ships per side. Is this acceptable to everyone? It will make the page shorter, by spreading the entries out to the other single ship page also. currently that page is quite short.
SpookyMulder 10:28, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too long (2006) 

message: Someone added this:
:Battles are in bold; single-ship and other actions in plain
to the top of the list. I have three comments. (1) If this is going to be done at all then it should be done consistently. (2) The change broke a number of links; please restore them. (3) The distinction between battles and "other actions" seems bogus to me: it just creates needless trouble as we start arguing about which is which.
I will change the article back to the old scheme but I am willing to be persuaded that this is a good idea. Gdr 15:56, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)
:I don't care for it either - the annotations on list entries should be sufficient to make big vs small obvious. There aren't very many single-ship actions famous enough for anybody to bother listing them here, so the net effect would be bold almost everything, so it loses any value it might have had. Stan 17:52, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Battles versus other actions 

message: It's true that this list might get extremely long.
How about using a table, with 3 columns... 1-land battles, 2-naval fleet battles, 3-naval battles with fewer than 3 ships on either side.
Battles would be listed chronologically under the war in which they happened. Wars listed chronologically also, with a line betwene each for clarity. Each battle would have its own page, which would link to ships/forces involved, and back to the main battle list. I think a table would greatly reduce clutter. currently only part of the page is used.
so you'd have
first section of table:
War
(land battle 1) I (naval battle 1) I (single ship battle 1)
(land battle 2) I etc.
etc.
second section of table for next war:
I also might mention that the independence wars of Brazil, Argentina etc. are usually ignored in books on naval battles. There were several fleet battles involving frigates and battleships from 1821-29 in the River Plate area.
Someone asked about edit summaries. I don't usually write them because the edits are:
just typos and grammatical errors
occassional additional information
frequent, as if i take a long time on an edit, I sometimes find someone else has edited it in the meantime and I have to start over. It's a pain to write notes for each edit. Mostly they're minor.
I also, generally, find linking every second word to be annoying. If you're not likely to want to link to say "Britain" in a particular page, why link it? I hope it cdoesn't get to the stage where every word is a link!
There are many single ship actions. You could also include lists of ships involved in things which weren't technically battles, such as "danish ships captured at Copenhagen, 1807" or "British ships destroyed in Finland to stop the Germans capturing them, 1918" or "Scapa Flow wrecks" or "French ships scuttle at Toulon 1942" or "ansons around the world fleet 1762" etc. they'd be plain text. Fleet battles would be the only bold ones. (Unsigned comment by User:SpookyMulder)
:Your fellow editors appreciate the edit summaries, because then we know whether a change is minor (grammar fix) or major (a sweeping change to the format, as you've done in several cases). People who make major changes without edit summaries, notes on talk pages, or anything, are generally not considered good team players, the consequence being that other editors have less compunction about undoing their changes. So think of edit summaries and talk pages as an insurance policy to ensure that your time isn't going to waste.
:As for this list, I think it should limit itself to named battles, and a very small number of well-known single-ship actions, or maybe not have them at all. Multi-column is highly undesirable, because list entries should be annotated, so a non-expert knows that "battle of the Kentish Knock" involved English and Dutch without having to click on the link, and on a machine with a smaller screen, tables get scrambled or require horizontal viewing. A list like this can't be all things to all people; its primary value is as a quick way for readers to find articles when they don't know the name accurately enough for a keyword search to work ("I know it's sometime around the turn of the century, and near Korea, and Russians or Soviets were involved I think").  A list recording every time a ship was in combat would be a different (and very long) list; we can have multiple lists here, although I wouldn't work on such a list because it would be impossible to complete, and inherently-incomplete lists are not that useful (did you not find something because it doesn't exist, or because the list is unfinished?).
:In any case, let's come to an agreement on scope and content, so that we're standing on each other's shoulders instead of each other's toes. Stan 16:19, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: While you might personally prefer the bolding, others don't, and it's nonstandard; uniformity across the encyclopedia is important. It's quick and easy to remove (with editor macros) what takes you a bunch of time to add, and every editor will do just that, so you might as well go along. :-) Stan 22:41, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too long (2004) 

message: First - 1652-54:
(Date) Kentish Knock (Details)
(Date) ... (Details)
Second - 1665-67:
etc.
Is there any way to remove the line after "Anglo-Dutch Wars" above?
I'll try to remember to include edit comments! :)
SpookyMulder 07:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: While you might personally prefer the bolding, others don't, and it's nonstandard; uniformity across the encyclopedia is important. It's quick and easy to remove (with editor macros) what takes you a bunch of time to add, and every editor will do just that, so you might as well go along. :-) Stan 22:41, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652-73)

message: Suggest something like a three/four-column table using smaller font-size:
Year	Date            	Battle          	
1563	Action of 30 May	Action of 30 May	Swedes capture three Danes before war is declared.
1563	Action of 11 Sep	Action of 11 Sep	Inconclusive [skirmish?] between Danes/Lübeckers and Swedes.
1564	Action of 30 May	Action of 30 May	Swedes under Bagge [clash with?] Danes/Lübeckers under Trolle.
1564	Action of 12 Jul	Action of 12 Jul	A Swedish captain blows up his ship after a Danish attack.
1564	Action of 12 Aug	Action of 12 Aug	Swedes under Klas Horn defeat Danes under Herluf Trolle, southeast of Öland.
1565	Action of 4 Jun 	Action of 4 Jun 	Danes/Lübeckers defeat Swedes near Buchow.
1565	Action of 7 Jul 	Action of 7 Jul 	Swedes defeat Danes/Lübeckers between Bornholm and Rügen.
1566	Action of 26 Jul	Action of 26 Jul	Swedes defeat Danes/Lübeckers between Öland and Gotland.
1568	                	                	Swedish fleet captures several Polish corsairs and drives off remainder.Unconfirmed.
Year     	Date     	Battle                           	
1914-1918	1914-1918	First Battle of the Atlantic     	
1914     	Aug 28   	Battle of Heligoland Bight       	
1914     	Nov 1    	Battle of Coronel                	German cruisers under von Spee defeat a British cruiser force off Chile.
1914     	Dec 8    	Battle of the Falkland Islands   	British cruiser force virtually wipes out von Spee's squadron.
1915     	Jan 24   	Battle of Dogger Bank            	Blucher sunk by British battlecruisers in the North Sea.
1915     	Jul 2    	Russian raid on Gotland          	Russian cruiser squadron intercepts German cruiser force laying mines off the Åland Islands. German mine-laying cruiser Albatross sunk and cruisers Roon and Prinz Adalbert damaged.
1916     	May 31   	Battle of Jutland                	A two-day engagement between the main British and German fleets, the only such engagement during World War I.
1917     	Apr 21   	Battle of Dover Strait           	Destroyer battle.
1917     	         	Raid on the Otranto Barrage      	
1917     	         	Battle of Moon Sound             	German and Russian forces clash in the Baltic Sea.
1917     	Nov 17   	Second Battle of Heligoland Bight	
...and so on. For battles lasting more than one day, date shows beginning and notes mention duration (e.g. Jutland above). Regards, David Kernow (talk) 17:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that looks nice. If you wan tto change the page over to that, I'd help with it. We could almost get rid of the "century" headings and just have the name of each war instead.SpookyMulder 10:34, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, I seem to be busy during my Wikipedia time at present, but will try to contribute. I've tried simplifying the code for the above and have added it to the list; I've also tabulated the first section ("Ancient"), which needs some attention to its wikilinks. The basic format, therefore, for battles featuring a year, date, name and notes, would be:
{| width="100%" class="wikitable" style="font-size:95%; text-align:center;"
!width="5%"| Year !!width="5%"| Date !!width="24%"| Battle !! 
|-
|                 (Year)
| (Date) ||       (Name)
|align="left"|    (Notes)
|-
...etc.
Re removing the century headings, I'm not sure; I guess it depends on how many folk might prefer to use them. Yours, David (talk) 17:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Via [[WP:RFC/STYLE]] 

message: 30-January-2007:  The article seems to have had good information, but has been reformatted and seriously over-linked, meaning: there are now broken links to articles that have dates in titles.  Serious overlinking, seriously.  Don't ya just hate it when plain text is a million times better than wickified?  In any aging bureaucracy, beware "form over substance" where formatting of information overwhelms the usability of that information.  Formatting of all dates is called "obsessive compulsive disorder" and is yet another danger of becoming a wackopedia.  If new changes seriously break an article, they should be reverted, and re-thought: remember, this is a live encyclopedia, as a source of information, above being a showcase for formatting.  Links to specific articles are more important than links to dates.  What a total mess.   -Wikid77 10:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed: I fixed & checked all the broken links to date-named articles (there were about 95).  Luckily, they followed a simple text-pattern: I exported the entire article to NOTEPAD and ran 3 global edits to correct date-named article links.  Most of the dates had a unique year-pattern using "]] [[1" which was replaced by " 1" by global-edit.  Since over-zealous date-formatting typically garbles date-named articles, remember that 3 global edits might correct such date-named links in the future.   -Wikid77 11:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Form over substance 

message: The article "Listing of naval battles" is in a text-list form, intended for use as text, sections of which can be copied, or annotated for adding information into other articles.  For the table-form, the article "List of naval battles" (should be "Table...") is being doubled in size as tables, where the battles are coded in complex, rigid Wiki-tables, with each battle split across multiple lines/boxes of the table.  Both forms of the information are maintained to support different groups of users in their needs for working on data formatting.
To avoid ongoing formatting, please see: Listing of naval battles. -Wikid77 18:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is good. Can whoever is doing the tables not remove the date (month and day) from some of the battles? Also I think it might be better if either the name of the battle or "action of..." are used, rather than having "battle of..." each time too. We know they're battles, we preobably don't need "battle of..." each time too. Just saves space etc. Other than that, the table looks good.SpookyMulder 11:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

text: It is preferable, in my mind, to give the full battle name because then it is clear at first reading if the link is to a description of the event or just a link to the location. compare Sluys with Sluys. First one is the battle link. GraemeLeggett 11:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text-list form 

message: Currently, there is a gap of about 150 years (after the Pax Romana), but wars were happening in other cultures, and more sea-battles could probably be added outside Europe, depending on source references not hindered by the Dark Ages when recording battle information.  -Wikid77 18:57, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ancient gap 

message: An editor has removed the following description as "non-neutral" and "one opinion among many":
:- Israeli forces prevent American technical research ship from observing the Six-Day War
While many individuals express decidedly non-neutral opinions about this battle, I haven't found "many" differing accounts of the battle results.  I'd like to explore the alleged non-neutrality of the removed text.  There seems widespread agreement that USS Liberty was an American ship, the attacking forces were Israeli, and the attack occurred during the Six-Day War.  It also seems the attack effectively prevented USS Liberty from performing whatever mission she was engaged in, unless that mission was to provoke an Israeli attack.  The removed statement avoided non-neutral adverbs like "intentionally" or "accidentally" prevented mission accomplishment; so perhaps the mission statement was perceived as non-neutral.  USS Liberty may have been perceived as spying on Israel as Israel was later perceived as having Jonathan Pollard spy on the United States; although some perceive USS Liberty utilizing electronics in international waters as different than Israeli agents obtaining classified documents within United States territory.  Perhaps some believe USS Liberty was providing military aid to Egypt in the Six-Day War.  So I've changed the description to remove mission statement:
:- Israeli forces pioneer anti-ship use of napalm to disable American technical research ship during the Six-Day War
Thewellman (talk) 23:40, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You're obviously spoiling for a fight. You've come to the wrong place. Poliocretes (talk) 05:22, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality of description of USS Liberty incident 

message: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_the_coast_of_Abkhazia  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wrant (talk • contribs) 21:57, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Battle of Abkhazia

message: I've removed this entry:
* 1702 May 29, Battle of Tourville (a.k.a. Battle of Barfleur) next to Cape de la Hague, north of Cherbourg. French battle fleet attacked by the Anglo-Dutch fleet. French fleet flees to Saint-Malo. See: Bosscher, (PH. M.) Oorlogsvaart. In: MGN, deel III, p. 367-368.</br>
as it is highly suspect. It was added nearly nine years ago, with this edit, and has sat here ever since, which may indicate how often this page is read. AFAIK there was no battle at "Tourville" (wherever that is) in May 1702, and a google search for it only throws up the WP entry and some mirrors. Nor is there a book by PhM Bosscher (nl) called Oorlogsvaart that I can find. There was a battle of Barfleur in May 1692 (which is already listed) and Tourville was one of the commanders, so "Tourville's battle" is a possible name, and "battle of Tourville" a possible (mis-)translation, but without a reliable source there doesn't seem much point in mentioning it. It's also possible someone is having us on... Xyl 54 (talk) 22:54, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Battle of Tourville