Talk:International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea

message: It would be benificial to include at least a section of one paragraph explaining how these rules came into being; Generally they are older rules that were ratified (but by who I don't know) and when (IIRC, it was one of several reactions to the Titanic sinking).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.25.99.40 (talk) 19:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: History

message: I have removed this passage from Rule 19 (Restricted visibility):
General requirement and application of this rule:
:when a vessel navigating or under way at sea inside or nearby (within audible range 1 to 2 n.m. of fog signal) an area of fog, heavy rain or other causes of restricted visibility;
:turn on appropriate navigational lights;
:switch on appropriate sound signal (this is important as some other vessel may not have radar and may not able to detect your vessel; often collisions in fog with small vessels are caused by vessels not giving sound signals; it is advisable to anchor or stay away from a busy shipping route for small boats when not being able to properly use radar);
:get your engine ready to stop at any time and reduce to safe speed in accordance to rule 6 so that at least you could stop or turn your vessel (refer to your stopping distance and advance distance of turning circles) within half of the distance of the visibility in busy water as some small boats may not have radar, nor may they be detected by radar and the audible range of their fog signal may be less than 0.5 n.m.
:keep proper lookout by sight, hearing and plot all radar targets.  (even small targets as they may not be apparent to you when they show only small changes of course and speed);
the radar (anti-clutter rain, sea and range scale) should be properly adjusted to the condition of visibility and your speed;
:stop your vessel when you hear any fog signal and avoid altering course to port if the intention of the target on the radar is not known forward of the beam of your vessel;
:take early action to stop or alter course and keep passing other vessels at safe distance (a few minutes and few hundred meters before collision; being too close to take action is not safe enough even when you are small vessel as the collision avoiding action of other large vessels may be delayed as their manoevrability is very slow due to their size).
I do not believe we should be making our own detailed interpretations of these International Rules. This passage contains all kinds of figures and details and is not cited in any way. Is there not some rule or policy here on WP about giving legal advice to readers? If this was cited to some particular training manual, I would be happier including it. --Nigelj (talk) 17:17, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed material 

message: When I did a review of this article in July, I first of all had a lot of trouble finding on-line a definitive copy of the regulations to reference. I eventually found one, in the the form of a MERCHANT SHIPPING NOTICE from the UK Dept of Transport.  Now, this is marked, Crown Copyright 2004, which in the UK does not mean it is in the public domain. 
It was hard to do, but I therefore tried not to copy and paste the rules verbatim from the original, but to simplify and paraphrase wherever possible. The point of Wikipedia is not to reproduce other published works, even if there were not copyright laws and WP policy to worry about. (e.g. WP:COPYVIO and WP:NOT)
Over the months that have followed, I have noticed other editors come along and, apparently taking my paraphrases and simplifications as errors, have simply pasted the official wording into the article. Now, there is not much in this article apart from the regulations themselves. What is the policy? I'm sure we don't intend merely to reproduce the official text here verbatim as that does not make a Wikipedia article, but if every time our wording diverges from the original, someone comes along and 'corrects' it, that's what we'll get.
Any informed comments welcome. --Nigelj (talk) 18:46, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copy and paste, or paraphrase? 

message: In coming to the article I found that the COLREG url for MSN 1781—The Merchant Shipping (Distress Signals and Prevention of Collisions) Regulations 1996—was dead, so I updated and corrected this link, and completed that citation as a book, indicating in its sporadic repeat inline citations need for page nos. (per WP:VERIFY, since it is citing a specific document that is on the order of 200 pages).
I then added a call for an expert, after becoming aware that the article has a bulk presentation of the COLREGS, presenting in near entirety the content of the 72 COLREGS, but that it does not—in its introductory or summary sections—make clear what it is presenting, or how it is derived. What appears is likely derived from MSN 1781 [full title above] or COMDTINST M16672.2D [The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Rules, International-Inland] or some amalgam of these (or some other related source).
The article confuses matters all the more by providing sporadic inline citations to one or another document, as I said, without page or rule numbers to any one of them.
All such sources are nearly identical in content. It is critically important to state something like, 
At the same time, expertise is needed, because when a variety of the documents that present the rules are all nearly identical, it is important to understand and communicate something on the differences—e.g., between the UK, US, Australian, and other English-speaking presentations—and how these relate to the treaty content on which all are based.
Bottom line, while I take no specific exception to the rule content presented, it is simply not clear except to those bring with them the necessary expertise, what is actually being presented (verbatim rules, rule paraphrases, rule summaries, or whatever). And because the rule presentation appears without clear introduction and overall attribution as the specific source used, its unclear as to how the rules being presented relates to the various sources of the rules that are available to international English-speaking readers.
Until this clarity of "what is this, and where did it come from" is provided, and until the nuances of how the various near identical documents cited differ, the article will not be encyclopedic, or authoritative on this subject.  Le Prof 73.210.155.96 (talk) 16:45, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not a professional, but I have been interested in COLREGS for a while, and I do think the article seems to be largely factually accurate. The 1972 COLREGS are reproduced near verbatim, with minor textual amendments or clarifications (e.g. spelling out abbreviations). This copy seems to be verbatim: . Since this body of rules is very condensed, and hard to sum up any further without introducing ambiguity, I think this is an appropriate way to treat the subject. I do not understand the objection about MSN or COMDTINST, how does that apply here?  -- Theoprakt (talk) 07:30, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you read the section below this?  As a qualified day skipper who is reading for his coastal skipper I'm clearly not an expert (at least in my eyes), but I do have the recommended RN course book on the subject as well as RYA guides.  Furthermore we do not need to refer to the US Navy site with the risk of link rot, the colregs are already in Wikisource.  As I argue below, we should not be reproducing them verbatim here (that is Wikisource's role) but providing an encyclopaedic explanation.  Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:08, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

text: This appears to have started as a direct quote of a now slightly outdated version of a part of the United States Code of Federal Regulations. I suspect the "based upon but is not identical to" wording was added later by somebody who could not find the source and edited something to clarify what was being said. Bulk quoting the CFR or Federal Register in a Wikipedia article is a really bad idea. It should have been linked as a reference in the section above talking about different countries (have added appropriate Canadian references there). However I do not feel comfortable deleting the section because I lack the patience to pick out and reorganize the edits which have been made since the original copy/paste. Not an expert, just a poor bloke that has had to get far to familiar with how laws and regs are published in the US and Canada. Trabber Shir (talk) 22:50, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits of this date—Call for Expert 

message: The existing section 4 is a mix of a direct quotation, added explanations and summaries.  Wikisource has the full text, so it does not need to be repeated here.  Invoking WP:RF would indicate that our target audience are not trainee navigators, but interested laymen.  I feel that what is required is a simplified guide to the rules but one which keeps the same structure so that it is easy to go from summary to detail.  I've started to mock up a replacement section 4 in my sandbox.  Would interested parties please review it and then come here to comment.  At this stage please don't get too hung up with exact phrasing, that can be thrashed out later, I'm more interested if if I'm going in the right direction. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 18:52, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section 4 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In its current state, the section "History" seems to state that there were no COLREGS prior to 1972. However, this may be inaccurate. In 1914, one Andrew Fursueth apparently wrote a paper for use by the US Senate, commenting on SOLAS from a US commercial perspective, and in his comment on SOLAS article 14 he stated that "These are proposed changes in the rules of the road, and will have no binding force until adopted by all the nations who have agreed to the International Rules for Preventing Collisions at Sea". So apparently, not all, but several (which?) nations had signed COLREGS in 1914? -- Theoprakt (talk) 07:17, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  History section, pre 1972 

message: I am not used to writing on WP, but I have knowledge when it comes to maritime law.  I am uncertain of what is needed here to make the page better. Would it be useful to add more precisions about the different annexes.  Just naming the rules seems kind of useless. 
I read here that there are issues with copyright.   The Canadian version of Colregs include all of the international version but adds the Canadian modifications could it be used as a source?
The section No right of way seems a bit awkward since it seems to be starting from the premise everyone thinks there is a right of way then argues against it.  Could we not just call it "stand on and give way".    
I want to help I am not sure what is needed and I don't want to mess anything up.   Barbawesome (talk) 12:37, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixing the page