Talk:Glossary of nautical terms (A–L)

Cut of his jib

Since ships are referred to as "her" and "she" the "his" in this phrase seems out of place. "Cut of her jib", when identifying a ship or its performance, would be more accurate.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.242.74 (talk) 15:54, 15 September 2005

"His" would refer to either the sailing master or the Captain of the vessel, if "cut of his jib" were being used literally. If it is being used figuratively then the gender of the person being described.

At speed, up to speed meaning

Can we please define and enter into the glossary of terms? Is it like there's a prescribed speed for the area/portion of the plan, and when someone says "we're up to speed" or "at speed" it means we're going the prescribed or planned speed? Or does it mean we're going very fast/at a quick clip? 2600:8801:C909:5700:E1F6:6632:F627:204B (talk) 10:08, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Why do you think these are nautical terms? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:48, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Single up

Would like to see a definition for ‘single up’ (referring to mooring lines). Thank you. Wordplay7 (talk) 13:00, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Wow! And the definition appears like magic! Thanks, User:ThoughtIdRetired for a very quick reply! Wordplay7 (talk) 17:13, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

The article page has exceeded template limits

This article page has exceeded the template limits. See Help:Template and Help:Template limits for more information.

The result is currently that all the references, source citations and further reading at the bottom of the page just link to various template definitions and not to their intended destinations.

The NewPP report (see Help:Template limits) is showing

Post‐expand include size: 2097152/2097152 bytes

which is one of the markers of this limit being exceeded.

I'll leave it to regular contributors to the page to decide how they want to deal with this. Philh-591 (talk) 14:48, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Suggest we split the glossary in half: A–L and M–Z. This should get a roughly equal division of content between the two articles. Does anyone have any knowledge on how to do this easily and effectively? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 17:23, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

I've taken a look at WP:CORRECTSPLIT. I guess the best method would be to move each section M–Z into the article Glossary of nautical terms (S) which will have to be moved to Glossary of nautical terms (M–Z). That way at least some of the references will be in the article already. The real work will be sort out all the short form refs (which are in a muddle already, with some being sfn's and others using the r template) that have been separated from the full statement of the ref. I don't see any easy solution to that, beyond a lot of hard work. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 18:06, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

The page could have been made to fit within this limit by replacing instances of {{gli}} with plainly formatted links: that can shave off about a quarter of the post‐expand include size. Still, the page would have remained huge (with all the consequent problems for the reader experience), so it was a good thing it got split. – Uanfala (talk) 20:54, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Dunsel

I'm 99% percent sure that this is a made up word from Star Trek. Does it really belong on the list? LordApofisu (talk) 16:09, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

It's unreferenced, and I can't find a reasonable reference. Anything from Star Trek has a presence on the internet, but there is nothing to suggest that this is in genuine nautical usage. Therefore I have deleted this entry. Someone can reinstate it if there is a reference that is not based on Star Trek. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:33, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Broken links after the split

The glossary has a lot of internal cross-linking: every instance of a term that's used in the description will be formatted using {{gli}} as a link to the respective glossary entry for that term. The trouble is, now that the original glossary has been split into two pages, roughly half of those links no longer work. There's a large number of them: Glossary of nautical terms (M-Z) has over 400. I think there may be a way to fix those links without going through each one of them by hand, but before I set out to find it, I would to know if the current arrangement is going to remain (because if there's another slit, or a merge, down the line, those links will need to get changed all over again).

Unrelated to that, the new titles use hyphens when they should in fact use n-dashes (see MOS:DASH). So if this is going to be the stable arrangement, then the two articles should be titled Glossary of nautical terms (A–L) and Glossary of nautical terms (M–Z). – Uanfala (talk) 19:56, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

As above (The article page has exceeded template limits) this topic was raised because the page size is too great for the technology. There was no assistance offered then, so it seemed to be a case of just getting on with it.

There was always going to be a lot of work involved in this split - not least the large number of articles that link to Glossary of nautical terms and now need to point to the correct half of the split. The ones that link to a term in Glossary of nautical terms (A-L) will still work, as there is a redirect from the "unsplit" article name. However, the ones where the term is in Glossary of nautical terms (M-Z) fail, unless the term starts with "S", as section 2 used Glossary of nautical terms (S) as a starting point. The only way to identify if an article that links to either of the glossary articles is to open it in edit and see what "edit/find" reveals. If you have an alternative to this tedious work, please say so.

Glossary links within the article: yes, that is going to be a lot of work. The ones to terms beginning with "S" have already been done, as that is easy to search for. The remainder are going to be a lot more tedious to do. You are very welcome to help.

Changing the article names to have an n-dash in them is theoretically correct. The time to have mentioned it was when he post above, suggesting the plan, was made. I don't see any value in undoing the significant amount of work already done to meet some stylistic guideline whose purpose I have never understood. Perhaps that is my failing on seeing the benefit of that precise bit of the MOS. What we have now is a bit quicker to type when a bespoke edit is done in any link or glossary link. Many of the common ones can be done with a cut and paste from a store of common occurrences - but it is a close call as to whether it is quicker to type or cut and paste. If you are a keen bot writer with a solution to this problem, now is the time to say.

One thing that slows down the whole tidying up process is that it reveals the disastrously poor content of the glossary. It is common to find another article link here with a correct meaning of a term which is not covered in the glossary. A lot of that is down to the huge prevalence of unreferenced content. That is a little despairing - that we have had to split the article as editors have piled in yet more unreferenced stuff when what is already in the article needs fixing.

Any suggestions to any of the above would be very welcome. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:26, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

On the point about n dashes, having just looked up User:Uanfala: "The less consequential a rule, the greater the zeal with which it is enforced" - just a thought. But clearly we need to see a way out of this before too much more work is put at risk. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:31, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

For the n-dashes: all you need to do is move the two articles. Redirects will remain at the old titles, so all the incoming links will still work. You don't need to do anything else.

If you have an alternative to this tedious work, please say so. – You can try this search; you'd need to then repeat a version of it for each of the two redirects that have incoming links [1] and [2]. This will filter out pages with links where the term starts with something other than a letter in M–Z. You'll still have to fix the links manually though. In principle, you can ask help with this sort of stuff at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks, but it's probably best to do it by hand – there are fewer than 180 links now, and there are oddities that may need human attention. – Uanfala (talk) 20:49, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Your alternative search noted, but I was using [3] (pages that link to Glossary of nautical terms, which was probably as efficient as it finds multiple hits in one page (by edit find). But that now finds no articles linking to the old glossary page. I am guessing that some bot has gone and pointed them all at Glossary of nautical terms (A-L) and some of those should point at the (M-Z) version. That might be fun to sort out, but first step is to find out if that is the case. I need to do a bit of work on this to discover exactly what has happened. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:44, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

You were using an odd offset parameter in the URL. Here's a link for your search that works [4]. – Uanfala (talk) 21:49, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I was just filling in display options on the screen so no idea what happened. It says there are 511 articles to attend to. I don't know how important talk pages, etc. are. I think last time I looked there were 711 links that needed attention, which kind of fits with the 511 plus some talk pages, etc.

I am tempted with the gli links in each of the two halves of the glossary to copy big chunks of each article into a word processor and do a semi-automated edit-replace. I might try that out with one letter - but not this late in the evening or I will mess it up. I also need to get my head round going for the n-dashes in the article titles. Thanks for your help in this matter. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:05, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Just a note: you said earlier that the "What links here" search was more efficient. It is not: it returns over 500 results (vs. 172 for the refined search), which includes articles that don't link to any particular subsection or term ([[Glossary of nautical terms]]), or articles that link only to terms found in the A–L page (say, [[Glossary of nautical terms#block|block]]). – Uanfala (talk) 22:23, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah, got that now - I said it was getting late. I did, however break my own rules and try taking letter M into a word processor to do semi-automated find/replace of gli's that should point to the other half of the glossary. Seems to have worked. I see you are actively editing, but I really am done for the day. Thanks ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:49, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

That should be sorted now: I used a regexp to handle all the letters in one go. – Uanfala (talk) 23:25, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Table of Contents

It is possible to code a table of contents that links between sub-glossaries, and to code a substitute for {{gli}} that automatically chechs the initial letter and opens the correct sub-glossary. These templates are probably a bit heavier on rendering time so might require slightly smaller page sizes, but splitting into smaller sub-glossaries becomes a relatively trivial exercise afterwards. The templates required would be Template:Glossary of nautical terms ToC and Template:Nautical term (or similar). This system has been applied to Glossary of underwater diving terminology, which currently has 5 sub-glossaries, A–C, D–G, H–O, P–R and S–T, a Template:Glossary of underwater diving terminology ToC, and a linking Template:Diving term which can be used from anywhere in Wikipedia, and automatically links to the correct term in the correct sub-glossary. If there is agreement to do this here I can prepare the templates and get the work started. I also have a copy of Jane's dictionary of Naval Terms, so could help with a bit of referencing. Feel free to test Glossary of underwater diving terminology and its system. I have not been able to break it yet, but there may be a weak point I have missed. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:42, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Discuss

ThoughtIdRetired,Uanfala I have coded the glossary ToC and put one on the top of the page. Take a look and see if you think it is suitable. It has worked for my tests. Putting it into service is just a matter of replacing the existing ToCs with the template on both sub-glossaries. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 15:32, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

I am more of an "article content" person, than an editor who is into the technicalities of how things work in Wikipedia. I will nevertheless have a look at the technology and will post here if I spot any issues. Can't see any problems in the first instance. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 16:05, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Main point is that the content people should be Ok with the change. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:36, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Converted both subglossaries to the new custom ToC. It seems to be working as intended. Ping me if there is any problem. If all goes well I will move on to the next stage of coding the Template:Nautical term and test it. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:10, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Coded Template:Nautical term and have a test example up and running. It seems to work correctly. Let me know if anyone finds a bug. I will add a few more examples for a more exhaustive test. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 13:31, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Have now converted all of "A", and all seems good. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:23, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Completed (as far as I can tell) all cross sub-glossary links using template:nautical term. I will have a look at some of the external glossary links, but not committing to doing them all myself. The existing links will continue to work until the next split anyway, so not urgent. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:31, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

If anyone cares, moving the sub-glossaries to names using ndashes should now be relatively trivial. MOS:GLOSS recommends Glossary of nautical terms: A–L etc. Let me know. Redirects would be left to avoid link malfunctions from other articles. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:44, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Inclining experiment

What is the definition of this? Various sources mention it as a way of measuring actual metacentric height but it is never defined. Can anyone define it on this page? Thanks! Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 00:25, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

References

There are many terms in this glossary that are completely unreferenced. That really needs fixing.

I note that where a term is clearly linked to an article on the subject, referencing is not needed (unless the glossary definition is different from that in the article). But there is a lot of content here that needs the addition of a reference. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:45, 11 June 2023 (UTC)