Attempt of a summary (by protagonist and antagonist together)

current situation:

• 1 category tree ("category system") of ships categorized by ship name; these categories are sorted into all the normal ship categories. Only a small (unknown) percentage of all ships can be found in Commons, as e.g. Miramar gives more than 400.000 entries on shipnames. Approx 700 ships in Commons have a category by alphabet (name).
• 1 extra category ("category system") per IMO number of a ship, approx 1500. These categories contain preferably further technical information on the hull and machinery, all her names, history etc., to group the pictures and information per ship in Commons, concise information as starting point for Wikipedia's per language for each ship

Ibn Battuta's criticism of the current situation:

• 2 identical category trees/systems are additional work (as compared to one)
  • two identical categories per ship have to be created
  • if images are not directly sorted into the category, they later have to be moved twice - once for each category tree/system (e.g., at the moment: Category:IMO 8811986 contains both the identical category Category:Nadieżda (ship) and image:Rotation of S2010024.jpg, which (along with half a dozen other images) is also in Category:Nadieżda (ship) - so someone needs to take it out etc. Check a few categories to see that this is by not an exceptional case, but happens all the time. I've left it in there as an illustration for the time being.)
• most people will not find the IMO categories => so they don't have access to the additional information provided there

Stunteltjes respons:

• creating description pages per ship is seldom useful in Commons, unless things are to be extra described.
• the IMO categories were initially intended as a tool to group uploaded pictures of a ship with different names. Grouping ships resulted in categorie(s) by shipname(s), new one's to be created if they didn't exist. The IMO category contains now subcategories of ships by alphabet (and the pictures of the ship in that subcategory can be easily withdrawn from the IMO category) together with (a) picture(s) of that ship under (another) different name(s).
• as in Commons categories with an single file are not supported, added extra information will give the IMO category even more reason to exist. It is a tool to supply conciced technical information of a ship, together with her history, as starting point when someone starts to work on an ship-wiki

Ibn Battuta's "solution" (= work in progress):

• rename all ship categories to "ship name, IMO number" (or similar), then categorize them into all the normal ship categories and have all the information available to all users

Stunteltje's criticism of Ibn Battuta's "solution":

• as it is done so far, users will find the IMO number in the categories and are by then aware of the IMO existence
• not all people know about IMO numbers and/or understand how to name them => users may create categories, which would have to be renamed
• E-facts (as a new shipname) are to be changed in or added to an number of categories by alphabet, not in single IMO category
• in case of a new name on a ship: the category by alphabet is not only to be renamed, but all gathered technical and historical information of a ship is to be added

Ibn Battuta's response to Stunteltje's criticism:

• It won't be much more work (if any) than the current work of linking name and IMO categories
• Besides, we have far more IMO than name categories, so chances are that not so many users ever have to create new categories... because the correct categories will often pre-exist.

Typical examples

• Category:IMO 7126322
• Category:IMO 9206712
• Category:IMO 5183364
• Category:IMO 7018563
• Category:IMO 9187887

Discussion here

Let's open the floor for the discussion! :o) --Ibn Battuta (talk) 02:58, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

• As far as I can tell, the proposed compromise does not bring improvement, simplification or less work, so I would suggest, as the majority I presume; keep the current implementation. --Foroa (talk) 06:44, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
• I agree with Foroa, the proposed Category:ship name, IMO number does not improve with situation. There is a single unique identifier for a ships hull, the IMO number. A ship can be sold many times in its life and have its name changed as in one of the examples given above Category:IMO_5183364. Having a Category:IMO number and separate Category:ship name seems the simple logical choice which is probably why it was created in the first place. In Using Category:IMO_5183364, if we change to the proposed solution the current 4 categories for this ship

• Category:IMO 5183364
• Category:SS Fryderyk Chopin
• Category:SS Kapitan K. Maciejewicz
• Category:SS Wisconsin

would change to

• Category:SS Fryderyk Chopin, IMO_5183364
• Category:SS Kapitan K. Maciejewicz, IMO_5183364
• Category:SS Wisconsin, IMO_5183364.

This IMHO just does not seem like a logical way to categorize ships, we are forcing together two different pieces of information into a single category name. I think it will be confusing to new users and cause more category rename issues as new users will probably create new categories using the Category:ship name since it's the most obvious. And you lose the ability through the category system to see all of the names of a ship by just viewing the Category:IMO number, you will have to search by the IMO number. I don't see that there is any problem at all with the current category system. It's logical, it's working and I don't see the proposed system adding any additional value. --Captain-tucker (talk) 11:45, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit surprised that the same argument keeps coming up: A ship can have different names, but one IMO number. We all know that. It's like towns which are renamed. To my knowledge, we do not usually have different categories for towns under different names--simply because we do not have enough materials for two or more categories. If, however, we do, we have two or more sub-categories and yet one common super-ordinate category. As mentioned before, I don't see ships any different from towns or animals or whatever: There should be one super-ordinate category (the hull) and then those who like can play with subcategories as much and as long as they want. (I hope we all agree on this? At least I myself find it totally useless to search content for the same ship under separate categories for separate names if they're not somehow linked. And again, so far, I haven't seen a single example where such a system was used.) It wouldn't change anything about the super-ordinate level. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 14:48, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Accordingly, the four (five) categories mentioned above (because they are lacking a superordinate name category--not such a good example!) would change simply to:

• Category:SS Kapitan K. Maciejewicz, IMO 5183364
  • Category:SS Wisconsin (sub-category of Kapitan K. Maciejewicz - b/c it is the same ship!)
  • Category:SS Fryderyk Chopin (would also be a sub-category of Kapitan K. Maciejewicz; but as it's empty, there's no use in having this category)

So, as mentioned before, we'd have still exactly one category at the superordinate level, and however many sub-categories that people want to have. The only change would be that the material in the IMO category actually becomes accessible to Commons users because they look for ship names and not for numbers. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 14:56, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The thing that bother me I guess is combining two different pieces of information within a single category name. And in your scenario which ship name do we use in the category name with the IMO #, the first, last? How will someone who is not familiar with this particular category naming convention know how to correctly create a new category name since its kind of non standard. I would think that we will get a lot of Category:Ship Name categories which will then have to be changed to the Ship Name, IMO version. It seems to me that a category should identify a specific aspect or description for the images and combining two of these together just does not seem to match the logic of all of the other categories on Commons. --Captain-tucker (talk) 20:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't need Commons for occupational therapy. I stated, as several other folks, my arguments in the beginning of the started as a deletion request, and have seen since then not a single change. Hence, I will not repeat my self in an attempt to exhaust the audience. --Foroa (talk) 21:35, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Captain-tucker, regarding names: It's the same discussion as for any Wikipedia ship article (and there, too, is for 99% of all ships exactly one article, not four or "one for an IMO number and one for a name" or something like that). The standard seems to be the most recent name or the name under which the ship is the most well-known. And in case you wonder: Yes, if it works for dozens of Wikipedias, I don't think it's too difficult for Commons. Regarding "non standard": As I said before, if a category system is not standard, people risk not finding it. That's exactly why I see a problem with the IMO system: It is effectively "hiding" information from the average user. Regarding "two" aspects, I can only repeat myself (again): The IMO number refers to one specific hull. In addition, there is (or should be) one "name category" for each specific hull (in your example, it is lacking, so it's actually not a good example!). These two categories are not "two aspects"--they both refer to the exact same thing, namely the same hull. It's like having category:Dog and category:Canis lupus familiaris - one is the ordinary word for it (in English), one is the scientific (Latin) version. If you want, you can have sub-categories, but "dog" and "Canis lupus familiaris" are still identical. Now you can add more technical information into category:Canis lupus familiaris (which most ordinary users will not find without the link from category:Dogs!)... but that doesn't change anything: they still refer to identical content. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 03:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

{{User:Hebster/IMOcat|Name=Svitzer Freja|IMO=9175262}}

As you see, User:Hebster solved your problem. This can be done by bot, I assume. --Stunteltje (talk) 07:34, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I would think that a possible solution would be to just add this IMOcat template to all of the current ship images and keep the existing category structure. This provides users with a pointer to the IMO info so that it's not hidden and we don't have the change the category system causing more work and change to a system that IMHO is more confusing and does not match the logical structure of Commons category architecture. We keep what appears to be the consensus category structure and users are informed that the IMO numbering scheme exists and there is a tag on each ship image pointing them to that category. --Captain-tucker (talk) 13:32, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Majority for keeping as is, no accepted alternatives have been formulated

--Foroa (talk) 15:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)