I just noticed that we have a6m_zero, but mitsubishi_a7m_reppuu, aichi_m6a_seiran, and so forth. Seems to me it ought to be mitsubishi_a6m_zero for consistency's sake...
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On the other hand, we have most of the American aircraft lacking not only designer, but also nickname. The Phantom II and Crusader being exceptions in that particular search.
unfortunately, we have no real consistency in naming aircraft in place. but we have list_of_airplanes (but not updated) to guide us of existing ones.
ghostrigger said:
unfortunately, we have no real consistency in naming aircraft in place. but we have list_of_airplanes (but not updated) to guide us of existing ones.
Ships and tanks too, for that matter.
I'm all for consistency, and I think it should be standardized across vehicles (i.e. ships, planes, tanks) and weapons (handguns, machineguns).
There are a couple of varieties that we could standardize on:
1. (Manufacturer|Designation|Name)
e.g. General Dynamics F-16 Flying Falcon
2. (Designation|Name)
e.g. F-16 Flying Falcon
3. (Designation)
e.g. F-16
There are other options, but I believe the above are the most common. I'm more for option 2, as I think it would be better to nix the manufacturer designation since I believe most people would type starting from the model designation. I also believe that the name is important, as many American military designations are overloaded, for example there are close to 20 different weapons and vehicles with the designation M3.
Since each ship is considered individual and unique and as ships are more commonly known by their names first, we could use the reverse format, e.g. USS Enterprise CV-6.
I'm also in support number 2, at least for military vehicles with the exception on ships, for your stated reasons. Having the manufacturer name in the tag name seems a bit like overkill. The manufacturer information would probably be better suited to be listed in their wiki and a wiki list.
As for weapons, I think it'd depend on the weapon. Having the manufacturer in the name might be necessary for many of them, like the Remington 870 and Colt Python.
BrokenEagle98 said:
I'm more for option 2, as I think it would be better to nix the manufacturer designation since I believe most people would type starting from the model designation. I also believe that the name is important, as many American military designations are overloaded, for example there are close to 20 different weapons and vehicles with the designation M3.
Since each ship is considered individual and unique and as ships are more commonly known by their names first, we could use the reverse format, e.g. USS Enterprise CV-6.
Names are particularly important for American aircraft, since the numbering scheme for those was revised in the 1960s, so there are duplications. If you say "F-4", for instance, you probably mean the F-4 Phantom II jet fighter from the '60s, but you might mean the WWII-vintage F-4 Lightning, which was a photo reconnaissance variant of the P-38 Lightning fighter. (And for that matter, if you say P-38 you might mean the Lightning, you might mean a German handgun, or you might mean a can opener. :) Let's not use the Allied recognition names for WWII Japanese aircraft, though, whatever we do. "h6k_mavis" just... lacks gravitas somehow. :) (Besides, not all of them had one.)
And, as you say, for other weapons systems it gets even muddier, since the US Army had (and still has) the habit of calling the first of each type of something adopted "M1" and so forth, which leaves us with, among many others, the M1 (Garand) rifle, the M1 carbine (which is not a carbine version of the M1 rifle), and the M1 Abrams main battle tank.
I agree that manufacturer names aren't as critical for aircraft, particularly with WWII American and Japanese aircraft, albeit for different reasons. In the case of Japanese aircraft, there's an indication in their designation codes as to who made them (the M in A6M is for Mitsubishi); whereas wartime American aircraft, though designed by particular manufacturers, were often produced by more than one company because of wartime production needs. (Around half of the "Consolidated" B-24 Liberators produced, for instance, were actually made by Ford.) I'm also down with your proposed strategy for ships; I think that contains all the necessary information to make a proper identification. Slightly trickier for ships belonging to nations that don't use prefixes and/or unique hull numbers, but like weapon naming, that's a different bridge that can be crossed elsewhere.
Anyway, that was a long-winded response given that I don't really have a dog in this fight, I just noticed the inconsistency and thought it was odd.
Updated
imho and after checking our current inventory, option 2 works for most airplanes not only for american-manufactured ones.
just going to raise some issues regarding (Designation|Name). what would be the final tags for avro_lancaster and avro_vulcan? would they be lancaster_(airplane) and vulcan_(airplane) respectively? if we eliminate the manufacturer these seem to be longer than their present names. same goes for fairey_firefly and fairey_swordfish among others.
how we will distinguish airplanes sharing the same name like hawker_typhoon from eurofighter typhoon (currently tagged as ef_typhoon)?
how about civilian airplanes like boeing_777 and airbus_a380? i would guess users are more familiar with these names than 777 or a380, without having checking the wiki or adding a qualifier. thanks.
With your examples, the following is my initial idea:
Special cases like the Typhoon would need to be handled on a case by case basis. At first glance, I would personally use Typhoon (plane) for the Hawker Typhoon, and either Eurofighter Typhoon or EF2000 Typhoon for the other one.
Also, I wasn't even considering civilian vehicles when talking about naming conventions, as I want to tackle just military vehicle naming conventions in this topic. Civilian vehicle naming conventions might need to be handled as a separate topic, although on first look, I would say that the manufacturer name in the case of civilian vehicles plays an important part in designation.
BrokenEagle98 said:
With your examples, the following is my initial idea:
- {Name|[Vehicle Type]} (Vehicle type is optional if tag is overloaded)
- Lancaster
- Vulcan (Plane)
- Firefly (Plane)
- Swordfish (Plane)
Special cases like the Typhoon would need to be handled on a case by case basis. At first glance, I would personally use Typhoon (plane) for the Hawker Typhoon, and either Eurofighter Typhoon or EF2000 Typhoon for the other one.
Also, I wasn't even considering civilian vehicles when talking about naming conventions, as I want to tackle just military vehicle naming conventions in this topic. Civilian vehicle naming conventions might need to be handled as a separate topic, although on first look, I would say that the manufacturer name in the case of civilian vehicles plays an important part in designation.
seems fine with me. or as an alternative, we can institute a mix of option 1 and option 2. option 2 already answers the bulk of aircraft. the situation rises in mainly british(?) planes and civilian types. we can use option 1 (with manufacturer) if option 2 fails. with this we can limit the naming to only 2 possible cases.
To me, all 3 options are both acceptable and necessary, and a system using all 3 would be fine with regards to consistency (since in naming conventions with alphanumeric designations but without official nicknames, option 2 basically just becomes option 3); it's just a question of what aircraft use what option.
I'd personally propose that naming conventions for aircraft be considered, rather than individual names, and that the preference be option 2 > option 2/3 > option 1. My reasoning is that:
Option 2 is generally preferable (plays well with auto-complete, is unambiguous), but also pretty limited in scope.
Option 3 is almost the same but without a nickname, but in cases where the designation itself is already unambiguous (e.g. bf_109, tu-160), the added clarity doesn't really matter. Both 2 and 3 save users from having to deal with monstrosities of names like Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Gudkov and Ling-Temco-Vought. (I say option 2/3 instead of just 3 since in some systems, like those of WWII Nazi Germany and the IJA, some aircraft have designations + nicknames while others only have designations. I figure for aircraft in these naming conventions that have both, they may as well be included.)
Option 1 is necessary in naming conventions that give aircraft easily ambiguous names (e.g. names only, like UK military aircraft, or numbers-only designations, like many civilian and dual-purpose aircraft.)
With this, the US, Sweden, and Yugoslavia would fall into option 2, as designation + nickname is the rule rather than the exception in these systems.
Nazi Germany, USSR/Russia, PRC, post-WWII Japan, and others would fall into option 2/3 or just 3.
The post-WWI UK would fall into option 1.
Now, having typed all that - I don't think this is a good system. In fact, I don't think it's necessarily possible to create a good "system." To me, the best that's realistically achievable (fairly loose) set of guidelines, and whether or not what I've come up with is a good one (spoiler alert: it's not) is immaterial. To me, there are just too many oddities and exceptions to create an airtight tag-naming system, much less while keeping tags consistent and intuitive, and the tag-naming system easy-to-use. (Is [Chengdu] "J-10" unambiguous enough to safely drop the "Chengdu"? Should the Northrop F-5's tag include "Freedom Fighter", or "Tiger II"? Neither? Both?)
I'm tired, so having thus contributed a net total of nothing, I'll add some thoughts on some detail aspects that don't require me to think too hard:
- I feel fairly strongly that post-WWI UK aircraft should include manufacturer names. Simple qualifiers like x_(plane) are still ambiguous in a lot of cases. IMO it'd be easier to just include the relevant company than try to qualify out ten or so airplanes named Firefly that aren't the Fairey naval fighter. In addition, it seems to me that in most cases the company names are equally known/associated with their aircraft anyway. I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that even for lesser-known aircraft, "Avro Lincoln" or "Boulton-Paul Defiant" roll off the tongue as one coherent unit in a way that "Republic F-105 [Thunderchief]" doesn't.
- When discussing option 1, what I mean is by "companies" is the designer or manufacturer name that's conventionally associated with the aircraft. Hawker (Hunter), not SABCA or Fairey Avions; Sukhoi, not Factory Nr.Whatever or Whatever Else JSC. I don't think license-production or such should affect tags. (In any case, identifying license-built aircraft often requires checking small details or serial numbers that may not be visible.) Of course, there are still cases to be handled like US defense industry mergers (e.g. GD vs. LM F-16.)
- PRC aircraft should probably keep their domestic designations, rather than export ones (J-6 vs. F-6).
- Regardless of if they change under whatever system is or is not adopted, there are some currently incorrect (or unintuitive) tags that need fixing. mirage2000, lacking a space, and ef_typhoon, with a weird nonstandard abbreviation, come to mind as having screwed me up before.
- I am personally what Wikipedia would call a "lumper" and generally favor folding variants and derivatives into fewer tags (especially for less-popular types that don't have a ton of tagged posts in the first place.) I only bring this up because there's a fair few 1-post tags for military stuff that's closely related to already-extant tags. Of course, if Wikipedia has taught me anything, it's that it doesn't matter, since lumper/splitter debates are never resolved and therefore pointless.
Ultimately, I have a pretty low bar for whatever system is or isn't adopted. As long as I can find the tag I'm looking for within a couple stabs at the auto-complete, I'm happy, and that's basically my standard for intuitiveness.
tl;dr: half-thought-out ranting
I agree that certain options might be better for different countries. Also, whatever we adopt doesn't necessarily need to be an all or none system. Tag aliases can also be used effectively to guide users to the correct tag.
For an example of what I'm thinking:
General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon -> F-16_Fighting_Falcon
F-16 -> F-16_Fighting_Falcon
Also, for others keeping up on this topic, I've converted the US aircraft over to option 2 just to show what it looks like. See List of Aircraft wiki for the updated list.
I just added a ground vehicle wiki (list of ground vehicles) to complement the aircraft wiki (list of airplanes).
I've loaded it with mostly tanks for now, and I've adjusted some of the naming conventions according to what has already been discussed in this topic. I've also collapsed some variants into a single tag, e.g. M4A1 Sherman -> M4 Sherman.