BUR #5621 has been approved by @evazion.
create alias flying_ship -> airship
I always struggle to remember which name we use.
BTW we also have flying boat which is for specific kinds of airplanes. God these tags have terrible names.
Posted under Tags
BUR #5621 has been approved by @evazion.
create alias flying_ship -> airship
I always struggle to remember which name we use.
BTW we also have flying boat which is for specific kinds of airplanes. God these tags have terrible names.
nonamethanks said:
BTW we also have flying boat which is for specific kinds of airplanes. God these tags have terrible names.
Except that tag doesn't have a horrible name, that's the specific name for those craft which has been in use since 1913. The naming is also completely accurate given that the hull of the plane is essentially a boat, which is why it can directly be on the water unlike other seaplanes that are airplanes that have effectively replaced their landing gear with pontoons so they can land on water.
NWF_Renim said:
Except that tag doesn't have a horrible name, that's the specific name for those craft which has been in use since 1913. The naming is also completely accurate given that the hull of the plane is essentially a boat, which is why it can directly be on the water unlike other seaplanes that are airplanes that have effectively replaced their landing gear with pontoons so they can land on water.
It might be obvious to a native speaker but you need to know that a "flying boat" is a specific kind of seaplane to be able to distinguish it from actual flying boats. I had never heard of the term before and I would've blindly assumed the tag was for flying ships if I didn't know to check the wiki before. See also these mistags.
@ion288 said:
Im tempted to argue that flying ship should be for ship/boat style airships while airships also cover sci-fi and "to heavy to really fly zeppelin" vehicles. Actually going through every airship post and judging which one is boaty enough would be a tough task though.
This is a pretty good point! But I think it would be better to just combine tags to avoid the ambiguity and complication, like adding longboat, pirate ship, battleship, medieval ship etc. to airship posts.
Never call a boat a ship or a ship a boat in front of a Navy man. They will castigate you for it.
That being said, one important difference is size, but another is the level of complexity plus how they are crewed.
Ships are huge in size and therefore they are operated by professionally trained navigators and engineers. A ship requires a captain to operate the ship and guide the crew.
On the other hand, the size of the crew on a boat depends on the size of the boat. It can be one person or a full-fledged crew depending on the size and purpose of the boat.
Source: https://www.marineinsight.com/types-of-ships/7-differences-between-a-ship-and-a-boat/
The bulk update request #5621 (forum #186891) has been approved by @evazion.
Airship versus flying ship versus flying boat is just one of those things where the English language is inherently confusing, since flying boat is a recognized term for a certain kind of plane, and airship is another word for a dirigible.
Actually now that I look, we have both flying boat and seaplane and I'm not sure what the difference is. It looks like a flying boat is a plane with a boat hull that can float directly on the water, whereas a seaplane doesn't float directly on the water, it floats on pontoons underneath the hull. But I don't think this distinction is consistently followed, or makes much difference for Danbooru purposes. We could just as well alias flying boat to seaplane to get rid of the confusion between flying boat and flying ship.
Flying boats are a type of seaplane with the distinct hull appearance that is unique to them, as they have to directly make contact with the water. The seaplane wiki also already states that flying boats are a type of seaplane.
The organization of plane types would be:
If you have to make changes to flying_boat I'd favor qualifying it instead aliasing it to seaplane, like flying_boat_(seaplane) or flying_boat_(airplane). Additionally flying_boat implicates airplane, but it'd be better that it implicates seaplane, and then have seaplane implicate airplane.
Updated
@NNescio said:
Submarines are boats but emphatically not ships. Motorboats too. Most of the smaller watercraft too, for that matter.
(Subs are always boats no matter their size or crew though.)
It really depends on who you ask, but the most common definition does suggest that boats need to be a certain size to be ships. However, submarines are in many ways underwater dirigibles/blimps/airships, and submarines can be quite big.
e? said:
It really depends on who you ask, but the most common definition does suggest that boats need to be a certain size to be ships. However, submarines are in many ways underwater dirigibles/blimps/airships, and submarines can be quite big.
Early submarines were carried by ships and launched like boats. Hence they were called boats and the name stuck.
This distinction is also seen in some (though not all) other languages from countries with a long naval tradition of, well, fielding submarines. German calls them boats (Boot), and Russian does so too (lodka).
But generally speaking most languages have two commonly-used words for waterborne vessels, with one corresponding to "boat" and the other to "ship". For Germanic languages these words are also usually etymologically related to English "boat" and "ship. And the usual distinction is also one that of size, very similar to that in English. (though the size cut-off point might differ). Also, again, if a certain type of vessel is historically called a "boat" (or equivalent), it tends to still be called a "boat" too even decades after when their sizes have grown to rival that of most "ships".
(Another example in English is "fishing boat", which can sometimes also be used to refer to gigantic vessels with built-in factories, though the "boat" terminology here is far less insistent than that for subs, so most people tend to call them "ships" when they see their sizes.)
Though, generally for English, there are the following rules of thumb (not hard and fast rules):
1) Ships are large. Boats are small.
2) Ships carry boats. Boats can't carry ships.
3) Ships are crewed and captained; boats are usually only manned when needed.
4) Ships can independently function on the open sea for extended periods of time, boats generally cannot.
5) If the watercraft it's open at the top then it's usually a boat.
6) Boats tend to lean inward when turning (like bicycles and motorcycles), ships tend to lean outward when turning (like cars and trucks).
Technically they all start to turn inward first. But because of different distribution of weight and propulsion, ships tend to soon lean outward into the turn.
7) Submarines are boats no matter what.
(Though interestingly, submarines also tend to lean inward when turning while underwater. Though this isn't what causes them to be called "boats".)
The above rules of thumbs also tend be a good guide on what constitutes a "boat" or "ship" equivalent in other different languages. Strangely, maritime traditions get copied back and forth quite often.
--
Going back to the subject of flying boats... most languages also call them "flying boats" (when directly translated). Japanese calls them "flying boats" (飛行艇) too. Think the only major exception is French, which calls them "seaplanes with hulls" (hydravion à coque).
Ironically, the first "flying boat" was made by a Frenchman. The first patent too, though that one wasn't built.
--
As for airships... usually most European languages call them either "airships" or "dirigibles"/"steerables" (short for "steerable balloons". And "dirigible" means "steerable"). Often both, but there's a preference for one (like airships for English). Most Germanic languages tend to prefer "airships". Romance ones tend to go for "dirigibles". Russian also borrows from French, getting dirizhabl.
Non-European languages... vary a lot, but a significant chunk also call them "airships" by borrowing from English/German/Dutch. Some others call them by a variation of balloon (though those will usually go for an equivalent for "airship" when describing the fantasy one that doesn't have balloons). Chinese/Japanese/Korean call them "flying ships" though.
Chinese oddly does differ somewhat depending on which region it's spoken in. Some call them "flying boats" instead of "ships", though this can cause confusion with the other "flying boat" (though that is written with one extra hanzi). But regardless of region fantasy ones tend to be called "flying ships" instead of "boats".
I suppose the most technically correct term would be aerostat (an equivalent can also be found in most other languages, often a direct loanword), but this term is generally not used unless the speaker wants to be as unambiguous (and general) as possible.
Anyhow...
evazion said:
Airship versus flying ship versus flying boat is just one of those things where the English language is inherently confusing, since flying boat is a recognized term for a certain kind of plane, and airship is another word for a dirigible.
Granted, but it's also one of those things that is inherently confusing in most other languages, because they also tend to use similar terminologies.
evazion said:
Airship versus flying ship versus flying boat is just one of those things where the English language is inherently confusing, since flying boat is a recognized term for a certain kind of plane, and airship is another word for a dirigible.
Actually now that I look, we have both flying boat and seaplane and I'm not sure what the difference is. It looks like a flying boat is a plane with a boat hull that can float directly on the water, whereas a seaplane doesn't float directly on the water, it floats on pontoons underneath the hull.
Yes.
evazion said:
But I don't think this distinction is consistently followed, or makes much difference for Danbooru purposes. We could just as well alias flying boat to seaplane to get rid of the confusion between flying boat and flying ship.
It matters a lot for plane and military aficionados (both tend to overlap). For Danbooru in particular it might not have mattered that much... if not for Kancolle. Kancolle distinguishes between the two (in game mechanics as well), and the H8K has a distinctive boat-shaped hull, particularly if it's drawn as Akitsushima's familiar Nishikitaitei-chan (I guess emphasizing the rounded curves makes it cuter, maybe). The PBY Catalina is also present in game and likewise has a distinctive boat-shaped hull, though it is slightly less apparent than Nishikitaitei-chan's.
NWF_Renim said:
I'm not really sure that's a rampant problem though. In this case we're averaging under 2 mistags for flying boat per year, and that's taking into consideration the posts I just removed from flying boat.
Generally I'd say that while the potential for confusion does exist, in general this kind of mistagging tend to only happen when:
1. There is a vehicle that looks like a boat-shaped and sized water vessel.
2. It flies.
This is rare since most fantasy/sci-fi airships tend to be, well, "ship"-sized instead. Anything 'boat'-sized tends to be a plane/car/chariot analog instead of a 'boat'. Even if it's launched off an airship.
The main things that can cause confusion are probably either flying Viking longboats or flying Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese Dragon boats, but again, those are rare.
At any rate, as you have noted, "we're averaging under 2 mistags for flying boat per year", which I think is pretty much negligible, so I agree that there is no need to change the tag, other than tweaking the implications.
NWF_Renim said (to evazion):
If you have to make changes to flying_boat I'd favor qualifying it instead aliasing it to seaplane, like flying_boat_(seaplane) or flying_boat_(airplane). Additionally flying_boat implicates airplane, but it'd be better that it implicates seaplane, and then have seaplane implicate airplane.
On this I agree.
Updated
e? said:
This is a pretty good point! But I think it would be better to just combine tags to avoid the ambiguity and complication, like adding longboat, pirate ship, battleship, medieval ship etc. to airship posts.
Problem with this is those imply watercraft. I have spent considerable time clearing watercraft tags from airships (not an argument I know).
Anyway, things that are commonly tagged with airship;
Im not saying we need separate tags for each of these but the first two are common enough that I would like tags for them. Do you have any suggestions?