Ship details: is anyone interested?

[polsteam]

First of all many shipspotters are just spotters and photographers of ships with emphasis on photography (doing and collecting) without any deeper interest in ships themselves and without much knowledge of ships, technology, operations, shipping markets.

However, the group of those interested in ship details is much larger than judged from amount of information (ship details) provided by photo uploaders.
In fact many photo uploaders NOT providing info ARE interested in ship details, but they do not provide details for one or more of the following reasons:
- it is time consuming and spending time on uploading their own (and browsing others') photos does not leave much time for typing in ship details.
- they are interested and would like to provide details for their photographed ships, but they do not have access to reliable sources of information...

Therefore it was a good arrangement that shipspotting.com was kind of interconnected with LR Fairplay's Sea-Web (or other) database...
It is a pity this agreement had to be terminated. This is one of drawbacks of sale of shipspotting to new owners / operators.

[Tony des Landes]

This comes down once again to the way the database is structured.

The way it works at the moment, if 1000 photos of the same ship are uploaded on to this site, then should all the technical details be entered 1000 times? i.e. against each image.

That is really inefficient, and no doubt typos, different sources will mean details will differ from photo to photo.

In a perfect world the site would consist of a database of ships with all the details required, and the images are merely linked to the master record.

This is how many ship databases work, but I appreciate it is easy to say this but a huge undertaking to actually do it.

Regards

Tony

[Anton Heuff]

Hi everyone,

I am wholly in tune witth Bob who started this thread. This comes as no surprise, as we both earned our bread and butter researching and writing about maritime matters. There are so many more interesting things to relate about a ship than her vital statistics! But we can't expect every Shipspotter to have the knack or the resources to do this. Besides, I take my time, which is in contrast with other temperaments. I'm an angler, not a hunter. What I see around me is that the modern camera seems to be made for hunting.

Tony is absolutely right that it is not efficicient to add the same data time and again with the same ship. I've seen Aleksi (AJL) linking to external sources where the relevant information can be found. This usually works well. Now my idea was that Shipspotting should create ts own ship data database, so all you have to do is linking to this internal source. Or, on the basis of the IMO number, the data could be shown right away. But I thought this was too utopic: who would organize it, how should it be maintaned? I saw only one possible solution, and Tony's comment prompts me to no longer hide it. It's a wiki. As far as I understand it a wiki is a programme to capture and organize the knowledge from a wide variety of sources and people in a fast and easy way. Even large organizations are building their internal knowledge base with a wiki. Could we benefit from it?

Thirdly something which should be organized. When I see a ship in, say, the fast craft section and I know that her maximum speed is 15 knots, how and where can I contribute to putting her in the right category? When I did a quick test of the Beta version (I was not an offcial tester) I saw the same ship in five different categories. We can't flood the websmaster with PM's or find five different moderators to tell about it. The same goes for wrongly assigned IMO numbers. Couldn't we have a kind of notice board where you post your remarks, so that the people in charge can take the appropriate measures?

All the best, Anton

[itsfoto]

Anton's suggestion is a very clever one. It opens up for a wealth of good solutions.
If, for whatever reason, it will not see the light of day, would a formalized co-operation with Miramar (for example) be a possible plan B?
Just a question.
cheers
Uwe

[E. Vroom]

Hi all,

Good idea Anton about that Wiki.
I recently came across an example of it at http://www.marinetraffic.com a Greek Free of charge AIS site. Have a look at this and see what a Wiki is like integrated here at the bottom of this page http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?mmsi=245529000&header=true
to be able to adjust the wiki you need to register and login. I'm just wondering if any alterations made by one can be changed by another. Or maybe is there a moderator in between to verify new data?

[Cornelia Klier]

My personal opinion is:

- Having ship-data is nice. IMO-Nr. should be mandatory ! Because, by IMO-Nr. you can always find out more about a ship ! If I am really so courious, I can take the number and search for more info.

- All other data, I think - not mandatory to post !
One reason: All other things than IMO-Nr. is a topic that might change. Even length of a ship can change  :lol:
I would not like to have outdated information on a photo, when I am searching for a ship. Shipowners, Charterer etc., all subject to change.
Another reason: Laziness !! I simply don't want to take time, to tediously type in detail after detail.. while 1000 other menbers are doing the same ! I know some do that.. but for me, typing and typing that, is too much. After I spent a week or so at the coast, coming back with all the photos, I spent my freetime after work for uploading. I think, if someone is really interested in the information: Copy IMO and search !!
I do put basic info under my photos, but this is a copy& paste job from Equasis.

And the final reason: We have here thousands of people typing in the same stuff ?? It's not really eeh.. up to date I'd say !!
I think, there should be a kind of database where data is transferred automatically and shown with the photos (by IMO-Nr.). Just, if you check vesseltracker, no bothering about putting in data !!!

So, if I really am interested in a ship's specifics, I do anyways not use shipspotting.com to look for that. I go to vesseltracker, or some other pages that are around.

Just my thoughts..  8-)

[Stephen Chester]

Hi Bob
Thanks for asking about this. I am now putting more info on my photos than I dis before. It is quite fun looking up all the info. I am using Xvas and I am finding out info I didn't know before about ships I have photographed. Even IMO numbers,  ex names and new names  :-)
Thanks
Stephen

[Captain Ted]

hmmm,,interesting question

for my part,,owners/operators come and go,,, numbers like IMO etc stay.
most owners listed are anyhow PO boxes on a wall in the ABC isles
or Liberia,,which is not even in Liberia, but in Virginia, USA,,,etc etc

more interesting would be perhaps for me as sailor the safety record of the vessel and where she might trade or trades anyhow

brgds
capt ted

[Glenn Towler]

Got to admit I find the information useful also, I used to copy and past that infro on my earlier posts from Maritimedata until it became  a pay to use site.

But a problem I find, is that a ship might be owned by a company in panama, managed by a company in the US, the ISM is another company again somewhere else in the world but the ship displays someone else entirley markings and some of those markings are hard to identify, ok ones Like Cosco, Clipper, Sanko, Egon Oldendorff, NYK etc are easy to identify but they ones you can't like some cases they are displaying the Operator or the Charter's makrings and the all the data bases online don't tell us this, ok,sometimes the managers site says the ship is time charted for 3 years to such and such a company so you can find out and some companies list their fleet and ships they have chartered.  But it is trying to identify those dificult ones is the problem especialy when we try to promote acuaracy on this site.

Glenn

[Anton Heuff]

Hi Glenn,

You're right of course. I think we, as ship enthousiasts, have to live with it. In the professional world it's a real nightmare of course in case of casualties, like hitting the Great Barrier Reef: who's the responsible owner, under which jurisdiction can you sue him, etc. I think we don't have to bother too much to make this site the datebase which answers all questions. Of course I hate question marks. Or blank fields in a form. But I suspect that knowing the answers of necessity has become a big business (think of Lloyd's Register Fairplay and Lloyd's List Intelligence Unit). So be it.

Cheers,

Anton