[WikiEN-l] Types of categories

Wed Jun 7 18:22:46 UTC 2006

On 06/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/6/06, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:
> > Significant? Salient? You don't want to go there.
> >
> > I'd argue the most significant thing about the Titanic is "major disaster"
> > ("Shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean", actually). It's not significant or
> > salient for being a ship, but for taking 1500 people down.
>
> But at the end of the day, it's a ship. Indisputably so. You would
> certainly want to put an attribute "shipwrecked" on it, and possible
> "shipwrecked in 1903" or whatever. Instead of "significant" and
> "salient" how about "concrete"? The fact that it's a ship is concrete
> and essential. The fact that it shipwrecked is ancillary.

But what's our *article* about? It's evenly split between an article
on the ship, and an article on the sinking of the ship - if the name
of the Titanic herself hadn't entered into common usage, there'd be a
good argument for calling the article [[1912 sinking of RMS Titanic]].

(Compare [[Exxon Valdez]] and [[Exxon Valdez oil spill]] - I'm
surprised they're not merged)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk