Talk:List of ocean liners

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A lot of these ships seem to have "MS", despite being steamships. I'm not absolutely sure I am right to change them to "SS", but I have for some of the more famous ones, especially if they have an article under SS. --Nycto 06:22, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

I was filling in from various sources, I'm sure there are plenty of errors. :-) In most cases it's worthwhile to have a redirect from the "MS" (maybe even "MV") version because from Googling you can see that the two are very often confused, you want to channel people to the correct version once it's been ascertained. (BTW, thanks for great liner work, it's been somewhat neglected!) Stan 14:07, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This list is a bit scary... so many red ships! My current priority is to get the more famous liners from between the wars covered, with images and deck plans (if I can get them together).--Nycto 18:06, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

They get there; list of battleships of the United States Navy was once mostly red, now it's complete! Stan 21:59, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Remove cruiseships from the list?

This is a list of ocean liners, so perhaps we should consider removing the cruiseships, and making them a seperate list. I think this would make the list more manageable, but it's not the sort of change I want to make without consultation.--Nycto 18:38, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

I would agree with removing cruise ships from the list and creating a new one for them. There is already a seperate category for them "Categories: Cruise ships" A disambiguation link at the top of the page could mention the difference between cruise ships and ocean liners and link between the two lists. Would some ships have to appear on both lists or would one list have priority over the other? Martyman 23:02, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would tend to give priority to the ocean liner list, as virtually all liners went on cruises on occasion, and a awful lot of classic liners were used breifly cruise ships in the thirties. So it's best to put ships that have engaged in a regularly scheduled passenger service for a significan part of their careers only on the liner list.--Nycto 05:07, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

You mean like list of cruise ships? For any ships used regularly in both roles, it's convenient to have them on both lists. They should also have "see alsos" to each other, in case one is looking on the wrong list and doesn't know about the other. In answer to the next obvious question, I'm not so keen to have a single combined list, because dual-use ships seem more the exception than the rule, and it seems less helpful to the searcher to mix dozens of old vessels in with Disney Magic etc; searches are likely to be "among modern cruise ships" or "among classic liners", not "among anything floating". :-) Stan 05:25, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Haha, guess I should have checked that. Anyway, my concern with putting ships that were used for both roles on both lists is that ship like the Mauretania would go on both (she was used a cruise ship full-time in the thirties), and I don't like that. So do we agree that we should start removing the cruise ships from the list? I can only do a few, because there are an awful lot of ships on this list I don't know.--Nycto 06:00, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

Why is having a ship on two lists problematic? Think of a multi-talented person who is a painter, novelist, and poet - you would want to add that person to "list of painters", "list of novelists", and "list of poets". It would be incorrect to decide that the person was more of one of them and therefore had to be removed from the other two lists. Another way to look at it is that if you removed Mauretania from the list of cruise ships, somebody will come along later and say "hey, but she did cruises in the 1930s!" and add back to the cruise ship list, while leaving on the liners list. So you always want to do things in a way that seems natural to later editors, because that will improve the odds that they won't undo your changes at some future time. Stan 07:53, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have a feeling we'll find out that virtually all the classic liners engaged in cruises, somewhat defeating the purpose of having two lists. Perhaps we should pay more attention to what the ships were built for, with a bit of common sense. For example, the QE2 and Empress of Britain belong on both lists, but ships that were built as liners, did 28 years of transatlantic crossings, but then a few months cruising during the depression needn't go on the cruise ship list (people are hardly like to look for them there anyway). That said, I'm not that fussed, as I'm not likely to pay much attention to the list of cruise ships.--Nycto 08:30, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

That's why I think it should be limited to those that did cruising as a regular part of their service, or simply did it for long enough to be mentioned in the article. :-) But the beauty of WP is that you can always go back and change everything later if the original idea isn't working out. Stan 14:11, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)