On 06/06/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/6/06, Roger Luethi collector@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)