Talk:List of ships named SS St. Louis

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Military history: Maritime / North America / United States SIA‑class

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SIA

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Request for comment

I believe that this page is unnecessary, but there may be some uncertainty about which alternative approach to adopt. At present "SS St. Louis" is a redirect to "MS St. Louis". The second ship on this list is at present a redirect to "USS St. Louis (1894)"; there is some doubt about whether that is the best title for this article, since this ship was known as "SS St. Louis" for most of its life, it was only "USS St. Louis" for a few months.

There appear to me to be 3 approaches which would make any sense:-

1. Move this page to "SS St. Louis", and continue to disambiguate between these 2 ships.

2. Keep "SS St. Louis" as a redirect to "MS St. Louis", with a hatnote pointing to the other ship, delete this page.

3. Move "USS St. Louis (1894)" to "SS St. Louis", add a hatnote pointing to "MS St. Louis", delete this page.

What do people think? PatGallacher (talk)

I've added another notable St. Louis to this page, which helps make a disambiguation page a little bit more relevant. I agreed with your assessment that the 1894 ship shouldn't be under the USN name, and have moved it to SS St. Louis (1894). I think that MS St. Louis (often incorrectly called "SS St. Louis" in many sources) should retain the SS St. Louis redirect as the most notable of the three ships. — Bellhalla (talk) 21:10, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We appear to have resolved this problem to some extent. However I still think there is far too much detail here for a disambiguation page. PatGallacher (talk) 23:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that despite the use of the word "disambiguation" in the title, this page is in actuality a set index page and not restricted to the typical dab page rules, like one link per line, etc. Ships—as the three referenced on this page ably demonstrate—can often have complicated histories with multiple names, owners, careers, etc. If a reader who has a personal connection with one of the ships—say a father that worked on a St. Louis, or a grandmother who immigrated to the US on one of them—came looking to find out more information about "their" ship, it's important to have some of what you think is excessive detail to help them, you know, disambiguate between the ships. — Bellhalla (talk) 10:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]