Proposed deletion of this shipindex disambig page would be counterproductive

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Someone has proposed deletion of this page because only one of its entries has an article so far. But Wikipedia has many shipindex disambigs that are lists of ships -- see many of the Royal Navy shipindex disambigs starting with "HMS" -- and these shipindex disambigs are themselves informational because they show the Wikipedia user what ships historically had a given name, when those ships existed, and what types of ships they were. Not retaining lists like this misleads Wikipedia users by making them think only one ship exists when many did, and may make them misidentify a ship. Finally, note that a first step in filling Wikipedia's missing ship articles is to identify the totality of ships with a name, so that articles will written. In due course I plan to fill in this list by creating articles for the ships; in the meantime, it benefits users to known how many ships of the name existed and when they existed, which is what this and all other Wikipedia shipindex disambigs do, and f the list spurs others to add in articles on the missing ships, so much the better. Deletion of this shipindex disambig or any others like it would be misguided and counterproductive; it is hard to understand how such deletions would help in any way. Mdnavman (talk) 04:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)mdnavmanReply