User:Born2cycle/Unnecessary disambiguation

Disambiguation on Wikipedia is necessary when two or more uses covered on Wikipedia share the same name, because only one of them can have that ambiguous name as its title - the titles of the other uses must be disambiguated. Unnecessary disambiguation (or unnecessary precision) is disambiguation that is not necessary for this technical reason or any other reason. For example, since the city in Ontario is considered to be the primary topic of Welland, adding ", Ontario" to that title (i.e., moving it to Welland, Ontario) would be unnecessary disambiguation. Since the reason sometimes given for such disambiguation is to "preempt" conflicts with other uses some time in the future, this practice is sometimes referred to as preemptive disambiguation, and is itself often considered unnecessary.

Background

A name or descriptive phrase commonly used in reliable sources to refer to an article topic can be referred to as the default title for that topic, in contrast to titles that have additional information added to them, perhaps separated by a comma or in parenthesis. Thus, the default title is the title an article would have if conflicts with other uses of that name did not have to be considered. The default title is usually the name used most often by reliable sources to refer to that topic.

When the default title is ambiguous with other subjects, it must be "disambiguated". Disambiguation is necessary on Wikipedia due to a technical issue: no two articles can share the same title. Thus WP:Disambiguation defines disambiguation with the following opening sentence:

Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous—when it refers to more than one topic covered by Wikipedia articles.

Further, WP:PRECISION states:

Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that.

If a name is used for only one article, or the article topic is primary for that name, its default title comprised of that name alone should not be disambiguated, even if similar pages are disambiguated. Adding more information to a title beyond the default title for the express purpose of disambiguation, when it's not needed for disambiguation, is called "unnecessary disambiguation" or "unnecessary precision".

If multiple articles have the same logical name (for example Delta rocket), they are disambiguated by adding either parenthetic or natural disambiguation to the title. (See WP:NATURAL for definitions of parenthetical and natural disambiguation.) This is a method of resolving naming conflicts.

Therefore, disambiguation is not necessary unless there are other articles that discuss a topic with the same name. For example, using the article title "Delta IV rocket" would be unnecessary disambiguation, since the only "Delta IV" discussed on Wikipedia is a rocket.

Descriptiveness vs. length

Title minimization (a.k.a. title succinctness or avoiding unnecessary precision in titles) is generally preferred to help us achieve the goal of reducing conflict about titles. The situation often arises that the choice is between the current title and an alternative. If strong arguments based on WP:AT and WP:D can be made supporting both, meaning that both are acceptable titles, choosing the more concise of the two is a highly effective tie breaker.

One might suggest that choosing the more descriptive title is an equally effective tie breaker, except it isn't. Choosing the more descriptive title is not effective because there is no obvious limit to "more descriptive". Almost any title could be improved in terms of becoming more descriptive.

But if we always favor the most concise of acceptable titles for a given article, then that title is likely to remain the most concise acceptable choice for a long time, if not forever.

One might suggest that consensus can decide in such cases what is the best balance of all the factors, including balancing concision and how descriptive the title is, but such a subjective decision depends entirely on whoever happens to be participating in the evaluation, and can change any time anyone proposes a change. That suggests instability.

If we all agree to favor the more concise title in such cases, there is no sound grounds for anyone to propose a change (unless something changes, like another use of that title becomes commonly used).

But, conciseness applies when other factors don't strongly favor one title over another. If a proposed alternative is much better than the current title for reasons well grounded in policy, guidelines and conventions, and an equivalent argument cannot be made favoring the current title, then it is supported better by policy and convention, even if it's less concise.

Recognizability scope

Unnecessary disambiguation is often cited as a reason to favor a more concise title in title discussions. While recognizability is also a criteria to be given consideration, its scope is explicitly limited to "someone familiar with the topic". In other words, we don't try to make our topics recognizable from the titles to anyone who is not already familiar with the topic. That's why we favor Laeken over Laeken, Belgium, Welland over Welland, Ontario, Nicholas Campbell over Nicholas Campbell (actor) (let alone Nicholas Campbell (Canadian actor)), Blue Afternoon over Blue Afternoon (album), Putsj over Putsj (magazine), Cincinnati over Cincinnati, Ohio, etc., etc.

Community support for this scope limitation to recognizability is demonstrated implicitly in the fact that most of our topics are recognizable from their titles only to those who are already familiar with the topic in question, something that can be easily verified with any WP:RANDOM sampling of a dozen or so titles, especially if any titles which are recognizable only because of necessary disambiguation are omitted from the sample. For example, Lorca (album) and Harley, Ontario are recognized as being an album and a city in Ontario respectively by those unfamiliar with the album and city, but only because they disambiguated with (album) and , Ontario respectively, due to conflicts with other uses of their respective names.

Community support for the recognizability scope limitation has also been explicitly demonstrated with unanimous support at this 2012 poll on WT:AT: Wikipedia talk:Article_titles/Archive_35#Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus.

What about consistency?

The consistency title criterion of WP:AT is often cited as a reason to use a longer title when a shorter title, consisting of the simple commonly used name for the topic, will suffice and has no disambiguation issues. The consistency criterion is defined as follows:

• Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) in the box of Topic-specific conventions on article titles.

Like all WP:CRITERIA, consistency is but one consideration. There is no requirement to meet the consistency criterion at the expense of conciseness, for example.

It certainly makes sense to rely on consistency when there is an applicable topic-specific convention and the other criteria do not clearly indicate a title without disambiguation issues. There is no known debate about that.

Controversy arises when the other criteria indicate an appropriate and available (unambiguous or primary topic) title that is different from that indicated by an applicable topic-specific convention. One school of thought is that such conventions should only be followed when disambiguation is necessary. Many guidelines, like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (films), state this explicitly, and there is little controversy about those titles. Thus we have Gone with the Wind (film) and Unforgiven. This is true for many place names as well, thus we have Laeken and Haren, Belgium - both districts of Brussels, but only the latter is disambiguated, because only it needs it. Another school of thought is that such conventions should be followed even when disambiguation is not necessary (e.g. Fort Lauderdale, Florida, rather than simply Fort Lauderdale). Only a few naming guidelines still explicitly call for this, most notably WP:USPLACE, a guideline with a long history of controversy regarding this conflict.

Contrived dab page

Sometimes editors try to legitimize unnecessary disambiguation by creating a contrived dab page. A contrived dab page is one on which only one entry legitimately refers to an actual use on Wikipedia - all the others are invalid dab page entries like red links, partial title matches, topics with vaguely similar spellings, references to pages not on Wikipedia, etc. These can be corrected by reducing the dab page to a redirect, and possibly moving the article about the only use over the redirect (usually by using the WP:RM process).

Examples

Below is a list of examples of pairs of titles from similar articles, each of which is consistent with general naming principles, where one is disambiguated in some way and the other is not. Note that these are not cherry-picked exceptions, but were mostly found by simply clicking on SPECIAL:RANDOM a few times, and exemplify the status quo.

• Laeken – Haren, Belgium
  • Districts of Brussels
  • No conflicts for Laeken, so no need to disambiguate, but Haren needs to be disambiguated from other uses of that name.
  • Note how the information that there is no other Laeken (or that this one is the primary topic), and that there is another Haren, is instantly gleaned from these titles; information that would be slightly more difficult to ascertain if all suburbs of Brussels were disambiguated whether they needed to be or not.
• Welland – Harley, Ontario
  • Ontario communities with large francophone populations
  • Only the ones needing disambiguation are disambiguated with ", Ontario".
• Queen Victoria – Victoria of Baden
  • Both are royalty
  • Note that while they are both technically queens named "Victoria", Victoria of Baden is better known as a princess.
• Nicholas Campbell – Douglas Campbell (actor)
  • Both are Canadian male film actors with common English first names and the Campbell surname
  • The parenthetical (actor) is in the title only when necessary for disambiguation.
  • Again, note that we instantly can see that Nicholas is either the only Nicholas Campbell on Wikipedia, or is the primary topic for that name, and also that there is more than one Douglas Campbell covered on Wikipedia.
• Blue Afternoon – Lorca (album)
  • Both are Tim Buckley albums
• Yecla – Cieza, Murcia*
  • Cities in Murcia
• Confirmed Dead – The Economist (Lost)
  • Lost (TV series) episodes
• New Providence High School – Union High School (New Jersey)
  • High schools in Union County, New Jersey
• Koshlauch – Alat, Russia; Shali, Republic of Tatarstan; Gruzinsky (settlement); Murali, Arsky District, Republic of Tatarstan
  • Rural localities in Tatarstan
• Saint-Edmond – Sainte-Foy, Saône-et-Loire
  • Communes of Saône-et-Loire
• Putsj – Bravo (magazine)
  • Youth magazines
  • Also note that one name is a common English word with a sizable disambiguation page, and the other is not any of these things.
• Ebro; Esgueva – Ega (river); Esla (river)
  • Rivers of Spain
• Britz – Spandau (locality); Mitte (locality); Wedding (Berlin)
  • Localities of Berlin

In each case, the reason for the apparent inconsistency is the same:

On Wikipedia most titles are consistent with the idea that it is best to disambiguate only when necessary.