Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 27

Archive 20

←

Archive 25

Archive 26

Archive 27

Archive 28

Archive 29

Archive 30

Request to change disambiguation guideline

I've outlined the below issue as it relates to the guideline that says:

"If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)"."

Lets assume there is article X and article Y. Article D is the disambiguation page for article X and Y. If there is 100 to 1 ratio of people interested in article Y versus X wouldn't it be better to point to the article that the 100 people are looking for? For the people interested in article X they get to read the disambiguation text as the first thing on article Y and can click on it.

Rather than using non empirical method for determining primary article, how about something more concrete? The thrash can be attributed to a few determined people rather than what is actually should be a primary topic. How many thousands of people do we need to inconvenience with a disambiguation page when we can determine what the vast majority really want? My suggestion is to change the guideline using more emperical methods rather than relying on people who aren't aware of how many zillion people they are inconveniencing by not pointing to the article they want to see. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 02:35, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

For reference, this comes as part of the discussion at Talk:Ubuntu. -- Natalya 02:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

As for changing it to a more empirical method, what more empirical method did you have in mind, Daniel.Cardenas? -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:19, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Can we agree what is ideal? My thought is if that individual page views per time period would be the ideal metric. If that is not available then we will have to move to secondary metrics. What metrics exists to indicate page popularity? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 13:53, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

If we can come up with a foolproof method that allows us to determine which article is more primarily a topic, then I think that's great. I'm very apprehensive about being able to find such an options, though, which is why I am hesitant. Yes we could use Google page scores, or number of hits on the Wikipedia page, or something like, but even so, I'm not sure if that will give a truly accurate measurement. What if one Wikipedia page gets more hits only because it is easier to find? For some issues, I imagine there would be tons of internet pages for one of the topics, and not many for the other. That doesn't necessarily mean that that topic is more primary over the other.

We should use primary topics when there is clear consensus that one topic is obviously more prominent than the other. If there is valid discussion on which is more primary though, even if there are more people on one side, to me, that indicates that there is enough discrepancy that neither should be considered the primary topic. For example, Boston is about the city in Massachusettes. I'm sure that if someone from any of the other towns named Boston in the United States felt that their town should be given equal footing with Boston, MA, almost everyone would clearly see that that doesn't make sense. However, when it's not that clear, I would personally rather leave both pages on equal footing. That is just my opinion though; we are trying to work for the good of the encyclopedia, so I hope that we can figure out something that everyone can feel okay with. -- Natalya 14:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

What if one Wikipedia page gets more hits only because it is easier to find?

Do you have an example?

For some issues, I imagine there would be tons of internet pages for one of the topics, and not many for the other. That doesn't necessarily mean that that topic is more primary over the other.

Does this comment relate to counting google page hits rather than wikipedia article page views? I researched a bit and wikipedia page views are available so google hits aren't needed. http://dammit.lt/wikistats/   http://stats.grok.se/

We should use primary topics when there is clear consensus that one topic is obviously more prominent than the other.

Are you disagreeing that even if page Y gets 100 times as many hits as page X there still should be a disambiguitation page? What you are saying to me, is that if there is a few obstinate people, then a disambiguation page is required regardless of how popular one page is over another. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 15:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

For my money these should be the priorities for deciding primacy: 1) First would come articles at the root word, which would include articles at any variant of the root word included in that dab page (so plurals, punctuation/capitalisation/accent variants are all included). My reason for these taking precedence is that other editors have already decided they are primary by electing to use the bare root word for the title (for example Title rather than Title (subset). If there are no root articles, then 2) By common consent (often known as consensus). When the majority of editors consider one (or more) meanings to be primary, then they are so. If there is doubt then imho there is no point in resorting to google hits or whatever because such methods tend to favour the commercial rather than the real. Failing consensus, there is no primary topic. All of course imho. Abtract (talk) 15:48, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify what you are saying. Assuming root word is not an issue and there is no clear consensus. If we see that page Y is 100 times more popular than page X on wikipedia, that is not sufficient information to decide which page should be the primary page because something about it "tend to favour the commercial"? Please don't talk about google hits, no one is suggesting that. I'm suggesting wikipedia page popularity. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

What I am saying is that, if the case is good, consensus will be reached. I don't favour enforced choice brought on by "hits". Abtract (talk) 16:06, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, your idea breaks down when taken to the logical conclusion. Bleach (manga) → Bleach is just one of the wacky examples that such a policy would encourage. We already have enough of a problem with WP:BIAS. Burzmali (talk) 16:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

O.K. I agree. How about adding to the guideline to say that wikipedia page popularity can be used as a data point to help reach consensus? Such as the tool: http://stats.grok.se/   Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:32, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I have cleaned up the hatnotes at bleach etc assuming that was what Burzmali had in mind. And I have no objection to that sort of change DC. Abtract (talk) 17:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I think what Burzmali was saying was that based purely on the criterion on most page views, the manga article Bleach (manga) should be moved to Bleach and the other to something like Bleach (cleaning product). That simply illustrates why any sort of hard-coded numerical criteria based on page popularity is ill-advised. older ≠ wiser 17:20, 29 April 2008 (UTC) PS but your edits to the hatnotes on the articles are an improvement. older ≠ wiser 17:23, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

If you think that, you might like to look at the changes since then. Abtract (talk) 23:23, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

For those who didn't look up the stats, Bleach had 235369 hits in March, while Bleach (manga) had 659274. I'm guessing that most of us can agree that the cleaning product is clearly the main topic, if for no other reason that it is far more widely known in life, even if the comic had more internet hits. A lot of that probably has to do with internet culture, and technology in general. But still, it is our goal to make an unbiased encyclopedia, not biased by anything, whether it be national preference or the fact that it is online. -- Natalya 20:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but how many people that went to Bleach (manga) went to Bleach first, scoring a hit for both pages? I figure that few people are entering "Bleach (manga)" into the search bar. Since Bleach isn't a dab page, it's hard to guess how many had to stumble over the wrong page, then a dab page, to get to the clearly more popular Bleach (manga)... Burzmali (talk) 21:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

That's why the desired empirical methods won't work -- they don't exist. Any metric you can come up with can be gamed, broken, or otherwise fail in any number of cases. In this case, an encyclopedia topic on "Bleach" can be expected to be about "Bleach", and if one means the manga, one should either (a) use a manga encyclopedia or (b) click through the dab to find it. Similarly, Muse doesn't go to the band and Bones doesn't go to the TV show. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

General Principles

I want to start my comment by outlining a few general principles that I think are applicable to disambiguation and this issue in particular, then touch specifically on the Ubuntu and Bleach issues.

• Wikipedia's main goal is to inform the reader in a neutral fashion
  • disambiguation serves to inform the reader of other uses of a term, which in turn often provides context for their knowledge of the desired topic
• There is a fundamental advantage over paper encyclopedia in that articles are part of a web
  • seeing links about other things is not bad - it encourages further exploration and ultimately more fully informs the reader
• Disambiguation anticipates likely and reasonable confusion on the part of the reader.
  • the more there is likely to be confusion for a specific term, the more extensive our effort to disambiguate

When a name is ambiguous, disambiguation helps the reader find what they are looking for.

1. When there is a clearly dominant topic and one other topic, that topic gets the "main" page with a link to the secondary page.
2. When there are only two prominent topics, with not one clearly dominant, provide hatnote links between then and try to pick one which has a stronger claim to the title, or create a disambiguation page if neither can reasonable claim the title above the other.
3. When there is a clearly dominant topic and several other topics, that topic gets the "main" page with a link to a disambiguation page, which links to all possible topics.
4. When there are a few dominant topics and several other topics, then the approach is a hybrid of #2 and #3. Link the dominant topics to each other using hatnotes and link to a disambiguation page. Try to pick one of dominants to be the main page or if no choice is possible, have the disambiguation page be the main page.

That doesn't address the issue of prominence yet. Google hits and Wikipedia page views provide us no information in this regard, as they do not reflect meaning, but volume of use.To take an example similar to Bleach, Apple stated in English without any context, clearly refers to the fruit. There is another prominent use of the word Apple which I would wager would have more hits on the Web and more page views, but it is only clear in the context of talking about technology that we mean Apple Inc.. Further, although Apple is often used to refer to it, the formal name is different. Plus, there should be special consideration when identical names are caused by one thing being named for another, as knowledge of the original would serve to better inform the reader about the namesake.

So specifically on Ubuntu, since it is at best a borrowed word, there is no clear meaning in English without the context of computers or philosophy. They are co-equal in the sense that neither one clearly can claim the word "Ubuntu". While the Linux distro has a certain advantage in volume of usage, the philosophy has going for it that the distro's name is based on it, like with Apple. Given that there are a few other less prominent uses, case 4 above applies... Ubuntu should be a dab page, with hatnotes in both the prominent articles mentioning the other in addition to the dab page. Neither "side" should consider having to go through the dab page a bad thing... in fact, by being informed that there are other uses... that there is a philosophy inspiring the distro, and that there is a distro applying the philosophy, is a good thing. There is no reason to put blinders on our readers... if there is no clear meaning for a term, inform them about how that term is used.

As for BLEACH, I have to say I though the original arrangement was superior. the Bleach article on the chemical is clearly the dominant meaning for Bleach, but Bleach (manga) is prominent enough that it merits special disambiguation in addition to the usual dab page. From the other side, even though capitalization shouldn't make a difference... in this case it does.. BLEACH is more meaningful in the context of the manga than the chemical... and for those who like to type in capital letters for no reason... bleach gets a special hatnote. I have to agree with the locals that the original usage was better before attention was drawn to that page from this discussion. --Marcinjeske (talk) 09:38, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I would just like to comment that we should be careful of allowing wikipedia's current user profile and biases to be our guidelines for future content and as a notability metric. Wikipedia's technical bias is currently one of its largest weaknesses. A policy along the lines of "frequency of page reads in wikipedia" as a notability guideline would merely reinforce and propagate existing user and content biases. I am very technical, but I consider the current state of both Apple and Ubuntu to be positive signs that wikipedia is growing up as a "real" encyclopedia my family might use. --HiltonLange (talk) 21:25, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

In case my point got buried in the prose... yes, it is clear that Google hits or page hits are not a good way to compare prominence of two similarly-named articles. They might make a good heuristic if we had a computer making automated decisions, but as long as we have a human involved, it makes sense to actually reason about what sort of disambiguation map is appropriate. --Marcinjeske (talk) 12:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Monckton

Monckton, unlike the rarer Moncton and Monkton does not seem to have a disam page. Lots of people, no doubt some places etc too. Johnbod (talk) 02:43, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

That would make it a surname list, not a dab page. Created (and cleaned up Moncton (disambiguation) and Monkton too). -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:13, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for comments—bot to find missing DAB entries

Hi— I'm developing Navibot, a bot to find and remedy missing disambiguation entries. Here's an example of the kind of edit I hope it will be able to make eventually. At the moment, all the bot can do is find such opportunities, I made the actual edit. The example is explicated a little more on the bot's user page, and I'd welcome comments on the whole endeavor on its talk page. Thanks! —johndburger 02:30, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The bot is going to find plenty of articles that should be deleted. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 02:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Good point. At the moment, Navibot finds candidates using a monthly database dump, and there is likely to be a lag of at least several days before making any edits. So any speedy deletes will have happened, and the bot will discover that one of the relevant pages no longer exists. Nonetheless, something to keep in mind if I ever make it more reactive, e.g., working off of Special:Newpages. —johndburger 00:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Provided the deleting admin remembers to clean up then I fail to see how the inclusion on a dab page of a page that should be deleted can be seen as a problem. If working of Special:Newpages then you might want to lag a day or so and look for a speedy template before adding, but otherwise I think this sounds like a good idea. If the bot is automated, and adding to a page with several lists, how will the bot know how to categorize the article?Taemyr (talk) 10:43, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

As to the first issue, yes, I think I will check the target page for any deletion templates, and hold off for a while, so as not to make more work for admins. As to the second, do you mean when a DAB has several sections (either ==explicit== or implicit)? I am working on parsing the structure of such pages—if the bot isn't confident that it "understands" the DAB page, it won't add the new entry, it'll wait for (my) confirmation. If there is an obvious Other section, it will probably always add the entry to that. It will also try to see if the entries are in alphabetical order, and insert accordingly. All good questions, thanks! —johndburger 11:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

It should probably insert last rather than try to maintain alphabetic ordering. Per Wikipedia:MOSDAB#Order_of_entries the entries should be ordered according to usage, most used meaning first least used meaning last. "Forgotten" entries should be assumed to be fairly seldom used. Taemyr (talk) 12:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

If the article isn't already in a DAB page then that is an indicator of perhaps low quality. And perhaps an indicator that the article should be deleted rather than added to a DAB page. The example you have given is a page that should be deleted, in my opinion. The BOT should check for several references before adding it to a DAB page or something to indicate quality. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:04, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Addition to a dab page is not a mark that this article has approval. It's simply a mark that the article exists. I see no reason that we should make a judgment on an articles encyclopedic appropriateness when considering if it should be put into a dab page. The important question is and should be, could the dabbed title be the title of this article. Making a bad article more accessible is a good thing, since it exposes it to more editors and thus allows the problem to be addressed. Taemyr (talk) 21:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

My fear if this type of program runs rampant is that:

1. We will have tons of links on disambuiguation pages. Many of them not want people are trying to find and make it harder for people to find the article they want.
2. Creates work for people to go and delete the many junk album and local band articles.
3. It is not so cut and dry to "...allows the problem to be addressed." Many articles start out as crap and then improve over years. Should they be deleted? Will create tons of debate for articles to be deleted.

I see more value added in a BOT that collects statistics related to appropriateness on articles and tags articles with poor stats for deletion. :-) Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 21:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

The two first of your points are addressed by my point that dab pages is not really a mark of approval. If articles exists on wikipedia then they should be accessible. The second, if the article should be deleted it should be deleted even if it was not listed, so the bot does not create work, it merely makes the fact that this work is needed more visible. The last is a point I totaly agree with. That's the reason I did not say allows the article to be deleted above. But especially when dealing with articles that could be improved increasing the articles visibility is an advantage. Taemyr (talk) 07:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Not appropriate to create a bigger mess so that a smaller mess can be cleaned up. First clean up the smaller mess. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 10:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we should focus on the point of disambiguation - if there are multiple articles with the same name (except for a dab phrase), a disambiguation page should list them to guide the reader to the desired article. For concerns about notability, we need to rely on the other processes of Wikipedia. A couple of points/ideas for the bot in light of the above discussion:

1. The bot should only deal with pages x (y) where a x (disambiguation) already exists as an articles or a redirect. Other cases of disambiguation (partial matches or word variants) at most should get put in a Category:Articles needing disambiguation for review by human editors. (This guarantees the bot only adds entries certain to need disambiguation.)
2. The bot should not act until an article is several days (or weeks?) old to allow time for speedy and proposed deletion processes. It should also check the article for warning flags like copyvio and the db templates. (We do not want to needlessly legitimize junk pages or create zombie entries which will just need to be cleaned up.)
3. If an article is orphaned, with very few incoming links (make sure to account for redirects - the key number is how many articles link to this article, whether that is through a redirect or not), it should be placed in Category:Articles needing disambiguation so that a human editor can evaluate it and possible suggest it for deletion. (This guarantees that disambiguation pages do not get swamped with
4. The bot should make sure that the new entry does not point to the same article as an existing entry (it must follow all links on the disambiguation page, including redirects, and confirm that the new entry does not direct to an existing entry's destination article. (In fact, this would be a good check to run on all the entries... there are dab pages where the same entry shows up multiple times, sometimes as differently-named redirects.)
5. The bot should append the entry after all other entries (just before stub or the See also section if there is one). If it is able to identify an appropriate subsection, it should append to the end of that subsection. (The idea being that the very fact the entry has not already been added is evidence that it is a less common use.)
6. If the bot adds more than a few (two?) entries to a page, it should change the disambig tag to disambig-cleanup to indicate that a human editor may need to take a look.

How's that for some feedback? --Marcinjeske (talk) 12:31, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the bot sounds a great idea. If an article exists as X (Y),then it needs to be included in the "X (disambiguation)" page. Full stop. If it isn't there, then the editor who wants to create an article about "X (footballer)" doesn't find it when they look at the dab page, so creates it as "X (football)" and we get duplicate articles. Including all appropriate existing pages in dab pages is a help in preventing duplicate article creation, as well as simply helping the reader to find the article, which is what dab pages are for. Go for it! But I support the idea about checking thoroughly, redirects and all, to make sure that the article isn't already listed on the dab page. I have my doubts about the bot categorising additions to dab pages, given the hugely varied way that dab pages are set out and categorised. Perhaps it needs to always add the new entry at the end, and to add a message to the talk page to list which items have been automatically added, so that anyone who verifies them could add a note to say they've done so? Or add a hidden comment within the code on the dab page, to be removed when a human editor has looked at the new entry and verified that it's in the right place? PamD (talk) 22:22, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[Friendly indent of PamD's addition —jdb]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions! My intent is to be very careful, because I think bots need to coexist in the Wikipedia ecology with all the humans, and should try to avoid annoying anyone unduly—too much of that lately. So if a candidate target article is very new, or has been tagged for deletion (or copyvio—good suggestion, that), Navibot will put it off for another round. I am already resolving all redirects, even more than MediWiki itself does (it stops at chains of one). I had already thought that candidate edits of either limited utility, or low confidence, should be added to a to-do list for humans—something like Category:Articles needing disambiguation would be good in some cases, but I can't figure out what category you were referring to, Marcinjeske. Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation doesn't seem quite right. I am a big believer in edit summaries, so the bot will try to explain specifically what it's doing in that way, but anything complicated (like adding multiple entries to a DAB) can be summarized on the Talk page, as Marcinjeske and PamD suggest. (I will be careful not to spam Talk pages indiscriminately, though.) These are all good ideas, thanks, folks! I hope to have a rudimentary version able to make its own (supervised) edits in a week or two. —johndburger 03:50, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

John, I recommend you change direction for a while and create a BOT to do wiki cleanup first. For your first example given, it created work, in deleting the DAB entry. Would be great if you created a BOT that tagged articles for deletion instead. After the bot has run its course, then a BOT to add DAB entries will have more value. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 12:58, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

First, to address the idea of a DeleteBot, I think 1) it would be difficult for a bot to make those kinds of decisions... 2) this is not the appropriate venue to propose a DeleteBot, try Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion... 3) as long as the legitimate concerns can be addressed, there is no reason to not have a DabBot just because it is not a DeleteBot.

As for the category to put "low confidence" articles into, I was suggesting above that a new category be created, Category:Articles needing disambiguation, sorry I was not explicit about that. I looked and I could not find an existing appropriate category. This should then be hooked up like the other DAB work categories so that editors could resolve decide these by hand.

Per PamD, I think the Bot should behave like other bots in that when it changes the page, it leaves a comment along the lines of (!-- disambiguation link added by NaviBot --) and an appropriate edit summary, but I do not see the need to repeat on the talk page, even for multiple entries... If someone wants to start a discussion, they will do so... and the bot is out of the picture at that point anyway. (Just do what the bot that generates external link titles does.)

As to Daniel's point about creating work, perhaps the example edit was poorly chosen. I think if some criteria are added to keep the bot from touching pages that are very young or marked for deletion or copyvio. For what remains, given how much work is involved in a deletion, an extra revert of the bot edit is trivial. Besides, as you said, stalking the bot would be a great way for you to find candidates for deletion, and may bring attention to questionable articles which have been silently passing the time (I can't tell with the album, but that bands page has been quietly sitting there for almost a year... if it had not been for a Bot designed to dab, no one would have noticed it... by adding to the dab page, the bot creates a fresh edit and a path to attract editorial attention, which would include a human evaluation of deletion, as you did.) Since I do not think a bot should be allowed to propose deletion, speedy or otherwise (except maybe in extreme circumstances), this is really the next best thing.

'Daniel, have you seen Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#On Inherent Notability and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Did someone ask for examples?. If you want to address the problem, I would say that you should go straight to the source, the "inherent notability" doctrine, under which there is a flood of pages getting added to Wikipedia.

Any objections to moving this discussion to the bot's talk page?--Marcinjeske (talk) 02:07, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Stubs in dab

I'm reverting this recent edit by Centrx (talk · contribs). I feel it's wrong to include "a basis or hint for a future article" in a dab entry. The use of red links in dab pages is discussed in detail at WP:MOSDAB#Red_links, and I don't think an incomplete summary of that guideline tucked into WP:D#Dictionary_definitions is helpful. For one, if no article exists for that dab term, then the dab entry itself is not useful for the purposes of navigating (other than telling the reader they've hit a dead end). Second, if a future article is indeed warranted, why not create a stub? (WP:STUB) Isn't that what stubs are for? I see no reason to clutter a dab with what should more appropriately exist in stubs. Noca2plus (talk) 22:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The stub can be created, but the topic should not be deleted from the disambiguation page if a separate page for the stub does not exist, or if the title of the potential stub is not redlinked.

• The stub may not exist because it has not yet been created, or because it was deleted for reasons unrelated to the inclusion of the topic in the encyclopedia.
• The redlink may not exist because it has not yet been created, or because a good title for the non-existent article is not known.
• The dab entry with its contextual definition may very well be identical before and after the creation of the stub.
• If no article exists for a dab term, the redlink is still useful to editors--and readers are editors.
• If no article exists for a dab term, a stub whether in a dab page or in a separate article still usefully navigates the reader to the information they sought, which is still on an encyclopedic topic but is sparse.

—Centrx→talk • 00:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it appears we simply disagree on what a dab should contain. I am a strong believer in the guidance (from WP:D#Disambiguation pages):

• Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link...

Based on your statements, it appears you disagree with both me and that guidance.Noca2plus (talk) 01:22, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Noca2plus. Stubs that don't exist because of, well, it doesn't matter why really; stubs that don't exist (that is, red links) should not be listed on dab pages without a blue link in the description. Links to actual stub articles that have been created are fine. Red links are fine on articles; disambiguation pages are not articles, but navigational pages that disambiguate existing Wikipedia articles. If you want to include a red link on a disambiguation page, you should first find an article to blue-link to in the description (and add the red link to that article if it's not already red-linked to the term). -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:50, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

And (although it may already have been assumed), there should only be a red-linked entry if it is reasonable/likely that an article could be created out of that topic. -- Natalya 11:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Right. I was assuming that WP:REDLINK will be followed for adding the red link to the article (before adding it to the dab), but the way I said it could have been taken as an instruction to add it regardless of its suitability. Thanks! -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

No worries - I figured as such! Just wanted to make sure it was clear for anyone who was reading. -- Natalya 19:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Redlinks do belong in disambiguation pages, and you would have overturn all existing practice and policy if you believe disambiguation page should not refer to encyclopedic topics that do not yet have articles. Incomplete dab entries are not the "Dictionary definitions" of Wiktionary mentioned here. Also, each dab entry should, generally, have one navigable blue link; but an entry without one navigable blue link is still a dab entry that needs to be improved; and if a dab entry with a redlink has a related article, that related article is the target of the one navigable blue link. —Centrx→talk • 18:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Centrx. Interpreting this guideline as an simplistic rule banning plain redlinks on disambiguation pages is a triumph of empty formalism over the goal of producing a comprehensive encyclopedia. Editorial discretion (and intelligence) is required to distinguish between a redlink for an encyclopedic topic that hasn't been created yet (and may entail some improvements such as identifying an appropriate blue link with sufficient context to make the reference intelligible or the creation of a stub page) and those spurious redlinks to vanity pages and other deleted nonsense that should be removed from dab pages. I don't think the guideline should encourage simplistic rule-bound, thought-free editing. older ≠ wiser 19:22, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

(Mwah edit conflict!) I believe there is general agreement with that point. I took a reviewing look at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Red_links, and it seems like we do want to have a blue link in each line, regardless of whether there is a red link or not. I don't think that's particularly hard to do, though. So, perhaps the disagreement is not so much in the use/non-use of redlinks? In technicality, it seems like all entries in a disambiguation page that are either red links or are not linked at all are "mini-stubs", in a sense; they provide very basic information about the topic, enough so that a person can determine if that is what they are looking for or not. I'm not sure if we need to say that these descriptions could be bases (plural basis) for stubs, becaues it seems like they just are. If it's not as evident to me as it is to everyone else, then perhaps we should, but I feel as though adding that part in may create invitation for rather lengthy descriptions on disambiguation pages. Either way, I think it will be okay. -- Natalya 19:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

This is apparently two separate issues: 1) Whether it is appropriate to have a dab entry for a viable future article without any links which would thus appear to be a dictionary definition, for the reasons given above such as not knowing what title to name it; 2) Whether a dab entry can consist only of a redlink with a dictionary definition to be incorporated into the future article, such as in cases where no related blue-link articles exist. This latter seems to be obviously common and allowed. —Centrx→talk • 16:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

No, a dab entry should not consist only of a red link where no blue link articles exist, nor should it have no link at all . This is (hopefully) uncommon and suitable for correcting to the allowed form (by adding a blue link or removing the entry). Disambiguation pages disambiguate Wikipedia articles. If there's no Wikipedia articles, there's nothing to disambiguate. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Certainly anything is "allowed" on wikipedia (see WP:IAR, and WP:MOSDAB#Break rules in particular). I'm not sure "redlink-only" dab entries are common. But even if they are common, that's hardly justification for interpreting the current Manual of Style as recommending their preservation. On the contrary, I don't think the MOS could be any more clear on the subject. From WP:D#Disambiguation pages:

• Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link

and from WP:MOSDAB#Individual entries:

• Including no links at all makes the entry useless for further navigation.

and from WP:MOSDAB#Red links:

• Red links should not be the only link in a given entry; link also to an existing article, so that a reader (as opposed to a contributing editor) will have somewhere to navigate to for additional information.

To me, it's clear that redlink-only dab entries are not recommended. Now, you might argue that MOSDAB should be changed, but judging by this discussion I don't think consensus (WP:CON) exists for such a change. Noca2plus (talk) 23:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

List of Wikipedia articles starting with...

The disambig page PAM has 'See also' links to List of Wikipedia articles starting with Pam and List of Wikipedia articles starting with PAM. I've edited quite a few disambig pages but never come across this type of link before. Are these valid and useful or just trivial? Should we be adding such links? Thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 05:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I've seen it a few times. It seems to be a solution to the problem of people trying to put Pam A through Pam B on the page. It could be useful. I've never removed it when I saw it, but I have never added it either. (John User:Jwy talk)

I've also seen links to the "List of people with the name..." pages, which also help to ameliorate the huge number of links that sometimes crop up on disambiguation pages. Like Jwy, I don't think I've ever added those pages, but I've not really taken them off either. They are sort of a compromise between listing everyone and their mother whose names starts with "X", and not listing any of them at all. I don't think they need to be on every page, but where this is some disagreement about including named people, etc, they could be a good compromise. -- Natalya 10:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I have added the links on occasion for precisely the reasons indicated. Perhaps the WP:MOSDAB should have some guidance about usage (assuming that it doesn't already--I haven't checked). For one, it could recommend using {{lookfrom}} instead of an external link. older ≠ wiser 12:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to codify anything on this. I don't think its that big a deal. If there gets to be some contention about it, then we might address it. (John User:Jwy talk) 15:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) I think it's helpful, particularly on words which can be forenames, and on placenames - saves listing every team, building society, etc which starts with a placename, but still provides access to them, as on the Leeds (disambiguation) page. It helps the reader to find the article s/he is looking for if it exists, and helps the editor who wants to create an article to check easily whether it already exists. The list reached through the link is guaranteed to be complete and up to date and involves no effort in maintaining it, at the cost of one or two neat entries in the "See also" section - now even easier to add since we've been introduced to {{lookfrom}} (I speak for myself - perhaps everyone else had it at their fingertips). I suggest it's worth including the capitalised version as well, especially for a page where some of the meanings are acronyms - leads to things like the PAM Brink Stadium. PamD (talk) 15:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC) (Yes, I declare an interest in PAM, and I added those two links).

FYI: New category related to splitting pages

Category:Disambiguation pages in need of being split
Origin of the category explained at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy#split category. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

As I am not super familiar with Wikiproject Anthroponymy, just for clarification, are these pages that need to be split into a page of people with those names and the rest of the disambiguation page? -- Natalya 15:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

As I see it, its kind of related to the item just above on "starting with..." They have been creating articles about (citable) names and extracting some of the non-dab information from the dab pages. If you check out some of the pages in the category you should get an idea - or check out their WP:WikiProject Anthroponymy where they have a list of pages they have split. It seems useful, for example, for those pages where there is a long list of people with the same last name that are not REALLY known by only that last name. My only quibble with the project is their name. I can never remember it! There's some sort of weird irony in not remembering the name. (John User:Jwy talk) 15:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

(Upon further perusal of the Wikiproject page) Cool! That seems to really help with disambiguation pages too; we don't have to fight over whether or not people's names (who don't go by just that name) are on them, which in turn keeps them easier to navigate, but yet there is still a reference for people with that name. -- Natalya 16:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Moving Mountains

I created an article called "Moving Mountains (song)", a song by Usher. I decided to use this title because Moving Mountains is already taken; its an article about an album but not related to Usher. The following day(s), a user created "Moving Mountains (Usher song)" subsequently creating a bit conflict between us. My stand is that why should we use "Moving Mountains (Usher song)" if there is no existing song-related article of the same name? --Efe (talk) 05:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I've replied to Efe about this subject on my talk page, FYI. As I stated there, it would seem to me that the earlier-released record of the same name would be the proper one to carry the "song" tag and the upcoming single should be more specific, but I'm perfectly cool with whichever. --InDeBiz1 Review me! / Talk to me! 05:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Music talks a little bit about what to use as a clarifier. I think the simplest one is best. Right now, Moving Mountains (song) redirects to Moving Mountains, which is an article about a Justin Hayward album called "Moving Mountains" (that has a song on it called "Moving Mountains"). However, if the Usher song is notable enough to have an article, but the Justin Hayward song by the same name is not, it would make sense to me to have Moving Mountains (song) go to the Usher song page (at least to me). -- Natalya 13:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

They say that its going to be his next single so I created it. Lets put aside notability issue; Justin Hayward's song is non-existent (no article is created to this) so it would be right to use "Moving Mountains (song)" for the Usher-related song. --Efe (talk) 03:43, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Just be aware that Wikipedia:Notability_(music)#Songs seems to say that most songs are usually not their own page. I don't know the past precident for this, though, and I feel like I've seen a lot of song articles. You might just want to look into it before making the move. But other than that, your evaluation seems to be right. -- Natalya 13:42, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Its going to be released as a single. I think we already reached a concensus now. Any affirmation? --Efe (talk) 05:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The opinions of only three of us doesn't constitute a consensus, IMHO. I suggest leaving this open for another day or two to see if anyone else weighs in, particularly an admin or two. Not that I disagree with what's being suggested, by any means... I just think if we're really going for a "consensus" we need a couple more thoughts. --InDeBiz1 Review me! / Talk to me! 06:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. --Efe (talk) 11:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Rewording the intro

From a discussion at WT:MOSDAB#"Trivial" categories on disambiguation pages, the intro here may need a little tweaking to avoid appearing to exclude dab entries that link to related articles (as opposed to articles that could have been titled with the dab phrase). My suggestion: "In other words, disambiguations are paths leading to different articles that the reader could have been seeking when looking up the title." -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:15, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

{{Page d}} - suggest removal of displayed icon in article

Hallo, I hope this is the right place to discuss this (and I know someone will point me to the right place if not). I've just discovered {{Page d}}, on Long-distance trail, labelling the link to Rights of way in the United Kingdom as a "correct" link to a dab page. I'm not sure whether that page actually qualifies as a dab page, as it's explaining that the topic is covered in two different pages, but that's not my issue in writing this. I don't think that the icon being displayed in the text of an article is useful to the reader (as opposed to the editor). If I hover my mouse over the icon, I see technicalities about the image. As a reader, I don't need to know that the link is "correct": it leads me to a useful page from which I can choose which link to follow, and that's all I need. The icon is disconcerting, and detracts from the article.

I can see that there is some real usefulness in tagging the link to the dab page to say it's OK, it's been checked out, it doesn't need to be tidied up. I wish there was something similar for occurrences of mistakes like "he should of" which are in quotes or song titles, so mustn't be "corrected", as that's one of my hobby-horses. This info could be included in the text, either in a template or in a standardised comment. (If such a mechanism already exists, please let me, and the other people at WP:Typo, know about it!) But I suggest that displaying the icon in the article is positively unhelpful to readers and should be stopped.

Looking at "what links to" the template, the first on the list is Books of Samuel, where the link to Zuph is labelled - but it seems to me that there is one person and one place on that dab page, so that the link is unambiguously to the place; Moses /Peor seems similar. PamD (talk) 11:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Aaargh: at Fulneck Moravian Settlement the icon has been added to the hatnote - surely we don't need every instance where someone has used free text in a hatnote instead of {{otheruses}} to be decorated with an icon? I'm about to change it. PamD (talk) 12:03, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Changed it. PamD (talk) 12:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the main problem is that the template is being misused. It is not supposed to be used in hatnotes such as {{otheruses}}, and the example in Books of Samuel is also a misuse, as it is not meant to be used in lieu of disambiguating the link. I can understand the argument against having the icon in the page, but would it be fine to still have the template in order for Wikipedia Cleaner to be more efficient? MrKIA11 (talk) 12:32, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this template should not be used. To "mark" a link as a correct dab link create a redirect that is an explicit disambiguation and link to that page with a pipe. So instead of Rights of way in the United Kingdom link Rights of way in the United Kingdom and have the latter target redirect to the former. I believe wikipedia cleaner understands that syntax. I will propose {{Page d}} for deletion. Taemyr (talk) 12:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Taemyr. I think your suggestion is helpful - linking to something with "(disambiguation)" in its article name is clearly a conscious decision, shows that an editor has decided that the dab page is the appropriate thing to link to. To clarify, I've just created the redirect at Rights of way in the United Kingdom (disambiguation) which your example above uses! PamD (talk) 13:04, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

We should try to make this practice more well know, if possible - it definitly does help make intended links to disambiguation pages clearer. There's actually a bit about it at Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links_to_disambiguation_pages. -- Natalya 17:12, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

What we did on the French wikipedia is having 2 templates Page h with the icon, Page h' without the icon. Otherwise, the idea of using links to pages ending with (disambiguation)) seems a good idea. If you want to go this way, I will see what I can do in Wiki Cleaner (but not right now, too busy). --NicoV (talk) 18:41, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Yusuke

How do I take off the parent cat from Yusuke? I've surely seen this done before, but do not recall the situation. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 03:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

It appears that the 'nocat' parameter needs to be the last parameter presented; I had thought that the order did not matter. (see diff) --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Parentheses

I think this guideline should be more clear that parentheses are not the only acceptable method of disambiguation. While it gives the Delta rocket example, there are many other cases where adding an adjective in front is a clearer method of disambiguation and is supported by the use common names metric. Some editors seem to be under the impression that all disambiguation must be parenthetical. Powers ^T 13:04, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Bot approved: dabbing help needed

Hi there. Fritz bot has been approved at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FritzpollBot for filling in a possible 1.8 million articles on settlements across the world. Now dabbing needs to be done for links which aren't sorted as the bot will bypass any blue links. and I need as many people as possible to help me with Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places to prepare for the bot. If you could tackle a page or two everything counts as it will be hard to do it alone. PLease also pass on the message to anybody else who you may think might be willing to help. Thankyou ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 12:23, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Could use some disambiguator's opinions at Talk:Ubuntu (disambiguation)

The primary topic of the disambiguation term "Ubuntu" is still in flux, and opinions have not been forthcoming. Some more input at Talk:Ubuntu_(disambiguation)#Continuation_of_the_primary_topic_discussion would be much appreciated. Feel free to take a look at Talk:Ubuntu_(disambiguation)#Revisiting_primary_topic and really a lot of that whole talk page for previous discussions on the topic. -- Natalya 20:37, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Template to caution against frequent mistakes

Please see, and voice support or objections for, a proposed dab-style warning-template, to appear (in edit-mode only) at the tops of all disambig pages, at:

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Template to caution against frequent mistakes.

Thank you :) -- Quiddity (talk) 02:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Surname disambiguation and partial title matches

Could we have some discussion over {{surname}} and the wording at Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Partial title matches? Surnames would seem to be an example of partial title matches, but {{surname}} seems to indicate that disambiguation pages for people with the same surname are both OK and useful. We have between 5000 and 10,000 disambiguation pages for surnames (or with tagged sections on surnames). I've also seen (and added) disambiguation hatnotes to direct people to surnames (eg. the articles listed at Gusmão). This would be a massive proliferation of such hatnotes, and I'm not entirely sure it is helpful. Could I get some advice on the following:

• (1) How should surname disambiguation pages be handled (as opposed to full name disambiguation)?
• (2) Should hatnotes be put on all relevant pages where a surname disambiguation page exists?

Any advice would be appreciated. The guideline doesn't seem to cover this explicitly. Carcharoth (talk) 12:52, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

It has been pointed out to me that {{surname}} pages are lists, not disambiguation pages. Still, they are useful pages when you only have a surname (many old documents only give surnames and initials) and nothing else to go by when looking for an article on a person, so they do have disambiguation purposes. Should they be categorised as such, but different from normal dab pages? Carcharoth (talk) 14:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Not sure I see the deep distinction. Dab pages are lists too, after all, just their own particular sort of list. There's especially going to a certain family resemblance between {{hndis}} and {{surname}} pages, which may lead to people concluding (erroneously at present) that the latter don't need to be categorised in some way (especially if they've ended up formatted as if they were dab pages). If the template automatically added to some sort of category, then at least that issue would be finessed. Alai (talk) 14:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Dab pages and surname pages are mostly different. For one, surname pages are part of the WP:WikiProject Anthroponymy. Most people only deserve mention on a surname page, not a dab page. E.g. while George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush most certainly belong on teh dab page, all others Bush people would be moved off to Bush (surname) if someone saw the need to create such a page. Still, there is no need to start a new surname page if there are only handful people, so that's where the trade-off comes in that you interpret as "partial match". There is no hard-and-fast rule, just editor preference. – sgeureka ^t•c 14:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

But if I had a reference somewhere to a paper written by a "Bush, M. S.", I would want to be able to go to Bush and be able to find Marian Spore Bush. There should be a single index page with all the people with the surname "Bush" on it. It seems we have a need for three distinct pages: (1) Disambiguation pages for similar or identical titles (eg. George Bush); (2) An index page listing all the people with the surname Bush; (3) An article about the surname: Bush (surname). I think WP:Anthroponymy covers the latter, and WP:Disambiguation covers the former, but it is difficult to find index pages for people. Categories sort of cover this. If Category:People were fully populated as well as being subdivided, it could be an index in the same way that Category:Living people is (this can be accessed as an index by the {{LargeCategoryTOC}} at the top, or by setting up alternatives, such as here). However, at the moment, we don't have comprehensive index pages or categories for people by surname. Maybe I should bring in the people active at WP:Categorization? Anyway, I hope this distinction between disambiguation, indices, and articles, is helpful. Carcharoth (talk) 15:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

sgeureka, see for example Renyi (which my bot tagged, and which is how I came across this in the first place). That's clearly formatted as a disambig, and is tagged with {{surname}}, which the reverter-back-to-uncategorised seems to think is some sort of analogue to hndis. Perhaps we need a separate template for such instances, and/or to give people more explicit guidance on when toy use which. (Perhaps this just needs to be tagged with hndis.) Alai (talk) 15:14, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad we're discussing this; this has always been sort of hazy, and as Sgeureka mentioned, guided by personal preference. Since it gets brought up quite a bit, it would be nice to clarify the guidelines a little more when it comes to surnames on pages and surname pages. -- Natalya 14:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you think the disambiguation, index, article distinction is useful? Carcharoth (talk) 15:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

By index, do you mean set index articles? I like that set index articles allow information that doesn't belong on disambiguation pages but that people still seem to want to have exist exist. I'm still not sure about the disambiguation page/article distinction, but I guess it makes sense, because they really aren't articles. -- Natalya 15:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I think I mean pure indexes. I'm still not sure what set indices are (though I have been reading about them - see below, which I wrote while you posted the above). Carcharoth (talk) 15:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Ooh. I just found (well, Natalya pointed me to it) Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Set index articles and Category:Set indices. Are surname index pages an example of set indices? BTW, Wikipedia:List of people by name talks about a previous attempt to have such a set of index pages for people. It eventually got bogged down and deleted (it was VERY large). See here, here and the DRV here. That system was unworkable, but I hope Wikipedia, a year later, can rise to the challenge of sorting out a proper, workable, index for its articles on people. I suspect this could be done very, very simply. Just create a super-category (similar to the one at Category:Living people), and then populate it with all the articles on people (these can be found using a variety of methods). The sticking point is the name of this super-category (if you use Category:People, that will invariably get depopulated), and making sure that new articles are added to the super (index) category. But ultimately, I think that is the most workable solution to getting an index of people. Carcharoth (talk) 15:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

A funny coincidence! Something we have to clarify, if we attempt to go that route, is that I know that on WikiProject Anthroponymy's pages, they've been putting both live people and fictional characters on the same page. If Category:People usually gets sectioned out, we may run into a problem there? -- Natalya 15:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

disambiguation

Is this a real word or did someone make it up? It's horrible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 (talk) 20:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

If you were curious, both Merriam Webster and dictionary.com have it listed as a real word. It may be long, but it does make sense; we're removing ambiguity. -- Natalya 22:04, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Business (disambiguation)

Could somebody help me by taking a look at Business (disambiguation)? Today an editor, I am sure acting in good faith, updated the page so that it includes what looks like every WP article that has the word business in it, grouped alphabetically, and almost all of them with no comments. This isn't what I thought disambiguation pages were supposed to be, but before I go to the editor who made the change, I want some feedback here to see if I am off base in thinking that was not a good change to make. Comments appreciated. UnitedStatesian (talk) 01:03, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Try Business (disambiguation) to avoid typo in the above! Yes, looks pretty ghastly. PamD (talk) 06:54, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Reverted to old WP:MOSDAB-compliant version. --Russ (talk) 09:56, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Brought in line with mos:dab ... ferrets needs checking. Abtract (talk) 10:17, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Heh... I saw your edit summary, Abtract, and I thought ferrets had something to do with the mess. But anyway, back to real things, it looks like the term for ferrets is legitimate. From Ferret#Terminology_and_coloring, "A group of ferrets is known as a business.". -- Natalya 11:19, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've improved the link. Abtract (talk) 11:41, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

And I've just seen what you meant about the edit summary ... very funny. :) Abtract (talk) 12:56, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I just posted a heads up on the users's talk page. Thanks for the help! UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:33, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

The page has been put back to its long-formed version. Rather than get into an edit war, I'm going to (also) post on the user's talk page, to see if we can come to an understanding about disambiguation pages. -- Natalya 14:19, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguating people and things

In applying the WP:D guidelines my reading and interpretation when applied to the Comics Project led to this general structure (as moving down the tree as more disambiguation is required):

• (comics)
  • (Marvel Comics), (DC Comics)
    • (comic book), (story arc)
• (writer), (artist)
  • (comics writer), (comics artist)

However, the Project's naming conventions suggest this general structure where "(comics)" is the general first level of disambiguation for both people and things (titles, characters, etc.):

• (comics)
  • (Marvel Comics), (DC Comics)
    • (comic book), (story arc)
  • (writer), (artist)
    • (comics writer), (comics artist)

There has been a long debate on the Comic Project talk page [1] and I thought it worth running this past the people here for an independent assessment. (Emperor (talk) 14:35, 25 June 2008 (UTC))

I generally dislike any indentation on dab pages. If its important enough to have its own page, its important enough to stand on its own on the dab page. Just MHO. (John User:Jwy talk) 15:54, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm talking about disambiguating links like Wolverine (comics) and Alan Grant (writer). The indenting is to demonstrate the "tree" of disambiguating starting with "(comics)" and then moving to something like "(DC Comics)" (e.g. Sandman (DC Comics) and Sandman (Marvel Comics)). See the discussion here (and given in the first post) for more debate on this. (Emperor (talk) 22:56, 25 June 2008 (UTC))

(comics) is not a great choice for a disambiguating phrase, IMO, since the articles subject is rarely comics themselves, but for fictional characters or other things the alternatives like (comic book character) are probably too long to be useful. For real people and other real things involved in the creation of comics, I would definitely disagree with the use of (comics) as a dab phrase, unless the articles is about a group of stand-up comics. If the comic connection must be at the "top level", (comics writer) or (comics artist) or (comics creator) would be my suggestion to start from. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:04, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Requesting clarification

The section #Disambiguation pages says: "Only include related subject articles if the term in question is actually described on the target article." Does this suggest that acronyms must be cited first? For example, does Bam's Unholy Union have to make an obvious reference to either "BUU", "B.U.U.", "B-U-U", etc., before warranting inclusion at Buu (see also this discussion)? If this is indeed so, then this cleanup was entirely legitimate. Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 16:48, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

This has been rumbing on for a while at BUU and recently on my talk.. Common practice has always been to disambiguate articles by their acronym / initials, whether or not the initials are explicitly referenced on the page. This is an entirely different situation to the example given on WP:D that Sess is taking as the basis for his edit. I'm not sure why this level of wikilawering to remove links from disambiguation pages is necessary, but this would be a very dangerous precedent to set (User:JHunterJ has already been doing so, link on my talk page), a ton of dab pages would have useful links removed from them under this incredibly strict and imo dispirited interpretation of the guideline, and there will be a shitstorm of editors who, like me, see no reason to remove useful, valid links to articles from dab pages simply because "the initials are not mentioned in the article". Come on. Deiz talk 17:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that the only reason to link to acronyms is because the acronym is listed in the article, but that certainly is the easiest way. My goal when dealing with pages of articles that may be referred to by an acronym is to keep all the articles on the page that people really do refer to with that acronym without overcrowding the page with extraneous articles. So, what I usually do is first check the article. If the article really does list the acronym, that's almost always good enough for me to leave it on the page. If the article doesn't list the acronym, I do a Google search of the article name (sometimes with the acronym), to see if there are references to it being referred to by the acronym. Usually, either a number of references will come up (in which case I leave the article on the page) or nothing will come up (in which case I usually take it off). If it still seems unclear (or, if the topic of the article is not an internet-friendly topic, and therefore may not have information avaliable via Google), I'll drop a line on the talk page of the article in question (or on the talk page of a related Wikiproject) to ask those more familiar with the subject if it really is referred to by this acronym. In the end, I find that this allows me to keep valid links on an acronym disambiguation page while not filling the page with unnecessary links, making it harder for people to find what they need. It may be hard to verify for many organizations if they really go by the acronym (unless it's the WWF, for example), but I think we can find a middle ground. -- Natalya 20:58, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

WWF appears to need a good cleanup, would you know of any other examples? AFAIK, the pages RK, AS, DB, DMZ (disambiguation), and AL only list articles which mention the dab term (the same may happen to DC per the discussion there). Alas, this is not the case for Bam's Unholy Union, I see no reason why it should stay on the Buu dab, and the guideline concurs. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 22:25, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

There is an abundance of informal acronyms for everything, some of which are just made up on the spot. If "BUU" is a non-rare acronym for this show in reliable written sources, why not include that for clarification, sourced, in the article Bam's Unholy Union? However, in mine own searches, "BUU" does appear to be quite rare as an abbreviation for "Bam's Unholy Union", its usage being confined to filename's for DVD rips, a peculiar case, and to forum comments with silly abbreviations like "u" for "you" and rampant misspellings, unreliable for determining language syntax. —Centrx→talk • 22:30, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Then that's just it. If someone can come up with a reliable source (as was once done for Horsepower's acronym) then Bam's Unholy Union remains on the dab. Consensus? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 22:41, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is all about reliable sources, no? If there's such a source for it, then it sounds like it should belong. -- Natalya 23:33, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

You're all missing the point. We are not compiling an article containing a sourced, referenced list of acronyms, we are aiding ease of navigation around Wikipedia. Disambiguation pages are not lists, and are not subject to the same rigours or sourcing - how many dab pages do you see with a refs section? This flies completely against common practice and the spirit of Wikipedia, two things which are far more important than a technical misinterpretation of a guideline which makes no reference to this strict requirement. In any case, you've noted it yourselves - Bam's Unholy Union has indeed been referred to as BUU, the reason being that it is intuitively obvious to refer to things by their initials, hence the reason we provide links to them on dab pages. I'm against redlinks and tenuous spellings on dab pages, but if something is referred to by the exact initials of the target article there should be no reason not to help our readers find it. Deiz talk 02:04, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Despite our agreement here, Deiz has re-inserted the link [2]. Any assistance required. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 04:28, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Guys, I don't know if we need to be fighting so much over this. The BUU disambiguation page isn't even a very long one, so it's not as though one extra link is going to make navigating it extremely difficult. (that's usually the goal in ferreting out unneccesary links) Myself, I'd just say leave it there, because it's not doing any harm, and may be valid to have there. But if that isn't satisfactory, Deiz (or anyone), can even just one link be provided anywhere that shows that more than one person refers to it as "BUU"? Really, it seems like that's all we need.

To clarify my statement about reliable sources, I think a reliable source would be great to solve this dispute, but I (and hopefully others) would settle for a less-reliable-that-showed-that-more-than-one-person-refers-to-it-by-the-acronym source. Otherwise, to follow suit, we'd need to remove quite a lot of acronym links, which would probably be detrimental to the overall navigation. -- Natalya 14:30, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Can we do something like Emu (disambiguation) does? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 21:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

You mean separating out things that go by "Buu" and things that go by "BUU"? I don't see why not. It's not a particularly long list, but I can't see why it would hurt. -- Natalya 01:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I would feel a lot better if you made the edit Natalya. Do you want to though? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 03:17, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I have no problem doing so. A question, though - does this help to solve the disagreement over the inclusion of Bam's Unholy Union? -- Natalya 12:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

IMO, it surely would. What do you think about Taemyr's suggestion below? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 16:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Frankly I am having difficulty seeing the need for a disambiguation page here at all. We say nothing about the element, and the acronyms inclusion is strenuous. I'd say move the dragonball article over the dab and then see if one should include a hatnote to Bam's Unholy Union. Taemyr (talk) 13:38, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you're halfway right. There are too few items, but I don't a hatlink to Bam's Unholy Union will be appropriate. What do you mean "move the dragonball article over the dab"? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 16:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that we do need the link for the element. True, there's not a lot of information on it, but it is a valid use of "Buu", and someone could come looking for it. -- Natalya 16:31, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, do we really need the disambiguation page? Hatnotes should suffice, as the guideline says. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 17:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Won't hatnotes only work if there are two articles? There are three, if we keep all of them (which it seems like we should). -- Natalya 12:12, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Spliting

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to split the article into BP (disambiguation), bp (disambiguation), and Bp (disambiguation) in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP_%28disambiguation%29, and in extension, for all other pages like this?68.148.164.166 (talk) 12:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

No! Er, I mean, I don't think that would be optimal. From a user's perspective: I'm going to type "bp" into the search box, not "bp (disambiguation)". I would then like to see what articles might have been named "bp", which might include Bp and BP possibilities.

From an editor's perspective, having three separate articles would be a maintenance nightmare, and I will guarantee that you will not see people keep "bp" "BP" and "Bp" articles neatly separated in their own pages; people will add their fave to whichever dab page they see first, or add it to two or three of them "just to be safe." Wikilinks from articles will link to whatever is written there, which may not necessarily go to the right page.

In short, the proper resolution of "BP", "Bp" and "bp" is ambiguous. Send them to (the same) disambiguation page. Regards, NapoliRoma (talk) 13:53, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

signing in agreement --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:37, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

School Article Disambiguation

A user has asked that I refrain from adding disambiguation links to an article page: this one in particular. His argument is that Franklin High School (New Hampshire) is not an ambiguous title and doesn't require a disambig link. I have to disagree. The base name "Franklin High School" refers to well over a dozen schools in the United States alone. And the disambiguation link at the top of the article allows a person to return to the main disambiguation page, regardless of where you came from. When I Google "Franklin High School," the first page from Wikipedia is for the Franklin High School in New Orleans, not the disambiguation. It's been my practice to add disambiguation links to every school article linking from a disambiguation page. Is that incorrect? I have cross-posted this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools --Jh12 (talk) 22:34, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that links back to disambiguation pages are potentially very useful, and am pleased you've found an example of a Google search result which illustrates this. But I can remember (though not find!) a previous discussion in which our view was in the minority. It's not just schools: if someone googles Joe Bloggs and the first hit is "Joe Bloggs (footballer)", a link from that page to "Joe Bloggs (disambiguation)" would help them to find the "Joe Bloggs (violinist)" who they are looking for. At the least, I suggest that such hatnotes should be allowed and not deleted. PamD (talk) 23:15, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I do think that links back to the disambiguation page can be useful in this sense. We usually think about the unlikelyhood of someone typing "Franklin High School (New Hampshire)" into the search bar, and really meaning a different Frankline High School, as an argument against links back to the disambiguation page. However, the point of Google (and other search engine) searches is a good one. I don't think there's any particular harm in having the links there, and it appears as though it will aid people in navigation if they are searching from venues other than Wikipedia. -- Natalya 23:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Hatnotes#Disambiguating article names that are not ambiguous is against the use of such hatnotes in general, and your friend is right in that it's not an ambiguous title. But exceptions are listed there, and the scenario you describe seems like a good additional exception. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:06, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem is the statement there: "the problem is that the reader would not have ended up at tree (set theory) if they were interested in other types of trees, as tree does not redirect there." That isn't so - the Franklin High School example illustrates. It assumes that people only reach WP pages from within WP, and ignores the fact that Google points many searchers to WP pages, though not necessarily to the page which answers their question. There has been lengthy discussion at Wikipedia talk:Hatnote over a period of years (I knew I'd discussed it somewhere, forgot where till JHJ's reminder that WP:NAMB was the policy concerned). PamD (talk) 07:34, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Just in case we appear to be disagreeing: I agree -- the scenario here involving a Google search is a good reason to place such hatnotes on this kind of article. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:03, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Do we need to consider changing those guidelines, then? Conceptually, anyone could reach a disambiguated article via a search engine. -- Natalya 11:37, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

At the very least, a note somewhere about school articles here or at the project-level would be greatly appreciated. There doesn't seem to be any documentation concerning the use of disambiguation for education institutions and there are over a thousand of them listed here. Many thanks for all the input, --Jh12 (talk) 19:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

It's not specific to schools, but applies to all disambiguated pages, surely? PamD (talk) 20:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's please beware of solving every conceivable scenario, at the expense of usability. Consider how many people will come to a page by search engine vs. by other messages. Do we really want to clutter pages to cover edge cases? I would argue that very few people would be served by such a hatnote, but every reader will be at least slightly distracted by it. Not to go all slippery slope here, but what if they typed "Franklin" by accident instead of some other high school name -- should we include a link to a list of all high schools? If not, why not?

There's a great line in WP:MOSDAB: "Disambiguation pages disambiguate Wikipedia articles, not the World-Wide Web." I think the same principle should be applied to hatnotes as well.--NapoliRoma (talk) 21:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The same principle does apply to hatnotes, in that we don't use hatnotes to direct Wikipedia readers from Wikipedia to sites off Wikipedia: "This article is about pursuing animals. For the engineering company, see http://www.hunter.com". It does not apply in the sense that you imply, that the path from the World Wide Web to Wikipedia should be ignored at the expense of reader utility.

I agree though that not every such page indexed by Google needs a hatnote; I would suggest a guideline that mentions something like "appearing near the top of a Google search on the base name" or something similar. Or even just mentioning the possibility and allowing the consensus at the Talk page of the page in question have sway. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:07, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

You're right, of course that the principle as it stands does apply to hatnotes. I guess what I'm looking for is a reflexive guideline along the lines of "Wikipedia can't anticipate every entry point from the WWW." On reflection, though, I do agree that it makes sense to anticipate reasonable entry points from outside of WP. I just don't think we need to be prepared to direct someone who came in to Franklin High of New Hampshire (the New Hampshireness of which would be very clear in the hit summary of any decent search engine) to Franklin High of not-New Hampshire.--NapoliRoma (talk) 17:09, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

OTOH, I think WP:NAMB has at times been simplistically interpreted to justify removal of hatnotes that fail to meet some mechanistic criteria regarding the structure of the title and that oftentimes it is helpful to give readers easy access to exit routes if they happen to get to a page that could reasonably be confused with others of a similar title. But OTOH, I would not want to see carte blanche given to use hatnotes in any case where a user might possibly land on an incorrect page. For example, I routinely remove hatnotes on articles such as Athens, Michigan, which linked back to Athens (disambiguation). The likelihood of a user reaching that page intending some other Athens is minimal, and in such a case, IMO, the clutter factor overwhelms the vanishingly small benefit to the hopelessly confused. However, for cases where there are multiple places within a state sharing the same or similar names, I think it is entirely reasonable to have a hatnote -- for someone not from the state (and even for many in-state), it is not always immediately obvious from the title alone which place name in a state is which. Similarly I think personal names can be easily confused and parenthetical descriptors may not be mutually exclusive. For example, here is one I just found: John Reid (politician) should almost certainly have a link back to John Reid as there are several other persons with that name (excluding the use of the middle name/initial as disambiguation) who are also politicians. So in sum, I think judiciously applied, intelligent hatnoting is in general a good thing, but shouldn't be overdone. older ≠ wiser 14:43, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

So, hatnotes on pages that, even when disambiguated, have other articles of similar names and similar subjects, presuming that someone might pick that article but have meant the other [politician, town in the same state by the same name, etc]? That seems like not a bad way to allow for some more helpful hatnotes, but not adding unnecessary clutter to all pages. I do agree - it wouldn't be good to see hatnotes on every page that was ever disambiguated, but perhaps we can find a way to add some helpful ones. -- Natalya 16:49, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

+1. There's another very good example of this already in WP:NAMB: "a hatnote may still be appropriate when even a more specific name is still ambiguous. For example, Matt Smith (comics) might still be confused for the comics illustrator Matt Smith (illustrator)." So I'd be totally in favor of a dablink for Franklin High (New Hampshire) if there were a second Franklin High in New Hampshire.--NapoliRoma (talk) 17:09, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I suppose part of the problem is I still believe the benefit outweighs the cost. Previously, school names lacked a location in parentheses (many still do). And although that problem is being corrected, it also occurs because high schools with the same name haven't had a Wikipedia page made yet. In the case of Benjamin Franklin High School (New Orleans, Louisiana), there are two Franklin high schools in Louisiana. Franklin High in Franklin, Louisiana (which Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans may be confused for if you don't say "Ben Franklin High" in Louisiana), doesn't have a Wikipedia page yet. The Dab helps confirm that there isn't a page for the other Franklin High since there's only one Franklin High in Louisiana on Wikipedia and when a page is created, you will definitely want the hatnote.

In the case of "Franklin High", we have a large number of secondary institutions in the United States with almost identical names. They serve the same purpose, same age levels, are publicly funded, use an American curriculum/testing, American extracurriculars, and all fall under the United States Department of Education. When searching LexisNexis and JSTOR, it becomes clear that even published, reliable sources have difficulty pointing out which specific "Franklin High School" they're referring to. It was mentioned before that "the problem is that the reader would not have ended up at tree (set theory) if they were interested in other types of trees, as tree does not redirect there." But these aren't even different types of trees; they're all the same thing and the likelihood of winding up at the wrong city is not improbable to me. I would say confusion from being at one of thousands of US high schools with the same name outweighs clutter. --Jh12 (talk) 19:49, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

That sort of logic treads awfully close Wikipedia is not a directory. High school articles, once created, have tended to survive WP:AfD discussions recently. However, disambiguation pages are not primarily intended to be a complete index of all possible articles--but rather a guide to help locate existing articles. Red links are generally discouraged on disambiguation pages, although some wikiprojects have created Set Index pages for topics with a narrowly defined scope and for which the project can define style guidance that may be somewhat less stringent that WP:MOSDAB.

Of course, even if school disambiguation pages are considered as set index pages rather than disambiguation pages, that doesn't really address the appropriateness of using hatnotes on otherwise uniquely named school articles. While I don't find the argument based on Google searches as a reason for including hatnotes to be very compelling, I also don't really care all that much about school articles in particular. That is, the vast majority of school articles are crappy, under-referenced permastubs and the presence of a hatnote really has very little impact on the relative quality of such articles. older ≠ wiser 20:36, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

A slight digression: last Friday there was a story about how privacy advocates have been beating up Google for not having a link to their privacy policy on their front page (it was one level down off another menu). The Google folk agreed they needed it there, and Page and Brin agreed it should be added -- but only if another word was removed from the front page. So they finally found a word they could remove (it turned out to be "Google", oddly enough), and the front page now has a privacy link, but still remains at 28 words.

This is a company that understands the principle of avoiding "death by a thousand cuts."

If you have three minutes to spare, and you haven't seen it already, watch the "What if Microsoft designed the iPod package?" video.

Again, I'm all for dablinks where they make sense. Automatically disambiguating every already-disambiguated high school or person without considering whether it's really necessary is not necessarily sensible. For the rare occasion where someone lands in New Hampshire when they really meant to be in Louisiana, there's always the search box.--NapoliRoma (talk) 20:50, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) PS Aside from perhaps unfairly denigrating school articles, it might be worth considering whether such a hatnote would survive the scrutiny a school article would receive if it were to become a featured article. There have not been many featured school articles to my knowledge. One such fairly recent one was Plano Senior High School, which has no hatnote despite other schools that might easily be confused Plano High School. Should there be a hatnote on Plano Senior High School linking back to the dab page? In that case, probably so since the article titles convey no information about the state. But if there is only one school in a state with a specific name (or any easily confused variant thereof) and the state is included in the article title, I really don't see the benefit in having a hatnote link back to the general disambiguation page. To reach such a page, a user would essentially have to be in a clueless mode clicking randomly on links from a Google search hoping to get lucky. older ≠ wiser 21:01, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Google toolbars offer an "I'm feeling lucky" option. So no clueless randomness required. Granted, I'm feeling lucky searches only hit the problem when you reach:

Franklin High School
"Franklin High School"
wikipedia "Franklin High School"
site:wikipedia.org "Franklin High School"

the final search on this list, so maybe the hatnote isn't as useful there. But if I had hit it with the first or second, I'd be in favor of the hatnote, and I wouldn't object strenuously if I hit it with the third. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Just so I'm completely clear on this: in order to provide full support for users who A) like to click on "I'm Feeling Lucky" and B) are somehow unable to retype their search into the WP search box when it turns out that no, they were not lucky, we should add otherwise superfluous hatnotes to thousands of WP pages?--NapoliRoma (talk) 00:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Except for the "superfluous" and "thousands of", and the entire "somehow unable to" predicate. I don't think "thousands of" Wikipedia articles that have parenthetical dab phrases in the title will be landed on by I'm feeling lucky searches on the non-parenthetical part. If they were, that'd be one item in favor of making that article the primary topic. In the cases where such an article is the target, the hatnote wouldn't be "superfluous". Casting users' non-optimal behavior as unworthy isn't part of the guidelines. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:21, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, then, except for those :-)...

Actually, the "thousands" came from below, where it was mentioned that there are "well over a thousand existing school articles," presumably all of which were candidates to have dablinks added, plus various person and other articles that had been proposed as candidates as well. "Otherwise superfluous" was based on my interpretation of your statement, which seemed to say that the potential for a visitor arriving via "I'm feeling lucky" was in itself sufficient justification to add a dablink that would not otherwise be necessary.

And... yes, at some point we do have to consider a visitor arriving via non-optimal behavior as outside of the scope of our efforts. If someone is looking for information on Cheez Whiz brand processed cheese food spread and caulking, and decides that Googling for "trout" and clicking on "I'm feeling lucky" is the way to do it, we have provided for their non-optimal behavior by having a search box readily available on the page. Additionally providing a dablink to "Cheez Whiz" on the trout page, although helpful to this one benighted soul, is a disservice to all other readers of the trout page who are not at all interested in this fascinating nearly foodlike substance.

So yeah, that's a bit of a stretch, but it does establish that there needs to be some limit to our helpfulness. The question is now where to draw the line, and the guidelines (well, at least one guideline) have drawn a reasonable one: if the page has a clearly unambiguous title, don't add a disambiguating hatnote. It further mitigates by saying that if there's reasonable opportunity for confusion, a hatnote may be necessary. I don't believe that in the case at hand there is any confusion about whether Franklin High School in New Hampshire is actually in Louisiana, and to say that it should have a dablink because there are other cases, but not this one, where there are two Franklin Highs in a state, is not correct.--NapoliRoma (talk) 15:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

That's more than a bit of a stretch. No, I agree that "This article is about the fish. For the processed cheese food, see Cheez Whiz" would be ridiculous, in a way that the hatnote proposed earlier is not. :-) Feeling lucky on a google search of the base name is infinitely more reasonable than searching for cheeze whiz with "trout". After checking my google searches, I think that (a) Franklin High doesn't need the hatnote (although the idea isn't ridiculous) and that (b) a WP article that can be hit by "feeling lucky" on a Google search of the article's base name would be a reasonable opportunity for confusion. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll buy that. We can call it the "'feeling lucky' rule of thumb." And I think we agree the article in question does not pass this test.

Now that I see it in print, I really want the hatnote on trout, though.--NapoliRoma (talk) 22:22, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree that a "rule" covering this would be appropriate. For one, the page rankings of Google (and many other search engines) are dynamic--often very dynamic. At best, I think if it can be shown that a particular WP article with a fully disambiguated title appears as a top hit for a base name search with some consistency over time, then there may be a rationale for a hatnote linking back to the dab page. But I suspect such cases would be rather rare. older ≠ wiser 12:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the "rule" should be as it is now, that the hatnote should be added if there's a reasonable opportunity for confusion. I'd be in favor of adding another example of such an opportunity to the guideline, and leaving the decision, as ever, up to the consensus of the Talk: page of the article in question. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Editors do seem to be able to talk things out; I think it would be okay to leave it up to discretion when a hatnote in such cases would be useful, especially since there doesn't appear to be a clear way to determine if it should be used or not. -- Natalya 14:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I think a hatnote should be added to Plano Senior High School and the article also needs to be moved to Plano Senior High School (Plano, Texas). I'm not sure what the importance of a school article would have to do with school disambiguation. As long as we have school articles, there should be a way of navigating between them. I can understand reluctance on clutter, but we still have well over a thousand existing school articles with the same basic name and in many ways are related to the same subject. There haven't been any objections on this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools and I am amazed there is so much resistance here. If there is consensus for such hatnotes among the people working on these articles, will Disambiguation move in and remove them? --Jh12 (talk) 00:27, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The resistance here is fairly moot, IMO. The guideline against them is over at Wikipedia:Hatnotes, not here. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:21, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Why resistance here and not there? Because "there" is where people think about schools, and "here" is where people think about disambiguation.

I for one will not move in and remove them, although I've already imagined a great logo we could put on our Disambiguation Squad brassards if we were to do so... . But if in the course of editing an article I happened to find a superfluous dablink, I would give serious consideration to removing it.--NapoliRoma (talk) 00:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

But the "I'm feeling lucky" doesn't fit what the average person uses. Try typing "french military victories". Even the Franklin example takes you to the webpage of the Franklin in Seattle. When searching for Franklin High School on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask the problem remains. And how can the purpose of disambiguation be to think about names without regard for the content of the articles? There has to be a middle ground. --Jh12 (talk) 00:59, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

So, this is totally unrelated to the actual discussion, but for a little bit of humor in the midst of this long discussion, NapoliRoma's comment about Disambiguation Squad brassards (which cracked me up), reminded me of a comment that User:Yamara made once: "This results in troublesome efforts to achieve pleasant syntax, and it looks ugly, but it is what's done, and the rest of WikiProject Disambiguation will enforce this with a certain mercilessness. This I know from grim experience." I feel like we should have pitchforks and torches! /off-topic-ness. Back to the real discussion. :) -- Natalya 19:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's never good to take Wikipedia too seriously. After all, it's a volunteer project. And if you do make WP:WPSCH medals to place on your uniforms, make sure you link to the project; we can always use the free publicity. --Jh12 (talk) 20:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Seeing stars

See Talk:Star (classification)/Archives/2013#Related articles and redirects for a current issue and Talk:Star (classification)#Disambiguations for a proposed solution. Comments and other help welcome. Andrewa (talk) 00:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Weeds

The DAB and hatnotes are sprouting like, ha, weeds. There's a variety of quite confusing DAB, potential DAB and redirects growing around weed and weeds. Right now:

• Weeds is a partially-complete disambiguation page; I would argue that it's of more service to redirect to Weeds (TV series) directly as that's the most relevant result. Failing that, weed (disambiguation) might be a good redirect.
• There's a lot of mention of 'widow weeds' - an old English term for mourning clothes. Widow Weeds currently redirects to Widow's weeds, which is a disambiguation page between the clothes (which has no actual entry, it's mentioned once in the mourning page, section on the UK) and the album.
• Weeds (TV series) currently has an inaccurate hatnote saying weeds redirects here (it did yesterday) and to refer to weed for the plant, which has Weed (disambiguation) at the top.

I don't know who would type in "weeds" and expect to find mourning garments. I would guess anyone typing in "widow weeds" or a variant thereof would be looking for the album or the clothing. But overall I'm just not sure what the best idea might be. I don't think it's standard practice to include in DAB pages links that could concievably be related in some way. There was an AFD debate a while back here that seemed to center on this idea. Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Lists was cited then, and it seems to apply here. Any guidance would be welcome. WLU (talk) 14:08, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Simple. Weeds should be targeting Weed (disambiguation) and the hatlink on Weeds (TV series) would be taken off. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 22:50, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

It would be great if we could get an article (even a stub) for the mourning sense of the term "Widow's weeds". I'm going to see if I can find anything. Even if not, it seems okay to link to the section of the mourning page from Widow's weeds. Perhaps we could put a link to that disambiguation page in the see also section of Weed (disambiguation), since it doesn't totally belong in the regular section. I think Weeds redirecting to Weeds (TV series) is fine (as long as we don't think we're furthering Wikipedia's systemic bias). If it does that, however, shouldn't the article be located at the title "Weeds", not redirect to "Weeds (TV series)"? For the hatnote at Weeds (TV series), if it ends up being located at "Weeds", we could have the hatnote link to both Weed (as it does now) and to Weed (disambiguation), since Weeds (disambiguation) redirects there. -- Natalya 00:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Since there is also a Weeds (film) it would be best if "Weeds" is a redirect for the dab page. Concur? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 00:52, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Depends on if we think there is a primary topic for "Weeds" or not. I'm not familiar with the film, so I don't know if I can give a neutral opinion on if there's a primary topic or not, but the TV show article is definitly very in-depth (if that speaks at all to the primary topic-ness). -- Natalya 01:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

What do you want to do then? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 01:51, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully, see what other editors think on the primary topic subject. -- Natalya 02:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I expanded the dab and moved (for now) the TV show to the base name, although the primary topic discussion (if it happens) might move it back. -- JHunterJ (talk) 04:02, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we take the plants as the primary usage for Weed and the TV series for Weeds, with each of them having a hatnote pointing to one dab page at Weed (disambiguation) which includes both single and plural forms (with redirect from Weeds (disambiguation)). Hatnote at Weeds could usefully continue also to point to the Weed primary usage. There's a similar single/plural mix at Saint (disambiguation) - though until a moment ago there wasn't actually a redirect from Saints (disambiguation), and it's a different scenario in that there's just the one primary usage. PamD (talk) 08:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

(Undent) So it looks like we're getting there. Right now we have Weeds (disambiguation) as its own disambiguation page. I haven't thought enough about if it's more useful to have it as its own page or combine that with Weed (disambiguation), but either way, I'm going to add a link to Weed (disambiguation) at Weeds (disambiguation). -- Natalya 10:58, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Given I thought there were only 2 pages that would qualify for weeds (dab), I was unsure. Thanks to some great detective work revealing that there are many potential pages, I'm heartily in favour of Weeds (TV series) being a separate article, weeds redirecting to the DAB page, and weeds (disambiguation) having a lead of "Weeds is the plural of the plant weed. Weeds may also refer to:" Putting weed (disambiguation) and weeds (disambiguation) in the respective plural and singular pages seems a good idea. WLU (talk) 16:35, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Your suggested lead there indicates that weed is (your choice for the) primary topic of "weeds", so (with that lead) Weeds would be a {{R from plural}} to weed, not to the dab page. But the discussion of what, if anything, is the primary topic should take place at Talk:Weeds. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Village pump

Thread at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#ALL disambiguation pages to end "(disambiguation)".

I'm sure people here will want to contribute to that discussion. --NSH001 (talk) 17:54, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Mystical 7

Discussion pointer: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Secret Societies#Mystical 7. --Geniac (talk) 14:07, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Navibot again

Hi—I'm working on a bot to add entries to disambiguation pages (see previous discussion on this page). After lots of development and testing, I'm ready to ask for a bot flag at WP:RFBOT, but first I wouldn't mind some feedback on the edits the bot has already made, under my supervision. If anyone wants to look at its contribs and comment on its talk page, I'd appreciate it. Thanks! —johndburger 02:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

What's the cutoff for primary usage?

Hi, Loodog and I are having a discussion at Talk:New York#Hi there I have a proposition about what proportion of Google hits would conclusively demonstrate that one title clearly was the "primary usage", and therefore should be the target of the main article. For example, "New York City" gets double the Google hits that "New York State" does, for a 2:1 ratio. Loodog is claiming that this is not enough, but that the proper ratio would be closer to 10:1. I think this discussion needs the input of some specialists in disambiguation. Thank you.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 23:27, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

You will likely get differing personal opinions on this topic, but overall, there is no guideline for how many Google Hits (or any similar ranking) determines a primary topic. Frankly, I am glad for that. I think that our current guideline from Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic stating that "If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)"." is clear enough. If it's obvious what the primary topic is, then it should be the primary topic. If there is enough legitimate disagreement over what the primary topic is, enough so that general comments about the topics in question cannot decide a primary topic (and thus, that one must resort to Google rankings), then there isn't a primary topic, and for the overall benefit to all Wikipedia users, the disambiguation page for the term should be located at "Term". -- Natalya 00:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Google hits do not define usage. They reflect what is written about on the internet, so are biased towards the recent and what interests internet users (predominantly the young, the technological, and the affluent). If you look at Google hits, it might be "obvious" that "Madonna" is a singer. I see that Wikipedia editors have decided there's no primary usage. Speaking as a Brit, I'd have expected to find the city at "New York", and the state disambiguated - but another peril of google hits is that you can't expect to find "city" or "state" (or any other pair of disambiguators" neatly attached to articles using "New York" in either sense, so you'd have to manually check and count all the ghits before you could analyse them anyway. I think consensus is all: as is written somewhere, if there's substantial disagreement about the primary usage, then put a dab page there and let everything disambiguate. PamD (talk) 13:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Which is, eventually, what happened. Consensus does work, after all.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 14:03, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Though I think you got it wrong there! From outside the USA, "New York" means the city, no question about it, so I'd have expected it to be the primary usage. I wonder if it would be useful to add bold links to the city and the state at the top of the dab page, as those two are co-primary usages, to coin a phrase, and it might save a lot of people having to look any further down the page? PamD (talk) 15:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggesting Google searches

This is sort of related to the above discussion, but I don't agree with the addition of the suggestion of using Google as a possible tool to help determine the primary topic (first addition, as it currently stands). I'm afraid that if we mention those in the guidelines, it will open a whole can of worms of people using Google search results to push primary topics that should not be primary (due to prominence of the issue on the internet), thus increasing Wikipedia's systemic bias. I know that people may use the search statistics to do so, but I'm not in favor of suggesting them in the guidelines. -- Natalya 11:35, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd be just as happy without them as well. I did like the addition of the Wikipedia stats link though, since it is not as widely known. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:02, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm fine with the current version, as it now emphasizes that these are only tools which may help. I do think that they are all useful in determining primary usage, so I would like to keep them in.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 14:06, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Moving help

Hi, we just moved New York to New York State as a result of discussion. Problem is, there are now a couple thousand broken links now. Is there a bot that can take care of this?--Loodog (talk) 14:43, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, I've been told the bots do this automatically.--Loodog (talk) 14:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

You were told wrong! --Russ (talk) 15:07, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering about that. It would be next to impossible for a bot to decide which links were supposed to be pointing to New York State and which were supposed to be pointing somewhere else. Guess we'll have to do 'em all by hand. *sigh* --Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 15:37, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

This was a major move undertaken with no formal proposal, with the support of only a handful of editors, and significant opposition from others. I strongly suspect that the move will be undone. My suggestion is that no one invest time in changing links unless and until it is clear that the move will stay. JamesMLane t c 20:02, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Dab pages with hatnotes

In the course of discussion over at Wikipedia_talk:Hatnote, Eugène van der Pijll has produced a list of 244 dab pages which include a templated hatnote. They make for interesting reading. Two themes show up: complicated relationships between Foo, Foo (disambiguation), Foo (surname), Foo (given name), and between Foo and FOO, as well as a lot of more individual nonstandard dab page! Should a dab page ever have a hatnote? Scope for some sort of a clear-up project? PamD (talk) 06:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I could see {{distinguish}} as a hatnote on a base-name dab, if the dab for the term being distinguished isn't merged into the "this" dab. But otherwise things in a hatnote would be better off in the dab list or in a see also section (or on the base name article if the dab is not at the base name). -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:00, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

{{selfref}} would also be acceptable on a base-name dab page. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:33, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

(ec) All these pages should probably be reviewed. However, two dab pages that I cleaned up but that don't appear in Eugène's list are Ill and III (see the difference? ;-)). I can't imagine how not to solve this via hatnotes. Still, hatnotes should be discouraged on dab pages and only be reserved for very special cases. – sgeureka ^t•c 11:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, special cases. Like JHunterJ said, most of the information in those hatnotes should belong in a see also section. There have been a few cases I've run across where a hatnote to reduce confusion is a good idea (such as Sgeureka's example above, wow!), but otherwise, they don't need to be there.

Now that we have this lovely list of pages that need changes... if we go about and fix the hatnotes, will it mess up the discussion? -- Natalya 11:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Mmm. I just fixed ABE/Abe. I'll wait before cleaning up others. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

About the list: feel free to move it, for example to some subpage of a disambiguation cleanup project. Also, I'm not really planning on doing anything with it, so if you want to remove the pages that you've cleaned up, that's fine with me. I am willing to make a more comprehensive list in the future, if that would be helpful. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 12:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Disambiguation pages with hatnotes‎. Thanks for creating the list, Eugene. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I echo JHunterJ's thanks - it will certainly help us to clean up some confusion. -- Natalya 15:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

A follow-up now that we're actually looking to clean these pages up - a number of the hatnotes (or, at least some of the first ones) refer to alternative capitalization disambiguation pages. Per Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Page_naming_conventions, all capitalizations should be on the same disambiguation page. Is this our opportunity to correct any that have been separated? It should be pretty straightfoward; I ask only because I think there was some hullabaloo about Ada and ADA in the past. Combining those would make a long disambiguation page, but per the guidelines, they really should be together. -- Natalya 23:44, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the cleanup effort following the guideline as causing a problem. Consistency in the encyclopedic is important. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:53, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Should surname and/or given name pages have "(disambiguation)" in the title?

It seems well-accepted that pages that only list persons with the same given name, or the same surname, are not disambiguation pages. However, I have found a fair number of these that contain the parenthetical "(disambiguation)" in their titles; for example, Codazzi (disambiguation) (a surname), Lemar (disambiguation) (a given name). Should pages like this be moved to Codazzi (surname), Lemar (given name), or, for pages that include both, Whatever (name)? --Russ (talk) 15:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I think so. I believe those pages fall more under the umbrella of Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy. And it would certainly make sense (as long, of course, that the pages don't contain any non-name links). We might want to double check with the Anthroponymy folks on the naming conventions, but it seems like the qualifiers used are just what you said, Russ - either (given name), (surname), or simply (name). -- Natalya 16:00, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, a page that is only a name-holder list (given name, surname, or both), and not a list of articles that might have had the single name, should never be titled with (disambiguation). If it's not the primary topic, it should be moved to one of the options you listed and the newly created (disambiguation) redirect should be deleted. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

(ec) This is from the hip, but I believe that if a dab page lists only persons, then we use the {{hndis}} tag, and if there are entries besides persons, we use the {{disambig}} and add a name category. Also, specific to this question, Codazzi as a primary topic is actually a city, which sadly, is not currently listed on the dab page. In this case, the (disambiguation) clarifier needs to stay, and the primary topic needs to be added. SlackerMom (talk) 16:15, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... that is a good point. Looking over some of the name articles from Wikiproject Anthroponymy, they seem to either use {{surname}} or {{given name}} (or both! :o ) on the name articles. You make a good point about {{hndis}}. Are we having some unnecessary overlap? Or are the surname and given name tags only used on name articles that actually have encyclopedic content, not just a list of names? -- Natalya 16:40, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Check out the instructions at Template:Hndis. I think that's what I've been using as a basis for my template usage. SlackerMom (talk) 16:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Re: Codazzi, we should move Codazzi (disambiguation) to Codazzi (surname) and replace the hatnote with {{for|people with the surname|Codazzi (surname)}}. Whether the surname list article needs to mention the city would be up to the anthroponymy guidelines. :-) -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:34, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that sounds good. I'll do it later if nobody beats me to it. SlackerMom (talk) 18:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, if anyone's inclined to dive into this mess, there's a list at User:RussBot/Name disambig report that may be useful. This should list all the pages with "(disambiguation)" in their titles and either {{surname}} or {{given name}} in their text (excluding any pages that also contain a legitimate disambiguation template). It's generated from the latest XML dump, which is about five days old at this point, so some of the pages may have been edited since then. --Russ (talk) 18:56, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that list, Russ. I've been mulling over the whole topic for a bit this afternoon, because I thought I was missing something, and I figured it out. Everyone else may have already had this, but oh well. :) {{hndis}} should be used on actual disambiguation pages that only list people, for example, Michael Jackson (disambiguation). All those people can legitimately be confused with the name "Michael Jackson". {{surname}} and {{given name}} should be used on pages that are lists of people with the same given name or surname (not disambiguation pages). Those pages that aren't actually disambiguation pages, and are just lists of people with the same surname or given name, shouldn't be located at "Name (disambiguation)", but rather "Name (given name)" or "Name (surname)"

Yes? Hopefully? -- Natalya 20:58, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, that's a lovely summary. I get so confused sometimes! Thank you Natalya! SlackerMom (talk) 21:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

The only thing I'd add is that sometimes, for short name lists, the name list is included on the disambiguation page instead of splitting it out to a given name or surname article. In some of those cases, the {{surname}} or {{given name}} also appears -- I used to add it just under the section heading, but I've since stopped, because some editors indicated it made the page seem cluttered. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy#Background reading if you want more. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:40, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

That's a good point to add. I think I've removed a few of those additional tags in the past, with the reason of clutter (and also possibly redundancy to the disambiguation tag), but I guess it technically is valid. Do we want to have any sort of standardized thing for including them/not including them, or just leave it as it goes?

I'm glad it makes sense to you too, SlackerMom! It definitly confused me for a while, and writing it down seemed to help. -- Natalya 21:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

New example needed at Wikipedia:D#Disambiguation_links

The example of use of a hatnote is no longer valid, as Alexander the Great now has a link to a dab page! Can someone provide a good current example? PamD (talk) 07:52, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I used Atlas Shrugged. Afghanistan, Aegean Sea, Amateur, and iSight are among those also available if we don't like Atlas Shrugged. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:19, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Wildwood High School

I thought I'd consult the experts again. We have Wildwood High School, Wild Wood High School, and Wildwood School. Two of them, Wild Wood High School and Wildwood School, are both located in Los Angeles. I was thinking of doing the following:
move Wildwood High School -> Wildwood High School (New Jersey) without hatnote
move Wild Wood High School -> Wild Wood High School (Los Angeles, California) with hatnote to other LA school
move Wildwood School -> Wildwood School (Los Angeles, California) with hatnote to other LA school
All three original names lead to Wildwood School, a disambig.
Does this make any sense? Many thanks, --Jh12 (talk) 20:17, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with having all three original names redirect to a disambiguation page. I'm not sure if they each need locational qualifiers, since they technically have different names, but I do see the reasoning behind it. If you want to have similar qualifiers, why not have the two in Los Angeles just be qualified with "(California)"? It makes the titles a bit shorter, and is in line with the first be qualified by a state. -- Natalya 01:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 03:11, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Kahuna

We have lots of people putting kahuna trivia that is useful to have somewhere but not on the kahuna page, so created a kahuna (disambiguation) page. Is this okay? Thanks. Makana Chai (talk) 23:28, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

That looks like a good choice. The disambiguation page definitly needs a lot of cleanup (to be in line with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)), but a disambiguation page like the one you made is a place for all articles (or potential articles) by the same name of another article. -- Natalya 00:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

No, while some of these entries are good disambiguation tagets, fisambiguation pages are no more a place for triva than the main article space. Taemyr (talk) 02:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

True, but it seems like most/all of the entries on Kahuna (disambiguation) aren't so much trivia as about things named "Kahuna". Granted, I imagine a large number of them will be removed upon cleanup, but other things named "Kahuna" do belong there. -- Natalya 02:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I removed the entries that I felt positive was bad. The page still needs cleanup.Taemyr (talk) 02:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I've actually just been having a bit more look at it too. There don't appear to be any actual articles for any of the terms (using the special pages link to all articles with prefix "Kahuna"), so next will be to check if any of the entries are listed in the other blue linked articles related to them. If not, it may turn out that there's nothing worthwile to be on the disambiguation page. :) -- Natalya 02:40, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, there's the film and the SOCOM character. Also Jon Miller and Windows Live Mail, although in the latter two cases the target does not mention the term so it tastes a bit of OR. Taemyr (talk) 02:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It's true most of these uses do not have pages, but it just seems that there has to be a place for people to go who hear the word kahuna and then go to the kahuna page and find it is something completely different. Otherwise, I feel we will be policing the kahuna article forever with people adding these things. Also, though I appreciate the clean up I'm not clear about some of your decisions. E.g., removing all references to genitalia - this use is very common. And including the name of a surf store in Ontario seems a bit of a stretch. But I will live with whatever you want to do. I just want to keep it out of the kahuna article. Thank you. Makana Chai (talk) 07:13, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages should only have links to terms that could legitimately be articles sometime in the future - not just an indescriminate list of information. If there was an article Kahuna (genitalia), then there would be no problem listing it. If the term referencing genetalia was even mentioned in another article, we could probably get away with listing it on the disambiguation page. Until there is actual encyclopedic information on that (or any of the other topics), however, they don't really belong on disambiguation pages. Otherwise, disambiguation pages would get huge, and it would be very difficult to navigate them! Disambiguation pages are all about helping a person find the article they are intending to find. -- Natalya 11:40, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect interwiki links from non-dab pages

At Dark Light, a bot has just added 8 interwiki links that lead to non-dab pages (all lead to their respective articles on Dark Light (HIM album), in this case). Is there a recommended method for fixing this, in general? Thanks. -- Quiddity 05:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

That particular problem seems to have arisen because the article at Dark Light was moved to Dark Light (HIM album). When the article was recreated as a disambig, the bot re-added the interwikis. It seems like the correct interwikis were already on the moved page. If it had happened and the interwikis were not on the correct page, you could just move them to the correct page. If the bot keeps re-adding them, then I would notify the bot's creator to try to fix the problem. Cheers!--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 17:43, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

User disambiguation

Should we put users in some disambiguations? For example, I accidently searched Bob instead of User:Bob. Should we pue User:Bob in the disambiguation page? -- K. Annoyomous24 _{GO LAKERS! Please reply on my talk page. Thanks.} 08:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think so. Disambiguation pages are about helping readers find the article they are looking for. Sometimes we have self-referential links to Wikipedia policies (for example, A-class), but they're only supposed to be there when readers of the encyclopedia might be interested to see how the encyclopedia works. -- Natalya 11:33, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

How about disambiguation pages inclusively for users? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 15:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

That's kind of a good idea but who would have the same name? -- K. Annoyomous24 _{GO LAKERS! Please reply on my talk page. Thanks.} 22:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Just look at the list of editors. Maybe a bot can help us write in the names (save us humans the work!). Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 03:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a great idea but how are we going to find one? -- K. Annoyomous24 _{GO LAKERS! Please reply on my talk page. Thanks.} 04:19, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

You can make a request at WP:BOTREQ. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 13:59, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I still can't quite see the point of this. I've never heard of a case of someone searching for one user and coming up with another. In fact, I almost never use search to find users, since I'm always linking to them through their talk page signatures or from page histories. Is there really a huge unreported problem of finding the wrong userpages, or is this a solution in search of a problem?--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 19:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank god for that ... I was beginning to think maybe the emperor did have new clothes afterall. :) Abtract (talk) 19:30, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Hijacking of dab pages

Is there a guideline or policy I can quote to dissuade an editor from hijacking well-established dab pages by moving Foo (a dab page) to Foo (disambiguation) and then redirecting Foo to his chosen usage of the word, adding a {{redirect}} hatnote to that page? Unpicking the mess involves using a WP:RM because the edit history has been made complicated. The two examples are Adel (was redirected to German nobility) and IAA (was redirected to Frankfurt Motor Show). PamD (talk) 22:18, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Probably (hopefully?) describing what a primary topic is and explaining that there is not always one would help. If the editor disagrees on the choice/non-choice of a primary topic, telling her that she can bring it up for discussion (rather than moving first) is also good. -- Natalya 23:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed rewording

We have:

• Where the term to be disambiguated is a small number of letters (up to say four), the page name should follow the usual capitalization policy if it forms a word (for example Arc) but should be all capitals if no word could reasonably be formed by the letters (for example (BBD).

• There should be just one disambiguation page for all cases (upper- or lower-case), variant punctuation and diacritic marks.

• For example, "Term abc", "Term Abc", "Term Ábç", "Term A-B-C", and "Term A.B.C." should all redirect to one page.

I can't follow this (particularly the first paragraph; I assume it's supposed to relate to the case described in the second, but it still doesn't quite make sense). I propose instead:

• Where different terms use the same letters, differing only in capitalization, punctuation and diacritic marks, a single disambiguation page should be created. For example, "Term abc", "Term Abc", "Term Ábç", "Term A-B-C", and "Term A.B.C." should all redirect to one page. Words are preferred over abbreviations for the name of the page; for example the shared disambiguation page for the terms "Arc" and "ARC" is named Arc.

Comments?--Kotniski (talk) 13:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The first paragraph is telling how to capitalise the title (normal rules if it is a word Arc; all caps if no word is possible BBD); the second paragraph advises only one page for all minor variants in spelling and punctuation etc. These points are unrelated and your change destroys the first para "Words are preferred over abbreviations for the name of the page; for example the shared disambiguation page for the terms "Arc" and "ARC" is named Arc" doesn't quite do it imho. I have reverted your changes until there is consensus for a new wording. Abtract (talk) 13:44, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

But surely if there is only one variant, then that's the variant we use for the title? The rule about capitalization must only apply if there are variants of the type described in the second paragraph, right? We wouldn't call a dab page Arc rather than ARC if it included only links to ARC (...) and none to Arc (...), would we? But that's what the first paragraph seems to say at the moment.--Kotniski (talk) 14:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment on strategy

A suggestion, if you're going to do a major rewrite of what is a relatively stable guideline, you'd might have better luck if you made your edits to a separate sub-page and then present it for consideration. Some of what you're proposing makes sense, but it is a lot to take in and difficult to process in lots of piecemeal changes. older ≠ wiser 18:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

If I were proposing a major rewrite, that's doubtless what I would have done. But all my edits have just been basically cosmetic, though I consider some of them important for making this valuable guideline readable. However, I'm not going to touch the page any more for a time, so people can now consider the proposed changes at leisure.--Kotniski (talk) 18:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Reverts

I unreverted since the controversial change being discussed above was not included in my most recent edits. The changes I just (re)introduced seem essential to making this page understandable. Having the primary topic question hidden halfway down the page was making everything that came before it quite incomprehensible - read the page again imagining you don't know what it says, and I think you will see what I mean. Still needs a lot of work as it is, though (assuming we do want people to be able to understand it).--Kotniski (talk) 14:10, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Next problem

Look at the Generic topic section. It's just repeating what's gone before, but using obscure phrasing and weird argumentation. The only thing it adds that's new (and it's only new because I deleted the previous instance of this statement) is that you can make "Xx (disambiguation)" a redirect to Xx when Xx is a dab page. It then gives an example to "illustrate" this, which appears to be out of date, since there's no link to Table (dis..) on the page cited, and if there was it would be in contravention of the earlier rule about not linking specific topics back to the dab page. Basically I want to delete this whole section as simply confusing, and replace it with a nice simple statement about these redirects, with a real example. Any objections to doing this? And anyone got a good example?--Kotniski (talk) 14:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Next next problem

And again, "Specific topic" is in entirely the wrong place on the page. It should be a separate level 2 header, after the whole section on Disambiguation pages (obviously, because it is not about disambiguation pages). I would move it but people seem to keep reverting anything I do without explanation of why they object to it, so this time I'll stop being bold and ask for objections first.--Kotniski (talk) 15:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

And while we're about it, I've just found this under Duplicate topics: Disambiguation should not be confused with the merging of duplicate articles (articles with different titles, but regarding the very same topic, for example "gas turbine" and "combustion turbine", or "restroom" and "washroom"). These are handled with Wikipedia:Redirects. Like, true, but what is this trying to say? What behaviour is it supposed to encourage or discourage? If it means anything concrete, then let's say it explicitly; if not then leave it out. Otherwise people are going to misinterpret it in all sorts of ways. --Kotniski (talk) 15:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

You may have some good points here, and I am all in favour of getting this right but ... slow down tiger. If you continue to flood us with the error or our ways, I feel you may antagonise some of us (not me obviously cos I am beyond all that). Take it easy, one point at a time and do it on the talk page (as you now are) rather than the main page. Good luck. You might like to look at this to see what I am attempting. :) Abtract (talk) 16:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course I'm not wishing to offend anyone - nor do I want to change the substantial meaning of anything in the guideline, but there seem to be a lot of problems with the wording and especially with the ordering of ideas on this page, so that someone coming to the page for guidance is unlikely to find much. Although my edits might look excessively bold (moving whole sections creates that impression), they're actually quite minor in practical effect, so I hope they will go ahead once people have had a chance to look at them. (And good luck with the work over at MOSDAB; I haven't even got there yet...)--Kotniski (talk) 16:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead with the changes?

In the light of the lack of response to my various suggestions above, can I assume that there is no objection to them and I can make the pertinent edits? Or do people still want time to consider them?--Kotniski (talk) 12:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

IMHO you haven't yet put proposals to us in a way that encourages debate. Tell us point by point (don't flood us with many points) what is wrong with current guidelines and what specific new wording you propose. I for one promise to respond. Abtract (talk) 12:13, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, let's concentrate on one at a time. How about the concrete suggestion under #Proposed rewording above? --Kotniski (talk) 13:22, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I have already commented but if my thoughts were not clear: I do not agree with your proposed new wording which is, in part, no better than the current wording and, in part, worse. Sorry. :) Abtract (talk) 13:28, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

But you didn't respond to my response. I think it's quite clear why the present wording is unacceptable. Of course my solution isn't the only possible one - maybe someone has a better suggestion.--Kotniski (talk) 13:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe they do, but I do not agree with your wording ... indeed you haven't convinced me there is a problem. Abtract (talk) 13:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've had a look and a think about #Proposed rewording. I think the problem with both the existing and the proposed text is that it blurs two issues: (a) how many dab pages are needed and (b) how to choose a title for a dab page. Logically, we need to answer (a) first, so I wonder whether we need a first section under "Disambiguation pages" which says something like:

Unified disambiguation page (needs a better title!)

There should be just one disambiguation page for all cases (upper- or lower-case), variant punctuation and diacritic marks.

For example, "Term abc", "Term Abc", "Term Ábç", "Term A-B-C", and "Term A.B.C." should all redirect to one page.

Note that there may exist separate WP articles at differently punctuated versions of the title. This is permissible, but they must all include a hatnote linking them to the unified disambiguation page.

Similarly, a single disambiguation page may be used for two or more variations of a term (eg Fred Xyz and Frederick Xyz) where it is thought that readers will find this useful.

Then we move on to the existing text about how to choose the name for your dab page in terms of (a) it needn't be Foo (disambiguation) unless there's a Foo page, and (b) capitalisation and punctuation.

I suggest that the wording It is acceptable, on the other hand, to create a page at "Term ABC (disambiguation)" that redirects to the disambiguation page at "Term ABC". This type of redirect can be used to indicate deliberate links to the disambiguation page. is unnecessary in the first section of " Page naming conventions", as it appears further down where it is less confusing. If we must leave it, then reword it to "It sometimes useful to create a redirect from "Term ABC (disambiguation)" to the disambiguation page at "Term ABC". This type of redirect can be used to indicate deliberate links to the disambiguation page, eg in dablinks in articles and in "See also" sections of related disambiguation pages."

PamD (talk) 14:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is the sort of thing we need. Though let's stick to the one issue (that of what you neatly call unified dab pages) for now, as requested by Abtract. We probably need to say still more about this issue: for example, singulars and plurals are often unified, variant spellings are often unified, etc. I don't know if the rules are set out anywhere, but I don't see them on this page. I also don't like the "Term abc" examples - we should use real examples if possible. We also need to decide what to say about choosing the name for unified pages. So far we seem to know that we prefer words (like Arc) over abbreviations (like ARC). Any more rules like that (for example, undotted abbreviations over dotted ones, like SA over S.A.)? Or are the other cases simply to be left to editors' common sense (as presumably they are now, since they are not addressed in the guideline)?--Kotniski (talk) 14:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've spent too long on WP today and must get on with some real life, but another element to consider in unifying dab pages is "The xyz" versus "Xyz". And the main, golden, rule, is to use just masses of redirects and all reasonable hatnotes, to ensure that people typing a term, or following a badly-written link, will get to the dab page appropriate to their search! Good luck. PamD (talk) 14:33, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

New proposed wording on unified/combined dabs

What about this version then (based on Pam's proposal above)? Right after the Disambiguation pages level 2 section heading, we insert:

(level 3 section heading): Combining terms on disambiguation pages

A single disambiguation page may be used to disambiguate a number of similar terms. Sets of terms which are commonly so combined include:

• Terms which differ only in capitalization, punctuation and diacritic marks. For example, the terms Oe, Ōe, OE and O.E. are disambiguated on a single page (Oe).
• Corresponding singular, plural and possessive forms. For example, the terms Eagle Nest, Eagle's Nest and Eagle Nests all appear at Eagle's Nest.
• Variant spellings. For example, Honor and Honour both appear at Honor (disambiguation).
• Variant forms of names. For example, Fred Smith also includes persons named Frederick Smith.
• Terms which differ by the presence or absence of an article. For example, Cure also contains instances of The Cure.

Editorial judgement should be used in deciding whether to combine terms in the ways described above. If a combined disambiguation page would be inconveniently long, it may be better to split the different spellings into separate pages.

When a combined disambiguation page is used, redirects to it (or hatnotes, as appropriate) should be set up from all the terms involved.

This still covers only the principle; the naming of such pages is then to be discussed under Page naming a bit lower down.--Kotniski (talk) 15:15, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

The problem I see with this is that by using the word "may" at the beginning and "editorial judgement" near the end, we have a long section that says nothing. I am not suggesting using the word "must" instead because we already have quite enough minor little edits made on the basis of these guidelines without creating a situation that encourages even more. The current wording actually works quite well and, until something better comes along I see no reason to change it. Abtract (talk) 15:47, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

The current wording covers only the first of the five points listed above, and gives a very opaque example. Don't you see that someone coming to this page for information and guidance (which is what it's here for) is getting only a partial picture, and a confusingly presented one? Why should only one of these points be mentioned? What's wrong with explaining this issue more clearly and completely? As to whether we say "must", "may" or (as now) "should", I think "may" is most accurate, since none of these combining rules is applied everywhere it could be - common sense is widely applied. That's not to say the whole section says nothing - omitting it might lead some to think that this type of combining is not permitted at all (as the current wording implies that combining of singular and plural, for example, is not permitted). Try to forget all you know about disambiguation and imagine what someone reading the page for the first time is going to understand from it. This page isn't for you regulars - you know it all anyway - it's for relative newcomers.--Kotniski (talk) 16:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

In fact it's not the "may" in my proposed version that determines the strength; it's the "commonly" in the next sentence. This might be replaced by something stronger like "most commonly", "usually", "generally", but to me "commonly" gets it about right.--Kotniski (talk) 16:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I like that the revision makes it clear that in some cases it is better to combine terms. I think I"m OK with the proposed wording. Until it is challenged with specific cases by editors capable only of binary thinking, I don't see any obvious problems. older ≠ wiser 12:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

In the absence of outstanding objections, then, I"m going to put this in as well.--Kotniski (talk) 11:27, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Question

Is it allowed to have on a page which is called for example PBS a link to a disambiguation page called PBS (disambiguation) which already contains more than 20 other meanings of PBS? I thought the links on a page of an article should directly point to the pages with the other meanings in case there are only two or three other meanings. But if there are 20 other meanings wouldn't it be better to start directly with the disambiguation page right at the beginning, in our example at PBS and not at PBS (disambiguation)?
What do you think? Thank you for your input. --Tom David (talk) 16:55, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

If the topic of the PBS page is much more significant than all the other PBS meanings, then the present situation seems fine, regardless of the total number of meanings involved.--Kotniski (talk) 17:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Then I would like to ask who decides what seems to be fine? The critical mass?--Tom David (talk) 17:08, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Consensus decides whether there is a primary topic ... if, in this case, there is no primary meaning then PBS should be moved to, say, PBS (broadcasting) and the dab page moved to PBS. Abtract (talk) 17:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(After edit conflict) It's not the number of other meanings which matters, but whether or not the topic is the Primary Topic of "PBS". In this case, the question is whether (a) PBS should redirect to Public Broadcasting Service as it does at present, with a hatnote pointing to the dab page, or (b) the dab page, currently at PBS (disambiguation), should be moved to PBS. Primary topics are discussed at WP:Primarytopic, but I've never found that section very clear! If you think this one is contentious, have a look at Talk:New_York (state)/Archive_3 (but only if you've got a lot of time to spare). PamD (talk) 17:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Dear PamD, thank you very much for your answer. Personally I would tend to have no Primary Topics at all in cases of disambiguation, and I would enjoy taking a look at WP:Primarytopic or Talk:New_York (state)/Archive_3. But you are right, I don't have that much of spare time. Indeed, I will wait for a new world with clear justice in the near future. Cheers! --Tom David (talk) 18:02, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks also to Abtract and Kotniski of course. Have a good time! --Tom David (talk) 18:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

"No primary topics"? That's a bold idea, but goes against longstanding WikiPedia tradition: you'd really not expect Copper or London or Oscar Wilde to go to the most likely topic, but prefer to send all seekers via a disambiguation page? I think it's a minority viewpoint! Enough for now. PamD (talk) 18:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to reorder sections

OK, I think it's time to consider another of the issues I raised before. The problem is this: under "Disambiguation pages" (level 2 heading)\"Page naming conventions" (level 3), we have two level 4 sections which logically shouldn't be there, called "Primary topic" and "Specific topic". The "Primary topic" section is about deciding whether and what should be the primary topic for a term. This is a fundamental question, relating not only to cases where dab pages are used, and needs to go (in my view) at the beginning of the article, as a level 2 section, right after "Deciding to disambiguate". (It could also use a bit of rewording, but we'll leave that for now.)

The "Specific topic" section, on the other hand, needs to be moved down, so that it is no longer under "Disambiguation pages". Presumably someone put it in its present position because it relates to the level 3 topic of "Page naming conventions", but didn't notice that this was under level 2 "Disambiguation pages". The Specific Topic section does relate to page naming conventions, but not to conventions for the naming of dab pages, and so is clearly misplaced at present.

Any objections to either of these moves? (I know more may need to be done with the wording, but I've been asked to consider one change at a time, so let's just discuss the reordering first.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, in the absence of objections and because it seems to me to be uncontroversial anyway, I'm going to get working on this. I will doubtless make some minor wording changes to reflect the new ordering - please (revert and) discuss if anything seems wrong.--Kotniski (talk) 11:26, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Next section requiring work

Now the ordering of ideas has been tidied up a bit, I think we can get to work on the wording of the "Page naming conventions" section under "Disambiguation pages". I've already reworded it a bit and deleted some of the repeated and false/misleading information I referred to in above discussions. It now consists of just the following paragraph:

• The title of a disambiguation page is the ambiguous term itself, provided there is no primary topic for that term. If there is a primary topic, then the tag "(disambiguation)" is added to the name of the disambiguation page, as in Jupiter (disambiguation). It is also acceptable to create a page at "Term ABC (disambiguation)" that redirects to a disambiguation page at "Term ABC". This type of redirect can be used to indicate deliberate links to the disambiguation page.

Improvements to this wording are welcome, of course, but we have to add something about the issue of what to call a dab page that combines more than one term or spelling. We know from what we had before that we prefer words (like Arc) over abbreviations (like ARC). I suggest also that we prefer singulars over plurals, undotted abbreviations over dotted ones, and forms without articles over those with articles. And where there are alternative spellings, use the "most common" (but without edit warring about it). Do people agree with these principles, or want to add anything to them, so we can try to formulate a second paragraph for this section correctly?--Kotniski (talk) 12:08, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Or more specifically, then, how about the following wording?

• If a disambiguation page combines several terms, then one of them must be selected as the title for the page (with the "(disambiguation)" tag added if there is a primary topic for that term). The choice is made in line with the following principles:

• Words are preferred over abbreviations; for example, the disambiguation page for the terms Arc and ARC is titled Arc.
• Singulars are preferred over plurals.
• Forms which exclude punctuation and articles are preferred (e.g. SA rather than S.A., Cure rather than The Cure).
• Where there are alternative spellings of a term or forms of a name, the most common one (or a reasonably common one, if it is not clear which is the most common) is chosen.

Comments?--Kotniski (talk) 08:40, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I like your new wording but not all your proposal that follows it. I suggest the following alternative:

• When there are two or more very similar terms that require disambiguating, these terms should be combined on one disambiguation page unless the number of items is large enough to make this confusing to the reader; under these circumstances separate pages for each may be created, with a link between them. When a disambiguation page combines several very similar terms, one of them must be selected as the title for the page; the choice should be made in line with the following principles:

• Where no word could reasonably be formed of the letters, all caps is preferred but, where a word can be formed, this is preferred to the abbreviation. For example, DDB is preferred to Ddb and Arc is preferred to ARC.
• English spelling is preferred
• Singulars are preferred to plurals.
• The simplest form of the term is preferred to those containing punctuation, diacritics and articles; for example SA is preferred to S.A., and Shadow (disambiguation) is preferred to The Shadow (disambiguation)).
• The spelling that reflects the majority of items on the page is preferred to less common alternatives. Abtract (talk) 11:12, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me, though the first long sentence is unnecessary, since it repeats information that is now already stated (in more detail) in the "Combining terms on dab pages" section. A couple of questions though: 1) What do you have in mind with "English spelling is preferred"; can you give an example? 2) The point in the first case is not whether a word could reasonably be formed, but whether it is formed (i.e. whether any of the terms listed on the page do use the word). This therefore still seems to require slight rewording.--Kotniski (talk) 10:36, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes of course you are right about the opening, strike everything except the last sentence (beginning "When a disambiguation page ... "). It's no big deal but I don't agree about reasonably - imho it is better to have a word rather than caps to cover for the future eg I would prefer Kyt to KYT even if there were no items using Kyt per se. Abtract (talk) 11:12, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, we are in disagreement about that then - I would go for KYT in such a case. What do other people think?--Kotniski (talk) 12:22, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a crystal ball to divine what might possibly be a word -- I'd go with actual usage -- and with a caveat as well. If most terms on a page are for an initialism and only a small number use the term as a word, I'd place the term at the initialism -- I think this could be an extension of the general principle of preferring the more common form for a title. older ≠ wiser 12:59, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess this isn't a big deal for any of us but perhaps it illustrates a bigger point ... the danger of making these guidelines too prescriptive or too proscriptive - it causes disagreement over nothing. I believe even the rules we have are in some cases being interpreted too rigidly for the sake of "consistency", for example changing "Other use" to "Other uses" (or is it "Other usage" I never can remember?). When an editor has spent time creating a page or cleaning it, the last thing they want to see is a piddling little change to it, but that's just my opinion. Abtract (talk) 18:04, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Let's do this then; I'm adding what is basically your wording with minor adjustments for the above discussion and for clarity. I would still like an example for the "English spelling" point though, if possible.--Kotniski (talk) 14:02, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

More changes

I've been making a few minor undiscussed changes again. It would take for ever to discuss each individual one here; I don't think they're controversial, but of course if anyone objects to anything then just revert and discuss.--Kotniski (talk) 14:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

And two sections I would delete

I suggest we delete the following two sections from the page:

1. WP:D#Disambiguation of CJKV character names - all this section says is that the normal rules are followed for these names, so there seems to be no reason for it to be here.
2. WP:D#Duplicate topics - unclear what it is supposed to mean or how it is relevent to "What not to include" on disambiguation pages (if someone knows what it means, then perhaps they could reword or expand it?)

--Kotniski (talk) 11:02, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Doing this, as it's easy to do and just as easy to revert if someone disagrees.--Kotniski (talk) 19:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merger

And my last proposal, I promise (at least for today). To merge Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations into this page. In fact I think there's very little meaningful information there that isn't on this page already.--Kotniski (talk) 11:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm actually now just proposing that that page be de-guidelined. There doesn't seem to even be anything useful from there that could be brought over to here. Comment at that page's talk if you're interested.--Kotniski (talk) 19:46, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

How to verify disambiguation terms?

Okay, I am sure this has come up before, and I think I understand the matter pretty clearly, but maybe not. Let's say an editor wants to provide a dab term to GTR, specifically, the musical notation of guitar usage to sheet music (which is actually true, and is the background for the name of the band of the same name). Someone says it isn't, noting a Google search of the term "GTR", which yields over 18.8 million results, and the first 100 of them do not refer in any way to its usage as a substitute for guitar.
However, if we add the word "guitar" to the search, we end up with 1.9 million hits, and some of them refer to GTR (albeit indirectly).
My question isn't really about GTR. My question is about whether the "pure" search of 'GTR' is better at determining disambiguation than the mixed terms. Can I get some 'big brane' input on this? :) - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 16:03, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Try searching for "GTR abbreviation guitar"; that seems to provide several very pertinent links. The more detailed the search, the more persuasive the results, I would imagine.--Kotniski (talk) 16:55, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but isn't that the same thing as defining a word using the word? To search thusly seems to weight the search in favor of the results one wishes to find, as opposed to the real, unflavored results. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 17:01, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) Google searches are largely irrelevant. If there is an article in Wikipedia on the subject which indicates use of the abbreviation, then it is valid to include it in the dab page. If not (either there isn't a WP page about the subject, or there is but it makes no mention of the abbreviation), then it has no place in the dab page. Red links are a grey area (colourful!): perhaps here, if there are established redlinks in other articles, it might be valid to look at Google or other resources to verify whether the abbreviation is standard. Better to go away and write the article at the redlink! A dab page isn't a list of abbreviations (there are dictionaries of those), it's a list of WP articles which someone might be looking for by typing that abbreviation or other dab term. PamD (talk) 17:08, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

My impression, though, is that these rules are not always followed to the letter (as has been mentioned in the past on this talk page). Often editors will include a common abbreviation or related term on a dab page without worrying too much whether it actually appears in the article linked to. We don't want to overindulge our readers, naturally, but once in a while we can afford to give them information they are likely to be looking for, even if we know that they should be actually looking for it somewhere else.--Kotniski (talk) 17:28, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

What's your take on this then. The term is JTR and it has been linked for over two years (it was the original entry and then split to become the DAB for Jack the Ripper. [3] thanks - its the usage under contention. 75.57.160.195 (talk) 17:20, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I have proposed a solution there with a recent edit. We'll see if it stands. To follow PamD, you might also take a look at the recent discussion here which involves the inclusion of common-sense initialisms which might not be included in their linked articles. SlackerMom (talk) 17:23, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

It looks like fine compromise. Thanks SlackerMom :)75.57.160.195 (talk) 17:30, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm really an inclusionist rather than a deletionist, and happy for dab pages to include a wide range of good stuff, but I think if the abbreviation is worth including in a dab page it ought to be mentioned somewhere in the article itself, so I'm a bit surprised that "JTR" isn't mentioned in the relevant page! PamD (talk) 17:38, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Rather my point, Pam. However, mentioning that only encourages a contributor to toss that in now, in an attempt to justify its disambiguation. Anyway, that wouldn't be reason to include it anyway. JTR, as a term for Jack the Ripper is used by a non-notable, small group of people; giving weight to such a small group of people's usage is a classic undue weight argument.

There is nothing citable or notable connecting JTR to Jack the Ripper, any more than there is connecting GTR to guitar. As editors (and, in a larger way, primary sources of information), our speculation as to what is common-sense is not encyclopedic. We cannot include unsupportable dab terms, especially those which constitute undue weight from tiny little groups. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell})

Is the purpose of a disambiguation page to provide an encyclopedic list of things a term can mean, or is it to help readers find what they are looking for when they type a term into a search box? --Random832 (contribs) 18:05, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, specifically those terms we can cite as being likely suggestions, as opposed to something like "Centaurs in Astrology"), used by a very small group of folk using CIA to do so. Common sense dictates that we ask if a normal user is going to type in JTR while looking for Jack the Ripper (when 'Jack' or 'Ripper' are more intuitive search terms); clearly, the average user won't. The term is used by an unduly-small group of folk, self-termed "ripperologists" (yeah, I know, the term makes me laugh, too).

We cannot add terms that we cannot prove are used commonly. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 18:22, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I've never edited the Jack the Ripper page and unlike you am not a hardcore fan and editor of the subject - but the DAB does reflect a wider use of the term.[4]. Several link to museums, books, movie productions and comics when using the term. And that's just the first page...75.57.160.195 (talk) 18:28, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

This is true, when one alters the search criteria from 'JTR' to 'JTR eastend' - apparently, you missed the opening discussion of the section. Your search skews the results in favor of a connection you are trying to prove. Example, I did the same thing, adding a term: 'kangaroo' and 'eastend, with results that connect the two. Similarly, a search of 'kangaroo' and 'JTR' returned some pretty interesting results, none of them related to Jack the Ripper, either. :) Your search protocol is fatally flawed, and inserts your own wishes and desires into the search itself. It is not surprising that the results are going to reflect that need for a connection that isn't inherently there.

We don't cock up the search to prove a point; its "disruptive and disputative". I use those exact words because this anon has been stalking my edits since April, and has been blocked for it repeatedly. He hasn't posted in JTR before because I haven't. Thought I would make that clear to the uninitiated. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 19:07, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

It never takes long to take the subject off the rails does it? Would I be wrong for pointing out that you have already claimed on the JTR DAB page that DAB Wikipedia policy supports your edit?[5] Or that your claim that DAB supports you came after you posted in two different DAB forums and had already been told "no." Would I be out of line to point out that five separate editors support some form of inclusion on the page? That you alone are for deletion and are seeking to overturn years of community consensus to include the term? Should mention be made that you have gone to two separate Administrators[6][7] pages in an effort to sanction another editor (DreamGuy) for voicing his support on the very same page? That was just a factual, and cited, review of your edits on the subject of a JTR DAB. Multiple forums, numerous administrators and the rolling thunder of your edits and yet...not a single voice yet in support of your edit or interpretations. Perhaps if you widen it further or focus on more personalities that stand in your way.75.57.160.195 (talk) 19:37, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Sigh. Apparently, the anon is again interested in turning it into a discussion about how I am the antichrist or whatnot. I guess I will be ignoring him here, too. We aren't talking about DG, my unfriendly, stalkerish anon. We aren't talking about me, and we certainly aren't going to give you the sportlight. If I choose to head to the relevant forum to ask for advice (even when I am pretty sure I am correct), that is considered a smart move. Maybe you should seek an editing history outside of my contributions, as you are dangerously close to getting reported for stalking. You are not in my way; you are just an annoyance. Kindly go away. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 19:59, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the any acronym/abbreviation needs to be mentioned within the target article, in order to be considered "valid" for inclusion in a dab page. But I haven't read my scriptures styleguides lately, so might be out of date...? -- Quiddity 20:37, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Lol...scriptures. :) - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 20:52, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hee, hee...Quid made a funny... Actually, the scriptures don't say anything about it, but it is common practice among dab editors. The question is whether some common sense inclusions can sometimes be allowed even if the article doesn't use the intialism. BTW, Arcayne, I don't really think Jack the Ripper is one of those common sense inclusions, I have merely tried to present a compromise that will avoid a big war over such a small prize. SlackerMom (talk) 21:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

And no one has really reverted that in the article space after Arthur Rubin's compromise edit; its just been under lengthy discussion by folk of differing pov and myself, who agrees with you that it doesn't belong in there.

As for the reason why I have been somewhat resistant to including it, it makes me wonder if we give on this breach of the dab, what is next? Its a slippery slope, and its one we needn't even broach. OR and RS is pretty clear on this as it is. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 22:39, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, everyone[8] agreed on including it in one form or another just a day or so ago.75.57.160.195 (talk) 21:51, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll also add that I never edited the main page or expressed any opinion about how it should be listed - I've only agreed with Arcayne and every other editor that it should be included in the DAB. 75.57.160.195 (talk) 22:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

For the record, it has been reverted in the article space,[9][10][11][12][13] and contrary to your assertion. (I've only included your reverts as you are the only one to make the claim).75.57.160.195 (talk) 22:54, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

And how many after Arthur's edit (after I asked for his insight)? That's right, zero. Should we point out how many times another single editor pointedly continued to revert any choice he didn't like? (hint: all of them). Should I point out how many articles you've stalked me to? (hint: it's more than a half-dozen). Maybe you can go away now Ignoring you now.- Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 23:04, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Dude, your yelling at me for my response AFTER you changed the historical record and added qualifying language:[14]. I have not followed you anywhere - hell my only position on the matter, inclusion, is in absolute agreement with yours.stop with the baiting attacks. Please.75.57.160.195 (talk) 23:16, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

And please stop changing my edits and text. You've deleted my words, changed the order of my edits and completely refactored too many of my words and ideas here and at JTR - my ability to express myself clearly is harmed when you change the order that I say things, the placement of my text and delete the words that I use. It's not appreciated.75.57.160.195 (talk) 23:27, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

For that unintentional effect, I am sorry; it was my sole intention to move your posts into chronological order. The only refactoring that was done was a removal of a blatant personal attack (the alternative was to simply ask for you to be blocked - you are welcome, btw). In order to help prevent that in the future, please present your posts and sections after earlier posts - if you are replying to someone else, then note who you are replying to. Again, the only real thing harming your ability to express yourself is your stalker behavior. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 13:11, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Good God.. Arcayne has a long history od regarding any and all reliable sources on Jack the Ripper as unreliable solely because he has personal opinions the experts do not support and wants his own beliefs to be featured in the article instead of doing what Wikipedia is supposed to do: represent expert thoughts on the topic. Here he just decides that the abbreviation iss nonnotable and small because he refuses to admit it's real. Most acronyms are only used within certain fields. The fact that the broader public doesn't always use it in no way means it isn't valid. Certainly plenty of sources proving its use exist and have been cited. DreamGuy (talk) 16:09, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

There are no cites for it outside the exceptionally small and non-expert field of "ripperology". Various websearches (those that aren't skewed to deliver favorable results) don't note the acronym as being specific to the Ripper. Therefore, it isn't notable, and its OR to include it. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 06:08, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

This is really the wrong place to "discuss" this ... I suggest you take it to the article talkpage; if and when the abbreviation is included in that article, with citation or by acclamation (consensus), then it will be a shoe-in for the dab page. Abtract (talk) 18:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Human names

Resolved

 – Discussion centralized elsewhere.

Recently, the Eddy Merckx article has become a disambiguation page. Normally I don't really mid in human names are made disambiguation pages even if one of the people is particularly more notable than any other. However, this one seems to be taking things to the extreme, one seems to be far more notable than the other. I'm not really sure how the guideline works for human names in regard to primary topics, for one editor is arguing that the primary topic rule doesn't apply to human names at all. Can anyone offer some advice on this one or join the discussion at Talk:Eddy Merckx? Cheers, Severo^TC 17:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

This discussion has been centralized at Talk:Eddy Merckx so I'm marking this variant of it "Resolved" to forestall further debate here, which would get lost in the overall consensus-building shuffle. Editors here may well be interested in commenting over there, as it is an interesting case. The cyclist Merckx is certainly more famous generally that the billiards player (but quite possibly not in English-speaking places where the latter's discipline, three-cushion billiards is a major sport, such as Singapore and Hong Kong, for which en.wikipedia exists just as much as it does for the US, UK, etc.), but both are world champions in their own right, and the billiards player is a current sportsperson, while the cyclist is retired. How does currency, equal status within disciplines with unequal world popularity, and localized popularity of the discipline, compare with age/primacy, more global reknown (tempered by likely lack of it in some relevant area), and a presumed higher "status" of the other discipline (billiards is not yet an Olympic sport, but is expected to be within the decade)? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:02, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Major WP:DAB and WP:NCP sports bio dispute

Resolved

 – Just an FYI pointer to a relevant debate.

Editors here may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Sports "revolt". The issue in a nutshell is that several sports WikiProjects are simply ignoring the biographical naming conventions and disambiguation guidelines, and I am trying to make it clear that doing so is a violation of WP:CONSENSUS policy, and that instead they need to convince the WP community at large that consensus should change at these guidelines to encompass their preferred way of doing things. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed rewrite of Disambiguation Links section

I'm working on rewriting the "Disambiguation links" section to make it more systematic and to fit in with the logic of the page as a whole (of course a lot of the information is at WP:Hatnotes and the template documentation pages). Please see User:Kotniski/Sandbox and let me know what you think (all feel free to edit that page as well).--Kotniski (talk) 10:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Now transferred to the live page.--Kotniski (talk) 16:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Headings

Resolved

 – Discussion moved.

Why not link section titles?

There can hardly be a technical problem; it's done routinely on talk pages.

If there is a reason, it should be given. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:47, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see where on this page there is such guidance. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Longer lists does say Section headings should not include links. And that refers to Wikipedia:Writing better articles#Headings, which states Headers should not be bluelinked. This is because headers in themselves introduce information and let the reader know what subtopics will be presented, similar to signposting in argumentation theory; bluelinks should be incorporated in the text of the section.

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Section headings also says Section names should not normally contain links. I believe this is fairly long-standing guidance. Is there some reason you'd think it might be beneficial to readers to place links in headings on disambiguation pages? older ≠ wiser 17:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Then I'll take it to MOS; thanks. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:37, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Dabs that point to nowhere

Resolved

 – AfD precendent says keep; the items were not all redlinks (actually none of them were).

Are disambig pages like Hyperactive (disambiguation) allowed? None of the pages listed here have articles, and they look very unlikely to as well (mostly album tracks, no singles that I see). Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 23:21, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I listed this at the AfD also, but Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/I Know What Boys Like was a similar AfD, and the page was kept. There's nothing wrong with having entries on a disambiguation page about a song with a link to that song's album; such entries show up on many disambiguation pages. It just happens that in this case (an in some others), all of the links are songs. So it goes. -- Natalya 23:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

And it's not accurate to say they pointed "nowhere"; they pointed to more-encompassing articles since there weren't articles exclusively about the songs on this list, just their albums. Kind of a no-brainer keep, really. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Shortcuts

All right, why do we think that the "primary topic" section of this page needs to be an exception to the WP:TWOSHORTCUTS rule (see recent edits)?--Kotniski (talk) 19:50, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Why do we think it is even worth asking the question? Does it really matter? Abtract (talk) 20:12, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, you reverted it, so I supposed you thought it mattered. If not then I'll just restore the shorter version.--Kotniski (talk) 20:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Why does WP:PRIME exist? Do people habitually call the primary topic the prime? That seems more confusing that reducing it to just one shortcut, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. (Keeping the other shortcuts, but not listing them.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 03:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Fine by me.--Kotniski (talk) 16:12, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Surely if you are going to list but one it should be the shortest, consistent with it being easy to remember ... WP:PRIME seems the obvious one. Abtract (talk) 23:14, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Since the word "prime" does not occur in that section, it seems counter-intuitive to me. Shortcuts are not always the shortest ones available. If brevity were the main thing, we could just use WP:PRI or WP:1T for primary topic (since WP:PT is already taken), but those are counter-intuitive as well... -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:22, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that's stretching counter-intuitive a little but OK. Abtract (talk) 23:35, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Kotniski & JHunterJ. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Unified way to ID disambig pages

As Wikipedia gets more and more botified, we really need a way to quickly and consistently identify a disambig page. Unless I'm missing something, currently there's no single ID method besides looking for one of a list of templates. Could someone let me know what discussions have taken place to remedy this? I've been poking around in the DAB project and MediaWiki but haven't found anything yet. --JaGa^talk 09:33, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

What? Do you want a list of Dabs, do you have pages you suspect of being Dabs and want to be sure? Are you upset that there are types of Dabs that are supposed to use other templates? Are you trying to count all the Dabs? I don't see the shortcoming that you want a remedy for, so i don't know where start thinking about what to offer you.
--Jerzy•t 07:19, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Well I suppose one use is to help bots which are doing tasks like labelling very short pages as {{stub}}: if that avoids all dab pages, it saves time for WP:WSS. PamD (talk) 07:34, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Making links - compulsory?

Is there anything in WP:DAB or elsewhere which makes it mandatory to provide a link (via dab page or hatnote) from Foo when creating a new page Foo (something)? I fell over Parc (AMT) while stubsorting for WP:WSS, then noticed that various other stations on that rail network have names which correspond to other places/things (I added Parc to the PARC dab page, sorted out a hatnote for Vendôme, then gave up). I mentioned it to a main editor of the pages, whose response was "Good idea, but a bloody lot of work". Is there something I can quote to him to suggest that there really should be such links, so that someone looking for Foo (AMT) will find it if they type Foo? Or am I misunderstanding the rules? I know there are lots of cases where the links don't exist, but I have always assumed that they ought to exist. PamD (talk) 22:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• I would argue that if no one would reasonably type "Parc" or "PARC" when they want the topic covered by Parc (AMT) (WTH is it, a Metro station? -- sorry, i can't find my Art-Deco font or i'd have used it on "Metro"), then there's no point to the effort. But i find it hard to come up with examples that meet that condition! (How about a rock band named

Ask (me)

where everyone pronounces it "Ask me" -- no one would expect to find it by typing "Ask", right?)
So it sounds like you created new Dab entries for the Parc and Vendome stations on the AMT line, and feel guilty about leaving the rest hanging? I wouldn't, i think, on the theory that not everything has the same priority, and the likelihood that those seeking AMT stations may well usually go to the AMT page (or to the AMT Dab, and thence to the AMT line article) and link to each of the stations they are considering as their destination from that page. This method should work at least as well as hoping all the Dab entries have been created. And if it doesn't, someone who uses the Dab method is going to be more motivated than you to make it work better. In fact, IMO WP is ill-served when editors focus on completing some area rather than contributing as much to it as holds their interest: straining to finish the Augean stables ('scuse me, i just ducked out to correct an ambiguous antecedent in Augeas, which was quick and refreshing) is an invitation to burnout, so leave it to someone it appeals to.
Thus ego te absolvo, go forth and feel guilt no more. And i gotta go myself; i think i smell smoke. [wink]
--Jerzy•t 07:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

New shortcuts

I have created two new shortcut-targets within Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages, pursuant to a short discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Entries to pages that are Dabs. I may not have complied with any naming conventions that apply to shortcuts.
--Jerzy•t 07:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I have used one already :-) Tassedethe (talk) 07:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Perfect! Thanks, Jerzy! SlackerMom (talk) 14:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• And thanks to whoever cleaned up the {{shortcut}} boxes.
  --Jerzy•t 22:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
  

A DAB or redirect disagreement

There is an issue which could use help resolving found at Talk:Sine Qua Non, and it would be appreciated if DAB experience could weigh in. MURGH ^disc. 20:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

My further tampering with Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages

I made a point of doing two separate edits to that section.

1. The controversial one, perhaps, is the more recent: from

   Category:Disambiguation provides a complete list of disambiguation pages.

   (which i can't find a useful interpretation for) to

   Category:Disambiguation pages provides a complete list of pages carrying disambiguation tags.

   My hypothesis that the two Cats were confounded (perhaps by a changing of the purpose of the first) is not inspired by, but is made more comfortable by, the parallel presumable error in {{meta disambig}}, resulting in three of the W pages listed at Category:Disambiguation.

2. The earlier edit is likely to inspire another collaborative edit or two, to correct my tendency to overwrite. But hopefully i have drawn attention to former pitfalls and captured the full intention, and hopefully that will facilitate saying it all more clearly, even if more tersely than my way.

--Jerzy•t 22:50, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Can't Happen Here

I just conducted my first experiment in creating a Disambiguation page (and they laughed at me at university - it's alive! Alive!), Can't Happen Here, and I was wondering if some folks could hop on over and make sure that I didn't completely cock it up. I'd appreciate some feedback. :) - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 15:28, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I reckon it ought to be at Can't Happen Here rather than at Can't Happen Here (disambiguation), as there's no article at the title "Can't Happen Here", so I've moved it. Also, the links shouldn't be piped, so that people see just which article they are going to ... except that it's elegant to pipe a link for purposes of putting song/film titles in italics. I've made a few changes. Will be interesting to know if anyone disagrees with them! PamD (talk) 15:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. :) - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 15:57, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

A couple more changes have been made, you should check the edit history for comments. Very good for a first effort, usually it's piping and blue links galore! Tassedethe (talk) 16:01, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

No disagreement but I have made some further improvements - removed headers which just add clutter to a short simple page, changed the target article for the redlinked item so that it points to the album where the track is listed rather than the band where it isn't, shorten descriptions a little, move one item to "see also" (different but similar title), I think that was all. Abtract (talk) 16:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd move it back to Can't Happen Here (disambiguation) and move Can't Happen Here (Atreyu) to the base name, since it's the only article at that name. The Swedish film and the Sinclair novel should also be "See alsos", unless that are known as "Can't Happen Here". And I usually shorten song descriptors from "a single from the album Difficult to Cure by the band Rainbow" to "a song by Rainbow from Difficult to Cure". Almost always "single" should be replaced with "song". -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. I was mostly worried about screwing up the piping and rename/move (the talk page was still for the Atreyu song, as I had originally renamed the article).

Which begs the question: in an instance where an article already exists covering one term of a dab'd term, how best to proceed? I had originally renamed the article to clarify the reference before setting it up as its own dab when I learned that there were more terms using the same (or very similar) names. Format aside (such as sections, entry brevity, etc), what should I have done differently? While I will still come here to get the stamp o' approval from the folk who work dabs more often than I, I'd prefer to better construct them so as to prevent those same folk from having to fix my oversights. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 16:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

This might be useful to develop for the project page eventually. I'd suggest this approach:

• If there's an article (or redirect to an article) at the intended dab phrase title
  1. Leave it there and create a disambiguation page with the "(disambiguation)" disambiguator.
  2. Add an {{otheruses}} hatnote to the base name page to direct readers to the disambiguation page.
  3. If you theorize that the disambiguation page should be at the base name, mention it on the existing article's Talk page. If there's consensus (or simply no objection), then move the pages around. Check with the article's project (if any) for the preferred disambiguator (e.g., in this case it might have been (Atreyu song) rather than (Atreyu)).
  4. If there's objection and you still feel there is no primary topic, proceed with WP:RM
• If there's no article at the intended disambiguation phrase title, create the disambiguation page at the base name. This should mean that all of the entries are at "also known as" names, or are subsections of other articles; in some cases, it may be that an article was created with disambiguators but didn't need it.

-- JHunterJ (talk) 17:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, not sure about JHJ's starting point: can a redirect count as a Primary Usage, so that it keeps the use of the term Foo and the dab page goes at Foo (disambiguation)? PamD (talk) 17:13, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure either but just as a matter of fact, we already have it with HP at HP (disambiguation). Abtract (talk) 17:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, a redirect can easily be a primary usage, whenever the article for the primary topic of "X" is better titled "Y". -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

OK,I can see that in many cases the redirect will be the primary usage - but by no means always. Sometimes someone has made a redirect, eg from a surname to a forename+surname, when it's the only use to date of that term, but the arrival of a second meaning for the term will justify making a dab page at the term itself. PamD (talk) 20:25, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The arrival of a second meaning may justify the claiming of the base name for the disambiguation page. But there's no harm in checking first (OK, little harm -- checking first means that an admin may have to be involved to move the disambiguation page to the base name), and I've had to go back and restore many primary topics to the base name when the arrival of a clearly secondary second meaning has pushed the primary meaning off the base name. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, Sessnominated it for deletion re CSD G6. It might have happened when the talk page was moved/deleted. Halp! - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 17:43, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Is this really the rule?

"When you create a disambiguation page, add a link to it in one of those pages as appropriate." Really? It says so at Wikipedia:Dab#Lists_of_disambiguation_pages, but I've never done so, and judging by the fact that the most recent edits to Wikipedia:Links to (disambiguation) pages/A-K were in April 2008, nor have most of us. Is this some left-over from a previous era, or a widely-ignored rule, or what? PamD (talk) 20:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Certainly the latter, I guess, maybe the former as well. Might be worth removing that section from the guidelines.--Kotniski (talk) 20:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Which, in the absence of any objections, I am now doing.--Kotniski (talk) 09:07, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

External links

I've been operating under the assumption that External links are not permitted on DAB pages, which only list actual or highly probable articles; they are not directiories or dictionaries. I just removed six EL-only entries from MBB, and came here to look over the guideline for future reference. To my surprise, I could find no mention of the subject on the page at all. Did I just miss it, or is it covered somewhere else? - BillCJ (talk) 01:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The guideline covering disambiguation page formatting and content is Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). That guideline explicitly recommends against adding external links (see the subsection on individual entries). --Muchness (talk) 02:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That is what I was looking for. - BillCJ (talk) 02:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

We need a disambig link at the top of this guideline page pointing to the style-guideline page! What exactly is the separation of purpose, as concisely as possible? "When and How to disambiguate" vs "the style guide for disambig pages"? (I'm not feeling technicalese-inspired...) I'll move the navbox up, in the meantime. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:48, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the separation of purpose is just as you say, a when-and-how overview versus specific guidelines for disambiguation pages. I assume the pages are separated because combining everything into one guideline would result in an extremely large and possibly unwieldy, hard-to-navigate page. MoS:D provides a lot of stylistic and content minutiae and the related talk page discussions can get fairly esoteric, so it makes sense in my opinion to keep them as separate pages. --Muchness (talk) 04:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Disambig help - Bobby McNeal etc

I know many of the basic guidelines and MoS of disambiguation, but I'm struggling with this one and would appreciate people's thoughts. We have:

• Bobby McNeal - English footballer
• Bob McNeil - Scottish footballer for Hamilton, Chelsea and Scotland, died 1948
• Robert McNeill - Scottish footballer for Sunderland, Greenock Morton and Scotland, born c. 1868
• Bob McNeill - Basketball player

I'm struggling to think how best to do the hatnotes and any disambig page. The different surname spellings and rather sketchy information on the Scottish footballers doesn't help. Thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 21:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to add, there are also Robert H. McNeal and Robert Duncan McNeill. I'd probably create Robert McNeill (disambiguation) and list all there, with appropriate hatnotes. Perhaps cross-hatnote the 2 Scottish footballers as well. Tassedethe (talk) 05:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Sounds sensible, cheers, I'll implement your suggestion when I get back from Wikibreak. --Jameboy (talk) 10:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd make it Robert MacNeil (disambiguation) (one l), since Clan MacNeil seems to be the origin. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:35, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Also Robert MacNeil PamD (talk) 14:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

And Bobby McNeal.PamD (talk) 14:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Countries and primary topic

Pointer to other discussion which would affect WP:PRIMARYTOPIC: WT:NC#Countries take precedence. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:34, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation discussion re radio/TV station articles

David Levy and I are having a spirited and frightfully civil debate over the best approach to disambiguation of radio/TV station articles, on my talk page at User talk:Mlaffs/Archives/2008/December#WBZ. According to the outlines at WP:DAB, both our preferred approaches are valid, so we're looking to get some consensus on one or the other. I've posted this note at WT:WPRS as well, so I think it's best if we keep the discussion consolidated on my talk page. All comments are welcome! Mlaffs (talk) 00:27, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Answered there per request, but not watching there. Please raise again here if you'd like any other input from me on what I wrote. Thanks. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:33, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

As regards broadcast station articles, long-standing practice and (based on very recent discussion) the strong consensus among active members of WikiProject Radio Stations is that anytime two licensed broadcast stations share the same base call sign that a dab page should be created. This greatly simplifies correcting errant links, allows a consistent experience for the reader, and sidesteps altogether any question of which station is the "primary" topic.

The "primary" topic debate for radio stations would also often lead to nonsensical outcomes wherein, for example, the FM station in an AM/FM combo is higher-rated or better-known this quarter so rather than a simple dab page at WEUP directing readers to WEUP (AM) or WEUP-FM the method I see above would have a redirect at WEUP that pushes people to WEUP-FM which still requires a hat note to guide people to the AM station whose actual call letters are simply "WEUP" but the article is still at WEUP (AM). And figuring out if you're at the "correct" WEUP station is difficult because both feature somewhat similar musical formats and both serve the same market in Alabama. And what about next quarter when the new ratings book comes out and the AM is the higher-rated station? The thought of having to actively update untold hundreds of dab pages every three months because of a slight shift in the ratings is distressing. And then you factor in television stations which use an entirely different methodology. Or radio stations in different markets that share the same base call sign so ratings can't easily be compared. The thought of thousands of individual discussions every three months to reach consensus on which station is "primary" would send me back to stamp collecting instead of encyclopedia editing as my primary hobby. - Dravecky (talk) 14:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Dab pages with two entries

On this page (WP:D) it says "If there are two topics for a term but neither is considered the primary topic, then a disambiguation page may be used; an alternative is to set up a redirect from the term to one of the topics, and use disambiguation links only." [JHJ's] remark at the talk page implies you think the second clause should be deleted (so we always use a dab page). Can you justify this with a view to establishing consensus for changing it? --Kotniski (talk) 12:48, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, no primary topic for a phrase is the definition of a base name dab. I've updated this page. Thanks; I'm not sure where that clause came from, but it needed to go. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:14, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, let's at least discuss it so we can be sure we've got it right this time. I remember someone doing an empirical analysis of this once (I'll try and find the discussion) to determine what percentage of hits ought to go to one meaning rather than the other in order to make hatnotes a mnore useful option. I'm not suggesting this question can be solved mathematically, but I feel there may be cases where, although the imbalance between the two topics isn't sufficient for one to be primary, there is still an advantage in making the term redirect to one of them and use hatnotes. Basically it depends how much hatnotes are less obvious navigational aids to readers than dab pages aer (because if they were just as easy to follow, then the redirect/hatnote solution would always be better). I've restored the section with the disputed tag; let's consider the matter carefully.--Kotniski (talk) 14:26, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

It was a WP:BOLD change, in the face of an obvious mistake. No primary topic means that no topic is primary, and having one topic show up when the phrase is entered makes it primary, which contradicts our assumption, QED. But since it's been reverted, I'll go along with WP:BRD. (But not all bold edits need to be reverted prior to discussion.) :-) -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

For reference, this is the (a?) previous discussion. It seems there are arguments on both sides. Will return to this when I have a bit of time.--Kotniski (talk) 14:44, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't look like consensus was reached then either. Sorry I missed that exchange. Still seems like a paradoxical situation to thrust a primary topic upon a phrase with no primary topic. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow — can open, worms everywhere. Sorry about that, although it appears that a consensus is coalescing on the radio/TV station front, so thanks for that. Personally, I'd !vote for dab pages being standard when there is no primary topic, regardless of whether there are two or twenty terms to be disambiguated. 1) As JHunterJ said above, the redirect/hatnote solution when there's no obvious primary topic means that somone has to pick where to point the redirect, which essentially suggests that one or the other actually is primary. 2) Dab pages provide a foundation for future additional disambiguation, which often turns out to be necessary — a two item disambiguation may just be a three item disambiguation where the person setting up the page didn't know about the third item. It's less work if it's set up that way right from the start. 3) While the redirect would still allow for monitoring of incoming links that ought to correctly go to one or the other article directly, I'd have to believe it would keep those incoming links from being captured within the fantastic work that RussBot is doing of tracking the disambiguations that most need attention, since the redirect wouldn't have the "disambig" tag. Mlaffs (talk) 16:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, why is this being limited to two items? The real question is what to do when there is no primary topic? Clearly no article should be at the main name space. So it comes down to either a dab page or a redirect. I guess one question that exists, is what is wrong with always using a dab page unless there is some overriding reason? It highlights the confusion in the name and there is a project that works to fix these bad links and does not send the reader to the wrong article. If you redirect a certain number of readers will be redirected to the wrong article and be confused. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks like we're all agreed then. I've left a note at WT:MOSDAB, since that's where the previous discussion took place, asking people to come here if they object to the change. Assuming no-one does so within a day or so, I think the change can be made.--Kotniski (talk) 11:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)  Done--Kotniski (talk) 12:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages with all red links but one

Hello, I recently moved three disambiguation pages with only one blue link each, redirecting the pages to point directly to the bluelinked article:

• moved Gilbert House to Gilbert House (disambiguation), redirected Gilbert House to Page-Gilbert House
• moved North Presbyterian Church to North Presbyterian Church (disambiguation), redirected North Presbyterian Church to Calvin Memorial Presbyterian Church
• moved Douglas County Courthouse to Douglas County Courthouse (disambiguation), moved Douglas County Courthouse (Omaha) to Douglas County Courthouse

Then an editor watching the articles voiced opposition to the changes. So, I'm wondering: what is the policy on disambiguation pages with only one blue link? Should they be kept as-is, or moved to "X (disambiguation)" as I did? Really, I'd be OK either way, I'd just like feedback on which way is preferred. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 21:55, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess in principle what you did was right (in fact the dab pages could have been simply deleted and replaced with a redirect). But if they are part of an ongoing project, and it is likely that the redlinks will become blue in the near future, then I can see the other editor's point that it would make more practical sense to hang on.--Kotniski (talk) 22:07, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The basic problem is that the topics of the articles that currently exist are most definitely not "primary uses" of the terms that have been redirected to those articles. For example, the main reason that two of the three historic buildings in the examples that currently have articles are in Omaha, Nebraska, is that there's at least one very productive user who is committed to creating articles about Omaha, Nebraska. That does not mean that Building X in Omaha is more important than other buildings called "Building X," nor the primary use of "Building X." I would submit that very few building names (like "North Presbyterian Church") have a primary worldwide use. Directing titles like that one to a single article, when there are red links on lists pointing to other buildings in other cities with the same name, is going to create extra work in the future (when the moves need to be undone), and it may also create confusion when good-faith contributors link to those terms in unrelated articles. --Orlady (talk) 22:26, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

What Remember the dot did on some disambiguation pages is to "clean them up" to remove the identification of red-links as NRHP sites. For example, this edit removed NRHP mention for several red-links. I am going through some trouble to add specific identification of individual red-links as NRHP sites, in other disambiguation pages that include NRHP sites. Removing the identification that way makes it easier then for Remember the dot or another editor to, in a second stage, remove those red-links, because then there is no evidence that the red-link is for a wikipedia-notable topic. And, Remember the dot asserts that a disambiguation page with only one blue-link should be a redirect. Please help stop this. Could someone with roll-back tools available UNDO all of Remember the dot's edits labelled "cleanup"? And/or could an administrator give Remember the dot a proper warning towards banning the editor from this wasteful tampering with disambig pages? doncram (talk) 05:58, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• First, disambiguation pages are for navigation. Including information such as lots of links to lists of NRHP sites detracts from the task of helping readers find the articles they are looking for.
• Second, having some red links on disambiguation pages is OK. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Red links, such red links should not be removed if an existing article links to them. For example, East Side Historic District (Kalispell, Montana) is linked to from List of Registered Historic Places in Montana, which justifies keeping it on the disambiguation page East Side Historic District.
• Third, my cleanup edits included various improvements aimed at bringing the pages into line with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages).

If you want to keep historical place disambiguation pages with only 1 blue link, fine. I won't move any more without further discussion. It's not worth arguing about. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 06:23, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

First of all, if readers in various locales may be looking for a local church that is NRHP listed, it is useful to have all of them identified, so that all the local readers can find them, and so that it is obvious that you have to be a lot more specific in your search (making it clear that there are 15 or 50 or however many more-or-less-identically-named places.

Second of all, great, you acknowledge that here. Would you please acknowledge that in your own nearly simultaneous nomination for deletion: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/St. Paul's Reformed Church, that the two NRHP places listed are referenced by NRHP county list articles. Please also see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Red links on disambiguation pages. And please cancel your own nomination, please.

Third, yes, your edits are not all entirely bad, but in my view they damage more than they fix and it would be most helpful to roll them all back.

On your last point, thank you. Honestly, i believe you were just trying to help. I am sorry for being a bit curt here, but I am getting frustrated, cumulatively, by too many similar editors coming across these disambiguation pages and destroying work that has been put in. Sincerely, doncram (talk) 06:44, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

And further, it is especially frustrating that you remove mention in these disambiguation pages of which red-links are for NRHP sites. You may be aware these are wikipedia notable, but other editors are not, and they tend to try to delete those red-links. The statement that a given site is an NRHP site is being added, laboriously, to try to prevent other editors from screwing these up. Your edits taking that out is not helping. doncram (talk) 07:01, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Doncram, you need another mechanism for building lists of red-link NRHP sites. Disambiguation pages are not them, and trying to use them for it is only going to cause you the frustration you've already encountered. As noted, disambiguation pages are a Wikipedia navigational aid to assist Wikipedia readers in finding the Wikipedia article they sought when they entered an ambiguous title. They are not a Wikipedia tool to assist Wikipedia editors in keeping track of "Wikipedia-notable" entities that do not yet have Wikipedia articles. You should use a Project (sub)page, User page, or a set-index article for that. Certainly there will be no "warning towards banning" against an editor who is improving Wikipedia by applying a project's style guideline to the pages of that project. I am sorry for your frustration, but do not take it out on Remember the dot. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I acknowledge that Remember the dot meant well, and further will say that Remember the dot has participated helpfully in resolving this by bringing it here.

I'll think further about what you say. But really, how can anyone take a disambiguation page that include multiple places of the same name, and choose to replace that by a redirect to a differently named place? This happened several times.

I have just put in four Requested Move requests at Wikipedia:Requested moves in order to undo the first-mentioned-above moves that were implemented, so that disambiguation works properly and so that readers are not, oddly, redirected to differently named articles when then should reach a disambiguation page. Discuss here and/or at the talk pages: Talk:Douglas County Courthouse (disambiguation), Talk:North Presbyterian Church (disambiguation), and Talk:Gilbert House (disambiguation). This takes hours and hours of work and the involvement of many parties to undo all that the one editor did in a lot less time. doncram (talk) 11:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a situation (and there are others) where a narrow interpretation of WP:Disambiguation results in a net loss for Wikipedia. With a case like this, there is known ambiguity with the title, a near certainty that articles will be created, and no basis for asserting primary topic (aside from being first out of the gate). I think the disambiguation pages with the redlinks (and with at least one blue link) should stay at the base name unless there is an argument for one being the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 12:28, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Sounds logical to me. Perhaps we need to tweak the guideline again to make clear provision for this kind of situation.--Kotniski (talk) 18:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Using disambiguation pages as placeholder lists or reminder lists or lists of things that might one day be Wikipedia articles or to-do lists or set indexes is a problem, and one solved to the benefit of Wikipedia by using User subpages, Project pages, Project subpages, or set index articles for the purpose, not by tweaking the disambiguation guidelines to allow for them in disambiguation pages too. (The blue links in the cases before led to articles that did not mention the phrase being disambiguated, or at least not always.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. There is obvious ambiguity, no primary topic and near certainty that an article will (or should) be created. What is the benefit to readers and editors to pretend that the one article which has been created somehow has primacy and to imply that there is nothing else of note that might be known by that term? older ≠ wiser 12:21, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess the problem is solved if we treat these dab pages as set index articles, as JHJ suggests. Then we still have the benefit of them without the worry that they breach the rules on disambiguation.--Kotniski (talk) 12:25, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes, though, there will need to be a disambiguation page, perhaps in addition to the set index article (or the project to-do list, etc.). -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:38, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

(after ec) Perhaps, but that seems a little disingenuous. Set index pages look and function very much like disambiguation pages, but for purely technical, formal reasons, they're not. To any casual reader (i.e., not steeped in the arcana of disambiguation practices on Wikipedia), {{SIA}} and its kin are functionally indistinguishable from {{disambig}}. On some talk page or other recently I did suggest it would be more prudent for NHRP topics to use set indices to avoid being hassled by disambiguation purists (just as happened with ship indices and mountain indices) -- but in a way, that indicates that maybe there is a problem with the disambiguation guidelines if there is a need to fork valid disambiguation practices into a separate sub-stratum that is for all practical purposes disambiguation and yet is not governed by WP:disambiguation. older ≠ wiser 12:40, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) I don't know, I think there is a clear conceptual difference between dabs and SIs. It doesn't matter much whether readers notice it or not. A dab page can contain uses of a term from all over the place - any field, any meaning, as long as it's kind of spelt the same way. An SI is by definition a list of similar things with similar names, so can reasonably be expected to follow different rules. In particular, it can contain (in a controlled way) basic information about things which aren't otherwise mentioned in Wikipedia yet, as in this case, which is useful to readers. Explicitly allow that on dab pages in general and it would probably spiral out of control, with whole swathes of non-notable people, bands etc. being added.--Kotniski (talk) 13:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that there is a conceptual difference and set indices have a place, but in practice the difference is not really very clear. Is Angel (comics) a disambiguation page or a set index? Is there something about the listing here that could not be accomplished with an ordinary disambiguation page? Similar examples are legion. Similarly, is there anything about Sosva River that requires it to be a set index (and I picked that one in part because there was only one blue link for the base term)? In practice, set indices are often refuges from overly zealous enforcement of narrow interpretations of disambiguation guidelines, resulting in a confusing array of subcategorization. older ≠ wiser 13:24, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the treatment of set index articles as safe havens for disambiguation pages that don't use the disambiguation style guidelines is a problem. The check should be that the criteria for list notability or similar should enable the offenders to be deleted for notability or other list criteria (WP:LISTS#Listed items), though. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I am following this and looking at the options, but what to do to prevent editor attacks is not clear. JHunterJ stated above that I and wp:NRHP need "another mechanism for building lists of red-link NRHP sites". I and wp:NRHP already do have that, in the form of geographically organized lists of all the 85,000 or so NRHP sites, which is about 15,000 blue-links and 70,000 red-links. We already have these lists, in nearly complete form. See, for example, List of Registered Historic Places in New York. Wp:NRHP's involvement in disambiguation articles is NOT to create the lists of red-links. We are, simply, trying to provide disambiguation for readers and editors. I looked at the example of wp:SHIPS creating set-index articles, essentially as disambiguation pages exempt from too-narrow wikipedia disambiguation rules. But set-index articles that way won't work for wp:NRHP, because of the nature of the places listed on the NRHP. For ships, each of them is notable, and each is notable for being a ship. For many NRHP places, such as many named "North Presbyterian Church", or several named "The Cedars", the place is notable first, and NRHP designation is secondary, reflecting the general notability. However, all the NRHP-listed ones are wikipedia-notable. There are many "North Presbyterian Churchs that are not NRHPs. There is one "The Cedars" which is a band, not an NRHP. Anyhow, set-lists as works for wp:SHIPs would not be simple for various complications, and I believe would not work for wp:NRHP. I prefer the alternative that you all would revise whatever are your too-restrictive guidelines. And/or add clarifications to address the wp:NRHP cases, so that editors are not motivated to launching costly attacks on disambiguation pages that include NRHPs. Specifically, I would ask that you explicitly allow wp:NRHP to add ", NRHP" after NRHPs listed (as, for example in Lewis House now) so as to indicate the wikipedia-notability of red-links, to defend from those editors who choose to attack red-links. doncram (talk) 20:38, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

What would be the benefit to the Wikipedia reader in allowing NRHP red links? That is the key point. Disambiguation pages disambiguate Wikipedia articles. You want to list things that aren't Wikipedia articles. You should use something other than disambiguation pages to do so. Some possibilities would be user pages, NRHP project pages, or list articles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:56, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Let's say I but this. What happens when an editor adds a link for X which is clearly notable and does not have an article. How does winding up at a dab page the does not make it clear that the article does not exist yet or to a series of hat notes that fail to mention in any way that said article is missing? Vegaswikian (talk) 02:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Vegaswickian -- redlinks are allowed on disambiguation pages and there is a benefit to the reader to present a disambiguation page of topics of roughly equivalent importance rather than direct them to the single existing article which is as likely as not to be the wrong topic. older ≠ wiser 02:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

What about a case like Washington Avenue Historic District in which there are eight different red links and no blue links? (I'm just curious what the guideline on this is.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Vegaswikian (and Bkonrad): how is a red linked topic ever "clearly notable" in the absence of a blue-linked article that describes it? -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Check what links here. But surely you knew that. To Josiah, Washington Avenue Historic District should certainly have some navigable blue links. That is definitely a defect of the page, but not an insurmountable one with a bit of checking what links here. Those redlinks that are not mentioned in any other article should probably be moved to the talk page or commented out until such time as there is some verifiable information available. older ≠ wiser 02:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Most of the redlinked topics in articles like that one are documented in articles such as List of Registered Historic Places in Lorain County, Ohio, but the dab guidelines don't make it easy to link "Washington Avenue Historic District, Elyria, Ohio" to that kind of list article. --Orlady (talk) 02:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

How is the lack of an article a clear indication of no notability? Accept the fact that this encyclopedia is missing articles. Clearly in the US, NRHP articles is one small subset these missing notable articles. In the case of Washington Avenue Historic District, how hard would it be to write a few notable stubs? Vegaswikian (talk) 02:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Bkonrad, yes, check what links here, and that will yield a blue-linkable article that should be linked from the dab entry. I thought you were talking about red links that don't have such valid blue links. In the absence of such blue-linkable articles, I think that Wikipedia should assume that red links are non-notable. Vegaswikian, the lack of an article is not an indication of no notability, but of no disambiguate-ability. Disambiguation pages are meant to list notable things with Wikipedia articles, not notable things in general. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:47, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I suppose the question is whether said Wikipedia articles need to be actual (that is, currently existing articles, which would generate blue links) or if it's sufficient that they be potential (such as the various Washington Avenue Historical Districts, all of which it is presumed could have Wikipedia articles due to the inherent notability of any location listed on the National Register of Historic Places). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

If that's the question, the answer is "actual". Actual vs. potential is what distinguishes red and blue links. Potential disambiguation pages can disambiguate potential articles, but actual disambiguation pages disambiguate actual articles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:56, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) They can disambiguate potential articles as well, as has been mentioned, but when all but one of the articles are potential, that isn't a suitable solution. Just redo these lists as set index articles, as has already been suggested, don't mark them as dab pages (unless there really are multiple meanings of the same term with blue links), and all will be well.--Kotniski (talk) 13:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

IT IS FINE IN WIKIPEDIA STYLE, PER MOS FOR DISAMBIGUATION, TO HAVE RED-LINKS. See MOS:DABRL. If you want to argue that disambiguation pages can't have red-links, you need to initiate an RFC or whatever towards changing the current style guidelines. Which I and numerous other people would oppose, for reasons already discussed in previous proposal to ban red-links. And, it serves readers looking for a given place, to see a red-link for that place in a disambiguation page, making it clear that there is no wikipedia article for it but there could be one. Rather than they need to keep searching further to find it. It is fine-sounding, but inaccurate to assert that "actual disambiguation pages disambiguate actual articles." doncram (talk) 01:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

THERE IS NO NEED TO SHOUT. Yes, the main bit in a given entry on a dab page might be redlinked, so long as in the description there is a single blue link to an actual Wikipedia article about the main bit. This appears to be possible for the NRHP places, since there are NRHP list articles that include these places. All that is necessary is to add those blue links (not just a link to NRHP, but to an article that describe the disambiguated bit) to the red-link entries' descriptions. If you want to argue that entries in disambiguation pages can have just a red link with no appropriate blue link, you need to initiate an RFC or whatever towards changing the current style guidelines. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:53, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Discussion merged to related parallel and continuing discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#what is wp:NRHP doing wrong RE disambiguation?. I must acknowledge that altho i didn't understand JHJ's position earlier, JHJ is very consistent. Please continue at related discussion. doncram (talk) 21:14, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Disambig editintro - working

It's Alive! Months later, but {{Disambig editintro}} is finally working. Do a hard refresh or cache clear, and try editing any disambig page (e.g. A Wonderful Life or Aboncourt) to see that edit message at the top of the page.

(Just fyi, the request to add the code was at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Disambig editintro, so ask there if you encounter any code-implementation problems)

The template message itself can still be improved too. See the template's talkpage for the older discussion.

Thanks to all that helped. (notice cross-posted to the 3 main disambig talkpages) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

More footballers

Hi, I'd appreciate any advice on this, as I'm not convinced the three articles are correctly disambiguated. There are three footballers named Gareth Williams (i.e. a subset of Gareth Williams) and their current titles are:

• Gareth Williams (footballer born 1941), English-born footballer who represented the Welsh international team, born 1941
• Gareth Williams (footballer born 1967), English footballer, born 1967
• Gareth Williams (Scottish footballer), Scottish footballer, born 1981

As I see it, there are an number of possibilities, including:

1. Move Gareth Williams (Scottish footballer) to Gareth Williams (footballer born 1981) - would seem the simplest option to dab all three by year of birth
2. Move Gareth Williams (footballer born 1941) to Gareth Williams (Welsh footballer) and move Gareth Williams (footballer born 1967) to Gareth Williams (English footballer). Would apply if nationality is a better differentiator, but could cause confusion due to one of the players representing a country other than the one in which he was born
3. Do nothing

Is there a guideline or "best practice" for this type of situation? Does year of birth outrank nationality as a differentiator or should these things be looked at on a case-by-case basis? Thanks. --Jameboy (talk) 20:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

There does not appear to be anything wrong with the current names, so I'd go with "do nothing". If the footballer project has more specific naming guidelines, you can certainly use those, but the only guidelines we have are "disambiguate them briefly and accurately". The disambiguation phrase of one does not have to dictate the disambiguation phrase of another. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Propose change in guidelines for primary usage

I've been in a number of move discussions where guideline ambiguity has made decisions more difficult:

1. Would it be out of line to claim that a simple majority of hits/google returns/incoming links is insufficient to determine primary usage? That an overwhelming majority is really needed?
2. Would it be wrong to write that lack of a primary usage supercedes all other naming guidelines? That an article is only located at a word or phrase with no qualifier if the article in question is the primary topic for the word or phrase?

If we could include these points in the primary usage guideline, this would shorten a lot of discussions for the better.--Loodog (talk) 15:20, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

What has the consensus been in the other discussions you've had/seen? I know that the most recent discussion, which involved a 2/3 majority of Google hits, still resulted in a consensus of "no primary usage". (Disclaimer:both Loodog and I were part of that discussion.) As I argued there, I think that one title having a 2/3 majority of Ghits is enough to determine primary usage. However, I'm not sure what the appropriate cutoff would be. Certainly, if it was a 51-49 majority, I would say that there was no primary usage.

As for your second point, could you explain in more detail how this guideline would override the other naming guidelines? Thanks,--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 15:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Most of the discussions I've been in have resulted in following the two points above. Notable exception: Worcester, which will address your second question.

There's been a great deal of discussion there, moving has been raised many many times, never with any agreement. Right now "Worcester" is the location of the city in England, while Worcester, Massachusetts actually gets more hits. The reasoning of the editors wishing to preserve how it is argue that Worcester, MA is where US city guidelines say it should be, and Worcester, UK can be at "Worcester" because then there are no conflicts. Essentially, not agreeing with #2 above. I realized if #2 is or isn't followed, we should establish consistency on it, and so I've invited the Worcester editors over here to help establish a general principle.

My personal belief on #2, I've already said. I think it's more true to: "The names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors."--Loodog (talk) 16:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

For No. 2, if "Worcester, MA" was the primary topic (regardless of whether it is or not), you could have "Worcester" redirect to "Worcester, MA", so that it is still the primary topic, but also follows the already created naming guidelines.

As for Google hit percentages, I've already expressed it above (and hope that other long-time disambiguators add their input too, because perhaps I am in the minority), but making any sort of firm decision about the ratio of Google hits to determine a primary topic makes me very uncomfortable. I think that people need to use common sense when determining a primary topic. If it comes down to using Google hits to decide which is the primary topic or not, then, to me, it seems pretty clear that it is so unclear what the primary topic is, that it's best left with no primary topic. This isn't even deciding that one thing is the primary topic over the other, it's a compromise.

As I mentioned above, I also think that relying on Google hits makes it far easier to increase Wikipedia's systemic bias towards both technology-related articles and articles about things and places from areas with more internet access. Just a simple example, but take the term "Apple". As makes common sense to everyone in the world, Apple, the primary topic, is about the fruit. However, if I do a Google search for the term "Apple", besides the one Wikipedia article, it is not until the 4th page of results that I even get a link about the fruit - the rest are about the well known company Apple Inc. (with one about Fiona Apple). I'm sure we can all see that this is an obvious case where the Google hits certainly give a skewed viewpoint on what should be the primary topic, but I worry about all the times when it is not that obvious.

I know that many people will be smart enough to use common sense even if consulting Google hits to determine a primary topic. However, there will also be people who do not do that, and making any sort of firm judgement about what proportion of Google hits determines a primary topic will only make it easier for primary topics to become biased. -- Natalya 16:31, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Natalya. Hits, links, and other measurements can suggest a possible primary topic, but they can never be determinative (even if the numerical majority is overwhelming) because of the potential of bias. --Russ (talk) 17:35, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh no, I agree with that. I never meant suggest that google returns/page hits/number of links should be binding. With regard to #1, I'm just trying to get a clearer definition on "primary usage".--Loodog (talk) 17:39, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh! Sorry if I was a bit to hasty responding to your query, then. As you can see, I definitly don't think that Google hits is enough to determine a primary topic.  :) As for actually determining the primary topic, my first response would be to use common sense. A lot of times it's just there or it's not. When it's not quite as clear (*hint* perhaps there is no primary topic!), I don't know if there's one thing that can decide a primary topic (I'm definitly interested to see what other people think of). Something important is to have neutral opinions, though, which can help a lot with the bias. For example, someone from the state (or city) of New York probably would have a skewed version of which "New York" should be the primary topic, whereas someone from neither of those places might have a better idea (although, everyone may have their own biases). We can at least do our best. A close to home example comes with Antagonist, which, until recently, was a disambiguation page. Sesshomaru asked me what I thought about moving Antagonist (literature) to make it the primary topic. I was sort of torn - the literary form definitly seemed prominent, but I personally was very familiar with the form Receptor antagonist, so I didn't think I could unbiasedly tell what the primary topic was. JHunterJ came along, and, assuminly taking a look at it with clearer eyes than mine, did the move to make the literary form of the term the primary topic. Which seems like the right thing. Not knowing if I was actually being unbiased though, it was good to get other points of view as well.

That may have been sort of longwinded, but I hope (at least some small part of it!) was helpful. -- Natalya 19:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

(e/c) I think that we are not going to be able to build a consensus on a numeric threshold of any sort for determining exactly how much constitutes primary usage. I also sympathize with Natalya and R'n'B (Russ) in that the use of primary thresholds should always take a backseat to what can be established from a clear quantitative assessment of the issue. Maybe the wording can be strengthened to require there to be a "significant" likelyhood of one topic being primary. However, this does not help us determine what to do about situations like Worcester where it is very clear that there is no consensus to determine whether Worcester, MA or Worchester, England is more notable, although there seems to be a consensus that they are approximantly equivalent in notability. I would argue that that is exactly the situation described in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC:

If there is extended legitimate discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)".

Therefore I would agree with Loodog that the situation there is very similar to the recently resolution at New York, which created a disambiguation page because there was no consensus on New York City or New York State being primary.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 19:24, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

There was no consensus to the resolution nor is the matter resolved; rather a unilateral application of guideline which ... by current consensus ... is being called to be reversed. See Talk:New York State#This move needs to be undone. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 19:47, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Consensus to undo the New York move had not been established. And regardless of what happens at New York, we do need a consistent principle regarding #2. Until we do, we'll keep getting these fleeting moves and lengthy discussions. Maybe a strawpoll is in order.--Loodog (talk) 21:01, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I definitely agree with #2 -- if the primary topic for "X" is better named "Y", "X" should be a redirect to "Y", and not become home to the second-best topic for "X". As for #1, not even an overwhelming majority of GHits or other metrics is enough; there needs to be consensus that one article is the primary topic. There might not be consensus with 99% of GHits going one way, and there might be consensus if 55% of the GHits go one way. There might even be consensus for the topic that gets a minority of the GHits for a phrase. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad that someone else is raising this point. We really need to make a strong stand on primary topic in lieu of a dab page. I think the guideline needs to make it clear that if there is no primary topic then the dab page must be located at the main name. It is really that simple and the policy needs to make this clear.

Issues with something being the primary topic can be addressed on that policy page but I will point out that oldest or largest or most Ghits or anything else that does not establish an article as the primary topic don't matter. Not having a primary topic is not a bad thing. Also, conflicting naming conventions do not grant an article rights to the name space. These conventions simply allow that article to exist there at the begining. If there are other candidates for the name space, then the primary use gets the name space or if there is none or there is no consensus for a primary use, then the dab page goes there.

As to the first point. Any measure of searches or hits or accesses is flawed as tool to determine primary use. They all have some kind of built in bias. While they may help illustrate a point, they should not be relied on as the basis for a decision. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

• Side note: discussion here would likely have consequences for Washington, Worcester, New York, possibly Birmingham, Wakefield, possibly Brighton, Limerick, possibly Chihuahua, to name a few.--Loodog (talk) 01:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

  Worcester and New York have current discussions on consensus for the page positions, so wouldn't be affected by the outcome of discussions here, even if they result in changes to the guidelines, unless consensus on those pages changes. I didn't look at the discussions for the others. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:23, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

  Au contraire, any consensus those pages have is based on the current wording of guidelines. Change/clarify the guidelines, and you've got a whole new discussion to make.--Loodog (talk) 01:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

  Yes and no, Loodog. The guidelines are meant to serve as a guide to what the current consensus is, and therefore will influence ongoing discussions, but if the consensus changes, then the guidelines should change, too. If the ultimate decisions at New York and Worcester should be contrary to this guideline, then it will be the guideline which changes.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:04, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

  Only if the consensus is that pages in general should follow the pattern set by New York and Worcester. Otherwise consensus at those pages can certainly ignore this guideline in its current or new form without dictating a change in the guidelines. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:56, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

  Please note my careful use of the word "likely".--Loodog (talk) 14:30, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

  If you think the current discussion for New York represents consensus we are not looking at the same page. This discussion seems to be mostly ignoring the WP:PRIMARYUSAGE policy. It is in my view more about the most important or the largest or the some form of state is more important then city. Maybe that discussion is another example of why this policy should clearly state 'no primary usage and you go with a dab page'. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:44, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. If no one has any objections I'm going to include in the guidelines, "If a word or phrase has no primary usage, it must direct to a dab page, regardless of other naming guidelines."--Loodog (talk) 01:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Regardless of other naming guidelines? It is quite possibly just me missing this, but what part of this previous discussion does that refer to? I agree with the need to direct to a disambiguation page if there is no primary topic (that seems to be pretty clear), but is there a specific example of that not happening, or the disambiguation page trying to be named something else? I thought most of the discussion here was if there was a primary topic that followed different naming conventions. Thanks for the help in clarifying, -- Natalya 03:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Worcester and New York. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:23, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

We don't use "must" here too much, unless we're talking about the limitations of Wikipedia (each article must have a different title) or practical issues (there must be a way to navigate the encyclopedia). "If a word or phrase has no primary topic, the page at that word or phrase should be a disambiguation page or a redirect to a disambiguation page." I understand the problem with New York and Worcester, but I do not think that "regardless of other naming guidelines" will be useful here. It sets up a little hierarchy of guidelines which we can't enforce. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:25, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

"Must" or "should", either way. But regardless of other naming guidlines is already implied in WP:PRIMARYUSAGE anyway, and #2 above, which we seem in agreement on, is stating this.--Loodog (talk) 12:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

For an interesting discussion take a look at Talk:Nice#Requested move for some interesting logic. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:28, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The discussion on "Nice" linked above shows that we need to define primary topic more exactly. Does it mean something different from "primary usage"? We have the wording "When there is a well known primary topic for a term or phrase, much more used than any other (significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings)", but that doesn't make it clear whether it's the primary usage outside in the world, or the primary topic as a word or phrase likely to be looked for in WP. In this case the most common usage of the four letter word NICE is an adjective, and unlikely to be looked for in WP (it's not a dictionary). So is that the "Primary topic" or not? If not, then it probably leaves the city as the primary topic, by far the most commonly searched in WP. I suggest that we need to clarify the wording, as I genuinely don't know what's intended at present. PamD (talk) 11:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Editors have expressed this at the discussion about Nice, and I agree - Nice is the primary topic; even though the word "Nice" is more well known that the city, we all know that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Since there is no article about the adjective "Nice", there's no need to disambiguate a non-existant article. If we want to clarify the guidelines further, we could say something like "the primary usage among all Wikipedia articles by the same name". -- Natalya 20:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Formal proposal

An article is only located at a word or phrase with no qualifier (main name space) if the article in question is the primary topic for the word or phrase. This guideline should be used to resolve conflicts between other guidelines for articles being at the main name space. Failure to establish a consensus for primary usage establishes the disambiguation page as the article at the main name space.

I think this is about where the consensus is. It probably needs some word smithing so lets try to modify this to clean it up and then see if we have a consensus. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it's clear how you just wrote it.--Loodog (talk) 13:58, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but I'm not sure it reflects consensus. I would wait until the debate at New York#Requested move is resolved before adding this into the guideline. If New York doesn't end up as a disambig page, then I think it will be clear that what you want to add doesn't have consensus.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 03:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The New York request is likely to end up as no consensus. I don't see how there is any consensus there. This is not a fair discussion to base a decision on here. There are what, 5 different surveys, in there and something like 4 or 5 renames. That debate is a complete disaster. If you look at discussions that have reached consensus, this guideline proposal is supported by the majority of those. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:47, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but adding this to the guideline implies that there is a general consensus in favor of it. You can't only look at the discussions that reached consensus. The fact that they didn't is a significant sign that there isn't a general consensus. Another significant sign is that even in the ones which did achieve consensus, the results haven't been universal. The guideline is supposed to reflect general practice, not impose it. The general practice and consensus hasn't yet gotten to the point of agreement with this proposal, no matter the worth of the proposal.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly the idea. Across the board, there have been inconsistencies in this standard, with each case being treated piecemeal, without the realization that a unifying principle could create better consistency with less discussion. Suppose that at every city we had the discussion of how to name it instead of choosing guidelines and only arguing the exceptions. Anyway, the editors at New York are welcome to offer opinions here, but beyond that there's no reason for one specific case to inform a standard far more general and abstract. We wouldn't forego the city, state convention just because New York is an exception.--Loodog (talk) 21:01, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you that there are inconsistencies, and that things would be easier with a unifying priniciple, but I think that the inconsistencies are a reflection of the lack of consensus on this issue, and therefore a unifying principle hasn't been agreed upon yet. Cheers,Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 03:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I think this proposal may be excessive. We like simple names, and parenthetical disambiguation is a cost. If we can disambiguate without parentheses, so much the better. (I don't particularly care how New York comes out; but any one of New York, New York City, and New York, New York is preferable to New York (city), which some will read Vegaswikian's proposal as requiring.)

It may be simpler to put in the rule of thumb that primary usage should be 80% or 90% of all English usage. (It's somewhere; was it once here?) This will accomplish much of the good, without producing a mandate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:42, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Everytime I ask to put a number to define "primary", people get very anxious, worrying a percentage would override common sense. Maybe if we wrote it as a non-binding suggestion, something like:

"If there is a topic associated with that phrase much more used than other topics (80-90% of usage as a rough rule-of-thumb), that topic is the primary use. If there is no primary meaning, the phrase should be disambiguated unless there is consensus to do otherwise."

--Loodog (talk) 17:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely nowhere here or anywhere else did anyone propose anything that would result in moving New York City to New York (city). Read the proposal again. If anything, this proposal would have consequences for "New York". I don't think you'll ever get a WP consensus to agree that "New York City" could ever be thought to be ambiguous.

Also, don't think that discussion here overwrites discussion anywhere else. The purpose of this proposal is to streamline ambiguous situations when no other guidelines apply. This very proposal can, of course, be ignored in specific cases where consensus is to do so.--Loodog (talk) 23:16, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

So this discussion pretty much dead. I'm going to go ahead and stick it in unless anyone objects.--Loodog (talk) 19:02, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the discussion over Nice shows that the definition of primary topic needs to be clarified. It says "much more used than any other (significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings),",and we need to clarify that this may not be the most common usage of the word in every day life, but is the most common sense in which it would be sought in an encyclopedia. (ie adjectives and verbs will tend to carry less weight). The decision there was that the city Nice was the primary topic, even though the adjective "nice" is the more common usage in general vocabulary. PamD (talk) 21:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, how about: "If there is a topic associated with that phrase which is searched for significantly more than other topics in an encyclopedia (80-90% of usage as a rough rule-of-thumb), that topic is the primary use. If there is no primary meaning, the phrase should be disambiguated barring compelling reasons to do otherwise."

--Loodog (talk) 22:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with this proposal. There is clearly very little consensus, so we should leave things alone until there is consensus. We've only scratched the tip of the iceberg as far as discontent goes. For example, there's the issue of NPOV not merely from a current world view but from a historical world view; Worcester, Worcs. is historically massively significant being the site of a decisive Royalist vs. Republican battle in the English Civil War; Worcester, Mass. played only a passing role in the American War of Independence. Then there's visitor numbers to consider rather than just population; Worcester, Mass. is hardly top of anyone's must-see list, whereas Worcester, Worcs. is one of the main cathedral cities of Europe. If you consider the primary reason behind any article - notability - then Worcester, Worcs. wins hands down over Worcester, Mass. Yet this proposal would force the less notable city into the more notable article name. The consensus just isn't there, so this proposal should be dropped until there is consensus. Doing nothing is the best option in this situation. Let the articles argue it out on a case by case basis, on their own talk pages. If this proposal goes ahead it will bring nothing but trouble. Andrew Oakley (talk) 16:30, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Again, this guideline does NOT override consensus elsewhere just as "city, state" guideline doesn't override cases like New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Therefore this guideline should not be argued against on the basis of individual cases (since they may prove to be exceptions), but rather on the best general principle to follow the MAJORITY of the time.

The entire Worcester-Worcester debate doesn't belong here; you're welcome to raise that issue on that talk page. And also, were this proposal to be chosen, and consensus at the Worcester page were to follow it, it would NOT put either city at the base case, and so would NOT "force the less notable city into the more notable article name".--Loodog (talk) 19:28, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I think you are misreading the proposals. There is no attempt to force a less notable city into the lime light. In fact your logic is why we need to more clearly state the guideline. Determining if an article belongs in the primary name space is based on primary use. It is not a notability issue. The proposal simply attempts to refocus on the fact that disambiguation pages are not bad and that it may be common for no primary use to exist. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:55, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, great. I'll change it.--Loodog (talk) 14:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

"There is no attempt to force a less notable city into the lime light." - wrong. Loondog has a vested interest as a primary voice in Talk:Worcester#Requested move (again) and Talk:Worcester#Guideline changes that would affect this article. It is difficult to assume good faith under these circumstances. Loondog's request to move the article failed, and rather than accepting this consensus, he is attempting to get the rules changed to fit his rejected request. He is directly using this argument specifically to force the more notable Worcester article into a less notable title. It is therefore simply not true to state that this policy change is not specifically directed at Worcester. The evidence clearly shows otherwise. It is the equivalent of asking mom, after dad already said "No." Andrew Oakley (talk) 15:55, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

With the flip side being that in a biased discussion, as just about every discussion on WP:RM is due to the way notices are posted, the outcome frequently does ignores guidelines like the one about primary useage. This happens all too often. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, my user name is not "loondog". And my proposal NOT directed at Worcester. It's directed at Worcester, New York, Washington, and other discussions I've been in, and I've placed notices on all of the aforementioned talk pages so please don't accuse me of insidious subterfuge. And I'll just mention one more time that policy agreed upon here does NOT override discussion elsewhere. Let me try again: policy agreed upon here does NOT override discussion elsewhere.--Loodog (talk) 19:44, 6 October 2008 (UTC)