![]() | See User talk:Andrewa/P T examples and scenarios and User talk:Andrewa/P T test cases for examples and please contribute discussion and relevant examples there too |
This is a place to develop a possible RfC along the lines of User:Andrewa/The third draft regarding avoiding primary topic#Ambiguous names. Andrewa ( talk) 00:18, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
See also (oldest first)
which contain some interesting examples, but further discussion on the proposal in general should be here for the moment, and on specific examples and scenarios at User talk:Andrewa/P T examples and scenarios. Andrewa ( talk) 05:49, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
In hindsight my original proposal made it too simple, and was not entirely consistent.
Clarifying the Details section made this obvious. So this is the result. It's a significant change. Andrewa ( talk) 16:05, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
The proposal does not currently include any specific changes to guidelines or policies, only to principles.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Malplaced disambiguation pages is a good place to start thinking about this as it links to several relevant pages and sections.
But perhaps the RfC should not get bogged down in such details. There's an advantage in first discussing and hopefully getting consensus on the desired effects of the changes. That should be specific enough for start. The devil will be in the detailed wording. Andrewa ( talk) 18:50, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
The two things that need to change are:
That is enough. It will have consequences. Andrewa ( talk) 01:50, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
This discussion on WP:MALPLACED is encouraging. Perhaps others will now look deeper, and perhaps then the whole house of cards will do what those do best.
But of course such rethinks are not easily sold. Lots of people have put lots of work into enforcing WP:MALPLACED, let alone WP:P T. It's a big investment to write off. Needs courage.
If relativity is proved right the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German and the Germans will call me a Jew. - Albert Einstein (scroll to the bottom of the section). Andrewa ( talk) 18:35, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
and
Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#PRIMARYTOPIC vs NOTADICT
both contain some very interesting observations. I'll comment on their relevance here, in due course. Meantime discussion here is always welcome. Andrewa ( talk) 01:40, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#PROPOSAL: rename PRIMARYTOPIC to MOSTSOUGHTTOPIC
Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#No consensus in primary topic discussions
Interesting. Andrewa ( talk) 08:52, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
That leaves us with a choice between two evils: requiring an extra click from readers seeking NYC, or leading those seeking the state to the wrong article. The former must happen a lot but its consequences are minor. The latter would happen less often but may be more severe: NYC is a big page, and there's a real risk that readers may absorb its facts without realising that they pertain to the city rather than the state. I think we've got it right, but neither answer is ideal and it's a judgement call. [1]
Very interested in discussing concrete scenarios. Andrewa ( talk) 22:23, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Certes has suggested above we should certainly err on the side of putting a dab at the base name when editors disagree for the good reason that the term means different things to different people and further above I still wouldn't go as far as the essay suggests, but some movement in that direction would be beneficial.
There are several problems with just raising the bar on P T.
One is just simplicity... or lack of it. Just how much disagreement on P T is required to establish no consensus? We risk replacing one contentious waste of time with another that may I fear prove equally problematic.
But the overriding one to me is that it doesn't seem necessary to keep this complication anyway. There simply aren't any scenarios in which having a new or moved article at an ambiguous name is of overall benefit to the readers. But the problem still is, this is counter-intuitive, and so many people have so often argued that having the P T at the base name is of benefit to the readers, either by reducing mouse clicks (it generally doesn't) or by making the P T more prominent in search results (it does, but also makes it less recognisable among those results) or by making it easier to link to the article (it does, a very little, but it also makes it far harder to link to the right article).
There is a valid argument for keeping existing articles at their ambiguous base names, to avoid breaking incoming external links, but it should be noted that it does not apply at all to new articles or those being moved anyway. And there is the principle of least astonishment. But this isn't a problem with existing articles, which should be kept at their existing titles anyway for the preceding reason. It would be a consideration for a new encyclopedia starting from scratch, but we are hardly that (and nor is any future fork).
On the plus side, it may be easier to get consensus to raise the bar on P T rather than just deprecate it. Again I'm unconvinced. We have tried before. Andrewa ( talk) 17:51, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Certes has now also said For these reasons, I think we still need primary topics, though I agree that they should be used less often. [2]
I now agree with this. That's why I'm proposing to deprecate P T rather than abolish it (as I previously proposed... but as well as being unsaleable and an enormous amount of work, that turns out to be unnecessary).
You could even see my current proposal as just raising the bar. But I'm proposing to raise it as high as we possibly can.
This seems to me the most logical solution, and also the simplest, and also the most beneficial to readers. (But it may still be unsaleable.) Andrewa ( talk) 01:01, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
I agree completely with this essay. Most WP:RMs I have seen which try to define or to change a WP:PTOPIC are fanclub stuff. I would only add:
The risk of accumulating bad links far outweighs the minor nuisance of requiring readers to make one extra click. (Example: the two discussions at Talk:Jethro Tull, in one of which OP participated.)
Page views and Google hits are bad guides both to current and to long-term significance. They should only be used to support other reasoned arguments. (I recall one case where there were three notable 18th- or 19th-century Scottish botanists with the same name. The argument was made that the one who was PTOPIC was indeed PTOPIC because he got more page views than the other two. Well, duh. The reason for that was obvious, and had nothing to do with relative notability.)
WP:TWODABS is a bad argument unless WP:NOPRIMARY is addressed also.
Something which was chosen as PTOPIC when Wikipedia was just starting out is very likely both to be PTOPIC and to remain so. An article which has only recently been written or moved is very unlikely to be PTOPIC. (There are, of course, commonsense exceptions. As a historical example, when Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, that immediately became PTOPIC: he may have been the most famous person in the world at the time. Similarly, I can imagine cases where something which was PTOPIC loses that status and becomes ambiguous. As a possibly hypothetical example – I haven't checked the history – I think there's a good argument that Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four) was PTOPIC until Big Brother (franchise) gained notoriety.)
One of my tests, which I think OP has seen before: Does just about everyone who knows about a lesser topic also know about the PTOPIC? Example: Tetrahedron and Tetrahedron (journal). If so, there is less risk of bad links being created and more chance of bad links being repaired. Narky Blert ( talk) 11:07, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry, as this is most likely not the spot for my comment, but I got lost with the amount of text and sub-headers so I just placed it at the last relevant-ish header. I'm not a fan of any use of Primary Topics. My main editing subjects are TV, film and media related and it always amazes me how hard people fight to get one item a primary over others. This even goes one step ahead and some editors even argue that an article which itself has a qualifier can be a primary of that qualifier - so "<name of TV series> (TV series)" can be a primary, over other TV series with the same name. As a current example of this, see Talk:Wheel of Fortune (1952 game show)#Requested move 19 October 2018 where Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show) is the "primary" for any US game show, even though Wheel of Fortune (1952 game show) is also a US game show. I'd be content even with disambiguation pages always being the primary. Yes, even Paris. If a user is searching the search bar, then Paris, France should be either the first or second results (in any adequate search engine). I've also never been moved by the argument of a user needing to click one more page in order to reach where they want to. So what? Will that kill that user? We click thousand of times each day during a normal web experience, why does Wikipedia have to be very "simple" one-click experience? If this ever gets a RfC, please ping me if you remember. [3]
Lots of good points, and interesting examples. Andrewa ( talk) 05:43, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Simplicity we could eliminate all primary topics, and use primary redirects. PT (without a redirect) is the simplest way to get a reader to the article, and similarly for writers. It's not just about navigation, but complexity. There may be reasons to increase complexity, but if search needs improving it's easier to improve search than make the structure more complex than needed (that's my gut reaction) [5]
I replied As an RM regular, I can assure you that P T as it currently stands is anything but simple... In my current view, deprecating P T is a very desirable simplification! But as I said, still early days... [6]
There was subsequent discussion. Later in that discussion:
...using an ambiguous title for a most likely topic reduces the complexity to that when there's no ambiguity. It's pragmatic. [7]
I replied No. It simplifies things for readers who are (1) looking for that article and (2) unaware that other meanings of that title may be considered primary by others. For all other readers (including of course any who don't agree with us on what the P T is), it complicates things. Most of the damage can be addressed by redirects, as discussed elsewhere. But this isn't simplicity. The simplest method is, have a DAB (or a redirect to a more general DAB) at every ambiguous article title. But that's not necessarily the best method. [8]
But here is IMO a better place to explore the issues raised. Watch this space. Andrewa ( talk) 09:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Well some things you'd need to address...
The benefits are stated (Improve the chance of readers finding the article they want; Reduce the number of mouse clicks required to find the correct article; Reduce the number of article moves; Reduce mislinkings within Wikipedia) but never proven or even really demonstrated. In fact it says that your proposal is "counter intuitive", and after all we have intuition for a good reason. So a counter-intuitive proposal is going to need especially compelling arguments.
Reduce the number of mouse clicks required to find the correct article, well of course (it is not the only virtue for article titles, but it is a virtue). But you don't provide any useful data or even argument to support that your proposal would, indeed, promote this virtue. Improve the chance of readers finding the article they want is even more important, but... again, crickets.
And such benefit as does seem likely true (to me) seem mostly for editors. I personally don't much care if editors' jobs are made easier, we're here for the reader. That being said, making it easier (and therefore less likely) for editors to make wrong wikilinks does help the reader. However, our internal arguments over article moves don't much harm the reader.
But then one example that you give implies that a link to the term "Prince" unadorned is often written, and this is commonly a mislink (the musician is meant), so I think what you're saying is that the article "Prince" should have been named "Prince (title)" if it was being made now. But assuming that people are still going to link to "Prince" in an article referencing the musician, all this will do is take the reader to a Prince disambiguation page where they then must select their desired article (from a list of dozens) rather than taking the reader to the article about the title Prince, where there's a hatnote. Same number of clicks, and the hatnote is certainly less intimidating than a menu page where you have to scroll around to find the musician
Not only that, but that means that a link to "Prince" alone would never be correct (altho I believe a robot will flag the editor's link to a disambiguation page and tell the, and sometimes they will fix it. Sometimes.) 24.107.115.8 ( talk) 05:04, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe said The first two dot points are worthy for debate, the third I oppose. [9]
That third point reads All new DABs should be created at their base names unless this would require moving an existing article which still has consensus support for being the Primary Topic.
I'm very interested in exactly why this is a problem. The bolded unless is critical here. This clause is only effective if either there's no existing article at the base name, or if there is one but no consensus exists that it's the Primary Topic.
If the second condition applies, then the article at the base name should be moved and disambiguated. It might perhaps be weakened slightly but significantly so that if no consensus exists either way, there would be no move. But I think that if no consensus exists that a topic is primary, then the default should be it isn't, and it shouldn't be at the base name anyway.
If the first condition applies, and there's no existing article at the base name (which would mostly mean that there's nothing there at all and it's a redlink, but could mean a redirect or a few other things), I don't see the problem at all. Andrewa ( talk) 00:39, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Proposal
Primary Topic should be deprecated.
- All new articles should be created at unambiguous names.
- All article moves should be to unambiguous names.
- All new DABs should be created at their base names unless this would require moving an existing article which still has consensus support for being the Primary Topic.
Primary Topic should be retained as a valid reason for keeping an existing article at a base name if (but only if) consensus exists that the topic of this article is the Primary Topic of the term.
Commenting ...
Ambiguous titling seems stupid. It does. But here are degrees of ambiguity, as you say, and that's exactly the issue. Primary Topic means, yes it's ambiguous, but not ambiguous enough to matter.
for very strong PrimaryTopics (NB. PT has degrees, not bimodal yes/no), if all readers expect the PrimaryTopic to be at that title, it is not a good idea to send them to a DAB page. Agree. But almost all of those articles already exist, and so are not covered by the third bullet.
DAB pages themselves need to be titled in compliance with PRECISE. I.e. suffix all DAB pages with "(disambiguation)" I have no objection to that in principle. We could then have redirects from the base names to these pages, in fact in terms of User:Andrewa/Primary Topic RfC#Primary redirects that's the only option I can see. I'm still not convinced that (disambiguation) is recognizable, but that's a different issue and can be handled quite independently. Andrewa ( talk) 01:13, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
I disagree because for very strong PrimaryTopics... I answered this above but it wasn't really addressed in the discussion.
I think the probability of a new article being on a very strong PrimaryTopic is zilch. Yes, we are creating new Primary Topics all the time. But they're all either controversial, or should be. Andrewa ( talk) 23:02, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
My comment above Primary Topic means, yes it's ambiguous, but not ambiguous enough to matter seems worthy of more discussion. (Aren't our own words delicious? But I like your degrees of ambiguity too.)
The issue as I see it is, it most often does matter, to the point that the onus of proof should be on those who wish to assert that Primary Topic should be preferred either in a particular practical instance or in policy. We are at the very least making far too much use of it, and spending far too much time on it, and missing the significance of the damage done, such as when a Primary Topic changes from one topic to another, and the resulting article move sends all incoming external links to the wrong article, and makes most incoming internal links both nonsensical and unfixable. Andrewa ( talk) 20:59, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
The naming convention guideline banner reads It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.
It might be good to list some current exceptions to current policy and guidelines.
And the proposed deprecation of Primary Topic would possibly have exceptions. It might also be good to consider some hypotheticals, to investigate and perhaps demonstrate how rare these would be. Andrewa ( talk) 08:16, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Using a dab when the PT is in doubt certainly makes life easier for editors. Of course, we should always put readers first, but the easier you make my job, the better I do it and the more time I have left for improving another part of Wikipedia. Certes ( talk) 10:47, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps surprisingly, those are not my own words! [10] But my thoughts exactly.
It's the whole basis of this proposal. OK, the original poster of those words didn't mean it quite that simply (see the context above or by clicking the diff, and the discussion that followed). But I do. Andrewa ( talk) 22:37, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
I know that the proposal is not consistent following this edit and my tidying it up has not fixed this. In progress. Comments of course welcome. Andrewa ( talk) 05:12, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
It occurs to me that WP:AT and WP:disambiguation may not be consistent.
An unambiguous name is inherently more recognisable than an ambiguous name.
Interesting? Andrewa ( talk) 23:46, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
At the very least, ambiguous names seem to be contrary to the spirit of WP:AT... despite it explicitly allowing them in the specific case of there being a Primary Topic. Andrewa ( talk) 00:49, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
See User:Andrewa/Primary Topic previous discussions. Andrewa ( talk) 23:48, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
It is a proven principle of software maintenance (it's probably got a name and a dozen PhDs describing it, but I worked it out all by my little self):
Fix the problem you know
Often I have confronted several problems with a program. There were big problems I didn't understand, and a little one that I did.
So I fixed the little one that I knew how to fix.
And as if by magic, the big problems that I didn't understand went away too.
This is applicable to this RfC. We can and should fix the problem with new article names. We understand that and can fix it.
So let us do that, and see whether the problem of existing long-standing names is then any problem at all. Andrewa ( talk) 00:39, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
That principle could be restated (not as clearly IMO but it's a useful other perspective):
Be as logical as possible
The more I think about it the more deliberately choosing an ambiguous article title seems to be quite simply illogical. The function of the article title is to identify the article topic, Ambiguous titles don't do that very well... that's what ambiguous means!
And it's even what WP:AT currently says too... Article titles should be recognizable, concise, natural, precise, and consistent. An unambiguous article title will be recognised by all. An ambiguous one won't be. Again, that's what ambiguous means. Andrewa ( talk) 18:43, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
I have a question regarding this All new articles should be created at unambiguous names
. Say our article is a new TV series called
Cars cars cars!, do we create it at the base name, or do we create it with a disambiguation -
Cars cars cars! (TV series). If the answer is with disambiguation, do we then create it with the base "(TV series)" or with the more specific "(American TV series)" / "(2019 TV series)"? --
Gonnym (
talk)
12:38, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe recently commented I have long argued that an important underappreciated underdocumented criteria against PT is propensity for mis-recognition by large particular audiences (eg school children in India). [11]
I couldn't agree more! I have tried to cover this in the proposal. But it's a work in progress. How can I cover this point better? Andrewa ( talk) 02:21, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Another editor has suggested that P T is often OK, often so-so, and often unhelpful.
See User talk:Andrewa/P T test cases#Examples where P T is helpful for more on this and a challenge: Can we find any examples where the current setup is better than my proposal? Andrewa ( talk) 18:55, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
The essay asserts without basis: Most often [Primary Topic] merely increases the number of mouse clicks required.
.
Please explain. -- В²C ☎ 00:20, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
This edit seems to raise questions best discussed here. Will the claimed benefits (see the Rationale section of the proposal) actually be achieved? They are:
(And there's now a fifth line to the rationale which I didn't think was necessary, as it's covered elsewhere in the proposal and isn't a motivation for change, but another editor wanted it clarified and it does no harm.) Andrewa ( talk) 19:17, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
It occurs to me that so far, my rationale and motivation is almost entirely practical. It just seems to me that the current system fails too often.
But there's another way of approaching it: A theoretical side. I'm touching on this when I claim that ambiguous titles are illogical, and contrary to the spirit of WP:AT.
We don't even have a workable definition of Primary Topic. It's in practice whatever the community decides by consensus should be at an ambiguous base name. And the guidelines have been rather volatile lately. Those both should give us pause.
And the current guideline says exactly that, and has for many years, but that section has been significantly changed over the years as to what is regarded as evidence, see December 2014 and December 2010 for example.
More to follow. Andrewa ( talk) 07:04, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Some good questions have been asked. Mostly that show a need to clarify the proposal rather than to change it in any basic way,
One contributor criticised the arbitrary date for grandfathering. There is none such.
Suppose a new band called themselves Metric space and became notable. We'd create Metric space (band), but we wouldn't move the existing article just because its title had become ambiguous. If they then recorded a chart-topping self-titled album and there was enough material to justify an article on it too, we'd then create Metric space (album) and a DAB at Metric space (disambiguation).
But we still wouldn't move the DAB to the base name, or the older article away from it, just because the term had become ambiguous. So long as it remains Primary Topic, it stays where it is. But now suppose the band becomes bigger than the Beatles. A petition for the UN to grant them pensions for life gains 100 million signatures in the first 24 hours. A rumour that one of them is secretly married causes tens of thousands of teenage suicide attempts. The Pope proposes all the members for immediate sainthood. Paris is officially renamed Metricity in their honour. They are clearly now the Primary Topic, so we move the math article to Metric space (mathematics), but we still don't move Metric space (band). Metric space is now ambiguous, so only the DAB could be moved there.
And in hindsight, we realise that we should have disambiguated the original article on the mathematical topic much, much earlier! That should have happened as soon as it was no longer the Primary Topic.
But how about completely new names? A professional wrestler called The Zonk becomes notable, and gets an article. A hairstyle and a cruise ship are both named after him, and get their own articles too, and we create a DAB at The Zonk (disambiguation). The wrestler retires and is fading into history, and there's an RM to disambiguate his article, but no consensus as to whether he's still Primary Topic. He might be. So no move.
Get the idea? There's no arbitrary date. And an article at an unambiguous name is trivially the Primary Topic of that name. Lots going on! Andrewa ( talk) 12:46, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Here's another little clarification... any article at an unambiguous name is, trivially, the Primary Topic of that name.
This sounds obvious but has some subtle consequences. Andrewa ( talk) 22:34, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Another rather subtle question.
Some current discussion at the RfC at wt:DAB#Primary topic and Incomplete disambiguation conflicts. See here if it has been archived. Andrewa ( talk) 22:40, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Surely you agree that your points at User:Andrewa/Primary_Topic_RfC#Rationale apply as much to existing articles as to new articles. Yes? Then why does your proposal not apply to existing articles too? If you've already answered this, please point me to the section. Thanks. -- В²C ☎ 22:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
This is in response to Talk:The Americans#Need help fixing links. Interesting impact that I had not previously considered. Andrewa ( talk) 20:30, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Two more things the proposal should try to address, and probably already does. They are related! Andrewa ( talk) 00:57, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
I just stumbled upon Wikipedia:Partially disambiguated page names which documents and summarises discussion on this apparently perennial issue, most recently discussed at wt:DAB#Primary topic and Incomplete disambiguation conflicts.
The recent discussion meandered a bit, and I'm not even sure whether anyone was aware of that summary of previous discussions... if they referred to it, I may just have missed that in the discussion at wt:DAB. Andrewa ( talk) 15:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Template:R from incomplete disambiguation reads in part This is a redirect from an incomplete disambiguation, a page name that is too ambiguous to be the title of an article or other project page. Such titles should redirect to an appropriate disambiguation page (or section of it), or to a more complete disambiguation. But hang on... if it's OK to redirect it to a more complete disambiguation, why can't this (supposedly) incomplete disambiguation just be used for the article title? Which is another take on #Incomplete disambiguation above really.
We're having a bet both ways. Andrewa ( talk) 00:57, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
See here. Food for thought? Andrewa ( talk) 00:27, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
I missed this edit until too late... the section has just been archived.
Exactly. Worthy of further consideration. Andrewa ( talk) 20:41, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
Very interesting discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Articles that exist and could exist.
Initiated by myself with the naive comment This is probably (I hope) a very quick discussion (for a change). It's claimed here that "We disambiguate article titles based on the articles that exist and could exist." I don't think that's even remotely true. Very interested in other views.
I was wrong on both counts. A tangled tale unfolded that led to the conclusion that we do disambiguate article titles based on the articles that exist and could exist, and a subsequent RM has confirmed this.
This reduces the impact of my proposal a great deal. New articles can and should be created at unambiguous titles even if no article currently exists for the shorter, ambiguous title. That it would seem is existing policy and practice. Andrewa ( talk) 16:52, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Much discussion recently which I'll link to in time! Is using the Search Wikipedia box searching? Some say no rather emphatically.
But there are many ways of seeking an article. One I use regularly without thinking is to Wikilink it in an edit and then test the Wikilink using the Preview button.
I recently did this looking for a magazine called Knowledge that I used to read as a small child. But Knowledge (magazine) was a dead end, not even a useful hatnote. When I finally found it at Knowledge (partwork), the article read Knowledge was a British weekly educational magazine for children which was assembled in blue binders into an encyclopedia. (my emphasis)
So I think that my seeking method was reasonable. Not sure how to improve the navigation in this case... maybe a hatnote.
The point is, there are many ways of searching (seeking?) and we probably can't even imagine them all. But having logical article titles should help! Andrewa ( talk) 22:45, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Interesting comment:
IMO the New York Wars ended in the correct consensus – different primary meanings in at least UK and US, and possibly within US, so no PTOPIC. [15]
But... surely if a term is ambiguous, it will almost always have different primary meanings to different groups of people? If we accept that as a criterion for no PTOPIC, there won't be very many primary topics.
Agree that the NYRM2017 decision was correct in terms of improving Wikipedia.
But what got me thinking more deeply is that IMO it's not the correct decision in terms of our current policies, guidelines and practices. New York City is the primary topic. And the more I dug into the logic of P T, the shakier the whole concept became. Andrewa ( talk) 21:21, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
The hell it is, in both cases!"New York" in sources can be contextual, but when something is from "New York", it more often refers to the larger locale—the same as Luxembourg and Luxembourg City. The state, by its common name, is the primary topic for "New York".
Very interesting issue raised here above. It's been raised before and I confess I didn't understand the point being made before.
It doesn't actually mention polysemes, just contrasts homonymy to being a variation on detail of usage. NYS vs NYC is not a case of an homonym, but a variation on detail of usage.
Homonyms are words which sound alike or are spelled alike, but have different meanings. It gets a bit more complicated, but as a written encyclopedia we're actually concerned with homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of their pronunciation). I think that's what homonym means here, and that distinction simplifies things a great deal. Whether or not they are homophones doesn't concern us when choosing article titles.
Is a variation on detail or usage a polyseme? Polysemy is thus distinct from homonymy—or homophony—which is an accidental similarity between two words (such as bear the animal, and the verb to bear); while homonymy is often a mere linguistic coincidence, polysemy is not. So the usage of New York for both the city and the state is polysemy. The articles aren't all that much help... the one on polysemy is very technical, and both articles are a bit vague as to the precise meanings of the terms, explaining that linguists themselves can't agree.
So linguistics is not a great help, but it's a little. We have one useful term... homograph. Article names are homographs if they are identical and the reason for this is nothing to do with their meanings. Row, bear and stalk are given as examples of words that have such unrelated meanings.
And the claim of SmokeyJoe seems to me to be that PrimaryTopic doesn’t apply unless the meanings are unrelated... that is, unless the meanings are genuine homographs. Is that an accurate paraphrase? If so I begin to understand I think.
But I still can't see why this makes any difference to us in choosing article titles. All we're concerned about is what our readers and editors will take the term to mean. Why they attach these meanings doesn't matter. Andrewa ( talk) 23:32, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
Andrea has mentioned wave a few times. It is worthy of its own consideration. It is a troubled case.
Fascinating discussion archived at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 52#INCDAB - Dubious assumptions. It refers to the RfC at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 51#Primary topic and Incomplete disambiguation conflicts which closed with There is a consensus in favour of Option 2, and that the standard for making disambiguated titles such as Foo (bar) a primary topic among all Foo's that are Bars should be tougher than the standard for titles that don't have any disambiguator. Andrewa ( talk) 04:59, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm coming around to the view that all DABs should be distinctively identified as such (as many are by the flag (disambiguation)).
This cuts across the idea that a DAB should be at an ambiguous name. And this is not necessary anyway. Perhaps this is my third epiphany. What is needed is simply that the destination of the ambiguous term is the DAB.
But I'm not convinced that (disambiguation) is the way to go. It's jargon. Maybe, the main namespace (AKA the article namespace) should be reserved for articles, and DABs should be in a separate navigation namespace?
We might for example broaden the use of namespace 100 (currently the portal namespace) to include DABs. We'd still need hard redirects from the article namespace. An alias of DAB could be created, similar to the wp alias of namespace 4.
And again, this wouldn't need to happen overnight. All that needs to happen is that new DABs are created in namespace 100 with a redirect from namespace 0, and that whenever a DAB is moved for some other reason, it is moved to namespace 100.
There are a few complications... what happens of there's already a portal by that name? New portals could be named XY Portal just as wikiprojects are named WikiProject XY in the Project Namespace. Maybe keep the pseudo-disambiguator (disambiguation) to resolve conflicts with existing portals.
It would not be good to complicate the RfC unnecessarily. But clarifying it, to say that it's not what is at the ambiguous term (in namespace 0) that matters but just what its destination is, seems a good thing. Andrewa ( talk) 15:27, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
![]() | See User talk:Andrewa/P T examples and scenarios and User talk:Andrewa/P T test cases for examples and please contribute discussion and relevant examples there too |
This is a place to develop a possible RfC along the lines of User:Andrewa/The third draft regarding avoiding primary topic#Ambiguous names. Andrewa ( talk) 00:18, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
See also (oldest first)
which contain some interesting examples, but further discussion on the proposal in general should be here for the moment, and on specific examples and scenarios at User talk:Andrewa/P T examples and scenarios. Andrewa ( talk) 05:49, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
In hindsight my original proposal made it too simple, and was not entirely consistent.
Clarifying the Details section made this obvious. So this is the result. It's a significant change. Andrewa ( talk) 16:05, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
The proposal does not currently include any specific changes to guidelines or policies, only to principles.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Malplaced disambiguation pages is a good place to start thinking about this as it links to several relevant pages and sections.
But perhaps the RfC should not get bogged down in such details. There's an advantage in first discussing and hopefully getting consensus on the desired effects of the changes. That should be specific enough for start. The devil will be in the detailed wording. Andrewa ( talk) 18:50, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
The two things that need to change are:
That is enough. It will have consequences. Andrewa ( talk) 01:50, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
This discussion on WP:MALPLACED is encouraging. Perhaps others will now look deeper, and perhaps then the whole house of cards will do what those do best.
But of course such rethinks are not easily sold. Lots of people have put lots of work into enforcing WP:MALPLACED, let alone WP:P T. It's a big investment to write off. Needs courage.
If relativity is proved right the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German and the Germans will call me a Jew. - Albert Einstein (scroll to the bottom of the section). Andrewa ( talk) 18:35, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
and
Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#PRIMARYTOPIC vs NOTADICT
both contain some very interesting observations. I'll comment on their relevance here, in due course. Meantime discussion here is always welcome. Andrewa ( talk) 01:40, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#PROPOSAL: rename PRIMARYTOPIC to MOSTSOUGHTTOPIC
Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#No consensus in primary topic discussions
Interesting. Andrewa ( talk) 08:52, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
That leaves us with a choice between two evils: requiring an extra click from readers seeking NYC, or leading those seeking the state to the wrong article. The former must happen a lot but its consequences are minor. The latter would happen less often but may be more severe: NYC is a big page, and there's a real risk that readers may absorb its facts without realising that they pertain to the city rather than the state. I think we've got it right, but neither answer is ideal and it's a judgement call. [1]
Very interested in discussing concrete scenarios. Andrewa ( talk) 22:23, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Certes has suggested above we should certainly err on the side of putting a dab at the base name when editors disagree for the good reason that the term means different things to different people and further above I still wouldn't go as far as the essay suggests, but some movement in that direction would be beneficial.
There are several problems with just raising the bar on P T.
One is just simplicity... or lack of it. Just how much disagreement on P T is required to establish no consensus? We risk replacing one contentious waste of time with another that may I fear prove equally problematic.
But the overriding one to me is that it doesn't seem necessary to keep this complication anyway. There simply aren't any scenarios in which having a new or moved article at an ambiguous name is of overall benefit to the readers. But the problem still is, this is counter-intuitive, and so many people have so often argued that having the P T at the base name is of benefit to the readers, either by reducing mouse clicks (it generally doesn't) or by making the P T more prominent in search results (it does, but also makes it less recognisable among those results) or by making it easier to link to the article (it does, a very little, but it also makes it far harder to link to the right article).
There is a valid argument for keeping existing articles at their ambiguous base names, to avoid breaking incoming external links, but it should be noted that it does not apply at all to new articles or those being moved anyway. And there is the principle of least astonishment. But this isn't a problem with existing articles, which should be kept at their existing titles anyway for the preceding reason. It would be a consideration for a new encyclopedia starting from scratch, but we are hardly that (and nor is any future fork).
On the plus side, it may be easier to get consensus to raise the bar on P T rather than just deprecate it. Again I'm unconvinced. We have tried before. Andrewa ( talk) 17:51, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Certes has now also said For these reasons, I think we still need primary topics, though I agree that they should be used less often. [2]
I now agree with this. That's why I'm proposing to deprecate P T rather than abolish it (as I previously proposed... but as well as being unsaleable and an enormous amount of work, that turns out to be unnecessary).
You could even see my current proposal as just raising the bar. But I'm proposing to raise it as high as we possibly can.
This seems to me the most logical solution, and also the simplest, and also the most beneficial to readers. (But it may still be unsaleable.) Andrewa ( talk) 01:01, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
I agree completely with this essay. Most WP:RMs I have seen which try to define or to change a WP:PTOPIC are fanclub stuff. I would only add:
The risk of accumulating bad links far outweighs the minor nuisance of requiring readers to make one extra click. (Example: the two discussions at Talk:Jethro Tull, in one of which OP participated.)
Page views and Google hits are bad guides both to current and to long-term significance. They should only be used to support other reasoned arguments. (I recall one case where there were three notable 18th- or 19th-century Scottish botanists with the same name. The argument was made that the one who was PTOPIC was indeed PTOPIC because he got more page views than the other two. Well, duh. The reason for that was obvious, and had nothing to do with relative notability.)
WP:TWODABS is a bad argument unless WP:NOPRIMARY is addressed also.
Something which was chosen as PTOPIC when Wikipedia was just starting out is very likely both to be PTOPIC and to remain so. An article which has only recently been written or moved is very unlikely to be PTOPIC. (There are, of course, commonsense exceptions. As a historical example, when Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, that immediately became PTOPIC: he may have been the most famous person in the world at the time. Similarly, I can imagine cases where something which was PTOPIC loses that status and becomes ambiguous. As a possibly hypothetical example – I haven't checked the history – I think there's a good argument that Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four) was PTOPIC until Big Brother (franchise) gained notoriety.)
One of my tests, which I think OP has seen before: Does just about everyone who knows about a lesser topic also know about the PTOPIC? Example: Tetrahedron and Tetrahedron (journal). If so, there is less risk of bad links being created and more chance of bad links being repaired. Narky Blert ( talk) 11:07, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry, as this is most likely not the spot for my comment, but I got lost with the amount of text and sub-headers so I just placed it at the last relevant-ish header. I'm not a fan of any use of Primary Topics. My main editing subjects are TV, film and media related and it always amazes me how hard people fight to get one item a primary over others. This even goes one step ahead and some editors even argue that an article which itself has a qualifier can be a primary of that qualifier - so "<name of TV series> (TV series)" can be a primary, over other TV series with the same name. As a current example of this, see Talk:Wheel of Fortune (1952 game show)#Requested move 19 October 2018 where Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show) is the "primary" for any US game show, even though Wheel of Fortune (1952 game show) is also a US game show. I'd be content even with disambiguation pages always being the primary. Yes, even Paris. If a user is searching the search bar, then Paris, France should be either the first or second results (in any adequate search engine). I've also never been moved by the argument of a user needing to click one more page in order to reach where they want to. So what? Will that kill that user? We click thousand of times each day during a normal web experience, why does Wikipedia have to be very "simple" one-click experience? If this ever gets a RfC, please ping me if you remember. [3]
Lots of good points, and interesting examples. Andrewa ( talk) 05:43, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Simplicity we could eliminate all primary topics, and use primary redirects. PT (without a redirect) is the simplest way to get a reader to the article, and similarly for writers. It's not just about navigation, but complexity. There may be reasons to increase complexity, but if search needs improving it's easier to improve search than make the structure more complex than needed (that's my gut reaction) [5]
I replied As an RM regular, I can assure you that P T as it currently stands is anything but simple... In my current view, deprecating P T is a very desirable simplification! But as I said, still early days... [6]
There was subsequent discussion. Later in that discussion:
...using an ambiguous title for a most likely topic reduces the complexity to that when there's no ambiguity. It's pragmatic. [7]
I replied No. It simplifies things for readers who are (1) looking for that article and (2) unaware that other meanings of that title may be considered primary by others. For all other readers (including of course any who don't agree with us on what the P T is), it complicates things. Most of the damage can be addressed by redirects, as discussed elsewhere. But this isn't simplicity. The simplest method is, have a DAB (or a redirect to a more general DAB) at every ambiguous article title. But that's not necessarily the best method. [8]
But here is IMO a better place to explore the issues raised. Watch this space. Andrewa ( talk) 09:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Well some things you'd need to address...
The benefits are stated (Improve the chance of readers finding the article they want; Reduce the number of mouse clicks required to find the correct article; Reduce the number of article moves; Reduce mislinkings within Wikipedia) but never proven or even really demonstrated. In fact it says that your proposal is "counter intuitive", and after all we have intuition for a good reason. So a counter-intuitive proposal is going to need especially compelling arguments.
Reduce the number of mouse clicks required to find the correct article, well of course (it is not the only virtue for article titles, but it is a virtue). But you don't provide any useful data or even argument to support that your proposal would, indeed, promote this virtue. Improve the chance of readers finding the article they want is even more important, but... again, crickets.
And such benefit as does seem likely true (to me) seem mostly for editors. I personally don't much care if editors' jobs are made easier, we're here for the reader. That being said, making it easier (and therefore less likely) for editors to make wrong wikilinks does help the reader. However, our internal arguments over article moves don't much harm the reader.
But then one example that you give implies that a link to the term "Prince" unadorned is often written, and this is commonly a mislink (the musician is meant), so I think what you're saying is that the article "Prince" should have been named "Prince (title)" if it was being made now. But assuming that people are still going to link to "Prince" in an article referencing the musician, all this will do is take the reader to a Prince disambiguation page where they then must select their desired article (from a list of dozens) rather than taking the reader to the article about the title Prince, where there's a hatnote. Same number of clicks, and the hatnote is certainly less intimidating than a menu page where you have to scroll around to find the musician
Not only that, but that means that a link to "Prince" alone would never be correct (altho I believe a robot will flag the editor's link to a disambiguation page and tell the, and sometimes they will fix it. Sometimes.) 24.107.115.8 ( talk) 05:04, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe said The first two dot points are worthy for debate, the third I oppose. [9]
That third point reads All new DABs should be created at their base names unless this would require moving an existing article which still has consensus support for being the Primary Topic.
I'm very interested in exactly why this is a problem. The bolded unless is critical here. This clause is only effective if either there's no existing article at the base name, or if there is one but no consensus exists that it's the Primary Topic.
If the second condition applies, then the article at the base name should be moved and disambiguated. It might perhaps be weakened slightly but significantly so that if no consensus exists either way, there would be no move. But I think that if no consensus exists that a topic is primary, then the default should be it isn't, and it shouldn't be at the base name anyway.
If the first condition applies, and there's no existing article at the base name (which would mostly mean that there's nothing there at all and it's a redlink, but could mean a redirect or a few other things), I don't see the problem at all. Andrewa ( talk) 00:39, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Proposal
Primary Topic should be deprecated.
- All new articles should be created at unambiguous names.
- All article moves should be to unambiguous names.
- All new DABs should be created at their base names unless this would require moving an existing article which still has consensus support for being the Primary Topic.
Primary Topic should be retained as a valid reason for keeping an existing article at a base name if (but only if) consensus exists that the topic of this article is the Primary Topic of the term.
Commenting ...
Ambiguous titling seems stupid. It does. But here are degrees of ambiguity, as you say, and that's exactly the issue. Primary Topic means, yes it's ambiguous, but not ambiguous enough to matter.
for very strong PrimaryTopics (NB. PT has degrees, not bimodal yes/no), if all readers expect the PrimaryTopic to be at that title, it is not a good idea to send them to a DAB page. Agree. But almost all of those articles already exist, and so are not covered by the third bullet.
DAB pages themselves need to be titled in compliance with PRECISE. I.e. suffix all DAB pages with "(disambiguation)" I have no objection to that in principle. We could then have redirects from the base names to these pages, in fact in terms of User:Andrewa/Primary Topic RfC#Primary redirects that's the only option I can see. I'm still not convinced that (disambiguation) is recognizable, but that's a different issue and can be handled quite independently. Andrewa ( talk) 01:13, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
I disagree because for very strong PrimaryTopics... I answered this above but it wasn't really addressed in the discussion.
I think the probability of a new article being on a very strong PrimaryTopic is zilch. Yes, we are creating new Primary Topics all the time. But they're all either controversial, or should be. Andrewa ( talk) 23:02, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
My comment above Primary Topic means, yes it's ambiguous, but not ambiguous enough to matter seems worthy of more discussion. (Aren't our own words delicious? But I like your degrees of ambiguity too.)
The issue as I see it is, it most often does matter, to the point that the onus of proof should be on those who wish to assert that Primary Topic should be preferred either in a particular practical instance or in policy. We are at the very least making far too much use of it, and spending far too much time on it, and missing the significance of the damage done, such as when a Primary Topic changes from one topic to another, and the resulting article move sends all incoming external links to the wrong article, and makes most incoming internal links both nonsensical and unfixable. Andrewa ( talk) 20:59, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
The naming convention guideline banner reads It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.
It might be good to list some current exceptions to current policy and guidelines.
And the proposed deprecation of Primary Topic would possibly have exceptions. It might also be good to consider some hypotheticals, to investigate and perhaps demonstrate how rare these would be. Andrewa ( talk) 08:16, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Using a dab when the PT is in doubt certainly makes life easier for editors. Of course, we should always put readers first, but the easier you make my job, the better I do it and the more time I have left for improving another part of Wikipedia. Certes ( talk) 10:47, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps surprisingly, those are not my own words! [10] But my thoughts exactly.
It's the whole basis of this proposal. OK, the original poster of those words didn't mean it quite that simply (see the context above or by clicking the diff, and the discussion that followed). But I do. Andrewa ( talk) 22:37, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
I know that the proposal is not consistent following this edit and my tidying it up has not fixed this. In progress. Comments of course welcome. Andrewa ( talk) 05:12, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
It occurs to me that WP:AT and WP:disambiguation may not be consistent.
An unambiguous name is inherently more recognisable than an ambiguous name.
Interesting? Andrewa ( talk) 23:46, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
At the very least, ambiguous names seem to be contrary to the spirit of WP:AT... despite it explicitly allowing them in the specific case of there being a Primary Topic. Andrewa ( talk) 00:49, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
See User:Andrewa/Primary Topic previous discussions. Andrewa ( talk) 23:48, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
It is a proven principle of software maintenance (it's probably got a name and a dozen PhDs describing it, but I worked it out all by my little self):
Fix the problem you know
Often I have confronted several problems with a program. There were big problems I didn't understand, and a little one that I did.
So I fixed the little one that I knew how to fix.
And as if by magic, the big problems that I didn't understand went away too.
This is applicable to this RfC. We can and should fix the problem with new article names. We understand that and can fix it.
So let us do that, and see whether the problem of existing long-standing names is then any problem at all. Andrewa ( talk) 00:39, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
That principle could be restated (not as clearly IMO but it's a useful other perspective):
Be as logical as possible
The more I think about it the more deliberately choosing an ambiguous article title seems to be quite simply illogical. The function of the article title is to identify the article topic, Ambiguous titles don't do that very well... that's what ambiguous means!
And it's even what WP:AT currently says too... Article titles should be recognizable, concise, natural, precise, and consistent. An unambiguous article title will be recognised by all. An ambiguous one won't be. Again, that's what ambiguous means. Andrewa ( talk) 18:43, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
I have a question regarding this All new articles should be created at unambiguous names
. Say our article is a new TV series called
Cars cars cars!, do we create it at the base name, or do we create it with a disambiguation -
Cars cars cars! (TV series). If the answer is with disambiguation, do we then create it with the base "(TV series)" or with the more specific "(American TV series)" / "(2019 TV series)"? --
Gonnym (
talk)
12:38, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe recently commented I have long argued that an important underappreciated underdocumented criteria against PT is propensity for mis-recognition by large particular audiences (eg school children in India). [11]
I couldn't agree more! I have tried to cover this in the proposal. But it's a work in progress. How can I cover this point better? Andrewa ( talk) 02:21, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Another editor has suggested that P T is often OK, often so-so, and often unhelpful.
See User talk:Andrewa/P T test cases#Examples where P T is helpful for more on this and a challenge: Can we find any examples where the current setup is better than my proposal? Andrewa ( talk) 18:55, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
The essay asserts without basis: Most often [Primary Topic] merely increases the number of mouse clicks required.
.
Please explain. -- В²C ☎ 00:20, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
This edit seems to raise questions best discussed here. Will the claimed benefits (see the Rationale section of the proposal) actually be achieved? They are:
(And there's now a fifth line to the rationale which I didn't think was necessary, as it's covered elsewhere in the proposal and isn't a motivation for change, but another editor wanted it clarified and it does no harm.) Andrewa ( talk) 19:17, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
It occurs to me that so far, my rationale and motivation is almost entirely practical. It just seems to me that the current system fails too often.
But there's another way of approaching it: A theoretical side. I'm touching on this when I claim that ambiguous titles are illogical, and contrary to the spirit of WP:AT.
We don't even have a workable definition of Primary Topic. It's in practice whatever the community decides by consensus should be at an ambiguous base name. And the guidelines have been rather volatile lately. Those both should give us pause.
And the current guideline says exactly that, and has for many years, but that section has been significantly changed over the years as to what is regarded as evidence, see December 2014 and December 2010 for example.
More to follow. Andrewa ( talk) 07:04, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Some good questions have been asked. Mostly that show a need to clarify the proposal rather than to change it in any basic way,
One contributor criticised the arbitrary date for grandfathering. There is none such.
Suppose a new band called themselves Metric space and became notable. We'd create Metric space (band), but we wouldn't move the existing article just because its title had become ambiguous. If they then recorded a chart-topping self-titled album and there was enough material to justify an article on it too, we'd then create Metric space (album) and a DAB at Metric space (disambiguation).
But we still wouldn't move the DAB to the base name, or the older article away from it, just because the term had become ambiguous. So long as it remains Primary Topic, it stays where it is. But now suppose the band becomes bigger than the Beatles. A petition for the UN to grant them pensions for life gains 100 million signatures in the first 24 hours. A rumour that one of them is secretly married causes tens of thousands of teenage suicide attempts. The Pope proposes all the members for immediate sainthood. Paris is officially renamed Metricity in their honour. They are clearly now the Primary Topic, so we move the math article to Metric space (mathematics), but we still don't move Metric space (band). Metric space is now ambiguous, so only the DAB could be moved there.
And in hindsight, we realise that we should have disambiguated the original article on the mathematical topic much, much earlier! That should have happened as soon as it was no longer the Primary Topic.
But how about completely new names? A professional wrestler called The Zonk becomes notable, and gets an article. A hairstyle and a cruise ship are both named after him, and get their own articles too, and we create a DAB at The Zonk (disambiguation). The wrestler retires and is fading into history, and there's an RM to disambiguate his article, but no consensus as to whether he's still Primary Topic. He might be. So no move.
Get the idea? There's no arbitrary date. And an article at an unambiguous name is trivially the Primary Topic of that name. Lots going on! Andrewa ( talk) 12:46, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Here's another little clarification... any article at an unambiguous name is, trivially, the Primary Topic of that name.
This sounds obvious but has some subtle consequences. Andrewa ( talk) 22:34, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Another rather subtle question.
Some current discussion at the RfC at wt:DAB#Primary topic and Incomplete disambiguation conflicts. See here if it has been archived. Andrewa ( talk) 22:40, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Surely you agree that your points at User:Andrewa/Primary_Topic_RfC#Rationale apply as much to existing articles as to new articles. Yes? Then why does your proposal not apply to existing articles too? If you've already answered this, please point me to the section. Thanks. -- В²C ☎ 22:00, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
This is in response to Talk:The Americans#Need help fixing links. Interesting impact that I had not previously considered. Andrewa ( talk) 20:30, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Two more things the proposal should try to address, and probably already does. They are related! Andrewa ( talk) 00:57, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
I just stumbled upon Wikipedia:Partially disambiguated page names which documents and summarises discussion on this apparently perennial issue, most recently discussed at wt:DAB#Primary topic and Incomplete disambiguation conflicts.
The recent discussion meandered a bit, and I'm not even sure whether anyone was aware of that summary of previous discussions... if they referred to it, I may just have missed that in the discussion at wt:DAB. Andrewa ( talk) 15:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Template:R from incomplete disambiguation reads in part This is a redirect from an incomplete disambiguation, a page name that is too ambiguous to be the title of an article or other project page. Such titles should redirect to an appropriate disambiguation page (or section of it), or to a more complete disambiguation. But hang on... if it's OK to redirect it to a more complete disambiguation, why can't this (supposedly) incomplete disambiguation just be used for the article title? Which is another take on #Incomplete disambiguation above really.
We're having a bet both ways. Andrewa ( talk) 00:57, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
See here. Food for thought? Andrewa ( talk) 00:27, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
I missed this edit until too late... the section has just been archived.
Exactly. Worthy of further consideration. Andrewa ( talk) 20:41, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
Very interesting discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Articles that exist and could exist.
Initiated by myself with the naive comment This is probably (I hope) a very quick discussion (for a change). It's claimed here that "We disambiguate article titles based on the articles that exist and could exist." I don't think that's even remotely true. Very interested in other views.
I was wrong on both counts. A tangled tale unfolded that led to the conclusion that we do disambiguate article titles based on the articles that exist and could exist, and a subsequent RM has confirmed this.
This reduces the impact of my proposal a great deal. New articles can and should be created at unambiguous titles even if no article currently exists for the shorter, ambiguous title. That it would seem is existing policy and practice. Andrewa ( talk) 16:52, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Much discussion recently which I'll link to in time! Is using the Search Wikipedia box searching? Some say no rather emphatically.
But there are many ways of seeking an article. One I use regularly without thinking is to Wikilink it in an edit and then test the Wikilink using the Preview button.
I recently did this looking for a magazine called Knowledge that I used to read as a small child. But Knowledge (magazine) was a dead end, not even a useful hatnote. When I finally found it at Knowledge (partwork), the article read Knowledge was a British weekly educational magazine for children which was assembled in blue binders into an encyclopedia. (my emphasis)
So I think that my seeking method was reasonable. Not sure how to improve the navigation in this case... maybe a hatnote.
The point is, there are many ways of searching (seeking?) and we probably can't even imagine them all. But having logical article titles should help! Andrewa ( talk) 22:45, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Interesting comment:
IMO the New York Wars ended in the correct consensus – different primary meanings in at least UK and US, and possibly within US, so no PTOPIC. [15]
But... surely if a term is ambiguous, it will almost always have different primary meanings to different groups of people? If we accept that as a criterion for no PTOPIC, there won't be very many primary topics.
Agree that the NYRM2017 decision was correct in terms of improving Wikipedia.
But what got me thinking more deeply is that IMO it's not the correct decision in terms of our current policies, guidelines and practices. New York City is the primary topic. And the more I dug into the logic of P T, the shakier the whole concept became. Andrewa ( talk) 21:21, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
The hell it is, in both cases!"New York" in sources can be contextual, but when something is from "New York", it more often refers to the larger locale—the same as Luxembourg and Luxembourg City. The state, by its common name, is the primary topic for "New York".
Very interesting issue raised here above. It's been raised before and I confess I didn't understand the point being made before.
It doesn't actually mention polysemes, just contrasts homonymy to being a variation on detail of usage. NYS vs NYC is not a case of an homonym, but a variation on detail of usage.
Homonyms are words which sound alike or are spelled alike, but have different meanings. It gets a bit more complicated, but as a written encyclopedia we're actually concerned with homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of their pronunciation). I think that's what homonym means here, and that distinction simplifies things a great deal. Whether or not they are homophones doesn't concern us when choosing article titles.
Is a variation on detail or usage a polyseme? Polysemy is thus distinct from homonymy—or homophony—which is an accidental similarity between two words (such as bear the animal, and the verb to bear); while homonymy is often a mere linguistic coincidence, polysemy is not. So the usage of New York for both the city and the state is polysemy. The articles aren't all that much help... the one on polysemy is very technical, and both articles are a bit vague as to the precise meanings of the terms, explaining that linguists themselves can't agree.
So linguistics is not a great help, but it's a little. We have one useful term... homograph. Article names are homographs if they are identical and the reason for this is nothing to do with their meanings. Row, bear and stalk are given as examples of words that have such unrelated meanings.
And the claim of SmokeyJoe seems to me to be that PrimaryTopic doesn’t apply unless the meanings are unrelated... that is, unless the meanings are genuine homographs. Is that an accurate paraphrase? If so I begin to understand I think.
But I still can't see why this makes any difference to us in choosing article titles. All we're concerned about is what our readers and editors will take the term to mean. Why they attach these meanings doesn't matter. Andrewa ( talk) 23:32, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
Andrea has mentioned wave a few times. It is worthy of its own consideration. It is a troubled case.
Fascinating discussion archived at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 52#INCDAB - Dubious assumptions. It refers to the RfC at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 51#Primary topic and Incomplete disambiguation conflicts which closed with There is a consensus in favour of Option 2, and that the standard for making disambiguated titles such as Foo (bar) a primary topic among all Foo's that are Bars should be tougher than the standard for titles that don't have any disambiguator. Andrewa ( talk) 04:59, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
I'm coming around to the view that all DABs should be distinctively identified as such (as many are by the flag (disambiguation)).
This cuts across the idea that a DAB should be at an ambiguous name. And this is not necessary anyway. Perhaps this is my third epiphany. What is needed is simply that the destination of the ambiguous term is the DAB.
But I'm not convinced that (disambiguation) is the way to go. It's jargon. Maybe, the main namespace (AKA the article namespace) should be reserved for articles, and DABs should be in a separate navigation namespace?
We might for example broaden the use of namespace 100 (currently the portal namespace) to include DABs. We'd still need hard redirects from the article namespace. An alias of DAB could be created, similar to the wp alias of namespace 4.
And again, this wouldn't need to happen overnight. All that needs to happen is that new DABs are created in namespace 100 with a redirect from namespace 0, and that whenever a DAB is moved for some other reason, it is moved to namespace 100.
There are a few complications... what happens of there's already a portal by that name? New portals could be named XY Portal just as wikiprojects are named WikiProject XY in the Project Namespace. Maybe keep the pseudo-disambiguator (disambiguation) to resolve conflicts with existing portals.
It would not be good to complicate the RfC unnecessarily. But clarifying it, to say that it's not what is at the ambiguous term (in namespace 0) that matters but just what its destination is, seems a good thing. Andrewa ( talk) 15:27, 29 October 2019 (UTC)