The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete by a very rough consensus. If certain policy/guidelines reach more clarity here, perhaps we can reevaluate. For now, 4meter4's argument seems to hold. Arbitrarily0 ^{( talk)} 19:58, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Charles Lott (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log | edits since nomination)

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Violates WP:NOTDIRECTORY, which tells us Disambiguation pages (such as John Smith) are not intended to be complete listings of every person named John Smith—just the notable ones. Cannot be converted into a redirect as there are multiple articles that mention a Charles Lott; Mount St Bernard Abbey, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, The Way Back (2020 film), James Madison Dukes men's basketball statistical leaders, New Zealand Supply Contingent Somalia, and V/H/S/99. BilledMammal ( talk) 14:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Disambiguations-related deletion discussions. BilledMammal ( talk) 14:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply
• Delete. The relevant guidelines here are at MOS:DABMENTION, and this dab page doesn't meet them. It has two entries, for two different fictional characters from the same series. Both entries point to the same article Between (TV series), which has no content about either of those characters apart from a mention in the cast list. The dab previously had an entry for Charles F. Lott, which linked to the now deleted List of members of the California Senate from Butte County. It doesn't seem like any of the other people with the name mentioned here and there on Wikipedia have any meaningful content about them. – Uanfala ( talk) 14:50, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply
• Keep it has several entries (I added more) which meet MOS:DABMENTION, they are mentioned within articles. And what gain would there be from deletion? Dabs are cheap and this is potentially WP:USEFUL. BilledMammal, Uanfala Boleyn ( talk) 17:52, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  WP:NOT is a policy, MOS:DABMENTION is a guideline. Per WP:POLCON, when a guideline and policy conflict, we follow the policy. WP:USEFUL is a link to Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. BilledMammal ( talk) 18:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  Per WP:USEFUL: There are some pages within Wikipedia that are supposed to be useful navigation tools and nothing more— disambiguation pages, categories, and redirects, for instance—so usefulness is the basis of their inclusion; for these types of pages, usefulness is a valid argument. -- Tavix ^{( talk)} 18:45, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  The list, however, is not useful. Up until Boleyn added those examples it made it harder to find the majority of articles mentioning a Charles Lott, not easier - and since no one will add such mentions to the dab, as proven by the fact that no one did until I nominated it, it will soon by out of date and again make it harder to find mentions of Charles Lott. BilledMammal ( talk) 18:51, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  It is a disambiguation page, not a list. Disambiguation pages are useful when, per WP:D, an article title refers to more than one subject covered by Wikipedia. -- Tavix ^{( talk)} 18:54, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  A disambiguation page is a list of articles, and you haven't explained why it is useful. However, this discussion isn't productive; policy is clear, if you disagree with it please open an RFC proposing that it be changed. BilledMammal ( talk) 19:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  A disambiguation page lists the articles in which you will find subjects with that name covered by Wikipedia. It is useful if you are searching for a Charles Lott to be presented with the places in which Wikipedia covers various people with the name. I do find that policy is clear in my favor, but I digress. -- Tavix ^{( talk)} 19:51, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  If the dab page was kept updated, it would be as useful as the search function. Since it is not it is less useful and impedes readers from accessing search results on Charles Lott. But all that matters to this AfD is whether it violates NOTDIRECTORY; references to DABMENTION and arguments about usefulness aren't relevant, because we have a policy that is very clear on this question and a local consensus here is forbidden from overriding it. BilledMammal ( talk) 20:36, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  ( edit conflict) Have you done a search for Charles Lott? 2,422 results and the first two after the disambiguation page are irrelevant: Ronnie Lott and Trent Lott. In order to get more manageable search results, one would have to put it in quotes, which takes more time and not everyone is keen to do. Even then, the first result is Charles Edward Church, which is listed because he is the son of Charles Lott Anthony Church and Sarah Hiltz. Well that's also irrelevant, no one is going to be searching for someone's father's first and middle name. On the other hand, the disambiguation is helpful because these results have been curated to only include what is "helpful to the reader". So yes, it's much more useful than search results. I do find WP:DABMENTION to be very relevant because it defines notability for the purposes of inclusion in a disambiguation page. If we have guidance, we should not be dismissing it outright. The guidance is there because it is generally accepted within the community. Sure, there are times when it makes sense to ignore the guidance if it improves Wikipedia, but I do not find this to be one of those times. -- Tavix ^{( talk)} 20:55, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

Search results. And policies overrule guidelines; if you disagree with the policy, please open a discussion to change it, although such a proposal was recently rejected. BilledMammal ( talk) 21:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

If you want search results so badly, that can be added to the disambiguation page. I have done so. -- Tavix ^{( talk)} 21:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply

• Keep per WP:DABMENTION: If a topic does not have an article of its own, but is discussed within another article, then a link to that article may be included if it would provide value to the reader. Such entries are notable for purposes of inclusion in a disambiguation page. -- Tavix ^{( talk)} 18:28, 6 March 2023 (UTC) reply
• Keep: Per WP:DABMENTION. Hey man im josh ( talk) 18:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC) reply
• Delete. This is not even useful, since it obscures search results. Compare WP:R#DELETE, The redirect page makes it unreasonably difficult for users to locate similarly named articles via the search engine. For example, if the user searches for "New Articles", and is redirected to a disambiguation page for "Articles", it would take much longer to get to the newly added articles on Wikipedia – this is a similar situation. WP:DABMENTION says that on dab pages we may use links to articles that only mention the subject, but it does not say that we have to keep dab pages that only contain such entries. See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Terry Pearce (2nd nomination) (no consensus). No such user ( talk) 14:09, 10 March 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Randykitty ( talk) 16:10, 13 March 2023 (UTC) reply

• Delete Fails WP:NOTDIRECTORY, the only policy that has direct bearing on this. WP:DABMENTION is just a manual of style guideline, and as such it tells how, not when, to mention an entry that lacks a single matching article title. WP:D applies to potential article titles and subtopics, not every single trivial topic mentioned in passing anywhere; dab pages are not search engines. This is no more "useful" than the search function itself, and has the disadvantage of requiring maintenance every time one of the entries is updated. Avilich ( talk) 02:37, 20 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  The bit in WP:NOTDIRECTORY is a stray mention that's still there because nobody noticed when it was boldly added. It's still mostly correct though, we all agree that Disambiguation pages (such as John Smith) are not intended to be complete listings of every person named John Smith, but then the next bit just the notable ones, is false. Or at the very least, an oversimplification of the more detailed and nuanced rules in the dedicated dab guidelines. – Uanfala ( talk) 11:40, 20 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  It's also there because when editors attempted to remove that sentence, ten years later, there wasn't a consensus to do so. BilledMammal ( talk) 03:58, 21 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  And, if my recollection is correct, there was no consensus to either keep or remove it because many of the participants were unaware of the dab guidelines and believed that sentence to be the only thing standing in the way of people creating dab pages listing every Bob, Dick and Harry who ever lived. – Uanfala ( talk) 14:40, 21 March 2023 (UTC) reply

• Delete, per nom and Avilich. We already have a search function on wikipedia, if editors want to create an annotated index they should take up at the VP and make it apply to all subjects, not just the ones that happen to share a name. JoelleJay ( talk) 03:43, 21 March 2023 (UTC) reply
• Weak Delete, fails WP:NOTDIRECTORY, which trumps WP:DABMENTION as the former is a policy and the latter is a manual of style guideline. I've considered DABMENTION to be used only when there is a subject which does not have an article but shares its name with at least one subject who does have an article (such as the "John Smith" in Mr. & Mrs. Smith who lacks standalone notability) as the search function would be affected by the presence of the "notable" subject. In this case, no person named Charles Lott has an article so there is no purpose to have this DAB page. Frank Anchor 13:02, 21 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  As I argued above, WP:DABMENTION also supports deletion. However, this whole policy vs. guideline angle is misleading. It's not the case that every single piece of text on any policy page would have stronger community support than anything found in a guideline. In this case, the relevant sentence of NOTDIRECTORY was only ever discussed a few months ago, and that discussion resulted in no consensus. DABMENTION, on the other hand, reflects almost two decades of good practice, and its last major discussion, again from last year, was on a proposal to make it slightly stricter (though not nearly as strict as the bit in NOTDIRECTORY). That met with almost unanimous community opposition. – Uanfala ( talk) 14:40, 21 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  However, this whole policy vs. guideline angle is misleading. It's not; we've got a policy, WP:POLCON, which tells us how to deal with situations where policies and guidelines conflict. I also think you misunderstand the opposition removing the sentence from NOTDIRECTORY. BilledMammal ( talk) 15:30, 21 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  What matters here is that the guideline has strong consensus while the bit in that policy page has no consensus. The rest is legalistic irrelevance. – Uanfala ( talk) 16:15, 21 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  Your personal assessment of the strength of consensus behind NOTDIRECTORY and DABMENTION is not relevant; both have consensus, as evidenced by their inclusion in the relevant pages, and under policy NOTDIRECTORY overrules DABMENTION. If you disagree with that you will need to propose a change to WP:POLCON. BilledMammal ( talk) 16:22, 21 March 2023 (UTC) reply

• Keep, as an absolutely reasonable use of disambiguation. The search function is useless here, as it will merely pull up a collection of articles that happen to use the word "Charles" one place and "Lott" another, with no refinement for finding people with the given name Charles and the surname Lott. BD2412 T 16:06, 22 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  The search function is shitty, but it's not that shitty. It still recognizes quotation marks. JoelleJay ( talk) 16:54, 22 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  That is of no use to people who search for this article title, which is Charles Lott, not "Charles Lott". BD2412 T 01:55, 31 March 2023 (UTC) reply

  ? Searching on wikipedia for "Charles Lott" gives me 12 results, all of them for people with the given name Charles and the surname Lott. JoelleJay ( talk) 17:09, 1 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  That is not even a correct reading of that search result, as one of the subjects is "Charles Lott Anthony Church" (aka, Charles Church with some middle names), while excluding any results for a person whose first name is Charles, last name is Lott, and has a middle name or initial. BD2412 T 21:26, 9 April 2023 (UTC) reply

  Ok, so I assumed for the second issue you could just use the standard search wildcard in that case:"Charles*Lott". But when I tried that for "Charles*Anthony Church" it didn't work for some reason (maybe wildcards don't work with spaces?). So instead you can use "Charles Church"~2 which will return everything with 0 to 2 extra words between "Charles" and "Church". But anyway, if ease of searching is the main motivation, why should a subjective, manually- and inconsistently-maintained index exist only for items with the same name? Surely there are plenty of people with unique given name-surname pairs who have middle names and thus wouldn't show up with the quotation marks? JoelleJay ( talk) 02:56, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 14:03, 23 March 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:17, 1 April 2023 (UTC) reply

• Delete. Fails WP:NOTDIRECTORY and WP:DABMENTION. DABMENTION should be used only in cases where the topic is "discussed within another article", not just merely mentioned in passing. We only should place articles in a disambiguation page when the target article will "help readers find information about the sought topic". In this case, the dab page itself contained all the information about these topics and the target articles had no more information to offer. This seems like a false promise, and misapplication of the policy. There needs to at least be a sentence of prose containing some information about the various "Charles Lott"s not on the dab page to warrant inclusion on the dab page. I'll also note that many these articles also lacked inline citations regarding the various Charles Lotts. I don't think anybody would be searching for these particular people either as I doubt any of these topics, fictional Charles Lotts included, would be likely search terms. They certainly wouldn't be independently notable. 4meter4 ( talk) 04:30, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

Delete because of NOTDIRECTORY Starship 24 ( talk) 16:24, 10 April 2023 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.