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Here's some more bits of info I've gathered after someone asked at Talk:Tupelo:
I think I'll have to keep updating this summary here to build up a knowledge base. -- Joy ( talk) 15:19, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
This isn't to say that all of these moves were truly warranted or that there aren't a plethora of individual factors at play. But even with this spread of outcomes, there's something distinctly off with our current near-consensus interpretation of how stats should look like for primary topics by usage. This also means little for considerations of long-term significance. -- Joy ( talk) 15:30, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
We attempt to exclude spider traffic by classifying user agents with the ua-parser library and a few additional Wikipedia specific filters.It's certainly possible that it misses, but then the page views "User" category is likely missing, too, so I don't know that we should rely on that being a major effect.
In all this data I've tracked, we've yet to observe a case where there was a fresh reader complaining about disambiguation lists being the wrong choice.This seems a peculiar criterion. Quite aside from reactions to the lists you have been compiling, I can't recall the last time I came across a "fresh" reader ever complaining about an incorrectly placed disambiguation page where the complainant was not a myopic partisan seeking to promote their preferred topic.
What I think we should learn from all this is that we should not be too cautious and instead we should not be afraid to experiment as much as we have been so far.I'm glad you are taking a deeper dive into the data, but I hope no one is being misled that the reems of data of uncertain quality based on poorly documented functions represents an agreed upon approach to making decisions. older ≠ wiser 16:02, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
In the discussion linked above, we have something of a weak consensus to stop strictly sequestering disambiguation from set indices in all cases. Does anyone see any reason not to draft changes to this guideline to incorporate some of these possibilities? -- Joy ( talk) 15:44, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
I'd like to point out an aspect of #on what statistics should look like for hatnotes, primary redirects, primary topics that is becoming increasingly clear - we don't need a lot of time to detect changes in readership navigation patterns. Usually whatever happened with one month after a change was quite indicative of the pattern of traffic going forward, there's never a serious fluctuation.
We should use this to our advantage - to be more willing to experiment for e.g. two months, because that will usually suffice to get measurements and decide if the change was good or not. -- Joy ( talk) 18:16, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
I noticed this a month ago in Talk:PAG, last comment. Would be nice if someone could analyze the data more thoroughly. -- Joy ( talk) 07:52, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
This is effectively a continuation of Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 55#effects of WP:NAMELIST on navigation outcomes for anthroponymy entries which went stale and got archived out, but still applies.
More examples have since cropped up where we see from the available data that readers would benefit from us including the most popular given name and surname entries on the base disambiguation pages whenever a separate name list (set index) exists:
I wanted to title this section " WP:NAMELIST considered harmful", but it's not really, just the overly strict implementation we employ right now. :)
If there are no objections, I would go ahead with making this change:
Lists of names
To prevent disambiguation pages from getting too long, long lists of given name or surname holders can be moved out of disambiguation pages into separate set indices. In cases where there are distinctly popular entries in such lists, such as those with substantially large usage or long-term significance compared to the rest of the list, links to such articles should be retained on the base disambiguation page. This kind of extra listing should in turn still be constrained by the base list size, so it should not typically exceed five to ten entries.
We reasonably expect to see Abraham Lincoln at Lincoln (disambiguation), but very few sources would refer to the waltz composer Harry J. Lincoln by an unqualified "Lincoln", nor is he a topic of outsized reader interest, so he is listed only at the Lincoln (surname) anthroponymy article. Conversely, it's reasonable to expect that a lot of readers might want to navigate to Andrew Lincoln because of consistently measurable outsized usage, so he should be listed at both.
This does not necessarily prejudice primary topic considerations. For example, many highly notable people are called Herb, but typing in Herb gets you an article on plants. However, as the usage statistics show the interest in Herb Alpert to be typically exceeding the reader interest in the plant topic, the hatnote at Herb or the list at Herb (disambiguation) may include a link to that biography, next to the links to Herb (surname) and Herb (given name), where articles on people named "Herb" are listed. Consensus among editors determines if an article should be listed on the disambiguation page.
-- Joy ( talk) 11:25, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
inferior search engine, but you see the usefulness. Likewise, allowing Jon Hamm to be listed at Hamm would be useful, as the same thing happens. The Lincoln biography is read by 400 thousand people a month, while the comparable city articles are read by 20 and 15 thousand, respectively. The Hamm biography is read by 200 thousand people a month, while the comparable city article is read by 2 thousand. In the latter case it's a difference of 100 : 1, we're not talking subtle nuance here, and it's significantly larger than the 10 : 1 difference in the former.
In cases where there are distinctly popular entries in such lists, such as those with substantially large usage or long-term significance compared to the rest of the list. Is that not strict enough? -- Joy ( talk) 08:41, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Since this discussion died down, the same kind of problems have cropped up in a few more places, for example at "Dina", described at Talk:Dina (disambiguation), and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy#Splitting lists of names articles when clearly different names. -- Joy ( talk) 17:42, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
BTW
Talk:Julius is another such case. We have it on the record that nobody calls him just Julius
, yet when we started presenting readers with the choice to click him or to click mononymously named people, the readers consistently choose him. :) --
Joy (
talk)
08:53, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
MOS:DABNOENTRY states: "On a page called Title, do not create entries merely because Title is part of the name ... This does not apply if the subject is commonly referred to simply by Title." On the other hand WP:PTM says: "Placenames are often divided between a specific and generic part, for example North Carolina (where "Carolina" is the specific, and "North" the generic part). Common generics are compass points, upper/lower, old/new, big/small, etc. It is entirely proper to include such placenames in disambiguation pages with the specific title (North Carolina is properly listed at Carolina (disambiguation))". DABNOENTRY would exclude North Carolina from Carolina (disambiguation) because the state is never called simply Carolina, just as New York is never referred to as York (York Yankees?). In my opinion, DABNOENTRY takes precedence (and makes the most sense), and the wording in PTM should be removed. Clarityfiend ( talk) 14:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Here's a bit of a continuation of Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 56#a change in page views between primary topic and primary redirect:
The term national bank was recently replaced by disambiguation through a WP:MALPLACED redirect, but it used to be read by ~4k readers a month. Likewise happened for state bank, which used to be read by ~1k people a month.
All-time page view statistics for these topics and the disambiguation pages
The change seems to have caused the reader traffic to practically instantly drop to 0.4k and 0.2k a month, respectively.
So it looks like the change caused us to effectively relinquish 80-90% of readers looking up a term like that, as their search engine stopped sending them our way (or at least I can't think of another scenario why this pattern change would happen). -- Joy ( talk) 18:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Here's another one: Talk:Ottoman#followup to the merge of plural - once we squashed plural and singular, 80% of incoming traffic magically disappeared. -- Joy ( talk) 11:47, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Edit purpose: The page section in the example no longer exists. The section and the redirect now use "American Football" instead of "Football".
Current text: In some cases, it may be more appropriate to redirect readers to a list rather than a disambiguation page. For example, Cleveland (NFL) should not be a disambiguation page, but should instead redirect to List of Cleveland sports teams#Football.
Replacement text: In some cases, it may be more appropriate to redirect readers to a list rather than a disambiguation page. For example, Cleveland (NFL) should not be a disambiguation page, but should instead redirect to List of Cleveland sports teams#American Football. Solid kalium ( talk) 18:09, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Courtesy link:
Shield and Sword – a neo-Nazi music festival
Courtesy link:
Shield and sword – red link
Courtesy link:
Sword and shield – a disambig page
Can someone help me unscramble all this?
Starting with the easy stuff: it seems pretty clear that D-page Sword and shield should contain an entry that links the festival article, right? Do we need to move the festival to Shield and Sword (festival) so we can create "Shield and sword" anew as a disambig page, so it can point to the festival, and also to Grand jury page, and maybe also the theory about Marshal Pètain? Thanks for any advice. Mathglot ( talk) 08:51, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
There is a move proposal at Talk:Rallying#Requested move 12 June 2024 suggesting the article should be disambiguated. Another user has supported, mentioning the policy of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. However, no other Rallying topic articles can be found - making the move unnecessary under that very policy. Is that correct, does primary topic only mean a primary Wikipedia article and not common usage of a word within multiple contexts? I'd be grateful if anybody could clarify that within the discussion, or here for me. Thanks. Rally Wonk ( talk) 16:38, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be useful to either define what the words "under cetain circumstances" at
WP:DABSISTER mean? or (even better) provide examples when a link to a foreign language Wikipedia would be useful and when it wouldn't be useful?
I would give it a stab, but I have no idea what those words mean.
The Mountain of Eden (
talk)
20:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Disambiguation page. |
|
Archives:
Index,
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25,
26,
27,
28,
29,
30,
31,
32,
33,
34,
35,
36,
37,
38,
39,
40,
41,
42,
43,
44,
45,
46,
47,
48,
49,
50,
51,
52,
53,
54,
55,
56Auto-archiving period: 60 days
![]() |
![]() | The
contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to the English Wikipedia
article titles policy and
Manual of Style, which has been
designated as a contentious topic. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. |
![]() | Disambiguation | |||
|
Here's some more bits of info I've gathered after someone asked at Talk:Tupelo:
I think I'll have to keep updating this summary here to build up a knowledge base. -- Joy ( talk) 15:19, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
This isn't to say that all of these moves were truly warranted or that there aren't a plethora of individual factors at play. But even with this spread of outcomes, there's something distinctly off with our current near-consensus interpretation of how stats should look like for primary topics by usage. This also means little for considerations of long-term significance. -- Joy ( talk) 15:30, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
We attempt to exclude spider traffic by classifying user agents with the ua-parser library and a few additional Wikipedia specific filters.It's certainly possible that it misses, but then the page views "User" category is likely missing, too, so I don't know that we should rely on that being a major effect.
In all this data I've tracked, we've yet to observe a case where there was a fresh reader complaining about disambiguation lists being the wrong choice.This seems a peculiar criterion. Quite aside from reactions to the lists you have been compiling, I can't recall the last time I came across a "fresh" reader ever complaining about an incorrectly placed disambiguation page where the complainant was not a myopic partisan seeking to promote their preferred topic.
What I think we should learn from all this is that we should not be too cautious and instead we should not be afraid to experiment as much as we have been so far.I'm glad you are taking a deeper dive into the data, but I hope no one is being misled that the reems of data of uncertain quality based on poorly documented functions represents an agreed upon approach to making decisions. older ≠ wiser 16:02, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
In the discussion linked above, we have something of a weak consensus to stop strictly sequestering disambiguation from set indices in all cases. Does anyone see any reason not to draft changes to this guideline to incorporate some of these possibilities? -- Joy ( talk) 15:44, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
I'd like to point out an aspect of #on what statistics should look like for hatnotes, primary redirects, primary topics that is becoming increasingly clear - we don't need a lot of time to detect changes in readership navigation patterns. Usually whatever happened with one month after a change was quite indicative of the pattern of traffic going forward, there's never a serious fluctuation.
We should use this to our advantage - to be more willing to experiment for e.g. two months, because that will usually suffice to get measurements and decide if the change was good or not. -- Joy ( talk) 18:16, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
I noticed this a month ago in Talk:PAG, last comment. Would be nice if someone could analyze the data more thoroughly. -- Joy ( talk) 07:52, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
This is effectively a continuation of Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 55#effects of WP:NAMELIST on navigation outcomes for anthroponymy entries which went stale and got archived out, but still applies.
More examples have since cropped up where we see from the available data that readers would benefit from us including the most popular given name and surname entries on the base disambiguation pages whenever a separate name list (set index) exists:
I wanted to title this section " WP:NAMELIST considered harmful", but it's not really, just the overly strict implementation we employ right now. :)
If there are no objections, I would go ahead with making this change:
Lists of names
To prevent disambiguation pages from getting too long, long lists of given name or surname holders can be moved out of disambiguation pages into separate set indices. In cases where there are distinctly popular entries in such lists, such as those with substantially large usage or long-term significance compared to the rest of the list, links to such articles should be retained on the base disambiguation page. This kind of extra listing should in turn still be constrained by the base list size, so it should not typically exceed five to ten entries.
We reasonably expect to see Abraham Lincoln at Lincoln (disambiguation), but very few sources would refer to the waltz composer Harry J. Lincoln by an unqualified "Lincoln", nor is he a topic of outsized reader interest, so he is listed only at the Lincoln (surname) anthroponymy article. Conversely, it's reasonable to expect that a lot of readers might want to navigate to Andrew Lincoln because of consistently measurable outsized usage, so he should be listed at both.
This does not necessarily prejudice primary topic considerations. For example, many highly notable people are called Herb, but typing in Herb gets you an article on plants. However, as the usage statistics show the interest in Herb Alpert to be typically exceeding the reader interest in the plant topic, the hatnote at Herb or the list at Herb (disambiguation) may include a link to that biography, next to the links to Herb (surname) and Herb (given name), where articles on people named "Herb" are listed. Consensus among editors determines if an article should be listed on the disambiguation page.
-- Joy ( talk) 11:25, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
inferior search engine, but you see the usefulness. Likewise, allowing Jon Hamm to be listed at Hamm would be useful, as the same thing happens. The Lincoln biography is read by 400 thousand people a month, while the comparable city articles are read by 20 and 15 thousand, respectively. The Hamm biography is read by 200 thousand people a month, while the comparable city article is read by 2 thousand. In the latter case it's a difference of 100 : 1, we're not talking subtle nuance here, and it's significantly larger than the 10 : 1 difference in the former.
In cases where there are distinctly popular entries in such lists, such as those with substantially large usage or long-term significance compared to the rest of the list. Is that not strict enough? -- Joy ( talk) 08:41, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Since this discussion died down, the same kind of problems have cropped up in a few more places, for example at "Dina", described at Talk:Dina (disambiguation), and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy#Splitting lists of names articles when clearly different names. -- Joy ( talk) 17:42, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
BTW
Talk:Julius is another such case. We have it on the record that nobody calls him just Julius
, yet when we started presenting readers with the choice to click him or to click mononymously named people, the readers consistently choose him. :) --
Joy (
talk)
08:53, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
MOS:DABNOENTRY states: "On a page called Title, do not create entries merely because Title is part of the name ... This does not apply if the subject is commonly referred to simply by Title." On the other hand WP:PTM says: "Placenames are often divided between a specific and generic part, for example North Carolina (where "Carolina" is the specific, and "North" the generic part). Common generics are compass points, upper/lower, old/new, big/small, etc. It is entirely proper to include such placenames in disambiguation pages with the specific title (North Carolina is properly listed at Carolina (disambiguation))". DABNOENTRY would exclude North Carolina from Carolina (disambiguation) because the state is never called simply Carolina, just as New York is never referred to as York (York Yankees?). In my opinion, DABNOENTRY takes precedence (and makes the most sense), and the wording in PTM should be removed. Clarityfiend ( talk) 14:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Here's a bit of a continuation of Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 56#a change in page views between primary topic and primary redirect:
The term national bank was recently replaced by disambiguation through a WP:MALPLACED redirect, but it used to be read by ~4k readers a month. Likewise happened for state bank, which used to be read by ~1k people a month.
All-time page view statistics for these topics and the disambiguation pages
The change seems to have caused the reader traffic to practically instantly drop to 0.4k and 0.2k a month, respectively.
So it looks like the change caused us to effectively relinquish 80-90% of readers looking up a term like that, as their search engine stopped sending them our way (or at least I can't think of another scenario why this pattern change would happen). -- Joy ( talk) 18:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Here's another one: Talk:Ottoman#followup to the merge of plural - once we squashed plural and singular, 80% of incoming traffic magically disappeared. -- Joy ( talk) 11:47, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Edit purpose: The page section in the example no longer exists. The section and the redirect now use "American Football" instead of "Football".
Current text: In some cases, it may be more appropriate to redirect readers to a list rather than a disambiguation page. For example, Cleveland (NFL) should not be a disambiguation page, but should instead redirect to List of Cleveland sports teams#Football.
Replacement text: In some cases, it may be more appropriate to redirect readers to a list rather than a disambiguation page. For example, Cleveland (NFL) should not be a disambiguation page, but should instead redirect to List of Cleveland sports teams#American Football. Solid kalium ( talk) 18:09, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Courtesy link:
Shield and Sword – a neo-Nazi music festival
Courtesy link:
Shield and sword – red link
Courtesy link:
Sword and shield – a disambig page
Can someone help me unscramble all this?
Starting with the easy stuff: it seems pretty clear that D-page Sword and shield should contain an entry that links the festival article, right? Do we need to move the festival to Shield and Sword (festival) so we can create "Shield and sword" anew as a disambig page, so it can point to the festival, and also to Grand jury page, and maybe also the theory about Marshal Pètain? Thanks for any advice. Mathglot ( talk) 08:51, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
There is a move proposal at Talk:Rallying#Requested move 12 June 2024 suggesting the article should be disambiguated. Another user has supported, mentioning the policy of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. However, no other Rallying topic articles can be found - making the move unnecessary under that very policy. Is that correct, does primary topic only mean a primary Wikipedia article and not common usage of a word within multiple contexts? I'd be grateful if anybody could clarify that within the discussion, or here for me. Thanks. Rally Wonk ( talk) 16:38, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be useful to either define what the words "under cetain circumstances" at
WP:DABSISTER mean? or (even better) provide examples when a link to a foreign language Wikipedia would be useful and when it wouldn't be useful?
I would give it a stab, but I have no idea what those words mean.
The Mountain of Eden (
talk)
20:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)