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Isn't there a rule that no external links should be used on disambiguation pages? Has it been discussed before? I would find it quite useful, because otherwise disambig pages tend to get clogged with stuff that nobody cares to write an article about, but of course there is some website about it that somebody wants to promote (see HOS (permalink)) for a vivid example . -- 790 23:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
This guideline states "When a reader enters a given term in the Wikipedia search box and pushes "Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result?". What if the reader is ignorant of the "thing" that technically belongs to that name? Do we put up a disambiguation page at that term saying, "this means this but you probably think it means that". Or do we put up the correct article for that "thing" and add a DAB link at the top saying, "Most people think this means this other thing". Should an encyclopedia defer to ignorance and throw in disambiguation to get around it? (This question seems to be coming up at Talk:Milky Way#The "Milky Way" and "The Milky Way Galaxy" are two different things. Halfblue 22:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Are there any policies or guide-lines concerning the placement of pictures or images in disambig pages? I found two on the Syracuse disambig & I removed them, here are before and after links. Naufana : talk 17:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I came across the new look of {{ disambig-cleanup}}, and I don't really like it. I would like to go back to the old style and explained my reasons at Template talk:Disambig-cleanup#Ambox style. More comments? (Reply there.) – sgeureka t•c 09:00, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
First of all, "hence" is a word that few people use every day. Also, removing "the process of" leaves us with "Disambiguation in Wikipedia is resolving conflicts in article titles", which can be taken as the answer to "what is dismabiguation currently doing?" as well as "what is disambiguation?". This is removing clarity, not adding it. The deeper question here is what the editor finds unclear in the opening; let's discuss and jointly decide if a change is warranted. Chris the speller ( talk) 17:55, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Here is an interesting case at AFD involving a disambiguation page that disambiguates foreign language (non-latin) characters. I've voiced my opinion there, so I won't repeat it here, but I think it raises interesting questions for disambiguation on WP:EN. older ≠ wiser 15:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
There's a major pitfall, and the need now for " CJKV disambiguation pages" is very real. We have long had redirects (Wikipedia-wide) for non-Latin script names, redirecting to their corresponding English Wikipedia article, such as 中国 and 東京. We believed that this worked within the guidelines of WP:ENGLISH. However, there was a large pitfall in this reasoning, because not all Chinese characters map to a unique English Wikipedia article name. And in such cases, disambiguation becomes necessary. We are now faced with a rude awakening that, short of banning all redirects from foreign scripts, we must now disambiguate between foreign scripts names, outside the frameworks of WP:ENGLISH.
Previous discussions never led in the direction of eliminating dab for CJKV scripts:
I believe the consensus so far is that we cannot ban or eliminate such dab pages. Hence we find it necessary for WP:WPDAB to cover (and regulate) dab's using foreign scripts.
At this point, Chinese characters ( CJKV characters) are the only ones I know of, which urgently needs some DAB guidelines. We propose a joint DAB task force as discussed here, in Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#CJKV disambiguation pages. WP:WPDAB will be the main parent, and we will need to create a subpage under WP:WPDAB. Please discuss the feasibilities there.-- Endroit ( talk) 19:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
A discussion recently came up concerning this edit, and how it relates to Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Page naming conventions which specifies that "there should be just one disambiguation page for all cases (upper- or lower-case) and variant punctuation". I thought the guideline was just talking about situations like mm/Mm/mM/MM, (milli/mega metre/mole or people's initials or other things listed at MM,) but not where the acronym is also a word, like SAP/ sap or RAID/ raid. My basic logic was that the do disambiguation page was already so long as to make it hard to find what you're looking for, and someone looking for the acronym would be more likely to type it in uppercase letters. But perhaps wiser minds than mine have already considered this idea and rejected it. Is that part of the guideline strictly followed? Is it a good idea?-- Yannick ( talk) 01:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
A problem I come across a lot of the time is people linking to articles that have names which have one similar word or maybe a similar root but really don't need to be disambiguated. Bohemia (disambiguation) does not need a link to Bohemian Rhapsody because no one calls Bohemian Rhapsody "Bohemia". I think the guideline should address this. Recury 18:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
There are several pages with Alexander the Great in their title [1], and the disambiguation link at the top of the page only links to the 1956 film. Would there be any objections to creating Alexander the Great (disambiguation)? (of course this would change the example given in this article) -- George100 ( talk) 14:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not exactly sure where to put this but there's a lot of links to Environmental Protection Agency that should be moved since that page was turned into a disambig (see Talk:Environmental Protection Agency). I think most links should point to United States Environmental Protection Agency. On a related note, it would nice if the direct external links to WikiMapia were replaced with a template. I don't think we should promote one mapping service over others. (Check Special:Whatlinkshere/WikiMapia--many of the links also link to the WikiMapia article)
(It would also be nice if the links to pdf were also changed, seeing that "PDF" is an acronym) Jason McHuff ( talk) 11:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
And I forgot about Southwest (and probably articles on other directions) Jason McHuff ( talk) 11:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
When a person with horror movies on their mind types in "giant monsters" in Wikipedia, would they be expecting to find the page of a television host? It may be amusing for a moment, but would not help someone who was looking for the name of a specific giant monster. It turns out that Giant Monsters is actually the title of a television show, and the article for the television show was already voted to be merged with the page of the television host of that show. What is the general consensus here (and I am looking for more than 1 persons opinion) on trying to apply disambiguation to the page? Overall, is it better to ignore the general meaning large creatures (such as dinosaurs and movie monsters) in favor of the show title? Also, does a vote on articles for deletion override the need for disambiguation? What standards should apply here, and what should be appropriate? Userafw ( talk) 03:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
{{
redirect3|Giant Monsters|For the legendary creatures, see
Monster}}
renders into –
sgeureka
t•c 10:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Are there any guidelines relating to an article having a section of disambiguation links? Should there be? Case in point: Criticism of Microsoft#Product criticism - Josh ( talk | contribs) 20:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Am I correct in saying that external links (other than interwikis, of course) are forbidden on disambiguation pages? If this is not the policy, we should make it so and state it in the strongest terms. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:47, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
As previously mentioned above (at #CJKV disambiguation pages), we are in need of a guideline which covers Chinese characters. Here are my 2 proposals,
...or...
If there are no objections, I would like to add Option 1 (above) into the WP:DAB guidelines page. Please discuss.-- Endroit ( talk) 20:20, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I frequently work on the WP:DPL project. Occasionally, I encounter editors who are slightly to very recalcitrant about having links disambiguated in articles they are involved in. I would like to propose that some version of the following text be included in the guideline here:
I've mentioned this at the projects talk page and have received only favorable comments, although not many. Your comments, please?
-- Steven J. Anderson ( talk) 10:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Lift is quoted as a prime example of a dab page but its current version has a link to a non-article. This made me think that, since it isn't possible to keep tabs on all all examples all the time, perhaps a quoted example like this should be somehow cast in stone to retain it in its exemplary form. I'm not even sure if this is possible but it seems a good idea to me. Abtract ( talk) 09:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Should they ever exist? The article doesn't currently say anything about the usage of "(disambiguation)" in titles.
There are even cases where both "X" and "X (disambiguation)" are disambiguation pages with the same (manual!) content. - Lwc4life ( talk) 20:14, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
A user keeps being very adamant about inserting a disambiguation page for Wal-Mart, which is not a true disambiguation page. Disambiguation, IMHO, is not needed, as there is only one company named 'Wal-Mart', and it's not likely to be confused with anything else. The articles listed on List of Wal-Mart articles are really just a collection of 'see also' list items; subjects that are related to Wal-Mart but unlikely to actually be confused by someone searching for the company. The links under 'operations' are actually already in the main Wal-Mart article anyway, so that's redundant.
There was an AfD about a month ago, but unfortunately was closed prematurely by an admin that claimed 'no consensus'. 7 users were in favor of deletion, and four wanting to rename it (from 'Wal-Mart (disambiguation)' to 'List of Wal-Mart articles'); only 3 named users (and two anon IPs with less than 10 edits each) wanted to keep it. In the end, it was ultimately renamed to 'List of Wal-Mart articles'; although that's not good enough for Shaliya waya, who seems determined to engage in a long-term revert war over making sure that the disambiguation page sticks (though no WP:3RR violations have occurred, as for as I know; although she does revert with no edit summary, and no comments on the talk page).
At present, I still don't think that this is a disambiguation page, and I think it would best fit if merged into the 'see also' section of the main Wal-Mart article, since the items listed do seem to be related. I'd like to know what others feel about this. Thanks! Dr. Cash ( talk) 02:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I am new to Wikipedia, but I'm pretty sure that some sort of disambiguation page should be created to make more clear the following entities: Spencer's (a defunct retailer) and Spencer Gifts (an existing retailer that many customers call "Spencer's"). It seems a bit odd that "David Spencer Limited" went out of business in 1948 but commands the direct article link for Spencer's. I'll be happy to help execute a disambiguation, but I thought it would be best to ask first. - Where I chillax ( talk) 13:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Does the fact that the title being used as a placeholder is an actual page bother anyone? -- DocumentN ( talk) 18:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I've been doing disambiguation work for a while, but have just started thinking if there were a better way. Has there been discussion somewhere (maybe in the Wikimedia community) to 1) improve the search mechanism to something like googles, where there is some importance to the order returned and 2) a way of extracting a summary line from the found articles? Done correctly, this would be a much more useful/efficient mechanism to accomplish what we do. We may then have to choose the primary article - but beyond that, I'm not sure what use the dab pages would be. I know 1 is non-trivial both technically and perhaps intellectual property wise.
Or maybe I missing something the dab pages do?
(John User:Jwy talk) 04:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Should we include names of schools that can be abbreviated in the disambiguation page for acronyms? I saw in MHS that there were several high schools listed there with such an abbreviation. I've split them into MHS (high schools) but I'm wondering whether or not they should be listed at all. RightGot ( talk) 19:38, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Well regardless of whether or not we have high schools dabbed by their abbreviations, they shouldn't be cluttering up the main disambiguation page for the abbreviation. I have created many separate dab pages for those e.g. SHS (high schools). RightGot ( talk) 22:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Should Saints be a redirect to Saint (disambiguation) or to Saint (as the primary meaning)? Please comment at Talk:Saints. -- Russ (talk) 17:17, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
First, if this topic has been discussed, please point me to the archive. I just had an interaction about John Gardner (disambiguation) with an editor and it brings up an interesting question. When there are multiple articles that might be addressed by the same <first name> <last name>, under what conditions, if any, should there be a primary article in the disambiguation sense. I have not found anything explicit in the naming conventions (again, if I am wrong, please help me out by pointing me to the right place). Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Given_names_or_surnames comes close to discussing this, but doesn't and seems to lead to a contradiction: Let's say there are a bunch of people notable enough to be in wikipedia with the name Benjamin Franklin. It is reasonable to assume that the Benjamin Franklin article should remain with the content it currently has. A page listing the others needs to exist and point to the rest. But the MOS section pointed to above indicates it should not be a disambiguation page. What is it and what MOS should it follow? Under what conditions would we NOT have a primary <first name> <last name> page. And a minor question: What happens if there happens to be non-person article that might reasonably have the same name.
I don't want to codify every last bit of this - they are just guidelines. But I see a lot of useful work being done in the names area and I think we need to coordinate that effort with the disambiguation efforts. (John User:Jwy talk) 18:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
WP:MOSDAB#Given names or surnames is not about {{ hndis}} pages -- it's about including everyone named "Green" on the Green (disambiguation) page. No one has the given name "John Gardner", nor the surname "John Gardner" either. As stated, though, a primary topic is determined for human names just like it is (or isn't) for any other dab, by consensus. Kevin Smith and Michael Jordan have a primary topic apiece; Michael Smith doesn't. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 21:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
In many discussion on WP:RM opinions to move articles to the primary name, even when there are scores of uses for a name, often assert that being the first or largest is justification to be declared the primary use. This seems contrary to the wording in this guideline. Is my interpretation incorrect or do we need to make this point in the guideline.
Along the same lines, sometimes I wonder if we could avoid a lot of problems by strongly stating that if there are differences of opinion, the default should be to use the dab page at the primary name. I know the guideline hints at this but it does not defer to using the dab page by default. Vegaswikian ( talk) 07:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
There has been disagreement at User_talk:Uncle_G#Disambiguation_pages_and_articles where to take dab pages for deletion. Since dab pages are self-claimed non-articles, it can be argued that AfD is the wrong place, however, dab pages are in article name space. Per the intro of MOS:DAB, this situation may be comparable to how redirect deletions are handled. Opinions? – sgeureka t•c 12:17, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
It needs to be noted that if a disambiguation page is not carefully constructed, BetacommandBot will delete all fair use images on the renamed pages.
BetacommandBot insists that image pages of fair use images have a link back to the article using the image. When a disambiguation page is constructed, and the article moved, that link now points to the disambiguation page. Betacommandbot doesn't know how to interpret article history, so it then flags the image as lacking a proper fair use template and schedules the image for deletion.
BetacommandBot notifies the uploader of the image of this, not the editor who created the disambiguation page. The original uploader may be long gone, or may not log in within the week or so allowed them by Betacommand Bot. It's not their job to fix this, either. So the image may be quietly deleted. See Wikipedia:Image copyright help desk.
This should be addressed in the Disambiguation article. Thanks. -- John Nagle ( talk) 16:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Have a look at Nate Newton (disambiguation). Nothing links to it (except for a user page and the standard Wikipedia:Links to (disambiguation) pages). I've just inserted a hatnote on Nate Newton that—since there is only one alternate use—goes directly to Nate Newton (musician). Does Nate Newton (disambiguation) need to exist?
My inclination is to put it up for deletion, but before I do that I just wanted to see what everyone else thought. Neonumbers ( talk) 10:42, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
The dab page Andrew Scott is laid out as a table, rather than the usual bulleted list. I was going to convert it to a list, per the convention, but then I thought that it might be useful to discuss the idea here.
The table doesn't show up as well as a list when using popups (the table contents are not displayed in the popup), which seems to me to a very unhelpful thing ... but OTOH it does allow more info to be displayed on the dab page in a very readable manner.
On balance, I think that the table is a bad idea — more appropriate for set indexes than disambiguation pages — but I'd welcome other thoughts. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 04:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
The topic has also been raised on WT:MOSDAB (which I think is a better place for it). -- JHunterJ ( talk) 11:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I am having a problem understanding this "A disambiguation page has links to a heterogeneous set of concepts." from here. I get the rest of the para which is pretty fundamental dab stuff but it's the heterogeneous set of concepts I am having trouble with. Surely a dab page contains many quite different concepts, ( MS) would be a good example. DAB pages have links to articles with the same or similar names not the same concept. ... can anyone enlighten me? Abtract ( talk) 18:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I asked JHunterJ a question here but he was not sure of the answer. Does someone know if a category can go to a same name dab page? Lord Sesshomaru ( talk • edits) 18:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
{{
catmore1|
Naruto}}
at the top, and
Naruto has "For other uses, see
Naruto (disambiguation)", so in that case the only issue is whether a confused reader needs to follow two links, or just one, to find what they want. If it isn't going to clutter the category page too much, I'd support adding another hatnote, since it's "cheap" and may help save users some time. --
Russ
(talk) 18:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)It isn't obvious to me ... and from what I have read above, I am against a change (without seeing what is proposed!) because each page is going to be different and therefore a case by case decision will need to be made by responsible editors. For example dragon ball seems eminiently sensible to have the category since all bar one line are suitable, but clearly many are not so suitable as mentioned above. Yet others will be debatable and consensus will be reached as to suitablity. Abtract ( talk) 10:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
" Categories aid navigation between articles. Disambiguation pages however are non-articles and do not require categorization other than for maintenance purposes, and they already get auto-categorized by using {{ disambig}}, {{ hndis}} and {{ geodis}}. No other categories should be added, except Category:Surnames, Category:Given names or their subcategories (if the disambiguation page includes sections of name information or lists of people), or disambiguation subcategories that might apply."
" Categories aid navigation between articles. Disambiguation pages however are non-articles and do not require categorization other than for maintenance purposes, and they already get auto-categorized by using {{ disambig}}, {{ hndis}} and {{ geodis}}. No other categories should be added, including those which are named similar to the disambiguation page title, save for ones like Category:Astro Boy or Category:InuYasha whose dabs, Astro Boy (disambiguation) and InuYasha (disambiguation), are comprised only of related works. The only other exceptions are Category:Surnames, Category:Given names or their subcategories (if the disambiguation page includes sections of name information or lists of people), or disambiguation subcategories that might apply."
disambiguation links — at the top of an article, a note that links the reader to articles with similar titles or concepts that the reader may have been seeking instead of the article in which the links appear.
The above appears in the guideline, but "concepts" are vague and could be interpreted as external links. There are disambiguation pages with external links. Should this be clarified as to whether links are allowed or not? - Wikianon ( talk) 00:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Please see Harshing My Mellow's edit history, as well as Harshing My Mellow (disambiguation) (sic), Talk:Harshing My Mellow (disambiguation), and (if you really want to see 'em) the various "harshing my/your/his/her/their/one's mellow" redirects created by User:Evrik. Little help? -- JHunterJ ( talk) 02:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup has been pretty empty in the past few weeks/months. Maybe this means that the really terrible dab pages have all been cleaned up, but I still come across some dab pages needing attention now and then (I am also slowly making my way through Wikipedia:Links_to_(disambiguation)_pages/L-Z). In April 2007, User:Interiot filled the DPiNoC category with his bot (see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Archive_31#Automated_drinking_game) but I have no wikibot experience. Does someone else have an idea for what can be done so that the dab-fixers aren't out of job? – sgeureka t• c 14:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The CJKV taskforce has been created to assist in disambiguation of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese when using Kyūjitai, Hanja, Hán tự, Simplified Chinese, and Shinjitai ( Kanji). If you wish to participate, please come and help out. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
In several recent move requests, proposers are reading WP:PRIMARYUSAGE as saying that hit counts from the stats tool and link numbers are grounds for a move. They cite, in my view wrongly, the guideline "(this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings)". I propose to clarify the guideline, by writing "this may SOMETIMES be indicated by ...". Any other suggestions? Sam Staton ( talk) 07:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase, much more used than all others, then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a
disambiguation link at the top. If there's a disambiguation page, it should
link back to the primary topic.
A particular meaning of a title should be identified as the "primary" one only if there is a clear preponderance in usage, both within and outside of Wikipedia, of that title to signify that meaning rather than any other, and a consensus of editors that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings. If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)". |
That looks reasonable. One other thing, which can be a pain, is that sometimes there are a small number of major topics, and then dozens of minor ones. eg I've just reformatted
induction, putting the very major topics at the top of the page. (According to
the tool they were getting 10-100 times more hits than the other articles.) I think what I did is helpful, but I couldn't find any guidelines about it.
Sam Staton (
talk) 13:35, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Use outside Wikipedia is not important. The only reason for having a primary usage is to decide if an article gets to use the name itself and make all the others use some other name. The only reason for doing that is if one article gets more hits than any of the others. In other words it is only the hit count that matters, although it should be supported by link count for verification. However a guideline needs to be established. What is the criteria for establishing primary usage? If there are a dozen articles about the subject foo, what ratio between most used and second most viewed establishes primary usage? Is it 10% more, 20% more, 2:1, 3:1, 5:1, 10:1, 50:1, or 100:1? Is there a number of articles about foo that influences whether one of them should be a primary article? For example does it matter if there are 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 other articles named foo? Does it matter if there is a non-encyclopedia use of the name foo? For example does it matter if foo is used in other contexts than ways that it would appear in the encyclopedia? My answer is that if foo is viewed 10% more than any other article that could be logically named foo, then it could be used as primary usage, if more than twice as many as the next most viewed it should possibly be used, if more than three times as many it should probably be used. In cases where there are many articles that get close to the highest number of views, such that no one article gets more than 25% of the total number of views, no article should be used as the primary. In cases where there is a historical name of great significance it should be given precedence over more recent uses. An example is Radio Flyer, commonly known as the wagon. While the movie of the same name gets more views, Radio Flyer is allowed to keep it's name for historical purposes. You also have to include a Yuck factor to allow editors to bail out if they wish. No one wants to use Madonna for the singer (ok very few), yet by all forms of logic it is the logical primary use (doesn't conflict with any other article, gets far more views). Uses other than in Wikipedia are not a factor at all. By the way the ultimate form of treachery is to attempt to change the rules to make the contest come out in your favor. Don't do it. 199.125.109.104 ( talk) 21:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting we have a strict formula to figure this out - I just wanted to explore the math a bit to see how it worked out so we could work that into the conversation. I still think that minimizing clicks should be a key part of dab pages - its primarily for navigation. It was a revelation to me that it didn't matter whether one item had 10% hits over another or not - it was each single entry against all the rest that matters. If you have 10 entries and one gets 50% more than each of the others (9 get 20 and one gets 30), you still would want to have no primary target using this criteria.
Again, if the goal is minimizing clicks and we have good stats on expected hit rates on the various pages (that's the hardest part!), you would only create a primary target if one article had at least as many "hits" as the rest of the pages combined. (John User:Jwy talk) 21:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't agree with the notion that a primary topic exists for the purpose of minimizing clicks and I don't agree with any quantitative approach to finding the primary topic. That is why my proposed rewrite of the section avoids any mention at all of the number of links to a topic and emphasizes instead the "clear preponderance in usage." This is intended as a guideline for humans who are writing an encyclopedia for use by humans, not an algorithm for machines. The purpose of disambig pages is to help readers find relevant articles, not to minimize clicks, so if a primary topic is going to make it harder for some significant groups of readers, it shouldn't be there. -- Russ (talk) 01:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
What is the intent of the "clear preponderance in usage" standard? If it is not to reduce clicks, what is it? (John User:Jwy talk) 15:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Let's take a dab term like 'HP'. In the top line, the most common usage (Hewlett-Packard) is listed at the top. A user recently asked why it also isn't sited under the organizations section, suggesting that the term isn't as noticeable at the top. I am tempted to think this is lazy, but in retrospect, I thought I would come here for some input. Thoughts? - Arcayne (cast a spell) 16:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Should references be included on disambiguation pages? See Bryophyta. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 14:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
The manual of style for disambig pages says that, pretty much, each entry should only have one link. However, in actually looking through disambig pages I find that at least 25% of them have at least one entry with multiple linked words, and sometimes all entries do. Am I correct in assuming that all of these should likely be fixed, and that this is because inexperienced editors are inappropriately attempting to be helpful by linking words all over the place when they actually shouldn't be? It would appear to me that 10,000+ of these disambig pages need to be fixed in this regard. -- Xyzzyplugh ( talk) 22:02, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I just was looking through WP:MOSDAB, and according to that, most of the links in Sexuality should be deleted and redirected to Human sexuality. However, it has several songs named Sexuality, and any future links to Sexuality would redirect to Human sexuality. I am not sure if I should leave it like it is, or redirect it, or what. Mynameisnotpj ( talk) 05:02, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I have cleaned it how I interpret mos:dab ... several items deleted with an important addition (list etc). Abtract ( talk) 10:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
The set index idea seems an elegant solution to a certain level of disambiguation need. This came up over on WP:HN [6] [7] but I thought the details are best thrashed out here.
Someone stated (rightly in my opinion) that The War of the Worlds (film) was a set index and removed the template [8]. My only concern was that it wasn't replaced with anything, as there was nothing to replace it with, which could lead to confusion over the nature and purpose of such a page. I suggested using a generalised form of Template:Shipindex that would also add the page to something like "Category: Set index", a child of Category:Disambiguation, which could then contain things like Category:Ship disambiguation - which would tend to clarify the structure there.
Of course, we might need to look at naming but I think it is largely OK and avoids messiness like "List of XX named XX". We also might need to look at whether we can add additional categories (as discussed in the section above) - I'd say that it would work fine but again it is an issue we probably need to decide on and make sure the guideline reflects this. ( Emperor ( talk) 19:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC))
Disambiguation question at Talk:Northern_Ireland#NI_disambig about removing the hatnote. Any guidance would be nice. WLU ( talk) 18:57, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
mos:dab makes it clear that set index article are not dab pages so I am trying to remove the Gorki dab statement at the bottom of the page ... sadly I cannot, can anyone help, what have I missed? Abtract ( talk) 15:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
We also want to avoid {{ SIA}} as an "escape hatch" for editors to use on random dab pages as an excuse to include red links. Baykal (disambiguation) (while not so tagged) had a similar conversation, and was even less of a set-index. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 00:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I am finding one element of the Set Index guideline very confusing. To quote from the page:
I think the combination of the red links and "Like this one" make it very hard to follow... I would fix it myself except I am not quite certain I get what it meant. -- Marcinjeske ( talk) 04:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
There's a small dispute on Barack Obama as to whether the current hatnote, {{Redirect4|Barack|Obama}} is sufficient to disambiguate the Senator from his father, Barack Obama, Sr., or whether an additional hatnote should be added saying something like:
I can't tell from the MoS what the standard for something like this is. The only comparison I can think of is Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill (1620-1688) and Winston Churchill (novelist). Winston Churchill has no hatnote linking to his namesakes, but it does have a hatnote pointing readers to Churchill (disambiguation). However, I wasn't sure whether that represented an actual guideline or just something that was locally determined. — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 21:25, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
{{
For|the Kenyan economist|Barack Obama, Sr.}}
before or after the current redirect hatnote. Churchill should (or could) also have such a hatnote. See also
William Shakespeare. --
JHunterJ (
talk) 22:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
{{
For|the Kenyan economist (1936-1982)|Barack Obama, Sr.}}
. Not sure whether it's in line with the rules, but it seems helpful.
PamD (
talk) 23:13, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm looking for some outside opinions as to whether or not Nostradamus should have a hatnote dab that links to Nostradamus (disambiguation). User:PL thinks that having a hatnote is unnecessary, and if any dab link should be present in the article, it should be under the "Popular culture" section, or at the top of the actual Nostradamus in popular culture article, because that's where readers will be looking for those links. I disagree and find this to be inconvenient to the reader and counter to the purpose of disambiguation. The passage from WP:DAB#Usage guidelines that says: "disambiguation links should be placed at the top of an article. Bottom links are deprecated, since they are harder to find and easily missed" applies to this situation, in my opinion. Any thoughts? Nufy8 ( talk) 19:14, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I suggest we move this discussion over to Talk:Nostradamus, as this is about application of the guidelines to that specific page. -- Marcinjeske ( talk) 11:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Currently there is a disagreement on whether it should be a WP:REDIR to Ubuntu (operating system) or Ubuntu (philosophy), or stay as a disambiguation page. Anyone who is neutral on the topic (not me, I use Ubuntu) care to comment? ff m 23:58, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I recently sorted through the links to the Templar and piped most of them over to Knights Templar. While doing this I noticed that a number of pages linked to Templar as a reference to fiction organizations unique to the fictional world the article was based on (for example Twokinds). In general, I took the following approach:
Thoughts? -- Burzmali ( talk) 14:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
The Knights Templar was a medieval Christian military order prominent in the Crusades, from the early 1100s until the early 1300s Knights Templar may also refer to: Knights Templar (Freemasonry) The Knights Templar (Deus Ex), a fictional organization in the Deus Ex series Knight Templar (The Saint), a 1930 novel by Leslie Charteris
Please voice your opinion about Jewish question (disambiguation) in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Jewish question (disambiguation) `' Míkka >t 20:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 20 | ← | Archive 24 | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | → | Archive 30 |
Isn't there a rule that no external links should be used on disambiguation pages? Has it been discussed before? I would find it quite useful, because otherwise disambig pages tend to get clogged with stuff that nobody cares to write an article about, but of course there is some website about it that somebody wants to promote (see HOS (permalink)) for a vivid example . -- 790 23:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
This guideline states "When a reader enters a given term in the Wikipedia search box and pushes "Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result?". What if the reader is ignorant of the "thing" that technically belongs to that name? Do we put up a disambiguation page at that term saying, "this means this but you probably think it means that". Or do we put up the correct article for that "thing" and add a DAB link at the top saying, "Most people think this means this other thing". Should an encyclopedia defer to ignorance and throw in disambiguation to get around it? (This question seems to be coming up at Talk:Milky Way#The "Milky Way" and "The Milky Way Galaxy" are two different things. Halfblue 22:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Are there any policies or guide-lines concerning the placement of pictures or images in disambig pages? I found two on the Syracuse disambig & I removed them, here are before and after links. Naufana : talk 17:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I came across the new look of {{ disambig-cleanup}}, and I don't really like it. I would like to go back to the old style and explained my reasons at Template talk:Disambig-cleanup#Ambox style. More comments? (Reply there.) – sgeureka t•c 09:00, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
First of all, "hence" is a word that few people use every day. Also, removing "the process of" leaves us with "Disambiguation in Wikipedia is resolving conflicts in article titles", which can be taken as the answer to "what is dismabiguation currently doing?" as well as "what is disambiguation?". This is removing clarity, not adding it. The deeper question here is what the editor finds unclear in the opening; let's discuss and jointly decide if a change is warranted. Chris the speller ( talk) 17:55, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Here is an interesting case at AFD involving a disambiguation page that disambiguates foreign language (non-latin) characters. I've voiced my opinion there, so I won't repeat it here, but I think it raises interesting questions for disambiguation on WP:EN. older ≠ wiser 15:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
There's a major pitfall, and the need now for " CJKV disambiguation pages" is very real. We have long had redirects (Wikipedia-wide) for non-Latin script names, redirecting to their corresponding English Wikipedia article, such as 中国 and 東京. We believed that this worked within the guidelines of WP:ENGLISH. However, there was a large pitfall in this reasoning, because not all Chinese characters map to a unique English Wikipedia article name. And in such cases, disambiguation becomes necessary. We are now faced with a rude awakening that, short of banning all redirects from foreign scripts, we must now disambiguate between foreign scripts names, outside the frameworks of WP:ENGLISH.
Previous discussions never led in the direction of eliminating dab for CJKV scripts:
I believe the consensus so far is that we cannot ban or eliminate such dab pages. Hence we find it necessary for WP:WPDAB to cover (and regulate) dab's using foreign scripts.
At this point, Chinese characters ( CJKV characters) are the only ones I know of, which urgently needs some DAB guidelines. We propose a joint DAB task force as discussed here, in Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#CJKV disambiguation pages. WP:WPDAB will be the main parent, and we will need to create a subpage under WP:WPDAB. Please discuss the feasibilities there.-- Endroit ( talk) 19:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
A discussion recently came up concerning this edit, and how it relates to Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Page naming conventions which specifies that "there should be just one disambiguation page for all cases (upper- or lower-case) and variant punctuation". I thought the guideline was just talking about situations like mm/Mm/mM/MM, (milli/mega metre/mole or people's initials or other things listed at MM,) but not where the acronym is also a word, like SAP/ sap or RAID/ raid. My basic logic was that the do disambiguation page was already so long as to make it hard to find what you're looking for, and someone looking for the acronym would be more likely to type it in uppercase letters. But perhaps wiser minds than mine have already considered this idea and rejected it. Is that part of the guideline strictly followed? Is it a good idea?-- Yannick ( talk) 01:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
A problem I come across a lot of the time is people linking to articles that have names which have one similar word or maybe a similar root but really don't need to be disambiguated. Bohemia (disambiguation) does not need a link to Bohemian Rhapsody because no one calls Bohemian Rhapsody "Bohemia". I think the guideline should address this. Recury 18:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
There are several pages with Alexander the Great in their title [1], and the disambiguation link at the top of the page only links to the 1956 film. Would there be any objections to creating Alexander the Great (disambiguation)? (of course this would change the example given in this article) -- George100 ( talk) 14:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not exactly sure where to put this but there's a lot of links to Environmental Protection Agency that should be moved since that page was turned into a disambig (see Talk:Environmental Protection Agency). I think most links should point to United States Environmental Protection Agency. On a related note, it would nice if the direct external links to WikiMapia were replaced with a template. I don't think we should promote one mapping service over others. (Check Special:Whatlinkshere/WikiMapia--many of the links also link to the WikiMapia article)
(It would also be nice if the links to pdf were also changed, seeing that "PDF" is an acronym) Jason McHuff ( talk) 11:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
And I forgot about Southwest (and probably articles on other directions) Jason McHuff ( talk) 11:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
When a person with horror movies on their mind types in "giant monsters" in Wikipedia, would they be expecting to find the page of a television host? It may be amusing for a moment, but would not help someone who was looking for the name of a specific giant monster. It turns out that Giant Monsters is actually the title of a television show, and the article for the television show was already voted to be merged with the page of the television host of that show. What is the general consensus here (and I am looking for more than 1 persons opinion) on trying to apply disambiguation to the page? Overall, is it better to ignore the general meaning large creatures (such as dinosaurs and movie monsters) in favor of the show title? Also, does a vote on articles for deletion override the need for disambiguation? What standards should apply here, and what should be appropriate? Userafw ( talk) 03:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
{{
redirect3|Giant Monsters|For the legendary creatures, see
Monster}}
renders into –
sgeureka
t•c 10:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Are there any guidelines relating to an article having a section of disambiguation links? Should there be? Case in point: Criticism of Microsoft#Product criticism - Josh ( talk | contribs) 20:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Am I correct in saying that external links (other than interwikis, of course) are forbidden on disambiguation pages? If this is not the policy, we should make it so and state it in the strongest terms. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:47, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
As previously mentioned above (at #CJKV disambiguation pages), we are in need of a guideline which covers Chinese characters. Here are my 2 proposals,
...or...
If there are no objections, I would like to add Option 1 (above) into the WP:DAB guidelines page. Please discuss.-- Endroit ( talk) 20:20, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I frequently work on the WP:DPL project. Occasionally, I encounter editors who are slightly to very recalcitrant about having links disambiguated in articles they are involved in. I would like to propose that some version of the following text be included in the guideline here:
I've mentioned this at the projects talk page and have received only favorable comments, although not many. Your comments, please?
-- Steven J. Anderson ( talk) 10:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Lift is quoted as a prime example of a dab page but its current version has a link to a non-article. This made me think that, since it isn't possible to keep tabs on all all examples all the time, perhaps a quoted example like this should be somehow cast in stone to retain it in its exemplary form. I'm not even sure if this is possible but it seems a good idea to me. Abtract ( talk) 09:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Should they ever exist? The article doesn't currently say anything about the usage of "(disambiguation)" in titles.
There are even cases where both "X" and "X (disambiguation)" are disambiguation pages with the same (manual!) content. - Lwc4life ( talk) 20:14, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
A user keeps being very adamant about inserting a disambiguation page for Wal-Mart, which is not a true disambiguation page. Disambiguation, IMHO, is not needed, as there is only one company named 'Wal-Mart', and it's not likely to be confused with anything else. The articles listed on List of Wal-Mart articles are really just a collection of 'see also' list items; subjects that are related to Wal-Mart but unlikely to actually be confused by someone searching for the company. The links under 'operations' are actually already in the main Wal-Mart article anyway, so that's redundant.
There was an AfD about a month ago, but unfortunately was closed prematurely by an admin that claimed 'no consensus'. 7 users were in favor of deletion, and four wanting to rename it (from 'Wal-Mart (disambiguation)' to 'List of Wal-Mart articles'); only 3 named users (and two anon IPs with less than 10 edits each) wanted to keep it. In the end, it was ultimately renamed to 'List of Wal-Mart articles'; although that's not good enough for Shaliya waya, who seems determined to engage in a long-term revert war over making sure that the disambiguation page sticks (though no WP:3RR violations have occurred, as for as I know; although she does revert with no edit summary, and no comments on the talk page).
At present, I still don't think that this is a disambiguation page, and I think it would best fit if merged into the 'see also' section of the main Wal-Mart article, since the items listed do seem to be related. I'd like to know what others feel about this. Thanks! Dr. Cash ( talk) 02:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I am new to Wikipedia, but I'm pretty sure that some sort of disambiguation page should be created to make more clear the following entities: Spencer's (a defunct retailer) and Spencer Gifts (an existing retailer that many customers call "Spencer's"). It seems a bit odd that "David Spencer Limited" went out of business in 1948 but commands the direct article link for Spencer's. I'll be happy to help execute a disambiguation, but I thought it would be best to ask first. - Where I chillax ( talk) 13:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Does the fact that the title being used as a placeholder is an actual page bother anyone? -- DocumentN ( talk) 18:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I've been doing disambiguation work for a while, but have just started thinking if there were a better way. Has there been discussion somewhere (maybe in the Wikimedia community) to 1) improve the search mechanism to something like googles, where there is some importance to the order returned and 2) a way of extracting a summary line from the found articles? Done correctly, this would be a much more useful/efficient mechanism to accomplish what we do. We may then have to choose the primary article - but beyond that, I'm not sure what use the dab pages would be. I know 1 is non-trivial both technically and perhaps intellectual property wise.
Or maybe I missing something the dab pages do?
(John User:Jwy talk) 04:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Should we include names of schools that can be abbreviated in the disambiguation page for acronyms? I saw in MHS that there were several high schools listed there with such an abbreviation. I've split them into MHS (high schools) but I'm wondering whether or not they should be listed at all. RightGot ( talk) 19:38, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Well regardless of whether or not we have high schools dabbed by their abbreviations, they shouldn't be cluttering up the main disambiguation page for the abbreviation. I have created many separate dab pages for those e.g. SHS (high schools). RightGot ( talk) 22:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Should Saints be a redirect to Saint (disambiguation) or to Saint (as the primary meaning)? Please comment at Talk:Saints. -- Russ (talk) 17:17, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
First, if this topic has been discussed, please point me to the archive. I just had an interaction about John Gardner (disambiguation) with an editor and it brings up an interesting question. When there are multiple articles that might be addressed by the same <first name> <last name>, under what conditions, if any, should there be a primary article in the disambiguation sense. I have not found anything explicit in the naming conventions (again, if I am wrong, please help me out by pointing me to the right place). Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Given_names_or_surnames comes close to discussing this, but doesn't and seems to lead to a contradiction: Let's say there are a bunch of people notable enough to be in wikipedia with the name Benjamin Franklin. It is reasonable to assume that the Benjamin Franklin article should remain with the content it currently has. A page listing the others needs to exist and point to the rest. But the MOS section pointed to above indicates it should not be a disambiguation page. What is it and what MOS should it follow? Under what conditions would we NOT have a primary <first name> <last name> page. And a minor question: What happens if there happens to be non-person article that might reasonably have the same name.
I don't want to codify every last bit of this - they are just guidelines. But I see a lot of useful work being done in the names area and I think we need to coordinate that effort with the disambiguation efforts. (John User:Jwy talk) 18:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
WP:MOSDAB#Given names or surnames is not about {{ hndis}} pages -- it's about including everyone named "Green" on the Green (disambiguation) page. No one has the given name "John Gardner", nor the surname "John Gardner" either. As stated, though, a primary topic is determined for human names just like it is (or isn't) for any other dab, by consensus. Kevin Smith and Michael Jordan have a primary topic apiece; Michael Smith doesn't. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 21:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
In many discussion on WP:RM opinions to move articles to the primary name, even when there are scores of uses for a name, often assert that being the first or largest is justification to be declared the primary use. This seems contrary to the wording in this guideline. Is my interpretation incorrect or do we need to make this point in the guideline.
Along the same lines, sometimes I wonder if we could avoid a lot of problems by strongly stating that if there are differences of opinion, the default should be to use the dab page at the primary name. I know the guideline hints at this but it does not defer to using the dab page by default. Vegaswikian ( talk) 07:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
There has been disagreement at User_talk:Uncle_G#Disambiguation_pages_and_articles where to take dab pages for deletion. Since dab pages are self-claimed non-articles, it can be argued that AfD is the wrong place, however, dab pages are in article name space. Per the intro of MOS:DAB, this situation may be comparable to how redirect deletions are handled. Opinions? – sgeureka t•c 12:17, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
It needs to be noted that if a disambiguation page is not carefully constructed, BetacommandBot will delete all fair use images on the renamed pages.
BetacommandBot insists that image pages of fair use images have a link back to the article using the image. When a disambiguation page is constructed, and the article moved, that link now points to the disambiguation page. Betacommandbot doesn't know how to interpret article history, so it then flags the image as lacking a proper fair use template and schedules the image for deletion.
BetacommandBot notifies the uploader of the image of this, not the editor who created the disambiguation page. The original uploader may be long gone, or may not log in within the week or so allowed them by Betacommand Bot. It's not their job to fix this, either. So the image may be quietly deleted. See Wikipedia:Image copyright help desk.
This should be addressed in the Disambiguation article. Thanks. -- John Nagle ( talk) 16:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Have a look at Nate Newton (disambiguation). Nothing links to it (except for a user page and the standard Wikipedia:Links to (disambiguation) pages). I've just inserted a hatnote on Nate Newton that—since there is only one alternate use—goes directly to Nate Newton (musician). Does Nate Newton (disambiguation) need to exist?
My inclination is to put it up for deletion, but before I do that I just wanted to see what everyone else thought. Neonumbers ( talk) 10:42, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
The dab page Andrew Scott is laid out as a table, rather than the usual bulleted list. I was going to convert it to a list, per the convention, but then I thought that it might be useful to discuss the idea here.
The table doesn't show up as well as a list when using popups (the table contents are not displayed in the popup), which seems to me to a very unhelpful thing ... but OTOH it does allow more info to be displayed on the dab page in a very readable manner.
On balance, I think that the table is a bad idea — more appropriate for set indexes than disambiguation pages — but I'd welcome other thoughts. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 04:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
The topic has also been raised on WT:MOSDAB (which I think is a better place for it). -- JHunterJ ( talk) 11:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I am having a problem understanding this "A disambiguation page has links to a heterogeneous set of concepts." from here. I get the rest of the para which is pretty fundamental dab stuff but it's the heterogeneous set of concepts I am having trouble with. Surely a dab page contains many quite different concepts, ( MS) would be a good example. DAB pages have links to articles with the same or similar names not the same concept. ... can anyone enlighten me? Abtract ( talk) 18:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I asked JHunterJ a question here but he was not sure of the answer. Does someone know if a category can go to a same name dab page? Lord Sesshomaru ( talk • edits) 18:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
{{
catmore1|
Naruto}}
at the top, and
Naruto has "For other uses, see
Naruto (disambiguation)", so in that case the only issue is whether a confused reader needs to follow two links, or just one, to find what they want. If it isn't going to clutter the category page too much, I'd support adding another hatnote, since it's "cheap" and may help save users some time. --
Russ
(talk) 18:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)It isn't obvious to me ... and from what I have read above, I am against a change (without seeing what is proposed!) because each page is going to be different and therefore a case by case decision will need to be made by responsible editors. For example dragon ball seems eminiently sensible to have the category since all bar one line are suitable, but clearly many are not so suitable as mentioned above. Yet others will be debatable and consensus will be reached as to suitablity. Abtract ( talk) 10:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
" Categories aid navigation between articles. Disambiguation pages however are non-articles and do not require categorization other than for maintenance purposes, and they already get auto-categorized by using {{ disambig}}, {{ hndis}} and {{ geodis}}. No other categories should be added, except Category:Surnames, Category:Given names or their subcategories (if the disambiguation page includes sections of name information or lists of people), or disambiguation subcategories that might apply."
" Categories aid navigation between articles. Disambiguation pages however are non-articles and do not require categorization other than for maintenance purposes, and they already get auto-categorized by using {{ disambig}}, {{ hndis}} and {{ geodis}}. No other categories should be added, including those which are named similar to the disambiguation page title, save for ones like Category:Astro Boy or Category:InuYasha whose dabs, Astro Boy (disambiguation) and InuYasha (disambiguation), are comprised only of related works. The only other exceptions are Category:Surnames, Category:Given names or their subcategories (if the disambiguation page includes sections of name information or lists of people), or disambiguation subcategories that might apply."
disambiguation links — at the top of an article, a note that links the reader to articles with similar titles or concepts that the reader may have been seeking instead of the article in which the links appear.
The above appears in the guideline, but "concepts" are vague and could be interpreted as external links. There are disambiguation pages with external links. Should this be clarified as to whether links are allowed or not? - Wikianon ( talk) 00:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Please see Harshing My Mellow's edit history, as well as Harshing My Mellow (disambiguation) (sic), Talk:Harshing My Mellow (disambiguation), and (if you really want to see 'em) the various "harshing my/your/his/her/their/one's mellow" redirects created by User:Evrik. Little help? -- JHunterJ ( talk) 02:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup has been pretty empty in the past few weeks/months. Maybe this means that the really terrible dab pages have all been cleaned up, but I still come across some dab pages needing attention now and then (I am also slowly making my way through Wikipedia:Links_to_(disambiguation)_pages/L-Z). In April 2007, User:Interiot filled the DPiNoC category with his bot (see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Archive_31#Automated_drinking_game) but I have no wikibot experience. Does someone else have an idea for what can be done so that the dab-fixers aren't out of job? – sgeureka t• c 14:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The CJKV taskforce has been created to assist in disambiguation of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese when using Kyūjitai, Hanja, Hán tự, Simplified Chinese, and Shinjitai ( Kanji). If you wish to participate, please come and help out. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
In several recent move requests, proposers are reading WP:PRIMARYUSAGE as saying that hit counts from the stats tool and link numbers are grounds for a move. They cite, in my view wrongly, the guideline "(this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings)". I propose to clarify the guideline, by writing "this may SOMETIMES be indicated by ...". Any other suggestions? Sam Staton ( talk) 07:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase, much more used than all others, then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a
disambiguation link at the top. If there's a disambiguation page, it should
link back to the primary topic.
A particular meaning of a title should be identified as the "primary" one only if there is a clear preponderance in usage, both within and outside of Wikipedia, of that title to signify that meaning rather than any other, and a consensus of editors that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings. If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)". |
That looks reasonable. One other thing, which can be a pain, is that sometimes there are a small number of major topics, and then dozens of minor ones. eg I've just reformatted
induction, putting the very major topics at the top of the page. (According to
the tool they were getting 10-100 times more hits than the other articles.) I think what I did is helpful, but I couldn't find any guidelines about it.
Sam Staton (
talk) 13:35, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Use outside Wikipedia is not important. The only reason for having a primary usage is to decide if an article gets to use the name itself and make all the others use some other name. The only reason for doing that is if one article gets more hits than any of the others. In other words it is only the hit count that matters, although it should be supported by link count for verification. However a guideline needs to be established. What is the criteria for establishing primary usage? If there are a dozen articles about the subject foo, what ratio between most used and second most viewed establishes primary usage? Is it 10% more, 20% more, 2:1, 3:1, 5:1, 10:1, 50:1, or 100:1? Is there a number of articles about foo that influences whether one of them should be a primary article? For example does it matter if there are 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 other articles named foo? Does it matter if there is a non-encyclopedia use of the name foo? For example does it matter if foo is used in other contexts than ways that it would appear in the encyclopedia? My answer is that if foo is viewed 10% more than any other article that could be logically named foo, then it could be used as primary usage, if more than twice as many as the next most viewed it should possibly be used, if more than three times as many it should probably be used. In cases where there are many articles that get close to the highest number of views, such that no one article gets more than 25% of the total number of views, no article should be used as the primary. In cases where there is a historical name of great significance it should be given precedence over more recent uses. An example is Radio Flyer, commonly known as the wagon. While the movie of the same name gets more views, Radio Flyer is allowed to keep it's name for historical purposes. You also have to include a Yuck factor to allow editors to bail out if they wish. No one wants to use Madonna for the singer (ok very few), yet by all forms of logic it is the logical primary use (doesn't conflict with any other article, gets far more views). Uses other than in Wikipedia are not a factor at all. By the way the ultimate form of treachery is to attempt to change the rules to make the contest come out in your favor. Don't do it. 199.125.109.104 ( talk) 21:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting we have a strict formula to figure this out - I just wanted to explore the math a bit to see how it worked out so we could work that into the conversation. I still think that minimizing clicks should be a key part of dab pages - its primarily for navigation. It was a revelation to me that it didn't matter whether one item had 10% hits over another or not - it was each single entry against all the rest that matters. If you have 10 entries and one gets 50% more than each of the others (9 get 20 and one gets 30), you still would want to have no primary target using this criteria.
Again, if the goal is minimizing clicks and we have good stats on expected hit rates on the various pages (that's the hardest part!), you would only create a primary target if one article had at least as many "hits" as the rest of the pages combined. (John User:Jwy talk) 21:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't agree with the notion that a primary topic exists for the purpose of minimizing clicks and I don't agree with any quantitative approach to finding the primary topic. That is why my proposed rewrite of the section avoids any mention at all of the number of links to a topic and emphasizes instead the "clear preponderance in usage." This is intended as a guideline for humans who are writing an encyclopedia for use by humans, not an algorithm for machines. The purpose of disambig pages is to help readers find relevant articles, not to minimize clicks, so if a primary topic is going to make it harder for some significant groups of readers, it shouldn't be there. -- Russ (talk) 01:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
What is the intent of the "clear preponderance in usage" standard? If it is not to reduce clicks, what is it? (John User:Jwy talk) 15:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Let's take a dab term like 'HP'. In the top line, the most common usage (Hewlett-Packard) is listed at the top. A user recently asked why it also isn't sited under the organizations section, suggesting that the term isn't as noticeable at the top. I am tempted to think this is lazy, but in retrospect, I thought I would come here for some input. Thoughts? - Arcayne (cast a spell) 16:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Should references be included on disambiguation pages? See Bryophyta. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 14:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
The manual of style for disambig pages says that, pretty much, each entry should only have one link. However, in actually looking through disambig pages I find that at least 25% of them have at least one entry with multiple linked words, and sometimes all entries do. Am I correct in assuming that all of these should likely be fixed, and that this is because inexperienced editors are inappropriately attempting to be helpful by linking words all over the place when they actually shouldn't be? It would appear to me that 10,000+ of these disambig pages need to be fixed in this regard. -- Xyzzyplugh ( talk) 22:02, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I just was looking through WP:MOSDAB, and according to that, most of the links in Sexuality should be deleted and redirected to Human sexuality. However, it has several songs named Sexuality, and any future links to Sexuality would redirect to Human sexuality. I am not sure if I should leave it like it is, or redirect it, or what. Mynameisnotpj ( talk) 05:02, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I have cleaned it how I interpret mos:dab ... several items deleted with an important addition (list etc). Abtract ( talk) 10:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
The set index idea seems an elegant solution to a certain level of disambiguation need. This came up over on WP:HN [6] [7] but I thought the details are best thrashed out here.
Someone stated (rightly in my opinion) that The War of the Worlds (film) was a set index and removed the template [8]. My only concern was that it wasn't replaced with anything, as there was nothing to replace it with, which could lead to confusion over the nature and purpose of such a page. I suggested using a generalised form of Template:Shipindex that would also add the page to something like "Category: Set index", a child of Category:Disambiguation, which could then contain things like Category:Ship disambiguation - which would tend to clarify the structure there.
Of course, we might need to look at naming but I think it is largely OK and avoids messiness like "List of XX named XX". We also might need to look at whether we can add additional categories (as discussed in the section above) - I'd say that it would work fine but again it is an issue we probably need to decide on and make sure the guideline reflects this. ( Emperor ( talk) 19:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC))
Disambiguation question at Talk:Northern_Ireland#NI_disambig about removing the hatnote. Any guidance would be nice. WLU ( talk) 18:57, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
mos:dab makes it clear that set index article are not dab pages so I am trying to remove the Gorki dab statement at the bottom of the page ... sadly I cannot, can anyone help, what have I missed? Abtract ( talk) 15:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
We also want to avoid {{ SIA}} as an "escape hatch" for editors to use on random dab pages as an excuse to include red links. Baykal (disambiguation) (while not so tagged) had a similar conversation, and was even less of a set-index. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 00:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I am finding one element of the Set Index guideline very confusing. To quote from the page:
I think the combination of the red links and "Like this one" make it very hard to follow... I would fix it myself except I am not quite certain I get what it meant. -- Marcinjeske ( talk) 04:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
There's a small dispute on Barack Obama as to whether the current hatnote, {{Redirect4|Barack|Obama}} is sufficient to disambiguate the Senator from his father, Barack Obama, Sr., or whether an additional hatnote should be added saying something like:
I can't tell from the MoS what the standard for something like this is. The only comparison I can think of is Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill (1620-1688) and Winston Churchill (novelist). Winston Churchill has no hatnote linking to his namesakes, but it does have a hatnote pointing readers to Churchill (disambiguation). However, I wasn't sure whether that represented an actual guideline or just something that was locally determined. — Josiah Rowe ( talk • contribs) 21:25, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
{{
For|the Kenyan economist|Barack Obama, Sr.}}
before or after the current redirect hatnote. Churchill should (or could) also have such a hatnote. See also
William Shakespeare. --
JHunterJ (
talk) 22:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
{{
For|the Kenyan economist (1936-1982)|Barack Obama, Sr.}}
. Not sure whether it's in line with the rules, but it seems helpful.
PamD (
talk) 23:13, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm looking for some outside opinions as to whether or not Nostradamus should have a hatnote dab that links to Nostradamus (disambiguation). User:PL thinks that having a hatnote is unnecessary, and if any dab link should be present in the article, it should be under the "Popular culture" section, or at the top of the actual Nostradamus in popular culture article, because that's where readers will be looking for those links. I disagree and find this to be inconvenient to the reader and counter to the purpose of disambiguation. The passage from WP:DAB#Usage guidelines that says: "disambiguation links should be placed at the top of an article. Bottom links are deprecated, since they are harder to find and easily missed" applies to this situation, in my opinion. Any thoughts? Nufy8 ( talk) 19:14, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I suggest we move this discussion over to Talk:Nostradamus, as this is about application of the guidelines to that specific page. -- Marcinjeske ( talk) 11:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Currently there is a disagreement on whether it should be a WP:REDIR to Ubuntu (operating system) or Ubuntu (philosophy), or stay as a disambiguation page. Anyone who is neutral on the topic (not me, I use Ubuntu) care to comment? ff m 23:58, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I recently sorted through the links to the Templar and piped most of them over to Knights Templar. While doing this I noticed that a number of pages linked to Templar as a reference to fiction organizations unique to the fictional world the article was based on (for example Twokinds). In general, I took the following approach:
Thoughts? -- Burzmali ( talk) 14:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
The Knights Templar was a medieval Christian military order prominent in the Crusades, from the early 1100s until the early 1300s Knights Templar may also refer to: Knights Templar (Freemasonry) The Knights Templar (Deus Ex), a fictional organization in the Deus Ex series Knight Templar (The Saint), a 1930 novel by Leslie Charteris
Please voice your opinion about Jewish question (disambiguation) in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Jewish question (disambiguation) `' Míkka >t 20:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)