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 15 | ← | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | Archive 21 | Archive 22 | → | Archive 25 |
Removed the following recently-added line from the intro:
While this is true, it doesn't belong on this page, IMO. Defining what a dab page is and isn't belongs at WP:D. Please discuss here if you disagree. — Wahoofive ( talk) 16:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Where in Wikipedia, if not on a disambiguation page, would one find the explanation of the fact that one of the several meanings is the basic one that explains the others? Often that can be put into one sentence that precedes the list of links. Michael Hardy 19:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
The article says:
On a page called Title, generally do not disambiguate: * Title County * Title City * Title Hospital * Title University
What does this mean? Does the verb 'disambiguate' mean make an entry for, or make a set of entries for, or ?? If this is not to be done, what is to be done?
For instance, on a "York (disambiguation)" page, does this mean don't have a "York County" line, or do have one, but not multiple ones (for York, Ohio and York, Iowa). If the latter, is then then supposed to be a link to a "York County (disambiguation)" page instead? Or is this supposed to be talking about something entirely different? - R. S. Shaw 04:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, I've been bold, and did something about this issue and the one mentioned below. It may not be perfect, but I hope you think it's an improvement. Go ahead and improve it further. — Michael Z. 2006-03-02 05:48 Z
I agree, the vague section titles are slated for demolition, but I would have to study them more before deciding where best to put them after they get new, sensible titles. The guidelines do say "generally do not disambiguate", so they anticipate the occasional need for exceptions, in effect they generally discourage adding those items. I still think there are good reasons to recommend leaving these items off a disambig page, although the first actual cases I looked at have ignored those guidelines (Mexico contains Mexico City, San Diego contains San Diego County), and if I removed them per the guidelines, they would reappear within a day. I hope a couple more editors side with you or with me soon. Two people with different opinions are not liable to reach a good consensus. Chris the speller 22:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
===Examples of individual entries that should usually not be created===
On a page called Title, generally do not create an entry for:
You may want to create entries on the same page for:
"Title Island", "Title River" or "River Title" may be worth listing in cases where the "Island"/"River" part is often omitted, so "Catalina" might include "Santa Catalina Island".
In most cases, do not list names of which Title is a part, unless the persons are very frequently referred to simply by their first or last name (e.g. Galileo, Shakespeare).
In an Issues section, the article says
In general, inline descriptions are problematic (because links to disambiguation pages should be avoided), so they are likely to be neglected for lack of visibility.
Descriptions inline with what? What do links to dab pages have to do with it? (I can't evaluate the 'visibility' clause since I haven't figured out the context.) - R. S. Shaw 04:40, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Unlike a regular article page, don't wikilink any other words in the line, unless they may be essential to help the reader determine where they might find the information.
The example given seems insufficient to determine when one ought to wikilink words that aren't the title of the disambiguation page. For example, I was told that ""Angel", a 1988 song by Aerosmith", and similar such fixes, shoud not be wikilinked per this rule. This seems unhelpful, given anyone looking for information about the Aerosmith song should at least be able to read about the group, even if there is no article about the song. However, I'm not sure if this is the correct way to interpret the rule, especially as it's been enforced inconsistantly. Nedlum 16:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Talk:Abatement.
Take a look at declaration. What is this page? Is it a (very malformed) disambiguation page, or some sort of omnibus article? I'm loathe to break it out into four separate stubs (and then track down and fix the dozens of links to it) , but it currently is rather a mess. Any ideas? -- TreyHarris 08:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
What are your thoughts on adding the following exception to MOS:DP piping guidelines?
I think the exception you propose helps for readability, but not for navigation. It used to be that most editors would pipe nearly all links on a disambiguation page, because " Turkey (bird)" is not something that one encounters in normal English, and so we'd pipe it into " turkey" on the disambiguation page, just like we would in an article. So you'd see a row of "Turkey...Turkey...Turkey...Turkey" links on the Turkey (disambiguation) page, regardless of what articles the links actually went to. Pretty, and grammatically and typographically correct, but it slowed down the reader's ability to scan the choices and select the correct page.
Today, the gestalt of this style guide is that the function of disambiguation pages is navigation elsewhere. The stricture against piped links is for this reason: if you use piped links, the reader must read the entire line containing the link to decide if it's the link she wants to click on. If you use an accidental (unpiped) link, the title of the article alone (and hence, the visible link itself) may be sufficient for the reader to decide whether or not to click. -- TreyHarris 17:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Talk:Abatement.
Apparently, I need discuss changing {{ disambig}} to {{ TLAdisambig}} for AAA. Can I ask why? Gflores Talk 02:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
The situation seems simple to me. {{ disambig}} is the only template that goes on a disambiguation page. There is no such thing as an abreviation page, there are only disambiguation pages. Thus {{ TLAdisambig}}, {{ 3LC}}, {{ 2LC}} and whatever other templates will be removed and replaced with {{ disambig}}.-- Commander Keane 13:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd rather not open this discussion again, except to ask: was any consesus reached? The discussion spread out over a couple of Talk pages and trying to follow it now gives me a headache. I do notice that {{
3LC}} got moved to {{
3CC}} a couple weeks ago, "letter combination" vs "character combination"? Maybe they weren't well thought out before being launched. No, no, no... I can't get started on this again So, was any consesus reached?
Ewlyahoocom 18:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
User:William Allen Simpson, member since November, has been insisting that he originally created the concepts of "disambiguation pages" and "abbreviation pages", and has been proliferating all those templates during the last month or two. The discussions have been hard to pin down because they span various WP and template talk pages. I would really love to redirect those templates to {{ disambig}} and finally put this to rest. — Michael Z. 2006-03-13 00:13 Z
One of those "whatever other" templates is hndis. There is a crew going around adding and updating a ton of hndis templates in Category:Human_name_disambiguation. Should we ask them to stop, and/or do we change them to disambig templates? Chris the speller 05:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Have a look at the convoluted set of polls here: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Disambiguation_subcategories#TLA_poll; the consensus was to delete all *LA templates. {{ 4LA}} is still there, but In response to the poll, Simpson also created {{ 4LC}} [ history], then later moved it to {{ 4CC}}. This circular game has added useless templates to thousands of pages since January. — Michael Z. 2006-03-13 06:14 Z
I just worked on Lisa, which has the {{ hndis}} template. About 1⁄3 of the entries are human names, but the other 2⁄3 are not. I left the {{ hndis}} in place, because I've never seen it before, but the text reads rather strangely given the non-human majority of entries. I put all the humans named Lisa under an "In biography:" header. I'm not entirely happy with the page, though. -- TreyHarris 07:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I can go along with that, but we still have 2 problems:
1) I contacted User:DLJessup on February 19 and warned him that we had hndis in our sights, and that he might want to save the energy he was expending on sorting them. He is a powerhouse of an editor and has been cooperative. We might want to find out how hard it would be for him and his pals to use our template and the hnd category (can that category be sorted by surname without the use of a template? Or can the hndis template be changed to insert the category and sort it, but not display at the bottom of the dab page?)
2) This MoS and WP:TM/GENERAL are at variance. The General template page specifies TLAdisambig and geodis as well as disambig, so it should have those 2 old ones removed or marked as deprecated. Chris the speller 17:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
When I posted the question, I had no idea this had been (thoroughly) discussed already. But for the record, I agree with Michael and C. Keane. Gflores Talk 19:08, 13 March 2006 (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 15 | ← | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | Archive 21 | Archive 22 | → | Archive 25 |
Removed the following recently-added line from the intro:
While this is true, it doesn't belong on this page, IMO. Defining what a dab page is and isn't belongs at WP:D. Please discuss here if you disagree. — Wahoofive ( talk) 16:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Where in Wikipedia, if not on a disambiguation page, would one find the explanation of the fact that one of the several meanings is the basic one that explains the others? Often that can be put into one sentence that precedes the list of links. Michael Hardy 19:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
The article says:
On a page called Title, generally do not disambiguate: * Title County * Title City * Title Hospital * Title University
What does this mean? Does the verb 'disambiguate' mean make an entry for, or make a set of entries for, or ?? If this is not to be done, what is to be done?
For instance, on a "York (disambiguation)" page, does this mean don't have a "York County" line, or do have one, but not multiple ones (for York, Ohio and York, Iowa). If the latter, is then then supposed to be a link to a "York County (disambiguation)" page instead? Or is this supposed to be talking about something entirely different? - R. S. Shaw 04:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, I've been bold, and did something about this issue and the one mentioned below. It may not be perfect, but I hope you think it's an improvement. Go ahead and improve it further. — Michael Z. 2006-03-02 05:48 Z
I agree, the vague section titles are slated for demolition, but I would have to study them more before deciding where best to put them after they get new, sensible titles. The guidelines do say "generally do not disambiguate", so they anticipate the occasional need for exceptions, in effect they generally discourage adding those items. I still think there are good reasons to recommend leaving these items off a disambig page, although the first actual cases I looked at have ignored those guidelines (Mexico contains Mexico City, San Diego contains San Diego County), and if I removed them per the guidelines, they would reappear within a day. I hope a couple more editors side with you or with me soon. Two people with different opinions are not liable to reach a good consensus. Chris the speller 22:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
===Examples of individual entries that should usually not be created===
On a page called Title, generally do not create an entry for:
You may want to create entries on the same page for:
"Title Island", "Title River" or "River Title" may be worth listing in cases where the "Island"/"River" part is often omitted, so "Catalina" might include "Santa Catalina Island".
In most cases, do not list names of which Title is a part, unless the persons are very frequently referred to simply by their first or last name (e.g. Galileo, Shakespeare).
In an Issues section, the article says
In general, inline descriptions are problematic (because links to disambiguation pages should be avoided), so they are likely to be neglected for lack of visibility.
Descriptions inline with what? What do links to dab pages have to do with it? (I can't evaluate the 'visibility' clause since I haven't figured out the context.) - R. S. Shaw 04:40, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Unlike a regular article page, don't wikilink any other words in the line, unless they may be essential to help the reader determine where they might find the information.
The example given seems insufficient to determine when one ought to wikilink words that aren't the title of the disambiguation page. For example, I was told that ""Angel", a 1988 song by Aerosmith", and similar such fixes, shoud not be wikilinked per this rule. This seems unhelpful, given anyone looking for information about the Aerosmith song should at least be able to read about the group, even if there is no article about the song. However, I'm not sure if this is the correct way to interpret the rule, especially as it's been enforced inconsistantly. Nedlum 16:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Talk:Abatement.
Take a look at declaration. What is this page? Is it a (very malformed) disambiguation page, or some sort of omnibus article? I'm loathe to break it out into four separate stubs (and then track down and fix the dozens of links to it) , but it currently is rather a mess. Any ideas? -- TreyHarris 08:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
What are your thoughts on adding the following exception to MOS:DP piping guidelines?
I think the exception you propose helps for readability, but not for navigation. It used to be that most editors would pipe nearly all links on a disambiguation page, because " Turkey (bird)" is not something that one encounters in normal English, and so we'd pipe it into " turkey" on the disambiguation page, just like we would in an article. So you'd see a row of "Turkey...Turkey...Turkey...Turkey" links on the Turkey (disambiguation) page, regardless of what articles the links actually went to. Pretty, and grammatically and typographically correct, but it slowed down the reader's ability to scan the choices and select the correct page.
Today, the gestalt of this style guide is that the function of disambiguation pages is navigation elsewhere. The stricture against piped links is for this reason: if you use piped links, the reader must read the entire line containing the link to decide if it's the link she wants to click on. If you use an accidental (unpiped) link, the title of the article alone (and hence, the visible link itself) may be sufficient for the reader to decide whether or not to click. -- TreyHarris 17:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Moved to Talk:Abatement.
Apparently, I need discuss changing {{ disambig}} to {{ TLAdisambig}} for AAA. Can I ask why? Gflores Talk 02:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
The situation seems simple to me. {{ disambig}} is the only template that goes on a disambiguation page. There is no such thing as an abreviation page, there are only disambiguation pages. Thus {{ TLAdisambig}}, {{ 3LC}}, {{ 2LC}} and whatever other templates will be removed and replaced with {{ disambig}}.-- Commander Keane 13:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd rather not open this discussion again, except to ask: was any consesus reached? The discussion spread out over a couple of Talk pages and trying to follow it now gives me a headache. I do notice that {{
3LC}} got moved to {{
3CC}} a couple weeks ago, "letter combination" vs "character combination"? Maybe they weren't well thought out before being launched. No, no, no... I can't get started on this again So, was any consesus reached?
Ewlyahoocom 18:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
User:William Allen Simpson, member since November, has been insisting that he originally created the concepts of "disambiguation pages" and "abbreviation pages", and has been proliferating all those templates during the last month or two. The discussions have been hard to pin down because they span various WP and template talk pages. I would really love to redirect those templates to {{ disambig}} and finally put this to rest. — Michael Z. 2006-03-13 00:13 Z
One of those "whatever other" templates is hndis. There is a crew going around adding and updating a ton of hndis templates in Category:Human_name_disambiguation. Should we ask them to stop, and/or do we change them to disambig templates? Chris the speller 05:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Have a look at the convoluted set of polls here: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Disambiguation_subcategories#TLA_poll; the consensus was to delete all *LA templates. {{ 4LA}} is still there, but In response to the poll, Simpson also created {{ 4LC}} [ history], then later moved it to {{ 4CC}}. This circular game has added useless templates to thousands of pages since January. — Michael Z. 2006-03-13 06:14 Z
I just worked on Lisa, which has the {{ hndis}} template. About 1⁄3 of the entries are human names, but the other 2⁄3 are not. I left the {{ hndis}} in place, because I've never seen it before, but the text reads rather strangely given the non-human majority of entries. I put all the humans named Lisa under an "In biography:" header. I'm not entirely happy with the page, though. -- TreyHarris 07:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I can go along with that, but we still have 2 problems:
1) I contacted User:DLJessup on February 19 and warned him that we had hndis in our sights, and that he might want to save the energy he was expending on sorting them. He is a powerhouse of an editor and has been cooperative. We might want to find out how hard it would be for him and his pals to use our template and the hnd category (can that category be sorted by surname without the use of a template? Or can the hndis template be changed to insert the category and sort it, but not display at the bottom of the dab page?)
2) This MoS and WP:TM/GENERAL are at variance. The General template page specifies TLAdisambig and geodis as well as disambig, so it should have those 2 old ones removed or marked as deprecated. Chris the speller 17:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
When I posted the question, I had no idea this had been (thoroughly) discussed already. But for the record, I agree with Michael and C. Keane. Gflores Talk 19:08, 13 March 2006 (UTC)