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 40 | ← | Archive 43 | Archive 44 | Archive 45 | Archive 46 | Archive 47 | → | Archive 50 |
Back in June the following statement was added to the opening of this page [1]:
That's a fundamental change to the definition of disambiguation on WP, and I see no discussion about this change, which was quickly obscured by a series of additional edits. I suspect nobody noticed. This new definition adds all kinds of ambiguity to title discussions. For example, it is being used to Oppose RM's like the current one at Talk:Nothing Has Changed (album). Accordingly, I've removed it [2]. It should not be restored unless evidence of consensus support for such a fundamental change can be established. -- В²C ☎ 17:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
The principal form of the disambiguation in cases like this is WP:NATURAL; if you're concerned that people are going to do a lot of unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation on this basis (which is not actually happening), I guess that's something we can talk about. But absent a showing of an actual problem, the last 3/4 of a years' stable version of the wording should remain. This wording was added for the very, exact reason that certain editors do not seem to understand what the word "disambiguation" means and how it applies here. It mean "making unambiguous" not "distinguishing between two or more present and accounted-for things"; WP just happens to to apply it to the latter sub-case 99% of the time. Not 100%. The result of the failure to recognize that the unusual case exists has result in a truly tedious amount of wasted breath at repeat nominations at RM. It's a stupid and pointless productivity drain, permanently forestalled by one simple clarification, which has worked well since last June. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
The wording as inserted would support the tendency of some editors to add "(film)" or "(album)" to numerous non-ambiguous titles. I regularly move stubs with those unnecessary disambiguations to their base titles. Almost any title of an artistic work could be claimed to be "likely to confuse readers if not clarified", and we don't want to go down that road. Pam D 23:34, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Above, I see: if you're concerned that people are going to do a lot of unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation on this basis (which is not actually happening)
Here are some moves made within the last 4 days:
These are just the ones I found in 20 minutes of looking. I see them every day. I think that these moves are a misreading of the guideline's sentence at the top of this section, but to say that unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation moves aren't happening is incorrect. - Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 00:27, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
The kinds of cases that this wording (perhaps imperfectly) actually addresses are real and legitimate, and codifying that repeated RM consensus is legitimate. If there turns out to be some unintended but resolvable side effect of the exact wording, we just tweak it, we don't act like cats with firecrackers tied to our tails. This is really the most exaggerated and game-playing panic I've seen on WP in so long I can't even remember. B2c's "you sneaked that by", "you sneaked this in" nonsense is farcically implausible; it's just denialism. There is no "sneaking" on a hugely watchlisted guideline, and there is no sneaking in a years-long string of RMs (in a controversial RM area, at that). Please. This sudden pretense that all the rest of WP who participate in RM are wrong and 4 editors at this page somehow trump all prior decisions is WP:FALSECONSENSUS at its worst. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Tony1 just restored the controversial statement again [5] (and Calidum reverted that). There are now at least five editors who have expressed opposition to inclusion of the controversial statement:
Clearly, the inclusion of this statement is controversial and does not have consensus support. And SMcCandlish has essentially conceded that it is problematic and needs refining. I think it's beyond merely problematic, but at least get consensus support for a revised version before restoring. -- В²C ☎ 01:40, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
For the record, Dick Lyon's description of my views is very wrong. For my actual views, please see my user page, my FAQ ( User:Born2cycle/FAQ), and my edit history. The statement in question goes far beyond "simply recognizes that this happens", does not apply to the USPLACE situations at all (unique US city names do not inherently lack precision - no one disputes the need to disambiguate the ambiguous ones), and I have not been involved in a USPLACE discussion in years. But when you don't have a position based on solid reasoning, I suppose resorting to ad hominem attacks based on straw man and red herring arguments is to be expected. -- В²C ☎ 21:41, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
It has been suggested above to have an rfc. I'll post it, but want to make sure we present this in a fair way. So this section is for the collaborative editing of the rfc. I'll start, but please feel free to edit it as you see fit. -- В²C ☎ 22:21, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
RFC DRAFT START
Back in June the following statement was added to the opening of this page [6]:
There is some disagreement about it. Should the statement remain, be removed, or be modified? Please indicate your position and reasoning below.
RFC DRAFT END
All parties are reminded to avoid personalizing disputes concerning the Manual of Style, the article titles policy ('WP:TITLE'), and similar policy and guideline pages, and to work collegially towards a workable consensus. In particular, a rapid cycle of editing these pages to reflect one's viewpoint, then discussing the changes is disruptive and should be avoided. Instead, parties are encouraged to establish consensus on the talk page first, and then make the changes.
Well here's my 2p: on the merits I can see both sides of the issue, but this is a huge huge huge change. It could easily be taken to authorize the renaming of tens of thousands of articles, for one thing. For another thing, if the current wording ("Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles", this absolutely knocks for six one of the Five Virtues of Titles (namely, Conciseness) mandated in WP:TITLE. I mean, look at WP:PRECISION which is also part of that policy (not an essay, not a guideline, not a suggestion). The current wording in this guideline completely opposes that. If you're going to keep this text you must make major changes to WP:TITLE or else were going to have a real can of worms down the road, here. We have to have a centralized RfC which includes WP:TITLE (and maybe other pages for all I know). This is going to take some time and effort to develop... let's not rush, here. Herostratus ( talk) 23:00, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Looking closer at WP:TITLE... this doesn't seem so far from the goal (whether desired or not) as it seems... WP:TITLE already says " Bothell is already precise enough to be unambiguous, but we instead use Bothell, Washington (see Geographic names), seeking a more natural and recognizable title." and some other things like that.... so you're really halfway there already.
I was thinking of maybe adding something like this to the end of the opening paragraph of WP:PRECISION" "...On the other hand, Horowitz would not be precise enough to identify unambiguously the famous classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz, and Six Corners is not precise enough to immediately indicate to the reader what the entity is (a small town, a neighborhood, a concept in geometry, a corporation, or whatever) so Six Corners (Chicago shopping district) should be used instead." This'd help clarify with an example? Is this a good example? (Maybe Six Corners, Chicago is better?)
On the other hand, WP:PRECISION also has an example " Energy is not precise enough to unambiguously indicate the physical property (see Energy (disambiguation)). However, it is preferred over "Energy (physics)", as it is more concise, and precise enough to be understood by most people (see Primary topic, and the conciseness and recognizability criteria)."
So... you'd really have to pry Conciseness loose as one of the Five Virtues, I think... Conciseness is IMO the least of the Five Virtues but it is one of them, and there would be some resistance... so I dunno. Herostratus ( talk) 23:34, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
I was disambiguating Ray tracing and came across Ray tracing/version 2 which is a redirect to Ray tracing. On the surface, it doesn't seem to make any sense. Looking at the history, it seems that Ray tracing/version 2 was used temporarily facilitate a move:
I'm not sure if the was the right or best way to accomplish this. Right now, there is no problem but keeping Ray tracing/version 2 seems to me to be unnecessary and potentially confusing since it doesn't have a use within Wikipedia as a search term. Can it/should it be deleted? Does anyone care to comment? MB ( talk) 01:03, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
See Talk:Spike (character)#Is Spike (character) a valid disambiguation page? older ≠ wiser 03:06, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
Shouldn't both criteria be required, not just one of the two? In ictu oculi ( talk) 16:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Some of fans of this "sacred COMMONNAME" misinterpretation are now trying to generalize this to a made up "common style" notion, whereby whatever turned out to be the most common stylization in the pop-culture news sources that coincidentally happened to have written the most about it (according to OR Google-hits "analysis") would be imposed on WP, both in titles and content. Its one of the most daft ideas I've ever encountered here. It would mean that, e.g., the gaming and toy press would dictate how WP is permitted to use English when referring to Pokemon things, since no one else really writes about that. Just one example. It turns WP:RS on its ear, ignoring the facts that there are very reliably sourced differences between journalism's writing conventions and formal publishing's writing conventions, and that being a reliable source about details regarding Pokemon characters doesn't make a publication a reliable source about how to write about that topic in an encyclopedic register for a general audience.
I'm at my wit's end with these people, both at WT:AT and WT:MOSCAPS. It doesn't matter how many sources are provided laying out the different journalistic, mainstream formal, and high-academic stylistic schema, and how clearly separated they are, as long as magazines they like overcapitalize something, they're certain that WP must do so also, and continue to campaign on this constantly. It's like they refuse to distinguishing between the name of something and how a particular writing genre applies style to it, like confusing a person with the suit they're wearing on Tuesday. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:35, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Right now, the page Foucault links to the disambiguation page. Can we change this page to Foucault (disambiguation) and have the page Foucault reroute to Michel Foucault? and then put a italicized text at the top of the page for Foucault saying "For other uses of Foucault, see Foucault (disambiguation)"? There's far more visits to the page for Michel Foucault (219K in the last 90 days) than for any other term that's linked on the disambiguation page — the most for a different Foucault is for Léon Foucault (10K in the last 90 days), far fewer for others. This is also what we do for other major thinkers. (I'm thinking here about students who hear "Foucault" referenced and have trouble finding the correct page.) - CircleAdrian ( talk) 21:11, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Chief contains three different links to the same page:
Chief (albumn). I've never noticed something like this before. Shouldn't they be consolidated into something like this: Chief (album), a 2011/2012 album by Eric Church (Chief)
That's assuming there is any basis for this at all. The article says the album was released in 2011 and the Chief is the name of the album, not an alternate name for Eric Church. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB ( talk • contribs) 23:29, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
See here: Sevan, Armenia was moved to Sevan (town). Isn't that a breach of WP:PARENDIS? Place names are typically disambiguated by adding the higher-level administrative division, not by adding (town).-- Midas02 ( talk) 03:10, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
I couldn't find a source for this edit (the JPS's website doesn't use this abbreviation), but a quick Googling indicated that a number of people out in the world (not RSs) use it, and so I thought readers might find my edit helpful. I think specifying whether or not an abbreviation is "official" would probably be too much.
Was I right?
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 23:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
A rare example of a one-person disambiguation page may be viewed at Charles Fredericks. A discussion related to this topic is at Talk:Charles Fredericks (actor). —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 13:45, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
There's a rather complicated page move discussion going on on Talk:Góngora (surname). A combination of the use of the diacritic, dab page and surname page. For those who like a bit of a challenge. -- Midas02 ( talk) 19:46, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I went to tackle Chris Jenkins from the March list and found four articles that link to this dab page: Michael Minkler, Nat Boxer, Steve Maslow, & Bob Minkler. None of these have a link to the Chris Jenkins dab page. They all do include the Template:Academy Award Best Sound, and it links (three times) to Chris Jenkins (sound engineer). So I don't see why these articles supposedly link to Chris Jenkins. I checked the links to the Chris Jenkins (sound engineer) and all four articles are listed at linking there. Am I missing something? Can anyone shed any light on this? MB ( talk) 02:18, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
The page Territorialism was recently converted to a dab page, but the result is somewhat lacking in quality. Seasoned editors are welcome to join the discussion. -- Midas02 ( talk) 12:15, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Should articles be disambiguated as XYZ (disambig 1) (disambig 2) or as XYZ (disambig1 disambig2 combo) ? We are discussing this at talk: National Highway 26 (India) -- 70.51.46.39 ( talk) 07:20, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#RfC:_Artist_name_as_disambiguation_regarding_non-notable_song_titles In ictu oculi ( talk) 20:41, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
this should not have been removed unless there is a RFC supporting it In ictu oculi ( talk) 18:15, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Or possibly the reverse.
There was clearly no consensus for the addition, as shown by Red Slash and Francis Schonken. This is WP:AT material. Additions to policy/guidelines require consensus before they go in. If people think that the removed material has consensus, we can add it. Until then, it is up to editors wanting to change the guideline to explain why. Dohn joe ( talk) 18:29, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Nice cherry-picking there; you skipped the entire |very recent discussion in which the last attempt to remove this also failed to gain consensus. Re-raising the matter barely a month later with no new argument for deletion is forum shopping-by-slight-time-shift. Nice circular reasoning, too; if "RReason for addition explained here", then your request "explain why it should have been added in the first place" has already been complied with by yourself.
There is no burden to explain why the material "should have been added". It was added with explanation at the time, there was discussion, it was modified in light of that discussion, and it has been stable since June 2015. You can't come along now and pretend that because you didn't participate in the original discussion that it "doesn't have consensus", especially when you clearly did not understand the original discussions. You also don't get to speak for other editors and count them on your "side" by badly mischaracterizing their positions (more on that below).
But just for kicks, there's the explanation again, and some additional background, incl. the failed attempt to remove it last month:
|
---|
Obviously, it should remain the consensus, per WP:POLICY, the purpose of guidelines is to codify actual consensus – real best practices – not try to force made-up ones you wish the community would adopt. Disambiguation of innately confusing names (or contextually ambiguous ones that may be confusing because of WP's naming conventions creating particular reader expectations) is routine at WP:RM and has been the entire length of the project; a fairly recent and unanimous RM example was the Algerian Arab to Algerian Arab sheep move (the original title eventually became a disambiguation page); certain kinds of names covered by WP:USPLACE are an entire class of examples. Such disambiguation is used when necessary because titles must be precise or disambiguated if they are not, as a matter of policy at WP:PRECISE. The tendentious attempts by a few individuals to hide this fact because they falsely believe that "disambiguation" (a word that WP did not invent) means and only ever means "avoiding collisions of article titles", or because the falsely believe article names must be shortest they can possibly be (a misreading of WP:CONCISE is what would be a made-up "rule" that is not followed by the community, and it cannot be inserted here – either by a wording that says that explicitly or by removal of its opposite – against the consensus of a decade and a half of actual community practice (not accidental mishap, but intentional, programmatic article renaming decisions). About the only way to undo the actual consensus that titles can be disambiguated for this reason would be to have a WP:VPPRO proposal (or one at WT:AT and VPPRO notified) for a site-wide policy change banning the clarification of innately ambiguous article titles if they do not already collide with the names of other articles. Of course, such a proposal would b an oppose WP:SNOWBALL, as grossly anti- WP:COMMONSENSE. It's routine and common-sense enough as a matter of practice that we do not need to address it in AT policy itself; it simply doesn't rise to that level of importance or potential conflict that it must be mandated as a strict procedure. Per WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY (and the WP:CREEP principle), we do not add things to policies without necessity. Policies, which are largely treated as non-optional requirements, should be as lean as possible or there will be too many actual rules (not guidelines of best practice, but rules) for anyone to keep track of. (See WT:AT in Jan.–Feb. for strong concerns in this regard already about WP:AT, with several in favor of merging anything non-essential in it back into WP:MOS.) The very purpose of its inclusion in this guideline is to correct the incorrect assumption that "disambiguation" only means "fixing article title collisions", so removal from this page would be the very definition of counterproductive. The current version has remained in place long enough (a few months is our rule of thumb) to have consensus to be here, and right here in particular) without incident, until a 5 Feb. drive-by deletion [7], the edit summary of which itself noted it it had been there since June and falsely claiming there had been no consensus discussion about it (double-derp). The deleter failed to gain consensus for the deletion in the ensuing discussion, and the deletion was reverted by Tony1 [8] and Dicklyon [9]. SmokeyJoe, who also opposed the removal as a reversal of the BRD burden, was drafting an RfC on the question – but none was launched. [Self-correction: Born2cycle drafted then abandoned it, not SmokeyJoe.] There was not a consensus for the deletion then, and there is not one now, so it goes back to the status quo stable version, per standard operating procedure. Every time it does so this re-establishes that it has consensus. If "two people won't stop beating a dead horse" was sufficient grounds to remove policy and guideline line-items through a pattern of "slow-editwarring", after consensus for them has been repeatedly established by longevity, then WP would have virtually no policy and guideline material of any kind left. Every time it is deleted, someone different restores it. Ergo, the cry "these couple of editors want it removed" is directly neutralized by other editors restoring it. Two editors disagreeing with the passage, in a page watchlisted as much as this one is, doesn't mean much anyway; WP:CONSENSUS does not require unanimity. If there were policy-based reasons behind their objections, that might be a different matter, but they amount to WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:NOTVALUABLE. "I don't think we need to bother covering this here" is insufficient justification to remove accurate information on how disambiguation is sometimes performed here from the guideline on disambiguation in Wikipedia. |
It's also interesting that Dohn joe, with whom I rarely interact, has become incensed with me at an RM discussion over the last couple of days; it's seems awfully "coincidental" that he's showed up here to oppose restoration of deleted guideline material, not on any substantive basis, but to single me out by name and oppose something he associates with me (the language isn't even my version), when the very same matter was resolved only last month against the position he's taking here (which is the exact same pattern WP:IDHT and WP:BATTLEGROUND pattern he's pursuing at RM after RM).
The guideline material is not even disputed; the dispute was about whether to make it policy, at WP:AT. Dohn joe is also misrepresenting both Red Slash and Francis Schonken's expressed views, from back in mid-2015.
This is a WP:WIKILAWYERING, WP:GAMING, and WP:STATUSQUO matter, too: If it is proposed that guideline material (whether it is recent or a decade old) be elevated to policy level, and that proposal is rejected, it remains guideline material; it doesn't get deleted.
In closing: WP:BRD against this guideline wording was satisfied in the original discussion, it was re-satisfied in the second, and again in the third, in Feb. The proposed alternative to it, of similar wording at AT instead, was rejected. Schonken's major AT rewrite that would have covered it and many other things, was rejected. The wording has remained present, stable (though shortened), and part of a major guideline since June of last year, describing actual WP practice for much longer.
The BRD burden has now reversed: Dohn joe must provide a sound rationale for removal. "I don't like it, and there was a consensus dispute once upon a time" is not a rationale. If he agrees with Red Slash's original position that it should be in AT, he has to make that case at WT:AT, as Schonken and others pointed out 8 months ago. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:27, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Questions about what is the "stable version" of something are vexing if contested. How about an RfC, even maybe a centralized RfC, to decide the issue, with neither "side" being given pride of place as the "current version" -- just let the RfC closer decide which version the community has embraced.
I'm confident that a big majority of editors will prefer allowing Algerian Arab sheep over requiring Algerian Arab and so on, and that the argument for doing so will also be seen as stronger. But if not, hey, it is what it is, let the community decide. Herostratus ( talk) 18:25, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
There's no question that RM routinely performs such precision disambiguations – they're simply not an everyday occurrence – and we have naming conventions that sometimes require them programmatically. This is real, operational consensus being recorded here. Eight months of stabliity in that recording is also consensus, which need not be unanimous. Two editors' WP:IDONTLIKEIT-based, drive-by deletions are unconstructive, not something to reward with a new soapbox. At least four editors have reverted attempts to remove this language over the last 2 months alone.
So, it's unclear what there is to have an RfC about. Given that the deleters keep making the bogus claim that the material wasn't discussed and thus didn't have consensus, when it was discussed, repeatedly, and modified until accepted, I can predict what dead horse an RfC would attempt to resurrect again, and there's no community interest to turning WP:RFC process into a platform for tendentious WP:IDHT. Even if you or I wrote an RfC (because ... ?), it would involve more naming conventions than we've even identfied at this point, and challenge 15 years of creating such titles (directly or through RM) when necessary. If someone came here with a solid rationale for why the wording is somehow wrong, and they seemed to be onto something real, then we'd have something to talk about. If AT wants this language in actual policy instead, WT:AT can have a discussion about moving it. If the language is unclear, it can be tweaked. Standard operating procedure. Spending 8 months to resolve (unclear and conflicting) concerns only to pretend no progress has been made is not SOP; at some point, people who cannot articulate what their issue with something is just have to accept that what they want isn't what's going to emerge. Finally, the main problem with RfCing this is the underlying false assumption that "disambiguation" is a Wikipedian neologism, for "prevent article title collisions"; it simply isn't, but people who don't use dictionaries much will jump on a "this isn't about article title collisions" bandwagon, a WP:FALSECONSENSUS based on false assumptions. That has been the primary source of all noise about this so far, so it would surely be the primary source of later noise, because nothing has changed in the interim. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:41, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
PS: Another objection I had to your RfC idea was the dwelling on "whether this should be in this is page" bureaucracy rather than on anything substantive about what it says; this is also a central flaw of Trystan's RfC. We already had 3 consensus discussion about whether it should be in this page. The first two emerged with wording that was accepted, and the Feb. one did not conclude to remove it, so the RfC in both cases is essentially just forum-shopping the same settled question instead of addressing any actual issue (editwarring to delete guideline matter is a WP:ANI issue). RfCs consume community time, attention and energy, thus should be on actual questions that need to be addressed, not rehash to satisfy tendentious parties like the two recent deleters who did not and will not properly parse previous discussions, and have an axe to grind. RfCs like this reward and encourage WP:WINNING, dead-horse, and slow-editwar behavior patterns. "Don't feed." — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:41, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Given the back-and-forth about whether or how this guideline should address the concept of inherently unambiguous titles, I've gone ahead and posted an RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Wikipedia:Disambiguation and inherently ambiguous titles.-- Trystan ( talk) 02:37, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Spring is a disambiguation page, and one of the entries is Spring (political terminology) which since last Nov is a redirect back to Spring. This clearly makes no sense. Before it became a circular redirect, it contained a list of about 16 political events that could be called springs. The edit comment says "(merge into Spring disambiguation page)" but I don't see that any merging of these 16 items was done nor that they really belong in the disamb page. I think I should just put back the previous version. Comments? MB ( talk) 23:00, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
I frequently find articles containing lists where the author has bracketed every item in the list, usually resulting in a few blue links and a lot of red links. When disambiguating these, the best choice is often to unlink, because there is no corresponding article and there is unlikely to ever be (so changing to an un-ambiguous red link isn't a good choice). A specific example I found today is Shadwell Turf Mile Stakes which had contained a link to Silver Medallion which I was disambiguating. But now Silver Medallion is the only item in the list that is not a link which makes it stand out. I'm wondering if that might lead someone else to just put the brackets back in for uniformity, thus re-creating a dab. Is there anything I should be doing differently in these cases? MB ( talk) 04:08, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Last month, I found a person that I thought was notable even though there was no article yet. There were existing redlinks in articles, and some bluelinks which I disambiguated to the same redlink, then added the redlink to the disamb page (just like was done with the horse above). Then my edits got reverted and I was warned about edit waring - even though I kept explaining this was normal procedure. See the history for Patrick Buckley and User_talk:MB#March_2016. Should I put Patrick Buckley (priest) back? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB ( talk • contribs) 17:18, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Disambiguation identifies itself as a "guideline" but the Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages§Links to disambiguation pages says that one aspect of it "the community has adopted the policy". Is this just a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS among disambiguation editors, or is it really a "policy" (using the formal distinction of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines)? I don't see this item included as a formal policy-level document in Wikipedia:List of policies or related lists/categories, but only in the guideline-level ones. DMacks ( talk) 19:33, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
I've made a proposal here at Village Pump that could reduce the number of ambiguous links in the encyclopedia, and thus reduce the workload at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links; please check it out and comment if you can. — swpb T 18:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
What happens when both Xzy and Xzy language are ambiguous? So far I've been following the established practice for having two separate dab pages: one for the general term and another for the language. This has been recently challenged by an editor who strongly insists that this is a case of incomplete disambiguation and that Xzy language should redirect to Xzy. Whether this is indeed a case of incomplete disambiguation (I'm not sure it is, at least not in light of previous discussions here, like this or that one), I'm finding this very problematic. It hinders searches: if a user types for example Bo language, what they need is one of the couple or so languages on that page, there's no point forcing them to find their way through the dozens of entries at Bo.
Any thoughts anyone? I can see three sensible ways of handling cases like this one:
A disambiguator is typically a parenthetical that we make up to distinguish similarly named thingsTrue enough, although we also use natural disambiguation as well where appropriate. Again, if the term "language" is only use descriptively in association with something named X, then I'd still argue that the things named (or known as) X should be on the X disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 01:51, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Since when is having separate disambiguation pages "established practice"?I was only referring to the case of languages.
Yes, some of these are tricky, especially the ones about groups. Bomberai languages seems to include only groupings of languages spoken on Bomberai (two of which are partial title matches), but the last entry is a group that is alternatively known as "Bomberai". West Timor languages seems to list valid genetic groups that can conceivably might have been called "West Timor" (although the target articles don't make that clear). Articles about individual languages are more straightforward, even though the ones you've picked could do with some tidying up. Tibetan language looks at first sight like a broad concept list, but two of the entries ( Classical Tibetan and Standard Tibetan) are commonly known as simply "Tibetan", while the rest of the entries can each be called "a Tibetan language". Both of the languages at Pray language are known as "Pray" according to the respective articles. Te first entry of Madi languages might look arbitrary as it points to Arawan languages, but one of the language varieties covered in that article ("Jamamadi") is alternatively known as "Madi". Of course, alternative names had better be mentioned within the articles, but if they aren't, it's good to be aware that these are almost invariably listed at the glottolog or ethnologue entries (and they are linked from the infobox). Uanfala ( talk) 15:28, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
An editor has claimed that links in disambiguation pages themselves (typically in the "See Also" section) should not point to other disambiguation pages, if that page does not have "disambiguation" in its title, but rather to the redirect to that page that does have disambiguation in its title. He seems pretty exercised about this (he considers that linking to a disambig page from mainspace can only be explained as intentional vandalism), so I thought I'd check it out.
There's some contradictory stuff here. On the one hand:
On the other hand:
But now whats interesting about the rule (and the editors argument to me) is that it explains itself as being for the benefit of editors, not readers (emphasis added):
and the editor in question pretty much had the same reasoning, as he writes (emphasis added, but CAPS in the original):
Well excuse me, but I'm not here to degrade the reader's experience in order to make it easier for live easier you all and I think this will not stand -- especially since it should be very easy to modify the report code to distinguish between links in article space and links on disambiguation pages (the generate-a-warning-on-your-talk-page code appears to already do this).
If there's some reason why its better to change a pointer to a menu page (what we call a disambiguation page) to point to a redirect to that page (an extra step for the software, or any editor working thru the links, to deal with), which also has the extra disadvantage of adding an extra word (and a difficult one, especially for ESL readers and so forth) to have to wade through, I'd be interested to know it. I'm willing to be convinced, if there is an argument.
Absent that, I would suggest a change of one word in the first sentence of WP:INTDABLINK, from
TO
So let's talk about this. Herostratus ( talk) 00:01, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
( edit conflict):Just to make clear, what we are talking about is the difference between
Erm, there are contradictory statements in this thread, so the water is rather muddied. These statements appear to be not correct, or rather not a correct description of how the rule is written nor how it is being applied:
Yeah but If I'm reading the rules correctly.... the main operative rules are WP:D and WP:MOSDAB, right?
So its a mixed bag at best. Probably the totality of the two rules taken together, reading it as a judge would read a law, should be "Do not pipe links on disambiguation pages"'. But none of this is necessarily a problem, because we have hella rules of the type "Oh yeah it says that, but its kind of silly and so we don't really enforce it" or "Yeah, it says that, but we use common sense in applying the rule" or "It doesn't overtly say to not do that, so we do" and so forth.
But that is very definitely not the situation here! The operative rule at this time is:
and based on the facts on the ground (e.g. here, a the revert to an unpiped version) even using a piped version is not sufficient.
I mean maybe I'm not getting the nuance, but when people start throwing around terroristic threats, you're going to lose the nuances, n'est-ce pas? If this happened to me, how many other editors have been insulted, blocked, and driven off the project for making an innocent interpretation of the an arcane rule based on how we've been doing things for years? This matters.
Anyway, it seems like a lot of this is based on being, or afraid of being, overwhelmed by error reports (although some people do think the "(disambuation)" is also a positive good for the reader, the "designed to prevent a serious disruption to the work of disambiguators" seems a common theme though all this).
This is understandable. I bet we can alleviate this some through making the code a little more subtle, and I think its there that the next forward progress can be made. Sounds fun, count me in! Herostratus ( talk) 22:37, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The above discussion does bring up an important question on the consistency of "See also" sections on disambiguation pages. Should the links to disambiguation pages be piped or not? I think that the arguments can be summed up as follows.
In favor of having a piped link:
In favor of having an unpiped link:
I therefore propose that this ask that the community to clarify Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages with the addition of one of the two sentences following:
@ Herostratus, Dicklyon, SmokeyJoe, Niceguyedc, and Xezbeth:, please indicate below which of these options you prefer (and perhaps, briefly, why). Thanks! bd2412 T 01:23, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Please indicate here which of the above options you prefer.
Please place any extended discussion of the topic here.
Well but first the code has to be fixed, yes? What I'm thinking is, find if it's possible to determine if the link is in the "See also" section. I would think it would be, simply by parsing the page text for the string "==See also==" (and close variants) and taking it from there (more parsing would be required which I won't describe here). I'm betting this is possible, and looking into it is on my list.
(What I would then further propose, as relief for the Disambiguation folks who I gather are faced with a firehose of links to disambiguation beyond human capacity to deal with is, is to simply unlink all links to disambig pages that are not in the "See also" section or in a hatnote (and probably some other appropriate places I haven't thought of). I honestly can't think of many cases where a link to a disambig page is useful in the in the body of an article. But suppose there are. Suppose 2% of the links to disambig pages in the body text of articles are intended and appropriate. Well sometimes you have have jettison cargo to right the ship. If the alternative is breakdown, failure, human burnout, falling years behind, and so forth... would we rather fail? And adding a little symbol that means "I truly did intend to link to a disambig page here" or whatever, while not a perfect solution, would help some.)
But nevermind the above paragraph for now -- something to think about for future discussion. Right now, the first thing we need is code that can tell us that the link is indeed in the "See also" section, yes? Herostratus ( talk) 00:43, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
In some cases the most common normal meaning of the subject of a disambiguation link is one that neither has nor requires its own page. How should this best be handled? I saw to my surprise there was a DAB for " Stop, Look and Listen," the safety procedure for crossing train tracks and streets. The disambiguation list started with the Green Cross Code, which adopted this in the 1970s. i.e., when it was a century or so old as a stock phrase, already showed up in case law, and so forth. How can this be reflected without turning the disambiguation page into a dictionary entry? Anmccaff ( talk) 19:47, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
At present there's a mismatch between Twinkle's pop-up help about Speedy Deletion G6 "Unnecessary disambiguation pages" and the actual criterion at
WP:G6. Twinkle's help message shows the criterion as disambiguates two or fewer pages and whose title ends in "(disambiguation)"
, while
WP:G6 says Deleting a disambiguation page that links to only one extant article and whose title includes "(disambiguation)"
and that's what appears on the template message on the page. I've raised this at
Wikipedia_talk:Twinkle#CSD_G6_-_unecessary_dab_page. It probably explains a lot of incorrect G6 nominations of dab pages disambiguating the primary topic and one other article.
Pam
D 11:01, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
Should training camp be reformatted as a disambiguation page? Seems like it is serving that purpose, but is currently rated and categorized as a stub article. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 18:38, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
It should be noted that there are duplicate disambiguation pages: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, (created 02:00, 11 April 2014) and Lives of a Bengal Lancer (created as a redirect 15:33, 11 July 2002 and turned into a dab page 16:20, 15 September 2014). —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 03:41, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
There's been a great deal of discussion recently over what article, DAB or redir should be at New York, and how to best disambiguate New York State from New York City. The discussion has been long and involved already, involving an RM that is now at MR.
At the heart of this discussion is disagreement over whether either is the primary topic. Some say the state, some the city, some that there is none. However I believe that there is rough consensus that neither the usage nor significance criteria support the state being primary.
It seems to me that most if not all of those who believe that New York State is the primary meaning base this on the higher-level jurisdiction criterion. Some have argued very forcefully that this criterion should, in this case at least, take precedence over the usage and significance criteria. ( [15] as just one example.) Others have just observed that the state has been at New York for some time, and have cited the higher-level jurisdiction criterion as the justification for this. [16]
Comments? Andrewa ( talk) 22:26, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
A more precise definition of this criterion needs to be hashed out. "Jurisdiction" may be too restrictive as it implies a governing relationship. Perhaps the more general term "entity" is better; the higher-level entity may just be something geographic and not jurisdictional. But the higher-level entity must include the lower-level entity. This rules out Washington as the District of Columbia is not located within the state of Washington. Georgia doesn't apply either as the two Georgias are on different continents. Another point generally needed to trigger this criterion is that the language spoken in these overlapping entities sharing the same name must be English. Thus, we make the lower-level Lhasa primary, while the Chinese make the higher-level primary (perhaps they follow the same implicit criterion in their language). I really don't understand what the deal is with Leeds and City of Leeds; they look like content forks which should be merged. Both cover the identical 213 square miles. To test the validity of this criterion, we should be able to point to another example of where it's applied in practice, so that New York isn't the only case where the criterion is applied. My exhibit #1 is Ireland and Ireland, Republic of. In this case the higher-level entity is geographic – it's an island. Neither of the two main criteria seems to support the island. And, the final confirmation that this criterion applies comes from looking at other language Wikipedias, and finding that most of them make the lower-level jurisdiction, the Republic, their primary topic. – wbm1058 ( talk) 02:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
This is just the first step in what may be a three step process. See Talk:New York (state)#Foreshadowing. Andrewa ( talk) 04:59, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
In the spirit of the above-mentioned need for interpretation: To re-state and re-factor my points above (which have thus far not been disputed, though I welcome discussion): Favoring a higher-level jurisdiction over a same-named and contained jurisdiction acts as a fail-safe for readers interested in either use, whereas favoring the lower-level jurisdiction leads to potential confusion (getting at the "Usage" criterion here, in addition to the spirit of Broad-concept articles). Readers seeking the city will find some information (and a clear hatnote) at a page devoted to the containing state, as it is covered as part of that topic; readers interested in the state will find no such information at a page devoted to the city and would potentially be confused or misinformed when landing there. The naturally disambiguated titles for both city and state appear immediately within the search box. So, any potential problems come from existing wikilinks, such as Wbm1058 has been working through (with thanks). So, which is worse: a link intended for the city that winds up at an article about the state (not wrong, since the city is contained and covered in said article), or a link intended for the state that winds up at the city article (potentially very confusing, as state information is not included there)?
As an example, if I say Pat Examplepants was born in New York (intending the city) but the link points to the state, it is not wrong. However, if they were born near Utica, and the link points to the city article (note that such links are often formatted [[Utica, New York|Utica]], [[New York]]), then the reader has been presented with misinformation and has been done a disservice. In both instances the writer of the article could have been more specific and careful, but we all know how it goes in the real world here, so fail-safes should be welcomed. Antepenultimate ( talk) 16:01, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Higher-Level Jurisdiction Criterion. Andrewa ( talk) 22:33, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure about this edit. It was made after I pointed out that Shams was a dab page and that we didn't have an article about the goddess Shams. Shams of course in English is a perfectly good plural with two meanings (the other being pillows hamster). It seems to me that this is sort of a substitute for creating an article. Doug Weller talk 19:14, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
I've been putting a lot of thought into Talk:New York/July 2016 move request.
One thing that I am wondering is why, when it seems so clear that by our existing criteria New York State is not the primary topic, there's so much opposition to the move, and such heated presentation of this view.
Another I'm wondering is why, when it seems so clear to me that New York City is the primary topic, I'm so comfortable to have the DAB or a BCA at the base name, despite that seeming to be in breach of our current guidelines.
Part of it I think is that both NYC and NYS are very important articles. NYC is rated as top importance by no fewer than four WikiProjects, high by another, and mid by another two. [18] NYS is rated as top by one and high by another, mid by one and of interest but unrated by a fourth. [19]
In a case like this, I think we should consider disambiguation (or a BCA) more favourably than for less important articles, and adopt it even if a case can be made for a primary topic, in view of the importance of the other topic(s).
Other thoughts? Andrewa ( talk) 02:42, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Could those watching here say whether the edit I made here at gas analysis is helpful, or if another approach is better? Thanks. FWIW, I was trying to find an article in Wikipedia on ' calibration gas generators', a rather specialised bit of equipment, see e.g. here. Not a topic I suspect there will be an article on any time soon. Actually, looking a bit further, I've redirected it to calibration gas (which needs some attention). Also not sure of the difference between a gas analyser and a gas detector (also, gas sensor is a redirect to the detector article, but I redirected the spelling of gas analyser to the gas analysis disambiguation page). Not sure how the subtle differences should be handled here. Carcharoth ( talk) 12:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
In brief: How should we treat links to anthroponymy pages?
For those unfamiliar,
Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy pages are a somewhat unique beast: they list people who share a given name or surname or complete name, and they are often treated like disambiguation pages, though they are categorized as set index articles. (Aside: there is no MOS guideline for these pages, just the
WikiProject standards page. I have tried unsuccessfully to have this page promoted to the MOS; the absence of a MOS for anthro pages is a big problem to be tackled separately.)
The issue at hand: There is no consensus on how to treat links to anthro pages. For dab pages, the correct method is to link to "Title (disambiguation)", which may be a redirect to the actual dab page—this is to make it clear to bots that the link is intentional, so it doesn't show up on lists of ambiguous links that need to be fixed (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links). IMO, the same logic applies to anthroponymy pages, and this has clearly been the practice for quite some time (see tens of thousands of examples in Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages). However, this practice is in dispute (see User talk:Bkonrad#Alphonse), on the basis that anthro pages should not be considered dab pages, even for this purpose. I've tried to create a workaround with {{ R to anthroponymy page}}, in parallel with {{ R to disambiguation page}}, but I think a question affecting such a huge number of pages needs larger input. The options I see are (add any you think I missed):
For linking to anthroponymy pages:
Thoughts? If you have a preference for one of the listed options, please indicate so. — swpb T 15:52, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
make it clear to bots that the link is intentional. I thought the main benefit of such links was for humans examining What links here manually. Are there any bots that rely on these redirects to automagically fix links (i.e. without human interaction to review the links)? Mistaken links are mostly likely to arise from the simple reclassification of a disambiguation page as an anthroponymy article. older ≠ wiser 16:25, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Editors interested in disambiguation may want to contribute to the RFC asking whether New York State the primary topic for the term "New York". — JFG talk 10:25, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
You're welcome to comment here: Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Cooling-off period before disambiguating new dablinks. Uanfala ( talk) 21:38, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Most people coming to this page are actually looking for actual help in editing. So lets add an Other-Uses hatnote pointing to Help:Disambiguation with the words: "If you intended to see the help page for dealing with disambguation see ... -- פשוט pashute ♫ ( talk) 06:48, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
@ R'n'B and Bkonrad: (re Publius Decius Mus (disambiguation) and Publius Decius Mus).
I did a bunch of cleanup because Decius Mus and the two wikilinks above were duplicative. They now redirect to Decia (gens)#Decii Mures, which in function is close to a disambiguation page while avoiding redundancy.
Given that anyone targetting Publius Decius Mus and Decius Mus should almost certainly have linked to either Publius Decius Mus (consul 340 BC), Publius Decius Mus (consul 312 BC) or Publius Decius Mus (consul 279 BC) instead, is there a way to tag them -- with disambiguation or otherwise -- so that DPL Bot or similar will flag an editor who's targetted them? I couldn't find anything explicitly on this.
Thanks, ~ Hydronium~Hydroxide~ (Talk)~ 03:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
Per WP:Disambiguation, Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead.Ambiguity can occur between articles with totally dissimilar titles. There seems to be no consensus about altering titles that do not strictly collide, so no consensus on the proposed guideline text. Other possible responses to ambiguity include disambiguation pages and WP:DABLINKS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhoark ( talk • contribs) 03:53, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
The question on the table is, generally
and specifically, which of these passages is preferred in the rule (the bolded text is just to highlight the addition, not intended to be bolded in the actual rule):
and the bolded section is called the "additional guidance" for the purposes of discussion. Herostratus ( talk) 17:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
There's been discussions on this in various places, but there has not been a formal RfC placed on this page (AFAIK), so that's what we're doing here -- making an RfC that someone will close with a binding decision.
The previous thread is here, and here's a summary/headcount of the old discussion, hoping I have categorized everyone correctly. I've done my best and I got you wrong (or you've changed your mind) just strike through your entry and make your vote in the New Business section below.
FWIW by my count I get:
and for the purposes of headcount I'd request the closer to fold them into the total.
Again, the question on the table is whether to include the additional guidance "Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles." in WP:Disambiguation.
Looking thru the previous discussion, it seems to me that here are really three camps:
Camps 2 and 3 perforce are both opposed (to guidance here). I don't have a point I'm just noting this. Herostratus ( talk) 17:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
This and some other places here and in MOSDAB leave an impression that, e.g., the dab page, e.g, Mouth (disambiguation) must contain entry Mouth to Mouth (TV series), because "there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word mouth might be expected to lead.".
IMO everywhere the language must say clearly everywhere that dab lists are for subjects which may be called in the same way. Otherwise every stubborn newcomer with start arguing for turning his favorite dab page into the list of all phrases with this word, arguing, e.g., that he remembers only a single word from the song title, and hence this is what "a reader might search". Staszek Lem ( talk) 19:17, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
I'd like to see a policy statement on the project page somewhere about the use of negative parentheticals in article titles for disambiguation: whether they're allowable (I think not) or when (if so). I came across a page like that, and tried to find an applicable guideline governing this, but was unable to. Can we have a discussion about whether and when a negative parenthetical for disambiguation is allowable?
Example:
I feel that the title of Defence in depth (non-military) is wrong due to the negative parenthetical, but I can't find a specific guideline about it. (I could try to lean on the general statements in WP:TITLE about 'naturalness', 'conciseness', etc., but if I got strong pushback I'd be on thin ice.) The negative was intended here, I surmise, in order to distinguish the article from the more narrowly focused article about military defense entitled Defence in depth.
In this case, I feel that the latter article should probably have been Defence in depth (military) and the former just Defence in depth (or maybe even repurposed to Defence in depth (disambiguation)) but I'm looking for a guideline for the general case that I can apply.
I tend to think there should never be a negative parenthetical, and that it indicates a confused structuring of some similarly-named articles that ought to have been done differently, leaving no need for the negative as a broad catch-all. Perhaps in rare cases where a negative is actually used in the domain by domain experts, there might be an exception; for example (I'm making this up): Vertebrates (flying) and Vertebrates (non-flying) but only where we have reliable sources for it, and not just because an editor came up with it as a method that seems to work for them.
What say ye? Mathglot ( talk) 01:15, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Is the current page clear enough that we don't have e.g. a primary John Smith (footballer) among many John Smith footballers, but that ambiguous (parenthetical) redirect to the dab page.? In ictu oculi ( talk) 15:51, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
One should beware of those who cannot or will not laugh when others are merry, for if not mentally defective they are spiteful, selfish or abnormally conceited ... Great men of all nations and of all times have possessed a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, as wisdom and wit are closely allied.
I'd like my esteemed fellow editors to opine on whether the image and caption seen at right (removed in this edit
[22] as a "bad idea") should be restored to this page, bearing in mind that project-space pages routinely incorporate images (humorous or otherwise) to break the monotony, raise editor spirits, make the material more memorable, and so on. See e.g.
WP:CRYSTALBALL,
WP:Vandalism#How_not_to_respond_to_vandalism,
WP:Civility#Avoiding_incivility,
WP:OR,
WP:NOTDICT.
E
Eng 18:25, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
In Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Determining a primary topic, the example given for the last of the criteria we don't use seems to me to be for an instance when they could have been applied:
Should this have other examples? Something of recent notability that isn't the primary topic (e.g., Muse vs. Muse (band))? -- JHunterJ ( talk) 13:06, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
Should Set-Index Articles be allowed as the primary topic? A simple query, quarry:query/13668, shows that we have 700+ of these. There was prior discussion in 2012. Any moves will require an admin. — Dispenser 16:14, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
Hi, all. Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Testosterone (hormone)#Proposed split. I weighed in at Talk:Testosterone (hormone)#Protest, which is an aspect of it. There is concern that the WP:Primary topic guideline is not being followed in this case. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 01:22, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
There is an ongoing DAB discussion on the Talk Page. I've commented, but think that input from other WP:DAB members could be helpful. Narky Blert ( talk) 00:25, 17 November 2016 (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 40 | ← | Archive 43 | Archive 44 | Archive 45 | Archive 46 | Archive 47 | → | Archive 50 |
Back in June the following statement was added to the opening of this page [1]:
That's a fundamental change to the definition of disambiguation on WP, and I see no discussion about this change, which was quickly obscured by a series of additional edits. I suspect nobody noticed. This new definition adds all kinds of ambiguity to title discussions. For example, it is being used to Oppose RM's like the current one at Talk:Nothing Has Changed (album). Accordingly, I've removed it [2]. It should not be restored unless evidence of consensus support for such a fundamental change can be established. -- В²C ☎ 17:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
The principal form of the disambiguation in cases like this is WP:NATURAL; if you're concerned that people are going to do a lot of unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation on this basis (which is not actually happening), I guess that's something we can talk about. But absent a showing of an actual problem, the last 3/4 of a years' stable version of the wording should remain. This wording was added for the very, exact reason that certain editors do not seem to understand what the word "disambiguation" means and how it applies here. It mean "making unambiguous" not "distinguishing between two or more present and accounted-for things"; WP just happens to to apply it to the latter sub-case 99% of the time. Not 100%. The result of the failure to recognize that the unusual case exists has result in a truly tedious amount of wasted breath at repeat nominations at RM. It's a stupid and pointless productivity drain, permanently forestalled by one simple clarification, which has worked well since last June. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
The wording as inserted would support the tendency of some editors to add "(film)" or "(album)" to numerous non-ambiguous titles. I regularly move stubs with those unnecessary disambiguations to their base titles. Almost any title of an artistic work could be claimed to be "likely to confuse readers if not clarified", and we don't want to go down that road. Pam D 23:34, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Above, I see: if you're concerned that people are going to do a lot of unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation on this basis (which is not actually happening)
Here are some moves made within the last 4 days:
These are just the ones I found in 20 minutes of looking. I see them every day. I think that these moves are a misreading of the guideline's sentence at the top of this section, but to say that unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation moves aren't happening is incorrect. - Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 00:27, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
The kinds of cases that this wording (perhaps imperfectly) actually addresses are real and legitimate, and codifying that repeated RM consensus is legitimate. If there turns out to be some unintended but resolvable side effect of the exact wording, we just tweak it, we don't act like cats with firecrackers tied to our tails. This is really the most exaggerated and game-playing panic I've seen on WP in so long I can't even remember. B2c's "you sneaked that by", "you sneaked this in" nonsense is farcically implausible; it's just denialism. There is no "sneaking" on a hugely watchlisted guideline, and there is no sneaking in a years-long string of RMs (in a controversial RM area, at that). Please. This sudden pretense that all the rest of WP who participate in RM are wrong and 4 editors at this page somehow trump all prior decisions is WP:FALSECONSENSUS at its worst. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Tony1 just restored the controversial statement again [5] (and Calidum reverted that). There are now at least five editors who have expressed opposition to inclusion of the controversial statement:
Clearly, the inclusion of this statement is controversial and does not have consensus support. And SMcCandlish has essentially conceded that it is problematic and needs refining. I think it's beyond merely problematic, but at least get consensus support for a revised version before restoring. -- В²C ☎ 01:40, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
For the record, Dick Lyon's description of my views is very wrong. For my actual views, please see my user page, my FAQ ( User:Born2cycle/FAQ), and my edit history. The statement in question goes far beyond "simply recognizes that this happens", does not apply to the USPLACE situations at all (unique US city names do not inherently lack precision - no one disputes the need to disambiguate the ambiguous ones), and I have not been involved in a USPLACE discussion in years. But when you don't have a position based on solid reasoning, I suppose resorting to ad hominem attacks based on straw man and red herring arguments is to be expected. -- В²C ☎ 21:41, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
It has been suggested above to have an rfc. I'll post it, but want to make sure we present this in a fair way. So this section is for the collaborative editing of the rfc. I'll start, but please feel free to edit it as you see fit. -- В²C ☎ 22:21, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
RFC DRAFT START
Back in June the following statement was added to the opening of this page [6]:
There is some disagreement about it. Should the statement remain, be removed, or be modified? Please indicate your position and reasoning below.
RFC DRAFT END
All parties are reminded to avoid personalizing disputes concerning the Manual of Style, the article titles policy ('WP:TITLE'), and similar policy and guideline pages, and to work collegially towards a workable consensus. In particular, a rapid cycle of editing these pages to reflect one's viewpoint, then discussing the changes is disruptive and should be avoided. Instead, parties are encouraged to establish consensus on the talk page first, and then make the changes.
Well here's my 2p: on the merits I can see both sides of the issue, but this is a huge huge huge change. It could easily be taken to authorize the renaming of tens of thousands of articles, for one thing. For another thing, if the current wording ("Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles", this absolutely knocks for six one of the Five Virtues of Titles (namely, Conciseness) mandated in WP:TITLE. I mean, look at WP:PRECISION which is also part of that policy (not an essay, not a guideline, not a suggestion). The current wording in this guideline completely opposes that. If you're going to keep this text you must make major changes to WP:TITLE or else were going to have a real can of worms down the road, here. We have to have a centralized RfC which includes WP:TITLE (and maybe other pages for all I know). This is going to take some time and effort to develop... let's not rush, here. Herostratus ( talk) 23:00, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Looking closer at WP:TITLE... this doesn't seem so far from the goal (whether desired or not) as it seems... WP:TITLE already says " Bothell is already precise enough to be unambiguous, but we instead use Bothell, Washington (see Geographic names), seeking a more natural and recognizable title." and some other things like that.... so you're really halfway there already.
I was thinking of maybe adding something like this to the end of the opening paragraph of WP:PRECISION" "...On the other hand, Horowitz would not be precise enough to identify unambiguously the famous classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz, and Six Corners is not precise enough to immediately indicate to the reader what the entity is (a small town, a neighborhood, a concept in geometry, a corporation, or whatever) so Six Corners (Chicago shopping district) should be used instead." This'd help clarify with an example? Is this a good example? (Maybe Six Corners, Chicago is better?)
On the other hand, WP:PRECISION also has an example " Energy is not precise enough to unambiguously indicate the physical property (see Energy (disambiguation)). However, it is preferred over "Energy (physics)", as it is more concise, and precise enough to be understood by most people (see Primary topic, and the conciseness and recognizability criteria)."
So... you'd really have to pry Conciseness loose as one of the Five Virtues, I think... Conciseness is IMO the least of the Five Virtues but it is one of them, and there would be some resistance... so I dunno. Herostratus ( talk) 23:34, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
I was disambiguating Ray tracing and came across Ray tracing/version 2 which is a redirect to Ray tracing. On the surface, it doesn't seem to make any sense. Looking at the history, it seems that Ray tracing/version 2 was used temporarily facilitate a move:
I'm not sure if the was the right or best way to accomplish this. Right now, there is no problem but keeping Ray tracing/version 2 seems to me to be unnecessary and potentially confusing since it doesn't have a use within Wikipedia as a search term. Can it/should it be deleted? Does anyone care to comment? MB ( talk) 01:03, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
See Talk:Spike (character)#Is Spike (character) a valid disambiguation page? older ≠ wiser 03:06, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
Shouldn't both criteria be required, not just one of the two? In ictu oculi ( talk) 16:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Some of fans of this "sacred COMMONNAME" misinterpretation are now trying to generalize this to a made up "common style" notion, whereby whatever turned out to be the most common stylization in the pop-culture news sources that coincidentally happened to have written the most about it (according to OR Google-hits "analysis") would be imposed on WP, both in titles and content. Its one of the most daft ideas I've ever encountered here. It would mean that, e.g., the gaming and toy press would dictate how WP is permitted to use English when referring to Pokemon things, since no one else really writes about that. Just one example. It turns WP:RS on its ear, ignoring the facts that there are very reliably sourced differences between journalism's writing conventions and formal publishing's writing conventions, and that being a reliable source about details regarding Pokemon characters doesn't make a publication a reliable source about how to write about that topic in an encyclopedic register for a general audience.
I'm at my wit's end with these people, both at WT:AT and WT:MOSCAPS. It doesn't matter how many sources are provided laying out the different journalistic, mainstream formal, and high-academic stylistic schema, and how clearly separated they are, as long as magazines they like overcapitalize something, they're certain that WP must do so also, and continue to campaign on this constantly. It's like they refuse to distinguishing between the name of something and how a particular writing genre applies style to it, like confusing a person with the suit they're wearing on Tuesday. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:35, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Right now, the page Foucault links to the disambiguation page. Can we change this page to Foucault (disambiguation) and have the page Foucault reroute to Michel Foucault? and then put a italicized text at the top of the page for Foucault saying "For other uses of Foucault, see Foucault (disambiguation)"? There's far more visits to the page for Michel Foucault (219K in the last 90 days) than for any other term that's linked on the disambiguation page — the most for a different Foucault is for Léon Foucault (10K in the last 90 days), far fewer for others. This is also what we do for other major thinkers. (I'm thinking here about students who hear "Foucault" referenced and have trouble finding the correct page.) - CircleAdrian ( talk) 21:11, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Chief contains three different links to the same page:
Chief (albumn). I've never noticed something like this before. Shouldn't they be consolidated into something like this: Chief (album), a 2011/2012 album by Eric Church (Chief)
That's assuming there is any basis for this at all. The article says the album was released in 2011 and the Chief is the name of the album, not an alternate name for Eric Church. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB ( talk • contribs) 23:29, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
See here: Sevan, Armenia was moved to Sevan (town). Isn't that a breach of WP:PARENDIS? Place names are typically disambiguated by adding the higher-level administrative division, not by adding (town).-- Midas02 ( talk) 03:10, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
I couldn't find a source for this edit (the JPS's website doesn't use this abbreviation), but a quick Googling indicated that a number of people out in the world (not RSs) use it, and so I thought readers might find my edit helpful. I think specifying whether or not an abbreviation is "official" would probably be too much.
Was I right?
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 23:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
A rare example of a one-person disambiguation page may be viewed at Charles Fredericks. A discussion related to this topic is at Talk:Charles Fredericks (actor). —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 13:45, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
There's a rather complicated page move discussion going on on Talk:Góngora (surname). A combination of the use of the diacritic, dab page and surname page. For those who like a bit of a challenge. -- Midas02 ( talk) 19:46, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I went to tackle Chris Jenkins from the March list and found four articles that link to this dab page: Michael Minkler, Nat Boxer, Steve Maslow, & Bob Minkler. None of these have a link to the Chris Jenkins dab page. They all do include the Template:Academy Award Best Sound, and it links (three times) to Chris Jenkins (sound engineer). So I don't see why these articles supposedly link to Chris Jenkins. I checked the links to the Chris Jenkins (sound engineer) and all four articles are listed at linking there. Am I missing something? Can anyone shed any light on this? MB ( talk) 02:18, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
The page Territorialism was recently converted to a dab page, but the result is somewhat lacking in quality. Seasoned editors are welcome to join the discussion. -- Midas02 ( talk) 12:15, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Should articles be disambiguated as XYZ (disambig 1) (disambig 2) or as XYZ (disambig1 disambig2 combo) ? We are discussing this at talk: National Highway 26 (India) -- 70.51.46.39 ( talk) 07:20, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#RfC:_Artist_name_as_disambiguation_regarding_non-notable_song_titles In ictu oculi ( talk) 20:41, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
this should not have been removed unless there is a RFC supporting it In ictu oculi ( talk) 18:15, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Or possibly the reverse.
There was clearly no consensus for the addition, as shown by Red Slash and Francis Schonken. This is WP:AT material. Additions to policy/guidelines require consensus before they go in. If people think that the removed material has consensus, we can add it. Until then, it is up to editors wanting to change the guideline to explain why. Dohn joe ( talk) 18:29, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Nice cherry-picking there; you skipped the entire |very recent discussion in which the last attempt to remove this also failed to gain consensus. Re-raising the matter barely a month later with no new argument for deletion is forum shopping-by-slight-time-shift. Nice circular reasoning, too; if "RReason for addition explained here", then your request "explain why it should have been added in the first place" has already been complied with by yourself.
There is no burden to explain why the material "should have been added". It was added with explanation at the time, there was discussion, it was modified in light of that discussion, and it has been stable since June 2015. You can't come along now and pretend that because you didn't participate in the original discussion that it "doesn't have consensus", especially when you clearly did not understand the original discussions. You also don't get to speak for other editors and count them on your "side" by badly mischaracterizing their positions (more on that below).
But just for kicks, there's the explanation again, and some additional background, incl. the failed attempt to remove it last month:
|
---|
Obviously, it should remain the consensus, per WP:POLICY, the purpose of guidelines is to codify actual consensus – real best practices – not try to force made-up ones you wish the community would adopt. Disambiguation of innately confusing names (or contextually ambiguous ones that may be confusing because of WP's naming conventions creating particular reader expectations) is routine at WP:RM and has been the entire length of the project; a fairly recent and unanimous RM example was the Algerian Arab to Algerian Arab sheep move (the original title eventually became a disambiguation page); certain kinds of names covered by WP:USPLACE are an entire class of examples. Such disambiguation is used when necessary because titles must be precise or disambiguated if they are not, as a matter of policy at WP:PRECISE. The tendentious attempts by a few individuals to hide this fact because they falsely believe that "disambiguation" (a word that WP did not invent) means and only ever means "avoiding collisions of article titles", or because the falsely believe article names must be shortest they can possibly be (a misreading of WP:CONCISE is what would be a made-up "rule" that is not followed by the community, and it cannot be inserted here – either by a wording that says that explicitly or by removal of its opposite – against the consensus of a decade and a half of actual community practice (not accidental mishap, but intentional, programmatic article renaming decisions). About the only way to undo the actual consensus that titles can be disambiguated for this reason would be to have a WP:VPPRO proposal (or one at WT:AT and VPPRO notified) for a site-wide policy change banning the clarification of innately ambiguous article titles if they do not already collide with the names of other articles. Of course, such a proposal would b an oppose WP:SNOWBALL, as grossly anti- WP:COMMONSENSE. It's routine and common-sense enough as a matter of practice that we do not need to address it in AT policy itself; it simply doesn't rise to that level of importance or potential conflict that it must be mandated as a strict procedure. Per WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY (and the WP:CREEP principle), we do not add things to policies without necessity. Policies, which are largely treated as non-optional requirements, should be as lean as possible or there will be too many actual rules (not guidelines of best practice, but rules) for anyone to keep track of. (See WT:AT in Jan.–Feb. for strong concerns in this regard already about WP:AT, with several in favor of merging anything non-essential in it back into WP:MOS.) The very purpose of its inclusion in this guideline is to correct the incorrect assumption that "disambiguation" only means "fixing article title collisions", so removal from this page would be the very definition of counterproductive. The current version has remained in place long enough (a few months is our rule of thumb) to have consensus to be here, and right here in particular) without incident, until a 5 Feb. drive-by deletion [7], the edit summary of which itself noted it it had been there since June and falsely claiming there had been no consensus discussion about it (double-derp). The deleter failed to gain consensus for the deletion in the ensuing discussion, and the deletion was reverted by Tony1 [8] and Dicklyon [9]. SmokeyJoe, who also opposed the removal as a reversal of the BRD burden, was drafting an RfC on the question – but none was launched. [Self-correction: Born2cycle drafted then abandoned it, not SmokeyJoe.] There was not a consensus for the deletion then, and there is not one now, so it goes back to the status quo stable version, per standard operating procedure. Every time it does so this re-establishes that it has consensus. If "two people won't stop beating a dead horse" was sufficient grounds to remove policy and guideline line-items through a pattern of "slow-editwarring", after consensus for them has been repeatedly established by longevity, then WP would have virtually no policy and guideline material of any kind left. Every time it is deleted, someone different restores it. Ergo, the cry "these couple of editors want it removed" is directly neutralized by other editors restoring it. Two editors disagreeing with the passage, in a page watchlisted as much as this one is, doesn't mean much anyway; WP:CONSENSUS does not require unanimity. If there were policy-based reasons behind their objections, that might be a different matter, but they amount to WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:NOTVALUABLE. "I don't think we need to bother covering this here" is insufficient justification to remove accurate information on how disambiguation is sometimes performed here from the guideline on disambiguation in Wikipedia. |
It's also interesting that Dohn joe, with whom I rarely interact, has become incensed with me at an RM discussion over the last couple of days; it's seems awfully "coincidental" that he's showed up here to oppose restoration of deleted guideline material, not on any substantive basis, but to single me out by name and oppose something he associates with me (the language isn't even my version), when the very same matter was resolved only last month against the position he's taking here (which is the exact same pattern WP:IDHT and WP:BATTLEGROUND pattern he's pursuing at RM after RM).
The guideline material is not even disputed; the dispute was about whether to make it policy, at WP:AT. Dohn joe is also misrepresenting both Red Slash and Francis Schonken's expressed views, from back in mid-2015.
This is a WP:WIKILAWYERING, WP:GAMING, and WP:STATUSQUO matter, too: If it is proposed that guideline material (whether it is recent or a decade old) be elevated to policy level, and that proposal is rejected, it remains guideline material; it doesn't get deleted.
In closing: WP:BRD against this guideline wording was satisfied in the original discussion, it was re-satisfied in the second, and again in the third, in Feb. The proposed alternative to it, of similar wording at AT instead, was rejected. Schonken's major AT rewrite that would have covered it and many other things, was rejected. The wording has remained present, stable (though shortened), and part of a major guideline since June of last year, describing actual WP practice for much longer.
The BRD burden has now reversed: Dohn joe must provide a sound rationale for removal. "I don't like it, and there was a consensus dispute once upon a time" is not a rationale. If he agrees with Red Slash's original position that it should be in AT, he has to make that case at WT:AT, as Schonken and others pointed out 8 months ago. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:27, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Questions about what is the "stable version" of something are vexing if contested. How about an RfC, even maybe a centralized RfC, to decide the issue, with neither "side" being given pride of place as the "current version" -- just let the RfC closer decide which version the community has embraced.
I'm confident that a big majority of editors will prefer allowing Algerian Arab sheep over requiring Algerian Arab and so on, and that the argument for doing so will also be seen as stronger. But if not, hey, it is what it is, let the community decide. Herostratus ( talk) 18:25, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
There's no question that RM routinely performs such precision disambiguations – they're simply not an everyday occurrence – and we have naming conventions that sometimes require them programmatically. This is real, operational consensus being recorded here. Eight months of stabliity in that recording is also consensus, which need not be unanimous. Two editors' WP:IDONTLIKEIT-based, drive-by deletions are unconstructive, not something to reward with a new soapbox. At least four editors have reverted attempts to remove this language over the last 2 months alone.
So, it's unclear what there is to have an RfC about. Given that the deleters keep making the bogus claim that the material wasn't discussed and thus didn't have consensus, when it was discussed, repeatedly, and modified until accepted, I can predict what dead horse an RfC would attempt to resurrect again, and there's no community interest to turning WP:RFC process into a platform for tendentious WP:IDHT. Even if you or I wrote an RfC (because ... ?), it would involve more naming conventions than we've even identfied at this point, and challenge 15 years of creating such titles (directly or through RM) when necessary. If someone came here with a solid rationale for why the wording is somehow wrong, and they seemed to be onto something real, then we'd have something to talk about. If AT wants this language in actual policy instead, WT:AT can have a discussion about moving it. If the language is unclear, it can be tweaked. Standard operating procedure. Spending 8 months to resolve (unclear and conflicting) concerns only to pretend no progress has been made is not SOP; at some point, people who cannot articulate what their issue with something is just have to accept that what they want isn't what's going to emerge. Finally, the main problem with RfCing this is the underlying false assumption that "disambiguation" is a Wikipedian neologism, for "prevent article title collisions"; it simply isn't, but people who don't use dictionaries much will jump on a "this isn't about article title collisions" bandwagon, a WP:FALSECONSENSUS based on false assumptions. That has been the primary source of all noise about this so far, so it would surely be the primary source of later noise, because nothing has changed in the interim. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:41, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
PS: Another objection I had to your RfC idea was the dwelling on "whether this should be in this is page" bureaucracy rather than on anything substantive about what it says; this is also a central flaw of Trystan's RfC. We already had 3 consensus discussion about whether it should be in this page. The first two emerged with wording that was accepted, and the Feb. one did not conclude to remove it, so the RfC in both cases is essentially just forum-shopping the same settled question instead of addressing any actual issue (editwarring to delete guideline matter is a WP:ANI issue). RfCs consume community time, attention and energy, thus should be on actual questions that need to be addressed, not rehash to satisfy tendentious parties like the two recent deleters who did not and will not properly parse previous discussions, and have an axe to grind. RfCs like this reward and encourage WP:WINNING, dead-horse, and slow-editwar behavior patterns. "Don't feed." — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:41, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Given the back-and-forth about whether or how this guideline should address the concept of inherently unambiguous titles, I've gone ahead and posted an RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Wikipedia:Disambiguation and inherently ambiguous titles.-- Trystan ( talk) 02:37, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Spring is a disambiguation page, and one of the entries is Spring (political terminology) which since last Nov is a redirect back to Spring. This clearly makes no sense. Before it became a circular redirect, it contained a list of about 16 political events that could be called springs. The edit comment says "(merge into Spring disambiguation page)" but I don't see that any merging of these 16 items was done nor that they really belong in the disamb page. I think I should just put back the previous version. Comments? MB ( talk) 23:00, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
I frequently find articles containing lists where the author has bracketed every item in the list, usually resulting in a few blue links and a lot of red links. When disambiguating these, the best choice is often to unlink, because there is no corresponding article and there is unlikely to ever be (so changing to an un-ambiguous red link isn't a good choice). A specific example I found today is Shadwell Turf Mile Stakes which had contained a link to Silver Medallion which I was disambiguating. But now Silver Medallion is the only item in the list that is not a link which makes it stand out. I'm wondering if that might lead someone else to just put the brackets back in for uniformity, thus re-creating a dab. Is there anything I should be doing differently in these cases? MB ( talk) 04:08, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Last month, I found a person that I thought was notable even though there was no article yet. There were existing redlinks in articles, and some bluelinks which I disambiguated to the same redlink, then added the redlink to the disamb page (just like was done with the horse above). Then my edits got reverted and I was warned about edit waring - even though I kept explaining this was normal procedure. See the history for Patrick Buckley and User_talk:MB#March_2016. Should I put Patrick Buckley (priest) back? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB ( talk • contribs) 17:18, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Disambiguation identifies itself as a "guideline" but the Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages§Links to disambiguation pages says that one aspect of it "the community has adopted the policy". Is this just a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS among disambiguation editors, or is it really a "policy" (using the formal distinction of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines)? I don't see this item included as a formal policy-level document in Wikipedia:List of policies or related lists/categories, but only in the guideline-level ones. DMacks ( talk) 19:33, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
I've made a proposal here at Village Pump that could reduce the number of ambiguous links in the encyclopedia, and thus reduce the workload at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links; please check it out and comment if you can. — swpb T 18:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
What happens when both Xzy and Xzy language are ambiguous? So far I've been following the established practice for having two separate dab pages: one for the general term and another for the language. This has been recently challenged by an editor who strongly insists that this is a case of incomplete disambiguation and that Xzy language should redirect to Xzy. Whether this is indeed a case of incomplete disambiguation (I'm not sure it is, at least not in light of previous discussions here, like this or that one), I'm finding this very problematic. It hinders searches: if a user types for example Bo language, what they need is one of the couple or so languages on that page, there's no point forcing them to find their way through the dozens of entries at Bo.
Any thoughts anyone? I can see three sensible ways of handling cases like this one:
A disambiguator is typically a parenthetical that we make up to distinguish similarly named thingsTrue enough, although we also use natural disambiguation as well where appropriate. Again, if the term "language" is only use descriptively in association with something named X, then I'd still argue that the things named (or known as) X should be on the X disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 01:51, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Since when is having separate disambiguation pages "established practice"?I was only referring to the case of languages.
Yes, some of these are tricky, especially the ones about groups. Bomberai languages seems to include only groupings of languages spoken on Bomberai (two of which are partial title matches), but the last entry is a group that is alternatively known as "Bomberai". West Timor languages seems to list valid genetic groups that can conceivably might have been called "West Timor" (although the target articles don't make that clear). Articles about individual languages are more straightforward, even though the ones you've picked could do with some tidying up. Tibetan language looks at first sight like a broad concept list, but two of the entries ( Classical Tibetan and Standard Tibetan) are commonly known as simply "Tibetan", while the rest of the entries can each be called "a Tibetan language". Both of the languages at Pray language are known as "Pray" according to the respective articles. Te first entry of Madi languages might look arbitrary as it points to Arawan languages, but one of the language varieties covered in that article ("Jamamadi") is alternatively known as "Madi". Of course, alternative names had better be mentioned within the articles, but if they aren't, it's good to be aware that these are almost invariably listed at the glottolog or ethnologue entries (and they are linked from the infobox). Uanfala ( talk) 15:28, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
An editor has claimed that links in disambiguation pages themselves (typically in the "See Also" section) should not point to other disambiguation pages, if that page does not have "disambiguation" in its title, but rather to the redirect to that page that does have disambiguation in its title. He seems pretty exercised about this (he considers that linking to a disambig page from mainspace can only be explained as intentional vandalism), so I thought I'd check it out.
There's some contradictory stuff here. On the one hand:
On the other hand:
But now whats interesting about the rule (and the editors argument to me) is that it explains itself as being for the benefit of editors, not readers (emphasis added):
and the editor in question pretty much had the same reasoning, as he writes (emphasis added, but CAPS in the original):
Well excuse me, but I'm not here to degrade the reader's experience in order to make it easier for live easier you all and I think this will not stand -- especially since it should be very easy to modify the report code to distinguish between links in article space and links on disambiguation pages (the generate-a-warning-on-your-talk-page code appears to already do this).
If there's some reason why its better to change a pointer to a menu page (what we call a disambiguation page) to point to a redirect to that page (an extra step for the software, or any editor working thru the links, to deal with), which also has the extra disadvantage of adding an extra word (and a difficult one, especially for ESL readers and so forth) to have to wade through, I'd be interested to know it. I'm willing to be convinced, if there is an argument.
Absent that, I would suggest a change of one word in the first sentence of WP:INTDABLINK, from
TO
So let's talk about this. Herostratus ( talk) 00:01, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
( edit conflict):Just to make clear, what we are talking about is the difference between
Erm, there are contradictory statements in this thread, so the water is rather muddied. These statements appear to be not correct, or rather not a correct description of how the rule is written nor how it is being applied:
Yeah but If I'm reading the rules correctly.... the main operative rules are WP:D and WP:MOSDAB, right?
So its a mixed bag at best. Probably the totality of the two rules taken together, reading it as a judge would read a law, should be "Do not pipe links on disambiguation pages"'. But none of this is necessarily a problem, because we have hella rules of the type "Oh yeah it says that, but its kind of silly and so we don't really enforce it" or "Yeah, it says that, but we use common sense in applying the rule" or "It doesn't overtly say to not do that, so we do" and so forth.
But that is very definitely not the situation here! The operative rule at this time is:
and based on the facts on the ground (e.g. here, a the revert to an unpiped version) even using a piped version is not sufficient.
I mean maybe I'm not getting the nuance, but when people start throwing around terroristic threats, you're going to lose the nuances, n'est-ce pas? If this happened to me, how many other editors have been insulted, blocked, and driven off the project for making an innocent interpretation of the an arcane rule based on how we've been doing things for years? This matters.
Anyway, it seems like a lot of this is based on being, or afraid of being, overwhelmed by error reports (although some people do think the "(disambuation)" is also a positive good for the reader, the "designed to prevent a serious disruption to the work of disambiguators" seems a common theme though all this).
This is understandable. I bet we can alleviate this some through making the code a little more subtle, and I think its there that the next forward progress can be made. Sounds fun, count me in! Herostratus ( talk) 22:37, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The above discussion does bring up an important question on the consistency of "See also" sections on disambiguation pages. Should the links to disambiguation pages be piped or not? I think that the arguments can be summed up as follows.
In favor of having a piped link:
In favor of having an unpiped link:
I therefore propose that this ask that the community to clarify Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages with the addition of one of the two sentences following:
@ Herostratus, Dicklyon, SmokeyJoe, Niceguyedc, and Xezbeth:, please indicate below which of these options you prefer (and perhaps, briefly, why). Thanks! bd2412 T 01:23, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Please indicate here which of the above options you prefer.
Please place any extended discussion of the topic here.
Well but first the code has to be fixed, yes? What I'm thinking is, find if it's possible to determine if the link is in the "See also" section. I would think it would be, simply by parsing the page text for the string "==See also==" (and close variants) and taking it from there (more parsing would be required which I won't describe here). I'm betting this is possible, and looking into it is on my list.
(What I would then further propose, as relief for the Disambiguation folks who I gather are faced with a firehose of links to disambiguation beyond human capacity to deal with is, is to simply unlink all links to disambig pages that are not in the "See also" section or in a hatnote (and probably some other appropriate places I haven't thought of). I honestly can't think of many cases where a link to a disambig page is useful in the in the body of an article. But suppose there are. Suppose 2% of the links to disambig pages in the body text of articles are intended and appropriate. Well sometimes you have have jettison cargo to right the ship. If the alternative is breakdown, failure, human burnout, falling years behind, and so forth... would we rather fail? And adding a little symbol that means "I truly did intend to link to a disambig page here" or whatever, while not a perfect solution, would help some.)
But nevermind the above paragraph for now -- something to think about for future discussion. Right now, the first thing we need is code that can tell us that the link is indeed in the "See also" section, yes? Herostratus ( talk) 00:43, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
In some cases the most common normal meaning of the subject of a disambiguation link is one that neither has nor requires its own page. How should this best be handled? I saw to my surprise there was a DAB for " Stop, Look and Listen," the safety procedure for crossing train tracks and streets. The disambiguation list started with the Green Cross Code, which adopted this in the 1970s. i.e., when it was a century or so old as a stock phrase, already showed up in case law, and so forth. How can this be reflected without turning the disambiguation page into a dictionary entry? Anmccaff ( talk) 19:47, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
At present there's a mismatch between Twinkle's pop-up help about Speedy Deletion G6 "Unnecessary disambiguation pages" and the actual criterion at
WP:G6. Twinkle's help message shows the criterion as disambiguates two or fewer pages and whose title ends in "(disambiguation)"
, while
WP:G6 says Deleting a disambiguation page that links to only one extant article and whose title includes "(disambiguation)"
and that's what appears on the template message on the page. I've raised this at
Wikipedia_talk:Twinkle#CSD_G6_-_unecessary_dab_page. It probably explains a lot of incorrect G6 nominations of dab pages disambiguating the primary topic and one other article.
Pam
D 11:01, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
Should training camp be reformatted as a disambiguation page? Seems like it is serving that purpose, but is currently rated and categorized as a stub article. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 18:38, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
It should be noted that there are duplicate disambiguation pages: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, (created 02:00, 11 April 2014) and Lives of a Bengal Lancer (created as a redirect 15:33, 11 July 2002 and turned into a dab page 16:20, 15 September 2014). —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 03:41, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
There's been a great deal of discussion recently over what article, DAB or redir should be at New York, and how to best disambiguate New York State from New York City. The discussion has been long and involved already, involving an RM that is now at MR.
At the heart of this discussion is disagreement over whether either is the primary topic. Some say the state, some the city, some that there is none. However I believe that there is rough consensus that neither the usage nor significance criteria support the state being primary.
It seems to me that most if not all of those who believe that New York State is the primary meaning base this on the higher-level jurisdiction criterion. Some have argued very forcefully that this criterion should, in this case at least, take precedence over the usage and significance criteria. ( [15] as just one example.) Others have just observed that the state has been at New York for some time, and have cited the higher-level jurisdiction criterion as the justification for this. [16]
Comments? Andrewa ( talk) 22:26, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
A more precise definition of this criterion needs to be hashed out. "Jurisdiction" may be too restrictive as it implies a governing relationship. Perhaps the more general term "entity" is better; the higher-level entity may just be something geographic and not jurisdictional. But the higher-level entity must include the lower-level entity. This rules out Washington as the District of Columbia is not located within the state of Washington. Georgia doesn't apply either as the two Georgias are on different continents. Another point generally needed to trigger this criterion is that the language spoken in these overlapping entities sharing the same name must be English. Thus, we make the lower-level Lhasa primary, while the Chinese make the higher-level primary (perhaps they follow the same implicit criterion in their language). I really don't understand what the deal is with Leeds and City of Leeds; they look like content forks which should be merged. Both cover the identical 213 square miles. To test the validity of this criterion, we should be able to point to another example of where it's applied in practice, so that New York isn't the only case where the criterion is applied. My exhibit #1 is Ireland and Ireland, Republic of. In this case the higher-level entity is geographic – it's an island. Neither of the two main criteria seems to support the island. And, the final confirmation that this criterion applies comes from looking at other language Wikipedias, and finding that most of them make the lower-level jurisdiction, the Republic, their primary topic. – wbm1058 ( talk) 02:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
This is just the first step in what may be a three step process. See Talk:New York (state)#Foreshadowing. Andrewa ( talk) 04:59, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
In the spirit of the above-mentioned need for interpretation: To re-state and re-factor my points above (which have thus far not been disputed, though I welcome discussion): Favoring a higher-level jurisdiction over a same-named and contained jurisdiction acts as a fail-safe for readers interested in either use, whereas favoring the lower-level jurisdiction leads to potential confusion (getting at the "Usage" criterion here, in addition to the spirit of Broad-concept articles). Readers seeking the city will find some information (and a clear hatnote) at a page devoted to the containing state, as it is covered as part of that topic; readers interested in the state will find no such information at a page devoted to the city and would potentially be confused or misinformed when landing there. The naturally disambiguated titles for both city and state appear immediately within the search box. So, any potential problems come from existing wikilinks, such as Wbm1058 has been working through (with thanks). So, which is worse: a link intended for the city that winds up at an article about the state (not wrong, since the city is contained and covered in said article), or a link intended for the state that winds up at the city article (potentially very confusing, as state information is not included there)?
As an example, if I say Pat Examplepants was born in New York (intending the city) but the link points to the state, it is not wrong. However, if they were born near Utica, and the link points to the city article (note that such links are often formatted [[Utica, New York|Utica]], [[New York]]), then the reader has been presented with misinformation and has been done a disservice. In both instances the writer of the article could have been more specific and careful, but we all know how it goes in the real world here, so fail-safes should be welcomed. Antepenultimate ( talk) 16:01, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Higher-Level Jurisdiction Criterion. Andrewa ( talk) 22:33, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure about this edit. It was made after I pointed out that Shams was a dab page and that we didn't have an article about the goddess Shams. Shams of course in English is a perfectly good plural with two meanings (the other being pillows hamster). It seems to me that this is sort of a substitute for creating an article. Doug Weller talk 19:14, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
I've been putting a lot of thought into Talk:New York/July 2016 move request.
One thing that I am wondering is why, when it seems so clear that by our existing criteria New York State is not the primary topic, there's so much opposition to the move, and such heated presentation of this view.
Another I'm wondering is why, when it seems so clear to me that New York City is the primary topic, I'm so comfortable to have the DAB or a BCA at the base name, despite that seeming to be in breach of our current guidelines.
Part of it I think is that both NYC and NYS are very important articles. NYC is rated as top importance by no fewer than four WikiProjects, high by another, and mid by another two. [18] NYS is rated as top by one and high by another, mid by one and of interest but unrated by a fourth. [19]
In a case like this, I think we should consider disambiguation (or a BCA) more favourably than for less important articles, and adopt it even if a case can be made for a primary topic, in view of the importance of the other topic(s).
Other thoughts? Andrewa ( talk) 02:42, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Could those watching here say whether the edit I made here at gas analysis is helpful, or if another approach is better? Thanks. FWIW, I was trying to find an article in Wikipedia on ' calibration gas generators', a rather specialised bit of equipment, see e.g. here. Not a topic I suspect there will be an article on any time soon. Actually, looking a bit further, I've redirected it to calibration gas (which needs some attention). Also not sure of the difference between a gas analyser and a gas detector (also, gas sensor is a redirect to the detector article, but I redirected the spelling of gas analyser to the gas analysis disambiguation page). Not sure how the subtle differences should be handled here. Carcharoth ( talk) 12:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
In brief: How should we treat links to anthroponymy pages?
For those unfamiliar,
Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy pages are a somewhat unique beast: they list people who share a given name or surname or complete name, and they are often treated like disambiguation pages, though they are categorized as set index articles. (Aside: there is no MOS guideline for these pages, just the
WikiProject standards page. I have tried unsuccessfully to have this page promoted to the MOS; the absence of a MOS for anthro pages is a big problem to be tackled separately.)
The issue at hand: There is no consensus on how to treat links to anthro pages. For dab pages, the correct method is to link to "Title (disambiguation)", which may be a redirect to the actual dab page—this is to make it clear to bots that the link is intentional, so it doesn't show up on lists of ambiguous links that need to be fixed (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links). IMO, the same logic applies to anthroponymy pages, and this has clearly been the practice for quite some time (see tens of thousands of examples in Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages). However, this practice is in dispute (see User talk:Bkonrad#Alphonse), on the basis that anthro pages should not be considered dab pages, even for this purpose. I've tried to create a workaround with {{ R to anthroponymy page}}, in parallel with {{ R to disambiguation page}}, but I think a question affecting such a huge number of pages needs larger input. The options I see are (add any you think I missed):
For linking to anthroponymy pages:
Thoughts? If you have a preference for one of the listed options, please indicate so. — swpb T 15:52, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
make it clear to bots that the link is intentional. I thought the main benefit of such links was for humans examining What links here manually. Are there any bots that rely on these redirects to automagically fix links (i.e. without human interaction to review the links)? Mistaken links are mostly likely to arise from the simple reclassification of a disambiguation page as an anthroponymy article. older ≠ wiser 16:25, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Editors interested in disambiguation may want to contribute to the RFC asking whether New York State the primary topic for the term "New York". — JFG talk 10:25, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
You're welcome to comment here: Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Cooling-off period before disambiguating new dablinks. Uanfala ( talk) 21:38, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Most people coming to this page are actually looking for actual help in editing. So lets add an Other-Uses hatnote pointing to Help:Disambiguation with the words: "If you intended to see the help page for dealing with disambguation see ... -- פשוט pashute ♫ ( talk) 06:48, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
@ R'n'B and Bkonrad: (re Publius Decius Mus (disambiguation) and Publius Decius Mus).
I did a bunch of cleanup because Decius Mus and the two wikilinks above were duplicative. They now redirect to Decia (gens)#Decii Mures, which in function is close to a disambiguation page while avoiding redundancy.
Given that anyone targetting Publius Decius Mus and Decius Mus should almost certainly have linked to either Publius Decius Mus (consul 340 BC), Publius Decius Mus (consul 312 BC) or Publius Decius Mus (consul 279 BC) instead, is there a way to tag them -- with disambiguation or otherwise -- so that DPL Bot or similar will flag an editor who's targetted them? I couldn't find anything explicitly on this.
Thanks, ~ Hydronium~Hydroxide~ (Talk)~ 03:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
Per WP:Disambiguation, Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead.Ambiguity can occur between articles with totally dissimilar titles. There seems to be no consensus about altering titles that do not strictly collide, so no consensus on the proposed guideline text. Other possible responses to ambiguity include disambiguation pages and WP:DABLINKS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhoark ( talk • contribs) 03:53, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
The question on the table is, generally
and specifically, which of these passages is preferred in the rule (the bolded text is just to highlight the addition, not intended to be bolded in the actual rule):
and the bolded section is called the "additional guidance" for the purposes of discussion. Herostratus ( talk) 17:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
There's been discussions on this in various places, but there has not been a formal RfC placed on this page (AFAIK), so that's what we're doing here -- making an RfC that someone will close with a binding decision.
The previous thread is here, and here's a summary/headcount of the old discussion, hoping I have categorized everyone correctly. I've done my best and I got you wrong (or you've changed your mind) just strike through your entry and make your vote in the New Business section below.
FWIW by my count I get:
and for the purposes of headcount I'd request the closer to fold them into the total.
Again, the question on the table is whether to include the additional guidance "Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles." in WP:Disambiguation.
Looking thru the previous discussion, it seems to me that here are really three camps:
Camps 2 and 3 perforce are both opposed (to guidance here). I don't have a point I'm just noting this. Herostratus ( talk) 17:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
This and some other places here and in MOSDAB leave an impression that, e.g., the dab page, e.g, Mouth (disambiguation) must contain entry Mouth to Mouth (TV series), because "there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word mouth might be expected to lead.".
IMO everywhere the language must say clearly everywhere that dab lists are for subjects which may be called in the same way. Otherwise every stubborn newcomer with start arguing for turning his favorite dab page into the list of all phrases with this word, arguing, e.g., that he remembers only a single word from the song title, and hence this is what "a reader might search". Staszek Lem ( talk) 19:17, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
I'd like to see a policy statement on the project page somewhere about the use of negative parentheticals in article titles for disambiguation: whether they're allowable (I think not) or when (if so). I came across a page like that, and tried to find an applicable guideline governing this, but was unable to. Can we have a discussion about whether and when a negative parenthetical for disambiguation is allowable?
Example:
I feel that the title of Defence in depth (non-military) is wrong due to the negative parenthetical, but I can't find a specific guideline about it. (I could try to lean on the general statements in WP:TITLE about 'naturalness', 'conciseness', etc., but if I got strong pushback I'd be on thin ice.) The negative was intended here, I surmise, in order to distinguish the article from the more narrowly focused article about military defense entitled Defence in depth.
In this case, I feel that the latter article should probably have been Defence in depth (military) and the former just Defence in depth (or maybe even repurposed to Defence in depth (disambiguation)) but I'm looking for a guideline for the general case that I can apply.
I tend to think there should never be a negative parenthetical, and that it indicates a confused structuring of some similarly-named articles that ought to have been done differently, leaving no need for the negative as a broad catch-all. Perhaps in rare cases where a negative is actually used in the domain by domain experts, there might be an exception; for example (I'm making this up): Vertebrates (flying) and Vertebrates (non-flying) but only where we have reliable sources for it, and not just because an editor came up with it as a method that seems to work for them.
What say ye? Mathglot ( talk) 01:15, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Is the current page clear enough that we don't have e.g. a primary John Smith (footballer) among many John Smith footballers, but that ambiguous (parenthetical) redirect to the dab page.? In ictu oculi ( talk) 15:51, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
One should beware of those who cannot or will not laugh when others are merry, for if not mentally defective they are spiteful, selfish or abnormally conceited ... Great men of all nations and of all times have possessed a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, as wisdom and wit are closely allied.
I'd like my esteemed fellow editors to opine on whether the image and caption seen at right (removed in this edit
[22] as a "bad idea") should be restored to this page, bearing in mind that project-space pages routinely incorporate images (humorous or otherwise) to break the monotony, raise editor spirits, make the material more memorable, and so on. See e.g.
WP:CRYSTALBALL,
WP:Vandalism#How_not_to_respond_to_vandalism,
WP:Civility#Avoiding_incivility,
WP:OR,
WP:NOTDICT.
E
Eng 18:25, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
In Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Determining a primary topic, the example given for the last of the criteria we don't use seems to me to be for an instance when they could have been applied:
Should this have other examples? Something of recent notability that isn't the primary topic (e.g., Muse vs. Muse (band))? -- JHunterJ ( talk) 13:06, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
Should Set-Index Articles be allowed as the primary topic? A simple query, quarry:query/13668, shows that we have 700+ of these. There was prior discussion in 2012. Any moves will require an admin. — Dispenser 16:14, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
Hi, all. Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Testosterone (hormone)#Proposed split. I weighed in at Talk:Testosterone (hormone)#Protest, which is an aspect of it. There is concern that the WP:Primary topic guideline is not being followed in this case. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 01:22, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
There is an ongoing DAB discussion on the Talk Page. I've commented, but think that input from other WP:DAB members could be helpful. Narky Blert ( talk) 00:25, 17 November 2016 (UTC)