Talk:Enfield

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It's clear from all the changes going on that we need to have some sort of real discussion about where this page should point (it's gone four different places so far today). Here's the thread from my user talk:

Can you explain how you arrived at your views on the "primary" Enfield and why you think structuring a disambiguation page by "prevalence" is preferable (in terms of clarity for the reader) to alphabetical order? We don't start our telephone directories with the "Smiths" because they are the most common. There would lie chaos! (Sarah777 23:24, 13 May 2007 (UTC))

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Order of entries asks us to "in most cases, place the items in order of usage, with the most-used meanings appearing at the top and less common meanings below." It isn't correct procedure to redirect Enfield to Enfield (disambiguation); either the disambiguation page should be at Enfield, or that name should redirect to the primary use of the term. The Enfield in London has over 280,000 people, which is by far the largest of all the Enfields, and almost all of the Wikilinks to the page are meant to link to it. This is grounds for a Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic link to the London location from Enfield - otherwise, editors have to go through and fix all the links to "Enfield", one by one. The “Enfield” redirects here. For other uses, see Enfield (disambiguation) text at the top of Enfield Town takes care of any problems with that setup. This was recently addressed, as well, at Wikipedia:Requested moves: see this edit. Does this address your concerns? Dekimasu 00:55, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Not really. There are about 450 Wiki links to Enfield, New Hampshire compared to 230 to Enfield in London. Google returns roughly the same number of hits for both (1.2 v 1.3 million) and the Enfield Gun gets a half as many as either. Also, a suburban area within a city is not as notable as a separate town by the same name. So I think there is no primary "Enfield" - if you type in Enfield you should get straight to the disambiguation page as 80% of queries will be for pages other than the London Enfield. (Sarah777 01:47, 14 May 2007 (UTC))

I wasn't referring to the links to the unambiguous titles. I was referring to the number of links to the ambiguous title (Enfield) that are meant to direct the user to a certain page. But as far as that goes, almost all of the links to "Enfield, New Hampshire" are the result of its inclusion in Template:New Hampshire. Also, I think you may have forgotten to include quotation marks in your Google test. A search for "Enfield, New Hampshire" gives 34K hits; "Enfield, London" gets 106K, and "Enfield Town" gets 140K (there's another 19K for "Enfield, England"). "Enfield Gun" gets around 700 Google hits. Dekimasuよ! 02:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• Based on this exchange, I would agree with targeting the redirect to either Enfield Town or London Borough of Enfield, and on that point I would defer to someone who is more familiar with the subject. However, it's clear to me that the primary topic for this page is related to the location(s) in London, so I don't think that this title is the proper place for the disambiguation page. Other views? Dekimasuよ! 07:47, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• • I think that Dekimasu's argument is exactly right. I would go further and say (partly in response to User:Smerus, who changed the redirect without discussion) that most people will mean the place, not the local government entity. If I talk about Manchester, I probably either mean the city centre, or the whole big conurbation out to the M60 (or thereabouts). The fact that much of the area within the M60 is actually Tameside, Stretford, Salford or Stockport is irrelevant. Similarly, if I exclude those peripheral areas, I am unlikely to include Wythenshawe, which is even further from the centre. People do not generally follow changeable local government boundaries in their conception of places. "Enfield" means Enfield. --Stemonitis 11:57, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• • The entity in London should get the primary reference/title, since it, more than likely, is the progenitor and basis for all subsequent Enfield references (towns and cities around the world, rifles, etc.). Its existence, far longer than any other entity, places it at a status of "Most Noteworthy" or "Most Notable" or "Most Prominent" despite any issue of scale. Birmingham (UK and US) comes to mind as an example, albeit a poor one, since Birmingham-UK is not only older than Birmingham-US, but larger. I suppose Sarah777 is using the argument that produced the current state-of-affairs for Springfield. I can see the point there (although, if anyone was to make the Springfield of The Simpsons as the primary, I'd slap them for ignorance). However, in my somewhat deep knowledge of history, if I was given a piece of paper with the word "Enfield" on it, and told to write about it, I'd start with the English town of Enfield . -- HawkeAnyone 12:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

"Enfield Rifle" gets 65,000 hits. And HawkeAnyone; the "Enfield" in Ireland is not named after the London version but is a corruption of Inn Field from the stage-coach era. (And living in Dublin, for many years of MY life the County Meath town and the gun were the only "Enfields" I had heard of - in fact, I imagined the "Enfield Rifle" was probably called after Enfield in Meath!

(I'd go further - if everyone in the English speaking world was asked what "Enfield" was the majority would think - rifle.

Antiquity hardly makes for primacy either; otherwise "Hollywood" should go straight to Hollywood in County Wicklow (after which some believe the Californian version is named). Instead it goes to the name coined by a developer just over 100 years ago - "Hollywood, Los Angeles". (Using the piece of paper test suggested by HawkeAnyone this would be the correct choice; and the Enfield Rifle would win the other battle.

I'd bet 99% of folk who type in "Hollywood" mean the LA location; and only maybe 20% who type in "Enfield" mean the place in London as distinct from other places or the guns. (Sarah777 23:39, 14 May 2007 (UTC))

I'm not sure where this obsession with firearms comes from. Everything I've seen suggests that that is a very minor use of the name Enfield. It's the primary use of "Enfield rifle", no doubt, and of "Lee-Enfield", but that's not what we're trying to assess. 65,000 hits is nothing in comparison to the million or so for the London meanings. --Stemonitis 06:54, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the gun might only qualify for the "See also" section under a strict interpretation of the MOS-DAB rules (although I believe the million hits data was flawed). Anyway, I did a quick check through the links themselves and they overwhelmingly intend the London location - even the link to "Enfield" in Webley and Scott means the place in London. Dekimasuよ! 11:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Stop shifting the goalposts! "Enfield, London" gets 106K, and "Enfield Town" gets 140K - quote above. "Enfield rifle" gets 68K. No so overwhelming. (Sarah777 13:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC))

I know you're not talking to me, but unless there's evidence of people calling the rifles "an Enfield" as opposed to "a Lee-Enfield rifle", it doesn't even belong anywhere on the dab page outside of a "See also" section. And we aren't only talking about Google hits. Dekimasuよ! 13:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

<rant>Just tried to link something to Enfield and walked into this mess. For goodness sake, Enfield was an area of Middlesex since (at least) the Domesday Book with a royal palace and hunting park, developed into a independent urban district in Victorian times, became an important manufacturing town (hence Lee-Enfield, Martini-Enfield, Enfield Revolver, Enfield Cables Ltd, Enfield Rolling Mills, Bren, Sten etc) of over 100,000 people with exports all over the world, and finally coalesced to become a part and major administrative district of one of the more important global cities. To dismiss this by saying "a suburban area within a city is not as notable as a separate town by the same name" in this instance is only marginally more off the mark than saying Westminster, Massachusetts is more notable than Westminster for the same reason. Because of its importance and long history there are lots of articles that link (or should link) to Enfield, not to Enfield Town or Municipal Borough of Enfield or London Borough of Enfield. For example The Royal Small Arms Factory was not in Enfield Town, it was at Enfield Lock, which was another part of Enfield, long before it was a London borough. As to the primary origin of the name, from my brief scan of the other Enfields on Wikipedia which have an explanation of their name: the Australian ones say they were named after the English one. The Irish one says ".. renamed after the well known borough of Enfield located in London". Some of the American ones were named after other American ones, and others state some variation on "the presumption that Enfield was named for the town near London is incorrect" so they have obviously heard of it. Enfield Mass. claims to be named after a Mr Field. No, not even Mr N. Field. So why would anyone just happen to use a string of letters that has no meaning in modern English (OK, so it's an obscure beast in heraldry) as the name of a new settlement unless they had heard the name before somewhere? See Edmonton, Kentucky for a similar stretch of credibility. </rant> Pterre (talk) 18:05, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• To me, "Enfield" first means that part of north London, or motorcycles. I am in England. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:32, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation

Greetings. Enfield is listed on Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links as having 255 incoming links needing disambiguation (see Special:WhatLinksHere/Enfield). I started on the job, and as a result expanded Enfield. However, the place names within the London borough are complicated, and many of the links are from infoboxes (where born, etc) on articles about athletes, so this is a job for someone with local knowledge and/or relevant sources. Someone please have at it. --Una Smith (talk) 05:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Now there are under 100 incoming links, and Enfield (dab) grows still larger. --Una Smith (talk) 20:33, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Now there are just 8 links left. Keeping a disambiguation page here was a good idea; the incoming links were a very mixed bag. Common among them were small arms, constituencies, the Enfield in Ireland, and many local place names within London Borough of Enfield. Most links from articles about football (soccer) players I moved to the borough article, so in effect that article is a bit of a disambiguation page itself. --Una Smith (talk) 06:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Una Smith to Choess: Thanks for disambiguating the link to Enfield in Rich Baronets. Could you do a few more? Daniel Cresswell (died at home while Vicar of Enfield but it seems the vicarage was in Southgate?), John Gallacher, Charles Cadogan, 2nd Earl Cadogan. --Una Smith (talk) 04:24, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Choess to Una Smith: Perhaps the vicarage was near Southgate, but Southgate was itself created a parish in 1851 from Edmonton, rather than Enfield,[1] so presumably the vicarage was still within Enfield proper. Cresswell was given the living, so whatever applies to Rich must apply to him as well. (See [2] which locates Rich's memorial.) Gallacher's title appears to apply to the borough, and I've linked Cadogan to the town, since the borough didn't exist at the time. Choess (talk) 14:00, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Note to future disambiguators of links to this page: to disambiguate an article about a current entity (notable building, business, railway station, etc) that has a physical address in the UK, it helps to search the web for a postal address, then look up the postcode in EN postcode area. --Una Smith (talk) 02:54, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Enfield Town which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:47, 28 March 2021 (UTC)