Talk:GRE (disambiguation)

I moved this as the Graduate Record Examination page is the most popular of the GRE acronyms and significantly more likely as the intended destination of a user search for "GRE". Ip208man (talk) 04:15, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

GRE disambiguation etc

Copied from User talk:Bkonrad

Hi Bkonrad -- thanks for your interest in my changes to Gre, GRE, GRE (disambiguation) and Graduate Record Examinations. My change was based on the fact that GRE doesn't automatically mean anything in particular except to subgroups of Wiki readers, and so the redirection to a particular one is takes non-US readers to the wrong place. (Which wouldn't be the case for very widely-known things such as the BBC and FBI, where there is clearly a pre-eminent meaning internationally.) So I changed them all to not place any particular emphasis anywhere, which seemed nice and neutral. Is this controversial? It would seem your reversion goes against Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no_consensus", but happy enough with Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle too, looking forward to hear what you think. Kind regards from London. 82.69.229.22 (talk) 16:51, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How about some sort of evidence rather than opinion? Consider page traffic. Over the last 90 days:

Graduate Record Examinations has been viewed 145968 times
GRE, while it was a redirect to Graduate Record Examinations was viewed 10683 times
GRE (disambiguation) was viewed 1428 times (less than 1% of the total for Graduate Record Examinations and about 13% of GRE)
Gecko rendering engine was viewed 280 times
Generic Routing Encapsulation was viewed 30408 times
Glucocorticoid response elements was viewed 253 times
Grand River Enterprises was viewed 1990 times
GRE (company) was viewed 792 times

Greece was viewed 482273 times

Excepting Greece, which is a special case, the total for all the other entries is 33723, which is about 23% of the total for Graduate Record Examinations. Thus by page traffic criteria, the exam easily qualifies as the primary topic. A case could be made for including a mention of Generic Routing Encapsulation in the hatnote along with a link to the dab page, but that's really a separate discussion. Greece is a special case in that the abbreviation GRE is not even mentioned in the country article. If anything, there probably should be separate entries for the Greece national football team (FIFA) and Greece at the Olympics for the IOC, both of which do not receive significant level of traffic. older ≠ wiser 01:24, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the info.

I don't think I agree though that these statistics properly inform this issue. If we think of subjects ABC1 ... ABCn (ordered by hits, descending), with redirect from ABC to ABC1. Now think of a person looking up ABC in context 3, say. They search for ABC, redirect to ABC1, click on ABC (dis), and click on ABC3. We don't have statistics for that, and even if we did, we wouldn't able to easily distinguish that from an ambling reader (who reads ABC1 and then wonders what else it might stand for) without some kind of timing thresholding. None of which is available. The fact that ABC1 is more read than ABC2, or indeed sum(ABC2..ABCn) doesn't alter this unless it's really overwhelming and also that ABC1 is very widely known by the ambiguous term. (FBI would be a good example where it's probably overwhelming, "ABC" where it's not, GRE->"Greece" fails "widely known by ambig term").

Nonetheless, using these numbers, ignoring Greece and GRE dis, Graduate Records Examinations is about 4:1 of this area; I think "much more likely" (per Wikipedia:PRIMARYTOPIC) would have to be at least 20:1. "Without regard to national origin" argues the same neutrality, as Graduate Records Admissions is really for those with US educational interests -- of course a very well represented group on Wikipedia.

All I'm really saying is in this: I don't think GRE is a case where a "primary topic" exists, and suggest we aim GRE at the disambiguation page, with corresponding edits to GRE (dis) and "Gre".

Look forward to hear what futher thoughts you have]]. Kind regards, 82.69.229.22 (talk) 12:17, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In other move discussions, a majority of 4:1 is easily considered as the primary topic. If you think a more stringent standard is needed, that would likely need broader discussion as it is a significant change from current practices. older ≠ wiser 12:38, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]