Talk:Heterogamy

Proposed merge

I've also commented at talk:anisogamy that I don't think a complete merge of these two articles would be useful, but there may be a couple more things to consider in regards to heterogamy: I did a PubMed search and found many articles mention the term in a social context, aka human marriages across ethnic, national, religous, age groups etc. There is some research looking at e.g. fertility and divorce rates of human heterogamous marriages. That info is so far missing here, but might be what the layman might be most likely looking for when typing "heterogamy" into the search box. I think the best course of action might be to expand that part into the main article at heterogamy. Also, there is an article on heterogamous, which should probably be merged/redirected here. The bottom line is: While anisogamy is sometimes called heterogamy, the term heterogamy can also refer to a number of other things besides anisogamy. - tameeria 22:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation page or not?

Peter coxhead (talk · contribs) removed the disambig status of the page, with the motivation that the references are not to pages which could have the title Heterogamy. I disagreed, and reverted.

The first item probably presently is of primarily interest for both of us, and that one indeed does not have a good further reference. It explains heterogamy as a kind of alternation of generations (which is in accordance with one of the meanings given by the first source of the item, namely, as a synonym for heterogony). The other items do contain proper references, Peter renewed a reference to heterogamy from alternation of generations; this was and still is not optimal, but should IMHO be remedied by other means than changing the status of this de facto disambiguation page. JoergenB (talk) 17:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

There are two different issues.

1) Is this a disambiguation page? No. This is clear from Wikipedia:Disambiguation dos and don'ts and the more detailed Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). A disambiguation page has bulleted entries in note style which simply direct the reader to other pages; it does not explain the meaning of the terms.

2) Should there be a proper article, either here or elsewhere, on heterogamy? Yes, definitely.

Peter coxhead (talk) 18:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Issue 2) is the more important, and we agree on that one.

As for issue 1): This page is not an alternative to a disambig. There are several deviations from the advices in Wikipedia:Disambiguation dos and don'ts and the guidelines in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages); this makes it to a badly written disambiguation page, not to an article. (If you would consider it as an article, you should find much more deviations from recommendations and guidelines. To start with, there are bullet points instead of sections with "mainarticle" references. More seriously, if you changed the lay-out from the "dab-like" to an "article like" one, the sections replacing the bullet points were much too short and dab-like.) Thus, it would be better to retain/restore the dab mark, but also to add a {{Disambiguation cleanup}}.

In either case, this is a rather unsatisfactory goal for the link from Alternation of generations. JoergenB (talk) 19:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

There's no point in {{Disambiguation cleanup}} at present because if you try to change it to a proper dab page, you just can't, because there aren't articles to link to. It's a brief article in a poor format; it can be improved in this respect, (e.g. by expanding each point into a short section) although it would still not be a good article. Much better, of course, would be to have an article for each section, and then make this a proper dab page.

I agree it's a poor goal for the link, but there isn't a better one at present until you or someone else writes Heterogeny. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

As an aside, I'd like to see more pages like this: succinct but sufficient explanations of the different uses of terms, without all the linguistic clutter that comes with wiktionary entries. As a general rule, I'd say that misunderstanding the uses of technical terms is an enormous problem in science, and this sort of page could play a big part in correcting that. I would be upset to see it stripped down to the format of a disambiguation page. Nadiatalent (talk) 16:52, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Interesting point. A disambiguation page is just supposed to be a kind of "switching page", without explanations, which are then supposedly present at the destinations. But then these pages probably won't discuss the alternative uses, or if they do, won't do so succinctly and sufficiently, to use your description. Maybe there is a need for a category of "differentiation page", like this one.

However, even if the page remains as it is, there should be fuller articles to link to on some of the topics, e.g. "Heterogeny" or whatever it should be called. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

@Nadiatalent, as for "stripping" this page to a dab page: It actually was declared as a dab page for a very long time, including when you prolonged especially the sociology item beyond dab status (as defined in the advices and policies Peter linked to supra).

Introducing a new kind of page, "in between" disambiguation pages and articles, would be a solution - but it would be a rather basic level change of wikipedia setup, and should hardly be brought out without some major discussions (and probably would meet considerable resistance). What would you like to call these new pages? Are there more existing pages you think could be classified in this new category? (If you have a serious proposal, pointing at practical examples where the new class would be of practical value increases the chances.)

In short, probably you would have to deviate from your exopedian practise for some time to get this accepted.

There are a few alternatives; e.g., to increase the awareness of wiktionary, and to encourage somewhat longer definitions therein than what wkt usually has now. JoergenB (talk) 22:27, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree with JoergenB that although what I called "differentiation pages" might be useful, they are outside current WP policies and practices. So the best solution seems to be:

• Create the articles to link to where they don't exist, even if they are stubs.
• Convert this to a proper disambiguation page.

Peter coxhead (talk) 23:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

As long as the point of this article is to say "Heterogamy is...", no matter it's condition, it is still an article (hence even at its inception that was so, despite its category tag). A dab page, conversely, only says "Which of these articles did you intend to link to?", nothing else. So Joergen, if you want to convert it then you first have to add a couple articles so every single fact on this page is covered somewhere else, complete the links, strip down the long explantions to a short phrase or sentence, and remove all references. Then I'm sure you would have consensus in calling this article a dab page.  :) --Tom Hulse (talk) 23:39, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Precisely. I don't think there's anything more to say on this subject. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC)