Talk:James Freeman (disambiguation)

To explain my hangon I've copied and pasted the objection and reasons for it from my Talk page:

COPIED AND PASTED FROM BOLEYN2'S TALK PAGE: I don't understand why you are creating unnecessary redirect pages such as James Freeman (disambiguation). James Freeman is already a disambig page, so the new redirect page is not necessary, in my view. Why not just move James Freeman to James Freeman (disambiguation)? – ukexpat (talk) 16:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It's buried in WP:MOSDAB somewhere that it is preferable on a dab, e.g. James Freedman, which includes a link to a dab for a similar name in its 'see also' section, e.g. James Freeman, that the link is to 'James Freeman (dab)', even if that isn't the name of the page. I think the reason is to make it explicitly clear that this is a dab, not one person's entry without a bio. I don't think it's particularly important, but does make the information clearer and it looks neater than black writing next to it saying that it's a dab page. I can see why you think it is unnecessary - I'd hardly argue that it's essential - but it's harmess and keeping to the style guide.

As for moving it to James Freeman (disambiguation), unless one of the Freemans is by far the most well-known, and this is likely to be the case for a very long time, e.g. Oliver Cromwell, Francis Bacon, then the page with the name only, without dab in parentheses after it, is the correct title for the disambiguation page of all people with that name. Hndis (talk) 16:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the speedy deletion tag. This redirect is entirely proper per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). SlackerMom (talk) 16:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with SlackerMom and Hndis, (and perhaps unusually for me, with MoSDAB too).

WP is not all about "necessity". Other important goals include (but are not limited to) simplicity, clarity, predictability, uniformity, consistency and ease of use. An "unnecessary" redirect page doesn't cost very much at all, yet adds all sorts of value. Pdfpdf (talk) 23:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]