Talk:John R. Williams

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:John R. Williams/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

ummm wow this wasnt the guy i was looking for

Last edited at 00:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 20:20, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Lengthy hatnote

The current hatnote seems far too long to me. The paragraph format (as opposed to a bulleted list) makes it very hard to quickly compartmentalize the different entries, and it takes up a ton of room before the meat of the article. If a separate disambiguation page for John R. Williams is necessary (and I would suggest that perhaps it be located at the base name, and this article be disambiguated), so be it, but this is not a viable alternative in the interim. Powers ^T 12:48, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

My inclination would be to have the disambiguation page located at John R. Williams (disambiguation) and to leave this article at the existing title since I suspect the 19th-century mayor of Detroit would be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "John R. Williams". This isn't because the mayor is the most notable of the nine articles' subjects, but because I suspect it's much likelier that users specifically searching "John R. Williams" would be looking for information about the mayor. I could be convinced otherwise, though.

In any case, I certainly agree that we desperately need a disambiguation page. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 02:49, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree. The 19th-century mayor of Detroit is known exclusively as "John R. Williams" - there are no other variations of his name. The other people who could be called as "John R. Williams" appear to be primarily known under some other variation aof the name - with spelled-out middle name, no middle name, nickname, etc. Andrew Jameson (talk) 20:00, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Jameson and LtPowers: I have prepared a draft disambiguation page at Draft:John R. Williams (disambiguation). I have also prepared draft disambiguation pages for other articles about people named John Williams that also have lengthy hathotes (Draft:John A. Williams (disambiguation) and Draft:John M. Williams (disambiguation)). Would one of you be able to move them to mainspace? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 01:18, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done Powers ^T 02:28, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks so much, LtPowers! Would you be able to move Draft:John F. Williams (disambiguation) as well? And there are two others that require an additional page move that I have listed at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests (Draft:John G. Williams and Draft:John H. Williams). If you could have a look at those too, it would be greatly appreciated. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 02:43, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Looks like someone else beat me to the G and H, but I got F for you. Powers ^T 16:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)