Talk:John Russell

This disambiguation page is within the scope of WikiProject Disambiguation, an attempt to structure and organize all disambiguation pages on Wikipedia. If you wish to help, you can edit the page attached to this talk page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project or contribute to the discussion.DisambiguationWikipedia:WikiProject DisambiguationTemplate:WikiProject DisambiguationDisambiguation articles

Biography

This disambiguation page is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles

Order of entries

Neelix noted in the edit summary for this change that it was reformatted per WP:MOSDAB. I had previously put the entries in order by name and then by birthdate, which at one time was recommended by MOSDAB. I no longer see any suggestions there about ordering people, either the way I did it or by pure alphabetical order of entries, as it now stands. I believe that name and birthdate are more useful to someone who is trying to find a particular entry than pure alpha and would like to see the page changed back.

But I don't want to get into an edit war. If there is disagreement, let's open it up for discussion at either the MOSDAB talk page or the WP:DAB talk page, where there are more experts than here. Matchups 01:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Matchups,

No worries about the order of the entries. My statement about reformatting according to WP:MOSDAB was mainly in reference to descriptions, syntax, and linking. I simply found it easier to sort through the entries when they were in alphabetical order. Feel free to re-organize the entries according to birthdate. I would prefer, though, that you leave the formatting of the individual entries as it is, as I believe it to be in accordance with WP:MOSDAB.

Thank you for letting me know about your practice of listing human name disambiguation page entries in chronological order. I will attempt to do so on other pages in the future.

Neelix 17:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I, too, thought surname dab pages were supposed to be chronological order, but I just read over WP:MOSDAB, and see that there is no specified ordering for a list of names; however, in the section on People the example given shows the names alphabetized, using parenthetical clarifiers as the ordering, rather than date of birth:

John Smith is the name of:

John Smith (filmmaker) (born 1952), London-based avant-garde filmmaker
John Smith (mathematician) (18th century), mathematician at the University of Oxford, 1766–1797
John Smith (Ohio Senator) (1735–1824)

So I think continuing the alphabetical ordering here is fine, especially based on the parentheticals. Cheers, --MCB 23:56, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I find ordering by parentheticals to provide the least benefit to the reader, as they can be arbitrarily phrased. For example, who's to know whether to find John Smith under (Senator) or (Ohio Senator), (filmmaker) or (moviemaker), (mathematician) or (Oxford). On the other hand, date of birth is a consistent and objective parameter, and the reader will generally know at least approximately when the object of his/her search flourished. In fact, on reflection my preference would be to go purely by this, as even the name itself is somewhat arbitrary, as some people are listed with middle names and some not, and the reader may not know this. Not to mention Lord Arthur John Edward Russell, whom some readers might expect to find at the beginning (Arthur) instead of under Lord at the end. Matchups 02:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest this discussion be moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). The appropriate order of entries on a human name disambiguation page is not specific to John Russell. This is a valid topic that should be addressed, and human name disambiguation pages should be standardized in their treatment of it.

Neelix 16:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Middle Name Russell

While we're at it, how about deleting all of the John Russell Taylors, Youngs, Bartletts, etc. unless there is some authority that they were ever known by the name "John Russell" alone. Matchups 02:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Concur. There would be no reason for people to look here for those names, and it just clutters the page. --MCB 06:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Adding John Russell, art critic (NYT)

I encountered the name John Russell as the author of several books on art, including a massive one on Matisse. Doing some basic research, I found he was chief art critic for the New York Times, was born in England in 1919, and received an award from the French government in the 1980's. I want to add him to the disambiguation page and wonder if he would be considered significant enough for which to construct a short page.JeanEva 03:10, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]