Talk:Princess Blanche

Disambiguation or Redirect?

I strongly disagree with the decision of Propaniac to turn this article from a disambiguation page into a redirect. Right now (with the latter), if anyone is looking for information about any of the "Princess Blanche"s except Blanche d'Évreux, he should not be able to find it... he should not even know they existed. This page should be kept as a disambiguation page, and the first entry should be made a link to Blanche d'Évreux. The purpose of disambiguation pages is to lead users to the best article. And even though none of the other Blanches has her own article (yet), this page in disambiguation form may serve to redirect users to Louis IX of France and Charles IV of France, which do provide information on these subjects.

I would like to note that WP:MOS does state, "Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link. " The last two entries did meet this standard, and there was an article for readers to read. I will condede that the MOS does say, "A link to a non-existent article (a "red link") should only be included on a disambiguation page when another article also includes that red link." By this rule, the second entry of this page (before the change) should be deleted (at least commented out). -- Rmrfstar (talk) 18:22, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at the four entries on the page and concluded that none of the entries would be useful for someone looking up information on the princesses mentioned. Both of the two redlinks were linked only from this page; I tried searching Wikipedia and could find literally no article that even mentioned those women. They may have been totally super important women who should, in an ideal world, be covered on Wikipedia in detail, but since there doesn't appear to be any article discussing them, there's nothing to disambiguate where they're concerned.

As for the other two entries, they did have links to their fathers' articles mentioning those princesses among the children. I admit I was using more discretion in deciding that they did not need to be included; my feeling is that if the linked article doesn't actually offer any substantial information on the topic, there's not much point linking to it. The pages only had birth and death dates for the princesses in question (and they list their husbands, but when they married they weren't princesses anymore). Still, if you really think a disambig page for those two entries, plus the one where this article currently redirects, is worthwhile, I won't object if you go ahead and make one. (I will request that you follow the Manual of Style, which this page was definitely not following before I redirected it.) Propaniac (talk) 20:51, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I reinstated it, and I believe I followed the MOS. According to the edit summaries of one editor of this page, the redlinks (now commented out) will likely be blue in the future. Thanks for discussing the matter. -- Rmrfstar (talk) 16:15, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you're referring to DGG's comment, I'm pretty sure he meant "Someone at some point in the future will presumably write these articles because the people are notable," not "I or someone else have a direct intention of writing these articles presently." Propaniac (talk) 15:32, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I know. I just said that he thought the red would become blue. And thanks for reformatting the page: I like the way you did it! -- Rmrfstar (talk) 19:17, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]