Talk:Sharaf al-Din

When redlinks are a good idea...

This edit removed Sharifuddin (Taliban intelligence leader). I believe this was a mistake, and I have restored it. Geo Swan (talk) 23:06, 29 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It was not a mistake. The main criterion for inclusion in name pages and/or disambiguation pages like this must be the existence of an article on the subject. Exceptions can occasionally be made for clearly notable dead people where there is no article and obviously should be, or for any heading where there are many independent inward redlinks; I regularly check for that when deleting redlinks. In this particular case, I have no view as to the general notability of the subject apart from the fact that he is not actually famous, but I see that there is no article, and no other links to his name. In my book that is enough to remove him from this list. If Geo Swan feels strongly that this person must be included, he should create a stub article. If that article survives, I will have no problem. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 09:58, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that there is a long-standing practice of allowing redlinks on disambiguation pages, so long as there are real articles that also use that redlink.
Abdul Matin (Guantanamo captive) should have had a wikilink to Sharifuddin (Taliban intelligence leader). I am surprised to find that it did not. I thought I had taken care of that. That is fixed now.
Samuel writes: "Exceptions can occasionally be made for clearly notable dead people where there is no article and obviously should be..." No offense but this is strongly at odds with my understanding of the relevant wikidocuments.
I've consulted the relevant documents, albeit, not recently. My recollection is that redlinks on disambiguation pages are perfectly acceptable, under much broader conditions than the occasional exception you describe. My recollection is that the general practice, codified in wikidocuments, are that the use of redlinks on disambiguation pages should be considered routine, so long as at least one real article has a real instance of that wikilink.
Relatively recently there was a change in practice. Originally the contributor placing the redlink on the disambiguation page was merely supposed to make sure it was really wikilinked in at least one real article. Currently, if the link is a red-link, the contributor adding the entry is supposed to have the entry explicitly link to one of the real articles that references the wikilink.
This is an essential tool. There are lots of instances where a notable individual has namesakes, who are also potentially notable.
When a contributor is working on the article on Joe Bloe A, and they come across references to a different incident about a Joe Bloe, who they conclude is definitely a different Joe Bloe, they should consider creating an entry in the appropriate disambiguation page for Joe Bloe B. IMO they should consider creating that entry even they are not sure there are two separate individuals named "Joe Bloe", but merely that there is no real connection to establish they are the same individual. IMO it doesn't matter whether they can definitively establish that Joe Bloe B is notable. If Joe Bloe B's article would lapse from {{blp1e}} it would still be worthwhile to have a disambiguation page entry for him. Our policy on blp1e individuals is that they should be covered in the article on the event. And that is what we would have here.
The failure to make this kind of disambiguation entry, or the removal of this kind of disambiguatinon entry, creates a lot of unnecessary work all around. There have been many occasions when I have come across references about namesakes, done the homework to satisfy myself they were namesakes, and then found a contributor who did less homework assumed there was just a single individual, and inappropriately merged the articles, or added new material on Joe Bloe B to the article on Joe Bloe A. For this reason it is essential to have entries on disambiguation pages for all namesakes notable enough to be potential sources of confusion -- not just for exceptional cases as you stated above. Geo Swan (talk) 14:47, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]