Talk:Shrew (disambiguation)

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Mammals

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Disambiguation?

Does the disambiguation page really need to be here? I would argue that "shrew (animal)" (a member of the family Soricidae) is clearly the primary meaning, at least for the purposes of an encyclopedia. We also have an article at "rat" even though metaphorical usage of that name is much more common than for "shrew". Ucucha 13:36, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I personally, see absolutely no need for this page. It's difficult to believe that many people searching for "shrew" on Wikipedia won't mean the animal. A hat will suffice, at best (which was what we used to have). Anaxial (talk) 15:59, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with both of you. "Shrew" shoud be for the animal. --Aranae (talk) 18:23, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should do it like dog or rat or something, even book, where people are sent to the primary meaning's article first, but there at the top there's a note saying "This article is about (e.g.: the domestic dog). For other uses, see (disambiguation)." Then people who care to learn about other uses have a place to go. This seems to be standard practice on Wikipedia. Chrisrus (talk) 20:02, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I entirely agree; that's what I mean by a "hat" - apologies for the jargon! Anaxial (talk) 06:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I was also questioning the "metaphorical usages" section, thinking, well, "Wikipedia is not a dictionary". Acually, when I found this page I considered deleting it, but only shortened that section. On the one hand, the primary purpose is to disambiguate between likely searches, not to discuss all the meanings of a word PER SE. On the other hand, I thought, it was kinda interesting and I did learn something (the fact that it's also a term of endearment) and it is not totally uncommon to use it to mean "difficult woman", and it doesn't seem to be taking up space or doing anything to harm anything and if someone wants to use Wikipedia as a dictionary, what do I care? Like if someone heard the word "shrew" used to refer to a difficult woman and wanted to know more about it, they would be served by having it here. So not being sure I left it, though I did delete some. I wouldn't object if someone wanted to delete the rest of the metaphorical uses. I also eyed the "Spitfire" thing but left it without deleting. I don't think anyone really would find the spitfire by searching for "shrew", because it says right there that they only considered calling it that but never really did. But I left it anyway. What do you think? Chrisrus (talk)

As the four of us all agree, I'll go ahead and make the change. Ucucha 15:05, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixing links

Shrew is number 4 on this month's disambiguation hotlist (Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links#October 2009). --Una Smith (talk) 14:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]