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Unsupported change reverted

Back in June the following statement was added to the opening of this page[1]:

Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles.

That's a fundamental change to the definition of disambiguation on WP, and I see no discussion about this change, which was quickly obscured by a series of additional edits. I suspect nobody noticed. This new definition adds all kinds of ambiguity to title discussions. For example, it is being used to Oppose RM's like the current one at Talk:Nothing Has Changed (album). Accordingly, I've removed it[2]. It should not be restored unless evidence of consensus support for such a fundamental change can be established. --В²C ☎ 17:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

"Born2cycle doesn't like it" doesn't equate to "unsupported". Seven to eight months of stability indicates support, as does WP:RM performing moves pursuant to that wording both before it was added and since. It was added because is reflects actual consensus practice on WP. See WP:POLICY: Our policies and guidelines exist to codify actual best practices, not try to force new practices or thwart existing ones that consensus actually uses. It is not a "fundamental change" to anything, other than making this page accurate reflect what we use disambiguation for.

The principal form of the disambiguation in cases like this is WP:NATURAL; if you're concerned that people are going to do a lot of unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation on this basis (which is not actually happening), I guess that's something we can talk about. But absent a showing of an actual problem, the last 3/4 of a years' stable version of the wording should remain. This wording was added for the very, exact reason that certain editors do not seem to understand what the word "disambiguation" means and how it applies here. It mean "making unambiguous" not "distinguishing between two or more present and accounted-for things"; WP just happens to to apply it to the latter sub-case 99% of the time. Not 100%. The result of the failure to recognize that the unusual case exists has result in a truly tedious amount of wasted breath at repeat nominations at RM. It's a stupid and pointless productivity drain, permanently forestalled by one simple clarification, which has worked well since last June.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm confused why this change would be necessary. Could you provide an example or two of an article title that would benefit from this clarification? -- Tavix (talk) 20:28, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Guidelines require affirmative support. Otherwise, anyone could post a page with any set of rules they want and call it a guideline, without any community input, and if no one else noticed the page, it would thereby become a guideline. bd2412 T 21:08, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Let's get this straight. B2C is deleting guideline material to WP:WIN an RM because someone is citing it incorrectly? Seriosly? And you're going to editwar to support that behavior, without being able to articulate anything better than WP:IDONTLIKEIT? Really? Have you even read WP:CONSENSUS and [{WP:POLICY]]], and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS? Guidelines codify actual practice. Material that has stood unopposed for months and is actually used in practice has consensus unless and until proven otherwise. When something is being used in RM after RM, three editors in one page forming a WP:FACTION to undo something they don't even understand do not magically form a changed consensus, that's a local, false consensus. I don't have time to deal with this right now, but will return to it later. I've already outlined just a handful of the actual RM cases this is based on, so I'll just copy that diff URL [3]. The ironic and ridiculous thing about this is I actually supported B2C's position in the RM that's triggered this silly "consensus only exists when I understand and like the outcome" rebellion; the reliance on this provision in the guideline for the rationale against the move was wrong. We do not delete guideline wording when people mis-cite it, we tell them they're mis-citing it. Come on, people. You all know better than this.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:29, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
    • The statement should have been deleted the first time it was noticed. So far as I know that's exactly what happened. The fact that you think this is about "winning" says much about you and nothing about anyone else. The notion that a WP title that is not ambiguous with any other title on WP can never-the-less be "ambiguous" and be subject to WP:DISAMBIGUATION (whether natural or parenthetic - that's beside the point) is a view held by a minority of WP editors; not a majority, and certainly not by a community-wide WP:CONSENSUS. Just because this minority manages to cobble together a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS in an occasional obscure RM discussion does not establish WP:CONSENSUS for this view. --В²C ☎ 21:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
      • I have a big pile of RMs demonstrating that under the conditions outlined, it's entirely routine for consensus to disambiguate titles like "Algerian Arab", "Blue Grey", "British White", etc., etc., etc. I have proof, you have an assertion. This dumb Bowie case is irrelevant. One editor using a guidleline line-item incorrectly doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the guideline. And it's process violative go delete something from any part of WP:POLICY just because someone tries to use it against you in a process in a way you don't agree with.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:55, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
        • Sounds like a list of titles that need to be fixed. I best most if not all got relatively little attention and squeaked in under the radar. --В²C ☎ 22:06, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict)By the way, I appreciate your !vote in support of the Nothing Has Changed (album) → Nothing Has Changed move [4], however it exemplifies the problem with the statement in question here. You "don't think this case is really a good application of the 'naturally ambiguous' clause in the guideline", but who is to say someone else won't think it is a good application? What is "good" anyway? To your credit, you support your view with some reasoning, but, again, it's not reasoning that has consensus support. And the statement here in the guideline does not imply the clarifications you make in your RM !vote comment anyway; it's far more open to interpretation than you seem to think it is. In particular, the phrase "inherently lacks precision" can arguably apply to almost any title. But I see no reason to disambiguate titles that "inherently lack precision" even when interpreted narrowly; if it's the most WP:COMMONNAME for that topic used in WP:RS, and there is no other WP article that uses that name, it should be the title. Once you start making exceptions to that, you open Pandora's box, and endless RM discussions. --В²C ☎ 22:04, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

The wording as inserted would support the tendency of some editors to add "(film)" or "(album)" to numerous non-ambiguous titles. I regularly move stubs with those unnecessary disambiguations to their base titles. Almost any title of an artistic work could be claimed to be "likely to confuse readers if not clarified", and we don't want to go down that road. PamD 23:34, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

So adjust the wording to clarify that this is not the intent, nor desirable. I've been here ten+ years, and I've never before encountered a case of this sort of 'this wording is not 100% perfect, and someone cited it in a poorly interpreted way, it 'every trace of it must be erased now, now, now, and process be damned, and no I and my three buddies won't even contemplate spending 2 minutes trying to think of a clarification' behavior. What Twilight Zone is this? I agree that adding "(film)" or whatever is not a road we want traveled, and is why I just !voted against that idea at the Bowie album RM, and explained clearly why this provision doesn't apply. That RM will proceed as we all expect. There is no emergency. WP:DONTPANIC.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Above, I see: if you're concerned that people are going to do a lot of unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation on this basis (which is not actually happening)
Here are some moves made within the last 4 days:

Lock Down -> Lock Down (Stooshe song) ("Lock Down", in theory, could be mistaken for "Lockdown", but irrespective of that, there are no other songs called "Lock Down" with articles (there are other songs of the same name on the disambiguation page, all without articles))
I Met a Girl -> I Met a Girl (William Michael Morgan song) (this is the only article with the name "I Met a Girl"; there are two other songs (without articles) on the disambiguation page) This is a bad entry - I Met a Girl (William Michael Morgan song) is only a redirect. edited -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 00:36, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
Jeanny -> Jeanny (song) (redirect still in place; there are three people with articles that have the first name Jeanny, but there is nothing, besides the song, none solely as "Jeanny")
Sing Song -> Sing Song (EP) (three songs named "Sing Song" exist on the disambiguation page, but no items with articles, besides the EP, are known solely as "Sing Song")
Remain -> Remain (José González song) (songs, albums and a book on the disambiguation page, but no items with articles, besides the song, are known solely as "Remain")
The Constant Lover -> The Constant Lover (EP) (songs and a play on the disambiguation page, but no items with articles, besides the EP, are known solely as "The Constant Lover")
Larry May -> Larry May (footballer) (this move was reverted, as there are no other people named "Larry May" with articles)

These are just the ones I found in 20 minutes of looking. I see them every day. I think that these moves are a misreading of the guideline's sentence at the top of this section, but to say that unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation moves aren't happening is incorrect. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 00:27, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

  • The text in question should be stricken because its addition never achieved consenus either or at dozens of related RMs before or after it was inserted. You don't get rewarded for slipping one past the goalie in this case. Calidum T|C 00:41, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
  • It is certainly incumbent on those participating in this discussion to remember that no matter what edits are made to the page over the course of this discussion, in the absence of consensus in favor of the controversial change, we revert to the version prior to that change. bd2412 T 00:44, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Thing is, from my perspective, the deletion is the controversial part. A handful of editors freaking out for no reason, as if they don't know that the sentence in question can be edited to be clearer, is not a real controversy, it's histrionic WP:DRAMA. You don't get to come along 3/4 of a year later and say something doesn't have consensus just because you weren't paying attention months and months ago, and a minor problem has been identified that is easily resolved. We're supposed to just fix things, and be bold about it. No one has to seek permission first before recording a recurrent, stable consensus in a guideline. We're expected to codify such things, per WP:POLICY's entire intent.

      The kinds of cases that this wording (perhaps imperfectly) actually addresses are real and legitimate, and codifying that repeated RM consensus is legitimate. If there turns out to be some unintended but resolvable side effect of the exact wording, we just tweak it, we don't act like cats with firecrackers tied to our tails. This is really the most exaggerated and game-playing panic I've seen on WP in so long I can't even remember. B2c's "you sneaked that by", "you sneaked this in" nonsense is farcically implausible; it's just denialism. There is no "sneaking" on a hugely watchlisted guideline, and there is no sneaking in a years-long string of RMs (in a controversial RM area, at that). Please. This sudden pretense that all the rest of WP who participate in RM are wrong and 4 editors at this page somehow trump all prior decisions is WP:FALSECONSENSUS at its worst.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

      • Do you disagree with the proposition that guidelines can only be created by consensus in a discussion? bd2412 T 03:50, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
        • I disagree. It certainly wasn't how things were written to start with. If imposed as a standard later, it serves to entrench the old versions in stone. Consensus is rarely found by discussion, usually it requires experiment, compromise, alteration of the scope and question. Formalized discussions tend to define a single question at the start, thwarting any consensus-finding process. I would agree that a guideline can only be affirmed by consensus. I would also like to return to notion that guidelines are not rules intending to be binding. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:53, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Tony1 just restored the controversial statement again[5] (and Calidum reverted that). There are now at least five editors who have expressed opposition to inclusion of the controversial statement:

  1. Born2cycle
  2. BD2412
  3. PamD
  4. Calidum
  5. Tavix

Clearly, the inclusion of this statement is controversial and does not have consensus support. And SMcCandlish has essentially conceded that it is problematic and needs refining. I think it's beyond merely problematic, but at least get consensus support for a revised version before restoring. --В²C ☎ 01:40, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Born2cycle: I'd be in that list too, although my comment wasn't that obvious. I could be in favor of a rewrite as I can see some value in it. -- Tavix (talk) 01:44, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Please remove me from the list. I expressed no opinion either way. I merely showed that moves are being made that suggest a misreading of the guideline. To me, there are some cases where the guideline is valid (the examples that SMcCandlish listed at 21:55 UTC all appear to me to be good moves). -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 01:48, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Sorry. I misunderstood. Replaced Niceguyedc with Tavix on the list. Niceguyedc, for the record, what is your position on whether the statement in question should be in or out? --В²C ☎ 03:59, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
You need to organise a properly conducted RFC if you want to get your way. Please see the guidelines for RFCs first, though. Tony (talk) 04:23, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
And it would be a lot less melodramatic to specifically identify what is seen as the exact nature of the wording problem, then we see about fixing it. If consensus cannot resolve the issue through the normal and reasoned approach of rewriting, then RfC it. There is no need to fire up a bureaucratic process if a regular one will suffice.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:38, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
The B2C theory of algorithmic naming requires that every title be the shortest possibly title that doesn't conflict with another title. The WP:CRITERIA of precision and recognizability have zero value in his scheme, as his long-term modification of those sections has shown since 2009. This is how it has always been with him: ambiguity is good, disambiguation is bad. Thank you for objecting. I'm with you. I doubt that there could be a consensus to roll back your reasonable clarifications from last June that essentially just say that B2C does not always get his way when it comes to a discussion among editors. As a specific example, WP:USPLACE is a consensus that he has fought for years, because in many cases the state could be omitted without a title conflict. Yet most editors value the fact that including the state name make the title recognizable as a US city name. SMcCandlish's edit simply recognizes that this happens. Dicklyon (talk) 06:16, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. I must say, however, that US cities–states require some editorial judgment, which could be built into the advice to editors: who, in this day, wants the slightly absurd "New York, New York"? There's a third-party list of well-known US city-names; I've seen it linked to years ago from a discussion. Tony (talk) 09:54, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

For the record, Dick Lyon's description of my views is very wrong. For my actual views, please see my user page, my FAQ (User:Born2cycle/FAQ), and my edit history. The statement in question goes far beyond "simply recognizes that this happens", does not apply to the USPLACE situations at all (unique US city names do not inherently lack precision - no one disputes the need to disambiguate the ambiguous ones), and I have not been involved in a USPLACE discussion in years. But when you don't have a position based on solid reasoning, I suppose resorting to ad hominem attacks based on straw man and red herring arguments is to be expected. --В²C ☎ 21:41, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

rfc draft

It has been suggested above to have an rfc. I'll post it, but want to make sure we present this in a fair way. So this section is for the collaborative editing of the rfc. I'll start, but please feel free to edit it as you see fit. --В²C ☎ 22:21, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

RFC DRAFT START

Back in June the following statement was added to the opening of this page[6]:

Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles.

There is some disagreement about it. Should the statement remain, be removed, or be modified? Please indicate your position and reasoning below.

RFC DRAFT END

rfc draft discussion

  • Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles.
Definite support. Precision is important, and specifically important to prevent mis-recognition. This concept is current, of avoid likely mis-recognition, is currently missing. Note the word "may", it does not assert even that it should be done, and to reject the sentence with "may" is to assert that it may not be done, which is a far more extreme position. The lack of technical titling conflict negating any justification for increased precision is an extreme position. I believe that the sentence relates to articles such as British White. Paint? Sheep? Articles where the title is technically unambiguous but fails to inform as to what, even very broadly, the topic is about. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Sensible additions are made one at a time. "we make policy by consensus" errs on statusquoism. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:18, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Sensible additions are still made through a process of discussion and consensus. Any one of us could, right this moment, unilaterally make a change that we think is sensible. Whether that change becomes the rule should not hinge on whether it slips under the radar. A truly sensible proposition should prevail in discussion. bd2412 T 04:19, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
      • This page is watched by many with an intense interest in its details. Yet you think this "slipped in under the radar"? Seems like a stretch. Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
      • Every unilateral change is thought to be sensible. Are you proposing that every non-minor edit should be flagged on the talk page? Anyway, what is not sensible about the statement? If it has been said above, a summary of the merits (or lack of) would be nice. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:32, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
        • I would suggest the you all reread remedy 1.2 of the "article titles and capitalisation" ArbCom case. It reads:
All parties are reminded to avoid personalizing disputes concerning the Manual of Style, the article titles policy ('WP:TITLE'), and similar policy and guideline pages, and to work collegially towards a workable consensus. In particular, a rapid cycle of editing these pages to reflect one's viewpoint, then discussing the changes is disruptive and should be avoided. Instead, parties are encouraged to establish consensus on the talk page first, and then make the changes.
If editors followed the good practice set by this remedy, we would not have problems like this here. RGloucester — ☎ 22:31, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I completely agree. My objection is not to the language per se, but to the means by which it was added to the page. That said, however, it is not at all clear to me that this language requires the creation of a disambiguation pages at the bare page name, rather than that name redirecting to a more "precise" page name. bd2412 T 12:20, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Well here's my 2p: on the merits I can see both sides of the issue, but this is a huge huge huge change. It could easily be taken to authorize the renaming of tens of thousands of articles, for one thing. For another thing, if the current wording ("Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles", this absolutely knocks for six one of the Five Virtues of Titles (namely, Conciseness) mandated in WP:TITLE. I mean, look at WP:PRECISION which is also part of that policy (not an essay, not a guideline, not a suggestion). The current wording in this guideline completely opposes that. If you're going to keep this text you must make major changes to WP:TITLE or else were going to have a real can of worms down the road, here. We have to have a centralized RfC which includes WP:TITLE (and maybe other pages for all I know). This is going to take some time and effort to develop... let's not rush, here. Herostratus (talk) 23:00, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Looking closer at WP:TITLE... this doesn't seem so far from the goal (whether desired or not) as it seems... WP:TITLE already says "Bothell is already precise enough to be unambiguous, but we instead use Bothell, Washington (see Geographic names), seeking a more natural and recognizable title." and some other things like that.... so you're really halfway there already.

I was thinking of maybe adding something like this to the end of the opening paragraph of WP:PRECISION" "...On the other hand, Horowitz would not be precise enough to identify unambiguously the famous classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz, and Six Corners is not precise enough to immediately indicate to the reader what the entity is (a small town, a neighborhood, a concept in geometry, a corporation, or whatever) so Six Corners (Chicago shopping district) should be used instead." This'd help clarify with an example? Is this a good example? (Maybe Six Corners, Chicago is better?)

On the other hand, WP:PRECISION also has an example "Energy is not precise enough to unambiguously indicate the physical property (see Energy (disambiguation)). However, it is preferred over "Energy (physics)", as it is more concise, and precise enough to be understood by most people (see Primary topic, and the conciseness and recognizability criteria)."

So... you'd really have to pry Conciseness loose as one of the Five Virtues, I think... Conciseness is IMO the least of the Five Virtues but it is one of them, and there would be some resistance... so I dunno. Herostratus (talk) 23:34, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Conciseness is very important. What is written is actually good. It only goes wrong when people mistake conciseness for brevity. On precision, a concept equally important to concision, not that you'd guess from counting its repeated use on this page, a big logical problem is its weak and circular definition "Precision: Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that. " --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:43, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Herostratus, as SmokeyJoe indicates, "concise" doesn't mean "short". The change in the text that's being discussed does not eliminate conciseness as an important criterion at all. Omnedon (talk) 03:15, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
"Concise" don't necessarily mean "short", I agree. But all things being equal it certainly strongly implies it; I would bet that you seldom hear an editor say "I made your article longer and more concise", although it's possible. And that's how most people take it I think. Herostratus (talk) 23:19, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
You know that I never suggested it meant "longer". What it means is: as short as possible while still being comprehensive or conveying a complete idea. "Short" is only part of the concept. It is not mere brevity. Omnedon (talk) 23:24, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment - I wonder whether the RFC should also invite discussion about whether WP:D is the most appropriate place to address this issue. Some editors (well, at least me) may be of the opinion that even if making some titles more detailed to avoid possible confusion is justified, that is not "disambiguation"; if the title is not ambiguous, making it more specific does not "disambiguate" it, but simply makes it clearer, or more specific, or whatever terminology you want to use. To me, that is a guideline that (if we have consensus for it), belongs on WP:AT but not on WP:D. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:59, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Confusing redirect/dab pages

I was disambiguating Ray tracing and came across Ray tracing/version 2 which is a redirect to Ray tracing. On the surface, it doesn't seem to make any sense. Looking at the history, it seems that Ray tracing/version 2 was used temporarily facilitate a move:

I'm not sure if the was the right or best way to accomplish this. Right now, there is no problem but keeping Ray tracing/version 2 seems to me to be unnecessary and potentially confusing since it doesn't have a use within Wikipedia as a search term. Can it/should it be deleted? Does anyone care to comment? MB (talk) 01:03, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

@MB: Ray tracing/version 2 was used by Anthony Appleyard in the process of a history merge. There appears to be some disambiguation page history still at that redirect, but I don't know that there would be a problem with deleting the redirect. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 06:51, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
I've moved the "version 2" page to Ray tracing (disambiguation). No harm in keeping the history and at that title it is actually a useful redirect. Someone with more tech skills than myself should probably run a script one day to find how many of these "version 2" pages there are lying around... Jenks24 (talk) 09:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Input sought on whether page is incomplete disambiguation or something else

See Talk:Spike (character)#Is Spike (character) a valid disambiguation page? older ≠ wiser 03:06, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC

Shouldn't both criteria be required, not just one of the two? In ictu oculi (talk) 16:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

These aren't "criteria", rather "prominent general considerations" the way I read it. BTW, not so long ago there was a talk page discussion resulting in not retaining primarytopic for a word that scored high on both "general considerations" – what tipped the balance as far as I know, was another consideration not very prominent in most discussions, but highly relevant for the one I am referring to. So, no deterministic reading of this part of the guideline please: if you're not sure, try to determine by talk page discussion. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:12, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Okay, then even more so, shouldn't the current guideline be strengthened to say that just one either or of these two considerations is not in itself enough. The onus should be on convincing evidence that there is a primary topic, rather than "passing" it on meeting either/or of these two. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:45, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Not at all. If there is no discernible primary topic based on usage, but one topic is an actual kind of organism recorded in natural history and the other is a Pokemon, we would be idiotic as an encyclopedia to downgrade the former because the latter is using its name. If we are going to be in the knowledge business, we've got to have some respect for the applications of knowledge. bd2412 T 17:49, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
At first glance, I think I'm in agreement with BD2412 on this. If both criteria have to be met then we would move Apple to Apple (fruit), which I'm not sure helps anyone. Jenks24 (talk) 09:34, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
The issue always comes back to the search engine usage being a short-sighted indicator of a primary topic, despite its apparent popularity. It makes people think that Wikipedia is a summary of the Internet, which it isn't (per first pillar). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:04, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Concur with both bd2412 and Joy on this. We also need to apply more of this common sense, encyclopedic thinking to a lot of broader article titles issues, including WP:COMMONNAME, which too many people around here treat as if God herself wrote it and it trumps all other possible concerns (never mind that if you actually read it, the only purpose it serves is to help arrive at a name that is likely to satisfy the actual WP:CRITERIA, which are the real policy).

Some of fans of this "sacred COMMONNAME" misinterpretation are now trying to generalize this to a made up "common style" notion, whereby whatever turned out to be the most common stylization in the pop-culture news sources that coincidentally happened to have written the most about it (according to OR Google-hits "analysis") would be imposed on WP, both in titles and content. Its one of the most daft ideas I've ever encountered here. It would mean that, e.g., the gaming and toy press would dictate how WP is permitted to use English when referring to Pokemon things, since no one else really writes about that. Just one example. It turns WP:RS on its ear, ignoring the facts that there are very reliably sourced differences between journalism's writing conventions and formal publishing's writing conventions, and that being a reliable source about details regarding Pokemon characters doesn't make a publication a reliable source about how to write about that topic in an encyclopedic register for a general audience.

I'm at my wit's end with these people, both at WT:AT and WT:MOSCAPS. It doesn't matter how many sources are provided laying out the different journalistic, mainstream formal, and high-academic stylistic schema, and how clearly separated they are, as long as magazines they like overcapitalize something, they're certain that WP must do so also, and continue to campaign on this constantly. It's like they refuse to distinguishing between the name of something and how a particular writing genre applies style to it, like confusing a person with the suit they're wearing on Tuesday.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:35, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Foucault disambiguation

Right now, the page Foucault links to the disambiguation page. Can we change this page to Foucault (disambiguation) and have the page Foucault reroute to Michel Foucault? and then put a italicized text at the top of the page for Foucault saying "For other uses of Foucault, see Foucault (disambiguation)"? There's far more visits to the page for Michel Foucault (219K in the last 90 days) than for any other term that's linked on the disambiguation page — the most for a different Foucault is for Léon Foucault (10K in the last 90 days), far fewer for others. This is also what we do for other major thinkers. (I'm thinking here about students who hear "Foucault" referenced and have trouble finding the correct page.) -CircleAdrian (talk) 21:11, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable, but this sort of discussion usually happens on talk page of the page in question so people who care about it are more apt to see it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:16, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Sounds unreasonable. Why do we think he should be primary over all the other meanings? This is what disambig pages are for. Leave it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:19, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Because this one article gets many times more hits than all the other articles on the disambiguation page combined. This is something we do with many, many people (see Bach, Mozart, Hegel, Marx, Lacan, Chomsky, Reagan, Obama, etc., etc.) It should be primary because some kid may have heard someone talking about "Foucault" (or "Marx" or "Hegel") but doesn't know his first name. Odds are they're looking for Michel Foucault, and not Léon Foucault or a different Foucault. -CircleAdrian (talk) 22:34, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
It's a plausible suggestion for a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC claim, but as SMcCandlish alluded to, you'd have to make a move request to make it happen. Follow the instructions at WP:RM#CM, and let us know if you need any help! Good luck, -- Tavix (talk) 22:50, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

multiple entries in dab page

Chief contains three different links to the same page:

Chief (albumn). I've never noticed something like this before. Shouldn't they be consolidated into something like this: Chief (album), a 2011/2012 album by Eric Church (Chief)

That's assuming there is any basis for this at all. The article says the album was released in 2011 and the Chief is the name of the album, not an alternate name for Eric Church. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB (talk • contribs) 23:29, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Chief (album) is a 2011 album by Eric Church. That's what the article says, that's all the disambiguation needs to say. Don't worry about the other entries, there's nothing to sustain them so I've removed them. -- Tavix (talk) 23:38, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Um, it helps to check the recent history. Some anonym was scribbling about, and unfortunately wasn't reverted. In case you would ever need it, Wikiblame is usually a good tool to help you to find out who added what and when to a page. --Midas02 (talk) 02:06, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Invalid name change

See here: Sevan, Armenia was moved to Sevan (town). Isn't that a breach of WP:PARENDIS? Place names are typically disambiguated by adding the higher-level administrative division, not by adding (town).--Midas02 (talk) 03:10, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

@Midas02: that nomenclature unfortunately is not appropriate here, because the Place-name, Administrative-division nomenclature can apply just as easily to the lake as to the town. The lake is also in Armenia, so "Sevan, Armenia" doesn't uniquely identify the town, and fails WP:PRECISE. Your assertion here that "comma-separated disambiguation is only used for place names, not for any other kind of landmark" has no basis in policy, and is not AFAIK followed by other articles. See the recent move request at Talk:Windermere, Cumbria (town), which was endorsed at move review, for a clear precedent that the community considers Entity, Location to be ambiguous if two such exist. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 19:05, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
But there is no indication that the lake is ever known as "Sevan", so it is not ambiguous. Windermere, the lake and the town, are both called just that: "Lake Windermere" is only an ignorant mistake (the "mere" part of the name means "lake"). The town be at Sevan, Armenia. PamD 23:23, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
@Amakuru:, I'm wondering how familiar you are with the motions of the disambig project, because for me this would be a first. Typically the lake would be disambiguated by adding the prefix "Lake", as per PamD's comments. WP:Precise is usually not invoked in these kind of cases. I'm not going to argue over it if others would agree, but let's wait until other experienced editors chip in. For the time being, please keep the redirect as it is, as it was coming up on the disambig-to-fix list. Rgds, --Midas02 (talk) 02:00, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
@Midas02: thanks for your reply. I'm happy to wait for the time being, but we'll need to figure out the best way forward here. Clearly your views and PamD's views are contrary to the consensus seen at the move request above, since the main argument there was WP:PRECISE. I think the best way to achieve clarity is if I request the page moved back to Sevan, Armenia, then reopen and relist the move request, to give it more time to pan out. Obviously yourself and Pam are welcome to contribute at that stage. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 11:28, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
@Amakuru: Thanks: I've tidied up the dab page at Sevan and commented at the move discussion. PamD 13:14, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree, it's annoying because it goes against a move discussion. The people who were involved in the discussion, however, are not names I usually see popping up in these discussions. Drawing attention from some other experienced editors in this field so they can weigh in: User:BD2412, User:Bkonrad, User:Tassedethe, User:Swpb, ... --Midas02 (talk) 18:04, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Midas is right; "comma-separated disambiguation" is only used for human administrative areas, not natural places. I doubt that's written down anywhere, but it's common practice and parallels typical English usage, and I would support making it into explicit guidance for the future. If "Lake Sevan" is not a misnomer, then that's fine; otherwise put it at "Sevan (lake)". Either way, the town belongs at "Sevan, Armenia". —swpbT 19:38, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
See WP:NCPLACEDAB. The guideline defers to Specific pre-existing national conventions. The comma convention is used for disambiguation of natural features in some places. older ≠ wiser 19:59, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I couldn't find a source for this edit (the JPS's website doesn't use this abbreviation), but a quick Googling indicated that a number of people out in the world (not RSs) use it, and so I thought readers might find my edit helpful. I think specifying whether or not an abbreviation is "official" would probably be too much.

Was I right?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation links are "verified" by the destination article (of which there should only be one: "one bluelink per line"). That is, there needs to be some discussion in the destination article of whatever it is you're mentioning on the disambiguation page.
In this case, neither the study bible nor Jewish Publication Society make any mention of "Jewish Study Bible"... however, looking at what links to the redlink, New Jewish Publication Society of America Tanakh does, so that should really be your destination link.--NapoliRoma (talk) 23:22, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Oh... that might be a problem. The redlink/bluelink info is helpful (thanks!) but because the Jewish Study Bible probably meets GNG in and of itself it's not really a long-term problem (I could throw together a decent stub in half an hour). I also don't think that the New Jewish Publication Society of America Tanakh would be an appropriate bluelink, since even though it should and does mention the JSB, the majority of the material in the JSB has nothing in particular to do with the particular translation, and postdates it by at least a decade or two; I'll add a reference to the JSB into the Jewish Publication Society article instead of changing the disambig link. The bigger problem is that if the material needs to be "verifiable" on the destination page, I don't know if we can do that. As I said, I couldn't find any RSs or official sources that used the abbreviation "JSB" (on an admittedly cursory search...), and added it to the page for the convenience of our readers, some of whom probably use the abbreviation. This means that even a hypothetical future article on the Jewish Study Bible would not be able state "also abbreviated JSB" since the closest we have to a reliable source is a Google search hit count.
Unless you're saying that as long as the disambig bluelink links to a page that uses the phrase "Jewish Study Bible", and the reader can assume that this can be abbreviated to "JSB", then we are okay.
Sorry. The rules for disambig pages are complicated and I don't intend to spend much time editing in this area, so I figured asking a question was better than pouring over the page intelf.
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:34, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
The red link was ok, but not the use of the blue links.
  • For the red link, see MOS:DABRL. A red link can be added if accompanied by one single blue link where that item is being described. In this case there are three, Jewish Publication Society seems to be the most logical one.
  • The Jewish Publication Society article used the red link "The Jewish Study Bible", so with the article, instead of "Jewish Study Bible". I modified it, so all links are now standardised. If you would prefer the link with the article, feel free to change them all, just make sure they're all the same.
  • Consider it's even better to create a stub article on that bible, or create a redirect to an article section where it is being described, rather than redlinking it.
  • The entry may fail WP:DABACRONYM. Customs would require the acronym to be mentioned in the article. That's a bit hard of course, since the article doesn't exist (yet), but an internet search learns that the item isn't well known by the acronym JSB. Some editors will have an issue with that. --Midas02 (talk) 01:34, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Charles Fredericks: a single entry disambiguation page

A rare example of a one-person disambiguation page may be viewed at Charles Fredericks. A discussion related to this topic is at Talk:Charles Fredericks (actor). —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 13:45, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Complicated page move discussion on Góngora

There's a rather complicated page move discussion going on on Talk:Góngora (surname). A combination of the use of the diacritic, dab page and surname page. For those who like a bit of a challenge. --Midas02 (talk) 19:46, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Need assistance with Chris Jenkins

I went to tackle Chris Jenkins from the March list and found four articles that link to this dab page: Michael Minkler, Nat Boxer, Steve Maslow, & Bob Minkler. None of these have a link to the Chris Jenkins dab page. They all do include the Template:Academy Award Best Sound, and it links (three times) to Chris Jenkins (sound engineer). So I don't see why these articles supposedly link to Chris Jenkins. I checked the links to the Chris Jenkins (sound engineer) and all four articles are listed at linking there. Am I missing something? Can anyone shed any light on this? MB (talk) 02:18, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

The jobs that update the what links here information sometimes lags awhile. You can do a WP:NULLEDIT on the articles to force them to purge. older ≠ wiser 02:29, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
OK, I didn't think to check the edit history of the template. It had been changed a week ago. All the work to fix this dabs was already done. MB (talk) 02:42, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Territorialism

The page Territorialism was recently converted to a dab page, but the result is somewhat lacking in quality. Seasoned editors are welcome to join the discussion. --Midas02 (talk) 12:15, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

The discussion has resolved. -- Natalya 20:58, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Multiple disambiguation brackets

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Should articles be disambiguated as XYZ (disambig 1) (disambig 2) or as XYZ (disambig1 disambig2 combo) ? We are discussing this at talk: National Highway 26 (India) -- 70.51.46.39 (talk) 07:20, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

RFC Exception to WP:DISAMBIGUATION for songs?

See Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#RfC:_Artist_name_as_disambiguation_regarding_non-notable_song_titles In ictu oculi (talk) 20:41, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Restored content on precision cut from lead

this should not have been removed unless there is a RFC supporting it In ictu oculi (talk) 18:15, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Or possibly the reverse.

There was clearly no consensus for the addition, as shown by Red Slash and Francis Schonken. This is WP:AT material. Additions to policy/guidelines require consensus before they go in. If people think that the removed material has consensus, we can add it. Until then, it is up to editors wanting to change the guideline to explain why. Dohn joe (talk) 18:29, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

User edit-warred it back out In ictu oculi (talk) 18:39, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Please explain why it should have been added in the first place, given the above discussion. Dohn joe (talk) 18:40, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Nice cherry-picking there; you skipped the entire |very recent discussion in which the last attempt to remove this also failed to gain consensus. Re-raising the matter barely a month later with no new argument for deletion is forum shopping-by-slight-time-shift. Nice circular reasoning, too; if "RReason for addition explained here", then your request "explain why it should have been added in the first place" has already been complied with by yourself.

There is no burden to explain why the material "should have been added". It was added with explanation at the time, there was discussion, it was modified in light of that discussion, and it has been stable since June 2015. You can't come along now and pretend that because you didn't participate in the original discussion that it "doesn't have consensus", especially when you clearly did not understand the original discussions. You also don't get to speak for other editors and count them on your "side" by badly mischaracterizing their positions (more on that below).

But just for kicks, there's the explanation again, and some additional background, incl. the failed attempt to remove it last month:

Obviously, it should remain the consensus, per WP:POLICY, the purpose of guidelines is to codify actual consensus – real best practices – not try to force made-up ones you wish the community would adopt. Disambiguation of innately confusing names (or contextually ambiguous ones that may be confusing because of WP's naming conventions creating particular reader expectations) is routine at WP:RM and has been the entire length of the project; a fairly recent and unanimous RM example was the Algerian Arab to Algerian Arab sheep move (the original title eventually became a disambiguation page); certain kinds of names covered by WP:USPLACE are an entire class of examples. Such disambiguation is used when necessary because titles must be precise or disambiguated if they are not, as a matter of policy at WP:PRECISE. The tendentious attempts by a few individuals to hide this fact because they falsely believe that "disambiguation" (a word that WP did not invent) means and only ever means "avoiding collisions of article titles", or because the falsely believe article names must be shortest they can possibly be (a misreading of WP:CONCISE is what would be a made-up "rule" that is not followed by the community, and it cannot be inserted here – either by a wording that says that explicitly or by removal of its opposite – against the consensus of a decade and a half of actual community practice (not accidental mishap, but intentional, programmatic article renaming decisions). About the only way to undo the actual consensus that titles can be disambiguated for this reason would be to have a WP:VPPRO proposal (or one at WT:AT and VPPRO notified) for a site-wide policy change banning the clarification of innately ambiguous article titles if they do not already collide with the names of other articles. Of course, such a proposal would b an oppose WP:SNOWBALL, as grossly anti-WP:COMMONSENSE.

It's routine and common-sense enough as a matter of practice that we do not need to address it in AT policy itself; it simply doesn't rise to that level of importance or potential conflict that it must be mandated as a strict procedure. Per WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY (and the WP:CREEP principle), we do not add things to policies without necessity. Policies, which are largely treated as non-optional requirements, should be as lean as possible or there will be too many actual rules (not guidelines of best practice, but rules) for anyone to keep track of. (See WT:AT in Jan.–Feb. for strong concerns in this regard already about WP:AT, with several in favor of merging anything non-essential in it back into WP:MOS.) The very purpose of its inclusion in this guideline is to correct the incorrect assumption that "disambiguation" only means "fixing article title collisions", so removal from this page would be the very definition of counterproductive.

The current version has remained in place long enough (a few months is our rule of thumb) to have consensus to be here, and right here in particular) without incident, until a 5 Feb. drive-by deletion [7], the edit summary of which itself noted it it had been there since June and falsely claiming there had been no consensus discussion about it (double-derp). The deleter failed to gain consensus for the deletion in the ensuing discussion, and the deletion was reverted by Tony1 [8] and Dicklyon [9]. SmokeyJoe, who also opposed the removal as a reversal of the BRD burden, was drafting an RfC on the question – but none was launched. [Self-correction: Born2cycle drafted then abandoned it, not SmokeyJoe.] There was not a consensus for the deletion then, and there is not one now, so it goes back to the status quo stable version, per standard operating procedure. Every time it does so this re-establishes that it has consensus. If "two people won't stop beating a dead horse" was sufficient grounds to remove policy and guideline line-items through a pattern of "slow-editwarring", after consensus for them has been repeatedly established by longevity, then WP would have virtually no policy and guideline material of any kind left. Every time it is deleted, someone different restores it. Ergo, the cry "these couple of editors want it removed" is directly neutralized by other editors restoring it. Two editors disagreeing with the passage, in a page watchlisted as much as this one is, doesn't mean much anyway; WP:CONSENSUS does not require unanimity. If there were policy-based reasons behind their objections, that might be a different matter, but they amount to WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:NOTVALUABLE. "I don't think we need to bother covering this here" is insufficient justification to remove accurate information on how disambiguation is sometimes performed here from the guideline on disambiguation in Wikipedia.

It's also interesting that Dohn joe, with whom I rarely interact, has become incensed with me at an RM discussion over the last couple of days; it's seems awfully "coincidental" that he's showed up here to oppose restoration of deleted guideline material, not on any substantive basis, but to single me out by name and oppose something he associates with me (the language isn't even my version), when the very same matter was resolved only last month against the position he's taking here (which is the exact same pattern WP:IDHT and WP:BATTLEGROUND pattern he's pursuing at RM after RM).

The guideline material is not even disputed; the dispute was about whether to make it policy, at WP:AT. Dohn joe is also misrepresenting both Red Slash and Francis Schonken's expressed views, from back in mid-2015.

  • Red Slash, who described the material as a "well-written and well-backed paragraph" [referring to the longer version], wanted to instead move it to AT (R'n'B also suggested this, in the Feb. discussion). Red attempted to do so, and was reverted there. But Red would not have proposed such a thing if the thought the material itself lacked consensus. While I appreciate the vote of confidence, the rationale to relocate it to AT has problems: "it doesn't really have to do anything with disambiguation" does not seem possible for something about disambiguating naturally ambiguous titles; this is, again, the mistaken understanding that the word is a Wikipedianism for "resolving title collisions", which it is not (resolving title collisions is just the most common case on WP for disambiguation).
  • Schonken opposed it being moved there: "too detailed for policy-level WP:AT", and reminded Red that material cannot just be moved from guideline to policy without consensus at the policy page: "If it doesn't belong here, and you think you've found a better place for it, please find agreement whether that other place is accepted for this content (in any case when it's policy level guidance)". Schonken did not say the wording had no consensus, only expressed an uncertainty ("maybe there's no consensus for it in the first place"). By August, even when Schonken reverted an attempt to expand on the short version that was then already accepted [10], he preserved the short version in the lead [11]. Schonken's noncommittal attitude about it was (he indicated this specifically) directly related to his proposal of an alternative treatment of a lot of AT matters; but it did not gain consensus; it was also predicated on his claim that names disambiguated in this way are "unstable", but this has never been shown, and the specific example he used (Flemish Giant rabbit) has in fact been stable, as have the USPLACE ones, and many others.
  • The only other rationale given by any other party for opposition to the existence of the actual wording (even in the original long version) was "I don't think the examples given [in the July 2015 verions] are in fact ambiguous", and similar disagreements about the examples, which were simply removed, and were not part of the guidance, but supporting material for it. (The bulk of the extensive discussion between me and Schonken and a few others was almost entirely about this)

This is a WP:WIKILAWYERING, WP:GAMING, and WP:STATUSQUO matter, too: If it is proposed that guideline material (whether it is recent or a decade old) be elevated to policy level, and that proposal is rejected, it remains guideline material; it doesn't get deleted.

In closing: WP:BRD against this guideline wording was satisfied in the original discussion, it was re-satisfied in the second, and again in the third, in Feb. The proposed alternative to it, of similar wording at AT instead, was rejected. Schonken's major AT rewrite that would have covered it and many other things, was rejected. The wording has remained present, stable (though shortened), and part of a major guideline since June of last year, describing actual WP practice for much longer.

The BRD burden has now reversed: Dohn joe must provide a sound rationale for removal. "I don't like it, and there was a consensus dispute once upon a time" is not a rationale. If he agrees with Red Slash's original position that it should be in AT, he has to make that case at WT:AT, as Schonken and others pointed out 8 months ago.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:27, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

  • The BRD burden has now reversed this was just discussed a month ago. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:48, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I had not seen that recent discussion. Looks to me like most participants there were against the addition...? Dohn joe (talk) 14:41, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
    • seeing what you want to see, as in your review of the previous discussions. In Feb., five supported it outright (or opposed its deletion, if there's a difference) – actually six, since Tony1 reverted the deletion without participating in the talk part except in edit summary; three wanted its deletion; three made neutral procedural observations (some of which were refuted) about how policy (including guidelines) is made; one suggested it's WP:AT policy material (which obviously indicates support for the the substance of it, perhaps above anyone else's support for it); and one spent a long time rambling to himself, having misread its relation to wording in AT the first time around. WP:NOTAVOTE anyway. The only repeat objection ever raised to this wording – in that discussion or at any other time – is the claim "did not have consensus to be added". But we had two discussions back to back when it was added, from which the short version emerged and has been accepted for 8 months. That is consensus. It's time to drop the stick and move on.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:14, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Questions about what is the "stable version" of something are vexing if contested. How about an RfC, even maybe a centralized RfC, to decide the issue, with neither "side" being given pride of place as the "current version" -- just let the RfC closer decide which version the community has embraced.

I'm confident that a big majority of editors will prefer allowing Algerian Arab sheep over requiring Algerian Arab and so on, and that the argument for doing so will also be seen as stronger. But if not, hey, it is what it is, let the community decide. Herostratus (talk) 18:25, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

@Herostratus: An RfC on what though? Various parties have grumbled, but none of their gumbles align (varying from "delete it" to "make it policy", but mostly "wasn't discussed first", now irrelevant), and most of them were mooted somewhere between 1 and 8 months ago. There's more noise than signal there. RfCs are for resolving real problems; we shouldn't fire up that get-the-community's-attention process if there's nothing substantive to draw the attention to. Especially not the already-disproven pseudo-rationale that consensus wasn't obtained back-when. [Early objections were you-didn't-get-permission (resolved through BRD process three times already), dislike of specific examples like Flemish Giant rabbit (removed), overly long wording (removed), and someone's desire to push this into WP:AT policy instead (rejected there). The later objection was the claim that it could lead to over-disambiguation against WP:CONCISE ("proven" by the existence of a small number of over-disambiguated titles without any evidence of connection to this wording, but resolved anyway by just clarifying that we prefer the concise version when possible, already added to the text now, and alread part of policy anyway). What's left? Shall we go line-item-by-line-item through every policy and guideline and challenge whether consensus was really established for each one?]

There's no question that RM routinely performs such precision disambiguations – they're simply not an everyday occurrence – and we have naming conventions that sometimes require them programmatically. This is real, operational consensus being recorded here. Eight months of stabliity in that recording is also consensus, which need not be unanimous. Two editors' WP:IDONTLIKEIT-based, drive-by deletions are unconstructive, not something to reward with a new soapbox. At least four editors have reverted attempts to remove this language over the last 2 months alone.

So, it's unclear what there is to have an RfC about. Given that the deleters keep making the bogus claim that the material wasn't discussed and thus didn't have consensus, when it was discussed, repeatedly, and modified until accepted, I can predict what dead horse an RfC would attempt to resurrect again, and there's no community interest to turning WP:RFC process into a platform for tendentious WP:IDHT. Even if you or I wrote an RfC (because ... ?), it would involve more naming conventions than we've even identfied at this point, and challenge 15 years of creating such titles (directly or through RM) when necessary. If someone came here with a solid rationale for why the wording is somehow wrong, and they seemed to be onto something real, then we'd have something to talk about. If AT wants this language in actual policy instead, WT:AT can have a discussion about moving it. If the language is unclear, it can be tweaked. Standard operating procedure. Spending 8 months to resolve (unclear and conflicting) concerns only to pretend no progress has been made is not SOP; at some point, people who cannot articulate what their issue with something is just have to accept that what they want isn't what's going to emerge. Finally, the main problem with RfCing this is the underlying false assumption that "disambiguation" is a Wikipedian neologism, for "prevent article title collisions"; it simply isn't, but people who don't use dictionaries much will jump on a "this isn't about article title collisions" bandwagon, a WP:FALSECONSENSUS based on false assumptions. That has been the primary source of all noise about this so far, so it would surely be the primary source of later noise, because nothing has changed in the interim.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:41, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, I think the RfC could be worded something like this:
Wikipedia:Article titles states that a good Wikipedia article title displays the Five Virtues of titles. Two of the Five Virtues are Precision ("The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects") and Conciseness ("The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects".
Wikipedia:Article titles then goes on to give a certain amount of play to these two Virtues, (see Wikipedia:Article titles#Precision and disambiguation for details), but essentially only when an exception is described in specific Wikipedia title sub-guidelines (such as Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) for instance).
At present, Wikipedia:Disambiguation does not uncontestedly describe any exception. The question before the body of editors is: should it? To be precise, should or should not the following sentence be appended (or remain appended) to the lede, as the fourth sentence of the lede:
"Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles.
This RfC asks, should this sentence be appended (or remain appended) as the fourth sentence of the lede, yes or no?
Then the person posting the RfC should at the same time post a (neutrally-worded) bit in the Discussion section, giving the example that a "Yes" vote would tend to allow Flemish Giant rabbit as an article title, while a "No" vote would tend to require just Flemish Giant (since there are at present no other persons or entities known as Flemish Giant), and so forth.
Again, for all I know a huge majority of editors would be of the mind "Flemish Giant rabbit is a terrible title, Flemish Giant should be required". I wouldn't agree with that, but it doesn't matter all that much as long as the proper redirects are in place. I'd like to know what the community thinks.
I understand that article titles such as Flemish Giant rabbit and Algerian Arab sheep have existed for a long time, but for all I know these have been sailing under the radar and the larger community would be horrified to learn of such things. Let's find out. Herostratus (talk) 23:17, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
Such an RfC would be very misleading in several ways, which I can address when I get home (it's virtually impossible to accurately copy-past policy quotes and stuff on this device). It would also breathe new zombie-life into "concision is the master of all criteria and must be pursued at all costs" campaigning that was affirmatively buried, twice in a row, last year. 70.36.197.61 (talk) 01:22, 25 March 2016 (UTC) [SMcCandlish, off-site]
Well OK, there's no hurry. Anyway, if it was affirmatively buried, twice in a row, last year, then there's no real harm in burying it a third time (which I guess would be the likely result if it was affirmatively buried twice recently), and perhaps some benefit in settling the matter for good and all, for a few years anyway. Herostratus (talk) 01:28, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Trystan has made it a hurry, at VPPOL. I've responded there. It's unfortunate, because that forum isn't really the place for a detailed AT-and-DAB analysis. I guess I would just recommend a re-read of AT; pretend you've never read it before and have no pre-established opinion about anything it it. Note how it indicates the criteria are balanced, not rules, that exceptions apply, that they may be in NC guidelines, but are not required to be (even WikiProject WP:PROJPAGE essays are valid), the detailed sections on particular criteria provide examples not "these are the only possible exceptions" rules, and the overriding concern is reader comprehension, nor robotic following of the letter of the "law". AT is very frequently misunderstood on these points.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:34, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

PS: Another objection I had to your RfC idea was the dwelling on "whether this should be in this is page" bureaucracy rather than on anything substantive about what it says; this is also a central flaw of Trystan's RfC. We already had 3 consensus discussion about whether it should be in this page. The first two emerged with wording that was accepted, and the Feb. one did not conclude to remove it, so the RfC in both cases is essentially just forum-shopping the same settled question instead of addressing any actual issue (editwarring to delete guideline matter is a WP:ANI issue). RfCs consume community time, attention and energy, thus should be on actual questions that need to be addressed, not rehash to satisfy tendentious parties like the two recent deleters who did not and will not properly parse previous discussions, and have an axe to grind. RfCs like this reward and encourage WP:WINNING, dead-horse, and slow-editwar behavior patterns. "Don't feed."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:41, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

RFC Posted at Village Pump

Given the back-and-forth about whether or how this guideline should address the concept of inherently unambiguous titles, I've gone ahead and posted an RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Wikipedia:Disambiguation and inherently ambiguous titles.--Trystan (talk) 02:37, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

That's a misleading and non-neutral RfC (due to failure of due diligence, not PoV that I'm aware of) that mischaracterizes this as an 8-month editwar. In reality the material was refined in multiple mid-2015 discussions, and accepted for 8 months, then subjected to drive-by deletions, in both cases making false claims that previous discussion didn't happen, and both of which were reverted by multiple editors (standard operating procedure when people try to delete guideline material without a valid rationale). This is a great example of how to not write an RfC, albeit for different reasons than the use WP:WINNING ones.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:10, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Spring

Spring is a disambiguation page, and one of the entries is Spring (political terminology) which since last Nov is a redirect back to Spring. This clearly makes no sense. Before it became a circular redirect, it contained a list of about 16 political events that could be called springs. The edit comment says "(merge into Spring disambiguation page)" but I don't see that any merging of these 16 items was done nor that they really belong in the disamb page. I think I should just put back the previous version. Comments? MB (talk) 23:00, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Agree, I moved it back. I don't understand the rationale for it either. A merge would not have been possible anyway, as those terms are partial matches, and wouldn't belong on the dab page. --Midas02 (talk) 04:11, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Just noticed in the history of Spring that this entire list was added back in Nov and then removed the same day by a different editor, who apparently did not revert the related changes. MB (talk) 17:56, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

DAB question concerning lists

I frequently find articles containing lists where the author has bracketed every item in the list, usually resulting in a few blue links and a lot of red links. When disambiguating these, the best choice is often to unlink, because there is no corresponding article and there is unlikely to ever be (so changing to an un-ambiguous red link isn't a good choice). A specific example I found today is Shadwell Turf Mile Stakes which had contained a link to Silver Medallion which I was disambiguating. But now Silver Medallion is the only item in the list that is not a link which makes it stand out. I'm wondering if that might lead someone else to just put the brackets back in for uniformity, thus re-creating a dab. Is there anything I should be doing differently in these cases? MB (talk) 04:08, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I usually make it into a redlink with a disambiguation (and quite a few of the other winners of that race are already redlinked as "..(horse)"), and then add to dab page using the list as the bluelink - have done so for this one just now. PamD 08:09, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
I agree, and would have done exactly what PamD has done. bd2412 T 11:19, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
OK, I have seen this done too. Many DAB pages have red links (with a bluelink) per the guidelines. I doubt an article will ever be written about this horse, so I didn't think adding it to the DAB pages was that important - especially considering the following:

Last month, I found a person that I thought was notable even though there was no article yet. There were existing redlinks in articles, and some bluelinks which I disambiguated to the same redlink, then added the redlink to the disamb page (just like was done with the horse above). Then my edits got reverted and I was warned about edit waring - even though I kept explaining this was normal procedure. See the history for Patrick Buckley and User_talk:MB#March_2016. Should I put Patrick Buckley (priest) back? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB (talk • contribs) 17:18, 4 April 2016‎ (UTC)

I think there is a big difference between linking an article about a horse that won a race and linking an article that includes an unsourced statement that said the person was controversial without any explanation (I have removed the statement). At this point, no it should not be put back as the article you linked does not mention him. -- GB fan 17:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
I agree here too; WP:DABMENTION applies, and there should be a reason to mention the link target in the article. bd2412 T 17:54, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
At the time, I there were several articles that mentioned him. Today, I can only find Michael Cox (Catholic bishop), Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Michael_Cox_(Catholic_bishop), List of After Dark editions, and Larne. He had also been in 1952 in Ireland and Buckley (surname) but has since been removed as non-notable. Note that I didn't add any of these links in the first place, I was just changing them from Patrick Buckley to Patrick Buckley (priest). A quick google search easily shows notability [[12]]. Note that in Larne, I disambiguated, then the entry was removed entirely, then two weeks later someone else added it back in, in the amgibuous form! It seems to me that my changes were better than the current situation where ambiguous links are being put back in. And if someone writes a stub article on the guy, then it is instantly "un-orphaned".

Policy statement buried in guideline page

Wikipedia:Disambiguation identifies itself as a "guideline" but the Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages§Links to disambiguation pages says that one aspect of it "the community has adopted the policy". Is this just a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS among disambiguation editors, or is it really a "policy" (using the formal distinction of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines)? I don't see this item included as a formal policy-level document in Wikipedia:List of policies or related lists/categories, but only in the guideline-level ones. DMacks (talk) 19:33, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

  • I would think that it has to be a policy, because it would be impossible for this project to effectively fix broken links if editors constantly had to dig through a sea of false positives to find the errors needing to be fixed. bd2412 T 20:06, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I would think that it has to be a guideline, because it would be impossible for the project to have any flexibility if every time someone agrees on an idea it gets called policy. I don't see what BD's comment is getting at. I think that text really means "has adopted the procedure ...", and that doing so is generally agreed and is part of the guideline. Hardly a policy issue. Take a look at WP:TITLE for an example of way too much guideline stuff dressed up as policy; it's nuts. Dicklyon (talk) 21:36, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I've made a proposal here at Village Pump that could reduce the number of ambiguous links in the encyclopedia, and thus reduce the workload at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links; please check it out and comment if you can. —swpbT 18:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Languages and incomplete disambiguation

What happens when both Xzy and Xzy language are ambiguous? So far I've been following the established practice for having two separate dab pages: one for the general term and another for the language. This has been recently challenged by an editor who strongly insists that this is a case of incomplete disambiguation and that Xzy language should redirect to Xzy. Whether this is indeed a case of incomplete disambiguation (I'm not sure it is, at least not in light of previous discussions here, like this or that one), I'm finding this very problematic. It hinders searches: if a user types for example Bo language, what they need is one of the couple or so languages on that page, there's no point forcing them to find their way through the dozens of entries at Bo.

Any thoughts anyone? I can see three sensible ways of handling cases like this one:

  • Keep Bo language as a separate dab, but also list the languages at Bo. That's probably the best option for users, but it creates duplication, so unless the list of languages is very small, it's more difficuly to maintain.
  • Redirect Bo language to a section in the general dab: Bo#Language. That's sensible, but doesn't always works right: often there aren't enough languages for a separate section. And it doesn't seem to be part of normal practice: I don't remember seeing a single redirect like that, whereas there are over 400 dedicated language disambiguation pages.
  • Double disambiguation: keep Bo language and add a link to it at Bo. I tend to favour this if there's more than two languages. Uanfala (talk) 00:37, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Since when is having separate disambiguation pages "established practice"? If reliable sources consistently refer to these as "X language", then the perhaps is something to consider. But if "language" is only a descriptive modifier rather than part of the name of the language, then the terms being on the main dab page and X language is just an incomplete disambiguation. Alternatively, at least some of these 400 dedicated language disambiguation pages might be more accurately described as broad concept pages describing related terms rather than pages that disambiguate things that are actually ambiguous. older ≠ wiser 01:08, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
  • A disambiguator is typically a parenthetical that we make up to distinguish similarly named things. In the real world, people are not likely to refer to "Seal (musician)", but just to "Seal" (or, at best, "the musician, Seal"). If there are sources that refer to the language using the phrase "Bo language" or "Bo Language", then that is itself a real-world meriting its own disambiguation page. bd2412 T 01:45, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
A disambiguator is typically a parenthetical that we make up to distinguish similarly named things True enough, although we also use natural disambiguation as well where appropriate. Again, if the term "language" is only use descriptively in association with something named X, then I'd still argue that the things named (or known as) X should be on the X disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 01:51, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
At the extreme end of that argument, why not merge Smith House into Smith, or Orange County into Orange? bd2412 T 02:13, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
It is the difference between a name and a descriptive term. Would Smith House ever be known as simply "Smith" or Orange County as simply "Orange" (other than elliptical cases where the reference is established)? older ≠ wiser 02:17, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
There is a distinct line where natural disambiguation becomes partial title match. —Codename Lisa (talk) 12:25, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Since when is having separate disambiguation pages "established practice"? I was only referring to the case of languages.
The point about making a distinction between a name and a descriptive term is a good one but I feel the line is extremely blurry here. Even for the few clear-cut cases where "language" is definitely a descriptive modifier (for example Sanskrit or Kiswahili), it's difficult to tell by just looking at word usage. Uanfala (talk) 12:38, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
But the crucial question is whether they are also referred to as simply "X" rather than "X language". If they are known as simply "X", they belong on the X disambiguation page. If reliable sources consistently refer to them using "X language", then there may be reason to consider a separate disambiguation page. But it also appears that at least some of these language disambiguation pages might more properly be treated as broad concept articles, or introductions to related topics. older ≠ wiser 12:48, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
My point was precisely that most languages can be referred to as both "X" and "X language". As for the dab pages that had better be treated as broad concept articles, could you give an example? Uanfala (talk) 13:04, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Tibetan language and maybe Pray language or perhaps British languages, although that is a TWODAB candidate. Quite a number of these are lists of two where there is arguably a primary topic and some are inexplicable based on the current articles; for example, Madi languages has two entries, one of which links to Arawan languages which makes no mention of any variation of the term "madi"; or Kajakaja language where none of the linked articles mention the term. Some are lists of languages in a region X where none of the actual languages are properly named X language, such as Kalahari language or West Timor languages or Bomberai languages, although they might be referred to as such in some contexts. I'm not sure about these. Some are just odd disambiguation pages, such as Finnic languages (disambiguation) or Portuguese-language countries. older ≠ wiser 13:35, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, some of these are tricky, especially the ones about groups. Bomberai languages seems to include only groupings of languages spoken on Bomberai (two of which are partial title matches), but the last entry is a group that is alternatively known as "Bomberai". West Timor languages seems to list valid genetic groups that can conceivably might have been called "West Timor" (although the target articles don't make that clear). Articles about individual languages are more straightforward, even though the ones you've picked could do with some tidying up. Tibetan language looks at first sight like a broad concept list, but two of the entries (Classical Tibetan and Standard Tibetan) are commonly known as simply "Tibetan", while the rest of the entries can each be called "a Tibetan language". Both of the languages at Pray language are known as "Pray" according to the respective articles. Te first entry of Madi languages might look arbitrary as it points to Arawan languages, but one of the language varieties covered in that article ("Jamamadi") is alternatively known as "Madi". Of course, alternative names had better be mentioned within the articles, but if they aren't, it's good to be aware that these are almost invariably listed at the glottolog or ethnologue entries (and they are linked from the infobox). Uanfala (talk) 15:28, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

In a WP:BROADCONCEPT article, the topics may be ambiguous. The distinction is that the topics are related and may require more explanation than typically given on a disambiguation page to distinguish the topics. That could be the case at Tibetan language and perhaps also at Pray language, where the disambiguation page gives very little for a non-specialist to go on. older ≠ wiser 16:43, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

This can't be right? And if it is, what do we need to do to fix it?

An editor has claimed that links in disambiguation pages themselves (typically in the "See Also" section) should not point to other disambiguation pages, if that page does not have "disambiguation" in its title, but rather to the redirect to that page that does have disambiguation in its title. He seems pretty exercised about this (he considers that linking to a disambig page from mainspace can only be explained as intentional vandalism), so I thought I'd check it out.

There's some contradictory stuff here. On the one hand:

  • WP:INTDABLINK does say "Links to disambiguation pages from mainspace are typically errors" and it doesn't make an exception for links from other disambiguation pages.

On the other hand:

  • When it says "Links to disambiguation pages from mainspace are typically errors", by "mainspace" it may really mean "articles" and the writer was just being a little sloppy.
  • And it does say "typically" rather than "always".
  • And in point of fact, as a de facto thing people do this all the time. I've been doing it for ten years and nobody's objected until now. And it's permitted -- I found this out when I brought up the case of User:Cliff1911 to ANI, and the consensus was "If he wants to continue to regularly link to disambiguation pages, its his prerogative, notwithstanding that some people find it non-optimal" and this is a guy who does it from within articles.
  • Besides which, the (helpful) warning you get on your talk for linking to disambig pages (which BTW does not appear to be generated if the link is on another disambig page) merely says "[Y]ou added a link pointing to [a] disambiguation page... [but] it's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions..." which certainly sounds like its the editor's option to do it and even to opt out of being bothered about it.
  • And maybe most important, it quite possibly doesn't make sense to not link to other disambig pages from a disambig page.

But now whats interesting about the rule (and the editors argument to me) is that it explains itself as being for the benefit of editors, not readers (emphasis added):

"Because these reports can not distinguish instances where an editor has made such a link with the intent to point to the disambiguation page, the community has adopted the policy of rerouting all intentional disambiguation links in mainspace through "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects. This makes it clear that such links are intended to point to the disambiguation page."

and the editor in question pretty much had the same reasoning, as he writes (emphasis added, but CAPS in the original):

WP:INTDABLINK is policy, and is designed to present a serious disruption to the work of disambiguators. If you intend to violate this policy, your edits will be treated as intentional vandalism. Do not ever, EVER, make an intentional link to a disambiguation page

Well excuse me, but I'm not here to degrade the reader's experience in order to make it easier for live easier you all and I think this will not stand -- especially since it should be very easy to modify the report code to distinguish between links in article space and links on disambiguation pages (the generate-a-warning-on-your-talk-page code appears to already do this).

If there's some reason why its better to change a pointer to a menu page (what we call a disambiguation page) to point to a redirect to that page (an extra step for the software, or any editor working thru the links, to deal with), which also has the extra disadvantage of adding an extra word (and a difficult one, especially for ESL readers and so forth) to have to wade through, I'd be interested to know it. I'm willing to be convinced, if there is an argument.

Absent that, I would suggest a change of one word in the first sentence of WP:INTDABLINK, from

"Links to disambiguation pages from mainspace are typically errors.

TO

"Links to disambiguation pages from articles are typically errors.

So let's talk about this. Herostratus (talk) 00:01, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand the problem. How does it degrade the reader's experience for you to link through a piped redirect that makes the intent clear to editors? In any case, there's no absolute requirement on you to do it the best way; just don't interfere with others who come along to fix it; and you might have to endure their complaints if you do. Dicklyon (talk) 00:10, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
  • @Herostratus:' argument is comparable to suggesting that we should not use the "{{sic}}" template to indicate that a word in a quote is misspelled because the template might confuse the reader, never mind that it is going to lead to editors trying to fix the misspelling. Disambiguation links are a problem, and in some cases a major problem for the reader. If you come to a page that says, without further context, that someone was "born in Ostrowiec" or "friends with John Smith", how is the reader even supposed to begin figuring out which one? That is why disambiguation is important work. On the other hand, if your intent is to point a link to the disambiguation page, what is wrong with informing the reader that the target of the link is, in fact, a disambiguation page? If you'd rather not do that, however, we have a process whereby you can PIPE THE GODDAMMNED LINK and not need to see the word "disambiguation". bd2412 T 00:23, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict):Just to make clear, what we are talking about is the difference between

Foobar is....[body of disambig page]
==See also==
*Foo <-- which is also a disambiguation page-->
*Bar <-- which is also a disambiguation page-->
and
Foobar is....[body of disambig page]
==See also==
*Foo (disambiguation) <-- which is just a redirect to "Foo"-->
*Bar (disambiguation) <-- which is just a redirect to "Bar"-->
Well, "disambiguation" is not a common word nor an easy one. It isn't even really a word, in the sense that it's not in my dictionary. It is constructed according to the rules of English grammar, but a great many non-words could be so constructed. But it's not even something that a person could look up easily.
Keep in mind that many of our readers are not native speakers, or do not have or yet have the equivalent of an American high school or even middle school education, or both.
Even if a typical reader could read it, its extra verbiage. I don't see it as necessary or helpful. I could be wrong about that; I don't know for sure (and neither do you). It's my opinion though and its reasonable. I also don't know if it was necessarily intended by the rule writers, or that it is our actual practice (and rules are supposed to codify actual practice).
So far, I haven't been impressed by the arguments. "there's no absolute requirement on you to do it the best way" is argument by assertion -- it's the best way, and that's that. I'm suspicious of people who are that certain of something it's not possible to easily be certain about. If there are actual arguments (beyond "it makes my job easier") I'm still waiting. Anyone? Herostratus (talk) 00:42, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
edit conflict... it's my understanding that (for some reason) pipes aren't allowed in disambig link pages -- this rule was put in a couple-few years ago IIRC. Besides which User:BD2412 knows perfectly well that he's not supporting piping links in disambig pages, the discussion is over changes like this: [13] where the change is from (in this case) Kindred Spirits to Kindred Spirits (disambiguation) unpiped... (Kindred Spirits (disambiguation) is a redirect to Kindred Spirits) Confusing the question is not helpful. Herostratus (talk) 00:50, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't think that it is necessary to pipe the link. Piped or unpiped, however, it is necessary to use a "Foo (disambiguation)" redirect to avoid literally tens of thousands of false positives from wasting immense amounts of disambiguator time and effort. bd2412 T 00:53, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I like the word "disambiguation". Weird, unusual looking, but logically interpretable in only the correct way if only you know the word "ambiguous". And if you try browsing Wikipedia, you very quickly discover that an awful lot of terms are ambiguous.
In See Also links, or indeed anywhere, I much prefer (as a reader) to have "(disambiguation)" in the bluelink text, hovertext, and url, if the linked page is a disambiguation page. Often, I want the disambiguation page, often I don't, and having ambiguous links can be frustrating. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:01, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I normally perform the same edit as BD2412 (per WP:DDAB - There are two reasons for this: One is so the page will not show up as an error needing to be fixed, and the other is so our readers know it is a link to a disambiguation page.), but if a user objects to the look of the page, I'm happy to pipe the link instead so that that user is not disrupted. Not at least linking to the (disambiguation) redirect, however, is not on. As someone who fixes a few disambiguation links, every intentional link to a disambiguation page that isn't piped through the (disambiguation) redirect is one more link that needs to be fixed (as of the last bot run at around 0800, 17 April 2016 (UTC), there were still 65,136 ambiguous links to fix, down from much higher numbers over the years, but still leaving plenty of work to do - see The Daily Disambig). WP:INTDABLINK is definitely a help to editors, but in the long run it helps readers, because it allows the editors fixing ambiguous links to get to other links that do need to be fixed.
The removal of piping on disambiguation pages is described in MOS:DABPIPE - Subject to certain exceptions as listed below, piping or redirects should not be used in disambiguation pages. This is to make it clear to the reader which article is being suggested. (bold in original) -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 01:12, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Erm, there are contradictory statements in this thread, so the water is rather muddied. These statements appear to be not correct, or rather not a correct description of how the rule is written nor how it is being applied:

  • Editor User:Dicklyon spoke of using "a piped redirect".
  • Editor User:BD2412 said "we have a process whereby you can PIPE THE GODDAMMNED LINK and not need to see the word "disambiguation"
  • Editor User:Niceguyedc said "if a user objects to the look of the page, I'm happy to pipe the link instead so that that user is not disrupted"

Yeah but If I'm reading the rules correctly.... the main operative rules are WP:D and WP:MOSDAB, right?

  • MOS:DABPIPE (part of WP:MOSDAB) says (bolding in the original, so its important!) "Subject to certain exceptions as listed below, piping... should not be used in disambiguation pages"
  • And the "exceptions listed below" would be at MOS:DABPIPING a bit below. Right? Unless I'm missing something. A few exceptions are listed, but there's no exception for "link is itself on a disambiguation page". It doesn't specifically say piping such links is forbidden, but since it doesn't say anything (that I saw), the reader'd have to assume no exception is envisioned for links coming from disambiguation pages.
  • Then moving over to WP:D. WP:D, at WP:INTDABLINK says "the community has adopted the procedure of rerouting all intentional disambiguation links in mainspace through Foo (disambiguation) redirects. This makes it clear that such links are intended to point to the disambiguation page". It doesn't say who the beneficial clarity of "makes clear" is for, but I'd assume it would be "makes clear to the reader", and I think that that's an assumption most reasonable people would make.
But then it gives an example, and while the example is not of a bullet entry in a "See also" list, it's of a hatnote which is as close we've got, and there it gives as "Correct" a piped link (although that's not the first choice, it appears to be allowed, at least by example). So maybe the clarity is for the robots. Or maybe in a hatnote conciseness may trump clarity since that's a special situation. Who knows?

So its a mixed bag at best. Probably the totality of the two rules taken together, reading it as a judge would read a law, should be "Do not pipe links on disambiguation pages"'. But none of this is necessarily a problem, because we have hella rules of the type "Oh yeah it says that, but its kind of silly and so we don't really enforce it" or "Yeah, it says that, but we use common sense in applying the rule" or "It doesn't overtly say to not do that, so we do" and so forth.

But that is very definitely not the situation here! The operative rule at this time is:

WP:INTDABLINK is policy, and is designed to [prevent] a serious disruption to the work of disambiguators. If you intend to violate this policy, your edits will be treated as intentional vandalism. Do not ever, EVER, make an intentional link to a disambiguation page.

and based on the facts on the ground (e.g. here, a the revert to an unpiped version) even using a piped version is not sufficient.

I mean maybe I'm not getting the nuance, but when people start throwing around terroristic threats, you're going to lose the nuances, n'est-ce pas? If this happened to me, how many other editors have been insulted, blocked, and driven off the project for making an innocent interpretation of the an arcane rule based on how we've been doing things for years? This matters.

Anyway, it seems like a lot of this is based on being, or afraid of being, overwhelmed by error reports (although some people do think the "(disambuation)" is also a positive good for the reader, the "designed to prevent a serious disruption to the work of disambiguators" seems a common theme though all this).

This is understandable. I bet we can alleviate this some through making the code a little more subtle, and I think its there that the next forward progress can be made. Sounds fun, count me in! Herostratus (talk) 22:37, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

  • First, "terroristic threats" is a bit on the extreme side. Second, we've been dealing with this issue for over a decade. We've discussed coding solutions numerous times. If you can come up with a way to make it so that an intentional link to a disambiguation does not show up on the "What links here" pages that we use to do our work, I'll congratulate you on achieving something that dozens of editors haven't been able to figure out in a decade of trying. bd2412 T 23:15, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
  • H, there's a very good reason for that rule, as BD2412 has tried to explain. But his calling it "policy" and making threatening noises about it is, I agree, unnecessary. Just do it. Pipe it or don't. If that becomes an issue, let's talk about which is better. Dicklyon (talk) 00:07, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
There is consensus to implement Option 1. (non-admin closure) ~ RobTalk 12:52, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The above discussion does bring up an important question on the consistency of "See also" sections on disambiguation pages. Should the links to disambiguation pages be piped or not? I think that the arguments can be summed up as follows.

In favor of having a piped link:

  • A piped link presents a neater look.
  • It has been suggested in the above discussion that "disambiguation" is an uncommon word that might confuse some readers.

In favor of having an unpiped link:

  • We generally do not pipe links on disambiguation pages.
  • Having "(disambiguation)" visible in the link, makes it clear that the page the reader is being taken to is a disambiguation page, not an article at that title.
  • Disambiguation pages such as Apple (disambiguation) are already at that title (since Apple is a primary topic). See, e.g., Appel.

I therefore propose that this ask that the community to clarify Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages with the addition of one of the two sentences following:

  • Option 1: In the "See also" section of a disambiguation page, an intentional link to another disambiguation page that does not contain "(disambiguation)" in the title should be written as [[Foo (disambiguation)]]
  • Option 2: In the "See also" section of a disambiguation page, an intentional link to another disambiguation page that does not contain "(disambiguation)" in the title should be written as [[Foo (disambiguation)|Foo]]

@Herostratus, Dicklyon, SmokeyJoe, Niceguyedc, and Xezbeth:, please indicate below which of these options you prefer (and perhaps, briefly, why). Thanks! bd2412 T 01:23, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

!Vote on proposal

Please indicate here which of the above options you prefer.

  • Option 1. The benefits of having "(disambiguation)" in the name exceed its caveats. Plus, the matter of "disambiguation" being an uncommon words is already addressed by {{Disambiguation}}. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 17:39, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 1 per Codename Lisa and per the principle of least surprise. I come across many hatnotes where the "(disambiguation)" has been piped, and I disagree with that practice as well.  Stick to sources! Paine  20:59, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 1: makes it clear that it's a dab page (and explains why there is no explanatory epithet, as there would usually be if it was a link to a single article). PamD 22:46, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 1. As far as I'm aware, we should always use "(disambiguation)" when linking to a dab. -- Tavix (talk) 23:41, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 2 but you are asking the wrong people. You are asking people who watch a page called "disambiguation". Some of them are in a project about "disambiguation". Some of them work with "disambiguation" pages regularly. It's like asking a fish if the water is dangerous. Even beyond that, I bet that many of the above commenters have high school diplomas from a first-world country and some have even attended college I bet. Try asking a 12 year old in Bangalore. Try asking a 73 year old retired construction worker in Billings. Try asking a Polish sex worker with a bad coke habit and a nasty predilection for blackmail... no wait that's a character from my novel, but you get what I mean. A commenter above said "I like the word 'disambiguation'. Weird, unusual looking, but logically interpretable in only the correct way if only you know the word 'ambiguous'". This strikes me as kind of elitist and narrow-minded. I could be wrong about all this! It's OK to have this discussion and vote for now, but really it ought to be Wikipedia-wide, at least (even that would be a skewed sampling. I wish people could get outside themselves more). Herostratus (talk) 00:58, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Erm, I mean my main point is "disambiguation" is a hard word and not such a great word and we should not make a virtue out of using it. It may be be true that we don't have a better word, I don't know. AFAIK nobody else uses this word. OTOH maybe nobody else has the need. Other words and phrases that are used for vaguely similar uses are "menu" and "table of contents"... "List of articles" might be better... it's a little less precise, granted. "List of articles named Foo" is long. I do believe that if you took 100 readers completely at random (a nearly impossible task, as any method of actually getting such a group would incur self-selection bias), probably for at least 10 of them the word "disambigation" would have no more meaning than "disestablishmentarianism". I can't prove that and it's a raw guess but it's my best guess. Herostratus (talk) 19:28, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 1. Any other method tricks the reader into thinking there's an actual article at the end of the link. Something along the lines of "[[Foo (disambiguation)|Foo]], a disambiguation page" is needlessly convoluted. If a reader doesn't know what disambiguation means, then they can look it up and be directed to our article on word-sense disambiguation. —Xezbeth (talk) 07:26, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 1. Bear in mind we are talking about the narrow case of a disambiguation page containing a link referring the reader to another disambiguation page. In that particular situation, highlighting the nature of the reference is more helpful than concealing it. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:26, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 1 – Though I previously suggested piping, I think that I agree more with those who point out that having an explicit cue for it being a link to a disambig page is a good idea. Readers will get the point soon enough, even if he word is unfamiliar. Dicklyon (talk) 04:49, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 1. It is annoying to find I have loaded a page I didn't want, and I am usually pretty decided in my mind as to whether I am still searching through topics and wanting a disambiguation page, or not. Further, I think that all disambiguation pages should be at foo (disambiguation), even if there is no article at foo and foo redirects to foo (disambiguation). This will serve readers better, and I have not heard how it can hurt anyone. Disambiguation pages are not articles, and readers should be warned that they are about to load a non-article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:11, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Option 1. 1. Least astonishment - the priority when looking for the desired topic 2. consistent with not piping other links at the start of entries 3. a link to a primary topic and one to its dab page are indistinguishable so this is a non-starter. I also dislike piped hatnotes, as this is navigation not prose. Widefox; talk 10:07, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place any extended discussion of the topic here.

Well but first the code has to be fixed, yes? What I'm thinking is, find if it's possible to determine if the link is in the "See also" section. I would think it would be, simply by parsing the page text for the string "==See also==" (and close variants) and taking it from there (more parsing would be required which I won't describe here). I'm betting this is possible, and looking into it is on my list.

(What I would then further propose, as relief for the Disambiguation folks who I gather are faced with a firehose of links to disambiguation beyond human capacity to deal with is, is to simply unlink all links to disambig pages that are not in the "See also" section or in a hatnote (and probably some other appropriate places I haven't thought of). I honestly can't think of many cases where a link to a disambig page is useful in the in the body of an article. But suppose there are. Suppose 2% of the links to disambig pages in the body text of articles are intended and appropriate. Well sometimes you have have jettison cargo to right the ship. If the alternative is breakdown, failure, human burnout, falling years behind, and so forth... would we rather fail? And adding a little symbol that means "I truly did intend to link to a disambig page here" or whatever, while not a perfect solution, would help some.)

But nevermind the above paragraph for now -- something to think about for future discussion. Right now, the first thing we need is code that can tell us that the link is indeed in the "See also" section, yes? Herostratus (talk) 00:43, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

  • If you can come up with coding that makes disambiguation links in the "See also" section of a disambiguation page not show up on the "What links here" page, have at it. bd2412 T 01:22, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Deliberate, correct links to dab pages also occur in hatnotes, infoboxes, navigation templates, in the main body of other dab pages, and in actual articles and lists. They should all remain as they are even if this non-existent code comes into being. —Xezbeth (talk) 07:16, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
    • I would add that just yesterday I found a disambiguation link in the see also section that was not intended to point to a disambiguation page, but needed to be fixed to point to a regular article. To avoid the risk of missing these, we should not merely ignore see also sections. bd2412 T 04:18, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
    • Here is one that I found and fixed today - a disambiguation link in the "See also" section of a disambiguation page intended for a specific article. bd2412 T 11:26, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I believe we have a consensus here, so if there are no further comments/opinions within the next week, I will request closure of this discussion. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:27, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mentioning uses of a word or phrase that don't have -or need- articles.

In some cases the most common normal meaning of the subject of a disambiguation link is one that neither has nor requires its own page. How should this best be handled? I saw to my surprise there was a DAB for "Stop, Look and Listen," the safety procedure for crossing train tracks and streets. The disambiguation list started with the Green Cross Code, which adopted this in the 1970s. i.e., when it was a century or so old as a stock phrase, already showed up in case law, and so forth. How can this be reflected without turning the disambiguation page into a dictionary entry? Anmccaff (talk) 19:47, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

The guideline does allow a short description of the common general meaning of the phrase to help the reader determine context. So if the history of the phrase isn't itself an encyclopedic topic, the lead could still briefly indicate that it originated as safety advice for crossing train tracks or streets. Ashes to ashes is similar, though there, there is an article to refer to in explaining the context of the phrase.--Trystan (talk) 20:13, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
On this topic, if the word or phrase is a non-notable business or organization (redlinked or not) that does not appear elsewhere on Wikipedia, should that business be removed from the disambiguation list? The guidelines Wikipedia:Disambiguation#What not to include are unclear. You can see multiple examples on the QSC disambiguation page. This could be a way to alert people to subjects worthy of articles, and if the subjects are not, then should any gatekeeper decide if the term can be removed or not? It seems like this activity could mirror an AfD discussion - "should the term be on the DAB page or not?" Would it help to specifically address this scenario in the guidelines?Timtempleton (talk) 17:01, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Twinkle and CSD G-6 - for info

At present there's a mismatch between Twinkle's pop-up help about Speedy Deletion G6 "Unnecessary disambiguation pages" and the actual criterion at WP:G6. Twinkle's help message shows the criterion as disambiguates two or fewer pages and whose title ends in "(disambiguation)", while WP:G6 says Deleting a disambiguation page that links to only one extant article and whose title includes "(disambiguation)" and that's what appears on the template message on the page. I've raised this at Wikipedia_talk:Twinkle#CSD_G6_-_unecessary_dab_page. It probably explains a lot of incorrect G6 nominations of dab pages disambiguating the primary topic and one other article. PamD 11:01, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Empanda (disambiguation) is at the moment an example of a page which does not fit WP:G6 but comes within Twinkle's version of the criterion. PamD 11:03, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Training camp

Should training camp be reformatted as a disambiguation page? Seems like it is serving that purpose, but is currently rated and categorized as a stub article. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 18:38, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I'd want to hear the opinion of the project elders, but to me this article seems like it's the beginning of a broad-concept article. Uanfala (talk) 19:16, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
It seems like a list of types of camps where some type of training occurs. In other words, it is a textbook case of WP:DABCONCEPT. bd2412 T 19:52, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
I think that this case may be a little different. A cursory search didn't provide any reliable sources on the development of "training camps" as a concept separate from there each unique use (i.e. there is a lot of info on Training camp (National Football League). Since Wikipedia is not a dictionary, having an article that more or less just defines the term "training camp" doesn't meet the threshold of a broad concept article to me and doesn't seem to be the right path to go. I think we need to take into account whether there are reliable sources that talk about "training camps" as a broad concept (I will admit I did not do an in-depth search). WP:DABCONCEPT gives the example of Football, which has plenty of coverage about the development of the concept of football games and thus justifies a broad concept article. However, I imagine that our readers will be looking for a specific type of training camp, where a disambig page would serve the best purpose. Just my opinion, but since I don't edit in this arena very much I wanted to bring it up here to let you all decide the best course of action. I think we can probably all agree that the current state of the article is lacking. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 20:39, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Duplicate disambiguation pages: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer and Lives of Bengal Lancer

It should be noted that there are duplicate disambiguation pages: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, (created 02:00, 11 April 2014) and Lives of a Bengal Lancer (created as a redirect 15:33, 11 July 2002‎ and turned into a dab page 16:20, 15 September 2014). —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 03:41, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Redirected the latter to the former. Jenks24 (talk) 07:03, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

higher-level jurisdiction criterion

There's been a great deal of discussion recently over what article, DAB or redir should be at New York, and how to best disambiguate New York State from New York City. The discussion has been long and involved already, involving an RM that is now at MR.

At the heart of this discussion is disagreement over whether either is the primary topic. Some say the state, some the city, some that there is none. However I believe that there is rough consensus that neither the usage nor significance criteria support the state being primary.

It seems to me that most if not all of those who believe that New York State is the primary meaning base this on the higher-level jurisdiction criterion. Some have argued very forcefully that this criterion should, in this case at least, take precedence over the usage and significance criteria. ([15] as just one example.) Others have just observed that the state has been at New York for some time, and have cited the higher-level jurisdiction criterion as the justification for this. [16]

Comments? Andrewa (talk) 22:26, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, I've made my opinions known at the WP:MRV entry for that. For the record we have numerous examples where the higher level jurisdiction rule is not applied. Georgia (U.S. state) vs Georgia (country), Washington (state) vs Washington, D.C., Lhasa (prefecture-level city) vs Lhasa, City of Leeds vs Leeds are a few that spring to mind where either a lower level entity is primary, or no primary topic is declared. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 22:32, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Yes, thank you. One purpose of this section is to try to simplify the discussion at MR. Some may like to summarise their thoughts here, but failing that a diff to your contribution(s) at RM or MR is quite sufficient.
Another purpose is of course that, whether or not that MR eventually reverses the move, we may need to add at least some mention of this (previously undocumented) criterion to this guideline... either positive or (I strongly suspect) to point out that it can't overrule the existing criteria. Andrewa (talk) 22:50, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
The state of Georgia is not a subdivision of the country of Georgia, and the city of Washington is not a subdivision of the state of Washington. Moreover, how was this discussion even carried out with no notice being given to this project or to Wikipedia:WikiProject New York? bd2412 T 03:20, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
FWIW, Wikipedia:WikiProject New York/Article alerts should have had a notice. It's transcluded to Wikipedia:WikiProject New York § Maintenance. wbm1058 (talk) 05:07, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Yes, and it did appear there. But it seems that nobody was watching. Andrewa (talk) 13:44, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Please stay on-topic. The question of notice to stakeholders should be discussed elsewhere. If you feel that others should be informed of this particular discussion, please do so, or at least drop me a note to that effect on my talk page and I'll take action on it. But in view of the heat this is generating, [17] I'd recommend a heads-up here as to where else you have posted notice of this discussion, to avoid any suggestion of canvassing. Andrewa (talk) 03:49, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

A more precise definition of this criterion needs to be hashed out. "Jurisdiction" may be too restrictive as it implies a governing relationship. Perhaps the more general term "entity" is better; the higher-level entity may just be something geographic and not jurisdictional. But the higher-level entity must include the lower-level entity. This rules out Washington as the District of Columbia is not located within the state of Washington. Georgia doesn't apply either as the two Georgias are on different continents. Another point generally needed to trigger this criterion is that the language spoken in these overlapping entities sharing the same name must be English. Thus, we make the lower-level Lhasa primary, while the Chinese make the higher-level primary (perhaps they follow the same implicit criterion in their language). I really don't understand what the deal is with Leeds and City of Leeds; they look like content forks which should be merged. Both cover the identical 213 square miles. To test the validity of this criterion, we should be able to point to another example of where it's applied in practice, so that New York isn't the only case where the criterion is applied. My exhibit #1 is Ireland and Ireland, Republic of. In this case the higher-level entity is geographic – it's an island. Neither of the two main criteria seems to support the island. And, the final confirmation that this criterion applies comes from looking at other language Wikipedias, and finding that most of them make the lower-level jurisdiction, the Republic, their primary topic. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Some good ideas there. But the claim that has been made is that this higher-level jurisdiction criterion can and should, now, be applied in support of the claim that New York State is the primary meaning of New York. That is the issue. If the policy or guideline should change, that's for the future. One step at a time, please! Andrewa (talk) 03:56, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
The notion that "the higher-level entity must include the lower-level entity" is critical here, and what separates this situation from most examples noted by Amakuru. In a sense, I believe that favoring the higher-level jurisdiction over a same-named and contained jurisdiction gets at the spirit of the Broad-concept articles guidance. The city is part of the state, and the city is covered in several places within the state article, including the lede (not true the other way around). The dedicated article was previously just a hatnote away for those who really care only about the city (which reveals itself prominently in searches anyway at its naturally disambiguated title); visitors seeking the city are therefore not confused or impeded from the information they seek in any way. This "broad-concept" idea is perhaps also why it has not been seen as confusing to naturally disambiguate article titles for geographic locations within the state with a simple ", New York" - nobody thinks Rochester, New York is within NYC, I hope, or the scope of work just got much, much larger if this change is seen through. If that title is not confusing, I think it would be interesting to explore why that's the case. (See also any New York-related category tree.) I think there's plenty of room for people to disagree with me on this, but I also think there's a reason that many people feel the old set-up made sense, and it isn't because we're all just willfully ignorant of the guidelines. Antepenultimate (talk) 12:31, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
I think you're right (well, I rather resent the suggestion that anybody is willfully ignorant, and equally resent the suggestion that anybody is suggesting they are!) but surely, if that's how it works, that's what the guidelines should say? Otherwise why have them? Andrewa (talk) 13:57, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
If the "higher-level entity" concept is not specifically listed under "Among several other proposed criteria that have never won acceptance as a general rule, we do not generally consider any one of the following criteria as a good indicator of primary topic", then this is a question to be decided under the primary discussion at Talk:New York (state). This talk page should just be for discussion whether to either add it as a third criterion, perhaps call it the "broad-concept criterion", or to explicitly state that it has never won acceptance as a general rule. My contention is that, per Ireland, it already has won defacto acceptance as a general rule. It seems that some are arguing for the city as PT based on that being what first comes to their mind, which WP:NWFCTM does not support, though "usage" and "what comes to mind" often align. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:27, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
I find it hard to accept that the single case of Ireland establishes a general criterion, especially since Lhasa seems to be an example of exactly the opposite. Ireland has a unique cultural and political context that makes it difficult to generalize from that example to other cases. Indeed, this may simply be an area in which there may be no consensus on a general rule and each case has to be addressed individually. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:48, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Indeed. Ireland should likely be considered an outlier in that the "consensus" emerged only after protracted disputes and an arbitration committee ruling. It is a poor candidate for a exemplar. older ≠ wiser 14:56, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
As I said, Lhasa doesn't fit because they don't speak English there. The "higher-level rule" is followed on the Chinese Wikipedia, FWIW. OK, then: "New York has a unique cultural and political context. There is no consensus on a general rule and the case of New York has to be addressed individually." If we don't care to explicitly mold a new criterion out of these special cases, I'm fine with that. wbm1058 (talk) 15:07, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure what being English speaking has to do with it. The proposal is that higher level entities should always take precedence over lower level entities, and that would apply equally to Lhasa, here on the English speaking Wiki. As you know we discussed that one to death, and some did think that Lhasa should be the wohle prefecture, but we came down to the decision that people mean the town when they say Lhasa. Similarly with Leeds and Honolulu, which are English speaking cities whose administrative boundaries stretch a lot further than their traditional urban areas. And in the many frequent move requests for Georgia (country), it is also often said that countries trump US states. Yet no consensus has been found for that. Whenever the "HLJ" theory is tested at individual RMs, with the exception of New York, and until 2010 Washington, it never finds favour. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 16:50, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
...then this is a question to be decided under the primary discussion at Talk:New York (state)... Agree. But that convoluted discussion has bounced from one claim of no consensus to another. As stated, this section has two purposes, and one is to try to build a specific consensus as to whether or not this higher-level jurisdiction criterion should overrule the two existing (documented) criteria.
Building any sort of consensus is not going to be easy owing to the heat and muddle already evident in that primary discussion. A few things that might help:
  • Let's not waste time on debating what to call it.
  • Let's not even try to decide precisely how to word it.
  • Let's focus on the specific case before us.
  • Let's not ask here whether there's evidence based on the other two criteria (or any others). This section is just about the higher-level jurisdiction criterion.
And let us try to build consensus. That is the only productive way forward. Andrewa (talk) 21:48, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
A more precise definition of this criterion needs to be hashed out. Agree, and I've made a start at WP:HLJC. Andrewa (talk) 00:22, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

This is just the first step in what may be a three step process. See Talk:New York (state)#Foreshadowing. Andrewa (talk) 04:59, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Let's focus on the specific case before us. And the specific case is whether any unnamed, non specific criterion can be allowed to override the two criteria explicitly suggested in the guideline. Until "There is no single criterion for defining a primary topic" is changed to read, "There are two, and only two, criteria...", then the answer is yes. Any unnamed, non specific criterion can be allowed to override the two criteria explicitly suggested in the guideline. Unless that criterion "has never won acceptance as a general rule", in which case we do not generally consider it, except in exceptional cases, and this just might be such an exceptional case. wbm1058 (talk) 01:20, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
That hypothetical change would prohibit us from using the higher-level jurisdiction criterion (hence HLJC) to overrule the usage and significance criteria, that much is true. But it's a stretch to say that such a change is necessary before the HLJC can be regarded as overruled by the existing (documented) criteria.
I think that those who wish to apply the HLJC need to show consensus that it should apply, while those who wish to apply the usage and significance criteria can instead rely on the historic consensus represented by the existing guideline. Andrewa (talk) 03:43, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
To quote the guideline itself: "There are no absolute rules for determining whether a primary topic exists and what it is; decisions are made by discussion among editors". So, those wishing to apply only the existing language of the suggested criteria to this unusual situation are still required to make their case and not just "rely on the historic consensus represented by the existing guideline". To reply to your question above, "if that's how it works, that's what the guidelines should say? Otherwise, why have them?" Again, guidelines are open to interpretation within individual circumstances. This situation is somewhat unusual and so it is not surprising that some interpretation is necessary that focuses more on the purpose and spirit of the guidelines, rather than the specific existing language. Antepenultimate (talk) 15:56, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Agree that this is an unusual case and that some interpretation of guidelines (and perhaps even policy) is required. The two things that I think make it unusual are:
(1) The article name has been stable at one that would have no chance of surviving an RM otherwise. There is no chance of consensus that New York State is primary, and without that, no chance that it would be at the primary article name, but for that history.
(2) This has become a test case for the HLJC.
In view of (1), some interpretation of the principle favouring stable names is necessary, and in my view it should not apply at all to this case. The case should be decided on its other merits. This is especially important in view of (2). If (1) is allowed to determine the result, then it becomes a poor test case, as consensus can change. Andrewa (talk) 19:21, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

In the spirit of the above-mentioned need for interpretation: To re-state and re-factor my points above (which have thus far not been disputed, though I welcome discussion): Favoring a higher-level jurisdiction over a same-named and contained jurisdiction acts as a fail-safe for readers interested in either use, whereas favoring the lower-level jurisdiction leads to potential confusion (getting at the "Usage" criterion here, in addition to the spirit of Broad-concept articles). Readers seeking the city will find some information (and a clear hatnote) at a page devoted to the containing state, as it is covered as part of that topic; readers interested in the state will find no such information at a page devoted to the city and would potentially be confused or misinformed when landing there. The naturally disambiguated titles for both city and state appear immediately within the search box. So, any potential problems come from existing wikilinks, such as Wbm1058 has been working through (with thanks). So, which is worse: a link intended for the city that winds up at an article about the state (not wrong, since the city is contained and covered in said article), or a link intended for the state that winds up at the city article (potentially very confusing, as state information is not included there)?

As an example, if I say Pat Examplepants was born in New York (intending the city) but the link points to the state, it is not wrong. However, if they were born near Utica, and the link points to the city article (note that such links are often formatted [[Utica, New York|Utica]], [[New York]]), then the reader has been presented with misinformation and has been done a disservice. In both instances the writer of the article could have been more specific and careful, but we all know how it goes in the real world here, so fail-safes should be welcomed. Antepenultimate (talk) 16:01, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

But there will be many other cases (as we've already seen) where someone will get it wrong and the fact that NYC is in NYS won't save the situatoin. For example "Rudy Giuliani is the former mayor of New York". It would be inaccurate to say he was mayor of the state. Having a disambig page would catch this error immediately, while the previous status quo would not, unless someone was examining every single incoming link to the state article.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:44, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
This is a WP:SPECIFICLINK problem: it should be "Rudy Giuliani is the former mayor of New York". Context has been provided which makes the meaning clear, as the state doesn't have a mayor. The roughly equivalent office is governor of New York. We should patrol for and fix cases where a more WP:SPECIFICLINK solves the issue of ambiguity. wbm1058 (talk) 16:54, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
And even if it does save the situation, it's still wrong. The intent was New York City, and it's a reasonable expectation. By far the better fail-safe is to have the DAB at New York, as the naming conventions very clearly suggest. Andrewa (talk) 19:32, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Having either article will lead to some "wrong" links, I think that's inevitable at the scale of this subject. Some would just be much more wrong than others, and I think that's relevant. That said, Amakuru's counterpoint is an excellent one. Serious question: How frequent would such a situation arise? The "usage" criterion asks for the topic to be "highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term" (the "more likely than all the other topics combined" qualifier is interesting, as it seems to be at odds with the Broad-concept articles guidance that addresses such situations). In this case, since both the city and the state are covered at the state article, it may be reasonable to wonder if searches that could be satisfied by the entire New York entity (state + city) are more likely to searched than those that only make sense in terms of the state alone, sans city (having trouble thinking of an example for that), or for the city alone (such as Mr. Giuliani, above). That's an honest question, I don't have the answer. Antepenultimate (talk) 21:21, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
(Deep breath, this is off-topic but important.)
I would support having a broad concept article at the base name, and disambiguating both the state and city. It seems the obvious solution. Perhaps we should try to get this seriously discussed, immediately? It would make most of the current muddled, heated discussion irrelevant, which would be a very good thing IMO.
I'm not sure at what stage it would be best to start one, or what (hopefully temporary) disambiguator we could use for it. Category:Broad-concept articles has only one disambiguated title in it, and it's not helpful. But at least some broad-concept articles don't seem to be in the category... We should probably add football, for example. Andrewa (talk) 22:03, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Some useful examples of broad concept articles that have been made: Schedule, Size, Getting lost, Container, Color code. Some that are specifically geographic: Southern United States, North China. bd2412 T 23:30, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Agree that favoring the lower-level jurisdiction is not a good idea. But that's nowhere suggested AFAIK (so perhaps unintentionally, it's a straw man). Andrewa (talk) 19:32, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I didn't mean to imply that anyone is arguing that lower-level jurisdictions should be automatically preferred, this is more specific to this case where many in the original discussion were arguing for the city to be primary, and be parked at New York. This idea has not been floated recently, true, and I think if the discussion here has accomplished anything, it shows the problems that would be caused by placing the city article at "New York", even if it could be proved to be the primary topic over the state. This is a direct result of it being fully-contained within the same-named higher jurisdiction, nothing else, and is therefore more-or-less case-specific. Anyway, it's a holiday here so I'm out, and I really didn't mean to get so heavily involved in the first place; apologies. Antepenultimate (talk) 21:21, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I must plead guilty as one who (still) believes that New York City is the primary meaning of New York, as Wikipedia currently uses the term. But the RM now under MR didn't address that; It was purely about whether New York State was the primary meaning. If we can form a consensus that it's not, then the question of whether New York City is the primary meaning is for the future; We have enough complication as it is! Andrewa (talk) 04:58, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

New essay

See Wikipedia talk:Higher-Level Jurisdiction Criterion. Andrewa (talk) 22:33, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Is this edit to Shams appropriate?

I'm not sure about this edit. It was made after I pointed out that Shams was a dab page and that we didn't have an article about the goddess Shams. Shams of course in English is a perfectly good plural with two meanings (the other being pillows hamster). It seems to me that this is sort of a substitute for creating an article. Doug Weller talk 19:14, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguating important articles

I've been putting a lot of thought into Talk:New York/July 2016 move request.

One thing that I am wondering is why, when it seems so clear that by our existing criteria New York State is not the primary topic, there's so much opposition to the move, and such heated presentation of this view.

Another I'm wondering is why, when it seems so clear to me that New York City is the primary topic, I'm so comfortable to have the DAB or a BCA at the base name, despite that seeming to be in breach of our current guidelines.

Part of it I think is that both NYC and NYS are very important articles. NYC is rated as top importance by no fewer than four WikiProjects, high by another, and mid by another two. [18] NYS is rated as top by one and high by another, mid by one and of interest but unrated by a fourth. [19]

In a case like this, I think we should consider disambiguation (or a BCA) more favourably than for less important articles, and adopt it even if a case can be made for a primary topic, in view of the importance of the other topic(s).

Other thoughts? Andrewa (talk) 02:42, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I think we need to be exceptionally careful when deciding to make disambiguation pages of titles that have large numbers of incoming links (in this case 70,000+), and will continue to generate large numbers of incoming links. In this case, my personal opinion is that the status quo is acceptable, but disambiguation is probably justified based on the city/state divergence and the large number of other minor possibilities. I am not sure a BCA would be helpful, as most of the links really should point to either the city or the state, not to an article explaining the relationship between these. bd2412 T 03:53, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Agree we need to be extra careful in such cases, but I think (hope) that these are rare! Personally (as is obvious elsewhere) I don't see any justification for the status quo or for the fierce defence of it... neither the world nor civilisation will end regardless of the decision, and even the recent claim that Wikipedia and the New York article would both be irreparably harmed... The very foundation of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia itself would be fractured by such a move... seems completely over the top to me. It's not such a big deal. I do think it's worth fixing, but the main reason for any urgency is just to stop spending resources on it that might otherwise go to improving Wikipedia in other ways.
What I'm trying to explore is what has produced a situation where we see such claims, and why the current situation has persisted for so long. I'm guessing these are related, and might uncover some useful insights into more common cases (still uncommon, but less so). Or might not. Andrewa (talk) 13:51, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. :-) Over-the-top claims are a dime a dozen here. "If we put/don't put a period after Harry Truman's middle initial, the world will come to an end." I have my own opinions about what has produced this situation, but they are only opinions, and I don't want to be perceived as insulting other editors, so I'll keep them to myself. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:09, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, it's good to be here! Andrewa (talk) 09:13, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Gas analysis

Could those watching here say whether the edit I made here at gas analysis is helpful, or if another approach is better? Thanks. FWIW, I was trying to find an article in Wikipedia on 'calibration gas generators', a rather specialised bit of equipment, see e.g. here. Not a topic I suspect there will be an article on any time soon. Actually, looking a bit further, I've redirected it to calibration gas (which needs some attention). Also not sure of the difference between a gas analyser and a gas detector (also, gas sensor is a redirect to the detector article, but I redirected the spelling of gas analyser to the gas analysis disambiguation page). Not sure how the subtle differences should be handled here. Carcharoth (talk) 12:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I think you have two dab pages here: Gas analysis, where different types of processes are listed, and Gas analyser, listing the different devices that do the analyzing. (I would also list a brief description for each device, per MOS:DABENTRY.) A "gas sensor" is a synonym for "gas detector", so that redirect is correct. About the difference: a detector can sense the presence of a specific gas in its vicinity and (usually) can alert you to its presence. A home carbon monoxide detector is an example. An analyzer, on the other hand, can use a sample of gas (from diving cylinders, blood samples, etc.) to tell you what is in it and how much there is. A breathalyzer is an example. Does any of this help? — Gorthian (talk) 20:59, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. I suspect that an actual article on this topic, rather than two dab pages, would be better. Gas detector is an article after all (not a dab page), so gas analyzer should be as well. Would you agree? Not sure whether the article should be at gas analysis or gas analyzer? Carcharoth (talk) 05:59, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
I support Carcharoth's change to the Gas analysis page. It's a topic that radiates in many directions, and this may be the best we can do. If there is to be further work done, consider whether any of the listed articles at Gas analysis could be merged. It is reasonable to expect some of these articles to be placed in Category:Gas sensors and possibly Category:Analytical chemistry. I agree with Carcharoth that we may not actually need an article on Calibration gas generators.EdJohnston (talk) 16:00, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Drafting disambiguation pages in DraftSpace

  • I think, and propose, that disambiguation pages should not be drafted in draftspace. Either the disambiguation is needed, or it is not, and if needed it belongs in mainspace immediately. Having these things in draftspace means they can be built up, time mis-invested in them, below the radar of editors watching out for bad disambiguation. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Power Rangers (disambiguation),for an example. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:25, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I have no objection to drafting any kind of page in draft space. Sometimes I find a term or a name that would benefit from disambiguation, do a Wiki search, and discover a bunch of possibilities, and paste them into a page to link and organize later. bd2412 T 15:38, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
  • There may not be many (or any) cases where it's helpful to draft a dab, but it seems pointless to ban the practice. Has this ever been a problem? —swpbT 13:41, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I see that the draft which is cited above, Draft:Power Rangers (disambiguation) was created by an IP, and I don't think IPs can create new articles. So if an IP wants to help create a dab page it's their only way. It's a pity there can't be some automatic alert, eg at Talk:Power Rangers or here, when this happens, so that those familiar with the topic or with dabs can comment or edit. In this case, one of the most certain dab page entries, Power Rangers (film), was created in 2014 and no-one had yet bothered to make it accessible by a hatnote in Power Rangers (done now). PamD 14:22, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

In brief: How should we treat links to anthroponymy pages?

For those unfamiliar, Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy pages are a somewhat unique beast: they list people who share a given name or surname or complete name, and they are often treated like disambiguation pages, though they are categorized as set index articles. (Aside: there is no MOS guideline for these pages, just the WikiProject standards page. I have tried unsuccessfully to have this page promoted to the MOS; the absence of a MOS for anthro pages is a big problem to be tackled separately.)

The issue at hand: There is no consensus on how to treat links to anthro pages. For dab pages, the correct method is to link to "Title (disambiguation)", which may be a redirect to the actual dab page—this is to make it clear to bots that the link is intentional, so it doesn't show up on lists of ambiguous links that need to be fixed (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links). IMO, the same logic applies to anthroponymy pages, and this has clearly been the practice for quite some time (see tens of thousands of examples in Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages). However, this practice is in dispute (see User talk:Bkonrad#Alphonse), on the basis that anthro pages should not be considered dab pages, even for this purpose. I've tried to create a workaround with {{R to anthroponymy page}}, in parallel with {{R to disambiguation page}}, but I think a question affecting such a huge number of pages needs larger input. The options I see are (add any you think I missed):

For linking to anthroponymy pages:

  1. Point all links directly to the anthroponymy page (This leaves no simple way to sort intentional links from unintentional ones that should be further disambiguated.)
  2. Leave or create "Name (disambiguation)" redirects, using {{R to disambiguation page}} (This has the drawback that anthro pages may not strictly be dab pages, though they do list ambiguous entries.)
  3. Create "Name (anthroponymy)" redirects, using {{R to anthroponymy page}} (This would require the most work (probably by bot), but would, IMO, leave things in the most useful state.)

Thoughts? If you have a preference for one of the listed options, please indicate so. —swpbT 15:52, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Just one initial note, I'm not sure the scope of Anthroponymy project includes people who share a "complete name". These are in general clearly disambiguation pages and marked with {{hndis}}. In general, there is little to write about a name as a name for such a "complete name" (unless I'm misunderstanding what you meant by "complete name". older ≠ wiser 16:01, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Thus corrected. —swpbT 16:07, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
It's rare, but possible. For example, George Washington (name) is an anthroponymy page made up, more or less, of what one could consider a "complete name." -- Tavix (talk) 16:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Tavix Thanks for the counter-example. But it is correctly (IMO) classified as a given name article as all but three of the entries are for persons with the compound given name + different surname rather than the complete name of only "George Washington". Those three could in theory get separate treatment on a {{human name disambiguation}} page, but I think that would not really benefit anyone. older ≠ wiser 16:37, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree with your assessment. I think those three were named for the George Washington, and that's why they are listed there. There are other people listed at George Washington (disambiguation) besides those three, but I could be wrong. -- Tavix (talk) 16:43, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I considered proposing the same thing a while ago. There are probably tens of thousands of incorrect links to name articles that will rarely get fixed unless a process like Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links flags them up. But then there are probably many tens of thousands of incorrect links to articles acting as primary topic that will also never get flagged up. They shouldn't be treated like dab pages just so they get picked up by WP:DPL though.
Also, mentioning Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages is a red herring. Most of those will have been created by bots, and only when the articles were formatted as dab pages. Almost any name article from before ~2012 will have been a dab page at some point in its history. —Xezbeth (talk) 16:13, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure that incorrect links to primary topics are especially relevant; they are also a problem, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't address this problem. Like you said, you considered a similar proposal yourself, and we're probably not the only two. If Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages is largely bot populated, then you're correct; it can't tell us how many people have been creating such redirects manually—but I still suspect it's quite a lot. —swpbT 16:20, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
The comparison with primary topics is apt (although to a different degree perhaps). The problem is that sometimes links to a name page are intended and sometimes are erroneous -- just as with primary topic pages -- there's no way to tell in either case. For those anthroponymy articles that are actual articles, it might seem peculiar to force editors to use a convoluted redirect when the name article is at the title that would be natural to link to. In other words, the "name as a name" is considered to be the primary topic for the term. That some links to a primary topic are erroneous is simply an unavoidable result of having a primary topic. And FWIW, I've been intermittently going through Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages for errors (typically either using {{R to disambiguation}} incorrectly instead of {{R from ambiguous page}} or redirects to pages that aren't disambiguation pages). In vast majority of cases of redirects to non-disambiguation pages, the redirects were created by bots when it was a dab page and later moved. In some cases, they were manually created at a time the page was a dab. In many cases the redirect is unused. When it is used, it is often for use on other similarly named dab pages and less commonly in hatnotes. Personally, I'd rather see such links to non-dab pages clearly identified in the description on the linking page as what they are (e.g. as name articles or a set index) rather than presenting themselves as intentional links to disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 18:29, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm agnostic on the general issue at hand but if a disambiguator gets generally adopted, let that not be (anthroponymy) – it's clunky and goes against the so far established practice of using (name), (given name) or (surname). (Disambiguation) isn't suitable either: it's inaccurate and won't work in cases where an anthroponymy article and dab page share a title, for example Donald (disambiguation) can't point to the name article Donald because there already is a dab page at Donald (disambiguation). Uanfala (talk) 16:22, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
  • (after ec) I can be persuaded otherwise, but I think my initial opinion would be for either #1 or #3. There was and continues to be significant confusion between the function and purpose of disambiguation pages and what are sometimes superficially similar looking list articles, both anthroponymy articles as well as various other set index articles. These aren't disambiguation pages and piggybacking on disambiguation page processes only increases the confusion. If these articles do in fact function as disambiguation pages, then perhaps they should be considered as disambiguation pages. If they are some sort of hybrid--where there might be encyclopedic content on the topic as well as a list of potentially ambiguous articles, then perhaps some supplemental mechanism for tracking links to them needs to be developed. One of the reasons for splitting off Anthro and other SIAs was based on assumption that editors wanted to be able to link directly to the topic (unlike disambiguation pages, where it is assumed than ALL links other than intentional links are in error).
Also, I'm not sure why we need to make it clear to bots that the link is intentional. I thought the main benefit of such links was for humans examining What links here manually. Are there any bots that rely on these redirects to automagically fix links (i.e. without human interaction to review the links)? Mistaken links are mostly likely to arise from the simple reclassification of a disambiguation page as an anthroponymy article. older ≠ wiser 16:25, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Anthroponymy pages sometimes act as disambiguations, and sometimes they don't. We have wonderfully developed articles on some names (eg: Spencer (surname) is a GA), and others are simply lists. When they don't function as dabs, I can see it useful to link directly to them, and I don't think that should be discouraged by any means. That's especially the case when the article is on a family, and it'd be useful to link from articles on individual family members. Yes, I see links that are "wrong" sometimes, but the problem definitely isn't as big as it is for disambiguation pages. I think it would be very unnecessary to create a bunch of redirects to try to rectify this problem. The best thing to do would be to fix them whenever you come across them. -- Tavix (talk) 16:29, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

RFC: Is New York State the primary topic for the term "New York"?

Editors interested in disambiguation may want to contribute to the RFC asking whether New York State the primary topic for the term "New York". — JFG talk 10:25, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome to comment here: Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Cooling-off period before disambiguating new dablinks. Uanfala (talk) 21:38, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

hatnote to help page

Most people coming to this page are actually looking for actual help in editing. So lets add an Other-Uses hatnote pointing to Help:Disambiguation with the words: "If you intended to see the help page for dealing with disambguation see ... --פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 06:48, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. I don't think there's going to be any resistance if you go ahead and boldly add the hatnote. Uanfala (talk) 18:37, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Help:Disambiguation has been in a hatnote for readers on this page for at least two years; it's no help to editors. But MOS:DAB definitely needs to be added for editors. — Gorthian (talk) 01:15, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
I edited the reader hatnote to make it clear that people who are just readers (not editors) should look there. Those people may not understand that "reader help" is supposed to mean "non-editor help". – Margin1522 (talk) 01:11, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
While we are at it, would anyone object if I removed the hatnote for the shortcut "WP:D"? That hatnote sends administrators to the page on WP:Deletion policy. Of all people, administrators are the ones who least need our help finding their way around. Why should we force everyone to read a hatnote on deletion policy simply because some administrators are too lazy to type "del" and type "d" instead? – Margin1522 (talk) 01:13, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
But WP:DEL is far from being meant just for administrators. It also receives more pageviews [20]. Uanfala (talk) 06:33, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
I have nothing against WP:DEL. It's a fine page. The problem is that it has nothing to do with disambiguation. There are almost 100,000 pages in the Wikipedia namespace (see here). Every one of those pages has a title that begins with a letter of the alphabet. Are we going to have hatnotes for the hundreds or thousands of other pages that users may have wanted when they typed "WP:D"? Why only WP:DEL? Is it too much trouble to type WP:DEL? To me it seems like the general principle for hatnotes should apply: add one only when the other article is related and there is a strong chance that users wanted the other article and made an effort to find it. Having a title that begins with the same letter of the alphabet is not related enough, and typing one letter is not enough of an effort. It doesn't justify the clutter. – Margin1522 (talk) 13:14, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
The hatnote is necessary because "WP:D" is a shortcut to this page. Those who type "WP:D", expecting to be taken to the deletion page, end up here instead. They may not know that they need to type "WP:DEL" to get there. But the hatnote gives them a convenient link to where they really want to go. — Gorthian (talk) 19:19, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Besides, in terms of page views [21] WP:DEL has a stronger claim for the short redirect than WP:DAB. Uanfala (talk) 21:26, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
It's not so clear cut over a longer period. — Gorthian (talk) 23:36, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Well, look at it this way. The article "D" in the encyclopedia has a hatnote to the the article "D#". This is fine because they are related and because it's very reasonable for someone looking for the article on D# to to type "D#", which for technical reasons redirects to "D". But suppose they were looking for the article on Disneyland. Would they they expect to find a hatnote to Disneyland in the article on "D"? Of course not. So why is this expected in the Wikipedia namespace? I know... it's because a shortcut exists and power users love shortcuts, to the point where they will try them without knowing where they lead. But I have to say, I'm not really interested in helping power users (the kind who spend hours a day on Wikipedia) to navigate with minimal keystrokes. I'm more interested in helping ordinary users who want to know what the heck "disambiguation" is supposed to mean. It's not at all helpful to these people to be told that a page on "Deletion policy" also exists. It's inconvenient, unhelpful, and confusing. It's stuff like this that made a new editor tell me that she didn't want to read any more Wikipedia help pages. It's just too much. Can't we let the power users who wanted "Deletion policy" figure out how to get there themselves, without providing a link that everyone else has to read? – Margin1522 (talk) 12:48, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
This "shortcut" (it's really a redirect) is not in mainspace, it's in project space. It was created early in Wikipedia's history specifically for editors. As such, it's in heavy use. Unlike redirects in article space, you can't just type "D" and get here. You have to type the prefix as well. It can't be compared to a redirect in mainspace. If you really want to try to get rid of it, take it up at WP:RFD. — Gorthian (talk) 18:55, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it's a kind of redirect. But it's usually called a shortcut if it appears in the {{shortcut}} box at the top of the page. I don't object to shortcuts. I've created a number of them myself. But I agree with the guideline that shortcut names should be descriptive, which "D" isn't. I also agree with the guideline that shortcuts should not appear in hatnotes. But that's OK. I've retired from arguments on Wikipedia. If someone objects to something I want to do, I don't do it. – Margin1522 (talk) 02:41, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguative redirection?

@R'n'B and Bkonrad: (re Publius Decius Mus (disambiguation) and Publius Decius Mus).

I did a bunch of cleanup because Decius Mus and the two wikilinks above were duplicative. They now redirect to Decia (gens)#Decii Mures, which in function is close to a disambiguation page while avoiding redundancy.

Given that anyone targetting Publius Decius Mus and Decius Mus should almost certainly have linked to either Publius Decius Mus (consul 340 BC), Publius Decius Mus (consul 312 BC) or Publius Decius Mus (consul 279 BC) instead, is there a way to tag them -- with disambiguation or otherwise -- so that DPL Bot or similar will flag an editor who's targetted them? I couldn't find anything explicitly on this.

Thanks, ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 03:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Disambiguation and inherently ambiguous titles

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Per WP:Disambiguation, Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead. Ambiguity can occur between articles with totally dissimilar titles. There seems to be no consensus about altering titles that do not strictly collide, so no consensus on the proposed guideline text. Other possible responses to ambiguity include disambiguation pages and WP:DABLINKS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhoark (talk • contribs) 03:53, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

The question on the table is, generally

What guidance should WP:Disambiguation give for article titles that do not result in a conflict between two or more articles, but which may not be inherently unambiguous to a general audience?

and specifically, which of these passages is preferred in the rule (the bolded text is just to highlight the addition, not intended to be bolded in the actual rule):

  1. Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous—when it refers to more than one topic covered by Wikipedia. (A "topic covered by Wikipedia" is either the main subject of an article, or a minor subject covered by an article in addition to the article's main subject.) For example, the word "Mercury" can refer to a chemical element, a planet, a Roman god, and many other things.
  2. Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous. This is most often when it refers to more than one topic covered by Wikipedia, either as the main topic of an article, or a subtopic covered by an article in addition to the article's main subject. For example, the word "Mercury" can refer to a chemical element, a planet, a Roman god, and many other things. Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles.

and the bolded section is called the "additional guidance" for the purposes of discussion. Herostratus (talk) 17:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Old business

There's been discussions on this in various places, but there has not been a formal RfC placed on this page (AFAIK), so that's what we're doing here -- making an RfC that someone will close with a binding decision.

The previous thread is here, and here's a summary/headcount of the old discussion, hoping I have categorized everyone correctly. I've done my best and I got you wrong (or you've changed your mind) just strike through your entry and make your vote in the New Business section below.

  • User:Jayron32 -- Oppose additional guidance. "Parenthetical notes in an article title... should only be used to distinguish between multiple articles with the same title." (Position on non-parenthetical disambiguation such as comma-delimited not stated. Did point out "The world, and the things in it, exist outside of your consciousness" which is useful to remember.)
  • User:Dohn joe -- Oppose additional guidance. Can of worms, asking for unintended consequences. Redirects work fine for the unusual cases. "Regular WP:DAB questions should be asked of any title. Those questions should not include 'Doesn't that kind of sound like something else?'" (Projects are allowed to develop naming conventions, and if they want to do this, fine -- for them.)
  • User:DoctorKubla -- Oppose additional guidance. "WP:DAB was created to address a very specific situation – what to do when two or more articles share the same name. Everything else is covered by WP:AT..."
  • User:Seav -- Oppose additional guidance. "I've always understood the WP:DAB guideline to only apply whenever two or more articles have ambiguous titles, and not merely because a non-ambiguous title sounds ambiguous. So such additional guidance that touches singularly on precision should be placed into WP:AT [if anywhere], where a more holistic look at the 5 criteria of good article titles should lead to better titles."
  • User:Born2cycle -- Oppose additional guidance. "WP:DISAMBIGUATION has always been, and should always remain, limited to situations where two or more actual articles on WP share the same WP:COMMONNAME"... "When no actual ambiguities exist between actual WP article titles, then there is no need for WP:DISAMBIGUATION. Period." Do not conflate the dictionary term disambiguation with what we mean by it in our specialized environment here.
  • User:Andrew Davidson -- Oppose additional guidance. User's entire comment was "Delete [the additional guidance] per WP:IAR and WP:CREEP. It generally doesn't matter what the exact title of an article is and arguing about such titles is disruptive". [I'm forced to guess his actual position and I don't know what the IAR reference is about, but it seems be that he'd welcome a clear rule only allowing disambiguation in narrow clearly-defined circumstances, to avoid arguments. And his bolded vote was to delete the additional guidance -- ed.]
  • User:Calidum -- Oppose additional guidance. "Disambiguation was intended only to be used where multiple articles shared the same name... unnecessary disambiguation shouldn't be promoted."
  • User:Tavix -- Oppose additional guidance. Agreeing with User:DoctorKubla that "WP:DAB was created to address a very specific situation – what to do when two or more articles share the same name."
  • User:BD2412 -- Oppose additional guidance. At any rate not here. "If there should be guidance of this sort at WP:AT, that is a different discussion".
  • User:Francis Schonken -- Oppose additional guidance. "This is WP:AT matter, not WP:Disambiguation matter. A general 'non-disambiguating disambiguator' guidance is not a good idea: it didn't get accepted at WP:AT (see ample prior discussion), not a good idea to insert some WP:AT-conflicting guidance into the WP:Disambiguation guideline.
  • User:SMcCandlish -- Support additional guidance. It "describes actual practice at WP:Requested moves for 15 years, and actual requirements of various naming conventions (e.g. WP:USPLACE)"...disambiguation means "to resolve ambiguity"... overemphasis on conciseness in titles is uncalled for. The new guidance was in for eight months and is therefore the stable version, and "This RfC..., would reverse much longer-standing portions of multiple stable naming conventions like WP:USPLACE and WP:USSTATION, just for starters, yet none of the affected pages were notified" (User:SMcCandlish had other arguments particularly on semantics which I won't summarize here, see the original discussion for details.)
  • User:Dicklyon -- Support additional guidance. "Disambiguation of this 'unnecessary' sort is used, widely, in Wikipedia, and is even encouraged in various naming guidelines. Those who argue against this use of disambiguation... put zero value on precision". A certain editor has been on a decades-long crusade to valorize conciseness -- the shortest possible title that does not have a name conflict -- above all else and this is part of that.
  • User:Sminthopsis84 -- Support additional guidance. [N.B.: this editor voted as "Oppose new guidance" but the body of his remarks indicates that this was a mistake borne of confusion -- ed.] "A recent example of a too-short page title that I came across was Hybrid name, which I moved to Hybrid name (botany)" because the talk page indicated confusion on the part of some readers.
  • User:Iryna Harpy -- Support additional guidance. It's the stable version and there's nothing wrong with it.
  • User:Otr500 -- Support additional guidance. It's the stable version and this entire discussion is born of edit wars and is not formatted or placed properly and is non-operative... "I am in support of retaining what is on the page because we can not right an error by a wrong procedure". [Which correct procedure is now taking place here -- ed.] On the merits, "Support for the below mentioned Flemish Giant over Flemish Giant rabbit has proven in many article discussions to be against consensus... It has become practice (like it or not) to clarify titles like this... Adding clarity so that new articles can follow accepted practice without large debates is not a bad thing".
  • User:SmokeyJoe -- Support additional guidance. "If inclusion of a parenthetical term helps, it should be used." We're not here to overreach on conciseness at the expense of the reader.
  • User: RGloucester -- Support additional guidance. "A title like "Flemish Giant" benefits no one. Most importantly, it does not benefit the reader, because it does not clearly define the subject. Shorter titles are not always better."
  • User:Tony1 -- Support additional guidance. "There has been a reluctance among some of the players to see disambiguation in terms of our readers" rather than a theoretical exercise.
  • User talk:EEng -- Support additional guidance. "I once was in an argument over Memorial Hall (Harvard University). This other editor said it should be simply Memorial Hall since, at that moment, no other Memorial Hall had an article -- and apparently guidelines supported that knuckleheaded approach. Anything that remedies that would be welcome."
  • User:BushelCandle -- Support additional guidance. "This is useful guidance to editors in encouraging a better and less frustrating experience for our readers."
  • User talk:No such user -- Support additional guidance. Also irked by Memorial Hall type situations. "Case-by-case examination is always welcome, but we do not apply WP:CONCISE at all costs."
  • User:Huwmanbeing -- Support additional guidance. "Some titles may be ambiguous or likely to confuse a reader even if they don't exactly match any other titles... I understand that some prefer the term disambiguation to be defined more narrowly as just the mechanical process of distinguishing between otherwise identical Wikipedia titles, but I don't think that's particularly useful."
  • User:Pincrete -- Support additional guidance. "What useful purpose is served by inherently ambiguous titles, even when this is the sole article?"
  • User:Insertcleverphrasehere -- Support additional guidance. "Why would we remove relevant information that helps users..."
  • User:Bkonrad -- Support additional guidance. "There are situations where reduction of ambiguity is desirable even though there may be only one article with the title... we should not prohibit this."
  • User:Shinyapple -- Unclear. "The simplest thing to do would be to change the names." [[Not clear what he means by that. -- ed.]
  • User:David Tornheim -- Unclear. [Pretty much entire comment was a non sequiter... I honestly don't know what his point his. FWIW he did vote "no guidance" but it's just not clear what he wants. -- ed.]

FWIW by my count I get:

  • 10 of the Oppose additional guidance pursuasion
  • 15 of the Support additional guidance pursuasion

and for the purposes of headcount I'd request the closer to fold them into the total.

New business (the actual RfC)

Again, the question on the table is whether to include the additional guidance "Disambiguation may also be applied to a title that inherently lacks precision and would be likely to confuse readers if it is not clarified, even it does not presently result in a titling conflict between two or more articles." in WP:Disambiguation.

Support additional guidance

People who "voted" in the previous discussion don't need to vote again here. You'd probably be better writing in the "Threaded discussion" section below. If you must make a top-level comment here please use "Comment" to characterize your contribution to avoid being counted twice. (But if your "vote" was mischaracterized above strike it out there and make a new one here.)
  • Support – This would help resolve the current debate at Talk:Luxembourg (Belgium)#Requested move 6 July 2016 where the "Luxembourg" name can represent any of 5 administrative divisions (city, canton, district, Grand Duchy and Belgian province), all in the same geographical area, but one of them in a neighbouring country. The additional guideline would help editors accept a move to Luxembourg (Belgian province) instead of just Luxembourg (province) as neighbouring Namur (province) and Liège (province) or Luxembourg (Belgium) as now. — JFG talk 23:28, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oops, I certainly "support", but apparently I told this story before... They say the memory goes first... Support I once had an idiotic dispute with someone who insisted on renaming Annenberg Hall (Harvard University) to just Annenberg Hall because no other Annenberg Halls had articles at that moment -- even though there are clearly other notable Annenberg Halls that would certainly have articles sooner or later. EEng 05:26, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Support. Additional guidance can be helpful for the people who are really interested in an uncommon usage of the article's title. For relatively uncontroversial disambiguations, a search should redirect to the most common meaning of the title, with a link to the disambiguation page at the top. Mooseandbruce1 (talk) 07:19, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Oppose additional guidance

People who "voted" in the previous discussion don't need to vote again here. You'd probably be better writing in the "Threaded discussion" section below. If you must make a top-level comment here please use "Comment" to characterize your contribution to avoid being counted twice. (But if your "vote" was mischaracterized above strike it out there and make a new one here.)
  • Oppose. As the launcher of the much-derided previous RFC, I bear much of the blame for continuing the confusion around this issue, which was contrary to my intention of bringing some stability to WP:DAB on this point. But re-adding this text to the lead (without consensus on the full explanation which should appear in the body of the guideline) is only going to make things worse. Specifically, I don't think there is any clarity on what "articles which inherently lack precision" means, as MOS:PRECISION is defined in terms of distinguishing a topic from others. Many titles don't convey what sort of thing they are about to someone unfamiliar with the subject area (e.g., Hemistich, Klewang, Felguk). Should these all have parenthetical information to clarify their subject area? Or do we mean to address only those titles that might be specifically misleading or confusing for some reason? Either way, it's an issue that should be dealt with by proposing a revision to MOS:PRECISION.--Trystan (talk) 19:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Shorter is better per WP:CREEP. We don't need to be told to do so, to add the disambiguators that are legitimately needed to reduce reader confusion, and telling us to do so is likely to lead to all sorts of pointless gnomery and cruft as editors try adding them to pages that don't need disambiguation. Or do we really want to change this guideline to Wikipedia:Disambiguation (fixing confusing article titles) to help out readers who might be put off by sesquipedalian titles or who might think it refers to using vague language in article text? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:17, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose: this leaves too much scope for every film, album, novel with a title which looks like a placename, a personal name, etc to be given a disambiguation. And then to not be linked from the base name. And then for a duplicate article to be created later. Editors creating articles with disambiguated titles very often forget to make the title linkable from a dab page or hatnote: in cases of unnecessary disambiguation this will be even more likely. Keep titles simple: don't disambiguate unless necessary to distinguish. PamD 18:18, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This opens up a whole new front for pointless debates on whether something is "likely" to confuse readers or is fine the way it is. From experience, near any title is likely to confuse at least one person; we don't need this fact to be formalized in our guidelines and keep wasting time on resolving problems which ultimately cannot be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. In all, if a tile explicitly ambiguous, disambiguate it; if not, leave it alone. Keep it simple.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 5, 2016; 13:13 (UTC)
  • Oppose Violates WP:CONCISE. Pppery (talk) 13:53, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

Which maybe this would be best used by newcomers to the issue. The "old regulars" have stated their points in detail in the previous discussion, summarized above. Please be reasonably concise.

Looking thru the previous discussion, it seems to me that here are really three camps:

  1. Support the additional guidance
  2. Oppose the additional guidance
  3. No opinion (necessarily), but if done should be done at WP:AT.

Camps 2 and 3 perforce are both opposed (to guidance here). I don't have a point I'm just noting this. Herostratus (talk) 17:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Ambiguous wording

"Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead."

This and some other places here and in MOSDAB leave an impression that, e.g., the dab page, e.g, Mouth (disambiguation) must contain entry Mouth to Mouth (TV series), because "there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word mouth might be expected to lead.".

IMO everywhere the language must say clearly everywhere that dab lists are for subjects which may be called in the same way. Otherwise every stubborn newcomer with start arguing for turning his favorite dab page into the list of all phrases with this word, arguing, e.g., that he remembers only a single word from the song title, and hence this is what "a reader might search". Staszek Lem (talk) 19:17, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Have you seen instances of disputes involving this interpretation? When I run across a dab page interpreted overly broadly, I usually trim it down. I've not yet had a dispute over my removals. — Gorthian (talk) 00:23, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Maybe we could have at a more realistic example: Cryan (disambiguation). It has only a single entry (Cryan) and a "see also" section containing five items that could be confused with the title (most of which were added after the dab was prodded). Now, these five items might not be very plausible but assuming for the sake of argument that they all are, then the question is whether this dab page is a proper one. If we take a dab page to be just a list of entries with the same name, then it is useless. On the other hand, if a disambiguation page serves as a search aid (and this is the wording at the very top of WP:DAB), then this dab page is needed. If it didn't exist, the same purpose would have been served by {{distinguish}} hatnotes, and five entries would be too much for a hatnote. Uanfala (talk) 10:24, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
I merged Cryan (disambiguation) and Kryan (disambiguation) to create a dab with enough items to justify itself. The items weren't correctly placed in Cryan as See also items as they are title matches rather than related topic items. Regards Widefox; talk 16:54, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
Ack, I just responded to Uanfala at Talk:Cryan as to why I did that. That being said, that solution should work too... -- Tavix (talk) 16:57, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Negative parentheticals

I'd like to see a policy statement on the project page somewhere about the use of negative parentheticals in article titles for disambiguation: whether they're allowable (I think not) or when (if so). I came across a page like that, and tried to find an applicable guideline governing this, but was unable to. Can we have a discussion about whether and when a negative parenthetical for disambiguation is allowable?

Example:

I feel that the title of Defence in depth (non-military) is wrong due to the negative parenthetical, but I can't find a specific guideline about it. (I could try to lean on the general statements in WP:TITLE about 'naturalness', 'conciseness', etc., but if I got strong pushback I'd be on thin ice.) The negative was intended here, I surmise, in order to distinguish the article from the more narrowly focused article about military defense entitled Defence in depth.

In this case, I feel that the latter article should probably have been Defence in depth (military) and the former just Defence in depth (or maybe even repurposed to Defence in depth (disambiguation)) but I'm looking for a guideline for the general case that I can apply.

I tend to think there should never be a negative parenthetical, and that it indicates a confused structuring of some similarly-named articles that ought to have been done differently, leaving no need for the negative as a broad catch-all. Perhaps in rare cases where a negative is actually used in the domain by domain experts, there might be an exception; for example (I'm making this up): Vertebrates (flying) and Vertebrates (non-flying) but only where we have reliable sources for it, and not just because an editor came up with it as a method that seems to work for them.

What say ye? Mathglot (talk) 01:15, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

A related question is what to do when (as in the case of Defence in depth), the narrower meaning is the primary topic. How should the broad one be disambiguated? Uanfala (talk) 08:21, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
The negative parenthetical is a sign that the article is either a broken disambiguation or broad-concept page. Editors have to decide which: either Defence in depth (non-military) needs to be rewritten as a proper concise dab page Defence in depth (disambiguation) with some of the content being sent to new disambiguated articles, or Defence in depth (non-military) is a broad concept that needs to be expanded to include military usage, and hence Defence in depth needs to be moved to Defence in depth (military). Note, also, that Defence-in-depth (Roman military) exists, but is unlinked. Hope this helps. —hike395 (talk) 19:00, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
I've no opinion on the matter, but this really is more a question for WP:AT or the naming conventions for a specific subject area. WP:Disambiguation is not really that concerned with what form the disambiguator takes. Yes, we may at times notice and fix irregular or non-standard disambiguators, but in general, the specific conventions are defined elsewhere. older ≠ wiser 19:29, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

WP:Primary footballer etc.

Is the current page clear enough that we don't have e.g. a primary John Smith (footballer) among many John Smith footballers, but that ambiguous (parenthetical) redirect to the dab page.? In ictu oculi (talk) 15:51, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

In general, I think it is. But it is not automatic. If one of these John Smiths had world-wide notability comparable to say Pelé while the other footballers were undistinguished second stringers, a case could be made for a primary topic, although that would a relatively uncommon exception. older ≠ wiser 16:11, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
@Bkonrad: thanks but that wasn't really my question, my question was whether the fact that we don't have primary footballer is clear enough. That's the general - in effect universal - situation, but would someone coming to the guideline realise that there is no such thing as a primary John Smith (footballer) among many John Smith footballers? We know it is the case, but is it clear that it is the case? In ictu oculi (talk) 17:20, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
Incidentally, I doubt we would have two articles Pelé (footballer) (that's only a primary redirect) vs Pelé (footballer, born 1987) In ictu oculi (talk) 17:23, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, I thought you were speaking hypothetically using John Smith (footballer) as a generic example, not specifically about the current state of things regarding that dab. Is WP:INCOMPLETEDAB not clear? And I only mentioned Pelé as example of a well-known sports person. I'm pretty sure I have seen cases where John Doe (footballer) or John Doe (golfer) was an article about (or redirect to) one particularly notable sportsperson while there were other significantly less notable persons in the same sport with different disambiguation (not unlike how Thriller (album) redirects to the Thriller (Michael Jackson album)). But none came to mind. older ≠ wiser 17:31, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
No problem; I was speaking hypothetically using John Smith (footballer) as a generic example, not specifically about the current state of things regarding that dab, since it is universal. I would have thought INCOMPLETEDAB is clear, but maybe people just aren't seeing it? I have not very boldly added {see also|WP:INCOMPLETEDAB} at the head of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC to encourage those who don't understand there is only one primary topic per term to read lower down on the page. This can be reverted if anyone is opposed to encouraging INCOMPLETEDAB to be consulted. In ictu oculi (talk) 18:02, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Grumpy old men (or women)

Wikipedia is no place for humour.
Everything is very serious here and we are all terrifically important.

One should beware of those who cannot or will not laugh when others are merry, for if not mentally defective they are spiteful, selfish or abnormally conceited ... Great men of all nations and of all times have possessed a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, as wisdom and wit are closely allied.

— Leander Hamilton McCormick, Characterology; an exact science embracing physiognomy, phrenology and pathognomy, reconstructed, amplified and amalgamated ... (1920)

Dab (dance)


I'd like my esteemed fellow editors to opine on whether the image and caption seen at right (removed in this edit [22] as a "bad idea") should be restored to this page, bearing in mind that project-space pages routinely incorporate images (humorous or otherwise) to break the monotony, raise editor spirits, make the material more memorable, and so on. See e.g. WP:CRYSTALBALL, WP:Vandalism#How_not_to_respond_to_vandalism, WP:Civility#Avoiding_incivility, WP:OR, WP:NOTDICT. EEng 18:25, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

So true. In fact, science has proven that one smile every eight hours will keep three doctors away! EEng 15:38, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
All the pages linked above are policy pages, not "ephemera". There's nothing "in" about the joke. EEng 19:47, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
Except in all those pages the images actually illustrate something meaningful in regards to the page. I have no idea what this image is supposed to illustrate. older ≠ wiser 20:33, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
If you don't get it I guess you just don't get it. The real question, then, is whether you want to deny this iota of pleasure to those who do, even if you don't. EEng 20:43, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
If I don't get it, what is the first-time visitor going to make of it? Especially since the term "dab" isn't even very clearly explained anywhere. It's an in-joke and if all it contributes to the page is some amusement for those in on the joke, I don't see it as having any place on the page. I mean, if it even remotely illustrated some meaningful aspect of disambiguation, it might be worth considering, but as it is, no. older ≠ wiser 20:49, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Odd examples of criteria we don't use

In Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Determining a primary topic, the example given for the last of the criteria we don't use seems to me to be for an instance when they could have been applied:

  • If a topic has only ascended to widespread notability and prominence recently (ISIS does not take the reader to an article on an Egyptian goddess)

Should this have other examples? Something of recent notability that isn't the primary topic (e.g., Muse vs. Muse (band))? -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:06, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Both the third and fourth bullets are a bit unclear, though I agree the fourth is especially so. These were add by @Red Slash: in this series of edits. Both the last two bullets seem to give examples (House of Lords and ISIS) that are in direct contrast to the point being asserted (both have a primary topic despite the criteria). I think in all the criteria there could be examples and counterexamples that would better illustrate these criteria are not by themselves definitive but may apply on a case-by-case basis. older ≠ wiser 14:30, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Set-index articles as primary topic

Should Set-Index Articles be allowed as the primary topic? A simple query, quarry:query/13668, shows that we have 700+ of these. There was prior discussion in 2012. Any moves will require an admin. — Dispenser 16:14, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Why not? They are not disambiguation pages, and part of the rationale for them being unlike disambiguation pages was that sometimes it is appropriate to link to the set index (that is, there is no assumption that links to set index page are incorrect and need to be disambiguated). older ≠ wiser 16:31, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
A question of default linking. For example, Murphy is the name of several towns, books, and companies. — Dispenser 16:47, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
How is it different than with any primary topic? That is a fundamental issue with primary topics -- they obscure mistaken links that should be disambiguated. But in determining there is a primary topic, these mistaken links are considered as less harmful than having a disambiguation page at the base name. older ≠ wiser 16:59, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Primary topic for testosterone

Hi, all. Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Testosterone (hormone)#Proposed split. I weighed in at Talk:Testosterone (hormone)#Protest, which is an aspect of it. There is concern that the WP:Primary topic guideline is not being followed in this case. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:22, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Flyer22 Reborn, part of the discussion is continuing at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#Testosterone. I posted there to get help with disambiguating all those links, and discussion about how to figure out the primary topic started up again there. — Gorthian (talk) 01:44, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Gorthian, WP:Med is on my watchlist. Judging by the comments in the aforementioned discussion at Talk:Testosterone (hormone), I was sure, without even checking, that WP:Med had been alerted to the matter. I see no need for me to comment there on the issue. So far, I've commented in two spots at Talk:Testosterone (hormone), including the Talk:Testosterone (hormone)#Proposal spot. But I will go ahead and note at WP:Med that I disagree with moving testosterone from the hormone focus. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:53, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Cooking plantain

There is an ongoing DAB discussion on the Talk Page. I've commented, but think that input from other WP:DAB members could be helpful. Narky Blert (talk) 00:25, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

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