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List of disambig-related bugs at BugZilla

How many disambig "articles" exist?

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Here's a thought: exactly how many disambig "articles" are there? Does anyone know a way to find out? — Jack · talk · 02:38, Monday, 16 April 2007

Based on a quick check of the three main disambiguation templates using whatlinkshere, I'd estimate about 100,000. I don't know if there's a more precise method of finding out; if there isn't, that is more reason why disambiguation pages should have a unique marker. Punctured Bicycle 03:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Special:Mostlinkedcategories. 79 072 for today. Mashiah 11:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]


What was the proposal being voted on? A vote to implement WHAT? (i.e. where did this come from?) (John User:Jwy talk) 00:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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.


Voting to implement

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If you wish, feel free to add your name below, and state why you agree/disagree with asking developers to implement this proposal:

Agree

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Disagree

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  • Disagree
    1. WP:WIAA already indicates that dabs aren't articles;
    2. the #REDIRECT is a command, not a "not-an-article" indicator (see WP:R);
      Besides, we already have them tagged with a {{disambig}} template. Why not use that? - Mgm|(talk) 10:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    3. and I am skeptical that simply adding "#DISAMBIG at the top of an article would keep the Special:Statistics software from picking it up.
    If the stats software can (be updated to) recognize a tag as a dab (probably needs to be discussed at WP:STAT), that tag should be added once to {{disambig}}, not individually to all the dab pages. -- JHunterJ 17:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    In response to your first point, I think you misunderstood. The ultimate aim is to teach that point to the software, not to us users. — Jack · talk · 03:50, Monday, 16 April 2007
    I didn't misunderstand, but perhaps the proposal is misworded. Point 1 counters "so shouldn't be classed as an article (see Wikipedia:What is an article?)" -- they aren't currently classed as articles; they're explicitly classed as non-articles. The statistics do not yet reflect this classification; if this proposal were solely "Wikipedia Statistics should not count disambiguation pages as articles", then my first point would not hold. -- JHunterJ 11:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree
    1. The points by JHunterJ, plus:
    2. Nobody was asked if they thought disambiguation pages in Special:Random were useful; they are useful to me, as it is a way to find faulty dab pages. I wish it were otherwise, but they DO contain article information, which I then move to the correct place, and other faults are also corrected. If I hover over the "Random article" button, it says "Load a random page", and that would include disambiguation pages. We just need to fix the button itself to say "Random page"   ;-)   Chris the speller 03:08, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That could be easily fixed (edit mediawiki:sidebar), but then it would imply the specialpage can call up any page on Wikipedia; which would certainly be a Bad ThingJack · talk · 03:50, Monday, 16 April 2007
If disambiguation pages were distinguished from normal articles like redirects, then a function like Special:Randomredirect for dab pages could presumably be created. Punctured Bicycle 03:53, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds good :) also, Chris, if you like cleaning up disambigs, you should try Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Disambig-cleanupJack · talk · 04:03, Monday, 16 April 2007
Thanks, but I don't have that much faith in editors who can flag 'em but not fix 'em. That's only one of the ways I find crummy dab pages. Chris the speller 04:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

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  • While I agree in general that it would be nice if the software could distinguish disambiguation pages and not include them in article counts and lonely pages, I think the suggested solution may be putting the cart before the horse. Simply placing #DISAMBIG at the top of every disambiguation page will do nothing until the developers implement software changes to recognize that. Some developers suggested that that might be possible, but that is a far cry from reality. I don't think I can support such a specific solution without clearer indications from developers that this is the best approach. I could support the proposal if it were limited to identifying this as a problem that should be addressed. olderwiser 18:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • In addition to just articles counting there are several problems related to orphaned pages recognition posted on bugzilla.wikimedia.org, see this for example. Mashiah 22:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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.

Bugzilla

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Another Idea

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Another idea would to have Disambiguation:Titlename, instead of Article (Disambiguation) and have everything from the Disambiguation: namespace to not count as articles. It would take a little work to rename everything, but it is better than nothing.Tavix (talk) 18:13, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The #DISAMBIG command could then be used to redirect to/transclude the article in the "Disambiguation" namespace... or something. SharkD (talk) 20:46, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Solution section out of date

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Discussion of dab pages at WT:Proposed deletion

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It seems this has some bearing on a discussion on the applicability of WP:PROD to dab pages - the discussion can be found at WT:Proposed deletion. B.Wind (talk) 20:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of deletion of dab pages at WP:Village pump (policy)

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A proposal for removing dab pages from the purview of WP:PROD and extending WP:RfD to cover dab pages is now being discussed at Village Pump anybody so interested are encouraged to participate in the discussion. B.Wind (talk) 18:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]