Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links/New York villages within towns

Opening heading

We have dozens of disambig pages which essentially follow this pattern:

Schoharie, New York may refer to:

• Schoharie (town), New York, located in Schoharie County
• Schoharie (village), New York, located within the Town of Schoharie

Many links to such articles are merely references to someone having been born there or died there. It is rarely of any import that the subject was born in the village within the town, and not merely in the town. I propose that where an article references an event within an ambiguous place name of this type, this link should be fixed to point to the encompassing larger place. So long as we are referring to the Village of Foo which is within the Town of Foo, then it is correct to say that someone "from Foo" is from the "Town of Foo", irrespective of whether they are from the village within the town. I don't know how many ambiguous links this will clear up, but it should be more than a handful. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed the same issue as an obstacle in clearing some dab pages with links. Sounds reasonable to use the town, as long as it is verified the village is in fact inside the town. --doncram (talk) 16:52, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I think people have been doing this in an unofficial capacity anyways. Full support from me. --JaGa^talk 18:23, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, need to be careful when the village in not in one town like Wappingers Falls, New York. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:24, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree that care must be taken. Usually it says in the disambig page whether the village is inside or adjacent to the town. bd2412 T 18:42, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Come to think of it, if we have an instance where "Foo, New York" is a town and also a village completely within that town, or the like, and we use that as a basis for pointing ambiguous links to the encompassing body, wouldn't that make the encompassing body the primary topic, where the article should sit? bd2412 T 11:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yerg, I hadn't thought of that. And don't forget WP:TWODABS. So it's possible the entire system of town/village NY dabs is contrary to our guidelines and should be taken out. --JaGa^talk 12:49, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm rustling up a survey of these pages to get a grasp of just how big an issue this is. bd2412 T 13:18, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to User:R'n'B, we have Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/New York disambiguation report. I have just begun sorting these out, but there are about 240 pages for ambiguous "Foo, New York" names, and so far about three fifths are two-link pages for a village or similar subsidiary unit contained entirely within a town of the same name. Collectively, these likely account for a few thousand currently ambiguous links. It shouldn't take more than a few days to check the entire list and separate out all pages falling into this pattern. However, I think we have enough information to decide what our policy should be as to these pages, and my opinion is that the encompassing unit should be treated as the primary topic. bd2412 T 13:39, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's possible to make a general decision without considering context. In some cases the village is the primary populated urban center and the town a relatively less populated administrative region. I'd suspect people would likely think of the village before the town (so far as anyone is likely to think of such things at all). In other cases, the town may be more densely populated overall and the village merely one population center among many. In such cases the town would be more likely to predominate. In any case, there are many editors working on New York places. It might be judicious to solicit their input. older ≠ wiser 23:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

That is an entirely reasonable suggestion. bd2412 T 00:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've left a note at Wikipedia:WikiProject New York directing them to this discussion. I suppose I could also drop a note on each disambig talk page. I finished going through the list last night, and found about 140 pages following the pattern of only two links, one for the town and the other for the village contained completely within the town. There are a handful of other pages having just those two links plus a third option which would fall off significantly in terms of plausibly displacing a primary topic (for example, Marathon, New York also links the New York City Marathon, and Gouverneur, New York also links New Yorker Gouverneur Morris). Conversely, there are about a hundred links on the list which do not follow this pattern, although some of those could arguably have a town as a primary topic among the options listed. bd2412 T 17:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Having seen that note, I too like the idea of town as primary in most cases. If someone says a few such as Hempstead (village), New York, the largest of all NY villages, should be excepted, then it's one of the exceptional cases that can be handled case by case. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:38, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm somewhat indifferent to the proposal; however, I will say that it would make it more difficult to determine where disambiguation is needed. I currently find links to dab pages by using the "stub link threshold" preference, but this method won't work if the dab pages are changed to redirects. So, in the long term, this proposal is going to create more work for those devoted to disambiguation because your typical editor (such as myself) will link to an ambiguous location, see nothing wrong, and move on. – TMF 16:50, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

If we generally make the encompassing geographic unit the primary, this will not be an issue. The vast majority of articles linking to these pages only reference them for the purpose of a person being from a place, or a building or the like being located in a place. Someone who is "from" Schoharie (village), New York is, in fact, also "from" Schoharie (town), New York, in the same way that someone who is "from" South Beach is necessarily "from" Miami Beach. This proposal has evolved towards the position that the dab page won't be changed to a redirect at all, it will be changed to the primary topic (which WP:TWODABS encourages anyway). Absent specific evidence that the encompassed place should be considered the primary, the dab page will be moved to a "foo (disambiguation)" title and the page for the encompassing place will be moved to the current dab title. bd2412 T 17:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, I edit articles (roads) where the exact jurisdiction is an issue. While it is true that something in a village is also within a town, our road articles use the most specific jurisdiction. I'd be more open to this idea if people actively watched the incoming links to the "non-dabbed" form for articles that should be pointing to the other entity, but I doubt they will be. – TMF 17:52, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Surely you'd be in no worse of a position having a link to an encompassing jurisdiction than you would be having a link to a disambiguation page. bd2412 T 02:21, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Not in my opinion. Like I said above, at the present time I can tell that I've linked to a name that is used for both a town and a village or a hamlet, from where I can fix the link to point to the right location. If this is carried out, I won't be able to tell unless I actually follow the link. If people are open to increasing the amount of links requiring disambiguation (since most editors don't know which towns have identically-named locations with articles and thus won't fix the links where needed), then whatever, but I still think it's a bad idea. (Also, I don't see the point of moving the current dab pages to <location>, New York (disambiguation) - who's actually going to use the page?) – TMF 04:57, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Leaving the disambig links so that their presence will prompt someone to fix them sounds good in theory, but if it actually worked in practice, then we wouldn't have the thousands of links to these disambig pages that will be solved by conforming them to our TWODABS guideline. However, I can offer a much easier solution to your concern regarding the ability to catch those links. We have the complete list of pages to be fixed right here, only about 150 pages, and we can easily generate a report (or a monthly report, or similar series of regular reports) of incoming links to each of those pages, so you won't even have to search through those pages looking for the ambiguous links. Would that resolve your concerns? bd2412 T 13:36, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

It would if people don't violate WP:R2D and start replacing [[<location> (town), New York]] with [[<location>, New York]] en masse. If that happens, the report pretty much becomes meaningless. – TMF 02:39, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

We have the tools to deal with that too. For example, we can generate reports of newly added links. bd2412 T 02:55, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have the report separate newly-added links that are truly new from articles where the redirect was bypassed? – TMF 21:14, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll have to ask User:R'n'B, but so long as some algorithm can be generated by which a bot can parse those kinds of links, I don't see why not. bd2412 T 21:28, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure it can be done; the main issue is making sure that the task is specified unambiguously, so that the report that is generated is actually useful. It's not difficult at all to generate a list of articles that link to a given title, and only marginally more difficult to compare that to a list of articles that had such links at a given earlier date. (By the way, TMF, if you are relying on the stub link display to identify disambiguation pages, you are necessarily going to have both false positives and false negatives, since some disambig pages are long and some non-disambig articles are short.) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:49, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Re false positives: I'm well aware of that, but I've found that a good 80-90% of the highlighted links on New York road articles are/were dab pages. The long dab page issue never really came into play here since all of the NY location dab pages were short, which I guess led to this discussion in the first place. Anyway, since it seems like it's possible to generate a report in the manner I inquired about above, I guess I'm no longer opposed to this proposal. I'm still not necessarily for it, but I won't be opposed to it taking place. – TMF 22:13, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll work out the logistics over the next few days. Shouldn't be too difficult - get the automated new links report set up, move the current disambig pages to "foo (disambiguation) titles in case any intentional disambig links are necessary, and move the encompassing area to the main title with a hatnote to the other, except where there is evidence that the encompassed jurisdiction is the primary topic. bd2412 T 22:34, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The proposed convention would be convenient, but I am concerned that in the long term this convention may not be a good idea. Birthplace is of extreme importance to anyone researching family history, and for this purpose it may make a big difference whether someone is born in Town of X or Village of X. Also, the problem of place names in New York State goes beyond towns and villages: there are also cities and census designated places. See Tonawanda for one notable example. 66.167.45.150 (talk) 04:17, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Tonawanda is an example of a page that would not be addressed by this proposal, which is aimed solely at two-link disambig pages for which one disambig topic entirely physically encompasses the other. The concern about identifying correct birthplaces is not affected, as these links are already currently pointing to disambiguation pages, and not to the "correct" page reflecting the subject's place of birth. Since, in every instance, the moved page will be accompanied by a hatnote pointing to the other page (and the other page is typically mentioned early in the article for the encompassing area), users will have the same notification that there is an encompassed jurisdiction of the same name. bd2412 T 14:04, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

The pattern of village within town may apply now, but what about historically? I remain not comfortable with the premise that it is safe to edit incoming links to send them to the town article. What if the disambiguation page lists only town and village only because no one has yet expanded the list? It seems to me that an editor with ample experience fixing links to disambiguation pages can determine when it is safe, but I am not comfortable with the premise that this is safe enough to do by a bot or an editor without experience. 66.167.45.150 (talk) 21:16, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I plan to do this myself, being an editor with the type of experience you reference. As for the disambig pages potentially being expandable, I am not going to delete them, I am only going to move them to the "foo (disambiguation)" title, and move the page for the encompassing jurisdiction to the base page name now occupied by the disambiguation page. If new information arises later indicating that there is another meaning, things can be moved back with little fuss. bd2412 T 22:02, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. This is a plan to create ambiguity and error for the sake of an editor's convenience. This plan will increase the need to disambiguate incoming links to articles. Also, I am not persuaded by BD2412's claim to possess sufficient expertise. The real issue here is the excessive inclusion of biographical information about people of borderline notability. 66.167.45.150 (talk) 22:33, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I really can't give much credence to your evaluation of the situation, as you appear to have drawn a conclusion about my expertise without doing any research on the question. As it happens, I have been on this project for over five years, and have over 200,000 edits to show for it, in all areas of the encyclopedia up to and including helping bring articles from stubs to good article status. However, the lion's share of my edits, probably more than 100,000 of them, are in the area of disambiguation work. This includes simple disambig fixes, creating, moving, and fixing pages to match our policies, which these two-disambig pages do not, and prompting the creation of substantial subprojects (such as Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Disambiguation pages that link to disambiguation pages and Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Questionable redirects to disambiguation pages, and Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/from categories). The ambiguity which seems to concern you already exists, in that we already have thousands of incorrect links to these improper disambig pages, which can be fixed with the set of actions I have proposed. Whether the articles from which these links arise should be included, or should contain data such as place of birth, is an entirely different matter, and is frankly not the concern of the WP:DPL project. bd2412 T 00:12, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Again BD2412 argues (a) BD2412's plan is sound because (b) BD2412 has lots of edits. Alas, (a) does not follow from (b). Let's focus on the plan, okay? Correct, the ambiguity already exists, but the plan does not fix anything; the plan merely sweeps it under a rug, hiding ambiguous links among links that do intend to link to the town vs the village. Links to disambiguation pages are not "incorrect"; they are ambiguous. Ambiguous and incorrect are not the same. BD2412's plan is to wholesale convert ambiguous links into correct links and incorrect links, without knowing which ones are incorrect. This plan is contrary to the objectives of this WikiProject. 66.167.45.150 (talk) 02:02, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you are raising concerns now, when the discussion is long concluded and consensus in favor of this proposal has been reached. I will note, however, that I never argued from my experience until you questioned whether I had sufficient experience to disambiguate these links, which I have demonstrated to the satisfaction of any reasonable person that I do. The point of this discussion is that the link to the encompassing area is correct for all issues of where, for example, a subject was born. If the subject was born in the village of foo, which lies completely within the town of foo, then it is correct to say that the subject was born within the town of foo. This discussion was ongoing for weeks, and was made known on the talk page of every single affected page, and at Wikipedia:WikiProject New York. The clear consensus among those participating in this discussion - reached more than ten days ago - is to address this problem as proposed, as evidenced by the comments by User:Doncram, User:JaGa, and User:Jim.henderson. The only concern was raised by User:TwinsMetsFan, who has agreed that his concern will be satisfied by the generation of the appropriate report. The discussion is therefore essentially over, consensus has been reached, and a late mystery objection does not belay the fact that this proposal will be implemented once the requested report has been set up. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:40, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Status update: This project is underway, and going slowly, but without any mishaps. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:49, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

It is better to have links to disambiguation pages than to have links to articles that can be incorrect. Accuracy is important. The disambiguation pages located under the ambiguous name help to increase accuracy and correctness.

Links to dab pages are less of a problem than links to incorrect pages. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 11:37, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

• That is why this proposal was limited to pages for which the village is contained within the town. If you were to ask me where my couch is, I would say it is "in my living room"; I might be more specific and say it is in the northeast corner of my living room, but "in my living room" is a completely accurate response, and is as precise as any article that might link to it would need to be. We could, of course, jump arbitrarily to any level of precision, listing for example the various street addresses at which a notable person lived as a child, and indicating what quadrant of the house their bedroom was in, but we don't do this because too much precision clutters the article trivially, while sufficient detail to give the reader the big picture can almost always be found by merely identifying the general area where someone was born and raised. bd2412 T 14:04, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Strong concerns

I have serious concerns about this move, and I'm sorry I didn't know about it sooner. In many cases, the village is much more notable than the surrounding town, so I don't see much justification for making the town the primary topic. Powers ^T 00:43, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

To the extent that references to the town are intended to indicate the geographical origin of a person or thing, the town encompassing the village also encompasses that reference. bd2412 T 00:59, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of that. The problem is all of the other use cases, such as searches, non-origin links, and the like. Powers ^T 13:43, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

This is still not a situation that requires disambiguation, because these are virtually all WP:TWODABS situations, and the terms are always related. Suppose someone is looking for the village of Palmyra. Palmyra, New York was previously a disambig page, and is now the page for the town, but the village is linked right there in the lede. This is the case for every single one of these pages, so instead of making a first click to a page which lists town and village and a second click to the village from there, the searcher will make a first click to a page about the town which immediately mentions the village, and a second click to the village from there. I suppose we could make it even easier by putting a hatnote to the village in each article, which I wouldn't object to, but remember also that for those people searching for the town, or just looking for general information about the area (which is covered in the article on the town) they have already reached their destination on the first click. bd2412 T 17:36, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree WP:TWODABS applies, but I question the assignment of the town as primary in all cases. In some cases it might be; in others, it's probably not. Powers ^T 19:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that's a discussion to be had on the individual pages; although I continue to believe that if the town encompasses the village, it amounts to the same thing. bd2412 T 20:58, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

But now when I try to have a discussion on the individual pages, I'm told that "The issue of New York towns which contain villages of the same name was addressed at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/New York villages within towns." [1] You guys can't have it both ways; that's not fair. Powers ^T 02:09, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

The question of whether we should have two-link disambiguation pages is settled. The question of which entity - the village or the town - is the primary topic of the term is subject to discussion, and that discussion should occur on the talk pages for the entities involved. bd2412 T 03:23, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Well maybe all you people should get on the same page about that, because Zyxw clearly didn't get the memo. He/She used "this is settled" as his/her entire argument against moving Skaneateles. Another question is why you opposed. You didn't give a reason; you just "opposed". What was your reasoning? Do you really think that people searching for Skaneateles are more interested in the enormous rural township than they are in the quaint historic village? Powers ^T 21:51, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

For one thing, the request for a page move is usually accompanied by some evidence in the form of page views or external links discussing the primacy of the subject that is claimed to be the primary topic of the title. For another, the "quaint historic village" is geographically contained within the town, and is mentioned right there in the lede of that article. This discussion established a presumption that the encompassing geographic region was the primary topic of the entity name, and evidence is needed to overcome such a presumption. As you noted, there should also be a hatnote there, which I support. bd2412 T 23:02, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I didn't think it was necessary to provide evidence for something that should be painfully obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with the village. Powers ^T 22:14, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

When you propose a move on Wikipedia, you must be prepared to demonstrate its necessity to people from all over the world, who may never even have heard of a village in New York. bd2412 T 04:03, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Certainly, but that doesn't have to be via data. Universal agreement from those familiar with the topic is usually sufficient, as is a logical argument based on well-reasoned premises and conclusions. Powers ^T 17:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)