Wikipedia talk:Suggestions for disambiguation repair

Making batches more useful

If I make another batch of these, is there a way I can make it more useful? Are there cut-and-paste text that you could use for each entry? – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 00:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

For dab pages, drop the article before the description and drop in the birth and death years if the categories are present in the article. Also, If possible, entries should be ordered (not written) by last name, first, middle. That should make it possible it hit all of the folks headed towards the same dab page in a single pass. Burzmali 01:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

For moral support, it might be useful in each page to split up the names into groups of 5 or 10, kind of like what the red link recovery wikiproject or stubsensor does. This way, I would feel like I accomplished something when I do a set of names (and be more encouraged to return and do some more). It feels a bit demoralizing when I finish 10 names in a page and then realize that there's 80 or so more to go. Thanks, Lisatwo 16:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Hallo, Q, You asked me for any thoughts: here goes.

Nice idea from Lisatwo about mini-files - there'd be a sense of achievement in doing a whole file of 10 entries.

I followed the link from the Community Portal, Fixup projects, to this "Name disambiguation", but I'm a bit disappointed to find that it's all based around U.S. politicians, in whom I don't take a lot of interest! Isn't there scope for a global biographical-article disambiguation project?

In doing the dabs I've done, I've done a "Search" on the forename + surname to find other folk who also need to be dabbed, and this has made it feel more worthwhile, so you might like to suggest that to editors who want to join in.

A handy shortcut to WP:hatnote might be useful, as a reminder of the various variations which can be used. Also to WP:MOSDAB for content and layout of dab pages, as a reminder, and a reminder about "hndis".

I don't actually know what MOS or anything else specifies for

(a) how to format an entry on the "Joe Bloggs" dab page for "Fred Smith", also known as "Joe Bloggs", if the article name is "Fred Smith", or

(b) the approved order for names on a dab page where there is "Joe Bloggs (something", "Joe Bloggs (other thing)", "Joe A. Bloggs (born 1980)", "Joe Z. Bloggs (born 1800)" -etc ie relative importance of initials/middle names, qualifying term in brackets, dates. (WP:MOSDAB says "In most cases, place the items in order of usage, with the most-used meanings appearing at the top and less common meanings below", but we don't usually know much about the meanings to assess that.)

I've improvised, possibly inconsistently, on the grounds that a nonstandard dab page is still more useful than a non-existent one! But if there are detailed guidelines on those issues, a link or a copy of them on the page would be helpful!

But perhaps I'm just displaying my ignorance here - and the project page does say "requires the attention of experienced editors"! PamD (talk) 18:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, all! I will definitely take these into consideration when I serve up the next batch. I will sort by last name, include birth and death years where available, and break the list into manageable sublists. I'll also include a link to search on the name with the click of a mouse. Also, the next batch will not be all U.S. politicians -- there will be artists, authors, scientists, etc., along with some politicians too.

As for your questions, Pam, they're not entirely worked out. For (a), I would say:

• Fred Smith (bassoonist) (1919 - 1932), called "Joe Bloggs" by his landlord

It's never a good idea to pipe dablinks though, such as [[Fred Smith (bassoonist)|Joe Bloggs]]. For (b), I really don't know. I tend to sort by birth year, when we know the birth years, except in obvious cases where one person is much more notable. I hope this helps! – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 18:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The hints for how to dab doesn't always follow the guidelines by WP:MOSDAB#People. E.g., it says to not use "a", "an", or "the" before people's occupations. I also got suggestions from a couple of editors. Please see these notes they left on my talk page: Dablinks and Unneccessasry dab links. --tess (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Weirdness of some entries

For example:

1. Lawton Chiles - U.S. Senator from Florida

• Lawton Mainor Chiles redirects to Lawton Chiles, which doesn't mention this person.

• Consider changing the rd to a dab, and adding {{otherpeople2|Lawton Mainor Chiles}} to both pages.
• If they're about the same person, use {{merge|Lawton Chiles}} and {{merge|Lawton Chiles}}

Tichborne disambiguation page needed

There is a need for a disambiguation page for Tichborne This is listed as a town in England, however there is also a town in New South Wales, Australia, with that name. There is a surname Tichborne. A number of notable historical Tichbornes are mentioned elsewhere in Wikipedia, and many descendants living all over the world have that name.

Can someone help? I'm sorry that I don't have the skills to create a disambiguation page.

Cheers, Atichborne 00:46, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. The Tichborne Case and Tichborne Dole are also quite interesting. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 22:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

dabs needed for names with distinguishers in brackets - "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)"

Would it be possible to produce a listing of articles named "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)" which are not linked, either directly or via a dab page, from the article at "Firstname Lastname"?

There are three situations which would be OK:

1. article at "Firstname Lastname" links to "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)", usually in a hatnote
2. article at "Firstname Lastname" links to "Firstname Lastname (disambiguation)", which includes "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)"
3. article at "Firstname Lastname" is itself a dab page which includes "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)"

But in rummaging around looking for extra people to include in dab pages along with the ones named in this project, I've several times found people with article title "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)" who aren't included in the appropriate dab pages or links. Some of our fellow-editors out there don't seem to have worked out how it all works. Sometimes two people have been given distinguishers nicely, but there's no page at the main name: yes, all the links from existing pages have been tidied to point to the right one of the two, but a reader looking for the name (or an editor about to create a new page for one of them!), will just type the name and find nothing. OK, so the "search" will often throw up the relevant answers, but it's not pretty.

So, there's a suggestion to add another tranche of work for this tidying-up project. I think it's just as important as clearing up all these people with middle initials, many of whom seem to be automatically generated from databases of U.S. office-holders. The pages with (distinguishers) have all been handcrafted (as far as I know!) - someone out there is interested enough to create a page for that individual and distinguish him or her from another similarly-named person!

This could perhaps also usefully extend to any articles with distinguishers in brackets - they should presumably all be linked from the undistinguished part of the title, in one of three ways listed above. I've done a bit recently with the various "Grand theatre" and "Grand hotel" entries - all good fun, lots to sort out - but there must be vast numbers of topics out there where the dab page doesn't include all the various "(novel)", "(Brighton)" or other bracketed versions of a title. Plenty to go on. PamD (talk) 13:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

PS I've just now found an entry in the lists which is indeed of this type (Peter Davison (poet)) - but I'm pretty sure I haven't seen one before! Are they such a tiny minority? I'd welcome a chance to work on them as a priority, if it was easy to split them off into a separate list in future. PamD (talk) 15:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

What next?

We've finished Batch 2! Well done, all of us. PamD (talk) 20:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation needed: Wali/Wāli

(not sure if this is the right place, but you can tell me where to go if not)

Wali and Wāli appear to need disambiguation. The Wali (= "friend") article has a disambig link to Wāli (= "governor"), but not vice versa, and the majority of the uses I find in a search that refer to a governor and should therefor link to Wāli are actually linked to Wali. Agricolae (talk) 23:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I've copied this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. --Tesscass (talk) 18:56, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Restarting this project?

Those who worked here previously may be interested in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Finding lists of surnames and User:Eugene van der Pijll/surnames, which is a start along those lines. Carcharoth (talk) 10:16, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Note that User:Eugene van der Pijll/surnames only covers surnames starting with an "A" in a small part of the database. Parsing the entire Wikipedia takes a lot of time. I will upload a new version of that page in a few weeks. This is what I expect to be able to do:

• Suggest entire disambiguation pages for surnames that do not have them
• Suggest additional links for existing disambiguation pages
• Create redirects from "Surname" to "Firstname Surname" when there is just one individual with that name

I will also take a look at other (non-name) disambiguation pages.

Suggestions for additional tasks would be welcome. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 12:17, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Creating the redirects when only one article exists is not always the best thing to do. Sometimes it is best for a human to search for other people with that surname, see how many redlinks exist in Wikipedia, and create a dab page with some redlinks instead. Difficult thing to judge, and not really something a bot can do. It should, though, create a list of possible redirects that might need creating (there will likely be a lot though). Unfortunately, all it takes is one enthusiastic person to redirect all the entries on that list. You might also be interested in the transclusion list of {{surname}}. We have between 5000 and 10,000 disambiguation pages for surnames (or with tagged sections on surnames). I've raised the hatnote for surname disambiguation issue at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Surname disambiguation and partial title matches. Carcharoth (talk) 13:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, though you talk about "dab pages for surnames", the folk over at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Surname seem quite clear that {{surname}} pages are not dab pages! I went over there to discuss the fact that Renyi had a surname tag but had been picked up and given a {{stub}} tag by AlaiBot as it didn't have a dab category assigned. More confusion.

I think what is most important, for personal names and other article titles, is that we make sure that every article name "xxx (yyy)" is linked, either by hatnote or dab page, from "xxx", whether "xxx (yyy)" is "Joe Bloggs (actor)" or "Pudsey (UK Parliament constituency)" or whatever. Also include "Joe Bloggs junior", "Joe Bloggs III", etc, so that anyone searching for the article who inputs "xxx" will find it. That's to help readers find WP articles, and to reduce duplication by ensuring that the editor about to create a new page can easily find the one which already exists with a bracketed disambiguator they hadn't thought of. Personally I think there should also be a link back from "xxx (yyy)" to "xxx", so that the person whose Google search has led them to the wrong wikipedia article (for a different sense of "xxx") can easily find the other options, but this view is against current policy!

A second priority would be, for personal names, to make sure that every name of the form "xxx yyy zzz" is linked from "xxx zzz",where "yyy" is middle name(s) and/or initial(s). (ie if you search for "Joe Bloggs" you get alerted to the existence of "Joe Marmaduke Bloggs" too).

Beyond that comes linking from surnames to full names. Wouldn't it be great if Wikipedia could produce a listing like Category:Living people, for all people (and with an index system more refined than the two letters of that listing)? Should be a doddle, technically: if a page has a "birth" or "death" category, or a category identified as within the "people" hierarchy, then give it a category of "people". Then produce that index, sorted by its sort key if it has one. Then provide a facility like {{lookfrom}} to give a single-click access to that listing, so that as one component of a dab page you can include a link to "people with the surname xxx". It might produce the occasional quirk, but would provide a really useful facility for people looking for someone whose surname they know (eg inventor, author, etc), where the surname is a common word so that searching on it doesn't work well (eg "Banks"). PamD (talk) 13:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Re the last point, I agree. A long time ago (it seems) I set up User:Carcharoth/List of living people compact index as an example. I would love it if that could be done with three letters (would be a bit large) and for all people. There are over 500,000 articles on people on Wikipedia now. Bringing order to all those articles is a mammoth task. Partly, you have to trust that eventually things will settle down and be consistent and ordered. Large parts are already, but aiming for complete order sometimes seems a bit ambitious! Carcharoth (talk) 14:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

As a real example, consider Ernest Smith. Yes, he's got a hatnote pointing to Tiger Smith, but what about Ernest Smith (1869), Ernest Smith (1888) and Ernest A. Smith, none of whom are linked. If a Bot could produce a listing of all "Ernest Smith (xxx)" and "Ernest xxx Smith" articles, then a human (yes, surely WikiGnomes are human!) could work away at producing a useful dab page to link them all together, with an {{otheruses}} hatnote on the gentleman who's the primary usage. PamD (talk) 14:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

My attempt at doing something similar to what Eugene is proposing is at User:Carcharoth/Surnames 1. That was produced from the transclusion list of {{surname}}, but is currently only the first 850 entires (A-B). There are also problems with names with diacritics, cos I lost information in a cut-n-paste stage. The full list I have is 5507 surnames (or pages with sections tagged as surname sections). I will be adding further pages to get the full list. I then looked at five surnames in a sequence. The surnames and the changes are: Abernathy change, Abicht no change, Abildgaard no change, Ablett change, and Abney change. I also foolishly clicked on Buxton, and ended up finding nineteen (19) more Buxtons to add to Buxton (surname) change. As you might be able to tell from my edit summary for the last one, I was sick of doing this by that point. It is rather surprising though that so many surname lists or surname disambiguation pages or surname index pages (whatever you want to call them) are incomplete. Either new articles are coming in very fast, or the lists are not really complete (there are also non-notable people with vanity articles, but hopefully someone will send those to AfD at some point). Some of these surname lists are, of course, complete, but I suspect many are not. Does anyone think the type of page I've laid out is any use for tackling this sort of thing? At the moment, progress would be painfully slow. Some bot action, like Eugene suggested above, will be needed. Combined with some super-category. While I was doing this, about half and half of the "new" entries I found came from the "living people" category and half from the "WP search" link. Using the category entry, though, was much easier than the WP search results. The latter is difficult to read and check properly, while the category listing is simple and arranged alphabetically. I think it might be worth trying (again) to get a clean list of all articles about people, and separating them into those with a "DEFAULTSORT" key and those without, and then putting the ones with DEFAULTSORT in a super-category, and putting those without DEFAULTSORT into that super-category as they get DEFAULTSORT added to them. That would be a big step towards achieving a unified index for all biographical articles on Wikipedia, and would help immensely for surname pages and surname indices (the super-category would be the surname index!). I've tried to get something like this going before, and failed. Does anyone want to help this time round? What I really need is advice on how feasible it is, what problems there might be, what level of support there is for this, how and where to start, and which bits will be the most difficult. Does anyone have any advice? Carcharoth (talk) 23:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I have added the first page of a new task: creating disambiguation pages for surnames. take a look, tell me what you think, and I'll take that feedback into account when I upload the remaining pages.

PamD, I will be doing stuff like you suggest: taking care that each xxx (yyy) is linked from xxx in some way. You'll just have to be patient for a while; it's not an easy task. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 20:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Spiegelberg disambiguation

Although I have time nor experience to create such a page it would be a good idea to create a disambiguous page for Spiegelberg, one directing to the town in Germany and the other to Herbert Spiegelberg, the philosopher. The latter is not findable using the wikipedia 'go' search, because the town page shows up --85.145.121.149 (talk) 12:02, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Spiegelberg (surname) created and linked from Spiegelberg. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:44, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation for John Callcott

Presently, if one searches for the composer John Callcott, one is directed to the painter John Callcott Horsley. Could a disambiguation page be created, please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucubratio (talk • contribs) 08:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorted out with hatnotes and redirects. PamD (talk) 08:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

New batch of pages

I see we're back in action (probably bad news for my list of "off-Wiki things to get on with", but...). Couple of comments:

- Last time, I seem to remember there were useful links to "Pages starting with ....", and possibly to "Search ...", which sometimes found extra article to include in a dab.

- The first one I'm looking at has a David Adam and a David Adam (diplomat), and suggests that hatnotes could be added to both pages. I think a hatnote added to the second one would be quickly deleted by another editor (personally I think it helpful, but I understand the rules to be that you don't add a hatnote from a page which has a disambiguator, as no-one would get there accidentally). I've done this one by adding the hatnote to the former page, but perhaps the instructions should be changed to save people wasting work which will be undone by other editors? PamD (talk) 09:05, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• What happened to John Adamson (antiquary), which isn't mentioned? PamD (talk) 11:33, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Some comments are replies are at User talk:Quadell, for those interested. Some further replies:

• Regarding hatnotes, WP:MOSDAB has changed since the last time I made a DABbing batch. Certainly you should follow the current guidelines. I will change the bot to make correct suggestions in the future.
• The bot is quite limited in scope. It won't find many useful people that could be disambiguated. Sorry.
• The bot currently doesn't add links to a search or a "starts-with" (e.g. search "David Adam" and starts with "David Adam"). Would this be useful?
• The counts were previously incorrect. I've fixed those manually.
• PamD suggestion I put a blank line between entries, to help editors delete only one entry at a time. The trouble is, the # number character only works if there are no blank lines; blank lines would make it list each entry as (1). Would it be better to have bulleted (unnumbered) entries, with blank lines?

Thanks again for working on this! – Quadell ^(talk) 14:03, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• Re the blank lines - could you add an empty final bullet point, perhaps, which would appear in the code as pretty well a blank line, certainly a good divider, but not upset the counting?
• Another little point: I understand that we should be writing "(born 1952)" rather than "(b. 1952)" (see Wikipedia:Mosdab#People), so it would be good if that was right so we could copy and paste the suggested dab page entry.
• I'd certainly appreciate having the 2 searches available at the click of a mouse - if I'm sorting out a couple of people of same name I'd like to make the dab page / hatnote system as complete as can be while I'm at it.
• This is getting addictive again... PamD (talk) 16:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• Even more useful might be if we have an "intitle" search like this? That would find pretty much everthing needed for a dab page except for thinking imaginatively about forename abbreviations (Andy etc) and variant spellings (Davi(e)s)! PamD (talk) 16:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, for the next batch I create I will put in a dummy line with an empty bullet between entries... I will change it to say "born"... I will add the "intitle" search... and I will make it non-addictive. Well, except for that last one.

At the top of section 1 of Wikipedia:Suggestions for name disambiguation/J I have tried several different forms of dividers. (You have to edit the wiki code to see them.) Does anyone have an opinion about which is preferable? – Quadell ^(talk) 15:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

My vote goes for the one between Shirley Jackson and Edward James - nice and easy to point the mouse and swipe to highlight for deletion. PamD (talk) 00:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

For future reference, that means placing the following between entries.

#* <!--

-->

When the time comes, I'll need new categories to plow through, looking for names. Good categories would have lots of people, and would describe the person well for a dab page. For instance, Category:British paleontologists works great, since anyone in this category could be suitably described as a British paleontologist. Category:American lawyers doesn't work so well, since a large fraction of the people there are more notable for being something other than a lawyer (like a senator), and Category:1922 deaths is not very useful as a disambiguator. Does anyone have any suggestions for good categories? – Quadell ^(talk) 22:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• A couple more points about the instant dab entries: there shouldn't be spaces round the dash in the dates, and we don't need "a" or "an" - see examples at Wikipedia:Mosdab#People. Might as well get it right! Cheers, PamD (talk) 00:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• • You are correct on all points. – Quadell ^(talk) 18:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• Another potential improvement: I'd prefer the instant "otheruses4" hatnotes to have the first parameter null, not "x": I tend rarely to use it, so have to remove the "x", while anyone wanting to use it will have to type something in, marginally easier if they don't have to remove the "x" first. I don't know what other people feel about this? PamD (talk) 20:05, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

• • It works with a null? (goes and tests...) Well I'll be. Yes, I'll leave the x out. – Quadell ^(talk) 19:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

For the next batch...

Whenever this batch is done, the next batch will include the following:

• Sports players and politicians, just because there are a lot of them.
• Librarians, in honor of PamD
• Scifi authors, in honor of TessCass
• Paralympians and Medal of Honor recipients, in honor of jwilber
• Air Force generals, in honor of Mukk
• U.S. federal judges, in honor of Polbot
• miscellaneous other people

If you contribute to this project, and have a suggestion for a category to cover "in your honor", just let me know! – Quadell ^(talk) 02:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

...and American computer scientists, in honor of Hqb. Thanks, all! – Quadell ^(talk) 23:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

nicknames

Had a go at the pair on offer (Brian/Brien Taylor and McMahon) - not sure what's the best technique! Raises the interesting question of lots of other groups of names which might, or might not, need to be disambiguated together. I tend to include Peter/Pete, Michael/Mike(/Mick/Mickey/Micky), David/Dave, James/Jim/Jimmy, Robert/Bob, William/Bill/Billy/Will ... somehow it's almost always male names, though I suppose if I was disambiguating a Pam I'd look for Pamelas! Anne/Ann? Susan/Sue/Susie/Suzy? Sometime an integrated dab page, sometimes "See also" links to variant names (articles or dab pages). Not sure how far to go, not sure if there are appropriate guidelines anywhere! PamD (talk) 21:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

• Looking at the Geoff/Jeffs... you'd need to include Geoffrey and Jeffrey too. I don't think it matters that "Geoff Barnett (cricketer) doesn't mention Jeff Barnett", as we wouldn't provide a link to a Geoff Barnett or Geoff Barnett (disambiguation) from the disambiguated page, though perhaps the vice-versa matters more. It gets a bit complicated! I think all we could go for is that each base name article (ie Geoff Barnett, but not Geoff Barnett (cricketer)) should have either (1) a link to a dab page which includes all the variations, (2) a link to a dab page which links to other dab pages for the other variations, or (3) hatnote(s) to the other variants. PamD (talk) 22:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

• The Geoff Smith variants seem very well catered for by dab pages and linking SAs already, as an example. PamD (talk) 22:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad you're looking at these! Yes feedback would be helpful, and be as specific as possible. For instance "[This] shouldn't have been listed because..." is very useful. I'll do some more small comparisons, but I'll hold off on the BIG ones (Billy vs. William, Smyth vs. Smith) until I'm sure I'm doing it right. – Quadell ^(talk) 22:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

• I think it needs discussion in some wider forum (dab and/or names projects), before we launch into a big project on these. There are lots of cases: consider James/Jim/Jimmy Foo. For each of these the possibilities include:
  • There is no article (yet)
  • There is a redirect:
    • To one of the other variants (article)
    • To one of the other variants (dab page)
    • To a different name (Joe Bloggs, also known as Jim Foo)
  • There is a dab page (either with (disambiguation) in name or not)
    • Which may include several variations in the listing
    • Or may not include them but have "See also"s
    • Or may ignore them
  • There is an article (with or without hatnotes to point to other articles or dab pages)

(We can ignore Jim Foo (thingummy), on the assumption that he'll be linked from Jim Foo).

I think that covers most of the possibilities! We need to establish in which of these cases we ought to have hatnotes pointing elsewhere, and how to make sure that the dab pages are all comprehensive - or, how comprehensive they should be. And should those be "For", or "See also" or "Distinguish"? And can we do this with the help of a Bot, or as an AWB project? Etc. Got to go, but these are some overnight thoughts! PamD (talk) 08:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Sturdivant

Sturdivant is presently a redirect to Ephraim Sturdivant but there are also, at least, the following:

• Tom Sturdivant (a just-deceased former Yankee star, certainly better known than Ephraim--5700 Google hits to 238 for Ephraim)
• Sturdivant, Missouri
• Sturdivant Gang (111 Google hits)

• and perhaps Kaira Sturdivant Rouda

Thank you. --Arxiloxos (talk) 22:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, done. – Quadell ^(talk) 12:21, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The latest batch

The suggestions this time have been very comprehensive, and will improve a lot of pages. Most of what's left now is redirects, which people obviously feel less strongly about changing. However, at the present rate and with the present amount of users working on it, it will take several months to complete the As. For the next batch, it might be worth limiting the scope of the suggestions, just so that the most important issues get sorted, such as adding missing entries. I hate to say it, as the bot is great as it is, but there are so many disambiguation pages which need repair that we should think about prioritising, unless we can get some more editors on board. Personally, I would like to see a hndis page of suggestions, but just because that's the area I usually work on and I'd therefore be more motivated to complete these. What do people think? Boleyn2 (talk) 16:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's no problem. I could certainly limit the Bs to suggestions and such. – Quadell ^(talk) 16:46, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree: I'd like us to concentrate on the missing items (where Foo (whatnot) isn't linked fromFoo or Foo (disambiguation)). Redirects, pipings, excessive bluelinks, are trivial in comparison. I've had other stuff going on recently and haven't spent much time on this... in fact I keep promising myself to spend less time on Wikipedia, so might not contribute a whole lot to this useful project, but will pick up the odd page or two from time to time. PamD (talk) 21:56, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

More on nicknames

• Your "Ash/Ashe" people are a different category - not nicknames, but confusible surnames. Like Davies/Davis, Tailor/Taylor, and thousands of other pairs, trios, groups. Scope for another enormous linking project there, but it's a third project. First we've got the dabs we're working on; then the variant forenames, where one person may well be known as both Mick and Michael; then we've got surnames, where only one version is correct for any one person but there are variations which a reader might type in search box (or an ignorant editor might link from an article), which are easily confusible. Three separate scenarios, and trying to do it all at once might be a bit overpowering, unless we can sort out some way to get a bot to do most of the work!
• I found a Bryan to add to one of your Brien/Brian pairs.
• There are interesting issues about how far to link related/confusible names: Patrick, Pat, Paddy, Padraigh... ?
• Do we go for one core name in each family (eg Michael, James, Patrick)? Do we then get into sensitive areas of nationalism if we choose between Patrick and Padraigh, etc?
• There might be some mileage in drawing up a list of groups of names which ought ideally to be linked via dabs or hatnotes to allow for confusion, if we're going down this road at all seriously. Names project might be interested in working on it?
• In short, it's a real, fascinating, can of worms! PamD (talk) 22:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a big can of worms. Here are some thoughts I had when looking through these situations.

• We shouldn't disambiguate just because a name is somehow related, but only if there might be confusion.
• Redirects and dab pages are sisters. If a redirect would be appropriate at a name, and there's an article there already, then disambiguation is needed. If a redirect would not be useful somewhere, then disambiguation is not useful either.
• I have a bot that creates redirects, e.g. William Zloch -> William J. Zloch. But for article names that already exist, it puts it in the lists here for dab needed by humans. (A blind bot would be too error-prone.)
• It may seem like there's a difference between nicknames (Steve vs. Stephen) and confusable names (Steven vs. Stephen), but the more I look at it, the more the distinction blurs. James Breckenridge Speed sometimes spelled his middle name "Breckinridge" on official documents, so both forms are correct. Some people are actually named "Steve" or "Dan", not short for anything. Some Michaels never go by "Mike", and a redirect would be unhelpful. It seems to me that a redirect should exist wherever there's confusion about the name. Someone may type (or link to) "Steven Hawking", meaning Stephen Hawking, so the redirect (and dab entry) is proper. But (afaik) he never went by "Steve", so no one would link to that, and a redirect isn't needed.
• Margaret (name) has a variety of nicknames, including Meg, Rita, Gretchen, Peggy, and even Daisy... rds and dabs are only needed where there might be confusion. Should Margaret Lee include Peggy Lee? Only if someone might mistakenly guess that "Margaret Lee" was her proper name. (It's actually "Norma Deloris Egstrom" -- go figure.)
• When it comes to non-English names, there are all kinds of fun. A glance through Spanish naming customs and Arabic name will show just how difficult it can be. (Example: if Abdulazziz Alomari's father was named Muhammad, then he could be called "Abdulazziz bin Muhammad Alomari" just as well. And if Muhammad's father was Abdullah, then "Abdulazziz bin Muhammad bin Abdullah Alomari" would also be correct. You can go back literally as far as you need to, to fully disambiguate the guy. And then note that each name has many valid spellings -- it could just as well be "Abdul Aziz ibn Mohammed ibn Adb 'Allah al-Omari". Each Arabic name requires an army of redirects. Muammar al-Gaddafi, leader of Libya, famously had 37 different spellings in official publications, and that doesn't include scholarly transliterations like "Mu‘ammar al-Qaḏāfī" or official appelations like "Abu Minyar".
• It would be great for related projects (names? Biography? redirects?) to give input, to get some standardization on these issues. WP:MOSDAB isn't detailed enough by a long shot. – Quadell ^(talk) 21:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Partial disambiguations

I'm wondering what to do about partial disambiguations - like Antoniadi (crater) which doesn't appear in Antoniadi (disambiguation) but is actually a partial disambiguation page. The two items listed in it do appear in the main dab page. My inclination is to leave it alone... but then it will crop up in any future iterations of this listing. I've encountered one or two similar cases before, can't remember just what I did with them, but wondered what we ought to do: is there any way to flag up a non-problem so it doesn't get listed next time round? PamD (talk) 22:23, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the recommended practice is to redirect it to the main disambiguation and tag the redirect with {{R from incomplete disambiguation}}. If the main disambiguation is lengthy and has sections, the redirect could target a section. older ≠ wiser 23:01, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Barry Wood

There are now at least four different articles and a redirect page for different men named Barry Wood:

• Barry Wood with redirect page Barry Wood (cricketer)
• Barry Wood (football)
• Barry Wood (interior designer)
• Barry Wood (singer)

Currently there is just a hatnote at Barry Wood. Now that there are three other articles, the hatnote seems unwieldy; perhaps a disambiguation page would be preferable?

Thank you,--Arxiloxos (talk) 06:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done: Barry Wood (disambiguation) -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:56, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Ballymore

Hi, the list included Ballymore (Cork) as a "does not include", but in fact this is a redirect to Ballymore, County Cork which is there OK. I wonder if the program could exclude cases like this where the item is a redirect to another term which was already in the dab page? In this case the redirect is from a malformed heading (shouldn't have had brackets for a placename), so perhaps this is what's confused the bot? Thought it worth a mention, anyway! Cheers, PamD (talk) 10:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Progress

Well, I've now got to the end of the "B" pages, adding all the "Does not include..." entries and doing occasional other bits of cleanup en route. I'm not sure whether I've gone through all the As - had a quick look at the last one and picked up Azul, so I guess not. About to take a wikibreak anyway - when I get back I'll scan through the rest of the As to see what there is that Boleyn and I haven't already added (we seem to be the only two working on this). I'm happy to leave pipes and redirects, as the reader at least gets offered a route to the info - missing items just seem an order of magnitude more important. There are some interesting distractions on the way, into cleaning up some lovely messes and muddles - did an overdue merge of Blue (1970s band) and Blue (Scottish band) just today. Cheers, PamD (talk) 07:58, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Just done A3 and A4. PamD (talk) 11:45, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I've done A5, A6, A7, A8 and A9 now, just for missing entries. Boleyn2 (talk) 17:59, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

A10, A11, A12, A13 and A14. Boleyn3 (talk) 21:43, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

A15 to A47 done. Boleyn (talk) 11:58, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

A48 to A61 done - that's the whole lot for missing entries! I might do the odd small edit on the rest, but most of the suggestions left are very minor and I'd rather concentrate on missing entries, especially hndis ones. Boleyn (talk) 08:37, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Well done, us! I too feel that the missing entries are the ones worth going for ... piped links and redirects are cosmetic issues, and the reader will find the article OK, while missing links mean articles won't be found by readers, or by editors about to create duplicate articles! PamD (talk) 07:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Tony Wilson disambiguation

Hi,

My name is Tony Wilson and I am in wikipedia as Tony Wilson (radio presenter). My main focus now is writing, so I'd probably prefer to be Tony Wilson (author /radio presenter) but that is by the by.

What I'm wondering is if there can be a disambiguation for my page and that of the main Tony Wilson, Anthony Harold Wilson who founded Factory records? At the moment, a Tony Wilson search takes people only to him.

I had a go at reading the page on disambiguatoon, but as a wiki newbie, found it all too daunting.

cheers

tony —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.63.36.111 (talk) 04:58, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

There wasn't, but there is now, see Anthony Wilson (disambiguation); there's a hanote to it at Tony Wilson as well, so people can now find your article more easily. As for the title, we try to keep it as short as possible and what he/she is well-known for, rather than what they known do. Would most people still know you primarily as a radio presenter? Then probably best how it is. If people would know you as both and may be confused, then go to the article and click on move. Boleyn3 (talk) 06:58, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggested improvement for bot

The number of false alarms would be reduced a lot if the bot reported

A pipes as B

only in cases where A is the subject of the disambiguation.

Example at random from page A54 "Aska"

Hundred (division) pipes as "administrative division"

There is nothing wrong with using a pipe in this way - within an explanation of an entry. What should be eliminated is the use of a pipe in the title of the linked article. Sussexonian (talk) 20:07, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Happy Endings

Right now Happy Endings goes right to the film, with a link to the disambiguation on the top. The film is from 2005. There is a television series out now (just started in 4/11) that is also named Happy Endings. Should happy endings go right to the disambiguation page? There is a discussion on the talk page, and if someone wants to move it, please do. You Can't Clap With One Hand ^(Talk) 14:49, 5 May 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Giselle (talk • contribs)

Historical or Needs update? Keep in sidebar?

Since this has been inactive for so long, I think it should be marked Historical and be removed from the Disambiguation sidebar. Any objections? Thanks, Geekdiva (talk) 11:36, 18 August 2018 (UTC)