Wikipedia talk:The onion principle

Why this page

This is another attempt at clarifying exactly what is meant by the HLJC, and building consensus on how and when to apply it. Andrewa (talk) 21:04, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Why this title

The discussion at WT:HLJC and elsewhere has led me to doubt that two of the four terms in HLJC are correct. The examples seem not just limited to jurisdictions, and the application is not limited to primary topic criteria.

In looking for a new and more accurate title, I also looked for one with an available shortcut, and PTI was available. Andrewa (talk) 21:04, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Moved

On second thought, it was an obscure and forgetable name. So I've boldly moved it. New better shortcut too... the old one sounded a bit like a spit in the eye, unless you pronounced it pity... NBG either way. Andrewa (talk) 01:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Why not just move the previous page

I think we should keep the page currently at HLJC, scoped as it is, for historical purposes. It only has incoming links from 17 different pages, but I think it's good to keep those intact.

This is a significantly different approach IMO. Andrewa (talk) 21:04, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Heads ups

Feel free to ping anyone who has expressed an interest in the HLJC, or I'll eventually get around to them all if this proposal appears to have any traction. TIA Andrewa (talk) 23:26, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

User:BD2412, you've said the HLJC principle is widely used [1] and I agree... is this a better (or worse) way of expressing that principle? How could I phrase it better? Andrewa (talk) 23:05, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

User:Castncoot, the HLJC is your idea... is this a reasonable next step to getting it accepted? Andrewa (talk) 23:05, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Castncoot (talk) 00:38, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Actually, No. I just looked at the stipulation that a base name be moved to a dab page in relation to a lack of primary topic status for one entity. So to clarify myself, No. Castncoot (talk) 01:13, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Just a question: why are most of the people you've consulted here people who support a "New York" move? Castncoot (talk) 01:16, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

These are the people who have commented in relevant sections of several talk pages (I can give you the list of those sections, or just follow the diffs, that's what they're for). Have I missed any? I'm doing it by hand so it's more than possible. Andrewa (talk) 01:28, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

It may well be that most people who looked at HLJC in earnest concluded that it was an unjustified argument in assessing a primary topic, and after discarding that argument along with WP:ILIKEIT and WP:STATUSQUO positions, logically also concluded that good old New York must be disambiguated. — JFG ^talk 07:44, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

No stipulation was intended, but I confess that I'm not sure what you mean... see section below, and let's fix it. Andrewa (talk) 01:32, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

The phrase, If there is a primary topic this article receives the base name, or if there is no primary topic the base name is used for a disambiguation page. That should be removed. Otherwise this article will simply be rendered a Trojan horse in advance of setting up a "New York" move in six months. I would just remove it altogether. Castncoot (talk) 14:54, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

See #The DAB clause below. Andrewa (talk) 19:08, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

User:Certes, you said the HLJC is dead... [2] Do you think this proposal might be any better? Andrewa (talk) 23:31, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! Yes, I think this is a big improvement. It's more explicit about the scope to which the essay applies and provides practical advice about matters such as wikilinks. I agree with it and I hope others see it as fair and neutral enough to endorse too. Certes (talk) 23:40, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

User:Amakuru, you've argued that the HLJC should not be adopted... [3] Is the WP:PTI any better? Andrewa (talk) 23:37, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

User:Diego Moya, you commented at Wikipedia talk:Higher-Level Jurisdiction Criterion#The "option" option... any comment here? Andrewa (talk) 23:48, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

User:wbm1058, you asked for a more precise definition of the HLJC... [4] How do you like my second attempt? Andrewa (talk) 00:07, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, my mind has turned a bit mushy and I'm afraid I don't really follow what it says. I think you should accept that we will always have special, unique cases that must be handled individually, and so no comprehensive guidelines can be written to cover all situations. You should just stop trying. I had thought that Ireland was a good case for supporting HLJC, but it turns out I just don't know Ireland that well (I've never been there). I've since discovered that the Gaelic Athletic Association organizes by county on the entire Island. So for sporting purposes the entire Island is treated as if it's a country. Where else in the world does this happen? No place I can think of. Right there are some Canadian teams in US leagues, but that's not quite the same. Colonie, New York is the higher level jurisdiction over Colonie (village), New York, but just compare the articles. The town doesn't need no stinking HLJC to make it primary over the village. Now, imagine that this little village of Colonie had 75,000 people living it in it, and included the tallest building in the state plus the headquarters of five Fortune 500 companies, and the rest of the town outside of the "village" had 6,000 people in suburban homes and a lot of cornfields. Would the town still be primary? wbm1058 (talk) 02:12, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Great example! I have a similar and even worse confession to make. I live in Hobbys Yards and just realised that the article reads Hobbys Yards is a small village... and then gives the population as 198. It's not actually a village, it's technically a hamlet as we have no commercial premises (and our zoning would not allow us to open any). We have seven houses with eleven occupants in total, plus one church and one community hall. That's it and we kinda like it. The census data includes the surrounding farmhouses I guess. Some of these people belong to the Community Association (which runs the hall, and we got more than 200 bods to our last social) and/or attend the church, but they're in the locality not the hamlet, not even if you call it a village. Andrewa (talk) 03:36, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

...oh, and look at Catskill (town), New York and Catskill (village), New York... Catskill, New York redirects to the town, so the town is primary...thank God, HLJC is preserved. OMG! is anyone going to have a heart attack because the town's article is defaced by that parenthetical "(town)"? Is the integrity of the encyclopedia in crisis because of that? wbm1058 (talk) 02:34, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

AAACK! Cobleskill, New York redirects to Cobleskill, which is a DISAMBIGUATION page! Cobleskill (town), New York is not the PT! HLJC has been blatantly disregarded and is broken. Are we in crisis mode yet? wbm1058 (talk) 02:58, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

User:JFG, you've been very active in the HLJC discussions... any comments? Andrewa (talk) 00:59, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't rank myself as "very active" here; note that I never edited this page until placing the deprecation notice on August 13. The grand total of my interaction with this HLJC concept has been to read the heated discussions about it and shake my head at its utter lack of applicability despite some good-faith attempts to make it practical. Any serious attempt to invoke this criterion instantly leads to numerous contradictions, and I explained that much in the notice. Plainly said, it's useless. I do see a way to avoid wasting all the effort that has been injected into this discussion, because it seems we have collectively discovered something worth noting: write a different essay arguing that from practical experience, any attempt at enforcing a container entity as primary topic over a contained entity only because the former contains the latter is doomed to fail, and that such articles mut be evaluated on their individual merits for each case. Judging by the comments in HLJC discussions and the large number of examples submitted, I bet you could get a lot of editor support for that. If well phrased and well supported, it might even make it to policy under WP:PTOPIC guidelines. — JFG ^talk 07:33, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Well said, but those are exactly the issues I'm trying to address in this new essay! Obviously not very well. The HLJC discussions to which I referred were on other talk pages, not WT:HLJC, I've provided diffs or wikilinks for most heads-ups but somehow left yours out, apologies... would you like me to try to find the page concerned? Andrewa (talk) 09:31, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

No thanks, no need to spend more time on this. — JFG ^talk 13:47, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough and thanks for your comments. Andrewa (talk) 20:22, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

DAB at base name

stipulation that a base name be moved to a dab page in relation to a lack of primary topic status for one entity [5]

I'm not quite sure what that means... how would you change the essay to remove that stipulation? Andrewa (talk) 01:25, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Looks like Castncoot objects to this utterance: If there is a primary topic this article receives the base name, or if there is no primary topic the base name is used for a disambiguation page. This is just a reminder of the existence and validity of our general WP:PTOPIC and WP:DAB guidelines, which he has been valiantly trying to dismiss in the New York case. — JFG ^talk 07:53, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

That phrase renders this article a Trojan horse in advance of setting up a "New York" move in six months. I would just remove it altogether. Castncoot (talk) 14:43, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

It is indeed relevant to that RM if it occurs, but only peripherally. It's the policy and guidelines which it summarises which will be cited in any RM, not this essay.

What might be more helpful to any eventual RM is any change that is made to these policies and guidelines as a result of this discussion. I regard the clause that you reject as a fair and helpful summary of current policy and guidelines. You disagree?

As I have made no secret of any of this, your accusing me of Trojan Horse tactics is not helpful IMO, and I have raised this on your talk page and now at ANI. Andrewa (talk) 18:43, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

The DAB clause

Essay currently [6] reads in part:

If there is a primary topic this article receives the base name, or if there is no primary topic the base name is used for a disambiguation page.

This appears to me to be a clear and accurate summary of current policy and guidelines, which was my intention. However from the discussion above, there are other views, strongly held.

As has also been noted, this is very relevant to the ongoing discussion on whether the article on New York State should be at the base name New York, particularly in the light of the recent RfC that concluded with consensus that NYS is not the primary topic.

It might be worth discussing on a relevant policy or guideline talk page. Andrewa (talk) 19:00, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

I have to get going now, but no, this is entirely inaccurate and WP:UNDUE, as many facets other than primary topic may and likely will be involved in a particular page's naming. One size does not fit all, by any means. Castncoot (talk) 19:19, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Can you give any examples of exceptions to this clause? Other than the obvious one of New York, that is? Andrewa (talk) 19:43, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

I believe that disambiguation pages should be redirects of last resort, when there is no other reasonable choice available, or if a topic is low profile in nature; in other circumstances, such directs should be deprecated. Castncoot (talk) 01:34, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm guessing that this means that you know of no other examples. We haven't come up with any at the policy talk page at WT:AT#Disambiguation either. Not so far, anyway!

Can you give an example of a redirect of last resort which would still be allowable under your proposed guideline?

Have a look at Category:Disambiguation pages, Category:All article disambiguation pages, and their other subcategories if you need some to think about. Note that, on the first page at least of both of these categories, the vast majority are at the base name.

Ah, but they're special characters. So skip ahead to the letter A in the table of contents of both of those categories. Same pattern. The vast majority of DABs seem to be at base names, don't they?

Now have a look at Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages which is a category for redirects from pages with "(disambiguation)" in their titles to disambiguation pages without "(disambiguation)" in their titles. Now this is a little more subtle. The pages in this category do have the qualifier (disambiguation) in their names, but the point is, each and every one of them points to a DAB at a base name. So this gives us at last some quantitative idea of the scope of your proposal.

That's 190,600 entries at last count.

If we adopt your last resort proposal, we'll have a lot of work to do! (;->

What is even more amusing is that we have in a sense swapped sides here. The splitting of the !votes between NYC as primary and there being no primary topic was a key factor in the defeat of the last NY RM. If your proposal were to be adopted, then the DAB ceases to be an option, and we just need to decide whether NYC or NYS is "more primary", sort of. Looking back at the !votes and evidence, it would be hard to maintain that NYS is "more primary" than NYC.

But I'm resigned to living with the current policy. Pity. Andrewa (talk) 07:16, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Not at all. As I've said repeatedly, primary topic is just one criterion toward a move. But I don't want to get into that further. Regarding untethering the dab page-primary topic relationship, if we could clean up 75,000 "New York" link redirects, then what's another 190,000 redirects (of a different sort)? Castncoot (talk) 15:47, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Just to clarify: that's 190,000 disambiguation pages, each of which may have many incoming links. Not a mere 190,000 links. Certes (talk) 19:51, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

I realize that. It would take a year, at most. But it would repair the scourge of the default (lazy) direct to dab pages for higher profile topics. Castncoot (talk) 22:37, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

As far as exceptions, the first and most obvious one that comes to my mind is "Washington", which should direct to its State article. The problem with dab pages is that too many of them are used as garbage dumps rather than for what they were probably intended to accomplish in the first place. Castncoot (talk) 15:55, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Rephrased DAB clause

As a result of an ongoing discussion at WT:AT#Disambiguation the clause now reads:

If there is a primary topic then the base name should lead directly to the article on that topic, either by being the title of the article, or by being a redirect to it. If there is no primary topic, then the base name should similarly lead directly to a disambiguation page.

Comments? It's wordier but less obscure I hope!

And I again ask, apart form NYS, are there any current exceptions? The only opinion yet expressed at WT:AT is New York notwithstanding, most other exceptions to this rule are probably good candidates for listing at WP:RM.

Comments there also welcome of course. Andrewa (talk) 00:15, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

And we now have quite a discussion going there! Andrewa (talk) 10:03, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

SIMPLEDAB

This clause has aroused such interest that I'm giving it a page of its own at WP:SIMPLEDAB. Andrewa (talk) 10:03, 5 October 2016 (UTC)