Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 11

message: A draft poll is now available for comment.  Voting for the new naming convention begins on January 24 and continues through February 15 2006. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 05:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)/poll]]

message: I modified the disambiguation example in the article.  I believe the topic LINK should go first, followed by a very brief description, to aid the user.  The previous example has an adhoc display of how a disambiguation page should NOT look IMHO :)  Cordially SirIsaacBrock 17:33, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Modified Disambiguation Example

message: I've just discovered that Tedernst jumped the gun on redirecting the *dis templates (and possibly others).  That is not concensus.  In order to remove the templates and subcategories, we have to be able to find the templates!  Currently, the What links here is very unreliable.  The subcategories are where we need to look for the pages to fix!
Therefore, I'm reverting his redirects.
Moreover, I don't see any edit history by Ted in the Wikipedia:Non-unique personal name and Wikipedia:Multiple-place names (and other) lists.  As he (and others) orphan the geodis and hndis templates, each name MUST be entered into these lists.  That was the WHOLE rationale for eliminating the subcategories, that they should be in the existing lists, instead.
Finally, I've just run into a couple edits where Ted has changed the template to {disambig-cleanup} after I'd already cleaned out the {2LCdisambig} or whatever.  He's not finding these in subcategories of category:disambiguation, so it's not part of any cleanup effort.  I'm wondering how he's editting these within minutes or even seconds after me.  
This also happened (more benignly) when I added the templates at TfD.  He voted to delete within minutes or even seconds after I added the entry.  
*"2006-01-17 03:05:05 William Allen Simpson (→January 17, 2006 - 4LA)"
*"2006-01-17 03:05:59 Tedernst (→Template:4LA - delete)"
It's almost like he can actively watch my contributions list....  Is that possible?
:--William Allen Simpson 06:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keeping *dis templates while orphaning 

message: One thing I'm wondering is should I move John Alexander (tennis player) to John Alexander OAM? Would this be conforming to naming guidelines?  Rogerthat Talk 07:01, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not really covered by the Disambiguation guideline, but rather by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people). I took a quick look at that. Qualifier between brackets or parentheses is the section that is pertinent here. It does say "Try to avoid abbreviations or anything capitalised". I think John Alexander (tennis player) is fine, since I knew he was a tennis player, but had no idea that he had an OAM.--Commander Keane 07:22, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Disambigs

message: Since 2003 May 10, the guideline for disambiguation of abbreviations, acronyms, and initialism has been some variant of: 
*"No need to disambiguate the abbreviations here."
*"Abbreviations pages replace disambiguation pages."
*"Such pages facilitate navigation and replace disambiguation pages."
The current guideline has been virtually unchanged since 2003 December 31 12:21:31, written by Docu and Eloquence working together:
Pages of common two and three letter abbreviations group series of possible expansions for the letters, such as chemical element symbols, similar to disambiguation pages.  These should be expanded beforehand.  Such pages facilitate navigation and replace disambiguation pages.  See Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations for details.
:--William Allen Simpson 15:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current abbreviation guideline 

message: At about the same time that MoS:DP was first written, a small group (9:1) resolved Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Deleted/April 2005#Template:TLA (without much discussion) to add  and  instead, and to use categories (later placed under :Category:Disambiguation).  This group included long-time contributors (such as Docu, Joy, Netaholic, and Radiant), who presumably understood the limited ramifications of this minor change. 
During the latter part of 2005, a fairly limited number of young folks involved in Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation turned their efforts from finding and updating ambiguous links (which often require considerable time and effort reading each reference) to hastily reformatting disambiguation pages themselves (which can accumulate edit counts much more quickly).  This devolved into turning anything that looked vaguely like a disambiguation page into the MoS:DP format, even when such pages (in particular, multi-stub and abbreviations pages) are explicitly stated in this guideline as not disambiguation pages.
The activity caused considerable uproar (for example, most of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)/archive13, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)/Freakofnurture reverts of Tedernst: mediation needed? and the other recent archives).  One result was the removal of  articles from the ambit of disambiguation.
On December 30, 2005, while most folks were celebrating holidays and without any prior discussion, there was a particularly damaging series of surreptitious template redirects and category closing by Tedernst.  Afterward, he posted on the MoS:DP talk page without mentioning his changes.
This guerrilla style of action is repugnant to those of us with over 30 years in the computing industry. 
:--William Allen Simpson 15:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflict at Manual of Style (disambiguation) 

message: In early January, I developed two related straw polls (now at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)/Disambiguation subcategories that covered the contested templates. I'd hoped that the two weeks taken for the straw poll would have given time for cooler heads to prevail. 
I carefully limited the poll to those elements of style related to disambiguation (a proper topic of MoS:DP), and divided the poll into 
*(A) the questions related to abbreviations, and 
*(B) the questions related to the existing disambiguation lists.
Much to my surprise, during the discussion some folks rejected the use of automatically maintained categories, and preferred hand-maintained lists instead.  Tedernst proposed eliminating :Category:Disambiguation entirely.  
:Nota Bene: This is especially surprising given that the 4 existing lists currently required by this guideline have been badly maintained.  I found no evidence that these same disambiguators have ever maintained the existing lists.
The result of the polls were that the small group of disambiguators wanted all ambiguous letter combination (*LA*) templates removed (8:3), and all disambiguation subcategory templates removed (9:2).
Clearly, the experiment of integrating abbreviation templates with disambiguation templates, an undertaking involving dozens of editors over the past 9 months, has failed.  The comments indicate it is "confusing" and "complexity" to use several templates that automatically add subcategories.
:--William Allen Simpson 15:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Straw poll on templates 

message: Having won that minor skirmish, an even smaller group has asserted that the polls (which did not cover categories themselves) really express a consensus that abbreviations and other such pages should all be merged into the ambit of disambiguation!
This arguably demonstrates bad faith.
Having designed, implemented, closed, and summarized the straw polls (and as a person involved in both political polling and consensus-based organizations for decades), I assert that nothing of the kind can be construed from the polls. 
Moreover, as I have reminded them, this is merely a discussion about style for pages of the structure described one level deeper/higher at Disambiguation — while the distinction was drawn with Abbreviation two levels deeper/higher as long ago as 2001. Folks at that level cannot make massive structural changes with a tiny straw poll. This is only about style.
:--William Allen Simpson 15:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Straw poll extrapolation as structural change 

message: Based on long-standing Wikipedia:Disambiguation#TLAs and Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations, Abbreviations pages replace disambiguation pages.
*replace  with 
*replace  with 
*replace  with 
*replace  with 
*replace  with  (about half done, 15:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: --William Allen Simpson 15:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviation cleanup 

message: In the alternative, this entire topic could be submitted for Arbitration, as some persons participating in the poll have demonstrated bad faith.  It may be that the outcome of the polls was not representative, or a subterfuge by some persons advocating a wider agenda. 
The disambiguation pages are not an empire to be expanded.
:--William Allen Simpson 15:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please William, no personal attacks. Thanks/wangi 13:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree with wangi. It's hard to get motivated to support, or even read, your proposals when they're peppered with attacks on those who disagree with you. How can we expect a rational discussion with someone who makes such accusations? This is a collaborative effort, not a competition. If there's a misunderstanding, we need to work together to clear it up. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternative solution