Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Archive 17

message: The early Wikipedia:Disambiguation process used the page itself to maintain links to the disambiguation pages and prevent their listing in Special:LonelyPages as orphans.  On 2002 August 01, these were moved to their own page (Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages) by Enchanter.  Likewise, as of 2002 September 21, disambiguated names of places were moved to their own page (now Wikipedia:Multiple-place names) by Enchanter. Finally, as of 2003 September 18, disambiguated names of people were offically directed by MyRedDice to the page (Wikipedia:Non-unique personal name), created 2003 July 05 by Docu.
The current guideline has been virtually unchanged since 2003:
When you create a disambiguating page, add a link to it in one of those pages as appropriate.
In parallel, circa 2001 October 06 to 2003 May 25, various 2-letter, 3-letter, abbreviation, and acronym root lists were developed, with the same orphan control ability. 
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 19:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Review of 2002 to early 2005 history 

message: The Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) is a comparatively recent innovation, begun by Wahoofive on 2005 May 02.  The use of  was quickly (about 43 minutes) deprecated in favor of .
On 2005 June 22,  was added by Docu.  On 2005 October 27, the language was substantially revised by RoySmith. Certainly, these folks found the differentiation of 3-letter acronyms to be useful.
During this period of time, I found no corresponding changes in Wikipedia:Disambiguation to any actual status of abbreviations, acronyms, apocopation, or initialisms. 
They remain "similar to" (yet separate from) disambiguation pages.
:--William Allen Simpson 17:57, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Review of mid-2005 history 

message: I became involved in this controversy when, circa 2005 December 9, an unknown (to me) fellow called "Tedernst" suddenly appeared on a couple of multi-stub articles that I'd recently converted to disambiguation pages, and utterly decimated them — edit comment (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)). Not merely a few minor edits, but completely eliminating bullets linking to the most important main articles that I'd just divided from the multi-stub page, making them lonely pages (orphans).
*21:06:18 discussed on his talk page, where among other things he argued, "The geo dab template is useless. A dab is a dab, as far as I can tell, and I see no reason to have multiple templates. I don't care very much about this. Feel free to change it back."  AFAIK, this is the first instance of somebody actively replacing  wherever it was found.
*22:52:35, I posted a query to the Village Pump (policy) to learn the current status of the guidelines on both  and  (without mentioning anybody by name).
*23:18:57, Tedernst questioned whether geodis should exist, and (2005 December 10 00:23) posted a response on the Village Pump asking that the topic be discussed elsewhere. I agreed, stipulating that both issues would be more appropriate to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages).
The discussion continued (see several archives 10-14), but not in the way that I'd expected to reach consensus.  Instead, there are several extended discussions of drastic changes by Tedernst to disambiguation related pages. Among other things, this resulted in removal of  pages from the disambiguation category. 
On 2005 December 30, at a time when most folks were busy with holiday activities — without any advance discussion that I've found — Tedernst surreptitiously: 
*20:46:58 uncategorized :Category:Acronyms that may need to be disambiguated (revert by Brian0918)
*20:49:51 redirected  (revert by Brian0918)
*21:42:51 uncategorized :Category:Township disambiguation (revert by Brian0918)
*21:44:45 redirected  (revert by Brian0918)
*21:47:21 altered :Category:Geographical locations sharing the same title (revert by Brian0918)
*22:05:37 redirected  (revert by Brian0918)
*22:15:22 and 22:16:31 altered :Category:Ambiguous four-letter acronyms (revert by Brian0918)
*22:16:17 redirected  (revert by Brian0918)
*(If I missed any, sorry, these are all that I remember, I just looked them up and sorted by time.)
*22:39:09 commenting here without any mention that he'd already started destroying the subcategories. 
This guerrilla style of action is repugnant to those of us with over 30 years in the computing industry. Thus, my formulation of the straw poll about handling of templates and subcategories, in an attempt to find a clear direction to proceed. 
:--William Allen Simpson 17:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Review of late 2005 history 

message: As I've taken the time (more than 9 hours) to gather the long-standing consensus and practice, in that context it is clear that it would be a major structural and cultural change to attempt to merge various page styles "similar to" (yet separate from) disambiguation pages. 
The previous attempt by merely changing a few words in this Manual of Style, and/or adding a special template ( and progeny), met considerable resistance.  Merging was a failure, primarily because some of our less capable editors find it confusing or too difficult to distinguish between the various kinds of similar pages.  "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." --- Mark Twain.
As I've stated before, based on that knowledge, I was careful to split the questions into two separate polls: 
#abbreviations and acronyms; and
#disambiguation pages of person names, place names, et alia.
Thus, the clear result is that abbreviations and acronyms are best separate from Disambiguation.  As we learned with ship names, sometimes it is best to keep two different groups out of each others' path.  The attempt to merge the concept resulted in pages getting "hammered!" 
Also, the clear result is that persons and places are to be "re-merged" into the main disambiguation category.  Although the subcategory and template method would seem to be superior technically, some folks expressed a preference to maintain such lists by hand.
Looking at the page histories for existing lists that were supposed to be updated by disambiguators over the past 3 years, I can find no evidence that such as Tedernst have ever bothered to keep them up-to-date.  Presumably every person who voted that way is also promising to be better about maintaining the lists in the future. 
I've already detailed the migration templates at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)/Disambiguation subcategories#Cleanup requirements, and it's probably best we keep that part of the discussion there to avoid confusion and repetition.
;this got stuck up above in some kind of diff error —
:Look, I — and I think most people — couldn't give two shits who done what when... and it's not the right way to move forward.
:I thought the whole point of the dicsussion was to take all the previous disambig sub-types, and merge them into one disambig category, if there was consensus. Is that's what is happening? Or is something else being done? Thanks/wangi 17:24, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you are misrepresenting the consensus that was reached. wangi 22:24, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

text: --William Allen Simpson 18:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving forward 

message: At this time, 
* and  are mostly done, 
* is partly done,
* is mostly done, and 
* is in progress.
Thanks to the assistance of Bluemoose and his BlueBot for the latter two.
:--William Allen Simpson 20:55, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Today's status 

message: I regret my actions that have seemingly kicked off William Allen Simpson's current actions.  I will not take a position or work on dismabiguation in any fashion until this is worked out.  I don't know why my mistakes have been taken as a justification to take abreviations and acronyms out of the dab world.  That makes no sense to me.  I hope that some consensus can be reached here to settle this issue.  Tedernst | talk 01:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed my mind.  William Allen Simpson is really abrasive, but we're here to build an encyclopedia, so there's no reason I ought to let his poor behaviour get in the way of making contributions where I feel I'm able.  peace, Tedernst | talk 16:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  apology