Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Archive 24

message: I would like to propose that (disambiguation) pages linking back to primary topics follow the standards of other disambig pages.
The current recommended style is:
:
A school is an institution for learning.
School may also refer to:
*School (discipline), a group of people with common characteristics in what they do — such as: a school of painting, or a school of thought
*"School" (song), by the grunge music group Nirvana
*School Street, Chicago
*Swarm of fish
which is arranged ostensibly so that the main link (which won't be needed by most users) doesn't conflict with the others.
However, in my opnion, this:
:
School may refer to:
*School, an institution for learning.
*School (discipline), a group of people with common characteristics in what they do — such as: a school of painting, or a school of thought
*"School" (song), by the grunge music group Nirvana
*School Street, Chicago
*Swarm of fish
is easier to read and easier for people looking for, say, School (discipline), to pick that out from the bunch.
— SteveRwanda 15:32, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I never cared for the change to the current recommended style. older ≠ wiser 03:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the way that the disambiguation page are set up now works out very nicely - when there is a primary topic, we want to make sure that it is more prominent than the other articles.  After all, since it is the primary topic, it is noticably more well-known than all of the other entries.  By putting it in line with the other entries (even if it is at the top), it is much harder to find it. -- Natalya 10:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I prefer the current recommended style to SteveRwanda's proposal.  Enquirers who reach the School (disambiguation) page have already decided that "an institution for learning" is not what they want.  I think it is clearer if we separate the new choices available to them from the link back to where they came from. CarolGray 17:11, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Primary topic links 

message: One of the things that I find hardest to do when doing MOSDAB cleanup is trying to come up with the section-lead statement (eg. "Blah is the name of:").  Often, the section headers a disambig page already has don't directly fit into this MOS...  sometimes I think I might be able to reorganize things a bit, but it might be a bit of a stretch.  In the case of GoldenEye (disambiguation) though, there's no doubt in my mind that one of the sections should be items related to James Bond.  Are there any suggestions for what the best lead for that section should be?  (maybe "Related to James Bond:"?)  Generally, when I run into sections that are very different from the examples listed in this MOS, is there any general advice for what to do?  --Interiot 18:52, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Relating to James Bond" sounds pretty good.  I don't think there are any specific guildlines, the Longer lists section of the Manual of Style just gives guidlines on how to split it up.  Using your discrition will usually work out. -- Natalya 19:07, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I think the GoldenEye page is a good example where it might be useful to have a short sentence description, like "GoldenEye is the nickname of James Bond" (I don't really know what it is, so don't use that one). - Centrx 00:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Specific entry types 

message: Are the single letter articles actually diambiguation pages?  For example, A#Meanings_for_A is a disambiguation section of the article on the Latin letter "A".  I don't just suggest this to argue in the extreme.  Rather, the items listed in that section (and presumably the 25 other similar sections) are, in fact, disambiguation lists. —Markles 17:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1CC 

message: I think the school example is wrong in that it links swarm yet there is a perfectly understandable redirect already present for school (biology)).
I am proposing to change the box from 
:
A school is an institution for learning.
School may also refer to:
*School (discipline), a group of people with common characteristics in what they do — such as: a school of painting, or a school of thought
*"School" (song), by the grunge music group Nirvana
*School Street, Chicago
*Swarm of fish
to
:
A school is an institution for learning.
School may also refer to:
*School (discipline), a group of people with common characteristics in what they do — such as: a school of painting, or a school of thought
*"School" (song), by the grunge music group Nirvana
*School Street, Chicago
*School (biology), a swarm of fish
 -- KelleyCook 17:16, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do we still want to illustrate a policy about linking words like swarm when there ISN'T an appropriate article (and we don't expect there to be such an article so a redlink isn't appropriate?).  If so, we might want to find another word for the exmample. And I would suggest "the collective noun for fish." John (Jwy) 18:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Either way will work, but I'm not sure if the table can be changed.  Linking to the redirect school (biology) does provide for consistancy on the page, but there's nothing wrong with linking to the direct article swarm. -- Natalya 18:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've provisionally restored the direct link to swarm, pending further discussion. I also fixed the song title formatting. --Muchness 21:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: it was two weeks worth of discussion and "School (Biology)" makes more sense of why it was on a disambiguation page in the first place. -- KelleyCook 17:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of "swarm" in the "school" example 

message: How do you create a page? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Saexon (talk • contribs) .
:Answered on talk page. John (Jwy) 06:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[How]]

message: While I can understand that it's sensible not to link years in a disambiguation page, I fail to understand why it would be considered such a sin to link a complete date. Most of the time, it is unnecessary to include a date at all in a disambiguation page. However sometimes it might be (perhaps if there were two Battles of Piffle fought in the same year on different dates, the dates are the key factor in disambiguation. If they are going to be included, then they ought to be displayed according to user preferences, and that means linking them. TheGrappler 15:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with this.  Though the real solution (and not currently applicable) would be to change the way to invoke Wikimedia's date reformat trick to use something other than a wikilink -- KelleyCook 18:11, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I quite agree, but that's not likely to happen any time soon unfortunately! TheGrappler 22:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Extra links only clutter the page. It would be nice to have an alternate way of formatting dates according to preferences, but I think that advantage is overshadowed by the extra blue a user has to sift through to get to the right page (which should have proper date formatting). - grubber 18:16, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

text: On the flip side, why have such a rule in the guidelines on an issue that hasn't cropped up yet? It's the contrary of adding an extra guideline: it would really be taking away an unnecessary, bad rule that says, pretty much, "never link dates" even though this is the way of getting dates to display per user preferences. TheGrappler 22:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the need to have a full date on a dab page will be sufficiently rare that even though I think it should be linked for preference purposes, we need not "legislate" but allow it via the 'break the rules' section at the end. John (Jwy) 06:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Even simpler than that, just change "Never link days or dates." to "Never link years, unless it is as part of a full date" (and get rid of the "scary bold" - reading a Manual of Style shouldn't feel like getting a telling off!) TheGrappler 16:46, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

text: 1 (disambiguation) is one of the few examples I've seen where dates should be linked (similarly, things like May (disambiguation)).  But those are clearly obvious cases of "break the rules" at the end, if not of WP:IAR or WP:SNOW, and I think these cases are extremely rare when compared to the large number of disambig pages that link to years when it's not needed.  --Interiot 16:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahh, I hadn't thought of that. That is obviously a rare example where the year should be linked without a date. In contrast, 911 (disambiguation) contains links to dates without years. I suspect most links to years from disambig pages are quite unnecessary and guidance to that effect should remain. However, this still leaves open how to write the guidance for when a full date is given as part of a description: at present there is a line of guidance on this (for what must be a vanishingly rare case) that makes very clear that it is unacceptable; even though it is presumably extremely rare (since nobody can find an example) and it would break user date display preferences. TheGrappler 19:49, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Days and dates 

message: Is there ever a reason to have things like Boxer redirect to Boxer (disambiguation)?  There are 382 redirects like this, and my first hunch was to go through and move all the (disambiguation) pages over the redirect.  --Interiot 08:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I cannot think of one. I have encountered this many times before but I didn't do anything about it because it seemed like too much work and it didn't seem harmful. —Centrx→talk • 08:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that redirects from X to X (disambiguation) are out of place. But I would not recommend simply reversing them automatically. Sometimes there may be contention over whether a term is or is not a primary topic. For example, for much of it's existence, Boxer was a redirect to Boxing. It was changed back and forth a couple of times over a period of years. A quick glance at What links here lends some credence for a redirect to the sport, but that should probably be discussed rather than being just an arbitrary judgement by one or two editors. If there's any question about primary topic, it should probably go to WP:RM for consideration by a broader group of editors. older ≠ wiser 12:28, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boxer => Boxer (disambiguation)?