Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 16

message: It looks like Wikipedia:Hatnotes is proposing changes to these guidelines. -- Beland 16:06, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for mentioning this here.  I would recommend that any users involved in the discussion above express their opinions at Wikipedia talk:Hatnotes, so that opinions of many disambiguators can be considered. -- Natalya 16:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related proposal 

message: Template:Otheruses4 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:40, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of Template:Otheruses4 

message: I have notice Links to pages that haven’t been written yet on disambiguation pages.  I have also seen people take those links to pages not yet written and change it to an external link to the main Sight on that topic.  I think it is ok to have a Red link because it will encourage people to write the article, however I think I remember somewhere there should not be external links on a disambiguation page.
Could we make a section in this page clarifying what to do when you come across an external link or an unwritten article on a disambiguation page?  I don’t want to undo the edit I am thinking of until I know what the policy is.--E-Bod 03:52, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Look on MoS:DP and its talk page: "External links should rarely, if ever, be given entries in disambiguation pages. Including them as comments or on a talk page is a way to mention URLs that might be helpful in the future." There is also a section named "Redlinks". Chris the speller 04:08, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks I was thinking about that artile but i just disn't remember where on WP it was.--E-Bod 20:51, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: Can some of the disambiguation people weigh in here on the best disambiguation for a highway in the U.S. state of Michigan named M-X (where X is a number)? Thanks. --SPUI (T - C - RFC - Curpsbot problems) 11:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Michigan highways

message: Is there a policy regarding whether or not there should be a disambig page if the whole page only has one link that isn't red?  It seems to me that the purpose of disambig is to disambiguate between articles that exist.
Anyway, the article I'm asking about is EPF.  Should there be a disambig page there?  On top of that, does anyone actually use EPF to mean ex post facto? Jesuschex 03:38, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Welcome to the world of three(/two/one/four/five) letter acronym pages! Some people (not me) think these pages are "special". Anyways, nothing links there Special:Whatlinkshere/EPF so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Ewlyahoocom 07:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  When to not disambiguate? 

message: We've got a few comic characters where the character (comics) page is a further disambig page, for example, Ares (comics), Thor (comics), Hercules (comics), Dennis the Menace and Sandman (comics).  I would like to create some form of category to place them in, perhaps :Category:List of comics characters sharing the same name?
:I think the answer is much more simple than this - put them onto the disambiguation page that they belong on!  There is no need for a separate disambiguation page just for the comics-related entries, that is why there is Longer lists section at the Manual of Style for Disambiguation Pages.  Thor (comics) and Hercules (comics) are separate cases, because they are not truly disambiguation pages, but Ares (comics) and Sandman (comics) should definitly be put back into Ares (disambiguation) and Sandman.  In fact, Sandman already contains all the information from Sandman (comics).  My goodness!  What a mess of disambiguation pages. :)  Appropriate cleanup tags have been added, which I will likely take care of.  -- Natalya 23:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hold up!  The reason they are needed is that people do link to these pages when wikilinking, they will thus otherwise get created and these issues need to be looked at before action is taken.  What sort of thing are you suggesting? Hiding Talk 11:50, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems that for almost all of the links to these pages, they could/should be corrected to link to a specific comic book character, rather than the page that lists all the different characters.  The title "Sandman (comics)", for example, seems to be linked to when referring to any reference of "The Sandman", when it really should be specified which Sandman is being referred to.  (Don't worry, I haven't made any changes yet!  I was just throwing my general impression out there). -- Natalya 16:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, I see.  So what would the page at Sandman (comics) become?  A redirect to the disambig page? Sorry if I came across a bit stressed, your enthusiasm scared me.  I'm not used to seeing it in the corners I inhabit. Hiding Talk 21:17, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I was just overwhelmed with the disambiguation. :)  That's exactly what I was thinking, making it a redirect to Sandman.  Does that seem appropriate? -- Natalya 21:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sound brilliant.  I'll add it to my to do list. The position is that if they simply act as a disambig page, then redirect them to the redirect page, but if they act as a summary page, like Thor (comics) and Hercules (comics), that's fine and they can be kept? Hiding Talk 13:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. Let me know if you'd like any help (I'll try to be less enthusiastic ;) ). -- Natalya 16:17, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh god, don't lose that enthusiasm on my account.  I should be alright, but if you turn one up feel free to have a go. Hiding Talk 18:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of comics characters sharing the same name 

message: The disambiguation guidelines say: Disambiguation serves a single purpose: to let the reader choose among different pages that closely relate to various meanings of a particular term (some of which might logically utilize said term in a titular fashion). This makes clear that dab pages are there to help the reader find a page. But there is no mention of the fact that editors also use dab pages to find the correct article to link to (either while writing an article, or when [as part of the Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links project] cleaning up after someone who linked to a dab page without checking).
The point I want to raise here is that dab pages that are written for readers are not as comprehensive as the ones that would be written to help an editor disambiguate. What do I mean by this? Well, for an editor to dab correctly, the editor might need a full list of the meanings of the word (and wiktionary often doesn't help here), plus possibly also the articles containing the word as part of the title. This is because the original editor at the page pointing to the dab page might have typed iris diaphragm instead of iris diaphragm, or something similar. Hence the "part of a title" bit is helpful for editors correcting dabs.
Given this, is there a case for relaxing the guidelines slightly? Carcharoth 17:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You can put these extra tips on the talk page. For example Talk:Italian. Editors read the talk pages, readers don't - this seems like a good idea. --Commander Keane 17:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh the irony! :-) Did you see that someone added in Italian cuisine the edit after your one that tidied up the dab page? But seriously, thanks for the tip, I will consider doing this in future. Carcharoth 20:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Compare that to pages like Dental or Alternative, which simply include every article whose title includes those words -- most of which are never, ever referred to as simply a "dental" or "alternative". Ewlyahoocom 20:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems like those pages would be candidates to be cleaned up...? -- Natalya 21:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, technically they do not include every article... For that have a look at articles starting with "alternative" and articles starting with "dental"... :-) But seriously, it is sometimes unclear where to draw the line, and I find AllPages listings like that to be very helpful. It is just a pity that they cannot be referred to in article namespace (it is self-referential). On the other hand, we could put links to listings like this on the disambiguation page's talk page. I wonder if there is a way to get a list of all articles containing a word, ie. not just starting with a word? Browsing the list generated by a search for the term, such as here for "dental", is the closest I can get. That yields Yamahachi_Dental for example. I just think that tips like this should be advertised more widely so that editors are more likely to link to the correct pages in the first place, rather than leaving it to the dab squad to clean up. In any case, something like this could be added to a collection of tips for those cleaning up dab pages. Carcharoth 22:27, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Self-referencing shouldn't be an insurmountable obstacle, so long as the self-reference is identified as such. Links to Special:Allpages can be wrapped within the  template.  For example,  This makes it relatively simple for responsible re-users of Wikipedia content to remove the self-reference. older ≠ wiser 00:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm... I wonder if such a link could become useful on disambiguation pages?  The main topics appropriate for the page would be covered in-depth, but then there is still the link to everything else with a similar title (true there would be some overlap).  Feasable?  Or maybe only on pages where it is an issue?  I'm just brainsrotming. -- Natalya 11:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are dab pages for readers or editors? 

message: The guideline currently reads: 
"Lists of articles of which the disambiguated term forms only a part of the article title don't belong here. Disambiguation pages are not search indices. Do not add links that merely contain part of the page title (where there is no significant risk of confusion)."
I suggest that the aforementioned paragraph be deleted as it does not reflect the reality on disambiguation pages in that there are numerous pages that disambiguate articles that only share part of a title. For instance Aaronovitch disambigs Ben Aaronovitch and David Aaronovitch (this is only one of countless disambig pages that disambig based on a family name), Ace (disambiguation) includes numerous articles that have other additional words in the title, Democracy (disambiguation) disambiguates a number of phrases that include the word democracy. Love & Hope 14:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The guidline is not meant to prohibit any links that only include the word in question.  Rather, it is meant to deter the adding of unneccesary links that may just have the word in the name.  If an article is likely to be confused with the term being disambiguated, it is generally appropriate to appear on the page.  You are correct that reality does not necessarily reflect this; Ace (disambiguation) has certainly gone a bit overboard, and should in fact be merged with ACE (which I'm about to bring up below), as well as cleaned up. -- Natalya 18:13, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguating phrases and names - proposed change 

message: Per the page naming conventions at Wikipedia:Disambiguation, Ace (disambiguation) and ACE should be merged.  Before that happens, though, it seems that it might be good to clean them up a bit, as they are both very long disambiguation pages.  As addressed above, Ace (disambiguation) contains a very, very large number of links, many of which may not be necessary to be on the page.  It definitly needs some trimming down.  Any opinions on the best way to go about this, since it's a bit more complicated than the norm?  -- Natalya 18:19, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Ace (disambiguation)]] and [[ACE]] 

message: I know this has been discussed before, but I'm confused by why the page contains the following guidance:
Ensure that the "(disambiguation)" page links back to an unambiguous page name.  The unambiguous page name should redirect to the primary topic page. This assists future editors (and automated processes).
:For example, the primary topic Rome links to Rome (disambiguation), where there is a link back via Rome, Italy (rather than directly to Rome).
This really seems counterintuitive, and if there is some rationale for doing this, it really should be explained, rather than simply postulated as if a decree from on high. What is the point of having Rome (disambiguation) link to Rome, Italy instead of Rome? I know there had at one time been some attempt to describe a "Disambiguated Primary Topic" (DPT), which if I understand correctly was supposed to make it easier to identify mistaken links to Rome that were actually meant for some other topic. At least I think that is the rationale for why the text above was added to the guideline. The way it was supposed to work, IIRC, was that intentional links to a primary topic like Rome were supposed to go through the redirect at Rome, Italy. Under this theory, it was supposed to be easier to monitor for mistaken links to the primary topic. 
But this does not at all reflect actual practice. If you look at What links here for these pages, there are over 9000 links to Rome, while there are about 300 to Rome, Italy. Is there some other reason for the disambiguation page to link to a redirect instead of to the primary topic? If not, can we get rid of these statements (that I've always found a little confusing, but really didn't pay much attention to). If there is some good reason for keeping this instruction, can we add some explanation to clarify this? older ≠ wiser 21:18, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I could see it being used along the same lines as the "no piping" guideline, but it does seem to make a lot more sense to link to the redirect in that case.  I don't see any reason why not. -- Natalya 21:45, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem, Anyone else care to comment on this? If there are no objections within a week, I will remove the text quoted above from the guideline. older ≠ wiser 22:18, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it makes sense to link to the redirect rather than to the primary topic.  If we have a disambiguation page, that means that the name is ambiguous, i.e. several entities have legitimate claims to use the name.  It doesn't really help anyone if we link, on a disambiguation page, to the ambiguous name. --Smack (talk) 21:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't really help anyone if we link, on a disambiguation page, to the ambiguous name. But by the same logic, it doesn't really help anyone to link to a redirect to a topic instead of directly. What is the benefit or harm either way? The real detriment in my mind is that this guidance is not only rather confusing, but is also, in my very unscientific estimation, rather widely ignored. Guidelines are supposed to reflect actual practice. Or in those cases where guidelines are prescribing a practice that is not generally recognized, IMO there should be a very strong argument in favor of making the change. I don't see that there is a very good argument here. older ≠ wiser 23:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Primary topic links