Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Archive 9

message: I'm slowly becoming unhappy with the way  works on dab pages.  On a normal page with paragraphs of text, the first paragraph flows around the box that's created in the upper-right corner, and that works fine.  Dab pages, on the other hand, have lines laid out in a list format, and the first couple of entries tend to get awkward line breaks because of the wictionary box and the result is a rather ugly layout.  Does anybody have a good solution for this?  --RoySmith 17:25, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiktionary links -- how to format better? 

message: Often, I run across disambig pages that look something like this:
Foo may be:
*The Foo people of Fooland;
*The Foo language spoken by these people;
*Foo (dish), a food eaten in California;
*A Hungarian term meaning "used tissue";
*A Japanese term meaning "my brother's housekeeper's widow".
Now, sometimes these foreign terms are useful, such as when the non-English term has been at least partially adopted into English. For example, the obi disambiguation page points to the Japanese garment of that name. But what about words that are just "Foo is the Crunk-language word for boy" and the like? I know there are instructions for including Wiktionary links in a dab page, but what about situations where the term isn't in English? BrianSmithson 20:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-Engish words on disambiguation pages 

message: Speaking as the main editor attending to LoPbN (above the handful-of-entries level) for the last year or so, it may help if i respond to several of the points made in the #Usage of List of people by name section.
# "...what I'm taking to be the "master list" of names of people." (User:Ceyockey/Courtland 00:17, 25 October 2005)
#: Pretty close to my understanding, but worth refining.  
#* The page itself says in its first sentence (lks omitted)
#*:This page provides access to a list of people by name, that is, a list
#*:*of articles (biographies) about real (rather than fictional) people 
#*:*arranged in alphabetical order by name (as discussed below the table). 
#: That's actually my version, but the focus on bio articles dates from that passage's first incarnation of 20 months ago.
#* De facto, and sometimes explicitly stated, it also serves to note (via rd-lk'd entries) the need for bios as yet unwrit.  (This role has been given as one of the reasons that categories do not obsolete LoPbN.)
# "...another secondary problem [In quoting, Jerzy has omitted connecting details.] ... the persons who maintain that list are verrry conservative about page size.... (User:Ceyockey/Courtland 03:47, 25 October 2005)
#: This could refer to any of three different aspects of LoPbN:
#:# There are at least a few stretches like  where lks for each of those 8 name-heads were created 28 months ago, along with the pages, each with a straightforward index to aid in navigating the (then) depth-2 tree. Five of those 8 pages got 10 to 40 names at that time, two got two names each, and the Ax page got its first name only 6 months later.  I have renamed pages and given them new scopes, but removed no pages, based on two principles: i don't know how to be sure which may have to be put back as the list grows, and i have plenty to keep me busy on LoPbN without fixing what ain't broke.  Although there are limitations implicit in my next two points, there's no reason i can see why  or maybe even  shouldn't replace their corresponding existing pages, if C/C is right in thinking something is now broke.
#:# I have split a number of pages that were below the 32 kB recommended limit. 
#:#: This is in accord with the following rule of thumb:
#:#:: The Table of Contents should fit comfortably on a reasonable-sized window, and each section should do the same.
#:#: (BTW, using a LoPbN page of any size with its ToC turned off is, as far as i can see, always a bad decision.) That practice increases clicks, but a few clicks can save the user a much greater effort in scrolling.  Maybe someone can quantify this from a human-factors point of view, but lacking that i have followed the principle that binary searches, where they can work, are better than linear searches. And yes, that limits the size of many pages.
#:# I have created a number of micro-pages and even name-free ones (besides the ones that lead down to pages deeper in the tree) like Mb in the   stretch. Mb may be the first i did, and provides an easy example. Mb has only three names; why can't it be folded into Ma or Mc-Md? 
#:#* OK, first, take a new  page (created by overwriting a rdr). Ma is only an index to over 15 pages of names, one or two levels deeper in the tree, including e.g. the Mat and Maru-Marz ones. Putting Mb back with Ma would mean breaking up the index at Ma, in order to permit some kind of format that communicates the downward lks to more Ma... pages are more akin the the Mb names, than to the other intra-tree lks (lateral ones to Me, Mo and whatever, and the obliquely upward lks toward names beginning with other letters of the alphabet. If anyone has a workable scheme other than mine of "a page can have either names or lks to deeper in the tree, but not both", they can to bring forward a specific scheme; otherwise, objecting to the consequences of this scheme is pointless.
#:#* What about a  page (even tho it was Ma-Mb that i split Mb off from)?  
#:#** Headings with one equal-sign at each end are enormous in some skins; i resign myself to some but prefer to avoid using them, other than one at the top like the Mc one. Merging in Mb would be enough to make me subordinate all hdgs one level. As i write this, the hdgs hav three real levels and a dummy top level entry for all the Mc names; adding the Mb names, it would be 4 real levels, with the single and six-fold levels in reserve. Not a real problem.
#:#** There are 20 headings on the page; when i finish writing this, i will divide the McCo-McCr section three ways, and McG, McK, and McN-McS each two ways; subdividing the McCo names will create sections the same depth as the existing subsections of McCa, so the depth of the section tree would still be comfortable. The additional Mb section is not a significant change, but the already needed subdividing will raise the number of hdgs to 28 anyway, probably enough in itself to require splitting the Mc names. (... even if having 11 headings at the top level, some of them ranges, weren't enough to confuse the reptilian part of the brain that probably does a lot of the processing of a ToC.) 
#:#* I suppose i shouldn't assume it's obvious that Mb can't share a page with, say Md and Mf. It can't bcz they still have to be in alpha order, and if they are, even casual readers will become editors who say "Hey, there's not even any Mc names either; i know some" and add them between the Mb and Md ones.
--Jerzy•t 00:43, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is LoPbN & How Does it Work?