Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Archive 8

message: Perhaps we can move this forward so that this turns from a group of comments to a qualified consensus of some kind?  I'm prompted to suggest this based on a recent interaction that tells me "don't just let the concerns of some folks fester ... lance the boil!"  The brief discussion @ Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#"refers to" should be included as well.
The guidelines currently call for
* bolding of the word/phrase/string being disambiguated (this is non-controversial and accepted best practice)
* the leading line should be a sentence fragment
* the leading line should end with a colon
Other than these three things, there are no guidelines, only precedent ... which is hotly contested and a source of editorial friction.  The question is what guideline can be put in place that will reduce friction on this matter?  Also, there does not appear to be a guideline that distinguishes between "word/phrase" and "word/phrase (disambiguation)" titled pages, but some precedent for an additional line before the leading line in the latter case.  Further, there is no consideration for multiple forms (captialization variants or non-Roman character variants) in the "leading line space", which we could refer to as the "DAB header" for convenience (unless there's already an established term for this).
What I propose is that a dab page anatomical term be introduced ... DAB header ... that includes 
# leading line
# primary link (for pages with titles of the form "word/phrase (disambiguation)")
# variants listing (for pages that include consideration of variants on "word/phrase")
# parts of speech addressed
Now here's the really weird part of my suggestion ... let's take a lesson from Wiktionary.  There are two reasons for this: a) there is a well structured header precedent in Wiktionary and b) using such a guide would allow us to further distance dab pages from regular articles, as there is considerable confusion about the relationship between the two types of entries in Wikipedia.
To illustrate my suggested, granted major, change, consider Sunbeam, which spurred me to write all this.  Present form has it as:
 Things commonly known as Sunbeam or as a sunbeam include:
This is perfectly fine according to the current guidelines, but is not fine according to precedent ... which is OK.  The "wiktionaried" version would look like this (perhaps):
 Sunbeam
 parts of speech: noun; proper noun
 variants included: Sunbeam, sunbeam
Now before reaching for the Malox or your blood pressure medication, consider the things this can help solve.  First, we remove natural language variation from a header whose very existence has been prone to discussion let alone its format.  Second, we drop the variants right up front so a person looking for navigation assistance knows whether or not what they are looking for might be here (a definite plus).  Third, it definitely distances dab pages from articles in format.  Fourth, it provides an index to incoming redirects that facilitate splits and mergers as needed.
Consider a more complicated example, such as Bee (disambiguation), the present leading line being "Bee may refer to:"; the "wiktionaried" version would look like this:
 Bee
 primary usage: Bee, an insect
 parts of speech: noun, proper noun, surname, abbreviation
 variants included: bee, Bee, BEE, Bees
Another example, consider AA:
 AA
 parts of speech: abbreviation, proper noun
 variants included: AA, Aa, aa, aA, A∴A∴, 'A'a
I don't have any illusions that this suggested guideline will replace the current guideline.  Rather, I'm providing food for thought that might go toward an evolutionary step in the guideline toward something that is more structured and more flexible and less prone to create friction among editors owing to stylistic differences ... it's good to divorce style from content when possible, in my opinion, when trying to discuss what requirements each should meet.
Regards, Courtland 21:26, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is worthy of consideration, although I'm generally suspicious of proposals which don't correspond to any existing pages. Where we part company, though, is the "parts of speech" line. All articles in WP are nouns. Sure, some are proper nouns and some are abbreviations, but I think we're departing too far from WP's purpose to identify "parts of speech". Let's find another way to separate abbreviations. I don't think it's necessary to break out proper and common nouns in a "dab header", although they can certainly be separated in the list of items. However, the list of variants and the "primary usage" have some potential. We wrestled with the "primary usage" situation extensively when this guide was first created, and I don't think anyone's really satisfied with the result. —Wahoofive (talk) 02:02, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Detailed consideration of the leading line guideline

message: A discussion has ensued at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Please_respect_naming_conventions_and_the_Manual_of_Style regarding piping of links on disambiguation pages and the text style properly used for ship names.  I would like to add an "exceptions" list to the piping section so that the section would read as follows:
begin sample revision
Piping means concealing the actual title of a linked article by replacing it with other text, typically to suppress parenthetical expressions.
*Don't pipe the name of the links to the articles being listed, e.g. Moment (physics). In many cases this may be all the user needs to find what they're looking for.
**Exceptions
**#Use piping if you're linking to an anchor point on the target page.
**#Use piping if the article title differs from what it should be due to technical limitations per ; for instance USS Adder (SS-3) or LATEX.
*If a word in the description is linked (an unusual occurrence), you may use piping in that link.
end sample revision
Thanks for considering this alteration to the Manual of Style. Courtland 23:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm fine with this. —Wahoofive (talk) 02:45, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

text: No objections. —jiy (talk) 03:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Fine by me. Neonumbers 06:15, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Got my voite. Josh Parris # 07:45, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Thanks Courtland 16:37, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Piping and title technical limitations 

message: I've recently been looking at pages like Unimodal and Unipotent and ran across two discussion threads related to adjective article titles and disambiguation: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (adjectives) and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ambiguous adjectives).  I proposed at the former that one might create something like  that would place adjective-titled disambiguation pages into a category such as :Category:Disambiguation pages having adjectives as titles, that category being a child of :Category:Disambiguation.  My thinking is that this would be a step toward formalizing a guideline exception for dab pages with respect to article naming conventions; it would have the further consequence of reducing the size of the main category by a small amount.
Thanks for giving this proposal a few minutes thought.  Regards, Courtland 02:40, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Since Wikipedia:Naming conventions (adjectives) essentially says adjectives should just be redirects, I can't see why we should violate that by having a formal standard for such pages as articles. —Wahoofive (talk) 18:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahh, but disambiguation pages are not articles per se, they are navigational aids, part of the help infrastructure but oriented toward content rather than formatting (as most of the Help addresses). Courtland 00:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: True. In fact, disambiguation pages are in the same category as redirects: they can be seen as a redirect to two or more pages at once. So I'm not against adjective-titled disambiguation pages, but I don't yet see why a separate standard is needed for those. Eugene van der Pijll 08:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation pages with adjectives as titles