Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation/Archive 2

message: === Massive revision of AC ===
I've just finished a massive revision of AC and anticipate that other two-letter abbreviations might need similarly extensive revisions.  I've invited the (potentially many) people affected by the revisions to contribute their concerns about the changes on the talk-page for AC and think that their input might inform work going forward on other two-letter abbreviation and three-letter abbreviation pages.  Please feel free to go and fix up the page further; perfection it is not by any means Courtland 22:28, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
:AC: 8 headers for 26 entries seems a lot to me. Besides, I wouldn't separate Isaac Asimov and AC/DC in a lead section. -- User:Docu
::OK, those can be fixed.  About the Asimov item, would you have anything as "definitive" for "AC", meaning anything for which "AC" is the name rather than just an abbreviation? Courtland 03:55, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
:::On pages for two letter abbreviations, I would mix them, e.g. as on BE, and sort by context. -- User:Docu
=== Assistance sought ===
I found an interesting dab problem at Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28assistance%29#User:Theodore W. and Frisian Josh Parris ✉ 07:10, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I responded there, although this isn't really a dab problem. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:28, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Following up, this page appears to be in good shape these days. Tedernst | talk 23:05, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Help and review requests

message: I found an interesting dab problem at Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28assistance%29#User:Theodore W. and Frisian Josh Parris ✉ 07:10, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I responded there, although this isn't really a dab problem. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:28, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assistance sought 

message: Color (disambiguation) is a mess. Almost all the entries are dicdefs of concepts which don't appear in the linked articles (although in some cases they should (e.g. Journalism)). As it stands, almost none of the entries are valid and maybe this page shouldn't even exist. —Wahoofive (talk) 17:34, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Following up, this page appears to be in good shape these days. Tedernst | talk 23:05, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Color

message: See Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation#Proposed_templates_and_template_changes_including_Wiktionary_linkage Courtland 11:51, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed templates and template revisions 

message: I created the page List of TLA-Dabs as an adjunct to the existing lists of TLAs and Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages. Courtland 02:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  FYI: New TLA-related page 

message: I'm not even sure where to start with Needle.  I stumbled upon Needle when I noticed that Hairpin (on my watchlist) grew a picture, which makes me think it's moving in the same direction.  Hairpin is actually an interesting case.  The cannonical meaning is the thing used to secure your hair; all the other meanings are derived from that, describing structures which have the same general shape as the hair-retaining device.  Yet, we have no article on the original usage, just several on the derived ones.  --RoySmith 14:10, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *Good idea, thanks.  I did the hairpin part.  Still mulling over how to deal with Needle --RoySmith 17:53, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Commander -- good job on Needle.  I was bold, you were even bolder, and the result was an improvement over what I did.  Thanks.  RoySmith 13:47, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another dab page on steroids: [[Needle]] and [[Hairpin]] 

message: I've created a new template titled "PrefixAllPages" that I believe addresses a functionality gap related to disambiguation.  Please take a look at Template_talk:PrefixAllPages and the first usage of the template at New York City Police Department.  Thanks. Courtland 04:17, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New template - {{tl|PrefixAllPages}} 

message: I just noticed somebody created :Category:Human name disambiguation.  See my comments at Category talk:Human name disambiguation --RoySmith 17:07, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New dab category. 

message: Where did the discussion take place for the introduction of :Template:LND? Is it necessary have another dab template? And the name is difficult to interpret. --Commander Keane 16:32, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
:There's also :Template:Hndis.--Commander Keane 16:49, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
OK: :Template:LND,:Template:Hndis,:Template:Numberdis, :Template:2LA.--Commander Keane 16:55, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
*The disambiguation category is overloaded, so I am splitting it into different categories along with describing what type of disamb it is in new templates. --SuperDude 19:13, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *Dude, while the effort is appreciated, you should be aware that there's been a whole project going for a couple of months now where people discuss  these sorts of things.  Please come join the project and the discussion.  --RoySmith 19:17, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template:LND 

message: section begun by Courtland 17:43, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename Template:LND 

message: I've made a post at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Bolding links about a problem with an unnecessary proscriptive part of the dab MoS. Please join the discussion over there if you're interested.
Peter Isotalo 15:18, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bolding links 

message: Please do not use "X may refer to" or "X refers to" in the introduction of disambiguation articles.  See Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#Use_of_.27refers_to.27.  Using "refers to" puts encyclopaedia articles on the wrong side of the use-mention distinction.  Encyclopaedia articles don't tell readers what their titles refer to.  They tell readers what their titles are. Uncle G 11:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Disucssion about this is now going at at MoS. --Commander Keane 16:11, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Just a reminder (perhaps an unnecessary one) ... disambiguation pages are not encyclopedia articles, by definition. Courtland 20:50, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "refers to" 

message: I've added some functionality to my popups tool which should help with disambiguation. To enable it, you should install the experimental development version of my script. If I think it's a good idea I'll migrate this feature to the stable version. To install it, edit monobook.js and add the lines
// User:Lupin/popupsdev.js - please include this line 
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popupsdev.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');
popupFixDabs=true;
Note that it's popupsdev.js and not popups.js since this is the dev version of the script. If you already have the script installed, then replace the old installation with these lines.
To use it, hover the mouse over a link pointing to a disambiguation page. A popup should appear, and after a (hopefully short) pause, a preview of the disambig page followed by a list of possible disambiguation targets should appear. Click one of the links at the bottom of the popup to disambiguate the link. The popup can get rather long, so you may have to scroll the page to see the links at the bottom (with keyboard or mousewheel).
If this is useful, if you have an idea to improve it or if it fails to work, please let me know! Lupin|talk|popups 21:31, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, someone else told me about that bug too. It should be fixed now, although there's something else going wrong which makes popups for redirects to dab pages look odd... but at least the links should work properly! The fix is in popupsdev.js (as above), not the "stable" version popups.js. Lupin|talk|popups 02:43, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Experimental popups-assisted disambiguation 

message: It is sometimes useful for a large, active, or common-term dab page to have the links to it redirected occassionally.  The act of redirecting those links is not recorded anywhere, so I thought it might be useful to have a bit of boilerplate text that could be added to the talk page of a dab page that would provide a record that this had been done.  For your consideration:
== Clearing links to this disambiguation page ==
Links to this page from the main article space have been redirected to more appropriate targets where possible. ~~~~
I've used this (or an earlier version) on ABC and AAU recently. 
Regards, Courtland 14:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A noble task and a useful notice/boilerplate. When doing link repair it would be useful to record that link repair has occured for a particular dab, and maybe put some tips for other editors when they next attempt link repair on the dab. Can these things can go under the above notice too? --Commander Keane 13:47, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

text: *That's exactly what this is about, but I dislike the term "link repair" for it because it confuses link repair on target pages vs. the dab page itself. Courtland 14:30, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *OK, that makes sense. I think the notice should be the first message on the talk page (and avoid archiving), but this goes against the "new messages go at the bottom" talk page etiquette, what do you think?--Commander Keane 16:16, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *It's a maintenance message and could be treated like a maintenance template and a) put at the top and b) not archived.  It could be templated, of course, kind of like  is.  I just didn't want to start creating more templates without some discussion around utility, format, usage, etc. Courtland 16:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested boilerplate for link clearing 

message: :Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup has suddenly started to get large over the past few days.  If we all knock off 3 or 4 over the next couple of days, we should be able to get the backlog down to something reasonable.  --RoySmith 21:10, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Large? You want large, look at :Category:Album stubs —Wahoofive (talk) 22:22, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Considering the number of things that should be in there, seeing this small number is soothing :) Courtland 02:59, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I may have something to do with that. Part of the reason why I requested something like a cleanup category is that when I am doing link repair I often come across a dab in need of attention but it is a hastle to stop what I am doing and fix up the dab, so I just put a cleanup tag on instead. Hopefully I will go back to spending more time fixing dabs after link repair is completed. Is this OK? --Commander Keane 13:55, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It certainly wasn't my plan to disuade people from adding things to the cat, or to distract them from other important work.  I was just trying to do a little cheerleading.  --RoySmith 16:49, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exhortation to clean up 

message: HI. I encounter a lot of articles whose name has been disambiguated when unneccesary. Sometimes this is fixable by normal users with the Move function, a lot of times it isn't. Often pages have been moved haphazardly, and bad redirects block pages from being moved to their proper title.
*For a real example, Plasma redirects to Plasma (physics).
*Another example, Chill out redirects to Chill out (disambiguation).
The latter type of example in particular, I can think of few reasons why a redirect should ever be targeted at an article with (disambiguation) in its title. As such, a bot would be useful to list all pages consisting only of #redirect ...(disambiguation)]] ...I'm not sure if something like that exists yet, if not I'll request it pending your comments.
Without administrator privledges, the only way to fix reflexively named pages after identifying them is to either list at Requested moves (which takes forever) or plead for someone on IRC to do it. It seems a waste of energy for one person to try to achieve something so mundane, so it would probably be helpful to try to coordinate efforts in some way (I'm not sure how). The long route of listing on Requested moves may be the only way, however.
Note that I'm not (neccesarily) talking about solving naming disputes for articles, such as whether Honey should regard the sweet and viscous liquid or become a disambiguation page and link to Honey (liquid). I'm talking about technical problems with naming. Chill out technically shouldn't redirect to Chill out (disambiguation), just as Blah de Da technically shouldn't redirect to Blah de Da (1979 album) if no other concept by that name exists.
Perhaps the scope of this project can be expanded to include stamping out reflexive disambiguation in article names. I'm not insisting it should be, but it seems right up our alley. What do people think? —jiy (talk) 04:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See the section above called #Page titling. I'm right with you, but there are other editors who seem to think all dab pages should have the (disambiguation) suffix. —Wahoofive (talk) 05:02, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Crap, I didn't see that. Sorry. —jiy (talk) 05:30, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stamping out reflexive disambiguation in article titles 

message: What's the feeling about setting up some sort of education campaign to let editor know about best practice when is comes to disambiguation style and not directing wikilinks to disambiguation pages. At the moment I occiasionaly will let a user know about not piping/excess wikilinks on dabs if I notice a change on my Watchlist (which soemtimes gets a positive response), but what about tracking down users who add links to English, Spanish etc and letting them know that it's better to link directly to the correct target. Any thoughts? --Commander Keane 06:23, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Education