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PROPOSAL: delete the historical significance consideration from PRIMARYTOPIC

Once again WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is being used to support and oppose the same proposal. This time see Talk:Worcester#Requested move. As I argue there, this is the quintessential example for why the historical significance criteria should be removed from WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It is not helpful to send people to an article about the English city when they're seeking an article about the US city, or a sauce. ALL that should matter is what people are most likely seeking when entering the search term in question into the search field and clicking on GO. The minute you allow for any other consideration, including the vague and meaningless "historical significance", you're throwing the user under the bus and just creating a contentious situation for no good reason. This is about numbers, period. Do we serve 40% and hinder 60%, or vice versa?

When people cite the same policy/guideline as supporting both sides, something is very wrong.

Therefore, I hereby propose that the historical significance consideration be removed from WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. --В²C ☎ 00:08, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: Specific proposal. Current wording:

There is no single criterion for defining a primary topic. However, there are two major aspects that are commonly discussed in connection with primary topics:

A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.
In other words, the proposed changed wording:

A topic is primary for a term if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.

--В²C ☎ 02:28, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Diametrically disagree. Historical significance fits the core purpose of an encylopedia, to cover significant things in an historiographical, scholarly manner . Search likelihoods and click rates are matters for search algorithms. Way better would be to remove the loaded, confusing, "PRIMARYTOPIC" term and replace it with something that can be easily explained. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:29, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Well, you've got it totally backwards. Do you not realize that when our users type a term like Worcester into the search box and click Go, there is no "search algorithm" that applies? It just Goes to the page that matches that term. Users who are going through a search mechanism that use search algorithms, like Google, are shown the search results based on all kinds of criteria independent of the article title. That's why Googling for Nixon results in our article for Richard Nixon, not any of the redirects to the article, including Nixon. We could title that article X451Qsujk&vvv and the Google search for "Nixon" would still show it. The title matters to the WP search/Go scenario; not to the search algorithm scenario. That's what PRIMARYTOPIC has always been about - to make sure that the most likely topic to be Go searched with a given term is the one associated with that term. Maybe the name "primary topic" is confusing, but the underlying meaning is definitely not "the most historically important topic associated with that term"; it's "the topic most likely to be sought with that term". --В²C ☎ 00:49, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose - both likelihood and long-term significance seem sensible to counter WP:RECENTISM / WP:NOT#NEWS Widefox; talk 01:12, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    • You did not address the problem I presented, did you? --В²C ☎ 18:52, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
      • To clarify your proposal, you've made a proposal based on what you see as a problem. The proposal is flawed as it doesn't address my (and other editors) concerns that WP is an encyclopaedia WP:NOT#NEWS, NOTGOOGLE, and dabs aren't search engines so a consideration of encyclopaedic factors (RECENTISM / longevity / educational worth / WP:SYSTEMIC) is prudent and in-line with that, despite how less quantitative / objective those factors are compared to simple viewcounts. I've now changed to Strong oppose, as I oppose this in principle and practice and per the flawed example (which appears to currently have no consensus). In summary, the problem you've presented here is oversimplification, with a bad example. Both the example discussion and here is flawed by weak proposals, and as PRIMARYTOPIC and that example may need looking at, there should be no prejudice for a better worded proposal at a later time. For instance, the English town name is the source of the US, and sauce (if you pardon the pun), so there may be encyclopaedic merit in having the minority seeing it instead of a dab for US / sauce readers. There's little merit the other way around. As for having the dab located at the basename, the US article is still a click away (so it doesn't help them) and by ignoring the UK city readers in your proposal (and any merits of that) they are disadvantaged by adding a click. More pain, no gain. I personally think a clear discussion of pageviews alone for it at a later date may indicate there's no clear primary topic, but that debate has been muddied. There's a lot of merit in BD2412's view of historical significance trumping pageviews. Widefox; talk 12:49, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose pretty much as strongly as possible. Ephemeral pop groups, songs, albums, films, and other such topics have long been known to adopt the names of existing topics of historical importance, enjoy a spike in popularity while they are being heavily advertised, and then subside into the ether from which they came. Even if they enjoy popularity that is unusually long for their media, they still do not and can not play as important a role in history as the things whose names they take. No matter how popular an album titled "Parachutes" may be, it will never be as important a topic from a historical perspective as the fabric device that carried troops into enemy territory to make it possible for World War II to turn out the way it did. The problem with the discussion at Worcester is that it really is weighing apples and apples, rather than the usual apples and oranges situation to which this debate applies. If this were between any city named Worcester on the one hand, and recently popular album titled Worcester on the other hand, there would be no contest. It is because we are discussing two old cities, one older, one larger, that we have an absence of a primary topic. bd2412 T 01:13, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    • You're not addressing the problem that exists any time the two criteria indicate different answers to the same question ("Is there a primary topic, and, if so, what is it?"). What kind of guideline does that? --В²C ☎ 18:52, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
      • Hey, if it was up to me, historical significance would always prevail over recent pageviews. bd2412 T 18:56, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
        • Great. Let's send not just 60%, but 99% of the users to an article they're not searching for. --В²C ☎
          • What makes you think that going by historical significance would tend toward 99% (or even 60%)? Over the long term, the term of greater historical significance is also likely to draw the most reader interest. bd2412 T 20:01, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
      • The dilemma you present is a false dichotomy, and the guideline offers the right solution for that case: "if there is no primary topic, the term should be the title of a disambiguation page". I.e. if none of those criteria dominates over the other, let the user choose what they're looking for, instead of forcing the wrong article upon them. The guideline does not need any change. Diego (talk) 20:20, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. A real problem has been cited, but this isn't a solution. As BD2412 noted, the "Worcester" case contains incorrect applications of the guideline. Perhaps we could clarify its wording to reduce the likelihood of confusion. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater by failing to recognize the criterion's important role in minimizing recentism. —David Levy 02:36, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Worcester is just one example. Don't get hung up on it. There are countless others, both actual and potential. This "guideline" gives two answers to the same question not just once in a while, but perhaps even in the majority of applicable cases. --В²C ☎ 18:52, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
      • I'm aware that Worcester is just one example. I've personally encountered others. As I noted, a real problem exists, but I disagree that the proposed change is a viable solution. The issue stems from the guideline's misinterpretation, so we should seek to clarify its wording. Abandoning the criterion in question would eliminate valid and invalid applications alike, thereby replacing the current problem with a worse one. (See Yaksar's and Vegaswikian's comments.) —David Levy 22:36, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment: It would probably be best to not advocate a policy change until after the debate where you’re citing that policy has concluded. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:17, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose - massively disruptive and shortsighted; why don't we just change the url to www.shitpedia and be done with it. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:40, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. In my experience it is not unusual for people on both sides of an issue to cite the same policy. That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the policy. Omnedon (talk) 14:32, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose - if you're looking to serve the highest number, then you're best off having a disambiguation at the main name. When it's something relatively close (i.e. pageviews on one topic doesn't consistently outnumber the other by large factors), you're best off just disambiguating and letting people making their own choice, rather than forcing a large number of people still to the wrong page under a false dichotomy. The numbers you give seem to be based on the pageviews of 47,000 and 39,000 for the US and UK cities respectively, making 55% and 45%, which is closer than you suggest (only 1.2 times as many people for the US city). So you can either serve 55% and hinder 45% by swapping them over based purely on pageviews for one period, or in cases that close, you can serve 100% of the readers by giving them an informed choice with a main name disambiguation page. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 16:10, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    I disagree somewhat with that interpretation of the outcome. If 100% of the readers are looking for a specific article (i.e. not a disambiguation page), then taking them to a disambiguation page disappoints 100% of the readers. It is important to remember that a disambiguation page is merely a tool to assist in navigation. In a situation where, say, 55% are looking for Option A, 40% are looking for Option B, and 5% are looking for one of a group of obscure options, then having Option A at that title with a hatnote pointing to Option B immediately satisfies 55% of readers while providing no more inconvenience to those seeking Option B than going to a disambiguation page would (since that option is right there in the hatnote, one click away). bd2412 T 16:42, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Why would showing a list of all the content that Wikipedia has to offer under the searched title be a disappointment to readers? If that was true, Google would be such a failure. Assisting in navigation is the right choice when there are several navigation targets. And you assume that showing the wrong article has zero cost, which is false - noticing that one has arrived to the wrong article has a significant recovery penalty if the page looks like the expected result, but is not it. Diego (talk) 20:26, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
      • I have yet to see any evidence of just how much of a "recovery penalty" there is for landing on the wrong page. Presumably, this is not the same for all readers or for all topics. For example, if a reader is looking for the company, Apple, and arrives at a page about a fruit, they should very quickly be able to find that Apple, Inc. is in the hatnote and go right to it. For a situation like two cities named Worcester, it might take a few moments of additional reading to realize that the wrong one has been reached, but that again is a problem of comparing Apples to Apples rather than Apples to Oranges. bd2412 T 21:35, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    I agree that the penalty will largely vary between topics and readers; that's why sometimes having a primary topic makes sense, instead of allways showing a disambiguation page. Apple is a very good example of the reason why the long-term significance criterion is needed. Apple Inc. gets three times as much visits as the fruit, yet no one would suggest placing the company article as the primary topic even if its WP:COMMONNAME is "Apple", not "Apple Inc.", and no one would be surprised to find the fruit at the base name.
    As for the penalty of landing into the wrong page, you need to look no further than at loading times. A typical disambiguation page is between 1Kb to 5Kb long, while the average PRIMARYTOPIC candidate can be 30 to 60Kb in size, plus images. There's people accessing Wikipedia on a data plan on mobile or through third-world networks, and size matters a lot there if you're loading useless information that will be immediately discarded. Diego (talk) 16:51, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. Whether a subject is a primary topic or not should be decided on a case-by-case basis anyway. And while there are undoubtedly situations where historical significance will play a role in determining which topic can or should be considered "primary", to legislate it as a guideline is unnecessary and redundant. We don't enumerate all other possible factors that may play a role in a primary topic debate, so singling out "historical significance" makes little sense. Removing this bit will simplify the guideline with no ill effects (apart from reducing the pomposity of the "encyclopedicity" mavens), and when we have a chance to chew even a tiny bit off our bureaucracy, we should take it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 4, 2014; 16:25 (UTC)
    • Exactly. When "historical significance" is truly significant, it is reflected in usage in reliable sources and page view counts anyway. Calling it out separately only allows us to give "historical significance" more significance than reliable sources do. It's a form of original research, actually. --В²C ☎ 19:07, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    • That would make sense if we also remove the bit about "primary with respect to usage", for those very same reasons. Diego (talk) 20:30, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
      • For the record, I have no problem with removing that bit as well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 4, 2014; 21:07 (UTC)
        • Primary with respect to usage is based on the assumption that how frequently a given term is used to refer to a given topic in reliable sources aligns and predicts well how likely that term is to be used to search for an article about that topic, relative to other uses of that term. It's not a perfect, but it's a true guideline that works well in the vast majority of cases. We also use page view counts to strengthen or weaken a case for primary topic. So the reasons to exclude long-term significance do not apply to removing with respect to usage.
          • I didn't say usage shouldn't be considered when discussing which topic (if any) should be primary. There are situations where it needs to be taken into account, just like there are situations where historical significance needs to be taken into account. There are also situations where a whole range of other factors may need to be taken into account. We don't need to enumerate each possible one in the guideline, though. Acknowledging that from time to time situations arise, which warrant a consideration of primary topic, is the only useful purpose of WP:PRIMARY. Codifying specific guidance is nothing but redundant wikilegalism.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 4, 2014; 21:47 (UTC)
  • Oppose per [[User:BD2412 and his "apples to apples" comment. This consideration really is necessary to prevent issues of recentism, which lead to cases where a subject which is newer or popular in the moment will get more views even though in the long term these can be expected not to last. Of course, what it's not meant to do is be used as an argument from preventing articles which have received higher views for the entire lifespan of Wikipedia and have no indication of ever dropping in relative interest or significance from being moved. There are still obvious exceptions -- for example we can comfortably say that the musician Prince should not be the primary topic over the concept Prince regardless of how page views turn out in the long term. But when comparing apples to apples, as in two cities, neither of which has recently experienced some dramatic upswing in coverage or interest, recentism isn't really a concern. The case in question, Worcester, is not one of these "Prince" exceptions. Similar faulty arguments were made in the move discussions for Boston, for example, where long-term significance was interpreted by some to mean "The UK city came first" when one can say that the significance, both historically and for a long term view which shows no sign of changing the MA city being the primary is pretty much common sense. This guideline has been misinterpreted, either unintentionally or in some cases deliberately for narrow-minded nationalistic reasons, but that does not mean it is not still necessary.--Yaksar (let's chat) 16:56, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    • But basically, the guideline does not say to base it on historical significance, but rather long-term significance, a concept which takes both historical, current, and future significance into account.--Yaksar (let's chat) 16:58, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    • We can assess likely future significance by examining the dropoff in significance over time of other topics of the same genre, and projecting a similar pattern with respect to current topics. I suspect that if Wikipedia had started in the 1970s, some people would be arguing that the primary topic of Bananas should be a Woody Allen movie. bd2412 T 21:39, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Neutral. I think the problem is that historical significance is being simplified to age in discussions. Clearly that should be clarified since how much older one place is then another is not the determining factor. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:10, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Question - What is the actual wording of the line we want deleted or changed here?--Yaksar (let's chat) 19:40, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose because of the example given by B2C. Particularly as we have WP:USPLACE to complement problems of primacy over issues like Worcester (as the US city is already naturally disambiguated using the state under WP:USPLACE it reduces the need to disambiguate Worcester, Worcestershire--which is not usually done in British English). Indeed B2C is this proposal a round about way to work towards the ending of WP:USPLACE? -- PBS (talk) 20:36, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Suggestion to open new discussion. I am more fond of the new proposal than outright removal of 'historical significance', but I think that it is substantial enough a change in wording to warrant a new discussion, lest any chance of consensus gets lost in debating two different things. I propose that we draw a line under this discussion, and open a new one for the new wording, as I believe that, while the new wording still seems vulnerable to recentism, it makes a strong and valuable suggestion to help clarify the existing criteria for PRIMARYTOPIC. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 14:08, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Procedural close - I'm not quite sure what the procedure could be for something which just starts as "PROPOSAL" without a RFC template to attract a wider selection of editors, but it's already clear that without approaching WP:SNOW this propsal isn't wanted and is sucking bytes out of article space edit time. Propose someone closes it. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:27, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
2nd that. (Commenting similarly in the example move request). Widefox; talk 00:39, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Support if only to eliminate the idea that being the oldest thing named "XYZ" automatically makes something the primary topic for "XYZ." -- Calidum 03:46, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
    • I’m not sure if it’s a matter of personal interpretation, but I thought age alone was irrelevant here. If something came along later, years after the original XYZ, and became more historically significant than the older thing, wouldn’t the guideline as is favor the more recent XYZ? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:35, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
      • Theoretically, yes. But that's not always the case in practice. I don't want to get into specific examples, but there is a fairly major going on right now as we speak where editors are arguing that older=prime topic in the face of other evidence. -- Calidum 17:03, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment/Question. Several have suggested the problem is that long-term or historical significance is sometimes simplified to age. That may be a problem but it's not the problem. Even if you look at long-term significance properly, it can still indicate a different title than usage in reliable sources indicates what is most likely to be sought. That is the problem. And again, the extent to which long-term significance is, well, significant, this is also reflected in usage and likelihood of being sought - it's intrinsic in that criteria - so why call it out separately? Why give it priority when it's not significant enough in terms of likelihood to be sought? --В²C ☎ 05:38, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
    • To counter-balance naked "likelihood to be sought". Likelihood to be sought is not obviously a bad concern, but if taken too far it leads to editors psycho-speculating readers intent, performing original research using non-scholarly tools, and generally thinking at odds to how an encyclopedia editor should be thinking. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:59, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
      • But is "likelihood to be sought" naked? Isn't the long-term significance of a given topic very important and often the most significant factor that determines how likely that topic will be sought? Further, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia but it is different from traditional encyclopedias, and one of those differences is the way titles are chosen. From the beginning commonly used titles have been preferred overly "scholarly" or "official" titles, and the way "commonly used" is determined is by looking at usage in, well, commonly used sources like newspapers and popular magazines, not just the scholarly sources by which titles in more traditional encyclopedias might be chosen. And use of ambiguous names as titles in particular, the realm of "primary topic", therefore best reflects likelihood of being sought by that name by our users. --В²C ☎ 17:16, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
        • Suppose we were just to go with "likelihood to be sought", but were to qualify that by saying, "likelihood to be sought (on average, over the next thousand years)"? When we discuss pageviews, we usually look at current pageviews generated by Wikipedia's own stats generator, which gives us the pageviews for up to 90 days. That is too short a span to say anything about the place of a topic in history. However, we can't gauge the likely number of pageviews that a page will receive over the next thousand years by any means but by weighing the relative historical importance of the topics, and seeing how those have tended to stack up over the last thousand years. bd2412 T 18:18, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
          • Do any of these proposals clarify being sought? Lets say the subject is Foo and we have two articles, Foo1 and Foo2. When people talk about Foo, they really mean Foo2, but they think they are talking about Foo1. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:26, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
            • BD2412, doesn't WP:CRYSTAL tell us not to go there? I think all that matters is what usage today indicates, ignoring obviously short (a few months) and temporary bursts of popularity per WP:RECENT.

              Vegaswikian, like dictionary writers, our job is to reflect usage, not correct it. If people are using Foo1 to refer to Foo, then Foo1 should be the title of, or redirect to, the article about Foo, which probably should encompass the topic in the article titled Foo2. --В²C ☎ 21:44, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

    Wikipedia should not be make titling discussions in a attempt to emulate search engine functionality. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:02, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
    Just because CRYSTAL is primarily about content does not mean it does not apply to titles. Anyway, how does deciding on titles based on our guessing about future usage improve the encyclopedia? Smokey, it's not about emulating search engine functionality. It's about making it easier for users to find the articles they are seeking - in fewer clicks. --В²C ☎ 22:57, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
    It means we’re less likely to have to rename things based on current events and popularity. I thought you were always in favor of title stability? And by your same logic, just because CRYSTAL isn’t explicitly limited to article content does not mean it philosophically applies to titles. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:43, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose because the "historical significance" for ephemeral subjects is typically brief. One of the best reflections could be made for the September 11th attacks which refer to 2001 and not the embassy attack in 2012. Perspective on such things is not always shared, but things work themselves out typically. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 19:33, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
    • But September 11th attacks being about 2001 and not 2012 demonstrates the point of this proposal - when long-term significance is sufficiently important, it's reflected in usage and "most likely to be sought" determination. The topic most likely to be sought by anyone searching for "September 11th attacks" is the 2001 attacks, not the 2012. There is no need to explicitly invoke the "long term significance" criteria to get that right. The problem occurs when the more likely to be sought topic is perceived to be "less important" by some that view the other topic to have "long term significance". That just creates unnecessary urinating matches that would be entirely avoided if we went by "most likely to be sought", period. --В²C ☎ 21:50, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
    September 11 attacks is now so old that school children in most of the world don't know about them. Dates without year imply the current year. The article should be disambiguated with the year, per recognizability concerns. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:02, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
    Yeah if "Benghazi attacks" wasn't the convention quickly adopted due to the that issue.... though even still, your case further elevates the fact that said discernment issues typically resolve themselves. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:50, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. As to the repeated concern about recentism: Our setup isn't carved in stone. If someone named Frank Porter Graham gets in the news as a defendant in a highly publicized murder case, and a lot of people want to read his bio, then we can put his bio at that name with a redirect to the former Senator who's there now. Then, maybe after a year or two, the murder fades from the headlines and the Senator's historical significance re-asserts itself in terms of what readers are looking for, so we move the article back. During the time that the murder trial is prominent, and lots of people are coming to Wikipedia for information, there's no reason to send them first to an irrelevant article. JamesMLane t c 02:39, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
    In a case like that, I don’t believe it would be possible to say which individual would ultimately have more historical significance. If this trial were on the level of the O. J. Simpson trial, I would argue the defendant trumps the senator. Or the defendant could be acquitted on the first day and fade into obscurity. It’s just impossible to judge. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 04:55, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
    That's precisely the point. Since it's impossible to judge the future, what we should go by is the current situation. If a use is consistently getting significantly more traffic than all other uses of a name, then it is the primary topic, regardless of the "long-term significance" of any of the other uses. What happens in another year or two or five or ten is a separate matter, to be evaluated then. In almost all cases usage distribution will stay the same, but of course in some cases adjustments will have to be made, to serve our readers best. --В²C ☎ 17:55, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose - In my opinion, the purpose of Primary Topic is less about taking the reader to the most popular topic, and more about making sure that when searching for apple, the reader is not taken to an article about the corporation (no matter how popular); and from that point of view, historical significance is infinitely more important than page hits, for example. It is a safeguard to ensure we remain encyclopaedic, and looking at earlier versions of the guidelines, it appears that this was foremost in the minds of those editors too, with phrases like, “most important” and “central meaning”, and no mention at all of how likely the topic is to be sought. Even the word 'primary' means, first in importance. It does not mean most popular. This whole infatuation with page traffic stats and Google hits, has its roots in this edit, [[1]] on the 28 July 2008 at 05:13, where there is an attempt to link usage to what people search for on Wikipedia. This concept is flawed because a significant amount of English speakers don’t use Wikipedia or even have access to the internet. I would much rather see a proposal to remove the ‘likelihood to be sought’ clause, which is unknown, has very little to do with common or established usage and (assuming that the primary term is not the one sought) only saves the effort of a couple of mouse clicks at the most. --Ykraps (talk) 14:14, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
An excellent point. Primary topic is not about web traffic (or search engine) optimization. The project is about writing an encyclopedia, not about making a web site that helps people find the trivia of the moment. older ≠ wiser 14:42, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose the proposal as currently written. The Apple example has been brought up. There was a a 2012 move discussion related to this, where it was suggested to make the computer company the primary topic based on usage. If only the "usage" factor was in place back then, the computer company would have mostly likely been made the primary topic. IMO, that would have been unacceptable in trying to maintain some sort of legitimacy here on Wikipedia -- relegating a centuries-old, core vital encyclopaedic topic like that. And as User:bd2412 has mentioned, pop groups, songs, albums, films, and other such topics have long been known to adopt the names of existing topics of historical importance. What happens if Culture (band), Language (album), Life (film), or any other topic with the same name as a WP:VA generates far more traffic? Under the proposal as written, they would then be made the primary topic over these more vital core encyclopaedic ones. Wikipedia already has a bad reputation for having a systemic bias toward pop culture topics over more encyclopaedic ones. Let's not make it worse. Zzyzx11 (talk) 17:29, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
    The cultural topic bias is more from looking at FAs on easy as pie stuff in comparison to major and very complex topics that simply confound even expert editors and field experts on how to properly construct. A fair point, but a vital topic should definitely elevate it for reasons other than purely historical. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:14, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Figured I’d weigh in since I’ve participated in discussion here. Wikipedia is not a news source. Some people do look to Wikipedia for news and updates on current events, but we should not cater to people who don’t treat this as an encyclopedia. That is not Wikipedia’s job, and that is not what ought to be expected. As an encyclopedia, the primary topic for any given title should be one with long-term significance. Some here claim that we would best serve the readers by helping them find articles relevant to today’s news, and the significance clause gets in the way of that goal; I say that would improve a news wiki, but not an encyclopedia. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:39, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
    To reiterate: The fundamental issue, the foundation of what Wikipedia is WP:NOT, is this: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That is why the long-term significance consideration is important. It’s not an encyclopedia of “now.” As best as possible, it should be as relevant next Tuesday or next year as it is today. Choosing titles based on what’s popular right now conflicts with that basic principle. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 20:41, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I think the two different criteria, when applied together, generally result in the best results. I think we want to capture not only what readers happen to access the most, but what they might reasonably expect to find at an article title, and historical significance is a part of that. It's not simply a question of getting to your destination article the quickest, but of having the encyclopedia organized in an intuitive way.--Trystan (talk) 04:45, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose. If anything, we should be titling things at least slightly in favor of the "long-term significance" qualification rather than eliminating it. The "Worcester problem" isn't that editors were using PRIMARYTOPIC to support and oppose the same proposal, it was that some editors seemed to think either that "oldest=most important" or that simply saying something was the most significant was a useful argument, without feeling the need to elaborate on why it was the most significant, as though we should just accept their saying so. Updating PRIMARYTOPIC with explicit verbiage spelling out these things (that really should go without saying) might be worthwhile, but getting rid of something valuable because some can't use it right? No. Emphatically no.
The usage criteria is helpful when none of the choices have a good claim to being the most historically significant, but when one does... this is an encyclopedia, after all. In addition to the "apple" example above, here's another example. Pink (a level-4 vital article) goes to the color. Over the past 90 days, it's gotten 83,867 hits. Pink (singer) has 348,603, four times as many. Needless to say, we should not be making a change here just because the singer gets more hits. This goes to show how long-term significance cannot be assumed to be reflected in usage. Sometimes when a subject is fundamental, it doesn't get the attention that reflects that significance. After all, adults do not generally need explained to them what a color is. Egsan Bacon (talk) 01:19, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose The "apple" and "pink" examples should be dispositive on this issue. I agree that oldest≠primary, but durability is a consideration that should not be ignored. --Bejnar (talk) 03:06, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Rivers

There is the Ariniș article and Ariniș River disambiguation page. The same with Arama — Arama River. Should I place a disambiguation note in Ariniș like {{otheruses2|Ariniș River}} or better not to do that? There are many instances like those, I don't know which way is the best to do. —  Ark25  (talk) 06:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

How about {{for|rivers named Ariniș|Ariniș River (disambiguation)}}? -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:37, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that is a better choice for a hatnote on the Ariniș page. Rather than make two hatnotes on the Arama page, it would be better to place that in the existing hatnote as follows:
{{about||the 15th-century rabbi|Isaac ben Moses Arama|the village in [[Iaşi County]], [[Romania]]|Coarnele Caprei|rivers named Arama|Arama River (disambiguation)}}
That will come out looking like this:
For the 15th-century rabbi, see Isaac ben Moses Arama. For the village in Iaşi County, Romania, see Coarnele Caprei. For rivers named Arama, see Arama River (disambiguation).
I should note that the "(disambiguation)" pages for both of these were red links, so I created the redirects. – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 13:20, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Yes, there are better ways to make the hatnote, using {{about}} and {{for}}. So I understand that it's better to add the river disambiguation title to the hatnote, instead of not adding it. Of course, I will use the style you suggested, better than using {{otheruses2}}. Thanks.
Speaking about the "(disambiguation)" red links, you just gave me an idea for improving my edit counter :) /joke. —  Ark25  (talk) 15:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
If your joke refers to finding more pages that need "(disambiguation)" redirects, good luck with that. Those two were the first ones I've come across in over two years. Someone unleashed a bot on those and it's very hard to find them now. Joys! – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 22:50, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
Not at all! I created tens of such redirects in the last few days. I just created Căpățânești (disambiguation) a few minutes ago. Câmpu Mare (disambiguation), Călmățui (disambiguation) or Călinești (disambiguation) are such examples — Călinești is a disambiguation page since 2006, so there is a plethora of such redirects to be created. Although I shouldn't have told you that, haha! —  Ark25  (talk) 09:51, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Călinești is not a good example because it was renamed recently, same with Călmățui, but Cârlig (created in 2006) is — I just created Cârlig (disambiguation). —  Ark25  (talk) 13:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Excellent! Good catches! Maybe bots have diacritical conditions? – Paine  02:51, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Not really, more likely, the bots suffer from some kind of Romanian-language avoidance syndrome (RLAS): Cerbu (disambiguation), Chirilovca (disambiguation) :) —  Ark25  (talk) 20:37, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Creating disambiguation pages for the "See also" section

For example Costișa has a hatnote sending to another three villages named Costișa. But, the word "Costișa" has the same root with Coasta and Costești (the root "Coastă" means "Coast" or "Rib"). So it's good to make each one to point to another, I think. Therefore my question is: Is it recommendable to create Costișa (disambiguation) just for the sake of placing a "See also" section with other disambiguation pages for words having the same root? I this case, the disambiguation page will look like:

Costișa may refer to:

  • Costișa, a village in Neamţ County, Romania
  • Costișa, a village in Frătăuții Noi Commune, Suceava County, Romania
  • Costișa, a village in Homocea Commune, Vrancea County, Romania
  • Costișa, a village in Tănăsoaia Commune, Vrancea County, Romania

See also

In this case there are four villages named Costișa so this might not be the best example. The best example for my question is when there are only two things with the same name. For example Costinești. —  Ark25  (talk) 09:46, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

The first part of the proposed dab page looks good, but you're making a mistake where you're saying that Costișa, Coasta and Costești should be linked. They may have similar roots in Romanian, but this is the English Wikipedia, and for English speakers those words do not look the same. They are spelt differently and sound differently, so they should not be linked. An English speaker is not supposed to understand what is meant by those words, so items should only be added based on similar spelling, or on similarities an English speaker could read into those words. --Midas02 (talk) 11:08, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Tahitian and Talk:Hawaiian

Talk:Tahitian and Talk:Hawaiian could use additional eyes; there is a dispute over whether these titles should remain disambiguation pages or should be redirected to Tahitians and Native Hawaiians, respectively. It would be helpful for those familiar with the dab guideline to add input in order to prevent escalation. Dekimasuよ! 20:03, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

At the very least, I hope that one of our dab experts may be able to better answer my concerns and address the reasoning better as to why the dab pages should remain for what looks to be a very limited use of a broad concept where the links seem to all explain the same concept, the people, language or culture. Now, if these subjects had more sourced articles and a larger usage I can understand it, but no, I don't understand how we take a word, and create a page that broadens the scope of the concept of a peoples beyond that of the articles on Wikipedia. It feels like we are comparing the Hawaiian people of any definition to a football team or an airline because they have the word Hawaiian in the title? I wish to better understand where I am going wrong here or if the problem may be as simple as I believe...the comparison of Hawaiian to French is simply not valid they may both be languages of a people but we have a much more limited scope of concept with Tahitian and Hawaiian. Any help would be appreciated.--Mark Miller (talk) 00:13, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Question

What's the policy (guideline, whatever) on redirects like My Face, for which there are not actually any articles with "My Face" as a title or even significant portion? Sorry if it's buried in here somewhere, I just skimmed. ansh666 08:27, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

The dab page My Face seems fine. If only one of the three artists had a recording of that name it would be an uncontroversial redirect. As there are three artists a dab page is appropriate -all have blue links and on the one I checked "My Face" is mentioned. Wp:DABMENTION I think -awkward tocheck on mobile. PamD 08:47, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Alright, just making sure. Thanks, ansh666 20:44, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Help request on Anil K. Jain

Long story short, can anyone help with the title disambiguation of the articles listed at Anil K. Jain? I've followed WP:NCPDAB as sufficiently as I can, but I am completely out of ideas. (Pinging Megalibgwilia so they can see this post.) Steel1943 (talk) 21:50, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

That's a tough one. I mentioned the departed Jain in one of my papers ([2]); it was sometimes hard to keep them straight. I don't have any great ideas for you here; the extra info on the disambig page is unusual, but useful in this case. Dicklyon (talk) 00:27, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Comma disambiguation order

When disambiguation is needed for placenames, comma-separation is often used. Normally that makes perfect sense of course. However, I came across the following example:

Both are not primary for their base-name, and use the correct disambiguating term indicated by the relevant naming convention (USPLACE and UKPLACE respectively). In this case, it almost feels like we are introducing a new ambiguity between these two locations.

Is the convention that the disambiguator is after the comma enough to ensure no confusion exists? Or could that convention be misinterpreted in certain contexts (eg by non-native English speakers)? If there is confusion, I'd imagine hat-notes between the two would suffice.--Nilfanion (talk) 16:37, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

It seems that there are always going to be isolated items that will defy almost any attempt to disambiguate and dispel confusion. If hatnotes such as:
Exeter, Pennsylvania
Not to be confused with Pennsylvania, Exeter.
are to be used, then so be it; however, most people may feel that such a hatnote patronizes them. – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 17:46, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
I think most people are so used to the "specific place, containing place" format that it's very unlikely to cause any problems - and I've checked that both articles mention the country in the lead sentence, which helps (and is so often omitted). It's a neat discovery, but I really don't think we need worry about them causing confusion. Add the "distinguish" hatnotes (without any giant fonts!) if you feel the need - no harm done, and alerts people to this amusing pairing. PamD 18:36, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Rather than a "distinguish" hatnote to follow the article title, perhaps this is good use for the simple "See also" hatnote? as in:
See also: Pennsylvania, Exeter
Doesn't that sound less patronizing? – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 21:05, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

What is a "place"?

Note: The issue of naming conventions for articles on buildings has been discussed here at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names), but is probably better discussed here or at Wikipedia talk:Article titles.--Mhockey (talk) 21:15, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

As y'all know, most disambiguation is done using parenthesis, an exception being names of places. The question is, what is a "place"? Obviously a town or city etc., but what about a smaller fixed entities such as buildings, parks, etc.? Apparently this has never been worked out or codified or written down. If I understand correctly, the usual method is to not treat buildings as geographic places (so that we have "The Hermitage (Nashville, Tennessee)" and not "The Hermitage, Nashville, Tennessee") BUT as a matter of long-standing widely used de facto practice, an exception is made for British places so that Victoria Memorial, London and Victoria Memorial (India) are both correct form. I could be wrong about this though. But if I'm not, I'd like to add a couple sentences to the appropriate places to codify this. Herostratus (talk) 23:14, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the key thing is what's being disambiguated. If it's a thing within a place, then brackets are best. If it's another place within the larger place, then use a comma. Bazonka (talk) 08:25, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
So is a building a place or a thing? Herostratus (talk) 14:44, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
I'd say a building would be a thing. I think a place would be a settlement, geographical feature, or administrative area. Bazonka (talk) 19:21, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Merge WP:D/DAB/DISAMBIG and MOS:DAB/WP:MOSDAB?

Copy of comment added to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages; I suggest that any comments should be added there, to keep the discussion in one place.

Should Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages and Wikipedia:Disambiguation and the related shortcuts be merged? E.g. sections MOS:DABACRO = MOS:DABINITIALS = MOS:DABABRV have content with meaning about the same as WP:DABABBREV = WP:DABACRONYM.

Pol098 (talk) 13:23, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Should parenthetical disambiguation be discouraged?

Note: the following discussion has been raised in response to my proposal at Talk:Pink (singer)#Requested move 25 January 2015 to move Pink (singer) to P!nk, based on my contentions that P!nk satisfies WP:NATURAL and that Pink (singer) is still ambiguous to the fictional Pink Floyd singer, "Pink". Cheers! bd2412 T 13:44, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The notion came up in a move discussion that parenthetical disambiguation could be confusing, since the disambiguation is not present in sources (being somewhat of a Wikipedia quirk) and may be interpreted by readers as part of a name. If this is the case, our guidance should discourage using parenthetical disambiguation much more strongly than it does. I’m going to leave my own opinions out of this, but just wanted to see what the community thinks. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:32, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

There may very well be some parenthetical disambiguations that might confuse readers; however, most of those that I've seen have already been renamed to better, clearer titles. In my opinion, it would be wrong to discourage the use of clear and concise parenthetical disambiguators on the basis that a few might still be confusing. Rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, find the confusing titles and fix them. Some of the fixed ones:
– Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 07:20, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Parenthetical disambiguation is already discouraged in the guidelines. See WP:NATURAL. NotUnusual (talk) 08:06, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Which is why I said “much more than it does.” But I’ve edited for clarity (added the word “strongly”). —174.141.182.82 (talk) 08:11, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't see how you could make the language in the guideline any stronger than it is now. But despite that, you're still voting against a proposal to replace a parenthetical with a natural disambiguator.[3] NotUnusual (talk) 09:42, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
You linked someone else’s !vote, and that’s irrelevant anyway. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 10:29, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
So we have two IPs with similar numerics and the same opinion not only involved in the same discussion, but reformatting each others' posts. That's going to make things easy for the closer. NotUnusual (talk) 11:11, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Please stop distracting from the subject at hand. If you want to make accusations, do it on my Talk page or WP:ANI or something. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 11:40, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
The current guidance on this states: "If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating term in parentheses". Frankly, I don't see how parenthetical disambiguation could be discouraged any more than being limited to situations where natural disambiguation is impossible. Whether we are following this rule effectively is another question, and one that the current move request at P!nk is seeking to enforce. bd2412 T 13:48, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I agree that parenthetical disambiguation is not the preferred way when there are other good ways. But I think it's already so strongly discouraged that people use that to fight for other titles that are even less appropriate, like in the example that bd2412 cites: P!nk. Dicklyon (talk) 16:57, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Since we can redirect from any variation we want, what is wrong with having the text at the top of the page say "P!nk"? Doesn't that more accurately reflect the subject? bd2412 T 18:35, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Again, off-topic. We can talk about why it’s wrong in that RM. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 20:11, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
The topic is article titles, which have a set of requirements governing their selection. One is a preference for natural disambiguation rather than parenthetical disambiguation. Another is conciseness (shorter, rather than longer; four characters where possible, rather than thirteen). All of these considerations are tied together. bd2412 T 20:16, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Is that just a rhetorical question? The guidance on that sort of practice is expressed in some other places that you're probably already familiar with (e.g., WT:AT / WP:TITLETM, MOS:TM, MOS:TM). It would be WP:forum shopping to have to reiterate all the justification of the guidelines about that here. —BarrelProof (talk) 20:45, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Please note that the name at issue is not a trademark. WP:AT and MOS:DAB apply; policies directed to trademarks (and never having developed a consensus to apply to stage names) do not. See also Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Stylization of the "common name" for a resounding community rejection of the application of MOS:TM to titles. bd2412 T 20:49, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
What makes you say that a stage name is not a trademark? Read up. And what makes you say that a still-open contentious debate is "a resounding community rejection" of current guidelines? I sure can't see that there. Dicklyon (talk) 21:09, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Having spent a decade as an intellectual property attorney, I'll pass on reading Google's random take on the subject, and point out that any person can assert intellectual property rights in the use of their own name; this does not make all human names or potentially protectable word coinages "trademarks" and does not require us to drag the guidelines MOS:TM in front of the sun and over all policies that would reach different ends. bd2412 T 21:35, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
At the risk of wikilawyering with a real-world attorney, MOS:TM says it applies to all names of business entities, not just to formal trademarks. Isn't an individual who is doing business (e.g., as a performer who wishes to promote their "brand name" – also known as a "stage name") a business entity? —BarrelProof (talk) 01:56, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I think we need to be careful about that. Does a performer choose a stage name as a business proposition, or as a statement of identity? There may be a mix of both going on, but I think we should weigh stage names far more favorably than we weigh products and ventures that are more clearly marketing gimmicks. There is already a degree to which we are doing this - if we really wanted to disregard stage names, we would have articles titled Alecia Moore and David Adkins rather than bothering to disambiguate Pink (singer) and Sinbad (comedian). bd2412 T 02:26, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
You should really be looking at some of those books that Google found about this. Dicklyon (talk) 02:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
You would be better served going to three years of law school and then spending a decade practicing intellectual property law. Really, with your background, you could be a patent lawyer and make a killing. bd2412 T 04:01, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Gee, that sounds like fun. Not. After 40+ years of working with patent attorneys, I think I have an idea how fun it might be. I have also owned, prosecuted, and sold a few of my own patents; can't say I netted anything for all that though. I haven't done a lot with trademarks; just some books and some business names; so I know a stage name is a service mark, which is a sort of a trademark. I'm sure you can work out the nuances. Dicklyon (talk) 04:13, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Let me put this in engineering terms. Saying that all stage names are service marks is like saying that all tools are some kind of wrench. bd2412 T 04:59, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Parenthetical disambiguation is perfectly acceptable. There is no "preference for natural disambiguation". BOTH are equally acceptable. Which should be used in a given article title is a matter of editorial choice and consensus. Sometimes it makes sense to use one, sometimes it makes sense to use the other. Neither is encourage or discouraged more than the other. Blueboar (talk) 00:12, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
    • WP:NATURALDIS specifically states: "If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name". This is part of Wikipedia:Article titles, which is policy. I would suggest that this states a policy preference for natural disambiguation. I would also suggest that such a preference is expressed at Wikipedia:Disambiguation, which states: "Natural disambiguation is generally preferable to parenthetical disambiguation". I suppose this could be read different ways, but I think the sensible reading of it is that natural disambiguation is generally preferable to parenthetical disambiguation. bd2412 T 00:30, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Re: parentheticals, I've never understood why Harry Potter (film series) is not Harry Potter film series. It's not like "Harry Potter" is a proper noun when discussing the franchise. Just an arbitrary Wikipedia choice. Harry Potter in film would be more desirable as well. -- Wikipedical (talk) 03:31, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I for one would support such a revision to WP:NCF#Film series. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:01, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm all for it. bd2412 T 15:08, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Should article titles that have disambiguators never be considered a primary topic?

I'm withdrawing the need to discuss this; turns out that WP:PDAB has information pertaining to this question. Nothing to see here... Steel1943 (talk) 02:28, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
In the section Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Is there a primary topic?, should the following sentences be added somewhere?

Articles with titles that contain a disambiguation in parentheses should never be considered a primary topic for its term. For example, if more than one article can be referred to as Foo (film) and none of the articles are considered the primary topic that can be at the base title without disambiguation, then all of these titles must have additional disambiguation in their disambiguators (such as Foo (1976 film) and Foo (2010 film)), and the title without additional disambiguation (Foo (film) should become a redirect to its applicable disambiguation page (Foo or Foo (disambiguation), depending if a primary topic has been established for the base name).

(I've made this an RfC since adding this statement to the page restricts the designation of a primary topic solely to article titles without disambiguators.) Steel1943 (talk) 01:58, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I understand what you're going for. But there are enough examples of two disambiguated subjects with the same name and medium, where one is immensely more notable than the other, aka yes, the primary topic, and I'm opposed to additional disambiguation there. The amount of work involved to implement this (while not the primary reason for opposing) also doesn't seem worth it to me. -- Wikipedical (talk) 21:51, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Delete inappropriate dab entries?

Re WP:DABABBREV, WP:DABACRO: I'm at the moment in a dispute with an editor who considers that an abbreviation that is believed to be used (WP:OR?), but not included in an article, makes the article an appropriate entry to leave in a disambiguation page if it already is there. See User talk:Pol098#Acronym pages.

The text of this guideline (which I have contributed to significantly) says

Do not add articles to abbreviation or acronym disambiguation pages unless the target article includes the acronym or abbreviation

I propose to change this to

Articles only belong on abbreviation or acronym disambiguation pages if the target article includes the acronym or abbreviation

(I did in fact change it, with a comment to revert if inappropriate; the same editor reverted it, fair enough. I'd like other opinions.)

Opinions please on whether the wording should be left as it is or changed. In my view the disadvantage of the existing wording is that once an inappropriate entry has been made on a disambiguation page, the wording does not clearly indicate that it should be removed.

Thanks. Pol098 (talk) 12:29, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are for navigation, and do not follow policies such as no original research. A relatively common abbreviation like GWB for Dubya doesn't need to be important enough to be mentioned in the target to be on the disambiguation page. --NE2 12:32, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
I disagree with NE2: If it's not mentioned in the article, then it doesn't belong on the dab page. That's clearly what the guideline says.
As for the wording: it's in the section "What not to include". I think most reasonable editors would interpret "Do not add" to include "These should not have been added, therefore if they have been incorrectly added should now be removed". PamD 12:56, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
(Respoonse to NE2, written before seeing PamD's comment) Thanks for comment. The problem is, who decides what is a common abbreviation? Disambiguation pages are stuffed with people whose initials happen to be ABC. That's why I suggested the wording change. The guideline "only dab articles that document the abbreviation" seems sensible and worth keeping; isn't it worth clarifying that non-conformant pages don't belong (rather than merely that they shouldn't be added)? A guideline is needed; who can decide that American Society of Criminology belongs on ASC (dab) (it does, the article has just been amended to add ASC), but not Anthony Stephen Connor? Pol098 (talk) 13:09, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
The guideline's wrong. If someone who types GWB is likely to want Dubya, he belongs there, whether or not the intro of the article awkwardly includes it. --NE2 13:26, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
The guideline's right. If GWB is a likely search term for Dubya, it should be mentioned there (not necessarily in the intro, and certainly not awkwardly). -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
"Likely search term" is not the same as "defined in a reliable source". --NE2 13:37, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Pol098, PamD, and JHJ on this. If the article does not support the usage, then there is no basis for inclusion on a disambiguation page. Without this guideline, any editor can feel justified to claim that X is known as Y and add the entry to the dab page. Without supporting evidence in a linked article, such claims are essentially unverifiable OR. older ≠ wiser 13:43, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
A Google search for "gwb" bush verifies that it is in fact used, but mostly by blogs and such. Would this wingnuttery from Fox be enough to add it to the article? Or this timeline from CBS? Not knowing much about political articles here, I'd say there's a good chance this could become a month-long edit war, all because people aren't willing to keep it on the disambiguation page that used to be a bloody redirect. --NE2 14:06, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Or it can be added to List of nicknames for George W. Bush. older ≠ wiser 14:46, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
How would that stop it from being removed from GWB because it's not on his article? --NE2 15:13, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
It wouldn't necessarily. It would provide a path for persons who end up on the GWB disambiguation page but were looking for Bush. If it is not significant enough to mention in the main article, then at least we can make some mention. After all, someone who sets out to look for information about GW Bush by searching for "GWB" likely either assumes that "GWB" is unambiguous (or at least is the primary topic) or they see the initials in some context in which the meaning is unclear. older ≠ wiser 15:20, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

There's discussion here about what constitutes a verifiable abbreviation, with GWB as an example. Sure, there'll always be dissension; but that should be about the article page, and needs to be settled before the abbreviation is dab'ed. In the particular case of GWB, my opinion would be that some sort of news or mainstream political source would be needed for inclusion in the article—but we're not discussing GWB, this is moot. If and when GWB makes it into the article consensually, dab it. The general principle is that the article should support the abbreviation; any dispute should be around the article, not the dab page; once that is settled (and only then), an accepted abbreviation could be dab'ed. Pol098 (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This web page is used as a source in the article. It's title is "GWB: HBS MBA". Dubya's initials are in the article in the references section. It would be incorrect to use {{R to article without mention}} to tag a GWB redirect if it existed, so appears to be correct to enter Dubya's name on the dab page. – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 15:40, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Now as to the pertinent issue, I disagree with the reverter, because I see only an insignificant difference between the two sentences, which in essence convey the same meaning: If an article is added that does not contain the dab title, then it should be removed; therefore, there is no reason to change the wording. – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 16:16, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going to mention GWB, a red herring here, this is about criteria for inclusion or removal of dab entries. StAnselm says: "about entries that have been 'incorrectly added' - I would say (sic) that they should first be checked in external sources, and not just in the article." This is absurd; to be added to a dab page, it makes sense that they should be in an article, as the guideline says. If someone adds, say "Anthony Stephen Connor (boxer)" (a made-up name) to "ASC", should it be necessary to search the world to check that there is no source for this? And even if it is easily findable that the abbreviation is used, should one have to check each entry before removing it? The onus is upon whoever adds a dab abbreviation entry to verify that the abbreviation is in the article, in commonsense and guideline. Also, the idea of verifiability without verification as the criterion is not good, and violates the idea that uncited text can be removed; following this criterion I could write whatever I wanted in any article without citation, so long as I remembered that I had read it in some academic journal (not sure which) for some time around the mid-twentieth century. (Actually I can do that; but it won't stay in long.)Pol098 (talk) 22:02, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
On the contrary, it's quite reasonable to expect someone to do a cursory google search, especially if the entry has been in the page for a long time. In your mass deletion from ASC, you missed American Society of Criminology - the correct outcome (which has now been achieved) was that the acronym be added to the article, not that the article be deleted from the disambiguation page. So we want a guideline that prevents these poor outcomes from happening. As for verifiability, I think you need to read Wikipedia:Verifiability again; uncited material does not always have to be removed, only for BLPs - sources are required for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged. StAnselm (talk) 00:03, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I would suggest that it is far more common for organizations to be referenced by their initials than for people to be known by their initials. We do not need to treat them the same. bd2412 T 00:24, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

"I would suggest that it is far more common for organizations to be referenced by their initials ..." That may be so, but (1) far more common isn't always, and (2) there are a great many organisations that don't use their initials; and it isn't always obvious which initials they use. To use an old name, is The Prudential Assurance Company for short TPAC, PAC, TPA, TP, Prudential, The Prudential? (And it's The Pru informally.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology is indeed MIT; but California Institute of Technology is officially Caltech (not CalTech, though that has been seen). Pol098 (talk) 09:51, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Section summary by pol098

A summary of this discussion seems to be:

  • There is a clear guideline "Do not add articles to abbreviation or acronym disambiguation pages unless the target article includes the acronym or abbreviation". Most people agree; a couple accept that the guideline says this, but that it shouldn't.
  • This guideline implies that if there is a non-conforming dab entry, it should be deleted. One opinion says to change the wording as I had suggested; another accepts this implication but doesn't consider the actual wording needs changing.
I would add that deleting disambiguation entries for abbreviations that aren't given in the relevant article has a beneficial effect beyond removing inappropriate clutter: it encourages people to improve articles by adding appropriate abbreviations; this often happens. Pol098 (talk) 16:33, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguations in names

Hello. I would like to ask couple of reasonable questions about why is it mandatory to put disambiguation in say for example Adam Johnson if the page is already exist under such name? To me, Adam Johnson (disambiguation) looks less useful (if not completely useless) comparing to Adam Johnson, several people when it comes to surname lists.--Mishae (talk) 01:33, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

You don't need to put (disambiguation) in the disambig page title unless some other page has been determined to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and has thereby taken the base name. Is that what you're asking? Dicklyon (talk) 03:40, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
What he's asking is related to List of people with surname Johnson. He's removed all of the piping of the various disambiguation pages through the (disambiguation) redirect (for example, [[Adam Johnson]] used to look like [[Adam Johnson (disambiguation)|Adam Johnson]]). -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 03:47, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
WP:INTDABLINK is, I believe, the only thing on the page that is policy rather than a guideline. If we woke up tomorrow and the list of pages with the most disambiguation links suddenly showed that List of people with surname Johnson had 50 such links (which is about ten times as much as a typical "bad" page needing to be fixed) two dozen people would rush to fix those links, and would do so over, and over, and over again. bd2412 T 05:18, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
By using [[Adam Johnson (disambiguation)|Adam Johnson]] to link to Adam Johnson, rather than [[Adam Johnson]], makes it clear that the link is to a dab page, not to an article about someone named "Adam Johnson". That's valuable. It prevents errors. --В²C ☎ 22:28, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Delete inappropriate dab entries? - ongoing dispute

Apologies for bringing this up again, it's the matter already discussed in #Delete inappropriate dab entries?, but I am having a disagreement with User:StAnselm who wants each change on each disambiguation change discussed on its Talk page; I want this resolved in general, not entry by entry, page by page. (This user contributed to the earlier discussion here, disagreeing with the consensus.) My understanding of the consensus from the previous discussion is that, clearly and unambiguously, the guideline is that articles should be listed on dababbrev pages only if the target article includes the abbreviation.

As a particular case (there are already similar reversions of a number of entries on several dab pages, which is why I want a general resolution), the first I found was KSI (a dab page). I had deleted the entry

The article for key performance indicator does not state the initials KSI in a verifiable way (indeed, it does not contain them at all, or even the term "Key Success Indicator", but the essential point is that the initials are not documented in the article, whether or not the term is used outside Wikipedia). I consequently today deleted the "Key Success Indicator" entry from KSI (dab) again; however, StAnselm disagrees and has reverted, asking that it be discussed on the article's Talk page. There have also been reversions, at least, to MSK and ASC; I haven't checked exactly what was changed there.

I bring the discussion here as a suitable general forum, and really hope for a general resolution. I have been cleaning up quite a few disambiguation page abbreviations (mostly obviously unwanted), simply following the letter of the guideline as discussed before.

Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 19:55, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Key Success Indicator currently redirects to Performance indicator, and KSI is prolifically used as an acronym for it.[4][5][6] StAnselm (talk) 20:01, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
So let's remove "Key Success Indicator" from KSI (dab) per guideline, as the target article does not include the abbreviation. It can be reinstated if and when the article does document this use. This single case, of course, is easily resolved, and I have added several sourced abbreviations to articles that lacked them, rather than removing the dab entry; I have no objection to doing the same here myself as the sources have been provided in the previous comment, but this would do nothing towards resolving the general principle: we seem to be in the situation of discussing entry by entry. That's what general guidelines are for! And that's why I'm discussing this here, not in Talk:KSI. And Talk:MSK. And Talk:ASC. And ... Pol098 (talk) 20:27, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

You could just not delete them if they clearly belong. WP:Bureaucracy. --NE2 20:39, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

  • In the time it takes for the average editor to determine whether specialized terms "clearly belong", the articles could be improved by adding reference to them. bd2412 T 20:52, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
"...if they clearly belong." But the point is that that it is not at all clear that they belong; lots of "obvious" candidates don't (and quite a few "obviously" wrong candidates do). It's not supposed to be up to those editing Wikipedia to edit according to their opinion. Pol098 (talk) 21:26, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
It's up to those editing Wikipedia to make sure their edits are constructive. --NE2 21:28, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

A dab page reflects what is in the articles. If "KSI" was used in the article Key performance indicator, then it would be a legitimate dab pag entry at KSI. As it isn't in the article, this entry should not be in the dab page. The unabbreviated term "Key success indicator" isn't included in Key performance indicator, and this from Googlebooks suggests that the terms are not synonyms. If you think the term "Key success indicator (KSI)" belongs in the article, then add it there with a source, and editors watching that page will accept or challenge that change. Dab pages don't require references, but instead they require that the term being disambiguated must appear in the target article. Deleting an inappropriate item from a dab page does not require the editor to research outside Wikipedia to see whether it is used: our rule is clear and easy to apply. If it's not in the article, it doesn't belong on the dab page. PamD 00:09, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I dispute your dogma that the acronym must appear in the target. --NE2 00:27, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
I agree with PamD. If it is not mentioned on the linked page, it is unverifiable. If I have time and feel it is likely that the acronym is common, I might do the research myself to remedy the linked article. But as often as not, I will remove the entry as WP:V is clear about where responsibility lies for including material that has been challenged. older ≠ wiser 00:49, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
The alternative, after all, would be to allow anyone to make up any acronym they want and put it in the corresponding disambiguation page. bd2412 T 01:09, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Here's an example (or it would be if it weren't a redirect): FL 15. This is commonly used in the roadgeek community and by online direction services to disambiguate it from other highways numbered 15. But it's a neologism. It doesn't belong in Florida State Road 15. --NE2 02:49, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

  • Well, there are two questions incumbent in that statement. First, can you provide any evidence that the roadgeek community and other services use "FL 15" that way? Second, should we relax the rules to allow common classes of references like that, where the class can be shown to exist but a particular reference within the class might be lacking in sources? I would think that if there was a comprehensive set of abbreviations following that pattern, we should have an article about them, and list them all. bd2412 T 03:50, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Directions including "FL-15" several times. But you're missing my point: it doesn't belong in the article, but belongs on the disambiguation page. --NE2 04:02, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, I was unclear. My second question really should be whether we should allow things like that on the disambiguation page where they conform to a common pattern of use. It is not an unreasonable proposition, but we would need to have a well-crafted rule to prevent that sort of exception from being abused by, at the extreme end, someone who names their band FL-15, or owns a local diner named the "FL-15 Diner" (compare the I-84 Diner) and wants to include it on the disambiguation page even though it does not merit inclusion in any article. Frankly, though, if it can be demonstrated that Google Maps and other such services would refer to this road as FL-15, I don't see why we wouldn't note in the article that online direction services refer to this road as FL-15. bd2412 T 04:41, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Major difference: there'd be no article to link the band or diner to. As for the note, it'd quickly become unwieldy: "the Goog calls it 'FL-15', MapQuest uses 'Florida 15', while AAA calls it 'Florida State Highway 15' and BBB says 'Florida State Route 15'" (all fictional examples except FL-15). --NE2 04:54, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Mapquest also uses FL-15. It is probably standard for maps/map services to use the shortest form that they can. It is entirely reasonable that a person with some interest in roads, seeing that on a map, would look it up here using that designation. I just want to be careful in how we word any exception to the existing restrictions, to avoid less reasonable outcomes. bd2412 T 05:06, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a directory or indiscriminate collection of slang or informal usage. If FL 15 is commonly used in reliable sources to refer to the road, then I don't underrated why this should not be mentioned in the article. older ≠ wiser 13:47, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
It's used only because their algorithm does it that way, not because they actually chose to use that name. --NE2 15:56, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Someone had to choose to program the algorithm to make "Florida" into FL and eliminate everything else but the number. Besides, doesn't the roadgeek community use the same abbreviation? Surely that was selected by choice, and not by some algorithm. I still don't see why, if it can be reliably sourced that multiple communities of interest use this specific abbreviation, we don't drop a reference to it somewhere in the article. It could take a short line at the end of the "History" section, for example. bd2412 T 16:06, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Just what road articles need, more padding to go with "x is not part of the National Highway System". --NE2 16:12, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
These articles are short as it is (FL 15 is just over 16.4K, and most of its content is from templates). Also, this is information - apparently useful enough in your view to warrant mention in the disambiguation page. How can the information be useful in that respect and not warrant mention in the article that is entirely about the stretch of road sourced as being referred to by the abbreviation? That is the dilemma - if it is not worth mentioning in the article on the thing itself, why is it worth mentioning anywhere? bd2412 T 16:20, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Herein lies the problem: you see a disambiguation as an actual integral part of the encyclopedia. I see it as a navigational tool. --NE2 16:36, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
A navigational tool should still generally be limited to the contents of the articles to be navigated - if there are exceptions, they should be made very carefully, and delineated very clearly. I am really not opposed to an exception in this case, so long as something somewhere in the encyclopedia (for example, in Florida State Highway System#Numbering). bd2412 T 17:50, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
Regarding the road redirects. "state postal abbreviation number" is often an easy shorthand way to refer to and search for a state route. In some states, it is the official abbreviation of the route while in others they may use other abbreviations such as "SR X". However, I do not see a problem with having "state postal abbreviation number" as a redirect or dab page entry for all state routes as redirects are cheap and using this abbreviation is an easy way to help editiors, including myself, get directed to the right article. Dough4872 16:24, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Personally, I always feel free to delete items that lack support in the linked article. What else does an editor have to go on? If someone wants to put it back, they can, so long as they add the support in the linked article, so that the next time someone like me comes along it won't be deleted again. Simple enough? Dicklyon (talk) 02:14, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

What else does an editor have to go on? Well, it could be referenced on the disambiguation page... --NE2 03:27, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
Could. But I'd still remove it if it lacked support in the linked article. And I wouldn't be the only one. Dicklyon (talk) 03:37, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
Because you're concerned primarily with strictly applying guidelines, not creating a useful navigational aid. --NE2 04:04, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
I don't often get to agree with Dicklyon, so I'm very pleased to do so here. We apply strict guidelines in order to maintain useful navigational aids. Without adherence to these guidelines, disambiguation pages would become endless streams of non-notable cruft. I am not suggesting that a commonly used shorthand for roads falls into this category, but unless we have a principle by which to distinguish exceptions, we open the door to anyone claiming that in some unsourced neck of the woods, FL 15 is a nickname for some barely-notable band or product or comic book character. bd2412 T 05:15, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
I only work on applying guidelines when I feel that doing so improves the encyclopedia. And if I don't, and someone else does, then I generally don't argue with them (unless the argument is about how to interpret the guideline). But strictly applying is never what I'm about. Here I was trying to convey that if you want stuff to last on a disambig page, you need support in the linked article; otherwise, people who feel the page is improved by removing stuff that does not belong will take your stuff out. It might be me, or one of thousands of others. Dicklyon (talk) 05:32, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
The fact that someone's added a reference should imply that they think it's a worthwhile addition to the page. --NE2 05:38, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
Even more strongly, the fact that someone's added anything to Wikipedia should imply that they think it's a worthwhile addition to the page. So, following the new guideline suggested by the previous comment, we should all stop removing "JFK was actually shot by a UFO", "Halrloprillalar Hotrufan is a &£(&*! moron" and so on. Pol098 (talk) 09:01, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Disambigation discussion at Oddfellows

Greetings! I'd like to ask the editors here to have a quick look at the article Oddfellows, where there is an ongoing discussion about disambiguation. The issue has been discussed here[7] and here[8]. The article is in a rather passive state, and there seems to be only two active editors with opposite views at the moment, so third party help would be highly appreciated!

There's only one paragraph in the lede and a hatnote under discussion, so it won't take much time to take a look. Thanks! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 20:54, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

London After Midnight

I do not think we need this disambiguation page, London After Midnight. There are only two options, this page is not necessary to navigate between one or the other. I suggest we remove it.-Xcuref1endx (talk) 09:06, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. I wouldn't be able to justify either article as a primary topic, so per WP:TWODABS, a disambiguation page at the base name is the way to go. —Xezbeth (talk) 10:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Is there ever not a primarytopic?

I'm baffled. It seems that editors usually have a lot of fervor for primarytopic grabs, and little patience for disambiguation pages, which would be really helpful in getting a user to the article they're looking for. I would think that people who care about title policy would watch RM discussions and provide a little perspective on this, but the primarytopic grabbers are often nearly unopposed, even when the article they're grabbing for gets less than 10% of the views, as at Mustang. What's up with that? Dicklyon (talk) 05:14, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Interstate 88 should shut them up. --NE2 06:05, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Actually, we've addressed pages like that before - see Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 40#So where are we at with John Quested example suggestion?. There is clearly no primary topic where both of the ambiguously named topics on the page are obscure, have comparatively little historical significance, and are of low interest to readers, as is the case with these two stretches of highway. bd2412 T 14:22, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
I think a reasonable criterion would be well beyond absolutemajority even. But on some like Mustang, is not even close to top. It's just crazy out there. Dicklyon (talk) 15:57, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
Page views are not the only criteria used to determine primacy. Historical significance is equally considered. If it wasn't, Apple would be a disambiguation page today. That is the criteria by which Mustang is weighed (along with the fact that most uses of the term other than the horse are partial title matches, commonly discussed using Mustang as only part of the name). There was a proposal within the past few months to delete historical significance as a consideration. It drew far more opposition than support, so clearly there is a will to continue weighing that factor. bd2412 T 17:24, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
What you call partial title matches may simply be disambiguated titles. If disambiguation were not necessary, the article for the Ford Mustang would certainly be titled simply as "Mustang". older ≠ wiser 00:08, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Would it? That depends on how it is most commonly referenced. It is not disambiguated in the sense of Mustang (Ford automobile). bd2412 T 01:05, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't get your point. older ≠ wiser 01:27, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Some automobile brands are disambiguated with parentheticals, such as Roosevelt (automobile). It may be that this one is not because people who think of it think "Ford Mustang" as an undivided full name. bd2412 T 02:59, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Well, yes ... but that's typical for natural disambiguation. Just because it can be qualified, doesn't necessarily mean the qualified name is the most common form. older ≠ wiser 03:05, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm just saying that we don't know in this case that "Ford Mustang" is any more separable as an identifier than "Rock Hudson". Are there sources that refer to the car solely as "Mustang" without using "Ford" as a qualifier? bd2412 T 03:22, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Just check how many of the titles in a simple book search are unqualified. older ≠ wiser 03:40, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
That is an interesting data point - for the PTM issue. bd2412 T 04:29, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
You were wrong about place names when you claimed that City, State is not a disambiguated form of City, and you appear to be wrong here. --NE2 04:36, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Where did I say that? A diff would be nice. bd2412 T 05:11, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
I was technically wrong (the worst kind of wrong); you tried (and failed) to argue that comma disambiguation is somehow different from parenthetical disambiguation, and that comma-disambiguated titles are at "the base page name". Putting a qualifier like Ford or Florida before is a third way of disambiguating (e.g. Florida State Road 50's actual name is State Road 50). --NE2 06:34, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
It is unfortunate if my statement was not clear, but please see Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Naming the specific topic articles, which distinguishes different kinds of disambiguation, and states that "natural disambiguation is generally preferable to parenthetical disambiguation". The point is that we prefer to avoid using a parenthetical to name a disambiguation page where a non-parenthetical is available. This is not a point of controversy. bd2412 T 13:56, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Your problem is in treating these differently after the page titles are chosen. --NE2 14:21, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
The guidelines treat these differently. I am merely pointing out what the guidelines require. bd2412 T 14:23, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
The guidelines do no such thing. Yawn. --NE2 14:40, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
I literally just provided the link in the previous post where this distinction is made. bd2412 T 15:03, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
after the page titles are chosen (yawn) --NE2 15:33, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
That phrase is ambiguous - chosen by the person originally creating the article, who may be unaware of Wikipedia guidelines, or chosen by community consensus? Also, you really should get that yawning problem looked into. It could be a symptom of sleep deprivation, or a number of heart conditions. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:52, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
yawn --NE2 15:56, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the point is that after the title is chosen, an article using natural disambiguation should not be subject to discrimination with regards to determining the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 16:17, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

@BD2412:, it seems to me that getting a majority of traffic should be a minimum criterion, since the experience is so bad for people who get to the wrong article instead of to a dab page. I understand that historical importance is also relevant; but I'd argue that whenever these criteria point in conflicting directions, then don't choose any primary topic, for most useful result. Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
So you think that Apple should be a disambiguation page? That is worth testing with the community. bd2412 T 12:50, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Also, what evidence do you have that the experience is "so bad for people who get to the wrong article instead of to a dab page"? Have you conducted a study? A focus group? Surveys, perhaps? So far as I know, the experience of landing on a disambiguation page is just as bad, since it is not the page that the reader is seeking (and, of course, much worse for the reader who is seeking the page that would be the primary topic). A disambiguation page is probably the wrong target for the reader nearly 100% of the time; at least a primary topic page would be the right target some of the time, and if the page has a well-thought hatnote, this can serve the disambiguation function just as well as the freestanding disambiguation page. bd2412 T 14:29, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
User:Dicklyon, it is crazy and deeply inconsiderate of those with poor or expensive connectivity. But then I don't believe it would be so crazy if everyone considered mobile uses. It's okay on wifi, but it can be massively annoying (and slow) to load a long (wrong) page rather than a few bytes of a dab when on roaming. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:01, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I've been doing more browsing and editing recently on mobile devices with occasionally spotty connectivity and it is extremely annoying to get a "wrong" page. older ≠ wiser 15:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
Isn't a disambiguation page a "wrong" page relative to whatever topic you were seeking? bd2412 T 19:53, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
It is not the "right" page, but is is far less "wrong" loading a relatively small dab page than most articles. older ≠ wiser
I'd like to make three other points here: 1) I remember that when I was a Wikinewbie, I often did not notice hatnotes or understand their purpose; it would take me a while to figure out that what I was reading about was the wrong thing, and I didn't understand how to get from there to where I wanted to go (despite the italic line at the top); at that time, the navigation assistance of a dab page was helpful. 2) Even as a not-so-newbie, I am glad for the education I receive when I discover that there is more than one reasonable target for the term I was seeking, and 3) When an editor creates a link to the wrong article because of a misplaced primary status, they don't realize it and the error may persist in the article they were editing, whereas if they accidentally link to a dab page, a rapid corrective action will emerge (e.g., a bot notice on their Talk page). (I recently discovered that many articles mentioning Rovi were linking to an article about a magician, and no one had noticed for a long time. Corvette comes to mind as a possible similar phenomenon there.) —BarrelProof (talk) 23:17, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
There still must be a line-drawing exercise. Some editors would make George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Barack Obama into disambiguation pages, since there are other people by each name (and at least one other notable "George Washington" was president of a company in the United States, so some disambiguator other than "President" would be needed for the former head of state). At the other end, some editors would take a topic like John Smith or James Johnson and just pick one as the "primary topic", despite the absence of any clearly predominant holder of the name. What we are doing is setting a boundary somewhere in the middle, and not always agreeing about where the line should be drawn or what principles should guide it. bd2412 T 23:50, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I have been asked to comment here. Primary topic is not a bad guideline, however, it's interpretation can be vexatious. It does not say there must be a primary topic, it says there maybe - if editors agree there should be. Primary topic is not an article which gets 10,000 views a month, or, if it is, then the guideline should say so. Too much time is wasted because editors want to argue what is primary. Some even want to only consider the last month to decide what is primary! Some of those editors might be suffering from an extreme bout of OCD. I compare this to a WikiVegas Casino and the sooner the encyclopedia that Wikipedia should be takes precedence the better for everybody. As for disambiguation, there are projects that insist on disambiguation when none is necessary. Those projects might be right! Rant over. --Richhoncho (talk) 00:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Separate disambiguation articles for word forms

Currently Hitchhiking (disambiguation) is up for deletion at AfD (see here). The idea is that we should have separate disambiguation articles for "Hitchhike", "Hitchhiking", and "Hitchhiker". Is there a policy on this, that word forms should be distinguished, with a separate article for each word form? – Margin1522 (talk) 09:29, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't hurt to have separate dab pages for each variation as long as enough notable titles are linked from those variation entries. It also helps readers to link to all the variations in the "See also" section. As for a policy on this, I don't think so. This guideline and the MOS guideline are where we begin, and unless I missed something, there is nothing specific about this type of similar-title disambiguation. Perhaps the deletion discussion for Hitchhiking (disambiguation) is a good place to garner a consensus for clarification in this guideline? – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 18:40, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Primary Topic wording change proposal to reduce guidance ambiguity

Until a few years ago primary topic had one definition, what is now called the "usage" criteria. The introduction of a second criteria, the so-called long-term significance criteria, complicated things. In particular, the guidance is now ambiguous on what to do when the two criteria conflict. Clearly there is consensus that certain uses of names with long-term significance should be titles even when they're not the primary topic. So, I'm proposing a change to primary topic that address the guidance ambiguity issue while recognizing consensus desire for retaining long-term significance as a consideration in title decisions requiring disambiguation.

The proposed changed section is here:

The first rev of that page is the current wording, so you can diff between the two version to see all the changes:

A summary of the changes:

  1. The long-term definition of primary topic is removed, so primary topic is once again clearly defined per the usage criteria only.
  2. A sentence is added clarifying that if a term has a primary topic (per the usage method), that should be the title of (or a redirect to) the article about that topic.
  3. A new section entitled When there is no primary topic encourages use of ambiguous names as titles even when there is no primary topic, if there is long-term significance for one of the names. This section is proposed to have the shortcut NOPRIMARYTOPIC, so RM proposals and !votes can say, "per NOPRIMARYTOPIC".

Examples are given for each.

The net result should be little if any changes in titles. The only cases where there would be a difference is where there is a primary topic per the usage criteria and another use has long-term significance. Currently the primary topic section provides no guidance for what to do in such a case. With this change the article with the primary topic per the usage criteria would be given preference to have the ambiguous name as its title; and long-term significance would continue to apply when there is no primary topic. The intent is to not have any effect in any other kinds of cases. If there is, then I've overlooked something. Please let me know. Thanks! --В²C ☎ 22:25, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

  • We just had a lengthy discussion where removal of long-term significance was rejected by the community. I would suggest that you notify everyone who participated in that discussion of this proposal. Maybe the difference in structure will lead to a different outcome, but I would not consider that likely. bd2412 T 22:34, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
    • I suggest that he be told to drop the stick. Making titling decisions through a simplistic algorithm is incompatible with community-based consensus decision making. Considering individual cases individually is not chaos. Long term significance is very important, it is a concept naturally entrenched in an encyclopaedia. His algorithm would serve the majority non-scholarly uses at the expense of others, and is a bad idea. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:31, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose for the same reason I opposed your attempt to remove long-term significance the last time you did this three months ago (here). That was widely opposed. This is essentially the same proposal, and the ever so slight way it isn't the same doesn't address the objections people had last time. For those who missed the conversation last time, here is what I wrote then:
If anything, we should be titling things at least slightly in favor of the "long-term significance" qualification rather than eliminating it. The "Worcester problem" isn't that editors were using PRIMARYTOPIC to support and oppose the same proposal, it was that some editors seemed to think either that "oldest=most important" or that simply saying something was the most significant was a useful argument, without feeling the need to elaborate on why it was the most significant, as though we should just accept their saying so. Updating PRIMARYTOPIC with explicit verbiage spelling out these things (that really should go without saying) might be worthwhile, but getting rid of something valuable because some can't use it right? No. Emphatically no.
The usage criteria is helpful when none of the choices have a good claim to being the most historically significant, but when one does... this is an encyclopedia, after all. In addition to the "apple" example above, here's another example. Pink (a level-4 vital article) goes to the color. Over the past 90 days, it's gotten 83,867 hits. Pink (singer) has 348,603, four times as many. Needless to say, we should not be making a change here just because the singer gets more hits. This goes to show how long-term significance cannot be assumed to be reflected in usage. Sometimes when a subject is fundamental, it doesn't get the attention that reflects that significance. After all, adults do not generally need explained to them what a color is.
In addition, I endorse SmokeyJoe's suggestion that the proposer be told to drop the stick. Egsan Bacon (talk) 13:34, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
You seem to want to demote long-term significance to cases where there is no primary topic, and apply the usage criteria alone in other cases. I entirely disagree with this. Omnedon (talk) 17:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
Where would that matter? It occurred to me it would be helpful to bringing stability to titles like Mustang. There is no primary topic for "mustang", and so many feel Mustang should be a dab page. My proposal would add the section NOPRIMARYTOPIC to clearly indicate that in cases like that, where one use (in this case the horse use) has clear long-term significance, that the article about the horse should remain there. --В²C ☎ 18:31, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Question - How is removing the long term definition of Primary Topic recognising the consensus desire to retain it?--Ykraps (talk) 18:19, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
    • I thought it was the ability to retain long term significance as a factor in title decisions that was important (and my proposal strengthens that with the new NOPRIMARYTOPIC section), not the semantic issue of whether long-term significance should be part of the definition of "primary topic". --В²C ☎ 18:31, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - and a 6-month moratorium on this editor making this and related proposals yet again. The six months could be use to make contributions to article space. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:44, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Parenthetical naming and consistency across an article series

When dealing with many articles that are naturally related (e.g. rivers or moons or mythological gods), my recollection is that it is generally agreed that adding parenthetical expressions to all members of the group should not be done solely to establish naming consistency even if most members of the article series already have parenthetical expressions due to the need for disambiguation. For example, most Roman gods are labeled "(mythology)", e.g. Jupiter (mythology), Saturn (mythology), but that is not by itself an adequate reason for moving an article like Minerva to "Minerva (mythology)". In other words name consistency is not a sufficient reason to add parenthetical expressions. Assuming my recollection is correct, could this be mentioned explicitly somewhere in the Wikipedia page? Dragons flight (talk) 18:34, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Victoria (geographical disambiguation)

This dab page spin-off appears to have existed for around 8 years, and I've never seen a similar one. Victoria (disambiguation) isn't particularly large, certainly not in the same league as some of the longest dab pages, so I see no justification for splitting off geographical articles in this manner; it's just a hindrance to the reader looking for one of them.

Is there a precedent for this sort of thing? —Xezbeth (talk) 14:38, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe combine Victoria (geographical disambiguation) and List of places named after Queen Victoria into a single List of places named Victoria or similar, and remove entries in the Places section of Victoria? Pol098 (talk) 15:25, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Are there places named "Victoria" that are not named for the queen? bd2412 T 15:37, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
WP:INCDAB. Merge Victoria (geographical disambiguation) to Victoria (disambiguation) per that. A few incoming to fix. Widefox; talk 15:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
@BD2412: Yes (Spanish for "Victory"), and also places named for Queen Victoria which don't include the word "Victoria"! The "List of places... " is a list but not a dab page. I think the placenames should probably be included in the general dab page, though it will become quite a size - but that's why it has a clickable table of contents, so people can skip to relevant sections. I suggest that the list of partial-title-match dab pages such as Victoria Island (disambiguation), currently the first section of the geographical dab page, would be more useful to readers if it was included as a final "Places: see also" sub-section within the "Places" section, rather than in the "See also" at the very end of the dab page, though that might need a bit of WP:IAR. PamD 16:06, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
I went ahead and merged it, removed some partial title matches in the process, and the end result isn't even that big. I left List of places named after Queen Victoria alone since that isn't a dab page in the first place. —Xezbeth (talk) 13:07, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Separate disambiguation pages for plural vs singular

Not sure if there's a clear guideline for this, but I'm wondering if there's a point where enough articles have the plural version of a term that it would be better navigation-wise to create a separate disambiguation page for the plural, rather than redirecting it to the singular, which then has a top note link to the regular disambiguation page. —Torchiest talkedits 13:59, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Proposed redirecting "Lohengrin (opera)" to "Lohengrin (Wagner)"

Moved to Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2015 March 16 § Lohengrin (opera)

It has been proposed that "Lohengrin (opera)" should redirect to "Lohengrin (Wagner)". The alternative is to redirect it to "Lohengrin (disambiguation)".

While most have heard of the famous classic opera Lohengrin (Wagner), there exists another opera called Lohengrin that is not well-known: Lohengrin (Sciarrino). It is safe to assume by all concerned that most who consult or edit Wikipedia, when encountering or creating a link to "Lohengrin (opera)", will at first believe the link will take them to the well-known favourite written in 1850 by the great German composer Richard Wagner thinking it to be the only Lohengrin opera, although of course those who are searching for the little-known short contemporary piece written in 1982 by Salvatore Sciarrino need to be accommodated also. Because it is generally believed to be more helpful to the vast majority of readers and editors, this proposal is being put forward. But please consider that the alternative to this proposal would be to follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Incomplete disambiguation, which state that a link to "Lohengrin (opera)", an incomplete disambiguation, should instead take the reader to Lohengrin (disambiguation), where the reader can choose which Lohengrin they want. Those who support this proposal believe that the middle step is unhelpful and will cause an unnecessary burden for most people looking for the major work, and that the few looking for the minor work will still be able to find it. Those who oppose this proposal believe that popularity is irrelevant, that the guidelines must be respected and should not be willfully ignored, regardless of any additional effort this causes. Ideally, the outcome of this discussion would either clarify or amend Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Incomplete disambiguation so other similar disagreements will be better-informed by established consensus in the future. Note that, if necessary, a Wikipedia:Hatnote can be placed at the top of both Lohengrin opera articles directing to the other article. Please reply with your Support or your Oppose and hopefully we will see a consensus! Thank-you. Prhartcom (talk) 20:33, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Support. It may be against guidelines but takes readers (and editors) without a detour where they expect to arrive. Note that until recently the article name was Lohengrin (opera). - I don't know if the guideline could be improved for such cases where one of the choices on a disambiguation is The choice in most cases, comparable to a primary topic. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:51, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose - It is for these very cases that the "Incomplete disambiguation" guideline exists. If it were always the case that there was no difference in prominence between the relevant subjects, then the need to redirect the incompletely disambiguated title to the disambiguation page would be too obvious to have a guideline about. Not following this guideline creates the necessity of adding a particularly problematic hatnote to the "primary" article. By stating in a hatnote that an incompletely disambiguated title redirects to a particular article, we are encouraging editors to invent/guess disambiguators when typing things into the search bar, which is not a practice we should be promoting; if casual readers were regularly in the practice of doing this (which they currently are not), then we would have to create many more redirects to anticipate potential disambiguated search strings, in the same way that we currently create redirects from synonyms and misspellings to anticipate search strings. Furthermore, we are inconveniencing almost no one by redirecting Lohengrin (opera) to the disambiguation page. Doing so effectively takes this title out of the picture for nearly all readers; it no longer appears in the search box drop-down menu when people type "Lohengrin" into the search bar, and Lohengrin (Wagner) is presented as the first option in that drop-down menu. The only people it might minorly inconvenience are people looking for the Wagner article who outrun the drop-down menu and incorrectly guess the disambiguator as "opera", an action which seems to me to be an unlikely or at least very uncommon one. The "Incomplete disambiguation" guideline is a good one and there is no reason to deviate from it in this case. Neelix (talk) 00:53, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Support - The Wagner opera is not only the primary topic for Lohengrin opera, it is far and away the most prominent Lohengrin opera. Any reader who types "Lohengrin (opera)" is almost certainly looking for the Wagner opera, and should get there directly. The few looking for the other opera, if indeed any of those typing Lohengrin (opera) are looking for that one, can get there via the hatnote in exactly the number of steps they would need to via the disambiguation page anyway. If the incomplete disambiguation guidelines causes a case like this to be directed to a dab page, then it is not a good guideline and WP:LEAST would be a better principle to follow. Rlendog (talk) 01:37, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Incomplete disambiguation section update

I will soon update the Incomplete disambiguation section to give an exception to what is stated there, according to what was decided in the following discussion: Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2015 March 16#Lohengrin (opera). Currently the section begins, "When a more specific title is still ambiguous ... it should redirect back to the main disambiguation page". This is a good guideline and makes sense for most incomplete disambiguations, in which two or more articles exist that could be described by the incomplete disambiguation (example: "Honey (album)"). The exception, however, will state that "this does not apply if one of two subjects is quite well known and the other is almost completely unknown. In such a case, the incomplete disambiguation should direct to the more notable subject, as it would be a disservice not to." (The discussion was over "Lohengrin (opera)", in which there exists the classic opera and a nearly unknown contemporary short work.) If there are no objections, this will be done within the coming week. Cheers, all. Prhartcom (talk) 20:40, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

  • That is not really an WP:INCOMPDAB issue at all, but a primary redirect issue. The point of "incomplete disambiguation" is that we should not have a disambiguation page at the title "Honey (album)"; if the term is ambiguous, then it should be a section in Honey (disambiguation). It says nothing about what to do if there is a primary "Honey (album)" among several albums named "Honey" (although albums are a bad example for this, because of decisions specific to the music project that have them always disambiguated). A comparable case would be George Washington (president); although there have been several men named "George Washington" who were "president" of something, if this redirect existed it would point to the one who was "President of the United States". bd2412 T 22:22, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
    • BD2412, thank-you for this information. My note came about after an editor attempted to move an article that was the primary "Lohengrin (opera)" of two Lohengrin operas and who cited this guideline as justification (they wanted "Lohengrin (opera)" to point to disambiguation rather than point to, or actually be the name of, the primary Lohengrin opera). After consensus voiced that this would be a disservice, the editor suggested that this guideline be amended. But you do not think so? Your example sounds to be exactly the situation I described: "George Washington (president)" should point to or actually be the name of the one who was President of the United States and ignore all other articles about presidents named George Washington as it would be a disservice not to; it should not point to "George Washington (disambiguation)", as the editor thought this guideline states. Prhartcom (talk) 13:20, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Should the Liquefaction page be a broad-concept article or a disambiguation page?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Liquefaction#Recent transformation into in a WP:Disambiguation page. A WP:Permalink for the discussion is here. Flyer22 (talk) 21:26, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Indexing

In reference to Jayaguru-Shishya's comment above: "specific parameters that we'll include to the page name for indexing purposes", I'd like to point out that indexing is very different from disambiguation. Automatic indexing (or manual, for that matter) should not be done just on the basis of article title, but on the basis of the title, the lead and the whole of the text. So I would suggest that such a discussion really is inappropriate here for two reasons (1) it is not about disambiguation and (2) it makes a assumption that indexing should be based solely upon title. Now a discussion of subject based metadata for Wikipedia articles might be useful somewhere else, I suspect that such a discussion has already been started numerous times. {{Persondata}} is a result of one such discussion regarding certain types of biographical metadata. Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists are others. --Bejnar (talk) 16:30, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Greetings Bejnar. What I said about indexing must have been a very inconsiderate choice of words above, because the least I wanted to to assimilate the discussion with "indexing" as a technical term. Therefore, I struck that part of my comment. What I was meant to say was that it is up to us to choose between some a) predefined parameters, i.e. disambiguators, or b) always aim to keep the name as concise as possible, and use disambiguators only when needed. Please get me right, I am not suggesting anything or taking any sides in support or against :-) I just made a comment as I am watching the page. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 18:25, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are navigation pages

In the current condition of the "WP:Disambiguation" page there are 8 instances of content containing "navigat" and 290 uses of content containing "disambig".
In contrast a search on:

while a search on:

The ratio is >1000:1

As a result of, I think, a misguided focus on disambiguation I think that Wikipedia regularly slips into WP:BUREAUCRACY often neglecting the role of a WP:ENCYCLOPEDIA to provide valuable WP:DESCRIPTION.

The result, IMO, is that editors can often favour emphasis on dissection rather than on presentation of subject descriptions.

For reference please refer to Web navigation and any relevant content at Disambiguation (disambiguation).

In the current state of the "WP:Disambiguation" page there are only 17 instances of content containing "descri" and I think that, to an extent, we can miss the point. I suggest a refocus of this content and would encourage editors to put some thought into this. GregKaye 10:22, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

So you think WP:Disambiguation has "a misguided focus on disambiguation" ?! Perhaps if you propose a specific change it will be clearer what you're getting at. DexDor (talk) 12:03, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I agree, because statistics reflect "quantity", not "quality", so I wonder what qualitative conclusions may be drawn from these quantitative ones? – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 23:30, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
I think that in discussions of the purpose and scope of disambiguation pages, we tend to lose sight of the fact that there are now over 160,000 of these pages. Any global change to their purpose must be made 160,000 times, which would be a massive undertaking. The purpose of disambiguation pages can neatly be summed up "a page to help a reader find the topic they are seeking, when it shares its name with several other topics". Of course, it is a navigational device (and a purely navigational device, not an end to itself); looking at a page like James Smith, we want to include just enough information to help a reader find the John Smith they had in mind. We don't want to include more than that, because including more information about other people named James Smith makes it harder to find any particular James Smith. We could have a whole paragraph on each James Smith, with all concepts mentioned in that paragraph fully linked, and the reader would get lost in that sea of information and never find what they are looking for. Of course, all of the information about the particular James Smith they seek should be at the article on that particular James Smith, and need not be repeated elsewhere. Therefore, both disambiguation and navigation require that our disambiguation pages be as concisely written as possible. bd2412 T 23:43, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Disagree with "as concisely written as possible". Sounds like fanaticism. Concise writing is always preferred, no need to repeat it. Prefer: Each entry should be no longer than one line on the standard output. Standard output should be the A4 PDF printout (single column, just noticed DAB paged rendering in two-column). Sometimes, a second blue link is worth including. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:13, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

"Clarification"

The content at WP:AT accessed by WP:PRECISION presents examples of the provision of information that goes beyond a need for disambiguation. The examples given are:

Precision is not the issue here and I think that "clarification" deserves a mention. Maybe this is a topic that should be raised at WP:AT. GregKaye 13:43, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like something that has less to do with the content of disambiguation pages than with the desire of some editors to move titles like George Washington to George Washington (planter, American Revolutionary War general, and President of the United States born February 22, 1732) or something like that. WP:AT, not WP:DAB, is the policy that determines what the title of an article is; to the extent that the title reflects the ambiguity of the subject to other subjects, we use the title determined by WP:AT on our disambiguation pages, with enough additional description to get a reader straight to their destination. bd2412 T 14:00, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
I mostly agree with BD2412. Also, the articles for the Michigan highway and the UK constituency are so named not because of a need to provide additional information, but because consistency with other articles in the same class was determined to be more user friendly than not. Both also have active projects maintaining them and that have helped formulate the conventions for those titles. I don't think you can extrapolate from those to a generalization about stuffing additional details into parenthetical disambiguation phrases. older ≠ wiser 14:20, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
I also agree with SmokeyJoe that you view that "our disambiguation pages be as concisely written as possible" "Sounds like fanaticism". I mention this as you did not reply. GregKaye 14:44, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
We could just as absurdly move Steve Henson (politician) to Steve Henson (Democratic member of the Georgia Senate born March 30, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana). Once we go beyond providing information sufficient to distinguish otherwise identical names, there is no principal binding us, and the inclusion of material in a title becomes arbitrary and whimsical. There are two people in the encyclopedia named "Steve Henson"; a person looking for the one from Georgia will see that Steve Henson is a basketball player, and that there is only one politician named Steve Henson. Of course, we could superfluously add to the title that he is a "Georgia" politician, but since he was born in Indiana, that would be misleading for those looking for the only Steve Henson who is a politician who was born in Indiana. There are two politicians named John Hanna, so "politician" is useless as a disambiguator; however, there is only one John Hanna who is significant to Indiana. A person looking for that John Hanna will immediately see that there is only one John Hanna relevant to their search, and will not be confused as to whether there is another John Hanna in Indiana whose existence requires the politician to be further identified. As for "fanaticism", I would estimate that I have made about 300,000 disambiguation-related edits to Wikipedia (including disambig fixes, disambiguation page creation, expansion, and formatting, and de-disambiguation of dabconcept pages); so, yes, I am pretty clearly a fanatic (and one of the most experienced experts on the topic). bd2412 T 15:00, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Of course, bd2412, you are not a fanatic. You are a prolificly-editing disambiguation expert who always says sensible things. But "our disambiguation pages be as concisely written as possible" is something to choke on, it is something that a fanatic may pick up out of context and run mad with. I see as begging the question: What does "our disambiguation pages be as concisely written as possible" mean that "our disambiguation pages should be concise" does not?
As for the notion that anything short of "as concisely as possible" means: able to be lengthy without bounds, that there is no principle binding, I have previously and recently suggested a principle. The principle is that: a one line entry should not be automatically considered long unless it exceeds one line. How long is a line? I point to the standard PDF output as an arbitrary measure, and it seems to be about 42 characters in the case of titles, about the same for dot point lines on two column rendered DAB pages, or double that for one column rendered DAB pages. I suggest that 42 characters is a good number for a soft line for "not too long".
Steve Henson (Democratic member of the Georgia Senate born March 30, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana) is 98 characters long, more than double 42, and so it would need to be supported by a very good argument.
Steve Henson (Georgia politician) at 33 characters is not unreasonably long. Note that 42 characters is not a target length, but a soft limit. A good argument for changing the title would still need to be made, to which I see you have a good counter-argument.
--SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:40, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
bd2412 you refuse the request to withdraw from the absurd. The fact is that guidelines are written so as to advocate an extreme form of conciseness that can result in the addition of misleading information rather than the provision of good. For instance I have recently put through requests for moves of:
In each of these cases I think that we have actually added erroneous information in an effort to be "concise". Our guidelines go too far. The certainly fail to accurately present the issue of clarification as evident in titles such as Leeds North West (UK Parliament constituency). Ping: older ≠ wiser GregKaye 15:14, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
I am curious, actually, as to why you didn't request Graeme Wood (Canadian journalist). Also, U.S. should be punctuated. That said, why not just redirect these variations to the existing titles? bd2412 T 15:15, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
BD2412 Many journalists operate internationally and Graham Wood also writes for British titles. I think that relevant information should be presented in regard to a subject but, as with many other things the type and the extent of the information to be presented may be decided subjectively. I am not trying to push the absurd nonsense that you have continued to present. In the article on Gordon Brown it was not relevant to say in the opening text that he is Scottish and yet, in the case of many parliamentary politicians that need disambiguation, it would be relevant to say that the the person is a ".. (UK politician)". Similarly I think that the title description of Amurru (god) is pretty poor when another divinity in the same pantheon is described as Tutu (Mesopotamian god). The additional information provides clarification. It is only with genuine "multi-disciplinarians" who have been separately and notably known in different roles that longer descriptions may, if justified, be relevant. GregKaye 02:02, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
BD2412 "why not just redirect these variations to the existing titles?" Because of WP:AT. GregKaye 17:49, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Despite all this discussion, I am still not sure what GregKaye is getting at. Does he/she want more description for individual entries on a disambiguation page beyond what is necessary to distinguish the major characteristics? If so, I thoroughly oppose such a grafting of excess description on what should be a navigation page that allows the reader to rapidly exit to his or her desired article. If GregKaye is suggesting that a key primary characteristic is insufficient for disambiguation of topics in titles, that is why we have titles like To Be or Not to Be (1942 film) and To Be or Not to Be (1983 film) with two characteristics; however, it is certainly not necessary for disambiguation purposes to add Lubitsch or Brooks to those titles. Occam's razor applies here: Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate. --Bejnar (talk) 22:35, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Bejnar I am not suggesting anything like the absurdly long titles presented by bd2412. The one character that I have mentioned is Arnold Schwarzenegger who Britannica presents as Arnold Schwarzenegger (American politician, actor, and athlete). Which of the items in parenthesis is his primary characteristic? In a situation like this should Wikipedia editors be forced to choose? Unsigned comment by GregKaye
GregKaye, if you want to propose a change to WP:Disambiguation then please explain it clearly here. DexDor (talk) 06:31, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Also @GregKaye, if there were another Arnold Schwarzenegger to disambiguate, there is absolutely nothing stopping us from having redirects from Arnold Schwarzenegger (politician), Arnold Schwarzenegger (actor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (athlete), Arnold Schwarzenegger (bodybuilder), Arnold Schwarzenegger (California governor), and any combination you can think of. There is nothing stopping us from redirecting Amurru (Mesopotamian god) to Amurru (god). Redirects are cheap. They are, in fact, a mechanism which allows us to show all of this information where it makes sense to show it without using titles that contain more information than needed to guide the reader to the correct work. I don't know whether Britannica has redirects, but if they are titling their version of the article Arnold Schwarzenegger (American politician, actor, and athlete), then we already know their titles are going to tend to be absurd, since there is no other notable Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first place. bd2412 T 13:15, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
BD2412 as I am sure you appreciate all of those redirects would be typically pointless as most people would simply, if the title had parenthesis, use a piped link such as [[Arnold Schwarzenegger (topic clarification)|Arnold Schwarzenegger]] In the case of multidisciplinarians in Wikipedia I have never seen two of the disciplines get included in the parenthesis let alone three. Even when one disipline is mentioned this is often done in the least specific or most concise way possible. The files on politicians of 36 countries, if the UK related articles are anything to go by, are likely to have a significant number of articles disambiguated with ".. (MP)" It would be so easy to add a country reference and yet, with the current parameters of guidelines this is almost never done. In comparison to contents such as Britannica, the descriptive nature of our titling is comparatively poor. GregKaye 17:24, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Britannica has the URL of 528623/Arnold-Swartzenegger, It has the title of Arnold Swartzenegger with a sub-title of "American politician, actor, and athlete". Nothing wrong with that, but there is a major difference between the two Encyclos. One of them uses the URL as the title name and that is the problem. If we didn't we would no longer be arguing primary topic, diffcaps, concise, etc because it would no longer be necessary. There could be a 100 Arnold Swarzeneggers, all more important than the original, all politicians, actors and athletes, too. But wouldn't mean a change to the URL at Britannica - and that is the significant advantage that Britannica has over WP. Oh for the day when the big-enders and the small-enders stop bickering over WP:CONCISE and we have stability...--Richhoncho (talk) 15:40, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
@GregKaye:, notice that I did not say "the key primary characteristic" but rather "a key primary characteristic". Usually one is more obvious than others, or there is a tradition in the area (such as with films to use chronology). Where neither of those is present, as Richhoncho pointed out, any one of the key characteristics that distinguish the topic may be selected as the disambiguator for a title needing disambiguation, and redirects may be used to supply the balance. Titles do not need to be descriptive (that's what the lead is for); titles need to be unique. If @GregKaye has no other point, then it would seem that he/she is flogging a dead horse. --Bejnar (talk) 16:23, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Not quite, Calling the Arnold Swartzenegger article by his name IS descriptive. Does it need further disambiguation? Not as far as I am aware, but if it was further disambiguated would it really matter? Would it be unencyclopedic or misleading? Depending on what disambiguation was used, probably not. --Richhoncho (talk) 17:11, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Bejnar I only gave the Arnie example as an, I think, fairly extreme example of Britannica's workings but with the intention to demonstrate that there are other ways of working. Our clarificatory disambiguations tend towards the comparatively monosyllabic. GregKaye 17:28, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
@GregKaye: And is your point that there is a problem with conciseness? What specific problem? Why would Occam's razor be inappropriately applied here? --Bejnar (talk) 17:43, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Bejnar Please explain how you think the topic of Occam's razor is applied here. Say there was a lesser known Spanish man called Juan X who was similarly well known by different groups as a banker in one community and as a mountaineer by another. Presentation options would include Juan X (banker), Juan X (mountaineer), Juan X (banker and mountaineer), Juan X (Spanish banker), Juan X (Spanish mountaineer) and Juan X (Spanish banker and mountaineer). Currently, it would be very likely that we would pick one of the first two options and I think that this may be peculiar to Wikipedia. How do you think that Occam's razor applies to this situation. Juan X would still be Juan X no matter how he is described. GregKaye 18:03, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Titles are primarily directory. Either Juan X (banker) or Juan X (mountaineer) would do to disambiguate the title. Readers would be accommodated by a redirect from which other one is not picked as the title. Not complicating things beyond necessity means not introducing a second characteristic in the title disambiguator unless it is necessary. --Bejnar (talk) 18:25, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Once you go down the Juan X (Spanish banker and mountaineer) road (without it being necessary to distinguish different people) you're on the way to Juan X (Spanish banker and mountaineer of French and Italian descent who died of a heart attack in Fooville ...) as editors interested in a particular characteristic want "their" characteristic in the title ... (see what's happened to categories). Britannica doesn't have that problem. DexDor (talk) 19:36, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
I second that, and would add that if someone knows enough about the banker, Juan X to know that such a person exists at all, then they are likely not to be surprised that the article title reflects his notability as a mountaineer. Is there anyone who knows of Governor Schwarzenegger who does not know that he was an actor? For the few who don't, we can redirect them there. bd2412 T 19:42, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Bejnar, DexDor, BD2412, Another illustration of how Wikipedia promotes the provision of minimal title information is found at WP:AT where the guidelines WP:ASSERT:
Why? Why give just what is precise enough? What is the justification?
We do the opposite of Britannica! Any search in Britannica that leads to reference to the group reads "Queen (British rock group)". I think that we should challenge our culture AND editor conditioning for opting for the minimum. In provision of navigation type information, others give much more.
In the example above readers who were familiar with Juan X as a mountaineer would not be helped by the banking reference. There would be a failure in clarification and the disambiguation would perform little differently than a random set of numbers. GregKaye 21:54, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
It is not the "opposite" to Britannica; it just isn't identical (IMO with good reason). If you want to improve Wikipedia then please make a clear proposal in the form "Where the page says X it should say Y because of Z." on the appropriate talk page (this isn't the appropriate page to propose changes to WP:AT). Continuing to grumble here without making a clear proposal to change anything is just wasting the time of other editors. DexDor (talk) 06:17, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
DexDor, I agree the the descriptions aren't identical but would say that our monosylabic "band" is far from being identical with the more descriptive: "British rock group".
(The Queen reference may well fit in with the "philosophically" wise words of dan le sac and Scroobius Pip "The Beatles: Were just a band. Led Zepplin: Just a band. The Beach Boys: Just a band. The Sex Pistols: Just a band. The Clash: Just a band. Crass: Just a band. Minor Threat: Just a band. The Cure: Were just a band. The Smiths: Just a band. Nirvana: Just a band. The Pixies: Just a band. Oasis: Just a band. Radiohead: Just a band. Bloc Party: Just a band. The Arctic Monkeys: Just a band. The next big thing... Just a band.")
However, in encyclopaedic description I do not think that prescription should be dictated that editors should regularly aim for the minimum. Certainly, as the guideline says 'Queen (band) is precise enough to distinguish the rock band from other uses of the term "Queen".' What about the person who is trying to remember a topic name and is working through navigation. How is this person catered for? All our policies are written for "someone (ambiguously described as being) familiar with, ... the subject area". What about the people with less familiarity or people who just forget things? In these cases Wikipedia certainly falls below the standards of Britannica.
In my view we impose a good enough philosophy and, such as in cases mentioned, we easily fall below that standard. Editors unpleasant scaremongering so as to suggest that change may result in absurdly long titles is ludicrous. The dismissive approach is not appreciated. Certainly changes can be suggested but when they are met with fanaticism, exaggeration and misrepresentation.
In the Queen example we could easily say something along the lines of: "... For example, in description of the British rock group "Queen", a title such as Queen (band) would be precise enough to distinguish the rock band from other uses of the term "Queen".
At present we impose: "... For example, it would be inappropriate to title an article "Queen (rock band)", as Queen (band) is precise enough to distinguish the rock band from other uses of the term "Queen"." In effect we WP:ASSERT that the practice of Britannica is inappropriate. I hope that this may highlight what I consider to be assertive and unnecessary misguidance within amongst our policies and prescriptions. GregKaye 08:37, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

(edit conflict) I'm not sure I understand all this, but let me give it a stab. GregKaye, are you saying that if an editor writes an article and titles it Juan X (Spanish mountaineer), which will coexist with the banker article, that the "Spanish mountaineer" article should remain in place, and it should not be moved to Juan X (mountaineer)? If that is the case, then it is my opinion that your suggestion would become very confusing to Wikipedia readers. This is simply because of how the English language is structured and difficult to learn as a second language (or even as a primary language in many cases). That is a pretty good reason why EB can be confounding to many readers, and why this encyclopedia is sought so frequently as a reference work – its article titles are (at great risk of sounding like a fanatic) as "concise as possible", therefore more easily understood and less verbose and unwieldy (like some reference works we know). – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 19:47, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

  • I have some real-life examples, by the way. John Davies (swimmer), as it happens, was also the federal judge who presided over the trials of cops accused of civil rights violations against Rodney King. However, his greater source of notability is as a gold medal-winning Olympic athlete. A similar example is John Davies (poet), who was also Attorney General for Ireland, and was influential in both roles. bd2412 T 20:03, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Paine Ellsworth What I am saying is that the way the Wikipedia:Disambiguation is written is relatively devoid of encouragement to aim at logical and helpful description. There is no encouragement in developing content that will aid navigation in categories or other listings. The result, I think, is that people are given forms of names that are just not used because editors are obsessed with making things as WP:CONCISE as they possibly can. Editors Choose against adding information (which readers might find helpful) in pursuit of WP:NATURAL and, instead opt for false content. Its chucking the baby out with the bathwater. In almost every case we chose to give the minimum of information. Is the priority of an encyclopaedia really to give minimal information? IMO, there is no comparison between our titling system and that of Britannica and we continually opt for less rather than more. I think that this is systemic.
I started by stating, "Example text" Added to this I think that it is notable that there is only 1 instance of content containing "identi". Surely the whole focus should be on helping readers identify each topic. There is virtually none of this. The talk is typically on cutting, slicing, separating and performing surgery. There are only two uses of content containing "expla" and these are used in connection to explanation within article content. Editors here are conditioned into "giving" the minimum. We are stingy with information and, ironically, our mention of Mother Theresa prior to mention of the more mundane Leeds North West (UK Parliament constituency), acts to reinforce our lack of giving. As a result I think that editor's may tend to want to impose the "Mother Theresa" model even in inappropriate situations when other ways of working may provide, dare I say it, clarity. Our emphasis is on the mechanics of separating topics rather than explaining subjects.
In my example Wikipedia editors might end up calling the Juan X character as Juan Alonso Gonzalez X, utterly moving away from the regular use of the name so as to avoid presenting useful information which might have to be located in that terrible place, parenthesis. GregKaye 21:39, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
What do "containing "expla"" and "containg "identi"" mean? --Bejnar (talk) 22:46, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Bejnar I think that my page searches indicate that there is negligible emphasis given in this example page on issues such as assisting clear "navig"ation, providing clear "expla"nation, or helping readers "identi"fy subjects.
In my page searches I wanted to search on the word root so conducted the searches on the first letters of the words. GregKaye
@GregKaye: Take a look at the first paragraph of Wikipedia:Disambiguation#What not to include and see if it doesn't address this issue directly. If it is unclear to you, why don't you suggest a rewording of that paragraph that does assist navigation and help readers identify subjects. --Bejnar (talk) 22:12, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Note also that there is a difference between having the information in the description line and having it in the article title. For example, the description line for George W. Bush says "George W. Bush (born 1946), 43rd President of the United States (2001–2009), eldest son of George H. W. Bush", but the article does not contain any information beyond the name in the title. The description of the animator named Frank Smith on the Frank Smith disambiguation page says "Frank Smith (animator) (1911–1975), American animator", but neither "American" nor the dates are needed in the article title for the disambiguation page to serve its function. bd2412 T 22:55, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
I can see your concern; however, I can't see how editors would handle getting away from "concise" toward more, perhaps unnecessary, disambiguation. Editors of EB are professional and paid to know precisely when and where to "rein in" the descriptions. So I don't see how our guidelines could be improved to allow such freedom as you appear to desire, and at the same time keep titles "reined in" so as to not get too out-of-hand, as previously described by bd2412. Wikipedia does not have the luxury of professional, paid editors, so how would you word a guideline that editors of this encyclopedia would find helpful, understandable and useful? – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 23:58, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
I would also point out that EB is massively different in many deep structural aspects. At the same time, they don't cover a fraction of the content that we do. bd2412 T 00:10, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Britannica's lack in quantity is no reason for shutting down a criticism aimed at our lack of quality. We can operate according to any model that is viewed as good practice, just at a larger scale. I have just written this above but:
In the Queen example we could easily say something along the lines of: "... For example, in description of the British rock group "Queen", a title such as Queen (band) would be precise enough to distinguish the rock band from other uses of the term "Queen".
At present we impose: "... For example, it would be inappropriate to title an article "Queen (rock band)", as Queen (band) is precise enough to distinguish the rock band from other uses of the term "Queen"." In effect we WP:ASSERT that the practice of Britannica is inappropriate. I hope that this may highlight what I consider to be assertive and unnecessary misguidance within amongst our policies and prescriptions.
Paine Ellsworth I can definitely see the view that it can be difficult to ".. see how editors would handle getting away from "concise" toward more, perhaps unnecessary, disambiguation" but this I think is symptomatic of the problem. I would hope to think in terms of "helpful explanation" rather than "unnecessary disambiguation". It seems to me that this mindset is symptomatic of the approach that editors may be conditioned to through reference to our project pages. Circular reasoning may potentially be a problem. GregKaye 08:58, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
So you would support Jupiter (planet) as an article rather than as a redirect simply because "(planet)" is a "helpful explanation" rather than "unnecessary disambiguation"? In any case, you still haven't addressed the challenge of explaining this to a set of globally located editors from all walks of life. You don't seem to get that whatever is in the middle of, whatever is in between WP:CONCISE and WP:LET IT ALL HANG OUT is a vast area of possible descriptions that are pretty much indescribably delicious and which will lead to a lot of Pepto Bismol and Tylenol for those of us who are mainly interested in the concise descriptions that do their best to guide general readers where they want/need to go. I don't see how this attractive idea in theory would work very well, if at all, in practice. – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 14:31, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
PS. See below where we already have an editor, Jayaguru-Shishya, who also asks for "exact parameters" that would describe what you're looking to achieve. If that question has an answer, then I'd like to see it, too! PS added by – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX!

Greetings! I've been watching this conversation for quite a while, and I don't actually have any opinion pro or con. Anyway, if I understood it right, the question is whether a) we have described some specific parameters that we'll include to the page name for indexing purposes, or b) we will include the most describing additional parameter whenever the page name might be confused with another one of the same name. Now, as far as I understand, what we are doing in Wikipedia right now is closer to b). Should someone be in favour of a), I'd like to see suggestions what those exact parameters would be, and how would they structure. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 11:34, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

  • Paine Ellsworth My main contention in this thread is that Wikipedia has an obsession with disambiguation and, as I see it, with dissection of topic descriptions one from another as opposed to description and the facilitation of navigation.
  • In answer to your question any decision that I made regarding Jupiter/Jupiter (planet) would not be made "simply because "(planet)" is a "helpful explanation"". As ever consideration would need to be given to a wide range of content in relation to the Solar system objects such as in: Mercury (disambiguation), Venus (disambiguation), Mars (disambiguation), Jupiter (disambiguation), Mercury (disambiguation), Uranus (disambiguation), Neptune (disambiguation) and Mercury (disambiguation). My general view on parallel issues is that I don't tend to favour the giving of a main title to a namesake in preference to the person or thing or, in each of these cases, "goddess" or "god". Obviously the namesakes here have a longer history of recognition than the supposed "deities" that they are named after and, in any case, each easily visible "planetes" was, I understand, closely associated to an associated deity within the interpretations of the past. None-the-less I would certainly question undisputed primary in many of these cases. Items in the disambiguation/navigation pages may have been named after the planet, the goddess/god or both but the planets were named after planetes/deity concepts of the past. However, while naturalness is presented as an argument for the non inclusion of description I think that navigation is an argument for its inclusion.
  • As for WP:CONCISE I would prefer it to have a focus on, for instance, optimal title length and or optimal title presentation in relation to a range of factors including readability, intelligibility and quality of description. A concise title is often but is not always best. The primary function of a title is to describe and yet, with a focus on "brevity" and on the provision of "sufficient information" I think there are cases where we can partly throw the "bab out with the bathwater". I think that focus should always be on the optimisation of titles and that conciseness should only be considered an argument in relation to gaining this optimisation.
  • Jayaguru-Shishya, thank you for your thoughtful response. Again my main contention above is that the text of the project page, similar to content in other places, has a focus on disambiguation rather than on, say, explanation. In relation to Comma-separated and Parenthetical disambiguation, as mentioned above that we use naturalness as an argument for non inclusion of these forms of topic clarification. In cases that it may be relevant I would see navigation as being an argument for their inclusion. Titles that had greater focus on self contained explanation would also help.
My contention is that we do not necessarily aim for optimal titles but for titles with "brevity" with regard to a provision of "sufficient information". I think that the wording of this project page enshrines this approach. The focus, as presented in rhetorically repeated wording, is on disambiguation (the removal of ambiguity) and not on, for instance, the provision of information. I think that we consistently set ourselves up for giving less when, in some cases, there may be arguments for giving more. GregKaye 10:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for this elaboration, and I feel I understand and even agree with what you've described; however it does not resolve the issue to just describe it. I'm sure that the wording of this page tends toward as much conciseness as possible with the occasional, perhaps even frequent, loss of information as you describe. Since you are the first contributor who has raised this issue in this manner, I take pause to wonder how many readers actually have trouble finding what they need due to what you describe. I will assume that by your raising this issue you yourself have had such problems, but just how large and pervasive is the scope of this problem, and just how should this page be reworded to reduce the problem in a way that the majority of contributors would understand and find useful? In a nutshell, can you describe what you would alter on this page in a "change X to Y" format? – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 13:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguator selection

To the extent that Jayaguru-Shishya is asking for clarification in the selection of disambiguators, the general rule is covered in the Wikipedia policy at Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation. Some editors seem to have assumed that the three types of disambiguators in that policy are ranked from best to least; however the policy does not so state, and indeed states that natural disambiguation should not be used if the result is obscure. However, this guideline states that natural disambiguation is typically the best to use. Given the discussion above, I'm not sure that that is true. Although I agree with the examples of mechanical fan and hand fan rather fan (mechanical) and fan (implement). I would state the reason for those as "Where a term is in general use it should be preferred to a parenthetical that is not." --Bejnar (talk) 16:49, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
I would disagree with that, though. I still like natural disambiguation for stylistic reasons as well as (usually) shortness of title. It's just ugly to have parentheses in titles, for the same reason that we should never in prose write "Benjamin thought that the national bird should be the turkey (bird)" but would always pipe away the parentheses. It should almost always be avoided and at almost any cost. Red Slash 02:06, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
This seems such an example of WP:IDONTLIKEIT reasoning. We pipe all sorts of things in text and the pipe trick was designed to make it easier to use properly disambiguated titles. I've really never understood why some editors have such strong objections to parenthetical disambiguation. older ≠ wiser 02:22, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Well, yeah, but that's the case for a lot of things at Wikipedia. Why do we always use sentence case for section headers? Is there a real reason for it? People thought it looked nicer, so they did it that way. I also find parenthetical disambiguators to be distracting, personally, and I suppose many others do, too. Red Slash 19:19, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
In an ideal world, we could have an unlimited number of articles with the same title (e.g., if the database schema used some other unique identifier other than title). Since that's not possible with the current setup, we have to make do. Personally, I find it parenthetical disambiguation far superior in almost every respect to forcing unnatural or uncommon names as article titles. older ≠ wiser 19:55, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
If that's really what you think, maybe we need an RfC. You and I both know that policy backs my position and is in opposition to yours, but we also both know that consensus can change and our policies are not set in stone. Maybe you'd have consensus with you if you proposed it. But currently, I do think that Wikipedia's stated preference for natural disambiguation has to hold sway until consensus overturns it. Red Slash 20:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
I think it is often more a matter of editors trying a bit too hard to make a "natural" title which is in fact not very natural or common when a superior option would be to simply append a disambiguator. older ≠ wiser 21:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Criteria for generating several possible choices of parenthetical are absent from the existing guideline. Some of the discussion above might be used to generate a proposed sentence or two on that. --Bejnar (talk) 16:56, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
    Perhaps there is a degree to which we should be titling articles on people differently from articles on things. Places, too. Consider that when we title articles on cities, we almost always disambiguate by noting some larger geographic division - Paris, Texas, not Paris (Texas city). Even where the name is only used for one kind of municipal entity, we still prefer the geographic designator, for example, Stone Mountain, Georgia, not Stone Mountain (city); Albany, New York, not Albany (capitol). This suggests something about the way we look at certain things. People are more important for what they do, not where they're from; places are more important for where they are, not necessarily for what they do. bd2412 T 17:28, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
    Those should be redirects, though. Well, except one Red Slash 02:06, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Re: "Some editors seem to have assumed that the three types of disambiguators in that policy are ranked from best to least". I do not think that this is surprising. WP:CRITERIA first presents : Naturalness pretty much as a reiteration of Recognisability and as the second of five priority sequenced issues mentioned and then the guideline section: Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation is given the shortcuts: WP:NATURAL, WP:NATURALDIS,... and WP:NATDAB. At the very least this borders on rhetoric and as, I think, a result editors at WP:RM are constantly presenting justifications such as "as per WP:NATURAL" as reason for excluding the likes of parenthesis. This, I think, accounts for a number of titles that do not use Common name but something more "natural". For instance middle names never or not regularly used in life but mentioned within the text of an obituary can be inserted into Wikipedia titles. ping Bejnar GregKaye 11:19, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

April changes

Generally, I'm not in favor of any substantive changes to rules pages without discussion and acceptance. Corrections of grammar or small anodyne changes that most any reasonable person would agree with, fine; otherwise, let's talk about this first. Even seemingly small changes or additions of examples might introduce changes in tone or emphasis that are subtle but substantive.

An editor is wanting to make this edit or as an alternative this edit which is essentially the same.

I don't see this as entirely an improvement, as the use of "York" to mean "New York" is never seen so that's a bad example, and I'm not sure what it meant by "This may sometimes be a key factor for determining if a primary topic exists" and whether or not this introduces some sort of subtle but substantive change in emphasis (and if it doesn't, whether the extra material is worthwhile). So let's talk about what we're trying to do here, if we want to, and whether this is the best way to say it if we do. Herostratus (talk) 13:03, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, after this excellent edit by Paine Ellsworth, there's really nothing I need to say. I thought it would be a bit clearer with the extra sentences, but I'm fine as is. "This may sometimes be a key factor for determining if a primary topic exists." - on second thought, I actually agree with you removing this sentence. If it ever is a key factor, that's usually extremely obvious. We don't need to mention it here and force people to draw conclusions. I appreciate you checking and reverting the edit, and with the clarifications added by Paine, I'm happy to leave the page as is. Red Slash 01:59, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that's fine, seems OK now. Herostratus (talk) 13:50, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I am intrigued by this sentence, "the vast majority of the time that "York" is used in books, it is used to refer to either New York City or its containing state". How has that conclusion been reached? I can imagine how New Yorkers might abbreviate the city's name but I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen outside of the US.--Ykraps (talk) 11:04, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

LOL. I was born in New York City, and I've never in my life heard anyone refer to either the city or the state as "York" without "New" in front of it. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:48, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
No, I think what's being said is that if you search for the word (not just the string) "York" in any large database of randomly-chosen books, it will usually be part of the term "New York". Less often it will refer to York in England (a smaller city) and seldom much else. Herostratus (talk) 13:50, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps that could be made a little clearer? – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 00:51, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
It could be made clearer by removing it altogether. The sentence is about partial title matches so all the sentence needs to say is, "New York City is far more notable than the British city from which it got its name, however, since scholarly sources rarely use an unqualified "York" to refer to New York, York still hosts an article on the British city, and no suggestion to remedy that would be seriously entertained".
I would also consider changing "...far more notable...", which is a moot point, to the less controversial "...probably better known...", and change "remedy", which is usually defined as a change for the better, to "alter".
If we really want to include a debate about the drawbacks of using ngrams to determine primary topic, we can have that elsewhere.--Ykraps (talk) 10:12, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
"Far more notable", I think, is still important; it's good to have an extreme case here to show that partial title matches are discounted whenever that partial title is not used to describe something in reliable sources, regardless of the relative notability. I do want to commend Paine Ellsworth's multiple positive edits to clarify this subsection.
To me, "remedy" is a bit facetious; we could instead use scare quotes and said no attempt to "remedy" , but I think it's unnecessary. But hey, edit it if you like, it's our encyclopedia. Red Slash 21:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Just to clarify what I mean: "Notable" does not mean the same as "well known". Something or someone can be completely unheard of but still be notable. I am suggesting that it's New York's fame which makes it such an extreme example.
Remedy means to cure, suggesting that you think something is wrong with the current situation. As your edits explain why you think the situation is correct, remedy is the wrong word.--Ykraps (talk) 08:57, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
I again think that "remedy" is fine as a facetiously used word, but given that the point of guidelines and policies is to be clear, I'll change it. If it confuses or irks you, it'd probably do the some for others. I did take "notable" to mean what you intended; that is, "noted". Thanks for the dialog; I think the guideline will be much clearer now. Red Slash 21:00, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
Hi Red, I understand that you were being humourous but that can be a difficult thing to convey, with or without inverted commas, and probably inappropriate in guidelines so thanks for changing that. Notable means "worthy of being noted", whether it is actually noted or not is a seperate issue but perhaps this is a British English thing? It does seem to get confused in move discussions. However, if you think it's okay, I'm not precious about it. I feel a bit pedantic now! :) Thanks for your patience. --Ykraps (talk) 08:15, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

TV stations by channel number vs. dab page

I've noticed the pages belonging to the following categories have also been tagged as dab pages. Here's another one (City nicknames).

But Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Categories states: disambiguation pages should be placed in disambiguation categories only. And these categories can not really be considered as dab categories. So confusion is rife. Either the statement on WP:DAB should be altered, or something has to be done about these categories. Any ideas? --Midas02 (talk) 23:45, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

One of the current exceptions to linking to disambiguation pages is for surname pages (or similar set index pages): "Certain pages that contain lists of words or names: Laing (surname) contains a link to Laing (disambiguation)." I did the same recently here and here. The DPL bot left me a message about this, but I'll ignore that. What I wanted to ask was whether there is any standard format to use? What I've observed is the following:

  • (i) The disambiguation pages are grouped separately, as at Turner (surname).
  • (ii) The disambiguation pages are listed with all the other pages, with the phrasing "several people" used, as seen at Newman (e.g. Frank and George).
  • (iii) All the variants are listed, an example is all the David Ingrams are listed at Ingram (surname), rather than a single link to David Ingram.
  • (iv) Some pages have a combination of (ii) and (iii), with the disambiguation page listed, and then the articles listed with indenting. An example of this is at Newman#D under 'David Newman'.

Is there a preference for how this should be handled consistently across all the ~49,000 surname articles? Carcharoth (talk) 00:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Air force academy

Should Air force academy be a dab page? Fuddle (talk) 01:21, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Definitely not. It is clearly WP:DABCONGOV. Also, please note that if this was a disambiguation page, most of the titles would need to be removed from the page, since disambiguation pages only contain articles with identical titles, and generally should not include partial title matches. bd2412 T 01:24, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Air Force Academy (currently a redirect to Air force academy) could/should be a dab page; there are currently dozens of inlinks to that redirect which should be corrected to refer to a specific academy (mostly the US one). DexDor (talk) 05:49, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
A page does not need to be a disambiguation page for errant incoming links to be fixed. I improve links to Supreme court, Mouse, and Apple on a fairly regular basis, and I have occasionally corrected links to Boston intending the band or to Pink intending the singer. In this case, a person who clicks a link to Air Force Academy and arrives at an article explaining what an air force academy is (and including links to specific air force academies), is not reaching a wrong page, just one that is insufficiently precise. I would consider this a somewhat lower priority than fixing links where the landing page is completely wrong (as with a link like "computer mouse). bd2412 T 12:51, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Should WP:BROADCONCEPT pages have a tag/category that indicates they're a special kind of article? I'm a relatively active user and I didn't know about them. (No big deal either way. I was tempted to add a dab tag, but I didn't. Fuddle (talk) 18:30, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
We have not done that to this point, but it is a very good idea. There should be some kind of tagging for articles that are at their primary topic, but are likely to draw some errant links or imprecise links. Something like:
Cheers! bd2412 T 20:43, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Two subjects notable for the same field with variant first name spelling

At Talk:Isaiah_Thomas_(basketball,_born_1989)#Requested_move_4_May_2015, I need clarification whether it is O.K. to have both an Isaiah Thomas (basketball) article and an Isiah Thomas (basketball) redirect to Isiah Thomas.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:20, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

It wouldn't be the first time we had two variants of the same name with the same disambiguation tag - there's Daniel Murphy (baseball) and Dan Murphy (baseball), for example. Egsan Bacon (talk) 14:38, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Those aren't really alternate spellings. This is a case like Stefanie Foo (X) and Stephanie Foo (X) or Elizabeth Foo (X) and Elisabeth Foo (X) rather than Stefanie Foo (X) and Stef Foo (X) or Elizabeth Foo (X) and Liz Foo (X).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:31, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
I wouldn't be surprised if media accounts could be found misspelling both names using the other variation, though. bd2412 T 15:34, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
There's nothing inherently wrong with the titles and so long as there are hatnotes, I don't think there's any real problem unless one is hugely more significant and there is evidence that the name is commonly misspelled. older ≠ wiser`

The word "disambiguation"

I don't want to give anyone ulcers, but can anyone point me to past discussions about alternatives for the word "disambiguation"? Asking for a friend :) —Swpbtalk 15:56, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

In anyone else's language what they might describe as an "xxx (navigation page)" is, for some unfathomable reason, described as an "xxx (disambiguation)" page.
I still contend that our focus should be on reader's needs to locate and access information and not on perceived editor's needs to, in my interpretation, clinically dissect one topic subject from another.
I consider that, in some ways, our focus is quite detached from the real world. GregKaye 07:55, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
Calling the resolution (or removal) of ambiguity "disambiguation" is unfathomable? And the removal of ambiguity from the reader's search term does focus on the reader's needs to locate and access information. Disambiguation pages are a type of navigation page, as are redirects. I think you see a focus on dissection that at least not all disambiguation page editors share. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:08, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
Wow. That discussion is rambling, toxic on all sides, and doesn't seem to relate at all to the question of the word "disambiguation" itself (though it's hard to determine quite what it is about). Thanks? —Swpbtalk 16:52, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

RfC on proposed update to WP:AT policy part of disambiguation

Please see Wikipedia talk:Article titles#RfC on proposed Precision/Conciseness/Disambiguation update, and comment there. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:46, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Establishing consistent policy for first order disambiguation page when second order disambiguation is necessary

There is very inconsistent policy on how to handle the first order disambiguation when two subjects that are notable for the same disambiguation word have identically spelled names and one is primary. It seems to be policy to avoid using the primary disambiguation for the other subject. E.g., Ray Charles (musician) redirects to Ray Charles (disambiguation) in the presence of both Ray Charles and Ray Charles (musician, born 1918). I have proposed that the current redlink for Tony Parker (basketball) be set up to point to Tony Parker given the existence of Tony Parker (basketball, born 1993). There are basically four possible policies that we could come to consensus about.

  1. Always create a redirect to the disambiguation page from the primary disambiguation page in the presence of a primary page and a disambuguation page (I.e., redirect pages like Ray Charles (musician) to Ray Charles (disambiguation)).
  2. Always create a redirect to the primary page from the primary disambiguation page in the presence of a primary page and a disambuguation page. Add a hatnote at the primary page clarifying the possible confusion (I.e., redirect pages like Ray Charles (musician) to Ray Charles).
  3. Always blank the primary disambiguation page and leave as a redlink assuming the reader knows how to find the disambiguation page (I.e., blank pages like Ray Charles (musician) and leave pages like Tony Parker (basketball) as a redlink)
  4. Continue to leave policy pages silent on this issue and handle each instance on a case by case basis.
  5. Create secondary disambiguation page (i.e., turn redirect pages like Ray Charles (musician) into disambiguation pages)

Can we establish a consistent policy?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:27, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

One of the few things that have actually frustrated me, as a reader, is arriving at a page like Ray Charles (musician), realising there that I do not want this particular Ray Charles, but finding no link either to Ray Charles or Ray Charles (disambiguation)). The presumption seems to be that I will go to the url and delete the characters " (musician)", or type "Ray Charles" into the search box. While these are not terrible hardships on a PC, on a handheld device it is a pain. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:37, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe it seems that you would like us to come to a consensus that takes into account mobile use, but it is not clear if you are saying you support one of the four options above as a mobile-friendly consensus. Can you state whether you support one of these four possible alternative consensuses?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:06, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Sorry Tony. I'm afraid that having formulated my response, I find that it is slightly off track from your post, and I have not fully digested your options. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:10, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Given the fact that I created Ray Charles (musician), and I gave Ray Charles (musician, born 1918) its current name, my vote is for #1. In my opinion, if the reader takes the time to type out a disambiguator, there's a chance that they are not looking for the primary topic. That, and telling readers in a hatnote that a search term with a disambiguator redirects to the topic at the ambiguous title just seems kind of ... clunky when a nicely-placed {{About}} template (as opposed to a {{Redirect}} template) identifying the topic at the ambiguous title could be more helpful. Steel1943 (talk) 02:25, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I am a fan of the idea of redirecting titles like Ray Charles (musician) to Ray Charles and Tony Parker (basketball) to Tony Parker. A reader might not know that the musician and the basketball player are the primary topics of those names, and may look for them at titles with disambiguators. In any case, they are the primary topics of those disambiguated terms. bd2412 T 02:58, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree option 1 should be the norm. older ≠ wiser 10:42, 13 May 2015 (UTC) Update, sorry I misunderstood the options. The norm should be for the incomplete disambiguation to redirect to the disambiguation page, regardless of whether it is at the base name (there is no primary topic) or has "(disambiguation)" appended (there is a primary topic). Hadn't this been hacked our already under WP:INCOMPLETEDAB? older ≠ wiser 23:54, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
WP:INCOMPLETEDAB actually seems to be the guide to which this discussion is related. I had not seen this. I think that it means to pursue #1. Unless the current consensus is to do something different, I could withdraw this discussion.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:34, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
WP:INCOMPLETEDAB relates to circumstances where there is no primary topic for the disambiguated title. For example, there are several albums named Mercury, none of which is primary for that name. If there was one overwhelming primary album of that name, it would be at "Mercury (album)", and the rest would be listed at "Mercury (disambiguation)"; if there was no other topic at that name, it would be at "Mercury", "Mercury (album)" would redirect to it, and the rest would be listed at "Mercury (disambiguation)". It is only because there is no primary album that "Mercury (album)" redirects to "Mercury (disambiguation)". bd2412 T 18:46, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I'm not interpreting WP:INCOMPLETEDAB the same. Per my interpretation, option #1 is the default, and #2 could only be established through discussion due to #2 going against this guideline. I also interpret this guideline as applying if there is a primary topic or not. Also, as Thriller (album) proves, primary topics aren't always at the most ambiguous title and without a disambiguator. In fact, I don't see a reference about primary topics anywhere in WP:INCOMPLETEDAB... Steel1943 (talk) 19:26, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Seems as though BD2412 is advocating option #2? Steel1943 (talk) 19:55, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Of these options, I would prefer #2, although it would take an enormous amount of work to make the top disambiguator redirect to every primary topic article. bd2412 T 20:02, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree with the latter part of what you said (regarding the enormous amount of work enforcing option #2 would require), which is actually part of why I think #1 makes more sense to me personally. Steel1943 (talk) 20:16, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
That wouldn't take any less work. The vast majority of potential disambiguated redirects don't exist, even as top-level redirects. Furthermore, once we start down that road, how do we decide which redirects to make? Do we also redirect Ray Charles (singer), Ray Charles (songwriter), Ray Charles (United States), Ray Charles (20th century), etc.? bd2412 T 20:29, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I disagree that this would cause less work for a few reasons. 1) In several cases, these redirects are leftovers from page moves when another applicable subject is created that can utilize its disambiguator, and in those cases, in my opinion, they would be pointed towards the disambiguation page as cleanup for a missed step during the page move. 2) In my opinion, determining if a primary topic should be the target of a redirect with its name and an ambiguous disambiguator is inherently controversial and thus should always be discussed. Steel1943 (talk) 00:21, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
We should redirect whatever disambiguation would be used if he were not the primary. Additionally, we would redirect every primary redirect that has been skipped over for a secondary redirect such as Ray Charles (musician, born 1918) (i.e., if there were also a Ray Charles (singer, born 1918), we would redirect Ray Charles (singer).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:57, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I don't think we should make any decision based on how much work it will take. When I proposed that we come to a consensus on using born (spelled instead of abbreviated with "b." and following a comma) as a secondary disambiguation it took a lot of work to move all the {x, b.), (x born) and (x b.) to (x, born). However, now there is a good consensus and people know how to name pages and what to look for.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:57, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
In all honesty, I don't think that #3 is even an option, given that it is basically incomplete disambiguation (if option #1 is preferred) or unnecessary disambiguation (if option #2 is preferred). But, back to why I prefer #1 over #2: the redirect cannot be accurately considered a {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}} if there is more than one subject which that disambiguator can describe ({{R from incomplete disambiguation}}). Steel1943 (talk) 19:59, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
There can still be one subject that the disambiguator primarily describes. Consider a title like George Washington (United States). There have been several people in the United States named "George Washington", but the typical reader would likely expect such a title to be disambiguating George Washington from some non-U.S. figure sharing the name. bd2412 T 20:05, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
This discussion is for instances when the primary disambiguation is skipped due to confusion. I.e., unless there is a George Washington (United States, born YYYY), we should not be worrying about George Washington (United States) and all other things that could possibly redirect to George Washington with this discussion. If there is a George Washington (politician, born YYYY), then this discussion is to resolve what to do with George Washington (politician).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:05, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree with this, but in cases like this one, I would rather be directed to a disambiguation page so that I can figure out who I am trying to locate because maybe I wouldn't even know what I am looking for. Also, I can see attempts to enforce #2 result in individual discussions due to someone considering the disambiguator ambiguous, unless there is enough verifiable evidence that the specific disambiguator has incredibly strong ties with the primary topic ... ties so strong that confusion about what a reader is looking for when using that disambiguator is basically nonexistent. Steel1943 (talk) 20:16, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
You are making this way too confusing. This is for instances where the primary is skipped to get to a secondary disambuguation like Ray Charles (musician, born 1918) and Tony Parker (basketball, born 1993). This is not a discussion about every possible disambiguation page for a primary subject. It is only for those primary pages that were skipped due to confusion. Thus, the determination of whether this policy discussion applies is whether a secondary disambiguation page exists.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:16, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Ah. In that case, I oppose secondary disambiguation pages. Leave everything on one disambiguation page, and direct to applicable sections on the disambiguation page if necessary. Steel1943 (talk) 21:26, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Steel1943, That is not the issue. We are not discussing having secondary disambiguation pages (which would be an option 5). We are discussing whether and how to redirect the primary disambiguation in cases where there is confusion. See the clear examples and 4 options above.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:54, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I understood that originally, but your previous comment seemed to contradict your original statement in this section. So, at this point, I'm not sure who is the confused one. Anyways, I've said my peace, and my opinions have been stated. Steel1943 (talk) 22:00, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
I have added option 5 as a separate consideration to alleviate confusion.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:12, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I'd like to throw in a bit of a monkey wrench into this discussion to help add to the question made in this discussion. So ... how would you explain the current state of Thriller (album) in regards to this discussion? Steel1943 (talk) 00:26, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
    • That case is outside of the domain of this discussion since there is no primary for the word Thriller (which is occupied by a dab page). This discussion is about cases where the undisambiguated page name has a mainspace article and there are other articles that are notable for a similar subject, but the primary disambiguation page for that name is skipped so that the other articles are at secondary disambiguation locations. If we want to confuse this issue so that nothing gets resolved we could expand to other types of cases that are somewhat similar. I guess a music example could be We Belong Together (song). Should it be a redlink, a redirect to "We Belong Together", a redirect to We Belong Together (disambiguation) or a disambiguation page as a matter of policy?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:36, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I disagree that it is not related: In this case, the ambiguous term "Thriller (album)" has a primary topic, but somehow, consensus has led to it redirecting to a title that is not ambiguous (such as the base name "Thriller") and actually has more disambiguation than the redirect. I would say that this is one of the rare cases where #4 applies. Steel1943 (talk) 02:08, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I still don't agree this is a separate issue, given that I can see with 99% certainty someone using whatever consensus is established here towards changing the situation at Thriller (album). So, no, I have no desire to start a separate discussion on the issue since I don't believe it is a separate issue. Steel1943 (talk) 15:04, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Michael Jackson (singer) seems to be within the domain of this discussion because their is a Michael Jackson (English singer), but Michael Jackson (entertainer) is not relevant to this discussion because there is no Michael Jackson (Fooish singer) or Michael Jackson (singer, born YYYY).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:25, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
  • This is rather confusing to talk about because the terminology is so slippery. The example given for incomplete disambiguation Aurora (album) has a primary topic at Aurora. The exceptional cases you mention are where consensus had determined that there is also a primary topic for a topic that would otherwise be incomplete disambiguation. However, perhaps we should note the existence of such exceptions. older ≠ wiser 16:10, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguating WP:PRECISION failures

I added a bit, at WP:PRECISIONDIS, to account for our common practice of using disambiguation (usually WP:NATURAL) to clarify names that fail the WP:PRECISION criterion because they're too vague and confusing. This fit neatly under 'Not "what first comes to (your) mind"'. Also made some conforming tweaks higher up the page. The WP:PRECISIONDIS or WP:PRECISIONDAB shortcuts give us a convenient name for this. We've had some pointless arguments at WP:RM about whether this form of routine disambiguation is "really" disambiguation or not, so might as well eliminate that waste of time and clarify that of course it falls under "resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous". The problem was that this statement in the guideline's lead was immediately followed by an aside that appeared to limit it to only cases where there are already two or more articles, but that clearly did not reflect actual WP practice. I moved that to a separate sentence, and clarified it with "most often." The full extent of these related changes are visible in this diff. I made a few other copyedits in the process, e.g. using our common term "subtopic" instead of the weird phase "minor subject".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:34, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Hat notes in disambiguation articles

Are hat notes suitable for disambiguation articles, or should that go in the see also section only? GimliDotNet (talk) 17:41, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I would say that anything that would go in the hatnote of a regular article would go in a "See also" section on a disambiguation page. bd2412 T 17:44, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
Kind of hard to parse this question. In case it means something else, I would clarify that a) hatnotes are not used on disambiguation pages themselves; b) at a real article, if something is already in a hatnote (or listed in a disambiguation page pointed to by the hatnote), it is redundant to add it again in the "See also" section.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:37, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

What is a place name?

I have noticed the place name disambiguation template {{geodis}} is being used, and abused, for municipalities, hamlets, unincorporated communities, townships, districts, suburbs, boroughs, constituencies, landmarks, provinces, regions, islands, rivers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

It's not being helped by the fact that the template specifies the following, rather vague, definition: distinct geographical locations with the same name.

Could we define a clearer definition, including a list, of what's supposed to be in and out? --Midas02 (talk) 01:27, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know that any of those are abuses. A place name is the name of a place; the term is distinct from, for example, a human name. bd2412 T 02:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
A river, a mountain, an island, ... would you call that a 'place' and/or a geographical location? And a province, is that a place? It's rather an administrative entity. I don't find it trivial at all. --Midas02 (talk) 03:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Personally, I do not consider mountains or rivers to be "places" in the same sense as the others. If a dab page has towns, two rivers and a mountain on it then I would probably use {{disambiguation|geo}}. I do not think any of the subdivisions you mentioned need to be treated differently though. —Xezbeth (talk) 08:30, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:

The terms location and place in geography are used to identify a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term location generally implies a higher degree of certainty than place, which often indicates an entity with an ambiguous boundary, relying more on human/social attributes of place identity and sense of place than on geometry.

I would therefore consider a mountain or a river with a fairly fixed geographic location to be a "place". bd2412 T 14:50, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
I've always interpreted "place" in the strict way: towns and villages. From the template description, it seems "geographical name" would maybe have been a better definition then.
I'd like to gauge what other experienced editors make of this template. Could I ask you to put a cross in the following two columns for all entries. It's not a firm vote, rather trying to capture how others feel about this. Feel free to add entries if you feel it's necessary.--Midas02 (talk) 21:43, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Item In Out
Formal communities (town, village, city, ...) xx
Informal community (suburb, quarter, borough, ...) x x
Administrative or other entities (region, province, county, arrondissement) x x
Election related (constituency, district) x x
Island x x
Mountain x x
River x x
Landmark (Cape, rock, ...) x x
School xx
Ship xx
Automobile xx
Person xx
Album xx
Song xx
Film xx

FWIW, I think the template is applicable for most geographical entities. older ≠ wiser 18:10, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the template {{geodis}} seems to be applicable to a very wide range of topics and perhaps this is to an extent to which its usefulness might even be questioned. Related templates may be considered to include:

Perhaps there are topics within the general description of geography that might also warrant their own templates. GregKaye 10:40, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

WP:PRECISIONDAB

This well-written and well-backed paragraph seemed to me to have absolutely nothing to do with disambiguation, so I moved it over to WP:AT. A slight rewrite took place as well to better fit the existing context there. [10] [11] - thoughts? Red Slash 23:57, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it doesn't belong here. Maybe it's not all that well-written. Anyhow, too detailed for policy-level WP:AT. Please discuss here. If it doesn't belong here, and you think you've found a better place for it, please find agreement whether that other place is accepted for this content (in any case when it's policy level guidance). If it's redundant, remove and find a good place for the shortcut to go to (or list the shortcut for deletion). --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:31, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Interstate 440

This project doesn't appear to have a section talking about how articles linked to from dis-ambiguation pages should be ordered. Look at what has gone lately at Interstate 440. This dis-ambiguation page has 4 uses; 3 of which are current meanings and one of which is a meaning of the 1970's. That was long ago that I find it very natural to think that that meaning is much less likely to be searched for and thus should go at the bottom. But User:2602:306:83A2:19E0:D11B:F38F:E443:A763 (I wish this user could go by an actual name rather than a code of numbers, letters, and colons) disagrees. They say it should be in a normal order even with the fact that one meaning is very dated. They even think it's likely that someone who wants to see the article will type Interstate 440 (Oklahoma), rather than Interstate 44 in Oklahoma, even though the highway is unambiguously Interstate 44 today. Any position in this project that talks about how articles should be ordered in dis-ambiguation pages?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:36, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

  • I think what you are looking for is Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages#Order of entries. Having said that, it is my considered opinion that both you and User:2602:306:83A2:19E0:D11B:F38F:E443:A763 have far too much time on your respective hands. For Pete's sake, this is a list of four terms. Extensive scientific research shows, or so I have been told, that the average human can retain five to nine discrete items of information in short-term memory without too much difficulty. For a list of four items, the reader should be able to find what they are looking for easily, no matter what order they are in. If I were you, I would worry more about whether the items on the disambiguation page are spelled correctly (one of them is not) and described correctly (also, one of them is not), than about what order they are in. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:53, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
FYI, Georgia guy, that other user is not registered and goes by an IP address, one of the newer IPv6 address codes. – Paine  13:44, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Sources don't magically disappear from the earth just because they're from a few decades ago. It's entirely plausible that readers will, in the real world, encounter references to what I-440 referred to in the 1970s. We don't suppress DAB page entries just because they're not the most current usage.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:17, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

"electoral district"

See Talk:Terrebonne—Blainville where a discussion is taking place to determine if "electoral district" only refers to "federal electoral district" thus all "provincial electoral districts" are not ambiguous with "federal electoral districts" if federal ones use "(electoral district)" to disambiguate them from "(provincial electoral district)" disambiguators -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 03:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Additional opinions are welcome at WikiProject Disambiguation#Scope of links unnecessary for disambiguation. Claim has been made that I am the only person who thinks additional links and detail are unnecessary on dab pages such as Monroe County. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I had thought avoiding such links was standard practice. older ≠ wiser 12:13, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Link seems to be Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Scope_of_links_unnecessary_for_disambiguation (ie talk page). PamD 17:48, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Not "what first comes to (your) mind" section

I've been meaning to address the Not "what first comes to (your) mind" section that Red Slash created in December 2014. I didn't notice the addition until about two months ago. Since it was added, other editors have molded it; for example, Ritchie333 added to it here and here, but was recently reverted by Red Slash. Red Slash also recently expanded the section. The reason I've been wanting to address the section here at this talk page is because WP:Primary topic currently states, "There is no single criterion for defining a primary topic. However, there are two major aspects that are commonly discussed in connection with primary topics:

A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term."

Well, when it comes to the "if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term" aspect, that is usually a "what first comes to your mind" matter. Not just one person's mind, but what people usually first think of. Take, for example, this Mike Jordan (racing driver) discussion that Steel1943 started. Undoubtedly, Michael Jordan, the American basketball player, is the person people generally first think of when they hear or read the name "Mike Jordan." I don't see it as problematic to note "what first comes to people's minds" in such cases, as long as it's not solely a "what first comes to your own mind" matter or clearly a regional matter when you weigh the evidence. Yes, I know that applying a "what first comes to your mind" rationale can be problematic for disambiguation and move cases; that's why Red Slash created the section. And, yes, I know that the Not "what first comes to (your) mind" section currently states, "Of course, coming first to mind does not preclude primary topic." But the section makes it seem like "what first comes to your mind" is usually invalid regarding disambiguation and move cases; from what I've seen, it commonly isn't. Flyer22 (talk) 03:55, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Note: I struck part of my post because it was actually Midas02, not Steel1943, who started that Mike Jordan discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 03:58, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I'll only comment briefly, because I really want to hear other perspectives. I wrote this because some people raise the idea that if they themselves don't think of Foo when they hear the word "Foo" (probably because they live in England, where "Foo" usually refers to Foo, England), then that's a valid reason to move Foo to Foo (imaginary topic). This is not valid, and really is just another form of WP:JDLI. Look at the last move request for... oh gall... Birmingham, Charlotte, Raleigh, Cork, Limerick, Cheddar, Perth (that one was huge!)... I mean, there's a lot of it going on, especially with geographical terms. It also happened at a recent move request where a man who is the executive of a state of over five million people was considered (by a few) to be unworthy of primary topic over a washed-up singer that they just happened to be more familiar with. So this happened to fix that, mostly. Red Slash 04:31, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining, Red Slash. I still think that we should loosen the language a bit more for that section so that it doesn't seem like "what first comes to your mind" is usually invalid regarding disambiguation and move cases. I don't doubt that some people will use the section you created to argue against cases where evidence for the primary topic is strong, even while including "what first comes to your mind" rationales. It's often that "what first comes to your mind" is valid for deciding what topic is the primary topic. And by that, I reiterate that I don't solely mean one's own mind (though it's common that people are right when applying "what first comes to your mind" in that way as well). Flyer22 (talk) 00:54, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Did you have specific wording in mind? I strongly concur with the point of Red Slash's addition there, and it seems to have been uncontroversial in the long run, as well as helpful, but I guess I can see the "this could be misinterpreted" concern you raise. Maybe even just adding "necessarily" before "what comes to your mind" would do the trick?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:58, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
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