Talk:Hilbert (disambiguation)

primary meaning

I disagree with the recent conversion of this redirect to a disambiguation page. I just finished disambiguating 49 links here, and every single one referred to the mathematician David Hilbert. As he is clearly the primary meaning, I propose moving this page to Hilbert (disambiguation), changing Hilbert to redirect to David Hilbert, and placing a Redirect hatnote on his article. Nick Number (talk) 15:58, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I sympathise with everything you say, but as you've actually done a heroic job of disambiguation, why subsequently make a change which renders it unnecessary? The only case where one would sensibly write [[Hilbert]] is indeed where David Hilbert is meant, but perhaps the same does not apply to just putting Hilbert in the search box when looking for someone or something else. I'd be inclined to leave things as they stand. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 16:57, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed the problem temporarily, but it won't do anything for subsequently-written articles. Mathematicians seem to be particularly fond of referring to other, famous mathematicians by their last names alone - Gödel, Euler, Fermat, etc. As you point out, none of the other entries on this page are likely to be referred to as just "Hilbert". For those rare cases where someone looking for something else uses that as their sole search term, a Redirect hatnote at the top of the David Hilbert article should be sufficient for them to find what they need.

I'm very much in favor of making this change. Nick Number (talk) 17:47, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Curses. Now that my nefarious plot against the mathematician has been detected, I have no great objection to Nick Number's proposal. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:39, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And you would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling ~~kids~~ disambiguators! Nick Number (talk) 16:13, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note that in German Wikipedia the dab is at de:Hilbert, as the mathematician is not the primary topic in that wiki. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:22, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]