Talk:William Cole

Help the reader

The purpose of a disambiguation page is to help the reader. The reader. The reader needs only enough information, quickly and clearly, to distinguish one term from another. When one reads a name on a disambig page, one shouldn't have the thought "But he's also this" or "He also did this" as though some great moral wrong were being corrected. The information is brief and limited for good reasons. The disambig page, like the lede of an article, isn't the place to list everything a person is or has done. Specificity is the whole point, not an insult. It's fast and useful. Ambiguous, open-ended praise isn't especially moral, and it's irrelevant to Wikipedia. It's slow and obfuscating and it reflects bias. Maybe it sends a thrill up your leg to say "African-American scholar" especially if the name in question is an idol, friend, relative, or symbol of all that is Good and True. My aim is more modest: to separate one term from another to help the reader. I can do it with two words: William Cole – jazz trumpeter, William Cole – jazz trombonist.

On the subject of disambig pages, we have some rules of thumb that come from our documentation and years of usage.

• Try to avoid creating categories with only one or two items. Try to make three the minimum. Why? Because I said so? No. Because every header, every indent, stops the reader's eye, interrupts his attention, slows him down. Just like more information slows him down.
• You chose to use as a header "Business and commerce". What exactly is the difference between those two words? Can one settle for "business" as on all the other other WP pages? Or do you suddenly know better than the rest of us poor slobs?
• Why "public service" instead of politics? Because it sounds noble and gives ootsy good feelings? Can one settle for "politics" as on all the other other WP pages? Or do you suddenly know better than the rest of us poor slobs?
• A person who is a professor doesn't automatically earn the title "scholar", a term that in America is a sign of distinction. One can be a professor without being a scholar, "professor" being a descriptive term (with levels of professor) and scholar being an opinion. It isn't the job of WP to tell people who is distinguished and who isn't, who has been naughty and nice. How about keeping it simple, like "professor at University of Whatever"? Of course, if the article is lousy, that makes it the disambiguator's job harder. The article William Cole (scholar) is a trophy case of foggy prose and terms unknown outside of hilly English hamlets. Few people are familiar with "inducted to the first portion of the rectory of Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire". Then we have "collated to the rectory of Mersham, Kent, by the Archbishop of Canterbury". More constipation. "he was installed prebendary of Westminster". Am I supposed to know what that means? And "received the degree of D.D. by the archbishop's diploma at the archiepiscopal visitation at Canterbury" and "presented to the vicarage of Shoreham, Kent." He married, but he "left no issue".

I can see why you were confused by this entry. To me, it's not even written in English.
Vmavanti (talk) 18:37, 14 April 2021 (UTC)