Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 23

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Absolute beginner!

Hi. I am struggling at the moment. Article Stephen Lodge (referee) was created (in that specific name). Search of "Stephen Lodge" brings up 'no article' in Wikipedia, so it seems (as there is a much-published author and screenwriter in California of the same name also, but with no Wiki article at present) that a disambiguation page needs to be created. The author would show as a redlink, however Stephen Lodge (author). Do I create a page called Stephen Lodge to house a redirect to Stephen Lodge (disambiguation where the disambig tag would be inserted below the discerning details of the two persons? Sorry if I appear a little thick, but Wiki markup and convention is all fairly new to me. Thanks! Refsworldlee^(chew-fat)(eds) 23:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Since there's no article on any other people named Stephen Lodge, I think a redirect from Stephen Lodge to Steven Lodge (referee) is fine for now. Whenever articles on other Stephen Lodges are written, the Stephen Lodge redirect can be made into a disambig-page. But a redir is fine for now. And I just made that redirect. Shanes 01:24, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much - most helpful. Refsworldlee^(chew-fat)(eds) 16:08, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of a name

The purpose of a "good" name is to distinguish the object to which it refers from all other objects with which it might be confused. Since this second set is unknown and growing one would hope, in the context of an encyclopedia, the task of picking a "good" name is one that cannot, in principle, ever be accomplished with certainty. A temporary or pragmatic solution is the best that can be done, based on an assessment of what is likely to change as opposed to what is likely to stay the same. :-) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MartinGugino (talk • contribs) 21:57, 9 February 2007 (UTC).

Punctuation as sufficient disambiguation?

Has there been any consensus on the use of proper punctuation as sufficient disambiguation? For a fictional example, a novel's proper title is ABCXYZ! (with an exclamation point). There already exists a disambiguation article ABCXYZ that links to two other articles - ABCXYZ (2000 film) and ABCXYZ (album). Would the novel ABCXYZ! have its article at ABCXYZ! or ABCXYZ! (novel)? I would think that since its proper title includes an exclamation point, its article would be found at ABCXYZ! and linked off of the ABCXYZ disambiguation page for those that search for "ABCXYZ". Thoughts? -Seinfreak37 18:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be most appropriate for those pages to be listed in the See also section of the disambiguation pages? We don't usually have different pages for different capitalizations of pages; these seem to fall into the same category. -- Natalya 00:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

That's perfectly appropriate and OK with me, but the general practice seems to be to mix them in, as in Wham (disambiguation) and Jump. Also, take a look at The Birds. Few would argue that the short story should be on it own page or not mixed in with the others because it has added punctuation (double quotes), although this is not the best example, since it already has a qualifier in parentheses, and the double quotes are in the piped link, not the actual article name. Chris the speller 03:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's a wild example: I just worked over Kit Kat (disambiguation). I don't think it would have made much sense to have separate pages for Kit Kat, Kit Cat, Kit kat, Kit cat, Kit-Kat, Kit-Cat, Kit-kat, Kit-cat, KitKat, KitCat, Kitkat and Kitcat. Chris the speller 04:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Good point; that makes a lot more sense. -- Natalya 12:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Here is the exact case for which I seek guidance: the recent television episode of Heroes entitled Run!. There obviously exists a disambiguation page entitled run, yet there is NO instance of an article with an exclamation point. I argue that the article for this episode should be placed at Run!, others argue that it should be placed at Run! (Heroes). I counter that the (Heroes) is unnecessary, as there exist no other instances of Run! in the encyclopedia. Go!, No!, Wham!, and What? are all other examples where an article stands alone using only punctuation as disambiguators. Thoughts? (Feel free to discuss on the article's talk page as well. -Seinfreak37 14:39, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

There are some page naming conventions about this. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Television_episodes#Structure_of_an_episode_article states "If there is no disambiguation, the name of the article should be the episode title written with the corresponding capital letters." Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(television)#Episode_articles supports that with "For an article created about a single episode, add the series name in parentheses only if there are other articles by the same name". Since there is no article at "Run!", it seems that per the guidelines, the "(Heroes)" is unnecessary. -- Natalya 14:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Would you mind chiming in on the article's talk page? -Seinfreak37 14:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Have you ever seen a bigger buch of copycats than the entertainment producers in Hollywood? An episode of some other series will soon be produced with the title Run!, in all likelihood. When it is, then a move of the article at Run! would be called for. Why not leave it as it is, a redirect to the qualified article name, so later on the rdr at Run! would only need to point to Run, the dab page. Thinking ahead is part of the art of disambiguation. Chris the speller 14:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but that just makes no sense. By that logic, EVERY article on here should have a parenthetical disambiguator JUST IN CASE, someday down the road, another article is created? That's ridiculous. Doesn't the naming convention posted above by Nataly clearly side with me? -Seinfreak37 15:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be making this a personal dispute. I am not interested in personal arguments. I may have made a mistake in trying to share my experience about what usually makes Wikipedia better with an editor who is starting to appear as a missionary for a TV show, to the point of shouting. Chris the speller 00:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The wikipedia isn't carved in stone. If conflicts arise in the future, it's a piece of cake to make changes then. We can't predict the future, and it's a waste of time (and counterintuitive to readers) to find "solutions" for problems that don't exist. I also agree the heroes article should be titled simply Run! --Milo H Minderbinder 15:27, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It won't be a piece of cake to move Run! to Run! (Heroes) a second time, as an admin will need to do it. You can't move a page over top of a redirect page that has an edit history. An inexperienced editor trying to add a Run! episode of a different series might really make a mess of the article about the Heroes episode. I am only suggesting that we plan for what is reasonably likely, not some occurrence that is as likely as being struck by a meteorite. The article is fine where it is, not hard to find, not surprising any readers. Chris the speller 00:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

True, but isn't the whole point of having naming conventions to follow them? Especially when there was a recent ArbCom case on this topic (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Naming Conventions), it seems that the guidelines should be followed until there is a reason to change something. -- Natalya 02:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I just read and familiarized myself with WP:TV-NAME, and that clearly covers the situation. If the TV fans have their own guidelines for naming conventions, why are they coming to WP:D to enlist us in their war? I feel we were sandbagged in this case, getting us active in what we thought was a general disambiguation issue. If some admin wants to waste time moving Run! (Heroes), let him or her waste it. I still feel the move doesn't make Wikipedia any better. I could have made a lot of other improvements and gotten a lot of satisfaction from them, instead of wasting my time on a political issue. Chris the speller 05:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

If the article is moved, it will leave behind a redirect automatically, one without an edit history. It can be moved back by anyone. In the event that the redirect was edited, an admin simply has to delete the redirect to make room for the move. And doing that is a piece of cake. Difficulty of future editing simply isn't an issue. --Milo H Minderbinder 14:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Different pages for different capitalizations?

It might just be me, but I recall the generally we don't have different disambiguation pages for the same combination of characters. I can't find this explicitly in the guidelines anywhere; the closest I've found is the bit about introductory lines in the manaul of style for disambiguation pages. However, we have BEN and Ben, and probably countless other examples. Two questions; am I making this guidelines up, and if not, is it an issue? -- Natalya 00:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

MoS:DP has this in the subsection "Examples of individual entries that should not be created":

You may want to create entries on the same page for:

• TITLE and Title

So the guidelines allow room for good judgment (which usually also leaves room for bad). Chris the speller 02:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

At least I'm not going crazy thinking it was mentioned somewhere! -- Natalya 02:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

A different approach to disambiguation

Hello, I'm currently working with the WikiProject on disambiguation. I'm mainly fixing some of the huge number of horrible disambiguation pages, which have accumulated over the years.

While doing this I was thinking about a different approach to disambiguation. Disambiguation pages have a lot in common with categories, but they classify articles with regard to name instead of topic. Maybe disambiguation should follow a similar approach.

Index Proposal

A new namspace called Index is created. Unlike categories, index pages don't have to be created, all of them are considered to exist. If no article of a certain name exists, the corresponding index page is simply empty.

Every article is part of the index page corresponding to its title within the Wikipedia. It can be added to additional index pages by adding [[Index:Alternative Name]]. A short description can be provided using . If this description is too long, it will be ignored.

Disambiguation pages are replaced by redirects to the corresponding index page.

Discussion

Both the list of names and the short description are maintained by the authors of the article which may be unaware of the disambiguation pages the article is currently listed. The difference between disambiguation pages and articles would become absolutely clear. Secular mind 13:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

It is an interesting concept, but what about entries on disambiguation pages that are either redlinks, with no article to add a tag to, or referring to specific parts of an article? It seems like there are a number of functions that disambiguation pages provide that this system would not. -- Natalya 14:49, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

This system could not index pages which do not exist, just as it is impossible to categorize articles which do not exist. But I don't think this is really a disadvantage. Missing articles should rather be listed by topic than by name.

Indexing subsections though shouldn't be a problem, but it requires work by the parser. An [[Index:Articlename]] in the lead section would refer to the page as a whole. An [[Index:Sectionname]] immediately after heading would refer to the subsection. Secular mind 17:36, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Category/subcategory reorganization

One problem with Category:Disambiguation is that it's so darn big. All the subcategorized pages still show up on in the top category too. With other big categories, we use subcategories to break them down into more manageable sizes: novelists and poets are grouped by nationality, and each categorized in, for instance, "Russian poets" or "French poets" rather than the overall "Poets" category, so only the un-subcategorizable entries show up in the top category. Maybe, "to be consistent", the same organizing principle should apply here.

We could use the Geodis, Hndis, 2CC, 3CC, etc., special-categories to subdivide the disambig category, and get that top category tag off most of the entries:

• Disambiguation
• Biographical disambiguation (personal names) with Biodis replacing Hndis
• Geographical disambiguation (place names)
• Numerical disambiguation (numeral strings)
• Acronym/abbreviation disambiguation (non-word letter or letter/number strings, eg "B2B")
• 2-character combinations
• 3-character combinations
• 4-character combinations
• 5-character combinations
• 6-or-more-character combinations
• (Other) Word disambiguation (including words that may also serve as acronyms) ...

Pages to disambig words that also serve as acronyms should have both the "word" tag and the appropriate "acronym"-or-subsubcategory tag, so they show up in both lists. Add other subcategories as needed to keep the top category to a reasonable size. Only those disambig pages outside all the subcategories would still have the "Category:Disambiguation" tag and show up individually in that top category. Sound feasible? -- Ben 16:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Ben, I disagree. There is a need to identify which pages are disambiguation pages for maintenance purposes. For example, in order to track links to disambiguation pages, you have to know which pages are disambigs. Having them all in one category or having them all contain the same template helps accomplish that purpose. However, I've never seen anyone explain any reason for having disambiguation subcategories other than to make smaller categories. With all due respect, your proposal has the same flaw; you haven't offered any reason other than preferring smaller categories, and you haven't considered the maintenance problems that your proposal might cause. --Russ (talk) 17:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Consider Category:Novelists -- which has several subcategories, like Category:Novelists by nationality -- which in turn has subsubcategories, like Category:American novelists and Category:Russian novelists -- which in turn have most of the individual articles on novelists. Only those few novelists who can't readily be so grouped (because their nationality is unknown or unclear, e.g. due to emigration during their writing careers) end up in the overall Category:Novelists. You can find all the "novelist" pages by looking at the top category page and also following the subcategories downward. This hierarchy groups and subgroups related-topic pages. As a result, someone familiar with one nation's novelists, or who has a book on the topic, can pick that subcategory to work through, not have to pick that little subset one-by-one out of a huge crowd. That's a big reason for having subcategories. Likewise, someone with a background or book on biographies, or geography, or perhaps a huge list of acronyms and abbreviations, can pick that subcategory to work through. But if the proposal to eliminate the subsubcategories (at CfD and TfD) goes through, and Category:Disambiguation becomes more of a "flat file", any such editor will have to plow through bigger lists, and more pages unrelated to what he wants to edit, which means we're throwing one more obstacle in his way. We shouldn't do that. -- Ben 20:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Put another way: on your personal computer, do you keep all your files, of every type and topic, in one "flat" list, or do you organize them hierarchically, in folders and sub-folders and maybe even sub-sub-folders, so you can deal with just the set of files you want to deal with? Same principle. -- Ben 20:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, it's probably helpful to keep this discussion centralized, perhaps at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_February_9#Counter-proposal so that everyone can see it. By the way, good point Russ; glad you remembered that. -- Natalya 17:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

RfC: Location of the {{disambig}} template

This paragraph states that the {{disamig}} template should be placed at the bottom of a disambiguation page. However, while browsing Wikipedia for some information about Lloyd's I came across the Lloyd disambiguation page. When I came across that page it looked like this. At that point I was confused and thought the page just listed names of people called Lloyd. It took me a while to discover the page was a disambiguation page containing more than just a list of people. In the mean time I'd made another disambiguation page for Lloyd, Lloyds and Lloyd's. So, I reverted a lot of the work I've done the last few days. I've now layed out the page differently to prevent the confusion. Primarily, I moved the {{disambig}} template to the top of the page. I've been thinking about this and I now feel that this should be the preferred location for the template. Your comments/insights are welcome. Mausy5043 17:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and further more. It is acknowledged here that putting information at the bottom of the page is "harder to find and easily missed". For that reason disambiguation links at the bottom of an article are deprecated. The same should count for the template Mausy5043 18:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

For starters, the page would not be that long if editors had followed the instructions in MoS:DAB, "For longer li]sts, create a new Title (name), Title (surname) and/or Title (given name) page, or a List of people named Title." Second, the page would be more recognizable as a dab page if the header were in the crisp format that is laid out in the guidelines, instead of several lines of blather. And third, an editor should not start turning dab pages upside-down until the guidelines are turned upside-down, and a consensus should precede changing the guidelines. If it comes to a vote and I'm busy doing something else, here's my vote: Oppose. Chris the speller 06:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Primary topic discussion at Village Pump

Consider the few responses here, I've taken the topic to the Village Pump.Agne^Cheese/^Wine 20:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

State

I want to suggest to include a disambiguation page for "state":

state (politics)

state (physics)

... and other states

See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zustand Do I have to do it by myself, or is there anybody who wants (or feels obliged) to do it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.204.188 (talk • contribs) 13:13, February 22, 2007 (UTC)

• Do you mean something like State (disambiguation)? --Russ (talk) 17:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Move disambiguation hint to top of the page

I want to suggest to move the disambiguation hint to the top of the respective page!! (Makes things clearer.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.204.188 (talk • contribs) 13:13, February 22, 2007 (UTC)

• What "disambiguation hint" do you mean? --Russ (talk) 17:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

A little research would help. Back up 3 topics on this talk page. It was suggested already. It didn't exactly cause a stampede. In most cases where new editors propose sweeping changes of the guidelines, they haven't tried very hard to apply the guidelines. Chris the speller 23:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary tag

I created a template linking to Wiktionary: {{See Wiktionary}}, See the "What's link here" for some examples and tell me what you think about it? 16@r 21:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It looks a lot like a disambiguation hatnote. Is it supposed to? Is there something wrong with the existing wiktionarypar template? A lot of people are familiar with the existing template, so what are the reasons for switching? And I suspect this is not the only forum where this should be discussed. Chris the speller 23:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

No, the aim of this template is not to replace {{Wiktionarypar}}, it should be used when the name of an artist, a music band, a book or anything else is a word, and so the reader may be confused because he/she thought he/she would find informations about the idea associated to the word. For exemple, Ridicule should use this template instead of writing a "manual" disambiguation link. 16@r 11:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the first page I looked at where it was transcluded was a dab page, and now I don't see it. That's why I didn't see the need. What I like least is the pair of little double angle brackets around the word in question; they look very foreign (German? French?) to an American eye. And my comment about a different forum still stands; at least bring it up on the talk page of WP:HATNOTE. BTW, Bossy needs its own dab page with a wiktionarypar template, so it's not a good poster child for this template. Chris the speller 02:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I understand now. I like this idea, but it doesn't really relate to disambiguation. I recommend that you take this up at Wikipedia talk:Hatnotes. --Smack (talk) 04:29, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

People with "red links"

Is there a policy on people with "red links" (i.e. no page yet) on dismbiguation pages for people's names? e.g. there are a number of red links at the Robert Brown disambiguation page. It seems to me that if a person isn't notable enough to have their own page, then they're not notable enough to be listed on the disambiguation page either. Rocksong 01:24, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty of extremely notable people in the world who do not yet have a Wikipedia article written about them. This is not to say that they will never have one. If you disagree with the notability of any of the 'Robert Browns', then you can always be bold and remove. The same is true of any redlink on any disambiguation page. Thanks. Refsworldlee^(chew-fat)(eds) 01:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Two reasons for a red link: 1) It has the potential of prompting someone to create an article that is needed. 2) When a reader comes upon it, at least it can indicate the end of their search, that they need look no further in Wikipedia. But if I see a red link, then google the name and find next to nothing, I usually take it as a sign of nonnotability, and show it the door. Chris the speller 02:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Just bearing in mind that Google is not the be-all and end-all :-) Refsworldlee^(chew-fat)(eds) 11:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I am not an idiot. I know that there are other search engines available, but if there are no Internet hits on a search engine such as Google, the proposed subject is not exactly a hot topic in our society (and Wikipedia editors are a wired society). The proposed subject may be well covered in one or more books somewhere, but until someone shuffles on down to the library, dusts off the book, writes the Wikipedia article and adds an entry to the disambiguation page, we can probably get along without the red link. How notable can it be? I am not sure how your remark about Google is going to help anyone build better disambiguation pages, which is what I was attempting. Chris the speller 16:18, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

A few quick points:

1. Try not to take offense. Using phrases like "I am not an idiot" is far from constructive here.
2. Obscurity and notability are mutually exclusive; if you were unaware of that fact, that does NOT make you an idiot.
3. The assertion that "Wikipedia editors are a wired society" [sic] leaves much to be desired. From what I gather, there are plans to make Wikipedia available to audiences in regions of the world that require an off-line version. Such audiences might not be familiar with the concept of a search engine, rendering this a moot point.
4. While said audience members may not be editors, there is no reason to rule out the possible contributions that such audiences might be able to provide. Who knows? They may know a thing or two about an obscure subject that has yet to be trawled by <insert search engine of choice here>.

Reminder: Belligerence serves no constructive purpose. --Aarktica 21:40, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Your point 4 seems to be the same as point 1. I don't think that hammering on the same point serves any constructive purpose. There, see how easy it is to state something in a way that some people may think is excessive? I didn't think the terse statement about "the be-all" was made in a constructive manner, but felt that it was made by someone talking down to a child, or an idiot, as if making a pronouncement. I said "I am not an idiot", a statement of fact, if too defensive for some. I didn't say "Them's fightin' words", which would have been belligerent. I had not claimed that Google was "the be-all"; in fact, I had used the lower-case "google" as a verb, allowing (I thought) for the possibility of using any search engine. And a search engine is frequently discussed as being one of the tools available for checking the notability of an article's subject. On those occasions, I didn't see terse replies about "be-all". I see the use of a search engine as being reasonably efficient. I see it as inefficient to begin driving down to the library and rummaging through all the books just to see if a red link should remain. From now on I'll try not to let such pronouncements get under my skin. Chris the speller 17:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I do respect your position, and acknowledge your POV. Cheers. --Aarktica 21:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

picking up from "Two reasons for a red link..." — I definitely agree there are plenty of notable people who do not yet have articles on Wikipedia. There are, though, two types of red links - those that have always been red and those that are associated with articles that have been deleted because the person was not considered sufficiently notable for inclusion in Wikipedia (at the time the article was deleted - might change over time). I've myself removed red links associated with deleted articles on the premise that the deletion of the article in most cases is a statement about the notability of the person. Should the article be re-created and the notability of the person subsequently warrant survival of the article, the person can be re-added to the dab page at that time. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:57, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

CorHomo strangeness

CorHomo has been dropping my edits in a strange way lately. While I'm signed on and have the program open, it sends my edits as though I'm logged out. They still go through, and it doesn't notify me at all. Then as I continue, again without prompting me, it starts crediting me with edits again - you can see an instance of this at Special:Contributions/220.17.184.27, sandwiched by other link repairs I've made today per my own user contributions. Any idea what could cause this sort of thing? Dekimasuが^? 13:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Try reporting the bug at [1]. Chris the speller 16:37, 27 February 2007 (UTC)