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Archive 10Archive 11Archive 12Archive 13Archive 14Archive 15

Constantine: not a dab?

I see that someone has moved Constantine to the "Done" section, noting that Constantine is not a disambiguation page. But that doesn't seem correct to me, so I wanted to consult with folks here about possibly moving it back up. The Constantine page seems like other personal name pages that I consider to be dab pages. The content is just a short paragraph about the etymology of the name. Then, the bulk of the article is a list of links to specific Constantines. I clicked on some of the "What links here" pages and they're not pages that just deal with the name Constantine. Rather they refer to specific Constantines (typically Constantine I, the Roman Emperor). So I think Constantine should be moved back up to the list and disambiguated, but maybe I've overlooked something. --JamesAM (talk) 18:14, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

It might make sense to split the name page off from a dab, but the way in which this was converted to a dab recently (by deleting the given name content and categories, and adding a disambiguation tag) was inappropriate. If we want to disambiguate this page, the given name, surname, and etymology portions should be split off into Constantine (name), leaving behind only the people who are known as simply "Constantine", a link to the new name page, and the current contents of the disambiguation page that already exists at Constantine (disambiguation). Dekimasuよ! 04:04, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
I went ahead and made this change myself; see Constantine and Constantine (name). Dekimasuよ! 06:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

August stats

I compared the August list with the new September list to find out what happened to dabs that were in the top 250 when the August list finally went up. The number of ambiguous links declined for 234/250 pages (94%), and rose for only 12/250 pages (5%). Not bad, considering that we didn't have as much time to work on this list and we were also in the process of handling big problems like Public school and Diesel. Two pages went up by more than ten links: Vedic (+20) and Kamboja (+12). It was the second month in a row both of those had increased. Convex increased for the third consecutive month. The other pages that increased were Deformation, Rule, Vesicle, Procurator, Reflection, Groundnut, Warbler, Control, and Locus.

On a broader note, per data at WP:TDD and WP:DPM, we enjoyed our first and only day this year without a page over 200 links on August 23. The number of active pages (dabs with over 100 links) declined from 836 to 710, and is at its lowest recorded level since March 2008. Dekimasuよ! 04:31, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I like watching the number of pages in the DPL-100 category of TDD drop. I think it'll be baselined this year! (Or early next.) Another interesting indicator is from the contest list; the number of links to the 250th item has dropped steadily - this month it's 115 - and I look forward to it dropping below 100 very soon, maybe by November or December. --JaGatalk 20:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I am sure I can't be the only one to have come across this problem. Sometimes, on returning to a particular disambiguation page where I have previously reduced the number of links to zero (or close to zero), I find that the link count has crept back up again. (The latest example is Great Northern Railway which I reduced to a handful of links a few months ago only to find it had increased to 33 again).

I think many contibutors add square brackets around keywords and, provided it goes blue rather than red, simply submit it without further investigation (I admit I've done it myself). Would it be possible for, at the very least, a warning to be displayed that adding links to dab pages is not recommended, and do you really want to do this? 82.1.62.101 (talk) 20:13, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

If that could be done it would certainly save alot of peoples time. I dont know if its been discussed here before, seems like a good idea. BritishWatcher (talk) 23:19, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree. If we could at least have a warning come up when someone links to, say, one of our top 1,000 disambig pages, that would be a huge help. bd2412 T 01:20, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Isn't there an editing tool that shows links to dab pages when in the preview mode? And I know there is at least one tool that shows all links to dabs on a given page. It is the nature of dab pages that they accumulate incoming links, and many of us periodically check and fix the incoming links to our favorite dab pages. --Una Smith (talk) 03:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I imagine that the editors who make the most obvious disambig links (as in "Joe drives a Mercury", without giving thought to the possibility that Mercury has meanings other than the car) are the casual visiting type who don't get to the level of installing those tools. bd2412 T 04:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
These tools could be imposed on every editor, but at the price of annoying at least some of them. And would that help them to fix the problems? Patrolling dab pages seems reasonably effective. --Una Smith (talk) 04:35, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Editors making a quick change may not want to be bothered with, or know what to do about, existing dab links. I believe there is a bot that sends messages to editors who introduce a new dab link. I've never tried it because of course I don't do that. I've made a request to have the wikEd gadget highlight dabs in a different color. UncleDouggie (talk) 09:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
The wikEd change is a no-go because it's a general purpose tool that they don't want to customize just for the English WP, plus it would be a huge performance hit to request the link status data. A fixed list of dab pages is unworkable because we have 115K. Instead, I purpose that we add an option that would display dab links in purple in the regular article display and in previews, just like broken links are in red. UncleDouggie (talk) 20:17, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Link formatting has been a big issue in the past. There appears to be a script to let you format links anyway you want at User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js. I'm trying it out myself but I haven't gotten it to work yet. UncleDouggie (talk) 23:39, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I've got it working great now, just had to get the right stuff in both my .js and .css files. You can use the standard version above with its rainbow of colors if you like. I decided it was too out of control, so I calmed things down in my settings and also added the names of the colors to the hex. Links to dab pages are shown with a yellow background. It looks really good, just like this. I'm using the beta interface, so my settings are at User:UncleDouggie/vector.js and User:UncleDouggie/vector.css. The same code can be run in the monobook skin files. The .js file also has my enhanced version of converting talk page comments to local time. UncleDouggie (talk) 02:37, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I looked at the database schema to see how expensive making it native that dabs get a different link colour. It would be expensive, so it's just not going to happen. Josh Parris 03:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I could imagine a bot going around and following every link to a dab page with {{dn}}, but there would have to be rules about when it's appropriate to put that in and when it isn't. How is the bot going to be able to tell when an editor is intentionally linking to the dab page, or ignorantly linking to it? Josh Parris 03:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
We already try to distinguish these, by making intentional links to Foo (disambiguation), that page being a redirect to Foo. --Una Smith (talk) 18:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

List of acronyms and initialisms

The pages in the List of acronyms and initialisms series are enormous disambig sinks - probably between 80 and 100 disambig links per page. I think we could reasonably ignore them from our count, unless someone wants to go to the trouble of fixing them. bd2412 T 21:24, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we can ignore them based on this. We've had worse. Many of the those dab pages need serious work themselves to meet the guideline. UncleDouggie (talk) 21:46, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I was thinking we could just treat them as intentional disambig links. Pipe them through the (disambiguation) redirect and be done with them at that. The pages are woefully short in identifying what the acronyms in question stand for anyway. bd2412 T 21:51, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
In cases where the acronym can only go to a dab, it can be delinked, the spelled out form already goes to the appropriate page. J04n(talk page) 22:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Interim

I don't think it's a dab, any other opinions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by J04n (talk • contribs)

In this case, I think it is basically a dab, since it deals with a lot of unrelated topics that simply share the word "interim". In that case, it should have 90% of its text cut out, though. For the time being, I'll mark it for dab cleanup and we can get a third opinion (probably from Boleyn). Dekimasuよ! 01:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

WikiCleaner

Due to a hosting change, there's a new URL to install Wiki Cleaner ([http://site4145.mutu.sivit.org/WikiCleaner/WikiCleaner.jnlp here]). It's better to uninstall the old version before going for the new one (0.97). --NicoV (talk) 21:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I have released a fix for the 'bad token' problem in 0.99. --NicoV (talk) 20:02, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Ignorance

On the list as a many-linked disambig. Strikes me that this ought to be an article on the basic concept, with the current content moved to Ignorance (disambiguation). That would address many of the links as well. bd2412 T 16:03, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. There's already a proto-article in the dab anyways. I'll put it in place today when I get the time. --JaGatalk 08:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Excellent work - thanks! bd2412 T 14:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Redirects from character names to media names

We have a lot of redirects from the name of a character to the disambig page for the media in which the character occurs. For example, Alexander Conklin redirects to The Bourne Identity; Blade (Street Fighter character) (and several alternative forms) redirects to Street Fighter: The Movie; E.K. Hornbeck redirects to Inherit the Wind. Perhaps we should have a different solution to these redirects?

IMO, the character redirect should target an article that contains the best introduction or overview of the character. older ≠ wiser 12:00, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
In retrospect, I'd actually prefer if it went to the article for the earliest work introducing the character, unless the character was really minor there and was greatly expanded in a later work. Maybe I should say the first work where the character was substantially developed in the work. The overview of the character can always be improved in any given article. bd2412 T 14:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
In most cases, that'd be just fine. For some series of media, there are List of characters in Foo that might be a better target than any single work. older ≠ wiser 12:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that would be a better solution where such lists exist. I propose that we make this a rule, then - character names to redirect to the "list of characters" page if there is one, otherwise to the page for the earliest media in which the character was substantially developed. bd2412 T 13:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Formally proposed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Proposed rule for redirects from character names to disambig pages. Cheers again! bd2412 T 23:16, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

(but please do contribute to the discussion there). bd2412 T 19:18, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
FYI, the consensus reached on the discussion linked above is that character names should redirect to the most likely search target (i.e. the most popular page), unless there is no agreement as to which would be most likely, in which case the default would be the page on the earliest work. bd2412 T 17:43, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Nowa Wieś discussion

[Note: Discussion moved here from Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/September 2009]

This only has 2 links that need disambiguation. The rest are just hatnotes for the numerous towns called Nowa Wieś. So this issue will recur. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JamesAM (talk • contribs)

  • These are still in direct violation of Wikipedia:Hatnote. I think we have to have another discussion on this topic, or else WP:NAMB needs to be altered significantly. Dekimasuよ!
  • Since the expressed intent (per old discussions at WT:DPL) is to inform readers that there are a lot of places with this name, perhaps something along the lines of the split of Springfield (toponym) from Springfield is in order. Any of the links could then perform the same purpose without linking back to an unrelated navigational page. Dekimasuよ!
    • I made all those hatnotes redirect through Nowa Wieś (disambiguation) - why are they still showing up here? Must be some way to eliminate those hits from the list, as that is how we code obviously intentional disambig links. bd2412 T 17:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
    • How about this as a compromise, to avoid inappropriate linking of the dab? I'm still not comfortable with the idea of a hatnote for this, but I think there were previous objections to moving the disclaimer to the see also section. Dekimasuよ! 05:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
      • I really don't see what's wrong with the solution I've already implemented. Linking it through a "(disambiguation)" redirect to the disambig page makes it clear that it's not an erroneous disambig link, and takes the reader to the place we want them to go to find alternatives to ambiguous terms. bd2412 T 06:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
They're serving their intended purpose, so they're not erroneous to that extent, but it's a purpose that's deprecated by Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Usage guidelines and Wikipedia:Hatnote, and it would be good to avoid making it seem like such hatnotes are generally acceptable; we are supposed to keep self-references to a minimum, and if this is propagated, our list here will become unworkable. I'm not trying to say that you weren't being helpful, but I think there's still an issue to be solved here. Unfortunately, I'm not sure who Kotniski was replying to after I asked him to comment, but it seems like he will be happy with anything that makes it clear there are other places called Nowa Wieś (please correct me if I'm wrong). Dekimasuよ! 10:40, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, though I'd much prefer for that "anything" to be a hatnote (i.e. before the start of the article) rather than a See Also entry at the end of it (as was suggested once before). If there's a chance the reader might be in the wrong place, they need to be told straight away.--Kotniski (talk) 14:00, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
From the perspective of fixing disambig links, it will show up the same on our list of pages to be fixed no matter where on the target page the link exists. If it's made to an index instead of a disambig page, that's fine, but just taking it out of the hatnote will not solve the problem. bd2412 T 14:41, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
Sounds a good solution to me. The reason I think these hatnotes are needed is that many people will arrive at these pages having clicked a link that just says "Nowa Wieś", and may not be aware (if they are not familiar with Polish place naming) that it very likely isn't the place of that name where their granny was born or whatever. (Or to put it another way - although the dab tags are theoretically enough to uniquely identify the place, for many of our readers (those who don't know the intricacies of today's Polish administrative divisions) those tags will be meaningless, and therefore not sufficient in practice to uniquely identify.)--Kotniski (talk) 06:33, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Since there are going to be quite a few of these, I've created a Category:Set indices on Poland, on the example of the Russian one, and updated {{SIA}} to handle it. I've also added a sort key parameter to SIA, so if anyone's creating more pages like this, you can write (on "List of places in Poland named Żźróć"): {{SIA|Poland|Zzroc}} --Kotniski (talk) 10:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Nowy Staw is now on the radar so I've gone and duplicated what was done with Nowa Wieś & Zalesie. Made an error in the original move but all should be okay now.Ulric1313 (talk) 17:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Not sure how that one got onto the radar with only three places, but I've changed it a bit since Nowy Staw is a primary topic in this case (the article was always at that name until someone recently moved it to something weird).--Kotniski (talk) 17:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
I saw it in the Daily Disambig and decided to fix it. Didn't realize most pointed to one article. My bad, jumped the gun. Thanks for fixing things.Ulric1313 (talk) 18:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
No, no harm done, at least not by you; in fact it's lucky that you happened to chance on it and mention it here so that I ended up noticing the odd "move" that someone else had made (indeed it was probably that move - a cut-and-paste job without repairing any incoming links - that caused the page to get onto the list).--Kotniski (talk) 19:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Someone has changed Nowa Wies back to a disambiguation page from an SIA. Before I did anything thought should get consensus. Ulric1313 (talk) 09:36, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Crud, I thought this was resolved. Well, we have several options, and something has to be done, otherwise every Nowa Wies article will be pointing at this dab again. We could revert JHunterJ's changes, or move it to a List of ... article, or remove all those hatnotes. Or something else? If we think SIA won't stand the test of time I'd vote for a List of ... article, because I think the hatnotes serve a useful purpose. --JaGatalk 12:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone know why JHJ changed it? Perhaps he was simply unaware of this previous discussion?--Kotniski (talk) 12:39, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
It's just one aspect of ongoing confusion over the purpose of SIAs and whether/how they are to be distinguished from garden variety disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 15:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

ECB

Should ECB (disambiguation) be moved to ECB? --AndrewHowse (talk) 16:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, done. bd2412 T 21:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Lorraine

Heads up on this one. It's currently listed at over 300 but that's the tip of the iceberg since more have been added since the update ran. Infoboxes are being added to French commune articles and instead of Lorraine (region), just Lorraine was used. I did a quick look over other regions, and it looks like this is the only one that had this happen. I'll probably try and start on this when I get home from work, but it's going to take some time unless someone out there can get a bot on it, or some other process. Ulric1313 (talk) 17:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Weymouth

There is a bit of a content dispute on Weymouth. See the recent edit history. I fixed links to the page, and added entries to it reflecting those fixes. In dispute here is a cluster of articles related to Weymouth, Dorset: should they be on the dab page, or not? This question applies also to a requested move discussion on Talk:Duluth. --Una Smith (talk) 17:50, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Cruciate ligament

Cruciate ligament ought not be a disambig. All meanings are for ligaments in the knee; many disambig links are unfixable because even the news reports do not specify which of an athlete's cruciate ligaments was thought to be injured (and some articles specify that a person had an injury to the "cruciate ligaments" of a particular knee. bd2412 T 22:20, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I could go either way: make it a straight dab, or make it an article that explains why they are "cruciate" (it has nothing to do with torture; they cross). Pass it by WP:MED? --Una Smith (talk) 22:54, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
The fact that they are unfixable (which they are) is no reason to make the the page not a dab. The only solution that I see is merging Anterior cruciate ligament & Medial collateral ligament Posterior cruciate ligament but the folks that edit the anatomy pages may not agree that they should be merged. J04n(talk page) 23:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Judging by the dab'ed articles themselves, the one that is frequently getting injured is the anterior, but many news reports on injured athletes maddeningly omit that specification. If we could find some source supporting this contention, we could default all these injury reports in articles on athletes to the anterior article. On the other hand, what is it that is really being disambiguated here? It's not as though there's movie titled The Cruciate Ligament, or a band, or a car. If someone asked you what a cruciate ligament was, and you answered that it's a ligament found in the knee, you'd be right every time. I compare this to toe. We have one article on toes in general, and another on the big toe with its special role. bd2412 T 23:54, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
bd, I'm not sure what you are suggesting by that last comment; merging Anterior cruciate ligament & Posterior cruciate ligament or creating a third page for cruciate ligament (knee) (or some other name)? A better example for your point is Meniscus (anatomy), as there are also pages for Medial meniscus and Lateral meniscus. J04n(talk page) 00:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
There is a different primary topic for meniscus; there is none for cruciate ligament. I propose that the entry be a short article on the general topic (i.e. everything that can be said about every cruciate ligament, no matter the animal and position), while maintaining the more specific articles on the individual ligaments. bd2412 T 01:11, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
You're right, I agree. J04n(talk page) 01:18, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Done. bd2412 T 01:39, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Shrew

The dab Shrew needs a cleanup. I think there is a proto-article on Shrew (word) lurking in it. See also Talk:Shrew and Talk:Shrew (animal). --Una Smith (talk) 14:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

September stats

I compared the September list with the new October list and found that the number of ambiguous links declined for 247/250 pages (99%), and rose for only 3/250 pages (1%). East Hampton, New York was merged into East Hampton and thus ended up at +18 for the month. The other two pages that increased were Equilibrium and Dynamics.

Per data at WP:TDD and WP:DPM, we had our second day this year without a page over 200 links on September 13. Overall, the number of active pages (dabs with over 100 links) declined from 710 to 472, and is at its lowest recorded level since October 2007. In September, we completed over 80% of the list for the first time this year. I wonder if we might want to increase the number of pages in the list again sometime soon. It seems like we can handle a little over 25,000 links a month, but the size of the "top 250" list and dab challenge has fallen by more than half over the last few months; now the whole list is the same size as the top hundred pages were a few months ago. Dekimasuよ! 02:25, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to increase the size of the list. If people OK it here, I'll set it at whatever size is decided upon. It's an easy change for me; I don't know how tough it would be on R&B. Of course, if I did change the size, we wouldn't see the changes until November's Challenge begins. --JaGatalk 11:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Sounds fine, assuming it isn't an undue burden for R&B why not go to 300? J04n(talk page) 23:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I was toying with even more, like 500. Looking at TDD and the archives, we see in May when we started the monthly lists, the top 250 had 62,860 links. As of October 1, the top 500 had 54,915 links. And that number is shrinking rapidly. I'd say we could handle it. And, I must admit, I like 500 because it's a Big Round Number.
On the other hand, there's much to be said for not expanding the list too much. At the end of last month, it was very difficult to find "doable" dabs, but that also forced people to do some great work on the difficult ones. So I'm OK with whatever is decided. --JaGatalk 18:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd be cool with expanding the list. We doing well getting through them, and I think we'd expand participation because they'll be more targets to attract people to the project. --JamesAM (talk) 04:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
If you want to expand the list, that's fine with me; it's not a big deal to change my scripts, as long as I get some notice in advance of November 1. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:23, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Norman Lamont

This looks a bit questionable to me. I'll take it to WP:RM, since I think the modern pol is the primary topic. Would appreciate any input. --AndrewHowse (talk) 13:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Lexicon

I wrote an article about the typeface Lexicon (Lexicon (typeface)), but I noticed that there are several articles about something called 'Lexicon' (obviously). Currently it autmotically links to the term without additions, and it only shows the disambiguation page in the article. Maybe you should just go to the disambiguation page instead? Or am I mistaken? Typehigh (talk) 00:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Pacific Theater vs Pacific Theatre

Any reason there are two seperate disambiguation pages for what, I suspect, are mostly the same subject base in terms of intended article direction? Ulric1313 (talk) 06:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

They have redundant information, will merge. J04n(talk page) 12:06, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

New list size

OK, I've got R'n'B's blessing to expand the monthly list. How big shall we make it? The discussion above ranged from 300 to 500. Votes? --JaGatalk 19:12, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Done I've modified my script to create a 500-article list, starting in November. --JaGatalk 11:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

October stats

This will necessarily be shorter than usual (you might have noticed I haven't been around much lately), but I went through the October list as usual. Links to 245 of the 250 dab pages listed decreased. Church of God had the same number of links at the end of the month. The pages that increased in links, all by 1 or 2, were Minnow, Imaging, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and Athenaeum. The number of active pages had stabilized at about 250 by the end of the month; here's hoping that the number of pages with over 100 incoming links will be down to 100 by the end of November! Dekimasuよ! 00:10, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Bill Owens

Somebody has moved the former governor of Colorado to Bill Owens (Governor) following the election of another Bill Owens in upstate NY. Before I take out the links to the new dab page redirect Bill Owens, does anybody have a suggestion of what the best disambiguator might be? (Governor) doesn't seem right, especially with an upper-case G. (politician born 1950) might work, although was born in 1949, so that's not as clear a distinction as might be. (Colorado) might work, but it lacks any reference to political life. --AndrewHowse (talk) 21:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Bill Owens (Colorado governor) would seem to fit the bill. --Una Smith (talk) 21:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
(e/c) Bill Owens (Colorado politician)? He did more than serve as governor, but from the article it looks like all his political offices were in/for Colorado. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks all. --AndrewHowse (talk) 23:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Questionable redirects to disambiguation pages

I have finished paring down the initial run of redirects to disambiguation pages to a list of about 5,000 questionable redirects, about a third of which (so far) are divided into subpages based on the type of problem presented. This is going to take a while to get through, so please have at it! bd2412 T 03:13, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Oktyabrsky District

It looks like there is both a set index and disambiguation assigned to this article. All, or most, of the links appear to be redirect pages. Can someone take a look at this? Ulric1313 (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Military of Cyprus

I noticed that this has been made a disambiguation page again. Since this has neen a point of contention, I thought I should mention it. Ulric1313 (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

New to project

I'm new to the project - saw a Wiki Ad, thought I'd give it a shot. I just finished cleaning up the links to heretic and Babyface. I've already moved them to the "done" list, but could someone please check those pages and make sure they're appropriately de-linked? Thanks! --SquidSK (1MC•log) 20:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Welcome and thanks for the help (the ads work!). Don't worry if you made a mistake someone will let you know. J04n(talk page) 20:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
I mostly just want to make sure I pared the links down to the target level. I didn't change the links on any user or talk pages, just articles and portals. --SquidSK (1MC•log) 20:37, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Welcome! I took a random look some of your fixes. The ones I saw looked okay with one exception. You changed the heretic link for Bessie Schonberg to link to Heretic (play). If you read the context of the article, though, you'll find it's actually referring to a 1929 ballet (which doesn't have an article yet). Sometimes the disambiguation page won't list all the possibilities (and sometimes there's not an article in existence yet). It's cool to see so many new productive contributors this month. Thanks! --JamesAM (talk) 20:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
And yes, you're correct. The article should be fixed. User pages and Talk pages should be left alone. --JamesAM (talk) 20:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for double-checking me, James - that was one of the few heretic links that should not have pointed to heresy. I think I just got on a roll! --SquidSK (1MC•log) 20:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Wallingford

Per outcome of a requested move, the article formerly at Wallingford has been moved to Wallingford, Oxfordshire and the dab page will be moved from Wallingford (disambiguation) to the ambiguous base name. Help repairing the incoming links would be appreciated. --Una Smith (talk) 00:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks like once again Wikipedia's internal database indexing is not working well. I am finding many articles on the list of incoming links to Wallingford that now do not link there. --Una Smith (talk) 02:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Could be. The job queue is jumping between 12K and 13K. Based on past numbers this should take a few minutes to process. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I believe that Una Smith's problem was due to the link to Wallingford actually being in Template:Oxfordshire, Template:River Thames or Template:South Oxfordshire. These templates are amended, but individual pages is another matter. I'm working through some, but may not finish today - other commitments. Basically, I'm inserting "Wallingford, Oxfordshire|" into the existing link if it's clear to me that the town is the intended target. Some were not so intended; I've come across some that were better pointed at Wallingford Bridge, Wallingford Castle, Wallingford railway station, etc. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
The link indexing was not reflecting changes to those templates, tens of minutes after the changes. A few months ago I showed that it was outright broken and a bug report did result. This time, it appears to be a simple delay, as the problem links I found in the list are now gone from it. --Una Smith (talk) 15:26, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I've dabbed about 100 (+/- 5%) articles, it's now my bath time. Back later, all squeaky clean. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:06, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I've dabbed some too; now under 100 remain. Many incoming links were of the form "Wallingford, Oxfordshire". Others included links intending Wallingford, Connecticut, Wallingford Castle, Honour of Wallingford, Wallingford, Berkshire, and Wallingford Grammar School. --Una Smith (talk) 16:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks all for your help. Given the above, the dab page in this case really did need to be moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 Done I've just done the last few in article space, and some in Talk: (the remaining two in (Article) and six in Talk: should point at Wallingford as a dab page). This leaves User: 14, User talk: 16, Wikipedia: 8, Wikipedia talk: 1 (this page!). I don't want to dab those in User: or User talk:, I have seen past criticism of such practices. Those in Wikipedia: are probably bot-generated. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Non-existant pages

Yo, don't change a disambiguation page link to a red link. Not helpful! In addition, if a page for the specific link doesn't exist then don't shoehorn a link into an inappropriate page. This is also not helpful. Disambiguation pages serve a purpose and shouldn't be treated as pariah pages. If they are the best place to leave a link pointing to then leave the link there! Overzealous "disambiguation" actually makes the link more ambiguaous and opaque to a casual reader. Use some common sense folks, please. Pyrope 19:24, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't think that I had. Examples, please --Redrose64 (talk) 19:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Examples? --Una Smith (talk) 19:33, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Plenty of the recent changes to the pylon links. Many mechanical and aero/automotive uses of the term have been linked to aircraft pylon. Examples of radio towers, lattice towers and support structures have been linked to electricity pylon. Please check Wafry's contributions. I realise that these were done in good faith, but the majority of them are unhelpful, at best, and some are downright incorrect. The point I was making was a general one, though. The supporting documentation for this project sets more store on the removal of disambiguation page links than it does on getting the actual links correct. Quality not quantity of work folks. Pyrope 20:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Pyrope, thanks for bringing this to our attention. As you noted, Wafry's contributions were in good faith so let's just focus on the fix. Could you help us? I can't say I know enough about pylons to fix the links myself; could you give us some guidance? For example, how do the electricity pylon links need to be corrected? --JaGatalk 20:48, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Redlinks are not in themselves problematic. In fact, they are very constructive; a nonexistent article with many incoming links will be a high priority for creation. --Una Smith (talk) 21:05, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
I kind of fall between two stools here. I agree that many identical redlinks suggests the need for an article; however, when dealing with the previous section, I dabbed from "Honour of [[Wallingford]]" to "[[Honour (land)|Honour]] of [[Wallingford, Oxfordshire|Wallingford]]" and not to "[[Honour of Wallingford]]" (ie from "Honour of Wallingford" to "Honour of Wallingford" and not to "Honour of Wallingford"), mainly to avoid redlinks. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
This kind of situation comes up a lot with species, and the usual solution is to make a link to the species name, and make the species name a redirect to the genus. Similarly, the solution to Honour of Wallingford would be to make this redlink a redirect to Honour (land). --Una Smith (talk) 00:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
The redirect was short lived (version); now it is an article with a bunch of incoming links. --Una Smith (talk) 04:16, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I checked the first five of Wafry's changes (Mendes to 1980 in music and they checked out okay, so those don't need to be redone. I may check more later, but I'm not familiar with the subjects to really do it justice. And I don't appreciate the blanket condemnation that participants of the project lack common sense for the mistakes of one editor who is new to the project. Blanket condemnations don't show any regard for the differences in what various editors do. Blanket condemnations just breed animosity. --JamesAM (talk) 22:45, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I found myself in this same conundrum while working on instructor. I usually defaulted to teacher, since at their roots, "teacher" and "instructor" are synonyms. At first, I was pointing college/university "instructor" links to professor, but then I realized that a lot more goes with being a professor than just teaching (research, faculty management, etc.). Pyrope makes a good point - the members of this project are fighting the good fight, but we do need to slow down, think, and when in doubt, discuss on this talk page, the article-in-question's talk page, or both. I also agree with Redrose - if these fixes result in a lot of redlinks to a certain subject, that seems to make for good requested article fodder. --SquidSK (1MC•log) 02:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

51 (number)

51 (number) is not a dab page, but probably should be. Any takers? --Una Smith (talk) 21:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

You could say the same about 50 (number) through 59 (number) inclusive. Why is 51 different? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
That one came to my attention. --Una Smith (talk) 21:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Note that there exists 50 (disambiguation) as well as 50 (number). It would be easier for the casual reader, I think, if the structure were consistent across various numbers of similar magnitude. There might well be an upper limit here too; 1237 might not need the same level of attention. --AndrewHowse (talk) 21:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Convert all number articles to dabs? I'd say 51 (number) deserves its own article; we could create 51 (disambiguation) I suppose, but personally I'm fine with these articles as is. --JaGatalk 21:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
If you don't like 50 (number), you're going to hate Category:Integers. There are lots of these pages, all organized approximately the same, acting as psuedo-article, psuedo-disambiguation, pseudo-"in popular culture" magnets. It would be a bad idea to change one of them, and changing all of them is a bit too big of a project for WP:BOLD to apply. Better to get consensus somewhere about whether these pages should have a different format or not. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:45, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Do any of these number pages exemplify the target we might want to aim for? 50 (disambiguation) and 50 (number) are not good examples: 50 (number) is full of dab-type clutter and 50 (disambiguation) reveals that 50 is occupied by a year. Gaak. --Una Smith (talk) 22:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Content about the number as a number should be on a n (number) page. Content listing pages that might be known as number should go on a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 23:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Note that these articles are the domain of WikiProject Numbers, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers would therefore be a good place to discuss them. --Zundark (talk) 22:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The base pages (50, 51, etc.) are about years, so WikiProject Years is involved also. What do you all think about moving the year articles to, eg, 51 AD (a redirect to 51) and making 51 a dab page? Wouldn't that be most likely to collect new dab content where it belongs? --Una Smith (talk) 23:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
I didn't realise that you were considering changing the year articles. Using raw numbers for years AD is one of the oldest naming conventions on Wikipedia, and there are probably a number of templates that rely on it. See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates). --Zundark (talk) 09:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the existing system is good and shouldn't be changed. Disambiguation pages are largely a means to an end. There not really for content, but for direct people to the right content article they want to go to. In contrast, the "x (number)" articles are an end in themselves. They exist to satisfy the content-seeking needs of people who want to read about the mathematical, numerological, and cultural significance of a particular number. So turning them into disambiguation pages would frustrate the purposes of the "(number)" pages. --JamesAM (talk) 03:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

From an organizational POV, I agree. I'm fine with 51 (number) et al (assume et al throughout) being about the number, 51 (disambiguation) being a disambiguation page (if needed), and 51 being the year 51 AD (per Zundark above), as long as the hatnotes in each article clearly direct people to the other two pages. This also neatly sidesteps the AD/CE tarpit. The real problem I see is that 51 (number) has become a magnets for all sorts of "in popular culture" junk, for example the sports figures who have the Jersey No. 51, which episode of the Simpsons was Episode 51, etc, etc ad nauseum. It is acting as a secondary fancruft disambiguation page. I don't think we need a reorganization, so much as a cleaning out. Prune 51 (number) back to being about the number 51, move any legit dab-related stuff to 51 (disambiguation), and throw out the rest. But it would be an uphill battle to counter the people who think that "there are 51 steps on the back staircase of the Louvre" is a reasonable thing to put in an encyclopedia article. Few people have the will to fight 30 such battles for each page, so you end up with what we have now. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Floquenbeam has it right, I think. --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Quota

Hi all, I need you kind help. I was beginning to disambiguate quota... first article is Institut Le Rosey. Quota is used as the wiktionary meaning not as the wikipedian meaning. Should I remove link or what? TY --Luckyz (talk) 14:42, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I prefer, in this case, to delink. --Luckyz (talk) 15:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

"Rare" exceptions?

This page says:

Ideally, article namespace pages should not link to disambiguation pages, with rare exceptions in which the ambiguity of a term is being discussed

There are many thousands of cases of articles that say

This is about innies in omphalology. For other senses of the word, see innies (disambiguation).

That is not rare at all.

Another obvious exception is when the name of a disambiguation page is a singular noun, and the plural redirects to the disambiguation page. Or when a commonplace misspelling redirects to the disambiguation page. I don't even see those mentioned among the mentioned exceptions, but I know those exist. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The statement you quote is, I'm sure, intended to refer to links within the article content itself, so, yes, perhaps it should be amended to, "apart from disambiguating hatnotes, article namespace pages should not link to disambiguation pages...."
The other "exceptions" you mention don't seem to me to be exceptions at all; they are ambiguous links that should be disambiguated and/or corrected to link to the intended article.--ShelfSkewed Talk 04:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Ah, JamesAM's comments below made me see that I misunderstood the earlier comment: Redirects exist in article space, of course, and, as JamesAM points out, they don't need to be fixed. But again, redirects to not constitute article content, which is what the original statement is referring to.--ShelfSkewed Talk 05:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand your comment that "they are ambiguous links that should be disambiguated and/or corrected to link to the intended article". An example is residuals redirecting to residual, which is a disambiguation page. That's an obvious case where something should link to a disambiguation page. Are you saying it should be changed to link to some "intended article" other than the residual disambiguation page? Michael Hardy (talk) 14:07, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Rare is a relative term. For the pages that make the list here, hatnotes tend to be a very small fraction of the links. The only exception of the hundreds of disambiguation I've been dealing with on this WikiProject is Nowa Wies (and perhaps one other I can't recall). But I'm not sure what this has to do with the purpose of a Talk page, which is discussing improvements to the page. Is "rare" confusing to people? I don't think anything on the page gives editors the misguided impression that they should "fix" hatnotes and redirects that ought to go the disambiguation page. If there are instances of people making those mistakes that can be cited here, then we should clarify the language. But if it's just an academic quibble about how uncommon it should be to merit the word "rare", then the language should be left as is. --JamesAM (talk) 05:16, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Concerning hatnotes like the model (This is about innies in omphalology. For other senses of the word, see innies (disambiguation).), it should be mentioned that in many cases innies (disambiguation) is not a dab page but a redirect to a dab page. The redirect is used to "isolate" legitimate links, so that all links to the dab page (which occupies the ambiguous base name) are links to be corrected. --Una Smith (talk) 16:35, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I've been working on Skating and discovered that a large number of the links require expert knowledge from the article author to disambiguate. I've placed {{dn}} templates in the past, but it's always hard to tell by looking at a list which articles have been {{dn}} tagged and which are potentially fixable by someone without expert knowledge. I'm suggesting, without having thought this all the way through, that tagged links get changed to [[example (dn)|]]{{dn}}, which redirects to [[example]].

In advance, I'd like to say I don't like the form of {{dn|linkname}}, because links in templates make it really hard to find them, and templates are too "advanced" for casual editors to understand (and thus fix the broken dab link).

What say you? Josh Parris 06:51, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Set index articles

Do incoming links to set index articles merit link repair similar to incoming links to dab pages at base names? This question concerns Poppy, a magnet for links and content that should go elsewhere. Poppy gets a lot of page views, and this is an incentive to keep something other than a dab page at that page name. See discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants#Poppy. --Una Smith (talk) 16:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

As a general matter, I think we should aspire to have every link on Wikipedia take readers to the article most relevant to the context in which the link appears, so that would be a "yes" in principle. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
In principle, yes. So, should we treat SIAs as a kind of dab? And include them on dab lists? At the other extreme, should we disambiguate incoming links to articles occupying ambiguous base names: articles such as London and Paris? --Una Smith (talk) 22:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, let's not get carried away. :-) Saying that all those links should be fixed is not the same as saying they should be part of this project; it's a question of priorities and resources. We don't have enough people to fix all the links to pure disambiguation pages, so I don't see any benefit to trying to expand the scope of the project even more. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't like set index articles as currently formulated; too many are essentially dab pages with stray content that could be worked into articles. The stray content attracts incoming links that interfere with the dab function. To me, a good set index article should contain an actual index; incoming links would be dab-able. I am considering applying the idea to Poppy; please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants#Poppy. --Una Smith (talk) 18:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

The subpage Poppy/draft is an index; would anyone like to try fixing the incoming links to Poppy, using the index like a dab page? Just like many dab pages, the index is far from complete. This is in the nature of a small experiment; can you use the index to help you disambiguate links, and is the logic of the index clear enough that you can expand it as needed? --Una Smith (talk) 15:24, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Poppy started out with 444 incoming links; now there are about 70. Has Poppy/draft been useful? --Una Smith (talk) 00:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Correction: a couple hundred incoming links remain. It seems Wikipedia's internal indexing was broken again today, for a time. --Una Smith (talk) 03:20, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixing template boxes

Is there something extra that has to be done to make dab fixes for template boxes register? Several pages have high link counts due to template boxes at the bottom of pages. There are some that I've fixed yet still show up in the link counts. For instance, the template boses about Seas has been fixed so that Seas has now been changed to Sea, but the change doesn't show up. And the Template: Daniel Handler which had a link to Stars, now correctly links to Stars (Canadian band), yet those haven't dropped from the count. So what am I missing? --JamesAM (talk) 21:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Periodically there is a lag in updating the database internal indexing. Rarely, the updating stops altogether. Are those links still showing up now? --Una Smith (talk) 21:39, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
(ec) All you need do is wait; but it can take a while. The main factor is the number of articles transcluding the templates which have been amended; but also whether the template is itself transcluded by another template. You don't actually say which template has the Seas/Sea change, so I can't check on transclusions; but {{Daniel Handler}} doesn't have many. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:44, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Okay. I figured it might be a wait, but then at least one of them went through (Mark Hudson in the Aerosmith template) - so I thought another editor did something that I missed. The template for seas is Template:List of seas. --JamesAM (talk) 22:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
You can always do a null edit as a sanity check. Go to a page that transcludes your template; click "edit this page"; make no changes and add no edit summary; save. The null edit won't show up in the article's history (or your edit history), but the article will be completely re-rendered. --JaGatalk 22:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
If the wait is more than a few hours, a Wikimedia bug report may in order. --Una Smith (talk) 22:19, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree: {{List of seas}} has under 150 transclusions (none of which are templates), which is not a terribly large number compared to (say) {{cite book}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
This has been an ongoing problem. Sometimes the template updates show up in seconds and at other times it takes days and a second edit to the template. The job queue is very problematic. Yes, if the problem is still there, we probably need another problem report. WP:CFD closers see this all of the time when we have to update a template to change categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:36, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems a bug report is in order. I am having similar problems with links to Poppy transcluded via Template:Herbs & spices. --Una Smith (talk) 00:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is persisting. We had a similar problem back in January, discussed here. --Una Smith (talk) 21:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
The problem with links to Poppy finally went away. --Una Smith (talk) 05:13, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Last one on Lancet

Only one last one on the list which is Ashcombe.

I don't know whether they are talking about Lancet arch or Lancet windows. Can anyone help?

Thanks! Tsange ►talk 15:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

That requires knowledge of the building, or research outside of Wikipedia. So tag the link in Ashcombe with {{dn}} and perhaps explain the tag on Talk:Ashcombe. Then your job is done. --Una Smith (talk) 16:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks very much! Tsange ►talk 19:14, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

New Page Patrol - Disambiguation bot

I'm forming a proposal for a bot. The intention of this bot is to immediately bring to the page author's attention that the article is linking somewhere other than they thought it would be linking.

The bot would inspect all new main-space articles except for redirects and dab-pages. Redirects are valid to point at dab pages, as are other dab pages. Any new page that has any links to disambiguation pages will have {{dn}} added after each link.

Is this a bad idea? Why? Josh Parris 06:49, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

  • Sounds good to me. But remember to allow links to disambiguation pages that are titled "Whatever (disambiguation)", whether or not they are redirects. If feasible, you could also {{dn}} links to redirects that target disambiguation pages if the redirect isn't titled "Whatever (disambiguation)". Cheers! --- JHunterJ (talk) 13:51, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
(smacks head) of course! I'm glad I've come here to check for glaring errors. Thanks! Josh Parris 00:19, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Sounds good to me. I've always thought we need to tackle disambig links at the source, but never quite knew how. This would get new article creators to clean up a problem they're usually unaware of. --JaGatalk 17:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Neat idea, assuming the servers can support it easily, which seems likely as new articles are only a small proportion of all edits. Would it be practicable to extend this to edits which insert a new dab page link into an existing article? Does anyone have a rough idea how many links to dab pages arise from new articles compared to the number that arise from edits to existing articles? Could there be a simple but effective way to prevent intentional dablinks from being flagged, preferably before the bot gets there if the author is reasonably well informed? Overriding would be essential if the proposal were extended to amendments. — Richardguk (talk) 19:21, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I suppose that I could demand that if you want to link to a dab page from a non-dab page, it has to be to Pagename (disambiguation)... Josh Parris 00:18, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
  • I think it is a great idea ... except that links to dabs more often occur in older, longer articles. New ones tend to be under-linked. The links accumulate over time. How about the bot goes around tagging links added in recent edits? --Una Smith (talk) 21:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
As Richardguk notes, new pages are less of a burden that all recent changes. Yes, links to dabs are introduced mostly through subsequent editing, but I want to start small. I'm sure that there will be teething problems, and once these are ironed out I'll look at progressing to wider coverage. Josh Parris 11:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Starting small is wise. One aspect of targeting new pages I like: it would give new page patrol editors something more constructive to do than plaster new pages with problem tags. But I see some downsides. This bot may contribute to the plastering, which already is rather too aversive. Also, we may send inexperienced editors to look at disambiguation pages that need cleanup or expansion. The result may not be an improvement. So how about starting small from the other end? How about we make a tag that we can add ourselves to a disambiguation page, that triggers the bot to tag {{dn}} on the incoming links to the page? That would allow for some supervision of the resulting link repairs. --Una Smith (talk) 15:53, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
My interpretation of what you are suggesting is that you're suggesting a "clean, quality dab page" tag which labels the dab page as currently having no inbound links, which is not in need of clean-up because it's fully compliant with WP:MOSDAB - and as such, not on the radar of Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links or WikiProject Disambiguation. I also understand that you're suggesting any new links to such pages ought to be tagged {{dn}} (excluding incoming redirects and direct links to dab pages with (disambiguation) in the title). I don't quite understand what you mean by supervision of the resulting link repairs; do you mean that once we've fixed something, it will stay fixed (human foibles excluded)?
One of the reasons I wanted to start with new pages is they are at is a single point in time where the history is fully known - none the ambiguous links have ever been tagged {{dn}}, and thus the tags have never been removed. I haven't figured out how to prevent a Recent Changes bot edit-warring over dn tags where the link to the dab page is intentional. I suppose that I could demand that if you want to link to a dab page from a non-dab page, it has to be to Pagename (disambiguation), but that doesn't seem very neighbourly. Also, with my current design checking a page is relatively expensive - the whole page has to be loaded, and each link has to be checked to see if it's a redirect to a dab page (dab pages are easily enumerated - I have the full list of 168476); while I'm kicking around ideas to tune things, I don't want to go in with a proposal that I don't yet know how to make run fast enough. Mind you, having said that, the list of "clean, quality" dab pages ought to start small and grow slowly, so building up a local cache of those redirects ought to be efficient enough. I've still got that problem with edit waring; any suggestions on how to prevent edit waring would be most welcome.
On balance, I like your suggestion. It would certainly change the nature of the disambiguation project from an on-going black war to one where editors are made aware of when they've make a sub-optimal link. One of my hopes with a NPP dab robot was that new editors would be introduced to disambiguation pages early in their career and reduce the likelihood of them creating ambiguous links in the future. Despite your implication, I don't think that the dab pages we have are in all that bad a shape. Once a page is marked as a "clean orphan dab", someone would have to take responsibility to making sure they stay that way (Wikiproject Disambiguation perhaps?) Josh Parris 23:34, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
I had something a little different in mind... Take for example the result of a WP:RM proposal to move Foo (disambiguation) to Foo. After the page move we fix all the incoming links to Foo, and usually as a result the dab page is expanded or otherwise improved. What I would like is a tag I can add to the dab page or its talk page, once I have finished fixing incoming links, that triggers the bot. It would then catch new incoming links to that page, as they are created. Perhaps the bot could run every day or every hour. It could attach a {{dn}} to each new incoming link, and perhaps also put a note on the talk page of the editor who created the link. For example, about a year ago I fixed all incoming links to the dab page Enfield; now there are almost 100 new links. Keep in mind this would be a trial period for the bot. I am proposing that it be set up so that it can be somewhat controlled and watched over by editors with experience fixing incoming links to dab pages. I would also want to observe the behavior of editors on the receiving end of the bot's work. Will most editors figure out what {{dn}} means and make an appropriate fix? How many will just unlink the text, or remove the tag? Do they welcome its help, or do they complain? --Una Smith (talk) 23:47, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Clicking on the tag takes you to a page about how to disambiguate that's a mixed up mess of instructions. Someone might clean that up and make it so an editor could follow it for a start. There's an editor who usually disambiguates my new articles, before I get around to them, or if I do them incorrectly. She (I think) might be a good person to ask. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 04:47, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
  • I like the idea, too. In most cases, a page author should have a pretty good idea of what a link is intended on a page they created. So it's a better allocation of editor-hours to try to get some editors to cure dab links at the time of creation. They'll often be able to do it quicker that disambiguation project folks (who oftentimes have to spend time researching stuff because the links we're fixing may be outside our own fields of knowledge/expertise. I don't know anything about bots. Would it work on templates be under the bot's purview? --JamesAM (talk) 14:26, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
    Yes, the editor knows where the link should properly connect, but dabs on wikipedia can chase editors away. Some are long lists of poorly sorted unrelated items, like various spellings, odd usages that are part of the word, very unhelpful junk, with one or two main uses hidden deeply. I used to look through the dabs to find what I needed, but their usefulness keeps going downhill-if I hit a long dab, I just google instead. Article editors may do this also, avoid the long dabs which are the ones that most need disambiguated correctly in an article for the use of the reader. But, if they're not, then you've tagged an article, not helping the reader, and not helping the editor. The tag needs to connect to a category where users who can stand reading wikipedia dab pages can help out. Otherwise it's just clutter, imo. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:25, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion is underway at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot Josh Parris 08:36, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion there has led to a rewrite of Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing links, and additional discussion on that page's talk page. --Una Smith (talk) 23:55, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

After an extensive discussion, the proposal now reads:

The bot will place a message on the talk page of any new namespace 0, 6, 10 or 14 article with ambiguous links.

(the namespaces are: 0 (mainspace), 6 (file), 10 (template) and 14 (category)). Current proposed message template:

If you have any opinion to voice, the discussion is nearing completion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot Josh Parris 08:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It appears that this proposal is going to fail. If you have any opinion to voice, the discussion is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot Josh Parris 22:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Novice friendly instructions

Whenever we don't know what to disambiguate a link to, we're meant to use the {{dn}} template; then any subject-matter expert who wanders past will see that link isn't quite right. But it's been pointed out that Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing links needs a rewrite to be more novice friendly; I've had stab, but it could do with more eyes. Nearly a hundred people a day read this page. Please help! Josh Parris 05:41, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

It has had a total makeover. --Una Smith (talk) 23:57, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Some eyeballs on the new page explaining how to disambiguate all the links on a page (as opposed to all the links leading to a page) Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing a page would be appreciated. Josh Parris 08:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Giron

Giron was near the top of the December list of dabs with the most incoming links, but now it is a stub. I think Giron should be made a dab again. It appears the dab content was moved to Girón, but Giron remains ambiguous. The majority of incoming links to Giron are via the redirect Giron, France. Unfortunately, Giron, France is ambiguous. There are places named Giron in both Ain and Canton of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine. And Giron itself remains ambiguous: the distinction between Girón and Giron often is not made in English, and there is a volcano in the Philippines named Giron (at least on the Wikipedia list that refers to it). --Una Smith (talk) 19:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the Giron in Ain & the one in the Canton of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine appear to be the same one as the canton is located in Ain as per the infobox.Ulric1313 (talk) 05:43, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
I think Ulric1313 is correct: just one Giron in France. --Una Smith (talk) 15:38, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
There are also several items at the dab page Girón, and I can imagine many gringos typing in "Giron" when looking for that. I'd be inclined to move Giron to Giron, France (assuming there is just one), make Giron a dab page, with a "See also" at the bottom for the Girón dab page. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
I have asked about Giron, France on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France. --Una Smith (talk) 17:40, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Solve_disambiguation.py

Is anyone here using solve_disambiguation.py? I cannot find instructions about what I need to do to get permission (do I need permission?) to use this bot, as distinct from permission for the bot to be used. There is a difference, isn't there? --Una Smith (talk) 22:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is: In it's default configuration it operates at a throttled rate; it also gives an explicit warning that you're not operating with a bot flag. But, because it's a manually assisted bot rather than an automatic one, you don't require authorization to use the tool. This is explicitly stated at Wikipedia:Bot policy#Assisted editing guidelines. Josh Parris 00:16, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. --Una Smith (talk) 00:56, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation bot to message pages tagged with {{dn}}

I've got a bot that places a note on the talk page of an article with links to disambiguation pages, like so:

As links are fixed it removes them from the box, and once they're all fixed it removes the box from the talk page.

Should a bot place a note on the talk page of all pages with {{dn}} on them? Josh Parris 04:29, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Mashups

Fixing links to Cocoa, I found in Viva Piñata (TV series) this: Cecil Cocoadile: A dull-sounding [[Cocoa]][[crocodile|dile]]. What to do with it, and its friends? Unlink? --Una Smith (talk) 03:04, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Cocoadile? Unlink the lot. No article, no Google define:, many ghits... unlink. Not a term, or at best a neolism. Plus, the links are "surprise links" which is never good. Josh Parris 04:41, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Where is the description of our practice of making intentional links to a dab redirect, ie to Link (disambiguation) rather than Link? --Una Smith (talk) 14:54, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Found it: WP:INTDABLINK. --Una Smith (talk) 14:59, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Primary topic

For a long time now I have been mulling over some ideas about disambiguation pages, set index articles, disambiguation, and the idea of a "primary topic". Now I have made a start on expressing those ideas: Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Primary topic not necessarily an article. --Una Smith (talk) 17:53, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Any idea what's going on here with this? It says there are 504 links in the Daily Disambig and 512 when you check realtime, but when you look for said links, none are really showing up to work on. Ulric1313 (talk) 18:15, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

It looks like the article Revolver (album) was briefly moved to Revolver (The Beatles album) and then moved back again. Although I don't see that the (album) page was ever redirected to Revolver (disambiguation), the number of incoming article-space links for Revolver (album) is...512. I'm still not sure why they would show up as links to the dab page, but it's got to be more than a coincidence.--ShelfSkewed Talk 19:35, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Follow up: Found your missing links, there in the page log: The (album) article had to be deleted to reverse the move, so there was an intervening edit, presumably redirecting it to the dab page. So all those links to (album) will show up as links to the dab page until the main server catches up.--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
The link counts that are the basis for the Daily Disambig are generated on the Toolserver at 08:30 UTC every day. In this case, the move and re-move of Revolver (album) took place many hours before that, but it's possible that the Toolserver was suffering from replication lag at the time. It should be back to normal tomorrow. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:26, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

DAB Challenge leaderboard broken

DAB Challenge leaderboard has not updated in days.  Randall Bart   Talk  20:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Have you contacted Jason about this? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
I've let him know, since it isn't just the leaderboard that is having issues. The list of articles isn't updating either. Apparently the scripts might be broken. Ulric1313 (talk) 06:04, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
Toolserver, where these things live, is suffering the effects of an upgrade. Josh Parris 08:19, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
I've put in a JIRA request to have someone at the Toolserver (River) look at the problem - the SQL procedures everything is based upon are missing. I've hope it'll be recovered. --JaGatalk 01:17, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Well, the Toolserver people have all but ignored my pleas for help. A couple of tables crucial to the contest have been inexplicably deleted, and without them I'd say the January contest has been ruined. I'm terribly sorry about all this, but it looks like we'll just have to wait until a new set of monthly articles are generated for the February contest. --JaGatalk 09:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I got the list down to five. Can anybody help finish it off? I'm not sure "sublimation" is being used correctly in some of the remaining articles, but not familiar enough with the topics to make a correction and didn't want to just update the link.
This is my first attempt at fixing one of these.
CraXyXarC (talk) 06:20, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

WildBot now running

WildBot has made well over 3000 edits since being started on the 18th. This graph shows every day, many editors new to the disambiguation process are learning how to repair dab links. Thanks to the support from this group, this group's workload should be slightly reduced, and as WildBot's scope increases, the effect will climb. Josh Parris 20:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

You deserve a lot of thanks for creating the bot. I think we'll make a lot of headway as the ambiguous links from new pages are reduced. Plus, hopefully it will encourage more editors to be cognizant of creating link are unambiguous. --JamesAM (talk) 23:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation as linked from {{disambig}}

There's a discussion at Help talk:Disambiguation as to the contents of the link from the bottom of every dab page. The participants invite broader discussion. Josh Parris 20:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Replication Lag Issues

Anyone have an idea on why the replication lag is running up to 12 hours right now?

The lag is throwing things out of whack.

Ulric1313 (talk) 06:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

DAB Challenge leaderboard

What happened? All of a sudden a lot of the fixes aren't being listed. Did the Toolserver lose them or what? Ulric1313 (talk) 06:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

It looks like it's traveling backward in time - getting rid of recent fixes and keeping the earliest ones. --JamesAM (talk) 15:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
I checked the database, and the data is still there (unlike last month's fiasco). For some reason the join isn't picking everything up any more. I'll investigate. --JaGatalk 20:51, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
OK, I've got it updating every two hours for now. A query that used to be super-fast is now super-slow after the Toolserver changes. I've retooled it as a quick fix, and will try to figure out how to rewrite it to get back to the hourly updates we had before. Good news is, nothing has been lost. (Or at least, I don't think so. Could anyone let me know if they think data is missing?) --JaGatalk 09:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I could be wrong, but the numbers don't seem to have gone up for a while (today anyway) even though the links to number fixed next to people's names have the most recent ones fixed. --BelovedFreak 19:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Right you are, on both counts. Thanks much for bringing this to my attention. The tallies are indeed updating (so the links next to people's names are accurate) but the script that updates the leaderboard in Wikipedia is failing its logon! When it rains it pours. I've updated the leaderboard manually, and asked around whether anyone else is having this problem. --JaGatalk 22:29, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Is the login failure caused by the newly-enforced requirement for a user-agent header? It's caused some bots to fail and has been discussed at WP:VPT and on wikitech-l. — Richardguk (talk) 23:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Bless you, Richardguk. That was the problem. I've got login working again, and have retooled the query to be efficient enough to go back to hourly updates. I've also added a line stating replag and the time of the last update, so that should be helpful. Let's hope they leave Toolserver alone for a while! --JaGatalk 10:18, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I've been working thru 160-odd pages that link(ed) to Bass (musical term) which is a redirect to the disambig page Bass. Are these included in the competition? Tayste (edits) 19:07, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Links via redirect are included in the competition, but only for articles in the monthly list, which doesn't include Bass this month (unless I'm overlooking it). The redirect to Bass was probably done in February, thus missing my lists, which are based on the state of disambigs on the last day of the previous month. --JaGatalk 20:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Arena Football League

Before anyone tries to fix links to Arena Football League, please see this discussion proposing to merge the two linked articles into a single one that would take the dab page's title (and comment if you wish). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

February results

Sorry about this month's results - I'll be fixing it about 12 hours from now, when I'm back from work. Or someone else could do it, just get the last update from User:JaGa/Short leaderboard - but I've got to catch a train! --JaGatalk 07:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I figured out a way around the firewall to get at the data and fix it, so everything should be OK now. --JaGatalk 09:37, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Musical dabs

It's likely that the musical dabs (or at least most of them) on this month's list will be reverted back to the primary topic. There's a discussion at the Musicals WikiProject about it. If this happens, any fixes to these dabs will not be recorded by the contest. So you may want to wait before fixing, for instance, Brigadoon. --JaGatalk 07:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Golfer

Golfer seems like a silly disambig, but I'm not sure whether to change it or assume there will be an Amateur golfer article some day. Should it just redirect to golf? Thoughts? --JaGatalk 12:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I fixed it up. I think it makes sense to distinguish between professional & recreational golfers—Tiger Woods is a [[professional golfer|golfer]]; Bill Murray is a [[golf]]er—but perhaps the dab page should be moved to Golfer (disambiguation) and Golfer redirected to Golf or Professional golfer, depending on what the incoming links show. As for Amateur golfer, I was thinking that, pending the creation of a separate article, it should be redirected to Professional golfer, which discusses the distinction between the two. What do you think?--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:41, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Because professional golfer seems to be about the distintction between professionals and amateurs (as noted above), I think the best approach would be to retool it slightly (like retitled it something like "Amateurism and professionalism in golf" and re-direct golfer, professional golfer, and amateur golfer to it. Or in the alternative, I think it would be fine to redirect golfer to "golf." I think if amateurism or professionalism is so important, someone would specifically seek that in their search term. DABs are supposed to be facilitators, not extra barriers before people reach content pages. --JamesAM (talk) 15:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

If anyone is interested in trying to power through some of these, we have about 25,000 disambiguation links on disambiguation pages, most of which are intentional links that need to be redirected through their "foo (disambiguation)" counterparts so they no longer show up as requiring repair. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:56, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

DAB Challenge updates

Hi all, there's been a non-backwards-compatible change to how Media Wiki API logins work, which means my script is not able to update the leaderboard, even though the data is being updated properly on the Toolserver (for instance, look at Woohookitty's status; the leaderboard has him at 2000, but you can see from the status page it's really much more!)

A user has posted a fix in the Toolserver mailing list, so I hope to fix this tonight when I get home. Then we can see where this intriguing R'n'B / Woohookitty battle stands. Could this be Woohookitty's first non-first place finish in 2010? (I doubt it! :D) --JaGatalk 11:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The standings here seem to be up to date. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:46, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
True that. But I've got it fixed now, anyways. --JaGatalk 21:27, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Intentional link to a disambiguation page

In Equilibrium chemistry the link to free energy is intentional as the term relates to both of two kinds of free energy, Helmholtz free energy and Gibbs free energy . The alternative, separate links to each topic would be cumbersome. I have removed the disambiguation tag and wait to see if it reappears. Petergans (talk) 16:44, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Rather than linking to the dab page, why not pipe-link to the umbrella article Thermodynamic free energy, which discusses, and links to, both Helmholtz and Gibbs free energy?--ShelfSkewed Talk 17:03, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
I see nothing wrong with that. --JaGatalk 20:51, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for this suggestion. I did not realise that the Thermodynamic free energy page existed! Petergans (talk) 11:50, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

In Equilibrium chemistry the link to stability constant is also intentional. In this case the "umbrella article" equilibrium constant (which I created) does not link in an obvious way to the acid dissociation constant and stability constants of complexes. The three articles each serve different purposes. Your suggestions will be welcome. Petergans (talk) 12:06, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with linking to the disambiguation page if that's the best solution. Just do it by pipe-linking through the redirect stability constant (disambiguation) so that other editors will know that you are doing it intentionally rather than accidentally.--ShelfSkewed Talk 14:04, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Cardboard

This should not be a disambig page. It merely directs readers to one of three ways in which paper can be thick and stiff. This should be a short article covering the common points of those uses of paper. bd2412 T 14:49, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Free kick

Free kick cannot be disambiguated as it stands. If the article is about Aussie Rules or Rugby Union or American, that can be fixed, but when it's soccer (and now they nearly all are) there's no single page, I am called upon to direct it to either Direct free kick or Indirect free kick, but there's not enough context to determine which.  Randall Bart   Talk  14:21, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Polish towns and roads

We now have articles on thousands of places in Poland, some quite small. I don't advocate a minimum size of notability for an article, but with Poland this produces a problem. When you name a village in Poland you give it a name unique within the county, but it's not necessarily unique within the voivodeship, much less Poland as a whole. There are therefore some quite large dab pages, such as the two I recently looked at: Dąbrówka, and Stanisławów.

Fixing these is not really difficult, but tedious. For Stanisławów the key was reading enough of all of the articles to determine that WWII and earlier references are all to the city in Ukraine. There were just a couple modern references, where I had to find which county or which voivodeship was otherwise referenced in the article.

When I got to Dąbrówka, there was only one article which needed fixing. It took me two hours. B^) Actually there were about 20 different things I changed in that article. Some took just a few seconds, but some were tricky. Familiarizing myself with the voivodeships of Southern Poland was part of it. (Silesia is not adjacent to Lower Silesia.) In checking the article, I found three links that were wrong, two of which I red linked.

I should go back and fix the road article about Stanisławów, and that's my point. When I was unemployed, I did barnstar numbers of dabs. Now I come by from time to time to help out the old project. I still prefer to find easy ones, and do big numbers, but there are other dabs to be fixed. In many cases, we find articles which have many dab links such as these Polish roads. There's no reason to wait for each town to individually makes its way into DPL (some of them it will be decades). It's more efficient to go through the article and fix all these dabs. It's a road, after all. Each town is going to be between the towns on either side.

Maybe there should be a queue of articles with lots of dabs.  Randall Bart   Talk  15:16, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

script to generate list of disambiguation pages

I would like to establish a parallel project on another Wikipedia. Can someone direct me to a script for generating disambiguation pages? --Redaktor (talk) 18:51, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

It lives on the Toolserver. Do you have an account? Which wiki are we talking about? --JaGatalk 08:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
I do not have an account on the Toolserver (I think). I would like to set up a list of dab pages with links on Yiddish Wikipedia. --Redaktor (talk) 12:31, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
It looks like someone with an account on Toolserver has now taken this in hand. --Redaktor (talk) 23:25, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Alma Mater Society

There are some links I can't seem to resolve. I suspect it's part of a template or something, but I fixed the ones there. Help? –Schmloof (talk · contribs) 01:05, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, they've all fixed themselves, or someone's fixed them. There's still one left, though. Can anyone shed any light on how to resolve this? –Schmloof (talk · contribs) 10:33, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
The trick in these cases is to "edit" the article that contains the phantom link, then save it without actually editing anything. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:43, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Got it, thanks! –Schmloof (talk · contribs) 10:53, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Script change - intentional disambig links

As part of the movement to differentiate between intentional and unintentional dab links, I've made a change to the Toolserver scripts. From June 21 forward, the scripts will consider a link to a (disambiguation) or (number) page or redirect as intentional, and not count it when compiling the daily lists.

As an example, consider Collision (disambiguation). If you look at its what links here, you see there are several intentional links, such as Collision and Impact, and a whole bunch of links from the Collision (telecommunications) redirect. In the past, all of these links would have been counted. Now, the direct links (Collision, Impact, etc.) are not counted, but the indirect links via Collision (telecommunications) are still counted, resulting in a total count of 47 links.

What does this mean for this project? A couple of things. One, slightly better monthly lists in the contest (goodbye, unfixable Nowa Wieś and John Smith). Two, you have another way to fix an article. If you find a link that is intentional (usually a hatnote), if you change that link to point to a (disambiguation)-titled page - even if the page is a redirect - that will be considered a "fix". --JaGatalk 22:59, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and per Russ' request, I'm generating a new daily report called named disambig pages with links, that tracks all the links that are now excluded from our counts. --JaGatalk 08:15, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
First off, great to hear. Secondly, I ran across another example, but want to make sure I understand correctly before I do anything to 'fix' the links so they don\t get counted. The pafe in question is Nowy Dwór which currently does not have a (disabiguation) page created for it. If I were to create said page, redirect it to Nowy Dwór, then update all the hatnotes, Nowy Dwór would no longer be part of the page counts, is that correct? Ulric1313 (talk) 19:03, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
Yes, exactly. I did the same thing for Nowa Wieś. --JaGatalk 21:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Bull/proposed article

Bull, currently a disambig page, is a regular magnet for links. You can guess what they most frequently intend to reference. I have begun putting together a draft at Bull/proposed article with the intention of moving the disambig page to Bull (disambiguation) and erecting an article in its place that would be comparable to what Stallion is for male horses. Any help would be appreciated, as it would solve a longstanding disambig linking problem. bd2412 T 00:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the proposed article is ready to be moved to mainspace. Opinions welcome. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:34, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
I expanded one section a bit, but really, this article is beyond ready to go "live". Nice work! --JaGatalk 23:22, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I agree that it is ready for the mainspace. I was thinking of letting it sit for another 24 hours, in case someone was planning on cobbling together a brilliant exposition on why the male of cattle is not the primary topic, but realistically that's not going to happen. Therefore, I'm going to be bold and move them now. bd2412 T 00:18, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Pipe the list through redirects?

I'd like to propose that when this list is generated in the future, the links be piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect; if any of these redirects are missing, they can be automatically generated at the same time as the creation of the list. bd2412 T 22:37, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Why? The (disambiguation) redirects are useful for distinguishing links in the article namespace, but links in the Wikipedia namespace are not really an issue, because they can already be easily ignored by disambiguators. --ShelfSkewed Talk 22:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
First, it's one way of insuring that we have the redirects. Second, there are occasional instances of bad redirects in project space (in draft articles, for example) that should, ideally, be fixed. I see no reason why anything should ever link to a disambig page without going through a an intentional redirect. bd2412 T 23:09, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Bio articles - Reed (plant) et al

Should Reed (plant) really be a disambig? Especially if you consider this version, before it was pared down to be more dab-like. I've been thinking about biology articles like this - like Cypress, for instance, where you have an article for the generic term instead of a disambig. I could see Cedar going the same way. Thoughts? --JaGatalk 10:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I boldly de-dabbed it. We'll see if it sticks. --JaGatalk 22:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
I did that with Grass years ago - it was contentious for a while, and then it stuck. bd2412 T 01:28, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Royal College of Surgeons

I just noticed that Royal College of Surgeons is on this month's list. Discussion of whether this should be a disambig page at all is underway at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Royal College of Surgeons. bd2412 T 17:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Lists of acronyms and initialisms

The various lists of acronyms and initialisms (from List of acronyms and initialisms: B through List of acronyms and initialisms: Z, "A" having already been fixed) collectively account for over 2,400 of our current disambig links, virtually all of which are intentional. Can we have a bot run through these and automatically redirect all of the naked intentional disambig links through "foo (disambiguation)" redirects? bd2412 T 17:59, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

  • I started the process with "A", but stopped when I realized there's hope to get those XYZ (disambiguation) redirects created by RussBot. (I'll admit it, I cheered out loud when I saw the bot request. It's a lot of hassle making those things!) If we don't get a bot to fix the initialism articles, I'll pick it up again once RussBot has had its big run. It's pretty easy if you use Dab solver. --JaGatalk 21:36, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
    • I haven't tried that one, but I sure will now. Between these lists and the intentional links coming in from hatnotes and from disambig pages cross-referencing one another, we could potentially solve tens of thousands virtually overnight. Of course, that would just highlight the real number of flat out bad links requiring resolution. bd2412 T 21:42, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Seems they're all done now. Very, very nice. bd2412 T 19:16, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Many of the links to Highland are from text in infoboxes for places in Highland (council area) in Scotland. Text in the infobox just below the map reads "Helmsdale [or whichever place the article is about] within the Highland council area." Unfortunately, Highland links the dab page not the council area page. Unfortunately, I don't see anywhere in the editing page to correct this. I suspect in may be in some sort of template. For any of your guys more knowledgeable than me, this looks like a good opportunity to knock a bunch of links off one of the highest pages in one fell swoop. --JamesAM (talk) 02:03, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Raised, along with more minor fixes, at Template talk:Infobox UK place/local#Disambiguation and redirect fixes. (Most of the other changes that I have simultaneously requested relate to page move redirects which would not usually matter but are worth updating in a template.) — Richardguk (talk) 13:32, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
Fixed. But it may take a while for WhatLinksHere to update. — Richardguk (talk) 02:15, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Symbian

Symbian should not be a disambig page. All of the meanings are variations on the theme of the Symbian OS platform. bd2412 T 00:02, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Tackle (American football)

This should not be a disambig page. It merely links to articles on the different kinds of tackle positions, and it should therefore probably just be a general article on those positions. Several hundred incoming links. bd2412 T 19:15, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I asked the mover to go ahead and make an article (he seems to be an article factory, and knowledgeable about the tackle position to boot) and he's agreed to do it eventually. --JaGatalk 20:25, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Great - thanks! bd2412 T 21:09, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I merged the articles. Below is commentary copied from the September 2010 to do list. 69.3.72.9 (talk) 15:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

  1. Tackle (American football): 366 links - discussion underway to make this no longer a disambig bd2412 T 21:03, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Nicely done. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:16, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Bomb shelter

Bomb shelter should not be a disambig. It does not link to other pages with the same name, it just lays out different kinds of bomb shelters. bd2412 T 02:05, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

12-pounder gun and 6-pounder gun

These seem more like indices than disambig pages to me, and are well nigh unfixable without invoking a real expert with access to some quaint records. bd2412 T 03:37, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Those have always seemed well-nigh impossible to "fix", and they fit WP:SETINDEX. --JaGatalk 08:42, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Done. bd2412 T 03:13, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Human rights in Iran

WP:TWODABS, distinguished only by time period. One is fairly stubby, so they could probably be merged together and avoid the dab altogether. bd2412 T 13:08, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but the big article is already 110 kB. A merge would probably not be approved. Perhaps a merge combined with a better WP:Subarticle? I would beware, though - these articles live in the land of strong POV - there be dragons. --JaGatalk 08:51, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps the one covering the more recent period should be considered the primary, then, and hatnoted to the other one. That would match the intent of virtually all incoming links. bd2412 T 18:21, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
It turns out most links are template driven, which is probably best solved by making the template an intentional disambig link. bd2412 T 03:13, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

"Animal name" disambiguation pages

Consider the following ratios of disambiguation page views to article page views in August 2010:

The above is sorted by ratio. At the top of the list are some problem cases where perhaps the article should be moved to another name and the disambiguation page moved into its place, because the ratio is far above average. Stag is a redirect to Deer; clearly, many readers who click through to Stag (disambiguation) are not looking for information about deer. Compare King and King (disambiguation) with Queen. Worker redirects to Laborer and Cow redirects to Cattle; both redirects could as well be disambiguation pages. At the bottom of the list are cases where relatively few readers see the disambiguation page. In general this is desirable, but here too are some problem cases. Boar redirects to Wild boar and until just now Wild boar has lacked a hatnote to Boar (disambiguation); thus, there was no apparent path from Boar to Boar (disambiguation). 69.3.72.9 (talk) 08:26, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, so what do you propose? To me, status quo looks good for everything except Stag. (Although I don't support the idea of making decisions based solely on page views.) --JaGatalk 08:58, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I think Stag (disambiguation) needs better organization (human behavior, animal topics?) and should then move to Stag; King needs a rewrite and perhaps to be renamed King (monarch) or something like that; Worker (disambiguation) should move to Worker; Cow (disambiguation) should move to Cow (many readers may be looking for Dairy cow or Heifer or even List of animal names); Boar (disambiguation) should move to Boar. Not deciding on the basis of page views, but using the page views to screen for pages that have navigation problems. 69.3.72.9 (talk) 09:07, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, but I oppose this whole-heartedly per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It someone types in Cow and gets a disambig, we've hampered the navigation for a huge percentage of users. IMO, the only thing worth consideration in this list is Stag. --JaGatalk 09:16, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree with JaGa in opposing such a reconfiguration. bd2412 T 16:16, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Cow

Hm. Cow is the big deal here? Well, Cow redirects to Cattle and Cattle is looking an awful lot like a disambiguation page. Especially the section Cattle#Other terminology. 69.3.72.9 (talk) 18:00, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Not at all. Nothing in the "other terminology" section suggests anything other than names for variations of the domesticated bovine. It would look like a disambig page if it listed, for example, an album named Cattle, or a band, or a TV series episode, or a person named Joe Cattle, or a town named Cattle. bd2412 T 19:55, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, the whole section Cattle#Terminology is like that, and it is not encyclopedic. It is a laundry list of nearly dictionary definitions of this, that, and the other thing. The list quality is what makes it like a disambiguation page, and bordering on content more suited to Wiktionary. All those terms could be (and should be) made encyclopedic by putting them in context. An encyclopedia should explain freemartins in the context of reproduction and stirks in the context of life cycle, etc. 69.3.72.9 (talk) 03:52, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
No, the list quality is what makes it unlike a disambiguation page. Wikipedia has tens of thousands of lists that have nothing to do with disambiguation, like a list of subtypes for a given type. bd2412 T 22:21, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Stag

Looking at incoming links and the huge numbers of redirects involved in Stag, I now think the real problem lies in the article Deer. The article covers the entire family Cervidae but "stag" refers to only a small part of the family. Also, Stag (disambiguation) should not link to Stag so long as Stag remains a redirect to Deer; I explain why on Talk:Stag (disambiguation). 69.3.72.9 (talk) 03:52, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

It's under 900,000!

For the first time ever, the Daily Disambig shows our total DPL count at under 900,000. Amazing work! bd2412 T 03:14, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, we're flying now that we have the WP:INTDABLINK policy. I wonder if it'll be under 800,000 by Christmas? --JaGatalk 18:37, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Ardnamurchan Point

I've almost finished "Highland", but I'm having trouble with Ardnamurchan Point. On the right, there's a map of Scotland with a caption that reads "Ardnamurchan Point shown within Highland". The caption doesn't seem to be in the page markup and I can't figure out how to get at it. Can someone help? It should be disambiguated to Highland (council area). --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 19:54, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. The |shire_county/state= of {{Infobox UK feature}} was not working correctly, but as the map description was of Scotland not Highland, I deleted the parameter instead of trying to hack a broken template. — Richardguk (talk) 22:07, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Sacred cow

Well, in the course of trying to improve redirects around Cow (discussed earlier in this talk page), I went on a bender making disambiguation pages and articles. Would someone like to fix the under 50 incoming links to Sacred cow? 69.3.72.9 (talk) 04:51, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

There are maybe 25 incoming links now. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 23:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Itinerant vs Nomad

A user has recently "merged" Itinerant into Nomad, in which he's taken all the content out of Itinerant and turned it into a two-link dab, one to Nomad and another to an article that doesn't use the word "itinerant". Now, I was first thinking of making this a redirect to Nomad per WP:TWODABS, but really, is Itinerant the same as Nomad? I'm not sure I agree with this merge. --JaGatalk 17:22, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I went back more than a year and even then Itinerant was mostly a disambiguation page with a few trappings of an article. I have no problem with the page Itinerant being a disambiguation page. I am wondering though if all the content moved to Nomad belongs there. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 23:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

List of regions of Scotland

WP:TWODABS. We should pick one article to be the primary and hatnote to the other. bd2412 T 03:35, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Definitely Scottish Parliament constituencies and regions; the other is historic (although very recent history). --JaGatalk 08:53, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I just went through all those links today, and 100% of them without exception were referring to the "historic" (from a decade ago) regional governments. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:11, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Since they are done, it should be no problem going forward, right? ;-) bd2412 T 19:33, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
The page itself is/was quite odd. In fact, neither of the pages that were linked from the dab (before you redirected it) could accurately be described as a "list of regions," although at least one of them did contain a list of regions as a section of the article. I'd have suggested re-targeting Regions of Scotland and some of the other titles that redirected there, and then nominating the List of regions of Scotland title for deletion. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:12, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Should we just create an actual list of regions? bd2412 T 20:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Chlamydia

(Horrible pun coming - wait for it). Chlamydia should not be a disambig page; primarily this page lists different strains of the Chlamydia bacteria. Why didn't someone catch this sooner? bd2412 T 01:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

It probably should remain a disambiguation page, if only to help editors figure out which "chlamydia" is intended. I have sorted the entries. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 23:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
If we make it a page on the bacteria generally, it would still contain all the information presently on the disambig page. bd2412 T 02:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Most of the links I disambiguated for this page when to Chlamydia, that is, the disease resulting from the bacteria's presence in a human host. I think it would be better to keep it as a disambig page, because people may be interested in the disease, the organism, or the various strains. Another alternative would be to merge content from the bacteria article and the infection article together with links to the strains. The next best alternative would be to the make the Chlamydia page about the infection with links to the bacteria. --JamesAM (talk) 20:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Funny One

there was a dab on Word sense disambiguation. Someone should be ashamed. The Interior (talk) 02:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Composite issue

A few links to composite refer to fictional "composite beings", created when the personalities of two or more other fictional characters are merged together into a new character (this is different from a composite character, which is a fictional character created with attributes of several real people). A good example would be the Star Trek Voyager episode where a transporter accident caused Tuvok and Neelix to be merged into a single person, Tuvix. Is there an appropriate article on this topic, or does one need to be written (and what would it be called)? bd2412 T 03:47, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Wild dog

I propose making this an article on the general idea of the wild dog, and moving other meanings to a "foo (disambiguation)" page. bd2412 T 14:15, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

This really needs to be asked at the relevant projects. In general, "wild X" and "feral X" are different, and should not be confused. Disambiguation pages are important. Are you having trouble fixing incoming links to Wild dog? 69.3.72.249 (talk) 23:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Consider articles like Taenia (tapeworm), for which the link appears to be intended to refer to wild (never domesticated) dogs of all types. Perhaps make this an article on the truly wild ones, have a separate hatnoted article on the feral dogs, and a "foo (disambiguation)" page to cover the rest. bd2412 T 02:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
On further review, there are some degrees of nuance. Some "wild" dogs include instances of domestication (like the dingo). What would you call a feral descendent of a domesticated dingo? bd2412 T 20:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Sodium citrate

This page just lists three kinds of sodium citrate. I don't think it should be a disambig. bd2412 T 00:39, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

It claims that the third is the most common. Perhaps a redirect to trisodium citrate and hatnotes for the rest? –Schmloof (talk · contribs) 07:54, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
I de-disambiguated the page. Sodium citrate is merely a parent category of chemicals, with the three types being children of the parent. bd2412 T 15:10, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Coming up on 50%

We are close to fixing 50% of all dabs on the list for the month, and with nearly a week left to go. Let's aim to close that gap! bd2412 T 20:32, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Now at 50.5% done! Great job! bd2412 T 17:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Fatal Fury

Does anyone agree that this should not be a disambig page? bd2412 T 20:41, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, all of the links are related to the same franchise. But how better to organize them? --JaGatalk 16:50, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
It's a single fictional universe, like that of Star Trek. It should be treated much the same, with a single article disclosing the characteristics of that in-game universe, and laying out the media that occur within it. bd2412 T 22:50, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Red sandstone

TWODABS situation. Redirect to one with a hatnote to the other? If so, to which should the redirect point? bd2412 T 00:25, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, I dunno. Really, it's sandstone, New Red Sandstone, and Old Red Sandstone. And I don't see any way to say Old trumps New or vice versa; they seem equally important. I'd say we're stuck with it. --JaGatalk 16:56, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Tekken

Per the Fatal Fury discussion above, the primary topic is the generic fictional universe of Tekken, which should be addressed in a single broader article, with a "Foo (disambiguation)" page for the other fairly obscure meanings. bd2412 T 20:34, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages with views

I have noticed a lot of WP:RM proposals concerning disambiguation pages, where the disambiguation page gets relatively more page views than normal. Some of them are mentioned here: Wikipedia talk:Requested moves#Precedent? Would it be helpful to have a project Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with views, similar to Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links? 69.3.72.249 (talk) 04:37, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Time to expand the monthly list?

I'd like to float the idea of possibly expanding the monthly list from the top 500 pages to 1000 pages. The last expansion was from 250 pages to 500 pages was in November 2009. On October 31, 2009, the top 250 pages had 28,318 links and the top 500 pages had 52,592 links. As of today, the top 500 pages have 31,361 links and the top 1000 pages have 57,609 links. So the situation is fast approaching what we had with that expansion. Obviously, editors can always work on pages that aren't on the monthly list, but the contest seems to be a significant incentive. One counterargument would be that expanding the list could cause editors to ignore troublesome pages on the top of the list. However, we're doing okay on that front right now. The DPL-100 has gotten fairly low as have pages with 90 links, 80 links, etc. Also, I suppose a list of 1000 pages might be unwieldy to look at. Thoughts? --JamesAM (talk) 15:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

It is a fairly lengthy list as it is. How about stepping up to 750? bd2412 T 16:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
I think it's long enough now. We are lucky to get through 50% of the list by the end of the month. I'm not sure a longer list would mean more links getting fixed. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:17, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
Tough one. When we were getting to 75%+, people were definitely running out of "fixable" disambigs towards the end of the month. 50% is not as much of a problem. On the other hand, I, for one, am guilty of only looking at the monthly list for disambigs to de-link, so an expanded list would be welcome, and probably lead to more links being fixed. But 1000 would be terribly unwieldy. Maybe expand to a smaller number, or revisit this in a few months? --JaGatalk 17:36, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

This may be far off topic, but I'd like to see a list of the oldest persisting disambig links. I think the contest would be more exciting if there were more variations than just addressing the most-linked pages. The current setup also makes it so that some very old disambig links, coming from disambig pages with smaller groups of links, will never be addressed here. bd2412 T 18:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Oldest persisting dabs, I'm not sure how/if I could do that. But I have been thinking about expansion. Like you say, there are some dabs that will never be addressed with the current approach; a multi-pronged attack is necessary. I was thinking of adding a "bonus list" of one-link dabs to the contest; did you know over 20,000 disambig pages only have one incoming link? (Here's a report I created to list them, just for my own amusement - the dab is in the second column.) But I don't want to detract from the monthly list; it's going quite well these days, and I'm hesitant to do something that would take away from that. --JaGatalk 15:07, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Dab in Template

hey everyone, was working on Talas and found a few links that must be inside the Turkey geography template. You can find it at the bottom of Kayseri. In the markup, it appears to be correct (Talas, Turkey|Talas) but as displayed, it links to the disam page. Anyone know whats the story here? The Interior(Talk) 06:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I just learned this recently from User:PC78, having just come across the same problem, (see PC78's talk page for our discussion of Claudine (disambiguation)); apparently it just takes a while for the "What links here" page to update and register the changes. The changing of Talas to Talas, Turkey, just took place on October 9th, so it could take a while longer. Hope that helps, -France3470 (talk) 10:20, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
If you want to force an update, just make a WP:Null edit on that page, thereby refreshing the cache. –Schmloof (talk · contribs) 16:58, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
If you look at the cfd pending queue, you will see the count for one template that was updated on October 6. The job queue is taking 30 days or more in some cases to update everything. Maybe it is time to bug the developers again. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
Null edits got rid of 20 of the 23 incoming links to that page. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:46, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks folks, will remember the Null Edit trick for next time. The Interior(Talk) 18:17, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

List of given names

I was wondering why the total number of dab links has been dropping slowly of late. Newly-created List of given names links to about 1,500 disambigs. Now, I'm tempted to just WP:INTDABLINK the whole lot, but there are several that will have XXX (name) articles. What do you guys think? (Another question - should this article even exist?) --JaGatalk 13:40, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there some way to configure bot logic to do that job, i.e., have a bot go through and first change [[Foo]] to [[Foo (name)|Foo]] or [[Foo (given name)|Foo]] where the latter exists, and then to go through and change whatever dab links remain to [[Foo (disambiguation)|Foo]]? Cheers! bd2412 T 15:09, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Neo-Renaissance

I saw Neo-Renaissance has been converted into a dab - to accommodate an article created October 11. Shouldn't this be moved to Neo-Renaissance (disambiguation) per WP:TWODABS? (I ask here because I see some DPL people have been involved with the page, and didn't move it, so maybe I'm missing something.) --JaGatalk 10:31, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

<<Shrug>> OK, I'm moving it. --JaGatalk 10:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Tata Group (disambiguation)

The page Tata Group (disambiguation) is not really a disambiguation page; it is a list or index of articles about a single set of related topics. Not sure, however, how best to rename it. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:02, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the list of family members complicates things. Index of Tata Group-related articles? Or remove People and call it List of Tata Group organizations or similar? --JaGatalk 13:24, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
The list of family members is not an ambiguous expression of the phrase "Tata Group", but merely of the name "Tata". Either way they should be removed (or mention of key family members should be moved to the lede to explain what exactly it is that makes companies in the group part of the group). bd2412 T 00:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

LGBT rights in Western Sahara

This popped up as a fairly heavily loaded new page on today's Daily Disambig. Seriously? This is a topic for disambiguation? bd2412 T 22:58, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd say no, especially since there is no LGBT rights in Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic article. Needs to redirect to LGBT rights in Morocco. --JaGatalk 11:34, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. Done. bd2412 T 16:10, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Penrith

Penrith is a problem. It was a dab page, but the dab page has been moved to Penrith (disambiguation), and Penrith redirected to Penrith, Cumbria. Unfortunately, this was done without fixing the incoming links to Penrith, so now there are several incorret incoming links, and dabsolver won't spot them. Anyone fancy taking it on? DuncanHill (talk) 01:00, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Not sure that there is a primary topic so the dab page was moved back. I should add that a good number of the links are for the NSW place. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I too am unsure about there being a primay topic, and had pointed out to the editor who moved it the problem with the incoming links. Ill have a bash at it with dabsolver now. DuncanHill (talk) 01:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Now being discussed at Talk:Penrith, Cumbria#Requested move. DuncanHill (talk) 22:43, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

British House of Commons

British House of Commons has been made into a dab page, introducing dablinks to several thousand articles and many categories. I've suggested to the admin who did it that she might like to spend the next few weeks fixing them, but I thought it might be worth asking for any thoughts or comments here - should it be a dab page or returned to the redirect that it was before? DuncanHill (talk) 09:45, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in this case is obviously the current House of Commons. There was no discussion before the title was redirected. However, you might have been a bit less sarcastic and assumed good faith in your message to the editor in question. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:06, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
I tried to be less sarcastic, but it proved impossible. I did not assume bad faith, and the message I left could not be construed to suggest that I did. If she had been a newbie I'd have reverted, and left a gentle explanation. She's an admin, highly experienced, and ought to know better. DuncanHill (talk) 13:38, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
Well, I've been guilty of excessive sarcasm myself sometimes, so I understand completely. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:28, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
I've restored the redirect. I'll put a note on her talk page. --JaGatalk 16:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 17:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Monthly progress

I don't know how many people have noticed it, but The Daily Disambig includes a count of how many links to the month's top 500 dab pages have been fixed since the first day. I thought it would be interesting to compile the results for the last day of each month to see how we've been doing:

Month Percentage fixed
November 2010 50.1%
October 2010 64.4%
September 2010 55.0%
August 2010 57.4%
July 2010 43.4%
June 2010 48.3%
May 2010 55.4%
April 2010 42.6%
March 2010 41.2%
February 2010 46.6%
January 2010 36.7%

I suspect these numbers correlate closely with the number of links fixed by Woohookitty each month, but I haven't confirmed this.  :-)

Anyway, the trend is generally towards fixing a higher percentage of the available links, which is great, but we're going to have to redouble our efforts to beat the October record. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:38, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

That would be a tall order. October was the epic R'n'B vs Woohookitty battle as I recall. --JaGatalk 17:05, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

New Brunswick/Nova Scotia election templates

Has anyone come across pages such as 12th New Brunswick general election? It's a disambig with a navbox ({{gesb}}) that links other disambigs, piling up the dablinks. Now, per WP:MOSDAB, that template shouldn't be there, but it looks like someone put a lot of work into it so I'm loath just to yank it. What are your thoughts? --JaGatalk 05:11, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I did see them, and didn't understand them. The whole idea behind these series of several hundred disambig pages is that there are two ways of numbering the provincial elections in these two jurisdictions; one from the first election under colonial rule, and another counting from the first election after Confederation. My question about all this is whether either or both of these numbering schemes has any basis in reliable sources, or whether one (or both) is something that an enthusiastic editor just made up for use in Wikipedia? There don't seem to be any internal wikilinks that refer to any of these elections by a sequence number, except for links generated by the template you noted. I suggest asking the editor who created all these whether there is any usage of these sequence numbers outside Wikipedia. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:21, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
More immediately, I think the solution is to adjust the templates so that the links redirect through the "foo (disambiguation)" page connected each disambig page. That will mark them as intentional links, taking them out of our lists of pages requiring repair. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:08, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
We even have the {{D'}} template for doing that.--Kotniski (talk) 15:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
I started changing it over to use {{D'}}, but ran into a problem. I put the D' template in place for the → link in the navbox. Articles such as 8th New Brunswick general election work fine, but check out 35th New Brunswick general election. Problem is, 39th New Brunswick general election is not a disambig, so can't have a (disambiguation) redirect, and I end up with a redlink. --JaGatalk 07:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Rice cake and High priest

Both of these are again on the list, so I am moving the discussions down to promote a resolution. Neither of these should be a disambig page at all.

  • High priest lists links to articles on the office as applied to various denominations, and equivalents in various languages; many do not contain the words "high priest".
  • Rice cake only lists different kinds of foods made from compacted rice, most of which are not even cakes; only one entry contains the phrase "rice cake".

These will continue coming up so long as these non-disambig terms are allowed to occupy disambig space, so it would be nice if someone would handle this. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

  • Well, let's start with Rice cake. Should it be a list article? List of rice cakes, perhaps? Or we could put in a lede and let it be an article, although I'm not sure what you can say about them besides "a cake made with rice". --JaGatalk 06:06, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
    • I think an article could be made to work. Think about what you would like to know about rice cakes from an encyclopedic standpoint. In what cultures are they prevalent and why? Where were rice cakes first made, and how did this formulation change over time and spread from its point of origin? Are rice cakes mentioned in historically significant contexts? Are there cultural traditions in which they play a role? The current list would then just be incorporated into that article. Also, pictures of different kinds of rice cakes would help. bd2412 T 18:04, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I'll work on it a bit more today. Now, how about High priest? Same treatment, I think. bd2412 T 17:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Adding a TODO message on talk page for dab links in the article ?

Hi everyone,

On French wiki, we've started adding messages on talk pages of articles in the form of a TODO message to list the links to dab pages that still need to be fixed (see fr:Modèle:Avertissement Homonymie, and the following diffs: 1, 2).

In WikiCleaner, I've added the possibility to automatically add the message when fixing some dab links.

If you're interested, you need to create a similar template here and add some configuration options to WikiCleaner at User:NicoV/WikiCleanerConfiguration (see example at fr:User:NicoV/WikiCleanerConfiguration. Parameters to add are : general_todo_templates (list of TODO templates), general_todo_subpage (subpage name used to add TODO messages), dab_warning_template (template used for the message), dab_warning_comment (comment used when modifying the talk page), dab_warning_after_templates (if you want to add the message after some templates when they are already used in the talk page).

--NicoV (talk) 09:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Ptarmigan

I'd like to suggest changing Ptarmigan from a disambiguation page into a redirect to the genus Lagopus. Sometimes there's good reason for common names used for animals or other organism to lead to a disambiguation. One such case is when a common name is used for a hodgepodge of species from different taxonomic categories. Another is when the common name is used to refer to some, but not all, of the species in a genus. A third is when the term can refer to other things besides animals, like eland. But when a common name is essentially synonymous with a certain taxonomic category, it makes sense that the common name lead to that category rather than a dab. For instance, mouse is the article about the genus Mus. We don't make mouse a disambiguation page and expect users to pick out which species each use of the word "mouse" refers to. The disambiguation page for ptarmigan has three - the three extant species of the genus Lagopus. So it seems use of the word Ptarmigan means Lagopus without specifying (or necessarily knowing) exactly which species. Thoughts? --JamesAM (talk) 01:20, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Alas, it's a well loved bird, or birds, and many things with Wikipedia articles have been named for it. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see anything on this page that says that intentional/legit links to a basename dab page (e.g., Mercury) should be changed to link to the corresponding disambiguation redirect (e.g., Mercury (disambiguation)). Is that the standard practice (so all direct links to the basename dab page can be eliminated), and, if so, where is this clearly stated/explained? Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:35, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:INTDABLINK.--ShelfSkewed Talk 21:54, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

DAB Challenge expansion

Based on discussions about the DAB Challenge list, I've introduced a "bonus list". This is another source of points in the Monthly DAB Challenge. Instead of adding more top-linked dabs (that stays unchanged with the top 500), this list holds the least-linked dabs. For now, the list consists of all one-link dabs (over 22,000!) as of 0:00 GMT, December 1.

I've also created a useful (if GUI-challenged) page to display the links that can be fixed for bonus points, which includes links to Dispenser's fantastic "Dab solver" for each article or template.

In coming months, if the number of one-link disambigs decreases considerably, I can increase the size of the list (by including two-link dabs, three-link, etc, etc), but I have to be careful, or overhead will bog down processing time. My goal is to gradually increase the bonus list until it meets the top-linked list and all disambig pages can be in the contest. (I imagine a "Golden Spike" moment.) It'll be a long time before that could happen, but this is the first step.

Oh, and the hourly updates don't begin until 0:00 GMT December 2, so it won't look quite right today, but any fixes done today will be counted. BTW the list hasn't been picked over much at all so there are a lot of really easy fixes for the taking. Enjoy! --JaGatalk 06:53, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Kudos on the Bonus list, will make things easier later in the month when the main list gets a bit creamed out. The Interior(Talk) 06:11, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Would it be possible to cross reference the bonus list with Articles with the most disambiguation links, to get a list of pages with the largest numbers of these one-time disambig links? bd2412 T 23:35, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Yep. --JaGatalk 07:09, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Redwood

I propose redirecting this title to Sequoioideae, the subfamily of trees which covers the three species that are primarily known as "Redwoods". I am fairly confident that these trees, collectively, comprise the primary meaning of the word. bd2412 T 14:11, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Weightlifting

I don't think this should be a disambig page. The clear primary meaning captures the first four meanings on the page, and the only other meaning on the page is a relatively obscure album. I propose making this a general article on the various reasons why people lift weights (for competition, appearance, and health), and hatnote the album. bd2412 T 02:41, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Avifauna

Avifauna is just a fancy name for the bird life of a region. The term should redirect to Bird. The other proffered meaning is the equivalent fancy name for bird books, and can be accommodated in the "see also" section of that article. bd2412 T 02:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Update: done disambiguating this one. As I suspected, every link but one was properly disambiguated to Bird. bd2412 T 17:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Hearing no objection, I've made this change. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Skullcap

I think the primary use of this persistently linked term is, generically, an article of clothing with variations among different cultures. I propose to make this title an article on that topic, and move all other meanings to Skullcap (disambiguation). Cheers! bd2412 T 15:24, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Civil parish

Civil parish, with its 6000+ incoming links, is up for discussion at RfD. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 January 7#Civil_parish. --JaGatalk 18:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

FWIW I've just suggested a couple of (my) preferred options. They don't include pointing it to Civil parish (disambiguation) (which I tried to make a little more informative while I was there). ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 21:51, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

We should have this tool.(its from the spanish wiki).

--Neo139 (talk) 21:39, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

We do. Take a look at User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js. Just remember that you'll probably have to add the "importScript"s to your vector.js, not monobook.js.ospalh (talk) 13:26, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Germanic mythology

As Germanic mythology remains high on the list, I renew my proposal that it should be an article, and not a disambig at all. bd2412 T 19:35, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The more I look at this, the more I agree. This isn't disambiguation. It's listing mythologies that can be called "Germanic" in their origin. That doesn't mean someone wanting to read about Norse mythology is going to type in Germanic mythology! This should be an article that gives a short blurb about every mythology that can call itself "Germanic". (Germanic folklore looks similar BTW). --JaGatalk 22:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
This revision may have some useful content to start with. --JaGatalk 00:24, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I've noted my intent to de-disambiguate on the talk page there. I'll give it a day or two for any objections to be raised, and then I'll go ahead with the fix. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Done. Goodbye problem page. bd2412 T 04:55, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Ubuntu

Ubuntu was a dab page, the dab page has been moved to Ubuntu (disambiguation) and the computer-thingy to the plain name. Has been raised at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Ubuntu, debate also at Talk:Ubuntu (operating system)#Link away from disambiguation. Would be good to have comments from experienced dabbers. DuncanHill (talk) 10:30, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Move reverted. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. The original move had hidden previous discussions in talk page archives, at least now they can be readily found. DuncanHill (talk) 12:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Help with Dab discussion

Hey folks. I am involved with a discussion with a another editor over a link to a disambiguation page. Here is a diff of the disputed edit and a link to our discussion over it. Would appreciate if someone more well-versed in Dab policy could comment. Thanks, The Interior(Talk) 22:33, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

German culture and Germanic mythology

Two more which arguably should not be disambig pages. The first should redirect to Culture of Germany with a possible hatnote to the referenced 'wider culture of German-speaking nations'. The second should be an article. bd2412 T 04:37, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Seeing no objection, done. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Mars symbol and Venus symbol

I doubt that either of these should be a disambig. bd2412 T 21:03, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, I've de-disambiguated both. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:35, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Happy Zero Day!!!

Congratulations are in order to everyone today. For the first time, there are no disambiguation pages in Wikipedia with 100 or more links. When R'n'B started The Daily Disambig, there were 1,117 disambigs with over 100 links; we've finally whittled that number to zero. This is a huge accomplishment and a great day for the project. Cheers, --JaGatalk 16:15, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

How does one properly exploit such an occasion? Nick Number (talk) 20:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Beer! (crack) Oh jeez, it's only 12:30. The Interior(Talk) 20:38, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

New template

I've created a new template modeled after {{incoming links}}, but instead of being for disambig pages with lots of incoming links, it's for articles with excessive dablinks. I've already created it - {{dablinks}} - but haven't used it yet, pending this discussion.

The template comes with its own FAQ (mostly lifted from RussBot's FAQ), a link to Dab solver, and includes the article in Category:Pages with excessive dablinks.

Along with the question of whether people support this new template, I'd like to get thoughts on what is an excessive number of dablinks. This report gives you an idea of how things stand; here's a summary:

Number of dablinks Articles
100+ 12
50+ 69
40+ 107
30+ 199
25+ 300
20+ 483
15+ 910
10+ 2476
1+ 527136

I would maintain the list manually; I've created this report to show articles that qualify for {{dablinks}} but are not yet tagged, and this one to show articles that should have the {{dablinks}} template removed (because the article's number of dablinks has dropped below the threshold). Currently, the threshold is 25 dablinks, but I plucked that out of the air so I would have lots of test data. --JaGatalk 21:31, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

That's a very good idea. I'd be inclined to make the threshold 10. That strikes me as excessive. Nick Number (talk) 21:56, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. Ten is indeed excessive, but I suggest we start with a higher number, at least to get the template established. There's always strong opposition to article maintenance templates, and a higher number would be less vulnerable to challenge. But I won't oppose if people here think it's an acceptable number. --JaGatalk 00:20, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I think we should start at 25. Does this list parse out intentional disambig links piped through the "foo (disambiguation)" redirect? bd2412 T 01:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes. All of the reports I've mentioned come from the script that generates the daily reports, so this is based on the exact same data and methodology. --JaGatalk 01:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Then, wow, those are actually some pretty surprising numbers. We should add cleanup of such pages to the list of things that count for the monthly contest. bd2412 T 14:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I've been considering that, but I've just launched the bonus list, so I'm going to wait before any more expansion. --JaGatalk 18:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm going to plow ahead with this, using 25 links as my threshold. --JaGatalk 18:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with this action. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
I've changed the style of the template a little from the lessons learned at User:WildBot/msg. — Dispenser 05:37, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Good stuff. Thanks! --JaGatalk 07:09, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Knight Rider

Knight Rider should not be a disambiguation page. Like Tekken, the overwhelming primary topic is to at least one of a series of shows and other media taking place in a single fictional universe, centered on an intelligent, talking vehicle. This title should be used for an article on the various installments in the series, with a hatnote to a disambig page for the other far less notable terms. bd2412 T 19:43, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Hey-oh. Should we unlink wikilinks inside the Persondata info fields in articles? They don't seem to be navigational. Anyone know about these? The Interior(Talk) 22:33, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Fixing those last few...

The last remaining link for Greg Jones is at Crowley, Louisiana, it's autolinked in the infobox. Anyone have any ideas how to unlink it? Some places use &nbsp; but that doesn't seem to work. Tassedethe (talk) 18:17, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)? I usually find it the best place to get help with templates. (Does anyone else get as annoyed as annoyed as I do by autolinks?) DuncanHill (talk) 18:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
I used "mayor" instead of "leader" in the infobox and that worked. Why? I have no idea. But hey, it's all good. --JaGatalk 01:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Great, thanks a lot. And thanks for the Village pump suggestion, I never considered that. Tassedethe (talk) 01:04, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Virta

Virta is clearly just a surname page, but it has a disambig tag, appended by a note that says: {{disambig|surname}}<!-- please keep {{disambig}} else interwiki bots malfunction -->. It appears to be one of a number of pages created in this vein. How should we handle this? bd2412 T 17:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Take {{disambig}} out and leave just {{surname}}. If the interwiki bots need to be debugged because of the correct application of the templates, that's a separate thing. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

A fine mess

Zero Day seems like a long time ago! Those who watch WP:TDD will have noticed a huge spike in big disambiguation pages - well over 20 100-linkers now. This is due to one of our create-a-dab-but-don't-fix-a-single-bloody-link repeat offenders, who has decided to make many, many disambiguation pages of the [[X people]] vs. [[X language]] variety using AWB.

At first, I settled down to fixing the links, since these are easy ones, but I came to realize that several (but not all) of them fall in the WP:TWODABS category, and have been redirecting articles here and there.

So if you come across one of these, before starting to fix the links, check first to see if one of the entries is primary.

Cheers, --JaGatalk 06:19, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Guess what. He did it again. More stuff to look over. Ulric1313 (talk) 21:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Terribly irresponsible editor. I wish there was more we could do, but no. He knows what he's doing and seems to be fine with it. Well, next month's contest should be interesting. There will be thousands on top of thousands of very easy dablinks ready to go. --JaGatalk 06:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
He knows he's creating disruption and he's fine with it, and we can't do a thing about it? Oh joy. Plenty of editors have been blocked for less. DuncanHill (talk) 14:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't know who we're discussing, but is he causing a disruption or creating work? Doing only the first task in a process that will require more tasks is not necessarily disruptive. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
It is when you've been repeatedly asked not to. User_talk:Kwamikagami#Disambiguation_fest. DuncanHill (talk) 14:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
If someone repeated asks me not to move malplaced disambiguation pages, my continuing to do so isn't disruptive. The question is, is the activity creating more work (it would be nice if the editor undertook some of the follow-up work, but isn't mandatory) or disrupting Wikipedia (and could eventually lead to a block)? -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
And that linked discussion points to the former: he's creating work. We can't block him for that. If we want to, it'll take some village pump discussion and a new policy under which to do so. I think that's unlikely at best, and possibly not a good idea in the first place. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
He's also been very sloppy about it. He's admitted to being ignorant about TWODABS and the role of "what links here" in determining primary topics, but hasn't bothered to consider those policies in his dab-creation. Also, he creates his dabs without any concern about what's already there; for instance he created an Achi disambig page, without bothering to see that Achi (disambiguation) already exists. Also, he'll create a disambig without regard to adding anything besides his language vs. people entries, even when there are obvious additions to be made, such as at Aragonese. He's been cranking out disambig pages like an automaton, and not only leaving us 10,000+ dablinks to fix, also has been perfectly negligent of any disambig administration outside his goal. That crosses the line from merely irresponsible to disruptive IMO, but I don't see that we can do anything but do his cleanup for him. --JaGatalk 17:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with JHJ on this one. The user in question is undoubtedly being discourteous and disrespectful in failing to fix the links that he is breaking by moving and usurping the titles that the links refer to, but for the most part the titles in question are indeed ambiguous and in many (not all) cases there is no obvious primary topic, so we can hardly say that he's deliberately disrupting Wikipedia by putting disambig pages at these titles. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You're right, of course. I've allowed my frustration with this editor to cloud my judgment. That why I haven't been working on the language vs. people stuff lately - that, and I'm interested to see what happens in next month's contest. The phrase "feeding frenzy" comes to mind. --JaGatalk 21:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

BBC Look North

I propose that BBC Look North should not be a disambig. The only three arguably ambiguous listings on the page are three different geographically diverse versions of a news broadcast originating with the same parent company. bd2412 T 14:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Lawlessness, Parent-in-law, Distal interphalangeal joint

These should not be disambig pages. I am thinking that we really need to set forth with greater clarity the sorts of lists that do not actually disambiguate, as opposed to simply identifying synonyms or different kinds of the same thing. bd2412 T 21:34, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Funny you should mention that. The other day I saw this comment by R'n'B at User talk:Aeusoes1#Disambiguation pages?: My understanding of the guidelines is that a disambiguation page is used when there are different topics that might be referred to by the same title. When there is a single topic that can be divided into subtopics, that is a list or summary article (depending on how the information is presented), not a disambiguation page. That's a really good explanation - but is it spelled out in the guidelines? And do these articles fall in that category? --JaGatalk 07:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
These articles are indeed nothing more than lists of (if you can even call them that) of subsets. Lawlessness contains a collection of things like chaos and anarchy. Parent-in-law only links to father-in-law and mother-in-law, both of which are very short stubs that I am going to merge. Distal interphalangeal joint also has only two links, one to this kind of joint in the hand, the other in the foot. bd2412 T 18:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
I went ahead and merged the stubs at Mother-in-law and Father-in-law into Parent-in-law. While doing that, I found that Spouse is in the same boat, and should be made into an article rather than a disambig. bd2412 T 19:55, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Should be just one in-law article for them all. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:41, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm satisfied with the fix to Parent-in-law. The other disambig pages mentioned rate more immediate attention, in my view. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:06, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Military personnel

Genus encompassing species. This should not be a disambiguation page, but should be a general article on the concept. bd2412 T 20:38, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I like the "genus encompassing species" concept. A bit more clarity in the "is it a dab" question. --JaGatalk 20:28, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Freedom of expression

I need a sanity check on the new dab page Freedom of expression. Shouldn't that just redirect to freedom of speech, or am I missing something? --JaGatalk 20:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you're exactly right. A dab page is supposed to list all the topics somewhat might have intended by the term. It's not supposed to list a bunch of interesting related topics. Thus, things like freedom of religion or freedom of expression don't call for a freedom of expression dab page. Freedom of expression is just freedom of speech clarified to note that it includes things like visual expressions. Freedom of expression should redirect to freedom of speech. But there should probably be a page at "Freedom of expression (disambiguation)" including, for instance, the works titled "freedom of expression". --JamesAM (talk) 22:43, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
I completely agree with this solution. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:20, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Freedom of expression (disambiguation) has a page history, so I put in a WP:RM request. --JaGatalk 06:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

January 29

No Daily Disambig update today? Wherefore art thou RussBot?--ShelfSkewed Talk 21:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

There was a Toolserver outage that killed the daily script. The unofficial afternoon update completed successfully, though, so if Russ is watching he can update TDD now. --JaGatalk 21:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
Ah. Thanks for the info.--ShelfSkewed Talk 21:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Double redirects vs piping through [foo (disambiguation)]

It seems like a good idea to pipe redirects through [..(disambiguation)] pages, but they keep getting "fixed" by bots, which makes checking harder. I would say that this is a fault in the bots in question, but what do others think? ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 16:00, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Intentional links to disambiguation pages should link to (disambiguation) titles, whether redirects or not. Intentional links to disambiguation pages through (disambiguation) redirects do not need to be piped to hide the (disambiguation) part (and IMO shouldn't be so piped). I'm not crystal clear on what the bots are doing. Sample diff? -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Ah, this, for example? Yes, the bot is right -- redirects to disambiguation pages go directly to the disambiguation pages. We avoid double redirects here as well, since they interfere with the reader getting to the navigational aid. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
That was one of the edits I was thinking of, yes. Seems fair enough to link directly (and it saves the bother of fixing them), though I'm not sure it makes much difference to the casual reader who would still end up in the same place. Thanks. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 12:18, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
The casual reader won't end up in the same place. In a double redirect, they'll end up looking at the "middle" page's link to the final page, "because Wikipedia's MediaWiki software will not follow the second redirect" (WP:Double redirects). -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:44, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
I never knew that! Thanks. But at least it means that bots+editors are doing a good job of keeping on top of them. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 13:04, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Efficiency and Effectiveness de-disambiguated

I have made Efficiency and Effectiveness into articles instead of disambiguation pages. Both are clearly overwhelmingly collections of variations of an overriding common concept, and therefore should be articles on that concept. If anyone has any objection to this move, then I throw my hands up in despair. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for New York villages within towns

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links/New York villages within towns. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:35, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Ruling needed on Cardboard

I have made a request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Ruling needed on Cardboard to convene the High Council of Disambiguators in order to make a final determination of this question of whether the persistently linked page cardboard has an unambiguous primary meaning. Please join the discussion there and help resolve this conundrum, as the participants discussing the matter at Talk:Cardboard are just not disambiguators. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:53, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

This appears to be resolved for now. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Jewish theology and Respiratory tract infection

Jewish theology and Respiratory tract infection should not be disambigs. The first should point to Jewish philosophy, with a hatnote to Kabbalah; the second should be a brief article on the common elements of respiratory tract infections, with links pointing out to the two types. bd2412 T 05:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed Jewish theology was a redirect until a week or so ago. I'll restore it (with hatnote). --JaGatalk 06:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't look to me like Otitis media is a type of respiratory tract infection as much as it's often associated with a URI. So I'm thinking the job here is to define the elements common to lower and upper infections, and give some details about each. --JaGatalk 23:50, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. I'll try to get to this in the next week or so. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Yves Saint Laurent is another one that I find problematic. Two dabs, the person and the brand. Let's pick a primary and be done with them. bd2412 T 05:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Never mind this one, it is fully disambiguated, and it really is not hard to distinguish references to the person from those to the brand. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:57, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Underground mining, yet another problematic twodabs page, the options being Underground mining (soft rock) and Underground mining (hard rock). bd2412 T 05:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I just converted Respiratory tract infection into an article. Hopefully it'll stick; it could probably use some more work. --JaGatalk 18:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a good start, and an excellent solution to the many heretofore insoluble ambiguous links referring to such an infection with no guidance is to which kind it was. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Aggressive tagging

I have begun a campaign of adding {{dn}} tags to a few thousand persistently knotty disambig links in the hopes that this will spur the people who maintain those articles to address them. I would encourage everyone else working on the project to not hesitate to tag all instances of such persistent links. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:11, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me, I'll try to do the same - is there a quicker way than inserting it manually? ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 18:07, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
I used AWB to make my run. I'd hesitate to have a bot do it. bd2412 T 19:55, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm usually on Linux, so AWB could be tricky, and I've come to like the DAB features of popups, so a 1-click manual method would suit me personally and fit in well. I'll ask at popups talk - maybe it would be a popular feature. Thanks. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 18:11, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
It seems to be having some effect. I tagged over a thousand pages, and by the next day over a dozen had been fixed. Now over a hundred have been. bd2412 T 18:59, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Kudu

Someone recently move Kudu to Kudu (Animal) and changed Kudu to a dab page. The rationale was simply that more than one thing with that name exists. The other things on the dab are an obscure Alaskan radio station with those call letters and a red link. Doesn't that seem like a move that ought to be reserve? The move didn't appear to take account of the notion of a primary topic. I don't think, for instance, the existence of various other things called Lion (including acronyms) should necessitate ignoring the primary topic. The radio station only has a few links. The station's article was created in December 2006. After a few edits on the first day, the page has only averaged about 1 edit per year (and the last one was back in 2009). That hardly seemes even remotely comparable to kudu, the animal. --JamesAM (talk) 03:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Yep, you're correct. Restored. -- JHunterJ (talk) 03:39, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

A goal: 775,000

Right now, our total disambig linkage is a little under 805,000. I'd like to propose we strive to knock that down to 775,000 for February, which will require a total of just over a thousand fixes a day, on average. Let's do it! bd2412 T 19:25, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to see if we can't generate some cross-listing dynamics, to get participants in other projects to put in a few extra edits per month toward disambiguation. Would it be possible to generate, for example, a list of unreferenced BLP articles with disambig links, so we can point those out to editors whose focus is fixing those BLP issues, so that they can also fix the disambig links while they're at it? bd2412 T 03:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Checked out the front page of Dab solver recently? Of course, it doesn't count toward the leaderboard and took 21 hours to generate. On a related note, how much time is spent picking out pages to disambiguate and waiting between pages? — Dispenser 07:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Hey, I'd wondered where Enkidu had gone off to. Nice page! --JaGatalk 07:33, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I'll try and make a beta release soon which will included edit verification as it kinda sucks having a save button that doesn't work.— Dispenser 00:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
The way it is set up now, it appears to line up a random page needing a repair, under the auspices of one of the listed projects. This is nice, but not every editor on a project will necessarily have the knowledge to fix disambig links on project pages, expecially if the link happens to be to something only tertiarily related to the project. If we were to generate a list of pages by project, noting what links on each pages needed fixing, it would be much easier for project members to pick out the ones they would be able to fix the fastest. bd2412 T 15:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
We could of course limit to disambiguation pages linking to pages under the project scope, but I'd quickly run out pages for demonstrations. And there are other ways of getting interesting pages to disambiguate: Dablinks can use categories, transclusion, a user's recent contribution, or their own watchlist (coming with next week's MW1.17 rollout); Using CatScan2 and {{dn}} or WildBot tagged pages.
Ideally, we'd have a system smart enough to give regular people problem that are productive, interesting, and fun to work through. Then to hook them in with an achievements/badges that rewards their continued effort. — Dispenser 00:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm not aiming to change the dabsolver, which I think is a great tool that I happen to use almost daily. The more tools we have to draw people into disambiguating and make it easy for them to coincide with their existing interests, the better. bd2412 T 01:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

We are really on track to make this happen! We have topped 50% of this months disambig list for the contest, and according to the latest Daily Disambig we are down to under 787,000 disambig links, down from over 804,000 at the beginning of the month. We are also down to 100,289 total pages containing disambig links, putting us in a position to drop that number below 100,000 for the first time since we've been keeping records! bd2412 T 21:56, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

  • As of the last update of JaGa's list about an hour ago, there are now only 99,973 disambiguation pages with links! Tomorrow's Daily Disambig should show us under 100K for the first time ever!! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Outstanding! We've had some setbacks on the path to 775,000 total links, but that is certainly an accomplishment. By the way, I have been thinking, can we tag every disambig link in GA and FA articles with a {{dn}}? I think those pages tend to be better attended, and would quickly be fixed by their usual overseers without needing to involve us career disambiguators. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Clerk

Clerk looks like another candidate for de-disambiguation. There is already an article Clerk (position) which covers the general concept and links to the specific kinds of clerks. None of the entries under the Television, film, and literature section would be referred to as just "Clerk", except for Clerk (1989 film) which is a red link. Nick Number (talk) 15:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixed up. Clerk (disambiguation) is now the dab page. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. Nick Number (talk) 16:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Reading to Plymouth Line

Reading to Plymouth Line does not seem ambiguous to me. It merely provides a number of railroad lines that happen to connect Reading and Plymouth. Since this appears to be an historic reference to some of these lines, we should not have a disambig page, but should instead have an article covering the periods wherein true "Reading to Plymouth" lines existed, and what become of them. bd2412 T 16:30, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

It was one article, and has just been split into three. No great mystery there. I've commented on the dab issue in the talk page. DuncanHill (talk) 18:30, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Direct-controlled municipality

Just de-disambiguated Direct-controlled municipality - this is exactly the kind of thing that should not be a disambiguation page. bd2412 T 21:46, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Audit Bureau of Circulations

Looking at newly-created disambiguation page Audit Bureau of Circulations, I'm a little confused - are the UK, India, and North America organizations independent, or are they all branches of a single organization? I couldn't really work it out from the websites. --JaGatalk 18:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

  • From the materials of the International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations, it appears that these are loosely confederated independent organizations. Since they all serve the same function, we should have a single article on the general topic rather than a disambig page. The current setup is rather like making Soft drink a disambiguation page with nothing but links to various soft drink makers. bd2412 T 19:08, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Different founding dates, different organizations. Even if they are loosely confederated, the articles on the members shouldn't be combined. If it is possible to make an article about the confederated bureaux, it could be done, but links to "Audit Bureau of Circulations" should probably continue to be disambiguated to the singular bureau intended. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
    • I did not intend to suggest that we should merge these, any more than that we should merge all the articles on the soft drink makers. I think we should have an article at Audit Bureau of Circulations that describes what such a thing is, how it works, what the general history of the practice is, and how they interrelate. Such an article would, of course, include links to those specific entities for which we have articles. Note that some of the existing links refer to ABCs in countries for which we have no corresponding article on the local entity. bd2412 T 20:30, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not entirely clear on the criteria for de-disambiguating (ambiguating?). Would National Trust fall into this same sort of category, where there should be an article on the general concept which contains links to all the individual organizations' articles? What about Organic Act?
Also, unrelatedly, Indonesian Archipelago is listed as "no longer a disambig", but it appears someone reverted it. Nick Number (talk) 19:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The logical rule would be that if everything that is listed under the name "foo" could be described as "a type of foo", then we should have an article on "foo" rather than a mere disambiguation page. Here is one of many examples: Automated erotic stimulation device is a disambig page, with two links, both to devices that could be described under the more general heading of the title. If a coherent article could be written on what a National Trust or an Organic Act is, then an article is needed. Compare my recent de-disambiguation of Color code. bd2412 T 21:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Also, I have re-reverted Indonesian Archipelago, with a substantial explanation at Talk:Indonesian Archipelago. All of the "ambiguous" meanings formerly listed on the disambig page were references to the same geographic entity, and were therefore not actually ambiguous. bd2412 T 21:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
I've de-disambiguated National Trust, although the result remains a bit stubby. Why don't you take a shot at Organic Act? Cheers! bd2412 T 16:51, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I was out of town for a bit, and without easy Internet access. Thank you for taking care of Organic Act. Nick Number (talk) 14:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
It was my pleasure. Don't worry, there are plenty more where that came from! bd2412 T 18:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Alpine foothills

This doesn't seem like much of a dab to me. There are only really 2 (non-red) dablinks, and 1 of those is "see also". The lead wouldn't need much expansion to turn the page into a stub with links rather than a dab (I think). ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Also many of the links pointing to the dab are about the concept in general, and couldn't really be dabbed even if a few more pages were created. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 16:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. A prime candidate for de-disambiguation into a short article on the general concept, with links to specific instances. bd2412 T 18:13, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Particle

Please join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Particle, where a number of editors are seeking to foist what they perceive as a problem on us by turning this article back into a disambig page, despite the clear primary meaning for the term and the large number of perpetually unsolvable disambig links this change would generate. bd2412 T 22:10, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Bonus list leaderboard

FYI, I've added a long-overdue bonus list leaderboard (also known as the "JustAGal and the Also rans" list) to the dab challenge page. Cheers, --JaGatalk 19:58, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Dorsal

It seems to me that Dorsal should redirect to Dorsum (anatomy) with a hatnote for the portion of the brain referred to as dorsal. I've fixed some of the links in the past months, and basically every dab link seems properly to link to dorsum (anatomy). Thoughts? Any objections or problems with doing the redirect? --JamesAM (talk) 00:55, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Egyptian military ranks

Something seems to be broken with the DAB Challenge database. It says there are still 75 pages that link to Egyptian military ranks, and has been doing that for some time, when they really don't link to it. The problem may be that the link was in a template, which was fixed with the new links. Can it be fixed? Superk1a (talk) 00:03, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

This should not be a disambig page anyway. The phrase is not ambiguous, it is basically a category title listing articles that fall into that category. bd2412 T 14:38, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Swimmer

Swimmer is a perpetual link generator. I think we should just have an article on the concept of a person or animal who swims, recreationally, professionally, or by nature, which would accommodate virtually all incoming links (I fixed those links regularly when the term redirected to "swimming", and I can't remember the last time I saw a link relating to anything but a thing (usually a person) that swims. bd2412 T 14:35, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

TBA/TBD

I plan to end the constant influx of disambig links from these terms by writing an article on the history and character of their use as placeholder terms for as-yet-unknown variables, modeling the flow of the article on our short but successful effort at Shut up. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:06, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

  • This is what I have so far:
    To be announced and To be determined (often abbreviated as TBA and TBD, respectively) are placeholder terms used to indicate that although a particular event is anticipated to happen, a particular aspect of that event remains to be arranged. Other similar phrases sometimes used to convey the same meaning include To be ascertained, To be arranged, To be advised, and To be decided.

Cheers! bd2412 T 17:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Why is this not within the scope of WP:DICDEF? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
At the moment it is, but if we can provide some historical and comparative information, we might be able to put together an article. We have a fairly substantial collection of terms like these in Category:English idioms. The article would be at "To be announced", with tha other variations and initialisms pointing to it. bd2412 T 15:52, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Broad concepts are not "ambiguous"

Our new policy at Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Broad concepts are not "ambiguous" should help clear the cobwebs of a number of persistently linked non-ambiguous disambiguation pages. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I have to say I disagree pretty vehemently with that policy. And it doesn't look like there's any Talk page discussion on it there. If the discussion happened somewhere else, like at Particle, I don't think suffices. I agree about the intro where you discuss pages like History of France. That should go to an overview article. The fact that a nation's history can be divided into various temporal slices doesn't mean the term is ambiguous. But I think the reasoning for the sections with examples is wrong. In my experience fixing links to pages like National Trust or Supreme Court or Department of Defense, the text is intended to reference a specific national example not the general concept. When an article refers to a case going before the Supreme Court, the writer is trying to convey and the reader wants to find information on the specific institution (e.g. the Supreme Court of X nation). In most cases, they're not looking to know what a supreme court is. It's just frustrating their goals to make them wade through a generic Supreme Court rather than reaching what they want to go to. Furthermore, it's worse than the status quo before the links are fixed. When links going to a disambiguation page, we at least know there's a problem to be fixed. But when these generic articles are created, it sweeps under the rug the fact that the links are not going where they'll be significantly more useful to readers (and where I think they're really intended to go). Basically, I want to remove that whole policy section until we have a vigorous discussion on that page's Talk page (or this Talk page). But I'll wait a bit just to see if a flood of folks are unanimously disagreeing with me. And I don't think we should replace disambiguation pages of those type with those generic articles. It only helps our numbers; it doesn't solve the real problem of getting people to the information that helps them best. --JamesAM (talk) 01:37, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Genus and species. We went through several drafts, and although there were constructive suggestions to change the language, no one objected. I regularly fix errant links to Supreme Court, but it is a general concept appropriate to cover in an article, and so far as I know it has always been one. If we premised page names on the fear of errant links, we would have no primary topic doctrine at all, and even, for example, George Washington would be a disambig page, to guard against errant links to George Washington University. Although there are certainly situations where more specific links are intended, we also have pages like particle, which draw a substantial number of links addressing the general topic. bd2412 T 02:09, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Part of the reason you probably got no objections is because the process to gather opinions was fundamentally flawed. Talk page section titles ought to accurately depict what is being discussed in order to catch the attention of interested editors. "Genus and species" was not a fair way to title the discussion. It suggests it would be a discussion of genus and species rather than such a broad discussion. Frankly, I don't think genus/species is closely analogous at all. A link to mouse should be link to the mouse article because the term itself refers to a genus. Those links tend to identify situations where the source didn't get to the level of species identification (otherwise the source would have named the species). In previous Talk, I've expressed that view. Department of Defense, National Trust, etc. are a whole different ballgame. A major difference is that in nearly every case, the context make clear that the text is intended to refer to a specific Department of Defense and makes clear which DOD that is. And the choice of which article to use ("the" versus "a" or "an") makes it clear that the text is supposed to refer to a specific institution rather than a generic concept. My point about article use wasn't addressed in your response. The George Washington point is a strawman. If we want this discussion to remain civil that should be avoided. The President is clearly the primary topic, and a hatnote would suffice. The implication of your argument is that we should not draw distinctions because situations leading to dab pages versus those that merit primary topics with hatnotes to a separate dab page. Rather, the specifics should be analyzed to see whether a primary topic applies. I fundamentally disagree with your argument about "the fear of errant links". That's the whole point of our exercise here. Links should go to the topic that they're intended to go to. We're about conveying knowledge. Our fixes should serve the utilitarian purpose of getting people to the information they want to read and where the writer/editor wants to direct them. When a certain proportion of the links are errant, that's a sign that we need a dab page and we need to funnel those links into this project so that they will be fixed. The proportion of errant links is very important (based on utilitarian concerns, probably the most important factor) in the need for disambiguation. I don't understand why you'd marginalize the concern. In the "Genus and species" discussion, you wrote, "I want to be sure that once this is established as policy, enforcement is not stymied by editors pointing to the limited number of participants in the discussion. I'd like to at least give it a few more days, and maybe publicize it a bit more." I think that's the much better approach than the quick adoption as policy. Would you agree to withdrawal of the text for a renewed discussion with more time, more publicity, and a detailed point-by-point discussion. --JamesAM (talk) 14:34, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
JamesAM, to avoid split discussion, please raise these points on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:33, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Without realizing it's such a general question, we handled Public Service Commission as suggested, as a disambiguator leading to two articles, each dominated by a list of red and blue links. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:26, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
I see. Public Service Commission has two distinct meanings not susceptible to coverage in a single article. However, Civil service commission, which could in theory be presented as a disambiguation page, is instead an article on the general concept. bd2412 T 03:55, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, Civil Service Commission is a small illustration of the Supreme Court problem. Perhaps the question indicates a need to maintain a list of general articles that have a chronically high percentage of stray inlinks. Jim.henderson (talk) 11:25, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Bon Appétit

Regarding the page Bon Appétit, which appears in today's TDD as a new dab page with 175 incoming links: Before anyone goes to the effort of fixing those links, I wanted to let everyone know that I have initiated a move discussion at Talk:Bon Appétit (magazine) to have the magazine returned to the plain title as the primary topic. All comments are welcome.--ShelfSkewed Talk 05:48, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I reverted the recent move as contested. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:16, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Obviously I think that's the right move, so thank you. Cheers!--ShelfSkewed Talk 18:13, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

20/20 (US television show)

After a requested move 20/20 moved to 20/20 (US television show) without redirect, but a disambiguation comes from 20/20. There are still many incoming links that need to be moved, but not quite all are 20/20 (US television show). (I don't know how t add to the list!) Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Imam

So I was having a go at doing the newly created Imam page, but so many of the links are impossible to tell from context which type of imam is being referred to, it feels like a pointless task. It seems like a general article on the concept of an imam and the differences between the types should be written in its place. Thoughts? --Closedmouth (talk) 11:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

FA/GA dn tagging drive proposal

I believe that good articles and featured articles are likely to be watched by a lot of people who would be keen to correct errors pointed out (or tagged) in those articles. I propose that we have a bot go through the entire project and add a {{dn}} to every single disambig link in every GA/FA in Wikipedia. My guess is that the article maintainers will rush to fix all of them, and we regular disambiguators won't need to lift a finger. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:56, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I often find myself using [disambiguation needed] instead of unlinking spurious links for this very reason; I figure those who knows more about the topic will be motivated to fix it if they see several ugly [disambiguation needed] notes on the article (especially in lists!). Is that bad practice? Woodshed (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it's ever a bad practice to put a maintenance tag where maintenance is needed. Of course, there are some instances (like links to Mercury, generally) where the correct link is usually so obvious that it's easier to make the fix than add the tag. However, outside of such straightforward fixes, I really think all dab links should be tagged as quickly as possible. Cheers! bd2412 T 12:42, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Salyut

I submit that Salyut should not be a disambiguation page, as Salyut program (which Salyut redirected to up until March 20) encompasses the subject and already links to all of the related articles. Nick Number (talk) 17:57, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Great, thank you for taking care of this. Nick Number (talk) 19:03, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Template:Swimmingrecord

Can someone fix this template so that it is possible to enter a disambig parameter for city names? As it stands, it is a disambig link factory. bd2412 T 20:38, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

WPCleaner 1.00

Hi,

I have just releases WPCleaner 1.00. The last new feature enables speeding up page loading for analysis by preloading the full list of dab pages. To use this new feature:

  • Start by clicking on All disambiguation pages.
  • When the full list is loaded (it needs some time: 2mn for me for frwiki) answer Yes to the question about using this list for analysis.
  • Just use WPCleaner as usual.

It avoids getting the list of templates used in each link in a page. It reduces greatly the number of request to Wikipedia.

What do you think? Is it useful? --NicoV (talk) 19:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Style Question

When you come across a link that is originally something like [[Yorktown]], [[Texas]], should this be disambiguated to [[Yorktown, Texas|Yorktown]], [[Texas]] or just [[Yorktown, Texas]] . I've noticed that this kind of thing appears a lot in info boxes. --D•g Talk to me/What I've done 23:37, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that depends, can the page really be said to benefit from separate links to the city and the state? bd2412 T 02:19, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Personally, I would not link both, but this is not strictly speaking a disambiguation issue. See WP:OVERLINK for guidance from the Manual of Style (although there are editors who strongly disagree with taking that guidance too literally). older ≠ wiser 02:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Ok thanks. --D•g Talk to me/What I've done 02:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

To be announced

I have converted the perpetual dab-link magnets at TBA and TBD into redirects to a new article at To be announced. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:29, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Comfort

I have converted the disambig page into a stub on the physical and psychological concept. Any assistance with expansion would be deeply appreciated. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:10, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Mustard

I have proposed at Talk:Mustard that the primary meaning of Mustard is the condiment. No other comments have been made on the issue, and I am prepared to move the relevant pages accordingly, if there is no objection here. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:37, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't, my immediate thought at reading this come up in watchlist was "condiment or plant?" followed by "if condiment, which one?" DuncanHill (talk) 01:52, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Request withdrawn, upon further investigation. bd2412 T 02:08, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles

A discussion is ongoing regarding the treatment of disambiguation pages on the "Lists of mathematics articles" pages, many of which are disambiguation pages with links. Please indicate your preference in the straw poll at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Straw poll regarding lists of mathematics articles. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:48, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

  • Just a quick reminder, this poll is scheduled to close at 02 June at 06:30 (UTC), which is about ten hours from this post; if you would like to weigh in, now is the time to do so. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:20, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Note: This straw poll was closed with a consensus to move the lists of mathematics articles to project space. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:22, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Another milestone

Today, for the first time ever, we have under 100 disambiguation pages on Wikipedia with 50 or more incoming links. This is quite an accomplishment, considering that we had over 5,000 pages in this category when The Daily Disambig started back on June 1, 2009, and over 2,000 when the current counting methodology was adopted less than a year ago, on June 21, 2010. More recently, we had seemingly been stuck between 150 and 200 pages in this group (usually) since mid-February 2011, until the total started declining noticeably about ten days ago. Great work, everyone! Now, let's go for 50! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:09, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I misspoke; it isn't "the first time ever." :-) On August 23, 2002, there were only 14 disambiguation pages with this many incoming links. It's interesting to note, though, how many of the pages on that original list are still perennials on our lists today. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:22, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
Still, I think the perennials are well-monitored. Congratulations to us on achieving this feat, by the way, thanks in no small part to the tools assembled by users such as yourself and JaGa. bd2412 T 17:37, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Grave

I have proposed that Grave (burial) be moved to this page as the primary topic for this persistently linked disambig term. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:51, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Award for DAB Challenge Winners

The Guild of Copy Editors gives awards for its backlog elimination drives. I feel that Disambiguation Pages with Links ought to do the same. I have created a variant of the Disambiguator's Barnstar that I feel ought to be awarded to past and future DAB challenge winners. Here's my attempt - feel free to improve it.

The Super Disambiguator's Barnstar
The Super Disambiguator's Barnstar is awarded to the winners of the Disambiguation pages with links monthly challenge, who have gone above and beyond to remove ambiguous links. Your achievement will be recorded at the Hall of Fame.
This award is presented to Disambiguation pages with links, for successfully fixing number of links fixed links in the challenge of month year.


User:Quinxorin/Templates/Barnstars/Super Disambiguation Barnstar
Quinxorin (talk) 03:19, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Very cool. I always wanted to do something like this and never put it together. I wonder if we could get a bot to hand them out? --JaGatalk 06:50, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
I've changed the image - I don't think the old one looked different enough from the regular Disambiguator's Barnstar. Is there any more support for this?
I like it as well. Would it be possible to make tiny images people could put on their userpage, like on User:TonyTheTiger? --JaGatalk 21:25, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
It would be possible, but that's a project for a different day. Quinxorin (talk) 08:16, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Bambous

Bambous shouldn't be a dab, as it only contains two links, and one is red. I submit that per WP:TWODABS, Bambous, Mauritius is the primary topic and Bambous, Martinique should be linked in a hatnote. Nick Number (talk) 01:20, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

With much help from Rich Farmbrough, I've reorganized Category:Pages with excessive dablinks. For one thing, there are now by-month subcategories, finally making use of the {{dablinks}} date parameter. Also, I created a new category for all tagged articles at Category:All pages with excessive dablinks, for those like myself who like to see the whole list at once.

One interesting thing that came from the by-month categorization: most articles that qualified for excessive dablink tagging after the program started in January have been fixed (43 tagged for January; 5 tagged in the February-June range; 8 so far in July). Now, I know most tagged articles have been fixed by members of this project, but I'm hoping the low numbers for February-June are also due to an article being tagged while the original author was still working on it.

But hey, who knows. All I can say for certain is that this project is rolling along nicely. Cheers, --JaGatalk 08:36, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I would like to propose, as an experiment, that at the beginning of our August DPL contest, we have a bot tag all links to be addressed with a {{dn}}, on the theory that this will spur some attention to cleaning this up from editors other than our usual participants. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:50, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I see the response to this has been underwhelming. :) I suspect some editors might get upset about a bot tagging so many articles, but I'd be willing to support it as a one-time trial and see whether it works as intended. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:35, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't notice this thread until now. It could make things tougher for the WikiCleaner crowd - and Dab Solver sometimes misses the {{dn}} as well. What would you think about instead tagging the links that haven't yet been fixed at the end of the month? (Oh and I assume we're leaving the bonus list out of this...) --JaGatalk 21:12, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I had not thought about the bonus list. I agree that it should be left out of this proposal. To keep it clean, how about we limit it to carryover pages from one month to the next. A page that remains in the top 500 two months in a row is probably being neglected, possibly because it presents a difficult group of links requiring some expert attention. Therefore, I propose that at the beginning of August, we bot-tag all links to pages that were on the top 500 list for July and remain on the top 500 list for August. bd2412 T 03:55, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
As a big WikiCleaner user I'd oppose this, though I don't spend a lot of time doing the challenge so it wouldn't impact me immediately. But if other people find it useful... If this is being done as an experiment there should be some sort of control i.e. a random half of the pages tagged the other half left alone. It should be easy then to see what impact the tagging has, and whether it is worth the effort. Tassedethe (talk) 04:09, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
I think the control is inherent in the fact that few enough of the links were fixed in the previous month to take the page off the top 500 list. Of course, the primary motive for tagging these is to inspire people to fix them. The information gained from the "experimental" perspective is important, but secondary. bd2412 T 18:04, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Well the problem is that we don't know if it will inspire people; plus there could be negative effects e.g as mentioned annoying people with bot edits, or the failure of automated or semi-automated tools to enable fixing links. (I'd like to thank NicoV for his efforts to enable WikiCleaner to cope.) But what about popups? And Dabsolver? I just tried both on the links List of fictional sports teams and they get nowhere. This proposal could end up actually reducing the ability of people to fix links. Tassedethe (talk) 18:20, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Disambiguation links are errors that need to be fixed. I assume most editors don't have a setup that allows them to see which links are disambig links without clicking on them, but that editors who watch a particular article will tend to be both knowledgeable enough to find the correct solution and motivated enough to make the fix. This experiment would basically test that assumption. bd2412 T 12:54, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Just to give information on what we do on frwiki. We are almost not using templates like {{dn}} anymore. We add informations about links that need to be fixed in the talk page, rather than in the article itself (see fr:Modèle:Avertissement Homonymie and how it is used in talk pages, for example fr:Discussion:Guy de Maupassant, if you're interested). My experience on frwiki is that bot edits for only adding {{dn}} or Avertissement Homonymie is annoying other people (we were quickly getting complaints), but that adding them while trying to fix links is quite accepted (which is done by WikiCleaner automatically when a page is edited with it on frwiki for several months). Hope this helps. --NicoV (talk) 09:16, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

That is certainly an option. We could start by bot-adding a talk-page notice and seeing how successful those are at getting editors to fix the problem identified. bd2412 T 12:55, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
WildBot used to add such notices, so it would be worth finding out why it stopped (and whether it could start again). Also, there are thousands of pages with WildBot dab notices, now often incorrect - any new bot doing the same thing ought to go through these and update or remove them, as appropriate. --Zundark (talk) 13:48, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Can we get a bot to do that? bd2412 T 20:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Just a question about the problem with WikiCleaner: what is it exactly ? Is it only that when a {{dn}} is used, there's no Link to or Replace by command in the contextual menu ? If it's just that, I can probably add the options. --NicoV (talk) 15:21, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I think if its [[Some link]]{{dn}} then you can fix the link but the tag remains. If its {{dn|[[Some link]]}} then you can't fix it. (I haven't doublechecked that.) Tassedethe (talk) 15:31, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. For [[Some link]]{{dn}}, it's clearly not taken into account currently, I have to think about a way of doing it. For {{dn|Some link}}, I have to add the possibility to fix it, I hope it's not too much work. --NicoV (talk) 15:36, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
More work than expected because I have some refactoring to do before. I still have quite some work to do before managing correctly {{dn}}, but the refactoring helps adding other features : <!-- comments --> are now displayed in light gray. --NicoV (talk) 20:02, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
The last version of WPCleaner should work for {{dn|Some link}}. You have to configure WPCleaner to tell it the list of templates used for requesting help. The configuration is in User:NicoV/WikiCleanerConfiguration with the parameter general_help_1lt_templates (see example at fr:Utilisateur:NicoV/WikiCleanerConfiguration). --NicoV (talk) 09:17, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

As the August contest draws to a close, I would like to revise and reiterate this proposal. Specifically, I propose that for all pages that were on the August list, and that continue on to the September list, we should at least autotag the talk page (if not in the article itself, and maybe both) with a notice that the link in question requires repair. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:38, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd favor starting with the talk pages, then waiting a while to see how effective, or controversial, that approach is. Nick Number (talk) 18:13, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Aggregate, Aggregation, Aggregator

If someone wants, they could tackle Aggregate, Aggregation, Aggregator at the same time. I don't have the time right now to compare them (does an aggregator aggregate to produce an aggregation?). I also haven't figured out why or where hundreds of IP User talk pages link to aggregator. TimBentley (talk) 21:36, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

It was hidden behind the "subscribe" link in {{RSS-Atom feed notice}}. I took care of it. --JaGatalk 22:11, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
You want to put all the aggregates together? Isn't that kind of...meta? Nick Number (talk) 03:18, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
I completely agree, we should aggregate these pages. bd2412 T 19:06, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Fate primary topic discussion

I have proposed at Talk:Fate that the overwhelming primary topic of Fate is Destiny, and that Fate should redirect to Destiny, with all other senses being moved to Fate (disambiguation) with a hatnote at Destiny pointing to it. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:29, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Fascicle (book)

Fascicle (book), which currently has about 40 incoming links, redirects to the disambiguation page, Fascicle, which has one dicdef line addressing this meaning: A discrete section of a book issued or published separately. With this many links to the concept, it seems to me we should have an article, rather than a redirect, at that title. Does anyone want to take a first crack at putting something together? bd2412 T 00:47, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I have added the information to the article Serial (literature) (with a reference), changed the redirect to point to that article, and made the relevant changes to the dab page.--ShelfSkewed Talk 04:11, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
Good job - thanks! bd2412 T 20:31, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I've created a new report called Today's Dablink Report. It shows all dablinks created on the day of the most recent database scan. It also has the ability to filter the list so only "new" disambiguation pages (that is, newly created dabs or dabs that previously had no incoming links) are shown.

Those of use who follow The Daily Disambig closely know that things are going very, very well - with one small exception. While the total number of dablinks continues to plummet, the number of disambiguation pages with links has been holding steady (or at least it was until I started testing this tool). Before the advent of the bonus list, that number had actually been increasing, slowly but steadily.

So why hasn't the number of disambiguation pages with links been dropping as well as total dablinks, especially now that we have the bonus list? Watching The Daily Disambig, one sees that disambiguation pages join the list at about the same rate they leave - roughly 150 per day. Further, most of the disambigs joining the list have a single link, meaning they were probably created by an editor who didn't think to check the link they just created.

I created this report to track these new disambigs. For the last few days, I've been using the list to work out the bugs. Usually, I get a full view of the "new" disambigs (this way) and take a close look at all the one- and two-link dabs, and fix what I can. As expected, most of them are ridiculously easy, so it's an enjoyable pastime - and the number of dabs with links has been dropping quickly.

I've found other uses, though. For one, it gives you a quick overview of everything, which I've found useful to catch questionable/easily fixed changes, such as changes to redirects. Also, the "show everything" mode is a good way to keep an eye on repeat offenders, such as American, Orange, Georgia, etc., etc.

So anyways, I hope you like it; let me know if you have questions. Cheers, --JaGatalk 09:08, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

In a strange sense, then, the steady number of dab pages joining the list is a measure of our success: Dab pages that already have incoming links can't "join" the list--they're already on it. But as more pages have their incoming links cleaned out, those pages increase the number of dab pages available to join the list. Unintended consequences.--ShelfSkewed Talk 13:56, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
I propose automated bot notification of any editor who creates a dab link in an article, as in:
Dear User:Foo. When you made this edit, you created a link to a disambiguation page. Please correct that link so that it points to the appropriate article. Thank you.
Cheers! bd2412 T 20:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
I would like to see that, but I'm not sure the community would tolerate it. Many, many of our daily dablinks are created in good faith by editors who would fix them if they only knew the problem existed. But wouldn't it come off as hounding editors? --JaGatalk 21:30, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
I think people who are frequently reminded of a mistake will tend to stop making that mistake. bd2412 T 12:18, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it would be seen as "hounding" since they would only be getting one message per incident. I like the idea. LarryJeff (talk) 14:45, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, I think the idea definitely has potential. I've been working on newly created dablinks for about a week now, and have already received three "thank you" messages from editors happy I fixed something they'd overlooked. That's a shocking rate; I'm more accustomed to a "thank you for dabfixing" rate closer to 1 or less/year. That tells me there are a lot of dab-creating editors who would be happy to be notified of a way to improve their article. --JaGatalk 10:13, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Daily Disambig Table 1

Would it be possible/practical to expand the Daily Disambig Table 1 to the sub-50 counts? There don't seem to be many pages left with 50+ links. --Squids'n'Chips 21:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

  • Yes, it's possible. What would you suggest - a DPL-25 column? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:11, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
    • Ooh I was wishing for a DPL-25 column just the other day. What about a DPL-25 and a DPL-10? I think a lot of people would be surprised at how few dabs have at least 10 links. --JaGatalk 21:26, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
      • I'm in agreement with JaGa. It would be helpful to see 25 and 10. That may give us a better idea of our progress. There's probably 20k pages there. There's already about 40k at 3 and under. --Squids'n'Chips 21:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Would you object if I removed DPL-800 (and maybe DPL-400) at the same time? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:02, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
    • I looked at those before your post and was wondering the same thing. If this is to be a useful tool, then my feeling is that the columns should focus on the working down the backlog. So if we don't need the big columns any more, they can go. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:17, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
      • I hate to lose DPL-800 and DPL-400, but IMO the project would be better served by the new columns, so it seems a fair bargain. Would you be able to generate historical data for the new columns, or would we only get the data moving forward? --JaGatalk 08:40, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
        • Hmm, I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose I could generate the data retroactively. I'm not sure what that would do to the /Stats page; it may take me a week or so to get all this sorted out. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:03, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
This is pretty much done. There were a few formatting glitches today, but I hope that they should be all worked out for tomorrow's edition. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 01:08, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

701,850

Let's make a push to drop this below 700,000 by the end of the week. bd2412 T 18:48, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Effort to turn Militant atheism into a disambiguation page

There is an ongoing request for comment at Militant atheism at Talk:Militant_atheism#Should_the_article_be_split_or_made_into_a_disambiguation_page.3F, where one of the proposals is to turn the page into a disambiguate page. However, since the page only contains variations of a single topic, this would violate WP:DABCONCEPT. I believe this should be headed off. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:13, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Ever notice...

Have you ever looked at the history of some of these "List of subjects in Gray's Anatomy" articles? Someone blissfully created them in 2006, walked away, and it's been a headache for DPL ever since. I mean, heck, the list of editors in the history section is practically a Who's Who in Disambiguation.

No one else seems to be paying them any attention at all. We're the only people who have made any effort to work on these articles since their creation.

Honestly, it would be nice if people would admit that no one wants to maintain these monstrosities, and userfy/projectify them until some hero comes along. I wouldn't want to delete them, since they have potential, but in their current form they're pretty much worthless. --JaGatalk 10:06, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Why yes it is a list of dabblers. The lists are pretty much useless as they are. The links are seemingly arbitrary. I've been working on fixing the links in reverse alphabetical order because it seems kind of pointless to dab links when the rest of the list is a mess. It isn't hard to dab or fix links, just tedious to read through Gray's anatomy to find the correct Wikipedia entry. --Squids'n'Chips 17:54, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Don't even get me started on this. However, it's not really a topic for discussion here. Maybe WikiProject Anatomy would like to have these as project pages; they aren't really suitable as articles. These pages literally are an exact character-for-character copy of the index of Gray's; can you think of any other case in which we have copied the index of another reference book and incorporated into the encyclopedia? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:22, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
I started a discussion at WikiProject Anatomy. Maybe they'll be OK with projectifying the near-worthless lists. --JaGatalk 09:15, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, no response so far from the Anatomy WP. If this goes a week without any discussion I'm going to take that as consent and do the moves. --JaGatalk 18:04, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
OK, I'll probably do this tomorrow. I'd like to get opinions - should I only focus on the alphabetical articles, like List of subjects in Gray's Anatomy (S), or should I also move the subject articles, such as List of subjects in Gray's Anatomy: IV. Myology? --JaGatalk 16:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I see no substantive difference between them. Neither set is useful in article space as it stands. bd2412 T 23:17, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I moved the alphabetical articles, but I held off on the subject articles, since they're linked by many anatomy templates. --JaGatalk 07:47, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Linking to a template from article text

I don't recall seeing this done before, and it may be a dangerous precedent to set, but hear me out on this example I came across working on the China Seas dab page. At USS Vincennes (1826) there is a link to dab page. It's not clear from the context (and there's no citation) which of the 4 seas on the dab page is intended. In fact, from the context of the article, it could very well mean that more than one of them would be accurate in this case. So, since any or all of the "China Seas" could be appropriate, what I propose is linking to Template:China Seas instead of the dab page. It gives the interested reader the information that there is, in fact, more than one "China Sea" while at the same time keeping the article text concise rather than listing out multiple similarly named items. Or would an intentional dablink accomplish the same? Thoughts? LarryJeff (talk) 16:24, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd leave it tagged with {{citation needed}} -- though from North Pacific Exploring and Surveying Expedition it looks as though South China Sea is the mostly likely target. Linking to the template is no more help to a reader than a link to the disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 16:52, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up on the expedition article. I agree with you that linking to the template is not more helpful than linking to the dab page, I only considered it as a way to remove the article from the list of dab links. LarryJeff (talk) 17:28, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

The Daily Disambig style note

Regular readers of The Daily Disambig may be interested in a script I have developed to improve the formatting of the tables. To try it out, add the following two lines to the top of your common.js file -- 

importStylesheet("User:R'n'B/tdd.css");
importScript("User:R'n'B/tdd.js");

Then follow the instructions that appear when you save the page, to refresh your cache. If you don't like the results, you can undo the edit. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:48, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

In January I introduced the {{dablinks}} template to tag articles that have an excessive number of links to disambiguation pages. At that time, "excessive" was defined as 25 dablinks.

Number of dablinks January October
100+ 12 0
50+ 69 0
40+ 107 0
30+ 199 1
25+ 300 7
20+ 483 45
15+ 910 251
10+ 2476 1142
5+ - 9866
1+ 527136 490790

As you can see, the over-25 dablinks are well under control, so I would like to discuss the possibility of lowering the excessive threshold to 15 or even 10.

Personally, I could go either way. A threshold of 15 would give us 251 articles to tag, very similar to the 300 we tagged in January. On the other hand, 10 is excessive, and would only affect 1142 articles, which could be acceptable. But having a backlog of 1142 articles could make clearing the list feel overwhelming, so it might be better to just go with 15 for now and lower the threshold to 10 some time next year.

Also, I should point out, pending this discussion, I plan on proposing a bot to do the tagging/untagging, so I no longer have to do it manually. (I wrote the bot this weekend; we just need to decide on the threshold change, if any.)

So my question to you is, excessive dablinks threshold: stay at 25, reduce to 15, reduce to 10, or other? Thanks, --JaGatalk 19:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

(BTW, is anyone else surprised by the huge drop in 10+ articles? I'm not sure who's been working on this, but whomever it is, wow. --JaGatalk 19:40, 3 October 2011 (UTC))

I strongly support tagging from a lower number. How many would it be if you tagged everything with a dozen or more? A dozen disambig links is already a dozen too many. bd2412 T 20:02, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Tagging for 12+ dablinks would give us 606 articles. --JaGatalk 20:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Think that's too much? I suppose going with 15 will make it easier to track progress. We can always add more later. bd2412 T 04:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm tending towards 15 as well. The number of articles seems nice and manageable. --JaGatalk 06:38, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Ampersand dabs in the daily report

I noticed that a large number of new disambig pages in today's daily report contained ampersands (&) in the title. Fifty-seven in all. I checked a few and saw that the links had been in articles for months. Is this influx a product of tweaking the results of the report? Cheers! bd2412 T 13:06, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. I am working on the scripts that generate the report, in hopes of avoiding some of the delays and errors that have been plaguing it recently. (Incidentally, I think each of the "new" disambiguation pages with ampersands will have a corresponding "old" page that is shown as leaving the list.) There are some glitches in the process, and I expect there will be a few more in the next few days until I get everything working correctly. Please be patient. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:50, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. I will be patient! ;-) bd2412 T 16:21, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, since this morning's update ran without any problems, I am cautiously optimistic that the new script is now operational. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Bonus List inflation

I notice that the Bonus List has been expanded this month to include pages with 4 incoming links. It seems to me that this may be too much. Making the list bigger does not seem to result in any increase in the number of links fixed. I compiled the table below from the Daily Disambig reports for the last day of each month --

Month Main List Bonus List
  Start Finish Num fixed Pct fixed Start Finish Num fixed Pct fixed
Feb-11 32,304 10,131 22,173 68.6% 48,761 41,834 6,927 14.2%
Mar-11 27,327 14,172 13,155 48.1% 46,285 39,996 6,289 13.6%
Apr-11 29,663 12,307 17,356 58.5% 44,102 37,849 6,253 14.2%
May-11 25,969 15,056 10,913 42.0% 42,259 34,220 8,039 19.0%
Jun-11 26,872 13,494 13,378 49.8% 71,323 62,095 9,228 12.9%
Jul-11 26,622 12,664 13,958 52.4% 68,558 60,716 7,842 11.4%
Aug-11 24,703 14,093 10,610 43.0% 67,849 60,906 6,943 10.2%
Sep-11 26,813 12,182 14,631 54.6% 67,386 59,668 7,718 11.5%

Since the goal of the DAB Challenge is friendly encouragement, I think part of the strategy has to be to set goals that are high enough to be meaningful to the project, yet low enough to be realistically achievable. If we set the bar too high, fewer people will try to jump it. We've got the balance just about right on the main list. I'd actually like to see the Bonus List cutoff go back to 2, so that we could have a chance of finishing 20% to 25% of the list in a single month. That would give people a little more incentive to make that extra effort. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:22, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

  • What if we cut it back to one link? I'd like to see some solid progress in knocking those out. bd2412 T 22:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
    • The reason I inflate the bonus every now and then has to do with a big picture goal. Eventually, probably a few years from now, I would like to see every single dablink at the beginning of the month go into the monthly contest. Then, instead of having the top 500 with links, I would hope for something like "the top 500 dabs with links older than December 2011" or some such list focused on old dablinks that would get, say, double points for the fixing. Or something like that; it's far too early to make concrete plans, but that's the vision.
After all, if someone goes to a page and fixes six dabs, why should they only get credit for one dablink that happens to be in the contest? I like the idea of being able to fix any dab in any page, and probably get credit for it. Further, I've found that old dablinks not in the contest simply don't get worked on. But how could we ever reach, say, the 10-link dabs when we only move top-down at 500 most linked/month? We're bound to reach equilibrium at some point, and certain dabs will never make the top 500 list.
So, that's my rationale. But if people want to go back to 2 or even 1 link, I can implement it easily enough. --JaGatalk 22:49, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
How many one-link dabs are there now? bd2412 T 23:06, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
21621. --JaGatalk 11:45, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Here is my thinking on this. One of the numbers I most like to see going down is the total number of disambiguation pages with incoming links, because, to me that represents fewer issues for us to deal with overall. The easiest way to knock down that number is to run through large numbers of single-link disambigs. On the list as it is currently presented, it takes some digging to figure out where those single link disambigs start. Would it be possible to create a variable list to make it easier to search for those (without necessarily affecting what counts for bonus points)? bd2412 T 12:42, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
How about this? (Only a test page for now until I can verify this change wouldn't screw up The Daily Disambig.) --JaGatalk 18:01, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
As of two days ago, the Daily Disambig gets the bonus list link count directly from your public database, not from the web page. Also, I'm getting the main list link counts that way, too.  :-) R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:29, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Great! In that case, I've updated the bonus list itself. --JaGatalk 18:37, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Beautiful! bd2412 T 22:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Ever since the discussion with bd2412 and LarryJeff, I've been thinking about this idea of user notification of dablink creation. If a person moves a page in order to create a disambig, they're pretty much aware that they're creating dablinks (although they often mistakenly think the cleanup is done by a bot). For an article editor, it isn't so obvious. For instance, if someone adds "He was born in Georgia" to an article, that editor will only know they've added a dablink if they click on Georgia.

Currently there's no way (short of testing each link) for an editor to realize they're creating dablinks. So I've been wondering; would we want to place notifications on user talk pages when they create dablinks? I could create such a bot, but I would only want to start the work if people here support the idea. So if you don't like the plan, or think such a bot would not get approved, please speak up!

If we were to do this, I believe enough editors would be willing to clean up their dablinks that we could finally get the total number of disambiguation pages with links to drop. We get roughly 150 "new dabs" added to the list each day; the majority is disambigs that didn't have a single incoming link until an editor unknowingly created one. --JaGatalk 02:21, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. I love this plan, this is a good plan. Let's do it. bd2412 T 03:46, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Hmmm. I'm not sure I can assume consensus with just the one response. Should I put this on hold? I haven't done any work on the bot, so nothing would be lost. --JaGatalk 22:11, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
I agree, this is great. —danhash (talk) 19:28, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
I also agree. I think that, ideally, the most intuitive solution would be to have dab links show up in a different color, à la red links for nonexistent articles, but such a fundamental change probably isn't practical for a host of reasons. Notifications on users' talk pages would be a good alternative, and much easier to implement. Nick Number (talk) 14:21, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Exactly. I would much prefer to have different-colored links - the notification would be immediate, and random editors would be encouraged to do the fixing. Maybe one day we can get that, especially since we have the WP:INTDABLINK policy. But until then, I think this is a step in the right direction. --JaGatalk 16:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
The German Wikipedia has a gadget install by 38,736 users of which 4,410 are active. Here we also have Anomie's Linkclassifier which does a more with the category data by highlight AfDs, FAs, and broken redirects. — Dispenser 17:31, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
I've started using Anomie's link classifier - very nice! --JaGatalk 15:16, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to start building the reports necessary for such a bot. I'll be getting back soon once I've got something stable; hopefully we can discuss the user page messages then. Cheers, --JaGatalk 15:16, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Badges brainstorming

The Hundred Club
Solve 100 dabs
Around the world in 8 days
Solve 25 dabs in 14 time zones
Pointless
Solve 25 dabs without receiving any points
Needle in a haystack
Find and solve the only dab point in a WikiProject
C-C-Combo breaker
Solver 50 of the same dabs in a row before switching
Look mom, no cheats!
Solve 50 different dabs without repeating one
All-Star
Solver 50 player dabs
Full time
Spend more then 40 hours over the last 7 days
Every little bit count
Solve 25 dabs on stub pages
Editing blues
Get reverted 10 times
Expert analysis
Complete 200 dabs in a WikiProject
What the!?
Get blocked for an hour or more

Funnier or more humorous the more likely they'll get implemented. No guarantees on me being able to pull this off. Feel free to add/change the list. — Dispenser 02:10, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Weightlifting

I have begun the process of converting the perpetual link target weightlifting into a short article on the various purposes for which weights are lifted. I would appreciate any help that anyone can provide with this, as this topic is outside my area. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:07, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Hooligan

Apparently Hooligan used to be a redirect to Hooligan (disambiguation) and the two were swapped back in September 2009. I think that instead, the present Hooligan page should be moved back to Hooligan (disambiguation), and Hooligan should be changed to redirect to Hooliganism. That is the primary meaning, and a Redirect hatnote could be placed there pointing to the dab. Nick Number (talk) 20:08, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal. Incoming links bear out the belief that hooliganism is the primary meaning. bd2412 T 20:42, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Assuming there are no subsequent objections, would you mind deleting Hooligan (disambiguation)? I can take care of the rest of it. Nick Number (talk) 21:15, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:15, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks. I cleaned up the dab a little and added a few entries. Nick Number (talk) 04:05, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Hilbert

After disambiguating Hilbert and finding that all 49 links were intended to point to the mathematician David Hilbert, I think it's pretty clear that this is the primary meaning and that the dab should be moved to Hilbert (disambiguation). I've started a discussion on the talk page if anyone wants to weigh in.
I'm also wondering if the entries from Hilbert (name) should be merged into the dab. Are there any clear criteria about when to use a (name) page rather than a dab? Nick Number (talk) 19:57, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Update and Request for Comment - User dablink notification

OK, I've finished most of the work for user dablink notification.

The first task was to sort all new dablinks by type. That work is complete, resulting in Dab Dashboard, which is an interesting report in its own right.

The user notifications will only focus on "Type 5" disambigs; that is, dablinks created by editing. There will be two notification runs per day, each taking a little over an hour. I'm seeing a total of 800-900 notifications/day, one third of which are for IP editors.

For now, I've been directing DPL bot to send every message to my User:JaGa/Sandbox. You can see the results of this morning's run there now.

Once a user is notified, that dablink is marked as such, to prevent multiple notifications for the same dablink.

Here's what I'd like to get from you:

  • Help improving the notification message and the FAQ.
  • Discussion on whether we should notify IPs or not. I'm concerned about spamming IP pages, and skipping IPs would reduce the load on DPL bot. On the other hand, it would invariably lead to more dabfixes, so I'm willing to go either way.

Assuming there's support for going forward, the next step will be to submit at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval. --JaGatalk 13:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

This looks really good. My only qualms might be that it could seem rather cryptic to a new user who might not have the slightest clue what a 'disambiguation link' is. I see that disambiguation is linked to Wikipedia:Disambiguation but maybe it should also link to something a bit more specific too. The FAQ you have written actually explain this very well but I nearly missed the link to it in the message. Also I do find the 'Check, fix' a bit technical. It might be better to have this in a sentence. France3470 (talk) 13:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that's my worry too - that it makes sense to me but not to a new editor. Perhaps the FAQ should be in its own sentence, and not small-texted? I copied the usage of {{dablinks}} when I could. --JaGatalk 14:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
My concern with notifying IPs is that in some rare cases it may have the opposite effect, inducing someone who is vandalizing or experimenting to add bad links in order to stimulate the system to respond to him. I assume we can basically toggle this functionality on and off, so I suggest we start smaller by only alerting logged in users. Also, I gather that you are only checking for new disambig links introduced in article space. While I can see how it might cause confusion to alert someone to a disambig link introduced through the addition of a template, I think it would make a great deal of sense to alert someone who has added such a link to the template itself. Is this possible? Finally, regarding the phrase "in no way required", this sounds to me like saying that there's really nothing bad about the link being there. Editors know we can't force them to do anything, so I would instead just say, "Your help in fixing these disambiguation links would be appreciated". Cheers! bd2412 T 15:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I hadn't thought about the vandalism angle. It is indeed an easy on/off toggle, so I'll go ahead and turn off IP notification. I'll also make that change to the "Your help ..." sentence. What do you think about France3470's comments? Any suggestions how to make the messages more newbie-friendly? Thanks, --JaGatalk 15:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm afraid I have no particular insight into what will best inform people of what they should be doing, other than the existing reference to our disambiguation guidelines. By the way, thanks for creating the Dashboard, it is a fantastic tool! Now I am thinking that as long as we are sending out notifications, we really should send something to editors who convert an existing page with incoming links into a disambig page, letting them know that they should be fixing those incoming links. bd2412 T 16:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I was tempted to expand the scope as well - especially for template dabs - but my biggest concern is getting this task approved by the bot people, and I'm thinking the simpler the proposal, the better the odds of approval. So I'd prefer to hold off on notifications for other types until after approval. --JaGatalk 20:04, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
Another thought. Perhaps there is someway to integrate the "What's wrong with links to disambiguation pages?" from the FAQ into the message. France3470 (talk) 16:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
That's a good idea. I've taken the first sentence from that section and tried to soften the overall message a bit. --JaGatalk 20:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm sorry to sounds negative - it's certainly nice work. However, I am concerned that giving that message to new users could be 'information overload'. There's so many complicated things for new users to try and figure out- they often get pages full of warnings. I know this isn't actually a warning but, try to see it from the newbie perspective: automated message to inform you of recent article edits that created disambiguation is just more blah blah blah TL;DR WTF stuff.
My instinct is, it should only be put onto the pages of users that have made a reasonable number of edits and/or are of a certain age - for example, >50 edits.
The addition of dab-links is such a minor concern, when the majority of new users are not even adding any form of reliable source, are copy-pasting copyvios/plagiarism, or adding spam.
Of course, this is just my viewpoint - and only based on instincts; maybe you could do some tests, and figure out if it is a net benefit.  Chzz  ►  16:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
Also, it appears to be telling people when all they did was 'revert' - e.g. [1] or accepted an Article for Creation e.g. [2]  Chzz  ►  16:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
Why would anyone revert a disambig fix to restore the bad link? If that is what is being reverted, they should get a notice about it. As for limiting notices to more seasoned users, I suspect that would be more difficult to implement, and I'm not sure it would be of any great benefit. I think new users need all the guidance they can get, and yes, it is a lot to be hit with, but it's not being done in a hostile way. I suppose we could let them know that if they have questions, they can ask here. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
They might revert it if it pointed to the wrong article, ie it was wrongly disambiguated. I completely understand Chzz's view, new editors are overloaded with information (whether hostile or not), and dab links will almost inevitably seems a triviality compared to all the other policies they are. However, I imagine new editors are also the largest creators of dab links. What are the practicalities of targeting say editors with over 50 edits? France3470 (talk) 17:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
Well, in the specific example, it was a checkuser/sysop removing edits by a blocked sock [3] and the dab was fixed shortly afterwards, by another editor. I really don't think that giving him a message about DABs is helpful.  Chzz  ►  17:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I would guess that the admin who reverted the edit would want to know that he had undone a valid fix, so that he could go back and re-fix it. The dab was fixed shortly afterwards by me, because it came up in this discussion. If it hadn't been brought up here (absent an alert to the admin who reverted the previous edit) the link would still be wrong. bd2412 T 17:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

@Chzz: Thanks for the comments. This is exactly the kind of feedback I need. A few points:

  • TLDR: I expect a great number of people to ignore these messages, and many to opt out altogether. But experience has shown me that many new not limited to new editors! users haven't the foggiest idea they're creating dablinks, and are actually glad to know how they can further improve their work. It's those editors I want to reach. I am willing to implement the >50 proposal if it comes to that, but I agree with France3470 in that I think reaching these editors would be beneficial. If you have any ideas how to make the message more user-friendly, I would appreciate the input.
  • New Article Creation, or as I like to think of it, the Alpha Quadrant Problem: Early in my testing, I noticed Alpha Quadrant's name coming up again and again. I soon realized this was because users were creating dablink-containing articles outside the article namespace, and Alpha Quadrant was moving them into article space, and then getting "blamed" for the dablink. To solve this, I changed the logic of the scripts. Originally, the tool only examined article edits that occurred since the last update. Now, if the tool detects that the article didn't exist as of the last update, and it finds that the article was moved in from a different namespace, it takes the entire editing history into account, regardless of namespace. This solved the problem. In the diff you provided, Alpha Quadrant actually did create the dablinks (diff) while wikilinking the page. (Side note: there are several editors I would contact before I put the bot live, suggesting they go ahead and opt out. Alpha Quadrant, Anthony Appleyard, and Bearcat, for instance.)
  • Reverts: Well, you got me there. But I don't think its as much of a problem as it may appear at first, because the messages are only intended for new dablinks, and I only check for new dablinks twice daily. Take, for instance, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which has linked to the disambig Magnetic resonance since February 15. Now, say some vandal pageblanks The Feynman Lectures on Physics and ClueBot quickly reverts it. ClueBot would not receive a message. This is because when the update script runs some time later, it will see that The Feynman Lectures on Physics still links to Magnetic resonance, and since it is not a new dablink, it would send no message. So the vast majority of reverters - namely, quick response vandal fighters - would never be bothered by DPL bot. That seems acceptable to me, especially since DPL bot is exclusion compliant. --JaGatalk 19:12, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I suppose at the moment we are all under the assumption that alerting users to dab links via an automated message will result in them getting fixed but actually this hasn't really been proven. I would be really interested in seeing some trial tests to really see how effective these messages would be. Would it be possible to send out notifications to a small test group, and then gather some information as to how many of these dablinks got fixed? (or is this kind of thing done during the bot approval process?) We could also look at how many of these fixes were made by new editors which might better allow us to evaluate whether it is worth targeting this group. France3470 (talk) 19:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that would be part of the bot trial - if I can get approved for one. --JaGatalk 20:04, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for clarifying. Thinking again about the message (not sure what you have at the moment) but perhaps the message could appear like this:

This is an automated message to inform you that some of your recent edits have created links to disambiguation pages. For more information please see What is a disambiguation link?. Your help in fixing these links would be much appreciated. Links found:
Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
was linked to NISA (check to confirm | Use Dabsolver to fix this now)

Also is there anyway that the link to the dab page could be made yellow, like the linkclassifier does. For me this alerts me that the page is a dab and therefore different from the one above, I think this might have a similar effect for those reading the messages even if dabs are unfamiliar to them. France3470 (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at it. I'll need to revisit it fresh tomorrow. The new message format will show up on the Nov 4 morning run. --JaGatalk 02:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
Wait, I should clarify - I've worked on rewording the message, but I haven't tried any highlighting. --JaGatalk 02:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposed de-disambiguation of Master of Arts

I have proposed at Talk:Master of Arts#Proposal to de-disambiguate to make Master of Arts (postgraduate) the primary topic for this perpetual link magnet, for which virtually all incoming links refer to that meaning; the other meanings of the term are already discussed in the proposed target article. Please weigh in. bd2412 T 12:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Naib

From looking at the incoming links, it appears that the primary meaning of Naib is at Nawab#Naib. I propose deleting Naib (disambiguation), moving the present Naib dab there, and changing Naib to redirect to Nawab#Naib. The dab could also be merged with NAIB. Nick Number (talk) 21:39, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the first option is reasonable, since the basketball organization is all caps, and the other meanings have no articles. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:45, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:17, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks again. Nick Number (talk) 03:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Walkthrough

Walkthrough was until recently an article, but was nominated for deletion, the discussion resulting in a highly divided vote for which the option obtaining the most support (though not a majority) was to turn it into a disambiguation page. Unfortunately, this was apparently done without consulting the guidelines governing disambiguation. As there are only two terms on the page that contain the term "walkthrough", one of which is listed as a "See also" option, I have therefore proposed at Talk:Walkthrough that this page be moved to Walkthrough (disambiguation) and that the current title be redirected to Software walkthrough as the primary meaning with a hatnote on that page directed to the relocated disambiguation page. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:45, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Rampart

I have proposed at Talk:Rampart to redirect Rampart to Defensive wall as the primary meaning, and to move the current disambig page to Rampart (disambiguation). Please weigh in if you have any thoughts on this proposal. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:08, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Nystagmus merge

I merged Pathologic nystagmus and Physiologic nystagmus into one article, based upon comments in the Nystagmus disambiguation page and its talk page. So, the good news is that's done. The unfortunate news is that there are a LOT of articles that link to Pathologic nystagmus (250-500) and Physiologic nystagmus (50-100).

Is there a way that a script can be written to change all:

There's no disambiguation here and no need to fix the links since they all already redirect to the correct article (see WP:NOTBROKEN). Or is there some other issue I'm missing here?--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
I greatly reduced the count by changing some templates - so that helped. Yep, you're right, it's not a disambiguation issue, it's an indirect link issue. If it's ok to have indirect links (Pathologic nystagmus --> Nystagmus), that's VERY cool with me!--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Functional

I am conceptually troubled by the use of adjectives as page titles. I think we should have an article on the general concept of Functionality (which is currently a redirect to Function) and direct this term there. bd2412 T 15:30, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not quite that simple, because Functional (mathematics) is, in fact, a noun. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:56, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
Right now if someone searched for "Functional" they are taken to a disambig page. They will be no worse off if they are redirected to a page on functionality with a headnote basically saying Functional redirects here. For the mathematics term see Functional (mathematics). For other uses see Function (disambiguation) and Functional (disambiguation). bd2412 T 17:04, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Some that are very close

The following dabs from the November list are very close to being completely done, if anyone wants to grab what's left:

Cheers! bd2412 T 22:04, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

All done.--CaroleHenson (talk) 05:42, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
Great work, thanks! bd2412 T 20:16, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Deva use in an Infobox

I'm not sure how to fix a disamb issue for the use of "Deva" in the Infobox in the Arad Central Railway Station article. If I change the "next" value to "Deva, Romania", it creates a red link.--CaroleHenson (talk) 07:20, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. According to Template:S-line/doc#Station, you have to edit Template:CFR Intercity stations. --Kusunose 07:41, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
Great, thanks!--CaroleHenson (talk) 07:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

User notification bot approved

DPL bot just got approval to send users dablink notification messages. Notifications will begin after Friday morning's run - I'm giving DPL bot a rest on Thursday because I sent messages late Wednesday evening, and I don't want to overwhelm people.

R'n'B and bd2412 have helped out with answering questions, and I wanted to thank them for that. I expect more pushback in the coming week, and appreciate any support I can get.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. My biggest concern is the daily frequency. Would it have been better to run it every other day, or even once per week? My initial thought was, strike while the iron's hot - that is, send an editor a reminder while their work is still fresh in their minds. But will it be too much? I don't know. We'll have to see! --JaGatalk 05:36, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that the bot should strike while the iron is hot. Might be interesting to run this every 5-15 minutes or so while the editors are still likely to be on. The question is, how disruptive would that be and how much workload on the server does the bot create? If the workload is high, then at least once a day should be the target. But like any new feature, experience with the tool will teach us how to best utilize it. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:25, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
The number of messages to send daily is roughly 300-500. The most I could run it is twice daily; it takes quite a while to collate all the necessary data. --JaGatalk 15:13, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
I would certainly limit it to once per day, so editors can get a single daily notification of their dab linking activities. In fact, if possible I'd frame it as a free service being provided to them. bd2412 T 15:33, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that's my angle - service, not warning. BTW, I'm putting the bot on hold while this discussion is under way. --JaGatalk 20:02, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Karate Kid

I have proposed a de-disambiguation solution to Karate Kid and The Karate Kid at Talk:Karate Kid. Please provide your thoughts. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:51, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, there. Sorry if this has been brought up before, but I see that On November 1 2010 there were 33 180 links to the top 500 DAB pages, whereas on November 1 2011 there were only 21 001. What do you think about increasing the number of pages incorporated in this monthly challenge from 500 to 1000, which now has ~37 000 links, roughly comparable to the old number? Or 750 pages, at least? Would it be difficult to do? Or are there arguments against it that I can't think of right now (I am, after all, pretty new to this)? It could spur more involvement in the latter half of each month. Looking forward to your thoughts, PhnomPencil (talk) 07:00, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

It looks like it might need to go up, as this month the monthly list is 70% done 70% through the month (great job everyone!) Although, having said that, is appears that the Calicut redirection removal is going to make next month's list a bigger one. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 11:04, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
I am dubious about the prospect of expanding the list. My concern is that disambiguators will look for easier pickings, and the hard ones will not get addressed at all. bd2412 T 12:26, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
There's a balance. If we get too deep into the list, the last week can be a real drag. We have an increased capacity these days, and as PhnomPencil pointed out, we have less to work on. I would like to see an increase. --JaGatalk 14:10, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps we can come up with some extra motivation for tackling the hardest dabs? Double points for fixing links which have been on the list for several months? bd2412 T 15:42, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
I'd be all for that. Good motivation to tackle the dry ones. PhnomPencil (talk) 18:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
I've been considering that. It will probably happen at some point, but I've got a lot of work to do to DPL bot first. --JaGatalk 17:45, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
I think conditions are ripe for an expansion of the list. We're actually doing a good job of not having many holdovers. If the monthly contest ended today, only 54 pages from this month's list would be in the new Top 500. I feel like the number of holdover page from month to month used to be in the 200s. --JamesAM (talk) 03:23, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
You can also try disambiguating links in any one of hundreds of WikiProject. — Dispenser 07:09, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
I'd be careful here. How do we measure the dabs to see if they were done correctly? I know of one page that probably has 75% or so of bad inbound links. And I suspect that many of those are from years ago when a bad move was made. It's easy to clean up links to a dab page. It's much more difficult to cleanup bad inbound links to an article. Accuracy is just as important as fixing the links to the dab pages. Not pointing fingers, especially when you guys have been doing heroic work. Just saying that it is more then numbers. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:40, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
If folks are messing up dab fixes, then please feel free to track down the change in the page's history and mention it on the user's Talk page or this page. --JamesAM (talk) 04:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Also, the dab challenge leaderboard links to diffs of each editor's dabfix. --JaGatalk 20:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Enemy

I recently de-disambiguated enemy, a perpetual link magnet for a term that had no encyclopedic coverage at all while the disambiguation page existed, on the basis that there is a broad concept to be addressed here. This move has not been without controversy, so any assistance in developing the article would be appreciated. bd2412 T 03:20, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

More that are close from the November list

Here is a new list of pages from the November list that are very close to being done. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:04, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

  • Updated 19:27, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Cheers! bd2412 T 19:27, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Protease inhibitor

I am struggling conceptually with the need for a disambig page here. There are only two links, Protease inhibitor (biology), and Protease inhibitor (pharmacology), addressing chemicals producing basically the same kind of result, but differentiated by whether their origin is natural or artificial. I think they could be merged, but I don't want to stir a hornet's nest between the different projects that handle these if there is some distinction that is eluding me. Opinions sought on the question of whether merger is a good solution. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:46, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Dab solver topic director

I'm not very good at communicating, but I've noticed continued interest with the WikiProjects I have contacted. Since I have more productive things to do with my time (better stats), I'm announcing a position for Dab solver's topic director.

The duties include arranging topic panels on the first of the month with consideration of general interest, expected WikiProject engagement, and disambiguation accessibility (WikiProject Math usually requires graduate knowledge while The Simpsons can be solved by ten year olds :-). Notifying the selected WikiProjects about their inclusion. Post the leader board/statistics to the Project's talk at the end of the month. Arranging the panel requires contacting me over IRC, a web interface maybe available in the future. — Dispenser 06:57, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

That page is pretty cool... is it new? I see we can access lists by Wikiproject... been going through Cambodia the past couple hours. The point system I don't really care about, because we already have the DAB challenge, but it's really a fantastic resource for the lists alone, IMHO.
I can't take on the responsibility to look after this because I don't always have access to the internet, but if you'd like me to add links to each project's list on their Wikiproject page, I can do so... it would be welcomed by them; exactly the kind of thing which should be placed there. PhnomPencil (talk) 11:30, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
This is the first time I've noticed this thread. There is fantastic potential in getting individual WikiProjects involved; enthusiasm + expert topic knowledge = pretty much guaranteed success. I would love to set up a WikiProject-specific contest, and maybe I will some day, but I've just promised myself no new projects for the immediate future. --JaGatalk 17:59, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Engelbert Humperdinck

Fans of disambiguation may want to participate in the heated debate at Talk:Engelbert Humperdinck#Requested move. Thanks, Bazonka (talk) 00:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Can we just move the pop singer's article to Zingelbert Bembledack? What about Wingelbert Humptyback? Nick Number (talk) 00:22, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your insightful contribution. Bazonka (talk) 00:48, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Talking back to a robot ;-) re Waterloo, Iowa

The following exchange is from my own Talk page:

Hi. When you recently edited Waterloo, Iowa, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Waterloo (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, as I noted in the Edit Summary when I posted the link, this time it was entirely intentional. The problem is, I don't know which of the many Waterloos those who renamed the settlement intended it be named after. The disambiguation page at least provides a list of possibilities. It would be better, if it can be documented, to state in the article which "Waterloo" the name came from. It may even have been named after the Belgian place that gave the battle its name, but I think it's more likely to have been the battle itself, or one (which?) of the many other places named, directly or indirectly, after the battle. --Haruo (talk) 17:58, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

If a better solution is available without the need for me to do research on the history of Iowa place names myself, I'd love to hear it. --Haruo (talk) 18:05, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the correct procedure for intentionally linking to a dab page should be included in the bot's message. Per WP:FURTHERDAB, intentional links to disambiguation pages should use the link that includes the (disambiguation) clarifier, even if that link is a redirect. This allows both human editors and bots to distinguish intentional links from accidental ones. I've gone ahead and taken care of the Waterloo link[4].--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:28, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Characterizing this as an "intentional" disambiguation link is merely sweeping a problem under a rug so it won't be noticed. In fact, the correct solution is for someone to research the history of the Iowa city and determine which Waterloo it was named after. It was certainly not named after the Wikipedia disambiguation page! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:43, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
I should have read the article first. It contains a story about the history of the name (unreferenced, to be sure) that indicates it was not named after any particular Waterloo but that the founder just liked the sound of the name. If that's the case, the link is pointless, as it cannot lead the reader to any information relevant to the context in which the term is used here. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:46, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
I tend to agree with you that the link is not particularly useful, but others might disagree, which is why I fixed it rather than removed it. An argument could be made that the link is intended to allow users to see for themselves the various U.S. Waterloos that might have inspired the Iowa town's name.--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:57, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't know if I'm missing something, but why not tag the link to Waterloo with {{Disambiguation needed}}? Vegaswikian (talk) 21:59, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Because disambiguation in this case may not be possible, even with diligent research. According to the article, the person who named the town "flipped through a list of other post offices in the United States...[and] came upon the name 'Waterloo'. The name struck his fancy...." There may be no way of way of knowing which particular U.S. Waterloo caught his eye.--ShelfSkewed Talk 04:48, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree. If a disambig link can not be "fixed" because it is impossible to know whether a correct solution exists, then the link should be an intentional link to the disambig page. As an alternative, of course, we could link to the Wiktionary page, Waterloo. bd2412 T 05:20, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
I'd say de-linking is the right course. That seems more intuitively in line with the fact that the town's actual identity is not terribly important. The town in Iowa wasn't really named after any particular Waterloo; it got its name because someone liked the sound of it. Seems more like an 1851 take on randomly generated names.
Also, regarding INTDABLINK, I keep it out of the message (and take pains to avoid sending DPL bot messages to INTDABLINK candidates when I can) because INTDABLINK is very confusing to the lay editor, and when editors get bot messages they don't understand, they get upset. --JaGatalk 04:24, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Kismet?

Kismet has some word-history content in it that shouldn't be there per WP:MOSDAB. I'm wondering, does the concept of "kismet" merit its own article, or perhaps instead a section in Destiny, or should it be removed altogether per WP:DICTDEF? That content needs to go but I hate to lose it. --JaGatalk 04:10, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The Numbers

I notice someone has added a bunch of references linking to The Numbers (I suspect they account for all the links), referring to the website for which the article has been deleted three times. They should probably be unlinked. TimBentley (talk) 02:51, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:36, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly what should we be disambiguating?

Are we supposed to be disambiguating (examples in the links) Category, Portal, and File pages? Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links#How to help number 4 only mentions Article and Template pages, but not the ones I mentioned above. SchreiberBike (talk) 02:42, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, yes, and yes. Although Portal, Category, and File links don't count for our monthly contest, a link to a disambig page in such space is usually the same kind of error as when it appears in article space, although article space remains our highest priority. In fact, we occasionally generate new lists of disambig links in these spaces in order to go about fixing them quickly. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:26, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Joseon (diambiguation) and Radio Invicta (dismbiguation)

Could a friendly administrator delete Talk:Joseon (disambiguation) and move Talk:Joseon (diambiguation) and the history to Talk:Joseon (disambiguation), and then delete Joseon (diambiguation)? Thanks! -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 00:38, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Also: Radio Invicta (disambiguation) needs to be deleted so that Radio Invicta (dismbiguation) can be moved there (the talk page can be moved with it, as the move location is empty). Once the move is done, the redirects at Radio invicta and Radio Invicta need to be updated (these are the only pages that link to the misspelled page). Thanks again! -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 01:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done --JaGatalk 16:00, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

23 seafarers boat

what do you mean ? . פארוק (talk) 11:36, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

When you edited the article 23 seafarers boat, you created a link to the page British. This page is not an article but rather a disambiguation page, which allows navigation to several articles that might be referred to by the term British. So the link needed to be corrected to point to the intended article. I went ahead and fixed it for you, piping the link to what seemed to be its intended meaning--in this case, the United Kingdom (i.e. the sovereign country and/or its government).--ShelfSkewed Talk 15:47, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Project page numbers not updating

Why are the project page numbers not updating? If you scroll down to "The List For March", the top 500 pages are showing the same counts as they did a few days ago, though many have since been reduced or cleared (I cleared out obedience, for example, and it still shows 33 links). Cheers! bd2412 T 22:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing that JaGa's away for the weekend (hopefully not even longer), and he'll reset the tools when he gets back. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
We will have to wait and see, then. It is a bit worrisome to have functions like this dependent on a single person, even someone as reliable as JaGa. After all, anything could happen to any of us. bd2412 T 23:32, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Flag of Western Sahara proposed resolution

Since Flag of Western Sahara is a persistent problem and has been going back and forth in status over the past few days, I have proposed a solution at Talk:Flag of Western Sahara#Proposed resolution. Please visit that discussion and help develop a consensus one way or another. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:49, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

There are no longer any incoming links to this page. They were being generated by a template, which I have fixed. I don't think it is an issue that needs to be resolved any more. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:04, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. It turns out that a previous discussion had already led to a solution that just hadn't been implemented yet. Nice to have this one out of the way, though. bd2412 T 17:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguations for discussion

Since someone has seen fit to tag Wikipedia:Disambiguations for discussion for deletion, I'd like to revive the discussion about having a single forum for discussion proposed de-disambiguation, redirection, or other disputes involving the status of disambiguation pages, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Wikipedia:Disambiguations for discussion. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:03, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Discussion regarding U.S. Post Office

Discussion is underway at Talk:U.S. Post Office#Requested move over whether the frequently linked disambiguation page U.S. Post Office should be moved to U.S. Post Office (disambiguation), with the current title to be redirected to United States Postal Service. Please feel free to add your thoughts. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:52, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

If any non-involved admin is interested in closing this move request, the deadline for comments has run and I think the outcome is pretty clear. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:15, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

A Simple request

Well, Toolserver is in a shambles, and will likely continue to be so for days. I'm very worried that this won't be straightened out before the end of the month. If so, the current standings will end up being the final ones, and I'll have to delay the start of next month's contest. That's the bad news.

The good news is, I've got a fun diversion from this outage. Turns out, although EN Wiki is swamped with replag, Simple EN Wiki is doing fine - no replag at all. Per a couple of requests, I've created a pared-down version of my scripts to run on Simple English Wikipedia. No contest, mind you, but at least the lists can actually be updated.

You can find the list of Toolserver reports at our doppelganger page simple:WP:DPL.

There are a couple of things that make disambig work on Simple EN Wiki attractive to me:

  1. This has never been done before; today is the very beginning of their disambiguation project. That means very, very easy pickings.
  2. They have only 1,236 disambiguation pages with links. A trifle! So it's possible we could finish off their disambigs in a matter of days.

So check it out! Might as well while we're in downtime. Cheers, --JaGatalk 20:00, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Can we let "this month's" contest run until the toolserver is up again, so that we get more inclusive numbers for the contest, and then have a shorter contest for the rest of April? bd2412 T 18:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Speaking as an outsider for this month's contest, I'm fine with that. PhnomPencil talk contribs 03:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
I think that's a good idea. I could do it easily enough, although there may be some date glitches here and there. Eternal March it is, then - assuming Russ is OK with it. --JaGatalk 05:16, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
I can stop the bot that normally generates the new Top 500 list on April 1 from running, but we'll have to manually edit WP:DPL to continue transcluding the March list for the time being; also, the first-of-the-month is hard-coded in the scripts, so The Daily Disambig will still report the progress of fixing April links. When we do start the April competition, I'll probably have to fix the script manually to allow for a non-standard starting date. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
So far as I understand the situation, are you not going to have to do that anyway? I don't imagine that we will be able to get an accurate list of dab pages for the April contest until the toolserver is back up. bd2412 T 17:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
As for deferring generating the April list, that's basically true. I suppose that if the replication started again today, then by three days from now we might be more-or-less caught up, but after today it would be pretty much impossible. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

The project page is now showing that replag is down to six days, but the numbers are not reflecting any change at all. bd2412 T 21:30, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Which project page? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:08, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Actually, both the leaderboard on this project page and the toolserver project page. bd2412 T 23:13, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Oh, well, the leaderboard says "This list was last updated March 25, 23:49 UTC. Replication lag is 6 days 2 hours 34 minutes." Which is exactly what it has said ever since, let's see, March 25 at 23:49 UTC.  :-) However, sometime in the last three hours, the new replica database on Toolserver became active, which means that the actual replag is down to about two and a half days, and dropping. The leaderboard and JaGa's other Toolserver pages won't change, though, until he runs his scripts again, which I hope will be soon. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 01:53, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Odd. My last counted edit for the leaderboard was March 19. We will see what happens when it happens. Does this mean we'll be starting the April contest once JaGa runs his scripts? bd2412 T 02:36, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd suggest we wait until tomorrow to let the replag shake itself out, but it's really up to JaGa. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:12, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm fine with that. Thanks to the daily being down for a week, it looks like we'll have a few thousand more links to work on in April. bd2412 T 17:03, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks like they've done something to PHP on Toolserver that destroys all of my reports - the command include_once no longer works as it once did. I've asked about it at the Toolserver mailing lists; if I don't get an answer by tomorrow I'll just remove the commands so the scripts will display. The data seems fine, although I didn't take a close look at the contest data. But I gotta go to bed, folks. I'll pick this up again tomorrow (Thursday). Cheers, --JaGatalk 05:12, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, found the problem. An error had caused a PHP include page to form improperly, which caused the include to fail. Everything is looking good, and another update should kick off in the next 30 minutes or so. I would suggest that we end this month's contest at 11:59 PM UTC April 6; the new monthly list would be generated a bit after 12 AM UTC April 7. (The outage has led to a lot of "junk dabs" and I don't want them the skew the results for next month.) What do you think? --JaGatalk 20:05, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
By "junk dabs", do you mean things like Montane (which is clearly article material)? There are always a few of those in the contest, so I wouldn't consider them worth waiting over. bd2412 T 20:19, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Or is it ones that appear as needing disambig but actually don't have any links in them.Edinburgh Wanderer 20:22, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Mostly cleanup of big easy dabs and mistaken dab creation (like Montane, which I undid - we'll see what comes of that), but also to give myself time to get everything in order. But I could end it tonight if it works better for people. --JaGatalk 20:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
That schedule is fine with me (although I'll keep my fingers crossed, as I probably will be on the road at 23:59 UTC April 6, but the script should be able to run automagically). Someone else may need to check in around that time and undo my last edit to WP:DPL in case I can't get to it myself. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:24, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
If ending it tonight instead of tomorrow is better for you, I think that would work OK. I've got to run for now but I'll log back in before midnight UTC. --JaGatalk 20:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
No, tomorrow's fine. I think it makes more sense, since the reports have not really been available until this afternoon. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:05, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Good. I've set the scripts up to end the contest tomorrow and start the new month beginning April 7 12AM UTC. So all day April 7 will be the results board. I'll have to manually fix some month naming errors that will happen, but everything else should be fine. --JaGatalk 02:36, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
The project page for April is still showing March numbers (or, at least, partial March numbers). bd2412 T 02:20, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
That should correct itself when the leaderboard starts updating again tomorrow. --JaGatalk 04:09, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Good news, then. I'm off for the weekend, so I'll see how it has picked up by Monday! bd2412 T 04:11, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I screwed up: I made montane into a disambiguation page, based on discussion at Talk:montane forest. This made 5000+ links to a dab page. You all (the community) did a heroic job of cleaning this up, running bot jobs to make previous links to montane point to montane forest.

I think I've straightened things out: montane currently redirects to montane ecology, which is a broader concept than montane forest. The distinction in clear in the technical literature: a montane forest is a concept the more general field of montane ecology. Neither article is very long, unfortunately.

My request: there are now 5000+ links that look like [[Montane forest|montane]] that are now incorrect. I would suggest that they should be restored to be simply [[montane]], so that whatever we decide to redirect montane to, all of the links will still be correct.

Can the heroic people/robots who turned the 5000+ instances of [[montane]] into [[Montane forest|montane]] please help me revert those changes? I only have AWB, and if I have to look at 5000+ pages by myself, it will take me a year and I will surely go insane.

There is one more wrinkle. Most of the 5000+ links were generated by Polbot, and they are incorrect. They refer to moist [[montane]]s. That was based on a misreading of the original data, and should be moist [[montane forest]]s.

In summary, I'm looking for help to perform the following find/replace tasks:

"moist [[montane forest|montanes]]" into "moist [[montane forests]]"

and if this pattern doesn't occur:

"[[Montane forest|montane]]" into "[[montane]]"

I will shower my undying wikilove and barnstars on whomever can help me fix this mess. —hike395 (talk) 04:32, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

RussBot, which made most of the previous round of corrections, is starting now to fix all the "moist montane" references. When that finishes (which will probably take several hours), I'll look at what's left and see if I can reasonably fix the rest. However, it's not immediately clear to me that all of these links can simply be changed en masse; some of them may be correct links to montane forest. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, Russ! You're right: I've started to go through the rest of the links, and about 1/4 of them are correct. If you simply run RussBot to correct the "moist montane" references (which is the vast majority of the 5000+ links), I am happy to fix the rest myself. You are welcome, of course, to help! Thanks again! —hike395 (talk) 10:20, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
 Done I've done my part with AWB: I went through and fixed links of the form [[montane forest|montane]] where they did not refer to forests. I skipped any "moist montane" links, so that Russbot can do its work. It wasn't bad at all. Thanks again for your help! —hike395 (talk) 12:19, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for help

Thanks for help - this is a new service to me. VG! Jacobisq (talk) 11:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Using the watchlist option on Dabsolver it shows that there is a link on Doctor Who to Doctor Who Prom, when i click fix it says There are no disambiguation links on Doctor Who. This has happened for the last few days if there are no links why does it still appear. Am i missing something. Its the same for Annan Academy to Annan.Edinburgh Wanderer 21:30, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

That does seem to happen from time to time. I have fixed both of these. Annan was in a template, which may have prevented it from being detected by the Dabsolver. bd2412 T 23:17, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for that.Edinburgh Wanderer 23:31, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
The reason Dabsolver didn't see the problem is that Doctor Who is a link on Doctor Who Prom and Annan Academy is a link on Annan. TimBentley (talk) 02:55, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Fixed The watchlist option User:JaGa's database and our hatnote methodology differ. Normally I add &force=yes or &fixlinks=dablink to the URL, but I forgot this time. — Dispenser 05:38, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Grackle

Hi, just a heads up that I've asked for help for Grackle here. Passerine taxonomy is notoriously confusing, and is in major flux right now, so I figured only an expert will be able to do those links justice. PhnomPencil talk contribs 18:14, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense message from bot

Hi. When you recently edited Rheinhausen (Breisgau), you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Schoenau (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles

The assertions are false I added no such link to Rheinhausen (Breisgau). I surmise that the bot got somehow got confused about a disambiguation link I added to Niederhausen, which references Rheinhausen (Breisgau). That link was intended. —Danorton (talk) 19:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

From this diff, it certainly appears as if you did insert a link to Schoenau into the article, in the first sentence of the "Neighboring communities" section. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:46, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Indeed it does appear so. I can only imagine something replaced Schœnau with Schoenau. Possibly I did but, if so, it was absent-mindedly. I have corrected it to reflect as I originally intended. Thanks for the clarification. —Danorton (talk) 01:38, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Boiler boiling over.

There is a heated discussion going on at Talk:Boiler as to whether Boiler should be a disambiguation page. If it becomes one, that's 1,200+ links that will need fixing. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Runet

The WP:PRIMARY TOPIC for Runet seems to be Internet in Russia, with the rest of the terms on the disambig page being redlinks or tertiarily related things. I propose moving and redirecting the page to reflect this. Any objections? bd2412 T 14:55, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good PhnomPencil talk contribs 18:42, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
I tried to implement the change but was swiftly rebuffed by the page creator with the somewhat arcane edit summary, "Runet is not "Internet in Russia", it is likely "Internet in Russian" according to users". I have put a dabconcept tag on the current redirect target, Runet (disambiguation), but don't know enough about the subject matter to proceed with de-disambiguation. bd2412 T 19:11, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 May 13#Template:Geographical locators

I wanted to bring this template deletion discussion to the attention of the community, as the template contains a large number of disambig links and was placed by its creator on an equally large number of disambiguation pages. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:09, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

leaderboard not updating

The leaderboard doesn't seem to have updated in a while, even though it says it has. Nick Number (talk) 17:51, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Close to the half-a-million mark!

We are currently within 10,000 fixes of dropping total disambiguation links below 500,000 for the first time ever. Momentous celebration is called for. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:13, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Today's Daily Disambig has our total disambig link number at 500,277. At this rate, we will drop below 500,000 disambiguation links sometime this evening! bd2412 T 19:25, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Jeez, you jinxed it!! Please don't do that again!  :-) R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:24, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
It looks like I did, doesn't it. Oh well, back to grinding away at it! bd2412 T 03:02, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Mark the calender, my friends: as of June 7, 2012 the total disambiguation link count stands at 497,853. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:42, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Argh, I missed it! I'm gonna turn USA into a disambig just so I can see it happen... --JaGatalk 22:05, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

De-disambiguation discussion for chemical formulas and molecular formulas

I have initiated a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Category:Chemistry disambiguation pages and Category:Molecular formula disambiguation pages proposing to reclassify the pages in these categories as set indexes. This includes six current disambiguation pages on the monthly list for June. I hope to hear a few more voices in the discussion, so that it will not be taken as a cabal-type decision. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:32, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

This has now been done. I will be cleaning up loose ends for the next few weeks. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:43, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Leaderboard Issue

Yesterday I was editing disambiguating pages and i was at 200 points, then today its gone back to 169 points. It's be doing this for the past couple of days. Is there an issue with the leaderboard?--Mjs1991 (talk) 22:41, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Ive noticed it as well some days seem to disappear of it. Edinburgh Wanderer 22:42, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I made a note of this a while ago. It seems that about the first ten days of the contest were wiped out. bd2412 T 23:09, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
There are few automated functions that aren't working, including refreshes of the Bonus List - there are a lot of cross-outs that shouldn't appear. PKT(alk) 20:32, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
If I'm not mistaken, these problems started around the time the Watchlist changes happened. Thursday, May 10th?--JustAGal (talk) 21:07, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm 99.9% sure that's just a coincidence. JaGa, who maintains the leaderboard, is off-wiki currently due to some issues in his personal life. I'm sure he'll get it straightened out eventually, but it will probably take longer than usual. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:20, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Well is somebody else able to do it or is applied to JaGa? or how about yourself, R'n'B?--Mjs1991 (talk) 23:59, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
No, at the moment, only JaGa can fix it because it is all contained in a database on Toolserver to which only he has write powers. We are working on changing that situation (for obvious reasons) but it wasn't completed before he got called away. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:06, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Ok then. So when the issue does get fixed, will the edit amount be fixed or do we have to do it all again? So like, if somebody has 300 edits, and they've done 100 more during the issue, would it go to 400 when it's resolved or will it go back to 300?--Mjs1991 (talk) 01:04, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
I did a couple of fixes over the last week or so and at that point the tool was showing me my points. But the next day all my points had disappeared. And this is something that has happened a couple of times now. I don't mind waiting, just want to make sure that I've done everything right, since I'm relatively new to this. --Ahmerkhan (talk) 07:52, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

By the way, not that I'm complaining, but I never got my medal for winning the March 2012 disambiguation contest. I also happened to set the all-time bonus list record that month. Not that I'm complaining, of course. Ok, yes I'm complaining a little bit. bd2412 T 20:03, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not complaining either, but I didn't get mine from February, and I'd like one. Thanks. SchreiberBike (talk) 03:42, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Remedied. Nick Number (talk) 14:04, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

The Bodyguard (musical)

Would someone mind having a look at this. [5] The disambig link is in the infobox and i cant work out a way to solve it. Im assuming its something to do with the template itself but i really don't know.Edinburgh Wanderer 17:40, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the link was in the (unnecessary) hatnote, which I have removed.--ShelfSkewed Talk 17:57, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks but i don't understand that. A whilst back when using Dab Solver it should as a link in the hat note and in the infobox. But after someone edited it it just should in the infobox, how does a hatnote show in the name field of the infobox.Edinburgh Wanderer 18:00, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
That is a mystery for which I have no answer. Perhaps Dispenser, who wrote Dabsolver, can explain it.--ShelfSkewed Talk 18:05, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I confess I've only looked over this Talk, and the main project page, only superficially so perhaps this suggestion has been fully ventilted already -- if so my apologies. The disambiguation project is important, and I complement you guys on your bravery, seeing as I do a post announcing a push to get 701,850 down to 700,000 "this week" (if I recall correctly) -- hmmm, let's see, at that rate... all other things being equal... only 7 years!  :) Anyway...

Instead of adding a notice to the Talk page of the user who adds a link to a dabpage, wouldn't be better to add {{Disambiguate}} to the link itself? It's almost certain that the editor who added the link has the article on his watchlist, and will see the bot's adding of the link. The bot's edit summary could be something like "Tagging link(s) pointing to disambiguation pages. Please modify such links to point to a specific" etc etc. In addition to not cluttering up user's Talk pages, this would bring more eyes onto the need for disambiguation.

On the other hand it could be argued that the editor who first added the link, not knowing it needed disambiguation, is probably the best person to do the disambiguation, and so the current notification, being narrowly focused on that one editor, makes more sense. But for myself I'd rather see it on my watchlist than get the "You have new messages on your talkpage notification" and so on.

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents. EEng (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Although it would be nice if every user who edited any article would also keep that article on their watchlist, I think your assumption that it is "almost certain" that they actually do so is extremely unrealistic. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:03, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I have to agree with Russ. Experience has taught us that placing a tag on the page itself seldom draws the attention of the person who made the link, and that person is the one most likely to know the correct disambiguation term to apply. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:27, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm begging to think that's right. Actually, this would be a great opportunity for one of the WP research experiments: randomly (a) template user's Talk; (b) add {{Disambiguate}} to the specific point in the article; or (c) both -- and which treatment gets the best response. Anyway, keep up the good work! EEng (talk) 21:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Discussed briefly at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 43#Disambiguation bot for talk page messages (dewiki way). I also tested a distinct graphical button (still needs to be undeleted) instead of a link on a few hundred pages. Which was easier for newbies, but didn't attract many watchers. Watchlists can on enwiki can be summarized as: The more active editors is, the closer to watchlist bankruptcy they are. And while I could create a watchlist pruning tool (from watchlist points), nobody has a good method of deciding what to prune :-(. — Dispenser 08:19, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
Why not do both? bd2412 T 19:50, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Figaro

Clearly the primary topic for Figaro is the character, so should it redirect to The Barber of Seville (play)#The character of Figaro (none of the other works have a similar section) or should it be a stand-alone article? Note that Figaro (character in operas and plays) was merged to the various plays/operas. TimBentley (talk) 21:12, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

  • I think that there should be a stand-alone article on this character. The character crosses multiple works within a series, and has been portrayed by an enormous range of actors. bd2412 T 22:03, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I realize that this is a few months late, but now that I'm looking at it, you are both absolutely right - the dramatic character should have his own article. Figaro (character in operas and plays) should be un-merged, and most of the dablinks should be pointed to it. Nick Number (talk) 14:04, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in.

Hi, I keep getting this error: "Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in. " I've already tried logging out and back in, clearing the cache, etc., but it still doesn't work. Any ideas? Thanks, Azylber (talk) 18:43, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I suspect it is unrelated to Wikipedia Disambiguation pages with links. Maybe try Wikipedia:Help desk? -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:20, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. The thing is, I have no other problems with wikipedia whatsoever. It's only when I use the dab link fix tool. Azylber (talk) 22:41, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
When you log out & back in, are you doing it in Dab Solver, or in Wikipedia itself? You want to do it in Dab Solver. --JaGatalk 22:56, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
And that's my confusion, since this is a WP Talk page. If it's a dab solver problem, maybe User talk:Dispenser/Dab solver? -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:56, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Usually when I receive such a message, I just click [Save page] again and it saves. bd2412 T 13:52, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
Ok, it's fixed now. The problem was I thought it meant log in to wikipedia, not to the tool. I hadn't read anywhere that you needed to sign in for the tool. Cheers, Azylber (talk) 11:14, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

In January 2011 I introduced the {{dablinks}} template to tag articles that have an excessive number of links to disambiguation pages. At that time, "excessive" was defined as 25 dablinks. Since then, that limit has been dropped to 15 dablinks, and those have been cleared out, so I'm back to request approval of another change to the limit.

Number of dablinks January 2011 October 2011 June 2012
100+ 12 0 0
50+ 69 0 0
25+ 300 7 0
20+ 483 45 0
15+ 910 251 0
10+ 2476 1142 71
9+ - - 205
8+ - - 450
7+ - - 907
6+ - - 1778
5+ - 9866 3565
4+ - - 8116
3+ - - 21313
2+ - - 73118
1+ 527136 490790 378144

Originally, I was going to ask to lower the limit to 10, but there are so few 10+ dab articles now, I think it would be better to go even lower - maybe 8? What do you think?

Once I get consensus here, I'll go to the bot approval group to get the change made. --JaGatalk 13:46, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd say 8, since that would involve tagging the same (order of magnitude) quantity of pages as the original limit of 25 in January 2011. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:13, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I agree, 8 is a good-sized list, and feels right. bd2412 T 14:28, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Has there been any significant pushback from the taggings so far? I could see it argued that 8 links doesn't really constitute an excessive number, except by the principle that any dablinks are too many. Nick Number (talk) 14:31, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I think in general, articles shouldn't have links to disambiguation pages, except when the link is intentional. I can't really imagine an article having more than 4 intentional links to disambiguation pages. And 4 unintentional links to dab pages in an article is annoying. I vote for 4. Azylber (talk) 14:31, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
There has been no pushback on the template that I can recall - which amazes me. I'd say the slow n' steady approach has been working. With WP:INTDABLINK on our side, there really is no reason for a page to have any dablinks at all. I'm hoping to eventually settle the limit at 5. (There's also a part of me that hopes we'll get the dablinks so low that we will indeed be able to tag even articles with a single dablink. But that's years down the road.) --JaGatalk 16:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
As far as I recall, intentional links that are appropriately marked as being intentional (i.e. are routed through the "Foo (disambiguation)" redirect) are already excluded from this list. We'll get to 4 eventually, but I think we'll draw more people to assist if we give them more bite-sized chunnks to accomplish. bd2412 T 16:19, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
That's right. The bot (and this list) ignores intentional dablinks. This is only for unintentionals. --JaGatalk 16:32, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Eight seems like a good number to start with. Edinburgh Wanderer 17:56, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 Done DPL bot now tags anything with 8 or more dab links, and removes a tag if the number drops below 5. Not only was the bot request speedily approved, it was approved for any limit as low as 5, so we can lower the threshold again whenever we feel able to handle the added workload. --JaGatalk 15:27, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Going forward, I would suggest that the number (8+ now) be lowered by 1 on both sides when the list of work elements drops below some target number. Say around 500-1,000. That keeps the list manageable until you get to 5+ when the number of links starts to climb significantly. At that time if the bot could limit the number of articles in the queue to keep it within a manageable range rather then tagging everything in say the 3+ list. Or does the bot become ineffective at those low levels? Vegaswikian (talk) 19:06, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
That's my plan; drop the limit each time we clear out the backlog. I'm not sure what will happen after we take care of the 5+ articles. But the bot can definitely handle any amount of tagging load we throw at it. --JaGatalk 19:24, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

DPL Bot

Whose brilliant idea was this and how long has it existed? In addition, will it notify me every time I add one or is it slightly hit and miss? I'm usually very good at following any links I add (due to my work with WikiProject Wikify), but I miss them sometimes. Ryan Vesey Review me! 15:40, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Normally it gets them all but right now Toolserver is so badly lagged the bot can't run. Otherwise you should get a notice every week or so summing up your recently created dab links. --JaGatalk 19:19, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Monthly list

In case anyone is wondering what happened to the monthly list for July: the bot that generates the list for inclusion on WP:DPL is unable to finish the job because of problems on the Toolserver. As soon as that problem clears up (although I have absolutely no way of predicting when that will be), I will re-start the bot so that we will have a list on this page. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:30, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping us informed. For now I'm working on red links. SchreiberBike (talk) 05:25, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
The DAB Challenge page is still available. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:04, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Hugh Thomas (disambiguation)

Since Hugh Thomas has been moved to Hugh Thomas (writer), Hugh Thomas (disambiguation) needs to be moved to Hugh Thomas over the redirect that is there, and then Hugh Thomas (disambiguation) can redirect to Hugh Thomas. I would do it, but Hugh Thomas has been edited, so an admin needs to do it. Can any friendly admins help out? :) -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 06:43, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I tagged the page with {{db-movedab}}[6]. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Malplaced disambiguation pages#Instructions. --Kusunose 10:24, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
Ah! I will do that in the future. The pages have now been moved. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 18:38, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Director (education)

This is problematic, given the likely WP:DABCONCEPT violation, the clear WP:INCOMPDAB violation, and the large number of incoming links. I wonder whether editors should be allowed to make disambiguation pages with incomplete disambiguation titles at all - it would be nice if the software stopped them before it became a mess for us to deal with. This page, I note, was disambiguated as the result of an RfD discussion, with no consideration of the rules governing disambiguation. With respect to this page, in particular, I propose that we create a Glossary of positions in education administration and redirect this, and all similarly sporadically used terms, to that target. bd2412 T 20:42, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

A discussion concerning the use of {{USS}} and similar templates

A discussion concerning the use of {{USS}} and similar templates on disambiguation pages is started at Talk: MOS/dab Use of {{USS}} and similar templates on disambiguation pages. Your participation welcome.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:35, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Number of disambiguation templates

Hi,

I've just fixed a bug on WPCleaner that was probably only visible on enwiki because there are more than 50 different templates listed in MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage. It's fixed, but I had to increase the number of requests made by WPCleaner to know if pages are dab pages.

I'm using Mediawiki API templates request to know if a pages are dab pages or not, with the list of disambiguation templates (using parameter tltemplates). This parameter only accepts 50 templates, so I now have to make 2 requests (one for the first 50 templates, one for the rest).

I don't know if it will be noticeable on the speed, I hope not.

Are so many templates for dab pages useful ? Especially so many redirects (more than half) ? --NicoV (talk) 21:15, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

If they're not being transcluded anywhere, they're probably safe for removal. If they're being transcluded somewhere (even the redirects), some body is finding them useful, but they could go through a MfD discussion. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:18, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
NicoV, not really answering your question, but a more efficient way to identify whether pages are dab pages or not would be to test for membership in Category:All disambiguation pages (or Category:All article disambiguation pages if you only care about the main namespace). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 01:23, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, I was also looking for that kind of advice for more efficient requests :) . Not every wiki has a category with all dab pages in it, that's why I am using a request based on templates in MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage, but I can make this configurable and use a request on categories when possible. It will work at least for enwiki and frwiki also. Thanks ! --NicoV (talk) 08:34, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
I've released a new version of WPCleaner that can use categories instead of templates to decide if a page is a dab page. I've configured it on enwiki to use Category:All article disambiguation pages. I tested it and it seems ok, but anyone tell me if they see strange behaviours. --NicoV (talk) 12:02, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Challenge Scoring

Over the last couple of days, I've removed dozens of links to disambiguation pages. But I don't appear in the challenge leaderboard. Why is that? Am I doing something wrong? -- Mikeblas (talk) 13:02, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

If you look at the top of tools:~dpl/disambig_links.php, you'll see "Replication lag is 13 days 2 hours 28 minutes." (more or less) - That means if you fixed a link 13 days ago, it just showed up for scoring purposes today. If you fixed a link 12 days ago, it hasn't been scored yet. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about this lag; we just have to wait for the server to catch up, which means that at least for the rest of August, scoring is likely to be highly inaccurate. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:10, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
Holy smokes! I saw that text, but didn't understand what what replicating to what. Thanks for the explanation. -- Mikeblas (talk) 13:30, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
How's The Daily holding up? Any lag on that? PhnomPencil talk contribs 15:45, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
The Daily Disambig says, "All information on this page is derived from the wonderful Toolserver reports generated by User:JaGa." Does that answer your question? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:44, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
I usually need to be told thrice for it to sink in, so no but we're two thirds of the way there. It means I misunderstood the nature of the Toolserver lag though, figured it was in fits and bursts instead of smooth. PhnomPencil talk contribs 22:20, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver news

Good and bad, that is: the bad news is that virtually all the toolserver.org tools that support Disambiguation Pages with Links are currently offline (the reports are still available but they haven't been updated for several days and probably won't be updated for several more), which also means the Daily Disambig can't be produced. The good news is that the Toolserver administrator has scheduled a repair for Wednesday which, if it works (keep fingers crossed), should not only get everything operating again but also eliminate the 16 days of replication lag we have been suffering from. Stay tuned.... --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:24, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

(But August challenge scoring will probably be irremediably screwed up nevertheless) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:27, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
Great news, Russ. It's still updating, I guess... but I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't wait to sink his teeth into some fresh links. Thanks for looking after this. PhnomPencil talk contribs 13:05, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
I hope the DAB Challenge updates will resume within the next hour. I have to wait for the replag to drop below 30 minutes before I can try the main Disambig update again. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:37, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
Earlier, the replag was at 2 hours and change, now it's peeking over 5 hours. Still better than 2 weeks though... --JaGatalk 21:34, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

For those who are suffering withdrawal pains due to the Toolserver problems, I have updated Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/from templates with a new list I generated last night. This was a hacked-together script that isn't as sophisticated as JaGa's Toolserver setup, so it probably has some false positives and other problems in it, but it's better than nothing. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:33, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thinking that we should remove the ones we've taken care of? --User:Woohookitty Disamming fool! 15:30, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely. bd2412 T 19:49, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Replacing a redirected link to a disambiguation page by a direct link to the disambiguation page

Hi,

I got a "kind of strange" message from DLP bot:

I've replaced a link to a "disambiguation but redirected page" to the "partially disambiguation page" pointed by the redirection: MOB (disambiguation) redirect to Mob. So I change MOB (disambiguation) to Mob in the page Crowd. The synopsis of Mob is the exact meaning aimed by Crowd: “Mob commonly refers to a crowd of people (from Latin mobile vulgus, meaning "fickle commoners").” And none of the “may also refer to” fits.

“Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Crowd, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Mob (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:20, 27 August 2012 (UTC)”

My change: http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Crowd&diff=509315600&oldid=507839381

The bot could may should be able to see when “a link pointing to the disambiguation page” is not added but only replaced an existing redirected link.

(pardon my english, my humour and the logic)

Lacrymocéphale 12:31, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Technically, the bot was right, since the original link to MOB (disambiguation) was correct according to WP:D#HOWTODAB. But it's no big deal; the edit can easily be fixed. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:03, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Yes, the bot is correct. If a link to a disambiguation page is intentional, then the link should be piped through the "Foo (disambiguation)" redirect so that it does not show up on our lists of errors needing to be fixed. bd2412 T 16:31, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Template:Incoming links has been nominated for deletion. The discussion is ongoing at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 September 5#Template:Incoming links. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:10, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Euphrasia Eluvathingal MADE IT OK, PLS CLICK KATTOOR now

I have read your message ,,,made proper changes pls check the kattoor by clicking it ,it links to proper page.--Johnyjohny294 (talk) 11:31, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I checked it out - looks perfect. Thanks for the fix. Cheers, --JaGatalk 16:53, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Per discussions at the deletion discussion and my talk, I've created a script that gets DPL bot to add or remove {{incoming links}} on disambiguation pages. If such a task is approved here, I'll take this proposal to the bot approvals group.

First, though, I'd like people's input on:

  1. Should the bot add and remove tags, or only remove tags when the number of incoming links drops below a certain level?
  2. What should the thresholds be for addition or removal? For {{dablinks}}, we started with high thresholds and moved down over time; that's worked well. Also, we usually have a spread to avoid frequent tagging, de-tagging, and re-tagging when people are warring over whether a single page is a disambig or not. For instance, we could add the tag for disambigs with 30 or more incoming links, and remove it for 25 or less.

--JaGatalk 17:05, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

That sounds about right to me. A threshold of 30 would include roughly the 75 disambig pages with the most links (which would mean a much smaller set of pages using this template than is the case now). Anything lower than that at this early stage would probably be too intrusive. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:56, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
I would set it to add the template at 20 links, and remove it at 15. There are several thousand disambig pages with over 20 incoming links, so this setting would potentially flag tens of thousands of links. However, I'm not opposed to "resetting" the status quo (many low-link pages now having this template) to tag at 30 and remove at 25, just to see how it works for a few months. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:11, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

 Done DPL bot has been approved for incoming links tagging - add for 30+, remove for < 25. It will start with this afternoon's run. --JaGatalk 18:20, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Is this bit of cleanup worthwhile?

When disambiguating, I often run into words like [[cynic]]al, then when I disambiguate cynic to Cynicism (philosophy), I change it to [[Cynicism (philosophy)|cynical]], moving the suffix into the displayed word instead of keeping it as [[Cynicism (philosophy)|cynic]]al. I do this because neatness counts, but I wonder if it makes even the smallest amount of difference from the point of view of the software. Am I saving some processor a few cycles, or is it just a waste of my time? Thanks, SchreiberBike (talk) 17:19, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

IMO, regardless of whether the hardware/software appreciates the effort, I think most editors would find your changes easier to read in the editing window. older ≠ wiser 00:26, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't know about the software, but it makes no difference whatsoever to the article readers. Other editors may find it neater and better, but it probably doesn't matter that much. Change them if you like, but I wouldn't spend too much time on it. Bazonka (talk) 17:32, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Some dab pages for the contest close to being done.

The following pages for the October contest are close to being finished:

Cheers! bd2412 T 20:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, the backlog of Category:Pages with excessive dablinks is finally cleared. Would anyone object if I drop the definition of "excessive" dablinks from 8 to 7? That would give us a total of 198 articles to work on. Setting it to 6 would give us 710, which strikes me as a bit much. --JaGatalk 16:48, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguating definitions (i.e. Versatile)

While there are some pages which are referring to the encyclopedia-worthy topics on the DAB page (Tractor#Modern_row-crop_tractors, which I just fixed), others, such as Falafel#Vegetarianism are trying to link to what is essentially the dictionary defined word. Should these wikilinks just be removed altogether? OhioGuy814 (talk) 22:41, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Common terms should not be linked. In my opinion, this would be a common term. If common terms were linked, then every word in an article would be linked. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:20, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. That's what I thought. I just wanted a sanity check before I went around unlinking a bunch of stuff.OhioGuy814 (talk) 00:32, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
I do a lot of common term de-linking as well. If you don't expect the user to know the definition of the word, but there's no reason for it to have an article in Wikipedia (or there is an article but it's not really the right usage), you can always link to Wiktionary. For example, I've Wiktionary-ed ectopic and iconoclastic recently. Some people aren't crazy about linking away from Wikipedia though, so use this sparingly. --JaGatalk 00:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Makes perfect sense. I'm hoping most readers understand "versatile" though. A lot of pages I ended up on had every other word wikilinked. I might have to go back and fix some more of those now. So much to do! OhioGuy814 (talk) 04:00, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
The relevant guideline is WP:OVERLINK, which says that "everyday English words that are expected to be understood in the context" should not be linked.--ShelfSkewed Talk 04:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Database problems

According to the Toolserver status page, database replication currently is "broken". I'm not sure exactly what is broken or what the prospects are for fixing it, but it is clear that there are some errors in the Daily Disambig reports and the Toolserver report pages, including the monthly challenge. These may possibly get worse before they get better. Sorry, but there is nothing we can do about this until the Toolserver fixes its problems. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:55, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Update: Although the database is being replicated, the replica is "corrupt", which is what is causing various obvious errors in the daily reports, and there have been some problems trying to replace it with a clean copy. I'd guess that these problems won't be cleared up for another week or so, at best. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:46, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:Macedonia topics

There is a disambig link to History of Macedonia in this template that I can't figure out how to fix. It should link to History of the Republic of Macedonia. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:31, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I fixed the dab link; I'm trying to figure out the best way to restore the flag. TimBentley (talk) 21:20, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, well done. bd2412 T 00:10, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Oldest dab needed links.

Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation from June 2011 contains the oldest dated tagged links. I think it would be a good idea to target those, to the degree that these links can be cross-referenced to our lists for the contest. bd2412 T 04:28, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Having looked at this group a bit further, I have an idea. Would it be possible to have a bot identify the editor who added the ambiguous link in each of these cases, and then drop a note on that editor's page asking them what they meant? I'd like to do this for all tagged links more than, say, a year old, since it is likely that a number of people have been unable to figure them out in that time, and the editor who added them would be the one most likely to know what they were talking about. bd2412 T 19:11, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I might be missing a really obvious one but i cant find what is causing these links[7]. Dab solver doesn't find so thought maybe in template but not seeing the link. Been showing as needing disam for a whilst, apologies if this proves to be very obvious.Blethering Scot 20:29, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

See the section immediately above this one. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
In what way, it works for other links and it is being updated at the moment I.e. other articles on my watchlist are clearing when fixed and if you look no one has edited template long before it appeared again. Even if server copy is corrupt to pick up as needing fixed the error had to be there at some point since server became corrupt and just can see it.Blethering Scot 21:38, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
What's the status with the toolserver now? Blethering Scot 19:47, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Nampally and CID are other such cases...--Vyom25 (talk) 10:30, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Andean culture and Anglo-French

I'm not sure that much can be done right now about the links (Culture of Bolivia, Jatari Indian Folk Association, Pucará, Sacred food as offering) that currently link to the "Andean culture" disambiguation page. It appears that all four pages should link to that disambiguation page since they are referring to a variety of cultures. There's already a tag on the "Andean culture" disambiguation page to convert that page into a broad-concept article, describing the primary meaning of the term. Guy1890 (talk) 08:01, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

The same basic thing goes for the term "Anglo-French". It doesn't look like much can be done for the pages that link to it: Eric Kolelas, List of critics of Islam, Norris (surname), and Tuffet.
Same thing goes for Chelsham and Farleigh. Not much can currently be done with the pages that link to it either: Farleigh, Surrey, Godstone Rural District, List of civil parishes in Surrey and Tandridge District. Guy1890 (talk) 23:25, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
I have de-disambiguated Chelsham and Farleigh, as this is clearly not a disambiguation page. The civil parish is a single distinct political unit, capable of being described as such in an article. bd2412 T 00:05, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
The problem with Andean culture is that it is not an ambiguous term; it is a broad concept that covers several related terms, those being the ancient and modern cultures of the Andean Mountain region. This should not be a disambiguation page at all. bd2412 T 16:32, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Seriously - 90.6% completed?

With three days left in the month, the list is 90.6% completed and there are only 55 articles left on the To Do list. The The Daily Disambig appears to be showing impressive numbers. Is this real, or is this a database problem? Does it indicate that next month we should start with more than 500 articles? Does it indicate anything else? SchreiberBike (talk) 03:54, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I think it's mostly real. There are some false positives on the list due to database errors, but many of those were removed at the start of the month and I doubt they amount to even five percent of the total links. Because we've been so successful, the top 500 pages just don't contain as many links as they used to, so maybe we should consider increasing the list to 600 pages. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:45, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, I've been on a long absence. I'd certainly like to increase the limit, and now that bd2412 is proposing to sweeten the contest, perhaps our dabfixing capacity will grow? I suppose going all the way to 1000 would be too much? I'm a big fan of nice, round numbers. --JaGatalk 02:35, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I do like round numbers. 600 seems too small, 750 is more triangular than round, I say go for 1000 for February 2013. SchreiberBike (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Having mulled the issue, I agree. Let's move it up to a thousand. bd2412 T 02:56, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
I see that Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/February 2013 has been created by RussBot, and it only has 500 links (including one on the January list that has already been finished). Will this be expanded to 1,000 (hopefully minus the four that should no longer be on the page)? bd2412 T 19:25, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Out of date?

The 'How to help' section claims that using either the userbox or the usertop template adds you to Category:Wikipedians who help fix disambiguation pages with links but the category page only mentions the userbox, and appears to be correct as I have the usertop and am not in the category. I assume that the statement on this page was either a mistake in the first place, or it used to work like that but has been changed. Anyone know if that's right?

It's not that I mind not being in the category, I just figure the section should be edited for the sake of accuracy. CarrieVS (talk) 22:53, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

The instructions state: "To include yourself in this category, you may add {{Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Userbox}} to your userpage." You have {{Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Usertop}} to your userpage. It looks like Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Usertop is supposed to add users to the category. Hope someone can fix this for you. GoingBatty (talk) 18:02, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Happy Double-Zero Day

It's time to celebrate! Today, February 5, for the first time ever, we have ZERO disambiguation pages with 100 or more links, and ZERO disambiguation pages with 50 or more links. The top of the list is Assyrian with 49. This definitely calls for a party! Good work, everyone!! But we'll have to make it quick, because it's nearly certain that when the sun comes up tomorrow, there will be new pages on the list.... --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:00, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Nice but that is temporary thing as you say. Good work everyone.--Vyom25 (talk) 14:08, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
We are also down to an all-time low of 11 pages with 25 or more links. If everyone could tackle one of those right now, we'd also quickly be in the clear for that column. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:45, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

CarrieVS (talk) has given you a WikiCake! WikiCakes promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cake, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Bon appetit!

Can't have a party without cake. Help yourselves, everyone, we've earned it! CarrieVS (talk) 18:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Spread the tastiness of cakes by adding {{subst:GiveCake}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Thanks for the cake. We've earned it and it's great to celebrate. SchreiberBike (talk) 18:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Cross-reference pages

When many pages link to a page that is labeled a "disambiguation page", one possibility to consider is whether it should be changed to a cross-reference page. Whereas a disambiguation page may link to unrelated topics known by the same name, a cross-reference page is on one topic, which is not in itself worthy of an article but would be worthy of a redirect if there were only one reasonable target page. I think this page on disambiguation pages with links should mention that. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:42, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

A cash prize for next month's contest.

February Dab Challenge Rewards
Fixes First Second Third Fourth
2,500 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00
5,000 $25.00 $12.50 $6.25 $3.13
7,500 $50.00 $25.00 $12.50 $6.25
10,000 $75.00 $37.50 $18.75 $9.38
12,500
(maximum
prize) 		$100.00 $50.00 $25.00 $12.50

I have recently taken a new job that severely restricts my editing time. I am therefore going to make a different kind of contribution by offering a cash prize to the winners of the February 2013 monthly disambiguation contest. Having thought through a variety of different formulas, I have determined that I will give a first place prize equaling one cent for every fix over 2,500, up to a maximum of $100. Therefore, if the winner fixes 3,675 links, they would get $11.75; and if the winner fixes 12,500 links, they would get the full $100. The second place finisher will receive a prize calculated the same way, but cut in half, so a second place finisher who fixed 10,000 links would receive $37.50. The third place finisher will receive a prize calculated the same way, but cut in half again, so a third place finisher who fixed 8,500 links would receive $15. Finally, the fourth place finisher will receive a prize calculated the same way, but cut in half again, so a fourth place finisher who fixed 7,300 links would receive $6, which is better than nothing. As usual, careless or incorrect edits will not be counted, and a pattern of such edits will result in the disqualification of the contestant. I will be glad to mail cash to the winner's home. If anonymity is a concern, the prize can be declined, or directed to the Wikimedia Foundation as a donation in the winner's name, or paid in kind through a purchase from a wishlist on a retailer's website. In order to preserve the integrity of the contest, I will not be a participant, and will instead busy myself with fixing WP:DABCONCEPT pages and repairing disambiguation links that don't count for the contest. I'll be glad to answer any questions. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:42, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

There were 12,659 combined fixes from November's Champions. Woohookitty holds the record at 9,034 fixes and clocks in at over an edit per minute. Compare this our bonus challenge winner to JustAGal who edits over 100 hours a month (>25 hours/week). So getting to your max grand prize will take somewhere between 180 and 600 hours. Maybe the WMF is willing to sweeten the deal? — Dispenser 20:00, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't think we want or expect the prize to be so great that anyone's going to quit their day job to devote themselves full-time to disambiguation.  :-) R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:19, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
What's wrong with having Win a free iPod touch plastered everywhere instead of stupid fundraising banners? — Dispenser 21:37, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm no longer active on this project BUT I see nothing but accusations of bad-will if $ was offered. J04n(talk page) 00:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't think the amount put forward in this case is enough to raise more than a minor grumble. I would agree if the prize was being "sponsored" by a commercial enterprise. By the way, for the record, the most second-place fixes is 6,140 (also by Woohookitty); the most third-place fixes is 4,225 (by Russbot, for non-bots it's 3,974, also by Woohookitty); and the most fourth-place fixes is 3,478 (by CanisRufus). bd2412 T 00:51, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Everything else is up to you guys but I'm happy to sweeten the deal to try and push the event. Perhaps a t-shirt for the top 4 ? Jalexander--WMF 02:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
This is sort of an experiment, to see if a more tangible prize fires the competitive juices. I have no objection to additional rewards, but I'd like to see how my fairly metered effort works out first. bd2412 T 04:19, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Are cash prizes used on other projects in Wikipedia? Part of me doesn't like the idea, because it changes the spirit of the competition, but it's a small enough amount that still no one would really be doing it for the money. It's great to try new things and I'm curious to see what will happen.SchreiberBike (talk) 06:25, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I think this would be great BUT I am concerned about overzealous competitors doing a sloppy job. It'd probably be a good idea to review the edits of newcomers if this is launched. --JaGatalk 02:37, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

As I will not be participating in next month's contest myself, I plan to do a good deal more reviewing. bd2412 T 02:59, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Given the stated contest rules above & looking at the 4-year or so averages from here Wikipedia:Disambiguation_pages_with_links/Disambiguator_Hall_of_Fame, I kinda doubt that anyone will be in the run for winning that much money. That should cut down on the possibility of Wikipedia users (of which apparently only a tiny fraction do much editing on Wikipedia anyways) doing hasty or sloppy edits IMHO. Guy1890 (talk) 08:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I think that the existing gamification makes resolving the disambiguation backlog more fun, and commend BD2412 for trying something new. I tend to do more disambiguation by Wikiproject using dabsolver, including many disambig fixes that don't count for any points. I wonder if expanding the list from the top 500 to 750 or 1000 would help to get more people involved in the contest and focused on their areas of expertise, which may provide more of a benefit to Wikipedia. Good luck to all! GoingBatty (talk) 02:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! Perhaps the competition could be enhanced even further by keeping separate counts for different kinds of fixes, like "most fixes done with dabsolver" or "most fixes in math topic articles". bd2412 T 03:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


Well this is a great idea :) I hope it works out. I'm "semi-retired" nowadays. LOL I still disam but instead of 500 edits a day it's more like 100-150. --User:Woohookitty Disamming fool! 15:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Results

The contest piqued my interest enough to get me focused on disambiguating this month (instead of other areas). However, it appears no one did enough to earn a prize. GoingBatty (talk) 03:20, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm kind of surprised by that. I will reassess, and perhaps make such an offer again in a month or two, with some tweaks to make it more likely that someone will win something. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:27, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

More input is needed at Talk:Trot (horse gait)#Requested move

More input is needed at Talk:Trot (horse gait)#Requested move, where the proposal is to move the page to the primary topic of Trot (currently a disambiguation page which regularly draws incoming links). bd2412 T 03:28, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Immunity (reality television)

If Immunity (reality television) is deleted as proposed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Immunity (reality television)‎, we will have hundreds of links pointing to Immunity with no way to fix them for lack of a place to retarget them. bd2412 T 01:34, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

They could be fixed by removing them instead of retargeting them, right? If the target is not encyclopedic, that's a valid solution. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I would suggest that the presence of over 250 such links indicates that the topic is either encyclopedic on its own, or merits coverage in some other article. I would add that removing the links would still require the work of removing the links, and that new links intended for this target are (and will surely continue to be) made on a fairly regular basis, which is what prompted the creation of this article in the first place. Furthermore, unless we plan to put a hidden comment after every use of the word "immunity" in a reality TV article, we can expect well-meaning editors to come along and re-link the de-linked pages with the expectation that the topic is indeed covered in this compendium. bd2412 T 04:25, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

DAB Challenge announcement

As regular participants in this project already know, the daily updates of the Toolserver reports, and The Daily Disambig which depends on them, have been off-line for several weeks due to problems on the Toolserver. The contest updates, fortunately, have been running semi-regularly throughout this period, although not on their usual hourly schedule.

Since there is no way of knowing how long the disruption of Toolserver service may last, I have consulted with JaGa and we are going to keep the March contest open until the Toolserver replication lag gets back down to an acceptable level and we can be reasonably sure of a reliable update. At that point, we will close out March and start April (or May, or whatever...). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:53, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

On the one hand, I am disappointed by this issue cropping up again, but on the other hand, let's knock this list out! bd2412 T 01:32, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
You may want to add some kind of temporary link to the March list on the project page. As a semi-regular participant in the contest, I'm used to finding the list at the bottom of the project page (which currently shows nothing) and it took me a little while to find the most recent list. Just a suggestion. -- Fyrefly (talk) 23:25, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Good catch. As you may have noticed, we got The Daily Disambig today! However, we'll have to wait and see what happens tomorrow. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:54, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Aargh! It's like we went backwards a month! bd2412 T 02:14, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Quite the shock... did someone deal with those Iranian towns (toolserver's down for me)? First time I've reached an Asian geographical dab, closed the laptop lid, and accepted stumpedifidy. PhnomPencil (talk) 23:34, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Because the disambig updates ran successfully yesterday and again today, even though the Toolserver is not really back to normal yet, I am going to go out on a limb and attempt to start the April contest as of 00:00 UTC tomorrow, April 5. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:32, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Proof of concept.

I would like to see over 500 pages on the list completed in this month's contest. Otherwise, it seems pointless to list a thousand. bd2412 T 03:49, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Huzzah! 500 pages for April. --Squids and Chips 14:43, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Commoners in the United Kingdom

Currently, all 27 of the dab links to Commoners in the United Kingdom come from "Fellow commoner", "Mature commoner", "Gentleman commoner" or other spellings of those three as dictionary definitions. Would it be better to create an article at Commoner (academia) or remove links to that page? I see there are articles for servitor, sizar, battel, which seem to be other types of students along the lines of "so-and-so commoner" and there seems to be a regular "commoner," but I can't seem to find much of anything about what a "fellow commoner" and "gentleman commoner" is outside of a dictionary definition, and I find even less on "mature commoner". The WikiProjects for Oxford and Cambridge appear to be very inactive, if not dead. --Squids and Chips 20:25, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Dabsolver having problems?

There's a problem with this dabsolver edit.LeadSongDog come howl! 02:34, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I've had things like that happen to me before, but only when I was on a strange computer. bd2412 T 02:59, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
That may be due to an older version of Internet Explorer not playing nicely with the XSS filter. GoingBatty (talk) 03:24, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
I can't get Dabsolver today, April 23, and use Firefox. I clicked on the Dabsolver link for work on my Talk page, and got a message saying that page doesn't exist.Parkwells (talk) 13:44, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
It looks like all the Toolserver tools are down at the moment. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:58, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Over the last week, I've noticed an editor on a dynamic IP that makes multiple bad edits, depiping links, adding unnecessary wikilinks, and making other unnecessary edits. I don't know if these edits are intentional or just misguided. The pages with bad edits might end up being tagged by the DPL bot if there are enough dablinks. If you check articles with the most dablinks, please look at the history, as it's easier just to revert to a version before the bad edits. --Squids and Chips 21:19, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguators! Focus all firepower on the top ten most linked pages!

Charge! bd2412 T 00:43, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Toolserver tools

It appears that all DPL pages on Toolserver are inaccessible. Can any watchers of this page look into this? -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 03:14, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

The applications that I routinely use on the Toolserver have been acting squirrely (either extremely slow or not at all) for a number of days now. In other words, it seems to be a larger issue than just the DPL pages. Guy1890 (talk) 03:57, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
Normally, I would agree, as it seems common for Toolserver to have issues. The lists hadn't been updated for three days, but that wasn't unusual. But within the last couple hours, all of the pages don't exist (according to the page that appears). This is the first time I've ever seen that. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 04:04, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#FYI:_Toolserver_web_tools_and_bots_down. GoingBatty (talk) 04:40, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
I have commented there, and will repeat here, that we need a backup to the toolserver. What would it take to create one? bd2412 T 13:18, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
This is a long and involved drama. WMF is in the process of creating a "replacement" for Toolserver, but it isn't ready yet. Dispenser says they don't want to move there anyway. Toolserver will go away at some point whether we move or not. The drama continues .... R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:32, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
I think part of the issue is that the replacement will require reprogramming and is not a simple drop in. So the move will create work those who provide the tools. If you have a large number of these tools developed over time, the conversion could require a lot of work. However since the replacement is not yet up, I suspect no one knows how much work will be needed. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

While the Toolserver remains alternately down and unreliable, I'm maintaining and irregularly updating a list of templates containing links to disambiguation pages, at User:RussBot/Templates with links to disambiguation pages. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:41, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks like some tools have been moved to the labs servers. I have no viability as to how much, but tools like DPLs seem to be running better. My thinking is that as workload is taken off the old server, the remaining tools will run better, at least until the server is taken down. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:59, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
Yea, I know that most (if not all) of the Red Link Recovery tools were moved to another server a short while ago. Guy1890 (talk) 19:53, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Working on coffee shop disambig list question

I have changed all the links that are related directly to articles only (coffee shop). My question is there are still more pages that link to the coffee shop disambig page however they are user, namespace page, disambig pages, or articles marked for deletion etc. I read that we shouldnt change the ones on user pages and just want to be clear about the other types of pages that I have ran across so I don't get banned for making too many mistakes while fixing these things. Oh and I want to be able to mark it as done when I am actually done with it. Thanks so much for the clarification in advance. TattØØdẄaitre§ 18:50, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I assume that you're talking above about this disamb. page, Coffee_shop. There's still one link to that page from Chock full o'Nuts, but it's under the "See also" header, which prolly isn't that big a deal. You don't need to worry about the rest of the links to that disamb. page. Nice job. Guy1890 (talk) 20:01, 13 June 2013 (UTC)"
Tattoodwaitress, it's customary just to fix links in the Article and Template namespaces. Per WP:INTDAB, the best way to deal with the intentional links on Chock full o'Nuts and Coffeehouse would be to pipe them to Coffee shop (disambiguation), e.g. [[Coffee shop (disambiguation)|Coffee shop]].
THANK you so very much. Its nice to know I am on the right track then. Alright so you put the nowiki tag in there? Just like you ... oh no you did that so it wouldnt show up as a link right? or will it do that automatically when I point it to the disambig page? TattØØdẄaitre§ 21:05, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
The nowiki tag was so it didn't show up as a link. Sometimes, you want to show someone some WikiMarkup without making them go into the edit window. There's a few ways to do that:
  • For templates only, {{name of template}} (the code is {{tl|name of template}}) produces the { and } around it with a link to the page
  • For everything, </nowiki> works (see next one for the code syntax).
  • For everything, the {{code|whatever you wish to display}} produces whatever [[you]] want [[to]] display. However, this doesn't work for html tags in the template (anything that is < something > </ something >)
In short, don't copy the nowiki tag :) Charmlet (talk) 21:12, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
I understand that now. Thanks and i just ran across something that leads me to another question. For the intentional link on chock full o nuts i used the suggestion above to do this [[Coffee shop (disambiguation)|Coffee shop]] i have now ran across another "see also" link on the herbivore article however the text that you can see (without going to edit) says "Plant-based diet (disambiguation)" my question is should the disambiguation in () actually be seen? (if so the one on did on the chock full o nuts article might be wrong.) Or should that be "behind the scenes" in the code on the opposite side of the "|" than where it is now? Also when going to the plant based diet disambig page it doesn't seem to have one like the coffee shop page had? Does this make a difference? Sorry I am one of those "hands on" learning type of people so sometimes it takes me a little while to get it when I have to get help. Hope you can understand what I am asking. Maybe this will make more sense. On the Herbivore article should it be [[Plant-based diet (disambiguation)|Plant-based diet]] or should it be this [[Plant-based diet|Plant-based diet (disambiguation)]] and what is the difference between this Coffee shop page and this page Coffee shop (disambiguation)

Attempted Page Break

  • OK, so now the Herbivore article..."my question is should the disambiguation in () actually be seen?" Usually, no...although I have seen it that way on some pages, especially on various disamb. pages or in hatnotes at the top of an article. I've changed the section in question now. I think that you generally don't want to pipe Wiki-link to a disamb. page.
The practice is laid out in WP:HOWTODAB. The idea is to pipe the (disambiguation) page so that other disambiguators can easily tell that the link is intentional. Nick Number (talk) 02:12, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Oh I am sorry that those two coffee page links I spoke about did go to the same page... weird i must of did links wrong. However if you go to the coffee shop page the one that says this on it Coffee shop From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Coffee shop (disambiguation)) and then click the link (very tiny words) that says (Redirected from Coffee shop (disambiguation)) it goes to a page that says this on it and that's it Coffee shop (disambiguation) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Redirect page Jump to: navigation, search REDIRECTCoffee shop I guess this is a redirect page?? I am just so confused about the two. TattØØdẄaitre§ lĖTŝ tÅLĶ 04:05, 14 June 2013 (UTC)TattØØdẄaitre§ lĖTŝ tÅLĶ 04:07, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
OK, this is what a redirect page looks like. If one attempts to Wiki-link (or pipe-link) the exact phrase "Coffee shop (disambiguation)", then that phrase will automatically go to the Coffee shop disamb. page. Guy1890 (talk) 05:28, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
OOOOooh, thats what happened to mine up there. Yes I get it now. Thanks so much. TattØØdẄaitre§ lĖTŝ tÅLĶ 06:28, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Could a more experienced editor check "possession" on to do list?

Could a more experienced editor check "possession" on to do list? I am pretty sure it is done; there is only talk pages, redirects, and the disambig pages left. I just want to be sure before moving it to the done list, as I am really new at helping out with fixing the disambig links. Oh and if you could let me know if my assumption is correct as this is part of the learning curve for me I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks! TattØØdẄaitre§ lĖTŝ tÅLĶ 16:58, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that looks good and it is ready to be moved. Nick Number (talk) 17:42, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks so much. TattØØdẄaitre§ lĖTŝ tÅLĶ 18:38, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Relief

I'm having a disagreement with another editor about Relief (disambiguation). He's added several entries under the Military section which appear to me to be partial title matches and I contend that they should be removed. However, it's possible that I'm mistaken. I'd appreciate it if someone could take a look at the Talk page discussion and weigh in with an impartial opinion. Nick Number (talk) 18:02, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Done. Others can feel free to chime in as well. Guy1890 (talk) 21:19, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Odd behaviour by DPL bot

DPL bot has added its dablinks template to Toronto and Region Conservation Authority in the past few months, even though there are no ambiguous links to fix. Can its owner please have a look and determine why it has done this? Thanks! PKT(alk) 17:07, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Best to inquire at User talk:DPL bot (or User talk:JaGa).--ShelfSkewed Talk 17:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks - one of my colleagues has done so. PKT(alk) 12:22, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Looking at the page's history, it seems likely that this is the result of Toolserver database corruption that occurred last September and October and still hasn't been fixed.  :-( I've made some test edits to the page that may clear up the problem; if it worked, the bot should remove the template on its next daily run. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:27, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

When I first started editing here I was taught that you should only add a link to another article using the first instance of a word you want to link. Since then I have heard from another editor that there are times that links are added to keep continuity (even if it creates a red link). I am wondering in the case of this article Co-marketing if the link that I just unlinked (it linked to the disambig) and the first instance of the word also linked to the disambig, but I already pointed to the appropriate word. After going back to look at the changes I realize that the second instance which I unlinked is in a list of other words that are also linked to other articles so it looks a little funny. Anyway am curious as to what should be done in this instance. I hope this makes sense and Thanks for any help in advance Note* the disambig I am working on at this time is "promotion" TattØØdẄaitre§ lĖTŝ tÅLĶ 06:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tattoodwaitress, the answer is "it's complicated." Yes we would typically only link to the first instance of the word. But in the instance where you delinked it, perhaps it would be appropriate to keep it linked for continuity (I personally would normally do that). It would only be redlinked if there were potential for a future article (i.e. we wouldn't redlinke for continuity). The issue in this case is with the eight words that are linked as part of that set (prior to your delinking), Product, Comodity, Price, Cost, Channel, Promotion, and Communication. Of those, probably the only one that should be linked is Channel (which is piped to marketing channel. The others are common enough words that they don't need to be linked, and Place links to a DAB page. In this case I would delink the 6 words, and the their instances immediately below (in C2, C3, C4, and C5). Hope this helps. --kelapstick(bainuu) 08:26, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
Hi kelapstick yes that helps a lot thanks so much. I will do as you suggest and if have any questions Ill come back TattØØdẄaitre§ lĖTŝ tÅLĶ 15:11, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, kelapstick Me again. I removed those and decided to check using the DAB solver (which i had forgotten about) which helped me to find another duplicate link. I did however remove the C6 link as well (which you did not mention above) but which I also thought was a common word. Would you mind checking my work and let me know what you think? I would really appreciate that. Thanks TattØØdẄaitre§ lĖTŝ tÅLĶ 15:29, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Is there a way to use this function independently from the dab solver tool? Or is there another tool that does it? I want to use it to help populate name lists. —Xezbeth (talk) 16:04, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

@Xezbeth: - You might want to try WPCleaner. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 23:27, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
@Xezbeth: This is the tool that dabsolver uses: redlinks.py Tassedethe (talk) 00:17, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Question

DPL Bot gave me a notification that I link one article to Titular. I still want to link to that because it shows a one line meaning that, "Titular means existing in title only". That's what I want. And what it shows below "It may refer to" is not what I want. Should I link to Wiktionary or keep that link? Shobhit Gosain Talk 13:52, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

If you just want to link to the common meaning and there isn't an article for the concept then yes, Wiktionary is the way to go. [[Wikt:titular|titular]] Nick Number (talk) 14:20, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Greater Mongolia

Greater Mongolia is a disambiguation page that lists two meanings of the term. Due to strong and to some degree sourced opposition by Han nationalists to a previous version (https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Greater_Mongolia&oldid=462409821) which itself was insufficiently sourced, I gave in and turned the old geographical article into a disambiguation page. But neither article exists. Greater Mongolia in Pan-Mongolism isn't worth an article of its own, and no current Wikipedia author I know would be willing to search for sources that would justify the geographical article. Most disambiguations, in turn, would go to the geographical article, and Mongolian plateau is no meaningful alternative in most cases as Dzungaria and some meaningful parts of Gansu, Qinghai and Manchuria are excluded. So what should be done about this? I tried to remove the template at the top of the page, but a helpful bot reinstated it. Should the status of this page as disambiguation page be changed? G Purevdorj (talk) 14:56, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

This sounds to me like a Central Europe problem, where the solution is an article describing the various competing uses of the term. bd2412 T 15:58, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that nobody I know is likely to write such an article. I myself am definitely short on time to locate sources. G Purevdorj (talk) 00:07, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Help needed with Template:Did you know nominations/Margaret Powell

I recently attempted to fix a disambiguation link at Template:Did you know nominations/Margaret Powell. The repair was reverted by User:Yngvadottir on the grounds that the page was a closed discussion (although the page is not in "Talk" space). At the time the link, Upstairs, Downstairs, was added to the template, it was an unambiguous link to the article on the 1971 TV series. However, the page on the series was recently moved to "Upstairs, Downstairs (1971 TV series)", and the base page title was changed into a redirect to the disambiguation page, Upstairs Downstairs. Therefore, the page as it stands is misrepresenting the original discussion, and will misdirect readers to the disambiguation page, and not to the article represented in the original link. Unfortunately, User:Yngvadottir fails to listen to reason on the subject, incorrectly stating that this "was already a link to a DAB page", and insists on maintaining a misleading disambiguation page in this template. I therefore feel compelled to initiate a discussion to determine whether there is a consensus to fix this disambiguation link. bd2412 T 22:41, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

The link should point to the page that was there at the time. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:34, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
That is exactly what I am trying to achieve consensus for. I propose to keep this discussion open for seven days, and if there is a consensus in favor of fixing the disambiguation link (or, at any rate, an absence of opposition to it), I will implement the consensus of the community. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:38, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
  • It's not that I'm failing to listen; it's that the discussion is closed (and like all closed discussions, not in article space). It is my understanding, supported by a boldfaced statement there and at the top of all closed discussions, that closed discussions remain unaltered as a record, and that inadvertent changes to them should be (self-)reverted. My statement that it was already a DAB page was a friendly concession to BD2412's reasoning; I did not realise the page had been moved and assumed we had inadvertently had a link pointing to a DAB page at the time of the DYK nomination. BD2412 now tells me these cases are always fixed; this frankly surprises me, I see no point to having such housekeeping trump the requirement not to change the record of a closed discussion. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:29, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
    • To be clear, the record of the closed discussion changed when the article on the TV series was moved to a different title, and the original title became a disambiguation link. Prior to that event, the link pointed to the article that the original editor had intended to point to. Now it points somewhere else. Piping the link to the original target is therefore preserving the record of the closed discussion, rather than changing it, because it restores the discussion to what was actually being discussed. Obviously, we don't want editors changing closed discussions to falsely create the appearance that another editor having said something that was not actually said. In this case, if the initial link had been erroneous, no such preservation would be effected by "fixing" the link. However, now that the page has been moved, no purpose is served by preserving a link to a target different from the one that was originally intended. The idea that this discussion is inviolate because a template has been thrown on it is not supported by the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to build an encyclopedia. Editors often lose sight of this purpose, and insist on the petty enforcement of their interpretation of rules, to the detriment of the encyclopedia. It is very clear that if a reader comes to this page, and follows that link, they will no longer be taken to the right place. This harms the encyclopedia, which is why we fix disambiguation links at all. There is no rule against the preservation of the original link target, but if there were, it could safely be ignored. bd2412 T 04:56, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
      • The nomination originally linked to the article now at Upstairs, Downstairs (1971 TV series). When the article was renamed, effectively there was a change at the nomination page from the desired link to an ambiguous link. Creating a piped link restores the nomination to what was intended at the time. I think that restoring the original meaning is worth ignoring instructions written for other purposes. SchreiberBike talk 05:38, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
        • I have two problems with this reasoning. First, this template is not for readers and would be hard for a reader to reach; it's a record of a behind the scenes process. Hence my argument that there is no reader surprise involved. Secondly, it occurs to me that you may not be appreciating the purpose of the template. It records the process by which this hook was chosen to appear on the Main Page. Are you intending to also change the link on the sub-page of my User talk where I archive Did You Knows? or at the archive of Did You Knows that appeared that month? They should remain matched; that's why these nomination templates are closed when the hook is promoted, and only reopened if the hook is returned from the prep area of queue for some reason. It's not just to stop people talking about it any more. (I was told to create a talk page for the nomination template even to report having done the required quid pro quo review of another DYK nomination, even though the reviewer should have spotted that I hadn't yet done one and held their approval until I had.) User:Rjanag created the nomination template system so that nominations could be watchlisted - this is not a class of templates that are transcluded in article space. I'm seeing it exactly in reverse of how you are; changing the link looks to me like placing bureaucracy over utility. Yngvadottir (talk) 12:20, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
          • The vast majority of templates and subtemplates in Wikipedia are designed for transclusion into articles, for which a disambiguation link in the template is a serious problem, because it introduces the error into all of the articles. For this reason, we generate regular reports of these errors for disambiguators to go after. If this is not fixed now, it is only going to pop up in those reports as an error, and a steady stream of editors are going to try and fix it. I am actually more disturbed at the idea that a system has been set up to use subtemplates (normally used for transclusion into complex templates for further transclusion into articles) as talk spaces. Why not just use the talk pages? bd2412 T 13:44, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
            • It's a record of a discussion that has been closed. We don't go around changing links in discussions that are over. The same is true for XfDs, RfAs, FACs, GANs, and all the other projects I know of that archive discussions like this. It's not our responsibility to update links in every discussion when they change. If a user who's following this old discussion wants to see where the link used to point, they can look in the history of the linked page. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:31, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
              • Ah good, I really can't speak to the issue of why these weren't put in Template talk space, as BD2414 has asked at Village Pump:Proposals ... I was about to leave you a note and to point out here that the notifications posted by the bot on users' talkpages and article talkpages after the article appears at DYK are also templates, surely? I honestly do not see the need to modify these classes of templates after the fact - anyone can see from the prefix that it isn't something transcluded into article space. I have no idea how often the situation has arisen, but would have expected patrollers from this project to have passed over such links on a common-sense basis. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:42, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
                • We have hundreds of disambiguators working to fix hundreds of thousands of erroneous links. When an error is found it is fixed; if the fix doesn't stick, it is fixed again, and again, and again, until it sticks. bd2412 T 16:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Response to VPP thread

(A thread was started at VPP proposing to move the nomination pages from the Template namespace to the Template Talk namespace. To keep the discussion from sprawling across multiple pages, I am responding here.)

These pages are transcluded, into T:TDYK. The system works the same as AfD and MfD.
As for your suggestion of moving everything into the template talk namespace：these are in the T namespace because they need to have associated talk pages. Just like AfDs, once they are archived then they're not supposed to be edited, so in the rare case that someone does need to leave a comment about it after the fact, there needs to be a talk page for doing that. When I originally set up this system these were indeed in the template talk namespace (they were originally subpages of T:TDYK), but people asked me to move everything over to the Template namespace for precisely this reason.
Really, though, I don't see what problem you are trying to solve. What's broken?
This change was discussed in the past (Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 89#Why are the DYN's in template namespace?) but apparently no change happened. It has been years since I put this system together and I don't have the time now to take responsibility for migrating the entire thing. If there ends up being consensus to do it, someone else will have to do it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:45, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Please show me any other discussion process that takes place in template space. bd2412 T 16:10, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Current disambiguation collaborations

Am I seeing things or have we fixed all of the templates with links needing disambiguation? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:32, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

The backlog was dealt with months ago. Someone has been keeping on top of new cases. Tassedethe (talk) 20:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Technical glitch

In case anyone is wondering, the links to Cleanup, Tone, POV, and other pages of that ilk that appeared in the Daily Disambig today are due to a technical issue (for gnarly details, see WP:VPT#Template links duplicated in article namespace), and with any luck they should be gone from tomorrow's report. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:45, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

October contest extension

The Toolserver is acting up (again!), so the October contest will be extended until the day after the next full update of the disambiguation page list is completed. As usual, there is no way of predicting when that might be. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:47, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

What are the chances of some of our tools like Dabsolver and reports being moved over to labs.Blethering Scot 17:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Eventually, very good, for the DAB Challenge, the Daily Disambig, and related reports. Before the beginning of November, not so much.  :-) However, I can't speak for Dabsolver, which has a different maintainer. R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

problems not showing up

Possible bug. I received the following dab notice:

Braille (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Ndebele language

However, when I went to fix, several other dabs where shown in red, including one that was already rd'd to a (disambiguation) page, but not the Ndebele link in the notice, despite the fact that it still needed to be corrected.

Here's the fix: [8]

Three of those showed up in red, though the first should not have; the third did not show up, and I needed to do a text search to find it. — kwami (talk) 09:32, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

IMPORTANT: tool migration

Because of the continuing problem with the Toolserver, I have expedited the migration of the DAB Challenge, Daily Disambig, and related report tools to Wikimedia Labs. There may be some problems with this migration, although so far most of the scripts have run successfully. I am going to try the DAB Challenge update next. Because the database was copied from Toolserver to Wikimedia Labs a couple of days ago, there may be some oddities with changes that were made during the last few days. I apologize in advance if this happens, but I don't know how to avoid it. If this works, I will try to start the November challenge as of 00:01 UTC on 2 November.

Because of this migration, all the reports at "toolserver.org" URLs are now out of date. The current reports can be obtained by replacing "toolserver.org/~dpl" with "tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot" in each URL. I will try to update links from this page and other Wikipedia pages shortly. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:05, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! The new DAB Challenge works, but I can't find out how to get https dabsolver links from that page. In the previous version you only had to 'switch to secure' once in the 'sign in' menu and the DAB Challenge page would remember that setting for the following links you clicked. Now it seems you have to switch to secure for every single DAB solver page. Am I missing something? (talk) 19:39, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Dabsolver is still on the toolserver and is run by a different user. Really though given how widely used it is i would hope its owner @Dispenser: would consider moving it or maybe passing tool onto another user who uses labs if he feels he isn't able to do so. Ive also left a message on his page in addition to the ping here.Blethering Scot 20:02, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
WMF could outright buy the Toolserver and its personnel. The reason they don't is because of politics and I'm unwilling to cooperate with that. The hardware is less, storage is less, the open source only aspect wastes my time reinventing the wheel when I could've bought proprietary software or a database (High quality TTS voices), and security is on the honor system. I'm glad Labs isn't affected by EU-data protection as I'll finally be able to create doxing tools. Additionally, WMF backstabbed the TS administrator (DaB.) when announcing Labs and pretty much has the motto "Our time is valuable, your is not". But hey maybe WM-NYC can get some bitcoin mined :-). — Dispenser 07:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Everything seems to work fine now. Thank you R'n'B and Dispenser for all the time and effort you put into these valuable and fun tools. (talk) 10:37, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
@Lemnaminor:: if I use https:// to access one of the Challenge pages, like https://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/ch/monthly_list.php, and then click on one of the "FIX" links, it does take me to the secure version of Dabsolver. But it's possible that there is a link somewhere that is not programmed correctly; if you find one that does not take you to the https:// version, please let me know. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:26, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Comic-Con

I'm not sure what to do with this. It's filled with partial title matches, and is sort of WP:DABCONCEPT-y. Make it into some kind of set index? bd2412 T 02:14, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for a one-day "mini-contest"

I think it would be fun to have a one-day contest sometime during the month, to see which disambiguator can fix the most links on that day, maybe with some kind of fun prizes or recognition for the winners. Is it possible to compile a count of all disambiguation fixes made by participating editors over the course of a 24-hour period (i.e., not just fixes that count for the monthly contest)? If not, is is possible to count links fixed for the contest for such a period? I note that there are close to 600 editors in Category:Wikipedians who help fix disambiguation pages with links. If we have such a contest and notify all of them, I think that we could stir a big one-day gain in our link-fixing progress (in theory if every editor in that category were to fix 450 links, the list would be wiped out). bd2412 T 16:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I would like to propose Saturday, November 23, for this one-day contest day. I propose to ping all registered disambiguators on Sunday, November 17th. bd2412 T 02:17, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Hearing no objections, I am going to go ahead with this. Let's hope it turns out to be productive. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:58, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Was there a result to this effort? How successful was it? Guy1890 (talk) 02:33, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
User:GoingBatty was by far the winner with 673 links fixed, and at his request the prize was donated to Toys For Tots. Over a thousand total links were fixed for the day. bd2412 T 04:11, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Contest on hold

Hi all, just wanted to let you know I've taken the contest offline while I perform maintenance. Hopefully I can cut down the time it takes to update, but I don't think it will ever be as fast as it was on Toolserver. --JaGatalk 20:17, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

OK, maintenance complete. Contest updates will be much faster now. --JaGatalk 22:20, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
15 seconds versus 90 minutes? Yeah, I'd say that's a lot faster! Good work, and thanks!! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:46, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

DPL bot and corresponding tool

DPL bot notified me of two pages linked to disambiguation pages on my talk page. However the Dab solver does not seem to be functioning at this time. I have also left a note at Wikipedia:Help_desk#DPL_bot_and_corresponding_tool.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Some repeat offenders.

The following 32 pages have been on the list of the top 1,000 most-linked dab pages for each of the last four months. Let's kill 'em all.

Pending

ALL DONE!

Done
  1. Apollonius
  2. Automatism
  3. Bahasa
  4. Balsam - no longer a disambig
  5. Block voting
  6. Castiglione
  7. Chaumont
  8. Correlation coefficient
  9. Curio
  10. Darband
  11. Fluctuation
  12. Greasewood - de-disambiguated per Talk:Greasewood#Disambiguation page to common name page
  13. Hamnuna
  14. Hazor
  15. Henty Brothers
  16. Indeterminacy
  17. Indicator
  18. National Baptist Convention
  19. Nonlocality
  20. Ramus
  21. Respiratory distress syndrome
  22. Saint Clement
  23. Saint Theodore
  24. Scheduling - no longer a disambig
  25. Sefer haYashar
  26. Solidarism
  27. Squama
  28. Tapanoeli
  29. Thomas Kelly
  30. Transition function
  31. Twistor
  32. Voluntary

Cheers! bd2412 T 04:04, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Permissions problems this morning

Hello People in Charge: The site where the monthly list, bonus list and project page resides is throwing up 403 errors today, ie "You don't have permission to access /dplbot/ch/monthly_list.php on this server. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request." Please have a look, and thanks in advance. PKT(alk) 12:31, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

The whole http://tools.wmflabs.org/ domain is down at the moment. I'm sure it will come back up soon after people at the WMF offices start coming online (it's 7:30 a.m. on the U.S. east coast at this writing). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:33, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

It appears that the domain is down this morning as well - can somebody please give the server a shake? Thank you! 13:19, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Corpus separatum and Index

If anyone would like to take a whack at fixing the incoming links to the last two outstanding pages for the February disambiguation contest, Corpus separatum and Index, please have at it. bd2412 T 19:07, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

All done

The list for February is complete. Congratulations to all who made it happen. We should have a party, announce it at the Village pump or send around a virtual round of drinks. Amazing. Any other ideas how to celebrate? SchreiberBike talk 00:18, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Do you think it is worth a mention in The Signpost? bd2412 T 16:44, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, with context of the overall reduction in the number of disambiguation pages with links over the years. So many of the problems with Wikipedia seem intractable and too large to tackle, but this is a great example of finding a way to make solving a problem fun and chipping away at it over years and having a truly meaningful effect. SchreiberBike talk 18:24, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
I have made a post on the Signpost suggestions page. Please feel free to expand upon it with your above comments. bd2412 T 18:37, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

When I saw the list was empty, I thought it had been vandalized. This is amazing!!!! Congratulations, all. I didn't think I'd ever see this happen. --JaGatalk 07:34, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

What is the highest number of links you have seen for one disambig page? I'm helping out with Newport at the moment and, although that has just over a thousand, I imagine it's a small total relatively? GnGn (talk) 08:59, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

I have seen a disambig with 6,000+ incoming links. For a brief period, Soviet was a disambig, and it had that many links when it became one. I believe Heer also had about that many when it was made into a disambig. bd2412 T 12:38, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
Wow. Thanks. And Newport is all clear – for the moment. GnGn (talk) 18:44, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Toolserver Problem - 404 on dab_solver pages

Hello - toolserver is showing 404 errors on https://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py?page=WhateverPageWasChosen Can somebody please look into this? Thanks in advance! PKT(alk) 01:19, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Halfway, Kentucky

Not sure if this is the correct section to be requesting this. I created a disambiguous page Halfway, Kentucky, but the Talk Page redirects to the talk page for Halfway, Allen County Kentucky, one of the specific page listed on the disambiguous page. Anyone know how to correct it? -Ichabod (talk) 16:02, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:26, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Persian Empire

Seems kind of WP:DABCONCEPT-y to me. Any thoughts? bd2412 T 01:23, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Lag?

I just received a DPL notice for an edit that I made on April 27. All notices I received previously were more timely, I think(?). Just wondering if others are also having a large lag between the edit time and the DPL notification? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 13:34, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Problem with Template:Phenylalanine biosynthesis

This template seems to be calling the disambiguation page Center in pages where that is used as an alignment parameter, and I can't figure out how to fix that. bd2412 T 22:59, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed now. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 04:25, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Congo

I've been going through and fixing the wikilinks to Congo, when I came across one that I don't know how to fix. Congo (novel) links to Congo, but the article explicitly states that which Congo is never specified in the novel. So, to me, that would seem to indicate that the link to the ambiguous Congo is correct, and I can't really change it to either specific Congo (all we know is that it's in Africa). Is it okay to leave that wikilink or should I just choose a Congo to link it to? — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 16:39, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:INTDABLINK, the thing to do there is to pipe the link through a disambiguation redirect like so: [[Congo (disambiguation)|Congo]], so that our tools will count it as a fixed link. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:48, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Additional namespaces for contest?

Has there ever been discussion on adding other namespaces to the contest? (e.g. Category, File, Portal) Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I would support this, particularly for Portal space, since this is most like Article space. bd2412 T 02:46, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Book namespace too. GoingBatty (talk) 02:16, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

How about a one-day contest on Saturday, May 24?

I would like to propose another one-day contest on Saturday, May 24. I don't have anything in mind as far as prizes go (I'm not planning on giving a cash award to the winner this time), but it would be a nice idea to have something. Perhaps the WMF can set us up with some t-shirts or something. In any case, does this sound like a good day for a contest? Also, how about having a regular one-day contest, perhaps once every three months, with its own Hall of Fame and barnstars? Cheers! bd2412 T 23:07, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I thought this was a great idea, but I just realized that the day's already started where I am! :-P No one else is interested? - Gorthian (talk) 07:35, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
I never heard from anyone else being interested. Maybe we'll do one around this time next month. bd2412 T 21:48, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Bonus list not refreshing

FYI - the Bonus list isn't refreshing - it says "This page is updated hourly; the last update completed 2 hours 32 minutes ago." GoingBatty (talk) 19:36, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

The job queue on Tools Labs got clogged up; I think they've called the plumber. :-) R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:14, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Getting better - now the rep lag is gone and "the last update completed 1 hour 14 minutes ago". GoingBatty (talk) 23:31, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Updating count

All along, I thought there was some magic machine that updated the count of links fixed; now, looking at the page history, I see that people have been "updating counts" for various edits...by hand? Are we each supposed to do that? Because if so, I've got a lot of numbers to tally! :-D - Gorthian (talk) 00:20, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Whenever one of us updates the count, we add in the numbers for any finished pages that have not already been added to the count. bd2412 T 01:06, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Set index articles

"List of schools named after Francis Xavier" has been tagged as a set index article, which is apparently "not a disambiguation page". It was originally a disambiguation page, but we couldn't keep a people from turning it into a set index article by adding every school they knew of with this name, no matter how unnotable. Now that it has {{set index article}} instead of {{schooldis}}, DPL bot no longer seems to prompt editors to disambiguate their links that lead to "List of schools named after Francis Xavier" or its redirects. Is there a way to have certain set index articles treated as disambiguation pages regardless of the page's format? – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 21:27, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I would suggest that, to the extent that there are pages that are exact title matches to incoming redirects, specific redirects should be turned into individual disambiguation pages. For example, St. Xavier's College currently redirects to this list. It could be a disambiguation page listing exact title matches for St. Xavier's College and the very close St. Xavier College, but not for pages titled St. Xavier's School or St. Xavier's High School, which are not close enough titles to be considered ambiguous to "College". bd2412 T 00:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
That was the case several years ago, and there still is Xavier University (disambiguation), but there was quite a bit of overlap between "St. Xavier's College" and "St. Xavier College" (especially among schools in India), "St. Xavier's Secondary School" and "St. Xavier's School", "St. Francis Xavier High School" and "Xavier High School", etc., either because editors were mistaken or the schools themselves were inconsistent. Maintaining one article has sharply reduced the amount of maintenance, even if we have to correct inbound links manually. So on second thought, I guess I'm fine with leaving things as is. :^) – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 05:12, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
And, as articles, SIAs are subject to the usual criteria, including notability for list articles. So crappy SIAs should be deleted, just like any other crappy list articles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:24, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

DABing articles from my watchlist

Is there any way to fix DAB links from pages on my watchlist? Ollieinc (talk) 04:20, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I think I don't understand the question. Can you give me an example of the problem on your watchlist and the kind of fix you'd like to apply? -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:25, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
I think he is asking whether he can get a list of pages on his watchlist with links needing disambiguation, complete with dabsolver links to make the fix. bd2412 T 19:37, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
@Ollieinc: Unfortunately, I don't think Dab Solver is going to be around much longer - see User:Dispenser/Toolserver migration. Instead, I suggest you use WPCleaner. You could use it one the following ways:
  • If you want to check articles on your watchlist to see if any of them have ambiguous links, launch WPCleaner, select the Watch list button, and run the full analysis on 20 at a time.
  • If you have a favorite list of ambiguous pages (e.g. Journey) where you want to find links and fix them, you can create a list of those pages (e.g. User:GoingBatty/Musicdabs), launch WPCleaner, enter the page name and click the Internal links button. For each of your favorite pages, click the Disambiguation button and run the full analysis on each article containing the ambiguous link.
Hope this helps! GoingBatty (talk) 20:14, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

10th Queen's Own Canadian Hussars

Hi. I've been left a bot message about the page I've created at 10th Queen's Own Canadian Hussars regarding a link to the disambiguation page at Canadian Mounted Rifles. This link is deliberate because the said disambiguation page has a history of the CMR which is more useful to a reader than trying to link directly to one of the categories. Can anyone instruct me on how to take steps to prevent this being a problem for the project in future? SonofSetanta (talk) 15:57, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems like Canadian Mounted Rifles should be converted to a broad concept article. Nick Number (talk) 16:03, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your reply, advice and the link Nick. I've read through it and it seems the recommended way of dealing with this is to create a redirect page called "Canadian Mounted Rifles (Disambiguation) and link to that from the article? Would you agree? I have to confess a complete lack of knowledge on the subject as, despite being a long time contributor, not having come across the problem before. SonofSetanta (talk) 16:13, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
If Canadian Mounted Rifles were to remain a disambiguation page then it would be correctly linked using Canadian Mounted Rifles (disambiguation) in the situations mentioned under WP:INTDAB. However in this case I think it would be best to convert Canadian Mounted Rifles to a broad concept article, removing the {{disamb}} tag and adding more information and references pertaining to how the name was passed down to the various units. Then it could be linked to using the plain title, like any other article. Nick Number (talk) 18:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Do you mean just make it an article? Do you want to do this or should I under WP:BOLD? Or should we wait for other opinions? Sorry if you think I'm fannying about. I'm just a little unfamiliar. SonofSetanta (talk) 18:53, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I mean just make it an article, including the existing links to units and additional information if available. I don't know if anyone else wants to weigh in on this, but I certainly have no objection to going ahead with it. Nick Number (talk) 20:41, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Ok, I'll get to it tomorrow, if you haven't beaten me to it. SonofSetanta (talk) 20:59, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Fork DPL bot

MariaDB [enwiki_p]> SELECT * FROM p50380g50692__DPL.bonus_list; -- DPL bot database
ERROR 1142 (42000): SELECT command denied to user 'u2815'@'10.68.16.7' for table 'bonus_list'

This project's data (as much of Labs) continue to not be open. Should we consider an open data forking? — Dispenser 21:01, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Pot, kettle, black. It was nice of you to put a complaint addressed (in part) to me in the banner at the top of dab_solver.py, when you NEVER contacted me or JaGa and NEVER EVEN ASKED about access to the data. And, Dispenser, if you want people to respond to your requests and inquiries, you might want to consider whether you have done the same in the past. Oh, by the way, is your software and data open? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
My software was open source and I can proudly tell you that u2815_p is the only open user database. :-P — Dispenser 04:49, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
@Dispenser: "open data forking" is pretty much Greek to me, but IMO we should consider anything that would bring the tools we need back into usefulness. — Gorthian (talk) 17:18, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
When DPL migrated to Labs they renamed the database p_dpl_p to p50380g50692__DPL (horrible labs naming scheme) without the _p suffix that makes it publicly readable. The Dab solver integration and backups been broken for months because of this. And a missed opportunity for multilingual support. — Dispenser 04:49, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

There will be prizes.

I have just spoken to the folks at the grants table here at Wikimania, and they have assured me that they will see to it that henceforth (probably beginning with next month's context) the winner of the monthly disambiguation contest will get a free Wikipedia t-shirt. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:04, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Contest? What contest? Ollieinc (talk) 06:10, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links#DAB Challenge leaderboard. Good luck! SchreiberBike talk 06:26, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

The deal is done. Henceforth, the top three disambiguators for the contest each month (starting this month) will win a free Wikipedia t-shirt. I will contact the winners by their Wikipedia-enabled email, or if they have none, on their talk pages to direct them to the Wikimedia staffer to whom they will need to convey shipping information. Cheers again! bd2412 T 03:36, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Particulate (disambiguation)

There is an effort underway to move the poorly structured Particulate (disambiguation) to the heavily-linked target Particulate (which I have recently redirected to Particle, after an attempt to redirect this title to the disambiguation page). This will be a nightmare to disambiguate and keep disambiguated. It would be helpful if editors familiar with the issues relating to disambiguation would help explain the harm this would do to the encyclopedia and its readers. bd2412 T 20:52, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Update: the reopened discussion of this matter at Talk:Particulates#Requested move may yet yield an alternate solution. bd2412 T 03:38, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I have a dream...

... that one day the number of links to disambiguation pages will be below 50 000! The Banner talk 10:09, 30 August 2014 (UTC) Seeing how difficult it is on the Dutch Wikipedia to keep the number below 10 000, this number seems realistic.

patient advocacy

I created a link to the DApage interest group, that was intentional. Breaking the DA guidelines was entirely unintentional.
Although I understand the guidelines, I'm now torn between two objectives for to clarify the concept interest groups the reference to the DA page seemed to make sense as a wikilink , but also the DAP guideline seem to make sense. what is wisdom, — Preceding unsigned comment added by DerekvG (talk • contribs) 13:23, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

I've corrected this by changing the link from [[interest groups]] to [[interest group]]s. The singular redirects to advocacy group, which appears to be the intended meaning in this case. Nick Number (talk) 14:09, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
thank you , that is wisdom --DerekvG (talk) 14:16, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Brian Bennett

For some strange reason DPL Bot keeps finding some disambiguation on the page Brian Bennett but I have not a clue where that is coming from. HELP!! The Banner talk 19:46, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Isn't this page the actual disambiguation page for "Brian Bennett"? I dunno if there's something wrong with the Template:The Shadows or if some of the many links that are currently coming into the Brian Bennett page need to be re-routed. Guy1890 (talk) 20:57, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
Also, I guess there was recently a move made (from Brian Bennett (musician) to Brian Bennett)...maybe it has to do with that somehow. Guy1890 (talk) 21:04, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
I start to think that DPL Bot has gone a bit cuckoo, see this edit. The Banner talk 19:39, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
It's actually adding multiple copies of that erroneous template; see this edit. —BarrelProof (talk) 11:03, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
I don't know what is going on. The bot maintaining the pages "Articles With Multiple Dablinks" and "Templates with disambiguation links" also has gone cuckoo. on the article-page it is not removing fixed articles, giving a big clutter. But today it also started to put back fixed templates on the template page. What is going on? Does the bot need a break in some sunny resort to get its spirit healed? The Banner talk 09:30, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Ow, great. I just discovered that the bot is doing the same at Google Street View in Chile, RTB2 and RTB1. Somebody stop that bot. The Banner talk 10:02, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Dab solver is gone

Dab solver is now gone :-(
Could someone please update the bonus list and any similar pages to remove the links to Dab solver? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:46, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

DPL Bot's automated message will need to be updated as well, since it still says "Fix with Dab solver". PaintedCarpet (talk) 15:16, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for mentioning this. The automated page links need to be changed to something that works as PaintedCarpet mentioned. Vegaswikian (talk) 15:58, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
So what do people think is the best tool for fixing dabs now? Bazonka (talk) 21:02, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
It looks like there is an effort going on to resurrect it - thank goodness, I tried WPCleaner and couldn't get it working. I was using an old school approach, and it wasn't going well.... PKT(alk) 01:39, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Great news - Dab solver is back! 01:50, 9 July 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by GoingBatty (talk • contribs)
Can disambiguation link notifications be changed back to include a link to fix with dab solver? A disambig link notif I got in June had a link to fix with dab solver, but a disambig link notif I got today didn't. Ollieinc (talk) 09:12, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
The dablink is now at this address. Can this template be changed to it before the next disambiguation link is sent? --Rtkat3 (talk) 15:16, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
I can't get that new version to work - it just spits out an error message ("oursql Error (2003): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'enwiki-p.rrdb' (111)"), so maybe hold off on adding it to the notification message for a little bit? Furius (talk) 10:27, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
What's happening? I need Dab solver. Is it working or not - I get dab link notices and no link to help solve the problems.Parkwells (talk) 14:14, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
@Parkwells: It looks like it's working for me. If something is not working for you, please provide more details so we can try to replicate the issue and provide you with a path forward. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:53, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
The watchlist feature doesn't work anymore always get Database error: Access denied for user 'u2815'@'%' to database 'u_dispenser'.Blethering Scot 19:12, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Should really ping @Dispenser: to see if he know why.Blethering Scot 19:15, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Given some other discussions, the tools have had some DB issues. While Dispenser is working to get changed over, there are all of the parts that are still not working. This may be another part of a reported issue where DB access was not requested. It would be nice if the DB managers just granted it to save the uninvolved editors from the grief. Another issue I have noticed was a long fixed bug that has returned. If you don't log in to the tool (I think that is the correct description), all of your edits get the watch this page flag set. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:38, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Is this still gone? The "Disambiguation link" notifications used to include a link to it and saved a lot of time from the disambiguation process. Now they are just plain invitations to fix the disambig but without a tool, how many people would edit manually? I miss it!. --Codrin.B (talk) 17:55, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation contest update.

I have received the t-shirt I won for being one of the top three finishers in the monthly disambiguation contest. Want to win your own? The next contest starts November 1. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:25, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Any chance of getting an update to WP:DPLC? I've forgotten where to find such info. Dekimasuよ! 22:02, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone make suggestions for the link migration suggested at Talk:National Highway 1D (India)(old numbering)#Requested moves? A bot request was placed a few days ago, but this seems like something that editors around here might know how to automate as well. Dekimasuよ! 19:58, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

A proposed additional condition for the contest.

I would like to propose that an additional condition for winning a t-shirt in the monthly disambiguation contest should be that the editor in question has made at least 1,000 fixes. Typically this number is met by the top three finishers (who currently are therefore eligible to get a t-shirt from the Wikimedia Foundation), but sometimes the number three finisher still falls below this mark. I think it would encourage a little extra oomph to have a thousand edit threshold for winning a t-shirt. bd2412 T 16:44, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Ariège

This is now a disambiguation page, but used to redirect to the French department. The links currently in there are currently due to the name being in the Info Box but editing the info does not fix things as the Info Box itself is Read Only.

If someone who has the proper rights or connections could get this fixed, it would be helpful.

Thank you

Ulric1313 (talk) 16:36, 17 December 2014 (UTC).

@Ulric1313: Can you explain which infobox you are referring to, and what parameter is causing the trouble? I couldn't figure it out from a quick look. If you mean Template:Infobox French commune, it looks to me like the problem is with each individual page that has "Ariège" filled in as a parameter, not with the infobox itself. Dekimasuよ! 21:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

All I can really say is that I edited Bagert to reflect the disambiguation and after it was saved when the link in the info box was clicked, it still went to the general disambiguation page, not where I changed the link to. My change has since been reverted by someone (Samrong01), who left the explanation about an Info Box being Read Only.

I did not reach out for more details at the time since if is Read Only, is nothing I have the power to do anything about. I can try and reach out and pass things along or someone who has ability to make fixes, if need be can.

Ulric1313 (talk) 21:39, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Move page to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambiguation_pages_with_links

Can we move WP:DPL to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambiguation_pages_with_links since WP:DPL is Active Wiki Fixup Project under Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia. Suggestions required.( !dea4u  06:13, 23 December 2014 (UTC))

This page is already part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation. Why does it need to be moved? Is the existing title hurting anything? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:14, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
I would prefer not to move it. I access the page often, and don't need to type the extra characters. Also, this is a general-purpose fix-up project for the entire community. Wikimedia even gives free t-shirts to the most active participants! bd2412 T 14:37, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
The appropriate move destination would be Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Disambiguation pages with links, if you wanted to formalize its hierarchical relationship with the project. I have no opinion on that move. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:02, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
This would still be a necessary process even if the WikiProject didn't exist, so to me it seems fine where it is. Dekimasuよ! 20:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Audit Each Article

This list could probably be lessened greatly if each article could be audited by bot to determine which links on eaach page need fixing, i.e., those that go to a disamb. page or are redirected. This would probably be time-consuming. I suggest a message giving the results on the articles' talk pages, and in a central location...Smarkflea (talk) 23:08, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Ṅ

I was trying to fix the article Ṅ, due to 68 links to disambiguation pages. Unfortunately, these links are hidden in N. I fail to find the proper solution to fix it. Anyone an idea? The Banner talk 16:23, 7 January 2015 (UTC) As a temporary fix I have commented out the template.

Non-article pages showing up in the lists

There appears to be something strange going on. Pages outside of the Article space are causing entries to show up on the reports. Wikipedia:WikiProject California/San Francisco Bay Area task force/Article alerts/Archive, Wikipedia:WikiProject Pakistan/Article alerts/Archive and Book talk:Mercedes Benz all are causing links to show up (the group of Mercedes-Benz articles on Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/The Daily Disambig/Recently added are examples). The last 2 articles are also being tagged by the DPL bot as having too many ambiguous links. I use WP:CLEANER, and it appears to think the three pages are articles with ambiguous links as well (I'm going to leave a note there as well).

Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on with those three pages? -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 10:32, 30 January 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) 01:14, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

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