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I believe that if I could take the Disambiguation pages with links list, somehow convert it to a piped list, feed that into AutoWikiBrowser's "What links here", then run a compare against a WikiProject's article list, I could more easily fix dab links in that WikiProject's articles. But the "somehow convert it to a piped list" part is the stopper, because I don't see a way to download the data. Am I missing something, or is there a more direct way of doing what I want to accomplish? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:07, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like a very useful report to have. Providing it would be part of any effort to encourage Wikiprojects to take care of the disambiguation problems in their area. A recruiting effort like that was done for the problem of Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons (UBLP), a few years ago, with use of a parallel report (but finding articles in a UBLP category within a Wikiproject is easy, apparently). Did you make any progress or can anyone else say whether this could be done? --doncram 16:50, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Hmm, Stevietheman your request can be done simply using CatScan. I see that pages having a dablink on them are already marked by Category:All articles with links needing disambiguation, a hidden category. Applying this CatScan query for articles (within Category=Disambiguation) and (with Template=Wikiproject Ships) on their talk pages takes 50 seconds to run and yields 138 articles. [Oops, no that yields all their disambiguation pages]. You might want to tinker with the query to exclude disambiguation pages, say, because WikiProject Ships created a lot of them and still "owns" them. Modified CatScan query now also requiring (NOT Template=Disambiguation) took 108 and 140 seconds in two different runs, and yields 9 ships. [Oops, no that yielded disambiguation pages that don't have disambiguation template on them (and which should probably be fixed).] Here is perhaps the right report: Query Ships Wikiproject pages that have dablinks, and are not dabs themselves, which took 19 seconds in one run and yields 99 ship articles. Yep, applying DabSolver to the first one of those currently shows it has a dablink to fix.
WereSpielChequers was a central person in the past UBLP effort, which was in 2010, and I think was one of the persons who programmed reports. They might also have been the one who sent out an automated message about UBLPs to all WikiProjects, a message which had been drafted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons, as I recall. And someone did programming to get UBPLs listed within the WikiProject's automatic updates about their AFDs and articles at AFD and so on. Maurreen was Secretary-General iirc and there was a small band of others involved. --doncram 17:33, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

The maintenance list "Templates with disambiguation links" is now empty for days, something what is highly unlikely. Is that page still maintained? The Banner talk 15:22, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

  • I have seen disambiguation links in templates in that time; I have not checked the maintenance list, but it definitely should be populated. bd2412 T 15:59, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
    • The Templates with disambiguation links report is working now. Earlier today it showed numerous templates to fix, and offered "FIX" links to address them. Right now it shows two templates, both crossed out because they have been edited since the last update 6 hours ago. Probably they will be gone at the next update, which presumably will happen around 4:30 p.m. U.S. east coast time (10:30 pm GMT). Because the report states "This page is updated once daily; the last update occurred 6 hours 25 minutes ago." I think this discussion section can be marked  Done :) --doncram 03:04, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Title says it all; I think the links have been down for more than a day now. Would somebody with the right technical knowledge please effect repairs? Thanks, PKT(alk) 16:35, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Reported to WMF Labs admins; it has gone down three times in the past 24 hours, so just repeatedly restarting it doesn't seem to be a good long-term solution. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:02, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
Jeez - it's been fine all morning today and just dropped out again. PKT(alk) 15:27, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

The tools are down today - can somebody please effect repairs? Thanks in advance! PKT(alk) 21:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Issue with templates

I've noticed that the tools don't seem to update correctly with templates. For example, I believe that I've fixed the dab links linking to Providence Academy, but for some reason, there are still pages listed under the "What links here" Wikipedia tool and the WMF labs tool ([1]). Most of the dab links were caused by this template, Template:Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, which I disambiguated.

Am I missing something here? Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 21:55, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

There is a know problem when templates are updated. The 'what links here' takes a while to be updated. I have seen it take a week or more! The developers are always saying it is fixed, occasionally the backlog drops but then it becomes an issue again. There was a tool to look at the size of the backlog, but I'm not sure of the link right now. A real and permanent fix would be really nice. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:26, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

The "Articles with Multiple Dablinks" tool reports on disambiguation status/progress from a different perspective: how many articles have how many outgoing ambiguous links. While number of disambiguation pages and number of incoming dablinks to them is what iscovered by the Monthly Challenge and by the Daily Disambig report. Is this worth tallying/reporting? --doncram 20:22, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Manually tallying for now:

Articles with outgoing dablinks vs. dab pages & their incoming dablinks
Date Pages w/
5 or more
outgoing
dablinks 		4 or more
outgoing 		3 or more
outgoing 		2 or more[1]
outgoing 		1 or more[2]
outgoing 		Dab pages
having
incoming
dablinks[3] 		Incoming
dablinks[3] 		note
July 22, 2015 31 215 1,222 8,647 116,939 vs. 51,361 127,193
July 23, 2015 24 195 1,195 8,592 116,863 vs. 51,194 126,927
July 24, 2015 24 178 1,180 8,579 116,834 vs. 51,056 126,907
July 25, 2015 21 173 1,190 8,574 116,415 vs. 51,049 126,608
July 26, 2015 10 157 1,159 8,470 116,420 vs. 50,852 126,150
July 27, 2015 11 150 1,139 8,444 115,869 vs. 50,575 125,713
July 27, 2015 b 13 154 1,155 8,448 115,647 vs. 50,575 125,713
July 28, 2015 12 131 1,092 8,363 114,996 vs. 50,323 124,950
July 29, 2015 7 126 1,079 8,301 114,618 vs. 50,212 124,820
July 30, 2015 9[4] 126[4] 1,069[4] 8,260[4] 114,457[4] vs. 50,027 124,106

References

  1. ^ Determine by checking at or near report of 500 articles starting at 8000
  2. ^ Determine by checking at or near report of 500 articles starting at 115000
  3. ^ a b Per The Daily Disambig
  4. ^ a b c d e Manual lookup from tool report output agrees with TDD's auto-reported Table 3 values

I think this is an excellent addition to our metrics. bd2412 T 12:51, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

  • I started to take a look at including this table in The Daily Disambig, but I ran into a problem. The totals I am extracting from the database don't match up with what is displayed on the tool's webpage. I think the difference is due to some filtering out of links that appear in templates. Maybe JaGa could help clarify how to reproduce the results appearing in the table; if not, I'll have to dig into the source code at some point when I have the time. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:40, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
    • Thanks for considering it! By the way, I am finding that this approach seems very natural and efficient in fixing dablinks. In a new article having many outgoing dablinks, it's easy to see the writer's perspective or English language skill level or whatever else is causing them to make many similar "mistakes", and then to fix them all efficiently. Sometimes almost all of the dablinks should be delinked. Sometimes what is meant are all names of films, and the fix for each dablink is very similar: look for the Tamil language ones on their corresponding dab pages. The approach has grouped together dablinks that are similar. And they can all be fixed in one edit!
    • This is complementary to the other approach, which groups together occurrences of the same error in many diverse articles. There if you understand the error, e.g. confusion between two or three similarly-named schools whose distinctions you learn to appreciate, then you can fix many occurrences of that error efficiently (though each fix requires a separate edit). But sometimes in that approach, the errors grouped together might in fact be very different, e.g. 10 different writers might mean 10 different things, some of which are listed on the dab page and some of which are omitted there, in which case it is NOT efficient to learn the distinctions and to fix them together.
    • I suspect that over-focus on one approach yields diminishing returns, and then the other approach becomes relatively more efficient.
    • Perhaps there are other ways to group similar dablinks together, which would allow a lot to be fixed efficiently? I don't know what's feasible programming-wise, but I suspect that it would be useful to group together dablinks created in diverse articles by one editor (in their last 100 edits, say). Seeing how multiple dablinks in one article (often created by the same writer) are often very similar, I bet such groups of dablinks would be similar. And then it would be efficient to fix them together. (Focusing that way, a dab-fixer would become informed about an individual editor's practices, and it would further make sense to deliver some customized feedback to them, at their Talk page. To encourage them to act differently. And perhaps the dab-fixing tool could even open the Talk page edit for you, to facilitate that. It would also make sense to prioritize writers who are currently the most active.) --doncram 22:40, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
      • But back to the current approach, i.e. addressing multiple outgoing dablinks on one page, could the tool help in prioritizing the pages to be fixed? Currently the tool's output presents all the pages having 2 dablinks, or all having 1 dablink, in alphabetical order. Could the most-recently edited pages be presented first, instead? Or better, present first the pages which most recently acquired an outgoing dablink. It is better to address those ones to provide feedback to current editors, and also these ones are fresher and have easier-to-fix errors (they're less likely to have been picked over already). I'll stop now! --doncram 23:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Good news, I figured out what I was doing wrong with the database, and I think I can generate this table in the Daily Disambig. We'll see if it works tomorrow. :-) R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:57, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
It looks good. :) --doncram 18:05, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Outgoing vs. Incoming changes and totals

Today's "the Daily Disambig" has the following report:

Count of articles by number of links to disambig pages contained
Date 5 or more 4 or more 3 or more 2 or more 1 or more
July 28, 2015 12 131 1,092 8,363 114,996
July 29, 2015 9 132 1,074 8,319 114,915
July 30, 2015 9 126 1,069 8,260 114,457

Thanks, R'n'B, for that!

I'm curious if it will agree completely with the approach for tallies done so far. And, do these reports on OUTGOING links reconcile with reports of INCOMING links? I think changes in the two types have NOT agreed so far. It is not clear, but the totals of the two types are possibly compatible, possibly disagree with each other, so far.

For July 30, per the Table 3-reported tallies of Outgoing links (plus specifics on July 30's 5+ items below), the total number of Outgoing links is: 

=10x2 + 9 + 8 + 7 + 5*4 + 4*(126-9) + 3*(1069-126) + 2*(8260-1069) + 1*(114,457-8260) 
=  57 + 468 + 2,869 + 14,382 + 106,197
= 123,973.

That's close but does not agree exactly with the July 30, 2015's Table 1-reported 124,106 incoming links (differs by 133).

The July 30 items having 5+ outgoing links are: 

  1. List of football clubs in Ghana	  10 links	    FIX
  2. Night of Champions (2015)	  10 links	    FIX
  3. The Fillmore Detroit	  9 links	    FIX
  4. List of the works of Bastien and Henry Prigent	  8 links	    FIX
  5. Ancient tell	  7 links	    FIX
  6. Beachborough Manor	  5 links	    FIX
  7. List of populated places in Kosovo by municipality	  5 links	    FIX
  8. List of the busiest airports in California	  5 links	    FIX
  9. Tourism in Paraguay	  5 links	    FI

Any small discrepancy does not matter; the point of these reports is to give general feedback on progress in disambiguation and give general guidance as to where effort can best be applied (e.g. if there has been a big increase in the number 5+ outgoing pages, then applying effort there will probably be fairly productive). --doncram 17:32, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

As I noted earlier, the articles with outgoing links table does not include links that are transcluded in templates; most likely, that accounts for the 133-link discrepancy you found. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:50, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying. The report within wp:TDD looks good! --doncram 18:05, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
The report within wp:TDD seems really great! Although it is not always reporting "good" news, it is enlisting me and perhaps others into the "game" of trying to make progress on this dimension, which again is complementary to other approaches to reduce dablinks. I notice also that R'n'B incorporated into the database all the days manually tallied above, from before the automated report started, which I appreciate, too. Thanks again to R'n'B !  :) --doncram 19:40, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

bot message confusing

I just received a DPL bot message saying

Mantra (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Katha

I've gotten lots of DAB link notices before, but I don't remember them being this unclear. I wasn't sure whether this meant

or does it mean

  • On an unspecified page, you (thnidu) added a link pointing to the Mantra page, and I (i.e., DPL bot) disambiguated it by linking (that link?) to the Katha page

?

I got that figured out: The message was wrong. WikiBlame said, "katha was already present in the first revision found dating from 13:36, 28 June 2010", so I followed instructions and left a message for JaGa.

But this all took a whole lot more time than I could afford. I had done quite a bit of editing on Mantra, so I was looking through my edits till I remembered WikiBlame. So please fix the message format to

  1. specify the link more precisely, such as with a link to the relevant diff
  2. make the text clearer, e.g.,
    On Mantra (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
    [in diff-link]
    you added a link pointing to Katha

Brevity can be a virtue in telegrams, footnotes, etc., but adding two letters and a space on each of two lines surely won't break the bank here. To discuss this, please {{Ping}} me. --Thnidu (talk) 20:04, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

  • The message meant that on the Mantra page there's a link to Katha (as in "There are Thai Buddhist amulet katha." - whatever that means). I think that link is still there BTW. I dunno who actually added it because I haven't checked. Guy1890 (talk) 01:20, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Oh, I understood that, eventually. As I said, "please fix the message format..."
    It was me that linked to Katha. I didn't fix it when I got the DAB message, but I've just aimed it specifically at Katha (storytelling format), the only article listed on the DAB page that makes any sense there at all.
    I used WikiBlame and bounced up and down the revision history till I found where User:Yumiko86 had deleted the refs on "katha" in good faith ("cleanup deadlinks and non-English spam websites"), in § Non-esoteric Buddhism. I restored one of the refs after checking— it really does describe Buddhist amulet katha— and I've added a few words on what the phrase seems to mean, according to the source.
    I still hope somebody fixes the message format. --Thnidu (talk) 01:44, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

TV channel mayhem

As can be seen witnessed from the project page, there's an inflation of "Channel xx" dab pages, usually referring to TV channels. As a side effect, this is leading to a massive inappropiate use of the (disambiguation) qualifier to link to them, e.g. Template:American TV by channel number.

Since most of them are TV channels, wouldn't it be best to shift all TV channels to set index articles called Channel xx (TV), thus purging the dab page and using it only for the purpose it's supposed to serve. And when the page contains TV channels only, just get rid of the dab tag and replace it by an SIA one. Feedback? --Midas02 (talk) 15:39, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Lazdynų Pelėda

I've started a discussion on the Talk page of Lazdynų Pelėda, as there is a disagreement over whether it should be de-dabbed. Nick Number (talk) 22:47, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Non-Sabbatarianism

Please be aware of a proposed article move with discussion here, which would also involve the move of disambiguation page Sabbatarian to Sabbatarianism (disambiguation). I see that the disambiguation page is on your maintenance list, which I wouldn't want to touch, not understanding your processes. If there are any concerns, please speak up at the discussion site, as there is no apparent controversy about the article move, and things could happen soon. If I make the move, I'll post notice here. Evensteven (talk) 03:09, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Sabbatarian the disambiguation page has just now been moved to Sabbatarianism (disambiguation). Sabbatarian itself is now a redirect. Evensteven (talk) 21:08, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Good. bd2412 T 21:33, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Mass damaging of dab pages

Hi, could someone keep on eye on 86.221.26.249? He/she is mass damaging dab pages related to Indian names, apparently completely ignorant of the dab guidelines. --Midas02 (talk) 04:05, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

August 2015 disambiguation contest

I aim to win the August 2015 disambiguation contest. Don't take this as discouragement, though. Quite the opposite: come at me. bd2412 T 15:23, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

You say that, but you have to come at it, too! :) --doncram 15:46, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
Oh, it's still early. bd2412 T 16:57, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
I have a gift for you BD. I'm away on vacation for 10 days this month, so I probably won't be able to challenge you. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 19:59, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
That's not a gift - a challenge would be a gift! ;-) bd2412 T 00:18, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
No offence to the dab challenge, but it is my impression that a large number of people do not always apply the necessary due diligence when disambiguating a topic, presumably driven by their desire to get higher on the ranking. Pick & Click I call it - pick an entry that resembles what would fit the purpose, not doing the research to make sure it IS actually the right solution, and on to the next. --Midas02 (talk) 02:54, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
I think people are driven to get the number of links down. A small number of errors are inevitable. bd2412 T 04:09, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes well, it's more than just 'errors'. People should do their due diligence before they click, and not just shoot from the hip. --Midas02 (talk) 17:00, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Galicia

There has been a lengthy discussion about the layout of Galicia. It probably isn't necessary to read the entire thing, but it would be helpful if people could offer their opinions on the layouts proposed in my last entry, with the names "All geographic entries in one section" and "Spain and Eastern Europe entries at the top". Nick Number (talk) 17:56, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

What a load of *. As you already pointed out in the comments, that page shouldn't have been purged as it was quite ok already. So everything should be restored. As far as layout goes, I can't see what was wrong with this one, which was very self-explanatory on top of being compliant. --Midas02 (talk) 17:00, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
That is essentially the same as the "All geographic entries in one section" layout. Would you mind posting your endorsement of that one in the discussion? Nick Number (talk) 19:37, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

dab to surname conversions

Discussion in a section above about the Noronha example raised some issues about the possibility and value of identifying and converting disambiguation pages to surname pages. For the Noronha example, there's agreement it should no longer be a dab, even though it has a place item, which itself is a partial match, as the place is named for one of the persons.

One issue: Are there a lot more of these? I found what seems like a lot by running Results of Catscan search for categories= "Disambiguation pages" and "Surnames" and NOT templates="surname", which yields 7022 items, and then reviewing selected ones that appear more likely to have usage as a lastname only. In review, discard ones where the dab page shows there's a company of that name or major places, etc. --doncram 22:32, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

(Restating, to be more clear): I found numerous pages that I think should be converted, and I list them below, by following a screen1-screen2-and-review procedure: First I defined and ran this Catscan search for articles who have category= "Disambiguation pages" and category="Surnames" within 5 steps up their category tree, and which do NOT have a "surname" template, to find dab pages that apparently have some surnames on them. If having a dab template means a page cannot have a surname template, then the last clause in the search wasn't needed. That was a first screen, which yielded 7022 dab pages (today it yields 7021). Just by their names I could see some of these dabs needed to stay as dabs, because I recognized them as names of places or I knew of other common usages they would have, besides as surnames. By place-related usage I mean the name would be used by Wikipedia editors to refer to a place. There were/are lots of words that are completely foreign to me. I randomly reviewed some of these, but they mostly turned out not to be surnames. So for further review I focused instead on names that I could recognize as surnames, e.g. "Daley", where I also thought they did not have other common usages, e.g. I would not bother to review "Dupont" (a surname but also name of a major company). My second screen, in effect, was to apply my judgment to selectively pick ones that seemed likely (to me) to be surnames only. For each of these, I reviewed it by clicking on it and looking at the dab page, then made a judgment whether any non-surname usages on the page looked important or not. "Feldburg" turns out to have usage as a placename, and the places are listed before the surnames on its page so I figure they are important, and reject it. Feldman and Feldmann give surnames first and then a few other uses that are just partial matches or do not seem important to me, so I accept both. Kirkman turns out to be the name of a place, but it is only listed at the bottom, and when I click on it I see that the place, Kirkman, Iowa, has a population of only 64, so I accept it. I found about 60 by this process, in not very much time, and list them below. I made a point to review most of the dabs ending in "man" or "mann", but I didn't even begin to review dabs ending in "son". If I continued I would find more. Someone else would recognize lastnames among the words that are simply foreign to me. A different initial Catscan search might yield candidates of higher quality, or yield more candidates. I conclude there are lots of dab pages that could be converted to surname pages.--doncram 15:31, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Dab to surname page candidates

assorted ones
  1. Grubman: a clean case of all persons, no other uses. Should be converted?
  2. Ahmanson: It is a surname. Other uses are just "partial matches" e.g. Ahmanson Theatre, named for donor Ahmanson. Should be converted?
  3. Gitelman There exists a "Gitelman syndrome", but that is not confusing, and this should be converted?
  4. Tofte a Norwegian surname. There is a place of this name in Minnesota and another in Norway, but in both areas people would recognize Tofte as a surname. Use "otheruses" hatnote and put places into Tofte (disambiguation)
  5. Eagleman is a surname but there is only one person listed, and 2 other usages. Still, it should be converted as it is clearly a surname?
  6. Cadman (disambiguation): Cadman is usurped; the usurper should be moved?
  7. Brinckman (disambiguation): Brinckman is usurped by an article with no usage of Brinckman in it and no clue why the article is at that name; the usurper should be moved?
  8. Tisch
  9. Fosdick
  10. Daley
  11. Samworth
ones ending in "man"

Using the CatScan results above, find ones ending in "man" by control-f searching for "man", which gets 156 hits. For hits where "man" ends the name, review the dab page, and if it seems placename or usage would be prominent, leave it out. (So expect most usages will be as family names). Resulting in:

  1. Acraman
  2. Beckman
  3. Bergman
  4. Borgman
  5. Dahman
  6. Elfman
  7. Ekman
  8. Feldman
  9. Feldmann
  10. Grohman
  11. Gutmann
  12. Hiltermann
  13. Huffman 2 places using name are just unincorporated places
  14. Kaiserman
  15. Kidman
  16. Kindermann
  17. Kirkman 1 place using name is a 64-person town
  18. Kjellman
  19. Koeman
  20. Kornman
  21. Leaman
  22. Lipmann
  23. Lohman Lohman, Missouri has population 1,547
  24. Loman
  25. Marshman
  26. Moorman
  27. Månsson
  28. Münstermann
  29. Orman
  30. Paxman Other usages show first in dab page but are just partial matches.
  31. Portman and #Portmann
  32. Priestman
  33. Rosman Rosman, North Carolina]] has pop. 576
  34. Rossman and #Rossmann
  35. Seeman There is a 1994 Tamil film of this name.
  36. Simmerman
  37. Soliman Soliman, Tunisia has population 29,000.
  38. Sundman There is a lunar crater named after a person
  39. Terman May be an alternative spelling for Iran village of pop. 600.
  40. Thielemann
  41. Tilghman
  42. Tolman
  43. Turman A village in Iran has pop. 600 and a town in Indiana has pop. 1,000
  44. Volkmann Two medical terms are partial matches.
  45. Vorderman
  46. Weissmann and variants Weiszmann, Waismann Weismann, Weissman, Weisman, Waisman]]

bot request

Having gathered these names, I feel inclined to request they be converted by bot that would remove any disambiguation template, add the surname template at the bottom, add an administrative tracking category. And have bot remove WikiProject Disambiguation if present on Talk page? Or add it if it is missing, with a new class? Anyhow, I'd like support here before making a bot request to implement it. It is not very many items; it could be done manually, but I would hope to have other batches to be run later. Is is okay to convert all of these? And to do so by bot request? --doncram 22:32, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Discuss

It is common practice where there are more than a few persons with a surname on the dab page to split them off to a separate surname page. But it is a judgement call as to whether the surname page is the primary topic, or even whether readers are better served by separating the surnames from the dab page.older ≠ wiser 23:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC) I don't think this can be done by a bot. If you have actually looked at rack[each] of the pages why not do it yourself.There is no benefit to having a bot do something.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bkonrad (talk • contribs)

Maybe this plus future batches are not worth getting a bot run, and it depends on finding a willing programmer at wp:BOTREQUESTS, but it is feasible programming-wise. Custom bots perform well-defined tasks all the time, like adding a wikiproject to Talk pages of all articles having a certain category, or finding and replacing every instance of a certain text-string in pages within a given category or listed in a list provided. One should work the kinks out of a potential draft request by manually going through the steps a few times, though. This is not ready to go as a botrequest yet because the admin category to add hasn't been defined yet. And if there is some further step that needs to be done beyond what the bot really can do, like making a judgment call whether to take some further step on pages affected, you can do that using Twinkle to run through the bot-changed pages. Do you really think this cannot be done programming-wise, or do you mean you believe that no programmer would be willing to do it? --doncram 14:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

You have to give credit to Doncram for thinking out of the box. Instead of fixing links to dab pages, he's thinking: let's get rid of dab pages! End result will be the same, less effort required. :) Joking aside, I feel very strongly about this. Speaking multiple languages, I often find myself scouring other Wikipedias trying to figure out how many articles, dab pages, family pages, surname pages, duke, earl, peerage and other title pages there are on some family names, and which is which. The result is that you often find yourself with a bunch of people sharing the same family name, usually some place names derived of that, or vice versa, sometimes a link about a "Foo family" (usually for nobility), then add to that some peerage as well... Anyway, needless to say, for the simple contemporary English family names, it shouldn't be too hard to clean up, in all other cases, an experienced someone will need to look into it to find the best solution. No bot can do that.

Another remark, you mention dab pages carrying the surname template? That's dead wrong, it's either one or the other. So what you could do, if there are such pages, they need to be tagged with dab-cleanup. But be careful, people won't appreciate you doing this for hundreds at a time. What's wrong with your tool by the way? It's supposed to be looking for pages with a disambig and a surname tag, and for me it comes up with pages carrying the disambig/Page with surname-holder list tags. Which is not the same, and the latter ones definitely don't need cleaning up. --Midas02 (talk) 01:37, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

The CrossCat search that I ran deliberately looks for pages having disambiguation template but specifically NOT having surname template, although having some surname category. The results are a screened set of candidates for review. Some of them do need cleaning up IMO, e.g. the ones I specifically identify list out in this batch-proposal. The CrossCat tool application does what I wanted it to do, I don't see anything wrong with the tool. Perhaps you mean the CrossCat could be defined better, to find fewer results that are better candidates, or to find more candidates? --doncram 14:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Doncram, when I run your search, I see the page Abdoun among the results for instance. But that page carries the tag {{disambiguation|surname}}. And that's not what you should be looking for, because someone already evaluate the page and decided that it contains surnames as well as general dab topics. What you should be trying to find is page having both {{disambiguation}} and either {{given name}} or {{surname}}. Because both are not allowed on the same page, and are good candidates for further consideration. --Midas02 (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree with this effort, and I applaud it. If a page has nothing but examples of people who share a surname, it is a surname page, period. Note that surname pages are anthroponymy issues. A good page about a surname should indicate the cultural origin of the name and the meaning if there is one that can be discerned. A well developed example is Gaughan. bd2412 T 02:28, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for going ahead and making the dab-to-surname conversion for several of them, and crossing them off. (Note those didn't get the not-yet-defined admin category to be added, but they're still listed here so that step can be done later.) Thanks! --doncram 14:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
I hope you clean up the links to those pages before converting them, as they will be disappearing off the DPL radar. --Midas02 (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

General Secretary and similar articles

Hey, I disagree with this edit converting General Secretary from an article into a disambiguation page. It goes the opposite direction to the conversions we ought to be doing, in general, and adds 900 articles to the number of disambiguation pages with links that need fixing! To editor Altenmann, would you please consider wp:DABCONCEPT and comment here, and to others would you please consider and comment upon this as well? I ask here at wt:DPL because this is individual article is a large and important issue, and because the editor changing this has modified other articles similarly recently, so it is important to come to some shared understanding. Right now I think it is a matter for discussion only, not requiring any change of policy, but perhaps also an RFC could be needed. (Disclosure: I and Altenmann were on opposite sides of some other issue recently, but, sorry i have touched so many articles recently that I can't right now remember where. I think that was completely unrelated, so I feel it is okay for me to open this discussion. However I hope completely uninvolved others could take the lead addressing this.) sincerely, --doncram 12:06, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

It was not an article in the first place. I deleted the text which merely duplicated what was already said in the list of titleholders. After that it turned out that there is no article (in normal sense) at all! I came to this article after my attention was brought to Talk:Secretary-General discussion. I am copying my comment here for your convenience, which probably addressed the concern raised by user:doncram. - üser:Altenmann >t 15:08, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Therefore I would suggest to simply make two disambig pages, for the following reasons:
  • The narrative is weak, unreferenced, or none
  • The actual functions vary wildly
  • In some cases the titles S-G and GS are interchangeable and in some they are not.
  • Not all people can "split the hair", especially referring to foreign titles.
During merging, I would also trim mercilessly the portrait gallery.
If someone manages to write a meaningful article, with the history of the title, and such (similar to e.g., "Chairman"), we can always make it "main" page, accompanied with "Secretary-General (disambiguation)" .
- üser:Altenmann >t 03:34, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
I did what I did after noticing that First secretary has already been a dab page. Therefore I did the same to General Secretary and Secretary-General. Being late night, I carelesslly deleted the "merge" tag from the two latter pages (restoring), threfore user:doncram probably did not notice the Talk:Secretary-General discussion; sorry for that. - üser:Altenmann >t 15:23, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
About personal notice: doncram: I understand your concern about a bold move; no grudges. - üser:Altenmann >t 15:24, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I noticed that Doncram taggen them with {{DabConcept}}. I hope you understand that the merge suggestion makes the solution less trivial. My quick google search shows that it will be difficult to write the "main" article without treading into the gray areas of WP:NOR/WP:SYNTH. - üser:Altenmann >t 15:34, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Re: adds 900 articles to the number of disambiguation pages with links that need fixing! Please clarify what you mean by this remark, which is ambiguous. I can read it in at least two diametral ways: Cool; one more rat's nest of confusion is uncovered ; let's clean it up and make wikipedia better. Or: Oh, shit, not again. If this continues I will never have time to write more articles. For the latter view, here is a simple formal solution: remove the "disambig" tag and assume that these articles are lists, pre-headed with a short blurb: "S-G or GS is a title of a number of offices, which functions in many cases have almost nothing in common. Here is a list; help yourself." - üser:Altenmann >t 15:42, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Per WP:DABCONGOV, if it is a position that exists in multiple organizations, it should be described as a concept. Consider the following scenario. An author writes a popular book where the characters engage in activities in the fictional country of Ruritania. In the course of the book they have a brief but important interaction with the "General Secretary of the labor union" of that country, and the term is linked like that in the Wikipedia article that gets written about that book. How do we fix the disambiguation link? It obviously does not refer to any meaning listed on the page, nor can there be an article about the General Secretary of the Ruritanian Labor Union, because it doesn't actually exist. However, it is equally obvious that General Secretary has a general meaning that can be discerned and explained to the reader at the general title. bd2412 T 16:02, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
No objections. See my comment above (search the text for the word "chairman"). My point of turning them into dab pages is that these pages were not articles about concept. And I am glad that my action (however erroneous it was) triggered some interest, and I hope this will probably lead to something better. - üser:Altenmann >t 16:16, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

I became convinced that the {{dab}} I added must be removed. Please confirm that the same is true for First secretary, which is of the same ilk (since 2012). - üser:Altenmann >t 16:16, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

A truly main article about the concept would be the one which traces the genesis of how a lowly "secretary" duty has gradually climbed to the top ranks. - üser:Altenmann >t 16:27, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually, it seems to have worked the other way around. A "secretary" was originally someone trusted with the secrets of a king or other powerful person. The term later devolved into the "lowly" position of the routine office clerk. bd2412 T 17:38, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

A generic solution

I noticed the following remark of User:BD2412 in the previous section:

If a page has nothing but examples of people who share a surname, it is a surname page, period. Note that surname pages are anthroponymy issues. A good page about a surname should indicate the cultural origin of the name and the meaning if there is one that can be discerned.

And it strikes me that it would be a great idea to do the same here: introduce the concept of {{office title}} type of page. I suspect there are quite a few pages have (paraphrasing BD2412) " nothing but examples of offices which share the title", and "A good page about a title should" have a well-referenced encyclopedic text, rather than a blurb "This title is used here and there".

I believe this solution will kill many problems associated with the articles of this type and permit a painless cleanup of these. - üser:Altenmann >t 16:36, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

A meta-solution to this is to merge all of these pages into a single list article on common types of office title. I recently did this with List of common film awards categories, merging together over a dozen WP:DABCONCEPT disambiguation pages on the subtopics listed on the page. bd2412 T 16:46, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
@BD2412: Please double-check what I did with First secretary. - üser:Altenmann >t 17:06, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
@Altenmann: Please check out what I did with Secretary (title). bd2412 T 16:16, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
@BD2412: Good start; text needs more refs, but you moved First secretary (disambiguation) without leaving redirect, which produced dead-end redirects. - üser:Altenmann >t 16:24, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
There are no incoming links of consequence. Since the target is no longer a disambig, I deleted all incoming "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects, and fixed all article-space links pointing to them. bd2412 T 16:30, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
@BD2412:I understand that. I guess because there were many of them, you missed some; I fixed them already, e.g, : First secretary. - üser:Altenmann >t 16:38, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks - cheers! bd2412 T 16:20, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Now that we are at this, what do you think about splitting a separate page for Executive assistant, which sits now within "Secretary" page? IMO it is a separate subject, midway between "secretary" and "secretary-general", with no overlap, which would have justified a merge. - üser:Altenmann >t 16:38, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's quite "midway", but I could see a separate article. bd2412 T 16:44, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Countdown on editors dablinking a lot

see: where table was continued, at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/New Dablinks By Editor

I dunno, this is just another idea, not sure if it is very worthwhile tracking. From the "New Article Dablinks Arranged by Editor" report:

Count of editors by number of still-unfixed "recent" dablinks
Date Editors with
20 or more
recent
dablinks
10 or more
6 or more
5 or more
4 or more
3 or more
2 or more
1 or more[1]
August 4, 2015 3 13 49 67 117 236 661 3,573
August 5, 2015 2 9 45 73 114 231 644 3,529
August 6, 2015 2 5 35 54 92 182 558 3,284
August 7, 2015 1 8 47 69 123 229 654 3,518
August 8, 2015 0 11 56 79 137 258 711 3,690
August 9, 2015 0 12 63 83 136 276 745 3,775
August 10, 2015 0 7 54 79 143 281 744 3,707
August 11, 2015 0 11 66 99 159 314 812 3,874
August 12, 2015 0 9 59 99 175 344 880 4,106
August 13, 2015 0 7 72 101 168 351 913 4,260

References

  1. ^ Find by trying search around 3000 level

--doncram 18:33, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Today's is the last update I'm making here; moving off-Talk. For occasional further updates, perhaps, see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/New Dablinks By Editor. --doncram 12:32, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
see: where table was continued, at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/New Dablinks By Editor.

convert 1,000+ "common name dab pages" to set index articles

Being involved here at wp:dpl, I have come to appreciate that many dablinks are properly eliminated by changing a dab page to a set index article or other regular article. And in my view now, there are 1,138 dab pages on common names of animals, including fish, that all should be converted to set index articles. Converting these should eliminate some number of current and yet-to-be-created dablinks in this area.

All 1,138 of these meet terms of wp:DABCONCEPT, and should be converted, right?

This comes up because "bollworm" is in the current month's DAB Challenge (wp:MDC) list. There were 6 dablinks to the former dab:

It seems to me that these are all cleared properly by changing bollworm from a dab page to a wp:SIA, which i did. And then I noticed that it was in the category of animal common name dabs. I browsed around and all find Category:Set indices on animal common names (which has 45 members now), and I applied that to bollworm article.

All of the others should be converted and put into Category:Set indices on animal common names, too, IMO. There's even a note at the SIA category that it is to include some disambiguation pages too, not just SIA pages. Because, I guess, they all should be SIAs already....

Is this all correct? And, if so, how is this best implemented, including where should there be any discussion, and where should notice be given? Probably a wp:BOTREQUEST could take care of the actual changes. I don't want to make waves unnecessarily, so I hope for some advice/comments here. :) --doncram 00:48, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

This is not something that can be done without some careful review. Some of the pages in those categories disambiguate a variety of terms, not only plants or animals. For example black widow or blacktail. Others might be animals or plants that share a common name but otherwise have nothing in common to warrant a set index. For example blue emperor or Longbill. older ≠ wiser 01:26, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
I strongly support this effort. To the extent that a disambiguation lists (or primarily lists) a group of animals that are basically examples of a type, it should definitely be turned into an index. The challenge is merely isolating out those pages that meet that description, of which there are many. I would also specifically suggest that a case like black widow is one where the collective description of spiders is the primary topic, and everything else is derivative, and should be moved to a Black widow (disambiguation) page. bd2412 T 01:47, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree there are many that would fit, but that it cannot be done with any easily programmed bot algorithm. I don't think dabs should be converted to set indexes unless all of the entries share some common characteristic as with the Bollworm where all the insects share similar feeding habits and are not readily distinguished by non experts. Or there are pages that list several related species that also share a name. But if the page lists species that have nothing in common but a name, that requires disambiguation, not a set index. Cases like black widow would need discussion. There already is a history of similar discussions at Talk:Black widow and Talk:Black Widow. older ≠ wiser 02:06, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Fully agree with Bkonrad's nuances to Doncram's remarks. I believe your proposal is common sense and is already being done by experienced editors, but it is a delicate exercise that should definitely not be left to bots. Here's a good example of how I recently defused an annoying disambig situation by moving a subset of articles, allowing me then to link to them because multiple articles needed to link to them as a whole. Mind you that on the new page Tambora (drum), the SIA tag could just as well be removed as you could interpret it as a stand-alone article. But all of these calls can only be made by a human, not bots. --Midas02 (talk) 03:29, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Thank you both for your comments! I was worried that i was way off somehow, because it seems so obvious to me that something big should be done here, yet has not been done. Right, there will be some exceptions. Certainly all need to be reviewed, but perhaps the "clean" ones could be put into a temporary admin category, for a bot to go through and convert, after there's been enough review. A bot could put the temporary admin category into them all (or into their Talk pages), identifying them as candidates, and then editors could change the category or add another category to indicate the exceptions that should not be bot-converted. At least if the category is on the Talk pages (not sure otherwise), I am pretty sure that all of the WikiProject Spiders ones could be reported by wp:CatScan or wp:Quick Intersection, so the WikiProject Spider editors could be given notice to review them. I am all for bots automatically doing stuff...the same bot adding the candidate category could identify all the relevant WikiProjects that should be notified.
I have not browsed in it yet, but I would suppose (as Bkonrad/older/wiser suggests) Category:Plant common name disambiguation pages, with 453 members, is likely to have a lot of clean candidates, too. However I think Category:Ship disambiguation pages is not likely to have any, because I know that WikiProject Ships has long worked at setting up Set Index Articles where possible, so the ones in this category are likely to all be mixed ones. E.g. its first member Aguila which has ships and people and places and more. Any more good possibilities within Category:Disambiguation pages?
Likewise, I am finding lots of medical disease dabs, e.g. brain fever, also in the monthly list, with inbound links from
which I "fixed" by removing the disambiguation template on brain fever, already a fine article with at least one reference or external link (noted in the edit history as not being proper on a dab page).
But the medical disease ones don't appear in a category together. I wonder if there is a list-article somewhere of medical disease names that could be reviewed, to find the dab ones?
It would seem obvious that converting the dab pages who are already nicely collected into categories should be done first, but since I am seeing so many of these in the Monthly Dab Challenge, I wonder if more care ought to be applied up front in the Challenge, to make sure as many as possible can be handled this way each month, rather than being handled by unlinking all members, say, (which would lose all their good links to a sensible article that should be created by dab-conversion). Dab-conversion should be a priority, to preserve the good links! --doncram 03:21, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
FWIW, the catscan tool can identify mainspace pages in a category which have a given WikiProject on their Talk pages. For example, this report identifies the 11 "Animal common name dab" pages in WikiProject Spiders. Of the 11, it looks to me like several are "clean", have a common name that is likely to be used to refer to them collectively, and could be revised/written to provide a brief general treatment, i.e. I would identify them as good candidates to being converted. I'd want for some arachnologists to review the good candidate ones and confirm that they're suitable, though. --doncram 04:29, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree about seeking input from relevant projects. What you might see as being as set index, for an expert might only be a random coincidence of unrelated species that happen to have the same common name. It's a major reason why Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life tends to prefer using scientific names over common names. older ≠ wiser 09:53, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
What an expert sees as a random confluence, the layman for whom we write may see as a type. The fact that people may generally refer to a "bollworm" without meaning a particular species is an example of that. bd2412 T 20:36, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
By that logic one could also argue for changing all the human name disambiguation pages to be set indexes. older ≠ wiser 01:52, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
I basically agree with BD2412, and don't understand the logical problem, and have some ideas.
  • There do exist articles at many names, e.g. Nguyen for one big example. For "bollworm" it makes sense to have an article about it, and for that article to list all 20 or so species, and I think readers expect there to be an article about it, and there's a plausible audience for the article. About "People whose last name is Nguyen", I don't think there is anyone who wants to read a list of all the persons it could name. So there is something different, although i am not saying it correctly, and I think there should not be a logic problem.
  • And why not change every hndis to a SIA? I'm not sure about that. But there certainly are a lot of new dablinks created every day to last-names and to first-names, I see that now. Sometimes there is an article about the surname at its name (less often), sometimes there is an article at "Last name (surname)" (and sometimes that is a SIA vs. other times it is a dab?), sometimes it is a disambiguation page having non-name meanings as well (so we see it as a new dablink). Frankly, this is kind of a mess. Shouldn't we create an article for every last-name and first-name that doesn't have one yet, now? Or at least create a target for each one, which for last-names sometimes would be an article at "Last-name (surname)" and otherwise would be a section or simply an anchor within a dab that could be linked to (by redirect from "Last-name (surname)" to "Last-name#last-name (surname)". For the anchor-targeted ones, if/when the missing surname article is created, all the incoming links will be directed properly. Or is a system like this already working for names?
  • The wp:dpl efforts including monthly challenges have been heroic, really, and the programming work of JaGa and R'n'b and dispenser (and others?) has been amazing, and it is almost incredible that the efforts have reduced the numbers of dablinks from over a million down nearly to zero now (or at least to zero more-than-a-day-old, give or take 100,000, and a true endpoint of the reduction campaign is reachable within 6 months at the current pace).
  • BUT, there still remain massive types of natural "errors" that could/should be addressed and handled "permanently" or more systematically that help reach the zero goal and could reduce ongoing maintenance tremendously perhaps (e.g. can we review frequency reports of the new dablinks created during the last two years say (do these exist already?), and identify and create the BROADCONCEPT articles that are most needed? This would certainly be higher priority than converting some of the 19 spider dabs into SIAs, I must admit. Set up more streamlined processes for handling new instances of the most common dablinks to dabs-that-are-always-going-to-be-dabs. ("The Telegraph" is surely one in the category, I notice, what are the others?). That could involve channeling new dablinks to specialists, e.g. one person or team to always handle "The Telegraph", removing them from the current channel of all new dablinks coming in together. Maybe more of this is done that I don't know about. I am not sure why i am writing this, bye for now. --doncram 14:17, 7 August 2015 (UTC) --14:37, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Doncram, don't get ahead of yourself. Links to The Telegraph will always pop up, just as BBC, ITV, The Guardian, The Mirror, etcetera. But that's because editors don't do their job properly and link to a dab page. And then there's a bot for that, which alerts them to this. But some links will remain, and they will be regular guests on the DPL list. Nothing can be done about that. --Midas02 (talk) 01:07, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Right, dablinks to all of those will pop up, as will dablinks to Taizhou in China, which I have become able to sort out. I'm actually not very comfortable sorting out The Telegraph ones, because I don't know if a news story ran in the printed, main weekday newspaper or the Sunday printed paper or whether The Telegraph publishes some stories only on their webpage, like some other publishers do. The Telegraph's disambiguation page demands that one makes the distinction. And someday soon there may be dablinks popping up every day for Gopalpur, Habibpur, Hardiya, Jagarnathpur, and Jagatpur, in India, among those which happened to come in yesterday. What I mean is for someone or some team comfortable working with the Chinese ones, say, to "own" them and each day would check for new arrivals, without those being sent to the general DPL list that are presented to everyone. Both for efficiency and for quality. Note some dablinks have easy-to-make erroneous choices offered up temptingly, and these dablinks perhaps shouldn't be disambiguated by non-experts. --doncram 18:16, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
The efforts to reduce links to disambiguation pages have been successful in large part because it is relatively easy to identify links to disambiguation page and fix them. Sure, it would likely be possible to expand the scope to include set index pages, but then it will be more difficult to distinguish between incorrect links that need to be fixed and generic links where the set index are the best available target. Creating set indexes on topics that have little in common other than the name merely for the purpose of reducing the number of links on this report is misguided. older ≠ wiser 14:38, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
(Two days later): Actually it might NOT be very hard to separate generic correct links vs. incorrect links. Just handle them like we do for separating good vs. bad dablinks. For incoming links to the Weissman surname page, say, begin to require that they go to Weissman (surname), a redirect to the "Weissman" page, if they are intended. Convert correct incoming "surlinks" to that, and for others direct them to the specific person intended or if that's not possible then mark them as "surlinks-needing-disambiguation". For the SIA about bollworms, convert correct "sialinks" to go to bollworm (sia), and apply a "sialinks-needing-disambiguation" tag on sialinks where it seems one specific species of bollworm needs to be identified. Wouldn't that work?  :) --doncram 18:37, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Do you realise that what you're describing now is exactly the same system which is in place for dab pages? SIA doesn't need to become a dab clone, we already have dabs. What you could consider, once dab pages have been brought down, and that will be more than 12 months from now, you could make a similar list with the most linked-to SIAs. If those have, let's say, more than 5-10 links to them, there's reason to suspect those need some weeding out. Similar for surname pages. In general, people don't want to link to surname pages, but they want to link to an individual they are referring to by his surname. So a list of most linked-to surname pages would be helpful for doing some cleanup from the top-down as well. --Midas02 (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Let me reply with some comments and an example.
  • I am afraid that the WPL process of identifying and "fixing" incoming links has often amounted to destroying good links by unlinking them, and in effect, denying that others' usage is wrong. When faced with no good option in the disambiguation page, I know I have often selected "delink" a good number of times when it would have been possible to validate the others' usages by converting the dab to an article. Delinking clearly should be done for minor words which would be unhelpful and distracting to the reader, even if they did link to an article on the topic. Delinking clearly should NOT be done for most incoming usages of bollworm.
  • Can you comment on this tangible example: the Noronha article. It is in the Monthly Dab Challenge, and was just converted by me from disambiguation page to SIA, simply by dropping one template and adding the other. I didn't have to, but I still looked at all 8 of the incoming links, and I wrote up this analysis at the Noronha Talk page. Two articles were plant articles and "Noronha" should have linked to botanist Francisco Noronha. The other six have usages referring to the Noronha family, and seem fine.
  • What would "normal" DPL processing do? I think it would make the same 2 fixes and delink all the others, and count them together as 8 eliminations of dablink errors, when in fact its 2 fixes were offset by WPL introduction of 6 errors. Or so I guess. There are not many conversions of dabs to articles going on, or at least I don't see very many announced in the MDD manual tracking of progress.
  • And why is our attention being brought to incoming links to this article? There are incorrect links to many non-disambiguation articles. We are reviewing the links incoming to dab pages because those are all defined by us to be errors. This big review process that is wp:DPL should perhaps be sampling other categories to look for areas where more numerous or more important fixes could be done, more fruitfully than making minor(?) improvements like the fixing the 2 out of 8 that could/should have been more precisely targeted (IMHO they weren't wrong per se, as they linked to "Noronha" where the botanist's name does appear).
I really am interested to hear your opinion about Noronha example and what it means. --doncram 16:24, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
I couldn't say how frequently editors remove links that might possibly become concept or index pages. I'm not sure you could with any accuracy. I agree that where there is a good candidate for an index or concept dab, can be acted on if it is an obvious case or brought up for discussion if there might be objections. In some cases, a link to wiktionary might be preferable and in other cases, there might be a question as to whether the set or the concept is the primary topic.
Regarding Noronha, that was mistakenly tagged as a disambiguation page. It has been a surname page for quite some time. The single non-person instance listed on the page, Fernando de Noronha, is a partial title match named for one of the persons listed here. I've changed it from a set index to a surname page. I think most seasoned disambiguators would have recognized that is was not a legitimate disambiguation page and changed it. I think the manual tracking of progress most amounts to removing entries from the list as they are cleared. I've not noticed most editors being very descriptive as to how or why the entries were cleared.
I'm not sure I understand your last bullet. It might perhaps be worthwhile to explore if there is some way to report on bad links in non-disambiguation pages. I have no idea how that might work. A simple algorithm would not be able to distinguish a good link from an incorrect link. Seems the alternative to be to list all the links to SIA and dabconcept pages in order of quantity and let editors loose on them to figure out which are which. I think my position is to avoid replacing dab pages with poorly considered SIA or dabconcept pages in the first place. older ≠ wiser 17:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
I share Bkonrad's analysis. Obviously a surname page. IF it would have been about members of the very same family (mostly for nobility), it could have been an article about the "Noronha family" as well, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Your comment about delinking. Well, that's down to disambiguation editors as well. I've shared frustrations in the past with people not putting enough elbow grease in to resolve things properly. One effect is that they don't bother to clean up dab pages as they go along, another is that they make swift and faulty calls, another is that they unlink where another solution could have been applied. But what are you going to do about it? --Midas02 (talk) 01:07, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
If the programming underlying the MDD is smart enough to assign points properly to the specific dabber-person who directly fixed a dablink or even who indirectly fixed it by fixing a template, then it could do more: give 5 points for adding a new option at the dab page, and give 2 points for any edit there, in order to encourage editors to clean up dab pages. Continue to give 1 point for each dablink cleared by revising it to link differently, but cut to only half a point any dablinks cleared merely by delinking, to encourage editors to apply better solutions. Take away whatever points were earned by a dabber who changed a link, if that link is changed by another person. If that other person is also participating in MDD, give them the points. If there is edit-warring back and forth, the points are left in the end with the person who "wins", presumably because the best solution has been reached by consensus.  :) Provide separate tallies for each dabber's accomplishments in each of these quality improvement areas you have helpfully identified, and calculate an overall weighted score at the end, or just keep track of their total of points using these weightings. If the technology allows, improving the performance measurement system is almost always best, because it sends the right signals and removes skewed incentives. And it's a truism that normal human beings generally do more of whatever is measured in their jobs and underperform where their contributions cannot be recognized. :) --doncram 19:12, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Agreed, but completely unfeasible. Dab editors should have the common sense not to touch topics which they don't understand. I generally don't, you will see me rarely working on an Asian topic for instance. --Midas02 (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
And I still don't understand your zero disambiguation page goal. That simply makes no sense to me at all given the nature of Wikipedia and English language. Editors will always be creating links to ambiguous topics and there will always need to be some cleanup. Disambiguation pages have been a pretty effective tool both for helping readers find a desired topic when something is incorrectly linked and for editors to easily identify and fix such incorrect links. older ≠ wiser 14:43, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
There could be other ways to bring attention productively to new links, besides defining some of them randomly to be bad and reviewing 100% of them, while reviewing 0% of all others.
And let's talk about whether the dab pages can simply be deleted or not, later...when Wikipedia has articles on all topics, all bad links have been fixed, all possible human and robot inventions have been achieved, and all articles are complete. :) --doncram 16:24, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

A proper analysis would also require one to consider the downsides of a move from dab page to SIA. Have you considered those, what would be the effect on links, users, the disambig situation and the ecosystem as a whole? --Midas02 (talk) 20:11, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Good questions. What do you think the upsides and downsides are?
In general, we want to eliminate disambiguation pages, is my philosophy. Disambiguation pages are temporary. They are necessary while the Wikipedia is being developed in new areas, simply to help editors sort out the organization needed, but eventually they should not be linked from anywhere and should not be encountered by readers at all. It would be ideal to have an overview page at the common name, in many cases. And, where there are truly different usages which make you feel like a dab is absolutely necessary, what I think would be better is for the reader to get to their intended destination without landing on the dab at all. E.g. in the search box, don't offer up the ambiguous term as one that they can choose, but rather provide them a meaningful choice there: allow them and make them choose between "Blue emperor (New Guinea butterfly)" vs. "Blue emperor (European dragonfly)". An underlying dab at "Blue emperor" is still needed, but only for editors. That is kind of my ideal, not practical yet.
For a "clean" dab page such as bollworm was, the benefits are clear, and include having the overview article allows for the common name, i.e. the general topic, to be found by readers and to be linked by editors from other articles. Links to "bollworm" before were invalid by our disambiguation page rules. The new bollworm article can use footnotes and be more specific in what distinguishes listed types from each other. Depending on how it is done, the SIA or standalone article can serve readers and editors who "want to disambiguate" to do that better, as Plantdrew suggests below. I.e. for those who want to find their way to just one specific bollworm type, the article version can provide more detail that is helpful in that finding process. So it provides usual dab function better, and also it serves as a place for an overview discussion as a contribution to readers, perhaps at a more elementary level.
In general I am fairly confident that moving a "clean" dab page to SIA is a good thing for readers.
For dab pages that include a mix of items but one grouping is significant and can be split off, as in Midas02's example about Tambora (drum), I think the benefits are similar. Readers get more: an overview page at Tambora (drum). Which grouping(s) to be split off and which gets the common name could sometimes be an issue, but that is just like for other cases where primaryusage is easy or hard to determine. Perhaps Tambora (drum) was a case where there was no conflict with local editors.
Another example where there was(is?) some disagreement is Opium Wars, recently converted by me from a dab to an article. Lesser usages were off-loaded to Opium Wars (disambiguation), and the main topic is properly devoted to giving overview of the mid-1800s wars in China, where there was no overview before, just the stark choice between war number 1 and war number 2. In fact there are incoming links where editors elsewhere just want to refer to the collective of mid-1800s wars in China, and they don't want to specify the first war or the second one. I found it impossible to disambiguate those incoming links; that was my major clue that there is a common term that is valid for an article. However, there had previously been debate about splitting an overview article at the topic name and converting it to the dab, which had been done. The previous discussion and decision had been inadequate, IMO, because there was not explicit consideration of disambiguation issues. And there were/are editors watchlisting it, who participated in new discussion.
The only downside I can see right now is the cost of editors' attention, and the need to educate/discuss/etc.
Again what upsides and downsides do you see? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doncram (talk • contribs) 22:00, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
And about educating/discussing, having a good essay or two or guidelines and some templates would help, e.g. I have tried creating Template:DabConceptExpand as one "message", one communication tool. --doncram 13:35, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
In answer to Doncram, I didn't have a prepared answer on what the downsides may be, but the discussion shows that the proposal involves treading on a fine line, and mass converting might be too brutal a method to fit the purpose. I agree SIA'ing some dab pages would definitely help to eliminate some difficult dab issues, and it would definitely stop people from disambiguating links just for the sake of it, which I'm seeing a lot as well. But as others pointed out, it may also remove the requirement to disambiguate where such is needed. --Midas02 (talk) 06:39, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
In general, we want to eliminate disambiguation pages What? Why? Disambiguation is and will always be a perpetual necessity in Wikipedia. There may be some cases where a set index might be desirable because the ambiguously named topics share some features whereby you can provide encyclopedic information about the the topics as a group and it may be desirable to be able to link to the general overview rather than a specific topic. But in most cases, we want to be able to easily identify and fix incorrect links and overuse of set indexes has the effect of burying such incorrect links. older ≠ wiser 02:03, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
To be fair, I tried to make it clear I was talking about an ideal world, where everything would already be disambiguated (all links would go to where they should go) and the project was finished. Like when Everything that can be invented has been invented already! is a true statement. :) I agree that having SIAs would reduce the pressure to fix incorrect links (because most incorrect links come to disambiguation pages now, and we have machinery for identifying those, like all of wp:dpl). Plantdrew elsewhere in this discussion suggested there oughta be comparable tools and processes for looking at incoming links to SIA's. We shouldn't avoid having SIAs because the bad-link detection processes work better (do they?) for dabs.
(Hmm, should the Daily Disambig be adapted to make a Daily SIA? Note when we make conversions from dabs per wp:DABCONCEPT, the articles that were dabs became SIAs or standalone lists or regular articles, and we have no way of tracking them. Probably some permanent category tag like "Once a disambiguation topic" or "plausible candidate for disambiguation" or "likely to be a bad target" oughta be put in place, so that new incoming links to those articles could be reviewed and fixed when they turn out to be incorrect. Currently disambiguation pages are the only pages identified as likely-bad targets for new incoming links. And there oughta be some way to link to previous discussions about the merit of dab vs. SIA for the topic. Like there are good links from Talk pages to previous AFD discussions. ) --doncram 13:35, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
And what are set index pages for then? Are they simply disambiguation pages with more text and references? older ≠ wiser 14:15, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
I dunno, would that be bad? And they can have pictures and sortable tables, too, which can serve the lookup functionality that dabs are supposed to provide. --doncram 23:16, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm largely responsible for populating the categories being discussed. Earlier this year, I went through all of Category:Disambiguation pages and added categories to all entries that I could readily identify as being common names shared by multiple organisms (though I'm sure I missed a bunch of non-obvious ones). For plants, I converted all the pages only listed plant meanings from DABs to SIAs. Barring any additions in the last few months Category:Plant common name disambiguation pages is entirely pages that list two or more plant meanings and at least one non-plant meaning, and the SIA category is pages with only plant meanings. Using SIAs for plant common names has been discussed several times at WikiProject Plants, and I feeel that there is sufficient consensus among plant editors to convert DABs to SIAs. However, I've encountered differing opinions from some editors working primarily on DABs. There is seems to be some disagreement about how much detail can be included in compliance with MOSDAB and whether or not links must include the title of the DAB page (i.e., whether the scientific name can be linked or whether a parenthetically disambiguated redirect from the common name such as Pawpaw (genus) should be linked).

There hasn't been much discussion about how animal common names applied to multiple species should be handled, so I simply tagged the ones I found with Category:Animal common name disambiguation pages rather than converting to SIAs. I added project banners to all the common names that covered two or more organisms in the scope of one of the animal projects (i.e., a page that listed two fish and one insect got tagged as a disambig with the fish banner, but not the insect banner; one fish and one insect got no banners, and two fish and two insects got both banners). I believe guiding readers to the correct page will usually require more detail than permitted by (my understanding of) MOSDAB, so I am in favor of converting animal DAB pages to SIAs and adding further details. At present, the animal common name DAB category is a mix of pages that have at least one non-animal meaning (which should remain DABs), and pages that have only animal meanings (candidates for conversion to SIA), so a bot can't be used to switch them all over.

I don't think pages should be converted to SIAs merely to reduce the workload for WP:DPL. Incoming links to ambiguous common names should still be disambiguated if possible, but I know in many cases there is insufficient context to determine which organism is meant and it's essentially impossible to disambiguate. I'd love to see an incoming link report for SIAs similar to the reports here.

I guess another issue is the concept of "sets". It is usually easier to provide details that would guide the reader to the correct article for organisms that have little in common but a shared common name. Organisms that have much in common (forming more of a set) are harder to differentiate. Plantdrew (talk) 20:39, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Your efforts are appreciated. With respect to animals where there are very different kinds at work (say, three kinds of fish and one kind of insect) it still bears examining whether, when people use the term, they generally mean the fish (as a group), in which case I would put an WP:DABCONCEPT index at that name and have a separate "Foo (disambiguation)" page for the remaining ambiguous term. bd2412 T 20:43, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, Thank you to Plantdrew! Both for your work grouping the articles together by your categorizing, and also for chiming in here. --doncram 22:00, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm not coming up with any examples quite like that offhand, but grayling covers multiple fish and insects (among other topics). Would you spin grayling (fish) off as a DABCONCEPT? I've thought about retargeting the red snapper (fish) redirect to Red Snapper, but didn't want to burden DPL with a whole bunch of unsolvable dab links. I've gone through the incoming links to red snapper (fish), and none of now them intend the current redirect target, northern red snapper, with any certainty, and the majority clearly intend something else (though I'm not sure which species are the red snappers of SE Asia and South America). I guess red snapper would be another to treat as a dab concept? Plantdrew (talk) 21:44, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, please! :) I think someone should convert grayling (fish) from being a redirect (to the list of fish types in the dab), into being an article. And also convert Red snapper (fish) from being a redirect (to just "Northern red snapper" !), into being an article with the five other types from the dab page. :) (And further then I'd prefer for the remaining dab material to be left at Grayling (disambiguation) and Red snapper (disambiguation), but that's another battle, so I expect one would have to leave the dab material at Grayling and Red snapper.) That's my "!vote", anyho--doncram 22:20, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't agree that Red Snapper is a good candidate. The fish sharing the name have little in common that would qualify as a set index. Links to these different species should be disambiguated. older ≠ wiser 01:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
In exactly the vein of this conversation, can someone please help explain at Talk:Plant-based diet that a list of articles relating to diets based on plants is not a topic for disambiguation? Cheers! bd2412 T 20:45, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

draft animals dab and sia plan, to be edited

This served a purpose maybe, but didn't really work out.
Hierarchy to call Dab #[1] to call SIA #[1] dab categories;SIA categories & SIA footer messages Notes
Animals {{disambig|animals}} 858 {{SIA|animals}} 108 Category:Disambiguation pages on animals?
Category:Set indices on animals, Category:Animals,
"This page is an index of articles on animal species (or higher taxonomic groups) with the same common name (vernacular name)." 		And not Category:Animal common names?
Get a move/rename of Category:Animal common name disambiguation pages‎ to Category:Disambiguation pages on animals‎.
And move/rename existing Category:Set indices on animalia to Category:Set indices on animals.
:Animal common names . ? {{Animal common name}} 45 Not needed? Get a merger of Category:Set indices on animal common names into Category:Set indices on animals?
:Fish {{disambig|fish}} ? {{SIA|fish}} ? Category:Disambiguation pages on fish?
Category:Set indices on fish, Category:Fish?		 There exists Category:Fish common names, to be kept or not?
:Reptiles {{disambig|reptiles}} 0? {{SIA|reptiles}} 0? Category:Disambiguation pages on reptiles?
Category:Set indices on reptiles, Category:Reptiles		 And not Category:Reptile common names?
:Birds {{disambig|birds}} 0? {{SIA|birds}} 0? Category:Disambiguation pages on birds?
Category:Set indices on birds, Category:Birds		 And not Category:Bird common names.
:Insects {{disambig|insects}} 0? {{SIA|insects}} 0? Category:Disambiguation pages on insects?
Category:Set indices on insects, Category:Insects		 And not Category:Insect common names?
:Arthropods {{disambig|arthropods}} 0? {{SIA|arthropods}} 0? Category:Disambiguation pages on arthropods?
Category:Set indices on arthropods, Category:Arthropods		 And not Category:Arthropod common names?
:Snakes {{disambig|snakes}} ? {{SIA|snakes}} 93 Category:Disambiguation pages on snakes?
Category:Set indices on snakes, Category:Snakes		 Note this already has an SIA category. And not Category:Snake common names?
:Spiders {{disambig|spiders}} ? {{SIA|spiders}} 3 Category:Disambiguation pages on spiders?
Category:Set indices on spiders, Category:Spiders		 Already has an SIA category. Category:Spider common names?
:Fungi {{disambig|fungi}} ? {{SIA|fungi}} 20 Category:Disambiguation pages on fungi?
Category:Set indices on fungi, Category:Fungi		 Separately because it already has an SIA category. Do a category rename fungus to fungi for that. And not Category:Fungi common names?
Plants {{disambig|plants}} ? {{SIA|plants}} 14 Category:Disambiguation pages on plants?
Category:Set indices on plants, Category:Plants		 And not Category:Plant common names
:Plant common names . ? . 1,218 Not needed? Get a merger of Category:Set indices on plant common names into Category:Set indices on plants?
  1. ^ a b Already, as of August 2015

fixing up categories for dabs and sias

(this has been split out from #convert 1,000+ "common name dab pages" to set index articles as this seems to be technical and separable)

Another example raises a question: should new SIA pages be classified similarly to disambiguation pages they replace? I just cleared 7 dablinks in this month's Dab Challenge by converting Dace from a disambiguation page to a SIA page. It had template {{disambig|fish}} on it which I changed to {{sia|fish}}. I imagine that SIA pages perhaps should be categorized together, i.e. have a category of fish - SIA pages, especially because it is possible that there will be back and forth conversions. But I have no idea if SIA pages are categorized that way. And if they are being categorized, i have no whether my edit was done properly (would capitalization to {{SIA|fish}} be necessary?) or has any effect. I don't immediately see an fish-SIA-related category in the article. Plantdrew, could you possibly please comment? (To be clear, I think the classification of dab pages done by Plantdrew, including for the Dace article in early 2014, is very valuable.) Others' comments welcome too of course. By the way I did not attempt to dismabiguate the 7 inbound links before converting the page, but I did note them on the Talk:Dace page. Currently, some of us are working on converting dabs to SIAs and so I think we should set them up with whatever categories are proper, but i understand we're not working on clearing inbound "sialinks". Also, an expert might consider the numerous species sometimes called dace to be very different, but to a common reader they are all the same IMHO. --doncram 16:27, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I think new set index categories would need to be added by editing the template. Dace seems a good candidate, even if experts might be able to pick out differences in the small gray minnow-like fishes that wouldn't be obvious to others. But again this is a judgement call. For example with red snapper the geographic distribution of the species are very different and should allow even nonexperts to disambiguate (or at least to be hopeful that a resolution is possible by tagging with {{disambiguation needed}}.older ≠ wiser 16:46, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
In my view, animal common name SIAs should be categorized. I'd like to see them categorized by groups pertaining to WikiProjects (birds, insects, fishes, etc.) rather than just dumped into one big category for all animals. Ideally, that would be achieved with a parameter in {{Animal common name}}. Note that the generic {{Set index article}} template supports a parameter for "animalia" (redundant with the Animal common name template) and "snakes". There are some subcategories that must be manually added for some groups of animals. See Category:Animal common names for existing subcategories. Categorization under animal common names is kind of a mess at present. I'd like to see the categories distinguish between SIAs and articles about a common name. In my view, the SIAs would basically be lists with a focus on providing details needed for a layperson to differentiate the listed items. An article about a common name would have a fair amount of text and would discuss the properties that the named organisms have in common (rather than what makes them different); I suppose this is similar to the idea of a DABCONCEPT. Category:Fish common names is a mix of SIAs/list and articles at the moment (Hake is a good example of a common name article). If I had my way, I'd make Category:Set indices on fish common names as a subcategory of Fish common names, and leave the articles in the higher category, separate from set indices. I'm open to other thoughts and opionions
@Bkonrad:. I need to put some more work into the Red snapper dab. The situation is not as clear cut as it appears on the dab page. There are dozens of remaining incoming links to red snapper (fish), and I've already done all I can to disambiguate them. "Red snapper (fish)" is an incomplete disambiguation, and should redirect to the dab page (or there should be a SIA/DABCONCEPT, or whatever). The fish currently listed on the dab pages are the ones where there is a clear candidate from the geographical context. Gulf Coast of the US? Lutjanus campechanus. Pacific coast of the US? Sebastes ruberrimus (or occasionally S. miniatus). New Zealand? Centroberyx affinis. There are another dozen or so fish species (mostly in the genus Lutjanus) that are referred to as red snapper and not listed on the dab page. In many parts of the world, there are multiple species of Lutjanus that are locally referred to as red snapper. Many of the remaining incoming links to red snapper (fish) have contexts of Southeast Asia, the southern Caribbean, or South America. If I get around to adding the other "red snappers" it will be apparent that geography doesn't always provide enough context to disambiguate. Plantdrew (talk) 17:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Yikes, there are several subissues here, and some cleanup is needed, including editing both the disambiguation template and the SIA template. And editing their documentation. Unfortunately I think all this should be done before any big campaign to convert 1000+ animal name dabs to SIAs. And this seems technical and separable from other discussion, so I split this out to be a separate subsection in my last edit.
About documentation, I see Template:Disambiguation mentions two out of the three dab categories we've been talking about (Plants, Fish, Animal common names). I scanned quickly but I think it does not cover the nice use of switches, as in {{disambiguation|fish}} as opposed to something like{{fish common names}}. Documentation at Template:SIA mentions just one of the three, and does not cover using switches. Trying a switch with "plant" and also with "plant common names" ...neither works. Use of an "animalia" switch that Plantdrew knows about is not documented; there's no mention of animalia on the page. I would prefer to concentrate on use of switches in dabs and sia, can we do that? And I prefer to use simplest possible wording, e.g. probably using "fish" rather than "fish common names". Separate-looking template calls like {{Fish common name SIAs}} would be like redirects, I think, and can exist without any problem. But I'd prefer to focus on switches. To start, can we possibly list out, here, the desired hierarchy of switches wanted vs. what is known to exist (and later move on to implementing them and documenting them)? About Plantdrew's concerns about how the categories themselves should be nested (i.e. have all the lowest ones appear in one big category, vs. having the big category divided by sias vs dabs first, etc.), I think that we can leave that to category-focused specialists and anyone else interested, to fight out later, right? Or do we absolutely need to have the intended category nesting figured out now, in the hierarchy of switches? --doncram 18:38, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Plantdrew's conceptualization of what SIAs should be for, vs. other possibilities, is really very very important I think and should be discussed, but can that be done elsewhere or later? It possibly/probably should be addressed in a much larger forum, like an RFC, getting the Ships editors and everyone else with opinions to buy into some new consensus vision. That question, anyhow, is about which fish articles should be fish SIAs vs. non-SIA fish articles. For here, we are sure there will be some fish SIAs and here we want to set up the machinery for that, IMO. --doncram 18:50, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
{{Set index article}} does accommodate multiple switches (which would also work on the redirect {{SIA}}). Mostly these are the subcategories under Category:Set indices, however they are manually coded. There does not appear to be any automation to pick up new subcategories. older ≠ wiser 19:29, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
So are we looking for a consensus to add more switches for categorization? If so, do we agree on using WikiProject scopes as the basis for the categorization (or at least starting with the projects that have the most existing dabs/SIAs in their scope)? I agree that final category structure is secondary too deciding to use more switches in the first place (i.e., {{SIA|fish}} could be set up to put things in Category:Fish common names for now; with the |fish switch in place it would be easy to change the template code later to place the pages in a more specific subcategory). If we are adding switches I'd rather work with {{Animal common name}} than {{SIA}}, as the boilerplate text in the former is more specific. Fish seem to account for the largest number of the SIAs & DABs. I'd go for |fish, |amphibian, |reptile, |mammal, |bird, |insect, and |arthropod switches, in roughly that order. But this is not really the best place to be discussing this. Plantdrew (talk) 20:09, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Okay good, that Bkonrad knows somewhat about how template coding works, perhaps you'd be willing to do any re-coding we deem necessary?
Regarding Plantview's questions: 1) Yes, and 2) Sure, if you like the hierarchy of animal-related WikiProjects, we can organize the hierarchy of switches here in the same way. Right, switches, etc. needed only for groupings expected to have a decent number of dabs and/or SIAs in them. About this not being the best place, if you mean others need to be involved, I think we can possibly make a decent plan that is uncontroversial and doesn't require consulting others in a formal process, but perhaps not. Is here okay to develop a proposal? To implement everything would require some Categories For Discussion (CFD)s that will involve others anyhow. Maybe a big CFD, with notice to various Wikiprojects, would be the way forward? Or an RFC with notice also to CFD people?
I would be happy for this to be moved off to a working page, if that's what you mean, say to Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation_pages_with_links/animals dab and sia plan.
About working with {{Animal common name}} rather than {{SIA}}, I think that is about coding implementation. Maybe Animal common name coding should be moved into SIA code, in effect? {{Animal common name}} could be redirected to template:SIA|animals, or template:SIA|animals could call out to separate {{Animal common name}}, i am indifferent. I would hope that is all behind the scenes coding, and that users could simply use "SIA|animals" and other SIA switches, and that documentation at template:SIA would not duplicate any documentation at template:Animal common name (perhaps by linking or fully incorporating same text block if necessary). But I haven't read up and don't yet understand what you mean by more specific boilerplate yet.
The template would add categories like Category:Set indices on fish. About Category:Fish common names and so, on, those are categories used by non-SIA articles, too. They don't have to be added by the SIA|fish template, but they could be, I guess. Oh maybe here you want it added separately for each rather than having Category:Set indices on fish be a subcategory of Category:Fish common names? Sure, they can be added and the template can be changed later about the categories, as you say.
Browsing at Category:Set indices, i see there are already SIAs on snakes 93, spiders 3, fungus common names 20, plants 14 plus subcategory of plant common names 1,218. And at Category:Disambiguation pages there are 858 animal disambiguation pages to distribute out. (Interesting to me, the biggest SIA category is Category:Set indices on ships with 5,154, and it looks like there may be less than 100 SIA cats & subcats in total. Not sure what i think about categorization of places starting with awkward-sounding Category:Lists of places sharing the same name, which i guess holds SIAs and numerous List-articles.)
Below is a draft plan, as a table, to be edited in its subsection. Let's keep discussing here and keep pushing the table down the page, while we are making changes? --doncram 00:34, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
P.S.If fungi is not the plural of fungus, then change above. If it would have many dabs and/or sias, add Mammals? If hierarchy is wrong, please rearrange rows, etc. --doncram 00:34, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes, fungi. I think the key to the whole setup is whether the collection of animals known by a common name is so known because of shared characteristics that make them a group so far as the lay person is concerned. For example, if there are three geographically overlapping species of snakes known as "blue racers" and our Secretary Bird article says "The Secretary Bird likes to eat blue racers", meaning any of those species. bd2412 T 01:26, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes, but if there's also another kind of so-called blue racer that grows profusely on another continent, of a completely different genus, which very may well be what the restaurant in Springfield actually serves to Secretary Byrd, can we still say he had blue racer for dinner? He said he had the blue racer and liked it, and it tastes kind of like chicken, and who are we to disagree? Is the newspaper not allowed to report it? --doncram 03:15, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
I think that the point is that if the distinction is one that would only make a difference to a herpetologist, then we are safe describing the collection of species as a concept. bd2412 T 03:39, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
  • This scheme looks pretty good to me. By boiler plate I meant the boxed text generated by the set index template. For {{Animal common name}} it reads "This page is an index of articles on animal species (or higher taxonomic groups) with the same common name (vernacular name)..." but with {{SIA}} it reads "This article includes a list of related items that share the same name (or similar names)." This is similar to how specialized dab templates produce more specific boiler plate (e.g. {{Hndis}} adds a category and specific boiler plate, while {{Disambiguation}} just adds a category with generic dab boiler plate). I do assume switches could affect what boiler plate is displayed if coded to do so, so it ultimately doesn't matter much.
  • Oh, okay, I see. Then yes the {{SIA}} template should be reprogrammed as necessary to display different text for each switch. From glancing at the current code of {{Animal common name}}, i see that the text is provided to a {{Dmbox}} call that generates the "Disambiguation footer message box" which is displayed. So adapting that terminology, we want for the SIA template to accomodate a customized "SIA footer message" for each switch. And each Dab should accomodate a customised "Dab footer message".
  • The plan table may need to be changed to accommodate more stuff like the footer message texts, and some columns aren't working too well. The table could better be organized with columns "Switch | Dab Categories and Footer messages | SIA Categories and Footer messages | Tasks and other notes". The counts of dab and sia usage columns should be dropped, with any interesting bits noted in the "Tasks and other notes" column. I can't re-organize it now but could do so within a few days, or anyone else could just go ahead and do something like that. --doncram 17:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm more interested in seeing this happen than arguing about the specifics, but a couple minor quibbles. Should they be Category:Reptile commons names, etc. rather than Category:Reptiles common names. Each page would cover multiple reptiles, but the double plurals of "reptiles" and "common names" seem a little strange (and per "blue racer", maybe each common name is a singular concept)? And Category:Set indices on plants currently includes pages that aren't common names; I don't necessarily object to merging Category:Set indices on plant common names, but am not sure what I'd do with something like Rubus fruticosus if that happened. Plantdrew (talk) 04:11, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Not quibbles at all, we want for the plan to be precise. The wordings matter. Ah, yes, i agree categories should be "Reptile common names", etc., with the singular and I just edited those changes into the plan table now. --doncram 17:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
I am worried that so far I seem to be pushing for consolidation of "animal common names" into "animals" and likewise for plants, with my not having enough understanding and appreciation for the distinctions that have been made previously. I don't want to be responsible for making those decisions. --doncram 17:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC) P.S. Maybe the dabs and the SIAs should all have "common names" in their names, rather than none of them (which is what I was intending). What I intended would put all SIAs about animals into Category:Animals not Category:Animal common names. Maybe I am all wrong with that.
When should singular vs. plural be used. Should the switches be singular rather than plural? Note if "common names" are to be used, it seems to make sense for an editor to put template "Animal common name" (singular) into the article, or they would use SIA and its animals switch. Would they put in "SIA|animal common names" (singular) or "SIA|animal common names" (plural)? Or "SIA|animal" (singular) or "SIA|animals" (plural)? --doncram 18:31, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Plants have a (mostly) consistent scheme. Animals are all over the place in terms of category titles and content. Category:Plant common names contains articles (more developed than SIAs) with Category:Set indices on plant common names as a subcategory, which is also a subcategory of Category:Set indices on plants. Pages included directly in Category:Set indices on plants are all ambiguous scientific names (although there are also ambiguous plant scientific names in Category:Species Latin name disambiguation pages; the distinction between SIAs and DABs isn't very consistent here).

I'm not quite sure what you're suggesting. I don't think Category:Reptiles etc. should be filled with a bunch of SIAs. Broad categories like that tend to fill up with articles categorized by editors who aren't very familiar with the category structure for a given topic, and need maintenance. There's almost always a more relevant subcategory. In the interests of making it easier for editors to put pages in appropriate subcategories, common names SIAs should have a subcategory so they don't clutter the main category. That could be either "Foo common name" or "Set indices on foo" or something. I don't both "Foo common name" and "Set indices on foo" are necessary unless common name articles (e.g, eagle, hake, mackerel) are being placed in the "Foo common name" category.

I'd go with singular for the switches, but it should be possible to make both singular and plural work. Plantdrew (talk) 01:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I was getting confused. I outline existing vs. "preferred" dab categories and SIA categories and common names below. Note the existing category tree doesn't make sense.

  • For one thing it puts non-common name articles into categories of common names (e.g. Callichthys fabricioi in Fish common names, as are other scientific-named species within armoured catfish are in Fish common names.
  • I am confused, but I am pretty sure that all current usage of "common names" in category names is defective in some way. Why group together the fish articles whose titles are common names? And the articles in category "fish common names" are not about "common names", they are articles about fish. You could have an article about fish common names, but that would be about history of naming practices and regulation of names and so on, it would not be about the fish per se.

The following may read better in an edit window, where indentations are uniform and with intended linebreaks. Parentheticals are about the contents of each type. Here:

Existing dab categories:

  • Disambiguation pages
    • Animal common name disambiguation pages (858) (some in combo dabs, some in animal-only dabs (soon to become SIAs))
      • Fish common name disambiguation pages‎ (281) (some in combo dabs, some in pure fish-only dabs)

Preferred dab categories:

  • Disambiguation pages
    • Disambiguation of animals (some in combo dabs, some in pure animal-only dabs
      • Disambiguation of arthropods etc.
      • Disambiguation of birds
      • Disambiguation of fish
      • Disambiguation of fungi
      • Disambiguation of insects
      • Disambiguation of reptiles
      • Disambiguation of snakes
      • Disambiguation of spiders
    • Disambiguation of plants

Existing non-dab categories:

  • Animals (non-SIAs, SIAs)
    • Animal common names (non-SIAs, SIAs)
    • Set indices on animal common names‎ (SIAs only)
    • Set indices on animalia‎ (4 C, 108 P) (SIAs only)
  • Arthropods (non-SIAs, SIAs)
    • Arthropod common names‎ (13 P) (non-SIAs, SIAs)
  • Birds etc.
    • various
    • Birds by common name‎ (27 C, 76 P)
  • Fish
    • Fish common names‎ (2 C, 96 P)
      • Armored catfish‎ (3 C, 1 P)
      • Misgurnus species by common name (12 P)
    • Snakes by common name‎
  • Fish
  • etc etc.

The SIA ones also fall into:

  • Set indices
    • Set indices on animal common names (SIAs whose titles are common names)
    • Set indices on animalia (SIAs)

The common names ones also fall into:

  • Animals
    • Animal common names (non-SIAs and SIAs whose titles are common names)
    • Arthropod common names (non-SIAs and SIAs whose titles are common names)
    • Birds by common name (non-SIAs and SIAs whose titles are common names)
    • Fish common names (non-SIAs and SIAs whose titles are common names, and "List of common fish names")
      • Armored catfish‎ (3 C, 1 P) (just one article titled "Armored catfish", and subcategories)
        • Callichthyidae‎ (4 C, 35 P) (non-SIAs, whether or not their titles are common names)
          • Callichthys‎ (4 P) (non-SIAs, whether or not their titles are common names)
          • Corydoras‎ (55 P) (non-SIAs, whether or not their titles are common names)
          • Megalechis‎ (3 P) etc. ...
          • Callichthyidae stubs
        • Doradidae‎ (1 C, 88 P)
          • Doradidae stubs
        • Loricariidae‎ (non-SIAs. whether or not their titles are common names)
      • Misgurnus species by common name‎ (non-SIAs and SIAs whose titles are common names)
    • Snakes by common name (non-SIAs and SIAs whose titles are common names)
    • etc.... etc.

Preferred non-dab categories

  • Animals (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
    • Arthropods (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
    • Birds (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
    • Fish (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
      • Armoured catfish
      • Misgurnus
    • Fungi (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
    • Insects (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
    • Reptiles (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
    • Snakes (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
    • Spiders (non-SIAs, some SIAs)
  • Plants (non-SIAs, some SIAs)

The SIA ones also fall into:

  • Set indices
    • Set indices of animals (SIAs only)
      • Set indices of arthropods (SIAs only)
      • Set indices of birds (SIAs only)
      • Set indices of fish (SIAs only)
      • Set indices of fungi (SIAs only)
      • Set indices of insects (SIAs only)
      • Set indices of reptiles (SIAs only)
      • Set indices of snakes (SIAs only)
      • Set indices of spiders (SIAs only)
    • Set indices of plants (SIAs only)

There are to be no categories with "common name" in their title, unless there are multiple articles written about naming practices for fish, etc. How does the above do? To implement those names would require renaming of some categories and removal of other categories in a big CFD. --doncram 23:49, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

This is looking good, but the timing is bad for me. I'm going to be away from the internet entirely for the next two days, and then busy with real life for a week, after which I will have a couple weeks with minimal internet access. I'm hoping I can find time to a proposal together by August 17th. Plantdrew (talk) 06:15, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

template for dabs converted

I drafted a template that I hope might be helpful when converting a dab to an SIA or standalone article. New {{DabConceptExpand}} is adapted from {{DabConcept}} (also known as {{Dabprimary}}). See Category:Former disambiguation pages converted to broad concept articles, which as of this writing has 15 members. All are recent conversions of dabs noted in the Monthly Dab Challenge by myself or others.

Why? Sometimes converting a dab to an article is a big change and may not be appreciated. Other editors deserve notice and invitation to participate, and this might help in creating necessary understanding, I hope. --doncram 00:24, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

What's the difference between Dabconceptexpand and Dabconcept? It seems to me they are serving the same purpose. Couldn't you achieve the same goal by tweaking the wording of the dabconcept infobox? --Midas02 (talk) 06:39, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
The idea there is that some pages merely need to be turned into indexes or lists, while others are really broad topics for which a much more substantial article is required. One example I can give is Size, which was a disambiguation page listing kinds of size until earlier this year when I turned it into the article you see now. bd2412 T 17:44, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Still struggling here. Is it the intention to use DabConcept for articles which still have to be converted to a broad-concept article, whilst DabConceptExpand is there to remind readers that the article has already been converted, and that they may wish to expand it a little? --Midas02 (talk) 01:17, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
The intent of {{DabConcept}} is merely to indicate that a disambiguation page should in fact be an article on the common concept covered by the page. Once such a conversion has been completed, if the article is still a stub, I don't see why it would need anything other than a stub tag. bd2412 T 19:18, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
The dabconcept doesn't stop some from still trying to disambiguate those topics, usually resulting in a lot of link removal. Happens all the time. Have you given that some thought? I see no other solution than to remove the dab tag as per when you're adding the dabconcept one. --Midas02 (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree. But the {{DabConcept}} banner is for before conversion, and would no longer would apply, and would be removed. So a different banner, suggesting that we made a quick changeover but more should be done, is needed. Or variations: for when a true broad concept article is wanted, vs. for when the converted article is properly a SIA and very little is needed. Oh, it is worth announcing in a banner that now references are allowed and wanted, and that photos are allowed. (The list of bollworms could be made into a table, with a picture of each type. ) Also as you suggest the changes in wording, i.e. the variations, could be implemented in the {{DabConcept}} template, rather than spawning new templates, but copying the one over was easier for me. And my writing was bad. Midas02 or others, can you suggest or implement (wp:BE BOLD) a differently worded banner? Allowing for some article-specific customization of suggestions, like some banners have, would be good, too. :) --doncram 00:13, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I created Template:SIA-Conversion-Expand, to apply better to cases when a new SIA has been created by conversion of a disambiguation page. Its wording is better in some ways but too long; revisions are invited. Note this proposes usage of "topic (SIA)" redirects, akin to "topic (disambiguation)" redirects, to differentiate intended links from those which might be unintended. It adds a tracking category. Engine house, on this month's Dab Challenge was just converted to an SIA and as of this writing is the category's only member. Some of the 16 pages converted recently by disambiguation page conversion, that received the {{DabConceptExpand}} template, should be switched over. As of this writing there are 310 pages marked with the DabConcept / Dabprimary template, waiting to be converted. (Updated continuously: There are now 415 articles in Category:Disambiguation pages to be converted to broad concept articles.) As Midas02 notes, these should be converted sooner rather than later, so that legitimate inbound links are not removed. I hope using these banners help other editors understand what is going on, and encourages them to help rather than to reverse good conversions (which has been happening). Here are some counters:

Hope this helps. --doncram 22:28, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

What to do with an irresponsible dab fixer?

Hi, I was alarmed by the disappearance off the dab list of a topic which I found highly difficult to disambiguate. Investigating, I stumbled upon someone who has been making a string of highly questionable edits. Now, what to do about this? This is a public forum, and it's not about naming and shaming. But that person needs to be called to order. --Midas02 (talk) 20:06, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

My strategy in similar situations is to approach the editor on their talk page in a friendly and encouraging manner. If the approach is gentle, I find most people appreciate the feedback.--Mojo Hand (talk) 21:06, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree. Just bring the diffs. bd2412 T 01:21, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

notice of proposal to merge "The Sunday Telegraph" into "The Daily Telegraph"

I have made a proposal to merge The Sunday Telegraph into The Daily Telegraph at Talk:The Daily Telegraph#proposal to merge "The Sunday Telegraph" into "The Daily Telegraph"; you may be interested in participating there. This relates to wp:DPL due to the workload of disambiguating what I believe is the #1 most frequently linked disambiguation page, The Telegraph. Merger would make disambiguation easier.

By the way, a possible follow-on, not mentioned in the merger proposal, would be to consider moving the combined page to The Telegraph. I am not sure, but the combined usage of these two may be larger than the usage of all other "Telegraph" newspapers. If so, then we would be agreeing that when "The Telegraph" is wikilinked it should be understood to be the U.K. publication(s), and the #1 source of disambiguation workload for wp:DPL will be eliminated. But the proposal is merely to combine the U.K. articles. --doncram 16:48, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Merging those articles would be a good idea.
I wouldn't advocate moving the combined article to The Telegraph, as from my experience, there are enough incoming links that are meant for The Telegraph (Calcutta) and Telegraph (Brisbane) to warrant the disambiguation page staying at The Telegraph.
As for the #1 source of ambiguous links, The Telegraph is in the top 30-50, as there are many pages that get a few links every day, but I think the top page is American. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 19:44, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't believe you stand a fair chance of pulling that one off. Both papers have a different background and tradition. And one shouldn't merge articles just to make dab fixing easier. When in doubt, just throw it to the Daily Telegraph, wich is the main newspaper of the two. You usually need it when disambiguating a link to their website, and both use the same domain name anyway. --Midas02 (talk) 03:28, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, but if in practice the disambiguation is done by a rule like "When in doubt, just throw it to the Daily Telegraph", then to me it seems the disambiguation is not adding value and making the distinction is not worthwhile. I more or less made that argument in the proposal at Talk:The Daily Telegraph#proposal to merge "The Sunday Telegraph" into "The Daily Telegraph". There are other reasons for merger stated there. --doncram 20:26, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
That's not what I said. In 99% you're faced with a link to telegraph.co.uk which needs disambiguating. There's no article for that (like itv.co.uk), but it is the website of the Daily Telegraph. It's only when you're absolutely sure a piece was published in the Sunday edition, that you could alternatively go for that one. --Midas02 (talk) 03:50, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Set Index Articles Needing Disambiguation

When a dab having incoming links is converted to an SIA (sia), that changes the dablinks into what I want call "sialinks". What to do with them? One view is that they're no longer in the domain of this wp:DPL project. (Note there are lots of incoming links to existing SIAs that wp:DPL is not examining.) Another view suggested is that one should fix all the incoming links first, before converting the dab. That can be done for links that clearly should be revised to point to specific articles listed on the dab/sia. And some incoming links may be correct, intended as they are. But others can be impossible to resolve properly. So something like a "siadn" tag, for "SIA disambiguation needed", is needed. Rather than discuss or request, I set something up. See template:siadn. Tagging a sialink with {{siadn|date=August 2015}} puts the article into new categories:

I applied it in Harada Daiun Sogaku at a sialink that i could not resolve, incoming to newly converted-to-SIA Ankoku-ji. Ankoku-ji is a dab on this month's Dab Challenge list. For another sialink that correctly comes to the SIA page, I revised it to link to Ankoku-ji (SIA) instead, to show that it is intentional.

It seems more responsible to mark the sialinks than to ignore them. Perhaps some part of this project, or other Wikiprojects or other editors may want to know about them and fix them, or at least the ones in their own areas. Currently if you click on the "SIA disambiguation needed" tag in the article, it brings up DabSolver, but DabSolver doesn't "find" the ambiguous link. Hopefully DabSolver can be adapted to do so, and to understand that a link to "article (SIA)" is intentional and does not need fixing, and to offer up "Link to SIA page" as an option. --doncram 20:26, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Doncram -- I think this is great: much better to improve the tools rather than to make unusual dabs or articles that would surprise our readers. —hike395 (talk) 00:41, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Good point, thanks.  :) And rather than disrespecting the intelligence of editors who set up good future connections from articles to plausible topics, by delinking them. :(
I should say that using {{dn}} instead is not a good option: it puts the page into categories of pages with links needing disambiguation. DabSolver will run on it as if the corresponding SIA is a dab, but it will highlight the page's non-compliance to dab rules such as having more than one bluelink for an item. An SIA-aware DabSolver user actually could use it responsibly: they would be able to revise the link to point to one of the options on the SIA page or to unlink it. Other DabSolver users might select DabSolver's "link to disambiguation" option linking to a "(disambiguation)" page that may not exist. They would not understand the SIA page is not a dab and would be likely to edit it harshly or tag it. Automated browsers like Twinkle probably would facilitate inappropriate edits, too.
Hmm, one subtask when converting a dab to an SIA would be to find any "dn" inline tags and switch them over to "siadn" tags instead. The switch could be facilitated by a modified DabSolver. Sialinks tagged with "dn" should perhaps become a maintenance category. --doncram 15:36, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

convert 500+ "Battle of X" dab pages to SIAs

There are 550 to 570 "battle of X" type SIA pages at Category:Disambiguation pages from "Battle of" on. The vast majority of these should be converted to Set Index Articles. In this month's Disambiguation Challenge, there were two: Battle of Kharkov and Battle of Târgu Frumos. In last month's there was at least one more, and the Battle of Ypres was also recently changed to a dab then re-converted by me. It is perfectly fine for there to be a link to any one of these, such as saying, for example, in the 28th Rifle Division article, that it "fought at the Battle of Târgu Frumos." Who knows for sure if it fought just in the First Battle of Târgu Frumos, 9–12 April 1944, or just in the Second Battle of Târgu Frumos, 2–8 May 1944, or both? Or for all of the time inbetween where the lines were relatively static but lives were lost every day? In fact Soviet historiographers didn't consider it to be a battle until relatively recently; they considered it to be part of a larger Soviet offensive and not worth talking about separately. Maybe to downplay that it went poorly for the Red Army. While the Wehrmacht's history plays it up. There exist commissions on the determination of battle periods and names, anyhow, which shows how arbitrary definitions are; insisting that all past and current and future sources use any single partition of a long campaign into separate battles is futile.

We should not be encouraging monthly dab challenge editors, or anyone else, to delink battle names like these. Nor should we be forcing editors to make guesses in order to keep links in, or force them to complete difficult research and then use awkward language like "the unit fought at the 'First Battle of Q' and the 'Second Battle of Q' and part of it fought in the 'Battle of R' (which some call the 'Third Battle of Q'{{cn|date=2007}}) but most sources say it was in reserve during the 'Battle of S', an arguably lesser engagement{{says who?}} that others call the "Fourth Battle of Q", and then they fought in what some call the "Fifth Battle of Q", and they were given an award for their performance in the 'Battle of Q' but that is a misnomer because it seems like they missed parts of it." No, simply state they received the award for the name of the battle in the award statement, the 'Battle of Q'.

It seems non-strategic to go through 275 to 285 months (20+ years) while we address the two per month that randomly show up in the MDChallenge, and make mistakes of inconsistency while "fixing" them, instead of fixing them all at once, well, and then enforcing the line on that (i.e. noticing and combatting slippage like someone changing the Battle of Ypres into a dab). I wonder, could the regular MDChallenge be redefined for October, say, to address permanent fixes like these conversions? Or, can 10 people agree to handle 1/10 of the conversions needed on a worklist? Or, do people think it's best to deal with these as they come up? --doncram 17:51, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand this obsession with converting disambiguation pages into set indices for the purposes of removing them from reporting about incoming links. I don't think this is a good course to go down. The only result is that bad links proliferate and become even less likely to be identified and fixed. If there is something encyclopedic to say about the battles as a group, then perhaps a set index is warranted. But I can't see how converting disambiguation pages to set indices simply because some editors find them difficult to disambiguate properly is a good course of action. older ≠ wiser 19:42, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Hey, I beg to differ.  :) That's not at all what I am saying.  :) I am in favor of checking all incoming links to a page before/when it is converted from dab to sia; maybe I was not clear enough about that before. And I am in favor of keeping track of all pages converted, by putting them into administrative category Category:Former disambiguation pages converted to set index articles. And I am in favor of those SIA pages being regularly checked for incoming links, along with any other SIA pages that anyone suggests should be checked (say because they have received incoming links that needed fixing, before). The "Battles" SIA pages should be checked by Wikipedia:WikiProject Military History editors, though, not by disambiguation-focused editors in the Monthly Dab Challenge, IMO.
Please don't repeat your opinion that I have an "obsession"; that is personally tinged and I feel it verges on a personal attack against me. Comment on content, not on the contributor. Please do let's discuss what I assume we both want: for dablinks and sialinks to be fixed properly. --doncram 03:43, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Doncram --- I have a suggestion. How about going to WT:WikiProject Military history and asking what they think? Many of the original SIAs (ships, mountains, automobiles, comics) grew organically from the corresponding wikiprojects, who wanted to add more information to dab-like pages than was permitted by WP:MOSDAB. I predict (with 90% certainty) that the Military history editors will like the idea, and will have good suggestions about encyclopedic content to add to the SIAs. That way, you'll have both well-structured list articles and also will have answered Bkonrad's objections. —hike395 (talk) 04:16, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, good idea, and I'd like to. Relatedly, I have approached three WikiProjects this month already about their fixing all outgoing dablinks from articles in their area of expertise, with success (wt:SHIPS with 96, wt:CANADA with about 300, and wt:MILLS with just 1) : two of them cleared 100% of the dablinks in their articles very quickly and the third is working on theirs. These requests are supported by use of a wp:CatScan3 report. It makes sense to ask experts in WikiProjects to tend to the incoming links to their dab pages and SIA pages as well. I have learned how to generate dab-fix-lists for those, also using CatScan. Within the last 2 days, however, CatScan got broken and reports a fatal error when run (and i have reported that to its maintainer). I hesitate about asking a WikiProject to address their DABS and SIAS if I cannot run CatScan to list theirs, but I will plan to contact wt:MILHIST when CatScan is working again, including to suggest DAB-to-SIA conversions, per your suggestion. Thanks! --doncram 06:17, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Chiefs of ... (military)

Hello, have a look at Chief of Army Staff which is on September's dab list. It is also linked to some other 'Chief of' pages. My first impressions: should these be dab pages? Not all chiefs of ... of every country will have their own article, so it only seems logical there should be a generic article about them. They are en:Category:Military ranks, and I would rather throw them into that category than to keep them as a dab page. How was this solved for other, similar, situations? --Midas02 (talk) 02:16, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like WP:DABCONGOV to me. bd2412 T 03:28, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Does this diff of changes just now of the Chief of Army Staff page suffice? (It converted dab to SIA. Note I did run https://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/dab_fix_list.php?title=Chief%20of%20Army%20Staff to confirm all inbound links were okay, while it was dab (so the tool would still work).
I think similar conversions are needed for Chief of the Air Staff, Chief of the Naval Staff. For Chief of the Defence Staff and Chief of the General Staff, perhaps they should be merged. I won't do those now myself. --doncram 14:24, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Ringtail

Why was Ringtail converted to a SIA? As far as I can see it lists different species, so should be dab'able. --Midas02 (talk) 00:22, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

It's an animal common name. Others, like bollworm (discussed recently), also list different species. --doncram 20:35, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Maybe I wasn't clear by using the word species. Apart from the possums, ringtail lists all kinds of animals as different as apples are from carrots. Those are very distinct animals and the links to that page should be disambiguated. There never has been any consensus for using a SIA in this kind of situation. --Midas02 (talk) 17:53, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
It is quite likely that all of the "Other" and all of the "See also" items should be removed entirely from the SIA, and then it is more tightly defined. Unless any of those really are known sometimes as "ringtail" (unclear), they are all merely "partial matches", and should never have been listed on the disambiguation page. IANAZK, but my belief is that "ringtail" is a common name referring to some or all of the mammals, and is used in statements like a zoo-keeper saying "This zoo really must obtain a ringtail for its collection" (meaning any one of the mammals). The inbound links include a couple usages in Wikipedia like "this zoo has a ringtail" without specifying which species, as if it is not important or as if it is understood what one specifically is meant. I inserted {{siadn}} tags on those inbound links, I believe. It is worth asking biology people to review this example. There is supposed to be a big upcoming process where they will consider the conversion of many many animal dabs to SIAs, when editor Plantdrew has time available. I plan to defer then to zoo-keepers or biology people about what is meant by "ringtail" in common usage among those who use the term. To resolve this discussion section now, how about adding a note to Talk:Ringtail? --doncram 15:28, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
@Doncram:, I've now taken a proper look and a couple of simple google searches allowed me to disambiguate all of the links. All of them were targeting the ring-tailed cat or Bassariscus astutus. Which proves my point that this is a list of completely different animals which should simply be disambiguated, and there is no fundamental reason to make this a set index article. I'll therefore revert the changes you made to the page, so it will be a simple dab page again. --Midas02 (talk) 03:45, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree with User:Midas02 here. Even the mammalian kinds of "ringtail" are too diverse to make an SIA of this. bd2412 T 12:11, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
I already accepted Midas02's view after their doing google searches and disambiguating, in terms of it being restored to be a DAB. Thanks for adding more to that. I thot discussion should be kept with the article and I gave some more info there, including evidence on where "ringtail" is used as a common name, but I agree there's not enough info to determine what is real usage of the term and to explain that with sources on a SIA page. But as I noted above and as I explained there, there were many partial match items which are not credible meanings of "ringtail" so don't belong on the disambiguation page. I have twice removed those, but although I think there is nothing controversial, there's been disagreement but no explanation provided. Perhaps it looked like I was restoring a SIA page? Not so. Anyhow some attention to Ringtail and Talk:Ringtail would be appreciated. Thanks, --doncram 15:53, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Increase of the monthly disambiguation batch

I guess this message is primarily concerning R'n'B, assuming he's the one taking care of the software compiling the monthly dab list. Everyone will have noticed the number of links to resolve has gone down considerably. The current list has an average of 7 links per dab page, where this was still 11 or 12 a couple of months ago, and the number of links to resolve per month has gone down from about 12-14,000 to about 7,000 now. As a result the list is more and more frequently falling short of the end of the month. We're now halway trough the month, and the number of pages with more than 6 links is already down to less than 200, the number of pages with more than 4 links less than 300.

This is a missed opportunity given there is a strong momentum to be going faster. My suggestion would be to increase the batch to 1,500 a month, and even to 2,000, as previous months have proven that 12-14,000 links per month can be dealt with by the community. So could you give it some thought please? --Midas02 (talk) 06:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually, you should ping @JaGa:, since he's the one who generates the lists; my bot just compiles the data from his lists. Anyway, if you run out of things to fix on the monthly list, there is always the much larger Bonus List to keep you busy. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:24, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
I know, but working top-down is by far the most efficient way of working. Having a bunch of links to fix gives you an appreciation of the context of a particular topic, which you don't get from lesser-linked topics. I, for one, do not pay any attention to the bonus list. There's no point in trying to understand a topic, if it's only to fix two or three links. So hope JaGa can look into it. --Midas02 (talk) 18:12, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
It won't be long until topics with two or three links are all we've got left. I don't think it's time yet, but it seems to me the next step should be to make ALL known dablinks part of the contest at the start of the month, and continue to list the top 1000 on the project page. --JaGatalk 20:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Not entirely true (about the "won't be long"). There are still 115k links or so left. At a rate of 6-7 links per dab page, the top 1000 list will only present about 6000 links for resolution per month. So that means it would still take more than 20 months to clear the existing stock, excluding new arrivals, and excluding the fact that the number of 6000 will go down further as we drive down the top end of the list. Look at this: [2], that's the 10,000th link from now. Which, at a rate of 1000 topics a month, will only come up on the dablist in another 10 months from now. It still shows an average of 4 links per page.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your work and the arguments. But it's just a missed opportunity. If there is a momentum now to get rid of a good 10,000 links a month, then why waste that momentum so the project might reach the steady state at a much faster pace. --Midas02 (talk) 05:12, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
When I said "won't be long" I meant a couple of years or so. We're long-term thinkers here. :) --JaGatalk 23:20, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
JaGa's suggestion makes sense to me. At August 1, we had about 76,000 links covered by the combination of the top 1,000 pages plus the Bonus List, out of a total of 123,000 links to disambiguation pages; so about 60% of all the links are already in the contest. Might as well make it 100%. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:01, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't quite see the necessity of opening the contest to all dablinks. Yes, the top 1000 is pushing into the sevens, but we're not succeeding in clearing the top 1000 every month. The bonus list goes up to the fours. What I'd really like to see is an intensive effort for a month to cut down one-link dabs. bd2412 T 16:40, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
There's a good reason for not clearing topics off the monthly list, it's either because the dab page doesn't make sense, because it's a very specialised topic (e.g. biology), or because it's quite simply impossible to find out which should be the target link (noticed all of the saints). They will always remain on there, but are sometimes being picked off as well, just at a slower pace. But I fail to see why you would want one-linked dabs to be dealt with. They're only at the bottom of the list. --Midas02 (talk) 01:47, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm concerned with swamp-draining. There are probably quite a few easy fixes in the one-link pages, but they may not be looked at for literally years. As for the difficult cases that are slow to clear out of the higher numbers, it is time that implement a new solution for those. We are often counting on disambiguators to figure out things for which we would be better served leveraging the knowledge of the entire community. bd2412 T 23:53, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
You have also Articles With Multiple Dablinks] to work from. The Banner talk 00:41, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
Again, I hope I was clear in trying to explain that it's not about the number of dab fixes which is available for resolution, it's about presenting them in the monthly dab list. There is a bunch of people out there who ONLY look at that list, and then cherry pick the easy ones. The quick fixes. And once that is done, usually by halfway into the month, they go and do something else and the progress on the dab list hits a lull. The point I was trying to make, is that the momentum of this work force could be better used by simply feeding them more links. And I'm even fearing that, as the number of resolved links on that monthly list is going down, it will start creeping towards the number of new dab links which are newly being created each month, thus resulting in a standstill of the project. --Midas02 (talk) 04:36, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Midas02 has a point with the scary scenario. May I connect that to a point that I would like to make, that fixing the newest dablinks promptly is probably the best use of effort. Fixing dablinks on so-called Today's articles (really yesterday's) is more successful in delivering feedback to other editors, while they are still working perhaps on the same article or on related ones. I get more "Thank you" notes from fixing those, than anything else i've done in wikipedia. I believe the editors a) notice the change made, b) if a fix has been done will then be somewhat more likely to use the correct link instead of the dablink in their other articles right away, c) if a "disambiguation needed" tag has been added they will likely fix it, d) be more sensitive in general about need for disambiguation (sometimes reminding past participants in the Monthly Challenge that they can come back), and e) are just a bit more encouraged and happy about contributing, from the fact they can see others noticing their work.

So, would it be possible to add Today's dablinks to the monthly points competition? Meaning you get to earn points fixing new dablinks, but only while they appear in the Today's Dablinks report. This way, we'd be much more certain to make progress every day, and we'd be spending more effort where it has the best effect.  :) I don't know if this is technically possible or not, but I hope, knock on wood, that it is. What do @JaGa:, @R'n'B:, and others think? --doncram 23:28, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Dabsolver error

Hi, Anyone else having problems. When i click fix on the watch list tool it comes up The URL you have requested is not currently serviced. Then says if you maintain this tool you have not enabled a web service for your tool, or it has stopped working because of a fatal error. You may wish to check your logs or common causes for errors in the help documentation.Blethering Scot 12:21, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Yep, since yesterday already. Same message The Banner talk 12:38, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
All the dplbot tools are getting this error. I can restart the webservice manually if I happen to see it, but after some time it will go down again. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:06, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
Any idea what triggers it? The Banner talk 16:00, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
Its really annoying as its the only tool I use for Disambig so when its down like it is now I won't do any. As Banner said do we have any idea what is causing it.Blethering Scot 16:57, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
Was working for a short whilst there, however it is down again.Blethering Scot 20:19, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
I hope someone can fix it; this is a great tool for me.Parkwells (talk) 13:19, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
Umm, the issue I was talking about was fixed, like a month ago. What are you talking about? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:19, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
I've been improve workflow on certain devices, he may have witnessed some breakage from that. I live on the edge, there's no testing server :-) A refresh (CtrL+Shift+R) should fix it. — Dispenser 17:30, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm a user of the Dab solver tool, ok? When I click on the link for "Dab solver tool" to fix an entry in an article, I get the error message 404 Not Found. What's the prognosis on fixing that? Parkwells (talk) 16:30, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
Where are you clicking? The original discussion was about the DPL tools 404ing. — Dispenser 16:42, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
Parkswells was clicking on the links in the DPL Bot message at his/her talk page, I guess. Those do not work. See User talk:JaGa#DPL Bot links. LittleWink (talk) 13:51, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
Fixed Over the weekend I added a feature if the page box was blank that it would redirect to the landing page. I forgot about the PATH_INFO case. — Dispenser 16:33, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

The guessing competition

There's something rotten in this project. I have, unfortunately, started taking a habit of investigating article histories whenever I'm encountering a link that doesn't make sense in an article. In many cases, I find it do be due to a faulty dab fix, even by established editors of the likes of RNB or BD2412. I can't blame them for that, because I don't know in which circumstances the misjudgement was made, maybe they just made an honest mistake.

What I'm seeing now, though, is not acceptible. There are a few editors, one in particular, who are racing through hundreds of - nontrivial! - fixes in the space of just a couple of hours, averaging two or three per minute. Considering the rate, brave will be the man who dares to suggest that these people are sure about the "fix" they are applying, because obviously they are not. A handful of seconds barely gives you the time to actually read the paragraph. So they are just applying best guesses.

I've spoken out in the past on the perverse effects of the leaderboard. I'd like to believe that this project is being supported by people who take in interest in correcting links, properly and responsibly, applying the necessary due diligence, and who couldn't care less about being up a ranking. The guidelines itself are calling for it is more important to disambiguate correctly than to disambiguate quickly. Right now, that's clearly not happening.

As such, it's about time the project is being brought back to its basics, doing it correctly, and responsibly, or not doing it at all. I'm therefore wondering if there is a will to exclude these editors from the ranking, or if things should just go on like this? --Midas02 (talk) 19:24, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Can you cite some examples of editors making large numbers of incorrect dab fixes in a short amount of time? Some links are obvious enough to be fixed in a few seconds, and template corrections can easily add dozens of entries to a person's total, so the number of edits alone does not necessarily seem damning to me. Nick Number (talk) 19:45, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
That's why I stated nontrivial. It's obvious to fix the links in case of a page move, I don't find it obvious when someone is going over Alaskan grizzly bears, Southeast Asian music instruments, and African villages, all in the space of 15 minutes. --Midas02 (talk) 19:16, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
You're going to have to name names, or else we're all going to keep talking in unproductive generalities. Nick Number (talk) 02:37, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
If you think that edits are wrong, I'd recommend reverting them. That should be a useful learning exercise, or a point for discussion. I'm certainly grateful for those who have corrected my edits.Klbrain (talk) 12:16, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree that examples would be nice. I would also point out that an editor who gets one out of every ten fixes wrong has still made the encyclopedia 90% more accurate, and the "wrong" fixes will be made right eventually. bd2412 T 14:11, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm quite baffled by these replies. Whether a fix is incorrect or not is completely irrelevant, it's about whether or not someone can guarantee he is certain about the fix he is applying. And that's completely out of the question if you're averaging two or three per minute. You are just guessing, that's all. You need an actor? Bang, the only actor mentioned on the dab page goes in. Whether it's the correct one or not... not your problem. You need a village in Kazakhstan, same, the one mentioned on the dab page goes in. The fact that there are a dozen other villages by the same name, not mentioned on that dab page? Hey... not your problem again.
BD2412's answer is completely against the spirit of this project, and of Wikipedia. It's about adding correctness, not about adding error and confusion. To answer you directly - the "wrong" fixes will be made right eventually -, no, that is definitely not the case! It might be so for well known situations, but there are some very undocumented facts, which are nearly impossible to track down, which will never be corrected. And when confronted with such links, readers will be misled, believing a lie. The situation before the fix is simple, it's ambiguous, when you're replacing it with a faulty link, you're replacing an ambiguous situation with an erroneous and misleading situation. So no, it's not right to be guessing, you should either have knowledge of the fix you're making, or you should have looked it up. --Midas02 (talk) 19:16, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
Note that if, for example, there are multiple actors by a certain name, and only one listed on the disambiguation page, then the link is likely to become ambiguous again in the future when the missing actor is added and the resultant page moves lead to the "Foo (actor)" link being redirected to the disambiguation page. bd2412 T 20:09, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
That's completely beside the point. A dab qualifier is merely there to distinguish one article from another. If someone allows himself to be guided by the qualifier alone, it means he hasn't got a clue of what or who the article is about, and thus, doesn't know if he is making the correct fix. Same when adding red links by the way. If you add a red link, but haven't looked up if the red link has already been used before, you can't guarantee that you're not mixing up two different topics or people. --Midas02 (talk) 01:45, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I completely disagree. If there is a link to a disambiguation page describing some Joe Doe as an actor or politician, and there is no one on the disambiguation page matching that description, it is common sense to turn the link to a "Joe Doe (actor)" or "Joe Doe (politician)" redlink. If link fixing reveals multiple actors or politicians (from different countries or centuries, for example), then the disambiguator can be further narrowed. Nevertheless, it is still the best option available short of unlinking. bd2412 T 19:50, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't know if you correctly read what I wrote. I'm not speaking out against red links, but a responsible editor should check if that red link has already been used before. And even better, through tools such as dabfix check if there is already a red link 'in use' for the person or item you're trying to link to. As an example, yesterday I spent half an hour fixing the red links John Reid (songwriter)/(writer)/(musician)/etcetera. All of those links were mixing up three different individuals. Why? Because people had just been redlinking without doing due diligence... and hadn't taken the trouble to mention the red link they used on the dab page per WP:DABMENTION.--Midas02 (talk) 17:23, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I have to note that Midas02's comments above about whether "someone can guarantee he is certain about the fix he is applying" is completely against the spirit of the encyclopedia. Our spirit is WP:Be bold, not WP:Be certain. "Be bold" doesn't mean be reckless, but it does mean doing your best to improve the encyclopedia in the absence of perfect information. Mistakes will be made; I've made some myself, and I'm pleased when someone else corrects them. But if the standard is certainty, then (a) a lot of information will never find its way into the encyclopedia at all, and (b) a lot of wrong information will never be fixed because no one will have the required level of certainty to make the change. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:08, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Perfection is not an acceptable quality level. But I share Midas02' concern that editors using semi-automated tools to blindly make edits does result in poor quality. If they contest encourages such editing, that should be more strongly discouraged. Perhaps a negative factor could be incorporated whereby participants lose points for making bad edits above some threshold. Not sure how that would work, but it is an issue. older ≠ wiser 14:33, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I believe Bkonrad is striking the right cord here. R'n'B, WP:Bold is about adding content, not about guessing your way through a bunch of dab fixes just to get up the ranking. You've used the word reckless, well, when someone is averaging 2 or 3 per minute, yes, I believe that user's level of 'certainty' about what he's doing is far below what can be called acceptible, and he should, temporarily, be discouraged from participating in this project. Nick Number was asking about names, have a look at the ranking, the whole top four is showing signs of this kind of 'reckless' editing, although some make more of an effort than others. --Midas02 (talk) 17:59, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Midas02 - I think you make a valid point that accuracy is more important that speed or the contest. Have you tried having a direct personal conversation with people you think are making mistakes?--Mojo Hand (talk) 22:53, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Mojo Hand, I've already mentioned it a couple of times before, it's not about making mistakes. It's about the reckless behaviour of editors who proceed at a speed which makes it impossible to believe they have done any due diligence before making changes. That may or may not lead to mistakes, but in any case, it is irresponsible. --Midas02 (talk) 17:23, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
My experience is that the amount of time that it takes to resolve dabs varies widely. Some dabs are very easy, particularly once you understand the ambiguity; other times is has taken 30 minutes or more to resolve a single dab. I don't think it's helpful to broadly assert that other editors are being reckless or irresponsible. If you see editors making excessive mistakes, give them that feedback. Most editors are open to constructive feedback.--Mojo Hand (talk) 19:21, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Ok, good, now we can look at specifics. The top four are currently Wikiisawesome (links fixed), Josve05a (links fixed), one Midas02 (links fixed), and LittleWink (links fixed). As the project page on wmflabs.org states, the "fixed" links next to users' names are reviewing tools to detect the kinds of abuses you're discussing. Let's look over the diffs for these four users and see if we can find some examples of reckless editing. Nick Number (talk) 18:20, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
@Nick Number and Midas02: I do try to skip over the disambiguation links I'm unsure of, leaving them for other users, or I tag them as "disambiguation needed" if I'm reasonably certain that they're uncertain. I haven't been made aware of any complaints about my disambiguation thus far, but if the consensus is that I tend to make reckless edits, I'm happy to step away from the project. I enjoy disambiguating, but I really don't want to cause extra work or headaches for others. /wia /tlk 18:27, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I've audited 20 recent dabfixes by each of the top four editors. Here are my findings:
I don't think this is enough data to establish any clear patterns. Other people should perform similar audits. Nick Number (talk) 21:21, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Before we criticize efforts to fix links, we should be addressing edits like this one, retargeting a a longstanding redirect to a disambiguation page with no discussion. In this case, I reverted the retargeting, but since the target of this redirect has basically been stable for a decade, I think that it would be completely appropriate in my view to change all the incoming links to direct links with little further review. We should be addressing the ability of editors to make thoughtless links to disambiguation pages in the first place - who in their right mind links to "John Smith" for example with the expectation that the link will lead to the person they have in mind? bd2412 T 15:44, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

BD2412, don't divert the current discussion please, otherwise it will get messy. I'd rather get to a solution for the 'reckless' editing issue first please. --Midas02 (talk) 17:59, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I believe the issues are intertwined. When I engage in mass-fixes, it is usually in response to a longstanding title or redirect suddenly being turned into a disambiguation link. bd2412 T 18:22, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I fully support that we double check each others edits to find discrepancies and problematic edits made. But until we have found that doing edits quickly has acctually geenrated in a lack of correctness, I don't believe we can make such an assumption. But please, feel free to point out where I've made mistakes, it will only help the encyclopedia if you do! (t) Josve05a (c) 18:29, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Tool list

/* Count contest edit summaries */
SELECT a.rev_id, user, COUNT(*), rev_comment
FROM p50380g50692__DPL_p.ch_results as a
JOIN revision as b ON a.rev_id=b.rev_id
WHERE rev_comment LIKE "%AWB]]"
GROUP BY 2
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
LIMIT 50;

Regarding the tools listed. Does anyone still use solve_disambiguation.py? And besides you BD2412, AutoWikiBrowser's disambiguate feature? At a cursory look it's mostly WPCleaner, Popups, and my Dab solver. Should this be a list of all tools or just the most useful ones? — Dispenser 22:13, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

It should point to recommended tools, not just any tool, IMHO. I have gone ahead and boldly(?) removed the Python script item in this edit. I could not myself understand how to run it, from its documentation at Manual:Pywikibot, in order to compare its functionality directly. However from what the documentation says, it seems inferior to other alternatives (For one thing you would have had to type name of a disambiguation page into its interface, and actions required you to type in words or letters to make choices. This seems inferior to the DabSolver tool which allows one to select options from a dropdown menu, and generally offers more than is described in the Python script's documentation (unfair perhaps because the program could be better than the documentation suggests, as perhaps true for DabSolver).
There exists an outdated "Guide" at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Guide, recommended in item 12 of the "How to help" section. It would be great if an update could compare the options available. Or should there be (or is there?) a FAQ? One of them could mention previously used tools and previous other campaigns in this area. As a matter of historical record and giving credit, or to learn from, for persons considering something similar. The Pywikibot/Solve disambiguation Python script should be mentioned in that context as a programming achievement, one that could perhaps be extended.
About best practices, I would really like to know how WPCleaner (what speedy Niceguyedc uses) compares to clicking on the DPLBOT-created monthly list, which gives links to dablink_list applications, which give "Fix" links to using DabSolver. And in either system, what personal preferences have to be set, etc. For example in using DabSolver, I am enjoying its new or revived feature that is often saving me a step (If one signs in, one can "Save page" directly in the DabSolver, rather than having to select "Show preview" or "Show changes" first before an edit window allows one to use "Save page"). --doncram 00:05, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
  • solve_disambiguation.py shows very small context around the single disambiguation it does. Requires memorizing all disambiguation options. Bulk disambiguation (can do many links to the same page). Window/Linux/Mac.
  • AutoWikiBrowser same solve_disambiguation.py but graphical, allows rewording, and applies general fixes. Bulk disambiguation. Windows only.
  • WPCleaner Best among the bulk disambiguators. Syntax highlight, builtin spell checker, Checkwiki and syntax fixer. Still requires memorizing disambiguation options. Bulk disambiguation. Window/Linux/Mac.
  • Navigation popups Casual disambiguation. Pretty awesome integration, but (mostly) unmaintained under a cloud of WMF replacing it any decade now. Requires an account (or Greasemonkey).
  • DisamAssist is like running solve_disambiguation inside the disambig page. Its an interesting method, but lacks feedback when saving.
So I look at my competition for improvements. Above are my views on the other tools. I also think we could eliminate disambiguation enabling Link suggest if the foundation wasn't so horribly inefficient. — Dispenser 03:07, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
I find AWB to be an amazing resource, and strongly encourage every editor to learn how to use it for disambiguation tasks, among other things. bd2412 T 12:23, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
What are the best features in your opinion? Built in differ and previewing? You've logged only 334 edits in our contest, but from your contributions it looks to be thousands outside the contest this month. — Dispenser 00:41, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
@Dispenser:: "logged only 334 edits in our contest" - my jaw is literally dropping. Have a look at the Disambiguator Hall of Fame. bd2412 T 00:12, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
@BD2412: In our contest so far this month. I thought that was implied by the sentence's end. I'll be more blunt, what features from AWB would you like to see in Dab solver? — Dispenser 00:21, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Sorry, I misunderstood. As for features, here are a few choice ones:
  1. Sometimes an article will link to the same dab term ten, fifteen, twenty times. If a dab term appears multiple times in the same article, have an option to apply the same solution to all of them with one click; or (per WP:OVERLINK) to apply the solution to the first one and unlink all the rest.
  2. Dabsolver is great about giving hints for the right solution; where the solution is a lock, prefill that solution into the field (of course, with the option to change to a different solution, unlink, or leave unsolved).
  3. Make it possible to select a series of pages, and as soon as the page is saved, automatically load up the next page.
  4. Where the page itself is a disambiguation page, and all dablinks on the page are in hatnotes or in the "See also" section, preload the WP:INTDABLINK solution of linking to the "Foo (disambiguation)" redirect for that dablink.
These are not all necessarily AWB features, but they correspond with the way that I use AWB. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:46, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
1) Is possible, would need to fit it into the UI somehow. 2) The hints are literally the number of articles linking to your article and disambiguating term. A lock would be a bad idea for such a simplistic thing. 3) We had this before WMF broke it (Enkidu). Should coming back with the OAuth. 4) Good idea-Tricky to implement. Might be able do something with the hatnote class. — Dispenser 23:01, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
I have an AWB script for certain obvious fixes (for example [[heavy metal]] music --> [[heavy metal music]]; [[English]] language --> [[English language]]). Would it be possible to incorporate fixes like that? bd2412 T 01:56, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
Analyzing edit summaries: Of the 12,677 points this month so far: 0x pywikibot script, 91x AWB (85 from BD2412), 2802x WPCleaner (2,726 from Niceguyedc), 144x Popups (68 from Adavidb), 702x DisamAssist (619 from Midas02), and 4,802 Dab solver (1,273 from ColRad85); leaving 4,140 manual/mistaken/incorrectly awarded (Klbrain seems to have done 1,277 them manually). [Not sure why it doesn't add up, but its close enough] — Dispenser 00:41, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
  • My 1,039 points would be mostly DabSolver, but I often go out to manually fix something. About the 4,140 unexplained, does your total include points from changing a disambiguation page to a set index article? They would if you are calculating from total dablinks that were available at beginning of month. In one manual edit, or a number of DabSolver edits plus one final manual edit resolving all other inbound links, a large number can be removed from the monthly list but do not earn points. I don't know if the disambiguating done before or after the manual changeover are counted for points. Also edits to templates that fix many dablinks also would not count for points. --doncram 16:41, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Another possible feature: expert focus support, on my wish list for tools.

  • Does AWB allow for content-area focused disambiguation, e.g. for a person to work only on pages that have outbound dablinks and are within one content area? Content area defined by their being within a parent category like Category:Animals or their Talk pages showing a specific Wikiproject. AWB is very powerful and I am wondering if it supports something like this.
  • Dabsolver does not directly support expert focus. I have been kludging together worklists like this one for WikiProject Canada editors that gives "Fix" links to DabSolver for all of their pages having dablinks. I used wp:catscan3 and Excel to make that. This list is not as nice as the monthly list (differences including that the this list does not show the ambiguous term as well as the page having the dablink, and it does not update except by manual edits striking off items done). There is need for user-operable custom report like this, ideally one that would work off any list generated by wp:catscan3 (which can define very complex queries).
  • Dabsolver has capacity (when this feature is turned on) to allow one to work on the focused list of your own watchlist. Does AWB have that? --doncram 16:41, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Are Point from WikiProject banners what you want? — Dispenser 17:53, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Well, yes, kind of like that. :) What I had in mind was to do something less, which would be more cumbersome for people to use and which would yield much less complete results. Like it would currently find about 80 dablinks in Wikiproject Canada, rather than 792 which this "Topic Points by WikiProject" report finds. So maybe be about 10% as effective, helping to preserve workload for the overall DPL project and keeping it alive for longer. Also it would not allow us to see directly how many dablinks are within each Wikiproject; I was expecting for us to have to look those numbers up one by one, by running the custom report.  :) Brilliant!  :) Thanks! --doncram 22:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
There use to be more 2 years ago, before the labs migration. Dab solver's front page had dozens of projects with progress bars for each. In development was a direct competitor mode (I'd pick someone for you to compete against), signature coloring was used in the score table, and plans for badges/achievements. Turns out it isn't compelling for people to come back to everyday even if its easy. — Dispenser 01:06, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Dab solver wrap up

So I dedicated November to improving Dab solver. Now the month is over and I'm needed on other projects (Geo, Link checking, telnet client), so I'm going have to stop working on improvements. Here are some of things I accomplished:

  • Made non-dab links clickable
  • Table rendering support
  • Wiktionary suggestions
  • Improved link handling in popup
  • Chrome users can now middle or ctrl+click to open new tabs
  • Single button sorts every list and sublist in the popup
  • 50% more translation strings available—not yet finalized
  • API errors (e.g. Red links & Special pages) will be shown as mini-web pages instead of browser alerts
  • Improved documentation and attributed icons
  • A lot of code rewritten for maintainability and clarity
  • New preference window and sign in for OAuth
  • New tool: Tasker. Lets you create lists for Dab solver. After saving, it will automatically advance to the next page on the list.

Changes related to mobile support

  • Now edit using your phone!
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Have fun disambiguating. — Dispenser 21:23, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Battle of Sinjar

In going through the dab links to this page, I found that nearly all of them are in the "see also" section of each article. I noticed that most of those "see also" sections were very similar, and I started wondering if a template added to those articles would be more efficient, because this ongoing war will be creating even more ambiguous links as time goes on and battles pile up. I found a template already created, and have decided to boldly add it to these articles and weed out the "see also" sections. So a lot of the dab links will be going away. — Gorthian (talk) 23:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Wasn't there a discussion to turn these into SIAs? --Midas02 (talk) 02:36, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm newly returned to editing, so I missed any discussion. But it doesn't look as if it's been done. There's a navbox, Template:Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and a couple of list articles, List of wars and battles involving ISIL and List of terrorist incidents linked to ISIL. — Gorthian (talk) 03:45, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Recent

This rather peculiar specimen is on next month's dab list. Needless to say it needs some attention as it's... Well, what is it? --Midas02 (talk) 05:04, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

It's explained in some detail on the talk page. I'm no paleontologist, but I would think that fixing the taxo templates to link to Holocene would obviate the need for this "dab" page. — Gorthian (talk) 23:24, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
I've turned it into a redirect to Holocene. My rationale is on the talk page. — Gorthian (talk) 19:17, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Convert the Saint pages to set index articles?

There is an increasing number of Saint pages on the monthly dab list. That problem will probably only get worse since it's often quite difficult to establish which particular saint a building (or other item) was devoted to. In order to get them off the list, and to avoid people being tempted to guess them away, or to remove links, wouldn't it be best to convert them to set index articles? It would also allow for some additional freedom in adding explanations and the likes, something people tend to do quite frequently on these pages. Mind you, my proposal is only concerning the actual saints, so humans, not churches and monasteries named after them. Any takers? --Midas02 (talk) 04:32, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I was about to disagree, but having had a look through WP:SIA I think that this could work, given that you are suggesting "a set of items of a specific type that share the same (or similar) name". In some cases it may be necessary to keep the DAB page, then create a separate "List of saints named YYY". I'd be happy to do a few.Klbrain (talk) 15:36, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
I think a reasonable solution would be to do that - keep the dab page, particularly where there are buildings or places sharing the name, but also having a "List of Saints named YYY", and where an article mentioned a "Saint YYY" without making it possible to determine which, change the language to indicate that a saint named YYY is discussed while pointing to the list page. bd2412 T 17:40, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

A Summit Lake mess

Hello, someone with a lack of understanding of MOSDAB guidelines has been making a bit of a mess of some Summit Lake articles. There is a dab page called Summit Lake, but now there is also a "dab page" called Summit Lake (Alaska). Although the last one should clearly be a "List of" article. However... there is also such a thing as a List of lakes of Alaska article. No point in having duplicates I'd say.

I can't figure out what would be the best solution here. Merge Summit Lake (Alaska) with the list of lakes of Alaska article, and refer to that article from the Summit Lake dab page for all lakes which do not have their own article? If someone feels inspired, please look into it. Note there's also a handful of links hanging off all of those pages. --Midas02 (talk) 02:34, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I attempted to merge Summit Lake (Alaska) into Summit Lake, but the merge was undone by An Errant Knight. The current state of the article doesn't seem to obey the standard disambiguation style. I support a merge to Summit Lake, leaving a redirect. —hike395 (talk) 06:54, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Discussion seems to be centralized at Talk:Summit Lake (Alaska)#Merge? (An Errant Knight, note) —hike395 (talk) 17:42, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Question on updating "done" pages

Hi folks, I have a quick question about updating pages as "done" once all the links are fixed. I followed the instructions to add the done pages to the end of the list (this round, Thar and Athenaeum), but when I view the list at Wikipedia:Disambiguation_pages_with_links#February_2016, those page still show up under the "To-Do" section. However, when I look at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/February 2016, they show up properly under the "Done" section. Did I mess something up, or is there a lag in the main page updating? I'm brushing off the cobwebs from a long, long hiatus, and want to make sure not to break anything.

One additional question - when we finish a page and add it to the "Done" section, are we also supposed to update the number of fixed links in the section "out of a total of 6,764 links, approximately 4,396 have currently been fixed"?

Thank you for the information! All the best, -- Natalya 17:30, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Monthly DAB Challenge February: Not updating

No updates on the February count for over 10days now, and it all looks rather quiet. Any news? Klbrain (talk) 19:39, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

There are still strange things going on. The March 2016 data page was modified as recent as half an hour ago, but that is not reflected on the main page. That one still holds a copy of the data which is 18 hours old. Or is it just me experiencing this? --Midas02 (talk) 18:55, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to reduce workload

I've made a proposal at Village Pump that could reduce the workload here; please check it out and comment if you can. —swpbT 18:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Barnstars

I don't mean to sound needy, but is it still customary to award barnstars to winners of the Disambiguation Challenge? It doesn't appear that anyone has received one since last September. Nick Number (talk) 15:39, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

So I guess that's a no. Nick Number (talk) 14:59, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, Klbrain, for resuming the award. This does actually help me with motivation. Nick Number (talk) 15:36, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Cheers: you beat me to the top in March, so I know how much work it took! Klbrain (talk) 15:52, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Someone seems hungry of Barnstars for January and February lol. GSS (talk) 17:34, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Hint taken; I've visited your talk page! Klbrain (talk) 22:41, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 Thank you very much! you're a lifesaver. GSS (talk) 04:24, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

False positives

I'm sure some of you have already noticed a number of false positives (that is, links that have already been fixed) appearing on the various disambiguation link lists on tools.wmflabs.org. This appears to be due to corruption of the Tools Lab database replica. I reported this a couple of days ago, but so far none of the system admins seem to think it is important enough to do anything about. If you want to monitor the bug report, it is at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T134203. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:11, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Second this. Poor Sacramento perch is being unjustly maligned on a daily basis by DPL bot for 7+ dablinks, whereas there are none, as far as I can see. Maybe the bot is reacting to piped links that read as if they were dablinks? (e.g., Clear Lake) -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:50, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

see Table 2 2601:541:4305:C70:4C71:5D70:4A5A:C8A (talk) 18:46, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Bonus list

@JaGa: The bonus list appears to be down. Nick Number (talk) 14:34, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

@Nick Number: Dplbot is behaving erratically, and JaGa hasn't been around for a month. See [3]. — Gorthian (talk) 16:59, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

St. Peter ad Vincula

I'm proposing a merge of St. Peter ad Vincula to Liberation of Saint Peter, with some rearrangement of the pages. Comments would be welcome at the linked talk page. Nick Number (talk) 19:17, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Ponce de León

I've started a discussion of whether Juan Ponce de León is the primary topic for the term Ponce de León. Comments are welcome at Talk:Ponce de León. Nick Number (talk) 17:25, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

The Monthly DAB Challenge is doing more harm than good

True, this contest is doing a lot of good and I can honestly say that the majority of all link disambiguations I've seen are correct. But there's still a significant minority of plain wrong ones and I think one of the major reasons this is happening is the goal-scoring point-and-shoot behaviour that such a contest encourages among a proportion of editors.

And I'm not sure the contest nowadays has a good raison d'être. This isn't the situation of five years ago when there were thousands of dab pages with more than a hundred links each and when you could just pick a single dab page, study the articles listed and then use that to disambiguate hundreds of links. Now dab pages have only a handful of links each and the cost of due diligence (relative to the reward of links disambiguated) is much higher. And given the impossibility of tracking down incorrectly disambiguated links, I don't think the whole thing is really worth it any more.

Any thoughts anyone? I'm sure I'm not the first to bring this up but I don't see anything in the archives of the last year. Thanks. Uanfala (talk) 08:53, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

As a relative newcomer to the dab hunt, I know I've seen a few hasty disambiguations. Quite a few times I had to give up on a page because the information to perform a proper disambiguation just didn't seem to be available only to see someone later do it without an explanation. As to what might be done about it, I'm not sure I have any good suggestions other than having someone perform occasional audits on a sample of the disambiguations done.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 09:16, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
Performing occasional audits is a good idea, is it technically feasible? At any rate, I think it's best to scrap the challenge altogether. This should remove the biggest incentive for thoughtless point scoring, but there's another reason too. A link to a disambiguation page is often an indication that there's something else wrong, either in the article text or at the dab page, and fixing that usually requires some time and effort that can't be expended by and editor who's trying to win a race. Uanfala (talk) 10:28, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
My feeling is that he challenge has been a significant contributor to reducing the number of ambiguous links, but accept that the decreasing number of such links does increase the difficulty-per-link. As to whether this leads to an increase in the error rate is hard to determine. My feeling is the philosophy behind WP:BOLD is that challenge should continue, and that we should feel free to audit each other (which does not require any new mechanism). Also, editing an ambiguous link can itself stimulate subject experts watching the page to act, and to think again about the content on the pages they are watching. So, even an initially inappropriate edit can lead to the page improving. Klbrain (talk) 17:00, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
There was this similar Talk thread from last November. There wasn't any evidence found of widespread improper editing, and in the absence of that, I think the DAB Challenge should continue. It's a great motivator and produces far more positive effects than negative ones. Auditing is pretty easy through the links on the leaderboard (not visible today since it's the first of the month, but they'll be back tomorrow). Issues can still be handled on a case-by-case basis through the usual channels of discussion. Nick Number (talk) 17:19, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
Rather than scrapping the challenge altogether, we should see what we can do to involve more subject matter experts in fixing links relevant to their areas of expertise. bd2412 T 17:39, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I'm attempting my first challenge this month, and I must say that the competition aspect is what got me here. While the point is technically to disambiguate "more links" than everyone else, I think that most people will have enough common sense not to link if they're not sure. For those who show carelessness to the point where it's clear they see it as more of game than a friendly competition to improve the encyclopedia, perhaps some sort of deterrent measures should be taken against them (e.g., voiding their link total for the month). Colonel Wilhelm Klink (Complaints|Mistakes) 19:02, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
My feeling is that a public pillory, assuming good faith (of course!), should be enough of a penalty in most cases.Klbrain (talk) 22:01, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
My recent experience with an editor who deleted my detailed complaint from their talk page and then dashed back into the race without seeming to care, tells me that a public pillory doesn't always work (or maybe a user talk page isn't public enough?). As for the case of a link disambiguation stimulating discussion among editors watching the page – yes, this happens. But another thing happens too – incorrect disambiguations can pass undetected and lie around for a long time, especially on pages with few watchers or ones with frequent edits. Uanfala (talk) 23:04, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps some sort of topic-ban like method would be effective. That is, ban them from the challenge for the month where they've broken decorum, explain to them why and what they should do differently, and let them try again next month. If they persistently defy the rules for months in a row, ban them for a longer period (or perhaps indefinitely). While it does seem a bit harsh, that's the only way to ensure (near) complete accuracy in linking. On the other hand, it may deter some with good intentions from contributing, and it may mean bringing in some sort of ANI/Arbcom-esque process to handle it, which means alot of unnecessary drama. In the end, more trouble than it's worth. Colonel Wilhelm Klink (Complaints|Mistakes) 23:26, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
A topic ban for sloppiness does indeed seem quite extreme. Uanfala (talk) 23:40, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
I suppose its only natural that, for me to randomly notice a questionable disambiguation or two, it would be by the same editor, someone who has done a very large number of disambiguations. Challenging them, auditing them, that's just not in the cards. I try to keep my DPL activity to 10-15 items a day, so WP doesn't take over my life.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 05:44, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
Reinforcing @BD2412:'s point about specialists - there's a whole pile of math-related {{dn}} links which I haven't dared touch, because they need a mathematician to look at them. They'd be easy to get very wrong, and if fixed badly could remain wrong for ages if not for ever. (I also have bad dreams about mononymic actors, footballers, and rappers.)
IDK any good counter to people who might be gaming the leaderboard by doing rubbish disambiguations, if anyone is. However, the bots do sometimes flag major DAB problems quickly solvable by opening half-a-dozen tabs and working through the bad links. (Anyone fancy a go at KIFM? thought not.)
@Colonel Wilhelm Klink: Have at ye! The game is on, among DABbers who are doing their best and treat the leaderboard as nothing more than an entertaining sideshow. The trends in The Daily Disambig make for much better viewing. Narky Blert (talk) 23:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
Can we add a parameter to categorize {{disambiguation needed}} templates by an area of expertise, and categorize these accordingly? bd2412 T 00:18, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
@Narky Blert: KIFM hasn't had any incoming links for almost three months. It's one of the pages that has been affected by the database problems mentioned mentioned in another section above. -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 00:30, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Numbers don't match

I'm curious: at the moment, the total of participants' edits is 1,754, yet the number above the progress bar says that 2,338 have been done. I know these numbers aren't precise, but that's a difference of 584. Does anyone have an answer to this discrepancy? — Gorthian (talk) 18:00, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

The 2,338 includes the false positives due to database errors that were actually fixed months ago. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:15, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
Aha! That makes sense, in a weird way. Thanks. — Gorthian (talk) 05:19, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
Doesn't the big number also include links that haven't been disambiguated by the top 10 of participants? Uanfala (talk) 06:53, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Jasonanaggie

User:Jasonanaggie, an active contributor to this project, continues to be reckless in disambiguating links. I've had to approach them on the need for some care on four occasions in the last two weeks [4], [5], [6], [7]. I don't know if I've sounded like I was picking on them, but they don't reply to the issues raised and they don't seem to have taken note at all. Even after my last post on their talk page, I see the same pattern of obviously bad disambiguations, for example link "fixes" that break template syntax [8], creating a red link with "(disambiguation)" in its title [9], a completely arbitrary disambiguation [10], and ones that suggest they haven't even looked at the context in which the link appears [11], [12], [13].

Is it just me or this user is creating way more harm than good? Is there anything that can be done? Uanfala (talk) 18:38, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

I have no idea what this user has against me, but they have been trolling my edits in an attempt to show they have superior knowledge, it seems. I have looked at the reverts that this user has taken issue with and honestly he/she is being very nit-picky with the attempt to call my edits incorrect. I will say that this individual has caught a couple errors I made, but then I think they wanted to find fault where none existed and sought to make my edits look like they were in bad faith. They were not, after continually hearing this individual commenting to me about my edits I just toned out this individual as it seems like he or she was exhibiting this trolling behavior that I initially thought he or she was performing to begin with. I don't know if this user is trying to look like a big shot or what. I always take constructive comments well, but what can you do when a troll latches onto you, hellbent to find error in any edit you perform?

I must say nobody else has found issue with my edits, only thanks have come my way for the work I have done. -- Jasonanaggie (talk) 19:08, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

You might want to take the advice to slow down a bit and take a bit more care in disambiguating links. I mostly agree with the concerns Uandala indicated with the several specific edits linked above. In just a very quick check of my own, I found at least two more [14] and [15]. And this edit seems a little dubious as well, although the problem may be more with the dab page and the linked articles. older ≠ wiser 19:25, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
Jasonanaggie, it isn't a question of bad faith (no-one doubts your good intentions) but about being careful. And I see that for the one hour since you replied in this thread, you've created another "fix" that breaks a template [16] and made several disambiguations that are either conspicuously bad [17], [18] or arbitrary [19] [20]. Uanfala (talk) 20:19, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Some of the faults you are finding are with the design of the software presenting the disambiguation in question. When it is shown in the software it is not clear that there is a template issue. Oh, and I see no issue with the DDR disambiguation you pointed out, that is just fine. Jasonanaggie (talk) 20:41, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Oh, is there a software issue? Doesn't the program let you see the page after you save your edit? Then it would become apparent. At any rate, the templates involved are {{see also}}, {{main}} and {{merge from}}, and the they aren't part of the main article content, they serve navigation or maintenance purposes, so in the vast majority of cases the links they contain don't need to be disambiguated. As for the DDR link, it's about apples and oranges. The text in question is DRAM Modules including: [[SDRAM]], [[DDR]], [[DDR2 SDRAM|DDR2]], [[DDR3]], [[DDR4]]. Now, this is an enumeration of memory types, and each article in the list is about one or another variety. DDR would fit the context if it was linked to DDR SDRAM (also known as DDR1). Double data rate doesn't fit because it's not a kind of memory but a data transfer mode (and incidentally, it would apply to four of the five types listed). Uanfala (talk) 21:10, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
Dabsolver is the last step in my disambiguating process. First, I examine the dab page itself and make sure I (semi)understand the entries. Then I open the article in question and skim it to see what it's about, and see where the dab link fits in. I make a decision about what I'm going to do with it, and then I click on the link to Dabsolver. If you're relying on the tool only, you will miss seeing some of the context as well. Dabsolver is fun, but it's not meant to be the whole job.— Gorthian (talk) 03:17, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree with the advice to "slow down". I thank Uanfala for their diligence; all of the situations where I've questioned whether a dab was done hastily or clearly incorrectly, the same editor was involved – I just didn't have the energy to do any systematic checks. Most recent case was Hartburn in List of Roman bridges.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 07:03, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
Do you use the visual editor? In my experience, VE does often not show enough of the article to make a proper judgement. If so, try not to use it. The Banner talk 07:47, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Hugh O'Neill - prematurely declared done

I've been trying to figure out the currently alleged connection between Hugh O'Neill and Newtownards and was surprised to see that the Hugh O'Neill line had been moved to the "Done" section of Wikipedia:Disambiguation_pages_with_links/August_2016.

I think I've now tracked down the proper connect, though not with the greatest of sources, but better than anything we had before. But as part of WP:DPL I was disappointed to see items claimed as "Done" that had not been completely resolved.

[On a different note, I'm very impressed to see that the completion percentage has exceeded 90%!!!]  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 02:08, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Koga

I have a question over here that needs fresh ideas. Thanks. — Gorthian (talk) 05:01, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

The Daily Disambig

I'm currently trying to work the "xxx disambig pages joined the list today, including:" list. Most of it is very easy - but I can't handle even half of the 400-odd new entries per day. Would anyone be interested in dividing up the work to avoid duplication of effort? Opening a "What links here" to find zero problems is great - but opening several in a row suggests that another DABhunter has already been on the case, rather than than that several users have had User:DPL bot on their tails and have felt guilty about it.

I managed to do A-L today, but that was heavy going. It really needs three or four of us to resolve or DN-mark each day's batch; e.g. start from the top ... start from the bottom ... start from the middle and work up and down. Most of those resolutions don't count towards the monthly scoreboard; but if your goal is to reduce the headline numbers in the TDD tables, who cares? Narky Blert (talk) 01:09, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm not the other DABhunter working systematically on that list, but I like this idea: fix or tag them while they're fresh (and perhaps get the attention of the editors who are – unintentionally, I guess – creating this workload).
I'm willing to contribute, but can I suggest using the list at WP:Disambiguation pages with links/The Daily Disambig/Recently added for coordination? Click on the column header to sort by dab page name. I'll agree to work forwards from the first article that starts with "M". I'm unlikely to get all that far, but every little bit helps.
But I also like the challenge of going for the oldest available {{dn}} tags, currently on Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation from December 2011. And I have yet to look at the so-called "Bonus List".
As for chasing positions on the monthly scoreboard, I care, but not all that much. I can't imagine how someone deDABs ten times what I do while still getting it nearly always right. But some diversity in approach is needed now, since – when more than 90% of the list has been resolved – too much time is spent looking at pages that someone else has already given their best shot. It makes a lot of sense to have editors nibbling away from multiple corners so there's less overlap.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 05:46, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
So people are working away at that list as well? I don't think it's generally a good idea to fix dablinks so soon after they're created. One of the reasons, of course, is that some of the editors who make these links do go back and fix them after receiving DPL bot's message. But there is another reason too: a dab page might end up at the primary title after topic restructuring or a page move, and these sometimes get reverted. There was a case earlier this year when an editor disambiguated around 2000 dablinks right after a dab page was moved to the primary title, only to see a subsequent requested move bring back the dab page to its previous location.
I think there needs to be a cooling down period before a dablink is brought to our attention here. What do others think? Pinging R'n'B who maintains the list. Uanfala (talk) 08:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
That's a good cautionary tale. Maybe we should let these things ripen a bit, have the bot bring them to the attention of the editors that created them, let the active page watchers get a chance to revert or improve things (they may have specialized knowledge), and only do things after things settle down a bit.
I've now looked at the Bonus List and on first impression it seems like no fun at all. I think I prefer working through the very old {{dn}} tags better.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 10:52, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
It depends a lot on the dab page that's being linked to. If it's only got two entries, then checking the history is important to see if it was just created as an alternative to deletion or a debate over WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. In those cases, a "cooling-off" period might be advisable. But if it's got lots of entries, like Saint Charles, then correcting a link quickly, while the editor is still likely to be working on or watching an article would be a better choice; it's more likely to get their notice. — Gorthian (talk) 01:02, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Note: If you see a questionable disambiguation page with a large number of incoming links that has been created without discussion by moving an existing page or turning an existing redirect into a disambiguation page, do not hesitate to revert the change and request that it be discussed first. bd2412 T 01:32, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Heuristics like these are probably useful but they don't help in all cases. The example I linked to above involved a dab page with a decent number of entries that was moved to the primary title after a formal requested move. Nothing in the dab page itself, or in the histories of the linked articles could have raised a flag. Often enough this is all a matter for editors with domain knowledge, and challenging a bad RM or, in the case of topic restructuring, rewriting the ledes of the relevant articles, doesn't happen at the lightning pace we're used to here. Uanfala (talk) 07:21, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk

I just made a request to move this to Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk (disambiguation) and restore Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk as a redirect to the primary topic, FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk. When that happens, all these links will disappear for good. Don't disambiguate any more. — Gorthian (talk) 05:26, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Quality control?

Following on from the previous discussion, I'm wondering if it isn't time to adopt some kind of formal, but light and unintrusive, quality control. How about performing an audit of a sample of the disambiguations done by the top three editors and then proceeding to list them in the hall of fame only if the error rate is below a threshold? Uanfala (talk) 18:55, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

@Uanfala: As a quality control measure, the sample should be taken from the entire set of disambiguations. Disambiguations by the top three will then be examined in proportion rather than singled out.
As a practical matter, someone is going to have to volunteer to do the extra work involved. I might be willing to examine a sample of 20, but not 200. And not all DAB actions are equal; wouldn't we need some sort of grading scale besides "right/wrong".
As a matter of collegiality, I don't think having any sort of "Hall of Shame" for high error rates is a good way to treat fellow editors. I would certainly appreciate having someone look at my actions and give me feedback about when I'm unlinking too often, or using Wiktionary too often, or failing to find that really apt link that could be obtained by including an additional word. If I were to get pilloried over every little thing, I'd just go do something else.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 06:09, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
I didn't have a "Hall of Shame" in mind, but do you think requiring a standard of quality for the Hall of fame amounts to that? Having the sample taken from the entire set (rather than the top three editors) does seem like a good idea. I agree about the need for a grading scale, I'm thinking of distinguishing: 1. obviously bad (for disambiguations that break templates or that are blatantly incongruous in the context); 2. just incorrect (where it is somewhat understandable how the editor might have been misled) and 3) suboptimal (where the link isn't the best one, but is still somewhat appropriate). Any thoughts? Uanfala (talk) 08:42, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Well, everything we do on WP is subject to review by other editors, but that happens in a distributed fashion and only comes to centralized notice (and that centralized is taken advisedly) when something pretty egregious happens. I only used the phrase "Hall of Shame" to contrast with the existing "Hall of Fame", but any sort of centralized critique of editors' performance is going to be problematic in that way.
You want to do an exploratory experiment? Let's use that query system we learned about and pick a couple of samples to examine, say 20 of yours and 20 of mine. (Others are welcome to play, too.) I'll try to grade yours on that grading scale while you do mine. Maybe by trying to do the proposed audit, we can gain more insight as to how the effort could be applied more generally.
The query for my sample is at Pick DAB activity sample - jmcgnh
The query for your sample is at Pick DAB activity sample - uanfala
I give my permission for anyone to inspect a sample obtained from that first query. I'll wait for a go-ahead before I start looking at someone else's dab actions.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 10:43, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
The query seems to return results only from the current (or last?) month. To get a proper sample from me, I'd suggest these two edit summary searches: [21] and [22] (and these also contain other editors' disambiguations that I've reverted, which don't show up in the query). Of course, everyone is welcome to have a look and I'd be happy to hear about any errors I've made. jmcgnh, I'll try to have a go at your sample when I have the time (and unless in the meantime another editor steps in). Uanfala (talk) 12:33, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

For those interested, the results of our exploratory trial audit are on Uanfala's Talk page.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 23:39, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Question about moving things to the "Done" list

I try to remember to move each dab page from the "to do" list down to the "done" list when I've resolved all the pages that link to it. If I can't resolve a link, I mark it with {{dn}}, but I don't move that dab page to the "done" list because the links are not all done. Have I been doing this wrong?

I ask because I like the challenge of those pages that have only one link left; I find them on the monthly list (when it's working). Then, if I'm successful at resolving the last link, I move the page from "to do" to "done". Unlike previous times, this month I keep finding that the dab pages have already been moved into the "done" list, even though there was still a link to be disambiguated. Is this a practice I should adopt? — Gorthian (talk) 02:12, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

@Gorthian: I agree that the list is not "done" if there are remaining {{dn}} tags. The damage is small, though, since the page will show up again next month.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 03:18, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
And speaking of challenges, I can't recommend enough the satisfaction of finding a good resolution for pages with the very oldest needs for disambiguation: Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation from September 2011 – August was marked finished, I've done what I could for September, and if we keep it up we can perhaps begin to close the interval.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 03:27, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
I tried a few of the July 2011 ones about a month ago—hoo, boy! I don't think I'm quite up to that level yet. Part of it is that I have access only to online resources and references and, though that's quite a lot, it's not like being at a big academic library. I'll try some more of them in a couple weeks. — Gorthian (talk) 05:21, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

@R'n'B: In this edit, you moved Tomaszów (among other pages) to the "Done" section, even though there is still an article that links to it. I'm curious to know your reasoning behind doing so. — Gorthian (talk) 21:49, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

@Gorthian: I assume that if there is only one incoming link left, someone has tried to fix them and the one that is left is not readily fixable, so for all practical purposes it is done. And, of course, that one link will remain on the current list on the Tool page, as well as being on the bonus list the following month, so it is not like the page is lost from view. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:52, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
@R'n'B: Thanks for explaining. I guess it's a psychological thing for me: it's sort of a letdown when I FINALLY get the last link fixed only to find that the page is already in the "done" list. But your reasoning makes sense, too. I didn't know how the entries in the bonus list got chosen, though I had noticed that there was overlap with the "regular" list. — Gorthian (talk) 16:35, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
I am strongly in favour of not moving pages to "Done" while dn problems remain. AFAIC "done" means "completed", not "looked at and tagged". (If you find me moving to "Done" with an unsolved link remaining, it's because I missed it.) Narky Blert (talk) 01:56, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

PFC Spartak Varna

Disambiguation of PFC Spartak Varna is a task for a bot owner. In fact, all links to PFC Spartak Varna should now point to PFC Spartak 1918.

It took me some time to figure it out when fixing the templates last night, to find that out that PFC Spartak Varna had changed its name twice since 2010 (so no name conflicts) but that in 2015 a new football club was founde with the name FC Spartak Varna (minus the P of the old club). The Banner talk 09:53, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

The Banner, I think this is texbook case of a dab page that doesn't need to be at the primary title. Uanfala (talk) 14:17, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
Feel free to solve it as you like. Fixing the other way was not too much work. The Banner talk 17:33, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

The Daily Disambig is updated with, among other things, the new entrants to the list of disambiguation pages with links. These come either from newly introduced links within articles, or from newly created or moved disambiguation pages. Following up on the discussion in the preceding thread, should there be a recommended "cooling-off" period before editors start disambiguating these links? If yes, what is the best way to implement it? Uanfala (talk) 21:33, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

  • I don't agree with the idea of a cooling-off period for newly-linked disambig pages. First of all, just because a page shows up on The Daily Disambig as "new to the list" does not mean it is a new disambiguation page. It could just be a long-existing disambiguation page that had a new link created to it. For example, if I fix all the incoming links to American on Monday night and it is removed from the list on Tuesday morning, it is certain that someone will create a new link to that page before sunset and it will show up as a "new" disambiguation page with incoming links on the Wednesday list. Second, although some newly-created disambiguation pages are erroneous, that doesn't mean they all are, or even a majority of them. It is probably good advice to check the disambiguation page and its history before fixing incoming links, if the disambig was just added to the list; but it is not good advice to avoid fixing those links altogether. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:06, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Support I know of three ways for a dablink to make its way into the Daily Disambig. An editor could have introduced an incoming link into the text of an article. In this case, they receive a talk page message by DPL bot, and we would want to give them the chance to fix the link, wouldn't we? They are in a much better position to do it than we are.
Now, dab pages can also end up in this report as a result of either page moves onto the primary title or topic restructuring (like article splits). Page moves often get reverted, so if incoming links get promptly disambiguated and then the previous primary-topic article gets moved back, then the effort to disambiguate would turn out to have been unnecessary and we would have ended up with links containing unnecessary disambiguation. In the case of topic restructuring, we would want to give content editors enough time to update the disambiguation page entries and rewrite the article ledes before we dive into disambiguating.
Now, the third scenario is when a stub, list or broad-concept article is turned into a disambiguation page. Such a change can get reverted (as happened for example to Tranquilizer yesterday). If in the meantime all incoming links have been disambiguated, then we would have effectively orphaned a legitimate article and that's very bad – restoring previous links to an article is very difficult (and as far as I know, in the long term it's impossible).
So all in all, there are two situations where a cooling-off period is desirable, and one in which it is essential. I think the least intrusive way of implementing this is to have Daily Disambig page contain a prominent notice advising editors to avoid disambiguating the links there until a certain amount of time has passed. Uanfala (talk) 21:50, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Currently Neutral – Can we quantify this "certain amount of time"? The Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/The Daily Disambig/Recently added list can be sorted by date; can we declare the oldest day to be fair game? Or is it being proposed that we wait until they show up in a monthly challenge list? I don't see getting a notice from DPLbot that a dab link needs to be fixed as "better" than noticing in your watchlist that someone has fixed it. As an aspect of quality of the dab that gets performed, experienced unDABers will do better than unexperienced editors, while less experienced unDABers may do a poorer job than an experienced editor might do, had they seen the orange link they created (if they have that option set) or seen the DPLbot notice. Is that a wash?  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 22:44, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
    I really don't see how an unDABer (no matter how experienced) could possibly do better than an editor (experienced or not) who knows the subject area. If it's an easy dab, it wouldn't matter, but if it's a difficult one then the editor who's in the best position to figure out what that content contributor was referring to is the content contributor. Well, yes, there are borderline cases where wiki experience could be useful: for example, knowing the article naming conventions helps when disambiguating to a red link.
    As for the duration of the cooling-off period, we would want to wait long enough for the relevant content editors to be likely to notice the changes that created the dablink. I don't have a precise method for arriving at a specific number, but I feel we should wait at least three days, and possibly not more than ten. Uanfala (talk) 08:05, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
    Editors with subject area expertise are best, no argument. I wonder what fraction of edits that leave dablinks are done by editors who meet that criterion.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 08:54, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
    Well, editors aren't supposed to contribute substantial content in areas where they lack basic expertise. And if they do, then the dablink will be the least problem. Large swathes of newly added content get routinely removed for various content-related reasons (WP:OR, WP:V, WP:NPOV....) and that's another reason we would want to wait for a bit before disambiguating. Uanfala (talk) 09:09, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
  • A couple of points.
  1. I fully agree that new entries in TDD with big numbers need looking at carefully: was there a bad move from a WP:PRIMARY topic? I haven't seen one I disagreed with yet, but they must happen and ought (after discussion) to be reverted. If it looks to have been a good move, sigh and clean up the mess which someone left behind. (I have however several times found that a move of e.g. "Thingummy" (song) to "Thingummy" (Thingummy song) has thrown up links which should always have been to "Thingummy" (Someone Else's song).)
  2. I too have seen ambiguous links turn up in TDD which were from years ago but seem never to have been picked up before. I don't puzzle my mind over why, I just try to sort them out.
  3. New singleton entries in TDD drop off after 24 hours, whether dealt with with or not - you can see this by staying online and not reloading the page; or, by logging on around 10 AM UK time and refreshing the page a couple of hours later. Those singletons disappear from all lists known to me, resolved or not (and they usually aren't, or else get a fatuous unconsidered resolution to the (disambiguation) page to make the problem go away).
#3 is the issue I wanted to raise. At the start of each month, the regulars all pile in onto the new "Disambiguation pages with links" page and give it some hammer. Meanwhile, those new singleton links to DAB pages fly under the radar - unless they're to one of those usual suspects which get patrolled, like American.
An example from today: Tournesol, in the page Chessy, Seine-et-Marne. Bad link, partial disambiguation of the name of a school. I got that from Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/The Daily Disambig on 4 September 2016. Unless I'm mistaken, that link will disappear from TDD later today whether disambiguated or not. Narky Blert (talk) 00:18, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Well, I think #1 is one of the reasons we wouldn't want the the Daily Disambig to be hidden from view during any cooling-off period. As for #3, doesn't that highlight the need for keeping a somewhat more visible record (other than what is in TDD's revision history) of past entrants to the list? Uanfala (talk) 08:05, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
  • After further thought (i.e. sleeping on it and having had a couple of beers too many):
  1. I agree with User:Uanfala that TDD should stay as it is. No reason at all to change it, or any of the other reports.
  2. A cooling-off period is a good idea. If responsible editors are woken up by a DPLbot message and fix their mistake - job done.
  3. General thought: there are 30,000+ links to DAB pages we can't easily find.
  4. A proposal. DPLbot presumably scans all DAB pages each day for incoming links in order to update the numbers in TDD. If so, it should be technically possible to create a daily report containing every DAB page with incoming links.
Twist #1: exclude pages with {{dn}} tags. That'll miss some stuff; but with 40,000 links to fix and 5,000 existing dn tags, a minor exclusion.
Twist #2: exclude recent pages. I can see two ways to do this.
(1) Tell the bot to ignore links to DAB pages made before a chosen date, e.g. the start of 2016. I can see problems here, it could be messy to implement.
(2) Tell the bot to record all entries every day. Then, after running for a month, at the start of each month, to post somewhere all the ones it has stored which were NOT created during the previous month. Real-time updates on progress in that post would be nice but could be difficult to implement; and would not be necessary, given the size of the backlog. A talk-page msg like "I'm working on A" would prevent duplication of effort. At next refresh (I'm suggesting monthly, see Twist #1), anything still on the list has not yet been looked at - everything else has either been resolved or dn-tagged.
Thoughts? Narky Blert (talk) 01:06, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
I seem to be suggesting something like hidden Category:Disambiguation pages with links which need looking at. It would be huge, but could work, Narky Blert (talk) 01:24, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Scrub my previous suggestions. It's all there, if you know where to look. Narky Blert (talk) 19:40, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
Ooh but that link is useful, and it's updated daily. There are fish in that barrel - reload my other shotgun while I blaze away with this one! Narky Blert (talk) 22:05, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Search for disambiguations of links to a given dab page

Is there any way to get to all the edits that have disambiguated links to a given dab page? I'm trying to track down and clean up likely iffy disambiguations resulting from misleadingly worded entries in a couple of dab pages. Uanfala (talk) 22:00, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Help us understand what you're after. You want something that works like the following pseudocode?
Given DAB pages X[0] through X[n]
for each member of X
containing entries Y[0] through Y[d],
for each member of Y
For each article that links to this Y
Open an edit window at the place where this Y is linked in this article
I don't know that any of the standard tools can do this, but some of the elements match what dab fix list does. I haven't advanced far enough to use AWB or WP Cleaner, but some of the DPL crew use those and may have suggestions.
How large an effort is it going to be to do this by hand?  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 05:35, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I should have explained better. What I was thinking of was rather something like this:
Given a dab page X, do:
find all edits (to any articles) that have disambiguated a link to X
The difficult bit is finding edits that have disambiguated a link, but this seems to be done by the tool that counts the number of edits by each participant in the monthly challenge. Uanfala (talk) 08:31, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
What you are asking is perhaps in-principle possible, but anything that starts out with "find all edits" is going to be pretty hard, especially since the criterion of "have disambiguated a link to X" can be met by a wide variety of edits.
We should probably think of a way to do what you want within the framework of what dplbot already does. We don't know precisely how it works, but based on what we can see, it has a list of pages containing dablinks (how many and to what) and it has a list of pages that have had disambiguation edits done to them (attributed to what is hopefully the correct edit and editor and also including the dab page that is no longer linked). So it's this latter list that you want to do your query from, based on "X" being equal to what I've called "the dab page that is no longer linked" field of the list.
That doesn't sound to me like it would be particularly hard, but I have no view into how the project actually works, so I could be completely off base. But expressed this way, I think the project maintainer(s) would not be scared off. Just ask for a version of the script at user results that queries based on the dab page name rather than the user name. —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 10:39, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, jmcgnh, I've left a message about that on the DPL tool creator's talk page. I'll hope that's still monitored. Uanfala (talk) 16:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
@Uanfala: JaGa has not been around at all since June 23. You might try Dispenser, who created Dabsolver, and who (I think) knows many of the ins and outs of dplbot. Or maybe try at WP:BOTREQ? — Gorthian (talk) 00:03, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
ch_results tells you the revision, the article, and the dab link. DPLbot only checks contest links and flushes the data every month (new contest). I have 6 months of backups. — Dispenser 00:18, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
Dispenser, thank you. There are hidden corners everywhere you look in this project. Can that query be modified to include the date, too? — Gorthian (talk) 00:46, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
You JOIN to the revision table and it'll only list dablinks starting with W. — Dispenser 03:55, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Pardon my excitement, but that example query is bloody marvelous!  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 06:12, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

That looks great. But does it only query disambiguations made in the last month, rather than the whole 6-month period for which backups exist? Uanfala (talk) 07:56, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
Uanfala, It is only for the current contest, chat with me on IRC to get the other dumps imported. — Dispenser 13:52, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
Dispenser a followup question if I may. I "almost" understand what's going on, but in the query you have
SELECT * FROM p50380g50692__DPL_p.ch_results LIMIT 700;
and I don't understand where the "p50380g50692__DPL_p" comes from. Is that a permanent, but "magic cookie", name? Can you explain a bit more?  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 10:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
@Jmcgnh: p50380g50692__ is the tool's project's internal number (it was p_dpl_ on Toolserver, but somebody fuck up by allowing IIRC >16 char names or something), I use my own user database u2815__p for everything.
DPL database name.
_p indicates that its publically accessible.

SHOW TABLES FROM p50380g50692__DPL_p; lists tables, while
DESCRIBE p50380g50692__DPL_p.ch_results; lists columns and
SHOW INDEXES FROM p50380g50692__DPL_p.ch_results; lists index that can speed up queries (e.g. commonly speeding up 20 min queries to 20 seconds). — Dispenser 13:52, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Brezovica

@Narky Blert: How did you come about this decision? I must admit, I didn't wade through all of the official site to find it myself, but how did you decide that 3x3 Ljubljana-Brezovica was an acceptable article name? All the rest in that table are plain names of cities. — Gorthian (talk) 19:06, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

@Gorthian: I found, among other things, this. (FWIW, it's also the name used on their FaceBook page.) They're a professional club with lots of what looks like WP:RS in Google (especially under their former name 3x3 Brezovica), and IMO WikiNotable. They were originally based in Municipality of Brezovica; they may have moved the 6 miles / 9 km to Ljubljana, but I'm not sure.
I'd never heard of 3x3 basketball before, but it seems to be big in some parts of the world. For myself, I found the bare links to city names very unhelpful - if someone wants to know more, they'll want to learn about the club, not where it's based. Narky Blert (talk) 19:32, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm impressed. I never get very far in sports articles—I know so little about those worlds, I can't translate what I find. Obviously, you really dug to find that! Good going, and thanks. — Gorthian (talk) 20:01, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
@Gorthian: I find the difficult ones the most fun :-) If only editors who create an article like that would follow through, and write up the things they linked to and presumably know something about.</sigh> I could find nothing useful on Slovenian or any other Wiki about the club, or I'd have {{ill}} linked. (I'm a big fan of doing that.)
IMO what makes this WikiProject work is people coming at problems from all sorts of different angles. I thought I'd done well by getting Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation from January 2012 down to single figures or thereabouts - but other editors have since cleaned it out, and it's gone! Narky Blert (talk) 00:13, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
@Narky Blert: I don't love ALL the hard ones: the worst is when it's a stub article with no references that just says, "he was born in Middletown, New York", and nothing and no one that cares about where he was born can be found in any search result. But most of them are great challenges to searching skills, and I really enjoy the hunt. I'm amazed all the time at what it's possible to find. And sometimes you can get other editors to help, if you can figure out where to ask. — Gorthian (talk) 01:22, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
@Gorthian: I feel your pain. "He was appointed to the living (i.e. parish) of <one of four different places scattered across England, and two others in the middle of it about three miles apart>." "He was voivode of <one of two dozen places in Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania, half of which have no article anywhere, none of which have as many as 1000 inhabitants>."
It is very gratifying indeed when you post a cry for help, and action results. I came across Alia carinata a few months ago, with an age-old {{dn}} on "Hinds". I don't know how long it took me to even find his initials; but I did manage to get them, and then his forenames; and realised I had an important article to write - not many people have a genus named in their honour; a classic case of, "WTF is there no article about this person?" I did what I could, then posted on the Botany and Zoology WP talk pages. Within a day, half-a-dozen editors had piled in with valuable improvements :-) Narky Blert (talk) 22:10, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

@R'n'B: In this edit summary, you said "1. Liga still has links to fix". But DPL bot showed there were zero links left. I checked the page—there were links there, but they had all been created by retargeting a redirect to the dab page on September 6. In other words, they didn't appear on the "official" monthly list. I don't always believe DPL bot when it says there are still lots of links to an article, but when it says there are zero links, I believe that.

I fixed all the links to 1. Liga; I didn't have time to check into Others, another one you mentioned as still having links to fix, but I suspect it may have been a similar situation. Please, believe DPL bot if it says there are no links left. Thanks. — Gorthian (talk) 01:41, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what the situation was with 1. Liga, but I do know what happened with Others. Someone added a link to Others into a template (probably after DPL bot's morning report) that was used in a couple of dozen articles. I found and fixed the link. By the time the next DPL bot report was generated, the incoming links were all gone. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:16, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@R'n'B: Please don't "put back" entries from the "done" list to the "to do" list unless you check the newly listed links. I looked at about half of the links to Tamil that you said still needed fixing, and all were rewrites or additions since August 31, so they don't "count" for this month's contest. The monthly report is correct: there are 0 links to Tamil that need fixing. I'm not sure which report you're going by, but it's wrong. — Gorthian (talk) 17:02, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Presumably, R'n'B is checking to see if there are actually incoming links to the page. Whether or not they "count" for the contest, the links still need to be fixed. Although the contest itself is a fun goal to pursue, it is pursued to the end of fixing all disambiguation links in the encyclopedia. bd2412 T 17:34, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
I know, I can't believe I care about this tiny issue. It's just that after finishing off a dab page on the list and moving it to the "done" list, it's disheartening to have it moved back. I'm going through Tamil now, fixing the new links. — Gorthian (talk) 18:26, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
@Gorthian: I think you are trying to use WP:DPL for a purpose other than that for which it was intended. This page is not part of the monthly disambiguation contest; in fact, in existed long before JaGa came up with the idea of the contest. It just happens (not entirely by coincidence) to start with the same monthly list that the contest does, but it is not inteded to track the progress of the contest. As BD2412 suggested above, the actual purpose of this page is to assist editors in finding links that need to be fixed. If you only want to see links that "count" for the contest, you can use http://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/ch/monthly_list.php. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:24, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm talking about the contest, yes. I'm talking about the lists of links on Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/September 2016, which is the list for the contest (with the progress bar and all). I didn't think of bringing this up at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links/September 2016, but I can do that from now on. However, if we're supposed to be marking progress against the original list, let's keep it to the original list. If you want to comment that there are still links to be fixed for a page, that's fine, and we can follow up on that. But please don't put it back in the "to do" list for the month. That just doesn't make sense.
(I do use http://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/ch/monthly_list.php to track what's still to be done from the monthly list, and I use https://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/disambig_links.php to keep an eye on the rest.)
It isn't that I am invested in the contest as such; I mostly use it to keep focused. But some of the biggest benefits I get from participating are the feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction as I watch our progress each month. That feeling of progress is rare on Wikipedia, especially in the gnomish work I do. So that's why I'm touchy about keeping the contest details straight. — Gorthian (talk) 19:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps we can make a separate page to list pages cleared in the disambiguation contest for which new links have since been added? That way, editors who are focused on points (and seeing the progress inherent in the contest) can see it on the contest page, and those who want to keep an eye on those links irrespective of the contest will have a place to do that. bd2412 T 19:48, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
Can I butt in to recommend this DPL report? It's updated daily. I'm hitting as much as I can every day starting from #2001. (If you've wondered why I'm scoring 100+ a day on the leaderboard, that's why.) If a few other editors select numbers a thousand or two lower down and work on those, we could do some serious damage to the number in Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/The Daily Disambig#Table 3 RH column. Narky Blert (talk) 02:22, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

DAB Challenge Leaderboard

Needs updating - it's still showing September, and October's results are being added into that month's. (Knock-on effects in this article and the HoF also.) Narky Blert (talk) 23:17, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

A disambiguator's trick

Most likely old hat, but I hadn't thought of it before today.

If you come across a link in one of those templates (e.g. an infobox) which automatically bluelinks an entry no matter how silly it might be (e.g. ? or ?? or Unknown or something clearly non-notable): you can suppress the link by enclosing the information after the = sign within <nowiki></nowiki>. Narky Blert (talk) 22:55, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Sometimes you can. Some have coding so abstruse that that doesn't work and you have to go posting to the template's talk page to ask the author to fix it, or to share the undocumented parameters they were keeping to themselves for some reason. But I'm not bitter... Nick Number (talk) 04:46, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
Been there too. Some of those templates are just so cute, and save oh maybe 24 bytes on each use. Pity that their authors never got around to documenting them ... What could possibly go wrong? Narky Blert (talk) 01:09, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

DPL bot issue

DPL bot may need a kick - The Daily Disambig hasn't updated today. Narky Blert (talk) 17:16, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

The regular disambiguation reports and the contest reports have both failed to update for approximately the last 15 hours. I don't know why, except that the bot hasn't been able to log in to the wiki. I'm not seeing problems with any other bots, so I'm stumped by this. I hope it will resolve itself, as some previous problems have; otherwise, it may have to wait until JaGa can take a look at it. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:33, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
The Daily Disambig seems to refresh around 11 AM GMT. Oddly, the Bonus List did update today. Narky Blert (talk) 23:41, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Well, I've been able to get the scripts to run again by commenting out the parts that failed; just hope I didn't break anything else by doing that :-) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:05, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
The Bonus List didn't update at its usual time on 15 October (11 AM GMT or so) - but, by ca. 7 PM GMT: it, The Daily Disambig, and the contest report had updated, correctly so far as I can see. How do I award your lump hammer a Barnstar? Narky Blert (talk) 00:22, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
To update the situation: anything that requires writing to the wiki (updating the daily leaderboard, notifying users of newly-created dablinks, etc.) is not working, but all the tools.wmflabs.org pages are being updated correctly. The exception is The Daily Disambig, which is being updated because that's done by an entirely different process. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:32, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Hiding article Virginia Conventions

The article Virginia Conventions has been internally linked to a disambiguation page, Virginia Convention which lists articles that mirror the main article's subsections broken down into seventeen stubs by Dallyripple, whose contributions are automatically posted to Bkwillwm's user page as his contributions. There was no discussion or consensus to hide the main article Virginia Conventions. How is this change in article status righted? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:41, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

@TheVirginiaHistorian: Bkwillwm created Virginia Convention eleven years ago, in 2005, as a redirect to Virginia Conventions. That's all the involvement there was by Bkwillwm. I'm not sure what you mean by "hiding" Virginia Conventions. It's still there...? This is not the place for working this out, anyway—that should be done on the talk page for one or another of the two pages. — Gorthian (talk) 04:55, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
@Gorthian: The hiding of Virginia Conventions is corrected by removing "#REDIRECT Virginia Conventions" from the disambiguation page. Yesterday it was still in place, so then the main article did not appear when typing in “Virginia Conventions”, but instead Search linked directly to the Disambiguation page only. Clicking on Virginia Conventions only returned to the disambiguation page, as opposed to the wiki operation earlier in the week that led to the main article. It now shows removed by Dallyripple, so there must be a delay of several hours in the implementation.
So as it operated yesterday afternoon, it was a matter of concern to me, not having access to the main article, as there are three editors actively trying to promote the main article to GA status. There are seventeen stubs recently created by Dallyripple mirroring subsections of Virginia Conventions with no additional contributions, and without discussion or consensus on the main article Talk page, --- failing to reach the Virginia Conventions article and its Talk page led me to seek a central location for a solution. Thank you for your prompt reply. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:26, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

It would be handy if the list of articles to fix included a direct link to the fixing tool. (I have created Template:Dab fix for this purpose.) Could the bot be asked to list the articles like this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:25, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

You mean like this? You can get to that list at WP:MDC. — Gorthian (talk) 19:14, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Seeking advice - unproductive discussion with another editor

Akanksha Sharma (singer and performer) has an "other uses" hatnote with two links. One is to Sharma, which is a {{surname}} page, and thus correct. However, Akanksha is a DAB page. I have had no success in persuading the article creator on the article Talk Page that WP:INTDABLINK means what it says(1), and have been repeatedly reverted with summary explanations like "the page name is Akanksha" and "per name of the page or move it". Another editor has also had a correction reverted, with the summary explanation "Akanksha (disambiguation) is a redirection to Akanksha".

(1) To save you the trouble of looking up the relevant bit of WP:INTDABLINK - "In a hatnote:

Incorrect: {{for|other uses|Springfield}}
Correct: {{for|other uses|Springfield (disambiguation)}}, or {{for|other uses|Springfield (disambiguation){{!}}Springfield}}"

Any advice? WP:ANI might be the next step, but I'd prefer not to escalate unless it's the only way. Narky Blert (talk) 22:04, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

  • I'm not sure I see the point of the hatnote at all. No-one arriving at Akanksha Sharma could conceivably be looking for Akanksha or Sharma. – Uanfala (talk) 22:13, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
  • @Uanfala: I'm inclined to agree - there are far too many hatnotes like this one (from the specific to the general) in articles which you only get to read if you knew what you were looking for in the first place. I tend to leave them alone (or to repair them) as "mostly harmless". Would you care to try deleting this one? (I have a dog in this fight, and would almost certainly be reverted.) Narky Blert (talk) 23:22, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
    • @Narky Blert:, well, they are harmless but I tend to remove them: it's strange to have something completely irrelevant taking up prime space at the top of the article and I imagine people with screen readers won't particularly like them either. – Uanfala (talk) 23:27, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Opposition Party

For those of you struggling with the dab links to Opposition Party (United States), there is a knowledgeable editor willing to help. See our conversation at User talk:InformationvsInjustice#Sort of an invitation and then at my talk page. — Gorthian (talk) 02:24, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

What about these disambiguation practices?

I've now run into a number of disambiguation cases where one of the following has been done:

  1. unlinked but {{dn}} left in place
  2. explicitly linked to (disambiguation) page in a context where disambiguation is still needed and with no {{dn}}

Both of these practices strike me as errors and I have now encountered it enough to think that it's not inadvertent errors. I'm well aware of the temptation to just do "anything" to get a page off the worklist, but sometimes you have to leave the task for someone else with more domain-specific knowledge.

Am I understanding the goals of this project incorrectly? How do we get the word out?  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 14:55, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

In my view those are unacceptable practices and should be reverted wherever found (even if it does mean getting a nastygram from DPL bot). If they were due to a misunderstanding then the person should be contacted to have the disambiguation guidelines re-explained. If they were deliberately used to game the system for a higher spot on the leaderboard then I'd say that at a minimum it would be grounds to disqualify the person from any of those months' contests. Nick Number (talk) 16:12, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
Unlinking but leaving the {{dn}} in place strikes me as more likely to be accidental than system-gaming. Intentionally linking to the disambiguation page is, of course, only appropriate where the usage indicates that it is the ambiguity of the term itself that is intended to be shown. bd2412 T 16:31, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
There's another instance where you might come across an unlinked item with a {{dn}} tag attached - in one of those templates which automatically links to an article if it exists. {{Infobox river}} is one such, for tributaries - a {{dn}} tag suppresses the link.
I know two ways around the problem. (1) Enclose the item in <nowiki></nowiki>. (2) Better, qualify the link if you can and use the {{!}} pipe substitute, e.g Trickling Creek (Muddy River){{!}}Trickling Creek - which produces a redlink. (That doesn't work in all templates; but sometimes an everyday bracketed pipe does the job.)
If all experimentation fails and you're left with the choice of a bad bluelink or a bad-looking {{dn}} tag, I'd suggest leaving the tag in place and posting on the template talk page. I got a good and speedy response yesterday by doing that (it was one of those complicated road system templates) - problem solved. Narky Blert (talk) 22:14, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
  • If someone is trying to game the system, then this is probably an indication that we need some sort of quality control (like auditing a sample of the disambiguations by the winners in the leaderboard and sending the T-shirts only if the error rate is below a certain threshold). As for the links that explicitly contain (disambiguation), all the ones I've seen so far have been intentional. They get linked from hatnotes and other dab pages (WP:INTDAB), but occasionally a dab page is the best target of a normal link (and the inclusion of "disambiguation" there is just to stop overzealous disambiguators from changing the link to something silly). An example can be seen at Greece#Science and technology: there's link to "Carathéodory theorems" and there is one place on wikipedia which lists them all and that is the dab page Carathéodory's theorem. Uanfala (talk) 17:51, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Head up on Testosterone

The medical folks decided to split the article into two, so testosterone is now a dab page. Because of some of the tricky subject matter, I posted a call for help at WP:MED. Some of the dabs will be easy, but there will be many requiring expert judgement. Lots of {{dn}} tags will be appropriate.— Gorthian (talk) 18:56, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Numerary

The page at this name was deleted, leaving Numerary (disambiguation) as the dab page with no primary topic. I moved the dab to Numerary, and there's something like 260 links to it. Almost all of them are via the {{Employment}} navbox. I've deleted the link there, but it will take the articles a good bit of time to catch up. (It used to take just a day or two, but now it seems to take weeks before edits to the template take effect on the articles they're transcluded in.)

Making a null edit on each article page will make the link to the dab page disappear. I'll be doing a few at a time; I don't have energy for the whole kit and kaboodle. Join in if you can. Thanks. — Gorthian (talk) 09:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Leaderboard stuck

User:JaGa/Short leaderboard hasn't updated since October 13. Anyone know how to update it? Purging and a null edit had zero effect. — Gorthian (talk) 00:26, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

On the plus side, the November DAB Challenge Leaderboard seems to be ticking along nicely, as is the Bonus List, even if DPL bot just found another 10,000 links from somewhere. November 3: "On November 1, the Bonus List contained 26,100 links; today it contains 35,570 links." The same happened on 4 October - 27,452 jumped to 37,455. (Not a problem IMO, the Bonus List headline number has never tallied with the other headline numbers. Just tell us where we need to look...) On the minus side, the HoF wasn't updated at the end of October. Narky Blert (talk) 01:38, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
Leaderboard not updated since 13 October, as we know - and today, the DAB Challenge numbers look stuck, too. The Bonus List may still be updating; at least, I hope it is. Narky Blert (talk) 03:22, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
See the thread #DPL bot issues above. The bot is unable to update any pages on the wiki, but https://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/ch/dab_challenge.php is up to date. If they "look stuck" it is only because of the replication lag, which is shown at the top of https://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/disambig_links.php, and at this moment is extraordinarily high. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:56, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
The DAB challenge numbers have now updated, for the first time in 24 hours or so (and, 3700 for the top 5 by 11 December looks seriously useful progress - November total for the top 5 was ca. 7600). DPL bot is still coughing and spluttering though - today, WP:TDD reported 14 new pages joining the list and 23 leaving it (I think not, both numbers should be around 400). Narky Blert (talk) 23:05, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

For entertainment only

A recent edit history:

  1. {{dn}} (that was me, inside one of those fancy templates - I knew the answer, but couldn't work out how to implement it)
  2. rv, breaks links (3rd party)
  3. dab fix #1 (3rd party) {oops, that didn't work}
  4. dab fix #2 (3rd party) {OK let's try this}

Hmm, that seems to have solved the problem! - and it only needed two attempts by someone who understood the template! Narky Blert (talk) 00:42, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Dablinks resulting from page moves

Sometimes an article would be moved away from a primary title, which would then be taken up by a disambiguation page. It's then easy to assume that the resulting dablinks were actually all meant for the article, and then proceed to retarget them using an automated tool. This probably works for long-established articles on prominent topics that are well-integrated into the encyclopedia. But most cases aren't like that, and the resulting dablinks need to be fixed on a case-by-case basis. – Uanfala (talk) 12:51, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it is ever safe to assume that all the links are meant for the former primary topic. That is one of the problems with the current systems — that mistaken links to a primary topic are significantly less likely to be noticed and fixed. The cost-benefit tradeoff in terms of overall traffic is considered acceptable, but I would not want a tool to automatically change the links. older ≠ wiser 13:09, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
I agree. But I brought this up only because I've seen several editors "fixing" links to such recently created dab pages using AWB (and consequently introducing a significant number of incorrect links along the way). – Uanfala (talk) 13:16, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Heh, unfortunately editors being careless using AWB is not a new thing. older ≠ wiser 13:25, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
You have succinctly explained why I never use AWB. Problem links need eyeballs. Narky Blert (talk) 02:27, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
You can put eyeballs on links with AWB. bd2412 T 03:35, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Sure, and people can make bad edits without using AWB too, but AWB let's you make bad edits faster if you're not careful. older ≠ wiser 03:50, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Failure to complete my mission

I ran into an editor with a contrary interpretation of where dab links are desirable at Talk:Cavetto#Links to disambiguation pages. I made enough mistakes in the process to withdraw.  —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 04:33, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Whether you see it as a failure or not depends on what you see as your mission. The higher-level objective of this project isn't fixing links to dab pages, it's making the encyclopedia easier to navigate. Most often, fixing dablinks achieves this objective. Occasionally it doesn't. – Uanfala (talk) 13:30, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
My edits on concave and convex in Cavetto (made before I read any of the discussion) seem, for now, to have stuck. I found the article because it was tagged in this month's list. My thought process, in fuller detail than I employed at the time: OK, what will be most useful to a reader? (1) Making an intentional link to a DAB page? Out of the question, utterly useless in this case (2) Some technical mathematical article or other? Gimme a break, the page is about an architectural detail! (3) Unlink? Tempting, but whoever added those links thought those words might be mysterious. (I might not think so, but that's not for me to say.) (4) Inline explanation (which can sometimes be the best way)? Too verbose, and anyway there are good definitions in (5) Wiktionary, for any reader unsure about what the words mean. So, I went for Wiktionary. Narky Blert (talk) 23:25, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

$100 $200 in cash to any editor who can break my record in March.

In March of 2012, I challenged myself and set the all-time record as Disambiguation Hall of Fame Bonus list champion (the bonus list includes all disambiguation links from disambiguation pages with four or fewer incoming links). The record I set is 4,936 bonus list links fixed in a single month. Since then no other editor has even come within a thousand fixes of my record. I therefore offer a bounty of one hundred dollars in cash to be awarded to any editor who can beat this feat in the March 2017 disambiguation contest. User:Dicklyon has matched this offer, raising it to $200. Five years is a long time for an editing record to stand. Let's see what happens. bd2412 T 00:30, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

And at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#.24100_in_cash_to_any_editor_who_can_break_my_record_in_March. I've made a potentially better incentive: in case the $200 threshold is not met, I will pay the top 5 disambig fixers $80, $40, $20, $10, and $5. Dicklyon (talk) 04:47, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Proposed addition of a parameter for topic areas in {{dn}}

I have proposed to add a parameter for topic areas at Template talk:Disambiguation needed. I believe such a parameter would be useful to the project in allowing us to consolidate links requiring expert attention in specific areas. I would appreciate the participation of anyone who has the technical knowledge to add such a parameter, in accordance with the proposal. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:43, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Put the champagne on ice?

As of 15 March 2017, the headline number in the LH column of Table 1 is 24,709; a record low. Next target: 20,000. (I think that c. 10,000 is just about possible, but it won't be easy.) Narky Blert (talk) 02:19, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't count our chickens before they hatch. bd2412 T 03:02, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
It's now below 20,000. 2601:541:4305:C70:D413:AE20:3DE5:2254 (talk) 16:59, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Code in this article

I was wondering if it was intentional that there was no use of the <code> tag in this article, and if I should go through and add it to all of the markup code in this article. Should I? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjismynameforreal (talk • contribs) 10:47, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

User:DPL bot

may need a kick. It didn't do its usual runs on 12 and 13 May, and the reports are getting out-of-date. Narky Blert (talk) 13:15, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

  1. Keep Calm and Carry On.
  2. Walk Fast and Look Worried. Narky Blert (talk) 23:30, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
An update by User:R'n'B: User talk:Dispenser#DPL bot errors again. Narky Blert (talk) 19:21, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
@Russ: *Applause!* It's all looking good from here :-) Narky Blert (talk) 17:01, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Talk:New York (disambiguation)/Meta#To Foo or not to Foo

I came across the title link as a subpage of the ongoing discussion at Talk:New York (disambiguation)#Survey on the proposed move. I've had my say in "To Foo or not to Foo" on a lightly-floated idea about whether or not WP:MALPLACED is the right idea. Other WP:DPL members might also wish to contribute. Narky Blert (talk) 22:23, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

  • For the record, if every disambiguation page were at a "Foo (disambiguation)" title, with "Foo" titles redirecting to them where there was no primary topic, then at least we would have no concern about whether to disambiguate such pages. We would, however, need to move several hundred-thousand existing disambiguation pages from their current base page names, and fix tools like the AWB disambiguation link fixing mode to fix the links even though the solutions are not present on the linked page. bd2412 T 22:30, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
There are parts of WP:MOS which I detest with a passion - notably MOS:CT, which to my eyes is ambiguous, can demand capitalisations which look ugly or are counter-intuitive, or sometimes just look plain wrong. However, MOS:CT is so deeply embedded within Wiki that I grit my teeth and put up with it. Anyone suggesting a radical change to a long-established guideline like MOS:CT or WP:DABLINK should also volunteer to repair the resulting damage. Narky Blert (talk) 22:53, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Template:infobox journal

There is a discussion in progress at Template talk:Infobox journal#Links to DAB pages which may be of interest to other members of this WikiProject. Narky Blert (talk) 00:48, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

WP:INTDAB

I have opened a discussion on the wording of this guideline at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#WP:INTDAB. Any change to a major guideline like that one clearly requires WP:CONSENSUS. Narky Blert (talk) 01:13, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

User:DPL bot

tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/ went down at 10:25 BST 22 September 2017 (just under 6 hours ago). The only response I get from any of the tools is "Database connection error. Please try again later. Access denied for user 's51290'@'10.68.17.65' (using password: YES)". Has anyone any ideas? Narky Blert (talk) 16:20, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Now working again. Narky Blert (talk) 18:18, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
phab:T172882 — Dispenser 11:53, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
Update. The tools may be working again, but the reports are not being updated. E.g. this one looks exactly the same as it did two days ago. It still includes 200+ links which I have fixed. As I work my way through, I am beginning to run into false positives – i.e. bad links which have already been fixed but which DPL bot thinks are still there. That wastes my time. (While all tools were down, I managed to get January 2013 down from 51 to 24, but that's a drop in the bucket.) Narky Blert (talk) 01:48, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Status Report - As discussed in the "phab:" link that Dispenser provided above, DPL bot has been blocked from accessing the database server that it has used for the past couple of years to generate its reports, supposedly for excessive locking of the database tables. I find this puzzling, since there have been no significant changes in any of our scripts for years, and no indication until now of any problems. But, in response to this decision, I've moved our jobs to a different database server. This was only a partial solution; the DAB Challenge is back up, but the daily disambiguation page updates aren't working (for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me). The long-term solution is to rewrite the scripts so that we don't lock any database tables, but this is going to take me some time, and I'm afraid that if the daily updates won't run, then we won't have a DAB Challenge for October. I'm sorry for this, but it's largely out of my control. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:19, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Russ: Ptooiy! (sp.?) to the DAB challenge. The only numbers that matter are in WP:The Daily Disambig#Table 1, and the only report I'm really interested in is Disambiguation pages with links. Get that/those working, and I'll be a happy bunny. Narky Blert (talk) 01:10, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm also mainly interested in the lists. I agree that Disambiguation pages with links is the priority but I also find these useful:
Is there a "data warehouse" copy of the relevant tables somewhere, which is updated on a daily schedule and where it is considered perfectly acceptable behaviour for multiple users to hog read-only locks for the rest of the day? Certes (talk) 12:55, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, but no such thing exists. The data provided by the report links is from the most current version of the tables stored on the server. The problem is that none of these tables can be updated until the entire script infrastructure is rewritten, which is not something I can do quickly (it's not my day job); OR until the Wikimedia admins give us back access to the original database server. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:21, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Update 30 September - We have gotten our database access back, and the disambig reports have been updated! I will continue working on new scripts over the next few weeks; hopefully, this will provide a longer-term solution and also will eliminate those annoying false positives from the reports. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:22, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

This page currently says

"User pages and 'Wikipedia:' administrative pages do not necessarily need to be fixed. Please avoid editing comments on 'Talk:' pages; doing so is usually inadvisable per the talk page guidelines. It's okay for redirects to point to a disambiguation page, but articles linking to these redirects need to be fixed."

Per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Editing talk page archives I suggest changing this to:

"User pages and 'Wikipedia:' administrative pages do not necessarily need to be fixed. Per WP:TPOC it is acceptable to fix links on 'Talk:' pages or noticeboard / AfD discussions when a link is to a page that has been moved or deleted and this changes the meaning of the comment, but always in such a way that the original meaning of the comment is retained. For example, it would be acceptable to change ' We talked about this at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Foo ' to ' We talked about this at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive42#Foo ' after the 'Foo' discussion was archived. Fixing a link to a disambiguation page is normally not needed, but should be decided on a case-by-case basis."

--Guy Macon (talk) 20:07, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

  • I support this proposal. I routinely do this after page moves creating a disambiguation page where a primary topic was once placed. bd2412 T 20:31, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • No. The bulk of the proposed addition (which is otherwise quite sensible) has no relevance for DPL. I reckon that the crux of this proposal has to do with fine-tuning the bit Please avoid editing comments on 'Talk:' pages. Well, if this can be misleading, I think it could be cut altogether, and we'll be left with the simple to-the-point advice against fixing dablinks on talk pages. If anything, I'd couch it in even stronger terms: it's not just that fixing dablinks on talk pages is a waste of time (and the only times I recall seeing it done was by editors with the habit of operating in de facto bot mode). An attempt to fix a dablink can get it wrong: if it's in an article, the error is likely to be eventually spotted and corrected. On talk pages however, a wrong dab will alter the meaning of the comment and is unlikely to be spotted. – Uanfala 20:39, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • First, it's not a waste of time if it reduces link load, and makes it easier to scan the "What links here" page. In some cases, that page is pretty barren, so it doesn't matter. In others, it is a time sink, so every fix helps. Second, if a page has been moved from "Foo" to "Foo (bar)", and a new disambiguation page is created at "Foo", then changing incoming talk and user page links to "Foo (bar)" does no more than point them to the same content to which they were originally pointing. bd2412 T 20:46, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Let's imagine that "Foo" gets moved to "Foo (bar)", after it's no longer at the primary title the hatnote it used to have pointing to "Foo (xyz)" has been removed. Now, prior to any automatic "fixes" links to "Foo" are potentially ambiguous, but a user following them can use the hanote to access the then non-primary topic. After the automatic repointing of all links from "Foo" to "Foo (bar)" any of them that were inadvertently intended for "Foo (xyz)" will become repointed as well, and form their new targets there will be no way to reach the intended targets. That's why automatic fixing of such links is a terrible idea. After this incident and the subsequent discussion I thought that this much was clear so far. Isn't it? Or is there something I'm missing? – Uanfala 21:19, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I quite get the "What links here" bit. Do editors use it to find out what talk pages link to a given article? – Uanfala 21:19, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Editors use it to find everything linking to a given article - articles, templates, portals, modules, categories, etc. There are many spaces in which disambiguation links need to be fixed. The less junk there is on that page, the easier it is to see what actually needs fixing. bd2412 T 22:02, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • But is there any practical purpose for editors to check incoming links specifically from talk pages? If not, there's no need to fix them. And as for being able to see what actually needs fixing at the "What links here" page, well, aren't the namespace filters on that page doing precisely that? – Uanfala 22:19, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I always set the filter on what links here to show only main space pages, our sometimes template pages. I rarely if ever fix talk page links. With the filter I think they can be safely ignored. older ≠ wiser 23:25, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Wouldn't it depend on what we consider the average likelihood of one of those userspace drafts becoming an article? When they do become an article, they'll be picked up fast enough. I usually don't bother undabbing drafts unless I'm accepting them. — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 02:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Yeah, given how many drafts get abandoned and then deleted per WP:G13, and how many of those that do get moved to mainspace do so only after significant rewriting, I don't think fixing dablinks on drafts is a particularly meaningful way to spend time. – Uanfala 07:10, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Examples where redlinks to a deleted redirect are harmful:

Example one: WP:BU was deleted in 2004.[23] There are still multiple comments that link to it, saying things like "For banned users see WP:BU."[24]

Let's say I write an essay tomorrow explaining that some things are not allowed in the sandbox and suggesting that the user edit his sandbox to get the formatting right using the preview button but instead of saving he should make a local backup.

Let's say I give my essay the shortcut WP:BU. Suddenly I have changed the basic meaning of WP:BU from "banned User" to "Back Up" and thus changed the basic meaning of the comment "For banned users see WP:BU".

And I have done so in such a way that the user who made that comment sees no edit to his comment.

Example two: WP:ZIMFF was deleted in June of 2017.[25] There is still a comment that links to it, saying "The page is nothing but a WP:POINTy attack on the folks who drafted WP:ZIMFF".[26]

Let's say that tomorrow I re-use the now-redlinked ZIMFF redirect for an essay on Zimbabwe Freedom Fighters.

Suddenly I have changed the basic meaning of the comment "The page is nothing but a WP:POINTy attack on the folks who drafted WP:ZIMFF". Now it makes no sense. And I have done so in such a way that the original author of the comment sees no edit changing the meaning of his comment.

My conclusion: In general, when any page is deleted and thus open to be re-used, it benefits the encyclopedia to fix any redlinks to the deleted redirect. This is especially true of redirects and disambiguation pages with titles that are likely to be re-used such as WP:BU, and there is nothing special about talk pages, noticeboards, or archived discussions that cause them to be immune to the meaning-changing side effect I describe above. That being said, any efforts to fix a redlink in a comment must never introduce even a hint of a change to the meaning of the original comment. We want to avoid the meaning changing, not introduce new problems. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:00, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

  • Guy Macon, these are all perfectly reasonable examples of fixing links to deleted pages, and it's commendable that you've taken up this task. But this is the talk page of Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links, whose sole concern is fixing links to disambiguation pages (which are by necessity pages that already exist). I'm wondering whether your proposal wasn't actually intended for the talk page of WP:TPO? – Uanfala 07:06, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I was, as you noted, only talking about the situation where either a disambiguation page has been deleted or moved, or the case where a disambiguation page with links contains links to pages that have been deleted or moved. The current language ("Please avoid editing comments on 'Talk:' pages; doing so is usually inadvisable per the talk page guidelines.") appears to forbid fixing those two specific situations on talk pages. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:20, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • If a disambiguation page has been deleted, then links to it are redlinks, not dablinks: they won't show up here as needing fixing. The second case is legitimate though it's relatively rare, and is best approached from the redlink angle (an editor cleaning up links to deleted article Foo (bar) checking if any of the links to Foo might not have been intended for it) rather than done via the standard dablink route (an editor fixing links to Foo will not necessarily be aware of the past existence of Foo (bar) as links to deleted articles would have normally been removed from the dab page). – Uanfala 08:43, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I am opposed the proposed change in wording. Its instruction creep. This is about dab link and the current wording is simple to understand and adequate for the job. The second reason is related to the comment "First, it's not a waste of time if it reduces link load, and makes it easier to scan the 'What links here' page.". The comment implies a desire to "clean up links" using a bot or some semi-automatic system simply because it would be convenient for people who like to use such systems, server load can be discounted as a reason (WP:DWAP), and as User:Bkonrad (older ≠ wiser) points out select article space instead of all namespaces. -- PBS (talk) 09:46, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment "How about drafts in userspace intended to eventually be moved into mainspace?" I for one do not like that idea of fixing drafts in user space. If I have a draft article in my sandbox, when I am finished editing it I copy the content into article space and then delete the content from my sandbox. I can do this because I am the only author. If people have contributed to the article in my user space then I run into issues of copyright and moving the article (with its history instead of copying it), this is a legal requirement see WP:COPYRIGHT#Reusing text within Wikipedia. I would rather any mistakes I have made with dab pages corrected after the the text is placed into article space than have help before hand. As an administrator I can if need be alter the sandbox history to select the history to move with the text (using WP:HISTSPLIT — but whether I may is another issue for another place), but most editors can not. This means that if a user has created two articles in their sandbox. The first was placed into article space and the sandbox blanked. The editor then prepares a second article, but another also adds to it, then there is a problem for that editor, because if the editor were to move the new article from his/her sandbox into article space not only would the history of the second article be moved so would the history of the first one. Now one can argue that changing a dab link is not sufficient to claim copyright, but why complicate the situation in the first place (and possibly cause lots of unnecessary work for a friendly admin)? -- PBS (talk) 09:46, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    • Suppose your draft was rife with dozens of disambiguation links. By copying that to mainspace, you would be transplanting those errors there with no warning. If you were not aware of the problem, a fix to a link in your draft might prompt you to do a more thorough search to eliminate them before transplanting them. bd2412 T 23:11, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
      • Churchill said of Neville Chamberlain that "He saw foreign policy through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe". I think you are looking at this from the point of view of an editor who is concentrating on fixing dab links. Worst case, initially a Reader would have to click twice to get to the correct link until such links are fixed. From the point of view of the editor concentrating on fixing dab links, concentrating on articles that need fixing and not including draft articles will reduce the workload (potentially leading fixing dab links in articles more quickly) and it removes the complication with the attribution needed WP:COPYRIGHT#Reusing text within Wikipedia that I mentioned at the start of this thread. Therefore not fixing dabs in draft articles is a win win with a slight inconvenience for Readers. If you are really concerned about dablinks in new articles, then concentrate efforts on those (not draft articles which may have the links checked and fixed by the editor before they go live anyway; or may never go live).-- PBS (talk) 08:13, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
    • I'm happy for any edit I mark as "minor" to be copied and pasted without attribution, but maybe some editors aren't and I've not seen that rule written anywhere. Certes (talk) 13:10, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Neutral/Comment. I have never fixed a link to a DAB page from a User, Talk or Wikipedia page, on the grounds that (a) Life Is Too Short, (b) It's Not My Problem, and (c) DPL bot doesn't pick them up (unlike the 26,490 genuinely bad links it reported today, which do damage the project). Clutter in Special/WhatLinksHere is just a fact of life: a nuisance, but unharmful. If I'm in a good mood, I may fix links from Category pages (unhelpful to readers) and File pages (which may affect the claim to a copyright licence). Narky Blert (talk) 22:55, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Proposal 2

Currently the text of point 4 reads:

For each page listed, visit the page. The most important pages to fix are those in the Article and Template namespaces. User pages and "Wikipedia:" administrative pages do not necessarily need to be fixed. Please avoid editing comments on "Talk:" pages; doing so is usually inadvisable per the talk page guidelines. It's okay for redirects to point to a disambiguation page, but articles linking to these redirects need to be fixed.

I propose to replace the underlined text with "Do not fix dablinks found on "Talk:" pages.". And maybe include a footnote to WP:TPO? – Uanfala 09:00, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

  • Oppose. If a page is moved, and this clearly changes the link from what was intended to something else, then it is entirely appropriate (courteous, even) to update the link in any namespace. bd2412 T 23:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
Despite what I've said upthread, I fully support this comment by User:BD2412. If you make a move which breaks links – well, you broke it, you fix it. Check WhatLinksHere when making any move, and clean up any mess you may have made. Narky Blert (talk) 22:51, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Fixing dablinks shouldn't be automatic or even normal but is valid where it moves the text closer to the author's clear intention. Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Editing others' comments gives some examples of appropriately editing others' comments: ... Disambiguating or fixing links, if the linked-to page has moved, ... the link is simply broken by a typographical error, etc. Certes (talk) 23:24, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    • I absolutely agree that it can be valid. But what I'm getting at is that it shouldn't be done as part of the DPL process. – Uanfala 12:17, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
      • Then it is enough to say that the DPL process should focus on links in article space and template space. Note that links in portal space can also sometimes be transcluded into article space; cleanup efforts should always try to fix those too. bd2412 T 12:41, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
      • It shouldn't be part of the DPL process, because the editor who broke the link should already have mended it. (In fact, the whole DPL process should be unnecessary.) But in the real world, mess happens, and when we find one it's legitimate to clean it up. Certes (talk) 23:36, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
        • Well, the post-move messes I've had to clean up have had to do with an editor moving an article away from an ambiguous title (which becomes the location of a dab page) and then using AWB to repoint all links (including the ones that were ambiguous) to the new article. This was the practice I was ranting about in the previous subsection. Anyway, I'll agree that it's probably not a good idea to try to have hard-and-fast rules about what namespaces to fix links in, and the instructions as they are now do a good job of telling newbies what to focus on and what to avoid. – Uanfala 08:39, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
    • This bit could be stated more simply, but as it stands, the advice for avoiding edits to talk pages is quite in line with WP:TPO, which is summarised as: The basic rule—with some specific exceptions outlined below—is that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission. – Uanfala 13:53, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

DPL bot problems again

The Wikimedia Foundation database server on which all the DPL bot tools depend broke last night, and apparently can't or won't be repaired. I was already in the process of migrating all these tools to a new database server, but because the new server doesn't have all the same capabilities of the old one (it can't join user tables with Wikipedia replica databases), everything has to be rewritten extensively, and the project isn't finished.

Because the problems with the old server appear to be irremediable, I've switched over those tools that have been rewritten to the new server, and others (where possible) to a backup of the old server. Not everything will be working for the next couple of weeks, but as I am able to rewrite other tools I will migrate them over to the new server. Sorry for the inconvenience. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:07, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Incidentally, I am aware that the Templates With Dab Links report seems to contain some false positives; I will try to track these down and eliminate them when I have some time. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:49, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I don't see any errors but, even if there are some, the new version seems to be a big improvement. Many old false positives such as Richard Gough (footballer) and Jon Snow have now gone away. Certes (talk) 18:07, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
DPL bot broke down majorly, early on 1 November 2017 (by 9:00 UTC). 404 and suchlike errors from DPL bot and all its children. I had to use "What Links Here" from pages listed in an old DPL bot report (which I did not dare refresh) to get any work done. By 18:00, it was up&running again but reporting huge numbers (tens of thousands?) of false positives – links fixed from as early as 1 September 2017. A couple of hours later, it had another major hiccup, as a result of which most of those false positives disappeared. But, I'm still seeing some there are no results to display thingies in the Bonus List. WP:TDD's report that "19,990 disambig pages joined the list today ... 2,520 disambig pages left the list today" is perhaps inaccurate...
My, but am I glad to see the back of Richard Gough and Jon Snow!
@Russ: Would it be helpful if I started to collect and to pass on to you any new WP:DPL bot false positives I find in the Bonus List? Easy enough to do, and actual examples might guide you as to where best to direct your tweezers/scalpel/lump hammer. Narky Blert (talk) 01:21, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
Yes, if you find any, please let me know. Hopefully, you shouldn't find any more, except for the garden-variety temporary false positives that can linger in the database for a day or two after a template containing a disambiguation link has been fixed. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:14, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
@Russ: Will do. I'll give it a day or two until stuff works its way out of the system. I know about the slooow template link problem, I'll ignore those. I would also only plan to give you typical examples, not the whole shooting-match.
False negatives. Disambiguation pages with links sometimes throws up entries with "There are no results to display". Oh yes there are! You can find them in "What links here". An example (this is going to be time-limited) is this DPwL link and the fix I made by eyeballing the WLH page. Narky Blert (talk) 21:43, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
Update. Disambiguation pages with links is now functioning correctly. Props to User:R'n'B, who did all the work. Narky Blert (talk) 21:55, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
I'm unable to get WikiProject dab lists to load right now. Forgive my technical illiteracy, but I can't tell from the above posts exactly what has happened. Is this the proper interface to be using for WikiProject lists, or is that page never going to load because you've switched to a new server? Lepricavark (talk) 05:02, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
The drastic change of removing temporary and user tables is buried as a footnote to server decommission. This will break alot of tools in the months to come. I'll try importing the backups, but suspect the server's too overloaded. — Dispenser 14:07, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

There is now a thoroughly usable fix - check that the journal is mentioned on the DAB page, and add |bypass-rcheck=yes to the infobox. See Template talk:Infobox journal#Bypass ifexist when page has a (disambiguation) redirect. Narky Blert (talk) 20:33, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

User:R'n'B, can you generate a list of all pages containing Template:Infobox journal with a disambiguation link? bd2412 T 20:46, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
Dablinks has methods to lists genearted by the API. One of those methods is transclusions of {{Infobox journal}} . Really slow, but gets the Job done. — Dispenser 20:55, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
@BD2412, R'n'B, and Dispenser: Also really slow - but I'm going through Disambiguation pages with links for the second time (I'm currently at "Kno-"). I haven't yet cleared all my bookmarked links. I don't think a special tool is needed, eyeballs can get the job done. Narky Blert (talk) 22:31, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
(This bug is actually useful, in a bizarre sort of way. I've added at least half-a-dozen missing entries to DAB pages because User:DPL bot had spotted one of those errors.) Narky Blert (talk) 22:45, 19 November 2017 (UTC))
Missing entries
Speaking of missing entries, Dabfix can track a large portion of them, currently over 14,000: WP:DABMISSING. – Uanfala 13:07, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
It's great that you want to talk about Dabfix filling in missing entries, but if you start a new topic in the middle of an ongoing discussion, it may prevent editors from addressing the issue for which the discussion was originally raised. Let's keep the focus here on making sure entries in the journal infobox do not generate disambiguation links. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:16, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Alright, collapsing out of view. – Uanfala 14:02, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
So, would this list be useful, or not? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:12, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have addressed this - Dispenser's report seems to cover this ground, and all the errant links found on it should now be fixed. bd2412 T 14:29, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
@R'n'B: IMO not worth the labour of creating such a list. Template:infobox journal isn't transcluded every day. A-K in DPL is now pretty much clean. Give me 2-3 months, and so will L-Z be. After that, it'll just be a matter of WP:DPL regulars knowing this trick, and adding it to all those others which fix DABlinks generated by templates. Narky Blert (talk) 21:50, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Apparently I did this wrong, as User:Headbomb reverted and then redid a number of my fixes. bd2412 T 21:53, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
@BD2412: I today redid one of your fixes without reverting you. Simply add |bypass-rcheck=yes to the infobox (I do it just below |abbreviation=)  – and the abbreviation shows correctly in the infobox, but no longer links to the DAB page. Narky Blert (talk) 23:49, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
(See e.g. Johnsonia (journal) and Johnsonia/What links here after my fix today. Narky Blert (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
The thing is, the best fix in most of those cases is to actually fix the underlying issue and use the actual ISO 4 abbreviation. The bypass should be used for when the ISO 4 abbreviation is also an existing disambiguation page, or there's some other problem with the ISO 4 abbreviation. In most cases, this will be single word journal with a (journal) dab. Bypassing the check when there's a bad ISO abbreviation is counterproductive, since when someone fixes the issue, they will not be prompted to create the redirects. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:50, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
@Headbomb: Fix the underlying issue? Among lawyers, CFR is the Code of Federal Regulations. I've never heard of the abbreviation Code Fed. Regul. I have legal qualifications, and have written professional opinions citing titles of CFR. Narky Blert (talk) 01:03, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
That's because most (US) lawyers don't use ISO 4 abbreviations, but bluebook ones, which can be specified via |bluebook=. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
It still seems odd to have an abbreviation listed that is not properly used in practice. With the CFR for example, the proper name of any CFR provision is 'x CFR y', so an alternative would inherently be a misnomer. With respect to the other uses, it is easy to conceive of a journal name that would just be a completely different and unrelated article in Wikipedia. bd2412 T 01:22, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
@Headbomb: UK lawyers don't either. U.S.P.T.O. rules are 37 CFR, or just CFR, and that is that. Lawyers use customary abbreviations, not something dreamt up for ISO4. There is a serious risk of drifting away from WP:COMMONNAME here.
This argument is counter-productive. I have now cleared the pages I had bookmarked where Template:Infobox journal had created a spurious link to a DAB page. There were about a hundred of them. In ten or twenty cases, I had to add the journal to the DAB page because the journal wasn't on it. That is a much more serious problem for readers than quibbling over interpretations of ISO4. Narky Blert (talk) 01:47, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME is for article titles, not technical information. Use of this abbreviation is rather widespread too, just not in law.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:50, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412 and Headbomb: "It still seems odd to have an abbreviation listed that is not properly used in practice." Ask any chemist what they understand by JACS, JCS or JOC. All of those are DAB pages. All three abbreviations are (among others) commonly used and are unambiguous among chemists. They only get expanded when writing up for publication.
Back to where I was a moment ago. It's all about the readers. We are their servants. Narky Blert (talk) 02:05, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
"Ask any chemist what they understand by JACS, JCS or JOC." I'm not sure what your point is here. None of those are ISO 4 abbreviation, and none of those should appear in the |abbreviation= field of {{infobox journal}}. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:07, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
The problem here may be the name of the parameter. abbreviation= doesn't make it clear that it is only for the ISO 4 abbreviation, not for the everyday abbreviation everyone actually uses. Of course, they're often the same, but sometimes they're not. {{infobox journal/doc#Parameters}} does explain, but how many people read that? ISO4= might have been better, though I doubt it's worth the effort of converting now. Certes (talk) 11:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
The problem was mostly that prior to 2010, the documentation wasn't very clear on this. There was a spur of creation in 2009 when WP:JCW came out, which led to several bad usage out there. And prior to late August of this year, no validation was done so a page with bad parameter use could have been used as a model for new articles, making the problem worse. It's since being greatly curbed with the validation template and User:TokenzeroBot reports (e.g. User:TokenzeroBot/ISO 4 mismatches).
Not against renaming the parameter |iso4= however. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
If it's not too much trouble, I think that may help. abbreviation=JACS causes problems but it is a very plausible piece of wikitext: JACS is an abbreviation. I think editors are much less likely to type iso4=JACS. Certes (talk) 01:40, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
@Certes and Headbomb: Certes makes a valid point about the name of the field. "abbreviation=" doesn't tell editors that they're supposed to do their research and to get the entry right, rather than just lazily to use the one in their lab notebook. Support renaming it to "iso4=" (or, perhaps even better, to "iso4_abbr=", to make it as plain as possible what the field is supposed to contain - and, preferably, to RTFM).
On clearing my bookmarks to pages with spurious links to DAB pages, I found a dozen or so where the link no longer existed because an editor had recently corrected the abbreviation= field. There were several where the informal abbreviation wasn't on the DAB page, so I added it.
@Headbomb - I've seen several pages transcluding Template:Infobox journal in which the abbreviation= field is empty, thus generating the somewhat unhelpful default entry Look up here. A report designed to find, and so improve, such pages might be useful. Narky Blert (talk) 22:56, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
Those can be found in Category:Infobox journals with missing ISO 4 abbreviations. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:14, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
@Headbomb: That maintenance category is a good one, and has 1,505 1,500 entries. It looks as if it could be easily emptyable (while taking care to ensure that an abbreviation is correct, and that any relevant mention in a hatnote or DAB page exists). Narky Blert (talk) 00:35, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

150 fixes away

We are 150 fixes away from clearing Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/October 2017‎. Let's have at it! bd2412 T 13:02, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Virginia State Routes

See Template talk:Jct#Not working as described. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:11, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Help with editing

Victoria is a bit more complicated than other disambiguation pages that I have dealt with, and I have a couple of questions. The page is listed as having 4 links; one was Dave Hughes and I fixed that. What are the other 3 links - the transclusion pages? Do I need to do anything with them? Thanks, Leschnei (talk) 12:40, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I am not seeing any remaining incoming links that need to be fixed. bd2412 T 12:58, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Good - thanks for checking. Leschnei (talk) 13:04, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Another question

The guidelines say that disambiguation links should go to the title that includes '(disambiguation)', even if it is a redirect. So, for example, for the five redirects that link to Hooghly, should they be linked to 'Hooghly (disambiguation)' instead? Leschnei (talk) 13:14, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

No, this does not apply to redirects, which are merely navigational tools, and which are not interpreted by our system as errors. bd2412 T 13:32, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks again, Leschnei (talk) 13:56, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Redirects aren't counted as errors, but this is based on the presumption that the redirect is correctly pointed to the dab page, and shouldn't instead be targeted somewhere else. If you've checked a redirect, there's one thing you can do: categorise it. The most often used category tags in this context are {{R from ambiguous term}} and {{R from incomplete disambiguation}}. – Uanfala (talk) 20:51, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Yikes, I'll definitely be back with questions on those! Leschnei (talk) 03:05, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

A discussion has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves#Fixing dab links which may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. The issue is, who should fix the incoming links to a DAB page after a WP:RM discussion and move. The relevant guideline is WP:FIXDABLINKS. Narky Blert (talk) 10:28, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Moving articles

The Daily Telegraph (Australia) really ought to be moved to The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) but has maybe thousands of links that would have to be changed. I've just moved The Advocate (Australia) to The Advocate (Tasmania) with only a hundred or so links to edit, and doing even that number was a real chore. Is there a smarter way? Doug butler (talk) 23:12, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

The existing wikilinks should continue to work, because The Daily Telegraph (Australia) will become a redirect to the new title. If you're going to make the old title into a disambiguation page, or a redirect to one, then WP:DisamAssist will do the job, though someone still has to press a button for each page. Automation is an option but I suspect some incoming links will refer to a different Telegraph, so they need vetting.
Thanks for asking. Too many titles just get turned into dabs without a thought for the existing links, which someone else then has to clear up! Certes (talk) 00:16, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Why would the links need to be changed? Per WP:NOTBROKEN, redirects are fine. bd2412 T 00:17, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
I'd presume that because, looking at the corresponding dab pages, there is more than one Australian newspaper with the given title in each case. – Uanfala (talk) 00:52, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
That does not necessarily prevent one of these from being the primary topic of the redirect term. bd2412 T 02:13, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
There are, or have been, four Australian publications with that or a similar title. None as important as the Sydney paper, but "Australia" is not a true disambiguating term.Doug butler (talk) 02:30, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Done! (with a lot of help from a DisamAssist expert). Thanks for the good advice. Doug butler (talk) 22:38, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Problem under Current disambiguation collaborations

Under "Current disambiguation collaborations" I am trying to update to the next month for "Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation from...", but for some reason it is showing the count as zero, when there are still articles in the category. bd2412 T 03:05, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Fixed: {{PAGESINCATEGORY}} assumes Category: and doesn't need the namespace. Certes (talk) 12:09, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks - well done. bd2412 T 12:37, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Hatnotes instead of DAB page?

It seems to me that Emmanuel Katongole could be easily replaced by hatnotes in the two relevant articles. There are no other article links to this page. I can work out how to place the hatnotes, but what happens the the DAB page in this case? Leschnei (talk) 19:11, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

The question then is: where should we take the reader who types in Emmanuel Katongole, i.e. which page are they likely to want? If there's a primary topic then we can call that page Emmanuel Katongole and we don't need a dab, just a hatnote. But if both topics are of similar notability then we probably want a page to prompt the reader, rather than taking them to a page with a 50% chance of being about some other guy. More details at WP:2DABS. Certes (talk) 19:27, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
Ah, I see your point. Never mind then; I don't think that either of these articles is clearly primary. Thanks for the insight. Leschnei (talk) 20:07, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
Related question - also related to my 'Another question' above - should hatnotes read "Emmanuel Katongole (disambiguation)" or is "Emmanuel Katongole" sufficient? The help pages seem to recommend the longer version but I've seen the shorter version used more often. Leschnei (talk) 20:12, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
That would be a good topic for an RfC. I prefer to visibly include "disambiguation" so that readers will know what they are getting by clicking the link, but I have tended to pipe it where someone else has already put the hatnote on the page, to respect that editor's choice. I would prefer that we always show it in hatnotes and see also sections. bd2412 T 20:17, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
I tend to agree with you; I like the link to be as unambiguous as possible. When you say you pipe it, do you mean {{About||other uses of the term "White Rider"|White rider (disambiguation){{!}}White rider}} or {{About||other uses of the term "White Rider"|White rider{{!}}White rider (disambiguation)}}? Leschnei (talk) 20:27, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
I mean {{About||other uses of the term "White Rider"|White rider (disambiguation){{!}}White rider}}; otherwise, it still registers in our system as an error to be fixed. bd2412 T 22:45, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
My personal preference has been to have a visible "(disambiguation)" when referring to articles (as in "For other uses, see ....") and to hide it when referring to concepts ("Not to be confused with ..."). – Uanfala (talk) 20:42, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
I display the name of the page: See Venus (disambiguation), as Venus has a primary topic, but See Mercury because that's the title of the dab. The second one goes via a redirect to keep it off the "dab links we need to fix" lists but can get fiddly in a template: {{See also|Mercury (disambiguation){{!}}Mercury}}. WP:DABLINK has more details. The third example in WP:INTDAB shows both BD2412's preference and mine as "correct" alternatives. Certes (talk) 20:47, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks all, it really helps to see how other editors have handled this. I've read the various help articles but it didn't all sink in at the time. Now that I've edited DAB links a little, I think I'll have to take another look. Leschnei (talk) 20:54, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
My approach seems to be consistent (in at least some ways) with editors who have already posted and who have more experience than I do.
  1. Respect an earlier editor's choice. If they chose an ambiguous name, usually prefer to correct the link by piping rather than by replacement.
  2. Respect WP:ASTONISH. A hatnote from a WP:PTOPIC article to a DAB page with the qualifier (disambiguation) should show the full name of the disambiguation page. A hatnote from a similar name should be piped. In summary: clicking on a hatnote link should land you on a page with the identical name to that shown in the hatnote.
  3. Deviously, if I think that a hatnote is hopelessly unnecessary because no-one could have landed on this page by accident, I usually pipe it. (E.g. FizBoz (planet Zog), {{see also|FizBoz (disambiguation){{!}}FizBoz}}. My reason? I won't be reverted, which would recreate the problem. If another editor later comes along and deletes the useless hatnote, great!)
  4. MOS:SEEALSO links should never be piped. I am in two minds about {{main}} and the like.
  5. Don't make something a WP:PTOPIC unless it's overwhelmingly clear; and even then, think about it. The WP:PTOPIC for tetrahedron is unquestionably the Platonic solid. Nevertheless, that page collects links which ought to be to Tetrahedron. No error messages are created; those mistakes can only be fixed by eyeballing. Narky Blert (talk) 01:19, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
(You can fall across some real horrors. I once came across a pair of pages called something like K. Krishnamurthy and K Krishnamurthy, about two different people who seemed to pass WP:NBIO. I then had no idea what to do – but I came across them again 6 months later, made two moves, and made a {{hndis}} page.) Narky Blert (talk) 02:01, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
I had a similar experience with K. Sivanesan (politician). I now think I chose the new titles poorly, as the local tradition is that the common name has only the initial and not the full given name, but I'd be interested to hear of a better solution. Certes (talk) 12:05, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
In my case, I was fortunately able to use one-word qualifiers; at least one of the articles didn't specify the given name. For K. Sivanesan, following the custom which you mention and I know too, the best alternative titles I can think of are K. Sivanesan (Jaffna District politician) and K. Sivanesan (Mullaitivu District politician); which are rather clumsy. Using their birthyears, i.e. K. Sivanesan (politician, born 19xx), would be a good alternative; but that date isn't in one of the articles. Narky Blert (talk) 15:46, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

How to deal with transclusions?

I have run into transclusions several times while disambiguating and, for the most part, ignored them. But, on the Naos DAB page, there is a transclusion 'Naos (shrine)' which links to Naos (shrine), which is a redirect page linking to Naos. This seems rather indirect and awkward, so I was wondering (1) should the transclusion (and Naos (shrine), for that matter) link to Naos (disambiguation) and (2) how do we/should we edit transclusions? Leschnei (talk) 14:54, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Transclusions from redirects to their target pages are caused by the template on the redirect page. We ignore those. bd2412 T 15:11, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
(ec) Just about to say the same thing. Though the Naos dab page is a mess -- I highly doubt that all of those articles contain a mention of the term. It looks like someone's attempt to make a sort of ancient Greek glossary page--though after checking, many do, though the organization of the page is still a bit irregular. older ≠ wiser 15:14, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers. I agree that the Naos page is a mess but I don't feel comfortable enough with the subject to fix it. Leschnei (talk) 18:56, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Can I blank a redirect page to make a red link?

The Deadbeef disambiguation page contains 0xDEADBEEF as one of its items. Originally, 0xDEADBEEF was not wikilinked on the disambiguation page, just described. I found that several articles referred to 0xDEADBEEF specifically, so I changed 0xDEADBEEF into a wikilink, meaning it to be a red link. However, 0xDEADBEEF is currently a redirect for Deadbeef, so I've created a circular redirect. Is it allowable to simply blank the 0xDEADBEEF redirect page to make it into a red link, or is there some process to go through? Leschnei (talk) 02:54, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I restored the previous redirect target of the page. bd2412 T 03:00, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! Leschnei (talk) 03:25, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

In Subic–Clark–Tarlac Expressway and Subic–Tipo Expressway, Hermosa should be disambiguated to Hermosa, Bataan but is it possible to have the table display just the town name with out the province? For the other table entries putting the town and province, like Dinalupihan, Bataan, displays just the town name, but these others don't have disambiguation pages. I've seen this in other tables, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Leschnei (talk) 21:43, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I can't figure it out either, I'm afraid. It is a problem of the template. bd2412 T 21:54, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that's a feature of the {{PHLint}} template. I think it needs a provdab= parameter, as I've attempted with this edit. It's not really a disambiguation issue; you'd have the same problem if Hermosa were an article about a different topic with the same name. Certes (talk) 22:04, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you both. I'll give the provdab a try. Leschnei (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Is there a way to disambiguate data coming from Wikidata?

Jacques Peretti has a link to the Broadcaster disambiguation page. The only mention of broadcaster in the body of the article is already disambiguated but the infobox mentions 'broadcaster' as his occupation, and it is linked to Wikidata. Is there any way to disambiguate this occurrence of 'broadcaster'? I have searched around but haven't found any answers on either Wikipedia or Wikidata. Leschnei (talk) 12:27, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

There's a pencil next to the term in the infobox (at least in the skin that I'm using). Click it and you can edit the entry on Wikidata. I've changed it to "television producer" there since that is what the cited source actually indicates. Alternatively, you can populate local values in the infobox, which I think will take precedence over anything from Wikidata, although I haven't verified this. older ≠ wiser 12:52, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your help Bkonrad (talk · contribs) After more searching I found Wikipedia:Wikidata/2018 RfC draft that talks about this issue. And you are right, local values currently override Wikidata - I tested it out by messing around with the Jacques Peretti page and previewing. Leschnei (talk) 13:12, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
The problem can be even more of a nuisance when no relevant Wikipedia article exists. See Template talk:Infobox person/Wikidata#Spurious links created by this template. Narky Blert (talk) 10:32, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Other templates using Wikidata record spurious wikilinks too, e.g. {{RCDB}} links Kumba (roller coaster) → 94. Details: Template talk:RCDB. Certes (talk) 11:54, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
It's difficult enough correcting errors inserted by humans; tracking down template errors seems like a game of whack-a-mole. Leschnei (talk) 13:29, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Although I can't fix RCDB without breaking other stuff, generally I try to fix template errors first. That way I can dispose of several moles with a single whack that's no harder than fixing an article. But I'm happy if other editors disagree: we need people mending both namespaces. Certes (talk) 14:04, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Railway templates

Arbitrary break inserted, as the following discussion is not directly related to Wikidata

If I can't work out how to fix a template-generated link to a DAB page in under 10-15 minutes, I flag it, even if that makes the page look unpretty. You created this problem, you fix it. My current bugbear is {{S-line}}, which seems to provide no means of disambiguating the |next= and |previous= parameters. It's bad enough trying to work out how to fix links in road pages with {{jct}} and the like, where the documentation is at least halfway adequate (but took me 10-15 minutes to work out). Narky Blert (talk) 23:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
For {{S-line}} you can disambiguate previous with state1 and next with state2, e.g. next=Newport|state2=Essex. But that's not exactly intuitive, given that Essex isn't a state, and I completely agree with your point. Certes (talk) 23:57, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
I've just called them out on that, see Template talk:S-line#Disambiguation. Taking your point, Perth isn't a state either... Narky Blert (talk) 00:17, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
See also {{Transperth stations‎}}, which appends the ", Perth" suffix to appropriate station links. Certes (talk) 11:44, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
I suspect a case of WP:OWN.
I took a certain sort of twisted pleasure in making this edit, after I'd been told that all I needed to do to fix links like that was to spend an hour or two learning the templates. Narky Blert (talk) 01:42, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
"[The template is] not badly written; it's complicated because it was presumably designed to be able to handle all sorts of disambiguation and other quirks (like multiple line termini and links to non-stations) for the convenience of editors. If you ever decide to bother to find out how it works, all the information you need is in the documentation (I've linked the relevant section; only the first two subsections should matter for article disambiguation)".
Convenience? Sheesh. I expect easy disambiguations to take about 2 minutes, including checking. I do NOT expect easy disambiguations to take 2 minutes and then please-read-this-incomplete-and-confusing-documentation. Narky Blert (talk) 01:57, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

It can sometimes be less than intuitive. Getting Warsaw Railway Station and Warsaw railway station to point to the same place required additions to the list of Dutch stations, to avoid breaking an apparently unrelated German article. Certes (talk) 02:10, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages vs set index pages

I do not think this will make me popular but when cleaning up old templates I came around a glitch. For instance, WPCleaner does not find links to set-index pages as it is strictly not a disambiguation page (to my opinion, a special type of disambiguation page). Example: RAF Staff College

I am well aware that it is more than likely that I made mistakes with cleaning up by being mislead by WPCleaner (who does not find set-index pages) on one side and my own failings by not recognizing them.

Would is not be a good idea to adjust both the maintenance-bots and WPCleaner so that they can find links to set-index pages? The Banner talk 11:42, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

When do template changes get reflected in DAB pages with links?

Jón Helgason, Gabriel Popa, Peter McDermott, and Tonnerre all have incoming links that are due to navboxes. The navbox terms were disambiguated in February, and are blue, but the respective disambiguation pages still list them as incoming links. How long does it take changes to templates to be reflected here? - just curious, Leschnei (talk) 23:11, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

In my experience usually overnight. I've done null edits on the pages which were still shewing as linked to Helgason and Popa, and that has cleared those, McDermott and Tonnere look clear to me. DuncanHill (talk) 23:18, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
I didn't know the test edit trick - thanks for that! Leschnei (talk) 02:52, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Andrews (surname)

Links to Andrews (surname) have appeared on Disambiguation pages with links report. I've dealt with those meant for a specific person but there are still several which genuinely refer to the name itself. I think the reason this page thinks it's a dab is that it transcludes Arthur Andrews etc. in a way that doesn't actually seem to work (faulty analysis: it's including everything except the names, rather than just the names). Is this page doing something frightfully clever that I shouldn't mess with, or does it need mending? Certes (talk) 00:25, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

I found the problem in David Andrews. I've fixed it (for some values of "fixed") but the transclusion still produces ugly headers, and I think it introduces blank lines which will break the lists for screen readers. At the risk of straying off the dab topic, is it best that I unpick this well-meaning effort and do things more conventionally? Certes (talk) 00:59, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
We generally don't transclude in this way, probably for a good reason. bd2412 T 02:45, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree that these transclusions should be replaced by normal text. Dekimasuよ! 02:53, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
I occasionally use a similar kind of transclusion. Otherwise, with personal names we end up having to maintain the same dab content in two or three places. – Uanfala (talk) 03:12, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the helpful advice. If this should be done then I agree that WP:LST is a better way to do it. Perhaps one day there will be a methodical review of surname articles, replacing the Givenname Surname (disambiguation) links by transclusions, but until then we should probably be consistent and use normal text here for consistency. I'll remove the cleverness for now. Certes (talk) 10:50, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

portal – Libraries and the Academy links to Portal, but I can't find a link, or a template or Wikidata reference, to account for it. Can anyone explain this to me? Leschnei (talk) 12:31, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

This is a known problem with {{Infobox journal}} and a few other templates. It uses #ifexist: to decide whether an article exists with the journal's ISO4 abbreviation, which in this case is Portal. Longer discussion at Template talk:Infobox journal#Links to DAB pages. Certes (talk) 12:42, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
@Certes: it looks like you put a lot of work into this - thanks for that, and User:Narky Blert too. I started reading through the discussion but got quickly lost since I'm not any kind of programmer - do I understand correctly that adding '|bypass-rcheck=yes' to the infobox of (for example) portal – Libraries and the Academy will keep it off of the DPL list? Leschnei (talk) 01:40, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Leschnei:I eventually lost track of the discussion too, but bypass-rcheck=yes should do the job. It has the disadvantage that certain errors won't be detected but on balance I think it's a good solution. Certes (talk) 01:46, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
Great, thanks again. Leschnei (talk) 01:48, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
@Leschnei: |bypass-rcheck=yes may be specific to {{infobox journal}}. It's poorly documented, but it works. If you come across an infobox:journal which makes that #ifexist call, check the DAB page to make sure that the journal is linked from it. It often isn't.
Sometimes, you can override a call from one of those godforsaken templates by adding a field with a dummy link or the correct link. Don't you just love those templates which create autolinks from minimal information like a road number? or those which take you 15 minutes to guess how they've created a bad link? or those where you're supposed to go a level or two deeper into a nest of templates to puzzle out a problem? I've seen some where there was neither any disambiguation field nor any way to add a {{dn}} tag in a useful place. I tend to lose patience, and to have a moan ask for help on the template talk page.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair (Certes could doubtless provide other examples). Narky Blert (talk) 04:54, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
It does make like as a disambiguator interesting. Leschnei (talk) 11:32, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Template:Africa topic

Constitution of Zambia links to DAB page Constitutions of Libya. I raised this issue at Template talk:Africa topic#A link to a DAB page on 30 January 2018, and have been deafened by the silence. The template is protected, and I cannot edit it.

Constitution of Liberia calls the identical template, but links to Libyan interim Constitutional Declaration by way of a redirect through Constitution of Libya.

In both articles, the template is titled "Constitutions of Africa"; but inspection of the links shows that the one in Constitution of Zambia is prepending "Constitutions of" to the country name, whereas the one in Constitution of Liberia is prepending "Constitution of".

Ideas, anyone? Narky Blert (talk) 17:15, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

I'd just remove the s in the template link, so Constitution of Zambia links to Constitution of Libya etc., per WP:LINKBACK. The Constitutions of Wherever (plural) titles are a mixed bunch of dabs and stubs but most are redlinks and I don't think it's helpful to assemble them into a template. Certes (talk) 18:45, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
TY. Done. Seems to have worked. I looked at the three other articles called by Constitutions of Wherever, and they all seem OK. Narky Blert (talk) 21:47, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
On the Constitution of Zambia page, the template header now appears to read "Constitution of Africa." Dekimasuよ! 21:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Fixed with title=. Certes (talk) 22:23, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
"A template allows you to reproduce content quickly." And also to introduce mistakes which only a very few experienced editors have any idea at all how to correct.
Three editors involved, more than 200,000 edits between us three, and that one problem may now be fixed. How much total time did that take? I'm putting in a low-end claim for my 30 minutes. Narky Blert (talk) 00:24, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Time to form an interest group to lobby for the abolition of templates? – Uanfala (talk) 00:29, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
I wouldn't go so far as that. I love those templates which enable you to enter data in unstructured order and which then sort it out for you. {{cite}} and {{infobox person}} are good examples. Templates which look for a Wiki article and add a bluelink if they find one, relevant or not, are a pest. They only get noticed if they link to a DAB page; if they link to the wrong page, those errors are unlikely ever to get noticed. However, the worst type of pest, IMO, is those templates which automatically create bluelinks and whose syntax is impenetrable to the uninitiated (or to the creator, often the same thing). Narky Blert (talk) 22:02, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
I just noticed {{Constitutions of Africa}}. Constitution of Algeria transcludes both templates, and raises the issue that the links are actually to "Constitutions of African countries" (since the Constitution of Africa isn't a thing). I'm tempted to edit the articles to use only {{Constitutions of Africa}}, so that any further changes can be made in a single place. Certes (talk) 01:19, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I give you Constitution of Burkina Faso, Constitution of the Central African Republic, Constitution of the Comoros, and Constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the template heading is "Constitution of Africa", and Constitution of the Republic of the Congo where it is "Constitutions in Africa". Aren't templates great? Narky Blert (talk) 02:47, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Fixed; thanks. My auto-edit failed for some multi-word countries. (I checked that the edits I made were right, but I was less careful about having caught all cases.) In this case, I think the template actually helps: the articles are now consistent, and anyone who thinks they're consistently wrong can fix that with a single edit. Certes (talk) 11:05, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/March 2018 has over 200 one-link pages at the end. I don't think we should have these in the contest. Otherwise, it turns into just an alphabetical list of links, rather than a list of pages with multiple links. Of course, they are already on the bonus list, but I think the monthly page should end at two-link pages. bd2412 T 21:18, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Maybe it's also time to think about retiring the stars for pages that appeared on the list in previous months? Starred entries are turning into pages that get new links on a daily basis (e.g. language/nationality ambiguity). Plantdrew (talk) 21:27, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Probably. It was good while it lasted. bd2412 T 22:01, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Congratulations to everyone on fixing so many links that there aren't enough multi-link pages to fill the list! I don't mind as long as we keep the full Disambiguation pages with links list, which is useful for searching (e.g. I just worked through the "station" dabs following template changes.) Certes (talk) 22:48, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
As to the main proposal, I'd be inclined to leave matters as they are. The headline number in WP:TDD (Table 1 Column 1) takes a real hammering in the first 3 or 4 days of each month (1 March 2018: 505 in, 902 out), then drifts slowly up and down until month end. I imagine that some editors fix mainly from that list. It's one of the easier ones to find, one of the least intimidating, and progress on it is very visible.
I agree with Certes about the full list, and not just for searching. I'm at #5211 in it (3rd time through).
Milestones. (1) WP:TDD Table 1 Column 1 below 8,000. It was 29,000 in March 2017. (2) That number is within 5,000 of the total in Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation (c. 3,300). Those two numbers aren't wholly comparable, but they do show how close we are getting towards looking at new problems in something approaching real time. Narky Blert (talk) 13:35, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
Just FYI, I haven't had a chance to work on any of these things this month, so don't expect any changes in the April contest. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:44, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Short descriptions

@Pbsouthwood: I've seen a number of edits like this one on my watchlist lately. I haven't followed the development of the short description concept (at first glance it seems reminiscent of the deprecated Persondata tag, and something that would be better suited to Wikidata), but regardless of its overall validity, if every dab is going to have the description "Disambiguation page", wouldn't it make more sense to add this functionality to the Disambiguation template rather than editing every single dab to add a new tag? Nick Number (talk) 17:39, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Nick Number, It is not only disambiguation pages, eventually all articles will have a short description. The reasoning, history and other details can be found at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions page, so I won't repeat them here. The template will be using a new "magic word" that WMF hope to deploy at the end of the month which is supposed to produce efficient code for the search engine - or so they say - the tech is beyond me. Anyway, it is more than disambiguation, so trying to fudge the dab templates is not likely to be much help. Unless you can come up with some practicable solutions? Read the background first, so you get the context. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:01, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
I realize that there's more to the initiative, but in the particular case of disambiguation pages (and set indices, and probably anthroponymy pages as well) it seems like there's a very simple way to handle it. I don't know why you characterize it as fudging. If every dab is going to have the same description then having the extant Disambiguation template add the magic word would be a lot easier. What's gained by adding an identical tag to every individual dab? Nick Number (talk) 18:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
I fully agree with Nick Number, if short descriptions are going to be implemented on disambiguation pages then the disambig template should include the short description, rather than doing a separate edit to each disambig page. In fact I made the same proposal on Pbsouthwood's talk page. -- intgr [talk] 21:32, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Is it not desirable to have variants on "Disambiguation page" for different categories of disambiguation? If a single short description is good enough for all of them, then maybe it can work. I am not sufficiently expert in template coding to be sure. It is certainly a less tedious solution.
Fudging may not be the right word. If inclusion in the disambiguation template can do everything that needs to be done it would be a good solution. I dont know if or how this is possible. This is ordinary ignorance, not a claim that it can't be done.
If someone can show me that putting the short description template in the disambiguation template would work I am eager to be persuaded. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:44, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Is there a reason these are going at the very top of pages (where they are most obtrusive to normal editing) as opposed to at the bottom? Dekimasuよ! 20:43, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
DekimasuThey are at the top of pages because they are annotations to the title, and if you use a script to make them visible on desktop then they should display just after the title. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:38, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
There is relevant information at Wikipedia:Short description and Wikipedia talk:Short description, which have gone up in the last 10 days. Dekimasuよ! 21:11, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
A couple of questions:
  1. Does Wikipedia actually want these descriptions, or are they being introduced by WMF without discussion? If the latter, just use the Wikidata descriptions. If they're inaccurate and libelous, that's WMF's problem, not ours. If WMF don't like it, they can go and edit Wikidata or turn the descriptions off again.
  2. Assuming we want descriptions, is it a requirement for every Wikipedia article to explicitly contain the magic word SHORTDESC, or can this be in a template which the page transcludes? If the latter, and if "Disambiguation page" is an acceptable description, then surely we should adopt Nick Number's suggestion of making one simple edit to {{Disambiguation}} which provides an accurate and consistent description for all present and future dab pages.
— Certes (talk) 21:36, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Certes, There has been discussion, including a Village Pump (Proposals) RfC, which is about as public and wide audience as we have on Wikipedia for discussions. You can read all the tedious haggling at the links provided on History. The end result of the discussion is that there was a consensus on Wikipedia which WMF quite plainly stated they would not respect as they consider they know better than us and we can't do anything about it. WMF Reading Team do not care about the quality of the descriptions, whereas Wikipedians do, as it reflects badly on Wikipedia when they display crap from Wikidata as a description of a Wikipedia article.
Would the proposed edit to {{Disambiguation}} allow for different short descriptions for different categories of disambiguation page, or is there a single short description that will be acceptable for all categories of disambiguation pages? Is there a way to get the short description embedded in {{Disambiguation}} to display on desktop view so that users can monitor the content? (a css user script does this for the short description template at present) If this is all possible I would be delighted not to add short descriptions to dab pages, as there are far more interesting things to do. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:27, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
If {{Disambiguation}} just transcludes {{Short description}} with a particular value, then that's just like putting {{Short description}} on the page directly, and visibility or not would be turned off by the same piece of CSS that controls the visibility normally. But {{Disambiguation}} would need appropriate coding, if it were desired that the {{Short description}} transclusion (when made visible) should always appear at the top of the page. Jheald (talk) 11:01, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Wow. Would love to see the short description be displayed in the title area, so current "titles" are relegated to just the url of the article. This would finally allow duplicate titles. --В²C ☎ 00:08, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

The intention is to clarify the scope of an article beyond what is obvious from the title, in just a few words. There is no intention to hide the actual title used in the url. If possible I hope that there will be a way to get the short description to display after the link in lists like categories, but I have no idea if or how that would be done. It would be very useful when browsing a category, to be able to toggle a view where the short descriptions all show to clarify what the articles are about.· · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:06, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
I left a similar note elsewhere, but just to clarify: this is going on all pages in all namespaces, right? Not just articles? (Disambiguation pages aren't articles.) Dekimasuよ! 07:09, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
@Dekimasu: All pages in namespace 0, I think -- or at least potentially. I don't think there has been any call to add it to templates, categories, images etc. Jheald (talk) 10:55, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposed insertion of short description into disambiguation template

Jheald, Born2cycle, Nick Number, intgr, and anyone else who may be interested. I have proposed an edit to {{disambiguation}} to add the short description template. I have tested in the sandbox and it seems to work, and RexxS has checked that the API returns the local short description. Those interested please take a look at the proposal and test it in any way you think might help. Suggestions for a better way also welcome. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 20:34, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Nick Number (talk) 20:53, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Reping Jheald, due to typo. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:22, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, responded at Template talk:Disambiguation Jheald (talk) 09:36, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

This feature is still under development

Does the Daily Disambig really need to say "This feature is still under development" at this point? bd2412 T 21:58, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

The INT Photometric H-Alpha Survey calls wikidata:Q3146779, which fetches the DAB page I band into the infobox and does not link it. It should fetch the redirect I band (infrared) and link it. I've just wasted 10 minutes and more trying unsuccessfully to edit the WikiData entry, and have lost patience. Does anyone round here know how to solve this problem? Narky Blert (talk) 18:16, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I just removed it from the Wikidata entry altogether, since the link is clearly wrong there. bd2412 T 18:38, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Pragmatic. Narky Blert (talk) 19:32, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
A moderate request? d:Module talk:Cycling race#A link in Wikipedia to a DAB page. Narky Blert (talk) 01:52, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Wikidata can't link to redirects. The solution is to temporarily save the redirect as a non-redirecting page, make the Wikidata link to the former redirect, and then revert it back to a redirect. Plantdrew (talk) 19:18, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I'm pleased to hear that that trick of converting a redirect page into an "article" and back again works. I'd been thinking of trying it. Narky Blert (talk) 19:32, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Surely that has to count as a bug that should be reported (phabricator?) and fixed. Certes (talk) 20:11, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Phabricator task. Also see d:Help:Handling sitelinks overlapping multiple items for some links to discussions of the issues here. Plantdrew (talk) 21:01, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

On the flip side, perhaps there is some way we can make our tools ignore Wikidata-generated links? After all, no bad link actually visibly appears on the page here. If it doesn't show up in our reports, then we won't trouble ourselves with it. bd2412 T 16:33, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

As I understand it, the tools query the same database table as Special:WhatLinksHere. That table records both normal wikilinks which appear on the page and invisible wikilinks generated by template code, without distinguishing between the two types. Typically, that template code is #ifexist:. In this case it's more complex: {{Infobox astronomical survey}} calls Module:WikidataIB, whose function _getvalue calls mw.wikibase.sitelink, which I believe records an invisible wikilink. I don't think there's a column in the database table to record that the link is an invisible one. I have found a rather convoluted way to avoid recording the link at all, but this has disadvantages. Certes (talk) 20:11, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Links to DAB pages generated by templates with call Wikidata which then calls a DAB page

I've only tried this technique once, but it seems to work. Yes, it is cumbersome.

  1. Find the Wikidata Q-number in the article which is making the problem call. Fire up Wikidata, and enter that Q-number into the search box. You should now be looking at the problem Wikidata page.
  2. Search for the problem link. You cannot edit it – yet.
  3. Write an article with a correct (i.e. usually a properly-qualified) name.
  4. Open its Page Information. Keep refreshing until Page ID contains a Q-number. Copy it.
  5. In your Wikidata link, select Edit, post in that Q-number, then hit Publish. You will not be notified that anything has happened, and may get what looks like an error message.
  6. Refresh the Wiki article which was making the problem call.

The one time I've tried this exact sequence, the Wiki article then contained a good link.

I haven't tested the variant where the new article is clearly hopeless, and you {{db-author}} or WP:PROD it yourself after getting a Q-number, Narky Blert (talk) 20:10, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

{{Infobox video game}}

I have commented at Template talk:Infobox video game#The series field regarding a matter which affects this WikiProject. Narky Blert (talk) 01:27, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Paiute#Proposal: convert to an SIA

Please weigh in on the proposal to convert the collection of links regarding Western United States Indian tribes known as the Paiute to a set index, as it is ill suited to be a disambiguation page. bd2412 T 11:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Problem pages

There are pages that keep bouncing back to the DAB bonus list whether they are solved or not. These pages seem to have problems that are beyond my ability to solve. Maybe someone else can figure them out. Starting from the beginning, numbers 1, 3, 4, 16, 40, 41, 53, 54, 63, 73, 74, 83. Out of the first 100 that's enough for now.
Vmavanti (talk) 22:08, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps we need two lists (with page names, as the numbers keep changing): pages that stick on the list despite appearing to have no problems; and pages with problems that are hard to solve. I'll nominate Elections in Korea for the second list, as {{Infobox political party}} assumes systematic titles which have articles for North Korea and South Korea but are dabs for "Korea". Certes (talk) 00:09, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
I changed the infobox call in one of them from Korea to Korea under Japanese rule (since that is the relevant period). For the other one, I don't know what the call would be. Is there a name for Korea between the end of Japanese rule and the split? bd2412 T 00:18, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
That worked, in the sense that it suppressed the useless links to dabs because there's no Politics of Korea under Japanese rule page. We don't have articles for 1945–48 either. Your change was reverted, so I've tried simply removing the parameter, which works too. Certes (talk) 01:18, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
I apologize for that. I forgot the numbers would change. I'll add the article names instead of the numbers. Soon. I can post a list of stumpers here or in another thread.
Vmavanti (talk) 21:47, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Portals

I seem to remember a grumble about WP:PORTALs, either here or on another WP:DPL editor's Talk Page. There's a discussion underway at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC: Ending the system of portals. Narky Blert (talk) 22:00, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Sremski Karlovci

Here's an entire sentence that needs disambiguating. What it needs is to be torn down and rebuilt.

"The Metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church, built by the grandfather of Vojislav Stanimirovic, Zika Stanimirovic resided in the town."

The link Metropolitan leads to the title Metropolitan bishop and the link Serbian Orthodox Church leads to the denomination. Both are general terms, in other words. So "built" doesn't modify anything. I don't know what Ziki Stanimirovic is modifying either. It's a garbled sentence.
Vmavanti (talk) 21:45, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Often, when there’s near-gibberish like this, I suspect that the article’s been vandalized (or edited by someone who has a tenuous grasp on English). Sure enough, I found that back on April 1, an IP dumped that nonsense into Sremski Karlovci. I edited it back out, then checked their other contributions. Turns out there were other articles they embellished with Vojislav Stanimirovic, which was never sourced or referenced. I also found good-faith edits by you and Narky Blert (and others) trying to disambiguate those links. Such fun. NOT.
Some other articles were Roy Cohn, Olympic Tower, and Kalmi Baruh (from a different IP). — Gorthian (talk) 03:01, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
Vandalism isn't always easy to spot. I have been rv'ed when another editor has spotted some behind me, and have rv'ed other experienced DABfixers (with an apology in the edit summary) when I had done the same thing.
I came across an article a couple of days ago, alerted by User:DPL bot about a link to a DAB page. It looked like the article was failing WP:NBIO, and then some; so I was setting about a WP:BEFORE search, when I noticed that one of the citations in the article on this seemingly insignificant person was to Cricinfo. I looked at the Edit History. Ah. The simplest solution (which I implemented) was to ignore the half-dozen-and-more recent good-faith edits, and to plonk the last good version of an article about a notable cricketer on top of the feeble autobiography which had been written over it. (That's one way to avoid WP:NPP. I've seen it before.) Narky Blert (talk) 22:22, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Stumper list

Plenty more, too.
Vmavanti (talk) 21:56, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Although I'm a Brit, I've begun to adopt a rule about non-notable-looking CEOs and the like who keep turning up in Disambiguation Pages with Links. I give page watchers and other DABfixers a chance to correct the link or to add a qualifier after a {{dn}} tag has been added; but, if I see the link a third time, that's three strikes and File:Cbbuckner25016.jpg. Narky Blert (talk) 22:48, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Sea of red

How does the team recommend we deal with lists of links which don't point to anywhere useful? I'm thinking of a page like List of Luxembourg national rugby union players, which is a sea of red with a few islands of links to dabs and links to unrelated people who happen to share their name with a rugby player. I'm reluctant to undo someone's hard work by removing the brackets (or, in this case, revising the templates), especially when similar lists contain useful wikilinks, but the current situation isn't ideal. Suggestions welcome. Certes (talk) 12:14, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd recommend delinking. Just a quick check of a few of the blue links show even those are mistaken. If there are articles in another language, then perhaps {{ill}} might be useful. older ≠ wiser 12:52, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
I've just redlinked the lot, bar a few where the target is ambiguous and which I've tagged {{dn}}. It wasn't just the 35 links to DAB pages - there were another 35 bad links, including one to a C17 Italian cardinal which gave me a chuckle.
I'm reluctant to delink international sportspeople, there's a prima facie case for notability. Narky Blert (talk) 21:16, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
I would just as soon change all ambiguous cases to "Name (Luxembourg national rugby union player)" links. It is a very precise target, and will eventually get sorted out, if these articles are ever made. bd2412 T 21:21, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice and for doing the donkey work (which I planned to do once we'd decided). My favourite player was Kim Zimmer. Certes (talk) 21:32, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
For no particular reason, you've just reminded me of one of the best ever sporting nicknames - Rikki "Zippedy" Duda. Narky Blert (talk) 22:46, 20 January 2TC)
I didn't look into all those redlinks; but in the few cases where I looked at dewiki, frwiki and lbwiki for those players, I found nothing. That is of course no proof of lack of notability - all rugby union was amateur until 1995. Narky Blert (talk) 01:39, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
IMO BD2412 is right (and notifying Certes). Cumbersome redlinks like those should (hopefully, will) get sorted out if articles are ever written. Meanwhile, if we cannot unify redlinks or specify them precisely, then making such cumbersome redlinks may be the best method of getting them out of our hair. Narky Blert (talk)
I'm belatedly wondering whether they pass WP:NRU. I don't see Luxembourg in Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby union/Notability criteria, though they may qualify via club rugby. If not, then should that carefully curated sea of red become all black? Certes (talk) 12:10, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
WP:NRU, now that I've looked at it, appears thoroughly sensible (I know the game). Playing for Luxembourg does not pass it, and I don't see why it should. I'm mildly surprised that there seems to be no Luxembourgeois playing professionally for a French club who has given up hope of ever winning a French cap, and has turned out for his country instead.
I suggest leaving those redlinks to mature for a bit, on practical and cynical grounds. (1) It'd be a fair bit of work to turn them all black. (2) If they were turned black, an editor might "helpfully" turn them all red and blue again.
The same reasoning applies to pages like e.g. Brussels Celtic RFC. Narky Blert (talk) 20:23, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Make that, two seas of black. I've delinked every one in both articles. Narky Blert (talk) 22:05, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Another case: List of watercourses in Western Australia, C came up in #Stumper list 2 below. I make it 14 good links, 7 links to dab, 27 links to an irrelevant river with a similar name and 331 redlinks. Obviously we keep the 14 good links and divert any bad links where an article on the correct topic exists, but do we leave the rest red or turn them black? Of course, the article is just one in a series, and I expect plenty of other cases exist. Certes (talk) 23:53, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

WP:NGEO isn't exactly precise. It suggests that if can wet your feet in a rivulet and it has a name, it may be notable. I have my doubts.
I like the X River (Y River) format. It's very specific, and should ultimately lead you from Y River (Z River) to Z River, and so to the sea (or, getting cute, to an endorheic basin) - or, if necessary, to Z River (some Ocean) or to Z River (country/state). I dislike X River (Y River tributary) and the like. What else is X River supposed to be? Narky Blert (talk) 00:40, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
WP:NCRIVER currently recommends using either political/administrative entity or Rio Puerco (Rio Grande tributary) (although this is not rigorously enforced). There was an inconclusive RFC, although there was considerable support for opinion that titles like X River (Y River) are confusing. older ≠ wiser 01:16, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Stumper list 2

These are articles from the Bs and Cs at the beginning of the bonus list. I alphabetized them.

Good detective work, everyone. You're a bright group. I wrote NarkyBlert about this subject before: Many geography links are simply impossible for me. I had no idea of the complexity of the divisions within countries. I'm surprised at how often sources fail to specify a location so that it can be distinguished from other locations with identical names. I recall researching the name of a hospital in Dublin. I think two had the same name, but the Irish Times never specified which one it was talking about. Maddening. I considered emailing the paper. I'm baffled by links having to do with the geography of Poland, Hungary, Russia, France, Italy, Germany, India, and the UK, and probably more. Even my own geography has surprised me. I didn't know what an unincorporated community was, for example, or the number of states which have cities with identical names, requiring you to check the township. During my whole life, I've rarely heard anyone talk about townships or unincorporated communities. My head swims when I look at DAB page with a list of Polish places and their voivodeships, and those odd diacriticals that my browser doesn't handle very well.
Vmavanti (talk) 23:23, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! This time we have the page containing the dodgy link, rather than the name of the dab page, which should make things easier. I've fixed a few entries where the diacritics fell off. Certes (talk) 23:57, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
If it's in Ireland, you often need to work out if it's Catholic or Protestant. (Yes, I know.)
Polish starosts can be a real bind. Polish Wiki is largely useless on them. The king from time to time owned certain towns, which he could hand over to his mates as a source of income and to keep them sweet. Those mates were titled starosts. The office of starost was not hereditary, and even the location might change. I solved one such problem recently by finding the German exonym for the starostship and a good-looking mention in German Wiki for the right year - only. There was nothing in any other Wiki or in a Google search. Narky Blert (talk) 01:00, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Germaine de Staël is another that sticks around despite apparently being fixed.Vmavanti (talk) 16:38, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Broken tools

Tools such as Dab Solver are misbehaving due to infrastructure changes. Details: User talk:Dispenser#Disambig fix list: strike through. Certes (talk) 19:43, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Normal service seems to have been resumed. (Famous last words...) Certes (talk) 18:41, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Sattal has a link to Fish eagle, a set index article, and the link has been tagged with {{disambiguation needed}}. Is it necessary to disambiguate this link? And is {{disambiguation needed}} the right way to do it? Leschnei (talk) 18:35, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

If you can figure out a more specific link, it would be good to change it. With three fish eagle species in India, it's not clear which one is being mentioned at Sattal. {{Siadn}} is the appropriate tag for links to set index articles. Plantdrew (talk) 18:49, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
Set index pages are just disambiguation pages with airs, so yes, they should be disambiguated. DuncanHill (talk) 18:54, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
In this case, it is likely not necessary. If the article just said "eagles", it might be nice to specify what kind of eagle, but we would not consider it a mistake requiring repair. Because there are several kinds of fish eagles, the term might be used to generally mean any or all of the various kinds of fish eagles. That is something that frequently distinguishes a set index from a disambiguation page. The term can refer to all of the kinds of thing on the page collectively. I would either remove the tag, or, if you think it is important to the reader to know what kind of fish eagle, to replace it with {{clarify}}. bd2412 T 19:34, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks all for the answers. I didn't know about {{Siadn}}. For both Sattal and Anamalai Tiger Reserve, it is unclear (to me) whether fish eagle is meant in a general or specific sense; I'll change the templates to {{Siadn}} in the hope that someone more knowledgeable about eagles can fix them. Leschnei (talk) 00:50, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
IMO fish eagle in Sattal does need disambiguation. It is inconceivable to me that two species called fish eagle could occupy the same habitat. The three possibilities are different birds and are in competition with each other. "Fish eagle" in Sattal is just wrong. Narky Blert (talk) 23:00, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
I've asked for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds#Some fish eagle or other. Narky Blert (talk) 23:06, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
There are no fish eagle records in eBird for Sattal or its surroundings, so that's no help in figuring out which species is or are meant. Craigthebirder (talk) 00:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
It is worth noting that there are no sources in the article for the proposition that there are any kind of fish eagles in Sattal. Lists like this one are inherently non-inclusive (i.e., they can't possibly list every kind of bird in the region), so if one is removed, there is no harm done to the article. bd2412 T 00:09, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
In the absence of any record, I think the decision by User:Shyamal to remove fish eagle from the list was the right one. (If there had been some sort of ambiguous record, I would have solved the problem by a footnote setting out the possibilities.) Narky Blert (talk) 11:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
(OR follows) we didn't see any fish eagles at Sattal, but we saw Pallas's and Lesser at Jim Corbett, so they can both occur, the size difference probably reducing direct competition. However, Shyamal is clearly correct here Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:18, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
@Jimfbleak: You lucky so-and-so! (And, your negative WP:OR about Sattal is useful confirmatory evidence.) Narky Blert (talk) 19:57, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

A different type of stumper

We're getting a few sticky entries on the Disambiguation pages with links list:

The first two disambiguate some specialised concepts that seem very similar to a layman like me. The last seems to be the name of every second town, village and gatepost in Bangalore. Certes (talk) 18:45, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

If it's late C19 or early C20, theosophy is almost certainly Theosophy (Blavatskian). It was all the rage in some intellectual circles.
Dualism is obscure. I know of at least three concepts with that name.
I have it in mind to ask other WP:WikiProjects for help on the first two.
The redirect Theosophist looks like another can of worms. It cannot stand in its present form. As one obvious example, it is linked from Isaac Newton. IMO it should be cleaned up and retargetted to theosophy. Narky Blert (talk) 22:49, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
Adding two:
  • Polarity (physics) — I've upgraded the dab and most incoming links fixed but a few stubborn ones remain. There may be a broad concept here.
  • Product portfolio — I created redirect Product mix to deal with narrow portfolios (e.g. several flavours of soda) but these links are about wider diversification

— Certes (talk) 14:46, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

IMO Polarity (physics) isn't a broad concept - it's at least three distinct topics called by the same name. See Polarization for a closely-related problem. Narky Blert (talk) 20:54, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Stumper list 3

Some of these I thought I solved yesterday, because they looked easy. I don't know what happened. Others I tried several times.Vmavanti (talk) 19:07, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

These appeared to fixed and yet remain on the bonus list:


Vmavanti (talk) 18:22, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

@Vmavanti: Could you add {{dn}} tags to the problem links in the stumpers you post here? It makes them a lot easier to locate in the article, and might get editors who watch Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation involved. Narky Blert (talk) 21:36, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Note: I proposed a while back to tag all remaining disambiguation links with {{dn}}. The proposal got substantial support, but has not been implemented. bd2412 T 22:17, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
OK. I'm doing it now.
Vmavanti (talk) 22:56, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Nearly everything left on the bonus list has a dn tag.Vmavanti (talk) 18:22, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
@BD2412: This may be one of those ideas which is still in the overflowing intray of our colleague User:R'n'B. Six months ago, User:DPL bot was totally down after some change or other to the Wiki database structure had caused it to flail at air. It no longer does. Narky Blert (talk) 23:35, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
My peeve about this is that we have completed all the date-tagged categories of disambiguation links up to January, 2015, but I don't know whether that means that we have actually solved all links older than that. Having everything tagged at once will at least set a baseline for what links need fixing as of right now. bd2412 T 23:42, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
I work on Disambiguation Pages with Links with one link. I'm currently at "Reo-" (#4329 of 6455) in my 4th time through. DPL bot seems now to be finding things that weren't there on my 3rd run. I think I may have picked up a couple from 2007; but, most untagged stuff I see is from March or April 2018.
I agree that anything that incites page-watchers to get their backsides into gear is a good idea. Narky Blert (talk) 23:59, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
I am now pretty confident that any dablink posted before mid-March 2018 has been either fixed or flagged. Narky Blert (talk) 15:48, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
Wow, that's wonderful news. Thanks to everyone who's helped! Certes (talk) 18:09, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
Props! to all DABfixers, especially to those firefighters who attack those new horrors which appear every day.
I've just begun my 5th run through Disambiguation Pages with Links with one link. Run #1 took about 6 months, run #2 about 4 months, run #3 54 days, run #4 44 days. Narky Blert (talk) 21:44, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Walking on water

What's best to do with the links to Walking on water? I've diverted all the Christian allusions to Jesus walking on water. The rest are a mixture of holy people of other faiths, magicians and fictional superheroes. Technically these are Homo sapiens performing animal locomotion on the water surface but that article isn't relevant either: we don't have an article about walking on water in general. Shall I unlink, or is this an encyclopedic topic needing a new redlink? Certes (talk) 13:40, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Unless there's a really to-the-point target, I say unlink. The concept is pretty straightforward, and hardly needs explaining. Neither do walking or water. Narky Blert (talk) 20:46, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
I should add that these links refer to literal movement over liquid, rather than the metaphor for general excellence explained in Wiktionary. Certes (talk) 15:05, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. Most of the links have been dealt with in the last few days; I've unlinked the rest. Certes (talk) 22:56, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

If you don't already know this film, well it's about time you did. It's a TFM. It has been described along the lines of "the best film about Christianity ever made by an atheist homosexual Marxist". IMO, the qualifications are redundant. See @54:25-@55:50 for the relevant bit for this discussion. If you can identify every piece of music in the soundtrack, you have my respect. Narky Blert (talk) 02:18, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Using Dab solver

Forgive me if you knew this: User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist fills that niche, though it doesn't have all the functionality of Dab Solver. Certes (talk) 15:37, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

National Liberal Party - Third Way

Broxbourne (UK Parliament constituency), Havering London Borough Council elections, and Castle Point Borough Council election, 2004 currently link to National Liberal Party which redirects to Third Way (disambiguation). I think that they should link to Third Way (UK organisation)#National Liberal party, but I don't know how to re-jigger {{Election box winning candidate with party link}}. Can someone advise? Leschnei (talk) 14:02, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Presenter

On dipping a toe into the festering pool which is presenter, I quickly spotted a problem which I am unsure how to solve. Kenneth Horne is described as a presenter. I remember him. He only appeared on radio, but he was not a radio presenter. He was the central figure (and a very funny straight man) in at least two radio sketch programmes which he devised, and which were named after him. He built on what Tommy Handley had done. I'm not sure how to link KH, but presenter is just wrong; and am posting in case either anyone else comes across a similar problem, or has a good idea for a link. Narky Blert (talk) 20:18, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

And 529 incoming links caused by Presenter's conversion to a disambiguation page! Leschnei (talk) 14:05, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
You were late to the party. It started out at 2,767 incoming links (of which I only fixed a tiny handful). Narky Blert (talk) 03:45, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Intricate templates linking to DAB pages

See Template talk:Georgia national football team results#A link to a DAB page and Template talk:Slovenia national football team results#A link to a DAB page. Ideas, anyone? Narky Blert (talk) 11:41, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

I think I have fixed these, by subst'ing the template in the article page, and fixing the content generated by the subst. This is hardly an ideal solution. bd2412 T 12:11, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be nice if editors who write templates in spaghetti code reacted to posts on Talk Pages? Narky Blert (talk) 18:35, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm baffled

Can anyone work out how Korea is calling the DAB page Demographics of Korea? Here's the DPL bot report. The problem also shows in the DAB page what-links-here. This is at least the third time I've seen this problem, which means it has been around for at least six weeks. I'm inclined to suspect Template:Korea topics, but it's transcluded in many other articles without causing a problem. I've tried both WP:NULLEDIT and WP:DUMMYEDIT on Korea without effect. Narky Blert (talk) 16:43, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

It's {{Infobox Geopolitical organization}}, which redirects to {{Infobox country}}. The text "Population" in the infobox is linked to the dab page. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:36, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Any idea how to fix it? Narky Blert (talk) 13:24, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
I changed the target page from a disambig to an SIA, as "Demographics of Korea" is not an ambiguous concept, per WP:DABCONGEO. bd2412 T 13:36, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Good solution. I tend to dislike SIAs, but this is a complete set, and a page very unlikely to collect new bad links. Narky Blert (talk) 14:25, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Yet another template calling Wikidata

See Template talk:Cycling race/bestyoungclassification. Ideas, anyone? Narky Blert (talk) 17:28, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

I've replied there. Certes (talk) 18:39, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
I think that this is the fourth time that I have come across a DPL problem created by one of these cycling-related templates.
The first two times, I wrote one-line stub articles with a citation. (Both cyclists passed WP:NCYCLING – but as I researched and wrote those articles I felt the futility of what I was doing: getting round a problem caused by a template, without creating an article of any real value to readers.) Of course, I did have to keep monitoring those articles until they got Wikidata Q-numbers, which I could use to correct the Wikidata pages.
The third time, I wrote a one-line stub article with a citation, and it never got a Q-number. I raised the issue in the WP:TEAHOUSE - and an editor there found a matching non-English Wikidata entry and added my article to it.
Fourth time: I give up. This problem has already wasted well over an hour's work for at least two editors. Thus, I am here, where another editor has wasted yet more time looking into it.
There is no guarantee that a cyclist linked/called by one of these templates passes WP:NCYCLING. Wikidata does not accept redlinks. If such a template makes a bad call, then (unless you are our colleague Certes, and are willing to scan, and to look for bugs in, 3493 lines of convoluted code) the only solution would seem to be to write a WP:NN article, wait till it gets a Q-number, use it, and then to {{db-author}} the page you just made. Ridiculous. Grrr, Narky Blert (talk) 22:09, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
I've suggested a solution at Module talk:Cycling race. Certes (talk) 22:56, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
This problem should now be fixed. Certes (talk) 00:55, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Leaderboard count error

Currently the leaderboard shows that I have made 16700 dab fixes this month. I know I've fixed a lot, but wow! Obviously this is an error. Is it known what's causing it? (I'd love to win the monthly challenge once, but preferably legitimately...) – Broccoli & Coffee (Oh hai) 00:09, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I noticed that. The system seems to think that you fixed a link to Social activity in the article Yogesh Dube about 16,600 times. bd2412 T 00:19, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Boy, I thought I was obsessive! — Gorthian (talk) 00:45, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
The monthly record, set in 2009, is 9034. KUTGW... Narky Blert (talk) 05:11, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Now up to 33,091. Keep going! Narky Blert (talk) 10:54, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
My goal is to set a record nobody will ever break! – Broccoli & Coffee (Oh hai) 17:46, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
At 542,616 (and it's not yet halfway through the month), you may be in with a chance. Narky Blert (talk) 08:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Now at 4,194,631. If this was registering on the board for total edits, you would now be Wikipedia's most prolific editor. bd2412 T 12:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
OK, hopefully I've squashed all the duplicate entries and things should get back to normal now. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:14, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Spoilsport. Narky Blert (talk) 22:05, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Well, that was fun while it lasted. Now I'll have to get back to fixing things without cheating the old fashioned way... – Broccoli & Coffee (Oh hai) 22:49, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

It had to happen sooner or later

Ø (Disambiguation) and Ø (Disambiguation). See also Ø (disambiguation). Is that a first? Narky Blert (talk) 10:18, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Sooner or later? Apparently, it happened eight years ago! :-) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:53, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Question

Hello, can you only get points from the DAB monthly list or can you achieve points other DAB articles such as the monthly backlog categories? I have successfully undid a ton of DABS NOT from the monthly list and it does not show up as points. If only the monthly list, how does the combined points total more than the total number of links? See Fixer88 AmericanAir88 (talk) 13:59, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

You should get a point for any page that was on either https://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/ch/monthly_list.php or https://tools.wmflabs.org/dplbot/ch/bonus_list.php. These pages are generated at the start of each month, so any links to disambiguation pages that were created after that will not appear (and will not be eligible for points) until the beginning of the following month. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:04, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

What's a DAB article? EricEgo2012 (talk) 03:47, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

@EricEgo2012: Dab is an abbreviation for disambiguation page (which, to be pedantic, is not classed as an article). For example, Portuguese is a disambiguation page listing several articles which "Portuguese" may refer to in different contexts, and the most relevant article for "Já não há distancia" is Portuguese language. Certes (talk) 10:05, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Chamber of horrors

This is a small select set of pages with {{dn}} tags which share three common characteristics:

  1. The tag was added before 2018
  2. If any sources exist, they should be in English
  3. IMO there is a good case for unlinking from maintext or for deletion from a list (as the case may be); but, that at least a second opinion is needed

If you solve any of these puzzles (in whatever way), mark it as {{done}} in the above list. Narky Blert (talk) 20:47, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

There is a "William J. Simmons" listed as a WWII flying ace listed at List of World War II aces from the United States. We don't have an article. Corroboration at this site. I haven't altered the link. Dekimasuよ! 21:33, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
Good find! I've changed that bluelink to a redlink. Narky Blert (talk) 23:06, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
Novelty and fad dances: probably a reference to Apache (instrumental)#The Sugarhill Gang version. Again, haven't changed the link. Dekimasuよ! 21:39, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
Kirkbride, Durisdeer: this looks to be Penpont. Note the reference to "Hunter" in the Project Gutenberg book linked in the reference. Dekimasuよ! 21:45, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm convinced that you're right. Kirkbride, Durisdeer, mentions Penpont elsewhere in the article; and Penpont mentions its presbytery in the 1760s. I've WP:BOLDly made that change. Narky Blert (talk) 11:58, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
I did a bit of rewording on Founder.org; it’s a little less spammy now. — Gorthian (talk) 23:42, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
I'd argue for removing the text altogether for "Jump on It" from Novelty and fad dances. Added in 2010 by an IP with exactly 1 edit. I haven't edited it, though. – Broccoli & Coffee (Oh hai) 00:29, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
Boldly removed. Unsourced; no search hits; quite possibly a dance made up one day and quickly forgotten. Certes (talk) 00:44, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
There’s a lot of doubt about whether the word “sindology” even exists. (In List of words ending in ology). The page history goes all the way back to 2011, when it was a stub. The post at Talk:sindology summarizes the situation. I removed the entry entirely from List of words ending in ology. — Gorthian (talk) 00:42, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

Template:LDS area seventy

Template:LDS area seventy autolinks to any name which matches an entry, even if it's badly wrong or a DAB page. See List of area seventies of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Joel Martinez. Adding a {{dn}} tag suppresses the link, but does not solve the problem. The template takes given name and surname separately, and there seems no way either to nowiki the link or to add a disambiguator. I can't find either a middle initial or a matronymic for this Joel Martinez, which would have solved the problem. Can anyone help? Narky Blert (talk) 11:09, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

I've added the secret |link=no parameter to those template calls. Certes (talk) 12:38, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Secret parameters, just what we all need. Narky Blert (talk) 22:42, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

List of Peel sessions

If you have the misfortune to fall across List of Peel sessions, the best starting point is this. If you click through from the artist to the details of a session, you will often find bandmembers' names; which can be useful in choosing a qualifier, or even in exceptional cases identifying a Wikipedia article. Peel was notorious for playing bands never heard of before or since, so don't be surprised if you can find nothing else about one. (I will have heard some of those sessions.) Narky Blert (talk) 14:42, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Help wanted - Template:Infobox former country

Template:Infobox former country is another of those templates which autogenerates bad links and is difficult to understand. In Irish Republic and Kingdom of Ireland, it generates links to the DAB page Demographics of Ireland (not easy to find - it's under the 'Population' bluelink). Irish Republic should link to Demographics of the Republic of Ireland, and Kingdom of Ireland to Irish population analysis. Narky Blert (talk) 15:35, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

 Fixed by adding |population_link=. Certes (talk) 15:53, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
Some of these template editors should have a go at the International Obfuscated C Code Contest, they'd be in with a chance. Narky Blert (talk) 21:21, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Help needed - Wikidata

Can anyone work out how the Wikidata call in Marie L. Shedlock is creating a link to the DAB page Story-teller? and, ideally, fix it? Narky Blert (talk) 17:41, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata has her occupation as story-teller, which in Wikidata is a separate occupational term; however, the en Infobox mistakenly interprets this by linking to the en Wikipedia article. older ≠ wiser 18:25, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
It's a problem we've seen before. Module:WikidataIB finds the Wikidata entity corresponding to her occupation (Story-teller). If that entity has an enwiki article then the article name gets displayed as a wikilink (good). If not then it checks whether enwiki has a redirect whose name matches the Wikidata item. If it has then that gets displayed as a wikilink, even if it redirects to a dab or other unwanted destination. Possible ways forward:
  1. Add a parameter {{infobox person/Wikidata|suppressfields=occupation}} to suppress the occupation field entirely. I don't see an easy way to just get rid of the square brackets.
  2. Edit Wikidata to link the item to an article. The best fit I can find is Storytelling but I don't think that's a legitimate change, as Storytelling is already a distinct Wikidata entity.
  3. Fix Module:WikidataIB. The problem lies at line 341 in function linkedItem. The code handle cases where Foo gets renamed to Foobar, leaving Foo as a redirect and leaving "Foo" recorded in Wikidata as the (outdated) article name. It's unclear how we could continue handling that case correctly whilst no longer linking to redirects to random places.
— Certes (talk) 18:29, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
Raised at Module talk:WikidataIB#Wikilinks for redirects. Certes (talk) 19:32, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
Wikidata is a total pain in the anatomy, and IMO thoroughly untrustworthy. Within the last two days, I've fixed (1) a unidirectional Interwiki link (Dutch Wikipedia linked to an English redirect - I got two This-Is-Your-Last-Chance Horrible Warnings while connecting the two articles), and (2) an English DAB page which was linked to specific articles in other-language Wikipedias rather than to the DAB pages in those and other languages. I've also had connecting edits reverted in Wikidata before now by editors who could not see the identity between pages in Cyrillic, Greek and Latin scripts. Narky Blert (talk) 21:36, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
My suggested module change won't be accepted because the existing code is a workaround for Wikidata's refusal to accept redirects as sitelinks. I've fixed this case by editing the Wikidata label to Storyteller. Of course, that does nothing to fix the general problem. Certes (talk) 21:46, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Yet another impenetrable template

Template:LDS Temple, which is calling ambiguous redirect Kenneth Johnson in Bismarck North Dakota Temple, Brisbane Australia Temple and Perth Australia Temple. You may need to click Expand in the infobox to see the link. We have no article, so if you can figure this one out, your choice of qualifier. Narky Blert (talk) 08:50, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

 Fixed: I've edited {{LDS Temple/Bismarck North Dakota Temple}} to redlink [[Kenneth Johnson (Mormon)|Kenneth Johnson]], modelling the qualifier on the dedicator of Logan Utah Temple, and done similarly for the other temples. An alternative is to use something like |groundbreaking_by=Kenneth Johnson<nowiki/> (sic), which gives simple text rather than a redlink but won't promote to a blue link if the article appears.
{{Link if exists}} shows a blue link if a page exists or black text if not. Would it be appropriate to use something similar here, to show "Kenneth Johnson" in black until Kenneth Johnson (Mormon) is created and a piped link thereafter? I could easily create {{Piped link if exists|Kenneth Johnson (Mormon)|Kenneth Johnson}} but firstly I'm not sure that we should be displaying redlinks in black, and secondly I don't want to reinvent the wheel if we already have such a template. Certes (talk) 11:09, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

See Template talk:Infobox national football team#A bad link and a link to a DAB page, posted on 16 August 2018 with no response. If you can help, thanks in advance. Narky Blert (talk) 14:46, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

 Fixed with a template enhancement and a minor article edit, which I'll repeat in similar articles if there's no negative feedback. Certes (talk) 14:41, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

And another of dem templates

Template:Infobox Observatory summons information from Wikidata, which may be wrong. Teide Observatory links to STELLA, a redirect to a DAB page. Maintext shows that the link should be to STELLA Telescopes (no article in English, German or Spanish Wikipedia). Grrr, Narky Blert (talk) 10:09, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I've changed the description of d:Q57415862 to "STELLA Telescopes", which unlinks the text. In the short term I think that's the best we can do, for the reasons explained above. In the longer term, I see a growing case for deprecating such use of Wikidata until that project accepts links to Wikipedia redirects. Certes (talk) 11:20, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
TY – and, agreed. Having been there before, I wasted no time floundering around in Wikidata, but cut to the chase and just posted here. Narky Blert (talk) 21:29, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Some editors of biological articles have the nasty habit of identifying binomial authorities by bare surname (redlinked, or bluelinked to a surname page), or of responding to a User:DPL bot nastygram by adding a (disambiguation) qualifier to a bad {{hndis}} link. If you happen to come across any such problems, please {{ping}} me: I enjoy solving them. Pison was a particularly bad example. Narky Blert (talk) 08:06, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

On a related note, I'm looking at bad links to the genera and species themselves, such as Astarte when a piped link to Astarte (bivalve) was intended. Further details here. Certes (talk) 11:15, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
I expect you knew this, but for anyone starting down a similar path: the two lists of biologists by author abbreviation can be useful. Certes (talk) 14:55, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Botany and zoology are different disciplines, and have somewhat different rules of nomenclature. Both follow the Linnaean idea that the name first proposed should stand, but that does not cross over between the two disciplines. See Category:Genus disambiguation pages for the numerous cases where genera of animals and of plants have the same scientific name. For added confusion, read synonym (taxonomy) – and then remember that some taxonomical classifications haven't been revisited in the last hundred years, and may be hopelessly out-of-date.
Botanists have a rigorous formal system of standardised authority names; see {{botanist}}. List of botanists by author abbreviation is an immediate go-to in any botanical problem. Note that botanists' rules override MOS:SPACEINITS in the names of authorities. For example, the standard author abbreviation for Alvah Augustus Eaton is A.A.Eaton not A. A. Eaton.
In the 18th century, zoologists missed their chance to establish something similar. There are no standard abbreviations. If you come across a zoological citation like 'Smith (1850)', that could be anyone, and your only resource is creative searching.
The paradox is that botanical taxonomy is often fuzzier than zoological taxonomy, but that identification of botanical taxonomists is the more precise. Narky Blert (talk) 05:14, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I noticed the duplication when fixing links such as an Anemia fossil, which may mean the fern or the beetle, but hadn't spotted the exact pattern (one plant; one animal). Certes (talk) 09:46, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Oh, that's very useful, thanks. Leschnei (talk) 00:21, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

In Eoghan Bán Gallagher, the link under 'Ulster titles' in the infobox (Template:Infobox GAA player) is Ulster Senior Championship, a redirect to DAB page Ulster Championship. I haven't the foggiest idea how it's doing it, though I suspect something to do with there being a value in the iculster= field. The link in this specific instance should be Ulster Senior Football Championship. (It won't always be - there are several other Ulster GAA championships.) Narky Blert (talk) 09:56, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

 Fixed by adding |sport= and |code=. Certes (talk) 10:29, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Template time again

Template:Asia topic links to the DAB page Communism in India. The code is so convoluted, I'm not even going to try. Until the {{dabconcept}} article is written, the link should probably go though Communism in India (disambiguation). The template can be found in Communism in Korea Communism in the Philippines and Communism in Vietnam (right at the foot, headed 'Communism in Asia'). Good luck! Narky Blert (talk) 13:00, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Messy as it is, I'm tempted to leave this one. There's a genuine mistake and it's in the content of Communism in India (which, as you suggest, should be a BCA) rather than in the template or the pages which call it. I feel that "fixing" the template would be whitewashing over an error message which we do need to see. Certes (talk) 13:35, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
I've attempted to add some ginger. See Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics#Communism in India. Narky Blert (talk) 03:19, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Template:Jcon

{{jcon}} seems to provide no means for disambiguating placenames. See Kinburn in Ontario Highway 417. {{jct}} has a 'county<i>' parameter, but it doesn't seem to be available in {{jcon}} (so much for the claim of added functionality). Narky Blert (talk) 08:21, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

 Done by abusing |nolink=y to display plain text which happens to be a piped link. Certes (talk) 17:42, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Nifty! Narky Blert (talk) 20:27, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Template of the day

Template:Infobox All-Ireland Hurling autocompletes some fields and does not seem to make any provision for ambiguity. See 1984–85 All-Ireland Senior Club Hurling Championship, where it twice calls the redirect St. Martin's GAA. The correct target in both cases is St Martin's GAA (County Kilkenny). I suspect that all four province fields will be affected. Narky Blert (talk) 13:14, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

 Fixed using |leinsterlink= and |teamlink=. Certes (talk) 14:48, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Yet another template calling Wikidata (revisited)

See #Yet another template calling Wikidata, above. This time, it's {{Cycling race/stageclassification|Q56754726}} in 2018 Tour of Iran (Azerbaijan) creating a blacklink in the article and showing up in what-links-here to DAB page Aleksandr Smirnov. A redlink should be Aleksandr Smirnov (cyclist); FWIW, he isn't in Russian Wikipedia either. Grr, Narky Blert (talk) 14:48, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Changing the label on d:Q56883920 should fix it but the current text of "Aleksandr Smirnov" seems to be the best value. Wikipedia's workaround for Wikidata's refusal to accept redirects breaks this case. I don't see how to fix it without writing an article which might be instantly AfD'd. Disconnecting the race from its rider in Wikidata would also fix Wikipedia here, but I suspect that Wikidata would view such an edit as pointy vandalism. Certes (talk) 15:02, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Aleksandr Smirnov (cyclist) doesn't pass WP:NCYCLING, so WP:A7 or WP:PROD might come into play before WP:AFD. Write the article then WP:G7 it is a possibility, but would raise serious questions about the good faith involved in writing it. Narky Blert (talk) 20:49, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I have stuck my oar in at m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Wikidata/Allow non one-to-one correspondence relationship in wikidata and display them in interlanguage link. Certes (talk) 15:48, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
...which revealed d:Wikidata:Project chat#Inclusion of redirects. Certes (talk) 16:24, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Spaghetti template code

Article, Socialism in Iran. Template, Template:Asia topic. Template heading in the article, Socialism in Asia. DAB page linked (via the redirect Socialism in China), Chinese socialism. The link probably should be to the DAB page, the Kuomintang and the Maoists were fighting each other so not exactly a {{dabconcept}}.

"Template:Continent topic"s are a confounded nuisance. Narky Blert (talk) 17:53, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Another tough one. Each bit of wikitext and template code makes sense individually but they don't play nicely together. Socialism in Iran is the only article which uses the Asia topic template for socialism. Should we remove that template call and add more Asian countries to {{Socialism by state}} which is already present in Socialism in Iran (along with Socialism in Pakistan etc.)? An alternative is to create a {{Socialism in Asia}} template along the lines of {{Asia topic|Socialism in|CN=Chinese socialism (disambiguation)}} so that the messy bits can be coded once in a central place but, with only one article to fix, that might just be adding more spaghetti. Certes (talk) 18:23, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Turning Chinese Socialism into a WP:SIA would be another way of solving the immediate DPL problem. However, I loathe and despise SIAs perhaps even more than I do WP:PTOPICs (except in the most limited of cases). They are both guaranteed ways of accumulating bad links which are unlikely ever to get found and fixed. On the surface, our goal in this WikiProject is to minimise the number of links about which User:DPL bot complains – but that is only one aspect of a more fundamental goal for Wikipedia, namely to maximise the chances that links point accurately to what readers are looking for. Narky Blert (talk) 21:42, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
SIA is an interesting idea but I don't like it for this case either. If I may digress: you're right about goals. The number of links to dabs has fallen by 97% over the last four years and, whilst new ones appear daily, we're diligently whacking the moles. Most of my recent edits have fixed links which led to the wrong article rather than to a dab. The number of such bad links can never be known but I suspect it is much more than the 4,272 links to dab, and I'm working on ways to detect and fix them efficiently. Certes (talk) 22:05, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, WP:RMs like Talk:Division of Fraser (Victoria)#Requested move 9 November 2018, Talk:Chris Pappas (politician)#Requested move 8 November 2018, Talk:Ain't Misbehavin' (song)#Requested move 6 November 2018 and Talk:Address (geography)#Requested move 6 November 2018 keep being made. Check the page view graphs. Narky Blert (talk) 20:09, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
IDK what %age of my edits relate to bad links rather than to DAB pages, but I'd guess something in the 1-5% range. If I come across a sea of redlinks with a couple of bluelinks, I often click on the other bluelinks out of curiosity. It's remarkable how often (say} an elderly and distinguished mediaeval historian moonlights as a bad-guy professional wrestler, or someone who's been dead 200 years has appeared in a C21 reality show.
I also click on bluelinks which my gut tells me might be wrong. I'm impressed by those Indian film studios who have hired Krishna to act in leading (and especially minor) roles. Narky Blert (talk) 03:49, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
I've boldly made a few additions to {{Socialism by state}} and edited Socialism in Iran to remove the use of {{Asia topic}}. (I fixed a few Krishna links myself a while ago; Vishnu also seems to have had a hand in everything.) Certes (talk) 12:20, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

This template employs intricate features of template syntax

In British Virgin Islands, Template:Infobox country somehow generates the legend 'Flag' with a link to the DAB page Flag of the Virgin Islands while linking to the correct image. Narky Blert (talk) 10:13, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

 Fixed by adding |flag_type_article=Flag of the British Virgin Islands (and |symbol_type_article=Coat of arms of the British Virgin Islands to link to the arms). The problem here is that the template prefers "common name", which is set to "Virgin Islands", which is ambiguous. Certes (talk) 12:20, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Gud catch on the Coat of Arms, I forgot to check for that half of the pair. Narky Blert (talk) 20:15, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Help with Draft:Open source

Getting Draft:Open source finished and moved to mainspace as a broad concept article will resolve thousands of outstanding disambiguation links. Please help! Thanks. bd2412 T 14:56, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

{{Infobox station}} in Aarhus Central Station is somehow managing twice to call the DAB page Struer rather than Struer, Denmark. It beats me how it's doing it, Narky Blert (talk) 16:34, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I edited {{DSB lines}} to fix one call. The link has gone away; maybe someone else fixed the other call. Certes (talk) 16:49, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Need m:Touch.py to touch all pages transcluding Template:Infobox aerial lift line

The file I have edited is Template:Infobox aerial lift line/type, simply to change the wikitext displayed so that the correct articles are linked. The instructions at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Guide stated I should ask for this here. Can someone arrange this please? Thank you. MegaSloth (talk) 11:24, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed; no need for further intervention. If anyone took action on this, thank you. MegaSloth (talk) 12:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Open source

Open source was on this list at the beginning of December, and I disambiguation about 1,000 links over the weekend. It's no longer on the list, because Open source is no longer a disambiguation page, which drops me on the leaderboard from 1st to 4th. Any chance to reconsider this month's stats? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 05:25, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I've seen lesser examples of this effect before. I can only suggest that you redouble your efforts...
The DAB Challenge is nothing more than a bit of fun, but its methodology has become flawed. It was designed in the days when there were tens and hundreds of thousands of links to DAB pages, so that a high proportion of fixes (i.e. of errors logged on the first day of the month) got counted. There are editors among us who concentrate on firefighting and whose contributions scarcely register in the DAB Challenge nowadays. I routinely score well only because, having tried my hand with the hoses and the buckets and seeing that I was duplicating effort, I decided to concentrate on the still-smouldering patches behind the front line.
If anyone feels like writing a new version of the DAB Challenge (don't overwrite the old one!) based on the number of fixes from the 12-hourly Disambiguation pages with links reports, go ahead; but that's hardly a priority. The numbers I look at first are in WP:TDD, because they record the team effort. Narky Blert (talk) 07:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
  • GB, I sympathize with your plight, but keep in mind that Open source was marked on the list as a page for which a de-disambiguation discussion was underway well before the monthly contest began, and the trend in the discussion itself was clear at the time. bd2412 T 12:19, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Thank you both for your responses. GoingBatty (talk) 00:30, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

No, it's not my imagination

When the modern method of counting was established in June 2011, the left-hand column of WP:TDD reported just under 114,000 pages. When I got interested in this game, in early 2016, there were 40,000. The number has just for the first time dropped below 3,000, and I'm starting more and more often to find pages in Disambiguation pages with links which colleagues in this WikiProject have fixed since the most recent 12-hourly update. Way to go! Narky Blert (talk) 10:57, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes; a great achievement. We have a few sticky entries near the top of Disambiguation pages with links. I've been through these and fixed the easy ones (and I expect others have tried too) but we're left with:
There are 1,455 articles with links needing disambiguation, i.e. having one or more links with a {{dn}} tag that someone couldn't resolve immediately. That leaves at most 1,500 links unaddressed; probably far fewer, as some of the 1,455 cover several bad links. With more links appearing daily, clearly we need to keep up the good work to keep those numbers low, but I wonder if this is a good time to think about where to go from here. For example, should we be looking at bad links to pages other than dabs, such as surnames (she beat Murphy in the final) or terms where popular culture's primary topic doesn't match Wikipedia's (Joe Garageband opened for Prince)? Certes (talk) 12:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Although the reduction in absolute numbers is impressive, I think many of those which are left are the most difficult and will take the most time to resolve. I have been guilty of "cherry-picking" the easier ones to deal with (and I suspect others may have done as well) therefore I would suggest not diluting the effort (?yet) by moving into other areas, and continuing with the list (remembering that a few days where the 500+ or so dab links created exceeds those resolved) can soon push the numbers back up again.— Rod talk 17:57, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
I've been picking away at the older entries in Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation (I'm now up to July 2017). A fair proportion are self-solving: no link, already a redlink, or a good link but someone forgot to take the {{dn}} tag off (yes, me too). Of course, some of them are where an editor has responded to a User:DPL bot nastygram by uselessly linking to a DAB page through the (disambiguation) qualifier rather than by addressing the underlying problem. That sort of gimmick is very difficult to spot, and really gets on my goat.
I see no blame in cherry-picking. The low-hanging fruit needs attention too. It seems to me that our success is precisely because we have different members willing to take on both the routine and the difficult tasks.
I deliberately mentioned only column 1 of WP:TDD Table 1. Column 2, and the RH columns of Tables 2 and 3, are always vulnerable to an editor dumping several thousand links onto us with or without good reason.
I have had considerable success in roping in help from some specialist WikiProjects. I single out the following for particular praise: Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics and Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine, all of whom are red-hot and keen to get articles on their topics as accurate as possible. I am not (now) going to name and shame those WikiProjects which I have found as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. There are also a couple of WikiProjects whose help I haven't yet asked for. Narky Blert (talk) 02:07, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
I've been fixing links to terms where popular culture's primary topic doesn't match Wikipedia's (Billboard magazine, Apple computers, Bumblebee from Transformers, Wolverine from the X-Men). Another interesting path is plurals that are also popular culture topics (peanuts the food, mythological pixies, house windows). I think I suggested before to expand the DAB Challenge to other namespaces, such as Book, File, and Portal. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, that's very helpful work that not many other people are doing. I also spotted Billboard (74 fixed) and Apple (I fixed only a few: BD2412 also tidies that term) but not the others. I've started an essay at User:Certes/misdirected links, and there's a fuller list of Billboard-like errors — fixed by adding " (qualifier)" — in an old version. I've not publicised it widely yet, to avoid distracting attention from disambiguation. It probably needs to be a one-off or occasional effort, rather than a daily update, because it's awkward to detect new links without trawling through all the false positives again. Certes (talk) 10:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
I've only once or twice done any systematic work on bad links to WP:PTOPICs. It can be tedious; but it's well worth doing, and I applaud anyone who does it.
My bugbear is WP:SIAs, of which {{surname}} and {{given name}} are (if the newfangled short descriptions can be trusted) subclasses. Some examples.
(1) Vostok (inhabited locality) and the like – and there are dozens of pages like that. The only features shared by the entries on that page is that (1) their name is Russian for 'east', and (2) they are all in Russia. They have no other connection. That looks to me like classic DAB page material (or DAB subpage, Vostok, Russia, if the main page is getting overloaded). I came across a group today which consisted of (a) a two-entry DAB page containing a standalone entry and a link to an (inhabited locality) page, and (b) an (inhabited locality) SIA containing two entries. (There is now a three-entry DAB page and a {{R from incomplete disambiguation}} redirect to it. In this instance, there were no bad incoming links to the SIA; but that is not always the case.)
(2) Surnames and given names. Most links to name pages are going to be bad. I can only think of one justified case (there may be more): a link from a name page, or from a see-also from a DAB page, to a related name. I know of two problem cases in particular. (1) Sports where it is customary in match reports to refer to players only by their surnames. Association football is one. (2) Taxonomy. Taxon authorities are invariably referred to only by their surname (zoology) or by their standard abbreviation (botany). Of course, some standard botanical abbreviations are identical to the surname.
(3) Ships. This is not an area into which I've looked at all, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are some horrors. There's a superficial attractiveness in a SIA, because no navy will have two ships with the same name in commission at the same time. Matters become more confused if you know that HMS Temeraire (1759) is the same ship as French ship Téméraire (1749), listed on both HMS Temeraire and French ship Le Téméraire; and that two ships called Swiftsure took part in the Battle of Trafalgar, HMS Swiftsure (1804) and French ship Swiftsure (1801) (which was the same ship as HMS Swiftsure (1787).
In at least (2) and (3), any change to current practice would need discussion and consensus with relevant WikiProjects. Narky Blert (talk) 22:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Subsistence

Any thoughts about new dab Subsistence? We may have a situation like Open source. I'm tempted to link several other articles such as Subsistence agriculture, but all apply the basic concept of maintaining a minimum level to various topics in a way which is obvious from the two separate terms. Certes (talk) 22:46, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Some WP:PTMs added as see-alsos. Narky Blert (talk) 08:44, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Thank you both. Normal service is resumed! Certes (talk) 13:14, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

More nonsense imported from Wikidata

In Fatehpur (Lok Sabha constituency), the infobox (d:Q5437428) calls the DAB page Jahanabad rather than Jahanabad, Uttar Pradesh (Assembly constituency).

Even worse, it does it by way of d:Q30678400, which relates to Bihar not Uttar Pradesh. Yuk! Narky Blert (talk) 14:42, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

 Fixed by editing d:Q5437428. Certes (talk) 15:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
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