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Proposed statement of purpose for disambigs

Should we take it as an official goal of every disambig to minimize the length of time that a user spends reading it before proceeding expeditiously to the proper specific page?
--Smack (talk) 01:17, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I'd rather state this in terms of the minimal amount of text necessary for proper identification. Otherwise some smartasses may copy half of article into dab page and then argue that the first sentence ensures this "minimal time", reading of the rest being voluntary.
mikka (t) 01:43, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
I'd say the fundamental goal is minimise time spent to make a successful selection, thus this being the official one (not with that wording). To minimise time means to minimise text as much as practical. If necessary we can state that explicitly.
Neonumbers 06:00, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
Time is the goal, and near-minimal text is a significant means toward it. The smartasses need to be directed to discussions about the involuntary aspects of reading such as The Psychology of Computer Programming, by Gerald M. Weinberg, 1973 (i guess), where he describes reading a page with a vague awareness that there was a misspelled word on it, and saying "Oh, there it is!" when he reached the last paragraph. If you read letters instead of words, you're dislexic, and while most of us read mainly words and sentences, the process is drastically changed by changing the length or organization of the page, even if you don't read enuf of it to be expected to deduce the organization from the part you consciously read.
--Jerzy•t 07:01, 2005 August 26 (UTC)
Where would we "declare" such a goal? -
grubber 11:36, 2005 July 30 (UTC)
It should be stated on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). In fact, it already does say that, Keep in mind that the primary purpose of the disambiguation page is to help people find the page they want quickly and easily. RoySmith 13:57, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I've met with some minor conflict on the matter of whether dab-pages are targeted to readers, editors, or both. The current statement supports targeting dab-pages to readers primarily. There are those who feel that dab-pages are resources for encouraging the expansion of wikipedia by putting all possible (or plausible) variations on the semantics on the page; this is especially true of abbreviations. This inclusive approach is certainly helpful to editors, but sets aside the readers convenience in favor of equating a reader with an editor (or encouraging the reader to become an editor). I'm wondering if in addition to a tactical use case statement, as the cited passage is, a strategic statement that addresses this reader/editor conflict-of-needs might also be useful to include. Courtland 01:43, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
With respect to Courtland's comment above, I believe the encyclopedia (and therefor, the dab page) exists to serve readers. Stuff for editor's benefit should be on talk pages, or in Wikipedia namespace, or some such location outside of the main article space. --RoySmith 16:47, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Also, I'm not sure that having more links can be ideally confined to being a benefit for the "reader" or the "editor". A reader may very well find many links useful or interesting to read, while an editor may very well want to get to the specific article he wants to edit. - Centrx 00:07, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
I think everyone but you has figured out that the admitted benefit to anyone of non-dab'g lks on dab pages is far outweighed by the harm done to readers, whether or not there is a net benefit or harm to editors. This artificial division is just a shorthand, for me, and IMO so obviously artificial as to invite no confusion.
--Jerzy•t 07:01, 2005 August 26 (UTC)
Why does the benefit of helping to direct the many readers who want information that does not precisely correspond to the article with the name of the dab page not outweigh the imperfect clarity that results from having few more links that are distinguished by clearly different formatting?
- Centrx 17:15, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
_ _ I may just be too tired to parse that sentence, since i am inclined to write long sentences myself. On the other hand, i'm pretty sure some commas and maybe another period or two could go a long way to speeding up my comprehension, no matter how well rested.
_ _ What i can discern immediately is that you assume
  • for no discernable reason many readers with, i think, tangential goals,
  • low cost of meeting what i would think must be disproportionally numerous needs, and
  • "[a?] few more links" where i expect several times as many (see the diff i cite at #A person-heavy dab article);
likewise, you
  • assert "few more links" producing "imperfect clarity" with no connection or desirability that i can see,
  • invoke "clearly different formatting" that seems to refer to nothing i've noticed, and
  • fail to address what seems obvious to me:
  • there are many more articles than Dabs, and
  • articles are much more naturally amenable to loose associations,
  • creating a presumption that you are seeking consent to exploit a resource (Dab pages)
  • that can do relatively little to promote your goal, and
  • is more vulnerable to interferance with its narrow and clear goal than is the larger resource (articles).
--Jerzy•t 09:08, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

We may have to take steps to further distance this policy from that of TLAs, which are developing a significant subculture with its own rules.—Wahoofive (talk) 04:37, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think that we should take steps to create a common policy with the TLAs. I do not like to see subcultures emerging on the wiki. We've done quite enough to confuse new readers and editors without de facto partitioning the wiki into autonomous enclaves.
--Smack (talk) 05:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I've made a proposal for addressing abbreviations (not just TLAs) as a group at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#New_abbreviation-related_sister_project_templates. My feeling is that we can successfully address abbreviation-based disambiguations and "word"-based disambiguations as distinct but related beasts and not be drawn into a fractal balkanization of the wiki into subcultures. So far, I've had no (0) responses so either a) noone knows about the proposal, b) I've shocked people into silence, c) people are wondering how to apply a straighjacket via internet protocol (SoIP), or d) not enough time has passed for folks to digest the proposal. The Proposal might be better placed elsewhere and it can certainly be moved, either by me or someone else.
    Courtland 13:04, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
I don't believe you can separate "word dab pages" from "acronym dab pages", since many combinations of letters are both acronyms and words, depending on the context.
RoySmith 02:36, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't mean to be facetious, but have you taken a look at Category:Disambiguation lately? Consider page two where the "A's" get going in earnest and let me know if you still feel there are not many many abbreviations that can be treated separately from words, at least in English.
    Courtland 02:53, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
That is true, but also take a look at ABC, which I will clean up pending a stalled discussion on the talk page.
--Smack (talk) 01:39, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Place-related dab pages - an experimental organization

I've applied an experimental organizational style to the disambiguation page Rochester where the majority of the target articles are cities in the United States (not all, though). In order to provide some decision support information for readers to choose a link I've added categories of size to segregate the populated places. This is only an experiment and I wanted to get some feedback on it so it can be agreed whether or not this is an appropriate organizational method for long lists of similarly named places. I'm wholly open to re-organizing along lines of, say, hierarchical place (i.e. by state) or strict alphabetical or other options. Thanks for taking a look and providing some input here. Courtland 13:12, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

My preference (as a minimalist) would be to pull the Rochester Institute of Technology and Rochester Products Division entries out of the place names section, and I'd also get rid of the categories by size, and just fold all the US locations together, alphabetized by state. Perhaps, it would make sense to add the pops in parens after each entry, thus:
sort of like you would put years of birth-death after a person's name. --RoySmith 15:44, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
I also vote that the Institute of Tech and the GM division don't belong on this dab page at all. I don't have a problem with the organization by size, though. You need some sort of organization, although alpha by state as Roy suggests is okay too. This MOS is intentionally nonprescriptive on organizing principles. Roy's suggestion of putting the population or each one would make it too difficult to maintain, though.—Wahoofive (talk) 16:05, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
on maintenance of populations: information would typically be from census (for U.S.) done every 10 years, so continuous update would not be typical. on birth-death similarity: that was what got me thinking of something along these lines, the lifespan data included for biographical references. on places and organizations on the same page: I did originally have these items segregated from the rest but an editor came along and agglomerated them as a way of indicating that the organizations were associated with the city under which they appear. Should there be a Rochester (cities) or Rochester (population centers) or similar page to allow segregation of one class of uses from the other? Courtland 16:37, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
Putting "Roch, NY" & "RIT" together is just plain wrong, bcz their natural association is irrelevant to 99.9% of dab'ns. "Rochester" as a nickname for RIT is plausible, and would qualify it for the Dab under the guidelines, but well separated from the cities and towns. Rochester offices, and Rochester-derived names, of organizations are probably not Dab'n-relevant, even in the See also "section", and in any case must pass a notability test. I'd probably trash any that lack mentions in the article on the city.
--Jerzy•t 06:33, 2005 August 26 (UTC)
The style guide says that "the primary purpose of the disambiguation page is to help people find the page they want quickly and easily" (emphasis added). Because most people don't know the population of the place they are looking for (and that may be why they are looking), they will have to scan down the list to try to find it. Organizing in an alphabetical (by country, then state) manner allows for quickly finding the location, or seeing that the location isn't on the dab page at all. Having an article like Rochester (cities) would be ok if there were a lot of other things to disambiguate. Counties and townships generally have their own disambiguation pages (e.g. Washington County, Washington Township). —Mike 23:33, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
_ _ The population is helpful to editors (i'll say more) but (as pointed out) not to readers (and a big maint burden), so the pop is a distraction & should not be visible to the reader. If we thot every reader knew the state they had in mind, then alpha by state would be ideal -- but in fact i doubt many readers will type "Rochester" planning to then slog thru the dab looking for the state name: they should type "Rochester NY" and hope for a rdr to "Rochester, New York". The dab is for cases like Fargo (movie), which is set almost entirely in Minnesota. Readers seeing "Fargo" in a context with, say, "Minneapolis" and "Brainard" will key "Fargo", note that Fargo, Kentucky is remote from the context and try Fargo, North Dakota even if they've never watched The Electric Company.
_ _ That implies that having big cities first (high pop surely correlates with high WP traffic better than any other practical org'n we can come up with) has some value, and we do no harm in endorsing the maint of that organization by those who want to bother. (Hopefully those adding places without any pop info at hand will put them at the bottom of the list. But it's hard to imagine what kind of violation of this organization would merit an RfC!) The rendered page should be in order of decreasing pop, but not display the pops. Instead, the markup should look like this:
*<!-- 2000: 200k --> [[Rochester, New York]]
*<!-- 2000: 50k --> [[Rochester, Minnesota]]
*<!-- 2000: 300 --> [[Rochester, Kentucky]]
and editors who find the order worth their attention will conscientiously revert changes from "200k" to "220k" (to keep it clear that more than one significant figure is just an unecessary distraction to the editors, since which city wins a closer race than that is of insignificant moment) but more than likely not bother to update with new census figures, since changes of order will be rare.
_ _ I strongly endorse the largest-first org'n, not bcz it bcz it's the best (tho i think it is), but bcz it is reasonable, and it pre-empts 15 really bad organizations that someone will try out if there's no sign of a clear one being in place.
_ _ Finally, i hope everyone agrees that duplicating pop figures is of so little utility to Dab'n that that info should be gotten from the article, rather than clutter the dab page with them.
--Jerzy•t 06:33, 2005 August 26 (UTC)
I do not think the singularly low size of Rochester, Kentucky warrants its placement alongside the most important Rochester, New York and above the 50,000+ population municipalities. - Centrx 15:27, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
that was on the page before I arrived; I did not add it and I agree. Courtland 01:11, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Sample disambiguation article

I think a sample disabiguation article, perhaps using "Blah blahs" would be useful in quickly determining a style aspect that you are not familar with. Has anything like this existed before?--Commander Keane 12:25, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

That's a great idea. The same page could have several examples using different approaches. —Wahoofive (talk) 00:07, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
A gallery of dab-pages that exist, copied at a particular stage of development and annotated, as opposed to an artificial construct I think would be a better approach. Courtland 01:16, August 6, 2005 (UTC)
Sounds great. Nominations are now open.—Wahoofive (talk) 05:19, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
I've made organizational changes below to make clearer what the "proposed" examples are versus the "accepted" examples. In so doing, I deleted a couple of comments around examples I proposed that didn't pass muster (and comments from Wahoofive on why they weren't the best examples); see here for the talk-page version prior to these changes. Courtland 12:41, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Positive examples

Negative examples

Proposed examples

A person-heavy dab article (John Taylor)

John Taylor (original revision in question; recently improved version) was cited as a good example of a person-heavy dab article in Talk Archive 1. Courtland 02:36, 25 August 2005 (UTC) (additions to this intro Courtland 12:27, 27 August 2005 (UTC))

_ _ That would be in the archive's discussion of 2005 May 2 thru 26, it seems (tho one heavy participant's sigs are un-time-stamped, and enough to derail my intention to specify the exact revisions referred to). My reading is that the sectioning & use of TOC directives found approval, but no one commented on its verbosity nor its use of multi lks per entry, in, e.g., the final revision of that period.
_ _ I have cleared out what i consider its promiscuous lks & "micro-bios (i.e., telling more of the story than furthers dab'n, as if the Dab page needed a little interesting detail beyond the Dab'g detail). I think the result is more of "a good example of a person-heavy dab [page]". I invite comment on the difference.
_ _ Even if my approach turns out to be more restrictive than most editors', i am hopeful that i've landed us a lot closer to the meaning most of us assign to "only enough descriptive information that the reader can distinguish between different people with the same name" and "unless [further lks] may be essential to help the reader determine which page they are looking for". (While this is not WP:POINT -- i believe every change i made is a good one -- my focus did not extend to the issue of red lks; rather than distract from less controversial aspects, i limited my rd-lk removal to dropping the rd lk where there was a mentioning article to lk to instead. I actually added a rd lk, to the final entry, to replace the ext'l lk that i suppressed into a comment (for use by editors considering starting the corresponding article): IMO, an ext'l lk should never occur on a dab: if it were urgent enuf to be on a Dab page, it would be urgent enuf to rate a stub instead, and the purpose of our ext lks is to provide access to detail (e.g. verification, or unencyclopedic throroughness), not to substitute for viable articles.
_ _ It may also be worth mentioning that i duplicated one entry, slightly modified as to order of the information. That puts in two groups a person who qualifies for each of them; i recommend that approach over trying to tune the groups titles to deal avoid the overlaps among them that keeping the usual groupings would force.
--Jerzy•t 05:28, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

Capital letters at start of each point

It reads

"Start each entry with a bullet (an asterisk in wiki markup) and a capital letter"

I think it could allow easier navigation if only proper nouns were capitalised, and other words left starting lower-case. This makes sense, since the sentence has already started, eg: "Colour may refer to: colour" makes more sense than "Colour may refer to: Colour". Is there any oppostion to this capitalisation rule changing? --Commander Keane 14:03, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes. Most of this MOS, like other WP policies, was developed to codify and standardize what was already being done. Almost all existing pages use the capital letters. It wouldn't be worth it to change 9,000 dab pages just for this. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:59, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • opposed The standard title format in Wikipedia is to start with a capital letter, regardless of whether the word/phrase is a proper noun or not. The standard in place in Wikipedia should be reflected in the disambiguation style guideline, in my opinion. Courtland 01:31, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Time out?

It is my impression that there is more arguing going on here than collaborating. May I suggest everybody take a short break to let their wikistress level moderate a bit? --RoySmith 15:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Your impression possibly, I think everyone is being constructive, but if you think I have wikistress, let me know. --Commander Keane 10:25, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Be instead of Mean

Is there anyway this style guide could encourage the phrase "Something may be" or "Something is" instead of "Something may mean"? Wikipedia is, after all, not a dictionary. -Acjelen 21:37, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I often use "Something may refer to". I don't know if the guide should discourage "may mean"; however, it could at least be removed from the examples. Eugene van der Pijll 21:43, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
The guide doesn't actually prescribe any wording; I'd be fine if you want to change the examples. "may refer to" is good. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:03, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Keep in mind that mean doesn't just mean "To be used to convey; denote" as in defining a word dictionary style. It also means "To intend to convey or indicate" and "To have as a purpose or an intention; intend" (as in I didn't mean to crush that egg, or I mean to read an article on quantum physics). For this reason I think mean is actually the perfect word to use. I thought I read somewhere that "may refer to" should be avoided, but don't remember why -- jiyTalk 00:26, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
This is one of the very very few things which I think needn't be prescribed. As long as it's something on those lines, and the subject Something is capitalised and the first word in the sentence fragment, and of course the leading line's not overly long, other lines will work fine. "may refer to", "may be", "may mean" and even "could refer to" etc. are all fine by me.
I think it's clear in this context that the "mean" has no dictionary connotations. Neonumbers 05:48, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Regarding this, is there really any reason to change the leading line to be more verbose than it needs to be?
—jiy (talk) 07:07, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
Exactly. Two words and three syllables (re-fer to) where one word and one syllable (mean) could state the same meaning looks pretentious and wastes neuronal processing cycles.
--Jerzy•t 08:07, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

Personally, I'd generally use "be" instead of "mean" or "refer to". -- User:Docu

This would be poor English. The word that the disambiguation page disambiguates is not any of the lines listed or the articles referred to. Words have meanings, or they refer to other words or meanings, but they have no substance of being in themselves. Furthermore, many disambiguation pages contain items that do not so directly correspond to the main term. In pop, for instance, it could never be said that "pop" is "Mayan Calendar"", or that the term "pop" is equivalent to the term "father". - Centrx 02:15, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Those examples aren't very good. 'Pop' doesn't mean Mayan Calendar, nor does it refer to Mayan Calendar. 'Pop' is the first month in that calendar. I have corrected the referenced disambiguation page to reflect how it should appear. 'Mayan Calendar' should never have been a lead link on that bulleted item. Also, my 'pop' is my 'father'. Isn't yours? Therefore they are equal. (Of course 'pop' is slang, and 'father' is formal, but we're not really talking about that kind of equivalence.)
Your argument breaks down in that most dab pages tend to be just a little ambiguous about what they are talking about—the term or the actual item. For example, if we say Pop can mean, one can infer from 'can mean' that 'pop' is probably just the word; if we say Pop may also be, one might infer we were talking about the physical presence behind the word. If we were more explicit and said The word 'pop'... or The term 'pop'..., it becomes much clearer that the word 'pop' isn't a soft drink, but it does mean that. On the other hand we can say A 'pop' is or A 'pop' may be a soft drink. —Mike 03:16, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
My "pop" isn't my father; it's the can (or more specifically the contents of the can) of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke I'm drinking as I write this. My father is my "dad". I have never used the word "pop" to refer to my father, but I realize it can mean "father".
~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:46, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
_ _ Sorry this is long; part of that is my fault, and part is that when people are stubbornly confused, it takes longer to make clear sense.
_ _ Centrx is right on this, tho the abstractions invite confusion, and tho we could quibble over whether the sin in question is "poor English" (ungrammatical) or "poor logic" (failing to reflect the real function of the same symbols in different contexts).
_ _ It is false to say that the first occurrence of the term being dab'd is or may be any of the people or things specified in the cases below. The subject of the first sentence is something different from any of them, and this is clearest in cases like "yellow". Without trying to write a real Dab for "yellow", such a dab could in theory begin as follows
Yellow may mean:
Yellow, the range of colors perceived by the human eye when irradiated in turn with single-wavelength light of each wavelength between xxx and yyy millimicrometers.
Yellow, cowardly, fearful, or otherwise under the influence of disabling emotion
Yellow, to become more more yellow in color, from a light color by oxidation, or from a shade of green or orange by bleaching
_ _ Note that the three entries respectively begin with the noun "yellow", the adjective "yellow", and the verb "yellow", and the only "yellow" that can have the same relationship to all three of the entries' lead words is the word "yellow", something distinct from the color, the emotional attribute, and the color-modification phenomenon. Or, more precisely, the character string that is the common spelling of those three words, each of those words being an instance of a different part of speech. (This is highlighted in the entries by the second and third ones beginning with an adjective and verb respectively, and each having intermediate language that bridges each to a noun, since WP article titles are nouns.
_ _ The function of a word is to mean something: to carry out the speakers intention to induce the listener think of (in this case) the color meant, or emotional attribute meant, or process meant, by the particular word the speaker intended and hopefully (by means of the context) implied. The function of the spelling or character string in this case is to specify the only element, common to the three words, namely one spelling. It is that commonality which produces the need, in light of multiple meanings, to disambiguate.
_ _ (We could in theory lessen the confusion by putting "yellow" in quotes or italics in the lead line where we currently bold it, a convention used to distinguish the string from any concept that the string is the spelling for. I think it would be cluttery and ugly enough, along with the bolding, to fall short of being an improvement.)
_ _ We also could clarify using "may be", as long as we started each entry with "Yellow, a word meaning ...". (Not a made-up bad idea, but in fact, similar to language that i removed from one dab in the last week or two.) But that stretches the period of abstraction out longer than necessary; better to get back to the parallel but simpler concrete language as quickly as feasible.
_ _ Mike is right that many, perhaps most cases entail much less cost in using "may be", but only because the cognitive dissonance evoked by our use is less when all the entries are nouns: people are less likely to notice we have said something illogical then. In truth, Mike's logic calls for additional words:
The referant of an instance of using pop may be...
_ _ Writing "...may mean" is always correct, and using the same correct wording in every dab (rather than a different wording where we can get away with it) has the advantage of keeping pedants like me from screaming when we see "Yellow may be...", and keeping normal readers from being slightly distracted, by a corner of their mind (that you can think of as the pedant-al lobe) from screaming subliminally in their normal ears. The best plan is to always use the same (correct) wording rather than trying to shorten or hide the abstraction involved in the cases where you've got a good chance; the pedantal lobe will be happier, and in fact so will more folksy parts of the mind that just appreciate the mental shortcuts that sticking to the same wording in (superficially) different cases permits.
_ _ The examples should all use "may mean" but not put emphasis on it; if editors think of it as just "local custom" rather than something they need to get their heads around the multi-level underlying meanings of, we'll all be happier.
--Jerzy•t 08:07, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

I took the step of implementing the full guideline as it is written, not the bolded emphasis, by adding an "or" to the proper example(s) line where a second wikilink is introduced according to the guideline that it "help the reader determine which page they are looking for". I hope that reducing the stricture of the guideline by adding a "relaxed" example is sufficiently acceptable to folks that the {{dubious}} template can be removed. If this is not sufficient, then could we specifically discuss what would be a sufficient change to allow us to reach a non-dubious condition for the guideline? Thanks. Courtland 03:55, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

What we for sure need is a better example than Dark Star, which is a link to a dab page. —Wahoofive (talk) 05:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
The quotation marks added to the primary link in the example are of a type appropriate for indicating the primary link, but I think there ought to be some discussion about whether this is the best formatting to do that. Quotation marks seem to be an uncommon method. - Centrx 15:14, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
The following is a quote from a punctuation guide published in 1960 that I often use for reference (the emphasis is mine): "Quotations marks are used to enclose the titles of magazine articles, chapters of books, names of songs, titles of poems, and other titles". Courtland 21:51, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
If you mean that the reason for putting quotation marks around "Dark Star" is because it is the name of a song, then this is a poor example to have in the Manual of Style for someone reading may get the impression that putting quotation marks around the primary link is the standard, suggested procedure. If you mean that the reason for putting quotation marks around the primary link is because it refers to an encyclopedia article and putting quotation marks around the article name is common, recommended style in the English language, that applies to standard English works which from the outside of an encyclopedia refer to the inside of that encyclopedia rather than to interlinking within this wiki encyclopedia. There may still be good reason for it to be standard practice, but its recommendation in the many styleguides of the English language is not sufficient as the sole reason. - Centrx 02:02, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't know how I can be clearer .. the quotation marks are there because it is the title of a song. Why make it more complicated than that? If you think it is a poor example, replace it. If you think this is an uncommon stylistic weirdness, which it seems you do, I don't know what to say to that but that I disagree and that I'm no grammarian myself. Courtland 02:19, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Canterbury (disambiguation)

Could someone take a look at Canterbury (disambiguation) and edit it if neccessary . I'm not too sure that it's correct in its present form. --Commander Keane 15:16, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Correct isn't the goal. Effective is the goal, and I'd say it's excellent as is. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:47, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Template:Reporting mark

Template:Reporting mark is often found in disambiguation pages, but it adds extra wikilinks and bolding, which is distracting. Eg: CAD (disambiguation) has "(reporting mark CAD)". Do you think it would be ok to replace this template on dab pages with the equivalent text, eg "(AAR reporting mark CAD)"? --Commander Keane 04:15, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Since lots of pages use that template, many of them TLAs, I'd suggest raising the issue with some of the editors on those railroad pages before getting bold. —Wahoofive (talk) 04:00, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
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