Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation

Primary topic and age or derivation arguments

A common argument (seen most recently at Talk:Engelbert Humperdinck but also at Talk:Anne Hathaway and others in the past) is that a particular topic is primary because the other use(s) came later, and sometimes additionally because the later topic was named in honor of the earlier one. This argument has no basis in policy or practice, yet it continues to be brought forth. Is this something we should look at making clearer in this guideline? Powers ^T 16:07, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Winston Churchill is a good counter to that argument. But I would love to (re)add the criteria that do not factor into primary topic consideration, except inasmuch as they impact the existing criteria (usage and notability/educational value): age, derivation, size, population, recentness, etc., in and of themselves do not figure into it. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:30, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree. Ideally, the guideline describes the actual practices used in determining primary topic. It would be inappropriate to edit the guidelines to suit the preferences of individual groups of editors. The fact is that derivation in various forms is a consideration in many discussions. We could perhaps attempt to summarize or describe the limitations of using such arguments. That is, as far as I'm concerned, derivation alone should never warrant placing a topic as primary that fails primary topic by other criteria. Where it is occasionally a valid consideration is to support arguments that a disambiguation page should be at the base name, even if there is a topic other than the "original use" that might otherwise meet criteria for primary topic. older ≠ wiser 17:06, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand your objection. I'm not suggesting changing anything "to suit [my] preferences"; I'm suggesting that what we have already is insufficiently clear, as an argument that has no basis in policy or practice is still being promulgated by some editors. Powers ^T 00:20, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

If it is successfully being used in discussions, then perhaps the guidelines do need to be updated. There is nothing in policy that prohibits it from being used. That you don't like it being promulgated by some editors is not a reason to change the guidelines to discourage its use. older ≠ wiser 01:01, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

It's an argument that is rarely successful, as far as I can tell, and the few exceptions where it has succeeded, like at Corvette, can be written off as either WP:IAR or something to be rectified in the future. I don't think it has been successful often enough to warrant reflection in the policy, and I agree that adding more clarification on this point is a good idea. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I also don't understand that argument. If whatever is being used in discussions is to be fair game, the entirety of the guideline should be removed and replaced with "whatever editors feel like bandying about this time, on any given page". Lousy guideline, IMO, and I'd rather provide guidance such as hey, look at the actual usage and educational value, not the editors' idea of what readers should be looking for (who cares that everyone is looking for article A, A was named for the never-sought article B, so article B is primary! That'll learn 'em!). Plus, Winston Churchill. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:57, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

That's not how it works and you know it. Guidelines describe practices that have community support. If a particular rationale is used repeatedly, that would appear to be an indication of community support. Revising guidelines to deprecate the use of such a rationale because you don't like it, is wrong. older ≠ wiser 03:35, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually I'm supporting how I think it works: communicate to other editors that simple age or derivation is not how current consensus for determining primary topics goes, and using them in ignorance of the guidelines is wrong -- if you're using them for WP:IAR, fine (with a reason to ignore the rules), or if it actually is coming up beyond isolated cases among editors who are not familiar with these guidelines, then we can reflect that new consensus. Until then, editors using those arguments in discussions despite the guidelines should be discouraged, and explicitly so in the guidelines. Analogously, if a bunch of AfD discussions start using WP:IDONTLIKEIT (and they do), that's a reason to clarify the guidelines to indicate that that's wrong (and they have been, long ago), not an indication that WP:IDONTLIKEIT is acceptable. -- JHunterJ (talk) 04:51, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Or, in other words, using the criteria listed instead of age and derivation does have community support, and the guidelines should clarify that since apparently they are not always understood that way. -- JHunterJ (talk) 04:52, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

And conveniently pretend that there is not any disagreement. Sweet. older ≠ wiser 13:39, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Tell me, Bkonrad, then why do we have guidelines at all, if we can't make sure they accurately reflect current consensus? Powers ^T 18:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

And where is consensus if there is disagreement? older ≠ wiser 19:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Isolated disagreement is not indicative of a lack of consensus. Powers ^T 01:04, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Persistent or isolated. Guess it depends on your perspective. I'd say the amount of discussion on the matter indicates there is not a very strong consensus, if any, to exclude considerations as as you propose. older ≠ wiser 02:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Isolated persistence does not equate to a lack of consensus. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:58, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

"Isolated persistence" sounds like an oxymoron. If by it you mean that the persistence is by isolated individuals, I think a review of past discussions show a range of people expressing similar concerns. older ≠ wiser 03:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I do not pretend there is no disagreement. I recognize that the disagreement is not a new consensus, not a new lack of former consensus, in the Wikipedia usage of "consensus". -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:19, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, so my point is that it is inappropriate to revise the guidelines to favor one's own preference in matters where there is disagreement. older ≠ wiser 03:02, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Clarification of what the guidelines already say is not the same as revising the guidelines to say something different. Age and derivation have not been criteria, and are not criteria, and making that exclusion explicit doesn't change that. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:58, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Some editors conflate age or derivation with arguments about importance. While I'd likely often agree with you about specific cases in that age or derivation alone is seldom an good indicator that a topic is a primary topic. I think there are a significant number of experienced editors who do see age or derivation as being stronger indicators of PT than we might. And besides, I tend to agree with other that while age or derivation alone is not sufficient to establish a primary topic, it may be a factor to consider in determining whether some other topic is primary or if a disambiguation page should be at the base name. older ≠ wiser 23:59, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguating when the disambiguator is ambiguous

Nice section title, isn't it? Here's the situation: I came across a dab page where several similarly-named school articles included the city to disambiguate; i.e., School (City). So far, so good. A couple of them, though, used the city and state to disambiguate, even though disambiguating with just the city would make each of the school articles uniquely titled. Further complicating things is that some of the ambiguous cities were in the US, where we automatically include the state in articles about the cities, and some of them were in countries that have no such automatic disambiguation policy. When I moved the US ones to School (City) for consistency with the rest, someone came to my talkpage and claimed there were guidelines that said when US cities are used to disambiguate, we use "City, State".

So my questions are: 1) In general, when a disambiguator includes a topic that is ambiguous on its own, but otherwise would sufficiently disambiguate, can we use just the ambiguous part of it? 2) If we can, do other naming conventions/project guidelines override that? Interested in your thoughts. P.S. The page at issue is Salesian College. Dohn joe (talk) 22:14, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Our convention for disambiguating places in the U.S. is to use the city and state for clarity. I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere. Powers ^T 00:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I know that's the convention for articles about the places themselves. But what about when they're just being used to disambiguate something else? The example here was Salesian College (Farnborough) vs. Salesian High School (New Rochelle, New York). The first school is located in Farnborough, Hampshire (note the disambiguation), but in the school article, only "Farnborough" is used, whereas in the second, "city, state" is used even though "New Rochelle" alone was sufficient to disambiguate. So this isn't about the city articles themselves - does that clarify the issue? Dohn joe (talk) 00:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I wasn't clear. Salesian College and Salesian High School are both "places", and that is the sense which I meant when I used the word. I did not mean to restrict the meaning of the word "place" to just "communities". Powers ^T 18:51, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

The convention to disambiguate cities with state never had consensus support since the half dozen or so people agreed to implement it, but we never had consensus to stop following it either. So we definitely never had consensus support for including the state as a disambiguator. Including the state when it's not needed is certainly contrary to WP:PRECISION. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Just quickly, the answer to Q1 is definitely yes. A good example of this is the thousands of articles that use "(footballer)" as disambiguation. Jenks24 (talk) 01:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

That was perhaps too quickly, since Footballer redirects to Football player, an article, not a dab page, so "footballer" is not ambiguous. I can't think of an example where the disambiguator is the title of a dab page (or is a redirect to a dab page).

So I think my answer to Q1 is no, since the disambiguator must be a primary topic itself, or at least it should not be an ambiguous title which is, or redirects to, a dab page. But note that that means that using just a U.S. cityname as a disambiguator is perfectly acceptable as long as cityname is either the title of an article (e.g., San Francisco), or redirects to one (e.g., Carmel-by-the-Sea). But, yeah, if the city is truly ambiguous, as in, say Rosemont, it probably should be disambiguated itself to be used as a disambiguator. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:42, 21 December 2011 (UTC) Revised (see below). --Born2cycle (talk) 02:00, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

In my defence, a) football player is really a WP:CONCEPTDAB and b) it only recently became an article (October 30) :) Jenks24 (talk) 09:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

So, for the examples at hand, Salesian College (Farnborough) should be moved to Salesian College (Farnborough, Hampshire), because Farnborough is a dab page? Dohn joe (talk) 01:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Oy. Well, per what I just said off the top of my head, yes, but now that I think about this some more, no. What's important is uniqueness in the given context - and the given context here is topics named "Salesian College". So, if there is only one "Salesian College" to which Farnborough can apply, then, yes, that's all that's required. You need to disambiguate the disambiguator further only if more than one Salesian College is in a city named Farnborough.

So, I'm striking what I said above and am restating here.

So my answer to Q1 is yes, the disambiguator can be an ambiguous name itself, since the disambiguator needs to be unique only in the context of the name being disambiguated, not in all of Wikipedia. But if the disambiguator applies to more than one of the uses of the name being disambiguated, then it does need to be disambiguated further. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:00, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I found an example... Whiz Kids (Ford). Note that Whiz Kids is a dab page, listing over half a dozen uses. One of the uses is associated with the Ford Motor Company, and is disambiguated with Ford, even though Ford is a dab page itself. That's because in the context of "uses of 'Whiz Kids'", "Ford" alone distinguishes one use from the rest, and that's all that is required of a disambiguator. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Another example: Spring Hill, New South Wales (Orange). Clearly "orange" is ambiguous (color, fruit), and yet here, int this context, it's a perfectly adequate disambiguator for Spring Hill, New South Wales. But now that I found that one, I see that the only other use of "Spring Hill, New South Wales", Spring Hill, New South Wales (Wollongong), is now a redlink, so Spring Hill, New South Wales (Orange) should probably be moved to Spring Hill, New South Wales, but it's still a useful example, I think. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:27, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Why School (City) format? Why not to name Salesian High School (New York) when there are no other schools of the same name in the state? --Kusunose 03:08, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Depends on the natural disambiguator. I would support state as preference without any other reason being advanced, or even [[Template:Null|Salesian High School (US). But I wouldn't go to [[Template:Null|Salesian High School (North America). Rich Farmbrough, 15:34, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

Engelbert Humperdinck

Fans of disambiguation may want to participate in the heated debate at Talk:Engelbert Humperdinck#Requested move. Is disambiguation really necessary when there are only two topics, neither of which is primary? Thanks, Bazonka (talk) 09:34, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, if there's ambiguity with no primary topic, a dab goes at the base name, even if there are only two topics for the ambiguous title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:29, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree, but not everyone else does. The opinions of others at Engelbert's talkpage would be welcome. Regards, Bazonka (talk) 15:15, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the debate a few topics below is entirely about this question, and while not vitriolic, it's certainly heated. As for E. H., it's a no-brainer: Probably 99% of people over the age of 30 in the English-speaking world have heard of the singer, and probably less than 0.01% of them have heard of his namesake, a minor arts-historical figure who really seems to be remembered in large part because of his funny name. Two clearly notable operas and some more minor ones, all in German, but his magnum opus is simply a musical folktale retelling. Just being earlier doesn't make him the primary topic, even in music. An obvious counterexample would be Eddy Merckx vs. Eddy Merckx (billiards player). They're both world champions in their respective notable sports, both also have received Belgium's highest civilian award as national sports heroes, and they equally satisfy WP:ATHLETE, making them seem equal and suggesting a disambiguation fight (one that I actually brought, a long time ago, before I understood WP:DAB better). But the cyclist, the elder and possibly the namesake of the latter, is way, way, way more recognized, with literally thousands of articles written about him, over a long career, while the cueist is still active and not globally known (yet). In 50 years we might look back and say the younger guy is actually more notable, depending on what happens with the rest of his life. We have that kind of hindsight already in the case of the Humperdincks, and the answer is pretty clear, in favor of the younger E. H. (on English Wikipedia; on de:wiki, the other way around, almost certainly). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:37, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation of two topics

A recent discussion at Talk:Engelbert Humperdinck#Requested move looked into a situation where two topics exist with the same name, but neither seems to be the Primary Topic. Unfortunately, the discussion was closed inconclusively. However, a few interesting points were raised:

1. Should WP:TWODABS apply in this situation? Correctly applying it in its current form means that a dab page should be created, but some people felt that this was counter-productive:

• If we have two articles, Foo and Foo (context), each with a hatnote pointing to the other, then people searching for the first article who type "Foo" will find it straight away; those looking for the second article will have to make an extra click, on the hatnote of the first article.
• If we have Foo as a disambiguation page, and articles Foo (context 1) and Foo (context 2), then all people typing "Foo" will have to make a second click to find their article. So, it is argued that disambiguation makes things more cumbersome for those searching for the first article, and no different for people searching for the second. However, if neither article is the Primary Topic, then this approach means that people looking for the second article just have to load a dab page, not an inappropriate article.

2. The definition of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC seems to be inadequate/unclear.

• What exactly is meant by "educational value", when should it apply, and by how much?
• Stability should be a factor in determining primacy (e.g. a flash-in-the-pan movie may generate a lot of web action following its release, but not be of long-term interest). Stability is covered by the Importance clause ("enduring notability"), but not by the Usage clause. Should this be addressed?

3. Should the bar for determining the Primary Topic be lowered when there are only two topics?

Personally, I feel that no change needs to be made to WP:TWODABS, although perhaps the guidance could be more clearly worded to show that dab pages must be used in this situation. I have no strong opinion regarding point 2. And I do not feel that the Primary Topic bar should be altered. Bazonka (talk) 09:32, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

If there is an article at the base name for a title (or the base name redirects to an article), that is the primary topic for that title. Therefore, if there is no primary topic for an ambiguous title, the title must lead to a disambiguation page. Yes, a disambiguation page means that every reader will need to click twice, but if neither article is primary, that is the proper behavior.

You are absolutely right about the lack of useful clarity for "educational value". The addition of that criteria has not helped bring consensus to any primary topic discussion that I'm aware of, and has instead only helped increase the rancor at primary topic discussions, as editors who favor primaryness for a topic that readers are not seeking and will be surprised to find claim educational value with no consensus for it either. IMO, educational value should be reined in so that it applies only to things that no reasonable English-speaking reader would not be surprised to find at the base name (e.g., Apple leading to a fruit instead of a technology company), and not applied to topics that are dear to the hearts of some segments of the English-speaking population but not generally known (e.g., Engelbert Humperdinck). Bemoan the sorry state of education or "kids today" as needed, but Wikipedia is not a schoolmarm.

Usage can change, so primaryness can change. One editor's "flash in the pan" (used for popular topics that he has no use for) is another editor's subject for modern cinematic dissertation. If we can put some guidelines in for it (needing references beyond simple movie reviews, awards, journal citations, or reliable sources a year after release), that may help.

IMO, the "bar" can't be changed. Either there is a primary topic for a title or there's not. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Agree. I think there is a subtle flaw in the premise of this section that confuses the issue, namely that in the Engelbert Humperdinck case "neither seems to be the Primary Topic". Disagreement about which of two topics is primary is not the same as consensus that there is no primary topic. There are undoubtedly many thousands of two-entry dab pages that are completely uncontroversial because of consensus that there is no primary topic (example: Abdiel Colberg). In the Humperdinck case some people think the composer is primary, some the singer is probably primary, some think one or the other is primary without specifying which, and only some agree that "neither seems to be primary topic". WP:TWODABS says "If there are only two topics to which a given title might refer, and one is the primary topic, then a disambiguation page is not needed" [emphasis added]. So TWODABS can be correctly applied in its current form to the Humperdinck case if one believes, as some do, that there is a primary topic. It doesn't apply only if one believes that there is no primary topic. Station1 (talk) 20:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm personally uncomfortable with Primary Topic, because it's permissive with the kind of thing WikiProject Disambiguation is working against: links going to places the author didn't intend. As a case in point, I had a rummage around in the links pointing to Engelbert Humperdinck and found over 10% were intended to be for the singer rather than the composer. At the moment, there's no guidance saying that nothing ought to link directly to an ambiguous title, even if it's the primary topic. That's a problem because the various tools don't regard linking to a primary topic as something worthy of disambiguating. But if one goes through the entire list of "What links here" for a primary topic and corrects all those that want to refer to the other terms, how does one maintain that "What links here" list? The only thing for it is to correct every article that links to the primary topic so that they either point to

1. the disambiguated redirect to the primary topic (i.e. explicitly linking to the primary topic via a redirect such as Engelbert Humperdinck (composer)); or
2. the intended alternative topic, such as Engelbert Humperdinck (singer)

leaving no links to the bare primary topic. Which makes me wonder, if that's the kind of effort you have to go through, and the tools don't support it, why allow Primary Topics?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Josh Parris (talk • contribs) 22:23, 27 December 2011‎

Because some ambiguous things have a topic that is primary: sought more than all others combined, and sought much more than any other. There would be little point in sending people to Science (disambiguation) rather than to Science when they enter "Science" in the search box, and similarly for William Shakespeare or Libya. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it's a useful concept. But far too often when there are just two topics, people insist on making one primary, like on the Engelbert H thing; sometimes, like there, there are even arguments about which one, which would appear to be strong evidence that neither is primary. Yet we tolerate it. These are sort of situations where maybe not a "ban" but a strong recommendation against picking a primary topic would be a great improvement. Dicklyon (talk) 22:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I respond in sympathy with Station1's contribution, and with Josh Parris and Dicklyon. And I thank Bazonka for raising an important issue.

Station1, I'm no fan of the doctrine of "primary topic" as it is currently constructed. I think it does a great deal of harm, along with other ill-considered provisions at WP:TITLE (see discussion here, for example, and in the sections preceding that). But if we accept its utility for the moment, I agree with you: "Disagreement about which of two topics is primary is not the same as consensus that there is no primary topic," but also: "TWODABS can be correctly applied in its current form to the Humperdinck case if one believes, as some do, that there is a primary topic. It doesn't apply only if one believes that there is no primary topic." Disagreement over which is "the primary topic" (precariously predicated on the assumption that there is one) is strong evidence there is not a primary topic.

The Humperdinck case is one of several recently that illustrate how complex it all becomes, both in elucidation of principles and in applying them. The course of the discussion there makes an interesting study. Major reforms are needed at WP:TITLE, with fresh input from the wider community. It just isn't working, and the key provisions do not reflect consensus with anything like the claimed robustness.

Noetica^Tea? 22:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Responding to no one in particular, it's long been my opinion that the guideline should have a stronger defaulting to a disambiguation page. Some have argued that because a disambiguation page always "the wrong page" and forces everyone to go through an extra click, in cases where there are exactly two approximately equal ambiguously titled topics it is preferable to arbitrarily select one to be primary so that approximately half of readers arrive at their desired target and the other half are still only one click away via a hatnote. I don't like this rationale for a couple of reasons. First, disambiguation in my opinion is not primarily about optimizing the number clicks that a reader has to make. Second, as noted above, having an arbitrarily selected "non-primary" topic at the base title makes it much more difficult to maintain the incoming links to the ambiguous topic. I think the bar for primary topic (regardless of whether there are two or more ambiguous topics) should be relatively high, although not such that any disagreement would disqualify the primary topic. For example, to select a topic I know Noetica and Dicklyon differ with me, I think French Quarter is correctly about the world-famous tourist destination in New Orleans. That there are other "French quarters" doesn't change the dynamics that the vast majority are looking for New Orleans topic. older ≠ wiser 23:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we have to get away from the idea that disambiguation pages are bad or that there is always a primary topic. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are bad. They represent our failure to get the reader to the content they want to read. Indeed, having primary topics does make it harder to maintain incoming links. But that's our problem, not our readers', and it's shameful to use editorial convenience as an excuse for sending readers to a disambiguation page. In my opinion, the only reason we should have a two-item disambiguation page is if it is plainly impossible to say that one or the other is the primary topic. That's the solution that serves our readers the best, even if it does make more work for us as editors. Powers ^T 01:22, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

In cases where there is an actual primary target, yes. But I disagree that there is any significant benefit to arbitrarily placing a non-primary topic at a base name under a mis-reading of WP:TWODABS. There is in fact nothing "wrong" with a disambiguation page -- it merely and only indicates that the title is ambiguous. Period. older ≠ wiser 01:32, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

As I said, if it's clear that neither topic is primary, fine. But if there are only two options, there's no reason to be overly strict about what constitutes a primary topic, because we should avoid sending readers to a disambiguation page if at all possible. Powers ^T 01:47, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Why should we avoid this? I do not see that there is an encyclopedic benefit to avoiding disambiguation where the term is ambiguous. Wikiepdia is not a web site and the primary purpose of disambiguation pages is not to optimize web traffic. The web happens to be the primary (but not the only) medium for the encyclopedia, but apart from technical limitations that cannot be avoided I don't think media-specific issues should determine how topics are titled. older ≠ wiser 03:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Why must the base assumption be that there always is a primary topic? Would the readers be better served by accepting the fact that, generally, there may not be a primary topic? Are we doing right by readers by assuming that we know best what they are looking for? Vegaswikian (talk) 03:16, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

One reason there is often a debate over primary topic is that it seems to be based on "what the man in the street would first think of", which is often boiled down editor opinion and googlehits. The problem with that is it is terribly prone to individualism, recentism, sportism and celebrity-ism. There may be a river in Germany called the "Foo" which has existed for centuries, but because "Fred Foo" happened to be a Canadian national hockey manager in the 90s, he gets to be the primary topic. Yet in 20 years time he will be forgotten and tourists will still be flocking in their thousands to the Foo Valley. If we tightened up the definition of "primary topic" it may help to reduce the amount of time wasted in debate. For example, it ought to count for something if the topic is the name-giver to all other subsequent uses, and perhaps more weight could be given to e.g. permanent features rather than people, bands, games and the like that, in many cases, have derived their name from the original. Just a thought. --Bermicourt (talk) 14:35, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the definition of "primary topic" needs to be tightened (particularly the reference to educational value), but I disagree that the derivation of the name should be a factor. This is likely to cause more confusion as it cannot be applied consistently - in some cases it will apply (e.g. Birmingham (UK) vs. Birmingham, Alabama), and in other cases it won't (e.g. Boston, Lincolnshire vs. Boston). Bazonka (talk) 16:26, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

@LtPowers: "Disambiguation pages are bad. They represent our failure to get the reader to the content they want to read." Nonsense: if the name truly is ambiguous, it is not a "failure" to point out the ambiguity. We didn't make it ambiguous; the English language did. If you walk into any library in the English-speaking world and ask the research librarian for help finding information about Mercury, without any other context, the librarian will ask you which "mercury" you mean. That is not a failure on the part of the librarian, it is correctly recognizing an ambiguity that is inherent in the question. In fact, a librarian who didn't ask you which Mercury you meant would be failing to do their job. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:36, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

If our goal is to get a reader to the content they want to read as quickly as possible, any delay represents a failure to reach that goal. In some cases, such as the one you note, it may be unavoidable. To extend your analogy, if you ask the research librarian for help finding information about Englebert Humperdinck, should the librarian say "Which one?" or should the librarian say "Do you mean the composer?" And then consider that the answer might be different since we are not a research librarian. Powers ^T 15:13, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if a direction to go might be the "subtitle" idea (as mentioned at WT:AT#Subtitles in smaller type, though it's been proposed before and quite well received). If the parentheticals were made less prominent, they'd seem to be less of a downside, and people would be happier about including them even if the article is the primary topic (except perhaps in extreme cases like Libya). So we could in some way detach the question of utility as regards primary topics (we want to get people to their sought article as quickly as possible) from the question of how the articles are titled. I mean, we could have Engelbert Humperdinck (composer) and Engelbert Humperdinck (singer), treat all links to plain EH as requiring disambiguation, but also make one of them the primary topic so that people don't get sidetracked to a dab page. Then we can fairly easily switch primary topics if relative traffic volume changes. (This solution doesn't require the smaller subtitles, but I think they would make it more palatable.)--Kotniski (talk) 15:06, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

How would you decide which is the primary topic? Unless it's obvious, this may well be a contentious issue, and so it may often be better to have no primary topic. Bazonka (talk) 16:26, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

It will be less contentious using this solution than it is now, since primary-topic-ness wouldn't affect the article titles, only which article a reader happened to get to first. We would decide on a primary topic in much the same way as we do now, but since it would be reduced to a practical, navigation-assisting choice, and one that could be easily changed at any time, we could probably rely more happily just on page hits and little else. (And in cases where there really is an obvious primary topic that all sane editors will recognize as such, we could still dispense with the disambiguator.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:05, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Template names

I have noticed that some disambiguation templates have been renamed from their established "short" names to longer names, for example Template:Hospitaldis to Template:Hospital disambiguation. This seems pretty pointless to me, given that the established names are well known and listed places like Mediawiki:Disambiguationspage. At least one editor has gone so far as to wheel war today when I restored the original name of the fully-protected Template:Schooldis when it was renamed without any discussion.

Rather than having people randomly rename templates, which are not likely to be on watchlists, we should work out once and for all whether these moves should be done. The main argument for the moves is that editors are somehow not able to look up the meaning of a template when they see it used, but that seems like a very weak argument to me. For example Template:Schooldis has 1,800 uses, and it is not clear why the name that has been established for years is no longer adequate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't it redirect to the new title? Isn't it better to have the more comprehensible name as the actual title of the template page when you view it?--Kotniski (talk) 15:06, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The documentation for the template is usually pretty clear when viewing the actual template; the template name at the top is never going to explain the meaning, unless we rename the template to Template:This is a disambiguation page about hospitals. But we have unlimited space in the documentation to describe the template at length. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:09, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

And how is a newbie going to find that? They will at minimum need to know what a template is, that templates are listed at the bottom of the edit page, that they can click there to go to the template page, and that there will be documentation on the template page. The template name should explain its function in a sensible manner, in as near plain text as makes sense. Historically programmers have had to contend with laziness, memory constraints (I had programs that would only fit in memory with variable names stripped to the minimum), hunt-and-peck typing (and punched cards), tokenisers that don't deal with spaces and other such problems. The resulting shibboleths are not suitable for public consumption. Proof: if they were books would be written without vowels and spaces saving a fortune in paper. The intelligent newbie will correlate semantic hints with page content, the more obscure the hints the fewer will pass the filter "intelligent newbie". Rich Farmbrough, 15:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC).

How is a "newbie" going to have the idea to make a disambiguation page in the first place? New editors see templates all the time (think infoboxes) and they are quickly going to learn that templates have documentation. More likely, a newbie would copy one disambiguation page when making a new one. But changing one abstract template name to another is not going to help a new user in any significant way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:49, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

In so far as I think it matters at all (which it hardly does), I agree with Richard. Since the shorter names still work as transparent redirects, all the advantages seem to be on the side of the more comprehensible name for the template page itself. --Kotniski (talk) 16:07, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

How could this possibly matter the slightest bit, when the redirects like {{schooldis}} still work just fine? There's been a system-wide strong trend over the last two years to consistently using plain-English template names ({{citation needed}}, etc.), even if shortcuts are available for using them ({{fact}}, {{cn}}, etc.). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed clarification: No consensus for primary topic means the page becomes a disambiguation page

The guideline current reads:

In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage and one of primary importance. In such a case, consensus determines which article, if either, is the primary topic.

I propose we change it to:

In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage and one of primary importance. In such a case, a disambiguation page is required unless consensus determines one article is the primary topic.

This explicitly (rather than the current implicitly) defaults to a disambiguation page if no one can agree which of the pages is primary. It says "if you can't agree, then clearly some readers are going to be quite surprised when they get here." It implies that the disappointment of a disambiguation page is preferable to the surprise and confusion of a wrong page (perhaps we could even throw that into the guideline). Josh Parris 22:20, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• I can live with that change. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:27, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support Sensible suggestion. Bazonka (talk) 23:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
• I support the general sense of this. Though I suggest that perhaps we need to qualify that the conflict needs to have credibility based on some sort of evidence. That is, a conflict where a small number of editors assert importance based essentially on ILIKEIT/IDONTLIKE arguments lacks credibility. older ≠ wiser 23:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
• This is by no means a clarification; it would be a major change to current practice for which there is no consensus. This was just proposed and discussed in September. Current practice with move requests is that where there is no consensus as to primary topic, the stable status quo prevails, whether that means an article or a dab page is at the title. This change would bias the outcome toward dab pages when there is no consensus about which topic is primary (as opposed to consensus that there is no primary topic, which is not the same thing). Those who favor dab pages would prevail in 'no consensus' discussions even if many editors agree that would not be the best solution. There is certainly no consensus that dab pages are always preferable to a "wrong page"; some people think dab pages are "wrong" pages. Station1 (talk) 06:25, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
• No, oppose, [Not necessarily opposed, there may be something in this if it's formulated right - see my later comments] this keeps being proposed and is really quite silly when you think about it. If there's no consensus, we default to no change (which at least provides stability, prevents broken links, and discourages time-wasting proposals about borderline cases). Declaring from our remote and uninformed position that some change should be made somewhere in spite of lack of consensus for it, just because it happens to be a change in a particular direction, is entirely contrary to the way we do things.--Kotniski (talk) 11:57, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• To both Station1 and Kotniski, similar language (i.e, protracted disagreement may be an indication that there is no primary topic) was the standard before it was removed. I'm not sure when that was discussed, but I recall there was opposition to removing it, but it was pushed through anyways. older ≠ wiser 14:50, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Well, that said "may" be a sign, which is pretty meaningless. It "may" equally well be a sign that there is a primary topic.--Kotniski (talk) 15:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. While I agree that "may" is pretty weaselly, I don't see how disagreement would be a sign that there is a primary topic. older ≠ wiser 03:07, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• OK, so disagreement in itself is not really a sign one way or the other. It "may" be a sign that the case is so borderline that it doesn't honestly matter which way it's decided, that's all. But it's absurd to say "disagreement about which of X or Y is true may be a sign that X is true" without making the corresponding statement about Y.--Kotniski (talk) 08:59, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The old language referred to extended discussion, which presumably excludes such borderline cases. Cases that generate extended discussion typically have participants who do care about which way it's decided. older ≠ wiser 14:24, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The fact that people care about something is no evidence that it actually matters. Or indeed that the position of those who care deserves to be given any weight. Arguments should count rather than passion.--Kotniski (talk) 21:23, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I cannot dismiss quite as blithely as you cases where people care deeply about something that might seem trivial to others. Of course there has to be some substance beyond LIKEIT/DONTLIKEIT arguments -- that is a given and really should be made clear in the guideline. older ≠ wiser 01:09, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• Support, although I feel it is a waste of my time to participate in these discussions because those users who dislike disambiguation pages will filibuster any proposed change to the guidelines. There doesn't seem to be any genuine effort here to reach a consensus through reasoned discussion and compromise, just endless repetition of entrenched positions. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Huh?? This proposal seems to be doing exactly what you criticize - instead of allowing each case to be settled on its merits through reasoned discussion, it tries to force through a particular answer "from on high". This isn't about who likes disambiguation pages and who doesn't - I presume there is no-one who believes there should always or never be disambiguation pages - but trying to judge the right answer in each case.--Kotniski (talk) 15:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see that at all. The proposal doesn't change the guidance that where there is a consensus that a particular topic is primary, the article about that topic should be at the primary name. It's not dictating anything. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the proposal doesn't change the guidance where there is consensus that a particular topic is primary, but it does change the guidance where there isn't consensus about which topic is primary. In those cases it would dictate that a dab page is "required", and that is the objection. Station1 (talk) 17:31, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

(ec) But surely you can see what it does change - it means that if there is no consensus, then one side (the "anti-primary-topic" side) gets its way. This is a fairly obvious attempt to bias the scales of discussion in a particular direction.--Kotniski (talk) 17:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

So your position is that a particular topic should be treated as primary even if there is not a consensus to do so? I fail to see the logic there. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Only if the established status quo is that it's treated as primary. This is exactly the same logic as we always apply - if there's no consensus for a change, we leave things as they are. It's not a perfect solution, but we have to do something in no-consensus situations, and this one at least provides stability (which is another factor in reducing reader confusion), prevents the breaking of links, and helps discourage the making of proposals "for the sake of it". --Kotniski (talk) 17:46, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

This is one of the worst reasons presented. It contributes to the blight of first-created topics squatting on topic names with pretense of being the primary topic. A primary topic has a unique definition and status within Wikipedia and I don't think we should default to assuming that the "status quo" is necessarily legitimately established. older ≠ wiser 03:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, if there's no strong argument for keeping it there, it won't be. But what you seem to support can hardly be any better - you want us to default to assuming that there is no primary topic, even if the arguments that there is one are equally strong. Do you realize how much disruption this has the potential of causing? Thousands of long-dead lame move debates will be reopened once people see that the goalposts have moved (often these things are motivated by politics or personal interest rather than genuine considerations of primariness), articles will be moved for no reason, links broken, links that people have got used to making will not longer be correct - and all because of the attractive but manifestly faulty logic that "no consensus for X or Y implies X (but - aribtrarily - not Y)".--Kotniski (talk) 09:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I can't see that there would be any more disruption that there already is or that there there is any shortage of lame move debates. I think the proposal would provide a stronger resolution to such intractable disagreements (though as always with such disagreement, one that will not satisfy everyonw). older ≠ wiser 13:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose; "the disappointment of a disambiguation page" is in no way "preferable to the surprise and confusion of a wrong page". Powers ^T 15:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support. I posit that treating similar situations consistently is preferable to leaving things hanging at random (and forever open to endless debates). What's more productive in the long run—having one clear way to deal with situations of the same type, or having to waste countless hours days debating which page is a more qualified "primary topic" candidate every time the situation arises? Those same countless hours days are better spent improving the actual articles (which, I realize, for some is not what they are here to do). In practice, it doesn't even matter which page is a dab and/or which page has a hatnote and/or which page is "primary"—there is always going to be a number of readers who end up on the wrong page (and that's regardless of which definition of "wrong" one uses). When it comes to slim margins this particular proposal addresses, I can't think of a more pointless exercise than trying to reduce that number by arguing each individual case.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 29, 2011; 15:57 (UTC)

If the second sentence of the proposal were changed to read "In such a case, a disambiguation page is not permitted and the article with the most views must be chosen as primary topic", that would also treat similar situations consistently and address all the concerns mentioned, but I doubt we'd find agreement for that wording. Station1 (talk) 17:11, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

And if that were the proposal, I'd support it as well, for all the same reasons. It doesn't matter how this is handled, as long as the practice is consistent and reduces the number of unnecessary debates in the long run. The needs of the readers are best addressed by serving them quality content (which under any setup is super easy to find as long as a network of dabs/redirects/hatnotes is implemented—it's not like we don't have the tools!), not by arguing ad nauseam which page is more "primary" than the other and why. Some folks are apparently forgetting that in the heat of all those debates.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 29, 2011; 17:35 (UTC)

But still nothing is consistent. Sometimes we have primary topics, sometimes we have no primary topics. There will always be a dividing line, and there will always be debate about which side of the line particular cases lie. Biasing the discussions either in one direction or another is just silly - and will encourage more pointless debate, not less, as people are encouraged to make proposals in borderline cases knowing that they no longer have to gain consensus for their proposals, they just have to make enough noise to ensure "no consensus".--Kotniski (talk) 17:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

A total consistency is, of course, hardly ever attainable. But this proposal is not at all about that. It's about following a certain course when there is no consensus on which topic is primary (and whether there even is one). Regardless of the volume of the debates, when consensus is lacking, I dare say it's pretty easy to spot. That's how the AfD, CfD, etc. processes work, and I don't see why the approach proposed above wouldn't.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 29, 2011; 17:58 (UTC)

I don't see why you think the current approach doesn't work - it's the same approach that's used for other page-naming discussions, and is basically consistent with the approach used for *fD and all other decision-making really: proposals for action need consensus in favour, not just an absence of consensus against.--Kotniski (talk) 19:20, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The current approach doesn't work because of the endless discussions over the pages where two (or more) parties can't agree on the "primary topic" and neither party has convincing arguments overwhelmingly in its favor. Having a default course of action (such as one proposed here) puts an end to that (and hopefully channels the parties' efforts to something more productive, like actual editing). As long as there is no clear consensus regarding the primary topic, there is no "action"—the page simply defaults to being a dab.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 29, 2011; 20:48 (UTC)

In what way is that "no action"? If there was no dab before, then making it into a dab (and consequently having to fix all the links) is obviously an "action". And as I keep pointing out, this will cause more unproductive discussion, not less, as people who want to create dab pages everywhere (or who dislike dab pages on principle, depending on which version of the proposal were adopted) will now be encouraged to make large numbers of proposals for change knowing that they no longer even have to gain consensus for them to succeed.--Kotniski (talk) 08:56, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

"Action", as I see it here, would be proclaiming one of the entries on the dab page as primary (which is fine when there is sufficient evidence and a consensus). On the other hand, when there is no consensus, the default course of action would be maintained. This proposal declares such a default, and having a default to fall back on leads to less unproductive discussion, not more.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 3, 2012; 20:12 (UTC)

• Oppose but I would support Station's excellent counter suggestion. I see no advantage in a dab page for two entries; hat notes are preferable because they will make life easier for some readers without making life harder for any reader. Abtract (talk) 17:31, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
  • So would this be more acceptable?
    In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage and one of primary importance. In such a case, a disambiguation page or disambiguated article names are required unless consensus determines one article is the primary topic.
    Vegaswikian (talk) 17:41, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
    • What is the advantage of a dab page for two entries?Abtract (talk) 17:44, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
      • The advantage is manifested only when neither of the two uses is the primary topic - see WP:TWODABS. That advantage is that a 2-entry dab page in that case avoids sending about half of all readers searching with that name to the wrong page. Yes, the desired page is still only one click away, but a 2-entry dab page is a much more reasonable and natural place to be than is the wrong page with a hatnote link.

        For a good example of this, see Poison oak. Neither of the two types of poison oak is the primary use, so we have a 2-entry dab page, with links to each type. The alternative is to somehow pick one and treat it as if it is the primary topic, thus sending half the people to the wrong type of poison oak. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        • In the case of poison oak, I think a disambiguation page is reasonable not just because neither topic is primary, but also because the two topics are so similar and difficult for the layman to distinguish. Powers ^T 03:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, as I oppose disambiguation pages for two entries for reasons that have been explained by others. I am also a fan of Station's counter-suggestion above. Theoldsparkle (talk) 20:09, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
  • We avoid dab pages for two entries when there is a primary topic - see WP:TWODABS. We do not avoid dab pages for two entries when there is no primary topic. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
    • I have no idea who you think you're speaking for or what you think your point is. The question of whether we should avoid dab pages when there is no primary topic is exactly what I'm expressing my opinion on: I believe we should avoid such pages, I oppose a guideline mandating these pages, and I would support a guideline discouraging such pages. Theoldsparkle (talk) 20:56, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Why? So you'd prefer it if people went to the wrong article, than met a signpost that helped them find the right one? Bazonka (talk) 21:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd prefer it if a lot of people went to the right article immediately, and some other people went to the wrong page with a hatnote link to the right one, as opposed to sending everyone to the wrong page (that would be the disambiguation page, which we know isn't the page that anyone wants to be at) and forcing them to click the link for the right one. Are you people coming into this without any experience discussing this issue and without reading anything else on the page? Because this perspective is explained quite clearly right under the "Disambiguation of two topics" heading above (along with other places on this page, I believe, which is why I didn't feel the need to spell it out in my vote) and I'm baffled that you seem so surprised by it. You might disagree with my view, but I'm hardly the first to feel this way. Theoldsparkle (talk) 22:50, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I understand that preference, but I don't agree with it. The concept of primary topic as currently framed is to send only relatively few people to the "wrong" article, in favor of sending more to a disambig page, which is informative, not wrong, and helps them find what they way. That agrees more with my preference. Picking more primary topics will send a lot more people to the wrong article. Dicklyon (talk) 22:57, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree with Dicklyon - dab pages are signposts, not incorrect pages. Also, we should bear in mind that dab pages are short and quick to load, whereas articles are generally longer and full of images etc. That might not be a problem if you've got super-fast broadband, but not everyone has. Bazonka (talk) 08:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for expressing your disagreement with me in a manner other than a bizarre lecture about what "we" all believe should be done. Having registered my opinion, I don't intend to participate further in this discussion. Theoldsparkle (talk) 14:20, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Support. The question of primary topic should always be determined by consensus - a lack of consensus about which use is the primary topic means there is no primary topic. A move proposal centered on whether a given use is the primary topic or not should be resolved accordingly - if there is no consensus, a dab page should be at the base name. It shouldn't matter that there might have been consensus for a primary topic in the past... consensus changes. In other words, a lack of consensus about any one use being the primary topic means consensus support for "no primary topic"; the affected articles and dab pages should be created/titled accordingly. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

We agree that the question of primary topic should always be determined by consensus. We also agree consensus can change. However, "lack of consensus about any one use being the primary topic means consensus support for 'no primary topic'" is not logical. Those are two separate possibilities; they are not the same or equal, and one does not cause the other. For example, if there are two unrelated topics with identical names, we have three possibilities: A) Topic A is primary; B) Topic B is primary; C) Neither is primary so a dab page is necessary. If nine editors make strong arguments for A and nine editors make strong arguments for B and two editors make strong arguments for C, it doesn't necessarily follow that the default should be the option favored by 10%. Perhaps B is the second choice of everyone favoring A and C. In that case, B should be the primary topic. That should only be decided through discussion of individual cases, not by fiat. Station1 (talk) 21:43, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

That's absurd. It does follow that if there's that kind of a split then there's no primary topic. Dicklyon (talk) 23:00, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Dicklyon that this is rather tortured logic. Also, the previously stated preference for the established status quo is actually illusory in many cases and enshrines a bias for "first to create" article naming as being the primary topic. I think that any claim of primary status should require substantiation if challenged and if there is no consensus that there is a primary topic, the default should be a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 02:53, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The tortured logic continues to be on your side. On what basis do you conclude that if there is no consensus, then one side or the other is more right? It's utterly absurd to try to make such a judgement. The "established status quo" rule is fairly arbitrary as well, but it's the one we use in all other cases, and here it has the great advantage (as I keep saying) of providing stability and discouraging proposals for unnecessary change. However, if there are genuine strong arguments (not just "we like it like this") for each of two conflicting positions, then it seems logically sensible for a closing admin to consider a middle solution and even imposing it without explicit consensus - the "no change" rule does have the disadvantage of discouraging the supporters of the status quo from engaging in compromise.--Kotniski (talk) 09:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

No, sorry, but I simply cannot make any sense out of what you claim as logic (and I have put some effort into it). It truly seems to me to be nonsensical to claim that where a principled disagreement whether a primary topic exists (or which of a limited subset of topics is primary) in which both (or multiple) sides have valid claims can result in leaving the status quo (a "non-primary" topic at the base name) being "correct". older ≠ wiser 13:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Well it's just as logical as leaving the status quo in any other situation. Some people say Burma should be titled Myanmar, others say keep it as Burma, both sides have valid arguments, the closing admin can't declare a consensus either way, so we leave it as it is. We could adopt some other random criterion (choose the shorter title, the first in alphabetical order, ...), but the status quo solution serves us well, as (I keep repeating) it provides stability and discourages pointless proposals.--Kotniski (talk) 14:28, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

That may be an especially poor example in that there are no other topics that are ambiguous with either Burma or Myanmar (although that may be an oversight), so there is no disambiguation page to be the default. But in any case, if you are talking merely about disagreements about what title to use for a topic -- that is quite distinct from disagreements about whether there is a primary topic among multiple ambiguous topics. Even if there were a disambiguation page for Burma/Myanmar, I don't think anyone would dispute that the article about the country, whichever title is used, would be the primary topic. Even in other contentious cases, such as Gdansk/Danzig, few would dispute that the article about the city is the primary topic (although some might argue for splitting the article into separate topics). I continue to see no logic whatsoever to the claim that it is preferable to maintain the status quo by leaving a non-primary topic at the base name where there is legitimate disagreement as to whether there is a primary topic. older ≠ wiser 16:31, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Well if there's legitimate disagreement, we are not in a position to say that it's a non-primary topic. We can't say, from our position here as theorists, whether the cat is alive or dead. In a real situation, the closing admin would encounter a situation where there are valid arguments that there is a primary topic, valid arguments that there is not, and no basis for saying that either position has achieved a consensus. You seem to think that the default should be that there is not, but to me that seems arbitrary, just like saying the default should be Burma because that comes earlier in a dictionary (or something). My position is the default should be the status quo, just as it would be in a Burma vs. Myanmar situation - also somewhat arbitrary I grant you, but at least it provides certain identifiable advantages (stability, relative peace).--Kotniski (talk) 17:26, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

This is starting to make even less sense. I see no reason at all if there are in fact valid arguments disputing whether an existing topic is the primary topic that there can be any conclusion possible that there is nonetheless a primary topic. And defaulting to the intertial position of maintaining the status quo merely enshrines such nonsense and gives the false impression that a higher standard of consensus is required to change the status quo than would ordinarily be needed. That is what I think is especially insidious about defaulting to the status quo. older ≠ wiser 18:16, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I think we must have different situations in our heads our something. What I'm trying to say is perfectly simple and obvious. We are considering a situation where there are valid arguments on both sides, right? Some saying that X is a primary topic, and some that there is no primary topic, and more or less equal numbers of editors persuaded by each. In that case we cannot conclude either that there is or that there is not a primary topic, just as we cannot conclude either that the Burma article "should" or "should not" be called Myanmar. But we nonetheless have to do something, and it's established practice that what we do is to maintain the status quo (whatever that happens to be). In both cases, just the same. There isn't a "higher standard of consensus" required to change the status quo than ordinarily - the standard is exactly the same (or should be) in both cases.--Kotniski (talk) 09:43, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, well in the situation you describe here, I disagree. The claim that something is a primary topic is a unique status and should enjoy fairly strong consensus. If support is evenly split, I would take that as an indication that there is not a primary topic. older ≠ wiser 13:31, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

But why?? Why not take it an indication that there is a primary topic? And what does "a unique status" mean? It's just one of two competing claims.--Kotniski (talk) 13:37, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

A primary topic should be relatively uncontroversial in that it should clearly satisfy the criteria for a primary topic. If there is legitimate disagreement about whether a topic meets the criteria, how can it be considered as "primary". older ≠ wiser 14:32, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

You must surely see what your argument appears to be lacking? What breaks the symmetry? Why should a decision that there is a primary topic be "uncontroversial", while a decision that there is not a primary topic apparently needn't be?--Kotniski (talk) 15:22, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

This seems so obvious as to be a tautology, but a primary topic is a recognition that a topic is generally considered to "the" primary for the title. Consider how two different scenarios can results in different results without any basis. Suppose someone happens to create a topic Foo, and at the time there are no other obvious articles competing for the title. People later create or discover other articles that are ambiguous with the term and make a disambiguation page. In an ensuing move discussion, the !votes are evenly split. Some editors believe the first Foo is the primary topic and have some marginal evidence to support the position. Other editors do not see that topic as primary and also have some marginal evidence to support the position. If I understand your position correctly, you think because there is no consensus to move the original topic, it appropriate for it to remain as the primary topic. However, if the Foo disambiguation page were at Foo, the same discussion would result in the disambiguation page remaining and no primary topic. That sort of inertial default to the status quo seems bizarrely inconsistent. I think the higher bar should be on those who claim that a topic is primary. Where a term might refer to multiple topics, the claim that one topic is primary is a somewhat extraordinary claim and should require corresponding demonstration of support. older ≠ wiser 16:04, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't find it extraordinary - I don't have any statistics, but I would imagine the number of ambiguous terms for which we have primary topics is comparable to the number for which we don't. In any case, primary topic is a perfectly normal scenario. If there are two genuine contenders for primary topic, then as I've already said, I'm happy to default to no primary topic as a middle ground. But if there's only one genuine contender, then it can't be all that bad to leave it as the primary topic (the fact that it's the only contender in itself shows that it has a kind of primacy). And if some topic got its Wikipedia article well before the others, then that in itself - in combination with its assumed status as only genuine contender - is kind of evidence (given that we're grasping at straws anyway - in our scenario the usual substantive arguments have already proved inconclusive) that there's something primary about the topic. So I still don't see any reason to depart from the usual way of settling no-consensus situations. There are always pros and cons to having a given topic as a primary topic - we have to assume that if there's consensus either way then the pros outweigh the cons or vice versa, but if there isn't then the pros and cons are more or less evenly balanced and it doesn't matter that much which way we decide it, so we do best to decide it in the way which causes least disruption to the project. (Anyway, I don't think we're going to convince each other, so I probably won't continue this thread further after this.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, yes it is "all that bad" in that incorrect links to the "non-primary" topic are far less likely to be noticed and fixed and leaving such a non-primary topic at the base name implies that there is consensus that it is the primary topic, where in fact it is only that there was insufficient consensus to overcome inertia. You assume that there is "something primary about the topic" -- but that presumption is precisely what I find most disagreeable. We really need some concrete examples to explore the boundaries of where we agree or disagree. older ≠ wiser 20:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Of course it's theoretically possible that "no primary topic" is not the second most popular choice of those who favor either A or B, but, practically speaking, it's highly unlikely (dare I say it has never happened, and never will?). "No primary topic" is the natural compromise position in this type of situation, and that's exactly the point this proposal tries to capture.

Remember, the question at issue is not: would you rather have A, B, or a dab page, at the base name? The question is: Is A primary, is B primary, or is it neither?

The distinction matters because in the first formation of the question it's reasonably likely for someone who favors A at the base name to prefer having B there rather than a dab page, even though he doesn't believe B is primary (due to not liking 2-entry dab pages, for example). But with the second formation it's unreasonable for someone who believes A is primary to think it's more likely for B to be primary than for there to be no primary topic.

I mean, if a reasonable person is convinced by the relevant evidence that the ship appears to be the primary topic for "corvette", he is not going to believe the same relevant evidence also suggests it is more likely that the car is the primary topic (if the ship is not) than there is no primary topic for "corvette". --Born2cycle (talk) 23:11, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

But the problem is that there are two competing definitions of primary topic: primary usage and primary importance. This proposed change deals only with cases where there is a conflict between those two definitions. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to simultaneously believe that, say, Engelbert Humperdinck the composer is primary importance but Engelbert Humperdinck (singer) is primary usage. That person may think 'usage is more important but if we can't get consensus for primary usage then at least we should recognize primary importance'; in other words, one or the other is primary topic so better to have second best at the title than a dab page. Station1 (talk) 05:19, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't follow that argument. Surely if there is any ambiguity over which is the primary topic, even if that disagreement is in your own head, then then best approach would be to disambiguate. Bazonka (talk) 08:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

We must disambiguate; it's impossible not to. But disambiguate by hatnote or by dab page? That is the question. As seen at Humperdinck, there is simply no broad consensus that a dab page is the best approach in all cases where "usage" and "importance" conflict. And because there is no broad consensus, it would be wrong to add it to the guideline as if there were. Station1 (talk) 18:18, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Support, more or less. I agree with Born2cycle's reasoning immediately above. However, I'm not sure this amendment is the best way to express it. Dicklyon (talk) 21:29, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I'm not crazy about the proposed wording either, but I figure we should get consensus on the proposal in principal first, and dicker about the nitpicks later. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:11, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
    • But to me, B2C's reasoning seems to suffer from the same defects as all the other arguments that have been presented in support of this. You're saying in effect "disagreement about whether X is primary is a sign that X is not primary". You might as well say "disagreement about whether X is primary is a sign that X is primary". Both are equally logical, and are therefore both entirely illogical.--Kotniski (talk) 09:04, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
      • No, that's a separate issue regarding where the burden should lie. That's about whether the burden should be with those who want to change the title, or with those who claim primary topic. That's not what this is about.

        This is about situations in which there is so much significant support for two different topics being the primary topic, that clearly there is no consensus that either is the primary topic. By the way, this is exactly why I opposed including consideration for "primary importance" in the definition of primary topic. Titling would be much simpler and less contentious if we did simply look at usage in reliable sources and page hit counts, and I don't think it would hurt WP one little bit. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:28, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• I have a couple concerns with the nature of the proposal, but not the underlying principle (no consensus what the primary topic is as an indication there isn't a primary topic). The first is this is a guideline and cannot require anything. Editors will be free to ignore it - replacing "required" with "recommended" will resolve that. Furthermore, if an admin closes a discussion as "no consensus" and doesn't move anything it is not a mandate for another editor to convert from a primary to a dab page.
• The proposal is about those cases where there is consensus that both A is primary with respect to usage and B is primary with respect to importance, and that this indicates neither is primary. There are a number of situations this doesn't address: Where there is consensus A is primary for usage, but no consensus B is primary for importance (or vice versa), or when there is only one candidate topic to be considered as primary - but no consensus whether it is or not. In these cases "no consensus" not meaning "maintain status quo" is a bigger difference from standard conventions, and may cause more harm.
• That said, the underlying principle is fine, and there are some similar cases elsewhere in WP. For instance WP:ENGVAR says try to use "neutral" terms if possible. Fixed-wing aircraft is not the preferred term in the US (Airplane) or the UK (Aeroplane), and both national groups could prefer their local variant as the most commonly used term in their own region. Fixed-wing aircraft, like a dab page, is the compromise that would be no-ones first choice but produces the most stable end result.--Nilfanion (talk) 10:30, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Fixed-wing aircraft is an aberration which is not supported by practice or policy (except for WP:IAR), and should not be used as an example or precedent of anything. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:32, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
    • So all right, I guess what's being proposed here is that if there are strong and genuine arguments for A being a primary topic and for B being a primary topic, and neither position has clear majority ("consensus") support, then a good solution might be to "compromise" and not have a primary topic at all (presumably, in order for this not to be an empty statement, it means that an admin closing a discussion could impose such a compromise even if the participants haven't explicitly reached it themselves). That seems feasible. (But the arguments must be genuine, and it should be made clear - because people notoriously overlook this - that when removing something's primary-topic status you have to correct the links, otherwise you do more harm than good.)--Kotniski (talk) 21:23, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
      • Yes, and I agree about all your concerns, for the reasons stated. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
      • @Kotniski, yes, and having a disambiguation page rather than a "non-primary" topic falsely occupying the base name makes it much more likely that mistaken links will be fixed. older ≠ wiser 01:07, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
• An example of a big discussion where this might have made a difference is at Talk:New_York/Archive_4#Should_New_York_be_a_disam_page. There was support for making New York City the primary topic for "New York" (because it is), and there was support for keeping New York State as the primary topic (for reasons of aesthetics and local patriotism, which the closing admin apparently considered to be genuine arguments). There wasn't much explicit support for having no primary topic (i.e. "New York" as a dab page). But should the admin have imposed the "no primary topic" solution anyway (rather than simply maintain the status quo)?--Kotniski (talk) 21:42, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Yep, perfect example. In fact, that proposal was specifically about moving the dab page to New York, and every support !vote, which was the majority, supported that. Reminds me that it should be proposed again.... --Born2cycle (talk) 22:44, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
    • So the dead horse can be beaten yet again? Powers ^T 18:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
      • No, to develop consensus, finally. Hey, if we can do with Yogurt, we can do it with anything! --Born2cycle (talk) 00:15, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
• Both: Oppose when there are only two articles to disambiguation, per WP:TWODABS; just pick one and use a hatnote. Support when there are enough entries for a DAB page (and, probably, one already exists) and two or more entries are vying in editorial minds and flamewars for primary topic. I can't think of a real example off the top of my head. Suppose that York in England, was supplanted by a New York next door (think Delhi and New Delhi). Then we'd have three notable New Yorks, and the pissing match, if still ongoing, between NYC and New York State being primary should be settled by a "STFU, it's a DAB now" result if it kept dragging out, even if the third NY is clearly less notable. Three is enough for DAB page, and that's that, thank you, please drive through, have a nice day. It's been my strong feeling that SingTFU and moving on and doing something productive is 100x preferable to continuing protracted pissing matches on Wikipedia, where none of this stuff is "fatal". No one is going to stop using Wikipedia, or get so confused they write their school paper about the wrong New York, or whatever, because they got the wrong page for a moment or because they went to a DAB page. But editors (good ones, too) do quit the project in frustration and disgust at an alarming rate over stupid, mutually tendentious editwars, flamefests and filibusters. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:16, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that often these matters don't really matter much, but we shouldn't negate the material consequences entirely. Having New York State as the primary meaning of "New York" (which by any normal standards it definitely should not be) might well mislead a reader into thinking that the state is the primary meaning of "New York" in real life, and consequently misinterpreting references to New York that they've seen elsewhere, or writing plain "New York" in a context where a better informed writer would have indicated "state" explicitly. A less familiar example is Kingdom of Sardinia, which a couple of editors have forced to be about a topic other than the primary real-world meaning of that phrase - now [depending on edit-war status] if you see the phrase used in a history book and come to Wikipedia to find out what it means, you're quite likely in practice to be misled. --Kotniski (talk) 09:55, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

But, for good reason, WP:TWODABS says to use a dab page, even if there are only two entries, unless one of them is the primary topic. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

"importance" versus "historical significance"

David Levy made this change (and some others) that I reverted. I think that makes the second clause of primary topic so narrow that the we'll be left with just counting hits to talk about usage, which already gets too much weight in my opinion. What do others think? David, explain what you're thinking. Dicklyon (talk) 02:31, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Both the text and the discussion behind it focus on historical significance (e.g. that "a currently popular actress is [not] primary over a person with centuries of enduring historical notability"). I seek to clarify this point.

My concern is that "importance" is too broad and will trigger inappropriate assertions of primacy based on the opinion that a particular subject is "more important" than others with the same name (e.g. that Patrick Lee (medical researcher) should be moved to Patrick Lee because the other Patrick Lees haven't worked on cancer treatments and therefore are "less important").

For a non-hypothetical example, see the many move discussions pertaining to Georgia. It's been argued that the country is "more important" than the U.S. state (and therefore should occupy the base title) because it's much older and has an independent government. Meanwhile, it's been argued that the U.S. state is "more important" than the country (and therefore should occupy the base title) because it's geographically larger and has a higher population and a far larger economy. I've responded to both arguments by pointing out that "relative importance" isn't a naming criterion. I'd hate to see the new text reignite that debate and others like it, especially given its basis on a specific, unrelated issue (long-term prominence vs. recent trends). —David Levy 03:38, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

What "new text" are you seeing that you're concerned about? And why do you think "importance" should be as narrow as "historically significant", given the the longstanding text includes "enduring notability and educational value"? I think lots of things reach "enduring notability" status without being part of history, and these are sometimes being ignored when a title gets used for a new movie or something, because in usage stats the new movie get more hits. Dicklyon (talk) 17:50, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm referring to the text added in September (as a result of the discussion to which I linked).

That's when the phrase "enduring notability and educational value" was introduced. The operative word is "enduring". Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, so such a determination inherently pertains to history (past events).

I quoted the aforementioned discussion, in which it was noted that a currently popular actress shouldn't be deemed primary over a woman with "centuries of enduring historical notability". Your example of "a new movie" is comparable. The point is that one subject might be talked about more (and receive more page views) currently, but that doesn't automatically give it primacy over a subject whose prominence has endured for many years. This is what I seek to clarify, as the word "importance" is likely to be misinterpreted in the manner that I described above.

Please elucidate your reading of "historical significance", which apparently is much narrower than I intended. (In particular, what did you mean when you stated that some of the subjects in question aren't "part of history"?)

Perhaps we can come up with alternative wording that addresses your concerns and mine. —David Levy 19:05, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The "not a crystal ball" thing is for article content, where we don't make predictions; it shouldn't be a barrier to exercising editorial judgement. But I agree that we're talking about things in the past; we would not claim that a recent movie topic has "enduring notability", at least until it wins an Oscar or something spectacular. Movies like The Graduate that clearly have enduring notability might not be seen as part of "history" by editors who construe that term more narrowly than you intend, since it's unlikely to be mentioned in a history book, and that's the sort of thing I worry about. I think we are in agreement on the intent, but I see things being read too narrowly too often. Dicklyon (talk) 19:21, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, it appears that we agree on the section's intent. We also share a concern that it's likely to be misinterpreted ("importance" taken too broadly or "historical significance" taken too narrowly).

I haven't encountered the definition of "history" that you describe (and having studied radio/television/film in college, I'll note that that The Graduate is covered extensively in film history courses and textbooks, with this book dedicated solely to that film and its impact).

I'd be happy to use alternative wording, but I'm struggling to think of something suitable. Any ideas? —David Levy 20:31, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, not a good example of a film with enduring notability but not obvious "historical significance". Nevertheless, I worry that your wording narrows the applicability of this clause. I think the broad "importance" with some specific modes of importance as examples is best, leaving open the option for other ways it might be important. Dicklyon (talk) 04:45, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

You've acknowledged that the text in question refers specifically to a scenario in which a subject's enduring prominence over a long period precludes primacy on the part of another subject with the same name that happens to generate more mentions/page views today. "Leaving open the option for other ways it might be important" ignores the context of both the section and the discussion leading to its creation.

As noted above, some connotations of "importance" are not appropriate considerations when determining article titles. Nonetheless, they've been raised time and again in move discussions, triggering drawn-out arguments with no hope of achieving anything constructive. That was before the word "importance" was present, and it's safe to assume that inserting it won't help matters.

I disagree with your assertion that "historical significance" is likely to be misinterpreted, but I'm more than willing to brainstorm alternative wording. I want nothing more than to clarify the meaning that we agree is intended. —David Levy 05:49, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

How about "long-term significance" as an alternative to "importance"? Bazonka (talk) 07:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I like this suggestion. If "historical" is subject to the sort of misinterpretation that Dicklyon describes ("found in history books"), "long-term" obviously isn't. —David Levy 07:53, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

That sounds better to me, too. Let's put a full sentence here and see if we can get others to agree. Will we have both "long-term significance" and "enduring notability" in it? Maybe that's OK. Dicklyon (talk) 16:48, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The text would read as follows:

A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.
In many cases, a topic that is primary with respect to usage is also primary with respect to long-term significance. In many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant. In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage and one of primary long-term significance. In such a case, consensus determines which article, if either, is the primary topic.

Of course, if other changes are desired, they can be discussed as well. —David Levy 17:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I would support that if you adopted the final sentence from the section above, so we would have:

A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.
In many cases, a topic that is primary with respect to usage is also primary with respect to long-term significance. In many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant. In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage and one of primary long-term significance. In such a case, a disambiguation page is required unless consensus determines one article is the primary topic.

This is also consistent with what WP:TWODABS says. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:03, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Rather than "required", which is a bit of a red flag for bull-headedness, I'd rather say a disambiguation page is recommended if there is conflict. older ≠ wiser 21:42, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, phrasing as a recommendation is likely better. Dicklyon (talk) 22:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not proposing that such a statement be omitted (or included). Whatever decision is reached in the other discussion will apply. —David Levy 23:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Now that you focus our attention on those sentences, I can see why we sometimes have trouble: what if a topic is primary with respect to usage, but by the long-term significance criterion no topic is primary (or vice versa). This is not a case where only one in relevant, and it's not a case where there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage and one of primary long-term significance. So what is it? I think it would be best to say that in cases like this, either clause might lead to a conclusion that no topic is primary. Dicklyon (talk) 21:12, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This problem is one reason why I believe we should go exclusively by usage in reliable sources, and page view counts, and forget about the nebulous long-term significance criterion altogether, which was only recently added. Consider a case where, say, usage for A, B and C are about the same, but B seems to be primary per historical criteria. So now we're going to send everyone to B even though 2/3rd are not looking for it? How are our readers served by that? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This numbers game is contrary to your stated goal of naming stability. A new movie will also become primary this way. Dicklyon (talk) 22:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Stability in naming is important, of course, but not more important than serving our readers. Presuming it's not for reasons of brief (a few weeks or months) high popularity, if there is a topic that readers are most likely to be seeking for a given term, then that article should be at that term (or the term needs to redirect to that article). If we have to move articles to achieve that, so be it. That's the best reason to ever move any article... to serve our readers better. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:04, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

In the scenario that you describe, it might be sensible to determine that the primacy in one area is insufficient to overcome the absence of primacy in the other. (Therefore, no topic is considered "primary".) It depends on the specifics. No guideline can replace editorial judgement. —David Levy 23:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

"In many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant." doesn't mean that only one of the two concepts (usage and long-term significance) is measurable; it means that only one establishes primacy.

If a comparison between/among topics establishes no primacy in area x, the question then becomes whether sufficient primacy exists in area y. As illustrated in Born2cycle's hypothetical example, if predominance in area x is split among three or more topics, this might not be the case. —David Levy 23:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

"Importance" is a nice idea, but not too useful in serving the reader. The goal should be to serve the reader the page sought where possible, and where not possible avoid serving the reader a page that does not make sense. Where there is agreement on the primary topic, it doesn't matter what criteria we set here. Where there is disagreement on the primary topic, the over-abundance of criteria here means that there are two possible answers: a primary topic (or none) that best serves the reader, or a primary topic that a group of editors is passionate about. I've found that editors all want to best serve the reader on general topics, but will passionately argue against that using whatever criteria are listed (or not) here for favored topics that are not primary. Titles need only be as stable as the readership; as the readership changes, the titles can and should change too. But where there's agreement for a primary topic, we should use it; where there's not, we should use a topic that when reached would not surprise the readership; and where there is no such unsurprising topic, we should use a disambiguation page at the base name. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:48, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Which is the guideline for this?

I'm not sure how to interpret these guidelines with regard to occations in which you have two disambiguation pages, one for the word written normally, and one which is written in all caps. Shouldn't they be merged? I mean, are "Thing" and "THING" really partial matches, or exact matches? It seems to me that people who type in "THING" and the users who type in "Thing" should be sent to the same disambiguation page, as the fact that a seacher uses all caps or not can be due to many things and is not a good predictor of what they are looking for. Has this issue been decided before? Chrisrus (talk) 20:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This [1] may be useful. Abtract (talk) 20:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Or, as an immediate answer, yes, it's been decided, and the decision was that no one rule would cover the cases. Some cases are best merged, and some cases are best served by separate disambiguation pages. Sometimes the caps variations may different primary topics, or one might have a primary topic while another doesn't. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:51, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

But, just to be clear, usually they should merge, and to the non-CAPS page in most cases. In 6+ years I've run into fewer than a dozen cases that clearly shouldn't, and I think most of them were short and very common acronyms that coincided with real and common words/names, and in all of the cases the resulting merged DAB pages would have been very long and messy. If it would fit in one screenful, there's no real excuse not to merge. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:59, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is in the guidelines. The ones you encounter may usually already be merged, but I don't think that the unmerged ones you may encounter should be merged as a matter of course. Each should be evaluated without a particular outcome in mind. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:53, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you all for your interest in discussing this matter. However, as I read the above, it's hard to understand what each of you meant without examples. Please give some examples where it wouldn't be good to merge them, as it still seems to me that if an unknown user searches for "Thing", "thing", or "THING" (or even "THing" or "thING", for that matter) should all be sent to the same place on the grounds that disambiguation pages are for disambiguating referents called by the same or very similar names, and "Thing" and "THING" are just about as close a match as I can imagine without being an exact match. But perhaps an example of a clear case where they are separated into two pages would help me understand why that should be done in a specific case, and what you have in mind when you speak of outcomes to best help the user. Chrisrus (talk) 19:12, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

BiSL and BISL go to different primary topics, but Bisl goes to a dab page. This example is weird, IMO, because none of the topics are actually called "Bisl", but without a redirect at Bisl (which I just created today), searching on "bisl" case-folded to BISL in the Wikipedia technical implementation details. HP and hp have different primary topics but share a dab page HP (disambiguation). ABA and Aba are separate dab pages. Length is certainly a factor in the decision, but the amount of overlap can be as well -- are the sets of topics on the potential dabs fully distinct? Are users looking for elements in one set likely to end up on the other set first? If readers often have to jump between dabs, they should be merged. If there's little overlap and readers don't often land on the wrong dab first, they should be separate. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:26, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting examples but you are correct that the applicablity is limited to this context. First of all, isn't BiSL in violation of the second paragraph of WP:TWODABS? Second, there aren't two separate disambiguation pages one for "HP" and one for "Hp". The other two, HP and Hp are redirects, not disambiguation pages. I was talking about is there any case where we have two disambiguation pages which differ only by capitals and lowercase spellings. So neither of these two seem to apply, and you do seem to understand this by seeming to wave them aside before you presented the Aba/ABA case.

The example of ABA disambiguation vs. Aba (disambiguation) is more to the point, and I would think that User:SMcCandlish could have used it to make his point clear when he spoke just above about the rare cases in which this is done, in order to show me why: First, both are very long, as there are many many meanings (American Bar Association, ....) that are pronounced "ay be ay" and spelled all caps. These things are known throughout the English-speaking world. The other one, "Aba" is the name of many foreign proper nouns; places, people and such. And so both are very different and both are very long. My guess it probably started as one and then someone advised merging because "ABA/Aba" was becoming huge. But McCandish wants us not to misunderstand. We should usually they merge caps/noncaps disambiguation pages, otherwise we "clearly shouldn't" unless they are:

1. Very long and difficult to use, as an ABA/Aba page would be.
2. Very common acronyms that coincided with very common words. (He didn't mention the factor that ABA and Aba are pronounced differently, one as three letters and one as a word. The American Bar Association isn't prounouced like the Sweedish Super group and Aba.
3. "...The resulting merged DAB pages would have been very long and messy. As a rule of thumb, if it would fit in one screenful, there's no real excuse not to merge."

I propose that these ideas should be edited properly and added to the guideline in an appropriate way. Where these or other considerations are not present, the default should be to merge disambiguation pages that differ only by arangement of capital and lowercase letters. Chrisrus (talk) 05:40, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

No, BiSL isn't in violation of any guidelines here. "BiSL" isn't ambiguous, so it redirects to its primary topic. Second, that's what I said about "HP" and "hp", so I'm not sure where the disagreement is. I would be very surprised if User:SMcCandlish or anyone else has memorized the list of disambiguation pages to the point where they would be able to summon up an example like ABA/Aba whenever asked. -- such mental faculties would be better applied to rocket science or brain surgery. And we still should not "usually" merge variants even if the lists are short. If two very short lists have mostly distinct sets of entries and little cross-confusion, they should still be kept separate and not merged into a still-short-but-not-as-short dab. They should be merged or not by weighing the benefit (fewer clicks if you use the "other" variant than the one you should have) vs the drawback (more entries crowding the one you're looking for). -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

If, other than length, there are some other reasons why two such pages should not be merged, please feel free to add them to the guidelines. Please do not delete this reason on the grounds that there may be other reasons.

Second, I'm very sorry I made a mistake. It's BISL (disambiguation) which seems to be in violaiton of the second paragraph of WP:TWODABS. I typed the wrong one because the terms are so similar. When there are only two, we're supposed to use a hatnote method, not use a disambiguaiton page with only two items.

Next, I'm sorry you seem to have misunderstood my point about the Aba/ABA example. I only meant to say that it serves as an example of what User:SMcCandlish was talking about: two pages that, combined, would be very long, and etc. that he was saying. I only meant that the ABA/Aba example was a very good example to bolster McCandlish's point. I thank you for providing this useful example.

To cycle back to my first point, please agree that being very long is at least among the factors that should be considered when splitting such disambiguation pages into two. You may be correct that there are also additionally other reasons to so spit/not merge even if it's short, but please agree that length is at least one consideration and do not delete this fact from the guidelines, but rather simply add to the reasons to split the article to include not only length but these other reasons you assert are also valid.

I understood you to be saying that the other reasons are

1. "mostly distinct sets of entries"
2. "little cross-confusion"
3. "the benefit of having them all on one page" do not outweigh "crowding" out the one the user wants.

These aspects do not seem to be in the guidelines as it stands as to when to split short DABs. Also, they seem quite vague to me and I reccommend making them more specific and clear, with examples if possible, before adding them to length as additional reasons why a split may be preferable. Chrisrus (talk) 21:38, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

On the contrary, the guidelines do not have to provide hard-and-fast rules, and may indeed seem vague while still being the guidelines. In this case, we avoid a foolish consistency and (unless there's a new consensus to look at page size alone, which BTW is still imprecise, because one browser's screenful is another browser's two screenfuls) admit that each set of variations can be examined independently of the arrangements of any other variations. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

And yes, you are correct that BISL (disambiguation) contravenes WP:TWODABS, which is why I included a comment explaining why that rule was ignored there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:09, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

We, McCandlish and I, are mearely stating that length is one criterion. You seem to want to add more, but seem to be having a hard time stating what they might be. Are you or are you not saying that length is at least one criterion for deciding to split or not to merge? There is no reason to state specifically what "too long" would be, and we are not trying to do so, McCandlish's "screenful" was clearly vague, not hard-and-fast, clearly intended just to give a general idea, and no one has tried to add that word into the guidelines. Please just in a general sort of way, agree that length is one criteron for deciding to merge or split or not, without in any way specifying what "too long" might mean in a particular case.

Your objection seems to be that the way it was written, it seemed to be the only criterion, where as you seem to believe that there are other important critera as well as length. The problem is, you have not stated clearly what those are, only "mostly distinct sets of entries", "little cross-confusion" and "the benefit of having them all on one page not outweighing "crowding" the one that a user is looking for". It is not clear what these mean. Perhaps examples might help.

I will now wait an appropriate amount of time for your reply. Next, I plan not to revert back to exactly the way I left it earlier but to edit it a bit to clarify length is simply the primary reason, without implying that it must be the only one, although I still don't know what those are, in the hopes of a compromise that doing so will gain your acceptance. Next, if that stands, and if you or someone else do not after a reasonable period of time add what those other criteria are in such a way as to make the guideline more useful in helping to decide when to split, merge, or not, I will revert again to the wording that states that the vague, not at all hard-and-fast, not at all "foolishly consistant" term "too long" as being the only reason to split or not to merge because no one will have been able to think of any other reason not to merge two short disambiguaiton pages that differ only by capital or lowercase letters or such, and the other cases the guidelines roughly describe. Chrisrus (talk) 00:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

No. You've made a bold edit without consensus, it's been reverted, and now you build consensus. You do not make blanket statements and take silence as consent. I have said exactly what I meant, and do not want to add any criteria, and said so. If you feel that length needs to be listed as a criterion, do so, but without implying that shortness leads directly to combining variants. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I am encouraged by the last part of this, your post, the part where you say "If you feel...to combinging varients." I plan to try to, as you advise, "do so", using an edited revert of your last revert sometime soon. Please look it over in the meantime with this in mind and see if their really isn't anything you can do, perhaps using the ABA/aba example, to clarify this matter of when to merge/not split or split/not merge such disambiguaition pages. Chrisrus (talk) 18:36, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Possibly the most amazing DAB tangle to deal with, ever

FYI

 – Pointer to a relevant discussion elsewhere.

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Games#A_question_on_naming_game_articles – one heck of a mess to sort out. I proposed a very stepwise solution to it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:53, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Amazing! Please, when that discussion is over, enshrine it somehow in some sort of disambiguation Hall of Fame. Chrisrus (talk) 00:48, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Links to disambiguation pages: not OK if redirect?

In the section "How to link to a disambiguation page", I don't think we should consider that "There is nothing wrong with linking to a redirect instead of linking directly to the disambiguation page; redirects are cheap and are basically transparent to the reader." When you consider mobile access, it may not be always neutral (time, money). Stephane mot (talk) 07:52, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirecting is a server function, so I don't understand why it should make a difference whether the user is accessing Wikipedia through a mobile device or whatever device. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:45, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Right. Wikipedia redirection is not URL redirection. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:22, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I wonder if Stephane has confused redirection with disambiguation pages. These pages do have an added overhead, but not as bad as that caused by going to an incorrect article and redirecting yourself to the right one via a hatnote. This is precisely why I feel that dab pages are valuable - see earlier discussions. Bazonka (talk) 12:32, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

When arriving via a redirect, extra text at the topic of the article informs you of such. Thus, extra bandwidth and cost. But it's only a few dozen extra bytes. Josh Parris 14:34, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

And potentially balanced out somewhat by having fewer bytes on the referring page, since it didn't have to pipe the link. :-) -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:53, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Browsing through a redirect does not require excessive HTTP activity (see above) unless the redirect contains an anchor (and really we have many such, even to dabs). In that case, direct [[page-#-anchor]] links are really cheaper than redirects, but one unlikely will point a [[]]-link intentionally to a section of a disambiguation page. Irrelevantly to dabs, anchor-bearing redirect are preferred though for maintainability reasons. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:11, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Dabs for Chinese/Japanese characters?

I came across 腹 while stub-sorting, and it seemed more of a dab than a stub, but I'm not sure it justifies its existence as either. Dab enthusiasts might like to have a look! PamD 18:22, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I've redirected it to Hara (tanden). -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:51, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Are primary topics bad?

There seems to be lots of talking to cross purposes in the two heavy discussions above. It might all boil down to:

Which is more important - article name stability or avoiding disambiguation pages?

also

Which is less desirable - internal links to dab pages or searches for ambiguous terms locating dabs pages?

WP:DAB talks about both, and it doesn't say that getting to a dab page is bad, it implies that recovering from an ambiguous landing should be quick and easy. Does it need to be re-worded?

My take is: Detecting internal links to either dab pages or primary topics is relatively simple. Maintaining unintentional internal links to dab pages is relatively simple, but for primary topics it's hard without a mandated redirect and a directive that one must not link directly to a primary topic. Primary topics, under current policy, are increasing the number of undetected, unintentional ambiguous links. Incoming links are linking to ambiguous terms and getting articles - not necessarily the right ones - rather than dab pages. As such, primary topics go against the core of WP:DAB. I don't think hatnotes are "quick and easy", unless you mean quick and easy to miss - they're small, they start before anything else on the page, they don't read your mind and detect surprise or confusion; they don't even use the <marque> tag!

Does WP:DAB need altering so that primary topics stay the result of a search or incoming link, but no internal pages link to these ambiguous terms? Or do we alter WP:DAB to force outsiders and the uninformed to acknowledge the ambiguity and only provide a disambiguation page for ambiguous terms?

Discuss. Josh Parris 23:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

"one must not link directly to a primary topic." I don't get it. What's wrong with a link to a primary topic, like this? --Born2cycle (talk) 00:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Currently, nothing at all. But a few current and future links to Paris will be imperfect attempts to refer to Paris (mythology) or some other meaning. We have no way to record which links have been verified as relevant to the French capital and which links ought to be checked. Hypothetically, one way to solve this problem would be to change the verified links to [[Paris, France|Paris]] or some other unambiguous term which redirects to Paris, and to treat any direct links to Paris with suspicion, but as far as I know there's no consensus to adopt that policy. Certes (talk) 00:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably you're pretty safe with Paris, but not with The Artist, which we've just done a bunch of work to patch up. With the new movie out, some editors wanted a new primary topic; the old one wasn't really justified; in any case, making it a disambig makes a lot more sense. When I went to patch up the ambiguous links, most were directly to "The Artist", which was never correct; only a few of the links to "The Artist" were going where they were intended to go. Making it primary would have fixed some, broken others, and invited a recurrence of the problem the next time a popular work called "The Artist" comes out. Dicklyon (talk) 00:41, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I've commented that we could compile lists of verified links (manually or in a semi-automated fashion) and set up a bot to report new incoming links (which then would be verified or corrected).

This probably is more feasible than mandating the use of redirects (which many editors instinctively "fix").

Additionally, I envision a scenario in which we go ludicrously overboard in the pursuit of perfect disambiguation (e.g. using Paris, France (city) because Paris, France might refer to a film and Paris (city) might refer to Paris, Texas). It's vastly preferable to permit links to the primary meaning and clean up the small number intended for something else. —David Levy 01:07, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

The WikiMedia database doesn't record how many links there are to a page, just that there are non-zero links from page X to page Y. If one link to Paris was about the city (dab-patrolled and marked as such), and later another link was made mentioning that the city was named for the mythic figure Paris, a bot querying the database would find that subsequent to the latest edit no links to new dab pages had been made, so everything's fine (when it's not). The alternative is to check the full wikitext with each edit: expensive, and possibly prohibitively so - at least for every edit; daily checks, for example, might work. Josh Parris 05:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking mainly of new pages with incoming links, which are more likely to stem from error (particularly when a term's multiple meanings are unrelated). As you note, breaking down the individual links on a particular page would be much trickier (though it might be realistic for a bot to periodically report changes in quantity). —David Levy 06:33, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

There might be a technical solution possible. Implement an "intentional" link syntax for primary topics. Not that it would be used, but let's say it would be Paris::, which would display just like Paris but be filter-able in the "What links here" and similar tools used for checking dab links. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:22, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

It would be impossible to prevent well-meaning editors from either removing the special formatting or emulating it when mistakenly linking to an article. —David Levy 01:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Right, and considering how hard it is for people to understand making intentional links to a disambiguation page through a redirect, I expect there would be a much greater outcry if editors were now also supposed to link to primary topics through special links or redirects. I'm more inclined to agree with Dicklyon that for true primary topics, even for those few mistaken links that are created, few if any would be surprised by such finding the primary topic at such a link. It is the largely undetectable mistaken links to the many non-primary ambiguous topics at undisambiguated titles that are a more significant concern. older ≠ wiser 02:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• I think what we need to concentrate on is making sure that whenever a title "X (y)" or "X,Y" exists, it is linked from "X" - either directly from a hatnote on the article at "X", or by an entry in a dab page either at "X" or "X (disambiguation)". When I'm stub-sorting and see a stub with a disambiguator in brackets, I always check it to see whether it has this sort of link, ie it is accessible from the base name. It quite often isn't. (And it sometimes doesn't need to be disambiguated anyway as there is no article at the base name but an editor has thought that the naming system required / approved a disambiguator in the particular case.) This seems to me to be a more important problem than worrying whether some readers to click once rather than twice to find their target article: without these links, the reader searching on the base name finds one or more articles but gets no indication of the existence of the article they are looking for so will assume it is absent. (And may well re-create it under a different choice of disambiguator!). PamD 08:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

{{R from ambiguous page}} as a Primary Topic solution?

Template talk:R from ambiguous page popped up in the last couple of days. I saw it come up, thought "I really need to think about that" and ignored it. It's just occurred to me that the proposed change in it's use would allow:

Article -> Primary Topic -> Disambiguated Primary Topic

Napoleon -> Paris -> Paris, France

The reason {{R from ambiguous page}} exists at the moment is to help bots and others decide how to treat links. Using this template per Incnis Mrsi's suggestion would allow us to change primary topics with little impact at all. Existing tools might already support Category:Redirects from ambiguous pages that {{R from ambiguous page}} chucks a page into, and if they don't it's a cheap and necessary change. Disambigutors ought to have an easy time fixing the links, because linking to a Primary Topic is marked via {{R from ambiguous page}} as being unintentional. The only thing is discovering the Primary Topic (disambiguation) page, and one could make a guess as to its title just as I did now. A side note: WP:NOTBROKEN doesn't apply to redirects marked with {{R from ambiguous page}}, so editors ought not feel upset about "bypassing the redirect"; {{Redirect|Primary Topic}} goes at the top of Disambiguated Primary Topic.

So:

• We get to keep primary topics and all the yelling and frustration they produce.
• We get the benefit of war wheeling over where the Primary Topic redirect should point.

  No more administrators to facilitate a change of Primary Topic! When the tell-all movie about the time-traveling musician is released, Engelbert Humperdinck can finally point to the true primary topic, Engelbert Humperdinck (film). Protocol would suggest dabbing all links to the redirect first.

• In the meantime, articles previously camped out on ambiguous title are at an unambiguous title
• It becomes machine-detectable if a link is ambiguous even when pointing to a Primary Topic
• When appropriate the primary topic can be redirected to the Primary Topic (disambiguation) page

And none of this should affect readers. A win? Josh Parris 07:43, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify, would this change involve moving Paris and making Paris a redirect? Such a move has advantages, but it would complicate the title displayed at the top of the reader's screen and might be seen as putting editors before readers. The Humperdinck editors !voted against a move, albeit one which would have left Engelbert Humperdinck as a dab rather than a redirect to the composer. Certes (talk) 11:27, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it would complicate the title marginally, and throw in a "redirected from Paris" line. A dab wouldn't need to have been proposed to the Humperdinck editors if there was a redirect in place, because it would have been disambiguatable. The primary topic would have still been the composer, but disambiguators would be able to distinguish links to the singer and composer. Josh Parris 01:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

BTW I by no way suppose any changes in articles’ names. There are many terms those primary meaning is defined and broadly used, such as "Paris". My proposal affects links which are frequently but incorrectly used. Another example of such is Special:Whatlinkshere/Hydrogen ion with many hundreds biochemists’ links to a target which for some misunderstanding is labelled "article", not a dab page as it has to be. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:11, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like you're saying the same thing I am, except you're expecting a larger proportion of erroneous links to the target. My reading of your proposed new the semantic for the redirect is "don't link to this, but if you do you'll be taken somewhere appropriate" (a dab page or perhaps Primary Topic) as opposed to the current semantic of "this is a synonym for an ambiguous term, but not the Term (disambiguation) redirect". Is that right? Josh Parris 01:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Other perspectives at Sundries

There's a disagreement at Talk:Sundries as to what should be at Sundries. It's been a disambiguation page since December 2007 and for most people, the term has no association with cricket whatsoever. However, one editor initially wanted to redirect the term to Extra (cricket). After a number of reverts, the editor created the self-admittedly useless article Sundries (miscellaneous items). I contend that the primary usage in this case is in fact the dictionary definition and the use described in the linked articles is more than sufficient to keep them on the disambiguation page rather than shuffle them off to a useless article. Discussion has stalled and other opinions are welcome. older ≠ wiser 16:42, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

As the other participant in the discussion, I wasn't aware that "discussion has stalled." But other opinions are of course welcome. My view is that disambiguation pages are for navigating the content in Wikipedia articles, and if content does not exist in Wikipedia articles, adding that content to the disambiguation page is not a good solution to the perceived problem. Theoldsparkle (talk) 17:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion has definitely stalled now; I just wanted to reiterate the request here for someone to come by and offer a third opinion, since I believe the next step would be to solicit such an opinion elsewhere, and I'd much prefer to get the perspective of someone with an interest and experience in disambiguation. Thanks. Theoldsparkle (talk) 17:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I'll bite. Before I go there, I'm just saying I learned about this here and that's why I'm going. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:09, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Term for what's inside the Parentheses?

Resolved

In Mercury(Element) and Mercury(Planet). Element and Planet are called what? I've used the phrase 'disambiguation term', but if there is a better term, I'd love to use it.Naraht (talk) 21:30, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

According to WP:NCDAB, it is called a disambiguating word or phrase. A briefer term might be context. Bazonka (talk) 22:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, well, guess I'll have to be intelligent to use a different term in different contexts. 1/2 :)22:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:NCDAB also uses the term context, which might work here. "What's the density of Mercury?" will get one answer in a chemical laboratory and another in an astronomical observatory. Qualifier is another term I've seen used. Certes (talk) 23:57, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I call them disambiguators. WP:NCB uses "qualifier". -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:03, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a disambiguator. The key is that it needs to be a characteristic of this use that distinguishes it from other uses - so we need to know what the other uses are to decide what the disambiguator needs to be.

So we use city in Cork (city) because it's the only use of "cork" in WP that's a city. Similarly, we use film in 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) because that "2001: A Space Odyssey" is the only use that is a film, but we use 1988 film in Godzilla (1998 film) because there are other films with the name Godzilla, but this was the only one made in 1988.

This is one reason I object to predisambiguation - using a disambiguator (or overly precise title) when it's not needed for disambiguation. Since there are no other uses, we have no other uses to look at to decide what the disambiguator should be. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Positioning of a new disambiguation category (townships)

Hello and happy new year. I've been feeding the recently created category Category:Township name disambiguation pages, which is located directly in Category:Place name disambiguation pages. Wouldn't it be more relevant to position it in the (sub) Category:Country subdivision name disambiguation pages‎ instead? Townships are country subdivisions, and could join similar entities (eg municipalities). NB: for the moment the overwhelming majority of the townships listed here are located in the US, but some pages combine Canadian with US twps, or Chinese with Taiwanese twps.Stephane mot (talk) 10:20, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Why not both? A category can have multiple supercategories, and both seem applicable here. bd2412 T 19:03, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Some clean-up issues

If anyone could help, I'm looking for ideas at Category talk:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup#Some issues. Thanks, Boleyn (talk) 18:47, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Unnecessary disambiguation

With the closure of the move request at Talk:Catholic Memorial School (West Roxbury, Massachusetts), we now have a case where the base title redirects to a lengthier disambiguated title. How can we resolve this situation? Powers ^T 22:16, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

There's nothing to resolve, really. It may not be ideal, but just leaving things as they are causes no real problem. Station1 (talk) 23:57, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Sure, let's have endless discussions about whether each of countless titles should be disambiguated even when it's not necessary for disambiguation, and about what that disambiguation should be. Nothing to resolve, indeed. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:14, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The article's topic either is primary (in which case it should occupy the base title) or isn't primary (in which case the base title should lead elsewhere). Redirecting "Foo" to "Foo (disambiguation term)" (so that the base title leads to the article, but the article nonetheless doesn't occupy it) serves absolutely no practical purpose.

Without commenting on the move discussion's outcome, there are two reasonable courses of action:

1. Move the article to the base title.

2. Create a disambiguation page at the base title or redirect it to an existing disambiguation page.

The same goes for Catholic Memorial High School, which presently redirects to Catholic Memorial High School (Waukesha, Wisconsin). —David Levy 00:26, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree completely (I favored the move at the RM discussion). But we can't do "1" without overturning the decision (which I think is not worth the effort for this one article), and we definitely shouldn't do "2" because there's nothing to disambiguate among article titles on WP. Leaving the redirect in place is, as I said, not ideal, but as long as it's there, readers can search for and link to the Catholic Memorial School as easily as if it were the actual title. Station1 (talk) 00:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Not overturning this bad decision sets a bad precedent and invites similar mischief on other articles. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

A 'no consenus' decision is never a precedent, and based on the discussion I don't think you'll gain consensus to overturn it, but if you can, great. Station1 (talk) 01:00, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I've challenged it on the grounds that saying there is "no consensus" on the questions of ambiguity and primary topic (which is the basis for the "no consensus" close) is nosensical when the term in question redirects to the article, and has so for years, not to mention that there is no dab page. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:14, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Unless the moves are undone, Catholic Memorial School can disambiguate between the two schools that are apparently not sufficiently unambiguous on their own. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:52, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

They appear to be sufficiently unambiguous, especially if mutual hatnotes are used, so a dab page seems unnecessary. Station1 (talk) 01:00, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

This dab page seems pointy and a violation of WP:DPAGES to me. None of the criteria for combining terms on a dab page listed there applies in this case. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I think it was done completely in good faith, but I don't think there is consensus for it, so I've reverted. Station1 (talk) 01:17, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with your revert, Station1, which I have explained here. By the way, "lack of consensus" alone is not a good reason to revert; at least you gave some reason for objection in your edit summary. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:POINTy? Please. Qualifiers are used to distinguish ambiguous titles. The discussion appeared to lead to the titles are insufficiently disambiguated by the presence of the word "High". Similar conclusions have been reached on differences in capitalization or other minor differences in long titles (see many of the longer NRHP-initiated dabs), resulting in DAB pages where unqualified but still possibly unclear names were possible. If qualifiers are needed, then the base name is not sufficiently deterministic and a dab page is needed. Yielding to consensus is not WP:POINTy, and you're out of line. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with most here that the disambiguator in that article title is inappropriate, but I don't see that it creates any "new" problem - we have thousands of redundantly disambiguated articles already (American towns, kings, lords, ships...), and the redirects from the shorter titles exist without causing any navigational paradox.--Kotniski (talk) 09:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Stylistically, there's a great deal of difference between "Name, natural elaboration" and "Name (parenthetical disambiguation phrase)".

Redirecting "Barack Obama" to "Barack Obama (United States President)" wouldn't cause any navigational paradox, but it wouldn't provide any benefit either. It wouldn't aid readers seeking the article on Barack Obama, Sr. (who still would arrive at his son's article and find the same hatnote). It would merely make Wikipedia look silly for appending nonfunctional disambiguation.

Obviously, redirects from Catholic Memorial School to Catholic Memorial School (West Roxbury, Massachusetts) and from Catholic Memorial High School to Catholic Memorial High School (Waukesha, Wisconsin) are far less prominent than my hypothetical example would be, but that doesn't mean that their senselessness ought to be tolerated. —David Levy 10:58, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

This is not really a disambiguation issue. Assuming for the sake of argument that there are no other schools anywhere in the world whose names are likely to be confused with either of the above (which seems a stretch to me, but beside the point), there is nothing in WP:D that indicates whether the article names should or should not include qualifiers. That would be an application of WP:AT. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:52, 12 January 2012 (UTC)