User talk:Genewald

The larger image that is linked to from the link under the image in the article only partially loads into the browser. However, when the link in the history is used, the entire image loads just fine.

Handball

Hello,

I changed your handball reference back to a disambiguation page, as the team handball version is an Olympic sport and professionally played in Europe, whereas American handball seems to be more of a recreational game not known by too many people. I recognise that the primary meaning in America is the American form, but the world is larger than the US. (The primary meaning in Ireland would be Gaelic handball, for example, and google trends suggests that even hits from the US rises considerably when there's an Olympic competition (2004) or a world championship (January 2007))

Also, due to this change, there is now a massive list of links (Special:WhatLinksHere/Handball) which currently point to a disambiguation page and would point to a flatly wrong page if the redirect went to American handball. Could you please help me in getting these links to point to the right page, perhaps by starting at the bottom and working your way upwards? Thanks in advance. Sam Vimes | Address me 22:34, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Sam

Sam, I agree with your idea of having the word "handball" resolve to the disamb page. That is most probably the right place that search engines like google or yahoo should send searchers to since there are so many different sports and interpretations. Within the wikipedia itself, where specific words are linked to a page, those should still work as originally intended if they pointed to their intended target, but shouldn't we leave it to the original authors to straighten those out? I did as you suggested - reading a few dozen of the pages that link to "handball" but it is nearly impossible to tell exactly which sport the author intended without taking some kind of bias towards one sport or another. For example, many of the pages I read are simply listing sports that are offered at a particular location (club, college, university, etc.), or sports that are played by individuals (as in biographies). If it requires knowledge that only the author would have to know which sport is intended, then the disamb page is the right place for it to go until the author clarifies. Until the author makes the edit, the reader of the article will be rightly sent to a page that clearly identifies the ambiguity of what the author has written. Does this make sense? I am always willing to learn, so teach me some more.

BTW, when I look up the word "handball" in Merriam-Webster, there are two entries: "handball" dated 1873 which refers to the game found here as "American Handball", and "team handball" added to the dictionary in 1970. I have not done an exhaustive search of other dictionaries to see how they deal with this, but just find it supports one view point. Note also that the "American Handball" page used to be titled just "Handball" in wikipedia until someone who wanted handball to resolve to "Team Handball" made a change.

Think about it: nobody in America refers to it by "American Handball"; it is just "Handball" here. Only in other countries where they have a game they call handball do they need a way to differentiate it. Why is it "Team Handball" instead of "Non-American Handball" or "Euro Handball"? Gene Waldvogle (talk) 04:13, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I can see that what you say makes sense - however, I would just like to note that the two (three, there's an Australian schoolyard game too) forms are almost unambiguously geographically split. If the club or city article mentioning handball is European, it will with almost 100 % certainty (especially if it's named among other team sports such as basketball, volleyball or water polo) be team handball.

As for your last point: the team game isn't called team handball by anyone either. As in America, nobody has the need to disambiguate because they do not know of the other game, and nobody calls it Euro handball or team handball. (Admittedly the team sport is tiny in pretty much every English-speaking country, but the BBC calls it [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/handball/default.stm handball], as do the IOC). Sam Vimes | Address me 05:52, 31 July 2008 (UTC)