Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Archive 20

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Page with content is not a disambiguation page

Removed the following recently-added line from the intro:

A page that explains the relationship between different meanings, and/or includes meanings which are not further explained in other articles, has content and is therefore not a disambiguation page.

While this is true, it doesn't belong on this page, IMO. Defining what a dab page is and isn't belongs at WP:D. Please discuss here if you disagree. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I definitly agree that it does not belong here. The only problem with saying that it belongs on Wikipedia:Disambiguation is that the section "Disambiguation Pages" links back to the main article Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)... It might belong somewhere, but is a bit convoluted as of now. -- Natalya 17:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
The language might need to be sharpened, too. Under these criteria, adding a redlink to a semi-obscure album by a semi-obscure band has added some meaning which is not further explained in other articles, thereby rendering the dab page non-dab, even if it has a disambig template. This is extreme, if not absurd. In reality, worthy content erroneously placed on a dab page does not change the character of the page, it is just an anomaly that needs to be rectified. But a multi-stub page, while obsolescent, is not a dab page, so the first part of the proposed sentence is accurate. If this proposed sentence gets added, it should be on WP:D, as it relates to substance, not style. Chris the speller 18:51, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Where in Wikipedia, if not on a disambiguation page, would one find the explanation of the fact that one of the several meanings is the basic one that explains the others? Often that can be put into one sentence that precedes the list of links. Michael Hardy 19:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

What does this mean?

The article says: 

 On a page called Title, generally do not disambiguate:
    * Title County
    * Title City
    * Title Hospital
    * Title University

What does this mean? Does the verb 'disambiguate' mean make an entry for, or make a set of entries for, or ?? If this is not to be done, what is to be done?

For instance, on a "York (disambiguation)" page, does this mean don't have a "York County" line, or do have one, but not multiple ones (for York, Ohio and York, Iowa). If the latter, is then then supposed to be a link to a "York County (disambiguation)" page instead? Or is this supposed to be talking about something entirely different? -R. S. Shaw 04:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it's just not very well written. It means on "York (disambiguation)", you should only list things that might be called precisely "York". I suppose that might include Yorkshire and York, Ontario, but probably not York University, North York, York Springs, Pennsylvania, or New York. —Michael Z. 2006-03-02 04:52 Z
Right, it's not well written; it has always given me the creeps. I am pretty sure they wanted us not to include a line for York Hospital on the York page, even though you might answer "York" for "What hospital did they take him to?". Any halfway sensible reader who wanted York Hospital would enter both words and then hit the Go button. Same thinking for Mexico City. They wouldn't just type Mexico and hit Go, or just enter Chicago if they wanted Chicago University. Who's going to clean it up? If one of you wants to try a rewrite and post it here, I'll be glad to look it over before we put it into production. Best to build consensus here first. Chris the speller 05:32, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've been bold, and did something about this issue and the one mentioned below. It may not be perfect, but I hope you think it's an improvement. Go ahead and improve it further. —Michael Z. 2006-03-02 05:48 Z

Sorry, Michael, nice try, but I felt it had to be reverted until it gets improved. The cases for County, City, Hospital and University are specific, and need to be retained, same for the town/township, etc. They do need to be explained better and have examples added. Not sure about moving it way up top, as many folks are used to looking in a certain place in the style guide, don't want to disorient them. I am out of time for today, but will get back to it soon. Chris the speller 06:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Awful quick on reverting my revert, Michael. I can't revert and explain the reason at EXACTLY the same time. Please put it back until we can work out something that is a true improvement. Chris the speller 06:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Alright, I'll leave this to you. But it's a mistake to revert unless you actually think my edit made the page worse. —Michael Z. 2006-03-02 14:37 Z
I didn't want you to go away mad, or even to go away at all. I reverted because I thought the guidelines were harmed by dropping County, City, Hospital and University. These have apparently been arrived at through serious thought, and should be retained. If you find yourself back here and see new examples and explanations that we have proposed, please add to the discussion. These things generally go better when there are multiple brains contributing ideas. There are no hard feelings, and there was no intention to slight your efforts. Chris the speller 18:46, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Go ahead and add them in, but they don't all seem like well thought-out general examples to me at all. As in many things, editor's judgement must be applied to the specifics of a disambiguation page, so a content-free example like Title City is useless. Not disambiguating city and university are probably bad advice in most cases anyway, but of course that depends on the specifics. For example, New York City and Carson City are often called New York and Carson, and I can easily imagine a context where Oxford or Rutgers quite definitely refers to a university.
Also, Examples and Issues are inaccurate and vague titles for these sections. They are about content and not format, and belong at the top of this MOS page. —Michael Z. 2006-03-02 19:38 Z

I agree, the vague section titles are slated for demolition, but I would have to study them more before deciding where best to put them after they get new, sensible titles. The guidelines do say "generally do not disambiguate", so they anticipate the occasional need for exceptions, in effect they generally discourage adding those items. I still think there are good reasons to recommend leaving these items off a disambig page, although the first actual cases I looked at have ignored those guidelines (Mexico contains Mexico City, San Diego contains San Diego County), and if I removed them per the guidelines, they would reappear within a day. I hope a couple more editors side with you or with me soon. Two people with different opinions are not liable to reach a good consensus. Chris the speller 22:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the general intent behind the guidance is good, but the specific examples, as you've found out, are commonly ignored. I would almost always include X County and X Township in a disambiguation of X -- as they are often referred to without the qualifier (and there are often several types of places named X in the same general area (e.g., Kalamazoo County, Michigan, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Kalamazoo Township, Michigan). Perhaps it is time to update the guidance to reflect actual practice rather than wishful thinking. Oops, of course that is not such a good example, since there is no Kalamazoo (disambiguation), but the same principle holds -- that was just one such place name that came to mind. older ≠ wiser 23:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
But I like the Kalamazoo example. A reader looking for the county who types Kalamazoo and hits Go is not presented with a disambig page from which to select the county, but other cities do present a disambig page where the county is also listed. Why do they need a disambiguation for the county while Kalamazoo does not? I don't think they are really needed anywhere, but editors who don't read the style manual will keep adding disambig lines for counties. Maybe it is time to face reality, as OlderNotWiser suggests. Maybe the guidelines should suggest (in clearer language, of course) that educated editors not bother to add such disambig items, but advise against removing such items that have been added by eager county residents and employees. But perhaps that's too much. Chris the speller 05:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Here is a suggested clarification. Any interested editors can abandon this project, reword this, or take it further.

===Examples of individual entries that should usually not be created===
On a page called Title, generally do not create an entry for:

  • Title County
  • Title City
  • Title Hospital
  • Title University
These may require their own disambiguation pages. For example, "Jefferson County" should list the counties in all the states, but the "Jefferson" disambiguation page ideally would not. A reader looking for Jefferson County would be expected to type both words and hit the Go button, not just type "Jefferson". However, if you find that another editor has felt the need to create such entries, please do not remove them.

You may want to create entries on the same page for:

  • TITLE and Title
  • Title town and Title township
An example is "Willow Valley", which lists a town of that name as well as "Willow Valley Township" in another state.

"Title Island", "Title River" or "River Title" may be worth listing in cases where the "Island"/"River" part is often omitted, so "Catalina" might include "Santa Catalina Island".

In most cases, do not list names of which Title is a part, unless the persons are very frequently referred to simply by their first or last name (e.g. Galileo, Shakespeare).

If you go with this, remove the nowiki, br and comment tags that are in the first six lines. Chris the speller 17:47, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I think this is much clearer, and should be implemented. CarolGray 13:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

And what about this?

In an Issues section, the article says 

  In general, inline descriptions are problematic 
  (because links to disambiguation pages should be avoided), 
  so they are likely to be neglected for lack of visibility.

Descriptions inline with what? What do links to dab pages have to do with it? (I can't evaluate the 'visibility' clause since I haven't figured out the context.) -R. S. Shaw 04:40, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I can't tell what that means at all. —Michael Z. 2006-03-02 05:45 Z
This is more like a guess, but I think they meant not to put much information in each disambiguation line after the link. Example:
  • Jeremy Q. Fenstermacher, second cousin of Cyrus Krummholz, who married Evangeline Winebibber and was the second-place finisher in the 1907 pork rind cookoff.
Two reasons: if Wikipedia is well maintained, most links will go directly to J.Q.'s article, and not to the Jeremy Fenstermacher disambig page, so the information is: 1) sitting there on the disambig page, mostly not being read; 2) sitting there, not being updated by editors who only see the article on J.Q., and not the dab page. New information proves that his wife was actually Evelyn, and the article gets fixed, but the dab page still has Evangeline. Not to mention that all that junk is distracting.
Of course, that section may be so poorly written that I have not interpreted it correctly. Someone please throw TWO life preservers. Chris the speller 05:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I think you've come up with the probable intention of the author. The dab page link is likely the thought that you could have a link from an article to each of the dab pages which lead to the article in order to "raise visibility" for maintenance, but that shouldn't be done. Whew; I think we can drop that part.
Here's a draft for a replacement:
The description associated with a link should be kept to a minimum, as it is only for helping the reader find the right link; being on an obscure page it will not be used for reference and will not be well maintained.
Hmm–seems too wordy; maybe the 2nd clause should be left out. -R. S. Shaw 22:58, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
How about: The description associated with a link should be kept to a minimum, providing it allows the reader find the correct link. ? -- Natalya 23:23, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
May I suggest: The description associated with a link should be kept to a minimum, just sufficient to allow the reader to find the correct link. ? CarolGray 17:03, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
After Carol made that change, I added Shaw's draft as an invisible comment, to be seen by future editors who want to "clean it up". Chris the speller 22:12, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks - that's a good idea - I didn't think of doing that. CarolGray 06:59, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikilinking

Unlike a regular article page, don't wikilink any other words in the line, unless they may be essential to help the reader determine where they might find the information.

The example given seems insufficient to determine when one ought to wikilink words that aren't the title of the disambiguation page. For example, I was told that ""Angel", a 1988 song by Aerosmith", and similar such fixes, shoud not be wikilinked per this rule. This seems unhelpful, given anyone looking for information about the Aerosmith song should at least be able to read about the group, even if there is no article about the song. However, I'm not sure if this is the correct way to interpret the rule, especially as it's been enforced inconsistantly. Nedlum 16:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

That's precisely what unless they may be essential to help the reader determine where they might find the information means. "You were told"—by whom? If there's no article on "Angel", then Aerosmith should absolutely be linked. A line with no link at all is useless—disambiguation pages are supposed to disambiguate, not give the reader information. The point of this rule is that, in almost all cases, each line in a disambiguation page should have exactly one link. No more, no less. --TreyHarris 17:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
The general guidelines are that if there is an article for topic, the link to the article is the only link in the line. If there is not an article for the topic (as in the above example), there should be a link to the page that gives the most information or is most relevant. Hence, "Aerosmith" should be linked to, since it is the band that wrong the song. -- Natalya 19:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
That's right, and I would include a link to the band or album if the song is a red link. But if the song doesn't meet the notability criteria, then it probably doesn't belong on the disambiguation page at all. In that case, interested readers will have to rely on searching for it or finding the article about the album or band. —Michael Z. 2006-03-03 20:22 Z
I always try to pay attention to my own reading behavior, and I have from time to time searched for songs before with no idea who performed them. I think it's reasonable, if the song is a popular or important one, to include it and make a link to the performer, even if it isn't notable enough to have an article in its own right. --TreyHarris 21:35, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Is this general guideline worthy of a section on the main article? I came by this article via [1] but wasnt able to understand the rationale until I came to this section on the talk page. Jayvdb 23:25, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Looking for advice

Moved to Talk:Abatement.

What is this? (multi-stub page)

Take a look at declaration. What is this page? Is it a (very malformed) disambiguation page, or some sort of omnibus article? I'm loathe to break it out into four separate stubs (and then track down and fix the dozens of links to it) , but it currently is rather a mess. Any ideas? --TreyHarris 08:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I rewrote it as a regular dab page. --Muchness 09:33, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps you can elaborate on what you did to rewrite it as a dab. Clearly the user asking the question is more interested in how best to handle problem pages like this[2], than in just this one page. Did you move the dictdef's to Wiktionary? Merge the troubling bits into some other articles? Or dump those bits on Talk pages hoping some other editors will deal with it? Start new articles? Or just toss it? (This happens a lot -- someone mentions a page and before the discussion even heats up the page is fixed -- which is great 'cause I'm all about getting these pages fixed -- but it doesn't help those of us who are still learning how best to approach fixing these pages.) Thanks! Ewlyahoocom 09:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the lack of explanation. Here's what I did:
  • Replaced redundant stubs with links to articles that cover the topics in depth
  • Shifted the stub with no existing main article to a disambiguated article, declaration (computer science)
  • Replaced the dict def with a {{wiktionarypar}} link
  • Added some entries
  • Reviewed the "what links here" page, redirecting links from the dab page to specific articles where appropriate
For reference, here's the diff: [3] --Muchness 10:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the details. Oh, you forgot that all important last step: wait for someone to come along and revert it without consideration for any of the thought or work that went into it because they didn't like the way you handled one of the tangential links. ;-) Ewlyahoocom 04:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
That was a multi-stub page. According to Wikipedia:Disambiguation: "Although this is similar to a disambiguation page, the disambiguation notice should not be put here...." And there was no such notice.
Trey was correct that it could be broken up, and that would be a fair amount of work. Muchness did a very nice job! But breaking up such pages is not always a good idea.
Always ask at the Pump or Help desk whenever a page is ripe for splitting (use template {{split}} or {{splitsection}}), since there should be consensus first. WP:Bold doesn't apply, as it is very difficult to revert a split, requiring the help of administrators and WP:SPLICE.
--William Allen Simpson 10:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I take back my comment that Muchness did a nice job. The page is pretty, and he found other uses of declaration, but he didn't handle the What Links Here. Trey correctly noted that was a major part of the split effort. Remember Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguated topics: A code of honor for creating disambiguation pages is to fix all resulting mis-directed links.
--William Allen Simpson 10:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
If you'll review my contribs, you'll see that that's just what I've been doing for the past hour or so. --Muchness 10:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Excellent, and thank you. As Ewlyahoocom noted, this cross-talk is what happens when the work happens during the discussion, instead of the discussion taking place first with consensus.
Also, you'll note that the instructions say: "Before creating a disambiguation page...." Those who came before us weren't ignorant, and clearly designed a process that would have avoided this cross-talk.
I updated the "Summary and multi-stub" section to note the long-time templates. Apparently, folks aren't always reading all the instructions, so it doesn't hurt to have reminders in more than one place.
--William Allen Simpson 11:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Suggested addition to piping exceptions

What are your thoughts on adding the following exception to MOS:DP piping guidelines?

I think the exception you propose helps for readability, but not for navigation. It used to be that most editors would pipe nearly all links on a disambiguation page, because "Turkey (bird)" is not something that one encounters in normal English, and so we'd pipe it into "turkey" on the disambiguation page, just like we would in an article. So you'd see a row of "Turkey...Turkey...Turkey...Turkey" links on the Turkey (disambiguation) page, regardless of what articles the links actually went to. Pretty, and grammatically and typographically correct, but it slowed down the reader's ability to scan the choices and select the correct page.

Today, the gestalt of this style guide is that the function of disambiguation pages is navigation elsewhere. The stricture against piped links is for this reason: if you use piped links, the reader must read the entire line containing the link to decide if it's the link she wants to click on. If you use an accidental (unpiped) link, the title of the article alone (and hence, the visible link itself) may be sufficient for the reader to decide whether or not to click. --TreyHarris 17:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, oftentimes I find that the article's title is sufficent to allow the reader to decide whether or not they want that link (although Gflores may disagree with me on that). Ewlyahoocom 17:41, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, agree, that makes sense. Thanks. --Muchness 18:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup

Moved to Talk:Abatement.

Changing disambig tag

Apparently, I need discuss changing {{disambig}} to {{TLAdisambig}} for AAA. Can I ask why? Gflores Talk 02:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

As I mentioned in the edit summary, MOS:DP specifies {{disambig}} for all disambiguation pages. —Michael Z. 2006-03-11 02:39 Z
I think there's an editor running around changing all these to {{3LC}} (and {{2LC}}). For more, see the above 5 or 6 sections starting with "Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations". Ewlyahoocom 13:13, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The situation seems simple to me. {{disambig}} is the only template that goes on a disambiguation page. There is no such thing as an abreviation page, there are only disambiguation pages. Thus {{TLAdisambig}}, {{3LC}}, {{2LC}} and whatever other templates will be removed and replaced with {{disambig}}.--Commander Keane 13:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Specifically on this topic, I changed the tag on FAST to {{disambig}}, because from these discussions that seems what it should be (it was previously {{4LC}}). Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations confuses me, though. Is its purpose to just detail how a disambiguation page of abbreviations should work? It seems to be kind of redundant then, since they are just disambiguation pages with the topic being disambiguated as an abbreviation. -- Natalya 18:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather not open this discussion again, except to ask: was any consesus reached? The discussion spread out over a couple of Talk pages and trying to follow it now gives me a headache. I do notice that {{3LC}} got moved to {{3CC}} a couple weeks ago, "letter combination" vs "character combination"? Maybe they weren't well thought out before being launched. No, no, no... I can't get started on this again So, was any consesus reached? Ewlyahoocom 18:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there was any real consensus. I suspect many participants got tired of being harrangued and of the ongoing obfuscation, which is why the discussion petered out with occasional fits and starts in the aftermath. older ≠ wiser 21:32, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

User:William Allen Simpson, member since November, has been insisting that he originally created the concepts of "disambiguation pages" and "abbreviation pages", and has been proliferating all those templates during the last month or two. The discussions have been hard to pin down because they span various WP and template talk pages. I would really love to redirect those templates to {{disambig}} and finally put this to rest. —Michael Z. 2006-03-13 00:13 Z

I agree wholeheartedly with Michael and Bkonrad. I got tired of chasing Simpson's pedantic arguments around in circles; he has put me off of contributing to Disambiguation discussions entirely for now (although I still work on the Cleanup category and keep my Watchlisted dabs tidy). Unfortunately I'm not alone, and he has taken silence as consensus; I think I've just been of the hope that he'll get tired of his crusade and things will gradually shift back where they were.
Don't get me wrong, I think Simpson has done some fine and needed work on cleaning up the guidelines on the WP:DAB, WP:DPL and MoS:DP pages. And I don't object strongly to the 2LC and 3LC templates/categories, but I have yet to see a convincing argument for keeping them. I just dislike his penchant for arrogantly stating a premise, dominating conversation, and dismissively discounting any point of debate which contradicts his own agenda. — Catherine\talk 01:12, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

One of those "whatever other" templates is hndis. There is a crew going around adding and updating a ton of hndis templates in Category:Human_name_disambiguation. Should we ask them to stop, and/or do we change them to disambig templates? Chris the speller 05:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

What are they doing? Could you give an example or a person's contribs that I can check.--Commander Keane 05:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at the convoluted set of polls here: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Disambiguation_subcategories#TLA_poll; the consensus was to delete all *LA templates. {{4LA}} is still there, but In response to the poll, Simpson also created {{4LC}} [history], then later moved it to {{4CC}}. This circular game has added useless templates to thousands of pages since January. —Michael Z. 2006-03-13 06:14 Z

I just scanned over Simpson's last few thousand contributions [4]. He's cleaned up a lot of disambiguation pages ("abbreviation pages"), while adding, renaming, and replacing a vast network of disambiguation templates and categories. I'm now convinced that no force on Earth can oppose the will of this unstoppable disambiguating machine. We may as well all just go edit some articles. —Michael Z. 2006-03-13 06:30 Z

I just worked on Lisa, which has the {{hndis}} template. About 1⁄3 of the entries are human names, but the other 2⁄3 are not. I left the {{hndis}} in place, because I've never seen it before, but the text reads rather strangely given the non-human majority of entries. I put all the humans named Lisa under an "In biography:" header. I'm not entirely happy with the page, though. --TreyHarris 07:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Lisa illustrates the problem with these templates. That's why this guideline does not allow their use. You can remove {{hndis}} and replace it with {{disambig}} (and optionally Category:Human name disambiguation).--Commander Keane 08:19, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I can go along with that, but we still have 2 problems:

1) I contacted User:DLJessup on February 19 and warned him that we had hndis in our sights, and that he might want to save the energy he was expending on sorting them. He is a powerhouse of an editor and has been cooperative. We might want to find out how hard it would be for him and his pals to use our template and the hnd category (can that category be sorted by surname without the use of a template? Or can the hndis template be changed to insert the category and sort it, but not display at the bottom of the dab page?)

2) This MoS and WP:TM/GENERAL are at variance. The General template page specifies TLAdisambig and geodis as well as disambig, so it should have those 2 old ones removed or marked as deprecated. Chris the speller 17:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the list of templates at WP:TM/GENERAL to match the MOS, by deleting references to those two templates. —Michael Z. 2006-03-13 17:46 Z

When I posted the question, I had no idea this had been (thoroughly) discussed already. But for the record, I agree with Michael and C. Keane. Gflores Talk 19:08, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

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