Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation/Archive 10

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Archive 5 Archive 8 Archive 9 Archive 10 Archive 11 Archive 12 Archive 15

I'm proposing the creation of this page, as I believe there are enough subjects:

Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 04:25, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think a user would be expecting any of those articles when typing in "Doctor Doom" other than the top two (when to disambiguate). I'd say a dab link at the top of Doctor Doom for Marc Faber should be sufficient. Thanks/wangi (talk) 11:10, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
What about the fact that we have other similar-looking "stub dabs", like Children's literature (disambiguation), Buu and Devilman (disambiguation)? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 07:55, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
Looking at Children's literature (disambiguation), I don't think we need all of those see also links! None of them are easily confusable by title, and even though they are about the same topic, they are all listed at the primary topic Children's literature. I don't even think we need that disambiguation page at all, and could just have top links between Children's literature and Children's Literature (journal). -- Natalya 14:08, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
Guess I'll tag it for deletion with {{db-disambig}}. That ok? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 17:58, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think we need to deleted - I just made it a redirect to Children's literature, and modified the hatnote. -- Natalya 20:33, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
I believe it's common practice to delete redirected links with "(disambiguation)", like I requested for UBU (disambiguation), Indian (Americas disambiguation) and Vizard (disambiguation). Does it bother you that much? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 22:38, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
I can't think of there being harm either way, but I had in the back of my mind that we were supposed to redirect them. After digging through WP:D, I came across a line in Wikipedia:D#Links_to_disambiguation_pages saying an example of a link to a disambiguation page could be "Redirects from page names that have "(disambiguation)" in their titles — E.g., Britain (disambiguation) redirects to Britain". Which it does. Since no one is going to type in "xyz (disambiguation)" into the search bar, it shouldn't hurt people using the encyclopedia to delete the pages, but for behind the scenes work, having the page at least exist may make it easier to see the history of why it was deleted, etc. Overall, probably no harm done by deleting them, but I don't think they have to be. -- Natalya 00:09, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
I think you're a little confused, Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages shows that the tag is for redirects with the "(disambiguation)". These only target their dab counterpart. This is not the case for Children's literature (disambiguation), which targets a non-disambiguation page. Does this make sense? Ah, while I'm here let me ask you, how does Beelzebub (disambiguation) look? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 05:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
OH! I get it. :) Sorry, it took me a while to work through all the terminology, but no, you're right, that totally makes sense. I'll go ahead and delete the page.
As for Beelzebub (disambiguation), it looks nice - I just have two thoughts. You could reconsider the ordering of links per MoS:DP#Order_of_entries. Also, I'm having some difficulty with the See also section. On first glance, it looks too long. Then I consider it more, and I can see that there are some legitimate possible misspellings going on. If it were me (and this is just my opinion!), I'd move the Beelzebub Jones link to the regular section, and probably delete the "What's New, Beelzebub?" link, since it doesn't seem to be anything anyone would easily confuse with just the term "Beelzebub". But what do you think? -- Natalya 20:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, I never really grasped the concept of MoS:DP#Order of entries, mainly because I'm not sure which terms (save for the primary topic) would be the most popular choices. Can you make the necessary tweak(s) there? I might learn from you ;) Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 20:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, though I still don't see a significant difference. So, what shall we do with a "Doctor Doom (disambiguation)" and this one? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 03:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)It seems valid to have Doctor Doomsday there, since (myself being confused), it seems that people would consider him similar to Dr. Doom. I don't particularly think the other links besides Doctor Doom and Marc Faber are necessary - yes, they are about similar Dr. Doom topics, but they are not confusable by title, and would be more appropriate in the Doctor Doom article (which many/all of them are). -- Natalya 21:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

OK. We all set here? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 22:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering if such a page could be used to disambiguate:

Thoughts on what to make of this? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 02:40, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
It definitly seems like a useful page. I think it may be a set index article, though? -- Natalya 14:11, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
Should I make a layout like that of List of Harry Potter related topics? Inclusively, since WP:PIPING discourages pipe links, what would be a good redirect for Spider-Man (1967 TV series)#Episode list? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 17:58, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
Piping would seem a appropriate in that case. I also agree with Nataly about making it a set index (which would allow a bit more flexibility on formatting so defintiely piping would be fine) but one thought on the name: should it be "Lists of Spider-Man episodes"? You could redirect "List" there but "Lists" strikes me as being slightly better, after all you would have "Mountains named Black" not "Mountain". Although that is splitting hairs - the important thing is to have the article. (Emperor (talk) 04:08, 1 June 2008 (UTC))
Since it's a list of lists, your point is sound, Emperor - it should be "lists". -- Natalya 10:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I just had a thought, wouldn't List of Spider-Man related topics be a lot better following the Harry Potter precedent? Any "List" and "Lists" links can redirect there. However, I still need a suggestion on what the name of the redirect for Spider-Man (1967 TV series)#Episode list could be. Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 20:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Could you make it similar to the title for List of Spider-Man (1994 animated series) episodes? -- Natalya 21:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
We have two options:
I'd say the latter would be the best choice, but only because the main article is titled Spider-Man (1967 TV series). Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 22:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Unless there was a 1967 un-animated series, List of Spider-Man (1967 TV series) episodes seems fine. -- Natalya 17:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Wanted: Disambigious members with free time to help MASSIVE project!

Note that this was originally posted here: Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links but I feel that this is also a good place to ask anyone to have a look.
Hello disambigious wikiproject! Just giving a shout out to anyone that is here interested in a VERY BIG disambigious task. It involves this BOT: User:FritzpollBot and this project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places. The objective is to add an extra ~1.8 million articles on Wikipedia. Yup that's right, ~1.8 million articles of places (viligies,towns etc). All of this will be automated and such but there is a problem with the disambigiuation aspects of this task. That is, there are many places that happen to have the same name (but are two different places --> as suggested by the coordinates) and if one article was to be created, the second won't be created but will instead be a copy of the first. This might leave big gaps in the amount of articles created so that is why disambigious names will need to be fixed to ensure there is an article for each of the places. There currently are a few people undertaking this task already but if you happen to be interested in this task, do check out the project page and help any country of your choise out. Currently not all countries are available, but they soon will be so I thought I give a heads up to anyone that might want to help out in anyway. Ok maybe that wasn't an exceptional explanation but if you have any questions, please go to User talk:Fritzpoll or User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE as both happen to be a part of this excellent idea. Cheers! Calaka (talk) 11:18, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh and just to give an update: There is currently a discussion occuring here at: [1] so if there is any interest, you are more than welcome to state your view/opinion. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 01:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

{{surname}} vs. {{hndis}} vs. {{disambig}}, etc

I'm working on a bot to add missing entries to DABs, and it has run into some problematic pages like McCain (disambiguation). This used to be tagged as a DAB, but now is just a {{surname}} page. Nonetheless, it has a few non–personal name links at the bottom. (Other examples include Riemann (disambiguation) and Yakovlev (disambiguation).) Most surname pages are not disambiguation pages, supposedly, but this one is a mix. I am a bit confused over DAB vs. surname vs. hndis—can anyone share their theories about this? Thanks. —johndburger 16:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi. This is another one where Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy might have some input - I'll cross-post it if nobody has beaten me to it. My understanding is that {{surname}} simply tags a page as dealing, anthroponymically, with a given name. It might cover derivation, similarities in other languages, and/or a list of examples. It is not intended to disambiguate. {{hndis}} is specifically for disambiguation of the same name; e.g. Michael Smith. There shouldn't be anything there but entries for various Michael Smiths, and certainly nothing about the names Michael or Smith per se. {{disambig}} is for other disambiguation pages that are not human names (nor ships, nor places, which also have their own disambiguation templates - there are doubtless others). In other words, {{hndis}} is a special case of {{disambig}} and should be mutually exclusive with {{surname}}, in the vast majority of cases.
You might also check with User:Quadell who has a bot to work on human names that could be added to dab pages; see (the history of) Wikipedia:Suggestions_for_name_disambiguation. No sense in reinventing a wheel.
Finally (one surely hopes - this is too long!) McCain (disambiguation) looks more like an {{disambig}} than a {{surname}}; I think that's the wrong template. I don't think it's an {{hndis}} because there are multiple given names covered. --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:01, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree - McCain (disambiguation), as it stands now, should have the {{disambig}} tag on it (going to go change that now). If there was a page McCain (surname), that would be appropriate to have the {{surname}} tag. -- Natalya 17:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
But DABs are for pages with same or similar titles—my reading of MOSDAB is that a DAB called McCain should not contain a list of people with surname McCain, which is mostly what McCain (disambiguation) is. Therein lies my confusion. Should said list be broken out into McCain (surname), with a pointer from the (now) DAB page? —johndburger 00:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
One could read it that way. One would then need to remove all the people from McCain (disambiguation) to List of people with the surname McCain or somesuch, along with the line about the origin of the name. I would contend that there's not enough about the name qua name to merit {{surname}}; it would simply be a list. Is there a problem you're trying to solve, or is this more of a theoretical excursion? There's nothing wrong with the latter, but I'm not sure what you're trying to do. --AndrewHowse (talk) 01:31, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how else to read MOSDAB—it pretty clearly says none of those people should be on McCain (disambiguation) if the latter is a disambiguation page. But the non-theoretical issue has to do with making my bot follow MOSDAB and other guidelines. An immediate question is what should the bot do with these kinds of pages. Imagine that it wants to add a new article, Riemann (album), to Riemann (disambiguation). Should it do so? Should it change the page from a {{surname}} to a DAB? That seems quite excessive. Thinking out loud, I suppose it should not do anything at all where a {{surname}} or {{given name}} page is involved. I want it to be as conservative as possible, as I think most bots should be. —johndburger 02:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Technically, unless the person is really known by just "McCain", they shouldn't be on the disambiguation page. However, this is often only loosely followed. I for one don't think that it is unreasonable to change a page from {{surname}} to {{disambig}} - there have been lengthy discussions about the topic, and it was made pretty clear that {{surname}} or {{hndis}} should be used if the page is only about those names. Something that your bot could do would be add the category Category:Disambiguation pages in need of being split to those pages. Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy, which created that category, is doing a lot of help to take the long lists of names off of disambiguation pages, and that category indicates disambiguation pages that need to have the names split off.
If there is an article about Riemann (album), there's no reason that it shouldn't be added to the disambiguation page, and really, the tag should be changed (in fact, since there are non-name articles there now, I'm going to change it). -- Natalya 03:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Where does this come from, the idea that people named Mccain (for example), shouldn't be on the McCain (disambiguation) page? This section of the manual of style, Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Given_names_or_surnames, seems to me to pretty clearly be saying that such entries do belong, but they belong in their own section of the page and not mixed in with the other entries. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 08:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I take it from the fact that things on disambiguation pages are only supposed to be there if they are easily confusable with the title in question, and that for the most part, people who happen to have the same first/last name aren't just referred to by that (unless of course, they are, in which case they should definitly be on the page). Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Examples_of_individual_entries_that_should_not_be_created and Wikipedia:D#Partial_title_matches both discuss this. With the work of Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy, however, we shouldn't even need to worry about it, because names of people should be getting their own page. -- Natalya 11:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes—MOSDAB says do not create entries merely because Title is part of the name. But then the section below that does indeed talk about people with Title as a surname. Not sure how to reconcile those two directives, except that the latter is an exception to the former, I guess. —johndburger 23:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
To me, McCain (disambiguation), as it is now with so many people whose surname is McCain, looks more like it should have been named McCain (surname), with a {{surname}} template. --Tesscass (talk) 17:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
And... I had just made a John McCain (disambiguation). Is there any reason why not to split the dabs and surnames into different pages, each more appropriate to its own style guides? --Tesscass (talk) 17:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
That seems OK to me, although WP:WikiProject Anthroponymy have at times, I think, tried to differentiate between (i) a surname page, which would include derivation of the name, geographic distribution and such, and (ii) a list of people with that surname. The current McCain page is more of the latter, I suggest. Also note the history of the Riemann pages, and this and this edit, where at least one editor didn't agree with that splitting approach. --AndrewHowse (talk) 18:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I'll drop a line over to the folks at WP:WikiProject Anthroponymy and see what they have to say about the splitting; hopefully we can get some more clarification! -- Natalya 20:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

(undent)I've been editing the John McCain article quite a bit lately. I just want to mention that, whatever you all decide, I hope it will not involve more than one hat note on the article. More than that would be unnecessary, and would have a cluttered appearance, IMHO.Ferrylodge (talk) 22:10, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I created the John McCain dab page, and then realized there's this McCain dab page. What I had meant to do was to change the McCain dab and then replace/combine the John McCain hatnote. Then after seeing this discussion, I thought better of doing any further change to anything pertaining either until there's some consensus, but I didn't undo my change of John McCain. Sorry I didn't think it was that cluttered. But that's just my opinion. --Tesscass (talk) 22:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I think the hatnote on John McCain should be {{for|other people with the same name}}, resulting in:
I don't think anybody will go to John McCain expecting to find Fred or Betty McCain. —johndburger 23:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
The one problem with only have that link is that since McCain redirects to John McCain, we need to have a link to McCain (disambiguation). We don't need to have a link to McCain (surname) if such a page existed, but with the redirect we do need the link to the disambiguation page. -- Natalya 00:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Oy, you're right. If there's only one hatnote, then McCain (disambiguation) is it. —johndburger 02:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Since there is John McCain (disambiguation), I think the way things lay out is that we have to link to both that and McCain (disambiguation), since both links take people to John McCain, when they could be looking for something else. -- Natalya 12:49, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure I see the need for John McCain (disambiguation) to exist. Is it really useful? Why not also have a John S. McCain (disambiguation)?Ferrylodge (talk) 15:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
They are all John S. McCains though, no? If there are multiple people by the same name, we have to have a disambiguation page somehow to sort them out. Can you clarify why you don't see the need for it? -- Natalya 20:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Anyone want to merge these two into one page? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 22:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Done. Redirected Geni (disambiguation) to Geni, and also cleaned up Geni slightly. All the information at Geni (disambiguation) was already at Geni. -- Natalya 00:16, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

False positives?

This morning I ran AWB on Confederacy for about 3 hours and it found nothing. I believe the "pages with links" page says it has something like 188. The "what links here" shows quite a long list in the article namespace, but I've started checking the first few and I can't find any mention of the word. A search of the template namespace doesn't turn up anything. Since there are so many listings, I'm going to assume I'm doing something wrong. Can anybody guess what that might be? --AnnaFrance (talk) 20:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you're being confused by the redirects? Most of the pages which link to Confederacy actually link to Confederate or Confederates, both of which are redirects to Confederacy. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 23:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Exactly! I never would have thought to look for that. Thank you for taking the time to help out a noob. --AnnaFrance (talk) 02:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Can someone fix up that top section? Overlinking appears to be a problem there. Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 03:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Tombstoning

I'd appreciate if somebody could help out with Tombstoning - it's clearly needing a clean-up and is basically a list of dictionary definitions and entries that are otherwise not notable. Add to that a references section... I don't have the time just to do this properly, talking the issue through with contributors as to why those entries are misplaced. Thanks/wangi (talk) 11:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Tombstoning is when a member of a legislative body uses his name as part of the name of an act, so that the law will be known by his name, eg, Taft-Hartley. Are you telling me there are other uses of the term? Who knew?
This is one of those dab pages that has few links into it and few links out of it. It's not really a dab page, it's more of a wp:dicdef. I think that dicdef belong in Wikipedia, but the powers that be disagree. When I encounter such a page, I just ignore it and move on. If you think you can do something with it, do it, but don't search too long for the right thing to do, because there is no right thing.  Randall Bart   Talk  19:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
This is not a dab page. If someone wants to turn it into one, they are welcome to, but in its current state it doesn't disambiguate articles, so I have removed the tag. SlackerMom (talk) 20:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Given that it contains a bunch of brief, unrelated entries, it appears to indeed be a disambiguation page, but one with no keepable entries. I'll agree with Barticus88 that there isn't really a right thing to do with this page. Split it up into 10 useless stubs? Keep it as a useless disambiguation page? I'd just as soon delete it, but then, I do like the simple answers. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 01:05, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Near everything there is a simple dictionary definition and shouldn't really be on the dabpage (per guidelines/policy at WP:DAB#Dictionary definitions and WP:DICTIONARY). However the "extreme sport" probably is notable enough to warrant an article (see http://tombstoning.com/ and http://google.com/search?q=tombstoning for links to many media stories). Thanks/wangi (talk) 22:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be a disagreement as to what links are appropriate for these dab pages, primarily epicene. Any views on contemporary semantics would also be appreciated. --Yamara 23:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well you could tag them both with {{disambig-cleanup}}. That'll garner some outside attention. Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 03:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
A comment has been made (and discussed) on the talk page for Masculine that not having references on dab pages is not mentioned anywhere in MOS:DAB. Indeed, I couldn't find anything, either. Am I crazy? Has this practice never been made part of the guidelines? SlackerMom (talk) 14:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Looks more like WP is not a dictionary is more to the point. (John User:Jwy talk) 15:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
There's no need to have reference on a disambiguation page, as it's not an article. If there's ever a question of having a reference to show that one term really related to the other, that reference better belongs in the article that is being linked to. We can totally put something in the Manual of Style about not having reference (if there is consensus, of course). -- Natalya 16:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I think something should be in the MOS to this effect. It would help prevent future disagreements on the issue with inexperienced and/or opinionated dabbers. We don't have this problem at Masculine right now, but I can see it being a problem elsewhere. SlackerMom (talk) 17:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

A bot to do DAB page cleanup?

Would it be possible or reasonable to have a bot that would carry out disambiguation page cleanup? It seems to me that a bot could remove punctuation from the end of entries, convert numbered lists to bullet point lists by switching #'s to *'s at the beginning of any line, comment out external links and reference sections, and remove any categories besides the few which belong on a DAB page. These changes alone would mean cleanup on 50,000+ pages.

It would not, I don't think, be possible for a bot to fully clean up a page. There is no way a bot would be able to tell which of the blue links in an entry to remove, or how exactly to go about fixing improper piping, or which red links to remove, or how to reorganize an entry to make the link the first word in an entry. But there is a lot a bot could do. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 17:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The accuracy of these bots is greater than the grammer from most editors I've seen. I honestly believe it is possible to program them to perform such tasks. This WikiProject should definitely have a bot. Actually, Xyzzyplugh, didn't User:DABbot do something like this? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 17:46, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DABbot, it appears that this bot never actually got started, and was going to be doing something different than what I mentioned above. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 17:54, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I once tried to request a bot myself, didn't work out though. Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 18:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible that it can also be programmed to "fix" excess blue links and red links? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 18:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I really don't see how. For red links, the problem is that we actually probably want to keep many redlinks even if nothing else links to them. For example, place names. If there's a city in Poland we don't have an article for, it's almost a guarantee we someday will, so removing the redlinks wouldn't work (Or at least, that's my opinion). For blue links, the problem is that a bot can't tell which of the links in an entry is the keepable one. It may not be the first link in the entry, it may not have the article title in the link. For example: Blah blah (song), by The Rolling Stones from their album No Security. A human editor knows to link to the album, the bot won't.
Now that I think of it, a bot might be able to do some blue link fixing. For example, every entry which begins with a blue link, where the blue link has the article title in it, should not have anything else linked in the entry (unless something else in the line also has the article title in it, in which case someone may have combined multiple entries into one line). --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 19:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Yeah... because sometimes people can combine two valid links for the page into one line. Still needs fixing, but not necessarily removal. -- Natalya 19:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... interesting idea. There definitly seem to be some tasks that it could do, and definitly a lot that it couldn't to. I'd have no qualms about a bot to remove periods, and to change numbered lists to bulleted lists (although, I've actually never seen a numbered list dab). Can we think of other tasks it could do that wouldn't require human input? Even if it couldn't fix it, could we get it to tag pages with the {{disambig-cleanup}} where it sees multiple blue links in a line or no primary topic when the page is located at "term (disambiguation)". That would still aid the human editors in finding the pages that need work.

As a follow up, I have no idea how to run a bot/write the code for it, but I think it would be really cool to learn how to do. I'd love to do this! -- Natalya 19:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Any bot expert you guys know of? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 22:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I can't think of anyone offhand (though I'm sure there is someone). I was looking at Wikipedia:Creating_a_bot, and even with my vague knowledge of Java, I was pretty intimidated. I'd like to be able to write the code for it, but I don't even know where to start. -- Natalya 03:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Given that likely none of us have the capability to write such a bot (or someone would have done it already), the place to look would be Wikipedia:Bot requests. Before I would go making a request there, though, I wanted to make sure that people here agreed that such a bot would be a good idea. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 09:02, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it's safe to say that everyone agrees with you Xyzzyplugh. Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 23:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Despite the discussion on Talk:Master Chief, I now realize that this shouldn't be a disambiguation page. Master Chief (Halo), which I believe is the popular choice, should be moved to this title and a hatnote to Master Chief Petty Officer would be more than appropriate. Show of hands? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 04:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I commented at the talk page. But I think it should stay as a disambiguation page. -- Natalya 12:02, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I also commented on the talk page, and I agree with Natalya. SlackerMom (talk) 13:12, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Converting hatnotes to templates

This may be of interest to this project:

I'm writing a bot to convert unformatted hatnotes to one of the hatnote templates. I'd like to have some feedback about this idea at Wikipedia talk:Hatnote#Converting hatnotes to templates. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 21:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Get railroaded

There currently is a discussion underway on Talk:Railroad about whether the Railroad disambiguation page should be moved and redirected to a primary topic. It would be helpful to have more editors review the page and express their views. --Russ (talk) 21:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Page needing splitting

Penia contains two articles at the moment - one on an Italian bread and another more substantial on a Greek deity. Really if I understand disambiguation properly it should be split into two articles, with the bulk of the article content and its interwiki links relocated to something like Penia (personification) and a stub created at Penia (bread) to contain the fragments of information about bread, and Penia should be kept as a disambiguation page. I am not sure how to do this bearing in mind the GFDL complications and also because I do not have access to page moving as I am a new editor. Can somebody help me out, if only to tell me how to report this page as needing disambiguating? TwoMightyGodsPersuasionNecessity 20:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Done. Split into Penia and Penia (bread). Used hatnotes to disambiguate, so no dab page is needed. SlackerMom (talk) 17:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Malplaced disambiguation

I'd Do Anything redirects to I'd Do Anything (disambiguation), and the page could use a little cleanup. Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 17:56, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Dab page cleaned up. I'll leave a page move to you; it's not hurting anyone where it is. --AndrewHowse (talk) 18:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
You can always add it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Malplaced disambiguation pages, which has two admins regularly stopping by. – sgeureka tc 20:08, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

What is this exactly? And why are there dab pages categorized here? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 23:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Did you see Reduplication? --Tesscass (talk) 23:54, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

There are some parts which should be changed to a disambiguation. Since I'm from de.wp I don't know anything about your guidelines and cannot do it by myself. Thank you, --Flominator (talk) 08:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Finding lists of surnames

Cross posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy#Finding lists of surnames.

I was wondering if people here knew about a fairly powerful way of finding lists of articles that may be useful for surname pages and surname disambiguation pages? It is similar to the "prefix index" method of finding all articles related to a given name (eg. All page starting "William", which I believe is part of one of the templates used on name articles). For surnames, you can try a search (and this is always needed because there are always some articles that aren't classified properly), but a good starting point is the entry in a category containing all articles about people. Now, this super-category doesn't yet exist (Category:People is currently subdivided rather than fully populated), but a good example does exist at Category:Living people. Assuming that the relevant articles are correctly sorted (by DEFAULTSORT or pipesorted for the 'living people' category), it is possible to jump to the relevant point in the category to find the articles on living people with the surname Brackman. This can then be compared with the articles Brackman, Brackman (name), and Brackman (surname) (none of these exist), and a normal search for Brackman, and the end result is a list of five names: Barbara Brackman, Levi Brackman, Andrew Brackman, Robert Brackman, and Jacob Brackman. My question is where people should go from here as far as constructing disambiguation pages and name pages (the latter is not in scope here, but is related)? Any advice? I found Wikipedia:Suggestions for name disambiguation, but that doesn't seem to be active at the moment. Carcharoth (talk) 18:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Answered at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy#Finding lists of surnames. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 19:19, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I think what I'm looking for is a template (both for a centralised page like Wikipedia:Suggestions for name disambiguation, and for the talk page of a name or name disambiguation article) that will take a parameter NAME (in some cases it could use PAGENAME to take the page title as a parameter) and output the following:
  • [[NAME]]
  • [[NAME (name)]]
  • [[NAME (surname)]]
  • [[NAME (given name)]]
  • [[NAME (disambiguation)]]
  • [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&from=NAME&namespace=0 All pages starting "NAME"]
  • [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Living_people&from=NAME Articles on living people with the surname "NAME"]
  • [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=NAME&fulltext=Search Wikipedia search for "NAME"]]
NAME could be "Brackman" as in the above example, but could also be "John Baker". In the case of "John Baker", several of the links will be redundant (the 'name', 'surname' and 'given name' ones), with the most useful ones being John Baker, John Baker (disambiguation) and Wikipedia search for "John Baker". All pages starting "John Baker" (note the need for a space of "%20" betwen 'John' and 'Baker') will be less useful (though not completely useless). The category listing would need tweaking to read "from=Baker,%20John", to give: articles on living people with the name "John Baker" (two in case anyone is interested). Things are all in synch there, as you would expect (though some tidying up is needed). As an aside, what should be done with John Baker's Mill, Barnham, John Baker-Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield, John T. Baker Middle School and John S. Baker House (Cincinnati, Ohio)? Anyway, before I set up such a template, I wanted to get some ideas from others for improvements or additions, and to find out if something similar has been done previously? Carcharoth (talk) 19:40, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
That sounds somewhat similar to the work that created the lists at Wikipedia:Suggestions for name disambiguation, which was done by a bot belonging to User:Quadell. Quadell seems to be on wikibreak, but you could always try emailing. Whatever logic s/he used to identify lists of names might be relevant. --AndrewHowse (talk) 00:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure what logic Quadell used. I will try and e-mail at some point. A similar list (or start at such a list) has been done (following my post) at User:Eugene van der Pijll/surnames. I guess I should contact those people who worked at Wikipedia:Suggestions for name disambiguation previously. Carcharoth (talk) 09:47, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Synchronising between different languages

Could people here suggest the best way to synchronise between disambiguation pages in different langauge wikipedias? Obviously adding interwikis is a good first step, but should we go further than that and make the pages match up? Different language wikipedias will have different standards on how to lay out the information (and also different inclusion standards as well), but the same basic information could be synchronised across pages. This is especially relevant with the advent of Single User Login (SUL). As an example, see Guillemin, which is in origin a French name (see fr:Guillemin), and Griesbach, which is in origin a German name (see de:Griesbach). Are there any guidelines on this and on whether it is OK to add redlinks with an interwikilink to the page on another language wikipedia, like I did for Amédée Guillemin here? See fr:Amédée Guillemin. Carcharoth (talk) 10:12, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I thought I remembered hearing about this once before! This was sort of brought up Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Foreign language wikipedias, though it wasn't discussed. Just fyi. -- Natalya 12:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. That previous post raised style issues, but not whether it is OK to add interwiki links directly to a page (ie. not as an interwikilink, but as a direct link using the preceding colon). These links would effectively be a translation request. For example: "Amédée Guillemin (see French language Wikipedia article)" - if that is not too self-referential. Carcharoth (talk) 13:10, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I've got another link for you, then!  :) It's more about keeping red links on pages for topics that have aticles on other language wikipedias, but is still semi-related. Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Red_links_in_disambigs_-_forgotten_interwiki. For having interlanguage links... I've got to think about it more. Ideally, it would be nice to just translate the article, but we obviously don't have the resources for that! The biggest possible concern that comes immediately to mind for me is if there would be an overcrowding of disambiguation pages with tons of interlanguage links. Do you think we'd run into that problem? Also, how helpful would it be? They would all be in other languages after all. Just mostly playing devil's advocate here, so that we can discuss possible issues. -- Natalya 14:50, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I consider such an embedded iwiki link as in your example as useful but tempoary solution, saying "please translate me as soon as possible".--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 15:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree. I don't see much real likelihood of disambiguation pages becoming overcrowded for this reason. An iw link is more useful for both readers and potential writers than a red link (as long as it's visibly clear that it is an iw link).--Kotniski (talk) 15:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Actually, if you compare Griesbach and de:Griesbach, there are more on the German page (for obvious reasons). I'm not entirely sure all the German entries are relevant for the English page. Sometimes, if people want a list of German names relevant for German-language speakers, they should follow the interwiki. Górki, for example, seems a bit like overkill, to be honest. Reminds me of Ptolemais, Booker T. Washington High School and Booker T. Washington Middle School, though, and such examples are interesting, even if such lists can get a bit long. Carcharoth (talk) 16:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

This seems a good idea superficially but surely not in practice.

  1. A dab page is to help readers of the English wikipedia to navigate to articles in the English wikipedia
  2. Languages are not identical and it will not be possible to simple create a Portugese (as an example) dab page from the English one as the words for various things are (duh) different in Portugese, not just English with an "O" added. Abtract (talk) 17:42, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking more of dab pages for people. People's names don't change as much as the names of objects. Ditto for disambiguation pages for anything that has a proper name that is the same across multiple languages. The very fact that some disambiguation pages have interwiki links should be a clue that there are cases where disambiguation pages can be synchronised. To be clear, I was never suggesting that Apple (disambiguation) and it:Mela (disambigua) (Italian for apple) should be synchronised, but rather that synchronisation possibilities might exist for Apple (disambiguation) and it:Apple (disambigua) (the Italian disambiguation page for "Apple"). There are currently seventeen (17) interwiki links on Apple (disambiguation). The differences between the pages makes interesting reading. To go back to my name examples, let's look at a typical English name and a typical Italian name, and see what the differences are. Compare Smith (en) with it:Smith. Obviously, as you say, some usages of the word Smith change in translation and hence no longer need disambiguating in that language, but other uses don't change. Another example is a common Italian name, Tolomeo. In English, that is Ptolemy. We can compare it:Tolomeo with Ptolemy (name) (as opposed to Tolomeo). Of course, in practice you do need to be careful, but what I am saying is that people working with disambiguation pages involving names or words from another language, should consider browsing the interwiki links for clues to help make our (English) disambiguation pages more complete. To finish with another example, look at Fontaine and compare it with fr:Fontaine (would you believe it? A disambiguation page with a picture of a fountain?). Unsurprisingly, the French page has a much longer list of names and places. I'm not saying we should recreate that list here, but we should be alert to the possibilities that, among the articles listed on other language Wikipedia disambiguation pages, there might be some that could be listed on our disambiguation pages (usually as a redlink) and also flagged up for translation. Carcharoth (talk) 22:04, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Pages belonging where people assume they will be

Could I get the opinions of some dabby-types at the village pump? Cheers! JohnnyMrNinja 16:47, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Template to caution against frequent mistakes

I asked at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 40#Template for edit-mode-only in dab pages whether it is possible to create a warning message box for the top of all dab pages, that only appear when in edit-mode. We've created {{Disambig editintro}} (seen above), which works just like MediaWiki:Talkpagetext, except that it disappears once you click "preview". Now we just need a show of support, to get it added into Mediawiki talk:Common.js, if you agree that it is a good idea.

You can test it out by adding importScript("User:RockMFR/disambigeditintro.js"); to Special:Mypage/monobook.js, hard refresh, and visit a disambiguation page, e.g. A Wonderful Life or Aboncourt.

(The wording in the box is a separate question. Feel free to tweak or improve (or discuss). Just try to keep the wording minimal :)

So, any support or objections for the overall idea? Please and thank you :) -- Quiddity (talk) 02:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds useful: should it also include something about not using piped links, eg "The link being disambiguated should be the first word or phrase in each entry and should not be 'piped'."? PamD (talk) 07:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Good idea as long as it works technically. I would make the wording a little less categorical though; the second point needs a "normally" or something, as there are fairly frequent exceptions, and once you put something up in the form of what appears to be an absolute rule, some people start following it (and indeed enforcing it) blindly.If my edit adding "normally" to the second point is accepted, then I'm all in favour.--Kotniski (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Support. Just keep it simple, or people will start ignoring it again. – sgeureka tc 08:09, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea. Tassedethe (talk) 08:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Yep; keeping it simple is good. Great idea! -- Natalya 11:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I like this idea. SlackerMom (talk) 14:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea as well. Marchije (talk) 02:42, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Good idea but maybe a third line should be added saying "For more information on how to construct a diambiguation page see the manual of style." Abtract (talk) 17:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
This looks very nice. Thanks for putting this together. JackSchmidt (talk) 18:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes please. --Tesscass (talk) 18:48, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I support this idea, and am in favor of adding "avoid the use of piped links" or something to that effect. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:12, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, excellent idea. The two most common mistakes I see are more than one navigable link, (which is covered in the current proposed text), and the addition of terminal punctuation, usually a period. Piping the entry name is a close third. The rule for that could be succinctly described as "don't pipe the entry name, except to format it", but I doubt if most people would get what that meant...--NapoliRoma (talk) 22:08, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Why this particular page title? I think "Chi Chi" would serve best, especially because there appear to be more entries named as such. Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 03:13, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

authorlink

I've found one instance (and I think there may be more) where an article page links to a dab page I'm working on, and the only instance of the dab page word I can find anywhere is in a couple of citations that have the word (which happens in that case to be an author's name) in authorlink=. What do I do in these cases? --AnnaFrance (talk) 04:27, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead and change the authorlink value to the correct unambiguous link. That's exactly why there's a separate "authorlink" field in the various citation templates: the "authorlink" value isn't displayed, the value of "author" or "last" / "first" is. So for example:
|last = Celine
|first = Hagbard
|authorlink = Hagbard Celine (author)
will show up in the citation as
Celine, Hagbard
--NapoliRoma (talk) 06:10, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
Oh! That's great to know. I was worried about changing the material in a citation template. Thanks. --AnnaFrance (talk) 12:37, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for assistance

Here goes: User:Abtract is aware that the use of primary topic(s) is only necessary when the dab has "(disambiguation)" in the page title. Think we all know that right? Despite knowing this, he willingly places a primary topic on dabs which do not have "(disambiguation)" as part of the title. I've been having to "clean up" after him for a while, but can only find two instances, see his edit to LSM and Wow. I have tried asking the editor to change his view, but he refuses (as seen when he removed my concerns from his talk page after an attempt of modifying my comments [2]). Any ideas on how to solve this? Or should I let him has his way? Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 04:45, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation cleanup bot

There is a proposed bot which would attempt cleanup on (eventually) all 100,000 disambiguation pages. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval#fuBot. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 08:10, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Deletion discussion of a dab page with two entries

In case anyone is interested in commenting: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tada Station (disambiguation). Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 04:42, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

It's been closed. The dab page should have been deleted, as it serves no disambiguation purpose: there is (now) one article Tada Station (which should be moved to the base name and have its hatnote removed). {{db-disambig}} may also be useful in future situations like this one. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:09, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Could someone take a look at this? The page does look like it could use a little revamping. Lord Sesshomaru (talkedits) 19:27, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages with transcluded templates

It has just come to my attention that the template {{NA Broadcast List}}, which appears to be transcluded onto 66 pages, includes {{disambig}} in the transcluded text. Therefore, none of these 66 disambiguation pages has {{disambig}} in its own text, which means that bots and other tools that look for this in the text will not identify them as disambiguation pages. It seems to me that it is a potentially serious obstacle to efforts to identify and fix links to disambiguation pages if we cannot even identify which pages are disambiguations. Is there a technical fix for this? --Russ (talk) 21:15, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Update: I've had {{NA Broadcast List}} added to MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage, which should help the situation, as long as bots and other tools know to look there to identify disambig templates. --Russ (talk) 00:22, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

John Campbell and John Campbell (footballer)

I don't think I've seen another pair of disambiguation pages like this, though they must exist. John Campbell has a few dozen names, about a quarter with red links. John Campbell (footballer) has eight entries, with only three blue links. Two of those are already repeated in the main disambiguation page; I'll go add the third. Is this the best set-up for subsidiary disambiguation pages? Should the footballer be merged and redirected, or kept as a harmless and convenient bit of duplication? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 06:25, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there's any particular need to have two separate disambiguation pages. BUT, that is soley my opinion, backed by absolutely no guidelines at all (it may be, I just don't have them here). So other opinions would probably be good too. -- Natalya 11:30, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
It may be useful for the reader: if he knows he's looking for a footballer, he only needs to look at the shorter list at John Campbell (footballer). The drawback is that there are two lists to be maintained. Solution: make a separate section on the main list, "Footballers", and redirect the footballer dab page to John Campbell#Footballers. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 12:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
That's a good approach. See for example Mike Smith (baseball) or Mike Smith (basketball). --AndrewHowse (talk) 13:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
That does seem like a good compromise; that way, someone doesn't come to the John Campbell page looking for any number of the footballers, but not finding any, and having to search around for the one link to the other disambiguation page that has them.
Although it doesn't seem to harm anything, in technicality, is there really any use for the redirects? It seems unlikely that someone would search "John Campbell (footballer)", rather than just John Campbell. Unless I'm missing somewhere where the redirect would be useful. I have no problem with keeping it as a redirect, more just wanting to make sure that I'm not forgetting some use of it. -- Natalya 14:27, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Some editors like to use context-specific hatnotes, such as at Mike Smith (basketball, born 1965). Looks a bit clunky to me, but it probably makes sense when the full dab for the name alone is large. I agree with you re use of the search term, but when one is browsing, and one comes across a particular Mike Smith by chance, then the opportunity to find others seems helpful. Not strictly necessary, but it surely seems convenient. --AndrewHowse (talk) 14:42, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I've implemented Eugène's suggestion. Thanks for the input. Would it be helpful to cover this type of situation in the guidelines? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure it would be useful. We'd need some sort of criterion for how long the main list would be, and perhaps how large a section should be to have its own redirect. Since it doesn't come up so very often, I'd prefer to avoid that sort of instruction creep. --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:51, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

New pages proposed

Please see here for a suggested set of new dab pages, asnd comment as you think fit. --AndrewHowse (talk) 23:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this page should be deleted, but I have no experience in that process. This term is not referenced in either of the articles linked on the page, and in fact one of the links is to a dab page. Maybe someone could come up with a decent redirect, but I couldn't figure one out. Any thoughts? SlackerMom (talk) 15:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Might need slight copyediting, but in principle I think it's OK. It's more of a stub than a dab page though.--Kotniski (talk) 15:51, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Stub for which entry? --AndrewHowse (talk) 15:56, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Both, I suppose. Don't know if this kind of thing is provided for by any explicit policies, but it seems a perfectly valid way of conveying information with minimum fuss.--Kotniski (talk) 17:41, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Probably better to have 2 distinct pages, validity of each one notwithstanding. Each would stand or fall on its own merits. Adding copy to the current page would go against dab-page policy - in fact, there's too much there already - and by having 2 topics on one page it must be a dab page. Separately, I see ghits for the book-keeping term (although it might only be a dictdef) but not for the encyclopaedic entry with no content. Is that we call a redirect, I wonder? --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:49, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it belongs in Wiktionary, not here. --Tkynerd (talk) 17:43, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... there's also an article-mentioned use (and a different form of the term) in the article Handspring (gymnastics). -- Natalya 21:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, that's the only actual use of the term in an article that I can see. What about a redirect there? SlackerMom (talk) 21:16, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
It may apply to other things too... but I can't quite see making an article about the handspring, or any of the other terms, as they really do seem like dictionary definitions. Err... I guess a redirect would be okay, but I wish there was a better option. -- Natalya 21:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Me too, but I'm not at all sure what a person might be looking for when they type in "blind entry", and I'm not sure what else to do with it. It's very unsatisfactory as it stands. SlackerMom (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Whatever they might be looking for, I think the page as it stands gives it to them as far as we are able. I say leave it alone. If it doesn't fit the guidelines, then either amend the guidelines or invoke WP:IAR.--Kotniski (talk) 10:48, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
It's certainly not that simple. Wikipedia is not a dictionary; see WP:DICT. My understanding of the essential criterion is that if an entry can potentially be expanded into an encyclopedia article, it should be treated as a stub; if there's no possibility of that happening (simply because the subject is too shallow, or because there are insufficient reliable sources to provide material, or for any other reason), it should not be on Wikipedia. This strikes me as the latter type of case, but I'm not that familiar with the subject matter, so I can't say with any authority. However, I definitely do not think this is an instance where there is reason to WP:IAR. --Tkynerd (talk) 17:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree. It is my opinion that neither of the subjects listed on the page are worthy of stub-dom. I am therefore going to turn this into a redirect to Handspring (gymnastics) since that is the only actual use of the term that appears in namespace (thank you, Natalya). Any who disagree or have a better plan, feel free to comment and/or edit there. SlackerMom (talk) 18:14, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be wise to transwiki (is that the right term?) the existing material to Wiktionary, assuming there is not already an entry there for this term. --Tkynerd (talk) 00:01, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
That sounds OK, but whatever we do we should make sure we are not removing information on topics just because the topic can be fully dealt with in a sentence or two. Real encyclopedias also have some very short entries, and nothing wrong with that.--Kotniski (talk) 09:58, 2 July 2008 (UTC)