Talk:Independent

I don't think typing independant should redirect here. It should redirect to a page that says 'Learn how to spell.' AdventurousSquirrel (talk) 19:23, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Removal of partial title matches, etc

I gave valid reasons in each edit summary that removed entries from the dab page. I am now waiting for the reverting editor to refute each of those reasons. -- Fyrefly (talk) 14:48, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Those partial title matches aren't there for fun. I've dabbed many articles that referred to their school as "Independent", or the band, or record label, or even athletes. The terms need to be on the dab page because people keep meaning them when they use [[independent]].

Just because some unthinking editor made a link to this dab page when they meant NCAA Division I FBS independent schools doesn't mean that we should have an entry for it. No user is going to type "independent" into the search bar when they're actually looking for that list of schools. -- Fyrefly (talk) 17:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Dab pages aren't exclusively for searches. They're for disambiguating. Disambiguating needs doing because some unthinking editor made a link to this dab page. There's no problem having partial matches if that's what people intend when they link to/search for "Independent". Just because you wouldn't do it, please don't confuse that with what actually happens. And sorry for not signing above, I get a little punchy at 4am. Josh Parris 01:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

You put the signature in fine, but you messed up the nowiki tag, so the signature wasn't substituted. I'm very aware of what dab pages are for. They should not be directly driven just by any editor putting a link on the word "independent". Many editors just have no idea how wikilinks should be used and do things like "ring-tailed lemur". That doesn't mean we put a new entry on the "ring" dab page because nobody simply titles that type of lemur as "ring". There's a reason that the guideline against including partial title matches exists and part of it is to keep dab pages from going crazy like this one has. I suppose there can be an argument for some of the entries here, but I don't see absolutely any reason to keep that list of lists at the bottom. That section is just ridiculous to have on this dab page in my opinion. -- Fyrefly (talk) 07:04, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll conceed those athletic lists at the bottom are of marginal value; I suspect I put them there after a long and frustrating search to disambiguate. The rest are there because people seem to think that it's okay to say, for example, a TV station is independent. This kind of stuff often turns up in infoboxes; a single word, space constrained, with no surrounding context to expand into a full independent station. Josh Parris 09:39, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Looking now at this old 2012 discussion, I agree with Fyrefly that dab pages can easily get frustratingly cluttered - but on the other hand, I agree a lot more with Josh Parris's point that a reader relatively unfamiliar with WP's guides and procedures can even more easily encounter "a long and frustrating search to disambiguate." Personally, as I mention in my own section on The Independent below, it's always preferable to try to help naive readers who are simply trying to find information, and may not know or be able to guess the appropriate page title. Milkunderwood (talk) 08:57, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Independent as independent and not DAB

why is there no discussion on the philosophy of the term? If there is no valid reason, I will contribute to that. I am starting to understand that there is little to no discussion on what independence actually IS. Anywhere. Why?184.99.84.124 (talk) 06:44, 30 May 2013 (UTC)184.99.84.124 (talk) 06:40, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

The Independent

The Independent has changed its logo from that shown in its infobox, presently displaying only the white eagle in the red circle, followed by "INDEPENDENT"; it no longer includes "The" preceding the eagle. (I don't know when that change was made.) Wanting to find where it is published, and assuming the newspaper had no "The" in its official name, WP Search sent me to this long dab page for Independent - which does not include this paper, because The Independent has its own separate WP dab page. Normally, of course, a leading "The" is ignored in Search, and many other situations. Without taking the time to search through page history, I'm guessing that at some point there was editorial agreement that the dab page was too long and should be split.

My own recommendation would be putting a hatnote at the top of both pages, where it's easily seen. But I find that, at least for this "Independent" dab page, that idea was already tried in May 2019, and immediately reverted, with the comment "it's already in See also, as it should be" - buried among many other "See also"s, at the bottom of the long page.

I'm sure The Independent has its own good reasons for the changed logo with "The" omitted; but it strikes me as unnecessarily officious to disallow a much more easily found hatnote here at Wikipedia. There's no good reason for an especially hard-to-find See also to preclude having a hatnote as well. Quoting from my own user page,

• "Don't make people have to struggle to find what they're looking for. Why make it hard for them? Here's a delicious bit of irony that I've stolen from a post by User:Ravpapa: Remember, the reader is the enemy. It's just something for each of us to think about."

Also, for what it's worth, I notice that The Independent dab page lists the following entries, none of which are listed here at Independent:

• Evening Independent, formerly published in St. Petersburg, Florida
• Independent, or The Independent, the previous name of a paper in Long Beach, California, now referred to as the Press-Telegram
• The Daily Independent, formerly published in Kannapolis, North Carolina and merged with The Concord Tribune to form the Independent Tribune

I take it that these non-italicized "The"s are not part of the papers' official names. The original split between dab pages, whenever it occurred, seems not to have worked quite as well as then assumed. Milkunderwood (talk) 08:17, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

If the biggest problem is with newspapers and other publications, perhaps it would work to create a third dab page for such publications only, and ignore whether the official name contains a leading "The" (or other words). Milkunderwood (talk) 09:06, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

It's always annoying when an editor says "well I think we should help the reader." Yeah, no kidding. That's literally what everyone is trying to do. It's the only reason that this entire page exists. So, getting back to the point of how to best help the reader, the problem is exactly what you pointed out, that there's a decently long list down there in See also. How many of them could instead be hatnote? And once you draw the line, how do you know it's where everyone will draw it? It invariably won't be. So then you'll not only get editors moving entries back and forth, but you'll also confuse readers with some arbitrary distinction between what goes in the hatnote and See also. Oh, and you'll probably end up with a lengthy, ugly group of hatnotes to boot. I don't see how it would be an improvement. -- Fyrael (talk) 19:46, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

It's really very simple. Since nearly everyone expects a leading "The" in a title to be ignored, only one hatnote is wanted, to point to the separate "The" dab page. Is that really a problem? In the examples I gave, we can already see that people are confused about where to list additional titles. The basic difficulty is that the distinction between having a "The" and not having one is logically arbitrary. This is exemplified by The Independent, which has deleted the "The" from its logo. Milkunderwood (talk) 23:38, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah....ugh. I do take your point. Most any other DAB would have titles with and without "the" together, making this an exceptional case and a confusing one. Alright, if you want to change it I won't stand in the way. -- Fyrael (talk) 06:51, 1 January 2021 (UTC)