Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation

Old talk archived at /Archive 1, /Archive 2, /Archive 3, /Archive 4, /Archive 5, /Archive 6, /Archive 7

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IMP -- which do you like better?

Any comments on which version of IMP works better?

• [1]
• [2]

--RoySmith 18:26, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• The single list (2nd link), based on the relatively small number of entries and the ambiguous status of "IMP programming language" and "Edinburgh IMP" where "IMP" is a truncation of "implementation". Courtland 07:18, 24 August 2005 (UTC) P.S. I've modified the latest version (split list) in a number of minor ways based on style guidelines (removal of full stops, singular noun/noun phrase for article titles) and non-dictated style fetures (alphabetical sorting of items and update of wikilinks to bypass redirects mainly).
  • Thanks for those edits. My only question is why the need for (callsign IMP) and (iMP)? They both seem extraneous to me. Let's say I was looking for the television station, and I typed "IMP" into a search box. Obviously, I already knew IMP was the callsign, so the parenthetical comment doesn't really add anything here. Same with (iMP). It may be interesting to know that the acronym is capitalized in a strange way (well, strange by the conventional rules of English), but that information doesn't help me figure out which of the entries is the one I want. --RoySmith 11:55, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I didn't want to derail the original proposed discussion with my edits, but I'll respond to your comments ... with respect to adding "callsign IMP" and "iMP", I'm working on a usability standard that suggest it is useful for the reader to understand why they are looking at a particular entry given a particular search. Rather than going on about that here, I'll open up a new section below to discuss this. Courtland 00:14, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Hmmm, now that I look at it closer, I really don't like how the fantasy creature entry was factored out. Logically, it makes a lot of sense, but visually, it doesn't work at all. The eye is naturally drawn to the two sub-heads, and the first entry doesn't have a sub-head, so it gets lost visually. The first couple of times I looked at it, I didn't even notice the entry was there (I was vaguely aware that something that used to be there was missing, but couldn't figure out what). --RoySmith 12:18, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
    • The lossage you're referring to might be helped by adding more separation between the three sections, which isn't necessary now that you've sectionized the "word" entry. A case where I've added separation is AAR, where there are two entries outside the list. This, though, might be in violation of the style guideline, I'm not sure. Courtland 00:14, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

• The first link considerably because there are sufficient entries to make it worthwhile separating. More than about seven in a continuous list (with exceptions) starts to push it. More than that and it becomes lots of text that's hard to keep track of (unless you're actually reading it, not scanning it). Neonumbers 23:29, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Telling the reader how she got to an entry on a dab page

This input was prompted by discussion around the IMP article.

Using IMP as an example, there are two lines that contain parenthetical information that I added. One parenthetical addition is "(iMP)" while the other is "(callsign IMP)".

• (iMP) was added because the target string "iMP" differs from the article title "IMP", though the current WikiMedia software treats these two strings as equivalent by forcing first-letter-capitalization
• (callsign IMP) was added because the target string is "IMP" and not the entry "Imparja Television"

These are instances of a general principle that would be useful to consider for inclusion in informal practice or as formal addition to the guideline. There is likely a technical term for this, but I refer to it as "letting the user know why they are seeing item X". Let's assume that instead of "Imparja Television" the target article was "Australian Aboriginal Television Imparja" (for argument's sake); given this target article title, it is not as clear why the user is seeing the article listed on a dab page aimed at the TLA "IMP" without adding information on the target string, the callsign. There are lots of related examples; for instance see AAR, where I've added the target string "air-to-air refueling" downstream of the target article link "aerial refueling", or A Train, where there are several performers who share this as a nickname or stage name and this is indicated on each line. My adding this information is an outcome of have heard a lot of useability feedback on interfaces I've contributed to building related to the user not having a clear understanding from looking at search result X why that search result was returned. It is true that parsing a dab page is not equivalent to parsing a search result, but in principle they are the same where the dab page represents a "pre-processed" search result.

My proposal for wording of a guideline addition, though I'm not sure if it's desirable to have this as anything more than a tolerated practice at this point, is something like (but with better diction): "In those cases where the dab-target article name is sufficiently distinct from the dab article title that their connection is not obvious, inclusion of a clarifying statement (such as a parenthetical following the dab-target link) can be added to increase the reader's confidence that this link indeed is the one that should be followed to the desired information."

Courtland 00:39, 25 August 2005

Question: how is this relevent to considering issues about disambiguation - isn't it a good thing, whats with the negativity?

Proposed templates and template changes including Wiktionary linkage

I'm finding a number of articles that it is useful to include a linkage to Wiktionary on using the Sisterproject template {{wiktionarypar}} where the passed parameter is a lower-case version of the page name or a bare page name without "(disambiguation)". Also, in the case of abbreviations, {{wiktionary}} is suitable to use without forced lower case.

I propose the following:

• EFFECT: passes TLA value to wiktionary as an unmodified parameter (example usage:AAA)
  • modification of {{TLAdisambig}} to include {{wiktionary|{{PAGENAME}}}} as part of the template; this would replace in large part {{WiktionaryAbbr}} which I created a while ago
• EFFECT: passes a lowercase pagename to wiktionary as a parameter
  • introduction of a new template {{Disambigwithdicdef}} that is the same as {{Disambig}} but with {{wiktionarypar|{{PAGENAME}}}} as a part of the template ... however, I don't know how to force lowercase as part of the code so that a lowercased pagename is passed as a parameter.
• EFFECT: passes a lowercase bare page name to wiktionary as a parameter
  • introduciton of a new template {{Disambigwithdicdefstrip}} that is the same as {{Disambig}} but with {{wiktionarypar|{{PAGENAME}}}} as part of the template ... however, I don't know how to strip the " (disambiguation)" from pagename to pass a bare word as a parameter

Thanks for the input. Courtland 11:48, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

This seems terribly complicated. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that'd make life a bit easier, except that I don't think there's a way (though admittedly I'd have no idea). Neonumbers 07:46, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

How about a "needs cleaning" category

I occasionally run across disambig pages that desperately need "cleaning" (i.e. check "what-links-here", and edit all the pages to refer to the proper targets). A good example is league - see Special:Whatlinkshere/League. However, I don't have the time to stop and do it right now, but I'd like to flag it as needing cleanup. Is there some category, something like Category:Disambigs needing pruning, or something, that we can tag them with, so they are noted as needing work? Noel (talk) 06:05, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Why not propose this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation? Sounds like a great idea to me. But first see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages maintenance and Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links —Wahoofive (talk) 00:38, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

There is a section on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation devoted to "pages needing adoption" and "major adopted pages" and "pages that might be needed". The first is for things that need a lot of work, the second for things that have been adopted but need some real time to finish (really an unnecessary section) and the third is for things that might be needed but are non-trivial to do right. This was what I was thinking, at least, when I created these subsections. Courtland 08:56, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

There is now a substitute template, {{disambig-cleanup}} for this purpose.—Wahoofive (talk) 15:20, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I hadn't run across this page, but since there were a huge number of sports articles linking to league, I created a article called sports league (since league system isn't quite the same thing, but the two deserve to be separate articles) and I fixed the link for all the sports articles I could find.Kevin M Marshall 03:36, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Question about page splits

Alright, here's a dumb question from a newbie. There is a page that I am proposing to split. The page is on Cram Schools. Is this a disambiguation? Can someone look at the page to see that I followed the necessary guidelines.

I've been browsing Wikipedia for sometime, but started learning to edit pages recently. I'm still learning a lot of the in's and out's of how to do things. If someone can help me I'd appreciate it. Feel free to post on my talk page. Thanks... Davidpdx

One link does not a dab page make ... ?

I've changed the former dab page N Train to a redirect to N (New York City Subway service). This contravenes some input from Talk:1 Train, but I'm think I'm on relatively good footing by positing that "one link does not a dab page make" ... or am I? I've not looked through the archives to see if this has been addressed previously. Thanks for the input. Courtland 03:40, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

There's certainly no reason to have a one-item dab page (or even a two-item dab page), but I can understand the view on Talk:1 Train that there must be other trains in the world called "N Train". I support the redirect at the moment; it's not an ambiguous term yet and there's no reason to make a page because there might in the future be other meanings for the term. —Wahoofive (talk) 15:16, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

They were originally redirects, and someone took them to RFD because of the ambiguity. Thus they were turned into disambigs. --SPUI (talk) 21:59, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Could we brighten up disambig pages a bit? (Use of image tables)

I had a thought for improving disambig pages. <snip>

Debate refactored and moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). Please go there to discuss it further. Thank you. :) --Ashenai 14:10, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Real people vs. fictional characters

Maybe this should go under Naming Conventions, and if it has been discussed somewhere already I hope someone will point out where, but I had a thought about disambiguating real and fictional people. This came up before with Miles O'Brien - that page is for the Star Trek character, while the real person is at Miles O'Brien (journalist). The other incident that brought this to my attention was Cylon - he was a real ancient Athenian, but there is also Cylon (Battlestar Galactica), and today the fictional androids or whatever they are were briefly moved to the simple "Cylon" title.

It seems to me that when a real person is notable enough to have an encyclopedia, like Cylon or Miles O'Brien, they should always get the non-disambiguated article title. Fictional Cylons or Miles O'Briens should not take precedence. Now, supposedly, in these cases the fictional characters are more well-known than the real people, and that's probably true considering who usually uses and edits Wikipedia, but I don't think that should matter. I know there is a rule about using the title that most people will expect to find, but in this case I think that rule should be ignored.

I don't want to make up a policy about it without getting other opinions though, so we can discuss it here I guess. Adam Bishop 21:55, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

While I think real people should get priority in close decisions, I don't think I'd want to make a blanket rule. If some 17th-century assistant cheesemaker happens to be named Jean-Luc Picard, that shouldn't give them priority to the article name, since the fictional character is so much better known. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:19, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, nevermind I guess. I am apparently not going to win the dispute over Cylon, so now it's a disambiguation page itself. Adam Bishop 23:53, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Two people with the same name and profession

There are two George Millers, both of whom are Australian, are film and television director and producers. The page currently lists both, but I want to separate them out and add the second to George Miller (disambiguation). Any ideas for how to name their respective articles? --K. AKA Konrad West TALK 06:06, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

If you're lucky, they might have different middle names. Another possibility would be to add their years of birth and death (if they're not still living) to the article titles. --RoySmith 10:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Good thinking. The second one is sometimes called George T. Miller, so I'll go with that. Thanks! --K. AKA Konrad West TALK 06:54, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that approach is always ideal. Roger Taylor, the Queen drummer, is at Roger Meddows-Taylor, whereas that's really just a formal name that is rarely used. Roger Taylor (Queen) would be a lot better in that case. Similarly, if you do have two John Smiths with similar careers etc, it's probably better to put the name of their major work in brackets, rather than pulling out a middle initial no one has heard of, no? Stevage 15:11, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Lists of Abbreviations and Links to Disambiguation pages

See discussion thread at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation and abbreviations#Lists of Abbreviations and Links to Disambiguation pages. Courtland 17:04, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

help needed

Please help to fend off a stubborn anon from a disambiguation page Lenin (disambiguation). mikka (t) 21:48, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Disambugiation vs link

I need some clarification about when to use disambugation vs a link to the alternative page. I was creating a Lost Eden article about an adventure game but realised there is also an upcoming Lost Eden expansion pack for Anarchy Online. Fortunately, the expansion pack already has an article under Lost Eden (Anarchy Online) so there is no conflict. In my article, I placed a link to the AO Lost Eden and did not create a disambiguation page (see my article if confused). I did this because as far as I can tell, there are currently only 2 Lost Edens. There is a work in progress movie link to Lost Eden on someone's talk page but a quick Google doesn't find anything so perhaps this is incorrect, I did come across a Children of the Lost Eden. Was this the correct thing to do? I have seen disambugiation pages with 2 links only before but there are usually names or general phrases which I suppose are more likely to have more then 2 enteries.

Given that I would admit, Lost Eden has never been very well popular or well known and the AO expansion pack is already much more popular and more well known, would it be preferble to make Lost Eden into a disambugation and link to the game (perhaps Lost Eden (adventure game)) and the AO expansion even with only 2 links? Nil Einne 07:12, 28 October 2005 (UTC) P.S. I just noticed the one link does not a disambig make which also supports my theory on 2 links. So it appears the general consensus is I did the right thing I think... Nil Einne 08:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

What you did was right. Normally there should only be a disambiguation page when there are three or more entries, or when two entries are considered equally important. —Wahoofive (talk) 15:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Cross-linking two pages?

I was looking for Zorro and didn't know how to spell it so got to Zoro by mistake. This pair doesn't rate a dab page, but the two articles should reference each other. Is there a standard template to do that? --RoySmith 23:27, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

• There are a number of options for this, among them using the {{For}} template, which I've inserted at the top of each record with what I feel are appropriate disambiguating statements. Courtland 00:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation and stubs

Should a disambiguation page be classed as a stub? Cawas and I were discussing whether Filthy should be a stub, and Cawas gave the following example:

Let's say hypoteticaly it's filthy and that everybody knows that it has more than 2 meanings. Then I want to add 2 meanings now, because I don't have the time to do the rest. I would call it a stub hoping somebody else would do the rest.

Would this be correct? Should you call filthy (were it in the above situation) a stub? Thelb⁴ 21:45, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for this initiative, Thelb4! :) --Cawas 00:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Stubs are articles, disambiguations are not

Absolutely not. Stubs are a kind of article. Dab pages are not articles. How many meanings a word has is not relevant, only how many Wikipedia articles might be expected to be named with the given term. To be sure, a dab page might be incomplete, in which case a note on the talk page and a {{disambig-cleanup}} tag might be appropriate. But not a stub. Anyway, what kind of stub tag would you use? They're all classed by topic now, and dab pages have multiple topics. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Furthermore, that page should be AFD'd, since it's just dicdefs and an irrelevant cross-reference. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I see your point, that was really of a great help. I really miss a "googlenification" (or organizing information) on wikipedia. I mean, it is still great wiki way of basically eliminating a lot of redundant information, but it grew up so fast and so much that a google acting deeper inside wikipedia would be great. But, once again, eventhough I'm both a googler learner and wikipedian newbie I haven't got to try both together too much, yet. :P

Thanks again! --Cawas 00:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

When to use disambiguation

• One way to answer this is to answer the related question "Is a disambiguation page an article?" Stubs are types of articles; disambiguation pages are non-articles in the main article namespace (they have been compared to Wikipedia:Redirects). The very first words in the heading "Disambiguation pages" on the main page (for this talk page) are "These have links only", which removes them from being articles in the stubbable sense.

Another way to answer this is to look at lists. By tradition (or "Common WikiLaw" if you prefer), lists have been set outside the article types that are subject to "stubbing"; more appropriate template-driven classifications for lists are things like {{Dynamic list}} and {{Listdev}}, that place the list article into special "please-expand" oriented categories.

Still another way to look at this is from a time-related standpoint. If we consider disamiguation pages to be articles but not lists, then are they subject to stubbing based on the "stub templates are transient labels" criterion? In most cases that I have seen of disambiguation pages, there is always the potential to expand their contents. Labeling something as a stub suggests that there is a time when it might not be a stub, meaning it is long enough or detailed enough or topic-comprehensive enough to no longer need the stub crutch to be considered an article in its own right. As far as I can tell, there is not even a fuzzy boundary that can be identified like this for disambiguation pages. There are cases of such pages consisting of one live link and one red-link, or two live links (even two red-links); at the other end, ABC has close to 50 entries (with no sign that the content is complete).

In the end I think that the disambiguation template ({{disambig}} and cousins) is sufficient and implies some things about "completeness" and "articleness" without addition of other templates to get the point across. That being said, the text of {{disambig}} is debated from time to time to help get the point across more directly and succinctly and that discussion can always use some new thoughts (such typically occurs at Wikipedia:Manual of style (disambiguation pages)).

Regards, Courtland 23:15, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I could understand that. But what about keeping an article together with a disambiguation page? That was also the case with filthy. It had 1 defintion and 1 link that I just grabed from the fact it was a redirect page before. So it couldn't be classified as a disambiguation page, and that's why you removed the definition. But that was a nice definition "translated" from the dictionary. Why removing it? It was another way to see the samething. This kind of information can prove itself usefull from time to time. I think maybe we could use another mid-term classification for a "dictionary2pedia + disambiguation page". Or maybe just add two classifications.

oops, I forgot to sign (again). Also, maybe this could be better discussed on Talk:Filthy?

--Cawas 00:54, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• I think it's ok to discuss here as we're using Filthy as an example of a set of edit styles.
• There is an article-dab chimera that I've advocated recently for really complicated situations (such as Aborigine and Affine), the "Signpost article", but the invocation of that article type doesn't fit this situation (in my opinion).
• Definitions translated from Wiktionary are still definitions. They are fine as part of articles. Consider, for instance, Sketch comedy or just about any article that is about a thing (in the most generic sense); a definition of some kind is almost always found in the introduction in order to provide context to the reader about what the article is about. However, that does not mean that a full dictionary definition is in order; that is what Wiktionary is for. Now I fully understand the desire to either a) eliminate Wiktionary and move all the content into Wikipedia or b) duplicate salient content between the two (both a and b fitting into your "dictionary2pedia" proposal), but neither of these things is accepted as consensus-supported editing activities in the Wikipedia environment; a certain technology option seems a no-brainer but is not a capability right now ... c) enable a cross-resource search function that would return both Wikipedia and Wiktionary articles (damn, I'd love to see that). The way that is currently supported in the Wikipedia environment to do what you did is not to duplicate content but to reference that content in Wiktionary.
• Another thing to consider is that "filthy" is an adjective, and adjectives as names of articles or as concepts standing alone as wikipedia articles are rare and kept so by policy emerging from consensus. Some information and opinion on this can be found at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (adjectives) and its talk page, and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ambiguous adjectives); the page Wikipedia Naming Conventions provides context to these other pages. Of course, "Filthy" as the name of a band or film is a proper noun, not an adjective.

P.S. I'd forgotten I'd written some stuff related to dab pages and Wiktionary that sits in an earlier thread, above (see the heading Proposed templates and template changes including Wiktionary linkage; unfortunately, the proposals needed more than simple wikiwork but some coding magic that would be better proposed elsewhere.

Regards, Courtland 01:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Amazing! Thanks, I've loved specially when you "fully understood" the desire that I had to eliminate Wiktionary. I believe I understood that when I read your paragraph! And now I also agree wiktionary is actually great and your edition was good. :)

This was great for me, I just got to quickly read Wikipedia:Disambiguation and I've noticed I knew about everything important in there, thanks to this discussion! o_O

But I got to see some new things as well, of course. :P

I'm want to help to create a new article right now, and I believe it better goes by being classified as wikipedia:stub.

Here's the article: Google search technology

Be carefull, I'm still finishing it up a very tiny little bit, but there is a bug on wikipedia that might trick you right now if you click on the article link.

Thanks again for everything, people! :)

--Cawas 03:46, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

All-redlinks dab page

An item on AFD has brought up a dispute on the validity of a disambiguation page containing exclusively redlinks. This isn't covered in the guideline, although redlinks themselves are permitted, and I'd encourage discussion here on whether there should be a policy on it. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:57, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

My view is, if there's a link to an article and it's reasonable that an encyclopedic article could be written, then there is some level of demand for said article. That a dab page is entirely redlinks shouldn't be a problem, because normally no-one's going to see a dab page. Josh Parris # 23:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I would not support deleting a page just because it was a dab-page of redlinks, but I certainly would not encourage the production of these pages. It would be useful (remind me if it is already there) to add a tiny blurb about creation of dab pages, that dab pages are meant to provide navigational assistance between articles and that it is best to create the article(s) first then create the dab page(s) after ... if in fact such dab page(s) is really needed. The case of a dab-page of all red-links might well arise when one or more related articles have been deleted that were disambiguated by the page; in this case, it can be argued that if all the targets were deleted via AfD process, then the dab page that provided navigation assistance among them should be deleted as well. Courtland 00:59, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages - birth and death dates for person on disambiguation pages

I work with the Missing Encyclopedic Articles and am constantly pruning new lists of already existing articles. One of my big pet peeves when I run into a disambig page is that there is seems that there never enough info on the disambiguation page to fully disambiguate who the person was and I have to check several articles just to be sure. Adding the birth and death dates would really help make the disambiguation easier and provide some context for who the person was. Can this info be added into the manual of style of disambig pages? If it is accepted, the conversion could be semi-automated by looking at the Category:1931 births Category:1995 deaths of the article in question. Any input or bot writers to covert the disambig pages would be awesome. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 20:19, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

The MoS already says you're supposed to include dates of birth and death. Unfortunately, conformance to the MoS is hit and miss. --RoySmith 20:26, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I'll post this to the bots page to see if anyone bites on it.

You should consider whether the dab pages or the LoPbN (list of people by name) should be the core reference for persons, or if they should be on equal footing. Note that birth-deah years are related differently on the two: on dab pages there is a mix of YYYY-YYYY (using '-') and YYYY–YYYY (using 'ndash') and grammatical convention suggests usage of the latter, while on LoPbN YYYY-YYYY (using '-') is used exclusively (at present) in the interests of keeping page size to a minimum. This is something that a bot should be aware of. Also, as you are no doubt aware, the usage of birth and death categories is by no means ubiquitous. Courtland 04:34, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

External Links

I was wondering what the policy was on including external links on disamb pages, because there is one on Flat Rock (at least at the time of this writing). - Akamad 23:12, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

If there should be an external link, it should at least exist an article about the subject, in my opinion. --Boivie 14:25, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I can't think of any legitimate reason for a WP article disambiguation page to have an external link. —Wahoofive (talk) 04:49, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Oops —Wahoofive (talk) 21:39, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

In response to User:Boivie, if there is an article on the subject, then the recommendation of the MoS is that there not be a secondary link, internal or external (see MoS information on content of individual entries.

In response to User:Wahoofive, if we did not allow external links in Wikipedia articles, there is no way that we could reference sources, so a blanket "(no) reason for a WP article to have an external link" is ... is that really what you meant to say?

In response to the original question, my feeling is that a) if there is an existing article, there should not be an external link (this is an internal navigational tool) and b) if there is a red-link'd article then in general no external link should be provided. The b) requires explanation and softening ... much of the discussion around Manual of Style matters has in the past been over the role of disambiguation pages: navigational (finding specific articles), educational/edutainal (supporting branching in searches, leading to articles previously unanticipated), editorial (assistance in finding articles to write via red-links). I think that external links for red-link articles could best be put in the talk-space for the dab page; alternatively, if the red-link article belongs to a class of articles that are thought to be suitable for encyclopedic inclusion, there is a Wikipedia page-set devoted to requesting articles for inclusion, and there is an entire WikiProject devoted to this (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles), and some user- and wikipedia-space pages have been constructed to capture this information (one of mine comes to mind ... see User:Ceyockey/List of companies by publication mention for instance).

Regards, Courtland 12:57, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Putting external links for redlinks on the talk page is an excellent idea. —Wahoofive (talk) 21:39, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

"Lift" example does not conform to MoS

The "Lift" example in the guideline does not conform to the MoS, does it? E.g. each line does not start with a link; and other words in the line are also linked. Even if these are valid exceptions (and I don't see why they would be), better to give an example that does not contain exceptions. While I'm at it, is this guideline really the place to be told how to pronounce disambiguation? Nurg 22:14, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Quoth the MoS:

If the item described appears as part of another page, link to the relevant section of that page instead (using the #anchor notation) and conceal that by making it a piped link, as shown with "coin", below. In this case the link may not start the line, but it should still be the only wikilink.

Tail may also be: The reverse side of a coin Part of an airplane fuselage Part of a bird's anatomy

I deliberately selected an example that includes both types of disambiguation links (to convey the fact that this other variety exists and is appropriate), and I removed the links to peripherally related pages (both here and on the actual Lift page). —Lifeisunfair 23:26, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I also don't like the lift example because by adding it, we've specifically added a recommendation (at least an example) that nested lists are to be used for disambiguation pages. Up till now, neither this page nor MOS:DAB has recommended or allowed nested lists, and in my opinion they should not be used in disambiguation pages. You may argue that it doesn't recommend against them; fine—let it remain that way.

I'm going to find a better example and replace this one. —Michael Z. 2005-12-3 06:27 Z

A good example should have examples of the different types of links (same name, name with "(disambiguation)", similar name, different name plus link, different name plus section link). It should be relatively brief, and contain few or no exceptions to the recommendations. It should be relatively stable. I haven't found a perfect one, but below are some candidates. —Michael Z. 2005-12-3 07:11 Z

• Anchor (disambiguation)
• Bison (disambiguation)
• Dam (disambiguation)
• Mafia (disambiguation)
• Mine
• Sabre (disambiguation)
• Tank (disambiguation)

Disambiguating disambiguated articles

Let's say we have The Avengers (TV series). Should this article have a notice at the top like the following?

For other things named The Avengers, see The Avengers.

I thought it's convention to have such disambiguation notices, especially as if someone links you to the article like this (The Avengers) things are obfuscated. In some cases I've had my addition of such notices reverted. So, I'd like to know: is there any consensus on this? If not, why? Johnleemk | Talk 19:39, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I thought the convention was rather the opposite--that it is unnecessary clutter to include dab notices at the top of articles where there is little chance of accidentally landing there. I don't think that the possibility that someone might contruct a bad or misleading link should warrant adding dab notes to every page where there is disambiguation. Those top of page dab notices as useful in cases such as 1) for articles where primary topic disambiguation occurs or 2) for articles which might easily be confused, such as if there are multiple places in a state with similar names or where there are multiple people with a similar name and occupation. Obviously there may be some differences of opinion as to how likely confusion is likely to arise, but I don't think there is any settled convention about it. older≠wiser 21:05, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

How about we fix it. I propose adding a line after the J.S. Bach example under "Disambiguation links" saying

Links to disambiguation pages are never necessary if the article title contains a qualifier in parentheses, such as Saturn (mythology), unless two or more articles might still be confused even with the qualifier.

At the same time, let's get rid of that stupid Horse example. Does anyone still support the bottom-of-the-page dablink? —Wahoofive (talk) 21:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed on both points above. Courtland 03:06, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

For this case, the television series is already unambiguous and has little to zero risk of being confused with anything else named "The Avengers". There's no reason to clutter the top of the page with otheruses or etc. To quote this guideline: "Do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page, if there is no risk of confusion." K1Bond007 21:50, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

The only argument I can think of for doing the dab-link on disambiguous pages is the reader coming in via a search engine like Google. "Oh, that's not what I wanted" dablink fixes that situation. Josh Parris#: 04:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree with this suggestion, and agree that the horse example needs to go—no one does it at the bottom anymore. I invite you all to add your thoughts to the developing Wikipedia:Hatnotes, which is meant to specifically address these kinds of issues.—jiy (talk) 23:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Indie

Should indie be a disambig page? I've disambiguated about 30 pages and 29 of them point to indie (music) and the other one linked to independent record label. The other articles in the dab page aren't very common at all. Is this common? Should I continue disambiguating (I'm fairly new at this)? Thanks. Gflores ^Talk 03:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Format/graphic

Why doesn't English Wikipedia use the "forking" graphic on the disamb pages common to many of the other languages? --Dpr 12:58, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

See template talk:Disambig. —Michael Z. 2005-12-4 17:00 Z

What to do about duplicate titles?

Hi:

Forgive my newb-ness.

I want to write an article about a person (Brian Jackson--jazz artist) and there is already an article, "Brian Jackson" about a sociologist. How do I proceed?

thanks, Eric

• Name your article Brian Jackson (jazz artist) and start writing. Make a link at the top of the other page with an indented and italicized note directing users to your page. If you want, you could also move the existing page (move tab on the top of every page after you've made a hundred or so edits) to Brian Jackson (sociologist). Then turn the old Brian Jackson page into a disambiguation page that points to both articles. Have fun. SchmuckyTheCat 20:11, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Greenwich University

Hi folks, can I get some community input into a disambiguation dispute at Talk:Greenwich University, please? Snottygobble | Talk 12:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

"No definitions": request for clarity

I disagree with this edit; this seems the place to come to get consensus. I know we have a "no definitions in disambigs" rule, but in this case I think it is confusing to give only specific contexts on the use of the word, and not indicate that it has a more general meaning (which may be the intended one in a link, after all). Thoughts? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you to some extent. For example, the British slang definition of fanny was removed from the disambig page because it was 'slang', and disambig pages aren't slang guides. However, thinking about this later, I realised that it was quite reasonable to assume that someone might come across that particular usage (whether or not they realised it was slang) and type it in, expecting to get either a relevant article or a link to one. Thus, on that count, it did not warrant being removed.

Of course, there is also the separate matter of whether a particular usage is (generally) common enough to warrant inclusion. In that case, it certainly was.

Perhaps not the closest match to your particular situation, but I believe that this sort of thing has a place in a disambig page... IF they help disambiguate when the user may be unclear which of two distinct meanings is being referred to. Fourohfour 22:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that the editor User:Tedernst was being a little zealous in the edit taken, because it is quite within bounds to have clarification of context on a disambiguation page, particularly now that the middle ground (Category:Signpost articles) has been deleted, leaving only the two poles of dab pages and articles with nothing between to bridge the gap. However, before going any farther I would suggest that you create a wiktionary entry for Royalist and add a link to that article from the dab page via {{wiktionarypar}}. Also, consider using the talk-space as a place to discuss nuances of meaning rather than the dab page itself. There is precedence for the latter in dab pages, for instance where red-links are sometimes placed in the talk-space prior to their appearing as articles, and in other page types such as templates where the "business end" of the template is in the main space but "usage notes" exist in the talk-space. I would go so far as to say that there be a guideline composed that helps to head off future clashes by relegating some information types to the talk-space and some to the main dab page. Courtland 23:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that short contextualizing descriptions such as the one deleted at Royalist are helpful. A link to a Wiktionary entry would be fine as an additional reference, but should not replace entirely the brief contextual note. older≠wiser 23:32, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

As a matter of style, if the short contextualizing description is included, I think it should be separated in some fashion from the "may mean" sentence fragment so that the fragment stands alone as a clear entry point to the listing of entries; see for instance Pork (disambiguation), where the circumstance is different but I'd suggest the general form could be used. Courtland 23:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that is a reasonable suggestion. older≠wiser 23:51, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Upon examing this situation, I don't see strong reason for this disambiguation page to exist at all. Aside from Monarchism, the entries listed appear to be specific groups of royalists, not unrelated articles that share the same term. Dictionary.com lists royalist and monarchist as synonyms—Royalist should then redirect to Monarchism and say something like "Monarchism or royalism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy." The specific instances of royalists listed on the disambiguation page (including the two groups dictionary.com lists as being titled Royalists with a capital R, the Cavaliers and Tory) can be listed on the Monarchism article, which has designated a section specifically for this purpose.—jiy (talk) 23:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Please don't muddy the water by bringing the matter of whether or not the page should exist up here .. it's a valid discussion point, but let's assume it can exist for now as it does for the sake of this discussion. Courtland 23:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I find it difficult to use this as an example for this point of discussion now that these considerations have come to light. Can you find a stronger example, perhaps theoretical, and instead discuss based on that?—jiy (talk) 00:01, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

The page should exist for two reasons:

1. A wikipedia editor, encountering the word "royalist" should almost always want to disambiguate it; this informs them as to where.
2. A non-expert reader—say a school student—might encounter the word "royalist" and want to look up whether we have an article. This accurately directs him or her to the correct article, given a context in which the word was found. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:44, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Redlinks and External links ... template wording suggestion

I'll start out with a suggested wording revision for the template:

Current wording: This is a disambiguation page — a list of articles associated with the same title.
If an internal link referred you to this page, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Suggested revision: This is a disambiguation page — a list of articles associated with the same title.
If an internal link referred you to this page, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.
Additional links to articles that do not yet exist may be found on [[Talk:{{PAGENAME}}]].

I'm not sure if that last is the right syntax for general deployment, but the point is to provide a link to the talk-page associated with the dab-page.

Why suggest this?: There are lots of voices that ask "why are red-links included on dab pages?" with the underlying reasoning going something like "if dab pages are navigational aids and you want to reduce the off-topic migration of folks, wanting them to stay focused on where they are going, providing links to non-existant articles defeats the aim of generating a minimalist, fit-for-purpose signpost." I don't 100% agree with this myself, and it's a paraphrase of a couple dozen voices. My thinking is that putting red-links and (as I suggested above) external links associated with those red-links on the talk-page for a dab-page should be encouraged. This would both enhance the navigation functions of the dab pages while satifying the need (or desire) to keep information about potential article destinations close at hand. Part of the dab-page maintenance activity would then become occasional examination of talk-pages for red-links-turned-blue, which could be facilitated by robotic routines.

Your thoughts?: This change is not small and it does come with a significant cost. The question is whether the direction the change points is right as perceived by the community at large. What do you think? Courtland 03:30, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

While I don't like the idea of dab pages containing lots of redlinks, it seems impractical to mandate that they be on the talk page, if it's a page with significant other talk content. They'd just be too hard to find, and trying to standardize a place for them seems like too much instruction creep. I just don't see this (redlinks) as a big problem. Putting a redlink on dab page is a statement that the article should exist; if that's not true, just remove the link. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:49, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

A tiny percentage of dab pages have a talk-page started for them at all, let alone having much discussion there. I'm not "mandating" anything .. the whole disambiguation scheme is a guideline that is liberally violated .. we can and do mandate nothing here. As for using dab pages as a way to collect "articles that should exist", there is an entire page set for that; see Wikipedia:Requested articles; lists of meanings belong in Wiktionary not Wikipedia. Courtland 02:45, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm still trying to decide what problem you're attempting to solve. Someone types in the name of a magazine, say "Mercury" (an astronomy magazine). They get to the Mercury dab page, where they see that we don't yet have an article on their magazine. This may end their search, if they only wanted only that specific information, but that too is a convenience. If they just didn't see the magazine name there maybe they would waste more time looking for it. Our objective is to help users find their info efficiently, even if the info is that we have no info. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:49, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. If users are genuinely ending up at a dab page looking for a topic that doesn't exist, better that they know that it doesn't exist straight away. Of course there are limits - if there's no reason to think people are ending up at John Smith looking for a baker who made yummy scones in 1943, then don't make a link for it. Stevage 15:19, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Homonym pages

I have been browsing the French Wikipedia and I notice that they call dab pages "homonym" pages. It's something we might consider, since it seems more encyclopedic to use real English words rather than made-up ones like "disambiguation". It might also serve to make clearer that Michael Jackson doesn't belong on the Michael page, and better embodies this principle: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", what article would they realistically be expecting to view as a result?. —Wahoofive (talk) 18:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

"Disambiguation" is not a made up word, or at least no more so than "smog" or "radio". It has been in common use in computer science at least since the 1970s. I suspect that it was not a new term then, and I suspect that at least linguists also used it. Does someone have an OED handy to check? I presume it's in there. And "homonym" in English would certainly not be right. "Here" and "hear" are homonyms. Michael Jackson (beer critic) and Michael Jackson (entertainer) are not. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:51, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

at least no more so than "smog"? Well, smog is a totally made up word, so what's your point? :) Stevage 15:16, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Correction: "Hear" and "Here" are homophones, whereas "desert" (a dry region) and "desert" (to abandon) are homonyms, even though they're pronounced differently (specialists use the term "homograph" in the latter case). —Wahoofive (talk) 18:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Oops. But a parallel point applies. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

A Google search shows that over two thirds of webpages containing the word "disambiguation" also contain the word "Wikipedia". We are the only ones really using this word much. It is gibberish only used by computer geeks. Even given the high proportion of Wikipedians who are geeks, I doubt many of us had heard of the term before seeing it here. It is a made-up word on the level of "wikify", not on the level of "smog". "Disambiguation" doesn't appear in my OED, though the most recent editions will have it, as they have hundreds of words that barely exist. — Chameleon 08:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Entries at onelook.com (dictionary portal) → http://www.onelook.com/?w=disambiguation&ls=a. Try looking with Google at the query "disambiguate thesaurus -site:wikipedia.org" (>21,000 hits) and you'll get a better apprecation for the scope of use of the term. Courtland 02:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I particularly like the listing at "worthless word for the day". —Wahoofive (talk) 06:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation is a major issue at Wikipedia, whereas I can't immediately think of other situations where the concept itself really exists. Hence it makes sense that we're the major source of its usage. If it's a neologism, so be it, if the concept itself is new too. Stevage 15:15, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

"Homonym" is not suitable, as the word "homonym" specifically describes single words with multiple meanings. It is not normally applied to proper names or phrases. Although we may have chosen the word because we are geeks, it's become part of our jargon and gained a very specific meaning within Wikipedia. That said, we usually try to keep our jargon out of articles - so we may want to edit it out of the template and remove any occurrences in articles. I can't think of a succinct replacement, however. Deco 08:33, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Some possibilities: topic selection page, selection page, fork page, forking page, multiple redirection page, gateway page. None of them feel right to me. Deco 08:37, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I concede your first point, Deco, but I still think "homonym" would be a big improvement over "discombobulation". —Wahoofive (talk) 06:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

This dictionary defines "disambiguation" as "clarification that follows from the removal of ambiguity". It also has the word "disambiguate" reference. Hence, I conclude that disambiguation is a normal word (and of course its meaning can be readily figured out by someone who doesn't already know it). Even if it is a rarer word, I figure it's still appropriate. Therefore, deciding between "disambiguation" and another equally appropriate word is arbitrary. Neonumbers 10:03, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I find "disambiguation" to be such a perfectly clear statement of what the page does that it's hard to improve on. My only other suggestion would be a "context page". Stevage 15:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)