Pattonre

Thank you for your recent efforts to improve disambiguation pages by adding missing information--many of your additions are greatly appreciated. Please keep in mind, though, that dab pages are navigation pages for material available in Wikipedia, so each entry must be supported by an article. If there is no article for the topic, and no related article that describes or at least mentions the topic, then the entry is not suitable for inclusion on the dab page. For more information about disambiguation and dab pages, please see WP:DAB and MOS:DAB. If you have any questions, I'm watching here, so you can reply here. Happy editing!--ShelfSkewed Talk 15:21, 14 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

OK, so can you help me with a few specific examples?

(1) I added an entry for a song "Tell Me" by a group called the Sharmettes. There is noting in Wikipedia about that particular song OR the group, so... no link. Should I have red-linked Sharmettes, or should I not have added that particular item at all? (The third option would have been for me to create a page for Sharmettes, which I am not qualified to do.) (1a)-What do I do with a scrap of information like this? Nothing?

(2) I added some song entries where I know the song appears on a certain album, but there is no Wikipedia article for the album AND the performer or composer article does not mention the particular song. Should I have refrained from adding those items? (Unless I also create a page for the specific album, for example, which is a much more time-consuming proposition. Plus, I have never created a wikipedia page before... only edited one.)

(3) When I add album links, am I supposed to show the entire link reference, e.g., Open Your Eyes (Goldfinger album) instead of Open Your Eyes?

(4) What do I do with a song like Monkey Man by Frederick "Toots" Hibbert which does not have its own page but appears on albums by several different people (in this case Toots & the Maytals and Amy Winehouse)? The album pages each show the song. Should I point to all the albums I know of that the song appears on? Does the answer to my question change if the composer never performs his own song, e.g., something by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, and the song is not mentioned on Al Dubin's or Harry Warren's page?

(5) Did you or someone else already delete the offending entries? Or do I need to do it myself?

I've been putting this information in because I have been trying to find out about certain specific songs with these names, like the many different songs named "Tell Me". Often, I find I have more info from other sources than appears in Wikipedia. In order to help other people (and myself in the future), I have been adding what I learn from other sources to the disambiguation pages (when they already exist), instead of letting that research benefit no one else. But I only have so much time to spend doing that.

Thanks for your help with this. It's not easy following all the rules and conventions of Wikipedia. My usual approach is to mimic what other people have already done on a given page, even if it is not consistent from one page to the next. I use Wikipedia a lot and feel some obligation to contribute back in when I can. But the higher the barrier, then less likely people will contribute. (And the lower the barrier, the less useful Wikipedia is... I get that.) -- Pattonre (talk) 18:56, 14 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

(1) Since there is no Wikipedia article to navigate to for more information, the Sharmettes' song should not be listed.

(2) Same as above.

(3) Links that involve the ambiguous term should be shown completely. Secondary links (like album links for ambiguously titled songs) may be piped.

(4) Point the entry to the original appearance, if possible. If there are cover versions, they can be added to the album article, not the dab page. In general, cover versions that aren't notable are not, well...notable. As with performers, then certainly if the composer's article mentions the song, it can be included with a link to the composer's article in the description. If you think a song should be noted, but the composer's article doesn't mention it, you can always add it to the article (preferably with a reference) and then list it on the dab page.

(5) I cleaned up a few of the pages (Take It or Leave It, I'm Free, Tell Me). You can take a look at the others you edited and clean them up if you wish. Or I'll probably get to them sometime. It's not a huge deal. As I said, I think you're generally doing good work. Keep it up!

--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:43, 14 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

P.S. Creating an album article may not be as time-consuming as you think. Find a short album article (here's a really stubby one I created a while back: Livin' in the Fast Lane), open the edit window, copy the article, paste the old article into the edit window of the new article, then replace the old info with the new. More help at WP:FIRST.--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for clearing all that up for me. By the way, some of what you cleaned up was added by people before I got there, but I imagine you knew that. PS- I see you live where I was born, graduated HS from, and lived for 40-plus years. I still live nearby. Small world! Pattonre (talk) 23:58, 14 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I've just new-page-patrolled your "first album article" and — good news — marked it to be kept in Wikipedia. Like the guy above says, you're contributing good work, and the album meets the notability criterion of the artist himself being fairly notable. There are a lot of editors out there who are very free with their speedy-delete button so, to avoid the frustration of your good work being knocked back, if you haven't already then take a look at this section: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes#Music. Good luck with your music project! Baldy Bill (talk) 23:56, 11 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:20, 23 November 2015 (UTC)Reply