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California (disambiguation)

User:Enquire and I have a disagreement about the latest change made to the page. The discussion was begun at User talk:Clarityfiend#California (disambiguation). Briefly, my stance is that it violates (1) WP:Partial title match with the Alta California and Baja California entries, and (2) the style guideline with some long descriptions. Alta and Baja California have their own dab pages, which are listed in the See also section. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:22, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Cleaned and taken up at Talk:California (disambiguation). Please continue the conversation there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:11, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree with the most recent changes. I do note WP:Partial title match, but also did read the paragraph enclosed which includes the caveat:

Add a link only if the article's subject (or the relevant subtopic thereof) could plausibly be referred to by essentially the same name as the disambiguated term in a sufficiently generic context—regardless of the article's title.

I respectfully submit that Baja California and Alta California are and can be plausibly referred to in the same context. The examples given in WP:Partial title match are: Baltimore Zoo and Mississippi River where the principal noun is "Zoo" and "River" respectively. So, one would not logically expect either to appear in the disambiguation pages for "Zoo" or for "River" (although possibly in "List of ...). WP:Partial title match continues, and I quote:

Place names are often divided between a specific and generic part: "North Carolina" (where "Carolina" is the specific, and "North" the generic part). Other common generics are compass points, upper/lower, old/new, big/small, etc. It is entirely proper to include such place names in disambiguation pages with the specific title (North Carolina is properly listed at Carolina (disambiguation)); but only exceptionally in the generic title (we don't expect to see North Carolina in North (disambiguation), just as we don't expect to see Mississippi River in River (disambiguation)).

See for example: Carolina, also a disambiguation page - there you will see, as subordinated bullets:
So, I think it is clear that the WP:Partial title match rule is not intended to be applied to related geographic entities. Note also that: "Alta" (Uupper in English); "Baja" (Lower in English); "Norte" (North in English); and, "Sud" (South in English) are, as such, the generic parts of place names which are all derived historically and linguistically from the same root noun "California."
Moreover, from a geographic and historical context; Alta California (Upper California) includes all of the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah; as well as western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming. The Californias (Spanish: Las Californias), is the predecessor state to all of: California, USA; as well as both Baja California (Norte) as well as Baja California Sur. Further, the latter two Mexican states comprise the Baja California peninsula (now in "See also" section, even though Baja California Sur, strangely, does not currently appear anywhere on this page at all) ... although the Gulf of California which separates the Mexican mainland and the two Mexican California states is included in the lead disambiguation cluster. I do not believe that the intention of WP:Partial title match is to distance these highly interrelated state entities which have a long and tangled history.
For the record and to avoid repetition of my primary points and for convenience of reference for others, I include the discussion between User:Clarityfiend and myself here:

You reverted my edit to the above disambiguation page. With due respect, did you pay any attention to my edit? IMHO it would seem not, the only comment you made was: "(Reverted good faith edits by Enquire (talk): Short descriptions are the guideline, just enough for ID purposes. (TW))". With due respect, I took great care to make this edit manually, because on several occasions now I have in he past re-insert references to Baja California, The Californias, and so on, when so called good-faith editors have changed such references to simply California, apparently oblivious of the not so subtle distinctions between the various historical and contemporary territorial entities in the region of SW USA and NW Mexico. I do not mean to suggest that you are unaware of these distinctions, but it has been my experience on Wikipedia as well as in the real world that there are a significant population of otherwise knowledgeable people, who only have superficial knowledge of the historical and factual origins of "California". I trust you understand; I have taken the liberty to revert your reversion of my earlier edit, please take a closer look. You should note that, in addition to organizing and grouping entries, I added a few new ones that should have been on the disambiguation page before, but were not. You may feel that there is excessive editorial, but in my experience, there is a great deal of confusion and misinformation about the distinctions between these various state entities and that, therefore, some rudimentary explanation is appropriate.
Enquire (talk) 03:33, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

A disambiguation page is not the place to deal with "confusion and misinformation". It is strictly a navigation tool, with specific guidelines. DABENTRY states "Keep the description associated with a link to a minimum, just sufficient to allow the reader to find the correct link." I forgot to mention it in my edit comment, but the Baja California entries also violate WP:Partial title matches. If you still disagree, I suggest you ask for a second opinion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:52, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
Incidentally, I think the MoS link you referenced is actually Wikipedia:DABENTRY#Individual_entries. right? On this matter, I would entirely agree that a disambiguation page is not the place to deal with "confusion and misinformation". However, there is confusion and misinformation and therefore it is important that this disambiguation page (in particular) clarifies the not so subtle distinctions between the various state entities (present and historical) clearly and concisely. IMHO, I think the current version does that. Maybe the entry for Alta California appears at first glance to be a little verbose, but I could not see any obvious redundant string of words that could be deleted without detracting from a concise differentiation of the various current and former states, provinces and territories without introducing some level of ambiguity. Overall, I feel that as is, including the indented sub-entries is a clear way to classify and disambiguate the various meanings of "California" as a state / province / territory. If you feel otherwise, and not wishing to be perceived as driven by pride of authorship, perhaps we should start a discussion on Talk:California_(disambiguation)?
Enquire (talk) 06:59, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
As a footnote, I have a friend who lives in San José del Cabo, Baja California Sur and I needed to send documents overnight via FedEx. FedEx dispatch called me to tell me that I had made a mistake on the label and wanted to know if this package was to go to California or Mexico. The wanted me to either replace the word "California" with "Mexico" (to make "Baja Mexico Sur") OR to delete "Mexico" and add a "US zip code". I forget how long I was on the phone, but it could have been over an hour. I demanded to speak to a supervisor, who was not much more knowledgeable ... but finally, I was able to convince someone at FedEx that "Baja California Sur" is a real state that really does exist in Mexico. Considering that employees of an International logistics company are confused just speaks volumes on the need to make a clear and concise disambiguation page for "California". Please note, prior to my edit, there were no entries at all for: Alta California; Baja California (Norte); or, Baja California Sur.
Enquire (talk) 07:30, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
We'll get a quicker response at the project's talk page, so I'm going to start the discussion there. P.S. There aren't supposed to be entries for anything other than California. Two of the three you cited have their own dab pages. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:17, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
Ok, let's do that. Enquire (talk) 21:28, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
In conclusion, I submit that since California, Alta California, Baja California (Norte), Baja California Sur are all state entities that are constituent parts of the former Spanish, then Mexican state of Las Californias; and that the US state of California is the westerly part of the former Spanish, then Mexican province/territory of Alta California; and that therefore, they should be logically grouped together. If the disambiguation page is to serve its purpose of helping readers find the specific Wikipedia article that is relevant to their search (whether they are among the confused/misinformed or not), then I suggest that they rationally should be grouped together for clarity.
Enquire (talk) 21:28, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Rivoli Cinema

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2014_April_21#Rivoli_Cinema about the DABs for this. I tidied one entry at the DAB up from redlink Rivoli Cinemas which I believed (and seems to be the case) was entirely uncontroversial – the one-liner said and still says it is a multiplex chain in Melbourne, Australia – to Rivoli Cinemas (Melbourne).

But Rivoli Theatre (disambiguation) only has four entries, and the DAB at Rivoli only has nine: they could easily be combined. User:Thryduulf, a stalwart at WP:RfD, created today Rivoli Theater (disambiguation) as an {{R from alternate spelling}}, because three of the entries at the first-mentioned are for "Rivoli Theater" with the American spelling (Rivoli Theater redirects to Rivoli Theatre with the British spelling) and one to Rivoli Theatre (Portugal) with the British spelling. There seems to be an excess of redirects and DABs for a title that doesn't have many topics on it. I'd like to cut out some of the vermicelli: although I am an inclusionist I think this hinders rather than helps a reader to search. Si Trew (talk) 23:00, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

  • Whenever there is a disambiguation page at Foo, there should exist Foo (disambiguation) as a redirect to it (see WP:INTDABLINK). In the majority of cases where there is a page with "theatre" in the name then there should be a redirect from "theater" (and vice versa), including for disambiguation pages and (imo) intdablinks. So the real question is how many disambiguation pages should we have for the various "Rivoli"s, "Rivoli Theatre"s and "Rivoli Cinema"s? Thryduulf (talk) 09:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I am not arguing about the redirects but suggesting to combine the DAB pages themselves. Obviously we would then retarget the redirects as housekeeping. Si Trew (talk) 13:19, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
I wouldn't combine the dab for the title "Rivoli" with the other dab(s). Combine cinema, theater, and theatre, but that dab should remain separate from the dab for "Rivoli". -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:09, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Hatnotes on DAB pages?

I couldn't find anything at MOS:DAB stating that hatnotes should not be added to disambiguation pages. I noticed that the page 2nd Division, which is a {{mil-unit-dis}}, uses the hatnote template {{about}}. Since the DAB is in article space, the template returns the text, "This article is about", but of course disambiguation pages are not articles as such.

Therefore, two questions: Is it appropriate, at least sometimes, to include hatnotes on disambiguation pages? If so, is there a way to make {{about}} render the text, "This page is about", even in article name space? Cnilep (talk) 02:16, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I can certainly see that there will be some uses where hatnotes on disambiguation pages are useful - and this is a good example. The answer to the second question is that I don't know that it can, but you can use {{hatnote}} to craft a completely custom message - it would be better to add an option to {{about}} (perhaps type=page or name=page) but I'm not competent to do that myself. Thryduulf (talk) 09:15, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Or just use {{For}} instead of {{About}} on dabs. {{Distinguish}} is probably even better. And in this particular dab's case, they could be combined. Separating them by their meaning (as opposed to their titling) makes them set index articles, IMO. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:11, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
{{About}} with empty first parameter acts the same as {{For}}, I think - but it would be helpful to be able to specify what the dab page covers, in the hatnote. I'm not keen on {{distinguish}} as it allows no scope for explanation. Another option is a handcrafted hatnote using {{hatnote}}, with which you could create the required effect of "An About template which refers to page instead of article". PamD 16:00, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Have just handcrafted a revised hatnote on 2nd Division. Not sure whether the word "disambiguation" should be there or not: feel free to tweak it. PamD 16:04, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Would "This page disambiguates..." be better? Thryduulf (talk) 20:48, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't think a dab page hatnote should refer to its subject matter, since it has none (other than the title it disambiguate). Saying the dab page is about military divisions makes it a set index article instead. Saying it disambiguated military divisions is also incorrect; it disambiguates any topic for the ambiguous title; if it handles only some topics, it's a set index. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:12, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
What is the practical difference between the two? The vast majority of readers will not care what we call the page, they're only interested in whether they are reached what they are looking for. Thryduulf (talk) 23:12, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
That is a good question, but one with a long history. The net from my point of view is that set index articles don't have to be formatted like dab pages, are articles, and so are valid link targets and subject to the usual notability, verifiability, etc. They sprang up (again, from my point of view) when editors wanted to put more links and other stuff than were needed on a dab page on their lists of whatevers. I'm not a fan of them. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:36, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

@JHunterJ: While a {{disambiguation}} page has no subject matter, a {{mil-unit-dis}} does have at least a general category – military units and formations. Similarly, {{geodis}} pages have places, {{hndis}} pages have the names of people, etc. In this particular case, Second Division is not a DAB page at all; it is an index of second-highest divisions in various association football leagues. Division II is a DAB page, which includes links to 'Second Division' and '2nd Division', the military unit disambiguation. Cnilep (talk) 23:36, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

{{mil-unit-dis}} has a general category, and is used when a particular ambiguous title happens to have no topics other than military units and formations. Similarly {{geodis}} have to have only places, etc., but dabs with places and other things use {{disambiguation}} with the "geo" parameter. In this case, it seems to me that the military units and formations are ambiguous with the titles "2nd Division" and "Second Division" and the sports leagues are ambiguous with the same titles, and this split is much like the Wikipedia:Partially disambiguated page names "Second Division (military unit)" and "Second Division (sports league)"--to be avoided. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:36, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
How is the split different to sections on a single dab page? Thryduulf (talk) 09:12, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Service to the reader. Dabs are there for the reader to get to the article sought. If the reader seeking a military unit lands on the sports league SIA, this is less useful than the initial landing on a disambiguation page for the ambiguous title (which would have a link to the reader's sought page). -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:58, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Template:National Youth football teams of Europe

To my surprise, Template:National Youth football teams of Europe just recently showed up at "Templates with disambiguation links". Still it looks like the links to the disambiguation pages Poland national youth football team and Scotland national youth football team are years old. Unless these pages are not dab pages but broad concept pages, I have no clue how to solve those links. Anybody an idea? The Banner talk 21:20, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

They look like set index pages to me - merely a list of subtopics sharing the name of a single topic. bd2412 T 21:42, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
If these (Poland and Scotland) are dab pages, then the Belgian, Swedish and Spanish equivalent pages need to be labelled as dab pages too, and all 5 should be linked from the template by a piped redirect through Poland national youth football team (disambiguation) etc. PamD 22:09, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
They're not really ambiguous, though. For example, the Scotland national under-19 football team and the Scotland national under-20 football team are both merely types of Scotland national youth football teams, i.e., a youth football team composed of players in a specific age group, representing the nation of Scotland. This is either an index, or WP:DABCONCEPT. bd2412 T 22:40, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

RfC: Proposed rewording for instructions for disambiguation at the WikiProject Comics Manual of Style

A Request for Comment has been made regarding the appropriate level of generality of article title disambiguation for articles under WikiProject Comics. Please join the discussion here. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:20, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Need help on Gigas

Not sure how to request this and implement it officially, and not an active member of wikipedia, so can someone in the know please look at this?192.249.47.186 (talk) 15:26, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

 Done. I moved the articles around and moved the existing Gigas (disambiguation) to the base name. Thanks! -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:44, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

RfC in progress that affects WP:DABNAME

There is currently an RfC in progress that could affect the guideline at WP:DABNAME, specifically the instructions regarding using the word "The" in the disambiguation page title. The discussion can be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)/Archive 2#RfC. Steel1943 (talk) 15:33, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Detoxification

There is currently a discussion under way on how best to disambiguate the topics related to the title: detoxification and detox. See Talk:Detoxification#Requested move (2014). Rincewind42 (talk) 06:02, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

MOSDAB

There's disagreement at Talk:Blogger. Another editor is following the current wording of WP:PIPING, plus not including the ambiguous term in an entry. The former appears too strict to me, as it ignores the ease and usefulness of the ambiguous term (unless strictly in bold / lead / synonym). PIPING wording may need to be more clear on how strict. More opinions are welcome there. Widefox; talk 19:07, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Sci Fi Channel redirect

I am not sure where to take this gripe, but since it has to do with a confusion of terms, I figuure the disambiguation team could tackle it. Unless there is a "WikiProject Redirect"

Why does Sci Fi Channel redirect to Syfy Universal instead of to Syfy?

Syfy Universal did not exist as an entity in the years 1989 to 2009, when the Sci Fi Channel existed, and the entity known as Sci Fi Channel was clearly the same entity as the one renamed Syfy on March 16, 2009. Presently Sci Fi Channel (United States) does redirect to Syfy, but none of the SFC international subsidiaries ever had the "Sci Fi Channel" name -- "Sci Fi Channel (United States)" is therefore meaningless, as there is not, and has never been, a Sci Fi Channel (UK), Sci Fi Channel (Latvia) or any Sci Fi Channel (not United States) Bustter (talk) 18:28, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I've tried to start a discussion of this at Talk:Syfy Universal Bustter (talk) 18:32, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Problematic redirects can be discussed at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion. See the guidance on that page. Cnilep (talk) 23:27, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Ty! Bustter (talk) 13:01, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Roger

There's a rather messy page here: part anthroponymy and part disambiguation. I've just added entries for quite a few single-name Rogers (viscounts, archbishops, the usual sort of folk), and as there was already an entry for one "Roger of..." I added links to the {{look from}} listings for "Roger of", "Roger de" and "Roger van", who presumably ought to have been included but seemed too numerous to be bothered with today. Someone might like to have a look at it! I'm surprised that there don't seem to be any songs, novels, famous dogs, etc called "Roger" needing dab entries, but the car (to which there is a hatnote) seems the only one. PamD 18:02, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I may start working on this. Steel1943 (talk) 18:38, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
@Steel1943: Thanks. I think the way to rescue it might be to split out a dab page (to include a link to voice procedure) and a page on "Roger (slang)", leaving the stuff about the name, and the forename-holders who have a surname, at the base page. Have fun! PamD 18:45, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
@PamD: I was thinking somewhat the same. As it looks now, Roger needs a whole lot of "dissecting". I'm thinking that entire section of "Radio phraseology" should be merged into Voice procedure where it is mentioned, then maybe copy edited. Here I go... Steel1943 (talk) 18:52, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Disambiguation At Wikimania 2014

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We are offering to design and print physical paper leaflets to be distributed at Wikimania 2014 for all projects that apply.
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Adikhajuria (talk) 14:40, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd like your opinions on the hatnote at First Unitarian Church of Detroit. The current hatnote links to an external website. I don't believe there should be a hatnote until an article exists for the church the EL points to. I believe I'm correct, but I cannot convince the user that keeps adding it. Thanks! — X96lee15 (talk) 13:30, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Simplest solution would be for one or other of you just to create a basic stub for First Unitarian-Universalist Church of Detroit, and have a helpful hatnote {{about|the historic church which burned down in 2014|the similarly-named current church|First Unitarian-Universalist Church of Detroit}} with the converse on the new page. Would do it myself ... but we've got a restaurant table booked and I need to go. PamD 17:34, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

A link to a stub isn't very helpful, and in fact is discouraged as described at WP:NOARTICLE. Hatnotes should not contain red links to non-existent articles since hatnotes are intended to help users navigate to another article they may have intended to find. The concern is that links to external sites may be become broken and should therefore not be used casually. This makes sense as a general rule, but in the present case, it would make sense to link to the actual information at the external site.

By way of analogy, suppose there was a Wikipedia page on the Mormon Tabernacle which actually was about a Mormon Tabernacle that burned down many years ago and was not about the Mormon Tabernacle. Obviously, you would want a hatnote to clarify. But not every church is the size and significance of the Mormon Tabernacle and not every church needs its own Wikipedia page. So in the case where a valuable but small Wikipedia article is easily confused with a larger entity that does not have its own Wikipedia page, then the use of a hatnote pointing to the external site may be justified. --Dan Secrest (talk) 14:36, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Stubs aren't non-existent articles. Hatnotes to stubs are fine. Hatnotes to external articles or to red links are bad. The larger entity without Wikipedia coverage should not be covered by a Wikipedia hatnote. WP:NOTDIR -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:58, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Whether First Unitarian-Universalist Church of Detroit should have an article in Wikipedia would be based on Wikipedia:Notability (local churches and other religious congregations). I don't think a hatnote to an external site is supported by any Wikipedia policy. If I am mistaken, please point out my error, otherwise (@Dan Secrest:) please stop re-adding the hatnote. SchreiberBike talk 04:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
I've responded with another suggestion on the article talk page. A sentence in the opening paragraph like "The nearby First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit is an unrelated church though the names are similar" might be helpful for the reader. SchreiberBike talk 04:14, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Firmly against adding hatnotes linking to external sites. If there isn't an article, then there is no ambulation until someone creates an article. If the external entity isn't notable, then no ambulation can occur because few people search for non-notable things. If we allow this then every blog and Facebook page will be added to a hatnote or disambiguation page where there are two people/things with the same or similar name irrespective of the notability. Rincewind42 (talk) 15:02, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Before anything happens...

I am not perfect, unfortunately. So I request a few extra eyes for Sephardi Jews. I have unlinked 5 links to family names there, just to be reverted by someone who prefers links to disambiguation pages. After that, I reworked the links to the type "name (surname)|name". This was followed by this discussion. I sense trouble, so I like to have more people watching that article. The Banner talk 19:06, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you, but I'm unwilling to enter that discussion, not least because I'm not a member of this project and I'd rather leave it to someone with more expertise. --Thnidu (talk) 19:14, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
I entered the discussion there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:35, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
That is another reason that using the same page for disambiguation and a surname is always going to leave some people less than happy. 24.3.8.179 (talk) 23:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Plurals and disambiguation

There are a series of interesting RfDs for plurals like Eagles ( here - see also above and below in that day's log) and Browns (here - see also below in that day's log) at present - disambiguation geeks might like to chime in on them, as in several cases the alternatives are "Redirect Foos to one specific sports team the XYZ Foos", "Redirect to the article at Foo", "Redirect to the dab page for Foo", and in the case of Eagles "Redirect to the dab page for Foos". It boils down to "What's the primary topic for Foos?" in each case, of course.

I was led to look at this lot when Niners was listed in our Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Article alerts. PamD 07:13, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

In editing Anachronism#Intentional I changed an existing redlink [[video recorders]], to [[video recorder]]s. That page's title doesn't indicate that it's a DAB page. I got a DAB note.

Video recorder lists four articles for five terms (including one redirect). None of the articles have the exact coverage that would be appropriate for the term in the context.

I just added an HTML comment to Anachronism#Intentional:

He also imagines that personal video recorders,
<!-- I KNOW video recorder POINTS TO A DAB PAGE. IT'S THE BEST I CAN DO. THERE ISN'T ANY ARTICLE WITH THE EXACT COVERAGE THAT'S RELEVANT HERE. --thnidu -->
like camcorders, would influence civil liberties by making it possible for ordinary citizens to film crimes committed by police, as well as by hooligans.

If there's a better way to handle such a situation, I'd like to know it. —If you answer me here, please {{ping}} me. --Thnidu (talk) 19:06, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

@Thnidu:: In such cases you can link directly to Video recorder (disambiguation) (with a pipe to hide the disambiguating parentheses, like this: video recorder). This indicates that the link to disambiguation is intentional, and avoids getting the DAB notice, although I don't know if that's the preferred solution. Diego (talk) 19:41, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
And in this case, video recorder seems a valid link target, so should be a broad-concept stub. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:59, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, very much so. This seems to be a list of kinds of video recorder (i.e. devices able to record video). bd2412 T 22:46, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Raleigh

There is a debate at Talk:Raleigh about whether Raleigh should point to Raleigh (disambiguation) or to Raleigh, North Carolina. Your contributions there are welcome. DuncanHill (talk) 19:53, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Page needing help

We have a page that seems structured as a disambiguation but is referenced as an article and not tagged as a disambiguation at Epaenetus. I suspect that none of the people mentioned are notable enough for an article, so I'm wondering if the best solution is a simple deletion. Ideas? Ego White Tray (talk) 05:57, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I take that back - it looks like Athenaeus does have an article - but a lengthy and detailed one that doesn't even mention this name. Ego White Tray (talk) 06:00, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
This looks like a job for WP:WikiProject Anthroponymy. (Feel free to imagine a heroic trumpet blast accompanying that sentence.) Cnilep (talk) 23:26, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Raleigh (disambiguation)

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Raleigh (disambiguation)#Requested move, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 17:34, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Stellar disambiguation, fixed height divs, Category Trees, lookfrom, Term Trees, Word Trees

Stellar is a disambiguation page. I was searching for stellar properties and hoped to find a guide by searching for stellar. I found 8530 hits, and 100 relevant astrophysical terms scattered among the results. I did not want to dominate the disambiguation page with this long list, so I used a fixed height div in the disambiguation page. If all the people with last name Stellar are listed, they could be shown this way. Ideally, there would be a program to show these kinds of lists, like Category Tree. For "stellar", astrophysics is a major heading, then people, then proper terms. At least to start.

I am looking for a way to handle this general problem. I found the same patterm for terms like "physicists", chemists, and other occupations. I found it for "physical", chemical, mathematical, social, economic, and similar terms. I found it for "list of", "lists of", "geography of", "birds of", and many other prefix and suffix strings.

It is very common for physicists to search for steller, knowing there are many astrophysical properties starting with that term, and many terms that include it. It probably happens often by mistake when someone enters a partial term. The auto list of related terms is too short for many of the broad searches like "geography of", "duke of".

I looked at lookfrom|stellar - All pages with titles beginning with stellar - but it does not distinguish astrophysical terms and it does not allow for searching for "stellar " with a space after it to separate out multiword terms. It would be nice if the prefix search could be generalized to include wildcards like stellar * for stellar followed by a word, or * stellar for a word followed by stellar. A little organizing would make lookfrom much better. If one could edit the resulting list and categories the entries, then it would be easier to build subject trees/word trees.

I have been looking at categories, disambiguation pages, lists and regular articles. There is a continuum from Category Trees, to pages from pure automatic lists (categories), categories pages with some text and references, disambiguation pages with lists and references, lists with many page names embedded in a repeated pattern, and regular articles with many embedded page names and category names. I think we need to broaden disambiguation to provide help to people searching.

I think we need new ways to organize lists of page names for rapid searching. Here I am suggesting something that might work until we can improve it. Could someone write a Subject Tree, Word Tree, Term Tree app like CategoryTree?

A lot of Category, disambiguation, list of, lists of, and redirect pages could be database driven with editors interacting with the database to modify classifications, add hierarchical searches, manage aliases, and generally improve Wikipedia.

Please contact me if you have questions or suggestions. RC711 (talk) 23:41, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

    • The reason I used the fixed height div was to not take up too much screen space. It is an inconvenience for a visitor to have to scroll around a long list looking for what they need. A simple page link to get to more detail only takes a part of a line and does not interrupt the flow of their reading. But it means leaving the original page, reading, then coming back to the original purpose. I was looking for a small screen space solution that keeps the visitor on the same page. That is why I like Template:Category tree so much. If we could adapt Category Tree technology to work with lists of page names -- for aliases/redirects, common patterns of page names, hierarchical lists of topics -- that would speed up navigation, searching and maintenance.

RC711 (talk) 17:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Location of discussion: The original poster made a shorter version of the same comments at Talk:Stellar, but I've suggested there that any general discussion about changes to disambiguation policy etc should be done here rather than there to avoid duplication. PamD 12:47, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
    • I am new to this and did not find the disambiguation discussion here, until after I added the note at the stellar talk page. I realized there were more general issues, beyond that one page. Is anyone interested in improving the search, prefixsearch, and lookfrom functions? Perhaps one program/template would handle all these features and would aim to help visitors with their searches and navigation?

RC711 (talk) 17:21, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Suggestion: There might be scope for a List of stellar properties? That would allow access to the articles of interest to the astrophysicists, in a way that a disambiguation page cannot do. It could give a one-phrase definition or description, and link to the appropriate article in each case. It could sensibly be included as a "See also" from the Stellar dab page. PamD 12:47, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Can disambiguation pages be tagged for one or more projects

Prof. Mc (talk · contribs) and myself have been having a polite discussion about whether disambiguation pages should be allowed to have project tags. In this case it was whether Talk:Stout (disambiguation) should be tagged with {{WikiProject Beer|class=dab|importance=na}} or not. The Prof's interest is from the beer project. My interest is from the Toyota Stout vehicle. Tagging the page gives the very real benfit that project members can readily track pages that relate to the project. If the disambiguation page is tagged with only a single project then it sort of belongs entirely to that project - which conflicts with the nature of the page being to disambiguate among many meaning. But if it is tagged as belonging to multiple projects then it's possible to get into fights if one project wants something in one way and another project wants it in another way. Does anyone have any thoughts or guidance on this manner?  Stepho  talk  07:10, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Any project tag can be placed on any talk page if the members of that project want it. Members of other projects can't keep a project's tag off any given page. No matter the number of project tags, a page never belongs to any project except the Wikipedia project. Multiple tags do not enable fights; editors enable fights, and we have processes to resolve those disputes. For disambiguation pages, for example, another project tagging the talk page would not mean that the disambiguation page style guidelines no longer apply; the disambiguation page is a disambiguation page, regardless of whether the dab project tag is on the talk page or whether any other project tags are there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi @Stepho-wrs: - Thanks for asking that here. I wouldn't have thought to do so. It's always interesting to get other perspectives on these kinds of things. I see that JHunterJ has already re-tagged the Talk:Stout (disambiguation) page for Wikipedia:WikiProject_Beer. I suppose it ought to be tagged for your project as well. Again, thanks for thinking to ask here. Prof. Mc (talk) 12:04, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

@JHunterJ. I'm not worried about whether my initial position is shown to be right or wrong (live and learn, live and learn) but your reply and your change of Talk:Stout (disambiguation) have left me a bit confused. If multiple projects are officially allowed the same page then I'd like to see where this is stated. But if it is not officially stated somewhere then this is still under discussion and your change to the Stout disambig page was premature. Can you clarify whether there is an official policy on this please.
@Prof Mc. I'm happy to wait for the end of the discussion before making any changes.  Stepho  talk  14:06, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
@Stepho-wrs and JHunterJ: I think he's referring to the general policy of WP:OWN. By default, nobody owns an article. So, tagging a disambiguation page isn't a claim of ownership. Many pages are tagged by multiple groups, and the tags themselves don't say "owned by," they say "falls within the scope of." While I'm happy to wait, I don't think the discussion needs to end first, given that the standard practice is for articles to have multiple tags by projects. What you're proposing seems to deviate from the accepted practice. For example, the Toyota Stout page is tagged by Wikipedia:WikiProject Brands. But it could quite fairly fall within the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles, Wiki Project Japan, and a few others I could think of. Being tagged doesn't confer "ownership," (as per, again, WP:OWN). It simply states that the page contains a subject of interest to that project. So there isn't a specific policy that says "multiple project template tags are allowed" because the idea is already covered more generally under WP:OWN and under the philosophy of what the template tags represent. Prof. Mc (talk) 16:41, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
@Stepho-wrs: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#WikiProjects do not own articles: "Many articles will be tagged by more than one WikiProject. [...] Placement of any relevant banner should generally be accepted, as each project may have unique resources and be willing to improve and monitor the article. One group may not prohibit another group from showing an interest in an article." See also Wikipedia:WikiProject: "WikiProjects have no special rights or privileges compared to other editors and may not impose their preferences on articles." Finally, something doesn't have to be explicitly officially allowed to be allowable. It was easy enough to find the quotations here, but I could have just as easily simply asked you to show me where it is stated that multiple projects are officially prohibited from the same page. -- JHunterJ (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Collapsible Table of Terms to help in dispersion disambiguation

I cannot write a term tree program yet, so I am experimenting with collapsible tables. I was going to put the full table in this talk page, then decided to create User:RC711/Tree/Dispersion for the table and insert it here for you to see. Click on [show] to open the table. The table contains all the page links from the current disambiguation page, as well as all titles found in searches for intitle:dispersion, intitle:dispered, intitle:dispersal, intitle:dispersing, and intitle:dispersive.

I would like to suggest that we create a class called "Disambiguation table" to hold this type of information, or a User:RC711/Tree/Dispersion to generate and display this type of information. It could be displayed in a tree viewer, or used as a collapsible table for now.

Pages like this could be generated automatically for any disambiguation page when a visitor is referred to the disambiguation page, and made available for visitors. Until something like this could be automated, we can make tables and add them to disambiguation pages through Template:Disambiguation table ***

What do you think?

Note: This is limited to terms in the disambiguation page and intitles for a few terms. When you do a search on dispersion in the search page, there are 4226 results. A disambiguation table/tree could contain all of the terms hiding inside pages that mention dispersion, like dispersion coefficient in the page Dispersive mass transfer.

RC711 (talk) 20:19, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Since partial title matches are not ambiguous, I think this template is incorrectly named. It should be made clear that it's not a list of ambiguous things, but rather a list of partial title matches, and it should be made clear that this (like most templates) should not be included on disambiguation pages. SO I'm not sure which project this would then fall under, but it's not the dab project. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:31, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
I was trying to edit the template and change the title to "Page Titles containing "dispers", and Page titles from dispersion page:" but someone was editing it at the same time. So I quit. Someone renamed the page I wrote, it might seem like an easier template name for you, but I will never remember it. I was envisioning a template called "Template:Disambituation table" prefix for every existing disambiguation page, or a template, similar to categorytree, that runs a program for a specific target string. Perhaps it will be easier to modify the search page to condense the, sometimes, thousands of results into some manageable form. I think a tree is the way to go.
I was suggesting the use of tables like this as a way to help visitors to disambiguation pages find what they are looking for. Sometimes they are focused on that particular term. But I think more often people get to disambiguation pages because they entered a broad term, looking for something more specific within that category. For instance, searching for chemical will get you 72,149 results and intitle:chemical will give you 656 results. This is somewhat outside the range of the current manually built disambiguation pages. It requires a different approach. I was suggesting to expand the scope of the tools used for disambiguation -- disambiguation means to resolve ambiguity, including the ambiguity when faced with too long a list of results. RC711 (talk) 21:19, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
It is somewhat outside of the range of the current manually built disambiguation pages because it is somewhat outside the range of ambiguity. There is ambiguity, there is title matching, and there is textual search. Three different things. I think more often people get to disambiguation pages to resolve the ambiguity. {{in title}} can be used in the "See also" section to generate an automatic list of the partial title matches (no need for this collapsed list). If really needed (and I suspect it is not), {{search link}} can generate the automatic list of textual search results. This appears to be a solution in search of a problem. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:13, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps all I am suggesting is the use of classified lists, instead of bulk listing from title searches and textual searches. A classified list can be shown with a tree viewer like Template:Category tree if there is some way to load a tree dataset into that viewer. If you get hundreds or thousands of titles from a search, it would be good to separate the text searches from the title searches, and further to identify organizations, publications, people, places, and some other major breakdowns.
(1) I apologize for bumping into you on these edits, I have never tried to talk to a group before. I thought it was proper to refine a topic in place, rather than starting a bunch of scattered talk entries. (2) I did not know about the intitle template, I will experiment with it. (3) I did not know about search link. I will try it.

RC711 (talk) 23:35, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Table of Terms to help in disambiguation

Hello, I created two sample tables to show you.

  • This table has all the page titles from dispersion, as well as all titles found in searches for intitle:dispersion, intitle:dispered, intitle:dispersal, intitle:dispersing, and intitle:dispersive. The titles are grouped by source.
  • Searching for chemical will get you 72,149 results, and intitle:chemical will give you 656 results. This is somewhat outside the range of the current manually built disambiguation pages. It requires a different approach.
  • This table contains all the titles for a search of intitle:chemical. I manually grouped them as follows: Award (2), Chemists (7), Event (8), Government (2), Law (11), Organization (234), Proper (27), Publication (42), Software (1), Subject (228), Subject Proper (4), Warfare (34), ZZ Other (57). The numbers indicate how many in each group. The total is 657.

Pages like this should probably be generated for disambiguations or searches where the search count exceed 50.

What do you think? RC711 (talk) 23:20, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I think {{in title}} and (maybe) {{search link}} should be used instead. There's no need for 656 entries, let alone 72K entries, on the dab page for "Chemical". Wikipedia is not a directory, and disambiguation pages aren't either. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:23, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for deleting that file.
I find a lot of benefit to searching classified lists. If I know I am looking for publications, I go down the list until I find publications and then I start reading. In the title searches you recommend, there are pages and pages of disorganized listings. It is hard to seperate the gems from the chaff. I am offering to manually classify certain terms. It is not a random listing of all the titles, but something where I have put a lot of time and expertise into identifying relevant breakdowns of the results.
If nothing else, I have at least alphabetized the terms! The search and title templates don't do that. :)
I think it takes only a few minutes to go through the sample categories lists above, compared to ten or twenty minutes or longer going through the unorganized search results. Please look again.
There would not be 656 entries on the dab page for Chemical, just one line containing the collapsible list. If people are not interested in looking, they just read on by. Doing searches takes you out of the dab page! This gives you a concise list of all the terms, in an organized fashion, and it only costs one line in the dab display. It is matter of visitor efficiency.

RC711 (talk) 00:05, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Pussycat

I have begun a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 May 27#Pussycat (disambiguation). I believe that the DAB page currently at Pussycat should be moved and that name should redirect to Cat. Cnilep (talk) 00:44, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

That discussion was closed due to being in the wrong forum. I have requested the move at Talk:Pussycat#Requested move. Cnilep (talk) 01:47, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Discussion continues: is Cat the primary topic of Pussycat? PamD 05:25, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
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