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How to disambiguate two ambiguous places that are in the same city

The general issue of how to disambiguate two places with the same name that are in one city (in this case a park and a community) is ultimately at stake at the proposed move of Lincoln Park, Chicago to Lincoln Park (Chicago community). --Born2cycle (talk) 23:10, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

As with similar questions, I would ask for clarification from the topic project (the Chicago one or one of its parents, in this case). Any unambiguous titles will work from a disambiguation perspective. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:47, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, well, the preference at that project so far seems to be to leave it at the ambiguous title. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:52, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
The usual format would be Lincoln Park, Chicago as the title for a neighborhood and Lincoln Park (Chicago) as the title for a park, with hatnotes on each. Station1 (talk) 08:01, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Dab page Darkest nominated for deletion

The disambiguation page Darkest is being discussed concerning whether it is suitable for inclusion as an article according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted. The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darkest until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion.--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:04, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Regarding "Please maintain a neutral, unbiased point of view."

I am going to "be bold" and add a small section about the phease, ```"Please maintain a neutral, unbiased point of view."``` which occurs at the bottom of every edit page:

Wikipedia editors and admins should remain cognizant that whether MEANING-1 or MEANING-2 is determined to be primary or not is a source of potential bias. If MEANING-1 is considered primary, it may seem to discredit MEANING-2 as being lesser of importance. This bias wants to be avoided. So in very contentious cases, consider having the ambiguous term land on the disambiguation page.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhuston (talk • contribs) 04:18, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

  • Oppose in the strongest possible terms. Primary topic has nothing to do with importance, and has everything to do with how likely one topic is to be sought with a given name relative to other topics. Period. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:12, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I feel likewise. Selection of something as a primary topic does not confirm any special purpose or importance to the topic, it just acknowledges that it matches what most people are looking for when they enter the term. There are cases where consensus on a page may put in effect what you suggest, but it shouldn't be the general guideline. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 06:57, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, Bhuston, do not tag the addition of content to a page as a minor edit. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:41, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


  • B2B says, Primary topic has nothing to do with importance, and has everything to do with how likely one topic is to be sought. John says:I feel likewise.

These comments perfectly illustrate the ridiculousness of this "primary" standard in cases of disagreement. It's about feelings and personal judgment about what's primary. Thus, the need for impartial application of conventions, in case of disagreement. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

No. I used the phrase "I feel likewise" to mean simply "I agree with B2B" and that agreement is based on consideration of the topic and what I think would work best for Wikipedia. And the problem is there are no impartial conventions that would serve in all cases so an intelligent, good faith discussion between people who understand the intent of disambiguation pages is the best way to go. I am not saying we base things on what we "feel", but that we make some intelligent assessments of aspects of the situation that are not available by fixed "conventions". --John (User:Jwy/talk) 16:48, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Spelling majority vs singulars

One of the criteria for naming disambig pages is "The spelling that reflects the majority of items on the page is preferred to less common alternatives." I'm assuming that the intent here is to follow the majority with respect to material differences in spelling, or AmE/BrE spelling differences, rather than simple differences in grammatical inflection. Otherwise we have something of a clash with "Singulars are preferred to plurals." (an explicit point here, as well as a naming convention for pages in general). Is there a case for tightening up the wording somewhat here? Smartiger (talk) 17:38, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Is there a case for not following simple differences in grammatical inflection? The "clash" with "singulars are preferred to plurals" is a clash in the titling of articles. If the ambiguous-term articles (such as Waivers (NHL) and Waivers (American football)) clash with that convention, then the disambiguation page should follow the articles to be disambiguated, not the convention. If this is a problem, you should propose the move of Waivers (NHL) to Waiver (NHL) and Waivers (American football) to Waiver (American football) (or even more accurate and shorter, Waiver (NFL)). Then the disambiguation page could follow. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:23, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
That's a separate issue entirely; let's not "change venue" to there, yet again. There may (or may not) be a case for retaining the plurals in those article titles, for the sake of avoiding an unnatural phrasing, or an excessively long parenthetical disambiguation. The question is rather, whether even if some of those remain at pluralisation titles, whether this should be determinative of the name of a disambiguation page, particularly one whose primary topic is singular.
In any event, I'd like to address the general issue here, not simply rehash the "debate" over that particular page. Smartiger (talk) 19:30, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:NCDAB - clarification proposed

One of the points currently made at WP:NCDAB is this:

4. With place-names, if the disambiguating term is a higher-level administrative division, it is often separated using a comma instead of parentheses, as in Windsor, Berkshire. See Naming conventions (geographic names).

I propose adding a few words of explanation to be more clear about the reason we often use commas for disambiguating place-names rather than the parentheses which are usually used to disambiguate (e.g., Madonna (entertainer), Cork (city), etc.):

4. With place-names, if the disambiguating term is a higher-level administrative division, it is often separated using a comma instead of parentheses, because that is how reliable sources disambiguate those place-names, as in Windsor, Berkshire. See Naming conventions (geographic names).

Any objections? If so, why? --Born2cycle (talk) 08:11, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, because it isn't needed here. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) can handle their own explanations, and if they change, there's no reason to create a dependency on them here. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:10, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
Isn't that an argument to remove the entire statement, not just my proposed clarification? Do you have an objection specific to the proposal? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:45, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
No, I object to your proposal, for the specific reason given. If you would like to propose that the current statement be removed instead, based on this objection or otherwise, I would not object to that. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:15, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
The specific reason being, "not needed" and "creates a dependency"?

Let's deal with the latter first. Is the reason you don't want a dependency so that if something changes there, we don't also have to change it here? That makes sense in theory, but in this case do you really think this part about using commas to denote a higher administrative division can ever change? I mean, don't you agree that the reason we use a comma, rather than, say, a semi-colon or tilde to denote higher administrative divisions, is because that's what is used in sources to denote higher administrative divisions for place names? I mean, the likelihood of that changing is practically nil, don't you think? So the dependency, here, in practice, should be harmless, don't you agree?

As far as "not needed", let's first establish that you agree the suggested wording is not incorrect. That is, your objection is not that you think it's wrong or even misleading, but that you see no benefit in adding it, right?

Now, the need I see is this: the use of the comma for higher administrative divisions in sources is not universal. For example, we typically don't use or see city, country or city, state, country for places in the United States. But, by ommission of the something like what I propose, the current wording implies that as long as a higher administrative division is denoted with a comma the title is in compliance with WP:NCDAB. Do we really want it to say just that? I'm suggesting in general, and with the specific proposed wording but am of course open to alternative considerations, to convey that such denotation should only be used in contexts in which the same is done in sources. I've seen the current wording used to justify denotation of a higher administrative division in a context in which commas are not used in sources for doing that, and I would like this wording to be more clear about that. Do you have an objection to being clear about this, or is your objection only with respect to doing it here? If your objection is still to only doing it here, and putting aside the option of removing this statement altogether, by not including the wording I propose (or something similar), why do you prefer leaving it ambiguous on this point? Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:38, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I fail to see how those paragraphs help clarify what I meant. To clarify: "This is not the place to explain that." The explanation or further clarification, if any is needed, is an explanation of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) and goes there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
Only you can clarify what you meant, not me. If you would be so cooperative as to answer the questions I asked, it would clarify WHY you think explanation or further clarification of what is stated here needs to go to WP:PLACES, and not here. --Born2cycle (talk) 15:18, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
No, thanks. Since this is not the place to explain that, this is not the place to explain that. Use Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names) to propose the changes or clarifications to those guidelines, and interested editors can answer your questions about their comments there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:28, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Why Born2cycle is proposing this. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:58, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
This proposal looks to be based on original research or synthesis and violates the spirit if not the letter of Wikipedia. I don't think the proposal presents any reliable authority for this "clarification." Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:57, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps you do not understand what is being proposed. I'm simply proposing adding the words, "because that is how reliable sources disambiguate those place-names" to the guideline. You can't possibly think adding wording encouraging the use reliable sources is "based on original research or synthesis and violates the spirit if not the letter of Wikipedia".

Also, you do realize WP:OR applies to article content and not to article title decisions, right? We have many original titles in Wikipedia. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:31, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Question about creating a redirect or a dab page

I have recently moved the article Brittany CoxXx, a BLP, into article space. Brittany CoxXx is the stage name of transexual porn star who appeared in gay porn as Stonie prior to transitioning. I have created Stonie as a redirect page, and intended to create Adrian Cortez (the performer's reliably verified birth name) as a redirect as well. However, there was a previous AfD of an Adrian Cortez article (here) which related to a wrestler. The wrestler (who fought under the name Anarchy) appears as a redlink on the Anarchy (disambiguation) page, and there are other redlinks which clearly refer the wrestler (judging from 'what links here'). Am I supposed to create Adrian Cortez as a dab page, even though the only blue link will be the porn star? Should I create it as a redirect? If so, what about the incoming links? Does the Brittany page need a note at the top to redirect people looking for the wrestler? Help! Thanks. EdChem (talk) 16:37, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you should just create a redirect, and repair the wrestler links (by unlinking them). If the wrestler isn't mentioned in any Wikipedia article, there's nowhere else we can send readers who may be looking for him (they can try Google, but they already know that).--Kotniski (talk) 16:56, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Primary purpose for dab pages (and hatnotes) is to route to existing content. The Adrian Cortez/wrestler article was deleted, an implication that its presence in WP will not be an issue (although the existing redlinks could be a contraindication).
However, you may want to consider whether the new Adrian Cortez redir is necessary. How likely is it that someone will be looking up that name in the expectation of finding CoxXx? Not every born name for a personality exists as a redirect (although relatively more well-known birthnames such as Allen Konigsberg do).--NapoliRoma (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
And if the red links for the wrestler are useful, make them red pipe links to Adrian Cortez (wrestler) instead of just unlinking them. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

A primary topic case

IOS (apple)

A primary topic case: is there a primary topic for iOS, and is it Apple iOS or Cisco IOS? See: Talk:IOS_(Apple)#Requested_Move. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:42, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Ubuntu

Another case which is ultimately about primary topic, and in which some seem to be arguing based on a definition of primary topic that is not reflected in the wording here: Talk:Ubuntu#Requested_move. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:13, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

See Sayre's Law.--NapoliRoma (talk) 07:09, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Skittles

And yet another case: Talk:Skittles_(confectionery)#Requested_move.

In all three cases editors seem to be presuming interpretation of "primary topic" that is not reflected in this guideline. I suggest we need to be more clear and explicit about what primary topic means, because right now just about any form of a WP:JDLI argument seems to be acceptable, and that's not conducive to making a good encyclopedia. In particular, the wording about the tools not being "determining factors" and how ultimately primary topic is decided by consensus seems to be used to mean anyone can use whatever criteria they want to decide if a given use is "primary". --Born2cycle (talk) 21:06, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I find that WP:MOSDABRL contains two conflicting guidelines for when a redlink must not be listed in a disambiguation page: one of them (more restrictive) is followed and enforced, but I believe the other one (less restrictive, but also stated in MOSDAB) is really better. In short, when topics are known to be notable and already treated in foreign-language Wikipedias, I believe readers here should be informed of the encyclopedically notable topics and even pointed to the existing articles. Please see the discussion I have begun at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Two_conflicting_criteria_in_WP:MOSDABRL. Wareh (talk) 20:52, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Primary topic - Chihuahua - voting VS evidence

There is a move discussion under way at Talk:Chihuahua#Requested move - Chihuahua (state), which addresses the fact that no source for the state to be the primary topic could be found. Still, some users claim that, but provide no evidence that would be in accordance with the disambiguation guideline. What can be done, if users simply by voting power keep an article under a name where it contradicts the guideline? TopoChecker (talk) 01:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no opinion in this debate, but I can tell you this: the number of votes makes no difference - or at least, doesn't automatically determine the outcome. If the closing admin is worth their salt, their decision will be based on the quality of the arguments instead of the vote count. I've seen the side with a minority of votes carry the day many times. Unexplained and "per nom" votes are pretty much worthless. --JaGatalk 06:48, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. I may report back what the outcome is. 94K views to the dog page and 19K to the state page, despite the state having the benefit of being at the bare name. The city 11K. I guess if Chihuahua would become a dab, then the state page views would go down, maybe even close to the city. TopoChecker (talk) 21:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I have not looked at the discussion either. But the problem with populated places is that in many cases editors always believe that any populated place (or even better, any city) is the primary topic. So the question is what do you do? Can we discount the overwhelming numbers in some cases? I have always claimed that moving a page can be rather difficult since the talk page is the one for the article. That means that all of the editors watching the article receive notice. So there is a built in bias of involved editors. Adding to the difficulty, page views is not in and of itself the determining factor for primary use. But p[age views can help determine that a page is probably not the primary use. The principal of least surprise has value here. Personally I think using dab pages is the best compromise, but many editors seem opposed to them. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:29, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Strong agreement from my side, for the built in bias and for the preferring dab pages. An IP editor at the Chihuahua made a similar point: Having dab would stop people to argue about whether geography or biology is more important. My additional reason is improved link quality. Yesterday I changed between 10 and 20 links that pointed to the plain name, which has the state article, while in fact these links were meant to refer to the dog article. TopoChecker (talk) 23:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Skins

There's an ongoing discussion on disambiguation at Talk:Skins_(U.S._TV_series)#Request_re-move_to_Skins_.28North_American_TV_series.29 on whether or not the page should be named Skins (US TV series) or Skins (North American TV series), as the show is produced by Canadians, and is aired in both countries. Thanks, ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 06:37, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Either will work from a disambiguation perspective. The TV series project may have a preference. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:56, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Primary topic: Trite vs. more substantial topics; a proposal

At Talk:Ubuntu Hesperian is arguing that trite topics should not displace more substantial topics as primary, even when the trite topic is more likely to be the one being searched with the term in question[1]. I agree with him that this is the interpretation many people seem to apply when deciding on primary topic, but it is clearly not the intended meaning of the guideline, and I don't think it should be. I have three objections to this interpretation:

  1. This interpretation seems to ignore the whole point of primarytopic - to get users to the articles that they seek with a minimum of clicks. I see it as nothing but a technical convenience for our readers.
  2. Determining which topic is primary by the current criteria is already subject to a lot of disagreement and discord. I suggest if we add in consideration for triteness vs. substantiveness, it can only make everything even less clear and cause even more debate and disagreement.
  3. The issue is already addressed in the current wording, at least by implication. An exception is made for "vital" articles - articles about topics with universal recognition.

So, given how often the substantiveness-trumps-triteness interpretation is used in RM discussions despite it not being part of the guideline, I really think we need to go the other way, and make it absolutely clear that primary topic has nothing to do with how trite or substantive a topic is, and is only concerned with how likely topics are to be the ones being sought for a given term. To that end, I suggest adding the following statement (highlighted in yellow) to the current guideline, in the paragraph about vital articles:

An exception may be appropriate if only one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the vital article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users. Except for this special consideration given to vital articles, the perceived substantiveness or triteness of a topic, no matter how well reflected in usage in reliable sources, is irrelevant to primary topic determination, and this factor should be given no weight or consideration whatsoever when a vital article is not involved.

Thoughts/comments? Any objections to adding this clarification to the guideline? --Born2cycle (talk) 00:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

"the whole point of primarytopic - to get users to the articles that they seek with a minimum of clicks. I see it as nothing but a technical convenience for our readers." -- This is the crux of the matter for me. The fact is that ~85% (see here) of our readers are trying to get to a Wikipedia article that talks about the Ubuntu operating system, and ~15% are trying to get to one of 3 or 4 other meanings of the term. The most heavily desired of these minority use cases is a philosophy called Ubuntu, but it is only ~50% more popular than the next largest minority use case. On the other hand, the operating system is desired by ~850% more people than the philosophy. Because of this, when people type "Ubuntu"-[ENTER] into the search bar, I want it to go directly to the page for the OS, which is what the very large majority of users are looking for, because that will make Wikipedia a better research tool. I do not want it to go to a page that someone other than the reader determined is more important to read about than what the reader wanted.
Users who are arguing to send them to a disambiguation page even though that's not what the reader wants, is tantamount to saying that they know better than the readers themselves what the reader should be reading. "If they are 'biased' towards the operating system, then we should take this as an opportunity to inform them about the 'more important' philosophy (that they're not looking for information on).", or so the story goes... In reality, we shouldn't be so arrogant that we start telling people what to read. We should send them to exactly what they are looking for, right away. Of course, we shouldn't forget about the readers that are looking for the philosophy or soft drink, and should place a nice blue disambiguation link at the top of the page for Ubuntu that tells them all about the various other meanings and how to get to articles about them.
What we should do, in addition to satisfying their expectations that information is easy to find on Wikipedia, is to fulfill their other expectation -- i.e. that we have high-quality and abundant information with easily verifiable references. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is about the first type of expectation -- making information easy to find. In web architecture parlance, it would improve usability. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is about making it a more useful research tool for the reader, rather than making it a better media platform for the editor. Other guidelines (WP:NPOV and WP:V most notably) take care of how we cover things within a particular article. However, as Born2Cycle points out, WP:PRIMARY topic exists for an altogether different set of reasons -- here, we are trying to organize information so that it is easily accessible to the largest possible number of people. I think stay that way, but I think the guideline needs to be updated to make this explicit. I think that Born2Cycle's suggested addition is a good step in that direction. However, I also think we need to explain some of the reasoning behind it, and explain that this is about web usability, and that it is not a judgement of importance or an act of promotion to declare something the primary topic. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 01:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't believe the change is necessary. There are topics where the sensitivities around the topic are strong and some wiggle room in this area is useful. But in this particular case, I think the discussion might focus more on how transient the search for Ubuntu OS might be compared to the philosophy and where we should draw the line for "Recentism" on DAB pages. I suspect the philosophy will remain a searched for topic quite a long while after the OS, but its not clear how we account for that here. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 01:24, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose, and I feel horribly misrepresented here. I did not say, and do not think, that substantive topics should always trump trite topics. What I said, and what I think, is that PRIMARYTOPIC should be assessed by how reliable sources use a term. If reliable sources use a term more often to refer a trite topic than to a substantive topic, then the trite topic should be primary. What I want to get away from, is the situation where reliable sources overwhelmingly use Titanic for the ship, but people are, perhaps temporariliy, obsessed with the film, so the film is treated as primary. The film can be primary, if and when it receives more coverage in reliable sources. Hesperian 01:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
    • Hesperian, so sorry about that. I did not mean to misrepresent what you said, but I see in retrospect that I failed to mention the very important point about distinguishing trite from substantive based on usage in reliable sources. But it still creates a conflict whenever topic A clearly has more page views than topic B, but the term in question is used more often to refer to B than to A in reliable sources. If in such a case we favor usage in reliable sources over reader usage in Wikipedia to decide which is "primary", how is the encyclopedia or reader experience improved?

      The other issue touched on by you and mentioned in more detail by Jwy is the relatively broad interpretation of "recentism" you both seem to favor. Let's not forget that this is an electronic encyclopedia that is constantly evolving, and is easy to change. It's one thing to avoid altering titles based on the news of the day, but I see nothing wrong with adjusting naming based on a period of a year or more. A truly temporary blip in popularity of a few weeks or months needs to be ignored, of course, but once we have reader usage in Wikipedia established for a year or more, I suggest it's best to adjust the naming accordingly. If a few years later the product or whatever dies out (and so does the interest about it), then the naming can be adjusted again. Where is the harm in that? --Born2cycle (talk) 02:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Hesperian, as I said above, weighting the views expressed in reliable sources is covered in WP:NPOV and is talking about the content of articles. WP:PRIMARY should be an issue of web usability, and organization of information. We have two primary goals here: (1) That we have an abundance of accurate and abundant information with easily verifiable references. (2) To make sure that this collection of information is useful by organizing the information in an easily accessible manner. NPOV is part of a constellation of policies (including WP:OR and WP:RS) that help us create high-quality encyclopedia articles. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is about how we organize these high-quality articles. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 02:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
By the way, the RMS Titanic vs. Titanic (1997 film) is not an appropriate analogy here. RMS Titanic (the primary topic) is visited by 200,000+ more people per month. This is in contrast to the situation currently under discussion, where you are claiming that a topic that gets ~8x less traffic should be the primary topic. That is, in the case of the Titanic articles, you are not making a decision that lowers usability for 85% of the readers of that set of topics. You are, in fact, doing exactly what I'm suggesting, which is having the more commonly desired usage be the primary topic, and having a disambiguation link at the top. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 02:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
WP:PRIMARY should be an issue of web usability, and organization of information. You're begging the question. Hesperian 02:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Begging or not, the question stands. How is the encyclopedia better for our readers if we set things up so that most searching with a given term are taken to an article different from the one they are looking for when they could just as easily be taken to the article they are looking for? --Born2cycle (talk) 02:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes indeed, that questions stands. My answer is that utility is not the only conceivable metric of success; there is also... something I'm having difficulty defining right now... but it's in the dignity/trustworthiness/reliability/encyclopedia register cluster... kind of about how we want to present ourselves.... What I will say is this: I hazard a guess that if the philosophy were the primary topic, the vast majority of those 85% of people who type in "Ubuntu" in search of the operating system, would, on skim-reading the philosophy article, grant that this is the primary topic, and hold no objection to having to click through it to get to the operating system article. Hesperian 03:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
And how does sending the large majority of our readers directly to the page they are looking for lower the dignity or reliability of the encyclopedia? -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 03:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
WP:PRIMARY should be... -- The WP:PRIMARY was a typo -- I meant to type WP:PRIMARYTOPIC there, as should be clear from context.
You're begging the question. -- Please explain to me how I am begging the question. You could do so by responding specifically to something that I said. Something I'm particularly interested in hearing from you about, is a justification for knowingly sending 85% of our users to the wrong page, on the premise that we know better than our readers what they should be reading. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 02:52, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
The question under discussion is whether we should be putting web utilisation first. You're starting from the baldly-stated assertion that we should be putting web utilisation first, and going on to show that we should be putting web utilisation first. That's begging the question. Hesperian 03:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
No, I'm starting by describing the current state of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and then justifying why it is that way. This is a reasonable thing to do when the current state is being challenged. Also, as I've said above, I think that both reliability/quality AND usability are of great importance, not that one should come before the other. I simply haven't seen a single coherent argument for how reliability is being harmed by the current focus on increasing usability in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 03:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
And no-one is saying that "we know better than our readers what they should be reading"? You think I'm saying that those people who come here looking for information about an operating system ought to be reading about African philosophy instead? Don't be so bloody ridiculous. Your position is not so weak that you have to bolster it with silly straw-man arguments like that. Hesperian 03:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
If "no-one is saying that 'we know better than our readers what they should be reading'", then what are they saying by insisting that we knowingly direct the large majority of our readers to a page other than the one that they are looking for? -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 03:19, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
They are saying that a popularity contest does not necessarily yield the best way for a serious encyclopedia to disambiguate a set of collection of topics associated with the same term. Hesperian 03:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
They are saying that, as well. But then they are basing that on the assumption that the majority of readers are incompetent and will not pick a "serious" topic. If the majority of readers were competent, and had sound reasons for wanting to visit a particular topic, then a popularity content would be the best way to choose which page can be accessed in a minimal amount of time. When 85% of our (mostly competent) readers come to the encyclopedia, I want them to be able to find what they are looking for easily, and will assume that if 85% of them are trying to access a single resource, that I should make it easier to get to, regardless of what I think about how "serious" or "distinguished" it makes us look. I'm not suggesting that we lower the quality of our content, in any way, by doing this. I'm suggesting that we maintain high-quality content, AND make it easy to access. I don't think this makes us less "serious". -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 03:40, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Ok, yes, I concede defeat. Your ad hominem straw man arguments have entirely overturned me, and I can only humbly confess that I think the majority of readers are utterly incompetent, with bad hair and pimples to boot, and it is our divine right as editors to force them to quit their jobs and go back to uni to study African philosophy. Hesperian 05:25, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
There are no ad hominem attacks taking place, and I'm not aware of any straw man arguments. If you feel that something I said isn't accurate or is mis-representative of other people's views, then please make specific criticisms rather than spewing vague accusations and sarcasm. What was a straw man, and how? -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 05:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
The straw man is the claim, made over and over again, that my position is that I know best what our readers ought to be reading about. Hesperian 05:50, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it's a straw man. I think that is implied when you insist that even though 85% of the readers are attempting to access one thing, they should be sent somewhere else, because it's more "dignified" and "serious" to do so. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 06:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I have much better things to do than argue with someone over which of us knows best what I think. Hesperian 08:05, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I think I kind of get where Hesperian is going with this encyclopedic dignity thing. If Justin Bieber changed his name to "Water", for example, then Water (entertainer) would get 4 to 5 times as many page views as Water - would that justify a move? What in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC wording addresses this. Well, in my particular example, Water turns out to be a vital article, so we're covered. Let me try this... if the "dignity" of the encyclopedia is not sufficiently developed, I suggest that's a sign we have some more articles to add to Wikipedia:Vital_articles. But I also suggest that the Ubuntu philosophy is not a vital article, and so there is no encyclopedia dignity at stake here. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


Given available statistics on the amazing proportion of Web traffic associated with pornography, I think it is safe to say that searches on Deep Throat are overwhelmingly for for porno, rather than the Watergate informant. If we follow the popularity-is-all policy you guys are expounding, then the porno should be the primary topic. If, as a newbie, I type in Deep Throat and get taken straight to the porno, I'm not going to think 'Ah well, fair enough, after all, porn is pretty popular.' I'm going to think 'Lol, the clowns who run Wikipedia think a porno is more important than a key figure in one of the biggest stories in modern American history.' That's what I mean by encyclopedic dignity. Hesperian 04:04, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Again, what is undignified about sending most of the readers to the porn film, and putting a disambiguation link to the Watergate informant, if the porn film is what they are trying to get information on? -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 04:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I feel as though that question is rather like "what is undignified about walking down the street with your pants around your ankles?" i.e. impossible to explain to someone who thinks the question worth the asking in the first place. Hesperian 04:48, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Okay, now you're talking, because the film does get about twice as many hits as the Watergate figure, and this even when the film is disambiguated and the Watergate figure is not (therefore all searches for "Deep Throat" are going to the Watergate figure). I do get your point about lack of dignity, however, I have to say there is a compelling primary topic case to be made for putting the film at Deep Throat. Once we decide a topic is notable and deserves coverage, I don't think there is much if any value in categorizing them according to importance or dignity, though we do that to some degree with the vital article concept. But at least there is some kind of process and system for drawing that line. What you're talking about is having people apply their own biases at each such discussion to see if this or that article is more important or dignified. That's practically inciting disagreement. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Disagreement? At Wikipedia? Perish the thought! Seriously, disagreement is what makes Wikipedia work. We start a discussion, hash things out, and reach a conclusion. This is good. I don't like the idea of incorporating language in PRIMARYTOPIC that forbids weighing encyclopedic value for anything besides vital articles. On the contrary, language should be added that gives more leeway; stating that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a Ghit mirror, and consideration of recentism and systemic bias is also valid. After all, we should be allowed to put forth the most compelling arguments in a move discussion, and leave it up to the closing admin to make a decision. --JaGatalk 06:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I would not have a problem with expanding more upon what our criteria for determining primary topic is, especially including how to deal with systemic bias and recentism, which I think are both very important issues. Is there anyone that has a suggested revision that integrates concerns about usability, systemic bias, and recentism? I don't think that usability should be the only concern, but I do think it should be a concern, especially when there is an enormous disparity in interest. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 07:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
  • JaGa, the goodness of systems based on rules and arguments based on those rules is ultimately determined by how clearly, unambiguously and consistently (with each other) the rules are written. If the rules are sufficiently vague and inconsistent you end up with a situation where just about any position can be reasonably argued, and any position can be reasonably justified. Such a system is often unfair, unjust, unpredictable, inefficient and unproductive. It will not vary too much from one in which whoever shows up votes their whim; a free-for-all unpredictable anything-goes type of chaotic scenario.

    On the other hand, in a system with relatively clear, unambiguous and consistent rules, decisions tend to be fair, just, predictable, efficient and productive. Of course, the reality is we're always somewhere between the extremes, but, in general, I suggest we would all rather be closer to the fair and just predictable system, and not get too close to the unpredictable chaos. To that end, we need to keep in mind the value in making our rules clear, unambiguous and consistent with other rules. That's the impetus here for this change. It's also why I'm such a fervent advocate for specific naming conventions that indicate names consistently with our general naming criteria at WP:TITLE. Hope that makes sense. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe navigation is the primary goal of the dab pages and that we should avoid endorsing the primary topic as an "honor" bestowed upon an article. As soon as we start codifying primary topic as assigning some value to the article, we will significantly reduce the navigational effectiveness and each primary topic decision becomes an explicit value judgement on the articles involved. Unnecessarily so. If we retain a consistent stance approaching "its just navigation," we retain our dignity in the eyes of those who understand what we are trying to do.
If we are focussed on navigation, systemic bias of a sort is required! We want to bias the DAB pages to help only the people that use Wikipedia and use the search box or the hatnotes. Once they get to the articles, we want the content to avoid systemic bias.
Recentism is a topic that needs further discussion. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 07:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Well stated. I have to agree. What do you think of the proposal above? --Born2cycle (talk) 08:24, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
So you're saying we are nothing more than a "what's hot in Google this week" site? That the Deep Throat porno is indeed primary, to aid navigation? C'mon. There's a balance here. Navigation is important, but it's not the only game in town. PRIMARYTOPIC should be worded so people are allowed to use the most compelling arguments at the move discussions, and leave the decision to the closing admin. Settle it on the battlefield, as they say. This proposal is nothing more than a "best of Google" fan's attempt to pre-empt opposing points of view. --JaGatalk 17:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

No, my comments apply to DAB pages only and I am saying DAB pages are "what's hot on Wikipedia in the coming X years." What googlers think may inform the discussion, but I am not a "best of Google" fan, if I understand the term. If the result of a navigational focus is sufficiently "outrageous" in its result as to be a problem, consensus at the page can decide to take that into account. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 17:37, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, but doesn't this proposal seek to disallow taking that into account? "perceived substantiveness or triteness of a topic, no matter how well reflected in usage in reliable sources, is irrelevant to primary topic determination, and this factor should be given no weight" (BTW the "Google fan" comment wasn't directed at you, but still the tone was a bit much, so my apologies to both yourself and B2C). --JaGatalk 06:53, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Settling it on the battlefield makes sense for issues that have a lot of peculiar aspects that vary from situation to situation. What I'm trying to accomplish with this proposal is to avoid the battle in the first place, which means reducing the number of battles by reducing the number of "potentially controversial" title situations which ultimately manifests itself in reducing the WP:RM#Backlog. To do this, we need to give ourselves fewer issues to resolve at the individual article level, not more. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggested revisions?

There has been a lot of discussion as far as what people feel is wrong with using traffic as a major criteria for determining primary topic. Keeping all of this in mind, I think what would be nice, at this point, is to have some suggested revisions to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, that could be applied reasonably throughout Wikipedia's article space, which incorporate suggestions on how to determine "encyclopedic"-ness and "importance", or whatever else are criteria for judging primary-topic-ness. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 07:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

  • Assess the primary topic according to usage in reliable sources. Hesperian 08:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
    Do you think that should be the only criteria, or that it should be weighed in with other considerations such as usability? -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 08:19, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
    • That should be the only criterion. Hesperian 08:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
      • And how do we do this? Presumably count how many reliable sources use the ambiguous term in its various senses - but which particular Google count(s) would you use?--Kotniski (talk) 08:59, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
        • There is no perfect tool for this. Google Scholar and Google Books together would suffice to resolve the easy cases. Difficult cases default to "there is no primary topic". Hesperian 09:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
      Use in reliable sources is not the way to go. Reliable sources can be specialized in a field and reflect the biases of those in that field, not the biases of those that use Wikipedia. Again, I do not believe being selected as a primary topic confers any special honor on the topic and we should avoid heading in that direction. We should keep it for navigation and other uses are exceptions per page. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 17:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
      Agreed. Reliable sources tend not to cover Wikipedia usage, so we cannot use reliable sources to determine Wikipedia usage. And agreed that too many editors misunderstand "primary topic" to confer some honor to the topic "chosen". The topic most likely intended by Wikipedia readership simply is the topic most likely intended. The process of recognizing that has become seen as an active choosing or awarding, which is not how it should go. The articles (individually and as a collections) should be neutral and avoid biases in recentism. The recognition of which article is most likely intended by the readership doesn't not undermine encyclopedic coverage of the other topics that might have the ambiguous title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:49, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
      I do not completely agree. Article naming IS a matter of editorial discretion. Discussing and deciding that a topic is the primary topic is an editorial choice and not a matter of an algorithm or formula. Regardless of how much participants in this project may disclaim that other people misunderstand primary topic, the fact that people continue to misunderstand is perhaps an indication that there is a misalignment of values. For most readers, I think that the title of a primary topic article does mean exactly what it is claimed here that it does not -- that it is primary and thus in some way more significant than other potential uses of a term. Wikipedia is not only a web site and readers of Wikipedia content are not limited to those who visit the web site. In my opinion, the optimization of web traffic is a secondary goal of disambiguation. The primary goal is resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous. Happily, in most cases, web traffic statistics tends to correlate fairly well with what most people would understand as primary topic. In other cases, there should be allowance for the reasoned judgment of editors to override the raw data of traffic statistics. older ≠ wiser 20:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I think this is along the lines of what Hesperian is saying. After thinking about it more, since yesterday, I'm starting to agree with it. I think that primary topic should be the one that best leads readers to a deeper understanding of the constellation of ideas centered on the ambiguous word/phrase, and that the guidelines over-emphasize traffic routing at the expense of this. I think the guidelines should be updated in order to make it clear that this is the purpose of primary topic, and that anything that does not have a clear primary topic will be disambiguated (with the goal of increasing comprehension, rather than merely efficiently routing traffic). I also think that it should be made more clear that this is the goal of the disambiguation project in general. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 21:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I also think that my concerns regarding usability and web navigation can be addressed within this framework. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 21:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
"I think that primary topic should be the one that best leads readers to a deeper understanding of the constellation of ideas centered on the ambiguous word/phrase, and that the guidelines over-emphasize traffic routing at the expense of this." I agree with this beautiful formulation. I was wondering, what if an algorithm was developed to change titles according to page views, would that be a better encyclopedia? I don't think so, I think it would be a mess. But contra to others I do think conventions would serve better than the amorphous present primary rule (at least ones that are agreed upon and then enforced, until a new convention is agreed on). Moreover, the present "primary topic' rule is apparently misnamed, hence the confusion. "Most popular title" is what it should be called, as in, we seek the most popular article that is called this. Primary Topic is a euphemism and should be discarded. At any rate, this manner of choosing primary topic, hurts the encyclopedia because popularity can be fleeting and is often dependent on the news of the day and without regard to a topics relationship to other topics, it also introduces allot of POV into the process of naming and renaming articles.Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
"what if an algorithm was developed to change titles according to page views, would that be a better encyclopedia? I don't think so, I think it would be a mess.". Great question. Why do you think it would be a mess?

Imagine a daily process that reviewed redirects, dab pages, links and hat notes, and automatically made adjustments based on a few objective criteria relative to only page view stats (I'm not suggesting we actually do this - just as a thought experiment to get to the underlying issues). We would, for example, actually formulate the definition of primary topic in terms of percentages of page views over the last, say, 30 days (e.g., for each dab page, if any of the uses linked on that page got more than X% of all page views received by all pages linked on that dab page combined over the last N days, and at least Y% more page views than any other topic linked on that page, then the article is moved to, or kept at, that name that that dab page disambiguates; if none meet the X% threshold, then the dab page is moved to, or kept at, that name).

Assuming the process could make these adjustments flawlessly (including magic resolution of complications caused by one topic being primary for multiple terms), where would be the mess? What would be the harm? Please be specific, because I really want to understand what the concern is. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It makes the encyclopedia unreliable (as in it can't be relied upon), if you keep changing the names of articles. Your friend, or student, or colleague, will tell you, 'I can't find that article you were talking about' or 'I looked it up and that article you told me about has has nothing to do with frozen peas.' Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
  • It could be implemented in a way to avoid that: have all articles have disambiguated titles and have the DAB term itself be a redirect to the current primary topic. What else would be a mess? --John (User:Jwy/talk) 01:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry to keep asking all these question, but I really want to understand the underlying objection. You really think it will make it unreliable? How so? Do you think someone who can find the Ubuntu philosophy today via the dab page currently at Ubuntu will not be able to find it via the hat note link at the top of the OS article if that article is moved to Ubuntu? All the changes we're talking about are basically like that. Regardless of how things change, your search will always take you to what you're looking for, or something that will help you find what you're looking for. I don't think these minor adjustments make anything really easier or harder to find (or less reliable), just slightly more or less convenient in terms of altering the number of clicks required to get to each, depending on what one is seeking and how things happen to be configured at the time of the search.

    The other thing is that for the vast, vast majority of topics, the statistics relevant to primary topic don't change. That is, once a topic meets primary topic criteria, it's likely to stay there for years if not "forever", unless it butts into one of those relatively rare case in which a new use of a given term arises and supersedes previously existing uses. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

  • "You really think it will make it unreliable? How so?" Like I said, because the article you told someone to look at has a different title, the encyclopedia can't be relied on. But it's interesting that here you now say that the article's title doesn't really matter in these cases -- people will find what their looking for, anyway. Makes me wonder why care about titles at all.Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
    • I still don't get it. If an article is at one title, say Ubuntu (operating system), and I send that link to someone, who clicks on it after the article is moved to, say, Ubuntu, the old title Ubuntu (operating system) still redirects to the same article. The only time that changes is if something goes from being primary topic, but, again, at the old title will still be either a dab page, or a new primary topic article with a hat note to the moved article and/or dab page. Regardless, it will still be easy to reliably find the article being sought. Again, all that changes is the number of clicks.

      As to why care about titles, I can only speak for myself: See User:Born2cycle#Goal. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

But back to the other topic. A move toward a criteria of "importance" or "dignity" or "comprehending the gestalt of an ambiguous term" is a significant change in the guideline's basic philosophy. Many of the decisions on the layout of the page, order of the entries, linking, etc. are based on optimizing navigation. It IS its primary purpose and watering that purpose down with other concerns that can be handled better in other ways would reduce Wikipedia's effectiveness. Someone interested in the "constellation of ideas centered on the ambiguous term" can spend some time clicking through the dab page links. Most people (I believe) will be better served by getting right to the particular bit of information they are looking for. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 01:42, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Here's my suggestion, with thanks to B2C's formatting skills:

An exception may be appropriate if only when recentism and systemic bias are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the vital article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users.

It leaves the strong emphasis on "most likely search term" in the first para unchanged, but acknowledges that there are other considerations at times. Wikipedia is at its best when editors with opposing views are forced to work together and hash out a compromise; a flexible PRIMARYTOPIC guideline makes that possible. Deep throat proves (IMO) there are times when "most likely search term" isn't enough; the guideline needs to reflect that. --JaGatalk 07:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Could you be a bit more specific of where systemic bias would be a problem here? I can see it if, as the WP:SYSTEMIC says, the page unduly reflects the interests and slants of the editor, but it should reflect the interests and slants of the readers to a large extent. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 17:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Systemic bias is my attempt to put a finger on that dignity/trustworthiness/reliability/encyclopedia register thing Hesperian was reaching for. The idea is simple; just because the Internet is dominated by techie sex-obsessed pop culture addicts, it doesn't mean we have to bend Wikipedia solely to their interests; we have some encyclopedic integrity as well. "Vital articles" goes a long way to maintain that integrity, but it falls short in some cases. We need wording that is flexible enough to cover those cases, and allow the decision to be made in the move discussion. --JaGatalk 22:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
  • This is the exact opposite of what I proposed and exacerbates rather than addresses the problem I'm trying to address (too many vague situations and too much consternation and debate). Even if it means the movie rather than the Watergate figure ends up at Deep Throat, I'm strongly opposed to this. Look at the RM backlog. We want to make the rules in general, and the primary topic determination criteria in particular, more clear and more consistent so that editors have less to argue about with respect to naming, not more. Take it from me on us not needing more issues to resolve on a per article basis, please. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:01, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

So you've started this debate because you think there's too much debate? :D Color me suspicious, but I think this proposal has more to do with winning debates than preventing them. Allow me to illustrate, with an entirely fictional move debate involving two entirely fictional editors I'll call ConceivedForPedaling and Despairian:

Deep Throat (film) → Deep Throat — The film averages twice as many pageviews as the political guy. 'Nuff said. --ConceivedForPedaling
  • Oppose To put a porn film at this location instead of the historically important Watergate figure makes a laughing stock out of Wikipedia; it's an assault on our encyclopedic dignity. --Despairian
  • Comment Maybe so, but it isn't a vital article, and the PRIMARYTOPIC guideline states that Except for this special consideration given to vital articles, the perceived substantiveness or triteness of a topic, no matter how well reflected in usage in reliable sources, is irrelevant to primary topic determination. The guideline couldn't be more clear; your argument isn't germane to this discussion. --ConceivedForPedaling

(Any perceived similarities to existing editors are purely coincidental.) Bkonrad put it well: "Article naming IS a matter of editorial discretion. Discussing and deciding that a topic is the primary topic is an editorial choice and not a matter of an algorithm or formula." We shouldn't try to dictate the terms of debate from here. Allow debate to proceed; RM backlog be damned. --JaGatalk 22:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Your point is well made. However, while I agree editorial discretion is an element of article naming, that fact is not a license for editors to make decisions about titles on a whim, or based on anything they happen to personally favor, whether made to look reasonable through clever rationalization or not. Which raises the question on what, then, if not whim, should these decisions be based?

It might be tempting to jump in at this point and blurt out COMMON SENSE, but I suggest what people consider to be "common sense" varies not much less than whim. It doesn't help us much when so many divergent conclusions can be equally grounded in "common sense".

So, unless we want to let editors choose whatever basis they believe is "common sense" (probably adjusted as appropriate from one decision to the next as needed to favor whatever position they prefer), the answer can only be the principle naming criteria at WP:TITLE. That criteria is, or should be, our common ground.

Ideally, reasonable people starting at the same principles will reach the same conclusions on any given issue. In reality, of course, it's far from that clean, partially because people are not perfectly reasonable and partially because principles are not perfectly comprehensive, consistent and clear, and, so, the possibilities range continuously from total unpredictable chaos on one extreme to something very close to the hypothetical ideal, which, I suggest, should be our goal.

At this point I think it's useful to note that Wikipedia already does a remarkably good job at encouraging people to be reasonable. I'm not saying there isn't much unreasonableness going on, of course there is (and I'm not just talking about vandalism), it's just that that has to be expected when dealing with human endeavors. I'm saying given human beings for what they are, people here are, for the most part, about as reasonable as one can reasonably expect. In other words, there is not a whole lot of room for improvement in that area, unless you're willing to wait for 10s of thousands of years of evolution to transpire (and even then I'm not sure we're headed towards becoming any more reasonable - we'll never know).

The principles and related guidelines, like primary topic, are another story. I suggest there is a lot of room for improvement in that area, particularly in terms of making the principle criteria more consistent with each other and making guidelines more consistent with the criteria, and taking out a lot of the ambiguity, like what we're talking about here. I realize we'll never make them perfect, but I think without too much effort we can make them considerably better, which should get us much closer to the ideal in which reasonably reasonable people agree about naming decisions considerably more often than we do today.

My proposed change takes us a step in that direction. I suggest yours takes us a step closer to unpredictable and whimsical chaos. But maybe you're okay with that. I think WP would be better off in general with more predictability and stability in naming. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Or not. "Predictability and stability in naming" can take a lot of forms and one person's preference in predictability and stability is another's anathema, as you well know from U.S city conventions. Your proposal here enshrines a perspective on primary topic which is at odds with a common understanding of what "primary" means (the perceived substantiveness or triteness of a topic ... is irrelevant). Another perfectly reasonable approach is to give less weight to page traffic statistics by raising the bar for primary topic and making a disambiguation page the default when there is ambiguity except when one usage is so overwhelmingly more likely to be the topic people expect to see at a title that it is worth inconveniencing anyone looking for one of the other meanings to make it the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 04:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Principle of least surprise

Well I still think going by target popularity alone violates the principle of least surprise. There is a line of reasoning that, if explicit, would read something like this: "I'm looking for information on the porno Deep Throat. I know that Deep Throat was a Watergate informant and that this is the more pithy topic, and I'll probably have to go through that article to get to the porno, but after all Deep Throat is the name of the movie and I can't think of anything else to search on... Oh my god it took me straight to the movie, that's bloody ridiculous!"

Actually a better example is probably tool and Tool (band). Without checking, I'll hazard a guess that an article on one of the world's most popular progressive rock bands gets heaps more hits than an article on a class of device. But anyone who types "tool" into our search box and hits Go will expect to end up at tool, and would be shocked to be taken straight to Tool (band), even if that's what they were looking for. Hesperian 04:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

And, without checking, I suggest Tool should be a vital article if it's not already. I think the vital article clause captures the essence of what you're trying to say, though perhaps not going as far as you would like. We might consider expanding the scope of vital articles as a fix for that, because at least with that approach there is a clear objective line not subject to debate (once it's decided whether a given article is vital). Otherwise you're going to end up with yet another vague rule that anyone can interpret any way they want to support their JDLI position. I know you've proposed making usage in reliable sources being the only criteria, but I don't believe that's going to fly. So the best we'll have is a combination, which means Fred will argue A is primary because it has those page views, and Ed will argue it's B because it has the most coverage in reliable sources, and the net result will be about as arbitrary as making all these decisions with a coin toss. I really think we need to be going in the other directions - adding more clarity to the rules so these ultimately unimportant decision are not arbitrary and subject to debate. By being more clear that only likelihood of being sought matters, we're moving in that direction. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
But I think vitality has nothing to do with it. One could make the same argument many times over; e.g. nirvana and Nirvana (band), pendulum and Pendulum (band), guru and Guru (rapper). In every case, the principle of least surprise strongly favours the first article, and I betcha page hit count strongly favours the second.Hesperian 07:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Well vital might be a misnomer for those articles, but I suggest it's close to what you mean... my take is it refers to vitality in terms of longevity... in that sense nirvana is vital and Nirvana (band) is not. Let's not get hung up on semantics, the point is that that mechanism could be used to implement much of what you're asking for by expand the scope of what constitutes a "vital" article. --Born2cycle (talk) 08:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Least surprise... I think in many cases the least surprise is the dab page. But what really is an annoying type of surprise is to be at a completely wrong article. Thus I would favor dab pages in general. A current example: even if view statistics show 94K for Chihuahua (dog) I would favor Chihuahua to be a dab page. So the readers that look for the state do not get strongly surprised by the dog page. The city has 11K views. How many want to see the state page - the statistics don't show, since the state page is at the bare name. That would be one more reason to have more dab pages. For the tool example: Not sure a special policy is needed. I think most people never ever even heard of the band, but very well know what "tool" means. TopoChecker (talk) 21:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Any mechanism needs to be relative not absolute. Speaking purely rhetorically, imagine we had some perfect measure of vitality such that "vital" articles were defined as all those articles that scored 100 or more vitality points. And absolute measure like you are proposing would mean an article with 101 vitality points would trump an article with 99 vitality points but many more hits; yet an article with 99 vitality point would not trump an article with zero vitality points but many more hits. Hesperian 06:32, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Mechanisms may be relative or they may be absolute. Coming up with good algorithms that don't rely on editor judgment is hard, though, as your example illustrates. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:53, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


As made clear by the present rule. "The article at Defamation is the primary topic for five ambiguous terms: "defamation", "libel", "slander", "vilification", and "calumny". Even though there is a British film with the title Libel, the article at Defamation is still the primary topic for that title and the film must be disambiguated." That means the the band Slander and the band Calumny just can never be primary topics, no matter how many page hits, nor how popular they are because of editorial judgment. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:15, 20 January 2011 (UTC)Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't give a crap about calumny. According to the current policy, the band is the primary topic for the term "nirvana". So either the band should displace the state of being article from Nirvana, or we must acknowledge that the policy is wrong. I think the latter. I get the impression Born2cycle thinks the former. The rest of you are stubbornly prevaricating. But you can't get out of this by mumbling about films, bands and disambiguation pages. Either you think the band Nirvana should displace the state of being nirvana as the primary topic article for nirvana, or you disagree with the current policy. Which is it? Hesperian 02:41, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

There is another option within the guidelines - no primary topic - which might be appropriate at this point. But I would want to know more about what pages people are looking for when they enter Nirvana. If the band turns out to be by a significant amount to be the desired article, the main reason NOT to treat it as the primary topic would be what we decide about recnetism and how long we think the band will be of interest. I expect, in the long run, the state of mind will remain of interest when the band fades away. But where to draw the line, I don't know. 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? 50? I see no problem going to either article or a dab page as long as we are helping people get to the information are looking for. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 02:57, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

"The rest of you are stubbornly prevaricating." What? At any rate, I.m not, but since there is no motion or proposal before us except B2B's long ignored proposal, all we've been asked to do is discuss. Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Educational value

A comment in the Chihuahua move debate brought up Didacticism which, IMO, strikes at the core of this debate. Sure, we disperse tasty nuggets such as the number of known tattoos on Lady Gaga - I'm not telling; now you have to look it up! - but that isn't our reason for existence. The primary function of Wikipedia is to be educational. If you look at the Wikipedia article, you see critics of Wikipedia accuse it of systemic bias and inconsistencies (including undue weight given to popular culture). This is spot on; I've noticed this critique several times when reading the 10th anniversary coverage. Accordingly, I'm tweaking my earlier proposal:

An exception may be appropriate if only when recentism and educational value are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the vital article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users.

We're already doing this; you only have to look at the many examples already given in this debate to see that. As Hesperian pointed out, either we should move Nirvana or admit PRIMARYTOPIC doesn't reflect actual practice and update it. --JaGatalk 18:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Educational value has promise. Other suggested "non-navigational" criteria have been more vague and I felt difficult to apply. We would need to expand on the term (I AM still "learning" when I discover how many tattoos Ms. G has!), but I think it possible to do so. We should roughly define it now and expect further refinements in the near future. Same with recentism. How do we incorporate the expected lifetime of a "trending" topic before it passes muster as a primary? --John (User:Jwy/talk) 19:42, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

  • Support -- Perhaps, as Jwy said, there will likely be refinements to this phrasing in the future. But I think this is a very good start -- a move in the right direction. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 05:33, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. This is a vast improvement. For people looking for a unambiguous answer, they're going to find it subjective, I can foresee that. However, I think that our judgement as editors should be called upon from time to time. --HiltonLange (talk) 07:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Support I made the comment about the didactic purpose of an encyclopedia. Generally speaking titles should reflect usage, but titling an article is an editorial decision, as pointed out above by several people, and editors should be free to use their judgement when appropriate. walk victor falk talk 23:56, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

 Done --JaGatalk 23:35, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Educational value

While I expressed support for the direction of this term, I was hoping we could discuss more what it is. I'm not sure how to come close to defining it in a way that will be useful here. Anyone care to try? --John (User:Jwy/talk) 00:41, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't really think of how to word it, but the main points are: (1) intentionally vague to encourage debate, as titling is, to some extent, an editorial choice, and (2) a counter to Wikipedia's undue weight for pop culture. --JaGatalk 04:58, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

WP:D as a Primarytopic conflict resolution

We have found a loophole which can be exploited in WP:disambiguation / WP:primarytopic discussions. In summary, there appears to be no logical process by which editors arguing for a new WP:PRIMARYTOPIC can ever reach the fair middle ground of WP:D intended to solve such debates, because editors supporting the WP:STATUSQUO WP:PRIMARYTOPIC will always ensure no consensus.

To set out the specifics of the situation:

  • Palestine (region) is currently directed straight to Palestine, and has been since the first ever iteration of the page
  • A large group of editors believe that State of Palestine should be directed straight to Palestine, as over the last few years the State has become much more widely recognised
  • A discussion was held here and the editors supporting Palestine (region) as the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC ensured no consensus
  • Disambiguation was proposed as a fair middle ground and a second discussion was held here in light of the guidelines at WP:D
  • The editors supporting Palestine (region) unsurprisingly continued to hold their ground, and so again no consensus was reached, such that their choice remains the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC despite wide disagreement. As an aside, the main opposing argument used was based on WP traffic statistics - this is of course a clear logical fallacy, as the existing WP:PRIMARYTOPIC will by definition always have an unfair advantage
  • Whilst WP:D is intended to "[resolve] the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous, and so may refer to more than one topic which Wikipedia covers", it can only achieve this if the rules allow for conflicting arguments to be able to conclude with disambiguation
  • Unfortunately, WP:STATUSQUO / no consensus clashes head on with the ideals of WP:D, as WP:D can never be reached to "[resolve] the conflicts that arise", because if there is "a conflict" there will - by definition - be at least one editor supporting the WP:STATUSQUO WP:PRIMARYTOPIC who will be able to block any change

Am I missing something obvious? If not, could I propose that this guideline be amended to close this loophole? Oncenawhile (talk) 20:22, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

For a while I have been saying that disambiguation pages are not bad and that should be used more. On the other hand, many editors believe that their article belongs at the main name space no matter how valid the opposing views might be. I would support some change that improves the usage of disambiguation at the main name space when the existence of a primary topic can validly be contested. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree that the default solution should be a disambiguation page and a primary topic should exist only when there is strong consensus supporting it. older ≠ wiser 21:23, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm inclined the other way though: if a given state exists for a non-trivial amount of time, consensus (strong or otherwise) should be formed to change from it to a new state. If this means that a primary topic continues, then it should. Traffic stats can still be used to change from a current primary topic -- if a disambiguation page gets at least half the traffic of the primary topic, then then primary topic should be changed. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:06, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't see that this situation is any different from others involving page titles and many other things - whatever the stable status quo happens to be, it stays like that if there's no clear consensus to change it. That doesn't mean that just one or two editors can block change - consensus (in Wikipedia's sense) doesn't require unanimity.--Kotniski (talk) 11:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that editors supporting an existing primarytopic are able to effectively game the system. Primary topics can change over time but the rules as they stand don't allow for a fair challenge. Oncenawhile (talk) 13:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Also note that if there are just two big subjects wihch might be considered primary for some term, then a disambiguation page in primary position is a pretty poor "compromise", as it ends up providing no-one with any benefit. (Even making the less sought-after article the primary topic is better than the disambiguation page solution, since it lets at least some readers get to where they want to go straight away.)--Kotniski (talk) 11:08, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

How about a guideline re "temporary disambiguation"? That would be a really elegant solution to resolve such a debate, as a month worth of clean and comparable traffic stats could be used to determine a disputed primary topic? Oncenawhile (talk) 13:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

(after ec) I agree generally with Kotniski about two topic dabs. But a stable status quo may be illusory. It requires considerably greater effort to establish a consensus to change something where there are entrenched interests. In matters of primary topic, if there is not a clear consensus that a topic should remain as primary topic, I think it is more fair to default to a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 13:16, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Oncenawhile, a month is too short, IMO. Experiments should run several months, like 6 or 9. We're in no rush. Bkonrad, using the normal WP guidelines for determining a new consensus is still fair. It may be more difficult, but that's not the same as unfair. But what is the encyclopedic downside of having Palestine cover the region and a hatnote direct readers to State of Palestine? If Palestine, State of Palestine, and Palestine (disambiguation) were in the current arrangement with the current hatnotes throughout December, the traffic stats appear to support the current primary topic as the primary topic, since only 34K of the 144K visitors to Palestine continued on to either State of Palestine or Palestine (disambiguation)-- JHunterJ (talk) 14:17, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't have any opinion as yet in the particulars of Palestine, but the advantage afforded to the status quo in some situations is unfair. OTOH, stability is also an important consideration and changes shouldn't be made lightly in contentious issues based on which side ekes out some marginal domination in any particular discussion. My opinion is that in situations with long and contentious discussions as to which topic is primary, it would be preferable to default to having a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 15:02, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Just a thought ... "fairness" seems to be gaining ground in detirmining the best course of action here. Fairness to whom? If fairness to the reader then surely a dab page with (any) one of the contenders for primacy as the lead article helps some readers more than directing everyone to a dab page (as Kotniski above). Trying for a compromise situation (as Bkonrad immediately above) helps no readers although it may be seen as 'fair' to some editors. IMHO there is no more justification for changing the guidelines with regard to consensus on dabs than for any other form of consensus. Abtract (talk) 16:05, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


OK, perhaps I can ask the question a different way. If there is a primarytopic dispute, is it better to ignore the dispute and use hatnotes - or is it better to dab to resolve the conflict?

If the former, we need to change the very first sentence in the lead of WP:D. If the latter, we need to actually be able to reach dab in a primarytopic conflict. That would require a lower threshold for dab than a primarytopic debate - I will try to illustrate below with the 5 broad scenarios in a primarytopic debate:

1) Vast majority support statusquo primarytopic
2) Many support statusquo primarytopic, sizeable minority support new primarytopic or dab compromise
3) About half support new primarytopic or dab compromise and half support statusquo
4) Many support new primarytopic or dab compromise, sizeable minority support statusquo
5) Vast majority support new primarytopic

The current guidelines mean that (1), (2), (3) and (4) result in statusquo, (5) gives a new primarytopic, and no scenario gives dab. Clearly (1) and (5) result in the correct outcomes, but dab-ing (2), (3) and (4) may be more "fair" to readers but cannot happen without a lower threshold. I suspect some editors will disagree that all of (2) should be dab'ed, a few will disagree that (3) should be dab'ed, but I don't believe anyone believes it is correct that the current guidelines mean (4) still results in statusquo. Oncenawhile (talk) 23:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

As a side comment, please note that the WP:D first sentence reference to "resolving the conflicts" has remained unchanged since wikipedia's infancy (see April 2002 revision here). Now is the time for us to make that ideal possible! Oncenawhile (talk) 00:10, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Why aren't the scenarios

  1. Continuing consensus is for the status quo primary topic
  2. New consensus is for change from status quo primary topic to no primary topic (base-name disambiguation page)
  3. New consensus is for change from status quo primary topic to new primary topic

? Current guidelines mean that (1) results in status quo, (2) gives dab, and (3) gives a new primary topic. You are right, if the (4) (or (3)) in the original list means that there is consensus for a new primary topic, then there's a new primary topic, despite the sizable minority. If (4) means that there is a consensus for a change to no primary topic, then the dab goes to the base name (I hesitate to call this a "dab compromise" -- we're not compromising, we're recognizing that there is no primary topic), despite the sizable minority. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:43, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Except that isn't what typically happens. Especially with contentious topics, and often with less contentious topics, the "consensus" required to overturn the status quo is significantly greater than a simple majority. Besides, consensus is not a majority vote. Factions will expound their interpretations of policies and guidelines and if one faction makes a convincing case that their position is supported by policy, they may prevail even if they are a minority position. older ≠ wiser 13:11, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
There are WP:DR mechanisms for that as well. If editors are ignoring the guidelines, the solution isn't to change the guidelines (since the new versions will also be ignored). -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:18, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
The problem is more that Wikipedia guidelines are often, sometimes intentionally, vague, and can be used to support contradictory positions. The main point though is that in many cases it takes considerably greater support to overturn an entrenched status quo. It seems this discussion isn't going anywhere though. My position is that I'd prefer to see the guideline give more explicit support for defaulting to a disambiguation page when there are conflicting indications as to whether there is a primary topic or which topic is primary. older ≠ wiser 13:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
And I definitely wouldn't. Usually when such cases arise it's because there are two fairly big topics, and then the "explicit mention in hatnote" solution is usually more reader-friendly, for the much rehearsed reasons. Often the no-primary-topic solution is proposed not for readers' convenience, but to satisfy tendentious editors' pride - and that's a criterion we certainly do not want to give legitimacy to.--Kotniski (talk) 14:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
That seems based in thinking that there is something inherently wrong about disambiguation pages being at the primary location. I don't. If a topic is ambiguous, the disambiguation page should be at the ambiguous topic, except in cases where there is clearly a primary topic (or in cases where there are only two possible meanings). older ≠ wiser 14:34, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
No, of course I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about it - in some cases it's preferable, in others it's not preferable - people have to discuss in good faith which is the preferable solution in any given situation. It's not for us to write the guidline in such a way as to tilt the discussion to one side or the other. (I don't agree with your use of the word "clearly" - if there is a primary topic but it isn't "clearly" so, then readers still take a net benefit from being taken there straight away; just as they benefit from being taken to a dab page if there isn't a primary topic, even if it's not "clear" that there isn't.) --Kotniski (talk) 14:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
(ec) If we can clarify that there is nothing inherently wrong with a base-name dab, I'd support that. I disagree with the slightly different position, that a base-name dab is the default. There's nothing inherently wrong with a base-name dab, but there's nothing inherently wrong with leaving a primary topic at the base name either. Either can occur by consensus, and either can be changed by consensus. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:47, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
I see this as a variation on a theme that keeps coming up on a regular basis. People attach significance to one topic or another being primary, based on a variety of considerations. All I'm suggesting is that when a topic is ambiguous (with multiple possibilities) and there is no clear primary topic, a disambiguation page is preferable to persistent squabbling over primary topic. older ≠ wiser 15:16, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
Why isn't the status quo primary topic is preferable to persistent squabbling over it? In my crystal ball, I see that putting the disambiguation page at the base name will not end the persistent squabbling. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:46, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
The squabbling is often because the purported primary topic is that simply because of the status quo. I think the guideline can be more explicit that disambiguation pages are perfectly OK in situations where there are conflicting indications for primary topic. older ≠ wiser 16:29, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I am so slow - this discussion moves so fast. To comment on a few of the points made above:

  • To JHunterJ, your (2) doesn't exist in a "primarytopic conflict" - it exists only when the majority of editors do not stand behind any single primary topic. The proposal refers to a situation where two or more groups feel strongly that their primarytopic is right - a conflict dab is supposed to solve according to its first sentence. In practice, (4) in the scenarios I set out actually leads to no consensus, as a sizeable minority can block any consensus. Do you disagree with this?
  • To Kotniski, I agree that the guideline should not tilt a primarytopic debate either way. But having no guidelines at all for this situation cannot be the answer! As currently written, the guidelines do not allow for primarytopic debates to move forward - editors have no rules to hook on to other than "consensus has to want it". But as described above, applying logic to the current guidelines shows that consensus can and will never be for dab in a primarytopic conflict! If you disagree with this, can you explain?
  • To Bkonrad, I agree - putting a dab at the base name will neutralise the pressure in any debate. Editors could be encouraged to agree to reassess in a number of months (to JHJ's well made point). Once the period of time has elapsed, traffic stats can be used fairly creating a strong argument which cannot credibly be debated by tendentious editors (to Kotniski's well made point). This is so much better than the long-running feuds which exist today, where arguments based on conjecture and passion become circular and never ending.
  • To all, the fundamental issue here is that in a primarytopic conflict the threshold to reach disambiguation is itself ambiguous. Ironic isn't it!

Oncenawhile (talk) 18:35, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Debate seems to have stalled - anything I can do to clarify anything? Oncenawhile (talk) 00:36, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Partial title matches, green section

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Green-backed has been relisted for more input. More input is solicited. -- JHunterJ (talk) 04:50, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Hearts: if different countries have different primary topics, do we ignore the guideline?

Seeking some input from those with deeper interest in the primary topic guideline. In this discussion it has become clear that there is no primary topic for Hearts, yet the card game is located there. Traffic stats and google evidence indicates that the football team football team is in fact the leading topic, so setting Hearts as a dab page seems to be an obvious implementation of policy. Yet it is maintained that in the USA the card game is the "primary topic". Does this matter? Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 21:23, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

How is that discussion clear that there is no primary topic? I will join that discussion as well. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:50, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorting

Hello. I was just reading this DAB page and I have noticed that within the two subcategories, items are apparently not sorted by any particular criteria. In my opinion it would be better to have an alphabetically sorted list of items within categories (on DAB pages generally, not this particular page). Has it already been discussed in the past ? Anyway this is not a major issue, just a matter of readability. What do you think about it ? Maimai009 14:27, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

MOS:DAB#Order of entries recommends that articles most similar to the dab page's name come first, so I would put J.D. (Scrubs) at the top of its section. Next, I think order of likelihood of what the reader is searching for would indicate Juris Doctor be at the top of its section. Beyond that, alphabetization is fine. In other cases, chronological or geographical order within sections might make more sense - whatever helps the reader get where they want to go most easily. Station1 (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Are dictionaries a valid means of determining the most "sought after" phrase for primary topic disambiguation?

In the discussion at Talk:Avatar_(Hinduism)#Requested_move, my view was based on the primary defintion given by the dictionary: [2]. User:JHunterJ has discounted my opinion on the grounds that WP:PRIMARYTOPIC do not consider dictionaries a criterion. However, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC clearly doesn't indicate how we should measure what is the most sought topic: There are no absolute rules for determining how likely a given topic is to be sought by readers entering a given term; decisions are made by discussion between editors, often as a result of a requested move.. It gives examples of what we can use i.e. Google, Page traffic etc but neither advocates nor discounts dictionaries. What I want to know is are we limited to using only the measures and tools that are listed? Since dictionaries often account for general English usage then I don't see why they should be prohibited. Dictionaries are also less subsceptible to recent trends which could cause spikes in traffic stats, which WP:PRIMARYTOPIC also asks to take account of by stating: An exception may be appropriate when recentism...'. While editors may have varying views on how useful a dictionary is in determining the primary topic, I would like to clarify whether dictionaries are only discounted by personal consideration or if there is a policy or consensus lying around that prohibits them from consideration? I don't want to complicate matters by getting into the particulars of the Avatar discussion, or whether you agree with my view, just whether my opinion is legitimate and consistent with policy please. Betty Logan (talk) 18:26, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe the set of criteria we have is sufficient, and possibly over-large now with the recent changes. Adding more inputs won't bring clarity. Also, Wikipedia and dictionaries have different purposes. (WP:NOT#DICTIONARY, WP:NOTPAPER). -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm not asking for new criteria though. I'm asking whether my opinion is valid within the existing criteria. I'm asking for an interpretation of policy and the guidelines from someone not involved in the dispute, which I'm entitled to do if you're telling me my interpretation is incorrect. The fact that Wikipedia is not a dictionary is irrelevant, Wikipedia isn't an internet search engine either but Google is a recommend tool in this capacity. Dictionaries reflect the prevalence of common English usage, so I'd like to get views on whether policy or guidelines as they currently stand make dictionaries an unacceptable tool in determining the primary topic of an article in the same way that Google search results can be used. As yet I have seen no valid reason why dictionaries are prohibited and Google search is permitted, except that one is explicitly mentioned and the otehr isn't. So I would just like a few objective opinions, especially if my vote is to be discounted on that basis. Betty Logan (talk) 19:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
"Dictionaries reflect the prevalence of common English usage"? Well, sometimes, but not always - some dictionaries reflect the historical development of the language, and others reflect the prevalence of usage at their date of publication. And most dictionaries are specific to one variety of English, and many of them ignore proper nouns (people, places, bands, etc), and I suspect that those which include proper nouns have their own rules on what order proper-noun senses and other senses of a word would be listed, regardless of "prevalence". So dictionaries may be useful, but also problematic, in establishing primacy of usage. PamD (talk) 19:22, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
"What I want to know is are we limited to using only the measures and tools that are listed?" Of course not. I strongly support the notion that an editor should use his/her brain. This whole page is only a guideline, after all. The number of google hits is usually a good measure of a primary topic, but not always. The same can be said of other measures, including those not explicitly listed. ...comments? ~BFizz 19:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
The drawback (IMO) is that we typically use our brains to find support for our initial decision, instead of seeking consensus on the right decision. In primary topic discussions, it is often easy to come up with a reason each for several different topics to be primary. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:22, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Example fix

The "Michael Dobbs" primary topic example is no longer valid because it does, in fact, point towards a disambiguation page (not a primary topic page). Lcm133 (talk) 23:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I fixed it by returning the primary topic article to the base name. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:30, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Dab page location

If there is no primary topic, the ambiguous term should be the title of a disambiguation page... ~ WP:PRIMARYTOPIC

Why is this so? Has there been past discussion about this that someone can point me to? It makes more sense to me to standardize the location of dab pages to always have "(disambiguation)" at the end of the title. ...comments? ~BFizz 18:11, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I think there is a "principle of least surprise" issue involved, because some users typing in "Mercury" would be confused to find themselves at a page titled "Mercury (disambiguation)". However, I've thought a lot about this question myself, and I can see why it would make sense to have all disambig pages at "Foo (disambiguation)" titles, with "Foo" redirecting to that title in the absence of a primary topic. At this point, I have no strong feelings one way or the other. bd2412 T 18:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
If there is no primary topic, then the disambiguation page doesn't need a (disambiguation) disambiguator. If we really want to go down this road, then we should have all pages have disambiguated titles, and all base names for ambiguous titles be redirects, either to the disambiguation page or to the disambiguated primary topic. That makes sense from consistency, but I don't think it's a useful consistency. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:26, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "the disambiguated primary topic". If there is a primary topic, the disambiguation page would already be at the "Foo (disambiguation)" title, so there would be no need to change anything with respect to those pages. bd2412 T 19:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
That's a slippery slope; I'm not suggesting all article titles include a parenthetical. I'm suggesting all disambiguation pages have a consistent naming convention. Seeing "(disambiguation)" in the title is only as surprising as realizing that the entire page they have landed on serves the purpose of disambiguation; in other words, the modified title adds no surprise that wasn't already there, and possibly reduces the surprise by clearly indicating the purpose of the page.
A similar option might be to create a disambiguation namespace, so that if "Foo" had no primary topic, it would redirect to "Disambiguation:Foo". We've never quite treated dab pages like the rest of article space; perhaps it's time to codify exactly what the difference is, either with a naming convention or with a namespace.
The thrust of my argument is that dab pages and articles serve very different purposes. ...comments? ~BFizz 20:02, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
BD2412, for instance, it has been suggested at the move request for Avatar (Hinduism) that if the Hindu topic is to become the primary topic, it be left at "Avatar (Hinduism)" and Avatar be made a redirect to it -- so that the primary topic continue to be disambiguated ("disambiguated primary topic" -- disambiguated title, primary topic so target of the base-name redirect). It parallels this request, that the dab page continue to be disambiguated, even though there is no primary topic. B Fizz, I agree it's a slippery slope, and I'm suggesting that not even disambiguation pages take that first step. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
What I meant was the way you interpreted my suggestion was a slippery slope argument--an exaggeration of the results of the proposed action. For the record, the request I made for Avatar to be a redirect to Avatar (Hinduism) was a special case, and not a general suggestion, since the "primary topic" discussion comes up so frequently for that particular page lately. It is completely separate from this suggestion. I thought the namespace idea would make that clear. ...comments? ~BFizz 22:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I don't generally adhere to slippery slope arguments. (Get it - adhere). Seriously, though, I don't see why using a disambiguator with all disambiguation pages would require us to do so for primary topic articles. Disambiguation pages are distinguishable on the grounds that they really are not articles at all. I could see us using "Foo (disambiguation)" at all disambig titles, and still have the Hindu concept sit at Avatar and the first U.S. President sit at George Washington, even though there is a George Washington (disambiguation) out there. bd2412 T 20:43, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
This has been proposed a number of times in the past and I have to admit that to a certain extent it might make some of the current circumlocution regarding primary topic easier for those who are not hard-core disambiguators easier to understand. A disambiguation page will always have "(disambiguation)" in the title. That way the title of the disambiguation page be comes a separate matter from whether or not a term is a primary topic. If there is no primary topic, the term redirects to the disambiguation page. If there is a primary topic, the term is the primary topic article, or is a redirect to the primary topic article. There are already a number of primary topics terms that are redirects to an alternate name. The proposal at Avatar would extend this to include articles named for consistency or according to a naming convention (though this part of it seems less compelling to me). older ≠ wiser 21:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Of course, if Avatar were a redirect, anyone would be able to retarget it any time. There would be a lot of undiscussed primary topic changes, which could get annoying. It might be better to force discussion to change a controversial topic like that. --JaGatalk 21:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
I grant that it is easier to retarget a redirect than to move a page. I'm not sure that should hold much sway on the question. Redirects can still be monitored with ease. bd2412 T 22:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm creating the following sections to get back to my original questions. Feel free to continue discussion above that does not directly pertain to these questions. ...comments? ~BFizz

Why the current policy for dab locations?

But let me split that discussion into two sections. ...comments? ~BFizz 22:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Strengths of the current policy, or weaknesses of standardized dab naming

There seem to have been two answers to this question that I can glean from the discussion so far

  • (A tiny bit of) principle of least surprise
  • if there's no primary topic, the dab page doesn't need "(disambiguation)" in the title

I find both of these to be weak reasoning. The former I have discussed above. As for the latter, why not? Wouldn't it be clearer if all dab pages did bear the "(disambiguation)" text in their title? What is the disadvantage of adding it even if it is not "needed"? Examples? ...comments? ~BFizz 22:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

  • Please note also that changing policies at this point would require a great deal of work. There are tens of thousands of these pages, and since all of them already have the "Foo (disambiguation)" title redirecting to them, they could not be fixed by a bot. These moves would need to be done manually. Even if it is a good idea, it is hardly on the priority level with fixing our existing backlog of nearly 800,000 ambiguous links. bd2412 T 23:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
    Good point. But couldn't we give a bot elevated permission to make the moves? Interesting to note: it wouldn't be an issue if we chose the namepacing solution; "Disambiguation:Foo" is currently 100% unused as far as I know. In any event, I'm not as interested in forcing a new standard on everyone so much as having a good standard to fall back on as issues come up in the future. The pages could be fixed over time. ...comments? ~BFizz 23:53, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
    The decision to establish a new namespace is beyond the authority of this project. In any case, doing so would require the establishment of a large numbers of cross-namespace redirects. bd2412 T 00:20, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
    You're right, bd2412, but is there something bad about cross-namespace redirects that I'm unaware of? Anyhoo, I've brought it up at WT:Namespace#Disambiguation namespace, asking for technical details and opinions. I'm not saying it's a better idea than just standardizing the name with "(disambiguation)", but it's an idea worth exploring. I'm willing to send the idea around to whoever might have authority to enact it. I suggest any discussion directly relating to the namespace idea be placed over there. Consider discussion here to mainly pertain to the "(disambiguation)" naming standardization idea. ...comments? ~BFizz 04:25, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Another weakness as I see it, as someone who watches a lot of dab pages, is that if this is implemented unless I watch the redirect to the dab page I will not know if someone has decided to redirect it to another page. I don't support this idea, it smacks too much of premature disambiguation, the idea it would be clearer if, for instance, all albums were at foo (album). To me if someone doesn't realise a particular page is a disambiguation page from its layout and the tag 'this is a disambiguation page', then adding something to the page title is not going to make them understand. Tassedethe (talk) 23:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
      • And a similar comment. Foo as a disambiguation page with a redirect from foo (disambiguation) is the preferred implementation from those who actually try to disambiguate the inbound links. The current practice is that links to foo (disambiguation) are intentional and those to foo are not and need disambiguating. Tampering with the efforts of this dedicated work group would be ill advised in my opinion. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:15, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
        • I don't see that there would be much change in operations in that regard. Anything linking through a base term redirect to a (disambiguation) page would need to be disambiguated. Redirects from the base term to (disambiguation) would need to be templated and categorized. Automated tools might need to be updated to read information from the new template/category to generate the lists that need disambiguation. older ≠ wiser 00:12, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
        • To Tassedethe, the problem is that the uninitiated will regularly move a base name page to (disambiguation) because they mistakenly assume that is how disambiguation pages are titled based on seeing others with that title. I don't think anyone is confused by what a page is looking at the contents. older ≠ wiser 00:12, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
          • See I don't think that happens very often. Most of the misplaced pages at WP:MDP are due to someone moving foo to foo (bar) and then redirecting foo to the existing foo (disambiguation). Mistaken moves of foo to foo (disambiguation) occur but no more often, in my experience, as someone mistakenly moving foo to foo (album), because, to paraphrase "they mistakenly assume that is how album pages are titled based on seeing others with that title". Also, to follow on from Vegaswikian's point, it took a lot of effort to get people to see that redirecting through (disambiguation) redirects (per WP:INTDABLINK) was worthwhile and not pointless make work, or vandalism or whatever. If this proposal is implemented I see the thousands of page moves involved as annoying people for similar reasons. Tassedethe (talk) 00:33, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
            • We can set up systems to track these pages. For example, R'n'B's daily disambig pages, which show what pages no longer have disambig links, covers pages which have ceased to be disambig pages. I'm sure we could get a daily report of pages that have gone from being disambig redirects to being something else. bd2412 T 02:27, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
              • So instead of changes appearing in my watchlist I have to either add extra pages or check another page? That doesn't seem like an improvement. Tassedethe (talk) 04:13, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
                • Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe when a page is moved, people that had that page on their watchlist will automatically be watching both the source page (which is now a redirect) and the destination page. But in the future, yes, if you care about where a particular page name redirects to, you would need to watch it. But what about people that don't care about the redirect? Some might only care about the dab page's content. They might easily call this an "improvement", though I'd hardly try to sell this as the best reason for making the change. ...comments? ~BFizz 04:28, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
                  • Yes I realize it doesn't apply to existing watched pages. My point is if I want to add a new dab page I also have to add the redirect if I care about WP:PRIMARYTOPIC or any such principle. And I don't think there are many people who add dab pages merely for content. Tassedethe (talk) 04:51, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
                    • We have scores of thousands of disambig pages. Whatever is on your watchlist is a fraction of a fraction of the whole, so if we want a system to catch changes to the entire population of disambig pages, we need a more comprehensive report anyway. bd2412 T 16:06, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
            • Tassedethe, I'm not sure about that. I have no sense for how frequently people move pages to titles like foo (album). But I often have to undo editors who mistakenly move a disambiguation page from the base name to (disambiguation), often with an edit summary indicating they think that is how disambiguation pages are named. Re the annoyance factor, I think what people generally were annoyed and confused about was linking through a redirect. If a disambiguation page is always named (disambiguation) then there is no confusion about linking through a redirect -- and all of the links through (disambiguation) would still be correctly formed and would not need to be changed. The page moves would likely generate some comments, but ultimately easier to understand than having to link through redirects. older ≠ wiser 02:49, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
              • I think that if this proposal is implemented you will end up reverting false moves in the other direction i.e now you will have to move pages from foo to foo (disambiguation). The disambiguation project has spent a lot of time educating people that if there are no pages with a similar title you do not redirect foo to foo (bracketed term). All that work will be for nothing if we suddenly make disambiguation pages the one exception to that rule. Not to mention it will smack literally of "do as I say not as I do". Tassedethe (talk) 04:22, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
                • Any new system will do that for a while, and then it will settle down. Publicizing a change in policy will help ameliorate the effects of that change. The only issue should be, what is the best policy for Wikipedia to adhere to in presenting disambiguation pages. bd2412 T 16:08, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
                  • Eliminating the biggest objection to WP:INTDABLINK makes this proposal very tempting, I must say. Users often struggle with understanding/accepting the intentional use of a redirect. If all disambigs ended with (disambiguation) the problem would disappear, with no harm done to our previous INTDABLINK efforts. Avoiding confusion and making policy more accessible to the lay editor is good for the wiki. On the other hand, giving every single disambig a qualifier strikes me as clunky. It's a shame we don't have a disambiguation namespace; that would solve a lot of problems. --JaGatalk 01:21, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Strengths of standardized dab naming, or weaknesses of the current policy

Bkonrad mentioned a few things:

  • Simplifies policy:
    • easier for the uninitiated to understand
    • the title of the dab page becomes a separate matter from whether or not the term has a primary topic

I agree. Simplifying policy is a Good ThingTM....comments? ~BFizz 22:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

(Actually that was Bkonrad) --JaGatalk 02:07, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
(whoops. fixed) :) ...comments? ~BFizz 04:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

If anyone's prepared to do the massive amount of work involved in making all dab pages have "(disambiguation)" at the end (or possibly at the beginning), put me down as a weak support - it would seem a more consistent solution that would help readers somewhat to feel the difference between dab pages and articles.--Kotniski (talk) 07:07, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

If this policy is implemented, I'll work on this task. Might take a while, and to the extent that this can be automated, it most definitely should be. bd2412 T 16:11, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
Obviously, I would be willing to work on this task as well if the policy were implemented. I've never made a bot for WP before, but would be happy to help with what I can, including but not limited to programming/automation. ...comments? ~BFizz 19:03, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be great to have DAB pages at "Name (disambiguation)". This would mean more link stability, as long as the base name is not changed the DAB page will always be at "Name (disambiguation)".

With that people can properly watch pages, when there is no Primary Topic. They can watch the base term "Name" that redirects to the DAB page "Name (disambiguation)" independently from watching the DAB page. Some people might be interested in the DAB page, others in Primary Topic settings, i.e. where the base name points to.

Also readers see directly from the title that something is a DAB page.

I think before implementing a new namespace "Disambiguation:Name" it is best to try "Name (disambiguation)". DABmaster (talk) 23:26, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Have there been past discussions on standardizing dab locations?

No one has mentioned previous discussion on this topic before. ...comments? ~BFizz 22:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Past discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 50#ALL disambiguation pages to end "(disambiguation)". Skirted around in Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 31#Hatnote redirects to disambiguation pages. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:07, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Taking to the village pump

Personally, the more I think about it, the more I feel that it would be clearest to create a Disambiguation namespace. All dab articles would have consistent naming simply by virtue of being in the namespace, and it would skirt around the permission problem with having a bot do the job, since no articles currently begin with the title "Disambiguation:". I haven't gotten any replies around WT:namespace, and I think its about time this discussion be taken to the village pump (policy section).

I plan to present it there as three general options, in order of least to most radical:

  • Keep the current policy
  • Change policy: make all dab articles end with "(disambiguation)"
  • Change policy: make all dab articles reside in a "Disambiguation:" (pseudo?)namespace.

Before presenting the idea at the village pump, I'm going to collect my thoughts on what has been said so far and either 1) try to present solutions to the concerns that have been raised, or 2) admit that there is no solution to some concerns raised, and possibly argue that the benefits outweigh the costs. I think there is a strong case to be made for standardized dab naming, and I plan on making it. For those of you that feel that either (1 dab name standardization) or (2 a namespace for dabs) is a Bad IdeaTM, I invite you to similarly collect your thoughts, and I hope you don't feel like it's me vs you; it's not. ...comments? ~BFizz 19:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

While I weakly support naming all disambiguation pages with "(disambiguation)" I don't support proposing to create a separate namespace without much more input as to the impacts and feasibility. older ≠ wiser 21:17, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
While I myself will try to consolidate some ideas about impacts and feasibility, I'm hoping that the diverse array of people at the village pump will be able to illuminate more on these issues. ...comments? ~BFizz 22:59, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I've initiated discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive 84#Uniform_Disambiguation_page_naming. ...comments? ~BFizz 01:07, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Flag of China

On the dab page Flag of China, obviously quite contentious, some editors are insisting on having a {{Citation needed}} tag for the inclusion of Flag of the Republic of China. It is my understanding that an entry's inclusion on the list is determined by consensus on the talk page, and that citations should not be included. Is this correct? If the problem persists, where does one go for assistance? Nightw 06:34, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Here. Chimed in, and removed the citation needed tag. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:15, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm afraid you've just incurred the wrath of the pro-PRC brigade, though... Nightw 13:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I'll incur the wrath of the other brigade, then, by saying that it shouldn't be a dab page at all and should redirect straight to the article on the flag of (the People's Republic of) China, which is what English-speakers always mean by that phrase. (Or possibly to List of flags of China, but that's to resolve the ambiguity between today's China and historical China, not the artificially promoted alleged ambiguity between PRC and Taiwan that seems to have been allowed to take hold on Wikipedia.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:06, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Right. I said not quite as much on the Talk page; we don't need citations, but we should remove entries that aren't ambiguous, and if that leaves us with no ambiguity, the page should redirect to the remaining target. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Redirect to List of Chinese flags and be done with it. bd2412 T 15:57, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Double negative?

I apologise if this has been brought up many times before, but why do we use disambiguation where a non-double negative, such as clarify would work just as well? Jay Σεβαστόςdiscuss 22:14, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

What are the two negatives in "disambiguation"? "dis" = removal, "ambiguous" = "of doubtful nature". -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:44, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Well think of it this way: "dis" = not "ambiguous" = unclear; "disambiguate" = "make not unclear" ≡ clarify. Jay Σεβαστόςdiscuss 14:03, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
"Dis-" doesn't mean "not".[3] I think of it this way: remove ambiguity = disambiguate; removal of ambiguity = disambiguation. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I guess you're right. Jay Σεβαστόςdiscuss 20:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
You're both right. There is a logical double-negative going on there, but I think it gives emphasis. (And Foo (clarification) would look weird!) --JaGatalk 00:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I could have sworn redlinks in DAB pages were delete-worthy. Are they, or are they not, permitted (by consensus or long practice, presumably)? A quick answer would be appreciated. --Lexein (talk) 21:57, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

See the section WP:DABSTYLE. "Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link." It's a guideline, though. Red links might be OK in rare cases, but usually just axe them or change them to a related blue link. ...comments? ~BFizz 22:33, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
More relevant is MOS:DABRL. Redlinks are allowed, but the red link should be linked to from other articles and should still contain a blue link to an article with relevant content about the red linked subject. older ≠ wiser 23:21, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, both. I cleaned up The Bridge#In_print a bit; it may need more. --Lexein (talk) 08:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

It looks like you did a good job in that, in fixing rather than deleting entries. Sometimes there are unhelpful-in-my-view outright deletions of redlink items for likely-to-be-Wikipedia-notable topics, when either creating stub articles for them or setting up MOS:DABRL-compliant supporting bluelinks would be better. Whether dab-focussed editors like it or not, the dab pages serve as lists of articles needed and appear as that especially to new editors. It seems mean to new editors to simply delete their contributions of redlink items, which are their gifts (in the form of requests for new articles, conveying their knowledge of the notability of the given topic), without any evaluation. I think it is more productive and friendly to start the articles as stubs, rather than remove the redlink items, in most cases. --doncram 13:46, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Correction request

The section titled Broad concepts are not "ambiguous" currently states that disambiguation pages should not be created under terms referring to broad concepts, and lists Supreme Court, Department of Labor, National Trust, and Finance Minister as examples of the pages which should not be disambigs. However, Department of Labor is in fact a disambiguation page, and has been since 2006. Someone more comfortable with editing this page than me should probably address this.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); March 11, 2011; 20:44 (UTC)

  • The point of the policy is that Department of Labor should not be a disambiguation page, because it is possible to write a general article on the concept of what a "Department of Labor" is - that is, a government department found in many jurisdictions which deals with concerns of employment and working people, often specifically with issues of unionization and union activities. If there were a very popular band by the same name, or a film or a racehorse of such renown that the type of government department was not the primary meaning, that would be another matter. Compare Finance Minister. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:23, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
  • But I think dab pages like this will continue to be created: the following sequence of events:
  • Someone creates an article on the Department of xyz, for one country (Abcland)
  • Someone later creates an article on the Department of xyz (Fooland).
  • A hatnote could be created at the former for the latter, but someone later decides that Abcland's dept is not the primary usage, and moves Department of xyz to Department of xyz (Abcland) and creates a dab page at Department of xyz. They may not have the inclination or expertise to write a whole article about such departments. Are we saying that the dab page should not exist?
  • Sorry if I should have raised this point earlier - my head starting spinning shortly after finding that "genus and species" was being used beyond biological taxonomy,and I skipped most of the discussion.
  • The kind of article described above ("a government department found in many jurisdictions which deals with concerns of employment and working people, often specifically with issues of unionization and union activities.") sounds rather like a dictionary definition of "Department of xyz" - anything beyond the literal meaning of the words is going to be so country-specific as to duplicate the content of the individual articles. PamD (talk) 23:13, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
  • It would not be a dictionary definition because it would contain the historical context of the existing articles. Supposing that we have the scenario you outline above, once we have "Department of xyz (Fooland)", if we decide that Abcland's dept is not the primary usage, that does not mean that there is no primary meaning to the term; rather, it means the primary meaning is the general concept of a type of agency of which both of these countries have examples. The initial article would probably say something like:
    A Department of xyz is a government department found in several jurisdictions which deals with xyz. The first [country/state/other entity] to have such a department was Fooland [earliest reference to a department is usually easily researchable], which established one in [year]. Abcland established one in [year].
  • Then we'd have a section with a table listing the jurisdictions having such a department, with lines for year of establishment, current head of the department, and whatever other information is useful to list in such a table. That would basically invite people to fill in the blanks. In this way, the resulting article will continue to provide all of the links originally in the disambig page, plus contextual information on how these entities are directly related. That way, when someone puts a link in an article on Defland to the Department of xyz in Defland, even though we have no article on that specific country's department of xyz, we will have an article at the end of the link saying what a Department of xyz does, generally. I will add that this is not an abstract discussion. At this point, I think we probably have all the government departments there are going to be had, and I have already collected together the list of dabs for them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Departments and Ministries. Once we account for the fact that a Department and a Ministry are basically synonymous, and that some subtle variations can be covered in the same article (for example, Department of Education and Science; Ministry of Education and Science; Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, and Department of Education and Skills all cover the same ground). bd2412 T 01:30, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Primary topic guideline

The primary topic portion of this guideline is overly vague. To remedy, I added a representative example indicating that 60% of incoming wikilinks and/or page views was not enough to make a subject the primary topic, but most editors agreed that 80% was. The most thorough discussion I know of was at Talk:Blue Mountains (New South Wales)#Page move. This was reverted with move does not determine new guideline for all other pages, though I never asserted that it did. Merely that it is indicative of what an extended debate resulted in. —EncMstr (talk) 17:45, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I think, numerical 80% certainly is a strong indication, but not a sufficient condition itself. There are hundreds of articles linking to "hydrogen ion" (yet formally an article, but virtually a dab), and all of them mean H+, but the possible redirect to hydron (chemistry) is discouraged by IUPAC position that a "hydrogen ion" is hydrogen cation or hydrogen anion. IMHO in the domain of science, such links using a terminology, strongly discouraged by respectable scientific bodies, must be fixed, not accommodated via redirects. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:24, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
These all seem to be edge conditions, are they not? My assertion is that 80% is often regarded as sufficient, but may not be. —EncMstr (talk) 03:36, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I took its insertion in these guidelines as your assertion that it was to be applied generally (to the pages covered by this guideline), instead of just to Blue Mountains (New South Wales) (which is all that that discussion can be applied to, unless a majority of dabbers happened to be participating in that discussion). Your assertion or insertion also took one discussion and extrapolated that that was the way such discussions "usually" go. Other extended debates (including some on the guidelines' talk pages) have reached different conclusions, such as "much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined". And current consensus is to avoid target numbers in the primary topic guide. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:53, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
I understand why you arrived at that conclusion. Alas, spent mere few seconds composing the sentence, and as as you rightly point out, it has several shortcomings.
My intent is to render useful a guideline that basically says There is no rule, only discussion. Novices who gaze at that might concluded that one article having more than the others is the primary topic. As far as I know, the usual decision point is much higher than a majority, even a super majority. Many editors commented at Blue Mountains and it received extended discussion over several weeks. There were side and spinoff conversations on other talk pages which reinforced what was agreed. So far, I haven't found a more thorough discussion. This guideline should be much more evocative of the likely result of a discussion in order to be a good guideline, and minimize editors duplicating effort. —EncMstr (talk) 03:36, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
The vagary is semi-intentional. In the end, consensus must be reached for every case. Many times consensus is unanimous, and the choice intuitive. But a few topics espouse debate and so the guideline tries to suggest some common indicators of the PT. Giving a guideline on the percentage seems like an unnecessary elaboration to me. Regardless, I'm not completely opposed to the idea. ...comments? ~BFizz 03:48, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
The guideline "much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined" can minimize duplication of effort, but in the field it tends to be ignored by editors who would like to see one of the contra-indicated topics primary. IMO, the guidelines need to be expanded to help address the misconception that primary topicness is a goal or an award, a judgement of value, or otherwise anything except a navigational aid for the expectation of the current readership. WP:BIAS and WP:RECENTISM should be addressed within the articles' contents, but the titling should be laid out to best serve up those unbiased articles to the readers. (But here I've spun off to a different discussion entirely). -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:08, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I agree; in the end the main idea behind the Primary Topic guideline is something like "If you were to crack open a 'real' encyclopedia and turn to the entry on ___, what would you expect to see there?" 'Real' encyclopedias seem to have some general, though not all-pervasive, preferences for longstanding over recent, for widely-known over fringe, and for reality over fiction. To an extent, we try to mimic those preferences, if for no other reason than to be "encyclopedic", since that is one of the very few criteria for Wikipedia that are deeply definitive. ...comments? ~BFizz 14:01, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
We mimic paper encyclopedias only where that lines up with serving the readership (minimizing surprise and maximizing navigation); following paper encyclopedias is not a goal itself, because we're not paper. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:23, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Genus and species

I propose to add the following qualification to this policy:

If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is merely a genus for which links asserted to be ambiguous are merely species of that genus, then the page located at that title should be an article describing the genus, and not a disambiguation page.

Adopting this policy would provide a basis to reduce the number of disambiguation pages which turn out to be lists of different kinds of the same thing - for example, with the de-disambiguated pages at Rice cake, Rocket launcher, and Broadsword, and with the pages currently in dispute or under discussion at Paper folding, Particle, and Audit Bureau of Circulations. Although, for example, there are many kinds of swords called broadswords and many kinds of projectile firing devices called rocket launchers, and there are ships named "Broadsword" and gaming/wrestling maneuvers under the name "Rocket launcher", the primary meanings of those terms, respectively, are the genera encompassing all of those kinds of swords, and all of those kinds of projectile firing devices. bd2412 T 17:26, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any problems in making that explicit. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Seems like the proposed wording could be improved a little but the idea's solid. ...comments? ~BFizz 18:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Do you have anything in mind for improving the wording? It would probably be helpful to include some examples within the policy. bd2412 T 18:30, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
The idea and examples look good, but as a frequent plant article editor, I found the use of "genus" and "species" very confusing. I first took them at their literal meaning, and almost put a note at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants, but then given your examples, it seems like you mean those terms figuratively. An explanation, or different terminology, is needed. First Light (talk) 18:37, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
I believe the terms are used literally, although the analogous examples provided do not. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:56, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm open to suggestions. The basic idea I want to convey is that if the primary meaning of the term being proposed as a disambig term is just a broad concept, and the links proposed as being ambiguous are really just things that could be described by that concept, than what is needed is not a disambig page at all, but an article on the broad concept. I think the deletion debate over Particle captures the essence of this dispute, and that the examples of de-disambiguated pages I provided above are clear examples of the successful application of the principle I am outlining here. bd2412 T 19:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
    Ah, if not scientific "genus", I'd throw "genre" into the ring. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:11, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
    To me, genre brings to mind literary and film categories. Would you say that "particle" is a genre of which "subatomic particle" was a species (or maybe a type)? Maybe supertype and subtype? bd2412 T 19:41, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

How about this:

If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is merely a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and the links asserted to be ambiguous are merely subtypes or examples of that type of thing, then the page located at that title should be an article describing the broad concept, and not a disambiguation page.

bd2412 T 19:44, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I like that too. This may be my computer programming background showing through, but I could also go with "... is merely a class of thing ... merely instances or examples of that class, ...". Classes and instances being terms familiar to me from object-oriented programming. But I can fault nothing in particular in the language chosen either. Well, I would probably strike "that is capable of being described in an article". If the instances can be article-fied, the class can be too. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:51, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Here's some minor tweaks:
If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is merely a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and all of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing the broad concept, and not a disambiguation page.
I would also add, perhaps in a parenthetical note afterwards, that use of summary style may be appropriate where detailed articles about instances or examples already exist. The "capable of being described in an article" clause probably should remain, if only to thwart rules lawyers who might argue that "things named 'Mercury'" is a broad concept or type of thing; yes, but it's not one about which an article meeting Wikipedia's standards for inclusion could be written. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
That sounds better - in fact you edit/conflicted the term "broad concept" right out of my mouth... I was going to suggest "specific application of that concept", but "example of that concept" is even better. First Light (talk) 20:10, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it should say "all of the links". Broadsword and Rocket launcher, for example, both have additional meanings that really are ambiguous, but are very minor (a pair of naval vessels in the first instance, and a video game maneuver and a wrestling maneuver in the second); there is also a band called "Particle". None of these should prevent articles on the general concept of a broadsword, a rocket launcher, or a particle, from sitting at those titles. Perhaps some other language could be added to sort out minor uses that do not fall under the general concept. bd2412 T 20:28, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, how about this:

If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is merely a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are actually instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing the broad concept, and not a disambiguation page. Where there are additional meanings that are not instances or examples of a "Foo" primary concept or type, those should be included on a "Foo (disambiguation)" page. For example:
Particle is a broad and abstract concept used to address many different ideas in physics, generally relating to small units from which larger things are composed. Although there are many different kinds of particles at levels ranging from the subatomic to the macroscopic, the broad concept is properly susceptible to explanation in an article. Other meanings, such as Particle (band), are presented at Particle (disambiguation).
A Supreme Court, Department of Labor, or Finance Minister is a kind of government branch, department, or official, occurring in several countries and in other political entities, and serving the same purpose in each. Rather than having disambiguation pages at these titles linking to existing articles on these entities by nation, each should contain an article describing in general terms what the concept is, and how the different examples of this concept relate to each other.

I think Particle is a good example despite the current debate going on there because it is clear that the debate is moving in the direction of a resolution that will support this policy. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:17, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

This is looking good. What do you think of an additional paragraph as follows?
Likewise, where the primary topic of a term is a general topic that can be divided into subtopics, such as chronologically (e.g., History of France) or geographically (e.g., Rugby union in the British Isles), the unqualified title should contain an article about the general topic rather than a disambiguation page. Consider using summary style to incorporate information about the subtopics into the main article.
--R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:03, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the operative elements of that language should be incorporated into the first paragraph of what I have above, and the other parts should be incorporated into the examples. I'm not sure that we need to make the summary style suggestion, but I have no strong feeling against it either. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I think this is an important policy to be outlined here, so I am taking another stab at it. How about this:

A disambiguation page should not be created merely as a substitute for an article that is difficult to write because it addresses a broad, vague, abstract, or highly conceptual topic. If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is merely a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are actually instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing the broad concept, and not a disambiguation page. Where there are additional meanings that are not instances or examples of a "Foo" primary concept or type, those should be included on a "Foo (disambiguation)" page. Where the primary topic of a term is a general topic that can be divided into subtopics, such as chronologically (e.g., History of France) or geographically (e.g., Rugby union in the British Isles), the unqualified title should contain an article about the general topic rather than a disambiguation page. For example:
Particle is a broad and abstract concept used to address many different ideas in physics, generally relating to small units from which larger things are composed. Although there are many different kinds of particles at levels ranging from the subatomic to the macroscopic, the broad concept is properly susceptible to explanation in an article. Other meanings, such as Particle (band), are presented at Particle (disambiguation).
A Supreme Court, Department of Labor, National Trust, or Finance Minister is each a kind of entity occurring in multiple countries and possibly in other political entities, and serving the same purpose in each. Rather than having disambiguation pages at these titles linking to existing articles on these entities by nation, each should contain an article describing in general terms what the concept is, and how the different examples of this concept relate to each other.
In writing articles on these subjects, it is useful to directly address the scope of the term, and the history of how the concept has developed. Each of the examples of the concept or type of thing should be included at some point in the article, possibly in a list, so that no information is lost from what would have been presented in the disambiguation page format. Consider using summary style to incorporate information about the subtopics into the main article.

Cheers! bd2412 T 23:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

If there are no further refinements to be proposed, I am going to go ahead and propose that we enact the last iteration above as policy. Any objections? bd2412 T 14:56, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Looks pretty good. No objections here, though I have one tiny refinement suggestion: put the "for example" on the second paragraph. That will make it clear that the indented paragraph is not attempting to simulate article text (that's what I thought as I was reading it for the first time), but is simply an extended example and explanation of the guideline in action. ...comments? ~BFizz 15:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
I really don't think anyone will be confused by the placement of the "for example". I can just break it out by one line, so it stands out a bit more. bd2412 T 23:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
I would definitely take out the second "merely" and maybe the first as well. I feel like we could condense that first para but I haven't figured out how yet. I got a little lost in it on the first reading. --JaGatalk 00:12, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Another stab at reorganizing this into something clear yet somewhat succinct:

If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing the broad concept, and not a disambiguation page. Where the primary topic of a term is a general topic that can be divided into subtopics, such as chronologically (e.g., History of France) or geographically (e.g., Rugby union in the British Isles), the unqualified title should contain an article about the general topic rather than a disambiguation page. A disambiguation page should not be created just because it is difficult to write an article on a topic that is broad, vague, abstract, or highly conceptual. Where there are additional meanings that are not instances or examples of a "Foo" primary concept or type, those should be included on a "Foo (disambiguation)" page.
For example:
Particle is a broad and abstract concept used to address many different ideas in physics, generally relating to small units from which larger things are composed. Although there are many different kinds of particles at levels ranging from the subatomic to the macroscopic, the broad concept is properly susceptible to explanation in an article. Other meanings, such as Particle (band), are presented at Particle (disambiguation).
A Supreme Court, Department of Labor, National Trust, or Finance Minister is each a kind of entity occurring in multiple countries and possibly in other political entities, and serving the same purpose in each. Rather than having disambiguation pages at these titles linking to existing articles on these entities by nation, each should contain an article describing in general terms what the concept is, and how the different examples of this concept relate to each other.
In writing articles on these subjects, it is useful to directly address the scope of the term, and the history of how the concept has developed. Each of the examples of the concept or type of thing should be included at some point in the article, possibly in a list, so that no information is lost from what would have been presented in the disambiguation page format. Consider using summary style to incorporate information about the subtopics into the main article.

Cheers! bd2412 T 03:31, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Nice. Thanks. --JaGatalk 05:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay then, shall we make this policy? bd2412 T 14:25, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
I haven't heard anyone object. I say just do it! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:15, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
I want to be sure that once this is established as policy, enforcement is not stymied by editors pointing to the limited number of participants in the discussion. I'd like to at least give it a few more days, and maybe publicize it a bit more. bd2412 T 22:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay, having just nominated Beliefs and practices of Jehovah's Witnesses for deletion as an improper use of a disambiguation page, I'm at my wit's end. Hearing no objection, this is going in as policy. bd2412 T 18:12, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
The proposed policy looks reasonable to me. (I can't comment on jehovah's witnesses though). bobrayner (talk) 14:42, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
The JW issue was resolved in an AFD by redirecting the page to the main page on JW beliefs. bd2412 T 15:56, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Redirects from "(disambiguation)" titles

Is it ever useful to have a page "Something (disambiguation)" containing a redirect?

There are valid circumstances for each of the following:

  • "Variant" redirects to "Main" article
  • "Variant" redirects to "Main (disambiguation)"
  • "Variant" redirects to "Main" which is a disambiguation page (no primary topic)

However, if there is a page "Something (disambiguation)" containing a redirect, then it must be

  • "Main (disambiguation)" redirecting to "Main", or
  • "Variant (disambiguation)" redirecting to "Main (disambiguation)", or
  • "Variant (disambiguation)" redirecting to "Main".

In each case, the redirecting page cannot arise usefully as the result of a search, so it can only arise as the target of a link. Would it not be better in each such case to fix all links with the redirecting page as their target to point directly to the target of the redirect, and then delete the redirecting title? What value does such a redirecting page have in wikipedia?

Apologies if this has come up before, but I couldn't find it covered clearly in the Project page, and I'm wondering if I've missed or not thought of something. Mooncow (talk) 02:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:INTDABLINK. bd2412 T 03:02, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Yep, and we should really have a bot create all those redirects automatically, too. Wouldn't that be a novel idea. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
The redirects aren't needed until the first intentional link is created, so it's not bot work. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:21, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
It's not? That will come as a surprise to User:RussBot, which creates a redirect to every disambiguation page that has incoming links, as per Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RussBot 5. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
I've had such redirects I created subsequently deleted in RfD since they were unused and in no danger of being search terms. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:33, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
They will just be recreated by the bot, operating in conformance with its community-approved function of creating such pages. Perhaps we should have a more clearly spelled out policy section on the existence and use of such redirects. bd2412 T 18:09, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Right, this seems to be a discussion of "Main (disambiguation)" redirecting to "Main". If this is considered desirable (and the existence of User:RussBot suggests that it is) then I suggest this should be added to the "Valid causes for redirecting to a disambiguation page" in WP:INTDABLINK, where it doesn't seem currently to be mentioned either way. Mooncow (talk) 02:53, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
OK, so "Main (disambiguation)" redirecting to "Main" is being discussed above. What about "Variant (disambiguation)" redirecting to "Main (disambiguation)"? Can this be useful, or should such pages (ie "Variant (disambiguation)") be deleted? NB it is specifically "Variant (disambiguation)" redirecting to "Main (disambiguation)" that I'm talking about: "Variant" redirecting to "Main (disambiguation)" is quite different, and is obviously useful in many cases. Mooncow (talk) 02:53, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
True. There is probably no good reason to have "Variant (disambiguation)" redirect to "Main (disambiguation)" if the latter can be used in a piped link. bd2412 T 05:10, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Possible reason: the terms are different enough but the lists short enough that the disambiguations are merged now but could reasonably become long enough to split. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:19, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Another reason they tend to arise is following a rename/move: "X (disambiguation)" gets moved to "Y (disambiguation)". I'm presuming that n general, once there are no incoming links to "X (disambiguation)", in this case, the "X (disambiguation)" page can be safely deleted. This is in contrast to moving an ordinary page, where the redirect can usefully stay in place to helpfully forward searches, old links, etc. Mooncow (talk) 14:24, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Also variant (dab) might link to a section of the main dab. Rich Farmbrough, 17:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC).
But regardless only recent or harmful main-space redirects should be deleted. They may all have:
  1. Historical links
  2. Links from external sites
  3. Links form mirrors
  4. Be typed at the prompt
  5. Be entered by an agent
  6. Be the natural place to link to in a hat note or similar
Deleting them gains us nothing (well it saves a smidge on d/l-ing data dumps, but that's it).
Rich Farmbrough, 17:24, 16 March 2011 (UTC).
These are valid points, but what about a theoretical "print version" of Wikipedia? When we say "For other uses, see: Variant (disambiguation)" it would be irritating to flip to "Variant (dismabiguation)" only to find "see: Main (disambiguation)". It's a strange comparison because 99.9999% of our readership will probably access Wikipedia online, but Wikipedia in print isn't unheard of, and probably about as common as #s 1-5 that you've mentioned. ...comments? ~BFizz 03:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

In all this don't forget that many people who use external search mechanisms will enter titles with "(disambiguation)". For example, if I am looking for X but don't think it is the primary topic for that title and don't know what the disambiguator will be, then I will go to the "X (disambiguation)" title direct from my url-bar search. This obviously means that in many cases I am redirected to "X" where there is no primary topic, making these very useful. In some cases where there are related topics with a single disambiguation page, I will be redirected from "X (disambiguation)" to "Y" or "Y (disambiguation)" I don't think it wise therefore to declare any class of redirects from "X (disambiguation)" as deletable without discussion (excepting where they meet the CSD criteria). RfD is not overloaded and so there is no harm in discussing each one on it's merits. Thryduulf (talk) 17:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't see these two cases as being keep-worthy:
"Variant (disambiguation)" -> "Main (disambiguation)" [a dab page, PT exists]
"Variant (disambiguation)" -> "Main" [a dab page, PT doesn't exist]
Thryduulf suggests that users might search for "X (disambiguation)" not knowing whether or not such a disambiguation page exists. In the event that X is unambiguous, there will not exist a "X (disambiguation)". For example, I might assume that Bill Clinton is ambiguous, and so search for Bill Clinton (disambiguation); however, no such dab exists. It would be silly to create a "(disambiguation)" redirect for all articles; so then the question becomes: for which articles or dab pages do we create them? The purpose for the "(disambiguation)" redirects is (afaik) so that they can be predictably linked to, and the links we use will explicitly state that they are linking to a dab page for that term. I can't imagine any examples of "Variant (disambiguation)" -> [other dab page] that would have any legitimate purpose.
In my opinion, we should encourage our readers to search for the base name, and use the hatnotes to navigate to disambiguation pages. ...comments? ~BFizz 03:01, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

pronunciation

Should pronunciation be added to dab pages, e.g. this? I think it shouldn't as dab pages are not informational, they are just search aids, and this tries to convey information, but can't find clear guidelines. --Muhandes (talk) 21:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's helpful. It raises the question "What about any use of italic which is pronounced differently?" The same editor has added pronunciation to a lot of other dab pages: AFAIK the Greek island Hydra is pronounced "Heedra" rather than the "Haidra" shown for the biological and mythological uses; OED gives no less than 4 pronunciations for Nystagmus, etc. Dab pages do not need pronunciation: they are differentiating between different uses of the written word. I'm not sure whether the split on Polish is helpful, or not. PamD (talk) 23:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
I as the one who has added the pronunciation hints discussed here have to confess that I have clearly made a mistake in the case of Hydra. I hope I have not acted as negligently in too many other cases and am going to check through what I have done. When somebody adds a catchword to such a dab page, he resp. she can, also, of course easily overlook that at the top of the page, there is already given a pronunciation which is false regarding the topic he resp. she is adding. I don`t know how I could overlook this problem. At least in the one case of Italic, I felt quite sure that all the catchwords would very probably be pronounced in the same way, and relied on somebody correcting me if they shouldn`t.
I have already removed the pronunciation hint from the Hydra page, the more as I wouldn`t know how to give the pronunciation for the Greek island, which could otherwise be given, additionally, right behind the catchword meaning the island.
In cases in which catchwords should be added to such a dab page automatically—and I fear I have added a pronunciation hint to such a page in the last days—one can, of course, not give a pronunciation. I was strongly diverted from these issues in the last days through the hazards around the Japanese nuclear power plants and, partially, dealt with such pronunciation issues to systematically calm down my nerves. I hope I will be able to go through all the pages I have added pronunciation hints to, within the next days, and manage not to overlook cases in which I am not sure that there should (except from really unprobable things) only be one pronunciation.
Regarding cases of words which can be pronounced differently, EncycloPetey has urged me to choose the most common of them. I have, in several cases, had a bad feeling while I did so, because I have not lived in the Anglo-Saxon world long enough nor listened to English radio or TV or spoken to Englishmen enough to be able to decide such matters surely, in all cases. What has led me was, in every single case, the conviction that one should publicise the international phonetic alphabet much more than that is done, at the moment. I see a magnificent possibility to make international communication easier through it and could imagine that it would, one day, end up to be more or less the only remaining alphabet. Given this, I thought it couldn`t harm if I chose only one of several possible ways to pronunce a word, as long as this was correct. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 02:15, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
It would, of course, be a pity if the correct English pronunciation of words as important as Hydra (/ˈhaɪdrə/) was only given at a place as difficult to find as http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hydra . One usually overestimates how far others knew the pronunciation of words one is oneself familiar with. I can imagine that such an unfamiliarity might feel quite embarrassing for a lot of people. Therefore—and I think, this has anyway not been challenged, here—one should indeed give the pronunciation at more places also within Wikipedia. Hydra is a good example of how one can publicise the IPA. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 02:26, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
To reiterate the point made by PamD: Pronunciation guides are not needed at all on disambiguation pages. Disambiguation pages are navigation pages, and pronunciation is not helpful to users in selecting their desired destinations from among the various topics listed (which may have, as pointed out, various pronunciations) but rather adds distracting clutter. This information should be confined to the respective articles.--ShelfSkewed Talk 04:35, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • The only purpose of a disambiguation page is to direct the reader to one of a choice of possible articles they may be looking for. Pronunciation is irrelevant, and by cluttering the disambiguation page it damages it. By all means add pronunciations to individual articles, but not to disambiguation pages. There is no mention of pronunciation in WP:MOSDAB: that means that it has no place on those pages, and should be removed where it has already mistakenly been added. PamD (talk) 08:09, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

O.k., I`m going to remove all the pronunciation information I have given on such pages and—in some cases—to put them into one or more of the pages linked to from the dab page. My intention was to avoid the same pronunciation information showing up on all-too many single pages, again and again. I feared that could be criticized as exaggerated. At least on pages which—like the above mentioned Polish—link to catchwords which really are absolutely different, I`d say pronunciation information could clearly help to do what disambiguation pages are made for.

There is always the problem with the English Wikipedia that it is used by millions of people all over the world who have, partially, decisive problems with a correct pronunciation so that there are strong arguments to help them with according hints, and that, on the other side, pronunciation information on words like, for example, Polish and polish could appear all-too trivial to mother-tongue speakers. That was what drove me to add such information to some disambiguation pages. On the Hydra disambiguation page, I had given the pronunciation information like this:

/ˈhaɪdrə/

i.e. so that one was clearly told the pronunciation information referred only to the English use and, by that, probably not to other uses like, for example, the Greek use for the Greek island. The pronunciation hints I gave were also just added in brackets, i.e., not in whole sentences—thus, more or less, still belonging to the catchword, itself.

I had not known of the existence of the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) (WP:MOSDAB) and beg Your pardon for having broken the rules given there. I don`t know if I am going to manage to remove all the pronunciation hints I have added to disambiguation pages, still today. I`d say I should devote some time onto deciding which single pages I should add that information to. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 15:46, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I have gone through the respective pages and think I will not have overlooked much. Thanks for the advice! --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 16:45, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
I had still overlooked Nystagmus and have removed the IPA hint, now, also there, putting it into the two single articles linked to on the disambiguation page. Indeed, the pronunciation is also given in a Wiktionary article on "nystagmus" linked to down at "External links" in the Wikipedia article on Pathologic nystagmus. In the Wikipedia article on Physiologic nystagmus, that Wiktionary entry is not linked to. The Wikipedia article on Pathologic nystagmus is quite long so that one doesn`t find the link to the Wiktionary article very easily, and the word and how it has to be pronounced appears rather exotic. The New Shorter Oxford of 1993 gives only the pronunciation I have given, myself. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 18:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
In case you didn't already know, you can add a link to Wiktionary on disambiguation pages by placing the template {{wiktionary}} at the top of the page (some pages place it in See also section, but it is more typically at the top). older ≠ wiser 19:24, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
BTW, Nystagmus looks to me (as someone unfamiliar with the term) a valid link target itself, and should be stubbed out as a "genus" article (from #Genus and species above), with links to the types of nystagmuses/nystagmi in the stub article. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:25, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
  • For the record, the complete OED offers: "Brit. /nʌɪˈstagməs/ , /nɨˈstagməs/ , U.S. /naɪˈstægməs/ , /nəˈstægməs/ ". I don't know how authoritative Wiktionary is. PamD (talk) 23:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I don`t understand what JHunter might mean by "a valid link target itself".

—As long as a shorter version of the OED gives just one pronunciation, one can probably assume one was not going to cause confusion giving the same. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 13:09, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Anyone wanting the pronunciation of a word should consult a dictionary. It may be useful to show pronunciations in Wikipedia for proper names, but not in general for ordinary words. If it is useful to show the pronunciation at all, it should be in a specific article on the topic in the sense being used, because the pronunciation will not always be common to all uses. (Reading, bow, hydra, etc). Look at Shrewsbury (disambiguation): you could give a pronunciation, but do you know which of the two common pronunciations is correct for Arthur Shrewsbury or Shrewsbury, Kentucky? I don't, and it's better to give no information than wrong information. Please keep pronunciation guides out of disambiguation pages. (In case you don't already know it, have a look at the splendid The Chaos as a sample of English pronunciation problems!) PamD (talk) 16:37, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I have understood that pronunciation should not be given on disambiguation pages and (as I have described it above, also because of the danger of misunderstandings / wrong information You pointed me to) removed, as I hope, all such hints I had added.

I do not see why pronunciation hints should be excluded from proper articles on topics which are no proper names. Of two hundred arbitrarily chosen articles in a volume of the German encyclopedia Der Große Brockhaus from 1956, twenty gave a pronunciation, four of them for ordinary words (i.e. a share of two percent). These four words were foreign words more or less tightly integrated into the German language: Sabotage, Sacking, Sacre-Coeur, Safe (sabotage; a kind of jute; Sacred Heart; safe). I don`t see why Wikipedia, which has more storage room for every single article and, anyway, tends to be more popular than works like the Große Brockhaus, should not take over this good custom. When I went through certain medicinal, biological, and other scientific realms within the English Wikipedia, some weeks ago, adding hints to the pronunciation where I counted that useful, I often was confronted with the situation that such a hint was already in place, in numberless cases of articles on topics which were no proper names. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 01:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

I have again gone through a bigger part of the articles I have added pronunciation information to and seen that there had still to be corrected a lot. Thank You for reminding me, again, of how important our work here is. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 06:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Is this a "broad concept" situation or a disambiguation situation?

There's an ongoing discussion at Talk:Old Town (Franklin, Tennessee) that I think boils down to a question of when WP:CONCEPTDAB applies and when a situation requires disambiguation. Perspectives of veteran disambiguators could be helpful there, if someone has time to look into the situation.

Old Town is a place where there is a prehistoric Native American mound complex that apparently was a landmark on the Natchez Trace and was known for generations as "Old Town," a mid-19th century house that is popularly called "Old Town" because it is built on or next to the mound complex, and an early-19th century bridge called "Old Town Bridge". The mound complex, the house, and the bridge are separately listed on the National Register of Historic Places, so there is a perception that each one is a notable topic for a separate article. The article Old Town (Franklin, Tennessee) currently is the article about the mound complex. There currently are, however, two competing versions of the article Old Town (Franklin, Tennessee): This one covers the whole topic of "Old Town", with a focus on the mound complex and links to the other articles that are supposed to provide more information about the house and the bridge, while this shorter version treats the mound complex and the house as distinct topics requiring disambiguation via hatnotes, while the bridge is mentioned briefly in the text. A third proposal seems to have emerged at the Talk page, under which the article about the mound complex would be renamed to "Old Town Archaeological Site" and I suppose that Old Town (Franklin, Tennessee) would become a disambiguation page.

Please comment on the article talk page. --Orlady (talk) 01:44, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Since this is relevant to the policy generally, I'll copy my response from that page over here: A disambig page can't sit at this title anyway, because it would be an incomplete disambiguation (see WP:INCOMPDAB). Therefore, if this is not the site of the article, then it must either redirect to whichever topic is primary, or redirect to the general disambig page for Old Town, and specifically to a Tennessee section broken out from the existing United States section. As for this being a concept, I'm really not sure. The three allegedly ambiguous terms are clearly related, with the later names being derived from proximity to the older. If they sit on the same location, then they are merely different uses of the same plot of land, but if they are distinct locations, then they are not really susceptible to description as the "same thing". The best way to look at it is from the view of the person making a general incoming link. Is it possible that they may mean to address the general concept, and not any one particular use of the name? Cheers! bd2412 T 18:25, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Phoenix King

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Phoenix King (disambiguation) has been relisted for more input. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:56, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Annoyed

I don't know who decided that links on disambig pages have to be just the article name and can't be piped. I think it's a bad decision.

For example, I was going to clean up Green Book (disambiguation), which is kind of a mess.

But I can't write entries like

  • The [[Green Book (New York City)|Green Book]], the official guide to the government of New York City

I have to write

  • The [[Green Book (New York City)]], the official guide to the government of New York City

Except that that name of the book is not "Green Book (New York City)". It is "Green Book". The title of the Wikipedia article is "Green Book (New York City)", but so what.

I'm basically not willing to tell people that "Green Book (New York City)" is the title of the official guide to the government of New York City. I'm not willing to do that because it isn't true.

So I'm not going to deal with the page. Let the people who decided that links can't be piped on disambig pages clean it up. It's not just this one example. The inability to pipe takes away flexibility that used to make it possible to write decent disambig pages.

I'm not asking anything to change. I'm sure it's all been discussed and settled. I'm just saying. Herostratus (talk) 05:57, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

But you could write [[Green Book (New York City)|''Green Book'' (New York City)]], to produce Green Book (New York City), which makes it clearer that (NYC) isn't part of the title. I think the reason for making the article titles explicit is that many readers will then be able to find their sought articles most quickly simply by scanning the blue text, without needing to read the black explanatory text at all. (Perhaps it would be strictly more accurate if the first line was more like "The following Wikipedia articles contain information on topics called Green Book:...")--Kotniski (talk) 12:26, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
Actually the link should be a copy and paste away from using it in another article. If you get there by a link, you just copy the correct page name, go back to the link that got you there edit, paste and save. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:31, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Enh. All I'm saying is, OK, I'm sure there was a good reason for deciding that links on disambig pages must be the article name and that bots will enforce this. But as with many decisions there's a cost. And the cost here is that when I see a suboptimal disambig page, my reaction now is "well, I can't pipe, so I don't really have to means to clean this up, so meh, leave it lay". There are cases where just leaving people alone to what they think best is the best thing, in my opinion. Herostratus (talk) 01:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

You could use your User page for "just saying" and "all I'm saying" things, since you're already sure there's a good reason and you're not asking anything to change. Stirring interaction here when you don't want to interact doesn't seem like the best thing. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:58, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
That example looks, to me, like good examples of cases where it's appropriate to have a piped link on a dab page. If a bot rigorously removes piped links from dabs even when the piped link is helpful, perhaps that bot would benefit from tuning?
I don't doubt that it's nice in principle for dab pages to be unpiped, but we shouldn't strictly enforce that principle in corner cases where it's actually detrimental to the article. I'm reminded of the ideal that ledes don't need to be cited because they should be a summary of stuff that's cited further down the article; alas, a minority of articles really do benefit from cites in the lede, and you can guarantee that somebody will arrive at that article wanting to remove the cites, regardless of the effects on the article, in order to consistently enforce the principle...bobrayner (talk) 14:40, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
@Kotniski: Yes, in the particular example I used, the [[Green Book (New York City)|''Green Book'' (New York City)]] kludge would make it slightly less unsatisfactory (although still unsatisfactory). (Although I'm not sure that the robot would allow that, anyway -- it's still a pipe.) But in most cases there is no such a kludge available.
@JHunterJ: Well, when I wrote "I'm sure there was a good reason for deciding that links on disambig pages must be the article name", I was being polite. I wrote that, but what I was actually thinking was "Well, this certainly looks to be the work of moronic control freaks who apparently think that think their fellow editors are idiots who can't be trusted with the pointy scissors". But it wouldn't have been pleasant and agreeable on my part to write that. But since you ask. Herostratus (talk) 00:09, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
I didn't ask for more nonconstructive conversation. I asked that you use your User page for this kind of nonconstructive conversation. Here, it just looks like the work of moronic whiners. Since you asked. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:51, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes or often?

There are 133,282 disambiguation pages out of 3,597,339 articles. Most articles have a unique title that doesn't need disambiguation. The wording in Is there a primary topic? previously said "Although an ambiguous term may refer to more than one topic, it is often the case that one of these topics is highly likely..." I have changed "often" to "sometimes" as more accurate wording, as "often" implies a greater frequency than is actually the case. This was reverted, though I'm not clear why. I have restored the change, though bring the change here for discussion in case there is something I have missed. SilkTork *YES! 11:34, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Wrong stats. Of the 133,282 dab pages, how many are for a title with a primary topic (that is, how many other dabs are at the "(disambiguation)" title rather than the base name)? -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:50, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
If the title goes to the primary topic, there is a hatnote pointing to a disamb page. Some disamb pages are named with (disambiguation) while others are not. However, all disamb pages should have a {{disambig}} tag which puts them in the Disambiguation pages category which gives a count of 133,282. That's a lot of pages, but it is a fraction of the total amount of titles of 3,597,339. There may be some disamb pages (with or without the (dismabiguation) title) which do not have a {{disambig}} tag, but I would assume these would not be many. SilkTork *YES! 16:51, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
You've shown that most titles are not ambiguous enough to need a disambiguation page. What you haven't shown is whether or not titles that are ambiguous often have primary topics or only sometimes have primary topics. Disambiguation pages without primary topics are tagged {{disambig}} and do not have titles that end in " (disambiguation)". Disambiguation pages with primary topics are tagged {{disambig}} and have titles that end in " (disambiguation)". So, back to the earlier question, of the 133,282 dab pages, how many are for a title with a primary topic (that is, how many dabs are at the "(disambiguation)" title rather than the base name)? -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:46, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

This is actually quite easy to determine. There are 192,721 disambiguation pages (using Category:All article disambiguation pages, which provides a more complete count than the category referred to above); of these, 31,447 (or 16.3%) have "(disambiguation)" in the title, suggesting that there is a primary topic. That implies that about five-sixths of disambiguation pages have not had any primary topic identified. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a "sometimes" at best then, and certainly not "often". Perhaps this discussion will serve. Thanks for the numbers, Russ. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:21, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
What about cases where there is no dab page, but only a hatnote from a primary topic pointing to one or more other uses? Station1 (talk) 05:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
More stats are welcome. Those might be harder to come by, but then I didn't know how to get the last set either. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Person names dab pages

I'd like to combine the Tommy Smith and Tom Smith dab pages into the existing Thomas Smith page, as by listing these variant names together it is easier for people to find the particular person they want. A number of other dab pages already combine names (e.g. Andrew Williams includes Andy's), and I note from [4] that combining similar names seems to be allowed. Whilst the individual pages do contain 'see also' links for the alternative names, this is not as easy to view compared with if the names are integrated in the main list. Is the overall view that it is reasonable to combine such name dab pages? Eldumpo (talk) 10:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

If combining them helps readers find the article they want faster, they should be combined. If separating a disambig would help readers find the article they want faster, they should be separated. Probably people named Tommy or Tom or Thomas are not commonly referred to by the other names, so a full merger may not help -- each reader would have a longer list to wade through. Individual Thomases who are sometimes referred to as Tommy could be included on each page, etc. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:31, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your response. My query was a general one on merging name dab pages as well as a specific one about Thomas Smith. I don't know the full background as to why separate pages exist for Tom/Tommy/Thomas, but I suspect it may be just down to individual editor preferences at the time they were created, rather than someone specifically deciding that these three names warrant separate pages. I don't really see any difference to Andrew/Andy. If someone is generally known as Tom/Tommy there may still be instances when they are referred to as Thomas as that will generally be their formal name, and some people/sources may refer to them that way. I do appreciate that size of overall article is something to bear in mind, although don't think in this instance it would be too long, and additional sub-divisions can be created if necessary.Eldumpo (talk) 11:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I would think that people referred to as "Tommy Smith" would actually be named "Thomas Smith" but referred to by a nickname. If that is more commonly the case than not, I would recommend merging the pages. bd2412 T 02:31, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
I think JHunterJ is right. If an article is titled with "Tom", "Tommy" or "Thomas", we should assume that is how the person is most commonly known (absent evidence to the contrary) and therefore is how readers are most likely to search for that person. So if readers search for "Tom Smith" they are more likely to find who they are looking for more easily among other Tom Smiths on the "Tom Smith" dab page than on the other two. For those relatively few cases where readers search under the wrong variation, the other two dab pages are referenced. These three dab pages are already long enough that merging them would make things more difficult for most readers. Station1 (talk) 05:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the responses to my question, and based on the consensus, I do not propose to merge the pages. However, I am not convinced by some of the arguments. I often get involved in writing/expanding sports biographies, and people are often referred to by different names. Yes, the title of the article should generally follow what they are most frequently called, but there will often be instances of other names (e.g. some publications may use their full birth name). The advantage of listing all the variant names together is that people can see at a glance the various people they may be looking for, e.g. at David Evans people named Dave and Dai are integrated into the list, and people within different sports are listed together, separated by birth year. I would suggest most people searching for a Tom Smith or whatever will already know something about him (i.e. that he is a footballer) rather than just be searching for a Tom Smith who they know nothing about. Anyway, in this instance, the length that the proposed merged article would be, helps to form an argument against. Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 15:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

There are two issues are work: what should an article be titled and what articles might be sought by searching for a particular title. If "Dai Evans" is ambiguous, a short list of the ambiguous entries is useful to a reader searching for "Dai Evans". If some of the Dais are also sometimes referred to as "David Evans", they should also be listed on a disambiguation page for "David Evans". But the disambiguation pages might still be left unmerged, unless the merged page is very short or all of the entries are all sometimes referred to by each name. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Dubious "disambig" page

Please see Talk:Disney XD (disambiguation)#Why is this a "disambiguation" page? for discussion and proposed resolution. Note that this page has well over 200 incoming links. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:16, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Educational value and origin

Educational value and origin

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC has (somewhat) recently been changed to state:


A discussion has arisen at Talk:Avatar (Hinduism)#Requested move to move it back to the primary topic page, Avatar. One sentiment repeated by several supporters of the move is that "It is fundamentally a Hindu concept" and "All of the modern uses of the word "Avatar" originate with the Hindu concept, so it's fundamentally the primary topic." One editor helpfully pointed out that origination is not a criterion in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Permit me to copy-paste my response here:

They do include a suggestion to prefer "educational value", which is clearly related to the "originated from" status. It is educational for people to realize that the word "Avatar" didn't originate with computers or movies, but from a much older concept that these recent technologies have drawn from in their use of the word. It's OK for them to go to Avatar and see something they weren't expecting...as long as we also have hatnotes to help them to get where they wanted to go should they choose to ignore the educational value of the article.

You could easily modify my comment, replacing the word Avatar with Nirvana, Ubuntu, Titanic, or whatnot, and get the same idea. I propose that we clarify the part of the guideline that says "especially if one of these topics is a vital article" to explicitly recommend making the "origin" article the primary topic, in most cases. I'm not trying to open this up to a vote just yet, rather, trying to get some feedback on what you all think of this proposal. ...comments? ~BFizz 17:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I still disagree with this. Titanic doesn't redirect to Titan (mythology), for instance, and it shouldn't. Winston Churchill goes to the prime minister, not Winston Churchill (1620–1688). Boston goes to the Massachusetts city, not to Boston, Lincolnshire. The criteria on traffic, wiklinks, vitality, web searches, scholar searches, book searches, and news searches are sufficient, and will often (but not as a rule) lend primacy to the origin. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:44, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
I wish I could have added to that discussion about educational value. I am also an editor of the Avatar page, and an advocate keeping the disambiguation page as the first page one sees when looking up the word "Avatar" rather than the Hindu definition. According to the new policy, they do have an argument. However, the more I think about it, I think the new policy is against one of the highest principles of wikipedia WP:NPOV. Who are we to say what is "educational"? The page Mercury is a good example of that. Is the planet more important, or is it the Roman God? Oh well. Oldag07 (talk) 08:09, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
  • I feel that "educational value" is subjective and may lead to pointless arguments. The reason we have a primary topic is for the benefit of the majority of readers who are thus saved both a moment of disconcertion and having to click through to a disamb page and search there for the article they want and then click through again. I'm not clear what "educational value" is implying. Does a more developed article have more educational value than a stub? Yes. So would the implication be that primary topics are first chosen from Featured Articles, then Good Articles, then B class, C class, etc, regardless of what the reader is actually looking for? Are we as editors making a decision as to which articles readers "should" be reading, and directing them away from the articles they actually want to read. Unless there is a good argument for keeping "educational value" it should be removed. It may also be worth questioning the statement about "vital articles" as well. I think the vital articles project is worthwhile in attracting attention to subjects that are likely to be of enduring importance, but asking readers to click through a topic they are not interested in is not going to address any systematic bias, it's just going to be a nuisance. SilkTork *YES! 10:13, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
"Unless there is a good argument for keeping "educational value" it should be removed." - See Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation/Archive_33#Educational_value. ...comments? ~BFizz 17:30, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Educational value has absolutely nothing to do with how well developed an article is. If you read some of the other discussions on this page you can get familiar with the concept. --JaGatalk 10:30, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
    It is of educational value to know the origin of a word we are using for something, be it a film or guitar synthesizer or social networking, especially when this word happens to be centrally important to a philosophy or religion (Hinduism is both) and happens to in use for thousands of years. I am not suggesting that we sould create new criteria and distictions by which to decide what is educational and what not. I understand the above mentioned concerns. However some terms are simply very obviously useful educationally and this term (Avatar) happens to be one of them. It is also highly relevant (and educational) to all the film fans to know that this term is a term carrying a huge significance for billions of people and why. Words have power, someone uses this power. We show where the power comes from. Else it is like hiding this significance by bypassing it. Hoverfish Talk 13:51, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
    We show the reader the information the reader is looking for. We do not show the reader the information that we feel they should have been looking for instead. In this case, the disambiguation page will direct readers most easily where they want to go, and if they are reading about the film and want to learn more about that significance, Avatar (2009 film)#Themes and inspirations will lead them to it. Primary topic is not a value judgment, an indication of importance, or an identification of word origins. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
    Actually I think there is a certain amount of value judgment. Even before educational value, we gave vital articles more leeway. But who decided what was vital, and how? These are articles that the community has decided are of great importance to the encyclopedia. That's a value judgment. Educational value, really, just allows the community to decide the "vitality" of an article without being subject to membership on the vital articles list. --JaGatalk 18:59, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
    I meant that not "winning" the primary topic position should not be taken as a loss of valuation of the topic. Too much of the arguments around primary topic placement stem from the view that it's an award, like "good article" status, to be sought (and fought for) as validation of the topic, when instead it's just a navigational aid for the benefit of the readership taken as a whole. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:03, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
    Let me put it another way: someone asks for "Apple". This does not link to a disambiguation page but it links to Apple the fruit. Why? Did someone make an extensive search on how many people are looking for the fruit and how many for the computer? No, because we take it as obvious that Apple means the fruit, just as billion others take it as obvious that Avatar means for their side what in the Western world is known by the Hebrew term Messiah (though there are some differences in the two concepts). I heard in a relevant discussion (though I don't remember where it was) the argument that if someone makes a very high budget film called Jesus and then it becomes a big success, the word "Jesus" should also lead to disambiguation page. I find this way of thinking biased, anti-scholarly, counter-educative and unfitting for Wikipedia. Just like it would look very unfitting if the word Apple led to disambiguation page. I may not be very versed and JHunterJ may easily turn my arguments down, but I know what I'm saying and I know it is important for Wikipedia.Hoverfish Talk 14:46, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
    Note that Messiah does not redirect to Messiah (Handel), despite it being "one of the most popular works in the Western choral literature". Nor does it redirect to Messiah (disambiguation). This is a good example of what is meant by "educational value". ...comments? ~BFizz 17:28, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
    Or of primary topic in English-language Wikipedia. It was the primary topic before the educational value bit was added to the guidelines. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:32, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
    But under which pre-existing criteria? Messiah only has about 1.5x the number of incoming wikilinks and page views that Messiah (Handel) has (though page views for (Handel) skyrocket to about 3x as much (~6k/day) as the PT (~2k/day) during December), and both topics, along with Messiah College, show up prominently in google searches. Clearly, it was chosen because of the basic idea behind the "educational value" guideline; even though it wasn't in place, it's just intuitive. ...comments? ~BFizz 20:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
    Educational value can be established by a review of authoritative sources like other encyclopaedias and dictionaries.--Redtigerxyz Talk 04:55, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
    Or by use of Google Scholar and Google Books searches. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:01, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure a consensus is emerging here, nor clarity regarding the disambiguation primary topic function. Where I think there is agreement and understanding is that we disambiguate when there is more than one likely topic for a given search term/article title - and we use the disambiguation process as an aid to the reader to help them find the topic they want. To save time and least confusion, we give a primary topic function to the most likely search term if there is clear evidence that one term is going to be more likely. The majority of readers will then arrive on the right page. The minority will have to search further.

The way we determine the most likely search term is to decide through discussion which is the most likely topic, using incoming links, page hits and amount of books and articles already on that topic. This is considered reasonable evidence, and I don't think that such evidence is in dispute.

However, added to the guideline six months ago was the notion that articles listed on Wikipedia:Vital articles should be considered as part of the evidence. Discussion on the issue was inconclusive, though the use of vital articles as part of the determining process for deciding the primary topic was kept.

Part of the objection for using vital articles is that it adds a new thread to the disambiguation process. One in which we are not aiding the reader to arrive at the most likely topic, but at one we feel is most valued, and therefore we should promote.

More recently the notion of "educational value" was also added. This sits alongside the vital article argument that it would be nice to promote certain articles, because they are educational.

The addition was felt to help counter any criticism that Wikipedia gives undue weight to popular culture, and gained support. Though as others who were not part of that discussion are becoming aware of that addition, it's inclusion is being questioned. Which is where we are now.

I think that presenting the majority of readers with a topic they are not looking for, mainly because Wikipedia editors have decided that the article is one they should be reading instead, is not our purpose, and should not be a part of what we do. It should also be borne in mind that popular culture is represented in the vital articles, particularly at Level 4. Popular culture is as vital and important a topic as any other. I note above that Titanic is mentioned. The primary topic for that is currently at the ship, rather than the film. In vital articles level 4, the film is listed, but not the ship. It is the piece of popular culture that is considered the most important by vital article editors, while disamb editors feel it is the ship. Using value judgements will lead to disputes. Guidelines should provide a path away from dispute, not lead people into conflict.

However, I can see a value in making people aware of a vital article, or one that may have some educational value. It may be worth opening up a discussion to the community, in which vital articles are indicated on disamb pages. I think it may be a bit much to flag them up on a hatnote, but a comment on a disamb page might be worthwhile. We would be leaving the choice up to the reader, which would be appropriate.

Meanwhile, I would like to remove the recent additions from Primary Topic, as I feel it is inappropriate to take the majority of readers to a topic they don't want. Would people make it clear if they would object to the removal of: "An exception may be appropriate when recentism and educational value are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users." SilkTork *YES! 13:44, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I object. While the language might not be optimal, I think it represents an important consideration in determining primary topic. I feel taking as a goal for disambiguation simply to minimize the number of clicks is not particularly encyclopedic. Wikipedia is first an encyclopedia that happens to use the web as primary media. IMO, considerations based on encyclopedic value take precedence over decisions based on the media. The criteria for primary topic had previously had language that extended disagreement might also be an indication that there is not a primary topic. In a way, I think that was a clearer criteria than educational value -- though perhaps it needed tightening that disagreements needed to be based on reasoned principles rather than variants of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. older ≠ wiser 14:59, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
I see the "educational value" as an improvement over the "vital" criteria. Perhaps instead of "origin" we should use the term "leech": if the choice of name for a thing (such as Titanic the film) was strongly influenced by an older thing (titanic the ship) then the older thing is probably the primary topic. When the "popular culture" thing draws heavily from the meaning of something else by adopting its name, that "something else" is clearly the true meaning behind the word. What legitimate encyclopedia would place the movie at Titanic with a hatnote saying "for the ship this film was based on, see ___"? Sure, more users might get there in one click, but it's just wrong for an encyclopedia. ...comments? ~BFizz 15:30, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
I am still opposed to any indication that age or ancestry should be considered, beyond what it already covered by its ongoing primary-ness based on other criteria. Often, the oldest or first will be primary, but because it has retained widespread general educational value (coverage in the kinds of things measured by Google Books and Google Scholar). -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:40, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Age isn't what I'm talking about, though. Origin is. It just so happens that we haven't invented time travel yet, so something can not be derived from anything newer than itself. Origin isn't really measurable by # of hits on a google search, but it's certainly perceivable. If two completely unrelated things happen to share an ambiguous name, then the older one is not necessarily the PT. This is often the case with acronyms, where dab pages are almost always appropriate rather than a PT. ...comments? ~BFizz 22:15, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Which is why I said "or ancestry". -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:23, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Wider community input

When a search title relates to two or more articles should readers be taken to the most likely article they are looking for or the most educational? See above for some previous discussion on this issue, including links to prior discussions. SilkTork *YES! 17:17, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Most likely. I support most likely as that is what most readers will be looking for. Deliberately directing readers to an article they are not looking for is a concept I am very uncomfortable with. And the arbitrary value judgements that would take place as to which article has the most educational or encyclopaedic value would be disruptive and lead to instability as one faction or other temporarily wins out in discussions and the search term would be redirected again and again. Our long standing system of using incoming links, page hits, scholarly sources, Google, and other means of determining the most likely is not a perfect system, but it does tend to produce solid data on which to make a sound judgement. SilkTork *YES! 17:26, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Generally speaking the most likely, though I'm not adverse to introducing other criteria that would give a certain extra weight to more "serious" subjects over ephemeral ones (though I'm not sure how they should be phrased; I don't think "educational value" is meaningful enough).--Kotniski (talk) 17:29, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
    I agree that "educational value" is overly vague, and needs clarification. ...comments? ~BFizz 01:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • base meaning - In cases where the most likely article is also the most "educational", the answer is clearly to redirect there. In cases where these two don't coincide, I believe the encyclopedic thing to do is consider how heavily the popular choice's name draws from the meaning of the educational choice. I'd say typically names of movies, TV shows, books, articles, etc should defer to the concept behind their name, unless it is a clearly distinctive name. Mythbusters need not redirect to myth, Harry Potter should clearly redirect to the media rather than a list of people with that name, but Pearl Harbor, Titanic, Atlantis, Twilight, and so forth should obviously redirect to the concept, and not the media named after it. Some names, however, are still ambiguous and should go to the dab, for example, Evita should go to the dab instead of Eva Peron or Evita (film). This is why I started the "origin" discussion above; perhaps "educational value" isn't a very clear way of stating the policy. However, origin isn't the silver bullet answer either. Radio should not redirect to Radio (film), though the film's name is only tangentially related to a Radio. However, I feel Wikipedia should typically encourage a "base meaning" spirit when considering primary topics. If there is an underlying base meaning to a word, then in most cases the search term should redirect to the base meaning rather than the popular one. It's just a guideline, though. There can and will always be exceptions to the rule. ...comments? ~BFizz 17:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
  • The phrasing of the question is misleading. I don't think this is a simple binary distinction and I don't think we should include simplistic guidance banning placement based on educational value or other considerations besides article traffic. older ≠ wiser 18:14, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
    I agree. The issue is more complicated than a binary choice. Kaldari (talk) 21:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
    I also agree. The originally phrased question ignores the possibilities of 1) sending the user to the dab page, and 2) sending the user to a search results page. Few would support #2 but it is an option. ...comments? ~BFizz 01:21, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Most likely expected. Educational value is often useful for determining likelihood, as there are problems with equating simple traffic counts to likelihood of the article being expected (or perhaps not being surprising) to the reader landing there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:01, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Follow current guidelines. It's a bit more complicated than a simple either-or choice. I think the current guidelines do a good job of addressing the issue. Generally most likely is the best choice, but there are warranted exceptions. Kaldari (talk) 21:21, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Educational value. My view is that Wikipedia should be organized according to the view that everyone who can read it will read it i.e the structure and practises of the project should reflect the highest aspirations. If you start organizing it based on access patterns, and bearing in mind internet use is a relatively narrow demographic, it will begin to lose its focus as a universal encylopedia. Betty Logan (talk) 01:43, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Follow current guidelines and keep educational value as one of the metrics. Educational value is no more arbitrary then the currently approved and most commonly used metric in page move discussions: "Google hits". Using Google hits is the application of Original Research to a non-reliable source. "Most likely" is also quite arbitrary. The way that other Reliable Source encyclopedias title their articles might be the most accurate metric of educational value, since these are reliable sources not only in terms of content, but in terms of choosing titles for that subject. In the end, page move discussions must balance all of these things, but "educational value" certainly deserves more weight than "Google hits". First Light (talk) 01:45, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Base Meaning If I'm searching for something, it's because I want to find that thing. Get me as close as you can get me, but don't presume that I'm looking for something more educational. Let's face it, plenty of hits come from people wanting to look up the plot to a Simpson's episode. We don't want to alienate people by making it harder for them to find what they are looking for. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:41, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with B Fizz and Bkonrad (older ≠ wiser). This is not as simple as it seems, and I think we should decide this on a case-by-case basis. However, I think it's pretty obvious we should leave Twilight at the concept of the natural occurrence and not the poorly-written fictional series, etc. It is one of those basic topics that should stay un-disambiguated. I also, as per Kaldari, don't see any need to change anything. We can have exceptions and we can have discussions for each contentious article title. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Case-by-case Attempting to set a general rule based on a vague concept like "most educational" is doomed to failure. Let's just figure this out on a case by case basis.--Danaman5 (talk) 05:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Case-by-case I fully support Danaman's viewpoint here. Sweeping generalised rules like this in a fully contributory and discussable information source will lead to the limitation of knowledge. People's viewpoints about which is more 'educational' or more 'anything' could badly damage the structure of information. Paul Bedson (talk) 23:27, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment The current guideline doesn't make "most educational" a rule, even in general terms. Nor does it make it a one-to-one comparison, as the RfC states in bold, between "the most likely article they are looking for or the most educational." It's only one of several elements that need to be balanced and discussed to arrive at a consensus. It merely says that "An exception may be appropriate when recentism and educational value are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article." There are several qualifiers there: "an exception may be appropriate"; "recentism and educational value"; "especially if....vital article". First Light (talk) 05:14, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Most likely if it's genuinely clear cut, being careful to avoid recentism and temporary likelihood of search target. Otherwise go for the primary topic as is likely to be judged in the long-term. Judging which article is "most educational" is fraught with problems.--Michig (talk) 10:20, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. It may be appropriate and less potentially disruptive if, in cases of doubt, a disamb page is set up rather than taking the reader to an unlikely article. Adding in considerations of "base article" or "most educational" introduce subjective opinions in what is after all simply an index. If there were no other possible topics then a search term would take a reader directly to what they were looking for, regardless of opinions of the educational worth of such a topic. Soggy biscuit goes direct to the appropriate topic rather than via biscuit. It could be argued that biscuit is the base term, and is of educational value as it informs the reader about the object that the activity is named after. Clearly such an argument would be silly, but is essentially no different to any such argument suggesting that I be taken somewhere I don't want to go because someone feels I need educating about it. Taking someone to a neutral page in which a list of related topics is given is of greater educational value than taking someone to the wrong topic. It is also less confusing. An index page is reasonable. The wrong article is unexpected. SilkTork *YES! 11:12, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Pretty much all disambiguation is subjective though really, isn't it? Even an index page is subjective because that's still a decision undertaken by us based on preconceived notions, because 100% of readers will then be taken to a page they don't want to be at, rather than maybe 40% of readers. If we were going to have a completely objective view then we would probably just follow the precedent set by other encylopedias, which is what I think should be done in cases where analagous entries can be found. So in some cases article title designation could be made an objective process, and in others we are still left with our imperfect subjective processes, but basically it would get us to a stage where an entry in Brittanica could be found on Wikipedia under the same name. Betty Logan (talk) 12:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Most likely - the value of Wikipedia in the eye of the public will be greater the more likely a person is to find what (s)he's looking for immediately on the page (s)he loads first. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:25, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
    But if we make it well-understood that Wikipedia sends you to the "educational" thing when you type it in, then users will expect to go to that thing when they type it into the search box. Wikipedia serves a different purpose than Google. It's Google's job to turn words into a link the user wants. It's Wikipedias job to be an online encyclopedia. ...comments? ~BFizz 20:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Most likely. This seems obvious to me.. It depends on what the reader wants to be educated on, so in all cases the most likely target IS the most educational because that's what the reader wanted to learn about. Although there are some exceptions, as in the case where "big tits" redirected to Great Tit.. I did think that was a much better target ;p -- œ™ 22:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Most likely. If I use an encyclopedia I expect to be sent as close as possible to what I'm looking for. While an encyclopedia serves also to educate, it is not a textbook. Kudpung (talk) 06:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
  • More educational, if by that you mean, I dunno, more scholarly or more mainstream of more... scientific, or more real-culture as opposed to pop-culture, or whatever. Like in an example given above, "Twilight" should go to the atmospheric phenomena and not the pop-culture book series. But if the "more likely" is really an order of magnitude more likely, then it would be OK to go to the more likely. Really it's kind of an art and needs to be done on a case-by-case basis. But with the default tending toward the more educational. In some cases maybe you have to throw up your hands and go to a disambig page, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 09:23, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Base meaning. The term people are most likely looking for may be influenced by various aspects regarding popular culture or some other recent phenomena. That's why dictionary / scientific definitions should always come first, with all other meanings thrown up in a disambiguation page. EricLeb01 (Page | Talk) 19:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
  • False dilemma The guideline does not require an editor to choose between "most likely" and "most educational". There's a strong emphasis on "most likely" but it also allows educational value to be a factor in consideration. That way, we don't have to move Apple Inc. to Apple or move Tool (band) to Tool. --JaGatalk 23:51, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Rather than "likely" or "educational", I would place the preference on "real" over "fictional". If the name of something in the real world is used as well for a fictional representation of it (such as "Evita" or "Battle of Los Angeles"), then the name should be for the real one. If the name of a real and known-by-all thing is taken by an unrelated thing because they like the name or whatever (such as the names of many music bands), then the general concept should be used. MBelgrano (talk) 02:44, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
    • A very reasonable alternative in my mind. Avoids the issues with the other options. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Introduces problems of what is "known-by-all" (which we already have to deal with in move requests even though it's not a criterion). Should Black Sabbath should be moved to Black Sabbath (band) so that the base name can lead to the Shabbat Chazon or Black Mass? Should Amadeus be moved to Amadeus (play) so the base name can lead to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? (If you can deflate either of those specific examples, note that there are others possible.) The question of "likely" and/or "educational" would also still need to be answered in the cases where multiple things are "real" (such as at Lincoln) or multiple things are "fictional", such as the recent request for Inception). Where "real" or "non-band" things are primary, I believe the criteria of "most expected", informed by both traffic and educational value. Traffic alone won't address the desire to avoid surprising readers; someone looking for the band Muse wouldn't be surprised (I hope) to land at Muse, even if the band article had more traffic. "expected" and "educational" covers the "known-by-all" well. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:10, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Agree with JHunterJ on this point. There are numerous counterexamples where a fictional topic IS by all measures the primary topic. Should Hamlet be moved to Hamlet (play)?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bkonrad (talk • contribs) 22:52, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
    • Great idea in general. But there is also an idea of "trademark-ness" that holds sway. Some names could allude to other things, but are not commonly used in that way. JHunterJ's Amadeus example was good. ...comments? ~BFizz 00:09, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
  • False dilemma For the reasons stated by JaGa. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:19, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Follow current guidelines, but I think "namesakehood" (what some call "base meaning" above) should be added to the factors considered when deciding primary topics. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:42, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I hardly realize what is the discussion about. We know, even if a word is essentially ambiguous, there may be cases where we give the preference to one article, such as a primary (base) meaning. But these are quite rare cases, so Wikipedia should follow a general rule: if ambiguous, then a disambiguation page. It is a bit less handy for readers than alternative approaches, but otherwise we would have a high risk of incorrect internal links to articles which can remain undetected and unfixed for years. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:55, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
  • It's my opinion that the guideline should more strongly endorse a disambiguation page as the default in cases where usage is ambiguous with some exceptions. AFAIC, internal traffic statistics are of value only when there is a very marked difference in traffic and the primary topic is not contra-indicated by other measures (such as Google Web, Google Books, Google Scholar, common sense of editors, etc). older ≠ wiser 15:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm also not sure you're asking the right question. It's not really about likely versus educational. It's definitely not about popularity. It's some combination of all of them which indicates it's some other criteria. Relevance? I think that's the criteria. It's just hard to define. It's the one that best fits the search term. Shooterwalker (talk) 12:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Wrong question. The correct question, IMHO, is whether we can determine at all, to a high likelihood, what the probable intended target of the search term is. Bear in mind that since the term is (by definition) ambiguous, we can never be certain what a particular reader thinks it should mean. Some terms, however, are so widely and commonly used throughout the English-speaking world for a particular purpose that we can reach a consensus that readers who use them very probably intend the common usage. If we cannot reach consensus on this question, then the title should contain a disambiguation page, not redirect to either a "most likely" or a "most educational" substitute. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Most likely as determined by consensus. Marcus Qwertyus 00:50, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Motion to close or change rfc

This rfc was a poorly worded false dichotomy. What exactly are we discussing? Why are so many contributing to the discussion as if it were a !vote between "most likely" and "most educational"? What do these !votes even mean? I suggest we close this rfc, with the possibility of opening a separate, more clearly defined, rfc. ...comments? ~BFizz 22:31, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

We are discussing that we have always disambiguated by "most likely", and that recently a wording has been introduced to direct people not to what they expect to read, but to something that a Wikipedia editor has decided is "more educational". The new wording is: "An exception [to directing to the most likely article] may be appropriate when recentism and educational value are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users." My bolding. This wording says that editors may decide (in situations which are not made clear) that readers who are searching for one topic may instead be directed to another because somebody considers it to have greater educational value. Someone might decide that people wanting to check who directed Titanic would be better served by taking them to the concept behind the name instead. This brings to mind Dotheboys Hall:

"This is the first class in English spelling and philosophy, Nickleby," said Squeers, beckoning Nicholas to stand beside him. "We'll get up a Latin one, and hand that over to you. Now, then, where's the first boy?"

"Please, sir, he's cleaning the back-parlour window," said the temporary head of the philosophical class.

"So he is, to be sure," rejoined Squeers. "We go upon the practical mode of teaching, Nickleby; the regular education system. C-l-e-a- n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, winder, a casement. When the boy knows this out of book, he goes and does it. It's just the same principle as the use of the globes. Where's the second boy?"

"Please, sir, he's weeding the garden," replied a small voice.

"To be sure," said Squeers, by no means disconcerted. "So he is. B-o-t, bot, t-i-n, tin, bottin, n-e-y, ney, bottinney, noun substantive, a knowledge of plants. When he has learned that bottinney means a knowledge of plants, he goes and knows 'em. That's our system, Nickleby: what do you think of it?"

"It's very useful one, at any rate," answered Nicholas

I think that Squeers' system is perhaps more useful than than of attempting to educate people by sending them to articles they didn't ask for. It's a novel idea though, and perhaps should be introduced at university and research libraries around the world. If a librarian has a doubt about which book is being ordered, they offer substitutes rather than deliberately giving a researcher the wrong text. SilkTork *YES! 17:56, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
The guideline's wording has never stated that the 'most likely' should unquestionably be the primary topic. It has always stated that consensus should be reached, and page statistics might be a good indicator. Recently, the guideline was expanded to illustrate some situations where it might not be a good indicator. But the main idea of the guideline is the same: consensus for each particular case, rather than blindly following one criteria or another. This rfc takes tiny points of the guideline completely out of context and pits them against each other. It is juvenile and pointless. This shouldn't be a criteria war. Conflicting criteria can coexist, and consensus can decide which is most applicable when. ...comments? ~BFizz 19:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
"The guideline's wording has never stated that the 'most likely' should unquestionably be the primary topic." Yes it has. That is the purpose of primary topic. If there is a topic that is most likely to be what people are looking for, we direct people there rather than a disamb page. The disamb process was set up to act as an index page for when we have the same titles for different topics. The aim has always been to seek to deliver people to the page they are searching for. We don't, however, always know (or agree) on what might be the most likely, so we have used various data, such as links, Google hits, page views and the amount of books on a topic. This is not perfect, but is the best we have so far. Any attempt to improve the way we decide what is most likely is to be welcomed. Confusing the issue by introducing a conflicting and subjective judgement, and explicitly stating that we are deciding NOT to direct people to the most likely, is not in the best interests of our readers, and is certainty not what disambiguation is about.
"This rfc takes tiny points of the guideline completely out of context and pits them against each other." This RFC is seeing if there is consensus for a recent introduction to the guideline which introduces a conflict. The RFC isn't introducing the conflict, the recent new wording has done that by changing the purpose of primary topic from "most likely" to "regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users". That changes the whole purpose and ethos of the disambiguation project from helping direct readers to what they are looking for into directing readers into someone we think they should be reading instead.
There is a good intention behind the change, and the enthusiasm for the notion of the moral good has swept some people along. I hope, though, that people will pause and think about the implications of the change. SilkTork *YES! 20:58, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
Well put. This is a pretty confusing RfC; the choice we're presented with doesn't represent what's in the guideline. --JaGatalk 00:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)


The Rfc is badly worded. Editors above agree that some judgment needs to be exercised in selecting titles. It's therefore appropriate to have in the guidelines things like "educational value" as one of multiple criteria to be discussed in reaching consensus. Wikipedia is based on consensus in editorial decisions, and this is an editorial, not a factual question, so consensus based on any and all relevant criteria, such as educational value, should be explicitly stated in guidelines. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Refocus?

A number of people are suggesting that the question is the wrong one. Perhaps we should be looking at the purpose of disambiguation and primary topic. Disamb was set up to deal with the situation in which a reader enters a search title and there is more than one possible article for the term. So what do we do? We initially create a disambiguation page in which the possible articles are listed. This is a sensible approach, and I don't think anyone disagrees with that. However, there are circumstances in which one of the articles is the most likely to be the one that the majority of people are looking for, and so we have the notion of primary topic. Where we have difficultly is in how we decide what the primary topic actually is. Perhaps the questions should be: 1) Do we keep primary topic? and 2) If we keep it, how do we decide what the primary topic is? Though there is a sense that some primary topics are very obvious The Sun, I would rather be taken to Sun (disambiguation) in that instance (and discover how many topics there are with Sun as part of the title), than be taken to RMS Titanic when entering Titanic and expecting Titanic (1997 film). There are ongoing disputes and problems with the notion of primary topic, and our systems of working out which is the primary topic are unsatisfactory. We could resolve that by always having a disamb page. Disamb pages are themselves informative and educational, and less frustrating than landing on the wrong page. SilkTork *YES! 12:07, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the proposal of never having a primary topic, if that is the proposal. The focus is (or should be) how to determine which topic being placed at the base name would be most beneficial for the readership; if none would very beneficial, then there's no primary topic. Disambig pages themselves are not educational or informative; they are navigational. I do not empathize with the possible frustration of someone landing on Red when they intended Red (2008 film), for example, but I can empathize with the frustration of landing at Red (disambiguation) when intending Red. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
There are a few extreme solutions to this problem. When a user types in a search term:
  • Always take them to the search page [this is a horrible idea]
  • Always take them to a disambiguation page
  • Always take them to an article
None of these extremes is a good choice, imho. Currently, we have a very vague "let consensus decide" hybrid approach that applies either #2 or #3 on a case-by-case basis, defaulting at #3 in unambiguous cases. SilkTork seems to propose a more straightforward hybrid approach, where #3 is used for the unambiguous terms, and #2 is used for the ambiguous terms. While the clarity of this proposition is appealing, I personally feel disambiguation pages should "get out of your way" as much as possible.
I also don't think that taking our readers to the "wrong" page is such a bad thing. I return to my Twilight example; I don't care how many people expect to reach Twilight (book) by typing in "Twilight", those people deserve a wiki-slap-in-the-face by taking them to the page about the "real thing". I could say the same about Titanic. Reader, did you really forget that there's actually a ship called the "Titanic" after which the film was named? One way of determining the Primary Topic might be this: if we had to choose only one of the articles to keep, out of all the ambiguous choices, and delete the rest, then which one would it be? If there is a clear "encyclopedic" choice (not basing the choice on popularity), then that is probably the PT. Disclaimer: I'm not saying this measure is infallible. Some might say that Titanic (film) is more culturally significant than the events it portrays. ...comments? ~BFizz 15:47, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
None of the readership "deserves" a wiki-slap. The encyclopedia is a tool for the readers, not a tool for the editors. Determination of hypothetical "sole topicness" is not related to "primary topicness" -- sole topic should be determined by importance, but primary topic is not (or should not be) a measure of importance, age, or ancestry, except where those are submeasures of reader expectation (not editor valuation). -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.
"Titanic" is the name of the film, which is based on the story of the RMS Titanic, which was named after the Titans. Titanic also relates to titanium, another thing named after the Titans, so it could be quite reasonably argued that titanic should go to the Titans. However, assuming that people are looking for one thing when they may be looking for something else is very problematic, especially when many of us are not fully knowledgeable about everything. We know the stuff we know, but we don't know everything, and rely on sources such as Wikipedia to inform us about topics we know little about. Within our own span of knowledge we can't always reasonably be expected to know exactly what other people are looking for. While a discussion among a broad range of Wikipedians will improve our knowledge base, we are aware that there is a systemic bias among the whole community, which increases when it comes down a handful of editors deciding on primary topics. If there is clear and broad consensus (it's bleedin' obvious) that a topic is most likely, then primary topic can serve a purpose, but if there are disputes and discussions, then perhaps we should not be casting around looking for reasons to have a primary topic. If we have to do a Google search or bring in notions of educational value, then we are moving away from the bleedin' obvious, and we are starting to impose our own biased (and sometimes poorly informed) points of view. The notion of disambiguation is to help readers find what they are looking for. If we are unsure then we should default to a disambiguation page. SilkTork *YES! 12:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
I guess I differ with both of you in that I don't see it as a major inconvenience to the user, who has typed in an ambiguous search term, even if they didn't realize it was ambiguous, to be taken to a disambiguation page. (If the term is not actually ambiguous, of course, that's a whole different issue.) I would much rather have that happen than have many users be taken to an article they didn't want at all. I agree with JHunterJ that "primary topicness" is a matter of reader convenience, not a value judgment; where we differ is that I tend to give more weight to the convenience of the minority who are looking for the less-popular topic, and would go to greater lengths to avoid sending them to the wrong article. As I said earlier, there are some (perhaps many) technically ambiguous terms whose usage in English is so clearly associated with one particular meaning that not only should that title take readers to an article about that primary topic, but it would be absurd if it didn't. I'd put "Sun" in that category; somebody who types "Sun" in the search box looking for a record company or newspaper and ends up on the article about the star may be disappointed, but they could not reasonably claim to be surprised. On the other hand, where there is more than one topic that could reasonably be expected to be the target of a particular search term, for example George Clinton, that term should take the reader to a disambiguation page. At least to me, the inconvenience to those interested in the musician of having to click twice is outweighed by the inconvenience to those looking for the U.S. Vice-President or another notable person of that name having to figure out how to get to the disambiguation page and then navigate a second time to the correct article. How many readers doing historical research would arrive at the article about the musician, conclude "This stupid Wikipedia doesn't even have an article about a U.S. Vice President," and give up? How can we know? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:14, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
I agree with this. If the topic is clearly obvious let's take people there and have a hatnote to help those who are looking for something else. If there is reasonable doubt, let's take people to a disamb page and let them decide. Any case in which people are having a dispute should default to a disamb page. SilkTork *YES! 12:06, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
I think Russ has essentially restated what I have always understood the intent of primary topic and disambiguation to be. Over time, "most commonly searched for" or similar language seems to have been interpreted by some to mean that the goal of disambiguation is to minimize the number of clicks for most users as measured by page traffic statistics. older ≠ wiser 12:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
(ec) By "clearly obvious" I mean that there should be no need to argue the case for primary topic - no need to bring in scholarly references or page hits. "Sun" should go to Sun, "Earth" should go to Earth, "Soil" should go to Soil, "Michael Jackson" should go to Michael Jackson, and "Beer" should go to Beer. If there's reasonable doubt or a reasonable challenge, then it shouldn't be a case of changing the primary topic, but of simply going straight to a disamb page. SilkTork *YES! 12:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Yet Wikipedia editors will argue over the primary topicness of things that other editors find obvious. All this would do is move the target from to arguing over what's reasonable. You cannot have editors saying "But I am being reasonable!" as justification for no primary topic. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Of course you can, but if they cannot provide reasons to support their subjective view of "reasonableness" then other editors may disregard it. WP:CONSENSUS does not not mean unanimity. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Correct. Which is why there is no need for this "clearly obvious" bit, unless it is to make the disambiguation page more likely the base name page, in which case I oppose the change. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Suggested new wording

Following the discussions above, I propose we change the wording in Primary Topic.

The wording initially proposed has not been accepted.

Initial proposal

Following the discussions above, I propose we change the wording in Primary Topic from:

Although an ambiguous term may refer to more than one topic, it is often the case that one of these topics is highly likely—much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined—to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that ambiguous term in the Search box. If there is such a topic, then it is called the primary topic for that term. If a primary topic exists, the ambiguous term should be the title of, or redirect to, the article on that topic. If there is .... on one page).

An exception may be appropriate when recentism and educational value are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users.

There are no absolute rules for determining how likely a given topic is to be sought by readers entering a given term; decisions are made by discussion between editors, often as a result of a requested move. Tools that may help to support the determination of a primary topic in a discussion, but are not determining factors, include:

to

Although an ambiguous term may refer to more than one topic, it is sometimes the case that one of these topics is highly likely—much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined—to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that ambiguous term in the Search box. If there is such a topic, then it is called the primary topic for that term. If there is .... on one page). There are no absolute rules for determining how likely a given topic is to be sought by readers entering a given term; decisions are made by discussion between editors, often as a result of a requested move. If there is no clear consensus, or where there is more than one topic that could reasonably be expected to be the target of a particular search term, for example George Clinton, that term should take the reader to a disambiguation page. If there are prolonged or repeated discussions regarding which topic is primary, then the default position should be to use a disambiguation page. If there is reasonable doubt, such that evidence and subtle arguments need to be used rather than common sense, then the default position should be to use a disambiguation page.

Here are the differences:

Although an ambiguous term may refer to more than one topic, it is often [sometimes] the case that one of these topics is highly likely—much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined—to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that ambiguous term in the Search box. If there is such a topic, then it is called the primary topic for that term. If there is .... on one page).

An exception may be appropriate when recentism and educational value are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users.

There are no absolute rules for determining how likely a given topic is to be sought by readers entering a given term; decisions are made by discussion between editors, often as a result of a requested move. Tools that may help to support the determination of a primary topic in a discussion, but are not determining factors, include:

[If there is no clear consensus, or where there is more than one topic that could reasonably be expected to be the target of a particular search term, for example George Clinton, that term should take the reader to a disambiguation page. If there are prolonged or repeated discussions regarding which topic is primary, then the default position should be to use a disambiguation page. If there is reasonable doubt, such that evidence and subtle arguments need to be used rather than common sense, then the default position should be to use a disambiguation page.]

The aim is to reduce the likelihood of internal disputes, provide more stability, and provide the reader with the most obvious and least surprising target page. SilkTork *YES! 09:51, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

  • The aim here seems to be to favour one side of a disagreement over the other - saying that if it's not clear which position is right or which is best supported, then we automatically come down on the side of those saying "there is no primary topic". This, to me, seems pretty irrational. Perhaps the current position, where we automatically come down on the side of those supporting the established status quo, is somewhat irrational too, but at least it provides stability and discourages people from continuously proposing unnecessary title changes without any particularly strong reasons. (I.e. the current practice achieves two of the stated aims of the proposal better than the proposal would; and I don't see how the third aim is achieved by the proposal either.) In summary, strong oppose.--Kotniski (talk) 11:06, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I think it's time for SilkTork to drop the WP:STICK. I'm really sorry to say this, but that last RfC was nothing more than a waste of everyone's time. Please, get involved with the disambiguation project first - vote on requested moves, fix some dablinks, get a good solid understanding of how PRIMARYTOPIC works and is implemented - and then try your hand at rewriting policy. --JaGatalk 17:53, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
From the above discussion there is no clear consensus on the wording, and so I am looking for consensus on new wording. That is appropriate and how Wikipedia works. Your comment here is not so much about the issue as about me. We can air any concerns you have about me on either mine or your talkpage, as I don't think this is the appropriate place for such matters. Let me know. SilkTork *YES! 12:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose due to "If there are prolonged or repeated discussions regarding which topic is primary, then the default position should be to use a disambiguation page." I disagree, continue discussion does not always mean there is no primary topic. --Falcorian (talk) 20:12, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose I see no reason to eliminate the non-exhaustive list of legitimate factors worth considering when deciding on primary topics. Similar to WP:EVENT, no single factor is typically decisive, but having a list is good for consistency purposes. I say this despite thinking the list itself should be amended. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:30, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I think the original guidance to specifically consider recentism and educational value is important and should not be removed. We are, after all, an encyclopedia. Kaldari (talk) 20:47, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose "...prolonged and repeated discussions..." can simply be due to persistence by a strongly-opinioned editor, for example. That doesn't indicate that there is no primary topic. Recentism and educational value are both important factors, along with the others that are currently mentioned. Reasoned discussion of each case, based on all factors, is much better than a more rigid approach. First Light (talk) 05:23, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

New proposal - wording to be added after the end of the first paragraph [....linked in combination on one page).]:

There are no absolute rules for determining how likely it is that a specific topic is the one sought by readers entering an ambiguous term; decisions are made by discussion between editors, often as a result of a requested move. Factors that may be considered in discussions include:

These are not determining factors, and other factors may be considered on a case-by-case basis. If there is no clear consensus, or where there is more than one topic that could reasonably be expected to be the target of a particular search term, for example George Clinton, consideration may be given to using a disambiguation page instead of a primary topic.

I have looked closely at the previous discussions and attempted to amalgamate the proposals that had support. This discussion/RfC started when the addition of "educational value" to the primary topic section was questioned. Opening up the discussion to the community showed limited direct support for "educational value", though "base meaning" was named often. The wording of the RfC was questioned as it set up "educational value" in opposition to "most likely", when people felt that it might be considered as part of the criteria, so the low direct support for "educational value" might be attributed to the RfC wording. The changes proposed are that "educational value" and "recentism" are now considered as part of the criteria rather than set up in opposition to "most likely". "Base meaning" has been brought in to the list as that appears to have existing support, and systemic bias has been added as a proposal.

Views are welcomed not just on the wording as a whole, but also on items within the wording, such as "base meaning" and "educational value". SilkTork *YES! 13:20, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose latest proposal on the basis that it does not give guidance, like the present wording does. IE. Is recentism considered pro or con a primary title? Is educational value considered pro or con a popular title? Are the other factors pro or con, when deciding on a title. In order for the guidance to be meaningful, it should guide one way or another: 'If this ... than generally that.' The proposed change gives much less guidance than the present wording.Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Good questions all.
  • "Base meaning" was picked up from what people were suggesting in the discussion above. I included it as it appeared a popular choice, though it's not a criteria I support (I'm ambivalent), so I wouldn't be able to give an appropriate rationale for its inclusion or meaning. BFizz was the first to use the term, and used phrases such as "the meaning" and that films, etc should redirect to "the concept behind their name". ƒETCHCOMMS developed this further with: "the original concept from which another subject's name was derived. In the example of "twilight", the book/movie series' title comes from the time period known as twilight". This may also link in with R'n'B's comment that "somebody who types "Sun" in the search box looking for a record company or newspaper and ends up on the article about the star may be disappointed, but they could not reasonably claim to be surprised". Being taken to the primary or base meaning (the record company and the newspapers are all named after The Sun) is somewhat less confusing than being taken to a currently popular meaning.
  • The text I proposed replaces all the text: "An exception may be appropriate when recentism and educational value are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users. There are no absolute rules for determining how likely a given topic is to be sought by readers entering a given term; decisions are made by discussion between editors, often as a result of a requested move. Tools that may help to support the determination of a primary topic in a discussion, but are not determining factors, include: * Incoming wikilinks from Special:WhatLinksHere * Wikipedia article traffic statistics * Google web, news, scholar, or book searches (NOTE: adding &pws=0 to the google search string eliminates personal search bias)"
The proposal brings in the "recentism" and "educational value" wording as part of the criteria rather than treating these separately, and removes the wording that suggests that an exception is used for these criteria, and any implication that these criteria are to be considered differently to other criteria.
The word "tools" has been replaced with "factors".
Some words or phrases are kept, but moved around. Full changes here:
Changes

There are no absolute rules for determining how likely [it is that] a given [specific] topic is to be [the one] sought by readers entering a given [an ambiguous] term; decisions are made by discussion between editors, often as a result of a requested move [[[Wikipedia:Requested moves|requested move]]]. Tools [Factors] that may help to support the determination of a primary topic [be considered] in a discussion[s], but are *not determining factors*, include:

[

An exception may be appropriate when *recentism* and *educational value* are taken into account, especially *if one of these topics is a vital article*. In such a case, consensus may determine that the article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users.

These are *not determining factors*, and other factors may be considered on a case-by-case basis. If there is no clear consensus, or where there is more than one topic that could reasonably be expected to be the target of a particular search term, for example George Clinton, consideration may be given to using a disambiguation page instead of a primary topic.

  • I'm not clear where the previous wording gave more guidance than the proposed wording. I included recentism as that was included in the previous wording, though I am unable to give guidance as there is none in the previous wording. It is included as one of the criteria that people may use. How people use the recentism guideline would presumably be down to the individual circumstances. Some editors may regard recentism as a positive asset as it brings in more readers, others may feel it is negative that many readers may wish to read about a current event rather than a more established topic. As with "base meaning", it is not a criteria I support. Indeed, it is a criteria that I am vaguely unsure belongs here, though I can appreciate that it is a criteria that may be brought up in discussions regarding primary topic.
I tried to be as neutral as possible in listing the criteria - to provide a list of criteria that people have named as being useful in discussions. How people use those criteria, and which criteria they use, would depend on circumstances. Generally, consensus is that guidelines reflect current best practise, rather than prescribe new ways of doing something. I am uncertain if all the criteria I have included do reflect current best practise, and a discussion which looks at the wording and picks out specific wording that is acceptable or unacceptable would be useful. The idea being to move forward on improving the current wording which, from the discussions above, is seen as slightly problematic. SilkTork *YES! 11:26, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
  • TLDR (I just came here following an item in WP:CENT), but the point should be something like "If there's an article that more than 50% of people typing [title] in the search box would want to get, then that's the primary topic for [title], otherwise [title] should be a disambiguation page." ― A. di M.​plé​dréachtaí 09:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
  • TLDR again. I think there's an easy way to explain this. If it's an editorial decision, there has to be a shorter way to explain it. This entire guideline is horribly confusing. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:50, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

why r people making comments if hey havent read what its about? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.28.215.151 (talk) 21:07, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

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