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INCDAB - Dubious assumptions

WP:INCDAB currently says:

In rare cases where a qualified title is still ambiguous and has a primary topic, it should ...

More often, a qualified title that is still ambiguous will have no primary topic, and ...

I do not see why a partial disambiguation should be less likely to have a primary topic than would an undisambiguated title. What’s the thinking here? —В²C ☎ 21:52, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree that, as the guideline is written, they are not likely to be rare. Stating they are rare certainly doesn’t make them so.

However, as stated in the close of the above RFC, there was consensus that the standard should be higher for finding that a parenthetically disambiguated title has a primary topic than normal. That’s what would make it rare.

I propose adding the following sentence to the start of INCDAB to better reflect the consensus:

A parenthetically disambiguated title may have a primary topic, but the threshold for identifying one is significantly higher than for a title without parenthetical disambiguation.

I’m not clear how the closer above found consensus for Option 2, given the nearly even split among participants. Leaving that aside for the moment, there was a fair amount of middle ground. Whether you get there by saying that primary topic takes precedence, but with a significantly higher threshold than normal, or by saying that parenthetically-disambiguated titles shouldn’t have primary topics, but allow for rare exceptions, the result is about the same.--Trystan (talk) 22:47, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Very interesting.

There are two types of disambiguation, natural and what I'll call formal disambiguation.... parentheses, commas and any other conventions we use (are there any?). And there are significant differences.

The purpose of any article title is twofold... to make the article easy to find, and to make it easy to wikilink to it.

Now we don't require that a formal disambiguation should be used in sources (it may be, but we don't care), or that it be a likely search term (and those two things are much the same thing really). We do of a natural disambiguation. And similarly, nobody is likely to want to wikilink the formal disambiguation, instead they wikilink the base name by using the pipe trick.

So the bar for Primary Topic might not even be the same for formal as opposed to natural disambiguations. We should not assume that it is. Andrewa (talk) 02:58, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

• The purpose of any article title? What about the purpose of titling the article? To state what the topic is. In journalism, the style is for a title to be a hook (like DYK). In fiction, the purpose of the title is to tantalise. In scholarship, the purpose of a title is to simply and directly state the topic of the content below. Easy wikilinking can be achieved with redirects, like shortcuts. If Paris were to redirect to the PRECISE Paris, France, editors can easily wikilink Paris, no need to compromise the article title. If the purpose is for logical searching, if you want to complement the superior AI search engine algorithms, then what you are looking for is keywords. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:18, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
  • So you're saying that one purpose of the article title is to give the article a title? Yes, that's trivially true... sort of, like x=x, which is a profound truth in some contexts... but I don't see the significance of the statement that an article title is an article title in this context.
  • This is not journalism or fiction. Scholarship, hopefully yes. And yes, the purpose of a title is to simply and directly state the topic of the content below. But I'd add clearly, and if the title is ambiguous, then its meaning is unclear. That's the whole problem. And yes, wikilinking can be by shortcuts.
  • For the umpteenth time, nobody is proposing to move Paris! So agree no need to compromise the article title.
  • Good point about keywords. We should probably make more use of them. Perhaps include the non-hidden category names in the HTML metadata of an article page? Or do we already do this? It seems logical to do so.
  • The Wikipedia article title has two consequences of which I'm aware in the outside world. It appears in the URL, and it appears in the title HTML tag for the page (and in both cases it's the whole title, not just the base name). I'm guessing that's not likely to change, and that it's the title tag that has most impact on external searching. Our internal search of course uses the article title directly. Andrewa (talk) 12:53, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
• I was the one who added "rare" since it was clear from the consensus and the closing statement that PDABs have a higher threshold than base name primary topics. I would note that naturally disambiguated topics can have primary topics in the same way as other articles at their best title since natural disambiguation is use of another term. Comma disambiguation for settlements in the US (and to a lesser extent in Australia and Canada) is often considered natural disambiguation (and sometimes for UK churches and streets) but for other topics like settlements in other countries (and similar) comma disambiguation is the same as using brackets, see Harris, Outer Hebrides for example. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:46, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes, comma disambiguation can be a form of natural disambiguation if it appears in sources, as in theory could parenthetical but that is less likely.
  • And that's not at all surprising, is it? These conventions weren't pulled out of the air, they were and are themselves natural English similar to what we'd seen elsewhere, and which we hoped and believed that English speakers would understand.
  • But the point is that we don't require any sources for these (full) titles anyway, because of our own naming conventions. In this sense they are treated as formal disambiguations, and so that's what we should call them whenever they could be either formal or natural and are therefore in a sense both. Andrewa (talk) 22:33, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
• There's no reason to say they're rare. That gives the impression the practice is discouraged, which it isn't. If they're rare then let them be rare, but we don't have to explicitly say so. I suggest this be reverted.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:51, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
  • It is discouraged to the extent that the RFC consensus was for a higher standard than for regular primary topic. Without that, the guidance is not reflective of the consensus.--Trystan (talk) 23:39, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree that there is (and should be) a higher standard for PDABs (particularly talking about parenthetical disambiguators here). I believe that has also been evident in the RM discussions in recent years, not just in the mentioned RFC. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:59, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Why a higher standard?

I don’t understand. Let’s say there are two uses of Foo and they’re both films, but one is a well known American academy award winner and the other an unrelated obscure Korean film. The page views are about 4,000/day vs three a day. So the well known one is the primary topic and is at the base name while the foreign obscure one is disambiguated. Okay, but now say there is a third use of Foo, say a major well known city with 12,000 views per day, and that is the primary topic at the base name. So now the American film does need disambiguation and the decision is about whether it’s the primary topic for Foo (film). Why should the standard be higher than in the previous scenario in terms of how it was decided that it was the primary topic of Foo? —В²C ☎ 06:32, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Because PDABs add an unnecessary layer of complication and confusion and there was a clear consensus that the standards are higher. Crouch, Swale (talk) 07:45, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

With a an undisambiguated title, the main consideration is how to direct the significant number of users that search for and end up at "Foo". But if you have "Foo" (the city and primary topic), "Foo (American film)", and "Foo (Korean film)", virtually nobody will search for or end up at "Foo (film)". So where it redirects to doesn't really matter much.

Let's say "Foo (US film)" gets 4,000/day and "Foo (Korean film)" gets 1,000/day. That meets the standard primary topic test; the first film is significantly more likely to be sought than the second. So we move the US film to "Foo (film)", which is a slightly shorter title. It doesn't help anyone get to their article any faster, and in fact will mean some increased portion of the 1,000 people seeking "Foo (Korean film)" will now end up at the wrong article. (For example, "Foo (film)" will now show up in the search box autocomplete. Users looking for the Korean film would likely click that, where they would not have clicked "Foo (US film)".)

So in choosing a primary topic for "Foo", the question is about how best to direct people searching for "Foo". In choosing a primary topic for "Foo (film)", the question is whether slightly shortening the title for one topic is worth the increased number of users reaching the wrong article. Totally different considerations, hence totally different standards.--Trystan (talk) 15:46, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Trystan put it well, in my opinion. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:59, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Articles that exist and could exist

This is probably (I hope) a very quick discussion (for a change).

It's claimed here that We disambiguate article titles based on the articles that exist and could exist.

I don't think that's even remotely true. Very interested in other views.

It's now a moot point at the RM, as the contributor has agreed to create the stubs they say they have the sources to support. Just interested in the principle. Andrewa (talk) 21:09, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Huh? We do have guidance on putting red links in disambiguation pages (MOS:DABRED). Or are you saying that we never set up disambiguation pages pre-emptively when there is (so far) only one article occupying a title that is ambiguous for multiple encyclopedic subjects? I find that hard to reconcile with your opinions about primary topics. We definitely don't put red links in hatnotes (WP:REDHAT), so what is supposed to be done when an existing article is accumulating links meant for a topic that does not yet have an article?

Category:Genus disambiguation pages contains many examples of disambiguation pages with a single blue link and one (or more) red links; e.g. Bonellia, Calopteryx. Plant and animal genera can share the same name. Species and genera are generally presumed notable (WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES). I'm generally loathe to confer primary topic status when genus names are shared; most genera of plants and animals are niche topics. I suppose a butterfly may more likely to be primary than a moss, and a tree more likely to be primary than an insect. But we still lack articles for many genera, and articles for a moss or fly may well be written before articles for a buttefly or a tree. I don't see any reason to leave the moss at the base title, accumulating links meant for the butterfly just because the butterfly article hasn't been written yet. Plantdrew (talk) 23:09, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, very interesting! So there are circumstances in which it's best to anticipate that these other articles will be created (perhaps despite wp:ball). Good point.

And that could arguably be the case in the RM in question, in that the supporters had undertaken to create the other articles, and claimed to have sources to support these articles. And we assume good faith in this of course.

I still think the RM is out of process, and the argument invalid. These other articles should be created first. Andrewa (talk) 22:57, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I've seen something very like the sentence you quoted in a guideline somewhere. Naturally enough, I can't find it again.

I may come across five or ten redlinks a day on DAB pages which are orphans or which link to deleted articles, and delete most of them with enthusiasm. However, per WP:IAR I do not delete orphan redlinks where the DAB page itself makes a plausible case for notability (e.g. a river or mountain which does exist, but doesn't seem to have an article in any Wikipedia).

I've seen numerous DAB pages which included a redlinked genus. On almost all of them (or nearly), the genus entry could be justified per WP:DABMENTION by a bluelink to a family (biology)-type article which mentioned it; which I added if it was lacking. I don't recall seeing a DAB page which included two redlinked genera each in a different kingdom (biology); though it wouldn't surprise me if such exist.

There is also the issue of unaccepted names, which are present in the older literature and are therefore both plausible and very necessary search terms. I have seen DAB pages which contained both an accepted and an unaccepted name within the same kingdom. As an unusual example, the DAB page Baeria contains two unaccepted genera, one a plant and the other an animal; and a see-also from a misspelling, which was how I came across it. Narky Blert (talk) 19:48, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Also very interesting! Yes, I think it used to be in policy or guidelines but may have been removed. With so many policy and guideline pages, and so many editors discussing and changing them, and no easy way of searching the histories that I've found (suggestions welcome), it's a configuration management nightmare.

The problem I see is, while we assume good faith we can't always assume competence. The contributors concerned in this RM seem to have limited English and I suspect they don't have a good grasp of what sources are required to support an article... I've tried to gently question this. I haven't even suggested that the article instead be rescoped to include all the various meanings of the current title, but it does seems a possible BCA candidate.

Of course we're here for all English speakers, not just native speakers, and sources don't need to be in English. But we haven't got that far at the RM either, and I don't see that we will. I still think that the obvious course of action is, create the foreshadowed articles (good non-deletable stubs will do) and take it from there. Andrewa (talk) 20:15, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

An article that could exist but does not yet is fairly likely to meet WP:DABMENTION somewhere. bd2412 T 20:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, but sometimes those topics may be mentioned in two or three or even more articles. With the one bluelink per entry "rule" stringently enforced by a lot of editors, I think it's usually better to let the search engine do its job. Station1 (talk) 02:51, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

For quite a few terms, particularly multi-word phrases, the search engine does not do it's job at all. It turns up many irrelevant results and buries the relevant ones. bd2412 T 12:15, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Tell me more. An example would be good. Andrewa (talk) 06:19, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

The contributors concerned in this RM seem to have limited English : it is not my case. For lots of contributors, if the article could be created, there are no reason for using a title without a parenthesis, despite the fact the others articles does not exist at this time. --Panam2014 (talk) 16:33, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

despite the fact the others articles does not exist at this time... I would say despite the fact that the other articles do not exist...... Do you get my meaning? There are many similar mistakes in the discussion.

My point was not that you're in any way disqualified from contributing here. But where it comes to understanding the finer nuances of policy, you're at an obvious disadvantage, and I think that shows in the discussion too. Andrewa (talk) 11:34, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

I think that if someone involved only in this disambiguation discussion, and not in that of the article under RM discussion, considers him/herself sufficiently uninvolved in that discussion, then it would be helpful to everyone if s/he could close the RM for those of us who are involved, rather than let it drag on infinitely... :) Boud (talk) 03:04, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

• This is a version of the old discussion, "does the world outside Wikipedia exist?"... which is answered each day when the content contributor slaves below decks chained to the oars create new notable articles from the real world of reliable sources. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:34, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery#Requested move 21 August 2019 supports the view that we do anticipate article creation. There are no other articles on Parliamentary Press Gallery at present, but there are other Parliamentary Press Galleries. I stand corrected. Perhaps this could be clearer in policy and guideline. Andrewa (talk) 16:11, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

While this wasn't a formal RfC and I couldn't close it even if it was, I'm seeing a consensus above that we do disambiguate article titles based on the articles that exist and could exist, and that latest RM result (comment immediately above) confirms this too.

And it wasn't short discussion. So I was wrong on both counts.

Very interesting! Discuss the impact of this at User talk:Andrewa/Primary Topic RfC#Articles that exist and could exist. It might surprise you as much as it does me. Andrewa (talk) 17:00, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Not disambiguation in that case; "Canadian" is part of the name. "The Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery (CPPG) is a self-governing corporation that consists of accredited journalists who cover Parliament and other Ottawa-based governmental organizations and institutions." [1] [2] - Station1 (talk) 04:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Disagree... "Canadian" is part of the name... Well, yes, in the sense that any natural disambiguation is part of the name. But Parliamentary Press Gallery is also a perfectly good name for the article, except for being (potentially) ambiguous, as the existence of the redirect shows. Andrewa (talk) 10:41, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

No, Parliamentary Press Gallery would not be a good name for that article, anymore than Canadian Mounted Police would be a good name for Royal Canadian Mounted Police, even though it redirects there. It's not a description of a press gallery that happens to be at the Canadian parliament, it's a proper noun name of an organization. Station1 (talk) 20:28, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

• I disapprove of all the talk above of "Articles that could exist". That set is too large, and includes articles that could, but should not, exist. Instead, much of the above is agreeable if read as "Articles that should exist". The standard for articles that should exist is written into WP:Red link. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:35, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Agree that Articles that should exist (my emphasis) is a better phrase. But disagree that the two phrases differ significantly in meaning in this context. By an article that could exist we mean one that would survive AfD, and that article should exist as well. Wikipedia is incomplete without it, so the set is no larger or smaller. And IMO that's exactly what WP:Red link says too. And on the other hand, could carries the extra connotation that these articles don't currently exist, which is the intended meaning, while should doesn't IMO carry that connotation quite so strongly. (And just BTW, could wasn't my choice of term, it was the term used in the RM comment that started all of this.) Andrewa (talk) 10:29, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
• I'd say we don't disambiguate articles, we disambiguate topics. Most of the time the topic will have its own article, sometimes it won't have an article yet, and at other times it will never have one because it's not notable by itself, but it's still treated at sufficient length within another article. – Uanfala (talk) 12:16, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Interesting observations. I'd say that strictly we disambiguate article titles. A topic that's not notable enough, or for which we just don't have enough material, for an article still needs to meet a sort of notability standard, otherwise we are giving it undue weight by having a redirect by its name. I very much like the idea that we disambiguate titles that are potentially ambiguous, that is there are other articles that should exist and hopefully will, someday, but don't yet, or even redirects by that name that should exist. But I thought that was contrary to our practice and policy. It seems it's not contrary to current practice and consensus. I'm unconvinced about policy, so far. Andrewa (talk) 13:08, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
  • It's the title that's ambiguous but this is really about relationships between titles and topics. If they corresponded 1:1 then life would be easy. Redirects mean that having many titles for one topic is no problem either. The problem we're solving occurs when a reader searches (broadly defined) using a title which has multiple title:topic relationships. Certes (talk) 13:44, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
    • Exactly. (Although I suggest you avoid describing a bijection as 1:1, as this may be confused with a one-to-one function which is injective but not surjective... maybe that's a quibble and perhaps unusually IMO this is the fault of my beloved mathematics rather than just another illogical quirk of English, but I have often seen these terms confused.)
    • More specifically, the problem occurs whenever a reader seeks (is that a better term than searches?) a topic using an ambiguous name which they do not consider ambiguous (that is, it has multiple title:topic relationships but they regard one of these as what we call a Primary Topic, which trivially includes the case that they think that there is no other possible meaning but isn't restricted to that case), and we have (at some point in history) chosen a different topic to be primary. Andrewa (talk) 21:34, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
      • Not just readers but editors too. We have too many articles about a primate paid a guinea to celebrate mass in a hamlet by a ford. Certes (talk) 21:52, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

@Andrewa: for all of the others articles, all should exist. So I will create the others articles but it is not necessary to create the others articles to move the first article. --Panam2014 (talk) 19:36, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

This discussion continues at #Pre-emptive disambiguation below. Andrewa (talk) 19:54, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

The case in point

The RM that started this is closed leaving the article at the undisambiguated name. So no pre-emptive disambiguation has occurred.

And nor have any of the other articles been created. Sovereignty Council of Sudan (1956–1958), Sovereignty Council of Sudan (1964–1965) and Sovereignty Council of Sudan (June–July 1965) remain redlinks at this time.

And nor has the scope of the article at Sovereignty Council of Sudan been expanded to include these other bodies. Andrewa (talk) 06:50, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Pre-emptive disambiguation

I thought there was a place in this guideline that clearly said not to perform pre-emptive disambiguation – e.g., not to use an article title like "Foo (in Canada)" unless there is some other identified article on Wikipedia where some kind of "Foo" is discussed that is not the Foo found in Canada. The issue is when some editor says that there is some other important kind of Foo, and thus asserts that article title disambiguation is needed, but does not identify any article on Wikipedia where that other kind of Foo is discussed. I see such a discouragement clearly stated in WP:SONGDAB, but I haven't found it here as a clearly stated general principle to apply outside of music subjects. Is it just me – am I missing it? I think this principle is somewhat implicitly expressed, but not as clearly here and in WP:AT as it is in WP:SONGDAB, which flatly says (in its most recent revision, after a further clarification by me]) "Do not pre-emptively disambiguate pages from topics that do not exist, that are not discussed anywhere in Wikipedia, or that are not notable." This came up in an RM discussion that is currently being held at Talk:Tax-Free Savings Account (Canada), and I wanted to refer to the relevant guideline. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:42, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Maybe somebody will find something relevant in the guidelines, but in my opinion it's all down to common sense. If you have one article with a potentially ambiguous title, the question is how likely is it for another article to be created. If 1) the topic area is one that's relatively saturated with existing articles (pop culture), 2) there is a very large number of similar entities that are judged not to be notable (songs), then yes, it's not usually likely that disambiguation will become needed at some point. If on the other hand, you're creating an article in a topic area with relatively few articles (say, geography of Southeast Asia), and there is a very large number of notable entities that dont' yet have articles (say, populated places), then pre-emptive disambiguation might be a good idea. Another factor is how likely the name is to be distinct. Long name with unusual consonant sequences or short name made up of common sounds?

As for the case in the RM discussion, I think it's a matter no so much of pre-emptive disambiguation as of the title's appropriateness with respect to the scope of the article. If the title were "Retirement compensation arrangements" (a generic term), but the article were about Retirement Compensation Arrangements (the proper name for a particular kind of savings account used in Canada), then there would be a mismatch in scope. In such cases I think it's best to have the scope clearly declared with a parenthetical disambiguator (like "(Canada)"), rather than rely entirely on the surreptitious use of title case. – Uanfala (talk) 00:55, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

This is somewhat off-topic, but I feel obliged to say that Wikipedia uses sentence case, not title case, for the names of its topics, and Retirement Compensation Arrangements is not a proper name. The mere fact of it being plural is a strong clue about that. As stated in the article on the subject, a proper name identifies a single entity, and there are many retirement compensation arrangements, just as there are many individual retirement accounts. A class of entities, such as the class of retirement arrangements that are defined under subsection 248(1) of the Canadian Income Tax Act or the class of retirement accounts defined in subsection 401(k) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, is not a proper noun. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:48, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

I also thought that pre-emptive disambiguation was explicitly prohibited, which is why I thought that the discussion at #Articles that exist and could exist would be short and simple. This is exactly the question i was asking there.

But can't find where. One of the things missing from Wikipedia is the ability to search previous versions (or if it's there I haven't found it, either). I guess we'd want to throttle such a search carefully to avoid colossal server loads (and creating a DoS paradise!).

But the more I think about it the more I think pre-emptive disambiguation is a good idea, anyway. If you think that an article title is ambiguous in the most general sense, you shouldn't use it. That was the letter of the very first cut of WP:AT and perhaps has never changed.

Wikipedia:Unnecessary disambiguation links to at least one other relevant page and the related talk pages might be of interest too. And RMs regularly remove unnecessary disambiguations. Perhaps we are not entirely consistent in this. Andrewa (talk) 20:01, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@Andrewa: for some subjects, pre-emptive disambiguation is really necessary when both articles have the same importance. --Panam2014 (talk) 16:03, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Agree. But I don't think that's the question here. The questions are, what is our current policy and practice when (for example) only one of two articles currently exist, and what should it be? And there seem to be various opinions on both of these questions. Andrewa (talk) 20:33, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think the term "pre-emptive" applies when there are already two articles on Wikipedia. Pre-emptive disambiguation is about what to do when only one of the hypothetically confusable topics is currently discussed on Wikipedia. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:25, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. It's a very good term, and that's one reason this section is so much more productive than my attempt at #Articles that exist and could exist above. Andrewa (talk) 21:53, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

• Preemptive disambiguation can be useful when all relevant topics have the same lack of notability. For example, redirects tagged {{R from song}} are helpful because they can be used to populate categories such as Category:xxxx songs, Category:John Doe songs, Category:Songs written by John Doe and Category:Songs produced by John Doe. In such a case, one or more of "Snafu" (Snafu song), "Snafu" (Fubar song) and "Snafu" (Bohica song) might be bluelinked redirects on the DAB page Snafu, and Snafu (song) a redirect to it tagged {{R from incomplete disambiguation}}; even though none of the songs has an article.

(I have been involved in exactly such a case. There was a WP:RM to move a song with a fully-qualified title to the less-qualified title on the grounds that it was the only one with an article. The result was not-moved; I put the article up for WP:AFD as failing WP:NSONG; and it is now a redirect.) Narky Blert (talk) 17:08, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to see the specific example, but yes, it sounds like a good use of preemptive disambiguation.

The reason for wanting the specific example is, I'd like to consider whether it was within current guidelines to preemptively disambiguate in this case, and if not whether it's adequately covered as an example of the occasional commonsense exception. Andrewa (talk) 10:48, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

My memory was imperfect. It was Tomorrow's Dream (song), where the RM was to remove the qualifier. There may or may not be preemptive redirects relating to entries in the DAB page Tomorrow's Dream (I haven't checked everything), but all seven entries could have a useful qualified and categorised redirect (four songs, one album, two novels). Narky Blert (talk) 19:06, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

• There is an elephant in the room which was never noticed in the discussion (Wikipedia talk:Article titles#RfC: Artist name as disambiguation regarding non-notable song titles), cited in WP:SONGDAB

That discussion was all about readers coming in blind using the searchbox, trying to find an article.

It did not address the problems caused by bluelinks which point to the wrong place. (This is a widespread and well-known problem with WP:PTOPICs, WP:SIAs and {{surname}} pages, among others.)

A reader who clicks on a bluelink in an article should be taken to the right place, not to an ambiguous or – still worse – a misleading and wrong place.

An editor, an enthusiastic fan of the band Tarfu, adds a link in that article to "Snafu" (song), their best-known number. However, the band Fubar recorded a completely different song called "Snafu" – and "Snafu" (song) already exists, either as a standalone article or as a redirect to Fubar. Confusion worse confounded. Narky Blert (talk) 21:57, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Songs are somewhat of a special case, because they often share titles with other songs and are sometimes only mentioned very briefly in articles (e.g., in a list of tracks on some album). I'm trying to bring up here the wider question of pre-emptive disambiguation as a more general issue across Wikipedia. Anyhow, that RFC has been archived, and is found here. The headline for the discussion is misleading, because it assumes that any song that does not have a stand-alone article written about it is therefore a non-notable song. In some cases, a song might be discussed extensively in an article that is about a band or about an album, perhaps because the song was particularly important to the history of the band, and we should not jump to the conclusion that the lack of a separate article about the song means, ipso facto, that the song is not notable. I don't think a separate (largely duplicate) article should be created about the song just to prevent it from being considered non-notable on Wikipedia. That creates a maintenance headache. But I have no problem with the idea that if only one song with a particular name is really discussed to any significant degree anywhere on Wikipedia, then it should be considered the primary topic among the other candidates where a song might just be mentioned once somewhere in a list of tracks in some discography. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:00, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

An actual example. I've just cleaned up the mess which was 99.9 FM#Argentina (it took 24 minutes, which included some cleanup in other articles). 20 links; formerly, about one-third each redlinks, bad links, and links to DAB pages; now, 100% redlinks. I used preemptive disambiguation in a few cases, purely from gut feeling. (1) 99.9 redirects to 99.9 FM. Even though 99.9 (radio station) doesn't exist, I changed the bad link 99.9 to 99.9 (Mar del Plata) for precision. The frequency is used everywhere, with many countries having several stations. (2) Pop (Argentine radio station) and Top (Argentine radio station). Even though Pop (radio station) and Top (radio station) are redlinks, I could foresee possible problems with them; those names look very generic. Narky Blert (talk) 07:21, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

A reader who clicks on a bluelink in an article should be taken to the right place, not to an ambiguous or – still worse – a misleading and wrong place. Exactly. And surely that's a good reason not to have articles at ambiguous (or just plain wrong) titles? A topic that's primary for some is not primary for others, however we choose P T. Editors who assume a different P T (including those who don't even think that the term is ambiguous) will of course innocently wikilink to the wrong article. If the mislinking is to a DAB we can warn them and we do and mostly they'll fix it themselves, and even if they don't fix it the wikignomes can easily find and fix mislinkings to DABs and they do, and the pipe trick makes it easy and natural to do so. But on the other hand, if the mislinking is to a wrong article then nobody gets any warning. Andrewa (talk) 23:24, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

WP:PRECISION is the guidance against premature disambiguation. If there's not yet Wikipedia ambiguity, there's to be no Wikipedia disambiguation yet either. If there is some ambiguity of topics but just not a second article, then the base name can be the disambiguation page linking the one article with the qualified title and the other article(s) that MOS:DABMENTION the other topics. Incorrect blue links in the article space just get fixed like any other incorrect blue links in the article space. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:38, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Incorrect blue links in article space do not get fixed. They tend to remain for ever, unless a DABfixer with a suspicious mind investigates them. As an example from my to-do list, Orel, Russia: 13 bad incoming bluelinks.

An editor once posted on my Talk Page, requesting that I refrain from posting {{dn}} in a particular infobox because they made the article look ugly, and members of a specialist WikiProject would spot and fix such errors soon enough. Two days later, I checked and corrected a bluelink which had triggered my spideysenses in a different instance of the same infobox. Guess who the most recent editor had been, a week or two earlier?

It may be about time I checked Tetrahedron again. It usually has a few links-in intended for Tetrahedron (journal). Narky Blert (talk) 04:13, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Although it has little to do with pre-emptive disambiguation, I've listed some of the most commonly mislinked articles in User:Certes/misdirected links#Examples. Certes (talk) 11:02, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha#Requested move 13 September 2019 seems an example. Andrewa (talk) 12:17, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Incorrect blue links do get fixed. They may tend one way or the other, but editors edit. Regardless, errors elsewhere are a bad reason to make errors here. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:25, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I assume this is in reply to this edit above by Narky Blert. Yes, of course they do sometimes get fixed, but only when editors stumble upon them by accident. On the other hand, links from articles to DAB pages are detected by DPL bot, and are far more likely to be fixed as a result. Andrewa (talk) 00:49, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Incorrect links do not get fixed unless someone takes specific trouble to go looking for them.

Earlier this year, Certes and I ran a project to repair links to surname articles for taxonomists in articles about species. There were about 1,500 of them, and it took two weeks and one trout. They included several explicitly linked to (surname) and (disambiguation) pages through those qualifiers. The task included a fair amount of multilingual searching. As a bonus, we were able to find by eye and repair some other bad links which turned up in those articles and elsewhere; e.g. to Amman, Baker, Chiron, Hedge and Jordan. I don't know how long those links had been around; but on looking at our worklist again, I found one error which had been introduced in 2011, and I doubt that was the oldest. We didn't even attempt to look at mononymic footballers, where the problem may be at least as bad.

That was the tip of only one iceberg. Narky Blert (talk) 10:22, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

If you're just going to go with hyperbole, nothing ever gets improved on Wikipedia unless someone takes specific trouble to improve it. We call those someones "editors". But we don't degrade the encyclopedia for the users to benefit the editors, and pre-emptive disambiguation is a degradation of the encyclopedia. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:45, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Which element of my post was hyperbole? Narky Blert (talk) 21:28, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

that incorrect link do not get fixed unless someone fixes them. Perhaps "tautological" would be a better description. Wikipedia does not get edited unless someone edits it. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Incorrect links get fixed when someone notices them. This can happen in (at least) two ways. Links to dabs get noticed because DPL bot flags them, both in talk page messages to the adding editor and in a convenient daily report. Links to the wrong article don't; we have to go looking for them. This is harder and takes longer than going through the DPL list. I've fixed quite a few recently but each group means thinking up a new search criterion: I'm currently fixing links to surnames from templates which don't list surnames. I'm sure I've missed far more than I've fixed, and I fear that no one else has found them either. Certes (talk) 14:01, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation isn’t needed unless there is another topic dealt with on Wikipedia to distinguish. [3] (my emphasis) Interesting comment. WP:Precision isn't cited but is it a valid interpretation of that policy? Andrewa (talk) 00:57, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Precision is defined at WP:AT as "The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects." The implied scope must be something like "the set of subjects covered on Wikipedia" or "the set of subjects that could be covered on Wikipedia, according to current content guidelines." It becomes meaningless if the title needs to be sufficient to unambiguously identify the topic among all possible subjects in the world.--Trystan (talk) 01:56, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. There are in fact three sorts of topics...

• Those that have articles (and presumably deserve them).
• Those that don't deserve articles.
• Those that do deserve articles but don't yet have them.

The question is, where and how do we discuss that third sort? I think if there's evidence that a topic is of the third sort, then that evidence should be enough to create a non-deletable stub, and that's what we should do rather than produce that evidence at an RM. It doesn't take appreciably longer, and improves Wikipedia. And it helps to weed out claims that the evidence exists by people who are guessing or worse (but possibly in complete good faith), so that (assuming again that they're here) they can instead do something more useful. Andrewa (talk) 04:38, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

WP:AT tells us "Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that." and (in the section about disambiguation) "According to the above-mentioned precision criterion, when a more detailed title is necessary to distinguish an article topic from another, use only as much additional detail as necessary." And WP:DISAMBIG defines as its scope "there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead". DMacks (talk) 05:03, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. WP:PRECISION and WP:DISAMBIGUATION are the policy and guideline against pre-emptive disambiguation (not just an interpretation of them). Otherwise we have William Shakespeare (English playwright born 1564) just in case another English playwright named William Shakespeare explodes on the scene next year. Future Wikipedia can handle its issues, and moves for changes in ambiguousness and primaryness are cheap. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:45, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Pre-emptive disambiguation sounds like a good idea in order to pre-empt any naming wars and disagreements, see Talk:Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha as case in point. Gryffindor (talk) 13:47, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

I think it would lead to endless unresolvable conflict regarding article titles. It’s relatively easy for editors to agree when a title is ambiguous between two or more existing articles. When one editor can say “We need to disambiguate this title, because it conflicts with some non-notable topic I am familiar with”, there is no common foundation on which editors can build consensus.--Trystan (talk) 14:05, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

That case is relatively easy... the non-notable topic doesn't need an article, so we just need rough consensus that it is non-notable. The problem is when there is a notable topic that doesn't yet have an article but should have.

And it seems to me, rereading the above, that then the question is not so much how we decide this (as in what evidence we consider) as where we decide (as in, is an RM a suitable place for the notability discussion even if the article in question doesn't yet exist). WP:DAB seems clear on this... Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead. (my emphasis) But WP:AT#Precision is not nearly so clear... Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that. No mention of whether this ambiguity arises whenever notable topics exist, or whether it's only if the articles on them exist. Does the policy at WP:AT override the guideline at WP:DAB? Or does the fact that the policy fails to say let the guideline override it? Do they need to be completely consistent? Why have guidelines at all if we're going to put everything in the policy?

I still think that, on practical grounds, these discussions shouldn't be part of WP:RM. If the evidence exists that there's another notable topic, then create that other article before going to WP:RM. Neatest procedure by far, and what WP:DAB already says. Andrewa (talk) 16:56, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Using both natural and parenthetical disambiguation when the former is not enough but the latter would be?

James Gunn (astronomer) currently redirects to James E. Gunn (astronomer), and he appears to be more commonly known by just his first and last name without the middle initial (I first noticed the matter because of this, a Google search supported my conclusion). Should the page just be moved, or am I missing something? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:18, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Most wikilinks use the middle initial but that may just be because it's the article title. If the common name omits the E. then the page should move. It will need a WP:RMTR because the redirect has history as a stub duplicate article. Certes (talk) 08:06, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I've WP:BOLDly moved the article to James Gunn (astronomer). I don't see many sources using the middle initial.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:07, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

You have missed nothing; you have made a gud catch.

As Certes says, the first place to post is at WP:RMTR. If you gain confidence in both identifying and knowing how to solve problems like this, and wish to take on the responsibility, study WP:SWAP and WP:PAGEMOVER, and post a reasoned request at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Page mover. Even if you're granted PAGEMOVER rights: if you're in any doubt, post at RMTR. Narky Blert (talk) 22:54, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Requested move discussion

An editor has proposed moving Rebelde (Mexican TV series) to Rebelde, which is currently a disambiguation page. As the proposal involves a disambiguation page, editors familiar with disambiguation practices may wish to cast an eye over the discussion and comment if they fell it necessary. The discussion is at Talk:Rebelde (Mexican TV series)#Requested move 5 October 2019. --AussieLegend (✉) 13:09, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Some help with potential controversial move that relies on WP:PRIMARYTOPIC

I've been preparing a move of the article climate change, which now refers to climate changes in general. I strongly believe the primary topic of this term is current climate change, which is now found under global warming. The argumentation for this can be found at User:Femkemilene/sandbox. Because this discussion will probably prove to be a hornets nest (overturning 15 years of hotly debated consensus and/or no consensus status quo), I'd like to have a full understanding of all policy and would like some help checking I'm using the guidelines entirely correctly. Anybody willing to have a peek? I've also got two specific questions:

1. Previous discussions about renaming have focused on definitions of global warming and climate change, with many of our most reliable sources giving a general definition of climate change (often, but not always alongside a definition of CC being the current human-caused CC). Are definitions also typically used in the determination of a PRIMARY TOPIC?
2. I've struggled with finding a better title for the climate change article. Can anybody think of other examples where the general definition is completely overshadowed by a specific use. The potential article name climate change (general) doesn't sound right to me, as general could still refer to other generalities (the human, animal and physical aspect of current climate change for instance). What type of titles are used in these cases? Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:42, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

What you have prepared so far looks very reasonable to me. Some comments:

• Re #1: No, typically not. Ptopics are ultimately chosen to help the reader get where they want to go. If an overwhelming majority of readers think of term T as referring to topic X, then T should at least be a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to X, if not the title of X. This is true even if there are some RS that say that actually by definition T refers to topic Y.
• Re #2: The best other example I can think of is Holocaust.
• What about just Climate variability as the new title for the current Climate change article? Another one that occurred to me was Climate changes. It doesn't exactly fit with any of the criteria for WP:NCPLURAL, but hey, it'd be a natural way to disambiguate.
• The number of mistargeted links to Climate change is IMO the strongest evidence that the current primary topic is badly chosen. Using Special:WhatLinksHere has the issue of bringing in a bunch of navbox inclusions, but these search results paint an even clearer picture. (I used User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js to generate that query)
• At User:Femkemilene/sandbox#First_rename_climate_change you say The climate change page will be either a disambiguation page to both this article and global warming at the end of step 1, or a redirect to global warming.. To be clear, I think it's important that this be decided as part of that RM (and ideally your nom should take a stance on which option you're advocating for).

Colin M (talk) 15:46, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that list of mistargeted links and the rest of the comment :). Really hope this will work out with the sometimes heated discussions around this topic.

Climate variability in scientific terms means something else, so doesn't really work in terms of precision. I think I'll go for climatic changes. I fear there will be consensus to move, but no consensus how. There's even people not wanting the topic as a separate article at all. Femke Nijsse (talk) 21:06, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 9 October 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. There is no consensus for a blanket move. Specific article move requests may be immediately made on their talk pages without prejudice to this discussion. (closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre (talk) 20:14, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

---

• Sea Urchin (disambiguation) → Sea Urchin
• Dry Cleaning (film) → Dry Cleaning
• Capital punishment (disambiguation) → Capital Punishment
• Death sentence (disambiguation) → Death Sentence
• Jury Nullification (book) → Jury Nullification
• Mob Mentality (album) → Mob Mentality
• No Man's Land (disambiguation) → No Man's Land
• Love song (disambiguation) → Love Song
• Blue Moon (disambiguation) → Blue Moon
• Summer solstice (disambiguation) → Summer Solstice
• Winter solstice (disambiguation) → Winter Solstice
• Head of state (disambiguation) → Head of State
• Lunar eclipse (disambiguation) → Lunar Eclipse
• Artificial intelligence (disambiguation) → Artificial Intelligence
• Trade Secrets (disambiguation) → Trade Secrets
• High voltage (disambiguation) → High Voltage
• Event horizon (disambiguation) → Event Horizon

– Following the previous discussion regarding this issue, and the recent consensus over at Talk:Friendly Fire#Requested move 22 August 2019, I believe it's safe to say that the community has made its decision on pages of this nature. I'm also starting this discussion here since the previous discussion regarding these kinds of pages took place here and I feel it would be inappropriate to single out a specific article talk page to host this discussion. Per WP:DIFFCAPS, all of the above pages can be moved to their capitalized versions alone without the "(disambiguation)" qualifier and still be adequately distinguished from their lowercase generic terms. As many editors have said before, anyone who bothers to capitalize these items will probably be looking for a proper name rather than a generic term. In the interest of getting these readers to their intended destination as quickly as possible, these moves should be made. Eventhorizon51 ^(talk) 19:45, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Generally oppose, as I think this proposal sweeps too wide. There are some specific categories of titles for which the capitalized form should redirect to the lowercase form due to common usage, including names of animals (e.g., Sea Urchin), names of dates or events (e.g., Blue Moon, Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice), job titles (e.g., Head of State), and terms commonly abbreviated as capital letters (e.g., Artificial Intelligence). bd2412 T 19:59, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
  • BD2412 and Amakuru, if someone searches with, say, the term Sea Urchin (making the effort to capitalize both words), don't you think they are almost certainly looking for one of the uses of Sea Urchin currently listed at Sea Urchin (disambiguation) rather than for the generic Sea urchin? If so, why send them to what is almost certainly the wrong article? If not, why not? --В²C ☎ 20:11, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
    • I think that it is entirely plausible that someone may think "Sea Urchin" is the formal name of the animal. I certainly think it is likely that someone will think "Winter Solstice" should be capitalized every bit as much as Valentine's Day, and that "Head of State" should be capitalized every bit as much as Chief Justice or Secretary of State. bd2412 T 20:22, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

    Personally I do regularly search for terms with capital letters, because I'm from a generation where title case meant title case. That's not to say I'm against Wikipedia naming conventions re sentence case, it's quite sensible, but lots of people won't be familiar with that. The incoming links tell you that lots of editors aren't aware of this distinction either. I'm not saying there are no cases where DIFFCAPS makes sense, but for cases where the main topic is so clearly primary over all others, it doesn't make sense to do anything other than a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:25, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

No offense, but I feel like you're trying to generalize something that is more personal than general with this "I'm from a generation" statement. Even the physical encyclopedias of yesteryear used titles like "Arctic fox". -- Fyrael (talk) 20:52, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Fyrael: no offense taken, and yes that line does look a bit silly in retrospect. I'm not even sure what "generation" I thought I hailed from! I guess I just had my angry-Wikipedian hat on for a while as I tried to make sense of the developments here and at Friendly Fire, and how 18 years of common sense redirects seem to be suddenly thrown out in the name of a "rule" that makes no sense to me. But there we are. I'm trying to cool off by writing prose in my current space that nobody else is inhabiting instead! Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 21:32, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Amakuru: No offense, but that is the saddest excuse for an "angry Wikipedian hat" I have ever seen. I can't feel any of the seething hatred for having the audacity to hold a different opinion. If you won't come back here and fight me, then I don't even know what the purpose of these talk pages is. Just disgraceful. -- Fyrael (talk) 02:36, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Thanks for the ping, Eventhorizon51, but I can't support this RM. All of these are clear primary topics for their terms, capitalised or otherwise, per WP:COMMONSENSE.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:03, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

How COMMONSENSE could it really be when there is clearly a discussion with a large number of participants, all but two of which agree that capitalization differences suffice in distinguishing disambiguation pages from articles? The discussion took place, so you're gonna have to explain your reasoning in more detail. Eventhorizon51 ^(talk) 20:09, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

No, you're going to have to explain in more detail why you think "Artificial Intelligence" doesn't mean what the current redirect says it means. The onus is on those proposing a change to state their case. You have failed to make any case.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:19, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

My proposal is in line with the outcomes of recent discussions. Artificial Intelligence" doesn't mean "Artificial intelligence" in the same way that Union Station doesn't redirect to Union station and Friendly Fire doesn't redirect to Friendly fire. It's the rule established through discussion. Eventhorizon51 ^(talk) 20:33, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

So that's the best explanation you have? "It's the rule". Well WP:IAR then, because none of these proposed moves make the encyclopedia better. They will just add an extra click for readers, for no good reason.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:42, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Are you really going to just IAR the Wikipedia policy of discussion and consensus? These moves follow the convention that has been discussed and agreed upon, so moving these pages make the encyclopedia more consistent. And in general, consistency is better. Eventhorizon51 ^(talk) 20:53, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• On closer inspection, a few of these do make sense: for Jury Nullification, Love Song, Blue Moon, High Voltage I think the alternative meanings are sufficiently close in primacy to the sentence case meaning that the disambiguation page can sensibly be put there. So I support for those cases, but oppose the others, in which the current redirect is to the highly sought-after encyclopedic topic.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:48, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Strong support. Per nom. What all these have in common is that the proposed destinations all have the second word capitalized and are currently redirects to an article for a generic topic without that second word capitalized. All these moves are in line with policy (WP:DIFFCAPS) and recognize that although people normally don't distinguish much between caps and not caps, in the particular context of typing in a search term, if someone bothers to capitalize the second word in each of these they are almost certainly looking for a topic with that name, not for the generic topic which is normally uncapitalized. So in some cases that means putting the one and only primary topic for that (capitalized) name at this base name, while in other cases it means putting a dab page containing all uses of said name at the base name. That's exactly what is proposed here. For example, someone searching with "artificial intelligence" is likely looking for the general article at Artificial intelligence, but someone searching with "Artificial Intelligence" is probably looking for something named Artificial Intelligence and listed on the dab page (currently at Artificial intelligence (disambiguation), and proposed here to be moved to Artificial Intelligence. Well done; a big improvement. --В²C ☎ 20:05, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

  The question is what is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term in question, though. Just because the term is a redirect with alternative caps, doesn't mean it's not a contender. By long-term significance and common usage, Artificial Intelligence refers to the topic it currently redirects to, which is correct per the WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT policy. I'm not sure which other topics you think are contenders.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:17, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Per WP:DIFFCAPS: "The general approach is that whatever readers might type in the search box, they are guided as swiftly as possible to the topic they might reasonably be expected to be looking for,... small details are usually sufficient to distinguish topics". It's generally agreed that whenever a reader capitalizes a title, they can be reasonably expected to be looking for a proper name rather than a generic term. That's what eliminates the lowercase forms as contenders. Eventhorizon51 ^(talk) 20:25, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

That just isn't true. The vast majority of our readers don't know in detail whether our titles are written in title-case or sentence-case. The WP:PRIMARYTOPIC policy, which mandates that readers should be taken to the topic they most wish to visit, and the most encyclopedic term for their title, applies for title case terms as much as any other. DIFFCAPS only tells us that we *can* differentiate based on capitlisation if it's sensible to do so, and there are some cases where it's valid. But it doesn't tell us that we *must* do so.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:30, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

No one knows exactly what each reader knows, so it's impossible to achieve the absolute fastest way to get to every topic sought for each individual reader. I would like to know which cases you consider "valid", since as it stands now, some dab pages have "(disambiguation)" and some are only distinguished by capitalization. And they seem quite arbitrary. Eventhorizon51 ^(talk) 20:42, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Amakuru, our difference in opinion seems to center on how likely people searching with title case are nevertheless looking for the generic use rather than one of the topics named after the generic use. Not sure how to resolve that. But I will point out I don't think knowledge of WP conventions matters much. I think most people on the internet in general have learned to search in all lower case. Those people are unaffected by this proposal. It's the minority that bothers to capitalize when entering a search term that we are concerned with here. Whether they capitalize naturally because it's the name of a film or because they know WP doesn't capitalize the generic title doesn't matter. The only ones not treated ideally if this proposal passes are those who use title case as a search term even though they're looking for the generic use, like BD2412's hypothetical user who looks for the ocean animal with Sea Uchin. But even for them it's not so bad, as in each case they're taken to a DAB page or article with a link to the generic use they're seeking at the top. Plus once that happens once or twice then they too will learn about case sensitive searching on WP... bonus! So, what's the real problem here? --В²C ☎ 20:45, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. I concur with BD2412. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:33, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose per Amakuru. These names have primaries no matter how they're cased. Hatnotes are our friend. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support per В²C. I think it's quite a small minority of users that will search for a general usage topic with title case. Some exceptions might be a person researching a title they've seen somewhere like the name of a college course or lecture that reads "Artifical Intelligence". Again, I think that's a pretty darn small use case though. -- Fyrael (talk) 21:00, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per BD2412 and Amakuru. Where there is a clear and obvious primary topic, we shouldn't be trying to guess someone's intent based solely on a difference in capitalization. CThomas³ (talk) 21:03, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
  • But Cthomas3, aren't you guessing either way? If you oppose, aren't you guessing most people searching with title case are nevertheless seeking the generic primary topic article without a title case proper name? Why? Why would most who bother to search with title case not be looking for a topic most commonly referred to in title case? If they're looking for the generic primary topic, not commonly referenced with title case (like sea urchin or dry cleaning, to take the first two in the list as examples) why would they bother to search with title case (like Sea Urchin or Dry Cleaning)? Granted a few might, but most? --В²C ☎ 22:04, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
    • I don't consider it really guessing (or perhaps I consider it to be the most logical guess) that someone typing a word or phrase that matches a primary topic, differing only in capitalization, is looking for that topic. Otherwise we'd be saying, "Yeah, I see what you typed there, but juuuuuuust maybe you meant this other thing. Did you? No? Oops, sorry." CThomas³ (talk) 01:30, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

      Upon further reflection I would consider Dry Cleaning, Jury Nullification, and Mob Mentality per DIFFCAPS. But if all we are going to do is send someone to a DAB page, I'd rather send them to the primary topic first with a hatnote, as we know no one is ever really looking for a DAB. CThomas³ (talk) 01:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per BD2412. Egsan Bacon (talk) 22:38, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose removal of "(disambiguation)" from any disambiguation page. It is needed to identify that the page is a disambiguation page. This is extremely so for ambiguous titling (and for readers, Wikipedia capitalization style is not to be assumed), and in all cases for PRECISE and CONSISTENCY. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:55, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

  You disagree with WP:DABNAME in addition to WP:DIFFCAPS. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:49, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  JHunterJ, I disagree with WP:DABNAME, and one of the bad consequences of the bad DABNAME is that it creates apparent DIFFCAPS crises. If it were not for DABNAME, I would have no problem with DIFFCAPS. Related is the other bad consequence of DABNAME, which is the overzealous push for PRIMARYTOPICS where one does not exist to avoid the DAB page sitting on the basename. Many of the proposed moves above will put DAB pages on basenames and readers will not recognize the DAB pages as DAB pages. I believe that you are one of the ancient proponents of DABNAME? Do you really believe in it, that XYZ must never redirect to XYZ (disambiguation), even if it means that DIFFCAPS must be compromised? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:29, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  WP:DABNAME, like WP:DIFFCAPS, is the consensus. I just wanted to be sure you were !voting contrary to the guidelines, and that the closer takes that into account. To answer your question though, no, I do not support compromising diffcaps, but yes, XYZ must never redirect to XYZ (disambiguation) (and that conclusion does not require any compromise of DIFFCAPS). Readers will indeed recognize dab pages as dab pages, unless they are illiterate and cannot recognize encyclopedia articles either. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:00, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  Why do you believe XYZ must never redirect to XYZ (disambiguation)? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:33, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  Your ancient opposition to it has come up several times and never gotten consensus. XYZ should never redirect to XYZ (qualifier) either. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:58, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  You are one of the ancient instigators of the practice, and as far as I can find it was never justified, just a practice that started up. Please correct me if I ma wrong. Some take interest in the idea of reversing the DABNAME/MALPLACED practice/policy, few comment against, and when they do it is along the lines of "sometimes people suggest this, and it would be a shocking change for us, it could be too much work". In the meantime, readers are being disserviced by being sent unexpectedly to poorly titled DAB pages. I guess the place to take this further is WP:VPP. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:35, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  If we have no better purpose for A than to be either the title of, or a redirect to, one particular page, then A is sufficiently precise, natural and recognizable by definition, and is the preferred title of the page over any A (x) title of that page because A is more concise than A (x), period. Good luck finding consensus to reject that reasoning; you'll need it. --В²C ☎ 23:02, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  I believe the wider community holds the titling aficionados in disdain, and a concise presentation of the pros and cons will be helpful.

  A is frequently, easily, obviously misrecognized as an article, from Go Box auto-complete suggestions, wikilinks, hovertext, search engine headings, when it is a DAB page and most definitely not a readers presumed "Primary Topic" (a Wikipedia term they probably don't know). Concise is not achieved by the absence of essential information. The problem frequently manifests with readers being sent to the wrong page, a DAB page, a point frequently made by yourself. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:19, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  "I was confused/hindered/misled/fooled/bamboozled/bothered/annoyed because a dab page title was an unadorned base name", said no one, ever. You're proposing a solution to a supposed problem that nobody else even agrees is a problem. --В²C ☎ 23:36, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  "I was annoyed and delayed getting the page I wanted because there was a DAB page at the basename" is something that personally annoys me. Othertimes, I *want* the dab page, but the fact that it is a DAB page is hidden. I clearly have slower internet that people like you who don't mind downloading large pages to read a hatnote to rescue you. DAB page title at an unadorned base name is a root cause of people getting an unwanted DAB page, which is a cause for people like you pushing with zeal to assign a PT to the basename excessively. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:26, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

  You never answer this question. What difference does it make in terms of your slow internet issues if the dab page is at A, or A redirects to the dab page at A (disambiguation)? --В²C ☎ 00:35, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

  For me, when I am on slow/unstable internet, and/or a poor device, I take care what pages I download. I will check the url of a link and open it in a new tab so as to not clear the current one. If the DAB page is at "A", I can't know it is a DAB page without downloading it. Downloading a DAB page is a small curse, but on the other side, when I want a DAB page, and I guess wrong, and "A" turns outs to be a heavy media-loaded page, that is considerable trouble for me. If the internet cuts outs, or pauses, mid download, the whole device becomes non-functional. I like to know precisely what page I am considering to download. Mercury and Paris, one is a DAB page the other is not, one downloads easy, the other is a catastrophe if I need the answer before the next tunnel. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:08, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

  In what context? There shouldn’t be a link to any dab page from an article. So maybe you’re on a talk page and someone links to it? So you’re saying if they link to A (disambiguation), or even if they link to A which is a redirect to A (disambiguation), you will be able to see that’s the case and know it’s safe to click? But don’t you have that problem all the time? Any link in an article can be to a short or long article, and you have no way of knowing which unless you are sufficiently familiar with the topic to make a reasonable guess. Just seems like we’d be addressing only a tiny part of the loading problem with your idea. —В²C ☎ 04:53, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

  As requested, letting you know you are incorrect. The common-sense idea that you don't put a qualifier on a title that doesn't need a qualifier was like that when I got here. No one argues against it as being too much work, and certainly not me; I'm all in favor of doing the work to improve the encyclopedia (see the fixes for using sentence case for bird names and for removing the unneeded qualifiers from NYC subway station article titles). The arguments against adding useless qualifiers are not that it would be too much work, but that it would unimprove the encyclopedia. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:20, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

  Thanks. So you arrived and picked up the tradition. I think I found the origin in a 2001 User:Larry Sanger pronouncement on using simple titles. Common sense? "Common sense" can be simplistic and inadequate in complicated cases. I am certainly trying to make the case that a disambiguation page needs a qualifier or else it may be misrecognized as one of the topics. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:41, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Also Oppose most due to independent criticism of DIFFCAPS where it crosses title case alternatives.

Having looked at some specific RMs, such as Absolute Zero, ("Oppose. Absolute Zero has a primary meaning / primary topic of -273.15 °C"), DIFFCAPS that corresponds to a choice of the several title case alternatives is not reasonable to expect a reader to understand. Titles are not just about Go Box use, titles stand alone in many places, on Wikipedia and in downstream uses. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:32, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

• Support, per principle of least astonishment: if the reader troubled himself to type double caps, High Voltage, There is a reasonable expectation that he is looking for a book/film/painting/company title rather than for the term "high voltage". Staszek Lem (talk) 23:54, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Yes, we should be guessing someone's intent by differences in capitalization, per WP:DIFFCAPS. The fact that the differently capitalized title is ambiguous doesn't negate that. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose the sea urchin move, neutral on the others right now. At least for that one, there is no other page with this exact name (only "The Sea Urchin" or "Sea Urchins") -- therefore the current title is most helpful for readers.--Yaksar (let's chat) 04:23, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• (Crouch, Swale's reccomendations, indented to show all are my comments per my talk. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:43, 10 October 2019 (UTC))
  • Oppose Sea Urchin per Yaksar because as noted there are no other uses of "Sea Urchin", all are "The Sea Urchin" (or "Sea Urchins") and have no indication of being just "Sea Urchin" so no competition for plain "Sea Urchin".
  • Neutral on Dry Cleaning, Jury Nullification and Mob Mentality because while readers bothering to capitalize shouldn't get the generic topic its best not to send them to an obscure topic per WP:ASTONISH so I support creating a DAB instead.
  • Support Capital Punishment per WP:DIFFCAPS and WP:DABNAME (all others are upper case) since someone typing a capital "P" could easily be looking for a proper noun its safest to disambiguate. Similar with No Man's Land, Blue Moon, Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice, Head of State, Lunar Eclipse, Artificial Intelligence, Trade Secrets (and some might argue WP:PLURALPT), High Voltage and Event Horizon.
  • Support Death Sentence per WP:DABNAME since Death Sentence already redirects to Death sentence (disambiguation). Similar with Love Song. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:26, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
    • @Crouch, Swale: Historically, it has been common to refer to the Summer solstice and Winter solstice with both words capitalized. See this Ngram, and this book (fifth paragraph on the left), this book (second paragraph on the right), this book (bottom half of the page), and this book (bottom of page 52 and top of page 53). bd2412 T 18:26, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
      • All of those that I can access (apart from the last book) capitalize other generic words commonly like "Noon" (above) for 1st book, "Hand" and "Day" for 2nd to last book. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:43, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
• @Born2cycle: would you agree with my point about Sea Urchin, that no others are called this. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:29, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

No. Anyone searching with title case is far more likely looking for one of the topics with a proper name on the dab page, not the generic topic, and we should send them there accordingly. —В²C ☎ 15:57, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

• Support while some of these changes seem a broad stroke within this single move request, all of the proposed capitalization change seem reasonable to me, especially as many of them are both proper nouns in English and should be capitalized while also warranting their own pages without disambiguation needs. --- FULBERT (talk) 12:20, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
  • @FULBERT: are you sure you have understood this proposal? It is not about giving its "own page" to the subject, rather, it is moving the disambiguation page to a page without (disambiguation) in the title. The problem this is causing for some of us is that that will overwrite the pre-existing redirect to the primary topic. My apologies if you already understood that. SpinningSpark 13:20, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose for those cases where their is a strong primary topic for the uncapitalized form. I agree with those that say many readers are likely to search for the primary topic with capitalisation, or even in all-caps. Most readers are not so anal about capitalisation as Wikipedia editors. By definition, primary topic means that most readers will not be misdirected; it is only the minority that will need the extra click to get to the dab page.

Also, as stated by others, many on of the primaries on this list either could be, or are, given in sources capitalised, or the reader thinks they are. I came here from the notification at High voltage. This is not just a generic term. It is formally defined by standards bodies and will often take the capitalised form because of that. SpinningSpark 13:11, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

But Spinningspark, in the specific context of searching you really believe anyone who bothers to capitalize it as High Voltage is more likely looking for the primary topic for "high voltage" at High voltage? They are not more likely looking for one of the uses with proper names (title case) that are listed on the High voltage (disambiguation) dab page? I get that it's possible that someone searching with the title case term is nevertheless looking for the primary topic. But that it's more likely that they're looking for that rather than they are looking for one of the other topics? --В²C ☎ 17:11, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I do, and are you going to try and WP:BLUDGEON everyone who opposes? People are likely to capitalise the search term if the source they are looking at capitalises it, as this, this, and this one did. That last one is a job advertisement – please don't tell me people don't look up technical terms on Wikipedia they see in job applications. Looking at an ngram over the date range from the beginning of domestic electricity to just before the earliest term being disambiguated (so the results aren't polluted with false hits) shows that the capitalised form is a small, but significant, proportion of the results. SpinningSpark 18:35, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

High Voltage was originally about an album (see the redirect's history) before being moved and targeted to the lower case, while this probably made sense in 2004 its probably not correct now even if its sometimes written in upper case and as noted even if someone wants High voltage they'll still have it on the 1st line of the DAB. Let's not guess what our readers want. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:08, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - There might be a couple that need a closer look, but most of these require an firm oppose. Dry Cleaning, Winter Solstice, and Lunar Eclipse are big nos! I often capitalize every word in searches, here or google, and that would create an extra layer for what I'm looking for. This is a case by case argument, not something that should be mass produced. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:14, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - not every reader uses "correct" (en.wiki style title capitalization) when searching; Not every editor links to correct disambiguated articles. Having 2 links that differ in one uppercase letter is not remotely helpful. --Gonnym (talk) 11:39, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

  If someone is searching with the upper case looking for the general concept they will still find that on the 1st line of most DAB pages, if someone is linking incorrectly then the DPL will be notified so that the link can be corrected either to a lower case link or to the correct proper noun's article. If there's a redirect from the wrong capitalization to the lower case then such links won't get fixed and readers searching using the correct case are inconvenienced. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:21, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per BD2412 and Amakuru. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:33, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:TRAINWRECK. Calidum 18:10, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move aftermath

Well, I definitely did not expect this to be such a contentious issue. Furthermore, after multiple lengthy discussions, there still doesn't seem to be any agreement either way. The question remains: Do differences in capitalization alone sufficiently distinguish between disambiguation pages and articles? The following are some discussions within the past few months that relate to this issue:

1. Talk:Union Station#Requested move 14 August 2019
2. Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 51#Application of WP:DIFFCAPS to WP:DABNAME
3. Talk:Friendly Fire#Requested move 22 August 2019
4. Talk:Absolute Zero (disambiguation)#Requested move 11 September 2019
5. Talk:Dark Matter (disambiguation)#Requested move 11 September 2019
6. And of course, the requested move directly above this section

In discussions 1-3, consensus was that capitalization alone was sufficient, while in discussions 4-6, there was no consensus either way and from what I see, very noteworthy opposition. If there's a given article Article title, there's no consensus as to whether the disambiguation page for "Article Title" should be at Article Title or Article Title (disambiguation).

Arguments for having "(disambiguation)"

Capitalized titles generally have the same WP:PRIMARYTOPIC

Many argue that in most cases, capitalization alone isn't enough to rule out the lowercase form as a primary topic. And, in cases where there is a primary topic, the disambiguation page should carry "(disambiguation)". This is certainly the case with most of the pages discussed in the above section.

Some readers search for all topics in title case

For readers who search for topics in title case, with every word capitalized, it's more efficient to direct them to the generic topic rather than a disambiguation page.

Arguments against having "(disambiguation)"

Capitalization alone is enough per WP:DIFFCAPS

DIFFCAPS states:

"The general approach is that whatever readers might type in the search box, they are guided as swiftly as possible to the topic they might reasonably be expected to be looking for, by such disambiguation techniques as hatnotes and/or disambiguation pages. When such navigation aids are in place, small details are usually sufficient to distinguish topics."

With this policy in mind, "(disambiguation)" is not necessary.

Readers searching in title case are likely looking for a proper name

Opponents of having "(disambiguation)" have argued that anyone searching for something in title case will likely be looking for a specific thing with that title, which will surely be listed at a disambiguation page. Even if they are looking for the topic at the uncapitalized title, they will be guided there quickly by the DAB page.

Examples of differences in application

Capitalized disambiguation pages where there is a primary topic at the uncapitalized title

• Freezer Burn
• Special Effects
• Warning Shot
• Union Station
• Central Station
• Friendly Fire

Disambiguation pages carrying "(disambiguation)" where all non-primary topics are capitalized

• Sea Urchin (disambiguation)
• No Man's Land (disambiguation)
• Blue Moon (disambiguation)
• Trade Secrets (disambiguation)
• High voltage (disambiguation)
• Event horizon (disambiguation)
• And many more in the previous section

Comments

• It appears that right now, there is no standard for disambiguation pages of this nature. I was originally on the side of "(disambiguation)" is required to differentiate DAB pages from articles. However, after the recent discussions and reading over the arguments for not having it, I'm unsure. Nevertheless, I believe that not having a general rule and having each DAB page be evaluated individually is a horrible option. Usually with naming conventions, there is a generally accepted way to name every different kind of page, with IAR applying for exceptional cases. If there's no guideline here, we'll just keep debating this forever. I'd very much like to see what the community thinks here. Eventhorizon51 ^(talk) 23:35, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
  • I think you missed the prevailing argument in the discussion above which can be summarized as, "it depends". A large number of participants expressed the opinion that some of those primary topic subjects are much more likely to be sought using title case than some of the others. This opinion being as prevalent as it is suggests we're stuck with looking at these on a case-by-case basis. In fact, that's what the closer essentially said. Our only hope is maybe we can convince a consensus that it's okay to send title case searchers to the dab page. Then they'll learn. Not sure why there is resistance to this. Like you said, the primary topic will be easy to find as it will be listed at the top. --В²C ☎ 01:57, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• "Do differences in capitalization alone sufficiently distinguish"?

A. It depends. Homoglyphs (0 and O; 1, l and I) are not good enough. DIFFCAPS where the difference is between title case alternatives is not good enough. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:43, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

• On

  "(disambiguation)" is required to differentiate DAB pages from articles

  what are the counter arguments? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:47, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Why, Eventhorizon51, did you create so many editable section headers. Is each meant to be a thread starter? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:49, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

• Yes, this is almost unreadable. The close asked nominators to nominate RM's on each item separately, not to continue debate on this topic on this page. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:05, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

• Removed some section headers. There is that better? Eventhorizon51 ^(talk) 03:10, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Just because the closer stated that there is no restriction on making individual RM proposals immediately does not mean general discussion here cannot continue. That said, I don't think there is much interest in a general solution because of a desire to support title case search for at least some but not all primary topic topics even though they don't have proper names. --В²C ☎ 17:22, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

• My opinion, which I've stated in many of the recent discussions, is that title difference in capitalization, is not sufficient. Creating two different targets for basically the same title is a wrong approach. Whether the target should be the PT or a dab page, is less important to me (I do have an opinion on that as well though), as long as both result in the same target. I'll also point to the RFC from least year at DIFFCAPS which while resulted in no consensus, had a majority of editors in favor of its removal, so I find it hard quoting a policy which does not even have majority community consensus. --Gonnym (talk) 17:31, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• Like so much on WP, "it depends", as SmokeyJoe observed. There are various cases where upper-casing is arguably sufficient, and cases where it is clearly not. The most common type of the latter case is when a term is sometimes capitalized by some people (usually in a WP:SSF manner) but not by most people, and the capitalized form coincides with a proper name of something (band, movie, etc.). That said, I lean toward treating case differences as insufficient, generally speaking, except in mid-word (camel case, as in "DisAmbiguation"). This isn't a strong view, but more of an "if there's any doubt, default to disambiguate" position, that permits of cases where there is no doubt one way or the other.  — AReaderOutThataway ^t/_c 10:44, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

How much more likely is "much more likely than any other single topic"?

How much more likely is "much more likely than any other single topic"? In a recent RM discussion (Talk:Kawésqar#Requested_move_4_September_2019) with a TWODABS situation in a dispute about whether there was a primary topic both sides acknowledge that one topic was favored 1.64/1 in terms of page views. In your experience and opinion is that always/often/usually/sometimes/rarely or never enough of a ratio to meet the "much more likely than any other single topic" criteria? In my opinion it's always, and it seems like the community agrees much more often than not. Am I wrong? --В²C ☎ 18:58, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

For example, if one topic is getting 60% of the hits, and the others are getting 40% all together, doesn't that make the one topic "much more likely" to be sought "than any other single topic"? Maybe this should be clarified at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. --В²C ☎ 19:30, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Well let's consider the extreme case where there's only one other topic. If I mix up 6 red balls and 4 green balls in a bag, and pull one out without looking, would I be "much more likely" to pull out a red ball than a green ball? I probably wouldn't use that language. I would agree with Certes that 2:1 is about where that phrase starts becoming appropriate. Colin M (talk) 19:34, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I am dissatified with the decision at Kawésqar#Requested move 4 September 2019 (a discussion in which I participated). Closer seems to have considered only pageviews (a ratio of 1.64:1, on what is known to be a poor guide to PTOPIC) and WP:TWODABS (which nevertheless explicitly says "if an ambiguous term has no primary topic, then that term needs to lead to a disambiguation page"), and to have ignored arguments based on WP:NCLANG ("Where a common name exists in English for both a people and their language, it is most often the case that neither is the primary topic"). Narky Blert (talk) 21:37, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

• Colin M, great analogy and analysis! In that 6:4/red:green mix, red is 1.5 times as likely to be picked as is green. If we have 62 green and 38 red then we're at a 1.63 ratio. With a distribution of 51/49 (1.04) certainly red is is merely more likely. But I think anything above 1.5:1 crosses the line into much more likely. I mean, is 62 merely more than 38, or is it much more than 38? If you had pay of 38/hour and it was bumped to 62/hour, would that much more pay, or merely more? --В²C ☎ 21:53, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

• The words "likely" and "probably" do not have precise quantified numerical definitions. They are words used when not only the answer is uncertain, but so is the question. Is it likely that a meteorite killed the dinosaurs? Trying to quantitative these adjectives is to miss the point. Read more at https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/probability.html --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:22, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
  • I’m aware of the ambiguity in the current wording. That’s the point. Is there consensus about a more precise meaning that the wording should reflect? That’s what I’m asking. —В²C ☎ 06:38, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
    • It's better to first consider page views of all involved as illustrative, and then to look closely at long term significance. Page views are very easy to obtain, and often correlate with long term significance, but where they don't its probably because of recentism or bias due to certain users having cheaper, easier and more frequent access. Then, if there's any doubt, there's no primary topic. I see you are still pushing the argument that no primary topic means the DAB page is at the base name and the DAB page is the wrong page for many. I agree, and the answer is to repudiate MALPLACED, never put a DAB page at a base name but instead PRECISEly title DAB pages with a "(disambiguation)" suffix. No more unexpected DAB pages from Go box autocomplete selections! Do this and the problems causing you angst will go away. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:00, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
      • The weighting of the long term significance criteria relative to the likelihood of being sought criteria is a separate issue from the question of exactly how likely is "much more likely than any other single topic"? It's also separate from the issue of what to do once no primary topic is established. --В²C ☎ 16:28, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
• I know most people are wont to avoid giving specific numbers here, but I think it's good to have some sort of benchmark. for me, if one of the articles in a twodab situation receives twice as many views as the other one, then it's likely to be a primary topic. I wouldn't consider a ratio of 1.65/1 as sufficient. – Uanfala (talk) 10:27, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  That sounds about right. If only two topics have significant interest then I'd put the dab at the base name unless the ratio is at least 2:1; perhaps more. Reading WP:PRIMARYTOPIC literally, a ratio of 1.01:1 can suffice if the 49% is spread thinly amongst several other topics, but I'd be reluctant to follow that advice. Certes (talk) 10:43, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  Interesting. In my experience the community tends to be more lenient with the likelihood criteria in a two-dab scenario than in multi-dab scenario. After all, even if the split is 51/49, at least 51% are taken directly to the article they're seeking, while the remaining 49% are only one hatnote link click away from the article they are seeking. But if we find no primary topic in that situation and put a two-dab dab page at the base name, then 0% are taken directly to the article they're seeking, and 100% are one dab page link click away from the article they are seeking. Everyone is worse off or neutral; no one is better off. Why do that? --В²C ☎ 16:28, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  Because being taken to an article on a different topic is worse than being taken to a dab. The dab is shorter and clearly a dab, whereas the "wrong" article may well be long and look superficially similar to the article sought. To take the hackneyed example of New York, a reader seeking the city who is sent to the state will load 2.4 MB of text and graphics and might well pluck out a statistic believing it to apply to the city. Suppose, by way of analogy, that someone asks me directions but I'm a tourist here myself. A dab is like admitting that I don't know and pointing at a nearby map; a bad primary topic is like sending them in the wrong direction. Certes (talk) 16:42, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  Because being taken to an article on a different topic is worse than being taken to a dab. So, I think our disagreement comes down to that. I understand your position in theory, but I can only imagine it happening in practice. Never actually experienced it. Even with New York City/state the first lines are "The City of New York, ..." and "New York is a state in ..." respectively. The language in most of our articles requires a level of intelligence and comprehension much higher than what is required to make the distinctions necessary for this. Even if I granted landing on a different topic is a little bit worse than being taken to a dab, which I would only do for the sake of argument, that wouldn't come close to making up for the cost of sending more than half to the dab page instead of directly to the article they are seeking. --В²C ☎ 17:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  I agree with the first sentence. If an article on a different topic is barely worse than a dab then we should put borderline primary topics at the base name. If there's a bigger gap then we should be stricter about only doing this for very clear primary topics. Certes (talk) 17:42, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  Agree but note the if in If an article on a different topic is barely worse than a dab.... And that antecedent is not generally true. NYS/NYC may be hackneyed but it's a spectacular example of what can go wrong. B2C says I can only imagine it happening in practice. Never actually experienced it. But in practice that's exactly what happened at New York. Readers wanting NYC were being taken to a long article. They are now taken to a much shorter DAB, and that's an improvement. But under our P T guidelines they should be taken straight to NYC, which is almost certainly the P T. This would then send those wanting NYS to an even longer article. Having the DAB as the destination of the base name is the current and best solution. But is this an occasional exception, or does it (as I have concluded) indicate a more general flaw in the way we have long treated ambiguous article titles? Andrewa (talk) 18:26, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

  First of all, no, the city is not the primary topic under our P T guidelines. Despite the significantly higher page views there is no evidence that those numbers reflect relative likelihoods of being sought between the city and the state. Since any searcher for the city is likely to know "new york" is ambiguous with the state name they are likely to search with "new york city" or "nyc". But if it was the P T, if most people searching with "new york" were looking for the city, then yes, the minority looking for the state with "new york" would be penalized by being taken to the large city article rather than to a dab page. Once. Presumably they'd remember to type "new york state" next time... And the one time they had to wait to load the city article, at least they'd have the hatnote link to take them to the state article once it did load. BFD. Furthermore, if anyone is on such a slow connection that this even matters (a cheap motel in Wyoming with SnailPace WiFi?) they should be clicking Search, not Go, after entering "new york" or whatever their search term is. That way they get to see search results and decide what to do from that instead of htting Go and loading the matching page. This whole large article loading consideration that you and especially SmokeyJoe love to bring up sure seems overblown to me. --В²C ☎ 19:33, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I agree with you on the hypothetical scenario of 51% vs. 49% thinly sliced. At least in the case where the 51% topic is something that people are widely aware of. If all the other competing topics are very obscure, then readers and editors will generally know better than to think that they can search for or link to them without a disambiguator. (I'm not sure how often scenarios like this come up in practice though. John Adams (disambiguation) has a lot of links, but their summed views are more like 15-20% rather than 50%. Curious if someone can think of a better example - maybe an acronym?) Colin M (talk) 19:50, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  Kawésqar, Kawésqar language. --В²C ☎ 20:27, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  That looks sensible as the article at the base name is obviously not about the language and has a direct hatnote to the one other, closely related, topic. However, several similar cases have changed recently to a two-entry no-PT dab. There's also at least one bad incoming link (from KBF via the questionable redirect Kakauhua) that I'm not sure how to fix (Spurious languages#kbf?) Certes (talk) 20:35, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

  But that's just two pages. The scenario I was talking about (which Certes raised as an aside above) was one article having a little over half of the overall views, and the remaining 50%-ε being spread thinly over many other topics, each having a very small number of page views. Colin M (talk) 00:43, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

  C. elegans (disambiguation) could be an example. It lists a primary topic and about 1750 alternative meanings. Certes (talk) 11:28, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

That’s a great example of needing to look at introductory no-context use versus repeated in-context use. In every case, “C.” refers to the C. things being talked about, and elegans (a common Latin word, elegant) is one of many of these things. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:22, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Surprisingly, the primary redirect C. elegans has incoming links from only 17 articles. Seven mention Caenorhabditis; ten have no explicit context saying what C. stands for. All links seem correct. The worm is the standard organism for many types of research, and may have well over 51% of C. elegans references. Certes (talk) 12:39, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Other candidates are Ace, Atlas, Herald, Star, Telegraph and popular names such as James Brown and John Williams. Certes (talk)

• New to this thread, but to answer the original question the simple answer is that there is no fixed page-view percentage at which primary topic is asserted. Page views are just one of many things we consider when determining what, if anything, is primary. Each situation is assessed on its own merits and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC suggests looking for two things - common usage in sources and long-term significance - neither of which is directly answered by raw page-view counts. I don't deny that page views are a useful tool and sometimes, as at Talk:Fernandinho_(footballer), I find myself arguing a PTOPIC on 90% pageviews while others seem to prefer a dab. But each case is individual.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

  So, in other words, the answer to the question — How much more likely is "much more likely than any other single topic"? — is.. "it depends"? That is, in some cases it might be 50% more likely and in other cases it has to be twice as likely or perhaps even ten times more likely to be considered "much more likely"? So, then, what determines that in each case? Note that the question here is not asking about primary topic - it's a more specific question; a sub-question if you will. Are you saying that you want flexibility on this question so that you can justify your sense (based on who-knows-what) about whether a given topic is or is not the primary topic? Wouldn't it be better to identify exactly what that who-knows-what is, document it, and just go by that? --В²C ☎ 17:15, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

  Amakuru, here is my problem with your answer, and that of others. WP:NWFCTM notwithstanding, since editors are human we are apt to intuitively decide an issue, and then use reasoning to justify our intuitive decision. That applies just as much to deciding primary topic as to anything else. That's just how the human mind works. The best way to counter this tendency is by tightening up the decision-making criteria to discourage post hoc rationalizing. I'm not saying we need a specific fixed page-view percentage, but I do think it would be helpful to come up with as tight a range as we can achieve consensus for. That said, in the real world many decisions are made by choosing arbitrary lines. Most notably the voting ages, driving ages, draft ages, drinking ages... They are all arbitrary lines that are within the "about right" range. Having specifics helps make decisions about which the correctness does not matter nearly as much as having some clear line. Imagine if we did say it's 60% of all page views. Would that be so bad? Maybe that would mean some topics would be primary that we felt shouldn't be, and some wouldn't be that we would feel should be, but so what? We would agree because the page views would dictate whichever it was, not our subjective opinions. And so all these cases that we go on and on about despite there being no one right decision would be resolved very simply. Wouldn't that be better? --В²C ☎ 18:53, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, if we introduced that rul then one of the first moves would be Apple Inc. to Apple, and the fruit article to Apple (fruit). Some might argue that's correct, but I personally think an encyclopedia has a different set of ideals than a pop-culture directory, per WP:5P1, the most fundamental rule we have. It might just be my liberal western bias coming to the fore, but I feel like there's something empirically right about prioritising the fruit over the tech company, and systemic bias aside, I don't actually think that Wikipedians are that bad at making these calls.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:14, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't think so; certainly not necessarily. That's the point. We would still have the long-term significance criteria to consider. I'm just saying that long-term significance should not affect how we interpret how likely "much more likely than any other single topic" is. Even if we recognize that Apple Inc. is much more likely to be sought than is the fruit (and surely it is), we can still decide to override that with long-term significance. But wouldn't it be better to at least make the likelihood assessment less subject to personal and systemic bias? Let's be clear that that is what we're doing, overriding with long-term significance, rather than redefining the likelihood of "much more likely" at every turn. --В²C ☎ 19:24, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

...closely followed by the likes of Prince (musician), Monopoly (game), Billboard (magazine) and Arsenal F.C.. Certes (talk) 19:29, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

A separate issue is the guidance we provide about how to decide what to do in all such cases when the two criteria conflict, leaving that decision to the whims of whoever shows up, every time. In this supposed guideline, we provide practically no guidance on this. But, that is a separate issue to the question I'm asking in this discussion. --В²C ☎ 19:59, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

WP:PTOPIC is not clear; but IMO the two tests (usage and long-term significance) should be cumulative not alternative. You have to pass both to be a PTOPIC.

There was a recent discussion/kerfuffle at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#RfC about articles on three digit numbers on this sort of topic. My conclusion from it: if a three-digit number has a PTOPIC, it is the AD year; if the year is not PTOPIC, then there is no PTOPIC. Narky Blert (talk) 23:20, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Narky Blert, by that interpretation nobody searching with “Boston” (for example) would be taken to the article they seek (most likely the Massachusetts city, Boston) but to the dab page. That’s not the community consensus. —В²C ☎ 03:14, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@Born2cycle: IMO too much emphasis is placed on reading rather then editing. People typing into the search box will always get where they want, sooner or later. One more or fewer click is neither here nor there. The danger and damage arises from bad bluelinks. Readers who click on bluelinks should always be taken to the right place – and that's the end of the matter.

UK readers who type 'Boston' into the search box might be mildly surprised to find themselves looking at an article about Boston, Massachusetts rather than the better-known Boston, Lincolnshire (not to be confused with Boston Spa, Yorkshire – a common mistake; it's often called just 'Boston'); but they can get to the article they want soon enough. Similarly, UK readers who type 'Perth' into the search box might be expecting to land on Perth, Scotland not Perth, Australia; but they can deal with it. However, bluelinks like this one are intolerable. Narky Blert (talk) 04:27, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Narky Blert, I definitely agree that bad bluelinks are far worse a reader going to a DAB page. A reader going to a DAB page implies, or should imply, to the reader that they misconstrued their topic as being a global primary topic. Or there's a good chance that they actually wanted the DAB page to get to what they wanted. Perth is one of a great many PrimaryTopic mistakes. I think people simply can't disentangle the concept of importance. Perth should be a redirect to Perth (disambiguation), it should never be suggested as a potential article of interest. Perth, Australia, or Perth, Western Australia, is a perfectly good title for the large city, Perth is not perfectly good. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:01, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

In the last year or so, I've corrected 133 articles which linked to the wrong Perth. Clearly I'm not the only editor fixing such problems, and there will be more that we've not spotted. Certes (talk) 00:11, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

That itself is a compelling reason to put Perth WA at a PRECISE title. Another rationale is that editors mislinking to Perth are an indicator of many readers who are similarly confused. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:23, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Narky Blert, thank you. This may be of interest to SmokeyJoe and Andrewa as well. This really helps understand your perspective. I think it comes down to a difference in priorities. You're primarily concerned with bad bluelinks, and believe reducing the chances of bad bluelinks should be a higher priority than maximizing the chances users get directly to the article they seek when searching with a given term. Right? I too am concerned with bad bluelinks, but I think existing primary topic criteria already handles it well enough, and do not think polishing the bad bluelink turd (pardon the expression) is worth reducing the chances users will get directly to the articles they seek when searching with a given term. There is no way to eliminate all bad bluelinks, and we have practices that mitigate the problem. First and foremost, since anyone can edit WP, anyone who encounters a bad bluelink can fix it, just like you did with Perth in the diff above. Secondly, hatnote links, like the one to Perth, Scotland at the top of Perth, allow users to get back on track quickly when misguided by the occasional bad bluelink. WP is by definition a constant work in progress, and nobody should be surprised by hiccups like occasional bad bluelinks. Trying to reducing the incidence of bad bluelink occurrence is certainly admirable, but adding measures that do so marginally with the side effect of making navigation to countless highly sought articles less efficient is, IMHO, not a tradeoff beneficial to most users. --В²C ☎ 16:17, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@Born2cycle, Certes, SmokeyJoe, and Andrewa: This is a hypothetical example, expanding on my idea of searchers and readers. I haven't seen an actual example; it would be difficult to locate one; but it's pounds to pennies that they exist.

Imagine that we have several articles on people called Joe Schmuck. One of them was a well-known American politician around the turn of the 20th century and is WP:PTOPIC; all the other articles have qualified titles, and are on the DAB page. Readers clicking on links to Joe Schmuck from non-political articles might be surprised to learn that this multi-talented man also was a moderately successful boxer, played two seasons of professional baseball, starred in silent films, wrote erotic novels, described a species of beetle found in the Amazonian jungle, and was an early advocate for the legalisation of cannabis. They are likely to assume that his other talents have been omitted from the PTOPIC article, and to go away with totally the wrong idea. Narky Blert (talk) 19:33, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

The whole concept of primary topic is designed to avoid exactly such a scenario. That's not to say something won't ever slip through the cracks, but, in general, if primary topics are selected correctly, per the criteria, it shouldn't happen. Also, I think we should give our readers a little more credit. If they only know of a Joe Schmuck as a politician in the early 20th century, and when they click on his linked name they land on an article with "(actor)" (or whatever) in parentheses, plus nothing about him being in politics, and dates likely not lining up, we have to assume they will figure out that's a different Joe Schmuck. --В²C ☎ 19:59, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

"we have to assume they will figure out that's a different Joe Schmuck". Why? we are an encyclopaedia, not a party game. Narky Blert (talk) 22:11, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

James Brown was born in 1862 after a brief career as a newspaper editor. Although best known for his musical career, he was also a notable basketball player and gridiron quarterback. Certes (talk) 20:18, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

He also acted in The Dirty Dozen. Narky Blert (talk) 22:07, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

At least that one links to the right guy. The articles I mentioned link incorrectly to the singer at the base name. (Yes, I should just fix them.) Certes (talk) 23:08, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

• My gut instinct is to refer to the 68–95–99.7 rule. 50.1-68% is more. 68-95% is much more (and is the PT discretionary range). 95-99.7% is very much more. >99.7% is almost certainly. A PrimaryTopic may be found at 68%, and may not be found at 95%, Pageviews are an unreliable easy statistic and other things need serious considerations. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:04, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

“More” means more than all independent others combined, not just the next strongest. Non-independent others may be excluded from consideration, or may be taken as contributing the claim of the strongest. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:07, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

In general, yes, but the clause in question here says "much more likely than any other single topic". So it's explicitly excluding any others. --В²C ☎ 22:21, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

• Regarding the 68% rule... So 67% is just "more", not "much more"? If one has 67% the most the other could have is 33%. So 67 is not much more than 33? If I said a bike ride is 33 miles and it turned out to be 67 miles, would that be much more, or just "more"? If your pay jumped from 33 units to 67 units would that be more, or much more? If the price for a meal of fish is 33 and for lobster it's 67, does the lobster dish cost much more than the fish, or merely more? Maybe it's just me but in every other context I can think of, 67 seems to be much more than 33... If one dog weighs 33 lbs and the other 67 lbs, does the larger dog weigh much more, or just "more" than the smaller one? --В²C ☎ 22:21, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

I think it is not reasonable to compare quantities and probabilities in terms of the same “more”. Consider uncertainties. 33 miles is much more than 32 miles if you are talking about measuring 32 miles to the nearest foot. Probabilities, or likelinesses, don’t work like quantities. 33 miles will be larger than 32 miles everytime. If Pageviews A-B are 67-33, the probability of the next view being A is only 67%, there is a 33% chance of being wrong. That’s pretty bad. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:56, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Sure, SmokeyJoe, but the likelihood of being wrong is 100% if you send 0% to the article they seek. I'll take being wrong 33% of the time over being wrong 100% of the time. Every time. --В²C ☎ 16:15, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Could you please rephrase that? Sending no one somewhere is like a division by zero error. Is your wrong article the imprecisely titled disambiguation page? Who is "sending"? Why not empower the reader to make informed choices, by having PRECISE titling? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:57, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Every time a user enters a search term and clicks Go we send them somewhere by virtue of how we arrange our articles and choose our titles. That somewhere is either the title they’re seeking (right place), or somewhere else (wrong place). Our goal should be to arrange our articles and select our titles to send the most people to their right place the highest percentage of times we can. If using a particular base name search always results in the user being sent to a dab page, then none (0%) are sent to the right place. That’s not a good result especially if it’s possible to send more than half to the right place by locating the most likely to be sought article at the base name. —В²C ☎ 03:02, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

The "wrong place" can only happen, without the reader knowing, if the title is ambiguous, and is a problem if the reader has a different PT assumption to editors. I disagree with your "Our goal should be to arrange our articles and select our titles to send the most people", that's presumptuous and patronizing, the goal should be to provide titles that inform the reader of what page they are selecting. That means PRECISE titling, including for DAB pages. I think you are mostly referring to DAB pages being the "wrong page"? If so, I agree, I personally dislike going to a DAB page that I anticipated being an article. "If using a particular base name search always results in the user being sent to a dab page" is obviously a failing of using a basename for a DAB page, the solution is to not use basenames as DAB pages, the solution is not to force a PT decision where there is no PT. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:42, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes. The problem occurs when the reader has a different PT assumption to editors. This happens more often than you might think. Having heard that a concert featured Madonna, Prince and Fish, it's easy to presume that those might be the titles of musicians' biographies. The first one is a dab, with the entertainer listed prominently. The others have non-musical PTs which are obvious when you stand back and think but are not what you might presume when your mind is preoccupied with the context. Certes (talk) 10:29, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, how is that goal presumptuous and patronizing? We simply do our best to determine what anyone searching with a given term is most likely seeking. If there is a topic that is most likely sought with a term, then searching for that term should take users to that topic. What's the alternative? Sending them all to a dab page. How is that better? It's certainly no better for the majority who could have been taken directly to the article they're seeking, and it's no better even for the minority that will end up one click away from their destination either way (by either dab page link or hatnote link). A much smaller minority will be an extra click away - but isn't it better to add clicks for a small minority than for the majority of those seeking with the term in question? How is it patronizing or presumptuous to send people searching with "boston" to Boston? And I don't see how not using basenames as DAB pages is a solution to anything. So we move Mercury to Mercury (disambiguation). What does that solve? What do we do with Mercury? We must redirect it to Mercury (disambiguation), right? So what difference does it make to not have the basename Mercury as a DAB page, but rather a redirect to the DAB page? --В²C ☎ 16:17, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

• Links to ill-chosen PTOPICs damage the encyclopaedia, are difficult to find, and rarely get fixed. Saving even a majority of readers one click from the search box is as nothing compared with the confusion or misleading information imparted by clicking on a bluelink which points to the wrong article. It's all about the readers. I generally look for a ratio of at least 8:1, and preferably at least 9:1, before agreeing to a PTOPIC.

Some examples. (1) Tetrahedron is without doubt a PTOPIC; but every time I've looked at its what-links-here, I've found and corrected a few links intended for Tetrahedron (journal). That isn't too bad: the only readers likely to click on a link expecting to find the journal but instead find themselves looking at the article about the Platonic solid are organic chemists who will understand the mistake, even if they don't correct it. Sloppy, but not appalling. (2) If you live in India, especially West Bengal, bluelinks to Esplanade or Salt Lake City will not always take you where you expect. In Kolkata, the PTOPICs for those are Esplanade, Kolkata and Salt Lake City, Kolkata. The only reason that such bad links are few is that a couple of editors have undertaken the mindblowingly tedious task of checking and correcting those bluelinks.

I have corrected well over a hundred thousand (possibly close to one hundred and fifty thousand) links to DAB pages. They are easy to find; User:DPL bot flags them up. While doing so, I have also fixed several thousand bluelinks which pointed to the wrong place, because my Spidey-Sense suggested that something was wrong: most obviously, things like bluelinks to newspapers called Star or Sun. Errors like that only get fixed if an editor spots one of them, and takes the trouble to look and see what others there might be.

I remember sorting out two articles about people from India which were differentiated only by the presence or absence of a fullstop after a personal initial; inevitably, the links-in were a mess. I have a bookmark folder in my browser called 'To-do' which contains potential problems of that sort which I haven't got round to looking at yet. (It currently includes, among others, Tiempo de amar, Tiempo de Amar and the redirect Tiempo De Amar, where the capitalisation may be a false way of distinguishing between two topics; but until I've dug into Spanish Wikipedia, I just don't know.) Narky Blert (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

• One thing I'd like to point out here is that WP:PTOPIC#1 talks about "likelihood to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term". Even if we reached some consensus for a numerical threshold for "much more likely", it would be of limited utility, because, for any given case, we can't measure the probabilities directly. Pageviews are often a decent proxy, but there are some major confounds that are rarely acknowledged. Here are some potential problems with saying "X has 2 times the page views of Y, therefore it's twice as likely to be the topic sought for term T":

1. It implicitly assumes that the % of pageviews that come from a search is the same across all articles. This is certainly not true. For example, in this RM, I argued that articles on TV episodes are much less likely to be arrived at via search (rather than from wikilinks, or links from outside Wikipedia, including search engines), for the simple reason that the titles of individual TV episodes are not widely known (even among people who have watched the episode).
2. It assumes that the likelihood that someone looking for information about X will use T as their search term is the same as the likelihood that someone seeking Y will use T as the search term. In some cases, this is far from true, and leads to inferences of relative probabilities that may be off by one or more orders of magnitude from reality. For example, close to 100% of readers looking for information about Dockers (brand) will search for "Dockers". However someone searching for information about the profession might search for "Dockers", or "Docker", or "Stevedore", or "Stevedores", or "Longshoreman", or "Dockworker", or.... Of the readers arriving at Stevedore via search, perhaps 1% or less will have used the search term "Dockers" to get there.

Pageviews are a useful piece of evidence when evaluated in their proper context, but I think it's a bad idea to try to uncritically plug them into some math formula to make a ptopic decision. Colin M (talk) 03:25, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

• To answer the question of how we should interpret "much more", I think we need to understand what the purpose of that requirement is. And now that I think about it, I don't know. A primary topic needs to be searched for more than all the others combined, and much more than any one other topic. The first part isn't ambiguous, and just requires a simple majority. Consider two potential primary topic discussions, A & B. In both, the potential primary topic is likely to be sought 55% of the time, so it meets the first part of the test. In A, the remaining 45% is split between 9 other topics at 5% each. In B, the remaining 45% is all for a single other topic. So A clearly passes the primary topic test, while B (arguably) does not. But why treat these cases differently? In both A & B, the same percentage of people will end up incorrectly at the primary topic. The potential for incorrect links appears to be similar in both cases.--Trystan (talk) 13:46, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

  A difference is that in the 55%/45% case, some readers (and editors) may assume that the 45% topic is primary and expect to find it at the base name (or mislink it using the base name). In the 55%/5%×9 case, although it's unclear whether there is a PT or not, there's only one contender for the role. Certes (talk) 14:00, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

  Good point, Certes. A 55/45 situation is more likely to create bad bluelinks than is a 55/20/20/15 situation. However, I don't think an occasional bad bluelink is reason enough to not send the 55% to the article they seek, which is the result of putting the dab page at the base name. And, yeah, in the 55/45 situation anyone seeking the 45% one is more likely to expect it to be at the basename than is someone seeking a 20% or 15% target in the other scenario, but, again, I don't think the occasional sending of a user to the unexpected article is reason enough to not send the 55% to the article they seek. --В²C ☎ 16:23, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Perspectives

I think Born2cycle has hit the nail right on the head with this edit in which I was pinged (thank you).

Narky Blert, thank you. This may be of interest to SmokeyJoe and Andrewa as well. This really helps understand your perspective. I think it comes down to a difference in priorities. You're primarily concerned with bad bluelinks, and believe reducing the chances of bad bluelinks should be a higher priority than maximizing the chances users get directly to the article they seek when searching with a given term. Right? I too am concerned with bad bluelinks, but I think existing primary topic criteria already handles it well enough, and do not think polishing the bad bluelink turd (pardon the expression) is worth reducing the chances users will get directly to the articles they seek when searching with a given term. There is no way to eliminate all bad bluelinks, and we have practices that mitigate the problem. First and foremost, since anyone can edit WP, anyone who encounters a bad bluelink can fix it, just like you did with Perth in the diff above. Secondly, hatnote links, like the one to Perth, Scotland at the top of Perth, allow users to get back on track quickly when misguided by the occasional bad bluelink. WP is by definition a constant work in progress, and nobody should be surprised by hiccups like occasional bad bluelinks. Trying to reducing the incidence of bad bluelink occurrence is certainly admirable, but adding measures that do so marginally with the side effect of making navigation to countless highly sought articles less efficient is, IMHO, not a tradeoff beneficial to most users.

The fundamental disagreement here is, they regard landing on a DAB as a loss, even if that DAB leads explicitly and obviously to the wanted article, with one more mouse click. I regard it as a win.

And that underlies all the rest. To me the that one mouse click is a trivial task that takes almost no time and no thought, and follows loading a DAB that takes minimal time and bandwidth. But to them it is an unacceptable burden.

I doubt that we can ever resolve this. It reflects a fundamental difference in our ways of reading Wikipedia, and our expectations of the way others do so. But we can at least understand it. I think I now do. Other comments? Andrewa (talk) 20:44, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

For a DAB page that’s just a few lines I suppose it’s not unreasonable to characterize the cost of having to land on it as “one mouse click [that] is a trivial task”, though I, for one, still find it to be annoying and definitely not a win. I’m much less bothered by landing on another article with a hatnote link to my desired article at the top because it’s just one line to scan; that truly is a trivial task, every time. But wading through the larger DAB pages riddled by categories with seemingly random headings organized in some unfamiliar fashion is a much more significant task which can be very annoying and time consuming. I think it’s important to spare our users from that as much as reasonably possible. And that is arguably the main purpose of identifying primary topics and arranging our articles accordingly. —В²C ☎ 15:53, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

You don't seem to be consistent in this. The DAB at The Americans (disambiguation) (formerly at The Americans) has nine entries in all, and one subsection, a See also with four entries. It all fits on my screen without scrolling. To call it one of the larger DAB pages riddled by categories with seemingly random headings organized in some unfamiliar fashion would be ridiculous.

Yet you argued forcefully (and successfully) that it was better to have The Americans (2013 TV series) moved to the base name. As I said at the time, this seems rather bizarre to me. It benefits very few readers, and makes things more difficult for many more.

I can now see why you like it that way, but I don't see any reason to think that many readers had any problem before. Most of those who will now find the article at The Americans would have found it just as easily or even more easily at The Americans (2013 TV series). Andrewa (talk) 02:46, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

We agree that the Americans DAB page falls into the category that you characterize as requiring "one mouse click [that] is a trivial task". But how am I inconsistent in not wanting that DAB page at the base name? Remember, I characterize landing on it as "still ... annoying and definitely not a win". There is no way the article about the epic 2013 TV series could be easier to find than it is now: enter "the americans" and click Go. When doing that took you to the (even relatively small) DAB page, that made it harder. And annoying. Which is arguably why it was fixed. --В²C ☎ 19:44, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Because you seem to be relying on assumptions on the way people use Wikipedia. There is no way the article about the epic 2013 TV series could be easier to find than it is now: enter "the americans" and click Go. Yes, that's your way of getting there. But you're a bit unusual in that you already know exactly what the article you want is called, and have returned to it frequently but can't be bothered bookmarking it, even when you find it so annoying to be taken to a DAB. Most unusual in fact.

But the most significant thing there is that you already know what the article you want is called. We also need to deal with the more common situation, that people don't know the article name. They may have a guess at it, and if for them the meaning of the base name is the same as Wikipedia's decision on Primary Topic, they may get it right. At the moment, you get it right for The Americans, not surprisingly because it was your idea to move the TV series article there. But if ever the P T changes (as was foreshadowed as an obvious possibility in the RM close) then you'll be taken to the wrong article. If it's a long, wrong article, you say that won't matter any more to you than being taken to a short DAB, but for most users it will.

Another way of getting there is to start to type The Americans and look at the drop-down list to see whether there's an article name that matches what you want. Previously, people who did this got The Americans (2013 TV series) on the list, a name which they were most likely to recognise as the article they want, but now they don't.

So it has become more difficult for these users. Do you see that now?

We could fix the "search Wikipedia" box (which some I know say isn't a search box at all - whatever) to always show redirects, and to always show DABS, and have hovertext or the like to explain what (disambiguation) means for those who may not know. But we have no control over other search engines etc.. The other way is, have the article at an unambiguous, recognisable name. That solves it all, except for those with a strong and to me unreasonable aversion to DABs. Andrewa (talk) 08:58, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Perspectives 2

First of all, no, the city is not the primary topic under our P T guidelines. Despite the significantly higher page views there is no evidence that those numbers reflect relative likelihoods of being sought between the city and the state. Since any searcher for the city is likely to know "new york" is ambiguous with the state name they are likely to search with "new york city" or "nyc". But if it was the P T, if most people searching with "new york" were looking for the city, then yes, the minority looking for the state with "new york" would be penalized by being taken to the large city article rather than to a dab page. Once. Presumably they'd remember to type "new york state" next time... And the one time they had to wait to load the city article, at least they'd have the hatnote link to take them to the state article once it did load. BFD. Furthermore, if anyone is on such a slow connection that this even matters (a cheap motel in Wyoming with SnailPace WiFi?) they should be clicking Search, not Go, after entering "new york" or whatever their search term is. That way they get to see search results and decide what to do from that instead of htting Go and loading the matching page. This whole large article loading consideration that you and especially SmokeyJoe love to bring up sure seems overblown to me. - comment above by Born2cycle [4]

That's all very interesting.

So, it's P T by page views. OK. No surprise that.

But is it P T by significance too? I think that's a no-brainer. NYC is one of the most important cities in the world, some even say the most important. You say any searcher for the city is likely to know "new york" is ambiguous with the state name. I say, ridiculous claim. How many of the States of India can you name? I've known about New York (city) since I stayed in a hotel there as a five year old, but I can remember that I knew it existed even before that. I can't remember when I learned that there was a state of the same name but it was much later and I can remember how surprised I was to learn at the time that NYC wasn't the capital. Not every user of English Wikipedia has studied American geography.

You seem to want everyone to follow your example in how to use Wikipedia. Won't work.

More to follow. Andrewa (talk) 07:39, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

No, it’s not P T by page views. There is no such criteria. Page views being higher does not necessarily mean it’s P T by usage either. The question relevant to the usage criteria is what are people most likely seeking when entering the term in question as a search term. Page views are a clue to that answer, not always definitive. Regarding your memories from age 5... see WP:BUTIDONTKNOWABOUTIT. As to typical American knowledge of the states of India compared to non-American English speakers knowledge of the state of New York, don’t be silly. Here, for example, is a BBC article referring to “New York” as a state in the headline and article content without qualification. —В²C ☎ 17:51, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Whenever arguments like WP:BUTIDONTKNOWABOUTIT appear, I think of using a dab. Why? Because it indicates that different editors have different opinions, or more precisely that in some contexts A is the PT, and in others it's B. Neither is wrong, and neither deserves to be sent to the "wrong" article. Certes (talk) 18:27, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

The problem with using a dab at the base name is that then nobody searching with that term is taken to the article they seek. The dab page is the “wrong article” for everyone. More benefit if we send everyone to one article even if it’s “wrong” for some as long as it’s “right” for most. We can’t be perfect, but we can minimize the number of wrong landings for the maximum possible of users. You don’t do that by putting a dab page at a base name. —В²C ☎ 22:12, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Exactly how are you searching? When I search on an article and it's at an unambiguous name, I get there straight away. But when it's at an ambiguous name, I have to guess what that ambiguous name means to Wikipedia. I can't see how anyone benefits from having an article at an ambiguous name, but obviously you do. But how exactly? Andrewa (talk) 00:28, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

The missing piece in B2C's logic is, how does having a DAB at the ambiguous name, and the wanted article at an unambiguous one, inconvenience anyone? We know it inconveniences B2C, but it's not obvious how. Surely, if you see a results list and two of the entries are The Americans and The Americans (2013 TV series), and you want a TV series from 2013 or thereabouts, you'll click on The Americans (2013 TV series)? Not to do so makes no sense to me at all. But maybe I'm falling into the very trap I'm accusing B2C of falling for, and assuming that others think like me. It's easy to do. Andrewa (talk) 01:33, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

There is no such criteria. (sic) I think this is playing with words, and amusingly so. Page views are your own favourite test of P T when you want them to be!

NYC was always clearly the P T both by long-term significance, and by the likelihood that it was the wanted article. Agree that page views don't prove anything, see User:Andrewa/The Problem With Page Views. But as they're so often quoted (particularly by yourself) they're just the last bit of evidence that could possibly be needed.

So far as my experiences as a five-year-old go, and your knowledge of States of India goes, the point is just we are not isolated cases. You claimed any searcher for the city is likely to know "new york" is ambiguous with the state name. That's sweeping, false and, as I said before, ridiculous. Andrewa (talk) 01:15, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

NYC was the best candidate for PT. Hypothetically, if the base name couldn't have a dab we'd put (a primary redirect to) the city there. Although I originally spoke up for NYC to be PT, we agreed that no candidate was primary enough to go at the base name. After hearing from several, mostly American, editors who give the state more prominence than I would, I think that was a good decision. Certes (talk) 08:36, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Totally agree. And that has been my journey too. I started out thinking, NYC is the P T, so we need to move it to the base name. Where we differ is, you seem to now think there's doubt as to whether NYC is in fact primary, and that justifies having a DAB at the base name... and I agree with the last part but not the first. The fascinating thing to me is, NYC is very clearly P T, but it's still better to have a DAB at the base name. So the question for me then became, is this the occasional exception to a guideline, or is the DAB guideline in need of a tweak? And the more I think of it and discuss it, the more I think it's not just a tweak that is needed but a major change.

New York isn't exceptional at all in having different groups of people assume a different P T. Rather, that is typical of any ambiguous name. And that's the basic problem with the whole concept of Primary Topic (as Wikipedia (mis)uses the term, which has a completely different but rather esoteric meaning in linguistics). And it's a bigger problem than it first seems, because those of us who !vote at RMs aren't typical of our readership, so our choice of P T typically doesn't even reflect that of our readers. This was part of the problem with New York... for eleven years and including of course NYRM2016, the Americans (misinking deliberate, please don't fix it) dominated the discussion. Andrewa (talk) 09:28, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Andrewa your conflating the usage criteria with your made-up "P T by page views" explains much. They are not one and the same! Yes, page views are an important consideration in deciding whether a given topic is P T by usage, but it's not definitive. And "New York" is one of those rare cases where page views don't necessarily indicate most usage. In other words, although having more page views is a strong indication that that topic is "highly likely to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term", there are exceptions, and "New York" is one, for reasons I've explained. You can laugh all you want, but I stand by my assertion that any searcher for the city is likely to know "new york" is ambiguous with the state name. Don't ignore the "likely" in that assertion. That doesn't mean "every searcher will know 'new york' is ambiguous with the state name"; it's just "likely" for any given searcher that they will know. Of course anyone who has been in grade school in the US will have learned the states including New York, and I already cited a BBC article which obviously presumes its readers know New York is a state. I don't doubt that there are some readers who don't know, but they are undoubtedly a small minority of English speakers using WP to search for New York City; therefore it's likely a given user does know about the ambiguity. The page views support this anyway: The daily average for New York is 703, while for the state and city it's 5,000 and 16,000 respectively. So, yeah, if it were not likely that users knew about the ambiguity, the numbers for the dab page would be much higher. Finally, regarding the inconvenience of landing on the dab page, it's solely because it's landing on a page that is not the article being sought. It's irrelevant how easy it is to find the page one is seeking among the entries on the dab page and click on it; the inconvenience has already been experienced at that point: the user is looking at a page that is not the article they are seeking. Compared to landing directly on the article they are seeking, that is an inconvenience. And landing on a dab page rather than on the page you're seeking is quite an annoying inconvenience. Thankfully, by way of recognizing primary topics and titling our articles accordingly, the community continues to strive to minimize how often our readers have to experience such an annoyance. --В²C ☎ 16:47, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Quite a mouthful.

Have a look at Talk:Powder#Requested move 27 February 2018 yeah, seems obvious, but I decided to double-check. Surprise! The film (I never heard of) demolishes the substance in page views, by a ratio of 6:1 to 10:1 on most days, sometimes 300:1, but always several times higher. No way is the substance the primary topic. [5]

So, why are page views relevant there, and in your post above? And please, don't just accuse me of some vague logical error with a name none of us understand (including yourself).

they are undoubtedly a small minority of English speakers using WP to search for New York City; therefore it's likely a given user does know about the ambiguity. (my emphasis) Yes, we know you think that. But why you think that remains a mystery to me. Saying undoubtedly doesn't make it true, it just underlines what a shaky assumption it is. Just to repeat, we haven't all studied American geography, any more than you have studied the states of India. Your background is not shared by enough of our readers to conclude that those ignorant of NYS are undoubtedly a small minority, there is at least some doubt. So it seems to be a baseless assumption on your part, not undoubtedly at all, and quite possibly a false one. And in the BBC source you quote, it's quite clear from the context that they don't mean the city, so there's no need to say New York state. It would be unnecessarily clumsy, and poor journalism. Andrewa (talk) 08:56, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

I've already explained why page view counts are unreliable for determining primary topic in the New York case. Those reasons clearly do not apply to the powder case. "New York state" and "New York City" are WP:NATURAL disambiguations of the state and city respectively - and so it's reasonable to expect many searchers to use those natural disambiguations when searching for the respective topics. That is, they will get to the articles, and bump the page views, without searching with plain "new york". That is not the case for any use of "powder" - there is no natural disambiguation for the names of these topics. Anyone searching for any use of "powder" is likely to search with just "powder". By the way, another common natural disambiguation for the city is "New York, New York", establishing further my contention that most English speakers know of the state of New York and thus of the ambiguity between the two topics. I can't believe you're seriously questioning this, and I won't address again. --В²C ☎ 17:25, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Andrewa that this is a highly dubious presumption. It typifies the sort of systemic bias built into many of your arguments (i.e., inability to comprehend that not everyone thinks the same way or uses search the same way or has the same knowledge base or sees the function of article titles in the same way. I would not be surprised if there were significant number of Americans, let alone world-wide English speakers who are unaware that the name "New York" also refers to a state named (or for whom it is a distant afterthought compared to the city). older ≠ wiser 18:18, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Apparently I was unclear (my apologies), since I too "would not be surprised if there were significant number of Americans, let alone world-wide English speakers who are unaware that the name "New York" also refers to a state". But 2% of users would be arguably "significant"; 10% would certainly be. That would leave 90% who were aware and therefore likely to qualify their search accordingly, whether for city or state. Regardless of the actual numbers, they are likely to be sufficiently significant to distort the page view counts from being as accurate a measure of determining "likelihood of being sought" for each use of "new york" as they are for other terms, like "powder". --В²C ☎ 19:30, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

(ec) 90% who were aware and therefore likely to qualify their search accordingly that is precisely the dubious part of the presumption. On the one hand, 90% is a ridiculously high number among world-wide English speakers/readers/users of Wikipedia. But even among any who might be aware that a state exists with that name, it is again completely presumptuous to assume they are therefore likely to qualify their search accordingly. Nonsense and poppycock. older ≠ wiser 20:48, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

I would think that virtually all of the 20 million that live in New York State are aware that New York refers to both the state and the city, but would not presume most of them would automatically qualify their search because to up-staters, New York refers first to the state while down-states believe the opposite. MB 19:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, among the myriads who are aware of both city and state certainly many would nevertheless search for either one with just "new york". But that still does not refute my position: there are sufficient numbers who are aware of the ambiguity and would qualify their searching accordingly which would "distort the page view counts from being as accurate a measure of determining "likelihood of being sought" for each use of "new york" as they are for other terms, like "powder"." --В²C ☎ 20:45, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Bkonrad, by "likely" I simply mean "not unlikely". Do you disagree? Do you think that it's unlikely that a significant number of the people who are aware of the ambiguity of "new york" would qualify their searches accordingly? --В²C ☎ 21:15, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Well ok, but so what? As you suggested 2% of users would be arguably "significant" -- what sort of guidance can be based on such fluid and speculative numbers? older ≠ wiser 11:45, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

The only point is that New York is an unusual case in that we can point to a good reason (searchers are likely — not unlikely — to know of the ambiguity and avoid using it as a search term, especially for the city very well known as New York City) for why the page views might not track likelihood of being sought as well as they do for other situations. --В²C ☎ 20:23, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

The non-sequitar here is know of the ambiguity and avoid using it as a search term. (my emohasis) Firstly, you yourself repeatedly used The Americans as a search term despite knowing it to be ambiguous, didn't you? That's why you wanted The Americans (2013 TV Series) moved to the base name. But that's the least of the problems with that argument. New York is an unusual case in that we can point to a good reason (searchers are likely — not unlikely — to know of the ambiguity... Hardly! Two problems here. As has been pointed out by several editors, many searchers won't know of New York State, any more than most Americans would know of the Indian state of Goa, but are more likely to know of what we now call Old Goa, which is highly significant historically and contains the World Heritage Site Churches and convents of Goa. But again that's not the main problem. An even bigger problem is that even if this were true it would not make New York in any way unusual. How many surfers or sailors have not heard of radio waves or microwaves? Whenever a term is ambiguous, some readers will know it is, and some won't, and those who don't know it's ambiguous will have various assumptions as to what the term means (to them, always), and those who do know will have various assumptions as to what it most often or most properly means.

And we should consider all of these possibilities. And we don't. Instead our policy is to go with the consensus of the Wikipedia community (of editors, and even a particular subset of that) as to what the term most commonly and/or most properly means, and assume that this reflects that of our readers, and worse, that it best serves them. And neither assumption stands up to scrutiny. Andrewa (talk) 19:16, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Umm, new york city is a natural common name for that topic, convenient to use, and thus likely to be used as a search term; there is no natural alternative common name for The Americans. Most ambiguous topics are like the latter, not the former, in this regard. Surely you see that?

Just because there are searchers who don't know of the state and the ambiguity does not refute my assertion: searchers are likely — not unlikely — to know of the ambiguity... That just means that most searchers, not all, know of the state and ambiguity. The state and ambiguity are so widely known and used that New York, New York has a dab page itself. Comparing this to Goa/Old Goa is ridiculous, but here ya go.

I don't understand your point about radio waves and microwaves. I would expect almost all surfers and sailors to have heard of both.

"And we should consider all of these possibilities. And we don't. ". Of course we do. Consideration for that is exactly why the usage standard for primary topic is "highly likely to be sought". And the consensus is not about what the term means to the editors involved; we have an explicit guideline against that (WP:BUTIDONTKNOWABOUTIT). It's about what it means to most others, based on their usage. Now, you're right with respect to the long-term significance criteria; that's totally subjective. That's one reason why I think it should not be part of primary topic. --В²C ☎ 00:47, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It helps me clarify my own thoughts. Hope my replies are not too in your face.

Umm, new york city is a natural common name for that topic, convenient to use, and thus likely to be used as a search term; there is no natural alternative common name for "The Americans". Agree.

Most ambiguous topics are like the latter, not the former, in this regard. Baseless assumption, and irrelevant anyway. Surely you see that? Admission that the you can't put forward a supporting argument. It's just your guess. Can't you see that? (;->

Just because there are searchers who don't know of the state and the ambiguity does not refute my assertion: "searchers are likely — not unlikely — to know of the ambiguity..." That just means that most searchers, not all, know of the state and ambiguity. Illogical. It doesn't mean that at all. You have provided no reason for your belief that searchers are likely to know of the ambiguity, or that most of them will. It's just a guess, and also irrelevant anyway. An unambiguous name is helpful in all cases. Yes, when I first realised that it surprised me too.

The state and ambiguity are so widely known and used that New York, New York has a dab page itself. Non sequitar. We have DAB pages on some very esoteric names. I thought it might take a while to find one, but Accius (disambiguation) just came up in an RM.

Comparing this to Goa/Old Goa is ridiculous, but here ya go. (my emphasis) I think we should agree to disagree on this too. I think it's a relevant example. The point is just, not all English speakers know that New York is a state, any more than all of us know that Goa is.

I don't understand your point about radio waves and microwaves. I would expect almost all surfers and sailors to have heard of both. Exactly. That was my point. It's an example of people who do know of the ambiguity. Some do. Some don't.

"And we should consider all of these possibilities. And we don't. " Of course we do. Consideration for that is exactly why the usage standard for primary topic is "highly likely to be sought". And the consensus is not about what the term means to the editors involved; we have an explicit guideline against that (WP:BUTIDONTKNOWABOUTIT). It's about what it means to most others, based on their usage. Now, you're right with respect to the long-term significance criteria; that's totally subjective. That's one reason why I think it should not be part of primary topic. I think we just need to agree to disagree on all of this. The standard of highly likely to be sought as we follow it in practice is not objective at all. You've tried to make it so, repeatedly, and failed, repeatedly, and for good reasons. It's just not possible. Andrewa (talk) 02:05, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

When I say, "surely you agree", I'm checking for agreement, a point of common ground. To be clear, you don't agree that most ambiguous topics don't have an alternative name as well known and commonly used and likely to be used for searching as "new york city" is for the city named New York? Here are some ngrams. I'm sure there are quite a few other ambiguous names with similarly common alternative names, but most of them? I'm not sure how to prove that, but it seems self-evident to me that New York City is relatively unusual in this regard, more commonly used (per those ngrams) than even all uses of "Manhattan". It's not my guess, it's my impression. As to how it's relevant, again, it goes to the heart of why New York is an unusual case. Consider that the question of whether the city is the primary topic of "New York" is not about whether the city should be at New York, but about whether New York should merely be a primary redirect to New York City. Most ambiguous names that have primary topics are article titles, not primary redirects, so that alone makes New York relatively unusual, and definitively proves how well known the topic is as something other than "New York". People are likely to search for it as "new york city", "new york, new york" and even just "nyc". So just because it has a lot more page views than the state does does not mean that's indicative of how many more would be searching for it with plain "new york". You can't say that about most other cases where they don't have so many different commonly used names (and thus likely search terms).

Yes, Accius is an esoteric name and it has a dab page at Accius (disambiguation). So what? Are you suggesting "New York, New York" is just as esoteric? Um, no, and no, by over an order of magnitude.

"The point is just, not all English speakers know that New York is a state," That's a silly point, since it doesn't refute my point. Of course not all English speakers know that New York is a state. "any more than all of us know that Goa is.". Totally different. It isn't a difference in kind (I'll grant you that), but it's a huge difference in degree, and that's what's relevant to likelihood of search topics. We're talking about, on the order of probably around 90% of WP users knowing New York is a state and 1%, maybe, knowing that Goa is. Huge difference. A difference highly relevant to determining how likely users are to be using the respective ambiguous terms in their searches. --В²C ☎ 21:57, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

To be clear, I don't think it at all relevant whether or not most ambiguous topics don't have an alternative name as well known and commonly used etc.. Nor does the rest of this seem terribly relevant to me. Not nearly so relevant as the example I gave of the state of India that (I'm guessing) is unknown to most Americans, and was to you until it came up in this discussion. And it seems likely that you've pulled the figures probably around 90% of WP users knowing New York is a state and 1%, maybe, knowing that Goa is... out of the air. That seems self evident to me. Andrewa (talk) 10:05, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Of course I pulled the 90% and 1% out of the air. It's my estimate. What's yours? --В²C ☎ 19:02, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

My estimate is that my guesses would be just as baseless and irrelevant as yours are. Andrewa (talk) 16:15, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Your estimate would be totally relevant to what we’re discussing: our perspectives and where they differ. Give us some idea. Do you think they’re about the same? About half of the users don’t know New York is a state? And also about half don’t know Goa is a state? Or what? —В²C ☎ 09:54, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

My belief that it is a baseless and irrelevant figure is the important part of my perspective. But OK, I'll play the game. My guess is that about the same percentage of Americans would be ignorant of the state of Goa as English-speaking Indians would be ignorant of the state of New York. What does that tell you (knowing of course that I don't have any confidence in its accuracy or relevance)?

And my having answered that, perhaps you'd answer my question above Exactly how are you searching? [6] Andrewa (talk) 22:22, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

I think you're selling the Indian English speakers way too short. After all, if they speak English, then they are likely to read English language newspapers and watch TV shows and movies in English, which makes it highly likely that they are familiar with New York state. But, even if true, what's relevant is the percentage of users searching with "new york" that are familiar with the state. It's one thing to consider a random English speaker; quite another to consider one who is searching with the term "new york". That said, anyone searching for "goa" is also likely to be familiar with the state (whether they're likely searching for the state is a separate question, just like with new york). But the bottom line is that the most common name for the city is New York City, that's a very likely search term for the city, and many of the hits on that page are from people searching with "new york city". Therefore, the raw number of views on that page cannot all be attributed to people searching with "new york". So, it's reasonable to discount those page views considerably. As to how much, that's very subjective, but the community think it's enough to establish the city is not the primary topic, despite the relatively high page views. Most importantly to this discussion, most topics under consideration in primary topic discussions don't have an alternative name that is its most common name; that makes the New York case rather unusual. Certainly not typical. Don't believe me? Search through the current open RMs and tell me how many rest on primary topic determinations, and of those how many have most common names that are different from the term under discussion. Odds are: none fall into that category at this time. New York is a very unusual case.

As to how I search, I just type in the name of the topic I'm searching for. I don't stop to consider whether my search term is ambiguous. Most of the time it takes me to the article I'm searching for. Occasionally it takes me somewhere else, in which case I scan either a hatnote (no biggy) or dab page (can be a pain), or both, and then click on the appropriate link. Normally it works very well. Every now and then it takes me somewhere unexpected that I also think would be the unlikely destination for most searchers, in which case I might file an RM accordingly. That's what happened with The Americans. --В²C ☎ 23:43, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

You've not been to India, have you? Emigrant Indians are not representative. Around 10% speak English well enough to converse in English about the weather. Your subsequent bad assumptions compound your mistaken presumptions. The world-wide fame of New York is a very US-centric. Western-style educated Indians are as likely to associate "New York" as having to do with York, which resonates because two of their Emperors were previously Duke of York. I have no faith in your presumptions about Goa. New York City is NOT most common name for the city, "New York" is, NYC is the best name because New York is ambiguous. Your assumptions on how people search, and presumptions on what page will be serve them, are speculation. How you search is typical of the privileged class. Just type, and expect things to anticipate cater for your needs. The Americans was a poor decision. Only "the Americans" would expect that someone searching for "the Americans" would be surely wanting a TV show about Americans from an American's contrived outsider perspective. Pageviews are unreliable and subject to systemic bias, as Americans in America have such ease of access to the internet, they can type and see results faster than they can think. This is not true in India. This is not true in most of the world, not in Mumbai, not in Sydney, not in Rome, not anywhere if your are relying on guest WiFi. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:26, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Your peculiar opinions are well-known and appreciated, SmokeyJoe. They are also largely contrary to community consensus. --В²C ☎ 05:12, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps, and so are mine on the Topic of Primary of that ilk. But of course consensus can change, and that's what I'm working on. (And hoping to change some of SmokeyJoe's opinions too along the way. I think you may be helping with that.) Andrewa (talk) 06:16, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

The irony is that your arguments largely support moving New York City to New York, or at least making New York a primary redirect to New York City. I mean, if most people searching with "new york" are indeed looking for the city, why not put the city there? Why make everyone go to the dab page, a page nobody is seeking? --В²C ☎ 21:13, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

No, my arguments overwhelmingly support having the New York City article at an unambiguous name, and I don't think anyone is proposing making New York a primary redirect there. But current policy seems to be to do exactly what you suggest, put the city article at the ambiguous name New York. So the question then is, do we regard this as the occasional exception, or does it suggest a tweak to the rule? The long-suppressed scientist in me says, this is very interesting, can we find a more general rule? But as I investigated, expecting like Howard Donahue that I'd confirm something, instead the whole house of cards came down, again like with Donahue. New York is not an exception at all. Ambiguous article names are always a problem and always were.

And nobody is suggesting we make everyone go to the dab page. In the case of The Americans it seems to have been a rather bizarre search technique that took you there. OK, that should be fixed if possible, but your fix is worse than the disease. See #Methods of searching. Andrewa (talk) 22:19, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Goa and Hiroshima

I have often heard of Hiroshima and would guess so have more than 99% of Americans, but only just discovered Hiroshima Prefecture and wonder how many Americans would be similarly ignorant of it. A parallel to New York and Goa is obvious to me. We cannot assume that our readers know of the Prefecture any more than they will generally know of the state of New York. Andrewa (talk) 15:30, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

How many people are wanting to read about Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and trying to find tha topic by searching for "Hiroshima"? If they use Google, the bombing is the first result and the city is second. The bombing article gets more than 4x as many pageviews as the city. Plantdrew (talk) 15:51, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

All true. And the Hiroshima article should stay right where it is, and the existing (since 2005) redirect from Hiroshima bombing to Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki does no harm, and nor would including it in the dropdown list from the box currently labelled Search Wikipedia so that those who just type Hiroshima there looking for that article then get to it in a single mouse click. But your point escapes me. Andrewa (talk) 21:23, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Methods of searching

As to how I search, I just type in the name of the topic I'm searching for. I don't stop to consider whether my search term is ambiguous. Most of the time it takes me to the article I'm searching for. Occasionally it takes me somewhere else, in which case I scan either a hatnote (no biggy) or dab page (can be a pain), or both, and then click on the appropriate link. Normally it works very well. Every now and then it takes me somewhere unexpected that I also think would be the unlikely destination for most searchers, in which case I might file an RM accordingly. That's what happened with The Americans. [7]

So, you typed The Americans into the box labelled Search Wikipedia ( which some want to call the "Go to" box rather than Search... ), is that correct? That's exactly what I would have done too.

The reason I ask is that I expect that in the dropdown list you would then have seen The Americans (2013 TV Series) (or The Americans (2013 TV series), I forget which). You won't see it now, as it's now a redirect following your successful RM, but you should have seen it then. Had I seen that, and had I been seeking the TV series, I would have clicked on that title as the one that best described what I was seeking.

But you didn't. Even after several attempts had led you to the DAB, even after you knew that the article title was The Americans (2013 TV Series) not just The Americans, you continued to click on The Americans and were annoyed that it took you to the DAB.

Have I got that all right? It seems somewhat bizarre, to the point of fitting the popular definition of insanity often wrongly attributed to Einstein: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In fact even without the repetition, it seems a very poor search method to me.

But you have the right to search however you find most effective, and we should try to make it a pleasant and productive experience. And if you do this I'm sure others do it too. But people who use my method, and click instead on the unambiguous title (and knowing from the other entries that The Americans is ambiguous) are now disadvantaged, as the unambiguous title that was previously helpful to us no longer appears on the list.

So I'm wondering, is there a way of catering for your search method, without hindering mine? But first I think we need to verify that this really is the method you use and recommend. Andrewa (talk) 22:47, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

I think the obvious method is to use Google. Google is a well developed real search. You can include +Wikipedia if you like, but I don't do that as Wikipedia is already highly ranked. By default, Google will learn your preferences and give you the pages that make you happy.

Wikipedia has a good internal search engine, at Special:Search. It is not as smooth as Google, but is essential if you want to search non-article namespaces.

The very confusingly labeled "search" box that is a "Go to title" box, possible, akin to use of a front-of-book contents page, and dissimilar to use of a back-of-book index page, is not a wikt:search, and attempts to modify titles and redirects to make it behave like a proper search tool are foolhardy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:55, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Agree with most of this. I often use Google web search with "site:en.wikipedia.org" with very good results (it's far more effective than +Wikipedia but I do use that sometimes too) and think we should encourage this far more than we do, and I've a couple of ideas as to how.

But I usually try the whateveryouliketocalltheboxlabelledWikipediasearch box first, because that usually is all I need to find any page whose name I don't know. It works very well, and is recommended at Help:Searching which currently starts out Wikipedia uses a powerful search engine, with a search box on every page and which I just found by typing WP:searching into the whateveryouliketocalltheboxlabelledWikipediasearchbutWPsearchingjustcallsitSearchtoo box. (;->

But I'm not suggesting that we should modify titles and redirects to make it behave like a proper search tool. Rather, I'm pointing out that it's an example of a good, logical navigation tool that works even better if we are equally logical with our article names. And I think we should (in hindsight) see this as completely unsurprising. Logically, we should expect that an unambiguous name will make an article easier to find by any rational means. Practically, this also appears to be the case. Andrewa (talk) 15:14, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

An alternate perspective

I think I've noticed an inadvertent aspect of the disambiguation process that may be causing us problems, and where the policy as written is not directly helping us take the best decisions.

There are two causes of ambiguous titles which *are* different in significant ways; ambiguity may appear because:

• two different topics, largely unrelated (or only indirectly related), happen to be recognized by the same name; such as Madonna, Dock, Ford (disambiguation)...
• or, we have several articles for topics directly related, as they share the name *because* they derive from the same origin; e.g. geographical places, media franchises - such as New York, Planet of the Apes, All That Jazz... (maybe Madonna as well, but with a much loose and indirect relation).

This difference is not entirely novel; I've seen it appearing here and there in previous discussions in some form, but it has never have ended affecting our common practice. We may have decided to put a primary topic or keep a disambiguation page based on other criteria, but I believe the current policy, as written, doesn't properly address how the two situations are different.

Sure, we have the "long-term significance" vs "usage" distinction, which sometimes helps in solving the ambiguity (and which I think exists in part because we have subconsciously identified the significant differences in dealing with homonyms from those in remakes). But this distinction is often just a proxy for things we usually look at, and in the end there are common situations where it's simply not enough - in cases where long-term significance and usage are both high, but for different articles, we end up discussing in circles which one is the most important.

I think that it's worth exploring this new criterion (topics with the same origin vs unrelated topics that happen to share names) to find out whether we can find cases that can help us make better decisions. Sometimes maybe we will see specific details that matter when we are dealing with a historic subject vs a popular item, that are irrelevant for deciding between several versions of the same story; or vice-versa. (For example, my gut feeling in particular is that, for unrelated topics, the bar to have a primary topic by usage should be much higher than in the other case, where having as primary topic the most popular version of a film remake wouldn't be hiding any historic definition of the term. Also, in the second case there's a higher probability that we could write a broad concept article instead of a DAB page). If we can find such cases where the distinction is relevant, we could refine the policy as written to provide better guidance.

So, what do you think of this approach? Please try to be constructive, I feel there may be some value here if we can collaborate to find it, even if we need to address this exploration with a slightly different approach than the one I'm suggesting here. Diego (talk) 11:36, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Until we added the long-term significance criterion, which I think was a big mistake and muddied the waters, none of this mattered. What mattered was likelihood of being sought, period. It didn't matter how the uses were related, which came first, whether one was derived from the other or that they had separate origins. All that mattered was maximizing how many people got to the article they were seeking in the fewest possible number of clicks. Trying to fix this without removing the long-term significance criteria is fruitless. --В²C ☎ 17:15, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Many of us think that long-term significance is essential to define what an encyclopedia is, and this is how content was ordered in paper encyclopedias - when there wasn't such a thing as "likelihood of being sought". We may as well remove this popularity-contest criterion (which is subjective and for which we don't even have proper tools to assess anyway) in order to get rid of the conflict; yet since we're not going to remove either, we'd better be looking for extra information that we can use to solve such conflicts. Diego (talk) 19:26, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Despite being the first entry at WP:NOT, WP:NOTPAPER still seems to get overlooked by many editors. WP is very different from traditional paper encyclopedias, including covering many times more topics, thus having many more naming clashes, having a search mechanism, and the requirement for that mechanism to work efficiently for our users. The concept of long-term significance ignores all that reality, and not to the betterment of this enterprise, IMHO. --В²C ☎ 19:35, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

I know very well we're WP:NOTPAPER, and I was not suggesting that we organized our content as if we were ;-) Otherwise we'd be dumping all the topics with a same name in the same page, one after the other. :-P

Still, there's this requirement to give a prominent position to topics which are important in relation to the core structure of all knowledge (see Wikipedia:Vital articles for the ultimate example). Your insistence on using mere popularity (or amount of use) ignores all this other reality, that knowledge is organized in a way that depens not just on the necessity to use a particular bit of it at a particular point in time, but on the long-term relations existing between the different parts.

I'm all for easing readers' access to the part of knowledge they need to , but that job is based not merely on how much a specific topic is used, but in how stable the pyramid of knowledge is - and how close some topic is to the pillars of the pyramid. That's where long-term significance fits in. Even commercial websites that specialize in bringing users to popular pages need to define a good information architecture, and don't rely exclusively on their search box (and yes, that includes even Google home page). Diego (talk) 20:01, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm not ignoring the importance of long-term significance. I'm recognizing it, but I'm also aware of how subjective determining that importance is. Users decide how important it is, based on how often they land on its article, whether it's by direct search, or through a link, or whatever. And we should trust their judgement about that, not impose our own. --В²C ☎ 20:39, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

I strongly agree that relatedness of the main topic ptopic candidates is an important consideration, and that when they're closely related, the threshold for there being a ptopic should be lower. I think I've invoked this in a few RMs. This is the first one that comes to mind - nominator proposed making Giant Steps a dab page on the grounds that the album and the title track were close in prominence. I opposed the move, reasoning that someone searching for the song and landing at the album (or vice versa) will suffer little astonishment, and will ideally have a quick path to their desired article via links in the article they land at (without having to even go to the dab page). Colin M (talk) 22:52, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

I like 'relatedness' as a name for this intuition! It's concise and descriptive. Diego (talk) 11:27, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Excellent point (and interesting discussion following). As a general encyclopedia I think we should make far more use of broad concept articles wherever possible, which of course link to the more detailed articles. But as you also say, a BCA this isn't always the answer, much less the complete answer. Andrewa (talk) 19:27, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Other options might be overview and outline pages in the main namespace. See User:Andrewa/New York (overview) for one such attempt, but it didn't arouse much interest, and that seems typical of overviews and outlines generally. Andrewa (talk) 00:33, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Dab page or surname page

Scheu mentions a variety of grape although the rest of the content is surnames, mainly redlinked although they all have entries at de:Scheu. Doug Weller talk 14:40, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: It's a surname page. The grape variety in English doesn't seem to be "Scheu" so I've cleaned up the page, moving the grape to See also. I'm not sure it needs all those categories though. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:38, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

{{re|Shhhnotsoloud]] thanks for that. I've removed the German history stub. Doug Weller talk 09:30, 4 November 2019 (UTC) Doh. I'll try the ping again, correctly this time. @Shhhnotsoloud:. Doug Weller talk 09:30, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

This particular mess was the handiwork of a Sheynhertz-Unbayg sockpuppet, which I have now fully cleaned up. —Xezbeth (talk) 10:07, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

If the name is the primary topic, disambiguation (like in other articles) is through hatnotes. Don't make readers go to the end to "see also" to get to the "right page" (even if this case is a ahort page).—Bagumba (talk) 16:34, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

When a foreign language definition is a DAB

@Narky Blert: has deleted a link to Hillel on the Tehillim (Reich), multiple times. Hillel is the Hebrew root word of tehillim so it makes sense to link to it, however, the page is also considered a DAB and so Narky Blert correctly references WP:INTDAB in removing the link. Any suggestions? I do not monitor this page so pings would be appreciated. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:10, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Walter Görlitz: One idea might be to define/explain the word briefly in the article, either inline or in a footnote. (There's no Wiktionary page, which can be a better way still.) That's less distracting to the reader than taking them to a DAB page. Narky Blert (talk) 15:13, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Thought of that, but it does not make sense. I had already look at Wiktionary and had eliminated it. I'm tempted to move the DAB contents of the page to an article, Hillel (name) and leave the definition, but that would violate WP:NOTDICTIONARY. My other thought was removing the DAB classification on the page and keeping on Hillel (disambiguation) and classify that page as a list instead. Walter Görlitz (talk) 15:19, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Walter Görlitz: If the disambiguation page provides information which a reader who clicks the link might find useful, I would link to [[Hillel (disambiguation)|hll]]. Otherwise please consider an {{interlanguage link}} to one of the pages listed on the Hebrew dab he:הלל, or just leave hll unlinked. Certes (talk) 16:00, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

That was my reasoning, but Narky Blert reverted it multiple times. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:43, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

The edits which were reverted linked directly to Hillel. If that page is the best destination then we need to link via the redirect instead. Certes (talk) 19:10, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Why do we need to link using the redirect? Just fix the underlying error instead. And if that's the best target, then why didn't Narky Blert link there? Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:53, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

I don’t see the point of linking to a DAB just because that DAB happens to briefly define the word. That’s not the function of a DAB. If a definition of the word is needed to understand the text in Tehillim (Reich), include it there. (I would argue it is not, particularly because linking to the DAB does not explain the connection between the linked “hll” and the target Hillel.)--Trystan (talk) 23:33, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

That it is a root is addressed in the article itself: "and it derives from the three letter Hebrew root ‘hey, lamed, lamed’ (hll)". Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:53, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

But don't roots correspond to multiple words? For example, why link hll to Hillel and not Hallel?--Trystan (talk) 02:37, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

I got my Hebrew wrong. Halal (הָלַל) is the root word, but the article for that word is currently occupied by its Arabic meaning. Root words do become multiple other words, but you can't link a related word instead of the root, when the root is being discussed. Hillel (הִלֵּל) is derived from halal (הָלַל). Hillel is a verb form (apparently a masculine singular imperative) while the other is a noun (praise). It is the imperative that is used in the Psalms. The creator of the subject article here references the imperative as used in the Psalms. On the other hand, a hallel is a specific Jewish prayer. And the reader is often directed to "praise Yah", or hallelujah (הַלְלוּיָהּ). Related to be sure, but not the concept discussed in the article.

There is an wiktionary article: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/הלל Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:54, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Another alternative is to link to an article hosted by the Wikipedia in that language, if that wiki has one. bd2412 T 02:42, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

As far as I can tell without knowing Hebrew, that's the page I was looking for. It sounds as if either he:קריאת_ההלל or wikt:הלל is a much better target than either Hillel or Hillel (disambiguation). Certes (talk) 10:40, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

• Articles shouldn't link to dab pages in the way WG was doing. Solutions include creating a Wiktionary entry and linking to that (in italicised text), using text in brackets or using a footnote (e.g. using Template:Efn). DexDor ^(talk) 07:54, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• This does not warrant an exception to link to a dab. Per MOS:LINKSTYLE: Do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links: if a highly technical term can be simply explained with very few words, do so. If a link is best, MOS:UNDERLINK advises "If there is no appropriate Wikipedia article, an interwikimedia link to Wiktionary could be used. Finally, follow Help:Interlanguage links if linking to a Hebrew page is a better option. Cheers.—Bagumba (talk) 06:54, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Aren't DAB pages articles?

The above discussion suggests our attempt to distinguish DAB pages from articles is a bit contrived, especially when you consider list articles. I mean, isn't a DAB page a list article presenting a list of uses of a given term? A DAB page is a page in article space, so technically it's an article. I can see how we can reasonably draw the line at redirects as not being articles, but I think a DAB is an article and you should be able to link to them as Walter Görlitz did, at least in cases like that. --В²C ☎ 01:07, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

• A disambiguation page is purely a navigational device. The question is sort of like asking, "aren't redirects articles"? A disambiguation page is basically a redirect but pointing to multiple possible pages rather than a single definite page. bd2412 T 01:51, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
• "A DAB page is a page in article space" is not always correct; there can be dabs in many namespaces (e.g. Wikipedia namespace). Dabs that are in article space are not articles. A dab page is not a list of uses of a term - it's a list of meanings which are topics in Wikipedia; the difference may be subtle, but it's important (e.g. no redlink-only entries, unlike list articles). The above discussion hasn't identified any good reason for that link to a dab. DexDor ^(talk) 07:10, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages opening sentence: "Disambiguation pages are non-article pages". Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:34, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

It may be the claim that DAB pages are much the same as articles that is contrived. See User:Andrewa/wrong article 2 and the various talk pages, particularly User talk:Andrewa/wrong article#Various opinions, for previous rather extensive discussions, and to avoid reinventing the wheel here.

As I see it, the agenda B2C has is, they wish to argue that landing on a DAB is always at least as bad as landing on the wrong article, despite a DAB being specifically designed to direct the user to the right article with a minimum of fuss, and therefore being short (few if any images and minimum text) and easily navigated. This is a key argument in primary topic discussions. If accepted it would mean we should always have a primary topic if at all possible, and just choose the best candidate however doubtful the evidence is that there is a primary topic at all. And as most would be (perhaps painfully) aware, I'm of the very opposite opinion. I'd like to avoid choosing a primary topic wherever possible, as it always means having an article at an ambiguous name, and that has a downside that I think has been underestimated, and an upside that I think is largely an illusion (and a well accepted one I admit). I'd suggest discussing this opinion at User talk:Andrewa/Primary Topic RfC for those interested.

When I say wrong article I mean an article other than the one the reader wants. That doesn't include DABs, and it's obviously a very useful term, but one B2C just as obviously doesn't want us to use.

Lately I sometimes wonder whether it would be better to reserve the main namespace for articles and hard redirects, and have DABs in a different namespace. And as with deprecating Primary Topic, that wouldn't need a Big Bang approach. Just creating all new DABs in another namespace, and moving existing DABs there whenever they were moved anyway for some other reason, would probably be enough, and relatively little trouble. Andrewa (talk) 18:23, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Does that work? What happens when someone visits :Mercury in the main namespace? We can't give the reader a 404 page, and I don't see what advantage a redirect to Dab:Mercury would have over the current arrangement. Certes (talk) 19:26, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I can't imagine why we would suppress the redirect if we were to move Mercury to another namespace, so we'd end up with hard redirects both from it and from Mercury (disambiguation) (the double redirect having been fixed either by the person who moved the page or by the bot).

The advantage is to clearly identify the nature of the DAB, both to users and to software. The term disambiguation while far from being a Wikipedism isn't all that common, and if I were to arrive here and see Wave (disambiguation) I might guess that there was a game called Disambiguation in which one could "wave", and not investigate it further. If on the other hand I saw Index:wave (or the like) I think I'd guess that it would link to articles on various meanings and uses of wave, and so I'd expect it to lead me to the article I was seeking. Andrewa (talk) 21:37, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Rasen and Rasen (disambiguation)

Tempjrds recently moved Rasen to Spiral (1998 film) and recreated Rasen as a disambiguation page. Rasen (disambiguation) already exists as a (more extensive) disambiguation page. Can I simply move the contents of Rasen (disambiguation) to Rasen and make Rasen (disambiguation) a redirect? I always see to get this wrong. Leschnei (talk) 12:52, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, you can merge them and then redirect as you propose. Iffy★Chat -- 13:08, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

You can, though it's neater if the history is preserved. Maybe ask at WP:RMT for the move of Rasen (disambiguation) to Rasen? – Uanfala (talk) 13:13, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I've had a go at consolidating the pages (while the replies above were being written). If anyone wants to undo my changes and move the MALPLACED dab instead, that might produce a slightly better result at the expense of some work. Certes (talk) 13:15, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks all. Is there a good rule-of-thumb for when it's OK to just fix things as Certes did, and when it's better to go through WP:RMT?

RMT is for moves that you'd feel justified in doing boldly but can't, typically because it needs admin or page mover powers to do it. So only use it for things you think are uncontroverisal. If you feel the need to test consensus, WP:RM is the place. Andrewa (talk) 17:03, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I've tagged it for a history merge. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:51, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, that helps. Leschnei (talk) 19:46, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Wolseley

I made some edits to Wolseley and Eddaido has asked, on the talk page, that we get a second opinion. If anyone has time, could you please take a look? Thanks, Leschnei (talk) 00:24, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Discussion elsewhere on deletion of dab entries if term not included in article

There's a discussion elsewhere that's also relevant here on whether disambiguation pages for sets of initials such as RTP should include links to articles that don't support the use of the initials. Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Removal of entries with valid abbrevs missing in the articles, started at Talk:RTP. I'd suggest that the discussion should be kept in one place, with the discussion in progress at WikiProject Disambiguation being the obvious choice. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 14:32, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Motive power

Editors who watch this page may be interested in Talk:Motive power#Undiscussed conversion to a dab. Certes (talk) 16:46, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Broad-concept article disambiguation pages

I suggest editing this page, section #Redirects to disambiguation pages, to add "Disambiguation pages marked as broad-concept articles" as an example of an acceptable link to a disambiguation page. Examples of current disambiguation pages marked as broad-concept article candidates include Jewish nationalism and British rule in Ireland. Both are reasonable to link to and will be helpful in the future for integrating the respective broad topic articles into the encyclopedia. buidhe 02:45, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• A broad concept article is something that should not be a disambiguation page at all, because it is describing variations of an unambiguous thing. BD2412 T 04:03, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

"Reasonable to link to" usually indicates that the page shouldn't be a dab. The two examples list subtopics rather than homonyms, and thus should be converted from dabs to BCAs. We can write a meaningful article about the whole topic, in a way that we couldn't do for a genuine dab such as Mercury. Certes (talk) 11:21, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

List of South Korean actors

List of South Korean actors has just become a widely linked dab. Its entries are two sublists: female and male. Certes (talk) 11:47, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Pinging Aymatth2 who dabified that page. We've been discussing some similar pages at WT:Lists of lists, specifically cases like Lists of Olympic medalists in handball that just contain two sublists for male and female athletes. Consensus (among our small group of 3 participants) was that these should be deleted or converted into dabs.

Most of the links to this page are via Template:Asian actors transclusions, but there are also about a dozen source wikilinks. Colin M (talk) 17:51, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

• @Certes and Colin M: I have reset it to a list-of-lists for now. The sublists, male and female, of List of South Korean actors are just alphabetical lists, essentially duplicates of Category:South Korean male actors and Category:South Korean actresses, so technically should be considered for deletion.

I was meaning to go back and look at Template:Asian actors, but got distracted. It is one of those auto-generated-list templates with a lot of redlinks, some bluelinks, and redirects to: List of Afghans#Media people (including actors and film directors), List of Khmer film actors, List of Egyptians#Actors, List of Indian film actors, List of Singaporeans and List of Sri Lankan actors and actresses. I will start a discussion on whether the template should be converted to a conventional hand-coded version, which could handle, e.g. • South Korean (male, female). Aymatth2 (talk) 18:26, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

See Template talk:Asian actors. All comments welcome. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:34, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with this resolution. Lists of lists are not ambiguous, as they have their own classification scheme. BD2412 T 13:00, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Use of "See also" hatnote

At WP:Disambiguation#Hatnotes there is guidance that "On a primary topic page for a term that has one secondary topic only (no disambiguation page)" one could add an {{about}}, {{for}} or {{see also}} hatnote. In my experience the latter is rarely used and usually there is an {{about}} or {{for}} hatnote. Later in the guidance, at WP:Disambiguation#Usage guidelines there is a statement: "As noted above, disambiguation links should be placed at the top of an article, where they are most visible. For alternatives that are related to the article but are not a source of ambiguity, the "See also" section at the end of the article is more appropriate." I think the use of "See also" in a hatnote at the top of an article should be avoided: it infers that the target article is about a related subject, rather than one with an ambiguous title, and so the information should be within the text of the article, at an article section heading, or in the See also section.

I suggest, therefore:

• at WP:Disambiguation#Hatnotes, remove the information regarding the {{see also}} hatnote, and
• at Wikipedia:Hatnote#More pages on the same topic ("Further information ..."), clarify that the use of {{see also}} should be restricted to use in a section (which, to my mind, is inferred anyway, but not explicitly stated).

Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:36, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

re it infers that the target article is about a related subject, rather than one with an ambiguous title sometimes it is about a related subject (which also happens to be kind of ambiguous with the article's title). For example, List of largest fish has a hatnote "See also" link to List of longest fish. Should that page only be linked at the bottom in the "See also" section? Maybe. But I think you could argue that the two articles are so closely intertwined that a hatnote is useful. Should the hatnote use the {{about}} template instead? Maybe, but I think {{See also}} is clear and succinct in this case. That was the only example I could think of off the top of my head - if anyone has the time and patience to do a query to generate a list of articles that use {{See also}} at the beginning of the article, I'd be interested to see some other examples, to get a sense of how effectively they're being used. Colin M (talk) 14:44, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Pages with both {{Disambiguation}} and {{See also}} can be seen here (although See also isn't necessarily at the beginning). Some examples; Ionic has a see also for Ion (ionic being an adjective form of the noun ion). Medium has some see alsos for Media (plural vs. singular). See alsos for distinct search terms that are grammatically related seem reasonable. Plantdrew (talk) 15:18, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the query, but I think Shhhnotsoloud is referring to the use of the template in articles (particularly articles that are primary for some ambiguous term), rather than on disambiguation pages. Colin M (talk) 18:40, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

If my experience so far is anything to go by, the use of "See also" hatnotes at the top of articles is indeed quite rare. Yes, there are exceptions (like the fish example above, or the somewhat related use of {{See introduction}}), but the two most common types of "see also" links on dab pages are handled differently in articles: similar looking terms are usually introduced using "Not to be confused with..." ({{Distinguish}}), whereas topically related articles (~ WP:PTMs) are linked from within the article's text where relevant, or otherwise in its "See also" section at the end. – Uanfala (talk) 21:04, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

@Colin M: I think articles that are actually related should be linked from text or appear in a See also section, and hatnotes should be for articles not actually related. In the example given, List of largest fish and List of longest fish are so similar that my instinct would be to merge the latter in to the former.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Shhhnotsoloud (talk • contribs) 08:51, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree, as I generally don't see see also's at the top of pages. The template documentation itself says it is intended for the top of article sections (excluding the lead). Using {{for}}, which included a brief explanation, seems more appropriate. The rare cases that see also might be suitable at the top of a page is best left to WP:IAR.—Bagumba (talk) 09:27, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. Given that no-one objected, I've made the changes. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 18:23, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

WP:LABEL guidance for parenthetical disambiguators?

See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Adding advice about avoiding WP:LABEL disambiguation terms?. Please discuss there, not here. The outcome of that discussion might lead to an update of the WP:D guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 02:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages for composite titles derived from an ambiguous term

Working on a semi-related task, I encountered a number of articles belonging to a curious species somewhere in the vague neighbourhood of disambiguation pages, set index articles, and lists of lists, which I'm going to call "composite dabs". The general pattern is that they take some ambiguous term X, and create a derived title like "List of X people", "History of X", "X in 1998" etc.. Then the article will list articles that fit that description for different values of X. Probably easier to just give examples:

• Glossary of football terms
• List of World Heritage Sites in Ireland
• Lists of Turkish field marshals
• Lists of football video games
• Lists of airports in Timor
• Lists of Georgetown alumni
• List of Congolese writers
• Lists of windmills in Limburg
• List of Congolese people
• Lists of Christian Scientists
• Lists of Dominicans
• Lists of Melrose Place episodes

The examples above are mostly classified as SIAs (the last is classed as a list of lists - a few are categorized as both). My take is the following:

1. In general, articles should be categorized as at most one of DAB, SIA, and List of lists.
   • this discussion found consensus that an article can't be both a list of lists and a SIA
   • WP:SIANOTDAB makes it clear that SIAs are different from DABs
   • WP:DPAGE describes disambiguation pages as "non-article pages", which would conflict with classifying one as a list article
2. A good test for whether one of these should be classified as a DAB is to ask "is it plausible that an editor would want to link to this page from a mainspace article?" If the answer is "no", it's probably a DAB. By this standard, of the examples above, I would say football terms/video games, Georgetown alumni, Christian Scientists, Dominicans, and Melrose Place episodes should definitely be DABs. The others are less obvious to me, and I'd be curious to hear others' thoughts. (Any of the examples above that aren't classified as DABs should be classified as lists of lists)
   • Side note: I think this test gives intuitively reasonable results for articles like the examples above. I'm not saying it works for all pages. In particular, a lot of SIAs like Mount Lincoln fail this test.
   • Another factor that's highly correlated with this (but harder to turn into a binary test) is how closely related the possible values of the ambiguous term X are. There's no common thread connecting people from the Dominican Republic and people of the Dominican Order, other than a superficial overlap in terminology. On the other hand, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are intimately connected, as they together make up the island of Ireland.
3. If an article like Lists of Dominicans is to be classed as a DAB page, it should be renamed in the singular, i.e. List of Dominicans per WP:DABNAME: "The title of a disambiguation page is the ambiguous term itself".
4. I think it would probably be useful to have a subcat of Category:Disambiguation pages devoted to these "composite dab" cases. Not sure what to call it. Category:Disambiguation pages for topics derived from ambiguous terms is a mouthful. Could maybe start with just the list case, and call it Category:List disambiguation pages?

Searching for DAB pages beginning with "List of" finds a number of analogous examples that are already classified as DABs (though some are, IMO, miscategorized). e.g.

• List of airports in Ireland
• List of bids for the Olympic Games (I might have classified this as a list of lists instead)
• List of Shameless characters
• Lists of the 100 largest cities in Canada by population (also classified as a list of lists - probably shouldn't be a dab?)
• Lists of Scream characters (also classified as a list of lists - and title is not consistent with being a DAB)
• List of museums in Georgia
• List of best-selling albums of the 2000s in the United Kingdom
• List of Scream Queens episodes
  • Lists of TV episodes are an interesting subclass. This is a great example of such a page that should clearly be a DAB page, because the two series are completely unrelated but just happen to share a name. On the other end of the spectrum you have Lists of Pokémon episodes, which is basically just one long list that's been split for size. In between, you have lists related to shows that have been rebooted (Lists of Melrose Place episodes), remade (Lists of The Office episodes), or franchised (Lists of CSI episodes), inconsistently classed as lists/SIAs/DABs.
• List of genocides (should be a list of lists IMO)

See also dabs with the prefixes "History of" and "Flag of".

Thoughts? Also, if anyone is aware of any earlier discussions on this topic, links would be greatly appreciated. (I tried to find them, but it's a hard thing to search for.) Colin M (talk) 23:35, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

• Some of these definitely should not be dabs. bd2412 T 23:53, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
• Some comments:
  • Lists of lists are mostly useful for developers, but if a reader stumbles on one they may also find it interesting to browse through the entries.
  • An editor might link to almost any title. Milly Quezada links (reasonably but incorrectly) to List of Dominicans.
  • It is relevant to think about search terms. If a reader searches for football terms they will see Glossary of association football terms followed by Glossary of football terms, a list of lists.
  • A list of lists usually includes similar things, like Lists of companies or List of museums in Georgia. The first clearly is not a disambiguation page, and the second clearly is. I cannot see any simple, rigorous way to say what is different about them.
  • Perhaps the best we can do is say somewhere that an article may meet the criteria for more than one of DAB, SIA and List of lists, but we should pick one of those classes and tag and format the article according to the rules for that class.

Aymatth2 (talk) 14:10, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

A list of lists usually includes similar things is a key insight. A list of lists should might divide a topic into subtopics (Lists of companies = List of bakeries + List of casinos + ...), whereas a dab includes entries connected by happening to have similar names in English (List of museums in Georgia = List of museums in Georgia (country) or List of museums in Georgia (U.S. state)). So List of Dominicans, linked mainly by name, should be a dab rather than [a redirect to] a list of lists. Good questions to ask might be "Could these lists reasonably form Category:Lists of whatever?" and "Would a translation of this list make sense on frwiki, bearing in mind that French has different homonyms?". Certes (talk) 15:00, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

A list of lists could point to lists of the same things in different arrangements, like "list of x by province", "list of x by size", "list of x by name". But I fully agree that a list of lists should have a matching category, and the list and category should make sense in another language. A LoL that does not make a good category or does not translate should be a DAB. There may still be cases that meet both tests but should still be DABs, but the category / translate tests will catch most of the DAB-type lists of lists. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:46, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

I like the translation test - that's a really clever way of getting at the crux of the issue! And I agree that not-translating is a sufficient but not necessary condition. For example, it won't help when the ambiguous term is a proper name that stays the same across translations - List of Scream Queens episodes would translate to frwiki, but is definitely a DAB. Colin M (talk) 17:45, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Re An editor might link to almost any title... I should have been clearer. What I intended with that test (in my point 2 above) was not "Is it plausible that an editor would link to this page?", but rather "Is it plausible that an editor would intend to link to this page, knowing its contents?". i.e. not counting incorrect/accidental links.

Regarding your last point, I agree. I'm not sure where that 'somewhere' should be though. Maybe we should have an explanatory supplement on Lists of lists, which could be linked to from a hatnote at WP:LISTOFLISTS? As interesting as I find this issue, I concede it's a pretty niche one, so it probably doesn't merit prime real estate at WP:DAB or WP:STANDALONE. Colin M (talk) 18:35, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

You could start Wikipedia:Lists of lists as an essay, then canvas for opinions on it here and at WP:STANDALONE. The existing Wikipedia:Stand-alone_lists#Lists_of_lists may be copied for the lead section. Once it is stable, Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists#Lists of lists would point to it, maybe with {{main}}, and perhaps WP:LISTOFLISTS could be re-vectored to point to it directly. There probably is enough to be said to warrant a separate page. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:16, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

List of World Heritage Sites in Ireland, mentioned above, has become a sticky entry on Templates with disambiguation links. It is linked from {{Culture of Ireland}}. The underlying {{Culture of region}} lacks the flexibility for us to fix it and I think both dab entries are relevant, because the template includes Northern Ireland. Is this another candidate to become a list of lists? Certes (talk) 11:12, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

RFC: Shabazz - moving list of names from dab page to name page

I'd like to request comment about moving a list of names from the Shabazz disambiguation page to the name page. Discussion is here. I moved the list of names and made some other improvements and these were wholesale reverted. Before I re-revert, I'd like some additional feedback. Thank you. The reverting user hasn't responded. Coastside (talk) 16:10, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Moon Valley

I converted Moon Valley from a redirect to a disambig page. Could someone more versed in disambig pages give it a look? « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:57, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Gonzo fan2007: That looks far better than most new dabs! I've added a valley, combined the single-entry sections and put in a See also in case anyone was looking for a moon valley. The plant entry should ideally start with a link to something known as Moon Valley, and I found a redirect. But these are all pedantic points. Certes (talk) 00:18, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Certes! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 01:25, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 → Eruption of Mount Vesuvius . Primary topic?

Seems like a clear primary topic case to me. What do you think? See: Talk:Eruption_of_Mount_Vesuvius_in_79#Requested_move_6_January_2020. --В²C ☎ 20:43, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation for nicknames?

I patrolled the page Mel-Man and am not sure what to do with it. buidhe 03:24, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

The articles themselves should not have nicknames in the middle of their titles, per WP:NICKNAME. The disambiguation page itself is not that problematic, I think. Dekimasuよ! 03:29, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Separate page for letter itself vs spelled-out name of it?

We have H (disambiguation), for which H is the primary-meaning page. We also have aitch and haitch redirect to H them because those are how to say the name of the letter H. But we also have several pages whose name begins with Aitch (and at least one of those is not merely spelling out the name of the letter). Should we have a separate Aitch (disambiguation) page? Or because one of those is just spelling out the name of H (Aitch (rapper)), should they be a merged into the DAB page for H itself to avoid confusion of "how it's said" vs "how it's spelled"? DMacks (talk) 05:46, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

There's also Aitch (surname) and Aitch, Pennsylvania. That plus the rapper plus whatever becomes of Aitch at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 February 5#Aitch amply justifies a DAB page. Narky Blert (talk) 18:32, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I've added a draft to Aitch, and changed my vote in the RFD discussion. Narky Blert (talk) 18:43, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

WP:DABSTYLE vs. MOS:BOLDAVOID

WP:DABSTYLE states that when a primary topic is available, it should be linked (and bolded) in the first sentence of the dab page. However, MOS:BOLDAVOID says that the bolded text in the first sentence should not be linked. I am guessing that it is just common practice that MOS:BOLDAVOID doesn't apply to dab pages? If this is the case, should a note be added to MOS:BOLDAVOID that it doesn't apply to dab pages? Cheers, « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 23:10, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

There is a note about that, at the bottom of the section: "Disambiguation pages use bolding for the link to the primary topic, if there is one."—ShelfSkewed Talk 23:18, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Facepalm, thanks. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 23:27, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Episode Numbers

Today I was going through the Star Wars Articles for "The Force Awakens" "The Last Jedi" and "The Rise Of Skywalker" and found that someone had made a disambiguation page for anything that has an "Episode 7" another for an "Episode 8" and another for an "Episode 9" And it wasn't just Star Wars Mind you, it was for anything that said "Episdode #" in it.

They are found here

"Episode VII" redirects here. For other seventh episodes, see Episode 7.

"Episode VIII" redirects here. For other similarly known episodes, see Episode 8.

"Episode IX" redirects here. For other uses, see Episode 9.

Isn't this what they call a "Content Fork" ? If it isn't then it may more identify with "Redundant or Useless Templates" or "Overcategorization"

I presumptuously attempted to stop these myself and just gave myself trouble. But perhaps someone here can help.

(talk)

It has nothing to do with Wikipedia:Content forking. Episode 7, Episode 8 and Episode 9 are standard disambiguation pages for articles about subjects with those names. The listed items are episodes which are officially called that and aren't merely the 7th, 8th and 9th episode of a show. "Episode 7" may be a boring name for an episode but it deserves the same disambiguation as other names like Doomsday#Television, at least when they have their own articles. The only problem I see is that none of the other entries on the disambiguation pages use Roman numerals, and readers are unlikely to use them to search for tv episodes, so the {{Redirect}} hatnotes on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker appear unnecessary. Those articles have a huge number of readers and none of them may be looking for episodes of unrelated tv shows. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:51, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 February 2#Episode 1 (disambiguation), which touched on this topic. Narky Blert (talk) 04:02, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Marking as disambiguation page: Minor or major edit?

Self-explanatory. I have the setting to mark disambiguation page links in orange instead of blue. I was just doing some editing assuming that wiki linking this would be direct to the page like normal. The visual editor didn't show as, so when I did show preview in the source editor, orange. So I went to the article to properly mark the page as disambiguation. Now it didn't change how the page looked. Then to mark as minor edit? Well, it's always safe to assume a major. No strict rule on marking minor edits, so would I mark this as minor? Can I Log In (talk) 02:57, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@Can I Log In: I replied at Help talk:Minor edit#Marking as disambiguation page: Minor or major edit? Please only start a discussion in one place per WP:CROSS-POST. In some cases you can post a link to the discussion in another place. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:30, 21 February 2020 (UTC)