Talk:List of people by name: Boa-Bok

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[edit] Indexing of the surname "Bo"

considering Yang Bo
Which would be better ...

• create a section List_of_people_by_name:_Boa-Bok#Bo
• extend the first section so that it becomes List_of_people_by_name:_Boa-Bok#Bo_-_Boc
• create new page List_of_people_by_name:_People named Bo proposed as third alternative below by User:Jerzy after posting of question

Thanks for the input. Courtland 04:37, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

This is an important question, and IMO it speaks well for you that you've asked it this clearly -- even tho there's nothing wrong with the others before you who have taken a stab at the underlying problem w/o any obvious sign of having considered the question.

I have my own answer to the question; i think so far that it is the best answer, but i think that only in the sense that IMO there is no really good answer to it. Mine is a third possibility that you haven't included, namely that Yang Bo belongs in a new page (with at least a duplicate entry for Riddick Bo), List_of_people_by_name:_People named Bo; you can see examples of how this would fit into the overall structure by lk'g to Template:List of people by name exhaustive page-index (sectioned) and searching the string

Name

on that page. There are about a dozen examples in production; i think since you were able to enunciate your question, the de facto design rule and probably the logic (even if not the perceived need for it) behind it will probably be clear to you.

I hasten to add what's wrong with it: it's an ugly waste of a page, and the practice is so rigidly committed to strict logic as to be offensive as an apparent display of shameless compulsiveness. While that assessment may even be fair and accurate, i have reasons for that approach that are distinct from the kinds of compulsiveness that i can recognize in myself, and i may be right in advocating it for the prevention of the kind of errors that i observed without it and that led me to implement it.

(BTW, i say "important" in the sense that the answer matters in the long run. In the short run, i think my current approach is good enough for the time being, and that if you and i can't reach quick agreement one way or the other, any thot-thru approach you come up with would also be good enough. In either case, my reason for wanting to put off a long-term answer is the assumption that anyone who asks the question you did is likely to be prepared to contribute to answers to other, more impactful, pending questions. E.g.: my experiments, lk'd from the section User:Jerzy/Argus for LoPbN Templates#Pilot pages, and even the possibility that that approach obviates piping the lk to each bio with the "inverted" order of that name).

I answered your last "notification" first, partly out of lack of discipline, and partly out of knowing that the subject of the first is so big that my lack of discipline would excessively delay answers to 2 and 3 if i answered in order. In fact, i am about to read 1 and 2, but i will respond to them only in another session, which may be 48 hours away.

Thanks for this opportunity, and TIA for any counter-response.
--Jerzy•t 16:25, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

• I think that short term practical solutions based on reasoned guidelines are fine. I will implement the third option you've suggested (also reiterated alongside the original two for reference above).
  • completed both page creation and inclusion on index pages That was more complicated than I'd expected, but I understand the mechanics now after examining the template cascade. Courtland 01:33, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
    • _ _ Yeah, it's still a little daunting to me in spite of being its conceiver. (I assume you can see that maintenance in the face of the evolution of the lks among pages as the tree expands is a classic problem looking for a meta-template solution, or that you'll ask abt it if you don't.) I don't know if you'll find it better or worse in light of what i am starting to apply (and retrofit even to obsolete markup, to give myself practice & work out the kinks, and for pedagogic value) to the markup for Template:List of people Bo Links and other pages that differ only in what replaces "Bo" in that title. The approach you'll see at Template talk:List of people Bo Links is primarily intended to reduce what i call the "finickiness" of edits like the one you just did: creating a higher-level language (via templates) that is more compact and leaves fewer manual operations that may be subject to slips of the pen or of the cut-and-paste keys. Whether it can lower (or might to some degree raise) the barriers to other editors making such a change as you did is not clear to me. I'm tweaking your edit, and i've renamed the page you started, with a reason-for-move summary that i reformat here as

      Consistency with nearly all similarly named LoPbN pages, and logic of

      1. "Ab" meaning names beginning "Ab..",
      2. "Bl-Bn" meaning names beginning with "Bl..." thru "Bn...", and
      3. "name Bo" meaning the name Bo

    _ _ I intend the changes in the spirit not even of "correction" of your editing that template without using its talk page as an intermediate step (let alone intending to reproach your following that route). Rather, i'm concerned for documentation, and hopefully ease of making the next change to the same page.

    _ _ At the same time, use of the higher-level coding forces a change in the resulting markup on Template:List of people Bo Links, in effect a correction, that will bring it into consistency with the similar cases on pages i did earlier. Please consider me as pointing out the inconsistency and eliminating it with the smallest change possible; if you prefer "Bo" in that context over "Name Bo", either argue why or even boldly change the content of Template:Lopbn-lnm to reflect your view. (But in that case, stay alert to the fact that that change would affect only future gens of Template:List of people Bo Links-like pages that use Template:Lopbn-lnm, and that someone, presumably you or i, should re-gen all the other users of Template:Lopbn-lnm (hmm, there are no others yet, as my retrofitting has not gotten that far) before the need slips off our radar.
    --Jerzy•[[User talk:Jerzy|t]] 23:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    

• On the matter of "more impactful things", it is often useful while traversing a learning curve to pick on "less impactful things" that nonetheless have an impact and ususally have a very limited scope than to dive into the deep. Wikipedia comes packed with the Be bold meme and therein admonishes "don't be reckless" but it should also come with a "be patient - no reason to rush" meme as well. Time is not your enemy when you are working on the time scale of years rather than days.

Courtland 01:11, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

• • I think we agree about that, and in particular i am in no rush for any global change to multi-level bulleting, let alone non-inversion of name lks. In fact, i feel much more urgency to elicit comment.
    --Jerzy•[[User talk:Jerzy|t]] 23:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)