Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert (disambiguation)

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was merge and redirect to Robert. – ABCD 00:54, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Robert (disambiguation)

None of the articles linked on this disambiguation page actually need disambiguation. They all refer to people named Robert, but none of them are people who are known simply as "Robert" --- Isaac R 04:04, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Redirect to Robert. The list of "famous Roberts" is pretty useless though, don't merge. We've got dozens of similar pages; this one's more legit than Joan, for example. —Wahoofive | Talk 04:32, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • So you want searches for "Robert (disambiguation)" to redirect to "Robert"? That doesn't make any sense. ---06:09, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Above unsigned comment by Isaac R —Wahoofive | Talk 16:30, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree that it's silly, but redirects are cheap and harmless. Anyway, no one's actually going to search for "Robert (disambiguation)". Maybe you meant wikilink. —Wahoofive | Talk 16:30, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • No, I mean "search". The main purpose of a redirect page is to help with searches. If the name of the page is something nobody ever searchs for, that purpose isn't served. You could still link to it, but you usually want to avoid linking to redirect pages. Especially when the name of the redirect page is "Robert (disambiguation)"!!!! ---Isaac R 20:56, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
        • Comment: Searching is one of the purposes for a redirect page but hardly the "main purpose" and certainly not the only purpose. Redirects also preserve attribution history (a requirement of GFDL), prevent broken links, aid in accidental linking, etc. See Wikipedia:Redirect and meta:redirect for more. Rossami (talk) 22:26, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
          • You're right. My statement of the purpose of redirects was much too narrow, and there are many other purposes. But you haven't demonstrated that any of those purposes is served by having a redirect page named "Robert (disambiguation)". ---Isaac R 23:31, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Merge into Robert. Wikipedia not being paper and all, I see no harm (and maybe some utility) in having the famous Roberts on the page. -- 8^D ^gab 05:52, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
  • The harm is that this is doesn't follow the rules for when to disambiguate. It may sound terminally anal, but there have to be some limits on what we include -- and this is well outside them. ---Isaac R 06:09, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Delete: I stumbled across this when trying to write up Saint Robert. In most cases, given name articles go to the most famous person known only by that name if there is only one. Otherwise, they're disambiguations. After I saw the wretchedness of the Robert article, where it wasn't a dab but rather yet another bar-bet trivia game "List of," I decided to manually merge in the people who needed to be disambiguated, and then let the silliness go forth. If Robert is a proper dab, then there is no need for Robert (disambiguation), and it should be deleted as duplicate content. Further, I would love to see the "list of favorite Roberts" have a mysterious accident in the night and disappear from the Robert page as well. Geogre 20:39, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

BTW, no articles link to Robert (disambiguation). Geogre 20:42, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, I realize now that the above was not clear. Here is a chronology, as best as I can see it:

Someone wrote Robert as a "List of Famous Roberts."

When that conflicted with the usual Wikipedia practice, the answer (!) was to create a new page called Robert (disambiguation) rather than knocking the stuffing out of Robert.

When I went to write up the saint, I was full of outrage, so I looked up all the "Robert of" people I could find and listed them in Robert above the silly list. I left the silly list as something not worth fighting over.

Given that the Robert article now has that disambiguation, there is no need for the disambiguation page as a separate entity. I'm not responsible for the "Famous Robert" stuff, and I would love to see it go away altogether. Any editor can do that, of course. Once the disambig. page goes away, the Robert page should get the dab tag, and then it will be in order to delete all that trivia contest stuff. Geogre 23:36, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Merge into Robert. Tony Jin | (talk) 23:49, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • That's two votes to merge with Robert, but still no positive statement to justify having a list of people named "Robert". What's the utility of list of people whose connection with each other is their first name? ---Isaac R 23:31, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. If this kind of list belongs anywhere, it should be named List of people named Robert. However, I think Special:Allpages/Robert does a much better job of listing the more than 3,000 articles on people named Robert. Gdr 22:36, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

• Comment: Ok, so folks were arguing that Robert (disambiguation) should be merged into Robert. That has been done. Now that it has been done, the only question that remains is whether or not to have a redirect from Robert (disambiguation) to Robert. I assume no one thinks such a thing is logical? Since no articles link to Robert (disambiguation) and there is no unique content and it is a secondary search term, I will, if I see no objections, delete it as in process. Geogre 22:09, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.