Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 26

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

External links

Isn't there a rule that no external links should be used on disambiguation pages? Has it been discussed before? I would find it quite useful, because otherwise disambig pages tend to get clogged with stuff that nobody cares to write an article about, but of course there is some website about it that somebody wants to promote (see HOS (permalink)) for a vivid example . -- 790 23:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

What about ignorance?

This guideline states "When a reader enters a given term in the Wikipedia search box and pushes "Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result?". What if the reader is ignorant of the "thing" that technically belongs to that name? Do we put up a disambiguation page at that term saying, "this means this but you probably think it means that". Or do we put up the correct article for that "thing" and add a DAB link at the top saying, "Most people think this means this other thing". Should an encyclopedia defer to ignorance and throw in disambiguation to get around it? (This question seems to be coming up at Talk:Milky Way#The "Milky Way" and "The Milky Way Galaxy" are two different things. Halfblue 22:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

We should accommodate ignorance. Without it, the Encyclopedia would be unnecessary. (John User:Jwy talk) 04:11, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Careful -- sounds like a recipe for making every single word into a wikilink. Ewlyahoocom 05:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I think you're talking about the exception rather than the rule. Every so often, some situation comes up where the guidelines don't quite fit. It's quite normal, we can't cover everything. I'm sure you and the contributors at the Milky Way and Milky Way Galaxy articles will find a solution. (I have to say, I learnt something today.) Neonumbers 09:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I still remember Neonumbers' remark of December 19 Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)/Archive 29#Proposed exemplary Human name dab that "We allow for confusion, but not stupidity". That struck me as being just about right. However, a certain level of ignorance that falls short of stupidity might be accommodated. After all, I read Wikipedia as well as editing it. Chris the speller 14:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Not knowing the "Milky Way" distinction is not an extreme level of ignorance - its something you would expect an Encyclopedia to help one out with. But we need not go to extremes. I like what I currently see at Milky Way. (John User:Jwy talk) 00:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Images in disambig

Are there any policies or guide-lines concerning the placement of pictures or images in disambig pages? I found two on the Syracuse disambig & I removed them, here are before and after links. Naufana : talk 17:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

MOS:DAB#Images. You were right in removing them from the dab page. – sgeureka t•c 17:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
To directly anwer the question of guidelines concerning the placement of pictures or images in disambig pages, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Images. The short answer: place them elsewhere. Chris the speller 01:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Ambox style for dab templates

I came across the new look of {{disambig-cleanup}}, and I don't really like it. I would like to go back to the old style and explained my reasons at Template talk:Disambig-cleanup#Ambox style. More comments? (Reply there.) – sgeureka t•c 09:00, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Reversion of rewording in the opening

First of all, "hence" is a word that few people use every day. Also, removing "the process of" leaves us with "Disambiguation in Wikipedia is resolving conflicts in article titles", which can be taken as the answer to "what is dismabiguation currently doing?" as well as "what is disambiguation?". This is removing clarity, not adding it. The deeper question here is what the editor finds unclear in the opening; let's discuss and jointly decide if a change is warranted. Chris the speller (talk) 17:55, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Interesting case at AFD

Here is an interesting case at AFD involving a disambiguation page that disambiguates foreign language (non-latin) characters. I've voiced my opinion there, so I won't repeat it here, but I think it raises interesting questions for disambiguation on WP:EN. older ≠ wiser 15:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

CJKV disambiguation pages

There's a major pitfall, and the need now for "CJKV disambiguation pages" is very real. We have long had redirects (Wikipedia-wide) for non-Latin script names, redirecting to their corresponding English Wikipedia article, such as 中国 and 東京. We believed that this worked within the guidelines of WP:ENGLISH. However, there was a large pitfall in this reasoning, because not all Chinese characters map to a unique English Wikipedia article name. And in such cases, disambiguation becomes necessary. We are now faced with a rude awakening that, short of banning all redirects from foreign scripts, we must now disambiguate between foreign scripts names, outside the frameworks of WP:ENGLISH.

Previous discussions never led in the direction of eliminating dab for CJKV scripts:

I believe the consensus so far is that we cannot ban or eliminate such dab pages. Hence we find it necessary for WP:WPDAB to cover (and regulate) dab's using foreign scripts.

At this point, Chinese characters (CJKV characters) are the only ones I know of, which urgently needs some DAB guidelines. We propose a joint DAB task force as discussed here, in Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals‎#CJKV disambiguation pages. WP:WPDAB will be the main parent, and we will need to create a subpage under WP:WPDAB. Please discuss the feasibilities there.--Endroit (talk) 19:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguating acronyms that are also words.

A discussion recently came up concerning this edit, and how it relates to Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Page naming conventions which specifies that "there should be just one disambiguation page for all cases (upper- or lower-case) and variant punctuation". I thought the guideline was just talking about situations like mm/Mm/mM/MM, (milli/mega metre/mole or people's initials or other things listed at MM,) but not where the acronym is also a word, like SAP/sap or RAID/raid. My basic logic was that the do disambiguation page was already so long as to make it hard to find what you're looking for, and someone looking for the acronym would be more likely to type it in uppercase letters. But perhaps wiser minds than mine have already considered this idea and rejected it. Is that part of the guideline strictly followed? Is it a good idea?--Yannick (talk) 01:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

In your quotation of the guideline, you left off the preceding "Usually". That leaves room for editors to use good judgment. So does WP:IGNORE. Finding one case where the guideline does not seem to lead to the best solution does not invalidate the guideline. If what you are doing improves Wikipedia, go for it. Chris the speller (talk) 04:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Borderline case. I'd be fine with having all acronyms on Do, or have a separate acronym page at DO. Chris said it all. – sgeureka t•c 10:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. Please remember that not everyone who uses Wikipedia is going to be reading it on a monitor. How is someone using a speech reader, for example, supposed to distinguish between DO and Do? I would think that there needs to be an extremely compelling reason for having different content at these two titles; not just "the page would be too long otherwise." --Russ (talk) 11:36, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Good point, although I think a better solution to that would be to move DO to D.O., and do the same for all acronyms, regardless of whether they also disambiguate to words or not. (I'm guessing that a speech reader would spell out D.O., although I have no experience with those things.)--Yannick (talk) 02:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Examples: From just a quick poke around: Most of the short ones don't split (NOD, MY); a few of the middle length ones don't split (AGE, AMI, WASP); but many of the long ones do seem to split (ACE/Ace (disambiguation), ABS/Abs (surname), ABE/Abe, ART/Art (disambiguation), SET/Set (disambiguation) (and 1 that needs fixing: AWE/Awe)). The long Gap doesn't.
I'm a mergist, so I agree with Russ that they should generally (always?) be on one page. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Unnecessary links

A problem I come across a lot of the time is people linking to articles that have names which have one similar word or maybe a similar root but really don't need to be disambiguated. Bohemia (disambiguation) does not need a link to Bohemian Rhapsody because no one calls Bohemian Rhapsody "Bohemia". I think the guideline should address this. Recury 18:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

The intro of WP:D says In other words, disambiguations are paths leading to the different article pages that could use essentially the same term as their title.. The intro of MOS:DAB says Disambiguation pages are solely intended to allow users to choose among several Wikipedia articles, usually when a user searches for an ambiguous term. It's clear: Bohemian Rhapsody has no place on Bohemia (disambiguation) and can thus be deleted then. :-) – sgeureka t•c 19:14, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I think the guideline is especially clear about this issue at WP:D#Lists: "Lists of articles of which the disambiguated term forms only a part of the article title don't belong here... Do not add links that merely contain part of the page title." --Paul Erik 19:23, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
That's what I was looking for I guess, but I didn't see that when I scanned it. I don't see how "Lists" as a heading make any sense there. How about "Links that only contain part of the title" or something catchier? Recury 19:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I would prefer leaving the header alone, if only for the reason that I have quite often (and at least once today) used that anchor to point other editors there (to WP:D#Lists). My descriptions and notes on user talk pages would lose their effectiveness. Chris the speller 02:02, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Writing ===<span id="Lists" />Links that only contain part of the title=== would solve the linking problem. – sgeureka t•c 09:27, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Good info. Thanks. Chris the speller 04:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Alexander the Great disambiguation

There are several pages with Alexander the Great in their title [1], and the disambiguation link at the top of the page only links to the 1956 film. Would there be any objections to creating Alexander the Great (disambiguation)? (of course this would change the example given in this article) --George100 (talk) 14:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

My rule of thumb: if there is one other article besides the primary meaning, use hatnotes. If there are two other articles associated with the primary meaning, a new disambiguation page can be created instead of using hatnotes. If there are three or more articles, a new disambiguation should definately be created. In this case, you have ATG (primary meaning), a film, a board game, and a song. – sgeureka t•c 18:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I moved Alexander the Great (1956 film) to Alexander the Great (film). I would have created the dab too, but I wasn't sure if you (George100) would prefer to do it yourself. Yes, the dab is definitely warranted. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:53, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, I've created the DAB page, and changed link at the top of Alexander the Great to {{otheruses}} --George100 (talk) 13:42, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Links to fix

I'm not exactly sure where to put this but there's a lot of links to Environmental Protection Agency that should be moved since that page was turned into a disambig (see Talk:Environmental Protection Agency). I think most links should point to United States Environmental Protection Agency. On a related note, it would nice if the direct external links to WikiMapia were replaced with a template. I don't think we should promote one mapping service over others. (Check Special:Whatlinkshere/WikiMapia--many of the links also link to the WikiMapia article)

(It would also be nice if the links to pdf were also changed, seeing that "PDF" is an acronym) Jason McHuff (talk) 11:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

And I forgot about Southwest (and probably articles on other directions) Jason McHuff (talk) 11:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks like Environmental Protection Agency should be moved to Environmental Protection Agency (disambiguation) and the redirect from the base name to the primary topic United States Environmental Protection Agency restored. I've commented on the Talk page, but the earlier note by Dekimasu seems to have gone nowhere. I'll see if anyone responds to the new comment, and then perhaps execute the moves. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Scenario on 'Appropriate' use of WP:D

When a person with horror movies on their mind types in "giant monsters" in Wikipedia, would they be expecting to find the page of a television host? It may be amusing for a moment, but would not help someone who was looking for the name of a specific giant monster. It turns out that Giant Monsters is actually the title of a television show, and the article for the television show was already voted to be merged with the page of the television host of that show. What is the general consensus here (and I am looking for more than 1 persons opinion) on trying to apply disambiguation to the page? Overall, is it better to ignore the general meaning large creatures (such as dinosaurs and movie monsters) in favor of the show title? Also, does a vote on articles for deletion override the need for disambiguation? What standards should apply here, and what should be appropriate? Userafw (talk) 03:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

See [2] for what this user attempted to do as a "disambiguation" of Giant Monsters. I reverted, twice, as not being an appropriate application of a disambiguation. Giant Monsters is the name of a TV show, not an article discussion what giant monsters. If disambiguation had been needed or appropriate, it would have come up during the AfD. Collectonian (talk) 04:03, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
This is precisely why I am asking for some clarification from more than one person, especially experienced users, and preferably some admins, on this policy. Is it automatically considered "inappropriate" to attempt to disambiguate a page after the AfD discussion has finished? I do recall (from viewing the discussion page after one of the attempts to branch the page out rather than use only an automatic redirect) some discussion on dinosaurs during the AfD and perhaps even some question on why dinosaurs were in the article(?) but I also recall general consensus was that the article as it had been in its original state (which I never did see) was primarily on the topic of the television show. I find it also interesting that a redirect (which I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't been browbeaten about using this convention that I didn't even know about at the time) is used to point to monsters rather than giant monsters in the post above. This suggests to me that there could be some disambiguation distinguishing giant monsters when it is intended to mean gigantic monsters, from giant monsters when it is intended to mean the television show, or even giant monsters when it is used to refer to dinosaurs. If the policy of AfD automatically overrides the policy of WP:D, then I will gladly refrain from attempting further edits to similar pages that appear to be disambiguous. Otherwise, it is one point of view vs. another on whether a given subject should be branched based on possible user conclusions, or redirected to one page (that may result in some possible confusion) since wikipedia is not a directory. Userafw (talk) 07:28, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Dinosaurs were mentioned in the article because that is what the special was about...as is noted at Jeff_Corwin#Giant_Monsters, which is where the article now redirects to. That isn't a redirect, BTW, just a renamed link to note that there is already a monster article which also includes "giant" monsters (i.e. giant-sized monsters). Collectonian (talk) 08:03, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
The renamed link is exactly what I was referring to. The new pointer to the specific show is useful though. Here's a little skit I thought up(animal planet can use this if they see this and give wikipedia all the credit) that I think illustrates my point about disambiguation being necessary in this case.
(you see a lady at computer(Jeff's wife?)- "Hey Jeff honey, did you know that when I looked up giant monsters on wikipedia a page with your name came up?" (Jeff as heard from the other room) "Just a minute, honey" You hear a door creak open. Then you see shocked look on her face. Camera cuts to Jeff the Animal Planet Giant Monsters host, who appears in giant monster (Godzilla or King Kong) costume, smiling mischievously, and says "Watch Giant Monsters Tuesday at 8/9 Central!" Stranger things (in terms of skits) have been done to promote television series. Besides, with the WGA strike, reruns are probably going to be inevitable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Userafw (talk • contribs) 09:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC) Userafw (talk) 09:17, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I see where both of you are coming from, but I'd go with a redirect to the person. Yes, Giant Monsters redirecting to a person is a little funny, but on the other hand, how likely is it that someone types in "giant monsters" into the search box and is not looking for the info in Jeff Corwin. To be on the safe side, I recommend a WP:HATNOTE at the top of Jeff Corwin. {{redirect3|Giant Monsters|For the legendary creatures, see Monster}} renders into
"Giant Monsters" redirects here. For the legendary creatures, see Monster.
– sgeureka t•c 10:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
How does that work when the redirect goes to the section. Taemyr (talk) 10:20, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Where to put the hatnote is up to the editor at the moment I guess. Internet Explorer redirects you directly to the subsection, whereas Mozilla Firefox ignores ancors and redirects you to the top of the new article. I use Firefox, so I always put hatnotes at the top of an article. – sgeureka t•c 11:18, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I'll have to try to remember that format. A hatnote (if that is what those boxes are called) would definitely satisfy my concern in this area, while displaying more prominently information about connected/redirected pages. This can become an issue if a page (we'll call it page one) is redirected first to one page(lets say page one redirects to page two), then to another page (page three)that was in itself relevant to page two, but not to page one. Userafw (talk) 11:32, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. I use Firefox as well, and it takes me to subsections automatically when they are specified in a redirect. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Strange. I have been using FF for all of my wiki existence, always the newest version (now v.2.0 German), and ancors in redirects never worked for me. But I just checked FF v.1.5 German on another computer, and the ancors worked there. Must be some kind of checkmark in the options maybe. I'll see. – sgeureka t•c 12:05, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Per the suggestion, I put a hat note on the page. I put it in the section where the redirect goes, since IE and FF have always followed anchors for me :) Collectonian (talk) 15:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Just checked the link with Firefox 3 beta 1 - FF 3 first goes to the top of the page, then automatically goes to the section. Userafw (talk) 03:50, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation sections

Are there any guidelines relating to an article having a section of disambiguation links? Should there be? Case in point: Criticism of Microsoft#Product criticism - Josh (talk | contribs) 20:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

That's not a section of disambiguation links, it's an article directory. It's probably not very good style, but I don't think it falls under the disambiguation umbrella. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:54, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree it is not disambiguation material. My guess is that it might be best to have a summary paragraph of each subject and have these links be there via the {{main|Criticism of Microsoft Vista}} type template - or just have them listed in a "see also" section. (John User:Jwy talk) 23:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

External links

Am I correct in saying that external links (other than interwikis, of course) are forbidden on disambiguation pages? If this is not the policy, we should make it so and state it in the strongest terms. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:47, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

External links and citations are unneeded on disambiguation pages, yes. WP:MOSDAB#Individual entries says so, although without the strongest terms: "External links should rarely, if ever, be given entries in disambiguation pages. Including them as comments or on a talk page is a way to mention URLs that might be helpful in the future." I would favor making that stronger too. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree, the wording is too weak. There is never a case for an external link. If anyone can come up with an external link that would make WP better, they can put it in a stub, at least. Chris the speller (talk) 19:23, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Exactly - I've cleaned up more than my share of DAB spam links that could never be articles, and would like to have a policy to point to that expressly forbids their inclusion. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
It's now "never". :-) -- JHunterJ 21:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Good - now, could someone generate a list of dismbig pages that contain external links (excluding other wikimedia projects), so I can pick 'em off? Cheers! bd2412 T 00:23, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

New guidelines for CJKV disambiguation pages

As previously mentioned above (at #CJKV disambiguation pages), we are in need of a guideline which covers Chinese characters. Here are my 2 proposals,

Option 1, "DAB of CJKV character names"
  • Common CJKV character (Chinese character) names should redirect to their corresponding acceptable article name per WP:ENGLISH as much as possible. However, if a CJKV name maps to multiple Wikipedia articles, disambiguation is required, and all the normal rules for WP:DAB apply.

...or...

Option 2, "DAB of foreign script names"
  • Common foreign script names which do not pass the criteria of WP:ENGLISH should redirect to their corresponding acceptable article name per WP:ENGLISH as much as possible. However, if a foreign script name maps to multiple Wikipedia articles, disambiguation is required, and all the normal rules for WP:DAB apply.

If there are no objections, I would like to add Option 1 (above) into the WP:DAB guidelines page. Please discuss.--Endroit (talk) 20:20, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new text

Hello, I frequently work on theWP:DPL project. Occasionally, I encounter editors who are slightly to very recalcitrant about having links disambiguated in articles they are involved in. I would like to propose that some version of the following text be included in the guideline here:

With very few exceptions, creating wikilinks to dab pages is erroneous. Wikilinks are not supposed to take the user to a dab page. They're supposed to take the user to a relevant article. The purpose of a dab page is to give a user who has typed an ambiguous term into the search box a list of articles that are likely to be what he's looking for. The exceptions to this are:
There is currently a major project underway to repair links to disambiguation pages. You can find out about it here. Creating links to disambiguation pages only results in the page on which they're created showing up on a list of pages that are in need of repair, bringing an editor to the page to repair it.
Please don't deliberately create links to disambiguation pages.

I've mentioned this at the projects talk page and have received only favorable comments, although not many. Your comments, please?

--Steven J. Anderson (talk) 10:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Any article that links to a disambiguation page intentionally should use the (disambiguation) page or redirect title (the editor may need to create the redirect if the disambiguation page is at the base name). I just updated List of Greek place names to do so, with a pipe link so that the displayed text wouldn't change. Redirects cannot use a (disambiguation) redirect, because that would make a double redirect. I'd rephrase "Dab links at the top of an article" as "Disambiguation links in hatnotes" (and spell out "disambiguation" instead of using "dab" throughout). Britten (disambiguation) (not Britten, BTW) turned out to be a list of surname holders instead of a dab page; I moved it. A different set you could use is Mali (disambiguation), Molly, and Mallee. I think it's a worthy topic for inclusion here, though -- thanks for drafting it. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your thanks, I drafted it in a fit of irritation. I actually drafted the text months ago when Britten was a dab page. Also, you didn't pipe the link in List of Greek place names to the redirect, you piped it to Great Britain, an article about the island, not the country. This seems wrong to me since the link refers to the word Britain, not the island or the country. However, I consider this so rare as to be probably not worth mentioning. I've disambiguated thousands of links and only encountered this once. Your thoughts?--Steven J. Anderson (talk) 10:39, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I did what I said, but another editor did what you said. I undid it. I'm often reverted when I use a link to a (disambiguation) redirect instead of a direct link by editors who are under the mistaken impression that the only good redirect is a Search Box redirect, so I still think the note would be useful. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:05, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I made the discussed edit (some time ago now - forgot to post here when I did it). Other editors please have a look. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 23:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Prime example

Lift is quoted as a prime example of a dab page but its current version has a link to a non-article. This made me think that, since it isn't possible to keep tabs on all all examples all the time, perhaps a quoted example like this should be somehow cast in stone to retain it in its exemplary form. I'm not even sure if this is possible but it seems a good idea to me. Abtract (talk) 09:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Better, I think, if it's watchlisted by a bunch of editors who are active in the project (I'll add it to mine now). Many eyes will keep it from being assaulted. bd2412 T 09:45, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages without the term "(disambiguation)" in their title

Should they ever exist? The article doesn't currently say anything about the usage of "(disambiguation)" in titles.

There are even cases where both "X" and "X (disambiguation)" are disambiguation pages with the same (manual!) content. -Lwc4life (talk) 20:14, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they should exist. See WP:D#Page naming conventions for when to use them (no primary topic) and when not to (when a primary topic exists). Often, when the dab does not have (disambiguation), a redirect with (disambiguation) is created for intentional wP:D#Links to disambiguation pages. There is no need for both "X" and "X (disambiguation) with the same content. The (disambiguation) page should be made into a redirect in that case. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
That's really short term thinking. What if a year later you'd have a primary topic? Why have the need to do moves and redirects and manual changing of possibly endless links when you can prevent it? -Lwc4life (talk) 00:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
It's not short-term thinking, it's expeditious thinking. Page moves will continue to be needed in the disambiguation space and in the main article space in general, with all that that entails. If the manual changing of "possibly endless" links is a problem, note that it will not be avoided by placing the disambiguation page at (disambiguation) -- people will still link to the base name, which will be wrong if there's no primary topic, and possibly wrong if one of the other articles later becomes the primary topic. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:00, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Requesting input on Wal-Mart

A user keeps being very adamant about inserting a disambiguation page for Wal-Mart, which is not a true disambiguation page. Disambiguation, IMHO, is not needed, as there is only one company named 'Wal-Mart', and it's not likely to be confused with anything else. The articles listed on List of Wal-Mart articles are really just a collection of 'see also' list items; subjects that are related to Wal-Mart but unlikely to actually be confused by someone searching for the company. The links under 'operations' are actually already in the main Wal-Mart article anyway, so that's redundant.

There was an AfD about a month ago, but unfortunately was closed prematurely by an admin that claimed 'no consensus'. 7 users were in favor of deletion, and four wanting to rename it (from 'Wal-Mart (disambiguation)' to 'List of Wal-Mart articles'); only 3 named users (and two anon IPs with less than 10 edits each) wanted to keep it. In the end, it was ultimately renamed to 'List of Wal-Mart articles'; although that's not good enough for Shaliya waya, who seems determined to engage in a long-term revert war over making sure that the disambiguation page sticks (though no WP:3RR violations have occurred, as for as I know; although she does revert with no edit summary, and no comments on the talk page).

At present, I still don't think that this is a disambiguation page, and I think it would best fit if merged into the 'see also' section of the main Wal-Mart article, since the items listed do seem to be related. I'd like to know what others feel about this. Thanks! Dr. Cash (talk) 02:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I deleted the redirects. (disambiguation) pages should not redirect to pages that aren't disambiguation pages, agreed. -- JHunterJ (talk) 06:24, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Requesting input on Spencer's

I am new to Wikipedia, but I'm pretty sure that some sort of disambiguation page should be created to make more clear the following entities: Spencer's (a defunct retailer) and Spencer Gifts (an existing retailer that many customers call "Spencer's"). It seems a bit odd that "David Spencer Limited" went out of business in 1948 but commands the direct article link for Spencer's. I'll be happy to help execute a disambiguation, but I thought it would be best to ask first. - Where I chillax (talk) 13:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

This is usually asked at the talkpage of the relevant article, in this case Spencer's. You can also make a Move request which gets more input, or just be bold (if you are really sure) by moving the current Spencer's to David Spencer Limited, and then turning the resulting redirect at new Spencer's into a normal disambiguation page. I have heard of neither Spencer's, so I cannot tell you if there is a primary meaning etc. – sgeureka t•c 14:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Don't ignore the fact that a dab page already exists at Spencer, which includes both the "Spencer's" businesses. I'm not sure if a new dab page just for these two articles is needed. I think that Spencer's should probably redirect to Spencer Gifts, with a hatnote back to David Spencer Limited as well as to Spencer for further disambiguation. SlackerMom (talk) 21:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Someone was bold, but sadly kind of messed this up, moving the department store article to the grammatically-odd David's Spencer Limited (and redirecting Spencer's to Spencer). I'm not going to presume which retailer is the primary use, if there even is one, so I created a DAB page at Spencer's (helpful to those typing "Spencer's" as a search term, despite the existence of Spencer), and moved the dept store article to Spencer's (department store) (I'm not from BC, but I know enough from history that no one called it David Spencer Limited). It seems that all the articles that link to Spencer's are intended for the department store, so I will fix those links. Skeezix1000 (talk) 20:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

"For example, there is some topic XXXX..."

Does the fact that the title being used as a placeholder is an actual page bother anyone? --DocumentN (talk) 18:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, it does. Surely we should be able to come up with an example that will stay red. SlackerMom (talk) 21:02, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
like this one, taken from WP:redlink ought to stay red. Taemyr (talk) 11:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Implemented. Thanks for pointing out like this one. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Improved search and summary page as alternative

I've been doing disambiguation work for a while, but have just started thinking if there were a better way. Has there been discussion somewhere (maybe in the Wikimedia community) to 1) improve the search mechanism to something like googles, where there is some importance to the order returned and 2) a way of extracting a summary line from the found articles? Done correctly, this would be a much more useful/efficient mechanism to accomplish what we do. We may then have to choose the primary article - but beyond that, I'm not sure what use the dab pages would be. I know 1 is non-trivial both technically and perhaps intellectual property wise.

Or maybe I missing something the dab pages do?

(John User:Jwy talk) 04:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Dab pages are disambiguating between separate meanings of the same word. It is a mistake of seeing it as a search mechanism, rather it is a method for getting a direct access to articles when the search term entered can have several meanings. Specific problems would be that it would be difficult for search functionality to pick up on synonymous words. Eg. instance can mean Object (computer science). And we do not want articles where the search term is just a part of the potential title. Eg. Dark matter should not be linked from Dark.Taemyr (talk) 11:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree that they are not search pages, but an intelligent search with extracted summaries might be combined (perhaps with a page with some configuration data to cover some indirect meanings) might serve the purpose of a dab page. (John User:Jwy talk) 20:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
It would have to be very intelligent if it is to pick up synonyms. Taemyr (talk) 15:12, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I think this is probably better done at a Wikimedia page or discussion group (anyone know where?). Synonyms could be provided by editors in the configuration data. And I think it through a little more and have a better description of the idea (or give up if I can't generate one). In any even, disambiguation must be a problem with most Wikimedia applications and there must be some technical assistance the underlying infrastructure could provide. (John User:Jwy talk) 18:34, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Acronyms that can refer to names of schools

Should we include names of schools that can be abbreviated in the disambiguation page for acronyms? I saw in MHS that there were several high schools listed there with such an abbreviation. I've split them into MHS (high schools) but I'm wondering whether or not they should be listed at all. RightGot (talk) 19:38, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd say no. Reason: Basically no-one would type "MHS" into the search box or write "Bill Clinton attended MHS" in an article. That would make disambiguation of schools useless. (There are obviously exceptions for very prestigious schools, usually colleges). – sgeureka t•c 20:02, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree. I'd leave some wiggle room on well-known colleges and universities, but no way do we need all the high schools in the English-speaking world dabbed by their abbreviations. SlackerMom (talk) 21:44, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Well regardless of whether or not we have high schools dabbed by their abbreviations, they shouldn't be cluttering up the main disambiguation page for the abbreviation. I have created many separate dab pages for those e.g. SHS (high schools). RightGot (talk) 22:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

No, there should not be separate dab pages for types of entries on a dab page. We've discussed this for things like (song) or (film) before too. If it's referred to as SHS, it should be on the SHS dab page. If it's a long "cluttering" list, they can be grouped after the main part of the dab page. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:05, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
There are many more high schools that share the same acronym than there are songs or films that share the same title though. RightGot (talk) 03:03, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with User:JHunterJ - having seen the SHS page, where the move had been made with no edit summary, I replaced the schools on the main dab page but in a separate section, before realising there was this discussion and systematic series of moves. I don't see any point in a separate SHS (high schools) page, nor any harm in these schools being on the main SHS page as a clearly separate section. PamD (talk) 23:13, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Has anyone considered that there will be thousands of schools for most 3 letter acronyms? Does a dab page really make sense in this case? Vegaswikian (talk) 23:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
It'll only be the schools which have WP articles. If there are a vast number, they could be split by country? PamD (talk) 00:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
It is already split by country on some of the dab pages. By the way, I'm actually for remvoing all the high schools from the dab pages to start with. After all, very few people are likely to type in PHS expecting that they'll get to the local high school. We should just remove them, and add a note at the top of the dab pages not to add high schools. 4.235.111.106 (talk) 00:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Well if all high schools are going to be considered notable, then it is the entire universe. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I haven't added or subtracted any high schools from their acronym pages, but if an editor adds them there, I really can't see any justification for removing them -- an article to be disambiguated is an article to be disambiguated. If you feel the schools are unworthy, work on getting the school articles deleted. Acronym dabs tend towards lengthiness with or without schools. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
The thing is however, that no one is going to type in SHS expecting to get to the article on a specific high school. As there are thousands of potential notable high schools, several of them will share the same acronym. RightGot (talk) 03:17, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I believe you are mistaken about what people will type in and expect. Or, the SHS article can be deleted altogether, since no one looking for Secondhand Smoke is going to search for SHS, etc. -- JHunterJ (talk) 04:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with JHunterJ that we should not make too many assumptions about what people will type into the search box and expect to get. The fact is that schools are (at least in the U.S.) often referred to by their initials. It is not such a stretch to think that someone might come across such a reference and try to look it up in Wikipedia. On the other hand, I'm not keen on cramming the ?HS and ??HS pages with long lists of high schools. I think shifting them off to sub-pages is a reasonable approach. older ≠ wiser 11:54, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I have requested comment from Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools. Taemyr (talk) 17:56, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Personally, I am for scrubbing the dab pages of ALL high school acronyms, separate or otherwise. However, if the consensus is that they HAVE to be here, I prefer them to be on separate dab pages rather than cluttering up the TCA pages. -- RoninBK T C 19:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
  • IMHO schools need disambiguating as much as anything else. If they have an article (therefore notable) and are known by the TCA then there is a need for a dab pag. If schools overwhelm the other items then separate them out; common sense should apply. Abtract (talk) 20:29, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
  • We aren't talking about listing all schools which are known by acronyms, only those which are in Wikipedia. And yes, I can imagine someone referring to "SHS" in a biography, interview etc, and a reader wanting to know what school it was and whether it's in Wikipedia. I see no harm in TLAs for schools being included in dab pages: if there are more than a handful (likely for the various xHS pages), then split them into a separate section (but not a separate page). If that section becomes large, split it helpfully by country (that would pose a problem when the school name itself has a dab page, as with Sutton High School, linked from SHS, but I'm sure Wikipedians can find an answer!). Splitting the school acronyms into a separate page just means that users have an extra click to do, for no good reason. PamD (talk) 22:17, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Your point about school names with existing dab pages can be handled like this SHS#schools at several locations. This is a really bizarre debate; why are schools any different from any other type of article? If there is a need for disambiguation then a dab page exists according to current rules; the fact that there happen to be a lot of high schools on the ?HS pages should not be questioned, that's the way the cookie crumbles. Surely the real question is "If a particular section on a dab page grows so large that it tends to overwhelm the rest of the page, should that section be hived off into its own dab page"? Abtract (talk) 00:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
SHS is a good example. The fact is that it is getting difficult to find Secure Hash Standard, since the dab looks like a list of schools. Schools is nothing special, in my opinion anything that is likely to push 30 or so similar entries into a dab single dab page is content that should be taken out of that dab page and over to a separate list. Taemyr (talk) 13:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd welcome other editors' input at SHS, where I believe that the non-school entries should come first, and another editor disagrees! PamD (talk) 14:05, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I applied the usual dab cleanups there, including deleting the entries whose articles didn't indicate they were known as SHS. I hope this goes more smoothly than MS did... -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:54, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Saints - comments sought

Should Saints be a redirect to Saint (disambiguation) or to Saint (as the primary meaning)? Please comment at Talk:Saints. --Russ (talk) 17:17, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I would have thought that a reader inputting Saints is more likely to be looking for an article like Saint rather than a specific saint via a dab page. Abtract (talk) 17:28, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Primary <first name> <last name>

First, if this topic has been discussed, please point me to the archive. I just had an interaction about John Gardner (disambiguation) with an editor and it brings up an interesting question. When there are multiple articles that might be addressed by the same <first name> <last name>, under what conditions, if any, should there be a primary article in the disambiguation sense. I have not found anything explicit in the naming conventions (again, if I am wrong, please help me out by pointing me to the right place). Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Given_names_or_surnames comes close to discussing this, but doesn't and seems to lead to a contradiction: Let's say there are a bunch of people notable enough to be in wikipedia with the name Benjamin Franklin. It is reasonable to assume that the Benjamin Franklin article should remain with the content it currently has. A page listing the others needs to exist and point to the rest. But the MOS section pointed to above indicates it should not be a disambiguation page. What is it and what MOS should it follow? Under what conditions would we NOT have a primary <first name> <last name> page. And a minor question: What happens if there happens to be non-person article that might reasonably have the same name.

I don't want to codify every last bit of this - they are just guidelines. But I see a lot of useful work being done in the names area and I think we need to coordinate that effort with the disambiguation efforts. (John User:Jwy talk) 18:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, by the criteria at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Given_names_or_surnames, the page at John Gardner (disambiguation) is not strictly speaking a disambiguation page, in that the style guidelines of WP:MOSDAB are not rigidly enforced on such pages listing people with the same name.
However, apart from whether that page is formatted according to WP:MOSDAB guidelines, the more general guidance about primary topics still applies. See Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic. If there is consensus that the novelist John Gardner is the most notable and most likely target for the name, then it is a primary topic. If there is a question as to whether or not the novelist is actually the primary topic for the name, that can be determined by requesting a move. older ≠ wiser 19:08, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:MOSDAB#Given names or surnames is not about {{hndis}} pages -- it's about including everyone named "Green" on the Green (disambiguation) page. No one has the given name "John Gardner", nor the surname "John Gardner" either. As stated, though, a primary topic is determined for human names just like it is (or isn't) for any other dab, by consensus. Kevin Smith and Michael Jordan have a primary topic apiece; Michael Smith doesn't. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Place disambiguation pages

In many discussion on WP:RM opinions to move articles to the primary name, even when there are scores of uses for a name, often assert that being the first or largest is justification to be declared the primary use. This seems contrary to the wording in this guideline. Is my interpretation incorrect or do we need to make this point in the guideline.

Along the same lines, sometimes I wonder if we could avoid a lot of problems by strongly stating that if there are differences of opinion, the default should be to use the dab page at the primary name. I know the guideline hints at this but it does not defer to using the dab page by default. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Making a dab page a default puts a lot of extra work on WP:DPWL, so it should only happen when a primary meaning is not clear. All of this is a case by case decision and can only be solved by discussion. – sgeureka t•c 10:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
But that is the point. In just about every case, there is no primary use that is clear. In the case of place names, it would also remove a semantic bias towards the place names from certain countries resulting from their naming convention. Are you suggesting that it is acceptable to favor the largest or oldest as the primary use even when that is not the case? Are you also suggesting that pointing to the wrong article for a significant number of users is acceptable? That is a point ignored in the rename discussions in favor of using the link count to say that the current page is primary based on the number of links. Which is meaningless in fact since this is the result of editors disambiguating the existing links. This is happening today. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I did not participate in any RM discussions recently, and I usually find what I am looking for at a primary meaning page (i.e. not a dab page). Therefore, I am biased to say that I don't agree with "In just about every case, there is no primary use that is clear." Primary use for me is about 80% per common use, not specialized use (e.g. Firefly should always be the insect, not a dab page, and certainly not the short-run TV show as that association is declining). Also, good use of hatnotes usually works quite well for me. Maybe someone else will comment here. – sgeureka t•c 18:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I agree with Vegaswikian that the default should be weighted towards disambiguation and that there should be a relatively high bar set for primary topic. Was there actually discussion about moving Firefly? I think that is a pretty clear case of a primary topic. But I *think* Vegaswikian is referring to more marginal cases (of which there are legion). older ≠ wiser 17:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Without examples, it's hard to comment. Surely, there are dab pages that I think should/could be replaced by a primary meaning, and there are also not-so-clear cases (usually when popular fiction is involved) where hatnotes work for me because I know that noone want to go the go the TV show in 2 years. That's also why I named Firefly: it's the only article where my specialized primary use is not directed at the insect, although generalized primary use probably is. I guess it all comes down to preference and the required "extra-click". Don't let me speak for anyone else. :-) – sgeureka t•c 17:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't see any active place name discussions, so I can't point to one. However, this discussion is kind of interesting. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:17, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Here is a current discussion that seems to be favoring not using a dab page when there is no primary use. Vegaswikian (talk) 08:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Here is one that attempts to justify one place in lieu of the dab page since everything derives (allegedly) from the first. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Where are dab pages discussed for deletion?

There has been disagreement at User_talk:Uncle_G#Disambiguation_pages_and_articles where to take dab pages for deletion. Since dab pages are self-claimed non-articles, it can be argued that AfD is the wrong place, however, dab pages are in article name space. Per the intro of MOS:DAB, this situation may be comparable to how redirect deletions are handled. Opinions? – sgeureka t•c 12:17, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Keep it at AfD. MfD is for pages outside of the article mainspace. Putting them at RfD might be an option, on the grounds that what is being considered is the deletion of a set of soft redirects. Dab AfD's should be rare enough that this should not be a great problem.Taemyr (talk) 13:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages vs. BetacommandBot

It needs to be noted that if a disambiguation page is not carefully constructed, BetacommandBot will delete all fair use images on the renamed pages.

BetacommandBot insists that image pages of fair use images have a link back to the article using the image. When a disambiguation page is constructed, and the article moved, that link now points to the disambiguation page. Betacommandbot doesn't know how to interpret article history, so it then flags the image as lacking a proper fair use template and schedules the image for deletion.

BetacommandBot notifies the uploader of the image of this, not the editor who created the disambiguation page. The original uploader may be long gone, or may not log in within the week or so allowed them by Betacommand Bot. It's not their job to fix this, either. So the image may be quietly deleted. See Wikipedia:Image copyright help desk.

This should be addressed in the Disambiguation article. Thanks. --John Nagle (talk) 16:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Preparation; Use the What links here list for the moved page to update all of the pages that link to that page (more likely than not, a link in Wikipedia will point to your new disambiguation page unnecessarily, and this should be resolved on a case-by-case basis).
Sadly people are not good at cleaning up after themselves. It's possible that Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation will want to take on these links as part of their link repair project. As it stands only links from the article namespace is considered on Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links. Other than that you will have to take it up with the deleting admin. Taemyr (talk) 16:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
BetacommandBot only gives you a week to comply with its demands. By the time the disambiguation project gets there, it's too late; the image is gone. The author of BetacommandBot claims it's the responsibility of the creator of the the disambiguation page to fix the problem, writing "When a DaB page is created, the person who changes the redirect needs to clean up afer themselfs, changing all incoming links to their proper targets and taking care of the images too.". See Wikipedia:Image copyright help desk#BetaCommandBot screwup: Image:Silverbranchcover.jpg. You'll have to take it up with him. --John Nagle (talk) 16:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but the point is that the dab guideline currently does call for people to clean up after themselves. There is not much more that can be done at this end. Deleting admin also have a duty to review the situation, and if an image is deleted because it's fair use rationale talks about a page that have been turned into a dab, and said dab links to the correct page then the deleting admin should have been able to spot this. If he has not he should undelete if the problem is brought to his attention. Taemyr (talk) 17:22, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Dabs with two links, one of which is a primary topic

Have a look at Nate Newton (disambiguation). Nothing links to it (except for a user page and the standard Wikipedia:Links to (disambiguation) pages). I've just inserted a hatnote on Nate Newton that—since there is only one alternate use—goes directly to Nate Newton (musician). Does Nate Newton (disambiguation) need to exist?

My inclination is to put it up for deletion, but before I do that I just wanted to see what everyone else thought. Neonumbers (talk) 10:42, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Why not just redirect it so that it's there if needed later? Abtract (talk) 11:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
I usually {{prod}} those; in theory {{db-disambig}} should work, but I've found that other admins often don't recognize the issue then. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
I think the problem is the wording of {{db-disambig}}. Admins should be sceptical about stretching the speedy criteria. Taemyr (talk) 16:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Disambiguation pages don't really cost much so they don't do any harm if left. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, when they are around then people feel the need that they should be hatnoted from the primary article. Taemyr (talk) 20:27, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, even as an enthusiast for hatnotes I'll agree with that one, no point in hatnoting a 2-name dab page. This can be handled better by a hatnote on each article. Until someone finds another notable Nate Newton, of course! PamD (talk) 20:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Table on disambiguation page

The dab page Andrew Scott is laid out as a table, rather than the usual bulleted list. I was going to convert it to a list, per the convention, but then I thought that it might be useful to discuss the idea here.

The table doesn't show up as well as a list when using popups (the table contents are not displayed in the popup), which seems to me to a very unhelpful thing ... but OTOH it does allow more info to be displayed on the dab page in a very readable manner.

On balance, I think that the table is a bad idea — more appropriate for set indexes than disambiguation pages — but I'd welcome other thoughts. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd say get rid of the table unless we are going to convert all dab pages to such a format, and I'm not sure that's useful. (John User:Jwy talk) 04:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
As per John. – sgeureka t•c 08:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The topic has also been raised on WT:MOSDAB (which I think is a better place for it). -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I knew it sounded familiar: WT:MOSDAB#Tables within dab pages to be precise. (John User:Jwy talk) 15:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Probably my dimness

I am having a problem understanding this "A disambiguation page has links to a heterogeneous set of concepts." from here. I get the rest of the para which is pretty fundamental dab stuff but it's the heterogeneous set of concepts I am having trouble with. Surely a dab page contains many quite different concepts, (MS) would be a good example. DAB pages have links to articles with the same or similar names not the same concept. ... can anyone enlighten me? Abtract (talk) 18:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

You are correct—a dab page contains many different concepts. Perhaps you are mixing up the term heterogeneous with homogeneous? --Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 19:02, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Well bugger me if you aren't right ... how stupid can a person be. Thanks. Abtract (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I've seen much worse. (John User:Jwy talk) 06:34, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Question

I asked JHunterJ a question here but he was not sure of the answer. Does someone know if a category can go to a same name dab page? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 18:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "go to"? If you mean, can the category page have a "see also" line of text referring to the dab page, I would say yes, and if there's any chance of confusion it is most likely a good idea. The existing Category:Naruto already has {{catmore1|Naruto}} at the top, and Naruto has "For other uses, see Naruto (disambiguation)", so in that case the only issue is whether a confused reader needs to follow two links, or just one, to find what they want. If it isn't going to clutter the category page too much, I'd support adding another hatnote, since it's "cheap" and may help save users some time. --Russ (talk) 18:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
In fact, it seemed like such a good idea that I went ahead and added it! --Russ (talk) 18:55, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, I'm not quite proposing a hatnote or an addition to "See also" sections, but not entirely against that either. Let me reiterate: can a disambiguation page be categorized under a same or similar name? Example, here's what I did to Dragon Ball? Should this be in practice? If yes, the guideline should reference this. Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 19:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Should Zelda have the Category:The Legend of Zelda series? Should Stargate (disambiguation) have the Category:Stargate? Should Harry Potter (disambiguation) have the Category:Harry Potter? The answer is IMO no, because (usually) other entries appear on the dab pages that have nothing to do with the primary meaning of the franchise. DragonBall is one dab page where, by chance, only franchise articles appear, but still allows franchise-independent entries. I have, however, no opinion if a dab page's talkpage is also marked with another wikiproject. – sgeureka t•c 19:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Generally the category should not be at the same name as the dab page. When there are multiple uses, the categories generally use some form of disambiguation. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure this is a good idea except on a case-by-case basis, for the reasons outlined by sgeureka. In practice, a large amount of the content on a given disambiguation page won't be relevant to the corresponding category: disambiguation pages group articles based on a lexical relationship, whereas categories group articles based on subject area. For example, most of the entries in Wind (disambiguation) are unrelated to Category:Winds, which is intended to contain articles relating only to the flow of air. If all of a disambiguation page's entries are related to the category's subject, then it may be worthwhile and appropriate to add the page to the corresponding category. Aside from that case however, and bearing in mind that disambiguation pages are intended to be navigational aids rather than articles per se, the hatnote solution suggested by Russ seems a better option to me. --Muchness (talk) 19:38, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I see. I'll undo the edit to Dragon Ball, and any others I see, just so it doesn't set a bad precedent. Beforehand, it would be a good idea if the guideline mentioned this. Who will do the addition? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 21:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Categories. But your question was valid nonetheless. – sgeureka t•c 21:40, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I'm aware of the section. I, however, would like for the guideline to make clear of same name categories. Could you do that or should it be me since this was my question in the first place? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 22:07, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I think the current wording already answers your question (this thread confirmed general consensus), but if you feel this should be specifically mentioned, I wouldn't be opposed. Just keep it short. :-) – sgeureka t•c 22:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Any suggestions on what I should say? Examples? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 22:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Last call for opinions. I plan to update the guideline tomorrow. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 05:56, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Exactly what change are you proposing? Vegaswikian (talk) 06:14, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Isn't it obvious? I'll keep it short, nonetheless. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 06:24, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It isn't obvious to me ... and from what I have read above, I am against a change (without seeing what is proposed!) because each page is going to be different and therefore a case by case decision will need to be made by responsible editors. For example dragon ball seems eminiently sensible to have the category since all bar one line are suitable, but clearly many are not so suitable as mentioned above. Yet others will be debatable and consensus will be reached as to suitablity. Abtract (talk) 10:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It isn't obvious to me ... I see no need to change, so much better to leave it "case by case" as suggested above. Your Sesshomau's example of Dragon Ball seems quite ok but most others will cover too many topics ... I see no problem except we are being rushed into a change without knowing what the change is! Abtract (talk) 17:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Dragon Ball would not count because Freescale DragonBall is included there. However, though dabs like Astro Boy (disambiguation) and InuYasha (disambiguation) would pass, I can't speak the same for Hellsing (disambiguation) (look at "See also" section there). Because of these details, Abtract, you have any idea on how the edits should be placed in the guideline? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 18:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry I don't understand the question. Abtract (talk) 18:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I can't be any more clearer. How about I'll do the change to the guideline and then you see if it needs specification? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 22:09, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
How about you state here in the talk page precisely which section you seek to change, what that section says now and what you would like it to say? Abtract (talk) 23:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Certainly. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Categories now says:

"Categories aid navigation between articles. Disambiguation pages however are non-articles and do not require categorization other than for maintenance purposes, and they already get auto-categorized by using {{disambig}}, {{hndis}} and {{geodis}}. No other categories should be added, except Category:Surnames, Category:Given names or their subcategories (if the disambiguation page includes sections of name information or lists of people), or disambiguation subcategories that might apply."

Here's the change (it's bolded for you to see the difference):

"Categories aid navigation between articles. Disambiguation pages however are non-articles and do not require categorization other than for maintenance purposes, and they already get auto-categorized by using {{disambig}}, {{hndis}} and {{geodis}}. No other categories should be added, including those which are named similar to the disambiguation page title, save for ones like Category:Astro Boy or Category:InuYasha whose dabs, Astro Boy (disambiguation) and InuYasha (disambiguation), are comprised only of related works. The only other exceptions are Category:Surnames, Category:Given names or their subcategories (if the disambiguation page includes sections of name information or lists of people), or disambiguation subcategories that might apply."

This will have to be rephrased and shortened, but to what? And what about Hellsing (disambiguation)? Does the "See also" section there really suggest that the same name category should not be put there? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 04:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
IMHO no change is needed as "no other" means "no other". Your astro boy example seems to me a good example of a set index article that is erroneously called a dab page. Abtract (talk) 07:46, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The articles are all called "Astro Boy", so "Astro Boy (disambiguation)" is valid -- it disambiguates articles that would otherwise occupy the same article slot. A list of such things could also be made, like List of Astro Boy media could also be made, which wouldn't need to follow the dab format. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:07, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
But you guys understand what I'm saying right? Then the category from Dragon Ball should be taken off? This is why I proposed the edit in the first place, for clarity. Thoughts? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 00:35, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

External links allowed?

disambiguation links — at the top of an article, a note that links the reader to articles with similar titles or concepts that the reader may have been seeking instead of the article in which the links appear.

The above appears in the guideline, but "concepts" are vague and could be interpreted as external links. There are disambiguation pages with external links. Should this be clarified as to whether links are allowed or not? -Wikianon (talk) 00:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I added a couple of "Wikipedia"s to narrow the possible interpretation, but that sentence applies to disambiguating hatnotes on articles, not to disambiguation pages. External links are not allowed in the guidelines for either. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:25, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Harshing My Mellow, indeed

Please see Harshing My Mellow's edit history, as well as Harshing My Mellow (disambiguation) (sic), Talk:Harshing My Mellow (disambiguation), and (if you really want to see 'em) the various "harshing my/your/his/her/their/one's mellow" redirects created by User:Evrik. Little help? -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your various moves/analyses: the dab page should go away, "Harshing My Mellow" should redir to "Bob Bert", and the hatnote and wikilinks to Harshing My Mellow should be cleaned out of the Bob Bert article.
There used to be a {{db-disambig}} tag, but it appears to have gone away -- maybe a generic speedy for the dab page would still be appropriate.--NapoliRoma (talk) 05:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
JHunterJ, with your edit here I have to ask, are you trying to get a {{rally}} going? I was going to create a soft redirect to wiktionary, see pimp slap as an example, but there are two albums with similar names - as well as at least one television show. There were more things that used the term, but someone has delinked them and I'm too busy to go add the links back in. The DAB is fine as it is, and there is no real reason to make it go away. --evrik (talk) 01:47, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't care (much) if the dab goes away, as long as it doesn't get in the way. Since there's only one Wikipedia article target suitable for "Harshing My Mellow" (the Bert album) and only one suitable for "Harshing Your Mellow" (the Akimbo album), I'll be satisfied if those redirects continue to point to the appropriate articles and not to the speed bump dab page. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:58, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup

Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup has been pretty empty in the past few weeks/months. Maybe this means that the really terrible dab pages have all been cleaned up, but I still come across some dab pages needing attention now and then (I am also slowly making my way through Wikipedia:Links_to_(disambiguation)_pages/L-Z). In April 2007, User:Interiot filled the DPiNoC category with his bot (see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Archive_31#Automated_drinking_game) but I have no wikibot experience. Does someone else have an idea for what can be done so that the dab-fixers aren't out of job? – sgeureka t•c 14:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Go to Category:Disambiguation, pick a random spot in the alphabet, and then choose a random dab page. My experience suggests that odds are better than even that it will need fixing in one way or another. If not, just go on to the next one. --ShelfSkewed Talk 14:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I have been trying that since I virtually cleared the list {just leaving E (disambiguation) which I couldn't face though I will one day!} and my experience so far has been that most need attention. Abtract (talk) 16:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

CJKV taskforce

The CJKV taskforce has been created to assist in disambiguation of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese when using Kyūjitai, Hanja, Hán tự, Simplified Chinese, and Shinjitai (Kanji). If you wish to participate, please come and help out. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Primary usage

In several recent move requests, proposers are reading WP:PRIMARYUSAGE as saying that hit counts from the stats tool and link numbers are grounds for a move. They cite, in my view wrongly, the guideline "(this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings)". I propose to clarify the guideline, by writing "this may SOMETIMES be indicated by ...". Any other suggestions? Sam Staton (talk) 07:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd even consider going in the other direction and saying that 'statistical data about article usage should not be used to determine primary usage. If there is any question about what the primary use is, then it is better to use a disambiguation page at the name space.' Another common argument is that the first use or the oldest is be definition the primary use. I'm not sure this is a valid case either. Vegaswikian (talk) 09:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
IMO, such solipsistic data is for the most part useless for determining primary topic. At most, such data might provide indications that there is not a primary topic (i.e., that the disambiguation page should be at the unmodified name). But without any external data or other arguments, such data does only provides the weakest of indications that one topic should be the primary topic over others. older ≠ wiser 09:54, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:25, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Following is a proposed rewrite of the section, for comments. I was thinking of including examples of "good" and "bad" primary topic choices, but that might be controversial so I have left that part out for now. --Russ (talk) 18:48, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase, much more used than all others, then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top. If there's a disambiguation page, it should link back to the primary topic.

A particular meaning of a title should be identified as the "primary" one only if there is a clear preponderance in usage, both within and outside of Wikipedia, of that title to signify that meaning rather than any other, and a consensus of editors that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings. If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)".

That looks reasonable. One other thing, which can be a pain, is that sometimes there are a small number of major topics, and then dozens of minor ones. eg I've just reformatted induction, putting the very major topics at the top of the page. (According to the tool they were getting 10-100 times more hits than the other articles.) I think what I did is helpful, but I couldn't find any guidelines about it. Sam Staton (talk) 13:35, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Need to think about this one a bit. To me, the goal is to reduce the average number of clicks it takes to get to the target article. My math skills are dull at the moment. When I have coffee I'll work on that one. (John User:Jwy talk) 16:53, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, caffeinated. If the goal is to minimize the average number of clicks for someone entering X to reach their article (and my logic is correct), there should be a primary target only if it is the desired target at least as many times as all the other dab targets combined. If you have a primary target, the primary target has 0 additional clicks and all others have two (click to dab page, click to article). If you have no primary target, all targets require a single additional click from the dab page. If Xp is the number of searches looking for the primary target and Xo is the number of searches for other targets, then when there is a primary target, the average clicks is (Xp*0 + Xo*2)/(Xp+Xo). When there is no primary target, the average clicks is 1. Xo*2/(Xp+Xo) is only less than 1 when Xp > Xo. Too much caffeine?
This doesn't solve the problem completely. First, do we agree on the goal of minimizing clicks? Second, how do we get a good guess/estimate Xp and Xo? And we might want to work in X~, the searches using the term X where we don't have a hit at all. But its changed my attitude to some extent on when to use primary topics. I will lean more towards NOT having them when there are several popular target articles. (John User:Jwy talk) 20:02, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Minimizing clicks is IMO a bit of an oversimplification. It is certainly an important part of disambiguation, but so far as there are not really good ways to produce reliable metrics, I'm very leery of reducing it to a formula. The page view tool doesn't actually indicate how many clicks are needed as many (perhaps even most) of the views may be through unambiguous links. Another consideration is the increased difficulty in identifying mistaken links to a primary topic. And of course, the page view tool is solipsistic in the extreme and can serve to reinforce systemic bias if not balanced with other rationales for selecting one topic as THE primary topic. older ≠ wiser 21:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Another problem is that "primary use" indicates an advocation of the topic as (in some sense) the most important. The discussion at Talk:Madonna (entertainer) is an interesting case: 400,000 hits per month for her, compared to 20,000 hits for Mary (mother of Jesus). It would cause a scandal if Madonna (entertainer) was deemed "primary use" on the basis of efficiency.
If you want to make a formula about it, perhaps the problem in this example is that both topics get relatively high hit rates; neither are niche topics; and so neither use is primary for the whole population. Wikipedia is not a democracy: if a topic is primary for most people, this doesn't mean it should be primary in wikipedia. (on the other hand, if one article gets a very low hit rate, say 200 compared to 4000, it is probably a niche topic and you might expect everyone to agree on this.) Sam Staton (talk) 13:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Use outside Wikipedia is not important. The only reason for having a primary usage is to decide if an article gets to use the name itself and make all the others use some other name. The only reason for doing that is if one article gets more hits than any of the others. In other words it is only the hit count that matters, although it should be supported by link count for verification. However a guideline needs to be established. What is the criteria for establishing primary usage? If there are a dozen articles about the subject foo, what ratio between most used and second most viewed establishes primary usage? Is it 10% more, 20% more, 2:1, 3:1, 5:1, 10:1, 50:1, or 100:1? Is there a number of articles about foo that influences whether one of them should be a primary article? For example does it matter if there are 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 other articles named foo? Does it matter if there is a non-encyclopedia use of the name foo? For example does it matter if foo is used in other contexts than ways that it would appear in the encyclopedia? My answer is that if foo is viewed 10% more than any other article that could be logically named foo, then it could be used as primary usage, if more than twice as many as the next most viewed it should possibly be used, if more than three times as many it should probably be used. In cases where there are many articles that get close to the highest number of views, such that no one article gets more than 25% of the total number of views, no article should be used as the primary. In cases where there is a historical name of great significance it should be given precedence over more recent uses. An example is Radio Flyer, commonly known as the wagon. While the movie of the same name gets more views, Radio Flyer is allowed to keep it's name for historical purposes. You also have to include a Yuck factor to allow editors to bail out if they wish. No one wants to use Madonna for the singer (ok very few), yet by all forms of logic it is the logical primary use (doesn't conflict with any other article, gets far more views). Uses other than in Wikipedia are not a factor at all. By the way the ultimate form of treachery is to attempt to change the rules to make the contest come out in your favor. Don't do it. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 21:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

That is a rather idiosyncratic description of what a primary topic is. While it may be somewhat understandable how you reach such a faulty conclusion, it is nonetheless unsupported by guidelines, consensus or current practice. older ≠ wiser 21:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
To each their own. Read the guidelines, and ask yourself why they exist. It isn't a faulty conclusion, it is a question. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 21:19, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting we have a strict formula to figure this out - I just wanted to explore the math a bit to see how it worked out so we could work that into the conversation. I still think that minimizing clicks should be a key part of dab pages - its primarily for navigation. It was a revelation to me that it didn't matter whether one item had 10% hits over another or not - it was each single entry against all the rest that matters. If you have 10 entries and one gets 50% more than each of the others (9 get 20 and one gets 30), you still would want to have no primary target using this criteria.

Again, if the goal is minimizing clicks and we have good stats on expected hit rates on the various pages (that's the hardest part!), you would only create a primary target if one article had at least as many "hits" as the rest of the pages combined. (John User:Jwy talk) 21:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

See the problem with adding up all the others is that the way exponentials work is you can have a thousand itty bitty uses that together add up to 50% of the total, yet all should be rejected from your calculation unless there is no dominant usage, in other words if no one article gets more than 25% of the total, not 50% which is far too high a bar, and not important. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 21:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Another way of looking at it is if you assume that there will always be an exponential spread of hits what you are looking for is a gap or step between the dominant primary use and all the rest. You don't care about the total. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 21:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Phaw. 50% + 1 against the total of all the others is far too low of a bar for primary topic. In the past consensus typically solidifies around a primary topic when there is pretty good evidence that it is overwhelmingly more well-known than other uses. And of course the question of using any such metrics in the first place is complicated by the low quality of such metrics. And it is further complicated by the inherent reinforcement of systemic bias promoted by looking at Wikipedia usage to determine relative importance. older ≠ wiser 21:46, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Some examples would be helpful. The metrics we now have are pretty accurate. Links take a bit to count, but are exact, the new stats are pretty accurate. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 21:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Since the stats just became available recently and are not well known it is almost easier to find examples where the wrong page is used for primary usage. An example is prohibition. Means Alcohol prohibition, right? Nope. 4:1 today it means drug prohibition. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 21:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
"Accurate"?!?! by what standard of accuracy? There are at least a few known anomolies for the stat tool, and given its newness, can anyone say with certainty there are not others. Even the creator of the tool says I wouldn't base any important decisions on these stats. [3] At best, the stat tool is merely one more data point to be considered. It should never be used as the sole criterion for determining primary topic. older ≠ wiser 22:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
How, pray tell, did you determine the 4:1 ratio of Prohibition (drugs) over Prohibition? older ≠ wiser 22:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with the notion that a primary topic exists for the purpose of minimizing clicks and I don't agree with any quantitative approach to finding the primary topic. That is why my proposed rewrite of the section avoids any mention at all of the number of links to a topic and emphasizes instead the "clear preponderance in usage." This is intended as a guideline for humans who are writing an encyclopedia for use by humans, not an algorithm for machines. The purpose of disambig pages is to help readers find relevant articles, not to minimize clicks, so if a primary topic is going to make it harder for some significant groups of readers, it shouldn't be there. --Russ (talk) 01:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I fail to see the difference between making it easier to find articles and minimizing clicks, although I would not use that as a metric. Prohibition (drugs) = 17,925 Prohibition of alcohol = 3,744 17925/3744 = 4.79 I did not see that Prohibition redirects to Prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition was moved to Prohibition of alcohol on 8 August 2007 and most of the links were not changed, so most people are going to Prohibition, which since it is not listed on the disambiguation page was not one of the pages that I looked at. Live and learn. It did not need to be moved, as the ratio is (93,810+3,744)/17,925 = 5.44 over the second most viewed article, which more than qualifies it to be the primary usage, and now the redirect page is the most viewed page. Whatever for? Links may tell a different story. Let's see 2,000 plus for alcohol, about 500 for drugs. Same result. The number of known anomalies is very low. So far I know of less than a dozen out of 2 million articles. They are pretty easy to identify when you cross check them against link count, and look at all four months of hit data. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 01:34, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
By the way mushy guidelines like "clear preponderance of usage" are not helpful. We need a metric of how clear the preponderance needs to be. Is 10% more a clear preponderance of usage? Is 20% more? is 2:1, 3:1, 5:1, 10:1, 20:1, 50:1, or 100:1 a clear preponderance of usage? Also do you mean clear preponderance over any other usage or clear preponderance over all other usages. I'll look for some examples, but I can already tell you that "over all others" is not important, but "over any other" is important. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 01:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't think "clear preponderance" is mushy. I understand it means that "X is the primary topic for title Y if, when you ask anyone what Y means (in the context of an encyclopedia), they think of X first". This is different from "if, when someone searches for title Y they are usually looking for X". e.g. if you ask someone what Sting means, in the context of an encyclopedia, they would probably say "it could mean a number of things". But if someone searches for "Sting", this is the internet, so they are probably looking for Gordon Sumner. I think wikipedia has to be an encyclopedia, and not just a reference for popular culture. Sam Staton (talk) 08:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
It would be kind of nice to create a Wikipop project and move all the pop out of Wikipedia - leave them with an entry that said "see wikipop". I'm thinking of that graphic that shows what percentage of Wikipedia is Stephen Colbert... 199.125.109.104 (talk) 16:58, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
And if it is "mushy" it is because, as I specifically stated above, I don't believe that these decisions should be made by algorithmic, quantitative processes. A qualitative guideline may not be helpful to Mr. or Ms. 199.125.109.104, but it is designed to allow for the fact that this encyclopedia is intended to be used by a world-wide audience with a wide variety of interests and backgrounds. --Russ (talk) 10:35, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Chiming in, I absolutely do not think we need a simple-minded metric for determining primary topic. Especially not one based on a poorly understood, beta-version of an tool that gazes deeply into Wikipedia's own navel. older ≠ wiser 12:26, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

What is the intent of the "clear preponderance in usage" standard? If it is not to reduce clicks, what is it? (John User:Jwy talk) 15:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It just ensures that, if the only other articles with that title are "niche" articles, then the article can go under that title. (Otherwise, if there are two non-niche articles with the same title, there should be a disambig page at that title.) Sam Staton (talk) 15:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
There are 51,000 disambiguation pages, and 51,000 reasons for using them. It isn't just for cases where there are two equal articles. See White for example. The primary usage is the color, but the most searched for is the derivative, White person. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 15:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
(Just wanted to highlight: I wrote "other articles with that title". The article on white people would never have the title "White". Sam Staton (talk) 16:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC))
That's an important distinction. In my statistics I am trying to leave out terms that appear on the disambig page but would not ever be used. I included white person because someone could logically search for "white" when they were looking for the article on white person, but I eliminated White House, also on that page, because no one would in my opinion type in "white" to find the White House. So I was a bit more relaxed in what I included. For example the "primary topic" for Fall is Autumn. Autumn would never be named "Fall", but it could be searched for under fall. In cases where there is a primary usage, it is helpful to have two tophats if there is one other that gets more or almost as many views, one to the other primary and the other to the disambig page. A good example is E, which defaults to the letter of the alphabet, but has two tophats, one to e the constant, the other to all the other uses. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 16:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Let me add that it is "clear" that "clear preponderance of usage" is not exactly what you are looking for. "preponderance" simply means "more" and "clear" simply means "statistically discernible", so a clear preponderance of usage could mean 0.001% more usage. What I am finding is that editors in the past just had to wet their finger and hold it up to guess which article was more preponderant, and gave weight to primary in the sense of "it came first" - for example, no one would even think to use e the math constant as the default, yet it gets 47% more views, Young's modulus 67% more, and Energy, not even linked to but alluded to, gets 3.8 times as many views as the letter E. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 16:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I am sure this has come up before (but I couldn't find it)

Let's take a dab term like 'HP'. In the top line, the most common usage (Hewlett-Packard) is listed at the top. A user recently asked why it also isn't sited under the organizations section, suggesting that the term isn't as noticeable at the top. I am tempted to think this is lazy, but in retrospect, I thought I would come here for some input. Thoughts? - Arcayne (cast a spell) 16:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I would think there is rarely, if ever, any good reason to link to the same article twice on the same dab page. HP is pretty clear as it is; anyone who actually reads the page is unlikely to miss the link to Hewlett-Packard. --Russ (talk) 18:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually this has just come up on Talk:HP (disambiguation) -- while ordinarily I'd agree that there is little reason to repeat links -- some consideration of how this is addressed on disambiguation page like that may be worthwhile. I've commented a bit more on the talk page there, but briefly, HP (disambiguation) is the disambiguation page for two different "primary topic" page. HP redirects to Hewlett-Packard and hp redirects to horsepower. That is probably a pretty reasonable state of affairs. But it may lead to faulty assumptions about how a reader gets to a page and how they read a page to locate the desired target. older ≠ wiser 18:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
And this underlying conflict of intent is what inspired my post here. Maybe there's some tweaking to dab guidelines called for, so as to delineate this issue if (and likely when) it occurs again. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 19:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Redundant entries on dab pages aren't forbidden (I've advocated for them on Patton and Madonna for instance). I think the reason given on Talk:HP (disambiguation), because of the different targetting of HP and hp, would mean that a redundant entry (or perhaps two if the intro were expanded to cover both) would be useful. Does it need to be addressed in the guidelines directly? -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
As per my post immediately prior to yours, I am wondering this as well. - Arcayne (cast a spell) 18:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

References

Should references be included on disambiguation pages? See Bryophyta. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Generally, no. The disambiguating phrase for that one entry should be slimmed down to just enough to make it clear how that article is different from the other. (John User:Jwy talk) 17:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
In very rare cases it is possible to add inline external links like this[4] to items that are on the disambig page that have no article to make it easier to create that article, but if there is an article, there is never any reason to include a reference. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 21:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
No, those inline external links should also be left off of disambiguation pages, since they either have no Wikipedia article to disambiguate or have one and don't need an external ref. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
The manual of style for disambiguation pages shows that these should be put on talk pages or as <!-- comments -->. 199.125.109.104 (talk) 18:38, 9 April 2008 (UTC)