Talk:Specimen

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specimen is about in biology

Oh, for the love of...this is ridiculous. The article as written gives information on how the term "specimen" applies to multiple disciplines, going well beyond the entry of wikitionary or any other dictionary. It's absolutely ludicrous that the average person typing "specimen" into a search box on an online encyclopedia because they want to know about scientific, medical, etc. specimens will be redirected to a page on an obscure glam/deathrock band.--Halloween jack (talk) 16:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I do see your point. However, here's my take: a disambiguation page is intended for when there are multiple articles/topics that could be a valid target for the term (see WP:Disambiguation). It's supposed to help the user find the information they're looking for. But, from my brief survey of the links, none of these articles actually appears to offer the kind of information that a user searching for "specimen" would be looking for. They don't talk about WHAT a specimen is, in other words. Many of them don't use the word "specimen" at all. The laboratory one might come closest, I guess, since it does talk about specimens but it's just about stuff that's done to the specimens. (I actually did just find there is an article about specimen banknotes, which is listed here but I assumed there was no article since it's not linked. If the redirect to the band stays in place, a hatnote to the banknote article would probably be warranted.)

So, the page doesn't fulfill the intentions of a disambig page. And it's not an article, because it's not about any one topic. Like I said, it's a list of meanings, which doesn't serve any goal of Wikipedia that I'm aware of. Hence turning it into a redirect to the only article I know of that's actually about something called Specimen, even if it is just some band.

What I would suggest as a remedy is either: A) starting one or more stub articles about whichever meaning(s) of "specimen" warrants an article, and then recreating the disambig page with links to those, or B) revising existing articles (probably just with a line or two) so that someone looking for "specimen" in that context could go to that article and get the info they're looking for, and then recreating the disambig page with links to those. Personally, I know nothing about specimens in any context, so I don't feel qualified or motivated to do either. Propaniac (talk) 18:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Addendum

In addition to my earlier comments, and while still maintaining that I'm no expert on any of the areas referred to by the disambig page, from a layman's POV, it seems to me that all meanings of "specimen" (except for the band and banknote) basically mean "an example of something used for analysis," which is essentially the Wiktionary definition. The biology, medical, typography and handwriting entries aren't so much definitions, they're just kinds of specimens. The reason the articles don't talk about specimens in themselves seems (to me) to be because there ISN'T anything else to say about specimens, and I question whether it really makes sense to have any kind of article about them.

Alternate suggestion: a disambig page linking to the band, the banknote, and Sample (material), which is a pretty crap article but is about the meaning of specimen currently described with the biology, medical, typography and handwriting entries. Propaniac (talk) 20:38, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response to most recent revision

While I genuinely appreciate the efforts to clean up the page, it still fails the standards of what a disambiguation page is and what it should look like. None of these links (except the band, and maybe the banknote; see my "Addendum" comment above) are articles ABOUT something that can be called "specimen"; they're someone's definition of "specimen", with links to other articles. And this page still isn't an article in itself, because it's not about any one meaning. Propaniac (talk) 21:21, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Okay, I'm letting go

The article (in its un-redirect state) is junk that serves no purpose; as far as I know, there's no possible defense for it that takes into account Wikipedia guidelines (since nobody has ever posted one). But I'm tired of reverting it and am taking it off my Watchlist; currently, it's still a redirect, but I'm sure someone will undo that soon enough. Propaniac (talk) 13:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)