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Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Archive 22

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Sectioning for people

I tried to follow this MoS in Lisa by adding a section topic, "In biography:", as shown in MOS:DP#Longer lists. Mzajac replaced this with "People:". I don't have any particular problem with one over the other, but if "People:" is preferred, we should have an example of that in the MoS—all the current examples have "In term:". It seems like this is a place for consistency. Thoughts? Should it be boldfaced "People:" for parallelization? --TreyHarris 04:05, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Although there is an example with bolded subheadings, they shouldn't be, because they are not article title terms. People is better because it is simpler, more general, but also more to the point. People include mythological and possibly fictional people, and tiny stubs—many of these will not be biographies, nor in the "subject of biography". —Michael Z. 2006-03-14 19:10 Z
Yikes.... subheadings shouldn't be bolded? I've been cleaning up dozens of disambiguation pages following that example—that is, boldfacing the subheadings. Yuck. No offense intended, but since fixing it is going to be a lot of work—can I get confirmation from others that this was a mistake in the example? Then we can fix the example, and start re-cleaning up the cleaned-up pages with boldface.... (I liked the boldface—I thought it made the sectioning more clear. But I'll defer to whatever is consensus.)
As for the other issue, it needs to be spelled out if "people" includes mythological and fictional characters—they are not "people" in the usual sense. What about articles about music groups, or ethnic or national groups (which are all composed of people)? Would they go under "people" as well? My gut instinct is that navigability would be best served if lists of personal names of real people, alphabetically, were to go together under a heading (and since those are the set of people whose eponymous articles would be biographies, that's why I chose the term "biography"), but non-names should not. I did not put Lisa Simpson under my "biography" subheading, but you did put it under your "People" subheading. So there seems to be a certain consistency here, but we need to decide between the two options and work out the edge cases. --TreyHarris 05:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Since the Longer lists section of the Manual of Style does show the sections with bolded headers, I'm sure you're not the only to have done so. Not only does it follow the MoS for disambiguation pages, but it helps to organize the sections. It doesn't even apply all the time anyway, for once the list of entries is long enough, section headers are used. -- Natalya 12:36, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I say leave 'em bold. Michael's "because they are not article title terms" has no basis, since nothing in the MoS:DP indicates bolding for article title terms. Bold separators help separate, that's all. Chris the speller 15:57, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I mean the occurrence of the title term in the leading line is always bold, and practically nothing else in Wikipedia is. There are some fourth or fifth-level headings which are bold and the same size as body text, but they are not in a position to be easily confused with the title term.
But bold subheadings in a disambiguation page appear very much like bold text in the first line, and they often comprise more bold text than the title term in the first line, which should prominently stand out. And in a disambiguation page, un-bolded plain paragraphs for subheadings stand out sufficiently by their position and alignment to the left margin. Adding bold formatting to them is overkill, in this case. —Michael Z. 2006-03-15 18:12 Z
Note, in general People shouldn't be in these lists at all, even on a given-name page like "Lisa". Unless they are primarily known only as Lisa, I don't think they should be added to a disambiguation page, unless the disambiguated term is a full name (like John Taylor). I prefer to put a link under "See also" to the proper section of List of people by name. See Benjamin (disambiguation) for a format that I think works well. — Catherine\talk 23:59, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
But there are cases where people DO have the same first and last names. It seems like we should provide for the fact that someone may not know that there's another James_Kerr for example. Another example would be people who want to find an article on "George Bush" Since both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush were recent U.S. presidents, it's not like one is more "primary" than the other. It just seems like an inevitable thing, given the scope of wikipedia and the way english first and last names combinations are not infinate. (theoretically, yes, but it's nearly impossible that someone would realistically have "Ssdgfhr Hyosmd" as a name)
Ckamaeleon ((T)) 05:27, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
_ _ There have been previous discussions, and some (IMO discouraging and certainly not definitively successful) experiments re integrating LoPbN with people Dabs. I don't think i have much of an axe to grind about this proposal. But/and i hope, after making it my primary focus for two years (and Dabs my secondary focus at least since WP:MOSDAB was put up for a vote), some of my insights will be helpful to all those interested.
_ _ (My watchwords re LoPbN have been
  1. Scalability and
  2. Navigation.
The impact of those concerns has not yet had full force on all of LoPbN; the pages i have worked hardest on, and watch changes most carefully on, are
  1. those on a growing list, and among them,
  2. those that have had an edit whose summary includes LoPbN GT (whether as a lk or plain text): mostly those from Aa thru Iz.)
_ _ Specifically in response to Catherine:
  1. "People" in the title of LoPbN has been construed, since IIRC long before i started working on it, as implying people who are both real and notable. (Gray area: King Arthur is officially called ineligible somewhere, but has an entry whose historical basis is any of three different figures each in a different century. And of course we have a lot of religious figures on the list who are attested to only via people whose credibility is compromised by their considering the corresponding figure a miraculous person.) Whether Dabs use the same standard isn't very important -- unless we try to integrate them with LoPbN.
  2. In contrast with LoPbN, i've given up trying to keep people off a Dab page for having the Dab'd title as their given or middle name, without being known by that single name. (On LoPbN: Madonna, Cher, Leonardo, Alexander, Plato, yes. Any Lisa (and IMO even Liza (Liza Minnelli), no.) On Dabs, i satisfy myself with putting Lisa etc. in a == See also == section, along with other articles whose topics would not be titled with the Dab'd title (such as people with different spellings of the surname, or phrases like Cassini Division and Cassini oval), even if there were no competitors. (Hegel, Lenin, and Mao are rdrs, but IMO could be the respective titles. It's hard to imagine most surnames as article titles, but IMO that is bcz so many so obviously need Dab'n: Truman, a Dab, is the title of biographical book, as is probably Churchill (which is a rdr to a bio article with a ToP Dab to a surname Dab'n page).) IMO, shifting all people from Dab pages to LoPbN would risk severely impairing the usefulness of LoPbN if every Tom, Dick, and Harry shifts their vanity-editing attention to LoPbN, and there is no corresponding shift of attention of policy-enforcers to LoPbN.
  3. I don't know (despite the enthusiastic AfD evaluations of its value for "eyeball search") if anyone has any idea how much usage LoPbN sees, compared to Dabs, Go/Search searches, and Google, as a means of access to bios (its nominal purpose). But the Benjamin (disambiguation) scheme probably deserves to be evaluated in terms of its long-term effectiveness: we should expect most users to learn to stop using Dabs for bios, and type "lopbn" in the Go box (or bookmark it, or use a shortcut-rdr to the no-frills entry point Template:List of people by name exhaustive page-index (sectioned), or keep a browser bookmark to one of them. Thus the lk to LoPbN is simply a transitional measure and a backup for that longer-term predominant adaptation of going directly to LoPbN.
  4. On the short term, and in its role as a backup, the Benjamin (disambiguation) scheme has problems. LoPbN has about 700 pages at present (of which about 100 are "index-only" pages that have no names, and never will, but only provide navigation within the tree of LoPbN pages). The subdivision of pages containing names, usually converting a page with names into an index-only page, is an essential aspect of the scalability. A recent pilot test, aimed at automated addition of entries from Category:Living people, showed that the Tam (i.e., Tam - Tamzzz...) section of Taa-Tax had 10 entries (from either automated copying and alphabetizing of various WP lists, at least 30 months ago, or manually added names), and grew by 28 entries from Living people. (The original 10 consist of 4 known dead, 4 apparently living, and 2 who were presumed living but actually dead, it seems likely that roughly as many names, and perhaps 50% beyond them, could be added to Tam by a bot that would check all date-of-death categories for Tam... surnames. Even without adding more bio articles to WP, ten-fold inflation of LoPbN seems more plausible than doubling. As mentioned, LoPbN is structured for scaling up with such expansion, but this involves subdivision of sections (e.g. the Tam section added to that single heading three subheadings) and subdivision of pages into pages "deeper" in the tree, under the pressure of three factors:
    1. sheer bulk,
    2. length of ToC in response to section subdivision, and
    3. depth of ToC -- depth of 4 remains attractive, 5 requires some heading in tiny type, and 6 requires some headings larger than the page title -- (also resulting from section subdivision).
(These pressures are worse than they appear at a glance: names are far from evenly distributed among possible strings, and subdivisions result in many very small pages and very small sections; it's not clear whether this may be better or worse with expansion as great is must be anticipated.) The pinch on the Benjamin scheme comes with names migrating down the tree as the tree expands, so that links either need repeated updating, or (as links that were optimum deteriorate) users must click deeper and deeper, a level at a time, into the tree. Perhaps less seriously, the truly optimum link is not to e.g. List of people by name: Ben, but to List of people by name: Ben#Benf - Benk, and even more rapidly than page divisions occur, section subdivision means that the old heading is no longer likely to be on the same screen as the entries sought, but can leave the user the choice of paging down further in search of the new section or new location of the entry, on one hand, and returning to the top of page to pick the precise heading out of the ToC, on the other.
_ _ (Off-topic, but still of concern, i note that even if it illustrates the issue at hand, Benjamin (disambiguation) deserves a heavy edit to comply with the MoS.)
--Jerzy•t 08:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Similarly, I recently encountered Dana which consists of 50+ people named Dana. There's a proposal on the talk page, but there's no mention on MOSDAB of what belongs in a first-name entry. There's been some discussion here, but it doesn't look like it's a guideline (unless I missed it). I like Catherine's and Jerzy's idea Jerzy of putting a List of people by name bit on 'See also' and only adding people who are referred to by that name alone (like Homer). That's actually two suggestions. Thoughts? Gflores Talk 23:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Bolding of dab word

I've done a quick look to see if this has been discussed, didn't find anything but feel free to point me to a previous discussion if you know of one.

If the purpose of dab pages is to find the particular article for the keyword, doesn't it make more sense to highlight the context words rather than the word itself? Maybe the first line should have the keyword bold, but later in the dab page, wouldn't something like the following make more sense?

Epic has several meanings.

In film and literature, Epic can refer to:

In music, Epic can refer to:

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwy (talk • contribs)

What you just described is the current style, except that we would not include a repetition of the title term; we'd just say "In film and literature:". I've made a couple of tweaks to Epic to better represent the current style. See MOS:DP#Longer lists. One extra note; we earlier, I think, decided that acronyms that also make words should collapse into the words' disambig pages; so EPIC's entries should probably move into this page as well. At that point, it will be long enough to where you should probably switch to the sectionalized format instead of the boldface term line format. --TreyHarris 21:35, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I hadn't looked closely enough (or seen such examples). John (Jwy) 22:39, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I would like to add the following bullet under Individual entries:

  • Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one link. Including more than one link can confuse the reader; including no links at all makes the entry useless for further navigation. (See "redlinks" below for cases where no article yet exists.)

I think this is implicit in the remainder of the guidance on the page, but from a recent discussion on Talk:Lisa, I think it would be good to make it explicit. Any objection? (We could strike the weasely "in almost every case" if the "Break rules" bit is judged to be sufficient.) --TreyHarris 06:47, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

If this does get added, I think it would be important to say something about it in the red links section, since right now the section does not define if there should be other links if a redlink is made. -- Natalya 12:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Looks like a good addition to me. I've had a couple of people ask that, so it helps to have it explicit. Gflores Talk 20:27, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I thought there might be exceptions, then returned to a recent dab page where there were red links with no good articles to link to, and after serious thought (yes, I know!) removed the red links, because I really couldn't find material for an article. So now I agree, one good link per line should be the guideline. Chris the speller 00:12, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Just trying to clarify, when there is information contained in another page but is not a separate article, then just link to the article containing the information and leave out the red link? I believe that is the idea, which would mean that on a page like AED (disambiguation), the three redlinks in the first section should be removed, and the entries reworded to only link to the valid articles? -- Natalya 03:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I should have said I removed the red-link entries entirely, since they led nowhere, and were not anchors for future articles. Your question is good, though. If no future article can be imagined, but the red-link entry also contains a good link to an article, we should just unlink the red link, making it "AED, the station code of Aulenda, a railway station in India". I wish that in this case editors could resist the temptation to make it a "black link" (bolded). The closest example is in the MoS:DP section "URL anchor notation", as in "the reverse side of a coin". Chris the speller 16:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, that's how I was feeling too. It has been corrected. I guess the only thing that's left is what to do when the red link is a possible future article but is also mentioned elsewhere in a separate article. It seems like the other two links fit that category. I would lean towards taking the red links out, since the articles that mention them are already linked to, but I also see reasoning for keeping the red links in. It just seems rather busy with both the links there, and it seems more important to keep the link to the article with the actual information there. -- Natalya 17:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
A consideration for red links is that they may provide an incentive for other editors to create new articles, but it's your call. Chris the speller 17:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
A very good point, one that will make them stay. Thanks for your input. -- Natalya 19:10, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

What about this exception: on the Ranger page, it has this:

Are legit disambigs to the term? --rogerd 01:23, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Link instead to Ranger program, which provides an overview of the individual missions. The dab page doen't have to do it all, and the overview article should usually do a better job of providing basic info and helping the user decide among the missions, if it comes to that. Chris the speller 01:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I've added text, incorporating the redlinks comments; see this diff. --TreyHarris 03:58, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Looks great! Well worded. -- Natalya 04:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Comments invited on Ptolemy disambiguation page

I would be grateful for advice on issues concerning Ptolemy (disambiguation). I have summarised the editing history and centralised links for discussions at Talk:Ptolemy (disambiguation). If you have any advice or comments, please leave them there. Thanks. Carcharoth 00:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

This note was also left at the WikiProject. For centralisation, discussion can continue there.--Commander Keane 00:48, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Articles about multiple topics

What about articles which consist of sections about various topics related to the title? Hyacinth 09:30, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

As I learned earlier, it's called a "multi-stub page". Apparently, it's not a disambiguation page, but people can take them, break them apart into separate stubs, and turn the original page into a disambiguation page pointing at the new stubs. This is because it's considered bad form to mix a stub in with a full-fledged article on the same page, or to have more than a few items listed at the top of an article as disambiguation entries. Such pages do not get a disambig notice, but they may very well have "(disambiguation)" appended to their name, if the primary meaning has been expanded into a full article. --TreyHarris 09:49, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Consensus of one

Mr William Allen Simpson is trying to sneak in a new policy instituting "abbreviation expansion" pages. Please express your opinion for or against the idea at Wikipedia talk:Abbreviation expansion. —Michael Z. 2006-04-02 04:36 Z

Poop

Moved to Talk:Poop. GfloresTalk 20:17, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

hndis has survived - now what?

Now that the Tfd discussion is closed, and the verdict is "Keep" for {{hndis}}, it seems time to change this guideline to specify the use of {{hndis}} in some cases instead of {{disambig}}. When most entries are articles about people? When all entries, or all but one, are articles about people? When half or more are articles about people? A parallel change will be needed in WP:TM/GENERAL. Chris the speller 01:48, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

The text of the template doesn't make sense when any of the entries are not human names. So, unless we're going down the road of splitting XXX (disambiguation) and XXX (human name disambiguation)', I'd say the answer is "use it when all entries are about people". --TreyHarris 02:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I was coming here to say exactly that - I think this template is useful, but should only ever be used on a page where every single entry is the name of a person. There are hundreds that fit this description, in any event. bd2412 T 02:41, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Yep. The "Human" bit creates a rather annoying constraint, though. If a famous animal or ship or fictional character shows up, all of a sudden the whole page changes its disposition. Maybe those of us who wanted hndis to die shouldn't be trying to figure out how to properly use it... :-) --TreyHarris 02:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I wanted it to die, too, but it's here and it's being used, so the guidelines ought to cover it. Your opinions (all entries being human names) sound good, but we'll let the editors in other time zones wake up and chime in, then I'll change the MoS and WP:TM as appropriate. Thanks. Chris the speller 04:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

The wording is, and always will be, the problem (and I wanted it to die too). So the template will be used only where all entries are human names. Will the category (without the template) be applied to dab pages that have non human name entries, like Lisa etc? --Commander Keane 08:07, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I definitly think the template should not be used on pages such as Lisa - there are many non-human name entries there! As mentioned above, it only seems appropriate for pages that contain solely names - John Smith, for example, and the template is already in use there. -- Natalya 11:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

When I nominated at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 March 25, there was little discussion (other than Chris and I). The gist is that the template was kept for convenience of editting.

Therefore, I propose (as my 3rd suggestion added after discussion) that as a matter of style, the template usage be changed to: 

 {{subst:hndis|name=last, first}}

and the output be: 

 {{disambig}}
 [[:Category:Lists of ambiguous human names|last, first]]

This would allow the template to be used on pages with more than one kind of thing. Any other subcategories could be added by hand.

Also, the project will need to ensure that every single instance of a name in the Wikipedia:Non-unique personal name list has either the template or the category. (Then, that list can be deleted.)

--William Allen Simpson 11:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I personally can live with this suggestion just fine, but consider:
  1. There are sure to be some editors who will object to the extra typing of "subst:"
  2. The resulting verbiage will be that of {{disambig}} instead of {{hndis}}, and that may not be in total harmony with the "Keep" verdict.
  3. Most of the editors who are heavy hndis users do not watch or participate in this talk page.
For these reasons, I think a real consensus needs to be gathered (after reaching out somehow) before changing the way {{hndis}} is now being used. Chris the speller 15:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I have reworded the instructions in Category:Lists of ambiguous human names, not trying to jump the gun on anything being decided here, but to reflect the best current usage of the category and the two templates (hndis and disambig). It spoke about articles, not dab pages, and left out surname-sorting details. Fix it more if it needs more fixing. Chris the speller 17:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

geodis has survived - now what?

Likewise, when I nominated at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 March 25, there was little discussion. However, there was an additional comment by Terence Ong that {{geodis}} pages are somehow different than a "normal disambiguation page". And BD2412 also seems to want the pages kept as a specialized subset, not as part of {{disambig}}. Unlike {{hndis}}, {{geodis}} does not currently add anything to Category:Disambiguation.

There are a few pages that have other things than geographic names, but they are rare. On those, the other categories can be added.

Also, the project will need to ensure that every single instance of a name in the Wikipedia:Multiple-place names list has either the template or the category. (Then, that list can be deleted.)

--William Allen Simpson 11:37, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Same deal as {{hndis}}—as soon as one entry on the page is not a place, replace it with {{disambig}}. See the prior version of Abingdon until I edited it—there were two automobiles listed, which makes no sense given the text of the template. --TreyHarris 17:17, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

"Linking to a primary topic"

There can be severad different "primary topics". Often the article title without () is a matter of who was first here. In this situation putting a randomly chosen meaning as "primary" is not justified.

Therefore I suggest the following phrasing:

If all other meanings are derived from the main one or closely related to it, then it is recommended to place the link back to the primary topic at the top ....

`'mikka (t) 18:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

No; the right way to fix cases when the current primary topic does not have semantic primacy is to move it to a parenthetical, and redirect the primary topic to the disambiguation page. (Of course, this is actually a three-step process, in order to do the move while leaving links correctly directed.) Leaving it alone when it's not actually a primary meaning is wrong. (But note that this can be controversial and should be discussed first. For instance, some hold that an eponymous or original meaning should always be primary, even if some other meaning is more common today; others hold that primary equals most common, pure and simple.) --TreyHarris 18:36, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. There should be no arbitrary primary topic - either the primary topic should have been decided on through discussion, or it should be decided that there is no primary topic, and the disambiguation page becomes the "primary topic", as TreyHarris described above. Taking the example from the Manual of Style, School (disambiguation) has the primary topic of School, for obvious reasons. The other entries on the disambiguation page are not necessarily related to School in an educational sense, and yet they still belong there, with School as the primary topic. -- Natalya 18:48, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


Hi mikkalai, thanks for joining in discussion. You may have misunderstood the meaning of the term "primary topic" as used in this manual of style. It refers to articles located at the "primary" name for a topic, the one without a parenthesized category, e.g. Light, House, Garbage, etc. When there's an article at the primary topic e.g. Window, the disambiguation page is located at Window (disambiguation). Imagine that a reader arrives at Window, but its not the page they were looking for. They select the link to the disambiguation page. They've already visited the "primary" page so we know they're not looking for that, and that entry is broken out of the list and placed at the top. Sometimes the disambiguation page is the primary topic e.g. Untouchable. In this case all the entries appear in the list as there is no "primary" topic. Does that make sense? Ewlyahoocom 18:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

No, I did not misunderstand the term. If you re-read my text, I am saying that the "primary" in the "disambig" sense does not necessarily match the "real life" sense, and no syntax must give pereference to bureaucratic conventions before "physical world". While Rocket (disambiguation) is OK with me, but how will you deal with, say, Lima (disambiguation)? Some would diagree that Lima is indeed the very "primary" meaning and the rest "may also mean".
In addition, this unnecessarily complicates the structure of disambig page and makes "eyeball search" more complicated, since not always I know which meaning is "primary", especially if all meanings are not familiar to me. Unless there is a clear hierarchy of "real-life" meanings, as mentioned in my proposals, I don't see any convenience in adding an extra level of distinguishing, whcih is based on what was happening in wikipedia, rather than on "real world".
The above does not mean that I do not appreciate this dirty job you are doing (comparable with vandal hunting, typo fixing, etc.). But I am vary of "due process" to overcome "common sense". `'mikka (t) 21:01, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

But "common sense" was figured into the guideline, and so was "least astonishment". The pages in Wikipedia are not only like printed encyclopedia pages, they are also hypertext, and the style guidelines were developed with a sensitivity to the text on a page and also to the flow from one page to the next. For this reason, a disambiguation page that is linked from a "primary" page gives a "tip of the hat" to that page (because there is a very small chance that it was reached another way), but then goes on to list only the *other* similarly named articles. It does not surprise the reader by offering as a choice that which has already been declined. Many editors understand and accept this style. Chris the speller 22:02, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

It does "surprise" him: a person stumbles on the first line wondering what the heck is written separately, then reads the second line.... instead of simply dismissing the first item of a homogeneous list, as you correctly said, "the choice already declined". This is an elementary exercise in the psyschology of perception: if something is singed out, one is involuntarily attracted there, even if the item "already declined". `'mikka (t) 18:38, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I completely understand that you do not like it; you should understand that I am happy with it the guideline the way it is, but will follow whatever the guideline is, and that is determined by consensus. If you read the 15 archives of this talk page, you will see that every so often, someone dislikes this part of the guideline, all the editors stop fixing Wikipedia while we hash it out again, no consensus is obtained to overturn it, and the editors go back to doing something useful. Please save us from starting the discussion from scratch — read the 15 archives and the previous sections on this page. I won't be surprised if you decide that there are better places within Wikipedia for us to expend our energies. Chris the speller 19:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

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