Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation

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This article is part of a WikiProject to improve Wikipedia's articles related to Disambiguation. For guidelines see WikiProject Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.

Archives: /archive1, /archive2, /archive3, /archive4, /archive5

Contents 1 Adopting Pages and Link Repair Banner 2 Igor 3 Project directory 4 Banner 5 Improving template code 6 Disambiguation with minor comic book characters 7 Bin and BIN 8 Other blue links 9 Leningrad 10 WikiProject Disambiguation Member 11 Proposed exemplary Human name dab 12 Request for comment at MOS-JP 13 Disambig templates proliferating again 14 U of A, U of B, U of C, U of D, ... 15 Problem with some templates, and solution 16 Malplaced disambiguation pages 17 Wikipedia Day Awards 18 New tool 19 Enabling act v Enabling act of 1933 20 10 cents 21 Name etymologies 22 Dab Adoption Category? 23 Listing songs without articles on disambiguation pages 24 MC (disambiguation) cleanup proposal 25 Talk:University of Wisconsin 25.1 UW redux 26 Felix 27 A discussion on CC templates... 28 Trains project disambig task 29 Stumped on Central High School 30 CC templates now redirect to {{disambig}} 31 Please help on Guard 32 Proposed new wording of otheruses template 33 Dab pages for misspellings

[edit] Adopting Pages and Link Repair Banner

Would adding a banner to disambiguation pages declaring that it is adopted by a user be feasible and effective for directing interest in disambiguation repair? For example the banner on the talk page could say:

• "This disambiguation page Football has been adopted by User:Example and User:Example2. Click here to adopt this page or here to help assist in disambiguation repair, where help is always needed."

Or something to that effect. Then people could take ownership for each page by including their name on the talk page on the banner. To get more participants another banner could say:

• "This disambiguation page Football needs to be adopted. Please click here to adopt this page in assisting in disambiguation repair."

Then they could go to that page or this one and adopt a page and include their name on the talk page banner. Would this be effective or possible? I know there are a lot of disambiguation pages, but all projects start small, and this could help to increase adoption rates and link repair. If this works, then a message can be sent to all of the WikiProject: Disambiguation participants asking them if they want to adopt a page. If you support/oppose this, please respond. If somebody knows how to program the banners to work, could somebody show an example? Just thought I would try and see if this would work or not. --Nehrams2020 21:27, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I just stumbled across Template:Maintained which looks very similar to what I'm talking about. Is this possible for disambiguation talk pages but in a different format? Nehrams2020 05:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't think this is a good idea for the dab page itself, but perhaps its talk page. --Storkk 22:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC) .... hitting head against wall. Yes, it would be ok for the talk page, but I don't know how much interest you'll get. In my experience, people don't care too much about dab pages. I only participate because I get frustrated when following a link to any dab page. I probably wouldn't maintain one after clearing its links. But I don't know. It's possible I'd adopt one or two. --Storkk 22:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a dumb idea. Maintain or not, it's a personal decision and it doesn't need to be stated outright like that. I maintain several dab pages like I do several articles, but I don't go saying: "This page is under the watchful eye of ACS" or some such. That kinda thing seems like it'd be bordering on a violation of WP:OWN. And orphaned? That term is misused. Linkless or poorly/un- maintained, articles aren't Annie, ya know? Anyway, no. No to the idea, however well intentioned it may be. ACS (Wikipedian); Talk to the Ace. See what I've edited. 22:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure WP:OWN applies that well to gnome-like activities. It's practically an administrative task, and one that many editors avoid. And in my experience on the project, it's not like anyone minds if someone jumps in to help with some of their disambig page. The idea seems to encourage people to keep at it, as well as encourage new users to take that on as a contribution to the project. Dina 23:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm undecided. While there could be some benefit from such a plan, I see are the potential to scare people off from helping maintain pages and editors becoming inactive after adopting pages (after a month or a year, etc). It might be more effective for dab talk pages to have a more general template pointing people at the the DAB project page to encourage helping out. I started working on dab pages mainly because one of the articles I was watching was updated to resolve a link and it seemed like something I could help out with fairly easily. Upholder 22:46, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• I think this is a pretty great idea. My very first edit to Wikipedia was an edit to the talk page of an article, pointing out that a link in the article needed to be disambiguated. I had no idea how to change it at the time and so posted my observation to the talk page of the article (sort of okay in retrospect, but now, obviously, I would just fix it.) Can we possibly consider putting a message at the top of the article page of the disambig and not the talk? I realize that's not pretty, but many people, even new users, following the bad link, might just fix it if they knew how. I'm thinking a combo of the adopted pages idea (which I like) with something like the message one gets when one clicks on a red link (ie. if you think you are here for a wrong reason, here are some steps you can take). An adopted page could also have a link to the "parent's" talk page, so a user could point out a specific problem (helpful especially if the disambig was tricky, as they can be.) I mean, really, maybe we ought to be thinking of disambig pages as error messages -- they're not, if you come upon them in a search, but they are if you get there through a link. And I suspect that's how most folks arrive there. So why not a template at the top? Dina 22:54, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Edit Conflict. I think that it might be useful. As for posting it on the actual dab page, I don't think that is such a good idea. Remember, Wikipedia must always be useful to the reader, not to the editor. The average reader has no need or care to know who works on the page, hence the reason why the maintained template is put on talk pages. The average reader isn't gonna be looking at talk pages. If an editor needs to know who works on it, they can go to the talk page. Put simply, I think that the template could be useful but not on the dab page. DoomsDay349 22:56, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

This strikes me as a good idea. Considering the amount of work that needs to be done, ISTM that this would help recruit people to the task; I also think it would be a good idea to provide a readily identifiable point of contact who has gained familiarity with the dab page in question. As for this being a violation of WP:OWN, it's certainly no closer to that than Template:Maintained. I do agree that the template belongs on the talk page and not on the main page. --Tkynerd 23:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• Just adding my POV here: I don't think I, as an editor, would want to use a feature like that. Simply because I feel it puts too much "pressure" on me. I fix these pages occasionally, when I have time, and when I feel like it. I don't want to take any kind of "responsibility" for them, checking the pages I edited regularily. If I feel the need to periodically check a certain page, then I'll add it to my watchlist. So, I'm totally OK with this feature if it helps others, I'm not against it or something. It's just something that I wouldn't use... Darkstar 23:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a bad idea, IMO. Pages will be marked as having been adopted by well meaning editors, and then abandoned. People won't bother to disambiguate those pages, thinking that the task is in hand.

A better idea would be a link repair message/banner for article talk pages (because an awful lot of ambiguous terms don't even have dab pages) and dab main pages simply stating that links have been disambiguated, when, and, perhaps, to what extent. There's no point in putting anything on dab talk pages. No-one looks at dab talk pages. The average reader shouldn't ever have to see a dab main page. Most dab pages don't even have talk pages yet, and that's a good thing. TheMadBaron 23:40, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that no one looks at dab talk pages. I rather like the idea of a link repair banner, but it still seems to me that the dab pages themselves are where they ought to go. Dina 00:27, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Nah. If you decide to "adopt" a page, then add it to your watch list and fix things as they come up. I don't see the point of posting your name to the talk page saying that you're doing this. --MrBoo (talk, contribs) 00:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I really like your idea, Nehrams. I think it would help a lot. —EdGl 00:42, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Good plan, Nehrams. It will help keep us on track too (I often start repairing links to a page, and then get distracted, so I think it's good incentive!) — riana_dzasta _{wreak havoc-damage report} 00:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• The main reason that I started all of this was to also drive interest in just getting a regular banner added to the talk page for the WikiProject. I already thought of several of the problems here and was hoping somebody knew a way around them. I figured an adoptive banner would be somewhat successful in decreasing the database dump of links as users would be able to keep multiple disambiguation pages link to other pages low. I am still in favor of a banner that at least points editors in the direction of the link repair page or adopting a page. Even if a banner does not list "adoptive editors" on it, at least it would drive traffic to the two pages. Based on the reception here, how does this sound:

"This disambiguation page for Football is part of WikiProject Disambiguation. Click here to help assist in disambiguation repair or here to adopt this page."

--Nehrams2020 00:52, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Dislike. What's really needed is a bot or script to go around reminding people that a particular disambiguation page they are interested in has exceeded a set number, per previous suggestions. Templates are cute but ultimately meaningless for this purpose. --Gwern (contribs) 01:07, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• I agree with Gwern - this conflicts with WP:OWN and what happens when someone adopts and then gets disinterested or busy, as all of us do occasionally? Another idea for a bot is to notify the person who introduced the link to a dab page. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-10-10 01:49Z

• What's wrong with {{WikiProjectNotice|Disambiguation}}? • Q^#o • 01:08, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• I dislike the adoption version of the idea, as pages will become abandoned over time as some editors become inactive. It also puts too much pressure on the editor, as Darkstar said. I do like the idea of putting a general template, similar to the above, on dab pages suggesting that people fix the link they arrived from, and that they should join the project if they feel so inclined. --Mbell 02:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• On further reflection (and perusal of this page), I've decided I prefer the version shown at "Template for Disambiguation link repair" above. Apparently nothing ever came of that proposal, but I think it is well worth reviving and using. --Tkynerd 03:06, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• Its a good idea. A small banner will help--Neo139 03:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• While I do watch a couple of dab pages, I do so in an unofficial, non-permanent capacity. As such, I probably would not use the above template. I'd rather have a template that I can stick on a user's talk page that says, "warning: you didn't disambiguate your links to dab in your edit to article" --Robocoder (t|c) 03:58, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Now that's something I'd like to see. I had the idea for something like that a while back, with hopes of having it implemented into MediaWiki, but this works too. Someone could probably write a plugin for AWB to check through for links to dab pages and that could be used to put messages on the talk page of the article "there are X links to dab pages on this page. They are:", or something along those lines. --Daniel Olsen 05:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I am a fan of this idea as well. It seems that a large number of links to dab pages are created by editors that are simply not paying attention, or by editors that move pages without either gaining consensus or following protocol. It seems that this proposal would: 1. Distribute the task to a much larger user base; 2. Provide education to editors, reducing the likelyhood of occurance in the future. Srice13 17:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• I don't like the "adoption" idea too much, for the reasons already listed. However, as CQ pointed out, {{WikiProjectNotice}} might be useful to put on disambiguation talk pages (which I do read before doing things like manual-of-style edits in case they were determined not to be helpful). —dto (talkcontribs) 04:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• Against -- I cannot support this idea because it crosses a line that I do not want to see Wikipedia cross--implying that users own or can claim pages as their projects. Users should not lay claim to any page except their own user page and user talk page. To be able to adopt a page (even if the banner is on the talk page) is hardly different than adding a "Credits" heading at the foot of every article and thanking the big contributors. Doing either could ward off new editors too. --Voidxor 07:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Personally, I don't think it's necessary. I don't think an adoption of a dab page needs to be formally declared — I always keep track of dab pages I've cleaned up in my watchlist — each can go around taking care of his own unoffical adoptions. Edit conflicts shouldn't be a problem; in the rare event that two editors disagree what is best for a page, well, that's what this page is for (which is probably beside the point anyway). I don't think it would help with promotion. The only advantage that I can think of is that it prevents an editor wasting his time on a page that another's got covered, but that should be fairly obvious (becuase teh page will alreayd be clean, and if it's been changed since last cleanup, then there's no reason why someone else can't do it) anyway. That's what I think, anyway. Neonumbers 07:23, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Well said, Neonumbers, I agree with you. I watch about 100 dab pages I have worked on, and return regularly to fix incoming links. I keep them listed on my user page for my own convenience. I am aware that disambiguating incoming links leaves no record of me at the dab page, and that I have built up knowledge that might be useful to someone. Perhaps we should leave messages on the dab talk page, such as "Incoming links fixed by (User) on (date). If you find an incoming link and would like help, please leave a message on my talk page." Anyone who responds to this could then be encouraged to join Wikiproject:Disambiguation. CarolGray 10:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Against for the same reasons as Voidxor. —B33R^{(talk • contribs)} 12:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Against as per Voidxor. Warhorus 16:06, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Against I have adopted several pages, and so I monitor their "what links here" pages every day. But that doesn't mean that other people can't do the same thing, and if I suddenly lose my internet connection for a month, I don't want those pages to go unattended. Cfrydj 16:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not really a fan of this idea, just because it seems unnecessary, and would probably cause more problems than it is worth. There's nothing wrong with someone watching a disambiguation page that they've fixed up; many of us do that. You stick the disambiguation page on your watchlist, clean up any edits that are non-MOS:DPed, and fix all the incorrect links once in a while. Those that like to "watch out" for disambiguation pages they've worked on will do so anyway, regardless of officially "owning" it, while having such a tag will seem overbearing and turn away those who wouldn't normally do it. -- Natalya 21:11, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Against the claim of adopting pages. I would accept and possibly use a template with text such as proposed by CarolGray, also referring to this project. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• I won't be using it, because I've found that I have bursts of activity. I keep all my dab pages on my watchlist, so I know what's going on. Josh Parris#: 01:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• The original idea seems excessive to me. If nothing comes out of this discussion, at the very least, people with knowledge on specific disambig pages could just post in that talk page detailing what links should go to which destination, giving inquiring users the needed info and bypassing the need to contact the adopting user. Disambig pages already link Wiki:Disambiguation so methinks a link in the talk page wouldn't do much good. This is unrelated, but while we're on the subject of "adopting pages," see Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Adopting disambiguation pages for what we do with the fastest link accumulating disambig pages. -Oatmeal batman 06:17, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• 'Against adopting pages - due to irregular editing in that area, and probable mistakes that I made at early stages - and then the sometimes ad hoc manner of adding items by later editors SatuSuro 08:17, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Against - on balance, while I like the notion that folk should take pages 'under their wing' and 'look after' them, I feel that all the previously-mentioned against points outweigh the advantages - plus I'd be concerned about 'retiring' or even, heaven fobid, 'deceased' editors not being spotted and a page therefore languishing on the vine, for want of attention, when everyone else thinks it's covered. - Ballista 04:30, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Late to the party! Hey I've been away for a while. This discussion is of interest to me. I particularly want to respond to folks above who seem to be saying, "I can adopt a dab page, but I don't need to announce it to the world." [There are also related/similar arguments above, which I'll discuss in a moment]. This idea of being behind-the-scenes etc. is a perfectly valid and quite common wikignome philosophy. However, I would really like to put in a plug for listing your name and your pages on Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Adopting disambiguation pages. This is not a show-off page (well it could be I guess, but that's not its purpose). It's a public service announcement kinda thing. It's like giving blood, then wearing one of those stickers that says "I gave blood." [Not saying adopting dab pages is of equal importance to giving blood -- don't strain the simile :-) ]. The point is that one main function of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Adopting disambiguation pages is to encourage newcomers to do the same. It's in everyone's best interests, etc. Public service kinda thing.
• Now that I've said that, and as much as I support the Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Adopting disambiguation pages subproject, I guess I kinda see a thicket of potential problems with putting a template on the dab page itself. I think putting a "claim of adoting pages" here is harmless and even productive; but putting the same on the dab page itselff is kinda problematic. Color me Weak Against. I really appreciate Nehrams2020 for taking the lead on this suggestion, but I guess putting tags on the dab pages themselves may have too many problems. My biggest problem is that it would look crufty if people put a tag on a page, but then abandoned the task. Which of course no one here would do. --Ling.Nut 13:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Kinda late to this, but I like the idea Kurt Wagner 06:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• I'm late as well, but don't see much point in this. Tedernst | talk 00:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Igor

Please help me to talk to the senses of a fan of the "Igor" name disambig page. `'mikkanarxi 03:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me like this is more of a content dispute. Perhaps another sllight would be in order. "Igor (disambiguation)"? "Igor as a word, Other uses of "Igor"? Also, I notice no attempt to discuss this one that article's talk page was made by either party. This is disappointing. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 03:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a message I just made to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Igor (where mikkalai also made the complaint): There's a Talk:Igor page for such discussions; that would be a better place to start. But I think removing the lists of people with a name is the minority opinion. Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Hndis needs its own Manual, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allen (surname), Talk:Jennifer. -- JHunterJ 11:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 13:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Banner

I stumbled across this page after finding a disambig page with random article. As there's no set banner for disambiguation pages (and, judging from the above, there seems to be opposing viewpoints as to what should be in one), I've created a bare-bones version for the project at {{DisambigProject}}, which I've added to Talk:Azariah (seeing as that was the article that lead me to make the banner).

Anyway, hope it works for you. If it turns out that nobody likes it, I'll only cry a little bit, I promise. ;-) EVula 15:18, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I found that you'd added the banner to Talk:8tv. Is the intention to tag all dab talk page in Wikipedia with this banner? Looking at the 8tv, it doesn't look like it has been edited to bring it in line with recommended dab page format guidelines ... or is your interpretation of those guidelines that the 8tv article is just fine as it is? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:06, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason why dab talk pages wouldn't get the banner; its fairly common place for WikiProjects to brand relevant articles.

As for 8tv, I fail to see how my putting the banner on the talk page can be seen as any sort of endorsement of an article's current state. I did do some light reformatting of the pages as I pulled them up (most of the time correcting faulty bold tags, or moving {{disambig}} from the top of the article to the bottom), but those have been few and far between; my primary target is the talk page.

If the article doesn't match the format guidelines, change it so that it does; problem solved. :-) EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:22, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

So you're saying that you are planning to indiscriminately put the banner on every dab page in Wikipedia just because it is a dab page and therefore, by definition, in scope for this WikiProject? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:27, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

That seems... less than useful somehow. {{disambig-cleanup}} already points here. If it were really important, might it not be better to just add a link to the wikiproject from {{disambig}} as well? --Interiot 00:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I am doing a fairly brief check to see if the page should be included, not just blindly adding the tag (I've found several such articles, like Adamantium). But as far as performing an exhaustive examination of each and every page to see if it conforms with the dab guidelines to the letter, no, I'm not (and I really don't see why I would be expected to).

I still don't see the problem here; someone goes to a disambiguation page, goes to the talk page for some reason (has a question, whatever), see the project banner, clicks it and gets further information on disambiguation pages in general, perhaps gets involved with the project and/or improves said article to make it conform with the guidelines. What's the problem, and how is this any different from the way any other WikiProject functions (except for the sheer scope)?

I would have hoped that any objections to the banner would have been mentioned in the almost month since its creation, rather than after I've already done a thousand or so edits... EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this is an asychronous communications environment, and such things inevitably happen in such environments. The point is to mitigate the 'damage' (including the fomenting of personal ire), keeping cool heads and keeping in mind that we're not plotting to undermine efforts later by keeping our mouths shut today (or yesterday, as it were). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

As suggested by Interiot, I would support addition of a link to this WikiProject to Template:disambig and most or all other dab-indicative templates (such as Template:3CC and Template:Geodis). What's different is in part the scope, but also the fact that there are already two things that highlight dab pages .. a set of templates that define the page type and a style guideline that borders on (but is not) policy resulting from thousands of person-hours spent debating and refining it. For articles that fall under the scope of other WikiProjects, this is usually not the case. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Should I remove the banner from the pages I've already tagged? (yes that will take a little while, but since I'm the one that added them, I wouldn't feel comfortable asking someone else to clean up after me). I personally like the banner, but the rationale against its use is sound (and, just as important, there seems to be somewhat of a consensus against it). EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Improving template code

I've proposed changing template:Disambig and its variations from a table-based layout to CSS, at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Divs instead of layout tables. —Michael Z. 2006-11-06 23:59 Z

From a limited technical background, this will overall make a shorter read time for the tags? That's always nice, if it provides some usefulness. Does it have any direct effect on the actual template appearance? Thanks for explaining it, -- Natalya 02:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

On the average page, the savings will probably not make it load perceptibly faster. For example, on the short disambiguation page Transcarpathia, the savings of 404 bytes represents only 3% of the actual data, and on the longer page ABC it is only 1.8% of the data. The less-complex layout of a div rather than a table will also save a tiny amount of rendering time in your web browser. In general, minor improvements like this represent good practice, and will cumulatively amount to significant savings, especially in terms of saving resources for the Wikimedia Foundation, on tens of thousands of pages and billions of page views.

The appearance shouldn't change much, if at all, depending on the web browser. —Michael Z. 2006-11-07 04:52 Z

I will always support any attempt as eschewing old and improper code for valid XHTML and CSS. EVula 05:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation with minor comic book characters

Just wanted to know - is there any established policy on character names. Very often some minor character will have a name which is also a common noun with a WP page of its own - e.g. Anole (comics), Rubbermaid (comics). Is it advisable/desirable to create a disambiguation page? Gamesmaster G-9 01:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Pages about characters in pop fiction annoy me, but that's largely because I'm biased against popular fiction. On one hand, I'm loath to legitimize them by making disambiguation pages; on the other hand, I'm loath to tag important articles with references to them. --Smack (talk) 06:38, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Why did you even bother commenting? Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 07:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Technically if there are articles by the same name, there should be a disambiguation page. If there are only two articles by the same name, then all you need are disambiguation links at the top. -- Natalya 15:03, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Because I was too sleepy to realize that I didn't actually have anything constructive to say. Sorry. --Smack (talk) 04:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bin and BIN

I wanted to clean these disamb pages up, but I couldnt decide where to start. Perhaps I can bring it to someone else with a bit more intestinal fortitude's attention? I was wondering if they also needed to be merged. [Bin] & [BIN] --Monotonehell 07:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, pages like this should be merged only if editors are routinely adding entries to the wrong page (eg. if it would take too much effort to keep them separate, and there's not much point if both are short). For these two, there seems to be very little overlap (I think the only thing that overlaped was ".bin"), so I personally lean towards keeping them separate. Anyway, I took a whack at them, but bin could probably use a bit more cleanup. --Interiot 08:28, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other blue links

Having just stumbled on this project, I was going to clean up the disambig Caliente by removing wikilinks other than the article name - but for most of the listings the article-name links are red, so the secondary links are the only hope that a reader has of finding out anything about the topic. (e.g, "* Caliente a music venue where Pinoy rock is played.") So I left them in. I don't see this addressed elsewhere on this enormous talk page; my apologies if I missed it. ... thoughts? - DavidWBrooks 13:39, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

See WP:MOSDAB#Individual entries: Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) 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.) older ≠ wiser 14:35, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

my edit conflicted with Bkonrad's ... which provides the proper text reference for resolution of the question

This is one of those things that couldn't be agreed upon to consensus, I believe was difficult to reach consensus on. The problem is that if you say 'it's ok to have a second wikilink' then that becomes quickly interpreted as 'additional wikilinks are ok under any circumstances' because of the existence of two 'flavors' of disambiguites - the Navigationalists and the Explorationists. The Nav's hold to the established line that dab pages are for navigation among potentially ambiguous titles; the Explorers hold to the more 'wiki-mind' line that dab pages should provide seeds for exploration among many topics. Neither is a 'wrong' approach, but only one can comfortably be accomodated within the present system.

My opinion on the matter - given a red-link, one or two blue-links are helpful if those blue links lead directly to an article in which the red-link topic is discussed in some fashion. For instance, I take the entry for the line item The Father (Strindberg play) @ Father (disambiguation) to be a good 2nd wikilink usage; however, I take the entry for line item "Unit Identification light (UID)" @ this old version of UID to be a poor usage (and perhaps a poor example, at that) of a 2nd wikilink (which I subsequently revised).

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Situations are like this are what make me chuckle whenever I see somebody lamenting that wikipedia has become too complicated and we just need to simplify the rules! - DavidWBrooks 17:07, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

There's another question that comes up around Ambato ... if there are two closely related items (each with its own wikilink) that should both appear on the page, can they be put in the same line item? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 19:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I strongly prefer to put them on separate lines... if any rule gets broken, I personally prefer it to be the "don't indent things too much" rule instead... put the second dabbable link indented under first one. Anyway, I agree that there are a number of reasonable people who would like to have a second bluelink sometimes. (for instance, if an album/book/etc has a single author, people seem to have a strong tendency to wikilink the author.... proper nouns (other than cities/countries) in general seem to be possibly remotely sensible to leave in, as long as per above, it's only 2 total bluelinks). --Interiot 20:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I take that to mean that this (more recent) version of 'Ambato' is preferable to this (previous) version, yes? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Just one opinion, but I much prefer the second version, with the related items on the same line. It's a bit of a judgment call though. It depends a bit on how closely related the terms are. Personally I rather dislike using a single second-level bullet to show a relationship and also reiterate the relationship in text. Now if there is are a few terms all related to one primary term, then it might make sense to group them with an indented list (and a brief introductory phrase to avoid repetition). older ≠ wiser 23:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Leningrad

I'm trying to get Leningrad (a dab) to redirect to St. Petersburg. Please see Talk:Leningrad#Just my two cents. (The two cents aren't mine, actually.) --Smack (talk) 06:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. A random sampling of backlinks shows that almost all uses are to the city. --Interiot 07:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Disambiguation Member

Is there a WikiProject Disambiguation Member userbox? TonyTheTiger 18:32, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

There's {{Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Userbox}}, but that's specifically for people who repair links to dab pages. Other than that, I don't know of anything. --Tkynerd 19:34, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I have created {{User WP Disambiguation}}

[edit] Proposed exemplary Human name dab

I would like to request feedback on Robert Johnson. I like the way it has evolved. I have tried to format other dab pages like and have been contested by other editors on the see also section. The major points of contestation are the propriety of including the surname and the list of names in the see also section. I think in Human name dabs these should be standard and this dab makes it clear why. If people agree, I would even like to note such a belief on the MOSDAB page itself. TonyTheTiger 22:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

P.S. The best place for comment is here at MOSDAB. TonyTheTiger 20:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for comment at MOS-JP

There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Designated cities concerning ambiguous or misdirected links and [[City, State]] naming formats. Some cities which are at simple names (e.g. Kyoto) are receiving many links intended for the state named after them (e.g. Kyoto Prefecture). However, because the governments of the cities are not subordinate to the governments of the prefectures, [[City, State]] is considered an inaccurate page name for the city in these cases. Please stop by and leave comments on this problem. Dekimasu 02:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambig templates proliferating again

Please see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Roaddis, Template:Roadis, Template:Schooldis, Template:Shipindex, Template:Songdis to discuss deletion of various specialized disambig templates. --Russ (talk) 15:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Update - See Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Request for comment on disambig templates for a proposal to replace all specialized templates with a new, optional paramater to {{disambig}}. Please comment there! --Russ (talk) 22:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] U of A, U of B, U of C, U of D, ...

Now, whatever with these pages?

A lot of them were created by Cardsplayer4life, but not all of them — and from what I gather it looks like (s)he just created them for the sake of completion (so nothing to do with him/her). Most of them started as redirects made by various users (possibly unaware that there are lots of universities in the world).

Personally, I'm not convinced that they need to exist at all. People who refer to universities as U of A or something like that almost invariably know that it's an abbreviation, can apply to several hundred universities and it most certainly not the name of the university. Can someone really expect to type that in, click "Go", and get somewhere? You wouldn't even type that kind of thing into Google — let alone have it in here.

If people are in agreement with me, then they all need to be either deleted or redirected to UA, UB, and so on (probably the latter, I think). Otherwise, all of them need to be marked for cleanup (they are in a rather poor state, if you ask me). Anyone else? Neonumbers 05:06, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Referring to universities with abbreviations of the form "U of A" seems to me to be an Americanism. Abbreviations for British universities are idiosyncratic; e.g. the University of Wales was never known as "U of W", but just "University of Wales", while consituent universities are e.g. "UWS" for Swansea (before it ceceded anyway), "Aber" for Aberystwyth. I've certainly never heard or read anyone refer to Exeter Uni as "U of E"! Also, I would be very, very surprised if people really referred to e.g. Belgian universities that way. If these pages deserve to exist at all, they should link only to articles where use for that university is verifiable. I suspect such verifiability is a pipe dream even for American universities. Hairy Dude 18:08, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

We could add {{not verified}} to them, though that might not be 100% clear. Perhaps we need a new disambig maintenance tag that says something like "Disambiguation pages are not indescriminate lists, and should only contain entries that are very frequently referred to simply as {{PAGENAME}}. and where the relationship is verifiable."? Would a tag like that be useful in enough situations to be worth creating? --Interiot 18:30, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

The initials are extremely commonly used in the USA, including the mainstream press. The pages should stay assuming there are entries on each one (and not just redirected to UA), but there may be schools on there that don't use the abbreviations (and some that use UA instead of U of A for example) A google search is an easy place to start. --Milo H Minderbinder 19:13, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

But even if they are referred to as that abbreviation, for the purposes of an encyclopedia, if you were looking for the University of Lincoln, you'd look up the "University of Lincoln", in the common-sense knowledge that typing in initials for a university is a very untactful search method, let alone a "Go" method. Imagine you were looking for a specific university. What would you type into the search box? Isn't it reasonable to expect someone else to do the same or similar? Neonumbers 23:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with some templates, and solution

Hi, everyone. I wanted to let you know that I've just encountered a problem with a template on one of the pages I was trying to dab, and got help to solve it at WP:VPT. The problem is that Template:Infobox Former Country automatically replaces plain text with wikilinks where it can find an article, but sometimes this results in links to dab pages, which then need to be disambiguated. The solution is to simply replace the plain text with the full piped disambiguated link. An example is at Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, where I replaced the text "English" for the language in the template with [[English language|English]]. Just letting y'all know in case you encounter this problem too. Also, I don't know whether there are any other templates that do this; if so, they may also cause the same problem. --Tkynerd 15:34, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Follow-up to the above: User:52 Pickup, who works with the Infobox Former Country template, changed the template to automatically dab the link as long as only a single language is put into the template. If any of you encounter similar problems with other templates, be sure to raise the issue on the template's talk page, and perhaps its maintainer(s) will fix the problem. --Tkynerd 00:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Malplaced disambiguation pages

Thanks to everyone who helped clear pages from this list from the November 4, 2006 database dump. The list (originally at 1,092 pages) has been reduced all the way to 0! Congratulations! If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 01:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New tool

Hi folks, after a little chat with User:Commander_Keane, I sat down to create a little tool that might be helpful for you. Basically you insert some pagename, and the tool then analyzes all the links in that page to check if any of them point to a page containing {{disambig}}. The tool is located at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~bjelleklang/dabLinks/index.php. I'd appreciate if you could report any bugs, or suggestions to me. I also plan to improve it by adding other language wikis to it in the near future. Bjelleklang - talk 16:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

A nice tool, thanks! A couple of specific comments:

1. It doesn't pick up redirects to disambig pages; for example Lebanon contains a link to Romans which is a redirect to Roman.
2. It doesn't handle article names containing spaces unless you replace the spaces with underscores; for example, "Ottawa Senators" doesn't work but "Ottawa_Senators" does.

--Russ (talk) 18:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! The second issue is fixed, so it should handle spaces correctly. I'll see if I can fix the redirects either tonight or sometime tomorrow :) Bjelleklang - talk 20:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Exciting! Thank you for writing this up! -- Natalya 21:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

In theory, the tool should now be able to handle the page -> redirect -> disambig page sequence. However, the version of Lebanon in the toolserver database appears to be rather old, and doesn't contain the link mentioned above, so I haven't had the chance to test it properly. If it works, it should print something like Lebanon -> Romans -> Roman (redirected). Please let me know if there is any other features that could be nice to have in the tool :) Bjelleklang - talk 22:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's still somewhat faulty, but I'm also trying to have it skip redirects. For example, when searching for George Walker Bush, the tool should skip that redirect, and check George W. Bush instead. Bjelleklang - talk 23:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

If it relies on the toolserver database, there's replication lag that causes the tool to reflect the state of pages as they were 17 days ago. DaBpunkt is working on trying to fix this, but the lag may increase for some time. --Interiot 00:18, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Have made some changes to the tool now, and it should now handle the following correctly (in theory ;)):

• Words not beginning with upper case
• Spaces (as well as underscores)
• Redirect from the page submitted, for example George Walker Bush
• A link to a redirect which points to a disambiguation page, see abovementioned example.
• Also handles redirects from both Mediawiki v1.9 and v1.8 databases.

• Quotation marks are not handled properly at the moment, but I'm working to fix it. I will also make it possible to search for other templates, if you have any good ideas as to which should be enabled, please let me know :) Bjelleklang - talk 20:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Oh, and please note that there is some delay in the database on the toolserver at the moment, approx 17 days. This means that all changes for the past 17 days hasn't been registered on the toolserver, on which the analyzer runs, so results may not be completely up-to-date. Also note that it only searches for {{disambig}}, although I plan to implement more templates in the future. Bjelleklang - talk 00:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Enabling act v Enabling act of 1933

At some point in the past, someone created both these pages. One is on enabling acts in general, the other is on the Nazi party use of the act. Unfortunately, they were created as "Enabling act" and "Enabling Act", leading to much much confusion in linking. I've just renamed the latter to Enabling act of 1933, and changed it's redirect to point back at Enabling act. This leaves a lot of pages now pointing at Enabling act which ideally want to point to Enabling act of 1933.

Please help me with repairing this by going though Special:Whatlinkshere/Enabling_act and dab'ing to the right page per context. --Barberio 22:39, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Per normal English capitalization rules, Enabling act of 1933 needs to be moved to Enabling Act of 1933. Once this is done (I don't have time to do it myself right now; also, it would be my first-ever page move and I'm nervous about doing it), I'll be happy to help dab the links to Enabling act. I'll be watching this page, but you may still want to leave a note on my talk page just in case. --Tkynerd 22:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, the word "disambiguation" is misspelled in the title of the page that should be titled "Enabling act (disambiguation)". This is the page that Enabling act redirects to. --Tkynerd 22:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC) EDIT: I went ahead and moved Enabling act (disambigutation) to Enabling act (disambiguation); the only double redirect was from Enabling act, which I fixed. --Tkynerd 22:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The resulting spree of moves, splits, redirects, circular redirects, and so on came after I mentioned needing help with link repair on #wikipedia, not from me. And it's left a confused enough state that I'm not going to touch it till the dust settles. I expect a flurry of 'why did this happen?' comments on the various pages. --Barberio 23:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've no intention of dabbing anything to point to Enabling act of 1933, which is an incorrect article title. I'm not blaming you for the state of affairs, just saying I'll be happy to dab the links once the page title is corrrected. --Tkynerd 23:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

And now Enabling act has been screwed up so that it is no longer a proper disambiguation page. *sigh* Let me know when that is also straightened out and I'll be glad to help. --Tkynerd 23:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

To be clearer -- and, I hope, more helpful -- here is what I would expect to see:

• Enabling act as a proper dab page.
• Enabling act (disambiguation) as a redirect to Enabling act.
• Enabling Act of 1933 (note capitalization) as the article about the German enabling act.
• Enabling act (general) as the generic page, although I'm not sure this one needs to exist; it can perhaps be left up to Wiktionary.
• Enabling act (United Kingdom), Enabling act (United States), etc. as individual articles as needed (I note that the UK article redlinks).

Hope that helps. --Tkynerd 14:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, Enabling act started out as a full article about enabling acts in general not a disambiguation page, but then someone decided to 'help' by taking all the sections and turning them into small stub articles, leaving the page as a not-a-disambiguation page. --Barberio 16:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the problem cropped up yesterday when someone moved Enabling act (general) to Enabling act. Before that was done, Enabling act was indeed a dab page. This also left me looking like a bit of an idiot, as I had dabbed a link at Jurisdiction to point to Enabling act (general). However, I'm not fixing that dab until this mess is straightened out one way or another. (This also reminds me that I really do think we need a generic page at Enabling act (general), as a dab target when no specific sense is intended. Strike what I wrote above.) --Tkynerd 16:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Re reading this, I think the split to separate articles was very unwise, since these articles can only ever remain stubs, and the United Kingdom one despite having the most text does not stand alone as an article. I'm going to re-merge them back into an article on Enabling acts in general. --Barberio 18:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I've now hopefully sorted things to a situation where disambiguation repair can continue. We now have two real articles

• Enabling act
• Enabling Act of 1933

which need to have their links sorted so articles specific to the 1933 act point there. --Barberio 19:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Enabling act doesn't comply with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages), so I'm reluctant to put the necessary {{disambig}} tag on it. Please read the first paragraph at that MoS page. Note specifically that dab pages are not articles. Disambiguation repair cannot currently be done because too many of the links would need to go to Enabling act, where they are already pointed, and it would be difficult or impossible to keep track of which ones are already done...to say nothing of the task of keeping the "dab" page clear of inappropriate inbound links in the future. --Tkynerd 00:34, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Enabling act is not a disambiguation page, it's an article in it's own right, but one that needs disambiguation of the links to it. It should not be or need a disambiguation page, as there are only two similar named articles, which are clearly linked to each other. What does need to be done is to disambiguate the links to it, where those links are clearly about the Enabling Act of 1933 not enabling acts in general. --Barberio 00:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

If this subject needs to be disambiguated, it needs a disambiguation page. The only exception I can think of is where there is absolutely zero possibility that the subject will attract 'shrooms, because if it will, then without a proper dab page it will be impossible to maintain. My intention was to take care of the existing dabs AND adopt this page to keep it free of 'shrooms, but unless I can use the tool I like to use (which only works if there is a proper dab page), the dab process is too burdensome. --Tkynerd 01:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Interestly enough: I think Tkynerd may have spent more time arguing about "the" solution than it would have taken to work out "an acceptable" solution. Barberio, thank you for your questions and your actions. "Let us spend more time doing rather than preparing to do!". Srice13 04:48, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, I proposed a solution above that not only is "acceptable," but provides long-term maintainability. Too bad that wasn't to your liking. I think both Wikipedia and I can do without your snideness. --Tkynerd 12:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 10 cents

I'm tempted to delete the disambig template from this page. It seems more article-ish than dab-ish. Any opinions? (Perhaps reply to the Talk:10 cents page for history's sake) - grubber 19:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name etymologies

Should dab pages that are also names contain the etymology, origins, or cognates of the name? (Examples: Fuqua, Justin) On one hand, it's not the purpose of a dab page, but on the other hand, where would we put that info? - grubber 06:22, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that information even belongs on Wikipedia. That's dictionary material, which says "Wiktionary" to me. --Tkynerd 06:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have changed James quite a bit. I removed most of the entries, moved the etymologies to James (name) and removed entries present on dab pages (like King James). I would appreciate if someone look at it; it was a bold edit and I'd appreciate a second set of eyes. - grubber 02:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

IMHO: your boldness was well justified. I would do almost everything as you did. My only remarks: a) instead of James (surname) (disambiguation) and like, I would create "People named James" or "List of people with the surname James" and like; at the very least, the double brackets were unnecessary - could have been "(surname disambiguation)"; b) I would create sections on ;Name and ;Sports and Entertainment, as there is enough material for each and nothing gets left out; c) link only to album on the James (song) entry and would remove the redlink (is this a hit song? Will it ever get its own article?); d) finally, I never saw the point of putting Special:Allpages/Jimmy and the like on dab pages (see the Archive5 page (link at the top) for comments on this). --maf 04:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dab Adoption Category?

Does it make sense to create a category for user pages that indicate what pages one has adopted? It might be useful to prevent duplication of effort on some pages, among other things. For example, I could put on my User Page:

[[Category:Disambiguation Adoption|Vertigo]] [[Category:Disambiguation Adoption|Epic]]

And the category page would be populated with adopted page names that link back to the user who has adopted it. Unobstrusive to the non-dab focussed editor, but useful for those who might be interested in this information. A more sophisticated template might be created for the user page that presents the adopted pages in a table there or something. I'm not completely convinced its useful, but maybe? (John User:Jwy talk) 03:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at the discussion at the top of the page about this topic: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Adopting_Pages_and_Link_Repair_Banner - it turned out to not be a very popular idea. -- Natalya 14:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I did. I thought this variation took care of some of the issues. A more careful reading makes me less hopeful about the idea. (John User:Jwy talk) 14:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Listing songs without articles on disambiguation pages

I was wondering what other people thought about the presence of songs that don't have articles (and, in all likelihood, won't be getting articles) on disambiguation pages; for an example, see this version of Daydream (disambiguation). Personally, I think this isn't useful because most of these songs don't have any notability outside the album, i.e. they weren't released as singles or did not win a major award. So it's doubtful that anybody, even a fan of the artist, would enter the song names into a search box; it's much more likely they would search for the artist or the album first. I realise these entries may not appear extraneous because on most of the pages they are below the blue links, but they are distracting to the eye and make finding the page you're looking for take longer than it should. Thoughts? Extraordinary Machine 12:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I figure if the album has an article and someone thinks its "important" enough to put on a dab page, then I leave it. But I usually reduce the links to just the album - as I have done with the page you mention. I don't mind having them that way, myself. Especially if there is an "In Music" section and they are collected together at the bottom of it. (John User:Jwy talk) 14:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Jwy. I don't see that such entries cause any real problem. After all, they are ambiguous, and especially where there are relevant articles to link to, it seems OK for them to be here, especially since the ambiguously titled,Daydream (song), is only about one particular song. older ≠ wiser 14:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. Though one doesn't usually see as many songs as those that are listed at Daydream (disambiguation), at least they all have appropriate bluelinks. I was looking through the MoS a bit to see if there was something about songs (I recalled that there was), but couldn't seem to find anything. -- Natalya 01:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I can see what you're getting at, Extraordinary Machine. They are distracting even if they are at the bottom of the page. The question, then, becomes one of cost-benefit: is it worth that distraction in order to include a possibly worthwhile entry?

I have a tendency to leave them there, because I tend to think that the possibility's a plausible and reasonable one. How likely it actually is is somewhat a matter of opinion. You'd be amazed, though, at what some people consider a reasonable search—I've seen far, far worse (can't think of any examples) outside music, so on a relative scale, this doesn't seem so bad.

But I've never seen an example as extreme as Daydream—but that said, I still wouldn't consider Daydream a desperate situation (in other words, it's not that bad). My two cents. Neonumbers 09:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

As long as they can be redlinked unambiguously, I let them stay put. However, I don't like them, so I put them in undesirable layout real estate. --Smack (talk) 16:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MC (disambiguation) cleanup proposal

I have avoided editing MC (disambiguation) for quite a while now, because I have no idea where to even begin. Of all the dab pages I have done, this one has had me stumped for months. Anyone else wanna help out? If a few others get stumped as well, maybe we can make this a "WP:WPDAB Collaboration" :) - grubber 23:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

There are a couple things we can certainly do right off:

• Remove the images (they don't aid in the disambiguation)
• Organize by categories
• General disambig cleanup, though it's in not too bad a shape.

Later, we'll need to see if all these things actually are abbreviated by MC! But at least at first we can clean up the page as is. -- Natalya 03:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Having looked at this more, there's actually an adendum to that - there are so many entries that don't really seem to need to be there, so perhaps getting rid of all the unneeded ones first would be more productive. -- Natalya 04:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

There was an informal vote about some of the entries a few months ago. There are a lot of junk links there, imo, but I'm not sure if everyone would agree with that. - grubber 13:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:University of Wisconsin

I need help explaining the value of a primary use claim to User:Miaers at Talk:University of Wisconsin. There are about 1200 links to the page, 99% of which are meant to be directed to University of Wisconsin-Madison, and so it is currently a redirect. He has focused on the 1% that aren't meant to point there as evidence that there should be a dab page at University of Wisconsin. There was previously a Template:Redirect tag at the top of University of Wisconsin-Madison, but he and a few other users have recently had the University of Wisconsin (disambiguation) page deleted through AfD (!!). Please help explain the value of fixing 15 links without a dab page as opposed to having 1200 more links to retarget at WP:DPL. Thank you for any assistance. Dekimasuが... 19:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the old disambig page. User:Dekimasu is creating a "double redirect" here and he has no solutions about it. Miaers 19:21, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The way it is set up now (at this moment) looks right to me. University of Wisconsin redirects to University of Wisconsin-Madison. At the top of the latter page is a note directing users interested in other units of the state university to University of Wisconsin System. No disambig page at all, and none needed IMHO. --Russ (talk) 22:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Russ. It makes sense for what is by far the most common use of "University of Wisconsin" to redirect to that meaning at University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a note at the top directing interested readers to the University of Wisconsin System article, which contains all the necessary disambiguating information as far as I can tell. Turning "University of Wisconsin" into a disambiguation page would seems an unnecessary inconvenience for readers more familiar with the very common use of the term to mean UW-Madison. older ≠ wiser 23:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

FWIW: That's how University of Texas is. - grubber 23:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The University of Wisconsin link in University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee#Early history, History of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee etc can't be redirected to UW System. UW System didn't exit when this institution existed. Miaers 23:21, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Just have them link to the University of Wisconsin System, and add a paragraph or two on the history of the UW system. – Lordmontu _{(talk) • (contribs)} 00:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

No bother, I've created University of Wisconsin (former) article. This name is ambiguous, even though some people don't like it. Miaers 00:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Miaers isn't the one who had the disambiguation page removed. In fact, I still don't understand the motives behind that removal. DABs are cheap! --Orange Mike 01:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that. It is only readding that deleted dab page at the plain title that is a problem, and that's what Miaers has proposed (and done a few times). I don't know why it was deleted, but I can understand if some editors thought the information could be incorporated into the University of Wisconsin system article. Dekimasuが... 04:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no such thing as University of Wisconsin system. University of Wisconsin is the official name of the former University of Wisconsin. You are suggesting an original work.

Also, it is quite ok if someone wants to expand the history information in University of Wisconsin System article. But University of Wisconsin (former) is a different subject from UW System and a seperate article written in a different angle. These two should coexist like many other articles do in Wikipedia. Miaers 23:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UW redux

One outcome of the above kerfuffle seems to be a proposal to put something like this draft in place of the existing basic dab-page. It seems somewhat large and un-dabish, and I was wondering if some editors from here might take a look? My comments on it are here. - David Oberst 02:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:University of Wisconsin (disambiguation)#Not related to the University of Wisconsin for one issue that has arisen during the discussion, and which has implications for the existing guidelines. Andrewa 18:33, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Felix

I've done a bunch of work to clean up Felix and have two requests. First, this was my biggest dab cleanup, and I'd be happy for a second opinion on the general results. Second, there was one entry that I left in apparent violation of dab style:

*[[List of characters in Golden Sun#Felix|Felix]] - character from the Nintendo video
 game series Golden Sun.

Perhaps this is a good case for IAR, or maybe WP:MOSDAB should be modified to allow piped links in cases like this. Comments? Matchups 02:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I switch it to:

*Felix - a character from the Nintendo video game series [[List of characters in Golden Sun#Felix|Golden Sun]].

which is my preferred way of handling this. (John User:Jwy talk) 03:36, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Using piping for # links is perfectly acceptable. THere's an exception in the rules for it. Looks like you cleaned the page up pretty good. If you want to do more on it, add some information after the links that have no info on the line yet. Usually copying the first sentence of the article gives you a good starter. Second, I hate long dab pages, but you've trimmed it up from where it began. - grubber 04:20, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks pretty good; nice job giving each entry only one blue link. A couple of things per the manual of style for disambiguation pages; entries should be sentence fragments, and therefore also shouldn't have periods at the end. Also, it's general style to describe articles with a comma rather than a dash. I've taken care of these small changes, but keep up the good work! -- Natalya 01:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A discussion on CC templates...

...has been started at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Let.27s_clarify_with_the_various_CC_templates_once_and_for_all (goodness that is a long link!). Just in case you don't watch both pages, please add your opinions there! -- Natalya 01:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, the {{2CC}}, {{3CC}}, {{4CC}}, {{5CC}} templates have been put up for deletion as a result of the discussion mentioned. If you'd like to chime in, see the TfD entries. - grubber 18:54, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

There is also a counter-proposal to reduce the size of Category:Disambiguation by removing that top-category tag from pages that fit subcategories. This hierarchical tagging would be in keeping with other categories like "Novelists" and "Poets", which are subdivided by nationality, so that someone might be tagged with "Russian poets" but then not also with "Poets". "2CC", "3CC", etc., would become true subcategories of Acronyms/abbreviations, which would become a true subcategory of "Disambiguation": the lowest-level tag that fits would be used, and the top-level tag would not. -- Ben 17:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, it's probably helpful to keep this discussion centralized, perhaps at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_February_9#Counter-proposal so that everyone can see it. -- Natalya 17:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trains project disambig task

Just an FYI more because I wasn't sure where to add a link to it anywhere else... I found this project while going through the "what links here" list for Western Pacific. One of the regular tasks of Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains is to go through commonly undisambigged links and update them to their correct locations. Our current work list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Todo/Disambig. Slambo (Speak) 14:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Cool! That sounds a lot like Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links; glad to see that individual Wikiprojects are taking it on too. -- Natalya 17:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stumped on Central High School

I have found a dab page that breaks all the rules on dab formatting, and I can't come up with any way to do it better. Central High School has lots of piping and two links per line. "Fixing" either style makes the page incredibly ugly. The page is surprisingly usable and readable as it is, and I can't think of a damn thing to do to it. Any ideas or comments? - grubber 19:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I would drop the piping and remove the city, state from those where the piping indicates the same thing. I'd be tempted to remove the redlinks. They should only be there if there is a decent expectation that someone would write the article. (John User:Jwy talk) 03:48, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I would drop the piping as well, but I'd leave the redlinks. Having that information available as a reference would be a great help when doing link repair, even if there isn't currently an article at the location. At the least I'd check to make sure there aren't any other pages linking to the redlinks before deleting them from the dab. Dekimasuが^? 04:35, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I would standardize the page titles, by either moves or redirections, to allow the following format:

• Central High School (Phoenix, Arizona)
• Central High School (Little Rock, Arkansas)

This page has unusually many redlinks, but I think we should leave them. First of all, I think we generally consider high schools to be notable. Second, the redlinks don't get in the way as much as they would on most dabs, because the links are so similar.

--Smack (talk) 04:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S: I see no need to keep the three redlinks to schools that have been closed. --Smack (talk) 04:42, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I did say "consider" dropping the redlinks. The criteria at WP:MOSDAB#Redlinks is not notability, however, but whether we expect someone to add the article. It could be argued that we delete the redlinks and the editors of the new articles will add them back in. But I don't feel that strongly (otherwise I would have already done it!). (John User:Jwy talk) 06:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there are enough redlinks that it might be appropriate to create List of schools named Central High School! (John User:Jwy talk) 06:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem with un-piping them is that the page gets ugly VERY quick, as the following selections illustrate:

1. Central High School (Connecticut), Bridgeport, Connecticut
2. Central High School (Brooksville, Florida), Brooksville, Florida
3. Fort Pierce Central High School, Fort Pierce, Florida

At least the page currently has parallelism -- it's easy to scan the list and find exactly the one you want, since the city and state are in the same spot. I must have tried 3 different previews before I realized my attempts to "fix" the page were making it almost unusable. Further, some titles have the complete City-State in the title, others don't. We could try to make the article titles consitent to Central High School (City, State) but then what about a school whose official name is Fort Pierce Central High School? Great ideas so far tho... - grubber 17:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

After unpiping, the rest of the line can be edited to remove duplication:

• Central High School (Connecticut), Bridgeport (I think this should be moved)
• Central High School (Brooksville, Florida)
• Fort Pierce Central High School, Florida

The states have never lined up, so that's no great loss. And within a state, there are typically just a few. Matchups 20:02, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

So it looks like we can have a readable, parallel structure, or accurate titles, but not both. --Smack (talk) 05:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CC templates now redirect to {{disambig}}

Per the decision at the TfD discussion, all of the CC templates ({{2CC}}, {{3CC}}, {{4CC}}, and {{5CC}}) now redirect to {{disambig}}, and no longer need to be used. The guidelines will be updated accordingly. Thanks to everyone participated in the discussion - I know we all don't agree, but hopefully we will be benefiting disambiguation pages overall. -- Natalya 01:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

We should get a bot to scour those pages and manually replace them all with {{disambig}}.- grubber 14:57, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

User:ST47 volunteered his bot to do that during the TfD. I'll ping him on User_talk:ST47 to see if he's still willing. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Running. ST47Talk 19:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of this! -- Natalya 21:18, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

PS, I think "manually" means "done by hand". If it's done by a bot, wouldn't that be "botanically"? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:59, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Would you like the links done as well? ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Which links? -- Natalya 21:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Anything linking to, but not transcluding, {{2CC}} ST47Talk 19:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... probably not? Might that mess with discussions that have gone on referring to them? -- Natalya 03:13, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Right. OK :) ST47Talk 12:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

893 pages contain {{2CC}}. See User:STBot for contrib list. ST47Talk 19:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

892 processed, one skipped, I will review it after the run. ST47Talk 20:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

6213 pages contain {{3CC}}. ST47Talk 20:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

6136 processed, 77 skipped, will review. ST47Talk 15:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

2565 pages contain {{4CC}}. ST47Talk 15:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

{{2CC}} review is finished, no transclusions remain. ST47Talk 17:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

{{Tla}} added to queue as cause of some errors in {{3CC}}, fixed double redirect, and will review {{3CC}} once that's done. ST47Talk 17:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

2540 processed, 25 skipped. ST47Talk 19:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

139 pages contain {{5CC}} ST47Talk 19:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

139 processed. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

11 pages redirect to {{2CC}} {{3CC}} {{4CC}} or {{5CC}}. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

11 processed. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Job Queue empty. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

38 more pages processed. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please help on Guard

I have started a discussion on Talk:Guard#This is a disambiguation page, not a dictionary entry! about the cleanup of Guard. Since I had my cleanup reversed (and I've done over a hundred cleanups), could I ask that others please take a look at it? Thank you. --maf 04:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed new wording of otheruses template

Template talk:Otheruses#"For other articles, see X (disambiguation)."—discuss there. Thanks. Punctured Bicycle 18:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dab pages for misspellings

Is the creation of disambiguation pages for misspellings discouraged? Petadine has been requested at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Medicine, but it may be a misspelling of 1) Pethidine (i.e. Demerol, an opioid) or 2) Betadine (a type of antiseptic). I checked MoS:DAB, but couldn't really find any definitive advice. I'd appreciate assistance from any members of this project. Thanks, Fvasconcellos 17:27, 7 April 2007 (UTC)