Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation

When to split a list into sections

Could the article make some recommendation as to the max nr of entries in the list before it is worth splitting the list into say 3 or more sections ? I would suggest 15 or 20. Rod57 (talk) 19:34, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Alphabetical or by notability

Some, perhaps many, DAB lists are alphabetical. If this is policy could the article confirm that or say if it is ok or prefered to have the most notable/likely uses near the top (my preference) ? Rod57 (talk) 19:37, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Where likelihood can be used and useful, it should be used. For long lists, or for short lists where likelihood is undetermined (and so can't be used), readers need to be able to find what they're looking for: sectioning, grouping, and sorting by alpha/chrono/geography can help. But for short lists (or sections/groups with short lists), sorting entries by likelihood is useful and should be used. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for non-Roman Redirects and Disambiguation

Discussion on a proposal to change parts of this guideline is taking place on the Redirect talk page. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 23:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Should WP:TWODABS not apply at Sephiroth?

Am I misinterpreting WP:TWODABS, or should it not apply in the case of Sephiroth (currently a dab page with two entries) for reasons that I do not understand? See Sephiroth (Final Fantasy)#Requested move for the discussion and reply there please... Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:41, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Somewhat more generally, I've always admired the phrasing "should not be created" in TWODABS; it doesn't read "is a burden on the servers", "should be deleted" or anything of that sort. It simply says that if it doesn't exist, then don't bother creating it. Equally, the phrasing used also implies that it's not worth the bother of convincing anyone that it should be deleted - in other words, it's unnecessary, but largely harmless.

I suppose you could take it to MfD, but it doesn't really seem that it's worth the trouble, does it? --AndrewHowse (talk) 03:15, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Good point, but, yes, I think eliminating 2 entry dab pages is a worthy goal consistent with improving this encyclopedia. The dab page itself is not the problem, especially if it's at [[Plainname (disambiguation)]]. The problem is when the dab page is at [[Plainname]] which means users entering "Plainname" are taken to the dab page instead of to the more likely subject to be sought of the two uses of "Plainname". --Born2cycle (talk) 06:23, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

That could be a move (boldly, or using a move request if controversial) of the dab from the base name, redirecting the base name to the primary topic or moving the primary topic to the base name, and tagging the new-name dab page with {{db-disambig}}. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:09, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

But I just closed the move request without moving the pages. There was no consensus on a primary topic, different tools given at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC indicated different possible primary topics, so there appear to be no primary topic for "Sephiroth", and the two-entry disambiguation page can continue to disambiguate those two non-primary topics. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:40, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

By my reading, WP:TWODABS doesn't apply. TWODABS means that if you have a primary topic article at [[Article]] and another at [[Article (about something else)]], you have a hat note at the top of the former pointing to the latter, rather than a hat note pointing to [[Article (disambiguation)]], which in turn points to both articles. —me_and 16:38, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

That's right. WP:TWODABS is for cases with a primary topic. If there's ambiguity and no primary topic, then a disambiguation page is needed even if there are only two ambiguous topics. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:07, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I thought the whole point of twodabs is that dab pages with two entries are inherently unhelpful, even if neither topic is primary (yes, I know it doesn't say that, I'm just talking about the underlying reasoning).

The whole point of having a dab page is to help readers find the subject they are seeking with minimal hassle, is it not?

Even if two topics are each perfectly equally likely to be the one being sought when a given term is entered in the Search box, if you toss a coin and put one of the two topics at that term, then half the time the reader will be taken directly to the desired article, while the other half will be one hatnote link click away from their intended destination. So compared to having a dab page, half are clearly better off, while the other half is worse off. But if you put a dab page at that term, then none of the readers searching for that term will be taken directly to the article they are seeking; everyone searching for that term is guaranteed to be a search plus a click away from the desired article.

Frankly, even if you have only three topics and none are primary, if you put the article most likely of the three to be the one being sought at that name, and hatnote links to the other two at the top of that article, then at least 1/3 of the readers will be taken directly to the desired article, while the others will again be only one click away.

The benefit of avoiding a dab page once you have 4 or more articles associated with the term, and no primary topic, starts to diminish rapidly for two reasons. First, because the percentage of readers who get to the desired article becomes increasingly insignificant as the number of entries increases. Second, because the number of hatnote links at the top of the article becomes unwieldy. But none of those problems apply when we have only two or even three articles with topics that are called by the term in question. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:21, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

The underlying reasoning (as I read it) is if there's a primary topic and all of the navigational assistance can be rendered through hatnotes, then there's no need for a disambiguation page, since no additional navigational assistance is needed. The unstated counterpoint is that if there's no primary topic, then there's no place to put navigational hatnotes, so a disambiguation page is needed to render navigational assistance. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:40, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, my reading is the same as yours. I'm asking about the underlying reasoning.

I don't understand why the absence of a primary topic means there is no place to put a hatnote. If there are two topics the article of one can be at the name in question (just as well as a dab page can be there), and it can have the hatnote to the other one, even though it is not the primary topic (not primary because it is more likely than the other, but not much more likely, to be the one being sought). Wouldn't that be more desirable for the navigational advantages I noted above... no extra clicks for at least half, probably significantly more in most cases, of those searching for the term, while the others are still only one click away? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:01, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I was answering about the underlying reasoning. If one of the articles is at the name in question then there is a primary topic. Your premise of no primary topic but one at the base name is in error. Yes, randomly assigning a primary topic would reduce the click count. That is not the underlying reasoning, though. Picking one of two non-primary topics to be primary would be (and will continue to be) contentious. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:14, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Not to argue semantics, but it is search likelihood, not article placement, that determines whether a topic is primary or not. If someone changed Einstein to be a redirect to Einstein Bros. Bagels that would not make the bagel company be the primary topic for "Einstein"; the scientist would remain the primary topic and the redirect would be incorrect.

Similarly, there is no primary topic for Cork, which is a dab page. If someone moved Cork (city) to Cork, that would not make it the primary topic. In fact, if placement determined primary topic, then no one could ever argue that an article should be disambiguated on the grounds that it's not the primary topic, because, by your reasoning, it is the primary topic, by definition, simply by being at the base name.

What I'm suggesting is that in the case where a term has only two uses is special. That that is why we have WP:TWODABS. Obviously if one of the two topics is much more likely to be searched for with that term than is the other, then it is the primary topic, by definition. There is no reason to make WP:TWODABS a special case for that situation; it's standard primary topic determination. Therefore, the only situation in which it makes sense to have a special WP:TWODABS case is when neither use is much more likely than the other to be searched for by the term in question. And, yet, in that case, because there are only two uses, it still benefits the reader for us to treat one of the two uses as if it is primary. That'sthe only I reason I can see to make WP:TWODABS be a special case. Am I missing something?

As to the point that deciding which of two uses should be at the base name would be (and will continue to be) contentious for editors, perhaps, but that's not a good reason to make the encyclopedia less convenient to use for readers (by forcing everyone to go through a dab page even though there are only two uses). It is a reason to make the guideline more clear about this, which, if done correctly, should reduce if not all but eliminate the contention. In fact, we might even say that unless one of the two uses is clearly the primary topic, that article movement (between one being at the base name and the other disambiguated) is not justified (status quo prevails). --Born2cycle (talk) 22:10, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Should dab pages have infoboxes?

See Feaster. I removed the broken template but the editor who placed it there (COI editor I'd say), replaced it, along with Feasterville, South Carolina, which I'd removed as it doesn't seem to be a legal entity (if it had any legal status I would have left it on the basis there could be an article for it), and an entry for "John Feaster, very prominent South Carolina Planter and Businessman of whom founded the Feasterville Church along with the Feasterville Male and Female Acadademy, of which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places" - this person seems only to appear in a history of Fairfield County [1] where it says about him only "John Feaster, son of Andrew Feaster, was the founder of Feasterville Academy, and donated 7^ acres of land to Liberty Church, and ^^ acres to the Academy. Tradition says that John Feaster had the first glass windows in the township." Dougweller (talk) 14:56, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

No, dab pages should not have infoboxes. If a dab page is temporarily housing a short list of name holders that should really be a separate anthroponymy article, and an editor would like to expand that short list by adding an infobox or other "real article"-style information, the split of the disambiguation page from the anthroponymy article should be made first, and then the article expanded. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:16, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for non-Roman redirects and DABs

To participate in that discussion, go to this link. Thanks. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Primary topics with other titles

Trying to get more into the primary topic section, without making it a legalese brain-hurty mess. Possible approaches:

When determining a primary topic for a given term, the question is the likelihood of each topic being the one sought by the reader who searched for the ambiguous title. Whether the topic article has that title is not a consideration. The questions of "which of several topics is most likely sought from this title?" is separate from "which of several possible titles is best for this topic?"

When determining the primary topic for a given term, the significant likelihood of any topic which might be called by that term being the one sought by a reader searching with that term must be considered. Such a topic being at a different title which is not in question is no reason to exclude the likelihood of that topic being the one being sought from the process of determining whether there is a primary topic.

The second leaves me scratching my head, but the first is one I mostly wrote, so I have no doubt that it makes others scratch their heads. Further ideas sought. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

The first one makes more sense to me, though I think "The questions of" should be replaced by "The question". In the second version, I have no idea what "the significant likelihood" means. PamD (talk) 14:31, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Likelihoods are a measure of probability. A likelihood of 0% means it never happens, 100% means it always happens. A very small likelihood is insignificant. A likelihood large enough to be significant is a "significant likelihood", or "likelihood sufficiently greater than zero to be significant". The point is that unless the likelihood of a term being used to search for a topic is practically zero, that likelihood needs to be considered in determining whether that term has a primary topic.

The 1st and 2nd paragraphs don't mean the same thing. I don't understand the point of the last sentence in the first paragraph, or how it relates to what the 2nd paragraph is trying to say. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:14, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Kotniski, JHunterJ, PamD, et. al, the point I'm trying to introduce and explain which keeps getting deleted is not exemplified by either Einstein or Danzig. The point is that when you're determining whether a given use of a term is the primary use, you have to consider all uses of the term to refer to other topics in terms of their respective likelihoods to be used to search for those topics. Uses are not to be dismissed or discounted in primary topic determinations just because they are secondary uses. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:02, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully the "defamation" example does what you're seeking. If not, I'm still not clear on what it is. I'm assuming this is being driven by a current or recent discussion -- which one? -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:01, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe something like (needs wordsmithing):

When determining a primary topic for a given term, the question is the likelihood of each topic being the one sought by the reader who searched for the ambiguous title. Editors should consider the article the reader is looking for may not incorporate the search term in its title, but still may have a high likelihood of being the article a reader is looking for - and thus may be a primary target.

--John (User:Jwy/talk) 18:05, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

No, Defamation does not exemplify the point either because slander/libel is the primary use of "Defamation", and the term defamation is the name the film would use if the legal use was not primary.

Here is a link to a discussion in which the problem is exemplified. See the comment under Important Note and my reply. The term in question there is "Fergie" and the argument made is that the use by Sarah Ferguson (whose nickname is Fergie) is not relevant since the article about her would never be at Fergie no matter what. I want something in here that explains clearly why that's not true. Just because that article would never be at "Fergie" doesn't mean readers will never search for it using "Fergie", and, so, in deciding whether the singer is the primary use of "Fergie", we need to consider the likelihood that that term will be used to search for the Sarah. I run into this flawed reasoning quite often in WP:RM discussions. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:04, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not entirely flawed, since the fact that her article would never be at "Fergie" (and not just because of Wikipedia's private and perverse naming conventions, but in any serious encyclopedia anywhere) means that readers are less likely to search for it using "Fergie". (How much less likely is hard to measure, though I think we should err on the side of helping readers who type in viable article titles for the topics they're looking for.) --Kotniski (talk) 16:21, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the reasoning that the usage should not have to be considered is entirely flawed. The term being less likely to be used for searching for the Sarah Ferguson article because that article would never be at "Fergie" is automatically incorporated in the likelihood estimate. Besides, we have countless redirects under titles that would never be the title of the actual article (but are there because those terms are used to refer to the subjects to which they redirect), and readers expect that. So it's not unreasonable for readers to expect to find the article about Sarah Ferguson by searching for "Fergie".

Besides, I, for one, could only remember the nickname, so if I was looking her up I would have to search for her with "Fergie" (certainly not by the title at which her article is actually at, which I can't remember even after seeing it).

Here's another way to look at it. When considering whether a given term (e.g., "Fergie") is the primary use of a given topic A (e.g., the singer), if the term would be a redirect to a topic B (e.g., Sarah Ferguson) if topic B was the only use of that term, then the likelihood of users using that term to search for topic B relative to the likelihood of using that term to search for topic A needs to be considered. That is, if the only use of "Fergie" was the nickname for Sarah Ferguson then Fergie would of course be a redirect to her article, so that's why we need to consider the use of Fergie to refer to Sarah in deciding whether the singer is the primary use.

So, the idea such a likelihood should not have to be considered is flawed. How do we make this clear? --Born2cycle (talk) 17:05, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

The article at "Albert Einstein" would never be at "Einstein" no matter what -- we use first & last names for articles, and ol' Al never published under just his surname, so that example would seem to be appropriate for the "Fergie" discussion. If people are ignoring the guidelines, they will also ignore expansions of those guidelines. OTOH, I thought the bit about The question of "which of several topics is most likely sought from this title?" is separate from "which of several possible titles is best for this topic?" would have also helped make that clear. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:42, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Albert Einstein is the primary topic for Einstein, so of course Einstein has to redirect to Albert Einstein; Sarah Ferguson is not the primary topic for Fergie, but "Fergie" is used to refer to Sarah Ferguson, so in deciding whether some other topic is the primary topic for Fergie we need to take that under consideration. I don't think people are ignoring the guideline when they say it should not have to be considered; I think they don't understand how that's an integral part of deciding primary topic, and that's why I want the guideline to be clear about this point.

I agree the question of "which of several topics is most likely sought from this title?" is separate from "which of several possible titles is best for this topic?", but that is not relevant to this point because primary topic is not merely about "which of several topics is most likely sought from this title?", but whether that likelihood is sufficiently high relative to the likelihood of other topics being sought when that term is entered into the Search box, and this point is about that likelihood. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:22, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

If "Sarah Ferguson" is not the primary topic but is still ambiguous, then the current guidelines already take this into account. In order for the singer to be primary (for instance), the article on the singer would have to be the one most used by readers searching on "Fergie" -- much more than any other (much more than Sarah Ferguson, for example), and more than all the others combined (more than the DJ, Sarah Ferguson, and whatever else combined). -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:33, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Right, yet never-the-less the argument posted at the Fergie discussion is repeated surprisingly often. Even Kotniski gave that argument some credence above and here (the fact that "Fergie" is "only" a nickname does not in and of itself matter as to how we determine primary topic for it - all that matters are the various likelihoods of it being used to search for the associated topics). I think this points needs to be explained more plainly and explicitily, because it's clearly not as obvious to many as it is to you and me. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:48, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Another example of this problem is at Talk:Freston,_Suffolk#Requested_move. The entire basis for proposing the move of Freston, Suffolk to Freston is that "The other entries on this disambiguation page just have the word Freston in them, not as the main title."

What can we write in this guideline to make it clear that just because another "candidate" (or entry on a dab page) for a given term doesn't just have that term alone as its main name does not mean we ignore, or discount in any way, how likely that topic is to be searched for with that term when determining whether another use is the primary topic for that term? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:26, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

That's a good basis. The other articles have no indication of being commonly referred to as "Freston". Surname holders, in general, are partial title matches, not ambiguous entries. In the unusual cases where a person is referred to by a single name (without clarification), then they become ambiguous with the title. Elvis, Madonna, Patton, and Lincoln, for examples, (and Fergie, for that matter) are different than Freston and Freston (who?). -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:16, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

No. Arguing that "Freston" is unlikely to be used to search for either of those people would be good basis, if there was reason to believe that was the case. But in the case of articles about people, especially people with relatively unusual surnames like "Freston", we have to presume that they are often searched for by only surname (often, it's all that can be remembered, and it's less typing). In fact, isn't the presumption that people are often searched for by only surname why we have dab pages for surnames?

The main point here is the stated basis -- the term is only part of another use's article title -- is no reason to discount the likelihood of a reader using that term to search for that other use. We can agree to disagree on how likely readers are to be searching for those topics with the term, and that would be relevant, but to simply say that they can essentially be ignored because the term in question is only part of the name used in the title is not correct. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:36, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm with JHJ on this one. Partial title matches should never usurp primary topic status when only one article has a full title match. Wikipedia has a tendency to over-disambiguate, and this is one of those cases. --JaGa^talk 00:04, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes (to Born2cycle's No). Arguing that "Freston" is likely to be used to search for either of those people is the part that needs a reason to be believed. We do not have to presume that articles about people, especially obscure people who are not commonly known at all, let alone commonly known by a single name, are going to be searched for by those names. Instead, we presume that anyone looking for one of them would be likely to use the full name (since any reliable source that mentions them will use the full name) And, as we've clarified many, many times now, we don't have dab pages for surnames. We have WP:Anthroponymy list articles for surnames, and includes lists of people by their surnames there. Only in the cases where no surname article exists and the partial-title match list is short do we take the shortcut of tacking-on the "People with the surname" section after the list of actually-ambiguous entries. We can say that partial title matches can essentially be ignored. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:12, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think any of this can be regulated with hard-and-fast rules - we have no way of knowing (do we?) how many readers are searching for articles under particular search terms; we have to use a certain amount of common sense, and I think we should assume there's going to be a certain tendency among readers to enter real titles (particularly now the search box produces a drop-down list), but exactly how much comes down to our judgement. My personal take is that people are going to search for Albert Einstein under "Einstein" quite a lot, relative to any other use of Einstein they might be searching for, whereas they're going to search for Sarah or Alex Ferguson quite rarely under "Fergie", relative to the singer who's "properly" called Fergie. But it's a judgement call rather than something we can lay down firm rules about. In any case primary topic decisions are sometimes made based on other factors, such as the (in)convenience of disambiguating, rather than strictly on the basis of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - New York probably being the most notable example. --Kotniski (talk) 10:12, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The hard-and-fast rule is that only an ambiguous topic can be the primary topic -- the primary topic is one of the ambiguous topics. You can find reliable sources that talk about Einstein that don't use "Albert", and about either Fergie without using "Sarah" or "Alex", so they're ambiguous with those single names. You cannot find reliable sources that talk about Tom Freston that don't use "Tom". -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:41, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I"m not sure what you mean by that - just click on the reference given under Tom Freston, and you'll see him referred to as just "Freston" several times (that's after he's been introduced as Tom Freston, of course, but I think any truly reliable source that referred to Sarah/Alex Ferguson as "Fergie" would only do so after introducing them by their real name).--Kotniski (talk) 18:29, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I hope you find the New York Times truly reliable. http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/using-her-head/ (singer), http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/books/review/Light-t.html (Duchess). Using the surname as shorthand is one thing, but you may as well claim that they are also commonly referred as "He" or "She" then as well. The Frestons are not commonly known by the single name, and are partial title matches. The Fergies are ambiguous with the single name and are not just partial title matches. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:10, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I honestly don't see your point, or the difference. I'm not disputing that the singer is referred to as just Fergie, that's the whole point - but the source that calls the duchess "Fergie" puts it in quotes, with an explanation of who they mean right after it - I don't see that's any more or less a sign of ambiguity than the use of "Freston" in the reference I looked at earlier. --Kotniski (talk) 19:16, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The difference is whether the topic is a partial title match (most name-holders) or an ambiguous entry (very few name holders). If some editor started a surname article on Freston and included the list of notable Frestons there, would they also be on the disambiguation page? No, because they are partial title matches, not ambiguous entries. While someone might have used an {{R from surname}}, that doesn't make it ambiguous. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:49, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

This argument seems rather circular to me - surnames are not regarded as ambiguous because Wikipedia doesn't always list surname holders on disambiguation pages; Wikipedia doesn't always list surname holders on disambiguation pages because surnames are not regarded as ambiguous. But of course they are ambiguous in the real world - people are often referred to by their surname alone - why should we treat them as different from nicknames? (Someone could equally well start a page called "Fergie (nickname)" and move all the people with that nickname from the dab page to the new page - it wouldn't be any different from the surname case.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:35, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the circularity. Some topics are ambiguous. Some are partial title matches. That's a fork, not a circle. And yes, consensus is that surname-holders are partial title matches, not ambiguous. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:39, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Can consensus make something unambiguous? Even if it can, though, surely there are exceptions - even Consensus must surely admit that "Einstein" and "Hitler" have Albert and Adolf as their primary meanings? --Kotniski (talk) 14:00, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

In general, people are sometimes referenced by last name only, although quality publications will usually give the full name at some point. And many people will search for a person by last name. Both of these generalizations are reasons for including people by surname on disambiguation pages, even though strictly speaking they are not ambiguous with the simple term. In cases where such a list grows unwieldy, it is common to shift the name-holders from the disambiguation page to a separate page. I think what JHunterJ is getting at is that apart from the generalizations above, there are cases where a person has become so commonly identified with the single name (either the surname, e.g., Einstein, or a given name, e.g., Elvis) that these are considered as primary topic for those terms, even though the article title may use a more formal name. Consensus can determine when a person is commonly known by only surname (in which case they should be listed on the disambiguation page, regardless of the existence of any separate surname page) and when persons are the primary topic for the term that is their surname. older ≠ wiser 14:29, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Right. Einstein, Hitler, Patton, Madonna, Elvis, Cher, Fergie & Fergie, Beyonce, Shakespeare, and such are the exceptions -- they are commonly referred to by the single name only. Most name holders might use the first name or last name just as a pronoun -- as a placeholder for the common name. The consensus is that name holders are partial title matches in general, and that in some exceptional cases are actually ambiguous. If they are not actually ambiguous, then they are not the primary topic. The article on the surname (with a list of name holders) might be primary, if that anthroponymy article exists, or it might not be. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:55, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

• I have proposed Bungay, Suffolk, as the google search clearly shows Bungay, Suffolk is the prime topic, even if Freston or Cliburn isn't in this move Crouch, Swale talk to me My contribs 19:58, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Dab request

Is there someone who loves to create Dabs who could make one of Chatton for all of these? --Kleopatra (talk) 07:33, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I've added a hatnote and See Also section to Chatton. A dab page doesn't seem to be necessary. Station1 (talk) 07:51, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Usually, however, you can find some way to get to a surname page. If I don't know a person's first name, I can often find it through the dab for the last name. In this case, I get two placename choices, and no option for the surname. This seems to be exactly the purpose of a dab, that you can readily access all articles. --Kleopatra (talk) 07:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I never saw the benefit of a surname page over using the search function. The latter is usually more up to date and inclusive. Dab pages were never intended to be search indexes, but rather to disambiguate article titles. Station1 (talk) 08:06, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

When I enter "Chatton" in the search box, I am taken to the Chatton page. The search box does not return a page of choices, unless I enter a misspelling that is not on en.wiki, like Chattonstsadfa, then delete the "tsadfa," and I get choices for "Chatton." While the dab pages may have not been intended to be search indexes, the search box is also not intended to be a search index, it is intended to take you to the one page named "Chatton."

So, the dab page isn't a search engine and the search page isn't a search engine, and this means there can only be one article on all of wikipedia titled "Chatton?"

Maybe more experienced editors know how to use the search box to get a choice of pages to click on, but the audience of this encyclopedia includes readers and the less experienced users. There is no way to get to anything with "Chatton" in it through the search box, except for this one placename article.

Again, great, the dab isn't meant to be a search engine, but if the search engine isn't a search engine either, then we might as well warn users that they have to know the full name of their topic before they can find it. Not very encyclopedia helpful. --Kleopatra (talk) 08:22, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not really sure if all browsers show the same thing, but when I type Chatton in the search box I get a drop-down menu showing all articles starting with "Chatton" and then a separate box below "containing Chatton". There's also a magnifying glass on the right that performs the same search function. I had assumed that's how you got the list of "these" in your original query. I agree that the search function is not as intuitive as it could be, but if another article is added to WP about another person named Chatton, Chatton (surname) will be out of date and therefore unintentionally misleading. Station1 (talk) 08:38, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

No, if I type in Chatton I get drop down choices of Chatton, Chatton transmitting station, and Chatton, Illinois. If I hit the search button, the magnifying glass, I get taken to the Chatton page. How I got the search results is as I stated above, I entered nonsense in the search window, then I got taken to another search page, and I replaced the nonsense with "Chatton," and I got the search results. That's not non-intuitve, that's "doesn't work."

"The search box does not return a page of choices, unless I enter a misspelling that is not on en.wiki, like Chattonstsadfa, then delete the "tsadfa," and I get choices for 'Chatton.'" (From above.)

I won't be able to get to the other person name "Chatton" any more than I could find Édouard Chatton earlier, without knowing his first name, so it really doesn't matter that the surname page is out of date, as there was no means to get to the other Chatton before. --Kleopatra (talk) 08:46, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

And browsers, it does it on both the latest Firefox and on the latest IE. Two very common browsers. --Kleopatra (talk) 08:51, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, you have a good point then. I'm using IE, so I don't understand why you don't get the drop-down at the bottom "containing Chatton", but if some people don't I agree it's a problem. Maybe someone else knows the technicalities of what's happening. Station1 (talk) 09:03, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm puzzled: using Firefox, if I input "Chatton" I get a drop down set of choices of which the bottom one, below a line, is "containing Chatton", and that one leads me to the full list of articles containing the word, which seems to be different from Kleopatra's experience.

That said, it has always seemed to be inadequate that we have no easy way for readers to find all the people with a specific surname. There are circumstances in which people are referred to by surname only ("until Chatton's work in the 1920s" or "the row when Chatton was fired from the team" etc). For living people, those of us who know how to work Wikipedia can look at Category:Living people with its browse bar, but it would be wonderful if there was some similar way to find items on all people, sorted by their sort key. It would save the perceived need for masses of surname pages or immense surname lists in dab pages, all of which are, as stated above, prone to be or become misleadingly incomplete. But I suppose it's been looked into and rejected in the past, somewhere. PamD (talk) 10:01, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Until someone pointed out that last entry on the search function in a different discussion recently, I had never noticed it -- it isn't exactly intuitive. It is one reason I find value in using {{intitle}} and {{lookfrom}} on dab pages of "common" words. While common words is somewhat subjective, it seems somewhat more user-friendly to offer an option of last resort on a disambiguation page. So long as people are creating articles, creating new redirects, or renaming existing articles, there will always be a possibility that any given disambiguation page will be incomplete. older ≠ wiser 13:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

HLB

The Disambiguation page called "HLB" does not refer to the Citrus disease "Huanglongbing". The disease was previously called "Greening" but it was first described in China as "Huanglongbing". This name is not easy to pronounce, so we are used to say "HLB"

This disease is very important. It causes the decay of millions of orange trees in Brazil and Florida since five years. It is spreading through the US and has reached Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina. The whole US orange production is threatened. There are many scientific references. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.100.149.242 (talk) 08:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

It wasn't on the dab page because there was no mention of this abbreviation in the article at Huanglongbing. I found a source which used the abbreviation, added it to the article, and added the abbreviation to the dab page. All done and dusted. PamD (talk) 10:08, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Surname holders and partial title matches and disambiguation

General issue from Talk:Freston, Suffolk#Move request. There is only one article that could have the title "Freston", so (IMO) it's the primary or only topic. Surname holders (excepting those who are commonly referred to by the surname alone) are partial title matches per consensus at the disambiguation and anthroponymy projects. Partial title matches cannot be the primary topic for the partial elements of their titles (if they are actually ambiguous with the partial elements, they are not partial title matches, but again, this is not the case for surname holders in general). Instead, the anthroponymy article or list article (if one exists) might be primary, one of the ambiguous entries might be primary, or there might be no primary. If there is only one article that is not a partial title match, there is no ambiguity. A surname that does not also have ambiguous topics and no anthroponymy article or list article might redirect to the only notable holder as an {{R from surname}}, but if there are multiple notable holders, an anthroponymy list article (at least) would be needed. If instead there are topics that could have the name, the title should lead (directly or redirectly) to one of them (if there's only one, that one; if there's more than one, the primary one) or lead to a disambiguation page if there a ambiguous topics (possibly including an anthroponymy list article) and none are primary.

This is my understanding of the current consensus and guidelines of the disambiguation project and anthroponymy project. Other views on the general case are welcome here, or on the Freston case there in the move request. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

As I just stated at the Freston discussion, I don't understand the basis for this at all. In particular: "Partial title matches cannot be the primary topic for the partial elements of their titles". Really? Why not? Why can't partial title matches be the primary topic for the partial elements of their titles? Are they not the primary topic by definition if readers use the partial elements of the title to seek the topic with the partial title match sufficiently often to meet the primary topic criteria? And what if readers don't search for such a topic with the term that is the partial title match often enough to make that topic primary, but often enough for the topic with the full title match to not meet the primary topic criteria? Why should partial title in general (or surname in particular) even be a consideration when determining primary topic? Should we be looking exclusively at likelihood of search, per the wording at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC? --Born2cycle (talk) 15:15, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Because they aren't ambiguous. WP:PTM. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:30, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Potential outcome if we switch to "whatever the user is searching for with the term" vs. "whichever ambiguous topic is the most likely one": If the users searching for the automobile who misspell it "lexis" outnumber the users searching for either of the ambiguous topics actually ambiguous with "lexis", should we redirect Lexis to Lexus and put a hatnote there sending the smaller group to the automobile page, then the dab page, and then the sought page? My answer would be "No", we should leave the disambiguation page at the page name, and leave the non-ambiguous "Lexus" in the See also section of it. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the Lexus/Lexis example is a hypothetical problem with the way primary topic is defined, but I don't know that that problem has ever actually manifested itself. Are you suggesting the wording should be changed to address this hypothetical problem? What exactly do you propose?

I'm quite baffled by this argument. You just referenced WP:PTM, as if that is relevant here. Well, it does say, "Do not add a link that merely contains part of the page title, or a link that includes the page title in a longer proper name", but adds, "where there is no significant risk of confusion". First, that's talking about links on dab pages, not titles of articles or redirects. Second, I'm not sure what it means... so, the 22 persons with surname "Landis" linked at the Landis dab page should be removed because "there is no significant risk of confusion"?

Anyway, even with respect to links, it also states, "add a link only if the article's subject (or the relevant subtopic thereof) could plausibly be referred to by essentially the same name as the disambiguated term in a sufficiently generic context. For instance, the Mississippi River article could not feasibly be titled Mississippi, but it is included at Mississippi (disambiguation) because its subject is often called "the Mississippi".. Since any article whose subject is a person "could plausibly be referred to by essentially the same name as the disambiguated term" where "the disambiguated term" is the surname of the person, according to this a link should be added on the dab page for the term matching the surname, as is the case for everyone with surname "Landis" at Landis.

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC could be more clear, but I think it's sufficiently clear to show no basis whatsoever in considering partial title matches (including surnames) a factor in determining primary topic. First, it states how primary topic is determined for a given term: "[when] one of these topics [to which the term may refer] is highly likely – much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined – to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that term in the Search box. If there is such a topic, then it is called the primary topic for that term. " Note that this definition makes no mention of title, much less states or even implies that somehow partial title matches should be a factor to consider.

Then, once primary topic is established per this definition, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC goes on to state, "the term should be the title of (or redirect to) the article on that topic." I highlight "(or redirect to)" because this clearly indicates that primary topic determination applies just as much to redirects to the topic, including redirects that are partial elements of the full title (as in how McNealy redirects to Scott McNealy), as it does to the article's actual full title. It even goes further to state, "The title of the primary topic article may be different from the ambiguous term being considered. This may happen when the topic is primary for more than one term, when the article covers a wider topical scope, or when it is titled differently according to the naming conventions [note: by convention, articles about persons are at [[Firstname Surname]]]. When this is the case, the term should redirect to the article (or a section of it). The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary."

To interpret that last statement in terms of the Freston discussion, the fact that the article Tom Freston has a different title from "Freston" is not a factor in determining whether the topic at Freston, Suffolk is primary. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:07, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with User:Born2cycle on this. A reader coming to Wikipedia looking for the term "Freston" is as likely to be looking for Kathy or Tom (or more so) than the tiny village. That is ambiguous usage and disambiguation is appropriate. older ≠ wiser 23:59, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

This is arguing that the term is ambiguous, which is a reasonable argument. But just saying "that's their last name, they should be there" is a different argument. I don't know any of the three Frestons here (people or town), so I can't help decide whether what is said is true about Kathy and Tom being searched for as much as the town. In the general case, we want to keep the list manageable so we can't go with "its there last name, put them on the dab page"). Practicality would indicate - at some point - creating a name page and linking to it from the dab page and include on the dab page only those with the last name that are prominently known by that one name. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 00:10, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

You're quite right, but so much depends on context. In this case there are two relatively well-known authors, by no means mega-stars and neither have any claim on primary topic -- but in comparison with the tiny village where the primary claim to any notability other than bare existence appears to be a peculiar tower of some age (which arguably is more likely target for the term than the village). So far as I'm concerned this is a pretty clear-cut case that there is no primary topic. older ≠ wiser 00:27, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

• Jwy wrote, "I don't know any of the three Frestons here (people or town), so I can't help decide whether what is said is true about Kathy and Tom being searched for as much as the town. ". We should not be determining primary topic based on personal experience or opinion. We need to look at the relevant facts... page view counts, ghits, incoming links, and common sense, like recognizing that searching for persons by surname, especially those with relatively unusual surnames, is a common practice. It's not a completely objective process, of course, but reasonable people should usually reach the same conclusion on these matters. When in doubt, there probably is no primary topic.

  And of course the name is ambiguous. That's the point. It's unclear, ambiguous, whether "Freston" refers to Tom, Kathy or the village. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:07, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Just for the record, by "I don't know any of the three..." meant that I didn't have any knowledge about any of the three subjects to have an opinion as to which, if any, should be primary. In the end, the choice is going to be an informed opinion - or consensus. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 06:50, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

If those really are the only three topics, I would suggest a good solution would be to title the village article Freston, and have a hatnote with links to the two people. That way everyone wins (or at least doesn't lose). In general, though, I would say that the fact that a topic isn't going to have its article titled using a particular term is a valid (though weak) reason for preferring some other topic as the primary topic for that term; but it becomes a stronger reason if no-one could even reasonably expect the article to be so titled (which I think is the case with both "Freston" for Tom, and "Fergie" for the Duchess). --Kotniski (talk) 07:14, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

There are references for the Duchess that refer to her as Fergie without any other names. There are no references for Tom that refer to him as Freston without any other names. One is commonly referred to by the single name alone (ambiguous), the other isn't (partial title match). OTOH, the fact that a topic isn't going to have its article titled using a particular term is not a valid reason for preferring some other topic as the primary topic; this is what we have the set of {{Redirect}} hatnotes for, so that Usa (Germany) isn't at usa. The determination is handled by the existing criteria, without regard for the titling, as long as the topics are ambiguous with the title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:29, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I still don't see this difference that you so insist on between Freston and Fergie. They're both alternative ways in which the people in question can be referred to; I don't expect any serious reliable source to call either of them by those names without explaining who they mean (and if they do, then it's because one is much more famous than the other, rather than because one name is a surname and one is a nickname). I agree that Usa (Germany) shouldn't be at Usa, but that's because the difference in prominence between it and the USA is so overwhelming. If it were not so clear-cut, then other factors like the one I mentioned might well come into play.--Kotniski (talk) 13:32, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

If they do (and they do, or the New York Times isn't serious), you're right, it's because one is actually well known by the single name (ambiguous) and the other isn't (partial title match, not ambiguous, but as a convenience sometimes listed after the ambiguous entries on a disambiguation page in the absence of an anthroponymy article). People who are not so famous have a much harder time being known by a single name, true, so they are much less likely to be ambiguous with the single word. The other factors that you mention come into play regardless, and we can leave out the proposed factor of actual titling, since it has no impact on the outcome. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:39, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Is this a new New York Times link you've found? (The last one you showed me didn't meet the criterion - it was accompanied by an explanation of who they meant.) But I'm not so sure the factor of actual titling can be said to have no impact (isn't the English city allowed to be at plain Plymouth at least partly because our weird naming conventions would not allow Plymouth, Massachusetts to be there in any case? And isn't the case for making the singer the primary topic for Fergie at least somewhat strengthened by the fact that "Fergie" wouldn't be a conceivable encyclopedia article title for Sarah or Alex?) --Kotniski (talk) 15:12, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it met the criterion. Talking about the subject, like identifying an occupation or title, is different than using a full name. If you can find a corresponding "executive Freston" (without Tom) to go alongside "duchess Fergie" (without Sarah or Ferguson), then it would also meet the criterion. Our weird naming conventions still flex where needed -- Boston, Lincolnshire is not at Boston, and Boise and Greensboro redirect to their primary topics. If the primary topic of a placename in the UK and the US is the US place, but that place is not one of the ones that our weird naming conventions place at the bare name, then the bare name redirects to the place (like Boise or Greensboro) and navigational tools lead the other readers where they want to go. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:17, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

J & K, honestly, what are you two going on about? Back and forth posts with no references to policy or guidelines whatsoever in any of your arguments amounts to I like it/don't like it rambling. Let's raise the bar, shall we?

The definition of primary topic is quite clear: "one of these topics [that are referred to by the term] is highly likely – much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined – to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that term in the Search box.". The term Freston ambiguously refers to one of three topics in Wikipedia, the village, Tom and Kathy, and, based on page view counts, only Tom comes close to meeting the criteria. The idea that even a modicum of consideration should be given to the fact that "Freston" is a "partial title match" for "Tom Freston" is not only completely unsupported by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC or any policy, guideline or style guide, it is expressly contra-indicated in at least three statements of this guideline:

• "... the term should be the title of (or redirect to) the article on that topic."
• "The title of the primary topic article may be different from the ambiguous term being considered."
• "The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary."

Why are you ignoring all this?

As to the idea of putting one of the three ambiguous topics at Freston despite none meeting primary topic criteria, that might be worth considering, except that the topic meeting the criteria most closely is the one which should either be at Freston, or to which Freston should redirect, and that of course is Tom Freston. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:24, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

But how do we know? We can only know that if we know how many people are typing in "Freston" when looking for Tom Freston. And the reason we're talking without reference to the guidelines is (I thought) that we were vaguely considering the possibility that the guidelines might be improved. My opinion is that the fact that "Freston" could not be expected by anyone to be the title of Tom Freston's article is a factor. I mean that (this is going to be awkward to express) the value of n such that the knowledge that "n% of readers typing in "Freston" are looking for Tom" would preclude Freston, Suffolk from being the primary topic is (or should be) possibly greater than it would be if we had another place called Freston rather than a person called Freston. (uff, will anyone understand that? but I think they do intuitively apply it) --Kotniski (talk) 16:38, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

We know from the all-knowing oracle. Google searches are for more intelligent than doing simple pattern matches. Google results are sorted by information that is compiled based on how countless others search and what they ultimately click on. When we search for "Freston", especially with &pws=0 in the url to turn off individual and regional bias, the results reflect what others who searched with "Freston" ultimately clicked on, in order of popularity. Interestingly, that (with -wikipedia to remove WP bias) indicates that Kathy Freston is the primary topic. WP page view counts conflicting with google search results like that indicates a lack of primary topic; in any case the primary topic for "Freston" is definitely not the village, by any measure.

And I don't understand why you think "that the fact that 'Freston' could not be expected by anyone to be the title of Tom Freston's article is a factor". Are people even thinking about titles when they search for something? I sure don't. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:22, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I think they are when on Wikipedia, at least, more than they are on Google, certainly. And if they're not, then they can't really expect to go straight to their target page, can they? I'm beginning to feel there's not a lot of point in discussing this at this kind of length - it doesn't matter a huge deal that we get every primary topic decision "right", or that different editors may have differing interpretations of "right" and consequently different factors may prove to have weight in different move discussions - it's not something we can legislate for in tiny detail. --Kotniski (talk) 18:01, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

So, you're saying that because people know neither Tom nor Kathy Freston will be at the title Freston that they are unlikely to search for either, at least within Wikipedia, with just "Freston"? I really doubt most people who use Wikipedia are anywhere near sufficiently familiar with all the nuances of how WP titles are constructed to take them into account when searching. You and I are rare wonks who know this stuff basically inside and out, but those of us with that kind of knowledge and understanding about titles make up a tiny percentage of all Wikipedia users. And even among us wonks, I, for one, can't recall ever thinking about titles when I construct my searches.

Readers are not supposed to figure out how WP titles work and construct their searches accordingly. Rather, editors are supposed to title articles consistent with how readers tend to do searches.

I agree we can have a philosophical discussion about what is "right" that would ultimately be pointless, but that's exactly why I've been trying to get us to talk about what the guideline says and means, and just follow that. I mean, it explicitly states, "The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary."

Not a factor. That seems very clear. There's nothing to talk about, except whether to follow that, or ignore it for some good reason. I vote follow. You? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:29, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Born2cycle, your elevation of the Google test to absolute authority isn't borne out. Note that Amazon is a disambiguation page and Hunter redirects to Hunting, despite the Google test's results that would make Amazon redirect to Amazon.com and Hunter a disambiguation page. I understand what you have put forth. You need to understand that it isn't the consensus. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:52, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

By characterizing my position as elevating the Google test to "absolute authority" you indicate you most certainly do not understand what I have put forth. Either that, or you do understand but won't characterize it without using hyperbole. Either way, it's not helpful to finding consensus. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:11, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

• Comment There is a similar move discussion going on at Cliburn (see Talk:Cliburn#Requested move), I have created Cliburn (disambiguation) so that Cliburn does not need to be moved, also Tony Blair isn't refered to as Blair, is he Crouch, Swale talk to me My contribs 13:19, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • There are so many other uses of "Blair" among which at least one must receive enough traffic, or all of them combined receive enough traffic, to make Tony Blair not be the primary use of "Blair", per the criteria at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. That same criteria indicates that the pianist Van Cliburn is the primary topic for "Cliburn", and, so, per that guideline Cliburn should redirect to Van Cliburn, just like, for example, McNealy redirects to Scott McNealy. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
    • I have proposed Bungay, Suffolk, as the google search shows it is clearly the prime topic, even if Cliburn and Freston aren't. Crouch, Swale talk to me My contribs 19:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I've lost track what the global discussion is here. If I'm the only one, let me know and I'll just shut up. Are we trying to refine the global policy about whether/when surnames show up on dab pages or are we discussing specific instances? If specifics, it doesn't belong here but on the particular talk pages. If we are trying to refine the policy, could we summarize the positions? One extreme would seem to be "All people with the dab term in their name should appear on the dab page" and the other extreme is "Since the surname is a partial match, it should never appear on the dab page." I don't think anyone is arguing for these extremes, but I'm not sure where people are in the middle. A summary of the positions might be useful, perhaps in a new section.

An interesting and possibly productive exercise would be for JHunterJ and born2cycle attempt good faith summaries of each others position? --John (User:Jwy/talk) 16:49, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, it's about primary topic decisions rather than dab pages, and the question is whether the idea now expressed at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC by the words "[likely] to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that term in the Search box" should cover (a) any string which a reader might type into the search box in his endeavour to find an article on a subject (B2C's position), (b) any string which is commonly used as a "self-contained"(?) name referring to the sought subject (JHJ's position), or perhaps (c) any string which could be reasonably conceived as the title of an encyclopedia article on the sought subject (my position). Though I don't think any of us holds any one of these positions absolutely categorically.--Kotniski (talk) 11:10, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

(b), if my position, is that the primary topic must actually be ambiguous with the title for which it will be primary. This is, IMO, the same as (c), in that Albert Einstein could be the primary topic of "Einstein" since he is actually ambiguous with "Einstein"; Van Cliburn could not be the primary topic of "Cliburn" (nor of "Kilgore prodigy pianist"), no matter what those bare Google searches say, since he is not actually ambiguous with "Cliburn" or "Kilgore prodigy pianist"; and since there is only one "ambiguous" topic for "Freston", it is the primary topic of "Freston". In other words, Cliburn could not be reasonably conceived as the title for the article on Van Cliburn. My position does lean on the earlier consensus (which has be called into question by at least Bkonrad) that lead to the formation of the Anthroponymy project, that name holders in general are partial title matches, therefore not mixed with the disambiguation entries and preferably split from the dab page to an anthroponymy list article about the name if an editor will create it. The list article then might or might not be the primary topic, but none of the general name-holders could be -- only exceptional cases where the person is commonly referred to only by just the single name. Then he'd be ambiguous and possibly primary. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:14, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

So my position is effectively very similar to that, except that we seem to disagree about cases like "Fergie", which I believe could not reasonably be conceived as the title for an encyclopedia article about Sarah or Alex Ferguson any more than the plain "Ferguson" could.--Kotniski (talk) 14:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

So we might disagree on some of the case-by-case application of the guidelines, but not on the guidelines themselves. And we don't have to hash out the Fergie case here. :-) -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Kotniski that this discussion is about how primary topics are determined (both what the guideline says and what it should say) and not about what is linked or not on dab pages. I also generally agree with Kotniski's formulation of the positions above except he has his terms and topics reversed.

Primary topic is about which one, if any, among several topics is primary for a single given term. Primary topic determination is never about "any string which a reader might type", but about only one specific string: the term in question (like "Fergie" or "Cliburn"), and how likely it is that a reader might type that term to search for each of the topics to which that term might refer.

So instead of:

The question is whether the idea now expressed at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC by the words "[likely] to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that term in the Search box" should cover (a) any string which a reader might type into the search box in his endeavour to find an article on a subject (B2C's position), (b) any string which is commonly used as a "self-contained"(?) name referring to the sought subject (JHJ's position), or perhaps (c) any string which could be reasonably conceived as the title of an encyclopedia article on the sought subject (my position).

I would say:

The question is whether the idea now expressed at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC by the words "[likely] to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that term in the Search box" should cover (a) any topic to which the term may refer (B2C's position), (b) any topic for which the term is commonly used as a "self-contained"(?) name (JHJ's position), or perhaps (c) any topic for which the term could be reasonably conceived as the title of an encyclopedia article on the sought subject (Kotniski's position).

Further, I suggest that (a) is the only reasonable interpretation of those words on this page, is supported by other statements on this page (like, "The fact that an article has a different title [different from the term in question] is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary"), and challenge positions (b) and (c) as having no basis whatsoever on this page or any other policy or guideline (except WP:IAR, perhaps, but even that requires "good reason" to make the encyclopedia better, which I have not seen here), and so amount to being rationalizations of personal preference. I mean, the qualifications in (b) and (c) are, as near as I can tell, pulled out of thin air (not from any guideline). Because editors of Kotniski's and JHJ's stature are not clear about this, I seek wording on this page that makes it even more clear that what is meant here is (a).

Without bringing clarity on this point to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC the encyclopedia is worse off in two ways:

1. Readers are not served as well as they can be in terms of how often searches take readers directly to the topics they are seeking (the whole point of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC).
2. Discussion involving primary topic are more contentious than they need to be due to being turned into popularity contests (in terms of popularity of topics as being "primary" for the editors involved, whatever "primary" means to each editor, rather than about how popular the topics are in reader searches with that term) mostly characterized by expressions of personal preference based on who-knows-what. I don't mean to imply that being more clear about (a) in this guideline is going to completely end debates about primary topic in requested move discussions, but I suggest it will move us a significant distance in that direction.

I might be wrong, so I'm also open to a change in wording that clarifies (b) or (c) as the actual guideline, but I really think those interpretations are so inherently vague that any such change would make primary topic discussions only more contentious, and can only lead to poorer search results for readers relative to (a). But, again, I might be wrong, so if there is a way to convey (b) or (c) that will make primary topic determinations less contentious, and will improve search results for readers, I'm open to it. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:42, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's also be clear: I'm quite clear about this, and I've been clear about it, and my clearly stated view happens to disagree with yours. That does not mean the "JHJ is not clear about this." The qualifications in (b) and (c) are pulled from the guidelines. OTOH, the view that the guidelines about disambiguating ambiguous topics switch from "ambiguous topics" to "any topics that might be sought by a search term" for the purposes of determining primary topic appears to be pulled from thin air, and is contrary to the guideline. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:05, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

No, you haven't been clear. This isn't about opinions or disagreements. It's about whether the positions expressed are supported by quotable words from guidelines or not. My position is so supported (which I redo again below); yours is not (at least you haven't provided such supportive guideline wording for your position - you are free to prove me wrong by citing the diffs).

"The qualifications in (b) and (c) are pulled from the guidelines." Excuse me, but I've asked repeatedly for this and you have not provided any support for this claim whatsoever. I ask again... Please indicate in which guideline and with which specific words the guideline indicates that the topics considered for WP:PRIMARYTOPIC should be limited to only those topics "for which the term is commonly used as a "self-contained"(?) name" (qualification (b)) or "for which the term could be reasonably conceived as the title of an encyclopedia article on the sought subject" (qualification (c)). If you can't do that, then please stop claiming these qualifications are "pulled from the guidelines."

Now, let's look at what you claim is pulled out of thin air: "the view that the guidelines about disambiguating ambiguous topics switch from "ambiguous topics" to "any topics that might be sought by a search term" for the purposes of determining primary topic appears to be pulled from thin air. Thin air? Modeling the kind of answer I expect from you, here is specific wording from actual guidelines supporting this view.

1. When talking about article title, WP:TITLE states that "article titles are based on what reliable English-language sources call the subject of the article". Limiting the scope to what the subject is called is a characteristic of title determination; it's not a characteristic of disambiguation in general or determining primary topic in particular.
2. When talking about disambiguation: Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Deciding_to_disambiguate states: "Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead.". Note the lack of qualification, explicit or implied, with respect to "for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search".
3. Also at WP:Disambiguation, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC specifically defines determining primary topic exclusively in terms of search likelihood: "the subject being sought when a reader enters that term in the Search box." Note again that there is no qualification on "the subject being sought"; in particular, no qualification implying much less clearly stating that the toipc needs to be an "ambiguous topic" narrowly defined as "a topic for which the term is commonly used as a self-contained name".
4. Again distinguishing from title determination (which, again, is based on what subjects are normally called), WP:PRIMARYTOPIC also states: "If a primary topic exists, the term should be the title of (or redirect to) the article on that topic.". Since titles reflect what subjects are normally, the recognition that the term in question for a primary topic could be a redirect clearly rests on the assumption that the term for which a topic is primary is not necessarily "commonly used as a self-contained name" for the topic.
5. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC also states: "There are no absolute rules for determining how likely a given topic is to be sought by readers entering a given term;" Note how no qualifications for "a given topic" are stated or even implied, except that it might be sought be readers entering the given term.
6. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC even states: "The title of the primary topic article may be different from the ambiguous term being considered. ... When this is the case, the term should redirect to the article". Again, the recognition that the term in question for a primary topic could be a redirect clearly rests on the assumption that the term for which a topic is primary is not necessarily "commonly used as a self-contained name" for the topic.
7. And finally, "The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary". How much clear can "not a factor" be?

These plain words from actual guidelines clearly support the view that "any topic that might be sought by a given search term" is the primary topic if it meets the criteria are not pulled out of thin air; whether the topic also meets qualifications (b) or (c) is not relevant.

Now, can you provide specific wording from guidelines at all, much less this much, which provides support for your view that the the topics considered for primary topic (not for consideration as a title or for listing on a dab page - those are separate issues) should be limited to only those topics subject to qualification (b)? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:04, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

And the other part of the disconnect is your approach that treats the guidelines as legal ordinances, seeking chapter and verse to justify positions. They are Wikipedia guidelines to assist Wikipedia editors (not lawyers). The guidelines in question are specific to ambiguous topics, which is my clear support. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:10, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm as big a supporter of WP:IAR as anyone I've encountered. Characterizing my view as treating "guidelines as legal ordinances" apparently because I quote from them in discussions about what they say is ludicrous.

Anyway, These are your words: "The qualifications in (b) and (c) are pulled from the guidelines". Back that up, or retract it. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:29, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Please quit barking orders. You are not in charge here. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:41, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I thought it was understood that I'm not in charge and that nothing I say could possibly be an order. Why would you interpret it that way? It should be obvious that the point is that you're making claims about ideas being "pulled from the guidelines" when they're actually pulled from thin air.

Anyway, since the only way to address that is to concede the point and that seems to be highly unlikely, let's go on to your most recent claim. Even if we accept the view that "the guidelines in question are specific to ambiguous topics", given that...

• persons are regularly referred to by surname (for example, WP:SURNAME actually requires persons to be referred to by surname only throughout an article, except at the initial mention, as is common practice in English),
• WP:D defines "disambiguation" as "the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous, and so may refer to more than one topic which Wikipedia covers",
• ambiguous means "can be understood or interpreted in more than one way"
• one of the ways a term which is also a surname "can be understood or interpreted" is as a reference to a person with that surname.

... how do you define "ambiguous topic" such that a person "which Wikipedia covers" is not an "ambiguous topic" for the ambiguous term that is that person's surname? I mean, you keep declaring that persons are not "ambiguous topics" for their surnames as if it is obvious, but what is the source of that definition of "ambiguous topic"? What exactly is that definition? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:37, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I interpret it the way it is written. "Back that up, or retract it." is an order. If you understand that you're not in charge, the question isn't "Why would you interpret it that way?" but rather "Why would you write it that way?". The "only" way to address the disconnect is through consensus, which is why I'm going out of my way to avoid repeating myself over and over again, so that other editors can read what we've each written and also make their opinions heard. I feel comfortable in my clarity, since all but one editor appears to understand what I've said, whether or not they agree with it. Once we find the new consensus, which may or may not be the same as (my understanding of) the old consensus, we can try to make the guidelines clearer so that they reflect the consensus. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:10, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

In retrospect it wasn't an ideal choice of words, which is why I apologized. But the reason I wrote it that way is because it's something I would have said had we been having a conversation. The reason it isn't ideal in this forum is because I couldn't convey with voice intonation and facial expression what I would have had we been having a conversation.

I seriously doubt anyone is reading your words as closely as I am, and I'm really trying to understand. But your use of "ambiguous topic" remains undefined, your claim that qualifications (b) and (c) are "pulled from the guidelines" remains unsubstantiated, and your assertion that persons in general are not "ambiguous topics" for their surnames remains unexplained. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:23, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Lest you think I'm conceding, I disagree that they remain undefined, unsubstantiated, or unexplained. I also seriously doubt that many are slogging through this vast expanse of text (here and elsewhere), which is why I am not repeating it every time you re-ask the question. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:45, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, a vast expanse of you claiming you've already answered questions you have never answered. If you had actually already answered, you could easily link to your supposed answer (as you did when you corrected me for incorrectly claiming goalpost movement). Just to take one example since the entire discussion is immediately above this, Kotniski's a, b, c characterization of our positions is new today and just above, and so is your claim that qualifications b and c are "pulled from the guidelines", as are my questions about that assertion. Still, no where between Kotniski's post and here is there an answer to my request for substantiation in guideline wording of that claim. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:11, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

A vast expanse of you claiming I've never answered questions I have answered. Kotniski was able to synthesize the a, b, c based on the answers you claim I never gave. And my response to him apparently resolved any lingering lack of clarity he may have had. And, to repeat myself, the guidelines are the guidelines for disambiguating ambiguous topics, therefore the guidelines on determining a primary topic from among the ambiguous topics are for determining a primary topic from among the ambiguous topics, not from among the search result leaders. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:39, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I just reread your response to Kotniski and have the following comments/questions.

1. You say, "the primary topic must actually be ambiguous with the title for which it will be primary." I presume that what you mean by "topic must actually be ambiguous with the title" is that "the topic must be one of several topics to which the ambiguous term which is the title might refer." Is that what you mean? If not, what do you mean?
2. If that is what you mean, then how is a person not a topic which is one of several topics to which the ambiguous term which is the person's surname might refer? Is not the last U.S. President ambiguous with Bush? Is not the American inventor of the lightbulb ambiguous with Edison? Is not the founder of General Motors ambiguous with Durant?
3. You say that Van Cliburn is not ambiguous with Cliburn. Do you not agree that Cliburn might refer to Van Cliburn? WP:D states in the first sentence that it applies to "[ambiguous terms that] may refer to more than one topic which Wikipedia covers." We know from Cliburn (disambiguation) that it "may refer to more than one topic which Wikipedia covers", and, we know from all the topics listed on that page that one of those topics is Van Cliburn. How is Van Cliburn not ambiguous with Cliburn?
4. You also say that "Cliburn could not be reasonably conceived as the title for the article on Van Cliburn." Fine, but what does that have to do with whether Van Cliburn is ambiguous with Cliburn, and, more importantly, what does it have to do with whether determining the primary topic for Cliburn, especially considering WP:PRIMARYTOPIC explicitly states: "The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary."
5. You also say "that name holders in general are partial title matches, therefore not mixed with the disambiguation entries"... Well that just means that names of persons who are ambiguous topics with the term of that dab page are listed in a separate section on the dab page, not omitted from the dab page, unless there are so many of them that they are sub-articled out to special surname-only article. Just being listed on the dab page of a term (or sub-articled from it) clearly indicates the name holders are indeed ambiguous topics for that term in every manner that could possibly be relevant here. No?
6. You also say, "The list article then might or might not be the primary topic". No a list article can never be a primary topic - a list article has no topic. If a list or dab article is at the base name -- not disambiguated with (disambiguation) or (surname) or whatever -- that means there is no primary topic, not that the surname or dab page is the primary topic. I think you're again conflating the notion of a primary topic with the article that is located at the base name.
7. You also say "none of the general name-holders could be [the primary topic] ... -- only exceptional cases where the person is commonly referred to only by just the single name [are ambiguous]". This again seems to presume, inexplicably, that the term in question not being reasonably conceived as the title for the topic in question means that topic cannot be an ambiguous topic for that term (which means that term cannot refer to that topic which is absurd).

In short, if an "ambiguous topic" is any topic to which WP:D applies, then persons are "ambiguous topics" for their surnames whenever the surname is an ambiguous term since the first line of WP:D states that it applies to terms "that may refer to more than one topic", and surnames definitely are used to refer to persons who have those surnames. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:38, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Confusingly similar titles

Question; is it useful to proactively add hatnotes to linking articles with potentially confusingly similar titles to each other? For example, below are listed pairs of similarly title U.S geographical articles. Is it of general benefit to addTemplate:About hatnotes to them? - TB (talk) 16:09, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

• (Berryville,_Arkansas Perryville,_Arkansas)
• (Monte_Rio,_California Monterio,_California) - (Mira_Monte,_California Miramonte,_California) - (Janesville,_California Jonesville,_California) - (Cornwall,_California Cornwell,_California) - (Englewood,_California Inglewood,_California) - (Janes_Place,_California Jones_Place,_California) - (Scott_Place,_California Scotty_Place,_California) - (Carmelita,_California Carmelito,_California) - (Flourney,_California Flournoy,_California)
• (Rock_Mountain_(Georgia) Rocky_Mountain_(Georgia))
• (Almira_Township,_Michigan Elmira_Township,_Michigan) - (Victor_Township,_Michigan Victory_Township,_Michigan) - (Ada_Township,_Michigan Ida_Township,_Michigan) - (Mellen_Township,_Michigan Millen_Township,_Michigan) - (Spalding_Township,_Michigan Spaulding_Township,_Michigan) - (London_Township,_Michigan Lyndon_Township,_Michigan) - (Allis_Township,_Michigan Ellis_Township,_Michigan) - (Rock_River_(Michigan) Rocky_River_(Michigan))
• (Sand_Lake,_Minnesota Sandy_Lake,_Minnesota) - (Pine_Creek,_Minnesota Pinecreek,_Minnesota)
• (Etterville,_Missouri Otterville,_Missouri)
• (Rochester,_Pennsylvania Roychester,_Pennsylvania) - (Tipton,_Pennsylvania Topton,_Pennsylvania) - (Cresson,_Pennsylvania Cressona,_Pennsylvania) - (Marklesburg,_Pennsylvania Markleysburg,_Pennsylvania) - (Roseville,_Pennsylvania Rouseville,_Pennsylvania) - (Goldsboro,_Pennsylvania Gouldsboro,_Pennsylvania) - (Blue_Ball,_Pennsylvania Blue_Bell,_Pennsylvania) - (Ardenheim,_Pennsylvania Erdenheim,_Pennsylvania) - (Barnesville,_Pennsylvania Byrnesville,_Pennsylvania) - (Bowers,_Pennsylvania Boyers,_Pennsylvania) - (Marion,_Pennsylvania Merion,_Pennsylvania) - (Johnston,_Pennsylvania Johnstown,_Pennsylvania) - (Hametown,_Pennsylvania Hometown,_Pennsylvania)
• (Pin_Oak,_West_Virginia Pinoak,_West_Virginia) - (Alton,_West_Virginia Elton,_West_Virginia) - (Coketon,_West_Virginia Coketown,_West_Virginia) - (Baynesville,_Virginia Paynesville,_Virginia) - (Werth,_West_Virginia Worth,_West_Virginia)
• (Skokomish,_Washington Skykomish,_Washington) - (Woodland,_Washington,_D.C Woodland,_Washington,_D.C.)
• (Spring_Brook,_Wisconsin Springbrook,_Wisconsin) - (Rock_Island_(Wisconsin) Rocky_Island_(Wisconsin)) - (Otter_Island_(Wisconsin) Outer_Island_(Wisconsin))

I'd use {{distinguish}} in those cases. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:18, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I've listed the 1500 closest matching titles that do not contain links to each other here. Many look like good candidates fort his treatment. - TB (talk) 22:26, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah, one more possibly useful template: for cases like Linguistic Imperialism vs. Linguistic imperialism (that differ by caps or punctuation, rather than by spelling), I'd probably use {{for}} rather than {{distinguish}}. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:18, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Civil parishes, villages and hamlets

When we disambiguate two hamlets in the same district, we disambiguate by the civil parish that the hamlet is in, eg Rose Green, Lindsey and Rose Green, Assington, but what happens when we have a hamlet and a civil parish in the same district, eg Soulby, Kirkby Stephen and Soulby, Dacre, they are both in the Eden district, but Soulby, Kirkby Stephen is a civil parish near the town of Kirkby Stephen, while Soulby, Dacre is a hamlet in the civil parish of Dacre, Cumbria, there is also a similar situation with Newbiggin, Temple Sowerby and Newbiggin, Dacre. Crouch, Swale talk to me My contribs 13:30, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

We typically rely on the content-project's naming conventions (if any) to guide the selection of disambiguating titles (either in the "real" title or in a parenthetical qualifier), so Wikipedia:WikiProject Lancashire and Cumbria or its mother projects. I'm not sure what the problem here is exactly, though. It appears all the topics have been given unique names. Is there a problem with having Soulby, Kirkby Stephen and Soulby, Dacre? If so, perhaps Soulby, Eden (hamlet) and Soulby, Eden (civil parish), or Soulby (hamlet), Eden and Soulby (civil parish), Eden? BTW, I find the latter pairing ugly, but that's the pattern used in some other geographic projects. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:59, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Ambiguous topics

Can someone explain exactly what ambiguous topics are and how they relate to disambiguation? Now if we are talking about ambiguous page names it could make sense. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:23, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I've searched for all uses of the nonsensical phrase in the talk pages. It's funny what a large percentage are attributed to one particular editor. Leaving those uses aside, most other people either use it to mean "ambiguous topic name" (with ambiguous modifying "topic name" rather than "topic" - which makes sense), or to mean any one of multiple topics to which an ambiguous term may refer. That's not English, but it seems to be used by a small number of editors to mean that, and everyone seems to understand it well enough. But it's not English, and semantic errors like that should not be in our guidelines like WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I've already fixed it once, but it has been reverted back to non-English. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:50, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't mean to engage in an edit war, but once an English error like that is identified it can't stay in the guideline. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:55, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

In most cases ambiguous topic is equivalent to ambiguous page name. But not all ambiguous topics with articles use the ambiguous term as their article titles (for example, Lysergic acid diethylamide is not itself ambiguous, but it can be the intended target for an ambiguous use of the term Acid, and is listed at Acid (disambiguation) under the redirect Acid (drug)). And not all topics have separate articles (for example, a book mentioned in the author's article, or a TV episode discussed in a list article). So the term ambiguous topics is used to encompass all ambiguous uses that might be covered, whether or not they have ambiguous article titles or articles at all.--ShelfSkewed Talk 22:04, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

When you say, "an ambiguous use of the term Acid", don't you mean "a use of the ambiguous term Acid"?

Merriam-Webster defines "ambiguous" as "capable of being understood in two or more senses or ways", so "ambiguous topics" is a misuse of the term "ambiguous". It's the term "Acid" that is capable of being understood, not the topic of the article at Lysergic acid diethylamide, and so the topic cannot be an "ambiguous topic" of "acid" or anything else. "Ambiguous topic" is nonsensical. That topic is, however, one of the uses of the ambiguous term acid. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:30, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, "a use of the ambiguous term Acid", if you wish. Or I might have said, more to the point, "an ambiguous linking of the term Acid", i.e. a link that goes to a disambiguation page or to the primary topic. I wasn't trying to argue against your phrasing of the guidelines; I was just trying to clarify for Vegaswikian why a more encompassing term than ambiguous page name was used. If you prefer ambiguous topic name, I have no problem with that.--ShelfSkewed Talk 22:46, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

While ambiguous topic name could be an improvement over what has been in the guideline for a while, I still view it as problematic. Page names for articles should not be ambiguous. Yes we need some exceptions, but the guideline needs to make it crystal clear that unambiguous is the right way with limited exceptions. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:02, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify... those only exceptions being when one of the meanings of the ambiguous term in question meets primary topic criteria, right? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:17, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd expand that to be a vital article as someone pointed out today or the article clearly meets the criteria in primary topic. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, right. There are so view vital articles I forget about them. but yeah, an ambiguous article name implies that use meets primary topic criteria, or it's a vital article.

By the way, that's another wording change I made today. I changed:

In such a case, consensus may determine that the vital article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users.

to:

In such a case, consensus may determine that the vital article should be treated as if it is the primary topic (the term is made the title of, or redirect to, the vital article) for the term regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users.

The point I'm trying to stress is placement at the basename does not mean it is the primary topic. For example, if some rock star who went by the name "Art" became super famous, that topic might arguably meeting primary topic criteria and thus be the primary topic, but the vital article, not the primary topic, would remain at Art. So the vital article would be treated (in terms of being at the basename) as if it is the primary topic. But that wouldn't make it the primary topic. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:46, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree some of the terminology is sloppy, but not sure I agree with your solutions. Its possible that we could define "primary topic" as the article that gets treated such - i.e. that the article on the page the disambiguation term takes the reader to. Then are discussion are not "which article is primary topic" but "which article shall we choose as primary topic." In that case, "Art" would be the primary topic in any event. But in practice, I have not found this subtle issue to be enough of a problem to get too worked up about it. For some of the other terms, we might want to work out consistent terminology for the following concepts (and what I generally call the concepts):

• The term being disambiguated - the Foo of Foo (disambiguation) for example. I use DAB term'.
• Articles that are linked to from the dab page (I think this is what ambiguous topics is intended to mean). I think I use target articles.

There are probably other concepts it would be useful to have a common term for. Perhaps a small glossary? --John (User:Jwy/talk) 02:33, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Ambiguous topics are topics of articles that might have titles that could also be the titles of articles of the other ambiguous topic(s). -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:36, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we should be talking about "ambiguous topics" - that would mean topics that have more than one meaning, and topics don't have meanings, so the phrase seems entirely illogical. Let's keep it clear and talk about "ambiguous terms" - it's terms that have meanings.--Kotniski (talk) 11:04, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

While I agree we should probably avoid ambiguous topics, I don't think ambiguous terms is good here as I think terms would mean the title of the article, not the content. I think when ambiguous topic has been used (as in HJH's comment 02:36, 5 Dec above) it is the articles that is being talked about, not the title. The title is changeable and, I think, irrelevant to the disambiguation process. That's why I use target article(s). I use "target articles" for the articles that we are trying to help the readers find when they enter something ambiguous. No matter what the title, if its likely the reader will enter the disambiguation term to find a given article, it doesn't matter what the title is. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 16:25, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with everything you say, except that "ambiguous terms" should be avoided because terms would mean the title. Term is far more general in meaning than that. It could be a title, it could be the location of a redirect, or it could be neither... just whatever someone enters in a search. So I think "ambiguous term" is absolutely correct, as "term" is used to mean in the initial phrase of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC: "Although a term may refer to more than one topic". That is, a term that may refer to more than one topic is an ambiguous term, and any one of those topics may be the primary topic for that term (or there may be no primary topic for that term).

Whether that term is a title or redirect is a separate matter. The main point is: first we determine whether there is a primary topic for a given term, only when we have established a primary topic do we decide if the article about that primary topic should be at that term as its title, or that that term is a redirect to that primary topic article.

A related point is that when we determine which if any of the topics to which a given term may refer is primary, that we look at the relative likelihoods of readers entering that term to seek each of these topics.

Another point is that when determining primary topic we have many factors to consider when deciding whether a given topic meets the criteria ("much more likely than .."), and, there seems to be some disagreement about how much weight should be given to readers taking into account whether a given term is likely to be the Wikipedia article title of the topic's article they seek when deciding what to enter in the search box. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:05, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I think perhaps there isn't any disagreement here - Jwy may just have been pointing out that "ambiguous terms" is not synonymous with "ambiguous topics", which I carelessly implied in what I wrote (I wanted to say that the adjective "ambiguous" should be applied to terms rather than topics, not that the words "ambiguous topics" should be directly replaced by "ambiguous terms").--Kotniski (talk) 17:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't get that implication from what you wrote, but I see now how Jwy might have. Yes, for each ambiguous term there are multiple topics to which that ambiguous term may refer, and it's sloppy/illogical/nonsensical to refer to those topics as "ambiguous topics", but of course "ambiguous topic" is not a reference to the term itself. After the last week or so I'm not accustomed to all this agreement to what I've been trying to say. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:30, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I just boldly reworded two sections and the intro of this page using the term homograph. The intended meaning of the words has not changed, but I think using homograph conveys it more clearly. Thoughts? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:36, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't like it. Who knows what a homograph is without having to click through? Its hardly standard everyday English. Terms, titles, topics, whatever, but not homographs. Tassedethe (talk) 22:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I know, and it concerns me too. However, it easy to understand once you click on it, and is exactly and specifically what we're dealing with on this page. "Terms, titles, topics, whatever" are all different or are insufficiently precise in meaning, and I think can lead to a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what the words using this terminology mean. I realize the changes I've made could benefit from more wordsmithing, but I also think they are already less likely to be misunderstood. For example, I often see people, even experienced editors and admins, conflate "topic" and "title" with "the ambiguous term". No one will confuse "homograph" with either of these.

The problem with using more familiar but less specific terminology is everyone thinks they understand what it means, but many understand the same words differently. That's why more specific jargon has to be used in every field I can think of, from sports to engineering, from law to fashion, from medicine to acting. The same is true here, this is just a new one to this context, and so initial ambivalence or worse about its use is to be expected (frankly, I'm surprised it's taken someone so long to object). But please give it a chance, I think you'll find it works quite well. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:33, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Jargon is often used in specific fields but in an endeavour such as this, which will include many people who's first language is not English, or who have varying levels of education, it should be avoided. Medicine is a good example of a field where precision is often deliberately lost for the sake of clarity and understanding (by non-medics). In all my time looking at dab pages I have yet to meet anyone who has added an item to a dab page based on a misunderstanding of term or topic or title. And certainly noone who would have been enlightened if I started talking about homographs. Tassedethe (talk) 23:27, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Certainly noone who would have been enlightened if you started talking about homographs? How can you be certain? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:46, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The wisdom of my years, or the arrogance of youth, depending on whether I am older or younger than you. :) Tassedethe (talk) 00:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Can one of the meanings of an ambiguous term be a person whose surname is that term?

Can one of the meanings of an ambiguous term be a person whose surname is that term?

A specific example is being discussed here. Basically, I've added the following hatnote to Cliburn to help readers who search for the pianist Van Cliburn by just his surname:

This article is about a village in Cumbria County, England. For the pianist, see Van Cliburn. For other uses, see Cliburn (disambiguation).

This hatnote keeps getting replaced with a more generic one:

For other uses, see Cliburn (disambiguation).

The two reverts were accompanied by the following comments in edit summaries:

• there is no pianist "Cliburn", only one "Van Cliburn" [2]
• name holders not ambiguous, see MOS:DABNAME and this Talk page [3]

Since persons are commonly referred to by surname, the assertion that "there is no pianist 'Cliburn'" is absurd. Google for "pianist Cliburn" and see what you get! I suppose it could mean, "There is no pianist with a claim on the title 'Cliburn'", but if there were no other uses of the term "Cliburn", Cliburn could very well be a redirect to the article about the pianist, just as McNealy is a redirect the only use of that name in WP, a person with that surname.

The assertion that "name holders are not ambiguous" is also absurd. I've asked for explanation here, but it has been refused unless someone else asks.

Prior to the relatively recent creation of Cliburn (currently an article about a small village that gets a few hundred views per month), there was no article there, so anyone searching for the pianist by surname would immediately find the link to Van Cliburn (an article with thousands of views per month) and could click on it. Now, the same user will find himself at the article about the village with the hatnote to the dab page, so he will have to click on that, and then click on the appropriate link on the dab page, before getting to the wanted article.

I see nothing at MOS:DABNAME (which addresses how to format dab pages) or Talk:Cliburn which explains why a popular article about a person should not be linked in a hatnote of the article whose title is the person's ambiguous surname.

It seems blatantly obvious to me that one of the meanings of an ambiguous term can be a person whose surname is that term, but this is the very point being disputed, even in the context of one the most famous American pianists whose surname is an ambiguous term that does not mean anything else remotely as popular (in terms of page views and ghits).

Any help to resolve this would be much appreciated. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:10, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

How many more splinters of this thread are you going to start? Most name holders are not ambiguous with either their given name(s) or their surname. Exceptions for people who are widely known by just a single name only are made (e.g., Einstein, Shakespeare, Patton, Madonna, Elvis). In the absence of and until the creation of an anthroponymy article for the name, short lists of name holders might be included on disambiguation pages, after the list of ambiguous topics (MOS:DABNAME). So, yes, one of the topics (not meanings) for an ambiguous title might be a person whose surname is that title, but only in the exceptional cases where the person is referred to by just that name only. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:33, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It has been over a week since I first started pointing out to you, eventually in multiple locations and multiple discussions, that the phrase "ambiguous topic" is nonsensical. You ignored every word I said about that. Not until I edited the guideline accordingly (and you immediately reverted) and others jumped in (see section above) did you finally seem to concede.

However, you are still even with this post missing the larger point... "ambiguous" is an adjective that can only apply to concepts that are interpreted, like terms, words, phrases, facial expressions, tones, etc., yet above you say, again, "name holders are not ambiguous". Name holders are not interpreted. Name holders cannot be ambiguous. That phrase is just as nonsensical as is "ambiguous topic". Is it going to take another week for you to get that too?

Can you please figure out how to state your position without using the word "ambiguous" in a nonsensical context in which it modifies something that is not interpreted? If you did that in our first discussion about Freston there would have been no need for all these splinters. Since you seem to be ignoring what I say no matter how reasonable I am, you leave me with little choice but to enlist assistance, which is why I start these splinters.

Now, I realize that this might seem like a pointless semantic exercise, but it has important consequences. For example, now that the nonsensical phrase "ambiguous topics" has been replaced with "these topics" at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, you can no longer claim that primary topic determination applies only to topics that meet some poorly conceived notion of what qualifies as an "ambiguous topic". Instead, "these topics" can only reasonably refer to the topics referenced in the previous paragraph. That paragraph, the first one at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, starts with, "Although a term may refer to more than one topic, ...", therefore "these topics" can only mean "the topics to which the term may refer".

This distinction gets to the heart of our disagreement. You want it to say the nonsensical "ambiguous topic" so you can define it as excluding persons whose surname is the term in question, but when it says "these topics" you are forced into a position of saying that surnames are not used to refer to persons with that surname, which is absurd, and you know it. And please don't bring up titles again, because determining primary topic for a given term has nothing to do with titles, something else I've been pointing out repeatedly and you've been ignoring. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:42, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It does seem that in this case (whether or not this situation is "exceptional") the single word "Cliburn" is very often used to refer to the pianist, so I think the explicit mention in the hatnote is justified. --Kotniski (talk) 17:14, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the confirmation of my point and showing why I have to start these splinters. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:33, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

If you had been clearly and directly arguing '"Cliburn" "is" very often used to refer to the pianist' and convinced us that was true, you would have gotten agreement quicker and in a single thread: "only exceptional cases where the person is commonly referred to only by just the single name. Then he'd be ambiguous and possibly primary." -- JHJ above. The semantic discussions are important, but I think not a major issue with the Cliburn discussion. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 18:41, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

First, I have presumed that anyone familiar with usage of the English language knows that persons in general are often referred to by surname, and anyone familiar with computerized searching knows that people are often searched for by surname. That point has nothing to do with Cliburn in particular.

Second, the article about Cliburn has by far the highest page view statistics and ghits of any use of the term "Cliburn".

I thought the implications of these two points with respect to whether a hatnote link to the pianist at Cliburn would be useful were rather obvious. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:19, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the opening sentence of WP:MOSDAB tells us that "dab pages are designed to help a reader find Wikipedia articles on different topics that could be referenced by the same search term". Nothing about "only exceptional cases". The interpretation in MOS:DABNAME that "could" means "are very frequently" in the case of given names and surnames seems to me to be too restrictive and inconsistent with the general principle. Mhockey (talk) 19:40, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Please read the linked discussions from Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy#Background reading, where this was hashed out. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Except that I read the same discussions and I don't quite see the that the discussions reached any strong consensus regarding the treatment of surnames on disambiguation pages, apart from agreement that surnames are ambiguous, but that they could be split off into separate pages when the lists became unwieldy. older ≠ wiser 23:01, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree. In any case, the discussions referred to are, as far as I can see, over 3 years old. Consensus changes. Editors use dab pages for their intended purpose, to assist users to find topics which could be (not are very frequently) referenced by the same search term - including cases where the search term is a surname. They have consensus on their side (the opening sentence of WP:MOSDAB). The assertion that editors should not do so except in "exceptional cases" detracts from the helpfulness of dab pages. Mhockey (talk) 00:00, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I have just nominated for deletion here the recently created surname articles Cliburn (surname) and Simister (surname). --Born2cycle (talk) 04:19, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, consensus can change. If consensus has changed, the guidelines should be changed (with consensus) before trying to apply the hypothetical new consensus to the articles. I'd like to think that the disambiguation pages will continue to disambiguate only those "ambiguous topics" -- topics that are need of disambiguation, rather than partial title matches, and I'd rather not see long lists of surname-holders cluttering up disambiguation pages, which is what we were getting away from with the consensus three years ago. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:10, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

There is no need to change the guidelines except maybe to make it clear that your interpretation is based on a misreading. In fact, when you tried to change the wording to be more in line with your understanding, it was reverted, and consensus apparently supports that revert.

No where do the guidelines intend to say or imply that links to articles with partial titles matches, including to articles about persons with surnames that match the homograph being disambiguated, should not be on the dab page, unless there is "no significant risk of confusion". The plethora of examples of surname redirects to articles about persons, as in McNealy, and the countless dab pages that list links to persons on them due to surname "partial matches" (see Armstrong), clearly indicates consensus about the "significant risk of confusion" that people with a given homograph as surname have with other article topics to which that homograph might refer. But of course when the list becomes so long as to warrant a split out to a list article, that's fine, but that has nothing to do with articles about the topic of the surname in question, which, as you like to point out, are not dab pages (and therefore should not list the persons that need to be disambiguated - those belong on the dab page). --Born2cycle (talk) 20:45, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I find that a rather Pointy move given that the topic is still in dicussion here. But if you are going ahead with it, I suggest you also notify the Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy project as they have a lot of experience and interest in such pages. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 05:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I thought their recent creation was the rather Pointy move, especially since their existence is contrary to what the relevant guidance suggests (the basis of the deletion nomination). Besides, AfD is probably a good way to get more people involved to weigh in the various related issues. Good suggestion about the Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy project notification to get even more input. Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Anthroponymy

Over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy I noticed a list of resources at the top, including a link to Wikipedia:Deletion policy/names and surnames which is a discussion about surnames that reached, among others, the following conclusion relevant to this discussion:

• 2. Articles on surnames are useful as disambiguation between articles between people with that surname (or as a redirect to one such article).

Isn't the statement that "articles on surnames are useful as disambiguation" based on the premise that people are likely to search for articles about persons using just surname? Note this comment from one participant:

[All names] may also serve as useful disambiguation pages to those who have that name ("What was he called... something Robertson...").

and this from another:

Names should basically be kept as disambigs only.

I see no qualification here (or anywhere else) that this applies only to articles about persons that meet the "Einstein" criteria (widely known to be referred only by surname). As far as I can tell, there has never been any support, much less consensus support, for JHJ's claim above that "Most name holders are not ambiguous [sic] with either their given name(s) or their surname." --Born2cycle (talk) 06:26, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Disambig templates

There's a discussion regarding disambig templates over at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2010_December_7#Disambig_templates. Mhiji (talk) 02:32, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Too much emphasis on "search term", to little emphasis on "refer to"

The recent changes by Born2cycle put too much emphasis on "being a search term" at the expense of "being referred to as". I have disagreed with this clearly and repeatedly over the recent explosion of topics, move requests, deletion requests, and other talking points. But I am taking a break at least for the Christmas season -- I'll check back to see what the new direction of "disambiguation" is to be on Wikipedia, whether it will include more unexceptional name holders, other partial title matches, other search destinations without risk of confusion, etc. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, at least we can agree that this is at the crux of our disagreement. It is my understanding that the importance of "refers" is derived from the importance of "search". After all, what is the reason we even care about what refers to what if not to make "search" work better for users? That is, the reason Einstein redirects to Albert Einstein is because "Einstein" is often used to refer to "Albert Einstein", but the reason that's relevant is because that makes it likely for people searching for the article about him to be searching with just "Einstein". The first two of three aspects of disambiguation are mostly unaffected by this disagreement. Disambiguating article titles to avoid conflicts in titles and fixing links in articles to point to the correct article title has little to do "refers" or "search". After all, disambiguating Madonna by putting the entertainer at Madonna (entertainer) is not about "refers" or "search". But with respect to the third aspect, redirects and links on dab pages and in hat notes, that is all about searching. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I think I have to agree with JHunterJ on this. The search term language brings us uncomfortably close to opening the door to disambiguating the Internet. This policy/guideline was originally and always has been an adjunct to policies about naming articles. I don't agree with JHJ about the treatment of surname-holders on disambiguation pages and primary topics, but I don't think that needs changing this to be based primarily on "search strings" rather than article titles. Seems there is are two different aspects that need to be considered, 1) inclusion on a dab page (and I think likely search terms should be included on dab pages and which is more the purview of WP:MOSDAB than this page) and 2) consideration for primary topic -- examples like Einstein indicate that surname holders can be the primary topic for a term; and so far as I'm concerned, surname-holders should also be considered when determining whether some other term is a primary topic. I don't think this page needs to be based on search terms instead of article titles for that. 21:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Above comment is from User:Bkonrad [4]. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

R to Bkonrad: Examples like Einstein (examples for which you can find reliable sources that refer to the subject without ever using the given name, or using the surname for examples like Madonna) are the exceptional cases of people whose topics are actually in need of disambiguation from the single name title (what I would have called "ambiguous topics" before). The unexceptional cases, the normal cases (Freston or Cliburn, for example), since they are not ambiguous, have been separated to the anthroponymy project. In the cases where both the list is short and also there is no anthroponymy article yet created, MOS:DABNAME allows the list to remain on the disambiguation page but still separate from the list of topics in need of disambiguation ("ambiguous topics"). Only the topics in need of disambiguation should be considered to determine the primary topic for an ambiguous title; topics that might show up in a set of search results for the title, but that are not in need of disambiguation, would not be considered for the primary topic. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

This is precisely where I disagree with you. Surname-holders are ambiguous under conventions of English usage. This guideline allows such lists of surname holders to be split off when the list becomes unwieldy OR when an anthroponymy article exists (and although I have done it on occasion myself, it is extremely lame to call a list of surname-holders an anthroponymy article). It is (or at least has been) common practice to create a redirect from the surname to a bio article where there are no other uses of the surname. In exceptional cases, one individual might be designated as the primary topic for a term that is the person's surname. That should not preclude consideration of persons with the surname when determining whether some other term is a primary topic or if the term should be a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 13:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Then you disagree with the consensus that lead to the anthroponymy project (however lame or not lame the project's list articles may be), not just with me. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, no. I think what I have said represents consensus. I think most serious participants in the anthroponymy project would agree that a bare list of surname-holders is a lame excuse for an anthroponymy article. older ≠ wiser 14:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I also believed they are lame lists, and should be deleted. My opinion was also not the consensus that resulted in the anthroponymy project, so at least the lists aren't masquerading as disambiguation pages any more. I don't believe any of the participants, serious or otherwise, in the anthroponymy project, have identified the problem you see or have an approach to clean them up. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

But surely if you have a bare list, it shouldn't be deleted as such, but made back into a disambiguation page - so I don't understand your comment about "masquerading" - if it's a list with no historical or etymological information, then it is a disambiguation page (or part of one) rather than an article. Or do you really think Wikipedia should not allow readers to search for biographies by browsing a lightly annotated list of people with a given surname? --Kotniski (talk) 14:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Not all lists without information are disambiguation pages. If it's not a list of topics in need of disambiguation, no, it surely shouldn't be made into a disambiguation page. That would go for set index articles, lists of name holders, or any other lists that editors may find lame. If they are problem lists, then they should be cleaned up to meet the encyclopedia's criteria, not mislabeled to avoid the clean up. And lists of people who are not ambiguous with a title, even if the list lacks historical or etymological information, are not disambiguation pages. I was a supporter of and contributor to the non-disambiguation list of people by name, but Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/List of people by name did not agree with me. But we have the lame anthroponymy list articles to allow readers to search for biographies by browsing, and (unlike disambiguation pages) can be annotated as editors have time and inclination.-- JHunterJ (talk) 14:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer to see the page rolled back to 23:33, 5 December 2010 per WP:BRD, and the subsequent edits discussed to gauge whether consensus supports their inclusion. The edits in question seem to me to alter the guideline in non-trivial ways (e.g., replacing references to ambiguous terms with "homograph"; shifting emphasis from article titles to search strings) and as such I feel prior talk page discussion to establish consensus is warranted. --Muchness (talk) 22:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I've tried to be careful about not changing what the words mean in all of my edits, but only make the intended (or only reasonable) meaning more clear, so I'd like to understand why you believe, for example, changing "references to ambiguous terms with 'homograph'" amounts to a non-trivial alteration. After all, the definition of homograph is: "a word or a group of words that share the same written form but have different meanings" (Homograph) or "A term with the same spelling as, but a different meaning from, another term" [5]. Isn't that just a more precise definition of what was really meant by "ambiguous term"?

Where I think I might have come closest to actually making a non-trivial change is with the nutshell summary. It used to say:

"When an article title could refer to several things, it is necessary to provide links or a disambiguation page so that readers typing in that title can quickly navigate to the article that interests them."

It now says:

"When a search string could refer to any of several topics covered in Wikipedia, it is necessary to provide links or a disambiguation page so that readers searching with that string can quickly navigate to the article being sought."

At a quick glance the original version seems to be about titles since it starts by referring to titles. However, a closer reading reveals that it's really talking about what readers are likely to type in order to find an article, and practically speaking we know that may or may not be a title. Note that the latter part of the original nutshell wording -- "provide links or a disambiguation page " -- refers exclusively to what the unidentified commenter User:Bkonrad above says is "more the purview of WP:MOSDAB" (what is included on dab pages). I'm not saying the current wording is perfect, but I do think it's more clear about what the original wording could have meant. I suggest that the use of "title" in the original wording was a bit sloppy but understandable, considering how often the string used to search for a topic is a title.

But if anyone thinks this or any other specific edit of mine does amount to a non-trivial alteration, rather than merely a clarification in meaning which is what I was trying to achieve, I'd like to know what that is, and why it's believed to be non-trivial. If I did err and create a change in meaning, I would rather we fix that than rollback all the work that has been done (believe me, I put a lot of time and thought into understanding the original meaning, and how to make it more readily understandable). --Born2cycle (talk) 23:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• As to Bkonrad's (a.k.a Older/Wiser) concern about "bringing us uncomfortably close to opening the door to disambiguating the Internet", I believe the WP:PTM section continues to protect us from that as much as it did before. What it used to say:

A disambiguation page is not a search index. Do not add a link that merely contains part of the page title, or a link that includes the page title in a longer proper name, where there is no significant risk of confusion.

What it now says:

A disambiguation page for a given homograph is not intended to be a comprehensive search index for that homograph. Do not add a link that merely contains part of the homograph, or a link that includes the homograph as part of a longer proper name, where there is no significant likelihood that anyone would search for that link's topic with that homograph.

Is that really different in meaning? Again, if so, then I failed, because that's not what I was trying to do. Frankly, I was confused about about "confusion" was referring to in the original wording. But after I thought about it some, I realized it could only mean confusing one meaning to which a homograph could refer with another, and that confusion is only relevant to the decision of whether to put links to the meanings on the dab page in the context of search. No? Anyway, that's why I changed this wording as I did. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• I know that homograph looks, well, unusual or something, but I think it allows for much clearer explanation. The best alternative I can think of is "ambiguous term or phrase", and that's much more cumbersome, and doesn't as clearly convey "a term or phrase that may refer to one of several distinct meanings", especially considering how often the concept needs to be referenced here. Another problem with "ambiguous term" is that it is often conflated with "vague term" because "ambiguous" and "vague" are synonyms (i.e., "ambiguous" is itself a homograph that can refer to either "imprecise" or "one of several" - we mean the latter), but "vague" cannot be the intended meaning in how "ambiguous" is used on this page, but I know it's often (mis)interpreted that way.

  If anyone can suggest an alternative to "homograph" that is better than "ambiguous term" and at least as precise as "homograph", I'm open to it. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

It might be helpful here to consider the deleted contributions of SpringSummerAutumn, an editor on Australian wine topics who, in their first days of editing, created numerous redirects to Howard Park Wines. For example, since the article discusses the joint venture Marchand & Burch Wines, SpringSummerAutumn created redirects from "Machand and burch wines", "Machand and burch", "Machand burch", "Marcharnd burch", "Marchand burch", "Marchand and burch wine", "Marchand wine", "Machandburch", "Marchburch", and even "Mandb". These are legitimate search strings, but not legitimate names.

Perhaps even more relevant to this discussion, SpringSummerAutumn also created redirects from search terms like "Biodynamic wine great southern", "Burgundian australian wine" and "Riesling western australia". These were problematic because various companies offer products related to these search terms, so it is completely inappropriate for Wikipedia to redirect them to a specific one. My question, then, is whether, rather than deleting the redirect from Riesling western australia, we should have converted it into a disambiguation page listing all the topics relevant to that search string? It seems to me that the old version of this policy would firmly answer "No", whereas B2c's new version offers a "Yes". Hesperian 02:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thank you very much. This is why I asked you to review. I now understand the problem and agree 100% that is not what it used to mean, nor is it what we now want it to mean. It seems like what we want is to mean something in between "title" and "search string". Let me think about it.

Anyway, do you think the problem is inherent in all/most of the edits I made, or only in the nutshell summary and maybe a couple of other spots? Without checking the text I'm expecting to find the latter to be true. Thanks very much. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

You could argue that when someone employs the search string "riesling western australia", they aren't specifically searching for Howard Park Wines. Possibly they doesn't know precisely what they are looking for; possibly they want multiple results; possibly they are after more general discussion on the overarching topic. This may be a solution to your dilemma: disambiguation pages list all of the topics that users of a search string are specifically looking for when they employ that string, as opposed to all relevant topics. I'm not saying I agree with that, but it's an idea. Hesperian 10:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

BTW, this problem was brought up above in the example of ""Kilgore prodigy pianist". -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:54, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

"Kilgore prodigy pianist" illustrates why Hesperian's suggestion is not water tight, because use of this search indicates a specific search for Cliburn. Below I've proposed the wording "reasonably likely to be an article title" as a hopefully more robust solution to this problem. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

If unexceptional surname holders are ambiguous, they should be listed on disambiguation pages regardless of the existence of an anthroponymy article (lame or full) -- the two pages would serve different functions. If unexceptional surname holders are not ambiguous, they should not factor in to the determination of the primary topic for an ambiguous title. So far, since the formation of the anthroponymy project, unexceptional name holders have not been considered ambiguous. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that surname-holders should be treated similarly to other borderline partial title matches. For example, a disambiguation page for Foo would typically include articles titled Foo Township or Foo University because these entities are frequently know as simply "Foo". In cases where there are many such entities sharing those names, there would be separate disambiguation pages for those terms that are linked to from the main Foo disambiguation page. I think it is much the same with surname holders -- they are ambiguous by conventions of English usage where people are commonly referenced by their surname -- but when the list of such surname holders grows unwieldy they can be split off into separate pages, which currently are perhaps misleading classified as anthroponymy pages. They might be more accurately described as surname set index pages. older ≠ wiser 15:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think I and most people agree with that approach, and from my experience I believe it's what generally happens. I don't think it's possible to divide people into two distinct groups - the Einsteins that can be referred to by their surnames alone, and the Frestons who can't - the great majority of notable people are in a big grey area in between, and it's reasonable to expect some readers (though not all, of course) to be searching for those people by surname alone. --Kotniski (talk) 16:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with treating name holders as other partial title matches, and including them when they are frequently known as simply "Foo" (this is the exceptional case of Elvis or Shakespeare) and not when they aren't (the usual case, as with Freston and Cliburn). It's easy enough to divide them into the two groups through reliable sources that refer to the people without using more than the ambiguous title (Einstein, Elvis, Shakespeare) and those that have to use another name to introduce them (Freston, Cliburn). And this is what is generally happening. The hypothetical readers who search for Van Cliburn by surname alone will be able to find him regardless. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:13, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, they will if we include him. What do you mean by "including...and not"? Are you still arguing that most biographical articles should not be listed on the dab pages for their surnames even if the list is short and unobtrusive, as you did at Cliburn? If so, then I don't think we yet agree at all on that point, nor have I seen any argument as to why your approach might conceivably help the reader. But if you mean listing them but under a separate section of the dab page ("People with the surname...") then that (except in the case of the very short dab pages, where subsections look silly) is fine by me. --Kotniski (talk) 16:20, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem I had with Cliburn was the errant conclusion that a topic that wasn't in danger of confusion (Van Cliburn) could be the primary topic for the title (Cliburn). Including on the disambiguation page a list of name holders not in need of disambiguation as a convenience is fine, as long as editors realize that it is a convenience, not a creation of ambiguity where none exists. Since there was confusion on that point, I tried to solve it (within the guidelines) by taking on the inconvenience of separating out the anthroponymy list to the surname list article. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:40, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

This is precisely the disagreement, I think. Surname holders ARE ambiguous by conventions of English language usage. There are some exceptional cases where the surname holder might be the primary topic for the term (e.g., Einstein), or might merit specific mention on the disambiguation page even though there is a separate page with list of surname-holders (e.g., Isaac Newton on Newton). In cases such as Cliburn, if over time evidence shows that a significant proportion of readers are going to the disambiguation page from the village article, that would be a strong indication that the village is not the primary topic. In a case like Freston, even leaving aside the likelihood of the two minor celebrities with the surname being the desired target of readers, I don't think the village article even begins to rate as primary topic -- Freston Tower, which appears to be the only thing notable about the place is arguably more a likely target for readers searching for "Freston" than the village and it is appropriate for the disambiguation page to be at Freston. older ≠ wiser 17:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)JHJ, by "errant conclusion that a topic that wasn't in danger of confusion (Van Cliburn) could be the primary topic for the title (Cliburn)", are you suggesting that if there were no other uses for "Cliburn", or the only other uses were other lesser known persons with that surname, that it would be inappropriate for Cliburn to redirect to Van Cliburn? --Born2cycle (talk) 17:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Bkronrad, yes that's the disagreement. If you are correct about the conventions of English language use, the conventions of Wikipedia currently disagree with it (which sometimes happens -- Wikipedia consensus is not English language consensus, for instance). I don't think that you are correct about the conventions of English language use, though, which is why persons that would not be in the Wikipedia disambiguation are introduced in English language sources with more than the surname, while person that are "Wikipedia ambiguous" are introduced without more than the ambiguous title. B2C, if there were no topic that could be titled "Cliburn", yes, "Cliburn" could redirect as a

• From a surname: This is a redirect from a person's surname. It is used because Wikipedia has only one article about a person with this surname, or because one individual is the most likely topic sought by this surname (other persons who share this name might be listed at an anthroponymy article or at the end of a disambiguation page).

(which is not a disambiguation redirect); this is similar to the case where if there is no topic for a title that could be a misspelling for another topic, it can be an

• From a misspelling: This is a redirect from a misspelling or typographical error. The correct form is given by the target of the redirect.
  • This redirect is made available to aid searches. Pages that use this link should be updated to link directly to the target without the use of a piped link that hides the correct details.
  • This template tags redirects with a subcategory of the Redirects from incorrect names category, so template {{R from incorrect name}} should not be used with this template.

, but if there is a correctly-spelled topic, then the title goes to it, even if the other spelling far outstrips it in hits, and we use {{distinguish}} to link them. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposed nutshell rewording

Great discussion, folks. The nutshell summary (now reverted to the version prior to my changes) currently states:

This page in a nutshell: When an article title could refer to several things, it is necessary to provide links or a disambiguation page so that readers typing in that title can quickly navigate to the article that interests them.

Since we "provide links or a disambiguation page" (and redirects) not only when an actual article title could refer to several things, but when a topic name or any reasonable conceivable title could refer to several things, I propose the following wording to convey this:

This page in a nutshell: When a name or description of a topic reasonably likely to be the title of an article may be used to refer to any of several topics covered in Wikipedia, it is necessary to provide redirects, links or a disambiguation page so that readers searching for that topic can quickly navigate to the article being sought.

I suggest this solves several problems without introducing the problems of the "search string" nomenclature I used before, and hopefully without introducing any other problems. I think we need to say "or description of a topic" because many of our articles titles are not names, but descriptions (the family of "List of ..." articles, is one obvious example, but there are myriads more).

I also contend this version reflects the consensus view about how surnames of unexceptional people and other partial title matches are handled: the hurdle that needs to be met is, "reasonably likely to be the title of an article".

Thoughts/comments? --Born2cycle (talk) 17:22, 10 December 2010 (UTC)