Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 21

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An entry was recently added to a disambiguation page I created, Nerf (disambiguation), referring to the fictional Star Wars creature by the name. While the creature does not have an article, it is mentioned in List of Star Wars creatures. I'm just wondering what the appropriate way to link to this would be, whether it should be treated the same as an entry with its own article or as a redlinked entry. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 06:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe this is covered by

MoS:DP#URL anchor notation —Duckbill

20:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Right. I've made an edit which I think brings it closer to

MoS:DP —Duckbill

20:20, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, good call. Thanks for the help. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 00:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering whether it might be a good idea to set up a notice board distinct from this guideline, so that this talk page could become a place only for discussing possible changes to the guideline, and a distinct page might be used as a place for people to come ask questions about specific cases. We do this with other issues, such as fair use and biographies of living people. - Jmabel | Talk 19:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

It strikes me as a spectacularly good idea. Chris the speller 20:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

There is an extensive discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) which in part depends on whether this paragraph

Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "

Go", what article would they most likely be expecting to view as a result? (For example, when someone looks up Joker

, would they find information on a comedian? On a card? On Batman's nemesis? On the hit song or album by The Steve Miller Band?) When there is no risk of confusion, do not disambiguate nor add a link to a disambiguation page.

does, or is intended to, rule out the use for all United States placenames of Pacific Grove, California, even when Pacific Grove would be unambiguous. (All United States articles use the state name, with a handful of exceptions for cities as well-known as Philadelphia or Los Angeles, which are primary usage.) If this is intended, this page should say so explicitly; if it is not intended, the paragraph above should be clarified, for example, by adding

Some Wikipedia articles follow systematic naming conventions; if there is one, it should normally be followed. For example, placenames in the United States usually have both town and state, like

WP:NC

Comments? Septentrionalis 21:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

As I commented there, I understand that the phrase on this page is not providing guidance with respect to how an article should be named. It is providing guidance on deciding whether two (or more) potentially ambiguous topics need to be disambiguated (and whether links to the topics should appear on a disambiguation page or in disambiguating notes at the top of an article. There are other naming conventions which prescribe including additional information in the title, even when it is not needed for disambiguation (e.g., conventions for royalty/peerage, for U.S. state highways, for naval vessels). older ≠ wiser 21:58, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI — I've started a discussion about potentially orphaning

The "otherpeople" template says: "for other persons named...". This is grammatically incorrect, the plural of "person" is "people". The template name is "otherpeople", not "otherpersons", so this could be an additional source of confusion. So the template should read: "for other people named..." --Salsa man 14:37, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary:

USAGE The words people and persons can both be used as the plural of person, but they are not used in exactly the same way. People is by far the more common of the two words and is used in most ordinary contexts:: a group of people ; | there were only about ten people ; | several thousand people have been rehoused. Persons, on the other hand, tends now to be restricted to official or formal contexts, as in | this vehicle is authorized to carry twenty persons ; | no persons admitted without a pass. In some contexts, persons, by pointing to the individual, may sound less friendly than people: | the number should not be disclosed to any unauthorized persons.

As for the name for the template, it's been previously debated see [1] and the template {{

Otherpersons}}. Thanks. --MZMcBride

15:20, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

"for other persons named..." sounds clunky to me. CarolGray 17:14, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Quote: Persons, on the other hand, tends now to be restricted to official or formal contexts, as in | this vehicle is authorized to carry twenty persons ; | no persons admitted without a pass. That is exactly my point - "persons" refers to anonymous "one or more people". Where the people referred to are named individuals, the plural "people" sounds better. You wouldn't walk into a room and say "you persons are all my friends". --Salsa man 18:01, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

First, by no means is persons "grammatically incorrect". Persons is the correct word when dealing with several independent individuals. In this case, the subjects of the articles in the disambiguation page may have no relation whatsoever; this is not some undifferentiated mass of people. I do not know if the New Oxford American Dictionary is specific to America or how accurate it is ("may sound less friendly"?), but the principal Oxford English Dictionary supports this usage ("In ordinary usage, the unmarked plural is expressed by the word people; persons emphasizes the plurality and individuality of the referent "), and you can see in the New American dictionary's primary examples that people is for groups in which the individual persons are related or are acting together, and the reason why persons is used more in official or formal contexts is because it is more precise. This is also, an encyclopedia, not a newspaper or a conversation on the street. —Centrx→talk • 00:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

There is an ongoing discussion at

No comments in five days... please stop by and give advice on this matter. Dekimasu 03:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Now that it has sophisticated enough syntax to handle pretty much all cases, I've redirected {{

We need to find another example. --Ishu 00:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

How about Mohawk hairstyle? A reader seeking Mohawk haircut and not finding it might try just "Mohawk". This example exists. Chris the speller 00:25, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I can't, at the moment, think of a suitable alternative. There are other examples in need of replacement or adjustment, as I mentioned here, more than a month ago:

• Cold Fusion
  no longer uses {{For}}, it has been changed to {{otheruses4}}
• Zürich no longer uses {{otheruses2}}, it now uses {{otherusesof}}
• Defense industry
  is not a disambiguation page.

Since there was no response to my previous post, I tentatively put forward the following:

For {{For}}, replace

Cold Fusion with Alexander the Great

which contains

{{For|the film of the same name|Alexander the Great (1956 film)}}.

For {{otheruses2}}, replace Zürich with Lace.

For double disambiguation, use Montgomery and Montgomery County.

In all cases, I propose adding an invisible comments to the example articles, asking editors not to make alterations without first posting on this discussion page. Any comments, or better suggestions, anyone? CarolGray 20:36, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, and it can't hurt, but there are probably plenty of editors who will still roll right through such a barricade. I have always favored synthetic examples, such as:

Blast-o-vator may refer to:

• Blast-o-vator drain cleaner
• Blast-o-vator (album), an album by Vanilla Dice
• Blast-o-vator on Wheels, a painting by Mackson Pollock that was originally titled simply "Blast-o-vator"
• An unsuccessful elevator powered by nitroglycerine

These synthetic examples are fairly immune to changes in Wikipedia and the real world, but some genius usually comes along and changes them to "real" examples, since those are "better". Of course, we could use that last sentence as an invisible comment with each synthetic example ;-) Chris the speller 00:48, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

For now, I've changed the example to

Delta rocket--at least until that is moved to Delta (rocket family). --Ishu

19:50, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I've now implemented my examples. I agree with

MoS:DAB, but when I was learning to use these templates, I found it helpful to look at real examples. CarolGray

18:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I recently tagged several specialized disambig templates for possible deletion, and a user suggested that it might be possible to modify {{disambig}} to allow an optional parameter that would incorporate information about the specialized nature of the disambig page. In response to this suggestion, for testing purposes, I have created User:R'n'B/Template:Disambig in my user namespace; see User:R'n'B/Sandbox for examples. The last example is to show what happens if an unsupported parameter is used. (All the templates currently are in my user-space but this would have to be changed if they were adopted for general use.)

The idea is to replace all specialized disambig templates, except {{disambig-cleanup}}, with references in the form {{disambig|topic}}. This is very much a work in progress, so if you think the implementation could be improved, please offer your suggestions. Please comment below. --Russ (talk) 22:30, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Could someone explain to me why we need anything other than vanilla {{disambig}}? If we were to have specialized disambigs, I think we should do it using parameters, like you propose. --Smack (talk) 03:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know why, but if you look at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 December 13 you'll see a bunch of people who think they need specialized disambiguation templates; although no one has given what strikes me (personally) as a persuasive reason yet. --Russ (talk) 11:57, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I really like the standardization inherent in Russ's idea. To start with, can we get agreement on the fundamental idea? I'm concerned the principle might get lost in a discussion about whether or not we need all the different versions. CarolGray 14:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Like I said there, many types of disambig are associated with particular projects with particular conventions, so having them specially categorized is useful in keeping an eye on pages related to particular project. Standardization shouldn't lose categorization, though. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I think we should leave the ship index pages for themselves; for some reason they like to consider themselves separate from disambiguation pages in all respects, so I think we'd be wise to leave them out of this. That aside, I don't see a need for any specialised templates at all (though evidently others do); if they must be, then like Smack says, I prefer the parameters way.

Are there any implications of using meta-templates on, for example, server workload that we need to consider? Neonumbers 21:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there are different disambiguation conventions in different fields, but I doubt that there should be. If WikiProject Foobars decides that foobar disambiguations should not conform to

MoS:DP, then as far as I'm concerned, either the WikiProject people or MoS:DP is wrong. --Smack (talk

) 02:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Is anything more happening on this? I think it's a really good idea and I'd like to see it implemented. CarolGray 08:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Not really. There wasn't a lot of interest expressed, except by you, and there didn't seem to be a consensus in favor of the change, so I haven't been working on it. The template parser functions had been giving me headaches, anyway, and I stopped worrying about how to make it work.  :) But if there's a consensus to change the templates, I'll pick it back up. --Russ (talk) 11:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd come across "country-specific" disambiguation schemes a few months ago while dealing with a page-move issue, and noticed that few of these, if any, have the rest of Wiki and foreigners (to the locale in question) in mind - the conventions adopted (state names, province names) are often only recognisable to people originating from or already familiar with the area in question, thus cannot be counted (worldwide) for their informative value; also, since the "higher administrative entity" used in such conventions have little informative value to foreigners (to the area in question), its disambiguation designation (purpose) should be obvious, but is not, as Wiki at present has varied disambiguation schemes, rendering such conventions useful only to those able to recognise them. Such segregative habits, in my opinion, are not in the interests of the international media that is Wiki, and it also should stand that all disambiguation should be easily recognisable as such to all. THEPROMENADER 23:56, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Examples, please? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:03, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm assuming he means something like Orleans, Massachusetts - if a user does not know where Massachusetts is, the disambiguation does not help them. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 02:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

That's partly right, but I wasn't very clear, was I? I will try to reformulate my argument in a better way later on today. In the meantime, if you'd like more understanding (especially around the debate on "city, State" and comma disambiguation in general), look here -> Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(settlements)#Style_used_in_local_paper. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 10:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, take two.

Wiki seems to have developed two forms of disambiguation - comma and parentheses. I think it would be useful if Wiki used one of these universally, as this would make disambiguation recognisable for what it is no matter the subject.

I target "subject" because some subjects, especially placenames, have adopted their own form of disambiguation that is a direct reflection of "naming" practices common to the article place's locale - "City, State" or "City, Province" - namely the US, Canada and the UK amongst others - and the justifications for this direct "porting" cited thus far are "common name", "style issues", "alternate name" and some even say that the act of adding a higher administrative entity is not disambiguation.

This would be fine and well were the readership of the same articles from the area where they are reading, but Wiki is supposed to be a media open to the world over. As stated above, readers from one country not knowing anything about the disambiguating term (where is "state"?) will indeed not be helped by the disambiguating term, but this is a minor point - what is most important is that it should be recognised as disambiguation.

In fact, let's drop all pretence of the disambiguating term being an "informative asset" altogether - we cannot count on a reader's previous knowledge of the subject or local customs, nor can we add a fully-explicative chain of administrative entities up to even the placename's country. Thus the disambiguation term's principle purpose should be pure disambiguation - that is to say: making sure that the article's title does not conflict with other articles with the same subject name - and we leave further explanation to the DAB page and the article itself, where, for any disambiguated term, an explanation will appear anyway.

This said, we can return to the "single form of disambiguation" question: if a disambiguating term's principle role is to disambiguate, then there's no reason that it should not be easily recognised for what it is - disambiguation. It remains to decide which method is in most use for what purpose (comma for titles, proper names; parentheses for river tributaries, etc.) choose one, and (re)organise articles around this theme.

For sure this is not a major problem, but I think the uniformity would help Wiki as a media; the added clarity would help the reader no matter his origins or knowledge. Any thoughts on this? THEPROMENADER 23:07, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a spillover of a very long discussion at

Portland (Oregon), instead of Portland, Oregon. It seems to me that we have never had a single disambiguation convention, Wikipedia wide; and that we have, as this guideline now says, avoided parentheses whenever any other natural means of providing unambiguous names (like check and cheque) has been available; but other comments are welcome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson

01:29, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Again the familiar arguments in favour of one existing convention. I proposed to take this discussion out of one little corner if you will, to the perspective of nation-less, habit-less reader looking at any article in Wiki. THEPROMENADER 09:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this proposal intended only for the English language Wikipedia, or is it to be truly Wiki-wide? --Ishu 17:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, English Wiki. Sorry for the imprecision. THEPROMENADER 09:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem here is assuming that

WP:UCN. It doesn't matter that people unfamiliar with the area would be unfamiliar with that style. I can hit Random Article a few times and I find Pablo de Sarasate. Looking at that title by itself, I have no idea who or even what that is. My lack of familiarity with the subject is no reason to rename that article Pablo de Sarasate (Spanish violinist). –  Anþony  talk 

19:30, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a pretty large interpretation of

WP:UCN

- people here are disambiguating with a term that is not the article subject's own name, and the ensemble cannot be considered a name in itself - but this is an argument used often to the end of justifying an existing convention.

The violinist example is a good example, and I agree, but the incoherence I am speaking about is a mix of unfamiliar term + non-parenthetical (or non-wiki standard) disambiguation, and this in comparison with other article subjects that use the same method to other purposes that are not disambiguation. THEPROMENADER 10:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps another example would be the use of

Vicente Fox Quesada rather than Vicente Fox (Mexican president), preferring the alternate name versus parenthetical disambiguation. --Ishu

19:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, it's still his own name. Yet when to disambiguate has nothing to do with the method of disambiguation used- In a nutshell, what I am proposing is a single, universally-identifiable disambiguation method and an end to "local naming habits locals best understand" for a method that treats all countries in the same way, or from a point of view that has nothing to do with a reader's (yet assumes) ignorance. THEPROMENADER 10:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

My understanding of the guideline is that when disambiguation is used, it should result in an unambiguous article name. Thus, the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic is not at Titanic (film) but Titanic (1997 film) because there are two other films also named Titanic, even though the 1997 version is undoubtably the most prominent.

Lost (TV series) faces a similar ambiguity problem, because there was also a short-lived reality TV series of the same name, Lost (2001 TV series). Lost (TV series) is therefore ambiguous, but editors there argue that because the current series is more prominent than the 2001 series, Lost (TV series) needs not be disambiguated further. They invoke the primary topic provision of this guideline, but my reading of that provision only applies to "the main article", i.e. without any disambiguation.

The rationale behind the primary topic seems to be when a user searches for an ambiguous term, eg "Rome", they are almost certainly looking for the city in Italy, so that article should be presented. However, no one is likely to search for the term with disambiguation as "Lost (TV series)", so it's not important which series is meant.

Am I reading the primary topic provision correctly? In general, I think that an disambiguated name should be, well, disambiguated, otherwise what's the point? Thoughts? –  Anþony  talk  20:04, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

For reference, here's the guideline:

When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase, much more used than any other (this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings), then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top. Where there is no such clearly dominant usage there is no primary topic page.

I know nothing of the Lost debate, but I think it's fair to claim that the current TV show is the "primary meaning" of Lost (TV series) as described in the guideline. It's definitely true that few people remember the 2001 series. But it's debatable whether Lost (TV series) is a meaningful "common name." --Ishu 20:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

(after ec) By and large you (an(untypeable character)ony) are correct. Problem is that it is confusing to disambiguate a multi-year television series by year. So some other disambiguation strategy would be advisable, though I've steered clear of the morass at the TV naming conventions debacle. In this particular case, where one series is so overwhelmingly better known than the other, I really don't see that there is a problem to leave the current series at Lost (TV series) with a disambiguating hatnote at the top of that page directing the curious or misdirected to the other series. Whether Lost (2001 TV series) is the best name for that other article is another matter. It might be best to disambiguate be genre, e.g., Lost (TV reality game show) or something similar. If in some years time the current series fades into similar obscurity, that name could perhaps be changed to something like Lost (TV drama show). older ≠ wiser 20:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Anþony, I would say you're reading the guideline correctly, though as older ≠ wiser says, we'd be hard-pressed to pick a year for the current series. Personally, I'd be inclined to disambiguate the genre too, because TV series generally don't stick to one year, unlike films. But for this particular instance, I wouldn't worry about it too much—no great deal of harm is done, because the disambiguation procedure's just a hatnote straight to the other article anyway. It works well enough. Neonumbers 22:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I've already chimed in at

Talk:Lost (TV series), but I'd like to thank the editors here for their opinions. The fact that a single year is not a particularly clear disambiguator for an ongoing television series is well taken. I think that the difference in notability between the current Lost and the short-lived reality TV program is sufficient that the hatnote should suffice for disambiguation, but I agree with Bkonrad (older ≠ wiser) that if we were to disambiguate this further, genre would be a more useful distinction than year. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs

) 23:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

*Yes, I'm aware that the status of Flemish as a separate language is controversial, and I believe it's more accurate to describe it as a dialect, but it's still a fairly distinct linguistic entity, analogous to, say, Scottish and deserves the same disambiguation as English, Chinese or Scanian.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

What is the correct way to disambiguate here? Soil can also mean the band

Your interpretation is correct. Stick the hatnote link to

SOiL back into the article Soil and, after checking the What links here page, put Soil (disambiguation) up for deletion (can't remember which deletion process you use for this one). Neonumbers

10:14, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, done both.

exolon

16:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

RE : "put

exolon

02:30, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the info. Neonumbers 03:20, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I ran into the same thing with

Is there a reason why the disambig templates look like regular text now? Not indented nor italicised like they used to be? They look rather nondescript and they look like they're the first sentence in the article now. --MPD (T / C) 19:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

You need to purge your cache. The disambiguation templates have been modified to used CSS styles more effectively rather than relying on in-line wiki markup. older ≠ wiser 19:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. --MPD (T / C) 20:34, 30 December 2006 (UTC)