Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 56

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There are two scholars on Wikipedia named

Well,

Eric Stowe Higgs, and have Eric S. Higgs be a (short) disambiguation page. Either that or redir it to E. Stowe's page, and use {{Redirect|Eric S. Higgs|the archaeologist|Eric Sideny Higgs}} there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢

 😼  22:12, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

We also have the odd case of Iain Banks, who wrote mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. Fortunately, he seems to be unambiguous. Certes (talk) 23:20, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

His university profile page does not use his middle name or initial. Readers will be much better served by the parenthetical disambiguatio . The latest title, Eric S. Higgs is worse than the previous one as it does not distinguish him from the ogher man. PamD 22:11, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Agree on the last point, but his university profile isn't particularly dispositive, compared to his published journal material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:14, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

• I think that it is important to look at the purpose of disambiguation, namely to inform the user which "Eric Higgs" or "John Doe" he is looking for. So long at the
  Eric Stowe Higgs and have Eric S. Higgs point to the Eric Higgs DAB page.--Bejnar (talk
  ) 22:42, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

  My experience is that a clear parenthetical is more useful than a rarely used middle initial, as at a glance it will point you to the subject you're interested in. And in this case, as you mentioned, the S. initial doesn't disambiguate. I have no issues moving this page to

  Eric Stowe Higgs, but only if "Stowe" is used enough that it's a useful disambiguator, if it's trivial I'd just prefer a parenthetical disambiguator unless policy or consensus says otherwise. Ortizesp (talk

  ) 02:41, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

  My understanding is that both the archaeologist (Eric Sidney Higgs) and the ecological philosopher (Eric Stowe Higgs) publish with and without the middle initial. I realize you disagree, but in my mind this is the natural, unambiguous, form of disambiguation, except as editors, we use the full middle name to make this explicit. Because this uses less characters and doesn't require a parenthetical, it is more efficient, easier to link (no pipes or spaces needed) and better for readers and editors. There's also the limitations of precision when we use a parenthetical dab. Calling him an "environmental scholar" doesn't specify the nuances of ecology and philosophy, his specialties. Simply referring to him as "Eric Stowe Higgs" is ideal as it avoids the limitations of the parenthetical. On the other hand, I support the use of a parenthetical when we have two people (or things) with identical names. Since they have different middle names, no parenthetical is needed. That's my take. Viriditas (talk) 22:23, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

  Is your contention that, if "Eric S. Higgs" is a natural name to use for the Canadian, then "Eric Stowe Higgs" must also be one? And so that calling the article "Eric Stowe Higgs" follows the guidelines?

  WP:NATURAL

  is less prescriptive, but still expects a name "that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources". My understanding of what has been said here is that "Eric Stowe Higgs" meets neither version of the test.

  Aoeuidhtns (talk) 23:40, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

• I think if the middle name or middle initial is inconsistently used in reliable sources (or is itself ambiguous) then parenthetical disambiguation is clearer. However, many 18th and 19th century folks (as well as some more recent ones) were commonly known by their full name. older ≠ wiser 11:19, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

  There's also the strange phenomenon in the US (that nobody has ever explained), where a person accused of or convicted of a major crime suddenly has their middle name permanently added to their title. Some famous examples include Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, and John Wayne Gacy, although there are many others. Viriditas (talk) 22:07, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

  250 of 1,141 American male criminals and 20 of 114 American female criminals. It's probably from having their full name as used in a police statement or court charge reported in the media, that being the first time most people hear of the accused and the name they remember. Certes (talk) 22:30, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

  That, and just being more specific in a country with a large population and lots of people with coinciding first/last name pairs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:37, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

• Can someone help me understand why we have vastly different approaches here? For example, take a look at Eric Higgs and Hans Beimler. The page on Beimler seems to reflect the position of Ortizesp and others here. Viriditas (talk) 23:27, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

A discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles regarding the word "marque" and a proposal to replace it with "car brand" may be of interest to watchers of this page and additional input is welcome to generate consensus. Thank you. Andra Febrian (talk) 07:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

There are two discussions at the foot of Wikipedia talk:Content assessment on problems resulting from the fact that Disambiguation is no longer accepted as a class for article assessment. Over the past two or three days, I have come across many new "unassessed" examples in wikiprojects including WP Women, WP Italy, WP Norway and WP Sweden. I have been encouraged to use Class=list in the banner shell rather than Class=Disambig which therefore needs to be deleted in the individually listed wikiproject assessments to avoid conflicts. Those associated with this project might like to comment.--Ipigott (talk) 15:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I recently added the following at Poling:

• Poling, a method of moving small watercraft using a Setting pole

There are numerous other usages of the term 'Poling' (which all seem valid, afaict) and they all start off with the term '"Poling" linked to an article (maybe Poling piped to "Shunting" is not correct?). Only my recent addition does not link the title word, and I wondered if that is okay. I think it should be on this page somehow, because when I think of "poling", boat movement is the first thing I think of; and conversely, when I think of that type of boat locomotion, I don't know any other term for it other than "poling". Is my addition correctly formatted? Mathglot (talk) 23:36, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I think that's what I would have done (except "setting pole" not "Setting pole" since it's not a proper name). In another thread above, someone has argued that every DAB entry should start with a link, but there doesn't seem much appetite for that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

It has occurred to me that we should basically have a rule that where we have two relatively short disambiguation pages (or a pairing where one is very short) differing only by a phonetic spelling variation of a surname, like Pedro Gonzalez and Pedro Gonzales, we should merge these. BD2412 T 18:16, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

• No, we shouldn't have a rule like that.
• It would be reasonable to include both Pedro Gonzales in the Pedro Gonzalez DAB page because that wouldn't make it significantly longer. They should, at least, link to the other DAB page.--Jahalive (talk) 19:38, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Three pages use "(Chetnik)" as a disambiguator (see

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)#Follow-up RfC on TV season article titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:54, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (lists)#Fixing disambiguation confusion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:47, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Content assessment#Request for comment — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:07, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

This is on the distinction between disambiguation pages and set-index articles and whether we should still have the latter (in case anyone's wondering).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:48, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I've done a decades-long poor man's research into primary topics by usage in the area of anthroponymy at "Tito", and I've made another update to at Talk:Tito (disambiguation)#followup to move. We now have data from both before and after we changed the navigation layout.

So it's a topic where there's by all accounts a rather clear primary topic by long-term significance, as well as a reasonably clear one by our conventional understanding of usage. Yet we now have pretty conclusive proof that the inherent ambiguity of human given names and surnames is measurable in our statistics even when in such a clear minority. --Joy (talk) 18:16, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Some anonymous user recently pointed me to a discussion from 2018 in [1]. Now, obviously I could just disregard this is some sort of block evasion and egregious

WP:WRAPPERs merely extend the functionality of existing templates and so are not new in any meaningful sense. 2601:5CC:8300:A7F0:2D98:B108:5F54:7DA0 (talk

) 21:32, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I've replied over there, what was written there was nonsensical. If you actually want to contribute something useful, this is a pretty bad start. --Joy (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:RFC, in the meantime not liking community consensus does not give anyone the right to violate it. 2601:5CC:8300:A7F0:2D98:B108:5F54:7DA0 (talk

) 21:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Come on now. This went through

anbl}} and nobody even noticed, yet now you're making it sound like some sort of a gross violation of consensus. That is just silly. --Joy (talk

) 22:13, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

It is a violation of community consensus. What is silly is bringing up the RFD, where the only participant who even mentioned the template was you. 2601:5CC:8300:A7F0:F4CC:EB10:74C:7D86 (talk) 22:57, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

CycloneYoris explicitly said use that draft after I mentioned it. I guess I'm just going to have to ignore further trolling. --Joy (talk) 09:21, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:RFC. You are not required to like current consensus, but you should abide by it until it is overturned through another community discussion. 2601:5CC:8300:A7F0:98C5:A273:98F2:4560 (talk

) 21:40, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@

anl}} of which it's a variation, but looking at that led me to a 2018 discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 50#Use of annotated links which comes down pretty firmly against the use of such templated annotations in dab pages. One main concern was that if the templates were used the content of the dab page could then be altered, invisibly to page watchers of the dab page. PamD

21:45, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@PamD that is technically true, but that goes for all other uses of templates in Wikipedia. Why is this so different, what sort of extra abuse are we expecting here? That someone would edit short description templates on the destination articles with the intent of having something abusive shown in their respective lines in the indices of people? And that this would go unnoticed in the destination article, but be shown in the list of biographies to a much larger audience? Or that someone would do it on articles that don't have that tag, so to track the history one has to go to Wikidata?

All this seems like a lot of very contrived scenarios, because our lists of people are hardly the mecca for vandals, we've been observing a number of navigation issues related to them, i.e. they get fewer eyeballs than expected, so a high potential for vandalism is barely on anyone's radar AFAICT. Besides, I was once told the SDs render up front on the articles themselves in the mobile app, and that they're numbered in the millions already (which was cited as the reason why we couldn't change the default order of templates). Why would we be unconcerned with the existing anti-abuse mechanisms of that, but concerned with this rather indirect potential of abuse? --Joy (talk) 22:09, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@

WP:MOSDAB. I've now added the dates to both the Sharafutdinovs' SDs, having been alerted to the fact that they were missing. PamD

08:42, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, so that's all I'm saying - if we can use it to format the list entry, we should be free to use it without the risk of getting insta-reverted. If it doesn't work, don't do it / get it reverted. --Joy (talk) 09:58, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

(ec)In addition to what PamD mentions, short descriptions are sometimes written in a way that can read oddly when included in a disambiguation list (i.e., (inconsistent with other entries or becomes an unusual grammatical contruct). I can't recall examples off the top of my head. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages#Images and templates also advises against transcluding templates, which is why ship name templates aren't used. As I recall at least part of the reasoning was to avoid introducing unnecessary complexity to the dab pages. Some of the templates are not exactly intuitive to use (e.g., the hopelessly confusing parameters for the hatnote templates). The documentation for the new template is spartan at present and based on what is there now, it is not what I'd call intuitive to use. older ≠ wiser 22:18, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Ship templates aren't used in set indices? I thought I saw a few just recently... --Joy (talk) 22:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Set index anrticles are not expected to ^follow^ (added later) the MOS for disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 00:21, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, so the disambiguation list formatting for biographies, where anbl is useful, is effectively the same. The main reason I brought this up here is because the anonymous invoked the D guideline, even if the page was obviously anthroponymy only; this natural overlap was also mentioned in that recent RFC at Wikipedia talk:Content assessment. I suppose we should just go ahead and clarify these concepts in the guideline text in an effort to dissuade pointless edit-warring. --Joy (talk) 10:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Or ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy to clarify guidance for surname pages. My main concern is that the template is quite confusing to use and is thus more prone to errors that are easily avoided by not using the template. What is actually gained by using the template? For the time being at least, I don't see any illumination forthcoming from the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Content assessment. older ≠ wiser 13:22, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, it's just so much easier for the editor. When composing a list from scratch, you just have to do the composition -- recognize the ambiguity, exclude partial title matches, etc -- and not worry about the captions (well, at least for the large majority of cases I tried so far). --Joy (talk) 20:41, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

The rules of

This rule does not work well, however, for historical events with the same name. For example, "Gaza War" -- there are like four or five of them. Even if one is the primary, they should all have a date, or readers will be confused. Typically, for historical events with the same name, readers are going to know that and they'll be looking for one with a specific date. I recently wrote a very long vote about this at Israel-Hamas war, where the year disambiguator was recently dropped. Srnec referenced my vote in another discussion at Talk:Siege of Baghdad, where the date disambiguator was also just dropped.

This is a hole in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It probably applies to other areas besides historical events with the same name. For example, if there is an album and a song with the same name, they should probably always be disambiguated, even if one is primary. If there is a book and a movie with the same name. Nobody is likely to confuse the book George Washington with the person, but people are likely to confuse a book with a movie of the same name, or multiple historical events with the same name that took place at different times (as another example, Sack of Rome).

I think PRIMARYTOPIC should be changed to account for "cross-domain" (for lack of a better term) primary topics (don't disambiguate), v. "within-domain" primary topics (disambiguate). Levivich (talk) 17:13, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Good work is currently going on at Wikipedia:Partially disambiguated page names analysing cases such as Thriller (album) which share their titles with other albums, etc. These are a different species from Gaza War etc. but are closely related. Certes (talk) 18:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree, closely related. Same principle at play at Talk:30 (album)/Archive 1#Requested move 22 December 2023, for example. Levivich (talk) 18:30, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

However, I think the format of the title makes a difference. Readers seeing a title Foo (bar) may well assume that there are other things called Foo, but none of them is a bar, because a qualifier normally disambiguates completely. That's not the case for a natural title such as

Great War or Gulf War. I'm not convinced that we should apply a higher standard of primality here just because the alternative meanings are also wars. Certes (talk

) 19:46, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

• I don't especially agree with this. If one usage is the
  Israel-Hamas war, is held to be primary. So I would have agreed with you at Talk:Siege of Baghdad, but I'm not sure bringing "domains" in helps the argument. Johnbod (talk
  ) 19:03, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
• I agree with Johnbod. If a topic is in fact primary topic, there is no reason to treat it differently based on what type of a thing it is. older ≠ wiser 20:34, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I think PRIMARYTOPIC still applies to historical events, but perhaps with the proviso (which may apply to other situations as well) that we should be wary of declaring one topic to be the primary one based on which one happens to be current. Is the current war in Gaza THE Gaza War? Perhaps we shouldn't find that to be the case until a few years after, when, in retrospect, it may still be referred to as THE Gaza War, or maybe it will be seen as just one Gaza war among several. Largoplazo (talk) 20:55, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I would think that a title like Gaza War should resolve to an article with a title like, List of wars in Gaza, or for something more in depth, History of military conflicts in Gaza. BD2412 T 20:57, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't, unless you want to create such a page. One would have to add in the bunch at Battle of Gaza, going back to 312 BC. But the disam page at Gaza War is effectively the same. What would be the point of ramming wars at totally different periods together? We don't have Wars involving the English Channel etc. Johnbod (talk) 21:32, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Well then, History of post-World War II military conflicts in Gaza. BD2412 T 23:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

re Largoplazo, yes, I think the ongoing discussions as to WHAT to call the article indicates there is a deep question as to whether it is the primary topic -- at least in terms of long-term significance. It is nearly always the case that very high-profile current events will at least temporarily be the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 21:40, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

• I don't see any hole in
  mutual
  22:54, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

  "Frustrated" is such an odd choice of word. I just reread what I wrote and I'm scratching my head wondering where anyone sees frustration in what I wrote. I think the rule should be modified to make it better, I think the application of the rule has led to some "wrong" results, but I'm not frustrated about it. I perceive a weakness and I'm suggesting a way to strengthen the policy, but it's not frustrating or in any way emotional; my opinion is based in logic not emotion. I understand if you don't agree with my logic but I assure you I am not frustrated or otherwise feeling any kind of negative emotions about article titles. Levivich (talk) 02:50, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

@Levivich You say For example, if there is an album and a song with the same name, they should probably always be disambiguated, even if one is primary. If there is a book and a movie with the same name. You seem to be saying that everyone who wants either the book The Outrun or the film The Outrun (film) should land instead on a dab page, to then choose between them, the book being at The Outrun (book), so that everyone has one more click to make, rather than the current position where those who want the book get there immediately, those who want the film see a nice helpful hatnote and make one more click. I don't think your proposal benefits the reader. PamD 23:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

@PamD: That's not what I'm saying, and it's not what I wrote. I didn't write anything about dab pages. I'm talking about article titles. In your example--I'm not familiar with Outrun but assuming the book is primary and not the film--I'd make The Outrun a redirect to The Outrun (book), and if a dab page is needed, have it at The Outrun (disambiguation). I certainly agree "one more click" would not be an improvement. But adding "book" to the title of The Outrun would be an improvement, IMO. Levivich (talk) 02:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

In that case it appears that the objection here is to the idea of what is normally called "unnecessary disambiguation" (a corollary of

WP:MALPLACED), rather than to the rules about primary topics. I agree with the other comments above that historical events are fully covered under the current rules under the ideas of frequency of usage and historical significance. Dekimasuよ!

04:34, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that's the objection here because I don't understand what it means. But I would agree that in some cases (like years of some historical events), keeping the disambiguator in the name of the primary topic can be helpful even if not necessary, and so the dab for a primary should not always be removed. Or something like that. Which could be summed up as "unnecessary disambiguators may still be helpful." PTOPIC doesn't say otherwise AFAICS, but I think it'd be improved by stating this explicitly, because even though PTOPIC doesn't require the removal of a dab, in practice it seems like many editors apply it as if it does, e.g. the disucssion is, "it's a PTOPIC, therefore no dab, end of story." Levivich (talk) 05:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, that would presumably conflict with

WP:AT. Dekimasuよ!

05:13, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

(Why are you guessing what my objection is? I'm trying to tell you what my "objection" is, which is not an objection, it's an idea for improving this page.)

Maybe it'll help if I give another example besides the two above about events. A classic example is

Harry Potter (TV series), or Harry Potter (character). Those other three titles have dabs so I don't have the confusion, but the primary one doesn't.

The primary article does say, right at the top, "This article is about the novel series," which is what clears up that confusion. But it'd be even easier if it said it in the title, particularly in lists of article titles. E.g., if you type "Harry Potter" into the search form, the short desc does help you find the one about the book series, but still I think it'd be easier if it was just called "Harry Potter (book series)" (or "novel series" or "literature series," both phrases are used elsewhere).

Aside from current events and historical events, these are two other examples of where I'd find unnecessary dabs useful, and I wish PTOPIC would say that it's ok to keep helpful but unnecessary dabs (subject of course to consensus that they're helpful for any a particular article). Levivich (talk

) 05:22, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

@Levivich Are you saying that as soon as an article was written for the film,The Outrun, the article on the book (at the undisambiguated title) should have been moved to the disambiguated title? PamD 06:44, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

No, not as soon as and not necessarily ever. I'm saying this page should tell editors they can decide to do that (have a dab in a primary title) if they think it's helpful. But not automatically or in every case. (I'm not familiar enough with that particular work to know if it's 'helpful' in that case.) Levivich (talk) 06:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

It's helpful if and only if the film is almost as likely as the book to be the topic a reader is seeking when they look for "The Outrun". That's already covered by

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I'm a big fan of dabs, but by putting one at the base name here we'd be adding one more step for readers seeking the book without shortening the path for the (presumably much smaller) number of readers seeking the film. Certes (talk

) 10:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

In what way does adding a dab to a primary add one more step for readers? Levivich (talk) 17:05, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm comparing two options for handling a case which I think matches what we're talking about, specifically where we have two Foo Wars in 1234 and 1987, of which 1987 is the more notable and passes

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Current practice is to call the 1987 article Foo War with a hatnote to Foo War (1234). What I think you are suggesting is to move the PT to Foo War (1987) and write a dab called Foo War. This change has little effect on the minority of readers interested in the 1234 war, who now click on a dab entry rather than a hatnote. However, it hampers the majority who seek the 1987 war, who now have to click on a dab entry rather than being presented with their desired topic immediately. If I've misunderstood, please explain how my statement differs from your proposal. Certes (talk

) 17:37, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

That's not what I'm suggesting. That's what Pam thought I was suggesting, too, and I cleared that up with Pam just above.

"write a dab called Foo War" is not anything I said in my OP I don't get why people think this is something I'm suggesting :-P

Foo War (1987) would be the name of the article, Foo War can be a redirect to Foo War (1987), not a dab page, and no extra click. If a dab page were needed, it would be at Foo War (disambiguation). (This is all assuming Foo War (1987) is the primary.)

And to repeat myself, all I'm suggesting is that PTOPIC should mention that it's OK for editors to come to consensus to do this if they think it's worth doing on a particular article. Not that this should be done automatically or in every case. Nor do I think the primary topic should be turned into a dab, or that any extra clicks should be created at all. Nor do I object to or want to repeal any other part of any policy. I'm just saying ... and all I'm saying ... is we should acknowledge that sometimes it makes sense to have a dab in the title of a primary topic (and I am suggesting nothing more). Levivich (talk) 17:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

What you are describing is pre-disambiguating the article titles, which in several earlier discussions has usually been soundly rejected. Of course, consensus can change, but if you are only looking for singular exceptions,

update this guideline to address rare exceptions. older ≠ wiser

18:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm learning a lot of new terms like "unnecessary disambiguation" and "pre-disambiguation" :-) Yeah, this can be done now without any changes to any policies or guidelines. I don't think it's even WP:IAR because there is no rule against it. Neither WP:DAB nor WP:AT nor anything else I'm aware of prohibits dabs on primaries, or says all primaries must have dabs removed. So I don't really see it as an "exception" to any rule. But it is certainly rare. The reason to update this guideline would be so editors know it's an option. Levivich (talk) 19:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

@Levivich So your intended outcome is this, in some cases:

• The article at title "ABC" is agreed to be the primary topic but you believe it would help the reader to put it at title "ABC (onething)"
• There would be a redirect from "ABC" to "ABC (onething)"
• At "ABC (onething)" there would be a hatnote directing readers to "ABC (otherthing)" (or perhaps to "ABC (disambiguation)".

A problem is that any editor familiar with disambiguation will see this, spot an apparent problem, and move "ABC (onething)" to "ABC" because it's the primary topic. Or they will move the disambiguation page to "ABC" because all the titles have been disambiguated, so it looks as if someone has already decided that none of them is the primary topic. Giving an article a disambiguated title is, in most cases, an indication of the fact that the person naming it does not think it is the primary topic.

So if you IAR to give the primary topic a disambiguated title, you need a lot of annotation (hidden comment plus talkpage note, perhaps?) to explain your reasoning to the helpful editor who comes across the article and tries to tidy things up according to usual practice, so that "corrections" don't get made and reverted without further discussion, wasting editors' time.

Is all this really needed, given that the short description and the lead sentence will both make quite clear which war, or which format of the creative work, the article is about? PamD 19:40, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

@PamD: So your intended outcome is this... Yes, exactly.

A problem is that any editor familiar with disambiguation will see this, spot an apparent problem, and move... Yes, unless we add a sentence to

WP:PTOPIC

that says "it's OK for a PTOPIC to have a dab if editors decide so by consensus" or "dabs on primary titles are not prohibited" or some kind of words to that effect.

I agree that IARing is difficult for the reasons you point out. This is exactly why I think PTOPIC should be explicit in saying "this is OK to do sometimes" or "there is no rule prohibiting this" or some kind of words to that effect (and I mean like something short, one sentence). Levivich (talk) 19:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. Continuing the example above, I think we agree that typing Foo War should lead the reader to the article on the 1987 war, and it's perfectly reasonable for Foo War (1987) to lead there too. So, the question is whether we title the article Foo War and have Foo War (1987) redirect there, or vice versa. We normally do the former per

WP:COMMONNAME. Is there a convention amongst historians to refer to wars with their years even when the unadorned title would obviously mean that year's war? Certes (talk

) 19:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate everyone taking the time to engage in this discussion. I don't think there is such a convention among historians for wars generally. I don't believe there is any kind of categorical rule. But I do think there are some specific instances where historians do commonly include the year of an event even if the event is what we'd call "primary," eg 1066 Battle of Hastings and 410 Sack of Rome. I suppose one might say that for any historical event, adding the year to the title would help orient the reader, but I'm still not in favor of categorical rules. Which is to say, even if historians had such a convention, I'm not sure Wikipedia should necessarily follow it (common name, after all, is not the be-all and end-all of article titling), but I think we should maintain flexibility on the issue (i.e., not automatically remove all dabs from all primary titles). Levivich (talk) 20:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I've always just called it the Battle of Hastings, but then I'm not aware of any other notable conflicts there. "Battle of Hastings, 1066" rolls off the tongue but I think that's a sentence fragment rather than a title. I agree with the current title of Sack of Rome (410), because it doesn't seem primary over the other sackings. Certes (talk) 20:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Of the 8 Sack of Rome events listed, Sack of Rome (1527) is pretty clearly primary, at least for art historians. Johnbod (talk) 01:44, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

We had a move request last year for "Rachel" that relates to ambiguity. In

Does anyone see a big problem with running this kind of an experiment? Should the consensus for it be examined locally at Talk:Rachel, with a