Talk:Pharos (disambiguation)

Requested move 31 October 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 08:39, 9 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pharos → Pharos (disambiguation) – The page Pharos needs to be a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to the primary topic Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the dab page needs to be at Pharos (disambiguation). – — Gorthian (talk) 16:50, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is a technical request (permalink) contested by In ictu oculi. — Andy W. (talk) 17:48, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Needs a discussion. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:25, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence:

The original Pharos was the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria on the island of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The word pharos has now come to mean lighthouse in many languages. All the other titles listed on this dab page refer back to the original (except for the island of Hvar, which was also named by the ancient Greeks). The guidance at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says, "A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term. I submit that this is true for Pharos.
The other criterion for determining a primary topic is usage: "A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. Comparing several of the articles over more than a year, it's clear that the ancient lighthouse gets the lion's share of page views. (I chose the most-viewed articles from those on the dab page, so this is an honest assessment. The one caveat is that the album by Childish Gambino has been out for only a few months.) I submit that the criterion for usage is satisfied.

— Gorthian (talk) 18:52, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Difficult - yes to English speakers when we use the Greek term "Pharos" it tends to suggest one very famous pharos in the ancient world. and "the Pharos" would certainly mean the lighthouse of Alexandria. But just "pharos" on its own? There were other lighthouses in the ancient world: "The Colossus of Rhodes served likewise as a Pharos or beacon." unquote. But it's probably the pop uses which would create ongoing mislinks if we move this. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:47, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. By all evidence, this is the clear primary topic.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:18, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This will simplify a lot of links. In English, the other lighthouses in the ancient world are usually called "lighthouse" indeed. As we see, the description of the Colossus adds the term beacon, because Pharos alone would result unclear and misleading. The addition is redundant, and for stylistic reasons I propose to simplify it writing "The Colossus of Rhodes served likewise as a beacon." or "The Colossus of Rhodes served also as a lighthouse."--Hyphantes (talk) 13:28, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

readership statistics

Monthly page view statistics for the titles Pharos and Pharos (disambiguation) can help illustrate reader navigation.

We can see that the title "Pharos" received thousands of views before it was short-circuited. Afterwards, a lot of the traffic incoming to Pharos seemed to map to traffic to Pharos (disambiguation), indicating it's possible that a substantial portion of those readers are clicking the hatnote. At the same time, often times people arrive at Wikipedia pages not through our internal navigation, but through search engines, so we can't be certain.

More recently, this was the pattern:

Identified traffic Pharos and Pharos (disambiguation) (last 6 months)

2024-01: 316 Pharos / 255 Pharos (disambiguation)
2024-02: 580 / 884
2024-03: 447 / 510
2024-04: 343 / 380
2024-05: 379 / 391
2024-06: 358 / 316

Looks like there was a spike of some sort in February this year, which subsided by April, though it seems to still be somewhat recognizable even in June. During this time, the traffic for Pharos doubled or tripled, and it's not clear that they were looking for the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

These days we also have the meta:Research:Wikipedia clickstream that can help us try to understand reader navigation better. Here's a snapshot of that data for the same time period:

Identified clickstreams at Pharos towards ambiguous topics (last 6 months)

2024-01:

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria -> Pharos_(disambiguation) link 108

compared to 316 that's ~34%

2024-02:

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria -> Pharos_(disambiguation) link 268

compared to 580 that's ~46%

2024-03:

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria -> Pharos_(disambiguation) link 165

compared to 447 that's ~37%

2024-04:

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria -> Pharos_(disambiguation) other 116

compared to 343 that's ~34%

2024-05:

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria -> Pharos_(disambiguation) link 113

compared to 379 that's ~30%

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria Pharos_(crater) link 42

compared to 379 that's ~11%

2024-06:

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria -> Pharos_(disambiguation) link 106

compared to 358 that's ~30%

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria Pharos_(crater) link 53

compared to 348 that's ~15%

We can also have a look at what happened to traffic that arrived at the disambiguation page - however it got there - and where the readers went next:

Identified clickstreams at Pharos (disambiguation) (last 6 months)

2024-01:

Lighthouse_of_Alexandria Pharos_(disambiguation) link 108
other-search Pharos_(disambiguation) external 79
other-empty Pharos_(disambiguation) external 38

Pharos_(disambiguation) Lighthouse_of_Alexandria link 53
Pharos_(disambiguation) Stari_Grad,_Croatia link 26

2024-02:

other-search Pharos_(disambiguation) external 465
Lighthouse_of_Alexandria Pharos_(disambiguation) link 268
other-empty Pharos_(disambiguation) external 115
other-internal Pharos_(disambiguation) external 11

Pharos_(disambiguation) Lighthouse_of_Alexandria link 154
Pharos_(disambiguation) Faros_(disambiguation) link 59
Pharos_(disambiguation) Characters_of_Persona_3 link 38
Pharos_(disambiguation) Stari_Grad,_Croatia link 30
Pharos_(disambiguation) Pharos_(crater) link 18
Pharos_(disambiguation) Dubris link 18
Pharos_(disambiguation) Pharo_(disambiguation) link 13
Pharos_(disambiguation) Pharos_Lighthouse,_Fleetwood link 11

2024-03:

other-search Pharos_(disambiguation) external 223
Lighthouse_of_Alexandria Pharos_(disambiguation) link 165
other-empty Pharos_(disambiguation) external 91
Faros_(disambiguation) Pharos_(disambiguation) link 10

Pharos_(disambiguation) Lighthouse_of_Alexandria link 88
Pharos_(disambiguation) Characters_of_Persona_3 link 27
Pharos_(disambiguation) Faros_(disambiguation) link 25
Pharos_(disambiguation) Stari_Grad,_Croatia link 16
Pharos_(disambiguation) Dubris link 10

2024-04:

other-search Pharos_(disambiguation) external 155
Lighthouse_of_Alexandria Pharos_(disambiguation) other 116
other-empty Pharos_(disambiguation) external 79
other-internal Pharos_(disambiguation) external 12
Pharus Pharos_(disambiguation) other 11

Pharos_(disambiguation) Lighthouse_of_Alexandria other 58
Pharos_(disambiguation) Stari_Grad,_Croatia other 12
Pharos_(disambiguation) Faros_(disambiguation) other 10

2024-05:

other-search Pharos_(disambiguation) external 141
Lighthouse_of_Alexandria Pharos_(disambiguation) link 113
other-empty Pharos_(disambiguation) external 77
other-internal Pharos_(disambiguation) external 25
Pharus Pharos_(disambiguation) link 14

Pharos_(disambiguation) Lighthouse_of_Alexandria link 65
Pharos_(disambiguation) Faros_(disambiguation) link 19
Pharos_(disambiguation) Stari_Grad,_Croatia link 15

2024-06:

other-search Pharos_(disambiguation) external 121
Lighthouse_of_Alexandria Pharos_(disambiguation) link 106
other-empty Pharos_(disambiguation) external 53
Pharus Pharos_(disambiguation) link 15
other-internal Pharos_(disambiguation) external 11

Pharos_(disambiguation) Lighthouse_of_Alexandria link 51
Pharos_(disambiguation) Pharos_Lighthouse,_Fleetwood link 16
Pharos_(disambiguation) Faros_(disambiguation) link 15
Pharos_(disambiguation) Stari_Grad,_Croatia link 13
Pharos_(disambiguation) Dubris link 12

It's interesting to compare the months before and after the spike, with the months while the spike was happening.

Interpretation of incoming traffic at Pharos (disambiguation) (last 6 months)

In January, we can estimate 108 people came from the hatnote at Pharos, and 117 came from the outside, which is 225, which is most of the total of 255 - the remaining 30 views could be any other source-destination pair that is not identifiable, such as from Special:WhatLinksHere/Pharos (disambiguation). So, let's say roughly 42% comes from the hatnote, the same from the outside.

In February, it's 268 from the hatnote at Pharos, 11 from other Wikimedia sites, and 580 from the outside. Total 859 identifiable is close to total 884, only 25 views unaccounted. Here it's a third from the hatnote, two thirds from the outside.

In April, the traffic subsided and the hatnote again brought in a more consistent 116 views, 12 from other Wikimedia sites, 11 from Pharus, and from the outside we got 234. Of the total of 380 views, 373 are accounted for. So it's still a third from the hatnote, and two thirds from the outside.

In June, we're back to numbers rather comparable to January, with 106 from the hatnote, 15 from Pharus, 11 from other Wikimedia sites, while 174 came from the outside for a total of 306 identifiable, out of 316 total. The ratio is 33% from the hatnote, but the outside still brings in more, ~55%.

Interpretation of outgoing traffic at Pharos (disambiguation) (last 6 months)

In January, we just see two topics, Egypt and Adriatic, and the ratio between them is 2 : 1 (i.e. Egypt gets 67% of identifiable outgoing traffic). The ratio between the hatnote incoming traffic and traffic seemingly going back to the Alexandria topic is around 50%. It's plausible that it's actually just external traffic that does that, not people internally navigating back and forth.

In February, Egypt traffic is 154 compared to total identified 341, so <50%. Looking at March, it looks like most of these readers were looking for the characters of Persona 3, but in February there was much more scattering.

In the later months, we settle back, and with the outside traffic having subsided, let's look at the ratio of Alexandria traffic to other items:

With regard to hatnote traffic, it's 58 vs 116, 65 vs 113, 51 vs 106. So it's come back to roughly 50% from before.
With regard to traffic to other items, it's 58 vs 80 (72%), 65 vs 99 (66%), 51 vs 107 (48%). So it's gone up, come back but then went further down.

I'll monitor this for a couple more months, because right now it's somewhat suspect whether the Library of Alexandria is truly the primary topic for "Pharos" - it's typically the most common topic for it, but whether it's actually overwhelming, that part isn't clear. --Joy (talk) 09:29, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]