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New WikiProject: Disambiguation

A new WikiProject has been created to address some facets of disambiguation template usage in Wikipedia. Please take a moment to click by Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation for more information. Courtland 04:42, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Plurals

There are a number of distinct meanings for Bugs that aren't the plural of Bug, but equally Bugs may in fact be a link that merely wants the plural. I've just realised that my link from Bugs (disambiguation) to Bug (disambiguation) might not be appropriate, if a DabBot picks it. Should plurals link the the (disambiguation) page or to the ambiguous page? Josh Parris ✉ 04:39, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I think this should be decided on a case-by-case basis.—Wahoofive (talk) 22:53, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Parts of speech (noun, verb, etc.)

I'm working on Note (disambiguation) presently. In this case the term can be either a noun or a verb, both of which require reference in Wikipedia. I've not seen here or in the MoS article mention of best practice in segregating parts of speech on a disambiguation page and I'm wondering if anyone has given this some thought sufficient for proposal as an addition to the usage guideline. Thanks for the input. Courtland 13:49, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to segregate by part of speech. RoySmith 14:03, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm willing to listen to other arguments, but it seemed to me to be the best way to handle Boot (disambiguation) -- take a look and let me know what you think. (Note: it also includes a separate section for plurals; someone else had previously merged Boots (disambiguation) into the page.) — Catherine\talk 14:23, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
Almost all entries in Wikipedia are nouns. Most of the verb examples in Boot (disambiguation) are dicdefs which really don't belong. There may be examples which convince me to separate parts of speech, but that page isn't one. Since Note (disambiguation) has only one verb form, there doesn't seem to be much point in separating it. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:53, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
Naming conventions are that all titles are nouns not verbs, and that verbs are put in the gerund, so if we must include verbs I would seem them as being put at the bottom, with synonyms or even in a see also section. Probably synonyms, like done on Note (disambiguation). Because our naming conventions ban non-noun titles, they should not be separated explicitly at all, ever.
The length of Boot (disambiguation) could be just about halved by removing dictionary definitions and some redlinks. My opinion with that page for the plural is that those should be on Boots (disambiguation) with links to each other through the see also section. Neonumbers 06:50, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
OK, I've moved the dicdefs to Wiktionary. The "Boots" entries were just moved there a month ago by User:Mikkalai from the page Boots, which is now a redirect to Boot (disambiguation). Even though "boots" is properly plural for these entries, since plural pages are an anomaly in Wikipedia, for ease of navigation I'm inclined to leave them at "Boot" rather than force another click to a second disambiguation page. Anyone searching for "boots" will end up at the right place anyway. Thoughts? — Catherine\talk 13:25, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I modified the lead entry to conform to MoS (see sec. "Linking back to the main article"). But is there any real value in separating the links for the "boot" from the links for "boots"? For two words so closely related, would it not be better to just organize by subject? As an example of what I mean, see Island (disambiguation) which I reorganized and reformatted to MoS standard. The "island" and "islands" are intermingled. —Mike 10:31, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Format for referred terms (i.e. what the DAB points to)

This is related to Note (disambiguation). I had bolded the wikilinks on the page as a matter of emphasizing them for users. This was changed back to non-bold by User:Wahoofive.

Could we (risking the label of instruction creepist) have an addition to the guidelines on the main page here that says something like "Font format for entry: Wikilinks to articles that the disambiguation page refers to should be in plain type (not bold, not italics, not underlined). Each such term should appear at the front of a line and font embellishment in addition to first-word placement should not be required for emphasis."

Thanks for considering this.

Courtland 12:32, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I note that this was a topic of discussion previously ... see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Archive_1#Bolding. Courtland 13:14, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

I think the biggest rule should be "each dab line should have exactly ONE link in it". The blue underline will be all the font embellishment that's needed. People have a habit of trying to link everything they can, and that just leads to a confusing sea of blue (and red!) links. Just make one link, to the article in question, and there's no confusion. RoySmith 14:41, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
OK, sounds reasonable. Should this be emphasized more on the page, or is it sufficiently emphasized already? Courtland 16:17, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
The first draft of this page did call for bolding, but after extensive discussion there was a consensus to remove it. I've added a line now discouraging it.—Wahoofive (talk) 17:57, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
Where is this extensive discussion? The most extensive discussion I found, the one to which Courtland refers above, does not provide any substantive reason, and it is by no means extensive. - Centrx 19:52, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Variations in capitalisation

This might have been addressed elsewhere ...

I previously revised DOI and more recently re-revised it to bring it in line with the stylistic guidelines. My question has to do with the usage of "DoI" in addition to "DOI". In the previous incarnation, I had treated the capitalisation variance as a separate term; in the present format I've incorporated that variance into the proper line item. This is an example of a class of terms, not all of which are acronyms (for instance, "Perl" vs. "perl", "Battleship" (the game) vs. "battleship" (the vessel), etc.). I wanted to bring up this as a point of discussion and see if people have opinions on how it should be treated. It is unlikely that this rises to the level of begging for inclusion in the guideline itelf.

Regards, Courtland 13:24, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of leaving it up to individual editors. In some cases there may be variations in the usage anyway. —Wahoofive (talk) 17:46, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
I think most people like to include all capitalisation variations on the same page, though I'm not sure. Even if it was on the manual, it wouldnt' be here, it'd be at Wikipedia:Disambiguation, though I don't think it's worth mentioning.
At some point on the MG page, where there is a link to magnesium, I saw "MG or Mg can stand for:". You coudl try that if you wanted. Neonumbers 06:57, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia namespace

The talk page associated with FAC has discussion on the matter of linking outside the main article space. I'm of the opinion that links outside the article namespace should not be part of the disambiguation article. However, there are cases where it would be useful to provide a navigational aid. Would it be useful, you think, to have a template created that provides a link to Wikipedia space similar in concept and implementation to the Wiktionary link used on many disambiguation pages? Courtland 13:55, July 22, 2005 (UTC) (follow-up: I ended up converting this from a DAB to a REDIRECT pointing at WP:FAC owing to the red-links for the article-space targets. Courtland 00:13, July 23, 2005 (UTC))

The link should go somewhere, since it's very easy for someone to mistakenly search the article space when they intended to look in the WP space (I've made that mistake many times). Maybe a "see also" or something of the sort. —Wahoofive (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Series boxes for geographical dab pages

See, for example, San Lorenzo and Santa Cruz: long templates down the right-hand side listing other places with "San" or "Santa" in the name. Pointless interference or harmless adornment? –Hajor 20:42, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

  • pointless OR harmless? Harmless YES. Pointless - depends on what you want. What is pointless for one, maybe is not for someone else. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:43, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Personally, I would suggest leaving such a box out of the disambiguation page. A better solution might be to have a "see also" to a list of placenames beginning with "San", such a list being a different type of navigational aid which, as a class, could cross-communicate with the standard disambiguation pages. A more formal way of looking at this could be that the standard disambiguation page relates to cases of mistaken identity while a navigational list relates to cases of unknown identity or known-neighbor identity. Thoughts (other than that I'm using terminology that might be more confusing than it need be .. perhaps)? Courtland 21:17, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm with Courtland. Tarting the dab page up with all kinds of cute stuff doesn't add to usability. It's just chrome. RoySmith 23:34, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Ditto. However, what about the possibility of creating a category of "San" pages.—Wahoofive (talk) 01:44, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Category or list, yes. I'm generally in favor of lists for solutions like this, where the grouping is not semantically but typographically driven. I am making the assumption that though "San" has a meaning and that meaning is historically relevant, most modern inhabitants either don't know or don't concern themselves with that meaning but use the title of a place as an anonymous identifier that labels the place and does not carry intrinsic meaning in the wording itself. Courtland 02:16, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the comments -- which, btw, I largely agree with. (I'm a bit doubtful about the idea of a category, since it would presumably include all the target pages as well the dab pages, and we normally don't get too excited about such large, essentially trivia-based categories.) I've put a link to this discussion on the Template Talk pages so their creator can pop in and argue their case. I think they detract more than they add; a discreet link to List of geographical names with San or Santa (title suggestions?) at the bottom should be enough to satisfy anyone's curiosity. –Hajor 02:36, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
    • if it's chrome for you, it's not for me. I found it very useful to easy navigate. Instead of destroying you could have enriched the stuff bringing all the San-pages to a simlar look and feel. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:41, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
      • I liked the box! It was completely harmless, it didn't interfere with the dab page, and gave the chance to surf through information that, even if you weren't looking for, you might find interesting without being in your way if you don't care for it. Shouldn't we exploit this advantages a Virtual Encyclopedia has over a Paper one? A real pity.-Mariano 07:27, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
        • Sorry to hear that, Mariano, particularly coming from you. Do you like either of the alternative suggestions -- a link to a catalogue page, or a template -- enough to have a crack at making them work? –Hajor 15:14, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I was wary of destroying unilaterally, which is why I came here to hear input from the dab-page experts instead of dogmatically plowing ahead and removing them. And although only 3 or 4 people answeres, there's a clear consensus that the templates were inappropriate. Do you see a similar template on St Ives or Saint-Maurice? Please don't put them back. The look-and-feel of the dab pages is another issue, but we are gradually working toward a uniform format; I introduced some tweaks in that direction during my mass edit this afternoon; I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a rampage to destroy your work. Start a Places called San or Santa page, and link that at the bottom of each instead, ok? –Hajor 22:17, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
  • informational comment: I've asked User:Grutness to wade in with a suggestion on the name of the list; he has been very active in the geography article domain. Courtland 23:40, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • ... and I'm here. I'd weigh in against having a template on the pages, but like the idea of the lists. I'd venture List of place names starting with... or List of place names containing.... One possible compromise as far as template navigation would be to have the list page but also use a template similar to the succession box used on pages for heads of state, like this:
San Ambrosius
Preceded by: San Ambidextera, San Ambiguosa, San Amblethwaite, San Amblyopia
Followed by: San Ambulancia, San Amburger, San Ammonium, San Amphetamania
Grutness...wha? 01:12, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • The succession box implies some sort of linear progression (typically chronological). Does any such progression, other than the somewhat arbitrary alphabetical orderl, exist here? Would somebody really want to read about all the San whatevers in alphabetical order? RoySmith 01:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
    • That's my problem with the box, too -- there's no real linear relationship. If it's going to be done, I'd rather it was by means of a "See also" link to a list page (placed only on the disambiguation pages, of course). –Hajor 15:14, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
      • the profession box seams to me a bit artificial. Why is this better than the right-side alphabetically sorted box? I still don't understand. Keep it simple.-Mariano 15:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm with Courtland's idea of the See Also section, though I wonder if anything like that is necessary at all. If it is, then yea, see also section + link to list of Sans. Long template is pointless. On disambiguation pages (dunno about articles) pointless is harmful, because it eats space that should be blank. So, yea, nothing new, just support for an existing path. Neonumbers 11:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
  • What is the point of having such boxes, which link to articles that are totally unrelated in content, but merely have a single common word in them both? Does anyone really think someone is going to search for or click on a link that says "San Diego" when they really want "San Bernardo"? Are we going to have similar templates for all the towns that end in "-town" or "-ton", or all the cities that have the word "City" in their name? Disambiguation pages are to help readers to get to articles with the same name or an easily confusable name, which might be entered in to the search box or linked to in another article. Putting a template or a See Also section for names that include "San" directly contradicts the purpose of disambiguation pages and engaging in such action requires a far more substantial discussion; I doubt there is any agreement for such a thorough transgression the purpose of disambiguation pages. This is codified, and worded well, at the top of Wikipedia:Disambiguation where it says:
Disambiguation serves a single purpose: to let the reader choose among different pages that might reside under the same title.
Do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page, if there is no risk of confusion. Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", what article would they realistically be expecting to view as a result? Disambiguation pages are not search indices — do not add links that merely contain part of the page title where there is no significant risk of confusion.
- Centrx 16:37, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I don't mind the navigation template on the right side that much, even if I wouldn't have created it. If it helps maintain the pages and keep them consistent, why not keep it? An alternative might be a saint disambiguation page template (e.g. {{Saintdisambig}}). Pages listing saints with the same and places named after them share some characteristics. For a brief discussion, see Talk:Saint John. -- User:Docu

Series boxes in general

It's a digression from the original topic, but I've noticed series boxes getting used in all sorts of places where I (personal opinion here) think they detract more than add to the page. For example, look at J/24. The two series nav boxes overwhelm the actual text. The page is more about how to get to other related pages (most of which don't even exist yet) than the subject itself. Maybe we need a Wiipedia: Manual of Style (nav boxes), but that's another project. RoySmith 15:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Terminating periods

Should each line have a terminating full stop? I thought there was a wiki project running around fixing syntax problems like that, but now I can't find them. Josh Parris ✉ 01:46, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Good question. I typically don't use complete proper sentences but descriptive sentence fragments so a period would not necessarily be called for (see First Love as an example of what I'm referring to). However this brings up the question of whether to use complete sentences or not as a matter of style. Courtland 02:11, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd vote against any punctuation. Generally, the less info the better. The ideal is for each entry to have only the link: e.g.
Moment may mean:
Obviously any punctuation would be wrong here. —Wahoofive (talk) 01:29, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd suggest that (strictly speaking) here you'd require a semi-colon, with the penultimate line having an "or" following the semicolon. But let's not be anal, let's be consistent. Josh Parris ✉ 01:51, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
I'd say use a full stop if (and only if) you have a following description, like "Moment (physics), a something that I don't know how to describe." with full stop but "Moment (physics)" without full stop. It gets pedantic and I guess inconsistent, but I think with descriptions no full stop would look kind of odd. The sentence fragment means that if you connect the leading line and the link, you get a nice full sentence (which most probably won't realise conciously, but I think it has an effect on the page style). In the same way, with just a link the full stop would look kind of odd. Kinda makes no sense, but that's my take on it... :-) Neonumbers 11:56, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I would suggest no terminating punctuation. However, I think there should be a bit more on the line to define the concept a bit more. As an engineer, if I type moment and I have to choose between
I have to open up both pages to figure out which one is more appropriate; it isn't immediately clear what the difference between the two pages is. - grubber 11:41, 2005 July 30 (UTC)
Since there's substantial overlap between those topics there's no way we could distinguish them on a dab page. One treats the topic from a mathematical perspective and one from a scientific perspective; most people would know which they wanted, and if they didn't, they'll have to read the articles because there's no way we could give one-sentence synopses that would make any sense. (Actually, most people searching for this term probably are thinking of a moment of time, but we don't have an article on that topic.) —Wahoofive (talk) 00:15, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
* Actually there isn't much overlap and the two refer to completely different concepts. One refers to torque, the other to things like averages and standard deviations. I've actually made a comment in the talk page of Moment (physics) that the page be merged into Torque, since they are the same thing. - grubber 11:13, 2005 August 1 (UTC)
  • I don't support any form of punctuation at the end of the line. The page is supposed to flow vertically as much as possible, and in my opinion, a full stop hinders that. -- jiyTalk 02:20, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

Common nouns vs. proper nouns

In many cases where a disambig has somewhere between five and ten links, it's impractical to organize links by subject area, but IMO it's natural to use a more fundamental distinction: that between common and proper nouns. I've been using the somewhat unwieldly "Common-noun meanings" and "Proper-noun meanings", but I'd like to come up with a better formula. Comments? --Smack (talk) 02:27, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Do "General uses" and "Specific uses" (or "In general"/"Specifically" or whatever) fit? -- Eugene van der Pijll 18:22, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • How about not sectionizing the common nouns and titling the proper nouns (and listing them second) as "Names and titles"? Courtland 18:28, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
  • How about just organising them but not saying so explicitly, in much the same way the current order of links is suggested? btw, with names vs. common nouns (vs. places, but only those, i.e. not science vs. art), I suggest separating them with a new sentence fragment ("X can mean:" and "X is the name of:") if there is enough for two per category; though others disagree. Neonumbers 12:00, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd say definitely not.
  • That's a good idea. Probably your "Names and titles" should be altered case-by-case.
  • I don't like that. Users are probably unpleasantly surprised enough to come upon a disambiguation page that they shouldn't be expected to try to make sense of an implicit structure. The goal of a disambig should be to get the reader out as expediently as possible. --Smack (talk) 01:07, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
That's fair enough. My idea was, and this is also the reason for sorting entries by "Name (topic)" then "Adjective Name", that the reader can scan the page and limit his scanning to just one vertical line, then another, without having to jump horizontally. With this case, I guess that idea doesn't really apply; it won't work in the same way.
I stand by separating them with a sentence fragment for fundamental distinctions (common vs. people vs. places vs. synonyms). If not with a fragment then at least with something, and only if there is enough for at least two each. Neonumbers 05:55, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest somehting like: " Foo can have several meanings, including:

Foo is also the name of several people, including:

I hope this suggestion is helpful. DES (talk) 23:14, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Pipe-linking on geographical dab pages

More from the San/Santa series. Please take a look at these two versions of Santa Rosa:

On this sort of geographical listing, is it preferable to leave the links unpiped, so editors see exactly where they are headed (principle of least astonishment, as on example No. 1), or is it better to pipe the links? I prefer the second approach: additional information can be given (eg, the Brazil listing there on No. 2, which also indicates the state); avoids duplicating information that has already been given (eg, the listing for Santa Rosa, Argentina, which we already know is in Argentina because it's under that heading); and it helps achieve more uniformity in the presentation and layout ("* cityname, provincename, comments," in a logical progression for all the entries). –Hajor 15:41, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Don't fall prey to the temptation to give "additional information" on dab pages. As most users argue in the section below, the purpose of a dab page isn't to provide information, but only to guide the user where they intended. If I search for "Santa Rosa", thinking of a town in California, our best strategy is to get me to Santa Rosa, California as quickly as possible with the fewest distractions. On that page, all the additional information I need will be available. Don't pipe the links, and don't provide any extra text unless the name of the link may not clarify things sufficiently for the reader.—Wahoofive (talk) 22:53, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. But please take a look at Santa Rosa as she now stands, with no pipe-links. Under Brazil we have:

And under Colombia:

Which (thank heaven for the US comma convention!) would be the equivalent of:

Hideous mish-mashed presentations like that are going to be common until we agree on a standard naming pattern for other countries' cities (I recently tried: see Talk:Venezuela and Talk:Brazil). They could be hidden by pipe linking, but the Project Page tells me no.

Your warning against "additional information" -- does that apply to the additional info. given there in the Colombian listings (ie, the department name)? Indicating the subnational entity a city's in also strikes me as a particularly good idea when the link is still a redlink -- clicking through to the province is better than having nowhere to go, isn't it? –Hajor 23:56, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, by "additional information" I did mean the department names. If our only purpose is to guide the user to the page they're looking for, then Santa Rosa, Colombia or Santa Rosa, California is all the info they need (unless there are two such towns in Colombia, in which case the article titles will have to distinguish them anyway). Style consistency is not that important. If the pages are difficult to find on the dab list due to the inconsistent naming, then section headers can solve that.
This MOS makes an exception for additional links when a redlink is involved, so there's no problem in that case — link to whatever page might be helpful.—Wahoofive (talk) 15:57, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
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