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Disambiguation with minor comic book characters

Just wanted to know - is there any established policy on character names. Very often some minor character will have a name which is also a common noun with a WP page of its own - e.g. Anole (comics), Rubbermaid (comics). Is it advisable/desirable to create a disambiguation page? Gamesmaster G-9 01:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Pages about characters in pop fiction annoy me, but that's largely because I'm biased against popular fiction. On one hand, I'm loath to legitimize them by making disambiguation pages; on the other hand, I'm loath to tag important articles with references to them. --Smack (talk) 06:38, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Why did you even bother commenting? Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 07:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Technically if there are articles by the same name, there should be a disambiguation page. If there are only two articles by the same name, then all you need are disambiguation links at the top. -- Natalya 15:03, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Because I was too sleepy to realize that I didn't actually have anything constructive to say. Sorry. --Smack (talk) 04:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Bin and BIN

I wanted to clean these disamb pages up, but I couldnt decide where to start. Perhaps I can bring it to someone else with a bit more intestinal fortitude's attention? I was wondering if they also needed to be merged. [Bin] & [BIN] --Monotonehell 07:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, pages like this should be merged only if editors are routinely adding entries to the wrong page (eg. if it would take too much effort to keep them separate, and there's not much point if both are short). For these two, there seems to be very little overlap (I think the only thing that overlaped was ".bin"), so I personally lean towards keeping them separate. Anyway, I took a whack at them, but bin could probably use a bit more cleanup. --Interiot 08:28, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Having just stumbled on this project, I was going to clean up the disambig Caliente by removing wikilinks other than the article name - but for most of the listings the article-name links are red, so the secondary links are the only hope that a reader has of finding out anything about the topic. (e.g, "* Caliente a music venue where Pinoy rock is played.") So I left them in. I don't see this addressed elsewhere on this enormous talk page; my apologies if I missed it. ... thoughts? - DavidWBrooks 13:39, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

See WP:MOSDAB#Individual entries: Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link. Including more than one link can confuse the reader; including no links at all makes the entry useless for further navigation. (See "redlinks" below for cases where no article yet exists.) older ≠ wiser 14:35, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
my edit conflicted with Bkonrad's ... which provides the proper text reference for resolution of the question
This is one of those things that couldn't be agreed upon to consensus, I believe was difficult to reach consensus on. The problem is that if you say 'it's ok to have a second wikilink' then that becomes quickly interpreted as 'additional wikilinks are ok under any circumstances' because of the existence of two 'flavors' of disambiguites - the Navigationalists and the Explorationists. The Nav's hold to the established line that dab pages are for navigation among potentially ambiguous titles; the Explorers hold to the more 'wiki-mind' line that dab pages should provide seeds for exploration among many topics. Neither is a 'wrong' approach, but only one can comfortably be accomodated within the present system.
My opinion on the matter - given a red-link, one or two blue-links are helpful if those blue links lead directly to an article in which the red-link topic is discussed in some fashion. For instance, I take the entry for the line item The Father (Strindberg play) @ Father (disambiguation) to be a good 2nd wikilink usage; however, I take the entry for line item "Unit Identification light (UID)" @ this old version of UID to be a poor usage (and perhaps a poor example, at that) of a 2nd wikilink (which I subsequently revised).
--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Situations are like this are what make me chuckle whenever I see somebody lamenting that wikipedia has become too complicated and we just need to simplify the rules! - DavidWBrooks 17:07, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
There's another question that comes up around Ambato ... if there are two closely related items (each with its own wikilink) that should both appear on the page, can they be put in the same line item? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 19:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I strongly prefer to put them on separate lines... if any rule gets broken, I personally prefer it to be the "don't indent things too much" rule instead... put the second dabbable link indented under first one. Anyway, I agree that there are a number of reasonable people who would like to have a second bluelink sometimes. (for instance, if an album/book/etc has a single author, people seem to have a strong tendency to wikilink the author.... proper nouns (other than cities/countries) in general seem to be possibly remotely sensible to leave in, as long as per above, it's only 2 total bluelinks). --Interiot 20:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I take that to mean that this (more recent) version of 'Ambato' is preferable to this (previous) version, yes? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Just one opinion, but I much prefer the second version, with the related items on the same line. It's a bit of a judgment call though. It depends a bit on how closely related the terms are. Personally I rather dislike using a single second-level bullet to show a relationship and also reiterate the relationship in text. Now if there is are a few terms all related to one primary term, then it might make sense to group them with an indented list (and a brief introductory phrase to avoid repetition). older ≠ wiser 23:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Leningrad

I'm trying to get Leningrad (a dab) to redirect to St. Petersburg. Please see Talk:Leningrad#Just my two cents. (The two cents aren't mine, actually.) --Smack (talk) 06:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. A random sampling of backlinks shows that almost all uses are to the city. --Interiot 07:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Disambiguation Member

Is there a WikiProject Disambiguation Member userbox? TonyTheTiger 18:32, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

There's {{Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Userbox}}, but that's specifically for people who repair links to dab pages. Other than that, I don't know of anything. --Tkynerd 19:34, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I have created {{User WP Disambiguation}}

Proposed exemplary Human name dab

I would like to request feedback on Robert Johnson. I like the way it has evolved. I have tried to format other dab pages like and have been contested by other editors on the see also section. The major points of contestation are the propriety of including the surname and the list of names in the see also section. I think in Human name dabs these should be standard and this dab makes it clear why. If people agree, I would even like to note such a belief on the MOSDAB page itself. TonyTheTiger 22:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

P.S. The best place for comment is here at MOSDAB. TonyTheTiger 20:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for comment at MOS-JP

There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Designated cities concerning ambiguous or misdirected links and [[City, State]] naming formats. Some cities which are at simple names (e.g. Kyoto) are receiving many links intended for the state named after them (e.g. Kyoto Prefecture). However, because the governments of the cities are not subordinate to the governments of the prefectures, [[City, State]] is considered an inaccurate page name for the city in these cases. Please stop by and leave comments on this problem. Dekimasu 02:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Disambig templates proliferating again

Please see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Roaddis, Template:Roadis, Template:Schooldis, Template:Shipindex, Template:Songdis to discuss deletion of various specialized disambig templates. --Russ (talk) 15:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Update - See Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Request for comment on disambig templates for a proposal to replace all specialized templates with a new, optional paramater to {{disambig}}. Please comment there! --Russ (talk) 22:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

U of A, U of B, U of C, U of D, ...

Now, whatever with these pages?

A lot of them were created by Cardsplayer4life, but not all of them — and from what I gather it looks like (s)he just created them for the sake of completion (so nothing to do with him/her). Most of them started as redirects made by various users (possibly unaware that there are lots of universities in the world).

Personally, I'm not convinced that they need to exist at all. People who refer to universities as U of A or something like that almost invariably know that it's an abbreviation, can apply to several hundred universities and it most certainly not the name of the university. Can someone really expect to type that in, click "Go", and get somewhere? You wouldn't even type that kind of thing into Google — let alone have it in here.

If people are in agreement with me, then they all need to be either deleted or redirected to UA, UB, and so on (probably the latter, I think). Otherwise, all of them need to be marked for cleanup (they are in a rather poor state, if you ask me). Anyone else? Neonumbers 05:06, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Referring to universities with abbreviations of the form "U of A" seems to me to be an Americanism. Abbreviations for British universities are idiosyncratic; e.g. the University of Wales was never known as "U of W", but just "University of Wales", while consituent universities are e.g. "UWS" for Swansea (before it ceceded anyway), "Aber" for Aberystwyth. I've certainly never heard or read anyone refer to Exeter Uni as "U of E"! Also, I would be very, very surprised if people really referred to e.g. Belgian universities that way. If these pages deserve to exist at all, they should link only to articles where use for that university is verifiable. I suspect such verifiability is a pipe dream even for American universities. Hairy Dude 18:08, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
We could add {{not verified}} to them, though that might not be 100% clear. Perhaps we need a new disambig maintenance tag that says something like "Disambiguation pages are not indescriminate lists, and should only contain entries that are very frequently referred to simply as {{PAGENAME}}. and where the relationship is verifiable."? Would a tag like that be useful in enough situations to be worth creating? --Interiot 18:30, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The initials are extremely commonly used in the USA, including the mainstream press. The pages should stay assuming there are entries on each one (and not just redirected to UA), but there may be schools on there that don't use the abbreviations (and some that use UA instead of U of A for example) A google search is an easy place to start. --Milo H Minderbinder 19:13, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
But even if they are referred to as that abbreviation, for the purposes of an encyclopedia, if you were looking for the University of Lincoln, you'd look up the "University of Lincoln", in the common-sense knowledge that typing in initials for a university is a very untactful search method, let alone a "Go" method. Imagine you were looking for a specific university. What would you type into the search box? Isn't it reasonable to expect someone else to do the same or similar? Neonumbers 23:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem with some templates, and solution

Hi, everyone. I wanted to let you know that I've just encountered a problem with a template on one of the pages I was trying to dab, and got help to solve it at WP:VPT. The problem is that Template:Infobox Former Country automatically replaces plain text with wikilinks where it can find an article, but sometimes this results in links to dab pages, which then need to be disambiguated. The solution is to simply replace the plain text with the full piped disambiguated link. An example is at Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, where I replaced the text "English" for the language in the template with [[English language|English]]. Just letting y'all know in case you encounter this problem too. Also, I don't know whether there are any other templates that do this; if so, they may also cause the same problem. --Tkynerd 15:34, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Follow-up to the above: User:52 Pickup, who works with the Infobox Former Country template, changed the template to automatically dab the link as long as only a single language is put into the template. If any of you encounter similar problems with other templates, be sure to raise the issue on the template's talk page, and perhaps its maintainer(s) will fix the problem. --Tkynerd 00:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Malplaced disambiguation pages

Thanks to everyone who helped clear pages from this list from the November 4 2006 database dump. The list (originally at 1,092 pages) has been reduced all the way to 0! Congratulations! If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 01:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

New tool

Hi folks, after a little chat with User:Commander_Keane, I sat down to create a little tool that might be helpful for you. Basically you insert some pagename, and the tool then analyzes all the links in that page to check if any of them point to a page containing {{disambig}}. The tool is located at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~bjelleklang/dabLinks/index.php. I'd appreciate if you could report any bugs, or suggestions to me. I also plan to improve it by adding other language wikis to it in the near future. Bjelleklang - talk 16:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

A nice tool, thanks! A couple of specific comments:
  1. It doesn't pick up redirects to disambig pages; for example Lebanon contains a link to Romans which is a redirect to Roman.
  2. It doesn't handle article names containing spaces unless you replace the spaces with underscores; for example, "Ottawa Senators" doesn't work but "Ottawa_Senators" does.
--Russ (talk) 18:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback! The second issue is fixed, so it should handle spaces correctly. I'll see if I can fix the redirects either tonight or sometime tomorrow :) Bjelleklang - talk 20:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Exciting! Thank you for writing this up! -- Natalya 21:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
In theory, the tool should now be able to handle the page -> redirect -> disambig page sequence. However, the version of Lebanon in the toolserver database appears to be rather old, and doesn't contain the link mentioned above, so I haven't had the chance to test it properly. If it works, it should print something like Lebanon -> Romans -> Roman (redirected). Please let me know if there is any other features that could be nice to have in the tool :) Bjelleklang - talk 22:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
It's still somewhat faulty, but I'm also trying to have it skip redirects. For example, when searching for George Walker Bush, the tool should skip that redirect, and check George W. Bush instead. Bjelleklang - talk 23:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
If it relies on the toolserver database, there's replication lag that causes the tool to reflect the state of pages as they were 17 days ago. DaBpunkt is working on trying to fix this, but the lag may increase for some time. --Interiot 00:18, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


Have made some changes to the tool now, and it should now handle the following correctly (in theory ;)):

  • Words not beginning with upper case
  • Spaces (as well as underscores)
  • Redirect from the page submitted, for example George Walker Bush
  • A link to a redirect which points to a disambiguation page, see abovementioned example.
  • Also handles redirects from both Mediawiki v1.9 and v1.8 databases.
  • Quotation marks are not handled properly at the moment, but I'm working to fix it. I will also make it possible to search for other templates, if you have any good ideas as to which should be enabled, please let me know :) Bjelleklang - talk 20:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Oh, and please note that there is some delay in the database on the toolserver at the moment, approx 17 days. This means that all changes for the past 17 days hasn't been registered on the toolserver, on which the analyzer runs, so results may not be completely up-to-date. Also note that it only searches for {{disambig}}, although I plan to implement more templates in the future. Bjelleklang - talk 00:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Enabling act v Enabling act of 1933

At some point in the past, someone created both these pages. One is on enabling acts in general, the other is on the Nazi party use of the act. Unfortunately, they were created as "Enabling act" and "Enabling Act", leading to much much confusion in linking. I've just renamed the latter to Enabling act of 1933, and changed it's redirect to point back at Enabling act. This leaves a lot of pages now pointing at Enabling act which ideally want to point to Enabling act of 1933.

Please help me with repairing this by going though Special:Whatlinkshere/Enabling_act and dab'ing to the right page per context. --Barberio 22:39, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Per normal English capitalization rules, Enabling act of 1933 needs to be moved to Enabling Act of 1933. Once this is done (I don't have time to do it myself right now; also, it would be my first-ever page move and I'm nervous about doing it), I'll be happy to help dab the links to Enabling act. I'll be watching this page, but you may still want to leave a note on my talk page just in case. --Tkynerd 22:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Also, the word "disambiguation" is misspelled in the title of the page that should be titled "Enabling act (disambiguation)". This is the page that Enabling act redirects to. --Tkynerd 22:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC) EDIT: I went ahead and moved Enabling act (disambigutation) to Enabling act (disambiguation); the only double redirect was from Enabling act, which I fixed. --Tkynerd 22:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
The resulting spree of moves, splits, redirects, circular redirects, and so on came after I mentioned needing help with link repair on #wikipedia, not from me. And it's left a confused enough state that I'm not going to touch it till the dust settles. I expect a flurry of 'why did this happen?' comments on the various pages. --Barberio 23:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, I've no intention of dabbing anything to point to Enabling act of 1933, which is an incorrect article title. I'm not blaming you for the state of affairs, just saying I'll be happy to dab the links once the page title is corrrected. --Tkynerd 23:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
And now Enabling act has been screwed up so that it is no longer a proper disambiguation page. *sigh* Let me know when that is also straightened out and I'll be glad to help. --Tkynerd 23:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
To be clearer -- and, I hope, more helpful -- here is what I would expect to see:
Hope that helps. --Tkynerd 14:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, Enabling act started out as a full article about enabling acts in general not a disambiguation page, but then someone decided to 'help' by taking all the sections and turning them into small stub articles, leaving the page as a not-a-disambiguation page. --Barberio 16:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the problem cropped up yesterday when someone moved Enabling act (general) to Enabling act. Before that was done, Enabling act was indeed a dab page. This also left me looking like a bit of an idiot, as I had dabbed a link at Jurisdiction to point to Enabling act (general). However, I'm not fixing that dab until this mess is straightened out one way or another. (This also reminds me that I really do think we need a generic page at Enabling act (general), as a dab target when no specific sense is intended. Strike what I wrote above.) --Tkynerd 16:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Re reading this, I think the split to separate articles was very unwise, since these articles can only ever remain stubs, and the United Kingdom one despite having the most text does not stand alone as an article. I'm going to re-merge them back into an article on Enabling acts in general. --Barberio 18:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I've now hopefully sorted things to a situation where disambiguation repair can continue. We now have two real articles

which need to have their links sorted so articles specific to the 1933 act point there. --Barberio 19:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Enabling act doesn't comply with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages), so I'm reluctant to put the necessary {{disambig}} tag on it. Please read the first paragraph at that MoS page. Note specifically that dab pages are not articles. Disambiguation repair cannot currently be done because too many of the links would need to go to Enabling act, where they are already pointed, and it would be difficult or impossible to keep track of which ones are already done...to say nothing of the task of keeping the "dab" page clear of inappropriate inbound links in the future. --Tkynerd 00:34, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Enabling act is not a disambiguation page, it's an article in it's own right, but one that needs disambiguation of the links to it. It should not be or need a disambiguation page, as there are only two similar named articles, which are clearly linked to each other. What does need to be done is to disambiguate the links to it, where those links are clearly about the Enabling Act of 1933 not enabling acts in general. --Barberio 00:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
If this subject needs to be disambiguated, it needs a disambiguation page. The only exception I can think of is where there is absolutely zero possibility that the subject will attract 'shrooms, because if it will, then without a proper dab page it will be impossible to maintain. My intention was to take care of the existing dabs AND adopt this page to keep it free of 'shrooms, but unless I can use the tool I like to use (which only works if there is a proper dab page), the dab process is too burdensome. --Tkynerd 01:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Interestly enough: I think Tkynerd may have spent more time arguing about "the" solution than it would have taken to work out "an acceptable" solution. Barberio, thank you for your questions and your actions. "Let us spend more time doing rather than preparing to do!". Srice13 04:48, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Interestingly enough, I proposed a solution above that not only is "acceptable," but provides long-term maintainability. Too bad that wasn't to your liking. I think both Wikipedia and I can do without your snideness. --Tkynerd 12:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

10 cents

I'm tempted to delete the disambig template from this page. It seems more article-ish than dab-ish. Any opinions? (Perhaps reply to the Talk:10 cents page for history's sake) - grubber 19:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Name etymologies

Should dab pages that are also names contain the etymology, origins, or cognates of the name? (Examples: Fuqua, Justin) On one hand, it's not the purpose of a dab page, but on the other hand, where would we put that info? - grubber 06:22, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that information even belongs on Wikipedia. That's dictionary material, which says "Wiktionary" to me. --Tkynerd 06:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, I have changed James quite a bit. I removed most of the entries, moved the etymologies to James (name) and removed entries present on dab pages (like King James). I would appreciate if someone look at it; it was a bold edit and I'd appreciate a second set of eyes. - grubber 02:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
IMHO: your boldness was well justified. I would do almost everything as you did. My only remarks: a) instead of James (surname) (disambiguation) and like, I would create "People named James" or "List of people with the surname James" and like; at the very least, the double brackets were unnecessary - could have been "(surname disambiguation)"; b) I would create sections on ;Name and ;Sports and Entertainment, as there is enough material for each and nothing gets left out; c) link only to album on the James (song) entry and would remove the redlink (is this a hit song? Will it ever get its own article?); d) finally, I never saw the point of putting Special:Allpages/Jimmy and the like on dab pages (see the Archive5 page (link at the top) for comments on this). --maf 04:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Dab Adoption Category?

Does it make sense to create a category for user pages that indicate what pages one has adopted? It might be useful to prevent duplication of effort on some pages, among other things. For example, I could put on my User Page:

[[Category:Disambiguation Adoption|Vertigo]] [[Category:Disambiguation Adoption|Epic]]

And the category page would be populated with adopted page names that link back to the user who has adopted it. Unobstrusive to the non-dab focussed editor, but useful for those who might be interested in this information. A more sophisticated template might be created for the user page that presents the adopted pages in a table there or something. I'm not completely convinced its useful, but maybe? (John User:Jwy talk) 03:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at the discussion at the top of the page about this topic: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Adopting_Pages_and_Link_Repair_Banner - it turned out to not be a very popular idea. -- Natalya 14:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I did. I thought this variation took care of some of the issues. A more careful reading makes me less hopeful about the idea. (John User:Jwy talk) 14:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Listing songs without articles on disambiguation pages

I was wondering what other people thought about the presence of songs that don't have articles (and, in all likelihood, won't be getting articles) on disambiguation pages; for an example, see this version of Daydream (disambiguation). Personally, I think this isn't useful because most of these songs don't have any notability outside the album, i.e. they weren't released as singles or did not win a major award. So it's doubtful that anybody, even a fan of the artist, would enter the song names into a search box; it's much more likely they would search for the artist or the album first. I realise these entries may not appear extraneous because on most of the pages they are below the blue links, but they are distracting to the eye and make finding the page you're looking for take longer than it should. Thoughts? Extraordinary Machine 12:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I figure if the album has an article and someone thinks its "important" enough to put on a dab page, then I leave it. But I usually reduce the links to just the album - as I have done with the page you mention. I don't mind having them that way, myself. Especially if there is an "In Music" section and they are collected together at the bottom of it. (John User:Jwy talk) 14:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Jwy. I don't see that such entries cause any real problem. After all, they are ambiguous, and especially where there are relevant articles to link to, it seems OK for them to be here, especially since the ambiguously titled,Daydream (song), is only about one particular song. older ≠ wiser 14:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree. Though one doesn't usually see as many songs as those that are listed at Daydream (disambiguation), at least they all have appropriate bluelinks. I was looking through the MoS a bit to see if there was something about songs (I recalled that there was), but couldn't seem to find anything. -- Natalya 01:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I can see what you're getting at, Extraordinary Machine. They are distracting even if they are at the bottom of the page. The question, then, becomes one of cost-benefit: is it worth that distraction in order to include a possibly worthwhile entry?
I have a tendency to leave them there, because I tend to think that the possibility's a plausible and reasonable one. How likely it actually is is somewhat a matter of opinion. You'd be amazed, though, at what some people consider a reasonable search—I've seen far, far worse (can't think of any examples) outside music, so on a relative scale, this doesn't seem so bad.
But I've never seen an example as extreme as Daydream—but that said, I still wouldn't consider Daydream a desperate situation (in other words, it's not that bad). My two cents. Neonumbers 09:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
As long as they can be redlinked unambiguously, I let them stay put. However, I don't like them, so I put them in undesirable layout real estate. --Smack (talk) 16:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

MC (disambiguation) cleanup proposal

I have avoided editing MC (disambiguation) for quite a while now, because I have no idea where to even begin. Of all the dab pages I have done, this one has had me stumped for months. Anyone else wanna help out? If a few others get stumped as well, maybe we can make this a "WP:WPDAB Collaboration" :) - grubber 23:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

There are a couple things we can certainly do right off:
  • Remove the images (they don't aid in the disambiguation)
  • Organize by categories
  • General disambig cleanup, though it's in not too bad a shape.
Later, we'll need to see if all these things actually are abbreviated by MC! But at least at first we can clean up the page as is. -- Natalya 03:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Having looked at this more, there's actually an adendum to that - there are so many entries that don't really seem to need to be there, so perhaps getting rid of all the unneeded ones first would be more productive. -- Natalya 04:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
There was an informal vote about some of the entries a few months ago. There are a lot of junk links there, imo, but I'm not sure if everyone would agree with that. - grubber 13:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Talk:University of Wisconsin

I need help explaining the value of a primary use claim to User:Miaers at Talk:University of Wisconsin. There are about 1200 links to the page, 99% of which are meant to be directed to University of Wisconsin-Madison, and so it is currently a redirect. He has focused on the 1% that aren't meant to point there as evidence that there should be a dab page at University of Wisconsin. There was previously a Template:Redirect tag at the top of University of Wisconsin-Madison, but he and a few other users have recently had the University of Wisconsin (disambiguation) page deleted through AfD (!!). Please help explain the value of fixing 15 links without a dab page as opposed to having 1200 more links to retarget at WP:DPL. Thank you for any assistance. Dekimasuが... 19:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the old disambig page. User:Dekimasu is creating a "double redirect" here and he has no solutions about it. Miaers 19:21, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
The way it is set up now (at this moment) looks right to me. University of Wisconsin redirects to University of Wisconsin-Madison. At the top of the latter page is a note directing users interested in other units of the state university to University of Wisconsin System. No disambig page at all, and none needed IMHO. --Russ (talk) 22:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Russ. It makes sense for what is by far the most common use of "University of Wisconsin" to redirect to that meaning at University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a note at the top directing interested readers to the University of Wisconsin System article, which contains all the necessary disambiguating information as far as I can tell. Turning "University of Wisconsin" into a disambiguation page would seems an unnecessary inconvenience for readers more familiar with the very common use of the term to mean UW-Madison. older ≠ wiser 23:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
FWIW: That's how University of Texas is. - grubber 23:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The University of Wisconsin link in University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee#Early history, History of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee etc can't be redirected to UW System. UW System didn't exit when this institution existed. Miaers 23:21, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Just have them link to the University of Wisconsin System, and add a paragraph or two on the history of the UW system. – Lordmontu (talk) • (contribs) 00:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

No bother, I've created University of Wisconsin (former) article. This name is ambiguous, even though some people don't like it. Miaers 00:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Miaers isn't the one who had the disambiguation page removed. In fact, I still don't understand the motives behind that removal. DABs are cheap! --Orange Mike 01:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry about that. It is only readding that deleted dab page at the plain title that is a problem, and that's what Miaers has proposed (and done a few times). I don't know why it was deleted, but I can understand if some editors thought the information could be incorporated into the University of Wisconsin system article. Dekimasuが... 04:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no such thing as University of Wisconsin system. University of Wisconsin is the official name of the former University of Wisconsin. You are suggesting an original work.

Also, it is quite ok if someone wants to expand the history information in University of Wisconsin System article. But University of Wisconsin (former) is a different subject from UW System and a seperate article written in a different angle. These two should coexist like many other articles do in Wikipedia. Miaers 23:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

UW redux

One outcome of the above kerfuffle seems to be a proposal to put something like this draft in place of the existing basic dab-page. It seems somewhat large and un-dabish, and I was wondering if some editors from here might take a look? My comments on it are here. - David Oberst 02:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

See Talk:University of Wisconsin (disambiguation)#Not related to the University of Wisconsin for one issue that has arisen during the discussion, and which has implications for the existing guidelines. Andrewa 18:33, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Felix

I've done a bunch of work to clean up Felix and have two requests. First, this was my biggest dab cleanup, and I'd be happy for a second opinion on the general results. Second, there was one entry that I left in apparent violation of dab style: 

*[[List of characters in Golden Sun#Felix|Felix]] - character from the Nintendo video
 game series Golden Sun.

Perhaps this is a good case for IAR, or maybe WP:MOSDAB should be modified to allow piped links in cases like this. Comments? Matchups 02:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I switch it to:

*Felix - a character from the Nintendo video game series [[List of characters in Golden Sun#Felix|Golden Sun]].

which is my preferred way of handling this. (John User:Jwy talk) 03:36, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Using piping for # links is perfectly acceptable. THere's an exception in the rules for it. Looks like you cleaned the page up pretty good. If you want to do more on it, add some information after the links that have no info on the line yet. Usually copying the first sentence of the article gives you a good starter. Second, I hate long dab pages, but you've trimmed it up from where it began. - grubber 04:20, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Looks pretty good; nice job giving each entry only one blue link. A couple of things per the manual of style for disambiguation pages; entries should be sentence fragments, and therefore also shouldn't have periods at the end. Also, it's general style to describe articles with a comma rather than a dash. I've taken care of these small changes, but keep up the good work! -- Natalya 01:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

A discussion on CC templates...

...has been started at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Let.27s_clarify_with_the_various_CC_templates_once_and_for_all (goodness that is a long link!). Just in case you don't watch both pages, please add your opinions there! -- Natalya 01:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, the {{2CC}}, {{3CC}}, {{4CC}}, {{5CC}} templates have been put up for deletion as a result of the discussion mentioned. If you'd like to chime in, see the TfD entries. - grubber 18:54, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

There is also a counter-proposal to reduce the size of Category:Disambiguation by removing that top-category tag from pages that fit subcategories. This hierarchical tagging would be in keeping with other categories like "Novelists" and "Poets", which are subdivided by nationality, so that someone might be tagged with "Russian poets" but then not also with "Poets". "2CC", "3CC", etc., would become true subcategories of Acronyms/abbreviations, which would become a true subcategory of "Disambiguation": the lowest-level tag that fits would be used, and the top-level tag would not. -- Ben 17:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

FYI, it's probably helpful to keep this discussion centralized, perhaps at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_February_9#Counter-proposal so that everyone can see it. -- Natalya 17:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Trains project disambig task

Just an FYI more because I wasn't sure where to add a link to it anywhere else... I found this project while going through the "what links here" list for Western Pacific. One of the regular tasks of Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains is to go through commonly undisambigged links and update them to their correct locations. Our current work list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Todo/Disambig. Slambo (Speak) 14:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Cool! That sounds a lot like Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links; glad to see that individual Wikiprojects are taking it on too. -- Natalya 17:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Stumped on Central High School

I have found a dab page that breaks all the rules on dab formatting, and I can't come up with any way to do it better. Central High School has lots of piping and two links per line. "Fixing" either style makes the page incredibly ugly. The page is surprisingly usable and readable as it is, and I can't think of a damn thing to do to it. Any ideas or comments? - grubber 19:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I would drop the piping and remove the city, state from those where the piping indicates the same thing. I'd be tempted to remove the redlinks. They should only be there if there is a decent expectation that someone would write the article. (John User:Jwy talk) 03:48, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I would drop the piping as well, but I'd leave the redlinks. Having that information available as a reference would be a great help when doing link repair, even if there isn't currently an article at the location. At the least I'd check to make sure there aren't any other pages linking to the redlinks before deleting them from the dab. Dekimasuが? 04:35, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I would standardize the page titles, by either moves or redirections, to allow the following format:
This page has unusually many redlinks, but I think we should leave them. First of all, I think we generally consider high schools to be notable. Second, the redlinks don't get in the way as much as they would on most dabs, because the links are so similar.
--Smack (talk) 04:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
P.S: I see no need to keep the three redlinks to schools that have been closed. --Smack (talk) 04:42, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I did say "consider" dropping the redlinks. The criteria at WP:MOSDAB#Redlinks is not notability, however, but whether we expect someone to add the article. It could be argued that we delete the redlinks and the editors of the new articles will add them back in. But I don't feel that strongly (otherwise I would have already done it!). (John User:Jwy talk) 06:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, there are enough redlinks that it might be appropriate to create List of schools named Central High School! (John User:Jwy talk) 06:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
The problem with un-piping them is that the page gets ugly VERY quick, as the following selections illustrate:
  1. Central High School (Connecticut), Bridgeport, Connecticut
  2. Central High School (Brooksville, Florida), Brooksville, Florida
  3. Fort Pierce Central High School, Fort Pierce, Florida
At least the page currently has parallelism -- it's easy to scan the list and find exactly the one you want, since the city and state are in the same spot. I must have tried 3 different previews before I realized my attempts to "fix" the page were making it almost unusable. Further, some titles have the complete City-State in the title, others don't. We could try to make the article titles consitent to Central High School (City, State) but then what about a school whose official name is Fort Pierce Central High School? Great ideas so far tho... - grubber 17:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
After unpiping, the rest of the line can be edited to remove duplication:
The states have never lined up, so that's no great loss. And within a state, there are typically just a few. Matchups 20:02, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
So it looks like we can have a readable, parallel structure, or accurate titles, but not both. --Smack (talk) 05:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

CC templates now redirect to {{disambig}}

Per the decision at the TfD discussion, all of the CC templates ({{2CC}}, {{3CC}}, {{4CC}}, and {{5CC}}) now redirect to {{disambig}}, and no longer need to be used. The guidelines will be updated accordingly. Thanks to everyone participated in the discussion - I know we all don't agree, but hopefully we will be benefiting disambiguation pages overall. -- Natalya 01:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

We should get a bot to scour those pages and manually replace them all with {{disambig}}.- grubber 14:57, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
User:ST47 volunteered his bot to do that during the TfD. I'll ping him on User_talk:ST47 to see if he's still willing. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:52, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Running. ST47Talk 19:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for taking care of this! -- Natalya 21:18, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
PS, I think "manually" means "done by hand". If it's done by a bot, wouldn't that be "botanically"? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:59, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Would you like the links done as well? ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Which links? -- Natalya 21:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Anything linking to, but not transcluding, {{2CC}} ST47Talk 19:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Hmm... probably not? Might that mess with discussions that have gone on referring to them? -- Natalya 03:13, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Right. OK :) ST47Talk 12:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
893 pages contain {{2CC}}. See User:STBot for contrib list. ST47Talk 19:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
892 processed, one skipped, I will review it after the run. ST47Talk 20:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
6213 pages contain {{3CC}}. ST47Talk 20:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
6136 processed, 77 skipped, will review. ST47Talk 15:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
2565 pages contain {{4CC}}. ST47Talk 15:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
{{2CC}} review is finished, no transclusions remain. ST47Talk 17:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
{{Tla}} added to queue as cause of some errors in {{3CC}}, fixed double redirect, and will review {{3CC}} once that's done. ST47Talk 17:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
2540 processed, 25 skipped. ST47Talk 19:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
139 pages contain {{5CC}} ST47Talk 19:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
139 processed. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
11 pages redirect to {{2CC}} {{3CC}} {{4CC}} or {{5CC}}. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
11 processed. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Job Queue empty. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
38 more pages processed. ST47Talk 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Please help on Guard

I have started a discussion on Talk:Guard#This is a disambiguation page, not a dictionary entry! about the cleanup of Guard. Since I had my cleanup reversed (and I've done over a hundred cleanups), could I ask that others please take a look at it? Thank you. --maf 04:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new wording of otheruses template

Template talk:Otheruses#"For other articles, see X (disambiguation)."—discuss there. Thanks. Punctured Bicycle 18:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Dab pages for misspellings

Is the creation of disambiguation pages for misspellings discouraged? Petadine has been requested at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Medicine, but it may be a misspelling of 1) Pethidine (i.e. Demerol, an opioid) or 2) Betadine (a type of antiseptic). I checked MoS:DAB, but couldn't really find any definitive advice. I'd appreciate assistance from any members of this project. Thanks, Fvasconcellos 17:27, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

My inclination would be to go for the same guideline as redirects. If there is a reasonable likelihood that people will look for the topic under the misspelling, then go for it. If it's bizarre and unlikely, then leave it out. In this case, Google says it has 604 hits, but only about 35 of these are distinct occurrences in English. Interestingly, several of these have "(sp?)" or the equivalent, and for most, context suggests they mean Pethidine--there are 102 (gross) hits for "petadine pain" but none for "petadine antiseptic" and only one for "petadine disinfectant." So my inclination would be to just make it a redirect. Matchups 01:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. At 604 Google hits, I think I'll leave this one as a redlink for now :) Fvasconcellos 02:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation by first name

I would like to get this community's feedback regarding the MOSDAB clause on disambiguation by first names. The main discussion thread is located here. Thank you!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Vengeance - need review

i tried tidying up Vengeance recently, can somebody review it please? cheers. 81.107.199.220 11:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks good to me. I've had a quick look at "what links here", and as a result, added HMS Vengeance. IMDb lists ten films called "Vengeance", so fixing the incoming links will need to be done with care, by someone who knows more about film than I do!. CarolGray 13:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I fixed title formatting, added some more links based on All pages with titles beginning with Vengeance, rearranged to keep the groups from being so small, removed the link to the director of the vengeance trilogy in favor of keeping the film links, moved the revenge link into the list since there's no primary topic, commented out the star destroyer that isn't mentioned on the linked page, and moved the surname holder to the end of the list. Maybe some other stuff too. :-) I think that Vengeance should probably be a redirect to Revenge, with the current page moved to Vengeance (disambiguation), in which case the intro could be restored. -- JHunterJ 14:50, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Nice! (Except for the redlink on that obscure 1970 Chinese movie, imho.) --maf (talk-cont) 21:50, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I turned Vengeance (1970 film) into a stub, so now the page is perfect! Mischievously, --Paul Erik 05:01, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Fellow support needed (or not)

I'd like to drag some fellow dab patrollers into supporting me at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Big Four (music). Or not supporting me, if that is your opinion (no grudges, promise). I am the only Keep on this Prod and my purpose is to keep a dab page from getting polluted with OR content. Thanks! --maf (talk-cont) 18:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

BBC (disambiguation) needs review

i had a stab at tidying this disambig page, but needs another pair of eyes to check its all ok. cheers! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.27.130.242 (talk) 14:27, 4 May 2007 (UTC).

Proposing Rename

Is there a proper way to propose moving a dismabig page to (disambiguation) and redirecting the original page to a primary article? -- pb30<c.t> 01:36, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

If you think the issue of which is the primary topic (per Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic) will be controversial, you can list it at Wikipedia:Requested moves to gather outside opinions. Also, if the title of the primary topic is officially the same as the title of the disambiguation page, it doesn't need to be a redirect. You can request to have that page moved to the location currently occupied by the disambiguation page. What's the page in question? Dekimasuよ! 03:43, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
TSN. I already listed it at WP:RM, but just wanted to make sure that's the best place. -- pb30<c.t> 05:12, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I left a response over there. I'm not sure I agree with you, but I could be swayed. Others will likely want a bit more evidence that it's the primary topic, so if you can give that to them, it would be helpful. Dekimasuよ! 06:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

CorHomo and CAPTCHA

I'm once again having trouble logging on to Wikipedia using CorHomo, and I suspect that this time the new CAPTCHA security is the culprit. Is this happening to anyone else? I'm worried that this will render the program obsolete. Dekimasuよ! 05:18, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I had the same problem after putting a wrong password. After using a wrong password, the CAPTCHA is added for a few minutes to the login page, preventing CorHomo to work. --NicoV 17:02, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Siberia : 3rd opinion needed

Talk:Siberia (disambiguation): Please explain to user:Petri Krohn that his addition (if it is correct) belongs to wiktionary, not to disambig page. `'mikka 23:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

ALF (disambiguation)

Opinions needed regarding the redirect of ALF to ALF (disambiguation). Please comment on Talk:ALF_(disambiguation)#And_again. Thank you. —Viriditas | Talk 08:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role

This article includes a long list of movies, each with its own wikilink. About half of the links needed disambiguation, so I disambiguated a long list of links. Now someone whose IP address keeps changing is adding more information to the list, but without preserving my disambiguation. I keep re-adding my disambiguations, and he keeps removing some more. My complaints to him go unanswered. Is this a good place to get some allies? Art LaPella 21:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The changing IP address doesn't help matters at all, but I left some messages on the talk pages to hopefully get this editor to address the issue. I do think this is a good place to get the allies, but apart from trying to communicate with the user, I am not sure that other measures should be taken. I'll help and keep an eye on things with you!--Xnuala (talk)(Review) 21:22, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Art LaPella 21:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Beginner on WP:WPDAB

I'm still new to the MOS for dab pages, as well as the WP page on them, so I was wondering if someone could clear this up for me. When the title of the page makes up only part of the name of the article listed, should the entry be included? For example, on the current revision of Psycho, should the entries on Psycho House and "Psycho Killer" be removed? I'm fairly confident Bates Motel and A Conversation with Norman should be removed as well, or should they be kept because they are closely related? Thanks in advance. Tbone762 01:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, an article should be listed if someone is likely to have enter the dab word when the information they are looking for is in the article. I'm not all that strict about removing them. Sometimes its a case of "what was the name of the song, "Psycho -something-," then it would come in handy. For your specific case, I wouldn't necesssarily remove House and Killer, but would not think it wrong if you were to make them flow down the drain. (John User:Jwy talk) 02:14, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
If the song "Psycho Killer" is often referred to as just "Psycho", it should be listed in its current position. If not, it can be listed in the "See also" section at the discretion of individual editors. Dekimasuよ! 05:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help, guys! Tbone762 09:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Cleaner

Not sure where to announce a new tool for disambiguation. I have posted the announcement here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NicoV (talk • contribs) 17:07, May 25, 2007 (UTC)

Talk page WikiProject template

I'm not looking to be an active participant in this project, but I have a question. When I do make an edit to disambiguation page, would it be helpful to add your project's banner to the talk page as my next edit? I can't tell from the project page if you want ALL disambiguation pages to be thusly tagged or only in certain cases. Please let me know. I'll be happy to help. Cheers, GentlemanGhost 13:02, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I assume from the silence that this is not controversial, so I will go ahead and do it. (I didn't think it would be, but apparently there was a issue with the Math project template, so I figured I should ask first instead of being bold.) --GentlemanGhost 18:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't really aware it existed. What use is it in your opinion? (John User:Jwy talk) 04:18, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
For clarity, this is the template to which GentlemanGhost is referring: {{WikiProject Disambiguation}}
It appears at the top of this Talk page. Occasionally it has it has been added to the Talk page of a dab page; see, for example, Talk:Vigil (disambiguation). Presumably this is to help editors find our project. My own opinion is that it is a little excessive to go about adding it to the Talk page of every dab page (although no harm done if it is). I don't think that editors would have trouble finding our WikiProject if they are interested. --Paul Erik 18:49, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for the confusion about which template we're discussing. I just noticed this template—{{DisambigProject}}—which is used more commonly on the Talk pages of dab pages. --Paul Erik 19:04, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. I'm with you, Paul. I won't go through removing them from pages, but I think those interested will find them - perhaps through the Category:Disambiguation or the stand dab template on the page. (John User:Jwy talk) 04:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
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