Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation

What does this mean?

How to link to a disambiguation page

To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text "(disambiguation)", even if that is a redirect—for example, link to the redirect America (disambiguation) rather than the target page at "America". (If the redirect does not yet exist, create it and tag it with {{R to disambiguation page}}.) This helps distinguish accidental links to the disambiguation page from intentional ones.

In other words, in case some people make mistakes, program the entire thing in a heavy manner to further exclude regular joes from ever being able to contribute to wikipedia? It appears I cannot organize and straighten out the mess that is "transversality" and issues with caste articles without having to create disambiguation pages that include links to disambiguation pages that are redirects to disambiguation pages that aren't titled disambiguation.

In spite of my heavy sarcasm can someone provide an explanation in English that would actually lead me to be able to think about how to do it with the ultimate results of organized and navigable access to encyclopedic information, aka articles, without creating useless nonesense. Thanks, Pseudofusulina (talk) 16:57, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

It is extremely simple. If you make a link that you deliberately intend to link to the disambiguation page, the link should use the form with "(disambiguation)" in the title, even if that happens to be a redirect. Otherwise, links to disambiguation pages are assumed to be mistaken. older ≠ wiser 17:12, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably, I am extremely stupid, then. It's not extremely clear to me (being extremely stupid) what exactly is the purpose. Pseudofusulina (talk) 17:54, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

We know that people often accidentally make links to disambiguation pages which are at the base name for a topic, like John Smith. They sometimes deliberately make links to dab pages, often from "See also" sections of other dab pages. Editors sometimes work on checking incoming links to disambiguation pages, and sorting them out. It is very helpful for these editors if deliberate incoming links are easily distinguishable so that they can be ignored - and where the dab page is at the base name of the article, this is easily done by leading all deliberate links through a redirect from John Smith (disambiguation) to John Smith. If you look at Special:WhatLinksHere/John_Smith you can see a collection of random incoming links which probably need to be fixed, and a large number of links which go via the redirect. (Oh dear, on looking more closely, most of those are links which shouldn't have been made anyway, following the rules for hatnotes!) I hope this helps! PamD 17:31, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

If you deliberately create the link titled "Transverse (disambiguation)" but don't make it a redirect, instead send it directly to the page it will be going to, a page titles "Transverse" by using the code, "[[Transverse|Transverse (disambiguation)]]" and don't create the page "Transverse (disambiguation)", then you are still making it clear to the reader that they will be taken to a disambiguation page rather than an article, and you make it clear to other editors by your code that you did not inadvertantly include a disambiguation link. The purpose of creating the page merely to redirect someone so that the code doesn't take them directly there is not clear (in spite of implications by someone older although not necessarily wiser that I'm stupid for not understanding it.) Pseudofusulina (talk) 17:54, 24 January 2012‎ (UTC)

As PamD also explained above, "[[Transverse|Transverse (disambiguation)]]" only changes the appearance of the link. When you check Special:WhatLinksHere/Transverse you will see the page that you added the link to listed there. When the link is formed as "[[Transverse (disambiguation)]]" it shows up on what links here as going through the redirect, which indicates to other editors that this is an intentional link to the disambiguation page and not an inadvertent or mistaken link. older ≠ wiser 18:03, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

<edit conflict>Using your method, an intentional link would still show up as a direct link on the "What links here" list. Using the redirect allows for straightforward differentiation by both human editors and bots. For example, look at the current incoming article-space links for the dab page Maverick. I can see immediately that there are two articles linking to Maverick (disambiguation) (don't need fixing), and five articles that link directly to Maverick (mistaken links that need to be disambiguated to the correct article). ShelfSkewed Talk 18:05, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

It does not seem to show that on transverse. When I click on "what links here" it lists only 1 redirect, not 2. Pseudofusulina (talk) 18:08, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

<edit conflict>The number of articles using the (disambiguation) redirect to a particular dab page can vary widely. It was the case that Transversality was the only article-space page linked to Transverse via the (disambiguation) redirect. I have since fixed the link from Transversal so it is also now a redirect. There are also nine direct links that need to be fixed.--ShelfSkewed Talk 18:20, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

First, the argument that some of dab links explicitly appear as such even without a "(disambiguation)" target in irrelevant to the most heavy problem of our disambiguation system: thousands of links to a dab page (or to a wrong article) which appear to be links to articles. It is not an appearance of intentional dab links on a Web page or in internal links tables what is the problem, but to facilitate bad links detecting. You wrote about a reader, but actually forgot automated tools which fix inadvertent dab links.

I haven't forgotten anything. I don't know about the dab automated tools. I'm trying to undo the messes made of Indian castes and transverse in biology, and I'm trying to understand how to create redirects/dabs/etc., in a way that makes it clear to me (understanding), so I don't have to reread the directions with every working to make sure I don't create a bigger mess. Understanding is not possible from this statement that I quoted above. I'm getting more confused, rather than more certain about what to do.Pseudofusulina (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Please, do not push to talk pages such easter eggs as raw tildes in [1]. Even an experienced user may be confused when posting a followup. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

? I have no idea what you are talking about, but adding more confusing things is not helping. Pseudofusulina (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to close the nowiki I used, someone did it for me. Now, that we've opened an entire discussion on a simple mistake, I see no hope for sorting the caste articles, as it is possible I will make mistakes. Maybe a bot can sort the caste articles on en.wikipedia without making any mistakes. Pseudofusulina (talk) 18:26, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ At this point, it is hard for me to tell why you are so confused and/or frustrated, or what you are trying to do. Why don't you provide us with a specific example of an article that you want to edit, and show us what you are planning to change; then we could provide more focused help. My one suggestion after reading the above discussion, however, is that you just focus on what WP:INTDABLINK asks you to do, and not worry so much about why. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:29, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm trying to edit all of the articles on Indian castes, as they all have much information that is wrong, very wrong, misquoted, contradictory, incorrectly or insufficiently transliterated, but, starting at the top, I'm confused about some of the dab pages, specifically some that need to be created, or have their links changed. The caste articles are such a mess, that I thought I would start with a page that is much easier that I had already seen needed corrections from duplicate and incorrect dabs, so I went to transverse, and I changed the redirects, got reverted and referred to this policy, and I am trying to understand its purpose clear enough that I can follow it without having to explicitly reread it every time I attempt to disambiguate something.

So, this is what I finally see at transverse, but I cannot see what it looked like before:

• Transversality (disambiguation) (redirect page) ‎ (links)
  • Transverse ‎ (links)
  • Longitudinal ‎ (links)
  • Transversal ‎ (links)

And this sticks out in the what links here, and seems useful, but it does not seem related to the discussions above, and I am not really following the rest of this. And, if you are already familiar with something and it is clear as a bell to you, trying to discuss it with someone else by insulting them, does not usually clarify things. Pseudofusulina (talk) 18:37, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

--rather, "transversality," Pseudofusulina (talk) 18:38, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to take a break from en.wikipedia. Thank you to those who tried to answer my question. Pseudofusulina (talk) 18:45, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Incomplete disambiguation (again)

Sorry to come back to this topic so soon, but there is currently a debate here and here as to whether Halifax, Nova Scotia is an "incomplete disambiguation".

Take these other examples:

• Adams, New York
• Madison, New York
• Upton, Oxfordshire
• Lincoln College
• Lincoln County
• HMS Victory

Are these examples of incomplete disambiguation, so that the dab pages should be replaced by redirects to Adams, Madison, Upton, Lincoln and Victory (disambiguation)? Or are they legitimate cases of double disambiguation, which we are told is "relatively rare" in WP (a doubtful assertion)?

It seems to me that if the ambiguous term is a likely search term, the user is usually best served (to find the right article quickly), if the term is a dab page (or there is a dab hatnote on the primary topic) and not a redirect to another dab page (even to a section of another dab page).

Any views on whether the guideline should be clarified?--Mhockey (talk) 12:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

No, they aren't incomplete disambiguations. IMO, incomplete disambiguations are pages with parenthetical qualifiers where the parenthetical qualifier isn't sufficient to identify a topic uniquely. "Natural" titles like Adams, New York or HMS Victory are legitimate, unqualified titles that users ignorant of Wikipedia's disambiguation titling might use to find information. There's no point in dumping them in an over-long disambiguation page. The topics might be duplicated on the less-specific title's disambiguation too (possibly creating additional work for editors, but that's OK), but they shouldn't be merged. I'd be happy to take a stab at clarifying the guidelines if my IMO there is consensus. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:52, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

(after ec) For Lincoln College, Lincoln County, HMS Victory, these are clearly not incomplete disambiguations as each term has a distinctive sense and is commonly used outside of Wikipedia. However, there is some overlapping ambiguity that would warrant linking to these pages from Lincoln and Victory. That is, in various contexts, these can be referred to as simply "Lincoln" or "Victory".

For the place names, I'd suggest that these are also not incomplete disambiguations. The village of Adams, New York is the primary topic over the town of the same name (though that may be a debatable point). Similarly, Upton, Vale of White Horse is the primary topic for Upton, Oxfordshire. And Madison, New York, is a disambiguation page for the term "Madison, New York". Of all of these, this might be considered by some to be an incomplete disambiguation, but unlike parenthetical disambiguators which are unique contrivances unique to wikipedia, the exact phrase "Madison, New York", has common currency outside of wikipedia and a reader looking for "Madison, New York", is poorly served by redirecting them to the much larger and less specific disambiguation page for Madison. And FWIW, I oppose the proposed merge of Halifax, Nova Scotia, for similar reasons.

You may be right that the statement regarding double disambiguation This kind of disambiguation is relatively rare on Wikipedia is not quite accurate. It is not exactly commonplace, but it is far from "rare". older ≠ wiser 13:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver outage

FYI, the Toolserver's replication of changes to the English Wikipedia database appears to be broken, and there is no ETA for when it may be fixed. This will affect all of the reports generated by JaGa's tools (such as //toolserver.org/~jason/disambig_links.php), as well as The Daily Disambig, which relies on those tools. Dispenser's various dab-fixing tools are still operational, but they are working off an increasingly outdated copy of the database. (Basically, the Toolserver is frozen at about 01:00 UTC on 25 January; any edits since then aren't being processed.) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver seems to be coming back to life now, so perhaps things will be more or less back to normal by tomorrow. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Using a disambiguation term instead of a commonly used alternative title?

I was wondering what the rationale is in regards to using alternative titles for artitsic works as page titles. There is a discussion at Talk:Bande_à_part_(film)#Requested_move about moving Bande à part (film) to Band of Outsiders. Bande à part and Band of Outsiders are both commonly used titles for the film, but the French version is more commonly used than its English variant in English language literature so should be the correct choice as per WP:COMMON. However, Bande à part itself serves as a disambiguation page, so which title usage is then more consistent with WP:COMMON? The disambiguated form of the more popular title i.e. Bande à part (film) or the less common English title ie. Band of Outsiders? Betty Logan (talk) 17:02, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

IMO: The proper title for an article should be first determined. In this case, the article on the film would normally be titled "Bande à part". Second check for ambiguity. The normal title would be ambiguous, so a qualifier is used: Bande à part (film). The two determinations (title and qualifier) are independent of each other. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion, it depends on how close in commonness (among reliable English-language sources) the two names are. If "Bande à part" is only slightly more common, "Band of Outsiders" is an appropriate title for the article.

This is consistent with WP:COMMONNAME. ("When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.")

If "Bande à part" predominates by a large margin, "Bande à part (film)" should be retained. —David Levy 20:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

For the record, having just examined the linked discussion, I'm not convinced that the name "Band of Outsiders" is sufficiently common to justify the proposed move. —David Levy 20:25, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

There is a margin, but I couldn't say it counts as a 'wide' margin. If you take the two main English language catalogues, the AFI has it under the English title and lists its French title as its alternative title; the BFI does the opposite listing the English title as the variant. The IMDB goes with the English title, and lists the French title under it as "original title". The New York Times goes with English title listing the French title as an alternative title. Allrovi goes with the French title and doesn't list the English title, but does use the English title DVD cover as its image. The US and Canadian Amazons goes with the English title, and the British Amazon goes with the French title. In terms of Wikiepda usage, over the last three months Bande à part (film) got 9000 hits while Band of Outsiders got [4000 hits. Betty Logan (talk) 20:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the relevant policy is at WP:PRECISE, not WP:COMMONNAME. Natural disambiguation is generally preferred to parenthetical disambiguation in article titles if a topic has more than one common name. Station1 (talk) 20:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

That advice pertains primarily to the choice between natural and parenthetical disambiguation of a particular name (e.g. "English language" vs. "English (language)"), not to the choice between a common name that requires parenthetical disambiguation and one that doesn't.

As noted above, the latter is covered at WP:COMMONNAME, which advises us that "when there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others." (Ambiguity is one of the "problems" mentioned earlier in the paragraph.) —David Levy 21:05, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation Category question:Greek Letter Organizations

I think this is the right place to bring this up... I notice that there are disambiguation categories, but they tend to be large and general (roads, for example). At this point, from quick looking, I have found the following Greek Letter Organization (Fraternities and Sororities) related disambiguation pages: Alpha Delta, Alpha Gamma Sigma, Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity House, Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House and Delta Phi Epsilon. Is it appropriate to have a category for these, if so, would a template be appropriate and what would be an appropriate name. Also, in the event of a disambiguation page like Ceres where *one* of the choices is a Fraternity or Sorority, how would that be handled?Naraht (talk) 16:13, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see a need for any special scheme of categorization for these. In particular, the "Fraternity House" dab pages are for historic buildings, not the organizations themselves. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:12, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

As a general matter, we don't have any policy about categories for particular subtypes of disambiguation pages. These have been created on an ad hoc basis by individual users who thought it would be useful for some reason to keep track of particular subsets of disambiguation pages. Personally, I don't see the usefulness, but I would suggest that we should deprecate the creation of new templates for this purpose, and instead encourage categorization by adding parameter options to Template:Disambiguation. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:17, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Could editors look at a couple of contentious pages?

Any comments at Monroe, Wisconsin (disambiguation) and Greatest Hits (Fleetwood Mac album) would be greatly appreciated. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 19:29, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Mandatory redirects for primary topics

About a week ago I made a bold edit which I thought was reasonable based on past discussions, but it was fairly quickly reverted. So, I'm here, asking: given there's a good reason to use redirects for primary topics (fixing ambiguous links), is there a good reason why we shouldn't mandate the use of redirects (instead of articles) for primary topics? Josh Parris 10:56, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

For one, it is a question with impact that goes beyond disambiguation. At minimum, I think you'd need to get support for the change at WT:AT. It might be well to use an RFC format and add notices at WP:VPP. older ≠ wiser 11:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not against that if there's a consensus here, but I think I'll wait to see if anyone who's paying attention here can come up with a decent counter-argument. There's no rush. Josh Parris 12:20, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I did not get how the redirects' problem appears as a part of article titles' problem. Titles have to be unambiguous and there are any objection to it from either side, but the disagreement is about the possibility of "ambiguous redirects" to articles. What did I miss? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:49, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

It affects Article Titles, because, if I'm understanding your proposal correctly, you think a primary topic article should be at a disambiguated title and a redirect at the primary topic. This is a fairly big change from common practice and will require a lot of explanation and retraining of editors. older ≠ wiser 13:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

No, you don't. Is the work with dabs so destructive for users' attention and mutual understanding? Please, try again. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:03, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I conflated your comments with Josh's. My comments are directed towards the edit Josh made to the page. older ≠ wiser 14:20, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Some recent participants have a destructive approach, but no, in general the work with dabs is unobtrusive. Your claim that "titles have to be unambiguous" (if you mean that no article can have a title that would be ambiguous with the possible title of another topic's article) isn't part of the guidelines or consensus. Wikipedia only technically requires that titles be unique -- this can be achieved by putting the primary topic at the base name, by redirecting any titles for which a topic is the primary topic to the article on the topic, and by qualifying any titles for non-primary articles that could have the ambiguous title. Please, try again. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I never promoted radical changes to articles' naming. It is possible that in some relatively rare occasions an article will have to be moved, but my point (I am not sure about Josh Parris' one) is to introduce an intermediate grade of ambiguity of redirects only, an "ambiguous redirect to an article". Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:10, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Me either. Can you give me an example of the application of your point? -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:12, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Currently:

• NetBEUI → NetBIOS – usually means NetBIOS Frames protocol, but it is a historically determined misnomer.
• Memory model (computing) – persistent confusion between what is now called Memory model (programming) and Memory address #Memory models, and I am not sure that a dab will be a good solution.

Potentially:

• Code (computer programming) – persistent confusion between source code and machine code, currently is a dab redirect, but ambiguously redirecting to software also can be considered.
• Hydrogen ion – currently a disguised dab page (formally still an article), but ambiguously redirecting to hydron (chemistry) (by overwhelming majority of inbound links) or Hydrogen #Compounds (by literal sense) also can be considered.
• Linux – an iconic example of inherit ambiguity. Now there is an article about Linux-based operating systems (so named GNU/Linux, by Stallman and others), but it could be moved to give a way to an ambiguous redirect. This is the only example of 5 which involves moving a real article.

Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:24, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

In those cases, if there's an article where there should be no primary topic, yes, the article should be moved to a qualified name and the disambiguation moved to (or created at) the base name (or an {{R from incomplete disambiguation}} created). But those can be handled with move requests under the current guidelines, since the proposal appears to be that the current primary topic isn't really a primary topic for the title. If the consensus is that the current base name is the primary topic, then the incoming links that don't intend that article should be updated. Is there a different arrangement of those articles that you're proposing? -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:37, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if I'm reading this right, but by saying the primary topic title should be different from the ambiguous term seems to imply that there will be no more primary topics i.e. all ambiguous terms will become redirects or disambiguation pages? Am I reading that correctly or am I getting the wrong end of the stick? Betty Logan (talk) 12:44, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

More or less, yes. The concept of a primary topic still exists, but the primary topic doesn't sit on the ambiguous term; it gets all traffic pointed at it. Josh Parris 14:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Based on past discussions, I still hold that an article's "correct" title should be determined, and then a qualifier should be added if required by the "correct" title being correctly occupied by another article, one that is the primary topic for the title. It's possible that, in cases where two titles are comparable in correctness, the absence of need for a qualifier on one title can tip the scales in its favor (David Levy recently educated me on that bit of WP:COMMONNAME), but otherwise, there is no "should" for the title of the primary topic being different than the ambiguous term. The title only "might" be different if (a) its "correct" title is different and yet (b) it is the primary topic for the ambiguous term. If the "correct" title is the ambiguous term and it's the primary topic, its title should be the ambiguous term. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:43, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful to focus on a concrete example. The example we have near the top of Wikipedia:Disambiguation of a disambiguation page with a primary topic is Rice and Rice (disambiguation). I take it that Josh's proposal is that, in any situation like this, Rice should be moved to a different title (although I'm not clear what that would be), so that Rice would be a redirect instead of an article. However, the disambiguation page would not be moved over the title of the primary topic. First, do I understand the proposal correctly? Second, am I correct in understanding that the claimed benefit of this approach is that it would be easier to locate and fix erroneous links that use Rice incorrectly (for example, when referring to the university)? If so, how exactly would this be easier if Rice is a redirect? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

This matches how I understand Josh's proposed change. And this is a very big change in how primary topics are currently handled. older ≠ wiser 14:22, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

It's only if someone runs around applying it retrospectively. But, that's the kind of thing people do I suppose... Josh Parris 14:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is what I propose. With Rice redirecting to the primary topic Rice (seed), there's now a way to distinguish between intentional links to the primary topic (i.e. those going to Rice (seed)) and unintentional links to the primary topic (those to Rice). Both end up on Rice (seed), but they are now segregated. Rice can be marked with a template indicating that the topic is ambiguous (this is a little beyond Incnis Mrsi's expected use of {{R from ambiguous}}) and then automatic tools can detect, count and assist humans in correcting links to Rice. Josh Parris 14:39, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with the proposal (and I don't know of any prior discussions that had any consensus for it). Other titles that would be impacted IMO for the worse: Cat, United States, William Shakespeare. I don't know if there's a technical enhancement possible for tagging links to such primary topics as "reviewed by another editor", but I don't think forcing every title to be qualified is the right approach. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:49, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I do not share Josh Parris' radical stand and think that for majority of cases the established system is adequate. So, there should be not mandatory, but situational redirects. I agree that inbound links to some especially dangerous words and word combinations should be discouraged. Hence, if such a term is occupied by an article (which occurs rarer, but is not uncommon, such as for "Linux" mentioned above, and names of countries and territories), then the article should be moved away of it, as Josh Parris proposes. But there are many such words as Moscow which, although are formally ambiguous, should not be declared as such and should be allowed to host an article. The primary concern should be not an existence of some different meaning, but a possibility of an inbound link made by mistake or ignorance. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

How is "Linux" dangerous? How are country and territory names dangerous? "United States" is a country and an ambiguous title -- should it be moved away as "dangerous"? Or are you talking about names like "Taiwan", "Georgia", or "Korea". Who's going to do the declaring of which names are allowed to host articles and which aren't? The primary concern should be the utility of the encyclopedia to the readership as a whole. Mistaken inbound links can occur (even to Cat), but mistakes can be corrected. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:34, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

"Linux" is dangerous because links bound to just Linux promote inaccuracy, which eventually blurs a distinction between kernel and userland, an important point in open software systems. There is an ongoing flamewar about "Taiwan", and I will not consider it specifically. Georgia is a dab and, hence, is not dangerous in the aforementioned sense. Korea is not dangerous at all: the article is dedicated to the most general meaning of "Korea" (similarly to recently introduced WP:CONCEPTDABs). "United States" is not dangerous in English, but becomes so translated to Spanish and Portuguese. Dangerous for en.WP are such totum pro parte toponyms as:

• California – an article about U.S. state, but really denoting larger territory, sadly, even without an article.
• Netherlands – similar condition, but with an article.
• Niger – there is not less known homonymous river.
• Luxembourg, Kuwait – small countries with homonymous capitals.

A user has to be completely unEnglish to link cat (Unix) as [[cat]]. But a physical geographer can link a river as [[Niger]] and a historian from, say, Great Britain can link [[California]] assuming the historical California, not modern U.S. state. The result is not just lack of precision – it is a link to related, but narrower topic, which can promote mistakes and confusion. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:22, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Let's use "error-prone" instead of "dangerous" -- I think that's what you mean. The examples of California, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Kuwait are sufficient to illustrate the disagreement. I see nothing problematically error-prone in them, and believe the articles for them are correctly placed. I suppose redirects California (state), State of Kuwait, etc., could be used by some editors who wish to avoid reviewing the same links repeatedly (and other editors should undo them), but I don't see any reason to urge the editorship at large to use the redirects, and I definitely wouldn't want to move the articles to those qualified names. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:43, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

For reasons put forth by others above, I also disagree with Josh Parris' proposal; it seems like a big change without a big enough benefit to justify it. (And I don't really understand his remark that it would be a big change "only if someone runs around applying it retrospectively"; if our guidelines say that articles should be titled by a particular scheme, that would seem to indicate that articles not titled by that scheme should be corrected.) I also disagree with Incnis Mrsi's proposal, which as I understand it would be applying JP's proposal but only to some articles without clear rules as to which articles it should be applied to. Theoldsparkle (talk) 17:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)