Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation

A disambiguation of disambiguation pages

There may be an irony in that (add: the titles of) Wikipedia disambiguation (navigation) pages are often not disambiguated. This also leads to an issue with regard to WP:CRITERIA Consistency which presents the ideal that "The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles.". In actuality in which many of our navigation purposed disambiguation pages are titled "Foobar (disambiguation)" while other pages (all of which - according to WP:Disambiguation#Page style presents "a list (or multiple lists, for multiple senses of the term in question)") simply presents a title in the typically singular form "Foobar".

If I visit an article named "Foo" (a title presented in singular form) I may naturally assume that the article entitled "Foo" will be concerning a subject on a topic named "Foo" or "foo". I will not necessarily expect to find a list of Foos/foos. For some time not I have regarded that less ambiguous titles might go along the lines of "Foo (disambiguation)" or "List of F/foos" in a pluralised "List of .." type format.

Without a disambiguation of disambiguation lists these lists fundamentally fail WP:AT which presents the ideal that "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles." A title such as John Smith presents a single name as of a single entity (person or organisation) who/that, in this case, would be called "John Smith". However, what we find in the article is a very long List of John Smiths and yet, failing to follow the format provided by the many "Foo (disambigution)" articles, the navigation page is not disambiguated from anything from amongst its extensive content.

I also think that the fact that Wikipedia editors have developed such a vast body of collaborative work to the point that it requires navigation deserves, if anything, celebration and I think that editors can be rightly proud that we have developed multiple articles that may all be referenced by use of identical terminologies. To erroneously describe a "List of foos" as "Foo" helps neither the reader or Wikipedia.

On the topic of helping the reader I also think that it would be to the benefit of readers if we moved towards the use of "navigation" based terminologies and this is an issue that was previously raised in the thread Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 43#Disambiguation pages are navigation pages. In web searches:

• article navigation -wikipedia got "About 594,000,000 results" while
• article disambiguation -Wikipedia got "About 560,000 results"

That's a ratio of 1060:1 in relation to the raw data results.

My interpretation is that "disambiguation" is a necessary editor concern in relation to the differentiation and frequent dissection of terminologies so as to fit mainly technical article address requirements. Reader concern however is, arguably, navigation of content and, in effect and even though it has its advantages, a title such as "Foo (disambiguation)" fails WP:UCRN. The main thing that this format of title achieves is a non commonname disambiguation from "Foo"

My suggestion is that we develop a Wikipedia preference for disambiguation lists for a topic such as "Foo" be placed at titles which might be presented in a format such as:

• Foo (navigation)
• Foo (navigation guide)
• Foo (navigation page)
• Foo (article navigation)
• Foo (article navigation guide)
• Foo (article navigation page) or
• Foo (disambiguation)

If a decision was taken to adopt something like a ".. (.. navigation ..)" disambiguation option then, if I were to be given the tools, I would be happy to action any currently required changes. I believe there are only ~2000 "... (disambiguation)" articles so this type of change would not take long.

However, beyond a potential encouragement for editors to think more in accordance to reader navigational needs, the main issue presented here is the WP:Precise titling of disambiguation lists according to the ideal that "titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article". This is something that our current titles fail to do.

GregKaye 06:22, 26 June 2015 (UTC) clarification "the titles of" added to the first sentence. I honestly don't see that such c clarification was needed as the second sentence presented the policy quote "The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles." and the second paragraph began "If I visit an article named "Foo" (a title presented in singular form) I may naturally assume that the article entitled "Foo" will be concerning a subject on a topic named "Foo" or "foo". ..." and the third paragraph began "Without a disambiguation of disambiguation lists these lists fundamentally fail WP:AT" GregKaye 04:47, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

I (an experienced wp editor) have no idea what your first sentence "Wikipedia disambiguation (navigation) pages are often not disambiguated" is supposed to mean and much of the rest of your posting is also incomprehensible. You appear to have learnt little/nothing from the response of editors to your (afaics) similar proposal in March. If you can't explain clearly what you think the problem is and precisely how you think guidelines/policy (e.g. WP:Disambiguation) should be changed then please stop flogging this WP:DEADHORSE. DexDor ^(talk) 06:53, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

DexDor There are two issues and perhaps they would both be best discussed with reference to an example. The list content with the web address for the en Wikipedia namespace John Smith has large content including listings for 111 people who are presented in Wikipedia as being called "John Smith". Examples include:

• John Smith (professor), mathematician at the University of Oxford, 1766–97 and
• John Smith (lexicographer) (died 1809), professor of languages at Dartmouth College

As mentioned there are 111 subjects with the title "John Smith" and yet the title of the navigation list "John Smith" is not disambiguated from any one of them. The content at John Smith also presents 96 subjects with titles that may not have needed any disambiguation at all and these include titles such as:

• John Blair Smith (1764–1799), president of Union College, New York
• John Augustine Smith (1782–1865), president of the College of William and Mary, 1814–1826 and
• John Smith's Brewery, a brewery founded in 1758 by John Smith at Tadcaster in North Yorkshire, England

Again for many such titles no disambiguation will have been IN ANY SENSE required and, in connection to these articles, a categorisation as "disambiguation" is incorrect.

Added to this is the fact that the common name terminology for navigational contents (such as those that are frequently used in Wikipedia) is "navigation". We use the relatively obscure terminology as related to the editorial concern of "disambiguation" and, in relation to the many articles that require no disambiguation, we use it inaccurately.

What we are doing is that we are providing a facility of navigation. This is a horse that seems to be alive and well in every other location that I have seen other than Wikipedia. GregKaye 12:55, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@GregKaye: When you say "I believe there are only ~2000 "... (disambiguation)" articles", what exactly do you mean by that? Category:Disambiguation pages has about 260,000 pages in it, and picking a few random pages from that group leaves me with the impression that at least 20% (over 50,000) have "(disambiguation)" in the title. By the way, I am not averse to the proposal, as I do agree that an undisambiguated disambiguation page title can sometimes be a shock to the reader. bd2412 T 13:48, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@GregKaye:, with respect, you appear to be profoundly confused when you state Again for many such titles no disambiguation will have been IN ANY SENSE required and, in connection to these articles, a categorisation as "disambiguation" is incorrect. The articles not categorized as disambiguation. The disambiguation page simply helps readers find articles with information about subjects that may be referred to as "John Smith". The examples you mention appear to use a form of natural disambiguation by including a middle name. It would be nearly impossible to establish that these are never known as simply "John Smith". As to your other point, so far you have been the only person to ever propose using "(navigation)" in place of "(disambiguation)" and your argument regarding any benefits are extremely unclear. older ≠ wiser 14:28, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@BD2412: Fair enough in regard to the number of pages. Category page listings of these navigation pages that I looked at typically contained between 15 and 35 pages marked "Foo (disambiguation)" amongst contents in which 200 articles were presented per page. At a potential average of 25 such article listings on each page that would make a large content of 260,000 / 200 * 25 = 32,500 articles.

@Bkonrad: With respect please specify what WP:DISAMBIGUATION is required so as to differentiate an article title such as John Blair Smith from an article title such as John Smith (professor). As far as I know the title "John Blair Smith" has primary topic in regard to the namespace John Blair Smith. This the title for this BLP topic. What further "disambiguation" is required? As far as Wikipedia's WP:Goal of presenting an encyclopedia is concerned, I think that we should aim to get our content right. GregKaye 14:58, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@GregKaye: Can you prove with certainty that John Blair Smith is never referenced as John Smith? The inclusion of "Blair" is necessary to disambiguate that John Smith from the others. As to encyclopedic goals, you haven't presented anything convincing that there is an actual problem, let alone that your proposed solution is appropriate. older ≠ wiser 15:04, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@Bkonrad: Please, WP:DISAMBIGUATION in Wikipedia "is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous". I don't see that there is anything "ambiguous" about a title such as "John Blair Smith". In Wikipedia we go by WP:COMMONNAME and I would have thought that this would stretch to the use of user focussed terminologies such as "navigation".

Comment I really think that habits of naming in Wikipedia are totally out of step with presentation methodologies elsewhere.

• site:britannica.com disambiguation gets "6 results" amongst "About 1,590,000 results" in relation to a search results estimate of a total number of site pages.
• site:en.wikipedia.org disambiguation in stark comparison gets "About 1,010,000 results" amongst About 16,200,000 results in relation to a search results estimate of a total number of en site pages. GregKaye 15:29, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I do not think that there is benefit in presenting the relatively obscure terminology of disambiguation when commonname terminologies are available.

I am unaware of any other source that presents navigation pages in the way we do. GregKaye 15:29, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

The ambiguous term is "John Smith", not "John Blair Smith". Is that really so difficult to understand? I mean seriously? As for the use of the term disambiguation, that Britannica uses a different method that is in effect impractical if not impossible to implement with Wikimedia software is irrelevant to whether the term itself actually presents any problem. older ≠ wiser 15:36, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Spot on. John Smith is an ambiguous term and, in parallel to this, a substantially sized navigation page has been developed in regard to people possessing both names "John" and "Smith". There is no reason to disambiguate a title such as John Blair Smith from a title such as John Smith (professor). There is however a reason to disambiguate a title such as John Smith from a title such as John Smith (professor). You are right in you identification of the ambiguous term. GregKaye 15:56, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

So you are claiming that John Blair Smith is NEVER referenced as John Smith (or John B. Smith, of which there are several included on the page)? Do you have some evidence to support such a claim? older ≠ wiser 16:00, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I am claiming that the most commonly recognisable name of many if not all the 96 articles mentioned is something other than "John Smith", I am claiming that, if there is an article title that need disambiguation from an article title such as John Smith (professor), its John Smith and I am also claiming that, on the issue of navigation pages, we are very far from an application of WP:CRITERIA in relation to Consistency. We highlight the presence of a navigation page in some cases but not in others.

Can you please specify in which aspects of Britannica's method you regard as being potentially impractical within a context of our use of Wikimedia software? GregKaye 16:11, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I really don't understand your point regarding John Smith. Unless you are completely certain that no one would look for John Blair Smith under John Smith, then you would be doing readers a disservice by not including it on the disambiguation page.

Wikimedia has a technical limitation in that the article title must be unique. Britannica does not have this limitation and can use other methods for helping readers distinguish the articles that are not readily applicable on Wikipedia. older ≠ wiser 16:18, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

If a reader has, for instance, incomplete knowledge of a subject such that the reader do(es) not know or remember the full commonname of a subject then it may be perfectly valid to present (the title of the biographical article of) that person within the content of a navigation page. The issue here is one of description. There is no disambiguation involved.

Britannica has both an extensive and (in many cases) a relatively rich titling and subtitling system and a web address system that parallels many aspects of our system of article title differentiation. See: Wikipedia:List of Johns whose Britannica article titles contain broad description

A search on http://www.britannica.com/search?query=John%20Smith immediately presents:

• John Smith (British explorer) at http://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Smith-British-explorer
• John Smith (British politician) at http://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Smith-British-politician and
• John Smith (American wrestler) at http://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Smith-wrestler

A search on site:http://www.britannica.com John Smith British explorer produces a heading in a search engine listing as: "John Smith | biography - British explorer | Britannica.com". It seems to me that Britannica's requirements and methods are quite similar to ours. The only difference is that they use parenthesis in internal search lists, vertical bars in html titles that appear on search engine lists and they use hyphens in the web addresses for their articles while Wikipedia uses underscores. The differences are mainly cosmetic. GregKaye 17:34, 27 June 2015 (UTC) additions added in brackets GregKaye 04:58, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

You're still missing the point about John Smith. You presume John Blair Smith should not be under John Smith, yet offer no evidence. And you go on to present a mostly irrelevant description of what Britannica is able to do without the constraints of Wikimedia software. All of which is even more irrelevant for the topic of this section. older ≠ wiser 17:38, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, it would be presumptuous of me to try to speak for Greg Kaye, but I don't think it is accurate to say "you presume John Blair Smith should not be under John Smith." If I understand him correctly, he is saying that John Blair Smith should be under John Smith, but that the function that is being served by doing so is "navigation", not "disambiguation". In other words, his concern appears to be entirely about terminology, not about page content. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:07, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

But that makes no sense to me ... if we cannot eliminate likelihood that John Blair Smith might be referred to as John Smith (or John B. Smith) then the subject is ambiguous and requires disambiguation. older ≠ wiser 18:47, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I totally agree with your point to the extent that "we cannot eliminate likelihood that John Blair Smith might (on potentially rare occasion) be referred to as John Smith (or John B. Smith)". There is also, arguably, the likelihood that readers may search for him with searches such as "John Blare Smith", "John Blaire Smith", "John Blaine Smith" or, if she or he is having real trouble remembering the most generally recognisable name by which he was most commonly known, she or he might simply search on "John Smith" (which I think should redirect to something like "John Smith (.. navigation ..)" and then work through the navigation list in search of the bio for the, amongst other things, "president of Union College, New York" None of this changes the fact that the title "John Blair Smith" requires no disambiguation.

In every other web setting I know a reader/user focussed presentation is given of search functions and navigation facilities. However, instead of offering reader focussed facility of search and navigation, we inaccurately present search and disambiguation. In this we present a non-commonname description of navigation pages that is focussed on editorial process rather than reader needs.

I also think that there would be a degree of value for editors in the development of a culture that presented readers needs to the forefront. Articles can be misplaced. On one instance, despite the presence of a hatnote on the article of the cricketer Graeme Wood I failed to notice the link to journalist Graeme C.A. Wood which I think was partly due to the fact that he is more commonly recognisable (certainly by me) by designations such as Graeme Wood (journalist). I think that a potential trap may be that some editors may get so caught up with the process of disambiguation that utility and navigability can be forgotten. I appreciate that Wikipedia presents as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." but, all the same, surely reader's needs should be prioritised over the perceived needs of editors. GregKaye 07:21, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

The last sentense of your first paragraph shows that you still don't understand what other editors are telling you - "John Blair Smith" may not require disambiguation, but "John Smith" does. I can't see the relevance of your cricketer/journalist example to how disambiguation pages (note: that's the name we currently use on wp - not "navigation pages") are titled.

Do you have any evidence that renaming "Foo (disambiguation)" to "Foo (navigation)" (which is the closest I can find in the comments above to an actual proposal to change anything) would make things easier for readers? "Disambiguation" may be a rare word outside wp, but the meaning should be clear to reasonably intelligent readers from the content of the dab page. Being a rare word in the real world has an advantage that it's unlikely to crop up in article titles; we can be pretty sure that any page with "(disambiguation)" in the title is a dab page that's not true for "(navigation)" (see Course (navigation), Breadcrumb (navigation), Oboe (navigation) ...). Even if you think that a mass renaming of dab pages would have a marginal positive effect on readers the huge negative effect on editors (and hence indirectly on readers) should be taken into account. DexDor ^(talk) 09:22, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

DexDor Please note the request that I have presented above: ".. please specify what WP:DISAMBIGUATION is required so as to differentiate an article title such as John Blair Smith from an article title such as John Smith (professor)." That was and is my simple request in regard to which I would be quite happy for you to tell me of your view. What disambiguation is needed? What? Please!

On the navigation page titled John Kennedy (disambiguation) the first person that gets mentioned is John F. Kennedy. What WP:DISAMBIGUATION has been required in this or the many parallel cases presented on the same navigation page.

Please consider the format of Wikipedia navigation pages. Many have titles in the format "Foo Bar (disambiguation)" and yet these pages frequently have content in formats such as "Foo Bar Baz"; "Foo Baz Bar", "Baz Foo Bar", "Foo Baz Bar Qux" and so on. In any of these cases in which commonname has been rightly used, ".. please specify what WP:DISAMBIGUATION (has been) required." Please.

What I understand is that other editors have not, truth be told, justified how the topic of "disambiguation" is of relevance in these cases. No one has explained, for that matter, how the Wikipedia content at John Smith is in any way disambiguated from any of the many topics in that navigation list that are actually called "John Smith". What should I have understood from the above?

I think that my personal preference would be for the titles of article navigation pages to be presented in a format such as:

Foobar, (article navigation guide)

---

or

Foobar, (article navigation page)

---

A title format such as those presented above would serve to disambiguate a navigation page entitled "Foobar" from any number of articles that are also entitled "Foobar" while simultaneously applying an accurate and commonname description to the navigation content. GregKaye 12:16, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

No one has explained, for that matter, how the Wikipedia content at John Smith is in any way disambiguated from any of the many topics in that navigation list that are actually called "John Smith". Now you are simply being obtuse and not hearing what others have said. Whether there may be any benefit to calling disambiguation pages something else is another matter, though I agree with DexDor. The current convention works just fine. You have not clearly explained any actual deficiency. older ≠ wiser 12:48, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Bkonrad with good faith I have clearly presented the issue (at 15:29, 27 June 2015) that "WP:DISAMBIGUATION in Wikipedia "is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous"". As you will have read I have contended that this does not apply to John Blair Smith and John F. Kennedy in situations in which the articles are listed in locations such as the navigation pages John Smith and John Kennedy (disambiguation).

No one has presented anything with any substantiation to show how such inclusion fits into any definition of "disambiguation".

I have also presented (at 06:22, 26 June 2015) that many of the lists, such as "John Smith", that we label as "disambiguation lists" "fundamentally fail WP:AT which presents the ideal that "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles."" That is what I "have said".

I am quite happy, for instance, for us to agree to differ in regard to an importance in regard to these issues. However I am not going to lie and say that I agree with your interpretations. Titles such as John Blair Smith and John F. Kennedy require no disambiguation according to any definitions of the word that I have seen. The title of the Wikipedia listing that contains the navigation presented at the namespace John Smith is not disambiguated from at least half of that page's substantial content.

Without substantiation DexDor has asserted "The last sentense of your first paragraph shows that you still don't understand what other editors are telling you" and similarly without justification you label me "obtuse". Please, either present a definitions based argument and justification for your position, (and/)or desist from your personal attacks. Your argument is that, even in the case of someone whose commonly recognisable name is "Foo Baz Bar" and even if they may only have been very rarely known as "Foo Bar", then this is adequate justification for the application of a "... (disambiguation)" label. You see this as sufficient justification in regard to the current practice of our encyclopedia. I do not.

Please take some time to consider the contents at WP:PA, WP:CIVIL and WP:WINNING. Please consider presenting your arguments and leaving things at that. Please. GregKaye 15:41, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Ignoring the condescensions, your claim that article titles such as John Blair Smith (ignoring for the moment John F. Kennedy which is a different case) do not require disambiguation is utterly unfounded and is little more than a fantasy. You have not addressed the fundamental principle—that you cannot reasonably exclude likelihood that readers might look for our link to this person using the ambiguous name John Smith. And I guess we will continue to disagree regarding your frankly bizarre interpretations. older ≠ wiser 19:11, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Please let's step back from the habit of "ignoring" range of related issues that can be considered to get this issue in perspective. Most (I consider) fundamentally or perhaps I should say centrally is the issue that, in web based contexts, when a content that presents a sequence of hypertext links is presented, the COMMONNAME given to that form of content is "navigation". Please also consider that our policy is present titling that, "someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize" and that, when adding in the concept of naturalness, that "such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English." In many cases in which, for instance, a fuller form of personal name is used by a person and, in many cases, it would be a misrepresentation of that person merely to present them according to an abridged form of their name.

In connection to other examples that I have given above, coming from the UK, I have on a number of occasions enjoyed a pint of John Smith's. I do not drink pints of "John Smith" because, if I did, I would likely and justly be arrested.

There are many other examples in which topics that are covered in Wikipedia are overwhelmingly known by one common name and yet Wikipedia helpfully and charitably gives reference to the subject by other possible renderings of the subjects name. My interpretation is that this is mainly done in order to give assistance to readers who are either ignorant of the subject or who had temporarily forgotten what the subject is commonly called. In many cases I do not personally see the issue here as being "disambiguation" but the provision of assistance to readers to "navigate" their ways to the actual article topic that they seek. The issues for readers are "search" and "navigation". These are the commonly used terms as they commonly appear across the web.

Please also do not ignore the issue that titles of Wikipedia navigation pages - such as the one for people who are known by the names "John" and "Smith"- are not disambiguated from subject titles that are actually called "John Smith". GregKaye 05:52, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

I can't even parse the 1st sentence. DexDor ^(talk) 20:56, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Try reading the second sentence and the op in context. GregKaye 04:38, 1 July 2015 (UTC) (reply placed out of sequence)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think, in a nutshell, what GregKaye is saying is that if you go to look up an architect named "John Smith", you would expect to find the article at "John Smith (architect)", and if you go to look up a navigational page listing a collection of people named "John Smith" you would expect to find the page at a title like "John Smith (navigation)". bd2412 T 23:35, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

"if you go to look up an architect named "John Smith", you would expect to find the article at "John Smith (architect)", and if you go to look up a navigational page listing a collection of people named "John Smith" you would expect to find the page at a title like "John Smith (navigation)"

That's a logical position, but one that I would refine.

"Look up", if it means "search", as in input 'architect "John Smith"' into the Wikipedia internal search engine, or the google search engine with "+wikipedia", then No, search engines search all content, not just titles, as well as other things such as looking what what past searchers chose after doing a similar search. No, a title does not necessarily have to reflect typical search query terms. Though it might.

If "Look up" means looking at a listing, such as an index listing in a traditional book thing, or a perusal of the Wikipedia Category system, then yes, I would like to be able to expect that if John Smith is primarily known as an architect, then "architect" will be in the article title. Unfortunately, this is not Wikipedia practice, as instead, if the name is unique, then no matter how obscure the person, no additional information is usually included in the title. Unfortunate, but probably not worth trying to change, because ascribing a single concise occupation to every biography opens a different can or worms, possibly leading to worse incongruities.

On the other side, if I were perusing a list, whether any list or a filtered list, and I saw "John Smith (architect)", I would expect that this person is primarily known as an architect. Also, knowing a little bit about Wikipedia, I would infer that there are other John Smiths who are not architects. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:50, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Our title policy, however, suggests that the title of an article should indicate precisely what the article is about. I am not necessarily agreeing with Greg's position, but I am not disagreeing with it either. I am contemplating the fairly stark fact that "John Smith" is not a title that tells you that the page is a list of people by that name. Granted, no one in their right mind should expect that "John Smith" is an article on any one particular person, but the principal applies to more obscure ambiguous names like Alfred Loomis, which is unusual enough that you wouldn't expect there to be three of them. bd2412 T 01:16, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you, and am not sure whether to agree or disagree with GK. With effort, I sometimes see that he is trying to make sensible changes. He doesn't have your clarity or English, and I appreciate you attempts to interpret. Alfred Loomis is a good example. I would be nice, one might think, if all Alfred Loomiss included the occupation for which they are known, but then when you come to the first, Alfred Lee Loomis, attempting to summarize his occupation into one or two words rapidly runs into increasingly complicated problems. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:10, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

The simple logic is that, if a page is named "Foo Bar", a reader can expect to find an article on the subject of "Foo Bar". The reader would not necessarily expect to find a list of topics that are genuinely called "Foo Bar" and other topics that may be commonly known by names such as "x Foo Bar", "Foo x Bar" and "Foo Bar x".

This, on a literal reading, fails the basics as presented in the opening paragraph at WP:AT and i find it ridiculous to label a page in the format "Foo Bar (disambiguation)" as being amongst WP:Malplaced disambiguation pages. Perhaps these pages (when marked as "disambiguation") may be regarded as unhelpfully and, in many cases, erroneously named but I think that is crazy to assert, without justification, that these pages are "malplaced". On what grounds do we say this?

My contention here is that, if editors end up at pages such as John Smith, John Kennedy and James Maxwell when they are looking for bios such as those for John Blair Smith, John F. Kennedy and James Clerk Maxwell, then this may (admittedly by my complete WP:OR conjecture) be likely because the the reader has simply forgotten (of forgotten the exact rendering of) the actual rendering of the subject's commonname. I also find it difficult to understand the titling of pages such as James McCartney (disambiguation), Harry Crosby (disambiguation), William Clinton (disambiguation) when they contain listings for people such as "James Paul McCartney or Paul McCartney (born 1942), British singer", "Bing Crosby (Harry Lillis Crosby, 1903–1977), American actor and singer" and "[[Bill Clinton|William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton]] (born 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States (1993–2001)". In the first case we have someone who is regularly known as Paul McCartney sometimes as Sir Paul McCartney. I think, that inclusion into the listing on the "James McCartney" page is certainly justified but I think that this may mainly be for the sake of potential reader interest and for the provision of potentially helpful options of navigation. A reader whose name was James McCartney may, for instance, find it of interest to note that the great musician, at least on some legal documents, shared their name.

I would also find it questionable, if navigation pages for names such as Eldrick Woods, Caryn Johnson, Charles Holley ever developed, if these page were labelled as pertaining to disambiguation and if the likes of Tiger Woods, Whoopi Goldberg and Buddy Holley were included in such lists. I mention some famous examples and even from this starting point I would argue that the articles on these people require no disambiguation. It is "navigation" that is usefully and beneficially provided.

Again my underlying contention is that it would be beneficial to move to terminologies that focus on readers needs than editor process. What are our priorities in article titling? Is it just to pigeon hole topics into the most concise possible rendering? Is our process purely about dissection? I personally think that such views are a trap that editors regularly fall into and I think that this example from yesterday is illustrative of a type of request that regularly comes up. I don't think that (what I perceive to be) our filing and sorting focussed mentality is always helpful. GregKaye 06:47, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

• Comment IMO @SmokeyJoe: makes a valuable point by indicating that "ascribing a single concise occupation to every biography opens a different can or worms, possibly leading to worse incongruities." While Wikipedia policy does not require occupational or other information to be applied to bios that are simply titled by an unambiguous WP:COMMONNAME designation such as for John Blair Smith, I think that it is also fair to point out that there is nothing in policy that necessarily restricts disambiguations to the presentation of a single occupation similar description. Again policy presents that WP:Disambiguation ".. in Wikipedia is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous." Nothing is mentioned to state that the disambiguation must be restricted to a single occupation. Again, reference can be made to content at, Wikipedia:List of Johns whose Britannica article titles contain broad description. This list contains examples such as:

• John Alcock (English bishop and statesman)
• John Arbuthnot (British mathematician and author)
• John Perry Barlow (American author, lyricist, and activist)

Please, my presentation of examples like this is not an invitation for the presentation of ludicrously examples of disambiguation as editors, I think, argumentatively presented in the previous discussion. In many cases a more basic disambiguation might be presented in many cases so as to potentially present something like Foo Bar (author and activist). In some cases I think that a presentation like this may have great benefit in assisting reader navigation of content. Some readers may know "Foo Bar" as an author while others may know "Foo Bar" as an activist. This, however, is a side issue in the current discussion. GregKaye 06:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

• Coming from wp:Feedback request service, I took the time to read through and try to understand this, though the proposals are sometimes confusing to me and the responses are sometimes unnecessarily rude (or so I think, both). First off I'd note that sometimes we do things in a certain way and get so much used to that, that we tend to believe it is the best way, even the only correct way of doing it. That is the case with disambiguation pages, I believe. We I joined, over a decade ago, it was a very weird thing until I got used to it; still today, to me a non-english native speaker, I tend to think of "disambiguate" as "the kind of page WP uses to distinguish similarly names articles".

As I understand the proposals, they could be described as:

a) Use pages name "Foo (article navigation)" (or similar) instead of "Foo (disambiguation)".

b) For article navigation / disambiguation pages always use that name, i.e. if there is no primary topic for "Foo", then redirect it to the navigation page.

Relative to statu quo, this would be a change to wp:Disambiguation#Naming the disambiguation page, a) represents a name change, and b) a inversion of the current main page policy, which is to redirect "Foo (disambiguation)" to "Foo" in the absence of a primary topic.

I lean on to agreeing with the proposals. Say, looking at the current page named John Smith, it clearly is not about any specific person named John Smith, nor about the name John Smith (say, about its origins and how common it is). It is not a article per se, it is a aid for readers to find a article. The article name should reflect its subject, the subject is 'Where is John Smith?', thus "John Smith (article navigation)".

Should we go on and implement such change? It would be a large change. Changing thousands or tens of thousands of article names is likely not a big problem, I presume a bot would easily do those in not much time. Keeping "Foo (disambiguation)" as redirects to the moved pages would cause little to no trouble with links. Changing templates would probably be harder to automate, and so a larger problem. Even more sensible would be changing editors' habits, and for that I say that any change can not come out of this discussion - not with the restrict audience and input it got so far - but from a broader audience with a more clearly stated RfC. Is it so much of a improvement to be worth the trouble? Well... I will not start it, but I could help a little bit if it goes on.

And, to finish up, a side note. The fact that the software requires unique page names does not impose any significant restriction on how we disambiguate titles, and aid navigation. One probably well known case is IMdB, which solves that problem by adding a sequential number to duplicated names, e.g. they have John Smith (XXXIV). To find the correct John Smith, their search page adds (automatically I presume) one role and movie to help the reader. Sorry for being so extensive... Enjoy! - Nabla (talk) 18:27, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

TY Nabla. I especially agree with your observation, "that sometimes we do things in a certain way and get so much used to that, that we tend to believe it is the best way, even the only correct way of doing it." There are many situations in which instruction creep can take effect and I think that this has been an example that has resulted in a clear contradiction in policy. We insist on disambiguation and then we insist that we don't disambiguate the disambiguation pages. We then apply WP:ASSERT within a Wikiproject essay so as to state that a disambiguated disambiguation page is WP:MALPLACED. This, as far as I can see it, is nonsensical and entirely unjustified. GregKaye 05:43, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

• I support the idea of adding parentheticals to the titles of disambiguation pages. These pages are often poorly put together with many partial title matches and so forth. The current setup leads the reader to expect that the disambiguation page is our main article on a given subject, so I assume many readers are disappointed. At RM after RM, you see many participants argue that the disambiguation page should always be the primary topic, although this rarely the option the reader is most likely to be seeking. Making a disambiguation page primary is the equivalent of a shopkeeper placing his least attractive fruit in the front window. H. Humbert (talk) 01:02, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
  • For a page like Seal or Phoenix or Mercury, if the disambiguation page is not "primary", then what would be? Would that title just redirect to a disambiguation page with a parenthetical? bd2412 T 01:06, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
    • I also support the idea of having all disambiguation pages at Foo (disambiguation). It would mean that one could always know that they are about to go to a disambiguation page. I see no downsides. Foo can redirect to Foo (disambiguation), despite a history of never doing so, supported by a few editors ensuring that it doesn't happen. It doesn't fix the problem of editors carelessly making inappropriate links to disambiguation pages, because they will continue to link to foo, not check what is there. But I don't see that it makes anything worse. In principle, I like this idea, but I don't know that it is worth the fight, should there be any resistance, or even worth the trouble of implementing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:36, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
    • In most cases, one or two articles dominate the traffic stats, so WP:TWODABS can apply. Otherwise, the base name can continue to lead to the disambiguation page, even after the DAB gets a parenthetical. H. Humbert (talk) 06:19, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

      I have rolled this over in my mind quite a bit, and have concluded that it would be more informative to the reader if all of our disambiguation pages titles contained "(disambiguation)". This would also make them more consistent, since many of them have this out of necessity. My concerns would be the sheer number of pages that would need to be moved (100,000? 150,000?), and the fact that AWB's automated disambiguation finder currently does not work for redirects pointing to disambiguation pages. I would prefer to have a plan of action in place to address those before pulling the trigger on a policy change. bd2412 T 13:12, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

      My concern would be the status of the redirects that this change would create. With the disambiguation page at the "(disambiguation)" title, every base title without a WP:PRIMARY topic would be a redirect. The target of that redirect is much easier to change than moving the disambiguation page when it is at the base title (additionally, the move is logged centrally). For the contentious WP:PRIMARY topic situations (Georgia, Macedonia, etc.), those redirects would need to be fully protected. A full move discussion could change the target of the redirect, but without full protection, the redirects in many situations would be bounced around between targets constantly. In lesser publicized situations, I still believe that the redirect targets would be moved way too often, which would cause havoc. In theory, a template could be placed on all of these redirects, so that the bots creating lists could keep track (and report on) any changes to these redirects, but I think it is more trouble than it is worth. -Niceguyedc ^{Go Huskies!} 00:08, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Section break

Wow long thread, skimmed it, but getting back to the original poster's point, I think what he's saying is: if you type "Foobar" and it takes you to a disambiguation page, then:

1. The title of the page should be "Foobar (disambiguation)" rather than just "Foobar", as a service to the reader to help her more quickly grasp what she's looking at. (This could be done fairly easily with a robot making moves leaving a redirect, even though there are many such pages.)
2. Except "disambiguation" is an unusual and difficult word (consider that many of our readers are not native speakers, not highly literate, and so on). So instead it should be a more common word(s), maybe "Foobar (navigation)" or "Foobar (menu)" or "Foobar (article navigation guide)" or "List of articles about Foobars" or whatever -- to be decided later.

He's correct IMO on both points. However, I don't know if this a big deal. The current system is not really broken. Changing "Foobar" to "Foobar (article navigation guide)" is a tiny improvement if any. I mean, the first sentence does tell what the page is about. And -- you are never ever going to get a consensus of people to agree to it. And if you somehow did, you would never ever get a consensus on what term(s) should be used -- "menu" or "navigation" or "guide" or whatever. And it would be a huge time sink. And since it's not really broken, my advice would be to let it go. The current naming system was decided a long time ago and is not going to ever change, so I'd recommend moving on. Herostratus (talk) 01:27, 25 July 2015 (UTC) In addition to which, it is forbidden to use redirects on disambig pages. I think that that's a foolish rule for a number of reasons I won't detail here, and I ignore it myself, at least to the extent of using the pipe trick or setting up a redirect sometimes.

But none of that matters. It's the rule, and (I gather) it's the rule because its the (pretty idiosyncratic IMO) consensus of the people interested in disambiguation that piping/redirecting is bad and confusing and the the text of a link and the name of the page it devolves to should always be identical. (Regular articles use piping and redirects all the time, of course.) So now you're talking about "Foo" redirecting to "Foo ([something])" and I can't' see that as something that will fly with the disambig folks in particular. Herostratus (talk) 02:58, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Not sure why you think it is forbidden to use redirects on disambiguation pages. There are many legitimate uses of redirects on dab pages described in MOSDAB. older ≠ wiser 18:26, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you think this is something that won't fly with "the disambig folks" - there is no one more firmly set in that category than I am, and I have previously noted that I see some merit to this idea. bd2412 T 18:41, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• "Except "disambiguation" is an unusual and difficult word..."

The first time I saw "disambiguation", yes, I stumbled and had to think. It wasn't so hard, given that I could quickly find the base, "ambiguous", but maybe I am natively highly literate? What about the non-natively weakly literate? It think it is actually a helpful feature that makes it abundantly clear that Wikipedia has just provided you something that is not a typical article, and that some care with this page is required. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:09, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• There has been a lot talk about the practical problems involved in adding parentheticals to the titles of the disambiguation pages. But the guideline describes the ideal an the actual encyclopedia will always fall short. If an idea takes years to implement, it takes years to implement. This page is for discussing improvements in the guideline. As I see it, the relevant section is this one: "As discussed above, if an ambiguous term has no primary topic, then that term needs to lead to a disambiguation page. In other words, where no topic is primary, the disambiguation page is placed at the base name." The second sentence would have to be dropped or rephrased. H. Humbert (talk) 05:48, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

• Indeed. The wisdom of "the disambiguation page is placed at the base name" is disputed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:37, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

• Comment I have raised a thread regarding a move of "... (disambiguation)" contents with the thread being posted at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Displacing (disambiguation)s. GregKaye 12:31, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

• Keep the current system. I agree that people clicking Alfred Loomis on a search page may be surprised to not find an article about an individual. But if they do click Alfred Loomis then they can quickly locate the person they were looking for. If the page had been called "Alfred Loomis (disambiguation)" then it would probably often get a lower or no placement on search results pages (including external search engines we couldn't tweak), so it becomes harder to find the disambiguation page and therefore often also to find the article the user actually wants. "Navigation" is indeed a more common word than "Diambiguation" but nearly all uses of "Navigation" are not about disambiguation so a Google comparison of search hits is meaningless. We might as well say that "website" is a more common word than "wiki" so we should stop calling our website a wiki. But wiki is more descriptive than website when it actually is a wiki. France (disambiguation) is an informative title. "France (navigation)" sounds like an article about how to find your way around the country. "France (article navigation guide)" and similar names sound like a guide to articles about the country like geography, history, politics and so on. But that's what Category:France or Outline of France is for. It's a weakness and not a strength that "navigation" is a common word in other contexts if we want to use the word in the name of disambiguation pages. Britannica doesn't have disambiguation pages at all as far as I can tell so it doesn't mean much that they don't use the word. They just give a list of computer generated search results. Websites with disambiguation pages seem very rare so it's hard to make statistics on what they are called by others. As a general encyclopedia with five million articles we have a strong need for disambiguation pages and I haven't heard anyone suggest that we omit them in favor of automated search results like other sites. Many new users actually think disambiguation pages are search results and ask questions like why they don't include a new article. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:30, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

PrimeHunter I would ask you to reconsider your concerns. I was going to comment that the Web spiders of search engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo etc. are known to do a good job at researching links. Then I did a search on "Alfred Loomis" and didn't find Wikipedia's "Alfred Loomis" article on any of the first 10 pages of Google results.

At least a page with a title such as Alfred Loomis (navigation page) would have one more link coming to it which, if anything, would then give search engines like Google one additional reason to give the page a higher placement in their listings. Of course we could alternatively accurately give the page a title such as Alfred Loomis (listing of Wikipedia disambiguated titles) but a title such as Alfred Loomis (navigation page) is still accurate but shorter. GregKaye 18:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Search engines are hard to predict. A Google search will usually only allow one or two pages at the same domain. Alfred Loomis is the third result for Alfred Loomis site:wikipedia.org. In Bing it's the third overall result for Alfred Loomis. Alfred Lee Loomis is first in both Google and Bing. We wouldn't get one more link by redirecting X to "X (something)", because WP:DABNAME says we should do the opposite now: when a disambiguation page exists at the ambiguous term, there should also be a redirect to it from the "(disambiguation)" title. But Wikipedia does make few incoming links to disambiguation pages and that probably hurts them a lot in Google (I'm not saying we should change this to influence Google). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:31, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

The problem with the Alfred Loomis disambiguation page is that none of the three disambiguated pages lead back to the disambiguation page. If I wanted Alfred Lee Loomis, but accidentally went to Alfred Lebbeus Loomis, then I am stuffed. The lack of links back to the disambiguation page is, I think I understand, a big reason for search engines not ranking the disambiguation page. I think disambiguated pages should link back to disambiguation pages. I think we should do this to assist readers who land on the wrong page, and just note that the incidental benefit to google is nice. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:06, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Hatnotes are a distraction to users who are already on the right page. Where do we stop if we try to help users who are on the wrong page? Should Alfred Lebbeus Loomis also have navigation to Alfred, Lebbeus and Loomis? Alfred Lebbeus Loomis isn't even a disambiguated title like Alfred Loomis (sailor). We have a search box on every page. If users click on a page name which cannot be confused with the name they actually want then I think it's better to just let them have the search option than try to guess what else they might have wanted. I do realize people may look for somebody called Alfred Loomis without knowing his middle name. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:29, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

In this case, each page should have a single hatlink to the disambiguation page, with further assistance to lost editors, such as a link to Loomis, to be found at the disambiguation page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:50, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree with SmokeyJoe. It wouldn't take much to install a hatnote perhaps with wording such as:

For other people with the names "Alfred" and "Loomis" see Alfred Loomis (disambiguation)

or, arguably, with something such as:

For other people with the names "Alfred" and "Loomis" see Alfred Loomis (navigation guide) (which, funily enough, is hardly any longer)

I would be happy to start (or for someone else to start) another RfC regarding possibilities. Any thoughts on optional wordings?

GregKaye 15:50, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The problem may be even more clearly seen in a Google (.co.uk) search on John Smith Which immediately lists the Wikipedia article on John Smith (Labour Party leader) (which doesn't have a hatnote directing to the navigation page) and which lists no other Wikipedia articles. I think that this issue is well spotted. GregKaye 15:58, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Place of the disambiguation page when there is only one blue-linked article

Hello, lately I've noticed an inflation in the creation of disambiguation pages with only one blue-linked article. Usually about villages and cities, where one of them has an article, and the other ones are redlinked. Notwithstanding the fact that MOSDAB should be followed and blue links should be added to the redlinked entries, I have always been under the impression that, in this case, the disambiguation page should wear the (disambiguation) qualifier, so that the sole existing article can take the primary location. That would seem rather logical, as there is no other article to contest the primary location.

But others sometimes disagree. Can someone remind me if there is an official policy for this kind of situation? --Midas02 (talk) 19:37, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Could you show us an example or two, please? PamD 22:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

I'll give you three: Mrtvica (disambiguation), Urney and, Dolenci. I had already asked to move the first page myself, that's why it has the disambiguation qualifier. You'll notice, although these dab pages have multiple valuable entries, each only has one existing article. --Midas02 (talk) 01:57, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Hrm. Well let's think about Dolenci. Having that devolve to Dolenci, Slovenia has this advantage: if the user is indeed looking for Dolenci in Slovenia, she goes right to it; and if she's looking for another Dolenci, the disambig page is not terribly useful since we don't have articles on those other Dolencis. (And if when we do, we can then create a disambig page).

The advantage of going to the disambig page is that if she is looking for one of these other Dolenci, it at least tells her that they do exist, it's just that (if she can suss what a redlink means) we don't have articles on them, and does at least give her a pointer to some nearby town or the province it is in or whatever, which would be useful to some readers. The link to Dolenci, Croatia is red, for instance, but it does give a bluelink to Vrbovsko where you can learn that ten people live in Dolenci, Croatia.

Approach B could be to have Dolenci devolve to Dolenci, Slovenia, creating Dolenci (disambuation) for the others, and adding a hatnote in Dolenci, Slovenia pointing to the disambig page. Approach C could be to have Dolenci devolve to Dolenci, Slovenia and just forget the other Dolencis and forgo the disambig page.

I don't have huge problem with the way the person handled it; I think it's OK. Approach B would be OK too. It's a little extra work and depends on one's guess of what percentage of people looking for "Dolenci" are looking for the one in Slovenia. If it's 90% or 75% then B would probably be the way to go. Problem is this'd be hard to know... maybe Google Ngram, if you wanted to do that much work...

Approach C I would not recommend, considering that someone has already made the disambig pages -- it's the least work but it hides useful data. There would be no easy way for a person wanting to know the population of Dolenci in Croatia, or what town it is near, etc. to find that information, which we have. Herostratus (talk) 03:18, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Could we just do a hatnote? Have "There are also cities named Dolenci, Croatia, Dolenci, Demir Hisar, and Dolenci, Bitola" at the top of Dolenci, which then would be the place for the Slovenian city's article until and unless an RM determines a lack of primary topic.. And we'd presumably delete the dab page. Red Slash 17:57, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Redlinks in a hatnote are worse than useless and editing to include a blue link would make the hatnote unnecessarily complex. Simpler to just link to dab page. older ≠ wiser 18:22, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Herostratus provided a good insight indeed of how a user would contemplate the different strategies being offered. But the problem is not about the existence of the dab page, also as per Red Slash's remark, it is about the place of the dab page. Should it be the primary page or not? Because the current set-up for Dolenci clashes with our concept of a Primary topic. How can an article NOT be the primary topic, if it's the only existing article on Wikipedia? Between one article, and, ummm... no other article, which is the most important? That's the crux, and I would like to cast that into the guidelines, otherwise this will remain an eternal point of discussion. --Midas02 (talk) 02:07, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Because it's a primary topic, not a primary article. It does not depend on which articles happen to have been written. --NE2 03:05, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Still, it would be rather inconceivable to have an article which doesn't exist as the primary topic. This is not an imaginary situation by the way. Think of the many places with Slavic names which aren't described on English Wikipedia. It's very possible that there is a stub article on some unimportant village, while the most important city by that name doesn't have an article. In that case you can't make it the primary topic, as it doesn't exist.

Distilling all of this, would it be feasible to add a statement to the guidelines like (wording still needs fine-tuning): In case of dab pages which hold only one existing article (all other suggested articles are redlinked), the normal rules for determining the primary topic still apply. If the article carrying the blue link is chosen to be the primary topic, it becomes the primary topic. If a redlinked article is preferred to be the primary topic, the disambiguation page will occupy the primary position.--Midas02 (talk) 19:09, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:PRECISIONDAB

This well-written and well-backed paragraph seemed to me to have absolutely nothing to do with disambiguation, so I moved it over to WP:AT. A slight rewrite took place as well to better fit the existing context there. [1] [2] - thoughts? Red Slash 23:57, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it doesn't belong here. Maybe it's not all that well-written. Anyhow, too detailed for policy-level WP:AT. Please discuss here. If it doesn't belong here, and you think you've found a better place for it, please find agreement whether that other place is accepted for this content (in any case when it's policy level guidance). If it's redundant, remove and find a good place for the shortcut to go to (or list the shortcut for deletion). --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:31, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• On second thought: it seems to have been a recent (undiscussed?) addition to this guideline – maybe there's no consensus for it in the first place. And true, it doesn't really have to do anything with disambiguation (with recognizability OK, but not with disambiguation). Then, remove and redirect the shortcut to where WP:PRECISION goes. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:07, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
• See also the more general treatment I tried to give this at Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 52#Disambiguating: some specifics and examples. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:15, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Move all disambiguation pages to a new namespace

Should disambiguation pages be moved to a new namespace called "Disambiguation"? If so, "(disambiguation)" redirects will be unnecessary, and existing pages starting with "Disambiguation:" or "Disambiguation talk:" will have to be checked and deleted. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:45, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

• I don't know if this would be helpful, and would like to hear about any technical advantages with respect to maintenance of disambiguation pages. I suspect that requiring a "Dab:" prefix in every link to a disambiguation would largely alleviate editors making accidental links to disambiguation pages.

Previously, I have suggested that if all disambiguation pages were suffixed with "(disambiguation)", it would be a clear flag to readers that the page they are considering loading is not a proper article. The reader may be wanting the disambiguation page, or wanting to avoid the disambiguation page, and currently it is hard to know what you are about to get.

If the concern is the proliferation of too many WP:namespaces, I suggest getting rid of Portal and Draft as attractors and repositories of cruft beyond the editorial capacity to maintain. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:00, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• Strong support. I find it important to distinguish that concept dabs should stay in mainspace, but otherwise this would be an excellent improvement. I would sooner use "Navigation", though. Red Slash 19:58, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
• Question: would this mean that mainspace titles like Battery and David Smith would be turned into cross-namespace redirects to titles in the new namespace? bd2412 T 20:14, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
• (ec) Oppose, at least until there is some clarification about what happens to links to ambiguous terms in the article namespace. The problem of marking intentional links to disambiguation pages is minor compared to being able to identify (and fix) links to ambiguous terms. Now, when an editor inadvertently links to a disambiguation page, a reader can follow that link and with any luck find what she was looking for on the dab page. So would all of the current base name (no primary topic) dab pages become cross-namespace redirects to this new namespace. And how would editors be able to monitor when one of these redirects is retargeted? That's a lot easier to slip by than requesting to move a page. older ≠ wiser 20:24, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. A proposal to make a change as large as this needs a detailed explanation of how the new scheme would work, what the advantages of the change would be, how the changes would be made etc. DexDor ^(talk) 22:18, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. Like others have stated: unless there is some sort of clarification, it appears that under this proposal that the thousands of pages that do not have primary topics (like Georgia, Joker, Macedonia, Madonna, Mercury, Orange, and Washington, to name a few of the high profile or heavily debated ones) would have to be moved to the new namespace and thus create thousands of cross-namespace redirects. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:59, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. Next, we'll have separate namespaces for redirects and lists, surnames and set index articles, policies and guidelines – gittin' outta hand here? – Paine  14:10, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose for all the above reasons, and basically per WP:BUREAUCRACY.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:18, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Interstate 440

This project doesn't appear to have a section talking about how articles linked to from dis-ambiguation pages should be ordered. Look at what has gone lately at Interstate 440. This dis-ambiguation page has 4 uses; 3 of which are current meanings and one of which is a meaning of the 1970's. That was long ago that I find it very natural to think that that meaning is much less likely to be searched for and thus should go at the bottom. But User:2602:306:83A2:19E0:D11B:F38F:E443:A763 (I wish this user could go by an actual name rather than a code of numbers, letters, and colons) disagrees. They say it should be in a normal order even with the fact that one meaning is very dated. They even think it's likely that someone who wants to see the article will type Interstate 440 (Oklahoma), rather than Interstate 44 in Oklahoma, even though the highway is unambiguously Interstate 44 today. Any position in this project that talks about how articles should be ordered in dis-ambiguation pages?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:36, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• I think what you are looking for is Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages#Order of entries. Having said that, it is my considered opinion that both you and User:2602:306:83A2:19E0:D11B:F38F:E443:A763 have far too much time on your respective hands. For Pete's sake, this is a list of four terms. Extensive scientific research shows, or so I have been told, that the average human can retain five to nine discrete items of information in short-term memory without too much difficulty. For a list of four items, the reader should be able to find what they are looking for easily, no matter what order they are in. If I were you, I would worry more about whether the items on the disambiguation page are spelled correctly (one of them is not) and described correctly (also, one of them is not), than about what order they are in. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:53, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

FYI, Georgia guy, that other user is not registered and goes by an IP address, one of the newer IPv6 address codes. – Paine  13:44, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

• Sources don't magically disappear from the earth just because they're from a few decades ago. It's entirely plausible that readers will, in the real world, encounter references to what I-440 referred to in the 1970s. We don't suppress DAB page entries just because they're not the most current usage.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:17, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Natural and clarifying disambiguation

I can't see how that has anything to do with WP:DISAMBIGUATION. Red Slash 05:03, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Both natural disambiguation, which is very, very frequent, and disambiguation to clarify naturally ambiguous names even when they do not directly conflict with another article (which isn't terribly frequent, but important) are both still disambiguation. This page is not "WP:Parenthetic disambiguation only to prevent article collisions". Instead of revertwarring on a WP:IDONTKNOWIT basis, is there somewhere else on this page you feel it would be better to address these disambiguation issues and how editors should approach them?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:15, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

RfC on disambiguation for clarification

As this is our primary page on the use of disambiguation on Wikipedia, should it not cover the routine (though not overwhelmingly frequent) article titling and requested move situation that some titles are naturally too ambiguous and confusing to use without clarification? Use of disambiguation to clarify inherently ambiguous names, not just to resolve multiple articles competing for the same title, seems to this proponent to be something that editors will obviously expect to be covered here, at least briefly.

Some sample wording:

Uncommonly, there are other scenarios for disambiguating an article title, even when this does not disambiguate between two articles, and there is no hatnote. For example Welsh Black is naturally disambiguated as Welsh Black cattle, because the shorter title is innately ambiguous (fails the WP:PRECISION criterion for article titles) and may confuse readers, liable to interpret it as referring to a human population.

This keeps being reverted (in whatever exact wording) by the same two editors, on a rationale that appears to be simply disbelief that this is disambiguation-related.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:01, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

PS: There are many other examples. British White, Anglo-Nubian and many other animal breed articles were moved to, e.g., British White cattle, Anglo-Nubian goat because their names are likely to be interpreted as human ethnicities or populations. Another class of them, e.g. Flemish Giant (now Flemish Giant rabbit) were moved because they also sounded like they were probably something else (e.g. a figure from folklore). It doesn't much matter what exact example is given.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:08, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

• I disagree to qualify "Flemish Giant" or Mechelen cuckoo (if a page would be created on that one) as "inherently" of "innately" ambiguous. Note that for instance WP:NCB#Precision specifically advises against this (within its scope). So making this a general rule, overiding specific caveats, seems like a bad idea. In sum: Oppose. If anything, the examples should come from a less contentious area, for instance the (Schubert) addition for article titles that are in fact already disambiguated with a D number, per the fairly anonymous RM at Talk:Wiegenlied, D 498 (Schubert)#Requested moves, and without making this a general rule, and not at the WP:D guideline (it is using a disambiguation technique, but not for disambiguation in the strict sense).

Also, as I said above in #WP:PRECISIONDAB, I prefer the formulation I tried to give this as archived at Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 52#Disambiguating: some specifics and examples, and oppose the more contentious way of explaining this as now proposed for WP:D. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:18, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Hatting two-editor back-and-forth

You appear to have totally misunderstood the nature of the material, since "Mechelen cuckoo" couldn't possibly qualify. I have no way of addressing what your particular concerns might be since they don't seem to relate in any way to proposed wording or its meaning. Your Schubert example doesn't relate either. Not every example of use of natural disambiguation or the use of descriptive titles is related in any way at all to disambiguating names that are naturally ambiguous because of easy misinterpretation as something else entirely. "Less contentious"? Surely you're joking. Last I looked, animal breed names have never been the subject of a WP:ARBCOM case, unlike classical music, which has at least twice: 1, 2.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:49, 8 August 2015 (UTC) I don't think I misunderstood anything, but as you contend your proposed addition is prone to misunderstanding, strong oppose, nothing so prone to misunderstanding should be added to the guideline. (note that a Mechelen cuckoo is not a cuckoo, not under any meaning of the word cuckoo) All animal breed examples are contentious, as you well know, so no, no guidance can be built on these. These can not, under any form or format, be used as guideline examples. This has nothing to do with ArbCom cases, as if that were a exclusive & sure "proof" of contentiousness. E.g., if successful, an arbcom case can resolve contentiousness. Taking a look at the two arbcom cases you link to it really becomes silly, neither of them had anything to do with article titles. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:23, 8 August 2015 (UTC) So pick a different example; I picked examples from that space because they were fresh in my mind. None of this is actually "prone to misunderstanding"; rather, I imply you're trying to make it seem prone to misunderstanding. The fact that you just wrongly labeled it prone to misunderstanding just proves the point clearly. I don't agree that animal breed articles are contentious. A three-person tagteam tried to make them contentious at RM, and failed. Now a two-person tagteam is trying to do it again here. I don't think I'm the one who comes out looking silly here. Who cares about Mechelen cuckoos? We have no such article. Classical music article title are in fact often contentious at RM, and you're quite activistic about them, frequently trying to insert special WP:AT rules about and references to them, so cf. WP:KETTLE. Finally "the formulation [you] tried to give this as archived" failed to find anything close to consensus, so it's moot.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:25, 8 August 2015 (UTC) ? I did pick a different example at Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 52#Disambiguating: some specifics and examples. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC) Re no-consensus archived formulation being moot: since I still consider it better & more viable than the new proposal this only strenghtens my opposition to this new proposal. Also, the wild tag-teaming accusations don't reflect very well on your line of argumentation. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:53, 8 August 2015 (UTC) No going to keep arguing circularly with you about your old proposal (to which I provided an alternative, you'll remember). I will discuss examples, of course. Re: "I did pick a different example at...", I don't know which example you mean; that post fills several screens for me, and is full of examples, none of which seem to relate to this issue, unless I just didn't see it. The examples in the British White cattle case are perhaps best, e.g. Argentine Criollo being moved to Argentine Criollo cattle. "Argentine Criollo" is automatically ambiguous (in English) despite us having no presently conflicting article, because it's more likely that any given reader will assume this means Criollo people in Argentina, a real group. The fact that we have no article about that human population yet is no reason to use a misleading name for a livestock breed that no one would recognize as such but a cattle expert. These cases do not come up every single day, but we do in fact routinely "pre-emptively disambiguate" them when they do, with natural disambiguation when possible, though not always. I'm sorry that you don't like animal breed examples; they're just what I recall off the top of my head. And fine, I retract the tagteam assessment; but please consider what it looks like when two editors, and only two editors, repeatedly revert every approach to the this issue, on the basis that they just can't see what it has to do with disambiguation, when it's already been explained what it has to do with disambiguation. It gets very frustrating. It's generally more constructive to work with people to a compromise than deny, deny, deny.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:23, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Tx for the retracting. I'd really like to find a way not using animal breed examples, because as said they all seem a bit contentious (or unstable) to me, and then this does also not change my position that this is rather something to be discussed in connection with WP:AT, and not for this guideline. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:38, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Francis Schonken: Totally fine to use a different example, I just don't have any fresh in mind. But this is a DAB matter. This is entirely about an application of existing policy; it is not a change to policy. See the discussion at WT:AT about how RM has added exceptional cases to that policy. This was not such a case. There was no IAR here; it was decided based on the existing WP:CRITERIA. People mostly seem to be resistant because they think "disambiguation means and only means preventing a collision of article titles". But that's not what it means. It means "resolving ambiguity", which is what these examples did.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:23, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is not always true and I hesitate to include it anywhere. I especially oppose its inclusion here. Red Slash 21:07, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

You appear to have misread. "Uncommonly" automatically rules out "always true". Your "especially" WP:IDONTLIKEIT comment is still not a rationale, just as it was not a rationale during your revertwarring.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:49, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

I would think that this may lead to a preference for article titles that are less concise than they should be. I think that this suggested addition is outstandingly unsuited for inclusion here, as it has almost literally nothing to do with disambiguation and everything to do with an article's title, so WP:AT. Even if consensus backs this (which it might, and which would be okay, I guess) I'd move it to AT. Red Slash 21:42, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

• Comment. I think I understand the concerns here, and I would probably ask myself before I move a page like Flemish Giant to Flemish Giant rabbit what would happen if I named it Flemish Giant (rabbit)? Would another editor come along, revert the move and tag the left-behind redirect with {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}}? In this case, probably so. What other "Flemish giants" (or uppercase "Giants") are there that might fit nicely on a dab page? – Painius  22:44, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

It would be moved to Flemish Giant rabbit because WP:NATURAL says to use natural disambiguation. A large number of animal breed articles were moved last year for precisely this reason. That's not the point though; the point is that no reader in the world other than an expert on rabbit breeds can reasonably be expected to understand that a reference to a "Flemish Giant" is referring to a rabbit, rather than a giant from Flanders.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:49, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

You mean such as these Flemish Giants? :>) – Painius  08:28, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. The fact that there really are things that people are liable to confuse with a Flemish Giant [ahem ... rabbit] kind of drives the point home. No one's proposed disambiguating things that only in wild flights of imagination could be ambiguous; RM never goes that way. Only when the name is likely to confuse readers.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:19, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

The outcome of Talk:Flemish Giant rabbit#Requested moves or any of the parallel moves (or non-moves) on animal breeds are afaics way too unstable to use any of it as guideline examples.

The Algerian Arab example is even worse: there appears to be no consensus to move it anywhere. It was included in Talk:Anglo-Nubian goat#Requested moves ending on a "no consensus to move". So, no, if RMs on the topic end in contentiousness, rewriting the guideline to please your fancy is not an acceptable way forward.

Further, if it is all covered in WP:AT, as you contend, adding guidance with contentious examples is unnecessary, a.k.a. rulecruft. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:42, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

You're reading an old RM that was tagteamed against. A later RM moved it with a clear consensus. "Rulecruft"? I think you mean WP:CREEP. But describing how things are in fact actually done here isn't instruction creep (or rulecruft or whatever term you want to make up); it's exactly what WP guidelines are for.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:19, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Please provide a link to the later RM. The talk page of the involved article (or articles?) seem not to have been notified of such later RM on their article title going on. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:39, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

NM, I was thinking of the Anglo-Nubian goat case, which was two RMs, one place or another. The Flemish Giant rabbit one you're just misreading: "consensus to move the pages, except no consensus in the case of Peppin Merino".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:08, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I linked to Talk:Flemish Giant rabbit#Requested moves above, didn't misread anything about it, but think any of these examples too unstable for use in a guideline. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:38, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

• Support. Based upon all of the above, it seems to me to be a good idea and an improvement to the guideline to clarify with an example or two in order to help editors who come here looking for answers. Examples that are the results of community consensus would be excellent. – Painius  10:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
• Support This relates to an area of titling to which I have seen SMcCandlish greatly improve in terms of clarification. To me clarification and disambiguation are merely the positive and negative sides of precisely the same thing.

The word "ambiguous", perhaps poetically (if that is not going too far), is itself ambiguous.

Oxford online gives the word more than a single definition [3]

In the first provided definition it can mean, "Open to more than one interpretation;" or "not having one obvious meaning:" and in the second provided definition it is indicated to express the meaning, "Not clear or decided:"

Disambiguation is naturally a broad topic that goes far beyond the woefully restricted habit of topical division as it is practiced by some editors.

The architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe came up with the expression "less is more" but this is rarely the case. Less is, in the vast majority of cases, less.

I have just asked someone that I am with what she thinks that an "Algerian Arab" is and she said she doesn't have a clue. I didn't have a clue either but why should I. This is not the kind of thing that is not common knowledge. I then phoned a nice lady whose number I found on the page http://www.sheepcentre.co.uk/contact_us.htm and, after a little explanation, asked the question, "have you ever heard of an Algerian Arab?" and she said "no". The thing is that a topic such as "Algerian Arab sheep" fails WP:CRITERIA: "Recognizability" that "The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize." The person at the "Seven Sisters Sheep Centre" that I phoned did not recognise the subject. What chance does anyone else have?

Red Slash is a another editor that I have worked with on a great many occasions particularly at WP:RM consistently achieving productive results according to consensus. Red I know that WP:CONCISE is one of your most quoted policies but I would be interested in your opinions on the above and whether you think it applies with validity in this case.

Francis Schonken, at a different extreme, is an editor who does remarkably little practical editing (on pages accessed via WP:RM) considering his vast, I think, own issues related to article titling related pages. Recently I stated: "{{tq|Here are some statistics that may give some indication in regard to editor involvement in regard to the naming of articles.In the month of July 2015 edits at a "== x ==" level in "Requested move" threads: ...were made on 13 occasions among 750 edits by Francis Schonken with these edits being made on two occasions on a single thread. In August Francis has made multiple edits in objection to a single and ultimately successful move request. Please can you refrain from your ownership behaviour such as your pointless pedantic reversions and get on with some practical work. GregKaye 19:45, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I personally think this is a small step in the wrong direction, because when people get to the page Algerian Arab, they should get a picture of a sheep, and then they'll see what it is. But I can easily see your points.

I still don't think it belongs here instead of WP:AT. Red Slash 02:01, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Agree with Red Slash on both points ("small step in the wrong direction"; "don't think it belongs here instead of WP:AT"), plus other points mentioned before (examples would need to be from a less contentious area; should be explained better so as not to override e.g. WP:NDESC, as for example explicited for book titles in WP:NCB#Precision)

@GregKaye: a lot of words, please stay on topic, which includes "Comment on content, not on the contributor". Regarding your Mies excursion: LOL, but really doesn't help your argument does it? Consider making your argumentation more succinct, which might make it more easy for your fellow-editors to assimilate what you're trying to say. --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:28, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Off-topic, two-editor, back-and-forth

Francis Schonken Re: "both points ("small step in the wrong direction"; "don't think it belongs here instead of WP:AT")". I have presented the actual dictionary definition of ambiguous. This is particularly relevant in the context that the project page actually begins with the wording "Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous." Would you prefer that we remove or change this introduction? You seem to be denying the actual and full definition of the term. Re: "a lot of words" there are a lot of issues and, to the same extent that Red Slash acknowledges, "I can easily see your points" I hope that you are similarly able. Again Red Slash seemed to have "easily" been able to "to assimilate what (I was) trying to say". Also please recognise your "trying to say" comment as a personal slur. This again I think belies your argumentative approach from which I would implore you to desist. SMcCandlish has already advised you of the content WP:Don't call the kettle black. Re: "please stay on topic" everything I said was on topic after which I added relatively short comment to address you. As you know I even previously attempted to address you privately on your talk page directly about behavioral matters and you have persistently refused to engage. Re: "Comment on content, not on the contributor" I have done both. Francis, "Please ... get on with some practical work". I genuinely think that this would really help you and, IMO, it would greatly help other editors here as well. Re: My "Mies excursion" as not helping my argument. Who says I was arguing? I was openly presenting a content in view that it was relevant to the debate. In many cases it is clear that "less" in terms of title content will result in less clarity in definition while "more" in terms of relevant addition to title content will result in improved disambiguation. Again, the most highly prioritized WP:CRITERIA in article naming is "Recognisabilty". Again, the representative of the "Seven Sisters Sheep Centre" that I spoke to did not recognise the term "Algerian Arab". GregKaye 06:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC) Half of your ramblings are off-topic, and indeed too much of it is an infringement on "Comment on content, not on the contributor". It's up to you to ammend your style of talk page participation, not up to me to participate "less" or "more" in WP:RMs (it's never gonna be the way you want it), in order to be able to participate in the writing of naming conventions guidance. I've more naming conventions guidance written that has been stable over many years, as in: being helpful for article titling including many article titles that never needed to be discussed via WP:RM – for instance the "Most biographical articles have titles in the form <First name> <Last name>, as with Albert Einstein and Margaret Thatcher" which you have been quoting a lot lately: who do you think wrote that, and when? So please, stay on topic, while for the rest the ramifications rather weaken your arguments than strenghten them, among other reasons while you're apparently not entirely aware what you're writing about in these off-topic ramifications. On topic: I see a fundamental misunderstanding of WP:CRITERIA: many attempts have been made to make rules that (systematically) try to prioritize one or the other of the five criteria as an over-all rule. Nope, and this only strenghtens the argument that this is WP:AT matter, not something that should be added to a subsidiary guideline in an attempt to override WP:CRITERIA as written. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:55, 11 August 2015 (UTC) Francis Schonken Again you are flagrantly indulging in pot and kettle and very direct personal attack regarding "ramblings". I have raised topic relevant issues and then made fair and cited comment to you, as an editor who does very little in regard to the actual work of moving articles and addressing practical issues, Francis, "Please ... get on with some practical work". I have also quoted the very broad introduction to the project page that "Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous" in indication that the content that follows mainly focuses on one small component of the overall topic. The SMcCandlish text has positively presented a more accurate account of disambiguation as an activity of reducing ambiguity. GregKaye 11:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC) Re. "who does very little in regard to the actual work of moving articles and addressing practical issues", LOL, please take your criticism elsewhere, and directed at someone else. Sometimes, indeed you seem completely out of touch with what you write. Mind you, "moving articles" is not a goal in itself. I see no reason to ammend my criticism of SMcC's proposal. Going off-topic, repeating the same arguments over and over rather seem like someone having run out of arguments long ago, and has thus far not been able to convince me to look more sympathetically on SMcC's proposal. In that way your elaborate interventions didn't help, however much they copy-pasted text from elsewhere. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:38, 11 August 2015 (UTC) I must agree with GregKaye and find your comments here in violation of Wikipedia's standards for AGF discussion. This is all about the clarification of a guideline with examples, and I fail to read anything here that can be seriously used against this proposal. It's time to add the examples and move on with our editing! – Painius  13:36, 11 August 2015 (UTC) ? I'm assuming good faith on Greg, but as said "Comment on content, not on the contributor", that's not only plain policy, but doing otherwise also does not lend additional weight to argumentation (quite the contrary). I think that the argumentation "not for this guideline page", while it is an undesirable interference with WP:AT policy should be understandable as a legitimate criticism to SMcC's proposal. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC) Francis Schonken My copy-pasted text from elsewhere" have either involved extracts from policy or have presented quotations of editors that I have either replied to or have otherwise referenced. There has been nothing that has been off topic except for my highlighting that, while you have little involvement in the practicalities of page moves, you make an inordinate number of interventions concerning related policy. Re: "repeating the same arguments over and over" I an new to this thread and do not think that I have repeated anything. Either please prove whichever argument/s that you may be referring to as being wrong or stop complaining. Please do not cast WP:ASPERSIONS but restrict yourself to directly referenced comment. Thank you for at least crediting "elaborate interventions". I consider them to contain new perspectives relevant to this thread and would be happy for editors to review points raised in my edit of 19:45, 10 August 2015. GregKaye 14:09, 11 August 2015 (UTC) Yeah, your contributions are rarely succinct, and I recommended in good faith to make them more so, in order to make them more effective. Off-topic is off-topic, so they don't have a place here, especially those comments that are against policy "Comment on content, not on the contributor", so, please retract these comments as irrelevant for this thread (I won't even get into how erroneous they appear, because as said, off-topic). I have nothing to "prove", my position is clear, well argued, and will be further explained when needed. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC) Your issue about "good faith" is with Paine Ellsworth who stated the view "I must agree with GregKaye and find your comments here in violation of Wikipedia's standards for AGF discussion. This is all about the clarification of a guideline with examples, and I fail to read anything here that can be seriously used against this proposal. It's time to add the examples and move on with our editing!" I am trying my best. Nothing in your last post had any relevance to the proposal. wikt:ambiguous, wikt:ambiguity and wikt:disambiguation are good sources covering the full meanings of the terms. Having recently joined this discussion I still contend that the broad meanings of the terms are best applied. GregKaye 16:07, 12 August 2015 (UTC) Please strike your off-topic comments, they're off-topic and don't belong here. They haven't helped here (on the contrary) and those that went against "Comment on content, not on the contributor" reflect very badly on whatever it was you were trying to say. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:38, 12 August 2015 (UTC) In the same way as none of your previous post was in any way on topic. You are criticizing my contributions for being "rarely succinct" and casting "WP:ASPERSIONS" regarding "how erroneous they appear". Recently, at 11:13, 11 August 2015 on WT:AT, you cast completely unsubstantiated and WP:CRYSTAL illusion, that I didn't immediately understand, that I had some plan to reduce down from a presentation of 5 WP:CRITERIA. Nothing that you have presented within your impalpable WP:BATTLEGROUND tactics and irrelevant slurs is substantiated. I've made a direct quote and, within what I interpret to be your WP:OWN behaviors on these policy pages, have made relevant and cited comment on the extents of your editing. What I was "trying to say" What I clearly said was "wikt:ambiguous, wikt:ambiguity and wikt:disambiguation are good sources covering the full meanings of the terms. Having recently joined this discussion I still contend that the broad meanings of the terms are best applied." GregKaye 16:58, 12 August 2015 (UTC) Going further and further off-topic... way to go! --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:17, 12 August 2015 (UTC) WP:KETTLE as multiply mentioned still applies. Please see, "What I clearly said". GregKaye 12:37, 15 August 2015 (UTC) Thus far you've retracted none of your comments that are in conflict with "Comment on content, not on the contributor", trying to distract attention from that point, pointing to other things you've said doesn't help getting this discussion back on topic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:26, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

• Comment. So we have an editor who would like to improve this guideline with an example(s), two other editors in support of the first editor's attempt to clarify one part of this guideline to help less experienced editors, and two other editors who don't support the proposal on the grounds that the example(s) used might be an unstable article title, and so this all should be discussed at Wikipedia:Article titles. Since this proposal is about first providing an example(s) on this page, and only second about article titles, it seems to me that discussion should focus upon the first part. While the second part actually is an article titles issue, it clouds the first part and it just might take care of itself without further discussion. If the example(s) chosen is altered in the future, then it can be replaced with another example, and then all will be well. If the opposers on these grounds turn out to be incorrect with the presently proposed example(s) as a stable article title, then all will be well. By our focus on the second part and the off-topic talk that comes with it, we are losing the improvement value of this proposal for this guideline and for posterity. – Painius  14:26, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

An additional problem with some of the opposition concerns is that it seems to want to "re-legislate" how a series of WP:RMs already concluded, alleged to be a "step in the wrong direction". The purpose of this guideline is (in part) to adapt and codify what RMs decide, including the unusual cases they come to consensus on. It is not to second-guess the consensus formed at RM. There's a thread about this fact at WT:AT right now, highlighting how central aspects of naming policy are derived from working-in the outcomes of controversial RMs. The point of doing so is, of course, to prevent the recurrence of similar controversies. That's the #1 function of WP:POLICY on WP. One of the opposers regularly inserts exceptional cases into this page and WP:AT (often about the outcome of classical-music-related RMs). What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and our coverage of the consensuses that WP evolves for article titling and disambiguation should not be topically skewed; that coverage needs to be balanced and broad. An earlier version of the example in question was removed on the basis that it should move to WP:AT, but it was not, and it would not be accepted there because it's not a policy-level kind of "do/do not do this" example, but an illustrative, guideline-level "here's a way policy has been applied" example. I know all of the involved parties are competent enough that they already understand all of this, so I find the level of conflict about inclusion of such an example a bit mystifying, and more than a bit frustrating.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:15, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't think the examples given are in fact ambiguous. Ambiguity is a problem only if people go the article thinking that it about another subject. Do have any reason to believe a significant number of readers are searching for information on giant humans living in Flanders? If so, do they go to the rabbit article and come away disappointed? I find this an unlikely scenario. Readers may not be aware that the Flemish giant is a breed of rabbit, but that's not the same thing as ambiguity. The title by itself should not be expected to explain the subject to people who are unfamiliar with it. In any case, one look at the article should be enough to tell the reader what the subject is. ConstitutionalRepublic (talk) 19:50, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Further discussion

I think what you just wrote at WT:AT:

... Queen (band) is sufficient until the day there's a notable zydeco or country or whatever band also named Queen. Unless that has become the case, an argument for "Queen (rock band)" just to include "rock" because you think it's important/defining/common in thinking about the band, is indistinguishable from an argument to name the article "Queen (English rock band)" or "Queen (English rock band with Freddie Mercury in it)". ...

also aplies to natural disambiguation:

... Peppin Merino is sufficient until the day there's a notable chicken or horse or whatever breed also named Peppin Merino. Unless that has become the case, an argument for "Peppin Merino sheep" just to include "sheep" because you think it's important/defining/common in thinking about the Peppin Merino, is indistinguishable from an argument to name the article "Peppin Merino sheep breed" or "Peppin Merino sheep but not an individual sheep". ...

In other words, I don't think the "exception" as formulated well enough written to avoid it would be called too easily for various exceptions to WP:CRITERIA (e.g. by giving the impression that WP:PRECISION as quoted can "override" other criteria), while all the RMs going on seem to result in page moves only when the new page name results in an improved over-all compliance to WP:CRITERIA. So there's no need for this "exception" while WP:CRITERIA suffises and covers the page moves (when considered an improvement!), and the explanation is confusing in seeming to suggest that a single criterion can override the others without consensus to do so.

Further, the presence of page names like Akita (dog) seems to indicate that it is far from a common fact that all breeds are disambiguated by natural disambiguation. So, I'd rather invite you to write Wikipedia:Naming conventions (breeds) (like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (music) was written for the field I'm more experienced in) and find consensus for it to sort this out, than to append this here where it is not in its place to begin with.

Also this comment/question didn't go unremarked: "I just hope this isn't another round of a bunch of these. Is this the only one? If so, I can support but only for the sake of being consistent with the others that are similarly situated, but I do hope this is over and there won't be more" [4] – so maybe reply to this question: "Is this the only one?" If yes, and this is the last one that needed to get sorted I see no need to write a guideline about it. If no, trying to get a guideline rewrite to operate multiple page moves the community doesn't really sees the need for would be somewhat questionable. If it's only about potential exceptional future cases (e.g. the Mechelen cuckoo I mentioned above): apply WP:CRITERIA and the thing will get sorted one way or another, or if you think it may apply for multiple future similar cases, write Wikipedia:Naming conventions (breeds) as suggested. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:50, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

That's an awful lot of stuff to raise in objection to including a simple clarification and example, much of it off-topic and self-contradictory. In good faith, I'll attempt to address all of it in series, in a constructive way, and forked for easier resolution.

1. Peppin Marino Peppin Merino was, out of that whole batch of articles (the breed ones you say you don't want to use as examples anyway), the lone case that was not moved. I suspected at the time that it would be the one least likely to move; its possible misinterpretation as maybe someone's personal name was the weakest argument in the lot, and I threw it in as an afterthought. It actually is true that "Peppin Merino is sufficient until the day there's a notable chicken or horse or whatever breed also named Peppin Merino" (though distinguishing between breeds was not the issue at that RM, but between the breed and the assumption of a non-breed). If you substitute in "Algerian Arab" your example does not work at all. So I'm not sure what your point was in bringing it up; did you think it was one of those that was moved? Regardless, it might have some utility as an example after all (see #3 below).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:10, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

2. "Exception": As already detailed above, the quite concise material I've proposed adding is not actually an exception (and thus it not should be moved to WT:AT); no new "rule" is being being proposed. It's an example of how existing rules have been applied, as you spell out yourself in some detail. Illustration of (not making up of a new rule about) "pre-emptive" natural disambiguation of inherently ambiguous names is important because we actually do it for good reason (WP:POLICY pages exist mainly to codify existing best practices, not force new rules on people [except for external WP:OFFICE legal matters]). This kind of disambiguation is done for a big group of reasons: several of the WP:CRITERIA simultaneously, WP:COMMONSENSE and not being "user-hateful", usage in (general-audience, non-specialized) WP:RS, MOS:JARGON/WP:TECHNICAL, and others. This did not come out of the blue, it's just not something you've chosen to focus on. We've been doing this for years, but many editors just disbelieve that we do it because they don't find it listed on this page, and some have tendentiously oppose RMs for months on end because, basically, it's not listed here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:10, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

3. Crafting of narrowing examples: So, maybe this material needs "Here's an example of when it did go this way, because confusion with a real ethnicity was very likely" [or whatever, if we pick non-breed examples], in whatever wording, followed by "More often, this is not done, because the likelihood of confusion is lower; e.g. Peppin Merino is not at Peppin Merino (sheep), because while it could be someone's name, readers would not be especially likely to assume this." Or something along these lines, in more compressed wording. Simply saying that it's not common might be sufficient. I'm certainly not suggesting that cases of disambiguation of naturally ambiguous names are going on every day at RM, much less that we should be broadening the interpretation of what may qualify. I'd be in support of making it clear that it's only done in very obvious cases like Welsh Black (and now that I saw what you were getting at [apologies for not getting it the first time] "Mechelen cuckoo"). There was a short series of other RMs similar to "Mechelen cuckoo", but also animal breeds, where the names were of the form "Silver Marten" (now Silver Marten rabbit, etc.). These might be better examples, since most readers would assume this was a kind of marten). Because of years of namewarring over capitalization of species names (and the fact that real-world sources do not consistently capitalize or lower-case species' common names), even WP:DIFFPUNCT could not plausibly be applied (and it seems to only be applied in the case of actual article title collisions anyway).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:10, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

4. Use what's in front of us: Breed names are convenient for this, because it's simply common that breeds are often named in a way that makes them inherently confusing if they're not disambiguated. It's a fad/jargon thing. Go to any cat show and you'll find that this cat "is an Asian"; you're a rube, in those circles, if you refer to it as an "Asian cat", though of course RS written by non-cat breeders do so regularly because they know that "an Asian" means a person, to virtually everyone in virtually every context. (The same will hold true at a horse show, etc., and non-specialist sources about horses, e.g. with "Arabian [horse]".) See SmokeyJoe's comment at the ongoing WP:SNOWBALL RM of Algerian Arab to Algerian Arab sheep (a snowball that indicates this sort of thing is not controversial when applied reasonably): "The title should describe the topic, and the most important thing about this topic is that it is a sheep, which the current title doesn't imply." PS: I'd actually forgotten that this article in particular had been omitted from the prior group RM; the ongoing RM is correcting that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:10, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

5. WP:NATDIS, and "WP:NCBREEDS": No case was made that natural disambiguation is always used for animal breed articles; they just usually are. The proposed wording doesn't say "always", it gives an example using NATDIS, because we usually use it for this, and AT policy says to prefer NATDIS. There's nothing odd or misleading about that. Remember that you yourself argue against associating this proposal with breeds, and it certainly isn't tied to them, they're provide ready examples. The fact that some animal breed articles have not yet had title cleanup, and the possibility that some should continue using WP:PARENDIS, are off-topic. Whether there should be a "WP:Naming conventions (breeds)" is off-topic (though it's been under discussion as something that could be forked from the draft WP:Notability (breeds) page. We may just not need "micro-guidance" of that level of verbiage for a topic so narrow; development has stalled. More importantly, perhaps, we're actually running out of notable breeds to write articles about, so it might be a waste to time to bother.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:10, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

5. "Is this the only one?": That was a comment (from someone who likes to needle me sometimes) about breed RMs of this sort specifically. If you read the RMs, you'll recognize her appearing to oppose in every single one of them up to that point; some people favor stability over consistency in the AT/RM sphere, as you know). It might well be the last inherently ambiguous animal breed article title that hasn't been disambiguated. But no, obviously, it won't be the last inherently ambiguous article name on WP. You can't simultaneously argue that we must not associate this DAB matter with breeds, yet that we must only associate it with breeds.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:10, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

"electoral district"

See Talk:Terrebonne—Blainville where a discussion is taking place to determine if "electoral district" only refers to "federal electoral district" thus all "provincial electoral districts" are not ambiguous with "federal electoral districts" if federal ones use "(electoral district)" to disambiguate them from "(provincial electoral district)" disambiguators -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 03:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Scope of links unnecessary for disambiguation

Additional opinions are welcome at WikiProject Disambiguation#Scope of links unnecessary for disambiguation. Claim has been made that I am the only person who thinks additional links and detail are unnecessary on dab pages such as Monroe County. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I had thought avoiding such links was standard practice. older ≠ wiser 12:13, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Link seems to be Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Scope_of_links_unnecessary_for_disambiguation (ie talk page). PamD 17:48, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Not "what first comes to (your) mind" section

I've been meaning to address the Not "what first comes to (your) mind" section that Red Slash created in December 2014. I didn't notice the addition until about two months ago. Since it was added, other editors have molded it; for example, Ritchie333 added to it here and here, but was recently reverted by Red Slash. Red Slash also recently expanded the section. The reason I've been wanting to address the section here at this talk page is because WP:Primary topic currently states, "There is no single criterion for defining a primary topic. However, there are two major aspects that are commonly discussed in connection with primary topics:

A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.

A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term."

Well, when it comes to the "if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term" aspect, that is usually a "what first comes to your mind" matter. Not just one person's mind, but what people usually first think of. Take, for example, this Mike Jordan (racing driver) discussion that Steel1943 started. Undoubtedly, Michael Jordan, the American basketball player, is the person people generally first think of when they hear or read the name "Mike Jordan." I don't see it as problematic to note "what first comes to people's minds" in such cases, as long as it's not solely a "what first comes to your own mind" matter or clearly a regional matter when you weigh the evidence. Yes, I know that applying a "what first comes to your mind" rationale can be problematic for disambiguation and move cases; that's why Red Slash created the section. And, yes, I know that the Not "what first comes to (your) mind" section currently states, "Of course, coming first to mind does not preclude primary topic." But the section makes it seem like "what first comes to your mind" is usually invalid regarding disambiguation and move cases; from what I've seen, it commonly isn't. Flyer22 (talk) 03:55, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Note: I struck part of my post because it was actually Midas02, not Steel1943, who started that Mike Jordan discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 03:58, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I'll only comment briefly, because I really want to hear other perspectives. I wrote this because some people raise the idea that if they themselves don't think of Foo when they hear the word "Foo" (probably because they live in England, where "Foo" usually refers to Foo, England), then that's a valid reason to move Foo to Foo (imaginary topic). This is not valid, and really is just another form of WP:JDLI. Look at the last move request for... oh gall... Birmingham, Charlotte, Raleigh, Cork, Limerick, Cheddar, Perth (that one was huge!)... I mean, there's a lot of it going on, especially with geographical terms. It also happened at a recent move request where a man who is the executive of a state of over five million people was considered (by a few) to be unworthy of primary topic over a washed-up singer that they just happened to be more familiar with. So this happened to fix that, mostly. Red Slash 04:31, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, Red Slash. I still think that we should loosen the language a bit more for that section so that it doesn't seem like "what first comes to your mind" is usually invalid regarding disambiguation and move cases. I don't doubt that some people will use the section you created to argue against cases where evidence for the primary topic is strong, even while including "what first comes to your mind" rationales. It's often that "what first comes to your mind" is valid for deciding what topic is the primary topic. And by that, I reiterate that I don't solely mean one's own mind (though it's common that people are right when applying "what first comes to your mind" in that way as well). Flyer22 (talk) 00:54, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Did you have specific wording in mind? I strongly concur with the point of Red Slash's addition there, and it seems to have been uncontroversial in the long run, as well as helpful, but I guess I can see the "this could be misinterpreted" concern you raise. Maybe even just adding "necessarily" before "what comes to your mind" would do the trick?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:58, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for regular use of hatnotes on biographical articles to provide links to the topics of "others" who have a shared or similar name

See also: #A disambiguation of disambiguation pages

Helpful comment was made in the above named discussion on the topic of hatnotes that might be placed at the top of biographical articles to provide links to the topics of "others" who have a shared or similar name to the article providing the links.

An issue that I perceive to be a problem became particularly apparent to me when I did a search (when using google.co.uk) on John Smith. The results immediately presented the Wikipedia article relating to John Smith (Labour Party leader) (which doesn't have a hatnote directing to the navigation page) but the google list then made mention of no other Wikipedia articles. The problem is that readers may have been looking for any one of a large number of people or other entities known by the names "John" and "Smith" and yet the reader is presented with a large content relating to one specific "John Smith".

One option would be to just leave the situation as it is and hope that, following potential readers having already written a term such as "John Smith" in a location such as a google search box, that they will quickly recognize notice the presence, of the Wikipedia search box and, again, enter the same search text.

The proposal here is that a template is developed as an adaptation of Template:For

The working of this template acts so as to convert a code, for example: Template:Xpd into a footnote with corresponding content, for example:

For the concept in behavioral ecology, see Altruism (biology).

An adaptation of this template could, I think, be developed with a designation such as: Template:For others

This template could then act so as to convert a code, for example: Template:Xpd into a footnote with corresponding content, for example:

For others with the names "John" and "Smith" see John Smith (example one)

or

For others with the names "John" and "Smith" see John Smith (navigation guide) (example two)

or

For others with the names "John" and "Smith" see John Smith (disambiguation) (example three)

I personally would see most merit in the regular use of the second option to be used. Reasons for this include that the content (a hyperlink based list) is not about a single person called "John Smith"; that the designations of the people listed in these namespaces frequently (if not predominantly) need no disambiguation and that I do not know of anyone called "John Smith" who is known for his activity within the field of "disambiguation".

Alternatively a system might be adopted where a range of templates could be used so that a code based on: Template:For others could result in an output in the form of "example one" while either a code based on: Template:For others nav could result in an output in the form of "example two" or a code based on: Template:For others dis could result in an output in the form of "example three"

GregKaye 10:37, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose – solution in search of a problem. BTW, no guideline change is needed to develop a {{For others}} template along the lines as proposed here. My prediction is, however, that it would be at WP:TfD within seconds for reasons completely unrelated to the WP:D guideline. So maybe this proposal should rather have been at WP:VPT. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:41, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
• There is no need to add yet another hatnote to the already confusing panoply of hatnote templates. Where needed, the simple {{for}} template works just fine. For example, Template:Xpd I don't see a need for a separate single purpose variant. older ≠ wiser 14:53, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose: "Solution in search of a problem" does seem to cover it. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that "disambiguation" is a jargonistic word, but changing it, e.g., to "navigation" or something, would be a policy change that would need to get consensus at WT:AT; it's not a guideline matter.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:44, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Francis Schonken SMcCandlish I have clearly presented an alleged problem that people who externally search on a name (such as John Smith), get channeled to specific articles (such as John Smith (Labour Party leader)) and then are given no direct link that would allow them to access other topics by the name "John Smith". Please do not disparagingly WP:ASSERT that a proposal is a "solution in search of a problem" when another editor is presenting something which from that editor's perspective and with good faith has been specifically regarded as being a problem. Please consider not stating opinion as fact. GregKaye 08:11, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

As others have pointed out, this is not a WP:DAB issue, and we already have a solution for this problem: Just put the {{Other uses}} template on the page. Rather than say, "oh, okay", you've followed up with yet another off-topic and redundant proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:26, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia has historically named its navigation pages as disambiguation pages and, as such, I am fairly raising this issue at WP:Disambiguation. We have navigation pages that are themselves, I think, abysmally poorly supplied by navigational links. {{Other uses}} does not work. Similar templates are certainly unsuited to use to link to a page like the previously mentioned Alfred Loomis. GregKaye 16:17, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Similar templates are certainly unsuited to use to link to a page like the previously mentioned Alfred Loomis What is unsuitable about the following?

• Template:Xpd

older ≠ wiser 17:34, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

[sigh] I don't mean, literally "{{Other uses}} and only that template ever", I obviously mean "{{Other uses}}, generally, and variants of it, like {{Other people}}, etc., as needed for the specific article type and context in question."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:47, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Adapted proposal

Thanks Bkonrad for above comment.

Propose that policy makes mention in some way of a practice of adding hatnotes to articles that have disambiguated titles so as to provide links to an associated navigation page presenting a list of both disambiguated and naturally unambiguous but associated titles.

(By "unambiguous but associated titles" I am referring to titles such as John Blair Smith etc. that require no disambiguation).

It is quite rightly pointed out that existing codes could resolve current issues. A code such as: {{for others|John|Smith}} would merely produce a shorthand and standardization of wording that might be otherwise generated. (Existing codes might present including and with similarity to:
{{for|other persons with the same name|John Smith (disambiguation)}} gives

For other persons with the same name, see John Smith (disambiguation) while

{{for|others with the names "John" and "Smith"|John Smith (navigation guide)}} might give

For others with the names "John" and "Smith", see John Smith (navigation guide).

(John Blair Smith does not have the same name, at least by used designation, as, for instance, John Smith (Labour Party leader)). At present the destination list of titles is at the ambiguously titled namespace John Smith).

In whatever form that the code may take, I propose that a hatnote be used from articles that have disambiguated titles and which have unambiguous titles that have commonality in form with genuinely ambiguous designation. In the second case such include John Blair Smith and John Smith's Brewery/John Smith & Son which have direct reference to "John Smith" within their titles.

GregKaye 08:59, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

"RfC" means "request for comment", not "request for fact" – "comments" can include opinions based on experience (without needing to elaborate the minute detail of that experience). Here's a fact: WP:SNOW is an essay. Here's a comment including opinion based on experience: WP:SNOW may apply to this RfC, regardless of attempts to rescue it by rewording and whatnot. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:08, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Despite the reasoning presented regarding an indicated need for navigation which i think Wikipedia lacks you did nothing more than slap on dismissive comment "solution in search of a problem". I have presented evidence to say that the current situation is less than ideal. I think that a fair argument might relate a cost vs benefit comparison of implementing such a proposal but please drop your continual use of unjustified WP:ASSERTion.

My argument is that Wikipedia lacks navigation. It hardly even features in our vocabulary. GregKaye 09:19, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes I assert this is probably going nowhere, a.k.a. a time sink. No apologies are needed for formulating my comment thus.

Re. "Wikipedia lacks navigation" – as you may know (or not know) I once took some lessons in web development, including elaborate chapters on web usability (navigation being an important topic in that context). Then I had some professional experience leading international EU-funded projects to develop interactive websites with a low threshold (which means a lot of optimising in view of usability and navigation, in that case based on testing by prospective inexperienced users etc.) With that experience your assertion "Wikipedia lacks navigation" seems ludicrous. Not every Wikipedia contributor is expected to know the finer points of web usability, but Wikipedia guidance is in large measure written thus that swift navigation is promoted. Your proposals in this RfC are a step back in usability and swift navigation, speaking from my experience. "Solution in search of a problem" summarizes this expertly, and not only in its usual meaning that a solution is proposed before a problem is properly identified, it is a solution "looking for trouble", i.e. (in the context) making navigation more cumbersome instead of improving it. Note that "navigation" is optimal when nobody needs to to think "hey, I'm navigating", so the absence of navigation-related terminology from guidance and from main namespace is actually a very good sign how well Wikipedia does in this regard. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:01, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Francis Schonken Thank you for presenting your CV. In my text above, to which you did not reply, I said: "I have clearly presented an alleged problem that people who externally search on a name (such as John Smith), get channeled to specific articles (such as John Smith (Labour Party leader)) and then are given no direct link that would allow them to access other topics by the name "John Smith"." I see this as a lack of navigation and, below, an actual editor of the John Smith (Labour Party leader) article agrees. GregKaye 16:33, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Also Francis Schonken, in light of your self proclaimed expertise in regard to the use of links, perhaps you can explain how this works. When an article presents prominent links, internet search engine results pages can give direct access to those links directly and within the search engine listing. For instance, when I use google.co.uk to search on isil, a prominent result that I receive reads as follows:

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Wikipedia, the free ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, /ˈaɪsɨs/; Arabic: الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام

), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the ...

‎Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - ‎Military activity of ISIL - ‎Isis (disambiguation) - ‎Salafi jihadism

The presence of the ‎Isis (disambiguation) link is surely due to the presence of the article hatnote that that includes this link. I see this as yet another reason to add navigational links to our navigation pages as, by so doing, we may even prompt search engines to give direct links to a page entitled as, say, John Smith (navigation guide). GregKaye 17:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose again: As others have pointed out, this is not a WP:DAB issue, and we already have a solution for this problem: Just put the {{Other uses}} template on the page. Rather than say, "oh, okay", you've followed up with yet another off-topic and redundant proposal. The "John Foo Smith" cases are already included at the John Smith DAB page. The "See also" section will also cover cases like "John Smith's Foo", etc. There is no problem, other than some missing hatnotes (not new kinds of hatnotes, but existing ones). I have a similarly hard-core Web dev and usability background to FS, above, and I agree with him completely.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:26, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, My proposal was "that policy makes mention in some way of a practice of adding hatnotes to articles that have disambiguated titles so as to provide links to an associated navigation page presenting a list of both disambiguated and naturally unambiguous but associated titles." I am not sure if you are disagreeing with this other than to point out that "this is not a WP:DAB issue". It is still, as far as I can see, a valid issue being raised on a board that people actually read. Thank-you for pointing out the {{Other uses}} template. This provides another option for fulfilling the mentioned and, I think, valid need presented. Where are we disagreeing? GregKaye 13:03, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I have added the {{Other uses}} template to the John Smith (Labour Party leader) with this result which seems to me to be poorly worded in consideration of the surrounding context. GregKaye 14:04, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

@GregKaye: Couple of problems with that addition:

1. The link to the dab page should be piped through John Smith (disambiguation) - can be done as {{otheruses|John Smith (disambiguation){{!}}John Smith}}.
2. I suspect someone will turn up and remove it, as it's against current guidelines. I personally agree that it's a useful link, to help those who land on the politician's page from Google while looking for a different "John Smith", but unfortunately the guideline Wikipedia:Hatnote#Disambiguating_article_names_that_are_not_ambiguous tells us not to add it.
3. There's also {{Other people}} which doesn't seem to quite work here .

I've amended it to {{Other people2|John Smith (disambiguation){{!}}John Smith}} which seems to have the desired effect. Will be interesting to see whether it lasts. PamD 14:28, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks PamD for sharing an improved solution which presents a succinct hatnote as:

For other people of the same name, see John Smith.

My argument remains that a more accurate and intuitive wording could read along the lines of:

For others with the names "John" and "Smith", see John Smith (navigation guide).

Something like this could also be used with regards to navigation pages such as for people called Alfred Loomis. A google search on Alfred Loomis] leads to a link to Alfred Lee Loomis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and yet there is no hatnote on this page to link to the Alfred Loomis navigation page so as to readily supply access to the articles for Alfred Lebbeus Loomis or Alfred Loomis (sailor). In this case I propose that a suitable wording for a hatnote would be something along the lines of:

For others with the names "Alfred" and "Loomis", see Alfred Loomis (navigation guide).

In the context of an article named Alfred Lee Loomis it would be inappropriate to write:

For other people of the same name, see Alfred Loomis.

This would be inaccurate. Alfred Lee Loomis is not the same name as Alfred Loomis! GregKaye 15:50, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

We do not currently have nor do I think there should exist a general navigation page for persons named "John" or "Smith". That seems simply bizarre. older ≠ wiser 17:36, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Whatever, GK. The point is, this can be hatnoted. A simple parameter tweaking of, or variant of, {{Other people}} would get at all cases that need to be gotten at. WT:DAB is for discussion of how to improve the WP:Disambiguation guideline, not for how to add features to (or work around limitations of) templates that just happen to have something to do with disambiguation. That's what the "Template talk" pages are for. A side lesson here is that "Hmm, I can't seem to easily do what I think needs to be done" is rarely cause for "We need to make a sweeping policy change", but rather for "What gets closest to what I want to do, and what would it take to adapt it?" The latter approach is far more efficient and raises much less dramahz.

WP has no "navigation guide" page system. If you want one, try proposing at WP:VPPRO. I guarantee that one which would result in "For others with the names "John" and "Smith", see John Smith (navigation guide)" will just WP:SNOWBALL straight to the bottom of Hell immediately, because there is no encyclopedic utility in a miles-long list of everyone notable in the history of the world named "John".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:41, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish on the Alfred Lee Loomis page, what wording would you use to complete the hatnote

For other people ..., see Alfred Loomis.

What explanation do you have for the presence to an Isis (disambiguation) link in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Wikipedia, the free ... Google listing mentioned above.

In the context of an article such as John Smith (Labour Party leader) a hatnote "For others with the names "John" and "Smith", see John Smith (navigation guide)" would surely be taken in the context of the surrounding references to "John Smith" but in a way that would allow for additions such as of middle names.

You have not responded to the point that, in the context of an article named Alfred Lee Loomis it would be inaccurate to write: For other people of the same name, see Alfred Loomis.

What would be your suggested wording?

GregKaye 18:34, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposal development of a Template:Navbox system to add navigation options in locations such as navigation pages

See also: #Proposal for regular use of hatnotes on biographical articles to facilitate links to "others" with a shared or similar name

In relation to the above named proposal (but hopefully with stand alone content) I propose that a Template:Navbox system (or similar) might be developed so as to present additional and relevant navigation content in a similar format as various Template:Infobox examples. Perhaps this might be done in a similar way as Template:Wikt with fixed width or perhaps it might be enabled to combine with content such as Template:TOC right with variable width.

In the previously mentioned thread I have again used the example of the navigation content presented in the namespace John Smith

In this case a code content such as "{{navbox|John (given name)|Smith (surname)}}" could result in a page display (hopefully without the additional horisontal line and maybe to a different width/spacing) in a format such as:

See also: [hide]
John (given name) Smith (surname)

 

 

 

Perhaps the width might correspond to the width such as the contents such as are produced by templates like Wiktionary which, has an output at John (given name), that presents:

 

 

 

• Perhaps the a navbox could use bullet points in parallel to the system used via Template:TOC right. (See John Smith for a relatively long example of a right justified TOC).

In whatever way it might be made to work, I think that something like this can only increase the navigability of our pages.

GregKaye 10:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose – what is this about? It's not clear what (if anything) is proposed as a change to the Disambiguation guideline. The proposal seems to be incompatible with the current WP:NAVBOX guideline, so we're confronted (again) with a RfC that aims to introduce new language in one guideline, but, in fact, overturns some of the guidance in other operational policies of guidelines, without even so much as notifying the talk pages of these possibly affected guidelines and policies. On the whole such proposals that would affect guidance on multiple operational guidelines and/or policies should be presented at WP:Village pump (WP:VPT for this one I suppose, with links from this page, from WP:VPP, WT:MOSDAB, WT:NAVBOX, etc.). --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:59, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
• Agree with Francis. This is a rather fuzzy proposal that is only partially related to disambiguation and would benefit from a broader discussion (or perhaps a more focused discussion in less public forum to sharpen the proposal before throwing it on the wall of the village pump to see if anything sticks. older ≠ wiser 14:58, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose: Unclear purpose and we don't need new "systems" for doing things for which there's no established need, per WP:BUREAUCRACY, WP:CREEP, KISS, WP:COMMONSENSE, "if it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it", etc. This proposal looks like "thrashing". It follows on the heels of various changes suggested by the same proponent, including one higher up the page, to use parenthetical disambiguators after all article titles (or least personal names like "John Smith"; I couldn't wade through all of that, and it was WP:SNOWBALLing anyway), then one for redundant hatnotes, and prior ideas along such lines. I get a sense that this all boils down to "I think someone somewhere is going to find WP disambiguation confusing, so something, anything absolutely must be done now, and it has to be new." This continued insertion of every passing notion in the do-something-different-about-DAB-navigation vein as a new proposal is not constructive. Maybe write an essay about what is allegedly wrong with the current DAB system, get comments on it, and see if something concrete emerges that a lot of people agree on.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:41, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

  The "re-proposal" in the thread above is strong evidence in favor of this assessment. Proponent is not listening to the fact that we already have a solution for the alleged problem.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:40, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish What have I not listened to? My "adapted proposal" above was "that policy makes mention in some way of a practice of adding hatnotes to articles ..." which could equally be achieved through the use of specifically adapted templates or preexisting templates. My personal view is that, in connection to the content of a navigation page such as John Smith that there is a clear association with the contents presented in both John (given name) in and Smith (surname).

My proposals have been related to potential changes in regard to the presentation of navigation pages which, in Wikipedia are commonly called "disambiguation pages". As such I have fairly posted on a discussion page entitled Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation.

Thank you from back tracking from "Solution in search of a problem" to at least admitting "alleged problem". GregKaye 13:39, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The not-listening part is that everyone's telling you that "potential changes in regard to the presentation of navigation" isn't something we need, and instead of considering on this for very long, you just launch new proposals for slightly different potential changes that re-raise the same objection. I'm not trying to be mean to you, I'm trying to point out that this is a quixotic, irritating time-waste. It's not a good way to expend time and energy here (and it's consuming more than just your own).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish Please consider the tone of Bkonrad's response above. If you go ballistic with all manner of inaccurate attacks, how do you think I am going to respond? There is nothing wrong in proposing navigation options relevant for navigation pages. Is it possible for editors to differ in views presented without the vehement aggression? GregKaye 18:43, 16 August 2015 (UTC)