Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links

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Constantine: not a dab?

I see that someone has moved Constantine to the "Done" section, noting that Constantine is not a disambiguation page. But that doesn't seem correct to me, so I wanted to consult with folks here about possibly moving it back up. The Constantine page seems like other personal name pages that I consider to be dab pages. The content is just a short paragraph about the etymology of the name. Then, the bulk of the article is a list of links to specific Constantines. I clicked on some of the "What links here" pages and they're not pages that just deal with the name Constantine. Rather they refer to specific Constantines (typically Constantine I, the Roman Emperor). So I think Constantine should be moved back up to the list and disambiguated, but maybe I've overlooked something. --JamesAM (talk) 18:14, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

It might make sense to split the name page off from a dab, but the way in which this was converted to a dab recently (by deleting the given name content and categories, and adding a disambiguation tag) was inappropriate. If we want to disambiguate this page, the given name, surname, and etymology portions should be split off into Constantine (name), leaving behind only the people who are known as simply "Constantine", a link to the new name page, and the current contents of the disambiguation page that already exists at Constantine (disambiguation). Dekimasuよ! 04:04, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and made this change myself; see Constantine and Constantine (name). Dekimasuよ! 06:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

August stats

I compared the August list with the new September list to find out what happened to dabs that were in the top 250 when the August list finally went up. The number of ambiguous links declined for 234/250 pages (94%), and rose for only 12/250 pages (5%). Not bad, considering that we didn't have as much time to work on this list and we were also in the process of handling big problems like Public school and Diesel. Two pages went up by more than ten links: Vedic (+20) and Kamboja (+12). It was the second month in a row both of those had increased. Convex increased for the third consecutive month. The other pages that increased were Deformation, Rule, Vesicle, Procurator, Reflection, Groundnut, Warbler, Control, and Locus.

On a broader note, per data at WP:TDD and WP:DPM, we enjoyed our first and only day this year without a page over 200 links on August 23. The number of active pages (dabs with over 100 links) declined from 836 to 710, and is at its lowest recorded level since March 2008. Dekimasuよ! 04:31, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I like watching the number of pages in the DPL-100 category of TDD drop. I think it'll be baselined this year! (Or early next.) Another interesting indicator is from the contest list; the number of links to the 250th item has dropped steadily - this month it's 115 - and I look forward to it dropping below 100 very soon, maybe by November or December. --JaGa^talk 20:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Preventing links to disambiguation pages

I am sure I can't be the only one to have come across this problem. Sometimes, on returning to a particular disambiguation page where I have previously reduced the number of links to zero (or close to zero), I find that the link count has crept back up again. (The latest example is Great Northern Railway which I reduced to a handful of links a few months ago only to find it had increased to 33 again).

I think many contibutors add square brackets around keywords and, provided it goes blue rather than red, simply submit it without further investigation (I admit I've done it myself). Would it be possible for, at the very least, a warning to be displayed that adding links to dab pages is not recommended, and do you really want to do this? 82.1.62.101 (talk) 20:13, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

If that could be done it would certainly save alot of peoples time. I dont know if its been discussed here before, seems like a good idea. BritishWatcher (talk) 23:19, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. If we could at least have a warning come up when someone links to, say, one of our top 1,000 disambig pages, that would be a huge help. bd2412 T 01:20, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Isn't there an editing tool that shows links to dab pages when in the preview mode? And I know there is at least one tool that shows all links to dabs on a given page. It is the nature of dab pages that they accumulate incoming links, and many of us periodically check and fix the incoming links to our favorite dab pages. --Una Smith (talk) 03:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I imagine that the editors who make the most obvious disambig links (as in "Joe drives a Mercury", without giving thought to the possibility that Mercury has meanings other than the car) are the casual visiting type who don't get to the level of installing those tools. bd2412 T 04:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

These tools could be imposed on every editor, but at the price of annoying at least some of them. And would that help them to fix the problems? Patrolling dab pages seems reasonably effective. --Una Smith (talk) 04:35, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Editors making a quick change may not want to be bothered with, or know what to do about, existing dab links. I believe there is a bot that sends messages to editors who introduce a new dab link. I've never tried it because of course I don't do that. I've made a request to have the wikEd gadget highlight dabs in a different color. UncleDouggie (talk) 09:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

The wikEd change is a no-go because it's a general purpose tool that they don't want to customize just for the English WP, plus it would be a huge performance hit to request the link status data. A fixed list of dab pages is unworkable because we have 115K. Instead, I purpose that we add an option that would display dab links in purple in the regular article display and in previews, just like broken links are in red. UncleDouggie (talk) 20:17, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Link formatting has been a big issue in the past. There appears to be a script to let you format links anyway you want at User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js. I'm trying it out myself but I haven't gotten it to work yet. UncleDouggie (talk) 23:39, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I've got it working great now, just had to get the right stuff in both my .js and .css files. You can use the standard version above with its rainbow of colors if you like. I decided it was too out of control, so I calmed things down in my settings and also added the names of the colors to the hex. Links to dab pages are shown with a yellow background. It looks really good, just like this. I'm using the beta interface, so my settings are at User:UncleDouggie/vector.js and User:UncleDouggie/vector.css. The same code can be run in the monobook skin files. The .js file also has my enhanced version of converting talk page comments to local time. UncleDouggie (talk) 02:37, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the database schema to see how expensive making it native that dabs get a different link colour. It would be expensive, so it's just not going to happen. Josh Parris 03:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I could imagine a bot going around and following every link to a dab page with {{dn}}, but there would have to be rules about when it's appropriate to put that in and when it isn't. How is the bot going to be able to tell when an editor is intentionally linking to the dab page, or ignorantly linking to it? Josh Parris 03:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

We already try to distinguish these, by making intentional links to Foo (disambiguation), that page being a redirect to Foo. --Una Smith (talk) 18:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

List of acronyms and initialisms

The pages in the List of acronyms and initialisms series are enormous disambig sinks - probably between 80 and 100 disambig links per page. I think we could reasonably ignore them from our count, unless someone wants to go to the trouble of fixing them. bd2412 T 21:24, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we can ignore them based on this. We've had worse. Many of the those dab pages need serious work themselves to meet the guideline. UncleDouggie (talk) 21:46, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking we could just treat them as intentional disambig links. Pipe them through the (disambiguation) redirect and be done with them at that. The pages are woefully short in identifying what the acronyms in question stand for anyway. bd2412 T 21:51, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

In cases where the acronym can only go to a dab, it can be delinked, the spelled out form already goes to the appropriate page. J04n(talk page) 22:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Interim

I don't think it's a dab, any other opinions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by J04n (talk • contribs)

In this case, I think it is basically a dab, since it deals with a lot of unrelated topics that simply share the word "interim". In that case, it should have 90% of its text cut out, though. For the time being, I'll mark it for dab cleanup and we can get a third opinion (probably from Boleyn). Dekimasuよ! 01:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

WikiCleaner

Due to a hosting change, there's a new URL to install Wiki Cleaner (here). It's better to uninstall the old version before going for the new one (0.97). --NicoV (talk) 21:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I have released a fix for the 'bad token' problem in 0.99. --NicoV (talk) 20:02, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Ignorance

On the list as a many-linked disambig. Strikes me that this ought to be an article on the basic concept, with the current content moved to Ignorance (disambiguation). That would address many of the links as well. bd2412 T 16:03, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. There's already a proto-article in the dab anyways. I'll put it in place today when I get the time. --JaGa^talk 08:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Excellent work - thanks! bd2412 T 14:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Redirects from character names to media names

We have a lot of redirects from the name of a character to the disambig page for the media in which the character occurs. For example, Alexander Conklin redirects to The Bourne Identity; Blade (Street Fighter character) (and several alternative forms) redirects to Street Fighter: The Movie; E.K. Hornbeck redirects to Inherit the Wind. Perhaps we should have a different solution to these redirects?

IMO, the character redirect should target an article that contains the best introduction or overview of the character. older ≠ wiser 12:00, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

In retrospect, I'd actually prefer if it went to the article for the earliest work introducing the character, unless the character was really minor there and was greatly expanded in a later work. Maybe I should say the first work where the character was substantially developed in the work. The overview of the character can always be improved in any given article. bd2412 T 14:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

In most cases, that'd be just fine. For some series of media, there are List of characters in Foo that might be a better target than any single work. older ≠ wiser 12:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that would be a better solution where such lists exist. I propose that we make this a rule, then - character names to redirect to the "list of characters" page if there is one, otherwise to the page for the earliest media in which the character was substantially developed. bd2412 T 13:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Formally proposed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Proposed rule for redirects from character names to disambig pages. Cheers again! bd2412 T 23:16, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

(but please do contribute to the discussion there). bd2412 T 19:18, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

FYI, the consensus reached on the discussion linked above is that character names should redirect to the most likely search target (i.e. the most popular page), unless there is no agreement as to which would be most likely, in which case the default would be the page on the earliest work. bd2412 T 17:43, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Nowa Wieś discussion

[Note: Discussion moved here from Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/September 2009]

This only has 2 links that need disambiguation. The rest are just hatnotes for the numerous towns called Nowa Wieś. So this issue will recur. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JamesAM (talk • contribs)

• These are still in direct violation of Wikipedia:Hatnote. I think we have to have another discussion on this topic, or else WP:NAMB needs to be altered significantly. Dekimasuよ!
• Since the expressed intent (per old discussions at WT:DPL) is to inform readers that there are a lot of places with this name, perhaps something along the lines of the split of Springfield (toponym) from Springfield is in order. Any of the links could then perform the same purpose without linking back to an unrelated navigational page. Dekimasuよ!
  • I made all those hatnotes redirect through Nowa Wieś (disambiguation) - why are they still showing up here? Must be some way to eliminate those hits from the list, as that is how we code obviously intentional disambig links. bd2412 T 17:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • How about this as a compromise, to avoid inappropriate linking of the dab? I'm still not comfortable with the idea of a hatnote for this, but I think there were previous objections to moving the disclaimer to the see also section. Dekimasuよ! 05:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
    • I really don't see what's wrong with the solution I've already implemented. Linking it through a "(disambiguation)" redirect to the disambig page makes it clear that it's not an erroneous disambig link, and takes the reader to the place we want them to go to find alternatives to ambiguous terms. bd2412 T 06:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

They're serving their intended purpose, so they're not erroneous to that extent, but it's a purpose that's deprecated by Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Usage guidelines and Wikipedia:Hatnote, and it would be good to avoid making it seem like such hatnotes are generally acceptable; we are supposed to keep self-references to a minimum, and if this is propagated, our list here will become unworkable. I'm not trying to say that you weren't being helpful, but I think there's still an issue to be solved here. Unfortunately, I'm not sure who Kotniski was replying to after I asked him to comment, but it seems like he will be happy with anything that makes it clear there are other places called Nowa Wieś (please correct me if I'm wrong). Dekimasuよ! 10:40, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, though I'd much prefer for that "anything" to be a hatnote (i.e. before the start of the article) rather than a See Also entry at the end of it (as was suggested once before). If there's a chance the reader might be in the wrong place, they need to be told straight away.--Kotniski (talk) 14:00, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

From the perspective of fixing disambig links, it will show up the same on our list of pages to be fixed no matter where on the target page the link exists. If it's made to an index instead of a disambig page, that's fine, but just taking it out of the hatnote will not solve the problem. bd2412 T 14:41, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds a good solution to me. The reason I think these hatnotes are needed is that many people will arrive at these pages having clicked a link that just says "Nowa Wieś", and may not be aware (if they are not familiar with Polish place naming) that it very likely isn't the place of that name where their granny was born or whatever. (Or to put it another way - although the dab tags are theoretically enough to uniquely identify the place, for many of our readers (those who don't know the intricacies of today's Polish administrative divisions) those tags will be meaningless, and therefore not sufficient in practice to uniquely identify.)--Kotniski (talk) 06:33, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• Just a heads-up, Zalesie is currently in position to make the list next month and appears to be a repeat of this issue. Any decisions about Nowa Wies should probably be applied to Zalesie at the same time. Ulric1313 (talk) 07:44, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
• Considering that Nowa Wieś only holds links to towns in Poland, shouldn't this be a set index article instead of a dab? --JaGa^talk 11:31, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

• I like JaGa's suggestion of an index article List of places in Poland that start with Nowa Wieś or something similar, the same could obviously be done with Zalesie, Springfield, or any other location that this becomes an issue for. Dekimasu's compromise would also work but would be less of a permanent solution, one drawback off the top of my head is that there could be no talk page. J04n(talk page) 13:51, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

• I went ahead and moved Nowa Wieś to List of places in Poland named Nowa Wieś and adjusted the hatnotes accordingly. --JaGa^talk 10:28, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
• Also, since JaGa moved Nowa Wieś, I went and did the same to Zalesie as a proactive move. Ulric1313 (talk) 18:16, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

• Beat me to it! Thanks, Ulric. --JaGa^talk 19:37, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Since there are going to be quite a few of these, I've created a Category:Set indices on Poland, on the example of the Russian one, and updated {{SIA}} to handle it. I've also added a sort key parameter to SIA, so if anyone's creating more pages like this, you can write (on "List of places in Poland named Żźróć"): {{SIA|Poland|Zzroc}} --Kotniski (talk) 10:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• Nowy Staw is now on the radar so I've gone and duplicated what was done with Nowa Wieś & Zalesie. Made an error in the original move but all should be okay now.Ulric1313 (talk) 17:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Not sure how that one got onto the radar with only three places, but I've changed it a bit since Nowy Staw is a primary topic in this case (the article was always at that name until someone recently moved it to something weird).--Kotniski (talk) 17:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I saw it in the Daily Disambig and decided to fix it. Didn't realize most pointed to one article. My bad, jumped the gun. Thanks for fixing things.Ulric1313 (talk) 18:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

No, no harm done, at least not by you; in fact it's lucky that you happened to chance on it and mention it here so that I ended up noticing the odd "move" that someone else had made (indeed it was probably that move - a cut-and-paste job without repairing any incoming links - that caused the page to get onto the list).--Kotniski (talk) 19:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• Someone has changed Nowa Wies back to a disambiguation page from an SIA. Before I did anything thought should get consensus. Ulric1313 (talk) 09:36, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Crud, I thought this was resolved. Well, we have several options, and something has to be done, otherwise every Nowa Wies article will be pointing at this dab again. We could revert JHunterJ's changes, or move it to a List of ... article, or remove all those hatnotes. Or something else? If we think SIA won't stand the test of time I'd vote for a List of ... article, because I think the hatnotes serve a useful purpose. --JaGa^talk 12:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone know why JHJ changed it? Perhaps he was simply unaware of this previous discussion?--Kotniski (talk) 12:39, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

It's just one aspect of ongoing confusion over the purpose of SIAs and whether/how they are to be distinguished from garden variety disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 15:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

• I've put in a move request to put it back to the List article. I don't see why a single user's decision should trump the consensus reached here. --JaGa^talk 13:44, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
• It looks to me like an ordinary common standard multi-link disambig page. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:27, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

ECB

Should ECB (disambiguation) be moved to ECB? --AndrewHowse (talk) 16:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, done. bd2412 T 21:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Lorraine

Heads up on this one. It's currently listed at over 300 but that's the tip of the iceberg since more have been added since the update ran. Infoboxes are being added to French commune articles and instead of Lorraine (region), just Lorraine was used. I did a quick look over other regions, and it looks like this is the only one that had this happen. I'll probably try and start on this when I get home from work, but it's going to take some time unless someone out there can get a bot on it, or some other process. Ulric1313 (talk) 17:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• I informed the editor that is adding the infoboxes of the problem, hopfuly he can set his bot to fix them. J04n(talk page) 18:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Weymouth

There is a bit of a content dispute on Weymouth. See the recent edit history. I fixed links to the page, and added entries to it reflecting those fixes. In dispute here is a cluster of articles related to Weymouth, Dorset: should they be on the dab page, or not? This question applies also to a requested move discussion on Talk:Duluth. --Una Smith (talk) 17:50, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Cruciate ligament

Cruciate ligament ought not be a disambig. All meanings are for ligaments in the knee; many disambig links are unfixable because even the news reports do not specify which of an athlete's cruciate ligaments was thought to be injured (and some articles specify that a person had an injury to the "cruciate ligaments" of a particular knee. bd2412 T 22:20, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I could go either way: make it a straight dab, or make it an article that explains why they are "cruciate" (it has nothing to do with torture; they cross). Pass it by WP:MED? --Una Smith (talk) 22:54, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The fact that they are unfixable (which they are) is no reason to make the the page not a dab. The only solution that I see is merging Anterior cruciate ligament & Medial collateral ligament Posterior cruciate ligament but the folks that edit the anatomy pages may not agree that they should be merged. J04n(talk page) 23:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Judging by the dab'ed articles themselves, the one that is frequently getting injured is the anterior, but many news reports on injured athletes maddeningly omit that specification. If we could find some source supporting this contention, we could default all these injury reports in articles on athletes to the anterior article. On the other hand, what is it that is really being disambiguated here? It's not as though there's movie titled The Cruciate Ligament, or a band, or a car. If someone asked you what a cruciate ligament was, and you answered that it's a ligament found in the knee, you'd be right every time. I compare this to toe. We have one article on toes in general, and another on the big toe with its special role. bd2412 T 23:54, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

bd, I'm not sure what you are suggesting by that last comment; merging Anterior cruciate ligament & Posterior cruciate ligament or creating a third page for cruciate ligament (knee) (or some other name)? A better example for your point is Meniscus (anatomy), as there are also pages for Medial meniscus and Lateral meniscus. J04n(talk page) 00:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

There is a different primary topic for meniscus; there is none for cruciate ligament. I propose that the entry be a short article on the general topic (i.e. everything that can be said about every cruciate ligament, no matter the animal and position), while maintaining the more specific articles on the individual ligaments. bd2412 T 01:11, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

You're right, I agree. J04n(talk page) 01:18, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. bd2412 T 01:39, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

• I just want to point out that bd2412 and Una Smith did a fantastic job with Cruciate ligament, kudos to you both. J04n(talk page) 09:48, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Shrew

The dab Shrew needs a cleanup. I think there is a proto-article on Shrew (word) lurking in it. See also Talk:Shrew and Talk:Shrew (animal). --Una Smith (talk) 14:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

September stats

I compared the September list with the new October list and found that the number of ambiguous links declined for 247/250 pages (99%), and rose for only 3/250 pages (1%). East Hampton, New York was merged into East Hampton and thus ended up at +18 for the month. The other two pages that increased were Equilibrium and Dynamics.

Per data at WP:TDD and WP:DPM, we had our second day this year without a page over 200 links on September 13. Overall, the number of active pages (dabs with over 100 links) declined from 710 to 472, and is at its lowest recorded level since October 2007. In September, we completed over 80% of the list for the first time this year. I wonder if we might want to increase the number of pages in the list again sometime soon. It seems like we can handle a little over 25,000 links a month, but the size of the "top 250" list and dab challenge has fallen by more than half over the last few months; now the whole list is the same size as the top hundred pages were a few months ago. Dekimasuよ! 02:25, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to increase the size of the list. If people OK it here, I'll set it at whatever size is decided upon. It's an easy change for me; I don't know how tough it would be on R&B. Of course, if I did change the size, we wouldn't see the changes until November's Challenge begins. --JaGa^talk 11:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Sounds fine, assuming it isn't an undue burden for R&B why not go to 300? J04n(talk page) 23:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I was toying with even more, like 500. Looking at TDD and the archives, we see in May when we started the monthly lists, the top 250 had 62,860 links. As of October 1, the top 500 had 54,915 links. And that number is shrinking rapidly. I'd say we could handle it. And, I must admit, I like 500 because it's a Big Round Number.

On the other hand, there's much to be said for not expanding the list too much. At the end of last month, it was very difficult to find "doable" dabs, but that also forced people to do some great work on the difficult ones. So I'm OK with whatever is decided. --JaGa^talk 18:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd be cool with expanding the list. We doing well getting through them, and I think we'd expand participation because they'll be more targets to attract people to the project. --JamesAM (talk) 04:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

If you want to expand the list, that's fine with me; it's not a big deal to change my scripts, as long as I get some notice in advance of November 1. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:23, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Norman Lamont

This looks a bit questionable to me. I'll take it to WP:RM, since I think the modern pol is the primary topic. Would appreciate any input. --AndrewHowse (talk) 13:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Lexicon

I wrote an article about the typeface Lexicon (Lexicon (typeface)), but I noticed that there are several articles about something called 'Lexicon' (obviously). Currently it autmotically links to the term without additions, and it only shows the disambiguation page in the article. Maybe you should just go to the disambiguation page instead? Or am I mistaken? Typehigh (talk) 00:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Pacific Theater vs Pacific Theatre

Any reason there are two seperate disambiguation pages for what, I suspect, are mostly the same subject base in terms of intended article direction? Ulric1313 (talk) 06:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

They have redundant information, will merge. J04n(talk page) 12:06, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

New list size

OK, I've got R'n'B's blessing to expand the monthly list. How big shall we make it? The discussion above ranged from 300 to 500. Votes? --JaGa^talk 19:12, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

• 500 --JaGa^talk 19:12, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
• 500 -what the heck J04n(talk page) 00:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
• 500 Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 01:59, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
• 500 - As noted previously, the current Top 500 has a link count which isn't much higher than what the Top 250 had on June 1, 2009. So expanding to 500 is reasonable. --JamesAM (talk) 04:52, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
• 500. We'll get more fun stuff to attack. bd2412 T 04:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Done I've modified my script to create a 500-article list, starting in November. --JaGa^talk 11:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

October stats

This will necessarily be shorter than usual (you might have noticed I haven't been around much lately), but I went through the October list as usual. Links to 245 of the 250 dab pages listed decreased. Church of God had the same number of links at the end of the month. The pages that increased in links, all by 1 or 2, were Minnow, Imaging, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and Athenaeum. The number of active pages had stabilized at about 250 by the end of the month; here's hoping that the number of pages with over 100 incoming links will be down to 100 by the end of November! Dekimasuよ! 00:10, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Bill Owens

Somebody has moved the former governor of Colorado to Bill Owens (Governor) following the election of another Bill Owens in upstate NY. Before I take out the links to the new dab page redirect Bill Owens, does anybody have a suggestion of what the best disambiguator might be? (Governor) doesn't seem right, especially with an upper-case G. (politician born 1950) might work, although was born in 1949, so that's not as clear a distinction as might be. (Colorado) might work, but it lacks any reference to political life. --AndrewHowse (talk) 21:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Bill Owens (Colorado governor) would seem to fit the bill. --Una Smith (talk) 21:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) Bill Owens (Colorado politician)? He did more than serve as governor, but from the article it looks like all his political offices were in/for Colorado. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

• Agree with Floquenbeam, Bill Owens (Colorado politician). J04n(talk page) 22:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all. --AndrewHowse (talk) 23:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Questionable redirects to disambiguation pages

I have finished paring down the initial run of redirects to disambiguation pages to a list of about 5,000 questionable redirects, about a third of which (so far) are divided into subpages based on the type of problem presented. This is going to take a while to get through, so please have at it! bd2412 T 03:13, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Oktyabrsky District

It looks like there is both a set index and disambiguation assigned to this article. All, or most, of the links appear to be redirect pages. Can someone take a look at this? Ulric1313 (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Military of Cyprus

I noticed that this has been made a disambiguation page again. Since this has neen a point of contention, I thought I should mention it. Ulric1313 (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

New to project

I'm new to the project - saw a Wiki Ad, thought I'd give it a shot. I just finished cleaning up the links to heretic and Babyface. I've already moved them to the "done" list, but could someone please check those pages and make sure they're appropriately de-linked? Thanks! --SquidSK ^(1MC•log) 20:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Welcome and thanks for the help (the ads work!). Don't worry if you made a mistake someone will let you know. J04n(talk page) 20:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I mostly just want to make sure I pared the links down to the target level. I didn't change the links on any user or talk pages, just articles and portals. --SquidSK ^(1MC•log) 20:37, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Welcome! I took a random look some of your fixes. The ones I saw looked okay with one exception. You changed the heretic link for Bessie Schonberg to link to Heretic (play). If you read the context of the article, though, you'll find it's actually referring to a 1929 ballet (which doesn't have an article yet). Sometimes the disambiguation page won't list all the possibilities (and sometimes there's not an article in existence yet). It's cool to see so many new productive contributors this month. Thanks! --JamesAM (talk) 20:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

And yes, you're correct. The article should be fixed. User pages and Talk pages should be left alone. --JamesAM (talk) 20:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for double-checking me, James - that was one of the few heretic links that should not have pointed to heresy. I think I just got on a roll! --SquidSK ^(1MC•log) 20:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Wallingford

Per outcome of a requested move, the article formerly at Wallingford has been moved to Wallingford, Oxfordshire and the dab page will be moved from Wallingford (disambiguation) to the ambiguous base name. Help repairing the incoming links would be appreciated. --Una Smith (talk) 00:46, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks like once again Wikipedia's internal database indexing is not working well. I am finding many articles on the list of incoming links to Wallingford that now do not link there. --Una Smith (talk) 02:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Could be. The job queue is jumping between 12K and 13K. Based on past numbers this should take a few minutes to process. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe that Una Smith's problem was due to the link to Wallingford actually being in Template:Oxfordshire, Template:River Thames or Template:South Oxfordshire. These templates are amended, but individual pages is another matter. I'm working through some, but may not finish today - other commitments. Basically, I'm inserting "Wallingford, Oxfordshire|" into the existing link if it's clear to me that the town is the intended target. Some were not so intended; I've come across some that were better pointed at Wallingford Bridge, Wallingford Castle, Wallingford railway station, etc. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The link indexing was not reflecting changes to those templates, tens of minutes after the changes. A few months ago I showed that it was outright broken and a bug report did result. This time, it appears to be a simple delay, as the problem links I found in the list are now gone from it. --Una Smith (talk) 15:26, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I've dabbed about 100 (+/- 5%) articles, it's now my bath time. Back later, all squeaky clean. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:06, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I've dabbed some too; now under 100 remain. Many incoming links were of the form "Wallingford, Oxfordshire". Others included links intending Wallingford, Connecticut, Wallingford Castle, Honour of Wallingford, Wallingford, Berkshire, and Wallingford Grammar School. --Una Smith (talk) 16:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all for your help. Given the above, the dab page in this case really did need to be moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

 Done I've just done the last few in article space, and some in Talk: (the remaining two in (Article) and six in Talk: should point at Wallingford as a dab page). This leaves User: 14, User talk: 16, Wikipedia: 8, Wikipedia talk: 1 (this page!). I don't want to dab those in User: or User talk:, I have seen past criticism of such practices. Those in Wikipedia: are probably bot-generated. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Non-existant pages

Yo, don't change a disambiguation page link to a red link. Not helpful! In addition, if a page for the specific link doesn't exist then don't shoehorn a link into an inappropriate page. This is also not helpful. Disambiguation pages serve a purpose and shouldn't be treated as pariah pages. If they are the best place to leave a link pointing to then leave the link there! Overzealous "disambiguation" actually makes the link more ambiguaous and opaque to a casual reader. Use some common sense folks, please. Pyrope 19:24, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't think that I had. Examples, please --Redrose64 (talk) 19:31, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Examples? --Una Smith (talk) 19:33, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Plenty of the recent changes to the pylon links. Many mechanical and aero/automotive uses of the term have been linked to aircraft pylon. Examples of radio towers, lattice towers and support structures have been linked to electricity pylon. Please check Wafry's contributions. I realise that these were done in good faith, but the majority of them are unhelpful, at best, and some are downright incorrect. The point I was making was a general one, though. The supporting documentation for this project sets more store on the removal of disambiguation page links than it does on getting the actual links correct. Quality not quantity of work folks. Pyrope 20:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Pyrope, thanks for bringing this to our attention. As you noted, Wafry's contributions were in good faith so let's just focus on the fix. Could you help us? I can't say I know enough about pylons to fix the links myself; could you give us some guidance? For example, how do the electricity pylon links need to be corrected? --JaGa^talk 20:48, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Redlinks are not in themselves problematic. In fact, they are very constructive; a nonexistent article with many incoming links will be a high priority for creation. --Una Smith (talk) 21:05, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I kind of fall between two stools here. I agree that many identical redlinks suggests the need for an article; however, when dealing with the previous section, I dabbed from "Honour of [[Wallingford]]" to "[[Honour (land)|Honour]] of [[Wallingford, Oxfordshire|Wallingford]]" and not to "[[Honour of Wallingford]]" (ie from "Honour of Wallingford" to "Honour of Wallingford" and not to "Honour of Wallingford"), mainly to avoid redlinks. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

This kind of situation comes up a lot with species, and the usual solution is to make a link to the species name, and make the species name a redirect to the genus. Similarly, the solution to Honour of Wallingford would be to make this redlink a redirect to Honour (land). --Una Smith (talk) 00:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The redirect was short lived (version); now it is an article with a bunch of incoming links. --Una Smith (talk) 04:16, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I checked the first five of Wafry's changes (Mendes to 1980 in music and they checked out okay, so those don't need to be redone. I may check more later, but I'm not familiar with the subjects to really do it justice. And I don't appreciate the blanket condemnation that participants of the project lack common sense for the mistakes of one editor who is new to the project. Blanket condemnations don't show any regard for the differences in what various editors do. Blanket condemnations just breed animosity. --JamesAM (talk) 22:45, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I found myself in this same conundrum while working on instructor. I usually defaulted to teacher, since at their roots, "teacher" and "instructor" are synonyms. At first, I was pointing college/university "instructor" links to professor, but then I realized that a lot more goes with being a professor than just teaching (research, faculty management, etc.). Pyrope makes a good point - the members of this project are fighting the good fight, but we do need to slow down, think, and when in doubt, discuss on this talk page, the article-in-question's talk page, or both. I also agree with Redrose - if these fixes result in a lot of redlinks to a certain subject, that seems to make for good requested article fodder. --SquidSK ^(1MC•log) 02:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

51 (number)

51 (number) is not a dab page, but probably should be. Any takers? --Una Smith (talk) 21:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

You could say the same about 50 (number) through 59 (number) inclusive. Why is 51 different? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

That one came to my attention. --Una Smith (talk) 21:29, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Note that there exists 50 (disambiguation) as well as 50 (number). It would be easier for the casual reader, I think, if the structure were consistent across various numbers of similar magnitude. There might well be an upper limit here too; 1237 might not need the same level of attention. --AndrewHowse (talk) 21:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Convert all number articles to dabs? I'd say 51 (number) deserves its own article; we could create 51 (disambiguation) I suppose, but personally I'm fine with these articles as is. --JaGa^talk 21:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

If you don't like 50 (number), you're going to hate Category:Integers. There are lots of these pages, all organized approximately the same, acting as psuedo-article, psuedo-disambiguation, pseudo-"in popular culture" magnets. It would be a bad idea to change one of them, and changing all of them is a bit too big of a project for WP:BOLD to apply. Better to get consensus somewhere about whether these pages should have a different format or not. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:45, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Do any of these number pages exemplify the target we might want to aim for? 50 (disambiguation) and 50 (number) are not good examples: 50 (number) is full of dab-type clutter and 50 (disambiguation) reveals that 50 is occupied by a year. Gaak. --Una Smith (talk) 22:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Content about the number as a number should be on a n (number) page. Content listing pages that might be known as number should go on a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 23:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Note that these articles are the domain of WikiProject Numbers, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers would therefore be a good place to discuss them. --Zundark (talk) 22:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The base pages (50, 51, etc.) are about years, so WikiProject Years is involved also. What do you all think about moving the year articles to, eg, 51 AD (a redirect to 51) and making 51 a dab page? Wouldn't that be most likely to collect new dab content where it belongs? --Una Smith (talk) 23:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't realise that you were considering changing the year articles. Using raw numbers for years AD is one of the oldest naming conventions on Wikipedia, and there are probably a number of templates that rely on it. See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates). --Zundark (talk) 09:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the existing system is good and shouldn't be changed. Disambiguation pages are largely a means to an end. There not really for content, but for direct people to the right content article they want to go to. In contrast, the "x (number)" articles are an end in themselves. They exist to satisfy the content-seeking needs of people who want to read about the mathematical, numerological, and cultural significance of a particular number. So turning them into disambiguation pages would frustrate the purposes of the "(number)" pages. --JamesAM (talk) 03:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

From an organizational POV, I agree. I'm fine with 51 (number) et al (assume et al throughout) being about the number, 51 (disambiguation) being a disambiguation page (if needed), and 51 being the year 51 AD (per Zundark above), as long as the hatnotes in each article clearly direct people to the other two pages. This also neatly sidesteps the AD/CE tarpit. The real problem I see is that 51 (number) has become a magnets for all sorts of "in popular culture" junk, for example the sports figures who have the Jersey No. 51, which episode of the Simpsons was Episode 51, etc, etc ad nauseum. It is acting as a secondary fancruft disambiguation page. I don't think we need a reorganization, so much as a cleaning out. Prune 51 (number) back to being about the number 51, move any legit dab-related stuff to 51 (disambiguation), and throw out the rest. But it would be an uphill battle to counter the people who think that "there are 51 steps on the back staircase of the Louvre" is a reasonable thing to put in an encyclopedia article. Few people have the will to fight 30 such battles for each page, so you end up with what we have now. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:24, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Floquenbeam has it right, I think. --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Quota

Hi all, I need you kind help. I was beginning to disambiguate quota... first article is Institut Le Rosey. Quota is used as the wiktionary meaning not as the wikipedian meaning. Should I remove link or what? TY --Luckyz (talk) 14:42, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• You have two options, delink or link to Wiktionaty, [[wikt:quota|]] will do it. If I feel that it is resonable to assume that a reader will be unfamiliar with the word I'll go to Wiktionary, if it seems obvious I 'll just delink. Judgement call for each case. J04n(talk page) 15:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
• Ditto what J04n said. Use your best judgement.--ShelfSkewed Talk 15:08, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I prefer, in this case, to delink. --Luckyz (talk) 15:43, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

"Rare" exceptions?

This page says:

Ideally, article namespace pages should not link to disambiguation pages, with rare exceptions in which the ambiguity of a term is being discussed

There are many thousands of cases of articles that say

This is about innies in omphalology. For other senses of the word, see innies (disambiguation).

That is not rare at all.

Another obvious exception is when the name of a disambiguation page is a singular noun, and the plural redirects to the disambiguation page. Or when a commonplace misspelling redirects to the disambiguation page. I don't even see those mentioned among the mentioned exceptions, but I know those exist. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The statement you quote is, I'm sure, intended to refer to links within the article content itself, so, yes, perhaps it should be amended to, "apart from disambiguating hatnotes, article namespace pages should not link to disambiguation pages...."

The other "exceptions" you mention don't seem to me to be exceptions at all; they are ambiguous links that should be disambiguated and/or corrected to link to the intended article.--ShelfSkewed Talk 04:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, JamesAM's comments below made me see that I misunderstood the earlier comment: Redirects exist in article space, of course, and, as JamesAM points out, they don't need to be fixed. But again, redirects to not constitute article content, which is what the original statement is referring to.--ShelfSkewed Talk 05:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand your comment that "they are ambiguous links that should be disambiguated and/or corrected to link to the intended article". An example is residuals redirecting to residual, which is a disambiguation page. That's an obvious case where something should link to a disambiguation page. Are you saying it should be changed to link to some "intended article" other than the residual disambiguation page? Michael Hardy (talk) 14:07, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Rare is a relative term. For the pages that make the list here, hatnotes tend to be a very small fraction of the links. The only exception of the hundreds of disambiguation I've been dealing with on this WikiProject is Nowa Wies (and perhaps one other I can't recall). But I'm not sure what this has to do with the purpose of a Talk page, which is discussing improvements to the page. Is "rare" confusing to people? I don't think anything on the page gives editors the misguided impression that they should "fix" hatnotes and redirects that ought to go the disambiguation page. If there are instances of people making those mistakes that can be cited here, then we should clarify the language. But if it's just an academic quibble about how uncommon it should be to merit the word "rare", then the language should be left as is. --JamesAM (talk) 05:16, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Concerning hatnotes like the model (This is about innies in omphalology. For other senses of the word, see innies (disambiguation).), it should be mentioned that in many cases innies (disambiguation) is not a dab page but a redirect to a dab page. The redirect is used to "isolate" legitimate links, so that all links to the dab page (which occupies the ambiguous base name) are links to be corrected. --Una Smith (talk) 16:35, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

{{dn}} to link to [[example (dn)|]], which redirects to [[example]]?

I've been working on Skating and discovered that a large number of the links require expert knowledge from the article author to disambiguate. I've placed {{dn}} templates in the past, but it's always hard to tell by looking at a list which articles have been {{dn}} tagged and which are potentially fixable by someone without expert knowledge. I'm suggesting, without having thought this all the way through, that tagged links get changed to [[example (dn)|]]{{dn}}, which redirects to [[example]].

In advance, I'd like to say I don't like the form of {{dn|linkname}}, because links in templates make it really hard to find them, and templates are too "advanced" for casual editors to understand (and thus fix the broken dab link).

What say you? Josh Parris 06:51, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Set index articles

Do incoming links to set index articles merit link repair similar to incoming links to dab pages at base names? This question concerns Poppy, a magnet for links and content that should go elsewhere. Poppy gets a lot of page views, and this is an incentive to keep something other than a dab page at that page name. See discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants#Poppy. --Una Smith (talk) 16:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

As a general matter, I think we should aspire to have every link on Wikipedia take readers to the article most relevant to the context in which the link appears, so that would be a "yes" in principle. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

In principle, yes. So, should we treat SIAs as a kind of dab? And include them on dab lists? At the other extreme, should we disambiguate incoming links to articles occupying ambiguous base names: articles such as London and Paris? --Una Smith (talk) 22:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, let's not get carried away. :-) Saying that all those links should be fixed is not the same as saying they should be part of this project; it's a question of priorities and resources. We don't have enough people to fix all the links to pure disambiguation pages, so I don't see any benefit to trying to expand the scope of the project even more. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't like set index articles as currently formulated; too many are essentially dab pages with stray content that could be worked into articles. The stray content attracts incoming links that interfere with the dab function. To me, a good set index article should contain an actual index; incoming links would be dab-able. I am considering applying the idea to Poppy; please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants#Poppy. --Una Smith (talk) 18:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

The subpage Poppy/draft is an index; would anyone like to try fixing the incoming links to Poppy, using the index like a dab page? Just like many dab pages, the index is far from complete. This is in the nature of a small experiment; can you use the index to help you disambiguate links, and is the logic of the index clear enough that you can expand it as needed? --Una Smith (talk) 15:24, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Poppy started out with 444 incoming links; now there are about 70. Has Poppy/draft been useful? --Una Smith (talk) 00:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Correction: a couple hundred incoming links remain. It seems Wikipedia's internal indexing was broken again today, for a time. --Una Smith (talk) 03:20, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Fixing template boxes

Is there something extra that has to be done to make dab fixes for template boxes register? Several pages have high link counts due to template boxes at the bottom of pages. There are some that I've fixed yet still show up in the link counts. For instance, the template boses about Seas has been fixed so that Seas has now been changed to Sea, but the change doesn't show up. And the Template: Daniel Handler which had a link to Stars, now correctly links to Stars (Canadian band), yet those haven't dropped from the count. So what am I missing? --JamesAM (talk) 21:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Periodically there is a lag in updating the database internal indexing. Rarely, the updating stops altogether. Are those links still showing up now? --Una Smith (talk) 21:39, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec) All you need do is wait; but it can take a while. The main factor is the number of articles transcluding the templates which have been amended; but also whether the template is itself transcluded by another template. You don't actually say which template has the Seas/Sea change, so I can't check on transclusions; but {{Daniel Handler}} doesn't have many. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:44, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay. I figured it might be a wait, but then at least one of them went through (Mark Hudson in the Aerosmith template) - so I thought another editor did something that I missed. The template for seas is Template:List of seas. --JamesAM (talk) 22:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

You can always do a null edit as a sanity check. Go to a page that transcludes your template; click "edit this page"; make no changes and add no edit summary; save. The null edit won't show up in the article's history (or your edit history), but the article will be completely re-rendered. --JaGa^talk 22:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

If the wait is more than a few hours, a Wikimedia bug report may in order. --Una Smith (talk) 22:19, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree: {{List of seas}} has under 150 transclusions (none of which are templates), which is not a terribly large number compared to (say) {{cite book}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

This has been an ongoing problem. Sometimes the template updates show up in seconds and at other times it takes days and a second edit to the template. The job queue is very problematic. Yes, if the problem is still there, we probably need another problem report. WP:CFD closers see this all of the time when we have to update a template to change categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:36, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems a bug report is in order. I am having similar problems with links to Poppy transcluded via Template:Herbs & spices. --Una Smith (talk) 00:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem is persisting. We had a similar problem back in January, discussed here. --Una Smith (talk) 21:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem with links to Poppy finally went away. --Una Smith (talk) 05:13, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Last one on Lancet

Only one last one on the list which is Ashcombe.

I don't know whether they are talking about Lancet arch or Lancet windows. Can anyone help?

Thanks! Tsange ^►talk 15:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

That requires knowledge of the building, or research outside of Wikipedia. So tag the link in Ashcombe with {{dn}} and perhaps explain the tag on Talk:Ashcombe. Then your job is done. --Una Smith (talk) 16:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much! Tsange ^►talk 19:14, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

New Page Patrol - Disambiguation bot

I'm forming a proposal for a bot. The intention of this bot is to immediately bring to the page author's attention that the article is linking somewhere other than they thought it would be linking.

The bot would inspect all new main-space articles except for redirects and dab-pages. Redirects are valid to point at dab pages, as are other dab pages. Any new page that has any links to disambiguation pages will have {{dn}} added after each link.

Is this a bad idea? Why? Josh Parris 06:49, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

• Sounds useful to me. Boleyn2 (talk) 08:58, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

• Sounds good to me. But remember to allow links to disambiguation pages that are titled "Whatever (disambiguation)", whether or not they are redirects. If feasible, you could also {{dn}} links to redirects that target disambiguation pages if the redirect isn't titled "Whatever (disambiguation)". Cheers! --- JHunterJ (talk) 13:51, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

(smacks head) of course! I'm glad I've come here to check for glaring errors. Thanks! Josh Parris 00:19, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

• Sounds good to me. I've always thought we need to tackle disambig links at the source, but never quite knew how. This would get new article creators to clean up a problem they're usually unaware of. --JaGa^talk 17:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

• Neat idea, assuming the servers can support it easily, which seems likely as new articles are only a small proportion of all edits. Would it be practicable to extend this to edits which insert a new dab page link into an existing article? Does anyone have a rough idea how many links to dab pages arise from new articles compared to the number that arise from edits to existing articles? Could there be a simple but effective way to prevent intentional dablinks from being flagged, preferably before the bot gets there if the author is reasonably well informed? Overriding would be essential if the proposal were extended to amendments. — Richardguk (talk) 19:21, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I suppose that I could demand that if you want to link to a dab page from a non-dab page, it has to be to Pagename (disambiguation)... Josh Parris 00:18, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

• I think it is a great idea ... except that links to dabs more often occur in older, longer articles. New ones tend to be under-linked. The links accumulate over time. How about the bot goes around tagging links added in recent edits? --Una Smith (talk) 21:31, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

As Richardguk notes, new pages are less of a burden that all recent changes. Yes, links to dabs are introduced mostly through subsequent editing, but I want to start small. I'm sure that there will be teething problems, and once these are ironed out I'll look at progressing to wider coverage. Josh Parris 11:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Starting small is wise. One aspect of targeting new pages I like: it would give new page patrol editors something more constructive to do than plaster new pages with problem tags. But I see some downsides. This bot may contribute to the plastering, which already is rather too aversive. Also, we may send inexperienced editors to look at disambiguation pages that need cleanup or expansion. The result may not be an improvement. So how about starting small from the other end? How about we make a tag that we can add ourselves to a disambiguation page, that triggers the bot to tag {{dn}} on the incoming links to the page? That would allow for some supervision of the resulting link repairs. --Una Smith (talk) 15:53, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

My interpretation of what you are suggesting is that you're suggesting a "clean, quality dab page" tag which labels the dab page as currently having no inbound links, which is not in need of clean-up because it's fully compliant with WP:MOSDAB - and as such, not on the radar of Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links or WikiProject Disambiguation. I also understand that you're suggesting any new links to such pages ought to be tagged {{dn}} (excluding incoming redirects and direct links to dab pages with (disambiguation) in the title). I don't quite understand what you mean by supervision of the resulting link repairs; do you mean that once we've fixed something, it will stay fixed (human foibles excluded)?

One of the reasons I wanted to start with new pages is they are at is a single point in time where the history is fully known - none the ambiguous links have ever been tagged {{dn}}, and thus the tags have never been removed. I haven't figured out how to prevent a Recent Changes bot edit-warring over dn tags where the link to the dab page is intentional. I suppose that I could demand that if you want to link to a dab page from a non-dab page, it has to be to Pagename (disambiguation), but that doesn't seem very neighbourly. Also, with my current design checking a page is relatively expensive - the whole page has to be loaded, and each link has to be checked to see if it's a redirect to a dab page (dab pages are easily enumerated - I have the full list of 168476); while I'm kicking around ideas to tune things, I don't want to go in with a proposal that I don't yet know how to make run fast enough. Mind you, having said that, the list of "clean, quality" dab pages ought to start small and grow slowly, so building up a local cache of those redirects ought to be efficient enough. I've still got that problem with edit waring; any suggestions on how to prevent edit waring would be most welcome.

On balance, I like your suggestion. It would certainly change the nature of the disambiguation project from an on-going black war to one where editors are made aware of when they've make a sub-optimal link. One of my hopes with a NPP dab robot was that new editors would be introduced to disambiguation pages early in their career and reduce the likelihood of them creating ambiguous links in the future. Despite your implication, I don't think that the dab pages we have are in all that bad a shape. Once a page is marked as a "clean orphan dab", someone would have to take responsibility to making sure they stay that way (Wikiproject Disambiguation perhaps?) Josh Parris 23:34, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I had something a little different in mind... Take for example the result of a WP:RM proposal to move Foo (disambiguation) to Foo. After the page move we fix all the incoming links to Foo, and usually as a result the dab page is expanded or otherwise improved. What I would like is a tag I can add to the dab page or its talk page, once I have finished fixing incoming links, that triggers the bot. It would then catch new incoming links to that page, as they are created. Perhaps the bot could run every day or every hour. It could attach a {{dn}} to each new incoming link, and perhaps also put a note on the talk page of the editor who created the link. For example, about a year ago I fixed all incoming links to the dab page Enfield; now there are almost 100 new links. Keep in mind this would be a trial period for the bot. I am proposing that it be set up so that it can be somewhat controlled and watched over by editors with experience fixing incoming links to dab pages. I would also want to observe the behavior of editors on the receiving end of the bot's work. Will most editors figure out what {{dn}} means and make an appropriate fix? How many will just unlink the text, or remove the tag? Do they welcome its help, or do they complain? --Una Smith (talk) 23:47, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Clicking on the tag takes you to a page about how to disambiguate that's a mixed up mess of instructions. Someone might clean that up and make it so an editor could follow it for a start. There's an editor who usually disambiguates my new articles, before I get around to them, or if I do them incorrectly. She (I think) might be a good person to ask. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 04:47, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

• I like the idea, too. In most cases, a page author should have a pretty good idea of what a link is intended on a page they created. So it's a better allocation of editor-hours to try to get some editors to cure dab links at the time of creation. They'll often be able to do it quicker that disambiguation project folks (who oftentimes have to spend time researching stuff because the links we're fixing may be outside our own fields of knowledge/expertise. I don't know anything about bots. Would it work on templates be under the bot's purview? --JamesAM (talk) 14:26, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

  Yes, the editor knows where the link should properly connect, but dabs on wikipedia can chase editors away. Some are long lists of poorly sorted unrelated items, like various spellings, odd usages that are part of the word, very unhelpful junk, with one or two main uses hidden deeply. I used to look through the dabs to find what I needed, but their usefulness keeps going downhill-if I hit a long dab, I just google instead. Article editors may do this also, avoid the long dabs which are the ones that most need disambiguated correctly in an article for the use of the reader. But, if they're not, then you've tagged an article, not helping the reader, and not helping the editor. The tag needs to connect to a category where users who can stand reading wikipedia dab pages can help out. Otherwise it's just clutter, imo. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:25, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion is underway at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot Josh Parris 08:36, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion there has led to a rewrite of Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing links, and additional discussion on that page's talk page. --Una Smith (talk) 23:55, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

After an extensive discussion, the proposal now reads:

The bot will place a message on the talk page of any new namespace 0, 6, 10 or 14 article with ambiguous links.

(the namespaces are: 0 (mainspace), 6 (file), 10 (template) and 14 (category)). Current proposed message template:

If you have any opinion to voice, the discussion is nearing completion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot Josh Parris 08:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

It appears that this proposal is going to fail. If you have any opinion to voice, the discussion is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot Josh Parris 22:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Novice friendly instructions

Whenever we don't know what to disambiguate a link to, we're meant to use the {{dn}} template; then any subject-matter expert who wanders past will see that link isn't quite right. But it's been pointed out that Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing links needs a rewrite to be more novice friendly; I've had stab, but it could do with more eyes. Nearly a hundred people a day read this page. Please help! Josh Parris 05:41, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

It has had a total makeover. --Una Smith (talk) 23:57, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Some eyeballs on the new page explaining how to disambiguate all the links on a page (as opposed to all the links leading to a page) Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing a page would be appreciated. Josh Parris 08:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Giron

Giron was near the top of the December list of dabs with the most incoming links, but now it is a stub. I think Giron should be made a dab again. It appears the dab content was moved to Girón, but Giron remains ambiguous. The majority of incoming links to Giron are via the redirect Giron, France. Unfortunately, Giron, France is ambiguous. There are places named Giron in both Ain and Canton of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine. And Giron itself remains ambiguous: the distinction between Girón and Giron often is not made in English, and there is a volcano in the Philippines named Giron (at least on the Wikipedia list that refers to it). --Una Smith (talk) 19:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the Giron in Ain & the one in the Canton of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine appear to be the same one as the canton is located in Ain as per the infobox.Ulric1313 (talk) 05:43, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I think Ulric1313 is correct: just one Giron in France. --Una Smith (talk) 15:38, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

There are also several items at the dab page Girón, and I can imagine many gringos typing in "Giron" when looking for that. I'd be inclined to move Giron to Giron, France (assuming there is just one), make Giron a dab page, with a "See also" at the bottom for the Girón dab page. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I have asked about Giron, France on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France. --Una Smith (talk) 17:40, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Solve_disambiguation.py

Is anyone here using solve_disambiguation.py? I cannot find instructions about what I need to do to get permission (do I need permission?) to use this bot, as distinct from permission for the bot to be used. There is a difference, isn't there? --Una Smith (talk) 22:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is: In it's default configuration it operates at a throttled rate; it also gives an explicit warning that you're not operating with a bot flag. But, because it's a manually assisted bot rather than an automatic one, you don't require authorization to use the tool. This is explicitly stated at Wikipedia:Bot policy#Assisted editing guidelines. Josh Parris 00:16, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Una Smith (talk) 00:56, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation bot to message pages tagged with {{dn}}

I've got a bot that places a note on the talk page of an article with links to disambiguation pages, like so:

As links are fixed it removes them from the box, and once they're all fixed it removes the box from the talk page.

Should a bot place a note on the talk page of all pages with {{dn}} on them? Josh Parris 04:29, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Mashups

Fixing links to Cocoa, I found in Viva Piñata (TV series) this: Cecil Cocoadile: A dull-sounding [[Cocoa]][[crocodile|dile]]. What to do with it, and its friends? Unlink? --Una Smith (talk) 03:04, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Cocoadile? Unlink the lot. No article, no Google define:, many ghits... unlink. Not a term, or at best a neolism. Plus, the links are "surprise links" which is never good. Josh Parris 04:41, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Link and Link (disambiguation)

Where is the description of our practice of making intentional links to a dab redirect, ie to Link (disambiguation) rather than Link? --Una Smith (talk) 14:54, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Found it: WP:INTDABLINK. --Una Smith (talk) 14:59, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Primary topic

For a long time now I have been mulling over some ideas about disambiguation pages, set index articles, disambiguation, and the idea of a "primary topic". Now I have made a start on expressing those ideas: Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Primary topic not necessarily an article. --Una Smith (talk) 17:53, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Revolver (disambiguation) Links

Any idea what's going on here with this? It says there are 504 links in the Daily Disambig and 512 when you check realtime, but when you look for said links, none are really showing up to work on. Ulric1313 (talk) 18:15, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

It looks like the article Revolver (album) was briefly moved to Revolver (The Beatles album) and then moved back again. Although I don't see that the (album) page was ever redirected to Revolver (disambiguation), the number of incoming article-space links for Revolver (album) is...512. I'm still not sure why they would show up as links to the dab page, but it's got to be more than a coincidence.--ShelfSkewed Talk 19:35, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Follow up: Found your missing links, there in the page log: The (album) article had to be deleted to reverse the move, so there was an intervening edit, presumably redirecting it to the dab page. So all those links to (album) will show up as links to the dab page until the main server catches up.--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

The link counts that are the basis for the Daily Disambig are generated on the Toolserver at 08:30 UTC every day. In this case, the move and re-move of Revolver (album) took place many hours before that, but it's possible that the Toolserver was suffering from replication lag at the time. It should be back to normal tomorrow. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 22:26, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

DAB Challenge leaderboard broken

DAB Challenge leaderboard has not updated in days.  Randall Bart   Talk  20:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Have you contacted Jason about this? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I've let him know, since it isn't just the leaderboard that is having issues. The list of articles isn't updating either. Apparently the scripts might be broken. Ulric1313 (talk) 06:04, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Toolserver, where these things live, is suffering the effects of an upgrade. Josh Parris 08:19, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I've put in a JIRA request to have someone at the Toolserver (River) look at the problem - the SQL procedures everything is based upon are missing. I've hope it'll be recovered. --JaGa^talk 01:17, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, the Toolserver people have all but ignored my pleas for help. A couple of tables crucial to the contest have been inexplicably deleted, and without them I'd say the January contest has been ruined. I'm terribly sorry about all this, but it looks like we'll just have to wait until a new set of monthly articles are generated for the February contest. --JaGa^talk 09:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Sublimation: 86 links

I got the list down to five. Can anybody help finish it off? I'm not sure "sublimation" is being used correctly in some of the remaining articles, but not familiar enough with the topics to make a correction and didn't want to just update the link.
This is my first attempt at fixing one of these.
CraXyXarC (talk) 06:20, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

WildBot now running

WildBot has made well over 3000 edits since being started on the 18th. This graph shows every day, many editors new to the disambiguation process are learning how to repair dab links. Thanks to the support from this group, this group's workload should be slightly reduced, and as WildBot's scope increases, the effect will climb. Josh Parris 20:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

You deserve a lot of thanks for creating the bot. I think we'll make a lot of headway as the ambiguous links from new pages are reduced. Plus, hopefully it will encourage more editors to be cognizant of creating link are unambiguous. --JamesAM (talk) 23:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation as linked from {{disambig}}

There's a discussion at Help talk:Disambiguation as to the contents of the link from the bottom of every dab page. The participants invite broader discussion. Josh Parris 20:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Replication Lag Issues

Anyone have an idea on why the replication lag is running up to 12 hours right now?

The lag is throwing things out of whack.

Ulric1313 (talk) 06:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

DAB Challenge leaderboard

What happened? All of a sudden a lot of the fixes aren't being listed. Did the Toolserver lose them or what? Ulric1313 (talk) 06:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

It looks like it's traveling backward in time - getting rid of recent fixes and keeping the earliest ones. --JamesAM (talk) 15:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I checked the database, and the data is still there (unlike last month's fiasco). For some reason the join isn't picking everything up any more. I'll investigate. --JaGa^talk 20:51, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've got it updating every two hours for now. A query that used to be super-fast is now super-slow after the Toolserver changes. I've retooled it as a quick fix, and will try to figure out how to rewrite it to get back to the hourly updates we had before. Good news is, nothing has been lost. (Or at least, I don't think so. Could anyone let me know if they think data is missing?) --JaGa^talk 09:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but the numbers don't seem to have gone up for a while (today anyway) even though the links to number fixed next to people's names have the most recent ones fixed. --BelovedFreak 19:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Right you are, on both counts. Thanks much for bringing this to my attention. The tallies are indeed updating (so the links next to people's names are accurate) but the script that updates the leaderboard in Wikipedia is failing its logon! When it rains it pours. I've updated the leaderboard manually, and asked around whether anyone else is having this problem. --JaGa^talk 22:29, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Is the login failure caused by the newly-enforced requirement for a user-agent header? It's caused some bots to fail and has been discussed at WP:VPT and on wikitech-l. — Richardguk (talk) 23:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Bless you, Richardguk. That was the problem. I've got login working again, and have retooled the query to be efficient enough to go back to hourly updates. I've also added a line stating replag and the time of the last update, so that should be helpful. Let's hope they leave Toolserver alone for a while! --JaGa^talk 10:18, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Links to redirects to disambig pages

I've been working thru 160-odd pages that link(ed) to Bass (musical term) which is a redirect to the disambig page Bass. Are these included in the competition? Tayste (edits) 19:07, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Links via redirect are included in the competition, but only for articles in the monthly list, which doesn't include Bass this month (unless I'm overlooking it). The redirect to Bass was probably done in February, thus missing my lists, which are based on the state of disambigs on the last day of the previous month. --JaGa^talk 20:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Arena Football League

Before anyone tries to fix links to Arena Football League, please see this discussion proposing to merge the two linked articles into a single one that would take the dab page's title (and comment if you wish). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

February results

Sorry about this month's results - I'll be fixing it about 12 hours from now, when I'm back from work. Or someone else could do it, just get the last update from User:JaGa/Short leaderboard - but I've got to catch a train! --JaGa^talk 07:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I figured out a way around the firewall to get at the data and fix it, so everything should be OK now. --JaGa^talk 09:37, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Musical dabs

It's likely that the musical dabs (or at least most of them) on this month's list will be reverted back to the primary topic. There's a discussion at the Musicals WikiProject about it. If this happens, any fixes to these dabs will not be recorded by the contest. So you may want to wait before fixing, for instance, Brigadoon. --JaGa^talk 07:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Golfer

Golfer seems like a silly disambig, but I'm not sure whether to change it or assume there will be an Amateur golfer article some day. Should it just redirect to golf? Thoughts? --JaGa^talk 12:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I fixed it up. I think it makes sense to distinguish between professional & recreational golfers—Tiger Woods is a [[professional golfer|golfer]]; Bill Murray is a [[golf]]er—but perhaps the dab page should be moved to Golfer (disambiguation) and Golfer redirected to Golf or Professional golfer, depending on what the incoming links show. As for Amateur golfer, I was thinking that, pending the creation of a separate article, it should be redirected to Professional golfer, which discusses the distinction between the two. What do you think?--ShelfSkewed Talk 20:41, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Because professional golfer seems to be about the distintction between professionals and amateurs (as noted above), I think the best approach would be to retool it slightly (like retitled it something like "Amateurism and professionalism in golf" and re-direct golfer, professional golfer, and amateur golfer to it. Or in the alternative, I think it would be fine to redirect golfer to "golf." I think if amateurism or professionalism is so important, someone would specifically seek that in their search term. DABs are supposed to be facilitators, not extra barriers before people reach content pages. --JamesAM (talk) 15:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Disambiguation pages that link to disambiguation pages

If anyone is interested in trying to power through some of these, we have about 25,000 disambiguation links on disambiguation pages, most of which are intentional links that need to be redirected through their "foo (disambiguation)" counterparts so they no longer show up as requiring repair. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:56, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

DAB Challenge updates

Hi all, there's been a non-backwards-compatible change to how Media Wiki API logins work, which means my script is not able to update the leaderboard, even though the data is being updated properly on the Toolserver (for instance, look at Woohookitty's status; the leaderboard has him at 2000, but you can see from the status page it's really much more!)

A user has posted a fix in the Toolserver mailing list, so I hope to fix this tonight when I get home. Then we can see where this intriguing R'n'B / Woohookitty battle stands. Could this be Woohookitty's first non-first place finish in 2010? (I doubt it! :D) --JaGa^talk 11:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The standings here seem to be up to date. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:46, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

True that. But I've got it fixed now, anyways. --JaGa^talk 21:27, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Intentional link to a disambiguation page

In Equilibrium chemistry the link to free energy is intentional as the term relates to both of two kinds of free energy, Helmholtz free energy and Gibbs free energy . The alternative, separate links to each topic would be cumbersome. I have removed the disambiguation tag and wait to see if it reappears. Petergans (talk) 16:44, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Rather than linking to the dab page, why not pipe-link to the umbrella article Thermodynamic free energy, which discusses, and links to, both Helmholtz and Gibbs free energy?--ShelfSkewed Talk 17:03, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with that. --JaGa^talk 20:51, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this suggestion. I did not realise that the Thermodynamic free energy page existed! Petergans (talk) 11:50, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

In Equilibrium chemistry the link to stability constant is also intentional. In this case the "umbrella article" equilibrium constant (which I created) does not link in an obvious way to the acid dissociation constant and stability constants of complexes. The three articles each serve different purposes. Your suggestions will be welcome. Petergans (talk) 12:06, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with linking to the disambiguation page if that's the best solution. Just do it by pipe-linking through the redirect stability constant (disambiguation) so that other editors will know that you are doing it intentionally rather than accidentally.--ShelfSkewed Talk 14:04, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Cardboard

This should not be a disambig page. It merely directs readers to one of three ways in which paper can be thick and stiff. This should be a short article covering the common points of those uses of paper. bd2412 T 14:49, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Free kick

Free kick cannot be disambiguated as it stands. If the article is about Aussie Rules or Rugby Union or American, that can be fixed, but when it's soccer (and now they nearly all are) there's no single page, I am called upon to direct it to either Direct free kick or Indirect free kick, but there's not enough context to determine which.  Randall Bart   Talk  14:21, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Polish towns and roads

We now have articles on thousands of places in Poland, some quite small. I don't advocate a minimum size of notability for an article, but with Poland this produces a problem. When you name a village in Poland you give it a name unique within the county, but it's not necessarily unique within the voivodeship, much less Poland as a whole. There are therefore some quite large dab pages, such as the two I recently looked at: Dąbrówka, and Stanisławów.

Fixing these is not really difficult, but tedious. For Stanisławów the key was reading enough of all of the articles to determine that WWII and earlier references are all to the city in Ukraine. There were just a couple modern references, where I had to find which county or which voivodeship was otherwise referenced in the article.

When I got to Dąbrówka, there was only one article which needed fixing. It took me two hours. B^) Actually there were about 20 different things I changed in that article. Some took just a few seconds, but some were tricky. Familiarizing myself with the voivodeships of Southern Poland was part of it. (Silesia is not adjacent to Lower Silesia.) In checking the article, I found three links that were wrong, two of which I red linked.

I should go back and fix the road article about Stanisławów, and that's my point. When I was unemployed, I did barnstar numbers of dabs. Now I come by from time to time to help out the old project. I still prefer to find easy ones, and do big numbers, but there are other dabs to be fixed. In many cases, we find articles which have many dab links such as these Polish roads. There's no reason to wait for each town to individually makes its way into DPL (some of them it will be decades). It's more efficient to go through the article and fix all these dabs. It's a road, after all. Each town is going to be between the towns on either side.

Maybe there should be a queue of articles with lots of dabs.  Randall Bart   Talk  15:16, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

script to generate list of disambiguation pages

I would like to establish a parallel project on another Wikipedia. Can someone direct me to a script for generating disambiguation pages? --Redaktor (talk) 18:51, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

It lives on the Toolserver. Do you have an account? Which wiki are we talking about? --JaGa^talk 08:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I do not have an account on the Toolserver (I think). I would like to set up a list of dab pages with links on Yiddish Wikipedia. --Redaktor (talk) 12:31, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

It looks like someone with an account on Toolserver has now taken this in hand. --Redaktor (talk) 23:25, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Alma Mater Society

There are some links I can't seem to resolve. I suspect it's part of a template or something, but I fixed the ones there. Help? –[[::User:Schmloof|Schmloof]] (talk · contribs) 01:05, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, they've all fixed themselves, or someone's fixed them. There's still one left, though. Can anyone shed any light on how to resolve this? –[[::User:Schmloof|Schmloof]] (talk · contribs) 10:33, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

The trick in these cases is to "edit" the article that contains the phantom link, then save it without actually editing anything. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:43, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Got it, thanks! –[[::User:Schmloof|Schmloof]] (talk · contribs) 10:53, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Script change - intentional disambig links

As part of the movement to differentiate between intentional and unintentional dab links, I've made a change to the Toolserver scripts. From June 21 forward, the scripts will consider a link to a (disambiguation) or (number) page or redirect as intentional, and not count it when compiling the daily lists.

As an example, consider Collision (disambiguation). If you look at its what links here, you see there are several intentional links, such as Collision and Impact, and a whole bunch of links from the Collision (telecommunications) redirect. In the past, all of these links would have been counted. Now, the direct links (Collision, Impact, etc.) are not counted, but the indirect links via Collision (telecommunications) are still counted, resulting in a total count of 47 links.

What does this mean for this project? A couple of things. One, slightly better monthly lists in the contest (goodbye, unfixable Nowa Wieś and John Smith). Two, you have another way to fix an article. If you find a link that is intentional (usually a hatnote), if you change that link to point to a (disambiguation)-titled page - even if the page is a redirect - that will be considered a "fix". --JaGa^talk 22:59, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and per Russ' request, I'm generating a new daily report called named disambig pages with links, that tracks all the links that are now excluded from our counts. --JaGa^talk 08:15, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

First off, great to hear. Secondly, I ran across another example, but want to make sure I understand correctly before I do anything to 'fix' the links so they don\t get counted. The pafe in question is Nowy Dwór which currently does not have a (disabiguation) page created for it. If I were to create said page, redirect it to Nowy Dwór, then update all the hatnotes, Nowy Dwór would no longer be part of the page counts, is that correct? Ulric1313 (talk) 19:03, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. I did the same thing for Nowa Wieś. --JaGa^talk 21:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for New York villages within towns

We have dozens of disambig pages which essentially follow this pattern:

Schoharie, New York may refer to:

• Schoharie (town), New York, located in Schoharie County
• Schoharie (village), New York, located within the Town of Schoharie

Many links to such articles are merely references to someone having been born there or died there. It is rarely of any import that the subject was born in the village within the town, and not merely in the town. I propose that where an article references an event within an ambiguous place name of this type, this link should be fixed to point to the encompassing larger place. So long as we are referring to the Village of Foo which is within the Town of Foo, then it is correct to say that someone "from Foo" is from the "Town of Foo", irrespective of whether they are from the village within the town. I don't know how many ambiguous links this will clear up, but it should be more than a handful. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed the same issue as an obstacle in clearing some dab pages with links. Sounds reasonable to use the town, as long as it is verified the village is in fact inside the town. --doncram (talk) 16:52, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I think people have been doing this in an unofficial capacity anyways. Full support from me. --JaGa^talk 18:23, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, need to be careful when the village in not in one town like Wappingers Falls, New York. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:24, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree that care must be taken. Usually it says in the disambig page whether the village is inside or adjacent to the town. bd2412 T 18:42, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Come to think of it, if we have an instance where "Foo, New York" is a town and also a village completely within that town, or the like, and we use that as a basis for pointing ambiguous links to the encompassing body, wouldn't that make the encompassing body the primary topic, where the article should sit? bd2412 T 11:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yerg, I hadn't thought of that. And don't forget WP:TWODABS. So it's possible the entire system of town/village NY dabs is contrary to our guidelines and should be taken out. --JaGa^talk 12:49, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm rustling up a survey of these pages to get a grasp of just how big an issue this is. bd2412 T 13:18, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to User:R'n'B, we have Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/New York disambiguation report. I have just begun sorting these out, but there are about 240 pages for ambiguous "Foo, New York" names, and so far about three fifths are two-link pages for a village or similar subsidiary unit contained entirely within a town of the same name. Collectively, these likely account for a few thousand currently ambiguous links. It shouldn't take more than a few days to check the entire list and separate out all pages falling into this pattern. However, I think we have enough information to decide what our policy should be as to these pages, and my opinion is that the encompassing unit should be treated as the primary topic. bd2412 T 13:39, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's possible to make a general decision without considering context. In some cases the village is the primary populated urban center and the town a relatively less populated administrative region. I'd suspect people would likely think of the village before the town (so far as anyone is likely to think of such things at all). In other cases, the town may be more densely populated overall and the village merely one population center among many. In such cases the town would be more likely to predominate. In any case, there are many editors working on New York places. It might be judicious to solicit their input. older ≠ wiser 23:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

That is an entirely reasonable suggestion. bd2412 T 00:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've left a note at Wikipedia:WikiProject New York directing them to this discussion. I suppose I could also drop a note on each disambig talk page. I finished going through the list last night, and found about 140 pages following the pattern of only two links, one for the town and the other for the village contained completely within the town. There are a handful of other pages having just those two links plus a third option which would fall off significantly in terms of plausibly displacing a primary topic (for example, Marathon, New York also links the New York City Marathon, and Gouverneur, New York also links New Yorker Gouverneur Morris). Conversely, there are about a hundred links on the list which do not follow this pattern, although some of those could arguably have a town as a primary topic among the options listed. bd2412 T 17:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Having seen that note, I too like the idea of town as primary in most cases. If someone says a few such as Hempstead (village), New York, the largest of all NY villages, should be excepted, then it's one of the exceptional cases that can be handled case by case. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:38, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm somewhat indifferent to the proposal; however, I will say that it would make it more difficult to determine where disambiguation is needed. I currently find links to dab pages by using the "stub link threshold" preference, but this method won't work if the dab pages are changed to redirects. So, in the long term, this proposal is going to create more work for those devoted to disambiguation because your typical editor (such as myself) will link to an ambiguous location, see nothing wrong, and move on. – TMF 16:50, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

If we generally make the encompassing geographic unit the primary, this will not be an issue. The vast majority of articles linking to these pages only reference them for the purpose of a person being from a place, or a building or the like being located in a place. Someone who is "from" Schoharie (village), New York is, in fact, also "from" Schoharie (town), New York, in the same way that someone who is "from" South Beach is necessarily "from" Miami Beach. This proposal has evolved towards the position that the dab page won't be changed to a redirect at all, it will be changed to the primary topic (which WP:TWODABS encourages anyway). Absent specific evidence that the encompassed place should be considered the primary, the dab page will be moved to a "foo (disambiguation)" title and the page for the encompassing place will be moved to the current dab title. bd2412 T 17:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, I edit articles (roads) where the exact jurisdiction is an issue. While it is true that something in a village is also within a town, our road articles use the most specific jurisdiction. I'd be more open to this idea if people actively watched the incoming links to the "non-dabbed" form for articles that should be pointing to the other entity, but I doubt they will be. – TMF 17:52, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Surely you'd be in no worse of a position having a link to an encompassing jurisdiction than you would be having a link to a disambiguation page. bd2412 T 02:21, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Not in my opinion. Like I said above, at the present time I can tell that I've linked to a name that is used for both a town and a village or a hamlet, from where I can fix the link to point to the right location. If this is carried out, I won't be able to tell unless I actually follow the link. If people are open to increasing the amount of links requiring disambiguation (since most editors don't know which towns have identically-named locations with articles and thus won't fix the links where needed), then whatever, but I still think it's a bad idea. (Also, I don't see the point of moving the current dab pages to <location>, New York (disambiguation) - who's actually going to use the page?) – TMF 04:57, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Leaving the disambig links so that their presence will prompt someone to fix them sounds good in theory, but if it actually worked in practice, then we wouldn't have the thousands of links to these disambig pages that will be solved by conforming them to our TWODABS guideline. However, I can offer a much easier solution to your concern regarding the ability to catch those links. We have the complete list of pages to be fixed right here, only about 150 pages, and we can easily generate a report (or a monthly report, or similar series of regular reports) of incoming links to each of those pages, so you won't even have to search through those pages looking for the ambiguous links. Would that resolve your concerns? bd2412 T 13:36, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

It would if people don't violate WP:R2D and start replacing [[<location> (town), New York]] with [[<location>, New York]] en masse. If that happens, the report pretty much becomes meaningless. – TMF 02:39, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

We have the tools to deal with that too. For example, we can generate reports of newly added links. bd2412 T 02:55, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have the report separate newly-added links that are truly new from articles where the redirect was bypassed? – TMF 21:14, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll have to ask User:R'n'B, but so long as some algorithm can be generated by which a bot can parse those kinds of links, I don't see why not. bd2412 T 21:28, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure it can be done; the main issue is making sure that the task is specified unambiguously, so that the report that is generated is actually useful. It's not difficult at all to generate a list of articles that link to a given title, and only marginally more difficult to compare that to a list of articles that had such links at a given earlier date. (By the way, TMF, if you are relying on the stub link display to identify disambiguation pages, you are necessarily going to have both false positives and false negatives, since some disambig pages are long and some non-disambig articles are short.) --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:49, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Re false positives: I'm well aware of that, but I've found that a good 80-90% of the highlighted links on New York road articles are/were dab pages. The long dab page issue never really came into play here since all of the NY location dab pages were short, which I guess led to this discussion in the first place. Anyway, since it seems like it's possible to generate a report in the manner I inquired about above, I guess I'm no longer opposed to this proposal. I'm still not necessarily for it, but I won't be opposed to it taking place. – TMF 22:13, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll work out the logistics over the next few days. Shouldn't be too difficult - get the automated new links report set up, move the current disambig pages to "foo (disambiguation) titles in case any intentional disambig links are necessary, and move the encompassing area to the main title with a hatnote to the other, except where there is evidence that the encompassed jurisdiction is the primary topic. bd2412 T 22:34, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The proposed convention would be convenient, but I am concerned that in the long term this convention may not be a good idea. Birthplace is of extreme importance to anyone researching family history, and for this purpose it may make a big difference whether someone is born in Town of X or Village of X. Also, the problem of place names in New York State goes beyond towns and villages: there are also cities and census designated places. See Tonawanda for one notable example. 66.167.45.150 (talk) 04:17, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Bull/proposed article

Bull, currently a disambig page, is a regular magnet for links. You can guess what they most frequently intend to reference. I have begun putting together a draft at Bull/proposed article with the intention of moving the disambig page to Bull (disambiguation) and erecting an article in its place that would be comparable to what Stallion is for male horses. Any help would be appreciated, as it would solve a longstanding disambig linking problem. bd2412 T 00:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the proposed article is ready to be moved to mainspace. Opinions welcome. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:34, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I expanded one section a bit, but really, this article is beyond ready to go "live". Nice work! --JaGa^talk 23:22, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that it is ready for the mainspace. I was thinking of letting it sit for another 24 hours, in case someone was planning on cobbling together a brilliant exposition on why the male of cattle is not the primary topic, but realistically that's not going to happen. Therefore, I'm going to be bold and move them now. bd2412 T 00:18, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Royal College of Surgeons

I just noticed that Royal College of Surgeons is on this month's list. Discussion of whether this should be a disambig page at all is underway at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Royal College of Surgeons. bd2412 T 17:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

• Done. bd2412 T 01:28, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Pipe the list through redirects?

I'd like to propose that when this list is generated in the future, the links be piped through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect; if any of these redirects are missing, they can be automatically generated at the same time as the creation of the list. bd2412 T 22:37, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Why? The (disambiguation) redirects are useful for distinguishing links in the article namespace, but links in the Wikipedia namespace are not really an issue, because they can already be easily ignored by disambiguators. --ShelfSkewed Talk 22:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

First, it's one way of insuring that we have the redirects. Second, there are occasional instances of bad redirects in project space (in draft articles, for example) that should, ideally, be fixed. I see no reason why anything should ever link to a disambig page without going through a an intentional redirect. bd2412 T 23:09, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Bio articles - Reed (plant) et al

Should Reed (plant) really be a disambig? Especially if you consider this version, before it was pared down to be more dab-like. I've been thinking about biology articles like this - like Cypress, for instance, where you have an article for the generic term instead of a disambig. I could see Cedar going the same way. Thoughts? --JaGa^talk 10:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I boldly de-dabbed it. We'll see if it sticks. --JaGa^talk 22:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I did that with Grass years ago - it was contentious for a while, and then it stuck. bd2412 T 01:28, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Lists of acronyms and initialisms

The various lists of acronyms and initialisms (from List of acronyms and initialisms: B through List of acronyms and initialisms: Z, "A" having already been fixed) collectively account for over 2,400 of our current disambig links, virtually all of which are intentional. Can we have a bot run through these and automatically redirect all of the naked intentional disambig links through "foo (disambiguation)" redirects? bd2412 T 17:59, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

• I started the process with "A", but stopped when I realized there's hope to get those XYZ (disambiguation) redirects created by RussBot. (I'll admit it, I cheered out loud when I saw the bot request. It's a lot of hassle making those things!) If we don't get a bot to fix the initialism articles, I'll pick it up again once RussBot has had its big run. It's pretty easy if you use Dab solver. --JaGa^talk 21:36, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
  • I haven't tried that one, but I sure will now. Between these lists and the intentional links coming in from hatnotes and from disambig pages cross-referencing one another, we could potentially solve tens of thousands virtually overnight. Of course, that would just highlight the real number of flat out bad links requiring resolution. bd2412 T 21:42, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
    • RussBot is on the verge of getting cleared to do this job. Should be a doozy! bd2412 T 19:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
      • Redirects are being created even as we speak, but given the size of the job it is going to take a while. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:16, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
        • Is RussBot going through the entire DPL list in straight-up alphabetical order? You could move pages like those discussed above to the front of the queue, although I suppose there would be no great payoff in doing so. bd2412 T 01:21, 18 August 2010 (UTC)