Talk:Na

Nursing Assistants

NA is also used to refer to nursing assistants. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.254.13.123 (talk) 14:40, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

And also it can mean "No" ~ bbglas007 11:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

its cool and good —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.179.116.60 (talk) 09:47, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Style guidelines

I just completed a series of smaller edits, to use the edit summaries to provide more detail as to which guidelines were being applied. Please read MOS:DABMENTION, WP:INTDABLINK, WP:PIPING (including the information about exceptions for piping and for redirects), and the rest of WP:MOSDAB and WP:D. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:07, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

You ought to familiarise yourself

Relocated from User talk:JHunterJ#You ought to familiarise yourself

You say you're a member of the Disambiguation WikiProject but you don't seem to know how a DAB is suppose to be formatted. Read this: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) for starters. And don't change things just to change them, if you can't point out why my edit wasn't an improvement to the article then it was. I double checked all of this information myself just in case, I edited the page to conform with it a best as possible... your reversion went against a lot of it. It's not strict adherence, it's just (un)common sense. Please tell me in detail why the page is wrong in your eyes. Thank you.  æronphonehome  15:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The edits have been re-applied in separate edits with explicit edit summaries. Please familiarize yourself with WP:INTDABLINK, MOS:DABMENTION, WP:PIPING, and the rest of WP:MOSDAB and WP:D. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess that's better than nothing. But thank you. I realized that a couple things I did were incorrect but I also now understand why you are doing some things incorrectly as well. Because the situation demands it, I'll be excessively detailed and point by point as well and do something I try to avoid at all costs; blue-linking everything I say to an MOS entry. But I'll do it here instead of lighting up someone's watchlist so please don't be startled by the wall of text.

Edit 1: "use fragments"

You committed this edit. Because there was no style guideline or policy directly tied to it I'm assuming you are referring to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Individual entries saying "Entries should nearly always be sentence fragments, with no final punctuation (commas, full stops, semicolons, etc.)." Taking that literally, final punctuation means something at the end of an entry. (e.g. Oakland is a town.) whether that be a proper period or anything else considered punctuation. The only other thing that could mean is punctuation that brings the fragment to an end (period, question mark, etc.). A comma is not something I would consider the end of a sentence or anything else. It's purpose is to break content apart without a true break so that separate remarks and thoughts don't get read as one whole thing or to prevent a run on sentence.

Either way the presence of a comma does not a complete sentence make. According to Wikipedia (hurr) it may make a compound sentence. So if you want to get seriously academical about it, I made a compound fragment. My rational for the content of that fragment, which you removed, is that it seems valuable to show readers what Na looks like in Japanese. If your issue is with the comma then it can be reworded to contain the content without giving you the impression that it's a complete sentence:

• Na (kana), a Japanese kana displayed as な or ナ

I cannot find anything in the style guide that says the actual kana is forbidden from a DAB page. Since it is a visual aide and can help facilitate the search for certain information it should be kept in place. And in this format satisfies your complaint regarding the entry. I will change the DAB page to what I showed above.

Edit 2: "keep entry part in the entry"

You committed this edit. Again there is no direct correlation with a style guideline. I found this, again listed under Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Individual entries. "The link should come at the start of the entry."

It is. It does. Again your edit seems to be regarding a second comma automatically meaning a complete sentence to you. Your edit again removed text, none of which was what you or I would call a link. The reason "a local name" was used because the tree is not known as Na anywhere except for where it originated, and only in Sinhalese. So to clarify I noted that Na was the local name for the globally known Mesua ferrea. In keeping with MOS:DAB's "The description associated with a link should be kept to a minimum" it is already brief. Though there's no reason it can't be briefly informative.

This is a difficult one. The article title is Mesua ferrea, Na is supposedly referenced but not directly, and the infobox says Ceylon ironwood (another one of the tree's many alternate names). For this reason I simply kept Na (tree) even though it's a redirect that simply goes to the top of the page and included the article title as the proper name. So once more your issue appears to be the comma:

• Na (tree), a local name for the Sri Lankian tree species Mesua ferrea

Which to me seems somewhat convoluted. So here's an alternate that takes a different approach:

• Mesua ferrea, a species of tree in Sri Lanka known locally as Na

Now it links to the target article as MOS:DAB insists despite the disambiguated term Na being pushed to the end of the fragment. Just because the redirect exists doesn't mean it must be used in a DAB. The second example conforms to style guidelines in that "Subject to certain exceptions as listed below, piping or redirects should not be used in disambiguation pages. This is to make it clear to the reader which article is being suggested, so that the reader remains in control of the choice of article." The only valid exception listed is "A redirect should be used to link to a specific section of an article if the title of that section is more or less synonymous with the disambiguated topic. This indicates a higher possibility that the topic may eventually have its own article." But in this case Na is not going to break off the Mesua ferrea article (I don't think). Since the term IS the article subject by another name MOS:DABMENTION doesn't apply either. So the second example is the best option to clearly identify that Na is a local name while satisfying your issue with commas and continuing to conform to MOS:DAB, WP:PIPING and MOS:DABMENTION. And unless you have more compelling evidence so it shall be modified.

Edit 3: "WP:INTDABLINK"

You committed this edit. Pretty straight forward, WP:INTDABLINK says "To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text "(disambiguation)", even if that's a redirect". Got it. Although it seems the quoted text belongs to WP:FURTHERDAB, but I can't tell because of the placement of the anchor. No need to change anything, deferring to your judgement.

Edit 4: "NA in the NA section, not the Na section"

You committed this edit. Read closely what each section for Na says. I debated merging both together because there are possibly too few entries to need subsections. NA in caps lists all entries that are abbreviations. "Stand for":

NA may stand for:

So everything that wasn't an abbreviation is listed under Na. Even though two capitol letters are used in the formatting of the symbol N_A, it's still a symbol. Otherwise the Sodium entry would need to be moved as well. There's more to it than pure adherence to the visual appearance of the letters. MOS:DABINT explains it better.

Edit 5: "keep entry part in the entry"

You committed this edit. A repeat of Edit 2, with the same issues and the same potential solution that works for both of us and continues to conform to style guidelines:

• Mosuo, a small ethnic group in China known to themselves as the Na

• Nga people, a small tribal group in India

The Nga people entry no longer even says Na (not that it ever had to, the blue link for THAT is common sense). But more so because the "better known as Na" is kind of weasel and not clearly sourced to any of the references. The blue links are: MOS:DAB and MOS:DABMENTION, updating the entries to the above.

Edit 6: "put the links first, WP:MOSDAB#Individual entries "The link should come at the start of the entry.""

You committed this edit. The general rationale you used for the multiple edits is Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Individual entries saying "The link should come at the start of the entry." However when applied in context it refers to the primary topic of the article linked. So the article .na's primary topic is the top level domain, which is what is linked and therefore should be at the beginning of the entry. Right below that quote is "In some cases, however, the target article title is not an expansion or variation of the term being disambiguated.". Meaning that the when the linked article is the disambiguated term but NOT the primary topic of the article (as often but not exclusively in the case of a redirect) it is more appropriate to include the link in description as explained by MOS:DABMENTION. So let's review the list of entries that you changed and how many of them fall under the "not the focus of the article" guidelines:

• Symbol for the metallic element Sodium

was changed to

• Sodium's chemical symbol

The article Sodium focuses on the element. The disambiguated term is the symbol for Sodium, Na. I guess you could argue that they are one in the same and that Na is the focus of the article. But really, Na is mentioned as the symbol and not even a section within the article. The focus of the article is not the disambiguated term but rather Sodium.

• National Academician, a member of the National Academy of Design

was changed to

• National Academician, a member of the National Academy of Design

National Academician stands as a redirect to the page National Academy of Design. The focus of the article is the academy, not it's members. There a list of members towards the bottom of the page but as you and I are too familiar with, the only reference that links National Academician to this DAB is in the articles intro. By chance or by something sublime, National Academician does not link to any section but right to the referenced text and it did so before the text was even there. That can be argued or changed or modified upon reading this paragraph but either way the article's focus is clearly not the disambiguated term.

• Noradrenaline, an alternate name for the hormone Norepinephrine

was changed to

• Noradrenaline or Norepinephrine, a hormone

Noradrenaline redirects to Norepinephrine. Norepinephrine is the article title and focus, Noradrenaline is an alternate name mentioned for the hormone and is the only reason the article is on this disambiguation (Because the proper term abbreviates to NE). The disambiguated term is not the article focus here either.

• N_A, a symbol for the Avogadro constant

was changed to

• Avogadro constant or N_A

Same deal as Sodium, Avogadro constant is the article focus and the disambiguated term is the symbol.

• IATA code for North American Airlines

was changed to

• North American Airlines's IATA code

The IATA code is not the article focus, the airline is.

• ISO country code for Namibia

was changed to

• Namibia's ISO country code

The ISO code is not the article focus, the country is.

In every single individual entry, your edit goes against MOS:DABMENTION and will be reverted to the previous format.

Edit 7: "don't pipe link entries WP:PIPING"

You committed this edit. You cited WP:PIPING which says (as above) "Subject to certain exceptions as listed below, piping or redirects should not be used in disambiguation pages." Underneath that, in the subsection Where piping may be appropriate, is "When the link is in the description, rather than at the start of the entry, piping can be used more freely. However, the text of the link should still be very similar to the title of the target article, to avoid confusing the reader."

Now, my edit put the link at the start of the entry and you moved the links to the description. You were right to do that (as per Edit 6) so the links should be kept there, because they are now in the description the following applies: "Section and anchor points in links should not be visible to the reader" and "For links in the description, link to a redirect or use an anchor-point link with piping to display text similar to the article title." Which is what my edits did. You simply altered them and continued to use piping which you said shouldn't be used. Which is confusing. Two things to point out, one for each updated entry:

• Naples' Italian car plate provincial designator

I just tweaked your entry as including NA without it being a link is redundant and your piped link was too wordy. Agreed, it needs to reflect the article but it also needs to be easily readable. There.

• Netherlands Antilles' international vehicle registration code

Redundancy and an aside that NA is the CURRENT vehicle code. I noticed the mistake which I originally made and corrected it but because you're making edits without double-checking anything it kept getting re-entered. Just so you know, it was Aruba's code that was formally NA. When it was still a part of the Lesser Antilles. Netherlands continues to use it. The source for that little bit is the article itself. Both entries are updated according to WP:PIPING properly.

Edit 8: "+National bank, per MOS:DABMENTION"

You committed this edit. There are actually two changes here, first the edit mentioned is the re-addition of an un-sourced off-handed mention of NA in a section of the article National bank. You cite MOS:DABMENTION which says "If a topic does not have an article of its own, but is mentioned within another article, then a link to that article should be included." Your interpretation of the guideline is taken out of context. MOS:DABMENTION refers to what was covered in Edit 6, and the article National bank falls into the same category with one not unimportant caveat. The mention doesn't have a reference to validate the term. Yes, of course it's needed. Wikipedia:Disambiguation#References says "Do not include references in disambiguation pages; disambiguation pages are not articles. Incorporate references into the disambiguated articles as needed." By design disambiguations do not reference anything listed, entries listed do not self-validate themselves. Ergo the articles must contain the reference to validate the term. If they do not, the term is disputable content could easily be original research or flat out wrong, and is not allowed on the article much less a disambiguation page which relies on the content of articles to be properly referenced for it. In this case, the article doesn't reference that term and the content of the article is disputable. WP:CITE says "The policy on sourcing is Verifiability, which requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations. The policy is strictly applied to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, captions, and sections of articles—without exception." If you need it in writing, I dispute the inclusion of N.A. in the article National bank. I will tag the article after I finish writing this. It is now on the article's editors to properly reference that term before it can be included in the DAB. That is the way it has been, is and will be. It's not interpretive, it's obvious. Don't make me have to explain WHY references are important, you're an Admin. You. Should. Know. This.

Your second edit, the unmentioned one, was to reintroduce slight alterations to to the terms being disambiguated. MOS:DABINT says "However, it is not necessary to mention minor variations of capitalization, punctuation or diacritics. For example, AU may refer to: is preferable to "AU, au, Au or A-U may refer to"; and Saiyuki may refer to: is preferable to "Saiyuki, Saiyūki or Saiyûki may refer to"." That's pretty textbook so I'm putting it back to the simpler format.

Edit 9: "+NAs, but compromise and place them in See also instead of the main list"

You committed this edit. Same deal as Edit 8, no reference therefore the content itself is in dispute. No matter where in the DAB it's located. I'll make the needed edits.

Your last edit simply arranged things, whatever, I'll arrange as needed as well. So, damn that's a lot of text (I hope you're not expecting perfect grammar or spelling), looking back at everything there's one edit you made that was obviously correcting a mistake of mine. The rest I've given you strong reason to revert or alter. I shouldn't have to do this, triple so for someone who's an Admin and for all of me how the hell did you become one??? If you passed a Administrator's interview then I'm Jimmy Wales. I admire your strict adherence to regulation, and you back it up when prodded hard enough, but you need to get your understanding of policy and guidelines updated something fierce because you were almost completely mistaken in all your edits to just this one page. What on Earth are you doing elsewhere that ought to be audited?  æronphonehome  22:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC) --JHunterJ (talk) 23:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)