Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links

Template:Wikipedia ad exists

Proposal for New York villages within towns

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links/New York villages within towns. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:35, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

German culture and Germanic mythology

Two more which arguably should not be disambig pages. The first should redirect to Culture of Germany with a possible hatnote to the referenced 'wider culture of German-speaking nations'. The second should be an article. bd2412 T 04:37, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Seeing no objection, done. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Avifauna

Avifauna is just a fancy name for the bird life of a region. The term should redirect to Bird. The other proffered meaning is the equivalent fancy name for bird books, and can be accommodated in the "see also" section of that article. bd2412 T 02:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Update: done disambiguating this one. As I suspected, every link but one was properly disambiguated to Bird. bd2412 T 17:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, I've made this change. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Mars symbol and Venus symbol

I doubt that either of these should be a disambig. bd2412 T 21:03, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, I've de-disambiguated both. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:35, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Time to expand the monthly list?

I'd like to float the idea of possibly expanding the monthly list from the top 500 pages to 1000 pages. The last expansion was from 250 pages to 500 pages was in November 2009. On October 31, 2009, the top 250 pages had 28,318 links and the top 500 pages had 52,592 links. As of today, the top 500 pages have 31,361 links and the top 1000 pages have 57,609 links. So the situation is fast approaching what we had with that expansion. Obviously, editors can always work on pages that aren't on the monthly list, but the contest seems to be a significant incentive. One counterargument would be that expanding the list could cause editors to ignore troublesome pages on the top of the list. However, we're doing okay on that front right now. The DPL-100 has gotten fairly low as have pages with 90 links, 80 links, etc. Also, I suppose a list of 1000 pages might be unwieldy to look at. Thoughts? --JamesAM (talk) 15:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

It is a fairly lengthy list as it is. How about stepping up to 750? bd2412 T 16:59, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I think it's long enough now. We are lucky to get through 50% of the list by the end of the month. I'm not sure a longer list would mean more links getting fixed. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:17, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Tough one. When we were getting to 75%+, people were definitely running out of "fixable" disambigs towards the end of the month. 50% is not as much of a problem. On the other hand, I, for one, am guilty of only looking at the monthly list for disambigs to de-link, so an expanded list would be welcome, and probably lead to more links being fixed. But 1000 would be terribly unwieldy. Maybe expand to a smaller number, or revisit this in a few months? --JaGa^talk 17:36, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

This may be far off topic, but I'd like to see a list of the oldest persisting disambig links. I think the contest would be more exciting if there were more variations than just addressing the most-linked pages. The current setup also makes it so that some very old disambig links, coming from disambig pages with smaller groups of links, will never be addressed here. bd2412 T 18:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Oldest persisting dabs, I'm not sure how/if I could do that. But I have been thinking about expansion. Like you say, there are some dabs that will never be addressed with the current approach; a multi-pronged attack is necessary. I was thinking of adding a "bonus list" of one-link dabs to the contest; did you know over 20,000 disambig pages only have one incoming link? (Here's a report I created to list them, just for my own amusement - the dab is in the second column.) But I don't want to detract from the monthly list; it's going quite well these days, and I'm hesitant to do something that would take away from that. --JaGa^talk 15:07, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Dab in Template

hey everyone, was working on Talas and found a few links that must be inside the Turkey geography template. You can find it at the bottom of Kayseri. In the markup, it appears to be correct (Talas, Turkey|Talas) but as displayed, it links to the disam page. Anyone know whats the story here? The Interior(Talk) 06:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I just learned this recently from User:PC78, having just come across the same problem, (see PC78's talk page for our discussion of Claudine (disambiguation)); apparently it just takes a while for the "What links here" page to update and register the changes. The changing of Talas to Talas, Turkey, just took place on October 9th, so it could take a while longer. Hope that helps, -France3470 (talk) 10:20, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

If you want to force an update, just make a WP:Null edit on that page, thereby refreshing the cache. –[[::User:Schmloof|Schmloof]] ([[::User talk:Schmloof|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Schmloof|contribs]]) 16:58, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

If you look at the cfd pending queue, you will see the count for one template that was updated on October 6. The job queue is taking 30 days or more in some cases to update everything. Maybe it is time to bug the developers again. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Null edits got rid of 20 of the 23 incoming links to that page. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:46, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks folks, will remember the Null Edit trick for next time. The Interior(Talk) 18:17, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Tata Group (disambiguation)

The page Tata Group (disambiguation) is not really a disambiguation page; it is a list or index of articles about a single set of related topics. Not sure, however, how best to rename it. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:02, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the list of family members complicates things. Index of Tata Group-related articles? Or remove People and call it List of Tata Group organizations or similar? --JaGa^talk 13:24, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The list of family members is not an ambiguous expression of the phrase "Tata Group", but merely of the name "Tata". Either way they should be removed (or mention of key family members should be moved to the lede to explain what exactly it is that makes companies in the group part of the group). bd2412 T 00:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

List of given names

I was wondering why the total number of dab links has been dropping slowly of late. Newly-created List of given names links to about 1,500 disambigs. Now, I'm tempted to just WP:INTDABLINK the whole lot, but there are several that will have XXX (name) articles. What do you guys think? (Another question - should this article even exist?) --JaGa^talk 13:40, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there some way to configure bot logic to do that job, i.e., have a bot go through and first change [[Foo]] to [[Foo (name)|Foo]] or [[Foo (given name)|Foo]] where the latter exists, and then to go through and change whatever dab links remain to [[Foo (disambiguation)|Foo]]? Cheers! bd2412 T 15:09, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Neo-Renaissance

I saw Neo-Renaissance has been converted into a dab - to accommodate an article created October 11. Shouldn't this be moved to Neo-Renaissance (disambiguation) per WP:TWODABS? (I ask here because I see some DPL people have been involved with the page, and didn't move it, so maybe I'm missing something.) --JaGa^talk 10:31, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

<<Shrug>> OK, I'm moving it. --JaGa^talk 10:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

LGBT rights in Western Sahara

This popped up as a fairly heavily loaded new page on today's Daily Disambig. Seriously? This is a topic for disambiguation? bd2412 T 22:58, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd say no, especially since there is no LGBT rights in Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic article. Needs to redirect to LGBT rights in Morocco. --JaGa^talk 11:34, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Done. bd2412 T 16:10, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Penrith

Penrith is a problem. It was a dab page, but the dab page has been moved to Penrith (disambiguation), and Penrith redirected to Penrith, Cumbria. Unfortunately, this was done without fixing the incoming links to Penrith, so now there are several incorret incoming links, and dabsolver won't spot them. Anyone fancy taking it on? DuncanHill (talk) 01:00, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Not sure that there is a primary topic so the dab page was moved back. I should add that a good number of the links are for the NSW place. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I too am unsure about there being a primay topic, and had pointed out to the editor who moved it the problem with the incoming links. Ill have a bash at it with dabsolver now. DuncanHill (talk) 01:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Now being discussed at Talk:Penrith, Cumbria#Requested move. DuncanHill (talk) 22:43, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

British House of Commons

British House of Commons has been made into a dab page, introducing dablinks to several thousand articles and many categories. I've suggested to the admin who did it that she might like to spend the next few weeks fixing them, but I thought it might be worth asking for any thoughts or comments here - should it be a dab page or returned to the redirect that it was before? DuncanHill (talk) 09:45, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in this case is obviously the current House of Commons. There was no discussion before the title was redirected. However, you might have been a bit less sarcastic and assumed good faith in your message to the editor in question. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:06, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I tried to be less sarcastic, but it proved impossible. I did not assume bad faith, and the message I left could not be construed to suggest that I did. If she had been a newbie I'd have reverted, and left a gentle explanation. She's an admin, highly experienced, and ought to know better. DuncanHill (talk) 13:38, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I've been guilty of excessive sarcasm myself sometimes, so I understand completely. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:28, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I've restored the redirect. I'll put a note on her talk page. --JaGa^talk 16:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 17:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Monthly progress

I don't know how many people have noticed it, but The Daily Disambig includes a count of how many links to the month's top 500 dab pages have been fixed since the first day. I thought it would be interesting to compile the results for the last day of each month to see how we've been doing:

Month	Percentage fixed
November 2010	50.1%
October 2010	64.4%
September 2010	55.0%
August 2010	57.4%
July 2010	43.4%
June 2010	48.3%
May 2010	55.4%
April 2010	42.6%
March 2010	41.2%
February 2010	46.6%
January 2010	36.7%

I suspect these numbers correlate closely with the number of links fixed by Woohookitty each month, but I haven't confirmed this.  :-)

Anyway, the trend is generally towards fixing a higher percentage of the available links, which is great, but we're going to have to redouble our efforts to beat the October record. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:38, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

That would be a tall order. October was the epic R'n'B vs Woohookitty battle as I recall. --JaGa^talk 17:05, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

DAB Challenge expansion

Based on discussions about the DAB Challenge list, I've introduced a "bonus list". This is another source of points in the Monthly DAB Challenge. Instead of adding more top-linked dabs (that stays unchanged with the top 500), this list holds the least-linked dabs. For now, the list consists of all one-link dabs (over 22,000!) as of 0:00 GMT, December 1.

I've also created a useful (if GUI-challenged) page to display the links that can be fixed for bonus points, which includes links to Dispenser's fantastic "Dab solver" for each article or template.

In coming months, if the number of one-link disambigs decreases considerably, I can increase the size of the list (by including two-link dabs, three-link, etc, etc), but I have to be careful, or overhead will bog down processing time. My goal is to gradually increase the bonus list until it meets the top-linked list and all disambig pages can be in the contest. (I imagine a "Golden Spike" moment.) It'll be a long time before that could happen, but this is the first step.

Oh, and the hourly updates don't begin until 0:00 GMT December 2, so it won't look quite right today, but any fixes done today will be counted. BTW the list hasn't been picked over much at all so there are a lot of really easy fixes for the taking. Enjoy! --JaGa^talk 06:53, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Kudos on the Bonus list, will make things easier later in the month when the main list gets a bit creamed out. The Interior(Talk) 06:11, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Would it be possible to cross reference the bonus list with Articles with the most disambiguation links, to get a list of pages with the largest numbers of these one-time disambig links? bd2412 T 23:35, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Yep. --JaGa^talk 07:09, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Rice cake and High priest

Both of these are again on the list, so I am moving the discussions down to promote a resolution. Neither of these should be a disambig page at all.

• High priest lists links to articles on the office as applied to various denominations, and equivalents in various languages; many do not contain the words "high priest".
• Rice cake only lists different kinds of foods made from compacted rice, most of which are not even cakes; only one entry contains the phrase "rice cake".

These will continue coming up so long as these non-disambig terms are allowed to occupy disambig space, so it would be nice if someone would handle this. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

• Well, let's start with Rice cake. Should it be a list article? List of rice cakes, perhaps? Or we could put in a lede and let it be an article, although I'm not sure what you can say about them besides "a cake made with rice". --JaGa^talk 06:06, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I think an article could be made to work. Think about what you would like to know about rice cakes from an encyclopedic standpoint. In what cultures are they prevalent and why? Where were rice cakes first made, and how did this formulation change over time and spread from its point of origin? Are rice cakes mentioned in historically significant contexts? Are there cultural traditions in which they play a role? The current list would then just be incorporated into that article. Also, pictures of different kinds of rice cakes would help. bd2412 T 18:04, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
• I'll work on it a bit more today. Now, how about High priest? Same treatment, I think. bd2412 T 17:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• I agree, and I see you've already done the conversion. My apologies for not helping out. --JaGa^talk 07:28, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

New Brunswick/Nova Scotia election templates

Has anyone come across pages such as 12th New Brunswick general election? It's a disambig with a navbox ({{gesb}}) that links other disambigs, piling up the dablinks. Now, per WP:MOSDAB, that template shouldn't be there, but it looks like someone put a lot of work into it so I'm loath just to yank it. What are your thoughts? --JaGa^talk 05:11, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I did see them, and didn't understand them. The whole idea behind these series of several hundred disambig pages is that there are two ways of numbering the provincial elections in these two jurisdictions; one from the first election under colonial rule, and another counting from the first election after Confederation. My question about all this is whether either or both of these numbering schemes has any basis in reliable sources, or whether one (or both) is something that an enthusiastic editor just made up for use in Wikipedia? There don't seem to be any internal wikilinks that refer to any of these elections by a sequence number, except for links generated by the template you noted. I suggest asking the editor who created all these whether there is any usage of these sequence numbers outside Wikipedia. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:21, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

More immediately, I think the solution is to adjust the templates so that the links redirect through the "foo (disambiguation)" page connected each disambig page. That will mark them as intentional links, taking them out of our lists of pages requiring repair. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:08, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

We even have the {{D'}} template for doing that.--Kotniski (talk) 15:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I started changing it over to use {{D'}}, but ran into a problem. I put the D' template in place for the → link in the navbox. Articles such as 8th New Brunswick general election work fine, but check out 35th New Brunswick general election. Problem is, 39th New Brunswick general election is not a disambig, so can't have a (disambiguation) redirect, and I end up with a redlink. --JaGa^talk 07:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Ptarmigan

I'd like to suggest changing Ptarmigan from a disambiguation page into a redirect to the genus Lagopus. Sometimes there's good reason for common names used for animals or other organism to lead to a disambiguation. One such case is when a common name is used for a hodgepodge of species from different taxonomic categories. Another is when the common name is used to refer to some, but not all, of the species in a genus. A third is when the term can refer to other things besides animals, like eland. But when a common name is essentially synonymous with a certain taxonomic category, it makes sense that the common name lead to that category rather than a dab. For instance, mouse is the article about the genus Mus. We don't make mouse a disambiguation page and expect users to pick out which species each use of the word "mouse" refers to. The disambiguation page for ptarmigan has three - the three extant species of the genus Lagopus. So it seems use of the word Ptarmigan means Lagopus without specifying (or necessarily knowing) exactly which species. Thoughts? --JamesAM (talk) 01:20, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

• Sounds OK to me. All ptarmigans are in the genus Lagopus and all birds in Lagopus are ptarmigans. --JaGa^talk 07:06, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Done. --JamesAM (talk) 16:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Alas, it's a well loved bird, or birds, and many things with Wikipedia articles have been named for it. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Dis links in yellow

We should have this tool.(its from the spanish wiki).

--Neo139 (talk) 21:39, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

We do. Take a look at User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js. Just remember that you'll probably have to add the "importScript"s to your vector.js, not monobook.js.ospalh (talk) 13:26, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Adding a TODO message on talk page for dab links in the article ?

Hi everyone,

On French wiki, we've started adding messages on talk pages of articles in the form of a TODO message to list the links to dab pages that still need to be fixed (see fr:Modèle:Avertissement Homonymie, and the following diffs: 1, 2).

In WikiCleaner, I've added the possibility to automatically add the message when fixing some dab links.

If you're interested, you need to create a similar template here and add some configuration options to WikiCleaner at User:NicoV/WikiCleanerConfiguration (see example at fr:User:NicoV/WikiCleanerConfiguration. Parameters to add are : general_todo_templates (list of TODO templates), general_todo_subpage (subpage name used to add TODO messages), dab_warning_template (template used for the message), dab_warning_comment (comment used when modifying the talk page), dab_warning_after_templates (if you want to add the message after some templates when they are already used in the talk page).

--NicoV (talk) 09:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

What about intentional/legit links to basename dab pages?

I don't see anything on this page that says that intentional/legit links to a basename dab page (e.g., Mercury) should be changed to link to the corresponding disambiguation redirect (e.g., Mercury (disambiguation)). Is that the standard practice (so all direct links to the basename dab page can be eliminated), and, if so, where is this clearly stated/explained? Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:35, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:INTDABLINK.--ShelfSkewed Talk 21:54, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Redwood

I propose redirecting this title to Sequoioideae, the subfamily of trees which covers the three species that are primarily known as "Redwoods". I am fairly confident that these trees, collectively, comprise the primary meaning of the word. bd2412 T 14:11, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Germanic mythology

As Germanic mythology remains high on the list, I renew my proposal that it should be an article, and not a disambig at all. bd2412 T 19:35, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The more I look at this, the more I agree. This isn't disambiguation. It's listing mythologies that can be called "Germanic" in their origin. That doesn't mean someone wanting to read about Norse mythology is going to type in Germanic mythology! This should be an article that gives a short blurb about every mythology that can call itself "Germanic". (Germanic folklore looks similar BTW). --JaGa^talk 22:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

This revision may have some useful content to start with. --JaGa^talk 00:24, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I've noted my intent to de-disambiguate on the talk page there. I'll give it a day or two for any objections to be raised, and then I'll go ahead with the fix. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Done. Goodbye problem page. bd2412 T 04:55, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

New template

I've created a new template modeled after {{incoming links}}, but instead of being for disambig pages with lots of incoming links, it's for articles with excessive dablinks. I've already created it - {{dablinks}} - but haven't used it yet, pending this discussion.

The template comes with its own FAQ (mostly lifted from RussBot's FAQ), a link to Dab solver, and includes the article in Category:Pages with excessive dablinks.

Along with the question of whether people support this new template, I'd like to get thoughts on what is an excessive number of dablinks. This report gives you an idea of how things stand; here's a summary:

Number of dablinks	Articles
100+	12
50+	69
40+	107
30+	199
25+	300
20+	483
15+	910
10+	2476
1+	527136

I would maintain the list manually; I've created this report to show articles that qualify for {{dablinks}} but are not yet tagged, and this one to show articles that should have the {{dablinks}} template removed (because the article's number of dablinks has dropped below the threshold). Currently, the threshold is 25 dablinks, but I plucked that out of the air so I would have lots of test data. --JaGa^talk 21:31, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

That's a very good idea. I'd be inclined to make the threshold 10. That strikes me as excessive. Nick Number (talk) 21:56, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Ten is indeed excessive, but I suggest we start with a higher number, at least to get the template established. There's always strong opposition to article maintenance templates, and a higher number would be less vulnerable to challenge. But I won't oppose if people here think it's an acceptable number. --JaGa^talk 00:20, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I think we should start at 25. Does this list parse out intentional disambig links piped through the "foo (disambiguation)" redirect? bd2412 T 01:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes. All of the reports I've mentioned come from the script that generates the daily reports, so this is based on the exact same data and methodology. --JaGa^talk 01:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Then, wow, those are actually some pretty surprising numbers. We should add cleanup of such pages to the list of things that count for the monthly contest. bd2412 T 14:43, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I've been considering that, but I've just launched the bonus list, so I'm going to wait before any more expansion. --JaGa^talk 18:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm going to plow ahead with this, using 25 links as my threshold. --JaGa^talk 18:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with this action. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I've changed the style of the template a little from the lessons learned at User:WildBot/msg. — Dispenser 05:37, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Good stuff. Thanks! --JaGa^talk 07:09, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Weightlifting

I don't think this should be a disambig page. The clear primary meaning captures the first four meanings on the page, and the only other meaning on the page is a relatively obscure album. I propose making this a general article on the various reasons why people lift weights (for competition, appearance, and health), and hatnote the album. bd2412 T 02:41, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Skullcap

I think the primary use of this persistently linked term is, generically, an article of clothing with variations among different cultures. I propose to make this title an article on that topic, and move all other meanings to Skullcap (disambiguation). Cheers! bd2412 T 15:24, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Civil parish

Civil parish, with its 6000+ incoming links, is up for discussion at RfD. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 January 7#Civil_parish. --JaGa^talk 18:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

FWIW I've just suggested a couple of (my) preferred options. They don't include pointing it to Civil parish (disambiguation) (which I tried to make a little more informative while I was there). ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 21:51, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Ubuntu

Ubuntu was a dab page, the dab page has been moved to Ubuntu (disambiguation) and the computer-thingy to the plain name. Has been raised at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Ubuntu, debate also at Talk:Ubuntu (operating system)#Link away from disambiguation. Would be good to have comments from experienced dabbers. DuncanHill (talk) 10:30, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Move reverted. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. The original move had hidden previous discussions in talk page archives, at least now they can be readily found. DuncanHill (talk) 12:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Help with Dab discussion

Hey folks. I am involved with a discussion with a another editor over a link to a disambiguation page. Here is a diff of the disputed edit and a link to our discussion over it. Would appreciate if someone more well-versed in Dab policy could comment. Thanks, The Interior(Talk) 22:33, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Happy Zero Day!!!

Congratulations are in order to everyone today. For the first time, there are no disambiguation pages in Wikipedia with 100 or more links. When R'n'B started The Daily Disambig, there were 1,117 disambigs with over 100 links; we've finally whittled that number to zero. This is a huge accomplishment and a great day for the project. Cheers, --JaGa^talk 16:15, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

How does one properly exploit such an occasion? Nick Number (talk) 20:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Beer! (crack) Oh jeez, it's only 12:30. The Interior(Talk) 20:38, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Knight Rider

Knight Rider should not be a disambiguation page. Like Tekken, the overwhelming primary topic is to at least one of a series of shows and other media taking place in a single fictional universe, centered on an intelligent, talking vehicle. This title should be used for an article on the various installments in the series, with a hatnote to a disambig page for the other far less notable terms. bd2412 T 19:43, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

links in Persondata templates

Hey-oh. Should we unlink wikilinks inside the Persondata info fields in articles? They don't seem to be navigational. Anyone know about these? The Interior(Talk) 22:33, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

A fine mess

Zero Day seems like a long time ago! Those who watch WP:TDD will have noticed a huge spike in big disambiguation pages - well over 20 100-linkers now. This is due to one of our create-a-dab-but-don't-fix-a-single-bloody-link repeat offenders, who has decided to make many, many disambiguation pages of the [[X people]] vs. [[X language]] variety using AWB.

At first, I settled down to fixing the links, since these are easy ones, but I came to realize that several (but not all) of them fall in the WP:TWODABS category, and have been redirecting articles here and there.

So if you come across one of these, before starting to fix the links, check first to see if one of the entries is primary.

Cheers, --JaGa^talk 06:19, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Guess what. He did it again. More stuff to look over. Ulric1313 (talk) 21:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Terribly irresponsible editor. I wish there was more we could do, but no. He knows what he's doing and seems to be fine with it. Well, next month's contest should be interesting. There will be thousands on top of thousands of very easy dablinks ready to go. --JaGa^talk 06:11, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

He knows he's creating disruption and he's fine with it, and we can't do a thing about it? Oh joy. Plenty of editors have been blocked for less. DuncanHill (talk) 14:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know who we're discussing, but is he causing a disruption or creating work? Doing only the first task in a process that will require more tasks is not necessarily disruptive. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It is when you've been repeatedly asked not to. User_talk:Kwamikagami#Disambiguation_fest. DuncanHill (talk) 14:50, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

If someone repeated asks me not to move malplaced disambiguation pages, my continuing to do so isn't disruptive. The question is, is the activity creating more work (it would be nice if the editor undertook some of the follow-up work, but isn't mandatory) or disrupting Wikipedia (and could eventually lead to a block)? -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

And that linked discussion points to the former: he's creating work. We can't block him for that. If we want to, it'll take some village pump discussion and a new policy under which to do so. I think that's unlikely at best, and possibly not a good idea in the first place. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:52, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

He's also been very sloppy about it. He's admitted to being ignorant about TWODABS and the role of "what links here" in determining primary topics, but hasn't bothered to consider those policies in his dab-creation. Also, he creates his dabs without any concern about what's already there; for instance he created an Achi disambig page, without bothering to see that Achi (disambiguation) already exists. Also, he'll create a disambig without regard to adding anything besides his language vs. people entries, even when there are obvious additions to be made, such as at Aragonese. He's been cranking out disambig pages like an automaton, and not only leaving us 10,000+ dablinks to fix, also has been perfectly negligent of any disambig administration outside his goal. That crosses the line from merely irresponsible to disruptive IMO, but I don't see that we can do anything but do his cleanup for him. --JaGa^talk 17:19, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with JHJ on this one. The user in question is undoubtedly being discourteous and disrespectful in failing to fix the links that he is breaking by moving and usurping the titles that the links refer to, but for the most part the titles in question are indeed ambiguous and in many (not all) cases there is no obvious primary topic, so we can hardly say that he's deliberately disrupting Wikipedia by putting disambig pages at these titles. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:29, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You're right, of course. I've allowed my frustration with this editor to cloud my judgment. That why I haven't been working on the language vs. people stuff lately - that, and I'm interested to see what happens in next month's contest. The phrase "feeding frenzy" comes to mind. --JaGa^talk 21:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Fixing those last few...

The last remaining link for Greg Jones is at Crowley, Louisiana, it's autolinked in the infobox. Anyone have any ideas how to unlink it? Some places use &nbsp; but that doesn't seem to work. Tassedethe (talk) 18:17, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)? I usually find it the best place to get help with templates. (Does anyone else get as annoyed as annoyed as I do by autolinks?) DuncanHill (talk) 18:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I used "mayor" instead of "leader" in the infobox and that worked. Why? I have no idea. But hey, it's all good. --JaGa^talk 01:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Great, thanks a lot. And thanks for the Village pump suggestion, I never considered that. Tassedethe (talk) 01:04, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Virta

Virta is clearly just a surname page, but it has a disambig tag, appended by a note that says: {{disambig|surname}}<!-- please keep {{disambig}} else interwiki bots malfunction -->. It appears to be one of a number of pages created in this vein. How should we handle this? bd2412 T 17:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Take {{disambig}} out and leave just {{surname}}. If the interwiki bots need to be debugged because of the correct application of the templates, that's a separate thing. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

BBC Look North

I propose that BBC Look North should not be a disambig. The only three arguably ambiguous listings on the page are three different geographically diverse versions of a news broadcast originating with the same parent company. bd2412 T 14:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Lawlessness, Parent-in-law, Distal interphalangeal joint

These should not be disambig pages. I am thinking that we really need to set forth with greater clarity the sorts of lists that do not actually disambiguate, as opposed to simply identifying synonyms or different kinds of the same thing. bd2412 T 21:34, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Funny you should mention that. The other day I saw this comment by R'n'B at User talk:Aeusoes1#Disambiguation pages?: My understanding of the guidelines is that a disambiguation page is used when there are different topics that might be referred to by the same title. When there is a single topic that can be divided into subtopics, that is a list or summary article (depending on how the information is presented), not a disambiguation page. That's a really good explanation - but is it spelled out in the guidelines? And do these articles fall in that category? --JaGa^talk 07:04, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

These articles are indeed nothing more than lists of (if you can even call them that) of subsets. Lawlessness contains a collection of things like chaos and anarchy. Parent-in-law only links to father-in-law and mother-in-law, both of which are very short stubs that I am going to merge. Distal interphalangeal joint also has only two links, one to this kind of joint in the hand, the other in the foot. bd2412 T 18:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and merged the stubs at Mother-in-law and Father-in-law into Parent-in-law. While doing that, I found that Spouse is in the same boat, and should be made into an article rather than a disambig. bd2412 T 19:55, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Should be just one in-law article for them all. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:41, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm satisfied with the fix to Parent-in-law. The other disambig pages mentioned rate more immediate attention, in my view. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:06, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Ruling needed on Cardboard

I have made a request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Ruling needed on Cardboard to convene the High Council of Disambiguators in order to make a final determination of this question of whether the persistently linked page cardboard has an unambiguous primary meaning. Please join the discussion there and help resolve this conundrum, as the participants discussing the matter at Talk:Cardboard are just not disambiguators. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:53, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

This appears to be resolved for now. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Military personnel

Genus encompassing species. This should not be a disambiguation page, but should be a general article on the concept. bd2412 T 20:38, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I like the "genus encompassing species" concept. A bit more clarity in the "is it a dab" question. --JaGa^talk 20:28, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Freedom of expression

I need a sanity check on the new dab page Freedom of expression. Shouldn't that just redirect to freedom of speech, or am I missing something? --JaGa^talk 20:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you're exactly right. A dab page is supposed to list all the topics somewhat might have intended by the term. It's not supposed to list a bunch of interesting related topics. Thus, things like freedom of religion or freedom of expression don't call for a freedom of expression dab page. Freedom of expression is just freedom of speech clarified to note that it includes things like visual expressions. Freedom of expression should redirect to freedom of speech. But there should probably be a page at "Freedom of expression (disambiguation)" including, for instance, the works titled "freedom of expression". --JamesAM (talk) 22:43, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree with this solution. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:20, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Freedom of expression (disambiguation) has a page history, so I put in a WP:RM request. --JaGa^talk 06:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

January 29

No Daily Disambig update today? Wherefore art thou RussBot?--ShelfSkewed Talk 21:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

There was a Toolserver outage that killed the daily script. The unofficial afternoon update completed successfully, though, so if Russ is watching he can update TDD now. --JaGa^talk 21:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah. Thanks for the info.--ShelfSkewed Talk 21:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Jewish theology and Respiratory tract infection

Jewish theology and Respiratory tract infection should not be disambigs. The first should point to Jewish philosophy, with a hatnote to Kabbalah; the second should be a brief article on the common elements of respiratory tract infections, with links pointing out to the two types. bd2412 T 05:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed Jewish theology was a redirect until a week or so ago. I'll restore it (with hatnote). --JaGa^talk 06:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't look to me like Otitis media is a type of respiratory tract infection as much as it's often associated with a URI. So I'm thinking the job here is to define the elements common to lower and upper infections, and give some details about each. --JaGa^talk 23:50, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. I'll try to get to this in the next week or so. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Yves Saint Laurent is another one that I find problematic. Two dabs, the person and the brand. Let's pick a primary and be done with them. bd2412 T 05:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Never mind this one, it is fully disambiguated, and it really is not hard to distinguish references to the person from those to the brand. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:57, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Underground mining, yet another problematic twodabs page, the options being Underground mining (soft rock) and Underground mining (hard rock). bd2412 T 05:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I just converted Respiratory tract infection into an article. Hopefully it'll stick; it could probably use some more work. --JaGa^talk 18:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a good start, and an excellent solution to the many heretofore insoluble ambiguous links referring to such an infection with no guidance is to which kind it was. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

A goal: 775,000

Right now, our total disambig linkage is a little under 805,000. I'd like to propose we strive to knock that down to 775,000 for February, which will require a total of just over a thousand fixes a day, on average. Let's do it! bd2412 T 19:25, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to see if we can't generate some cross-listing dynamics, to get participants in other projects to put in a few extra edits per month toward disambiguation. Would it be possible to generate, for example, a list of unreferenced BLP articles with disambig links, so we can point those out to editors whose focus is fixing those BLP issues, so that they can also fix the disambig links while they're at it? bd2412 T 03:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Checked out the front page of Dab solver recently? Of course, it doesn't count toward the leaderboard and took 21 hours to generate. On a related note, how much time is spent picking out pages to disambiguate and waiting between pages? — Dispenser 07:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey, I'd wondered where Enkidu had gone off to. Nice page! --JaGa^talk 07:33, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll try and make a beta release soon which will included edit verification as it kinda sucks having a save button that doesn't work.— Dispenser 00:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The way it is set up now, it appears to line up a random page needing a repair, under the auspices of one of the listed projects. This is nice, but not every editor on a project will necessarily have the knowledge to fix disambig links on project pages, expecially if the link happens to be to something only tertiarily related to the project. If we were to generate a list of pages by project, noting what links on each pages needed fixing, it would be much easier for project members to pick out the ones they would be able to fix the fastest. bd2412 T 15:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

We could of course limit to disambiguation pages linking to pages under the project scope, but I'd quickly run out pages for demonstrations. And there are other ways of getting interesting pages to disambiguate: Dablinks can use categories, transclusion, a user's recent contribution, or their own watchlist (coming with next week's MW1.17 rollout); Using CatScan2 and {{dn}} or WildBot tagged pages.

Ideally, we'd have a system smart enough to give regular people problem that are productive, interesting, and fun to work through. Then to hook them in with an achievements/badges that rewards their continued effort. — Dispenser 00:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aiming to change the dabsolver, which I think is a great tool that I happen to use almost daily. The more tools we have to draw people into disambiguating and make it easy for them to coincide with their existing interests, the better. bd2412 T 01:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

We are really on track to make this happen! We have topped 50% of this months disambig list for the contest, and according to the latest Daily Disambig we are down to under 787,000 disambig links, down from over 804,000 at the beginning of the month. We are also down to 100,289 total pages containing disambig links, putting us in a position to drop that number below 100,000 for the first time since we've been keeping records! bd2412 T 21:56, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• As of the last update of JaGa's list about an hour ago, there are now only 99,973 disambiguation pages with links! Tomorrow's Daily Disambig should show us under 100K for the first time ever!! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:27, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Outstanding! We've had some setbacks on the path to 775,000 total links, but that is certainly an accomplishment. By the way, I have been thinking, can we tag every disambig link in GA and FA articles with a {{dn}}? I think those pages tend to be better attended, and would quickly be fixed by their usual overseers without needing to involve us career disambiguators. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Double redirects vs piping through [foo (disambiguation)]

It seems like a good idea to pipe redirects through [..(disambiguation)] pages, but they keep getting "fixed" by bots, which makes checking harder. I would say that this is a fault in the bots in question, but what do others think? ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 16:00, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Intentional links to disambiguation pages should link to (disambiguation) titles, whether redirects or not. Intentional links to disambiguation pages through (disambiguation) redirects do not need to be piped to hide the (disambiguation) part (and IMO shouldn't be so piped). I'm not crystal clear on what the bots are doing. Sample diff? -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:27, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, this, for example? Yes, the bot is right -- redirects to disambiguation pages go directly to the disambiguation pages. We avoid double redirects here as well, since they interfere with the reader getting to the navigational aid. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

That was one of the edits I was thinking of, yes. Seems fair enough to link directly (and it saves the bother of fixing them), though I'm not sure it makes much difference to the casual reader who would still end up in the same place. Thanks. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 12:18, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The casual reader won't end up in the same place. In a double redirect, they'll end up looking at the "middle" page's link to the final page, "because Wikipedia's MediaWiki software will not follow the second redirect" (WP:Double redirects). -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:44, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I never knew that! Thanks. But at least it means that bots+editors are doing a good job of keeping on top of them. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 13:04, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Efficiency and Effectiveness de-disambiguated

I have made Efficiency and Effectiveness into articles instead of disambiguation pages. Both are clearly overwhelmingly collections of variations of an overriding common concept, and therefore should be articles on that concept. If anyone has any objection to this move, then I throw my hands up in despair. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Aggressive tagging

I have begun a campaign of adding {{dn}} tags to a few thousand persistently knotty disambig links in the hopes that this will spur the people who maintain those articles to address them. I would encourage everyone else working on the project to not hesitate to tag all instances of such persistent links. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:11, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me, I'll try to do the same - is there a quicker way than inserting it manually? ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 18:07, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I used AWB to make my run. I'd hesitate to have a bot do it. bd2412 T 19:55, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm usually on Linux, so AWB could be tricky, and I've come to like the DAB features of popups, so a 1-click manual method would suit me personally and fit in well. I'll ask at popups talk - maybe it would be a popular feature. Thanks. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 18:11, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems to be having some effect. I tagged over a thousand pages, and by the next day over a dozen had been fixed. Now over a hundred have been. bd2412 T 18:59, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Kudu

Someone recently move Kudu to Kudu (Animal) and changed Kudu to a dab page. The rationale was simply that more than one thing with that name exists. The other things on the dab are an obscure Alaskan radio station with those call letters and a red link. Doesn't that seem like a move that ought to be reserve? The move didn't appear to take account of the notion of a primary topic. I don't think, for instance, the existence of various other things called Lion (including acronyms) should necessitate ignoring the primary topic. The radio station only has a few links. The station's article was created in December 2006. After a few edits on the first day, the page has only averaged about 1 edit per year (and the last one was back in 2009). That hardly seemes even remotely comparable to kudu, the animal. --JamesAM (talk) 03:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Yep, you're correct. Restored. -- JHunterJ (talk) 03:39, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Audit Bureau of Circulations

Looking at newly-created disambiguation page Audit Bureau of Circulations, I'm a little confused - are the UK, India, and North America organizations independent, or are they all branches of a single organization? I couldn't really work it out from the websites. --JaGa^talk 18:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• From the materials of the International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations, it appears that these are loosely confederated independent organizations. Since they all serve the same function, we should have a single article on the general topic rather than a disambig page. The current setup is rather like making Soft drink a disambiguation page with nothing but links to various soft drink makers. bd2412 T 19:08, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
• Different founding dates, different organizations. Even if they are loosely confederated, the articles on the members shouldn't be combined. If it is possible to make an article about the confederated bureaux, it could be done, but links to "Audit Bureau of Circulations" should probably continue to be disambiguated to the singular bureau intended. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
  • I did not intend to suggest that we should merge these, any more than that we should merge all the articles on the soft drink makers. I think we should have an article at Audit Bureau of Circulations that describes what such a thing is, how it works, what the general history of the practice is, and how they interrelate. Such an article would, of course, include links to those specific entities for which we have articles. Note that some of the existing links refer to ABCs in countries for which we have no corresponding article on the local entity. bd2412 T 20:30, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not entirely clear on the criteria for de-disambiguating (ambiguating?). Would National Trust fall into this same sort of category, where there should be an article on the general concept which contains links to all the individual organizations' articles? What about Organic Act?
Also, unrelatedly, Indonesian Archipelago is listed as "no longer a disambig", but it appears someone reverted it. Nick Number (talk) 19:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The logical rule would be that if everything that is listed under the name "foo" could be described as "a type of foo", then we should have an article on "foo" rather than a mere disambiguation page. Here is one of many examples: Automated erotic stimulation device is a disambig page, with two links, both to devices that could be described under the more general heading of the title. If a coherent article could be written on what a National Trust or an Organic Act is, then an article is needed. Compare my recent de-disambiguation of Color code. bd2412 T 21:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, I have re-reverted Indonesian Archipelago, with a substantial explanation at Talk:Indonesian Archipelago. All of the "ambiguous" meanings formerly listed on the disambig page were references to the same geographic entity, and were therefore not actually ambiguous. bd2412 T 21:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I've de-disambiguated National Trust, although the result remains a bit stubby. Why don't you take a shot at Organic Act? Cheers! bd2412 T 16:51, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I was out of town for a bit, and without easy Internet access. Thank you for taking care of Organic Act. Nick Number (talk) 14:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

It was my pleasure. Don't worry, there are plenty more where that came from! bd2412 T 18:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Clerk

Clerk looks like another candidate for de-disambiguation. There is already an article Clerk (position) which covers the general concept and links to the specific kinds of clerks. None of the entries under the Television, film, and literature section would be referred to as just "Clerk", except for Clerk (1989 film) which is a red link. Nick Number (talk) 15:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixed up. Clerk (disambiguation) is now the dab page. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Nick Number (talk) 16:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Reading to Plymouth Line

Reading to Plymouth Line does not seem ambiguous to me. It merely provides a number of railroad lines that happen to connect Reading and Plymouth. Since this appears to be an historic reference to some of these lines, we should not have a disambig page, but should instead have an article covering the periods wherein true "Reading to Plymouth" lines existed, and what become of them. bd2412 T 16:30, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

• A good point, which I've already raised on Talk:Reading to Plymouth Line.  :-) Relevant to this page, however, I think it's time to revise the guidelines on WP:D to indicate some situations where a disambiguation page is not useful; I'll try to come up with some suggested wording shortly based on previous discussions here. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:52, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Some of my comments in the above discussion under Audit Bureau of Circulations might be useful for this proposition. bd2412 T 16:57, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Every time I look at these I just get confused. None of them actually goes from Reading to Plymouth - they're just components of the route. And there's a historic factor as well. Urgh. Clearly there should be an article here that explains the mystery, instead of a dab. I'm going to drop a line at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Railways requesting help. --JaGa^talk 18:28, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

It was one article, and has just been split into three. No great mystery there. I've commented on the dab issue in the talk page. DuncanHill (talk) 18:30, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Direct-controlled municipality

Just de-disambiguated Direct-controlled municipality - this is exactly the kind of thing that should not be a disambiguation page. bd2412 T 21:46, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Alpine foothills

This doesn't seem like much of a dab to me. There are only really 2 (non-red) dablinks, and 1 of those is "see also". The lead wouldn't need much expansion to turn the page into a stub with links rather than a dab (I think). ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Also many of the links pointing to the dab are about the concept in general, and couldn't really be dabbed even if a few more pages were created. ChrisHodgesUK (talk) 16:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. A prime candidate for de-disambiguation into a short article on the general concept, with links to specific instances. bd2412 T 18:13, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Particle

Please join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Particle, where a number of editors are seeking to foist what they perceive as a problem on us by turning this article back into a disambig page, despite the clear primary meaning for the term and the large number of perpetually unsolvable disambig links this change would generate. bd2412 T 22:10, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Bonus list leaderboard

FYI, I've added a long-overdue bonus list leaderboard (also known as the "JustAGal and the Also rans" list) to the dab challenge page. Cheers, --JaGa^talk 19:58, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Dorsal

It seems to me that Dorsal should redirect to Dorsum (anatomy) with a hatnote for the portion of the brain referred to as dorsal. I've fixed some of the links in the past months, and basically every dab link seems properly to link to dorsum (anatomy). Thoughts? Any objections or problems with doing the redirect? --JamesAM (talk) 00:55, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:03, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

TBA/TBD

I plan to end the constant influx of disambig links from these terms by writing an article on the history and character of their use as placeholder terms for as-yet-unknown variables, modeling the flow of the article on our short but successful effort at Shut up. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:06, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

• This is what I have so far:

  To be announced and To be determined (often abbreviated as TBA and TBD, respectively) are placeholder terms used to indicate that although a particular event is anticipated to happen, a particular aspect of that event remains to be arranged. Other similar phrases sometimes used to convey the same meaning include To be ascertained, To be arranged, To be advised, and To be decided.

Cheers! bd2412 T 17:15, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Why is this not within the scope of WP:DICDEF? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

At the moment it is, but if we can provide some historical and comparative information, we might be able to put together an article. We have a fairly substantial collection of terms like these in Category:English idioms. The article would be at "To be announced", with tha other variations and initialisms pointing to it. bd2412 T 15:52, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Egyptian military ranks

Something seems to be broken with the DAB Challenge database. It says there are still 75 pages that link to Egyptian military ranks, and has been doing that for some time, when they really don't link to it. The problem may be that the link was in a template, which was fixed with the new links. Can it be fixed? Superk1a (talk) 00:03, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

This should not be a disambig page anyway. The phrase is not ambiguous, it is basically a category title listing articles that fall into that category. bd2412 T 14:38, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Swimmer

Swimmer is a perpetual link generator. I think we should just have an article on the concept of a person or animal who swims, recreationally, professionally, or by nature, which would accommodate virtually all incoming links (I fixed those links regularly when the term redirected to "swimming", and I can't remember the last time I saw a link relating to anything but a thing (usually a person) that swims. bd2412 T 14:35, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Broad concepts are not "ambiguous"

Our new policy at Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Broad concepts are not "ambiguous" should help clear the cobwebs of a number of persistently linked non-ambiguous disambiguation pages. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I have to say I disagree pretty vehemently with that policy. And it doesn't look like there's any Talk page discussion on it there. If the discussion happened somewhere else, like at Particle, I don't think suffices. I agree about the intro where you discuss pages like History of France. That should go to an overview article. The fact that a nation's history can be divided into various temporal slices doesn't mean the term is ambiguous. But I think the reasoning for the sections with examples is wrong. In my experience fixing links to pages like National Trust or Supreme Court or Department of Defense, the text is intended to reference a specific national example not the general concept. When an article refers to a case going before the Supreme Court, the writer is trying to convey and the reader wants to find information on the specific institution (e.g. the Supreme Court of X nation). In most cases, they're not looking to know what a supreme court is. It's just frustrating their goals to make them wade through a generic Supreme Court rather than reaching what they want to go to. Furthermore, it's worse than the status quo before the links are fixed. When links going to a disambiguation page, we at least know there's a problem to be fixed. But when these generic articles are created, it sweeps under the rug the fact that the links are not going where they'll be significantly more useful to readers (and where I think they're really intended to go). Basically, I want to remove that whole policy section until we have a vigorous discussion on that page's Talk page (or this Talk page). But I'll wait a bit just to see if a flood of folks are unanimously disagreeing with me. And I don't think we should replace disambiguation pages of those type with those generic articles. It only helps our numbers; it doesn't solve the real problem of getting people to the information that helps them best. --JamesAM (talk) 01:37, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Genus and species. We went through several drafts, and although there were constructive suggestions to change the language, no one objected. I regularly fix errant links to Supreme Court, but it is a general concept appropriate to cover in an article, and so far as I know it has always been one. If we premised page names on the fear of errant links, we would have no primary topic doctrine at all, and even, for example, George Washington would be a disambig page, to guard against errant links to George Washington University. Although there are certainly situations where more specific links are intended, we also have pages like particle, which draw a substantial number of links addressing the general topic. bd2412 T 02:09, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Part of the reason you probably got no objections is because the process to gather opinions was fundamentally flawed. Talk page section titles ought to accurately depict what is being discussed in order to catch the attention of interested editors. "Genus and species" was not a fair way to title the discussion. It suggests it would be a discussion of genus and species rather than such a broad discussion. Frankly, I don't think genus/species is closely analogous at all. A link to mouse should be link to the mouse article because the term itself refers to a genus. Those links tend to identify situations where the source didn't get to the level of species identification (otherwise the source would have named the species). In previous Talk, I've expressed that view. Department of Defense, National Trust, etc. are a whole different ballgame. A major difference is that in nearly every case, the context make clear that the text is intended to refer to a specific Department of Defense and makes clear which DOD that is. And the choice of which article to use ("the" versus "a" or "an") makes it clear that the text is supposed to refer to a specific institution rather than a generic concept. My point about article use wasn't addressed in your response. The George Washington point is a strawman. If we want this discussion to remain civil that should be avoided. The President is clearly the primary topic, and a hatnote would suffice. The implication of your argument is that we should not draw distinctions because situations leading to dab pages versus those that merit primary topics with hatnotes to a separate dab page. Rather, the specifics should be analyzed to see whether a primary topic applies. I fundamentally disagree with your argument about "the fear of errant links". That's the whole point of our exercise here. Links should go to the topic that they're intended to go to. We're about conveying knowledge. Our fixes should serve the utilitarian purpose of getting people to the information they want to read and where the writer/editor wants to direct them. When a certain proportion of the links are errant, that's a sign that we need a dab page and we need to funnel those links into this project so that they will be fixed. The proportion of errant links is very important (based on utilitarian concerns, probably the most important factor) in the need for disambiguation. I don't understand why you'd marginalize the concern. In the "Genus and species" discussion, you wrote, "I want to be sure that once this is established as policy, enforcement is not stymied by editors pointing to the limited number of participants in the discussion. I'd like to at least give it a few more days, and maybe publicize it a bit more." I think that's the much better approach than the quick adoption as policy. Would you agree to withdrawal of the text for a renewed discussion with more time, more publicity, and a detailed point-by-point discussion. --JamesAM (talk) 14:34, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

JamesAM, to avoid split discussion, please raise these points on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:33, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Without realizing it's such a general question, we handled Public Service Commission as suggested, as a disambiguator leading to two articles, each dominated by a list of red and blue links. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:26, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I see. Public Service Commission has two distinct meanings not susceptible to coverage in a single article. However, Civil service commission, which could in theory be presented as a disambiguation page, is instead an article on the general concept. bd2412 T 03:55, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Civil Service Commission is a small illustration of the Supreme Court problem. Perhaps the question indicates a need to maintain a list of general articles that have a chronically high percentage of stray inlinks. Jim.henderson (talk) 11:25, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• Any further discussion of this topic should take place at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:33, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Bon Appétit

Regarding the page Bon Appétit, which appears in today's TDD as a new dab page with 175 incoming links: Before anyone goes to the effort of fixing those links, I wanted to let everyone know that I have initiated a move discussion at Talk:Bon Appétit (magazine) to have the magazine returned to the plain title as the primary topic. All comments are welcome.--ShelfSkewed Talk 05:48, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I reverted the recent move as contested. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:16, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Obviously I think that's the right move, so thank you. Cheers!--ShelfSkewed Talk 18:13, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

20/20 (US television show)

After a requested move 20/20 moved to 20/20 (US television show) without redirect, but a disambiguation comes from 20/20. There are still many incoming links that need to be moved, but not quite all are 20/20 (US television show). (I don't know how t add to the list!) Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Imam

So I was having a go at doing the newly created Imam page, but so many of the links are impossible to tell from context which type of imam is being referred to, it feels like a pointless task. It seems like a general article on the concept of an imam and the differences between the types should be written in its place. Thoughts? --Closedmouth (talk) 11:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

• I completely agree, and this is actually now policy. Rabbi would be a good model. bd2412 T 15:22, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

FA/GA dn tagging drive proposal

I believe that good articles and featured articles are likely to be watched by a lot of people who would be keen to correct errors pointed out (or tagged) in those articles. I propose that we have a bot go through the entire project and add a {{dn}} to every single disambig link in every GA/FA in Wikipedia. My guess is that the article maintainers will rush to fix all of them, and we regular disambiguators won't need to lift a finger. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:56, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I often find myself using instead of unlinking spurious links for this very reason; I figure those who knows more about the topic will be motivated to fix it if they see several ugly [disambiguation needed] notes on the article (especially in lists!). Is that bad practice? Woodshed (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's ever a bad practice to put a maintenance tag where maintenance is needed. Of course, there are some instances (like links to Mercury, generally) where the correct link is usually so obvious that it's easier to make the fix than add the tag. However, outside of such straightforward fixes, I really think all dab links should be tagged as quickly as possible. Cheers! bd2412 T 12:42, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Salyut

I submit that Salyut should not be a disambiguation page, as Salyut program (which Salyut redirected to up until March 20) encompasses the subject and already links to all of the related articles. Nick Number (talk) 17:57, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

• Disambiguation reverted as improper subject for disambiguation per policy at WP:CONCEPTDAB. bd2412 T 18:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Great, thank you for taking care of this. Nick Number (talk) 19:03, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Template:Swimmingrecord

Can someone fix this template so that it is possible to enter a disambig parameter for city names? As it stands, it is a disambig link factory. bd2412 T 20:38, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

WPCleaner 1.00

Hi,

I have just releases WPCleaner 1.00. The last new feature enables speeding up page loading for analysis by preloading the full list of dab pages. To use this new feature:

• Start by clicking on All disambiguation pages.
• When the full list is loaded (it needs some time: 2mn for me for frwiki) answer Yes to the question about using this list for analysis.
• Just use WPCleaner as usual.

It avoids getting the list of templates used in each link in a page. It reduces greatly the number of request to Wikipedia.

What do you think? Is it useful? --NicoV (talk) 19:19, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Style Question

When you come across a link that is originally something like [[Yorktown]], [[Texas]], should this be disambiguated to [[Yorktown, Texas|Yorktown]], [[Texas]] or just [[Yorktown, Texas]] . I've noticed that this kind of thing appears a lot in info boxes. --D•g ^{Talk to me}/_{What I've done} 23:37, 11 April 2011 (UTC)