Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation

Section, example and shortcut needed

Re the opening paragraph:

(A "topic covered by Wikipedia" is either the main subject of an article, or a minor subject covered by an article in addition to the article's main subject.)

Would it be possible to add a separate section with example and shortcut to this part of the guideline, because editors are evidently having trouble seeing it. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:25, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

For example

Primary redirects - a primary redirect occurs when the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of a term redirects to an article with a different title. For example "Hurricane" redirects to the primary topic of Tropical cyclone, requiring Hurricane (cocktail) to have disambiguation by "(cocktail)", the Hurricane aircraft to have disambiguation as Hawker Hurricane and so on, even though no article "Hurricane" exists.

In ictu oculi (talk) 02:25, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

....any objections? any comments? In ictu oculi (talk) 00:30, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Well I can understand that people think that Hurricane is not significantly different than the Danzig example. But I have added WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT as a shortcut to Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Redirecting_to_a_primary_topic. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:37, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment

Due to no consensus on a previous discussion re: article naming involving WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, there is a second discussion open about moving Australia national association football team to Australia men's national association football team. We are seeking outside input. Contributions to the discussion are much appreciated. Thank you. Hmlarson (talk) 01:31, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Merging disambiguation and surname articles.

Hi all, I am highly frustrated by what's happened on a couple of disambiguation pages recently. Both edits were made by editors who believed they were following WP:D and I even think they are right, but if so, WP:D is wrong. Let's explain: The history for "Yeager" and "Bieber (disambiguation)". In practice both pages had previously been disambiguation pages in the months prior to my edits, which precipitated the edits shown in the diffs.

Here's my point - I see no reason whatsoever to hide Yeager, Kentucky (let's say) from someone who types in Yeager. The page they are landing on is not an article. It is a couple of sentences followed by a list of names. It will never be more than that because you can't really write an article on a surname. Same thing with Bieber (disambiguation). The last names removed there are absolutely possible desired searches from Bieber; when someone lands on Justin Bieber which is where Bieber redirects to, they have to click on Bieber (disambiguation) and then again on Bieber (surname) and then again on their desired article. Too many clicks. There's no reason in the word to have these split up--the articles are not too long (this is not a Hamilton-type situation). What do you say? Red Slash 22:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

It is certainly possible to write a well-researched and referenced article on the origin and meaning of the surnames "Yeager" and "Bieber"; this just hasn't been done yet. bd2412 T 22:05, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

You can't really write an article on a surname? Seriously? Smith_(surname), for one. In any case, I think separation of the surnames into a separate article is quite reasonable. The only question now is, what is the primary topic? For Smith, its the dab page. I think for Yeager, the surname makes more sense, as there are lots more Yeager-surnamed articles than Kentucky towns - but you could start an RM and attempt to move Yeager (disambiguation) to Yeager and Yeager to Yeager (surname); same for Bieber.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 00:13, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it reasonable to have articles on surnames, as long as we don't preclude individuals from inclusion on the disambiguation page as well.

Per WP:PTM, "Add a link only if the article's subject (or the relevant subtopic thereof) could plausibly be referred to by essentially the same name as the disambiguated term in a sufficiently generic context—regardless of the article's title." So anyone plausibly known simply by the last name should be on the disambiguation page. As an example, David Belasco is appropriately included on the Belasco disambiguation page, because if someone refers simply to Belasco, it's quite probable they are referring to him. It's likely he would be a contender for a primary topic for Belasco, so it would be absurd to exclude him from the disambiguation page.

Given the number of fields in which people are commonly referred to simply by their last names (sports, politics, arts and entertainment), I think we should be fairly liberal about including people on the disambiguation page for their surname.--Trystan (talk) 01:18, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

There are relatively few people in the fields of sports, politics, arts, and entertainment who are commonly referred to simply by their last names in reliable sources. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:08, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

My proposal: Disambiguation and surname pages should only be separate if there is article content for the surname. In the case of Bieber, separating them is ridiculous - there are not a lot of people with this name and we don't have any article content on the name whatsoever. In that case, all the surname page is doing is disambiguating and there is no reason for a separate page. Smith, on the other hand, has a detailed article about the name itself, and a huge number of people with the name. If both the article and disambiguation content are very short, I say it makes sense to combine them - see Heinrich Müller and Heinrich Müller (name) for the ridiculousness that results when you don't. Ego White Tray (talk) 04:53, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

That one, I would merge into Müller (surname), as it is an anecdote about the abundance of a certain combination of a common given name with a common surname. bd2412 T 05:10, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

• I too dislike pages such as Müller (surname) and Hadik (as they are currently) - mainly because it blurs the distinction between articles and dab pages and is inconsistent with the way other disambiguation works in WP. This can cause confusion - for example a page ("Foo") is tagged as a surname page (when all the entries are surnames), then editors add other things that are not surnames ("Foo Inc", "SS Foo", "FOO" etc) without converting the page (back) to a proper dab page (which means, AFAIK, that editors won't be notified if they link to it). Etymology (including of surnames) should be separate from disambiguation (and mostly in Wiktionary). I.e. an "article" like [1] should be a dab page like [2]. DexDor (talk) 06:34, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
• Another example: Tornquist. There's a sentence of etymology so it shouldn't be a dab page; there are placenames so it isn't a surname page; but it seems rather petty to insist on two separate pages for so few entries! I've left it for now, WP:IAR. PamD 07:05, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm happy with Tornquist after JHJ's edit (after tweaking the grammar), but I'd understood that a page like broke the rules for a dab page as it includes "... is a surname of Swedish origin. The word tornquist means "thorn branch"." in the opening section. If we can do this, then that's excellent and we have a sensible page. I can't see anything one way or the other in WP:MOSDAB, I just have a memory of having this sort of content removed as "Inappropriate content for a disambiguation page". PamD 14:41, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
    • I think it falls nicely under this project page's "A short description of the common general meaning of a word can be appropriate for helping the reader determine context." -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:16, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
• If the list article can't stand on its own, there's no reason to merge it back to the disambiguation page, since the entries would be partial title matches. If the list article isn't encyclopedic, delete it and be done with it. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:25, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposed change to the section on partial title matches

I hereby propose to add "People with the surname of the title in question should be included in the disambiguation page (generally at the bottom) unless that page would grow to an absurd length with their inclusion (see Johnson (disambiguation)). In such a case, the link to Foobar (surname) should be prominent on the disambiguation page. Surname pages may exist on their own, but do not take the place of disambiguation pages. Names should not be removed from disambiguation pages on the grounds that they also appear within the surname page (except for reasons of absurd length on the main disambiguation page), as the surname article is not a disambiguation page." This helps our readers, as again, someone looking for Friedrich Bieber who can only remember his last name does not have to go to Bieber (disambiguation) and then a step further onto the surname article. What say you? Red Slash 18:42, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

• I continue to disagree. Including the non-ambiguous partial-title-match name-holder lists on disambiguation pages is a temporary state only, until someone (anyone) opts to move the list to its anthroponymy list article, regardless of length. If the length is "absurd", then that option needs to be exercised sooner. The link to the surname does not need to be any more prominent on the dab page that the existing dab page guidelines indicate. Some surnames (e.g., "Banana") simply aren't that likely to be the topic sought, and so don't warrant prominence. Names should be removed from the disambiguation page when they also appear on surname article lists unless there is grounds for including them (that is, that the topic person is commonly referred to by just the surname, and so is not a partial title match). And at no point, ever, should an existing anthroponymy list article (or list on an anthroponymy article) be merged to a non-article disambiguation page -- if the list of non-ambiguous partial-title-match name-holders is non-encyclopedic, the list article should be deleted just like any other non-encyclopedic list article. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:06, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't believe that anthroponymy is a word and I would appreciate it if you explained it. You have yet to explain how it helps readers if they can't find the article they are looking for on the disambiguation page. Red Slash 04:18, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
    • See Anthroponymy and WP:ANTHROPONYMY. It helps readers to list only actually ambiguous topics on the disambiguation page, rather than overload the page with partial title matches. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• No, it would not be a good idea to establish duplicated lists of surname-holders. If there is a surname page, then the dab page for that word only needs a link to the surname page. Duplicated lists run the risk that new names will be added randomly to one or the other but rarely to both. The present system is fine - with JHJ's welcome clarification that it is OK for the preamble to a dab page like Tornquist to include a very brief description/etymology without breaking the dab page rules. PamD 19:14, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • But this clearly provides an inconvenience to our readers. It makes their task of finding the right article more difficult. And for what? Red Slash 04:18, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• I think WP:PTM just needs a sentence or two to explicitly clarify that people should be included on the disambiguation page when they are commonly referred to by the surname alone. So Johnson (disambiguation) should include Samuel Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, and possibly a few others likely target articles for "Johnson".--Trystan (talk) 19:40, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  I do not think Johnson (disambiguation) should include Samuel Johnson or Lyndon B. Johnson. Is there a reliable source that refers to either of them as "Johnson" that doesn't mention the words "Samuel" or "Lyndon", respectively? -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:01, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  That's not the point. Readers might enter a surname into the search box expecting to get (possibly after a few more mouse clicks) to the article they want. Also, a (slightly sloppy) editor might put something like "During the Johnson and Nixon presidencies..." into an article. I.e. surnames need disambiguating. DexDor (talk) 20:43, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  But it is the point. Readers entering a surname into the search box can get to the article they want after a few more mouse clicks: the surname list article would be linked from the dab, and the surname holder would be listed on the surname list article (not the dab). And slightly sloppy editors might do any number of things that make navigation difficult; the solution there is to clean up after the sloppy editors, not to keep the plastic covers on the sofa year-round. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:50, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  It's not just us referring to "Johnson" in passing and expecting the reader to understand whether the president or the dictionary writer is being referred to; it happens throughout English. It's entirely reasonable to expect that someone reading about, e.g., "the house where Johnson wrote the Dictionary" could come here, type in "Johnson", and be properly disambiguated, as they would for any other ambiguous search term. Surname lists shouldn't be acting as incomplete disambiguations and creating an extra step for readers.

  The article on the surname is currently the primary topic for Johnson, which seems odd to me. Do we really think that a large majority of people typing in "Johnson" don't want a proper disambiguation page (leading to the many people, places and other things with that name), but ultimately are looking for information on the surname itself?--Trystan (talk) 21:06, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  Johnson is an unusually productive surname. It is unlikely that someone looking for a little known person with that surname, such as anthropologist Guy Benton Johnson, would type in Johnson with the expectation that this subject will be found on that page. bd2412 T 21:18, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  Agreed. The existing WP:PTM standard is what greatly limits the Johnsons that we need to include, i.e., those who "could plausibly be referred to" by the last name alone in a "a sufficiently generic context".--Trystan (talk) 21:42, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

• It is not beneficial to have a surname list baked into a dab page. They wont be correctly categorized as set indices, you can't expand them into proper articles, and by having any description of the surname in the lede you are implying that everything mentioned in the dab page is derived from the surname. Which you can't prove since you can't have references in a dab page per MOS:DABENTRY. —Xezbeth (talk) 21:50, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  Why not have the list of people in the dab page and any etymology separate (either in a surname article or in Wiktionary) linked from the dab page ? To me, the dab page seems a much better place to keep the list - for one thing it's easier/simpler for readers (who just want to get to the info about a specific person) and for another it's less likely that an editor will think "this surname page has far too many examples, lets remove some" (not realising that the list is also used for disambiguation). DexDor (talk) 22:16, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  The list of non-ambiguous partial-title-matching name holders can be a separate anthroponymy surname list article from the anthroponymy surname article if that's a problem. As for why not have them on dabs, it's because they're non-ambiguous partial title matches, and likely to be remove by editors who recognize them, in order to allow the readers to efficiently navigate to one of the actually ambiguous topics. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Create a new article for each definition of a topic?

Bhny will sometimes tell editors that "There is no reason to put alternate meanings" in an article and that they "could write another article about it and have a disambiguation page to direct to the two articles." I've told Bhny to "stop incorrectly informing other editors of how this site functions. You are mostly incorrect about our treatments of terms. And you should already know that.[3] We usually don't create WP:Content forks to cover each different meaning of a term. We cover it all in one article, and doing that doesn't make the article a dictionary. Even when we create different articles for the different meanings (which is only when those meanings deserve a Wikipedia article to themselves), we still usually mention them in the main article. Also, you know that we have articles about words, even if those articles are supposed to be about more than just the definitions." Bhny insists that I'm wrong, even though Bhny has seen, for example, plenty of Wikipedia articles that have a definitions section because there is more than one definition of the concept and the section significantly helps people understand the concept.[4] Bhny either doesn't know of WP:DABCONCEPT (the broad-concept article guideline) or doesn't care that it exists.

We could use some outside comments on this. I suggested to Bhny that I ask about it here. Bhny agreed that doing that would be fine.[5] 72.216.11.67 (talk) 17:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

The specific example here is zoophobia or "fear of animals". An editor added a different meaning "fear of people who practice zoophilia", an obscure neologism that had nothing to do with a fear of animals. After I pointed this out, the editor agreed with my edit.[6] Bhny (talk) 17:59, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like the specific case is resolved, but just to be pedantic: unless I'm missing smoething, I would offer that the general case the IP poster attributes to Bhny is correct.

This is pretty much exactly why disambiguation pages exist: because we don't, for example, have a single article that covers every meaning of Mercury.--NapoliRoma (talk) 18:25, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Even if this were a separate meaning, the "fear of animals" sense would be the primary topic; where there are only two notable meanings, and one is primary, the other is addressed in a hatnote, per WP:TWODABS. bd2412 T 18:50, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I didn't bring this here because of the zoophobia case. I brought it here because Bhny commonly tells editors that an alternate meaning of a term should not be in the article about the concept. Bhny ignores the fact that a concept can have different definitions and seems to think that a different article should always be made to address each different meaning of a term. I've explained to Bhny why that is incorrect (see the discussion on Bhny's talk page, my 06:04, 22 November 2013 (UTC) post especially). I didn't say that we always have broad-concept articles, or that every definition should be included. I merely said that broad-concept articles (which are articles with more than one definition for a term) exist. I can point to many different articles where it is important to address the different ways that the word is used in order to understand that article's concept. Female genital mutilation is one example. In no way should we create a different article for each different definition, unless those different definitions are notable enough and/or otherwise distinct enough be separate articles. 72.216.11.67 (talk) 19:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, broad concept articles do not cover "more than one definition for a term"; they cover terms which are themselves broadly defined. For example, Particle, which used to be a disambiguation page, is a broad concept article because most of the things called "particle" have common characteristics capable of being discussed holistically. bd2412 T 19:32, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

It's "more than one definition for a term" to me, such as what can sometimes be seen in a dictionary entry as a different definition of a concept. But regardless of the semantics on that, you and I agree about it being commonplace for an article to cover more than one meaning of a concept. 72.216.11.67 (talk) 19:41, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I would say that is more than one expression of a single broad meaning. The connection must still go beyond using the same name. bd2412 T 19:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. 72.216.11.67 (talk) 19:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

In the context of "Zoophobia" specifically, there may be several different kinds of "fear of animals", and it would incorrect to have a disambiguation page pointing to separate pages on these; however, these are all unrelated to "fear of people who practice zoophilia", which is not covered under the same concept (and probably does not merit coverage in the encyclopedia at all). bd2412 T 20:14, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

BHNY is right that there should be a new article for a new definition, with the key caveat that it is actually a new definition. Particle is a good example that is not actually new definitions, since the various aspects of particle are still the same concept. Apple (fruit) and Apple Corporation and Apple Records is what Bhny means when he says new definition, since these are actually different definitions. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:57, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Ego White Tray, your characterization of what Bhny means is inaccurate because that is not what Bhny generally means. I thought I was clear above about what Bhny generally means. Read the discussion Bhny and I had on Bhny's talk page about this issue, which also notes other discussions Bhny and I have had about it. Bhny is not usually talking about two different concepts. Bhny is usually talking about one concept that happens to have different meanings. Bhny has said that an article should be about one meaning (or what BD2412 calls "one expression"). A new definition of female genital mutilation, for example, would not get its own article unless it is a significantly notable definition or means something completely different than cutting a female's genitals. That definition would be covered in the Female genital mutilation article. And if it has a term, that term would be redirected to the Female genital mutilation article, just like the other alternate terms are. 72.216.11.67 (talk) 02:49, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Ego White Tray correctly states what I mean! IP 72.216.11.67 stop talking about me and talk about specific edits. If you want to report my behavior do it in an appropriate place. Also your chosen example is beyond creepy. Bhny (talk) 11:34, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh please! Our past discussions, such as at the Civilization article and the Hentai article[7][8], obviously show that that's not what you mean (except perhaps in the zoophobia case, which is obviously why you tried to save face above by starting off with "The specific example here" is zoophobia or 'fear of animals'." And I'm talking about your editing rationale and edits. That concerns you! This is the appropriate place to address getting you out of your "There is no reason to put alternate meanings" rationale, and your mistaken beliefs about when to create a disambiguation page. That's why you agreed that I should post about it here. I didn't bring this here to try to get you in trouble (I know where to go for that). And as for calling my chosen example creepy, thank goodness that we have great Wikipedia editors willing to tackle such a horrific topic that affects girls and women on a mass scale, and great people in this world willing to try to end it, without backing away from it and saying, "Sorry, no, that's creepy." 72.216.11.67 (talk) 18:23, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

In fact, maybe Dougweller and Andrew Lancaster, two people you tried to convince at the Civilization article to define that topic in one way (to give "one expression" for the term civilization), would like to join this discussion. 72.216.11.67 (talk) 18:33, 10 December 2013 (UTC)