Talk:Śniadecki

Not to be deleted

Examples of use of "J. Śniadecki":

Note that there also is a Nathan J. Sniadecki (e.g. http://faculty.washington.edu/nsniadec/pubs.html) and a Paul J. Sniadecki (e.g. http://www.nodra.com/NODS_2006_01.doc). Urhixidur (talk) 14:05, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you suggesting that because a published bibliography reference uses the man's first initial, that he is therefore commonly known as "J. Sniadecki"? This is a dab page, not a search page or an index. It is not customary in Wikipedia to have a dab page for every possible abbreviation of a notable person's name. Imagine if we had to disambiguate every "J. Davis" or "T. Jones" simply because there was a published reference to their name as such. That's overwhelming to imagine. I support the deletion of this page, or at the very least, a redirect to the most notable of the two entries. SlackerMom (talk) 14:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, you did not change the page in order to address the concerns raised. What you did was to add references to the talk page. As a dab page, the rules are slightly different here. The concern is that the target articles themselves do not support the claim that these men are commonly known as "J. Sniadecki". We do not have to prove it by placing references here, we have to prove it by placing references in the articles. SlackerMom (talk) 14:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed - and furthermore, if these individuals aren't commonly known as "J. Sniadecki", then this isn't really a dabpage at all, but a list of people who might possibly be referred to that way, which makes it even more deletable. Please see W:MOSDP#Given_names_or_surnames for clarity on this issue. Merenta (talk) 16:18, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Śniadecki redirects here - could this be made a surname page? Hndis (talk) 12:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Śniadecki could certainly be changed from a redirect to a surname page. In that case, I think this page should still be deleted, or at least made into a redirect to the surname page. SlackerMom (talk) 13:46, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you clarify those last sentences? I can't quite parse them. "Śniadecki could certainly be changed from a redirect to a surname page. In that case, I think this page should still be deleted, or at least made into a redirect to the surname page." Śniadecki is not a redirect at this point, so I suspect you simply need to update your text to make sense in context. I suppose what you're suggesting is that J. Śniadecki redirect to Śniadecki, which would be a {{Surname}}. Considering that J. Śniadecki is failry obscure or infrequent, that seems reasonable.

As for it not being "customary in Wikipedia to have a dab page for every possible abbreviation of a notable person's name", that is sort of true: we have dabs when the abbreviation is ambiguous. Notability doesn't enter into it, or not much. The scientific literature is, in certain domains and at certain epochs, replete with authors identified only by their initials, which makes redirects (and the occasional dab) necessary to sort out the mess. Surely you don't object to making Wikipedia as usable as possible by its readers? Urhixidur (talk) 18:53, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your interpretation of my meaning is correct. I made the above comment when Śniadecki was still a redirect, to give my support for it becoming a surname page (which it has). I have no problem with abbreviations being redirects. The situation we were dealing with here was an abbreviation (J. Śniadecki) which was an actual dab page at the time of the discussion. That's the page I was referring to when I said "this page". The talk pages have been moved around, so it sounds confusing now. SlackerMom (talk) 19:43, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]