Talk:Charles B. King

ProD removed

   While i have left the {{incompdab}} tag in place until there is opportunity for further discussion, i removed ProD because the page is markedly useful.
   The page can logically be described as an inc Dab, but the same logic would justify so describing Charles King as well -- except for the fairly convoluted point that King (disambiguation) delegates to King (surname) (an SIA, not a Dab) the task of aiding users who know the occupation, nationality, and fl.-period (but not the given name) of a person referred to as "King" in some document they are using. And users who seek a Charles B. King benefit by needing to examine only two entries, instead of scanning, in the middle of each of a couple dozen entries, for the initial B or a B middle-name.
   In fact, Honey bee (disambiguation) and Honey bear also are incomplete Dabs by this strict-constructionist notion (along with no doubt uncounted thousands of other compound-noun-titled Dabs). In my 8 years of editing experience, i don't think i have ever before seen IncDab invoked for a Dab whose title was not of the form

name (qualifier)

(e.g. Introducing (album) and Death (band)), which calls for some ugly related form like

name (qualifier) (disambiguation)
name (qualifier; disambiguation)

or

name (qualifier disambiguation)

and i suggest that in practice the IncDab provisions exist not to avoid awkwardness of maintenance, but to avoid both the ugly bushy-tailed titles, and easy visibility of how poorly (despite prohibition of IncDabs) Dabs are maintained.
--Jerzy•t 07:53, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If I search for "charles king" there is a fair chance that I have some idea of his principal field of endeavour, but less so that I know his middle name or initial. To take your position (that the page is markedly useful) to its logical conclusion would require a dab page for each known middle initial and each known middle name associated with any "charles king". What you have achieved here is to discourage an editor with time and interest from further endeavours in this area of need. Downsize43 (talk) 00:55, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- So far as I understand it, WP:INCOMPDAB is only concerned with the use of parentheticals. We have literally thousands of disambig pages with a middle initial or middle name, and I have never heard that raised as a problem before. bd2412 T 04:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC).[reply]