Talk:David Johansson

Johanssen

Some potentially notable David Johanssen examples:

• David Johanssen (fl. 1895), director of the School of Mines in Stockholm [that entity seems to have later become the Swedish School of Mining and Metallurgy in Filipstad today, and about which we also have no article yet]
• David Johnassen, a producer/director/writer for NBC Universal and, before the merger, Universal Studios
• David Johanssen, managing director of Swan River Law firm in Perth, Australia

I've left them off for now, since they're not mentioned at the target articles (where those exist) and do not have articles of their own.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:43, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 13 June 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 21:09, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

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David Johansson → David Johansen (disambiguation) – None of the at least 4 spellings (Johansohn is also attested, but rare) appears to be particularly dominant (i.e., there is no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC), so it's probably best to use the first alphabetically, which is also one of the two shortest, thus more WP:CONCISE as the base name, though this is kind of cancelled out by disambiguating parenthetically. Of everyone listed, musician David Johansen is also the most notable. Regardless, David Johansen (disambiguation) should at least exist as a redirect so I've created it in the interim.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:50, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

• The problem seems to be the formatting of the DAB page rather than the title, David Monrad Johansen is already hatnoted from David Johansen so that's covered per WP:TWODABS. This DAB page should only exist to deal with the three David Johanssons. Check it out after an edit. —  AjaxSmack  03:29, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per AjaxSmack. Similar surnames should not be commingled on the same disambiguation page (as an example, John Reed, John Read and John Reid are three separate dab pages which mention each other under their respective "See also" section headers). The David Johansson dab page should only list those named David, Dave, Davy or Davey Johansson, while the page's "See also" section would mention any Wikipedia entries for similar surnames, such as David Johanson, David Johansen, David Johanssen, etc.    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 08:22, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

  I have no real objection to taking that approach, other than it creates more disambiguation pages over time when one will suffice. There are various other human-name DAB pages where variant spellings of the same surname are covered in the same page; I don't see why this case should be different. Split pages make more sense for a case like Reed/Read/Reid, because those are much more common names, so there are many more individuals to disambiguate.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Inconsistencies abound throughout Wikipedia, especially where disambiguation pages are concerned. For example, Phil, Philip, Phillip, Reed, Read and Reid are all combined at the Phil Reid dab page, while the Elizabeth Walker dab includes Elizabeth, Elisabeth, Betty and Liz Walker, but not Beth Walker, Eliza Walker, Lisa Walker and Liza Walker, all of whom have separate dab pages, except for Liza Walker, who is all by herself, not mentioned anywhere else. We even had, at the same time, one dab page for Ivan Saric and another one for Ivan Šarić.

Some dab pages combine same-surname William, Will, Willie, Willy, Billy and Bill, while other surnames have separate dab pages for all of these forms or mix and match some forms, but not other forms. If we were to start combining lightly used surname pages such as David Johansson/Johanssen/Johansen/Johanson, but not heavily used ones such as John Reed/Read/Reid, we would need to write some specific guidelines since WP:COMMONSENSE may not be interpreted in the same manner by differing editors under disputed circumstances.    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 03:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm afraid we can't have much better guidance than WP:COMMONSENSE, but I'd appreciate the effort if someone can take a shot at it. Generally, I prefer merging of dab pages for similarly-spelled persons (as long as the list is reasonably short, say up to ~20 entries in total), as I think it's the most reader-friendly setup. If the reader does not know the exact spelling (and that is very common), it's much easier to parse a 10-20 entry page than to search in several dab pages, which are not always conveniently interlinked. But frankly, the Beth Walker example is a real hard case.
That being said, I'd oppose this particular RM, as I think the current setup is sensible (one dominant spelling is a dab page, and a few similarly spelled individuals linked via See Also. No such user (talk) 14:03, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.