Talk:Elliptical

This article was nominated for deletion on 2020 August 17. The result of the discussion was Disambiguate.

Cleanup

User:Uanfala if you consider there's merit in deviating from WP:MOSDAB for basically the whole dab, then here may be a good place to justify that rather than reverting routine cleanup? Until then, anyone like me can come along and eliminate the multiple links per line and other undesirables per consensus of the style guide. E.g. I personally find MOSDAB here does aid navigation [1] , so here goes underlining the consensus:

having one link per entry ellipse and oval
links at the start of the entry help speed users to their article
splitting into "Science and technology" and "Other uses" - less arguably useful with only seven entries, but may help

I now see there's arguably a WP:RECENTISM angle to this Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2020_August_17#Elliptical, but fundamentally per Apple Inc / Apple the shape is both the root and more encyclopaedic and should dominate here for titles. The issue of adjective vs noun throws a spanner in, and it's easy for editors to start defaulting to a dab for an adjective - I see even our guide Wikipedia:ADJECTIVE needed an update as one example had turned from an article redir to a dab redir [2]. The hatnotes on Ellipse seem to have the issue covered.

Elliptical trainer could be put in the tech section as a nod to what users want. Widefox; talk 18:12, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean that this page should redirect to Ellipse? Even if the trainer entry is disregarded, I don't think I see a primary topic with respect to long-term significance.

Now about the layout. As for many other dabs for adjectives, I find it much more helpful if this one enumerates not naked articles, but the meanings of the adjective. Each meaning will have one (or more) relevant articles to link to, but it's still the meaning that's the basic building block, and not the article. That's because the connection between the dab term and each listed article is not that of synonymy (as at most other dabs), it's more indirect. Does something like Elliptical may refer to [..] Concision make sense? Of course, "Elliptical" doesn't refer to concision, what it does is describe a speech style that's characterised by concision. Making clear the relation between the dab term and each linked article is in my opinion more important than having a format that's rigidly consistent with that of every other dab.

For me the imperative is for the entries to be worded in a way that fundamentally makes sense and with definitions that help readers, I'm not so much worried about which end of the line the link will happen to be or how many of them there would be in each. The style recommendations of MOS:DAB enable us to be helpful to readers in most cases, but for the occasional case where they do the opposite of that I see no need to adhere to them. The guidelines themselves say as much (MOS:DAB#When to ignore the guidelines):

Application of these guidelines will generally produce useful disambiguation pages that are consistent with each other and therefore easily usable by most readers. Usefulness to the reader is their principal goal. However, for every style recommendation above, there may be pages in which a good reason exists to use another way; so ignore these guidelines if doing so will be more helpful to readers than following them.

– Uanfala (talk) 21:31, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "Do you mean that this page should redirect to Ellipse?" - not really, I don't see a change since that 2020 close. I was more thinking aloud - it's a weak dab, with elliptical trainer arguably a WP:PTM. Ghits for a product dominating a shape aren't a surprise, and IMHO is a weak argument (along the lines of Apple vs Apple).

Your argument above seems to be of prioritising dictionary help over navigational help. I think MOS:WTLINK covers that wikt links are for that, allowing the dab to focus solely on navigation. The caveat being adjective dabs aren't clearcut.

A further point on the weakness of the current dab - this piped entry is also not desirable as it obscures the article name "elliptical planform" -> elliptical wing.

This is the sort of dab that has both avoidable and easy fixes and would benefit from routine cleanup, and I don't consider that you can just revert without taking the consensus into account? Widefox; talk 17:06, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The elliptical trainer isn't a PTM as it's commonly called just an elliptical. Its link is also the one with the most clickthroughs from the dab [3].

As for piping the link to the wing planform: that's necessary to keep the particular wording used and, being within the description, is allowed by MOS:DABPIPING. The piping shouldn't be confusing for readers, as the visible term and the title of the target article are simply two angles on the same topic.

I'm not sure what consensus you're referring to? The dab page, in this particular form, is the outcome of an RfD discussion and likely has the implicit support of the participants there.

When putting together this dab, I've given some thought into how to organise it best for reader navigation (yes, navigation). Of course, different decisions could have been made, and I'd welcome suggestions for specific changes with explanations about how they will improve the reader experience. I'm much less keen on "routine cleanup" which will bring the dab into a shape I could have gone for myself if I'd given less thought to the process or used the output of an automated tool like Dabfix. – Uanfala (talk) 10:25, 31 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]