Talk:Regulatory RNA

With some help from my WikiEducation teachers, I put this page together to address the need to be more inclusive in responding to the topic Regulatory RNAs.  It used to refer one to the RNAi article when there are many more kinds of regulatory RNAs known.  I'm in a Fellows class in August, 2018 and learning how to improve content for Wikipedia.  Any input or changes with rationales welcomed!LLMHoopes (talk) 17:19, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Page discussion

Hi! I oversee LLMHoopes and I saw that the page edits were reverted by Lithopsian with the edit summary "Not anything, not dab, uncited mish-mash, breaks incoming links, revert to redirect (to one type of regulatory RNA, there is also RNA#Regulatory_RNAs as a possible more generic target". I see that LLMHoopes is still interested in creating a general page for this, so I thought it would be good to open up a discussion on the topic. I'm also tagging Natureium since they made a brief edit.

LLMHoopes, it looks like the main concerns are that this breaks incoming links that are meant to go to the original target page, that the pages don't have the same or similar name, and that there's a question of sourcing. I asked Ian (Wiki Ed) about this and his response is that the question here is whether these are different types of things you can call regulatory RNAs or whether there are different types of regulatory RNAs. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:23, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

The more I think about this the more I don't understand why links should be attached to a reference page rather than the article for RNAi. I tried to see if I could tell whether links called out one or the other but failed. The instructions for the disambiguation page are pretty opaque to learners, I'm sorry to say, not very helpful for me to peruse at all.LLMHoopes (talk) 01:21, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't think I understand this. What do you mean by "attached" or "reference page"? Links are just words or short phrases that take a reader to an article about that phrase. They aren't attached to anything. I don't know what you are understanding or expecting for a "reference page". RNAi is a redirect. The expectation is that any reader who types "RNAi" will want to read the article about RNA interference. If there was a non-trivial chance that some readers would actually want a different page, then RNAi might be better as a disambiguation page listing two or more articles that could plausibly be about something called "RNAi". Note that even if there is something else called RNAi but only very rarely, or a very obscure subject, then RNAi could remain as a redirect and RNA interference could have a hatnote at the top of the article explaining that a people looking for RNAi might just possibly want to be somewhere else (and linking to "somewhere else", for example see binary star). The goal is always to direct readers as easily as possible and with the least confusion to the article they want to read. There are other mechanisms for grouping related subjects, for example categories and templates, but the intention there is to allow readers to further explore once they have found the thing they first came looking for. So, for example, the question would be "what article does someone looking for regulatory RNA want to read?" If it is a particular article or section that already exists, then we have a redirect. If it is likely to be any one of several unrelated articles, then we have a disambiguation page. If there is currently no good summary of what regulatory RNA is, then we could still have a redirect to the least worst place or to an article that perhaps mentions it and could be expanded at some stage. There is nothing wrong with even a notable subject being a redirect to an article that better explains that term in context, and it can always be WP:SPLIT later into its own article when the original becomes too large to comprehend easily. Or you can write a comprehensive article in draft or sandbox form and then move it into Regulatory RNA when it is ready. Lithopsian (talk) 15:10, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the main driver for my reverting was the incoming links. A number of pages link here, and of course not expecting a disambiguation page. It is possible that the incoming links would be happy with a generic article about regulatory RNA, but I think that is something to investigate before the redirect itself is removed. Another concern is about whether the page is intended to be a disambiguation page or an actual article about regulatory RNA. Note that there is a section about regulatory RNA at RNA, but this doesn't necessarily mean it can't become a separate article. If the intention is a disambiguation page then there are a number of formatting issues, and some questions about which of the links should really be here, but these wouldn't be a reason to revert unless the layout was a complete basket-case. Best to read WP:DAB carefully. Sourcing would be an issue only if the intention was to create an actual article, sources are not needed for dab pages. Note that the redirect has currently been retargeted, following some edits and another revert (by Polyamorph), something that also usually best to avoid when there are incoming links (if anything, it is worse than leaving them with a dab since there is no simple way to detect that the incoming links are now all wrong). Lithopsian (talk) 20:54, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

I still think that a disambiguation page is what is needed. Obviously I do not know enough about how to put one together to avoid the kind of mess I created, though. Some comments indicate that perhaps there is too much on that page. I wrongly assumed that it should clue one in to anything relevant but it is fine to just do the major types of regulatory RNA. What is definitely NOT fine in my view is leaving the person clicking on Regulatory RNA referred only to interfering RNA, only one type of regulatory RNA. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can start a disambiguation page here.LLMHoopes (talk) 00:28, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

The difficulty might be in understanding the purpose of a disambiguation page. It is not a "portal" or summary page for a subject (ie. regulatory RNA as you know it). Rather it is a page which will direct readers wanting to know about "regulatory RNA" to one of several different articles which might possibly be what that reader was looking for. It might be easier to see by looking at some dab pages such as APS or Star (disambiguation). Note that the linked articles are not related, not about the same subject, or even the same subject area. They are simply articles that might have the same name (eg. star) except that Wikipedia insists they have different names (eg. Star (glyph) and Star (board game)). Note that a disambiguation page is also not a list of different types of, for example, regulatory RNA. A category could group different types of regulatory RNA (eg. Category:Regulatory RNAs) or you could have an actual list (eg. List of regulatory RNAs). A dab page would be appropriate if there were several different things that might normally be referred to as regulatory RNA, but actually have a WP page with a different title mainly to reasons of uniqueness. There also is a type of WP page called a set index, which is a list of links to related items with the same name (eg. Ark Royal or A Velorum), but that really doesn't seem appropriate here. I don't have an in-depth knowledge of the subject, but it does seem that anyone coming to an article called Regulatory RNA should be redirected to somewhere that explains what regulatory RNA is (I would suggest RNA#Regulatory RNAs as a good place), and probably lists various types of regulatory RNA (note that the original redirect doesn't do this). If the subject is sufficiently WP:NOTABLE then it could be an article itself with just a brief summary and link from RNA. Lithopsian (talk) 14:44, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

• Hi Lithopsian, the idea of redirecting this to RNA#Regulatory_RNAs sounds good - do you have any objection to redirecting there? As LLMHoopes said, there are different types of regulatory RNA and the general article on RNA would be a good landing space and could be expanded with any missing information that would be too general on the current landing page, which is about a specific type of regulatory RNA. (I know you suggested it, but I wanted to post just in case.) Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:51, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

  I think its an excellent plan, subject to sorting all the incoming links for the new target (they may be OK already, but should be checked). The existing section in RNA can be expanded right now with no doubts about notability, and there is likely to be a lot of feedback with many people watching a popular article. Then go from there. Lithopsian (talk) 18:56, 22 August 2018 (UTC)