Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation

UK railway stations

Disambiguation enthusiasts might like to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (UK stations)#Disambiguation clarification again. PamD 14:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Central Prison

Central Prison is about an institution in Raleigh, NC. With several other similarly named places, such as Central Prison, Bangalore, we need a dab – and with no clear primary topic, that dab should probably take the base name. I have an unfinished draft of a dab sandboxed but what do we include? Are most of the entries there ineligible, like the Louisville Zoo example at WP:PTM, or do we take the qualifier "Central" to be our equivalent of "Louisville" and admit them as legitimate meanings of an ambiguous term? Certes (talk) 00:27, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

"Talk" parameter for {{Broad-concept article}}?

Similar to, for example, {{More citations needed}}, it would be useful for this template to include an option to link to the relevant thread on the talk page. I wanted to throw the idea out here to reach a consensus before implementing. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 14:53, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Huge clusterf regarding cardinal direction + railway/railroad dab pages

Just would like to point out that:

• Issue: Northern Railway and Northern Railroad are two separate dab pages.
• Issue: Western Railway and Western Railroad are two separate dab pages.
• Southern Railway and Southern Railroad (redirect) are not separate dab pages, they are one and the same. There’s no problems with this one.
• Eastern Railroad is in the main namespace, with a hatnote to Eastern Railway as the dab page. There’s no problems with this one.
• Issue: North–South line’s name is inconsistent with East West Line’s name.

If someone could please wrap their head around this and fix them, I owe you many thanks. Much appreciated, Fork99 (talk) 13:25, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

And there’s potential for unnecessary overlap with the railway vs railroad dab pages. Fork99 (talk) 13:27, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

And Northern Railways redirects to the Indian Northern Railway zone ... though at least there is a hatnote there to point to Northern Railway (disambiguation)! And Great Northern Railway is a dab page which includes Great Northern Railroad.

Perhaps we need the sort of comprehensive dab page which churches have, where "St/St./Saint X's Church" and "Church of St/St./Saint X", as well as "Saint X the whatsit Church", are all listed on a page such as St. Mary's Church, helpfully arranged by country (and sometimes subdivided eg by UK county).

Would we put "North" in with "Northern", as well as putting "Railroad", "Railway", "Railways"?, "Rail"? together?

And of course the same for the other compass points. And what about the intermediate points? I note that Northeastern Railroad and North Eastern Railway don't link to each other as "See also", and there are also Northeast Line (dab page) and North East railway line. Oh what fun.

Before putting too much thought and effort into this it would be wise to talk to the folk at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains who will have strong, if not necessarily unanimous, views on the matter! PamD 15:07, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Just noticed North railway (Austria) where there is nothing at North Railway or North railway! I can't find any rule by which that unnecessary disambiguation might have been made, though (IAR) it seems useful to disambiguate such a generic name (as long as a redirect from the base name is provided, unlike here). There's a section on naming at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Style advice#Articles about rail transport companies (railroads) style guide but it neither discusses disambiguation nor requires unnecessary disambiguation like that one. PamD 15:15, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

@PamD: oh wow yay! How fun, totally... Yeah, ok I second bringing in people from WikiProject Trains, which I’ll do now (link from there). But we should continue the conversation here, rather than starting a new one. Fork99 (talk) 21:19, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

In addition to the Northern Railways mentioned above:

• Western Railways also redirects to the respective Indian article.
• Same for Eastern Railways.

But, NOT Southern Railways which does redirect to the Southern Railway (disambiguation) page. When/if these are redirected to their disambiguation pages, I’d be willing to use AutoWikiBrowser/AWB to fix the broken links.

I’ve added a ‘see also’ links for the relevant North Eastern whatever pages.

Regarding North–South line’s name, I would propose moving it to North South Line for clarity and consistency.

Would we put "North" in with "Northern", as well as putting "Railroad", "Railway", "Railways"?, "Rail"? together? – I second this, in addition to the lowercase forms of “railway”, “railways”, “rail”, “railroad” (plus “Railroads” and “railroads”) if necessary as redirects. And of course, the same for the other compass points. Fork99 (talk) 22:23, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Plus, the plural forms of all of these too as redirects, i.e. “railways”, “Railways”, etc. Fork99 (talk) 22:25, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Our usual convention suggests keeping North–South line, with an en dash, as in North–South MRT line, North–South Rail Link, etc. A space might imply the northernmost of several South lines (and we generally don't use "-" here). If any title is wrong, it's that East–West line needs an en dash too, to match East–West MRT line (but not most of its other entries). As for North v. Northern or Railway v. Railroad, there are pros and cons to merging. A single page will allow someone unsure of the title to find the right entry in one (long) list, but will slow down someone who already knows they're looking for a Northern Railroad rather than a North Railway, etc. Certes (talk) 23:11, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I’ve moved East West Line to East–West line.

Regarding all discussion above, I would argue for merging all of them. Some folks might not know that the other term (railway vs railroad) isn’t used outside their respective home country. Some folks might erroneously call a “Northern Railway” a “North Railway”, etc. In fact, there’s inconsistencies within my own country Australia, as an example, we can’t decide whether it’s the Main Northern railway line or the Main North railway line. Another example from Australia is the company that is officially called “Southern Shorthaul Railroad”, but as “railroad” isn’t commonly used here, some folks erroneously call it “Southern Shorthaul Railway”.

While having yet another look, I found more unnecessary dab page overlaps:

• Northern Line (disambiguation), North Line
• Eastern Line, East Line
• Southern Line, South Line
• Western Line, West Line

Literally no idea what to do with these. Fork99 (talk) 23:27, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

On second thought, maybe don’t merge the “Line” ones as there’s links to articles other than railway lines, and they all have “see also” links to the other respective dab pages. Fork99 (talk) 23:33, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

A few observations. While Railroad and Railway aren't necessarily interchangeable when it comes to the proper nouns in a company name, I think it's fine to treat them as such for a dab page (as is already done with the Southern Railroad/Southern Railway). North railway (Austria) is disambiguated like that probably because it's that way on the German Wikipedia; the dab page is at Nordbahn (lit. 'northern railway' or 'northern railway line'). Note that we also have Südbahn, which again follows the example of the German Wikipedia of treating de:Southern Railway and de:Südbahn as distinct proper names, though they arguably mean the same thing. Mackensen (talk) 22:25, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

This topic is way too complex for a retired fellow like me to get involved with. I'd just like to note, for those who may not be aware of it, that in the United States from the 19th century onwards it was common practice when a railroad was reorganized or bought or sold or whatever, to keep the name just as it was, merely changing Railroad to Railway - or vice versa. The terms were, in fact, interchangeable. A glance at the corporate history of most American roads will quickly confirm this. Textorus (talk) 22:04, 8 July 2023 (UTC)