Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)

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WikiProject Manual of Style

This page falls within the scope of WikiProject Manual of Style, a drive to identify and address contradictions and redundancies, improve language, and coordinate the pages that form the MoS guidelines.

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[edit] PROPOSAL: Consider DABs as meta-articles

07-June-2009: The current terminology as "non-articles" is very confusing, across all of Wikipedia:

Disambiguation pages ("dab pages") are non-article pages,
in the article namespace...

Honestly, that sounds like "double-speak" to allow POV-pushing something about the handling of dab pages, forbidding something that would (normally) be allowed in "real" article pages. (What is the hidden agenda in the MOS:DAB?)

Instead, the term should be "meta-article pages" in the MOS:DAB wording. Otherwise, there is so much confusion:

If DABs are not articles, why do they get "AfD" not "DABfD"?
When someone wants to modify a DAB page, can't they just "edit an article page"??
If DABs are not articles, then why do they get counted in the total article pages by {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} = 2,932,651...??

Instead, call the DAB pages "meta-articles" whose primary use is to list other article titles, rather than function as detailed articles. Then DABs become a special form of article page, which can have an AfD, be edited as an article, and counted by {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}. (Wow, what an amazing solution!) The MOS:DAB is trying too hard to force unusual rules, and saying "non-article pages in the article namespace" is like saying "we are so wiki-confused we can't put pages in the correct space" and so "non-white is white, or perhaps white is black". There is simply no need to force the terminology, in some sideways effort to force the rules. It is yet another source of embarrassment in Wikipedia, as seen by people who don't realize "almost everything in Wikipedia is invented out of thin air" rather than official policies to be blamed on the Wikimedia Foundation. At least, try to make the inventions seem logical, and they probably will become so, once reality is reconsidered. Call the DAB pages "meta-articles" as a special form of article page. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:32, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see it as a source of embarrassment, more as something that people would see as a technical point. I mean, is anyone really marking off points in some scorebook somewhere if we don't use the right terminology to talk about disambiguation pages?

That said, of course they're not quite "articles". Of course they're a kind of "meta-article". Of course they're in the "article namespace". Does this actually bother many people? Is it really necessary to change our definitions in order for people to know what to do? In other words, what's the practical upshot of this proposal? Is it just that we change what we call them, but do everything else the same? -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:54, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I see the upshot as very minor, but still positive, with no negative repercussions. In other words, Pareto optimal. Calling them "meta-articles" means people won't be surprised that they are counted when one counts articles. Calling them "non-articles" makes it hard to rationalize counting them. The choices are three:

Leave them as non-articles, leave them in the count of articles, and live with the inconsistency
Leave them as non-articles, stop counting them as articles to eliminate the inconsistency
Call them meta-articles, keep counting them as articles, so consistency in nomenclature and counting rules

Option 2 is more work than it is worth. Option 3 is a tiny bit of work for a decent gain. Option 1 leaves the inconsistency.--Sphilbrick (talk) 15:19, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, it sounds as if it won't have any effect on how I, an editor, deal with DAB pages. Therefore, I'd support letting those who count articles do whatever they want to make that task make a maximum of sense to them. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:41, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal re dab and radio frequencies

I'm posting this in both Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Radio Stations and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages).

The canonical dab is reached by a user because George Foo is an eminent scientist, a hip-hop artist and an athlete. The user is interested in the scientist, the artist or the athlete, and (with rare exceptions) has little interest in the coincidence that they have the same name. In this case, a well-written dab is a simple list, organized in an obvious way, so the user can move on to the subject of interest.

In some cases, a dab may be more functional that simply disambiguating otherwise coincidences.

Radio frequencies are a perfect example of this phenomenon. A user searching for a particular frequency may also be interested in two dimension of the dab - various stations in various locations sharing the same frequency, and frequencies that are nearby (in the sense of spectrum) as well as nearly (in the sense of location).

Thus a good dab for radio frequencies will help the user in bother areas of interest. In fact, the well-designed dab may move from being a meta-article to an actual article. For example, if I'm interested in 1080 AM, I may be interested in the geographical spread of the various stations utilizing this frequency. If the dab had a map showing this information, it could be helpful in its own right. In addition, the map might use pogs of various color r size to indicate the strength of the station, adding further useful information (I realize a day and night version might be necessary).

Second, the user may be interested in adjacent frequencies, in the case of bleed-over (or whatever the right technical term may be). A well-designed page would be organized so it would be easy to do this.

Wikipedia is a big place. Whenever I think up a new idea, the odds are high it has already been implemented, and I just have to find it. If something like this has already been done, or is in progress, please point me to it. If not, I'll work up a mock-up of how I think such a page might work, so we can discuss whether it is useful. My current thinking (starting with just AM frequencies) is a large page, one section for each frequency - and each frequency containing a table of stations, sortable by station, city and state (separate tables by country), and a map showing the location and strength of each station. The dab redirect would bring you to the section of the page, so you can scroll up or down to see adjacent frequencies. I'd also like to do overlay maps of adjacent frequencies, but that for another day.--Sphilbrick (talk) 16:44, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea, but it doesn't sound like a disambiguation page. 1080 AM, for example, is a radio frequency (although really the page ought to be at 1080 KHz), and a page about that frequency should link, among other things, to individual radio stations broadcasting on that frequency (conceivably, all of them in the world, if the information is available). But that's an article, not a disambiguation page; the fact that some radio stations might use their frequency as a brand name, and therefore that people looking for information about a particular station might search for "1080 AM", does not change the fact that the primary topic is the frequency, not individual stations. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:45, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Order of entries: people

At the risk of exposing my scrivenerhood to ridicule by having occasion to ask, and by caring about the answer:
I make a point of trying to make hndis and surname pages maximally efficient for those using them for Dab'n. That is, i assume the user is there bcz,

_ _ in the former case, they know or recall only the given and sur- names (not the initial or minor spelling variation -- and gofforbid we start standardizing Dab'g suffixes, or anyone tries to remember whether it's "(singer)" or "(musician)" or "(frontman)" or the name of the band, or

_ _ in the latter, they know or recall only the surname.

In the celebrated case of Palin, there was enormous fuss fueled by Order of entries ("In most cases, place the items in order of usage...") and a consequent dispute over whether Sarah was more significant than Michael, and if so, were Todd & IIRC Bristol as well. IMO that should be a cautionary tale, counseling that in the case of people, the literal construction of the present guideline (or rather, discounting the opening qualification) is a subjective trap, as to the most prominent few (and BTW provides no usable guidance among the less so). Before leaving that specific case, i'll mention for clarity that Palin now

carries a {{surname}} tag and is thus an SIA,
is the target of Palin (disambiguation))
only appears to link to itself, and
has been stably in alpha order so far this year.

Perhaps the hndis case is clearer (tho, despite the reasonable distinction, IMO users more often use surname pages for Dab'n than out of interest in the surname itself -- or in those sharing the surname, as a group, except as a means of getting to the article on a specific one of them). And it is a hndis case that brings me here today.
The significant difference of opinion regarding Michael Fisher (disambiguation) is my reorganization of it into chronological order, rather than as i found it, which was

alpha by first initial, and

(within those groups) alpha by which variation on "Michael" is used in our title, and

(similarly) whether our title includes a middle name, and

(...) presumably alpha by middle name, and

(...) alpha by the disambiguating suffix in our title.

I admit that this has the effect -- not a noticeable virtue -- of making it clear to editors exactly where to place an entry. In that, it is fully in the spirit of the "German thoroughness" of the de:Preußische Instruktionen, whose first rule i learned in one lesson in Berlin. I was seeking a work that American genealogists call "Meyer's Orts", after the first two words of its German title. The rule is "erste unabhängige Substantiv, Dummkopf" (first independent noun) so that (translating the title verbatim) Meyer's Place- and Transportation-Lexicon of the German Empire obviously will be found under L. (And in case you're wondering, "Empire" seems to be the only other independent noun.)
IMO -- since a hndis is a species of Dab and the purpose of a Dab is to disambiguate -- this is, however, the worst possible kind of impediment to users: if you want Michoel Fisher and remember the spelling of his name, the hndis page will take you quickly right to him using your instinctive binary search. (But if you knew that spelling, why aren't you already on that page, instead of on a Dab page?) Likewise with Michael Fisher (politician): great as long as you know his Dab'g sfx isn't "Vermont" or "Representative" or "U.S." IMO chronology is the only criterion for ordering people on a hndis (or for that matter surname) page that is useful to the users whose needs it is intended to meet. You don't always know what period a person belongs in, but there is no other single property, other than nationality, that even comes close to being as frequently known -- at least roughly, which is all you need to make it useful in guiding a binary search of a chronological list. There may be languages of WP where nationality would be valuable, but in en: British and American people predominated, and with them you have to decide whether to group those described as "English" under E, B, or U, and Americans under A or U -- and at least 25% of the other countries are hard for most people to remember or spell.
I'm not asking for a change in wording the guidelines, but a colleague has reverted (including fixes clearly mandated by People, but never mind!) saying MoSDab doesn't mandate chronological order. Well, it does mandate common sense, and it specifically does so in the case of order (as is implicit in "In most cases,..."). Still, i'd like some feedback, on this talk page, to point to, at least that alpha order is not significantly better than random order, and chronology is better.
--Jerzy•t 00:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Alpha is the best way, IMHO, it's the way we are accustomed to looking things up (people, too). It's also objective and not liable to change because of the morning's papers and the larger the list, the better alpha order works, e.g.: try figuring out which entry on Adams (surname) should be eleventh vs. twelfth objectively. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:43, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
- I'm flabbergasted. In fact, i'm paralyzed by my indecision about whether it's more urgent to denounce in detail
  1. the assertion that we should use a method that is widely used in situations utterly unlike such a dab, simply because there are many (non-Dab) cases where it is either the most effective possible one or the only imaginably feasible one -- in contrast to the very familiar
    
    chronological lists of events or holders of a common position,
    
    lists of countries by continent, and cities by country, or
    
    organization and ancestor charts represented as hierarchical lists (and descendant charts similarly, but with each person's offspring chronologically by birth date within family)
    
    OR
  2. what i hope reflects mere carelessness or time pressure: citing Adams (surname) as if its list of 3 dozen Dab pages for specific Adams names were well suited to the typical user who doesn't know their target's given name, and without acknowledging its requirement for users to know that
    
    chess is a sport, but mountain-climbing is not
    
    running a railroad is only "other" if your military rank was low enough,
    
    writings on religion are not literature, and
    
    mutiny in the Royal Navy is not a military matter,
    
    OR
  3. my colleague's apparent belief
    
    that we can't afford another Palin incident, and/or
    
    that a good Dab-page design can sacrifice users' needs, to avoid conflict between pairs of editors who can't resolve close but insignificant decisions by one walking away saying (hopefully only to themself) "You win: you are a bigger asshole than me."
Well, i guess i'm over the paralysis, even if there's more to say.
--Jerzy•t 22:35, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

BTW, Adams (surname) is not a disambiguation page. WikiProject Anthroponymy is not WikiProject Disambiguation. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:49, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Basically it's acting as though it is - are you contending that set index articles are outside the scope of this project and that MOSDAB does not apply to them? So the various names on the Adams page can be linked ad nausem? We would have a lot less uniform encyclopedia and it would degrade quickly as most of the dab pages can be claimed by other projects and they can impose whatever editing MOS they want and this project becomes superfluous. I think that is not the answer and that pages that guide users to articles as Adams (surname) (especially, as most surname articles, this has no meat on the name and no references but does have a list of things that Adams may refer to) does is properly within dab project and MOSDAB applies. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Tweaks to ordering

I made a few tweaks to the ordering to handle disambiguation by commas (common in geographic entries, and not otherwise described in the MOS), and to explicitly permit ordering alphabetically where appropriate (this seems to be the norm for most dab pages anyway, so let's formalize it), and was also the subject of the inquiry above. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:56, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Let's not formalize it. Some pages use chronological or reverse chronological ordering where likelihood ordering is indeterminate. As long as the entries remain easy to locate, the ordering-within-isolikelihood should be left to the individual page consensus. Not every page choice needs to be formalized across all pages. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

But removing the alphabetizing seems to formalize ordering based on usage, which is mostly subjective - where is there support in the current MOSDAB for putting things in alpha order without what you removed? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:00, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Additional input

I'd like to invite other opinions at Talk:Meros#Wiktionary link -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:32, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)

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[edit] PROPOSAL: Consider DABs as meta-articles

[edit] Proposal re dab and radio frequencies

[edit] Order of entries: people

[edit] Tweaks to ordering

[edit] Additional input

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