Help talk:Incomplete disambiguation

Rationale for creating this help page

See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 January 16 § Template:R from ambiguous term for the discussion that led to my creation of this help page. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:40, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Descriptive title

To editor Wbm1058: This seems to be a gnarly one. Just when I think I've found one, the title seems better suited for {{R from ambiguous term}}. Can you link to where you found "descriptive titles" connected to the other three types of incomplete disambiguation? To my mind, a "descriptive title" is one created by Wikipedia editors who consider it to be the COMMONNAME but is just their fabrication and eventually redirects to the correct title of an article. It may or may not be ambiguous, and if it is, it would be tagged with R from ambiguous term, wouldn't it?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  15:32, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I found it at Wikipedia:DESCRIPDIS; however, it doesn't connect specifically with incomplete disambiguations. Perhaps we should rethink "descriptive titles"? Not entirely sure they should be included in the table.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  15:49, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Probably doesn't hurt to include it, even if only to say that "as more latitude is allowed to form descriptive and unique titles, presumably this latitude will be used to form sufficiently unique titles that further disambiguation will not be necessary." – wbm1058 (talk) 16:36, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

It may not "hurt" to include it; however, it is only helpful when an example is included, and as I said, whenever I think I've found an example, it seems better suited to the ambiguous term rcat.

Also, the table appears to give the false impression that incomplete disambiguations must target disambiguation pages. We should remember what the rcat itself instructs... Such titles should redirect to an appropriate disambiguation page (or section of it), or to a more complete disambiguation.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  16:53, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Example: Philip W. Anderson (editor)Philip W. Anderson (film editor)  Paine  17:07, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Philip W. Anderson (editor) is not an incomplete disambiguation. There are no other editors named Philip W. Anderson. It's just an {{R from other disambiguation}}. wbm1058 (talk) 14:45, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

We must agree to disagree. The distinction you make is too subtle for most editors, especially those inexperienced editors who take up redirect categorization, to make. To them and to me, Anderson's redirect is an obvious incomplete disambiguation, and there are many more like it in Category:Redirects from incomplete disambiguations. Some of those will fall under your distinction, and some will not. In any event, their targets are not dab pages, and it would be deceptive to those editors who rely on Help pages to indicate otherwise.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  16:09, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

To editors ­wbm1058 and Certes: a hypothetical argument... awhile back I considered creating the Boundless terror redirect to target the Irrational fear dab page. Would you tag that redirect as an incomplete descriptive-title disambiguation? or would you think it better suited as an ambiguous term redirect? When we nail this one down, we might be able to decide to either find more examples of incomplete descriptive-term dabs or to eliminate that type of incomplete dab from this Help page as "too rare to care".  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  03:29, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Paine, I think you're treading fearfully close to "Neelix territory", if you know what I mean (if you don't it's not important). Observing that it Terror (emotion), Terror and 😨 all redirect to fear, then boundless quantities of the same would redirect to fear as well.

{{R from synonym}}. There's probably going to be some grey titles at the edges where it really doesn't matter which template is used.

I think it makes sense that "descriptive titles" will never be incomplete disambiguation nor ambiguous terms, because one can always (and should) make sure that their "descriptive titles" are 100% unambiguous. So I suppose that line can be removed from the table. "Descriptive titles" are unique titles. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

If Boundless terror could describe multiple articles and has no primary topic then in my book it's an ambiguous term. It's also a descriptive title, but then I like to think most titles on Wikipedia are descriptive, especially the unambiguous article titles, so I don't see any need to tag it as such. Certes (talk) 10:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Which template to use

Can we give clear guidance here as to when to use {{R from incomplete disambiguation}} and when to use {{R from ambiguous term}}? Firstly, the common features: both are on redirects from a title to a page which is may not be the article the reader was seeking but links there. This destination is most commonly but not always a disambiguation page.

My opinion is that such a redirect is from incomplete disambiguation if the title contains a qualifier as in 1 (album). It's from ambiguous term if it doesn't contain a qualifier but is a naturally occurring search term, such as Mike Jones. The concept of "qualifier" leaves some wiggle room. Personally I think the US in New York, US is a qualifier but the L. in Edward L. Beach isn't; other editors will disagree on both counts.

Supporting evidence: R from ambiguous term had 286 uses with parentheses; 10,183 without. R from incomplete disambiguation had 21,647 uses with parentheses; 1,278 without. Having parentheses doesn't equate to having a qualifier, but it's close. So there's a strong correlation between having a qualifier and using R from incomplete disambiguation rather than R from ambiguous term. Further reading: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 January 16#Template:R from ambiguous term.

I've not boldly added this to the essay because I don't think it yet has consensus. Further reading: Template talk:R from ambiguous term#R from incomplete disambiguation.

Any thoughts? Certes (talk) 10:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

That all sounds very agreeable. The murky parts you mention where other editors would disagree might need a little massaging with Rfc; however, it sounds as if you've captured the essentials so that they may continue to be nailed down.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  03:18, 29 January 2018 (UTC)