Talk:Austin Bay

disambiguation page (or, something like that) needed

Some existing links are "intended" to refer to the person

At least two of the references that currently link to [point to] the article Austin Bay, namely:

• the "Notable alumni" paragraph (currently the last paragraph) of

List_of_Rice_University_residential_colleges#Lovett_College, and

• the last paragraph (actually, the last 2 words) of John_Quarterman#Biography,
  

plus a talk page:

• Talk:The_Path_to_9/11
  

*all* refer to Austin Bay the person, not Austin Bay the body of water. Hence it appears that Austin Bay(person) (or -- should it be Austin Bay(author)?) is already known to be somewhat notable, and that there should be an article about the person (plus -- presumably -- a disambiguation page).

Could we re-name this (already-existing) article?

Is it too late to re-name the article currently named Austin Bay to something like Austin Bay(body of water)? In order for that "default" article name, Austin Bay, to be available to be used for Austin Bay, the person?
(Doing this, would also turn those dead-end links "red" [3 of them are mentioned above], until the article about the person [/slash, author] exists) ...which, IMHO, would be a good thing, because currently someone quite likely might click on one of those links, expecting some info about the person (the author), and will hit this "brick wall" article about some place in Canada, with no disambiguation page features.

The person is ^{(outside Canada, at least!)} more notable than the body of water

The evidence from doing a Google search:
(i.e. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=austin+bay&btnG=Search) suggests way more notability for Austin Bay the person, (/the author), than for Austin Bay the place. That is, far more persons (such as, ["non-Canadian"] wikipedia readers) have -- (or, should have) -- heard of Austin Bay the person, (/the author), than Austin Bay the place.

references for "disambiguation page [...] needed":

Some references have been included, to help whomever would like to "start off" the [new] article (the article about the author.)

Just my 0.02 ... --Mike Schwartz (talk) 23:33, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

thread of replies (confusing?)

Commenting on this entire topic as someone who has some experience with disambiguation.

If, as you say, the author Austin Bay is better-known in the English-speaking world as a whole than the body of water, then the appropriate course of action would be to rename this article to something like Austin Bay (body of water), and create Austin Bay (with no qualifier, as it is the primary topic for this term) as an article about the author (which could be started as a stub and improved with time). See WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Be aware that consensus should be reached on this page before taking this course of action, because some people (wrongly) see the use of an unqualified article name as the encyclopedia endorsing that use of the term as the most important one.

If no primary topic can be agreed on, the appropriate course of action is to (1) move this article to something like Austin Bay (body of water), (2) create Austin Bay (author) about the author, and (3) create Austin Bay as a disambiguation page.

A final note: I consider myself fairly well-informed, and I had never heard of either the author or the body of water before I saw your question at the Help Desk. If many people share my lack of knowledge on this, it may mean it would be difficult to reach consensus on using the author as the primary topic. --Tkynerd (talk) 03:23, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your informative explanations and advice. I understand that reaching consensus might be difficult, and I do not know how to go about it. (That is, how to get the ball rolling, to start to try to cause it [reaching consensus] to happen). I think the "appropriate course of action (if no primary topic can be agreed on)" might be the easiest solution. It might well avoid spending some "not very fruitful" time on trying to reach consensus about what to do, (IMHO a worthwhile goal) (that is, not spending/wasting time/effort "trying" to decide).

As for opting for that "NO primary topic" approach, I don't see any major "disadvantages" (if any). One [minor] "disadvantage": some readers might have to click through from a disambiguation page, to whichever article they intend to read. Not a big deal, IMHO (partly because, some of the most popular "cross-reference" links, would probably bypass the disambiguation page). Another possible issue: risking incurring the ire (or disagreement) of some readers / editors, who might already "(wrongly) see the use of an unqualified article name as the encyclopedia endorsing" one thing or another. I hope that doesn't happen, but in any event [as you already sorta said], it should not. Does anyone have any comments? ("such as", about including some of the above material -- and footnotes -- about Austin Bay (author) in a new article with that title)? Thanks, --Mike Schwartz (talk) 19:10, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey Mike. Another important point is that if this page is moved to another name, incoming links to it will need to be fixed to point to Austin Bay (body of water) or whatever name is decided on. This is usually the responsibility of the person who initiates the move...so, that'd be you. :) There aren't that many, though. --Tkynerd (talk) 20:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, -- thanks for that (um), reminder. While on that subject, how would we determine whether the new name should be Austin Bay (body of water) or something else? (Such as: Austin Bay (sea) or something like that)? Some more possibilities, (found at Body_of_water):

* Austin Bay (inlet)

* Austin Bay (loch)

* Austin Bay (sound)

I hope we can avoid a big disagreement.
PS: Is my indenting style wrong? Should it be zero for me, one for someone else? instead of adding a level for each level of reply? --Mike Schwartz (talk) 22:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey Mike. You're indenting correctly; the usual practice is to keep indenting until it gets ridiculous, then return to zero and preface the post with "(outdent)" or something similar. As for the name, I think CambridgeBayWeather did well (see below) with the new name. --Tkynerd (talk) 18:37, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I moved it. Austin Bay is now a disambiguation. The three links to the author are now Austin Bay (author]] and are of course red. After looking at Category:Bays of the Great Lakes, Category:Bays, Category:Bays of British Columbia, Wikipedia:WikiProject Lakes#Naming, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains#Naming conventions and Wikipedia:WikiProject Rivers#Naming it seemed to me that the logical place for the article was Alert Bay (Nunavut) Austin Bay (Nunavut). Of course if it turns out that the author is the main subject then change Austin Bay to reflect that. I live on Victoria Island and I have no idea where this bay is so I supect that the author is better known. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 04:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

disambiguation page created

Thanks ((CambridgeBayWeather) (talk)) for creating the disambiguation page. A couple of comments:

• Choice of titles for the [existing] article about the body of water: Austin Bay (Nunavut) seems fine. (If there were any objections, this talk page would probably be the place for them) (right?) Someone probably needs to check, to see whether the references to it (to Austin_Bay) (the ones not intended to refer to the author) have been updated yet, so that they can "bypass" the disambiguation page. (maybe that has already been done?)

It appears that this has been done. I clicked on "What links here" ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Austin_Bay_(Nunavut)") and it looks good. Thank You! --Mike Schwartz (talk) 02:59, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

• [quote:] "if it turns out that the author is the main subject [...]"; [my 0.02:] I agree that this issue probably does not have to be decided now. "For example", I noticed that the article title Matisyahu_(reggae_artist) currently re-directs to the article with the title of just plain Matisyahu. Then, that article has something near the top, coded as

{{for|the 2nd century B.C.E. Jewish high priest of the Maccabees|Mattathias}} and it displays as

For the 2nd century B.C.E. Jewish high priest of the Maccabees, see Mattathias.

which seems to work OK. So, at some time in the future, if something like that is appropriate to be done "here", it won't be "too late". (right?)

Thank you, --Mike Schwartz (talk) 02:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. As I said this appears to be a very minor bay and I checked with several people, including a couple from Kugluktuk, and only one had heard of the place. And yes I updated the links. It's a minor obsession that if I make a move I have to clean up. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 10:26, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Another 0.02 comment from Mike Schwartz (talk): I did a little bit of investigating, and it appears that some of the pages that do still link to the plain name, (Austin Bay) do so for good reasons -- such as this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Canadian_Territories_articles_by_quality_log

As an example of those "good reasons", the above mentioned page contains this: {{Log}}, which expands to say this:

so I guess that -- ((the part about "[...] links should not be disambiguated [...]")) -- is the reason why some of the links there, were deliberately left "not" disambiguated. (right?) --Mike Schwartz (talk) 03:05, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes that's correct. It appears though that the bot is not running. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 17:56, 18 January 2009 (UTC)