Talk:Brown pitohui

How much information to include in entries

The guidelines at MOS:DABENTRY are intended to help Wikipedia editors know how much information to include in entry lines. Two relevant directives are:

• Keep in mind that the primary purpose of the disambiguation page is to help people find the specific article they want quickly and easily.
• Keep the description associated with a link to a minimum, just sufficient to allow the reader to find the correct link.

Both points say in different ways that the objective is to help the reader identify which entry is "wanted" or "correct". Readers may come with varying pieces of knowledge, so we can provide more than one fact about each entry. For example, for biographical entries, we include birth and death years if available, nationalities, and career information, because any of these might be the clue that identifies the correct entry. For biological entries, some readers will be clued by scientific name. Some readers will be clued by the part of the world where the life form is found. Some readers will be clued by coloration or other distinguishing features. Some readers will be clued by diet. In a totally made-up example, there would be nothing wrong with the following disambiguation:

Mellow trumpeter may refer to:

• Alberta swan (Cygnus albertus), a swan endemic to Alberta and Manitoba, Canada
• Robust swan (Anser rubustus), a goose (not an actual swan) endemic to the southeastern United States

That way, we help readers who know:

• the genus name
• that it is or isn't an actual swan
• where the animal is found

Providing species names is helpful, not harmful. —Anomalocaris (talk) 20:28, 3 May 2017 (UTC)