Talk:Charles Allen House

Unnecessary

This page is completely unnecessary. Redirecting it to Allen House makes more sense. Both of these entries are on that page, and it is senseless to duplicate content like this. The page fits in under the broader Allen House criteria. If this page is necessary, why not make a John Allen House and add the 4 or 5 of those on the Allen House dab page to it? There are in fact more John Allen Houses than Charles Allen Houses.. Of course that is not an actual suggestion. This page should be merged into the broader dab page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 04:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I usually have created big dab pages at Lastname House and smaller ones at more specific Firstname Lastname House names, and believe this is consistent with other disambiguation practice and policy. These smaller dabs serve persons who type in a search on the more specific name. I don't know why i missed creating John Allen House dab page; that should be done. All of this is pretty secondary to creating mainspace articles, in the bigger picture; dab pages are not real articles. It's not worth much arguing about negative policy for disambiguation pages, among serious editors; dab pages should basically be created freely and there shouldn't be a lot of hassles about it. Since i did create the specific structure for this one, i think it should be kept. --doncram (talk) 05:14, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I rather expect you don't have the patience for an extended discussion about the pros and cons. But, one reason to have a specific dab page rather than just a redirect to Lastname House dab page, is so that the structure is self-obvious and self-defending. It surprises me that you choose to delete it, being aware that there are more places than one of the exact name. The more expected threat would be editors who want to create one of the named place articles, and who would replace the redirect with an article, because on the bigger linked page they only notice their one of the multiple places of this name. Having them all listed on this dab page gives them the info they need to see that they should not create an article at the "Charles Allen House" name. Setting up the specific dab, upfront, is my preferred strategy for reducing later maintenance and conflicts. Of course, new editors arrive all the time with unexpected ways to cause contention, but still, one tries. --doncram (talk) 05:22, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

When the article was redirected to Allen House, any user that typed in "Charles Allen House" would arrive at a page that showed the Charles Allen Houses on it, as well as other ___ Allen Houses. It doesn't matter if the links are here or there; they still see them. This page is no more averting the future conflicts than the bigger Allen House dab is. As such, I fall back to my original position.. that as much content should be in one place as possible.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:44, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

You have far more confidence than i do that readers will both look for and find multiple occurrences of "Charles Allen House" or "J. B. Allen House" in a long dab page. You only know there were 2 or more because you were the one who encountered the specific dab pages and overwrote them with redirects (for clarity to others: which i reverted, restoring this and the other dab page). I find that many/most editors cannot insert a new entry at the appropriate point in a geographically-sorted list, especially if it is not heavy-handedly identified as being sorted by state then town. I think giving this Charles Allen House dab page is the definitive way to dummy-proof against someone claiming that the Charles Allen House name is not taken. Your mileage may vary. That's my judgment of best, most dummy-proof treatment here. You probably find my arguing this as heavy-handed, something to react against; I am sorry for that. I am just responding in what i think is appropriate mode to somewhat conservatively oppose making a change from proven practice that others have found acceptable and good. I find your opposition on this point to be only mildly novel. There are always newly arriving editors who have a different take on how disambiguation should be done, and usually it is a mistake to go backwards and delete structure that has been built to serve a purpose. I am afraid this is too much discussion for you already. --doncram (talk) 06:40, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I knew there was more than one John Allen House just by looking at the full list, right? I didn't take the time to count the exact number of occurrences, but I still noticed that there was more than one. If I had been looking specifically for "John Allen House", I probably would have counted. In much the same way, people looking for "Charles Allen House" will notice more than one of the specific thing they are looking for. There's also a "Ctrl+F" (or "Cmd+F" on a Mac) function that will search for all "Charles Allen Places" on a single page, which many users use. Reader stupidity is no reason for duplicative content. Either this should be a redirect or the entries here should be taken off the bigger list. I suggest the former.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Here's some more information for you. I realize the reason why i had created the Charles Allen House and J. B. Allen House dab pages is that I was able to detect the need for those by my running a program on NRIS data. For each, there are two NRHP-listed places of exactly that name. In March 2010 I was completing out a drive to create dabs for all these program-found cases where a dab page need was identified. Since then, because the dab page exists, others like KudzuVine have been finding and fixing the now-ambiguous links in NRHP county list-articles (because 2 list-articles would have entries linking to "J. B. Allen House" dab page, and those dab-links can be detected because the dab page exists and then fixed easily using the dab page information). My program did not detect the need for a "John Allen House" dab because there is only one NRHP-listed place of exactly that name (the other two we have noticed include also a middle initial or a middle name). Creating a dab page now "sends the correct information back" (makes the info available to anyone running a dablink-check tool) to the relevant one county list-article that currently displaying the "John Allen House" item.

Having the small dab pages exist "sends" the information back, and provides a clear basis for the decision to rename the 2 J. B., 2 Charles, and 1 John Allen House article names to include "(Town, State)" in their titles. Readers and editors can find the dab page. In general I only will append (Town, State) to suggested article names where there exists a dab page providing documentation of the need for such disambiguation.

On the other hand, a different way to manage this (that you suggest) would be, for any case where there is this ambiguity of name, to create a redirect to the larger "Allen House" dab page. With that, there is also some "sending back" of info to the NRHP county-list-articles, e.g. the "John Allen House" one would point to a redirect to the Allen House dab page. However, the quality of that "sending back" is not as good: another editor could quite likely identify that there is only one truly exact match to John Allen House name, and choose to go differently, by not using the (City, State) disambiguation, and by using the redirect location to create the article for that one John Allen Place. Bascically that editor would be judging that the "John C. Allen House" one is distinctively different, and disambiguation with (Town, State) is not needed. And, unfortunately, this would be played out almost indetectably by a conversion of a redirect, rather than positively, explicitly, clearly, by review at the disambiguation page itself. Similarly, there could be other assertions that any one of the John Allen House ones is the wp:primaryusage for the name, in which case the redirect should be redirected to that one article, perhaps to the John C. Allen House one. The place for such assertions about primary usage or not should be at the Talk page of the corresponding dab page. It is natural to have the disambiguation page to allow for these types of information-sharing and decisions.

Also, maintenance is clearer with the disambiguation page existing. It is true that there is some duplication, and that adding a new John T. Allen House article to wikipedia would require adding it to both the Allen House page and also to the John Allen House page. But the John Allen House page is mentioned at the bottom of the Allen House page, and there are disambiguation editors available to scan for any discrepances, and the maintenance is at least straightforward to understand and proceed with. Note, if one of the J. B. Allen Houses turns out to be non-wikipedia-notable (say it has been demolished and delisted and never got an article and we agree it does not need one), then updating the implementation everywhere is straightforward (including redirecting the now-one-entry-disambiguation page to the one now-primary article at J. B. Allen House (Town, State), or moving that article to the now-non-ambiguous J. B. Allen House name).

With the redirects-based approach, maintenance is not clear. If one J. B. Allen House gets dropped from the Allen House page because of non-notability, there is no signal / no obvious prompt to update the redirect. Actually you would want to delete the now-no-longer-needed redirect. Also, when redirects should exist or not is not clear. You would have redirects to the Allen House page existing for any Firstname Allen cases where there are exact matches on the Allen House page, and where there are near-exact-matches like for the John Allen House case. Should there then be a redirect to the dab page for the John C. Allen House article name? Why not set up a redirect for any/all of the Firstname Allen House entries on the page. I think it would be unclear what the policy is, and why. With an explicit dab page, the prior editor assertions are clear, and there is a natural point to discuss any questions. (For example, someone could question whether the one place named John Allen House exactly should get the primary-usage name, and so on. Then editors could investigate whether the John C. Allen House one is really commonly known as John Allen House and is more primary-usage than the other one, etc., etc., but occurring naturally at the Talk page of the dab about John Allen House places.) Upon all this reflection, i think there are multiple reasons along the lines of having a clear audit trail, and having clear locations for discussion of possible changes, and having straightforward maintenance decisions, that all point towards having explicit small dab pages like this one. Whew. Again, I imagine this is more than you want to consider. --doncram (talk) 13:27, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm beginning to think you purposefully write these long walls of text specifically to discourage editors from replying. Stick to the the status quo at all costs, eh? Anyway, the whole "sending information back" bid is moot. My dab link checker will tell you if the page is a dab even if it is a redirect also... and will in fact distinguish between redirected dabs and regular ones. A dab is a dab regardless of a redirect. Any respectable editor knows not to create an article at a redirect unless there is a very good reason for doing so, and even if some novice does, it's not like the article can't be moved. If they're dumb enough to start an article at a redirect, why then are they not dumb enough to start one at a disambiguation page? As for specific places for discussing content, that's what talk page sections are for. If someone wants to talk about a specific entry on the large list, (s)he can simply name a section on the talk page for that specific listing. In fact it's even desirable to have all the discussions at a central location (and thus the birth of WikiProjects?) so guidelines can be set and the same issues are not encountered and argued multiple times. So basically it's what I've said from the beginning. Keep as much in one spot as possible. Not everyone wants thousands of pages on their watchlist like you.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 15:59, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I have a different opinion from you, partly because I have more experience having new editors arrive at articles that i watch. So give me some credit, maybe i am a little more in tune with likely problems and how to try to avoid them, because of that. --doncram (talk) 03:59, 29 July 2010 (UTC)