Talk:Clostridium difficile

This page must be a disambiguation, not a redirect

The topic of Clostridium difficile refers primarily to a species of bacteria and secondarily to a disease it can cause. It is illogical to redirect to the disease when the primary meaning of the term is the species of bacteria.

There are almost 300 articles with this link. I checked incoming links in a random manner without attempting to favor those likely to favor one meaning over the other. Of the first 10 articles and items with incoming links I checked, 6 of the links really meant the bacteria, 2 of the links really meant the disease, and one article had the link twice, with one link aimed at the bacteria and one at the disease. So the preponderance of incoming links appears to be the bacteria. I have edited those 10 articles appropriately.

Articles that should have linked to Clostridium difficile (bacteria)

Bacteria, Antibiotics, Antimicrobial resistance, {{Gram-positive firmicutes diseases}}, Ethanol, Clostridium, Quinolone

Articles that should have linked to Clostridium difficile colitis

Colitis, Ampicillin

Article that should have linked to both

List of infectious diseases

Since it appears that a majority of the incoming links are intended for the bacteria, with a strong minority intended for the disease, this page must be a disambiguation page. Let's clean up these links. —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:36, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

• The Disambig fix list for Clostridium difficile may be helpful. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 12:23, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

The bacteria is plainly the primary topic and should have this title. Anything else can be fixed with hatnotes. As the majority of incoming links are for the bacteria, that as well says give it the primary name and stop messing with 300 odd articles. There is also the issue that the disease is only a partial title match so does not really belong on a dab page anyway. SpinningSpark 23:26, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Clostridium difficile/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

The abreviation for Clostridium is Cl. C. is the abreviation for Corynebacterium, e.g. C. diphtheriae, and so C. diff. sounds as if the organism is the causative organism of diphtheria. Frosty wind 12:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 12:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 01:53, 5 May 2016 (UTC)