Talk:Harry Smith

Spacing

     I'm removing the line of markup reading

;In sports: <!-- to aid disambiguation using pop-ups, please don't leave a blank line before the sub-heading. Thanks -->

in favor of a section heading. That's bcz

_ the non-sports figures at the top should not be subordinated to the multitude of moderately to barely notable sports figures, and

_ no suitable heading (I've ruled out "Real notables".) offers itself for the top, but

_ the first existing non-section heading, especially with the non-spacing requested, is not sufficiently visible to comfortably inform readers at a glance of which portion they probably need.

     For the record:

1. The first consideration in editing is to make the page in question useful to readers, and browsers are likely to display, as with

• Something

Heading

• Something else

less perceived spacing preceding the heading than following it. (That's probably an optical illusion, IMO due to the bullets being rendered with their centers below the center of the line.) This creates some tendency to misperceive the heading as being instead subordinate to the last bullet point preceding it. That means that an extra line is a reasonable effort to overcome the problem, and more clearly attach the heading to what it refers to. (Sadly, each of the browsers i routinely use shows, with a single blank line, no difference i can see:

• Something

Heading

• Something else

So IMO either HTML remains somewhat primitive, or the Mediawiki developers have not adequately exploited it.)

2. Where a readability issue is not involved, blank lines in markup should be used where they aid editing (for all users); in this case, lack of the blank line slows editor perception of where the mark up for one subdivision ends and that of the next begins, and makes editing less efficient. (And "all users" leaves out those intimidated by the pop-up tools -- or lacking access to them, e.g. certainly those still restricted to Lynx, and maybe to less thoroly deprecated browsers.

3. Making the pop-up tools more effective is a good goal, where it doesn't interfere with 1 and 2 above. I too have noticed the typical inadequacy of the pop-ups for working out Dab-lk bypassing, and i would applaud efforts to modify them to take into account the info (which they already have) abt whether a pg is a Dab or not, and forgo truncating Dabs by the same standards they apply to articles. IMO they do a pretty good job of meaningfully truncating articles, but the real problem you are trying to solve is not bad markup, but application to Dabs of a cut-off criterion that is suitable to most articles but only to the shortest Dab pages.

--Jerzy•t 04:15, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I have read all the above, and I'm astonished.

As you noticed after starting this, omitting the blank lines has no effect on legibility, so it's not a reader issue.

So the only issue here is whether to make disambiguation easier. There are currently about a dozen undisambiguated incoming links to this page, and not only have you apparently done nothing to disambiguate them, you have made it harder for other editors to do so.

Undisambiguated links harm readers, and occur frequently as a by-product of good-faith editing. By making it much harder for editors to fix those undisambigauted links, you have inconvenienced those readers in order to make a slight difference for the small number of editors who edit the dab page. This is disproportionate: a very minor gain for a few editors cause a lot of damage for readers, so I have restored the formatting which allowed the use of popups.

Oh, and the rankings of notability argument doesn't impress me. I'm not a sports fan myself, but I don't see why sports people are less notable than others. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:28, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

    With the intention keeping us on topic without the distraction of arguments that sometimes occur about the removal of PAs and other off-topic material, i struck thru, thus, portions of the preceding contrib, having often found that the result -- making portions easily ignorable without rendering them invisible or illegible -- failed to raise objections. I also requested that editor's concurrence, in two places, but find that approach rejected, and those who wish will find the contribution above in its original form.
    Nevertheless, i shall respond to that contribution indirectly by offering, and responding directly to what is IMO more to the point and less distracting, namely a paraphrase by me of that contrib, of the 19:28, 22 June 2010 contribution by User:BrownHairedGirl, which precedes this one. (This differs from the version that she reverted by being a separate copy, without her signature, by taking up more space, and, by ruling out -- if there is any actual concern that my version would be mistaken for hers -- any such possibility.) Here is my paraphrase:

I have read all the above, and I'm astonished.
As you noticed after starting this [noted], omitting the blank lines has no effect on legibility, so it's not a reader issue.
So the only issue here is whether to make disambiguation easier. There are currently about a dozen undisambiguated incoming links to this page, and not only have you apparently done nothing to disambiguate them, you have made it harder for other editors to do so [disambiguate them]
Undisambiguated links harm readers, and occur frequently as a by-product of good-faith editing. By making it much harder for editors to fix those undisambigauted links, you have inconvenienced those readers in order to make a slight difference for the small number of editors who edit the dab page. This is disproportionate: a very minor gain for a few editors cause a lot of damage for readers, so I have restored the formatting which allowed the use of popups.
Oh, and the rankings of notability argument doesn't impress me. I'm not a sports fan myself, but I don't see why sports people are less notable than others.

--Jerzy•t 06:58, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

    (It's not bcz i lack things to say about the original topic that for the moment i'm limiting my response to peripheral clarifications; it should soon be time for me get to the core matter.)
--Jerzy•t 05:00, 10 July 2010 (UTC)^{This contribution was originally part of an edit, at the time its standard sig indicates, that was reverted and is now restored as of 06:58, 11 July 2010 (UTC).}

    I think it's worth disambiguating the term "disambiguation" in its WP contexts. (Word sense disambiguation, Category:Disambiguation, and WP:Disambiguation each casts some light on the task -- but Disambiguation (disambiguation) is a red herring for our purposes!)

1. A disambiguation page
2. Replacing a link to a Dab page with a link to an appropriate page that appears as an entry on the Dab page (a sense which BHG used at least once above, but which i always refer to as "Bypassing a disambiguation page")
3. Creation of a Dab page that has at least 2 entries
4. Following a link to a Dab page, then following a link found on it to an article

--Jerzy•t 05:00, 10 July 2010 (UTC)^{This contribution was originally part of an edit, at the time its standard sig indicates, that was reverted and is now restored as of 06:58, 11 July 2010 (UTC).}

    I said

... the non-sports figures at the top should not be subordinated to the multitude of moderately to barely notable sports figures ...

and BHG responded

... the rankings of notability argument doesn't impress me. I'm not a sports fan myself, but I don't see why sports people are less notable than others.

But it is a misreading to suggest i think being a sports figure implies deficient notability. On the other hand, there are various categories of artilces

Wikipedia:Inherent notability is an essay rather than having a formal consensus, but bears reading. It appears to me that in practice, we treat structures in the NRHP and professional athletes in some sports as "inherently notable", bcz everything in NRHP is apparently described in that generally recognized source, and bcz there are fans of those sports who dote over completing rosters. True, our main concern abt notability is the subject of WP:N, which IFAIK is concerned w/ notability almost exclusively as a yes-or-no matter. On the other hand MoSDab explicitly uses (at point 5) the criterion "ordering to best assist the reader in finding their intended article ... [e.g.] by most likely target", and it is such a criterion that i had in mind in saying "barely notable" i.e., "notable for WP purposes bcz of their inherent notability, but orders of magnitude less of interest than those in the same category who are among the 5% most of interest."
    The first 4 athlete entries -- Harry Smith (infielder), Harry Smith (1910s catcher), Harry Smith (1900s catcher), Harry Smith (boxer) -- may be a biased sample, but their 4-and-under-sentence bios surely illustrate my point: barely notable bios are overrepresented among athletic bios; thus they are sufficiently unlikely to be the Harry Smith that users seek, that putting all the 14 "In sports" bios after the 8 miscellaneous bios is a reasonable bet for improving average access time of all users who come to the Dab looking for a Harry Smith bio. It will increase the access time to the superstar-athlete Harry Smiths, but (as the rest of the cited MoSDab section clearly recognizes) the best we can hope to approach is minimization of the average access time.
--Jerzy•t 05:00, 10 July 2010 (UTC)^{This contribution was originally part of an edit, at the time its standard sig indicates, that was reverted and is now restored as of 06:58, 11 July 2010 (UTC).}

There are so many words there in such long sentences that I'm really not sure what point Jerzy is trying to make about this dab page. I think Jerzy's point is that since readers are less likely to want access to the sports bios, the non-sports bios should be at the top. But they are at the top, and that has not been in dispute, so I cannot see why this conversation is being revived. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:06, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Fl.

    Our well established usage on Dabs is consistent even (in light of the prohibition on extra blue lks) w/ Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates of birth and death: italicizing it only on Dab pgs is confusing or misleading (It suggests italicizing it everywhere in WP.) and pointless (While one need not be a fool to say " 'fl.'? Wha...?", even a fool should be expected to cope by following the link to the bio; the use of "fl." per the MoS just cited is appropriate there, and even if that IMO widely neglected guideline is neglected in the target, clarifying detail is likely to exist there.).
--Jerzy•t 18:13, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I think that guidance of italicising fl. or c. may have changed over time, but current guidance doesn't seem to support it. So fine with me to leave it without italics. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:10, 11 July 2010 (UTC)