Talk:Ironman

Gehrig

Gehrig's article calls him only the Iron Horse, not the Iron Man. Either the nickname could be added there or removed from here. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, well spotted. The evidence for his being called "Iron Man" looks a bit thin - just the title of a 1941 NYT obituary, which I'm unable to check. Everything else has "Iron Horse". I'll remove him from here. NSH001 (talk) 20:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Target

The following page-view statistics for the month of April are interesting:

Page	Viewcount
Ironman (this page)	68256
Ironman Triathlon (NSH001's preferred target)	42560
Iron Man (disambiguation) (the original target)	78293
Iron Man	699145
Iron Man (film)	444351

From this I conclude that other potential redirect targets are more than ten times as popular as Ironman Triathlon as a final destination; consequently, I have reverted the redirect to target Iron Man (disambiguation). If you think this is incorrect please discuss the change here first rather than persisting in this edit war. Happy‑melon 08:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the trouble to look up the statistics. However that doesn't alter the fact that the most common use of "Ironman" as a single word refers to the triathlon event, and the athletes associated with it. Those interested in the comic character already have Iron Man (two words) as the primary article.

--NSH001 (talk) 11:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that that assertion is simply not supported by the numbers. Iron Man (disambiguation) has almost no incoming links other than redirects; given that it is also an unlikely search term, it may be assumed that almost all its pageviews come from redirections. Given the roughly similar levels of pageviews to this page and to its target, I conclude that Ironman is the most important redirect funnelling into Iron Man (disambiguation), which also makes sense. It is self-evident that Iron Man is by far the most popular single destination of all possible permutations. The point is that, even given that this popular redirect has fed directly into Ironman Triathlon for several days of this month, it still does not achieve as many page hits even as the disambiguation page. Given the tremendous popularity of the superhero destinations compared to the Ironman Triathlon, I don't think that assertion has much evidence to support it. Remember, I'm not saying that Ironman should redirect to Iron Man or somesuch, let alone that Ironman Triathlon should be removed or hidden from Iron Man (disambiguation); only that, given there is no overwhelmingly popular target for incoming links to this page, it would be appropriate to direct them to the disambiguation page rather than attempt to second-guess where prospective readers might be headed. Happy‑melon 18:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

No, the point is that that there are two separate terms involved here, Iron Man (two words) and Ironman (one word). My contention is that they refer to different subjects, and although page view statistics may inform the choice, they are not definitive. It's not a question of second-guessing, that's simply what the two terms mean. To put it another way, Iron Man is the primary subject of the two-word dab, and Ironman Triathlon is the primary subject of the one-word dab - or would be, if it had its own dab page.

To take this argument a bit further, try typing Ironman (one word) into google. Out of the first 100 entries, only 2 refer to Iron Man (the comic character), one of which is our Wikipedia article, 24 refer to films (mostly the 2008 film), 59 refer to triathlon, and 15 refer to other subjects (including advertising for an ironing board!). These search results show both the one-word and two-word versions, but importantly, only 4 of the one-word version refer to anything other than triathlon. Bear in mind also that the film count is inflated by the recent release of the 2008 film, so the true triathlon count is higher.

Looking at the "what links here" from the disambig page, as you suggest, is also illuminating. It shows that Ironman (this redirect page) has links from 21 triathlon/triathlete subjects and only 2 from pages relating to the comic character (ignoring user, talk, and wikipedia space pages). It also has 9 links from other subjects (mostly music/surf - and I may well go through these and dab them properly sometime soon). Again, this is another powerful argument for redirecting to Ironman Triathlon.

Examining your statistics, and your argument above, proves very little regarding which is the appropriate target for this redirect. We can only say with certainty that in April 68,000 out of the 78,000 views of the dab page came via this redirect page (the other 10,000 will be mostly from hatnotes); we know nothing of where they went, except that they didn't all go to Ironman Triathlon, not surprising given there are dozens of targets from that dab page. It is still quite possible that the majority of those following this redirect in April went to Ironman Triathlon. (Note, BTW, the March figures are stronger: 29,384 here, 27,829 for Ironman Triathlon.)

--NSH001 (talk) 23:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

We've been barking up the wrong tree a little; I didn't fully appreciate what those statistics mean. Each page view is only counted once, so for March, for instance, that means that 29,000 readers clicked on a link to Ironman, and 28,000 in total clicked on a direct link to Ironman Triathlon. In the same way, all 78,000 hits to Iron Man (disambiguation) come from hatnotes - the redirect hits do not also contribute. This is actually quite helpful, as it lets us try a little experiment. I've reverted the redirect to target Ironman Triathlon, and will leave it as such for the rest of the month, until the May stats come out on stats.grok.se; during which time Ironman will have spent about 18 days with its new target. Then we can see where the readers are really going: if the majority of hits to Ironman are from readers looking for Ironman Triathlon, we should expect to see the hit-count for Ironman Triathlon fall slightly (as those readers get straight there and don't need to click a direct link), while the hit-count for Iron Man (disambiguation) stays roughly the same. If, however, the majority of readers are looking for something related to the comic-book character, we should see the hit-count to Iron Man (disambiguation) rise, as many of those readers have to follow the hatnote to the dab page and thence to the correct article. Of course, at the same time we'll have to account for the fluctuating appeal of the film as it moves further from its release date, and any change in the popularity of the Ironman Triathlon article, but if the trends are clear enough we should be able to get some clear results. Am I making any sense? Happy‑melon 09:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Red links

What's wrong with them here? So long as they meet the requirements of MOS:DABRL, they're fine. Bongo, Abra, Chi, Ace (disambiguation), Gouki, Firestar (disambiguation), Santos, Goku (disambiguation), Jinx (disambiguation), Abracadabra (disambiguation), Rain (disambiguation), OB, Superman (disambiguation), Beelzebub (disambiguation), Storm (disambiguation) and Wow are precedents for my edit. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 03:03, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem seems to be in the interpretation of DABRL. As currently written, it states a necessary condition for a redlink to have an entry, namely that the subject should have at least one redlink elsewhere on Wikipedia. So if the subject doesn't have such an redlink, it doesn't get an entry. That's clear enough, and I agree with it. It does not, however, constitute a sufficient condition for such an entry (a condition that automatically justifies the entry on the dab page) — which should be governed by the general Wikipedia guidelines on notability. Otherwise the result would be absurd: unlimited redlink entries to pointless articles.

Thinking about it a bit further, it seems the authors of DABRL may be relying on the rules for redlinks in general articles, which state that they should only be used if it is likely that someone will eventually write an article on the subject, and so automatically implying notability. But we all know this isn't always the case. To avoid future confusion, DABRL should be amended to make clearer the difference between a necessary condition and a sufficient condition, and to place more emphasis on notability.

--NSH001 (talk) 10:31, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

PS. Your edit summary accuses me of "Implicating WP:IAR by yourself", when in fact I am doing the exact opposite, and following the rules very precisely indeed. I hope you will withdraw that accusation, and apologise. (BTW, the correct verb is "invoke", not "implicate"). I won't revert you, or waste any more of my time on this trivial matter.

--NSH001 (talk) 10:31, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The style manual is pretty clear

The problem with using "triathlete" is that there is currently no mention of the dab term at that link. There are, however, references to "Ironman" at the article Triathlon. NSH001, no where in the MoS does it suggest what you said, "... this is an obvious case where a new article can (and probably will) be written in place of the redirect ...". WP:MOSDP#Items appearing within other articles indeed says "If a topic does not have an article of its own, but is mentioned within another article, then a link to that article should be included. In this case, the link does not start the line, but it should still be the only blue wikilink.". Shouldn't be that difficult to render. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 23:37, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Danville Area

The students, faculty, and Alumni of Pennsylvania's Danville Area School District are also called Ironmen. We (speaking as an Alumnus) are probably just as notable as those of the Normal Community High School already mentioned. So, let's add a mention of it. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 23:57, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

The "Ironmen" bit would've sufficed for something titled "Ironmen (disambiguation)" or similar. I rectified your entry though, thanks for the contribution ;) Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 00:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 01:57, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

"Iron Man (statue)"

The usage and topic of "Iron Man (statue)" is under discussion, see talk:Iron Man (statue) -- 70.51.203.69 (talk) 04:18, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

The Iron Man 2006

There is apparently a movie that predates the 2008 Robert Downey Jr. vehicle called 'The Iron Man" According to IMDB it is a 2006 movie of the true story about the Iron Man, but there is no clarification on whether this is referring to the sporting event or the Canadian comic book series or any other details, beyond the title. It is however referenced in the credits for Canadian actress Tanja Reichert, so if anyone has any other facts, please add them to the page. Sochwa (talk)—Preceding undated comment added 13:49, 28 August 2018

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Iron Man (2008 film) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:46, 3 September 2023 (UTC)