Talk:Levitation

Primary topic

Per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, I'd suggest that there is no clear primary topic that a reader may be looking for, and that this disambiguation page itself should be the result of a reader search for "levitation" or "levitate". That might be the clearest way to point out the difference between 1) paranormal "levitation", 2) the magician's illusion of "levitation", and 3) the various scientific types of levitation. (I've cleaned up the disambig page as another step towards making that clearer)

If agreed, what should we rename the page that is currently at levitation, which lists the scientific types? Levitation (physical principle)? Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:42, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the primary topic is the current article levitation, the physical process of levitation, ultimately this covers all forms of levitation and describes exactly what levitation is i.e. the suspension of an object by a force opposing that of gravity without solid physical contact, this is valid no matter what technique is used. I have recently altered the hatnote on the article to take into account human levitation, as per an old talk discussion which was never properly addressed, and I personal feel that this together with the disambiguation page adequately disambiguates the articles. However, to address your point, perhaps we could add the article concerning the magician's illusion into the hatnote of the levitation article just to be sure users can easily find the article they are looking for. Kind regards, Polyamorph (talk) 20:59, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

With regards to the incorrect incoming links, I think these can be cleaned up, I don't mind doing that, it just requires looking at the "what links here" tab and changing the wikilinks accordingly. Cheers, Polyamorph (talk) 21:03, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Re: cleanup of incoming links: Perfect, much thanks :)

Re: primary topic-ness: The worst-case-scenario I want to avoid, is having a casual reader glance at levitation, and come to the erroneous conclusion that paranormal "levitation" has any kind of scientific basis. (But we can't protect all fools, so, I'm content with either outcome.) Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:25, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Well yes, the paranormal levitation article does state that it has no scientific basis right at the start in the lead. I see what you mean about levitation giving a casual reader the mis-conception that paranormal levitation might have scientific basis. However, if they actually read the article they will see that the article describes the physics behind the technique and will see that it doesn't involve any "magic" or "paranormal activity" at all. I think it is better that we provide the verifiable scientific facts and readers have to make up there own mind. It is important however that we provide the disambiguation links because people may be genuinly looking for information on the paranormal type of levitation. Perhaps I should adjust the hatnote on levitation to read something like "this article deals with the scientific technique of levitation. For other uses see levitation (disambiguation)." Cheers, Polyamorph (talk) 08:38, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I made changes to the hatnote on levitation. Let me know if you think it should read differently. Thanks Polyamorph (talk) 09:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I also changed about 60 wikilinks that were pointing directly to levitation when they should have been pointing to levitation (paranormal) or Magic (illusion)#levitation using AWB. There are however a lot more piped wikilinks that the AWB didn't pick up on. Polyamorph (talk) 11:34, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The new hatnote is ideal. Thanks for understanding :) -- Quiddity (talk) 20:26, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Levitation which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 14:30, 9 March 2023 (UTC)