Talk:Malays

Redirecting to Malay

[Support] A redirect I put in place here was reverted with the comment that Malay is not equivalent to Malays. That is true, but the one disambiguation page encompasses the other. All of the links appear on the other page, and in fact at the top of it, so redirecting should not create a problem. See Americans (redirects to American) or Indians (redirects to Indian) for other examples of this type of redirect. There is also WP:Naming conventions#Prefer singular nouns to consider.

Please also note Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguated topics. Creation of the Malays dab page broke over 450 links, as shown at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages maintenance#Nationality and ethnic group adjectives. I would like to put the redirect back in place, and although all of the links will still have to be fixed, they can be fixed from one central location. Dekimasuが... 12:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[Oppose] I don't see any benefit in redirecting to a very general dab page, whether it is for Americans, Indians or whatever. Why shouldn't Americans redirect to the same place as American people instead of a very dab page which presents a whole bunch of irrelevant and incorrect options? Wikipedia is not paper, so we are not saving anything by merging a specific dab page into a general one. Take a look at Koreans or Germans, both of which DO NOT redirect to the Korean or German dab pages. (Caniago 13:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC))

The usages are not exclusive, however. They overlap; otherwise the pages here would not appear on Malay. It indicates that these terms can be used in a singular form, and singular titles are strongly preferred by the MOS. By virtue of the fact that there is a disambiguation page, it is self-evident that the link will not refer to all terms on the page. Rather than strains on space, it places strains on our abilities to organize and standardize.

I am somewhat confused as to why Malays (ethnic group) was moved from its location here in the first place, since it also deals with all three of the topics on this dab page and has tags at the top indicating other possible uses.

This was an edit conflict. I will look at what you've changed now. Dekimasuが... 13:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Koreans and Germans are articles rather than dab pages. I know off the top of my head that Koreans was renamed as it is based upon the argument that it is in more common use than any of the alternatives - the opposite outcome from creating a dab. I believe that if they required disambiguation they would be disambiguated at the singular titles. Dekimasuが... 13:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay. It is my opinion that this type of separation for singular and plural disambiguation pages is a bad idea, and I'm on record saying it. In the long run other editors will come along and judge this one way or the other. For now I'd like to let this go, because I don't feel it's worth eating up our editing time. I'd appreciate it if you would help fix the links as per the dab guidelines I mentioned above, since you want the page to stay in place as it's currently constituted. Dekimasuが... 14:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

If the singular and plural forms had the same meaning I'd be in favor of having a unified redirect, but thats not the case here. The Malays (ethnic group) article was created in place of Malays (and Malay people) since the term Malays has multiple widely-conflicting meanings. The term can refer to the Malay ethnic group or the Malay race, yet there is no relationship between these meanings. I've already fixed many of the broken links, but a wider effort is needed to conquer the remaining links. The Malaysian/Singaporean/Indonesian Wikipedia members would be a better judge than I about the correct linking of pages linking to these terms - many pages are not obvious. (Caniago 14:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC))

[Support] I cannot cite chapter and verse of the MoS, but I have made thousands of edits in the holy name of Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation, so I have seen what is commonly done, what works, and what doesn't work.

When disambiguating a language/nationality/ethnicity, the plural should direct to the nationality or ethnicity where possible (eg, Koreans, Goths, Italians). This doesn't work where there is no plural (there's no Irishes), or where the ethnicity and nationality are distinct enough for separate articles. If those who have analyzed this topic in depth say Malays must be a dab, then it must be a dab.

The question then is which dab. When I did Goth, I saw that people tend to link Goth and Goths assuming they are the same. When I did Bonds I quickly determined that Bond, Bonded, and Bonding had enormous overlap. The existance of item on one list but not the other only complicates maintenance. If it's going to be a dab page anyway, then Malay and Malays should be a single dab page. — Randall Bart 17:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Maintenance isn't an acceptable excuse for redirecting Malays to a dab page which has links which have no relationship or meaning with respect to the term Malays. Malay language, Malay states, Malay Peninsula, etc do not in any way relate to the term Malays. (Caniago 18:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC))

Maintenance is important. If maintenance is performed efficiently, most users shouldn't have to see the disambiguation page at all — that's the ultimate goal of link repair. When people start "correcting" links back and forth between dab pages, as is currently the case at Chinese and Chinese people, the number of links (and users seeing the dab) balloons quickly. Language/ethnicity disambiguations collect new links faster than any other dabs on the English Wikipedia, so it can become a serious problem. Malay+Malays links have already become the third-largest backup on the site, trailing only Chinese+Chinese people and TBA. Dekimasuが^? 04:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

In the scheme of things, with wikipedia having 1.6 million pages, an extra dab page for Malays because of exceptional circumstances isn't a big deal. (Caniago 05:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC))

[?] Maybe then we need to check that the dab is well organised. Merbabu 05:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Support. This should have happened 20 years ago. It still needs to happen. This is silly nonsense from a single editor that leads to WP:EGG/WP:UNDUE/WP:POVFORK issues. Someone kindly recognize the consensus at this point and get this fixed. Also make it clear with the final edits to the page that "Malay race" is not a separate idea from "Malay ethnicity". It's a historical treatment of quasiscientific racist nonsense and needs to be clearly marked as such. (Alternatively, the existing article needs to be rebuilt to talk about sth else.)

The only real question is why the pseudoscientific nonsense deserves such WP:UNDUE prominence. Everyone hitting this page is trying to get to the page about the actual Malay ethnicity (WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) and not the armchair discussion of lesser races based on the 3 skulls in the local cabinet of curiosities. Isn't the better solution to park the Malay ethnicity article right here or redirect to Malay people? (Malay (ethnic group) is needlessly obtuse, unintuitive, and irregular based on our standard naming.) The rest of this can be part of Malay (disambiguation). — LlywelynII 13:08, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Fixing the Links

Whatever the outcome of this debate it is preferred on individual articles for Malays links to be replaced with the correct destination wherever appropriate, thus bypassing this disambiguation page. I've done about 50 so far and plan to finish the rest tonight. Just wondering, on Singapore related articles, should Malays link to Malays (ethnic group) or Malays in Singapore? Currently I'm redirecting to the second. JameiLei 15:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC))