Talk:Palace Hotel

SIA vs Dab

@Doncram:. In this edit you removed the SIA tag and replaced it with a disambiguation tag. The page has (1) a hatnote that says "This article is about hotels called Palace Hotel"; (2) a lead that would not be appropriate for a dab; and (3) an expand list tag not found on dab pages. The definition of an SIA (WP:SIA) is "a list article about a set of items of a specific type that also share the same (or similar) name". I have therefore reverted your good faith edit. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:36, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

By the way, see also Palace Theatre. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:45, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay there's also Alcazar Hotel where you reverted me also. Hi, User:Shhhnotsoloud, so I see in these three pages, and presumably some more, you have during the last few months changed the page from disambiguation labelling and formatting to SIA labelling and formatting. I don't think this should be done for these topics, because the pages are needed in Wikipedia for disambiguation, for helping readers find their way to the "Palace Hotel" of interest to them, but there is no natural readership interest in a list-article about hotels coincidentally having "Palace" in their name. It is perhaps a subtle difference. If all the hotels were part of one Palace Hotel chain, i.e. one company, or if they were all substantially linked by having been founded by the same person or something, then it could be a decent topic for a list-article. Please note that for other SIAs, such as list of ships named "Constitution" or "USS Constitution", there is a coherence to the list, i.e. each of those are official successors to one another, and highly related. For standalone lists, there may be or should be sources explicitly dealing with general topic. Here I cannot imagine there is any existing book about places coincidentally named "Palace". Basically I think we just do not want to have a list-article for these unrelated hotels and theater places. Could you please expand a bit on why you think "Palace Hotel" is a decent topic for Wikipedia explicit coverage? Sincerely, --Doncram (talk) 16:09, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Hello User:Doncram. I understand and agree with you. The redesignation of these pages still makes them available for readers to use to disambiguate topics: most readers won't notice the difference. Please rest assured that I'm not randomly, or on a large scale, converting dabs to SIAs. There is one important factor which means these 3 particular pages are better off as SIAs: the number of redlinks. Palace Hotel has 3 redlinks which fail disambiguation page rules and would be removed. Alcazar Hotel has 2; Palace Theatre has 4. I took the view that the encyclopedia is probably better with these redlinks than without then, so I converted the pages to SIAs, and in the case of this page made it look more like a list article in order to discourage a change back! Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:15, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

I am glad you agree in principal that the pages should be disambiguation pages. The number of redlinks is not especially relevant, IMHO, but I am willing to cooperate in allowing their entries to be edited so that they can be compliant with wp:DABRL. Specifically for the three Canada items in current Palace Hotel, you could make edits to appropriate Toronto or other geo articles, or to List of hotels or List of hotels in Canada to add the redlinks with supporting references. And then add supporting bluelinks here. If that is done, or if the redlink items are copied here to the Talk page, say, will you now go along with my restoring these to be disambiguation pages. Or are there any principles which still need discussing. I currently think that a formal AFD or RFC process should not be necessary. --Doncram (talk) 14:13, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

@Doncram: No, I don't believe any changes are necessary at all. This page (and the others) are perfectly fine as SIAs and compliant with the SIA definition. They are available to readers to use for disambiguation purposes. Reformatting them as dab pages and removing redlinks would not improve the encyclopedia. Of course, anyone is welcome to improve the pages, for example by adding detail to the redlink entries. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 14:40, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry, that does not cut it. The current three pages do not comply with Wikipedia standards for list-articles or any other kind of article. I believe that no sources exist which support their validity as topics. Notability of "places named Palace Hotel" etc. is just not there. They would fail badly in AFD discussions. Your reading of SIA requirements is too simplistic and/or the statement of requirements perhaps needs to be edited, to rule out random/spurious SIAs / list-articles. There is no free pass to have a list-article about just anything.

For example, there is no Wikipedia article about "Antonio's Pizza", say, but i imagine there are many independent places of that name. Is it your contention that you could just make a list of redlinks for ones in various cities, with no sources, and have that be a valid list-article in Wikipedia? --Doncram (talk) 15:39, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

@Doncram: Respectfully, we disagree. You assert that this article is non-compliant with guidelines or policy; I don't think it is. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 18:12, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay, you are being clear that you disagree, although IMO you are not being clear on policy reasons. This could be addressed by an RFC to give you feedback from more editors about your DAB to SIA changes. I think those are end-runs around existing policies; you disagree; we could call for other editors to weigh in by an RFC. But doing that, could you please make an attempt to explain policy/guideline reasoning for your side. If you don't want to discuss further before an RFC, then that would change what the RFC states or whether I should proceed in some other non-RFC way.

Specifically, what do you have to say about wp:SIA's clear direction that an SIA must comply with standards for list-articles, i.e. "Fundamentally, a set index article is a type of list article. The criteria for creating, adding to, or deleting a set index article should be the same as for a stand-alone list. The style of a set index article should follow the style guidelines at Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. A set index article can be tagged with {{Set index article}}." These three examples do not comply. Notability of topics is not asserted or established.

One way to criticize is to say that they are random collections, not of plausible interest to any readership, unlike various SIAs of similarly named ships and mountains, where there are at least organized Wikiprojects full of editors who believe those are of interest. Specifically, see wp:SALAT: "Lists that are too specific are also a problem. The 'list of one-eyed horse thieves from Montana' will be of little interest to anyone other than the creator of the list." IMHO, "list of hotels with Palace in their names" is like that, while I do personally believe that the geographically-organized List of hotels in Canada and similar might well be developed with sources and cover the redlinks that you want to have mentioned in Wikipedia.

I do appreciate your interacting here so far. Sincerely, --Doncram (talk) 18:48, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

@Doncram:. My position is simply that this article, and the other 2, meet the requirements of WP:Set index articles and WP:Stand-alone lists. It makes the encyclopedia better to have this page as an SIA rather than a dab page because good-faith redlinks can be retained on an SIA. I don't think you have pointed to specific non-compliance with guidelines. I don't agree that the list is random and of no interest: it's no more so than Alexander (ship) or Hurricane Cristina or Pyramid Mountain. This article is just another regular, compliant, SIA and there's nothing wrong with it. There are hundreds, possibly thousands like it. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:57, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Hmm. Actually, User:Shhhnotsoloud, I hear you. I was gonna retort along the lines of "well, no one is interested in 'places named Palace Hotel', as proven by the fact that it would be ludicrous to create and populate a category of that definition, while any genuine list-article usually will have a corresponding category". Yet there are no corresponding categories for the items in those three SIA examples you point to. Frankly, IMO, I don't get where there is a real line between SIAs vs. DABs. In fact the definition of SIAs has, IMO, been the result of a political compromise process within Wikipedia, where groups of editors in wp:SHIPS and the Mountains wikiproject and a few other areas have expressed their disgust with arbitrariness of DAB requirements and enforcers, so SIAs were invented to get out of DAB page restrictions.

And, despite my removals of the redlinks with assertion that some could be fraudulent, I do strongly tend to believe in the basic merit of the good-faith additions you point to. Where someone has gone to the trouble to point out that there is another historic place named Palace Theatre or whatever which seems worth mentioning in what appears to the general reader to be a list of all such places. Personally, I would want to include mentions as "blacklink" items, i.e. not having any link at all, but requiring a footnote/source to something establishing that the place existed although it is probably not notable for having a Wikipedia article. While it should be a redlink if one wants to assert its probable notability, and is willing to comply with wp:DABRL by inserting its redlink into appropriate articles that should link to the topic. But very literalistic/legalistic DAB page enforcers, of which there are many, would detect and delete the blacklinks and especially any footnotes supporting them.

Hmm. Where I am coming from is from having developed most of the current 3,662 pages in Category:Disambig-Class National Register of Historic Places articles, and I don't want to see my own good work (if I do say so myself) get trashed somehow. I have had a long history of dealing with editors enforcing their views of disambiguation page guidelines, which are kind of arbitrary in not allowing footnotes, and being defined to be only as means of navigating between existing plus likely future articles (and not including any other kind of trivia however interesting or relevant).

About the good-faith redlink additions, I have done a lot of work "saving" such additions over the years, i.e. by helping them comply with wp:DABRL. But I see that it doesn't necessarily work in the Robillard area article to permanently include the Palace theatre/hotel mention or whatever. So, I don't exactly know where to go from here. Is it possible to get DAB page policy changed to allow "blacklinks with footnotes" this way? Hmm.

One thing/request though: please don't delete the Wikiproject NRHP class=dab Talk page designations on any of these. Maybe that could be refined to state as "wikiproject NRHP dab or sia" or the like, eventually. You didn't remove any such, AFAICT, but I'd appreciate your agreeing to that. --Doncram (talk) 01:02, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks User:Doncram, I hear you too. Sorry if my responses in our interactions have seemed a little sharp. By the way, your work on NHRP has my utmost respect. I won't touch any NRHP tags! Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:57, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

redlink items

I removed the following three items:

Canada

• Palace Hotel, Nanaimo, former hotel (c.1889) and now pub at 275 Skinner Street
• Palace Hotel, Vancouver, former slumhouse at 37 West Hastings Street
• Palace Arms Hotel, a low-frills hotel in Toronto c. 1892 at 950 King Street West

These are all currently redlinks which do not comply with wp:DABRL for their inclusion in a DAB page. They have no sources provided and are not appropriate for inclusion into a list-article/SIA, either. Who knows, they may be entirely made up, fraudulent items. Please present sourcing and otherwise discuss here. Please do not return them to the page without consensus here. --Doncram (talk) 15:08, 9 September 2018 (UTC)