Talk:Peter Stephens (footballer, born 1950)

My earlier move

I note my bold page move has been reverted. That's fine, however I'd like to discuss the appropriate disambiguator as from my perspective the consensus on article titles as documented in page naming policy and disambiguation guidelines are not being followed. The disambiguation guidelines state: "Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead." (my emphasis). Thus while there may have been more than one footballer named Peter Stephens, there is only one Wikipedia article about a footballer named Peter Stephens, and "footballer" is a sufficient disambiguating phrase.

There may be particular reasons in this case why the longer disambiguator is required. If the reverting editor or any others would like to explain them, I would be grateful.

Many thanks. --MegaSloth (talk) 20:27, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly, I started up a discussion on this at WT:AFL after I did the revert. Basically, with AFL/VFL footballers, we know that we still have 1000s of articles to create. Where we know we have to disambiguate, it makes more sense to plan for it now, and not have to change a lots links later. The 2nd Peter Stephens is actually fairly notable (he played over 100 games), so the article will be created sometime soon. I agree that not everything should be pre-emptively redlinked, but this one is fairly clear that there will be an article soon, and I put a blue link to the "list of players" article on the Peter Stephens (disambiguation) page to prove it within wikipedia, without needed to go to an external list/book to prove that he exists. The phrase that you quoted from the WP:D is in the "should there be a dab page at all" section. Once you decide to have one, then redlinks to definitely notable future topics are OK - there is a whole section about them at MOS:DABRL. The-Pope (talk) 00:02, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

And to avoid any doubt, I just went ahead and created the Peter Stephens (footballer born 1879) article stub. The-Pope (talk) 00:22, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

MOS:DABRL is talking about disambiguation page contents. Red links there are fine, but there is no obligation on existing articles to disambiguate themselves by their names from red links, which by their very nature have not established independent notability of the article's subject. DAB entries from red links would be allowed from only the blue link entry that is also required anyway. You are bending the article naming rules slightly here, but you do have a good reason, albeit not an immediately obvious one. I do do a search of Wikipedia for competing article titles before moving pages, but this clash was not clear. I will bear your comments in mind if I ever consider moving any other Australian rules football articles. Please do not be surprised however if other editors independently choose to make similar changes in good faith. As you say, creating the stub removes doubt in this case, especially given that it appears to be very nicely referenced. I have taken a look at your helpful comments at WT:AFL and will respond as I have some observations to make. Thank you for recognising that my change was made in good faith. --MegaSloth (talk) 10:25, 18 December 2011 (UTC)