Talk:Testament Records

Too many words?

I am copying the content of the following box here from User talk:Jerzy#Testament Records disambig page, bcz i consider its relevance there to probably be over. It may have further relevance here, but beyond what i've said inside the box, i hope not to participate further.
--Jerzy•t 03:36, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

You made several edits, some of which I understand. But you give no explanation for your changes to the explanatory text and removal of links that were there. I thought the original versions were better: easier to understand and more useful, so I am planning to change them back. If you would like to discuss it, please respond to this. Thanks.--Robert.Allen (talk) 18:04, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• Maybe, rather than assuming "Dab-CU" serves to explain, i should resume routinely lk'g such edits to both MoSDab and Dab. Experience editing WP does not prepare one for editing (much less creating) Dab pages, which are not articles and thus not pgs intended to be treated as instances of many (& probably most) WP guidelines and policies. I suggest you study those pgs first (since you'll need to in the long run anyway), but i would be glad to comment on specific issues specified by you, either before or after your doing so.
  --Jerzy•t 18:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  
  • Thanks for the links, I should have seen them before I guess, but somehow I missed them. I still think the explanatory text is a bit confusing, at least it was initially to me: it seemed like a dictionary entry saying they were British and American terms. Also, since there are only two items, I'm not sure a section heading "Record labels:" is an improvement. I skipped over it entirely when I first saw the new version of the page. I may make some small changes back. If they aren't acceptable, then please revert them.--Robert.Allen (talk) 18:40, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Don't feel bad abt missing those guidelines; if i seemed to imply "you should have known better", i misspoke. (In fact, i had thot to myself "How do i add a single link that encompasses both links?", and have a couple of thots.) IMO, editors who go around trying anticipate and read all the guidelines they're going to need are wasting their energy.
      I think the most important thing is to resist reading a Dab page. Unless you can master the knack of imagining what someone does, who gets to the page bcz of either looking for, e.g., Testament Records, or following a lk from an article, the tendency is to sabotage by "making it read better" what is hopefully optimized as a navigational aid. If the user looks at the two entries and immediately clicks on one, the page is perfect for them, even if they don't understand what they've seen. For users to have to read "record label" in both entries, when we have no articles on anything but record labels as a candidtates for the title "Testament Records", is a waste of their time. Until there are entries that don't fit under the single heading, not noticing it is a plus (and the lack of other headings is probably the reason you overlooked it). The only purpose of the heading at present is to have a read-once globally applicable place that the rare user who gets there, not looking for a record label (or not realizing that that's the nature of the thing the article referred to), can refer to for reassurance. (And perhaps guidance: knowing they are labels increases the helpfulness of knowing one article pertains to matters British and one American: e.g., British and American cars and records (as opposed to songs) are much less available to the UK or US respectively, than are the literary works of the respective countries -- thus when the rare user who didn't grasp that the reference in a WP article or outside page was about a label, the national or genre info is suddenly cast into a new light. (Even tho most users would be wasting their time by reading those extra words, and certainly by reading them twice, once in each entry.)
      --Jerzy•t 22:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
      
• Well, I'm not sure whether I agree or not. Acutally, I'm not totally sure I understand what you are saying. The extra explanation comes at the end of each entry after the links to the actual pages, so the user may not even need to go that far. In any case, I like it the way it is now. Can we leave it that way? --Robert.Allen (talk) 23:19, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I'd like to say the rest in the context of observing that your "classical"-music interest should prove to make you substantially valuable to WP, and i hope to see your work continue.) (I particularly took pleasure at seeing both Feen & Varnay among your contribs!) That said ...
    Well, those are not "small changes", as you earlier said you were about to make. (They are everything you had there when i started, except what is explicitly ruled out by the guidelines.) And i can't imagine that you both understand and accept what seems to me the obvious and fundamental principle, repeatedly reflected implicitly in the guidelines, that nothing belongs in a Dab that does not contribute to disambiguation.
    I'm merely tagging it for cleanup, bcz i don't think i have anything left to say, and it's not worth it to me to do otherwise. IMO you've had your BOLD, so please don't change the tag back, but if a colleague with substantial Dab-cleanup experience sees no further CU needed and de-CUs, i'll be satisfied. Hope to see you around the 'Pedia.
    --Jerzy•t 03:26 & 03:31, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
    

I thought about this some more, and I've come up with an alternative text that I think may satisfy both Jerzy's desire for the minimum necessary to disambiguate, and my desire for accuracy. Perhaps we can agree that the section label is not appropriate since there is only one section. This will require us to repeat the words "record label" for each entry. Perhaps unfortunate, but in this situation it seems necessary to me. If we assume that UK and USA are sufficient for the vast majority of users to determine the nationality of each company, then I think there is a way to disambiguate the entries with fewer words which will be in my view totally accurate. So I will put it in and see what others think (if anyone else ever bothers to read through all of this!). :-) --Robert.Allen (talk) 08:21, 22 August 2009 (UTC)