Talk:Whorf (surname)

Benjamin Lee Whorf hatnote

Entering "Whorf" looking for the Star Trek character "Worf" led to an article of BL Whorf, with the following hatnote:

"Whorf" redirects here. For the film director, actor and producer, see Richard Whorf. For the American radio personality, see Mike Whorf.

I wanted to add the possibility that the reader might be looking for "Worfs" and briefly considered changing the hatnote to something like:

"Whorf" redirects here. For the film director, actor and producer, see Richard Whorf. For the American radio personality, see Mike Whorf. For other uses, also see Worf (disambiguation).

This would assume the reader arrives at the BL Whorf page by searching for "Whorf" only, and possibly could have mispelled his or her search term.

However, this was messy. Not only to create (since it would mix hat note purposes) but to comprehend properly.

In the end, I thought the cleanest way to implement a Whorf>Worf link was to replace the redirect with a proper disambiguation page, mirroring how the Worf (disambiguation) helpfully suggests other uses, including the possibility that you aren't looking for "Worf" at all but a "Whorf" (or even "Warf" or "Wharf").

That is why the BL Whorf hatnote was given a minimal change: to remove the "Whorf redirects here" part.

I am aware that current Wiki policies don't encourage hatnotes on specific articles (which the BL Whorf has now become) to link to other equally specific articles, since it is unlikely you searched for "Benjamin Lee Whorf" when you're looking for, say, his brother Richard.

However, I didn't want to simply remove the hatnote, since that would mean a jarring unexplained change. Feel free to further improve the BL Whorf page - my aim was to introduce the helpful Whorf > Worf link, much like there already exists a Worf > Whorf one. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 08:21, 24 August 2015 (UTC)