User talk:Andrewa/Let us abolish the whole concept of primary topic

Why this page

I started something with this edit, so maybe it's not such a silly idea after all!

This and the user page are to develop the idea. It's not really ready for wt:disambiguation, IMO. Andrewa (talk) 06:16, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Ongoing discussion

They are serious impacts with negative return on investment. You say "some readers" and "short page" and "single mouse click" to minimize it, but that is exactly the negative return on this investment you're seeking: we do a bunch of editor work (and increase the ongoing maintenance editor work) in order to worsen the overall reader encyclopedia experience. [1]

• that is exactly the negative return on this investment you're seeking... Yes, and I respect that some see these as serious impacts, but disagree. And if that's exactly the downside you see, I'm most encouraged! Because it doesn't seem all that significant.
• (and increase the ongoing maintenance editor work)... No, the net effect is to decrease the work.
• in order to worsen the overall reader encyclopedia experience... That would be a show-stopper, but disagree. Reader experience is of course our bottom line. This stands to improve it significantly, on balance.

Interesting. Andrewa (talk) 21:37, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Mathematics etc

From wt:Disambiguation:

Mathematics is ambiguous. Do we really want to disambiguate one of the top-ten vital articles? When the competing terms are 2 relatively obscure songs and a hip-hop producer? And even if we did, how do you clarify such a major topic further? [2]

An excellent question! And Geography and many other articles are similarly affected.

Perhaps we could call the article on the subject The subject of Mathematics. That has an encyclopedic feel to it to me. Interested in other views of course. Andrewa (talk) 00:24, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Mathematics (discipline) would be more in line with WP conventions, but I still think Mathematics is the article title which minimises reader surprise. Certes (talk) 12:15, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Anything other than plain "Mathematics" would confuse me to be honest. I'd assume "Mathematics (discipline)" is about the discipline used in mathematical activity, not the whole. The same is true of just about any other parenthetical term I can think of - it looks like an aspect of mathematics, not the whole.

Likewise "Subject of Mathematics" is too narrow and implies mathematics as a school subject.

Only Wikipedia would have this issue, as only Wikipedia would bother to write about the other Mathematics.--Nilfanion (talk) 15:37, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

To gain my BA at UNE I was required to study four subjects under the University regulations; Technically mine were Philosophy, Pure Mathematics, Computing Science and French (the last at first year level only but it was at least the advanced not the beginner stream). I suppose it's just as well that we did not realise at the time that one of them was merely a school subject!

But I sympathise, and not just because Mathematics (which includes Logic as I define the two terms but my Alma Mater disagrees) is arguably the greatest love of my life. It's a compromise between reducing instruction creep and surprise. This amount of surprise does not seem a major drawback to me, and if we allow Mathematics to be an exception, where do we draw the line? We will just have replaced a big time-consuming mess with a smaller one.

Inclined to agree that Only Wikipedia would have this issue, but I think the other articles would survive AfD, and I'm quite glad we have that problem! Vive Wikipedia, the Greatest Ever Encyclopedia! Andrewa (talk) 16:36, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

I think that proves my point really, even if I used the wrong term, the subject of mathematics implies education. And I imagine there other high-level articles that will cause difficulty on the choice of term. .

Regardless of that difficulty I don't think we are helping our readers by forcing someone who wants to read about "the" mathematics and goes to mathematics, math or maths, click through from a dab. IMO primary topic is about balancing the inconvenience to the many against the hindrance to the few. It might just be one click. But almost everyone will be making that one click.

If we carve an exception for mathematics, you lose the purity of your goal and discussions on the borderline will still happen. Its just instead of discussion about Corvette, you'd get discussion about Life, or France, or.. wherever that borderline ends up.--Nilfanion (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Exactly. Very well put.

I disagree only on two points, but they are key points.

Firstly, I don't think there is a great deal of difficulty in disambiguating the topic of Mathematics. There may be better article titles than The subject of Mathematics (which may sound a bit like it comes from an older encyclopedia), but it is adequate. Anyone seeing this in a search results list or on a disambiguation page alongside the other article titles we have will know exactly which article they want.

If we can come up with a better (unambiguous) article title, then by all means use it. But there is no need to do so.

Secondly, while I agree that in a trivial sense we are not helping our readers by forcing someone who wants to read about "the" mathematics and goes to mathematics, math or maths, click through from a dab, I think your intent is to claim that that overall, readers are worse off because of this burden despite any positives, and I disagree with this.

In my opinion the burden is trivial, and the positives relatively significant, both for readers and for editors. But this is the key point of the entire discussion, and I am only one voice. Andrewa (talk) 05:34, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

OK I think I see where the differences come from. There's two points. In one sense, Wikipedia titles are irrelevant. What matters are the URLs that go with the titles - as that's how people get to them. Now people can get to a Wikipedia article by a number of routes - direct-typing the URL, using WP's internal search function (and then using the drop-down, go, or the detailed search page), using external search engines (like Google), links from other Wikipedia articles and links from external websites. There are three basic classes:

1. Search engines, internal and external, which smart enough to cope with whatever titles we use.
2. Direct-typing and the "go" button users, who expects the topic they think of as X to be at X.
3. Link followers who follow a link expecting to be what it says it is.

I believe you have considered, and dismissed as minor, the harm to those in group 2; which is the group Primary Topic protects. If that group is sufficiently large, then the inconvenience to those many readers will probably outweigh the potential benefits. I'm not convinced myself, but its clear many people think that group is large enough to be worth protecting.

However, I do not believe you have fully considered the impact on the 3rd group. That's because you seem to suggest by correcting all of our internal links everything will be fine. However, by changing things in a dramatic fashion like this you would damage incoming external links - and we can't fix those. Link rot is bad, we should avoid it unless it is necessary. Damaging links from other sites into Wikipedia is harm to our readers.--Nilfanion (talk) 19:31, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Excellent analysis, thank you! Worth a section on its own. Watch this space. Andrewa (talk) 00:38, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Bangkok

Bangkok is apparently unique. Even if it is today, that could change tomorrow. That means messing with stability, generating page moves and adjusting thousands of links, just because of a new article with less than 10 links. Is that good? We could avoid that by pre-emptively disambiguating everything? But is that wise? [3]

Very interesting. At the risk of harping on one of my personal failures, NYRM2016 comes to mind again, because in fact Bangkok is already ambiguous, see Bangkok Metropolitan Region. It would seem likely that a Thai who lives in the Metropolitan Region but not the Metropolis would naturally say I live in Bangkok in most contexts worldwide.

So, are we confident that all of those thousands of current incoming links are in fact correct? It seems likely that many of them are not, and currently it's hard to tell, and likely that more incorrect links are being created daily, as was the case with New York. Not likely to be nearly as many certainly. But the current system encourages and hides such incorrect links; The proposal would discourage and identify them. Andrewa (talk) 16:09, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

How do you correctly disambiguate them though? Geography is an obvious field to look at because problems occur left, right and centre. There are three scenarios I can think of off the top of my head:

1. When you have two places with the same name, and one contains the other. Carlisle, Cumbria and City of Carlisle are both in the northwest of England, and they are titled correctly according to the convention. I don't agree with that convention, but its really hard to think of a clearly better proposal. Bangkok looks to be similar problematic. Its rare to have one like New York where reasonably natural terms can be found. The difference is people routinely disambiguate between the state and city of New York in real life. They don't for Bangkok.
2. When you have two places with the same name, in the same administrative area, and one is vastly more important than the other. I mean one is a clearly notable town, and the other is a point on the map that may be a single farmhouse, or might be a hamlet. That makes the correct title of the large town contingent on the notability of the tiny place. To work out the correct title, you'd have to go through AFD-type assessment for all the possible competing terms. And you might still might miss one.
3. Things can change, like if a new town is built. Which will negate all the previous discussion.

Having the concept of a primary topic avoids a lot of the nonsense. Because you can gloss over minor problems.--Nilfanion (talk) 16:29, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Going backwards up these points (because these days interleaving is discouraged):

Having the concept of a primary topic avoids a lot of the nonsense. Because you can gloss over minor problems. Exactly what nonsense? I suspect that these minor problems may be little time-bombs that will detonate someday!

Things can change, like if a new town is built. Yes. That's also a problem under both the existing and proposed system, as primary topic can also change, and a new town will typically get lots of ghits in online reliable sources and, dare I say it, page hits. We just need to deal with it. But the proposal reduces the burden of doing so.

When you have two places with the same name, in the same administrative area, and one is vastly more important than the other... That makes the correct title of the large town contingent on the notability of the tiny place. Yes. If both are notable, then we need to disambiguate the big one because of the existence of the small one. We should not play favourites. This is an important positive when it comes to disambiguations that may have political consequences because of historical usage, disputed names or territories, lots of reasons. Macedonia is a prime example of this.

Agree that there are differences between the cases of Bangkok and New York. Bangkok is far less of a problem. But my time both in software development and fixing VSAM catalogue corruptions taught me that there are no little problems. Fix a little problem that you understand, and big problems that you don't understand often just go away, as if by magic. Andrewa (talk) 06:01, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

By the way, with regards to Bangkok - I would be confident that the vast majority are correct. The significant concept is the city, not the metropolitan area, and while the metro area is larger - its a sub-concept of the city. Someone who lives in the broader area might say "I live in Bangkok". However, an actual article about them should say they live in Nonthaburi. The NY case is quite different to that, as both meanings are significant and independent.--Nilfanion (talk) 16:41, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

See above. Andrewa (talk) 06:01, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

I think my concerns here are about title stability, which tie into my comments about link rot in the section above. The examples above demonstrate that places are a type of concept where no primary topic rule could cause lots of instability, and changing article titles, potentially to high-importance articles and therefore negatively impacting readers.--Nilfanion (talk) 19:35, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Disagree. Stability is enhanced by easily interpreted naming conventions, which is exactly what we do not have in the case of primary topic. By the examples above I assume you mean Carlisle, Cumbria and City of Carlisle, and Bangkok. These proposals would not affect Carlisle which is already a DAB. They might move Bangkok to a more stable title, so that even if say a band called itself Bangkok and became even bigger than the Beatles, there would be no possibility of needing to move or even to discuss moving the article again. How is stability reduced? Andrewa (talk) 19:36, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

The main example is #2. Somewhat hypothetical and woolly here, sorry. But we work out titles based on what terms compete. What happens if the only article we have with one name (say for an English city): its at the base name. What if we then discover another English town of the same name, in a different county - the city gets moved to (county). And if we find a village in the same county? It gets moved again. And potentially several more times as we discover and create articles for steadily smaller places. The Carlisle examples are a problem with the Naming Convention rather than disambiguation itself - both are in Cumbria, and both could be described as a city. A better convention would avoid problems with those two.

A possible counter-proposal to all of this would almost be "Leave the articles alone. Don't move them for PT-type considerations. Even if its "wrong"." Even if the band Bangkok became bigger than the Beatles, would we really cause any issues by having the city at the base name? And if Bangkok was completely unique at present, your proposal would have it at the base name. If the band Bangkok was formed, you change the point of a move from "this band is big" to "this band exists". It feels wrong to move a major topic from its long-term stable title, because a minor topic suddenly appears.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:35, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Behaviour of the regulars

I haven't been following this thread – so apologies if what I say is irrelevant – but if the motivation for these rather bold proposals is the existence of controversies over at RM, then I think the issue has less to do with the guidelines and more to do with editor behaviour. From my experience so far (not very extensive, let me admit), all the primary-topic-related controversies have seemed to be caused by a small number of tenacious RM regulars who apparently pretend that PTOPIC doesn't exist. [4]

Interesting claim and very relevant, Uanfala... can you give an example of one of these primary-topic-related controversies that was caused by a small number of tenacious RM regulars who apparently pretend that PTOPIC doesn't exist? (Either here or where you originally posted this.)

My initial motivation was NYRM2016, which was a colossal waste of time and energy and suggested to me that something was broken. The RM regulars involved (I guess I'm one of those) were AFAIK entirely on the side of moving the New York State article, and one of our principle arguments (not the only one but one we regarded as clear-cut and important) was that New York State is not the primary topic of New York. And this view eventually prevailed in NYRM2017, the puzzle to me is that it didn't prevail in NYRM2016.

However, ever since first questioning the concept of Primary Topic, I keep coming up with more ways in which abolishing it would to the advantage of the reader. Many of them still relate to freeing up editor time, but see User:Andrewa/Let us abolish the whole concept of primary topic#Easier searching for another which was I now recall raised during one of the NYRM discussions, but I don't recall exactly where and didn't see its more general implication at the time. Andrewa (talk) 01:44, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

The most recent example is Talk:Hebrew language. What happened at Talk:Other (philosophy) also comes close, although in the latter case I think some of the blame can be taken by the misleadingly narrow lede of the article (and its equally misleading title). – Uanfala (talk) 01:50, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

We certainly disagreed on several things (nearly everything?) in the RM you recently raised at Talk:Other (philosophy)#Requested move 30 December 2017. You said I had a really novel interpretation of the primary topic criteria, and posted a heads-up now archived at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 46#Other asking for input. My views prevailed, but by a no consensus close which I find most unsatisfying.

So, what's the behavioural issue there?

Or as it just comes close, let us focus on the better example.

I wasn't involved in Talk:Hebrew language#Requested move 28 January 2018, and I see you didn't request this one. It's another no consensus close I also see, in which you again argued that there was a primary topic but again did not prevail. Agree it's a most unsatisfactory discussion and conclusion, but I can't see how any other close was possible under our existing system. Agree that several other RM regulars were involved.

But again, what's the behavioural issue here that you see as a small number of tenacious RM regulars who apparently pretend that PTOPIC doesn't exist?

PTOPIC does exist, and if it did not exist (as proposed) these two long discussions would both have gone the same way, only far more quickly and with fewer ruffled feathers. Andrewa (talk) 05:45, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

See also my reply at wt:disambiguation. Andrewa (talk) 18:06, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

This seems more evidence supporting the proposals

No reply yet from Uanfala and I'm not going to ping them yet (I will in time). But I've had a few hours sleep and then reread the above dialogue and it is most satisfying, in a sad way.

I cannot see how anyone can look at the two examples given and not say what a waste of time. These discussions waste the time of established editors including the small number of tenacious RM regulars who have so offended both Uanfala and I'm sure others who have a similar interpretation of primary topic to theirs. They frustrate newer editors who read the primary topic guidelines and form an opinion which aligns with one camp or the other, and are then dropped in it.

And then the result was just as if primary topic did not exist, as Uanfala so fears. And none of this can possibly be to the readers' benefit.

Am I being unfair?

In the RM which Uanfala proposed and then chose as an example of why Primary Topic should stay, they describe my arguments as a really novel interpretation of the primary topic criteria. [5] Note however that my interpretation did subsequently receive explicit support, and although I didn't at the time raise it at wt:DAB as Uanfala suggested, when they later did they got no joy.

No, it's not novel. But it is controversial. Which is my whole point. It's a bad guideline. Perhaps we can fix it, either as proposed in my less radical proposal or as in an even more modest proposal by Netoholic (whom I'll ping but only when their Wikistress level drops a bit).

Far less trouble in the long run to just abolish it, which remains my preferred option, but in the medium term it's a lot of work. Andrewa (talk) 00:16, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

On a personal note

Just in case I'm one of the tenacious RM regulars who apparently pretend that PTOPIC doesn't exist, I must point out that in the NYRM2016 and NYRM2017 discussions I was repeatedly appealing to PTOPIC, as were most if not all of the regulars who more recently opposed the two RMs now given as examples of this supposed behaviour. Andrewa (talk) 02:07, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

P T vs PT

I intend to use wp:P T as a shortcut, as wp:PT to my surprise (since 2013) leads to a DAB whose top line is picture tutorial.

Interesting... in the project namespace the P T of PT is surely primary topic? More evidence that the concept is ill-defined and iller understood. Andrewa (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

P T of a disambiguated title

Primary topic rules do not apply to disambiguation. [6]

I don't think there's such thing as primary within a parenthetical disambiguation. That's why the movie everyone knows named Titanic isn't at Titanic (film), even if it would be the obvious primary. [7]

Interesting question. Not sure we're consistent on this, although these two posters (to the same RM) are of the same mind. Andrewa (talk) 05:26, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Bad Company

Talk:Bad Company#Requested move 7 March 2018 lots of interesting arguments and general consensus finally assessed that the band is P T, or at least that its article shouldn't be moved to disambiguate. Andrewa (talk) 09:42, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Primary redirects

Primary redirects are particularly problematic.

This edit raises some of the issues. The fact that there are other titles doesn't in any way weaken the claim of the novel to this title, but this is a very subtle point often not grasped. Andrewa (talk) 22:52, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps a show stopper

User:Andrewa/Let us abolish the whole concept of primary topic#The bottom line seems a show-stopper to me.

If that argument is valid, then is there really any doubt that primary topic is a bad idea? Andrewa (talk) 02:36, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Bernardini

Interesting RM at Talk:Bernardini (disambiguation)#Requested move 22 March 2018.

As it turns out there is a three-way DAB at Bernardini (disambiguation) one of whose legs is Bernardini (surname) which lists nine names all with articles, making only eleven topics in all to disambiguate.

If we wish to reduce mouse clicks, there's an obvious case for merging the two DABs. And I wonder how many similar cases there are? Andrewa (talk) 00:28, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Progress

Some very interesting comments have been added to Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation while I've been busy with other things (and one since). I'm encouraged that the discussion didn't die in my absence. Andrewa (talk) 07:52, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Newest first:

• no consensus need not imply no primary topic: If editors make reasonable cases for two different PTs then I also suggest there is no PT. But if everyone agrees that there is only one candidate for PT and the debate is merely over whether it passes the PT threshold then it's not clearcut. [8]
• I think the PT threshold should be higher... [9] (long)
• "every reasonably likely reader familiar with" is an improvement over "everyone familiar with". Still has the problem with "Muse (band)" vs. "Muse" (the myth). There are indeed fans of the band who have no idea where the name comes from. [10]
• Any reasonably likely reader, group of readers, not any editor’s claim. [11]
• scary thought: That would be a horrible threshold. All you would need is one editor saying WP:IDONTLIKEIT (only phrased as "I've never even heard of {the fruit called apple|the Muse in mythology|the prime minister named Churchill}) and we'd move the dab to the base name? *shudder* [12]
• raise the PT threshold: Support raising the PT threshold considerably. I suggest the level at which everyone familiar with any one of the ambiguous topics is necessarily familiar with the PT. This will apply mostly to topics that are the original term and from which all others derive. Avatar would meet this. Paris would not. [13]
• abolishing PT entirely is unviable; but support raising the threshold for PT: I don't think that abolishing PT entirely is viable; it would produce absurdities like "Water (H2O)", "Mathematics (numerical science)", "Africa (continent)" and "Sky (blue layer above your head)".
  However I would support raising the threshold for PT from the current "more likely than all the other topics combined" (which is effectively 50%+1) to "much more likely than all the other topics combined". [14]
• Support giving long-term significance priority over current usage: Support giving long-term significance priority over current usage. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; it is not clickbait, nor is it a sales-driven tabloid newspaper, or a ratings-chasing TV show, and favouring usage amounts to prioritising transient news or pop culture. Current usage should only ever be a tie-breaker criterion .
  I also support the proposal that no consensus defaults to no primary topic, because chosing one topic as primary over others should require an explicit consensus without first mover advantage. [15]

Some really good stuff there. Andrewa (talk) 23:57, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Two more examples

While idly disambiguating today, I came across two links to pop. This is a very well-known DABfixers problem: the answer is almost always pop music, as it was in those two cases.

I made the mistake of noticing that one of those articles also linked to soul, a clear WP:TOPIC. I gritted my teeth, and got to work. There are now just over 3,000 incoming links to that page, including all the Draft/Portal/User stuff which doesn't really count.

In the middle of that exercise, I made a second mistake. I noticed that a music-related article linked both to soul and to gospel, another clear WP:PTOPIC. I ground my teeth, and got onto the problem once I'd finished with soul. That page now has just over 4,900 incoming links.

I fixed more than 350 bad links to those two WP:PTOPICS; i.e. over 4% were bad. All bar one (which was a piece of puffery) should have linked to soul music or to gospel music. It took me about 6 hours, by which time I was braindead. I got the impression that gospel had a higher proportion of bad links than soul, but cannot be arsed to dig out the figures.

I hope that I got at least 99% of the bad links. Of course, there's nothing to stop other editors posting new bad links tomorrow. Narky Blert (talk) 00:14, 5 January 2019 (UTC)