Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links/Archive 11

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Wachovia

Can someone help me out? There's a bit of a mess here:

Wachovia points to just Wachovia about the company and should probably be renamed Wachovia (Corporation) or Wachovia Corporation so that Wachovia can become a dab page for:

Wachovia Corporation

• Wachovia Center
• Wachovia Spectrum
• Wachovia Championship
• Wachovia Securities
• Wachovia Building
• Wachovia, North Carolina
• Wachovia Center (Winston-Salem)
• Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza
• Wachovia Bank of Georgia
• Wachovia Tower (Birmingham)
• Wachovia Building (Philadelphia)

I've never done a page move and its a bit BOLD for me just yet :)

help? Legotech·(t)·(c) 03:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps consider creating Wachovia (disambiguation) and adding {{otheruses}} to the Wachovia article. (Oh, I added bullets to your list for readability, hope that's okay.) --Closedmouth (talk) 03:54, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Duh, the simple solution...no wonder I couldn't come up with it :) And thank you for fixing the formatting! Legotech·(t)·(c) 04:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Barticus88/WhatLinksHere.js

The script User:Barticus88/WhatLinksHere.js had stopped working due to a change in the WikiGuts. It is now fixed. You may need to do a page reload (in Firefox ctrl-R) for it to take effect. Thanx to Russ for pointing this out.  Randall Bart   Talk  21:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Archives?

If an archive of a talk page leads to a disambiguation page, should I change that link? Please reply on my talk page if possible, thanks! ĞavinŤing 10:16, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

(This question has been replied to a couple of times, so it can be considered resolved. Dekimasuよ! 03:40, 21 March 2008 (UTC) )

Inappropriate "disambig" tags

On this talk page, I have raised an issue which might deserve a wider audience. Is there any mechanism to detect and remove "disambig" tags from pages that really shouldn't be classified as disambiguation pages in the first place? The problem as I see it is that this project's goal is to repair links to disambiguation pages, since the links really should be going to the more specific article instead. If the more specific article is the very one linking to the disambiguation page, then the link is deleted entirely, since self-linking is neither allowed nor useful in any way. That is the specific scenario discussed in the aforementioned talk page.

However, if a disambiguation page exists that shouldn't even be a disambiguation page in the first place, and there are useful links to that page, then members of this project will assume they need to repair or delete those (useful) links. Are members of this project advised, before they undertake "repairs", to at least consider whether a "disambig" tag is appropriate? Is there a hard and fast rule as to when a "disambig" tag is appropriate? The first sentence of this project page reads, "Disambiguation pages exist to clarify confusion in which two or more similarly named articles exist – for example, if two famous people have the same name." Is that the only rule, or might there be exceptions (e.g., a list of articles not having similar names, but still qualifying for some reason as a disambiguation page)?

Please advise if you have useful information and/or opinions on this issue. Thanks. --Art Smart (talk) 17:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I did a little research to try to answer my own questions, and I've proposed a slight wording change in Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). See the talk page for my proposal. Thanks. --Art Smart (talk) 17:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Link counts

I have a question about link counts: the new dump shows 130 links to Independent, but I've been keeping an eye on that on and there are only 21 links in article space. (6 are redirects, there are a few other cross links from other dab pages, and a few that I'll fix.) Yet, when I move it down to "done" we'll credit the project with 130 fixed links. Do we view that as an acceptable compromise to make the link-counting simpler, or is there a better way of counting links for article space only?--AndrewHowse (talk) 14:07, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

There were 130 links at the time the dump file was generated 12 days ago, but most of them were fixed in the meantime. --Russ (talk) 14:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Something is broken

Category:Zoologists with author abbreviations is strange and incorporates Einstein and some others with have no such cat given--Stone (talk) 21:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Quick question

What happens if there's a link to a disambiguation page in an article I can't edit? It isn't protected or anything, it just won't let me edit it. Another quick question, if you add the page to the "done" list when it's all finished, what happens if people add more links to it? Then it isn't really done, is it? Totakeke423 (talk) 08:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

On the first, can you provide an example please? It might be a template, but let's take a look. On the second, there's a maintenance function here too. It's "done" at that point in time, but it could certainly change.--AndrewHowse (talk) 12:03, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I have a problem like this too. It is on Sexuality. There are three links left and I can not find where the links are. I had fixed a template that got rid of several different links except those two. Any help would be highly appreciated! Mynameisnotpj (talk) 02:06, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Could it be on the template talk page? I delinked in your comment; it might take a few minutes to roll out the change. I'll keep an eye on it. --AndrewHowse (talk) 02:13, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

You might try making a null edit (like adding a space) to the pages. Sometimes that helps to flush cached versions of the page that might still appear to have an older version of the template. older ≠ wiser 02:20, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

We have a winner! Bkonrad, please replace your inequality with equality! --AndrewHowse (talk) 02:26, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I'm still not completely sure what you did, but I will probably be able to figure it out if it happens again. Mynameisnotpj (talk) 03:19, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, the wiki guts don't always reproduce the new template exactly, but use a version that was earlier stored in some sort of cache. Only when the page changes, e.g. by the addition of a space or two after a final period, can one force the software to go get a new copy of the template. --AndrewHowse (talk) 04:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

To answer your second question, it's taken that those links that were present on the dump date have been fixed, and other links that were added later aren't counted. Thaurisil^t_c 10:22, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Armored car

Would appreciate other views on this: It looks like somebody took an article, split it into 3 pieces and put a dab page at the original. Then he/she pushed off to do something else, leaving 200+ inbound links. I'm truly unsure about the value of this. --AndrewHowse (talk) 20:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, they are three different types of vehicles with the same name... It should be relatively easy to tell if the articles mean the military or one of the civilian armored vehicles, with the primary civilian vehicle being Armored car (valuables). --Bobblehead ^(rants) 22:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

CorHomo not working for me

Hi fellow repairmen, I just downloaded CorHomo v.1.3.3, and no links appear in the lefthand corner no matter which disambiguation page I try. The most I can do is enter my ID and a disambig page, click start research, and have a list of possible links (righthand side) show up. Note: I'm using Windows Vista. ~EdGl 00:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe related to this ? I am not sure since I prefer to use my own tool, Wikipedia Cleaner. Feel free to give it a try ;) --NicoV (talk) 07:28, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, how do you change "'Whatlinkshere' to 'WhatLinksHere' in the tcl file" (what is the tcl file)? Maybe I'll just have to pick a new tool, like yours, NicoV. ~EdGl 13:58, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The tcl file is CorHomo source code, but after that I don't know the executable is created for Windows. --NicoV (talk) 14:57, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Any chance to get this fixed? I have no Java on my computer and work with CorHomo used to be fine for me in the past. I was trying to tweak executable, but with no success. Perhaps someone could recompile executable with new WhatLinksHere, hm, please? --Ruziklan (talk) 22:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Could you use a hex editor to modify the exe file? Andareed (talk) 22:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but I could not find texts, they are seemingly hidden, as usual in some executables. --Ruziklan (talk) 22:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

As almost 2 days have passed since my posting here and no new idea was offered, it seems that not many are watching this and I should not expect working version of CorHomo. Anyway, if Java based tool is no option for me, what would you recommend? --Ruziklan (talk) 14:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC) (in WinXP environment --Ruziklan (talk) 15:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC))

All right, despite my doubts I managed to get some Java on and indeed WikiCleaner works fine. Thanks for not answering (and I mean it really positively :-). --Ruziklan (talk) 20:40, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I downloaded Wikipedia Cleaner and it works great :) ~EdGl 15:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Good to hear . If you have suggestions on it, you can use this page. --NicoV (talk) 16:02, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Rename the nationality section

This is about the current list page. Is it OK to rename the section “Nationality and ethnic group adjectives” to “Nationalities and ethnic groups”? It contains nouns too, and there are more in the general list. Also, the words can usually be understood as adjectives or nouns, depending on context (if I'm not mistaken). Wipe (talk) 00:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Wipe (talk) 01:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Old IP links.

Some of our what-links-here pages are crowded with links to IP talk pages with ancient warnings about vandalism by IP editors. Per the discussion archived at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 9#IP talk pages, these may be blanked on sight. A bot can do this task, if we feed it all the IP talk pages containing links from disambig pages and instruct it to blank any one from which there have been no contributions since, say 2006 (to be on the safe side). bd2412 T 20:58, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

As an addendum to that, for IP talk pages with identification templates (i.e. indicating that the IP address in question belongs to a particular school or company), that template or message should be left intact, but the rest can be blanked (or at least links to disambig pages can be delinked). bd2412 T 04:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Atrocity?

Atrocity dab's to three possible links, a wikitionary definition, and music links. Should the dab page just redirect to the wikitionary page (i.e. the primary subject)? Martin451 (talk) 23:08, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it even possible to redirect to a Wiktionary page? (Btw, I linked "atrocity" in Martin's question for ease of navigation.) --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 04:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, you use the {{wi}} template (with a long comment please!) --Closedmouth (talk) 07:21, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

However, I don't think that is advisable when there are other terms to be disambiguated. The other terms should also be listed, which makes the page more appropriately a disambiguation page than a soft redirect to wiktionary. older ≠ wiser 12:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I realise this is somewhat tangential to the discussion here, but if the word atrocity is wikilinked when it's used in the 'ordinary word' sense, then I'd tend to unlink it when dabbing the inbound links to Atrocity. Do others agree? --AndrewHowse (talk) 12:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

You can link such uses directly to Wiktionary. Although I check to make sure it is warranted and not simply overlinking of common terms. See Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects#Wiktionary and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links). older ≠ wiser 13:00, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with delinking when the word is used in its ordinary sense. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 17:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

List of Users

Just recently joining the cause to remove disambig. pages with links, I thought that it would be good if we had a list of all users doing this using something like "# {{user4|Username}}." Just an idea, Astrale01^talk_contribs 18:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Never mind, there is already a list for the whole DAB Wikiproject. Astrale01^talk_contribs 18:15, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Another thing we could do is to have an article category to show which pages need a big cleanup. If any of these ideas are already in place, please let me know. Astrale01^talk_contribs 18:11, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello, are you looking for Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup? ~EdGl (talk) 19:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks. Astrale01^talk_contribs 19:43, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Template to display project participation at top of your userpage

I happen to like these little icons along the top bar of my userpage, so I boldly created one for this project ({{Wikipedia:Disambiguation_pages_with_links/Usertop}}). Let me know your thoughts. (Example: User:Xenocidic). If anyone can figure out how to remove those bars along the top and bottom of the icon, that would be great. xenocidic (talk) 14:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

And this is now fixed. Thanks, Thingg! xenocidic (talk) 19:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Template changes slow to propagate?

Does anyone else find that changes to templates are getting slower to propagate through the articles using them? I seem to remember that they used to roll out in a few minutes, and now it takes days. Has there been a change in the software somewhere? --AndrewHowse (talk) 16:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I was going to ask the same question. The links to Bernhard Vogel just refuse to go away even though I fixed the ones in templates a couple of days ago. --Closedmouth (talk) 16:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Null edits seem to take care of it (edit/no change/save) although that seems like an inelegant solution. --AndrewHowse (talk) 16:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I've tried purging the cache of every page I could think of, but it had no impact. I guess the servers have more important things to worry about. --Closedmouth (talk) 16:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Try editing the page that transcludes the template. That should work and is probably more useful, since you can fix up grammar and whatnot. --Squids'and'Chips 00:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I am having this problem, where many articles link to Harris (dab page) via a cached version of Template:Hebrides, which no longer links to Harris. I could edit each article, but is that necessary? How long should I expect to wait for this to resolve on its own? --Una Smith (talk) 18:47, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I dab'd the link to Breeching in Template:Clothing circa December 22, but apparently some articles still link to the dab page via the template. Or am I overlooking something? --Una Smith (talk) 23:42, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you're right. The job queue is either not working or working so slowly as to be almost useless. I think you should raise an issue on Bugzilla. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:58, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Bugzilla meaning Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests? Is anyone here already a registered user, who could do this? --Una Smith (talk) 00:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Bugzilla, sorry, I should have been clearer. Anyone can register there and submit a bug report. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 02:36, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

So filed, as #17170, to the best of my ability. --AndrewHowse (talk) 05:05, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! Now we just wait some more? It occurs to me I can work out which incoming links to Breeching need disambiguating, by pasting the WhatLinksHere for both Breeching and Template:Clothing into two files, sorting both, and running them through diff. --Una Smith (talk) 07:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It worked, and isolated all of 8 links needing to be disambiguated. --Una Smith (talk) 07:41, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

• User:Tim Starling fixed a big bug in job queue code last week. Links to templates should be refreshed automatically now, although any jobs that were in the queue before the fix have probably been deleted. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Fixing RDs to dab pages with AWB

I suspect this is really obvious to somebody, but it's not obvious to me. How do I disambig links to a dab page via redirect with AWB? E.g., King George V redirects to dab page George V, so anything that links to King George V needs to be fixed too. TIA, --AndrewHowse (talk) 02:06, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Load the links to the dab page, then type the name of the redirect in the "Link to disambiguation" field without clicking anything. AWB will look for the name of the redirect in the article and use the links from the dab page. --Closedmouth (talk) 02:43, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Perfect. Thanks much. --AndrewHowse (talk) 04:11, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Wanted: Disambigious members with free time to help MASSIVE project!

Hello disambigious wikiproject! Just giving a shout out to anyone that is here interested in a VERY BIG disambigious task. It involves this BOT: User:FritzpollBot and this project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places. The objective is to add an extra ~1.8 million articles on Wikipedia. Yup that's right, ~1.8 million articles of places (viligies,towns etc). All of this will be automated and such but there is a problem with the disambigiuation aspects of this task. That is, there are many places that happen to have the same name (but are two different places --> as suggested by the coordinates) and if one article was to be created, the second won't be created but will instead be a copy of the first. This might leave big gaps in the amount of articles created so that is why disambigious names will need to be fixed to ensure there is an article for each of the places. There currently are a few people undertaking this task already but if you happen to be interested in this task, do check out the project page and help any country of your choise out. Currently not all countries are available, but they soon will be so I thought I give a heads up to anyone that might want to help out in anyway. Ok maybe that wasn't an exceptional explanation but if you have any questions, please go to User talk:Fritzpoll or User talk:Blofeld of SPECTRE as both happen to be a part of this excellent idea. Cheers! Calaka (talk) 04:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh and just to give an update: There is currently a discussion occuring here at: [1] so if there is any interest, you are more than welcome to state your view/opinion. Cheers!Calaka (talk) 01:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Can't find links to DAB page

I've been spending a lot of time repairing links to DAB pages, learning as I go along. My latest DAB page is Khan, and, from over 600 links, I'm down to just a couple dozen. And now I'm having problems. I just can't seem to find where most of these pages link to Khan; I've even checked for redirects (Khan has quite a few). To make this a more specific question, could somebody show me where Börte (a very short article) links to Khan? I would really appreciate it. --AnnaFrance (talk) 18:35, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

It might be one of those "transcluded template hasn't updated" issues. Try a null edit of Börte; that might flush the old template. --AndrewHowse (talk) 00:24, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

That did it! And now I have another trick in my arsenal. Thank you very much Andrew. --AnnaFrance (talk) 03:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Alexander

Alexander is on the list of most increases this week. The problem is that it is not a disam page. The disam page is at Alexander (disambiguation). So the links to Alexander aren't necessarily accurate but it doesn't fit the bounds of this page. I put a note next to it but I'm unsure if there is anything else that needs to be done. --Woohookitty^Woohoo! 06:54, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

This might not be relevant to you, but the disambiguation tool corhomo won't work for pages that don't have a {{disambig}} template. If anyone wants to use corhomo to fix links pointing to Alexander or any other non-disambiguation page, they might want to temporarily add {{disambig}} to that page. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 09:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

It is on the list because it contains a {{surname}} template, and until a day or two ago that template was (incorrectly) listed on MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage as a dab template. That's now been fixed, but the maintenance list won't be updated until the end of the week. --Russ (talk) 10:38, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah ha! :) Thank you. --Woohookitty^Woohoo! 07:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Subpages

Neither WP:Disambiguation pages with links/from categories nor WP:Disambiguation pages with links/from portals has been updated in quite a while. If anyone is interested in maintaining these pages, current source data can be found at User:RussBot/DPL/from categories and User:RussBot/DPL/from portals, respectively. --Russ (talk) 10:18, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

James Gordon

I have a question. Here it says that this list is generated automatically. But I completed yesterday James Gordon and he's still at the top of the Non-unique personal names list. It takes some time to update or do I have to do something? --PeterCantropus (talk) 08:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

It is only generated once per week. See the page history. --Russ (talk) 09:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

John Dee

I'm working on John Dee and it seems that almost every page refers to John Dee (mathematician). Shouldn't we move that page to John Dee, and John Dee to John Dee (disambiguation)? --PeterCantropus (talk) 02:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the mathematician would appear to be far more notable and should be the primary page here. I suggest discussing this with Boleyn, who first moved the page. Playclever (talk) 11:21, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Orange

Over the last few days I have tried to fix Orange. There are a few remaining stragglers that I'm not sure what to do with. In addition, I am assuming that only mainspace links are changed, not userspace or talkspace? - DigitalC (talk) 00:48, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look. We don't usually worry about talkspace, and changing pages in userspace is often seen as a bit rude; best not to do that. Cheers, --AndrewHowse (talk) 02:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Where should "Russian" link to...

...when it precedes the profession and name (e. g. "Russian histologist Alexander Maksimov") when the person if both of Russian ethnicity and citizenship? To Russians or to Russia? In cases where the person somehow "represents" the country (e.g. "He faced the tough Russian Igor Andreev and won in a 5-set victory.") it is obviously the latter, but what about other cases (such as in the former example)? --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! !  15:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I always link to country, unless context implies the ethnicity only. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 18:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I remember the same dilemma with "[[Irish]] singer". Is she Irish or does she sing in Irish? Linking to the island or the republic seems nonsensical. This varies by nationality/ethnicity/language; rules applicable to one don't apply to another.  Randall Bart   Talk  01:12, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

What happens when all the links are fixed?

I think I finished up the list for The Message, but I'm pretty new at this and I don't want to do something terribly wrong. Do I move the entry to the done section? Thanks. Ensign beedrill (talk) 13:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. Just cut the whole line that contains the link for that page, and paste it at the bottom of the "Done" section. --Russ (talk) 13:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks. Ensign beedrill (talk) 15:05, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Church DAB

So, I'm looking at the (frighteningly huge) set of links to Church, and would like to get opinions on disambiguating church in terms of church = the congregation and administration connected to a single building. In Tithe barn we see "a tenth of the farm's produce which had to be given to the church". Now, should church in that sentence be

• (a) Unlinked
• (b) Ecclesia (church) - "both a particular body of faithful people, and the whole body of the faithful"
• (c) Church body - "a Christian religious organization made up of congregations, members and clergy. They are organized more or less formally, with constitutions and by-laws, maintain offices, sometimes seek non-profit corporate status in the United States and often have state or regional structures"
• (d) Something else???

I suppose Ecclesia seems the best - but grew up around church-goers, and never heard it called that in my life. Seems like there should be a better term - or maybe just go with choice (a)? That's my favorite so far... --JaGa^talk 03:08, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I admire your bravery. You might consider using Christian church, which I think is preferable to Ecclesia (church) and will probably cover most of the ground. I would also be pretty tempted to unlink wherever the context allows. SlackerMom (talk) 03:22, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Another idea: You might consider Church service when the context seems to indicate that "church" is being used as a time (such as "before church" in Sunday roast). In fact, I think I'll add this one to the dab page. SlackerMom (talk) 03:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Ooh, I like the Church service idea. And I think I will unlink that one. --JaGa^talk 05:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

You are indeed brave. I looked at Church, and realised that I wouldn't know where to redirect the pages to, and that created a problem. Realistically, if clear wikilinks aren't created, the Church DPL problem will be recreated even if it is fixed. DigitalC (talk) 09:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Very good point, DigitalC. If we don't have this all ironed out, we'll probably end up redoing the church disambig in a year or two. I found a proposal for organizing the articles here, so I'm going to pursue this before doing more church disambigs. --JaGa^talk 03:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Constituency

There are literally thousands of articles that link to constituency that should link to electoral district, however constituency isn't a disambiguation page (the article used to encompass both meanings of constituency, now electoral district is a separate article.) It's not quite a disambig project, but it seems like very similar work as is done here. Please help :) Scott Ritchie (talk) 05:23, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks to me like that article needs a rename in order to make [[constituency]] a dab. Hmmm. What to call it?  Randall Bart   Talk  00:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I just took a look at this, and it might not be literally thousands. It might be only about 1900. B-) Of course the other 500 or so links would need to be fixed to point to the renamed article.

I volunteer to fix at least 200 of them once somebody decides what to rename the article to.  Randall Bart   Talk  01:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Inline engine

I took a look at inline engine, and I'm not sure it can be easily fixed. The ambiguity over "inline engine" refers to the difference between automotive and aviation terminology. In automotive terms, and inline engine is a straight engine (not arranged in a V like in a V8) whereas n aviation it refers to banks of cylinders that are not rotary engines or radial engines. However, there is no article for the use of the aviation terminology. Currently the DAB link leads to reciprocating engine, but an aviation article that links to inline engine can't simply be redirected to reciprocating engine, because while all inline engines are reciprocating engines, not all reciprocating engines are inline engines. Basically, an article would need to be created on inline engine (aviation). DigitalC (talk) 23:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Done Josh Parris 23:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Robert Williams

Robert Williams is a perennial member of Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Current list, so I wanted to fix it. Many pages link to an author of a text on geometric bodies, so I think I'll point those to Robert Williams (geometer) for now; if there's already a page for him then the geometer can be redirected. If anybody knows of such a destination, then please speak up. --AndrewHowse (talk) 02:03, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguating redirects

When an ambiguous title is occupied by a redirect, is there a mechanism to get its incoming links disambiguated? Eg, CMT? --Una Smith (talk) 03:22, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

That's an interesting question ... in a narrow sense, there's no disambiguation page involved, so it's not a problem in the sense that this project has in its scope. That is, CMT has only one interpretation in the current state of Wikipedia. If it became a disambiguation page, with several entries and several possible intended destinations, then it would move into scope here. Are you suggesting that this change will happen soon? If so then it would be good to know in advance; an editor with some of the more sophisticated tools could then run a "find and replace" to change links to CMT in advance, while we could be fairly confident that they should all point to the same destination.

In the broader sense, there are guidelines that say it's not necessary to "fix" redirects, and that it might even lead to a net reduction in performance. I guess it's a case of "If it ain't broke..." unless there's other contextual info. --AndrewHowse (talk) 14:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

CMT used to be a disambiguation page. That page was moved to CMT (disambiguation) and CMT was made a redirect to Country Music Television. Then someone requested to move Country Music Television over the redirect (request denied, see Talk:Country Music Television). Meanwhile, CMT is accumulating incoming links, much as if it still were a disambiguation page. --Una Smith (talk) 15:59, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Forgive me for being slow - I don't understand what your last sentence means. Editors ought not to be linking to dab pages, but it's just fine to link to [[CMT]] as an intentional use of a redirect. Of course, if you see such links that ought to go to some other destination then it would be public-spirited of you to fix them, but that's beyond the scope of WP:DPL. --AndrewHowse (talk) 16:10, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

My point is that regardless of what should happen, what does happen is ambiguous titles accumulate incoming links needing disambiguation. A case in point is Weymouth, which before this week was an article about Weymouth, Dorset, yet when I first examined them about 10% of its incoming links intended other articles. Now Weymouth is a disambiguation page. --Una Smith (talk) 17:42, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks. I guess that's a weakness of allowing primary topics to take the base-named page? I don't know of any organised group to address that; one could "adopt" a page of the sort you describe and monitor inbound links. --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguating links in these situations is very frustrating and laborious, because first any new links have to be found among the old, "correct" ones. And the bigger the primary topic, the worse it gets. Consider London (primary topic) vs America (dab). --Una Smith (talk) 21:32, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

A similar situation exists with Heavy metal music, Heavy metal, and Heavy metal (disambiguation). In situations like these, a redirect page is a compromise somewhere between the title being occupied by a primary topic and the title being occupied by a disambiguation page. It seems to me generally to be a poor compromise. --Una Smith (talk) 15:59, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

This is developing into a larger discussion on Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation and to some extent also on Wikipedia talk:Requested moves. --Una Smith (talk) 18:50, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation of Lysicles

I would appreciate your comments/suggestions on my planned disambiguation of Lysicles at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome#Disambiguation of Lysicles. - Canglesea (talk) 19:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

 Done --Una Smith (talk) 18:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

History of labour law in the United Kingdom

History of labour law in the United Kingdom has a large number of dab links. I don't have enough knowledge of legal terminology to be able to fix all of them. --Geniac (talk) 18:30, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

A Streetcar Named Desire (film)

I just today made A Streetcar Named Desire (film) redirect to A Streetcar Named Desire. Most but not all incoming links to A Streetcar Named Desire (film) intend A Streetcar Named Desire (1951 film). I welcome help disambiguating them. Also, is it okay and useful to put a {{disambig}} tag on the redirect page? --Una Smith (talk) 21:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps {{R from incomplete disambiguation}} would be better? The redirect isn't really a dab page, so the {{disambig}} doesn't quite fit there. --AndrewHowse (talk) 02:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Much better, thanks! --Una Smith (talk) 04:05, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Delink?

I'm currently doing Anomaly and I have found that most of the links to it refer to the general meaning of the word and not any specific instance of it. Should I be delinking these? I've already had one editor object to me doing that and, after discussing, I think they were right to. I think the word is uncommon enough and misused enough that people would benefit from a link to some adequate description. Is a link to the Wiktionary entry the way to go?

Also, I've seen a great many links to Anomalous phenomenon, which apparently was an article on pseudoscience and the paranormal that was merged into the disambig, which raises a whole new set of nightmares. Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this? Reyk _YO! 05:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This is a fairly common problem. It applies also to Founder, and I have held off from fixing links to Founder until I decide on a solution. I have thought of some, including:

1. Make the dictionary type links a pipe and redirect, like this: [[Anomaly (disambiguation)|anomaly]].
2. Create a Wikipedia article about Anomaly (word), similar to American (word), and link there.

Other ideas? --Una Smith (talk) 15:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Double redirects to dab pages

This project likes to make necessary links to disambiguation pages via a redirect "(disambiguation)" page, so these links can be isolated from incoming links in need of disambiguation. However, Wikipedia:INTDABLINK says don't do this. Can we make these instructions clearer? Remind me again, what do we use these secondary "(disambiguation)" pages for? Here is an example. Annie Hathaway can redirect to Anne Hathaway, the relevant disambiguation page; or to Anne Hathaway (disambiguation), a redirect to that disambiguation page. --Una Smith (talk) 16:59, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Double redirects are non-functional. A link to a redirect is broken. A redirect is not a link to a dab page in the sense meant by Wikipedia:INTDABLINK. older ≠ wiser 01:45, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Templates and Whatlinkshere

I was disambiguating pages to Defender. One of the links that I disambiguated was in a template {{Serbia-footy-defender-stub}}. However, all of the pages that contain that template still show up in the Special:WhatLinksHere/Defender page. It's been almost a month since the link was disambiguated on the template, and I've tried purging that page, and pages that contain the template, but the pages that transclude the template still appear on the whatlinkshere page. Any thoughts on how to fix it. Regards, -- Jeff3000 (talk) 03:44, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

see also #Template changes slow to propagate? above. Null edits seem to fix it, but don't actually do that; I'll use this as an example in the [bugzilla.wikimedia.org bugzilla] report. --AndrewHowse (talk) 04:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Bug #17170. --AndrewHowse (talk) 05:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

List of top 5000 disambiguation pages by number of links - updated DAILY

I've created a Disambiguation pages with links page on the toolserver, which updates its list daily instead of every half-year or so. This represents a big change for us, as we can now track status day-to-day. The question is, how can we best make use of the list? --JaGa^talk 19:40, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow! (Australian??? Certainly no primary topic to be found there...) Anyway, this pretty much obsoletes the bot that now generates WP:Disambiguation pages with links/Maintenance. Maybe we should just have it grab the data from your page instead. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

FWIW (and long time no see), I de-dabbed six of the top 15 on this list today, including Australian. There was already a dab at Australian (disambiguation) when the new one was created at the plain title. We'll see how many hold.... Dekimasuよ! 03:40, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

That would be great. I'd be happy to alter my page to help this project in whatever way is necessary - the page exists solely for this project. BTW, the 5000 limit is arbitrary - we can get the stats for as many disambigs as we want. So there's room for creativity here. :) --JaGa^talk 22:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

For WP:DPM I've tried to capture every page with 50 or more links; that would probably require you to add 500 or 1000 more places to your list.

I could also generate a list where number of links >= 50, regardless of how many we end up with. I think I like that better than the current "top 5000" - heck, I'll put that in for tonight's run. --JaGa^talk 03:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Done. Now, it has 5436 entries. --JaGa^talk 03:56, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

This raises the question of whether to bother with the use of database dumps to generate WP:DPL, maybe we should just use the top 500 or so off the toolserver list. The only advantage of the dump is that it gives us a fixed starting point that we can use to measure progress, but that's only important as a motivational tool. Thoughts? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:40, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The motivational part is the sticking point IMO. I think it's important to preserve it - and enhance it, if we can. For instance, I could make a scheduled job that runs, say, once every three months. That job takes the top 250 (or whatever number) offenders and puts them in a table. Then, this page could list those 250 for the next three months - along with stats like original position in the list, original number of links, current number of links, diff in links since yesterday, etc. We could have a countdown until the next regen - which would make an even stronger motivation. We could also link to the list I have today for a reference to up-to-date numbers. Or something along those lines. --JaGa^talk 03:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Let's give it a try. I will see if I can update the DPL list on February 1 using the top 500 from your report as of that date. (Also, as of this Sunday, WP:DPM will be fed from your reports.) We'll see how it works, and we can always change it later if need be. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:57, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to add a search function? If I want to check the number of links to a particular page (e.g., I often do "Japanese"), I have to click through lists of 50 at this point. Dekimasuよ! 04:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the ability to search would be awesome. ~EdGl (talk) 20:45, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

There definitely should be a search function. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 21:18, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Should that link be used on the project page instead? Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 16:55, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Ask and ye shall receive °

° Certain restrictions apply.

OK, since I launched my new toolserver page, I've been given some great ideas that never occurred to me.

1. From Dekimasu: Is it possible to add a search function? If I want to check the number of links to a particular page (e.g., I often do "Japanese"), I have to click through lists of 50 at this point.

• DONE. Disambiguation link count - Get the number of mainspace links for your favorite disambig page. Real time. If you bookmark it after a search, you won't have to type in the article name any more.
• (AND I added a search box to the original page, which is probably what you were really asking for. But the page listed above is real time, while Disambiguation pages with links is only updated once daily. --JaGa^talk 00:54, 31 January 2009 (UTC))

2. From Commander Keane: Thinking about the problem from the other direction, would it be possible to input an article title, say Frog, and output how many links to disambiguation pages are in the article & list the links that need to be fixed.

• DONE Disambiguation pages linked by an article - Lookup all disambiguation pages links from a single article. Real time.

3. Also from Commander Keane: And even create a list of articles with the most links to disambiguation page.

• DONE Articles with the most disambiguation links - Updated daily. Links each article to the lookup page in #2.

--JaGa^talk 22:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, what bliss. --Una Smith (talk) 04:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		To JaGa and everyone else who helped cook up this most excellent tool. Una Smith (talk) 04:47, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Dekimasuよ! 05:03, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

And now I shall see if this device can be made to work with AWB, for quick cleansing of all disambig pages in an entry. bd2412 T 17:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Causing fits

Currently bugging me is a case where the "official" common name of a mammal is also a sum-of-parts phrase meaning something else. I refer to Wild horse, now an article about the species Equus ferus rather than the mustang or feral horse. Wild horse keeps mutating into a dab page by the addition of content about mustangs and feral horses. My proposed solution, to make Wild horse a dab page, seems to be causing fits in several editors. See Talk:Wild horse#Requested move. --Una Smith (talk) 06:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

New templates list?

My look-through so far has shown that there are a lot of pages that are just linked through one or two templates. (Some have five... the people who make templates for place names in India need to be slapped with a rubber chicken until they start checking their links.) Is there any chance we can have a new list of transclusions so that I'm not sorting these out one by one? I'd do normal link fixing, but it appears CorHomo is dead again. Dekimasuよ! 14:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

We're gonna need a bigger rubber chicken....

Anyway, WP:Disambiguation pages with links/from templates is updated as of the most current database dump. There probably won't be another one for 3-4 weeks, at which time I'll update it again. Maybe this could be done more currently through the toolserver, but at the moment I don't know how. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:04, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Vanity Fair

I'd appreciate some points of view on this: Vanity Fair currently redirects to Vanity Fair (disambiguation) so on its face that's a malplaced dab. However, the history of Vanity Fair indicates some moves have taken place, and a reasonable part of the inbound links are for the magazine or one of the movies. I think the dab should be at the base name, but it's not obvious that there isn't another possible solution. Hence, my request for alternative povs. --AndrewHowse (talk) 15:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I would think Vanity Fair (magazine) would be at the base name as the most common usage of the term, but you might get some fighting over that with the novel. If that is the case, then it is probably best for the dab page to be at the base name. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 16:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

AndrewHowse, why not just request the move via WP:RM and see if consensus emerges? --Una Smith (talk) 18:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, since you ask, I was hoping to avoid the sorts of controversy you describe above at #Causing fits! --AndrewHowse (talk) 18:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

As I expect you know, those debates are part of the process of thinking through a problem: how to weigh the relative merits of a primary topic vs a dab page at a base page name. I think that on the whole debating, rather than avoiding debate, is the more helpful approach. --Una Smith (talk) 19:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Quite. My purpose here was to solicit points of view that I might not otherwise have anticipated. For example, I take a rather chronological perspective, and it wouldn't occur to me to have the magazine at the base page, since it seems to be named for the novel. For all I know there are active editors here who don't watch WP:RM; their opinions might well be valuable too. --AndrewHowse (talk) 20:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The chronological argument (book came first, so is primary) is offered regularly but it does not hold a candle to the page view stats argument. That argument in turn is vulnerable to counter-arguments about recentism, so does not hold a candle to reliable source usage stats via Google web/book/scholar searches. Those have their weaknesses too. There also is analysis of the incoming links to the base page: how many total, how many wrong, etc. --Una Smith (talk) 23:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Page view stats alone are not worth much either. Adhering to such stats merely encourages a self-reinforcing, systemic bias. older ≠ wiser 12:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. --Una Smith (talk) 16:09, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

James Watt

Shouldn't this just point directly to the inventor, with a James Watt (disambiguation) page for the others? --JaGa^talk 18:13, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

One more toolserver report

I just released Templates with disambiguation links, a daily-updated version of Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/from templates that Dekimasu was asking about. I also placed a list of my toolserver reports on the main page, hope that's OK with everybody. --JaGa^talk 21:15, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

• Excellent! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I love this tool! Just wondering, with the job queue rumoured to take up to 40 days to clear, to reshresh this daily report do we need a bot to make null edits or does the tool check the templates themselves? If we need a bot to make null edits is it better to ask on this page, Wikipedia:Bot requests or just ask the nearest friendly bot operator (Russ)?--Commander Keane (talk) 02:16, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

• My script looks directly at the template-to-disambig link, so once a template is fixed, it will drop out of the "Templates with disambiguation links" list the next day. (Actually, it would drop out immediately, because I don't display templates that have been edited since the last update - but that's another matter.) However, there will be a lag on when other lists (Disambiguation pages with links et al) will reflect the template fix. I was thinking, a good thing for Wikipedia in general would be a bot that null-edited every page that transcludes a template any time that template is edited. The templates that are included in a LOT of articles are protected anyways, so I don't think this would be as dangerous at it might seem. --JaGa^talk 02:57, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

• Ok that is good to know the script will update. I think your idea for a null-editing bot is already implemented in the job queue, it is just not working at the moment. See Help:Job queue, the current length of the job queue at Special:Statistics and the village pump thread.--Commander Keane (talk) 03:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Some automation thoughts.

Certain recurring disambiguation patterns could probably be handled by a bot. I can't tell you how many times I've seen [[Orlando]], [[Florida]] (or [[Orlando]], FL or the like), [[Phoenix]], [[Arizona]], and even, "they drank [[champagne]]". A bot could easily clean up the typical Orlando (Florida) or Phoenix (Arizona) link, and probably the (drink/drank/bottle of/glass of) champagne links. There are probably a few hundred similar common combinations where the context makes the right solution obvious, and bot-fixable. I'd gladly hunt them down if someone can make a bot that will regularly disambiguate those links. bd2412 T 04:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

There is already a bot that can do this (in fact, I already use it for this purpose on a limited basis with some common patterns I have come across) - it is replace.py with the -fixes: option. All you need to do is prepare a list with (a) the disambiguation page title, (b) the string to be replaced (optionally in regular expression form), and (c) the replacement string (using \1, \2, etc. to replace regular expression groups). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:55, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a one-time entry into a list that the bot regularly clears? If so, please add:

[[Orlando]], [[Florida]] --> [[Orlando, Florida|Orlando]], [[Florida]]

[[Orlando]], Florida --> [[Orlando, Florida|Orlando]], Florida

[[Orlando]], FL --> [[Orlando, Florida|Orlando]], FL

[[Phoenix]], [[Arizona]] --> [[Phoenix, Arizona|Phoenix]], [[Arizona]]

[[Phoenix]], Arizona --> [[Phoenix, Arizona|Phoenix]], Arizona

[[Phoenix]], AZ --> [[Phoenix, Arizona|Phoenix]], AZ

drink [[champagne]] --> drink [[Champagne (wine)|champagne]]

drinks [[champagne]] --> drinks [[Champagne (wine)|champagne]]

drinking [[champagne]] --> drinking [[Champagne (wine)|champagne]]

drank [[champagne]] --> drank [[Champagne (wine)|champagne]]

glass of [[champagne]] --> glass of [[Champagne (wine)|champagne]]

bottle of [[champagne]] --> bottle of [[Champagne (wine)|champagne]]

[[champagne]] glass --> [[Champagne (wine)|champagne]] glass

[[champagne]] bottle --> [[Champagne (wine)|champagne]] bottle

received an [[Oscar]] --> received an [[Academy Award|Oscar]] -->

nominated for an [[Oscar]] --> nominated for an [[Academy Award|Oscar]] -->

[[Oscar]] nominated --> [[Academy Award|Oscar]] nominated -->

[[Oscar]] nominee --> [[Academy Award|Oscar]] nominee -->

[[Oscar]] winning --> [[Academy Award|Oscar]] winning -->

[[Oscar]]-winning --> [[Academy Award|Oscar]]-winning -->

Cheers! bd2412 T 19:10, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

• Done. Note that this will only fix exact matches (including capitalization and spacing); if someone typed [[oscar]] nominee or [[Oscar ]]winning onto a page (and you'd be surprised how often things like that happen), the bot won't touch them. Also, I fixed one typo above. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:18, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Thanks. There will be enough exact matches that the above will significantly cut down human labor in disambiguating this common links. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
    • This is a useful bot, but when it's sorting out ambiguous US city links, I think it would be better to keep the linking simple - just convert the link to [[Phoenix, Arizona]], not the convoluted [[Phoenix, Arizona|Phoenix]], [[Arizona]]. There's no need for a separate link to the state - the intention of the article's writer was to link to the city, and the state is only there for disambiguation/clarity. The state will be linked in the city's article if any reader wants to know more about the state the city's in. Colonies Chris (talk) 10:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
      • I agree with this. Dekimasuよ! 12:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Hoping for input

I'm hoping for more input at WT:DAB#Is this a dab?... some of the "dab pages" in question have lots of incoming links, so this might be something worth taking a look at. Dekimasuよ! 03:33, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Deletion discussion of interest

Template:Public transport disambiguation pages is up for deletion. It's a template designed to be placed on dab pages and link to other dab pages, thus aiding navigation. However, it thus creates a large number of links to them, mixed in with the links that need to be fixed. Hoping for input. Dekimasuよ! 13:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Should we count Set Indices as disambig pages?

Currently, my scripts consider a set index article to be a disambiguation page, and therefore they show up in my reports. Bobblehead just requested that I ignore set indices - see SIAs and Dab lists on Toolserver. This seems fine, but I wanted to get input from those who would be affected by the change. --JaGa^talk 23:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm looks like this has been dealt with in Is this a dab?, and it looks like the answer is going to be "yes, ignore set indices". If I don't hear anything to the contrary in a couple of days, I'll just go ahead and start working on my scripts. --JaGa^talk 23:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I feel like I'm debating myself. :) If you look at Category:Set indices on comics, a lot of these look like plain old disambigs to me - Countdown (comics), Reaper (comics), and Everyman (comics), to name a randomly-picked few. Should these be converted to disambig, or is this proper use of the set index? --JaGa^talk 00:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the comics entries look like dabs that need to have their links fixed, not set index "articles", or "lists" as the road pages are being named. I haven't moved forward with any of the moves I/we suggested at WT:DAB yet; I feel like there is a more discussion (like this) that needs to take place, but maybe I'm just thinking too much. Dekimasuよ! 01:41, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

My feeling is that anything classified as a "list" should be ignored, at any rate. Something called "List of comic book characters named Countdown" would be a surefire target for deletion, and certainly not a dab. Countdown (comics) seems much more like a dab than any kind of article. That's not to say that all such lists would be useless; List of Atlantic hurricanes, which is classified as an SIA and is really a list of lists, seems useful, but it doesn't seem to me that links to it need to be fixed at all. Dekimasuよ! 01:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

(Last, I promise.) Dodge Charger is a second subset; it's not a list, but it still deserves to be ignored. It has real article content, as described in the section on SIAS: "A set index article is meant for information as well as navigation: just like a normal list article, it can have metadata and extra information about each entry." There is information on the article that ties the entries together and explains why they can be treated as a single entity or as a whole. That's not really true for a page disambiguating among the comic book characters; there's no justification there for treating the plain title as a parent article. It'd be another example of a granfalloon. Dekimasuよ! 01:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I hope I'm not intruding ... I agree with the proposal to ignore SIAs. SIAs are not dabs. There might be a few, or even many, pages with sia tags that would be better as dabs, but that's a different debate, I think. --AndrewHowse (talk) 02:24, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

For things that are correctly labeled as SIAs, I agree that we should ignore them. Since that seems to be a minority of all SIAs, though, I think we should handle the classification problems first. Dekimasuよ! 03:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I should perhaps have said "...ignore true SIAs" and so forth. --AndrewHowse (talk) 04:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Ooh, a Cat's Cradle reference, very nice. :D Well, I would plan on counting any article that is a member of the following categories as non-disambig:

• Category:Set indices
• Category:Set indices on Russia
• Category:Set indices on Russian_inhabited_localities
• Category:Set indices on comics
• Category:Set indices on manga
• Category:Set indices on mountains
• Category:Set indices on plants
• Category:Set indices on ships
• Category:Set indices on snakes
• Category:Set indices on sports
• Category:Scottish Island set index articles

(Too bad we don't have an "All set index articles" category like we do for disambigs.) Looks like we'll be having one for roads as well. I'd like to wait until that is decided before I make changes to the script. Also, I'd like to clean up these cats - the comics cat certainly needs work at least, and I wonder whether the manga and Scottish Island cats are necessary. But it'd be nice to have guidance over what should and should not be converted to a disambig. --JaGa^talk 02:33, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Would looking for {{SIA}} be easier than using members of a the various set indices categories. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 02:41, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I decided against templates because of variants such as {{Sportindex}} but maybe it'd still be easier than this category stuff. I'll look into what templates would be necessary to get all set index articles. Your suggestion would be better, since a new set index category would probably be covered by a SIA|something template and therefore automatically be picked up in my scripts. Thanks much for the suggestion. --JaGa^talk 02:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Some of these "set indices" are really pages with links that need to be fixed, which would seem to bring them within the scope of this page. The comics page we looked at earlier is one, and U.S. Open is an example of another. That's not to mention that a single entry from outside the "set" (say, a movie about free trade and the United States called "U.S. Open") would turn U.S. Open into a normal dab. I don't think they can all be knocked off the list right away. Instead we should focus first on making sure that the things being called set index articles are really set index articles and not disambiguation pages that happen to have all of their constituent articles linked in some categorizable fashion. I think that's the key here--a set index article is something someone went out of their way to describe in article fashion as a set. A "U.S. Open" set index article might describe why so many events would choose to name themselves that way, or something like that (frankly, a set index article on the topic is probably unnecessary), whereas this is just a dab. Dekimasuよ! 03:15, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

At just a quick glance, all of the pages in Category:Set indices on Russia are definitely dabs that happen to be united by the fact their constituent links concern Russia. They are not SIAs and I think the category needs to be moved. Dekimasuよ! 03:20, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

← I went ahead and created Category:Set index article templates and moved the "obvious" set index templates into that category. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 04:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I just looked at some of the sports SIAs - User:Yohan euan o4 has been applying {{sportindex}} in place of {{disambig}} and I'm not sure why. {{sportdab}} might be better for at least some, including U.S. Open, as mentioned above. --AndrewHowse (talk) 04:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I did this in hopes of emphasizing the article aspect of SIAs. I'm not sure how to alter the documentation, though, or if that is something that will just propagate the change later. Dekimasuよ! 04:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It does appear that "Set index article" seems to be misapplied in most cases that it is being used. One could argue that such a grouping of "articles" is not necessary as by definition the article is either a list article or an article. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 04:41, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

My edit messed up one, and only one, SIA template: the "Russia" one, which doesn't have anything in a plural form. Fortunately, all of the "Russia" pages can and should be moved to {{Russia disambig}} just as the sport ones were marked for moves above. Can someone do an AWB run to switch the tags? 168 is a lot of pages to change manually. Dekimasuよ! 05:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The 219 pages in Category:Set indices on Russian inhabited localities can be moved there as well; they need not stay separate. Dekimasuよ! 05:13, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

SIA|Russia Done. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 05:33, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Cramped thumb, but {{SIA|Russian inhabited localities}} is done. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 05:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Dekimasuよ! 07:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I knew I was going to get in trouble for the change, but looks like I got reverted due to the lack of coordination with WP:RUSSIA. I'll pop over and give them a pointer to this discussion and the other SIA discussion on WP:DAB. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 17:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I wrote the SQL to remove set indices from my DAB reports based on Category:Set index article templates (thank you very very much Bobblehead) and will test it - and probably release it - tomorrow, unless there are objections. --JaGa^talk 10:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Would anyone please be so kind as to explain why this mass move was done without as much as dropping a courtesy notice on WT:RUSSIA and waiting for feedback? There were plenty of reasons why the set indices on Russia (and on Russian inhabited localities—separately!) were structured the way they were, not the least important of which was that these sets had never been intended to serve as disambiguations, but as set index list of places sharing the same name. Each was to be referenced (something disambig pages do not allow) and include detailed descriptions. This approach would prevent creation of meaningless substubs which cannot be immediately expanded, such as, for example, this one, but would still allow to aggregate the basic information in the sets. Merely because at this stage the majority of these sets look like malformed disambiguation pages does not mean they are disambiguation pages. Please restore the SIA tags and start a discussion with WP:RUSSIA if further clarifications are needed. Thank you.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:42, February 26, 2009 (UTC)

I agree that SIAs are not dabs, and shouldn't be edited by mosdab-enforcing robots. The original discussion around the creation of SIAs determined that they are useful list articles that can be confused with dabs. Not all SIA titles start with "List of" (although perhaps we should suggest that), see, e.g., Granite Mountain.

As you can see from Ezhiki's note, immediately above, SIAs are very useful tools for individual wikiprojects: I would recommend avoiding mass edit/moves without notifying the affected wikiprojects. Having said that, it seems to me that articles using {{hawaiiindex}} and {{sportindex}} are truly dabs, and that the editors using them seem a little confused about the distinction. hike395 (talk) 15:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and left a note on WT:RUSSIA pointing them over here, so prepare for the onslaught.;) Anywho, Ezhiki, your example was more the exception than the rule and that one in particular is more a stub than a set index article, so I would still classifiy that as a misclassification. While I did use AWB to make the move from {{SIA|Russia}} and {{SIA|Russian inhabited localities}} to {{Russia disambig}}, I did review the edits before I made the changes and I would say in around 99% of the time, there was functionally no difference between a straight DAB page and the Russian SIAs. It is all well and good that the intent is for those articles is to be inline with a SIA, but at this time, only 2 or 3 of the articles that I moved from the SIA template to Russia disambig were anything but DAB pages. The proper course of action would be to set those articles as disambiguation pages until which time they meet the criteria of a SIA, rather than pre-emptively setting them as SIA and then hoping that someone comes back and gets them properly set up. As an example, appearance wise, there is no difference between Vyselki and Phoenix. Both include a link to an article and then a very brief description of what that link is in reference to. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 17:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

In response to this, I should note two things. First of all, the work being done on Russian inhabited localities is done in stages. At this stage, yes, the SIAs may look like disambigs, but nevertheless even in this state they are not. Not to boast about my psychic skills here, but after any given set is re-classified as a disambig, the next edit is going to be by a disambig bot of some sort which would remove all the redlinks (because, you know, red links without incoming backlinks are not allowed on disambig pages), all the "redundant" blue links (because, you know, disambig entries are supposed to have only one blue link per line), all the lines mentioning that there are "other inhabited localities in Russia by this name which are temporarily not listed here for various reasons" (because, you know, disambig pages aren't supposed to contain lines with no links), and any references and/or external links supporting the entries (because, you know... you get the idea). So, as you see, the pages were not classified as sets "pre-emptively", but rather as a part of a plan. I assure you that none of these pages were created in hopes that someone, some time (from a universe far far away) eventually stumbles upon and develops them according to a divine plan; they were created with full intent to be expanded further, when the project workflow allows to do it in the most efficient way. None of these sets were created for the sake of being created, they were all created out of necessity. I alone can easily create several hundred more such sets in a couple of days (with refs and all, mind you), but since the project workflow does not immediately require it, doing so would be foolish, irresponsible, and inefficient in the long run.

Another thing worth mentioning is that whenever a set that does at the same time meet the disambiguation page requirements (no red links, no refs, etc.) is created, we always mark it as a {{geodis}}. While such pages will eventually be converted to SIAs, as you rightfully pointed out, there is no good reason to mark them as sets if their content is identical to what a disambig page would contain. So, once again, the SIA marker is not added pre-emptively, it is added when the page at the time of being created does not, cannot, and will not meet the requirements set for disambig pages. I hope this addresses your concerns.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:42, February 26, 2009 (UTC)

I take two issues with the classification of these pages as SIAs.

First, there are well-thought-out reasons for the rules on disambiguation pages as well. Disambiguation pages are important for navigating the encyclopedia and getting readers to the information they want, as quickly as possible. From your comments, it appears that you are adding SIA markers specifically to avoid the rules for disambiguation pages (one link per line, no red links, no preemptive disambiguation, et cetera), while conceding that most of the pages are currently being used for the purpose of disambiguation. I understand that you are doing so in order to indicate that other articles should be created and to better organize your project, but it's also contrary to the goal of getting people to the articles they want. For example, you reverted changes to Konstantinovka twice, calling it an SIA instead of a dab in order to avoid the removal of a link to Types of settlements in Russia. I don't understand who, upon clicking on a link to "Konstantinovka" or typing it into the search box, would want to read Types of settlements in Russia, which has no information on anything called "Konstantinovka". Thus, even if you place the article outside the scope of WP:MOS-DAB, I don't understand what benefit there is from adding the link. Of course, if you really wanted it there, you could list it at the top (e.g. "Konstantinovka is the name of several Russian settlements. It may refer to:") and leave the dab tag at the bottom.

The second question I have is about the fully-developed SIAs you intend to create once the flow of the project moves in that direction. In what way would SIAs at those locations be preferable to normal disambiguation pages? What sort of centralized, or overarching, information would you expect to put on them that would not be better located on the individual targets? Dekimasuよ! 02:13, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

What is wrong with this reasoning is that in your head you still see these pages as disambig pages, keep applying disambig page guidelines to them, and believe that the only reason they are marked as SIAs was to bypass the disambig style requirements. The answers to these allegations are no, no, and no.

So, let's review this again, from the top. As per WP:SIA, a set index article is "a list article about a set of items of a specific type that share the same (or similar) name". Let's take a random set, Lvovo (I know you asked about Konstantinovka, but since it's not a typical set, I'll address that particular page at the end of this post). It contains "a set of items of a specific type" (inhabited localities in Russia) that share the same name (Lvovo). Given the definition, I see absolutely nothing wrong with the set the way it is.

Now, you ask why Lvovo is a set and not a {{geodis}}. The page in its current state, after all, is used for the "purpose of disambiguation", isn't it? Well, yes and no. Take another look at the definition of a SIA. If you think about it, any SIA can be used for the purpose of disambiguation. The main difference is that for a SIA disambiguation is a side effect, not the primary purpose. The primary purpose of a SIA is, again, to list the "items of a specific type sharing the same name" and to provide additional information that may not be added to a disambig page (a longer description, references, additional links, maybe external links, etc.). Consider the sentence in Lvovo that you took issue with in your comment above: "Lvovo, name of several other rural localities in Russia". The way you see it, the sentence is neither helpful to readers, nor links to an appropriate subject. Of course, this would be true if we were talking about a disambiguation page, but we are talking about a set here! Try looking at it differently. Suppose you are looking for information about Lvovo. You type "Lvovo" into a search box and land on a disambiguation page that lists two villages—one in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, another one in Tambov Oblast. You look through the article about the one in Tambov Oblast and decide that's not the village you need, so the other one must be the one you are looking for. Unfortunately, we don't yet have an article about it, yet you still leave Wikipedia happy to have something for further research. Little do you know that there are thirteen (!) other villages by this name in Russia, most of which are nowhere near Nizhny Novgorod, and there are many more Lvovos that existed in the past but exist no longer (they were merged, destroyed, abolished, abandoned, etc.). So much for being helpful to our readers... Now, when we have a sentence stating that hey, here are the two villages, but please note this is not all there is, that would at least alert the reader that there is a good chance that the village in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast might not be the one they need. The reader will most likely not be as happy when leaving Wikipedia to pursue further research, but at least they'd know to look for additional information and we had been honest with them.

Now, as for having the link to the "types of inhabited localities..." in the description, why not? This is the only term in the sentence that can be linked, and, as we established earlier, SIAs may link whatever is necessary without being bound by disambig page guidelines restrictions. Once again, if you view the set as an article, and not as a disambig pretending to be a set, the presence of the link will make immediate sense to you. Also note that while Lvovo only lists rural localities, many other similar sets additionally list cities/towns and urban-type settlements (which are categorized as "urban localities"). Having a link to "types of inhabited localities..." is very helpful in such cases for situations when readers require explanations of the difference (it is not exactly obvious where to look up this information).

Foreseeing further questions, why did I not simply list all thirteen Lvovos? The answer to this is, again, project workflow efficiency (I won't go into the details of the workflow organization here as to not add to this already lengthy post, but you, or anybody else, are welcome to contact me on my talk page if this interests you). I assure you the "other rural localities" sentence was not intended to stay there forever. All such sentences are to be expanded as work progresses (and, by the way, if one wants to know what is included into the "other" group, I'm always happy to expand it upon request).

OK, I believe this takes care of the first question of yours. Let's continue with the second question—in what way would the fully-developed SIAs be preferable to normal disambiguations. Let not the answer to catch you by suprise, but when this project is finished (and make no mistake, I am talking about years before that happens), there will be no SIAs! Let me elaborate on this a bit.

As of 2009, there are over 190,000 rural localities in Russia. Each and every one of them deserves an article. Each and every one of them has rich history and can get to at least B-status. However, about 90% of them cannot be brought even to the marginal Start-status given the information currently available to the members of WP:RUSSIA interested in and working on this topic. Moshonki is an example of the article that can be written about each and every one rural locality given the information I personally have. And Drakino, Republic of Mordovia is an example of an article that is expanded by the person who has information about that particular village. Looks much better than Moshonki, isn't it? Unfortunately, people who can get the village articles to at least the level of Drakino are far and few between. I personally can rarely produce anything better than Lvovo, Tambov Oblast. The problem here is that the information about small Russian villages is not available online and is hard to find even offline. While plenty of information about any random Russian village exists, it is mostly scattered throughout Russia in the museums of local history, local libraries, newspapers, etc. Books on small villages are incredibly hard to find due to limited circulation. All in all, this is an extremely challenging topic to work on. I am often surprised that despite the wealth of information about small US towns being so readily available, most of the Wikipedia articles about such towns are in pitiful condition, often remaining in the condition they were left when Rambot created them in 2004. If our project had access to that much freely accessible data about Russian locations, people'd be complaining about "random article" feature being biased towards Russian villages!

Anyway, my point is basically this—while it is not that difficult to create 190,000+ Moshonki-like stubs over the course of several weeks, does anyone really want to see them in such abundance? "Such and such is a village in such and such district in such and such oblast, Russia, the end, that's all, folks" times 190,000 sounds ridiculous to you yet? How about we add "such and such WAS a village in such and such uyezd of such and such guberniya, Russian Empire, the end" times roughly 450,000? Nevertheless, try putting something like Moshonki on AfD, and you'll get dozens of people shouting "it's real, it's referenced, it's notable (sometimes even if it's neither!); the result was 'keep'" to its defense. Are those people wrong? Absolutely not! The location of the village and its jurisdiction are valid and useful pieces of information, and folks who actually need it and are looking for it (and it's not exactly easy to find even if you know Russian and where to look) should not be deprived of it. So, we have 190,000 useful bits of information on one hand, and total unwillingness to create 190,000 substubs on the other hand. The WP:RUSSIA's answer was SIAs—they (and their "multi-stub" variety) are extremely useful for just this task, as they allow to list all villages sharing the same name on one page along with whatever bits of information are available about them. In perspective, as people such as the person who wrote the Drakino article show up and start working on those entries, some, and ultimately all, of the entries from the SIAs will branch into the articles of their own. At that point the SIAs can be dismantled and replaced with a regular geodisambigs (by the way, I can't resist but to point out that before the MOSDAB got overrun by overzealous sticklers who consider the MOSDAB guidelines the holiest of the holiest and the rules that guide the process of encyclopedia creation more important than the encyclopedia itself, before the MOSDAB rules got tightened to the point of being unusable, having just geodisambigs was working just fine for this little project. Now we have disambigs, surnames, sets, multi-stubs, and not a single person who can coherently explain the actual difference between them).

I sure hope by this point (if you are still reading... are you? Wow! :)) I was able to answer the questions. Returning to Konstantinovka, as I promised in the beginning of this post: this one I can actually give to you. Konstantinovka itself is more of a disambig page than it is a set. Ideally, as a disambig, it should contain a link to the city in Ukraine, a link to the village in Azerbaijan, and a link to the set index article about Russian inhabited localities called "Konstantinovka" (Konstantinovka, Russia). Since the latter is currently an unexpanded "other rural localities" sentence, and since the project does not immediately need to have a Konstantinovka set, the easiest thing to do was to mark the whole page as a SIA. So, in a sense, this page is an attempt on my part to weasel out of the MOSDAB requirements by marking the page as a set, just to save one helpful but non-compliant sentence. So, if you want to shoot me over this one, feel free to do so, but please know that the weaseling was done in the interests of simplifying the workflow, not because I wanted to push my interpretation of the rules or something. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:55, February 27, 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree with your "holiest of the holiest" characterization. There was never a sense of "I'm sure WP:Russia has good reasons for making these articles into SIAs, but we're changing that anyways!" I think everything done here was in good faith; we've seen a lot of improper use of the SIA template and were fixing what we could. We might have jumped the gun, but I hope you know we aren't trying to lord our collective will over other projects. --JaGa^talk 21:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I was not accusing any of the editors who contributed here, nor did I question the validity of this particular inquiry. I merely shared past experiences of my less-than-pleasant encounters with several folks who were taking MOSDAB a bit too seriously than they should have been, and who indeed were placing MOSDAB over encyclopedic content. For the sake of keeping good faith and avoiding animosity, I am not going to link to any previous such discussions here. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:19, February 27, 2009 (UTC)

I don't have time to reply to your post in detail now, but of course there are points on which we agree and those on which we disagree. Most importantly, though, I do not see a problem with going through and creating the 190,000 stubs you mention. You talked about Rambot's stubs for locations in the United States, but much more recently, User:Ganeshbot created articles on a large number of places in India based on data from the 2001 Census. I haven't heard any outcry about those articles. It seems likely that you could use the bot (or a similar one) to do use the same sort of data set to create the Russian articles.

And I have one or two other suggestions. The trouble here began when some of us were unable to tell the difference between (some of) the pages you have linked as SIAs and normal dabs. Would it be feasible to either (a)retitle the articles to "List of places called <foo>" with a redirect from the plain title, and recategorize them as lists, or (b)rewrite them in prose format without bullet points so that they do not visibly resemble dabs? Dekimasuよ! 02:34, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

First off, I'm going to have to admit I pulled a "too long; didn't read" on your response, so sorry about that. If you're opposed to creating 190,000 stubs, have you considered creating multi-stubs, like Abundantius, for each city name until which time individual articles can be created for each town? That way, you'll be creating a fraction of the stubs, while still maintaining the information you seem to want to have in your "set index articles". I'm also going to have to agree with Dekimasu that 190,000 stubs with a dab page at the base name is acceptable. I believe the general consensus on Wikipedia is that all locations are inherently notable (hopefully that hasn't changed in recent months), so 190,000 stubs should not be an issue as long as WP:RUSSIA is committed to going through those stubs over time and expanding them beyond stub form. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 00:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I can only support what Ezhiki has expanded on above. I too use to think it was a crazy way of doing things, but have come to realise that these sets as described are the best way of organising these subjects, at least for WP:RUSSIA. --Russavia ^Dialogue 20:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I was afraid of the "too long; didn't read" reaction, but oh well, my post indeed turned out to be quite long. Anyway, if you could read it in its entirety when time allows, that'd be most appreciated.

For a change, I'll try to be brief in addressing the questions by Dekimasu and Bobblehead. First off, we do not have a problem with eventually creating 190,000 stubs. The key words here, however, are "eventually" and "stubs". It is OK to have that many stubs, but I have real problem with that many substubs, most of which will not get expanded for quite some time, while at the same time contributing to WP:RUSSIA's maintenance workload. This WikiProject simply does not have sufficient manpower to support that many one-liners—consider that currently WP:RUSSIA has less than 10,000 articles tagged overall, and many of them have been neglected to the point of being virtually useless. The bottom line is that while you are unlikely to hear an outcry if 190,000 new substubs are added to Wikipedia overnight, but it wouldn't exactly be doing much good for our readers either.

That said, eventually the stubs will need to be created. This, again, is the workflow issue. There is currently no one good source to feed to a stub-creating bot. There are many federal subject-specific sources, but they all differ in format and depth of information covered. For the past year and a half, I've been working on compiling all those sources into one database (which, as of today, is 61% complete and 99% accurate), and User:Fritzpoll was kind enough to agree to set up a bot once the database is complete. Before that happens, however, there are a few more things that need to be done, which brings me to Bobblehead's multi-stub comment. I actually covered multi-stubs in my long post above, but I should have also pointed out that the way WP:SIA is currently written, multi-stubs are simply a variation of a set index articles (the guidelines are too vague about explaining in what way, however).

Back to Dekimasu's question regarding whether it would be feasible to re-title the existing sets to "List of places called <foo>", the answer to this is no, it would be very impractical. While Category:Set indices on Russian inhabited localities currently only contains ~200 entries, that cat is hardly complete. Out of 190K places in Russia, over 50% of them share the same name. That's a lot of sets as it is! Like I said before, since the existing sets are to be eventually converted to geodisambigs as stubs get created, it is much easier to do when you have SIAs titled <foo> rather than when you have lists titled "list of places..." With the "list of" approach, we'd basically be spending time on setting up something that'll need to be dismantled later anyway (thus wasting more time). If it were affecting only 200 existing articles, then, of course, the appoach would have made more sense.

Regarding Dekimasu's second question—if it would be possible to re-write the SIAs prose format without bullet points so that they do not visibly resemble dabs—the answer is going to be the same (more work that'll eventually will need to be undone). An additional point here is that there is nothing wrong with the SIAs visually resembling dabs—if you read WP:SIA, you'll see that a set index article's definition differs very little from the definition of a disambig page. Basically, the two main differences are that the dabs are primarily navigational while the sets are informational, and that the dabs can contain entries on a variety of topics while the sets are limited to one and only one topic. With that few differences, any set (not just those devised by WP:RUSSIA) would resemble dabs!

Hope this answers your questions. Please let me know if anything was unclear. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:59, March 2, 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver update and question

I thought I'd drop a line for those waiting for the toolserver reports to come back online. We've found that the reports aren't working due to this mysql bug, which was introduced with a hardware upgrade. I've been told by the toolserver sys admin that a fix is "imminent" and that he'd integrate the fix immediately, without waiting for a new MySQL release. So hopefully the scripts will be back very soon.

In the meantime, I was hoping to get some opinions here. From this discussion, articles with the set index, surname, and given name templates have been moved out of the "All disambiguation pages" category and into the "All set index articles" category. As it now stands, articles with these templates will no longer show up in my toolserver reports (when they return). Now, I know that's what we want for set indices. But is that also OK for {{surname}} and {{given name}} articles?

Short version: is it true that {{surname}} and {{given name}} articles are not disambiguation pages? --JaGa^talk 09:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes. These are articles about the particular surname or given name. See Michael or Hashemi, for just one example of each. Most of the content discusses the origin and history of the name; only a part is devoted to listing individuals. Michael even has its own corresponding dab page at Michael (disambiguation). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Would it be appropriate to remove {{Surname}} from Category:Disambiguation and redirection templates? Dekimasuよ! 12:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

My concerns come more from articles like Adigozalov, which is very similar to the problems we had with the Russian articles - called a surname, but really just a list of names with no extra information at all. So this is definitely not a disambig? It makes sense to me to say, "Right, it isn't a disambig, it's just a surname stub", but I wanted to verify my understanding. --JaGa^talk 21:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That's my view, as well. And my answer to Dekimasu's question above would be "yes." --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Voodoo

I took a feeble swipe at cleaning the links to Voodoo and quickly discovered that most of the incoming links referred to the religious/cultural practices, but seemed to intend, not any specific variety of the religions listed, but more a vague, popular notion of Voodoo. The Haitian Vodou article does have an apropos section—Haitian Vodou#Myths and misconceptions—but the popular beliefs about voodoo also partake of the supposed superstitions and practices of Louisiana Voodoo. The ideal solution would be to have an article called "Voodoo in popular culture" or "Popular conceptions and misconceptions of voodoo" or similar. But lacking that, I am left with these choices:

• Dab to the "misconceptions" section in the Haitian Vodou article
• Dab to Wiktionary
• Dab to the dab page, by way of the (disambiguation) redirect
• Dab to whichever article most closely matches the context (which would be what, in, say, the Simpsons episode article that quotes a character talking about doing a "Voodoo dance"?)

Any advice?--ShelfSkewed Talk 22:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I would dab to different articles depending on the context. It seems like Hoodoo (folk magic) would be a good target in some situations as well, including perhaps the one you mentioned. The links themselves don't intend to link the dab page, so I wouldn't do dabs to the dab page. Dekimasuよ! 01:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Generic name

Most of the links are from Template:R from brand name, for example B-17 Flying Fortress variants mentions plexiglas, a redirect for acrylic glas. Nothing to change there.

My problem is that sometimes none of the choices on the generic name page fit:

• Genus name: not relevant here
• International Nonproprietary Name: only for drugs, to narrow
• placeholder name: to, well, generic

--ospalh (talk) 08:47, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Problem solved (if it sticks). Redirect templates like {{R from brand name}} are not supposed to contain wikilinks at all, so I've removed them. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:35, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver reports back online

I'm happy to report that the bug that was keeping my reports from being run has finally been patched, and the toolserver reports are again available. Sorry for the inconvenience. --JaGa^talk 15:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

DAB or set-index?

Should Abuse be a disambig or a set-index? --JaGa^talk 14:40, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Abuse seems to span more than one topic, so it should be a dab, IMO —hike395 (talk) 04:19, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Links to Grand Touring

In November 2008 it was decided that Grand Touring should be a redirect page to Elite Systems, a video game company which did a game called like that. The problem is that grand torer is synonym of grand tourer, a car type. several articles from Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports Car Racing point to "Grand Touring" instead of "grand tourer". Can someone fix those links? --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)