Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Disambiguation subcategories
A number of discussion topics and straw polls on the future of disambiguation subcategories. Thanks/wangi 22:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
TLA discussion
editI'm sure this has been discussed before. If so, please point me to that discussion. The MoS:DP currently reads:
- If a disambiguation page title is composed of three letters only (such as ABC, CDC, or PDQ), use {{TLAdisambig}} instead of {{disambig}}. Use this even if not all the entries are abbreviations or acronyms.
There are plenty of other useless dab templates, but this is the only one I see on the page. Is there truly consensus about it's use? Tedernst | talk 20:05, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)/archive10#Abbreviations ? Thanks/wangi 22:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, Wangi. Yes, this is perfect. The problem I see with that discussion is that it didn't come to any conclusion. How do we set up a proposal and a vote? For example (someone help me with this?):
I propose disambig and disambig-cleanup be the only "approved" dab templates and that MoS:DP be updated to reflect this usage. Tedernst | talk 22:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
- I would support that. There may be enough support to pass it, but the proposal should be widely publicized on the Disambiguation Wikipedia and MOS pages so that we can do away with TLAdisambig fair and square, once and for all.—Michael Z. 2005-12-30 22:59 Z
- I want to get rid off TLAdisambig too. There should only be too allowable templates: {{disambig}} and {{disambig-cleanup}}.--Commander Keane 23:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
- At some point in the past, when I tried to "enforce" the MoS(DP), I was rebuffed with a comment along the lines of the DAB project being the wrong place to set policy, and WP:RFC being the correct venue. I don't know if I agree with that, but if putting an announcement on RFC lends authority to the result, then it's probably a good idea. So, wherever the discussion ends up happening on the fate of TLA, post a notice on WP:RFC and make sure we get buy-in from the whole community. This issue has been festering for a long time; my personal opinion is that TLA should go away, but one way or another, it's time we got consensus and put a fork in the issue. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:44, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
- Certainly I'm all for it too. I'd say this is the right place to have the discussion but it would be useful to post a pointer on WP:RfC, WP:VPP and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Remember too that any decision we come two will also get further scrutinised when it comes to deleting the templates at WP:TFD. So, who wants to summarise that past discussion and start the ball rolling? Thanks/wangi 01:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
OK. I'm a proponent of keeping TLA (or 2 and 3 LA), but not 4LA, etc. But I'll do my best to keep the poll language clean and unbiased. --William Allen Simpson 13:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Categories versus Lists
editThe first poll responder made a comment that surprised me! Categories are expressly and specifically designed to make automatic indexes, instead of the older list methods. Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes are supposed to be complementary, and lists are specifically recommended where the list must be annotated. What's the need for annotatation here?
- An advantage of using a list is that you can have a comprehensive listing of all two-letter (aa) and three-letter (aaa) and letter-number (1a, a1, 1aa, a1a, aa1) combinations without the need for actually having articles for them; I see this as an advantage, but there are many who feel that is an unnecessarily crufty approach to the problem. My argument in favor of this (even for four-letter) is that it is a type of almanaic content that is permissible within the remit of Wikipedia that some find useful. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 22:29, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand. What's the use of this listing? What's the need for annotation? Why would anybody want to know which combinations haven't been used yet? Wouldn't it be better to start with a (sub-)category (automated list) of the ones that have been used, where the alphabetization will make it obvious which ones haven't been used?
- Try looking at it from the perspective of almanac-type content, William. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:56, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Methodology
editThe poll below is so confusing and vague that most of the questions are useless. Clearly, if we are going to have templates for acronyms with three or more letters, and they are separate (not merged into one), the naming should be consistent. We need to figure out first if we want to have acronym templates at all, and then what the maximum number of characters should be. Once those questions are settled, it will be a lot easier to work out a consistent naming scheme.--Srleffler 00:57, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
- I'll second Srleffler's opinion that the entire poll structure below should be scrapped and redone. Part of the problem is the issue doesn't decompose nicely into "Support/Oppose" questions; trying to force that just makes the confusion worse. I
seriously considered addingjust added a poll question about whether the poll is confusing/premature. Pre-emptive reply: Yes, yes, we can figure it all out, given enough time. That's not the point. Point is a poll should not be a rhetorical maze. --DragonHawk 01:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
So, you are asked: "Do you want a hamburger or a hotdog?" and you answer "Maybe." That answer is not a useful outcome. Where in the world did you learn your survey methodology? The choice of "support" or "oppose" is standard and clear, and each question that has positive alternatives asks that supporters indicate a particular preference. (A real survey would have 4 or 5 levels of support, this only has two, in keeping with Wikipedia:Straw polls.)
Perhaps you're still in school, and used to multiple guess questions with (a), (b), ..., (e) none of the above. That's not good survey technique, as it doesn't give an indication of support. This is supposed to be finding consensus, not "right" and "wrong" answers.
And here I thought I'd plenty of real world experience designing poll questions. (heavy sigh) Good poll questions are sentences, without interpolating Meta issues.
- When the question is "Should ... be named ...?" — that's exactly what it means! Support one or oppose them all as a group. Yes/No doesn't fill the field. So there's no vagueness problem, each question is pedantically specific, stripped of any PoV!
- Moreover, there are already corresponding Meta questions: "Should ... be removed?" Somebody else added "... be merged?" Nice and specific alternatives.
Too many folks in the computer science mode of thinking "all problems can be solved by another level of indirection." There's no more need for Meta issues, and indirection, and taking a poll to decide whether to have a poll. These are the variants already in use. Support them, or oppose them (or suggest more variants of your own and gather support for them). That will give the project a direction to proceed.
What harm?
editI'm undecided on this issue myself, but I note that the opposition's major objection to the *LA* template thing appears to be that they simply categorize abbreviations by the number of letters. Now, personally, I don't see the benefit to that, but maybe somebody finds them useful. So, I have to ask: What harm does it cause? --DragonHawk 01:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
- excellent point Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
- I agree. So useful that there are thousands of instances. But some folks around here have been actively deleting them, causing much disharmony. Thus, we are trying to gauge the temperature (or temperament).
- Hurm. I'm not saying we should strive for the perfect set of poll questions. Quite the opposite, really. I believe that a better discussion of the issues involved, a clearer breakdown of what the issues are, will tend toward a consensus which will make the poll below obsolete. m:Polls are evil says what I'm trying to say here very well. And as I said above, for the purposes of my enlightenment, I would like to see an answer to the question: What harm does it cause? --DragonHawk 07:51, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
- Having read through a great deal of the archives here, I'd say no harm has ever been demonstrated. But it has been discussed ad nauseum. The folks calling for more discussion seem to be the ones that haven't yet discussed it here themselves. There's really no need for more discussion until the direction has been chosen.
- -William Allen Simpson 08:21, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
- Hmmm. When I went and read the past and present discussion, I saw the same thing. The past discussion, in fact, kept leading me back to this very page! I saw lots of people asking "Why have dab categories?" The only answer I saw was "They might be useful.", which, while vague, is not invalid. I also saw lots of people asking "Why should we avoid dab categories?". I never saw an answer to this. My conclusion (different then yours, obviously) was not that we needed a vote, but to say, in effect: Before we have a vote, we need a reason to vote. If the only objection anyone can come up with is "I don't like them", well, that's not a very Wikipedian reason. --DragonHawk 16:02, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
- The harm I see is complexity. Complexity makes it harder for readers to become editors. If all dab pages were to have either disambig or disambig-cleanup, it would be very easy for readers to become editors. If there are multiple dab templates with sub-cats, we set the bar much higher. I'm not saying complexity is never appropriate. I just see no benefits whatsoever and a fairly significant harm from having sub-cats. The harm I see is much less for 2 and 3 letter combinations since they are finite. Tedernst | talk 16:30, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
- Ted, by that logic, there wouldn't be any articles about cities!
- I've never had a particular problem adding categories to geographical articles, as those are reasonably well organized.
- Whereas folks keep changing the organization of rome/romans/ancient rome, so that has been a problem sometimes.
- These categories are relatively well organized so far, except 2. And should be kept that way.
- Relying on manually maintained lists instead of automatically maintained categories is just asking for trouble. Most of the "List of" that I've seen are setup by somebody with intensive development, then fall by the wayside as they move on to something else, and rapidly become obsolete.
- Categories work much better for the average editor!
- Ted, by that logic, there wouldn't be any articles about cities!
- I don't follow. What purpose is there in navigating by the dab subcats? Dabs are to help people get to the intended article, not to surf through. A person might be interested in articles about Rome, but not about articles about human name disambiguation. Tedernst | talk 07:43, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
- if you don't want to surf, you don't need too. I may find it interesting to see all ambigous townships Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
- Please don't confuse disambiguation pages with Category:Disambiguation.
- Categories are explicitly for "surfing". Categories are just as useful as the index in a book.
- Some of us have been around long enough to remember that categories were a cool new feature!
- You'd be surprised what interests people. One of the expert editors here is legendary partly because he maintains a database of where politicians are buried. I happen to know that he also has compiled frequency of street names in the US, frequency of birth names by year, and other fascinating projects. He loves history and demography.
- Clearly, somebody wanted to index duplicate township names. Although I think that would automatically fall out of geodis, never-the-less it's a perfectly valid use of (sub-)categories.
- Just because YOU don't browse the categories doesn't mean nobody else does. Apparently, there are some people who read and use the *pedia, rather than dashing quickly from article to article editing them ;-)
- Just because someone created sub-categories for township disambiguation pages doesn't mean that anyone ever intended to surf that category like someone would with other categories. Some people saw it as problematic that the disambiguation category was growing so large, and the obvious solution with any other category (creating sub-cats) creates more problems than it solves, IMO. Dabs are not articles. If we keep that in mind, I really feel some of this sub-cat argument falls away.
- what can we learn from the statement that dabs are not articles? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
- On top of all of this, I don't actually have a fundamental problem with disambiguation pages being categorized (parallel to have disambig on them). If we really want to index ambiguous township names (I don't, I'm using "we" to mean "someone", then perhaps there should be category: ambiguous townships that's added in addition to the disambig tag. Does that solve anything? I still don't feel it's needed, but if others want to us it, fine. The problem I do have is with the proliferation of disambig tags and variations. The confusion seems so unnecessary to me! Tedernst | talk 08:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
- The former is a fallacious tautology. Since somebody created the sub-categories, then somebody intended to browse them. That's as much intent as we can ever discover.
- The latter proposal (for the umpteenth time) is already being polled, although I didn't write the question. I'll add a qualifier, as Ted is confused.
- However, I'm not confused about sub-categories, and nobody else seems to be confused, either. Maybe folks should try editting other types of articles than disambiguation pages for awhile, until they begin to comprehend categories and sub-categories.
- --William Allen Simpson 16:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
- agreee! Try editing something more usefull. - Nevertheless I like parts of the dab cleanup, like unpiping and unbolding. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:55, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Abolishing Category:Disambiguation
editTedernst claims that nobody "surfs" Category:Disambiguation. Since categories are indexes intended for browsing, it logically follows that Ted is in favor of abolishing the main category. I look forward to Ted's explanation on why and how this would be in the best interest of *pedia.
- No page on wikipedia is supposed to be without a category. I'm not sure exactly why that's so, but it is. Since disambiguation pages are not articles and don't need to be browsed, having category disambiguation makes the most sense to me, if categories are required. In addition, the work taking place at WP:DPL can only happen if dabs are in a category (as far as I know). If there's some other way for that work to carry on without categories, then I see no reason for keeping the category. Tedernst | talk 19:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
- Speaking of WP:DPL, how do sub-categories affect that work? Tedernst | talk 19:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Cleanup requirements
editShould any subcategories be eliminated, they will need to remain until new subcategories elsewhere are implemented, and the new templates gradually moved, so that the utility of the existing browsing system isn't impaired.
And while I'm thinking about it, should any subcategories be eliminated, folks proposing their elimination are signing up to set a new category in each and every article currently listed in the disambiguation pages. Just to keep the workload in perspective; folks shouldn't propose work that they aren't willing to do themselves.
- Actually, if this goes through what will be needed is that in every one of those articles, the *LA template will need to be replaced with {{disambig}}. The categories will take care of themselves as this is done.--Srleffler 02:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
- No, you are incorrect. The editors of these topics desired subcategories. If they aren't subcategories of disambiguation, they must be subcategories of something else. And if they aren't placed in the disambiguation page, then they have to be in each article. That's going to be a lot more work than just deleting or replacing a template. Folks shouldn't just go around deleting things without doing all the related work.
- --William Allen Simpson 10:08, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
*LAdisambig cleanup
editFirst poll results are in, and there's going to be a massive cleanup required. Apparently, all the *LAdisambig templates will be removed. Also, GraemeMcRae found {{LND}} for "letter number disambiguation".
They'll need to be reclassified into super categories that aren't Disambiguation.
I've already removed {{TLAdisambig}} from the MoS:DP.
Based on long-standing Wikipedia:Disambiguation#TLAs and Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations, Abbreviations pages replace disambiguation pages.
It appears that the first step to removing the Disambiguation sub-categories will be to replace:
- {{2LA}} with {{2LC}}
- {{2LAdisambig}} with {{2LC}}
- {{2LCdisambig}} with {{2LC}}
- {{TLAdisambig}} with {{3LC}}
- {{4LA}} with {{4LC}}
- {{5LA}} with {{disambig}} (done? 11:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC))
- {{LND}} with {{2LC}}, {{3LC}}, or {{4LC}} (done? 11:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC))
Where there are other references on the page, presumably these are moved to the appropriate "XX (disambiguation)" page.
Anything I missed?
- Right now the xLC templates categorize articles in "Lists of x-letter combinations". Is that the most appropriate category name? If one wanted to change the category names, now is the time, before the massive template shift is done.
- It looks like your intent is to separate letter combinations, acronyms, and initialisms from actual words, with the words on a separate page from the rest. The text of the xLC templates indicates that those pages include English and foreign words. These need to be consistent: either the pages list abbreviations and words together, or they do not, and there is a clear link to the page for the word(s) if necessary.
- Otherwise, the scheme above looks good: it replaces the current mess with a consistent standard, and satisfies the people who don't want disambiguation subcategories by completely removing abbreviations and acronyms from the disambiguation scheme. --Srleffler 21:34, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, like shipindex, this removes these pages from Disambiguation. Historically, both the guidelines that I referenced above clearly state these are not disambiguation pages. Apparently, the editors of those documents were smarter (or more cautious) than the later Grand Unified Theory of Everything folks. Trying to include anything that "looks like" disambiguation under the same rubric generated considerable discontent, time and time again.
- "Lists of" (plural) was chosen because each is a category containing pages that are a "list" in their own right, following the usual naming convention.
- "x-letter" to match existing article titles.
- "combinations" to combine all the variants of abbreviation, acronym, initialisms, et alia, bypassing past argument about 2LA versus 2LC, and what should be in TLA. (Such as, are 3GL and 4GL TLA?)
- Word lists are referenced because they already exist as lists. This is an attempt to salvage what exists, rather than create something new and controversial out of whole cloth.
- The categories (and pages in the categories) list words together with all other combinations, unlike the annotated word lists. Categories are merely indexes, word lists are for annotations, they have different purposes and different content.
I've listed {{4LA}}, {{5LA}}, and {{LND}} for deletion. I'm holding off on the 2s and 3s, since there are so many of them. When they are closer to being converted, I'll list them, too.
I listed Category:Ambiguous five-letter acronyms for deletion as well. Tedernst | talk 03:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, that was jumping the gun. You're not supposed to delete until the templates that reference it are deleted. See Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Closing #5. I'd already listed it in the TfD, as you would know since you supported deletion within minutes or seconds after I posted them. Patience is a virtue. It may be many months before these are finished.
- Yes, I saw you listing it in the TfD, but since it's a category, it seemed to need a CfD. And it's empty. Tedernst | talk 16:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
- That might have been true yesterday, but this morning it had 11. And this moment it has another 10.... That's why you have to wait until the templates are deleted!
Shall I run a bot to do all the above replacements? Martin 15:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, all the pages with "(disambiguation)" in them need to be handled differently. I'm working on them first, in concert with an effort over on the disambiguation project page. Once those that require preparations and thought are done, yes, a bot might be helpful!
*dis cleanup
editIn some respects, this might be easier or harder.
Based on long-standing Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages, folks were supposed to be adding these names to lists. Now, it's being forced, as there will be no more subcategories.
It appears that the second step to removing the Disambiguation sub-categories will be to:
- replace {{geodis}} with {{disambig}}, and list in Wikipedia:Multiple-place names.
- replace {{hndis}} with {{disambig}}, and list in Wikipedia:Non-unique personal name.
- replace {{townshipdis}} with {{disambig}}, and list in Wikipedia:Multiple-place names.
Where will {{numberdis}} be listed?
In some cases, the listing work will already be done. In other cases, more than one type may be on the page, so it should be in more than one list. But every case has to be checked.