Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Archive 24

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Primary topic links

I would like to propose that (disambiguation) pages linking back to primary topics follow the standards of other disambig pages.

The current recommended style is:

A school is an institution for learning. School may also refer to: School (discipline), a group of people with common characteristics in what they do — such as: a school of painting, or a school of thought "School" (song), by the grunge music group Nirvana School Street, Chicago Swarm of fish

which is arranged ostensibly so that the main link (which won't be needed by most users) doesn't conflict with the others.

However, in my opnion, this:

School may refer to: School, an institution for learning. School (discipline), a group of people with common characteristics in what they do — such as: a school of painting, or a school of thought "School" (song), by the grunge music group Nirvana School Street, Chicago Swarm of fish

is easier to read and easier for people looking for, say, School (discipline), to pick that out from the bunch.

— SteveRwanda 15:32, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I never cared for the change to the current recommended style. older ≠ wiser 03:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the way that the disambiguation page are set up now works out very nicely - when there is a primary topic, we want to make sure that it is more prominent than the other articles. After all, since it is the primary topic, it is noticably more well-known than all of the other entries. By putting it in line with the other entries (even if it is at the top), it is much harder to find it. -- Natalya 10:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I prefer the current recommended style to SteveRwanda's proposal. Enquirers who reach the School (disambiguation) page have already decided that "an institution for learning" is not what they want. I think it is clearer if we separate the new choices available to them from the link back to where they came from. CarolGray 17:11, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Periods in list entries.

First off, let me say that I agree with the idea of the MoS in principle. This is especially true for the no-piping guideline; I usually try and clean up old-style disambig pages when I see piping, since the entire point of a disambig page is to see the different pages at a glance, not see the same term over and over again. I've actually been trying to clean up random disambig pages whenever I see that.

Anyway. My point of disagreement is on the "no punctuation at the end" rule. While I will grant that it is a valid style to omit the semicolons or periods normally required, I happen to prefer ending with periods. I'd hope that that rule could be loosened up, and instead suggest that the current style in use be respected if possible unless the page is majorly redone.

That said, that's not even my main point. Even given that we keep "no punctuation" as standard, I think that certain exceptions should be made so that complete sentences are permissable within a disambig page occasionally. This is most true for cases where there is no actual article to link to for a topic, and there is merely a descriptive sentence describing the sense of the word as well as a different link to an article where you can find more on it. For example:

Doodad may refer to several things.

• Doodad (oceanography), interesting things found on the ocean floor, often from shipwrecks
• Doodad, oh Doodad, a satirical movie that composed William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and the original Biblical story, and was almost prosecuted for blasphemy in the United Kingdom
• Doodad is the name of a character in Eskimo Express, a 1974 television sitcom.
• Doodad can also mean "the terrible realization that you have no money left", a loanword from the Hindi language.

Since there is no direct article for the last two, doing it in the list style of "word, definition" doesn't make as much sense. At this point, it's more like you're writing a mini-article on that definition that is just one or two sentences long, not really disambiguating. So it makes sense to use the style of an article, not the style of a disambiguation list entry. SnowFire 16:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree in general, but it is not necessary to use complete sentences for the last two. In fact, for parallel structure, I think it would best be avoided. For example,

• Doodad, the name of a character in Eskimo Express, a 1974 television sitcom
• Doodad, a loanword from the Hindi language meaning "the terrible realization that you have no money left"

older ≠ wiser 03:31, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

You took the words right out of my mouth. There is no need for complete sentences with the last two. In fact, the use of complete sentences makes the entries noticably more wordy and complicated than is needed. It is already said at the top "Doodad may refer to several things", there is no need to say "Doodad is the name of" and "Doodad can also mean" in the individual entries. -- Natalya 10:55, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, I know that you can write them that style, but I don't think they should be written that way. It looks worse to me to see a whole line of "Word" without any further modifiers before the comma:

• Doodad, a song by band
• Doodad, a song by band 2
• Doodad, the ephemeral feeling for fans immediately after their favored team loses in Sports Psychology
• Doodad, an informal and condescending term for male former members of the Nobility

That looks silly to me. Complete sentences would aid in mixing up the flow and indicating that these aren't intros to an encylopedia article, but mini-definitions and hints at where to look to find more.

You say you agree normally; I didn't bring it up before for reasons of brevity, but a time when complete sentences especially make sense is on the frontiers of Wikipedia, where there really are articles so small that they don't even make for a good stub. Grand Tour (disambiguation) might be a good example I saw recently; both the red-linked articles should really have their own article and less information in the entry in the long run... but not knowing anything of the subjects, I don't particularly want to be the one to try and write the stub, so leaving the extended information in there for now is reasonable. Hopefully that's a case where we can all agree that complete sentences are understandable, even if not optimal in the long run perhaps.

That said, I still think that complete sentences are best for most situations where there isn't a direct article on that particular meaning to link to.

Natalya: Aside from making it more clear what's going on, the reason to include the "Doodad can mean" in the beginning again is more obvious if there are two or three sentences in the entry. It looks odd to have the first phrase be a sentence fragment "completed" from the top of the list, and then have a normal, complete sentence immediately after it. SnowFire 16:34, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't have any knee-jerk objection to Grand Tour (disambiguation). I'm sure there's room for marginal improvement, but it seems an adequately functional disambiguation page as is. I am an advocate for flexibility, contextual appropriateness, and situational consistency over an unthinking, hard-and-fast conformity to arbitrary rules. But in general, I think the advice to frame disambiguation entries as sentence fragments is sound. I'm not sure I understand your comment to Natalya regarding "can mean" though. I find the extraneous verbiage distracting. It is essentially without any substantive semantic content. Breaking a pattern might be a useful cognitive cue in some cases, but I think that'd have to be analyzed on a case by case basis rather than using made-up examples. older ≠ wiser 17:01, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are supposed to make it easy for a person to find the article they are looking for. By adding extra words, unneeded sentences, and other prose, it complicates the pages that should be simple, and perform their purpose admirably by being simple. Your example above of:

*Doodad, a song by band
*Doodad, a song by band 2
*Doodad, the ephemeral feeling for fans immediately after their favored team loses in Sports Psychology
*Doodad, an informal and condescending term for male former members of the Nobility

While you may not like it, is very straightforward, very streamlined, and easily allows anyone looking at it to find what meaning they are looking for. Also, you do not necessarily have to repeat "Doodad" at every line if you are linking to an article. For example, it would be perfectly appropriate to have it say:

*Doodad, a song by band
*Doodad, a song by band 2
*The ephemeral feeling for fans immediately after their favored team loses in Sports Psychology
*An informal and condescending term for male former members of the Nobility

The song names are left in because they are definite names (and italicized), but the other references do not necessarily have to repeat the word in question. -- Natalya 17:41, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. I concur completely that the point of a disambig page is to quickly and simply spirit people to the proper page; I just think that in cases where there is no disambig page, using a full sentence is both a more proper style and a good "cognitive clue" as o!=w put it. That said, if we eschew full sentences, I much prefer the clipped format you offer in the second example to repeating the word over and over again. SnowFire 18:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Specific entry types

One of the things that I find hardest to do when doing MOSDAB cleanup is trying to come up with the section-lead statement (eg. "Blah is the name of:"). Often, the section headers a disambig page already has don't directly fit into this MOS... sometimes I think I might be able to reorganize things a bit, but it might be a bit of a stretch. In the case of GoldenEye (disambiguation) though, there's no doubt in my mind that one of the sections should be items related to James Bond. Are there any suggestions for what the best lead for that section should be? (maybe "Related to James Bond:"?) Generally, when I run into sections that are very different from the examples listed in this MOS, is there any general advice for what to do? --Interiot 18:52, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

"Relating to James Bond" sounds pretty good. I don't think there are any specific guildlines, the Longer lists section of the Manual of Style just gives guidlines on how to split it up. Using your discrition will usually work out. -- Natalya 19:07, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the GoldenEye page is a good example where it might be useful to have a short sentence description, like "GoldenEye is the nickname of James Bond" (I don't really know what it is, so don't use that one). - Centrx 00:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Location codes

Would it be okay to add a brief blurb regarding the formatting of Location Identifiers, and airport codes and the like? Especially on 2-5 letter acronyms, one often finds entries like:

WRX may refer to: Western Refrigerator Line (reporting mark WRX) The UK railway station code for Wrexham General railway station

(the first one is frequently used due to {{reporting mark}}) I personally prefer the parentheses used in the AAR example above, but the links and bolding I think are in direct contradiction with WP:MOSDAB. Would it be okay to add to the main page that the suggested format is:

Western Refrigerator Line (AAR reporting mark "WRX"), a refrigerator car leasing company founded in 1923 Wrexham General railway station (UK railway station code "WRX")

Or maybe (AAR reporting mark: WRX) or (AAR reporting mark WRX). I bring it up because I'm seeing a lot of these examples, formatted in several different ways. --Interiot 22:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I've always gone about entires like that something along the lines of:

• WRX, the AAR reporting mark for Western Refrigerator Line

Your way is able to give a lot more information, while not being too busy, which I really like! The suggested format looks good. -- Natalya 16:08, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, it's a special case of the general issue of significant nicknames, where the nickname is actually the name being disambiguated. For instance, which of the following is preferable? I personally prefer the top one, but it's not a really strong preference. --Interiot 06:55, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Do may refer to: Marshall Applewhite, nicknamed Do, the leader of the Heaven's Gate cult who died in the cult's 1997 suicide Marshall Applewhite (nicknamed Do), the leader of the Heaven's Gate cult who died in the cult's 1997 suicide Marshall Applewhite, the leader of the Heaven's Gate cult who died in the cult's 1997 suicide (eg. don't explicitely state the association, but rely on the article to explain it) Do, the nickname of Marshall Applewhite, the leader of the Heaven's Gate cult who died in the cult's 1997 suicide

I like the top option best, too. I don't like option 3 - I think we need to explicitly state the association - someone might move/remove/alter the explanation in the article without realising the dab page was relying on it. CarolGray 07:37, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Either options No. 1 or No. 4 work nicely - the first one immediately lets you know which article is being referred to, which is good if someone already knows what they are looking for. At the same time, the fourth one immediately identifies the article's relationship to "Do", and since it is the disambiguation page, it is helpful. For number four, I might even leave out the "Do", and just start it as "The nickname of..." -- Natalya 14:11, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Symbols for chemical elements

Here are some examples of entries for chemical symbols on two-letter abbreviation pages:

• Helium (He), symbol for the chemical element
• Lithium, the chemical element.
• Beryllium (Be), a chemical element
• The name of Sodium in the periodic table.
• Magnesium (Mg)
• chlorine (Cl), symbol for the chemical element
• Argon, chemical symbol
• Calcium, symbol for the chemical element (Ca)
• Titanium (as "Ti"), the chemical element of atomic number 22
• Manganese (Mn)
• Iron by its element symbol Fe
• Cobalt, a ferromagnetic metallic chemical element
• Nickel, chemical abbreviation Ni
• Copper, from Latin cuprum
• The chemical element zinc

I'm inclined to standardise these. I favour:

• Zinc, chemical element

Comments, anyone? CarolGray 17:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that they should be standardized (Thanks for compiling them for us to see!), but I also think that if the disambiguation page is the abbreviation, it should at least be mentioned, for the sake of clarity. -- Natalya 17:32, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Since we're talking about an article like Fe not Iron, I would suggest:

* Chemical symbol for Iron

Many of the above seem pointlessly prolix - we don't need information like etymology or magnetic properties, even atomic numbers; that's what the element's own article is for. But "Iron, chemical element" seems a little off to me. The character string "Fe" is not a chemical element; it is the chemical symbol representing one. Entries of the format "Iron (Fe)" are just redundant, since we already know we are at the "Fe" disambig. page. Chemical symbol and chemical element both appearing is also redundant; linking to the first then to the named element gives access to all of the information needed. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 08:42, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Except in most cases, chemical symbol shouldn't be linked, and if it really really does need to be linked, the entry should be reordered so it's not the first link on the line. --Interiot 09:25, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we don't need to link either chemical element or chemical symbol.

I've checked the articles for elements where the chemical symbol is based on the Latin rather than the English name, and they all have a clear, adequate explanation near the beginning.

I accept the point that "the character string "Fe" is not a chemical element", but I was trying to make it clear what kind of article the link would take you to. If you'd rather use "chemical symbol", I'd prefer to put it in brackets like this:

• Iron (chemical symbol)

CarolGray 13:30, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Drinking game

Does anybody else want to vote for the "worst disambig of the week"? I always run across a few doozies that I wish I could nominate (for example).

Either that, or we need a drinking game:

• take 1 drink for every year that's linked
• take 2 drinks if a dictionary definition or a multi-sentence etymology is given
• take 2 drinks if [[wikt:...]] is used as an entry's main link
• take 1 drink if "the name of" or "also" is used in an extraneous way
• take 2 drinks for every link (eg. United States, British, slang, or abbreviation) that's repeated 5 or more times on the same page
• take 1 drink if there's an ==External links== section
• take 3 drinks if every entry includes a bold+italicized phrase
• take 4 drinks if you're left with only one worthwhile link after cleaning up a page

--Interiot 12:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh my goodness, thanks for the laugh! :D That was hilarious! Wow, that version of Ditto is almost painful to look at - "ack" is definitly an appropriate addition to the edit summary there. -- Natalya 15:06, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Holy &$#%@, that was horrible. I tried cleaning it up. æ² ✆ 2006-06-15t18:58z

First name disambiguation

In the spirit of the disambiguation page purpose, the articles like John, Nick, etc. should not list each and every John. I suggest to add a phrase to guidelines in this respect: something like :"Given name disambiguation: only persons commonly identified by their first name should be listed in such disambigustion pages".

I see pages like Oleg (see this version in case of cleanup done.) as listcruft. Your opinions, please. `'mikka (t) 19:04, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, the Oleg example should lose the entire section on contemporary people bearing this first name, and I like the addition to this page you've suggested. Ziggurat 00:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

After seeing the onomastics pages (eg. Wein (onomastics), Reich (onomastics)), I've sort of given up on long name disambigs. And even if it is listcruft, the people over at List of people by name are spending a lot of time maintaining the lists. I don't know... as long as it's not POV listcruft, and it's not redlink listcruft, I'm personally hesitant to remove content like this unless there's a good reason. --0x845FED 00:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it really depends on the commonality of the name. For less common first names, it would be quite reasonable to list all articles about people with that first name as part of a regular disambiguation page. But, for "John" etc., it would be best taken elsewhere, if done at all. — Jun. 16, '06 [15:06] <freak|talk>

I sometimes find it useful to link to LOPBN or use the {{lookfrom}} template to link to Special:Allpages, as at Benjamin (disambiguation):

See also:

• List of people by name: Ben- for persons with the surname Ben or Benjamin
• All pages with titles beginning with Benjamin, for persons with the given name Benjamin

I agree that first name pages generally should not include lists of people with that name, as long as there's a little wiggle room for sensible exceptions. — Catherine\^talk 15:20, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning the lookfrom template--much better than manually wrapping a link to special pages within a {{selfref}}. Oh, and I agree that in general, lists of people by first names are not desirable on a disambiguation page unless the name is unusual or where the person is very commonly know by only the first name. older ≠ wiser 15:41, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Elvis might be an example of such a name, where the reader practically expects to find a complete list. — Jun. 16, '06 [17:48] <freak|talk>

Linking to LOPBN or using {{lookfrom}} are really, really good ideas. I would be all for adding a guideline saying that unless there is a reason why a person with name "foo" should be listed on the disambiguation page, adding those links in the see also section (or wherever) is all that should be done. This would take care of a LOT of issues with disambiguation pages. -- Natalya 20:20, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

1CC

Are the single letter articles actually diambiguation pages? For example, A#Meanings_for_A is a disambiguation section of the article on the Latin letter "A". I don't just suggest this to argue in the extreme. Rather, the items listed in that section (and presumably the 25 other similar sections) are, in fact, disambiguation lists. —Markles 17:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I think all of these templates should be deleted/subsumed by Template:Disambig. —Centrx→talk 03:40, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Use of "swarm" in the "school" example

I think the school example is wrong in that it links swarm yet there is a perfectly understandable redirect already present for school (biology)).

I am proposing to change the box from

A school is an institution for learning. School may also refer to: School (discipline), a group of people with common characteristics in what they do — such as: a school of painting, or a school of thought "School" (song), by the grunge music group Nirvana School Street, Chicago Swarm of fish

to

A school is an institution for learning. School may also refer to: School (discipline), a group of people with common characteristics in what they do — such as: a school of painting, or a school of thought "School" (song), by the grunge music group Nirvana School Street, Chicago School (biology), a swarm of fish

-- KelleyCook 17:16, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Do we still want to illustrate a policy about linking words like swarm when there ISN'T an appropriate article (and we don't expect there to be such an article so a redlink isn't appropriate?). If so, we might want to find another word for the exmample. And I would suggest "the collective noun for fish." John (Jwy) 18:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Either way will work, but I'm not sure if the table can be changed. Linking to the redirect school (biology) does provide for consistancy on the page, but there's nothing wrong with linking to the direct article swarm. -- Natalya 18:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I've provisionally restored the direct link to swarm, pending further discussion. I also fixed the song title formatting. --Muchness 21:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

it was two weeks worth of discussion and "School (Biology)" makes more sense of why it was on a disambiguation page in the first place. -- KelleyCook 17:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

How

How do you create a page? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Saexon (talk • contribs) .

Answered on talk page. John (Jwy) 06:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Days and dates

While I can understand that it's sensible not to link years in a disambiguation page, I fail to understand why it would be considered such a sin to link a complete date. Most of the time, it is unnecessary to include a date at all in a disambiguation page. However sometimes it might be (perhaps if there were two Battles of Piffle fought in the same year on different dates, the dates are the key factor in disambiguation. If they are going to be included, then they ought to be displayed according to user preferences, and that means linking them. TheGrappler 15:08, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this. Though the real solution (and not currently applicable) would be to change the way to invoke Wikimedia's date reformat trick to use something other than a wikilink -- KelleyCook 18:11, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I quite agree, but that's not likely to happen any time soon unfortunately! TheGrappler 22:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Extra links only clutter the page. It would be nice to have an alternate way of formatting dates according to preferences, but I think that advantage is overshadowed by the extra blue a user has to sift through to get to the right page (which should have proper date formatting). - grubber 18:16, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a specific page in mind? I can't see any point adding anything to the guideline if the issue hasn't cropped up "in the wild". Thanks/wangi 18:47, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

On the flip side, why have such a rule in the guidelines on an issue that hasn't cropped up yet? It's the contrary of adding an extra guideline: it would really be taking away an unnecessary, bad rule that says, pretty much, "never link dates" even though this is the way of getting dates to display per user preferences. TheGrappler 22:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the need to have a full date on a dab page will be sufficiently rare that even though I think it should be linked for preference purposes, we need not "legislate" but allow it via the 'break the rules' section at the end. John (Jwy) 06:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Even simpler than that, just change "Never link days or dates." to "Never link years, unless it is as part of a full date" (and get rid of the "scary bold" - reading a Manual of Style shouldn't feel like getting a telling off!) TheGrappler 16:46, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

1 (disambiguation) is one of the few examples I've seen where dates should be linked (similarly, things like May (disambiguation)). But those are clearly obvious cases of "break the rules" at the end, if not of WP:IAR or WP:SNOW, and I think these cases are extremely rare when compared to the large number of disambig pages that link to years when it's not needed. --Interiot 16:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, I hadn't thought of that. That is obviously a rare example where the year should be linked without a date. In contrast, 911 (disambiguation) contains links to dates without years. I suspect most links to years from disambig pages are quite unnecessary and guidance to that effect should remain. However, this still leaves open how to write the guidance for when a full date is given as part of a description: at present there is a line of guidance on this (for what must be a vanishingly rare case) that makes very clear that it is unacceptable; even though it is presumably extremely rare (since nobody can find an example) and it would break user date display preferences. TheGrappler 19:49, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Question about if it is ok to pipe in some cases

I understand the reason for not piping dab links (and it is one of my main tasks to clean up these pages), but some cases I leave them in, because I can't see a better way to do it, and would like suggestions. These are the cases in which, without a pipe, it is not clear why the listing is on the page. For example, if the page title refers to someone's nickname, which is not part of their article's title, and so it is piped to their name including the nickname. I generally don't change these, cause it seems like the best way to do it, even though it's not per the rules. How should it be done? -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 20:46, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

In cases where a synonym appears on a disambiguation page, near the bottom of the list I enter a line with the link at the end, such as:

• X, a nickname for Y

This has the advantage that it is still clear for the reader what article he is about to jump to, the relationship between the two names, and why it is listed on this disambiguation page. —Michael Z. 2006-07-04 21:09 Z

That works, but I do:

• Y, known as X, known for. . .

to keep the blue links to the left. John (Jwy) 21:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Yup, I go for that too... "Y (also known as X), description..." Works well for foreign language links too. /wangi 21:16, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Boxer => Boxer (disambiguation)?

Is there ever a reason to have things like Boxer redirect to Boxer (disambiguation)? There are 382 redirects like this, and my first hunch was to go through and move all the (disambiguation) pages over the redirect. --Interiot 08:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I cannot think of one. I have encountered this many times before but I didn't do anything about it because it seemed like too much work and it didn't seem harmful. —Centrx→talk • 08:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that redirects from X to X (disambiguation) are out of place. But I would not recommend simply reversing them automatically. Sometimes there may be contention over whether a term is or is not a primary topic. For example, for much of it's existence, Boxer was a redirect to Boxing. It was changed back and forth a couple of times over a period of years. A quick glance at What links here lends some credence for a redirect to the sport, but that should probably be discussed rather than being just an arbitrary judgement by one or two editors. If there's any question about primary topic, it should probably go to WP:RM for consideration by a broader group of editors. older ≠ wiser 12:28, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

There was a reason this was once proposed and used. The idea was that any links that were meant to go to the dab page would go to Boxer (disambiguation), while experienced editors would of course use Boxing, or Boxer (dog), or whatever. The only people linking to Boxer itself would be the average inexperienced editor who is likely to insert an ambiguous link without checking where it goes. This would supposedly make it easier to clean up dablinks, by making the Boxer "what links here" list only those links most likely to need cleanup. While clever, this idea was never clearly explained enough, nor widely used enough, to become common policy. Successive "generations" of dab builders, dab editors and dab cleaner-uppers have forgotten and all but wiped out the usefulness. It should either be reinstated or eliminated completely as this in-between state is confusing for everyone -- I would personally support either way. — Catherine\^talk 06:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)