Talk:Anne Hathaway (disambiguation)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR (talk) 00:25, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I do not see a clear primary page, and so I suggest that this page be moved to Anne Hathaway. Snowman (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Support as per my nomination. Snowman (talk) 01:50, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose The actress's page is clearly the primary page. Just like the prime minister's page is clearly the primary page for Winston Churchill, rather than the page for that Winston Churchill from the 1600s that nobody's ever heard of.  Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway's article has taken over 5.5 times as long to have the most recent 500 posts as has the actress Anne Hathaway's article (since 17 August 2006, rather than since 25 June 2008).  That's an indication that the actress's page is more noteworthy than Shakespeare's wife's page. - Shaheenjim (talk) 12:42, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Support move. I thought there was a clear primary page (Shakespeare's wife, the only Anne Hathaway I have ever heard of) until I saw the post above. Kusma (talk) 22:07, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose for following reasons: Anne Hathaway has nine times as many hits in October as Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare) (the proportion in previous months was less but still significant); a Google search shows the actress overwhelmingly dominating the first half dozen or more pages; "very little is known about" Shakespeare's wife; and (least important) all the links that currently point to Anne Hathaway would point to a disambiguation page instead unless fixed. Station1 (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This reason is specious, because it does not show that all the hits on Anne Hathaway were by people looking for an article about the 20th Century American actress, not some other Anne Hathaway. Maybe some of those hits were by women named Anne Hathaway and curious about other women with the same name. --Una Smith (talk) 17:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "specious"? In October there were 129,339 hits on Anne Hathaway (it's one of the top 10,000 articles on Wikipedia). Those who didn't want an article about the actress would likely click on the hatnote link to Anne Hathaway (disambiguation). That article had 3,964 hits in October. So you're right: we can only say with reasonable certainty that 97% of the hits on Anne Hathaway were by people who wanted the actress. The other 3% were dissatisfied (or curious?). Take off 3% and it's still nine times the hits as Shakespeare's wife. Station1 (talk) 07:56, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The counts that you quote for "Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare)" are wrong, they are not 3956 in October 2008 they are 13956; anyway, lets use more up-to-date counts. from 1 to 25 November 2008 "Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare)" had 12586 hits and "Anne Hathaway" had 65736 hits. Currently Shakespeare's wife is getting about 21% of the hits. Remember this is with the current setup with "Anne Hathaway" being the primary page and "Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare)" being an unlikely search term. Snowman (talk) 11:06, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * On the 25 November 2008, the latest day available, Shakespeare' wife got about 37% of the hits, but I think that this is artificially low because of the way the primary page and redirects are set up. [-Snowman]


 * No, I was not wrong. I did not quote hits on "Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare)" but rather on "Anne Hathaway (disambiguation)", my point being that only 3% of viewers landing on Anne Hathaway may have been looking for something other than the actress. That was in reply to Una Smith's comment. I used an October comparison of 9:1 for the actress over the wife because that was the last full month available and the default month on the program, while noting "the proportion in previous months was less but still significant". The more common proportion is indeed 5:1, which while less than 9:1, is still significant enough, combined with my other reasons, to meet the requirements of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, in my opinion. Other reasonable people may differ. Station1 (talk) 19:21, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The actress has had a substantial decline in hits between October and November, so you are using out-of-date page views. It would be more relevant to use November results. The actresses hit counts appear to fluctuate a lot and may be influenced by recent events. The fame of Shakespeare's wife has endured for more than 400 years. Snowman (talk) 21:51, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose Anne Hathaway (actress) is more prominent than ol' Willy's wife, having starred in many hit movies. The statement Very little is known about her, beyond a few references in legal documents shows that wifey is very trivial, except in Shakespeare worship. 76.66.195.63 (talk) 01:18, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It would be helpful if you logged-in or signed. It is easier than using italics, wikilinks, embolden, and bullet points. which you appear to be familiar with. Snowman (talk) 16:26, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * signature ~ produces: 76.66.195.63 (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2008 (UTC) &mdash; hence I did sign.
 * It would be helpful if you logged-in and had a user name. Snowman (talk) 13:59, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Snowmanradio, are you thinking this IP is a sockpuppet? Given that the polling is nowhere near tied, I think it does not matter and the IP's vote can be taken at face value.  --Una Smith (talk) 17:56, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have said that it would be helpful if the IPA logged in. I have no reason to suspect that any of the votes here are from sock-puppets to date. Snowman (talk) 11:20, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Support move. Both Anne Hathaway and Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare) have over 100 and under 250 incoming links.  In that sense, neither is a clear winner in terms of prominence.  I think a topic with more incoming links is a worse candidate to occupy the ambiguous title.  Here is why.  Anne Hathaway is bound to accumulate links intending someone other than this lady, and the more links there are that do intend this lady, the more painful it is to disambiguate the other links.  I have just been going through this with Weymouth and Weymouth, Dorset, involving far more links than here.  See Talk:Weymouth, Dorset.  --Una Smith (talk) 03:06, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, the actress's article has more than 250 incoming links. I suspect they only fit on the page for 1-250 because some of them go to articles that redirect to the actress's article, rather than going to her article directly.  The actress's article has more than 2.5 times as many incoming links than Shakespeare's wife.  And if the links to the primary article are intended for the actress (and they are), and she keeps the primary article, then there's no need to disambiguate the links. - Shaheenjim (talk) 04:36, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think incoming links to incoming redirects count; they are not involved in any way, except in the argument that some measure of popularity should decide which topic other than a disambiguation page should have the ambiguous title.  My argument is different.  My argument is that the disambiguation page, not any of the others, should have the ambiguous title. --Una Smith (talk) 05:21, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Suppport move per Snowman, Kusma and Una Smith's comments. In terms of notability/importance Anne Hathaway may currently be more popular/prominent in the public eye, but will she be remembered in centuries to come (or possibly even decades – no disrespect intended) as has Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare)? I understand the reasoning behind the opposing comments, but looking at the bigger picture there's no clear winner in my mind. --Red Su ns et    10:14, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Certainly the actress won't be as well known in 100 years as she is now. But Shakespeare's wife isn't really remembered either.  The article says very little is known about her.  And even though most people won't know the actress in the future, record keeping today is much better than it was during Shakespeare's time, so there will still be more information about the actress available than about Shakespeare's wife. - Shaheenjim (talk) 16:47, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, the clear winner would be a disambiguation page. Once the backlog of incoming links is disambiguated (that means editing each linking article to make the link go where it should), in future only periodic new disambiguation parties are needed.  A year ago, I disambiguated several hundred links to AFP;  since then, about 60 more incoming links have accumulated.  But because AFP is a disambiguation page, there are almost no "legitimate" links, so disambiguating those 60 new links will be relatively easy. --Una Smith (talk) 01:03, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that all the links to the primary article are for the actress. So if we leave the primary article as the actress's article, then there's no need to edit the links.  And I don't know why you'd want the disambiguation article as the primary article.  Most people who go to the primary article do so because they want the page for the actress.  Not because they want the disambiguation article. - Shaheenjim (talk) 01:43, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Do not worry about links they can be sorted out quite quickly. What about vast numbers of people who know Anne Hathaway as the wife of William Shakespeare, who is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist, and have never heard of the actress? I really think that the incredible worldwide lasting fame of Anne Hathaway should not be underestimated. Actually, there is a very good case for an article on Shakespeare's wife being the primary page, however the wiki is generally overrepresented by modern popular culture. Snowman (talk) 02:13, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * People looking for Shakespeare's wife can easily find her article by clicking on the link to the disambiguation article at the top of the article for the actress. And the allegedly "vast" numbers of people who know Shakespeare's wife but not the actress are wildly outnumbered by the actually vast numbers of people who know the actress but not Shakespeare's wife. - Shaheenjim (talk) 02:39, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If Anne Hathaway is a disambiguation page and at intervals editors go through any new incoming links and disambiguate them, all readers will go directly to the relevant article. That is how a disambiguation page works best, if it has the ambiguous title.  Anne Hathaway (disambiguation) does not serve.  That pages has one incoming link that might need disambiguation. --Una Smith (talk) 03:38, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh. I think I see what the problem is.  You're right that if the primary article is the disambiguation article, then people who reach their desired article through a link will go directly to the correct article.  The problem is that a lot of people don't reach their desired article through a link.  A lot of them go directly to the primary article.  And since most of those people want the article for the actress rather than the article for Shakespeare's wife, the primary article should be for the actress.  People who want the article for Shakespeare's wife, and who reach it through a link, will still go directly to the right article.  Because I think the links already are all disambiguated.  The links that are intended for the article for Shakespeare's wife already all go directly to that article. - Shaheenjim (talk) 03:57, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think we're getting somewhere: now I see some assumptions.  One is that more people type "London" into the search box than navigate to "London" via a link.  Is that true?  Is that data we can access?  Another is that people who don't want London, England are savvy enough to qualify their search term and that they guess in advance, correctly, how to qualify it.  Eg, "London, Ontario" and not "London, Canada".  As a reader, I would expect searching for "London" to return a disambiguation page, with London, England right at the top.  Another assumption is that someone (who?) has already fully disambiguated any wrong links to Anne Hathaway.  I agree that all links to Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare) should be correct, by virtue of the article's unambiguous title.  I do not agree that all links to Anne Hathaway also will be correct, unless someone diligently fixes them. --Una Smith (talk) 04:12, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * But London doesn't go to a disambiguation page. It goes straight to the article most people are looking for, with a hatnote to other uses right at the top. Station1 (talk) 06:35, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, London is about London, England; it is an article with an ambiguous title, just as Anne Hathaway currently is.  London may be beyond changing, and its incoming links beyond disambiguating, but Anne Hathaway is not.  --Una Smith (talk) 13:38, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * (outdent) Shakespeare wife and her name and fame are rooted in history spanning centuries. I have just found out something about the actress, who I had never heard off until I was looking on the wiki for the page on Shakespear's wife: "She [the actress] was named after the wife of playwright William Shakespeare." Snowman (talk) 11:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I did a Google Search for "Anne Hathaway" and the third hit (and first Wikipedia hit) was to Anne Hathaway (actress), not to Anne Hathaway. If readers are going to search to find what they want, are they going to do it here on Wikipedia, or on Google? Most probably do it on Google, in which case an unambiguous title would be a help to them. That's a point in favor of moving the article about the actress back to Anne Hathaway (actress). --Una Smith (talk) 13:57, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * People who want London, Ontario (rather than London, England) don't have to qualify their search term. They can just search for London, go to the article for London, England, then click on the link at the top of that article that takes them to the disambiguation article.  That's how it should work.  I'd expect someone searching for London to return the article for London, England, since that's what most people want.  And yes, someone already fully disambiguated the links to Anne Hathaway that were intended for the article for Shakespeare's wife.  I did, several months ago.  And even if the primary Anne Hathaway article remains the actress's article, we can (and do) still have an article for Anne Hathaway (actress), which redirects to the primary article. - Shaheenjim (talk) 22:54, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Can you explain some of your edits, , regarding page moves in June and Augues 2008? Snowman (talk) 01:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The disambiguation article used to be the primary article, but I moved it so that the actress's article could be the primary article, since the actress is the main Anne Hathaway, just like how London, England is the main London. I might've done it inefficiently, as I wasn't sure how moves work.  There were some links to the primary article that were intended for the article on Shakespeare's wife, so I edited those links to go directly to the article for Shakespeare's wife. - Shaheenjim (talk) 02:03, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I do not know how you got away with doing these moves by yourself to make the actress the primary page earlier this year, because such moves should have been discussed prior to the move. Perhaps, you did the moves when you were quite new to the wiki and did not know all the guidelines. Snowman (talk) 20:04, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Support the move. It is not sufficient that a single person has the preponderance of the Google hits at any one point in time. In general, the rule of thumb should be that ambiguous titles go to disambiguation pages. It is never "should it be this or that", it is always "should it be this as against all of the other possible search outcomes". Only when one can categorically state that seldom will anyone be searching for anything else, is the default appropriately deflected from the disambiguation page. That cannot be said here. For fun, one possible search target: "Actress Ann Hathaway made her New York debut in 1850 at the National Theatre as Desdemona." http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/22611 Oh, you meant the other actress! --Bejnar (talk) 07:15, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This title is not ambiguous. The actress is clearly the primary.  Even if people more than seldomly search for Shakespeare's wife, the actress should still get the primary article as long as people search for the actress much more than they search for Shakespeare's wife.  Which they do. - Shaheenjim (talk) 12:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The article on the actress is not overwhelmingly primary. This is demonstrated by the fact that Anne Hathaway used to be a disambiguation page.  Now it seems that perhaps even Anne Hathaway (actress) should to be a disambiguation page.  --Una Smith (talk) 17:49, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * "...the actress should still get the primary article as long as people search for the actress much more than they search for Shakespeare's wife." So if the actress gave up her career tomorrow and was no longer in the public eye, would she still be searched for more often than Shakespeare's wife this time next year, and would we have to go through this process again because someone now thinks Shakespeare's wife has become the primary article? Per my original comment, neither article is clearly the lasting primary one, although Shakespeare's wife is IMHO the more likely candidate. Better to move "Anne Hathaway (disambiguation)" to "Anne Hathaway", and "Anne Hathaway" to "Anne Hathaway (actress)". --Red Su ns et    21:36, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Una Smith: The fact that the primary article used to be a disambiguation article does not demonstrate that the actress is not overwhelmingly primary. It just means that whoever made the primary article originally didn't know what they were doing.  And there's no need to make a disambiguation page for actresses, since the Ann Hathaway (no "e") from the 1800s isn't noteworthy enough to even have an article on Wikipedia.


 * Red Sunset: If the actress's fame fades in time enough to be overtaken by Shakespeare's wife, then we can switch the primary article at that point. Although I'm not sure it'll ever happen since, like I said, we don't know much about Shakespeare's wife, but record keeping from this period of time is good enough that we'll always know a lot about the actress.  But even if it does happen, it probably won't be for at least a couple decades, even if the actress gives up her career tomorrow.  So there's no rush.  There might not even be a Wikipedia by that time.  And if there is, they'll probably have come up with a better way to fix links when moving pages. - Shaheenjim (talk) 22:47, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems the actresses page views have taken a substantial decline from October to November 2008. Using the most up-to-date page view counts from 1 to 25 November 2008, Shakespeare's wife is getting about 21% of the hits as the actress, and the actress's page, being the primary page, gets hits that may be confused with Shakespeare's wife, and also having "Ann Hathawy" and "Annie Hathaway" being redirected to "Anne Hathaway". On the 25 November, the latest day available, Shakespeare' wife got about 37% of the hits that the actresses page got, but I think that Shakespear's wife's page would have got an even greater percentage, if the primary page and redirects were set up correctly with "Anne Hathaway" as a disambiguation page. Snowman (talk) 11:34, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Support Per WP:RECENT and the fact that making Anne Hathaway a dab page is the only combination that does not artificially prefer either of the other articles by some arbitrary metric. The argument that better record-keeping guarantees higher notability is specious: it would mean the C-list actor from Yonkers named Will Shakespeare would automatically displace William Shakespeare. --Xover (talk) 17:45, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Snowman: On a single day the number of hits isn't large enough to be a good way to compare them. The actress's pageviews might've declined lately, but you should still use at least a month for the comparisons.


 * It's true that some of the actress's pageviews lately might've been intended for Shakespeare's wife. But if you do a comparison from several months ago, when the actress's page wasn't the primary page, it'll still get several times as many views as Shakespeare's wife's page.


 * To the user named William Shakespeare: The metrics we're using are not arbitrary.


 * And I didn't suggest that better record-keeping guaranteed higher notability on its own. But it is a factor. - Shaheenjim (talk) 22:48, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Support Is Wikipedia supposed to be an encyclopedia or a search engine? If the former (which I believe to be true) then pages should be logically organized on the basis of content, and should prioritize items as knowledgeable people would expect them to be organized. It should also promote serendipitous discovery. If the latter, of course, then give the public what it wants. :) - Pingku (talk) 14:32, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Footnotes


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.