Talk:Belladonna

Revisions to Belladonna and Belladonna (Disambiguation) pages
Prior to my changes on Feb 21, 2008:


 * This page was originally titled simply "Belladonna"
 * In the script of the "Belladonna" page someone had also added the dablink "For other uses, see Belladonna (Disambiguation)."
 * In turn,the "Belladonna (Disambiguation)" page was redirected to the "Belladonna" page, so in effect it was creating a loop.

My changes:

The former "Belladonna" page actually contained a list of the different uses of the word "belladonna"; it was obvious that it should actually be a disambiguation page, so I cut the script from the "Belladonna" page and pasted it to the "Belladonna (Disambiguation)" page.

Since the most common usage of the word "belladonna" in the English language is in reference to the plant which is also known as "Deadly Nightshade", I have decided to redirect the "Belladonna" page to the "Deadly Nightshade" page and have added an "other uses" redirect to the "Deadly Nightshade" page which points to the "Belladonna (Disambiguation)" page.

I also removed the opening sentence stating "Belladonna from the Italian expression "bella donna" meaning "beautiful woman". Besides the plant Deadly nightshade used by Italian ladies to artificially seem more interested in their husbands-to-be as persons then they really were, the word can also refer to:" There was no reference link to support the statement that Italian women used belladonna "to artificially seem more interested in their husbands-to-be." I did however find information that Italian woman may have used it to dilate their pupils, which would make them seem more attractive, but since this fact is mentioned on the Deadly Nightshade page I just removed the statement all together.

Marchije (talk) 00:57, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have restored the explanation of the basic meaning. The usage by Italian women is legendary and I agree that the mention in the article about the flower is enough, but some entries in the disambiguation page may have been called Belladonna just because of the double meaning this word can have in Italian.--Tcp-ip (talk) 10:01, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

This page is functioning as a disambiguation page, and should be labelled as Belladonna (Disambiguation) pages
The page for Belladonna is currently not listing a subject and providing a definition. The page is listing a bunch of links instead, which is the function of a disambiguation. This is not an article but a directory page.

It created confusion to me when I came looking for one of the sub-categories, and was redirected to this page. If the re-direct took me to a page that said Belladonna (Disambiguation) I would have known right away that I was in a disambiguation page, but I didn't realize that immediately.

I am proposing that the material of this page gets moved to the Belladonna (disambiguation page), and this page becomes the re-direct to the disambiguation page. I seek comment, and if I don't receive reasoned feedback in two weeks (November 10), I will shift the two pages around to fix the disambiguation problem.

Back in, User Marchije moved the Belladonna page to Belladonna (disambiguation). On, User JHunterJ moved the page back from Belladonna (disambiguation) to Belladonna , and in , User Tcp-ip defended the use of the Belladonna page to be used for the disambiguation list. I would like to gather some their input before making changes. Mburrell (talk) 02:04, 30 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The truth is, there is nothing wrong with a disambiguation page that does not contain "(disabiguation)" in the page title. As per MOS:DABPAGENAME: "In general, the title of a disambiguation page is the ambiguous term itself, provided there is no primary topic for that term. If there is already a primary topic, then '(disambiguation)' is added to the title of the disambiguation page, as in Jupiter (disambiguation)."  There are however dab pages where the title is simply "the abmiguous term itself", such as Mercury.


 * So technically, renaming this page "Belladona" was not wrong per se, especially if the consensus is that none of the links on the dab page are to an article that one would arguably call the "primary topic" for most users searching the term "Belladona" on Wikipedia.


 * So I suppose the question we should be asking here is: Is there a page on Wikipedia that arguably already contains the primary topic?


 * As discussed on WP:PRIMARYTOPIC: "There are no absolute rules for determining whether a primary topic exists and what it is; decisions are made by discussion among editors." It also goes on to list some tools one might use to build the case for which article on Wikipedia could be considered the primary topic.


 * Back in 2008 when I changed the name of this dab page to "Belladonna (disambiguation)" as I felt that Atropa belladonna was the primary topic, and so I redirected "Belladonna" to that page. If you were to look-up the word "belladonna" in an English dictionary the first definition will be either a reference to the plant Atropa belladonna or the drug derived from this plant — as an example, take a look at the 3 dictionary entries for this word on dictionary.com or even the definition of the word as per Wiktionary.


 * So if we were to put to a vote, my vote would of course be to rename this page "Belladonna (disambiguation)" and redirect "Belladonna" to the Atropa belladonna article. However, if other editors disagree or can build a case for the fact that there is arguably no primary topic for this term, or even perhaps that a different article entirely may in fact be the primary topic, so be it. --Marchije•speak/peek 23:55, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I have no input to the presence or absence of a primary topic for the title "Belladonna". But: the proposed move to Belladonna (disambiguation) without a primary topic, with the base name pointing there, should not be done, and if done will probably be reversed. See WP:MALPLACED. My earlier revert of the move was to fix a Cut and paste move. So the change, if a change is needed, would be to move this page to Belladonna (disambiguation) and redirect Belladonna to Atropa belladonna, but not to copy the text over without moving and not to redirect the base name to the disambiguation page. Cheers!-- JHunterJ (talk) 22:22, 2 November 2015 (UTC)