Talk:Dance (disambiguation)

Step-by-step cleanup
I've spent valuable time analyzing this page and making thoughtful and carefully considered changes to clean it up, only to have all of my good faith efforts reverted, without adequate explanation, by Bkonrad. There may be good reasons for those reverts, but the lack of equally well thought out and explained reasons for the reverts have left me frustrated and somewhat miffed. It's obvious that this page needs cleaning, though, and now that I have put so much effort into it I am compelled to see it through to fruition. In lieu of the ugly edit war that is being offered, I will take a step-by-step approach to clean this page, with the expectation that subsequent reverts will be explained here to clarify why my changes are unacceptable. Lambtron (talk) 19:34, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Eliminate entries with partial title matches
To start things off, my next edit will delete all entries that have partial title matches. For example, Dancing (Elisa album) and electronic dance music. These would never be confused with "dance" or "dancer" and, per WP:DABNOT—which states "Do not add a link that merely contains part of the page title, or a link that includes the page title in a longer proper name, where there is no significant risk of confusion"—clearly do not belong on the dab. Also, it is obvious that "the dance" would never be used as a search term by someone seeking to disambiguate "dance". The dance (disambiguation) should be created if disambiguation is needed for that title; this is common practice for other dabs (e.g., ring and the ring). Lambtron (talk) 19:34, 19 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Except you are mistaken in that there is no separate disambiguation page for the other terms. Readers looking for any of those terms are redirected to either Dance or to this disambiguation page. It is relatively common to disambiguate closely related terms on a single page. If the list gets excessively lengthy, then there might be some benefit to splitting, but that doesn't seem to be the case at present. older ≠ wiser 19:43, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

That's not entirely true: readers looking for "dancing" or "dancer" are always redirected to Dance (and thereform will never be redirected to this page), and consequently they would never see a hatnote for the precise term they are seeking even if such a dab page existed. Even so, following this line of thought and, in light of entries like ball (dance) and electronic dance music, shouldn't the top of the page be changed to read "Dance or Dancer or Dancing or The dance or Ball or Electronic dance music may also refer to:"? Lambtron (talk) 19:56, 19 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Perhaps to a limited extent. MOS:DABINT suggests: Where several variants of a term are being disambiguated together, significant variants may be included in the lead sentence. Ball or Electronic dance music would be extraneous, since both those are fully disambiguated titles for subjects that might otherwise be known as simply "dance". older ≠ wiser 20:10, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

If it's really true that Electronic dance music and Ball (dance) are commonly known by the simple term "dance" and, as a result, it could reasonably be expected that someone would search for these articles with the lone term "dance", wouldn't these articles state somewhere that their respective topics are known by the discrete term "dance" (backed up with a suitable reference, of course)? Since said articles lack any such statements, doesn't it make sense to delete these links? Lambtron (talk) 21:19, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Reduce number of significant variants
As Bkonrad has pointed out, this dab covers several significant variants. Aside from a few random entries that don't really belong here (dance music, electronic dance music, ball), this appears to be the biggest problem with this page—too many distinct, disparate topics crammed together. The result is a merged list of largely unrelated, miscellaneous stuff that one must parse through to pick out relevant prospects. The resolution for this problem is obvious: split into multiple dabs. I realize it isn't always productive to create dabs with just two or three links, so an obvious candidate is "The Dance", which has ten links. Therefore I have created The Dance and moved all relevant links to it. Lambtron (talk) 16:49, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

As noted above, readers looking for "dancer" are redirected to Dance. They must then click the hatnote to get to Dance (disambiguation). Next they must parse through assorted unrelated links to find the article they seek. Finally, they will click that link and arrive at the article of interest. Although a dab for "Dancer" would have only three links (at present), its existence is justified by this convoluted navigational path and, accordingly, I have created Dancer (disambiguation) and removed all "dancer" links from this page. Lambtron (talk) 19:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Ditto for "dancing". Lambtron (talk) 19:24, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Swell work, except you forgot to put the hatnotes on Dance for all the terms that redirect to that page -- which is one reason why combined disambiguations for closely related terms are not necessarily always a bad thing. older ≠ wiser 21:37, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the kudos, Bkonrad. Can you please provide some specific examples of where, and what sort of hatnotes are needed? I have made a good faith effort to root out potential problems here and thought I had covered all bases, so I appreciate your help and insight. Lambtron (talk) 03:31, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind--now I see what you mean. I had previously changed Dancer to redirect to Dancer (disambiguation) as there is no primary topic for that title, but it was reverted without my knowledge and, hence, the need for a hatnote on Dance. I started a discussion at Talk:Dancer to see if the reversion can be undone and thereby eliminate the need for the unattractive hatnotes on Dance. The same needs to be done for Dancing. Lambtron (talk) 06:10, 24 December 2009 (UTC)