Talk:Dick Davis

De: link
The iw link to the de: article on Dick Davis, the saxophonist, was removed with an edit summary stating, "English Wikipedia disambiguation pages do not have external links, including to other-language Wikipedias". Why would we hide the existence of an interwiki article from readers? It provides them with another location where information on Davis can be found in the Wikimedia domain, and also may help encourage the creation of an English article on Davis. Chubbles (talk) 14:13, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Nothing is being hidden. Disambiguation pages aren't encyclopedia articles. The article space includes links to the German article for article readers. The disambiguation page does not provide encyclopedic information, but does provide navigational functionality to readers on English Wikipedia to reach information available in English Wikipedia, so it links to the English Wikipedia articles, including one with a link to the German article. Disambiguation pages are also not the place for article-creation-encouragement, although the red link may do so. There are other Wikipedia projects and resources for article-creation-encouragement. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:18, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Why is it impermissible for a disambiguation page to provide navigational functionality to information available in the German article when there is no direct information on the English Wikipedia? There is a basic sensibility to this that I sense is being ignored here. Furthermore, I see no documentation saying interlanguage links are impermissible on disambiguation pages (they are not external links). Chubbles (talk) 14:21, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The basic sensibility that is being observed here is that English Wikipedia disambiguation pages disambiguate ambiguity on English Wikipedia; they are not navigational aids to other-language Wikis. See also Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 50. But why isn't the placement of the interwiki link on the linked English article sufficient? -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:28, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * For one thing, simply adding a link to a musician Davis played with encourages people to remove Davis from the dab page, because they may see it as a NOTINHERITED issue. Davis's notability is implicit in the fact that he, a long-dead American musician, has representation on a Wikipedia in another language. Second, it provides a direct link to a place where far more information on Davis can be found, albeit in the wrapping of a potentially unfamiliar language. I don't see any reason why a dab shouldn't provide navigation to another language Wikipedia for a presumptively notable topic in the specific case of there not being an English article on that topic; it still fully supports the purpose of the page - disambiguating ambiguity on the English Wikipedia - and incidentally encourages the building of the English Wikipedia, which does not hamper the functionality of the dab and is consistent with our other project goals. Chubbles (talk) 15:47, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * There's no encouragement to remove a valid red link from the dab page. Other Wikipedia's have their own notability policies. The encyclopedia provides the direct links in the article space, where they belong. And the reason we don't do it in disambiguations is the same: English Wikipedia disambiguation pages disambiguate ambiguity on English Wikipedia. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:15, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * That's just a tautology, not a rationale. I'm surprised this is so needlessly and rigidly enforced, but I have grown tired of fighting City Hall all the time, so if this is what consensus has established, stare decisis. Chubbles (talk) 17:15, 28 June 2019 (UTC)