Talk:Pharos (disambiguation)

Requested move 31 October 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 08:39, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Pharos → Pharos (disambiguation) – The page Pharos needs to be a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to the primary topic Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the dab page needs to be at Pharos (disambiguation). – — Gorthian (talk) 16:50, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * This is a technical request (permalink) contested by . — Andy W. ( talk ) 17:48, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Needs a discussion. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:25, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Evidence: — Gorthian (talk) 18:52, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) The original Pharos was the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria on the island of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The word pharos has now come to mean lighthouse in many languages. All the other titles listed on this dab page refer back to the original (except for the island of Hvar, which was also named by the ancient Greeks). The guidance at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says, "A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term. I submit that this is true for Pharos.
 * 2) The other criterion for determining a primary topic is usage: "A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. Comparing several of the articles over more than a year, it's clear that the ancient lighthouse gets the |Pharos_(horse)|Pharos_(Childish_Gambino_album)|Pharos_University_in_Alexandria|Dubris|Hvar|Stari_Grad,_Croatia lion's share of page views. (I chose the most-viewed articles from those on the dab page, so this is an honest assessment. The one caveat is that the album by Childish Gambino has been out for only a few months.) I submit that the criterion for usage is satisfied.
 * Difficult - yes to English speakers when we use the Greek term "Pharos" it tends to suggest one very famous pharos in the ancient world. and "the Pharos" would certainly mean the lighthouse of Alexandria. But just "pharos" on its own? There were other lighthouses in the ancient world: "The Colossus of Rhodes served likewise as a Pharos or beacon." unquote. But it's probably the pop uses which would create ongoing mislinks if we move this. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:47, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. By all evidence, this is the clear primary topic.--Cúchullain t/ c 18:18, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. This will simplify a lot of links. In English, the other lighthouses in the ancient world are usually called "lighthouse" indeed. As we see, the description of the Colossus adds the term beacon, because Pharos alone would result unclear and misleading. The addition is redundant, and for stylistic reasons I propose to simplify it writing "The Colossus of Rhodes served likewise as a beacon." or "The Colossus of Rhodes served also as a lighthouse."--Hyphantes (talk) 13:28, 8 November 2016 (UTC)


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

readership statistics
|Pharos_(disambiguation) Monthly page view statistics for the titles Pharos and Pharos (disambiguation) can help illustrate reader navigation.

We can see that the title "Pharos" received thousands of views before it was short-circuited. Afterwards, a lot of the traffic incoming to Pharos seemed to map to traffic to Pharos (disambiguation), indicating it's possible that a substantial portion of those readers are clicking the hatnote. At the same time, often times people arrive at Wikipedia pages not through our internal navigation, but through search engines, so we can't be certain.

More recently, this was the pattern:

Looks like there was a spike of some sort in February this year, which subsided by April, though it seems to still be somewhat recognizable even in June. During this time, the traffic for Pharos doubled or tripled, and it's not clear that they were looking for the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

These days we also have the meta:Research:Wikipedia clickstream that can help us try to understand reader navigation better. Here's a snapshot of that data for the same time period:

We can also have a look at what happened to traffic that arrived at the disambiguation page - however it got there - and where the readers went next:

It's interesting to compare the months before and after the spike, with the months while the spike was happening.

I'll monitor this for a couple more months, because right now it's somewhat suspect whether the Library of Alexandria is truly the primary topic for "Pharos" - it's typically the most common topic for it, but whether it's actually overwhelming, that part isn't clear. --Joy (talk) 09:29, 16 July 2024 (UTC)