Talk:Protium (disambiguation)

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how can an atom exixt without nucleus?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.246.234.8 (talk • contribs) 17:02, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Requested move 26 June 2023

 * 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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Consensus the isotope is the primary topic and there should be a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to Isotopes of hydrogen. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 21:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Protium → Protium (disambiguation) – The isotope looks pretty clearly to be WP:PRIMARYTOPIC: proposing this page be converted to redirect to. Web search for "protium" gives nothing but the isotope for a long way down, with one exception, the software product.

Lots more links for hydrogen. A number are through redirects, and I suspect Protium (isotope) doesn't have more because people just link Protium, then they or someone else sees that it goes to a disambig, and they retarget the link. 47.155.41.201 (talk) 09:11, 26 June 2023 (UTC)


 * https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Protium indicates that in May '23, there were incoming 943 views of "Protium", which in turn led to 446 outgoing views of the isotope (~47%), and just 19 of the plant. I'm not sure why the remaining half of readers didn't click through, though. With the isotope being the first and most prominent link in a very short list, I'm not sure we should make any changes based on usage. Is there any reason to believe that the average reader really needs to see the two paragraphs of isotope description and we're doing them a disservice by not short-circuiting? --Joy (talk) 13:55, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * That actually makes me suspect at least some of that half hit the disambig, got lost/confused/frustrated, and gave up. Plenty of "average Joes" have no familiarity with WP's internal conventions and aren't computer wizards. (Let me tell you about a few people I know and how easily they get frustrated when the computer doesn't "do what they want".) The idea behind WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is that if most people come to page X looking for thing A, we should just give them right away thing A, instead of making each of them work to hunt through a list of A, B, and C to pick out the thing they want. Then add a hatnote to aid the minority who wanted something else. I think inflation is a similar situation, where the word is used a lot in science in a different sense, but most readers want the econ topic. 47.155.41.201 (talk) 22:55, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, but we need some proof of the idea that a lot of people get lost/confused/frustrated when they see the words "Protium may refer to:" and then in the next line "Protium (isotope) ..." which is clearly marked as a hyperlink (blue and underlined). After decades of internet and hypertext usage, clicking a link is supposed to be par for the course for the average English reader. I've observed several other discussions where the stats were e.g. 90% incoming mapped to outgoing. --Joy (talk) 12:11, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * We don't need a lot of proof that one of two topics the the primary. One or the other is very likely to be primary, we just have to guess which.  In this case it seems fairly obvious, both that more people are interested in the isotope and that we're failing the majority of people by making them hit a dab page.  Making a minority click on a hatnote direct to the page they really wanted would still better than everyone going to a dab page.  Just a shame that there is a third entry that we can't judge very well: Cadence is a much more popular article than either of the other two, but the Protium product is a very minor part of that article.  So at the very least, a hatnote would need to reference two alternatives, and possibly link a dab page which is back to the worst case for at least a substantial minority of people.  I'd still come down in favour of the move, but it isn't so clearcut just because of the third entry.  Lithopsian (talk) 15:30, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * No, the determination of primary topics just doesn't work that way. There is no actual reason to guess or expect that one of two topics has to be primary. Please see the relevant guideline at WP:PTOPIC, WP:NOPRIMARY. --Joy (talk) 20:36, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry if you don't like my way of interpreting the guidelines. According to WP:PT1, we have one (of two, ignoring the third for now) topic approximately twenty times more likely to be chosen from the dab page (about three times more likely to be visited overall, but that's probably not relevant).  That seems to be to be "much more likely".  There doesn't seem to be much difference in WP:PT2, both have longterm significance unlikely to wane even over decades.  My only doubt is for the third topic (nobody at all clicked through to Cadence?), but I'd say the isotope is also "much more likely" to be visited from the dab page than that topic, "more likely" than the other two combined, and the Cadence topic looks like something that will become less relevant over time rather than more.  Isn't that exactly what WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says?  Lithopsian (talk) 10:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The comparison of outgoing clicks tells us a bit about how the users left the disambiguation page, but comparison of incoming an outgoing is informative as well. As I mentioned before, if we have ~50% of readers not clicking, then that mass of reader behaviors can't be ignored in the determination of what is the most likely usage. --Joy (talk) 07:56, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support – sorry to that 50% of people who didn't find what they wanted on the DAB page, but I don't think directing them directly to where over 90% of the remaining people want is going to make things worse for them – they won't find what they want either way. Are we assuming that the DAB page is the primary topic and 50% of people wanted the DAB page? I highly doubt that. You could maybe convince me to wait for more wikinav data to see if this clears up, but the plant has gotten less views over the past 2 months than there are outgoing pageviews to the isotope from the DAB page. Skarmory   (talk •   contribs)  22:53, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. I think this satisfies WP:PTOPIC (even if many people don't click through). If there is any need to speculate on why about half of people clicked on nothing, I would suggest that many of them are chemistry/physics students who read the first definition and say, "oh, right, it's literally just normal hydrogen" (¹H). SilverLocust (talk) 09:33, 5 July 2023 (UTC)