User talk:Andrewa/wrong article

Why this page
This came from my response to this post which puts forward several common and important misconceptions with admirable clarity.

See User talk:Andrewa/P T examples and scenarios for any subsequent discussion there. Andrewa (talk) 23:10, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

How it happens
I'd always assumes that the ways of getting to the wrong article were all by broken links. These are mainly caused by change of Primary Topic, but can also be caused by editors and uses creating Wikilinks, bookmarks etc based on their assumption of the Primary Topic if that is different to the one we have chosen.

But as it turns out, some users have ways of working that will take them to the wrong page by their use of Google, if the Primary Topic we have chosen differs from their assumption of what the term means. See this post for more on that. Andrewa (talk) 02:18, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

This edit appears to misunderstand the page title. A DAB is not an article.

It appears to be making again the point that was answered here, on a page to which it is not directly relevant, and with no attempt at discussion.

But we are a collaboration, and the page belongs to the whole community. So in the absence of discussion, I'll just make the most of it. Andrewa (talk) 14:23, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Following discussion at User talk:Andrewa/wrong page, I think it would be best to remove the disputed section now at User:Andrewa/wrong article.

It was always controversial and appears to have been originally based entirely on the misconception that a DAB was an article. The original title Taken to a dab page (which is always the wrong page) reveals this, and as a result it's off-topic... This page is about landing at the wrong article, its name is wrong article, its topic is landing on the wrong article, but this section is about landing on a DAB, and a DAB is not an article.

The current heading at least contains no disputed material as far as I can see, but is still appalling. I can't see how to save it or the section.

So, I think it would be best simply removed. Or, would you like to try to correct it, making any relevant and on-topic points you wish to make, and with a section heading that helpfully expresses the topic of the section?

I think it's a waste of time, as the whole basis of the section is flawed as described above. But have a go if you like. Andrewa (talk) 14:40, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Landing on the wrong page, be it an article or a dab page, is still not landing on the sought article, and, IMHO, just as problematic. --В²C ☎ 16:57, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
 * But it's not landing on the wrong article, is it? The difference between the wrong page (which includes DABs) and the wrong article (which doesn't) is important IMO. You disagree, fine. But let us discuss this with clarity, and that isn't helped by your cluttering the page with irrelevant and confusing material. Andrewa (talk) 23:50, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I've made revisions accordingly. --В²C ☎ 17:05, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
 * So I see and thank you for trying. But they don't remove the confusion at all, they preserve it. For example you now say Taken to a dab page (which is never the sought article) in the heading. A dab page is not an article at all, so how could it possibly be the sought article, or the wrong article for that matter? It is neither. Resolving the confusion between wrong page and wrong article is the main point of the page, which it now fails to do. Andrewa (talk) 23:50, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The point is you can get taken to the sought article or to something else. The something else can be either a wrong article or a dab page, which we may refer to as a wrong page, but in either case "it is never the sought article". --В²C ☎ 22:49, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
 * True but irrelevant. This page is about the wrong article, not the sought article or the something else. But it seems you'd prefer to talk about anything else, other than the topic. Why? I suggest you write an essay on the sought article if you feel it is a useful term, and stop cluttering this one with irrelevant material. It gives the impression that you are avoiding clarity. Andrewa (talk) 09:37, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
 * You are avoiding clarity by predicating this essay on the ridiculous notion that landing on an article wrong page is somehow worse than landing on a non-article wrong page. —В²C ☎ 13:28, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
 * No. The essay is not predicated on this. Other way around. See predicate to base (on); to assert on the grounds of.
 * Whether or not landing on an article wrong page is somehow worse than landing on a non-article wrong page is a consequence of the difference between page and article, not vice versa. Failing to understand this difference is what I am trying to avoid.
 * But you are partly right. You seem to be arguing (here and elsewhere) that landing on an article wrong page is no worse than landing on a non-article wrong page. This is untrue, and if we use the words page and article correctly, that's far more easily understood, and that was the reason for this essay.
 * But let us take the easy way out. Let us use your new terminology article wrong page and non-article wrong page and give up the disputed term wrong article. Would that be OK? Andrewa (talk) 04:34, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Why it matters
Loading any unwanted page is never good, but sometimes acceptable, for example if the page is a DAB. But in general, a wrong article will take longer to load than a DAB. This is the harm that was found at wp:NYRM2016.

Sometimes, depending on the way they work, a user may even wrongly interpret being taken to the wrong article as meaning that Wikipedia has no article covering the topic that they want. See here. Andrewa (talk) 02:12, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Various opinions
This edit seems to me to just further confuse the very issue that this essay was intended to clarify.

The point is just that a DAB page is not an article.

This is an important distinction as a point of disagreement is whether being taken to a DAB page is as bad as, or even worse than, being taken to the wrong article. In a sense a DAB is the wrong page, but it's never the wrong article. It can't be. It's not an article. So when I say wrong article, I want it to be clear that I don't mean a DAB. And when I say wrong page, I want it clear that I mean any wrong page including DABs. Isn't that fair enough?

So this essay and the one at User:andrewa/wrong page were intended to be ones I could link to in order to make that very simple distinction. I have linked to them for that purpose.

It would IMO help discussion a great deal if we were careful to use this terminology accurately... to the point that if the terminology is accurate, several arguments obviously collapse, and we need not waste time on them. Andrewa (talk) 21:45, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

More confusion
''In that diff I literally say "page", not article. A DAB is not an article (and I never suggested it was) - it's a page - and in the context of a user searching for an article landing on a dab page they are landing on the wrong page. --В²C ☎ 20:57, 24 July 2019 (UTC), edit sumary You're the once conflating article and page, not me''. (sic)

Exactly. (Or at least yes, you literally say "page", not article. That much is accurate.) That's exactly what I want to clarify. This essay is about getting to the wrong article. And a page is not necessarily an article. But you persist in adding material about wrong pages that are not even articles.

And that defeats the whole purpose of this essay, which is to clearly make that very simple distinction. Andrewa (talk) 19:52, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Conflating
Edit summary You're the once conflating article and page, not me. (sic, my emphasis).

See also edit summary I'm surprised you're conflating the two. (my emphasis)

I confess I had to look up conflating (which also appears in one of the above edits) and I'm none the wiser as to what is meant here. More rhetoric? So it seems to me, as I said at User talk:Andrewa/P T test cases. Andrewa (talk) 19:52, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Obsoleted
This user subpage is obsoleted by User:Andrewa/wrong article 2.

It is mainly kept as a soft redirect so existing wikilinks to the older essay will make some sort of sense.

It is also kept for historical interest... that is, in the hope of not needing to reinvent the wheel. Andrewa (talk) 00:26, 21 September 2019 (UTC)