User talk:Certes/sandbox

General tips
These are for links which can be difficult to locate in edit mode.
 * 1) John_Doe, especially when piped as e.g. Doe
 * 2) John Doe
 * 3)  and the like, if you're searching for e.g. '[[John Doe'.
 * 4) If you can't find a link in edit mode, search for it in read mode mousing over all links, concentrating on templates (including infoboxes)

Another general tip
If an editor has added one bad link, it's odds-on that they haven't checked several or even any. Look at the surrounding text for things like surnames and possible WP:PTOPICs.

WP:NULLEDIT
WP:NULLEDIT, combined with looking at Special/What links here, is a good way of checking that a complicated fix has worked.

Template:S-line
This also accepts link1= and link2= parameters, which avoid the hassle of editing subtemplates.

More when I think of them. Narky Blert (talk) 14:34, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguator's Handbook
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious."

I suggest this title. (I also considered 'Disambiguator's Vademecum'; but, having once edited the sentence "He died by autodefenestration" with a mildly rude summary saying in effect "Nobody loves a smartarse", decided against it.)

WP:DPL members have vast experience in fixing all sorts of problems. As I suggested at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links, this could be a way to pool our knowledge in all areas, not just templates. That could be useful to future as well as to current members – perhaps especially to the former of those classes. I'm thinking of a WP:ESSAY marked as WikiProject advice. An essay is by definition not definitive, and would always be open to improvement.

I've helped edit a collaborative article once before: cheating in bridge. That was complicated by all sorts of WP:BLP issues which don't apply here. That experience (which went well) suggests that it's best to have a lead editor who oversees the article as a whole, and that new ideas should be posted on the Talk Page for the leader to consider (preferably in a form which will require minimal editing should they be adopted). In that instance, the Talk Page was preserved when the article was moved into mainspace; a good idea IMO, it shows that the main editors had the BLP issues firmly in mind. That's probably a good idea for an essay also: it records thought processes for posterity. One thing we might have done but didn't, was to have the leader add done or notdone to the Talk Page.

Further difficult-to-spot, and weird, errors

 * 1) John Doe . The empty pipe wrecks the syntax, and the link shows in main text as John Doe . That is not specific to sortname: it can crop up in any inline template which relies on field position rather than labels.
 * 2) No, I'm Spartacus! and variants, where xx is a 2-letter language code. That particular one is an error for No, I'm Spartacus!.
 * 3) John Doe and John Doe . These don't show up in User:DPL bot reports, unless by chance a link is to a DAB page (as both John and Doe happen to be).

Choosing a redlink qualifier
Most of these are pretty standard and obvious: (album), (film), (song), and so on. If you're in doubt, look for parallel examples both on the DAB page and in relevant categories.

If you choose a qualifier correctly, it's remarkable how often the page/redirect already exists but wasn't on the DAB page.

If you choose a two-part qualifier where another variant might exist (e.g. Ugg (Stone Age actor) and Ugg (actor, born 3000 BC)), look at related articles and/or try a quick search. You can often unify redlinks, or create a new redirect to an existing article.

Infobox journal
Problem : infobox journal field abbreviation looks for a page with the specified name. If it doesn't find one, the editor who added that field sees an error message. If it does find one (whether relevant or irrelevant), it does not create a link in the source article (i.e. it's blacklinked there), but it does create a Special/What links here to the target article, which User:DPL bot reports as an error.

Solution : Add the undocumented field yes to the infobox.

Infobox river
Problem : infobox river fields tributaries_left and tributaries_right look for pages which might be links. If they find nothing, no problem, they just generate harmless blacklinks. However, if they find a match, they generate a bluelink.

Solution : (1) Turn the bad link into a fully-qualified link. E.g., on the page Boring Stream (assuming that Dull Rivulet is a DAB page), change
 * tributaries_left=Dull Rivulet

into
 * tributaries_left=Dull Rivulet).

That should turn the bluelink red (or on a good day, into the correct bluelink). (2) [*IIRC this works, but it needs testing*] Nowiki the offending link out:
 * tributaries_left= Dull Rivulet

Infobox roller coaster
Problem : infobox roller coaster field manufacturer tries to generate a bluelink.

Solution : [I haven't seen this one recently. manufacturerarticle may be the answer, but IDK. In the past, I've solved the problem by spelling out the manufacturer's name in full.]

DPL member specialities
A section where DPL powerusers could briefly say what they do, if they feel like it. Not so much to stay out of each other's way (we've all learnt how to do that), but to highlight (by inference) what specialities might be missing or be in short supply; especially for the benefit of new disambiguators. An analogy, though rather a slow-moving and uninformative one: WikiProject Intertranswiki. I would describe myself as 'cycles through disambiguation pages with links; searches in languages other than English; identifies taxonomists from surnames'.

Concluding comment
When I first got organised, I went systematically through Category:Articles with links needing disambiguation. I then moved on to [templates], [pages with many DABlinks], and the [monthly list]; but soon realised that I was duplicating effort.

More to follow. Narky Blert (talk) 00:42, 5 February 2019 (UTC)