Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 1

Something that can be done is to use the links "Pages that link here" on the desambiguating pages listed and correct the links to go directly to the desired page, without passing through the desambiguating page. I did it for vulcan, for example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AstroNomer (talk • contribs) 15:01, 14 March 2002 (UTC)

In reference to Saturn, user:Maveric149 wrote: "moved god stuff even though I am not totally sure that having so many disambiguating pages is a great idea -- shouldn't the original use of the word have an actual article on its page?"


 * Unfortunately, the planets and moons are completely chock full of reused names for completely different things from their original meanings. The problem with picking one particular meaning as the "main" meaning that should be presented on the disambiguating page is that who's to say which one should be there? The mythical gods were the first uses of those names, sure, but on the other hand the planets are much more "relevant" to modern life. I would rather treat both meanings equally and avoid the debate. Bryan Derksen, Tuesday, April 2, 2002

I agree and I will stick to the convention -- However, I don't have to like it. -maveric149 —Preceding undated comment added 21:46, 2 April 2002

Just curious; what was the original raionale (if any) behind labelling disambiguating pages as such, and linking them to the list? I don't see any point to it. -- Lee Daniel Crocker —Preceding undated comment added 17:57, 3 April 2002


 * I'll be damned if I know the original reason, but I interpreted it as being that one normally shouldn't be linking to such pages but rather directly to the one you want, and thus the note was to indicate that the link you just followed was incorrect. But I just made that up from thin air. --Brion VIBBER —Preceding undated comment added 18:06, 3 April 2002

That's vaguely plausible I suppose. But the current notes are really ugly. I'll offer this alternative to see what people think: how about a more detailed note, but in text that makes it clearly "meta", like this:


 *  This is one of Wikipedia's disambiguating pages, meaning one that merely points to two or more specific articles about different subjects that happen to have the same name. If you arrived here by following a link, you may want to consider changing that link to point directly to one of the more specific pages listed here. 

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lee Daniel Crocker (talk • contribs) 18:29, 3 April 2002 (UTC)

I believe the rationale is so that disambiguating pages don't show up on the orphans list, since they're not redirects but serve a similar purpose. Bryan Derksen —Preceding undated comment added 19:26, 3 April 2002


 * That would explain why they are listed here, but that doesn't explain why there's a note and backlink to here on each one of them. --LDC —Preceding undated comment added 19:28, 3 April 2002


 * Yeah, I don't know why that's in there. But the examples I saw had it, so I've been slavishly putting it into other disambiguation pages for no particular reason because I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. :) Bryan Derksen —Preceding undated comment added 19:08, 5 April 2002

I have noticed a tendency for people to create disambiguation pages without fixing all the links to them. No doubt this is because creating a disambiguation page is easy, while fixing a hundred links to it isn't. The result is that Wikipedia is left in a worse state than it was before the page was split. It would be good if people who don't want to fix links would refrain from splitting pages in the first place. --Zundark, Tuesday, April 9, 2002 (If anyone is in a link-fixing mood, set and analysis are two that badly need working on.)

Analysis is fixed (and in the process I saw lots of things I disliked about several otehr articles - ugh!). Now someone else please do set. -- Miguel —Preceding undated comment added 17:02, 9 April 2002

The current article metions Paris in the opening paragraph and goes on to talk about the ambiguity of the fact that "Paris" is a city in France and one in Texas. A better example needs to be placed in the article -- one would never make a disambiguation page out of Paris; all you would do is have a link at the bottom of the acticle linking to Paris, Texas. The article on the page Paris should only talk about the most famous Paris. I will give the example of Jupiter as a replacement for now -- but somebody needs to mention what I just stated above in the article (unless I missed it further down....) --maveric149 —Preceding undated comment added 12:17, 12 April 2002

My bad. -- miguel —Preceding undated comment added 09:12, 15 April 2002


 * I very much think that where a disambiguating note is required for a topic with one overwhelmingly common use, and one or more less common use, that note should be right at the beginning of the article for the most common use. This lets the person looking for the obscure usage know immediately that he must go elsewhere without the need to scroll through a long article that may not even include his reference at the end.  Where there are numerous minor usages then to keep the note short it can point to a new disambiguating page such as Paris (not France). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eclecticology (talk • contribs) 22:00, 16 April 2002 (UTC)

Another page that needs disambiguation is interval. -- Miguel —Preceding undated comment added 09:12, 15 April 2002


 * Yes, that one definitely needs splitting, if someone can first change all the links. The musical meaning can probably go in Musical interval. Someone tried Interval on the real line for the mathematical meaning, but I think we probably want it to be more general than that. --Zundark, Monday, April 15, 2002

I propose: Ed Poor —Preceding undated comment added 10:16, 15 April 2002
 * interval (music)
 * interval (mathematics)


 * OK. But you shouldn't have split the page if you're not going to fix the links. (The links can be changed before splitting the page, since you can create the new pages as redirects and link to them. So there's no excuse for leaving things in the broken state they're currently in, even temporarily.) --Zundark, Tuesday, April 16, 2002


 * I gather you would prefer that repairs to articles should be done in an order such that they are in a broken state for a minimal amount of time. This sounds like a reasonable guideline. Ed Poor, Tuesday, April 16, 2002

I agree with those who question the wisdom of having disambiguation page notices; I have the same reaction to stub page notices. I don't much like meta-type comments like this. Articles are there for users, not developers. It's only getting to be more so, too, as Wikipedia increases in quality and depth. Those who care about potential problems with disambiguation pages and stub pages are greatly outnumbered by users, and are not greatly helped by the notices (I guess--I could be wrong). Generally, it's better to fix problems as we see them--alternatively, we can assume that the problems will be obvious enough to editors who encounter them that, if they want to fix the problems, they will. The notices aren't going to help much. (Can anyone report being helped greatly by them?) Individual problem cases, like the analysis page was (apparently), could be noted on the talk page.

I'd propose nearly always making disambiguating pages whenever there is an ambiguity to resolve. Yes, even in the case of Paris (notwithstanding Parisians and the Greek hero!). It would provide a consistent way of beginning articles and a more consistent policy about how to deal with multiple meanings. So it handily solves two problems at once. (1) We wouldn't have to worry about people concluding that we don't have an article about Paris, Texas because they don't know that they should scroll to the bottom of Paris to find a link to it. (2) And then there's never any question whether a disambiguation page is necessary (whether there's "one dominant" sense or several others). We just say one always is.

I agree (of course) that broken links (well, sort-of broken) are a problem (so that, if a page links to Paris and someone wants to see the Paris article they have to go through a disambiguation page to arrive at Paris, France. But I really don't think they're a huge problem.  Moreover, I'd argue that insofar as they're a problem, the problem is a natural, to-be-expected, unavoidable byproduct of our having adopted a new, more accurate system of disambiguation (viz., parentheses) instead of using the old subpage system.  In other words, the new system allows us to give pages more precise titles, but in order actually to give them more precise titles, we, well, change the titles.  Since linking to a page involves linking to its title, changing titles entails "breaking" links.  So we should expect that links are going to be "broken" as part of the process of adopting a more precise method of naming pages, because we actually have to rename quite a few pages. It's part of the process. It'll all get fixed eventually!

Of course, the very best solution (in my opinion, of course) would be a renaming function that renames all links, or better yet, allows someone to choose how to rename a list of links (so that, e.g., some go to analysis (mathematics and some go to analysis (philosophy), etc.. That'd be great. --Larry Sanger —Preceding undated comment added 18:46, 25 April 2002
 * What about creating a sort of "family" of links, as it now happens for the user: and user:talk pages, to be recalled the same way at the bottom and on the right (or wherever else)? We still could easily find Paris the town and the links to the other senses in the same page (and reciprocally) - usually disambiguating pages don't contain more than 4 or 5 links. Would it be possible? --Gianfranco —Preceding undated comment added 19:23, 25 April 2002

In theory, you are correct Larry -- but this could quickly lead to madness, especially for people's names. And as the project grows this will become worse and worse. There are only so many combinations for people's names and we will end up having [Paul Simon (musician)], [Paul Simon (politician)] and the inevitable [Paul Simon (obscure historical figure)]. This when the overwhelming majority of English speakers know of only the musician. Therefore this person is the one that is going to be linked to within wikipedia by far the most. One of the founding principles of wiki wiki is easy linking -- It just may be me, but I don't think having to write Thomas Jefferson, Paul Simon, or Albert Einstein (physicist) is effort-free. BTW would we disambiguate Albert Einstein as (physicist) or (scientist)?

This type of disambiguation would make the 'pedia more difficult to use and would make many names far more ambiguous than they really are (who is really going to confuse the real Einstein from the character in the TV series Alien Nation?). More obscure usages can be parenthetically disambiguated but parenthetical disambguation of all terms that share the same name should only be used as a last resort. --maveric149, Friday, May 17, 2002

Is the word "film" now an anachronism? And if so, should we disambiguate movie titles with (movie) instead of (film)? Somebody wrote a naming convention which states that (movie) should be used -- but hardly anybody follows that convention. Is this something we should enforce? Was there any discussion about this particular convention? --maveric149, Friday, May 17, 2002
 * I don't know what the 'official' policy is... when I went to make a disabiguating link I automatically put in 'movie' but I've seen that many already-made links refer to 'film'. I'd think 'movie' was a more modern reference and probably more familiar to users.~KJ —Preceding undated comment added 22:30, 17 May 2002

Hi Mav -- out of curiousity, why does it matter whether it's "movie" or "film"? Personally, I'd vote for "film" every time, but it's just as easy to have both and redirect one to another with content. Oh -- my rationale for "film"? Most of the Americans I know use both terms(often as a way of implying quality); Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis I know mostly (and the Brits almost exclusively) say "film". Cheers! JHK


 * Will the term "film" survive -- maybe only time will tell: Just wanted to know what everyone else thought so that we can abide by a common naming convention (which explicity states that "movie" should be used, even though I am not aware of a discussion on this taking place). I also wanted to gauge people's feelings about the fact that within several years the term "film" will probably become an anachronism since movies will be released in digital format (although most theater owners will continue to order copies placed on "film" for projection for some time afterwards -- digital projectors ain't cheap).


 * The question I have, is whether this detail is even important -- will people continue to call movies "film" even after production, distribution and projection are all digital (might be too early to tell...)? I also would prefer to use the term "film", but as you stated, in the States that term is usually reserved for higher quality stuff and the term "movie" is more of a catch-all general term which might be better in this case. Just trying to come up with the least ambiguous disambiguation set-up that is consistant and has some reasoning behind it. I don't think this is like the American/British spelling issue where the only option is to go with the first spelling/set-up and provide redirects for the other spellings/set-ups -- these types of compromises should be options of last-resort (I don't think we are at the "last resort" stage with this though). I also don't want to have to go back through all the (film) articles and changing them over to (movie) in a few years if use of the word "film" goes out of usage. Star Wars Episode II is the first filmless "film" so I quess only time will tell. Would like to know if the Brits, Aussies or Kiwis would drop use of the term if it becomes anachronistic and also if the term "movie" is a good alternative. --maveric149


 * umm... I just had a lengthy debate with members of my family over whether we use the term 'film' or 'movie'. My mother came down on the side of film, my father voted for movie and my brother said it depends on whether you're talking about them in general or specific (he's always been a bit of a nitpicker!) I think movie has a more general use nowadays, in Australia anyway. Even SBS has the 'Movie' Show, not the 'Film' Show... ~KJ —Preceding undated comment added 23:31, 18 May 2002

The more I think about it, the less and less I like the term "film" -- at least in the context of disambiguation. "Film" has several widely known and used meanings in English; a thin coating or layer, a thin sheet of plastic, photographic celluloid, motion picture and the making of a motion picture. Movie only has one meaning in English = motion picture. This term therefore is the least ambiguous of the two and combined with its already widespread usage and the fact that the term "film" will soon be outdated, I change my vote for "movie" instead of "film". --maveric149 —Preceding undated comment added 00:16, 19 May 2002
 * A couple months ago I tried to change a lot of film articles to movie articles, but that effort soon went down in flames. Maybe I was just premature about it.  Somebody changed it all back, and I'm not particularly inclined to go through that exercise again.  For disambiguating pages it probably doesn't make much difference since the disambiguating is almost exclusively done from something completely different.  I'll continue to use "movie" as preferable, but won't make work for myself when somebody else uses "film".
 * Occasionally, when there is more than one movie of the same name, the production year can be a second level disambiguation. A Roman numeral (used by IMDb) or even the director's surname could be used when a third level disambiguation is needed. Eclecticology, Sunday, May 19, 2002
 * This is exaclty the reason why I wanted to have some discussion on this -- so that if I or somebody else started changing things one way or the other then there is documentation to back-up the reasoning. Also needed to work out the reasoning myself in order to make sure that the most correct disambiguation is used. Which so far seems to be (movie). --maveric149 —Preceding undated comment added 01:13, 19 May 2002
 * There has already been some discussion which is now at talk:film Eclecticology —Preceding undated comment added 01:30, 19 May 2002