Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 56

Middle names or parenthetical disambiguation?
There are two scholars on Wikipedia named Eric Higgs. Up until a few days ago, one was named Eric Sidney Higgs and the other Eric Higgs (environmental scholar). I thought that was strange, and since the dab guidelines say that "natural disambiguation that is unambiguous, commonly used, and clear is generally preferable to parenthetical disambiguation", I moved it to Eric Stowe Higgs. Further, a significant majority of his work (but not all) is published as "Eric S. Higgs". User:Ortizesp has a different take and thinks the parenthetical dab should remain. Although I am willing to admit that I'm wrong, I'm convinced that in recent years, best practice is to disambiguate biographical names using the middle name instead of the parenthetical. I would appreciate the opinions of others on this. For example, I recently created John Hunter Thomas. The literature partly uses John Thomas, partly uses John H. Thomas, and partly uses John Hunter Thomas. As you can see from our dab page on John Thomas, this is preferred. Wouldn't the same argument hold for Eric Higgs, such as, we want to have foresight and prepare for additional figures by that name by defaulting to the middle name preference? Viriditas (talk) 21:34, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, WP:NATURALDIS says to favor natural over parenthetical, so let's favor it. There are edge cases, e.g. where someone's middle name is only found very rarely in sources and they are univerally known without it or an initial for it (posing a WP:RECOGNIZABLE issue – e.g. we would never move the singer Michael Jackson to "Michael J. Jackson" or "Michael Joseph Jackson", and for that matter we probably would not move the also rather famous beer author Michael Jackson (writer) to "Michael J. Jackson" or "Michael James Jackson"; both of them are universally known as "Michael Jackson"). But in the case of some academic whose name is rendered different ways in different publications, this is not a concern. That said, Eric S. Higgs seems like a poor choice for Eric Stowe Higgs because Eric Sidney Higgs is also an Eric S. Higgs. I would go with Eric Stowe Higgs, and have Eric S. Higgs be a (short) disambiguation page. Either that or redir it to E. Stowe's page, and use there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:12, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * We also have the odd case of Iain Banks, who wrote mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks. Fortunately, he seems to be unambiguous. Certes (talk) 23:20, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * His university profile page does not use his middle name or initial. Readers will be much better served by the parenthetical disambiguatio . The latest title, Eric S. Higgs is worse than the previous one as it does not distinguish him from the ogher man. Pam  D  22:11, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree on the last point, but his university profile isn't particularly dispositive, compared to his published journal material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:14, 10 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I think that it is important to look at the purpose of disambiguation, namely to inform the user which "Eric Higgs" or "John Doe" he is looking for. So long at the hatnotes and DAB pages contain adequate identifiers such as "environmental scholar" or "footballer" it doesn't matter what the title of each of the articles is from the point of view of the user seeking a particular bio. Therefore, use the middle name or initial as required, unless there is a primary target who either has no middle name or never uses it or a middle initial. Parentheticals should not be the default, just the stop-gap for the cases that don't fit, IAW "natural disambiguation". Here there seems to be no reason why the two articles cannot be entitled with full names, with an appropriate hatnote for the other "Eris S. Higgs". If neither is primary then rename Eric S. Higgs to Eric Stowe Higgs and have Eric S. Higgs point to the Eric Higgs DAB page.--Bejnar (talk) 22:42, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * My experience is that a clear parenthetical is more useful than a rarely used middle initial, as at a glance it will point you to the subject you're interested in. And in this case, as you mentioned, the S. initial doesn't disambiguate. I have no issues moving this page to Eric Stowe Higgs, but only if "Stowe" is used enough that it's a useful disambiguator, if it's trivial I'd just prefer a parenthetical disambiguator unless policy or consensus says otherwise. Ortizesp (talk) 02:41, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that both the archaeologist (Eric Sidney Higgs) and the ecological philosopher (Eric Stowe Higgs) publish with and without the middle initial. I realize you disagree, but in my mind this is the natural, unambiguous, form of disambiguation, except as editors, we use the full middle name to make this explicit.  Because this uses less characters and doesn't require a parenthetical, it is more efficient, easier to link (no pipes or spaces needed) and better for readers and editors.  There's also the limitations of precision when we use a parenthetical dab.  Calling him an "environmental scholar" doesn't specify the nuances of ecology and philosophy, his specialties.  Simply referring to him as "Eric Stowe Higgs" is ideal as it avoids the limitations of the parenthetical.  On the other hand, I support the use of a parenthetical when we have two people (or things) with identical names.  Since they have different middle names, no parenthetical is needed. That's my take. Viriditas (talk) 22:23, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Is your contention that, if "Eric S. Higgs" is a natural name to use for the Canadian, then "Eric Stowe Higgs" must also be one? And so that calling the article "Eric Stowe Higgs" follows the guidelines?
 * WP:MIDDLE says that you should use a middle name in full "if reliable sources write out several or all of a subject's given names nearly as often as they use initials". WP:NATURAL is less prescriptive, but still expects a name "that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources". My understanding of what has been said here is that "Eric Stowe Higgs" meets neither version of the test.
 * Aoeuidhtns (talk) 23:40, 20 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I think if the middle name or middle initial is inconsistently used in reliable sources (or is itself ambiguous) then parenthetical disambiguation is clearer. However, many 18th and 19th century folks (as well as some more recent ones) were commonly known by their full name. older ≠ wiser 11:19, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * There's also the strange phenomenon in the US (that nobody has ever explained), where a person accused of or convicted of a major crime suddenly has their middle name permanently added to their title. Some famous examples include Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, and John Wayne Gacy, although there are many others. Viriditas (talk) 22:07, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * 250 of 1,141 and 20 of 114 .  It's probably from having their full name as used in a police statement or court charge reported in the media, that being the first time most people hear of the accused and the name they remember. Certes (talk) 22:30, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * That, and just being more specific in a country with a large population and lots of people with coinciding first/last name pairs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:37, 11 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Can someone help me understand why we have vastly different approaches here? For example, take a look at Eric Higgs and Hans Beimler.  The page on Beimler seems to reflect the position of Ortizesp and others here. Viriditas (talk) 23:27, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles
A discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Automobiles regarding the word "marque" and a proposal to replace it with "car brand" may be of interest to watchers of this page and additional input is welcome to generate consensus. Thank you. Andra Febrian (talk) 07:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Banner shell assessment problems
There are two discussions at the foot of Wikipedia talk:Content assessment on problems resulting from the fact that Disambiguation is no longer accepted as a class for article assessment. Over the past two or three days, I have come across many new "unassessed" examples in wikiprojects including WP Women, WP Italy, WP Norway and WP Sweden. I have been encouraged to use Class=list in the banner shell rather than Class=Disambig which therefore needs to be deleted in the individually listed wikiproject assessments to avoid conflicts. Those associated with this project might like to comment.--Ipigott (talk) 15:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Requesting feedback on Poling
I recently added the following at Poling: There are numerous other usages of the term 'Poling' (which all seem valid, afaict) and they all start off with the term '"Poling" linked to an article (maybe Poling piped to "Shunting" is not correct?). Only my recent addition does not link the title word, and I wondered if that is okay. I think it should be on this page somehow, because when I think of "poling", boat movement is the first thing I think of; and conversely, when I think of that type of boat locomotion, I don't know any other term for it other than "poling". Is my addition correctly formatted? Mathglot (talk) 23:36, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Poling, a method of moving small watercraft using a Setting pole
 * I think that's what I would have done (except "setting pole" not "Setting pole" since it's not a proper name). In another thread above, someone has argued that every DAB entry should start with a link, but there doesn't seem much appetite for that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Gonzalez/Gonzales, etc.
It has occurred to me that we should basically have a rule that where we have two relatively short disambiguation pages (or a pairing where one is very short) differing only by a phonetic spelling variation of a surname, like Pedro Gonzalez and Pedro Gonzales, we should merge these. BD2412 T 18:16, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * No, we shouldn't have a rule like that.
 * It would be reasonable to include both Pedro Gonzales in the Pedro Gonzalez DAB page because that wouldn't make it significantly longer. They should, at least, link to the other DAB page.--Jahalive (talk) 19:38, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

"Chetnik" as a disambiguator?
Three pages use "(Chetnik)" as a disambiguator (see Category:Chetniks). I have two questions regarding these: 1) Is the term sufficiently well known for this purpose? 2) Does it matter that none of the three were members of the Chetniks in World War II, the primary topic of that term? They were in other groups noted at Chetniks (disambiguation). Dimitrije Dimitrijević (Chetnik) was a Chetnik in World War I, Vladimir Kovačević (Chetnik) was a member of the Serbian Chetnik Organization and Mihailo Petrović (Chetnik) was in as many as four different Chetnik groups. I have no idea what would work better. If this is a case of WP:AINTBROKE, I'll quickly move along. —  AjaxSmack 00:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * You might receive better input at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 03:43, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

At what point is WP:PDABPRIMARY considered?
Since I recently proposed moving "30 (Adele album)" to "30 (album)", and a 99.5% pageview advantage is apparently not enough for primary disambiguation, is it time WP:PDABPRIMARY and the outcome of this RFC be discussed again? If no one except Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift can have one, I am not sure there should be a guideline implying this is much more frequently acceptable. The pageview ratio is a ridiculous 1200 vs 5 and that is not enough?--NØ 08:53, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * You might receive better input at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 03:43, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Second-round RfC on titles of TV season articles
Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:54, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to resolve nomenclatural confusion between split long lists and parenthentically disambiguated page names
Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (lists). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:47, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC
Please see Wikipedia talk:Content assessment &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:07, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This is on the distinction between disambiguation pages and set-index articles and whether we should still have the latter (in case anyone's wondering).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:48, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

on the quality of clickstream and pageviews usage data
I've done a decades-long poor man's research into primary topics by usage in the area of anthroponymy at "Tito", and I've made another update to at Talk:Tito (disambiguation). We now have data from both before and after we changed the navigation layout.

So it's a topic where there's by all accounts a rather clear primary topic by long-term significance, as well as a reasonably clear one by our conventional understanding of usage. Yet we now have pretty conclusive proof that the inherent ambiguity of human given names and surnames is measurable in our statistics even when in such a clear minority. --Joy (talk) 18:16, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

on annotated biography links
Some anonymous user recently pointed me to a discussion from 2018 in. Now, obviously I could just disregard this is some sort of block evasion and egregious WP:POINT, but whatever. The anbl template was made by someone else this month, and I immediately started using it because it seems quite useful - it allows us to stop copying and pasting short descriptions of people in navigation lists and instead just reuse them. Wherever it becomes a problem, e.g. if it prevents list consistency or something like that, we can do it the regular way, but it seems quite sensible in most cases. Is there an actual concern about this that I'm missing here? --Joy (talk) 21:26, 3 February 2024 (UTC)


 * User:Joy, thank you for bringing this here, though I could do without the WP:ABF, please note that I have explained this further at Talk:Sharafutdinov, and that WP:WRAPPERs merely extend the functionality of existing templates and so are not new in any meaningful sense. 2601:5CC:8300:A7F0:2D98:B108:5F54:7DA0 (talk) 21:32, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've replied over there, what was written there was nonsensical. If you actually want to contribute something useful, this is a pretty bad start. --Joy (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * User:Joy if you believe the community's reasoning is nonsensical you may seek to overturn it at anytime through an WP:RFC, in the meantime not liking community consensus does not give anyone the right to violate it. 2601:5CC:8300:A7F0:2D98:B108:5F54:7DA0 (talk) 21:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Come on now. This went through Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 20 with the use of anbl and nobody even noticed, yet now you're making it sound like some sort of a gross violation of consensus. That is just silly. --Joy (talk) 22:13, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It is a violation of community consensus. What is silly is bringing up the RFD, where the only participant who even mentioned the template was you. 2601:5CC:8300:A7F0:F4CC:EB10:74C:7D86 (talk) 22:57, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * CycloneYoris explicitly said use that draft after I mentioned it. I guess I'm just going to have to ignore further trolling. --Joy (talk) 09:21, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * User:Joy no one is trolling you, and diffless accusations of trolling are clearly prohibited WP:ASPERSIONS. Even if we were to interpret the one remark on the RFD as suggesting use of the template, which we shouldn't since they don't mention any particulars, the agreement of two editors at one time and place does not overturn a consensus community discussion. Now given the multiple instances of you grasping at straws to try and get your way when no one supports you, or calling quotations of summarized community consensus nonsensical because you don't like them, someone unfamiliar with how confusing things can be here might interpret your actions as trolling with some justification, but you'll notice that despite repeated personal attacks I have not done so, because the remarks could also come from someone who is deeply confused. It is however time for you to either drop the WP:STICK or start an WP:RFC. You are not required to like current consensus, but you should abide by it until it is overturned through another community discussion. 2601:5CC:8300:A7F0:98C5:A273:98F2:4560 (talk) 21:40, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Joy I haven't come across either anbl or the anl of which it's a variation, but looking at that led me to a 2018 discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 50 which comes down pretty firmly against the use of such templated annotations in dab pages. One main concern was that if the templates were used the content of the dab page could then be altered, invisibly to page watchers of the dab page. Pam  D  21:45, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @PamD that is technically true, but that goes for all other uses of templates in Wikipedia. Why is this so different, what sort of extra abuse are we expecting here? That someone would edit short description templates on the destination articles with the intent of having something abusive shown in their respective lines in the indices of people? And that this would go unnoticed in the destination article, but be shown in the list of biographies to a much larger audience? Or that someone would do it on articles that don't have that tag, so to track the history one has to go to Wikidata?
 * All this seems like a lot of very contrived scenarios, because our lists of people are hardly the mecca for vandals, we've been observing a number of navigation issues related to them, i.e. they get fewer eyeballs than expected, so a high potential for vandalism is barely on anyone's radar AFAICT. Besides, I was once told the SDs render up front on the articles themselves in the mobile app, and that they're numbered in the millions already (which was cited as the reason why we couldn't change the default order of templates). Why would we be unconcerned with the existing anti-abuse mechanisms of that, but concerned with this rather indirect potential of abuse? --Joy (talk) 22:09, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Joy The main problem is that a short description will not always be suitable for a dab page entry: in particular, for biographical items, WP:SDDATES encourages the addition of dates, but these will be at the end of the SD, while the annotation in a dab page puts them first - I notice that in the case of Sharafutdinov you added the dates by using the "abbr" parameter of the template, but in many cases the date would have been imported as part of the SD, but in a way incompatible with WP:MOSDAB. I've now added the dates to both the Sharafutdinovs' SDs, having been alerted to the fact that they were missing. Pam  D  08:42, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, so that's all I'm saying - if we can use it to format the list entry, we should be free to use it without the risk of getting insta-reverted. If it doesn't work, don't do it / get it reverted. --Joy (talk) 09:58, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * (ec)In addition to what PamD mentions, short descriptions are sometimes written in a way that can read oddly when included in a disambiguation list (i.e., (inconsistent with other entries or becomes an unusual grammatical contruct). I can't recall examples off the top of my head. Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages also advises against transcluding templates, which is why ship name templates aren't used. As I recall at least part of the reasoning was to avoid introducing unnecessary complexity to the dab pages. Some of the templates are not exactly intuitive to use (e.g., the hopelessly confusing parameters for the hatnote templates). The documentation for the new template is spartan at present and based on what is there now, it is not what I'd call intuitive to use. older ≠ wiser 22:18, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ship templates aren't used in set indices? I thought I saw a few just recently... --Joy (talk) 22:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Set index anrticles are not expected to ^follow^ (added later) the MOS for disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 00:21, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, so the disambiguation list formatting for biographies, where anbl is useful, is effectively the same. The main reason I brought this up here is because the anonymous invoked the D guideline, even if the page was obviously anthroponymy only; this natural overlap was also mentioned in that recent RFC at Wikipedia talk:Content assessment. I suppose we should just go ahead and clarify these concepts in the guideline text in an effort to dissuade pointless edit-warring. --Joy (talk) 10:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Or ask at WikiProject Anthroponymy to clarify guidance for surname pages. My main concern is that the template is quite confusing to use and is thus more prone to errors that are easily avoided by not using the template. What is actually gained by using the template? For the time being at least, I don't see any illumination forthcoming from the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Content assessment. older ≠ wiser 13:22, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, it's just so much easier for the editor. When composing a list from scratch, you just have to do the composition -- recognize the ambiguity, exclude partial title matches, etc -- and not worry about the captions (well, at least for the large majority of cases I tried so far). --Joy (talk) 20:41, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is not for historical events
The rules of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC work when there are multiple topics in different domains that have the same name, and one is clearly the primary. For example, George Washington and George Washington (book). People searching for "George Washington" are looking for the person, not the book with that title, and the person is by far the primary, so it makes sense to call the article "George Washington" and not "George Washington (person)."

This rule does not work well, however, for historical events with the same name. For example, "Gaza War" -- there are like four or five of them. Even if one is the primary, they should all have a date, or readers will be confused. Typically, for historical events with the same name, readers are going to know that and they'll be looking for one with a specific date. I recently wrote a very long vote about this at Israel-Hamas war, where the year disambiguator was recently dropped. referenced my vote in another discussion at Talk:Siege of Baghdad, where the date disambiguator was also just dropped.

This is a hole in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It probably applies to other areas besides historical events with the same name. For example, if there is an album and a song with the same name, they should probably always be disambiguated, even if one is primary. If there is a book and a movie with the same name. Nobody is likely to confuse the book George Washington with the person, but people are likely to confuse a book with a movie of the same name, or multiple historical events with the same name that took place at different times (as another example, Sack of Rome).

I think PRIMARYTOPIC should be changed to account for "cross-domain" (for lack of a better term) primary topics (don't disambiguate), v. "within-domain" primary topics (disambiguate). Levivich (talk) 17:13, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Good work is currently going on at Partially disambiguated page names analysing cases such as Thriller (album) which share their titles with other albums, etc. These are a different species from Gaza War etc. but are closely related. Certes (talk) 18:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree, closely related. Same principle at play at Talk:30 (album)/Archive 1, for example. Levivich (talk) 18:30, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * However, I think the format of the title makes a difference. Readers seeing a title Foo (bar) may well assume that there are other things called Foo, but none of them is a bar, because a qualifier normally disambiguates completely.  That's not the case for a natural title such as Great War or Gulf War.  I'm not convinced that we should apply a higher standard of primality here just because the alternative meanings are also wars. Certes (talk) 19:46, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't especially agree with this. If one usage is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, I don't see what it matters what "domains" they are in. I do agree that things like "Gaza War" should always be disambiguated (as in fact they all are), even if one usage, here a redirect to Israel-Hamas war, is held to be primary. So I would have agreed with you at Talk:Siege of Baghdad, but I'm not sure bringing "domains" in helps the argument. Johnbod (talk) 19:03, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with Johnbod. If a topic is in fact primary topic, there is no reason to treat it differently based on what type of a thing it is. older ≠ wiser 20:34, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I think PRIMARYTOPIC still applies to historical events, but perhaps with the proviso (which may apply to other situations as well) that we should be wary of declaring one topic to be the primary one based on which one happens to be current. Is the current war in Gaza THE Gaza War? Perhaps we shouldn't find that to be the case until a few years after, when, in retrospect, it may still be referred to as THE Gaza War, or maybe it will be seen as just one Gaza war among several. Largoplazo (talk) 20:55, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I would think that a title like Gaza War should resolve to an article with a title like, List of wars in Gaza, or for something more in depth, History of military conflicts in Gaza. BD2412  T 20:57, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, it doesn't, unless you want to create such a page. One would have to add in the bunch at Battle of Gaza, going back to 312 BC. But the disam page at Gaza War is effectively the same. What would be the point of ramming wars at totally different periods together? We don't have Wars involving the English Channel etc. Johnbod (talk) 21:32, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well then, History of post-World War II military conflicts in Gaza. BD2412  T 23:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * re Largoplazo, yes, I think the ongoing discussions as to WHAT to call the article indicates there is a deep question as to whether it is the primary topic -- at least in terms of long-term significance. It is nearly always the case that very high-profile current events will at least temporarily be the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 21:40, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't see any hole in WP:PTOPIC. The criteria are 1)frequency of usage and 2)historical significance, and how to weigh those two criteria is appropriately left to case-by-case consensus. This has worked well for all sorts of domains, historical and otherwise, for years. There's no added value in considering whether the top targets are "within the same domain". There is no reason to force an otherwise-clear PT to wear a parenthetical, and force all readers to a dab, just because the PT is "in the same domain" as less noteworthy topics. It looks to me like Levivich is frustrated at some recent PT determinations. But the matter of determining whether Israel–Hamas war and Siege of Baghdad are really PTs still comes down to how common those uses are relative to others of the same name, and how enduring that primality is. I don't know if the PT determinations made in those two cases were right or wrong, but I don't see any case for a change in the guidance on what makes a PT. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;beyond&#8201;•&#8201;mutual 22:54, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * "Frustrated" is such an odd choice of word. I just reread what I wrote and I'm scratching my head wondering where anyone sees frustration in what I wrote. I think the rule should be modified to make it better, I think the application of the rule has led to some "wrong" results, but I'm not frustrated about it. I perceive a weakness and I'm suggesting a way to strengthen the policy, but it's not frustrating or in any way emotional; my opinion is based in logic not emotion. I understand if you don't agree with my logic but I assure you I am not frustrated or otherwise feeling any kind of negative emotions about article titles. Levivich (talk) 02:50, 11 February 2024 (UTC)


 * @Levivich You say For example, if there is an album and a song with the same name, they should probably always be disambiguated, even if one is primary. If there is a book and a movie with the same name. You seem to be saying that everyone who wants either the book The Outrun or the film The Outrun (film) should land instead on a dab page, to then choose between them, the book being at The Outrun (book), so that everyone has one more click to make, rather than the current position where those who want the book get there immediately, those who want the film see a nice helpful hatnote and make one more click. I don't think your proposal benefits the reader. Pam  D  23:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @PamD: That's not what I'm saying, and it's not what I wrote. I didn't write anything about dab pages. I'm talking about article titles. In your example--I'm not familiar with Outrun but assuming the book is primary and not the film--I'd make The Outrun a redirect to The Outrun (book), and if a dab page is needed, have it at The Outrun (disambiguation). I certainly agree "one more click" would not be an improvement. But adding "book" to the title of The Outrun would be an improvement, IMO. Levivich (talk) 02:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In that case it appears that the objection here is to the idea of what is normally called "unnecessary disambiguation" (a corollary of WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT or, in the case of disambiguation pages, WP:MALPLACED), rather than to the rules about primary topics. I agree with the other comments above that historical events are fully covered under the current rules under the ideas of frequency of usage and historical significance. Dekimasu よ! 04:34, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's the objection here because I don't understand what it means. But I would agree that in some cases (like years of some historical events), keeping the disambiguator in the name of the primary topic can be helpful even if not necessary, and so the dab for a primary should not always be removed. Or something like that. Which could be summed up as "unnecessary disambiguators may still be helpful." PTOPIC doesn't say otherwise AFAICS, but I think it'd be improved by stating this explicitly, because even though PTOPIC doesn't require the removal of a dab, in practice it seems like many editors apply it as if it does, e.g. the disucssion is, "it's a PTOPIC, therefore no dab, end of story." Levivich (talk) 05:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, that would presumably conflict with WP:CONCISE (and WP:OVERPRECISION, cf. the entry on Energy there) once it has been determined that there is a primary topic, so perhaps then the objection is to the criteria at WP:AT. Dekimasu よ! 05:13, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * (Why are you guessing what my objection is? I'm trying to tell you what my "objection" is, which is not an objection, it's an idea for improving this page.)
 * Maybe it'll help if I give another example besides the two above about events. A classic example is Thriller (album) and Thriller (song). The reason those are dab'd is because there's no consensus that either are primary. But irrespective of that, I find it very helpful that those two articles have "(album)" and "(song)" in the title, because it tells me right away whether I'm reading the article about the album, or about the song. Harry Potter, the novel series, is the clear primary. But when I look at that article, I wish it would have "(book series)" or something in the title so I knew I was reading the article about the book series and not Harry Potter (film series), Harry Potter (TV series), or Harry Potter (character). Those other three titles have dabs so I don't have the confusion, but the primary one doesn't. The primary article does say, right at the top, "This article is about the novel series," which is what clears up that confusion. But it'd be even easier if it said it in the title, particularly in lists of article titles. E.g., if you type "Harry Potter" into the search form, the short desc does help you find the one about the book series, but still I think it'd be easier if it was just called "Harry Potter (book series)" (or "novel series" or "literature series," both phrases are used elsewhere). Aside from current events and historical events, these are two other examples of where I'd find unnecessary dabs useful, and I wish PTOPIC would say that it's ok to keep helpful but unnecessary dabs (subject of course to consensus that they're helpful for any a particular article). Levivich (talk) 05:22, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Levivich Are you saying that as soon as an article was written for the film,The Outrun, the article on the book (at the undisambiguated title) should have been moved to the disambiguated title?  Pam  D  06:44, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * No, not as soon as and not necessarily ever. I'm saying this page should tell editors they can decide to do that (have a dab in a primary title) if they think it's helpful. But not automatically or in every case. (I'm not familiar enough with that particular work to know if it's 'helpful' in that case.) Levivich (talk) 06:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It's helpful if and only if the film is almost as likely as the book to be the topic a reader is seeking when they look for "The Outrun". That's already covered by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.  I'm a big fan of dabs, but by putting one at the base name here we'd be adding one more step for readers seeking the book without shortening the path for the (presumably much smaller) number of readers seeking the film. Certes (talk) 10:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In what way does adding a dab to a primary add one more step for readers? Levivich (talk) 17:05, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm comparing two options for handling a case which I think matches what we're talking about, specifically where we have two Foo Wars in 1234 and 1987, of which 1987 is the more notable and passes WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Current practice is to call the 1987 article Foo War with a hatnote to Foo War (1234).  What I think you are suggesting is to move the PT to Foo War (1987) and write a dab called Foo War.  This change has little effect on the minority of readers interested in the 1234 war, who now click on a dab entry rather than a hatnote.  However, it hampers the majority who seek the 1987 war, who now have to click on a dab entry rather than being presented with their desired topic immediately.  If I've misunderstood, please explain how my statement differs from your proposal. Certes (talk) 17:37, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That's not what I'm suggesting. That's what Pam thought I was suggesting, too, and I cleared that up with Pam just above.
 * "write a dab called Foo War" is not anything I said in my OP I don't get why people think this is something I'm suggesting :-P
 * Foo War (1987) would be the name of the article, Foo War can be a redirect to Foo War (1987), not a dab page, and no extra click. If a dab page were needed, it would be at Foo War (disambiguation). (This is all assuming Foo War (1987) is the primary.)
 * And to repeat myself, all I'm suggesting is that PTOPIC should mention that it's OK for editors to come to consensus to do this if they think it's worth doing on a particular article. Not that this should be done automatically or in every case. Nor do I think the primary topic should be turned into a dab, or that any extra clicks should be created at all. Nor do I object to or want to repeal any other part of any policy. I'm just saying ... and all I'm saying ... is we should acknowledge that sometimes it makes sense to have a dab in the title of a primary topic (and I am suggesting nothing more). Levivich (talk) 17:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * What you are describing is pre-disambiguating the article titles, which in several earlier discussions has usually been soundly rejected. Of course, consensus can change, but if you are only looking for singular exceptions, WP:IAR can always apply on a case-by-case basis provided there is a good reason for ingnoring the rule(s) in any particular case. There is no reason to update this guideline to address rare exceptions. older ≠ wiser 18:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm learning a lot of new terms like "unnecessary disambiguation" and "pre-disambiguation" :-) Yeah, this can be done now without any changes to any policies or guidelines. I don't think it's even WP:IAR because there is no rule against it. Neither WP:DAB nor WP:AT nor anything else I'm aware of prohibits dabs on primaries, or says all primaries must have dabs removed. So I don't really see it as an "exception" to any rule. But it is certainly rare. The reason to update this guideline would be so editors know it's an option. Levivich (talk) 19:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Levivich So your intended outcome is this, in some cases:
 * The article at title "ABC" is agreed to be the primary topic but you believe it would help the reader to put it at title "ABC (onething)"
 * There would be a redirect from "ABC" to "ABC (onething)"
 * At "ABC (onething)" there would be a hatnote directing readers to "ABC (otherthing)" (or perhaps to "ABC (disambiguation)".
 * A problem is that any editor familiar with disambiguation will see this, spot an apparent problem, and move "ABC (onething)" to "ABC" because it's the primary topic. Or they will move the disambiguation page to "ABC" because all the titles have been disambiguated, so it looks as if someone has already decided that none of them is the primary topic. Giving an article a disambiguated title is, in most cases, an indication of the fact that the person naming it does not think it is the primary topic.
 * So if you IAR to give the primary topic a disambiguated title, you need a lot of annotation (hidden comment plus talkpage note, perhaps?) to explain your reasoning to the helpful editor who comes across the article and tries to tidy things up according to usual practice, so that "corrections" don't get made and reverted without further discussion, wasting editors' time.
 * Is all this really needed, given that the short description and the lead sentence will both make quite clear which war, or which format of the creative work, the article is about? Pam  D  19:40, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, exactly.
 * Yes, unless we add a sentence to WP:PTOPIC that says "it's OK for a PTOPIC to have a dab if editors decide so by consensus" or "dabs on primary titles are not prohibited" or some kind of words to that effect.
 * I agree that IARing is difficult for the reasons you point out. This is exactly why I think PTOPIC should be explicit in saying "this is OK to do sometimes" or "there is no rule prohibiting this" or some kind of words to that effect (and I mean like something short, one sentence). Levivich (talk) 19:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the clarification. Continuing the example above, I think we agree that typing Foo War should lead the reader to the article on the 1987 war, and it's perfectly reasonable for Foo War (1987) to lead there too.  So, the question is whether we title the article Foo War and have Foo War (1987) redirect there, or vice versa.  We normally do the former per WP:CONCISE.  There are systematic exceptions such as US places ( redirects to Sacramento, California) but they're generally prescribed by WP:COMMONNAME.  Is there a convention amongst historians to refer to wars with their years even when the unadorned title would obviously mean that year's war? Certes (talk) 19:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I appreciate everyone taking the time to engage in this discussion. I don't think there is such a convention among historians for wars generally. I don't believe there is any kind of categorical rule. But I do think there are some specific instances where historians do commonly include the year of an event even if the event is what we'd call "primary," eg 1066 Battle of Hastings and 410 Sack of Rome. I suppose one might say that for any historical event, adding the year to the title would help orient the reader, but I'm still not in favor of categorical rules. Which is to say, even if historians had such a convention, I'm not sure Wikipedia should necessarily follow it (common name, after all, is not the be-all and end-all of article titling), but I think we should maintain flexibility on the issue (i.e., not automatically remove all dabs from all primary titles). Levivich (talk) 20:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've always just called it the Battle of Hastings, but then I'm not aware of any other notable conflicts there. "Battle of Hastings, 1066" rolls off the tongue but I think that's a sentence fragment rather than a title.  I agree with the current title of Sack of Rome (410), because it doesn't seem primary over the other sackings. Certes (talk) 20:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Of the 8 Sack of Rome events listed, Sack of Rome (1527) is pretty clearly primary, at least for art historians. Johnbod (talk) 01:44, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

temporarily vacating WP:MALPLACED for one title?
We had a move request last year for "Rachel" that relates to ambiguity. In Talk:Rachel, I analyzed the statistics further and came to the conclusion that it would be worthwhile to change to a primary redirect in order to be able to get better measurements. However, I don't know that there's a good alternate title that doesn't involve parenthetical disambiguation, so moving the article about the biblical figure would necessarily run afoul of WP:MALPLACED, and it would have to stay there for over a month (ideally over three, to get a better sample). Nevertheless, the two proposals discussed so far, Rachel (Old Testament) (2010) and Rachel (biblical figure) (2023) both seem reasonably unlikely to astonish many readers during the experiment.

Does anyone see a big problem with running this kind of an experiment? Should the consensus for it be examined locally at Talk:Rachel, with a WP:RFC, and/or a discussion here or some other global forum? --Joy (talk) 09:27, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Switching to an -ing for in the middle of a disambiguation list
Please see WT:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:24, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

A specific question on disambiguation
I recently promoted Therapy Dogs (2022 film) from AfC to mainspace. I would like to disambiguate Therapy Dogs (currently a redirect to Therapy dog) but I am not sure if the best action would be to create a disambiguation page at Therapy Dogs, linking the film and the dog, or a hatnote at Therapy dog. I tried to follow the guideline but I'm not sure how to interpret it in this case. Broc (talk) 11:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)


 * There seems no reason for the capitalised plural to redirect to Therapy dog, and none was offered when the redirect was created, nor any Rcat added to explain it, so I would suggest a Move Request to move the film to Therapy Dogs, with hatnotes from film to dog and v.v. Pam  D  14:57, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, the policy WP:SMALLDETAILS seems relevant for considering "Therapy Dogs" being the film. —Bagumba (talk) 17:09, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

"DAB page" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DAB_page&redirect=no DAB page] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 16:06, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

a change in page views between primary topic and primary redirect
A few years ago, I had noticed Sumber, Cirebon was at "Sumber" and moved it away, but kept a primary redirect because it wasn't clear if there was not a primary topic. Now that I had a look at the graph of monthly page views it looks like that change significantly altered the overall traffic at "Sumber" - it went from an average of >200 a month to <20 a month.

This difference of an order of magnitude seems to be another confirmation for how our choices about navigation influence traffic in unforeseen ways - it looks like if we put something in a presumed primary topic position, the search engines drive traffic there way more than they do otherwise, even with a primary redirect in place. This sort of puts a significant dent in our logic of figuring out primary topic by usage - once we have a presumed primary topic, we can't really trust our statistics about that to tell a straightforward story.

Now, this property of the system could have both positive and negative effects - maybe we should think of this in terms of: by choosing to put a topic in the primary topic position, we can intentionally drive traffic to it and more effectively contribute to the spreading of knowledge. At the same time, this indicates a need to have more substantive long-term significance discussions, because we if we have a chance to influence reader traffic like this, we want to make sure we do it for the right topics, as opposed to doing it arbitrarily and/or effectively hiding ambiguity. --Joy (talk) 10:16, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I just found another case of this, just in the other direction: Talk:Bosut (disambiguation). --Joy (talk) 10:28, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

At Talk:Bold, we see a change from primary redirect to disambiguation page leading to significantly more traffic at the latter. --Joy (talk) 21:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

The Fifth Avenue Hotel
What would be the best way to name this article, given that we have Fifth Avenue Hotel for a different (former) hotel on the same avenue? I don't think using the word "The" is the correct way &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Options include using the date it opened, i.e. The Fifth Avenue Hotel (opened 2023) or the street it is on, i.e. The Fifth Avenue Hotel (28th Street) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:33, 5 April 2024 (UTC)


 * As long as the correct title is The Fifth Avenue Hotel in accordance with WP:THE, then WP:SMALLDIFFS kicks in, and we needn't add anything further to the title. All we need is hatnotes on each article pointing to the other. Station1 (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

RDAB speedy criteria
See Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion for a proposal to make RDAB errors a speedy criteria.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 19:09, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Proposed DAB category - Greek Letter Organizations
examples include: Sigma Phi Beta and Phi Kappa. Would contain about 20-30 dab pages, willing to generate a list. Can't find the guideline here, though it seems smaller than most of the existing.Naraht (talk) 15:25, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

How should redirects to list entries be disambiguated?
Following this RfD, was retargeted to Features of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There were mentions in the RfD discussion about putting a hatnote to Quantum mechanics at the target; however, as the redirect points to an entry in a list rather than to a section, there doesn't seem to be a good way to include a hatnote template. I was therefore wondering if there was any guidance or ideas about how these sorts of redirects can be disambiguated.

All the best, &zwj;—&zwj; a smart kitten [  meow ] 12:28, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't know a standard way to do this but we might replace
 * by something like
 * However, that's a bit intrusive for readers simply browsing the list. Certes (talk) 15:59, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That's the option that occurred to me, as well. It is, as you say, a bit intrusive, but something needs to be there so that users looking for quantum mechanics aren't left hanging. Another possibility is an inline pointer:
 * But that seems kind of awkward, especially because there's already a parenthetical in that sentence. — Shelf Skewed  Talk  17:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That's an innovative approach. It feels wrong, but perhaps only because we don't do it elsewhere.  It's analogous to confuse, which is mainly for typographically similar words such as Astroid vs Asteroid, but "quantum realm" is the correct spelling of a colloquial term for quantum mechanics as in .  I think redirect is the tool for the job, as per your first instinct. Certes (talk) 18:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, let's give it a try. I added a hatnote (with a leading colon to distinguish it from the section above) with an edit summary linking to this discussion. Maybe someone will have another idea. — Shelf Skewed  Talk  19:08, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * One thing I'd note here is that there was still some amount of acrimony about whether the term was truly ambiguous. In this sort of a case, the primary redirect method should not generally be preferred because it doesn't allow us precise measurements. We should instead default to erring on the side of caution and first disambiguating these with normal disambiguation lists, and then be able to look at the page views and clickstream statistics specifically for that. I know it seems like seven editors agreeing at RfD is a true sign of consensus, but when it's not backed by a volume of empirical data, but is rather largely assertions, it could well be wrong. I came to this stance after seeing how the stats changed after RfDs for forced march and Celebi. --Joy (talk) 19:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * But that seems kind of awkward, especially because there's already a parenthetical in that sentence. — Shelf Skewed  Talk  17:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That's an innovative approach. It feels wrong, but perhaps only because we don't do it elsewhere.  It's analogous to confuse, which is mainly for typographically similar words such as Astroid vs Asteroid, but "quantum realm" is the correct spelling of a colloquial term for quantum mechanics as in .  I think redirect is the tool for the job, as per your first instinct. Certes (talk) 18:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, let's give it a try. I added a hatnote (with a leading colon to distinguish it from the section above) with an edit summary linking to this discussion. Maybe someone will have another idea. — Shelf Skewed  Talk  19:08, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * One thing I'd note here is that there was still some amount of acrimony about whether the term was truly ambiguous. In this sort of a case, the primary redirect method should not generally be preferred because it doesn't allow us precise measurements. We should instead default to erring on the side of caution and first disambiguating these with normal disambiguation lists, and then be able to look at the page views and clickstream statistics specifically for that. I know it seems like seven editors agreeing at RfD is a true sign of consensus, but when it's not backed by a volume of empirical data, but is rather largely assertions, it could well be wrong. I came to this stance after seeing how the stats changed after RfDs for forced march and Celebi. --Joy (talk) 19:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)