Wikipedia talk:Suggestions for name disambiguation/Batch 3

Initial suggestions
First, thanks for setting this up! I'll wait until people arrive at this discussion before doing more. I notice that User:JLaTondre created Ahlberg, so I'll drop a note off there for starters. Carcharoth (talk) 21:32, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I looked at the last three entries on this page, and I've created Ahlers and Ahle, and updated Ahlberg with two entries and created the redirect Åhlberg.
 * Since I didn't find any non-surname pages, I used surname instead of disambig. I think the next page should offer both templates and ask people to choose which one they want to use on the page after doing the searches for non-name entries. The {surname template is also widely used on disambiguation pages in sections involving surnames, so some standard approach here would be good.
 * The order of the entries here appears to be by birth year. Many surname pages use alphabetical order instead. Again, this is something where a standard approach is needed.
 * This output uses "?" when an entry is not known. The standard entry for a living person seems to be to put "born XXXX". Could the output for the next page be adjusted to do this?
 * Also, this approach could be used to regenerate surname lists for pages where examples of surnames have been added but people haven't been bothered to add the birth/death years and the nationality and profession.
 * Another point is that "what links here" can be interesting and useful. From Special:WhatLinksHere/Ahlers I found Allard (surname). Could a "what links here" link be added to the output to remind people to follow that link and tidy things up there if needed?
 * Finally, when an entry has been done, do we strike it off, delete it, or what?

Parallel efforts
I've been checking the 15 or so pages listed on this page that were created since the May 24 database dump (the ones that show at links on this list), and they were all created by User:JLaTondre. It is possible there are parallel efforts going on here, so it might be an idea to see what the most efficient way it to approach this, rather than have two or more parallel efforts (not that having parallel efforts is in any way a bad thing, just might be more efficient to centralise resources). Carcharoth (talk) 21:47, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Quite a long time ago, you made this bot request. It's taken me a long time, but I finally got around to completing it. I'm in the process of making my first complete run and fixing issues that I find. While my processing does generate cases where surname pages don't exist, it's primary goal was to find full names that need to be disambiguated or that are missing from existing disambiguation pages. I was close to the point where I was going to let you know my status as I'm generating too much output to handle on my own. I was not aware of this effort so thanks for calling it to my attention. One option is for me to ignore surnames that don't exist and only look for names that are missing on existing dab pages or dab pages that are needed for full names. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:34, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Reduce size of initial task? and other comments
I wonder if it would be better to start off with a smaller list, perhaps those with at least 5 (or 10, or 3?) names. A large proportion of the current batch seem to be cases where only 2 people share a surname, and it might be that the effort would be better spent initially on more widely shared names.

I wondered the same as Carcharoth: what do we do with completed entries?

I'm still not clear whether we should be using surname (which doesn't count as a dab page) or disamb, despite various discussions on different pages recently!

I personally think sorting by date of birth is more helpful than alpha - if you only know a surname, you're more likely to have an idea of period (16th century? Alive today?) than of initial or forename, and if you knew the forename you'd probably have input it anyway. WP:MOSDAB says to order items by most-used first, which clearly can't be done automatically. I'd like to see us stick with date order.

But thanks for getting this going - it looks like the start of a very useful operation ... though a horrendously addictive time-consumer! PamD (talk) 22:19, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Done a couple. Got bogged down in redlinks, found by WP search or by "what links here".


 * Dates are wrongly formatted: "(1983-?)" should be "(born 1983)". PamD (talk) 22:41, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Redlinks are something I don't do very thoroughly. I agree, it is easy to get bogged down if you try and create a comprehensive page. I kind of hope that people will come along later and expand a page, rather than trying to get every redlink in there now. Carcharoth (talk) 23:01, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * We need a policy on names like Aberconway, which aren't actually surnames, just parts of titles - in this case the most useful might be a redirect from "Aberconway" to "Baron of Aberconway", though that doesn't include the Baroness...! But why was Charles McLaren, 1st Baron Aberconway not included, I wonder? PamD (talk) 23:22, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Probably becase the DEFAULTSORT sort key is "Maclaren, Charles". Carcharoth (talk) 23:35, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Temp done list
Temporary section to list ones that are done: That's enough for now. Carcharoth (talk) 00:13, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ahlers
 * Ahle
 * Ahlberg
 * Adshead
 * Adebayo
 * Adamec
 * Łukasz Adamczyk wasn't picked up by this program
 * Karolina Adamczyk wasn't picked up by this program
 * Adamczyk
 * Acord
 * Acklin versus Acklins (various islands or defunct districts) and Acklins Ground Iguana (may need dab page for Acklins)
 * David Ackles didn't get the death year reported by this program
 * Ackles
 * June Ackland was missed (because she is fictional?)
 * John Ackland was missed by this program
 * Ackland
 * Emilio Aceval had no birth year because that information was added later (need to be careful we aren't working from data that is too out of date).
 * Aceval
 * Abu-Lughod
 * Abshire
 * Antonije Abramović was not found by the program
 * Abramović (and variants - may need merging)
 * Abrahamsen
 * Abbagnale
 * Abarca
 * Aas (surname)

Choosing descriptors
Perhaps the algorithm for choosing which category to pick up for the dab page needs to put "People from x" and "Alumni of y" as lower priority, not using them if there's any other category which might be better.PamD (talk) 22:42, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I choose the first "interesting" category, where interesting means: not "xxx births", "yyy deaths" or similar; not "living people"; not equal to the name of the page. I can exclude other categories as well; probably I'll add the "people from" and "alumni" to the list next time. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 22:47, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

New version
I've uploaded a new version, with a few requested changes that were trivial to implement:
 * surname instead of disambig; the surname template s also used on disambiguation pages, and it seems most of these pages end up as pure surname pages.
 * (born ...) and (died ...)
 * Added a link to "what links here". I'm sorry if this confused some of you ;-)

There were some inserted notes "DONE" etc; instead of re-inserting these, I just deleted the finished entries.

Some other reactions to the comments above:
 * I like the chronological ordering better, personally. However, with the small number of people on these dab pages, the order is less important.
 * I prefer to have all names with two or more people on these pages; those with two have to be dealt with to, and it's easier to do that if there is some variety, if they are mixed up with the somewhat more interesting ones with 5 or more.

More comments are always welcome, of course. And I will check on the pages that my algorithm didn't find. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 22:43, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Halfway!
We are now halfway through that first list of 200. It's taking a while, and there are another 113 pages (of 200 surnames each) after this one, so it looks like we do need more help here! Those who have been working on this - do you think a bot can help or not? Or is a human needed to do the final checks and searches and tidying up? Carcharoth (talk) 11:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

suggestion
Checking on "All pages" often finds people where the "surname" is actually a forename. It can take a lot of work to add them all. I've now taken to using a shortcut: see it at Abed. Could I suggest that the text:


 * See also
 * Articles with "Abed" as forename or first part of name

ie:
 * See also
 * Articles with "Abed" as forename or first part of name

could be included in the draft version of every page - it's much quicker to delete it, if "all pages" has zero hits, than to add it when relevant! PamD (talk) 12:58, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, I find such links unhelpful when left on a dab page. They are mixed up with redirects, with non-name dabs, and don't give information about dates and nationalities. It is OK as a stop-gap measure, but ultimately someone will have to turn such links into a list. Carcharoth (talk) 10:08, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I think they're a whole lot better than nothing - and anyone looking at them soon realises that italics means redirects, and can skim through for the one thing they're looking for.
 * But, having moved on from a bad section round the "Ab..."s, I'd now retract the above suggestion anyway, as the proportion of names which crop up a lot as forenames is pretty small (but patchy in the alphabet!). PamD (talk) 14:06, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Existing redlinks
I've not always been following the "links" link, but now realise I should have been doing: when looking at the "WP search" link for Agerskov I found two redlinks to it as a placename - one a list of German exonyms for Danish places, one a list of Danish postcodes. My solution, for now, you can see - but I included a comment:. That seemed best, to explain to future editors why I think the entry should be there even though it's neither a bluelink nor a redlink. I wondered about disambiguating the pagename, or disambiguating the two redlinks into Agerskov, Denmark, but thought it best to leave it as is for now rather than get sidetracked. Any other thoughts? PamD (talk)
 * Oh, and by the way: we've finished the page! (I've had a cold and have felt in the mood to sit and do something relatively mindless but potentially useful, so have rattled on with this lot.) PamD (talk) 14:15, 17 July 2008 (UTC)