Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation: Difference between revisions

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Disambiguation

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What to do RMs on hurricanes, tornados, and tropical storms, like Talk:Hurricane Kathleen (1976)#Requested move 5 February 2017? I don't think I can provide so many. Clearly, those RMs come and then usually fail. What else to do about this issue if we can't limit the number of such RMs in the future? --George Ho (talk) 04:05, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Given the IP number on that one example, and the behavior, this is pretty certain to be a sock of User:N-C16. I would report these to WP:SPI. (See the archive here). If the RMs have been opened within the last day or two, ask for a block. If not, a block won't be useful. But keep an eye out for more. — Gorthian (talk) 04:21, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You're right; ones that were done one week ago are not useful. But the RMs were relisted. George Ho (talk) 04:48, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Somehow, Hurricane Trudy (1990), whose name that IP challenged, was merged into 1990 Pacific hurricane season. Pinging SkyWarrior about this, though I must put good-faith and thanks to him/her for those efforts. George Ho (talk) 04:51, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they can be procedurally closed, if they were all opened by socks. You might ask at WP:AN, since you're aware of all of them.

I thought that multiple-tropical-storm pages were set-indices now, instead of dab pages. These RMs have not been coming up on the DAB project alerts. — Gorthian (talk) 05:53, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, you alert the admins there. I'll notify the related projects about this discussion. Thoughts? George Ho (talk) 06:07, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I filed an SPI. Now I'll go ask for procedural closes. — Gorthian (talk) 07:41, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I posted it at ANI. I'm off to bed; I'll check back in the morning. — Gorthian (talk) 07:56, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I notified WT:WikiProject Disambiguation and WT:WikiProject Tropical cyclones about this discussion. The sock issue can be handled differently, while the matter is about tropical storms and hurricanes themselves. George Ho (talk) 07:58, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I was pinged here, for obvious reasons. Essentially, I relisted them all RMs without comments for the simple reason of, well, given this issue, I expected most of them to get at least one oppose !vote; because of that, I didn't want to close and move it as uncontroversial since it very much was, and I didn't want to close it immediately as not moved because, well, that's just bad faith. If socks opened the RM then that's a different matter, but I honestly didn't suspect that at the time, nor did I realize (or notice) that some of the RMs were open just a single week after the other one closed. SkyWarrior 11:41, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SkyWarrior: I replied at ANI about the ones currently listed at RM. Seems like a lot of work to be made. You can do the "procedural close" and point to either the ANI case or a recent SPI case. George Ho (talk) 17:53, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like NeilN beat me to it. Thanks for the heads up anyways, I'm only on Wikipedia for a few hours anyways on the weekdays so I can't get around to doing these things if they happen during a time I can't be on. SkyWarrior 19:35, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Putting aside the sockpuppet issue for a minute, my interpretation of WP:NCDAB is that you should only use parenthetical disambiguation in titles when natural disambiguation isn't possible. In the case of hurricane names that have only been used once, there is no need for further disambiguation if the title is "Hurricane XXXX", so I would favor removing the "(year)" part in those cases. Kaldari (talk) 18:49, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Kaldari: Thanks for your input. Question: are "tropical storm" and "hurricane" interchangeable? If not, why are base titles redirected to SIAs? George Ho (talk) 19:29, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I understand. Can you give me an example? Kaldari (talk) 19:33, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tropical Storm Allison (disambiguation) includes cyclones, tropical storms, and a hurricane using Allison. Cyclone Allison redirects to that SIA. Hurricane Allison previously redirected to Tropical Storm Allison (2001), but I recently changed its target to the SIA. Another is Tropical Storm Colin, redirected from Hurricane Colin and Cyclone Colin (created by me). Tropical Storm Kiko, redirected from Hurricane Kiko. George Ho (talk) 19:50, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: I would say that a hurricane is also a tropical storm, but a tropical storm isn't necessarily a hurricane. So including hurricanes in the Tropical Storm set lists is fine, but I personally wouldn't redirect Hurricane X to a set list unless it actually needed disambiguation. Otherwise, we're just adding an extra step for anyone trying to find the article for that hurricane. Kaldari (talk) 23:03, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Kaldari, there are extensive style guidelines for storm articles; they mostly agree with you. — Gorthian (talk) 22:39, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Shall we continue the case-by-case method, or shall we make a wider, central discussion? George Ho (talk) 00:42, 16 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Archive 35#Category:Set indices on storms. None of the set index articles on tropical storms should have "(disambiguation)" in their titles, but the project hasn't decided on how they'd like to phrase the "List of XXX named YYY" titles instead. But that project would be the appropriate place for the discussion, I hope. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:30, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are discussions in several venues concerning this question.

• Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#G6 and redirects ending in "(disambiguation)"
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Possible improper use of page move redirect suppression
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 March 9#Västra Frölunda IF (disambiguation)
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 March 10#Communist Party of Nepal (disambiguation)

Additional input welcome. older ≠ wiser 12:55, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from editors interested in dab pages are welcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ancient tree. — Gorthian (talk) 20:38, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Should we add Wikipedia:Namespace and Wikipedia:Subpages (particularly ones in user-space) to the list? I just like things to be explicit. As it is I'm not completely sure what consensus is. I'm fairly certain but I'd like to be 100%. Not really sure if it is notable enough though. Endercase (talk) 00:48, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY currently says:

...

Among several other proposed criteria that have never won acceptance as a general rule, we do not generally consider any one of the following criteria as a good indicator of primary topic:

• Historical age (Kennewick, Washington is primary for Kennewick over the much older Kennewick Man)
• If a topic was the original (Boston is about Boston, Massachusetts, not the English city that first bore that name)
• Principal relevance only to certain people or groups
• If a topic has only ascended to widespread notability and prominence recently (Muse does not take the reader to an article about a current band)

I know this has been discussed before, but that third bullet is still causing confusion. At this discussion Laurel Lodged has interpreted the third bullet to mean that certain people (like Patrick Leahy cannot have "principal relevance" which Laurel seems to think means an article about a person cannot be a primary topic for the name of the person. I am going to modify the wording to be similar to the 2nd and 4th bullets so that it's more clear:

• If a topic has principal relevance only to certain people or groups

If anyone has any suggestions on how to clarify it even better, that would be great. In particular, maybe someone has an example in mind? Thanks. --В²C ☎ 16:11, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. Talk of moving the goal posts. This is a highly unethical thing to do in the middle of a discussion I would have thought. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:30, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If it changed the meaning as understood by consensus, it would be. If it's merely clarifying the intended meaning, it's not. Does it not make sense to you? As I said in the discussion, it makes no sense whatsoever to interpret this to mean that articles about people cannot be primary topics. --В²C ☎ 16:51, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problematic wording of this section was very recently discussed. There seemed to be tentative consensus for the following version:

Some general principles for determining a primary topic include:

• While long-term significance is a factor, historical age is not determinative. (Kennewick, Washington is primary for Kennewick over the much older Kennewick Man)
• Being the original source of the name does not make a topic primary. (Boston is about Boston, Massachusetts, not the English city that first bore that name)
• A topic may have principle relevance for a specific group of people (for example, as a local place name), but not be the primary meaning among a general audience.
• A topic that has only achieved to widespread popularity recently should be weighed against the longer-term significance of alternative topics. (Muse does not take the reader to an article about a current band)

--Trystan (talk) 17:40, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks. Missed that. So my change was a small step in that direction. --В²C ☎ 21:06, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Trystan, regarding the revised fourth bullet, I think the main concern is when topics that are recently popular are also likely to be brief in popularity. However, say an unknown is nominated to be on the SCOTUS and all other uses of that name are relatively obscure. This person's popularity suddenly spikes of course, but given that she is now on the SCOTUS we know this is not just a flash in the pan, and therefore the recentism is not very important. Can we capture that? How about this?

• A topic that has only achieved widespread popularity recently and its likely long-term significance should be weighed against the long-term significance of alternative topics. (Muse does not take the reader to an article about a current band)

--В²C ☎ 21:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As a result of this discussion at WP:TV, there is a discussion on a proposal to harmonize the text at WP:NCTV with the text at MOS:TV#Naming conventions in regards to the necessity of disambiguation text for List of episode or List of character articles. Please add any thoughts or comments to the discussion on this proposal, which can be found, here. Thank you. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:33, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]