Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages
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MOS:DABACRO - not a great example
[edit]The example given to illustrate MOS:DABACRO is itself concerned with acronyms. This makes it quite "meta" and harder to read and understand. An example using acronyms that are about something other than acronyms would make it much clearer in my opinion. --Jameboy (talk) 00:34, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
- Have a particular example in mind? Paradoctor (talk) 00:50, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
- Not yet. I'll go away and think of one. I may be a while. In the meantime please enjoy some smooth jazz. --Jameboy (talk) 10:08, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Jameboy and Paradoctor: It's not hard to find violations of this policy (as I understand it) on most acronym DABs today.
- Not yet. I'll go away and think of one. I may be a while. In the meantime please enjoy some smooth jazz. --Jameboy (talk) 10:08, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
SSB may refer to:
- (correct) Scandinavian School of Brussels
- (incorrect) Sonic Soldier Borgman
WPA may refer to:
- (correct) Works Progress Administration
- (incorrect) Western Pennsylvania
POC may refer to:
- (correct) Point of contact
- (incorrect) Pirates of the Caribbean
JRB may refer to:
- (correct) James River Bridge
- (incorrect) Joseph Robinette "Beau" Biden III
GWB may refer to:
- (correct) George W. Bush
- (incorrect) George Warren Brown School
Hoof Hearted (talk) 16:11, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
Paradoctor (talk) 15:20, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Sentence about wikidata and wikivoyage
[edit]The current sentence in WP:DABSISTER about wikidata and wikivoyage makes no sense. The sentence reads as "Do not add entries where the content is on any other sister project, like Wikidata or Wikivoyage
".
- EVERY Wikipedia article has an entry in Wikidata. Wikidata is the database used to connect entries between different languages. See for example the entry for Wikipedia on Wikidata.
- Not clear what is the purpose of this prohibition
I think the sentence should be about not linking to non-encyclopedic sister projects such as Wikidata or Wikivoyage, since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 15:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- Wikidata has had serious issues regarding verifiability and reliability. So, while we don’t mind if Wikidata takes its information from us, it does not work in the other direction. We don’t take information from Wikidata (except in the limited ways specified). Blueboar (talk) 16:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- Then it sounds like we don't wnat to link to it. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 18:38, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, we absolutely should not be linking directly to wikidata from disambiguation pages. Although there has been some contention elsewhere about whether it might be acceptable to use wikidata with {{ill}} to provide links to multiple languages within articles. older ≠ wiser 20:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- You lost me. Why would it be acceptable to use {{ill}} to link to Wikidata? The Mountain of Eden (talk) 21:06, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- Suggest you look in the archives, both here and at the various Village Pump pages… we have had a LOT of discussions about how (and even whether) we should incorporate Wikidata. There is a lot of negativity about it. Blueboar (talk) 21:29, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- Personally, I don't think it ever is. But in articles, there has been some contention about this. But for disambiguation page, it has never been appropriate. older ≠ wiser 23:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
- You lost me. Why would it be acceptable to use {{ill}} to link to Wikidata? The Mountain of Eden (talk) 21:06, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
Thai nicknames as entries on disambiguation pages
[edit]I am encountering an editing dispute. Unfortunately from an anonymous user and a banned sockpuppet, and reverted without explanation, but it is still a dispute that I would prefer not to be involved in. An entry I made to a disambiguation page for a common word which is used as a Thai nickname by an actor has been reverted twice. This actor is, as is a common Thai practice, often referred to by just that word, so I believe a link to her page is appropriate for that disambiguation page. Oddly, there is someone else on that same disambiguation page who is known primarily by such a nickname who has not been touched.
It would be good for the section on Given names or surnames as disambiguation entries were updated from
People who have the ambiguous term as surname or given name
to
People who have the ambiguous term as surname, given name, nickname, or professional name
Thisisnotatest (talk) 08:13, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
- I think this is already obvious from the guidelines, because the formatting of the lead section of Intira Charoenpura says this name is used as such to refer to that person, in no uncertain terms, and there's also redirects Sine Jaroenpura and Sine Charoenpura.
- IOW we can keep clarifying the guidelines but that's unlikely to help with people who can't read the actual article lead sections. --Joy (talk) 09:15, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Full stop
[edit]Should the dab line have a period at the end? Some of the examples have one, while others do not. Christian75 (talk) 14:35, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
- No, see MOS:DABPERIOD. Largoplazo (talk) 16:55, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
- The examples you refer to are introductory lines linking to a primary topic, not the normal entries. Paradoctor (talk) 17:11, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
Add example of synonym in taxonomy
[edit]Under § Synonyms, I recommend we clarify what to do with a synonym in taxonomy. For example, at R. africana I made the change to blue link the actual name and not the synonym which goes against the statement simply use it as it is named
, but is supported by § Items appearing within other articles. waddie96 ★ (talk) 15:00, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
place descriptions
[edit]I'm here after trying to verify [1] by @Shhhnotsoloud. I spent a bit of time looking into what those place names refer to and then describing and ordering them by likelihood of being topics of interest, so I'm not exactly thrilled with it being dumped so casually :)
The manual text here does say:
For places, it may only be necessary to write the name of the article.
It may be appropriate to add the country after the link.
This is inexplicably terse in a lot of cases, and inconsistent with the other entries, because WP:D and this page also say it's normal for captions to exist:
Entries are sentence fragments
If an entry link by itself is insufficiently descriptive for navigation, use a sentence fragment
The disambiguated place names themselves may be descriptive enough to people who know exactly what they're looking for, but for anyone else, and/or anyone wading through a drab list, I don't see why we should be removing a handful of words that describe these. Maybe there's ways to make it more natural or concise, but wholesale removal seems excessive to me. Blue links at the start are already fairly distinct for whoever is just looking for a quick parsing of the list.
Likewise, sorting a hamlet before a huge suburb just because it's alphabetically ahead seems really inefficient to me. This is also covered by MOS:DABORDER. (We also don't have a great track record with navigation outcomes with long, alphabetically sorted lists.) --Joy (talk) 17:08, 11 February 2025 (UTC)
- I completely agree with Joy, and think the it may only be necessary to write the name of the article should simply be stricken. It's not urgent but every entry, including geographical locations, should have a brief description, even if it is only "a town in Southern New Jersey" or the like. Do not see a reason to suggest excluding more information is good practice. This is especially obvious, at, say, Frankfurt (disambiguation) - simply having "Frankfurt (Oder)" is useless, and "Frankfurt (Oder), Germany" wouldn't be much better. A location in Brandenburg and "on the Polish border" makes clear that this Frankfurt is very far away from Frankfurt-am-Main and a separate entity. SnowFire (talk) 17:26, 11 February 2025 (UTC)