This page is within the scope of WikiProject Disambiguation, an attempt to structure and organize all disambiguation pages on Wikipedia. If you wish to help, you can edit the page attached to this talk page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project or contribute to the discussion.DisambiguationWikipedia:WikiProject DisambiguationTemplate:WikiProject DisambiguationDisambiguation
how reader navigation functions without our navigation elements set up right
The village article was effectively set as a primary topic for "Tivadar" since it was created in 2006.
The name article was written in late 2019, and it immediately got some persistent traffic, which is not what I'd expect when it wasn't linked from "Tivadar" itself - a hatnote was missing throughout this period.
In early 2020, someone adds[1] an indirect link to the name by linking Theodore (name) in a Name section, and the traffic at Tivadar seems to start dropping, while the traffic at Tivadar (given name) starts rising, and since 2021 it regularly overtakes the village traffic.
All this time, the list at Theodore (name) was still linking back to the (misplaced) village article, and again there was no hatnote even.
Seems like search engines learned where our navigation was lacking and worked around the problem - at least most of the time. --Joy (talk) 08:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't find any guidelines on the process for a possibly contentious disambiguation page merge. Perhaps the process for articles applies: Wikipedia:MERGEPROP?
In the meantime we've had some fresh examples in this vein, so I wanted to keep tracking this matter.
Because of numerous findings of how search engines take a lot of hints from our navigation and guide user traffic to wherever we hint them to, I have stopped focusing on trying to make sense of every little bit of stats WikiNav generates, because it often compares apples to oranges.
no primary topic, proposal was to promote the one most popular
listed first, positive trend, but several more individual topics matching a natural pattern of ambiguity (prefix, Latin) with some popularity and long-term significance
clickstreams show less than a third of incoming readers choose the most popular topic, ~60% of identifiable outgoing, ~15% filtered, several topics noticable outgoing
no primary topic, proposal was to promote the one most popular
listed in the first section, positive trend, but several more individual topics matching a natural pattern of ambiguity (suffix - surname) with a lot of popularity and long-term significance
clickstreams show ~70% of incoming traffic matches the most popular topic, ~80% of identifiable outgoing, but ~37% filtered, and second index noticable outgoing
no primary topic, proposal was to promote the one most popular
listed in the second section, second subsection, probably visible on the first screen of desktops, probably requires tapping once and scrolling on mobile
page views show a positive trend but no overall advantage over several other topics of obvious significance
clickstreams show a scattering of incoming traffic, less than half to the most popular, three more visible; more than half of identifiable outgoing, but 37% filtered
primary redirect in place, proposal was to disambiguate instead
numerous internal incoming links to the redirect
redirect overall traffic pattern did not quite match destination article, was a better match for hatnote traffic pattern
ratio of identified hatnote clicks to redirect views was consistently ~13%
numerous individual topics, both mononymous and those matching a natural pattern of ambiguity (prefix - given name) with a lot of popularity and long-term significance
after the move, previous primary redirect destination gets a bit less than half of incoming traffic and a bit more than half of identifiable outgoing traffic, but there was ~35% filtered, and a handful of other topics are noticable outgoing
Does this change to the guideline actually have proper consensus? There's some level of organic consensus stemming from the fact nobody reverted it, but that is pretty flimsy :) --Joy (talk) 08:02, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fundamentally, the question is what does this sentence actually have to do with disambiguation:
English spelling is preferred to that of non-English languages.
What would be some examples where a foreign spelling is still ambiguous with an English spelling of a term? This seems like a solution in search of a problem, because foreign terms are usually fairly distinct. The idea that there would be ambiguity between different words just seems like a non sequitur here. --Joy (talk) 08:15, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first entry at Herding cats has as its only blue link, 'Idiom', which seems singularly unhelpful at a D-page. And yet (at least for me) the idiom covered at wikt:herding cats is by far the primary topic here. In the absence of a Wikipedia article by that name, how should this be handled? The current situation seems very unsatisfactory. Mathglot (talk) 12:21, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd link to the Wiktionary entry as the primary topic if there's nothing explicit against linking to a sister project in policy. I see the fourth entry has no link, and I just removed some terminal punctuation from the first and second entries per WP:DABSTYLE RE sentence fragments. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs13:44, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS feel free to upgrade my {{uw-vand1}} warning if they keep at it; but they're an IP-hopper, and I suspect a combination of WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU, WP:IDHT, and assorted other guidelines; so I doubt whether a WP:BLOCK would be of much use. Should they persist, I have an idea for a WP:EF request which would be both concise and precise ({{ping}} me). but it's too soon for that while the problem can be handled manually. Sigh. Narky Blert (talk) 15:25, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone check my newly created Francisco Campos (disambiguation) for proper format and content? I created it because I found a double hatnote at Francisco Campos, and then found even more possible articles it could be confused with.
One issue I haven't attacked yet, is that of primary topic; currently, the person described at Francisco Campos is a Mexican baseball player (b. 1972) which seemed a little surprising; I was kind of expecting to find no primary. So, I went to Google books and searched, and lo and behold, seven of the top ten book results, and all of the top five are about Brazilian jurist Francisco Campos, cabinet minister (multiple offices), and author of the 1937 Constitution, for whom we have no article. So that seems likely to be primary (unless we count sports articles on the web as having equal weight to books, an open question in my mind). I am about to create Francisco Campos (jurist) (or maybe, Francisco Campos (Brazilian jurist), although that seems needlessly long). After I get a stub created and linked from the D-page, any thoughts on what to do about the primary topic issue? Mathglot (talk) 11:44, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps so, although the ball player is linked in several templates making incoming links a mess to sort out. There perhaps is good case for no primary topic, at least temporarily until there is some better quality page view data with the ball player distinguished from any who might be looking for the jurist. As might be expected, the jurist is primary topic in Portuguese wiki. Even Spanish has the player at Francisco Campos Machado and a disambiguation page at Francisco Campos. older ≠ wiser13:59, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
FYI: Links not from templates can be shown as a single link with this kind of search: Source links. This does not show links from redirects. There is an extension "Source links" available somewhere in WP that provides this in Tools menu on every page. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 14:16, 7 January 2025 (UTC) (Edited, word "not" was missing. 17:19, 7 January 2025 (UTC))[reply]
Thanks, but I doubt I'd be able to remember that syntax. Also, it would be more useful as the inverse -- that is links to a page that are NOT from a template. Is that possible? (Or maybe I misunderstand -- is that what these links are? older ≠ wiser14:21, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Further on primary topic: in the G-Books search, the three search results in the top ten that are *not* about the Brazilian jurist, are: a poet, a CREDHOS human rights official, and an unknown letter writer cited in a book about Mexican crime. That is, neither the baseball player (current primary) nor any of the sporting figures currently on the D-page are in the top ten of the Books search. (I also tried this Scholar search as well, but the results are not helpful, because there are a great many papers authored by scholars with that name. If anyone knows how to exclude author names in Scholar search queries, that would help.) Web search tells a completely different story, with the Mexican athlete prominently displayed (along with a World Bank employee, and a kid who threw a perfect game).
I don't know how to weigh these web results against the very different story we get from the book results, but surely this must be a common pattern: that is, books and academic tomes us show one thing, popular web sites something else; how is such disparity usually dealt with? My bias favors the jurist, but I don't want to upset the apple cart. Mathglot (talk) 21:45, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Books search seems indicative of long-term notability (WP:PT2), while the web results indicate a lack of overwhelming usage (WP:PT1). In this case, it could be justified to take the jurist as the primary topic, since there is no other topic which would satisfy PT1 either. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 05:27, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Those PT1 and 2 links are new to me, thanks. Maybe I should wait a week or so to see if there are any objections, and then move Francisco Campos (jurist) to primary. Or, would it be better to split the difference, say nobody is primary so everybody gets a disambiguation parenthetical, and the one pagename lacking a parenthetical becomes the disambig page? Mathglot (talk) 11:34, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Given than the evidence for primary is mixed or at the least very unclear, I'd default to putting the dab at the base name. older ≠ wiser12:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note that a disambiguation page isn't meant to include all titles that begin with the term only subjects commonly known by the term. Look at Union: it doesn't include all articles about subjects whose names begin with "Union". Largoplazo (talk) 15:31, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For five of the eight I mentioned I know that they are commonly called L'Union. For two it's possible/likely, for one it's unlikely. Nobody (talk) 16:37, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind it should not be based on your personal knowledge alone, but be supported by usage in reliable sources (preferably attested within the linked articles to address any editors who might later question it). older ≠ wiser16:53, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Bkonrad@1AmNobody24 I've created a dab page at L'Union (disambiguation); this assumes the commune to be the Primary Topic, and I see no reason to think it isn't. It does seem that we need access from "L'Union" to La Quotidienne, as it's the successor title (but how long did it go on for? No indication in either this poorly-sourced article or the fr.wiki one!), and I've also made a redirect from L'Union monarchique - both should probably have been created long ago.
Creating the dab page gives us the opportunity to include the "look from" links, capitalised and non, which allow access to all those "Partial Title Match" titles which can't be included in the disambiguation page as individual entries unless we have evidence that they are actually also known as "L'Union" (and not just in the way one might call any university "the university" when writing or talking locally).
I defer to BKonrad, an acknowledged disambiguation expert, over disambiguation, so will be interested to hear whether you think this solution is OK!
I had a look at the French dab page fr:L'Union (it's interesting to see their different rules about the appearance of a dab page), and can't see anything there which has a presence in en.wiki and ought to be included in our dab page (eg we don't have an article about the ecoquarter). PamD18:33, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would appreciate some editors well versed in disambiguation policies/procedures participating in this conversation. All opinions welcome.4meter4 (talk) 18:02, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
