This is the talk page of a disambiguation page, which is a non-article that lists actual articles with similar names.
This page is not frequently watched, so present and future discussions including most move requests usually should take place at the talk page of whichever listed article is the most appropriate. This is also true of edit requests, unless they pertain to the content of the disambiguation page itself. If a move would affect only the disambiguation page, or a discussion is needed about the disambiguation page's list of articles, then this talk page is actually the appropriate venue.
Personally, I'm not quite sure I understand where its creators see its place in the big scheme of things, but it certainly has some merits: for example, the first sentence definitely makes sense and it's more informative than the text in Template:WikiProject Disambiguation that is so often found on talk pages.
However, I'm concerned about the second part of the text, which says in a somewhat convoluted way that discussions not pertaining to the dab page should not take part on the dab page's talk. Do we really need to state that explicitly? Have we had frequent problems of editors discussing the articles there? Additionally, in stating the page is not watched, the text seems to discourage starting any discussions at all. And the bits about move requests seem contrary to current practice: they seem to be saying that RMs involving a dab and an article should never take place on the dab's talk page. Given that RMCD bot places notifications on all pages involved in a move, it shouldn't matter that much which talk page hosts the discussion; it's perfectly acceptable for that to be the dab, and in some cases – for example, when the dab is at the primary title – it's probably the best one too. – Uanfala (talk)14:21, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I see no basis for language suggesting that move discussions should not take place on the talk page of disambiguation pages. It is already often confusing enough to try to find relevant move discussions without additional pseudo-guidelines created without discussion or consensus. older ≠ wiser14:31, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Uanfala, Thank you for the opportunity to provide comment. I did request that SMcCandlish create this template as it has a purpose, but, truthfully, my thought was that most requests should take place on destination page of the page subject to being moved. If that's the dab page, then it should occur there, per our policy. If, on the other hand, it will involve multiple moves of the linked articles on the disambiguation page, the move request should occur on the dab page's talk page. But yeah, I think we should ultimately refine that wording a bit.
There was some discussion to combining, potentially, between SMcC and I about combining or replacing the {{WikiProject Disambiguation}} template since the current header template is of little utility. I think SMcC's thought was to have the combined template explain the purpose of the talk page of a disambiguation page and where move requests and edit requests should occur and the combined template would add the talk page to the non-hidden category Category:WikiProject Disambiguation pages and hidden category Category:Talk pages of disambiguation pages automatically. I suggested possibly making the talk page wording be displayed as part of an optional parameter, but SMcC said that's easy to do but likely it wouldn't get done. So what about potentially having it as a parameter that is enabled by default to yes if unspecified? Doug MehusT·C14:32, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
If you're ONLY moving a DAB page, then the discussion should take there, and people may not care much. But in most cases, an RM involving a DAB page is round-robinning in favor of something with a PRIMARYTOPIC claim (move Foo to Foo_(disambiguation), and Foo_(film) to Foo), and those discussions should be at the real article's talk page which will almost always have more watchlisters. Anyway, I really don't feel all that strongly about the exact wording. I would like to discourage attempts to WP:GAME the system by effectively hiding RMs in places no one will see other than the most hawk-eyed RM monitors. RM is centralized process for a reason, but it's only semi-centralized as a listing; unlike at XfDs, the actual discussions take place on individual talk pages, so the ability to gin up a WP:FALSECONSENSUS by excessive venue selectivity is always something we should be mindful about. It doesn't come up every single week, but it often enough that it matters. There may be better phrasing to get this admonition in there than what I wrote at first. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 22:05, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, the situation you're describing was definitely a very real one before RMCD bot started tagging all pages involved in an RM a few years ago. – Uanfala (talk)10:45, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
It sounds as if the message we need to convey is something like "discussions about moving both an article and a dab should take place on the article's talk page, not here". Certes (talk) 22:13, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Shouldn't Kathy Baker be promoted? Most people hearing the name verbally would have no idea if it were spelled with a C or a K and could easily wind up here. MB18:42, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Nisshin has more redlinked entries (without other wikilinks) than valid entries. I'm hesitant to delete them because they are quite useful to editors. If I were trying to disambiguate an instance of this, and I knew I was looking for a food company, and the only entry was Nissin Foods, I would pick that. But seeing that there is also a Nissin Healthcare Food Service Co., I would know this needed more research, or to be tagged with {{dn}}. The redlink keeps me from making an incorrect choice.
I've come across this before with human names. Should we have a way to keep these around just as disambiguation aids since they are not navigation aids (other than just commenting them out). Perhaps wrapping them in a template that would exclude them from being displayed to readers? MB23:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Interesting – entries for items about which Wikipedia has no content, and may never have content, just to keep readers from confusing a blue-linked entity for the one they have in mind? The problem is this: with no article, we have no way to verify that the red-linked entity isn't utterly obscure. If no one is looking for Nissin Healthcare Food Service Co., then a dab entry for it helps no one. If lots of readers are looking for Nissin Healthcare Food Service Co., then we should be endeavoring to turn that link blue, even if it's just a stub or a redirect, or to find a relevant article that can mention the entity and serve as the blue link. So the question is about topics that are simultaneously:
Notable enough that significant numbers of dab readers will be looking for them; but
Not notable enough to have enough reliable sources to produce a stub, or even a cited mention in a relevant article.
That seems to me like it would be a pretty small class, and I'd want to see more solid examples before going down the road of inventing a new way to handle them. Short of that, hidden comments <!--like this--> are pretty unobtrusive, at least. —swpbT • go beyond • bad idea15:48, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
I think you missed what I was saying; I never said anything about keeping them in dab pages to aid readers - I meant only keep them as non-printing entries to help disambiguators (editors). Functionally what you said - a hidden comment. I just meant that instead of using <!-- -->, use a template, perhaps {{dab placeholder}}. This would just make it clear why the entry was being kept. The template documention would explain the the entry should remain non-printing unless/until there was an article or a valid bluelink in the descriptor. MB05:21, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't think the two relevant criteria are distinct: if an entity is noteworthy enough for it to be possible as the intended target of an existing link (and hence necessary for the work of editors who disambiguate links), then it is also noteworthy enough for readers to be looking for it. I don't think we should allow readers to get confused any more than we should allow editors to get confused. – Uanfala (talk)12:06, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
I'd agree that it seems strange to say that a red link is useful to editors but not useful to readers, but there is a significant difference in the follow-through between those groups. As MB mentioned, an editor using one of our dab fixing tools to disambiguate a link will very likely see one food company listed and select it with no reason to think they've made a mistake, then move on. A reader will end up actually reading the article and potentially find context clues that will suggest it isn't the topic they were seeking. Regular hidden comments seem like a fine solution though. -- Fyrael (talk) 16:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
I see that all the redlinks have been removed from Nisshin per MOS:DABRL (which is of course "correct", but I think it could have waited until the conclusion of this discussion). But they weren't commented out, or moved to the talk page, or kept in someway where they could be useful to editors. They are just gone, only visible by looking at prior versions of the article. This is why I am proposing a policy to formally allow keeping these links somewhere. I don't they would necessarily survive even as "regular hidden comments". Maybe on the talk page, with a hidden comment in the article to the effect of "See TP for other uses of this term that don't currently qualify to be included here". MB02:13, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
Desert Hot Springs
Hello! I've never created a disambigulation page, and I'm hoping for a little guidance. Currently, Desert Hot Springs redirects to an article, Desert Hot Springs, California which is about the town of Desert Hot Springs (DHS) in Riverside County. I recently created an article on the geographic geothermal hot spring area which is also called Desert Hot Springs, and named the article, Desert Hot Springs (thermal mineral springs). It makes sense to me that there should be a disambig page for the general term Desert Hot Springs that lists both pages, and that the redirect to the town should be removed. Is this correct? Secondly, is there a guide to creating a disambig page that someone could kindly direct me to? Thanks in advance, Netherzone (talk) 01:38, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Hi. Desert Hot Springs, California is at that longer title due only to WP:USPLACE, which suggests adding the state to most U.S. cities. You've created an excellent new article, but with about 139 views per day, it seems likely to me that the city is still the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and that this is a WP:TWODABS situation where a hatnote pointing to the new article is more appropriate than a dab page, at least for now. (I've added a hatnote to the city's article.) Once your article has been around for a while, it's possible that might change. That's not an absolute rule, of course, and some editors prefer two-entry dab pages in cases like this. As to a guide to creating dab pages, MOS:DAB may be your best source. Station1 (talk) 02:11, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
@Station1: thank you for the quick response. I appreciate the detailed information and the hatnote you created. Will read the MOS guide page you suggested, as well as the other links in your message. Netherzone (talk) 03:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Khariboli
I did a small clean-up at Khariboli, removing pipes, removing definite articles between the bullet and the link, etc. That edit was undone by an IP user with the edit summary "reverted". Rather than risk an edit war, I'll just point you all to the page. (There are also a large number of incoming links. It appears that the page was a redirect until 17 February.) Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 05:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
All articles with "North" and "etc" in the title
I've noticed on the disambiguation pages for the cardinal directions (well, actually only West (disambiguation), East (disambiguation) and North (disambiguation)) that at the bottom there's links to All articles with "North" and "University/College/School" in the title and All articles with "North" and "Region/District/Province" in the title. These seem useful but they don't actually work, at least when I clicked on them (on any of the three articles). The All articles with "North" in the title links do work however. They aren't there on South (disambiguation), perhaps removed since they don't work. Was there some kind of software changes which made these links not work anymore, or perhaps something to do with browser/operating systems? (I'm using Firefox on a Win10 PC if that's relevant). Anyway I wonder if there's any way to fix these or if they should just be removed. A7V2 (talk) 23:56, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
See also H:LOPS. OR works unpredictably, especially with intitle:. We should probably remove the entries. Choice of browser and operating system should not affect the results. Certes (talk) 00:25, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
Jonathan Root, early settler of Southington, Connecticut
Jonathan Root, the early settler, should have a separate link to an article about him--yet to be written--and not be considered less important than the house named for him. There is currently no separate article about Jonathan Root, only the link which includes the name of a house in which he lived: Jonathan Root. This is an obvious disambiguation case.Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 14:15, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
You are very free to write an article about this person if you think there is material to support one. Disambiguation pages are not judgments on the relative importance of topics; they are simply navigation aids to existing articles. This person should definitely not have a second entry with no additional article to link to, as it would not help anybody. -- Fyrael (talk) 14:54, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
Should California Proposition 13 be a set index article? It seems to meet the criteria of "a set of items of a specific type that also share the same (or similar) name". And the article contains external references for the red links which would also work better for a set index page than a DAB page. Leschnei (talk) 17:42, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
No. There is absolutely nothing about those propositions tying them together that could not be adequately described in the general article California ballot proposition. That is to say, California Proposition 13 is not any different from California Proposition 14, California Proposition 15, etc. -- King of♥♦♣ ♠ 19:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Although the recent editor might be correct that the 1978 proposition deserves to be the PRIMARYREDIRECT based on page views. -- Fyrael (talk) 21:30, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Ingobernable
Hi, at the moment, there are EN pages for Ingobernable - a Mexican Netflix series, La Ingobernable - a Madrid social centre and Los Ingobernables - a Mexican wrestling team. There's also a wrestling offshoot group called Los Ingobernables de Japon. I feel that a disambig page would be useful but I'm pondering how to do this, the fact that Ingobernable is a Spanish word meaning 'ungovernable' makes it a bit confusing. Should I just use hatnotes? Thanks for any advice. Mujinga (talk) 14:26, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Feeling bored? You can have a look at this search. There are hundreds of articles with manually written hatnotes that need attention. At the most basic, they need to be converted to use some template: either the generic {{Hatnote}}, or – in almost all cases – a more specific one, like {{About}} or {{Distinguish}}. The fun bit is that – to a much greater extent that properly formatted hatnotes – these will have other issues at hand as well. Maybe the hatnotes are for terms that aren't ambiguous, maybe they aren't pointing to the right articles or dab pages (incoming redirects will need to be checked in many cases!), maybe they need to be moved to another article or a different section, they may occasionally even need incorporating into the article's text. If you know the hatnote guidelines and have access to the templates, then there's scope for a lot of good work here. – Uanfala (talk)22:00, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh dear. By the way, searches run faster, find more cases and use far less server resource with a string to search for as well as the insource:, as in the examples below. Straying somewhat from disambiguation, other potentially unwanted strings are available:
The numbers suggest that a bot should sort out the simple cases, leaving only the awkward ones for human intervention afterwards. Certes (talk) 01:10, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
Ah, that's a clever trick! Now we finally have an idea of what we're dealing with. I think we could leave the "Main", "Further" and "See also" ones for now – they aren't used for disambiguation, but for linking to topically related content, that's not our job and if we start doing it we risk running into the dense jungle of subject-specific conventions. I think the vast majority of hand-written "For" hatnotes are of this type too. Still, this leaves over 4,000 unambiguously disambiguous hatnotes that we'd need to sort out. We should definitely think about getting some sort of bot help, but I think we'd still need too go through each of them by hand. I've done about a hundred of these over the last couple of weeks, and only in a minority of cases was it enough to simply replace with a template. The vast majority have had various other infelicities that could only be fixed by hand – they were wordy, had links they ought not to have had and lacked ones they ought to have had, were pointing at the wrong places, or were unnecessary altogether. I think we'd need gnoming superpowers. – Uanfala (talk)16:04, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
It's the sort of thing I do, though I'm not sure I could face 4000 of them alone. AWB or JWB is good for such semi-automated tasks: properly configured, it will suggest an edit which is usually correct for human confirmation. If we need help, there's always WP:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. Certes (talk) 18:27, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
One more thing... beware of WP:COSMETICBOT. I agree that such edits would improve the pages, but we may want to get wider consensus before making bulk changes which some editors may consider as needless clutter in the page history. Certes (talk) 19:05, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
Simpler cases may also be of interest to AutoWikiBrowser/Typos (large page). If added to that list, they could be fixed as a side-effect when editors perform unrelated repetitive tasks. (Best to ask at the talk page first.) Certes (talk) 09:36, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't think this should be done automatically: fist because these strings of text are sometimes used in unusual ways and a (semi-)automatic replacement can mess things up (WP:CONTEXTBOT), and second, because manual hatnotes tend to also have other issues requiring editor attention, so this list sort of serves as a general to-do list for hatnote maintenance. What can work is some script that would help us make the replacement, although this isn't going to be a major time-saver as most of the labour goes into inspecting the article with the hatnote, the other articles that are linked from there, and the incoming redirects. – Uanfala (talk)12:52, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Can I hijack this section to ask a general hatnote question that's very relevant to the results of that search? I see quite a few pages there that are similar to People of the Book (novel). The hatnote is generally "This article is about <term in parentheses>. For <description of primary topic>, see <primary topic>". Isn't that kind of hatnote just stating the incredibly obvious and should be removed? Isn't a reader who skipped past the base name in favor of a specific disambiguator very, very unlikely to have been looking for the primary topic? I'm not super familiar with hatnote guidelines. -- Fyrael (talk) 22:24, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Yep, there's no need for a hatnote when the article't title is not ambiguous (WP:NAMB). However, a hatnote may be appropriate if there entities are of the same type (say, all are novels), and they may be confused with one another. With the particular case of People of the Book (novel), there's definitely no need for a hanote, but I suspect that the information contained there might need to be incorporated into the article's text – the title of the book is presumably a reference to the primary topic and this is probably worth mentioning somehow. – Uanfala (talk)22:39, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Disambiguation "template"
Could someone please link me to the example disambiguation template that's been put together? Not the template template, but the page that shows how a disambiguation page should be structured with common section titles and such. I know it exists, but I can't find a link on any of our project pages. -- Fyrael (talk) 22:13, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi! At Talk:RHS I was informed that there was an AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/AHS (high schools) which advised against creating a page like "AHS (high schools)". That I suppose is fair enough to not have a disambig page entirely about high schools.
However I also feel that the internal comment "don't add high schools" should not apply. Ralston High School for example uses RHS as an acronym on its own official pages and there's no doubt people casually use acronyms to refer to schools. I feel high schools should be listed on these pages.
If there's concerns over whether a high school is really referred to by an acronym, evidence can be collected to document this.
Having an entry for a high school that has its own article and goes by the initials is 100% appropriate per MOS:DABABBREV. Hopefully Voortle was just referring to entire pages, not individual entries. -- Fyrael (talk) 02:53, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
Personally, I find the inclusion of "xHS" in article content to be, well, silly, as it is totally non-distinguishing. For example, there are four high schools in the county I grew up in with the initials "HHS" and the county name doesn't begin with "H". So, it also follows we shouldn't disambiguate that way either. Using a school's initials as an alternative name is strictly a localism, and hence unencyclopedic as a disambiguator. John from Idegon (talk) 11:59, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Per WP:PTM, a dab should only refer to items that can realistically be referred to solely as "Rothmans". The rest could be accessible in "see also" via {{look from}} and {{intitle}}. I'm not familiar with the individual items here to determine which are only partial matches.—Bagumba (talk) 08:44, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
I've proded it with reason "seems to be a valid WP:SIA of people with names beginning "John Taylor", regardless of whether it was a pen name or not a birth name; helps readers knowingly looking for a "John Taylor" instead of forcing them to a larger list of all John's". Can have a wider discussion at an AfD if there is still disagreement. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 08:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Kirktown is a very common place name in Scotland, often shortened to Kirkton, with both spellings sometimes in use for the same place. The Wikipedia page Kirktown was a one-line stub on a fairly insignificant area of a small village in Aberdeenshire. I tried to convert it into a dab page (my version) but almost instantly someone reverted to the one-line stub with the comment "not a disambiguation page". What did I do wrong, please? --188.30.19.65 (talk) 20:25, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for creating the disambiguation page. I think that's the right page to reside at the title Kirktown, but we should also keep the stub about Kirktown of St Fergus. Here's what I'd suggest:
Copy-paste the dab over the resulting redirect at Kirktown, with appropriate attribution, but with entries limited to those articles which actually mention Kirktown
Link Kirktown to and from the existing dab Kirkton as See also, perhaps adding a few entries to Kirkton.
Thanks for your help. That seems good. Perhaps it would be better to combine the Kirkton and Kirktown lists into a single dab page, since some of these places are liable to appear as Kirkton in some sources and Kirktown in others, but at least there's a "see also" at the bottom of each, so readers should be able to find what they are looking for. --188.30.19.65 (talk) 20:46, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
I don't know if this is the right place to say this but...
Why does Exercise or Operation Lionheart both redirect to a page listing all uses of the word Lionheart where it isn't even mentioned? Could anyone create an article for it please, I no clue what it really is and wish to know, and it is a lesser known part of history so it would also be great for learning.
I thought I remembered some guidance that advises against the use of lang templates on disambiguation pages because they create an additional blue link, but if it exists I can't find it. Can someone point me to it please? Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 10:37, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
Although multiple blue links are frowned upon in entries, I'm not aware of any advice to suppress them in the lead. I would use common sense depending on the language. Readers can be expected to know what French is without having a link to follow; Mro-Khimi not so much. Certes (talk) 11:44, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
(ec) @Shhhnotsoloud:, most of the language templates have option to turn off the display of links. The use of the templates may be helpful to make clear what are not misspellings or to mark the text for screen-readers. However, I don't think foreign language glosses such as you mention are appropriate on a disambiguation page. Of the multiple links in the current first two entries, the only one that mentions the term is Islamic calendar. older ≠ wiser11:45, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
Hello, I'm seeking some dab advice. I was trying to clean up the New Mill dab page a little bit, but the more I looked at it the more I thought it needed some ruthless pruning of not-quite appropriate entries. The page lists lots of mills, most of them without articles, and in some cases called things like Highdown New Mill or Glover's New Mill, not simply New Mill. In these cases I don't think people would just type "New Mill" in the search box to look for information. Should these be on the page at all? --188.29.156.67 (talk) 20:37, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
WP:DABMENTION advises that mills mentioned within another article... may be included if it would provide value to the reader. I think the mills listed qualify, but please remove any that don't. Entries such as Highdown New Mill seem to be partial title matches which should be removed, but they could be relegated to a "See also" section if "New Mill" on its own is a likely search term for them. Certes (talk) 21:04, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Thank you both! I would never have guessed there was a project dedicated to mills! I'll wait a few days to see if anyone from there expresses an opinion before I do anything. --188.29.156.67 (talk) 22:59, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
In the case of Glover's and Highdown, those are the full title, but they may have also been referred to as simply "New Mill" locally. I don't see anything wrong with the way these titles have been handled, being at the bottom of the section and further indented. Mjroots (talk) 04:33, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Advice re "anyone for tennis"
Alright, I'm not expert on this... so here's my problem
As well as another page (it is a redirect) titled Tennis, Anyone?.
All of these are pretty obscure, so there's no primary subject I guess. Right now, each article is reached by typing/or selecting its exact title; there are hatnotes at each article pointing to the other two.
It seems that capitalization and the presence/absence of question mark is not enough to distinguish these? Will a student in Mumbai know that "Anyone for Tennis" and not "Anyone For Tennis?" is the way to get to the Cream song? Will an ESL hausfrau in Essen know that that "Anyone for tennis" and not "Anyone for Tennis" is the right way to look up the idiom? And so forth. And if not they're left looking at an unwanted article and having to thrash their way forward via hatnotes which is not ideal.
(In addition, the phrases "anyone for tennis?" and "tennis, anyone?" are used pretty much interchangeably for the idiom, and Tennis, Anyone? is an extremely obscure episode of crappy long-dead TV show; I'd warrant that >90% of people searching on "tennis, anyone?" is likely looking for one of the "anyone for tennis" articles, thus it'd be good to bring that into the playpen also I guess.)
My inclination is to move these to "Anyone for tennis? (idiom)", "Anyone for Tennis? (band)", and "Anyone for Tennis (song)", set up a disambigation page (already made, here: Anyone for tennis? (disambiguation)), and have all the variant manifestations of "anyone for tennis" and "tennis, anyone" point to it. I don't want to move all these pages if that's not the way we roll here. Is it? Herostratus (talk) 00:41, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
I would move Anyone for tennis? to Tennis, anyone? because it's less ambiguous and I think that's the more common expression anyway. I would leave the song and the band where they are per WP:SMALLDETAILS. The band, especially, is lightly viewed and the hatnotes seem to be sufficient to take care of the occasional reader on the wrong page. The Tennis, Anyone? redirect has exactly 4 hits in the past 90 days, so is pretty much irrelevant. Station1 (talk) 02:44, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, WP:SMALLDETAILS is relevant here, and I also would leave things mostly as they are. A reader typing in exactly what they're looking for with the right capitalisation and spelling will reach the right article immediately; other readers are only a hatnote click away. What we do need is a route from Tennis, anyone? to the article currently titled Anyone for tennis?. I would add a simple redirect: in my experience, and presumably the creating editor's, "Anyone for tennis?" is the more common form of the idiom. I suspect it may be a UK vs US distinction. If there is consensus for a page move then that also solves the problem. Certes (talk) 11:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
I hadn't realized there might be a WP:ENGVAR difference regarding the phrase. If that is indeed the case, I agree that it should remain at the current title. But either way, I would not add a parenthetical qualifier. Station1 (talk) 17:15, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
Alright. All this has been very helpful, thank you all. Having worked on the "Anyone for tennis?" article a bit, I'm not sure what the title should be, but I think the preponderance is for "Tennis, anyone". I don't know if its an ENGVAR thing or not. Anyway, I will put an requested move on that page and see how it goes. Herostratus (talk) 20:34, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Briganti
The article Briganti, originally created as a dab page, needs attention. The original editor's username is familiar to me, but the editor who attempted attempted to create an article out of it is not. Their only edits are to that article. AFAIK it should not be both an article and a dab page, but I lack the knowledge to make the repair myself. Dawnseeker200004:28, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
As there seemed to have been several edits after the usurpation of the surname page into a page about Celtic mythology, it seemed simpler to split off the surname-holders (and the third one I found) into a new Briganti (surname) which I've created; as "I" is Italian for "The", the dab page at "I briganti" also needed a mention and link from this one, done. I think all is now well - unless all the Celtic stuff isn't as solidly sourced as it seems, at a quick glimpse, to be.
The original wasn't strictly a dab page but a surname page, unfortunately, so needed the original content to be credited to its editor (done, with {{Copied}}. If it had just been a dab page it would all have been simpler as they don't need attribution. PamD10:39, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
OK I've been WP:BOLD and reverted Hot Summer Night to the previous redirect, copied the newly-added content into Hot Summer Night (wrestling match), lef the appropriate template on both talk pages, added the wrestling match to the dab page.
My first instinct was that surely the song was not the primary topic, but looking at page views it was certainly viewed a lot more (over year, not over last 90 days) than the film or play. I know nothing about Meatloaf songs, so can't be sure how important this alternative title is relative to the song... leaving that question for now. PamD10:03, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I know surname pages aren't disambiguation pages but they have some similarities, at least at the level where they are solely a list of holders of a surname for navigational purposes. A full surname page would have a lot of sourced content about the etymology and distribution of the name, of course.
My question is this: what footers should a simple little page like Méresse have? Does it need both a "surname" footer and a "surname stub" one (which looks terribly clunky)? If not, which, and how can I avoid it getting given the other?
I've wondered recently about issues like this as well. For pages like this, I would think that some of the WP:MOSDAB guidelines should apply, because the page (or, for more contentful pages, a portion of a page) is pretty much acting as a disambiguation page in that a reader likely may have arrived at it searching only on the surname, and the same things that make those points good ideas for a disambiguation page make them good ideas for lists of names as well. I particularly thinking of the guideline to have one blue link, which encapsulates two good ideas: 1) the person listed should have sufficient notability that either there is an article on them, or at least discussing them; and 2) the reader can tell which article to go to to read about the person. TJRC (talk) 15:30, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
My controversial view is that the footer on such a simple page should be {{disambiguation|surname}}. If the page does not describe the surname and its only function is to list (human) topics which may be known by the term in the page's title, then that quacks like a disambiguation page to me. I've seen surname lists with over 100 incoming wikilinks, every one of them referring to one of the entries rather than the surname itself, and they could really benefit from our tools such as a listing on Disambiguation pages with links. Certes (talk) 15:56, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
For the record, I think that the claim, "Foo is a surname", requires a citation, and if there isn't one, then a "citation needed" tag should be added after that statement. BD2412T16:07, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
It may be useful to ask ourselves whether most readers landing on the page are seeking information that is on the page (details of the surname or an associated family or the people listed as a group) or want to know about one of the individuals listed. If the latter then it may work better as a dab. How many visitors to Méresse will think "ah, so it's a surname, that's exactly what I wanted to know", close their browsers and go away happy? Certes (talk) 17:09, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
I now see that there is an example of a simple two-entry surname list stub at WP:APOSTUB within Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Standards, and it doesn't include the standard {{surname}} template, which seems a pity as it deprives readers of the useful information included in that template. I wonder whether it's time to create a new non-standard stub template for {{surname-stub}}, which would incorporate the useful info from the main surname template but without the ugliness of two separate boxes? PamD17:45, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
And of course there are also given name pages, which I usually ignore. Neither John nor John (given name) attempts to include a list of name-holders beyond the mononymic, but Agatha (given name) does, and Alan (given name) has a hatnote pointing to List of people with given name Alan, and there must be thousands more, all presumably laughably incomplete, and unlikely to be any use to any reader. Ah well. I add articles to surname lists, on the basis that a reader may have a reference to "Hill's earlier work on the topic" or "Cook's innovations", where a search without a surname list would be very difficult, but no-one needs a given name page, surely! PamD18:00, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Long given name lists are probably more useful for randomly finding people with the same name as opposed to using it for search.—Bagumba (talk) 12:25, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
This is a newly created dab page that replaced a redirect. The original redirect target does not mention "Google Go" directly (it is in two refs) but still seems like a plausible redirect. The second entry in the dab does not mention "Google Go". I restored the redirect once and was reverted. Looking for more opinions. MB03:50, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
The programming language is occasionally called "Google Go", so it seems to be a reasonable search term. Google Playoffers a search app called "Google Go", though this seems different from Android Go which is a basic operating system. We don't seem to have an article on the Google Go search app, and it's probably not notable. A (non-Google) web search has similar numbers of hits for both meanings, with the search app having a slight majority. If the search app is closely related to Android Go in some way then the page might work best as a dab, but the article makes no suggestion that this is the case. Can an editor who disagrees with MB provide any evidence of a connection? If not then I think it should redirect to the language as the only meaning covered in Wikipedia. Google go (small g) has redirected to the language since 2009. Certes (talk) 10:41, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
@Dunkleosteus77: DPLbot tools are still alive and well at dplbot.toolforge.org, and may do what you need. Dispenser's website is also working but the dispenser.info.tm domain no longer reaches it. Those tools can be accessed via their IP address. Some tools work with http: but others are redirected to the broken domain. https: works but produces browser warnings because the certificate relates to the broken domain rather than the IP address. Certes (talk) 21:02, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
