Disambiguation

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January 2003 – July 2005 July 2005 – September 2005 September 2005 – December 2005 December 2005 – March 2006 April 2006 – July 2006

Hello. I decided to take Shell as my first attempt at helping here. I think that I am almost done.

• I have changed 135 pages in Main space and have 2 left. One of them is a question, which I posted on its talk page, since I need someone who knows Hebrew to translate. The other is a redirect, which I found out the hard way (via a RfD attempt) that I should just leave alone (although I did clean up the links to the redirect).

In the other spaces I have the following:

• Talk space (6 articles), User (14), User talk (1), Wikipedia talk (2) - I leave these all alone, right?
• Wikipedia space has 17 articles - Do I leave all these alone or are there exceptions. For example, some are to "Today's featured article" from 2004/2005 - are these "live pages" or "archive"? Should this (or any others of these) be changed?
• Anything else I may have missed?

Thanks --Brian G 13:01, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good - well done on asking a question on the talk page of the article, people who watch those articles are usually really helpful. The main namespace is the only space that the links need to be fixed in. Other namespaces do not necessarily need to be fixed, and as was recently discussed, editing other people's comments on talk pages is often frowned upon. -- Natalya 02:25, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I generally don't modify stuff that links from the Wikipedia namespace, as most of that material looks archival to me (such as the old featured article link you mention). I'll modify Category pages (such as the Multiverse link at Category:Michael Moorcock's Multiverse) when the ambig. link is in the description. It's generally a bad idea to modify people's user pages (although I must confess that I've modified a few when it was very obvious what they meant to link to). It's nicer if you can ask them on their talk page to correct the link. As Natalya mentioned, modifying Talk/User talk/Wikipedia talk is frowned upon (see discussion above). I looked at the list of what links to Shell, and I think your job is sufficiently done on that page. Thanks for your work on this one - I hope you keep working on other disambig. pages. --Mbell 18:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Priority is definitely the article namespace. When we finish that, we'll move on to the wikipedia namespace etc, but I doubt I'll live to see that. PS I'm back on this project, any of the 'Old Guard' still here? Soo 21:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

what hebrew?trespassers william\danny lost 15:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Richardson is a disambiguation page without any "child" articles. There are 2 people mentioned, but neither has an article. Should I split off 2 stubs and then move the links to them? A potential issue is that someone deletes the stubs on notability concerns. They both probably meet criteria for notability, but they will be short stubs.... Note also that one of the two subjects has >95% of the links, so I guess that I could move one subject to a stub and remove him from the current article and create a Mike Richardson (disambiguation) to point to both subjects. --Brian G 22:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest leaving the stub about the more notable one at Mike Richardson, and creating the stub for the less notable but still notable one at Mike Richardson (whatever qualifier is appropriate). Then all you need is a link at Mike Richardson saying This article is about the [whatever he was]. For the [whatever they other guys was], see Mike Richardson (whatever qualifier is appropriate). -- Natalya 03:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

200 pages linked to a disambig page with no child articles? Sheesh. Frankly, I'd be in favor of deleting the disambiguation page and having the links be broken everywhere and show up as red; maybe that would prompt someone to write an article about at least one of them and then the disambiguation page could be recreated, if need be. I'm guilty at times of typing in the "[[" and "]]" wiki codes without bothering to follow the links if they turn up blue; that seems to be what's happened here, perhaps? Don't know if there's a precedent for doing something like this it's just a thought.—Chidom ^talk  08:51, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• OK. I figured maybe I should trace the article history here to see how this evolved...
  • Initially (a little over a year ago), the article was a stub created for a football player for the 1985 Bears Super Bowl team (remember the superbowl shuffle?) Played 6+ years, 20 career interceptions, etc. This is the subject with the small number of links. Article remained mostly as it was for almost 6 months.
  • 6 months later, an IP address added information to the page for a comic book publisher. This is the subject with most of the links. But are they more notable? A few days before the publisher was added to the page, someone started creating articles for comic books realted to Star Wars. Naturally, thare were a couple hundred articles created over time - one for each book published (?) My guess is that when peeople started clicking on the links on the comic pages they wondered why they went to a football player and someone then made the article a 2-subject page.
  • In June, it was tagged as disambig and the football categories were removed.

I think that if I were to delete the page the folks at WikiProject Comics might not be too thrilled, not sure I want to be accused of making a point. Natalya's option may be best. I personally think that football player is more notable, but I'm sure others would disagree with me. Also, I think that more links in the future are likely to be created for the publisher than the football player, so her solution (with the publisher "owning" the primary link) also prevents most of the future problems from people not checking where the link goes. I'm going to wait a couple days for any more input and, subject to consensus, that is what I will go with. --Brian G 10:44, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just to throw out a bone.. How about enlisting the assistance of the Comic wikiproject? Post a note on their project page mentioning your intention (whatever it is) and seeing if they are willing to undertake the change themselves? I'd be more inclined to set up Mike Richardson (comic publisher) and Mike Richardson (athelete) just to make sure people that try and link to one have a clear distinction. An added benefit of posting on the comic wikiproject page is you get it in their collective brain that whenever they link their Mike Richardson they should add (comic publisher) to the end. Dark Horse is a fairly popular indy publisher so their guy is going to get a lot more hits.--Bobblehead 15:16, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also a good option, when there is no primary topic determined. -- Natalya 02:24, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm working through Chief of Staff and I'm discovering that a vast majority of them link to the disambig for the definitions in the top two rows. Is it acceptable to create an entry for Chief of Staff in Wiktionary and then link these to Wiktionary:Chief of Staff (with piping of course)? Or should I do something else. As an example Erich Raeder, Military of Armenia, Second Sino-Japanese War, and Manuel Noriega all link to Chief of Staff do not have actual articles for the Chief of Staff definitions. --Bobblehead 20:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Creating a Chief of Staff entry in Wiktionary is a great idea, but I'm not sure about linking to it from the various articles. Though I can't claim to be really familiar with it, I don't feel like that is a very common practice. It may just be a better idea to remove the link all together, in that case. -- Natalya 23:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a bad idea to link to wiktionary, I think. Unlinking is a good idea for pages where the link is totally redundant because the meaning of the word is common knowledge. I don't think that's the case with Chief of Staff so, if there's in inadequate material for a stub page, wiktionary linking is the way ahead. Soo 23:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Check this Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambiguation_fixer--Neo139 10:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am looking at a link from the article Floyd Landis to the Disambiguation page Exogenous. The link itself seems like one of thoses cases where linking directly to the disambiguation page is probbly ok (in which case I usually point it at PAGE (disambiguation) and redirect that page to the real disambig to indicate that it is an intentional link. However, in this case I am toying with the idea of linking to wiktionary:Exogenous. Is there some standard here? I suspect the dab page is possibly the better of the two pages but somehow the wiktionary link feels right. Dalf | Talk 00:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a fan of linking to Wiktionary, and it doesn't really seem to be common (or even uncommon) practice. Why not make a stub for that use of exogenous? It seems to be defined enough that a stub could be fleshed out enough to be encyclopedic, perhaps. -- Natalya 01:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Linking to Wiktionary is the way to go only when there's no chance that an article could ever be more than a dicdef. That said, I wouldn't take "common practice" to be much of a guide, since evidently linking to disam pages is itself a common practice. Soo 12:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's a bit of talk on the British talk page Talk:British about how to disambig people who are British, i.e. "Bob is a British politician." Someone suggested that we should pipeline it so that that would become [[Briton|British]]. What does everyone think of that solution? And what do you also think about using that for other instances of British as an adjective like that, like "British rock band" or "British television programme"? Metros232 15:57, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a brilliant solution for references to people.. I'd be a bit leery of linking television programmes and other 'British' non-human contexts as it's not really defining the people on the programme, but rather the programme itself. Would linking to Britain be an acceptable alternative?--Bobblehead 16:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be the best alternative for the other instances. Perhaps Britian would be the best alternative for bands, television, and the like. Metros232 16:36, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since we need a new collaboration, I'd suggest Punk if EdGl doesn't mind, as there are quite a few links to deal with there. I haven't really looked closely at any articles, but I feel like it should be relatively straightforward to do. --Mbell 16:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly wouldn't mind the help! I've only done around 20 or so to be honest. —EdGl 20:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about British? :) link to Briton for people, Britain for other things from UK. There's also something to say about getting rid of #1 on the list.--Bobblehead 21:00, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I think the current collaboration should be the #1 unless there's a particular reason not to. I don't think British requires any specialist knowledge, so I reckon it's a good choice. Soo 21:46, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I just checked the British page and it's a mess. Perhaps Media would be a better choice. Soo 21:52, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I figured British might not be the best choice, as there seemed to be a bit of confusion over what to do with it. Media would also work. Given that stuff gets taken care of pretty quickly with lots of people on it, maybe somebody should just pick one, and we can go on to the others once we're done. :) --Mbell 17:21, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I went for it, before we get stuck in democratic limbo. Ultimately no one is obliged to work on that one, if they really don't want to. Soo 18:33, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've actually already started British and run into a problem. After 25 or so edits (using my bot account on AmiDaniel's request; bot AWB approval has been given but I am not auto saving) I begin to wonder what I should be changing links to. Pretty much every one so far has been to Great Britain but I probably should be linking to Britain instead. I have a lot of time on my hands so could get about 300 done in an hour (yes, including reviewing each edit, going at a steady pace of 5 edits per minute - this is what I opened a bot account for) and since its a bit confusing I suggest a collaboration on #2 through to #4 (which I believe is Punk). If people choose to help out on British thats fine, some help would be good, but since 95% of the time its a simple British >> British using AWB would be best for the disambig. --Draicone ^(talk) 07:31, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thought this might be a bit of fun. I've staked my own claim to these records, but I imagine they've been beaten by someone at some point. Feel free to edit if you know better! And by all means, add your own claims to fame. I'd like to see fastest 500 and even fastest 1000 from the hardcore around here. This isn't meant to make the project competetive, but it might liven things up. Join in! Soo 18:51, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Fastest 100 fixes: 21 minutes [1]
• Fastest 300 fixes: 71 minutes [2]
• Most fixes in one edit: 27! [3]

Will you be also tracking quality-oriented metrics, like most fixes without a revert? -- Mikeblas 19:48, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone else is welcome to add that themselves, I don't think I have the patience to check myself. Soo 20:54, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

LOL - I've actually been making sure that I don't go too fast so that I don't cause any AWB problems as well making sure that I get them all right. I think they like us to limit AWB to 2 pages saved/minute. --Brian G (Talk) 20:05, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've got 104 in 21 minutes [4] and 73 fixes in one edit [5]. The sad thing is that article was turned into a redirect three days later. TimBentley (talk) 20:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Impressive, and unlucky. Soo 09:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So User:Jooler has changed the British disambig page away from being a disambig page [6], then was reverted by User:Grubber [7] which was then reverted back by Jooler [8]. Does anyone have thoughts on how this page should be? Should it remain as the disambig page or as Jooler has adjusted it? Metros232 14:38, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like Jooler's adjustements. Some of the entries in the disambiguation page were confusing (i.e. British accountancy: none of the bodies listed are known as British anyway). Your thoughts? E Asterion ^{u talking to me?} 15:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, we should get more people on this collaboration, as there's still tons of work to be done (over 1000 links, I believe).

Second, I'm unsure of how to handle some of the ambiguous links. I'm sending most of them to mass media or news media, but there are a few that reference the term in the sense of a medium used for transmitting information. The problem is, that there doesn't seem to be a good relevant article to link to. Recording medium is somewhat limited, as it doesn't include online media, comics, etc., which often seem to be included in the desired definition. The Wiktionary entry is also somewhat confusing, containing only a very brief blurb (Formats for presenting information.) among other definitions. My opinion is that it might be most appropriate just to remove these links, although Wiktionary might be a good option too. --Mbell 15:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For online media (news, A&E, etc), you could try Electronic media. For transmitting/recording information digitally, how about Digital media. It is also acceptable to delete links if the usage is more for the definition than actual information. Sometimes people are just to quick to put the brackets around a word. --Bobblehead 16:11, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the list page, there are a lot of articles linked that say "This is a list of..." What would be the best option for this disambig? To link to the article on lists at List (composition) or one of the Wikipedia sections on lists (in the Wikipedia organizational sense)? Or the 3rd option is to remove the link all together. Metros232 22:02, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Removing the link seems like a very appropriate option in this case. 'List' in that sense is purly a dictionary definition, and a very simple one at that. -- Natalya 01:56, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I got annoyed with various things so I decided to fix them. I wrote a script that adds a "DPL mode" option to the toolbox. Clicking that on Whatlinkshere causes it to filter out the User/Talk/Wikipedia namespaces, and changes the bulleted list to a numbered list to make it easier to see how many links remain. If you want to use this script yourself, just add

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' +

            'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Agentsoo/dpl.js' +
            '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

to Special:Mypage/monobook.js. Like all the best scripts, it fails for no obvious reason in Internet Explorer. If anyone can figure out why and wants to fix it, be my guest. Soo 21:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Using Firefox, can't get it to work. Can you clarify: Is this totally in place of the current script I have, which is:

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="'

            + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js' 
            + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

or in addition to, with my new script having 6 total lines? Or are just some of the lines added? Does it matter if they go before or after the script that is already there? Maybe a full example would be useful to people. Thanks. Simon12 01:18, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to, assuming you still want Popups (which you probably do). I added the extra lines afterwards, although it ought to work either way. Soo 04:44, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally the link numbering, which worked perfectly yesterday, now does nothing. Gotta love Javascript! Soo 05:14, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Curse you, Agentsoo! ;-) This posting caused me to waste nearly two full days debugging and improving your Javascript. See User:RussBlau/dpl.js. I still can't get listStyleType = 'decimal' to work; I suspect it is being overwritten by something else in monobook.js, but I don't know what, because this code works fine in a test HTML page generated from scratch. Also, the script still doesn't strip out all of the non-main namespaces. Works on IE6 except as noted above. --Russ Blau (talk) 17:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good stuff, I'll merge it back into mine to avoid the dreaded fork. It's odd, the listStyleType trick worked fine the first time I tried it. The alternative is to rip out the whole ul and replace it with an ol, but that was more work than I could be bothered with at the time. Soo 19:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed up a slight bug as well. It seems JScript uses a different version of insertBefore to JavaScript. The fixed version still works in IE. Soo 19:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As seen on Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages maintenance, there has been a real explosion in the last couple of months of disambig pages with very high numbers of links; instead of the typical case where we need to fix 100 to 200 links to a page, we now have quite a few pages with over 500 to as many as 3000 incoming links. I therefore suggest that for the next database dump, which will probably come in a week or two, instead of posting a long list of hundreds of pages, we limit the list to the top 20 or 30 pages, and we all collaborate on knocking down these huge link counts. (In other words, no "claiming" pages as one's exclusive domain; every page will be a collaboration.) Once this list is finished, we can go back to the more usual method of operating on future dumps. Comments? --Russ Blau (talk) 13:45, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I for one like working on the smaller pages. As recently discussed on Wikitech, if you prevent Wikipedians from doing what they want to do, they don't do what you want them to do - they just do nothing. This project is doing quite well at the moment and it'd be a shame to damage that. If everyone else wants to work on the top 20 or 30 then obviously my objection is moot, but I for one would be much less inclined. Soo 14:07, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... perhaps we suggest and encourage every to work on the big ones first, but not demand it? Soo makes a good point, we would want to deter anyone from helping out on this project, even if it is by working on a small page. But getting everyone to work together on the bigger ones certainly has been helful. -- Natalya 17:23, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad I asked. I also would hate to do anything that discouraged even one person (especially a valued contributor like Soo) from participating. Maybe I will provide the usual full list, but put the top 10 or so in bold and identify them as the "Current disambiguation collaboration." --Russ Blau (talk) 20:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seems very reasonable to me. I've been lurking on the Wikitech mailing list for a while, with a view to proposing a more permanent technical solution to the disambiguation problem. More news on that as and when. Soo 21:15, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just what I would have suggested. Put a "plea paragraph" to explain the need, and then let folk do what they will. I have done one page (Celtic) largely by myself (the previous worker had, I think, taken a break before I started), and when I finished, it felt great! Wee hah! But it sure would be great to see a list of 3000 wittled down to nothing. --Sean Lotz 00:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bolding sounds like a good idea, it will certainly draw attention to those with the largest number of links. -- Natalya 01:18, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like your "top ten in bold" idea, Russ Blau. —EdGl 02:04, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The vast majority of the links to the Consulate disambig page are references to the common modern usage of this term, which is covered in Consul (representative). Suggest that someone systematically check the current crop of links to see if there are any exceptions (I found only one to French Consulate in a random check of 10) and then redirect all links to that page. That seems to be a more robust solution than piping all of those links. I would do this myself, but I am leaving for vacation shortly. --M4701 15:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Russ Blau (talk) 21:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...can Punk be the new collaboration? Like I said on the project page, the number of links are increasing, not decreasing. This is an easy one to do, and any user can do this (i.e., not very tricky or confusing). Most direct to the broadest punk article, punk subculture, and if an article is referring to the music genre, then it should be pointing to punk rock. About 90% of the links point to one of these two articles. Anyway, does anyone support this request? —EdGl 15:09, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, go for it. The collaboration feature is fairly informal on this project. Soo 23:23, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I edited the Project page, hope I did it right. Thanks. —EdGl 23:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe someone has discussed this before. If we let go of a disambiguation link page after it's been cleaned up, it will sit in the dark and links will multiply like mushrooms. When that happens, after a while someone else will need to clean it.. and we are all kinda like mice running around on a little wheel, getting nowhere.

I suggest that we have an Adopt a 'Shroom effort. When a particular disambiguation page has been cleaned of links, someone should adopt that page and check it once or twice a week. If you do that, there are only about five or six links to be corrected at one go. If an adoptive person has to take a Wiki vacation etc., s/he should list the 'Shroom as "up for adoption" somewhere.

I'm adopting [[Chinese]] and [[Japanese]], and will probably adopt another one of the problem-child languages/ethnicities currently listed on the bottom of the project page.

Peace, but Death to 'Shrooms: --Ling.Nut 16:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I often feel that I have built up a certain level of understanding after 200-300 fixes, and then it's all tossed aside as I begin fixing a completely different page. Your suggestion resolves that problem quite well, and if people lose interest in their shrooms then the page will just resurface in the next update of the main list. Good thinking. Soo 23:37, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tks. How far would you think it should be encouraged... Just mention it on this project page? Make a separate page for it? Keep track of who adopts what, and maybe useful edit info (e.g., [[Chinese cuisine|Chinese]], [[Culture of China|Chinese]]) to capture what you called a "certain level of understanding"? I don't have a sense of how much investment of time/energy is enough/too much...Ling.Nut 23:58, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It should be a separate page. kept alphabetically. I think just the topic, the owner, and maybe the last time the list was pruned, so we can see when an owner is no longer actively working on a list. (As said above, it will also show up again on the main list). I keep a list of the terms I've worked on, and go back and work on them every 2-3 weeks. I've seen some other folks mention they yo back every couple of months. For me, checking the list twice/week is inefficient, so I'm not sure the frequency is important. See also Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation_pages_with_links/Archive_05#This_is_a_Sisyphusian_effort.21 for more comments on adoption.

If the adoptive person has to manually change "last time pruned" each time for each page, that would be an additional burden. I would just make people responsible for passing the dab page on to someone else when s/he quits or goes on vacation. As Soo said, if someone goes slacker on that responsibility, the page will creep back into the main list. --Ling.Nut 02:33, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. It would be neat if someone ran a bot to alert given users when a particular disambig racked up X links, where X is 20 or whatever. Does anyone know of a bot that could be adapted to do that? --maru (talk) contribs 03:17, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WP:DPM lists everything over 100. One hundred seems like a fair "Danger Will Robinson" number to me.--Ling.Nut 03:40, 4 September 2006 (UTC) Wait. I missed your point about individual users. Good idea.--Ling.Nut 04:14, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. For example, I would be perfectly happy to adopt Haskell and Clone Wars, but... there's so much to do on-wiki that there's no way I can remember to manually check every few weeks. --maru (talk) contribs 19:18, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK I've been bold and created stubs for Wikipedia:Adopting disambiguation pages and Wikipedia talk:Adopting disambiguation pages. It may be a long while before they're stable, so they aren't linked anywhere but here. I put a starting suggestion for implementation on the talk page. I guess this discussion should be continued there. Cheers! --Ling.Nut 14:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like the adopt-a-shroom idea. I keep a list of links I've dabbed, and then after every new dab, go through the list and fix up my old dabs again, limiting their expansion. I've also tried going through the history and see who made the link to the dab page, and commenting on their talk page [9], why they should not be linking to the dab page. Hopefully this will raise awareness, especially with new editors. -- Jeff3000 22:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The new adoption page is still in stub format... but would it be OK to put "Punk" in the "Pages for adoption" section? Tks--Ling.Nut 19:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As we get to the end of the dump, there's about 41 dabs that are left and almost all of them are "claimed". I wonder if we should start some sort of policy where we remove a claim after awhile. Some of them have been claimed since early to mid-August and should probably go back to being unclaimed. Thoughts? Metros232 18:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Be bold. If someone wants to re-insert their name, they can. Anyway, a "claim" really just means, "I volunteer to work on this"; it doesn't mean everyone else can't work on it, too. --Russ Blau (talk) 19:13, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I realize that, it's just that some people feel like they're stepping on other people's toes by doing somethign that's already been claimed. And some people take the claim part seriously. I know I had one user who told me I was wrong for working on a dab without first claiming it (I've been working dab work off and on for 4-5 months now and I don't think I've ever claimed an article). Metros232 19:17, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Be Courteous. Some people probably actually take this claiming stuff seriously, even tho they certainly should not. I suggest: Drop the person a note on his/her talk page, asking if s/he still wants the cliam. Cheerfully say you will work on this, and they should contact you if they are angry about it.. and say that if you don't hear from them in a week (? ) you'll rv their claim. After dropping the note, immediately begin dab link repair, but do not rv the person's name. In the small minority of cases in which someone objects, some reasonable discussion can follow. See below--Ling.Nut 20:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. I've claimed a few from time to time, but generally I go into one of the larger ones and 'help' get the count down for awhile. I also spend time going through the shrooms. I'm constantly amazed how quickly those shrooms grow.;) --Bobblehead 21:10, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Better idea: Be explicit. Head off this whole territoriality question at the pass. Take what Russ just said about claims and put it in big bold (but politely expressed) text at the top of the list: claims ain't claims; theys volunteer work. Oops forgot to sign --Ling.Nut 21:22, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just find the declaration system to be a way to avoid edit conflicts. If someone hasn't edited those pages since August, the chance of an edit conflict is fairly small. I can't imagine anyone will complain about you doing their work. Soo 15:39, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If that's the case, then I agree. I think being explicit about things up front is always and everywhere at least a reasonably good idea, but.... if something is unnecessary, then it's unnecessary. --Ling.Nut 16:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I [--Ling.Nut 21:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)] made an appeal for expert help on a wikiproject page for the Anglican church, and rec'd this response from Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) (all questions should go to him):[reply]

We don't have lots of new Anglicanism articles, but we do have several hundred new incoming links.

• These appeared because Episcopal now redirects to Episcopal Church.
  • 80% of the articles are bios linking to Episcopal to try to identify the denomination of the subject. Only someone with detailed knowledge of the bio would know for sure, but it would be reasonable to guess that a U.S. person should be Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and a Scottish person would be Scottish Episcopal Church.
  • The rest of the Episcopal links should probably be changed to Bishop, and very rarely to Episcopal polity or Anglicanism
• Episcopal Church should always go to the nationality of the article in question. If there is a very rare link like Reformed [[Episcopal Church]] then it will go to the wrong place, but that is tough luck.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 13:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

These problems built up over several years, because, quite understandably, many Wikipedia editors think that there is a denomination called Episcopal. Episcopal Church is intended to explain that there isn't. (So was the old article at Episcopal.)

So, read Episcopal Church carefully and then bypass the disambiguation if you can.

Try to clean up Episcopal Church. Ideally it should be understood instantly by someone that knows the subject of their own article, but knows nothing about Christianity.

I will paste this piece into Talk:Episcopal and Talk:Episcopal Church

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 08:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to continue this conversation atTalk:Episcopal Church

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 08:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much, Hroðulf, for helping to clear this up. --Russ Blau (talk) 12:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1. A few days after the above conversation, I cleaned up Episcopal Church following WP:MOSDAB to try to make it simpler and easier to use. I hope you find it so, as editors are continually creating new incoming links.
2. I have made a suggestion at Talk:Episcopal Church#Proposed move that might ease the situation. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 15:53, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Think I got the link count right; sorry if errors. Here is the count:

Page             Cleaned         Links
French        8 August 2006        276
Filipino     21 August 2006         52
Gaelic       30 July 2006           47
German       29 August 2006        125
Hungarian    19 August 2006         62
Rugby        20 August 2006         68
Spanish      12 August 2006        189
Vietnamese   18 August 2006         41

Death to Shrooms! --Ling.Nut 11:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to say good job on the new format of the disambig links page. Here's hoping the numerical order and bolding leads people to take down the 1000 link beasts! --Oatmeal batman 20:26, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, once you start disambiguating, it takes you over like a fever. I've been working on music articles and I've noticed that a lot of the pages often have many links that need to be cleared up. Also, music articles proliferate the most quickly -- every day there are several new articles that need Rock Pop Punk, etc. cleared up. I just posted a message on someone's talk page encouraging them to be more careful about linking (the page they created Iva Davies still has problems). Does a template exist that we can post on the pages of new users who don't understand why this is problematic (I am totally guilty of doing this when I was new, by the way.)? I wonder if we couldn't create a "joke" warning template that "sentences" the user to one hour of disambig work. I mean, after working on some of these pages I would never write an article with screwed up links again. I'm thinking of something cute and friendly that explains the problem, forgives the user, and then says, somehow nicely "if you want to make good on creating this work for others, go to the disambig pages with links page and work on this." It might be a good way to get more help on the project, or at least discourage new users from adding to it (which I bet most of them have absolutely no idea that they are doing.) Anyone? Dina 14:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your line about how you used to do it when you were new leads me to a confession...this morning I disambigged a link in an article I wrote a few months ago. It's not completely my fault, there was a page move on that link a month or so ago, but I forgot to update my article's link at the time of the move. Metros232 14:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ohhh, the Wikignomes are going to move your stuff around when you're sleeping now. Dina 14:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What I tend to do is copy and paste "I noticed that you recently added a link to [[<dab page>]] [<diff>|here]. <Dab page> is a disambiguation page as the phrase has many uses including <top 2 or 3 uses>. In the future, could you link the term to one of the articles listed on the <dab page> disambiguation page, that would be great. As an example, if you're linking to something related to <the most popular link>, you would input [[<most popular link>|<dab>]]. Thanks! --~~~~" Of course, I replace everything surrounded by <> with the appropriate info. I also tend to only use that when I'm doing shroom cleanup. I'm more built for speed when I'm cleaning up new lists. --Bobblehead 14:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I get wanting to bang them out as fast as possible (when I finished Gothic after 2 hours of clicking through feverishly I hooted out loud and then had to lamely explain to my boyfriend what the big deal was and suffer his "you're a geek" look.) But I kind of like talking to new users so maybe I will work on something like I'm thinking of and post it here for discussion. Dina 14:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get me wrong, contacting them is definitely a good thing. Just with some disambig fixes off the list (rather than a shroom fix) it's hard to find who was the one that made the offending change.;) Music ones are a lot easier as I've noticed that many of them only have few or no changes since the article was created. --Bobblehead 17:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay I'm trying something like this now (for music pages only obviously):

I also contact the person who linked to the dab page when I clean up the shrooms. You can see the messages I post at User:Jeff3000/dab (you have to click edit the page, to copy the text so that it pastes correctly on the user page). -- Jeff3000 18:24, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking forward to the day (?) when Wikipedia will catch dab links as they are created, offer a detailed warning, and refuse to save the edit. That woouldn't kill all links to dab pages, as some are created by moves, but it would take a huge slab off them off the table. --Ling.Nut 20:03, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Although I feel sorry for the poor editor that goes in to change something unrelated to the dab link and discovers they have to fix the dab link before they are able to save their own change. I've had that happen when links are added to the spammer blacklist. Rather annoying. --Bobblehead 20:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't giving a "be careful next time" message to everyone that makes a mistake be very time consuming? I say, if we don't bother to do this, then we could just focus on the work that we need to do and get it done. I think this message business would slow down the project instead of help it. —EdGl 23:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto. Let's keep some perspective here - fixing disambiguations is something that needs to be done, and is fairly easy, but it's not so incredibly important that we need to set blocks on commits unless they meet certain disambiguation-linkedness standards. -- Gwern (contribs) 23:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the message to the editor who makes the dab page quite important. When you look at some pages that have recently been disambiguated, usually there's a whole bunch of new links created by one user, who is a relatively new user. Stopping the behaviour before it continues saves a lot of time. -- Jeff3000 02:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't agree more. I have been working on Acoustic guitar for several days and was finally moved to take a look at the history of the page. A small discussion occurred in August that concluded with one suggesting a page move and the creation of a dab page. The recommended policy (check What Links Here and clean it up) was skipped, leaving 1600 articles linked to the dab. Is there an easy method to find new dab pages? If I could have caught that one within a day or so, I might have been included to revert the content an work on a plan to implement in a way that would not create hours of additional work for this group. Srice13 23:49, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I am a member of the Wikipedia project for disambiguating links. Links in music articles are big culprits of creating ambiguous links so I wanted to pass along some tips to help you with your contributions:

• Rock should be (rock music) Rock
• Metal should be (heavy metal music) Metal
• Pop should be (pop music) Pop
• Band should be (band (music)) Band
• Punk should be (punk rock) Punk
• Soul should be (soul music) Soul
• Gothic or Goth should be (goth music) Goth
• Remember this applies to music templates too!

Please contact me if you have any questions. Cheers. Dina 15:15, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Damn, I just realized that this has the effect of adding all the talk pages I post it on to the disambig pages with links. Is that just going to make everything messier? Dina 15:19, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We ignore talk pages, 'cause changing what people have written is a big no-no. If you want to, you can go back and nowiki stuff. But it's not necessary. --Ling.Nut 15:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For the newbie editor they aren't going to notice the difference between Gothic and Gothic and probably wonder why you are telling them to do the same thing they already are doing. You may wish to nowiki [[Gothic rock|Gothic]] to make it clear what the difference is and add a link for Help:Piped link. Other than that, good work.;) --Bobblehead 16:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is it ok to disambiguate [[Editor]] links to [[Editing]] when the term is being used as a position, like a magazine or newspaper editor? None of the links on the disambiguation page seem exactly right for that sense, and I'm kind of new at this. -- Gwern (contribs) 17:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I typed in "newspaper editor" and was redirected to Editing, so I'd say it was acceptable to do so. --Bobblehead 18:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to hear that. I was doing some more when I realized I must have done at least fifty by now and was stricken with fear that I might've redirected them all to the wrong place. :) -- Gwern (contribs) 18:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the the links to "Conservative" out in the wild refer to a particular Conservative Party (The Conservative Party of Elbonia, etc.). But Conservative Party has its own dab page, separate from Conservative. What to do? Copy/paste the links from the Conservative party page onto the Conservative page, but put them inside comment tags. CorHomo currently ignores the comment tags & grabs all links. Of course you can remove the comments later.--Ling.Nut 03:14, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Once a dab page in the top 10 is completed, should we update the top 10 (i.e., always have the 10 pages with the most links in bold)? Right now it looks more like a "top 4". —EdGl 01:59, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But then we'd be deprived of the pleasure of seeing it gradually whittled down and finished, and instead confronted with the grim reality that there will always be more to do. I like the former better. :) -- Gwern (contribs) 02:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Gwern on this. If we keep bolding more pages, no one will ever work on British. ;) Once all of the bold ones are gone, then we'll start on a new collaboration. --Russ Blau (talk) 02:40, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that's why I asked, because I had a feeling that some people would like to leave it as is and try to completely finish the top ten. =) —EdGl 02:53, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am one of the editors that creates a lot of dab pages. IMO the earlier something is dabbed the better it is. One field where it is good is help avoiding the creation of wrong links. I think what could help the DPL clean-up is to avoid new dirt in the first place. Unfortunatly sometimes I have really hard time with people assuming "their" topic must be the primary topic. This invites editors to create links to a page that maybe one day will be a dab page. Any thoughts? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My feeling is that unless there is really not a dominant usage of a term, the best way is to have the ambiguous term direct to the most common usage, with a dab note at the top. For example, criminal, really should not be a dab page, as most uses (all of the ones I randomly checked) should be directed to crime. -- Jeff3000 15:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

can understand this. That was my thought when I saw "conservative" being a dab page. I think it's absolutly ok to link to a page called conservative. It's an english word. 90% of english speaker will have some idea about this word. This is IMO not so with geographic names. See for example Kalinga (disambiguation). On 19 Aug the province was made primary topic again. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 03:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Problem is, what is the most dominant use for "conservative"? When I was going through I was disambiguating some to American conservatism, others to Canadian conservatism, still others to conservatism or social conservatism. --Bobblehead 20:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IMO it's all the same thing, only with derivatives. Like, what is the most prominent use of green? Green grass, green banana, green cucumber, green frog. Green is green and conservative is conservative - when used as adjective. As noun this might be different. So maybe having it as dab page is ok then. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been plugging away at DPL for some time now, and one thing I've found very annoying is when I click on something in the To Do list with "150 links" listed beside it, it ends up being around 300 links with all of the redirects. I know nothing of the process by which the dump is created, but is there any way to change the way numbers are generated in the initial dump to reflect these redirected links to disambig pages? It would give us numbers closer to the actual amounts. Any help in this area would be appreciated. -Oatmeal batman 08:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages maintenance has more current totals. The main DPL page is static; that is, it lists the counts as of a specific date. The DPM page is updated once a week, so it is usually closer to the truth. There is no practical way that I know of to have the numbers be updated more frequently. --R'n'B (talk) 12:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As some of you may already have noticed, I have adopted a new user name. This is part of an effort to reduce my level of involvement in Wikipedia. I did say reduce, not eliminate.... I expect that I will still be around, and RussBot will continue to run weekly to update Disambiguation pages maintenance. However, I am going to try to spend much less time on this than I have in the recent past, due to other demands on my time, and if anyone is interested in taking over any of the administrative work on this project, I will be more than happy to brief them on what needs to be done. --Russ (talk) 18:16, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]