Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:27, 23 July 2005

Tools

Post proposed tools for discussion here.

• There are many thousands of disambiguation pages. They're all in various states of conformance to the Manual of Style, and they all see different amounts of traffic. Thus, we need a way to:
  • Systematize, so that we know which disambigs need work and which are done.
  • Prioritize, so that we can work on the most oft-used pages first, and leave out-of-the-way ones until later.

--Smack (talk) 03:18, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Post comments here

• Fixing links to disambigs is mind-numbing. In my experience, after half an hour of fixing links, my head starts to swim and I have to sit and vegetate for a while. If I interrupt my progress periodically to fix pages that obviously have other problems, I can fix about forty pages in that time. To me, that's not satisfactory. It would be nice to have a bot, similar to the one used for the Wiki Syntax project. This bot would do three things:
  1. Identify every page that links to a disambig page (using Category:Disambiguation and Special:Whatlinkshere)
  2. Search through each of these pages for every link to a disambig
  3. Generate a link to an edit window in which every one of these links has been suitably marked, maybe like this: ].

--Smack (talk) 03:18, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Post comments here

Scope addition suggested

3. addition of usage notes to disambiguation discussion pages

Several of the dab templates for use in the main article space do not have clear usage guidelines/suggestions associated with them. This could be rectified.

4. monitoring of dab-template repertoire

The template I listed on the main page which does not appear in the Template Messages: General listing is {{TLAdisambig}}, which I ran across accidentally about a month ago. This WikiProject could take stewardship of the representation of disambiguation-related templates in the Template Messages page set and actively contribute to discussions regarding deletion and creation of templates in this space.

Thoughts?

Courtland 04:36, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

3. That's a worthy task, but from what I know about wiki convention, it's something that should just get straightened out on a talk page somewhere. That said, we can create a dedicated talk page for it here, but the title would probably be a little frightening (something like Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Disambiguation/templates).

4. Also a worthy task, since disambig-related templates are among the most important, but I'm not sure that it belongs here. The two tasks that this project has at present are thrown together a bit haphazardly, but they're similar at least because they're both clear-cut and require a lot of work. This one is nebulous and requires comparatively less work. IMHO, I think that could be a separate project, but I really don't know. --Smack (talk) 01:58, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed .. it's a fuzzy activity, more a matter of being a good wikicitizen than anything else (the creator of the template should place it on the index page in general, I think). Courtland 03:07, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Page titling

Another possible expansion of scope: correcting page titling. Some dab pages are named Glop (disambiguation) but have Glop as a redirect, or vice versa. This might be too big a can of worms, though.

And then there's the fact that Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus are primary topic pages but Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto are dab pages. (Mercury is a special case because of the element.) I put Venus on Requested Moves to move it to "Venus (planet)" (and turn Venus into a dab) and that idea got soundly trounced, so probably Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto should become planet pages.

Also, some pages titled Glop (1989 movie) have a dablink to Glop (disambiguation) even though it's not necessary.

I'm thrilled that somebody started this project, however, and am eager to dig in! —Wahoofive (talk) 07:33, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm mildly in favor of adding this to our list of tasks.

Why is that form of titling a big can of worms? User:Jnc promoted it here, and I've been using it semi-regularly.

Second, I'm confused by the Venus thing. Venus has around 1000 links, and Venus (mythology) has around 175. Some of the reasons cited on the relevant talk page are against policy. --Smack (talk) 01:58, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

What I was referring to regarding the planets is the inconsistency; some planets have a dab page at the primary title while others go directly to the planet. The decision on Venus is already made. —Wahoofive (talk) 03:46, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

_ _ It is a mistake to assume such inconsistency is a problem, just bcz they are all planets. Saturn and Mercury are both cars; should we ensure that the subject matters of Saturn and Mercury are consistent with other cars or with other planets? The attempt to discover all the types of things that should "own" the corresponding un-qualified titles will inevitably result in contradictions because there is no logic to which types (planets, mythological figures, cars, & many more) can "overlap" by sharing a name; i am convinced the only feasible approach to these cases is title by title, disregarding all supposed precedents in the form of things of the same kind.

_ _ In fact, our whole concept of dabs rests on the fact looking a topic up with an unqualified name works whether or not that title is a dab, an article with at Top-of-Page dab leading directly or via a dab to the sense you want, or an article on the sense you want. How would inconsistency among planets disrupt that?

_ _ Don't get hung up wanting order for its own sake, where the information we are representing is just not that orderly.
--Jerzy·t 08:25, 2005 July 21 (UTC)

indicating agreement with User:Jerzy on points made Courtland 12:35, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. --Smack (talk) 01:27, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Suggested way for individuals to start

A good start to work out personal processes for page updates related to this WikiProject might be for each participant to go through their own disambiguation page-related contributions and work on those first. However, looking through one's contributions list is tedious; is there a way the database can be interrogated directly to identify the set of pages I'm referring to here? Courtland 03:15, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Maintenance

I was glad to see this project get going, because I've been quietly been working on fixing up dab pages for a while. One of the things that's been really frustrating to me is to put in a lot of time fixing up a real mess of a page, only to have somebody come along the next day and start undoing all the work you did. I think we need some standardized edit tag to point people to an explanation of what this project is all about; hopefully that will both disuade un-fixer-uppers, and help enlist new people into the project. RoySmith 12:50, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

How about

Disambiguation cleanup -- you can help!

—Wahoofive (talk) 22:56, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Works for me. RoySmith 23:39, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest about being careful about taking ownership of the pages that we as a group edit. The notion that changes to a page might be made after we've ourselves made changes is part of the "Misplaced Pages experience", being both a strength and a weakness. The label "un-fixer-upper" is a moniker that is close to being inconsistent with the Misplaced Pages concept of "assume good faith" and puts changing pages nearly on par with vandalism.

• If the creation of this maintenance-indicator template takes place, I would suggest it be put in the talk space and not in the article space.
• Further, I would suggest that variation in format/style within the guidelines that are codified is both acceptable and to be encouraged. This is the way toward definition of better guidelines, both new definition and dropping superfluous or unhelpful guidelines. (this is a general statement and not restricted to the present discussion)
• If we truly believe there are certain disambiguation pages that should not be changed, then we should consider the step of protecting them from edits. I can envision some such pages where minor changes can have major POV impact or there has been an edit war for primacy of a term.

Regards, Courtland 12:44, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that I owned the page, or that I minded anybody else editing it. But, the Manual of Style gives specific, objective guidance (and, yes, allows people to break the rules if appropriate) on the right way to do it. If we can find a way to make it obvious to future editors of the page that the MoS exists, and encourage them to read it, that would be a good thing. RoySmith 14:49, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

The way I indicate a MoS wholesale change (-wiki, complete re-layout, whatever) is by using

Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)

as the edit summary. Most explicit. Josh Parris ✉ 22:55, 22 July 2005 (UTC)