Wikipedia talk:Suggestions for name disambiguation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Making batches more useful

If I make another batch of these, is there a way I can make it more useful? Are there cut-and-paste text that you could use for each entry? – Quadell (talk) (random) 00:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

For dab pages, drop the article before the description and drop in the birth and death years if the categories are present in the article. Also, If possible, entries should be ordered (not written) by last name, first, middle. That should make it possible it hit all of the folks headed towards the same dab page in a single pass. Burzmali 01:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
For moral support, it might be useful in each page to split up the names into groups of 5 or 10, kind of like what the red link recovery wikiproject or stubsensor does. This way, I would feel like I accomplished something when I do a set of names (and be more encouraged to return and do some more). It feels a bit demoralizing when I finish 10 names in a page and then realize that there's 80 or so more to go. Thanks, Lisatwo 16:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Hallo, Q, You asked me for any thoughts: here goes.
Nice idea from Lisatwo about mini-files - there'd be a sense of achievement in doing a whole file of 10 entries.
I followed the link from the Community Portal, Fixup projects, to this "Name disambiguation", but I'm a bit disappointed to find that it's all based around U.S. politicians, in whom I don't take a lot of interest! Isn't there scope for a global biographical-article disambiguation project?
In doing the dabs I've done, I've done a "Search" on the forename + surname to find other folk who also need to be dabbed, and this has made it feel more worthwhile, so you might like to suggest that to editors who want to join in.
A handy shortcut to WP:hatnote might be useful, as a reminder of the various variations which can be used. Also to WP:MOSDAB for content and layout of dab pages, as a reminder, and a reminder about "hndis".
I don't actually know what MOS or anything else specifies for
(a) how to format an entry on the "Joe Bloggs" dab page for "Fred Smith", also known as "Joe Bloggs", if the article name is "Fred Smith", or
(b) the approved order for names on a dab page where there is "Joe Bloggs (something", "Joe Bloggs (other thing)", "Joe A. Bloggs (born 1980)", "Joe Z. Bloggs (born 1800)" -etc ie relative importance of initials/middle names, qualifying term in brackets, dates. (WP:MOSDAB says "In most cases, place the items in order of usage, with the most-used meanings appearing at the top and less common meanings below", but we don't usually know much about the meanings to assess that.)
I've improvised, possibly inconsistently, on the grounds that a nonstandard dab page is still more useful than a non-existent one! But if there are detailed guidelines on those issues, a link or a copy of them on the page would be helpful!
But perhaps I'm just displaying my ignorance here - and the project page does say "requires the attention of experienced editors"! PamD (talk) 18:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, all! I will definitely take these into consideration when I serve up the next batch. I will sort by last name, include birth and death years where available, and break the list into manageable sublists. I'll also include a link to search on the name with the click of a mouse. Also, the next batch will not be all U.S. politicians -- there will be artists, authors, scientists, etc., along with some politicians too.

As for your questions, Pam, they're not entirely worked out. For (a), I would say:

  • Fred Smith (bassoonist) (1919 - 1932), called "Joe Bloggs" by his landlord

It's never a good idea to pipe dablinks though, such as [[Fred Smith (bassoonist)|Joe Bloggs]]. For (b), I really don't know. I tend to sort by birth year, when we know the birth years, except in obvious cases where one person is much more notable. I hope this helps! – Quadell (talk) (random) 18:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The hints for how to dab doesn't always follow the guidelines by WP:MOSDAB#People. E.g., it says to not use "a", "an", or "the" before people's occupations. I also got suggestions from a couple of editors. Please see these notes they left on my talk page: Dablinks and Unneccessasry dab links. --tess (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Weirdness of some entries

For example:

  1. Lawton Chiles - U.S. Senator from Florida
  • Lawton Mainor Chiles redirects to Lawton Chiles, which doesn't mention this person.
  • Consider changing the rd to a dab, and adding {{otherpeople2|Lawton Mainor Chiles}} to both pages.
  • If they're about the same person, use {{merge|Lawton Chiles}} and {{merge|Lawton Chiles}}

[edit] Tichborne disambiguation page needed

There is a need for a disambiguation page for Tichborne This is listed as a town in England, however there is also a town in New South Wales, Australia, with that name. There is a surname Tichborne. A number of notable historical Tichbornes are mentioned elsewhere in Wikipedia, and many descendants living all over the world have that name.

Can someone help? I'm sorry that I don't have the skills to create a disambiguation page.

Cheers, Atichborne 00:46, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. The Tichborne Case and Tichborne Dole are also quite interesting. – Quadell (talk) (random) 22:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] dabs needed for names with distinguishers in brackets - "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)"

Would it be possible to produce a listing of articles named "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)" which are not linked, either directly or via a dab page, from the article at "Firstname Lastname"?

There are three situations which would be OK:

  1. article at "Firstname Lastname" links to "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)", usually in a hatnote
  2. article at "Firstname Lastname" links to "Firstname Lastname (disambiguation)", which includes "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)"
  3. article at "Firstname Lastname" is itself a dab page which includes "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)"

But in rummaging around looking for extra people to include in dab pages along with the ones named in this project, I've several times found people with article title "Firstname Lastname (distinguisher)" who aren't included in the appropriate dab pages or links. Some of our fellow-editors out there don't seem to have worked out how it all works. Sometimes two people have been given distinguishers nicely, but there's no page at the main name: yes, all the links from existing pages have been tidied to point to the right one of the two, but a reader looking for the name (or an editor about to create a new page for one of them!), will just type the name and find nothing. OK, so the "search" will often throw up the relevant answers, but it's not pretty.

So, there's a suggestion to add another tranche of work for this tidying-up project. I think it's just as important as clearing up all these people with middle initials, many of whom seem to be automatically generated from databases of U.S. office-holders. The pages with (distinguishers) have all been handcrafted (as far as I know!) - someone out there is interested enough to create a page for that individual and distinguish him or her from another similarly-named person!

This could perhaps also usefully extend to any articles with distinguishers in brackets - they should presumably all be linked from the undistinguished part of the title, in one of three ways listed above. I've done a bit recently with the various "Grand theatre" and "Grand hotel" entries - all good fun, lots to sort out - but there must be vast numbers of topics out there where the dab page doesn't include all the various "(novel)", "(Brighton)" or other bracketed versions of a title. Plenty to go on. PamD (talk) 13:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

PS I've just now found an entry in the lists which is indeed of this type (Peter Davison (poet)) - but I'm pretty sure I haven't seen one before! Are they such a tiny minority? I'd welcome a chance to work on them as a priority, if it was easy to split them off into a separate list in future. PamD (talk) 15:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What next?

We've finished Batch 2! Well done, all of us. PamD (talk) 20:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation needed: Wali/Wāli

(not sure if this is the right place, but you can tell me where to go if not)

Wali and Wāli appear to need disambiguation. The Wali (= "friend") article has a disambig link to Wāli (= "governor"), but not vice versa, and the majority of the uses I find in a search that refer to a governor and should therefor link to Wāli are actually linked to Wali. Agricolae (talk) 23:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I've copied this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. --Tesscass (talk) 18:56, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Restarting this project?

Those who worked here previously may be interested in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Finding lists of surnames and User:Eugene van der Pijll/surnames, which is a start along those lines. Carcharoth (talk) 10:16, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Note that User:Eugene van der Pijll/surnames only covers surnames starting with an "A" in a small part of the database. Parsing the entire Wikipedia takes a lot of time. I will upload a new version of that page in a few weeks. This is what I expect to be able to do:
  • Suggest entire disambiguation pages for surnames that do not have them
  • Suggest additional links for existing disambiguation pages
  • Create redirects from "Surname" to "Firstname Surname" when there is just one individual with that name
I will also take a look at other (non-name) disambiguation pages.
Suggestions for additional tasks would be welcome. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 12:17, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Creating the redirects when only one article exists is not always the best thing to do. Sometimes it is best for a human to search for other people with that surname, see how many redlinks exist in Wikipedia, and create a dab page with some redlinks instead. Difficult thing to judge, and not really something a bot can do. It should, though, create a list of possible redirects that might need creating (there will likely be a lot though). Unfortunately, all it takes is one enthusiastic person to redirect all the entries on that list. You might also be interested in the transclusion list of {{surname}}. We have between 5000 and 10,000 disambiguation pages for surnames (or with tagged sections on surnames). I've raised the hatnote for surname disambiguation issue at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Surname disambiguation and partial title matches. Carcharoth (talk) 13:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Interestingly, though you talk about "dab pages for surnames", the folk over at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Surname seem quite clear that {{surname}} pages are not dab pages! I went over there to discuss the fact that Renyi had a surname tag but had been picked up and given a {{stub}} tag by AlaiBot as it didn't have a dab category assigned. More confusion.
I think what is most important, for personal names and other article titles, is that we make sure that every article name "xxx (yyy)" is linked, either by hatnote or dab page, from "xxx", whether "xxx (yyy)" is "Joe Bloggs (actor)" or "Pudsey (UK Parliament constituency)" or whatever. Also include "Joe Bloggs junior", "Joe Bloggs III", etc, so that anyone searching for the article who inputs "xxx" will find it. That's to help readers find WP articles, and to reduce duplication by ensuring that the editor about to create a new page can easily find the one which already exists with a bracketed disambiguator they hadn't thought of. Personally I think there should also be a link back from "xxx (yyy)" to "xxx", so that the person whose Google search has led them to the wrong wikipedia article (for a different sense of "xxx") can easily find the other options, but this view is against current policy!
A second priority would be, for personal names, to make sure that every name of the form "xxx yyy zzz" is linked from "xxx zzz",where "yyy" is middle name(s) and/or initial(s). (ie if you search for "Joe Bloggs" you get alerted to the existence of "Joe Marmaduke Bloggs" too).
Beyond that comes linking from surnames to full names. Wouldn't it be great if Wikipedia could produce a listing like Category:Living people, for all people (and with an index system more refined than the two letters of that listing)? Should be a doddle, technically: if a page has a "birth" or "death" category, or a category identified as within the "people" hierarchy, then give it a category of "people". Then produce that index, sorted by its sort key if it has one. Then provide a facility like {{lookfrom}} to give a single-click access to that listing, so that as one component of a dab page you can include a link to "people with the surname xxx". It might produce the occasional quirk, but would provide a really useful facility for people looking for someone whose surname they know (eg inventor, author, etc), where the surname is a common word so that searching on it doesn't work well (eg "Banks"). PamD (talk) 13:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Re the last point, I agree. A long time ago (it seems) I set up User:Carcharoth/List of living people compact index as an example. I would love it if that could be done with three letters (would be a bit large) and for all people. There are over 500,000 articles on people on Wikipedia now. Bringing order to all those articles is a mammoth task. Partly, you have to trust that eventually things will settle down and be consistent and ordered. Large parts are already, but aiming for complete order sometimes seems a bit ambitious! Carcharoth (talk) 14:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
As a real example, consider Ernest Smith. Yes, he's got a hatnote pointing to Tiger Smith, but what about Ernest Smith (1869), Ernest Smith (1888) and Ernest A. Smith, none of whom are linked. If a Bot could produce a listing of all "Ernest Smith (xxx)" and "Ernest xxx Smith" articles, then a human (yes, surely WikiGnomes are human!) could work away at producing a useful dab page to link them all together, with an {{otheruses}} hatnote on the gentleman who's the primary usage. PamD (talk) 14:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)