Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Definition of a dab page

You may be interested in the WikiProject discussion at WT:WikiProject Disambiguation#Navigation pages – creating a new page type. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:39, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

This page says:

: Correct: {{tq|{{other uses|Springfield (disambiguation){{!}}Springfield}}}}

However, I can't find where was the consensus to pipe dab links in hatnotes established. Because to me, it seems unnecessary (and frankly, misleading) because "Springfield" and "Springfield (disambiguation)" may have different contents. In such cases, saying that "For other uses, see Springfield." is misleading. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 12:19, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

:See Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages: {{gi|the community has adopted the standard of routing all intentional disambiguation links in mainspace through "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects}}. older ≠ wiser 13:16, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

:It also says Correct: {{tq|{{other uses|Springfield (disambiguation)}}}}

:It depends on the situation, and whether the linked page is the dab page or is a redirect to it. Perhaps "Springfield" is a bad example? Mdewman6 (talk) 08:33, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

:IMHO, it is always correct to use "Foo (disambiguation)" in hatnotes. To use a base name is in all cases misleading, because base names do not imply disambiguation – never, not in any case. Editors should always be very clear and use the "disambiguation" qualifier, visibly, in every hatnote that leads readers to a dab page. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 09:10, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

::For context, the corresponding discussion is User talk:R'n'B#Regarding RussBot's hatnote task. The bot pipes hatnote dablinks when converting a base name to dab name. Unfortunately, the botop says that piping was the only way to get consensus for the bot, but I do not see any positive side to piping, and there probably was not even a discussion before being added as a guideline here. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 11:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

:Previous discussion found no consensus on this issue and both forms are considered valid. I prefer piping, because revealing the dab's actual title minimises the WP:SURPRISE which is an unfortunate side effect of the necessary WP:INTDAB, but there are many respected editors on each side of the fence. Certes (talk) 21:30, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

I was reviewing the text and noticed this [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ADisambiguation&diff=prev&oldid=647148090 2015 revision] which mentions:

: {{tq|"Sofia" is the first name of countless girls and women throughout history, but as a single term, it most commonly refers to the Bulgarian capital.}}

However, there was never a proper discussion here or at Talk:Sofia about this. I've started a thread at Talk:Sofia (disambiguation).

We need to find a much better example for this. --Joy (talk) 08:26, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

The guideline currently says:

: {{tq|This is even more widespread for first names—many highly notable people are called Herb, but typing in Herb gets you an article on plants. Herb (disambiguation) does not even list any people named "Herb", but instead links to Herb (surname) and Herb (given name), where articles on people named "Herb" are listed.}}

However, [https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Herb WikiNav at Herb] for April shows the hatnote to be the #1 outgoing link in the article, at 733 identifiable clicks last month, which is usually a bad sign. In turn [https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Herb_%28disambiguation%29 WikiNav at the disambiguation page] shows given name and surname links to be #1 and #2 identifiable destinations from there, 267 and 68. So it's obvious that we need to add a direct links to at least the given name to that hatnote.

This example needs to be replaced with a much less misguided one. --Joy (talk) 10:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

:@Joy Interestingly, the [https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Herb WikiNav at Herb] for May shows Herb (disambiguation) is only the seventh most common destination after six articles directly related to the culinary plant meaning. In May, only 3.72% of readers navigated to the Herb DAB but in April it was 21.4%. All the other items in the top 10 only varied by 1–3 percentage points in April and May. Was April a fluke? Was some other Herb in the news? Or was May the outlier? Please note, I have no objection to the Lincoln example you have replaced this with. I was just poking around and found this curious. You have a thoughtful way of looking at traffic and clicks data, which I always appreciate in discussions. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 03:17, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

::Hmm, I only made the hatnote change on May 28 [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Herb&diff=prev&oldid=1292724715] so that can't be it.

::Looking at the last six months of data, looks like April was a bit of an abberation:

:::clickstream-enwiki-2024-12.tsv:

:::* Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 110

:::* Herb Herbaceous_plant link 103

:::clickstream-enwiki-2025-01.tsv:

:::* Herb Herbaceous_plant link 162

:::* Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 119

:::clickstream-enwiki-2025-02.tsv:

:::* Herb Herbaceous_plant link 136

:::* Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 99

:::clickstream-enwiki-2025-03.tsv:

:::* Herb Herbaceous_plant link 139

:::* Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 75

:::clickstream-enwiki-2025-04.tsv:

:::* Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 733

:::* Herb Herbaceous_plant link 115

:::clickstream-enwiki-2025-05.tsv:

:::* Herb Herbaceous_plant link 134

:::* Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 109

::Now, this ostensibly weakens the argument, but in reality we just don't know.

::I've previously tried to measure the hatnote click incidence against the actual ambiguity, cf. /Archive 56#on what statistics should look like for hatnotes, primary redirects, primary topics. The outcome was that most commonly the hatnotes would get a tiny fraction of incoming traffic. Yet, after we'd ponder the issue and decided to change navigation, the results afterwards had a huge spread: sometimes the previously presumed primary topics would start getting a tiny fraction of incoming traffic, sometimes modest, and sometimes a large fraction (yet even in the latter cases we'd rarely have consensus to overturn).

::The thing that goes unnoticed here is that a huge majority of the incoming traffic at Herb (and often at any other article) is identifiable as other-empty and other-search (~14k out of ~18k, almost 80%). Because we don't control how readers land at an article, and instead our navigation is pre-processed by search engines, we don't actually see the entire pipeline, entire funnel. At the same time, we can surmise that the search engines necessarily short-circuit around our navigation - they don't want to send the readers to our navigation elements, rather they'll try to send the readers directly to what the reader meant because that's more efficient from their perspective. So we can't know what was the context of any of those clicks, and our statistics don't really translate into "these readers were looking for the word 'herb' and that's why they're here".

::So while April was an exception, we don't know why it was an exception - it could have been an organic spike in interest in 'herb' or 'Herb' search traffic looking for biographies, or it could have been some arbitrary portion of that traffic seeping through, one that usually gets short-circuited better by the algorithms. Does this incident then tell us that the term 'Herb' is more or less ambiguous?

::BTW, it should be noted that Mediawiki technical restrictions prevent us from measuring the difference between 'herb' and 'Herb'. --Joy (talk) 08:52, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

:::Very interesting, thanks for digging in! I always wish we had a better way to assess that incoming traffic. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 10:41, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

::::Sadly, it looks like it's only going to get worse, with the AI crawler bots it's all over the place and inherently different (they may ingest all of our content and then produce a lot of it themselves without much new traffic towards us). [https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2015-07&end=2025-05&pages=Cat|Dog|Chocolate Monthly page views stats for some generic topics] indicate some fairly wild ups and downs, most notably the 2023 crash, which is when ChatGPT got started IIRC. Maybe it's leveling off at this point, but who knows. --Joy (talk) 13:24, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

The WP:PARTIAL section misues the terms "generic" and "specific" – see Toponymy#Toponymic structure (or, for a fuller explanation, George R. Stewart's [https://archive.org/details/namesonglobe0000stew/page/20/mode/1up Names on the Globe]). In the name North Carolina, the generic would be Carolina and the specific would be North. Zacwill (talk) 17:56, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

:Thank you very much, editor {{u|Zacwill}}, for catching that! P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 18:46, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

::{{ping|Paine Ellsworth}} Apologies for reverting you, but having read the section again, I've realized that it isn't actually using "generic" and "specific" in their technical toponomastic senses. A "generic" element in this context is one that appears in hundreds or thousands of names (like North), whereas a "specific" element is one that is markedly less widespread (like Carolina). The section was maybe fine as it was, although it could perhaps do with some copyediting. I'd suggest modifying it to:

::{{tq|Placenames often include a generic component and a more specific one, as in North Carolina (where "North" is generic and "Carolina" is specific). Common generic components are compass points, upper/lower, old/new, big/small, etc. It is entirely proper to list such placenames under the specific component (North Carolina is properly listed at Carolina (disambiguation)), but only exceptionally under the generic component: Kingston upon Hull is properly listed at Hull (disambiguation), but we do not expect to see North Carolina at North (disambiguation), just as we do not expect to see Mississippi River at River (disambiguation).}} Zacwill (talk) 20:31, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

:::I'd have said that "Kingston upon Hull" has two specific components. The set of things that are Kingstons and the set of things that are along the Hull are both quite limited. Contrast "Shoreham-by-Sea", which would certainly not be listed at Sea (disambiguation).

:::That nit about terminology notwithstanding, this seems largely beside the point. Kingston upon Hull should be listed at Hull (disambiguation) because it's commonly called just "Hull". Whether it should be listed at Kingston (disambiguation) is what calls for deeper consideration. Perhaps it should only because "Kingston" is specific, and "Kingston upon Hull" looks like a base name "Kingston" with "upon Hull" as a qualifier, so it would reasonable to expect someone seeing "Kingston upon Hull" to guess that it can be found merely by typing in "Kingston". Largoplazo (talk) 21:58, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Red Stone#Requested move 7 June 2025 is relevant to this guideline. --Joy (talk) 17:03, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

File:Symbol watching blue lashes high contrast.svg You are invited to join the discussion at :Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:DAB (disambiguation). How should the hatnote on this page, Wikipedia:Disambiguation, be formatted? —Bagumba (talk) 10:02, 16 June 2025 (UTC)