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WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is not for historical events[edit]

The rules of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC work when there are multiple topics in different domains that have the same name, and one is clearly the primary. For example, George Washington and George Washington (book). People searching for "George Washington" are looking for the person, not the book with that title, and the person is by far the primary, so it makes sense to call the article "George Washington" and not "George Washington (person)."

This rule does not work well, however, for historical events with the same name. For example, "Gaza War" -- there are like four or five of them. Even if one is the primary, they should all have a date, or readers will be confused. Typically, for historical events with the same name, readers are going to know that and they'll be looking for one with a specific date. I recently wrote a very long vote about this at Israel-Hamas war, where the year disambiguator was recently dropped. Srnec referenced my vote in another discussion at Talk:Siege of Baghdad, where the date disambiguator was also just dropped.

This is a hole in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It probably applies to other areas besides historical events with the same name. For example, if there is an album and a song with the same name, they should probably always be disambiguated, even if one is primary. If there is a book and a movie with the same name. Nobody is likely to confuse the book George Washington with the person, but people are likely to confuse a book with a movie of the same name, or multiple historical events with the same name that took place at different times (as another example, Sack of Rome).

I think PRIMARYTOPIC should be changed to account for "cross-domain" (for lack of a better term) primary topics (don't disambiguate), v. "within-domain" primary topics (disambiguate). Levivich (talk) 17:13, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good work is currently going on at Wikipedia:Partially disambiguated page names analysing cases such as Thriller (album) which share their titles with other albums, etc. These are a different species from Gaza War etc. but are closely related. Certes (talk) 18:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, closely related. Same principle at play at Talk:30 (album)/Archive 1#Requested move 22 December 2023, for example. Levivich (talk) 18:30, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
However, I think the format of the title makes a difference. Readers seeing a title Foo (bar) may well assume that there are other things called Foo, but none of them is a bar, because a qualifier normally disambiguates completely. That's not the case for a natural title such as Great War or Gulf War. I'm not convinced that we should apply a higher standard of primality here just because the alternative meanings are also wars. Certes (talk) 19:46, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think PRIMARYTOPIC still applies to historical events, but perhaps with the proviso (which may apply to other situations as well) that we should be wary of declaring one topic to be the primary one based on which one happens to be current. Is the current war in Gaza THE Gaza War? Perhaps we shouldn't find that to be the case until a few years after, when, in retrospect, it may still be referred to as THE Gaza War, or maybe it will be seen as just one Gaza war among several. Largoplazo (talk) 20:55, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would think that a title like Gaza War should resolve to an article with a title like, List of wars in Gaza, or for something more in depth, History of military conflicts in Gaza. BD2412 T 20:57, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it doesn't, unless you want to create such a page. One would have to add in the bunch at Battle of Gaza, going back to 312 BC. But the disam page at Gaza War is effectively the same. What would be the point of ramming wars at totally different periods together? We don't have Wars involving the English Channel etc. Johnbod (talk) 21:32, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well then, History of post-World War II military conflicts in Gaza. BD2412 T 23:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
re Largoplazo, yes, I think the ongoing discussions as to WHAT to call the article indicates there is a deep question as to whether it is the primary topic -- at least in terms of long-term significance. It is nearly always the case that very high-profile current events will at least temporarily be the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 21:40, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich You say For example, if there is an album and a song with the same name, they should probably always be disambiguated, even if one is primary. If there is a book and a movie with the same name. You seem to be saying that everyone who wants either the book The Outrun or the film The Outrun (film) should land instead on a dab page, to then choose between them, the book being at The Outrun (book), so that everyone has one more click to make, rather than the current position where those who want the book get there immediately, those who want the film see a nice helpful hatnote and make one more click. I don't think your proposal benefits the reader. PamD 23:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@PamD: That's not what I'm saying, and it's not what I wrote. I didn't write anything about dab pages. I'm talking about article titles. In your example--I'm not familiar with Outrun but assuming the book is primary and not the film--I'd make The Outrun a redirect to The Outrun (book), and if a dab page is needed, have it at The Outrun (disambiguation). I certainly agree "one more click" would not be an improvement. But adding "book" to the title of The Outrun would be an improvement, IMO. Levivich (talk) 02:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In that case it appears that the objection here is to the idea of what is normally called "unnecessary disambiguation" (a corollary of WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT or, in the case of disambiguation pages, WP:MALPLACED), rather than to the rules about primary topics. I agree with the other comments above that historical events are fully covered under the current rules under the ideas of frequency of usage and historical significance. Dekimasuよ! 04:34, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's the objection here because I don't understand what it means. But I would agree that in some cases (like years of some historical events), keeping the disambiguator in the name of the primary topic can be helpful even if not necessary, and so the dab for a primary should not always be removed. Or something like that. Which could be summed up as "unnecessary disambiguators may still be helpful." PTOPIC doesn't say otherwise AFAICS, but I think it'd be improved by stating this explicitly, because even though PTOPIC doesn't require the removal of a dab, in practice it seems like many editors apply it as if it does, e.g. the disucssion is, "it's a PTOPIC, therefore no dab, end of story." Levivich (talk) 05:02, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that would presumably conflict with WP:CONCISE (and WP:OVERPRECISION, cf. the entry on Energy there) once it has been determined that there is a primary topic, so perhaps then the objection is to the criteria at WP:AT. Dekimasuよ! 05:13, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Why are you guessing what my objection is? I'm trying to tell you what my "objection" is, which is not an objection, it's an idea for improving this page.)
Maybe it'll help if I give another example besides the two above about events. A classic example is Thriller (album) and Thriller (song). The reason those are dab'd is because there's no consensus that either are primary. But irrespective of that, I find it very helpful that those two articles have "(album)" and "(song)" in the title, because it tells me right away whether I'm reading the article about the album, or about the song.

Harry Potter, the novel series, is the clear primary. But when I look at that article, I wish it would have "(book series)" or something in the title so I knew I was reading the article about the book series and not Harry Potter (film series), Harry Potter (TV series), or Harry Potter (character). Those other three titles have dabs so I don't have the confusion, but the primary one doesn't.

The primary article does say, right at the top, "This article is about the novel series," which is what clears up that confusion. But it'd be even easier if it said it in the title, particularly in lists of article titles. E.g., if you type "Harry Potter" into the search form, the short desc does help you find the one about the book series, but still I think it'd be easier if it was just called "Harry Potter (book series)" (or "novel series" or "literature series," both phrases are used elsewhere).

Aside from current events and historical events, these are two other examples of where I'd find unnecessary dabs useful, and I wish PTOPIC would say that it's ok to keep helpful but unnecessary dabs (subject of course to consensus that they're helpful for any a particular article). Levivich (talk) 05:22, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Levivich Are you saying that as soon as an article was written for the film,The Outrun, the article on the book (at the undisambiguated title) should have been moved to the disambiguated title? PamD 06:44, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, not as soon as and not necessarily ever. I'm saying this page should tell editors they can decide to do that (have a dab in a primary title) if they think it's helpful. But not automatically or in every case. (I'm not familiar enough with that particular work to know if it's 'helpful' in that case.) Levivich (talk) 06:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's helpful if and only if the film is almost as likely as the book to be the topic a reader is seeking when they look for "The Outrun". That's already covered by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I'm a big fan of dabs, but by putting one at the base name here we'd be adding one more step for readers seeking the book without shortening the path for the (presumably much smaller) number of readers seeking the film. Certes (talk) 10:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In what way does adding a dab to a primary add one more step for readers? Levivich (talk) 17:05, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm comparing two options for handling a case which I think matches what we're talking about, specifically where we have two Foo Wars in 1234 and 1987, of which 1987 is the more notable and passes WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Current practice is to call the 1987 article Foo War with a hatnote to Foo War (1234). What I think you are suggesting is to move the PT to Foo War (1987) and write a dab called Foo War. This change has little effect on the minority of readers interested in the 1234 war, who now click on a dab entry rather than a hatnote. However, it hampers the majority who seek the 1987 war, who now have to click on a dab entry rather than being presented with their desired topic immediately. If I've misunderstood, please explain how my statement differs from your proposal. Certes (talk) 17:37, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what I'm suggesting. That's what Pam thought I was suggesting, too, and I cleared that up with Pam just above.
"write a dab called Foo War" is not anything I said in my OP I don't get why people think this is something I'm suggesting :-P
Foo War (1987) would be the name of the article, Foo War can be a redirect to Foo War (1987), not a dab page, and no extra click. If a dab page were needed, it would be at Foo War (disambiguation). (This is all assuming Foo War (1987) is the primary.)
And to repeat myself, all I'm suggesting is that PTOPIC should mention that it's OK for editors to come to consensus to do this if they think it's worth doing on a particular article. Not that this should be done automatically or in every case. Nor do I think the primary topic should be turned into a dab, or that any extra clicks should be created at all. Nor do I object to or want to repeal any other part of any policy. I'm just saying ... and all I'm saying ... is we should acknowledge that sometimes it makes sense to have a dab in the title of a primary topic (and I am suggesting nothing more). Levivich (talk) 17:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What you are describing is pre-disambiguating the article titles, which in several earlier discussions has usually been soundly rejected. Of course, consensus can change, but if you are only looking for singular exceptions, WP:IAR can always apply on a case-by-case basis provided there is a good reason for ingnoring the rule(s) in any particular case. There is no reason to update this guideline to address rare exceptions. older ≠ wiser 18:16, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm learning a lot of new terms like "unnecessary disambiguation" and "pre-disambiguation" :-) Yeah, this can be done now without any changes to any policies or guidelines. I don't think it's even WP:IAR because there is no rule against it. Neither WP:DAB nor WP:AT nor anything else I'm aware of prohibits dabs on primaries, or says all primaries must have dabs removed. So I don't really see it as an "exception" to any rule. But it is certainly rare. The reason to update this guideline would be so editors know it's an option. Levivich (talk) 19:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich So your intended outcome is this, in some cases:
  • The article at title "ABC" is agreed to be the primary topic but you believe it would help the reader to put it at title "ABC (onething)"
  • There would be a redirect from "ABC" to "ABC (onething)"
  • At "ABC (onething)" there would be a hatnote directing readers to "ABC (otherthing)" (or perhaps to "ABC (disambiguation)".
A problem is that any editor familiar with disambiguation will see this, spot an apparent problem, and move "ABC (onething)" to "ABC" because it's the primary topic. Or they will move the disambiguation page to "ABC" because all the titles have been disambiguated, so it looks as if someone has already decided that none of them is the primary topic. Giving an article a disambiguated title is, in most cases, an indication of the fact that the person naming it does not think it is the primary topic.
So if you IAR to give the primary topic a disambiguated title, you need a lot of annotation (hidden comment plus talkpage note, perhaps?) to explain your reasoning to the helpful editor who comes across the article and tries to tidy things up according to usual practice, so that "corrections" don't get made and reverted without further discussion, wasting editors' time.
Is all this really needed, given that the short description and the lead sentence will both make quite clear which war, or which format of the creative work, the article is about? PamD 19:40, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@PamD: So your intended outcome is this... Yes, exactly.
A problem is that any editor familiar with disambiguation will see this, spot an apparent problem, and move... Yes, unless we add a sentence to WP:PTOPIC that says "it's OK for a PTOPIC to have a dab if editors decide so by consensus" or "dabs on primary titles are not prohibited" or some kind of words to that effect.
I agree that IARing is difficult for the reasons you point out. This is exactly why I think PTOPIC should be explicit in saying "this is OK to do sometimes" or "there is no rule prohibiting this" or some kind of words to that effect (and I mean like something short, one sentence). Levivich (talk) 19:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the clarification. Continuing the example above, I think we agree that typing Foo War should lead the reader to the article on the 1987 war, and it's perfectly reasonable for Foo War (1987) to lead there too. So, the question is whether we title the article Foo War and have Foo War (1987) redirect there, or vice versa. We normally do the former per WP:CONCISE. There are systematic exceptions such as US places (Sacramento redirects to Sacramento, California) but they're generally prescribed by WP:COMMONNAME. Is there a convention amongst historians to refer to wars with their years even when the unadorned title would obviously mean that year's war? Certes (talk) 19:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate everyone taking the time to engage in this discussion. I don't think there is such a convention among historians for wars generally. I don't believe there is any kind of categorical rule. But I do think there are some specific instances where historians do commonly include the year of an event even if the event is what we'd call "primary," eg 1066 Battle of Hastings and 410 Sack of Rome. I suppose one might say that for any historical event, adding the year to the title would help orient the reader, but I'm still not in favor of categorical rules. Which is to say, even if historians had such a convention, I'm not sure Wikipedia should necessarily follow it (common name, after all, is not the be-all and end-all of article titling), but I think we should maintain flexibility on the issue (i.e., not automatically remove all dabs from all primary titles). Levivich (talk) 20:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've always just called it the Battle of Hastings, but then I'm not aware of any other notable conflicts there. "Battle of Hastings, 1066" rolls off the tongue but I think that's a sentence fragment rather than a title. I agree with the current title of Sack of Rome (410), because it doesn't seem primary over the other sackings. Certes (talk) 20:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of the 8 Sack of Rome events listed, Sack of Rome (1527) is pretty clearly primary, at least for art historians. Johnbod (talk) 01:44, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

temporarily vacating WP:MALPLACED for one title?[edit]

We had a move request last year for "Rachel" that relates to ambiguity. In Talk:Rachel#followup to move discussion, I analyzed the statistics further and came to the conclusion that it would be worthwhile to change to a primary redirect in order to be able to get better measurements. However, I don't know that there's a good alternate title that doesn't involve parenthetical disambiguation, so moving the article about the biblical figure would necessarily run afoul of WP:MALPLACED, and it would have to stay there for over a month (ideally over three, to get a better sample). Nevertheless, the two proposals discussed so far, Rachel (Old Testament) (2010) and Rachel (biblical figure) (2023) both seem reasonably unlikely to astonish many readers during the experiment.

Does anyone see a big problem with running this kind of an experiment? Should the consensus for it be examined locally at Talk:Rachel, with a WP:RFC, and/or a discussion here or some other global forum? --Joy (talk) 09:27, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Switching to an -ing for in the middle of a disambiguation list[edit]

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see WT:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages#Switching to an -ing for in the middle of a disambiguation list.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:24, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A specific question on disambiguation[edit]

I recently promoted Therapy Dogs (2022 film) from AfC to mainspace. I would like to disambiguate Therapy Dogs (currently a redirect to Therapy dog) but I am not sure if the best action would be to create a disambiguation page at Therapy Dogs, linking the film and the dog, or a hatnote at Therapy dog. I tried to follow the guideline but I'm not sure how to interpret it in this case. Broc (talk) 11:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There seems no reason for the capitalised plural to redirect to Therapy dog, and none was offered when the redirect was created, nor any Rcat added to explain it, so I would suggest a Move Request to move the film to Therapy Dogs, with hatnotes from film to dog and v.v. PamD 14:57, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the policy WP:SMALLDETAILS seems relevant for considering "Therapy Dogs" being the film. —Bagumba (talk) 17:09, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

on what statistics should look like for hatnotes, primary redirects, primary topics[edit]

Here's some more bits of info I've gathered after someone asked at Talk:Tupelo:

I think I'll have to keep updating this summary here to build up a knowledge base. --Joy (talk) 15:19, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

--Joy (talk) 14:44, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't to say that all of these moves were truly warranted or that there aren't a plethora of individual factors at play. But even with this spread of outcomes, there's something distinctly off with our current near-consensus interpretation of how stats should look like for primary topics by usage. This also means little for considerations of long-term significance. --Joy (talk) 15:30, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your numbers for % of "interest" are rather misleading, as they don't mention that in many cases, the largest percentage by far was "no traffic at all", i.e. no clickthrough, for whatever reason (visits not by humans? wanted target not available? info on disambig page sufficient?). E.g. for Hamme, you note "after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~16% interest", which was more than 4 times as much as the other topics "combined". Fram (talk) 14:51, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've mentioned this several times. I agree it is misleading to simply assume that every incoming view counts for something meaningful. Truth is that there is no way for us to know what if anything those 'dead-end' incoming page views signify. older ≠ wiser 15:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"DAB page" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

The redirect DAB page has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 March 2 § DAB page until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 16:06, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Content assessment#Request for comment[edit]

In the discussion linked above, we have something of a weak consensus to stop strictly sequestering disambiguation from set indices in all cases. Does anyone see any reason not to draft changes to this guideline to incorporate some of these possibilities? --Joy (talk) 15:44, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

a change in page views between primary topic and primary redirect[edit]

A few years ago, I had noticed Sumber, Cirebon was at "Sumber" and moved it away, but kept a primary redirect because it wasn't clear if there was not a primary topic. Now that I had a look at the graph of monthly page views it looks like that change significantly altered the overall traffic at "Sumber" - it went from an average of >200 a month to <20 a month.

This difference of an order of magnitude seems to be another confirmation for how our choices about navigation influence traffic in unforeseen ways - it looks like if we put something in a presumed primary topic position, the search engines drive traffic there way more than they do otherwise, even with a primary redirect in place. This sort of puts a significant dent in our logic of figuring out primary topic by usage - once we have a presumed primary topic, we can't really trust our statistics about that to tell a straightforward story.

Now, this property of the system could have both positive and negative effects - maybe we should think of this in terms of: by choosing to put a topic in the primary topic position, we can intentionally drive traffic to it and more effectively contribute to the spreading of knowledge. At the same time, this indicates a need to have more substantive long-term significance discussions, because we if we have a chance to influence reader traffic like this, we want to make sure we do it for the right topics, as opposed to doing it arbitrarily and/or effectively hiding ambiguity. --Joy (talk) 10:16, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just found another case of this, just in the other direction: Talk:Bosut (disambiguation)#primary topic. --Joy (talk) 10:28, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At Talk:Bold#post-move, we see a change from primary redirect to disambiguation page leading to significantly more traffic at the latter. --Joy (talk) 21:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Fifth Avenue Hotel[edit]

What would be the best way to name this article, given that we have Fifth Avenue Hotel for a different (former) hotel on the same avenue? I don't think using the word "The" is the correct way — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Options include using the date it opened, i.e. The Fifth Avenue Hotel (opened 2023) or the street it is on, i.e. The Fifth Avenue Hotel (28th Street) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:33, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As long as the correct title is The Fifth Avenue Hotel in accordance with WP:THE, then WP:SMALLDIFFS kicks in, and we needn't add anything further to the title. All we need is hatnotes on each article pointing to the other. Station1 (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RDAB speedy criteria[edit]

See Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#RFC new R5 for a proposal to make RDAB errors a speedy criteria. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:09, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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