On 8/25/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com
I do think surnames are a special case. It seems quite clear to me that chasing up a reference in some academic text, which gives just surname, or initials with surname, is an everyday use of WP as reference. Special pleading, with surname pages just an isolated case, doesn't strike me as the best way to go. It would be much better than having to fight off AfD nominations for listings by surname, though.
There's no doubt whatsoever that it should be easy to find a person simply by their surname. I think people get confused with disambig pages thinking "This person is not simply known by their surname, they're not that famous!" Whereas in fact, we should just be extending the basic principle of disambig pages which is that the most likely, most ambiguous matches appear at the top (articles which are named X (y)), working down towards articles which only incorporate the dab term, and finally, articles which simply contain some material on it ("X is a product made by [[Y Corporation]]").
Surnames should just have their own section, probably towards the bottom. If all you know about someone is their surname, you don't really expect to find them in two seconds. You're happy to spend 30-60 seconds wading through a comprehensive list of all the Smiths to find them. And the disambig format ("John X Smith (1930-1980) was a biologist best known for his "If ants could talk" series...") is absolutely perfect for that situation.
Steve