I'm not convinced. I generally dislike the idea of automatic content of any kind--the content of Wikipedia should be created by human editors, and even disambiguation pages should each be crafted uniquely to suit the needs of the subject, not just stamped out of a template. -- Lee Daniel Crocker &lt;lee(a)piclab.com&gt; <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote: I agree with Lee, but I think that the idea can still be made to work. To expand on Lee's point, if faced simply with a list of alternate articles -- [[X]], [[X (Y1)]], [[X (Y2)]], [[X (Y3)]], etc. -- it may not be clear which article you really want, at least if the various Ys are closely related. A disambiguation page, if necessary, can offer explanations. We usually don't need explanation, and a disambiguation page is thus usually just a list -- but sometimes we do need explanation. My idea is to link people directly to the disambiguation page, which will (if well written) contain exactly what readers need -- human editing of the disambiguation page in the wiki way will see to that. Here's a brief algorithm: Given a page title [[X]] without parentheses or of the form [[X (Y)]]: * Search for a page [[X (disambiguation)]] ** If it exists, add "See also: [[X (disambiguation)]]" (unless "Y" = "disambiguation", of course). ** If it doesn't exist, add "See also: [[X]]" (unless we're on [[X]] itself, of course). We don't need to link to anything else; the disambiguation page (either [[X]] or [[X (disambiguation)]]) will do so, and furthermore will have human-written text explaining the nuances, if necessary. As a bonus, we could add the complete list of parenthesised pages as a "See also" on the disambiguation page itself (as identified by the "unless"es in the previous paragraph). That's not really necessary, but it could be convenient; for example, it would highlight an incomplete disambiguation page. Furthermore, this could solve the problem of formatting disambiguation blocks. Larry, mav, and I have discussed this matter before on [[en:Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation]] (look for "= Jimmy Carter ="). If, as mav suggested on the mailing list just now, we put this "See also" directly underneath the language links, then Larry, mav, and I, at least, should think that it looks good. Human-written disambiguation blocks would be unnecessary; but the human-written material would still be on [[X (disambiguation)]], so Lee (and I) should be happy about that. -- Toby PS: I can read German (standard Hochdeutsch) just fine, but I'll write my own comments in English since that's easier.

--- Thomas Corell &lt;T.Corell(a)t-online.de&gt; wrote: the If we adopt Magnus' feature (which I would support), then it should not become a user option. The whole point of the feature is to do away with hand-written disambiguation blocks, but that is only possible if everyone uses it. Axel __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Axel Boldt wrote: | If we adopt Magnus' feature (which I would support), then it should not | become a user option. The whole point of the feature is to do away with | hand-written disambiguation blocks, but that is only possible if | everyone uses it. | | Axel If everybody must use it and hand-written disambiguation blocks are to be "done away with," then I oppose it. Given a mandatory XOR choice between "See also USS Enterprise (1775), USS Enterprise (1799), USS Enterprise (1831), USS Enterprise (1874), USS Enterprise (CV-6), and USS Enterprise (CVN-65)." and the 1500-character disambiguation block at USS Enterprise -- which not only mentions the Star Trek ships and the Space Shuttle and the ten HMS Enterprises but also describes a schooner and a motorboat that are not worth separate articles AND gives a couple of points of distinction between the each of the eight ships -- then I choose the hand-written, informative page. - -- ~ Sean Barrett | Lozhka diogtia portit bochku miodu. ~ sean(a)epoptic.com |

--- Toby Bartels &lt;toby+wikipedia(a)math.ucr.edu&gt; wrote: Absolutely, and I think that answers the objections of Lee and Sean. Just to clarify, [[Paris]] has a human-written disambiguation block at the top which would become unnecessary; [[Paris (disambiguation)]] is a human-written disambiguation page which would stay the same. Axel __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com

Smurf wrote in part: Yes, let's set Erik's ideas aside for now -- we can trust Erik to bring them up again! ^_^ -- Toby

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote in response to me: I don't think that one should stress much of an *analogy* to language links. It should go no farther than that the place where language links now lie would be a good place (one a separate line) to place these as well. Or [[Foo (disambiguation)]]! ^_^ -- Toby

Magnus Manske wrote: But Yet Another Special Page would be precisely wrong. It would function like a disambiguation page, but one not written by a human and featuring only a list. If we direct people to a special page through "Other 'Foo' pages", then that really should link to [[Foo (disambiguation)]]. As you say: -- Toby

Erik Moeller wrote: Much of this seems compatible to a suggestion that I made several months ago: To include a category box or boxes at the bottom of the edit page. At the time I also spoke in terms of a specific category scheme, which some people felt would be just one more thing to learn before it could be used effectively. Although I would still favour that scheme there is no reason why we can't (at least in the early stages of such an initiative) have multiple overlapping schemes. A which-is-better debate about various possible schemes in the early stages could rapidly lead to accomplishing absolutely nothing. If multiple schemes are allowed, usage and practice will over time determine what stays. Disused schemes will die by atrophy. Whether there are many boxes at the end of an article, or one box with comma delimited categories would make no difference to me. Although I would appreciate an option being available for case sensitive searches. When I discussed this before I raised the possibility of an "XXX" classification for possibly objectionable material. Some responses at the time felt that this was tantamount to applying censorship. From my perspective any censorship would only be applied at the home computer level, and would give a parent the opportunity to block articles with certain codes from being viewed by their children. Providing this sort of opportunity would at least give the public some confidence that we are aware of the problems. Erik's suggestion of categories to detect stubs or to mark an article for deletion could fit in very well. A simple search of category boxes for the word stub could instantly creat a list of these. As the project gets bigger indexing will become more problematical. Brute searches of the data base are not always the most satifactory. A biography of a famous person will most often not include the word "biography" to be used as a search element. Having an [[Index of ...]] or [[List of ...]] article does not guarantee that everything that could go on that list does go on it. In Wiktionary we have seen a proliferation of index pages for multiple languages. I've had doubts from the beginning about whether this approach would be viable in the long run. It can be a lot of additional work to insure that each article is properly indexed and linked, often from places whose existence is completely unknown to the newcomer. One established contributor has taken to setting up a series of Wiktionary articles withe the title format [[Polish word: foo]]. It would be a whole lot simpler if the [[foo]] article could have a PL in it's index box. Eclecticology

Kurt Jansson wrote: To be perfectly clear, I am not saying that the category material should be in the body of an article but in a completely separate box. If that fits in with your idea of a "meta-namespace" that's just fine. The interlanguage links have never bothered me, and I've always thought of them more as a benefit than a problem. However, in saying that I also have to admit that I rarely use them. Using drop down boxes for interlanguage links would likely be just as effective. I would also make a distinction between Interlanguage (IL) boxes, and Index (IX) boxes. IL boxes would involve links between pedias, so they would need to be applied consistently in all the projects. IX boxes would address the requirements of a particular pedia, and its contents could be fashioned to suit the needs of that community. Wiktionary has already developed many unique characteristics, so I am sure that it would use IX boxes quite differently from the other projects. It could use the IL boxes to link to substantive articles arising from a word. I suppose that some people mught interpret my proposal for XXX codings as "ratings", but I also need to be clear that I think that dumbing down an article in order to appeal to the most prudish elements in a society does not have my support. It will still be an individual human's choice to put an XXX coding in an IX box, and I anticipate that there will be edit wars over this kind of thing. Eclecticology