[WikiEN-l] Water chestnuts

[Andrew Gray]

On 22/01/07, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> Could somebody please explain why [[Water chestnut]] is a disambiguation
> page (with, in my opinion, neither splitting article really doing a good job
> of describing the tuber that most English-speaking people are familiar with
> from either a grocery store can or their local Chinese restaurant), while
> [[Corn]] (which redirects to [[Maize]]) is a really nice article that talks
> about the corn we all know and love, while having a convenient,
> unobtrusive "disambig" flag at the top?
>
> Doesn't the water chestnut deserve a little better than this confusing
> disambiguation page?  It's a pretty common food.  Does the Wikipedia
> community really expect users to find their way specifically to [[Eleocharis
> dulcis]] to get a half-decent write-up on the water chestnuts that many of
> their recipes call for?

I think we expect them to be intelligent enough to open [[water
chestnut]] and click on the appropriate link. (I would have no idea
which one it is, but then I don't eat them)

What I want to know is... why does [[corn]], in much of the
English-speaking world a generic term either for cereal crops in
general or the locally-dominant crop specifically, and a term with
several other distinct meanings, redirect to the specific footstuff
called "corn" in America?

I find it amusing we have entirely opposite reactions to these two!

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk