[Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation detector

[Toby Bartels]

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>Erik Moeller wrote:

>>Magnus Manske wrote:

>>>I hacked a small function that automatically shows what might be
>>>disambiguation pages below the page subtitle. This works for all pages with
>>>a " (" in the title.

>>Very cool feature, Magnus! This will save us a lot of manual "Alternate
>>meaning" links. Now all we need is some kind of template/transclusion
>>system so the disambiguation text does not need to be edited on 20342
>>pages if it changes ..

>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.

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.