[Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation detector

[Erik Moeller]

Lee-
> 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 regarding the disambiguation pages themselves. In general, we  
should only use automatically generated/added content where it is at least  
equivalent to text written by humans. Using this criterion:

1) The "Alternate meanings:" solution by Magnus is a good one, because  
this is supposed to be a short line on individual articles that  
complements the longer disambiguation page. There is no point in having  
humans write and update this information, just as there is no point in  
having humans write the "What links here" information.

2) Text blocks that do not change are currently written for each  
inidividual page. On the main disambiguation pages, for en:, the following  
text block is currently used:

''This is a [[wikipedia:disambiguation|disambiguation]] page; that is, one  
that just points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name.  
If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link  
to point to the appropriate specific page.''

It may be useful to be able to transclude such text segments  
([[>Wikipedia:Disambiguation]] or something like this). However, I am also  
thinking about having these segments be inserted as part of a general  
category scheme, such as

[[Category:Disambiguation page]]

Where that page would list all pages in that category, with automatic  
paging and sorting, and allow editors to define a standard block of text  
that is added at the bottom of all pages of that category. So we could use  
the same principle for

[[Category:Stub]]

or

[[Category:Deletion]]

To have texts like

''This aricle is a [[Wikipedia:stub article|stub]]. Please see  
[[:Category:Stub]] for a list of current stub articles.''

or

''This page has been marked for deletion. In order to debate its deletion,  
please use the discussion page.''

Regards,

Erik