Wikivoyage talk:Disambiguation pages

I moved the disambig stuff back to the article naming conventions page. These are such an important part of article naming, I think they need to be part of the page. --(WT-en) Evan 14:14, 28 Dec 2003 (PST)

Disambig pages vs links

Moved from Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub - by (WT-en) Huttite 21:45, 2 Oct 2004 (EDT).

Can I ask for the rationale behind using disambiguation pages instead of links? Often, eg. St. Petersburg, one of the places being disambiguated is much better known and it feels stupid to have to write St.Petersburg every time I want to link to the bigger of the two. I'd prefer the Wikipedia style, where the main page is usually the Big One and has a link up top with "This page is about X, see also Y for the Z in Q". (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:18, 29 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Which city has more English-speaking tourists, the one in Russia or the beach resort in Florida? ;-) Personally, since this is a travel guide I prefer the disambig to make sure we're displaying the page the user wants when they do a search (cause they might skip the see also clause at the top and skim down). Conversely, in an Encylopedia, Moscow (Idaho) is pretty much never what the user wants when they ask for Moscow. (I'm gonna regret this when the other five Fremonts in the US are added) -- (WT-en) Colin 04:43, 29 Jul 2004 (EDT)

The mos does allow the first approach "if one place is so famous that the disambiguation is a hindrance rather than a help", giving examples of Paris and Los Angeles. I think you could probably make a case for St Petersburg under that exemption; although having three different names in the last 100 years certainly doesn't help that cities case.

But that is almost incidental. The vast majority of ambiguously named places are not like that; there is genuine cause for confusion. I live in Reading in England, but I know there is a Reading in Pennsylvania although I know no more than that about it. I guess most of the english speaking world have only vaguely heard of either, if at all. Which is the more important in a Wikivoyage context?. I think the only sensible answer is 'it depends on the readers context', in which case disambiguation is the right approach. -- (WT-en) Chris j wood 07:38, 29 Jul 2004 (EDT)

See Talk:St. Petersburg --145.99.202.92 05:12, 13 April 2006 (EDT)

Disambig pages for famous cities

A policy question/suggestion for the 'famous' cities:

Given that there's famous cities that get the main article, such as London, what should we do about disambiguating other Londons? At the moment there seems to be three approaches:

1. The famous city article doesn't mention the other city: Sydney doesn't mention Sydney (Nova Scotia). This is probably the most common.
2. The famous city article links to the other city: London links to London (Ontario)
3. The famous city article links to [[Famous City (disambiguation)]]: Atlanta links to Atlanta (disambiguation).

At the moment, I suspect #1 best reflects policy, because the full set of famous cities is meant to be on Project:Disambiguation page index (which is terribly out of date). I suspect #3 is borrowed from Wikipedia. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem like a terrible idea, especially since the link at the top would only need to read: This article is about London, United Kingdom, see London (disambiguation) for other places called London.

The major risks of adopting such a policy seem to be:

1. People will see the major articles and think this is normal procedure, and start treating the default article as "first in, first served", so we start having [[Nowheresville]] and [[Nowheresville (disambiguation)]].
2. It means the 99% of people seeking information about London UK have to read a bunch of text that doesn't contain that information at the top of the article.

Thoughts?

(WT-en) Hypatia 05:41, 1 Nov 2004 (EST)

In-page disambiguation

I'd like to suggest that we do a MediaWiki template for the in-page disambiguation at the top of pages. This usually happens for pages like London or Paris or Ontario where we've exercised the by-far-the-most-famous naming rule. For example:

This article concerns London, capital of England and the UK. Several places exist by the same name, including London (Ontario) in Canada and East London in South Africa

Although this is useful for the Web site, it's unnecessary and confusing accounting work for print versions. If it was in a template, it could be safely ignored by printing software.

If we use Template:Samename, it would be formatted correctly, and be ignorable. --(WT-en) Evan 08:08, 8 Jul 2005 (EDT)

I'll give a thumbs up for this. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:19, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Template:Samename has been replaced by Template:otheruses. -- (WT-en) Ryan 18:21, 24 March 2006 (EST)

Similar pages

So, actually, it's not that difficult to determine automatically if there are other pages with a name similar to the one under discussion. Like, say, for Burlington (Vermont), it's relatively easy technically to trim everything in parentheses and surrounding whitespace and then search for other articles titled exactly "Burlington" or "Burlington (something)". I wonder if there'd be any value in showing links to these out-of-page, maybe near where the other sites/languages links are. --(WT-en) Evan 16:24, 9 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Provinces/prefectures and cities

(moved in from Wikivoyage talk:Disambiguation page index)

About the differences between province and city in Spain, I think that there shouldn't be this kind of page. An example: Sevilla city and Sevilla Province. Every important city in Spain has a province with the same name (Frm Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza, Granada, Salamanca.....), so this can be really confusing. I think that is much better to put Sevilla as the page for Sevilla city and then make a page named Sevilla Province. This page can be linked from the page of the region ie Andalucía, and froma the page of the city (maybe on the top of the page). What do you think about it? 09:47 (WT-en) pstng

Most all of Japan's prefectures are named after their largest cities, and if you say "I'm going to X" this will be by default assumed to mean the city, not the prefecture. For these cases, I thus think it makes sense to redirect X to X (city) and uplinking X (city) to X (prefecture), instead of creating explicit disambig pages. Opinions? Note that this is already the de facto state of affairs, I'm just trying to make it formal.

This also applies to Thai prefectures, so I think we've got the beginnings of a rule here. Now to decide which model to follow:

# X redirects to X (city), X (city) uplinks to X (prefecture)

# X is the city, and uplinks to X (prefecture)

Opinions? (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:18, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)

My opinion is that I think this case is pretty well covered by the disambiguation rules we have so far. However, I think that it may be useful to have some sort of explanation for this common case.

I think the current rules are as follows: use "X (city)" and "X (province)" (or region, or state, or prefecture, or whatever) to disambiguate places with the same name, and make "X" a disambiguation page. As an exception, if one is significantly better known, don't bother with a disambiguator for that one. For example, if the city is much much better known, use "X" for the city and "X (prefecture)"; if the state is much much better known, use the opposite "X (city)" and "X" for the province. I don't think there's been a case where the state is sufficiently more famous than the city that we could leave out the disambiguator (the best I can come up with is Chihuahua), but I don't think we can rule it out as a possibility.

Is there a good place we should put this? Maybe a section on Project:article naming conventions? --(WT-en) Evan 15:11, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)

See, the problem with the current rule is that it requires that "much much" in there before the disambig page can be dispensed with. This makes perfect sense for the Paris (France) vs Paris (Texas) type of situations, but less so for Toyama Prefecture vs Toyama City cases where it's be a stretch to call either "famous".

My stab at a rule:

If a city X and its surrounding province/prefecture/voivodship/... share the same name, and the city is the better known of the two, then the city gets "X" and the province goes in "X (province)". Always uplink the city to the province.

So how? (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:10, 28 Jul 2005 (EDT)

I'm plunging forward and converting Japanese prefectures to use this convention (which most of them already implement anyway), but I'd like a few more comments before I go edit the policy. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:42, 11 Aug 2005 (EDT)

The Rt. Hon. User:202.47.247.130 has gone ahead and disambigged a bazillion Thai provinces into X (city) and X (province). As Thai provinces are nearly always named after the largest city, I hereby will make the text above policy, and proceed with the mass renaming in a few days if there is no mass uproar. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:41, 6 Dec 2005 (EST)

In the absence of uproar, how will the policy be applied for Thai provinces/cities (other than Bangkok & Phuket)?

Will the "Ayutthaya and Ayutthaya (province)" example apply to all Thai cities/provinces other than Bangkok & Phuket?

Yes, I think so. Common sense should be used, but I can't think of any other exceptions in Thailand at the moment. The same policy has already been adopted for Japan. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:26, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)

Although this policy may be applied to Japan and Thailand, it has not been appied to the policy page first. Perhaps we should say the following:

If the main or gateway city of a region and its surrounding area share the same name then the main city need not be disambiguated, though the surrounding area should be. For example: Many Japanese prefectures take their names from their capital cities. This is also common in Spain and Thailand. In these cases the region should always be refered to in the first line of the article by saying the city is the capital/main city of the region. In other words: If you get to the place with the ambiguous name you also find yourself the middle of the region of the same name, then you do not need a disambiguation page for the destination name. In these cases, a disambiguation page is only needed where the ambiguous name also refers to other places that are geographically separate from the city/region pair.

-- (WT-en) Huttite 21:53, 9 Dec 2005 (EST)

Disambiguation lists

Can someone explain to me which of Project:Links to disambiguating pages or Project:Disambiguation page index we should update when we create a disambiguation page? Both? The latter seems really out of date. I know it's there so that there's extra data about disambiguated names without a disambiguation page, and about the "famous" locations without disambiguators, but having the second list of disambiguation pages as well just seems like a maintainence problem. -- (WT-en) Hypatia 03:57, 25 Oct 2004 (EDT)

This sounds like a good use of categories for me... just add Category:Disambiguation to each page and you have a self-maintaining list. Same goes for the list of itineraries. (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:27, 25 Oct 2004 (EDT)

When I first created the Project:Disambiguation page index article I had not discovered the Project:Links to disambiguating pages article. At that time there were about 30 disambiguation pages. The problem I had was that disambiguation pages were not listed anywhere. I created a list for disambiguation pages that had a manually created disambiguation message on them. Later, mediawiki messages were introduced and the disambiguation maintenance fuction came along. I have been trying to keep Project:Disambiguation page index up to date. I suggest you add pages to Project:Links to disambiguating pages first and then add them to Project:Disambiguation page index if you feel like it. -- (WT-en) Huttite 15:18, 9 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Disambiguation page standard

Would anyone be opposed to adding a standard format for disambiguation pages to this policy? Currently they're pretty scattered, with formats like Barrow, Albany, Ontario. My thought is that the Barrow format looks the nicest and is the most organized, with the format being:

__NOTOC__

There is more than one place called Name of place:

===Region===

* Name of place (with region) - A town in Region.

===Region===

* Name of place (with region) - A town in Region.

* Name of place (with region) - A town in Region.

{{disamb}}

Any suggestions? If not, would anyone object to adding this example to the policy page? -- (WT-en) Ryan 16:03, 19 March 2006 (EST)

Done. -- (WT-en) Ryan 04:59, 23 March 2006 (EST)

Suggestion: how about taking out the __NOTOC__ ? On shorter pages (ie few regions) the TOC doesn't appear regardless, on longer pages it's very useful ~ 125.24.4.216 13:56, 14 July 2006 (EDT)

I wouldn't be opposed although I like it as-is. If Evan's new TOC-on-the-right-side change is ever implemented then I think removing the NOTOC makes sense. The reason for putting it there initially was that it just didn't seem very useful to have half a screen taken up by a TOC when the full article length was unlikely to exceed one or two screenfuls of text. -- (WT-en) Ryan 15:13, 14 July 2006 (EDT)

Template:otheruses

I just created Template:otheruses to add a link to the disambiguation page for articles meeting the "most famous" rule, ie adding a link from Paris to Paris (disambiguation). We didn't implement this consistently, and I figured it would be a non-controversial thing to do. I should have known better, and having just read some comments about disambiguating Paris I'm adding this discussion - any user searching for "Paris, Texas" will probably start out by typing "Paris" into the search box, in which case they are taken directly to the Paris, France article. It seems useful and inobtrusive to me to add a link to the dismbiguation page to the top of that article, thus the "other uses" template was created. I've added that template to a few articles already, but will hold off on doing any more until people have had a chance to comment. -- (WT-en) Ryan 05:43, 23 March 2006 (EST)

I'm taking the lack of comment as a hopeful sign -- if no one is opposed I'll go ahead and update the remaining "most famous" destinations. Any reason not to do so? -- (WT-en) Ryan 13:59, 23 March 2006 (EST)

I'll take the lack of comment as tacit approval and go ahead and make the changes - I really think adding a link to the disambiguation page for "most famous" articles should make the site a bit more user friendly. -- (WT-en) Ryan 03:24, 24 March 2006 (EST)

Sorry for the short reply. Have you seen Template:Samename? Why have two templates for the same purpose? --(WT-en) Evan 10:14, 24 March 2006 (EST)

See Template talk:Otheruses. Short answer is that I didn't see Template:Samename until after I had created Template:Otheruses, but I agree one should be deleted since we now have two. Since Samename merely prints the message passed to it, and thus requires more user work and more maintenance to keep things consistent, while Otheruses can be used by simply entering "{{otheruses}} and is also consistent with the naming used on Wikipedia I'd lean towards keeping that one, although if Samename was modified to be easier to use then I'd be OK with keeping that instead.

Somewhat related, but Project:Using Mediawiki templates seems quite out of date and is definitely missing a LOT of templates that are currently available. Would there be any objection to updating that to include all currently available templates? Otherwise, is there a list somewhere else of what's available? -- (WT-en) Ryan 11:45, 24 March 2006 (EST)

No objection from me. I think otheruses is better than samename, so lets replace the places that samename is used with otheruses and VFD samename. Also, I wonder if we shouldn't move the list of templates to a different place than the template policy page. --(WT-en) Evan 11:49, 24 March 2006 (EST)

Continued at Project:Using Mediawiki templates#Template:otheruses.

I've gotten through Memphis on the most famous list. Anyone else who wants to jump in and do a few feel free, I'm heading off for a bit. -- (WT-en) Ryan 07:05, 24 March 2006 (EST)

Spanish provinces

Moved from User talk:(WT-en) Wrh2:

Ryan, I saw that you recently changed Cadiz into the city page, making a disambig and province page. This seemed to make a lot of sense as a lot more people want to link to the city than province. I think there is scope to do this to some other spanish city/province pages. Do you fancy having a go at: Malaga, Valladolid,Salamanca & Granada(?). Cheers, (WT-en) DanielC 16:43, 3 April 2006 (EDT)

Just to confirm before making any changes, are each of these cities "much more famous" than the surrounding province, as desribed in Project:Article naming conventions#Disambiguation? I would assume so since you're bringing this issue up, but I'm not familiar enough with these areas to be certain. -- (WT-en) Ryan 16:48, 3 April 2006 (EDT)

To the general traveller, the "regions" of Spain are of much more use and more well known than the provinces. To them the cities are much more often used than the provinces. However, for residents of Spain I do think that they refer to the provinces a reasonable amount, but they do always still refer to them as XXX province. -- (WT-en) DanielC 17:03, 3 April 2006 (EDT)

Malaga, Alicante and Salamanca are done. Granada and Valladolid are also the names of a places outside of Spain, so I've left those pages as a disambiguation and moved the city articles to Valladolid (Spain) and Granada (Spain). -- (WT-en) Ryan 17:37, 3 April 2006 (EDT)

How to create a new Disambiguation page

Swept in from the Pub:

Sorry for the newbie questions, I'm probably missing something here but in the articles on the subject I cannot find how to create a new disambiguation page for two existing locations, namely Rabat in Morocco and Rabat in Malta. (WT-en) PeterW 06:30, 14 Feb 2006 (EST)

It's just an ordinary page with a link of places to go. However, for this particular case I think the one in Morocco (capital of the country, pop 1.2m) is much more famous than the Maltese one (pop. what, a couple of hundred?), so they should go in Rabat and Rabat (Malta) respectively. (WT-en) Jpatokal 08:24, 14 Feb 2006 (EST)

Links to related Wikipedia disambiguation

I added information to the main article policy about adding a link to the related Wikipedia disambiguation page. I have been doing this for some time and think it is useful. I have also notice others doing this as well. I plunged forward on this, so if there are any disagreements, lets talk about it here. I am not against changing this if there are valid concerns or arguments. -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 12:41, 17 September 2006 (EDT)

Disambiguation pages considered useful

Archived from the Pub:

This tragi-comic story (tragic for the person concerned, comic for everyone else) serves as an object lesson in the usefulness of diambiguation pages. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 05:56, 31 December 2006 (EST)

Wow! That is really interesting! Thank you for posting it. We do need to be very careful. -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel) 08:46, 31 December 2006 (EST)

several townships named washington in new jersey

Swept in from the pub:

hello, I am having trouble with the disambiguation of the township of washington in New Jersey. Where I live, there are two Washington townships practically right next each other. One in Morris County (commonly known as Long Valley because that's the name of the post office), and one just a few miles away in Warren County. Right now, the morris county one is listed as "Washington (Morris County, New Jersey)" on the disambiguation page and I"m not sure how it got there, or do I know how to get the warren county one on that page, either. They both need a lot of work, but it's a start. My main concern is that when I tried to redirect the page called "Long Valley" to the morris county page and it said "This action cannot be performed on this page." Has this ever happened before? thanks (WT-en) Kire1975 04:29, 20 July 2008 (EDT)

It looks like you added the Warren County one just fine. To create the redirect, just edit Long Valley and put #REDIRECT [[Washington (Morris County, New Jersey)]] in the edit box. (WT-en) LtPowers 11:05, 20 July 2008 (EDT)

Is it much more commonly referred to as Long Valley? Cause if that's the case then we should name the article that, we prefer most common over official names, per our article naming conventions. If not, and we do need to differentiate between the two, then they should both be shortened to "City (County), rather than City (County, State) – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 23:30, 20 July 2008 (EDT)

sounds fine to me. I'm very tired right now. I'll get to it soon, I promise. (WT-en) Kire1975 20:46, 21 July 2008 (EDT)

cacahuate, I've always been confused about how to change the names of pages once they are created, is there something that could help me figure out how to do all that. Do I have to create a new page with the right name, transfer all the information, and then nominate the old page for deletion? or should I redirect something somewhere? I'm sorry. Once I figure this out, I should be good for awhile.

Also, I've got another one for you, very similar:

Sussex (New Jersey) is a town in Sussex County (New Jersey). How should that be handled on the disambiguation page? Where would I put the word town? And also, like above, how is that done? Thanks (WT-en) Jargas 06:34, 23 July 2008 (EDT)

There's a tab at the top of every page that says "move". Use that to rename an article, and a redirect will be created from the old name to the new one. As for Sussex, just add Sussex (New Jersey) to the bottom of the list and say it's a town in New Jersey. (WT-en) LtPowers 11:37, 23 July 2008 (EDT)

How to make a disambiguation page for Kenwood?

Arcived from the Pub:

I wanted to work on Kenwood Ca, a town very close to my home town, but after typing in Kenwood I was redirected to Chicago/South Chicago Shore.

I would like to make a disambiguation page but I don't know how. I would love to learn. Anyone want to teach me?

--(WT-en) Trew 19:13, 2 December 2008 (EST)

Create the Kenwood (disambiguation) page. Copy another, say look at Sutherland (disambiguation). Then decide whether the Kenwood page redirect should be changed to Kenwood (disambiguation), or whether a link to the disambiguation page should be added to the top of the Chicago/South Chicago Shore article. The former is easy just change the redirect page by editing the Kenwood page. If you decide to do the latter, look at the the way it is done in Sydney. If you can't decide which to do, just discuss it on the article talk page, and reach a consensus. It really depends on the significance of the other Kenwood for travellers. --(WT-en) Inas 19:35, 2 December 2008 (EST)

Disambiguated. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 16:41, 5 December 2008 (EST)

Thanks for all your help. I am going to get started on making the Kenwood, Ca guide once the holidays are over. (WT-en) Trew 19:54, 18 December 2008 (EST)

Not just for identical names

Sometimes we use disambiguation pages for an area like New Guinea, where a plain redirect can't be used because it isn't clear which part of the area we are redirecting to, and where the area doesn't justify a region article. This seems to be de-facto policy, so in the absence of any objection, I'll make the change to the main article. --(WT-en) Inas 03:29, 11 December 2008 (EST)

Sounds good to me. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:48, 11 December 2008 (EST)

Rewrote some other bits as well. Hopefully clearer now. --(WT-en) Inas 05:30, 12 December 2008 (EST)

Question

Given the above (that articles like New Guinea are considered disambiguation pages), what should we do with links to them? The page currently says that links to disambiguation pages should be corrected, but I can imagine some cases where we might want to link to articles like New Guinea, Great Lakes, or Northern Tier. (WT-en) LtPowers 17:45, 29 June 2009 (EDT)

I've looked at every article that links to New Guinea, and in each case I would regard the link as being an error. There is little point linking to a page contains no information, and just links elsewhere. Can you see any use where it appears valid on the face of it? --(WT-en) inas 19:41, 29 June 2009 (EDT)

New Guinea, in its current state, no. But the other two (which are not currently formatted as disambiguation pages, admittedly) do have valid incoming links. I think the most likely scenario is linking to a body-of-water guide that has relevant itineraries listed (or something like the current Do listing in Great Lakes). But if the consensus is that these should be for searching purposes only, I'm sure it can be worked around. (WT-en) LtPowers 21:54, 29 June 2009 (EDT)

Non-articles

Inspired by the contentious vfd for Madam Tussauds, I thought it might be worth deciding whether we should ever disambiguate non-articles—that is, whether we should disambiguate some term that then links to non-articles (in this case, what is basically a "see" listing). None of the Madame Tussauds would qualify under our article criteria, but some are arguing that we should disambiguate the term, and provide links to each location. This policy page currently does not recommend such a disambiguation, but there is a precedent at SeaWorld, and in the practice of redirecting non-articles under the conditions listed at Project:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting.

I'll argue we shouldn't, pretty much exactly for the reasons Ryan gave in the vfd:

If instead we create a disambiguation page it puts us into the uncomfortable position of having to figure out where to draw the line between "useful to travelers" and spam. Does SeaWorld get a disambiguation page? If so, does the Ripley's Believe-it-or-not museum? Does the Hard Rock Cafe? Seems like a slippery slope that we could avoid by just saying "any attraction that does not warrant its own article should not be given a disambiguation page".

I don't think that our practice of redirecting non-articles to destinations is really a precedent, since that was done for the express purpose of saving time—anyone can make a redirect, so we don't need to clutter the vfd page (and vfd cleaning process) with redirected attraction articles. Disambiguating them, and deciding which cases are OK to disambiguate, on the other hand, would wind up using extra time better spent elsewhere, IMO—better to have a simple policy to decide when to disambiguate, rather than have our most productive contributors kept busy debating the value of each and every possible disambiguation.

Regarding utility for readers, I think the search function should suffice. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:24, 20 December 2009 (EST)

Unfortunately, the search function does not suffice, and here's why: http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Sea+World&fulltext=Search -- Ignore the first two results, which would go away under this proposal, and note that Orlando, San Diego, and San Antonio are nowhere to be seen. (WT-en) LtPowers 17:07, 20 December 2009 (EST)

Well yes, but that is because the name is SeaWorld, without a space . --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:21, 20 December 2009 (EST)

I know that, and you know that, but we can't count on the average traveler -- one who doesn't even know where they all are -- to know that. (WT-en) LtPowers 22:19, 20 December 2009 (EST)

We are constantly putting ourselves in the position of deciding what is useful for travellers and what is not. We already have to figure out what is a spam, and what is an attraction when we create travel guides.

A disambiguation page is really just a special form of redirection where there is more than one possible target article. It also can take far less effort to create than a vfd.

Currently our deletion policy says to redirect rather than delete. That is both to save time, and help the next traveller looking for the same thing. If there is more than one target for a redirect - we should disambiguate.

We should apply our common sense and experience to determine whether an attraction is major enough to be a likely search term, and whether a fall-through to the search engine is more useful that a disambig --(WT-en) inas 20:02, 20 December 2009 (EST)

As Inas says we are constantly putting ourselves in the position of deciding what is useful for travellers and what is not. And that is precisely why we need clear policy and to stick to it. The logic seems clear to me - if the term warrants an article then disambiguate, if it doesn't then delete or re-direct as appropriate. As an aside, SeaWorld is in my view a poor precedent and should not have been diambiguated. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 21:03, 21 December 2009 (EST)

I don't get this. If there was only one Seaworld attraction would you redirect it? I can understand why we might want to delete all attraction articles, and if we want a policy which says that, I'm fine with it. What I can't understand is the logic which says if there is one major attraction with a name, we redirect it to a destination article, but if there are two at different destinations we delete rather than redirect to the two articles (i.e disambiguate). --(WT-en) inas 21:52, 21 December 2009 (EST)

If there was only one SeaWorld then yes, per Project:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting it would be redirected. However, redirections are merely a convenience, and in cases where there is absolutely no good redirection target I think that we should delete rather than disambiguate - unlike a redirect, a disambiguation requires effort to create and maintain, and more importantly turns Wikivoyage into a site that creates pages for all attractions, something which we specifically don't do. If the consensus is that all attractions should be given a redirect or a disambiguation page then I suspect we will open ourselves up to seeing thousands upon thousands of new pages created that may be of questionable value and will definitely push the envelope of what is really of value to a traveler. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:36, 21 December 2009 (EST)

Disambig articles and redirect articles are our index. They are the way we direct people looking for stuff to the article that contains it. I can see why we don't want to list everything in an index. I can see why we could use a search and drop the index. But I don't think a large index is a slippery slope to suddenly starting to write articles about attractions. --(WT-en) inas 01:51, 22 December 2009 (EST)

To clarify, I don't think it's a slippery slope to "writing articles about attractions", but I DO think it's a slippery slope to creating a lot of extra work dealing with any one of the thousands of borderline attractions/topics that a traveler might think up. Off the top of my head, examples such as Planet Hollywood, double-decker buses, Harrah's Casino, Ripley's Believe-it-or-Not Museum, camel rides, etc, are all things that we could potentially need disambiguation pages for, depending on a consensus. This wouldn't be the end of the world to spend time figuring out what to do with all sorts of random attractions, but I think it's a more valuable use of people's time to keep our focus on existing articles and guidelines rather than opening ourselves up to requiring a new debate about (for example) whether the Ripley's museum is famous enough / too spammy / whatever to warrant a disambiguation page. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 02:06, 22 December 2009 (EST)

It may lead to disambiguations like Museum of Natural History, Grand Mosque, etc. Do we want ambiguation pages for these attractions? —The preceding comment was added by 74.98.133.54 (talk • contribs)

I don't buy that slippery slope, either. SeaWorld is a legitimate attraction that one might specifically organize a trip around. It's also a likely search term, as someone might see that Disneyland has an article and then search for "Sea World" looking for something similar. But, as I demonstrated above, the search function is not forgiving of spelling variations, making it inadequate compared to a simple disambiguation page. (WT-en) LtPowers 11:38, 22 December 2009 (EST)

A read over Wikivoyage_talk:Votes_for_deletion#deleting_vs_redirecting might help explain the rationale for Project:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting (although that discussion is a little more convoluted than I remember)—it's above all to save time and effort. "Redirect attractions, but not other listings" is simple, categorical, and should reduce the load on the vfd page, since anyone can do it, and because "Delete, per Project:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting," should end discussion with a simple application of clear policy. A policy of "disambiguate some attractions" is much more complex, and will lead to a heavier load on the vfd page. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:25, 22 December 2009 (EST)

Here's a suggested compromise:

"Disambiguation pages for topics that do not merit their own article (example: SeaWorld) should be an exception rather than a rule. Disambiguation pages for non-articles should only be created for attractions that are major travel destinations in their own right, that new editors commonly re-create (example: Atlantic Ocean) or that there is a consensus to create. When there is doubt as to whether a destination meets any of these criteria a consensus must exist to keep a page, otherwise it should be deleted."

This suggestion obviously needs further refining as it's still a bit too loose (what constitutes a "major travel destination"?) but it addresses LtPowers' and Inas' concerns about usability while also putting the burden on the creator to justify keeping a page rather than on the community to justify deleting it. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:50, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

Seems reasonable, although I worry about the "consensus to keep" requirement. (WT-en) LtPowers 16:10, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

I'm a fan, actually, of both the wording and intent. We generally are able to pull off reasonable consensuses in these cases.I don't think, for example, that we would have trouble agreeing that a disambiguation for SeaWorld is indeed useful to aid searchers. If this discourages borderline cases (e.g., Madame Tussaud's), I think that's fine—it will save us time debating things that aren't very critical. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:31, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

*Bump* Any further comment, or is it OK to update existing policy with the proposed wording and refine it further in the future if necessary? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:53, 15 November 2010 (EST)

I've updated the policy page with the suggested text. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:19, 18 November 2010 (EST)

Geographic features

This discussion copied from Project:Votes for deletion#Lake James (disambiguation)

If this is deleted, are we okay with people getting a list of search results when they look for "Lake James"? It doesn't come up with two of the three pages listed on the disambiguation page; Northern Indiana is listed but "Lake James" doesn't appear in the blurb. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:47, 5 November 2010 (EDT)

I was about to delete this article and just noticed this comment. I'm personally OK with search results for cases like this one - I think it's better to rely on search for corner cases rather than trying to manually maintain a disambiguation page for all non-article destinations, but since the disambiguation policy page suggests discussion and consensus for handling corner cases then this discussion would be the place for any discussing. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:28, 18 November 2010 (EST)

You're okay with the search results even though they don't come up with two of the three pages currently listed on the disambiguation page? (WT-en) LtPowers 08:40, 19 November 2010 (EST)

100% OK. Just as I don't think we need to make sure that a search (or disambiguation page) for something like "Hard Rock Cafe" shows every single location, I don't think "Lake James" is a destination that is worth creating an index for when our search index will suffice. Coming at this from another angle, there is a "Saint James Lake" in Minnesota - if we keep the disambiguation page, should that be included? What about the likely dozens of other places with the same (or similar) names - at what point do we draw the line? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:26, 19 November 2010 (EST)

That seems contrary to the principle behind Project:The traveller comes first. We should be taking pains to get the reader to the destination he or she is looking for, not throwing up roadblocks. (WT-en) LtPowers 18:34, 19 November 2010 (EST)

But per our rules, none of the Lakes James qualify as destinations. To illustrate, if one of them were, we would have a page for it, and no mention or possibility of reaching the other two non-article lakes. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:46, 20 November 2010 (EST)

Likewise, if we're speaking in hypotheticals, if there were only one destination that had a Lake James, we'd redirect it and the reader would have no problem finding the correct article. (WT-en) LtPowers 13:16, 20 November 2010 (EST)

Right, but the reason we do that as a matter of policy is not for the sake of navigation, but for the sake of saving time on this page, as anyone can make a redirect. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:42, 20 November 2010 (EST)

Getting the user to the right article ought to be a bedrock principle, not a mere side effect of a rule intended for editor convenience. (WT-en) LtPowers 14:38, 20 November 2010 (EST)

Where I disagree is threefold:

1. I don't think we should be anticipating everything a user might be looking for. Whether such an effort would be useful for travelers is debatable since it would likely lead to a great deal of inconsistency in how disambiguation pages are managed and created. Invoking the slippery slope argument, if lakes are valid topics for disambiguation pages, are hotel chains?
2. I don't think disambiguation pages for attractions are particularly beneficial to travelers except in the case of major attractions. Using the example above of "Saint James Lake", the user still won't find what they wanted on the "James Lake" disambiguation page. For the majority of these cases relying on the search engine seems entirely valid.
3. On a wiki I don't think you can discount the value of having clear editorial guidelines by invoking a possible benefit to users. Our Project:External links policy clearly eliminates content that would be beneficial to users, but on a freely-editable site it's often preferable to have clear rules to help avoid a profusion of questionable contributions.

Summing up, I think that at some point we simply need to say "the search page is good enough", and the recent changes in the disambiguation policy were an (apparently failed) attempt to define that dividing line. Note that if search isn't turning up an article with the name "Lake James" in it (as you mentioned) then that's a technical issue with search, but not something I think we need to create a disambiguation page to work around. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:39, 20 November 2010 (EST)

Well I tend to consider most geographic features to be likely search terms. Maybe all of the Lakes James are minor enough that no one would ever search for them; I don't know. (WT-en) LtPowers 15:56, 20 November 2010 (EST)

(Re-indenting) I think there is room for compromise on clarifying policy with respect to redirects and disambiguation pages for geographic features such as lakes, rivers and mountains. That said, I don't think there is a need to have a disambiguation page or redirect for each of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes (for example) so there is still a need for some sort of dividing line. I'm not sure where that line should be, so do your or anyone else have suggestions? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 14:59, 21 November 2010 (EST)

I would lean toward any lake or river or forest or the like that's a significant attraction within a destination ought to redirect to that destination, or, if that's not possible due to ambiguity, be a disambiguation page. But I'm open to counter-arguments. (WT-en) LtPowers 20:37, 21 November 2010 (EST)

I think "significant attraction" is where clarification is needed. It could be argued that any lake that a person might want to go fishing or boating on is "significant", but that would account for about 99% of the lakes in the world, and I think having a page (or disambiguation page) for each is an unnecessary editorial burden and is confusing for users since thousands and thousands of pages will be needed to get full coverage, resulting in users facing a partially-implemented set of disambiguation pages for the foreseeable future. If there is some metric that can be used to clearly define "significant" for the vast majority of cases I'm all for it, otherwise I'd lean towards the current "if it's not article-worthy or something that a new user may think is article-worthy (ex. SeaWorld) then it probably doesn't need a disambiguation page" guideline, leaving the search engine to handle the rest. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 17:23, 24 November 2010 (EST)

Link to every possibility?

Another question that has cropped up in multiple discussions is whether we should provide a link to every possible use of a term when disambiguating. That is, whether we should A) link to all places that use that name, B) link to all places which we expect to qualify for an article, or C) link to all places that actually have an article.

I think the practice has been A. That usually takes a lot of work to research when disambiguating, and I'm not sure it provides a whole lot of extra benefit for that time. Franklin is a good example—are all of those towns worthy of articles? Ultimately, though, when we are disambiguating official place names, this isn't going to be too much of a problem, so I'm not inclined to debate that point.

The problems arise when we are disambiguating unofficial article names, which have most likely been created by us. Namely, for regions and districts. In these cases, I think we should disambiguate, but that we most certainly should not link to every possibility (we should follow practice C). So if we have an article like "East Coast", we should create a disambiguation for only existing articles that actually bear that name, rather than every possible East Coast we could have, like "East Coast (Azerbaijan)," "East Coast (England)," "East Coast (East Franklin County (United States of America))," ad infinitum. Ditto district articles—see Hyde Park for a good example of how I think we should handle these types of disambiguations. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:36, 20 December 2009 (EST)

I don't think it works for all unofficial place names, though. It only works when the districts we create are destinations. That was the issue with Downtown. "East Coast" may not be extremely practical, but it is an actual designated name that people use for U.S. If we create an arbitrary "East Coast" that would not really be known to the natives, then I don't really support linking it on the disambig page. For example, do Brits use "East Coast" as a term for the region or just us? Do the Azerbaijanis use it for that region (in their language), or just us? 74.98.133.54 15:46, 20 December 2009 (EST)

I agree with both Peter and 74.98 here. (WT-en) LtPowers 17:07, 20 December 2009 (EST)

I think I agree, although I can't get the essence of what the final policy text would be. Sometimes the districts we create are less well known than other unofficial names. For example, in Sydney, we now have Sydney/City East, which is a Wikivoyage made up district name. Oxford Street, however is an unofficial and common name. Disambiguating City East is absurd - like disambiguating downtown. Disambiguating Oxford Street seems sensible. --(WT-en) inas 20:09, 20 December 2009 (EST)

I guess the difference is that regions with directional names still may need to be disambiguated. We can avoid this by using "Southwestern Georgia," instead of "Southwest (Georgia)" (although, in that example we still wound up with a disambiguation for the republic and the U.S. state). Still, it's certainly conceivable that we could have two or more legitimate article titles of "Southwest." Southwest is the proper name for the region of the U.S., and if we have any other such regions, we'd need to disambiguate with something like Southwest (United States of America) as the title, and then a dedicated disambiguation page at Southwest, for the other articles someone may have meant to reach.

Looking at that particular disambiguation page, Southwest, I think we should be more restrictive in which articles we link—not just anything located in the southwest of any given region. To me, it seems that someone may mean to go to the Australian, Chinese, Scottish, or American page—the others are too contrived. To avoid this, I'd propose language like:

Disambiguate unofficial place names for region articles only for articles that essentially have the same title, e.g., disambiguate South West (Western Australia) and South West (China)—but not Southwestern Georgia.

Districts are different, since the title includes the city name—no one would enter West, meaning to go to Kyoto/West. Ditto "Downtown." Language could be:

Include city district articles in disambiguation lists only if the district (or well-known neighborhood within the district) has a well known proper placename. E.g., include Chicago/Hyde Park in a disambiguation page for Hyde Park, but do not include Jakarta/South in a disambiguation page for South.

Look good? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 21:19, 20 December 2009 (EST)

I don't know what "proper' means in "well known proper placename". Can we just say "well known placename" - meaning - in effect - well known outside of Wikivoyage. Proper has overtones of "official", which I don't think we mean. Apart from that it looks good to me. --(WT-en) inas 22:29, 20 December 2009 (EST)

That looks good! (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 01:16, 21 December 2009 (EST)

Well, this smells a lot like consensus (to my great pleasure), and it's held up for a month and a half, so I've introduced it to the article. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:07, 4 February 2010 (EST)

I noticed you put the word "well known proper", in the modification. I know it is a little trivial, but as per my point above I can see some dispute arising at some stage over what constitutes a "well known proper" place name. I don't understand what you mean by it, and how it a "well known proper" place name differs from a "well known" one. --(WT-en) inas 17:10, 4 February 2010 (EST)

Oops, fixed. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:25, 4 February 2010 (EST)

Non-place disambiguation

The help page seems to say that disambiguation would only apply when you have two or more places (destinations, cities, bodies of water, attractions, ...) -- things which have specific geographic places. It also seems to suggest that the "region" header levels would always apply. However, we also have disambiguation pages for topics such as Backpacking, Skiing, Creole languages, words like Czech.

When I was about to add a disambiguation page and wanted to be sure it was appropriate, I came here and was unsure, until I went out and found some examples of non-places. I would suggest one extra bullet after "bodies of water" for topics, and one sentence under "format" that indicates regions should be used except for non-geographic topics. (WT-en) Bill in STL 02:20, 16 August 2010 (EDT)

alternative regions

There are a number of pages that are marked as disambiguation page because they are not in the main hierarchy. For example Rhine, Aegean Sea. I, and I think other do too, find this a little confusing. I would like to prose that the {{Disamb}} tab be only used on pages with ambiguous names to direct to specific locations. Areas that collect places together in a alternate way to the main breadcrumb hierarchy should have a different tagging. Note there are many of these overlapping regions that are not tagged as Disamb but as regions, for example Carpathian Mountains, Appalachia which are not in the breadcrumb hierarchy. I thinks these are useful for people planning trips so should not be removed but maybe for clarity be defined differently. Suggest a tag such as alternative region. Other name suggestions? Maybe locality, alternative area, area, division, ...? Or should all these pages simple be tagged as regions? --Traveler100 (talk) 06:18, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I think the local parlance is "extra-hierarchical region." Some editors find them confusing, some (like me) think they're only confusing for us content organizers, but helpful for travelers. --Peter ^Talk 21:16, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

They are helpful, just feel describing as ambiguous is misleading. Should we simply mark them all as region articles? --Traveler100 (talk) 07:13, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

As you say no one seams particularly bothered about this topic so I am taking the overlapping "extra-hierarchical region" out of disabig. Most are already tagged as regions so the 15 or so tagged as disambiguation I will relabel.--Traveler100 (talk) 06:50, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Some extra-hierarchical regions are full region articles, like Navajo Nation. Others, like Western New York, are not, and should not be labeled with our article quality templates like Template:outlineregion. The latter category should never be filled out with full regional information like the former category. LtPowers (talk) 13:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I will repeat, for the benefit of those who didn't hear me the last time, that some of these extra-hierarchical regions should not be labeled with article quality templates like Template:Outlineregion or Template:Stub. At the moment, Template:Disambiguation is the closest thing we have for them. Placing article quality templates on them implies that they could be improved to star articles, which they should never be because they would duplicate information from other guides. LtPowers (talk) 15:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

How about Template:Extraregion --Traveler100 (talk) 10:58, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The concept is fine, but I would be worried about a temptation to tag articles like Navajo Nation with this template. While such articles are indeed extra-hierarchical, they are full region articles and should have a normal region status template. LtPowers (talk) 18:39, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Excessive disambiguation pages

Swept in from the pub

I've noticed that some of our disambiguation pages are growing a great deal with the addition of tiny settlements that are red-linked.

Hampton is a good example with 10 links, of which 8 are red links. I believe most of those red links are to destinations that do not fulfil our Wiaa criteria.

I believe it is not helpful to have so much disambiguation for relatively common names. Is it OK to remove the red links that would likely not become articles? The alternative would be to redirect them to the relevant geographical region. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, let's please remove the red links that never merit having their own article, as they were generally put there by a long-time vandal. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:09, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Removing them seems fine if we're dealing with vandalism. Disambiguation pages full of red links to tiny places make no sense indeed. But wouldn't it make sense to create relevant redirects for small destinations that don't meet our separate article criteria? For names with one major destination we can use the {{otheruses}} template to link to the disambiguation page with the other links. Just a thought. JuliasTravels (talk) 11:05, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Yep. Redlinks are holes that we need to fill, not simply sweep under the rug. If someone looks for one of these places, we need to be able to inform them which article they should be reading. Powers ^(talk) 14:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

If they're all legitimate cities, then the disambiguation page is the most appropriate place for them, right? That's exactly where we'd like people to end up if we don't have an article for the specific one they're searching for. The redlink is actually very useful in letting them know, we don't currently have any information about their intended destination. Please don't make redirects. Redlinks are better. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 14:53, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Well no, not for articles that don't meet our Wiaa criteria - and that's what Andrewssi2 was talking about. JuliasTravels (talk) 15:14, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

At the moment I think redlinks are better for both potential articles and articles that "don't meet our Wiaa", because discussions as of late have made me trust our ability to distinguish (or concern about distiguishing) the two much less, so rather than messing around with redlinks about cities we don't know about, it's better to leave the redlink, especially in a disambiguation article where they are not even an annoyance. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:20, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Take the example of Neustadt (I don't know where this link takes or whether it redlinks) it means "Newtown" and is a place name so common in Germany that pretty much every fifty kilometers in either direction you will stumble upon one. That does not mean all of them or indeed any of them meat our article criteria. The same can be said for the numerous Spanish Saints that have cities and hamlets named after them throughout the Americas and beyond. If we have a disambiguation page where the biggest listed "city" has a population of 1,600 and the other redlink, we might ask ourselves what purpose this serves. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:21, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

(indent) Since we have no Neustadt, looking at the Hampton example, I don't see why the redlinks would be an issue when they all seem to be real cities/towns. It is not hurting the traveler to have a disambiguation page that serves its purpose (listing real cities with the name), but deleting them would make it unreliable and redirects are going to be annoying because then we are telling the traveler that we actually do have their destination covered when we don't; we just decided to make meaningless redirects for every location. The redlink is the better choice. ChubbyWimbus (talk) 15:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm in complete agreement with ChubbyWimbus here. It would do us well to stop looking at redlinks as ugly eyesores and start looking at them as invitations for users to roll up their sleeves and create a new article. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:14, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

In cases where a link was added to a disambiguation page either via a copy-paste from Wikipedia or by a likely page creation vandal (like the two disambiguation pages created yesterday that contained nothing but redlinks for tiny towns and likely prompted this thread) I think keeping them is not helpful since it indicates that the place should have an article. I think we need to try to find a middle ground in this debate between "keep everything" and "redlinks are bad" - my opinion is that since we don't create articles for every dot on the map there is no harm in deleting redlinks from disambiguation and region pages when it seems at least probable that the place might not merit its own article - it can always be re-added later if someone creates the article - but the person doing the deleting should do the background research required to make an educated decision, and redlinks for places that are clearly article-worthy should not be deleted. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Ryan - That's fine, but I'd also like to opine that redirects are rarely if ever appropriate in this scenario. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:38, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry, but I have to disagree here. If we have a redlink imho that means "we don't currently have an article on this but we should". The only exception are talk pages where redlinks are sometimes put to discuss articles that don't exist and sometimes a consensus to not create them (under that name) emerges. Now do we need an article about every five hundred people hamlet? No. Should we redlink to every five hundred people hamlet? Also no. Does it sometimes make sense to redirect (some) five hundred people hamlets to a region or park article? In some cases, yes. Be it the Adirondacks or Franconian Switzerland. However, when covering rural areas, we do have to take into account that a huge portion of human settlements concern the traveler only insofar as the train or bus drives through or past them or as there is an off-ramp by that name. We don't need articles on such places and creating redlinks on them actually decreases the quality of our guides. That being said, we should really find some kind of solution for rural destinations. Given that the basis of our coverage is the "city", what do we do about destinations that are mostly rural areas or indeed hiking paths far away from any human settlement? Park articles have on occasion been used for this purpose, but they are a bit silly for areas that are not a park in any meaningful sense of the term. And besides their use has not become widespread at all... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:56, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict, reply to Andre) I think you would agree with the following point, but redirects should be encouraged when they are obviously correct. To cite a specific example, w:Echo Park shows three places with that name, but if someone created a disambiguation page on Wikivoyage I would most definitely redirect Echo Park, California to the existing Los Angeles/Northwest article since it already covers Echo Park. Note that in this hypothetical example, if someone was unfamiliar with the area I would expect the redlink to be left alone rather than deleted or redirected since it was not obviously a questionable link. That would leave us with the following approach:

1. If an editor feels that there is a high probability that a place would not merit its own article, deleting a redlink should be fine.
2. If an editor is confident that the place is better covered in another article a redirect is fine.
3. When confidence isn't high, leave it be.

-- Ryan • (talk) • 17:04, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Does "delete the redlink" mean "Turn '*Hampton (Iowa) - a city in Iowa"' into '*Hampton, Iowa - a city in Iowa'", or does it mean "remove all mention of the existence of this small town from the disambiguation page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

If a place is of a reasonable size or there is a POI there but currently has no article then a redlink is a valid thing to have on a wiki site. As mentioned by others it indicates an article that is needed. If the location is probably never going to be an article then I think it is fine to reference it on a disambiguation page but as text only with possible a link to the region/state it is in. this will at least indicate that there are multiple places with the same name allowing the reader to confirm which one they are looking for. Redirect should really only be used when it is redirecting to an article that include information about that locations, for example combining more than one suburb in one article or a number of small hamlets into a single article. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:10, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to turn a link for a valid place into plaintext. It leaves the reader with a dead end. If a reader is looking for that particular hamlet, and finds no link (red or otherwise), what is the reader expected to do next? At least with a redlink, the reader is informed that we simply don't have an article on that hamlet yet. Powers ^(talk) 22:38, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

(indent) Thanks for all the overnight feedback! Although there is a diversity of opinion, I believe there is a general understanding that we are not just removing red links for valid articles.

As Ryan pointed out, if the confidence of not meeting Wiaa criteria isn't high then leave the red link as it is.

Example 1:

• Hampton (Iowa) - a city in Iowa  : this is a small town (population of over 4,000) with at least one motel. It remains a valid potential article for WV. No change.

Example 2:

• Hampton (Florida) - a town in Florida : this is a town with a population of 500 and no apparent accommodation. Change to:

• Hampton (Florida) - a town in Northeast Florida in Florida - The red link is removed, but a more precise region is provided

Does this work for everyone? Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:42, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see the point of removing the redlink, but at least it provides someplace for people to go. But we should note that simply not having hotels isn't sufficient reason to remove a link. Powers ^(talk) 19:00, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Wait, what? I thought that was the whole point of "can you sleep there"... Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:05, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a rule of thumb. Places to sleep can also be camp grounds or whatever. In the end, we just need common sense to determine if an article has merit. No place to sleep is one of the easy ways to separate (most) attractions from (most) valid destinations. Places that are interesting enough to fill the other sections but just happen to have no place to sleep could get an article - but that's not very common. I'm fine with your proposal, Andrewssi2. Of course, nothing is set in stone anyway; if another user feels the place should get an article after all, they're free to plunge forward and create it. JuliasTravels (talk) 19:28, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm actually a bit lost regarding the comments above. Is the interpretation of Wiaa so wide that actually it isn't regarded as relevant policy at all? Andrewssi2 (talk) 20:11, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I think my answer would be... no :) It's very relevant, and the "can you sleep there-test" works 99 out of a 100 times, I think. I agree with LtPowers that a lack of hotels doesn't /always/ mean we don't want an article. I would however say that a lack of places to stay is in principle enough reason to delete a red link, unless someone comes up with arguments to show it's that one in a hundred case. I shouldn't have said rule of thumb. What I meant was rather that we use that statement or test to illustrate the spirit of our policy, and it's not a rule cast in stone. JuliasTravels (talk) 22:56, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

(Indent reset) Are there places where you can sleep that still don't merit an article? Do such places exist? And if so, how can we ascertain which places belong to that category? Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:25, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I completely agree that a destination article may not meet the sleep test but nevertheless deserve to be a valid article by virtue of its 'travel-worthiness'. Some of the Galapagos islands come to mind.

I raised this discussion around (specifically) disambiguation articles because I felt Hampton was confusing and unhelpful by the addition of too much detail. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:31, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I've said this before, but it seems perhaps our policy page needs to be re-written for clarity. The "Can you sleep there" test is meant to distinguish what types of places get articles, not which specific places "qualify" for coverage on our site. For example, you cannot sleep in a museum; thus a museum is an attraction, not a destination. You cannot sleep at Six Flags Over Texas; so it is an attraction, not a destination. You can sleep at Walt Disney World, so it is a destination. You can sleep in a city. You can sleep in a village. You can sleep in a national park. You can't sleep in a city park. Etc. Powers ^(talk) 02:44, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I like Andrews' approach of linking to the region (or perhaps the nearest city: "___ is a small town near Famous City in Country" might work, too). I think it would also be helpful to link to the region for redlinks, too. A disambiguation line that says "Hampton (Iowa) - a city in North Central Iowa" might be helpful (especially if the region article is well-developed). The bigger the place, the more helpful a link to a region or nearby city will be. "Somewhere in Russia" is much less informative than "Somewhere near Moscow". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Overly long disambiguation pages

Swept in from the pub

There are quite a few disambiguation pages on Wikivoyage which contain long lists with multiple redlinks, unlinked items or redirects. The general tendency for disambiguations seems to be to list all examples of a place which share the same or a similar name. In my view, that crosses the line into encyclopaedia territory, and doesn't help the traveller find the place they're looking for quickly and easily. We should only be disambiguating places which already have an article here, or are likely to get one in the future, rather than listing every speck on the map with a common name.

One newly-created disambiguation which has almost no travel content at all is Mar (disambiguation) - nowhere on the list has a Wikivoyage article, and there's some ISO code thing which I don't think even belongs on this wiki. Far and away the most useful bit of travel info (the IATA code for Maracaibo International Airport) is tucked away near the bottom of the list. Some other examples are Lexington, Berkshire (disambiguation), York (disambiguation), and Springfield; the number of redlinks on these suggests several specks with no travel guide-worthy content.

In the case of Mar, I suggest it would be better to turn it into a redirect to Maracaibo#By plane. For others, trimming them down to only list places which qualify under WV:WIAA seems a good idea. But what do others think about this? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. However, if we're going to as far as deciding if some city follows WV:WIAA, we might as well create the article, right? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:47, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

If somebody wants to, then sure. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:53, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

As at least one of the articles mentioned was created by me and I have created some long lists in the past, I will give another point of view. The main point is that you cannot predict why someone is coming to this site, but generally they are visiting either to look up information on a location or a travel topic. Yes there are only articles on places that have POIs but it is good to know there are other places with the same name, first not to get confused, second to make sure people do not go to the wrong one. May sound like it cannot happen but today people just enter the name of a town and follow the SatNav in the car. I know of people gone to the wrong Newport in the UK and the wrong Rüdesheim in Germany. The other reason is that a page with a good bit of content and covering a few different subjects and locations is going to get picked up more by a search engine. There should be a limit, this is not Wikipedia, but the limit is locations and travel topics. On red links, I think they should be there if there is the chance of the location becoming usable, else just list as text. --Traveler100 (talk) 18:03, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Some good points raised there, though I'm not convinced we should be catering to the "follow the GPS off a cliff" crowd. Isn't the idea that Wikivoyage is for people who can think for themselves, which is why Captain Obvious is unwelcome? One benefit I can see of redlinks on a disambiguation page that you didn't mention but might have, is it could spur a new user to create an article for the place they were searching for. On the other hand, my points about making the list look untidy and harder to navigate still stand. And if they really are specks on a map, how many people are going to be looking for them? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:58, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. Some of the new disambig pages take things to really comical extremes, such as Acadia (disambiguation)'s link to "Municipal District of Acadia No. 34, Alberta", an unpopulated rural expanse that not only will never have its own article, but with a name that's not even in common local usage, or known to anyone other than a handful of planners and local-government wonks. The status quo of linking only to places that currently have articles or redirects, or redlinking to places that could conceivably support their own articles per wiaa, is fine. If we're wrong about the viability of a redlink that we may have opted not to include, we can always add it back to the disambig page after the fact. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:22, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

I think that, in some situations when we create disambiguation pages, it may be worthwhile to consider, when we add each name to the list, if the traveler is likely to the find the destination name ambiguous, before we add that name to the list. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:46, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Revisiting disambiguation pages

Swept in from the pub

My view is that Birmingham should refer to Birmingham, England by default, since Birmingham, England is way more famous than Birmingham, Alabama, but I'm looking to get a second opinion on this.

Similarly, I'm thinking Portland should by default refer to Portland, Oregon, since it is much bigger and better known than Portland, Maine. The dog2 (talk) 22:07, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I suppose, but I will say that in the U.S., Birmingham, Alabama is better known than Birmingham, England. However, I would expect for the reverse to be generally true in the rest of the world. As for Portland, the one in Oregon is much bigger than the one in Maine, so yeah, probably, but on the East Coast of the U.S., the one in Maine is better known. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:31, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I supposed we could look at how we treated Perth as precedent. I won't be surprised if Perth, Scotland is better known than Perth, Western Australia to Scottish people (correct me if I'm wrong, AlasdairW), but on WV, Perth refers to the latter by default because it is by far the best known Perth internationally. The dog2 (talk) 22:46, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

This is one of these things that is very hard to please everybody. To me Portland refers to Isle of Portland, but I know of the existance of the two US cities.

I know Perth (Scotland) much better because I have been there several times, but I know of the Australian city. I think that most vistors to the Scottish city know of the Australian one, but this might not have been the case 30 years ago.

I would prefer Birmingham to refer to the city in England, but it is not an important issue. Although the Alabama city is better know in the US, those in the US may be more aware that there are several Birminghams as there are over a dozen US Birminghams with Wikipedia articles. AlasdairW (talk) 23:31, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with The dog2 regarding Birmingham. The Birmingham in the UK is around five times larger than the Birmingham in the US – it has also hosted various international events (including the unpopular Commonwealth Games), hence why it's the primary Birmingham on Wikipedia.

Using Hamilton as an example, Canadians will usually default to Hamilton, ON, while New Zealanders will default to Hamilton, Waikato – neither is considered the primary topic because they're equally known. Birmingham is not in a similar case, though – one is almost better-known than the other in around 190 or so other countries. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 23:29, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I wonder what other people think about Portland, but for me, as someone from Singapore, if you just say "Portland" to me, unless specified or otherwise obvious from context, I will by default assume you mean Portland, Oregon. The dog2 (talk) 02:40, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Ditto – I'd never heard of Portland in Maine until 5 or so years ago. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:52, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Everyone should note that I agreed with the suggestions, even if not enthusiastically. I think that 40 or 50 years ago, it would have been less obvious that Portland by default meant Oregon, but that city has grown so much and is really sizable. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:45, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Pageviews analysis suggests that Birmingham (Alabama) gets a little less than a third as many views as Birmingham (England). A clear winner, but not an overwhelming one, unlike, say, London, where the ratio is more like 10 to 1. I think that's enough to make it worth keeping the disambiguation page at Birmingham. On a similar basis I think it makes sense to keep the disambiguation page at Portland. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I think pageviews are an important consideration. I suggest the monthly view that Granger is using (the default is daily, for the last 20 days), and looking back over several years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘@Mx. Granger: So in your view, what should be the threshold we need to cross when deciding whether to default to the disambiguation page, or to the most famous city of that particular name? How do the page views compares between Berkeley, California and Berkeley, England for instance? We decided to make Berkeley refer to California by default instead of the disambiguation page. And likewise, how do the stats compare between Perth, Western Australia and Perth, Scotland? The dog2 (talk) 03:45, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Maybe a ratio of 4 to 1 or 5 to 1 would be a good reference point. I'm not totally sure, and other considerations are relevant too. In a comment above about Perth, User:AlasdairW thinks that "most visitors to the Scottish city know of the Australian one", which also seems relevant. I would guess the same is true of Portland (Maine) but maybe not Birmingham (Alabama), which would be a reason for keeping Birmingham as a disambiguation page but moving Portland (Oregon) to Portland.

The Berkeleys have about a 10 to 1 ratio, though it's harder to interpret these numbers when one of the pages is already at the main title – the Berkeley page has a built-in advantage over Berkeley (England) because the former is where readers end up if they type "Berkeley" into the search box. As for Perth, the ratio is between 4 to 1 and 3 to 1 (despite the built-in advantage for the page at the main title), and there are two cities vying for second place: Perth (Scotland) and Perth (Ontario). Based on that I think Berkeley should probably stay where it is, but I wouldn't object to making Perth a disambiguation page. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:54, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

This might not be helpful, but I think Glacier National Park is a good example. As a half-American, I was revolted to find this as a disambiguation page. But, indeed, Canada has their own Glacier National Park, and it's only about a 2:1 ratio on views for the American one vs the Canadian one. So, fair enough I think... DAB it. I also think that in general we can defer to en.wikipedia on disambiguation issues a lot of the time. Let them do the hard work over there, we don't need to bother with it so much. The collective brain trust they can aggregate there re trivial issues like disambiguation is far more than we could ever hope to pull together here. So in terms of Birmingham, yes, direct to Birmingham, UK. Brycehughes (talk) 01:01, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

(FWIW, that page wasn't a disambig page for Glacier NP long ago). --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:54, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Heh, I know. That's actually why I noticed it/brought it up. Brycehughes (talk) 23:19, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Based on this discussion, I'll take it that we should leave Portland as a disambiguation page, but make Birmingham refer to the second largest city in England by default. The dog2 (talk) 15:32, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

If Birmingham and Perth are not disambiguated on Wikipedia it would seem unlikely they do here, while we have a "So much more famous" rule here, because we have far fewer articles it means both that non-geographical meanings often have little or no impact and places too small also don't normally count so if Wikipedia doesn't disambiguate we probably don't. The only argument I can see for disambiguating Birmingham here is that Wikipedia nearly always puts the state in US settlement names while we don't here meaning its more likely readers and editors will search/link using the state but otherwise while there was a RM in 2009 for Birmingham which resulted in not moved Perth has been far more controversial though not much after 2012. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:13, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Template for a single disambig?

People looking for Port Stephens almost certainly want the major tourist resort in Australia; however, there's another tiny settlement of the same name in the Falkland Islands, likely too small to ever have its own WV article. There are no other Port Stephenses in the world, so a full-blown disambig page seems like overkill. Do we have an equivalent of WP's {{for|X|see Y}}, and if not, should we create one? Jpatokal (talk) 06:51, 8 June 2024 (UTC)