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on what statistics should look like for hatnotes, primary redirects, primary topics

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Here's some more bits of info I've gathered after someone asked at Talk:Tupelo:

  • Talk:Slow#followup to move
    • hatnote got up to 50% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic barely registers though the common section does consistently get a measurably noticable chunk of traffic
  • Talk:Panis#post-move
    • a primary redirect was in place and no hatnote
    • after the move, the previous presumed primary topic got ~1.2%, ~1.4%, ~2.4%, ~1.9%
  • Talk:Zozo#post-move
    • hatnote got a small amount of traffic but almost all identifiable traffic anyway; RM received very little interest
    • after the move, the previous presumed primary topic got ~2.6%, ~1.9%, ~2.2%
  • Talk:Mar#post-move
    • hatnote got ~5.2% compared to incoming traffic
    • after the move, the previous presumed primary topic got ~6.5%, ~4.3%, ~4%, ~2.9% (the latter being a weird month)
  • Talk:Julius#followup to move
    • a primary redirect was in place before, hatnote got ~3.5% of traffic, we noted the redirect ratio back then as 68/91 = ~75%
    • after the move, the previous redirect destination got ~11%, ~5%, ~3%, ~4%
  • Talk:Sola#followup to move
    • hatnote got ~10% of traffic
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~7%, ~7%, and then with the fall of overall traffic it was below the anonymization threshold (< 10/273 = < 3.66% with every source-destination combination - which doesn't mean it wasn't actually something different though still a minority).
  • Talk:Tete#post-move
    • the hatnote got ~11% before the move
    • afterwards the previously presumed primary topic gets ~6%, ~7.2%, ~8.2%
  • Talk:Uma#post-move
    • there was a primary redirect in place and the hatnote got ~25.3% of its traffic before the move and dis. traffic was much larger still
    • afterwards the previously presumed primary topic gets ~8.2%, ~9%, ~11% interest
  • Talk:Ty#post-move
    • hatnote got a very small amount of traffic (max 220/13742 = ~1.6%), was only #5 in the top list
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic was sorted down in the list, got ~7% clicks the next month; sorted back up the following month it got ~8%, ~7.5%, ~5% clicks, though ~53% / ~55% / ~60% / ~47% of identifiable outgoing
  • Talk:Hum#full disambiguation again
    • used to be primary redirected to human humming, went back and forth a bit
    • previous primary redirect destination gets ~10%, ~8%, ~8%
  • Talk:Marr#post-move
    • hatnote got ~10% of traffic
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~11%, ~10.5%, ~11%, ~7.2%, ~9.6%
  • Talk:Rara#post-move
    • hatnote got some traffic before, all small
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~11.9%, ~11.3%
    • closely connected topic also shows up in outgoing destinations, but nothing else
  • Talk:Cam#post-move
    • hatnote got ~3.3% of traffic
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~11.5%, ~8.6%, ~12.3%, ~11.4%, ~17.8%, ~16.8%
  • Talk:Luz#post-move
    • hatnote got ~9.7% of traffic, total disambiguation list traffic at times substantially higher as well
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~12%, ~7%, ~7.7% among several other topics
  • Talk:Top#post-move
    • hatnote got ~2%
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~12%, ~9%, ~9%, ~9.5% and less than half of identified outgoing
  • Talk:Kolya#post-move
    • hatnote got ~1.4%, total disambiguation list traffic substantially higher than that
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~13%, ~11%, ~8%, ~7.6%, ~7%
  • Talk:Shoot#post-move
    • hatnote got ~1% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~11%, ~10%, ~11%, ~12%, ~14.5% interest
  • Talk:Redd#post-move
    • hatnote got ~5% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~10.8%, 19.6%, ~10%, ~17%, ~15%
  • Talk:Tupelo#post-move
    • hatnote got ~3% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~14%, ~28%, ~31%, ~30%
  • Talk:Boyle#post-move
    • hatnote got <4% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~15.6%, ~33%, though it's not clear if this is an actual improvement as we know we're burying one notable part of it at least, ~40%, ~40%, ~36%
  • Talk:Vic#post-move
    • hatnote got ~2%
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~15.8%, ~15%, ~18%, ~20%, though most of outgoing
  • Talk:Golden shower#disambiguated
  • Talk:Bold#post-move
    • the previous stats indicated up to ~20% interest in the hatnote
    • after the move the interest in the previously presumed primary topic was ~16%, ~14.7%, ~18.4%, ~12.1%, ~14.3%
  • Talk:Julia#post-move
    • hatnote got ~20% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~14%, ~16%, ~17%
  • Talk:Slava#post-move
    • hatnote got ~13% of traffic
    • after the move, we continue seeing seasonal spikes for the previously presumed primary topic, and regardless of spikes it gets ~23%, ~15%, ~11%, ~9.5%, ~14%, ~11.5%, ~10%, ~14% interest
  • Talk:Hamme#post-move
    • hatnote got relatively small traffic, was not measurable, most likely <10%
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~16% interest
    • reverted, subsequent discussion resulted in no consensus
  • Talk:Baudouin#post-move
    • primary redirect, hatnote got < 0.5% interest compared to total incoming traffic at destination, nobody checked a comparison of redirect and disambiguation traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~16%, ~23%, ~17% interest
  • Talk:Warren#followup to move
    • hatnote got ~7% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~18%, ~12%, ~14%, ~15% interest
  • Talk:Hamm#followup to move
    • hatnote got ~2.5% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~18.4%, ~21%, ~22.9% interest
  • Talk:Mana#post-move
    • hatnotes combined got ~8% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~19%, ~17%, ~16% interest
  • Talk:Charlotte#post-move
    • the hatnote got ~0.7% before the move, yet there were hints that it could do better if reorganized because of ~20% measurements related to the primary redirect (which we sadly can't have in a lot of cases)
    • afterwards the previous presumed primary topic gets ~21%, ~23.5%, ~21.1%, ~22.9% interest
  • Talk:Lili#post-move
    • the hatnote got ~2% before the move
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~23.2%, ~15.4%, ~26.4% interest
  • Talk:Gaga#post-move
    • the hatnote got ~1.5% before the move
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~24.8%, ~29.9%, ~27.4% interest
  • Talk:Saba#post-move
    • hatnote was in the top 5 of identifiable outgoing clickstreams, the ratio wasn't recorded then but was around 635/23806 = ~2.6%
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~28.5%, ~26%, ~24%, ~23.5%, though around half of outgoing
  • Talk:Frida#post-move
    • hatnote got ~2% of traffic
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~27%, ~19%, ~27%, ~24.2%
  • Talk:Thomastown#post-move
    • hatnote got ~1%
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~25%, ~28%
  • Talk:Forced march#post move to disambiguation
    • was a soft redirect between 2011 and 2015, when it was made a primary redirect, and in 2023 it was disambiguated after a discussion
    • previous primary redirect destination gets ~29%, ~27%, ~44%, ~34.1%, another meaning that wasn't even mentioned in the RFD gets much more
  • Talk:Major#post-move
    • the previously discussed primary topic was moved after a lot of discussions, at the time of the RM the hatnote had max 431/17909 (~2.4%) interest
    • afterwards it shows up with ~30.6%, ~30.3%, ~25%, ~28%, ~21.3%, ~26.9%, ~37.1% of reader interest, though three quarters of outgoing
  • Talk:Ultra#post-move
    • the hatnote got ~2% before the move
    • afterwards the previously presumed primary topic gets ~29%, ~30.6%, ~26.5%, ~23%, ~26.9%, ~20.6%
  • Talk:Quantum leap#post-move
    • the hatnotes got ~21% before the move
    • afterwards the previously presumed primary topic gets ~32%, ~29.7%, ~32.5%
  • Talk:San Juan#followup to move discussion
    • before the discussion, the most popular link is alphabetically sorted in the middle of a big list and got ~22% clickstreams
    • after the discussion, it's on top of a MOS:DABCOMMON section, and gets ~29%, ~38%, ~26%
  • Talk:Sokol#post-move
    • hatnote got ~3-4%
    • afterwards the previously presumed primary topic got ~33%, ~21%, ~30%
  • Talk:Rasna#post-move
    • hatnote got ~1%
    • afterwards the previously presumed primary topic got ~20.9%, ~23.2%
    • move got reverted, went through a RM
    • afterwards the previously presumed primary topic got ~37%, ~38%, ~39%, ~53%
  • Talk:Severian#post-move
    • hatnote got ~1.7%
    • after the move, previously presumed primary topic got ~37%, ~33%, ~31%, ~25%, ~35%, ~23%, ~29%, ~24%
  • Talk:Tiro#post-move
    • primary redirect was in place and we could measure ~18% of interest in the hatnote
    • after the move, previously presumed primary topic got ~36%, ~28%, ~36%
  • Talk:Lio#post-move
    • before the move, hatnote got ~1%
    • after the move, previously presumed primary topic got ~35.6%, ~37.9%, though >90% outgoing
  • Talk:Mons#post-move
    • hatnote got ~2%
    • after the move, previously presumed primary topic got ~38.5%, ~33.3%, ~32.3%, ~40.9%
  • Talk:Starwood#post-move
    • hatnote got ~2%
    • after the move, previously presumed primary topic got ~38.5%, ~35%, ~36.6%
  • Talk:Dave Hill#post-move
    • hatnote got ~0.5%
    • after the move, previously presumed primary topic got ~39%, ~46.1%, though almost all outgoing
  • Talk:Alnair#post-move
    • had a primary redirect
    • after disambiguation, previously presumed primary topic got ~46.5%, ~38%, ~41.5%
  • Talk:Angles#followup to move discussion
    • with primary topic in place, hatnote got less than 0.5% compared to incoming traffic and wasn't even in top 20 clickstreams
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic gets ~46.5%, ~43.6%, ~43.7%, ~42%
  • Talk:ATB#post-move
    • hatnote got ~1%
    • after the move, previously presumed primary topic got ~47%, ~45%, though almost all identifiable outgoing
  • Talk:Lord Cameron#followup to move discussion
    • proposed primary redirect quite recent, no consensus
    • proposed primary topic later got ~47%, ~54.8%, ~36.3%, ~54.2%, ~52.4% of incoming traffic
  • Talk:Give Me Liberty#post-move
    • hatnote did not get an observable level of interest
    • after the move, previously presumed primary topic got ~62%, ~39%, ~42.5%
  • Talk:Erasure#post-move
    • hatnote got < 0.3% interest, I myself doubted that there's a navigation issue there, but it wasn't completely clear
    • after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~48%, ~47%, ~44%, ~47.9% interest
  • Talk:AEG#post-move
    • hatnote got ~1% of traffic, I was skeptical because of that and long-term significance aspects
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~49%, ~47.5%, ~47.3% interest, though ~90% of identifiable outgoing
  • Talk:Motul#followup to move discussion
    • proposed primary topic gets ~51%, ~49%, ~52%, ~48%, ~51%
    • no consensus to move
  • Talk:Nabis#post-move
    • hatnote had ~1% interest
    • after the move the previous presumed primary topic got ~50%, ~58%, ~42%, ~49%, ~51%
  • Talk:King Charles#post-move
    • several RMs, kept disambiguated
    • proposed primary topic gets ~60%, ~55.9%, ~58.4%, ~61.7%, ~61.8%, ~59.1% interest, though ~80% of identifiable outgoing, and hints of more
  • Talk:Sugar Man#post-move
    • was a primary redirect, the ratio between redirect views and disambiguation views was between ~23% and ~43% but then mostly going back
    • after the move the previous redirect destination got ~60%, ~61.5%, ~61%, ~68.2%
  • Talk:Heavy metal music/Archive 13#Requested move 12 June 2023
    • proposed primary topic got ~60% of traffic, though a fair bit of of it came from there, too
    • the discussion was overwhelmingly against the move regardless
  • Talk:Sean O'Malley (fighter)#Requested move 5 March 2024
    • proposed primary topic got ~71% or ~84% of traffic, one other topic identifiable as well
    • no consensus
  • Talk:Michael Fagan#Requested move 17 February 2024
    • proposed primary topic got between around 70 to around 85 percent of traffic for years and across spikes in usage
    • no other major topics by long-term significance, consensus to move by usage

I think I'll have to keep updating this summary here to build up a knowledge base. --Joy (talk) 15:19, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

--Joy (talk) 14:44, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
--Joy (talk) 18:05, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
--Joy (talk) 06:55, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
--Joy (talk) 16:37, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
--Joy (talk) 13:25, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't to say that all of these moves were truly warranted or that there aren't a plethora of individual factors at play. But even with this spread of outcomes, there's something distinctly off with our current near-consensus interpretation of how stats should look like for primary topics by usage. This also means little for considerations of long-term significance. --Joy (talk) 15:30, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your numbers for % of "interest" are rather misleading, as they don't mention that in many cases, the largest percentage by far was "no traffic at all", i.e. no clickthrough, for whatever reason (visits not by humans? wanted target not available? info on disambig page sufficient?). E.g. for Hamme, you note "after the move, the previously presumed primary topic got ~16% interest", which was more than 4 times as much as the other topics "combined". Fram (talk) 14:51, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've mentioned this several times. I agree it is misleading to simply assume that every incoming view counts for something meaningful. Truth is that there is no way for us to know what if anything those 'dead-end' incoming page views signify. older ≠ wiser 15:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Bkonrad exactly, but it's not exactly that we don't know that they don't signify anything. There's multiple hints that they do:
First of all, there is a spread of cases here, ranging from where we see a lot of the incoming views translate into clicks, to where we see few of the incoming views translate into clicks. I didn't summarize all of that information on this talk page, you have to go click through the links to examine that. (I may find some time later to extract that dimension of data and extend the list above.)
That means that we're not just consistently seeing some ghost traffic always, rather, we've got to be observing actual reader behavior at least to an extent. So we can't just see e.g. 60% of traffic translate into clicks in a fresh case and then jump to the conclusion that most of the remaining 40% is ignorable.
Secondly, there are cases where we see almost all of the incoming views translate into clicks. The most recent such example I found is described at Talk:Forced march#post move to disambiguation, where our identification rate went from 34/55 (~62%) in the first month observed, to 96/96, to 95/95, to 135/135 in the last three months, amazingly enough, even at such a small amount of traffic.
This negates even the idea that there's always got to be at least some of this ghost traffic, because apparently we have a falsifying scenario that seems quite consistent. So we can't just see e.g. 75% of traffic translate into clicks and then jump to the conclusion that any part of the remaining 25% is ignorable.
--Joy (talk) 12:33, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It should be noted that we since observed forced march getting more outgoing clicks than incoming ones. That's another scenario we can't account for - the same readers clicking multiple items in a list. --Joy (talk) 08:48, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On the individual points raised by @Fram earlier:
  • meta:Research:Wikipedia clickstream says it tries to exclude visits not by humans: We attempt to exclude spider traffic by classifying user agents with the ua-parser library and a few additional Wikipedia specific filters. It's certainly possible that it misses, but then the page views "User" category is likely missing, too, so I don't know that we should rely on that being a major effect.
  • Wanted target not available - how would this improve the odds for the claim that there would have to be a primary topic, when there'd be topics that detract from there being a primary topic yet they're not even available? That would seem to just raise the risk of astonishing more contingents of readers. "These people don't even know about meaning X, and they proclaimed meaning Y as the main one - pfft!"
  • Info on disambig page sufficient - this use case is indeed not studied at all, and I agree that it seems possible for at least some cases. Ultimately, why would we consider all navigations that do not result in another click bad? IOW surely this also detracts from the idea of there being a primary topic, if there is also the contingent of readers who we cannot convince to click on the link to read about the proposed primary topic (which is also usually the very first link in the list).
  • More than 4 times as the other topics combined - I've explained already at Talk:Hamme (disambiguation) how you are making weirdly incorrect statements. Even if we compare 28 identified clickstreams and the 10 identified clickstreams, the ratio between those two numbers is 2.8, it is simply not 4. Likewise, both 28 and 10 are so close to the anonymization threshold that it's not at all clear that this ratio has to be precise. In other words, this could have been 4 or it could have been 2 with just a few more src-dest pairs of views identified as opposed to anonymized out. And none of these ratios are impressive when we also see a lot more traffic interested in neither of these.
In any event, thanks for the interest. --Joy (talk) 12:33, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm not saying the count of incoming views should be completely ignored, only that trying to read into what it signifies is highly speculative and we should be very cautious about what significance we attribute to such dead-end views. If there is a sudden change in the number of such incoming views, that likely merits some further consideration. Similarly, if there is a consistent, very large gap between incoming and outgoing views, that also may merit some consideration. But even in such cases, deciding what readers reaching such dead-end views were looking for when arriving at a particular disambiguation page is still highly speculative. It could play a factor in arguing that there is no primary topic where there is none at present (i.e., where there is a request to replace a disambiguation page with a primary topic). I'm not sure what significance we could read into such dead-end views of a disambiguation page where there is an existing primary topic. It could be readers are just curious about what else might have the same name, without intending to look at any of them in more detail. We just don't know why such readers behave that way. older ≠ wiser 13:46, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, the change in pattern would be a significant indicator. But on that front, I point again to evidence above - we often observe a clearly consistent pattern, and then we do a switch for whatever reason, and then we the data switches to observing a clearly different consistent pattern. Well, it often takes a few months for things to settle, and in the interim period there's a swing or two, but still.
In cases where there is already a primary topic selected, it's very hard to read into the no-clickthrough traffic. Because the content is larger and varied, it could be any number of possibilities. Just like it could be readers who are navigated wrongly and just immediately click away, it could also be misnavigated readers who stayed and learned something and then clicked away, or it could be a bunch of completely content readers who were absolutely happy to read what was in front of them and had no need to immediately learn more about another related topic. We don't have the tools to discern these.
With simpler pages like the disambiguation lists, however, it's less hard to understand the general reader behavior because we don't present people with huge amounts of possibilities, we reduce that number and streamline their options, and make it more likely we can understand the measurements of our existing tools.
What I think we should learn from all this is that we should not be too cautious and instead we should not be afraid to experiment as much as we have been so far.
In all this data I've tracked, we've yet to observe a case where there was a fresh reader complaining about disambiguation lists being the wrong choice. As long as we apply MOS:DABCOMMON, and we do, we have no indication that we're confusing or troubling any appreciable amounts of readers even in contentious cases. --Joy (talk) 14:35, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In all this data I've tracked, we've yet to observe a case where there was a fresh reader complaining about disambiguation lists being the wrong choice. This seems a peculiar criterion. Quite aside from reactions to the lists you have been compiling, I can't recall the last time I came across a "fresh" reader ever complaining about an incorrectly placed disambiguation page where the complainant was not a myopic partisan seeking to promote their preferred topic.
Regarding What I think we should learn from all this is that we should not be too cautious and instead we should not be afraid to experiment as much as we have been so far. I'm glad you are taking a deeper dive into the data, but I hope no one is being misled that the reems of data of uncertain quality based on poorly documented functions represents an agreed upon approach to making decisions. older ≠ wiser 16:02, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We actually have some interesting data points about that, too, cf. Talk:Tito (disambiguation), where nobody really paid attention for over a decade as disambiguation was in place, and then a consensus of editors practically instantly chose to apply a primary topic redirect mainly for long-term significance. (On the plus side, that flip allowed us to measure something else afterwards, Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 56#on the quality of clickstream and pageviews usage data explains more.)
I'm pretty sure if we go through other cases we can also find similar timeframes, where some arbitrary navigation choice has been in place for years and decades, and then we arbitrarily decide to congregate, make fun new decisions and pat ourselves on our collective backs :)
IOW our decision-making process seems perfectly sound (mostly to me too, I'm not excluding myself here), but so much goes through the cracks that it's doubtful that much of it really matters as much as we think it does. --Joy (talk) 16:49, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

top/common ordering as a matter of style vs. navigation efficiency

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I've noticed a few cases recently where MOS:DABCOMMON formatting was a bit of an issue:

Several of the discussions at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Archive 44 have been about ordering, too. The search of talk page archives here brings up a lot of discussions on ordering as well. Maybe we need to ponder this matter more coherently.

It seems to me that we should move the part of the style guideline that affects the top of a disambiguation page into the main guideline here, because this doesn't seem to be a matter of just style per se, rather it might be making a significant impact on ensuring that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily. --Joy (talk) 09:54, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that advantage of having a common uses group at the top is always clear-cut. It can result in slowing navigation if readers jump to the relevant section expecting to find the specific item listed there only to have to look back up to the top. This is similar to what can happen with a primary topic as well and raises question of whether such entries should be duplicated within the appropriate section as well as at the top. older ≠ wiser 12:54, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, we should actually list the common items in both places. If the list is already relatively long, duplicating a couple of popular items shouldn't lengthen it unreasonably, and we hopefully catch most of those cases. --Joy (talk) 16:52, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That and also with relatively short pages, it may be unnecessary or even counter-productive to try to pull out a couple. older ≠ wiser 17:21, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because of so much possible variety, we'd have to test on specific examples. For example, is it 1 common 20 uncommon, or 2 : 20, or 1 : 10, or 3 : 10, and then the varying levels of how common each of the common ones is, etc. --Joy (talk) 18:51, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like we found a case of such a relatively short page - at Deadlock, most of the common entries were in Other uses, and @Zxcvbnm removed them[1]. --Joy (talk) 07:14, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that seems reasonable as two of the duplicates were in "Other uses" section and the third was in weakly coherent "Politics and law" section that had only remaining entry merged into other uses. It's a bit odd that impasse remains duplicated in the see also section. older ≠ wiser 11:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the meantime, at King Charles, adding a duplicate listing in the appropriate section immediately below the top listing looks to have been helpful to at least half the readers who missed the top listing before, per two monthly measurements afterwards. --Joy (talk) 09:14, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalization of a disambiguation page title with both all-caps and lowercase senses

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I seem to recall that there is a rule that if a disambiguation page has both all-caps and lowercase senses, then the title of the page should be at the lowercase title, if that is available. In particular, I am thinking of LOR (for which many Lor senses exist). Lor currently redirects to LOR. I am not asking for a page move here, but for where the rule on this can be found. If there is no rule on this, where should one be put? BD2412 T 01:58, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think what you're looking for is two of the bullets under WP:DABNAME:
  • A word is preferred to an abbreviation, for example Arm (disambiguation) over ARM.
  • The spelling that reflects the majority of items on the page is preferred to less common alternatives.
Those can sometimes be contradictory, but it's probably best to hash those out on a case-by-case basis. Station1 (talk) 06:01, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The real question here is do we have to account for this merge in the first place? If you see distinct usage patterns based on capitalization, and if it would make navigation more efficient if the reader didn't have to wade through both lists together, they should simply be split up, as this guideline is not actually consistently applied in the first place, cf. Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 56#WP:DABCOMBINE not actually with organic consensus in the acronym space.
In my browser, I have to do PgDn twice already to browse that list, so if that can be two lists of Lor and LOR and if these would be more straightforward, that would actually make more sense. The idea of merging is valid where we believe there's a huge amount of traffic of people e.g. typing in "lor" but wanting "LOR". If these could be served with a link to LOR visible on the first page without scrolling, that seems better than forcing the readers to go through two pages of a more complex list on every visit. And, it would become measurable, we could see in the statistics how many readers needed to do that. --Joy (talk) 07:25, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... as this guideline is not actually consistently applied in the first place ...: It is a guideline, until it is modifed or removed. Until then, it's unclear if other examples are WP:OTHERSTUFF or WP:IAR.—Bagumba (talk) 09:53, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the WP:DABCOMBINE guideline is only useful if it actually makes sense. The current text is just too broad:
Terms that differ only in capitalization, punctuation and diacritic marks. These should almost always share a disambiguation page.
This just says 'terms', but it doesn't have to be that generic: for example, Mediawiki forces us to combine arm and Arm, but it doesn't force us to combine Arm and ARM. If we have 9 known meanings of Arm, 3 known meanings of both Arm/arm and ARM not because of laziness in typing (company, software, language), and 34 known meanings of ARM, it's neither trivial nor obvious to just advise these almost always need to be one list of 46 items, and we should not guide people towards that solution in such strong terms.
This guideline sounds like it was written only for short, more trivial use cases, and I sincerely doubt that anybody ever checked if it was actually battle-tested by analyzing its outcomes. We should change it to be less strong. --Joy (talk) 09:39, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Joy: I have seen much longer "merged" pages, and would be concerned that some people searching for "LOR" will not bother to capitalize when typing the letters into the search box. BD2412 T 17:50, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the case of long pages, that can be handled by adding, for example, "LOR (disambiguation)" to See Also, or even adding it as a hatnote if See Also is really far down the page. Even with merged pages I think it's easier for readers to find what they're looking for if the Lors and LORs are split into separate sections. Station1 (talk) 18:03, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Location of self-reference tool templates {{srt}}, {{look from}}, {{intitle}}

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These templates help a lot with cutting down on non-essential WP:PARTIAL matches, but it's not really clear WHERE in the See also section they should appear. I always put them at the top because that's how I saw them first in Draw#See also about 15 years ago. But in recent times, I tend to see them (70%) as the very last thing in the See also section, below other XXX (disambiguation) and alternative-spellings. Is there a good reason to do it one way or the other, or deliberately leave it to the editor? – sgeureka t•c 12:15, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sgeureka: I would put them first, using the guideline at MOS:DABSEEALSO. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 11:44, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

how reader navigation functions without our navigation elements set up right

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Here's an interesting example I stumbled upon:

The village article was effectively set as a primary topic for "Tivadar" since it was created in 2006.

The name article was written in late 2019, and it immediately got some persistent traffic, which is not what I'd expect when it wasn't linked from "Tivadar" itself - a hatnote was missing throughout this period.

In early 2020, someone adds[2] an indirect link to the name by linking Theodore (name) in a Name section, and the traffic at Tivadar seems to start dropping, while the traffic at Tivadar (given name) starts rising, and since 2021 it regularly overtakes the village traffic.

All this time, the list at Theodore (name) was still linking back to the (misplaced) village article, and again there was no hatnote even.

Seems like search engines learned where our navigation was lacking and worked around the problem - at least most of the time. --Joy (talk) 08:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And in turn, since then the new pattern has emerged: page views with the new layout included. Given name list is at peak volume, while the traffic at the base name fell to its lowest volume ever. --Joy (talk) 12:52, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cleaning up INCDAB

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I've been going through Category:Disambiguation pages with (qualified) titles and cleaned up all the straight-forward cases, but I am not sure if my "solution" for the past few incdabs were going to far (and that I should self-revert them). Specifically, I created {{anchor}}s in list sections within articles (which are neither dab pages nor lists, as mentioned in WP:INCDAB) where the former incdabs now redirect.

The navigational/dab value is still intact, but I figure there might be problems with Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links down the line. Opinions? – sgeureka t•c 14:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Avoiding confusing or astonishing readers

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WP:D says in the lead:

[An important aspect to disambiguation is] ensuring that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily, whichever of the possible topics it might be.

I'd like to compare that to WP:CONS, which says:

The goal of a consensus-building discussion is to resolve disputes in a way that reflects Wikipedia's goals and policies while angering as few editors as possible.

Using that kind of a standard, I'd say we should make it an explicit aim of disambiguation (or more generally, navigation) to make sure we confuse or astonish as few readers as possible.

This would be aimed at helping balance the two major primary topic criteria and in general reinforce the idea of double-checking whether there is a primary topic at all. So, for example,

  • if there's very popular topics for a term, but they don't necessarily have long-term significance, we remind people to ponder if the average reader would be confused or astonished to see us 'push' one of these popular topics rather than present the ambiguity

Conversely,

  • if there's no particularly popular topics, but there are topics of long-term significance, we remind people to ponder if the average reader would be confused or astonished to see us 'promote' one of these significant topics rather than present the ambiguity

Often times in requested move discussions I notice people can be keen to just pick a topic as primary and be done with it, regardless of whether we have a sound analysis of the big picture - whether we can actually tell how big is the advantage of the most popular/important topic over the others. Too often we're just spitballing it, deciding based on personal biases. The guideline should do more to try to counteract that.

The current guideline text covers reader confusion and astonishment in a few places, notably:

To be clear, it is not our goal to astonish our readers, and the topic that comes first to mind indeed often is suitable as the primary topic. Anne Hathaway, as one of countless examples, takes the reader to the modern-day American movie star's page, not to the article on the wife of William Shakespeare. But in no case do "what comes first to mind" or "what is astonishing" have much bearing, either positive or negative, on which topic, if any, actually is the primary topic.

I don't think this final sentence is actually helpful or leading to good navigation outcomes - leaving things open like that is not a good guideline. --Joy (talk) 13:04, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

followup to how page views can change between having and not having a primary topic or primary redirect

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Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 56#a change in page views between primary topic and primary redirect got archived, but I keep finding more of these examples:

  • Talk:Jump drive - went from 4k views/month to almost nothing after being turned into a primary redirect
  • Talk:Tuk#post-move - went from less than ~200 views/month to consistently over, spiking at ~350

--Joy (talk) 22:28, 18 October 2024 (UTC) --Joy (talk) 19:32, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Editor insists on adding references and external links to the disambiguation page Ionex

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User:MolecularPilot has added references and external links to the disambiguation page Ionex, and has readded them following my removal of them. It has been explained to this editor that these are forbidden on disambiguation pages, but the editor persists. Will someone please explain this point of policy to them in a way that will cause them to conform their conduct to policy? I am beginning to fear that a topic ban may be necessary. BD2412 T 01:25, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@BD2412 Hi! I'm so sorry. What happens: I added new content with references, reporter undid them. I wanted to add the content back without references (as they are in the article) but I'm in mobile now so it was a bit tricky so I undid the reporters undo and then I removed the references. I think they might just have seen the undo notification and not checked the page history for what I did. MolecularPilot 01:29, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I accept this explanation, given the difficulties that sometimes arise with editing on a mobile device. BD2412 T 01:32, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nutshell

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Moved from user talk:The Mountain of Eden
 – The Mountain of Eden (talk) 20:26, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I undid your edit to the nutshell but accidentally hit the return key before typing an edit summary! The problem is that "disambiguation" occurs in a variety of ways, not only via disambiguation pages, but also by hatnotes and "see also" links in articles. Your rewrite suggested that the topic is limited solely to disambiguation pages. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 20:07, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't think "see also" sections are used for disambiguation purposes. They are used for making links to related articles.
  • While hatnotes can be used for disambiguation purposes, they are only good when the number of possible links is very limited (2 or 3 at the most)
  • Most importantly: I don't think that the existence of hat notes invalidates the proposed text "Disambiguation pages serve as navigation guides that allow a reader to quickly find the article that best fits what they had in mind in cases when the search term could reasonably apply to more than one article."
The Mountain of Eden (talk) 20:33, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, it does not adequately provide a nutshell of what disambiguation is. This guideline page is about much more than disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 20:54, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Point taken. We can modify the proposed text to say "Disambiguation pages and hatnotes serve as navigation guides ..." -- The Mountain of Eden (talk) 21:01, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see that there was any actual problem with the current text. older ≠ wiser 21:25, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with the existing text of the nutshell is that it starts out with "It is necessary ....". Since that is the very first sentence, the pronoun "it" is ambiguous. That's why I rewrote the nutshell. —The Mountain of Eden (talk) 21:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is there some stylistic prohibition about this on Wikipedia? It seems a fairly common imperative construction using a dummy pronoun. Is there evidence readers are finding this construction ambiguous? older ≠ wiser 22:02, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why use a dummy pronoun when it can easily be written out? The Mountain of Eden (talk) 22:11, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes writing it out is not an improvement. And if there is no actual problem, then what the is need to fix anything.older ≠ wiser 22:41, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Removing the dummy pronoun makes it less colloquial. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 00:23, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Still don't see that there is any problem that needs fixing.older ≠ wiser 00:40, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think the proposed text is worse than the existing text? If so, how? —The Mountain of Eden (talk) 06:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question to start with is to specify precisely what is it that you are trying to "fix" aside from a possible stylistic weakness and gain consensus that this is actually a problem. Then discussions about solutions can be more fruitful. older ≠ wiser 10:38, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have already stated what I'm trying to fix (eliminate the use of the dummy pronoun). In your opinion, it's not broke, and you are entitled to hold that opinion. So now the question is even though you don't think the existing text is broken, is the new proposed text worse than the existing text, and if it is worse, why? The Mountain of Eden (talk) 14:17, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It provides an incomplete summary of the page. And your suggestion for making it more complete would be more unwieldy and less efficient than the current text. older ≠ wiser 14:29, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds to me like you are saying that the fix of the additional words "and hatnotes" to give "Disambiguation pages and hatnotes serve as navigation guides ..." makes the proposed text a good summary.
I fail to see your point that "Disambiguation pages and hatnotes" is any more unwieldy than the existing text of "links and disambiguation pages". The Mountain of Eden (talk) 15:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's not what I'm saying. You object to the current text on a stylistic basis, not on any actual deficiency. I do not think what you propose is any sort of improvement. older ≠ wiser 15:58, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You have made your point abundantly clear that you don't like the proposed text. Up to now, you have failed to communicate what you think is wrong with the proposed text. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 16:02, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You have failed to demonstrate any actual deficiency in the current text. older ≠ wiser 16:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not true. I have already pointed out that the existing text uses the dummy pronoun, which is too colloquial. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 17:29, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's your opinion, not an actual defect. older ≠ wiser 17:37, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's your opinion that it's not a defect. So given that you cannot point to any defects in the proposed text, I will go ahead and put it into the project page. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 17:39, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You've already been reverted by another editor. I suggest that you first gain consensus that there is an actual problem with the current text. Then there perhaps can be some productive discussion about how to address that. older ≠ wiser 18:09, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree with older ≠ wiser on this. The page is about disambiguation generally. In fact, the first two of three bullets start out by mentioning titling and wikilinks. There are several methods of disambiguating topics, including titles, incoming wikilinks, outgoing links not just in hatnotes, although that is most common, but also in the lead or body of articles or See Also sections. The focus of the page is not just hatnotes and dab pages. It might be possible to improve the nutshell, but the focus is not just hatnotes. Station1 (talk) 18:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good points. How about this proposed text?
Disambiguation helps readers quickly find the article that best fits what they had in mind in cases when the search term could reasonably apply to more than one article.
This takes takes out the details of what tools are used for disambiguation, is much shorter and cleaner than the existing nutshell (29 words for the proposed text, 33 words in the existing text), and most importantly (at least for me), takes out the dummy pronoun "it is" that gives the nutshell a colloquial tone. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 19:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is progress. I'd suggest leaving out mention of the reader's mind and also "search term", as the process isn't only about searching -- it is also about ensuring articles are named in a way to minimize ambiguity. How about:
Disambiguation helps readers quickly find a desired article in cases when a term could reasonably apply to more than one article.
older ≠ wiser 19:39, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Even better !! Only 21 words. -The Mountain of Eden (talk) 19:54, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds good to me. Station1 (talk) 02:01, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Shouldn't the last word be topic rather than article? PamD 05:25, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so. It's about finding the right article when multiple articles can reasonably apply to a term. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 05:46, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is nice and clear and concise. I agree it applies to articles, not topics. There may be multiple articles with similar titles but different topics: that's what disambiguation is usually about. Shooterwalker (talk) 13:51, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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