Wikidata talk:WikiProject Disambiguation pages

WikiProject Disambiguation pages WikiProject to solve any issues regarding disambiguation pages.

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Q744128

Q744128 contains links to word "Attraction". Finnish word "vetovoima" is "attraction" in English, but what then when fi-wiki has also page for word "attraction"? Is it better to separate these words now or later, if/when there is page for both words? Here was a different page for "vetovoima" before it was deleted because of "Duplicated entry: copy of Q744128". --Stryn (talk) 14:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

According to the rules it should be separated. --Knopfkind (talk) 02:00, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Done. --Stryn (talk) 08:03, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Q402408

• En-wiki has a surname article Ahonen which is not a disambiguation page, but it's linked together with disambiguation pages here: Q402408. In this case, is it ok to add statement "main type: disambiguation page", because some of the linked pages are not disambiguation pages, and some of them are? --Stryn (talk) 14:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I see no problem as long as the linked page conatin a template mentioned on the MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage from the same wikipedia. That's the system how the interwiki bots handled this problem, why should we change this? In your example w:en:Ahonen contains {{surname}} which claims that the page is a set index article and thus can be linked to DABs in other languages. --Knopfkind (talk) 07:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Interwikilinks set by a bot

Hey. Does it make sense that disambiguation pages have an interwiki link? I doubt that, because the meaning of a word depends on the language. Due to that fact one cannot provide an interwiki link for disambiguation pages, which is consistent. Let me give you an example: Which disambiguation page should be linked to the page w:de:Kälte? Sould one link w:en:Cold (disambiguation)? But w:en:Cold (disambiguation) links to w:de:Cold and this can also be reasoned. The Problem is:

• Wikipedia describes objects, no matter what word describes them
• disambiguation pages work with an ambiguous word, where the ambiguity is dependent on the language

Conclusion: one cannot provide consitent Interwikilinks for disambiguation pages, since a disambiguation page workes in only one language.--Biggerj1 (talk) 14:26, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are unique in the Wikipedia, they not only work with an ambiguous word as you determined, they also contain abbreviations which represent phrases or even clauses, but they can have one thing in common in every language, a specific combination of letters, and based on that they can be linked through all languages. That is why w:de:Kälte should be linked to w:en:Kälte. --Sixsi6ma (talk) 22:12, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree to Sixsi6ma. Plus there is no need that every DAB has an interwiki link. e.g. Kälte: there is just no other DAB spelled Kälte so that's it and I don't find it bad. If people want to have a translation for a specific meaning of Kälte they just need to go to teh article and there they go. @Biggerj1: Unfortunately I don't understand what you mean with consistent interwikilinks. For me linking w:de:Cold to w:en:Cold (disambiguation) would be consistent. --Knopfkind (talk) 23:16, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok, this seems to be a standard which has been worked out for DAB (i did not know that). But this is not really put into practice. Now knowing that this standard exists i suggest that dab-interwikilinks are set by a bot, which simply has to check all dab pages in a wiki for dab pages in another wiki with exactly the same name. In de wiki we have ~170000 DAB so this should not be too much to do (compared to the bot run we encounter right now). The biggest problem would be if there is something like "cold (disambiguation)", but the scheme for this is clear: simply take the word and put the word disambiguation in the right language and in brackets behind that--92.201.35.213 07:45, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

See my post in the other section. I don't like the idea. And in addition I think that a huge amount of DABs has already proper interwiki links so that there is no need for a bot. --Knopfkind (talk) 10:57, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Exact same spelling ?

I just merge Q7663755 (systema) and Q3485338 (sistema), when I see this page. I think in several case, the disambiguation pages can have little variation of spelling, specially when the wikipedia page use different variation of spelling. The plural is often one of this variation. --Nouill (talk) 10:02, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

The community decided to prohibit variations (see here), but I would agree to link those because both pages include both terms, they just use different terms as page title. --Sixsi6ma (talk) 22:13, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

+1 Should we add this to the guidelines as an exception as long as there is no Wikipedia which has separate DABs for each spelling? Or do we need a poll at project chat for every additional point? --Knopfkind (talk) 09:41, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

-1 no exceptions. You produce a huge problem. Without exceptions the interwikilinks can be set by a bot! Don t mess this up.--92.202.105.199 10:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea to let a bot do this. I'm sure we can handle this by hand espacially as we are not under time pressure to get ready. As you haven't probably noticed yet: there are already exceptions in our guidelines. Don't missunderstand me: I like guidelines. But I also like to use my common sense before becoming a slave of guidelines. I really would like to hear other opinions on that. --Knopfkind (talk) 10:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Space, Uppercase and Lowercase

See : [1]. In plenty of case, variations of uppercase and lowercase exist for the exactly same expression, especially when there are some compound words or expression. I start to think if the guidelines aren't a minimal flexible, guidelines will just not be applicate. I just want to write on the guideline some problem that I find when I do some maintenance on the disambiguation pages. --Nouill (talk) 23:41, 18 April 2013 (UTC) I edit the guideline after merge a wp:fr items in Q438052. --Nouill (talk) 00:24, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I might be wrong, but what is currently stated in the guidelines was approved by the community. Your changes are not approved so that's probably the reason why it was reverted. In the section above I also proposed a change of the guidelines but I just don't know if we need an extra survey for each change or not or how to propose changes in the right way... --Knopfkind (talk) 00:01, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I created Wikidata:Requests for comment/Disambiguation pages guidelines. If someones can check, correct and say their opinion the RfC is will be great. --Nouill (talk) 00:39, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Interwiki Links and Disambiguation

Some days ago, I tried to set an interwiki link to a disambiguation article and got an error message. If I got this right, it is not allowed/possible to link an article to a disambiguation, right? (If it actually IS possible, please correct me!)

I do not quite understand, though, why this should be a good idea. I'm thinking in terms of WP articles. Let's say there's a 'normal' article on a non-ambgious word in one language, while the same word in another language has several meanings. If, in these cases, it is not possible to link the article to its ambiguous foreign-language counterpart, you have no way to tell readers where to find the information they are looking for in another language.

Now, don't say that the article in the first language should be divided if it is really about two different concepts. That won't work in many cases as what is regarded one logically solid and indivisible concept in language A might be regarded as two completely different (and in the eyes of the speakers "logically" different) concepts in language B. This is a linguistic problem; anyone familiar with translation or linguistics will agree. Ignoring this and simply not allowing the linking of normal to disambiguation articles will result in extreme user-unfriendliness.

Another point I do not quite understand: Are interwiki links always non-directional? If so, that would mean, you simply cannot allow links from normal towards disambuation items while at the same time disallowing links in the other direction... - while this distinction indeed would be a good idea in terms of user-friendly and goal-oriented linking.

If anyone can clarify my doubts revise the disallowing of this kind of links, it would be greatly appreciated. And I also think that this might be quite an issue in the long run...

Another, similar problem: It appears to be impossible to link from two items to the same item in another language. The underlying linguistic/logical problem is the same as explained above, although in this case it's not about disambiguation pages... Is this so? --5.158.132.72 18:49, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

It is technical possible to link articles and disambiguations. Do you have an example where it was not possible for you? And for the last question: yes, it is technical impossible to link two items from one language to one in another language with wikidata but you can still use the old fashioned interlanguage links. --Knopfkind (talk) 23:50, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanations! Here's one example: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8501996 Try to add en:Collar and you get this:

 Site link enwiki:Collar already used by item Q423230.

If you cannot link 2>1, as you say, then the only way to do this is an interwiki link. Now look at the history of that article: Many reverts with the explanation that wikidata links to disambiguation pages are not allowed or that the correct way are wikidata links not interwiki links... E.g.:

"Änderung 115995064 von Anka Friedrich rückgängig gemacht; Interwikilink zeigt auf eine BKL in en-WP. Das ist in jedem Fall falsch. Wenn schon unklar, dann bitte aus Wikidata entfernen."

"Revert auf Version von Benutzer:Anka Friedrich (12. Sep. 2012, 16:56). Grund: Nutzlose Änderung. Interwikis laufen über Wikidata."

How do you deal with this? --5.158.132.72 08:18, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

You got the error message because you cannot link two items to one article, that's correct. For a database which is used by all wikipedias, you have to have clear and general rules. The Halsband/Collar problem is a really specific exception/problem. I don't think it's helpful to adjust the rules here in wikidata just for this case (or for every future exception). As I already remarked here, in my opinion this problem should be solved with local interlanguage links and cannot be solved in wikidata. I also commented your question here. --Knopfkind (talk) 10:10, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again for your comments. The problem apparently is that some users think that iw-links are prohibited from now on?!

Now to this: "The Halsband/Collar problem is a really specific exception/problem." Unfortunately not. It's something that happens all the time. I can't tell you any examples right now, but as a translator and graduate linguist I tell you that 1:1 congruency between concepts actually is rather rare. OK, just a few examples:

es:bermellón + es:rojo -> de:rot

de:Indigene Völker Südamerikas + de:Indianer -> es:Amerindio

de:Gerätestecker + de:Steckdose -> en:AC power plugs and sockets

de:Gerätestecker + de:Steckdose -> es:Enchufe

...etc. You could continue this list ad nauseam. While some of these examples are intrinsicly linguistic problems, arguably, some of them could be resolved by dividing or joining articles - a lot of work across many language versions and you will still have conflicts... --5.158.132.72 13:07, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I see your point. But right at the moment I have no other idea than using local interlanguage links. Assuming you are starting a discussion about changing the rules (article <-> disambiguation and 2>1) this needs to be confirmed by the community and even then you still have the software sided problem. And I'm even not sure if this is only a problem of the wikidata software or the mediawiki software in general because 2>1 was also not possible with the old interlanguage links (only the first links to one language was displayed). Do you have an idea to solve this problem? --Knopfkind (talk) 15:24, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

If you can indicate the right place where to continue/move this discussion (on either of the two issues...), I'd appreciate that :-) And concerning iw-links/mediawiki software: 2>1 links were/are possible. Obviously you mean that 1>2 links weren't possible (which is ok as it isn't really a problem imo). --5.158.132.72 16:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Args, sorry. Never edit wikidata when you were nearly falled asleep... Stupid me, especially because I did this and it worked. --Knopfkind (talk) 23:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I guess that the wikidata:Project Chat is the Right place because we need a general rule for normal Interwiki links maybe a commentary indicating that they were checked/created after the introduction of Wikidata.--Saehrimnir (talk) 03:23, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Q401355 and Q364807

Hello i am bussy trying to resolve these interwiki conflicts. But i am struggling a bit with these two disambiguation pages, in Q364807 there is a link to the page Beobachter on dewiki (German translation of observer) (the same case for most of other wikis) while in Q401355 there is a link to the page Observer on dewiki, some advice? - Foxie001 (talk) 16:54, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I have partially split Q364807. --Nouill (talk) 13:33, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks - Foxie001 (talk) 15:44, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Other cases

I don't know if it has been already discussed. If the disambiguation pages should only contain links to pages with the exact same spelling, what about rules regarding:

1. articles: "The XXX" and "XXX" should be separated, like The Doctor and Doctor, but on en.wiki they're united in en:Doctor
2. plurals: "XXX" and "XXXs" should be separated, like Eagle and Eagles (but on en.wiki they're often redirected in the XXX form, like in Eagle)
3. very close words: for example, "Color" and "Colour" should be separated, but on en.wiki they're together in en:Color (disambiguation) <- is it the same case of this?
4. numbers: should "6" be different from "six" (english) or "sei" (italian)? So, should 6 and six be separated or united (currently they're united). Or again, Numero 6 and Numero Sei (currently they're separated)?

Note that I'm using mainly examples in english, but this should be extended to all the languages. --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 12:21, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I suppose that 1-4 should be merged and don't have strong opinion about 5. About 1st I have got a bias (or argument?) that in my language there are no articles like "the" or "a". --Infovarius (talk) 16:31, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

If there is the possibility to merge the items (no two different items in any language) you should merge them if not you should split up all links correctly. --Sk!d (talk) 22:40, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I didn't understand very well:

@Infovarius: why 5? They are only 4. Regardings articles, what do you mean? Should they stay separated or not?

@Sk!d: so they should count as separated items if they're kept separated on the local wikis, and merged if the local wikis keep them in the same page, right?

Shouldn't we open polls like these ones? --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 19:59, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Is it important? Littledogboy (talk) 20:13, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

like the other ones, yes it is (IMHO). --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 07:54, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Hm, I don't remember why 1-5... I suppose I mean 1-3 + 4. --Infovarius (talk) 19:47, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I am a little late but want to comment nevertheless. First I need to clarify that we only discuss about how WikiData deals with Wikipedia Disambiguation pages not how WikiPedia deals with them internally, we only link those pages and don't merge, split or change them.

Regarding those cases:

There has to be an item Doctor and another item The Doctor because there is at least one language (Italian) with those two separate disambiguation pages. If and only if all languages had either Doctor or The Doctor and would not exclude one of them internally you could link those pages with one item.

The other cases work equally, if one language distinguishes between variants, WikiData does too. --Sixsi6ma (talk) 17:16, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation in an article vs. a dedicated disambiguation page

"Verwaltungsgemeinschaft" Q6936310 is a term with several different meanings, that up until rather recently were all handled in one article in the German Wikipedia. Other Wikipedias followed the German example and did the same Q251987. Actually it seems unlikely, that even in the future the other Wikipedias will handle the concept in the same detail as the German Wikipedia.

How is one supposed to handle this situation in Wikidata?

• Is there supposed to be a relationship between Q6936310 and Q251987? Which relationship should that be if so?
• Another solution might be that all different meanings of Verwaltungsgemeinschaft are handled as distinct items in Wikidata and if for example the Dutch Wikipedia article is about all of them, link all Wikidata items that are treated in the Dutch article to that article (this is currently not possible, if I understand it correctly).

Thanks, --S.K. (talk) 21:30, 21 July 2013 (UTC) PS: Since I'm rather new to Wikidata, just point me to the right place if this was discussed before or if here is not the right place for this discussion.

This has been referred to as the "Bonnie and Clyde problem". Some wikipedias have one page for Bonnie and Clyde instead of separate pages for each of them.

We agreed with the developers that they would change the software so we can create sitelinks to redirect pages. This would help solve this problem but has not been implemented yet.

There is a workaround which works now. Create stub pages for each topic. Link each of these to a wikidata page then convert the stub pages to redirects. Filceolaire (talk) 01:19, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Then I guess I'll wait until the developers come around to implementing this. The stubs are not really an option for all the different languages involved and the number of dab variants. Thanks, --S.K. (talk) 22:10, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

More specifically to the original question: We are quite rigid, and our rule is purely technical – if a page has a {{Disambiguation}}, we will only ever link it to other disambiguations. Like Filceolaire said, if you convert it into a stub, it can be linked to a page in English. This is often the case with French legal articles, fr:Délit pénal is an example. Littledogboy (talk) 09:23, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that clarifies the relationship between dab Wikidata items and Wikipedia articles/dab pages. The question that remains for me is then if and if so which relationship exists between a Wikidata dab item like "Verwaltungsgemeinschaft" Q6936310 and one of the Wikidata items the dab points to like Q1317260 Verwaltungsgemeinschaft in Thuringia. Thanks, --S.K. (talk) 22:10, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation on Wikivoyage

Also Wikivoyage have disambiguation pages, maybe is better to modify description in "Wikimedia disambiguation page" --ValterVB (talk) 08:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I support that. Byrial (talk) 11:23, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

As for Categories, I support making two classes item, <Wikivoyage disambiguation page> and <Wikipedia disambiguation page>, which are subclass of <Wikimedia disambigation page>, with the same rationale I have in project chat. One item can be instance of both if the disambiguation page exists in both project with the same disambiguated label. TomT0m (talk) 12:10, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I do not understand why you want two subclasses of <Wikimedia disambigation page> (and neither for categories). From my point of view it is only bureaucracy without benefits. I prefer to keep it simple. Byrial (talk) 12:45, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to make a firm rule, it's just keeping the door open for someone who might want to make easily a request such as which catégories are only Wikivoyage, and a task for a trivial bot. In that sense it's the opposite of bureaucraty ;) We even keep the door for a user to just enter the <Wikimedia disambiguation page> class if he does not want to be precise, which is fine by me. TomT0m (talk) 12:54, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I lost the point :) You suggest to split Georgia (Q4962) no description in two item? or you suggest to add two two statements/property in same item? --ValterVB (talk) 13:21, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

One item, two instance of (P31) statements (or subclass, I'm not sure /o\).

why not simply "disambiguation page"? --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 19:55, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Form versus meanings

Hello,
The case study is here. I tried to „correct”, but I need help.

The German, French and Romanian word „energie” means „energy”. If disambiguation pages are linked by primary meaning, then en:Energy here is wrong. If disambiguation pages are related to form, then lv:Enerģija (nozīmju atdalīšana) here and lv:Eņergija here are wrong. Please, can you explain the criteria? And what about non-Latin alphabets, where the form cannot be taken into account? --Turbojet (talk) 09:08, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are related to form, not to primary meaning."energie' should have one page and "energy" should have a second. Enerģija and Eņergija should, in principal, each have their own page however, as this would mean they would be each on a page on their own, they could be left where they are for now and moved if other similar disambiguation pages are created later. Filceolaire (talk) 10:07, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

You're kidding, it's obvious that all those forms energie and energy shares some kind of parenthood and derivation relationship. TomT0m (talk) 10:18, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not kidding. Disambiguation pages are about the word, not about the meaning which is why Energie and Energy are separate pages in wikipedias in 5 different languages. See Energie (Q10561091) and Energy (Q5402200). Filceolaire (talk) 10:33, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Be more precise then, it's about the en:morphology of the en:lexeme (Natural language processing is hard /o\). If we had chosen the pronunciation, things would be different. I guess there is no real good solution for disambiguation pages as it depends on the kind of ambiguities it's supposed to resolve (for example there is also ambiguities in pronunciation). TomT0m (talk) 10:53, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

← Pronouncement can not be taken into account. In my above example, "energie" is pronounced as follows:

• in german, e-ner-gi-e, all e like bed and gi like gift.
• in french, e-ner-gy, g like Geneve.
• in romanian, e-ner-gy-e, all e like bed, g like George.

I agree with the principle of form. Then en:morphology is an excellent example of bad practice. And I understand that this will lead to failure linking disamb pages of non-Latin alphabets, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Jewish, Greek, etc.

To continue the project of disamb pages we must decide formally about the principle. --Turbojet (talk) 14:09, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

We have already decided formally about the principle. See the Main page linked to this Talk page. Now we have to devise a way of applying this principle to pictographic languages. Filceolaire (talk) 17:18, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

If is already decided, why TomT0m say something?

Filceolaire, please give me the links to the discussions with the consensus, I want to understand exactly the arguments. And please be bold and give a concrete example, processing the page en:morphology. So I can use your example if 3RR. --Turbojet (talk) 11:28, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Read the discussions at the top of this page. These include examples.

As to Morphology (Q178224): most of the pages linked to this page refer to 'morphology' or transliterations of this (e.g. changing the 'ph' to an 'f'). I think these are close enough in form to stay until one wikipedia creates separate disambiguation pages (as was done for 'energy' and 'energie' for instance) and we need to create separate wikidata pages to match. Others may interpret the rule more strictly. The link to Vietnamese from this page has a very different form and should probably not be here except that there is no other Wikidata page to put it on and having a wikidata page all to itself is not much use for anyone - in my opinion - so I would leave it here for now; it's not doing any harm so why not? Filceolaire (talk) 14:07, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not satisfied by your response, especially by the lack of links to discussions. Without links I believe that what you say is only your personal opinion, not the decision of the community.

Please compare Morphology-Morphologie-Morfologie-Morfologia with Energy-Energie-Energia. It is unsatisfactory that someone just give instructions (contradictory in two examples), but is hesitant to apply uniformity. The object of discussion is the principle. We want to do something, not to argue and revert the other's actions ("I'm smarter than you"). Please be serious and consistent.

Wikibreak till September 1. :) --Turbojet (talk) 15:18, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

To answer the question about why I said something, I'll say that I have maybe seen the discussion, but I did not say anything because I had not anything smart to add. It's not a trivial question, so it's difficult to find a good rule. I must say I'm not totally satisfied with this one, but it's at least non ambiguous. But a rule which is applicable in principle but not really satisfying for anyone is probably not a good one and might need a lot of work to enforce and correct mistakes made by community cause it's not satisfying. I would say we should not try too hard to enforce it until a long discussion (ant not an early one when the project was just beginning and it was not obvious where things would go). TomT0m (talk) 15:44, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey Turbojet, the actual guidelines for Disambiguation pages can be found in the project-page related to this talk-page, to get there you can click on the "Project page" link on top of this page or remove the "_talk" part of the url or just click here. The discussions about Disambiguation pages in Wikidata that finaly led to the creation of the guidelines and this task force can be found on exactly this project page under: "See also", those discussion pages contain links to other discussions as well as examples. On the issue of contradictive answers from Filceolaire I'd like to point out the key-phrase "I think..." in his post which suggests that the following statement was no longer official policy but personal opinion. LG --Sixsi6ma (talk) 23:54, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Turbojet: I can assure you I was serious. As to consistency....

The discussions are at the top of this page as I said above. What more link do you need?

The principle is, as I said above, established. The object of the discussion is the application of that principle. I gave you some examples of how and why I would choose to apply the principle (loosely) but other may choose differently. I can assure you I will not be edit warring over this triviality. Enjoy your break. Filceolaire (talk) 22:10, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Variation of Bonnie and Clyde problem

It's not exaclty about duets or pairs of something/somebody but a similar problem.

Let's assume that in one Wikipedia there are two articles: "First Zelebanian confilct" and "Second Zelebanian conflict", and a disambig page "Zelebanian conflict". In another Wikipedia there's only one article "Zelebanian conflict" that has two sections devoted to both conflicts. This example is fictitous, of course, but I came across similar real situations.

Can this article and this disambig page be connected to each other? On the one hand, they are devoted to the same topic. On the other hand, this is a common disambig vs. article problem --Michgrig (talk) 09:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

IMO we should never connect articles and disambiguation pages to each other. It's not Wikidata's problem if some Wikipedia's makes things differently. --Stryn (talk) 20:07, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

If we keep pressing with our strict policies, all Wikipedias may give in and follow. Apparently, our rules ("only merge same-string disambs") are already in accordance with dewiki... Littledogboy (talk) 22:39, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

BTW there is plenty of study cases in User:Sk!dbot/disambiguation page conflict – some make me feel pretty uneasy. Maybe we should reach out to Wikipedias more, and post this policy on Wikipedias' Chat/Village pump/Cafe pages, and invite them to discuss in a RfC – surely everyone wants this sorted and logical. I think one of the most difficult problems will be names and surnames, as policies differ widely. I understand from botmasters, that the small difference, whether there is {{Disambig}} in these pages, makes a huge difference in terms of automatic processing and checking... Littledogboy (talk) 18:19, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I have a strong opinion that in this case article "Zelebanian conflict" and disambig "Zelebanian conflict" should be connected. Presence of disambig template is a technical thing (it could be removed some time when the wiki expand it to summary article) while interwiki connection should serve as a sense linking. Infovarius (talk) 13:54, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I strongly oppose any mixup of article with non article pages, it creates massive consistency problems. What properties would we give that item? What happens when one wikipedia adds the new rock-song Zelebanian conflict in their disambiguation page?

We need to withstand the urge to link things that are not the same in order to "save" an item. This database is not supposed to be read by humans but by computer programs and those need consequently followed consistent rules or developers will avoid Wikidata entirely. --Sixsi6ma (talk) 21:39, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Cannot agree with your general statement – interwiki links are very useful for Wikipedia readers. But in particular, interwiki links between disambiguation pages? Who gives a flying f? Littledogboy (talk) 21:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, but how does that contradict my statement? Interwiki-Links are a perfect example of a computer program looking up information on Wikidata and presenting this information to a user without the user ever visiting Wikidata. ....obviously I do :) --Sixsi6ma (talk) 00:08, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh, ok, I thought you meant something like User:Byrial/Used-disambiguations, when you said "by computer programs" – and this is indeed the problem, we are looking for a system that would serve both Wikipedia readers and programs/bots working on consistency checks an so on. From readers' point of view, obviously, I'd have to agree with Infovarius. Littledogboy (talk) 14:12, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Why are you so afraid of disambigs? They are not so "non-article" as e.g. a template or a category. In order to serve bots I propose to introduce "topical disambigs" which are not usual disambigs (lists of things with the same name) but belongs to a quite specific topic. As in subj example it can be "Zelebanian conflicts" topic. Infovarius (talk) 20:23, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

There is also math disambiguation, for example the multiple variations on the same mathematical ideas applied to different mathematicals domains, or theorems with similar names ... Actually there exists categories of disambiguation page which could be classes on Wikidata. TomT0m (talk) 12:06, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree. While most DAB pages are about a particular spelling that is shared by a bunch of otherwise unrelated items (though sometimes in the middle of these lists you find a couple of related items, often signalled by an indent) there are a few DAB pages which are about closely related but not identical items. These DABs probably need to be treated differently so we need to change the Help:DAB page to reflect this.

• How do we identify these pages?
• How do we handle these pages on wikidata? Filceolaire (talk) 12:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

1) I suppose we should determine them case-by-case and write down in some list. 2) Now I prefer to handle them as following. Page "Zelebanian conflict" is about conflicts, so this is like instance of (P31) war (Q198). The page is DAB (technically) so we can tag it as usual DAB ({(P|31}} or P107 (P107) or anything which is agreed upon). May be though we should create an item for each such class of DABs. In this case the item "Conflicts DAB" will be subclass of (P279) war (Q198) for the example. --Infovarius (talk) 14:21, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Proposed changes to guidelines at Wikidata_talk:Disambiguation_pages_task_force/guidelines#Topic_Disambiguation_pages. Filceolaire (talk) 20:30, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

mess with Q1369980 and Q1369933

Hi! I thought this is simple

1) one family of pages about the House of Esterházy and

2) one family of disambiguation pages Esterházy.

It is more complicated. One should also consider:

3) REDIRECTS as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Esterh%C3%A1zy&redirect=no

4) spelling variants as de:Esterhazy with a and not with á.

Please try to fix this. Thanks! לערי ריינהארט (talk) 21:56, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

done --Diwas (talk) 09:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Mixed Disambiguation Page

Hi, Q6453254 is quite complicated, could someone please fix it? --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 09:30, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd propose to revert separation of 9 January back. Infovarius (talk) 20:48, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Re-discuss the rigidness of some guidelines

I hardly recommend your participation here. --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 08:47, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Homophones, transliterated to another language

Hi. There are three French homophones, each having its own disambiguation page:

Auger

,

Augé

and

Oger

. Each of these pages has several interwikis at Wikidata. However, in Russian, all three words are transliterated the same, and the disambiguation page Оже contains items from all three French spellings. Currently, the Russian page is only connected to Wikidata item Auger (Q4331834), which also links to an Ukrainian disambig page with identical title. Questions:

• In principle, should all the three French disambigs be linked to the Russian one and the Ukrainian one? If yes, what is the recommended way to achieve that? Within the existing technical means, I personally see only one way: use the old interwikis mechanism and include the [[:ru:Оже]] and [[:uk:Оже]] lines to all pages (in all languages!) that are connected to any of the three French pages. But this takes us back to the pre-Wikidata age…
• Another solution could be as follows:
  1. Create three redirects in Russian wiki (say, ru:Оже (Auger), ru:Оже (Augé) and ru:Оже (Oger)), pointing to the Russian disambig ru:Оже; link those redirects one-to-one to the three Wikidata items
  2. Create a special "homophones disambig" page in French, English, etc. wikis, listing the three homophones; link those pages to the Russian and Ukrainian pages through Wikidata

The second solution is complicated and must be backed by all wikis; however, it keeps Wikidata in the loop, with all benefits it brings.

I would be glad to see your suggestions. Thanks, DmitTrix (talk) 17:37, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

i'd prefer solution 1, but name the pages ru:Auger, ru:Augé and ru:Oger (if not used; if used place a hint in the header). and on fr and other latin-languages there could also be redirects from fr:Оже. --Akkakk 14:37, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Is linking items to redirects on Wikipedia possible? I thought this was still on the 'wish-list'.

Regarding the question 'in principle', I think it is definitively a good idea of all readers of any of the three French pages can see a link to the one Russian page. Making that possible is cumbersome indeed.

@Akkakk, I suppose you meant part 1 of solution 2! (Solution 1 being using old-style inline links on the Wikipedia pages.) Part 2 of solution 2 is also useful, it makes links in the other direction possible (from the Russian page to the three French pages, but in two steps). Bever (talk) 04:09, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

english set index articles

in en wikipedia there are lots of pages marked as "set index article". according to en:MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage they are not really disambiguation pages, but they are often linked to disambigs in other languages and the description is often set to "Wiki(p|m)edia disambiguation page". according to the guidelines these pages should only be linked to non-disambiguation pages and should not be marked as disambiguation pages. are there any plans on how to archieve this goal? en is not that small that we can ignore this issue. --Akkakk 12:28, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

What do you mean with 'these pages should only be linked to non-disambiguation pages'? Why should pages which are very similar to disambiguation pages and contain mainly a list of links to articles (about persons), not be linked to 'real' disambiguation pages?

Your main argument is that it is in the guidelines, but in fact the guidelines are not so straightforward as you describe theem here. They recognize that 'set index articles' are something in between disambig.pages and articles and that they can be linked to both, depending on what's best in a certain case.

The guidelines also point to en:MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage (or corresponding pages on other Wikipedias). It is is a bit strange that the guidelines let the presence of a certain template decide what kind a certain page is, but that way I could find useful information about this topic.

Surname lists and other set index articles, as they ar called on the English Wikipedia, are mentioned in the last section of 'MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage'. It is also noted there that: 'the interwiki bots consider set index articles to be "disambig similar", they allow interwiki links between set index articles here on the English Wikipedia and disambig pages on other Wikipedias. So the interwiki bots need to know about the set index templates.' Of course the wording is outdated (referring to bots instead of Wikidata), but I think it is a useful approach. Read also the extensive explanation by R'n'B on the related talk page. The distinction between set index articles and disambiguation pages on the English Wikipedia is largely due to very strict rules there for disambiguation pages.

Concluding, set index articles are listed on the page which is mentioned in the present guidelines, and links to them can be useful, so there is no need for de-linking them. Bever (talk) 05:56, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I disagree because index page are not marked like "Disambiguation page". Pages like Anaconda are complete entries, not the disambiguation pages. This is a disambiguation page: Anaconda --ValterVB (talk) 08:51, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

It is not a matter of black and white. Set index articles are marked as 'disambig similar', so 'not marked like disambiguation page' is disputable. You are right that en:Anaconda (linked to similar articles through anaconda (Q14375839)) is more like a real article, with its extensive information about etymology, although it has a disambiguation function as well. But there is no problem to ponder about in this case: there is also en:Anaconda (disambiguation) and of course a strict disambiguation page gets the preference for linking it to the disambiguation page Wikidata item (Anaconda (Q255586) in this case). Bever (talk) 03:55, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

@Bever: Maybe is necessary to know why en.wiki don't set index article like disambiguation page, maybe they have some reason for not doing so. --ValterVB (talk) 19:07, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Founded? «A set index article is not a disambiguation page: A disambiguation page is a list of things, possibly of different types, that share the same (or similar) name, formatted for best navigating the reader to the sought topic. A set index lists things of only one type and need not follow the formatting rules for disambiguation pages; however, many do by convention. A set index article is meant for information as well as navigation: just like a normal list article, it can have metadata and extra information about each entry. It may contain red links to help editors create articles on notable entries.» --ValterVB (talk) 19:10, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

New report

I created a new report to check problems on disambiguation, you can found here. For every Item with instance of (P31)=Wikimedia disambiguation page (Q4167410), I check every sitelink with API api.php?action=query&prop=pageprops&format=json&ppprop=disambiguation&titles=XXX.

Some problem:

• fiwiki, sowiki, ladwiki and kvwiki don't manage disambiguation with __DISAMBIG__
• arcwiki, scowiki, kowiki urwiki and zeawiki don't have __DISAMBIG__ in template, is necessary to add, but need a local administrator. (maybe also some other little wiki)
• ocwiki have a lot of false disambiguation that must be deleted on wiki.
• ruwiki:Need to check if ru:Шаблон:Неоднозначность2 is a disambiguation template because hasn't __DISAMBIG__ --ValterVB (talk) 15:10, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

--ValterVB (talk) 19:55, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@AmaryllisGardener: is an admin on sco.wiki and also active on Wikidata. Just pinging to make aware. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 21:32, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

 Done for scowiki. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 23:44, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

@AmaryllisGardener: Can you check sco:Template:Disambiguation? (I don't see __DISAMBIG__) and also if sco:Template:Geodis must be disambiguation or is simply a list? --ValterVB (talk) 07:46, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@ValterVB: Oh, I updated it to be like enwiki's version. I thought theirs would be correct. I wasn't quite sure about it at first, but I figured it was right since you thanked me for the edit. Anyway, does this fix it? --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 16:08, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@AmaryllisGardener: Yes now is correct, Yesterday I have thanked too early :) --ValterVB (talk) 16:16, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@ValterVB: what means "don't manage disambiguation with __DISAMBIG__"? We have __DISAMBIG__ in the {{Täsmennyssivu}} template here and all disambiguation pages are seen in fi:Toiminnot:DisambiguationPages I think. --Stryn (talk) 05:59, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@Stryn: Can you check this template? It's used for example in fi:Schmidt. It's a template for disambiguation or for list of surname? --ValterVB (talk) 07:38, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@ValterVB: it's for listing disambiguation pages which are about surnames. So... I think that Malline:Täsmennyssivu/sukunimi should also contain the DISAMBIG magic code? What do you think? --Stryn (talk) 11:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@Stryn:Yes it's also my opinion. I change it and add a note on discussion page of the template. --ValterVB (talk) 11:56, 16 August 2014 (UTC)  Done --ValterVB (talk) 12:05, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

another disambig/name problem

there's a problem with 4 links in Schnitzler (Q4646) (disambig) and Schnitzler (Q17142442) (family name). The question is rather easy: do the following links qualify as disambiguation pages, or not?

• eo:Schnitzler, perma link
• it:Schnitzler, perma link
• ja:シュニッツラー, perma link
• nl:Schnitzler, perma link

All 4 pages are marked with {{disambig}} (or equivalent), and there is really no content in these pages that might allow thinking they are "articles about surnames". So – according to our guidelines – i'm sure that these 4 links should be placed at Schnitzler (Q4646) (and not at the name item like they are now).

The problem is, an other user moved these links to the name item 2 times now (i corrected it once). I don't want to step into a stupid edit war, so i'm asking others here to have a look and to take care of these items.

Please notice that i'm only asking here because i think it makes no sense if i (personally) would again try to talk to the user. My experience in regard to the handling of disambiguation items and discussing issues with him is not good, see the 2 threads "Mixing of disambiguation pages and name articles in one item" and "Name article items as subclasses of disambig items" on his talk page, where i got no real answers or otherwise constructive reactions. Holger1959 (talk) 14:12, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Only en:Schnitzler, es:Schnitzler and sv:Schnitzler are about family name all the other are disambiguation page. I have fixed. --ValterVB (talk) 16:32, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Is possible to check with API (example in it.wiki is a disambiguation, in en.wiki isn't a disambiguation. --ValterVB (talk) 16:36, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

@ValterVB: thank you, also for the API links! Holger1959 (talk) 16:57, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

@ValterVB:, i can't agree with your vision and the actions. I repeat that template about disambiguation is just technical point, which can be switched off and on for specific Wikipedia page. In some cases the template makes sense (as it is obvious that pages is about language-specific homonyms), in other cases it is better to ignore it (as in cases for proper names, surnames and some other). In the case under consideration you can browse into pages and see that so called "disambigs" contains exactly the same type of information - list of persons with common surname. Separation into 2 items is destroying linkness of information. I'll open discussion at english chat. --Infovarius (talk) 13:26, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

@Infovarius: Isn't a technical point, because a page marked like disambiguation can keep link to every thing with the same name, but if is a list of surname I can't add only family name page. For example if there is a book with title "Schnitzler" I can add to it.wiki, but I can't add to en.wiki, so the difference exist. It's necessary keep separate them. (Redirect and disambiguation are the only "special" pages managed directly by wiki software) If we start to mix item in a short time there will be a lot of confusion. --ValterVB (talk) 13:43, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

now Infovarius didn't revert again, but made the name item into a "subclass of the disambiguation item" [2] (using subclass of (P279), while the disambiguation item is in no class, naturally), and the disambig item is now "said to be the same as the name item" [3] (using said to be the same as (P460), while there's no such statement the other way round). does this make any sense? I mean, i tried to talk to Infovarius about exactly these issues before (see above)…In both cases the items (if unchanged) will end up as constraint violations, Wikidata:Database_reports/Constraint_violations/P279#Target_required_claim_P279 and Wikidata:Database_reports/Constraint_violations/P460#Symmetric. Holger1959 (talk) 15:14, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Translations

Despite being approved by a near unanimous support, excluding translations from disambiguation pages creates a ludicrous situation where pages that are the same are not linked and pages that have nothing to do with each other are linked. For example, the perfectly good disambiguation page for left has been rendered useless by linking only to other words spelled "left", which of course are not very common in say Hindi. Yet Hindi does have left as a direction, and could likely have a disambiguation page for items about left as a direction, or left as a political direction. The entire purpose of Wikidata is to link similar pages from other languages but that always only means "in meaning" and never "in spelling". If you do use spelling you get the absurdities shown, where en:gauche was linked to fr:gauche, but in English the word "gauche" does not mean the same thing as it does in French, so none of the pages on the en disambiguation page are about the same subjects as any of the pages on the fr disambiguation page, making linking them absurd. An even better example is in English the word gift means something that you give someone, but in Swedish the word gift means "poison", so if there was an en disambiguation page for gift and it was linked to an sv disambiguation page for gift, you would once again have none of the pages on either disambiguation pages be the same, and once again linking them would be absurd, but instead the pages that need to be linked would be the en:poison disambiguation page with the sv:gift disambiguation page. (no also uses gift for poison, and currently en:gift dis is linked to no:poison dis, in no, gift is spelled "gave") The fact that every language could have additional items that are not meaningful in another language is not important. For example, the Swedish page could have people named Gift, and the English page could have people named "Poison", and for left, the German page, which uses the word "Links" for the direction left, has people named Link. What else is on a disambiguation page is not important as long as the item that was used to link it to other languages is on the page. There can always only be one Wikidata page for every Wikipedia page, but the goal is to link as many similar pages, and not create situations where there are inherently only one Wikidata page for each Wikipedia page, which makes them useless as a Wikidata page, because there is nothing that they are linked to - if you go to the page and try to click on what that page is called in other languages there would be nothing there, even if there were 200 other languages that had a disambiguation page for that same item. 76.24.193.7 02:39, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikiquote pages linked to disambiguation items

Hi :-) thanks to ValterVB we have prepared this list -> Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/Wikiquote disambiguation page conflict, which is a list of Wikiquote pages which are NOT disambiguation pages and are linked to disambiguation items on Wikidata. Of course this has to be corrected, by checking them and fixing in one of the suggested ways on the list (depending if the disambiguation item is labelled correctly as disambiguation or not, if the Wikiquote page actually is a disambiguation page, and so on). Since they are about 1600 items (!), my opinion was that it could be useful also to inform all the Wikiquote communities with a bot, in order to recommend to help. What do you think about it? --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 07:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the list, I've asked a technical question. Telling Wikiquotes about the list and advice is good, but is there also some general guideline or project page about it? --Nemo 12:02, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: you mean guideline about how to deal with these pages? Generally speaking there is Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/guidelines; I also saw User:Sk!dbot/disambiguation page conflict, which was more or less the same but even bigger, dealing with Wikipedia links, which are much more. --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 07:45, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. The guideline is not very clear to me. For instance, the list says "If the disambiguation item is not disambiguation..." but the guideline doesn't say what makes a disambiguation item.

For instance Q80411 is a valid topic in itself, but it's linked to some disambiguation pages. Is this mix forbidden by some guideline and if yes which? If it is, what should be split to another item, the disambiguation pages or the true articles? --Nemo 16:21, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I would appreciate creating similar list also for Wikipedias because there are even more wrong sitelinks, I believe. See Special:Diff/220825183/220825418, both sitelinks are not disambiguations and they even belong to two different items. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 17:47, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

For Wikipedia it's too much time/machine expensive. --ValterVB (talk) 19:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis:

1. a "disambiguation item" is an item with Property:P31 "Wikimedia disambiguation page" which connect disambiguation pages... (see also the template on the top of Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages)
2. "Is this mix forbidden by some guideline and if yes which" -> have you read Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/guidelines which I linked to you? It clearly says "The item should only contain links to Wikipedia disambiguation pages with the exact same spelling (disregarding the affix to identify the page as a disambiguation page e.g. (disambiguation))"
3. Q80411 contains Wikiquote links which are all normal pages, and Wikipedia links which are all disambiguation pages, apart from ru which is not. It doesn't matter what should be split, since the only important thing is to have separate items; I always move the fewest number of links in order to "work less", but there are no necessary rules about that. (see also Help:Split an item)

--Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 08:41, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

1. That's a tautology. When am I supposed to add the statement?
2. Yes, I read. That's why I need to know what makes an item a disambiguation item.
3. Why do they need to be split? What's the benefit? Per point (2) it seems that's not a disambiguation item, it has non-disambiguation sitelinks.

--Nemo 21:59, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: the point is: an item must contain either disambiguation pages or other ns-0 pages. Not a mix of them. The first ones are connected basing on their spelling, the second ones on their content. --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 19:32, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

About the second point: an item is a disambiguation item when all the sitelink are disambiguation page, and a page is a disambiguation page when have the tag __DISAMBIG__ --ValterVB (talk) 20:27, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

restrictions: case sensitivity on disambiguation items

please see Wikidata:Project_chat#problems_with_Lee_and_LEE (permalink): there is a new technical restriction, which makes editing certain disambiguation items (partly) impossible. maybe someone has a solution or an idea? Holger1959 (talk) 09:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Is an old problem. When is possible I merge items. The better solution is to exclude the constrain from disambiguation item, or merge on Wikipedia upper/lower case --ValterVB (talk) 17:54, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

In case we can't merge them, should we mark them as Wikimedia duplicated page (Q17362920)? --Pasleim (talk) 09:06, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Good idea, so is possible exclude this case in reports. --ValterVB (talk) 09:19, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil

Hi! I have found two concerns about this disambiguation page Q7063327: First, both homonyms exist in <fa> (farsi?), but it doesn't to have a disambiguation page in this language. Second, in <sv> (swedish), an article exists for Q3344651, but it contains a mistake. The village is not included in the Mauricie region, but rather in Centre-du-Québec, which is in the title of Q3344650. Even if the latter doesn't exists yet in this language, it has some data. I wanted to point those out. Thank you.--Laurianna2 (talk) 07:36, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Same label for all latin language in disambiguation item

@Verdy p: Can you eplain to the project why you think is incorrect add same label in all latin language for disambiguation item? (example) --ValterVB (talk) 19:11, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

The example was caused when I tried to add an entry in French for "Registre", it was impossible because of the conflicting entry in "Register". When these entries are in separate disambiguation elements, we have to drop the legacy entries that existed when they were all associated to the same set of disambiguation pages (but actually for different terms).

Adding extra labels does not even help, they also create their own conflicts when we attempt to add the actual label. See also the conflict reports: sets of homonyms, when they are separated because of distinct orthographies, must also be cleanup up (including in description labels). The "names" in labels should be the same (with only minor diffrences such as capitalisation, notably on the first letter, which are typically ignored for searches in Wikimedia wikis).

We don't need and must not keep any name/label pair for languages that have no such article name in the listed wikis. These languages must be separated if the sets of wikilinks have been separated in distinct elements. Otherwise they create conflict each time we want to add a new case of homymy in those wikis.

The best thing to do would be to split all Wikidata elements that contain distinct terms (dictinct name: the description for this name is normally not a relevant difference, but Wikidata rejects any name/description pair in a language that matches exactly in another Wikidata element).

In summary: those duplicate name/description pairs are not helpful at all, they create more blocking problems. We never need those duplicates and we should cleanup them. Verdy p (talk) 19:21, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Note: I see that you accurately move wikilinks from one Disambiguation element to another, but you should also move the name/description pair because you create duplicates (Wikidata does not let us distinguish two identical name/description pair i nthe same language, and then does not let us add the wikilinks we want due to conflicts). Those extra name/description pairs for languages actually not used in listed wikilinks (because their target title names are different and not locally redirected as aliases) just cauise problems.

If you move wikilinks, you should also move the name/description pairs; we never need to keep them (we can know what the wikieldment is about by just looking at the single property name, which is translated separately in all languages, and may be used as a default description if needed; in fact when adding wikilinks to a Wikidata disambiguation element, this is already done automatically, as long as there's no conflict with another element with the same Name/Description pair for that language.

The (name/description) pair could be in fact created automatically, infered only from the single property P31 when searching in Wikidata.

In fact we could even drop all these name/description pairs from those Wikidata elements (this would be an improvement in the Wikidata search tool: if there's no listed name but there's a matching wikilink, display the title of that link, and use the translation of the P31 property as the description). This would avoid conflicts, but also lot of maintenance work. Verdy p (talk) 20:16, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I try to explain how we manage the disambiguation item in Wikidata (we have more or less 800k item of disambiguation item):

1. The definition of disambiguation is more or less the same in all the wiki and in Wikidata the guidelines are here.
2. In wikidata it's impossible to have same label and same description for the same language
3. All disambiguation item have a standard description, you can see the description in autoEdit gadget
4. Every weeks bot add standard description to disambiguation item
5. Every weeks bot add same label for latin language for all the disambiguation item

Following these rules we can detect all the conflict.

Using Q21081127 for example: On en.wikipedia someone create a disambiguation page called en:Registre then the user create the item in wikidata for that page, he add the english label "Registre" and use the gadget to add the standard description. If we keep Q21081127 like you say (label and description only for ca and fr) the user has create a duplicate and we have 2 item for the same disambiguation, instead if we have Q21081127 with labels and descriptions for all the language, the user is warned that already exist an item with the same label and the same description, so he can add the english page to Q21081127 without create a new item. This is why we add labels and description for all the language in disambiguation item. --ValterVB (talk) 20:35, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree withy all that, but under the rule #2 you give above, all my cleanups are correct! We cannot have two label/description pairs for the same language, and this is exactly what I have cleaned up, and that you absolutely want to restore. So you are contradicting yourself.

The weekly bots may add name/description pairs but only in languages for which there's a matching wikilink listed in that element. This must not be done before that for other languages (and especially not if the names actually don't match exactly).

And if bots can do that, users actually don't need to add any name/description pair in the language. Adding a name would be useful only if the listed wikilinks use several variants of the same name (e.g. with additional disambiguation suffixes, or with some character encoding variants such as apostrophes, whose differences are not essential for searches, i.e. not with primary differences in collation).

My opinion is that even those name/description pairs are not even needed at all (the P31 property already describes the element and it is already translated, and the wikilinks listed for that language already gives a name).

This means that bots adding those name/descriptions are just performing unnecessary works. Instead, when searching a name in Wikidata, it should be enough to list the found element, using the P31 property to describe it in the search results, and displaying the name matched in wikilinks for the relevant search language).

Note that users are not just warned about their attempt to add the conflicting entry, the normal way (i.e. without bots that ignore all rules). They are really blocked from saving the data because of the conflict caused by the duplicate name/description pair: those irrelevant pairs (in other elements) must first be deleted each time this occurs (meaning that they are really a pollution in Wikidata) !

But I have kept the two name/description that are relevant for the two listed languages for "Registre", dropping only the conflicting name/description pairs (that are also in the Wikidata element for "Register"). I use the same rules as you above, but you apparently think that it is still useful to keep extra pairs, but I have demonstrated to you that they were conflicting duplicates with those defined in another element. Verdy p (talk) 21:02, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

The rule number 2 is the key rule to avoid duplicate. You said "We cannot have two label/description pairs for the same language": exactly! I say the same thing, if we have 2 label/description pairs for the same language we must merge they, and this is why we add labels for all the languages: to detect duplicate and merge they. If a user try to create a duplicate item he is warned with a a message, and if you click on "Detail" you can see the duplicate item. --ValterVB (talk) 21:17, 10 April 2016 (UTC) ps Have you an example of problem with Q21081127 if we keep all the label and all the descriptions? Because I don't see problem.

And really look at Register (Q217425) which is also full of conflicting junk data (including name/description ames without any given name, but also names in unrelated scripts, notably Arabic, or Japanese that have their own sets of homonyms, due the the way these scripts are not distringuishing written terms that distinguished orally, and because they also approximate the source Latin terms they have just more or less transliterated).

But note that (name/description) pairs may not match exactly the same orthography, there are some minor differences that are not relevant for searches, e.g. the two different Cyrillic "i" letters used between Russian and Ukrainian, or differences between the legacy ASCII apostrophe and the prefered curly apostrophe in French, handled in French Wikipedia with simple redirects. Or the absence or presence of a final punctuation (such as "!" or "?") in artwork names (movies, books...), or other minor differences of separating punctuation in "title - subtitle" or "title: subtitle" or "title, subtitle", that are also not very relevant for searches, meaning that those variants should be listed in found disambiguation Wikimedia pages, as well as in Wikidata elements.

Note also the presence or absence of a leading article (when a given language is set so that such word is not significant for searches: an, the, and, or...), or some differences like the relative position of the first name and the last name of a person, or the kind of punctuation used for suffixes added in disambiguated pages, or even the presence or absence of this suffix in Wikimedia article names depending on languages: the title of articles listed in Wikimedia links may also not match the name displayed in Wikidata because of these variable prefixes or suffixes.

But differences of scripts in Wikidata is not normal (Register (Q217425) should be split as well, and those non-Latin scripts don't need to be listed in the Wikidata elements for "Register", "Registre", "Registro"...).

I had a conflict caused by Register (Q217425) when I attempted to add the French Wikipedia article for Registre in the Wikidata element for the desambiguation of "Registre": it was impossible to save it.

There's absolutely no need to "prefill" those name/description pairs when there'sd actually NO use in Wikimedia links for the same language in Wikipedia (for international wikis like Commons or Wikispecies, the language used in article names is difficult to infer there's in fact no general rules, just guidelines). All these "prefilled" name/description are not needed (and NO bot should not even add them automatically, except possibly for languages actaully used in the article space of localized wikis, but not for articles in Commons or Wikispecies).

I repeat my opinion: all these name/description pairs should not even be needed at all for disambiguation elements in Wikidata: the listed wikilinks and the value given to property P31 (which is already translated) is enough to FULLY describe them! But if we keep some of them, this should only be for relevant languages that have matching wikilinks. Bots adding them may better be stopped, we don't need this automated work !

Note however that we may accept manually added name/descriptions (notably for adding some aliases for minor differences relevant to a specific language, e.g. plural forms when it is clear that they are true "synonyms" in that language and about the same topic, or for different orthographic conventions to write an abbreviation such as "SNCF" used today vs. the older "S.N.C.F." used up to the end of the 1970's, if "SNCF" alone requires now a disambiguation). Verdy p (talk) 21:38, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

New WDQS opportunities

After a recent update WDQS became a new way to find incorrect sitelinks. This query:

SELECT ?item ?count ?name ?sitelink {
  VALUES (?lang ?regex) {
    #('cs' 'rozcestník|příjmení')
    #('de' 'Begriffsklärung|Wegweiser')
    #('en' 'disambiguation|name')
    ('vi' 'định hướng|đổi hướng')
  } .
  ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q4167410; ^schema:about ?sitelink .
  ?sitelink schema:inLanguage ?lang; schema:name ?name .
  FILTER ( STRENDS ( STR( ?name ), ')' ) ) .
  FILTER ( !REGEX( STRBEFORE( STRAFTER( STR( ?name ), '(' ), ')' ), ?regex ) ) .
  OPTIONAL { ?item wikibase:sitelinks ?count } .
} LIMIT 50

Try it!

shows disambiguation items linked with pages in Vietnamese Wikipedia that have a disambiguator in their title that isn't the common one. You can also see pattern for scanning other wikis. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 13:42, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Q27924673

I think that the criterion Q27924673 should be mentioned somewhere. I started merging items and User:Holger1959 reverted them based on this criterion. See the case Q16761630. --Jarash (talk) 08:42, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

It isn't really an other criterion, but a system to detect the more frequent error with the disambiguations. If you read the wikiproject page it's clear that we can't mix disambiguation with other item and that disambiguation are a particular page on all the wiki ( __DISAMBIG__ magic word) that are very easy to detect with the checkSitelinks tool. --ValterVB (talk) 19:17, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Preventing to merge disambiguation items with regular items

FYI, RFC -> Wikidata:Project_chat#Preventing_to_merge_disambiguation_items_with_regular_items. --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 08:30, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Announcing Disambiguation monitor

Hello! These days, I am developing a tool which should help us tracking sitelinks connected to disambiguation items. It's called Disambiguation monitor (code) and replaces Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/Wikisomething disambiguation page conflict and User:MatSuBot/Disambig errors. I have already implemented the most necessary features to have my bot run and scan all disambiguation items and report problematic links. The features I will try to code up soon are marking false positives (so that the control is more efficient) and real-time monitoring (so that resolved entries disappear very soon after fixing). Matěj Suchánek (talk) 11:21, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Versions and Translations pages

For your information, English Wikisource (and probably other wikisources) have several types of disambiguation pages. In particular, Versions and Translations pages are currently handled on a software level with the __DISAMBIG__ tag, but they are linked directly to the object of the work per se on Wikidata. There is a proposal on English Wikisource to remove the DISAMBIG tag on Versions and Translations pages, but your Wikiproject needs to be aware that until such a proposal is approved, these special disambig pages on Wikisource need to be handled correctly. Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:45, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I report here what I said in my talk: "I think that is better delete __DISAMBIG__ from template "Translations". It's a no sense and it is "dangerous" for wikidata. There are BOTs that read all disambiguation page and add instance of (P31)=Wikimedia disambiguation page (Q4167410) to the item, so we can find (for example) item with instance of (P31)=book (Q571) AND instance of (P31)=Wikimedia disambiguation page (Q4167410) and this situation is totally inaccettable also because there are other BOT's that add in all item with instance of (P31)=Wikimedia disambiguation page (Q4167410) standard label and descriptions in a hundred of different language and I don't think that is correct add "Wikimedia disambiguation page" like description in an item about a book."

What I mean is: if they are disambiguation pages, we must connect to disambiguation item, if they aren't disambiguation simply delete the magic word from template in wikisource. I remember that the size of this project is such that it is unthinkable not to use BOTs --ValterVB (talk) 18:59, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

As I said, there is a proposal on English Wikisource to make this change. If the proposal succeeds, you will not need to modify your bot behaviour. Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:14, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

It isn't my BOT, it's a lot of time that I don't use it for this, but there are at least a couple or more BOT that done this --ValterVB (talk) 20:32, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Please note that Wikiproject:Books has concluded that no data item should have instance of (P31)=book (Q571), as "book" is a polysemic word likely to create confusion. So if you are adding that value, you should cease doing so. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:58, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

UPDATE: The proposal on English Wikisource has concluded with the following results:

• English Wikisource will NOT remove the __DISAMBIG__ magic word from the Versions and Translations page header templates.
• If this causes problems on Wikidata, it is the responsibility of Wikidata to fix those problems.

Because the proposal was not successful, the current practice of using Versions and Translations pages to represent works per se will continue. Please note that Versions and Translations pages are not disambiguation pages under the scope of WD:DAB, as they do not disambiguate between pages with the same name. Please see s:WS:Versions, s:WS:Wikidata, and Wikidata:Wikisource/How to help for current policies and community guidelines on this practice. Beleg Tâl (talk) 04:14, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@ValterVB: @EncycloPetey: @Samwilson: this result may be of interest to you. Beleg Tâl (talk) 04:14, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, English Wikisource is not the only Wikisource with this practice of considering versions or translations pages to be a form of disambiguation page. The French and Polish Wikisources do the same thing. The Italian Wikisource does something similar as well. The only reason that English Wikisource has been singled out among Wikisources is that the process of adding Wikidata items has progressed further on the English than on other Wikisource projects, and also because the English Wikisource is more likely to have multiple editions or multiple translations than other Wikisources.

In other words, this is not an issue limited to a single Wikisource, but a general practice among many Wikisource projects in multiple languages. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:54, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh, also: you may wish to add this to Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/guidelines#Special cases or somewhere similar, to ensure that other editors are aware of this practice. Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:15, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: I wrote some words. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 17:07, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

And I've been reverted by ValterVB, see Wikidata talk:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/guidelines for an other part of the same discussion. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 21:50, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Exception for translation of disambiguation?

Hi,

Do you think it would be appropriate to add explicitely a third exception on Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/guidelines#Links for translation of disambiguation?

For instance, we have all the disambiguation pages about churches where the links are translated but are on the same item, see all pages with instance of (P31) = churches with name of patron saint (Q18091489) like Church of St. James the Greater (Q81885) (and there is many more cases).

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 11:00, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

 Support Pamputt (talk) 12:46, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

 Oppose. First of all, this suggestion breaks many of the guidelines in this project. You would need to re-structure the whole approach to disambiguation on Wikidata. Secondly, translations are not a one-to-one relationship, which interwiki links are required to be. How would your suggestion work when there are separate disambiguation pages on a single project for w:en:Saint Etienne, w:en:St. Stephen (disambiguation), w:en:San Esteban, w:en:Sant Esteve, etc?---That being said, I do think it necessary for there to be a link between such items, for example using said to be the same as (P460) Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:27, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

In the city named after a saint, named after (P138) can do the link between the cities (or all the stuffs named after the same thing, actually). We cannot auto generate language links from such statements in disambig articles, however. author  TomT0m / talk page 21:42, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: my suggestion is just to aknowledge on the guidelines the habits already applied on Wikidata for almost 7 years. Your very general examples are not what we're talking about, please take a look at my example (way more specific and as far as I can tell is almost always a 1 to 1 relation and just a slight extension of the 2nd exception). Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

@VIGNERON: If my examples were too general, it is because your proposal is too general. How about these examples: w:en:St. Mary's Church, w:en:Church of Santa María, w:en:St Marie's Church? How about w:en:St. James' Church and w:en:Church of Santiago? How about w:en:Church of the Holy Spirit and w:en:Church of the Holy Ghost and w:en:Église du Saint-Esprit? w:en:St. Denis' Church and w:en:St Denys Church? Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:50, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: again I'm not proposing any change to Wikidata here. Yes, these examples are what I'm talking about, see St. Mary's Church (Q2229214) for how it's done on Wikidata, do you think this item should be deleted? Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

@VIGNERON: Yes. These are disambiguation pages, not list pages. w:fr:Église du Saint-Esprit should interwiki link to w:en:Église du Saint-Esprit, not w:en:Church of the Holy Spirit. Disambiguation pages are for listing articles with the same title; if there is a book called "Église du Saint-Esprit" or a town called "Église du Saint-Esprit" it would be listed there too. If you want to list churches with the same patron, you should create a list article, like w:en:List of churches named after Saint Joseph; then you can interwiki link to the corresponding list article in the other language. Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:23, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

It is the same principle as other disambiguation pages. There is a reason w:en:Christmas (disambiguation) doesn't link to w:fr:Noël (homonymie). Instead, Christmas (Q296740), Noël (Q11794080), and Noel (Q409674) are separate items, with separate articles in many language Wikipedias as well as English Wikisource. Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:40, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Ok, in this case, if we follow this strict rule of same spelling there is thousand of item existing for years that need to be changed and split and it will disrupt Wikipedia. We probably need a vote before we act on that. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 15:26, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Meh, interwiki link rules are already disruptive on Wikisource. If it happens to Wikipedia, then maybe the developers will have an incentive to fix it for everyone. It's the same issue as the Bonnie and Clyde problem, where an article on one wiki should link to an article in another wiki, even though the articles are not linked to the same item in Wikidata. Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:00, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Speaking of Bonnie and Clyde, the recommended solution for that problem would work here too. Add wikilinks on Church of St. James the Greater (Q81885) to redirects: w:fr:Church of St. James the Greater redirected to w:fr:Église Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur ; w:it:Church of St. James the Greater redirected to w:it:Chiesa di San Giacomo Maggiore ; and so forth. Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:15, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

churches with name of patron saint (Q18091489) doesn't really fit as a instance of (P31) value on disambiguation page items. Since it has the statement subclass of (P279)church building (Q16970), all those disambig items therefore become instances of churchs buildings. But the topics of those items aren't church buildings, the topics are disambiguation pages (that list churches, but might also include other things). IMO the statement should be removed. --Kam Solusar (talk) 23:47, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

@Kam Solusar: thanks for noticing, I removed

⟨ churches with name of patron saint (Q18091489)    ⟩ subclass of (P279) ⟨ church building (Q16970)    ⟩

which was obviously wrong. It still not perfect but Wikidata is a wiki, feel free to improve it. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

 Support making some kind of new exception. This has been discussed previously at Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation_pages/guidelines for the likes of Maximilian II (Q227885), Sino-Japanese War (Q162313) and St. Bartholomew's Churches (Q183500). I see these still haven't been split up, as required by the current guideline. Splitting them up into separate items wouldn't give any benefit, it would only break the interlanguage links, which is the only reason that disambiguation items are created on Wikidata. Ghouston (talk) 20:31, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

 Strong support it is a long-waited thing. I call them "topic(al) disambigs", enwiki calls them "set indices". --Infovarius (talk) 15:32, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

@Infovarius: In that case, the articles are not instances of Wikimedia disambiguation page (Q4167410), but instead they are instances of Wikimedia set index article (Q15623926), and they are not in the scope of WD:DAB. Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:59, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Cleopatra, Kleopatra, and 클레오파트라

Just found out the entries for Cleoptra disambiguation pages have been separated by exact spellings:

• Cleopatra (in many languages) - Q20799297
• Kleopatra (in many languages) - Q735866
• Клеопатра (Cyrillic languages) - Q60372373
• 클레오파트라 (Korean) - Q60374066
• Κλεοπάτρα (Greek) - Q60372192
• クレオパトラ (Japanese) - Q60373492
• etc.

Disambiguation pages are for browsing conveniences, much like the interlanguage links are. If someone opened el:Κλεοπάτρα (όνομα) but failed to find what he/she was looking for, he/she would want to look up en:Cleopatra (disambiguation); interlanguage links should be there to guide them. But with separated Wikidata entries like these: Wikipedias in like Korean/Greek/Japanese, languages with "fancy scripts," would never have any interlanguage links for disambiguation pages.

Myself being working with disambigutaion pages for years, I see a good reason behind the spelling policy in Wikidata:WikiProject Disambiguation pages/guidelines. But in my heart I also find it European language centric. All of 클레오파트라, Κλεοπάτρα, and クレオパトラ are the transcription of Cleopatra. And Kleopatra too. The fact that latin C and K both sound the same is not the fault of other languages, but it's causing them to miss out on interlanguage networks.

I have two things to propose:

1. Let alone Cleopatra & Kleopatra, merge everything else - They're all transcription/transliteration to each other; no reason to be isloated individually by writing system.
2. Modify MediaWiki software to incorporate "said to be the same as" properties into interlanguage links, at least for the disambiguation pages - (This is out of the scope of this WikiProject.) If the C/Kleopatra spelling ambiguity is the issue, showing them both could be a good compromise. Again interlanguage links are for the convenience, and they should guide the users who fell into the page by ambiguous keywords, with as many choices as possible.

--Puzzlet Chung (talk) 04:52, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't know about ideograms, which is a very tough matter, but I think that Клеопатра and Κλεοπάτρα could be merged to Kleopatra, since they use a K (the spelling matters in disambiguations, not the sound). --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 08:01, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

First, Korean & Japanese writings are not ideograms; they represent sounds.

And how about this example: Q436865 includes hi:गौतम, de:Gautama, en:Gotama, ru:Гаутама, ja:ガウタマ, etc. Clearly everything else is the transcription of Buddhist term hi:गौतम (gautama) , yet the guideline says some need to be separated. While I'm not totally against the same-spelling-same-page policy, I'm saying that if we stick with it we have to rethink about the interlanguage link system.

--Puzzlet Chung (talk) 00:16, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

There are a lot more data modelling issues that interfere with interlanguage linking - this, the Bonnie and Clyde problem, the versions/editions distinction at Wikisource, the fact that articles might be in different namespaces depending on the wiki, the complete lack of support for top-level domains like Multilingual Wikisource (https://wikisource.org) - all of this goes to show that the interlanguage linking system is very much in need of overhaul regardless of this particular issue Beleg Tâl (talk) 01:58, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

@Superchilum: but К (Q82320), Κ (Q14401) and K (Q9922) are 3 different letters! And in this case first two are more logically corresponds to C (Q9820). --Infovarius (talk) 11:37, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

@PuzzletChung: sorry, wrong words, I meant something similar to waht you wrote :-)

@Infovarius: actually, cyrillic K is almost always transliterated as K. I don't know about greek K. --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 12:18, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Hm, but latin С is always (when read as "K") transliterated as cyrillic К. So what? --Infovarius (talk) 05:37, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

But when is a "sweet" C (like in "cease") it is not translitterated as cyrillic K :-) so what? --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 16:01, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

In that case I would link en:sweet to ru:свит (not "квит"). But Клеопатра corresponds to Cleopatra, for sure. --Infovarius (talk) 09:08, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Well, according to the rules of disambiguation items, it is not so obvious at all :-) it should be more appropriate to "Kleopatra", instead. --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 09:13, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Read 2nd case in the guideline after "with only the following exceptions". And interpretation of "exact same spelling" in relation to different scripts is not explicit. --Infovarius (talk) 16:34, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation on wikidata

Here. --Pequod76 (talk) 10:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Reboot

Hi, I was analyzing the problem of disambiguation pages and missing items of homonymous people during the last weeks. As a result, I think this project should be "rebooted" maybe creating a list on interested users.

Briefly, linking the presence of our disambiguation items only to local platforms is a valid policy, but it makes difficult to organize future work for similar names to be created, which is the workload that we managed to establish sometimes on specific wikis.

There is also some lack of proper disambiguation pages on the other main multilingual project, that is Commons. The biggest problem is the lack here of in-depth "cleaning" of MixnMatch and possible items. Creating items for combination of not even common first names and surnames with at least 2 IDs can take few hours of workload, and it's probably overall faster if not fragmented and diluted by different users over many years. Plus, conflation are frequent and the faster they are spotted, the faster they might be fixed. I analyzed this in depth with personal names, and I can see it also with geographical items, but in that case the situation is probably easier to be "adsorbed" on the long term with limited organization, or at least handled... in the case of churches or hamltes or rivers having much more images is a better starting point to create order.

I hope to do my part to increase literacy on this issue and set up some useful steps in that direction, and revitalizing this project from "Disambiguation pages" to "Disambiguation" in general might be the proper way. If someone is interested, could you leave some comments here? I see no urgence, just want to see how people feel about this issues. Alexmar983 (talk) 16:21, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Renaming "Disambiguation" seems a good idea, it's easier and aligned with English Wikipedia; also creating some list of participants would be nice. --Epìdosis 16:14, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Inserted users section.--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:04, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

I will also create an archive, than I will move the title.--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:04, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Some of the concepts I want to introduce, I write them down so we can think about them:

1. The current policy of disambiguation pages is clearly centered on local dynamics, it dates back to the early years and it mostly focus on addressing the disambiguation process if somebody did so locally, creating items here as a result.
2. This low-end approach creates a certain unbalance in the workflow. Basically, there is no vision, people maybe randomly add some IDs or notice conflations in external database, but they do not go in-depth on single cases. This attitude dilutes the efforts of quality improvement, in many cases a concentrated effort on similar names could clean up many databases in a compact way, investing overall less users time (the single users works more, but the community less as a whole). It should also spare propagation of mistakes, which in turn consumes less time of the average users involved.
3. We could focus on items of people as a starting point for good practice, for the moment. Such subset is much more defined and it encompasses many projects related to cooperation with centralized national archives and libraries.
4. Generic good practice could be to standardize the use of different from (P1889), create queries of items with similar given names and family names to check them properly, remind guidelines for conflation in external databases.
5. Users active locally should be encouraged when they spot potential disambiguation to create such pages on the local platforms, so that such items of disambiguation pages can also be standardized quickly. Particular attention should be given to the other multilingual platform, Wikimedia Commons, where disambiguation pages are less common. Properly clean up all disambiguation pages for multimedia is also necessary for an efficient workflow (part of the work is also taking care of mis-categorization or under-categorization of P18 files). In other words, we should try in more clear cases to induce order locally and not wait for it to effect us here. It takes more time on the single user, but less time globally.
6. We might also calculate most common family names and given names in the current Wikidata database and list all potential combinations with high risk of homonyms to be checked properly as a side-project.

That's basically it.--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:03, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Since I am very busy, I don't know if I will move the page soon or maybe during the Christmas season, but I will do it.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:21, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Quick update, I am currently participating in the data-a-thons cycle for February ad March 2023, organized by the Italian Wikidata Group for Museums, Archives, and Libraries, and I am putting a particular focus on common first and family names. This experience has further convinced me of the need for a dedicated coordination platform for this topic, given the substantial amount of work that remains to be done. The current coverage of homonyms is not as good as the average level of items even for a language area that it's active; it's therefore important to keep our users a little bit more focused with proper guidelines to ensure efficient and effective work.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

As a further proof of the need of such reboot, here in one section I added a list of common names with critical coverage on Wikidata, and this is a partial sampling in a specific sector of just one country. If we can address few of this cases properly, the impact will be perceived also in other areas--Alessandro Marchetti (WMCH) (talk) 11:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Update: The situation is probably worse than we I started this thread, because AI is massively used now. There is a concerning issue that questions regarding similar or common names produce "hallucination" more frequently. The use of AI to expedite content creation (no idea what users do... but AI use is increasing) may inadvertently perpetuate some vicious cycle. Moreover, this trend is leading to a growing disparity in language quality (Asian names are a disaster in AI). I am hopeful that the translation administration will approve my request to change the page's title, as it will allow us to broaden the scope and present the problem more effectively to the community.--Alexmar983 (talk) 22:38, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@Epìdosis@Alessandro Marchetti (WMCH)@Alexmar983 Hey! I support the reboot of this project, and I'm interested on taking part of it, mostly for the Portuguese language (Lusophone) names, and their eventual translations to other languages (which also cause disambiguation issues). Please ping me when you would be starting it. Darwin ^Ahoy! 17:35, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi all. Since there is some support but moving looks complicated, I think to create a new "parent" project. This can be kept if people are really interested in this specific topic.--Alexmar983 (talk) 17:39, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

As for names/surnames don't forget about Wikidata:WikiProject Names. --Infovarius (talk) 18:56, 21 April 2024 (UTC)