[edit] Distinguish template The example above (/* The present article's topic, mention or not */) is not the egregious one, both tell the person about the other choice, because it is clearly labeled as disambiguation. On the other hand, the {{Distinguish}} template does not let the searcher know what the choices are at all. The text at Wikipedia:Hatnote for Two articles with similar title correctly, in my opinion, suggests the use of {{otheruses4}} which does provide that. I think that {{Distinguish}} should be depreciated for the very reason given by Largo Plazo above, namely so that the searcher coming upon the hatnote doesn't have to ask, "What's the other choice?". --Bejnar (talk) 19:15, 3 January 2009 (UTC) - Are you suggesting deletion? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 20:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- No, I am suggesting a discussion about when and where {{Distinguish}} should be used. For example, as a second hatnote on the Arianism article it may be appropriate, or there might be something better. I do feel that the absence of guidance on its use is a problem. Because I believe that it is important to assist searchers, I think that the {{Distinguish}} template should be depreciated to a secondary status, below {{About}}/{{otheruses4}} and {{For}}. --Bejnar (talk) 20:24, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- That sounds demeaning. At the very least, it should be on par with {{Otheruses}}. I, however, have never seen a use for that {{For}}. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 20:34, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- Assuming that you are using the word demeaning in the technical sense of "reduce the status of" and not the pejorative sense, you are correct. But more importantly, I am asking for discussion of the pros and cons of preferring {{About}}/{{otheruses4}} and {{For}}. One pro is that those templates provide the information seeker with a basis for choosing the second term. The
{{otheruses4|USE1|USE2|PAGE2}} template actually distinguishes between the two terms by the provision of USE1 and USE2. The {{For}} template provides only the second use, but at least the information seeker has the article in front of them about the first usage. The {{Distinguish}} template does neither of those. One possible con is additional length, since providing more information has a cost; however, as most of these are less than a single line long, I don't think that that ought to be dispositive over the purpose of Wikipedia which is to provide information. What other plus and minuses are there? --Bejnar (talk) 20:59, 3 January 2009 (UTC) - I'll admit you make a good point. And now that you mention it, there really isn't a purpose for {{Distinguish}} and {{Otheruses}} since it may very well be more appropriate to always have a short description in the hatnote. Yeah, those should be scrapped, maybe just redirect them to {{Otheruses4}} or something. Think a bot could that for us? It'd save us all the work ... Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 21:12, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- I don't know. There are only ~4400 {{Distinguish}} transcluded articles according to David Göthberg in October 2008, and some of them might be appropriate uses. 4400 is really a small number of articles. I inherently distrust bots, because I have seen so many fall flat on their faces despite good intentions. I doubt that a bot would be good at picking the one or two words that appropriately distinguish between two like sounding articles. I think a more cautious approach of thinking about and discussing when {{Distinguish}} might be useful, putting appropriate guidance on the Wikipedia:Hatnote page and let things come out in the wash. I don't quite get your point about {{Otheruses}}, as that template does let the individual know that they are going to a disambiguation page, i.e., it does tell them about what their choice is, and a reader can anticipate some attempt at completeness on a disambiguation page. I would rather for the time being stick with looking at {{Distinguish}} and seeing if we can identify the "good intentions" of the creators, and figure out its proper place on Wikipedia:Hatnote, although it is possible that it may not have one. I look forward to others joining in the discussion. --Bejnar (talk) 00:43, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Hatnotes and infoboxes Placing a right-justified infobox at the top of a page with a left-justified hatnote arranges the page with both the hatnote and the infobox at the top. I think this results in a more attractive page. See Colorado for example. --Buaidh (talk) 16:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC) I believe that right-justified infoboxes are no infringment of our hatnotes at top policy since the hatnotes remain at the top of the page. I think we are being at little overzealous on this issue. --Buaidh (talk) 22:56, 8 January 2009 (UTC) - I have reverted these edits for now; please gain consensus first. The reason for the hatnotes first policy is not just because of appearance; screen-readers for the disabled display everything sequentially. Therefore, the hatnote must come first. See Wikipedia:Accessibility#Article structure Dabomb87 (talk) 23:09, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
The use of infoboxes in any article pretty much disables screen-readers. Perhaps we should discuss that issue first. --Buaidh (talk) 23:27, 8 January 2009 (UTC) - Feel free to discuss that issue first. Bring it up on WT:ACCESS and WT:INFOBOX, but please gain consensus first before changing the format. There seems to be very little benefit for a change that is solely based on style. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:41, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
- It's illogical too - the hatnote is not part of the content of the article (i.e. it does not provide information about the article subject), so it is better not mixed in with elements of the article proper.--Kotniski (talk) 07:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Redirected links in hatnotes In reverting the hatnote move mentione in the previous discussion, I've run into a problem with another editor on the Georgia (U.S. state) page. The second part of the note stated For other uses, see Georgia (disambiguation), but the DAB page is at Georgia. I've attempted to correct this to the direct link, but been reverted twice, the second time at this diff, with the reason direct links hinder fixing dablinks. To me, it is confusing not to use a direct link, esp. when the location of the DAB page for "Georgia" is a contentious issue, with the country article having been requested to be moved to the un-DABed page six times. I've read the guideline page here, and the issue of dierect vs. redirect links is not mentioned at all. Are there any existing guidelines on this matter elsewhere? Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 03:28, 9 January 2009 (UTC) - I think at WP:Disambiguation it says somewhere that such redirects are preferred, or at least allowed, since they make it clear to the reader that the target is a disambiguation page (and they also help with link-fixing projects).--Kotniski (talk) 07:22, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
- Yep, Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages covers this quite well. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 17:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
This brings up another question though, why are there even hatnotes on Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country)? Georgia is a disambiguation page so it's impossible to get to either of these two articles unless you specifically search for them, and they both have what they are about already in the article title so there is no confusion. Furthermore, some people like to make the Google argument for hatnotes, but it doesn't work in this case either because a Google search of "Georgia" returns you both the country and the U.S. state articles. Basically the hatnotes do not aid in navigation at all and this is the sole purpose of hatnotes. So is there any good reason not to just delete the hatnotes from these articles? LonelyMarble (talk) 20:00, 14 February 2009 (UTC) [edit] Hatnoting to links already in the article What is the situation with hatnoting to links which are already in the article? For example if there is a film adaptation where the article is linked in from the relevant section and mentioned in the lead, as at Watchmen (we don't do the same at Wanted (comics))? Also the question of hatnotes came up at Eddie Brock where it hatnotes to Venom (comics), even though it is mentioned a couple of lines below in the lead. Venom (comics) hatnotes back and to another character who has used the alias even though these are linked in in the relevant areas below and should be linked in from the lead (which should be expanded). In those last two examples it would also make sense to bold the names in the lead which would draw the eye to the relevant links and it seems to make the hatnote redundant. Thoughts? (Emperor (talk) 14:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)) - Hatnotes are purely for navigational purposes. If someone searches for Watchmen they could be looking for either the comic book series or the film since both have the same exact name. That is why there is a hatnote for it. The reason why Wanted (comics) and Watchmen (film) don't need hatnotes is because it's impossible to get to those articles unless you specifically search for them or are directed towards them because of the parentheses clarification. Someone searching for Wanted would go to a disambiguation page. So basically, it doesn't matter whether something is linked further in the article or not. Hatnotes are used when another article could have the same exact or very similar title and therefore a reader may be looking for that article instead of the one they got to. Regarding the hatnote on Venom (comics), that's somewhat of a unique situation; I can see why there is a hatnote since someone searching for Venom (in relation to Spiderman) might actually want the article on one of the two human hosts. This would be a reason to keep the hatnote, as a reader might go to the Venom article but really want one of these other articles, which is what hatnotes are for. Only problem is the parentheses again make it hard to get to that article without going through Venom (disambiguation) first, but I suppose someone might search for Venom comics or Venom (Spiderman), so I'll leave that hatnote alone. LonelyMarble (talk) 19:40, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Hatnote in addition to Disambiguation hatnote MickMacNee and I are having a discussion about hatnotes on G. MickMacNee has added a hatnote "{{See also|g-force}}" because it is notable enough to not be hidden away on line 50 of a dab. The article already has {{otherusesof}} and g-force is one of the entries on the disambiguation page. I do not see any reason to have the additional hatnote because it is just another use of G that is already on the disambig page and it just clutters the top of the article with the other 2 hatnotes on the article. Any input to the discussion would be helpful. A new name 2008 (talk) 12:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC) - Generally, if there a lot of other uses for something, as is the case for G, only the otheruses should be included. In this case, g-force is definitely not necessary, is "g" for g-force more notable than "g" for gram? I don't think so. There are plenty of other notable entries on G (disambiguation) as well. This section implies only the otheruses should be used: WP:Hatnote#Linking to a disambiguation page. It's not implicitly said other entries should not be used, it should just be common sense I guess, but in this case, g-force is definitly not overwhelmingly more notable than other entries on the disambiguation page and therefore should not be included in the hatnote. There are a small amount of exceptions to this rule, two off the top of my head are Plymouth and Worcester. There were long debates whether those article titles should be at the disambiguation page and it was decided to keep them to the city in England, but include the city in Massachusetts in the hatnotes because they are overwhelmingly the second-most-popular usage in both cases. The situation in this case is not the same though, g-force is not overwhemingly the second-most-popular usage. LonelyMarble (talk) 21:02, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Restrictions on hatnote usage I'd like to see much greater restrictions placed on the use of hatnotes. To me these are basically low value notes that are taking away valuable real estate from the high value article lead, especially in the case of featured articles. At most the hatnotes should be limited to a single line of text. I've seen hat notes take up two and even three separate lines, sometimes wrapped, and they can become very distracting. It is particularly irksome in the case of "X redirects to this page. See page Y for more..." (for some lesser importance topic X and Y), which basically serves the role of a railway junction. If nothing else, it would be better if they were hidden in an expandable navbox of some type. My $.02 worth. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 20:29, 11 May 2009 (UTC) - Could you point us to an example or two? 98% of the time that I see these, it can easily be fixed by making a disamb page and a single hatnote pointing to it.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 21:35, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
- Unfortunately I don't have one handy because I've worked to tamp down the problem. It just keeps coming up as an issue (at least for me :).—RJH (talk) 17:27, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, but the problem also arises when a page is a redirect target for several different search terms. In this case too, though, I agree with RJ that this produces too much clutter. I've seen combined hatnotes of the type "Multiple terms redirect here; see also X (disambiguation), Y (disambiguation) and Z (disambiguation)", which seems preferable to having three separate hatnotes. Not sure if there's a specific template for this or if you have to use {{dablink}}. (Of course what would be really great would be if the devs could give us a magic word for the current redirect source - then we could display a hatnote relevant only to the term the current user searched for.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:29, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
- {{otheruses4}} does this.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 13:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
- Not exactly, I suspect. The syntax I have in mind would be like {{SomeTemplateName|X|Y|Z}} to produce a message like:
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- --Kotniski (talk) 14:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
- To follow up on your other suggestion, it would be useful if there were a magic word such as REDIRECTNAME that contained the title of the redirect. This could then be used with conditional logic in a template like to automatically produce the appropriate hatnote only when the page is reached by following a redirect. I.e., if the page were reached by a redirect from X, the hatnote would display X redirects here; for other uses see X (disambiguation). And if reached by redirect from Y, it would display Y redirects here; for other uses see Y (disambiguation). And if reached directly without a redirect the hatnote would not display at all. older ≠ wiser 14:27, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
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- My thoughts exactly. Worth raising at WP:VPT or on Bugzilla?--Kotniski (talk) 15:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
- A most excellent idea! The thought I had was to introduce a tabbed list along the top of the page with a limited set of alternative topics, but this sounds better.—RJH (talk) 17:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
- Mentioned at WP:VPT.--Kotniski (talk) 17:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I think the user-specific hatnote based on the search term would be pretty useful but I'm not sure it is that necessary. One of the things I like doing is maintaining hatnotes so they aren't intrusive and are kept to one line as much as possible, if you could give some examples of where hatnotes are becoming a problem that would be helpful, I haven't been on Wikipedia much lately but I haven't noticed a problem with hatnotes. My guess is this section might have been spurred by the "First planet redirects here", etc. on the planet articles, which I agree, was a bad idea and the redirect hatnotes for these are of a very limited usage. I removed the last one that I saw on the Mercury (planet) article. Problems with hatnotes like that can be dealt with on a case by case basis. Are there any other examples of problems with hatnotes? A user-specific hatnote wouldn't even be desirable or that helpful in a lot of cases because you'd still want to keep the main page (disambiguation) link so any redirects could probably just as easily be added in a one line hatnote without any additional technical changes. LonelyMarble (talk) 09:47, 15 May 2009 (UTC) - Aaargh - there isn't any route from Happy Christmas (another redirect) to Happy Christmas (album) and various other articles, just to add to the problems here! Dab page needed, no time just right now. PamD (talk) 10:20, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
- That was certainly a mess but easily fixable, I think the one line method I changed it to works fine. That article is probably also a rarity having so many terms redirect to it that also have disambiguation pages, but even articles like that can have fairly simple hatnotes. I also created the Happy Christmas (disambiguation) page. LonelyMarble (talk) 15:35, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
- Mother and Father are even worse.. -- OlEnglish (Talk) 20:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
- I think the fact that even the simple fixed proposed above would lead to a long and unwieldy hatnote shows there is something more fundamentally wrong there. What about redirecting Mom, Mommy, Moms, and Mum to their respective disambiguation pages or moving the disambiguation over to those pages? Equally you could make Motherhood a disambiguation. All those pages would link to mother on the first line anyway and so anyone specifically looking for that article can click on. We certainly shouldn't be linking to mother through something like Mom (with the possibility of rare exceptions) and making them disambiguation pages would help clean that up. You could then link to the variants from a see also section in mother (disambiguation) (as is already done at Mom (disambiguation)#See also - it'd be no harm to drop such see also into all of those). So you'd basically be left with just one short and dimple hatnote (the current top one). Same fix for father and looking over Holiday greetings I'd suggest the same - move all the disambiguations into the top slot. I think a reasonable rule of thumb might be that if there is a disambiguation page with a number of non-trivial items in it then the redirect hatnote should be avoided by putting the disambiguation page in the top slot, as long as we make sure the main page it was redirecting too is on the top of the list. (Emperor (talk) 17:18, 17 May 2009 (UTC))
Is there interest here in developing the idea I proposed here? That is, allowing us to change the "(Redirected from Foo)" message to something like "(Redirected from Foo. For X, see Y)". This could potentially remove one of the main source of hatnotes; those that explain redirects. Thoughts? Happy‑melon 13:42, 17 May 2009 (UTC) [edit] Soft to hard redirect I changed "Hat note" and Hatnote" from soft redirects to hard redirects. I did this because, the link wasn't to a Wiki sister project. ask123 (talk) 22:14, 17 May 2009 (UTC) - I changed them back, because the result of the Afd was to make Hatnote into a soft redirect, and Hat note might as well be treated the same way. PamD (talk) 22:48, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Lots of red links This project is filled with red links, due to past changes. The problems are in transduced template documentation. This should be fixed. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:57, 11 June 2009 (UTC) - Are you referring to the many red links after the word "see" in Wikipedia:Hatnote#Otheruses templates, where template calls with example parameters result in red links? That is not a problem. The links are not meant to go anywhere in those examples and I don't know which past changes you are referring to. The links have always been red as far as I can tell. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
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- Yes, that is what I am referring to. I found an example of what I wanted at Joe Montana, so I don't need more information right now. I don't understand the point of the example parameters with red links. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
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- The point is to show what the templates will produce with given parameters which should be easy to generalize. With parameter choices like USE1, PAGE1, USE2, PAGE2 it may be easier for many readers to see what happens to the parameters than if arbitrary and irrelevant article names were chosen as examples. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:29, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
[edit] "See also" as a hatnote at the top of an article? At Template:See_also, it says that this template is "used for small sets of see also information at the head of article sections according to Wikipedia:Layout." However, Wikipedia:Layout doesn't actually say this. Could you please clarify whether these templates can be used at the top of an article? As an example, I have in mind Judicial_review_in_the_United_States. Agradman (talk) 05:56, 15 June 2009 (UTC) - {{See also}} for sections is mentioned at Wikipedia:Layout#Section templates and summary style. I don't think it belongs at the top of the lead. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
- I agree that see also is not right for an article lead. older ≠ wiser 10:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Just to clarify: what I had in mind was to mention this somewhere in the policies and guidelines (i.e. which templates may ONLY be used under sections, vs. which ones can also be used at the tops of articles). Agradman (talk) 13:34, 15 June 2009 (UTC) - Just to interject, based on a disagreement over at Radon transform, it is not appropriate to use some other template as though it were a {{See also}} template at the top of an article either. For instance, although {{otheruses4}} could conceivably be used to point a reader to related topics, it is strictly intended for purposes of disambiguation. Sławomir Biały (talk) 13:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Notable featured articles with hatnotes to unimportant articles. The Atheist dab with 4 links that was created to prevent a hatnote to a unimportant band was deleted. Now, Atheism, which is a featured article about a very important and basic philosophical concept, has a hatnote to a band that would never be in a real encyclopedia (one where notability is not decided on by people who've never even seen an encyclopedia, but base notability on blog posts and twitters). This would be like having an article like death start with a hatnote to a band called "Death". Can we add to this page that real encyclopedic articles should link to dab hatnotes instead of starting important subjects with links to silly pages no one will care about in 10 years? -- Jeandré (talk), 2009-07-18t20:33z [edit] Progress It is a sign of Wikipedia's progress that we no longer see things like the following. Someone creates a page titled Bishop. It says (1) A bishop is a certain ecclesiastical official; and (2) A bishop is a chess piece. Then someone expands point (1) so that there's a long long long article on bishops, the ecclesiastical officials, and after you scroll down through many many screenfuls of material on that, you find a lone paragraph that says only that a bishop is a certain chess piece (with a link to that article). Down there at the bottom, where it will not be seen by those arriving at the article. Nor do we still frequently see articles consisting of several paragraphs on each of several unrelated topics (e.g. a section on ordained bishops, then a section on chess pieces, then a section on Alfonxe Bishop, a rock star, etc. Back in 2004 and 2005, I used to clean up situations like that all the time. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC) [edit] Appropriate Hat Note? Do editors here feel the hatnote at Scientific opinion on climate change is appropriate (I do, but it's not really covered by this WP:HATNOTE article)? In this case, the article title is refined, and limited, for what is essentially a list article - to specifically 'disambiguate' (dictionary def'n) what is or isn't suitable for inclusion in the list. If this is a valid use (and I think it should be) then perhaps this type of usage should be included in the article here. --Jaymax (talk) 02:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC) - That is not even a hatnote, it explains what the article is, which should be the job of the lead. Hatnotes are purely for navigation. LonelyMarble (talk) 04:09, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- I'm not in total disagreement - however, the point is many users come to the article thinking it's about something else. I've reworked the hatnote into an about template including links to the most often 'confused-with-other-pages' articles, and moved out part of the text. Regards purely for navigation, I also refer the following from WP:HATNOTE In many cases the hatnote also includes a brief description of the subject of the present article, for readers' convenience. In summary, the hatnote serves to disambiguate, but we at SOoCC should probably have paid more attention to 'where you need to go' as 'why what you're thinking should be here isn't' - and your edit there hopefully helps us head in the right direction. --Jaymax (talk) 06:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- I'd also still appreciate other editors input - specifically with regards hatnotes (or not) for disambiguation (dictionary def'n again) (ie: what the article IS NOT). --Jaymax (talk) 06:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- The hatnote is better now that there are two clear article links which could possibly be confused for the article title, which is the point of a hatnote. Before the edit it was simply explaining what the article is and isn't which usually should be for the lead. The brief description thing is basically because it doesn't make sense to have a "For other uses go here" hatnote when the reader doesn't know what the current article is about, but the keyword is "brief" description. And this is mainly useful when viewing on a mobile phone or similar device when you can't readily see the lead paragraph to see what the article is about. I still think the hatnote seems to be catering to fringe views a little bit as usually you should work dissenting opinions or criticism of an article subject into the article, rather than link to a dissenting article in a hatnote, but I don't know how these articles developed and I'm sure there are some edit wars that go on that lead to this. LonelyMarble (talk) 19:05, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- Started a discussion at Talk:Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#The_hatnote_.2F_disambiguation following your comments. Thanks. --Jaymax (talk) 09:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Lists alternate for 'about' Since the about template kicks off This page is about is there advantage in having a syntax-identical variant with the leadin text This page lists or similar. Just a passing thought - I suspect the usage would be too low to justify implementation, but after I saw there was an otherhurricaneuses template, I thought I'd mention it... --Jaymax (talk) 06:34, 6 December 2009 (UTC) or maybe not - on reflection, this idea is too friendly to the kind of stuff that User:LonelyMarble talks about avoiding above, and might promote same --Jaymax (talk) 06:38, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
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