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Manual of Style

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Disambiguation

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AtIPA, User:Joy is insisting on sorting the "commonly refers to" list according to the clickstream data rather than alphabetical. Is there a guideline that supports doing this? Has there been discussion on sorting order on DAB pages? Nardog (talk) 02:03, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The order for the commonly-refers-to list isn't documented specifically, but the spirit of the text suggests that MOS:DABORDER #4, which allows either way of sorting, should apply to it.

Also FWIW, of the two commonly-refers-to examples, Mercury is in frequency order and Mojave is near-random but closer to frequency than alphabetic. Dan Bloch (talk) 02:55, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've elaborated further at Talk:IPA#clickstreams data.

On a more general note, we know that alphabetical lists work well as a safe option when there's no other way for the reader to predict their traversal of a long list, but in short lists it's unlikely that readers spend a lot of time figuring out sorting.

The key question here would be what constitutes a short list. In the case of top 4 MOS:DABCOMMON items right at the top of the page, it seems easy enough, but we also have various different cases. For example, the WP:NAMELIST guideline has completely decimated lists of people, where practically none get listed up front in short lists, and practically all get listed in long lists. This has had a negative effect on navigation that I've complained about before - wherever we happen to have a vaguely popular item in the short list, it gets way more traffic than a otherwise very popular items in the long list.

Random Brazilian footballer lists, or for example various entertainers like singers or rappers, or in turn minor toponyms and whatnot, effectively spam the top-level disambiguation lists just because they are single-word matches, while biographies with vastly different long-term significance are relegated to long lists, where they're actually much harder to find. A recent egregious example of something like this is Talk:Boyle#post-move.

We'd really have to do some research about what actually makes the most sense for readers (Wikipedia:Readers first). From other web user research it's become generally know that the contents of the first page of text is the most relevant (i.e. scrolling is not great), and that people read typical websites in an L-shaped fashion, from the top left towards the top right and then from the top left to the bottom left (i.e. there's a huge difference in where something is). Obviously another question is if and how the average web user changes their behavior as they become the average Wikipedia reader. The difference between the observed Wikipedia reader clickstreams from the list at IPA and the general Google Search Trends for IPA are an interesting case for this - apparently people at the encyclopedia act differently in this regard than people at the general search engine.

In an earlier thread, I also noted differences in how the existence of a section heading and the length of caption may apparently affect the outcomes of our MOS:DABCOMMON lists. --Joy (talk) 10:52, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please express an expert opinion in Talk:Qasr#Agreed: ONLY places called solely Qasr to be listed. The issue is whether two-part names, such as "proper_name + object_type", e.g., [[<something> Prison]] and the likes, belong to [[<something> (disambiguation)]]. - Altenmann >talk 21:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The guidance for this is at WP:PTM. --Joy (talk) 22:30, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Mos:Dp has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 25 § Mos:Dp until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 21:50, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Mos:DP has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 25 § Mos:DP until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 21:51, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Mos:Dab has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 25 § Mos:Dab until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 21:51, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Mos:DAB has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 25 § Mos:DAB until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 21:51, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]