Talk:Amber

Frogspace, Why aren't Fanworks and Zines allowed on a disambiguation page? I think they would be relevant to the page, because someone might not be able to remember a name of a fanwork or zine but can only remember "Amber" part of the title, so I think it would be a better idea to keep it on the page. Plus it would match other disambiguation pages that are formatted the same way because (at least to me) it makes sense to keep them on it.--Harpie (talk) 08:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Harpie, fanworks and zines are allowed on a disambiguation page, but only if they have the disambiguated name. Here, none of the listed fanworks were named Amber. Amber is just a word that's part their name and we don't need disambiguation for that. If you have two pages about fanworks that are both named Amber Eyes, then you need a disambiguation for Amber Eyes because both pages can't have the same name. That's technically impossible. But you can have a page that's called Amber Eyes and one that's called Temporarily in Amber Light because they both have different names and therefore none of them needs disambiguation. Adding a page named Temporarily in Amber Light to a disambiguation page for "Temporary" for "in" for "Amber" and for "Light" is not what disambiguation is about. If someone is searching for pages with the word "Amber", they can use the search function of the wiki. If there are other disambiguation pages that have pages listed that don't belong there, they need to be corrected. --Doro (talk) 11:27, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Alright so by that definition, than everything else in that page beside the fan writer named Amber would also be deleted as well since they have last names different from each other but we are still allowed to keep them on the page. The search function might show them, but a lot of times things get lost in there because if that word is in an article it's also listed so it's annoying to search that way - but the disambiguation pages cleans it up to my POV, but I guess that's just my opinion.--Harpie (talk) 12:19, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

People, whether fictional or real, are sometimes referred to by first name and sometimes by last name, not always by both. Therefore they need to be disambiguated, so that the wikilink on the page where the name is used can be corrected. For example, if a page includes a comment that says "I was inspired by Claire's story", then the "Claire" wikilink should not go to Claire but to, for example Claire. The Claire page itself should not be the wikilink. But to know that, you need to disambiguate it. --Doro (talk) 13:29, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

someone might not be able to remember a name of a fanwork or zine but can only remember "Amber" part of the title -- We used to have an option on our search page to only search for the word/query in article titles. I did some Googling and it look like it still works if you search "intitle:Word", so searching "intitle:Amber" should find all pages that have "Amber" as part of the title. So I agree that pages like "Amber Eyes" shouldn't go on the disambiguation page for "Amber" (I think it clutters up the page and makes pages just called "Amber" harder to find), but I think a Click here for other articles with 'Amber' in the title link could be appropriate. (I wonder if there's a cleaner way to link that?)

Anyway, the Help:Disambiguation Pages article really needs to be updated with some guidelines. Another thing it's missing is that I believe we're discouraged to preemptively disambiguate (i.e., we should wait until two pages with the same name are actually created), but I don't remember the specific rational behind that... --sparc 20:28, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Pre-emptive disambiguation seems fairly common these days (eg Q); I find it annoying but it does perhaps make sense if many inbound links created are going to be for the redlink meaning. (There again, it's probably better to at least stub out the alternative.)

One problem we have on fanlore is that the search engine is a bit rubbish; it can be hard to find pages unless you know the exact title, which is, I think, behind much of the drive to create extensive disambiguation pages, as well as redirects.

The other thing we might try is using hatnotes more. In this case, Amber (fan writer) would go back to Amber, with a hat note pointing to Amber (disambiguation) which listed other possible Ambers. This would mean linking Amber alone would go straight to the person who was probably meant, but it would be easy to find other meanings. The one that bugs me most is icon, which is 99.9% one meaning but I can never remember the disambiguator. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:18, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

The rational for not preemptively disambiguating is that the next person to come along might not find it at the disambiguated title and simply recreate the article. Say someone creates Spike (Buffyverse). Someone else clicks on a red link to Spike, not knowing about the existing page, and develops a duplicate article about the vampire. Then, anyone who types "Spike" into the Search box and hits Enter is taken directly to the Spike page (search box defaults to Go, not Search) and never realizes another page is out there. (If you create Spike and Spike (Buffyverse) at the same time, this issue is less of a problem.)--æþel (talk) 23:25, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Spike is another annoying case; I'm guessing 99.9% of links will be to the Buffyverse character, 0.1% to the red-linked tv channel, and 0 to red-linked Cowboy Bebop character. The sheer number of times I've typed that pipe, I could have done a lot more useful things... Espresso Addict (talk) 23:37, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

In that case, we could move Spike to Spike (disambiguation) and Spike (Buffyverse) to Spike and add a note at the top of Spike about the existence of the disambiguation page. Same with Icon. (But I don't know how Cowboy Bebop fans would feel about that...)--æþel (talk) 23:49, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

I know nothing of Cowboy Bebop and its scant presence here might well not be an accurate indicator of its popularity, but that character has a surname, while the Buffyverse one does not. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:01, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Aethel, that definitely makes sense, I thought we were trying to avoid pages like Spike (I guess for fear that every article every article ever might end up disambiguated? not sure). Espresso Addict, I agree that we should utilize hatnotes more for pages where the overwhelming majority of searches are going to be looking for a particular use -- we already have this for Star Trek, and I think Icon is another good example. I disagree that "Amber" is, however; I think with common names it's important to disambiguate. Looking briefly at WhatLinksHere, there's at least one different Amber being wikilinked (who is also a fan writer -- which is why I don't like the disambiguator "fan writer" for situations like this, and I prefer using another pseud/LJ handle/etc. But that's kind of a tangent). So without a disambiguating, people wikilinking a generic "Amber" (and not double-checking where their links point) would end up linking to someone else, increasing the likelihood of conflating different fans and causing confusion. --sparc 23:51, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Sparc, I agree if there are several fans called Amber a disambiguation makes perfect sense, though while others don't have pages, a list of other fans called Amber could be put in a hatnote. (But then the person creating Amber (fan2) would need to move Amber to Amber (fan1), which might be problematic -- can non-gardeners move pages?)

More generally, I think the egalitarian (all pages are created equal) nature of fanlore has often been overemphasised at the cost of unneeded pipelinks (which I believe can cause server stress) -- though it is sometimes hard to understand the frequency of terms used in different spaces. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:12, 12 September 2014 (UTC)