Wikipedia talk:Hatnote/Archive 7

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Hatnote. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 5

RfC regarding hatnotes and disambiguation

There is a (somewhat disorganized) RfC being held at Talk:Nissan_Caravan#RFC on disambiguation hatnotes for 'Caravan' named vehicles seeking to determine whether longstanding disambiguation hatnotes distinguishing Nissan Caravan and Dodge Caravan which were removed unilaterally by User:Mr.choppers in opposition to other editors prior to initiating an RfC should instead remain in place/be restored in some form. --Kevjonesin (talk) 20:44, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Models with the same name as other makes

A lengthy debate about whether it is correct usage or necessary for a hatnote to be added to a page where a particular model name has been used by other manufacturers has reached an inconclusive end with those debating being more or less evenly split between yes and no. The event that caused the debate was the addition of a hatnote on the Dodge Caravan and Nissan Caravan pages. At this point in time the hatnote says For other makes with the same model name, see Caravan#Automobile models.

As there are a number of similar situations with car models of the same name being made by different manufacturers I would like to see what the wider community thinks about this use of hatnotes NealeFamily (talk) 02:34, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Correction: Questions arose following the removal[1] of longstanding (year+) hatnotes on the Dodge Caravan and Nissan Caravan pages. Please, take care to provide citation links when making such assertions in the future. I often find that simply making the effort helps to reduce errors in addition to offering readily verifiable common points of reference for common consideration (and sometimes one finds unexpected gems along the way as well). --Kevjonesin (talk) 06:07, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

p.s.— Also, I'm unsure as to how well, "has reached an inconclusive end with those debating being more or less evenly split between yes and no", represents the state of things prior to initiation of this subsection. I'm inclined to suggest, "editors have reinstated hatnotes on both pages and are presently in process of reaching a consensus as to specific wording and choice of hatnote template to be used on the two specific articles under discussion", might serve as a useful alternate characterization.[2][3][4]

While I'm here ... I'd like to thank NealeFamily for suggesting to his fellow editors that this talkpage may be an appropriate and effective place in which to carry on more general meta conversation aimed at clarifying guidelines regarding the use of hatnotes to disambiguate and increase ease of discovery for readers of other articles across the wiki where multiple manufacturers have made use of the same – or perhaps even very similar – model names. --Kevjonesin (talk) 06:55, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Meta-hatnote question

Could somebody please explain what this means:

For "hatting" old debates, see WP:Closing discussions.

It isn't mentioned on the linked page, so the statement appears obtuse. Praemonitus (talk) 16:00, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

It concerns the pair of template redirects {{hat}}/{{hab}} --Redrose64 (talk) 17:33, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

That much is obvious. But what does "hatting" mean? It appears to be a town in Austria. If it's meant as slang, then it should be clarified somewhere. Praemonitus (talk) 20:45, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

I've deleted the hatnote to Template:Hidden archive top, which is back again. Following are some of the reasons why I think it isn't needed and shouldn't appear here.

It's been deleted several times before. If someone wants to put it back, shouldn't they have to say why?
"Hat" and "hatting" for "Hidden archive top" are slang, not a proper title. The policy on this page is no hatnotes for slang.
According to WP:Shortcut, shortcuts should not appear in hatnotes.
It violates the policy to "If at all possible, limit hatnotes to just one at the top of the page."

And I would argue that it's not even needed. Anyone familiar with the term "hat" for hiding a discussion must be familiar with the template. They know what it is and what it does. And they can easily find it with template:Hide, or template:Hidden, or even WP:HIDE and WP:Hidden. Those last two are also shortcuts, but they are far more plausible than the obscure jargon terms "hat" and "hatting". I realize that some people are fond of these jargon terms, but this is policy page for hatnotes. Shouldn't this page try to set an example by adhering to our own guidelines? – Margin1522 (talk)01:16, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

When should "Obama redirects here" be used?

It says "{(tl|redirect}}... can be used when an ambiguous title is redirected to an unambiguous title or a primary topic article". Any thoughts about when exactly it's best to use it or not? For example when [Obama]] redirects to Barack Obama, it it best to say "Obama redirects here. For other uses see Obama (disambiguation)" or just "for other uses see Obama (disambiguation)"? Does it have anything to do with the relative notability/primacy of the topics? Siuenti (talk) 21:15, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Siuenti: I expect that it's a matter of consensus. If you removed the phrase "Obama redirects here" and nobody objected, then there would seem to be agreement that the phrase was not necessary—perhaps logical but not necessary. However, in other cases where the reason for the redirect is less obvious, it may be necessary to use "… redirects here. For other uses, see …" for clarity, when a disambiguation page exists that is relevant to the redirect. Biogeographist (talk) 22:32, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Can you find an exact example of what you mean, or make one up I suppose? I'll also have a look, I don't think any of the redirects to Barack Obama qualify as "reason less obvious" Siuenti (talk) 23:17, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

So at tempering (spice) it says "Oggarane" redirects here. For the 2014 Kannada film, see Un Samayal Arayil." It's not immediately obvious by Oggarane would redirect there, so people searching for "Oggarane" are helped by seeing "Oggarane redirects here", presumably. Siuenti (talk) 00:52, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

disambiguate these forms

Regarding

{{About|USE1|USE2|PAGE2|USE3|PAGE3|other uses|PAGE4}} (When there are several standard other uses and also a disambiguation page with non-default name) →

This page is about USE1. For USE2, see PAGE2. For USE3, see PAGE3. For other uses, see PAGE4.

{{About|USE1|USE2|PAGE2|USE3|PAGE3|other uses|PAGE4|and}} →

This page is about USE1. For USE2, see PAGE2. For USE3, see PAGE3. For other uses, see PAGE4.

What's the difference? Did the extra parameter "|and" do anything?

Paleolith (talk) 17:59, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Paleolith: Hi, I wrote the underlying code that governs that. and is a keyword in hatnote templates that have variations on "For X, see Y"; it lets you specify multiple pages (targets) for the same "use". For example:
{{about|USE1|USE2|PAGE1|and|PAGE2}} →
If you don't use the and keyword, the template assumes that the next parameter is the next "use" rather than an extra target:
{{about|USE1|USE2|PAGE1|PAGE2}} →
Trailing "and" keywords, or missing list items (e.g. {{about|USE1|USE2|PAGE1|and| |and|PAGE3}}) are intentionally ignored, for resiliency. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 20:39, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks ... so the second example is included simply to illustrate that the trailing "and" is ignored? Seems reasonable. Paleolith (talk) 06:16, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Hatnote help

I am seeking help to find the hatnote that best fits what I had hoped to use for chemical weapon where I would like to say that when "CW" was used in that article it is meant as chemical weapon, for other uses see CW. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 05:38, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Because CW doesn't redirect to Chemical weapon, a hatnote isn't necessary. - BilCat (talk) 06:21, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I understand.--John Cline (talk) 06:40, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Italics in italics

Usually when an italicized word is used in an italicized phrase, the convention is to put the italicized word in normal type. Using an example from Italic type#Italics within italics, "I think The Scarlet Letter had a chapter about that, thought Mary." Based on that should the example on the project page be changed from:

For the 2014 film adaptation, see The Giver (film).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2014)

The Giver is a 1993 American Young-adult fiction-Dystopian novel by Lois Lowry. It is set in a society which at first appears as a utopian society but then later revealed to be a dystopian one as the story progresses. The novel follows a boy named Jonas...

to:

For the 2014 film adaptation, see The Giver (film).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2014)

The Giver is a 1993 American young-adult fiction-dystopian novel by Lois Lowry. It is set in a society which at first appears as a utopian society but then later revealed to be a dystopian one as the story progresses. The novel follows a boy named Jonas...

Note that I've also made "young-adult" and "dystopian" lower case.

For me this frequently comes up with the scientific names of genera or species which are in italics. For example:

Thanks, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 23:09, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

The point of the italics in the hatnote is to show that it is not part of the actual article, so any other formatting is confusing. Btw "Fiction" is redundant with "novel" and "society" with "society". Siuenti (씨유엔티) 23:56, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree with the OP. This has always bugged me, especially given italics is already prescribed in <h1>DISPLAYTITLE</h1> and on disambiguation pages (even with piping where necessary), suggesting italics is preferred even when referring to a Wikipedia article, not just to the concept or term it's about. I think it's a huge inconsistency and they should be in normal type. Nardog (talk) 13:38, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Acceptable use of hatnote?

In many music-related articles, the text will use one of several "shorthand" notation systems to indicate musical pitches, e.g. Helmholtz pitch notation and Scientific pitch notation. For the benefit of readers unfamiliar with the systems, I thought of making a hatnote template or templates that would generate messages like:

or:

Is this an appropriate use of the hatnote formatting? Should anything else be added to the text?--Theodore Kloba (talk) 16:33, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Remove hatnote linked from mainspace to other namespace (usually project page)

The hatnote on mainspace that linked to project page maybe confusing some readers. We should prioritize readers over editors. Just because its Wikipedia doesn't mean that you can link the similar term that only the editors community know, it may violated WP:SELF. Example: Village Pump, Word-sense disambiguation, Sandpit, Style guide, etc. Hddty. (talk) 15:01, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Possible contradiction

Rule n. 5 of the lead recites: "If at all possible, limit hatnotes to just one at the top of the page. This also applies to the usage of hatnotes in subsections of articles. Such usage is not discouraged, and subsections should also have a maximum of one hatnote as well"; did the author possibly mean: "[..] Such usage is discouraged [...]", or "Such usage is not discouraged, but subsections should also have a maximum of one hatnote as well"?

Jan Hoellwarth (talk) 18:54, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

That was definitely confusing wording, and did not actually reflect consensus. I've rewritten it to describe actual practice [5], though others may want to refine that copyedit. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 20:42, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

"Such usage is not discouraged" must mean usage of hatnotes in subsections is not discouraged. That was the preceding sentence. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:49, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

The entire line item was a mess anyway. Makes way more sense now. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 04:52, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks

— Jan Hoellwarth (talk) 14:51, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

"A large possibility"?

Jax 0677 and I disagree on whether {{confuse}} is appropriate for Brooke Burns and Brooke Burke. It appears we differ on our understanding of what is meant by the admonition that we should "[m]ention other topics and articles only if there is a large possibility of a reader arriving at the article either by mistake or with another topic in mind." He argues that, where a name differs by only two letters, there is a real risk of confusion; I maintain that the significant difference in pronunciation and spelling (and typing) makes this improbable at best and that the hatnote is unnecessary clutter. A third opinion would be appreciated. Rebb ing 03:42, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree this is pushing the limits. They're both model-actors relatively close in age, so it's not totally absurd, but anyone looking for a model-actress named "Brooke Bur<something>" could sort it out by looking at Brooke (given name), where they will also find Brooke Burfitt, and anyone typing "Brooke Bur" in the search box will see all three names drop down to perhaps help jog their memory of the correct surname. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:36, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Reply - Even I have gotten the two confused from time to time. --Jax 0677 (talk) 14:07, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Missing guidance on generic terms and linking to dab sections

I just stumbled into a minor disagreement (in the BRD sense, not the EW sense) on disambiguating hatnotes, and in the process of figuring out what to do, there were two things I wished for more guidance on from WP:HAT. First, the players:

Scala Theatre (the article with the hatnote under discussion)
Scala (club) (the possibly-confused-with other article)
Scala (disambiguation)#Places and buildings (the relevant dab page and section)

Now, what I landed on based on current guidance is that Scala Theatre should not have a hatnote to Scala (club) because neither the venues' names nor their articles' names are actually ambiguous. Neither should Scala Theatre have a hatnote to Scala (disambiguation), because Scala doesn't redirect there and the article's title is not ambiguous. So far so good.

Now my first issue: while Scala Theatre and Scala (club) (or the other performance venues with "Scala" in their name) are not actually ambiguous, they are fairly generic. Both our readers and the reliable sources are very likely to refer to all such places as "the Scala" (and rely on context to determine which is meant). Thus, to my mind, it would be entirely appropriate to have a hatnote saying something like For similarly named venues, see Scala (disambiguation)#Places and buildings. And even if the consensus would be against that, I would still want more direct guidance on how to handle such cases.

The second issue is the hatnote link to a dab page section: Scala (disambiguation)#Places and buildings. For this particular case, none of the other entries on the dab page is remotely relevant; only the buildings and places in that section. But I didn't find any guidance on whether including the section link was appropriate or not. Personally I am torn on the issue (either option has disadvantages) and would have appreciated some guidance that addressed this more directly.

I'm glad to see we have guidance on hatnote templates to use when selectively transcluding entire sections of articles. I'm sure I'll have desperate need of that any day now. :)

In any case, with some close reading of this page, and keeping IAR firmly in mind, I'm sure we'll figure out the specific case that prompted this. But next time I run into a similar issue I would love to have more specific guidance to lean on: hence this request. --Xover (talk) 07:17, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Xover said: "Thus, to my mind, it would be entirely appropriate to have a hatnote saying something like For similarly named venues, see Scala (disambiguation)#Places and buildings." I don't see any problem with this, and I don't see any problem with linking to a dab page section in cases where none of the entries in other sections of the dab page are relevant. Biogeographist (talk) 13:41, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

@Xover: But keep in mind the advice at MOS:HEAD about linking to sections: "Similarly, when linking to a section of an article, leave an invisible comment, at the heading of the target section, naming the linking articles so that if the section title is altered the linking articles can be fixed. For example: ==Implications==" Biogeographist (talk) 15:29, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Hatnote templates at TfD

Several hatnote templates have been nominated for merging/deltion. See:

Thanks! – Uanfala (talk) 02:01, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Reciprocal hatnotes

To what extent, if any, does the appropriateness for a hatnote from A to B imply propriety in the reciprocal form from B to A?--John Cline (talk) 08:27, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

It depends on the hatnote - perhaps you could give an example of the kind of hatnote you're thinking of? Thanks. PamD 09:50, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

I was speaking of {{About}}.--John Cline (talk) 10:04, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Very often the reciprocal is not needed: eg if it's from "Jane Bloggs" to "Jane Bloggs (pilot)" who is the only other of that name, we give a hatnote from the article at the basename to the disambiguated one but not in the reverse direction, on the basis that no-one would land accidentally on the "pilot" page if they were looking for the other one - with exceptions if the two are very likely to be confused. PamD 10:18, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that answers my question, and comports with WP:2DABS which speaks of a hatnote from the primary topic but not the other way. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 10:23, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

There's an example I've just created at Ali Abbasi. Ideally the person who created the disambiguated stub would have added the hatnote, but they didn't. PamD 11:32, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Distinguish hatnote

Exactly under what circumstances, the distinguish hatnote can be added to an article? Is it only based on the user's taste? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 13:51, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

@Ali Pirhayati: {{Distinguish}} is added to an article to distinguish the article from another article with a similar name.

For example: {{Distinguish|Coma}} is used in the Comma article as a reader might confuse “Coma” with “Comma” since the two terms are so similar. Interqwark ^{talk contribs} 14:07, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

What counts as a similar name? For example are Daniel Nathan and Daniel Nathans similar? Are George Theodore and Theodore George similar? If there is a dispute between two users about the use of the hatnote, what policy will settle the dispute? Ali Pirhayati (talk) 15:27, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

@Ali Pirhayati: Yes, your examples are valid. I don’t think there’s a specific rule, like “X amount of characters has to be different.”

{{Distinguish}} is for possible misspellings or terms that can be confused with each other (e.g., Google and Googol, CD-R and CDR; and Maxis and Maxxis). The template is supposed to aid the reader to finding the correct article if he or she misspelt it or confused it with something else. This template is only used if there’s a strong resemblance between all the terms and an explanation isn’t needed. If an explanation is needed, a template like {{For}} and {{About}} is used instead. Interqwark ^{talk contribs} 15:31, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

In other words, if there is a good chance that two different terms can be confused or misspelled into each other, and there is an equally good chance that both terms are well known to the reader, then {{Distinguish}} can be used. Otherwise, if either or both terms are likely not well known to the reader, then {{For}} or {{About}} are usually better suited. --Deeday-UK (talk) 23:44, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:For

Template:For has been nominated for merging with Template:Other uses. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 02:51, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to see WP:NAMB referred to/reiterated at the top of "Other uses of the same title"

I still see a lot of this sort of misuse of hatnotes, and I don't think the extra notice would hurt. User:PamD respectfully disagrees. Thoughts? —swpb^{T go beyond} 16:51, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

@Swpb: I suggest that if anything goes there it should be more nuanced, with a "in most cases" or "rarely" (am on mobile so not easy to check wording etc). And "fully disambiguated" didn't seem clear. NAMB itself is more permissive than the suggested note here, and there are some cases where confusion is so likely so that even readers of pages with disambiguated titles would benefit from one of these hatnotes. (Two villages in different districts of same county, possibly). PamD 17:03, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Ok, then what about repeating the exact wording: "Per WP:NAMB, it is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous." —swpb^{T go beyond} 17:17, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that seems fine. Thanks. PamD 18:34, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages

The lede, bullet point 1, says "Link directly to other articles; do not pipe non-disambiguation links.". The examples in the "Linking to a disambiguation page" section show "(disambiguation)" in the examples, i.e. not piped.

So why say "non-disambiguation pages"? We shouldn't pipe to any pages, not make this loophole. I've just fixed an example of it being jumped through in the hatnote at Yellow, for Yellow #5 (disambiguation). 94.21.204.175 (talk) 01:46, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, it depends. Piping might be undesirable in most cases, but by no means all. I can see how there can be different views about this edit to Yellow. The link is to Yellow#5, which is a disambiguation page. Piping wouldn't even be on the table if it weren't for WP:INTDAB requiring all intentional links to dab pages to be done via the redirect ending in "(disambiguation)". Now, the choice is whether the link should make it explicit which redirect is being used, with the added advantage of alerting readers that the target is a disambiguation page, or whether the link should be clear on which article is being linked: piping could be used to balance out the effect of having to use a redirect, so that the reader can see the exact title of the article they're going to be send to. I guess this is a fuzzy area, but there are situations where piping is clearly better. Depending on the text of the hatnote, an unpiped link may not quite make sense. If the link is preceded by Not to be confused with , then this context calls for the name of a topic or a concept, not an exact article title. Not to be confused with Foo (disambiguation) sounds a bit jarring; Not to be confused with Foo is much better. – Uanfala (talk) 02:32, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

I've spent a while thinking about this, and ended up back where I started: why would you use a pipe in {{confused}}? That seems a way to add, not reduce, confusion. Just use a different hatnote: This article is about bar. For foo, see Foo (disambiguation).

I don't think it matters if the "(disambiguation)" page is a redirect. It's more important to be clear in the hatnote that the link leads to a disambiguation page. Also, the hatnote need not be updated if the disambiguation page is moved to or from the "(disambiguation)" title, but that's a side benefit. 94.21.204.175 (talk) 11:26, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this would be an improvement. But let's take a concrete example. How would you change the hatnotes in this article? – Uanfala (talk) 21:17, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

I would unpipe the "(disambiguation)" links. The point is to make clear in the hatnote that the link is to a disambiguation page.

Surely you would not recommend writing in Amine, For other uses, see Amine, but how is Not to be confused with ... Amine (disambiguation) any more "jarring" than For other uses, see Amine (disambiguation)? And {{other uses}} is the base case where the words "other uses" themselves make "(disambiguation)" redundant.

The reader of the hatnote does not know that the link is to a disambiguation page - be it at the base page name or not - and gets a WP:SURPRISE that it is. WP:HOWTODAB (part of WP:INTDAB) also suggests the link can be piped. But these concentrate on the benefit to editors (and editing tools such as bots), to whom the displayed title is irrelevant. Showing the "(disambiguation)" is useful for readers. When there is a strongly related topic we sometimes link both to that and the DAB in a hatnote, e.g. at Azincourt, but then we obviously shouldn't pipe the "(disambiguation)" - because it would look like a link to the primary topic itself.

I feel the same about piping links in "See also" sections. 94.21.204.175 (talk) 06:44, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

The hatnote at Amine reads like this:

.. and you would prefer it if instead it read like that:

But really, what benefit is there to readers in knowing that the link in a "Not to be confused with..." is to a dab page? These situations will normally involve a word that is spelt similarly to the ones in the article's title; what difference does it make to the reader if this goes to a one other article, or to several articles that are bundled in a dab page? – Uanfala (talk) 13:01, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

If readers are confused, there is no need to confuse them further. If the disambiguation page sits at the base page name, consensus has established that there is no primary topic, so we shouldn't WP:ASTONISH people by implying there is one. The "(disambiguation)" informs readers that the name has more than one meaning. Piping it hides that information.

But anyway, the loöphole is wider than just "confused" hatnotes. 94.21.204.175 (talk) 07:11, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

By the by, I would cut the link to "Ami (disambiguation)" and maybe to "Amin (disambiguation)" anyway. I can't see a reader mistaking "Amine" for "Ami". 94.21.204.175 (talk) 07:41, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Hatnote for Buggy (automobile)

FYI

You are invited to the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation#Hatnote_for_Buggy_(automobile) regarding the hatnote for Buggy (automobile).—Bagumba (talk) 12:23, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

What if a Google search won't work?

This is just one example, but it is something that could happen with other search terms. I made a note several months ago about an article in an actual newspaper about "WALL-E" that I wanted to learn more about. I forgot to make a note about which newspaper figuring it would be easy enough to find the information, but every single Google result for "WALL-E" is about the movie or the character. Had a made a note about what it was about, I might have had better luck. Guessing which newspaper didn't help since a search of its web site didn't work, but another resource I could access this week gave me what I needed, and I made an improvement to a Wikipedia article and was able to link to it, after which I was reverted, along with a change that would work better. Well, maybe. It depends on whether a person would actually look at "See also". If you remember only that something else is called "WALL-E", Wikipedia is not very helpful at this point. Although maybe that is unlikely. Either the WALL-E article needs a hatnote or there needs to be a disambiguation page. Also see this discussion.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:03, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Capitalization for article titles

Is the capitalization needed for the the first letter of the article title in the hatnote? For example:

or

. —Wei4Green | 唯绿远大 (talk) 18:19, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I have no idea how this reflects past consensus on the subject, but I would definitely prefer the lower case version. If we're going to capitalize it to call attention to the fact that we're referring to the name of a Wikipedia article rather than honorary degrees as a normal English noun (the only argument I can see for the capital letters) then we should also put the name in quotes or set it off in italic or something like that. Since we're not doing that, we should stay lower case. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:29, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what the explicit consensus is either, but my experience, which appears to be backed up by what I see in the examples at WP:HATNOTE), is that if we're referring to an article, then we do capitalise, as in If the linked text isn't explicitly referring to an article, then it's not capitalised: With a bare {{distinguish}} hatnote, as in the example with honorary degree, I'd tend to use lower-case as well, although other people's practice might vary. – Uanfala (talk) 22:41, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Examples of two Guernsey women

Here are two hatnote examples of two Guernsey women with the same surname and similar given names, and both working during the German occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II.

.

The about hatnote seeks to avoid the likely confusion with specific details. --Dthomsen8 (talk) 00:04, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Okay, but strip out all those unnecessary links that aren't the ambiguous term, so people can more easily find the link they're looking for. --ShelfSkewed Talk 01:35, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't think the name of the "this" article is needed; date useful here because the death dates are so different that they will help distinguish; Salvation Army seems the major description for Marie; no extra blue links needed. I've edited both hatnotes, to:

and

Advertising obscure commercial items on high usage pages

I've had it happen 3-4 times where , on a very high profile article, someone inserts a disambig to an obscure song or album of the same name by a band at the top of the article. Imagine at the top of the United States a disambig that says "for the song "United States" by Larry's Band, see "United States (Larry's Band song)" In every case it's been pretty clear that it is to advertise the product in a prominent place. Usually they cite this editing guidline to say that it should stay in. Item #3 sort of says otherwise but covering this better would be good. Probably replace the "possibility" wordin #3 with something clearer. And maybe add "be particular careful on this criteria when listing a commercial product. North8000 (talk) 13:55, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

The situation that appears to have prompted this thread is the disagreement on whether Folk music should include a hatnote to Folk Music (album). Now, if wikipedia has an article (or any sort of relevant encyclopedic content) on a given topic, then there should be a way for readers to be able to find it. That's what hatnotes are for. It doesn't matter if the content it is about a commercial product or something else. If you believe the album to be so obscure as to pass below the notability threshold, you can nominate it for deletion. – Uanfala (talk) 14:28, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Actually, there is also another apparently noteworthy album with the same name: Folk Music (Far East Movement album). I think it's best to create a dab page at Folk Music (disambiguation) listing the two albums, and add a hatnote linking to it at Folk music (that article already has a bit of a hatnote clutter, so it's best to keep the hatnote links to a minimum). – Uanfala (talk)
Yes, it sometimes produces odd hatnotes, but how else can we provide navigation to an article which happens to be the only one with the same title, disambiguated, as a major topic? I don't see it as advertising, just providing the normal level of access to an article. I seem to remember discussion a while back about The Book of Mormon (musical), though there's now a dab page at Book of Mormon (disambiguation) so no problem. If an album is called "Folk Music", then it must be accessible through the term Folk Music, and as there is an article at that title, it has to have a hatnote pointing to the album. PamD 18:55, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

The most recent occurrence of this (at the folk music article) was the most recent example that triggered this, but it it were about that particular situation I would handle it at the article rather than here. The reason I brought it up here is as described when I started this thread. We can't say that providing ability for find an article rests solely on disambig. Using the discussed example, it would be ludicrous for somebody to be surprised to not end up at the "Show of Hands" band's album when they typed in "Folk Music". And for finding the "Show of Hands" album one merely needs to type that in the search bar and they will quickly find the album. Possibly Uanfala's idea of Folk Music disambiguation page would be a work-around for most of these. If the title is prominent, there are probably several candidates to list on the disambig page. North8000 (talk) 22:52, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

If there is literally only two topics that meet the name, with one being clearly the most commonly known part of the topic, and the other something obscure, the hat note is the only way to do this. If there's two relaitvely unnknowns along with the clearly known one, then a disambiguation page could be the way to not dilute the main topic, but when its only the 1, this is the only route to help with searching. --Masem (t) 23:12, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Hash section links

I've just noticed that some old hatnote templates, such as Template:Distinguish-otheruses and Template:Distinguish-otheruses2, do not parse links to subsections in line with Template:Section link. For example:

{{Distinguish-otheruses|Example#section|Another#section}}

Renders as:

Not to be confused with Example#section. For other uses, see Another#section.

Instead of:

Not to be confused with Example § section. For other uses, see Another § section.

I'm not too familiar with modules etc. needed to fix this – can someone more experienced take a look? ‑‑Yodin^T 15:24, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

To hatnote, or not to hatnote...

Is the question at Talk:Monotheism#Monotheist_hatnote. Tassedethe (talk) 22:01, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:Disambiguation#Use of "See also" hatnote

You are invited to join the discussion at WT:Disambiguation#Use of "See also" hatnote. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:38, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Resurrection of italicization question

Should we be putting italics inside already-italicized hatnotes when such words would otherwise be italicized? SchreiberBike (talk · contribs) asked this previously, but it's been archived at Wikipedia talk:Hatnote/Archive 7#Italics in italics after only three editors commented (two in favor, one opposed). I've assumed this was SOP, but upon reading this guideline, I found it wasn't. Can this be added to the guideline? — fourthords | =Λ= | 21:28, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

@Fourthords: Thanks for bringing this up again. The practice I've seen is that we do italicize, by un-italicizing, text that would normally be italicized in hatnotes. For example:

Nice work in finding my old question there. I didn't agree with the response, but didn't feel like arguing then. I'll admit that I have continued to italicize scientific names of species in hatnotes by un-italicizing them like in the example above. I'd love to see further input on this to change the guideline. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 22:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

@Siuenti and Nardog: I've pinged the previous discussants to try to bring more attention to this. Thanks, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 02:43, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: I feel like we need to take this to WT:MOS or somewhere like that, or start an RfC, or this'll get nowhere. Nardog (talk) 22:14, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I'll post a note at WT:MOS. I also changed the capitalization of the subject heading above. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 00:59, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I've always treated this as SOP; however, I usually only change those when other edits were needed. I see where {{Other ships}} does not upright the ship name, so maybe that's an indication? It might also be an exception since ship titles are often partially italicized (USS Constitution). Wouldn't hurt to have some guidance both here and at the MoS. Paine Ellsworth, ed. ^put'r there 03:03, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

In my IRL work I used to take the un-italicize route, but at some point I decided to looks weird, and I began to underline, like this:

I'm not going so far as to recommend that for use here, but just thought I'd throw it out. E Eng 11:04, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Seeing as how this has not attracted any more comment, I've boldly changed the only example on the associated project page which uses italics. If that flies, then maybe also we can add some text to the instructions. Thanks, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 19:56, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Just having the example from The Giver could be sufficient, or we could add something like the below:

===Hatnotes with italics in the links===

"Spotted angle" redirects here. For the other butterfly with this name, see Caprona alida.

Caprona agama, the spotted angle, is a butterfly belonging to the family Hesperiidae. ...

The italics are reverted by the parameterization: {{Redirect|Spotted angle|the other butterfly with this name|Caprona alida{{!}}''Caprona alida''}}

I've never used the word "parameterization" before, but the other examples use it. What do others think? SchreiberBike | ⌨ 06:53, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Example added as proposed above. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 22:08, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

I think "inverted" is more accurate than "reverted", so I've changed the text. Widefox; talk 19:43, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Hatnotes on mobile app

@Quercus solaris: I removed: "which is why it is counterproductive that the Wikipedia mobile app fails to display hatnotes. It used to display them below the lede; now it hides them from the user entirely." from the project page. It's an important point, but I don't think we should be trying to fix the apps by commenting on them here. I'm not sure where such discussion should take place. Any ideas? Maybe ask at WP:VPT. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 02:01, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: Nah, places like that tend to be where legitimate concerns go to die, unread by almost all. Leaving it here may actually get results by shaming someone into fixing what is either a stupidly bad "design" idea or a big bug. The facts should be restored here. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:54, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

With a technical village pump post you're much more likely to find someone who knows either why this is so, or of the processes to bring it up with the developers. I don't think you're likely to find such an editor among the people who're going to read this project page. – Uanfala (talk) 14:05, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

OK. I posted at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Cannot_find_hatnotes_displayed_anywhere_in_iOS_app. Someone there helpfully pointed to the bug report, which is classified as "low priority": https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T240721. I wouldn't care if I was confident that it's just a bug that's going to get fixed sometime, maybe next year. But I have a bad feeling that what's more likely is that it is someone's private UI/UX/"D" preference that the rest of us aren't invited to influence. (Referring to user interface design but the "D" for "design" has to be in quotes because anti-patterns are not merely patterns.) Maybe whether Wikipedia on iOS mobile just doesn't even have hatnotes anymore, and whether it ever will again, might be decided by a personal preference of someone at the WikiMedia Foundation who thinks that hatnotes are mere "clutter". The reason this annoys me is that (1) stuff like whether hatnotes even exist on an page, and how they're used, used to be decided by Wikipedians at pages like this one and (2) now it may be decided by 1 or 2 people at WMF who might happen to drink today's trendy UI/UX/"D" koolaid that wants to hide everything away from users, think for them, decide for them, make all features and commands either a hidden Easter egg or simply disappeared completely. But hatnotes serve an important purpose in helping users to quickly think critically about where their search results have landed their attention and whether some other relevant piece of information exists that they should at least have a chance to be made aware of at that moment. Like maybe they heard /ˈɪliəm/, but before they land on and read an article about the ileum they should be told that there is also the ilium and it's not the same thing although its name sounds the same. Or their search lands them on "John Smithington" but they should be told up front that maybe "John A. Smithington", his son, may be the subject they were truly interested in finding. The status of whether hatnotes even exist on iOS mobile at the moment, and whether they ever will again, is not something that should be censored from appearing at Wikipedia:Hatnote, so I'm going to post the status of it there. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:52, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I've gone into phab:T240721 and I think I've changed it to "High" priority, with an explanation for why I think it's important. (My first Phabricator edit.) If you want to contribute to that discussion there, it might help. We'll see what happens. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 21:37, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at MOS on whether to use inline footnotes for family name clarification instead of a hatnote

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/China_and_Chinese-related_articles#Hatnote_for_Chinese_names_of_people. Sdkb (talk) 02:32, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Improving navigation to the hatnote templates

A widely recognised issue is that we've got too many hatnote templates. Surprisingly many, given how simple is the job they do. One major practical consequence is that it can be difficult for editors to find the right template they need. Navigation to these templates happens via the section Wikipedia:Hatnote#Hatnote templates and the navbox Template:Hatnote templates. How can these two places be improved? Please, share any ideas you might have!

Here are a few thoughts:

The section Wikipedia:Hatnote#Hatnote templates is really long and detailed. Maybe we could have fewer examples of each template, and leave out the more obscure templates altogether?
The navbox Template:Hatnote templates can probably skip some of the more niche topic-specific templates. The template specifically for townships in Pennsylvania and the one for articles about popes named "Stephen" are alright, but they're already used on all pages that they can be used on, so it's unlikely that an editor browsing the table will actually need them.
Both this page and the navbox list templates like {{Main}} or {{Further}}, which are used for linking to thematically related articles from within sections, but mix them in with the remaining templates, which are used at the top of articles for disambiguation. Maybe separate out the thematic templates into a separate subsection?
The navbox also lists the templates for use on category pages, mixing them in with the rest. I guess it makes sense for, say, {{Category see also}} to be displayed right after {{See also}}, but given the well circumscribed use of the category templates, I think it will be better if they had a navbox of their own.

If there are no objections, I will likely proceed to implement some of these suggestions. Please share your ideas as well! – Uanfala (talk) 13:46, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Go for it. When I have to select a hatnote template to use, it's always confusing. I have just fallen into using a few I know and ignoring the rest. If I can't figure it out I'll use {{hatnote}} and write it out myself. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 19:11, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I agree too. I wouldn't necessarily say there are too many templates, but I agree with all 4 of your suggestions. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 14:12, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

1HAT and disambiguation pages

The second paragraph of WP:1HAT currently reads:

To keep hatnotes short, generally they should only list disambiguation pages (X (disambiguation)) if the article is at X or if X redirects to that article. If X is a disambiguation page and the article is at X (letter), then X (letter) generally needs no hatnote. Direct links to other articles should be limited to circumstances immediately following a page move or redirect change or if the other article could be reasonably expected by a significant number of readers to be at the title in question: for instance, Turkey is about the country, but many readers reasonably expect to find the article on the bird at that title; therefore, the hatnote there correctly reads
{{about|the country|the bird|Turkey (bird)|other uses}}
which renders

This page is about the country. For the bird, see Turkey (bird). For other uses, see Turkey (disambiguation).

To a reader unfamiliar with hatnotes, this would seem to suggest that hatnotes should never link to articles, only to dab pages. This should be rewritten to make it clear it's about cases where a disambiguation pages already exists. I'm also finding it bizarre that it suggests links to articles (given a dab page exists) are OK not only when a significant number of readers might be looking for that article but also for circumstances immediately following a page move or redirect change. This should be dropped altogether: after a move we change the hatnotes and call it a day, we don't go back and forth between different hatnote setups depending on how much time has elapsed since the move. I'm proposing the following version for this paragraph:

If a disambiguation page exists for a given term, then linking to it should be enough. For example, if the article is X then its hatnote will link to X (disambiguation); it should not have entries for other topics known as X, like X (novel) or X (charge), because they are already listed in the disambiguation page. However, an article could be linked to in addition to the disambiguation page if it could be expected by a significant number of readers to be at the title in question: for instance, Turkey is about the country, but many readers expect to find the article on the bird at that title; therefore, the hatnote there correctly reads
{{about|the country|the bird|Turkey (bird)|other uses}}
which renders

This page is about the country. For the bird, see Turkey (bird). For other uses, see Turkey (disambiguation).

Any thoughts? – Uanfala (talk) 21:23, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's an improvement. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 14:15, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Hatnote templates nominated for deletion

Template:Redirect for has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Uanfala (talk) 00:32, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Template:Distinguish-otheruses (and the related Template:Distinguish-otheruses2 and Template:Distinguish-otheruses3) are now also at TfD. – Uanfala (talk) 22:18, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

{{Other uses2}} is up for deletion as well: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 April 16#Template:Other uses2. – Uanfala (talk) 22:33, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Use of hatnote at Alexander Friedmann for the redirected Alexander Friedman

I have tried adding a hatnote at Alexander Friedmann but have been reverted. Can someone else please take a look. Thanks. Tassedethe (talk) 17:59, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

A bot to replace some instances of two "other uses" templates

I'm considering asking for a bot (or an editor with a semi-automated tool like AWB) to replace some instances of {{other uses of}} and {{other uses2}} with the more common {{other uses}}. The main point is that we don't have uses of a more obscure template when the same job can be accomplished by using a simpler, more widely known one. The two replacements are the following:

Replace {{other uses of|X}} with {{other uses}} in all cases where X is the same as the article's title. This will result in a change of appearance. For example, the hanote at Anomie currently looks like this:

For other uses of "Anomie", see Anomie (disambiguation).

After the change it will look like this:

For other uses, see Anomie (disambiguation).

As far as I can see, this is an improvement as it makes the hatnote briefer: there's no need to specify what term is being disambiguated if it is the same as both the article's title and the base title of the linked dab page.

Replace {{Other uses2|X}} with {{Other uses}} in all cases where X equals the article's title. This will not change the appearance, but it could have a possibly negative side effect if in the future the article is moved – with {{Other uses2|X}} the link will remain the same after the move, but with {{Other uses}} it will likely need to be updated. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing – after most moves hatnotes will need to be changed anyway (for example a {{for}} hatnote will need to be replaced with a {{redirect}}), and if the link in the hatnote suddenly turns red after the move this will be a good reminder for editors to edit the hatnote.

I'm seeing these replacements as a small step towards simplifying existing uses of the hatnote templates, and a prelude to getting a better handle on the remaining uses of these two templates (see here for some context). The total number of pages affected is going to be around a thousand.

I'm looking for feedback – if you think this is a bad idea let me know, and if you believe this will be an improvement then please say so – any future bot request will need evidence of consensus. – Uanfala (talk) 17:27, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

I support this as a good idea. Simplification of hatnote templates generally is a good initiative. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 16:30, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
I can definitely get behind this. I'd say step zero, which I've used successfully for other such hatnote simplifications, would be to categorize such uses into Category:Hatnote templates using unusual parameters. I've mocked up a quick tweak to the template's module, to categorize such uses, over at Module:Other uses of/sandbox, but I'm tired so I'm not going to implement it at least until I'm fresher. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 03:58, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
- I've categorized uses of {{other uses of}} where parameter 1 is case-insensitively equal to the title over at Category:Hatnote templates using unusual parameters, and I did an AWB run to replace parameter-less instances of the same template with {{other uses}}, using a regex search hastemplate:"other uses of" insource:/\{\{ *other *uses *of *\}\}/. While I've probably eliminated all of the cases, if new parameter-less instances of the template are added, they'll also become categorized as using unusual parameters. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 02:53, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines#Hatnotes

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines#Hatnotes. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:29, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Volksfront#Hatnote

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Volksfront#Hatnote. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:43, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

TfD of note

Watchers here may be interested in a hatnote-related discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 June 4#Template:Not WMF. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 19:26, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

TfD on hatnote template for pronouns

Watchers of this page may be interested in the following discussion: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 August 26#Template:Multiple pronouns. Crossroads ^-talk- 03:36, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Where should hatnotes go for templates?

I've seen some templates that place disambiguatory hatnotes at the top of the documentation, and others that place it at the top of the template itself (within noinclude tags). Which is correct? The advantage of having it at the top of the page is that it would fit better with the general practice of placing hatnotes at the top so that readers looking for another page can easily get where they want to go without having to wade into the wrong page. There are a few small disadvantages, though: putting it at the top requires using noinclude tags (thus making the page slightly more complex), prevents non-template editors from directly adding them to protected pages, and introduces possible confusion with the template itself (which is not a problem for 99% of templates, but definitely a problem for e.g. {{For}}). If this hasn't been discussed before, I think it'd be a good thing to sort out and standardize. Courtesy pinging Andrybak and Mdaniels5757 who I recently briefly discussed this with at {{Button}}. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:22, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

The practice of putting hatnotes at the very top is at least notionally a concession for users with screen readers, as they implicitly read the page sequentially: the idea's that if they're on the wrong page entirely, that's the first thing that should be mentioned, rather than forcing them to listen through a variety of other stuff before finding the hatnote as navigational aid. I think that that concern is lessened somewhat on template pages, but not completely absent. I would put the hatnote in the documentation block, but that's obviously not ideal. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 14:48, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
This question largely depends on how we handle template documentation. Currently, the documentation is visually set off by a frame with a blue background and it's topped by a header with a bunch of links announcing that what follows is the documentation. I imagine this layout was chosen because most template pages initially contained only the template itself, and the documentation was later tacked onto the end. Even now we still have a lot of templates whose pages have this generic instance of the template displayed before the documentation, but if we're moving away from that, as we should be, then maybe in the end all templates' code will be includeonly and a template page will display nothing but the documentation. Then it won't be necessary to set it apart visually, so any hatnotes that go at the start of the doc page will necessarily also appear at the very top of the template. – Uanfala (talk) 16:46, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Changing hatnote template naming scheme to avoid numbers

I think we could improve the family of hatnote templates by improving the naming scheme of variants. The names-with-numbers-appended pattern is opaque. I'd like to propose a mass move of templates so that their names are more self-explanatory:

{{About-distinguish2}} → {{about-distinguish-text}}
{{For2}} → {{For-text}}
{{Further2}} → {{Further-text}}
{{Redirect-distinguish2}} → {{Redirect-distinguish-text}}
{{Redirect-distinguish6}} → {{Redirect-distinguish-for}}
{{See also2}} → {{See also-text}}

There's one template that would presumably escape with its number intact, which is {{redirect2}}, used for mentioning two redirects in a single hatnote—I don't know how I'd rename that one if at all. I figured I'd mention this idea here first, as I'm open to alternative naming schemes, so that this idea could start as a discussion rather than go immediately to TfD as a pass–fail proposal. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 14:30, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Nihiltres: Looks reasonable to me. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 18:28, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I wish I had the time to look into this more. Now, as far as I recall, the use of templates ending in "2" was a common way of handling hatnotes with custom text. But then at some point for some templates, this functionality was integrated into the main templates (using a |text= parameter), and the dedicated custom-text templates got deleted (like {{About2}} or {{Distinguish2}}). The trouble now is that for some hatnote templates, custom text is handled in one way, and for others it's handled in a different way. I believe that whatever is ultimately chosen as the best solution, should be done across the board – for simplicity and consistency. We shouldn't be forcing editors to learn two separate ways of doing the same thing and then making them also remember which template used each one. Using the text parameter everywhere would be nice, but my impression from the quick look I had on the issue a few years ago was that there would be templates for which this wouldn't work. – Uanfala (talk) 23:24, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

@Uanfala: That's a good point! I'll do some survey work at some point (extending somewhat the data I've already gathered in my sandbox) to look at the problem a bit more, but offhand I seem to recall that it's mostly a difference between ones that do exactly one blob of text, and ones that do list-construction on multiple text fields. If my survey says that's all there is, then an obvious path for unification would be to convert all extant list-construction uses to use a single text field (reconstructing the constructed list in the first text parameter to do the change in-place), then convert those uses to use |text= instead of a separate "text" template. If that's not all there is … well, I suppose we can go for the short-term patch of tweaking the names for clarity while poking further at the issue. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 05:02, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

the redirect 2 could be renamed to redirect duo, pair, combo, or something like that. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:50, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Planning for the future of surname clarification

Previous discussions (some bigger than others):

At the last discussion in particular, it became clear that the overall matter of surname hatnotes needs a large, centralized discussion, since there is extensive discontent with the current way of doing things (i.e. using templates like {{Chinese name}}) due to the fact that it contravenes the hatnote guidelines at WP:HAT and gives extremely prominent placement to what is essentially trivia. I have been pushing {{Efn Chinese name}} and its peers as an alternative framework that uses a footnote instead of the hatnote. There have also been consolidation concerns, which it looks like Primefac has recently tried to address with the creation of {{Family name hatnote}}.

At the TfD, Bsherr and Coffeeandcrumbs discussed where an appropriate venue might be for an upcoming large discussion. Given the potential impact of a change in this area, I'm inclined to agree with C&C that WP:VPR would be the appropriate venue; we'd also want to place {{See also}} notices here, at WT:WikiProject Anthroponymy, and other relevant places.

For here and now, I think we should focus, first, on doing some brainstorming. We currently have a plethora of different problems and two different frameworks in use. Are there additional problems that we'll want to solve with any wide-scale changes we may make? Are there other potential frameworks we might want to explore? Once we've brainstormed, we should then put together a draft RfC that we can take to the pump to seek consensus.

I'm hopeful that if we go about this intelligently, we'll be able to overcome the inertia of the status quo and put a better system in place. Please keep in mind that this is a meta planning discussion, and save any discussion that belongs at the upcoming RfC for the RfC. Also, there have been quite a few people involved in the different scattered discussions above, and there may be discussions I've missed. Feel free to list any other discussions, and to ping folks so long as you do it evenly. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:17, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Thank you for putting this together. As to the venue, I think this talk page is the most suitable. I'm not of the understanding that we use the village pump for "impactful" things, whatever that means. And I've recently seen criticism of RfCs conducted there that interested users have missed because they thought it would be sufficient to watch the affected project talk page. Posting a notice of the discussion to the village pump and inclusion in the centralized discussion list would be sufficient, I think. It also makes it easier to locate in archives, as users are far more likely to search the archives of the affected project talk page than the whole of the village pump.

As I mentioned at TfD, I have seen three recently discussed uses of hatnotes other than for navigation: (1) concerning the names of natural persons, specifically which part of the name is the given name and which the surname, etc.; (2) pronouns used to refer to the subject; and (3) whether the subject is connected to WMF.

As for the RfC itself, I see two questions here: (1) Should hatnotes be used other than for navigation? (2) If yes, what criteria should determine whether a hatnote is indicated for a particular usage? The second question is quite large in scope. (Anticipating this will be raised, yes, I understand that hatnotes are currently being used, de facto, for purposes other than navigation. I don't think the beforementioned phrasing of the question ignores or prejudices that, and I would expect that a background statement developed here would discuss that.) One option would be to first pose the first question, which is conveniently binary, and will determine whether we need to proceed to the second. Another option would be to pose both questions together; basically, the binary question 1, and then probably a menu of proposed acceptable uses for editors to individually !vote yes or no. Thoughts? --Bsherr (talk) 03:50, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Bsherr, that's an even broader set of questions than what I'm talking about above. The result I'm hoping for is some kind of deprecation of using hatnotes for surname clarification, and an alternative framework set up to replace it. Those questions allow for discussion on potential deprecation, but not for discussion and possible consensus around an alternative.

Given the scope you're thinking about, it makes sense that you'd want to host here, since you're centering around hatnotes, whereas I'm centering around surnames, and since there's no single page precisely about surname hatnotes, it makes sense to me to go to the pump. If there's a CENT listing, hopefully anywhere could work alright.

Do you have any thoughts re the brainstorming questions I posed above? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:02, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, it's interesting. The question of what, if anything, to do with surname explanations—hatnotes, endnotes, something else—is 90% of the question of what, if anything, to do with the hatnotes guideline. Because it's a more limited question, it might be an easier one to answer, so it might make a better RfC. As I think about it, I think I am preferring it. To your questions, I agree with how you have described the problem with using hatnotes, and I agree with putting forward your efn templates as the proposed replacement. (Lastly, I would still maintain that the place to discuss surname hatnotes is Wikipedia talk:Hatnote.) --Bsherr (talk) 04:22, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion An RfC should include:

Why the name information is deemed important to readers' understanding of the article.
What are tradeoffs of other non-hatnote options—Bagumba (talk) 04:11, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

If the RfC must be held here, please ensure the widest possible notification, including WP:CENT. This would have huge ramifications. Also ensure the RfC is very concise and to the point: Should all surname, family name, patronymic name templates such as {{Korean name}}, {{Chinese name}}, and {{Patronymic name}} be removed? You can include a list of previous discussions, but please keep all opinions out of the preface and add them to your !votes.

I warn you that, if the consensus reached is localized, the confusion we would create maybe disruptive and far-reaching. I suspect these templates have been very helpful to readers and have also been protecting many pages from damage, from drive-by editors that would change all instances of the subjects name to Western perceptions and bastardizations. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 04:16, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure that removal fully describes what's proposed, since the intention is to add the information somewhere else in the article. By the way, are there any edit notices covering the issue? --Bsherr (talk) 04:25, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

You are asking to remove the templates. Another suggestion is to add ... and the information moved to {{efn}} and Edit Notices or something like that. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 04:28, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

The reason why I suggest the RfC statement begins by explaining the high-level problem we are trying to solve. If it's deemed a problem worth solving, then we need alternatives if it's not a hatnote.—Bagumba (talk) 04:58, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

What about {{Spanish name}}? Doesn't seem to be included in {{Family name hatnote}} but is another case where the "main" surname to be used as sort key and in referring to the person isn't obvious to all readers from the article title. PamD 07:26, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
PamD, see this TFD, which came after the Singapore name template; basically, I wanted to get the "simple" ones merged as proof-of-concept and also to gauge the interest in such a consolidation. The Spanish template was a little more complex, so I put it off for "phase two" of the consolidation. Primefac (talk) 18:37, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
This is background information about a culture, not specific to the subject of the article. It does not belong as article text (where pedantic editors will require published sources that the subject's name follows the obvious convention that it does and idiosyncratic editors will express it in idiosyncratic and inconsistent ways in different articles). It does not make sense to require it to be an efn, when many articles do not use efns and per WP:CITEVAR should not be required to do so, and when that puts the information far too late in the article to do any good. And it isn't appropriate for a lead. But it is helpful for it to be very early in the article so that people who aren't familiar with the conventions can understand why an article about Elena Fernández Aréizaga (say) refers to her as Fernández. A hatnote seems like a completely appropriate way of doing so to me. No, it isn't about navigation to other articles. So what? The discussion should be about the most appropriate way to present this information, not about whether it is different from an unrelated piece of information that coincidentally happens to be presented in a similar-looking way. And incidentally, this discussion is completely misplaced here, since these templates are not hatnotes in the sense of things that direct readers to potentially-confused topics. I think Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography would be a much more appropriate place for a discussion about what, in essence, is a matter of how to format biographies. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:45, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
- WP:CITEVAR is about citations, from which explanatory footnotes are distinguished. While no article need contain explanatory footnotes any more than it need contain any other bit of content, we don't have a guideline that specifically recognizes a privilege not to use explanatory footnotes in favor of some other method. --Bsherr (talk) 01:00, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Your comment preempts the RFC this discussion is actually planning, so you might want to be on the lookout for that one. I agree that MOSBIO is a place that discussion could be held. (So is LAYOUT; I might tend that direction.) --Izno (talk) 08:42, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
An approach I've suggested elsewhere is for these to take a different form, that is to use {{distinguish}} or otherwise to provide navigation from people with different order names (or to point to an appropriate dab page of the same), as another potential consideration. --Izno (talk) 08:42, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Hatnotes for navigation are always approporiate for ambiguous or likely confused names, independent of how we handle these "surname hatnotes".—Bagumba (talk) 09:59, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
I think the issue is a little bit broader: it's about how we present and annotate information about a person's name: how the full name is structured, which bit of it is the short form to be used to refer to the person, and what sort order should the name appear in. Some, but not all, of this information is implicit in how a person's name is used throughout the article, but it will be desirable to have it presented in a single place where readers (and editors) will expect to find it. At first blush, I'd think that should be the {{Authority control}} box at the end (as that information would normally be part of an authority control record; that's also one reason why Wikipedia:WikiProject Libraries would ideally be notified of this discussion). The trouble with that is that many readers probably don't know these things exist – and readers will probably be looking towards the infobox for any standardised bits of information. I'm thinking we could probably use some modular unit, either embedded in an infobox, or used independently (for articles that don't have infoboxes), which will contain detailed annotations of the name (as well as alternative names), some parts of which will be displayed to readers while others will remain there in the code just for editors. – Uanfala (talk) 10:57, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. While in the past I have argued that since WP:HAT says hatnotes are for navigation, and surname hatnotes are not used for that, they violate the guideline. Now I think that argument is rather pedantic and shallow. Guidelines should reflect actual, good practice. Surname hatntoes clearly clear confusion about article titles, even if they are not strictly speaking for navigation caused by ambigious titles. This is the essence of hatnotes and the guideline should reflect that. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:36, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Finnusertop, I'd hoped to avoid getting too much into the for/against arguments, but since that can of worms seems to have been opened above, a quick reply. I do think there's value to having a clear and reasonably narrow definition of hatnotes. First, readers over time learn that "the hatnote is the thing I should read when (and only when) I think I may have landed at the wrong page", and allowing them to be used for other purposes both disrupts that training. Second, there's the issue of prominence. The very top of an article is valuable real estate, so to speak, and should be reserved for the most important things. A clarification of naming practices is useful, but no where near as much so as the things we put in the first sentence or the top of the infobox. We don't want to clutter the top of a page with hatnote blindness any more than we do with banner blindness. Lastly, there's the concern about precedent. Editors have trouble using tools within proscribed boundaries even when the boundaries are relatively clear, as they currently are at WP:HAT, which is part of why we're here in the first place. Because hatnotes are so prominent, there's a huge temptation for them to become the place where you just throw anything you really want readers to see, so there's benefit to keeping a firm lid on their allowed scope.

It seems from the above/the previous discussions that some editors find that rationale more persuasive than others, but the point is that enough editors do find it persuasive that a large discussion is clearly warranted, and I'd like to focus here on shaping what the contours of that discussion should be. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:51, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Uanfala brings up some alternatives to the efn idea that we've seen workshopped. I suppose I should point out that we don't necessarily need to mandate a style for this information at all. It is possible we could create templates for the information to be presented as an efn, or in an infobox, or something else, and let the decision of which is best be made at the article level. That would address David Eppstein's concern that not all articles are wanting of efns. Obviously not all articles have infoboxes either. And, as appropriate, an edit notice would address those who find that the purpose is to prevent unaware editing of the articles. A result that it can be anything but a hatnote would be a valid one. --Bsherr (talk) 01:00, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

It is already not a hatnote, except by miscategorization of these templates under the hatnote category. Think of it as a piece of information that by pure coincidence happens to have the same standard formatting as a hatnote. What makes that a reason to get rid of it? Why would the same reasoning not instead suggest removing all hatnotes because they happen to look like name-format descriptions? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:13, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
The venue for this discussion should be either Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, as it has nothing to do with hatnotes except that the templates under discussion look like hatnotes, and it has everything to do with biography articles, which have a specific Wikiproject. PamD 08:03, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
The templates in question are all transclusions of Template:Hatnote, they're all in Category:Hatnote templates for names, and they're all placed where hatnotes would be placed in MOS:ORDER. So if they're not hatnotes, (1) they're doing a really, really good job of fooling everyone, and (2) everyone who participated in the last several TfDs did a really, really good job of pretending otherwise. If they're not hatnotes, we should be discussing redesigning them so they are distinct from hatnotes: (1) they are italicized because that is our style for cross-references, so that should change (2) they shouldn't use Template:Hatnote, (3) we should start moving them from above to below the banner area, (4) to say nothing of the erroneous categorization. It would also be helpful if we had a guideline about their use, so that those of us under the mistaken impression that they are hatnotes have something to which to refer to learn about them. --Bsherr (talk) 16:41, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Suggestions: I totally agree with Sdkb point of view. My proposal is to launch a RfC as simple as possible, with two options a) keep status quo b) forget the hatnote template and adopt a footnote style just in the few cases that the editor expects some kind of confusion. It would be great if we could ping all the Wikipedians involved in the previous discussions the OP have listed. Is it possible to ping them in a "automatic" way or must be done manually ? —Alexcalamaro (talk) 06:09, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

With a footnote we could as well be without it all. Nobody except Wiki aficionados would see it. And I can't see how it can be trivial to be able to understand why it's "Mao" not "Zedong" or for a non-Hungarian or non-Icelandic Westerner generally to realise that there are more ways of naming people than given name(s) + family name. Nor can I see the unimportance of preventing drive-by editors from continually doing harm to articles about e.g. García Lorca by replacing that name with "Lorca", which I, like C&C above, suspect would happen if this note wasn't specifically placed above the article. Is there an inflation in hatnotes and banners as some have hinted above? I haven't seen any. But it's still also a question of the practical consequences for and against. 151.177.57.31 (talk) 17:24, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
Old timer "involved" comment: I had a lot to do with a large number of these templates. I always saw them as a stopgap (maybe something better would come along, like pop-up-on-hover notes, or whatever), and as a lesser of two evils, the greater being reader confusion about how to parse a name. I'm not wedded to these particular templates, or to any particular alternative strategy, as long as we actually have a strategy to address the confusion problems. And they are multiple, including as some examples: which is/are the family name(s), whether multiple orders are used by/in reference to the same person, whether multiple forms are used for someone with multipart given name (Foo Bar, Foobar, Foo-Bar), whether a person with a multipart surname is normally referred to with both of them or only one (and which one); and more prosaic things like whether someone with a name of the form "Foo Van Bar" or "Foo Von Bar" has a Germanic name where the surname is "V[a|o]n Bar", or whether it's an Asian (or some other) name in which "Von" or "Van" is their middle name (second given name), or their first given name in surname-then-given-names order, and the V[a|o]n has nothing to do with their surname/family name at all. And so on. Some of this stuff can be covered in article text for specific subjects, but some of it is rote stuff that will apply to many subjects as a class, which is why we templated it all to begin with. It might be better as footnotes instead of hatnotes, or whatever, but having templates of some kind available to cover recurrent cases of the same kind of note is beneficial for editors (save works) and for readers (consistently presented information). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:29, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
PS: After reviewing some of the above. Yes, of course they are hatnotes. Yes, of course we have used hatnotes for more than just navigational information since around their invention. (I would cite some additional examples, but I think at this juncture that would have a WP:SPITE effect of inspiring someone to go create more trouble.) The bare fact that we have done so for about a decade and a half is proof, ipso facto, of consensus to do so. If someone in the interim has edited the hatnote guideline (note: not policy) to inject some kind of "never ever for anything but nav links" dictat, where is the consensus for that, and on what basis is anyone considering that it supersedes many years of actual practice (which is what consensus actually is)? Remember that consensus is not a type of discussion or decision, it is a result of discussions and decisions (primarily the latter, and primarily unwritten). So, to get to the RfC-drafting point, all of the heated invective about these side matters is a distracting waste of time, and the RfC should directly discourage it in some way. Yes, consensus can change, and TfDs have suggested that is has for these specific templates, not for all hatnotes ever. Wallowing in philosophical what-ifs and I-wishes will not help the RfC clarify consensus in any way, and just mire it in angry and basically off-topic noise. Finally, WP:CONSENSUS is clear that consensus can form anywhere. The venue for the present discussion and for the actual RfC really doesn't matter much as long as the drafting process is not dominated by a micro-cabal of people with the same opinion, the RfC is neutrally worded and actually addresses the right questions well, and the live RfC is well-"advertised" to the proper venues, including to VPPOL and CENT, which would be appropriate since this would affect a large number of articles; to related guidelines' talk page (this one, WT:MOSBIO, WT:MOSLAYOUT, plus WT:MOSJAPAN and other culture-specific ones with name hatnotes); to the templates' talk pages (incl. also the "root" Template talk:Hatnote and Module talk:Hatnote); and to appropriate wikiprojects' talk pages (WT:APO, WT:WPT, WT:WPBIO), and so on). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:48, 27 October 2020 (UTC)