Wikipedia:History of set index articles

This is an information page.

It is not an encyclopedic article, nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

This timeline includes some changes to the infrastructure that is relevant to the relationship between set index articles and disambiguation pages.

Timeline

Date unknown: Category:Signpost articles is created with a description stating that signpost articles "are a lot like disambiguation pages, except that the target pages need not have the same name". Some disambiguation pages, such as USS Merrimack, are retagged as signpost articles.

November 30: A discussion at WikiProject Ships includes "I've had it in the back of my mind for a long time to create a ship-specific subcategory of disambiguations with a special template, note the subcats of Category:Disambiguation to see others doing this already."

December 8: Category:Signpost articles is deleted along with its corresponding Manual of Style page.

December 30: Severe trimming of a disambiguation page (formerly a signpost article) earlier that month results in a heated discussion at MOS:DAB.

January 15: A discussion about disambiguation subcategories is closed with "The overwhelming consensus was remove all disambiguation subcategory templates, and carried to every specific template currently in use."

January 4:
- In a discussion at MOS:DAB, an editor argues that "these pages are not "pure" disambiguation pages, but capsule histories of the use of a ship name in a navy". Subsequently, some disambiguation pages, such as HMS Resolution, are changed to {{shipindex}}.
- At the talk page for WikiProject Ships, another editor remarks that "the development of a very strict format for disambiguation pages [...] means that there is a group of editors who are likely to apply this style blindly to all disambiguation pages, including ship index articles."

January 5: {{Ship index}} is created—it places pages in Category:Lists of ships.

January 7: Further discussion at MOS:DAB is started in which editors are generally in favour of ship index pages, with one of them saying "true disambig pages should be short and sweet, with "hood" pointing to the ship index page "HMS Hood"... so the ship index pages can be as inflated as they like."

October 31: At Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages), an editor starts a discussion regarding a disambiguation page that, to them, "apparently did not conform to disambog [sic] guidelines".

November 1: {{Ship index}} is changed to be less of a dab template. It is included in a TFD discussion about disambiguation templates (although not discussed specifically) which results in the templates being kept.

April 26: {{Mountain index}} is created as a copy of {{shipindex}} following a discussion about mountain disambiguation pages violating MOS:DAB.

June 1: A discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation titled "Clarification of "index set article" exemption?" is started that includes the statement "at this point the consensus view seems to be that strong/explicit WikiProject support is the main criterion for allowing an exception".

June 7: Category:Set index articles is deleted with the rationale "A generic category for what was intended to be exceptional is not a good thing". A redirect was later placed at that name.

November 13: Category:Disambiguation lists of ships is moved to Category:Ship disambiguation following a discussion at Categories for Discussion.

November 30: {{Mountain index}} survives at Templates for Discussion. The rationale given was "This is a useful template for set indices, which are not the same as standard disambiguation pages".

March 19: The {{Set index article}} template is created and used in edits such as these.

May 1: A discussion is started at WikiProject Mountains that refers to two types of disambiguation pages.

July 2: Category:Ship disambiguation is moved to Category:Set indices on ships following a discussion at Categories for Discussion.

October 6: {{Mountain index}} is changed from a disambiguation template to a set index article template. Category:Disambiguation lists of mountains was deleted as empty the following April.

November: Category:Set indices on snakes is created and subsequently expanded with the following text:
This category page is for administrative purposes only. Most of the entries below are set index articles (Template:SIA), but some redirects have been included to allow easy access to disambiguation pages (Template:Disambig) that are not only about snakes. Category tags are no longer allowed on disambiguation pages, so these "(snake)" and "(synonym)" redirects have been created to carry them instead. Example: Adder (snake) redirects to Adder. The category tags are used for overviews of common names (e.g. Viperinae by common name) and taxonomic synonyms (e.g. Crotalinae by taxonomic synonyms).

April: The Monthly DAB Challenge begins. Since that point (and possibly before), some very industrious editors fix thousands of links to disambiguation pages every month.

December 14: A TfD discussion regarding several disambig templates results in keep.

November: DPL bot starts notifying editors of links that they've created to disambiguation pages. Links to set indices do not trigger this.

Category intersection becomes available with off-wiki tools. This provides a way to detect pages that are in categories that should be mutually exclusive.

May 21: A discussion is started on a template talk page in which editors discuss changing pages from disambiguation pages to set indices.

June 8: Steps are taken to separate the concept of set indices from that of disambiguation pages; the guideline (Wikipedia:Set index articles) is split from Wikipedia:Disambiguation.

June 26: Category:Ship disambiguation pages is created following a discussion at the talk page for {{Disambiguation}}.

July: By this point, there are over 50,000 pages in Category:All set index articles—most of which are lists of people sharing a surname (e.g. Aarflot). This amounts to approximately one set index page for every 5 disambiguation pages. The interwiki links from Category:Set indices show only 2 other Wikipedias (Portuguese and Chinese) having a category for set indices—and they contain a total of 29 pages.

September 23: Categories named "set indices" or "set index pages" are renamed to "set index articles".