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This page says:

Correct: {{other uses|Springfield (disambiguation){{!}}Springfield}}

However, I can't find where was the consensus to pipe dab links in hatnotes established. Because to me, it seems unnecessary (and frankly, misleading) because "Springfield" and "Springfield (disambiguation)" may have different contents. In such cases, saying that "For other uses, see Springfield." is misleading. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 12:19, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages: the community has adopted the standard of routing all intentional disambiguation links in mainspace through "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects. older ≠ wiser 13:16, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It also says Correct: {{other uses|Springfield (disambiguation)}}
It depends on the situation, and whether the linked page is the dab page or is a redirect to it. Perhaps "Springfield" is a bad example? Mdewman6 (talk) 08:33, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO, it is always correct to use "Foo (disambiguation)" in hatnotes. To use a base name is in all cases misleading, because base names do not imply disambiguation – never, not in any case. Editors should always be very clear and use the "disambiguation" qualifier, visibly, in every hatnote that leads readers to a dab page. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 09:10, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For context, the corresponding discussion is User talk:R'n'B#Regarding RussBot's hatnote task. The bot pipes hatnote dablinks when converting a base name to dab name. Unfortunately, the botop says that piping was the only way to get consensus for the bot, but I do not see any positive side to piping, and there probably was not even a discussion before being added as a guideline here. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 11:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Previous discussion found no consensus on this issue and both forms are considered valid. I prefer piping, because revealing the dab's actual title minimises the WP:SURPRISE which is an unfortunate side effect of the necessary WP:INTDAB, but there are many respected editors on each side of the fence. Certes (talk) 21:30, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

the "Herb" example

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The guideline currently says:

This is even more widespread for first names—many highly notable people are called Herb, but typing in Herb gets you an article on plants. Herb (disambiguation) does not even list any people named "Herb", but instead links to Herb (surname) and Herb (given name), where articles on people named "Herb" are listed.

However, WikiNav at Herb for April shows the hatnote to be the #1 outgoing link in the article, at 733 identifiable clicks last month, which is usually a bad sign. In turn WikiNav at the disambiguation page shows given name and surname links to be #1 and #2 identifiable destinations from there, 267 and 68. So it's obvious that we need to add a direct links to at least the given name to that hatnote.

This example needs to be replaced with a much less misguided one. --Joy (talk) 10:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Joy Interestingly, the WikiNav at Herb for May shows Herb (disambiguation) is only the seventh most common destination after six articles directly related to the culinary plant meaning. In May, only 3.72% of readers navigated to the Herb DAB but in April it was 21.4%. All the other items in the top 10 only varied by 1–3 percentage points in April and May. Was April a fluke? Was some other Herb in the news? Or was May the outlier? Please note, I have no objection to the Lincoln example you have replaced this with. I was just poking around and found this curious. You have a thoughtful way of looking at traffic and clicks data, which I always appreciate in discussions. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 03:17, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I only made the hatnote change on May 28 [1] so that can't be it.
Looking at the last six months of data, looks like April was a bit of an abberation:
clickstream-enwiki-2024-12.tsv:
  • Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 110
  • Herb Herbaceous_plant link 103
clickstream-enwiki-2025-01.tsv:
  • Herb Herbaceous_plant link 162
  • Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 119
clickstream-enwiki-2025-02.tsv:
  • Herb Herbaceous_plant link 136
  • Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 99
clickstream-enwiki-2025-03.tsv:
  • Herb Herbaceous_plant link 139
  • Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 75
clickstream-enwiki-2025-04.tsv:
  • Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 733
  • Herb Herbaceous_plant link 115
clickstream-enwiki-2025-05.tsv:
  • Herb Herbaceous_plant link 134
  • Herb Herb_(disambiguation) link 109
Now, this ostensibly weakens the argument, but in reality we just don't know.
I've previously tried to measure the hatnote click incidence against the actual ambiguity, cf. /Archive 56#on what statistics should look like for hatnotes, primary redirects, primary topics. The outcome was that most commonly the hatnotes would get a tiny fraction of incoming traffic. Yet, after we'd ponder the issue and decided to change navigation, the results afterwards had a huge spread: sometimes the previously presumed primary topics would start getting a tiny fraction of incoming traffic, sometimes modest, and sometimes a large fraction (yet even in the latter cases we'd rarely have consensus to overturn).
The thing that goes unnoticed here is that a huge majority of the incoming traffic at Herb (and often at any other article) is identifiable as other-empty and other-search (~14k out of ~18k, almost 80%). Because we don't control how readers land at an article, and instead our navigation is pre-processed by search engines, we don't actually see the entire pipeline, entire funnel. At the same time, we can surmise that the search engines necessarily short-circuit around our navigation - they don't want to send the readers to our navigation elements, rather they'll try to send the readers directly to what the reader meant because that's more efficient from their perspective. So we can't know what was the context of any of those clicks, and our statistics don't really translate into "these readers were looking for the word 'herb' and that's why they're here".
So while April was an exception, we don't know why it was an exception - it could have been an organic spike in interest in 'herb' or 'Herb' search traffic looking for biographies, or it could have been some arbitrary portion of that traffic seeping through, one that usually gets short-circuited better by the algorithms. Does this incident then tell us that the term 'Herb' is more or less ambiguous?
BTW, it should be noted that Mediawiki technical restrictions prevent us from measuring the difference between 'herb' and 'Herb'. --Joy (talk) 08:52, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting, thanks for digging in! I always wish we had a better way to assess that incoming traffic. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 10:41, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sadly, it looks like it's only going to get worse, with the AI crawler bots it's all over the place and inherently different (they may ingest all of our content and then produce a lot of it themselves without much new traffic towards us). Monthly page views stats for some generic topics indicate some fairly wild ups and downs, most notably the 2023 crash, which is when ChatGPT got started IIRC. Maybe it's leveling off at this point, but who knows. --Joy (talk) 13:24, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Generic and specific

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The WP:PARTIAL section misues the terms "generic" and "specific" – see Toponymy#Toponymic structure (or, for a fuller explanation, George R. Stewart's Names on the Globe). In the name North Carolina, the generic would be Carolina and the specific would be North. Zacwill (talk) 17:56, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much, editor Zacwill, for catching that! P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'er there 18:46, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Paine Ellsworth: Apologies for reverting you, but having read the section again, I've realized that it isn't actually using "generic" and "specific" in their technical toponomastic senses. A "generic" element in this context is one that appears in hundreds or thousands of names (like North), whereas a "specific" element is one that is markedly less widespread (like Carolina). The section was maybe fine as it was, although it could perhaps do with some copyediting. I'd suggest modifying it to:
Placenames often include a generic component and a more specific one, as in North Carolina (where "North" is generic and "Carolina" is specific). Common generic components are compass points, upper/lower, old/new, big/small, etc. It is entirely proper to list such placenames under the specific component (North Carolina is properly listed at Carolina (disambiguation)), but only exceptionally under the generic component: Kingston upon Hull is properly listed at Hull (disambiguation), but we do not expect to see North Carolina at North (disambiguation), just as we do not expect to see Mississippi River at River (disambiguation). Zacwill (talk) 20:31, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd have said that "Kingston upon Hull" has two specific components. The set of things that are Kingstons and the set of things that are along the Hull are both quite limited. Contrast "Shoreham-by-Sea", which would certainly not be listed at Sea (disambiguation).
That nit about terminology notwithstanding, this seems largely beside the point. Kingston upon Hull should be listed at Hull (disambiguation) because it's commonly called just "Hull". Whether it should be listed at Kingston (disambiguation) is what calls for deeper consideration. Perhaps it should only because "Kingston" is specific, and "Kingston upon Hull" looks like a base name "Kingston" with "upon Hull" as a qualifier, so it would reasonable to expect someone seeing "Kingston upon Hull" to guess that it can be found merely by typing in "Kingston". Largoplazo (talk) 21:58, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Red Stone" move discussion

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Talk:Red Stone#Requested move 7 June 2025 is relevant to this guideline. --Joy (talk) 17:03, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:DAB (disambiguation)

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 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:DAB (disambiguation). How should the hatnote on this page, Wikipedia:Disambiguation, be formatted? —Bagumba (talk) 10:02, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Talk:Mario § Requested move 1 July 2025

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 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Mario § Requested move 1 July 2025. -- Joy (talk) 11:09, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Taskmaster (TV series)#Requested move 13 June 2025

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An editor has requested that Taskmaster (TV series) be moved to Taskmaster, which may be of interest to this page. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. Pineapple Storage (talk) 23:44, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 July 2 § Template:WikiProject Disambiguation

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 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 July 2 § Template:WikiProject Disambiguation. older ≠ wiser 11:50, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Parenthetical disambiguation in the middle of the title, i.e. Gay Street (neighborhood), Baltimore

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I came across a handful of neighborhood articles that are disambiguated like Gay Street (neighborhood), Baltimore, with the parenthetical disambiguation right in the middle of the title instead of at the end. The style I would have expected is Gay Street, Baltimore (neighborhood). This is the only one that went through an RM, and quite recently (Talk:Gay Street (neighborhood), Baltimore#Requested move 22 May 2025). It was mentioned that combining comma and parenthetical disambiguation is discouraged but this was rebutted with precedent from Patterson Park (neighborhood), Baltimore and no one seemed to objected to the placement of the parenthetical. A lot of these are in Minneapolis and Baltimore, pointing to local consensus.

Most of these titles have been stable for many years as far as I can tell. I don't think I've ever come across this and I can't find anything saying the parenthetical must go at the end of the title. This came up at here and surprisingly this was the most common form of parenthetical DAB for neighborhoods. Am I missing something?

--MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 23:30, 15 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, I think you're right per MOS:USPLACE. Gay Street might be a little complicated because there's also an article about the street, titled Gay Street (Baltimore street). Do we have a naming convention for streets, US or otherwise? If so, is there a conflict between the one for places and the one for streets? Possibly we should be distinguishing "Gay Street, Baltimore (street)" from "Gay Street, Baltimore (neighborhood)"? Largoplazo (talk) 01:34, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I could not find any general guidance. We have WP:NYCPLACE for NYC neighborhoods (use the borough instead of (New York City) to DAB) and highways in the US. I did an in title search for neighborhood and found these and the other examples I posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Seattle#Is Westlake, Seattle the primary topic for "Westlake, Seattle"?, which led to this. I can understand the need to get creative with Gay Street, and Minneapolis, which I learned has "communities", some of which share names with neighborhoods that are in a different community. But I don't see how the mid-title parenthetical achieves this any better than placing it at the end. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 03:00, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
IMO, it is a stupid convention, but appears to be more or less accepted (although it has been a long time since the last discussion that I can recall, so consensus can change). older ≠ wiser 10:47, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When this post came up in my watchlist I was drawn to it because I had just been participating in the discussion at Jacksonville, Florida#Requested move 11 July 2025. There, two people so far have supported the move to Jacksonville on the grounds that the guideline is stupid (one of them having used that word), so you have company. I'd like to find the discussion that led to the creation of that guideline, though, in case it sheds light on the reason(s) for issuing it and makes it appear not so stupid after all. Largoplazo (talk) 11:59, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is not the City, State convention I consider stupid, it is the insertion of a parenthetical disambiguation in the middle of a comma-disambiguated title. That is essentially a Frankenstein's monster conjoining of disparate methods. older ≠ wiser 12:11, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, that's different from what I thought you meant. Still, regardless of the wisdom of the USPLACE example of Callicoon (CDP), New York and Callicoon (town), New York, on that model I'd deduce that we're meant to have Gay Street (street), Baltimore, Maryland and Gay Street (neighborhood), Baltimore, Maryland. Largoplazo (talk) 12:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the mid-title insertion of '(CDP)' and '(neighborhood)' is precisely the sort of stupidity I was referring to. older ≠ wiser 12:55, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, I have seen the (CDP) example, and I can see where editors find the "Neighborhood (neighborhood), City" convention as an extension of the guidance for CDPs and counties. . Terminal (DAB) or even natural disambiguation would work well here. I can't speak to local conventions, but Gay Street neighborhood, Baltimore looks good to me. I for one am glad we can leave the states off here, keeping titles shorter, but I can see where it's out of whack with the "City, State" requirement. I don't quite agree, but I'm sympathetic with the view that if Arlington (Jacksonville) is acceptable then why not simply Jacksonville? Anyone know the history of the (CDP) convention? I may look into this later. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 13:50, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the (CDP) convention was introduced with the original run of Rambot using census data to autogenerate the US placename articles. I don't think there was any discussion prior to what appears to be an arbitrary decision to use that convention. It has been discussed subsequently, but it would take some digging. older ≠ wiser 13:58, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I may still look into it. I don’t have the energy for a mass ‘(neighborhood)’ RM but may get there. The CDP convention, being memorialized as it is, requires a bigger discussion. I can understand extending this to neighborhoods but it’s not what I would come up with. Another justification could be to make clear the name is properly “Gay Street” and not “Gay Street, Baltimore” but this is pretty weak. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 15:47, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! I’ve occasionally wanted to call MOS:GEOCOMMA stupid so part of me wants to shake their hand. But it’s not a very persuasive argument. I tend to sit out RMs where I know I’ll feel obligated to invoke this standard. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 13:35, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
GEOCOMMA is sensible, no different from other uses of comma-delimited words or clauses that add extra information and that could be removed without changing the overall meaning of the sentence, as in "Nolte's daughter, Angelina Jolie, has appeared in ..." or "My car, the one you saw me driving last week, has a manual transmission." Largoplazo (talk) 14:55, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I find the result awkward and frankly jarring in titles like 2018 Crozet, Virginia, train crash. Don't get me started! I understand the argument and pick my battles. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 15:22, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(and I agree it's mostly sensible.) --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 21:41, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:GEOCOMMA
MOS:GEODUCK
Does this clarify matters? (image, right) Mathglot (talk) 22:51, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, 2018 Crozet🦆 Virginia🦆 train crash? (I see no emoji for clams, gooey-ducks or otherwise.) Largoplazo (talk) 23:25, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As a Washingtonian, this does speak to me! --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 02:58, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Including redirects, I see 28 of them. Not all cities, though; some are other places (e.g., Orchard Park (neighborhood), Indiana) or redirects (Navy Yard (neighborhood), Washington, D.C.) or both. I don't like them, either; can we just change all of them to postposition? Having medial parenthetical disambiguation is ducking the issue. Mathglot (talk) 23:18, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I excluded redirects—which I'm much less concerned about—and only collected US examples to start with when I did my rather clunky search, but I'm not surprised I missed some titles while scrolling down the page. I tend to be rather conservative when it comes to undiscussed page moves. Given the number of pages impacted, and especially given that Gay Street was implemented as the result of an RM one month ago, these probably need an RM… or an RFC confirming the standard is terminal parenthetical? (And if anyone wants to implement MOS:GEODUCK, I'm in! 🦆) --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 03:09, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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The page at Investigating judge has recently been changed from a redirect to a two-item disambig page. Setting aside for the moment the issue of two-item dabs vs. mutual hatnotes (let us assume there were three or more), I am mainly concerned about whether a dab page should ever contain two items related by hypernymy.

In this case, the two items are: 1) Examining magistrate (a type of investigating judge in numerous European countries) and 2) Investigating judge (France). In other words, examining magistrate is a hypernym of investigating judge (France). Is this permissible? (Trying to think of a metaphor that's easier to grok, I came up with Bee and Africanized bee, however that is a poor example as it doesn't involve paren-dis or use entirely different wording, but was the best I could do on short notice.)

My gut feel is that the disambig page at Investigating judge is improper in its current state, possibly shouldn't exist at all, but I can't put my finger on why, or what is really appropriate here. Can you help? Secondly, WP:D does not refer to hypernymy anywhere on the page; depending on the outcome of this discussion, perhaps it should? Mathglot (talk) 07:50, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Investigating judge should be reverted (or taken to WP:RFD is uncertain). Definitely improper. I'm struggling with what the guidance might say generally about hypernymy, that isn't already covered in some other way by existing guidance on DAB pages, lists, hatnotes, etc. Listing every single felid at Cats (disambiguation) would obviously be wrong but hypernymy–hyponymy isn't the best or only reason why. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 20:24, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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