User talk:Andrewa/wrong page

Why this page

This edit raises a related issue, but IMO it's not on-topic there, as a DAB is not an article despite being in the article namespace. This will give a place for such points and the discussion of them. Andrewa (talk) 20:44, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Page or article

Still thinking about this edit which added the subheading to Taken to a dab page (which is always the wrong page) to the section How it happens of the page Wrong article.

I think I can see the point that Born2cycle is making. At the risk of paraphrasing, they seem to think that it's always a problem when a reader is taken to a DAB. If true this would of course be a powerful argument against ever having a DAB at an ambiguous base name.

But is it true? Born2cycle and possibly others object violently to loading a DAB, that much is certainly true. But it's not obvious why they feel this way. The DAB takes them quickly and efficiently to the page they want.

And if it were true, what would be the point of having a DAB at all, by whatever name?

The other issue is of course, a DAB is certainly a page but it's not an article. This is an important distinction. An article can be long and there's no policy that says that the wrong article will link to the right one. A DAB on the other hand is short and should contain a clear link to the right article. Andrewa (talk) 18:30, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Ignoring administrative purposes, a dab page is never what the user is seeking; so in that sense, yes, landing on a dab is always a problem. However, in some cases it's likely to be the least problematic option for most users seeking with the term in question. When is that? When there is no primary topic (by "primary topic" I mean simply a topic more likely to be sought than all the others combined). When there is a primary topic, it's more problematic to have everyone searching with the term taken to the dab page than to have everyone land at the primary topic article. For at the primary topic article, the majority will have been taken to the page they are seeking, and the others are really no worse off, or not significantly worse off, than if they had been taken to the dab page. --В²C ☎ 20:10, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I think you have hit several nails right on the head here, and identified the issues well. But I also think some of your assumptions need to be challenged.

The key is, is it significantly better to land at a DAB (which is in one sense the wrong page) than to land at the wrong article (which is in every sense the wrong page)?

You say the others are really no worse off, or not significantly worse off, than if they had been taken to the dab page (my emphasis). Really? When the New York State article was at the base name New York, those who wanted the city but ended up at the state article were loading a long page. Even with the hatnote leading to the right article with a single mouse click, that's still significantly worse than loading the DAB, as they do now at worst. And while that hatnote was there in this case, there's no guarantee of one.

But if we were to instead have the city article at the base name, those wanting the state would then be similarly and significantly worse off. On the other hand, having the DAB at the base name gets everyone to the page they want with one simple mouse click. This is of course the specific example (which I named NYRM2018) that first caused me to ask: Is Primary Topic perhaps more trouble than benefit? See wt:NYRM2018#Why I do not intend to proceed.

And in addition, far fewer mislinkings (if any) are being created, as editors now get a warning that they should not wikilink to the ambiguous New York. As a result fewer readers are taken to any wrong page, DAB included. That's another plus for the current setup with the DAB at the base name, which we would lose if the city article were at the base name. If you were correct and it was not significantly better to land at the DAB than at the wrong article, we'd need to weigh these and any other advantages against the problem you find with loading a DAB.

But there is no such problem. Loading a long unwanted article is a problem. Loading a short DAB is not... or at least, not in any comparable sense. Andrewa (talk) 07:47, 12 July 2019 (UTC)