Redirects are your friend...

[Aleta Curry]

[Thread hijack alert]

I meant to note something before and forgot.

We've been (correctly, I think) defaulting letters of the alphabet to main topics: A, B, C...but I noticed that someone wrote 'E' and it's not the letter but (oh I don't remember) a scientific symbol?  Something else?

Okay, correction.  I just checked in another browser tab.

Evidently, someone else noticed the above.  'E' now goes to a disambiguation page: 

*E (math)
*E (letter)

HOWEVER,  others default directly to the letter, see 'C'

Defaults to the letter, at which you read:

For other uses, see C (disambiguation).

Same with 'T' and others, I suppose.

This type of thing drives me nuts.

Decide.  I'll live with the decision, but let's do it all the same way.

[Christian Kleineidam]

I think there are two questions:

How detailed should a disambiguation page be?

When you type in something should you go to the disambiguation page or the main thing that ownes the name.

I'm a fairly well-educated guy who has actually written so-called "hard" science ficiton, primarily for Analog, the mag. for engineers and rocket scientists.

Newton is an SI unit, maybe in America you would use another unit in it's place?
In Germany every highschool kid who takes physics should learn what a Newton is.

I know that this makes me seem like a dummy, but trust me, *far* more people who access WP and CZ are gonna be interested in looking up Sir Isaac than whatever his namesake is....

I don't  think so.
The unit Newton is more than "whatever Sir Isaac newtons namesake is".
As a matter of fact, if you type in Newton in citizendium you also get the unit at the moment.

I also think that Einstein should redirect to Albert Einstein and not the unit, because not many people are going to be interested in the unit.
Tesla can also either mean the unit or Nikolai Tesla (which I would consider as less important than the unit Newton). In wikipedia it goes straight to the redirection page (which I would consider correct).

I proposed a particular system for Wikipedia - you can read about it here, and there are a few useful comments on the talk page here. I still think the scheme suggested there is the best one (modified by my comment about 'tree' on the talk page).

Making that a CZ policy would probably be a good idea.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I'm a fairly well-educated guy who has actually written so-called "hard" science ficiton ...  I don't know what the hell a Newton is

That's because you're an even older fuddy-duddy than me, and your education predated the common teaching of SI units in the US! :-)

trust me, *far* more people who access WP and CZ are gonna be interested in looking up Sir Isaac than whatever his namesake is....

What about Ampere, Coulomb, etc, etc, etc? Sure, Newton as a unit isn't that well known in the US, but I think in the future the Newton situation will be more like them.

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I think there are two questions:
...
When you type in something should you go to the disambiguation page or the main thing that ownes the name.

Actually, I think the two questions are: i) do we need to have the exact same setup everywhere, and ii) if so, <your question above>. I would say 'yes' to the first, and 'always the disambig page' to the second, because it will help us find the cases where people throw in a link to [[foo]], and then don't bother to check to make sure the "foo" they got was the "foo" they actually wanted.

In wikipedia it goes straight to the redirection page

Umm, please be careful with your terminology "redirection" is not the same as "disambiguation". (And in my proposal below, I make use of both of them...)

I proposed a particular system for Wikipedia - you can read about it here, and there are a few useful comments on the talk page here. I still think the scheme suggested there is the best one (modified by my comment about 'tree' on the talk page).

Making that a CZ policy would probably be a good idea.

Thank you for the vote of confidence! I don't really know my way around the new Proposal system on CZ - would anyone else who likes this idea be interested in putting it into the proposal system?

Noel

[Aleta Curry]

Um...isn't a Newton a soft biscuit with fig filling?

[Hayford Peirce]

That's because you're an even older fuddy-duddy than me, and your education predated the common teaching of SI units in the US! :-)

I never even hoid of an SI until a couple of days ago, when I questioned its usage in a CZ article -- I changed it to Standard Internationalized Unit or whatever the hell it means, and it was reverted, with the comment that it's absolutely standard usage.  Well, of course, I went to Exeter instead of Andover, hehe, so how could I be expected to know such arcane things...?

trust me, *far* more people who access WP and CZ are gonna be interested in looking up Sir Isaac than whatever his namesake is....

What about Ampere, Coulomb, etc, etc, etc? Sure, Newton as a unit isn't that well known in the US, but I think in the future the Newton situation will be more like them.

Well, even I have heard of Amperes. But none of my heroes ever had to mention them, or not to my recollection....

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Well, even I have heard of Amperes. But none of my heroes ever had to mention them, or not to my recollection....

Hunh. You must have actually written stuff which wasn't tacky space-opera! ("Ensign, increase the output of that warp-gun to 12,000 amperes or that worm-creature will digest us all!" :-) Both of my kids are addicted to a number of SciFi channel series. The dialogue - oi vey.

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Making that a CZ policy would probably be a good idea.

No volunteers? So you all are going to make me write it up, eh? :-)

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Making that a CZ policy would probably be a good idea.

No volunteers? So you all are going to make me write it up, eh? :-)

I have finally found the time/energy to turn this into a proposal. You all can find it here. Please read and comment. Thanks!

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Can I appeal to people once again to create lots of redirects. The reason is simple: it will prevent the creation of duplicate articles. I just found another pair: [[Precision-guided munition‎]] and [[Precision guided munition‎]]. :-( Alternative capitalizations, alternative hyphenation - please add them all.

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Can I appeal to people once again to create lots of redirects. The reason is simple: it will prevent the creation of duplicate articles. I just found another pair

And another pair: [[Bond rating]], [[Bond Ratings]]! Keep those redirects coming (if you set them up first, you'll find the other article before you create a duplicate)!

In addition to alternative capitalizations and hyphenation, another good one to create is for people - with an without middle initial/name, and also nicknames (e.g. [[Maggie Thatcher]] - > [[Margaret Thatcher]]).

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

And another pair: ... Keep those redirects coming (if you set them up first, you'll find the other article before you create a duplicate)!

And another pair: [[NGC 224]] and [[Andromeda Galaxy]].

You can't have too many redirects! Please view the creation of redirects as part and parcel of the work you need to do to start an article.

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

And another pair: ... You can't have too many redirects!

I do not believe this. While I was sending that previous message, another pair of duplicates was created! [[Javascript]] and [[JavaScript]] - and the obvious redirects would have prevented that.

Please, everyone, don't waste your time, and other people's time (in writing two separate articles on the same topic): make lots of redirects!

Noel

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Can I appeal to people once again to create lots of redirects. The reason is simple: it will prevent the creation of duplicate articles. I just found another pair

And another pair: [[Bond rating]], [[Bond Ratings]]! Keep those redirects coming (if you set them up first, you'll find the other article before you create a duplicate)!

In addition to alternative capitalizations and hyphenation, another good one to create is for people - with an without middle initial/name, and also nicknames (e.g. [[Maggie Thatcher]] - > [[Margaret Thatcher]]).

Noel

Uh....do those redirects also need disambiguation, between finance and 007?

[Aleta Curry]

I do not believe this. While I was sending that previous message, another pair of duplicates was created! [[Javascript]] and [[JavaScript]] - and the obvious redirects would have prevented that.

Please, everyone, don't waste your time, and other people's time (in writing two separate articles on the same topic): make lots of redirects!

Hey, Noel, I know you're frustrated, but I don't think people are deliberately trying to send you around the bend.  Sometimes the redirect (even an obvious one) just doesn't occur to a body at the outset, y'know?

Also, I'm wondering if 'redirect wherever possible' is current written into operating procedure anywhere, and if it's made clear that redirecting doesn't hurt anything or eat up megabytes of space and no one will be yelled at for "over-redirecting"?  I mean, for animal breeds and variants you can have ten redirects for one--people might be scared that that's excessive and be intimidated.

Just a thought.

[psst!  Howard: Groan!]