Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by William Allen Simpson (talk | contribs) at 15:48, 26 January 2006 (→Questions regarding a partial solution). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Role in Western view of Indian music

Interesting. He criticised the way Indian music was made "superficial" and "marginalised" , yet he played a major part in encouraging this by playing at Rock festivals with the Beetles and allowing this to happen himself.

Disambiguation

The question has arisen whether or not the page Ravi Shankar ought to be a disambiguation page for Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Ravi Shankar (musician) and others. Although the immediate question pertains to the Ravi Shankar article, this question touches upon some larger questions related to when should an ambiguous title point to a disambiguation page, versus when should it point to the most commonly expected page.

I will start the discussion by pointing out that there are three types of links that need to be fixed:

1. links to the wrong article
2. links to disambiguation pages
3. links to non-existent articles

Whether an ambiguous title points to a disambiguation page or to the most likely article will affect the types of bad links that are created. If the ambiguous title points to the most likely article, then in cases where the most likely article was not intended, naive links will point to the wrong article. If the ambiguous title points to a disambiguation page, then naive links will always be links to disambiguation pages. In one case, some, perhaps most, links will not need fixing, in the other case, all links will need fixing. But in addition to the issue of the relative proportion of links that need fixing, is the issue of the costs associated with each type of bad link.

Costs of ambiguous name pointing to disambiguation page

There are at least three ways that users may arrive at a disambiguation page.

1. by typing in the name of the page in the search box and pressing Go
2. by typing in a search term in the search box and pressing Search, then selecting a page from the results.
3. by clicking on a link that points to that page

I don't have any figures regarding the relative frequencies with which these methods are used to reach a page. I will, however, make some general observations.

1. When a user clicks the search button, they would probably not be inconvenienced by the appearance of a disambiguation page
2. If the percentage of links to a disambiguation page is small in comparison to links to the disambiguated articles, then the likelihood of arriving at the disambiguation page via a link becomes correspondingly small.
3. If the ambiguous title points to a disambiguation page, then most attempts to reach a related article using the Go button will bring the user to the disambiguation page.

Cost of links to an incorrect page

The main difficulty in correcting a link to an incorrect page is that the location of such links is generally unknown. Such links may be found through browsing the articles, or by iterating through the "What links here" list. The effort required to find errors by iterating through "What links here" lists must be repeated over and over again if it is to find newly introduced errors. Thus the cost of fixing such links through planned effort is high. On the other hand, if a user, browseing Misplaced Pages comes across an incorrect link, there are several possibilities.

1. The user recognizes that the link is in error and fixes it.
2. The user recognizes that the link is in error and does nothing to fix it.
3. The user does not recognize the error, but draws no incorrect conclusions.
4. The user does not recognize the error and arrives at incorrect conclusions. (For example, a user might conclude that Ravi Shankar, the musician, is an alumnus of Government Victoria College, Palakkad, which is false).

Costs of links to disambiguation pages

The costs of links to disambiguation pages differ from the costs of links to the wrong article.

• Links to disambiguation pages are easy to find, via "What links here" enabling them to be efficiently corrected through planned effort.

When a browsing user clicks on a link to a disambiguation page the user may

1. Click through to the page they seek without making the original link a direct link
2. Fix the original link to a direct link as well as proceed to their desired page.

If no planned effort is used to fix links to disambiguation pages, then the quantify of inconvenience to users by the link to the disambiguation page depends on the frequency with which users change such links to direct links.

My opinion

Given the above considerations, I am of the opinion that the greatest costs are associated with links to the wrong article, even when one particular article is much more like to be the desired article than others. The costs associated with links to disambiguation pages I think are significantly less than the costs associated with links to the wrong article. The area where the issues seem most clouded are when users attempt to reach pages with the Go button. All in all, I would argue that it would be a net win for the Ravi Shankar page to be a disambiguation page. --BostonMA 21:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't really read through this long analysis, but current common practice is that if one person with the name will receive a very large share of the name's usage, such as with Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, George Harrison, etc., then they get the direct page, while if the name is split among two or more with roughly equal usage, such as with Bob Grant or John Sterling, then disambig gets the direct page. This current practice seems very reasonable to me. As for this particular case, I don't know anything about the "other" Ravi Shankars, so I can't say. Wasted Time R 22:15, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Well the executive summary of my argument is that even when one article gets 9/10's of the attention, the costs of having Ravi Shankar point to a particular Ravi Shankar are probably greater than having it point to a disambiguation page. Double links have low cost over there lifetime, which I imagine would a fairly limited number of uses. --BostonMA 23:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Strange that you'd bring up as good examples of disambiguation two horrible examples of how disambig pages should really work. Bob Grant uses bold even though it shouldn't, and since there are only two actual articles with that name, could easily just move "Bob Grant (radio)" to "Bob Grant" and have it link to the actor at the top of the page, essentially encapsulating the entire disambig page in a single line of text at the top while allowing at least half of the readers to instantly read the page they want, and the other half to be no less inconvenienced than they would have been by a disambig page. Even more so, John Sterling, which doesn't even have an extra broken link for the disambig page to provide, should clearly have one of them (probably the author) at John Sterling, and link to the other at the top, and vice versa. Instant disambig! Having a whole page just for a pair of links is completely overdoing it when only two articles are possible options. And even more so, of course, when one page is vastly more likely than the other to be the one looked for, as is the case when one of the articles is simply named after the page (Ravi Shankar) and the other is merely similarly-named, not identically. Then again, the vast majority of disambiguation pages, ironically enough, violate disambiguation style in some ways or others, so it's hard to find good role models... -Silence 22:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, to be honest, I don't care how it's done ... you guys should petition the powers that be to revise the diambig guidelines then. I think Ravi Shankar should follow whatever those guidelines are. Wasted Time R 22:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

First, I think 'the powers that be' would want to know the consensus reached by the editors. Second, I think guidelines, in contradistinction to policy, are meant as suggestions rather than laws. If editors find that a particular guideline doesn't seem to provide the best results, I think the editors are free to set the guideline aside when appropriate, and to re-write the guideline in light of experience and a growth in understanding. Long and short, I think that the editors are "the powers that be" in this case. --BostonMA 22:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Ravi Shankar, the musician, and Ravi Shankar, the guru, are identically named. Sri is an honorific, and the guru apparently merits two of them. Chris the speller 23:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and there has been discussion of renaming the article Sri Sri Ravi Shankar --BostonMA 22:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

If you take a look at the "What links here" tool for each article, Ravi Shankar is linked to by 138 pages, whereas Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is linked to by 19 pages. However, in my personal opinion, unless the search is ridiculously common (even more so than the above mentioned Michael Jackson example), along the lines of USA, the disambiguation page should be the one to come up. The pages can be built to point to the most obvious article, but if you disambiguate it makes it easier for the overall search. -- Natalya 00:22, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

So make a Ravi Shankar (disambiguation) and link to both of them from there, and let the links to the musician be the default, since he is by far the most commonly-known. User:Zoe| 03:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

There already is a Ravi Shankar (disambiguation). The discussion is whether to keep it that way, and have a search for "Ravi Shankar" go directly to Ravi Shankar (the musician), or to have the search go to the disambiguation page. -- Natalya 03:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I did read the long explanation, and it did a fine job! Thank you.

• The guidelines at Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation#Primary topic already state "well-known (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles)". Natalya indicates that the musician is by far the more well-known. So, the "Ravi Shankar" should link directly. And {{Otheruses}} should be used, without another extra link to the relatively unreferenced "Sri Sri Ravi Shankar".

• However, remember that this is not set in stone! Someday in the future, the musician may not be the majority of links any longer. At that time, it's easy enough to move "Ravi Shankar (disambiguation)" to "Ravi Shankar" (making it a Generic topic page). OK?

--William Allen Simpson 11:41, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Questions regarding a partial solution

There seem to be mixed opinions on this topic. I would like to know opinions regarding whether it would be a good (or bad) thing for me to do the following.

1. move the current article to 'Ravi Shankar (musician)'
2. Leave a redirect (for the moment at least) from 'Ravi Shankar' to 'Ravi Shankar (musician)'
3. Finish changing the existing links to either 'Ravi Shankar (musician)' if appropriate, or to another page if appropriate.
4. Continue to add red-line links to the disambiguation page when an existing link was intended for an individual for which there is no existing article.

Please share your opinions on my taking these steps. Please also note that I have come across 3 instances where existing links to 'Ravi Shankar' pointed to the wrong article. --BostonMA 22:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I suggest you leave the page arrangement the way it is, and fix the three wrong links. Then move on to one of the thousand worse areas of Misplaced Pages than arrangement of disambig vs direct pages. For example, this article itself. I tried to fill in Shankar's early years a bit, but the article still has no description of how he advanced the art of sitar playing, or what he did that other players hadn't done. It doesn't make clear whether he's a major composer or not. It has no discography. The selection of works described seems suspiciously skewed towards Western idioms and collaborations, even after the Beatles involvement. All of these matters are more worthy of attention than futzing around with further page moves. Wasted Time R 23:05, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate that you would like my efforts to be utilized in the most effecient way. However, we are all different, and the edits that interest me might not be the edits that interest you and vice versa. Thus, I would appreciate your opinion on whether the changes that I propose would be beneficial or harmful to Misplaced Pages, without any reference to other things I might be doing. (On a side note, I did fix the links when I found them, but as I was interrupted after going through about half the links, I expect that there are more.) --BostonMA 23:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if I was snarky before. I appreciate that page arrangement is important, and I've done a few page moves in that regard myself. But in this case I think that any slight benefit that might acrue from a rearrangement is not worth the effort of changing all the links to here, and in a month or two someone else will come along and think the new arrangement violates WP guidelines and change it all back again. Wasted Time R 23:35, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Your apology is welcome and appreciated. Unless you lead me to believe otherwise, I will understand your comment about "any slight benefit" to mean that you see no harm in what I propose, (other than wasted effort), and possibly a slight benefit. --BostonMA 00:26, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Adding my two cents: I don't see any harm in what you propose, but I also don't see the need for it. It appears that there are only two articles with the name "Ravi Shankar" in the title, Ravi Shankar and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. As others have already pointed out, in cases where there are only two possible pages that might need disambiguation, Misplaced Pages policy dictates that a separate dab page should not be used. So unless someone wants to write articles for the other two guys who are currently red-linked on Ravi Shankar (disambiguation), the dab page is actually pretty useless, regardless of what it is called. I think that the current state of the articles is probably the best solution to the problem as currently constituted. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 03:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with BostonMA. Especially the part about adding red-links to the disambiguation page. I'm a big proponent of compiling links to future articles! The rest seems to follow the guidelines (as shown earlier).

--William Allen Simpson 15:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Related guideline (proposal)

Not so long ago someone started Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (people of India and Sri Lanka) - maybe not a bad idea to see this discussion in the light of that guideline proposal too? --Francis Schonken 09:16, 25 January 2006 (UTC)