Talk:George Stokes

George Stokes from in Ravagers (1979 film)

@Boleyn: you want to keep this entry but I don't think it deserves to be there. In your latest revert you mention MOS:DABMENTION. You are, I suppose, using the sentence, "If a topic does not have an article of its own, but is mentioned within another article, then a link to that article should be included." That wording is ridiculous and mustn't be taken with much weight. Why? Because taken literally, it says that any topic whatsoever mentioned in an article is allowed to go on disambiguation pages. This clearly violates WP:INDISCRIMINATE section of the Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not policy. I would expect an experienced editor to be aware of the ever-present (and always fluctuating) wrinkles and inconsistencies in our policies and guidelines rather than trying to exploit them. WP:COMMON must take precedence.

After your first revert, I posted a directly relevant sentence from MOS:DABRL — the same section you originally used to undo my edits — that supported the removal. Rather than acknowledge that or discuss it, you elected to resort to a more tangentially related guidelines to undo me again. This gives me the impression that you are "trying to win" by rules lawyering rather than taking into account the reasons I've given.

Disambiguation pages' primary purpose is to aid finding existing articles. It is not to create lists of all things that a person might be of interest. To a much lesser extent disambiguation pages help with the creation of missing articles, which, I am guessing, is your goal here. This is why we allow some red links. But those red linked topics still must be notable. This person however doesn't seem to qualify as a notable actor. We can discuss that if you like. In your latest change, you may have even abandoned wanting an article on him, and instead were merely using him as a pointer to the Ravagers (1979 film). This starts to become tread on WP:INDISCRIMINATE again.

I unfortunately have to go before I can finish or polish this. Could you please explain more why you want this entry and how it makes sense in the grand scheme of things? Jason Quinn (talk) 10:40, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not particularly interested in your message, which assumes bad faith from start to finish. I work with disambiguation pages all the time, and the entry clearly meets guidelines; if you object to the guidelines, this isn't the place to discuss them. You have insisted on forcibly removing the entry against guidelines; so be it. I've better things to do with my time. Boleyn (talk) 16:24, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I mis-interpreted your second revert (I didn't notice you were not wikilinking that time). It seemed like you were ignoring my remarks after your first revert and explains some frustration that was evident in my reply. (Less taciturn and ambiguous edit summaries than "per X" are sometimes very helpful.) I see now my message is worded worse than I would have liked so I have stricken some of it. Some remaining text only makes sense in light of my misunderstaning. I apologize and hope we can continue fresh. Regarding MOS:DABMENTION. Do you feel is it consistent with WP:INDISCRIMINATE? Are you suggesting that it's not only okay but preferred that every actor mentioned throughout Wikipedia (no matter how insignificant their role) were to have dab entries? For that matter, that every "topic" has dab entries? This seems to me a wild idea completely at odds with WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Things that can't even qualify for list entries — let alone articles — somehow get a free pass to get on disambig pages this way. I just cannot imagine that this is the intended result from MOS:DABMENTION, especially when disambig pages are intended to help people navigate quickly (imagine if every "John Smith" mentioned in Wikipedia had a entry on John Smith it'd make an already crowded page overbearingly so, with perhaps thousands of entries.) Barring some ambiguity over what is meant by the word "topic" (is any concept/thing/etc whatsoever a topic?) and what "mentioned within another article" means (do authors in refs count?), that's the way MOS:DABMENTION currently worded. This particular case is a good litmus test I think for the rationality of the current wording for MOS:DABMENTION. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:22, 27 April 2015 (UTC)