Talk:Jonestown (disambiguation)

Removal of book title

I reverted the adding of Masters' book, for these reasons: It lacks an article about it on Wikipedia, and altogether rightly lacks one because it has not (yet) gained true notability -- true notability as opposed to being the subject of an ephemeral media flap within Australia. The jury will be out on its notability for at least a year. If the fuss about it has not died away by then -- I'm betting it shall have -- then it might be worthy of a Wikipedia article, and only then, only if and when the book legitimately has a Wikipedia article about it, should it appear on the "Jonestown (disambiguation)" page. Lonewolf BC 17:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Redlinks for more information: "Links to non-existent articles ("redlinks") may be included only when an editor is confident that an encyclopedia article could be written on the subject." I have enough sources to write an entry for this book within the next day or so. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 23:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

That's fine. Restore the link when you have the article ready. I'm skeptical that this book can have achieved real notability yet; it's only lately been published, and scarcely the talk of the town, (except perhaps in Australia). I think it would be better to judge its notability after a year or so. Quite often these things fade away and are fairly well forgotten. Not every book that makes a splash becomes worthy of an encyclopedia article. I'd be interested in an Austalian perspective on this. Anyhow, if you figure you can produce an article on it that passes muster, be my guest. Meanwhile, please don't revert-war me over the link. So long as there is no article that meets standards, I stick by my analysis that the link is essentially spam for the book. -- Lonewolf BC 05:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I have shown you the guideline that supports what I have done. Do not revert again or you will violate the three-revert rule. Consider this fair warning. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 06:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Just produce an article -- one that meets standards -- and that will be the end of it. I don't see that that guideline supports keeping a red-link on your mere saying that you could produce an article -- especially given the circumstantial appearances. -- Lonewolf BC 06:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

It says that you can add a redlink if you feel the article has a good chance of being written. I am the third editor to add this, so I have a pretty good feeling there'll be an article. Well, I know there will be one because I am going to start one.--Chris Griswold (☎☓) 06:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The guidelines say "may...only when", thus setting a necessary, but not necessarily a sufficient condition: that someone believe they could produce a WP-worthy article on the topic. Against that, are these considerations: It's been over a month since a red-link for this book appeared here for the first time, yet no one has bothered to actually write a WP article about the book. The book is so recent that it's notability should remain sub judice for a while yet; popular books (popular in either or both senses) come and go and often are forgotten even if they appear with some fanfare. Start including articles on books based a possibly ephemeral appearance of notability, shortly after their publication, and, well, you could end up articles on a hell of a lot of books that a year, five years later, might as well never have existed. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating: If someone can write an article that passes notability and other considerations, that'll prove the requisite article really could be written, and that the book is "notable", (at least in the short term, although I have reservations about the endurance of such "notability", as said). Meanwhile, including a red-link amounts to promoting a book of doubtful notability -- spam -- which was partly why I deleted the entry before. So, I figure the entry should be left out until there is an article to go with it. For the time being, I've made ready a briefer version of the entry, shorn of attention-getting stuff and fitting as a disambiguation-page item, and left it in the page, but commented out. If the article ever materialises, the entry can readily be restored to sight. If the article fails to materialise within a reasonable time-spam, the entry should be deleted altogether. -- Lonewolf BC 07:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The topic is represented on Wikipedia at Alan Jones (radio broadcaster)#Jonestown, which would warrant a disambig note of some kind. Even if it's not a stand alone article yet, it's still a topic on Wikipedia. -- Ned Scott 10:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It's worth a mention, but it's not worth second billing. I put it in an appropriate section. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 10:12, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

• smacks forehead* I just saw what you meant by "commented out". I thought you were talking about the discussion on the talk page. My bad. -- Ned Scott 10:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Notes on edits of 23:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

1. Formatting: Large text of section-headings overshadowed that of content. Toyed with those before. Didn't like 'em. Still don't. They're not really needed, editing-wise, for an article that fits onto one screen. So I replace 'em with bold and underlined, but otherwise unwikied headings.
2. "unrelated": Made clearer to what it's unrelated. Not sure this bit really belongs on a disambig. page, whose purpose is only to list the items, giving just enough lore on each that a seeker for one of them can pick it out from among the rest as that which he seeks, rather than to give further details. I guess the "unrelated" might help a little with that -- arguably at least. No biggy, anyhow.
3. "exhaustively": "Editorializing"? The parenthetical "perhaps exhaustively" is just a two-word way of saying, "This might not be all of them, but is at least most of them." While that bit of information is not essential, neither does it hurt anything. On the contrary. So back it comes.

-- Lonewolf BC 23:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

But why?

Of course I have no objection to this page's being worked upon by other editors, provided such work is constructive and collegially done -- and that is much more because I'm a constructive and collegial type of guy than because of WP:OWN or any other rules and regulations, which I view as being largely needless were it not for the unreasonable. All the same, I am surprised and more than a little puzzled by this sudden jump in the relative amount of editing of, and apparent interest in this mere disambiguation page. If any of you other recent editors (excepting the one whose interest I already know) can spare the time to enlighten me on this, please do. My talk page might be the best place.

Other than that, well met, and cheers. -- Lonewolf BC 23:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

My assumption is posting my 3RR violation caught the attempts of other editors. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 00:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep. No better way to get a page jumped on than to post a link to it in a community forum page. --tjstrf talk 00:24, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

town redlinks

I do not think these should be commented out. This information is useful to someone looking up information on places named Jonestown. I do not believe it is either common or prescribed practice to comment out lists like this on disambiguation pages. --Chris Griswold (☎☓)

Suits me if they're de-commented. I covered them up mainly because I didn't want some stickler to rub them out -- which is because I'd rather keep the info handy, as preliminary notes toward actual articles (some day, maybe). But MoS discourages having such extensive lists of red-links, whereas disambig. pages are meant mainly as directories to what is in WP, not lists of what perhaps could be. Many of those Jonestowns are minuscule, so articles for them might be a hard slog; I thought perhaps an omnibus article, at least for the really tiny ones.
There are a few other U.S. Jonestowns that I never got round to adding. One is now an historic district within Baltimore. Lists show one in Guam, although the map at Topozone doesn't show it, at least not by that name. And there are one or two others, as I recall. Feel free. -- Lonewolf BC 03:51, 9 December 2006 (UTC)