Talk:Natural History Museum

Capitalisation/scope

So is this article about natural history museums, or institutions with the specific words "Natural History Museum" in their name? In fact, should this just redirect to List of natural history museums, as natural history museum does? --McGeddon (talk) 18:51, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Not if "Natural history museum" - with or without caps - is a topic worthy of encyclopedic coverage. I have added sourced content about the history of such institutions which should not be deleted, and exceeds what would go in a mere list article. There is much more that can be added. bd2412 T 04:22, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, if this is what you're going to do with the page, it obviously belongs at Natural history museum without caps. Also, I would suggest you either eliminate, cull down, or diversify the list of "Notable examples", as right now it still looks like a disambiguation page for the proper noun "Natural History Museum". -- tariqabjotu 20:31, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Redirect bypass

Hi, I see you are changing links from Natural History Museum to Natural History Museum, London. This practice is deprecated. Please see WP:NOTBROKEN. DuncanHill (talk) 19:46, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: oh, but it is broken: fixed Sirindhorn, fixed Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, fixed Pakistan Museum of Natural History, fixed Museo di Storia Naturale di Venezia, fixed NTNU University Museum, fixed Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, fixed Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra, fixed Florida Museum of Natural History, fixed Koch family foundations – wbm1058 (talk) 20:14, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Those are not what I am talking about. You are changing correct uses of the redirect in order to avoid it. "Piping links solely to avoid redirects is generally a time-wasting exercise that can actually be detrimental. It is almost never helpful to replace redirect with redirect". DuncanHill (talk) 20:48, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Natural History Museum, London § Requested move moved Natural History Museum → Natural History Museum, London in June 2013 (diff). The sysop who closed that RM then redirected Natural History Museum to Natural History Museum (disambiguation) but that redirect was WP:MALPLACED. So @15:47, 29 June 2013 another sysop moved page Natural History Museum (disambiguation) to Natural History Museum without leaving a redirect (per WP:MALPLACED). Then that disambiguation page was converted to a WP:Broad-concept article (diff). Soon after that, another sysop moved Natural History Museum → Natural history museum (diff) as the article described the generic term. From 1 July 2013 to 12 July 2017 (for 4 years) the proper name Natural History Museum targeted the generic term Natural history museum. During that time none of the nine links I fixed (listed above) would have been broken. But then an IP redirected to Natural History Museum, London (diff) giving the rationale "Users typing in the specific capitalised version are not going to be looking for a generic article, but the museum by that specific name". Within minutes the redirect was changed again, to target List of natural history museums (diff). The name is not unique; there are also Natural History Museum, Berlin and Natural History Museum, Vienna. The redirect has been targeting Natural History Museum, London for the past three years, since it was changed on 20 November 2017 (diff) with the rationale "Natural History Museum is a proper name, not a generic name. The capitialisation is most likely deliberate. The link to list of natural history museums messes up thousands of template links." As seen by some of the fixes I listed above, editors sometimes deliberately use title case in infoboxes when they intend to link to the generic topic and not to a specific museum. Most of those "thousands of template links" were caused by Module:Taxonbar/conf and I made them go away with this edit. Those links had all arisen since that module was created on 28 May 2017. Now there are just 140 links left that will need disambiguation when Natural History Museum no longer targets the London museum. – wbm1058 (talk) 05:42, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Just 25 minutes after I made this 15:20, 1 December 2020 edit, at 15:45, 1 December 2020 Tom.Reding nominated Template:Taxonbar/Label for deletion; see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 December 1#Template:Taxonbar/Label. I don't know whether that was just a coincidence, but the deletion of that superseded sub-template broke this DIFF that I gave in my edit summary rationale. For the benefit of administrators, who can view deleted revisions, this is the DIFF.

An edit at 07:21, 22 December 2017 by Mellis with edit summary "Removed ButMoth link as there is no description on en:Wikipedia." changed:

| butmoth = [[Natural History Museum#Butterflies and Moths of the World|ButMoth]] to:

| butmoth = ButMoth

– wbm1058 (talk) 14:31, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Background disclosure on how I got here – I wrote a Quarry query to report Talk-to-mainspace redirects. The initial report had over 1,000 pages on it. I've now worked through and fixed them all, saving this page for last, because it's special;). Thank you, EdJohnston, for fixing it. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:56, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

OK, it's a disambiguation again, so it really is broken now. Now I won't be surprised to see someone from WikiProject Disambiguation drop by to complain that I should have fixed it before I broke it. Sometimes you get blowback from both sides ;) – wbm1058 (talk) 16:24, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

I haven't read all of the background, but the current setup doesn't look bad (with Natural history museum being an article on the concept, and Natural History Museum being a DAB page. The alternative seems to be, picking one celebrated natural history museum as a primary topic and have Natural History Museum go to that. Seems like a recipe for further confusion.. EdJohnston (talk) 22:36, 26 December 2020 (UTC)