History of the page
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This page started as a disambiguation page, and has recently outgrown its disambiguation status. A lot of the extraneous material will be moved to another page, but discussion is (or will be) ongoing at the talk page of Wikipedia:Disambiguation and other places as I want to clarify and discuss a few things before I (or others) make changes. I will add links to the discussions. I would be grateful if people could wait a few days until the discussions reach some sort of conclusions. Carcharoth 15:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Creating an article from a disambiguation page
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This editing history summary concerns work I did on Ptolemy (disambiguation). This started when I realised that Ptolemaic redirected to Ptolemaic dynasty, as seen here (27/09/2003). This rang a warning bell in my mind, as I realised that many people would link Ptolemiac in articles referring to Claudius Ptolemaeus, the famous astronomer of the 2nd century AD, not the Egyptian ruling dynasty (of Macedonian origin) of the 3rd to 1st centuries BC. Clicking on "What links here" confirmed my fears. I eventually got round to tidying up those links and redid Ptolemaic as a disambiguation page (24/03/2006). While changing those links, I had got interested in the history of the Ptolemies, and the confusing tangle of Ptolemies in the Ptolemaic dynasty. I then gradually started tidying up the disambiguation page by adding descriptions to help people find the Ptolemy they needed. Previously, a reader had to click back and forth between different Ptolemies, and try and mentally keep track of where and when these Ptolemies existed. I also expanded the list and organised it into mostly historical sections. Over the course of a few days, Ptolemy (disambiguation) went from this (25/03/2006) to this (28/02/2006). During the course of this work I had been delving deeper and deeper into the history of the Ptolemies (see here for 'The House of Ptolemy' by Edwyn Bevan, an enthralling history of the Ptolemies). At some point I also tidied up the disambiguation page at Ptolemais.
The reorganisation of Ptolemy (disambiguation) into historical sections had made me realise that there was a narrative thread here, one that spanned over 2000 years of history. This focused my interest on the etymology of the name Ptolemy, to add to the history of the people bearing the name, and how the name has come to be used in today's world. This accounts for the addition of the etymological section ranging across several languages. By the time of this version (29/03/2006), my earlier fears that the page was no longer a disambiguation page were well and truly confirmed!
At this point, I initiated discussions at various places in Wikipedia, to add to the discussions I had already started at places like the Help Desk and the Reference Desk. Here, I provide links to some of these discussions (some discussions may have since been archived, and talk page discussions have not been refactored):
I then spent some time browsing through the Manual of Style (disambiguation pages), and the talk pages there and at Wikipedia:Disambiguation. I then posted this summary at the Ptolemy (disambiguation) talk page. I intend to continue the current discussions and, if needed, start discussions at the Wikipedia Disambiguation talk page. Eventually, after taking advice and discussing the best way to organise the material, the split to Ptolemy (name) will take place.
Links to new discussions will also be added here. Carcharoth 23:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
More comments were requested at the following places:
Issues and where to discuss them
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There are several issues I would like to lay out and ask advice on. Please either discuss them here (preferably starting and linking to a new section), or add a link to a discussion you start elsewhere (if the discussion is best taken to another page). Please also add other issues to this list:
- What is the easiest way to move stuff from here to Ptolemy (name), while still preserving the relevant history and leaving material here to form the disambiguation list?
- What should be moved? Already marked for moving (hit "edit" on the page to see the comments) are the various etymological comments.
- What is the best style for the disambiguation page that is left behind? Is the historical ordering at the moment the best one? What should be listed and what doesn't need to be listed? Does anything need to be tidied up according to the disambiguation Manual of Style? (Please discuss before making drastic changes).
- Something about the different regnal numbering schemes for the Ptolemies needs to be put on the disambiguation page. Some older books will refer to Ptolemy Caesarion XV as Ptolemy XIV. And similarly for other Ptolemaic kings of Egypt. This is because more Ptolemies were discovered after the first numbering system was introduced.
- Would a similar sort of "historical ordering" help at other pages where a name has a long history? Jesus (disambiguation) is an example that I found.
- I read something about "primary" topics on the Disambiguation Manual of Style. Would I be correct to say that both: (1) Ptolemy I Soter or Ptolemaic dynasty; and (2) Claudius Ptolemaeus are the most recognisable Ptolemies, and that Ptolemy has two "primary" topics? Note that the article about Claudius Ptolemaeus currently resides at Ptolemy.
- Where should the line be drawn when adding examples of later uses of the name Ptolemy? This is the "Other" section.
- Do the "Legacy" sections belong on the disambiguation page? I feel these sections would help editors who linked to Ptolemy and (as all good editors do, of course...) click on the link to check it goes to the right place, and arrive here and realise that they actually want to link to one of the "Ptolemaic..." articles instead.
- I want to have parts of this list in the Ptolemy (name) article. Is there a way to use templates so that I don't have to keep updating both pages? I want to have the lists in both places because I want these lists in the article about the name, rather than forcing people to click away from the article. Part of the reason being that this has been an attempt to draw stuff together from all over the encyclopedia, to present in one place.
Random thoughts
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Congratulations on the work here. It demonstrates a pleasing commitment to scholarship. In effect, you have created a meta-data page and, by virtue of your labour, you have exceeded the normal bounds of dab. Personally, I quite like the page as it stands but... The issue is whether this is the most appropriate mechanism for achieving the desired result which is a communication of the available content to the reader. For example, an alternative approach would be to create an infobox which is inserted on all the "regnal" pages and which lists the Ptolemys in sequence. It is not actually necessary to have a complete list here. One might simply signal a link to the first in line, and then leave it to the reader to navigate from there. This is a judgment about efficiency v scholarship. As it stands, the meta-listing is a little long but comprehensive and pleasingly serendipitous (not to say fascinating). Indeed, I might be tempted to abandon the idea of trying to formalise this as an eliptical dab page. Treat it like any other meta-data page which introduces each sub-topic and then links to the relevant main page. David91 03:43, 30 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
- Thanks for the comments and advice. I think I understand what you mean by a "meta-data" page and an "infobox" (though I would appreciate links and examples if you have them). I don't understand what you mean by an "elliptical dab" page though. Carcharoth 11:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
How about a subdisambiguation page?
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How does this proposal sound?
Then I could go on expanding the page at Ptolemy (name)?
The reasoning behind this is that most people only want to disambiguate between references to the Ptolemaic dynasty and references to Ptolemy the astronomer. Only a small number of people will want to refer to the other Ptolemies. Does this sould like a good way to go about restoring this page to a more usable disambiguation status, while preserving this "meta-data" page at Ptolemy (name), which would also act as a sort of subdisambiguation page? Carcharoth 11:52, 30 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
- That sounds fine to me. I think it would be a great shame to break all this up. I will run up a sample infobox for you so that you can use it as a model in the future. David91 16:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
- Sample info box is at Template:Ptol. Thanks, David! Carcharoth 13:50, 1 April 2006 (UTC)Reply
Preparing to move this page to "Ptolemy (name)"
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I am preparing to move this page to Ptolemy (name), though I am currently trying to find out how to preserve the relevant parts of the page history at this page. In effect I want to move the content (the article), but copy the page history so that it remains available at both places. This sounds like a fork, but I don't think it is. Just moving the page will mean that people have to go to Ptolemy (name) to get the history for Ptolemy (disambiguation), which is not a good thing. In effect, I really want to copy the content, along with preferably all (or part) of the page history, from here to Ptolemy (name), leaving this page history and content unchanged. I would then re-edit this page back to a more suitable disambiguation form, as discussed on this talk page. I have raised this at the Wikipedia Help Desk to get some advice on how best to handle this. Please do not move the page without first discussing here how best to handle the preservation of the page history at both locations. Carcharoth 13:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)Reply
- Old revisions cannot be duplicated. What is possible, though laborious, is for an admin to go through the history and assign each revision to one article or the other. This takes a lot of work, and in most cases the resulting article histories don't really make much sense, so this isn't normally done except to undo an incorrect history merge. My recommendation would be to just move the article and then copy-and-paste the latest revision back to the original title, with an edit summary explaining what has been done. Then the two articles can be edited to match their respective titles. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)Reply
- Or, since your proposed content for the disambiguation page is so brief, just do the move and create the disambiguation page from scratch. No need to copy-and-paste the antire article just to trim it down to four links. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:50, 1 April 2006 (UTC)Reply
- OK. So from what you are saying, any particular edit and version can only appear in the history of one of the articles, not both. At least I think that is the problem. I am happy with the bulk of the history only appearing at one of the locations, and I will put lots of notices in edit summaries and talk pages at the other location to make people aware of what the earlier history is.
- The only thing I am undecided about is which of the two locations is more appropriate for the history. Since I've done most of the recent editing, I can say that it was still a disambiguation page up until a few days ago, but there will be versions in the page history that will not resemble either the new (brief) disambiguation page or the article at Ptolemy (name). On reflection, I think it is more important that the history remain at Ptolemy (disambiguation), in which case I think I want to copy and paste the content here into Ptolemy (name) (creating that as a new article). Then again, I also want to preserve the history of Ptolemy (name) to show that it started as a disambiguation page! Also, as Ptolemy (name) will be the larger page and the more dynamic and changing page, maybe that is a case for that page keeping the full history, while the Ptolemy disambiguation page shouldn't change too much, will appear to have a short history, and people can note that earlier content and versions were spun off to Ptolemy (name).
- So, while writing the above I changed my mind! Do you (and others) agree that moving is best, leaving notes behind explaining things? Carcharoth 15:11, 1 April 2006 (UTC)Reply
PS. What happends to talk pages in a move? Is it acceptable to copy and paste (with notes explaining things) so that the same content appears at both talk pages? Carcharoth 15:14, 1 April 2006 (UTC)Reply
- You have the option to carry the talk page with you (or not) when you move. In this instance, it might be better to leave the talk page behind and copy whatever you want over to the talk on the new page. As to the move generally: just make the move, then edit the redirect into the short dab page. Try not to worry too much. If I can do it, it must be relatively idiot-proof. BUT do not forget to check the "What links here" because you will want to avoid links terminating at a dab page wherever possible. :) [the previous, unsigned comment, was added by David91 at 17:35, 01 April 2006 (UTC)]Reply
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