Wikipedia:History of SIAs

This timeline includes some changes to the technology that are relevant to the relationship between set index articles (SIA)s and disambiguation pages (dab or DAB pages).

  • 2005
Category:Signpost_articles is created with a description stating that signpost articles "are a lot like disambiguation pages, except that the target pages need not have the same name". Some dab pages are retagged as signpost articles (example edit).
Category:Signpost_articles is deleted and the corresponding MOS is also deleted.
Severe trimming of a dab page (formerly a signpost article) results in a heated discussion at MOS:DAB. A subsequent discussion at WikiProject Ships includes "I've had it in the back of my mind for a long time to create a ship-specific subcategory of disambiguations with a special template, note the subcats of Category:Disambiguation to see others doing this already."
  • 2006
A discussion about disambiguation subcategories is closed with "The overwhelming consensus was remove all disambiguation subcategory templates, and carried to every specific template currently in use."
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships/Archive_2#Ship_index_pages - "... the development of a very strict format for disambiguation pages ... means that there is a group of editors who are likely to apply this style blindly to all disambiguation pages, including ship index articles.". There is a discussion at MOS:DAB where one editor argues that "these pages are not "pure" disambiguation pages, but capsule histories of the use of a ship name in a navy". Subsequently some dab pages are changed to shipindex (example edit). In further discussion at MOS:DAB editors are generally in favour of ship index pages - e.g. "true disambig pages should be short and sweet, with "hood" pointing to the ship index page "HMS Hood"... so the ship index pages can be as inflated as they like."
Template:Ship_index is created - it places pages in Category:Lists of ships.
Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)/Archive_29#Disambiguating_United_States_Navy_ships.
Template:Ship_index is changed to be less of a dab template. It is included in a TFD discussion about disambiguation templates (although not discussed specifically) which results in the templates being kept.
  • 2007
Template:Mountain_index is created as a copy of shipindex following a discussion about mountain dab pages violating MOS:DAB.
There's a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation titled "Clarification of "index set article" exemption?" that includes the statement "at this point the consensus view seems to be that strong/explicit WikiProject support is the main criterion for allowing an exception".
Category:Set_index_articles is deleted with the rationale "A generic category for what was intended to be exceptional is not a good thing" (note: a redirect was later placed at that name).
Template:Mountain_index survives at TFD ("This is a useful template for set indices, which are not the same as standard disambiguation pages").
  • 2008
Template:Set_index_article is created and used in edits such as these.
There's a discussion at WikiProject_Mountains that refers to "two types of dab pages".
Category:Set indices is created.
Category:Set indices on ships is created by a rename of "Category:Ship disambiguation". The category had previously been Category:Disambiguation_lists_of_ships.
Template:Mountain index is changed from a dab template to a SIA template. Category:Disambiguation_lists_of_mountains was deleted as empty the following April.
Category:Set indices on snakes is created with the following text:
This category page is for administrative purposes only. Most of the entries below are set index articles (Template:SIA), but some redirects have been included to allow easy access to disambiguation pages (Template:Disambig) that are not only about snakes. Category tags are no longer allowed on disambiguation pages, so these "(snake)" and "(synonym)" redirects have been created to carry them instead. Example: Adder (snake) redirects to Adder. The category tags are used for overviews of common names (e.g. Viperinae by common name) and taxonomic synonyms (e.g. Crotalinae by taxonomic synonyms).
  • 2009
Monthly DAB Challenge begins. Since that point (and possibly before) some very industrious editors fix thousands of links to dab pages every month.
  • 2010
Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2010_December_7#Template:Geodis results in keep
  • 2011
DPL bot starts notifying editors of links they've created to dab pages. Links to SIAs are not flagged up.
  • 2013
(Circa 2013) Category intersection becomes available with off-wiki tools. This provides a way to detect pages that are in categories that should be mutually exclusive.
There's a discussion at Template_talk:Ship_index#Use_of_template_on_disambiguation_pages
  • 2014
Steps are taken to separate the concept of SIAs from that of dab pages - e.g. the guidance (WP:Set index articles) is split from WP:Disambiguation.
There's a discussion on a template talk page in which editors discuss changing pages from dabs to SIAs.
Category:Ship disambiguation pages is created (discussion at dab template talk page).
  • As of July 2014:
There are over 50,000 pages in Category:All set index articles - many/most of them lists of people sharing a surname (e.g. Aarflot). This is approximately one SIA for every 5 disambiguation pages.
The interwiki links from Category:Set indices show only 2 other Wikipedias (Portuguese and Chinese) having a category for SIAs - and they contain a total of 29 pages.
  • 2022
Categories named "set indices" or "set index pages" are renamed to "set index articles".