Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Editing/Warn when linking to disambiguation pages

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Warn when linking to disambiguation pages

  • Problem: Between 500 and 800 links are added to disambiguation pages each day. This means readers are less likely to get directly to a relevant article when they click on a link and instead are shown a list of possible matches for the term. A recent en RFC to en:Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Make links to disambiguation pages orange by default suggested coming to the community wishlist.
  • Who would benefit: Readers - in helping them get to the relevant article and editors in not having to fix bad links.
  • Proposed solution: A warning message appearng on preview or publish when adding a link to a dab page asking whether the editor really wanted to do this.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets: T97063
  • Proposer: Rodw (talk) 08:34, 27 November 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion

Sure, but if you know enough to install a userscript like that, you're probably already checking for accidental dabs. A warning to newer users along the lines of "are you sure you wanted to link to this page" seems like a good idea IMO, as long as there were an easy way to resolve it (i.e. pop up options linked from the dab page). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • On enwiki, even editors who wanted to link to this page should do so via its X (disambiguation) redirect. A simple warning would be very helpful to readers and to those of us who mend such links. A way to choose a correction and replace [[Mercury]] by [[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]], etc. would be even better. Certes (talk) 13:26, 1 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Code to pick the correct link could be shared with a Dablinks replacement. Certes (talk) 17:10, 9 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • For the solution. It can ask if you want to preview the disambiguation page in another browser window or tab. The user could surf from there to a disambiguated page (then could click a button in VE to add this page instead of the disambiguation page)--BoldLuis (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • As an easy solution, to activate this option for all your wikis, you can edit m:Special:MyPage/global.css to contain:
.mw-disambig { background-color:#AFEEEE; }
.mw-redirect { background-color:wheat; }

Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 13:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • Thanks for this but I suspect most editors don't do this (or may not even know about it) otherwis we wouldn't be getting 500-800 links to dab pages being created every day.Rodw (talk) 11:55, 15 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    So this is why we want a global solution, thanks to the below "Support" votes... Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 13:38, 15 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Heißt das, der Haken beim Begriffsklärungscheck (d:Q6047536) sollte automatisch gesetzt sein? Denn die Funktionalität ist ja schon lange vorhanden, auch ohne dafür zum Scriptkiddie mutieren zu müssen. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 09:38, 19 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    This Gadget seems not to be available on all Wikis? Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 16:23, 20 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Of course it's available on all Wikis, it only has to be implemented by the local communities. So there is nothing to do here for the devs, it's an existing gadget. Grüße vom Sänger ♫(Reden) 16:41, 20 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks for clarifying this. Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 19:02, 20 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Ruwiki solution:
    ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-disambiguationLinks.css
    ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-disambiguationLinks.js Carn (talk) 20:13, 19 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Comment Comment I supported this, but only on the assumption that implementation will focus on solving the problem in a modern and user-friendly manner, and not merely implement the disruptive workflow currently hinted at in the comments. I think it'd be a lot simpler and better for everyone if we focus on the act of writing itself. In the visual editor, we can prompt users contextually right as they are creating or inspecting a link, and suggest one of the destinations from the disambiguation page instead, at which point we can have a list of suggestions right there. A similar thing could be done in the 2017 wikitext editor, and even in the 2010 editor when using the dialog to create a link. I don't think this is important enough to distract readers with, nor to inject a primitive warning forcibly into the save workflow. Doing so would, I think, drain considerable amounts of energy and will power from contributors to still continue with their edit, and much more to actually rediscover and address the issue itself. That sounds more like abuse mitigation, and less like contributor education. --Krinkle (talk) 03:28, 21 December 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting

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