Talk:Old Mill

Mills

I've reinstated the Windmill, Watermill and Cotton Mill sections. I've added in various non-UK mills to the appropriate section. These sections, and the various articles linked from them should remain on the dab page. The purpose of a dab page is to disambiguate between various things that could have the same title. All those mills that were named Old Mill certainly fit that criteria. Mjroots (talk) 09:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I must strenuously object to your reversion of my edit. This is a disambiguation page and the following rules apply to it, as one sees when the "edit this page" tab on the article is opened:

This is a disambiguation page, for directing readers quickly to intended articles. For details, see the disambiguation page style guideline. Some noteworthy differences from articles:

• Generally only one navigable link (blue link) belongs in each bulleted entry.
• The full article name should be visible; do not pipe entry names.
• Entries are sentence fragments; do not end them with periods or other punctuation.

In particular, my edit eliminated all of the piped entry names. Best wishes. clariosophic (talk) 19:50, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You also reverted this good entry per the above standards:

• Old Mill (Vermilion, Ohio), on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Erie County, Ohio

to this:

• Old Mill (Vermilion, Ohio) USA

clariosophic (talk) 19:58, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

What Clariosophic says/wants seems all correct to me. The entries should be shown without pipelinks hiding where they are directed to. Also the good entry that Clario refers to was indeed fine, it covered a NRHP redlink entry with the required explanatory bluelink, per guideline covering redlink entries at MOS:DABRL. In fact about 10 more NRHP entries named exactly "Old Mill" or having "Old Mill" in their name need to be covered.

Also, I think the article should be organized geographically first, and only secondarily within the England section by water vs. wind vs. other type of mill. The U.S. section should put all together in one list, organized by state then city, probably. I'll watch for responses here, but may make some edits in the article. To start i will just add a NRHP dab cleanup tag which will bring me back here as I clean out that category this month. doncram (talk) 20:13, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually i went a bit further in my edits, adding all the U.S. NRHP ones, and beginning to bring the first five United Kingdom entries into MOSDAB compliance. I'm also tagging this whole dab page with "Under Construction", as it does need revamping. Mjroots, it is good that you are adding the UK and other windmills and watermills of name "Old Mill" to this list, but we have to clean up to follow MOSDAB policy/guidelines. Do you follow what I am suggesting in the article, for the first 5 UK entries? You or I will need to revise the windmills list-articles to include red-links for specific mill articles that may be created for these mills. You cannot have red-links here in the dab page which are not shown as a red-link in one of the mill list-articles. I'll watch for discussion here, but may also make a demo edit or two to add red-links in the List of windmills in West Sussex article. doncram (talk) 20:47, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Reply by Mjroots

Clariosophic, your edit didn't eliminate all of the piped entry names, it removed all windmills, water mills and cotton mills regardless of whether there was a piped link or a redirect or an article.

The situation with the windmills is that there have probably been around 15,000 in the UK since 1134. Obviously not all of them will get an individual article. For the majority of them, all verifiable info will only be sufficient to get a mention on the relevant list - List of windmills in the United Kingdom is the main list, or a county list if that county has more than 20 windmills (mock mills not counted).

I'm currently working through creating the county lists and creating articles of all surviving windmills in each county. I've still got a few big lists to do, such as Anglesey and Yorkshire.

WP:IAR says "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it". Common names for mills include Black Mill, White Mill, Upper Mill, Lower Mill, Great Mill, Little Mill, New Mill, Old Mill, North Mill, East Mill, South Mill, West Mill, Town Mill, Union Mill.

Your main objection to me seems to be the use of piped links. One solution could be to create redirections for each title to the relevant list. Would that be acceptable? If so, then I'd appreciate some assistance in creating them. Mjroots (talk) 03:30, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't review the history closely enough to understand before that Clariosophic edits in this big diff had removed your previous list, and that your recent additions were to re-add it. I think that Clariosophic and everyone would/should agree that there can be entries for any clearly wikipedia-notable old mills, probably any one you want to add. Clariosophic and i work mostly on U.S. NRHP articles; probably many of these mills predate the United States as a nation. But, Clariosophic is right that your entries don't comply with guidelines. You don't need to ignore all rules, and I for one am willing to help clean up all these disambiguation pages, which all are out of compliance with guidelines. What is needed is for you to make red-links in the corresponding list-articles, to each of these places which do not yet have an article, but which deserve one. Only then can you be entitled to list them in a dab page. The dab page is not the correct place in wikipedia for the notability of the red-links tobe established. That is better done in your extensive list-articles, which have other supporting information, such as sources and dates of construction, and so on. You assert notability there, in effect, by including red-links there to articles which you assert there would be valid. Then, dab guidelines allow you to piggy-back on that by including the same redlink. The MOS:DABRL specific part of the MOSDAB overall guideline explains that. Clariosophic and I are doing that all the time with NRHP dab entries, within Category:Disambig-Class National Register of Historic Places articles. If you don't have the redlinks in place in list-article that way, then technically any editor can delete the dab page entries; there is little to distinguish them from directory type listings by other editors of places which are really not wikipedia-notable.

So for the Black Mill disambiguation page, the first entry currently

• Black Mill, Aldeburgh

should be replaced by

• Black Mill, Aldeburgh, a windmill in Suffolk

which is a redlink explained by a bluelink and which is proper, really, only if you have that same redlink Black Mill, Aldeburgh in the List of windmills in Suffolk article (which is not currently the case, but you could change that). doncram (talk) 07:22, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, I understand that, but what is wrong with having a redirect from the title, rather than redlink, bluelink? The entry would then appear as

• Black Mill, Aldeburgh.

and link to the relevant section of the Suffolk list. To take the example of Black Mill, Aldeburgh, it is unlikely that enough info will be available to make anything more than the shortest of stubs. The entry in the Suffolk list is sufficient at the moment. Of course, if someone writes a history of windmills in Aldeburgh, and sufficient info can be gleaned to create an article then it can be created if an editor decides to write it.

I'm thinking of the way that many ship articles get a load of redirects where they have changed names over they years. A redirect is created from each name (with and without prefix) to the article. Mjroots (talk) 07:57, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, let me try to say what's wrong. The main thing is that disambiguation pages are for providing links to actual wikipedia articles (current articles, and grudgingly for future articles), and there is no wikipedia article for that one and you suggest there is never likely to be one. There is allowance in DAB guidelines for redlinks to expected, future wikipedia articles, but the requirement is to have an assertion elsewhere that the redlink is in fact wikipedia-notable. For NRHP-listed places, we've been successful in convincing other editors that any NRHP-listed place is wikipedia-notable due to it meeting requirements for documentation being available (reliable sources) and for being significant according to the U.S. National Park Service's criteria for importance of architecture or of association with historic events etc., and we assert there will be an article for every NRHP-listed place some day. We have a high production rate which helps others believe that the NRHP redlinks will turn blue as articles are created. So the NRHP redlinks are tolerated, although there are editors who don't like them. In your case here, it sounds like you don't want an ugly red-link in your own list-article, because you don't want to create an article (because you don't have sources). Of course if a book is written and info becomes available, an article can be written, but there is not a repository of information available to be mined, like the NRHP application documents provide for the NRHP places. So it just sounds like that one is not likely to become a wikipedia article, and it should not be on any disambiguation page listing wikipedia articles. And you can't expect disambiguation page editors to perform research and come to different conclusions about wikipedia eligibility of that place, when you yourself are reluctant to put a redlink for it into your own list-article.

About the multiple redirects for ship articles, I am familiar with that somewhat, as some NRHPs are ships which went by different names under different owners. Those are redirects to an existing article though. For a ship that went by several common names, I also agree that it would be appropriate to make a link for that ship from each of any corresponding disambiguation pages. But only if there is an article for the ship (or a strong likelihood that the ship article will be created, as documented by it being included as a red-link in some ship list-article or another). So from what you say, it sounds like many of these "Old Mill" places should in fact be dropped from the disambiguation page again. And I am unclear which ones do have individual articles or are likely to get articles soon. doncram (talk) 09:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I could go through the 70+ lists and redlink all those which are likely to be notable enough to have an article. Personally, I hate seeing a sea of redlinks though. Would an acceptable alternative be to display the entries like this:-

• Black Mill, Aldeburgh, Suffolk

where the mill is an entry on a list.? Mjroots (talk) 10:31, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, quite possibly, although I am not sure. I've generally focused on building NRHP lists of links to existing or future articles, usually mostly redlinks to start, and then also adding the NRHP red or bluelinks to relevant disambiguation pages. I do notice black text, non-wiki-linked other entries in some dab pages, have never really understood what is policy for them. This does look better to me, because it does not give a false promise to the reader that if they click on the Black Mill name they will get to an article about that Black Mill. I'll ask another person to comment here who will know more than i do. doncram (talk) 05:21, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I've asked 2 helpful wikiproject disambiguation persons, hopefully at least 1 will be able to comment here. But, I also wanted to suggest that having redlinks on your lists of mills pages would in fact be a good thing. I know you are recruiting for a wikiproject on mills. Your making redlinks for the list entries that are suitable for separate articles (for which sources are available, etc.) is a good way to help others get involved. Currently, the lists seem intimidating to me, I wouldn't know which entries I would be allowed to begin to develop. In fact, it looks like there is nothing i can add. The NRHP wikiproject has been generally succeeding by putting out list-articles of largely redlinks at first. We are, this month, completing out our efforts to make nicely table-ized lists for all 84,000 U.S. NRHP sites, indexed here. Where these have already been available, many local wikipedians have come forward and started adding pictures and making articles, turning many of those red-links blue. doncram (talk) 06:09, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll go through the various lists and add redlinks to those that are likely to have enough material available to be able to write an article. All existing mills should qualify for a start. Mjroots (talk) 06:16, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, good, but I am assuming then that will address some but by no means all of the mills entries in this and related dabs (allowing some to be reported as redlinks here). Hopefully others will respond to your question on the black-text, non-wikilinked items. doncram (talk) 14:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Doncram asked me to chime in on this discussion. (I'm not actually a member of WikiProject Disambiguation, though I've worked with them on occasion.) My feeling is that if articles on these individual mills are unlikely to exist, the best course of action is probably to link to an anchor on the table page. So, for example, if at List of windmills in West Sussex there were an anchor at the Amberley line, it would be possible to have an entry here like this:

• Old Mill, Amberley, a windmill in West Sussex

I think that would be OK per MOSDAB because of this passage under WP:MOSDAB#Exceptions:

• When a disambiguation page is linking to a specific section of an article, rather than an entire article, piping may be used for linking to that section via anchor points or section linking. This technique is used commonly for piping to the track listing section of an album; a further example, from E (disambiguation), is that the piped ESRB ([[ESRB#Current | ESRB]]) is preferred to simply linking to the top of the target page ESRB.

This situation seems analogous to me. However, I haven't used anchor points without section heads before, and my attempts to create such anchor points on the West Sussex windmill list page were unsuccessful. Perhaps one of the other editors here has more experience with using anchor points within tables? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:38, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll split the various lists into subsections and link to those. Mjroots (talk) 04:30, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've redone all the entries. Will await reaction before I tackle the other Mill disambig pages. Mjroots (talk) 06:14, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Organization

I'll leave the section above to cover how individual entries should appear. About the overall organization of this article, currently it is organized as:

    * 1 Places
          Canada
          United Kingdom
          United States (by state then city)
    * 2 Windmills
    * 3 Watermills
    * 4 Cotton Mills
    * 5 Others
    * 6 See also

Because this is a disambiguation page where wikipedia readers are most likely arriving to look up an Old Mill in a specific place, I think it should be organized by place. Note sometimes arriving readers don't know what kind of mill it is. Also, for U.S. NRHP redlink ones and perhaps others, we as editors don't even know what kind of mill it is, though we may know it is wikipedia-notable (as is any NRHP-listed place) and deserves listing here. So I suggest organizing as:

Option A

*Australia
*Canada
*United Kingdom
  England
     Places
     Windmills
     Water mills
  Wales
     Places
     Windmills
     Water mills
  Scotland
     Places
     Windmills
     Water mills
  Northern Ireland
     Places
     Windmills
     Water mills
*United States
*Others
*See also

or as
Option B:

*Australia
*Canada
*United Kingdom
  England (with each entry identified as a town, windmill or watermill, but sorted alphabetically by town)
  Wales
  Scotland
  Northern Ireland
*United States (by state then city)
*Others
*See also

I prefer Option B. doncram (talk) 21:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

• I think places, although there aren't many, should be separated out - so I'd suggest something like Option C:

*Places
*Mills
**Australia
**Canada
**United Kingdom
***  England (with each entry identified as a windmill, watermill or cottonmill etc, but 
sorted alphabetically by town, and with county mentioned in each entry - or sorted by county)
***  Wales - ditto
***  Scotland - ditto
***  Northern Ireland - ditto
**United States (by state then city)
*Other uses
*See also

PamD (talk) 07:49, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for commenting! Can you also possibly look at other question in section before, about how mjroots may include items in dab pages where he does not currently expect they will become wikipedia articles, so does not have them as redlinks in a list-article? Thanks. doncram (talk) 14:54, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

what now?

There was plenty of movement in the discussion sections above, and elsewhere (e.g. at wt:HSITES, where I should comment further). However, what is right to do, now for this disambiguation page and others like it?

I suppose, for how individual entries, that discussion could continue above. But I could say, the non-linked ones still appear to me to not conform to disambiguation guidelines or to other principles. For example, the "Old Mill, Amberley" entry is a non-link entry, indicating no article is expected, here on the disambiguation page and in the bluelinked West Sussex-or-wherever-it-is list article. I don't think having the non-link entry is needed for any readers, because I don't think any readers will be typing in "Old Mill" in order to find the one of that name in Amberley. I think it suffices to have the entry in the West Sussex list-article. Your opinion may differ, about whether it is necessary or helpful to have it listed here. I certainly don't want to battle and I won't remove this one and others myself. But, as others tell me from time to time as they try to remove NRHP redlink entries, disambiguation is for disambiguation among Wikipedia articles.

Other entries which are now redlinks, corresponding to redlinks now showing in the West Sussex and other list-articles, are now okay to keep by MOS:DABRL guideline. But I think there should be some other phrase used in the bluelink, rather than displaying "West Sussex", because goes to an unexpected article. If a West Sussex article included mention of a given windmill, and showed a redlink for it, that would be okay. When the bluelink is to a list of West Sussex windmills, I think a better descriptive display to show would be something like ", one of West Sussex's historic windmills". Then, a reader would correctly expect that clicking on it would bring one to a list of the historic windmills in Sussex.

Organization-wise, I don't think the current organization is good, per my comments in organization section above. How deal with U.S. and other locations and mills, where u do not know what kind of mill it is? Probably organizing by country first? And then perhaps by by watermill vs. windmill, if it is known what each one is? I guess i lean towards preferring by country, then by town/city location, with watermill or windmill indicated for each one individually in a trailing explanatory phrase. doncram (talk) 21:51, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Doncram on his points above (and the disambiguation guidelines).

Remove:

• Entries with no link
• Entries with a link to an article that doesn't cover the "Old Mill" in question
• Entries with a red link and no blue link

Keep:

• Entries with no "entry link" or a red-linked entry link, but with a blue link in the description
  • The description link should not surprise the reader. For example, the first variation of these two is preferred:
    • Old Mill, Amberley, a windmill in West Sussex
    • Old Mill, Amberley, West Sussex
• Entries with a blue-linked entry link (and no piping in that link unless needed for title formatting)

-- JHunterJ (talk) 13:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I've tweaked the display per example above. Let me know if this is now acceptable as there are other pages to do. Mjroots (talk) 15:00, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) It looks much better to me. If JHunterJ is okay with the no-entry-link ones (but with a blue link to the corresponding list-article), then those are fine. I was, above, saying i was not sure. JHunterJ is a very active disambiguation page editor. So consider that point settled.

The organization is still a bit loopy, now including a U.S. section within Windmills and within Watermills, now that some of the U.S. entries are known, duplicating those entries' appearance in the U.S. section. The duplication doesn't bother me, but the organization is not clear to readers. To address that partially, perhaps if the TOC was more informative and showed U.S. showing up within several sections, that would be better. Therefore I suggest using subsections rather than just bolding by a leading semi-colon, so that the subsections appear in the TOC. Organization then a bit loopy, still, but clear.

In the watermills section, i noticed links to river articles not, lists of watermills. Fine if the river article mentions the watermill, and checking, I find it does, even that there is a section on the mill alone. So, better to convey to reader that there is an article or section on that mill. So, instead of:

• Old Mill, Bexley, on the River Cray, Kent

better to replace by:

• Old Mill, Bexley, on the River Cray, in Kent

formed by
*[[River Cray#Old Mill, Bexley.|Old Mill, Bexley]], on the River Cray, in Kent
I don't often form disambiguation entries that link to sections, and I see that my link is using a pipelink (which should usually be avoided), but I cannot see how to avoid using a pipelink to display reasonably, so I am pretty sure this treatment is proper. No doubt wp:MOSDAB describes this. Certainly the section in the river article should be directly linked to, if the river article and its mill section is reasonably stable, as that is helpful to a wikipedia reader.

Also, actually i don't think the section title in the river article should have a period in it. In the river article, also, a hidden comment could be added to the section title indicating that this is a linked-to title, so that another editor would know to change linked articles, if the section header wording is to be changed.

Overall, looking very good, much more defensible and useful to readers than two weeks ago! doncram (talk) 23:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

We should avoid [[River Cray#Old Mill, Bexley.|Old Mill, Bexley]], on the River Cray, in Kent, because of the pipe link you noted. Instead:

• Old Mill, Bexley, a Domesday site on the River Cray, in Kent

formed by

Old Mill, Bexley, a Domesday site on the [[River Cray#Old Mill, Bexley.|River Cray]], in Kent

(or somesuch) would be used, or alternatively create the Old Mill, Bexley redirect to that section and use your version without piping. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:44, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh? Well then of those two, I would strongly prefer creating the redirect from Old Mill, Bexley (currently a red-link), and

*[[Old Mill, Bexley]], a Domesday site on the River Cray, in Kent

so that the reader gets the correct idea that there is an article/section on the place, rather than getting the incorrect idea that there will be scant mention within the River Cray article. Thanks. doncram (talk) 15:49, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I've created redirects for all cases of Old Mill watermills. Mjroots (talk) 16:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

And i revised several of those to fix so they reach to the hopefully-intended sections within river articles. Please check and fix my fixes if they were wrong. :) doncram (talk) 19:12, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Cool. I don't think in-description links imply scant mention -- not all in-description links are to the NRHP list articles that you're used to working with. But the section redirects are useful here, and in general -- someone entering "Old Mill" will now (eventually) see "Old Mill, Bexley" in the suggestion drop-down, and it will appear in the "List of pages with prefix" special pages, etc., as it should. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:40, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll bow to your view that in general in-description links target to more-than-scant information. Here in these Mills disambiguation pages, I think it is useful to differentiate these with actual sections somewhere, from the masses of no-link entries that have in-description links only to list-table articles. doncram (talk) 19:12, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

... although I would expect there to be more/better coverage on entries listed top, and less on entries listed lower, which is one of the reasons entry-blue-links should be listed before entries with description links (and among those I often sort the redirects after the direct links). -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I prefer alphabetical order <g>. Mjroots (talk) 17:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I've reworked all the other similar disambig pages now. Will let others worry about order etc. Mjroots (talk) 13:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)