Talk:Black room (disambiguation)/Archive 1

The Black Room disambiguation

The Black Room in Baghdad seems to me at least as notable as a techno record that was never actually finished. It was notorious under Saddam's Iraq and it is likely to be the topic of much discussion in the news now that the new torture scandal has broken wide open. If this gets a lot of coverage in the coming weeks I think it is likely to be far more notable than a record that doesn't really exist. Certainly a disambiguation page is reasonable, since the Black Room is referred to in several articles. It is also the name of a film from 1935, another film from 1984, an erotic novel, a fantasy novel, yet another novel, and a Chinese poem. I'm pretty certain if I put "the black room" into lexis/nexis for print articles in newspapers and magazines I will find a lot more hits for uses other than the KLF's unfinished album.--csloat 20:49, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes indeed, but we don't have articles on those things yet. I disagree about the jail cell though. The only incoming links were links you created (!) and your dab page link for The Black Room pointed back to one of the articles that one of the links came from (Camp Nama)!!! To add insult to injury, instead of moving this article to a new slot and retaining the page history and the credits for the people who have worked on it, you cut and pasted it. You also didn't fix the incoming links to point to the new article.

Anyway, technical points aside, let's look at what should be in this slot. At the moment, it's simple. There's only one "Black Room" article that I know of at the moment, and no non-KLF incoming links. Under Wikipedia guidelines, the occupant of a slot is determined by what people would expect to find in the slot, and given that only the KLF have incoming links that's what people would currently expect to find here. Another policy is that 2-choice disambiguation does not need a dab page, a dab template can be used.

That said, looking at Google there are indeed various Black Rooms, and in particular the 1935 film seems to have a very good claim (certainly far better than this unreleased album, I agree). Create a good dab page with these choices, or better still write an article on the 1935 movie and I'll happily support moving this page elsewhere. If you still want to replace it with a 2 line dab page, with one of the 2 entries not even having it's own article, I couldn't support that.

In the meantime I'll sort out a dab template for this article. --kingboyk 21:03, 19 March 2006 (UTC) :P.S. If you want, you could create a Black Room article or dab page in your user space, and when it's ready to go live (i.e. it's better than what's currently here and better than what I reverted) drop me a line and I'll do the move, redirects and disambigation.

OK, I've put a dab template into the page. If you have a decent article on the torture chamber, the 1935 film, or a multiple line dab page to go we can move this article elsewhere. For now, though, an existing page shouldn't be moved in order to disambiguate something which doesn't even it's own article when the {{otheruses4}} template can do the same job. --kingboyk 21:07, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Cool, you are way ahead of me; I just finished writing a note on your user talk page on this. I think it's a good idea to leave the torture chamber as a section of Camp Nama though it should be mentioned and the section linked on the dab page. The 1935 film is definitely the top candidate for this slot I agree; I think it would be reasonable to have entries for at least the 1984 film and the books too (not as sure about the erotic book but the novels certainly) even if they don't yet have entries in wikipedia.

Also, my apologies to everyone here for disrupting the page; I thought I was doing the right thing.--csloat 23:07, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree (re section and an entry on the dab page). No apology needed as far as I'm concerned! Your point is good about the redlinked articles, I'm not sure what to do about that. I'll have another look at the dab guidelines :) I certainly don't want the presence of this article be a barrier to someone creating an article on a notable film or novel! What's your take? Would you still prefer a dab page or are you happy with the current arrangement? --kingboyk 08:00, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that the redlinks make it easier for someone who happens to be looking for info on the film to start editing; or the list could simply include statements --

The Black Room could be:

• A 1935 film
• An unfinished album by the KLF
• An erotic novel

...etc. Links could be added later when the pages are created. There may be a guideline that explains a standard way to do this but it still seems better to me than assuming everyone who types "The Black Room" is looking for one of these things in particular.--csloat 09:09, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

<-- I've had a look at the guidelines, and they say red links should only be present on a dab page if the editor is confident that an encyclopedic article can be written on the subject. I haven't looked into the 1935 film in any detail, but it probably qualifies. I don't know about the others, if you'd like to look into it that would be great.

I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll move this article to a new slot, but leave a redirect in place. If in your opinion, the redirect should be replaced by a dab page, then you can go ahead and replace it. If the list doesn't seem to serve much purpose or the links stay red for a long time it's easy enough for me or another editor to revert back to the redirect.

If you do replace the redirect with an article please fix incoming links at the same time. Let me explain how to properly move a page, so that if you need to do this again you'll be an expert at it :-)

• Move the article which occupies the slot you want to use (in this case The Black Room) to it's new location. Do this using the 'move' tab which is up at the top near 'edit this page'. Don't cut and paste.
• If the new location is already occupied, for example there's a redirect in its place, and Mediawiki won't let you move it, don't move the page to a second-best name. Instead, ask an admin for some help (e.g. me). In some circumstances we can delete the target page and then do a page-history-merge.
• This is the bit I want to ask you to be sure is done. A disambiguation page is just that - it's a quick pointer to take readers to the article they wanted in the first place. Therefore, a dab page should not have incoming links incoming links shoud point to exactly the article that the reader is supposed to be heading for. So, if you decide to replace The Black Room with a dab page, it's common courtesy to then go to Whatlinkshere (Special:Whatlinkshere/The_Black_Room) and fix the incoming links, so that (in this case) the KLF links point to The Black Room (album). In this case, there's not many and of course I'd fix ir if you didn't, but just so you know... Don't worry about incoming links from talk pages.

That's it, a 3 step guide to replacing an article with a dab page :) --kingboyk 09:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, done. The Black Room is now a redirect page, and the KLF article with full edit history is at The Black Room (album). --kingboyk 09:54, 20 March 2006 (UTC)