Talk:Vatican (disambiguation)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move (via the "malplaced dab" process). Una Smith (talk) 17:22, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

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Vatican (disambiguation) → Vatican — Move the dab page back to the ambiguous base name, now a redirect. -—Una Smith (talk) 23:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Note: when the dab page was moved away from the base name, its talk page was left behind. --Una Smith (talk) 23:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support — The base name was usurped without prior discussion, becoming a redirect to Vatican City despite comments on Talk:Vatican that more links to Vatican actually intend Holy See. --Una Smith (talk) 23:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose unless the hundreds of internal links pointing to Vatican are cleaned up. It's a disservice to make readers land on a dab page. Station1 (talk) 21:30, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Chick Publications Inc., Pope Gregory XIII, Rome, Ion Antonescu, Pope Benedict XVI, Going My Way, Leprosy, 359, Christina of Sweden and Pope Pius IX are the first ten articles displayed at Special:WhatLinksHere/Vatican. Six of those use the term "Vatican" to mean the Holy See, three the Apostolic Palace and one Vatican Hill. None of them is referring to the Vatican City, i.e. the territory ceded to the Holy See by Mussolini in the Lateran Treaty of 1929. The disservice we are giving to readers is the direction of these links to the wrong place. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:13, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
  • OK, you have a point. I had assumed, based on article titles, that many if not most links intended Vatican City, but perhaps that's not the case. Still, I do hope someone knowledgeable will clean up the links, because landing on a dab page is also the "wrong place" and, once there, many such as myself will be unsure where to go. Station1 (talk) 23:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Certainly the incoming links will be fixed. I already fixed many of them, as they are unusually easy to fix. --Una Smith (talk) 17:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support since one doesn't write only about the modern era when the state of the Vatican City exists, but one also writes about "the Vatican" in earlier centuries, when it referred to the Holy See but not to the present-day political arrangement. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. I have to agree that sending people to a dab page on such a major topic is a disservice. Holy See, Vatican Hill and Apostolic Palace all relate to Vatican City, so I don't believe that reader are going to find it hard to find the information they are seeking. It certainly seems like the most appropriate primary topic. The redirect was to Vatican City prior to 31 Dec and that didn't seem to cause any issue. However, if someone is willing to take on the task of correcting and redirecting the link to the proper locations than I willing to change to a support.--Labattblueboy (talk) 22:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

So do you think that the many links that relate to subjects from centuries before the Vatican City was established should link there? Do you want this encyclopedia to be full of anachronisms? I went through all these links and disambiguated them a couple of years ago, and would be perfectly willing to repeat the exercise over the next few weeks, but until I get round to it we are presenting disinformation to our readers by linking to the wrong target. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:49, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

If you disambiguated links pointing here a couple of years ago and now there are hundreds more, this is perhaps an ongoing problem. Because of the unusual situation here of "Vatican" meaning different things in different contexts, might it make sense to make Vatican something more than a dab page: perhaps a relatively short article that describes and explains the several related meanings of "Vatican" with forks to the main articles that currently exist? Just a thought. Station1 (talk) 23:39, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

The Vatican Hill was called by that name centuries before Christianity existed. It's the one from which the others got that name. Michael Hardy (talk) 07:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

When the articles are related, I think it is especially important that they be properly disambiguated. A reader not familiar with the related topics may not know they are reading about a topic related to but not the actual topic they seek. --Una Smith (talk) 17:13, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.