User:SoledadKabocha/essays/Potential vs. actual confusion

major work in progress

Disambiguation pages and hatnotes are intended to resolve likely sources of confusion, not all possible sources. If the ambiguity is non-obvious enough that you need to cite sources that demonstrate the ambiguity, you should avoid including the entry in question. It is important not to make readers more confused.

Consensus is that the mere potential of confusion is not by itself a sufficient reason to mention an item in a disambiguation page or hatnote. In principle, verifiable evidence of actual confusion is desired. However, the disambiguation page or hatnote itself cannot link to said evidence (see MOS:DABENTRY and WP:ELHAT respectively).

The Verifiability and Neutral point of view policies are technically applicable to disambiguation pages and hatnotes, but how should they be applied in practice?

Costs of disambiguation pages and hatnotes

See the nutshell and specific examples below.

The standard is reasonable doubt, which differs from "any conceivable doubt."

Examples of unverified potential confusion

TODO: Better section title

TODO: Examples unrelated to song lyrics would be welcome

• Windows NT (diff) – I attempted to fix a hatnote that contravened WP:RELATED and so should have been removed entirely.
• Talk:Work It#Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger – a question from another user
• Talk:Bad Boy (Ringo Starr album)#Hatnote to clarify "who needs a heart" – posted by me
• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music/Archive 7#Song lyrics disambiguation and hatnotes, my poorly-written attempt to formulate a consensus around the above two cases. It received no replies and thus motivated this essay. I probably overemphasized the importance of verifiability policy over other documented practice for dabs and hatnotes.

Conclusion: To be considered noteworthy for disambiguation, song lyrics must be mentioned in the article's body with adequate citations and commentary. For example, the article Smoke on the Water mentions a lyrical excerpt in the section History and contains the following (unchallenged) hatnote:

"Some stupid with a flare gun" redirects here. For the Ass Ponys album, see Some Stupid with a Flare Gun.

The latter article does not have a hatnote that links back to the former; it instead includes the link in an ordinary sentence in the lead paragraph.

See also

Motivation

• Wikipedia:Article titles § Precision

Disambiguation-specific advice

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages
• User:Born2cycle/Unnecessary disambiguation – discusses several tangentially-related topics, in particular discouraging the creation of redirects from unnecessary disambiguation

Hatnote-specific advice

• Wikipedia:Hatnote § Examples of improper use