Wikipedia talk:Hatnote/Archive 8

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Hatnote to a search

Should we allow a hatnote to a search? For context, see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 February 2#Ballyholme Bay where one argument made to delete the redirect Ballyholme Bay (which targets a ship, SS Ballyholme Bay) is to allow uninhibited searching. I think this could be a good solution in cases where that is the primary/only reason to delete a redirect. User:Thryduulf says that this is possible, whereas User:Narky Blert says it is not permitted due to this page. I feel that whether or not it is currently permitted that it should be permitted, and that if it is decided that it is not (and should not be) permitted, then it should be added as an "example of improper use" in case this comes up again. Thanks. A7V2 (talk) 05:55, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Weak oppose. This could be a slippery slope, encouraging bad hatnotes which leave readers at a loss. Narky Blert (talk) 06:06, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
Weak oppose. I've been thinking about this, and I can't really think of any occasion where it will be useful - if we have one article we should link to it directly; if we have multiple articles we should link to a dab page, set index or list; if we have no articles then searching wont help. Thryduulf (talk) 10:42, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
Oppose. The fundamental purpose of a hatnote is to say "you've landed at this article, but you might have wanted that article...". If "that article" doesn't exist then there's no point in linking to it (which is why redlinks aren't allowed). The Search box is right there for readers to use and I don't think we need to provide an alternative to it. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 10:57, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
Comment Note that while dabs may have {{intitle}} in a "see also", non-ambiguous terms don't have the same option to have a convenient search link. Not sure if that is good or bad. There's always the search box.—Bagumba (talk) 17:02, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
Oppose, particularly per the reasons by Thryduulf. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:56, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Language hatnotes

We have a template: {{Family name hatnote}}, that includes numerous links to things like surname, given name, and various language links. I'm not that it's compliant with the guidelines here. If someone arrives at Fidel Castro looking for Fidel Ruz having links to Spanish name and surname isn't going to help that reader. The notice is fine; the links add nothing but confusion. Should the links in these be removed? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:40, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Carlossuarez46, see Wikipedia_talk:Hatnote#Planning_for_the_future_of_surname_clarification above for related discussion. There is widespread sentiment that the notice is inappropriate, because it doesn't fit with the intended gives extremely prominent placement to what is essentially trivia. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:51, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Pseudo-hatnotes

I would appreciate the views of another editor familiar with hatnotes at Talk:List of 5th-century religious leaders#Pseudo-hatnotes please. Thanks, Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 15:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

I would appreciate the meaningful discussion on the part of Shhhnotsoloud at the same. Why don't you try replying to my comments there? tahc ^chat 17:24, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

New improper use proposal

Hi. I'd like to propose the improper use below, to be listed as a new subsection of Wikipedia:Hatnote#Examples_of_improper_use. The motivation is the perceived spam about artists in articles about common concepts. For example, in the case below, the artist's name is irrelevant, as there are no other similarly titled albums. fgnievinski (talk) 06:06, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Excessive detail

Do not include details unnecessary for disambiguation; for example, instead of:

For the Deadmau5 album of the same name, see Vexillology (deadmau5 album).

Vexillology (/ˌvɛksɪˈlɒlədʒi/) is the study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags...

Give preference to:

For the music album, see Vexillology (album).

Vexillology (/ˌvɛksɪˈlɒlədʒi/) is the study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags...

@Fgnievinski: have you come across editors opposing you simply changing the links? It seems rather uncontroversial to do so. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:59, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

This seems pretty reasonable. Hatnotes occupy precious space at the top of an article and shouldn't be given more space than necessary. I'm not sure I'm strongly opposed to saying "Deadman5 album" rather than "music album" (what if there's another music album of the same name that's not notable?), but "of the same name" and lines like that should certainly go. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 10:25, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
I think a single mention of the artist is not in any way excessive. But it does not need to be repeated in both the description and the link. older ≠ wiser 10:39, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
The hatnote should mention additional detail only if necessary for disambiguation, following the same rules as for titles. Here's another example:

It should be just:

Or better yet:

fgnievinski (talk) 03:15, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree that a single mention of the name is excessive. I don't particularly care in any of the specific examples given here, but I strongly object to making it into a rule. 08:42, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Hatnote templates for biography articles

Hello hatnote people. I was thinking that for a biography article it's better to use {{About other people}} ("This article is about foo. For other people with the same name, see Bar (disambiguation)." instead of {{About}} ("This article is about foo. For other uses, see Bar (disambiguation)." But a recent change of mine along those lines, here, was reverted. Is there a guideline for this, and if so, where is it? Thanks. (Pinging @GimmeChoco44:). — Mudwater^(Talk) 21:51, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand why you were reverted. Hatnote templates with this wording are widespread: {{Other people}}, for example, has over 33,000 transclusions. Generally, I feel that "for other people with the name" reads better than "for other uses" and is often preferable. From a different point of view, I guess it can be argued that hatnotes should be as short as possible, and so "for other uses" would be better. The one case where the "other people" wording is clearly not appropriate is when the linked dab page has at least one entry that's not for a person. The really tricky bit here is that at the time when the hatnote is added, a dab page may only list people, but subsequently get expanded with entries for other things (like films or fictional characters with the same name), and then the hatnote would immediately become misleading, with no clear way to track down this sort of problem. – Uanfala (talk) 22:27, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

For user Mudwater -- The original version of the hatnote was sufficient, and adding additional wording wasn't explained in the edit. Stan Lee also goes into brand name/trademark territory. However, it's not that big of a difference -- now that you've explained your reasoning, I wouldn't oppose your new version if you re-did it. --GimmeChoco44 (talk) 18:53, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@GimmeChoco44: Okay. Thanks. — Mudwater^(Talk) 23:32, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Hatnotes to dab pages

Hello, I'm quite an experienced Wikipedia editor but I've never quite understood the whole "hatnote to dab page" question. When to add a hatnote? When not to add a hatnote? I've read WP:HAT but it doesn't make things too clear. Case in point:

Geoff Thompson is a disambiguation page without a primary topic. If you do a Google search on "Geoff Thompson", you get the writer's wiki page (Geoff Thompson (writer)) at top of list, followed by the karateka's wiki page (Geoff Thompson (karateka)), but none of the others. So if you were searching for the NZ politician, for example, you might find him by following the link to the writer's article, or the karateka's article, then clicking on the dab link in the hatnote and going via the dab page. If a hatnote isn't provided, then you're a bit lost. Surely the whole point of the hatnote is to direct the reader to the dab page where they might then find the article they were actually seeking in the first place. That was my understanding anyway.

The writer has 2,764 pageviews in last 60 days, compared with the next most popular, Geoffrey Thompson (businessman), who has 1,620 views, Geoff Thompson (karateka) has 501, Geoff Thompson (football executive) has 187, etc. I accept that the writer is not a clear winner and does not warrant being the primary topic (i.e. renaming his article "Geoff Thompson") BUT what I'm confused about is whether we should or should not be putting hatnotes to the dab page. I added some hatnotes and they've all been reverted by User:Paora. I thought the whole point of a hatnote was to aid the reader in navigating to other similar articles if they landed at the wrong one in the first place? Please see this version with hatnote to dab page, compared to the current version without. Thanks, Rodney Baggins (talk) 08:27, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

The general guideline for this is at WP:NAMB: "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous." So for example "Geoff Thompson (writer)" is not ambiguous, it's the Geoff Thompson who's the writer -- therefore it's better in that case not to have a hatnote on that article saying "For other people named Geoff Thompson, see Geoff Thompson (disambiguation)." So, that's the short answer, I think. Note however that in some cases it *is* helpful to the reader for such a hatnote to be there, and the guideline talks about that too. — Mudwater^(Talk) 11:33, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, the guidelines are explicit that there's no consensus on this matter. If we think only of Wikipedia and exclude the rest of the internet, then I'd agree with you: those sorts of hatnotes are not needed. However, a very large number of readers arrive here from Google (or other search engines) and I don't think we should completely discount their navigational needs. The situation described by Rodney Baggins is relatively common and in those cases it definitely makes sense to keep the hatnotes. – Uanfala (talk) 00:23, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Leon exemption?

Can anybody take a look at the article Léon: The Professional for me? I've applied WP:ITHAT there twice, now, but MB (talk · contribs) is saying it's exempt for unclear reasons. It looks to me like any other article where I've italicized the hatnote. I don't want to risk that user's ire; I'm just hoping somebody can see what I'm not. Thanks! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 20:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Clearly, communicating through edit summaries isn't working. Try opening up a Léon: The Professional talk page section to ask MB to elaborate. If you're still at a loss after that then then feel free to come back here. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 21:08, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Sure, sure. I just wanted to make sure I myself am not missing something before taking that step. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 22:10, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

And it turns out that I was wrong. This is the right place. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 00:26, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The hatnote is already italicized by default. You un-italicized parts of it. Was that your intention? There is code in the template that checks if a term actually redirects to the article, and your markup caused this check to fail (the name must match exactly) putting the article into Category:Missing redirects. That category is normally empty, so there are no other articles that do this with the first parameter (the redirecting article). MB 21:24, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I intentionally applied deitalicization to the film name. The manual of style on titles says that film titles should be emphasized, and the editing guideline on hatnotes says that when hatnotes link to an otherwise italicized title, deitalicization is applied to retain the due emphasis. That's how I read those manuals and guidelines; I've been applying them as such for years now and I'd hate to only now find that I'm doing it wrong. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 22:10, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

That's my understanding of WP:ITHAT, which guideline MB seems to be unaware of, and they are wrong to revert you completely. I'm not sure if their other objections have merit, however, but if they do, we just need to figure out how to follow ITHAT in a way that doesn't break the categorization. BilCat (talk) 22:35, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it needs a redirect template. Perhaps a simple {{about}} or {{distinguish}}. older ≠ wiser 23:02, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

The example in WP:ITHAT does not show deitalicization of the first parameter, which causes the categorization problem. (Yes, I've never seen this before - it's commonly not done - e.g Moby-Dick). The workaround is to just use {{hatnote}} instead of {{redirect}}. Nihiltres, here is another similar case to the other ones with special markup. MB 23:07, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh! I didn't realize that previously you were referring to the first parameter of that hatnote. Now I understand what you were saying about categorization. I don't actually think I've run across {{redirect-distinguish}} before, so I apologize for not realizing its extra functionality as you described. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 05:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

When you refer to a film, then you'd use the opposite italicisation to the surround text, so Fourthords would be right. However, does that also need to happen when you're quoting (rather than using) the name of a redirect? I'm less sure about that. Imagine if it were a song title, which is typically surrounded in double quotes (example). But the "redirects here" hatnote also surrounds the name of the redirect in double quotes, so if you followed that, then the hatnote will need to begin with a sequence of two double quotes, and that would be a bit confusing.

Another issue is that this bit of text is right at the start of the hatnote. If it's unitalicised, then it may be a tiny bit less immediately easy to recognise that what follows is indeed a hatnote (rather than part of the article's text).

Unrelated to that, am I the only one who finds it a little bit odd that at the top of an article we should have a string like "The Professional (1994 film)" redirects here.? The Professional (1994 film) is the sort of artificial name necessitated by Wikipedia's naming conventions. Doesn't it feel a little bit awkward using it so freely? If it were up to me, I'd follow Bkonrad's suggestion and just replace the hatnote with something like Not to be confused with other films titled "The Professional". (Though I'm sure I'm getting some bit of the formatting completely wrong :) ). – Uanfala (talk) 23:21, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Not to be confused with Léon: The Professional. is the hatnote on the 1981 film (another example with the film name left in italics). Since there is also a 2003 film by the same name, using Uanfala's suggestion on all three is probably a good idea. MB 03:48, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Would {{distinguish|text=other films titled [[Professional (disambiguation)#Film|''The Professional'']]}} work? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 05:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe that does work. You may want to consider Not to be confused with other films titled The Professional(s), or something similar, and use it on the two The Professionals as well. MB 13:56, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Italics

The hatnote on the article Texas Heartbeat Act mentions Roe v. Wade. As the name of the US court case, Roe v. Wade is italicized in running text per MOS:ITALICS. Since the text of the hatnote is already italicized, should it be un-italicized there? Neither WP:HATNOTE nor MOS:ITALICS seem to have conclusive guidance. Rublov (talk) 15:26, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

If WP:ITHAT instructs to italicize the hatnote links themselves, I assume it also covers the rest of the hatnote, too? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 15:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes. I'd format that as {{redirect|Texas Abortion Statute|the law at issue in ''Roe v. Wade''|Texas abortion statutes (1961)}}. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 18:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Template renaming for clarity

I've been meaning for years to do a broad rename of a bunch of hatnote templates. Historically, a lot of the templates took the form of "namen", e.g. "{{about2}}". I've done a bunch of work that's made a lot of the numbered hatnote templates go away, by condensing them and simplifying them away, but a number of the remainder remain, particularly ones in the "2" family. Most of these are variants that allow supplying custom text, so I propose renaming them so that their titles make it evident what they do. Here's the full list of renames I'm proposing:

{{about-distinguish2}} → {{about-distinguish-text}}
{{for2}} → {{for-text}}
{{further2}} → {{further-text}}
{{redirect-distinguish2}} → {{redirect-distinguish-text}}
{{redirect-distinguish6}} → {{redirect-distinguish-for}}

Two notes:

{{Redirect2}} is not included because its "2" indicates two redirects, not a text option. It should probably be merged into {{redirect-multi}}, but that's a different discussion.
I'm putting this discussion here because this should be an all-or-nothing rename.

Do you have any questions or concerns about this proposal? Thanks for your interest. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 22:18, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm all for renaming templates to make it clearer what they do. Merging them is even better, but that would be difficult in this case. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:51, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. I note that the uses of these have to be explained because they are not intuitive: MB 23:00, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

If no one objects in the meantime, I'll perform the moves approximately a week after my original post, on October 23. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 00:31, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Done {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 16:38, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

We can add these changes to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Template redirects to slowly cause the actual hanotes to be updated as genfixes are run. MB 20:16, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Done MB 17:08, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

"space-saving"

[1] @Narky Blert, perhaps I'm missing it, but where is "space-saving" among the WP:HATNOTERULES when WP:DABLINK explicitly advises not to pipe hatnotes? czar 14:44, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Czar: Neither of my reasons is properly documented, but I recall at least one discussion at WT:DPL, WT:DAB or WT:WPDAB. They are implied in the {{distinguish}} documentation (and possibly elsewhere). (BTW, I completely agree that non-DAB hatnotes should never be piped.) Narky Blert (talk) 15:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Moving "Disambiguating article names that are not ambiguous" to another toplevel section?

With the recent change to that section, I believe it no longer belongs under Examples of improper use but I'm not sure whether to move it to Examples of proper use or to create a new toplevel section, perhaps "Example of uses to be evaluated case by case". I'm leaning toward the latter for the time being, but what do others think? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 14:10, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

That change resulted from the discussion at #Hatnotes in articles with unambiguous titles. I agree that if there are other appropriate ways, besides disambiguation, that hatnotes "benefit readers" these other ways should be listed in the section on proper use. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:56, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

New improper use proposal

Hi. I'd like to propose the improper use below, to be listed as a new subsection of Wikipedia:Hatnote#Examples_of_improper_use. The motivation is the perceived spam about artists in articles about common concepts. For example, in the case below, the artist's name is irrelevant, as there are no other similarly titled albums. fgnievinski (talk) 06:06, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Excessive detail

Do not include details unnecessary for disambiguation; for example, instead of:

For the Deadmau5 album of the same name, see Vexillology (deadmau5 album).

Vexillology (/ˌvɛksɪˈlɒlədʒi/) is the study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags...

Give preference to:

For the music album, see Vexillology (album).

Vexillology (/ˌvɛksɪˈlɒlədʒi/) is the study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags...

or:

For the music album by deadmau5, see Vexillology (album).

Vexillology (/ˌvɛksɪˈlɒlədʒi/) is the study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags...

@Fgnievinski: have you come across editors opposing you simply changing the links? It seems rather uncontroversial to do so. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:59, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

This seems pretty reasonable. Hatnotes occupy precious space at the top of an article and shouldn't be given more space than necessary. I'm not sure I'm strongly opposed to saying "Deadman5 album" rather than "music album" (what if there's another music album of the same name that's not notable?), but "of the same name" and lines like that should certainly go. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 10:25, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
I think a single mention of the artist is not in any way excessive. But it does not need to be repeated in both the description and the link. older ≠ wiser 10:39, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
The hatnote should mention additional detail only if necessary for disambiguation, following the same rules as for titles. Here's another example:

It should be just:

Or better yet:

fgnievinski (talk) 03:15, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree that a single mention of the name is excessive. I don't particularly care in any of the specific examples given here, but I strongly object to making it into a rule. 08:42, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to follow up on this proposal. Here's another real example with excessive level of detail:

It'd have sufficed to say:

The additional details would only be necessary if there were multiple similarly titled music albums. This follows from WP:PRECISION, which says: "Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that." And [[WP:QUALIFIER], which says: "when a more detailed title is necessary to distinguish an article topic from another, use only as much additional detail as necessary." fgnievinski (talk) 23:16, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I disagree that a mention of the artist and year is excessive. While there might only be one album that we have an article about, there might be others with the same (or similar) names we don't either because they aren't notable, nobody has written the article yet, or simply it hasn't been linked in a hatnote for some reason (I see this more often than ideal). When arriving at an article someone has the combination of the title and lead to determine if they are where they want to be, but with a hatnote they have only what we write so we should give them enough detail to know if the link is worth following. If someone is looking for an album by someone else they aren't going to be happy to find that they've gone to a second wrong article, and we should avoid implying we have content about something we do not. Remember that clicks aren't free and can sometimes be expensive in time and/or money (slow connections, metered internet access, etc). Thryduulf (talk) 02:25, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm afraid your view is bordering on WP:CRYSTALBALL and directly contradicts WP:NOARTICLE. fgnievinski (talk) 05:55, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

How? This is only about making it clear what the other article(s) we have are about. Neither of those guidelines do or should require us to pretend that non-notable things don't exist, or require readers to know what articles we do and don't have from a potentially ambiguous title.

The first example you give,

For the 2008 album by Jóhann Jóhannsson, see Fordlandia (album).

Makes the subject of the article clear regardless of whether there are other albums by this name or not, while

For the music album, see Fordlandia (album).

Requires someone to know that there is only one notable album by that name that we have an article about. If someone is looking for a different article by that name (people are allowed to, and do, look up things we don't have articles about) then in the first example they know we don't have what they are looking for, in the second they have to follow a link to find that out - potentially wasting time and/or money doing so. There is absolutely no benefit to us from the shorter hatnote so we would be making things harder for readers for no reason at all, which is about the last thing we should be doing. Thryduulf (talk) 11:18, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

The consideration for limited data access and the like goes both ways. Hatnote links are followed by only a tiny proportion of the readers of a given article, and saving one of them from loading one article they don't need means forcing a very large number of other readers to load an article that's slightly bigger. That hatnote link at Fordllandia, for example, is followed by 0.5% of its visitors (according to March 2021 clickstream data; this looks like a typical number). How many of the readers looking for the album will actually be interested in the hypothesised other album with the name? At most an order of magnitude fewer. So for every one reader that we're saving from having to load an unwanted 50-KB article, we're adding 25 B to the article loaded by thousands of others. – Uanfala (talk) 20:52, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Requiring people to read up to a dozen words and download an extra few tens of byes extra on a multi tens- or hundreds-of-kilobytes article so we don't mislead people is not at all comparable to requiring people to load tens or hundreds of unnecessary kilobytes and then read up to a paragraph or so of the article lead to determine that we've mislead them. Thryduulf (talk) 00:45, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Thryduulf. I don't think a mention of the artist is excessive. The year is not essential in most cases. While the article title might be technically unique, we still usually provide some minimal additional information when listing it on a disambiguation page. A hatnote is similar. older ≠ wiser 11:18, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Let's leave this to the editor's discretion. Knowing whether a link would lead to the desired topic helps the reader. Certes (talk) 16:21, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I oppose formalizing this rule, since there are subleties in how much information hatnotes should reveal based on the relationship between the two articles (specifically the closeness of their titles and subject matter; whether it is an "X redirects here" hatnote). Editors have generally gotten it right, and erring on the side of too much information seems like a better outcome than too little. — Goszei (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I disagree because I'd go further. With the Forlandia example I would say "For another use, see Fordlandia (album)". "the music album" is superfluous because it's obvious from the title that it's an album. My solution is just a single version of the {{other uses}}. If there were 2 choices I'd say "For other uses, see Forlandia (album) and Forlandia (tree)". I certainly wouldn't use "Not to be confused with" unless it was something like "Not to be confused with Ford Landia". Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 17:22, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Why would it be excessive to mention the artist? While the term "album" does distinguish the article title from all non-albums, by itself it is not particularly helpful. On a disambiguation page, we would generally include the artist and year -- why treat a hatnote differently. And before you mention space, consider that many disambiguation project regulars routinely trim dab page entries to a bare minimum -- and yet I think most would still include the artist's name in an entry for the album. older ≠ wiser 18:26, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
I agree with Certes and that we should let editors decide based on the context. If you, for example, know there are several albums with the name, then you should be free to add the distinguishing details to the hatnote. But if there aren't such albums, then like Shhhnotsoloud, I don't see a reason for these details. Hatnotes are different from dab pages. All the readers of a dab page are there to find something else, whereas almost all of the readers of an article have already found it: hatnotes are needed by a small number of the article's visitors: almost always less than 5%, and typically less than 1%. Couple that with the fact that hatnotes occupy such prominent space at the top of articles, and you'd appreciate why brevity is so much more important there than it is on dab pages. – Uanfala (talk) 20:52, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
How different is it really? If there were two or three things known as "Fordlandia" there would likely be a disambiguation page with some details that are not any more necessary on the disambiguation page than in the hatnote. Are the miniscule additional bytes in the hatnote really significant? older ≠ wiser 21:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
I've addressed the minuscule byte difference in my response to Thryduulf above. But it's not about the bytes, it's about the prime visual space that's taken up. And again, articles are different from dab pages: only a tiny proportion of the visitors to an article arrive after searching for its name on Wikipedia (either through a link on a dab page or by using the search bar). Most of an article's traffic (typically well in excess of 95%) comes from incoming links or directly from external search engines, like Google. That's why dab pages, even ones occupying the primary topic, will typically receive one or two orders of magnitude less traffic than the articles they link to.
If I could use an analogy, a dab page is like a product catalogue: it's used by people who browse it looking to find one or another of the things listed inside. Hatnotes, on the other hand, is like an advertisement on a web page: most of the readers of that page have already found what they were looking for and the ad doesn't help them. – Uanfala (talk) 21:20, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't buy it. MOS:DABENTRY says Keep the description associated with a link to a minimum, just sufficient to allow the reader to find the correct link. In many cases, the title of the article alone will be sufficient and no additional description is necessary. and yet we routinely include additional information that is not strictly necessary. A hatnote is absolutely not advertising. Although understandably, some editors might view the relative disparity in notability between a primary topic and something linked in a hatnote as somehow giving undue weight to what they see as obscure or unworthy topics. The purpose of a hatnote is the same as that of a disambiguation page -- to help a reader who has arrived at the "wrong" article find what they were looking for. If a couple of extra bytes or a tiny bit of text can help, I don't see the issue. Just as some editors seem to see the hatnote as somehow taking up precious spaces, other editors complain that it is too easy to overlook. I suggest what is good enough for a disambiguation page is good enough for a hatnote.
The problem is not the additional bytes, it's the additional time required by the average reader to parse the dab hatnote and decide it's not relevant for them. Plus the effect on search-engine optimization of having a particular name slapped onto a high traffic Wikipedia article. Hatnotes are indeed like an ad and superfluous details are like spam. We should not oblige the average reader to get to know the existence of a particular band or artist just because they've recorded an album or song with a random name. fgnievinski (talk) 02:31, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

A very closely related topic is under discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Should a "reasonable expectation" be made a requirement for a disambig hatnote?. fgnievinski (talk) 02:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

The extra time required to read 2-3 words is excruciatingly trivial, and much, much better for people to become aware of something they didn't know (educating people is our primary goal after all) than mislead other people into thinking that we have information about a topic when we do not, but use of {{about}} can remove that problem too - if someone sees "this article is about [topic they are looking for]" they don't need to read any further. A hatnote is very much not an advert, it is a navigation aid that is in place to help readers find the content they are looking for. Thryduulf (talk) 00:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

NAMB doesn't make sense

WP:NAMB says "hatnotes should be used when they benefit the reader" but doesn't give any guidance or examples. As I understand it, we are no longer limiting ourselves to thinking about navigation within Wikipedia, but instead want to make it easy for the reader to find the right article no matter how they ended up at the wrong article, and we want to do this without making them use the search function.

So then the first example seems wrong. It says that the hatnote on Water (Wu Xing) can be removed because you can't get there by searching for "water" on Wikipedia. But that explanation is no longer valid, so the example should be removed, or the explanation changed.

What's missing is an example of when the hatnote could benefit the reader who arrived by some other route. In the discussions, Margaret Hamilton (nurse) came up, maybe that could be put in here. If we need hatnotes for Margaret but not for Water then there should be some discussion as to why. GA-RT-22 (talk) 05:29, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that update is a nonstarter – there have been multiple objections to it in multiple sections of this talk page. I've reverted to the status quo, version of 13:28, 21 December 2021. I'm not sure at this point how to reboot the discussions about the matter. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:58, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I suggest working out the wording to everyone's satisfaction here on the talk page first, then changing the whole subsection at once, rather than experimenting with different versions on the doc page. I haven't been following the discussion, but the changes have been confusing to those of us who are just trying to follow the guidance. GA-RT-22 (talk) 17:48, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Hatnotes in articles with unambiguous titles

Could we please delete from WP:NAMB:

The presence or absence of hatnotes in articles with disambiguated titles has been a contentious issue, and this guideline doesn't prescribe one way or the other. There are cases where some editors strongly believe that such hatnotes should be included, such as the various articles about treaties called Treaty of Paris.

Any such contentiousness has dissipated over time and the particular case of Treaty of Paris could be treated as WP:IAR. At the moment the statement introduces unnecessary ambiguity: it is enough to say "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous.". Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 10:55, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any recent contention, so I think it's ok to remove. Rather than the double negative in "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous.", how about A hatnote is only used when the name of the article is ambiguous.? SchreiberBike | ⌨ 17:49, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

See above for why hatnotes on apparently non-ambiguous articles can sometimes be useful too. – Uanfala (talk) 19:01, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes it's quite helpful to the reader to have a hatnote on an article with a title that is not ambiguous. For example, the article Saving Christmas (2017 film) has a hatnote that says, "This article is about the movie starring Edward Asner. For the movie starring Kirk Cameron, see Saving Christmas." The article title for the 2017 film is unambiguous, but the hatnote can help the reader find the article they are looking for. I would therefore oppose having the guideline say "A hatnote is only used when the name of the article is ambiguous." — Mudwater^(Talk) 19:30, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Done as proposed. Thanks everyone. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:04, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Uanfala: Surprisingly, you reverted my edit [2] "I think you've missed the latter half of the discussion." The latter part of the discussion was about changing the existing text "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous." to SchreiberBike's proposal "A hatnote is only used when the name of the article is ambiguous." I have not changed that text which is not part of what I removed. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:15, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

The latter part of the discussion here pointed out cases where editors strongly believed hatnotes on unambiguously titled articles are desirable. Your edit [3] removed the bit of the guidelines that stated that some editors strongly believe such hatnotes are desirable. That's why I reckoned you might have missed it.

The section could do with some rewriting (including a better integration of that paragraph into the rest of it – it's currently quite awkward), and some explanation of the factors at play. It may even make sense to have a bigger discussion on where the community stands here, but in the meantime I don't think it's productive to make big changes just because 2 out of 4 people didn't disagree with them. – Uanfala (talk) 17:48, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Uanfala: and pinging @SchreiberBike: and @Mudwater:. Have a wider debate if you like. My question was simple: "Could we please delete...?" No-one disagreed with that (I did not interpret your comment as "I disagree"): I therefore have a consensus for my limited question. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 19:03, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I think the guideline should be enhanced to explain more clearly that it is sometimes desirable to have hatnotes on articles with unambiguous titles. I might propose something here, or other editors can do so. See my previous post for a bit more on this subject. — Mudwater^(Talk) 21:36, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Mudwater. Hatnotes should be used when they benefit the reader, regardless of whether the title is technically ambiguous or not. The current text does a mediocre job of explaining this imo, but a much better one than "A hatnote is only used when the name of the article is ambiguous". Thryduulf (talk) 17:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I have made changes, deleting the sentence per my suggestion, and adding "Hatnotes should be used when they benefit the reader, regardless of whether the title is technically ambiguous or not". Improvements, rather than reversion, are welcome. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:11, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Where is the list of appropriate other ways, besides disambiguation, in which hatnotes benefit readers? wbm1058 (talk) 15:53, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Two are discoverability and ease of navigation. The latter is especially relevant to anyone with a motor disability affecting fine use of hands. There are probably others. See this (archived) help desk discussion for some background. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 05:38, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Anyone with a motor disability affecting fine use of hands should really try using Alexa or Siri. Voice recognition assistants have gotten really powerful. After reviewing the discussions about Margaret Hamilton and Geoff Thompson and skimming the several other discussions found in the archive search of NAMB, I believe I understand the issue, and will start a new section to propose a more focused solution. "Improving discoverability and ease of navigation to benefit readers" isn't the sort of language that's going to help. Stay tuned while I compose my proposal. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:51, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Word to the wise: 1- it's very poor form to give advice to people with disabilities or about working around disabilities unless the people you're giving advice to or talking about have explicitly asked you or given you permission for that, and 2- some medications affect speech (up to and including aphasia), and so do some causes of motor disabilities, such as cerebral palsy. See eg, benevolent ableism in Ableism#Types_of_ableism. Could you, before embarking on proposing a solution, describe here what you think the problem is, so we can try for consensus on that first? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 20:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I support this recent removal of "but hatnotes should be used when they benefit the reader, regardless of whether the title is technically ambiguous or not." WP:IAR is always an option, and this is too open-ended to offer any useful guidance, while inviting misuse. I do support some verbiage for cases where Wikipedia's WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is different from a real-world primary topic (e.g. top Google search result).—Bagumba (talk) 08:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Also, BilCat thanked me for that edit. You make a good point, a member of the Arbitation Committee recently pointed out to me that the real-world primary topic for backsliding differs from the meaning of Wikipedia's article on the topic. Let's endeavor to keep this guideline from backsliding into Hell ;) wbm1058 (talk) 17:12, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Near-primary topics

Not all readers search for articles using Wikipedia's "Search Wikipedia" box. Many use external search engines, which always identify the primary topics for a particular title, in contrast with Wikipedia. For example, while Margaret Hamilton is an ambiguous name on Wikipedia, Google Search finds two primary topics: Margaret Hamilton (actress) and Margaret Hamilton (software engineer). Margaret Hamilton (nurse) is buried deep in these results and locating pages about that person will be tedious if the user doesn't search for a more specific term such as "margaret hamilton nurse". Users may punt and click on one of the primary topic links taking them to Wikipedia, rather than re-searching for a more specific term. Wikipedia may help them find their search target when the external engine failed them.

A topic which appears as one of the top two results on a major search engine generally should link to the disambiguation page for the base title, even when it is parenthetically disambiguated.

There is no need for hatnotes on lesser-viewed topics (e.g. Margaret Hamilton (nurse)) as readers are highly unlikely to unintentionally land on such pages. — wbm1058 (talk) 21:15, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

There is no need for hatnotes on lesser-viewed topics (e.g. Margaret Hamilton (nurse)) as readers are highly unlikely to unintentionally land on such pages. I smell OR for the latter and SYNTH for the former. Do you have evidence for either? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 22:56, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

The burden isn't on me to do the impossible – prove a negative – but rather on you to assert a plausible scenario for that unintentional landing. C'mon now, I'm accepting your scenario for landings on Margaret Hamilton the actress or software engineer. Speaking of "OR" is your talk about "working around disabilities" OR or are you personally disabled? wbm1058 (talk) 00:30, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

The pageviews analysis shows which are the co-primary topics. The others barely register. Which is consistent with how far buried they are in the Google Search results. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:48, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Taking your points in order:

- The burden isn't on me to do the impossible – prove a negative – but rather on you to assert a plausible scenario for that unintentional landing. I don't agree I need to provide anything other than evidence of > 0 pageviews for all the pages under discussion which the tool you linked me to already provides, and certainly not to speculate on the cause for those mislandings (which is how I interpret "plausible scenario").

- C'mon now, I'm accepting your scenario for landings on Margaret Hamilton the actress or software engineer. I cannot and will not hazard a guess about your intent in writing this, but regardless, it's coming out with an extremely patronizing connotation of "I did you a favor by accepting your point when I didn't have to". (This isn't about doing favors, in case that needed saying.)

- is your talk about "working around disabilities OR" A fair question, but no, it's not OR.

- are you personally disabled? That's none of your business, and it's at best very dubiously relevant anyway, given that different types and degrees of disability, alone or in combination, require different workarounds, so having a certain disability to a certain degree wouldn't allow me to speak authoritatively about or on behalf of people with disabilities differing in nature or degree.

- The others barely register. Which is consistent with how far buried they are in the Google Search results. Knowing how often mislandings happen is only part of the picture; an equally important part is how to get from there to the intended page, and we appear to have circled back to discoverability and ease of use (or in many cases, ability to use at all).

The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 04:28, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

In practice, I often place hatnotes to the dab page from the top search result. I hope we can agree that is helpful. I'm not as certain about needing it for the 2nd result and on; as always WP:IAR can apply there.—Bagumba (talk) 07:13, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Topics which are only disambiguated by year

The year an event occurred or a work was created provides weak disambiguation as some readers may not know or recognize the year of the event or production. Such titles (e.g. Treaty of Paris (1783) and Saving Christmas (2017 film) may use a hatnote to distinguish from other titles which only differ by year. — wbm1058 (talk) 21:15, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Probably applies to bios with "born" disambiguators, unless the era (think centuries) of those years is a clear disambiguator.—Bagumba (talk) 07:16, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with both of these. Hatnotes linking to them directly (i.e not via disambiguation pages) should use some description in addition to the year as well in most cases. Thryduulf (talk) 13:10, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

sentence case

At Talk:Autogas#Hatnote, Widefox and myself are having a discussion about whether a hat note should be

or

To my mind, having that capital letter in gasoline halfway through a sentence (technically, a sentence fragment) is wrong. The MOS text doesn't seem that clear to me. Comments? Stepho talk 23:21, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I read the hatnote as referencing an article, not a petroleum product. Confusing autogas with gasoline would be a mistake in which chemical to use, but in a hatnote, to confuse Autogas with Gasoline would be to read the wrong article. I hope that helps, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 23:29, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't go too far in drawing inferences from the formatting used in the single example of this page: I doubt much thought or discussion would have gone into such a minor point. The template documentation has examples of both types of capitalisation. I think you may be able to get more feedback if you ask at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters.

My own thinking here is that when you refer directly to an article name, it will usually have sentence case: For the unrelated fuel, see Gasoline. However, with the "distinguish" hatnotes, I find that it's often (though not always) more natural to see the link as referring to a topic (and not directly to an article name), so using normal case is better: Not to be confused with gasoline. It may be easier to see the point of that if you try a slight variation on the wording: Not to be confused with the more popular fuel gasoline: here an upper-case G will obviously not work. – Uanfala (talk) 23:59, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I have asked the question at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#Capitals_in_hatnotes. Stepho talk 22:34, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Hatnote-like text with inter-language links

I'd be grateful for another opinion at Talk:Wadi el Maleh#Hatnotes please. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:53, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

There's also a relevant ongoing discussion at Template talk:Interlanguage link#Use in hatnotes. – Uanfala (talk) 16:58, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

VPR discussion on method of surname clarification

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Method of surname clarification. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:18, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

As the proposal at Village Pump has been archived, its transcluded version is shown here below. Alexcalamaro (talk) 07:56, 2 April 2022 (UTC) :

Village Pump discussion

Which format should we prefer to clarify the surname of biographical subjects with non-English names: hatnotes, explanatory notes, or something else? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Background and rationale (surnames)

For many years, Wikipedia used hatnotes at the top of biographical articles for subjects with names that used Eastern name order or other naming conventions likely to be unfamiliar to English speakers. Since 2020, these have been consolidated in {{Family name hatnote}} (examples: 1, 2). Also since 2020, a set of templates has been available that clarifies surnames using an explanatory footnote (examples: 1, 2), although so far their use has been relatively limited.

As far back as 2011, concerns have been raised repeatedly about the hatnote approach (discussions: WP:VPP 2011, WT:MOSCHINA Feb. 2020, WT:HATNOTE Sept. 2020, and others). There are two main issues:

Emphasis: A hatnote is arguably the single most prominent place in an article after the title, since it appears above even the first paragraph and is emphasized through italics and indentation. However, the information in surname hatnotes is not all that vital compared to the essential biographical information in the first paragraph. Eastern name order, while an interesting factoid, does not relate specifically to an individual person. Further, because we refer to a person by their surname throughout an article, most readers would likely pick it up even if it were not spelled out for them. We normally try to avoid putting trivial pieces of information in the lead, as such information would be undue weight. The same principle applies to layout, where trying to include too much leads to banner blindness (as we see on many talk pages). Overall, the information in a surname hatnote is not as essential as the information elsewhere in the lead and does not seem to warrant a prominent placement if avoidable.
Fittingness: Per the WP:Hatnote guideline, hatnotes have a discrete and clearly defined purpose, which is to help readers locate a different article if the one they are at is not the one they're looking for. Under this core definition, using them instead for surname clarification is a misuse which muddles their purpose. It seems that (as with emphasis), the choice to use surname hatnotes way back in the early 2000s was likely not a deliberate preference, but rather an awkward shoehorn of information that did not easily fit elsewhere at the time.

Surname footnotes address both these issues: they reduce the visual emphasis of the clarification, while still preserving it for any interested readers and converting it to a form that fits its purpose. I therefore propose that we adopt a preference for surname clarification via explanatory footnotes. If passed, this would permit interested editors to transition articles to the footnote format, but it would not override local consensus at any article where editors decide to keep the hatnote format (which could be noted in a hidden comment). Relevant guidelines would be updated to state that footnote clarification is preferred but hatnote clarification may be kept if desired. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Notified: WP:CENT, WT:Hatnotes, WT:Footnotes. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Survey (surnames)

Please !vote Hatnote, Footnote, or something else.

Footnote preference, as proposer. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Footnote exactly per nom. Levivich 05:24, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Footnote a.k.a. Support proposal per nom. I'll also go farther and ask to deprecate surname hatnotes community-wide (if this extra bit doesn't pass, then the proposer's version is still very good). In this case, they would be phased out gradually as editors get around to updating articles.
These hatnotes I find to be quite bizarre, giving WP:UNDUE weight to trivia, and violating WP:HATNOTE's well-reasoned direction that such prominent placement is only for navigation. The WP:TRHAT section of HATNOTE especially applies here. Explaining naming conventions, regardless of what it is, is not so important a matter that it deserves to have the most prominent place in an article. A footnote (or failing that, anything else) serves the same purpose much better.
The existence of these has also occasionally been used to justify arguments to add hatnotes for other personal information, such as gender pronouns. However, current practice is that any time such in-article clarification is done, a footnote is used, and it works well for these cases. (Example: ND Stevenson.) If that can work for gender pronouns, it can definitely work for surnames. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC) updated Crossroads ^-talk- 05:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Not hatnote per OP. No great opinion on the alternative, though I think I would recommend footnote if deemed necessary locally as advisement and not as general expectation. It probably just isn't necessary at all to point out which is the family name, also per the OP. --Izno (talk) 06:10, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Currently not voicing a preference, however I oppose the "preference" wording used in the proposal. If a decision is made that hatnotes shouldn't be used based on the arguments provided, then a a local consensus shouldn't override it. So if consensus arises for footnotes, I support complete adoption of it. This would also make it possible to very easily convert {{Family name hatnote}} (which has 66719 transclusions) without needing to check with the local editors of each page. --Gonnym (talk) 06:25, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Not footnote I'm not particularly vibing with the idea of adding to 66000 biographical articles an entire level 2 Notes subheading consisting entirely of "a. ^ This is an East Asian name. The surname is Method of surname clarification." Folly Mox (talk) 07:19, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Allow all depending on level of likely confusion. I like the historically widely used hatnote approach because it sets out the conventions used in an article without impacting on the body. A footnote is the minimum that is necessary, as it is non-obvious which name ordering is used. This is especially confusing with Chinese compound surnames like Sima or Ximen: the family name of Sima Qian is Sima. With names like Lee Kuan Yew, it is hopeless to guess what is the last name, so the article needs to tell you. A reader searching for Cixin Liu needs to be reassured that Liu Cixin is the same person (so there is some navigational use for the hatnote). —Kusma (talk) 10:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
For Cixin Liu, both orders are bolded per MOS:BOLDLEAD, which is how we normally handle topics with multiple names and I think is sufficient here. For a name where one order goes to one person and a different order goes to another, I'd support a hatnote. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:09, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Any decision here applies only to hatnotes about surname clarification. So Lu Ping would keep the hatnote For the Taiwanese writer, see Ping Lu. but the hatnote In this Chinese name, the family name is Lu. might be relegated. Certes (talk) 19:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Footnote or other non-hatnote. A hatnote is too prominent and usually applies to the entire article rather than to a detail such as surname clarification. Certes (talk) 11:27, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Allow either per Kusma. Stifle (talk) 12:00, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
~~More information, please~~ Hatnote Both of the examples given, the family name comes first, so at first glance it looks like the hatnote is worthless, that people should just know that in a Chinese name the family name is first. But I don't think that is the case. In the discussions, editors have already mentioned that sometimes it is unclear which name is the family name. I think to be fair, you should list examples of articles with hatnotes where the family name does not come first. This, I think would give editors trying to weigh in here a better snapshot of the impact/value of these hatnotes. I reserve my vote until I understand this better. StarHOG (Talk) 14:39, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Okay, the article on Raul Neto sealed the deal for me. Thank you Kusma for providing several examples. This along with Mathglot's comments about wanting to know up front how to read an article and have a person's name in your mind correctly. The Antonio Arias (referee) article is also a good example of why we do not want this information as a footnote. It is only the brevity of this article that the reader is given information about the naming almost immediately. In a longer article, that footnote would be lost or never referenced by your average reader. I am now strongly for using the Hatnote to explain to readers the naming convention a person uses. StarHOG (Talk) 03:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Raul Neto has a hatnote and Antonio Arias (referee) a footnote about naming conventions with given names appearing first. Certes (talk) 14:45, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

The last name doesn't always come first with Chinese name, especially with people who have lived elsewhere. There's Shiing-Shen Chern (family name is Chen) and the wonderfully weird Lowe Kong Meng. Category:Members of Academia Sinica is a bit of a mess with both naming orders widely used. —Kusma (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

For some non-Chinese examples, consider Gloria Macapagal Arroyo or Arantxa Sánchez Vicario. —Kusma (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Footnote (ie Support proposal per nom). Makes perfect sense. MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:59, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote per Folly Mox, and the fact this is pretty important information you shouldn't have to dig for when you need it, and names don't often need other hatnotes so it's fine to use it for a non-disambiguating purpose for people. 107.242.121.51 (talk) 18:29, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
I think Folly Mox, Kusma, and StarHOG make good points. If the way that hatnotes are actually used on thousands upon thousands of articles is inconsistent with WP:HATNOTE, perhaps it is WP:HATNOTE (a guideline, not policy) that needs revising. Should we also eliminate {{correct title}}, since that doesn't direct readers to another article with a similar name? Hatnotes in general resolve possible confusions regarding article titles, and their use in this respect is entirely consistent with that broader purpose. XOR'easter (talk) 19:38, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
{{Correct title}} is the other notable exception to WP:HATNOTE, but it's much less common – <1k pages – and something that we will hopefully one day no longer need once future software improvements are made to MediaWiki. I'd rather reign in the purpose of hatnotes than let it broaden out to the point of meaninglessness, since allowing it to broaden has costs to readers: with a discrete purpose, it's safe for readers who know they've landed at the right page to ignore hatnotes, whereas if we allow them to become a catch-all place for important information, that no longer holds true and opens us to a bunch of sure-to-be-messy discussions about whether to have hatnotes for things like pronouns (see Crossroads' !vote above).

With that said, I do acknowledge that fittingness is more of a secondary consideration than emphasis. The main reason I'm putting this forward is the emphasis concern, and the fact that clarifications would also fit better purpose-wise with footnotes is just an added bonus. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

The article title would be the same regardless of which of the names is the surname, so I fail to see how this is consistent with the purpose of handling title confusions. The "correct title" template does 'alter' the title, so that placement makes sense - and is ideally temporary until MediaWiki is improved as noted by Sdkb. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
The possibility of title-related confusion exists because readers are not unlikely to come to those pages from somewhere that used a different order. A hatnote is a convenient place to ameliorate that confusion. WP:HATNOTE was made for editors, not editors for WP:HATNOTE. I guess I fall into the allow all, including possible-something-else camp on this one, with a preference against footnotes but a recognition that a one-size-fits-all, across-the-board rule is probably suboptimal. XOR'easter (talk) 00:00, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Allow either per Kusma. There are cases where it's genuinely confusing enough to merit a hatnote, and other cases where it isn't. (t · c) buidhe 21:03, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Not sure yet; leaning 'something-else' (Summoned by bot) – I take the point about the original purpose of hatnotes, and that's somewhat persuasive, but otoh, presenting information clearly to the reader trumps just about anything else in my book, and if a majority of surveyees say hatnote makes it clearer, then I'm fine with that choice, too. Otoh, not sure footnote helps as much as I would like. I think a major part of the calculus for me, is I *want* to know how to properly identify someone, and I don't want to have to hunt for whether the Singaporean politician is Mr. Lee, Mr. Kuan Yew, or something else, and a corollary of this is that I don't want to feel like a fool after getting halfway through the article, and realize with embarrassment that I've had it backwards in my mind up to that point. That would be the fault of the article, not my ability to understand, and I would resent it. So, I'm basically okay with any solution that avoids that, and I think at this point, I'd like either a clear statement in the first or second sentence ("Lee Kuan Yew (surname: Lee) was a Singaporean lawyer and politician...") or a usage such as "Mr. James", "Prime Minister Martin" that makes it clear by implication, without necessarily stating it outright: ("Lee Kuan Yew was a Singaporean lawyer and politican. Lee was Prime Minister from 1959 to 1960..."). So basically, just get me the information by sentence #2, don't make me hunt too hard to find it, and I'm good. I'm not categorically opposed to having the surname in a hatnote just because hatnotes were initially designed for disambiguation, because it satisfies the "clarity" issue; but if a just-as-good solution offers itself, I'd vote for the latter. Mathglot (talk) 01:19, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
something-else Perhaps a |surname= added to {{Infobox person}}. Tvquizphd (talk) 03:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Allow all per Kusma, specifically including Mathglot's something-else. On the one hand I'm sensitive to the slippery slope argument made by Crossroads, the last thing we need is a list of hatnotes at the top of articles. However I also agree with those who want to make sure that it gets communicated right away, and I'm conscious that getting it right - and communicating it right - matters. To inadequately purvey this info is to continue biases already rampant here and elswhere. What to do, then? Let's allow a variety of practices to flourish here and if the benefits of a particular approach eventually become clear we can prescribe/prefer/deprecate as needed. Retswerb (talk) 07:27, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Footnote, but use <ref group=note> to avoid it getting confused with normal references. Hatnotes are overkill for this - they should be used when there is potential for confusion with another article, not minor clarifications of surnames. Modest Genius ^talk 12:48, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Allow all There is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all solution to this, and having options for how to handle it best per article is the best option. --Jayron 32 14:16, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Against explicit preference for footnotes. The current practice doesn't fit well with the overall purpose of hatnotes, but I wouldn't like to see a shift from the misuse of hatnotes to the misuse of footnotes. Explanatory footnotes are used for tangential details, not for information that may be necessary to understand how to read the article.
I would like to note that even though I disagree with the proposed solution, I don't question the existence of a problem, but that's part of a bigger issue that we need to tackle. The first sentence of a biography article will often contain a lot of details – nicknames, maiden name, spelling of name in native orthography, transliteration(s), pronunciation (in English or native language) – that create a difficult to parse thicket that stands in the way of readers getting to the bit that describes who the subject is. I think we need a dedicated space for that information: one that doesn't clutter the first sentence but is still prominent enough (the end of the first paragraph? the end of the lede? a new lede paragraph that's visually set off from the rest? a section of the infobox? a dedicated (info)box?....). Once that is done, and we have a space where readers will learn to expect all name-related information, then the content of those hatnotes will naturally fit in there. – Uanfala (talk) 15:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
I agree with that problem statement, though I have no brilliant solutions. Footnotes seem less bad than hatnotes but I hope there's a better way. Certes (talk) 17:02, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Definitely a separate conversation to be had about this, I completely agree. Retswerb (talk) 09:31, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote ~ the footnote is a pain to have to scroll down to in order for important information ~ or, at most, allow all. Happy days ~ Lindsay^Hello 16:26, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote - the votes are leaning otherwise, and I assume that is because there are a ridiculous number of completely unnecessary hatnotes for names on biography articles that should be removed. Just because someone is from Asia doesn't mean they need a naming hatnote. However, when there is a reason that the name must be clarified, a hatnote is the correct way to do so. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 00:00, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote Understanding a person's name is quite important and so clarification should go at the top of their article, not the bottom. An infobox entry may be adequate and so we shouldn't be rigid about this. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote this information is too critical for a footnote, most of which don't get read. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:43, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote much too important to have to go looking for it, and much too hard to explain and re-explain Spanish surnames, and way too many hispanic names that are first, middle and last name the same, so need the fourth surname as per Spanish language customs spelled out right up front. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:54, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
@LindsayH@力@Andrew Davidson@Headbomb@SandyGeorgia, if you think that putting the information in a footnote would be insufficient emphasis, I'd urge you to consider @Mathglot's idea above to put it in the parenthetical after the name, where we already put name information like pronunciation and native language spellings, and to adjust your !votes if you'd consider it an acceptable outcome.

I understand where you're coming from, in that names are an inherently important thing, but I think it's important to remember that in many cases (albeit not all), we can clarify a surname easily just by using it in the rest of an article, and we wouldn't want a strict outcome of "hatnote" here to prevent us from using other methods for the articles where they fit better. It's also worth remembering that anything is going to seem more important in a discussion where it's the explicit focus, but hatnotes don't just note the information alongside other things, they prioritize it by emphasizing a generalized note on naming conventions more than even an individual subject's nationality/occupation/birth date. No matter your preferred solution, I hope we can reach a consensus at least that that isn't ideal. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:12, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
In hispanic names, the parenthetical just wouldn't make sense as part of the text; one's full name is Joe Bloe FatherLastName MotherLastName, and the parenthetical would take up valuable real estate in the middle of the first line to explain how hispanic surnames work. So our text would be cluttered with Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza (Halvorssen is his father's paternal family name, Mendoza is his mother's paternal family name, according to Spanish naming customs) ... it's just goofy to take up precious real estate for that. Hatnote does the job, is easier, and standard. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:08, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Sandy, I believe this is not the issue we are trying to solve. In fact, Nil Einne addressed this confusion directly below. What we care about in this discussion, if I'm not mistaken, is not *really* what the surname is, but *how we are going to refer to Mr. XYZ in the rest of the article. In that sense, we don't care if "Mr. Lee" means that "Lee" is his surname or first name, we just care that in this article, we refer to him as "Mr. Lee", because that's what the sources do. Same thing with a Hispanic surname, Russian patronymics, or Sitting Bull; it doesn't matter which one is the surname, or if the term "surname" even applies at all.
In your example, therefore, there would be no long parenthetical at all; in your Halverson example, the second sentence already solves this, and says: "The New York Times described Halvorssen as a maverick 'who champions the underdog...'" so now we know that he is referred to as "Halverson" in the article, and that's all we need to know. Mathglot (talk) 23:22, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Missing ping User:Nil Einne. Mathglot (talk) 23:29, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia, sure it could work. Here's that article with efn footnotes and here it is with a hybrid parenthetical/footnote format. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:24, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
The first (footnote via efn) was so hard to see that I had to go look for it in the footnotes and then backtrack to see where you had placed the efn (meaning, a casual Wikipedia reader will probably miss it, or not go look for it). The second is just what I said in terms of convoluted and cluttering the first line.
To Mathglot, consider a common issue (not in this case because they don't have a close relationship, but I digress); father and son do business or politics together and their article deals a lot with both of them and has to distinguish them. If is very common for mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons, to have the same name, and even the same middle initial. Then, per Spanish naming customs, we would refer to them in text as Halvorssen Mendoza and Halvorssen Vellum. The hatnotes are doing a good job educating readers about Spanish naming customs and how they are used in writing; I don't see a way around it, and I consider them a valuable aid to readers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:46, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Hi Sandy, that's possibly a good use case for keeping the hatnote, it might help in that case. If this is a fairly common situation, can you link a few examples so we can see what they actually do now? I'm particularly interested in how they handle this in the body of the articles.
But even here, I can see an argument for dropping the hatnote: partly due to banner blindness, and partly due to proximity: if I were reading one of those articles, I presume that the person named in the article title would be introduced in the lead sentence and paragraph, and I'm not sure how far down the same-named father would be introduced. I think *that* is where I would want to see the explanation; by the time I get there, I won't remember the hatnote (assuming I ever read it, which I might not if I saw a picture or a lead sentence with a bolded title in the first sentence letting me know I was on the right page). When they bring up the father, that is the point where I want to know who is who; if they use words like "Senior" in their culture, maybe that is sufficient; or pere, and so on.
In the George W. Bush article for example, his similarly named father isn't mentioned by name in the five-paragraph lead at all; he first shows up in section #Early life and career as "He was the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce." and by that time, the hatnote is a distant memory, if it ever registered at all. Perhaps you are talking about father-son pairs with identical names, not even differing by a middle initial; here, I'd like to see those links and see how the articles treat them now. See also Alexandre Dumas. Mathglot (talk) 00:20, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
My memory won't cough up the example I am trying to recall of two Panamanians who got mixed up on Wikipedia; it will likely come to me when this discussion is over. But the George H. W. Bush example accomplishes same. Do a ctrl-f on the word son to notice how awkward the text is, particularly starting with the Appearances section. If those two had Spanish names, that awkwardness would go away, as we would have clear names for both: Bush Walker is the father and Bush Pierce is the son. Ah, but it gets better in this case, because Jeb is also Bush Pierce. So, this is probably as good of an example as it gets.
Gow to move forward with this example: I believe the goal of this discussion is to reduce the number of banners at the top of the article per banner blindness. A different goal is to educate about Spanish naming customs at the very top of the article, without adding clutter to the text. My concern with removing the banner is that you remove something that editors creating articles in the Spanish-language realm will clearly have noticed and can see how to easily use, and serves to educate broadly about Spanish names. We would be replacing it with either a footnote or in-text clutter that offer the potential for inconsistent use. I am sympathetic to your goals and open to being convinced, but we're not there yet. Maybe there's a third alternative, that we could explore with the Bush Walkers and the Bush Pierces. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I understand what you're arguing (purely in the sense of "discussing") for, but i'm not sure i agree; i have read Mathglot's suggestion and, i'm afraid, in mine opinion that would be far more disruptive to the flow of the lead sentence/paragraph. To take the example given there, i think it is essential that we are clear that Lee is the surname, and just using it in the next sentence is not clear, especially and specifically because the name order is different from that expected by what is probably the majority of our readers; in particular with this name it rather clashes with expectations because "Lee" is sometimes a forename in English, so it has the immediate appearance of being over-familiar, and did i (and therefore probably others) not know i might try and change to what appeared to be a more formal and appropriate usage. As for the first suggestion with this example, putting "(surname: Lee)" immediately after the name is very interuptive (surely there's a word for that?) to the flow of the sentence and i would strongly oppose that. I recognise the argument that it's not what hatnotes are for, but...so what? It works and (if it's essential we use them only as intended) we can say we are disambiguating any confusion over the name. Happy days ~ Lindsay^Hello 13:15, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Footnote. There's lots of background information that is often absolutely crucial to understanding a biography. Why stop at naming conventions? Often there's far more significant background detail relegated to a wikilink - if you're reading an article on a Qin dynasty court official, a completely blank slate reader may well need to click multiple other history articles before they can really get it. A hatnote just isn't the right place for this; stick it in text (if the name is expected to cause unusual confusion / dispute) or in a footnote, same as all other relevant content. A hatnote simply isn't the right spot in the same way that a maintenance banner isn't the right tool for the job; hatnotes are for Wikipedia navigation, not explaining background detail. SnowFire (talk) 10:21, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote as it's an important detail which often explains inconsistencies in the article between people's full and common names e.g. why Spanish/Portuguese people have multiple surnames, and why we only use one of them to refer to them. Allowing any type seems sensible too, but footnotes will never be read. Joseph2302 (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote per basically all of the above. I don't need to repeat what everyone else already said. I don't object to footnote templates also existing for this purpose, e.g. to use at an article that already has a lot of hatnotes. And we don't need either for a lead like "A B (Chinese: B A) ...". But use hatnote by default. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:37, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote for now, as though there's the possibility of a better solution somewhere down the line that this discussion might lead to, hatnotes are the best we have for now. I feel that anyone advocating footnotes or presuming that readers will be able to work things out for themselves just by reading the article is confusing the average reader of English Wikipedia with the average editor, regarding their knowledge of MediaWiki's conventions, those of web pages in general, and their global perspective. When writing for a general natively English-speaking readership, I don't think of what I would understand, I think of what my parents or grandparents would understand. They do not know that Wikipedia has footnotes and that clicking the blue superscript characters leads to them. No matter how many times I explain it to them, they cannot remember that cultures other than their own, indeed all but a minority of the world's population, use naming systems other than <personal name> <family name>. They will read an article about an Icelandic person and be confused why the person is only referred to by their personal name, not by what they think is the person's family name. They will read an article about a Chinese person and be confused by why the person's name is shortened to what they think is the person's personal name. I will explain why they are mistaken, and they will have forgotten my explanation in a few days' time. These kinds of people need these things to be mentioned first of all, every time a name is not in <personal name> <family name>. Hatnotes are good at doing this (even if it's not their original purpose) because they at the same time visually get this information out of the way for people who don't need it, and it avoids making the first mention of the person's name even more complex. Tempjrds (talk) 19:12, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote. Long story short, hatnotes for this particular use enjoy a strong and longstanding consensus. The guideline on them should be updated to reflect this. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:54, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote While not perfect, at present this seems to best way to make it clear to our readers (many of which may not even be aware of Eastern-naming order) which name is the surname. At least for me as a mobile reader and editor, I would prefer a hatnote. I would also be opposed to adding something only in the infobox as not every last-first person article has an infobox. Link20XX (talk) 04:03, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Footnote per OP, Crossroads and Izno. WP:UNDUE weight to trivia. I really think that the best solution is to use a explanatory footnote, but just when it is necessary. Alexcalamaro (talk) 22:09, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
Hatnote I find the arguments against footnotes more compelling than the arguments for footnotes. To me, the argument over the wording of WP:HATNOTE isn't compelling and seems like wikilawyering over the wording of policy rather than engaging with what's practical---if the OP's interpretation is correct, why have hatnotes endured for a decade? The OP claims that it's trivial information which doesn't serve a navigation purpose, but I don't agree with that interpretation. Joseph2302 says it's an important detail which often explains inconsistencies in the article between people's full and common names, which to me contradicts the claim that name style hatnotes don't serve a navigational purpose. They do. Our articles are titled after names, and clarifying how that name is styled can clarify article titles which may or may not follow the English COMMONNAME. The OP's argument seems self-contradictory as well; it claims that surname hatnotes give undue emphasis, but also that no one reads them because fo banner blindness. If no one is reading them, then it's not a prominent or undue position; if it's prominent and undue then people aren't blind to them. I don't think either is really the case, certainly not a serious problem, and I'd be open to evidence suggesting that one of these is in fact the case, but arguing both seems self-contradictory. Lastly, the argument to put them in a footnote runs into actual practical problems. First, no one reads that far down the page. Second, not all articles have them. We'd be forcing level-2 heading sections on thousands of articles for a single footnote that no on will read. Why? To create artificial consistency with a policy we could just rewrite to reflect the practical reality? Seems contrary to WP:NOTBURO. People have made various proposals to try and remedy this problem, like parentheticals and putting it in infoboxes, but these have their own problems and run into the same issue as the original proposal: the problem with hatnotes is bureaucratic not practical. The closest we get to a practical issue is banner blindness, but there's no particular evidence for that and other support arguments about undue prominence contradict claiming that point. Just rewrite the policy to fit the decade-old reality. Let writers use the efn surname templates if they like, but enforcing an artificial consistency at this point is premature. — Wug·a·po·des 22:05, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
I responded to the idea we should just adapt WT:HATNOTE to match usage above here. I don't see any contradiction in discussing both prominence and banner blindness—banner blindness by definition happens when too much is made too prominent. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:42, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Edit notice – This will probably disappear in the void of this conversation, but I don't think either solution is helpful. The reason this is even an issue is because novice editors (or anons, or otherwise) go and change the name, thinking they're correct. This group of people will almost certainly never read the footnote (which you have to "go out of your way to click"), and it seems very possible that they will ignore the hat note by clicking edit too quick or editing a section not near the top of the article. The only place we know they will go to is the editing screen, so we may as well put it there. Aza24 (talk) 01:56, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
@Aza24, not lost in the void The reader-editor distinction is an interesting angle to look at this from, and the editor perspective might help explain why some above seem to consider this information so crucial. I think it does still have some value for readers, so perhaps a footnote-editnotice combo could be a possibility. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:19, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Footnote as proposed. While this is may not be a perfect solution, we should move on from hatnotes as they occupy an undue position for such trivial information. -- Ab207 (talk) 15:49, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
Footnote. The current hatnoted-based system is very out of step, I think, with how hatnotes are meant to be used: for navigation. I find Crossroads's arguments very compelling as well. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 19:12, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (surnames)

A |surname= parameter could also be added to {{Infobox person}}. Or guidance should be given to note the surname under the template's "Notes" section. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 12:46, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree that this information belongs as structured data in the {{Infobox person}}. Tvquizphd (talk) 03:25, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Tvquizphd and IP, how would you want it to display in an infobox? Make a sandbox mockup if you'd like. I'm not sure how viable that could be as a main method, though, since infoboxes are already trying to cram in a lot of information, and not all articles have them.

If we're exploring alternatives, I think Mathglot's idea of putting it in the parenthetical is the most viable I've heard so far. The advantage is that it'd place the information in the body, in a space that's already communicating name info (typically pronunciation). The disadvantage is that we'd only be able to reasonably fit a very short e.g. (surname: Lee), which would cause problems for the more complicated examples like Raul Neto above or Vietnamese people like Phan Xích Long. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:42, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

The idea of developing this as Infobox information is appealing. It would match the Wikidata P734 family name, which is present for cases such as Sima Qian, Gáspár Miklós Tamás and other interesting cases such as Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink (see also this on the latter's doubling), but seems to be omitted for patronyms that might be associated with Mongolian people,for example. Populating an optional line in Infoboxes from Wikidata could allow a gradual move away from the use of hatnotes and towards more structured information which might embed types of naming? AllyD (talk) 08:44, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps it can display in parentheses after or below |name=. An example would be:

|name=Name (Surname: |surname=Surname)

To display

Name (Surname: Surname)

Note variable values are slanted as a coding convention.

Or a structured note under |Notes= can be used.

Also there is the issue of meta-templates & related templates based on the infobox. A look at Category:People and person infobox templates shows a bunch. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 13:49, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@Retswerb: I appreciate you bringing up the topic of bias in your !vote. One angle to look at this from is that the hatnote convention includes some strong biases about what readers know and don't know. We would never (and should never) put a hatnote at John Smith saying "the surname is Smith", since we assume that readers are familiar with Western name order, but we also assume that they're unfamiliar with Eastern name order and need this explained to them prominently. Granted, on a practical level, this is English Wikipedia and our efforts to take a global perspective need to have some limit. But I think it's worth noting that one benefit of making the clarification less prominent is that it'd also make these names less marked, meaning that we wouldn't be assuming so strongly that readers have a Western perspective in which non-Western names are this exotic other. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:45, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Surnames in an unfamiliar position is probably the easiest name hatnote situation to solve. Other naming conventions, such as patronymics, or perhaps having no surname, seem more difficult to clearly imply through usage in prose alone. Is this proposal aimed at removing Surname Firstname hatnotes, but leaving other Family Name hatnotes in place? CMD (talk) 07:57, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis, any naming convention hatnote can be pretty easily converted to a footnote: just take the text in the hatnote and put it in a footnote. The same general considerations apply.

I think that it's important that we're able to handle edge cases in whatever system we end up with, but I also think we should take care not to focus so much on the most complicated instances that we lose the forest for the trees, as I see happening a little above. It's also worth remembering that this information is going to seem a lot more important here where we're hyperfocused on it than it will in the context of an actual article where it's one of many things to arrange in balance. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:09, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
It does not make sense (and feels like a bit of the bias Retsweb mentions) to treat patronymics and single names as edge or particularly complex cases; they are established and regularly used naming systems. They might be unfamiliar to some or most English speakers, but they're whole forests in themselves. Framing a discussion as relating just to surname firstname order when it is intended to have a wider impact seems likely to lead to more confusion, not less. Footnotes may work for whatever the case is, but other suggestions above that were built in response to the framing of the question, like the "(Surname: Lee)" and the infobox surname parameter, will simply not work. CMD (talk) 08:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@CMD It would be nice if the Template:Infobox person could accomodate many naming conventions with many options |surname=, |matronym=,|patronym=, |tekonym=, |laqab=, |nisba=, and even perhaps |mononym=. Some examples might look like |surname=Lee or |mononym=triyatno. If no infobox or too much infobox, I think a simple parenthetical "(Surname: Lee)" or “Triyatno (mononymous, born 20 December 1987)” would do. I’ll post on Project Anthroponymy to see if anyone there has ideas.Tvquizphd (talk) 17:07, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
I would not object to that. If it is done, perhaps the relevant wikilink could serve as the communicating text to the reader in place of the hatnote. CMD (talk) 17:59, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Entirely a fair point! My personal take is that our general readership is probably unfamiliar enough with non-Western naming conventions that the value of pointing them out overcomes the detriment of marking them - but that's entirely an assumption on my part. Retswerb (talk) 08:08, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

The occasional Western surname also needs a note: Emile Smith Rowe (surname Smith Rowe) vs. Leo Stanton Rowe (surname Rowe). Certes (talk) 16:56, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd welcome an explanatory note at Marion Zimmer Bradley. Never sure what end of the bookshelf to use for her books. —Kusma (talk) 18:28, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm slightly confused here. The opening comment etc refers only to surnames. But the template also deals with patronyms although for some reason we still have stuff Template:Malay name. Is this proposal only to deal with surnames? Also the opening comment claims "because we refer to a person by their surname throughout an article" but again that is not the case. We use whatever is the norm to refer to the person so for people without surnames this is often (but not always) their given name. Also we should not forget that even for people with surnames, name order can be more complicated than simple family name given name, given name family name e.g. Carrie Lee Sze Kei, Michelle Yeoh Choo-kheng or Daniel Lee Chee Hun. Nil Einne (talk) 06:45, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
@Nil Einne: Yes, I can validate that confusion. In fact, I don't think this is really about surnames at all; I believe it's about how to refer to someone via a short name (if any) throughout the article, when we are not referring to them by their long, convoluted name, as in Sandy's example of Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza.
Imho, we don't really care which is the father's name, mother's name or any of that; what we care about, is how they are referred to "for short". This is cleared up in sentence #2 of that article, and the answer is: Halvorssen. Who cares which ancestor bore that name? I don't. In such articles as importance would attach to knowing about their mother and father, because it's duly covered by reliable sources, than by all means, go into it in the body of the article, and even link our articles (not hatnotes!) about Hispanic surnames as appropriate. But I see no reason why the Thor Halvorssen (human rights activist) article needs a hatnote, and I don't care what his surname is. The #Background section explains in some detail his relationship to famous ancestors including a President Mendoza, and for anyone who's interested, they can read that, and follow the links. But all we really need to know about Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza's name, is that he is referred to as "Halvorssen" in the article, presumably because that's what the sources do. I don't see why a hatnote would be required at all, or even helpful. By the way, what is Sitting Bull's surname? Mathglot (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
One more thing that occurs is that in some cases, the current family name template actually servers another purpose although I'm doubtful many readers understand this who didn't already know. If we take Chinese names like Lee Hsien Loong and Chong Sin Woon, it mentions the generation name. This isn't of relevance to how we refer to the person in the article since we use the family name but it conveys an important point.
If you are referring to these people by their given name, it should be Hsien Loong or Sin Woon, never Hsien or Sin. While this applies to most two character Chinese given names too (double characters is sort of exception I guess), it's a special problem with generation names because calling someone Hsien/Sin or Hsien Lee/Sin Chong (as may happen in the west, even if you put the first name as Hsien Loong/Sin Woon in the form) can be confusing when multiple siblings are involved as it's unclear precisely who you're referring to. (If you did want to use one character only Woon or Loong will me more appropriate.)
This is mostly a problem with Malaysian and Singaporean given names as it's where the practice of rendering the two characters as two "words" with spaces predominates. Those from Mainland China generally follow pinyin and don't include a space; those from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and while not Chinese names, those from (either) Korea where there's a similar issue, generally use hypens. Those in Western countries mostly use either don't include a space or use hypens since they're aware of the problem if they don't.
That said, the generation name parameter seems to be hardly ever used (those were the only 2 examples I could find with a space in the given name) and I think it's hard to populate especially without OR since not all 2 character given names include a generation name. Also as said, this is an issue which technically applies to all 2 character Chinese give names even in cases where it's not a generation name; and I'm very doubtful anyone reading our hatnote is going to understand this point if they didn't already know from the name.
And there are plenty of other naming issues which can cause confusion which we do not clarify in each article. For example Karpal Singh was not Muslim and while his name may sometimes be referred to as Karpal Singh al Ram Singh the al is from a/l and is unrelated to the al in Arabic names. (Having trouble finding links talking about this now, but in the past, there were reports of people coming under special scrutiny because their passport rendered the a/l as al since / cannot be used in the name part of machine readable passports and assumptions were made that the al meant they were Muslim. I suspect this is one reason why that is no longer done [4].)
Nil Einne (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Nil Einne: (edit conflict) This is more of an aside, but the generation name param |suffix= is used in template {{Portuguese name}}, which was sufficiently different due to this very param, that that template did not get merged into the {{Family name}} template when the mega-merge took place. There are 90 occurrences of the template that use param |suffix=. Mathglot (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Just pinging User:Primefac to this discussion and proposal, as they were responsible for the family name hatnote mega-merge, and may have something to say either about the somewhat narrower issue in this discussion, or the larger one at the top of this proposal. Mathglot (talk) 01:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Taking into account Mathglot's comments, would a "commonly known as" property be more apt? Or is this making the issue even more convoluted? 68.173.76.118 (talk) 02:04, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
As a reply to the ping - I genuinely don't care how this information is displayed (my prior involvement has largely been in standardising template usage and minimising maintenance burdens). If necessary, though, I'm happy to consult on the hows, whys, and "what ifs" so that others may make a better decision. Primefac (talk) 09:23, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion. Okay, this is going to sound absolutely buck-wild, so I am going to drop this radical idea and walk away: use {{Notice}}. I know; I know.. This is heresy. I'm talking something small like this. Not going to make any arguments for this suggestion since I know it's one of those things that will probably appease zero sides of this discussion. If I'm wrong, then let me know. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 19:21, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
Alas, I think you're correct that that wouldn't appease anyone. My whole goal here is to decrease the prominence of the information to something more commensurate with its importance, whereas that would increase its prominence. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:30, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I guess this is a vote for hatnote presentation in some form. I am a bit confused as to why user MJL considers it "radical". 74.72.146.123 (talk) 19:04, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I think something like this could be an excellent way forward, provided the notice is floated to the right, like Template:IPA notice. This would be similar to the way natives names for Buddhist concepts are currently formatted using a dedicated template (example of use: Four Noble Truths). – Uanfala (talk) 20:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion I agree that knowing the surname can be helpful for understanding the article (and less importantly for editing the article when there is inconsistent usage). Adding to the infobox doesn't seem practical since they are not required, and there are over 150 different templates that are used on biographies. Coordinates are displayed at the very top right, and that space should always be available in a biography article. What if we use that space for a very short note (e.g. "Subject shortname is foo^[a]") with a footnote link allowing the full explanation to be provided in a footnote. I don't know if "shortname" is the best way to collectively refer to all the variations that have been mentioned here, but the concept is to use both a brief hatnote-like statement of the shortname with an explanatory footnote. MB 22:53, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
I really like this idea, or something similar that might provide a third way. Retswerb (talk) 00:51, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Just want to point out that looking cursorily, it seems that many of the person infoboxes are meta- or wrapper templates for {{infobox person}}. In such cases, adding a surname parameter to the core code would make it generally available. 104.247.55.106 (talk) 14:21, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Many are also wrappers of {{infobox sportsperson}}. Yes, updating the core code would make it available to the wrapper template, but each of them would still need an update to use it. MB 19:00, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

That's an interesting idea and I can imagine that it can be made to work. But the text will need to be visually more prominent (say, surrounded in a box), otherwise, I'm sure that most readers won't think to look at the tiny text in the top-right corner for that sort of information. – Uanfala (talk) 23:12, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I'll throw out another, perhaps more creative type of possible solution. This comes from what I've observed sports broadcasters tend to do, e.g. here/here, which is to use capitalization. In our implementation, this could come through smallcaps, e.g. this, or even a combination of smallcaps and tooltips, e.g. this. I'm curious what folks think of these, as my read of the discussion above so far is that few editors see hatnotes as the ideal solution but many also don't like footnotes. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:18, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
There's no accounting for taste, but I find the caps solution very unappealing aesthetically. These pages will stand out as a sore thumb imo, and applying this format will probably necessitate changes to several established MOS guidelines. 71.105.141.131 (talk) 01:53, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
Another interesting idea, but I'm not sure I can imagine people accepting it. It's also not going to work well in all cases (what do you do with Slavonic patronymics?) and if in the end we're going to rely on footnotes (or tooltips) this brings us back to the start of this discussion. – Uanfala (talk) 23:12, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Clarification

Is a hat note needed to distinguish Sam Phillips and Sam Phillips (musician)? Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:59, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Likely a good thing. Although the founder of Sun Records was not known as a musician, his fame is directly connected with the music industry and the unmodified term "musician" could cause some confusion. older ≠ wiser 19:29, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Timeline

Should Template:For timeline be included? Magnolia677 (talk) 21:41, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Included where? Since you are asking here, did you see in the documentation for {{for timeline}} that it says The use of this template in a hatnote at the top of an article should be avoided... MB 21:55, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@MB: It also says, "The template can be used at the top or below a narrative section", and the first line of this article says, "Hatnotes are short notes placed at the very top of...a section". Magnolia677 (talk) 23:07, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Hatnote for most recent instance?

Is it a valid to include a hatnote from x to the most recent instance of x? For example, NBA Finals currently includes the hatnote:

For the most recent series, see 2022 NBA Finals.

It doesn't seem to be for disambiguation, as "NBA Finals" is simply the main topic, however I could see that it might be useful for directing people based on readership bias towards ongoing and recent events. Any thoughts on this? --Jameboy (talk) 15:57, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

It's commonly done, and very helpful for the reader. There are examples at The Championships, Wimbledon and The Boat Race, though London Marathon only has an infobox link to the 2022 version, which is a redirect back to that article (it hasn't happened yet, so is "next" rather than "most recent"). PamD 18:09, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

And it's quite difficult to find a route from Grand National to 2022 Grand National - although the winners are displayed in an image box, the only link to the race is in a table a long way down. I think the article would be improved with a hatnote linking to the most recent. (I'm not a sports fan: those four are just about the only sports events in which I take any interest, having spent the afternoon watching Wimbledon.) PamD 18:15, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

...might be useful for directing people based on readership bias...: The important point is to direct readers to the actual page they could reasonably be searching for. I might remove it once the specific "recent" event has sufficiently passed.—Bagumba (talk) 00:52, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

"Hatnote" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Hatnote and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 July 31#Hatnote until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. F Adesdae 378 20:26, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

"Hat note", "Hatnotes" and "HATLINK" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirects Hat note, Hatnotes and HATLINK and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 July 31#Hatnote until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 17:52, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Multiple hatnotes

Multiple hatnotes are not, per se, "rare", but it is indeed very rare for that to be ideal. Hatnotes are supposed to be as minimalistic as possible, and having multiple ones is invariably a bad idea. Just combine the hatnotes and get readers to the actual article quicker. Red Slash 23:46, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

That's a gross oversimplification, especially when there are multiple topics to disambiguate, which does happen often enough. Perhaps we need a hatnote "wrapper" that can handle multiple separate hatnotes, but display them together to save space, much like {{multiple issues}} does for maintenance tags. It might be worth considering, especially if it hasn't been proposed before. BilCat (talk) 01:00, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

The existing guidelines are at Wikipedia:Hatnote#Length and number:

There should be as few hatnotes as possible. One single hatnote, which can accommodate several links, is greatly preferable to two or more. Multiple hatnotes may however be appropriate when each serves a different purpose, such as disambiguating the title or distinguishing similar terms.^[1]

References

^ The acceptability of multiple hatnotes was clarified in a 2016 discussion.

I don't think I see any need to change them, though being able to combine some (not all) hatnote statements in a single template, as suggested by BilCat, would be useful. – Uanfala (talk) 08:45, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

There is a multiple hatnote wrapper, {{hatnote group}}. I don't believe it is mentioned anywhere in the guidelines. There should be info on when to use it. MB 14:44, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that! It is exactly what I had in mind. But yes, we could use some guidance on when it's appropriate to use it. I would think possibly for three hatnotes, and probably for four or more, though I've rarely seen more than 4 legitimately necessary hatnotes at the top of one article. BilCat (talk) 20:57, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

That's the first I've heard of that template, and it seems like I'm not the only one since it looks like it's used on only 46 articles in all of WP. It seems far more useful than that number would indicate. Pompey is a good example. I've added a sentence to the guideline. Station1 (talk) 21:31, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's an improvement ( and it self-describes as "experimental"). Too soon to instruct editors to use it, without discussion. Different hatnotes, for different functions, each starting on a new line, is clearer for the reader.

OTOH we do need to deprecate multiple uses of {{for}}, which I've sometimes seen: a single {{about}} with multiple fields does the job. PamD 05:48, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

The template seems to work fine, so I would not be too concerned with it being marked "experimental". Since it is 7 years old, I think that can be removed. The author, Nihiltres, should be able to comment on that. The real issue seems to be whether grouping is an improvement. I think it is. WP:1HAT says There should be as few hatnotes as possible. One single hatnote, which can accommodate several links, is greatly preferable to two or more. This allows one hatnote without an endless variation of combined templates (e.g. redirect & redirect-distingish). It eliminates whitespace and makes the "hatnote" more concise. The majority of readers are already at the correct pages and skip the hatnote. For others, I don't think removing line breaks makes the hatnote too difficult to read. MB 17:26, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd previously left it marked "experimental" because I wasn't sure that the 2016 discussion had established that it would be acceptable to use {{hatnote group}}; it's certainly not so much "experimental" as "not officially supported for broad use"; I just hadn't updated the documentation since the time when it was experimental. It should be reasonably stable so long as the default classes included on hatnote templates remain the same; I should probably tweak Module:Hatnote to export its default classes to help bypass that particular fragility. If its use becomes more formally accepted and normalized, which I generally support, I'll probably do an AWB pass to simplify a lot of ugly uses of "text" parameters that combine hatnotes by embedding the second as raw text in the first. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 21:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it's correct to say that it's "clearer" to use two hatnotes on separate lines. The two purposes of a hatnote are that:

upon arriving at the wrong article, a reader can find the correct article quickly
upon arriving at the correct article, a reader can get to the content quickly

Person 1 (the minority of readers) need a bunch of blue links with as few extra words as possible (while still providing context). Person 2 doesn't want any hatnotes and therefore the hatnotes should be as unobtrusive as possible. For both cases, condensing hatnotes is the best way forward. Red Slash 22:59, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea to have more than one hatnote for the same title. But titles are not the same as articles. Condensed or combined hatnotes are not always possible when some of the hats are for redirects rather than for the main article title. In those cases, multiple hatnotes may be necessary. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:27, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

With respect, I disagree. I have personally never once seen an article that needed multiple hatnotes. Can you provide an example? Red Slash 17:48, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

The obvious case, as already set out on the page, is where article "X" has a disambiguation hatnote (linking to "X (DAB)"), and a redirect hatnote from "Y", pointing back to "Y (DAB)". Those can still be combined if one is happy with "Generic hatnote: slightly handwaving form of words, see X (DAB) or Y (DAB)." I think that's sacrificing clarity and any sort of natural-reading text for brute-force concision, personally. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 03:01, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

So let me put this to a direct question about the wide-spread and general use of {{hatnote group}}, given it represents a noticeable change of layout and there are both 'pro' and 'con' comments in this discussion. Should it genenerally be used? Does it depend on the number or specific types of hatnotes? DMacks (talk) 15:22, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

I support general use. Note that usage is up to nearly 300. At least once, I have added it and been reverted, so I would like to see a consensus documented. While I think that condensing hatnotes in this way is generally an improvement, I have elected not to use it at times when the resulting hatnote was just too awkward to parse. There are so many different hatnotes that can be combined in different orders that I think it would be difficult to specify exactly when to use or not use it. MB 16:50, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

This guideline needs to expressly address puns and homonyms

I am seeing many editors adding hatnotes involving puns, such as Shepard's Citations and Sherardising (which I disagreed with).

Another issue is I Ran and Iran, which are close homonyms in American English. Like many Americans, I was surprised to realize the classic New Wave song is not actually about Iran (it's confusing because many Second British Invasion songs were actually about the Middle East, such as Rock the Casbah). Then I found a source on that (on how many Americans actually mistook the song as one about Iran) and added it to the article on the song.

We need a consensus on this. Coolcaesar (talk) 20:15, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

unusual hatnote

Came across UMC (company) just recently. It's a redirect to a Taiwanese company called United Microelectronics Corporation. Thing is, this company has (or used to have) an American subsidiary called Unicorn Microelectronics Corporation.

Had never come across this case before, where I want to use a {{redirect}} variant, but with no link elsewhere. If you get here expecting the California Unicorn, there needs to be a hatnote saying you're on the right page (despite it being about a foreign company). I checked out ALL of the hatnotes I found relevant, none of them could do what I wanted to do: {{Redirect}}, {{Redirect2}}, {{Redirect-multi}}, {{Redirect-several}}, {{Redirect-synonym}}, {{Redirect-distinguish}}, {{Redirect-distinguish-text}}, {{Redirect-distinguish-for}}, {{Distinguish}}, {{About-distinguish}}, {{About-distinguish-text}}...

Feel free to give my solution a look; I would appreciate learning if there's a better way. CapnZapp (talk) 19:36, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: I would tell you to use {{for}} however, unless I put it in wrong, the subsidiary doesn't seem to have an article. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 19:41, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

The subsidiary is mentioned at the target page of the redirect. That is, the redirect redirects to the correct page no matter whether you were looking for UMC i.e. United Microelectronics Corporation or UMC i.e. Unicorn Microelectronics Corporation. CapnZapp (talk) 19:48, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Then is a hatnote really necessary then? ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 19:50, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

A valid question. I made the judgement call that it is conceivable that a user looking for, say, old chips from Unicorn Microelectronics or even just "UMC", finds UMC (company) and gets confused when presented with an article on a Taiwanese company. I mean, it is far from obvious that the article will eventually mention Unicorn. Let's take a specific example: the article on MOS Technology 6507 is illustrated by a UMC chip. It is far from obvious that this is an American chip and not a Taiwanese one. At the same time, to a reader somewhat versed in semiconductor history, it would have been unexpected to use a foreign chip as illustration (and indeed, it was made by Unicorn in the US, not United abroad).

That said, I'm open to alternative solutions. In fact, my primary reason for coming here was to a) showcase what I found to be a very special use case: This appears to be an instance where a given redirect can have two separate meanings that still lead to the same page! A hatnote to explain that XYZ leads here but that XYZ can mean two things are common - but how often do the same article explain both of those two things? And b) satisfy my curiosity: has this sort of thing happened before? is it actually so rare that my generic solution suffices or should I have looked longer and harder for a specialized hat note already existing? Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 11:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Hmm... well what doesn't help is that Unicorn MC doesn't have its own section on that article (although the article is quite poorly written inmo) so we can't just make a hatnot that takes users to that section. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 13:49, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that there are other UMC's that are companies at UMC#Companies and businesses. I'm not a big fan of parenthetically disambiguated titles

still being ambiguous
being used as "primary topics"

Ideally, I'd say to redirect UMC (company) to the dab page as an incomplete disambiguation of UMC. Barring that, this "primary topic" needs a hatnote that goes to UMC (disambiguation), which should have an entry to Unicorn Microelectronics Corporation, which should redirect to its parent, United Microelectronics Corporation. —Bagumba (talk) 14:37, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I do agree that UMC (company) should redirect to UMC as incomplete dab since that doesn't seem to be the primary topic. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:42, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Feel free to start a discussion, ideally involving the editors that partook in the 2019 Redirects for Discussion. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 14:56, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I looked at that and it confuses me. Why was there even an RFD if both editors agreed that the redirect was fine as is? ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 16:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I can't answer that. CapnZapp (talk) 17:17, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

It appears that out of my two topics, only one is generating discussion. But isn't the discussion about how to handle this particular case better held elsewhere?

The other discussion (that I see no other place for than here) is: if you review the example case (permanent link), do you agree the need for, let's see if I can phrase this coherently; a "redirect-disambiguate" that does not link is... uncommon? In other words, are there really no specialized hat notes suitable for such cases? Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 14:54, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it seems uncommon. Use the free-form {{Hatnote}} if there is a legitimate one-off case. Otherwise, follow my above suggestions specifically for UMC (company). —Bagumba (talk) 15:13, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Use the free-form Hatnote if there is a legitimate one-off case. Just to be clear, I did. CapnZapp (talk) 17:16, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Hatnotes gone wild

If you'd like an example of when hatnotes go too far, please take a look at Science Publishing Group. The hatnote list is almost as long as the article. I just don't see how this can be a time saver for anybody. Praemonitus (talk) 18:55, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Most of those terms shouldn't redirect to the article as they are not mentioned in the article, and most of what they are potentially confusing with don't have articles either so that mess is a big WP:NOTDIR violation. Thryduulf (talk) 12:09, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Looking further there are 1162 redirects to that page that are not mentioned in the article, some of them having names that probably have better targets. There is also a discussion about some of them at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 March 13#Humanities and Social Sciences. Thryduulf (talk) 12:18, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I see the list has been trimmed a bit, so thanks for that. I thought about making a disambig page and sending the redirects there. Praemonitus (talk) 13:13, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Suggested fix for this issue and others

There's one concept which would solve this problem and many others. Which is to say hatnotes are only for when there is a reasonable expectation that the person who landed at the article thought they were going to the article mentioned in the hatnote. Another problem which I encountered (which this would solve) is illustrated by this example. Let's say that there is a wp:notable garage band named "Joe Biden" someone creates the Joe Biden (band) article. There is nothing in this guideline to prevent or even discourage putting a hatnote at the top of the Joe Biden article which says: "This article is about the President of the United States. For the garage band Joe Biden see Joe Biden (band)" Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Assuming that the band is notable, why would we not want a hatnote to it? If there were enough other uses of "Joe Biden" for there to be a disambiguation page then we wouldn't exclude it so I don't understand why doing something different for hatnotes would benefit the encyclopaedia or its readers? Thryduulf (talk) 12:06, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, first, I agree that a hatnote to a disambig page is always fine. That means that there are multiple articles/topics involved. Now first noting a few things about my example, that it was placed at an ultra prominent topic article, and the target of the redirect is obscure, (albeit still meeting the wp:notability requirement which doesn't require real world notability) and so practically nobody that lands at Joe Biden article was expecting to land at the band article. My argument is that making the first "sentence" of the Joe Biden article being a mention of a garage band is inappropriate use of the spot and promotional and not something that we should be making every reader of the Joe Biden article read. But my idea would also prevent want was noted in the OP. In essence putting the "see also" section before the lead where it is clear that those aren't what the reader expected to land on. North8000 (talk) 13:35, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

While very few people wanting the band article will expect it to be at Joe Biden, they will have gone there because they don't know where it is and know that there will be a prominent link. Except because someone has deemed it "promotional" (and you will have to explain how a hatnote to an article about a notable topic can be promotional, and would you say the same thing about Joe Biden (racehorse), Joe Biden (Bahamian politician), Joe Biden (academic), Joe Biden (statue), Joe Biden (asteroid), Joe Biden (beetle), etc, etc? Who, using what objective criteria, would get to decide which articles are so notable they need protection (for want of a better term) and which articles are not notable enough to grace the hallowed pixels of a super-notable topic's article?) there isn't a link. Adding a link to the see also section would not be helpful to those people looking for the other article, or compatible with MOS:SEEALSO's requirement that articles linked should be related to the topic of the article or be in the same defining category.. Hatnotes are not the first sentence of the article, they are not even part of the article, they exist only because of the technical limitation that two pages cannot have the same name. Thryduulf (talk) 14:16, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I seem to remember a furore about Book of Mormon when a hatnote pointing to the musical was first added, which people felt was disrespectful to a sacred text (there's now a dab page to point to). It happens. Yes, a band could get itself more conspicuous by calling itself "Joe Biden" ... but only if it was Wiki-notable, and the article non-promotional, etc. It's just the way Wikipedia works, and I don't at present see a better way to do it. PamD 15:39, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

FWIW My idea was just "hatnotes are only for when there is a reasonable expectation that the person who landed at the article thought they were going to the article mentioned in the hatnote." And the opening of my post discussed that it would solve the OP problem. Everything beyond that was just another example and answering questions about the other example. But once I did have a case like my example. A relatively obscure band named an album the same name as a major musical genre and via a hatnote got their album listed at the top of the main article on that genre. On the flip side, Thryduulf's "they will have gone there because they don't know where it is and know that there will be a prominent link." is a valid one for my example. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:38, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

NAMB not being 'prescribed by the guideline'

I just had an interaction about WP:NAMB at [5] that hasn't happened to me in... decades? In that case, I would be really surprised if there was an average English reader who managed to land on a gazetteer entry for a tiny village and then really needed a hatnote to get back on track to look for other eponymous topics.

But upon closer look at the phrasing, I found it weird to have a guideline on this but one that also says 'ehh I'm not really a guideline'. This seems to have come about as a result of [6] which seems to have followed Wikipedia talk:Hatnote/Archive 5#Request for comment - hatnotes on non-ambiguous titles. (And before that edit there was a lot of edit-warring about it.) This was almost a decade ago, though, and I've been dropping these kinds of redundant hatnotes without even knowing something had changed. Reading through the discussion with fresh eyes, I see a handful of people wanted to actually encourage these kinds of hatnotes in a discussion of 20 people, though. A guideline means there are logical exceptions already, so I'm not sure why we would want to claim there's a proper lack of consensus on what to do, it just doesn't really seem like an accurate description of what's the practical reality. --Joy (talk) 08:40, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

That RfC was 9 years ago, and you make good arguments for why consensus may have changed—I think another RfC could be a good idea. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 20:43, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I mean, the previous one wasn't really done in a way that built an actual consensus. If the discussion closer had been the person amending the guideline, that would have been much better than what happened, that it was the proposer, and there was a fair bit of edit warring about it, too. --Joy (talk) 18:55, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

@Joy Hey, wanted to chime in on this. I've noticed variability on the issue because the Manual of Style isn't set in stone and had been wondering the same as you. I fall in the "Include hatnotes" camp because most of the time, the traffic comes from search engines, my own searches included. And when I land on an article that might not be my intended, I want a link to follow "back up the tree" so to speak.

@Snowmanonahoe I think starting up an RfC on this would be excellent. Jasonkwe (talk) (contribs) 17:32, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I think I saw such arguments back then, but even back then I think some noted that this could be an automated feature instead of yet another thing requiring maintenance at the top of the page. Maybe something could be implemented in a template to make it more configurable? --Joy (talk) 18:03, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

If the previous RfC was "no consensus", no changes should have been made per WP:NOCONSENSUS:

When discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles end without consensus, the common result is to retain the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.

No consensus to change a guideline should not render the existing guideline to then be effectively obsolete. As WP:IAR always applies, the caveat for edge cases did not need to cast the whole guideline into doubt.—Bagumba (talk) 18:32, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Proper hatnote to point to topic/disambig of similar word

Satisfactory is a video game, and appears to be the only topic named "Satisfactory" on WP. However, it is close to the word satisfaction of which there is a reasonable disambiguation page with numerous topics. Because there may be an off chance that a user searching for "satisfaction" may stumble upon "satisfactory" first, I think a hatnote on the video game page to the disambiguation page is reasonable (and certainly can't hurt), but none of the templates here given seem the best first, or at least what wording to use.

Is there a good hatnote to use for this purpose? I have something there now but would want to know if there's an established route here. Masem (t) 13:36, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

{{for}} and {{about}} allow customized text for the other uses of the term, so its mostly a matter of how to word it. Otherwise, there's the generic {{other uses}} —Bagumba (talk) 16:07, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation § Best practices when a similar name is massively less notable

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation § Best practices when a similar name is massively less notable. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 23:49, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Hatnote use for biography title clarification

So I recently noticed an issue with Template talk:Family name hatnote#Extraneous links which led to the discovery how this whole class of hatnotes is not really documented in the WP:HAT guideline since over a decade ago, and it's not clear which parts of the current guideline text are supposed to apply to them at all.

Since the previous few discussions about this at the village pump and at this talk page were never properly decided, I suggest we have a WP:RFC for it here. Does anyone see a better venue for this? --Joy (talk) 20:16, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

RfC for what, exactly? What is the question to pose? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:27, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish as I said above, to what extent is the hatnote guideline supposed to apply to these anthroponymy hatnotes? Right now the guideline mentions something at WP:HATFAM but only footnotes, not hatnotes, which doesn't really match the reality. This in turn links to a pretty odd text in the template documentation that sort of just describes a lack of consensus. That is just not an actual guideline. --Joy (talk) 14:54, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

"Hatnote" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Hatnote has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 September 1 § Hatnote until a consensus is reached. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:36, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

[1] The acceptability of multiple hatnotes was clarified in a 2016 discussion.

[1]

v t e Hatnote templates
Wikipedia:Hatnote Wikipedia:Disambiguation Wikipedia:Redirect
Generic	{{Hatnote}} {{Self-reference}}
For and about	{{For}} {{For-text}} (for custom text) {{For-multi}} (for multiple uses) {{About}} Variations: {{Other uses}} {{Other uses of}} {{Redirect-distinguish-for}} {{About-distinguish}} {{About-distinguish-text}}
Other topics	{{Other people}} {{About other people}} (adds "about" description) {{Similar names}} {{Other storms}} {{Other places}} {{Other ships}}
Redirect	{{Redirect}} {{Redirect2}} (for two redirects) {{Redirect-multi}} (for multiple redirects) {{Redirect-several}} (for several redirects, without listing each) {{Redirect-synonym}} {{Redirect-distinguish}} {{Redirect-distinguish-text}} {{Redirect-distinguish-for}} {{Technical reasons}}
Distinguish	{{Distinguish}} (supports custom text) {{About-distinguish}} {{About-distinguish-text}} (for custom text) {{Redirect-distinguish}} {{Redirect-distinguish-text}} (for custom text) {{Redirect-distinguish-for}}
For use in sections	{{Main}} {{Main if exists}} {{Main list}} {{Further}} {{Further-text}} (for custom text) {{Further interlanguage link}} {{See also}} {{See also if exists}} {{See also-text}} (for custom text) {{For outline}} {{For timeline}}
Special	{{Broader}} {{For introduction}} {{See Wiktionary}} {{Transcluding article}} {{Transcluded section}}
Subject specific	{{About year}} {{Highway detail hatnote}} {{For LMST}} {{WikiIPA}}
Category:Hatnote templates modules for [family] names for lists hatnote templates for category pages