Talk:Dental

Redirect

Based on the links to this page it should be a redirect to Dental consonant (as it repeatedly has been). Although it is a pretty general word, as a term it doesn't seem to exist outside of the linguistics articles. For example, the current disambiguation page is really nothing more than an (incomplete) list of articles which begin with the word -- none of which, I would guess, are ever referred to as a "dental". If you disagree and re-undo this, do not fail to update this page's links to point at Dental consonant. Ewlyahoocom 12:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I understand what you're saying, but let me still argue my case: When I review the links to Dental, I see a big mix of different subjects. Many are linguistic, yes, but many are referring to other uses of the term. For exactly that reason (that the term "dental" is ambiguous), I think that a disambiguation page is appropriate, rather than automatically assuming the term of "Dental consonant".

I also think that the link to the index starting with "dental" (though it is a clever way of handling it), isn't thorough enough -- like it doesn't catch words starting with "dentist".

When I've dealt with disambiguation pages in other parts of Wikipedia, the general rule that I've followed is that if there are one or two cases of ambiguity, I can probably handle it with a brief disambiguation note at the top of the main page. But if there are three or more, then a disambiguation page is really the most appropriate way to handle things. In this case, with over 100 pages involved, I feel strongly that sending "dental" to its own page is the best choice. --Elonka 16:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not redirect this page. When it's changed to point to Dental consonant, it causes a robot ripple effect through other pages on Wikipedia, which ends up making some really absurd auto-changes. For example, the term Dental assistant gets redirected to Dental consonant. When the page is set like this with a disambiguation list, things are handled correctly, and the robots don't get confused. --Elonka 17:10, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And why would you ever think redirecting Dental assistant to this page, disambiguation or not, would be a good idea? Ewlyahoocom 18:07, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]