Talk:Mariner (disambiguation)

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Mariner should be the disambiguation page[edit]

The page named Mariner has a tangled history. It began, appropriately in my opinion, as Mariner, a disambiguation page. At some point it was changed to being a redirect to Sailor. Along the way, somebody else tried to hijack the page to say, "Mariner is the nickname for Marino Cortina", whoever that is! This led to the page being temporarily deleted altogether. There has apparently been a struggle between editors who maintain it should be a disambiguation page and editors who want it to be a redirect to Sailor.

There is currently an excellent page named Mariner (disambiguation) although the average WP user would never find it.

I recommend the following:

1 This page should be deleted entirely.

2 The name of the page Mariner (disambiguation) should be changed to Mariner.

IOW, Mariner should BE the disambiguation page. No page called Mariner (disambiguation) is needed.

Another way to do it: this page could simply redirect to Mariner (disambiguation).

Here is the motivation:

1 There are a lot of other things named Mariner. But the abrupt redirect makes it very difficult to find the relevant disambiguation page. In essence, the disambiguation page is hidden from the user. Even experienced WP users could fail to ever know that it exists. In fact, it took me a while to find it.

2 There is little reason to single out Sailor from the many other uses of Mariner. A lot of users may be looking for one of the Mariner probes or somebody with the surname Mariner. In fact, The meaning Mariner as sailor is right there at the top of the disambiguation page. This adequately serves the need of those people who do not know what mariner means.

3 See Wikipedia is not a dictionary. If somebody does not know what Mariner means, WP is not the place to find out. I suspect that those who vote for Sailor are motivated by a didactic & scholarly sense of purity in language, at the cost of convenience and usability of the encyclopedia.

4 The disambiguation page is not even mentioned on this page. This was perhaps an oversight. But, even if a mention is added, there is still little reason stay with the present redirect.

--Toploftical (talk) 16:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Do a Requested Move please. Follow the instruction from WP:RM#Requesting_a_single_page_move, at Mariner (disambiguation), asking to move it to Mariner with rational such as "no primarytopic"; if approved, the redirect there will be deleted. Dicklyon (talk) 18:09, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 27 September 2019[edit]

This discussion was listed at Wikipedia:Move review on 21 October 2019. The result of the move review was Overturn and relist.

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. I don't think I'm involved, but if you scour my history, maybe I am? I can't recall and this definitely seems like the sort of discussion I would have previously been involved in. Let me know if I am and I'll undo the close. Anyway, it's really obvious that there is no consensus here. "One size does not fit all" is probably the only thing that all agree on. (non-admin closure) Red Slash 01:55, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mariner (disambiguation) → Mariner – The reasons for the move are outlined on the Talk page of the Page Mariner Toploftical (talk) 18:24, 27 September 2019 (UTC)--Relisting. Cúchullain ^t/c 19:46, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose mariner correctly redirects to sailor. In ictu oculi (talk) 18:44, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support

The page named Mariner has a tangled history. It began, appropriately in my opinion, as Mariner, a disambiguation page. At some point it was changed to being a redirect to Sailor. Along the way, somebody else tried to hijack the page to say, "Mariner is the nickname for Marino Cortina", whoever that is! This led to the page being temporarily deleted altogether. There has apparently been a struggle between editors who maintain it should be a disambiguation page and editors who want it to be a redirect to Sailor.

There is currently an excellent page named Mariner (disambiguation) although the average WP user would never find it.

Mariner should BE the disambiguation page for the following reasons:

1 There are a lot of other things named Mariner. But the abrupt redirect makes it very difficult for the average user to find the relevant disambiguation page. Casual users of WP have never heard of disambiguation pages. In essence, the disambiguation page is hidden from the novice user. Even experienced WP users could fail to notice that it exists. In fact, it took me a while to find it.

2 There is little reason to single out Sailor from the many other uses of Mariner. A lot of users may be looking for one of the Mariner probes or somebody with the surname Mariner or one of the many sports teams. In fact, The meaning Mariner as sailor is right there at the top of the disambiguation page. This adequately serves the need of those people who do not know what mariner means.

3 See Wikipedia is not a dictionary. If somebody does not know what Mariner means, WP is not the place to find out. I suspect that those who vote for Sailor are motivated by a didactic & scholarly sense of purity in language, at the cost of convenience and usability of the encyclopedia. User In ictu oculi simply says, "mariner correctly redirects to sailor". Yes, it is correct. But is it helpful? Someone who types Mariner in the search box is either (1) looking for one of the many non-sailor things named Mariner, or (2) does not know that mariner means sailor because he would have typed sailor if he did know. But even such a language challenged person will immediately see "Mariner is a term for a sailor" at the top of the disambiguation page.

4 The disambiguation page is not even mentioned on this page. This was perhaps an oversight. But, even if a mention is added, there is still little reason stay with the present redirect. I doubt that most people typing mariner are looking for sailor. Why force ALL users to jump right to Sailor without even giving them a hint that other kinds of mariners exist.

--Toploftical (talk) 16:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to "sailor" is correct. That article has had a hatnote to Mariner (disambiguation) for many years, so I don't understand this part of the above argument. PC78 (talk) 21:03, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, now I do see the hatnote. I did not notice it before and neither did the person who called this redirect to Sailor to my attention. He was a college professor and was looking for something about the Mariner space program. He said he wasted five minutes trying to find the info he was looking for. He did not know about disambiguation pages. BTW, it would make a lot more sense to have the Mariner (disambiguation) hatnote first. Who gives a damn about The Seafarer (disambiguation). I think the chance of somebody typing in "mariner" but they are really looking for "the seafarer" is about .001%. Unless you do not believe in the dictum: Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Hatnotes solve some of the problem of hidden information, but are easily overlooked.--15:48, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Dab pages and hatnotes are the system we have – did your college professor not think to search for Mariner space program? The primary meaning of "mariner" is "sailor", for which we have an encyclopedic article; oher uses of the name do not preclude there being a primary topic, or in this case a primary redirect, and I don't see anything on the dab page with comparible significance. And who "gives a damn" about The Seafarer (disambiguation)? Anyone looking for that title who ends up at the sailor article, obviously. PC78 (talk) 23:58, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support – I can't see why anyone thinks there's an appropriate Primarytopic for this very ambiguous term with a huge disambig page. Note: there are about a hundred uses of the Mariner redirect to Sailor, which I volunteer to fix. Dicklyon (talk) 02:58, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Surely that's about a hundred examples of why the primary redirect is correct? Most if not all of those refer to "mariner" as "sailor". PC78 (talk) 03:34, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - I think we all know that mariners are sailors. But WP is not a dictionary, and that's not likely the article people are looking for in most cases. Dicklyon (talk) 14:54, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    - Based on what evidence? It seems entirely reasonable to me that most people looking up mariner should be seeking information about sailors. People citing WP:NOT#DICTIONARY are completely misrepresenting what that policy says. PC78 (talk) 17:03, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      - Right back at ya: "most people looking up mariner ... seeking information about sailors"! Based on what evidence? Wouldn't people seeking information on sailors just type in "sailor"?--Toploftical (talk) 17:33, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving aside the fact that there are a great many 'mariner' articles that all get a moderate amount of traffic, two topics are overwhelmingly the most visited: The Seattle Mariners and the various NASA Mariner probes. Here is a rough table of Hits Per Day (HPD):

Article page	HPD
Seattle Mariners	600 to 1000
various Mariner probes	1000+
Sailor	200 to 300
Mariner of the Seas	200 to 300
Mariner (album)	50 to 200
master mariner	40 to 80

--Toploftical (talk) 14:09, 1 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support per nom and supporting discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:53, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Because Wikipedia is indeed not a dictionary but an encyclopedia I support this change. VWA (talk) 15:50, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Further arguments for support

The following pages have an incorrect redirect to Sailor

Concatenated error correction code should instead link to Mariner 8 or Mariner 9
Chronology of discoveries of water on Mars should instead link to Mariner 8 or Mariner 9
Bertram Fox Hayes should instead link to master mariner
Minerva Foundation should instead link to master mariner
Dan Armstrong should instead link to Mariner (band) or something. (no such article at present)

There may be other such pages, I did not check them all. Admittedly most links to mariner should go to sailor, but not all of them. In my opinion, a lot of them are a result of overlinking, but they don't really do any harm if the link is correct. One of the advantages of DAB pages is that inappropriate links do not go unnoticed because the offending editor is notified that they have linked to a DAB page. They are forced to think about what they really want to link to. This is so much safer.

I also found a major inconsistency. Unlike the page Mariner which redirects to Sailor, the page Mariners redirects to Mariner (disambiguation). BTW, there are no pages that link to Mariners, so the matter is moot and the page should probably be deleted.

Dicklyon has volunteered to fix all the links to mariner and make sure they are correct. I think we should let him do it.--Toploftical (talk) 20:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd note that Mariners was originally a redirect to Sailor even though it indeed does currently redirect to the DAB it was also a DAB and a redirect to Seattle Mariners. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:45, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Sailor is the clear primary meaning of this word. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:43, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Further remarks by Toploftical

This is supposed to be a discussion of the proposed move. I have added a lot of arguments to this "discussion". The editors opposed have presented no arguments. Instead, with one exception, they just keep repeating parrotlike the same statement.

In ictu oculi's entire argument is: "mariner correctly redirects to sailor"

Necrothesp's entire argument is: "Sailor is the clear primary meaning of this word"

The only opposer who presents any arguments at all is PC78 who correctly points out hatnotes as ameliorating some of the problems I associate with the redirect to sailor. But he also says at one point, "It seems entirely reasonable to me that most people looking up mariner should be seeking information about sailors." This is just pure personal opinion, something I have also been guilty of when I said a lot of the links may be due to overlinking.

I have never questioned the statement that sailor is the primary meaning. What I question is the policy of blindly redirecting words to their primary meaning no matter how inconvenient that is to the user, no matter how illogical, no matter what information it conceals in in almost invisible hatnotes.

I am questioning the Wikipedia policy. Some senior administrators really should think about these issues.

We do not redirect walker to pedestrian.

We do not redirect car to carriage.

We redirect doctor to a DAB but redirect carpenter to the trade.

Sometimes common sense rules and sometimes it doesn't.

BTW, hatnotes (I do like them) would work a lot better if they were bolded or, even better, in color. Then people might not miss them like my professor friend did when looking for one of the Mariner probes.

As editor Necrothesp himself says on his home page (about certain deletionists), "Any appeal to common sense is shouted down and mocked, as these editors seem uncomfortable with using judgement and discretion and instead prefer to obsessively apply dogma and fictional rules."

I will shut up now. Thank you for your time.--Toploftical (talk) 16:17, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why on earth would we redirect car to carriage when the common meaning of car is the meaning described in the article. Why would we redirect walker to pedestrian when walker is an extremely common name? Why would we not make doctor a dab page when there are several common meanings of the word? Why would not redirect carpenter to carpentry when the craftsman is by far the commonest meaning of the word? Common sense has prevailed in every case you mention. You say I have presented no argument. I have in fact presented one of the best available arguments for Wikipedia article titles, that "sailor" is by far the commonest meaning of the word "mariner" and is therefore the prime topic for the word. You not agreeing with it does not invalidate my argument. It is clear that you do not agree with Wikipedia's article naming policy. That is your prerogative of course, but a single RM is not the place to discuss a policy that has been in place for many years or to sneer ("presented no arguments", "repeating parrotlike the same statement") at experienced editors who do support it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:10, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That was precisely my point.

Why would we redirect walker to pedestrian when walker is an extremely common name?
Why would we redirect carpenter to Carpentry when Carpenter is an extremely common name?--Toploftical (talk) 17:39, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Because common sense dictates that people looking for "walker" are more likely to be looking for someone called walker, whereas people looking for "carpenter" are more likely to be looking for the craft. One size does not fit all. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:02, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So you would be open to the argument that common sense dictates that mariner should be a DAB page since people looking for "mariner" are more likely to be looking for the the Seattle Mariners (600 to 1000 hits per day) or one of the Mariner probes (1000+ hits per day) than than they are for sailor (200 to 300 hits per day). Not to mention all of the other many mariners on the mariner DAB page.--20:57, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

There is certainly a case for making Mariners a dabpage, but no, I would say that the singular should remain a redirect to the primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:57, 11 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The primary topic for "mariner" is sailor. Calidum 21:20, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - as noted above, when considering the long-term significance criterion of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, the dictionary definition of "mariner", which is a sailor, is indeed the primary topic and the Mariner page is correctly WP:PRIMARYREDIRECTed to Sailor. — Amakuru (talk) 20:02, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per WP: PRIMARYTOPIC regarding a term's "long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value" which "sailor" clearly has, to the exclusion of all other entries on this page. SteveStrummer (talk) 20:51, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. "Sailor" is the correct target for Mariner, which should remain a primary topic redirect to Sailor. P. I. Ellsworth, ed. ^put'r there 01:01, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Per WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 11:12, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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