User talk:T f m f

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, T f m f, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Mike Christie (talk) 19:42, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages

Take a look at John Smith, which is a disambiguation page for people named John Smith -- you could copy the text on that page and edit it so it suits what you need. There is a page here which provides information about what should be disambiguated, and formatting information and so forth. If you can tell me the name you want to create the page for I can do it for you. Mike Christie (talk) 22:47, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

That would be wonderful if you could do it for me, because I still don't understand how to make the page, i.e., how to make the words of the disambiguation page show up, where to type it, etc. The only complication is that the names that need disambiguation are on Italian Wiki. Here's the problem. The article currently labeled "Paolo Brera" is for a rock singer. The newer article is for Paolo Brera who's a journalist, novelist, translator, and economist. However, in order to distinguish Paolo the writer from the singer who already has a Wiki page, the person writing the writer's biography inserted his middle name, entitling the article "Paolo Alberto Brera." However, Paolo Brera the writer never uses his middle name professionally, and all his books and articles appear with "Paolo Brera" as the author. So anyone searching for him would simply look for the name Paolo Brera. This is what we need: 1. Change of the title of the writer's biography from Paolo Alberto Brera to Paolo Brera, and 2. a disambiguation page listing:

   *Paolo Brera (scrittore, giornalista, traduttore, economista)--This is the newer article currently entitled Paolo Alberto Brera, which needs to be renamed Paolo Brera
  *Paolo Brera (cantante) --This is th older article about the rock singer 

Thank you so much for offering to fix this for me. T f m f (talk) 03:00, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Hello again. If it's not going to be possible for you to deal with disambiguation on a non-English Wiki page, would you be able to change the title of the article from Paolo Alberto Brera to Paolo Brera, and then perhaps someone else with tehnical skills in the Italian Wikipedia will have to step in to do the disambiguation? Or, in the alternative, can you recommend a colleague in the Italian Wikipedia operation who's kind and helpful? The subject of the article posted a question on one of the help pages, explaining the problem in detail, but unfortunately the person who responded was not inclined to be helpful. T f m f (talk) 14:30, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll have a go at doing this tomorrow -- sorry I didn't have time tonight. Mike Christie (talk) 02:20, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've had a look at this. I don't think I'll be able to actually do this for you on the Italian Wikipedia; I don't speak Italian. However, I can tell you what would be done here and you can try doing that there. To see what the English Wikipedia would do, look at Michael Dobbs. There are two people named Michael Dobbs, and people looking for one need to be able to find the other. So there's a note at the top of the default Michael Dobbs article saying "For the American author, see Michael Dobbs (US author)". I think what you want is a note on each Paolo Brera page saying "For the journalist, see ..." and "For the rock singer, see ...". In the English Wikipedia there's a template that can do this but I don't know how it's done over there. You were asking for a disambiguation page, but if there are only two pages then a disambiguation page isn't needed -- just these "hatnotes" as they're called.

The other question is the name of the article. I think it would be best to find local help for that; you should be able to post on a page like this and get some help. You can also ask about the hatnote I mentioned above and see if there's an equivalent there.

Ask again if you have any questions, but I can't help much with the Italian Wikipedia -- I think you need to use the help page there. Mike Christie (talk) 09:41, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for looking into it. The subject of the article did post on a help page. The response was worse than unhelpful. The person answering said that she didn't think he was important enough to have an article written about him and that she wouldn't help him change the title to "Paolo Brera" until and unless contributors improved the article and demonstrated its worthiness. She also posted a note on the article page saying that the subject didn't seem to be distinguished enough to deserve an encyclopedia page. So much for asking for help.... (He may not be "famous" but I'm confident that he's distinguished enough to merit an article on Wikipedia. But it's true tht the article needs to be fleshed out and more citations are needed.)

About the disambiguation: I thought that even when there are only two people with the same name, if neither is the "primary" one, then there should be a disambiguation page instead of a little note at the top of each page. In either case, I couldn't figure out where and how to type in either the notes or the disambiguation page.

Do you happen to know anyone nice who works in your role in the Italian Wiki?

Thanks again for considering doing this. I can understand why not knowing the language makes it too difficult for you to do the edits. T f m f (talk) 12:24, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Update: Someone fixed it. The article title has been changed, and there's a disambiguation page for Paolo Brera, with a link to the Paolo Brera (scrittore) article. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Brera Problem solved. T f m f (talk) 14:51, 7 May 2010 (UTC)