Talk:Assignment: Relieve Emergency Shortage of Gamma Quadrant Commodity

Hi @User:Unscjon117, what do you think about renaming the page to "Assignment: Relieve Emergency Shortage" to have consistent naming with and  that don't include the variable part in the name of the page? Trajos (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Disagree, along with both of the other pages, as they're too generic. For articles representing multiple similar assignments, the name should reflect as much of the actual assignment name as (reasonably) possible. In this particular case, it also makes players aware of what may be required as input to the assignment, for players looking to utilize same. Unscjon117 (talk) 11:54, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I've done the website search, and the articles appear in search results as per your suggestion, so we can keep as it is, as long as consistency can be achieved with other pages with variable parts in their name. I've added disambiguation links using the existing names. Trajos (talk) 16:31, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't consider the result of an (external?) website search to be definitive. As the "official wiki" (see icon at the top of every page here), the STO wiki itself is definitive with regard to STO - (external) links can be (temporarily, in most cases) accounted for via redirect links/pages. In this particular case, the article has only existed for three (3) days, so I would put little weight (if any) on such results. Sites that link to other external sites are generally considered to be responsible for maintaining and updating such links; in the case of search engines, the same processes that add links to their db also periodically check for and remove any expired links.
 * It is a more common practice (and simpler/cleaner) to use simple links in these cases (e.g. "Are you looking for the uncommon or rare assignments?"). Disambiguation links should not be used where there is no ambiguity. A better example of ambiguity might be if the wiki had multiple (unrelated) articles referencing "credit" (which it does); that might result in a "Credit (disambiguation)" page, containing links to articles on "Energy credit", "Fleet credit", "Mission: Passing Credit", etc. As the articles in question here are related and have unique names, there is no ambiguity; referencing them by their corresponding rarity simply provides additional information - not disambiguation. The affected pages should be revised accordingly.
 * Re: other articles, using as an example, it would be appropriate to rename the article itself (as was done), leaving a redirect (not a disambiguation page) behind temporarily until any (important/significant) pages that link to it (as indicated by the "What links here" sidebar page) can be addressed (and in that case, the only remaining pages are Talk pages for other than that article: one for a nameless user, one in a Sandbox, and *this* Talk page). While removal of the redirect is not critical, allowing... ~30 days after such a rename before deleting the redirect would not be unreasonable. Unscjon117 (talk) 16:11, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Re: other articles, using as an example, it would be appropriate to rename the article itself (as was done), leaving a redirect (not a disambiguation page) behind temporarily until any (important/significant) pages that link to it (as indicated by the "What links here" sidebar page) can be addressed (and in that case, the only remaining pages are Talk pages for other than that article: one for a nameless user, one in a Sandbox, and *this* Talk page). While removal of the redirect is not critical, allowing... ~30 days after such a rename before deleting the redirect would not be unreasonable. Unscjon117 (talk) 16:11, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Re: other articles, using as an example, it would be appropriate to rename the article itself (as was done), leaving a redirect (not a disambiguation page) behind temporarily until any (important/significant) pages that link to it (as indicated by the "What links here" sidebar page) can be addressed (and in that case, the only remaining pages are Talk pages for other than that article: one for a nameless user, one in a Sandbox, and *this* Talk page). While removal of the redirect is not critical, allowing... ~30 days after such a rename before deleting the redirect would not be unreasonable. Unscjon117 (talk) 16:11, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

--- Hi, @User:Unscjon117, the extent of definitiveness of search on external websites aside, what is more important is which search engine the typical user would use to get to the article. If they would in fact use an external website - then articles should be generated in a way as to facilitate that search. In my case however I only use the internal search feature available on this website, because I like the autocomplete feature that would not be focused on results from this website if an external search engine was used. As regards removing redirect pages - same thing, if the user search makes it more likely to find a redirect page, then I would not remove it even after 30 days to make it easier for users to find the final page they are looking for. As regards to the common practice aside - again same thing, practices exist for readers, not the other way around. Thus if breaking a common practice makes it more intuitive/easier for a typical reader to use this website - then in those specific cases I would reconsider applying that practice.

"Disambiguation" in my mind does not necessarily have to refer to a situation where an obvious "ambiguity" is present, but would also include situations with several potentially related concepts - including pages for different rarities of an assignment with the same name, but as this is a terminology question - we don't need to use exact the same term for each phenomena, as long as each of us understands each other. In practical terms - using seems quite intuitive especially with the arrows icon on the left, as it clearly indicates to the user that there are other related pages they might be interested in. However, I also don't mind just using Are you looking for X? formulation that you suggest - I don't think it changes much for the end reader vs. using about template.

Regarding referencing by rarity - yes that can be useful if that is all the user might be looking for e.g. for Assignment: Special Deal on Entertainment_Provisions, but it can lead to pitfalls that cause a deterioration in website usability that we as editors should attempt to avoid. For instance, with Assignment: Barter Gold-Pressed Latinum this caused a problem that if I am interested in the details of e.g. version of this assignment - I need to visit up to 5 (+1 for disambiguation page) different pages before I am able to locate the page with that commodity, since rarity in the page name does not help me. I added commodity names to the disambiguation page itself to alleviate the problem, but now this disambiguation page seems to contain more information that the actual assignment pages, so we are kind of back at square one of considering if we should actually just merge it all into one page, rather than having to maintain 5 separate pages, when only disambiguation page is all that will be visited. Trajos (talk) 22:48, 14 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Re: "which search engine the typical user would use to get to the article", disagree completely - that is absolutely NOT "what is more important". And no, the STO wiki does not use article names "generated in a way as to facilitate that search". The standard established here is to name articles based on the actual in-game description of the assignment, mission, ship, etc., not based on what keywords someone might use during a search - that's where redirects can be of use.


 * Re: disambiguation, disagree here also, as it's the actual definition of the word - not what someone thinks it means "in their mind". Wiki articles and their names need to be as accurate as reasonably possible; again, how else someone might refer to them can be accomplished via redirects. And yes, we "need to use exact the same term for each phenomena", in order to convey specifically what is being referenced - not just because someone prefers to use one term over another.
 * An unrelated analogy would be the way some people commonly refer to "memory" with regard to both storage and RAM. If one needed more storage and took their computer to a shop asking for more "memory", they might be unpleasantly surprised to get it back with more RAM instead - and while the shop owner might be willing to "redo" the work, put back the original RAM and increase the storage once there was clarification, they may not be willing to eat the labor cost caused by the customer's failure to use the correct terminology. While the shop owner might be considered responsible to ask for clarification up front, you'd be surprised how many people will argue and insist they mean the same thing - when they're wrong.
 * Re: the "about" template, while it may be used in multiple contexts (regardless of whether that was its original intention or not), it doesn't support including/excluding the disambiguation icon based on the context in which it's intended to be used. Since there's no way for a template to universally make that determination based on how something is phrased (unless it includes some variation of the word "disambiguation", parsing for which shouldn't be the responsibility of such a template), there should be a parameter to select an icon appropriate to the context. There are likely plenty of suitable icons in the STO wiki that could be used in a non-disambiguation context.
 * Re: whether it "changes much for the end reader", articles need to be as accurate as reasonably possible; adding a disambiguation reference where no ambiguity actually exists effectively presents that information inaccurately.


 * Re: rarity... not sure how this became an entire separate point of discussion. It's already been established that the STO wiki has been set up to categorize assignments by rarity - that needs to be followed. Merging those articles would defeat that purpose. And no, the disambiguation page does NOT contain more information than the articles themselves - having reviewed both the articles and corresponding disambiguation page, and finding the articles contain significantly more information, not sure how anyone could possibly arrive at that conclusion. What it does rather is clearly point out the difference between the use of disambiguation pages and links vs redirects. As there is no ambiguity, disambiguation pages and links are of no use/value here. However, a redirect for each specific assignment name by commodity would direct someone to the corresponding "catch all" assignment page for assignments of the corresponding rarity.
 * Unscjon117 (talk) 12:42, 15 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Regarding RAM shopkeeper example - while fascinating, not sure how this is relevant to our discussion, because if you were the "shopkeeper" in our case - the key difference is that I already explained to you the meaning that I put into "memory" (i.e. "disambiguation" in our case). This is different to your example, where the customer did not make an attempt to explain his specific meaning to the shopkeeper. As unlike the shopkeeper you already know my meaning, I don't see why you should have any difficulty in understanding the information that I am providing to you.


 * While it is unfortunate that we disagree on some key aspects of how articles should be written, I think it is just unfortunate that for you a specific format appears to be more important than a different format that would be more useful to end readers. Another issue that I specifically want to point out is It's already been established that the STO wiki has been set up to categorize assignments by rarity - as I have mentioned previously, the existence of an "establishment" in itself is not yet necessarily a convincing argument for me, but only if in addition it can be demonstrated that a particular "establishment" is not conflicting with the goals of this website (which is both accuracy, and ease of use, even though I am now aware that we sadly define "accuracy" differently too). Trajos (talk) 15:52, 15 November 2019 (UTC)