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I'm not a fan of this particular template, because I hold that the need for it points to a deeper structural problem in Wikipedia. However,
I would like to report a problem with this template, because it does not perform as intended. This problem affects the hundreds of redirect pages that include this template.
The {{R to disambiguation page}} template clearly intends to display an informative message on any (disambiguation) page where it is used. The message is necessary and helpful, because it indicates to possible editors that things are a little more complicated than they might appear.
To see the text that this template intends to show, just follow the link {{R to disambiguation page}}. I'll also quote it here, as it exists today. (It probably needs to be edited for clarity as well.)
This is a redirect to a disambiguation page. This redirect is used by links that should always point to the disambiguation page, rather than be disambiguated. Therefore, this template generally should only appear on pages that have "(disambiguation)" in the title.
For more information, follow the category link.
When you follow a link to a page containing this template, obviously it doesn't make any difference, because you get redirected. For example, follow Table (disambiguation), and you end up viewing the retrieved contents of Table, a disambiguation page.
But, near the top of that redirected page, there is a little link to show the "actual" redirect page at "Table (disambiguation)", with redirection turned off. That link goes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Table_%28disambiguation%29&redirect=no. Notice that the text is NOT displayed.
Now, if you start editing "Table (disambiguation)", and click on "Show preview" with edits or no edits at all (no need to Save the experiment), the helpful text shows up. The template actually does what it is supposed to, under this unlikely circumstance. The problem is, the message does not show under other circumstances when it is needed, namely simple viewing of the page.
I tried editing "Table (disambiguation)", but I could not make the template work properly. The text showed in Preview, but would not show in the Saved page.
When the {{R to disambiguation page}} tag appears after the #REDIRECT link, REDIRECT works (viewing with redirects enabled), but the message text is NOT displayed (viewing with redirects disabled). It is as if parsing stops as soon as the #REDIRECT link is processed.
However, when the {{R to disambiguation page}} tag appears BEFORE the #REDIRECT link, the message text IS displayed (viewing with redirects enabled) but then the REDIRECT is broken (viewing with redirects disabled).
I could not get the message to display and the redirect to both function in the same version of the page. (See futile series of attempts at .) (I was sure my first attempt would fix it -- If I try again, I'll remember to use the Sandbox.) Note, the template message usually displays while previewing edits, but then is gone when actually viewing the revised page.
Possible solutions include: 1) Repair the processing of #REDIRECT or {{R to disambiguation page}} so that the helpful message actually appears.
Note, the redirect page "Table (disambiguation)" is referenced by the EXAMPLE at Wikipedia->Disambiguation->Disambiguation pages->Page naming conventions->Generic topic.
Debugging templates is a little beyond me. I looked and I didn't see any possibility of a problem within {{R to disambiguation page}}. It might be a software problem inside MediaWiki, something none of us editors has control over. (Well, I could learn PHP and then start browsing the Open Source of this Free Software (deep voodoo), but then how to test or incorporate the patch?)
(I'm posting here for now, because I don't know where to post this kind of problem such that it might get attention from some able to actually do anything about it.) -Whiner01 (talk) 07:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
{{editprotected}}
Please restore " <!-- this is Template:R to disambiguation page --> " to the end of the template. I know it looks useless, but it actually does have a purpose. If an editor uses subst:
on the template (which they shouldn't do, but you know some of them will), this helps other editors track down where the big mess of formatted text on the page came from. --Russ (talk) 19:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
{{Edit protected}}
Please add {{Documentation}} to the template so I can add {{Twinkle standard installation}} to it. (Note: Friendly is now part of Twinkle.) – Allen4names 18:13, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
{{Edit protected}}
The template currently displays on Talk pages where it is added as:
"This is a redirect to a disambiguation page. This redirect is intended for use in links from other articles that need to refer to the disambiguation page, rather than be disambiguated. Therefore, this template generally should only appear on pages that have "(disambiguation)" in the title."
Note, the last sentence is a parenthetical type comment, which should not be part of the main message of the template. It seems silly, as if the purpose of the template is to state where the template should not be used.
Please change to make that side comment an explicit parenthetical mention (and i suggest also italicizing for further dissociation from the main message: "This is a redirect to a disambiguation page. This redirect is intended for use in links from other articles that need to refer to the disambiguation page, rather than be disambiguated. (Therefore, this template generally should only appear on pages that have "(disambiguation)" in the title.)"
--doncram 16:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
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Please remove the categories from the end by editing the ending to look like the following:
[[Category:Unprintworthy redirects]]<!-- This type of redirect wouldn't be useful in a paper Wikipedia.-->
</includeonly><noinclude>
{{Documentation}}
</noinclude>
<!-- this is Template:R to disambiguation page -->
Those categories have been transferred to the /doc page, but are inactive. As soon as this edit has been made, I shall activate the categories on the /doc page. – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX ) 22:08, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Done R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:55, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Why doesn't the text that begins, "This is a redirect to a disambiguation page..." appear on the redirect pages that include this template? Pseudonymous Rex (talk) 00:21, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
To editor RainCity471: They're workin' on it boss – see Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor/TemplateData/Tutorial#Description. – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 03:17, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
The docs contain the statement, "Therefore, this template should only appear on a redirect page that has "(disambiguation)" in its title." However, there are plenty of disambiguation pages which do not have "(disambiguation)" in their title. I suggest that this statement be changed to something similar to "Therefore, this template should only appear on a redirect which redirects to a page containing a {{disambiguation}} template or one of its Variants or Aliases."
I came here in the course of trying to get a problem with the Haiyan County page fixed. That page was initially a redirect to a disambiguation page titled Hayan, but was changed by User:EmausBot to (mis)redirect to the Typhoon Haiyan page instead -- probably because the bot didn't recognize it as a redirect to a disambiguation page. I'm reverting the bot's change to the the Haiyan County page, and I'm adding an instance of this template there in hopes that the categorization to Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages done by this template will allow the bot to recognize it and avoid changing it. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:32, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
I agree that the current documentation is misleading. As I understood it, the original purpose of the Rcat {{R to disambiguation}} was to indicate that the redirect deliberately points to a disambiguation page, regardless of if the target page has "(disambiguation)" in its title or not. Thereby editors and bots know that a link doesn't point to a disambiguation page by accident, so that they don't try to "fix a link to a disambiguation page" that cannot reasonably be fixed.
(There is not much point to have an Rcat indicate that the target page has "(disambiguation)" in its title, because everyone can readily see that from the title of the link.)
Based on the misleading documentation, we now even have editors who remove the {{R to disambiguation}} from redirects pointing to disambiguation pages just because the target pages don't contain "(disambiguation)". Thereby they are destroying valueable semantic information about the network of links which cannot be (re)generated automatically.
For this, it is important to revise the text, as not all disambiguation pages contain "(disambiguation)" in their title.
Often, disambiguation pages with "(disambiguation)" in their title redirect to a disambiguation page of the same title but without the "(disambiguation)". In this case, linking the redirect to the disambiguation page with "(disambiguation)" in its title would create a double-redirect, which must be avoided by WP:HOWTODAB and other guidelines. This can only be fixed by letting the redirect point directly to the disambiguation page without the "(disambiguation)".
Example: C.K.S. redirects to CKS, a disambiguation page, and therefore should carry the {{R to disambiguation}} Rcat.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 19:18, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
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I think the part about this template only being added to redirect pages with " (disambiguation)" is ridiculous, as we also have redirects to dab pages that don't have " (disambiguation)", such as Liberal Republican. Therefore, I request that all of the coding for "this template must be used for redirects that end in " (disambiguation)" and the like be removed entirely. ToThAc (talk) 15:22, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
{{edit template-protected}}
template. See the discussion immediately above — I think you've misunderstood the purpose of this redirect template. —RP88 (talk) 15:42, 26 October 2017 (UTC)Paine Ellsworth, on 10 March 2014 you changed the documentation for this:
On 28 August 2019 you reverted me with the rationale, NOT to a dab page, this is to a dab TALK page, which makes me question the change to "any" namespace. Should it say any non-talk namespace?
Currently there are just over 160 transclusions of this from talk pages, so fixing this shouldn't be difficult. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:34, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
long-term consensus is that both the subject pages and the talk pages are considered to be Redirects from unnecessary disambiguation, because they both have the unnecessary "(disambiguation)" along with their page titles-- I'm sorry but where is this long-term consensus at? My understanding is that there is an important distinction between a redirect from unnecessary disambiguation and a redirect to a disambiguation page. These should NOT be conflated. With regards to the talk page redirects, IMO these really do not need categorization, but if they are going to be categorized then it should match the mainspace redirect page. older ≠ wiser
Disclosure: I boldly changed templates on these redirects, figuring that as there were only ~100 of them, it would be easy enough to reverse this if necessary. These were detected shortly after I added an error-check to {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}} after I noticed this template was transcluded on Talk:CBD (disambiguation) (there is an open RM on Talk:CBD, which is due for closure). The fact that there were less than 100 uses of {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}} on redirects with "(disambiguation)" in their titles – in both mainspace and talk combined – speaks to how this has been allowed to go for several years after its bold implementation. Either nobody noticed, or nobody who noticed was bothered enough to raise the issue – until now. Paine did not revert my error check until just after I finished clearing out Category:Pages with incorrectly transcluded disambiguation templates. Though it took some time for the category to populate after I added the error check (job queue processing), I'm pretty sure the category had been fully populated, and cleared, before the error check was reverted. wbm1058 (talk) 13:29, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
It is pleasing that questions like this draw the attention of interested editors as shown above. There has been no further discussion since 4 September, and there still does not appear to be a firm conclusion to the main question: are talk pages valid uses for the {{R to disambiguation page}} template?
The way it has been done for more than ten years may be wrong, or it may be correct, with valid arguments being raised above. For example, why track talk pages? The project tracks pages because we want to know how many pages are of a certain type. The project is also concerned that redirect pages are targeting correctly. The fact that a page is in the Talk: namespace is inconsequential when it comes to knowing things like quantity and correct targeting plus whatever else the project learns by tracking redirect pages. For example, if a page redirects to a modified title, and {{R from modification}} should be used, what difference does it make that the redirect is in the Talk: namespace? Isn't it still a modification?
The initial question about the validity of using this template on talk pages has been answered over time in the following manner, and whether or not this is the correct answer is the main subject of contention here. This template, {{R to disambiguation page}}, is used only on redirects that are "subject" pages and that have "(disambiguation)" in their titles. So this template should never be used on "talk" pages, but only on "subject" pages. The terms "subject" and "talk" are used here as they are used with <nowiki>{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}</nowiki>
and <nowiki>{{TALKPAGENAME}}</nowiki>
on the Help:Magic words page. A talk page that is formatted "Talk:Title (qualifier)" only very rarely redirects to a subject page and nearly always redirects to another "talk" page. And a talk page is never a disambiguation page. If the "(qualifier)" happens to be "(disambiguation)", and the talk page redirects to the exact talkspace title without the qualifier, then why would it be anything else but {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}}? The historical, long-term answer has been that the unnecessary disambiguation rcat does apply to such talk pages. Right or wrong, this should be settled as soon as practicable. P. I. Ellsworth, ed. put'r there 10:18, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
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This template also counts as currently unnecessary disambiguation. Can you change the template to:
{{R to disambiguation page}}{{R from unnecessary disambiguation|cat=no}}
Faster than Thunder (talk) 02:37, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
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Wanted to suggest that the superfluous italics be removed from this template, and that "may" be replaced with "should". It currently reads:
This redirect is intended for use in links from other articles that need to refer to the disambiguation page, rather than be disambiguated. Therefore, '''this template should ''only'' appear on a redirect page ''that has "(disambiguation)" at the end of its title'''''. Ambiguous titles that do not have page names ending with "(disambiguation)" may use {{tl|R from ambiguous term}} {{em|instead}}. For disambiguations that later prove to still be ambiguous (e.g. "(painter)" when there are multiple notable painters by the same name) and which redirect to disambiguation pages, then {{tl|R from incomplete disambiguation}} is the appropriate template. :* Any [[Help:Talk pages|talk page]] redirect that has "(disambiguation)" in its title targets another talk page, not a disambiguation page, and should be tagged with {{tl|R from unnecessary disambiguation}} ''instead'' of this template.
I'd like to suggest that instead it read thus:
This redirect is intended for use in links from other articles that need to refer to the disambiguation page, rather than be disambiguated. Therefore, '''this template should only appear on a redirect page that has "(disambiguation)" at the end of its title'''. Ambiguous titles that do not have page names ending with "(disambiguation)" should use {{tl|R from ambiguous term}} instead. For disambiguations that later prove to still be ambiguous (e.g. "(painter)" when there are multiple notable painters by the same name) and which redirect to disambiguation pages, then {{tl|R from incomplete disambiguation}} is the appropriate template. :* Any [[Help:Talk pages|talk page]] redirect that has "(disambiguation)" in its title targets another talk page, not a disambiguation page, and should be tagged with {{tl|R from unnecessary disambiguation}} instead of this template.
Thank you for considering the request. A loose necktie (talk) 17:53, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
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