Talk:Centerville

Fremont Centerville

I've returned the Fremont, California neighborhood of Centerville to its location next to the Centerville located in Butte County, California. Maybe I'm a poor reader, but I don't see anything in the MoS that requires URL anchor-linked entries to be at the bottom. Conversely, it appears from the linked articles that the Centerville in Fremont is much more populous than the one in Butte County, meaning there's a good chance of confusion between the two if they're separated. Finally, Centerville Pioneer Cemetery should remain in the dab page, as "Centerville" is prominent in its title. --Ken Gallager (talk) 13:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Found the cemetery. You can disregard my last comment. --Ken Gallager (talk) 13:45, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm also not clear on where in the MoS it says that you can't identify the country in the header line. It seems to me that it's more a matter of taste. In my view, it may not actually be obvious that we're talking about the United States here, believe it or not. It is more respectful of readers from the rest of the world if it says somewhere on the page what country we're referring to. Putting it in the opening sentence is more concise than placing it after every entry. Just a thought. --Ken Gallager (talk) 13:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Re mentioning the country, I agree -- but it shouldn't be linked, especially not if it is part of a section heading. older ≠ wiser 14:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:MOSDAB#Order of entries covers putting things with articles of their own before things that are just parts of other articles. Putting the country in the "may also refer to" line is a bad idea in general; there's nothing in "Centerville" that restricts its use to the U.S., even if it happens that the entries below are all in the U.S. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Omitting the country is worse that including on the refers to line, IMO. If any non-US entries need to be added, it is a very simple edit to convert the last part of the opening line into a subhead. older ≠ wiser 23:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Omitting it here is no worse than omitting it from, say Los Angeles, California, United States (which is entitled just Los Angeles, California). It's not a necessary variation from the guidelines -- as a dab page, we expect the reader knows which Centerville they meant, and if they were looking for the one in Alabama, say, they also know that Alabama is in the United States. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:47, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, actually, the United States of America is very prominently mentioned in the first sentence of the Los Angeles article. It is long-standing courtesy for international readers to identify the country. Why should disambiguation pages be different? PS, I think we risk poor decisions when making too many assumptions about what a reader knows about what they are looking for when they get to a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 03:41, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I think we risk implying to the reader that Centerville is only allowed to refer to things in the United States. It would be better, if needed, to group the entries or add a description to the entries that require national identification. -- JHunterJ (talk) 04:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

When all of the listed entities are from one country, then it seems an artificial complexity to introduce groupings that contain only one group. While there may be a possibility that some readers might interpret a statement such as "Centerville may refer to the following places in the United States" to mean that Centerville is only allowed to refer to things in the United States, I think the actual number of readers that interpret a conditional statement to imply exclusivity is significantly less than those readers who would appreciate the additional context. In any case, in the event that an article on a Centerville in another country is created, the introductory sentence can easily be amended. older ≠ wiser 11:42, 19 January 2008 (UTC)