Talk:Saints

Please comment on whether this title should redirect to the disambiguation page Saint (disambiguation), or to the singular form Saint. --Russ (talk) 17:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Saint is far preferable. Abtract (talk) 17:33, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't follow the logic of the comment "anyone looking for a specific saint would hardly put "saints" so a redirect from the plural to the singular Saint makes more sense", as this suggests to me that a redirect from "Saints" to the dab page would be more useful more often. There are so many uses of "Saints" for which the "Saint" page is not what's wanted (novel, football teams, French places, bands etc), that I think this plural should point to the dab page. PamD (talk) 19:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Have just spotted that your question, R'n'B, offers a third option - a separate Saints (disambiguation). At present Saints redirects to Saint, and it has previously pointed to Saint (disambiguation), which includes both singular and plural terms. I think this is the best option, so I disagree with both of your suggestions and prefer Saint (disambiguation)! We could usefully add a redirect from Saints (disambiguation) to Saint (disambiguation). PamD (talk) 19:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, that "s" was a typo. If you look at the page history, you will see that Saints was a redirect to Saint from March 11, 2004, until December 26, 2007, at which point a little edit war broke out. I tried restoring the original redirect, but you, PamD, reverted my edit. Then Abtract reverted again to the original redirect. Rather than continue having a series of reverts, I thought it would make more sense to have a discussion here. --Russ (talk) 13:52, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I have some sympathy with User:Unschool who started the "edit war": his sought book title is one of the many senses of "saints" which is not just the plural of the article title word "saint", and he would be much better served by a redirect to the general, single-and-plural-combined, dab page. I wouldn't agree with his suggestion that it go direct to the novel! I really believe that more people would be better served by a redirect to the dab page. (An alternative might be to have a separate plural dab page... but I think that would complicate matters unnecessarily!) PamD (talk) 14:11, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

• I didn't express my own opinion earlier because I wanted to do some research first. Since yesterday, I have reviewed all of the 270 Wikipedia articles that contain links to Saints. As might be expected, since the term is indeed ambiguous, there are a number of different meanings reflected. However, the very great majority -- well over 250 of the links, I estimate -- refer to the meaning of "holy person," which is the same meaning that has been recognized as the primary meaning of the ambiguous term Saint. Although a user who searches for "Saints" could be searching for the New Orleans NFL team, or the novel, or the 1960's secret agent TV series (singular), or some other meaning, I don't see any reason why this is any more likely for the plural form of the word than for the singular. And there is an {{otheruses}} headnote at the top of Saint for the benefit of readers who get there while looking for a different meaning. --Russ (talk) 18:51, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your work. I suppose, reluctantly, I have to concede on this - though I'm amazed that so many editors have used [[saints]], linking to a redirect, rather than [[saint]]s! Though of course your evidence only shows what links there are, rather than what readers coming to WP and entering a "Go" term will be looking for. I wonder whether we could modify the hatnote so that it makes it clearer that the dab page includes "Saints" as well as "Saint"? I'll have a go and see if it gets shot down in flames. PamD (talk) 22:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)