Talk:Solaris

Simple English Version

There is a handful of errors in the Simple English Wikipedia for example it is now owned by oracle not sun microsystems can someone please tell me how to put that little section where it says 'there are numerous errors on this page' Anish9807 (talk) 16:50, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Category order

A quick Google search finds hits for:

• Solaris OS : 47 million
• Solaris movie: 1.6 million
• Solaris game : 1.4 million
• Solaris planet: 1.3 million
• solaris rock band : 813,000
• Solaris Lem : 743,000

Given this, I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of people who would come to this dab page are looking for Solaris the operating system, followed by Solaris the book and the movies it inspired, followed by games involving Solaris (although it's hard to tease this away in a Google search from games available for the Solaris OS), followed by the band. Everything else tails off from there.

If the planet isn't mentioned in the referred page, that should be fixed by adding a mention of it to the page, not deleting it from here. In this case, it turns out it's in the List of towns and locations in Xenogears rather than the main article.

As for the formatting, per WP:MOSDAB#Longer lists the recent reformatting to section headers is acceptable, but I agree that the older format looks better; I added the bolding back. --NapoliRoma 16:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Right, and "Java language" returns 210M hits, "Java programming" another 200M, while "Java island" is only 3M and "Java Indonesia" is 1,8M, yet Wikipedia had the sense of keeping the island at Java. Whatever though... I don't care that much.

In case of the floating whatever, I think that lack of mention in the main game article suggests that it is not a major part of the game, and as such does not warrant listing on this disambiguation page. There are a lot of things called "Solaris" out there. If RMS had a machine named "Solaris" (that had no other claim to fame), would we put a link to his article on this page? --74.109.173.23 04:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you in general, especially including not caring that much... although, here we both are. Kinda sick, ain't it?

I think there's much more of a case to keep Java Java, and if you look at what links to it, there are over 500 links from pages that refer to the island, and less than a couple of dozen that look to be mistaken references to the programming language. On the other hand, last weekend I dab'ed all the ambiguous links from articles to Solaris; 14 of them were intended to point to the OS, 2 meant to point to the Soderbergh movie, 2 to the book company, and 2 to fake planets. (Yes, I just counted them; I'm not proud of this.) None meant to point to the novel or the bands, which might only mean that cultch'ral people are better at creating dab'ed links in the first place than computer people.

On the Stallman hypothetical -- if it was actually mentioned on his page, and someone thought to add it to the dab page, yes, why remove it? (And we could all hope he wouldn't be moved to write a song about it.) The only times I'd yank an entry from a dab page is if it's inaccurate, or there's no relevant link at all to be made and it doesn't meet the usual criteria for keeping a redlink.

Cheers,--NapoliRoma 14:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Definition

I restored the brief definition because, per WP:DABDIC, "A short description of the common general meaning of a word can be appropriate for helping the reader determine context." There is no other page that explains that this meaning is what unites the pages directed to from here. A link to wiktionary is suitable for those wanting a more detailed definition and, what's more, affirms that a definition is helpful to many readers. Dubbin^{u | t | c} 00:06, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes it can, but in our case it is meaningless: nearly all item are proper names and their relation to Sun is close to none, so the dicdef is not helpful for navigation. If anyone wants the word, there is wiktionary a click away. We have dab pages very terse for a reason: no distraction, get quickly to the sought page. Concluding: in the rule you quoted the other key word is in the part you omitted: "Otherwise, there are templates for linking the reader to Wiktionary..." Staszek Lem (talk) 00:24, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Concur with the above explanation; also note that the final line of WP:DABDIC applies ("WP is not an interlanguage dictionary") and circles back to Staszek Lem's first point: knowing that "Solaris" is Latin for "pertaining to the Sun" is not helpful in distinguishing between, say, Suzie Solaris and the comic character Solaris.

It's an interesting tidbit to those who are interested, but is a distraction to those who are not, and are just trying to learn more about the Buck-Tick song. For the former, there's the wiktionary link.--NapoliRoma (talk) 01:26, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Taking each of your points in turn:

• Many items do relate to the sun, e.g. the ship (solar-powered) in the Mysterious cities cartoon; the Elliot minor album which depicts a sun on its cover; the Photek album which has an astronomical theme, to name but three. I haven't gone through the whole list. In each case, knowing the meaning from the dab page - without having to click through to the dictionary entry and back again - establishes the context of the name per WP:DABDIC. It establishes, in a way no other single page can, what meaning unites all the pages linked. Similarly, many dab pages begin with things like 'X is a surname. It may refer to:'.
• "We have dab pages very terse for a reason: no distraction" - my definition added 8 words, no lines in a normal browser window, and no markup or blue links. I think it's more of a distraction to have to click to the definition and back. It is no less easy now to find the list or an item within it. I'm not being arbitrary here: this was my experience as a user of this page. I came to the page having seen the Russian film and looking for some context as to why it had that title, having found none on the film's page. Hence my edit.

• The 'Interlanguage dictionary' passage is not relevant. It clearly relates to dab pages that contain multiple language versions of a source word in its list of pages. That's not the case here. It's an English definition of the page title, for English wikipedia.

A thought experiment for you both, since the WP:DABDIC page is vague: I invite you to contemplate under what circumstances you would you view a definition as providing context in a dab page. If the answer is 'never' then we have a problem because, whatever the WP:DABDIC page intends to mean, it's not that. NapoliRoma's edit summary said "content doesn't go on disambiguation pages" which makes me worry whether s/he would ever view a definition as acceptable. That's clearly not the intent of the guideline.

Finally some examples, plucked from thin air by searching for dab pages for foreign words:

• Tête à Tête
• Calculus (disambiguation)
• Papilla
• Déjà vu (disambiguation)

Perhaps these are all incorrect and need changing? I hope not, because I suspect there are innumerable others, most probably added by people in the same situation that caused me to edit this page. I suggest that if a user has found a dab page, found that it lacks context and in good faith added a definition, that is a pretty good test that the definition is useful. I think this is both consistent with WP:DABDIC and pragmatic. Thanks for your patience. Dubbin^{u | t | c} 20:03, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

• To bring what I think is the most important point forward: "never" may be too strong, but no: so far I have not found a place where adding a definition to the beginning of a disambiguation page supports the intended purpose of dab pages.

If I understand your explanation of this specific addition correctly, the problem you're addressing is that the definition of "Solaris" is not included in the Solaris movie article. The appropriate solution here would have been to add it to the Solaris movie article. (Or really, the book article, since the real origin of the movie's title is the book title :-).)

Content should only be added to articles, where people who got there by any means will be able to benefit from it. Dab pages are not for content, especially content not already in the appropriate article(s).

I think the current wording of WP:DABDIC needs to be discussed; if no one else opens up a question on it, I'll try to do so in my copious free time.

• "Just eight words" is not, to my mind, an acceptable exemption to the brevity principle. See "broken window theory", "death by a thousand cuts", and "it's waffer thin".
• The first line for Déjà vu is a primary topic entry and just needs to be trimmed for length; the one for Papilla is at least close to acceptable, as it's really at heart just a stab at being a primary topic entry. But the intro for Tête à Tête is out of scope, and the one for Calculus is right out. (As an aside: note that the latter's definition makes no sense when applied to most of the "other meanings" entries.)

Yes, there are doubtless innumerable others. That's the nature of WP. It's also the broken window principle again: the more of these left uncorrected, the more chance there is that people will see them and think, "Ah, so that's how it should be done!"--NapoliRoma (talk) 05:39, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Broken windows etc are only relevant if your starting point is that the addition is bad or inappropriate. I don't think it is, so I don't view the edit as a broken window or a cut. I think it's entirely in keeping with the policy. My addition of the definition to the dab page rather than each of the individual pages was because the definition is what unites all these pages - it is the reason they are all here together. Context, per the policy. It does seem that your issue is not with this edit but with the policy. I encourage you to seek to get it changed or at least clarified. Dubbin^{u | t | c} 11:55, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 8 April 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Closed per SNOW and withdrawal of opener. A good faith request from a well-meaning editor based on a simple misunderstanding relating to WP:DABNAME when there is no primary topic.(non-admin closure) -- Netoholic @ 20:41, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

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Solaris → Solaris_(disambiguation) – This page already self identifies as a (disambiguation) but is not labeled accordingly like http://en.m.wiki.x.io/wiki/Rice_(disambiguation) Frankk74 (talk) 12:11, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Disambiguation pages do not need to be titled as such when there is no primary topic. PC78 (talk) 14:28, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose and WP:SNOW close. If there's no primary topic, the disambiguation page takes the basename. Paintspot Infez (talk) 14:41, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose ans close we only use something like X (disambiguation) if something there is something called X which is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and there is no evidence to support that here.--64.229.166.98 (talk) 16:02, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
• Just trying to help. I should have asked here first, sorry about that. Should I cancel the request? Frankk74 (talk) 17:35, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

  @Frankk74: Yes unless you intend to make something primary for "Solaris" the DAB page should remain at Solaris. A quick look at the views of just some[[1]] show no primary topic (unless possibly you argue Sun is primary like at Talk:Sol#Requested move 24 April 2018 but I doubt that that would be a good idea. If you're not then you can indicate that you withdraw it. Do you intend to withdraw? Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:17, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

  @Frankk74: Before making proposals like this, you better read the corresponding guidelines, in order not waste other wikipedians' time (and learn something new). The template "disambiguation" has a blue link to click and read. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:53, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Another video game not listed

The ZX Spectrum also has a game called Solaris, a space shoot-'em-up by Theo Develegas. It was published in the early '90s (or very late '80s?) on Crash magazine's cover-mounted game cassette. Equinox ◑ 00:35, 12 February 2020 (UTC)