Talk:Distal

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Redirect[edit]

On August 31st, an IP changed the Distal page from redirecting to Anatomical terms of location#Proximal and distal; he or she changed it into the disambiguation page that it currently is. I just became aware of this (today) after this edit, and I disagree because this is a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC matter; in almost all cases, distal is referring to anatomy...as the significant majority of sources (for example, Googling Distal definition) show. If a disambiguation page is needed for the other distal definition the IP is referring to, or more, then a Distal (disambiguation) page should be created. This one should redirect to the anatomical meaning, per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Furthermore, some of the other anatomical terms still redirect to the Anatomical terms of location article.

I will alert the IP, WP:ANATOMY and WP:MED to this discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 22:13, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if this is related but someone raised a related issue with medial in Aug Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_37#Medial:_A_disambiguation_page. Lesion (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's clear that this should be reverted--I don't think the effort you've put into discussion and alerting was necessary. A similar change at proximal should be reverted as well.--Taylornate (talk) 22:48, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If this becomes the redirect again, should some kind of hatnote be put on the target for this use of the term in linguistics? Lesion (talk) 22:54, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Taylornate, I understand your point about my effort. But I decided to start a discussion about it to avoid a possible WP:Edit war, considering that the IP (judging by his or her edit history) appears quite experienced with editing Wikipedia and might have returned to this issue (unlike other IPs that simply never return to a matter they've edited); I decided that it was better to develop WP:Consensus about this matter.

Lesion, yes, as can be seen, I didn't pay much attention to that Medial matter. But it should probably redirect to the Anatomical terms of location article and have a disambiguation page created for it as well. As for your question about the hatnote, probably. Flyer22 (talk) 23:12, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was about to simply restore both pages earlier, but now I'm unsure of the correct MOS ... we are redirecting to a subsection of an article, not the whole article. Would the hatnote still go at the top of the page? And if yes, how many different redirects link there? Might this lead to overcrowding at the top of the page? Maybe hatnote is not a solution. We didn't have any hatnote before, but personally I would like people to see a route to the linguistics definition of these terms somehow, just can't see any good way of doing this ... Lesion (talk) 23:24, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wondered somewhat the same thing, concluding that we need to provide a way for readers to get to that alternative definition. Flyer22 (talk) 23:28, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Medial is currently a fairly substantial disambig page. Agree to make medial a redirect, and the disambig to medial (disambiguation) ... would need a hatnote on anatomic terms of location like:

"Medial redirects here. For other uses of the term, see medial (disambiguation)"

For distal and proximal, since there are only 2 uses of the term (or so we have currently), they should be redirects, and there is no need for a disambig with only 2 entries (or so I understand), just a hatnote on the primary topic:

"Distal and proximal redirect here. For the linguistics terms, see Demonstrative"

Unsure if we have any other issues here, had a quick gander at the IP's edit history and these are the only 2 anatomic redirects that were changed. Any more than 1 or 2 hatnotes is too many imo... Lesion (talk) 23:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure we even need a hat note. In the linguistic context, I think the anatomic definition still applies.--Taylornate (talk) 23:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sort of ... from what I've read it refers to the position of a syllable in a word. I know there are many anatomic terms in speech and language therapy derived from how the tongue and lips make the sounds, e.g. labio-dental, glosso-palatal... Lesion (talk) 23:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The definition linked to in the disambig page says it relates to distance of an object from the speaker.--Taylornate (talk) 00:02, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For proximal and distal, yes I see you are right. I was looking at some of the entries on medial (disambiguation): e.g. Medial consonant and Syllable medial. Lesion (talk) 00:14, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Noting here on the talk page that R'n'B has reverted the disambiguation page. Flyer22 (talk) 01:04, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted the same at proximal as well.--Taylornate (talk) 01:29, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just when I'd finished fixing all the links, too. Still, it doesn't hurt to have them link there directly, instead of redirecting there. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Noting here that I alerted BD2412 to this discussion. And, yeah, BD2412, despite what WP:NOTBROKEN states, I prefer avoiding redirects. Flyer22 (talk) 03:17, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]