The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

A dispute has arisen whether or not "Vita" can be used as an entry on this Disambiguation page when referring specifically to a book by that title, written by the 1st-century historian Josephus. One of the conditions for adding a name to WP:DAB is: "Ensuring that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily, whichever of the possible topics it might be." For the relative arguments (pros and cons) of adding the name "Vita (Josephus)" to this page, see the discussion here. Please advise.Davidbena (talk) 03:43, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

• No As patiently explained in the linked discussion, vita is a generic term meaning "biography" and the removal is correct. Similarly, Biography (disambiguation) should not have a "biography" entry with a link to a particular bio. Johnuniq (talk) 08:20, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Minimē vērō What makes the Josephine vita a more relevant target than, e.g., that of the Moaner of Iona? ——SN54129 11:06, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In answer to your question, Josephus' book, Vita, if added in the Disambiguation page, will contain the additional marker "(Josephus)", in parentheses, to distinguish between other works by the same name. As for the widespread use of this title when referring to Josephus' fourth historical work, you can see by the following references that it is used extensively by scholars and academics: 1) Conder and Kitchener, whenever citing this work in their Survey of Western Palestine, mention it as "Vita," as you can see here (s.v. Tell M’aûn), and here (s.v. Kerak), and here (s.v. Kh. Benit), and here (s.v. Semûnieh), as well as in many more places. The same can be said about Edward Robinson, in his Later Biblical Researches in Palestine, which you can see here (p. 82, note 3). The list goes on and on. This usage is also common among modern academics, as we can see in the following: Page 635 in Ward, J.S. (2007). "Roman Greek: Latinisms in the Greek of Flavius Josephus". The Classical Quarterly. 57 (2): 632–649. JSTOR 27564099. , and Page 94 in Hata, Gohei (1975). "Is the Greek Version of Josephus' "Jewish War" a Translation or a Rewriting of the First Version?". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 66 (2): 89–108. JSTOR 1453908..Davidbena (talk) 14:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My question was wholly rhetorical. The point is that neither of them are clearly the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Indeed, an anonymous and currently unsigned commentator above this section from nearly 12 years ago point out that vita is a common fem[ale] name in lithuania, and there is no policy-based reason why—in extremis—the Josephine Vita should be considered particularly more of a primary topic than a common given name in the 21st-century western world. ——SN54129 16:28, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, User:Serial Number 54129. Davidbena repeats the point they've been making ad nauseam on my talk page--that there is secondary sourcing that refers to the Josephus bio as "vita". On my talk page, I have done the exact same thing for Goulven of Leon. Literally any vita one can come up with on any person is called vita. Why they refuse to understand this point is beyond me. Drmies (talk) 18:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Have you ever thought that a person reading Josephus and who sees a reference to Vita in a footnote (and who has no other basic knowledge of the subject or of the book) just may want to check the references for this word on Wikipedia? Isn't that what a WP:DAB was designed to do?Davidbena (talk) 18:09, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly - this is why the page has "Vita, the usual start to the title of a biography in Latin, by which (in a known context) the work is often referred to; frequently of a saint, then called hagiography". All readers puzzled in this way will be helped, not just those reading about Josephus. You are making the arguments for "no"! Johnbod (talk) 19:16, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So, if Josephus is notable as a historian, and he is, why not add another entry, namely, Vita (Josephus)? Is this hard to understand?Davidbena (talk) 19:48, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Because when your addition has been contested, you need a better reason than "why not". Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:50, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The reason is outlined under the expressed purpose why readers have recourse to Wikipedia's WP:DAB.Davidbena (talk) 20:07, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• No: Drmies's comments in the linked discussion are compelling. --JBL (talk) 13:20, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes, for the reasons cited by me above.Davidbena (talk) 14:04, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes Do not see any logical reason why the reference to Josephus should be challenged. If Vita is the name used by scholars and others for this book, what is the problem with including it? I see there is another "Vita" book - one of much less importance - which is cited here and nobody has made a fuss over it.--Geewhiz (talk) 14:48, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean "Vita – Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment, an ethnographic study by João Biehl", there it is part of the actual title, which it isn't for Josephus, a book written in Greek. Johnbod (talk) 15:10, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Johnbod, that's a non-sequitur if I have ever heard one! First, although Josephus wrote his works in Greek, we all know that, today, his works have all got recognised titles in different languages: The Jewish War, for example, or what some English authors prefer to call by its Latin title, Bello Judaico. It is the same here for Vita. This name is now used in English for the book's title by many scholars, just as we have evinced from the cited sources.Davidbena (talk) 18:53, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User:Gilabrand, "vita" is the name used for any biography or hagiography in Latin. There is nothing specific about that of Josephus. Drmies (talk) 18:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Drmies, I strongly disagree. What makes the use of Vita (in Josephus' case, where it is used copiously as a specific reference for a book) different from the use of the Latin word Nova (which means "new), and, yet, it is used in the DAB page Nova (disambiguation) for a book by that name, Nova (novel)? If it's a problem with confusing the name with biographies in general, we can add in parentheses "Vita (Josephus)." You see, if you were to study the diachrony of Latin words, sometimes the referents used for Latin words and expressions have, throughout time, come to represent different things, just as in this case it is often used as the title of Josephus' fourth book. Besides this, very few authors are more notable than Josephus.Davidbena (talk) 18:23, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You can disagree all you want. You keep saying you have sources that call this specific book "vita", and I keep proving that every single such text is referred to as "vita". I don't need to study no Latin diachrony for any of that. But why don't you create an entry for Saint Goulven's vita, and then half a dozen different ones for Saint Boniface (few saints are as notable as Boniface)--let's see, there is the Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldo, the Vita altera Bonifatii, the Vita tertia Bonifatii, the Vita quarta Bonifatii, the Vita quinta Bonifatii (but that's just based on Willibald, and doesn't have much distribution or readership, so I suppose you can leave that out), the Vita Bonifatii auctore Otloho (and you better not leave that one out! it's hugely important since it uses the Boniface Correspondence--which reminds me, I should put a link to that on the dab page Correspondence), the Vita germanuum Willibaldi et Wynnebaldi, the Vita Gregorii abbatis Traiectensis (can you believe it? more from Utrecht!), and the Vita Sturmi. You may wonder what that last one is doing in here, since Sturmius is a different saint--well, Dr. Godlove explains, "The vita of Boniface’s pupil, Abbot Sturm of Fulda; contains enough material about Boniface to be considered a double life of Boniface and Sturm." Note that she calls it "vita", so add that. And guess what all these vitae are called in the peer-reviewed academic journals and books that discuss them? "Vita". Every single one of them. Oh, and I think Marlon James is much more notable than Josephus, just to answer your non sequitur in kind. Drmies (talk) 19:03, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it's your unfamiliarity with Josephus' works that you confuse the use of Vita, as used here, with other works by the same Latin title. Josephus wrote his works in Greek, but we do not find any transliterated Greek titles; only English or Latin titles. By that I mean that his works have all got recognised titles in different languages: e.g. The Jewish War, or, as some English authors prefer to call it by its Latin title, Bello Judaico. It is the same here for Vita (Josephus). This name is now used in English for a book composed by Josephus, hence, the reason why we are asking for it to be listed on this disambiguation page. In answer to your question why I don't create an entry for Saint Goulven's vita, it is simply because of Josephus' notability that we pursue this one DAB.Davidbena (talk) 19:15, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Certainly not As patiently explained at Drmies's talk by several editors, "Vita" as a shorthand reference is normal in discussions of any Latin biography. In fact it isn't even the correct title for Josephus's book, which was in Greek. It's perhaps also relevant that The Life of Flavius Josephus, the cause of all this fuss, is a two-line stub, that didn't mention "vita" at all, until Davidbena added it (rather misleadingly) a while back. Johnbod (talk) 15:04, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• No per the linked discussion. --Ealdgyth (talk) 15:12, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• No, in case that wasn't clear. Davidbena, I'll ping you this last time just to say "please don't ping me anymore": please don't ping me anymore. Or quaeso, ne me iam ping, as Google Translate has it. Drmies (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• No. TL;DR: per above. Davidbena's analogy of the book Nova having an entry in the DAB page for Nova is an inaccurate one; in that, the specific title of the book, without translation, is "Nova", which isn't the case for the Life of Josephus's original title Ἰωσήπου βίος, which only contains the word "vita" when translated to Latin after the fact. It might be more apt (though still not entirely apropos) to the current situation if we listed Nova in the DAB page for New; since "new" is the translated version of the original title "nova" in the same way that "Vita" is an (abbreviated) translation of the original title "Ἰωσήπου βίος". But of course we don't do that for Nova, and so there's no reason we should here, either.
  The fact, as Drmies et al. have already pointed out, that "Vita" is a generic term for a biography in Latin makes it even clearer: because of that, it would seem that any scholarly reference using "Vita" for the "Life of Josephus" can only be understood in context--without the context of Josephus already being under discussion, the use of the word "Vita" could refer to any biography written in Latin (or in this case, translated to Latin after it was written). Nothing appears to tie the word specifically to Josephus without context. If you are reading a paper about Josephus, and the paper refers to "Vita", you could certainly infer that it's talking about the Life of Josephus, because you're already talking about Josephus. But if you pull a random history professor off the street and ask them, "Hey, what are your thoughts on Vita?", it seems like there's no reason they would think that you're specifically talking about Josephus as opposed to any of the other Latin biographies that exist, and if that's true, then i don't think it belongs on this DAB page.
  If there was a scholarly source that's not specifically about Josephus--I dunno, maybe a literary or historical analysis of biographies from the Imperial Roman era or something like that?--that still uses "Vita" to specifically refer to Josephus's biography, then I think Davidbena would have a much stronger case, but without that, I don't think their position holds much water. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:11, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Writ_Keeper, As anyone who has ever studied languages knows, sometimes generic words also carry specific meanings. I speak Hebrew fluently. The word shoshanna in Hebrew is sometimes used generically for "flower," but it can also be used specifically for "Rose" and "Iris."Davidbena (talk) 19:25, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(just fyi, linking my contribs page doesn't actually ping me, if that was your intent.) Of course, that's absolutely true. I'm not disputing that the word "vita" has multiple meanings--it certainly does. But what people disagree with you about is that specifically The Life of Josephus is one of those meanings. You don't seem to have provided much evidence to support your claim that it is; people have pointed out that your sources all use the word in the surrounding context of Josephus, and provided sources where the word "Vita" applies to other Latin biographies in other contexts. This makes it seem like the definition of the word "Vita" that we're using here is "a biography in Latin", which requires context to be understood to refer to specifically The Life of Josephus. Just because a generic word can be used in context to refer to a particular thing, doesn't mean that the generic actually means the particular. To take your earlier example, that's like saying that, because I've written a review about the book Nova wherein I referred to it as "the novel", an entry for "Nova" should be added to Novel (disambiguation). But we wouldn't do that, because without context, the word "novel" doesn't refer specifically to "Nova" at all. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:46, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

True, but even if we were to say that the term "Vita" (as used, let's say, in the Survey of Western Palestine) requires context to be understood to refer specifically to The Life of Josephus, an ordinary reader may wish to link to that source, in which case the WP:DAB is a proper venue for doing that, when accompanied by a link to the article describing that work. As I said, Josephus is a notable personage.Davidbena (talk) 19:55, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but so is William of Gellone, whose biography is also referred to as plain "Vita" in scholarly sources, as Drmies pointed out on their talk page. There are undoubtedly others. By your logic, we should also include a link to him, and probably every single other biography written in Latin. What's so special about Josephus, with regard to the word "Vita"? That's the question you have failed to answer. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, my argument to that would be notability. Look at the Disambiguation page for History (disambiguation) where, under the section of Literature, you'll find many historical compositions by that title. The common denominator between them is that all authors are quite notable. Davidbena (talk) 21:11, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Again, William of Gellone is also notable, as evidenced by the fact that they have an article. Unless you're going off of a different definition of notable than Wikipedia's. Either way, you have asserted that Josephus is different/special/notable/whatever, but you still haven't explained why. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 21:50, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not saying that the others are not notable, but rather Josephus is far more notable. I have already explained the rationale for having Josephus' Vita placed in the DAB; just as Bella Judaico (or, in short, BJ) is a Latin designation often given to describe the title of Josephus' work, The Jewish War, so, too, Vita, being a Latin designation for "Life", is also used by many to describe this particular work.Davidbena (talk) 21:55, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• @Davidbena: Your persistent badgering of the discussion is now having the (I'm sure unintended) effect of bludgeoning it. Apart from your nomination statement and subsequent !vote you have replied to everyone who has commented, even those who have not pinged you. Please, there's no need for it. ——SN54129 20:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes As a common (abbreviate) name for The Life of Flavius Josephus. Debresser (talk) 23:43, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not a common name for that Life. Sorry--facts. Drmies (talk) 03:09, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You should stop making this utterly false claim. Actually it is one of the most common names for it in the scholarly literature. Zero^talk 07:50, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just so. It certainly is the most common name in discussion regarding the Josephine vita; just as, for examples, it also is within the Columbine or Helenae traditions for their Lives. ——SN54129 19:40, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Zero, I don't do much for a living, but hagiography happens to be one of the things that I know something about. A database search of scholarly publications doesn't say everything, but it says something. In JSTOR, "vita" has 135,422 hits; "vita josephus" has 3,027; "vita boniface" has 2019, and a few hundred more if you throw in some Latin permutations. So there is nothing there to suggest that Josephus is special. And if you want to get Latin, "vita josephi" has 8 hits, and "vita bonifatii" 42. I'm not suggesting that that particular saint would win a pissing contest with Josephus, but the comparable numbers for both, and especially the discrepancy between the hits for unspecified "vita" and the term with "josephus" thrown in are clear indications that he's just not that special. I have yet to see any proof from a publication that suggest "Vita" is used for that of Josephus outside the immediate context of deictic reference. Drmies (talk) 16:53, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak yes I think that a case can be made that for any subject whose Latin biography is notable enough to A) have a Wikipedia article and B) have a redirect pointing to that article called Vita (Foo's name), it's appropriate to include them at this dab page. Vita (Josephus Flavius) meets this standard, but I'm not really familiar enough with Roman historiography to make this case in earnest. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:56, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes, but differently. I think that some people here have forgotten what a dab page is for. It isn't just for providing dictionary definitions, which is what "Vita, the usual start to the title of a biography in Latin, by which (in a known context) the work is often referred to; frequently of a saint, then called hagiography." is. A dab page is to help readers locate articles. So the right way to do it is a section heading for biographies, an explanation that it is Latin for "life" and often appears in titles of biographies, then a list of articles which are about (or prominently mention) such biographies. Josephus' Vita should be in the list. Contra Drmies, Vita is a very common name for it and there are tons of examples. Zero^talk 07:01, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• No, though Zero makes a good point. The major problem all over wiki is that editors like creating pages, but not writing them up to snuff. The Life of Flavius Josephus has about 70 words, after 15 years from its creation, during which editors could have incremently enlarged it, but haven’t. The Josephus page shows little trace of its contents, just as nothing much in the extant lives of Vergil, such as those by Servius and Donatus(Suetonius) shows up on his wiki bio. One could write a fairly long article on Flavius’s autobiography, using however only secondary sources which would tend to the recondite, for no primary sources for ancient biographies or autobiographies are in themselves reliable, as they are patched up or interewoven with third-hand hearsay, late invention, rhetorical exercises and fantasy. One can only exploit them through a set of competent scholarly analyses closely surveying the controversies that arise as to the reliability of each passage or datum.

So the link is pointless, since (a) all we have is a bare mention of the fact such a work exists and (b) eventually the sensible thing would be to expand coverage of Josephus’s self representation in a specific section of his wiki bio dealing with that autobiography.

If the work we are obliged to do in discussing pseudo-problems like this were allocated to actually expanding the still sketchy wiki bios of people like Josephus and Vergil, this encyclopedia’s coverage of antiquity would attract much more interest than it has. No, that’s actually hard work, so we tinker and prettify the skimpily otiose outlines begging for careful expansion with links to pages that tell you nothing.

The solution is to write a section on Flavius’s autobiography in the wiki bio and, if it threatens to expand to article size length, only then transfer it to an appropriate main page, with a link.Nishidani (talk) 12:32, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently that isn't the solution, as we have had The Life of Flavius Josephus for some years, though only as a 2-line stub. Johnbod (talk) 23:29, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Question Is Josephus' Vita more prominent than other such works, i.e. the one which would be assumed if someone simply mentioned Vita? If so then it should probably be listed. If not then WP:PTM has a good analogy: Louisville Zoo is not included at Zoo (disambiguation) because people outside Louisville would not readily identify it as the "Zoo", and including all zoos in the world in the disambiguation page is impractical. Certes (talk) 18:54, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  Answer: No it isn't. In fact it is never called Vita out of the context of an existing discussion of Josephus. All the editions, like our article, are called The Life of Flavius Josephus, translating the original Greek Ἰωσήπου βίος. Davidbena has come across many citations just saying "Vita" with a reference, and failed to understand this is just scholarly shorthand, operating within an understood context. Johnbod (talk) 19:12, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps, indeed, it started out as "scholarly short-hand," for those who know Latin ("Vita" being the Latin word for "Life"), but now the word is used nearly consistently by scholars who recognise the word when used in its Judeo-Greco-Roman context for a book existing by that name and written by Josephus, a book containing 76 sections with several thousands of words. It is a primary source for the 1st-century history of Roman Palestine (aka the Land of Israel). Not all persons reading these accounts and seeing the reference Vita are as studious as our friend, Johnbod, who needs no more than a Latin phrase to know its immediate translation into English or designation. Would our friend Johnbod also think that Bella Judaico (BJ), or often Bellum Iudaicum (as in p. 120, JSTOR 1451192 here), is "scholarly short-hand" for the work entitled The Jewish War? Both Latin titles are used simultaneously to describe two of Josephus' books. They are both meant to represent bona fide titles, although in the Latin tongue. What's more, even Josephus' original Greek copy of his "Life" is called Vita, as you can see here! The use of this title in the original Greek editions may have been the reason why this title has stuck with us in English sources.Davidbena (talk) 20:03, 29 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]

Vita is an extremely common name for it (I counted almost 50 academic sources using it just on my computer without recourse to Google, include a whole book on it that never calls it anything else). But anyway the "only a scholarly shorthand" argument is actually a good case for adding it here. People who find fully explained references don't need dab pages; it is precisely those who come across "Jos., Vita" in a footnote who need our help the most in finding the relevant article. Zero^talk 01:09, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment First: I was asked to look at this page by Davidbena. Secondly, I think we need a dab page for Vita (book); there we can put Josephus, all the saints (Vita Sancti Wilfrithi, Vita Sancti Columbae etc) and De Vita Caesarum and Vita (Cellini), for that matter. And of course link to Vita (book) from this page, Huldra (talk) 22:42, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That would be a WP:INCDAB. If we do create Vita (book) then it should be a short article on what a vita is, i.e. an expanded version of the first entry on the current version of Vita, probably followed by the list of books so called. Does the topic merit such an article? Certes (talk) 23:46, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

DAB pages like Vita (book) are bot-categorised into Category:Disambiguation pages with (qualified) titles as problems which need looking at. They should not be created. Narky Blert (talk) 07:56, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• No. It's a generic word and a WP:PTM. There are hundreds if not thousands of biographies and autobiographies whose title includes "vita"; e.g. Vita Basilii, Vita Ædwardi Regis, Vita Germani and Vita Sancti Wilfrithi. From closer to Josephus's time, there is De Vita Caesarum. There can be several vitae about one person, e.g. Vita Mahumeti. Benvenuto Cellini titled his autobiography, a much better known one than Josephus's, Vita. None of them is referred to as "vita" outside a context which makes it clear whose vita it is; any more than with titles which include "biography" or "autobiography".

For a recent discussion as to whether or not a common Latin word which is a non-distinguishing part of a name should be on a DAB page, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tristis (2nd nomination). It WP:SNOWed. Narky Blert (talk) 08:38, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So, if we were to accept your conclusion that "Vita" is used as a generic word (and that many books have been given that generic title), are you saying that Josephus - no matter how prominent of an author he really was, or for that matter, no matter how prominent the other names that you mentioned were (and where there are biographies written about their lives under the heading of "Vita"), that there is no place for all of these entries in the DAB page "Vita," let's say, under a separate section entitled "Literature"? If not, then how would you rectify the statements on WP:DAB that unequivocally state the purpose of having a DAB as:

• Making the links for ambiguous terms point to the correct article title. For example, an editor of an astronomy article may have created a link to Mercury, and this should be corrected to point to Mercury (planet).
• Ensuring that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily, whichever of the possible topics it might be.

From the outset, I have proposed that Josephus' Vita be distinguished from the others by writing in that section Vita (Josephus Flavius).Davidbena (talk) 17:16, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If I might ask our contributing editors here, as a start, if we were to add the section "Literature" to the DAB, can you agree to the following edit? (open collapsible window to view)

This may help settle our dispute, when these common names used for a notable person's "Life" autobiography are included in the DAB. What do you think, Narky Blert and Huldra? Will it help solve anything? Davidbena (talk) 14:08, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose. They're all WP:PTMs, just like Tristis was full of before it was deleted; e.g. Carduelis tristis, Gladiolus tristis and Luprops tristis. There wasn't a single keep !vote in the discussion. Narky Blert (talk) 15:31, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I hear you, my friend, but is this really similar to a WP:PTM? The example given for WP:PTM is where, for example, Louisville Zoo should not be included at Zoo (disambiguation), since people outside of Louisville will not link to it. Here, it's different, since people all around the world who read Josephus' works and who may wish to find out more about them can link to his Vita, if added to this DAB. You see, the use of Josephus' Vita in academic sources is tantamount to Louisville Zoo being an international word, where "Vita" is concerned. There is a subtle, but intrinsic difference.Davidbena (talk) 17:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that "the zoo" means "Louisville Zoo" only after having established the narrow context of Louisville. Elsewhere it is ambiguous and we might assume, say, "London Zoo". Search statistics above suggest that "the vita" means "The Life of Flavius Josephus" only after having established the narrow context of Josephus. Elsewhere it is ambiguous and we might assume, say, "Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldi". This is true all around the world because the narrowness of the context is by biographical subject rather than geographical. Certes (talk) 19:27, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In that you are absolutely correct, Certes. However, there are two opposing Wikipedia guidelines that come into play here when referring to Josephus' Vita. It is true that in the narrow context of Josephus, Vita is an ambiguous term, seeing that many other titles of books bear that same name. It's like looking for a particular stone in the DAB Stone (disambiguation). We cannot just simply add every stone that carries the name "stone" in that DAB, for which reason we have WP:PTM. That makes perfect sense. However, there is another guideline which is overlooked here. A DAB is meant to help readers that look for a specific link, in this case Josephus's book Vita (aka "Life of Flavius Josephus"), a reference that is often used and appears in articles of Josephus on Wikipedia, and which, based on additional guidelines, should be linked to Vita (Josephus Flavius) or to a DAB for easy understanding, based on the WP:DAB instructions: "1) Making the links for ambiguous terms point to the correct article title. For example, an editor of an astronomy article may have created a link to Mercury, and this should be corrected to point to Mercury (planet). 2) Ensuring that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily, whichever of the possible topics it might be." Yes, we've found two seemingly opposing guidelines, but I say that the two do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive.Davidbena (talk) 20:19, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

searches for a topic using a particular term is imprecise. Clearly, a search using the term "Vita (Josephus Flavius)" should find the book; we have a redirect for that. However, a search using only the term "Book" shouldn't: search results are useless after the top n lines, and this vita isn't in the top n most sought books. Should a search using only the term "Vita" find the book? Given how many other articles could be referred to, in their narrow contexts, as "Vita", it's unclear. I see no policy or guideline mandating that it must. Certes (talk) 20:48, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's borderline. For this reason our co-editor User:Rosguill thought that because of Josephus' prominence, editors reading his histories will, no doubt, encounter the word Vita and may wish to search for its reference on a DAB (disambiguation page), in which case, they would find his work described there, if we allow that entry to be listed there in the section "Literature". You see, as far as WP:PTM is concerned, some of us here feel that Josephus' Vita is an exception to the rule.Davidbena (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Certes:, @Narky Blert:, @Joel B. Lewis:, @Ealdgyth:, and Johnuniq, I will not pursue this matter any further, after I've made this final remark here for the record. Now that we've come this far, and without belaboring the point, if we were to have Vita (Josephus Flavius) in this DAB under a section called "Literature," wouldn't it be more closely related to having a compilation of written "Histories", such as what we already have got here, in History (disambiguation), than what it is related to WP:PTM? Have a good day, gentlemen. Ive enjoyed discussing these issues with you and trying to reach a consensus. One has to know when enough is enough. I have no more to say about this matter.Davidbena (talk) 14:40, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BLUDGEON, much? Away with your incessant badgering. ——SN54129 14:43, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User:Zero0000, can you officially close this RfC?Davidbena (talk) 14:07, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but since I was a participant with an opinion in one direction it should be closed by someone uninvolved. Zero^talk 01:49, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User:El C, may I cordially ask you to close this RfC for us?Davidbena (talk) 02:41, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, Davidbena, I don't believe I'll have the time to attempt closing this discussion any time soon, as I am quite busy elsewhere. I suggest you list it at ANRFC, though. El_C 16:20, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes as per Zero, there should be a section of the DAB on works of this sort which may be referred to simply as Vit6a. Or there could be a short article or list article on such works, limited to notable works of course. Zero is correct that the purpose of a DAB is to help readers who are not fully familiar with the subject. Readers who already know the convention will not need such an aide, but many will benefit from it. That this book is not the primary topic for the term "vita" (which indeed it is not) is of little relevance here. Most items mentioned in a DAB are not the primary topic. DABs are not to define and explain their items, nor to categorize them, but merely to point readers to articles of possible relevance to the search term. The entry being challenged fulfills that purpose. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 23:15, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]