The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:51, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ethopia[edit]

Ethopia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Contains only two entries: Ethopia (moth) and a misspelling of Ethiopia. That does not seem useful for a disambiguation page, but a user claimed that the misspelling of Ethiopia is common enough to justify a dab page. WP:DAB is ambiguous on misspellings. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:25, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Animal, Disambiguations, and Ethiopia. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:25, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete and move Ethopia (moth) to this title with a hatnote - given the shortness of that stub the result for people looking for the country is almost as good. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:59, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Pppery. Including a misspelling on a disambiguation page doesn't seem appropriate to me. A hatnote would be better. - Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 02:53, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete and institute Pppery's suggestion. —siroχo 04:51, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete and move Ethopia (moth) to Ethopia, per Pppery. (I'm the one who initially changed the redirect to Ethiopia to the dab. Yes, really I should have suggested moving Ethopia (moth) but I can't recall my thinking at the time.) --A bit iffy (talk) 05:25, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• So before we get all bandwagony here ;) let's revisit the comment: https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Ethopia does indicate the typo is quite common, so this is actually useful apparently. In July, there were 182 views of the page, and given anonymization rules for <10 clickstreams, we only see 116 clicks to Ethiopia (i.e. typo) which is 63%, and nothing rendered going to the moth. That means in the absolute best case very unlikely scenario for the moth, 9 readers went to the moth from search, 9 from main page, 9 from an unidentified source, and 9 from other Wikimedia projects. It's still just 36 which is a bit under 20%. Even if this was just one month of data, and we don't know if it's super reliable, sending at least 80% of readers to somewhere where we don't have any proof they want to go to - seems a bit sketchy. We also have a recent precedent here in the recent move of Courtney Cox to primary redirect (!). --Joy (talk) 08:01, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I appreciate the context. I feel that's at least a slightly different case, because "Courtney" is the more common spelling of the name pronounced in that way, so even though it's technically a misspelling, it's more of an alternate spelling, because the reader is intentionally spelling it that way. (we can even see the internet slowly learn the correct spelling for the performer's name over time [1])

  In this case, WP:SURPRISE is happening either way, so the dab should probably go, and I think that's what Pppery was probably getting at with the given the shortness of that stub... comment.

  And to cover all the bases, if the consensus is that to avoid WP:SURPRISE, despite an actual misspelling that is not an alternate spelling, Ethopia should be a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to Ethiopia, we can still hatnote Ethopia (moth) itself on the article. A dab would have a single meaningful entry in that case and not be useful. —siroχo 08:58, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not sure how to satisfy the principle of least astonishment here. It seems reasonable to assume that a person who knows they're looking for the moth will probably be astonished that we promote a typo over the correct use of the word; conversely, a person looking for information on Ethiopia will probably be confused that in the very top of the article we promote a word that has little to do with the country. The latter group is significantly larger than the first, though, so if this traffic remains at a separate disambiguation page, at least the impact is less. --Joy (talk) 21:16, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  My reason for agreement with the initial suggestion was because the dab is overall less useful than a hatnoted article. Perhaps WP:ONEOTHER is the most appropriate guideline, despite the spelling. Do you see a clear benefit for keeping the dab over simply hatnoting Ethopia (moth), and leaving Ethiopia alone? (Leaving aside, for now, the potential for a different consensus around Ethiopia being considered the primary redirect for Ethopia) —siroχo 21:47, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I mentioned it above - the only data point we have tells us that over 80% of people would then likely be clicking the hatnote. IOW we would not actually be helping the navigation of the average reader. --Joy (talk) 14:22, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.