Online talk:First Mate Gulfreida

Hatnote

Per discussion on UESP Discord channel (wiki editing help), I recommend we add a hatnote to this page, leading to the other Gulfreida. Some users felt a hatnote was appropriate for the Gulfreida page, but not for the First Mate Gulfreida page. Other users felt it was appropriate for both pages. I originally thought of a disambiguation page, but that was also deemed inappropriate. Some of the discussion points included the following:

• Dcsg: A disambiguation page would not be appropriate, so I did this <link to hatnote on Gulfreida page>.
• Solomon1972: Thanks! I added the same (opposite) to the other Gulfreida <created hatnote on First Mate Gulfreida page>.
• Dcsg: That is not necessary, as there are no situations where someone would end up there expecting the other.
• Jeancey: Generally, you'd only put it on the one more likely to be hit. So the only Gulfreida, since no one is going to search for First Mate Gulfreida, land there, and then realize it's the wrong one, but someone easily could search for Gulfreida, land on Gulfrieda, and realize they really wanted First Mate Gulfreida.
• Enodoc the Artificer: I would support any such new policy suggestion on Community Portal which recommended bilateral hatnotes over Wikipedia's one-way hatnotes.
• Uncle Sporky: I'm a complete nobody so my opinion is not worth much, but I agree. I don't see why it's helpful to have less information rather than more, especially when it's one small line that isn't that disruptive or messy. And for a user to find the wrong character and NOT see disambiguation might give them the impression that the right character isn't even present on the wiki.
• ]jinxmaster1: <link to wikipedia's disambiguation page> First bulletpoint seems to support solomon's suggestion almost word for word.
• Solomon1972: Agree with jinxmaster1 and Uncle Sporky. And the Wikipedia guidelines are guidelines. Not hard and fast rules. "best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." And hatnotes "help readers locate a different article if the one they are viewing is not the one they're looking for." If a user looks for Gulfreida from inside UESP, they'll find the fisher. If a user looks for her from a search engine, they'll find the sailor. It seems a simple thing, considering it's a one-liner at the top of a small page, to aid the end user if they end up on one page or the other. It is rare for TES characters to have the same exact name spelling. We should help the end user of our collective product be able to know there are two Gulfreidas.
• Jeancey: That's fair. Raise this point on the talk page of first mate gulfreida, as to why we aren't following the guidelines in this case, but that makes sense to me. (So there is a record of it on wiki)

End of initial post. Solomon1972 (talk) 16:49, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I support this hatnote. Dcsg's assertion that it is completely impossible for someone to arrive on First Mate Gulfreida when they are looking for Gulfreida is unfounded, especially considering how similar these two characters are. They're both female Nords who can be found at city docks - and they have the same name! Someone looking for Gulfreida could easily see a First Mate Gulfreida link and click it, assuming that they had merely forgotten the preceding rank and only remembered the name. Is it unlikely? Perhaps, but one, this whole discussion started from Solomon making a similar mistake, and two, that is not a good argument for exclusion. It was mentioned on the Discord after the above excerpt that the top of a page has some sort of value wherein unnecessary information distracts the reader, and I just cannot see where this view is coming from. Anyone looking for Gulfreida will click it, and anyone not looking for it will simply go "Oh, there's another person with the same name. Neat." I do not see where the confusion could come from, unless someone is just unfamiliar with hatnotes in general, which is not sufficient reasoning for exclusion as it applies to every hatnote on the wiki. Mindtrait0r (talk) 22:30, 21 July 2023 (UTC)