This timeline includes some changes to the technology that are relevant to the relationship between
set index articles (SIA)s and
disambiguation pages (dab or DAB pages).
2005
Category:Signpost_articles is created with a description stating that signpost articles "are a lot like disambiguation pages, except that the target pages need not have the same name". Some dab pages are retagged as signpost articles (example
).
Severe
trimming of a dab page (formerly a signpost article) results in
a heated discussion at MOS:DAB. A subsequent
discussion at WikiProject Ships includes "I've had it in the back of my mind for a long time to create a ship-specific subcategory of disambiguations with a special template, note the subcats of Category:Disambiguation to see others doing this already."
2006
A discussion about disambiguation subcategories is closed with "The overwhelming consensus was remove all disambiguation subcategory templates, and carried to every specific template currently in use."
Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships/Archive_2#Ship_index_pages - "... the development of a very strict format for disambiguation pages ... means that there is a group of editors who are likely to apply this style blindly to all disambiguation pages, including ship index articles.". There is a
discussion at MOS:DAB where one editor argues that "these pages are not "pure" disambiguation pages, but capsule histories of the use of a ship name in a navy". Subsequently some dab pages are changed to shipindex (example
). In
further discussion at MOS:DAB editors are generally in favour of ship index pages - e.g. "true disambig pages should be short and sweet, with "hood" pointing to the ship index page "HMS Hood"... so the ship index pages can be as inflated as they like."
There's
a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation titled "Clarification of "index set article" exemption?" that includes the statement "at this point the consensus view seems to be that strong/explicit WikiProject support is the main criterion for allowing an exception".
Category:Set_index_articles
is deleted with the rationale "A generic category for what was intended to be exceptional is not a good thing" (note: a redirect was later placed at that name).
Template:Mountain_index survives
at TFD ("This is a useful template for set indices, which are not the same as standard disambiguation pages").
Template:Mountain index is
changed from a dab template to a SIA template. Category:Disambiguation_lists_of_mountains was deleted as empty the following April.
This category page is for administrative purposes only. Most of the entries below are
set index articles (
Template:SIA), but some redirects have been included to allow easy access to
disambiguation pages (
Template:Disambig) that are not only about snakes. Category tags are no longer allowed on disambiguation pages, so these "(snake)" and "(synonym)" redirects have been created to carry them instead. Example: Adder (snake) redirects to
Adder. The category tags are used for overviews of common names (e.g.
Viperinae by common name) and taxonomic synonyms (e.g.
Crotalinae by taxonomic synonyms).
2009
Monthly DAB Challengebegins. Since that point (and possibly before) some very industrious editors fix thousands of links to dab pages every month.
DPL bot
starts notifying editors of links they've created to dab pages. Links to SIAs are not flagged up.
2013
(Circa 2013)
Category intersection becomes available with off-wiki tools. This provides a way to detect pages that are in categories that should be mutually exclusive.
There are over 50,000 pages in
Category:All set index articles - many/most of them lists of people sharing a surname (e.g.
Aarflot). This is approximately one SIA for every 5 disambiguation pages.
The
interwiki links from
Category:Set indices show only 2 other Wikipedias (Portuguese and Chinese) having a category for SIAs - and they contain a total of 29 pages.
2022
Categories named "set indices" or "set index pages" are
renamed to "set index articles".