Wikipedia:Primary topics in WP:ONEOTHER situations
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 | This page in a nutshell: From a utilitarian perspective, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC should have a different (i.e., lower) standard in WP:ONEOTHER cases. |
WP:PRIMARYTOPIC holds that:
Discussion commenters have attempted to quantify this in discussions such as this (by User:SMcCandlish):
However, in WP:ONEOTHER cases, one of the pages serves as both the primary topic article and the de facto disambiguation page by way of the disambiguation hatnote at the top of the same page. Readers seeking the non-primary topic only need one click to reach their destination from the primary topic page via the hatnote.
Consider the following two imaginary cases. First, a term with three meanings:
In this case, all other factors being equal, Pletskath (animal) would likely not be considered the primary even though it gets a majority of pageviews. Instead, the base name would be a disambiguation page linking to the three articles. The result is that 100% of readers arriving at the disambiguation page would have to click once to reach their destination.
If animal page was/were moved to the base name, the 60% of readers seeking the animal article would reach their destination faster with the animal now occupying the base name. However, the 40% of readers seeking the book or the village would peruse the animal page more carefully and then have to click twice to get to their destination, once from the animal base page to the disambiguation page and then again to reach their final destination. (Think of it as 80 clicks per 100 readers versus 100 clicks per 100 readers when there is a disambiguation page)
Next, a term with two meanings:
If dance article was/were moved to the base name, the 60% of readers seeking the dance article would likewise reach their destination faster with the dance article now occupying the base name. However, in this case, the 40% of readers seeking the city would only have to click once to get to their final destination, since there is no intervening disambiguation page, representing a much lower comparative inconvenience. (Now only 40 clicks per 100 readers versus 100 clicks per 100 readers when there is a disambiguation page)
Thus, since there is a greater comparative benefit, there is more utilitarian incentive to move the dance article to the base name in a WP:ONEOTHER situation. A 60% of pageviews threshold would likely be unacceptable to qualify a topic for primary status when there are three or more topics of that name, but could be acceptable if there are only two topics sharing the name.