Talk:Murse

Redirecting Murse to Handbag#Men.27s_bags does suggest the following:

1. Murse is a proper word/common term (otherwise it would have been deleted)
2. Male purse is the primary meaning of murse^[1]
3. Male purse is the only possible meaning of murse (there's no hatnote over there to murse (disambiguation))

I seriously doubt this is correct. It can mean both "man purse" and "male nurse"^[2], there's no primary topic, so Murse and murse (disambiguation) should be DABs, not redirects.

There are two other meanings, by the way:

• archaic name of Moers
• variant of mirza^[3]

{{wiktionary|murse}}

Michael! (talk) 10:58, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

• It's not a question of what the "primary meaning" of "murse" is, but the "primary topic" in the sense of a topic an encyclopedia user will be looking for, and which is represented in the encyclopedia. There is no wikipedia article on the "male nurse" sense of "murse". There is no indication in the encyclopedia article that it is a variant of "mirza" (OK, so OED shows it as a 15th century variant spelling: we don't tend to include all archaic spellings of all our article titles). It's an archaic Dutch spelling of "Moers", mentioned in Moers: that could just about merit making the Murse redirect into a dab page. There is no need for any link or redirect to Murse (disambiguation) from anywhere, as that is at present only a redirect.

Taking your 3 points in order:

1. Yes, there is evidence that it's a proper word - the mention of it in Handbag is sourced
2. Yes, as there is no mention of "murse" in any wikipedia article on nurses or male nurses, then that sense is not relevant when considering the primary topic of the word in the encyclopedia
3. There is no point in linking to a non-existent dab page.

As wiktionary is user-contributed, I don't think it is a Reliable Source. But in any case, Wikipedia is not a dictionary: if there is an article on any other sense of "Murse" then there should be a link to it; if not, then not.

If you have solid evidence for the use of "murse" for male nurses, then add that information to the article on nurses. If it gets rejected there by those who say it is considered offensive, there might be grounds for an article about the word itself if you can find reliable sources about it. PamD 19:43, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick reply.

No, I don't think wiktionary is a reliable source - nor is or anything equivalent. However, I do think the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Oxford Dictionary of English (2010 edition), and the Oxford English Dictionary are reliable - and apart from OED's mirza, there's no entry for "murse" in any of them. That's why I concluded it isn't a proper word nor common term.

The handbag usage's source seems to be just as reliable as (questionable?) sources for "male nurse"^[4]. I can't see why the former would be "solid evidence" to include it in an encyclopedia, but the latter not.

By the way, excluding the "male nurse" usage just because someone might consider it offensive is contrary to Wikipedia:Offensive.

Concerning "a topic an encyclopedia user will be looking for": I do consider myself as an encyclopedia user, and when I searched for Murse, I was actually looking for Moers, certainly not for a handbag.

Michael! (talk) 09:47, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I've re-created the dab page, with no mention of the male nurse sense as that is not supported within the Male nurse article. PamD 06:43, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

But your points about the sources for handbag and nurse are irrelevant to the dab page: if there is sourced content in Male nurse or Nurse which shows the term is used, then it merits a place in the dab page; if not, then not. There is no mention of the term on those pages. There is sourced mention of the term on the handbag page. The dab page is not a list of possible meanings of the term. I've included Mirza on the strength of OED, but it's iffy: it's not mentioned in the article. PamD 07:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I do think this is better. By the way, I've redirected Murse (disambiguation) to Murse instead of Handbag#Men.27s_bags. Michael! (talk) 09:14, 17 June 2013 (UTC)