Difference between revisions of "Help:Disambiguation"

Revision as of 11:27, 21 October 2009

Disambiguations are used when multiple articles needs to be called the same name, but share no content, or needs to be separated. It's when a slight name change is used to keep them apart.

What is a Disambiguation?

Disambiguation is a long and strange word that you are unlikely to use in any other context than for wiki editing. It is the wiki verb for removing potentially ambiguous articles with multiple contents that are not related, but share the same name. An example is APM in Wikipedia, where "APM" can mean a host of different things, and they would not fit on the same article page. This is of course a much smaller problem in DiabloWiki than on Wikipedia.

How to use Disambiguations

In the cases of multiple identical article names, a small differentiation is needed between the different pages, and a disambiguation page is put in place of the original article. If it's a very small number of conflicting articles, then it's possible to just use the title for the more prominent one, and then linking the less important page at the top of the prominent one.

When the disambiguation is an acronym, then it's most often best to just use the full name as article names instead of any more "advanced" changes.

Disambiguation Pages

These disambiguation pages are basically just a list of articles on a page, but they should be made similarly, and this is how you make one:

Topic, alternate name and a potential tertiary name may refer to any of the following:

• [[Link]]<nowiki>, explanatory text * <nowiki>[[Another Link]]<nowiki>, explanatory text * <nowiki>[[Link (with explanation)]]<nowiki>, explanatory text * Etc. <nowiki>[[Category:Disambiguations]]

Disambiguation "list" pages should be added to this category: Category:Disambiguations.

DiabloWiki Disambiguation Formatting

DiabloWiki uses the same formatting as Wikipedia when dealing with disambiguations. The new page names from a disambiguation are named like this: [[Article name (clarification)]], if it's not possible to name them any other way. Check our title naming policies for further help with how to make disambiguation titles. Articles or categories work in the same way.

When to Use Disambiguations

Try to avoid using disambiguation changes to names as much as possible. There are no great problems with adding disambiguation list pages for acronyms, however.

The use of disambiguations can confuse new users of the wiki, so always try to put the article which is most likely the visitor is looking for in the primary name slot.

There are a few examples on how to deal with disambiguations:

1. If two or more articles are both well and equally used, make a disambiguation page in the primary name slot. Encourage visitors to specify links leading to the disambiguation page to lead directly to the right page.
2. If one page with the ambiguous name is significantly more used than the minor one, don't make a full disambiguation: just add :''Where you looking for [[conflict page]]?'' at the start of the article, linking to the article in question.
3. If several disambiguations exist but one article is more used than the rest, just change the specific article mentioned in (2), to link to a disambiguation page like [[Conflict page (disambiguation)]], and keep the main article in the primary name slot.