Wikipedia:Disambiguation
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This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
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This page in a nutshell: It is necessary to provide links and disambiguation pages so that readers typing in a reasonably likely topic name for more than one Wikipedia topic can quickly navigate to the article they seek. |
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Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous, and so may refer to more than one topic which Wikipedia covers. For example, the word "Mercury" can refer to an element, a planet, a Roman god, and many other things. There are three important aspects to disambiguation:
- Naming articles in such a way that each has a unique title. For example, three of the articles dealing with topics ordinarily called "Mercury" are titled Mercury (element), Mercury (planet) and Mercury (mythology).
- Making the links for ambiguous terms point to the correct article title. For example, an editor of an astronomy article may have created a link to [[Mercury]], and this should be corrected to point to Mercury (planet).
- Ensuring that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily, whichever of the possible topics it might be. For example, the page Mercury is a disambiguation page – a non-article page which lists the various meanings of "Mercury" and links to the articles which cover them. (As discussed below, however, ambiguous terms do not always require a disambiguation page.)
This page discusses the standard ways of handling the above issues. For detailed advice about the format of disambiguation pages, see the style manual.
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Deciding to disambiguate
Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead. In this situation there must be a way for the reader to navigate quickly from the page that first appears to any of the other possible desired articles.
There are three principal disambiguation scenarios, of which the following are examples:
- The page at Joker is a disambiguation page, leading to all the alternative uses of "Joker".
- The page at Rice is about one usage, called the primary topic, and there is a hatnote guiding readers to Rice (disambiguation) to find the other uses.
- The page at Michael Dobbs is about the primary topic, and there is only one other use. The other use is linked directly using a hatnote; no disambiguation page is needed.
For how to decide which of these scenarios is appropriate in a given case, see the following two sections.
Broad concept articles
If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing the broad concept, and not a disambiguation page. Where the primary topic of a term is a general topic that can be divided into subtopics, such as chronologically (e.g., History of France) or geographically (e.g., Rugby union in the British Isles), the unqualified title should contain an article about the general topic rather than a disambiguation page. A disambiguation page should not be created just because it is difficult to write an article on a topic that is broad, vague, abstract, or highly conceptual. Where there are additional meanings that are not instances or examples of a "Foo" primary concept or type, those should be included on a "Foo (disambiguation)" page.
For example:
- Particle (previously a disambiguation page) is a broad and abstract concept used to address many different ideas in physics, generally relating to small units from which larger things are composed. Although there are many different kinds of particles at levels ranging from the subatomic to the macroscopic, the broad concept is properly susceptible to explanation in an article. Other meanings, such as Particle (band), are presented at Particle (disambiguation).
- A Supreme Court, National Trust, or Finance Minister is each a kind of entity occurring in multiple countries and possibly in other political entities, and serving the same purpose in each. Rather than having disambiguation pages at these titles linking to existing articles on these entities by nation, each should contain an article describing in general terms what the concept is, and how the different examples of this concept relate to each other.
In writing articles on these subjects, it is useful to directly address the scope of the term, and the history of how the concept has developed. Each of the examples of the concept or type of thing should be included at some point in the article, possibly in a list, so that no information is lost from what would have been presented in the disambiguation page format. Consider using summary style to incorporate information about the subtopics into the main article.
Is there a primary topic?
Although an ambiguous term may refer to more than one topic, it is sometimes the case that one of these topics is highly likely—much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined—to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that ambiguous term in the Search box. If there is such a topic, then it is called the primary topic for that term. If a primary topic exists, the ambiguous term should be the title of, or redirect to, the article on that topic. If there is no primary topic, the ambiguous term should be the title of a disambiguation page[under discussion] (or redirect to a different disambiguation page, if uses of more than one ambiguous term are linked in combination on one page).
An exception may be appropriate when recentism and educational value are taken into account, especially if one of these topics is a vital article. In such a case, consensus may determine that the article should be treated as the primary topic regardless of whether it is the article most sought by users.[under discussion]
There are no absolute rules for determining how likely a given topic is to be sought by readers entering a given term; decisions are made by discussion between editors, often as a result of a requested move. Tools that may help to support the determination of a primary topic in a discussion, but are not determining factors, include:
- Incoming wikilinks from Special:WhatLinksHere
- Wikipedia article traffic statistics
- Google web, news, scholar, or book searches (NOTE: adding &pws=0 to the google search string eliminates personal search bias)
The title of the primary topic article may be different from the ambiguous term being considered. This may happen when the topic is primary for more than one term, when the article covers a wider topical scope, or when it is titled differently according to the naming conventions. When this is the case, the term should redirect to the article (or a section of it). The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary. For example:
- The primary topic for "Danzig" is the former German city of that name, but the article on that city is titled Gdańsk. Therefore Danzig redirects to Gdańsk, and the latter page contains a {{redirect}} hatnote linking to Danzig (disambiguation).
- The primary topic for the search term "Einstein" is the physicist, but the article title is Albert Einstein. Here Einstein redirects to Albert Einstein, and a hatnote then links to Einstein (disambiguation).
- The article at Defamation is the primary topic for five ambiguous terms: "defamation", "libel", "slander", "vilification", and "calumny". Even though there is a British film with the title Libel, the article at Defamation is still the primary topic for that title and the film must be disambiguated.
Disambiguation page or disambiguation links?
As discussed above, if an ambiguous term is considered to have no primary topic, then that term should lead to a disambiguation page. However, if there is a primary topic, then the question arises whether to create a disambiguation page, or merely to link to all the other meanings from a hatnote on the primary topic article.
If there are only two topics to which a given title might refer, and one is the primary topic, then a disambiguation page is not needed – it is sufficient to use a hatnote on the primary topic article, pointing to the other article. (This means that readers looking for the second topic are spared the extra navigational step of going through the disambiguation page.) If there are two or three other topics, it is still possible to use a hatnote which lists the other topics explicitly, but if this would require too much text (roughly, if the hatnote would extend well over one line on a standard page), then it is better to create a disambiguation page and refer only to that. (If one of the other topics is felt to be of particular interest, then it is possible to link to it explicitly as well as linking to the disambiguation page.)
For more about hatnotes, see Disambiguation links below. For rules about naming disambiguation pages and combining similar terms on a single page, see Disambiguation pages.
Naming the specific topic articles
For disambiguating specific topic pages by using an unambiguous article title, several options are available:
- When there is another term or more complete name (such as Heavy metal music instead of Heavy metal) that is equally clear and is unambiguous, that may be used.
- A disambiguating word or phrase can be added in parentheses. The word or phrase in parentheses should be:
- the generic class (avoiding proper nouns, as much as possible) that includes the topic, as in Mercury (element), Seal (mammal); or
- the subject or context to which the topic applies, as in Union (set theory), Inflation (economics).
- Rarely, an adjective describing the topic can be used, but it is usually better to rephrase such a title to avoid parentheses.
- With place-names, if the disambiguating term is a higher-level administrative division, it is often separated using a comma instead of parentheses, as in Windsor, Berkshire. See Naming conventions (geographic names).
If there are several possible choices for disambiguating with a class or context, use the same disambiguating phrase already commonly used for other topics within the same class and context, if any. Otherwise, choose whichever is simpler. For example, use "(mythology)" rather than "(mythological figure)".
If there is a choice between using a short phrase and word with context, such as Mathematical analysis and Analysis (mathematics), there is no hard rule about which is preferred. Both may be created, with one redirecting to the other.
Naming conventions applicable to certain subject areas are listed in the box to the right; these often contain detailed guidance about how to disambiguate. In particular, for articles about people, see the Disambiguating section in the people naming convention.
Format
To conform to the naming conventions, the phrase in parentheses should be treated just as any other word in a title: normally lowercase, unless it is a proper noun (like a book title) that would appear capitalized even in running text.
For common disambiguation words, see User:Jarry1250/Findings.
Disambiguation links
Users searching for what turns out to be an ambiguous term may not reach the article they expected. Therefore any article with an ambiguous title should contain helpful links to alternative Wikipedia articles or disambiguation pages, placed at the top of the article using one of the templates shown below. (Notice that the links are generated automatically, so double square brackets should not be used within the templates.)
In some cases there are different templates available, including or omitting information about the topic of the article. The shorter hatnote may be chosen if omitting the information is not likely to confuse the reader.
On a primary topic page for a term that has one secondary topic only (no disambiguation page):
- Type {{about|TOPIC|TOPIC 2|ARTICLE (2)}} to produce:
- Type {{for|TOPIC 2|ARTICLE (2)}} to produce:
- Type {{see also|ARTICLE (2)}} to produce:
On a secondary topic page for a term that has one other topic only (no disambiguation page):
- As above, but consider whether the hatnote is really necessary (see the first of the usage guidelines below).
On a primary topic page that has an associated disambiguation page:
- Type {{about|TOPIC}} to produce:
- Type {{otheruses}} to produce:
- or, if the disambiguation page is not in the default location, type {{otheruses|NAME}} to produce:
When the primary topic redirects to another page:
- If there is only one secondary topic, type {{redirect|TERM|TOPIC 2|ARTICLE (2)}} on the target page to produce:
- If there is a disambiguation page, type {{redirect|TERM}} to produce:
Other variations on these templates are available, including templates for specific subjects such as places, numbers, etc. Templates are listed and illustrated at Template talk:About and Wikipedia:Otheruses templates (example usage). A longer list of disambiguation templates is found at Wikipedia:Template messages/General#Disambiguation and redirection; further style information is given at Wikipedia:Hatnotes#Templates. Many more templates are listed in Category:Disambiguation and redirection templates.
Usage guidelines
- There is no need to add disambiguation links to a page whose name already clearly distinguishes itself from the generic term. For example, Solaris (1972 film) is clearly about one specific movie and not about any of the many other meanings of "Solaris". It is very unlikely that someone arriving there from within Wikipedia would have been looking for any other "Solaris", so it is unnecessary to add a link pointing to the Solaris disambiguation page. However, it would be perfectly appropriate to add a link to Solaris (novel) (but not, say, Solaris (operating system)) to its "See also" section.
- As noted above, disambiguation links should be placed at the top of an article, where they are most visible. For alternatives that are related to the article but are not a source of ambiguity, the "See also" section at the end of the article is more appropriate.
- Do not pipe disambiguation links. Showing the entire linked article title avoids confusion, which is the reason for the link in the first place.
- Consolidate multiple disambiguation links into as few dablink hatnotes as possible.
- See Wikipedia:Hatnote for other guidelines on the proper use of disambiguation links.
Disambiguation pages
Combining terms on disambiguation pages
A single disambiguation page may be used to disambiguate a number of similar terms. Sets of terms which are commonly so combined include:
- Terms which differ only in capitalization, punctuation and diacritic marks. For example, the terms Oe, Ōe, OE and O.E. are disambiguated on a single page (Oe).
- Corresponding singular, plural and possessive forms, or compound words. For example, the terms Eaglenest, Eagle Nest, Eagle's Nest and Eagle Nests all appear at Eagle's Nest.
- Variant spellings. For example, Honor and Honour both appear at Honor (disambiguation).
- Variant forms of names. For example, Fred Smith also includes persons named Frederick Smith.
- Terms which differ by the presence or absence of an article (i.e., "a", "an", or "the" in English). For example, Cure (disambiguation) also contains instances of The Cure.
Editorial judgement should be used in deciding whether to combine terms in the ways described above. If a combined disambiguation page would be inconveniently long, it may be better to split the different spellings into separate pages.
When a combined disambiguation page is used, redirects to it (or hatnotes, as appropriate) should be set up from all the terms involved.
Naming the disambiguation page
The title of a disambiguation page is the ambiguous term itself, provided there is no primary topic for that term. If there is a primary topic, then the tag "(disambiguation)" is added to the name of the disambiguation page, as in Jupiter (disambiguation). It is also acceptable to create a page at "Term ABC (disambiguation)" that redirects to a disambiguation page at "Term ABC". This type of redirect can be used to indicate deliberate links to the disambiguation page.
When a disambiguation page combines several similar terms, one of them must be selected as the title for the page (with the "(disambiguation)" tag added if a primary topic exists for that term); the choice should be made in line with the following principles:
- A word is preferred to an abbreviation, for example Arm (disambiguation) over ARM.
- When no word can be formed all capitals is preferred. For example, the disambiguation page for "ddb" is DDB (disambiguation), not "Ddb".
- English spelling is preferred to that of non-English languages.
- Singulars are preferred to plurals.
- The simplest form of the term is preferred to those containing punctuation, diacritics and articles; for example SA is preferred to S.A., and Shadow (disambiguation) is preferred to The Shadow (disambiguation).
- The spelling that reflects the majority of items on the page is preferred to less common alternatives.
Page style
Each disambiguation page comprises a list (or multiple lists, for multiple senses of the term in question) of similarly-titled links.
- Link to the primary topic (if there is one):
-
- A school is an institution for learning.
- Start each list with a short introductory sentence fragment with the title in bold, and ending with a colon. For example:
-
- Blockbuster may refer to:
- Try to start each entry in the list with a link to the target page.
- Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link; including more than one link can confuse the reader.
- Do not pipe the name of the links to the articles being listed. (See exceptions)
- Include related subject articles only if the term in question is actually described in the target article. (For example, the Canton disambiguation page legitimately has an entry for Flag terminology.)
Include the template {{disambig}} (or other disambiguation template, such as {{Geodis}} or {{Hndis}}) at the bottom as an indicator of the page's status. For more information, see the relevant style guide section.
For prime examples of disambiguation pages, see "Lift" and "Aurora".
What not to include
Dictionary definitions
A disambiguation page is not a list of dictionary definitions. A short description of the common general meaning of a word can be appropriate for helping the reader determine context. Otherwise, there are templates for linking the reader to Wiktionary, the wiki dictionary; see Template:Wiktionary.
Partial title matches
A disambiguation page is not a search index. Do not add a link that merely contains part of the page title, or a link that includes the page title in a longer proper name, where there is no significant risk of confusion. For example, Baltimore Zoo is not included at Zoo (disambiguation) because people outside Baltimore would not readily identify it as the "Zoo", and including all zoos in the world in the disambiguation page is impractical. Add a link only if the article's subject (or the relevant subtopic thereof) could plausibly be referred to by essentially the same name as the disambiguated term in a sufficiently generic context. For instance, the Mississippi River article could not feasibly be titled Mississippi, but it is included at Mississippi (disambiguation) because its subject is often called "the Mississippi".
Sister projects
Disambiguation descriptions should not be created for subjects whose only articles are on pages of sister projects, even if the disambiguation page already exists.
References
Do not include references in disambiguation pages; disambiguation pages are not articles. Incorporate references into the disambiguated articles as needed.
External links
Never include external links, either as entries or in descriptions. Disambiguation pages disambiguate Wikipedia articles, not the World-Wide Web. To note URLs that might be helpful in the future, include them on the talk page.
Preparation
Before constructing a new disambiguation page, determine a specific topic name for all existing pages, and the name for the disambiguation page. Move any page with a conflicting title (i.e., the same exact title) to its more specific name. Use the What links here list for the moved page to update pages that link to that page.
Construction
If an article has been moved to make way for the disambiguation page, use the What links here list of the moved page to access the redirect page created by the move, and replace that redirect page with the new disambiguation page.
Use the new disambiguation page to find and replace any old disambiguation links in existing pages with a link to the new disambiguation page.
Note that the standard link templates will actually point to a Term XYZ (disambiguation) version of the new name. Use the red-link on an existing page to create a redirect page marked with the {{R to disambiguation page}} template.
For example, Term XYZ (disambiguation) could be redirected to the new disambiguation page Term XYZ as follows:
#REDIRECT [[Term XYZ]] {{R to disambiguation page}}
Set index articles
A set index article is a list article about a set of items of a specific type that share the same (or similar) name. For example, Dodge Charger describes a set of cars, List of peaks named Signal Mountain describes a set of mountain peaks, and USS Enterprise describes a set of ships.
A set index article is not a disambiguation page: A disambiguation page is a list of different types of things that share the same (or similar) name. A set index need not follow the formatting rules for disambiguation pages; however many do by convention. A set index article is meant for information as well as navigation: just like a normal list article, it can have metadata and extra information about each entry. It may contain redlinks to help editors create articles on notable entries.
Fundamentally, a set index article is a type of list article. The criteria for creating, adding to, or deleting a set index article should be the same as for a stand-alone list. The style of a set index article should follow the style guidelines at Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. A set index article can be tagged with {{SIA}}.
Sometimes there will be a disambiguation page and a set index article for the same term. If the disambiguation page carries the name of the term (as with Signal Mountain), then the set index article should be named "List of XXXs named YYY" (as in List of peaks named Signal Mountain). Alternatively, if the set index article is considered the primary topic, it may be named with just the term itself, the disambiguation page being called "YYY (disambiguation)".
For more information about set index articles for ships, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines#Index pages.
Links
Double disambiguation
A double disambiguation is a link to a disambiguation page from another disambiguation page. This kind of disambiguation is typically more specific than one with a simplified name. This kind of disambiguation is relatively rare on Wikipedia.
- For example, Montgomery is a disambiguation page that leads to Montgomery County, a secondary disambiguation page.
Incomplete disambiguation
When a more specific title is still ambiguous, but not enough so to call for double disambiguation, it should redirect back to the main disambiguation page (or a section of it). This aids navigation, and helps editors to avoid creating new articles under the ambiguous title by accident.
Such redirects should be marked with {{R from incomplete disambiguation}} (which places them under Category:Redirects from incomplete disambiguations). For example, Aurora (album) could redirect as follows:
#REDIRECT [[Aurora#Music]]{{R from incomplete disambiguation}}
Interlanguage links
Pure disambiguation pages should contain interlanguage links only where a similar problem of disambiguation exists in the target language; that is, they should not point to a single meaning from the list of meanings, but to another disambiguation page.
Links to disambiguated topics
A code of honor for creating disambiguation pages is to fix all resulting mis-directed links.
Before moving an article to a qualified name (in order to create a disambiguation page at the base name, or to move an existing disambiguation page to that name), click on What links here to find all of the incoming links. Repair all of those incoming links to use the new article name.
When repairing a link, use pipe syntax so that the link does not show the new qualifier. For example, when renaming Topic Name to Topic Name (qualifier), [[Topic Name (qualifier)|Topic Name]] will render as Topic Name just like the original.
A shorter alternative is to use empty pipe syntax, also known as the pipe trick. This allows editors to leave out the piped alternative when editing. For example, typing "[[Topic Name (qualifier)|]]" will automatically produce "[[Topic Name (qualifier)|Topic Name]]". Read Help:Pipe trick for more information.
Ambiguous links are periodically checked and repaired, but even if some ambiguous links remain, one of the primary reasons for making a disambiguation page is so that following such links will still be useful to the reader.
There is a tool to facilitate ambiguous link repair in the Python Wikipedia Robot. The bot offers to update links to choices listed on the disambiguation page. Don't forget to seek approval on the Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval page if doing extensive or fast runs.
Links to disambiguation pages
With very few exceptions, creating links to disambiguation pages is erroneous. Links should instead point to a relevant article. The purpose of a disambiguation page is to give a user who has typed an ambiguous term into the search box a list of articles that are likely to be what he or she is looking for. Disambiguation pages are not articles and so should not be tagged as orphans per the Orphan criteria.
- When to link to a disambiguation page
The exceptions, when an intentional link to a disambiguation page is appropriate, are:
- Disambiguation hatnotes – Watergate redirects to Watergate scandal, which carries a hatnote linking to Watergate (disambiguation) for other uses.
- Links from one disambiguation page to another for further disambiguation – British has a link to Britain (disambiguation) for further disambiguation.
- Certain pages that contain lists of words or names – Britten (surname) contains a link to Britain (disambiguation).
- In a redirect page (below)
- How to link to a disambiguation page
To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text "(disambiguation)", even if that's a redirect – for example, link to the redirect America (disambiguation) rather than the target page at "America". (If the redirect does not yet exist, create it and tag it with {{R to disambiguation page}}.) This helps distinguish accidental links to the disambiguation page from intentional ones. (For use in navboxes, see the {{D'}} template.) There is nothing wrong with linking to a redirect instead of linking directly to the disambiguation page; redirects are cheap and are basically transparent to the reader.
- Redirects to disambiguation pages
Valid causes for redirecting to a disambiguation page include:
- Redirects from misspellings – Britian redirects to the "Britain" disambiguation page.
- Redirects from alternative spellings if separate disambiguation pages are not warranted – Türk redirects to the "Turk" disambiguation page.
- Redirects from variations in capitalisation, word separation, or punctuation, if separate disambiguation pages are not warranted – Bullet Proof redirects to "Bulletproof (disambiguation)".
The rule about linking through a "(disambiguation)" redirect does not apply to redirects to disambiguation pages: do not create a double redirect, but make a redirect to the disambiguation page directly (thus Ann Hathaway, a redirect from an alternative name, redirects to the disambiguation page and does not go through the redirect Anne Hathaway (disambiguation)).
See Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages.
See also
| This page is referenced from the Wikipedia:Glossary. |  |
- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation
- Wikipedia:Disambiguation dos and don'ts
- Help:Disambiguation
- MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage
- Dablinks, a Toolserver tool that lists ambiguous internal links
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