Memory Alpha talk:Disambiguation

About the use of disambiguation pages

Right now, there are several pages claiming to be "disambiguation pages" (DP), such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma... I don't know if these are really necessary (or valid DPs at all). In my opinion, a DP should be created only if there are several "objects" that are normally referred to using the same term. Enterprise, for example, is such a term, because it is used to refer to one of many starships as well as the latest series. Alpha, though, could be a disambiguation page for Alpha (Jem'Hadar), Alpha Quadrant and Alpha system and others, but definitely shouldn't include links to articles like Treaty of Alpha Cygnus IX (no one would refer to that treaty as simply "Alpha"). In this case, the search function of this wiki seems to be good enough (try searching for "Zeta", for example). -- Cid Highwind 12:55, 17 Dec 2004 (CET)

Yeah, this was occuring to me as I wrote Beta through Epsilon; Alpha was created by someone else (Mike maybe?) and that's what gave me the idea. Wikipedia, though, does do these basically the way we are right now: Wikipedia:Alpha, Wikipedia:Beta, &c. -- Steve 00:32, 18 Dec 2004 (CET)

XYZ (disambiguation)?

Copied from Talk:Kaelon (disambiguation), regarding the use of disambiguation pages not being placed at the "natural title" as described in this guideline. Might better be discussed here.

I'm not sure about the usefulness of this (and other, similar pages), either. In the beginning, a disambiguation page was created when there were two or more articles that could be addressed using the same term. The disambiguation page was created at that term, to have a destination for every link that wrongly links to it instead of the proper article title. A good example of this is USS Enterprise, which links to all nine articles about ships called USS Enterprise.

Now, a disambiguation page is often used to list articles that share a part of their name - most of those article would never be addressed by just that part, though, so the usefulness of the disambiguation is dubious at best. For example, Kaelon could refer to the species or the star (whose article might not ever be created), but surely not to Kaelon starships. An even worse example would be Alpha, a so-called disambiguation page listing all occurences of "Alpha" in an article title. But it doesn't stop there - often, these disambiguation pages aren't even created with the title they are designed to disambiguate. Instead they have a qualifier "(disambiguation)" added to them, making them inherently useless to find accidentally misleading links somewhere. I think this practice has to be rethought. -- Cid Highwind 10:15, 30 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Having spent the better part of the day with disambiguations, I want to backtrack on the above opinion (just a little, though ;)). If there's one meaning that is obviously preferred to all others and there are more than two possible articles with that natural title, a disambiguation located at "XYZ (disambiguation)" seems to be the best option. I still think that many of the now existing disambiguation pages should not be placed at such a location, though, and will start to move some pages around. A disambiguation page at the non-disambiguated title should still be the norm, not the exception.

BTW, for "preferred meanings" as described above, I created the template {{disambiguation link}}. -- Cid Highwind 21:53, 21 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Manual of Style?

In absence of an own complete MoS guideline regarding disambiguation pages, I'm going to adopt Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). Is there anything you disagree with? In that case, discuss here and we might create our own MoS section. -- Cid Highwind 22:37, 21 Nov 2005 (UTC)

New templates

As already mentioned above, I created the template {{disambiguation link}} (to link to a disambiguation page located at Title (disambiguation)), and also {{ep disambiguation}} (to link to an episode article located at Title (episode)) as well as {{disambiguate}} (using a parameter, to link to another page if there are only two meanings of a term). I hope the use of these will bring some "order to chaos" ;). The templates can also be used to track such disambiguations via their "What links here" page. -- Cid Highwind 12:35, 25 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Order?

What should the order on disambiguation pages be? Wikipedia has them being in order of importance, but we could do them in chronological order or something. Look at Riker. When most of us think Riker, we think William T. Riker. However, he is fourth of seven in the list. On the contrary, look at Janeway. Kathryn Janeway is at the top, in order of importance. Is there any sort of preferred style for certain type of article? If so, it should certainly be on the page. -Platypus Man | Talk 20:49, 14 Dec 2005 (UTC)

I think the definition in section "Order of entries" on the Wikipedia page is a good one. On Riker, William T. should definitely be the first entry. Commander Riker Day should probably not even appear on the page, because you would never address that day using just the term "Riker" - there's simply no need for disambiguation in that case. -- Cid Highwind 21:04, 14 Dec 2005 (UTC)

New approach to disambig pages

I was thinking about the possibility of changing our approach to disambiguation pages. Take Kirk for example. My guess would be that 99% of people who type Kirk into the search bar are looking for informatin of James T. Kirk, yet instead they reach the disambig page, in case they are looking for George Samuel Kirk, Aurelan Kirk, Peter Kirk, James T. Kirk (mirror), Kirk Android, or Kirk Thatcher. My suggestion is that we make Kirk, and the last names of all other main characters (except repeates like Dax and Crusher) into re-directs, and move the disambig pages to Blah blah blah (disambiguation), just leaving a note at the top of the page that they may be looking for other people, and link to the disambig page. Jaz ^{talk | novels} 05:25, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

First, I took the liberty to make the "Kirk" links above real links to the existing disambiguation page instead of piped liks to James T. - makes the discussion easier if we can actually access what's being talked about. I hope you don't mind.

Second, it is good that this is being brought up, because the "Kirk" article is actually not a proper disambiguation as described on this project page. There, it says:

Disambiguation in Memory Alpha is the process of resolving the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same natural title.

Which articles linked on this disambiguation have the same natural title ("Kirk")? Correct, none of them - all articles have a different proper title, not one of them is named "Kirk (QUALIFIER)". So I'd say that a disambiguation, whether at "Kirk" or at "Kirk (disambiguation)", is completely unnecessary here. -- Cid Highwind 13:01, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea has merit. Anythign that makes searching easier I'm all for.--DannyBoy7783 14:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)