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. Anything that makes searching easier I'm all for.--DannyBoy7783 14:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

So what is it you are saying specifically, Cid? Looking at, for example, the disambiguation for Reed at Wikipedia -- it is essentially used in the same way as we use Kirk...

"Reed is also a surname:

Alfred Reed, American composer
Andre Reed, American football player for the Buffalo Bills
Carol Reed, British film director
David P. Reed, telecommunications expert, creator of Reed's law
Davin Reed, American botanist
Donna Reed, American actress"
(etc...)

So I'm not sure I see that we are exactly using it incorrectly. However, what does seem apparent is that we should have a James T. Kirk (disambiguation) as there are three variations of that name "(android)" and "(mirror)". --Alan del Beccio 12:31, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I think turning Kirk into a redirect to James T. Kirk makes this into a very untidy wiki. Sure the newbie will type and link only Kirk or Picard or Archer, but (s)he has to be taught what is the proper way. (On a site note, I don't think that an extra disambiguation for "James T. Kirk" is needed, because that can be covered by "Kirk") -- Kobi - (Talk) 12:38, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Well I didn't mean to say that we should, I'm just saying that although I didn't understand was Cid was saying exactly, but without Kirk as a disambig page we would technically need James T. Kirk (disambiguation). Also, for those those who do not know, for anyone who is too new to know or lazy to type out James T. Kirk and simply type Kirk, our bots can easily fix or "solve" the error. I went through Kirk the day this was first posted and fixed all the links that came here that should have gone to James T. Kirk. I believe there were some 60 links fixed. --Alan del Beccio 13:26, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

What I was trying to say is that, according to our own guideline about disambiguation pages (DP), Kirk is an incorrectly used DP because it lists pages that are not "topics with the same natural title". This might be a problem of the disambiguation page, a problem with our policy, even both or neither, and I felt like bringing that up for discussion. I also found out that Wikipedia's disambiguation page guideline has changed a little since it was first copied to become our guideline, for example - maybe we need to adopt some or all of these changes?

The most important question, in any case, is: Does the content of a page make sense? Wikipedia has this to say:

Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", what article would they realistically be expecting to view as a result? When there is no risk of confusion, do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page.
Lists of articles of which the disambiguated term forms only a part of the article title don't belong here. Disambiguation pages are not search indices. Do not add links that merely contain part of the page title (where there is no significant risk of confusion).

Regarding #1, I guess that most, if not all, people who enter "Kirk" would like to see an article about James T., not about individual members of his family who only appeared once, or even some guy from the production staff who has "Kirk" as a forename. How big is the "risk of confusion"? Not big, I'd say, if we would redirect "Kirk" to "James T. Kirk" and have his family members prominently linked there (as it is already the case).

Regarding #2, that basically describes what happened on Kirk. At the moment it is a search indice for articles containing the phrase "Kirk", not a disambiguation for different articles all called "Kirk". The Wikipedia example you gave has 6 different definitions/links of things called just "Reed", and only after that also lists some people with Reed as their surname.

By the way, the disambiguation for the various "James T. Kirk" pages really shouldn't be a part of the "Kirk" page. A DP shouldn't disambiguate any other title than its own - that just wouldn't make any sense. -- Cid Highwind 23:57, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Disambig Page "styles"

For lack of a better title of course...

Earlier today, Captain M.K.B. went and removed a bunch of descriptive sentences from the Brooks disambiguation page, and it got me to thinking. (Portions of my original note on his talk page are heavily reused here...)

I've found that when I'm looking for a particular person, just seeing a stack of links like "Brooks (Admiral)", "Brooks (Ensign)", "Mark Brooks", "Avery Brooks", etc doesn't really help me find what I'm looking for. Yes, perhaps the line with Avery Brooks on this particular example ("Better known as Benjamin Sisko from DS9" or something similar) wasn't the best possible, but it was (to my mind) a good deal better than having just a hanging name there. Yes, if I know that Avery Brooks is the dude that played Sisko, I'd click on that one, but maybe I've got him confused with "Stephen Brooks" (or "Mark Brooks" for that matter).

Point being, I believe that having some brief descriptions on those items is significantly better than a plain page of just links.

When I asked him, Captain M.K.B. responded on his talk page as follows:

I'm not sure if its an actual policy, but I really do dislike the wierd things people to to "spruce up" these pages -- as Cid and probably Alan have said, they should remain, basically, lists of -very basic- links. the only real policy on the matter is that we follow wikipedia's, but theirs has changed since that suggestion came around. go fig... -- Captain M.K.B. 18:33, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Now, to make it clear, I've got no major desire to spruce them up with lots of other extra stuff, just a brief sentence (or portion thereof) so that you can get a vague idea which "Brooks" is which (in this case). To my mind, those sentences still keep it a basic list of links, just give you some vague sense of context as to what they are.

So, in case all of that rambling got a bit confusing (likely), I'm suggesting that we keep those sentence portions on some of the pages to help the reader/user/whatever figure out precisely which link he or she is actually looking for rather than seeing merely a list of links with no explanation on any of them and having to guess at which one they really wanted. -- Sulfur 18:49, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I also like the short description better. However remember to just link the pages that need to be disambiguated. When a bot works on the page it will then read some 40 links even if there is just an Ensign aboard the ENT-D and a lieutenant on the VOY ... -- Ⓚⓞⓑⓘ 14:02, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, in those past discussions (which might be in the TF archives, or even on this page) I argued that disambiguation pages should not contain links to articles other than those they are trying to disambiguate, and that they should only try do disambiguate titles that really are ambiguous instead of going out of their way to include each and every article that might be "similar" in some way. So, in my opinion it would be preferable to revert to the last version (containing some words of explanation, but no links to unrelated articles) - otherwise, if one only knows that a character was called "Brooks" on screen, should he be forced to click through (in this case) up to five articles just to find what he is looking for?

Also, and semi-related, I think it is a guideline on Wikipedia to not use piped links in these cases - "Brooks (Admiral)" and "Brooks (Ensign)" are easier to distinguish than "Brooks" and "Brooks". -- Cid Highwind 15:11, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Keeping that in mind, I've tweaked the Brooks disambig page, and removed any excessive links from them too. Cid, is that more in line with what you were thinking of? -- Sulfur 15:43, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I see my name popped up in this and I'm just following along with a message that Cid dropped me about 6 months ago:

Hi Alan. I deliberately did not add additional wiki links on that disambiguation page. One of Wikipedia's MoS-pages defines a common style for their disambiguation pages and states that additional links (those not used for the disambiguation process itself) are considered distracting. I agree with that statement and tried to start a discussion about an own MoS regarding this here (subsection "Manual of Style?"). Can I get you to comment on that? Thanks :)

I thought that sounded good and went ahead a few months ago and essentially de-linked every disambig page and left a very limited description (if any at all) along with the links (as it can be helpful in cases of vague references). But in terms of leaving extended descriptions on disambig pages describing the link, I find that to be rather unnecessary, thats why I went through again yesterday and undid most of what Renegade54 did (relinking words and extending the descriptions) the previous day. --Alan del Beccio 20:28, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about all the links, Alan... some of the disambigs had links, and some didn't, and I was trying to make them consistent. Not knowing about the previous discussions, I chose the wrong way to standardize them. Bah. Anyway, I do agree with Sulfur, though, and feel a very brief description helps the disambig rather than hurting or being distraction. That's what Wikipedia is apparently doing on their disambigs as well. -- Renegade54 20:45, 8 June 2006 (UTC)