Xenharmonic Wiki:Disambiguation
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Disambiguation is the process of resolving conflicts that arise when a potential article title is ambiguous, most often because it refers to more than one subject covered by Wikipedia, either as the main topic of an article, or as a subtopic covered by an article in addition to the article's main topic. For example, Igliashon can refer to an artist or a scale, and possibly other things.
There are three important aspects to disambiguation:
- Naming articles in such a way that each has a unique title. For example, two of the articles dealing with topics ordinarily called "Igliashon" are titled Deja Igliashon and Igliashon (scale).
- Making the links for ambiguous terms point to the correct article title. For example, an editor of an article about scales may have created a link to Igliashon, and this should be corrected to point to Igliashon (scale).
- 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 Igliashon is a redirect page, pointing to Deja Igliashon because it is the Wikipedia:WP:Primary topic associated with that name.)
Two navigational tools are provided to help readers find the most appropriate page:
- Disambiguation hatnotes: short messages at the beginning of a page with links to related articles or a disambiguation page.
- Disambiguation pages': non-article pages which list various meanings of a given title and which link to the articles that cover them. These pages are necessary when different meanings are comparably common or when there are too many meanings to fit in a disambiguation hatnote. A disambiguation page's title always ends in "(disambiguation)". Note that ambiguous terms do not always require a disambiguation page.