Memory Alpha:Disambiguation

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About → Policies and guidelines → Disambiguation

This page describes one of Memory Alpha's policies and guidelines.
Please read through the policy below to familiarize yourself with our common practices and rules.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or complaints, please post them on the talk page.

Disambiguations are used on Memory Alpha to resolve the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same natural title or are substantially similar in title.

Memory Alpha thrives on the fact that making links is simple and automatic: as you're typing in an edit window, put brackets around Enterprise (like this: [[Enterprise]]) and you'll have a link. But were you intending to link to Enterprise the series or one of the many ships?

See also

• Naming conventions, for guidelines on naming pages to further avoid ambiguity.
• Linking to episodes and films, for details on episode and film naming conventions.

How to disambiguate?

There are two ways to disambiguate. The first one is to create a disambiguation page listing and linking to the different meanings of a term. The second one is to add disambiguation links to other meanings at the top of articles.

In almost all cases the "most important" article is the one that should stay at the main, natural title without any disambiguation. This is open for discussion, though. In this case, a disambiguation will be be placed at Title (disambiguation) and should be linked to from the main article.

If there are two, or more, articles of importance, the disambiguation page should be located at the natural title. For example, there are at least two starships named "USS Enterprise" of importance (Kirk's original and the Enterprise-D), so the disambiguation page is at "USS Enterprise". In the case of D.C. Fontana, author of several novels and episodes, that article is of greater importance than the in-universe version which featured in background information in two episodes; thus, the article about the real author is at D.C. Fontana and her fictional namesake is at D.C. Fontana (author).

Disambiguation page

A disambiguation page lists and links to all articles that naturally would have this name, or are substantially similar in title. A good example of this would be USS Hood. When creating a disambiguation page, you should include the following template at the bottom of the page:

{{disambiguation page}}, which will display the following text:

This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that points to other pages that have the same or a similar name. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link to point to the appropriate specific page.

Links to disambiguation pages

While it is generally okay for disambiguation pages to be orphans – it is more appropriate for other articles to link to the specific subjects rather than to the disambiguation page – we want to avoid cluttering the list of orphaned pages with these intentional orphans. Thus, all disambiguation pages should be linked from Links to disambiguation pages.

Of course, there will be accidental links, and in some cases it will even make sense to point a reader to the disambiguation page rather than to a single specific article (generally, if you want to let the reader choose which topic they are looking for).

When linking to a disambiguation page intentionally, the link should be to a redirect to the disambiguation page from the "(disambiguation)" title; in other words, if "Term ABC" is a disambiguation page, a redirect from "Term ABC (disambiguation)" should be created if it does not already exist. The template {{dislk}} can be used for that purpose. This type of redirect is used to indicate any intentional links to the disambiguation page, to distinguish them from accidental or erroneous incoming links that should be disambiguated to the appropriate article.

Disambiguation links

Disambiguation links are a notice at the top of a page, linking to another meaning of that term, or to a disambiguation page. Direct links are generally only done between terms if there are less than three different meanings and one of them is considered the primary definition. To create disambiguation links, you can use the following templates:

{{disambiguation}}

For disambiguations.

{{disambiguation link}}

For disambiguations to a disambiguation page.

{{ep disambiguation}}

For disambiguations to an episode.

{{comic disambiguation}}

For disambiguations to a comic.

{{mirror disambiguation}}

For disambiguations to a mirror universe page.

{{alt disambiguation}}

For disambiguations to an alternate reality page.

{{prime disambiguation}}

For disambiguations to a prime universe/reality page.

{{timeline disambiguation}}

For disambiguations between the in-universe and production timeline pages.

The following pages list all disambiguation pages:

• Category:Memory Alpha disambiguations
• Special:Whatlinkshere/Memory Alpha:Disambiguation
• Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Disambiguation page
• Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Disambiguation
  • Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Disambiguation link
  • Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Ep disambiguation
  • Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Mirror disambiguation
  • Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Alt disambiguation
  • Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Prime disambiguation