PathfinderWiki:Disambiguation
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This page is an official policy on the PathfinderWiki. In accordance with policy, this page has been protected. You can suggest changes by following the revision procedure or discussing it on the talk page. |
Disambiguation in PathfinderWiki is the process of resolving the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same natural title.
PathfinderWiki thrives on the fact that making links is simple and automatic: as you're typing in an edit window, put brackets around Pathfinder Society (like this: [[Pathfinder Society]]) and you'll have a link. But were you intending to link to the organized play campaign or the Absalom-based organization?
In-world priority
It is the practice of PathfinderWiki to use the natural title for the in-universe article, reserving disambiguated titles for articles written from the publication point of view. In some cases, such as Nex and Nex (person), Geb and Geb (person), and Katapesh and Katapesh (city) it is a judgment call on the part of the chronicler who creates the article, as both examples exist in-universe. In these cases, a disambiguation link or link to a disambiguation page should be included at the top of each article, as outlined below.
See also
- Naming conventions, for guidelines on naming pages to further avoid ambiguity.
How to disambiguate?
There are two ways to disambiguate. The first one is to create a disambiguation page listing and linking the different meanings of a term. The second one is to add disambiguation links to other meanings to the top of the article with the natural title.
If each of the topics themselves only has a sentence or two, it may be even simpler just to put all of them together in one article. Each method should depend on the specific subject and the amount of content that is/will be in the article.
Disambiguation page
A disambiguation page generally is placed at the natural title and links to all articles that naturally would have this name. One example of this is Awakened.
When creating a disambiguation page, include the following template at the top the page:
{{Disambig}}, which appears as:
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This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link to point to the appropriate specific page. |
However, if there is one clear and primary definition of a subject, the article for that subject can use the natural title for it. This is a subjective decision and open for discussion. In such a case, create the disambiguation page at Title (disambiguation) and link to it from the main article using the following template:
{{Disambiguation link}}, which appears as:
- For other meanings of "Title", please see Title (disambiguation).
If this distinction is not clear, or if you believe the potential for a primary article exists, you may also create the disambiguation page at Title (disambiguation) and redirect the natural title to the disambiguation page. When an article is later created at the natural title, include it on the disambiguation page.
Disambiguation links
If you're not making a whole disambiguation page you can put a notice at the top of a page, linking to another meaning of that term. This is generally only done if there are just two different meanings and one of them is considered the primary definition (see above). In this case, you can use the following template:
{{Disambiguate}}, which takes the title of the target page as a parameter and will appear as:
- For another meaning of "Title", please see Title (second meaning).
Links to disambiguation pages
While it is generally okay for disambiguation pages to be orphans—it's 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).
In addition to the manual list above, the following pages list all disambiguation pages: