You are on page 1of 3

Disambiguation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For more comprehensive information, see Wikipedia:Disambiguation.

This is an information page.


Shortcut:
It describes the editing community's established practice on some aspect or
aspects of Wikipedia's norms and customs. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies
or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. H:DIS

Readers' FAQ and help

About Wikipedia
o Administration
o FAQs
Authority control
Categories
Censorship
Copyright
Disambiguation
Images and multimedia
ISBN
Microformats
Mobile access
Navigation
Other languages
Page names
Portals
Protected pages
Searching
Student help
Researching with Wikipedia
Citing Wikipedia
Contributing to Wikipedia

Readers' glossary
Readers' index
Reader's guide to Wikipedia

v
t
e

Disambiguation pages on Wikipedia are used as a process of resolving conflicts in article titles
that occur when a single term can be associated with more than one topic, making that term
likely to be the natural title for more than one article. In other words, disambiguations are paths
leading to different articles which could, in principle, have the same title.

For example, the word "Mercury" can refer to several different things, including an element, a
planet, and a Roman god. Since only one Wikipedia page can have the generic name "Mercury",
unambiguous article titles are used for each of these topics: Mercury (element), Mercury
(planet), Mercury (mythology). There must then be a way to direct the reader to the correct
specific article when the ambiguous word "Mercury" is referenced by linking, browsing or
searching; this is what is known as disambiguation. In this case it is achieved using Mercury as
the title of a disambiguation page.

There are three principal disambiguation scenarios, of which the following are examples:

The page at Joker is a disambiguation page, leading to all the alternative uses of "Joker". It has a
{{Disambiguation}} template at the bottom.
The page at Rice is about one usage, called the primary topic, and there is a short message at
the top of the page, called a hatnote and created with the {{Other uses}} template, guiding
readers to Rice (disambiguation) so other uses of the term can be found.
The page at Anita Hill is about the primary topic, and there is only one other use. The other use
is linked directly using a hatnote created with the {{For}} template; no disambiguation page is
needed.

Occasionally a reader may follow a link that ends up at a disambiguation page rather than at one
of the links shown on that page. The original page can be edited to link directly to its intended
destination. Feel free to make such edits; everyone is welcome to improve Wikipedia, including
you. It could be you who makes the overall experience of Wikipedia that much better.
Citation;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Disambiguation

You might also like