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Revision as of 17:39, 29 January 2014 by Born2cycle (talk | contribs) (+RM discussions)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) | This is an explanatory essay about the Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation guideline and Misplaced Pages:Article Titles policy page. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Misplaced Pages's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. | Shortcut |
WP:Disambiguation defines disambiguation in Misplaced Pages with the following opening sentence:
- Disambiguation in Misplaced Pages is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous—when it refers to more than one topic covered by Misplaced Pages articles.
Page titles should only be disambiguated where there are other articles with the same name. If a name is used for only one article, its title should not be disambiguated, even if similar pages are disambiguated.
If multiple articles have the same logical name (for example Delta rocket), they are disambiguated by adding either parenthetic or natural disambiguation to the title. This system resolves naming conflicts. It should not be used to make concise and precise titles more descriptive.
Therefore page names should not be disambiguated unless there are other articles that use the same name. This includes cases of articles being disambiguated from non-existent pages for consistency with similar articles, (for example Delta IV rocket)
RM discussions
Unnecessary disambiguation is often cited as a reason to favor a more concise title in RM discussions. While recognizability is also a criteria, its scope is explicitly limited to "someone familiar with the topic". In other words, we don't try to make our topics recognizable from the titles to anyone who is not already familiar with the topic. That's why we favor Laeken over Laeken, Belgium, Welland over Welland, Ontario, Nicholas Campbell over Nicholas Campbell (actor) (let alone Nicholas Campbell (Canadian actor)), Happy Sad over Happy Sad (album), Putsj over Putsj (magazine) and Cincinnati over Cincinnati, Ohio. This concept was unanimously supported by the community at this 2012 poll on WT:AT: Misplaced Pages talk:Article_titles/Archive_35#Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus.
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