Tardis:Disambiguation

Disambiguation is the process of resolving conflicts that arise from several articles having the same name.

There are three important aspects to disambiguation:


 * Naming articles in such a way that each has a unique title. This is done by adding a disambiguating element in brackets which uniquely identifies that article. For example a common in universe name Charlie is a disambiguation pages with Charlie (The Gunfighters), Charlie (The Mind of Evil) and Charlie (Night of the Humans).


 * Making the links to the articles point to the correctly disambiguated title, so for example checking the 'what links here' for Charlie to make sure any links are pointing to the correctly disambiguated article name.


 * 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 the possible topics might be. For example Charlie is a disambiguation page, a non-article page which lists the various uses of "Charlie" and links to the disambiguated articles.

As discussed below however, some articles do not need to primarily be disambiguation pages, and the term itself/article itself may require being disambiguated away from the primary topic title.

Primary topics
Although a term may potentially refer to more than one topic, it sometimes is the case that one of these topics is far more likely to be the one a reader is searching for when searching in the Search box. If there is such a topic, then it is known as the primary topic for that term. If a primary topic exists, that article should be titled with no disambiguation, however, with a note at the top of the article directing to a disambiguation page.

An example is Regeneration which is a primary topic article, at the top of the article it directs to a disambiguation topic covering other uses of the term regeneration.

The regeneration disambiguation article is titled thusly Regeneration (disambiguation).

Disambiguation rules
There are some disambiguation rules to follow on this wiki.


 * Story titles are always disambiguated when they share their name with an in-universe term. For example:
 * Frontios links to the planet, whilst DW: Frontios is disambiguated as Frontios (TV story).
 * Similarly Castrovalva links to the planet whilst DW: Castrovalva is disambiguated as Castrovalva (TV story).


 * When two or more story titles have the same name, you have to disambiguate them all. All stories, regardless of medium, are seen as equally important on this wiki. For example, the Doctor Who Magazine comic story, The Lodger (comic story), and The Lodger (TV story) are both disambiguated.


 * You need 3 similarly-named things to start a disambiguation page, particularly one that is itself un-disambiguated. A disambig page that is itself un-disambiguated simply invites people to link to it.  For instance, if the page 'City of the Daleks existed, then people would most likely link to it when they were trying to link to the modern City of the Daleks (video game), because many people are unaware of the 1960s City of the Daleks (comic story).   Deleting the page at City of Daleks is actually helpful, because it forces users to pick one of the two valid links.  We want disambiguation pages to help us create more correct links — not be lightning rods for bad ones.  Un-disambiguated disambig pages tend to have long WhatLinksHere lists, so they really shouldn't be created before they are truly necessary.  Thus, disambig pages consisting of just two items are actually considered, on balance, unhelpful.


 * According to a forum discussion, if a thing needs disambiguation, but it appears in more than one episode or story, the disambiguation term shall be the first story or episode in which the character appears. For instance, Nancy of The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances is disambiguated as Nancy (The Empty Child).

Disambiguation page formatting
The disambiguation page should start with a sentence such as;

Article title may refer to...

It should also include the tag on the page, this also adds the disambiguation category to the page.