User:Russell D. Jones/Resolutions Sandbox 2

A disambiguation page is a page designed to help readers find the correct article when two or more articles deal with subjects with the same names. To disambiguate a word or phrase is to clarify which sense is meant or to list out all the different possible meanings. Disambiguation pages should not be used either to give all the possible senses used in English (disambiguation is not a dictionary), but should be used as a directory to articles with the same names. The disambiguation page should list only those articles that really could be confused with the word or phrase in the title of the disambiguation page. A good example is reel.

All disambiguation pages should be in Category:Disambiguation (this can be done by adding the {{disambig}} template), and not in any other categories such as Category:CZ Live or the workgroup categories.

See Naming Conventions, Disambiguation mechanics and List of multi-use words.

Disambiguation Mechanics

The following instructions will use "reel" as its example.

When editing an article, the author/editor would include the word or phrase as normal.

Donegal fiddle player James Byrne was well known for his ability to play a reel.

This allows for ease of editing and ease of reading. In this example, the term "reel" means a musical form. It should link to the CZ page Reel (music). So the proper coding for this sentence would be to use a piped link: [[Reel (music)|reel]]

Donegal fiddle player James Byrne was well known for his ability to play a reel.

However, under this disambiguation method, [[reel]] would redirect to a disambiguation page [[Reel (disambiguation)]] thus requiring no piping on the part of the author.

The disambiguation of "reel" would not occur on the Reel page, but on the Reel (disambiguation) page. Reel should redirect to Reel (disambiguation). This step is necessary because of the strong templating done at the Citizendium.

Terms

"AmbiguousTerm": the term that requires disambiguation. (e.g., "Reel")

"AmbiguousTerm Article": the page that has a title "AmbiguousTerm" (e.g., Reel)

"Disambiguation Page": the page that has a title "AmbiguousTerm (disambiguation)" (e.g., Reel (disambiguation)

"Disambiguated Page": a more specific page title of the form "AmbiguousTerm (unambiguous meaning)" (e.g., Reel (music))

Creating the Disambiguation Sequence

First, citizens need to determine how to disambiguate the ambiguous term: whether or not they want to send readers in every case of the term to a disambiguation page. If so, you want complete disambiguation; if not, you want partial disambiguation.

There are two formats of disambiguation usages on CZ: Complete Disambiguation and Partial Disambiguation. Complete disambiguation requires that no article be developed at the AmbiguousTerm Article aside from a redirect. Partial disambiguation will allow an article at AmbiguousTerm Article provided that the page alerts readers to the disambiguation page.

• Complete Disambiguation: The AmbiguousTerm Article shall be a redirect page to the disambiguation page and shall be tagged with the {{dabredir}} template. (The reason why we tag with templates instead of linked categories is that this method allows us to change how we handle these redirect pages without editing every last redirect page.) The text of each redirect page will look like this:

#Redirect [[''AmbiguousTerm'' (disambiguation)]] {{dabredir}}

Example of term using complete disambiguation: Reel

• Partial Disambiguation: In some cases citizens may wish that the most common understanding of a term be a base page and suggest readers to the disambiguation page if this most common understanding was not what they were seeking. In these cases, the page should include the {{dambigbox}} template at the head. The {{dambigbox}} template will generate the following alert:

This article is about Russell D. Jones/Resolutions Sandbox 2. For other uses of the term Russell D. Jones/Resolutions Sandbox 2, please see Russell D. Jones/Resolutions Sandbox 2 (disambiguation).

Example of term using partial disambiguation: Library

Regardless of which format citizens choose for disambiguation, all Disambiguation Pages should be tagged with the {{disambig}} template. This will insert a standard explanatory text header into the page and categorize it.

Results using Templates

Following this sequence will produce the following results:

When linking to the definition page of an AmbiguousTerm (through the {{r}} template, for example) when Disambiguated Pages exist, the following warning message is inserted (Reel is the example):

Please do not use this term in your topic list, because there is no single article for it. Please substitute a more precise term. See Reel (disambiguation) for a list of available, more precise, topics. Please add a new usage if needed.

When linking to the definition page of an AmbiguousTerm and no Disambiguated Pages exist, the following warning message and invitation to create page is inserted (NoArticle is the example):

Please do not use this term in your topic list, because there is no single article for it. Please substitute a more precise term from the disambiguation page.

Note: currently there is no disambiguation page for NoArticle, please create one.