Help:Disambiguation

The technique of disambiguation is one way to resolve certain name conflicts.

It is generally to be used only if the concepts are unrelated; for theorems, disambiguation is always required. In either case, read Help:Name Conflict to know whether creating a disambiguation page is the right course of action.

Choosing a name
The title of the disambiguation page should not contain.

The intended title of the disambiguation page may already be in use. If so, ensure that the existing page is given an appropriate new title. As always with renaming pages, take care to update any links to the page (which can be viewed using the "What links here" option in the menu, under Toolbox) to the new page before installing the disambiguation. If this is an involved and long-winded task, an appropriate invocation of Template:WIP may be added to the disambiguation page to signify the task is still unfinished.

Page content
When this is all taken care of, replace the content of the page with:


 * Disambiguated Page 1
 * Disambiguated Page 2
 * Etc.

Each entry may feature a short line describing the particular page it links to, but this isn't required. If applicable, the links can be organized as subitems according to the mathematical field they belong to. Example: Definition:Complete.

On definition disambiguation pages, the  prefix need not be included in the displayed text of the link. This is because, contrary to e.g. the Also see section, we only expect definitions among the links.

Adding hatnotes
When the disambiguation is finished, it is a good idea to put an instance of the About template at the top of every page it disambiguates.

Instructions on how to use this template can be found by following the link above.

Categories
When the disambiguation resides in the Definition namespace, it is to be placed in Category:Definitions. Disambiguations of theorems needn't be added to a category.

Disambiguation pages are automattically added to the hidden Disambiguation category by using the disambig template.

Nested disambiguation pages
In some cases, for example when an adjective is disambiguated and the disambiguation page contains many links, one can be tempted to organize the links in disambiguation pages with titles of the form,.

Also see

 * Help:Name Conflict
 * Help:Renaming Pages