Late on this, but here's some potential social if we want to get something on this:

• Did you know there are more than 200 "John Smith"s on Wikipedia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith
• Need to disambiguate disambiguation? We have a page for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disambiguation_(disambiguation)

Excuse the maths, it's just after 3am here… :)

Joe

On 12 August 2015 at 20:38, James Alexander <jalexander@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Ok, the John Smith disambig page is absolutely hysterical to me....

James Alexander
Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation
(415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Katherine Maher <kmaher@wikimedia.org> wrote:
This disambiguation thing is pretty funny. We should do something with it at some point :)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Beutler Ink <hello@beutlerink.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 8:00 AM
Subject: WP:60 • Week 38 | Anti-Disambiguation-arianism
To: katherine@wikimedia.org


Zen and the art of topical disambiguation
            
            
WP:60, a weekly Wikipedia newsletter from Beutler Ink
Beutler_WP60_logo_blog

Hi Katherine, Welcome to Week 38: "Anti-Disambiguation-arianism"

•     •     •

Disambiguation is a concept that got little public attention before Wikipedia (like the @ symbol was little-used before email). When a Wikipedia article needs a title, but another topic already is using that name, what do you do? By devising a method to reduce the ambiguity.

What Wikipedia usually does is adds parentheses after the formal title, selecting a phrase that most closely describes what is unique about each one. For example, several dozen John Smiths have met Wikipedia's notability requirement, so there are no less than six cricketers and seven footballers disambiguated only by their birth date.

And all relevant examples (including similar spellings) are collected on a single page, the disambiguation page. One of my favorite ironies of Wikipedia: disambiguation has its own disambiguation page, naturally found at Disambiguation (disambiguation).

•     •     •

Missed any previous installments of WP:60? Never fear! You can catch up with the WP:60 archive.

Next week: Autobiography
Why not share WP:60 with a friend?
Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Share on Email
            

Beutler Ink   1629 Columbia Rd. NW  Suite 433  Washington,  DC   20009   USA

You received this email because you are subscribed to Wikipedia in 60 Seconds from Beutler Ink.

Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive.

 Unsubscribe from all future emails 




--
Katherine Maher
Chief Communications Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

_______________________________________________
Social-media mailing list
Social-media@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/social-media



_______________________________________________
Social-media mailing list
Social-media@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/social-media




--
Joe Sutherland
Communications Intern [remote]
m: +44 (0) 7722 916 433 | t: @jrbsu | w: JSutherland