At 01:21 AM 6/29/02 -0700, you wrote: To play devil's advocate, I think a case can be made that disambiguation pages make spontaneous linking much easier. For example, a contributor working on an article about Klez or Ebola could link to [[virus]] without having to even realize that there _are_ two alternate uses for the term, let alone knowing what specific names they're under; the "virus" link will show up as valid, and anyone following it will presumably be able to figure out which type of virus was being referred to and move on to the full-scale article from there. In other words, disambiguation pages allow for overly simplified and ambiguous links to still be perfectly useful to the encyclopedia editor and user. Changing all links to always bypass the disambiguation page is nice and convenient, but it's not absolutely necessary. If it were, then why have the disambiguation page at all? BTW, I dislike artucles which have a full-length (usually multiple screen) article on one meaning of the article's title, and then at the bottom have a "see also: [[alternate meaning of title]]." It forces the reader to scroll down through the entire first article before seeing that there's a second one; a small disambiguation page with a simple bulleted list of articles is much nicer IMO even if it's not "absolutely necessary" because you can take it all in with a single glance. The issue of whether parenthetical additions to the base title are used as part of the disambiguation process is a separate issue, though, and I certainly agree that parentheses are inelegant. A pity the software doesn't have a built in method of creating child articles explicitly associated with a root, a sort of "sub-article" thing perhaps... :) -- "Let there be light." - Last words of Bomb #20, "Dark Star"

As a relative newbie that entered Wikipedia during the full flower of disambiguation pages, I'd like to give my response to the discussion so far. I think it's clear that some ambiguous pages, most obviously [[Paris]] but also for that matter [[Virus]], should be primarily about the most common sense of the term, while other pages such as [[Venus]] should only disambiguate. However, the difference between these examples is not vital and can safely be decided on a case by case basis. What's important to me is that Bryan Derksen is right, and we should make sure that he continues to be right: If a writer makes a spontaneous link to an ambiguous name, then readers can get to the right page after one more link. Is it ideal that the link read "[[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]]" rather than just "[[Mercury]]"? Yes. Is it necessary? No. I can easily imagine a writer in the heat of a computer article typing "[[worm]]" without thinking if that makes global sense, but if they do, then this causes only minimal damage. The encyclopaedia is still readable, even easily so, as long as the article [[Worm]] begins something like "''This article is about worms, the animals. There is also a Wikipedia article about [[computer worm]]s.'' " "---- " "A '''worm''' is any of numerous relatively small elongated soft-bodied etc. (Currently, the computer bit is at the bottom, which I too don't like. But I think that it's important to keep the top stuff *short* -- get people to the right page, and then start the article.) As a reader, disambiguation pages have worked for me. As a writer, I try to link directly but I know that I make mistakes; I hope that disambiguation pages are there to catch them. -- Toby Bartels toby(a)math.ucr.edu PS: You know what would make writing unambiguous links easier? I'd like to say "[[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]]" without repeating "Mercury". Would it work to have a feature such that, say, "[[Mercury]](planet)" (with no space) produces that effect?