[WikiEN-l] My irrelevant hatnote disambiguation policy

[Stephen Bain]

On 9/2/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> And while we're on the subject, what do people think of this,
>   http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/a/a2/Disambig-alt2.png
> instead of the typical this?:
>   http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/a/a2/Disambig-alt1.png

The weakness is that it's not apparently obvious what "Disambiguation"
means (especially when it is a single word displayed to the right of
the title). A hatnote in a standardised form is easy to interpret,
even for someone who hasn't seen one on Wikipedia before, and it also
corresponds with how disambiguation occurs in some other publications.

[[WP:DAB]] does a very good job of setting out when disambiguation
should be done, how it should be done and the various forms it can
take. Interestingly, it actually suggests that where there are only
two articles to be disambiguated, the form that should be taken is the
one you seem not to like. I suggest you bring up this issue on the
talk page there, since apparently some people consider it a good
enough form to recommend.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com