[Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation pages

[Toby Bartels]

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 at 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?