[Wikipedia-l] Possible compromise for disambiguation

[Daniel Mayer]

On Saturday 29 June 2002 12:01 pm, you wrote:
> 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?

The reason is to catch any future honest mistakes for true disambiguation 
issues. Such as this conundrum: "Where might the article on [[Mars]] be in 
the in context of a hyperlinked encyclopedia? Now "planet" is not a part of 
its name in any context, so it would be silly to find it at [[planet Mars]]. 
Hum, how about I just type in [[Mars]], hit preview and see where it takes 
me." 

The bingo! They find out that an article about the planet lives at [[Mars 
(planet)]]. 

This is different when alternate two word terms are actually a part of a 
title that <naturally> disambiguates a term. Such as <computer worm> -- here 
the addition of the word "computer" is totally valid and widely used. We can 
reasonably expect a person to think: "Hum, I'm witting here in an on-line, 
cross-linked encyclopedia. Where might an article about computer worms be.... 
How about [[computer worm]]. Yep there it is." Besides, there is a link to 
[[computer worm]] at [[worm]]. 

If you like, we can move this to the top in a short row stating: Other uses: 
[[computer worm]].  Then the obvious disambiguation you want is there and an 
actual article is at [[worm]] that is about creepy, crawly, slimy worms and 
we don't have to place that article at [[worm (biology)]] which can only be 
linked to through pipes. 

In fact, it might be a good idea to have a very short row list like this in 
other places in order to prevent the subvertion of a the common use of a 
single word term for non-article disambiguation pages just because other 
terms also share the same single word within narrow contexts (but are also 
widely known by two or more word equivalent). I would suggest having this at 
a -1 font and be limited to a row with maybe a line separating it from the 
actual article. This shouldn't be any more obtrusive than having language 
links for articles AND also acts as a disambiguation page without turning it 
into a non-article list. 

I could be very happy with this. 

---maveric149