Forum: The Situation Room > Manual of Style disambiguation changes proposal
After years of thinking I'd come up with a disambiguation policy better than that used on Memory Alpha, I must conceit that the way they seem to do it is probably the best. The reason for me writing the Manual of Style the way it is is because I wanted to avoid the use of the hideously long "(disambiguation)" tag on articles, when it it seemed unnecessary. However, I see now this is likely the best way in a lot of situations.
So, here's my proposal for the new policy:
- If there's only one character with a single name (ie. Eric), that character gets the "Eric" page and a note appears at the top of his page, directing to "Eric (disambiguation)" for other characters with the same name (ie. Eric Balfour).
- If more than one character shares a single name (ie. Lisa), they each have a disambiguation tag (ie. "(Day 1)", "(The Rookie)", etc.) added to their title, with a link to "Lisa (disambiguation)" at the top of each article. The "Lisa" page would redirect to "Lisa (disambiguation)." Or we would remove the tag in this case (which is what I was originally trying to do), however this would seem to create inconsistency with the policy. Characters with full names (ie. Lisa Miller) still need no disambiguation notes, of course.
And I'm pretty sure this exact same policy will work with non-character name articles, too. What do you think, sirs? --Proudhug 23:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
- I'm all for the first option, but I slightly disagree with the second proposal. As I've asked on a couple talk pages before, it's not necessary to link to a disambiguation page if the article already has a more specific title (full name, or day appearance). It's already implied that there are other characters named "Lisa" when a user sees the disambig tags in the title, so that user can just type "Lisa" into the search and be taken to its respective disambiguation page. --Deege515 01:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)