This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts WP:D WP:DAB WP:DISAMBIG

This page in a nutshell: It is necessary to provide links and disambiguation pages so that readers typing in a reasonably likely topic name for more than one Wikipedia topic can quickly navigate to the article they seek.

Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving conflicts that arise when a potential article title is ambiguous, most often because it refers to more than one subject covered by Wikipedia, either as the main topic of an article, or as a subtopic covered by an article in addition to the article's main topic. For example, Mercury can refer to a chemical element, a planet, a Roman god, and many other things.

There are three important aspects to disambiguation:

• Naming articles in such a way that each has a unique title. For example, three of the articles dealing with topics ordinarily called "Mercury" are titled Mercury (element), Mercury (planet) and Mercury (mythology).
• Making the links for ambiguous terms point to the correct article title. For example, an editor of an astronomy article may have created a link to Mercury, and this should be corrected to point to Mercury (planet).
• Ensuring that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily, whichever of the possible topics it might be. For example, the page Mercury is a disambiguation page—a non-article page which lists various meanings of "Mercury" and which links to the articles that cover them. (As discussed below, however, ambiguous terms do not always require a disambiguation page.)

This page discusses the standard ways of handling the above issues. For detailed advice about the format of disambiguation pages, see the style manual.

Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead. In this situation there must be a way for the reader to navigate quickly from the page that first appears to any of the other possible desired articles.

There are three principal disambiguation scenarios, of which the following are examples:

• The page at Joker is a disambiguation page, leading to all the alternative uses of Joker.
• The page at Rice is about one usage, called the primary topic, and there is a hatnote guiding readers to Rice (disambiguation) to find the other uses.
• The page at Michael Dobbs is about the primary topic, and there is only one other use. The other use is linked directly using a hatnote; no disambiguation page is needed.

For how to decide which of these scenarios is appropriate in a given case, consider the following sections.

If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing it and not a disambiguation page. Where the primary topic of a term is a general topic that can be divided into subtopics, such as chronologically (e.g., History of France) or geographically (e.g., Rugby union in the British Isles), the unqualified title should contain an article about the general topic rather than a disambiguation page. A disambiguation page should not be created just because it is difficult to write an article on a topic that is broad, vague, abstract, or highly conceptual. Where there are additional meanings that are not instances or examples of a Foo primary concept or type, those should be included on a Foo (disambiguation) page.

For example:

• Particle (previously a disambiguation page) is a broad and abstract concept used to address many different ideas in physics, generally relating to small units from which larger things are composed. Although there are many different kinds of particles at levels ranging from the subatomic to the macroscopic, the broad concept is properly susceptible to explanation in an article. Truly unrelated meanings, such as Particle (band), are presented only at Particle (disambiguation).
• A Supreme court, National trust, or Finance minister (or Ministry of Finance) is each a kind of entity occurring in multiple countries and possibly in other political entities and serving the same purpose in each. Rather than having disambiguation pages at these titles linking to existing articles on these entities by nation, each should contain an article describing in general terms what the concept is and how the different examples of this concept relate to each other.
• The Microsoft Lumia is a cell phone with many different design models. The fact that different models in the same series of product by the same manufacturer may have the same name, or the same combination of name and number, does not make them ambiguous. The relationship between these design models can and should be discussed on a page describing products created by or licensed by the same manufacturer.
• Central Asia, Northern Europe, and Southern United States are geographic designations that have been used with respect to different specific boundaries over time. Varying uses for broad geographic terms can be discussed in the context of an article describing the overall agreement of which areas definitely fall within that designation and which areas are only occasionally described as falling within that designation, for certain purposes.
• Football may refer to one of a number of team sports which all involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with the foot. Although the word "football" can apply to whichever form of football is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears, all of these variations share some common elements and can be traced to a common origin. Thus, the history and development of the general concept of football can be explained in its own article. Football (disambiguation) describes the various literal uses of the word including the actual balls.
• Many definitions of triangle center are used in Euclidean geometry, which coincide only in the special case of equilateral triangles. The article lists a dozen of these and also gives a validity criterion applicable to various definitions of center.

In writing articles on these subjects, it is useful to directly address the scope of the term and the history of how the concept has developed. Each of the examples of the concept or type of thing should be included at some point in the article, possibly in a list, so that no information is lost from what would have been presented in the disambiguation page format. Consider using summary style to incorporate information about the subtopics into the main article.

Pages needing to be expanded to describe the concept may be tagged with {{Broad-concept article}}.

Although a word, name, or phrase may refer to more than one topic, sometimes one of these topics can be identified as the term's primary topic. This is the topic to which the term should lead, serving as the title of (or a redirect to) the relevant article. If no primary topic exists, then the term should be the title of a disambiguation page (or should redirect to a disambiguation page on which more than one term is disambiguated). The primary topic might be a broad-concept article, as mentioned above.

While Wikipedia has no single criterion for defining a primary topic, two major aspects that editors commonly consider are these:

1. A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
2. A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.

In most cases, the topic that is primary with respect to usage is also primary with respect to long-term significance; in many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant. In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage (Apple Inc.) and one of primary long-term significance (Apple). In such a case, consensus may be useful in determining which topic, if any, is the primary topic.

Determining a primary topic

There are no absolute rules for determining whether a primary topic exists and what it is; decisions are made by discussion among editors, often as a result of a requested move. Tools that may help to support the determination of a primary topic in a discussion (but are not considered absolute determining factors, due to unreliability, potential bias, and other reasons) include:

• WikiNav, which shows a graph of incoming and outgoing traffic from a given page, as well as other graphs. It can be used to compare incoming and outgoing traffic patterns, but doesn't show the long tail of traffic well because it anonymizes data that is more scarce. The top graph shows only a single month of historical traffic, so it's fair to consider it over a longer period of time before suggesting changes.
• Wikipedia article traffic statistics (for the exact title of a page or a redirect) and redirect traffic statistics (for the total views of a page including traffic coming from its redirects).
• Usage in English reliable sources demonstrated with Google Ngram viewer, Books, Scholar, News, and Trends. Simple web searches may be problematic due to limited sources, open interpretation, and personal search bias, but may be helpful if other methods are inconclusive.
• Incoming wikilinks from Special:WhatLinksHere (their count).

Some general principles for determining a primary topic include:

• While long-term significance is a factor, historical age is not determinative.
• Being the original source of the name is also not determinative. Boston, Massachusetts is the primary topic for Boston, not the English town from which it took its name.
• A topic may have principal relevance for a specific group of people (for example, as the name of a local place, or software), but not be the primary meaning among a general audience. An attorney may read the word hearing and immediately think of a courtroom, but the auditory sense is still the primary topic.
• A rule of thumb is that it's unlikely that there is a primary topic by usage if the top WikiNav graph shows a spread of multiple significant usages, or if there is so little traffic that few or no graphs are shown. Conversely, a rule of thumb is that it's likely there is a primary topic by usage if the top graph shows a single significant usage that maps to almost all of the incoming traffic and overwhelms all other usages.
• Initialisms and acronyms are often so ambiguous that it's less likely a primary topic can be determined in those cases.

Not "what first comes to (your) mind"

Perhaps the most commonly rejected criterion is that the primary topic should only belong to what "first comes to mind". This argument is inevitably tainted by factors such as one's location, ideology, ethnicity, and other personal biases, but we are trying to build an encyclopedia that is untainted by systemic bias. Therefore, the primary topic is determined without regard to certain attributes, such as national origin, of the articles in question.

Because many topics on Wikipedia are more interesting or pertinent to particular groups, one potential criterion to commonly avoid is what "first comes to mind". An American might first think of the city in Alabama when Birmingham is mentioned, but primary topic belongs to the city in England, which is far more notable and whose article is read much more often. Raleigh takes you directly to the American city, even though a British reader may not even know of the city and only think of the explorer or bicycle manufacturer when Raleigh is mentioned. What first comes to your mind when you hear the word Java? It may be coffee or a programming language, but the primary topic belongs to the island with over 150 million people living on it.

Partial title matches should also be considered. Consider what users searching with the term in question are most likely to be seeking. For instance, New York City is a partial title match for "York" and is far more notable and likely to be sought (more page views) than is the British city from which it got its name, and the vast majority of the time that "York" is used in books, it is used as part of the phrase "New York". However, since users are unlikely to search for New York with the search term "York", which is supported by the rare use of unqualified "York" to refer to "New York" in reliable sources, York still hosts an article on the British city, and no suggestion to change that would be seriously entertained. Likewise, "Sofia" has been the first name of countless girls and women throughout history; however, as a single term it most commonly refers to the Bulgarian capital, and anyone searching with plain "Sofia" is most likely looking for that city.

To be clear, it is not our goal to astonish our readers, and the topic that comes first to mind indeed often is suitable as the primary topic. Anne Hathaway, as one of countless examples, takes the reader to the modern-day American movie star's page, not to the article on the wife of William Shakespeare. But in no case do "what comes first to mind" or "what is astonishing" have much bearing, either positive or negative, on which topic, if any, actually is the primary topic.

Redirecting to a primary topic

The title of the primary topic article may be different from the ambiguous term. This may happen when the topic is primary for more than one term, when the article covers a wider topical scope, or when it is titled differently according to the naming conventions. When this is the case, the term should redirect to the article (or a section of it). The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary. For example:

• The city which is the subject of the article on Gdańsk used to be called Danzig in English, but is now usually referred to as Gdańsk. Thus the primary topic for "Danzig" is this city; Danzig redirects to Gdańsk, and the latter page contains a {{redirect}} hatnote linking to Danzig (disambiguation).
• The primary topic for "ovens" is the cooker but because of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals) the article is titled Oven. Here Ovens redirects to Oven, and a hatnote then links to Ovens (disambiguation).
• The primary topic for the search term "Einstein" is the physicist, but the article title is Albert Einstein. Here Einstein redirects to Albert Einstein, and a hatnote then links to Einstein (disambiguation).
• The article at Defamation is the primary topic for five terms: "defamation", "libel", "slander", "vilification", and "calumny". Even though there is a film with the title Libel, the article at Defamation is still the primary topic for that title and the film must be disambiguated.

There are times when a disambiguated article title, such as Apostrophe (punctuation), may be moved to its base name (unqualified title) based on a consensus that this is the primary topic for the unqualified term. When such a page move is made, the redirect template {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}} should be used to categorize the redirect that results from the move under Category:Redirects from unnecessary disambiguation. Using the above example, Apostrophe (punctuation) would redirect as follows (where Apostrophe's topic is primary):

#REDIRECT Apostrophe

{{Redirect category shell|
{{R from move}}
{{R from unnecessary disambiguation}}
{{R unprintworthy}}
}}

Primary topic when a disambiguation page lists only one existing article by that name

When a disambiguation page lists only one existing article by that name (all other suggested articles are red-linked), the normal rules for primary topic still apply. The existing article is not automatically the primary topic nor is there automatically no primary topic. So:

• If the article with the blue link is the primary topic, it should be the primary landing page (possibly via a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT). The disambiguation page should be at a page with the (disambiguation) qualifier.
• If there is no primary topic, then the disambiguation page should be the primary landing page.
• On the rare occasions that a red-linked article would be the primary topic, the situation is treated as if there is no primary topic until the red-linked article is written.

Please note, MOS:DABMENTION still applies: any red-linked entry should still have a blue link to an article that covers the redlinked topic.

As discussed above, if an ambiguous term has no primary topic, then that term needs to lead to a disambiguation page. In other words, where no topic is primary, the disambiguation page is placed at the base name.

If a disambiguation page is needed, but one of the other topics is of particular interest, then it may be appropriate to link to it explicitly as well as linking to the disambiguation page. For example, Inflation is about the primary topic—a rise in prices—and a hatnote links to both Inflation (cosmology) and Inflation (disambiguation).

No primary topic

If there are multiple topics (even just two) to which a given title might refer, but there is no primary topic (per the criteria at § Is there a primary topic?), then the base name should lead the reader to the disambiguation page for the term. For example, John Quested is a disambiguation page for the two people by that name who can be found in the encyclopedia:

Primary topic with only one other topic

If there is a primary topic located at the base name, then the question arises whether to create a disambiguation page, or merely to link to all the other meanings from a hatnote on the primary topic article.

If there are only two topics to which a given title might refer, and one is the primary topic, then a disambiguation page is not needed—it is sufficient to use a hatnote on the primary topic article, pointing to the other article. (This means that readers looking for the second topic are spared the extra navigational step of going through the disambiguation page.)

If an existing disambiguation page does not appear to be needed because there are only two topics for the ambiguous title and one of them is the primary topic, but there could reasonably be other topics ambiguous with the title on Wikipedia now or in the future, an {{about}} hatnote can be used to link to a disambiguation page (either in addition to or instead of a link directly to the other article). At the same time, the {{One other topic}} template should be added to the top of the disambiguation page, which will inform users that the page has only two ambiguous terms, one of them primary; thus it may be deleted if, after a period of time no additional ambiguous topics are found to expand the disambiguation page. The {{One other topic}} template will also list the article in Category:Disambiguation pages containing one non-primary topic, allowing other editors to locate these pages and help in expanding them. If the two-dab page has been expanded to include additional ambiguous topics, {{One other topic}} template should be removed and a direct link in the primary article to the other article may not be needed anymore as a link to the disambiguation page alone may be sufficient.

Primary topic with two or more other topics

If there are two or three other topics, it is still possible to use a hatnote which lists the other topics explicitly, but if this would require too much text (roughly, if the hatnote would extend well over one line on a standard page), then it is better to create a disambiguation page and refer only to that.

Different spelling variants

If the titles of two articles differ only in capitalization, pluralization, spacing, or punctuation (as per WP:DIFFCAPS or WP:PLURALPT), the articles each should contain a hatnote to link to each other: for example, Ice cube and Ice Cube.