Concordances and Characters:Disambiguation
From Concordances and Characters
Disambiguation is the process of distinguishing between two otherwise identical items. Since this Wiki is dedicated to gathering names and terms from a number of sources, there is bound to be some confusion--not every author tries to avoid names used in other authors' works.
Here's how disambiguation should work in Concordances and Characters:
[edit] Overloaded redirects
It is perfectly acceptable to use redirects from the short forms of character or term names to the long forms, e.g. Mat -> Matrim Cauthon. However, once that redirect becomes ambiguous(if there is a Mat in another series), then the redirect must turn into a disambiguation page. Furthermore, for best results, the links that previously pointed to the redirects should be modified to point to the page formerly redirected to--i.e., [[Mat]] links would be changed to [[Matrim Cauthon|Mat]]. This may be tedious, but will make the Wiki better in the long term. (If you're worried about it, you can eschew redirects from the outset if you know there will be a duplication in the future.)
You can use Special:Disambiguations to help find pages that link to disambiguation pages.
[edit] Duplications
If there are two characters or terms that have the exact same name, then their pages titles must be distinguished by parenthetical additions. For instance, in The Wheel of Time, the name Dorindha is used for two distinct characters. These are disambiguated as Dorindha (Maiden of The Spear) and Dorindha (Wife of Bael). These descriptions should be enough for a reader familiar with the work to be able to determine which one he needs to refer to at any given time.
If the character or term appears only once in a given series, then the series name could be used to disambiguate--e.g. Gil (Darwath) for Darwath (series) and Gil (Gil) for Gil (series).
Do not bother to disambiguate a series name from the book of the same title--i.e., there doesn't need to be a disambiguation page for The Wheel of Time to distinguish between The Wheel of Time (series) and the actual Wheel of Time mentioned in the series.
[edit] "See Also"
If a complete name is also a short form of another name(e.g. a character known only by their first name, which is also the first name of another character whose surname is provided), then in lieu of a disambiguation page, a "See Also" link may be used. This takes the form of the line See Also: at the end of the main article for the short form, which links to the longer forms. See Maigan.
Links to a family are slightly different. If there is a group of related characters with the same last name, then a page for that surname can be made which explicitly lists the members of the family or house.
