Template:Disambig link help/doc

May be placed on a user Talk page to offer help to a user who has previously received several disambiguation link notifications on their Talk page and may not understand how to avoid adding ambiguous links. Read § When to use before using.

Usage

{{Disambig link help}}
{{Disambig link help|heading=Your heading string}}

Parameters

There is one optional named parameter:

• |heading=Any string – replaces the standard heading with your choice; default: "Help with disambiguating links"

When to use

This template may be placed on the User talk page of a user who has previously received multiple Disambiguation link notifications generated by DPL bot, and who appears not to understand how to remedy the situation by placing disambiguated links in articles. It should not be placed indiscriminately. In particular, it is such an easy mistake to fall into, that even very senior editors with a complete understanding of linking and disambiguation may also have several notices on their page despite their mastery of the concept and how to fix it. So the simple presence of multiple notifications on the page or in the history is not enough; there should be evidence or a strong presumption that the user in question needs assistance in understanding or fixing ambiguous links before placing the template.

Examples

1. {{Disambig link help}}

Help with disambiguating links

Hi, Disambig link help, I'm [[User:imported>Mathglot|imported>Mathglot]]; thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that you have previously received some Disambiguation link notifications, and I wanted to offer some tips. Take this ambiguous link to "Mercury" for example; it is ambiguous because we don't know if it's about the planet, the chemical element, the Roman deity, or something else. Clicking it will not take you to a Wikipedia article; instead, it goes to a special page called a disambiguation page where all the different possible articles about "Mercury" are listed.

When we add a wikilink to an article, we want to take the reader straight to the right place, not to a disambiguation page. In order to link the correct article, we have to use the full page title, which may contain a qualifier to distinguish it from others with similar titles. In the "Mercury" example, we might want to link one of these:

• Mercury (planet)
• Mercury (element)
• Mercury (mythology)

or one of the other titles listed at Mercury (disambiguation).

Manual disambiguation with piped links

When adding a disambiguated link like to an article, readers only need to see the word "Mercury" in the link, not the longer disambiguated title as shown above as the shorter link will be clear in context. To achieve that, you can use a piped link, like this:

• [[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]] is the planet closest to the sun ⟶ "Mercury is the planet closest to the sun"
• [[Mercury (element)|Mercury]] is liquid at room temperature; ⟶ "Mercury is liquid at room temperature", and
• [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] is the Roman deity ⟶ "Mercury is the Roman deity".

Note that although the three blue links after the arrow all look identical, if you mouse over or click them, you will see that they each go to a different article, the right article for the context.

Semi-automated disambiguation with the ambiguous link helper

Would you like to make this link more specific?

You linked to "Mercury" which is not a content page but a list of topics with similar names.

Review link

There is another way to avoid adding ambiguous links to the page which you have likely already seen, but perhaps are not familiar with. When you add an ambiguous link to a page while editing, you will immediately see a pop-up message with a bold Review link prompt at the bottom as in the example to the right.

If you click "Review link" when the pop-up box appears (not here in the example) then it will pop up a new box showing all the possible pages you might want to link to (Mercury planet Mercury deity, Mercury metal, etc.). When you select the right one, it will substitute the proper link back onto the page for you. You can try this right now, if you want: just {{Reply}} to this message, and type [[Mercury]] watch for the pop-up, click "Review link", place your cursor in the input field below where it says "Target page or URL", and then choose the right link from the drop-down list, and then click the Insert link button at the bottom of the dialog box.

Going forward, please take note of ambiguous links while you are editing, and provide a link to the correct article, either by manually piping the link, or using the pop-up box to insert the correct link. Need more assistance? You can {{Reply}} below, or post a question at the Wikipedia:Teahouse.

Notes

This template may be substituted. In this case, the edit history will append the following to your summary:

Tag: Disambiguation links added.

This is expected, and of no concern.

See also

• Wikipedia:Disambiguation
• {{uw-dab}}

• Find user talk pages with three or more disambig link notifications     (Note: be patient; query timeout likely with partial results out of 23,000 total results)
  • five or more (about 12,000)
  • eight or more (about 6,000)

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Disambig link help in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Disambig link help

May be placed on user talk pages of users who have several disambiguation link notifications on their Talk page

Template parameters

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Heading	heading	Replacement string for the default heading Default yes	String	optional