Wikivoyage:Disambiguation pages

A disambiguation page lists the full titles of several different articles, and allows the traveler to choose between them.

It is useful to create a disambiguation page when destinations share identical names. For example, Perth refers to several different cities and towns.

If you reach a disambiguation page by following a link in an article, it means that the original article isn't linked directly to the right article. You can help make Wikivoyage better by going back and editing the link on the page that directed you to the disambiguation page. Before you do you might like to read the naming conventions, especially those on disambiguation.

If an article that should be listed in the disambiguation page is not, this might mean the article does not exist yet or that it has not been added to the disambiguation page. If you can find the article by searching, please add it to the disambiguation page. If you cannot find the article and want to write or link to a new article, please ensure the correct format for the link on the original page and add that link to the disambiguation page as well.

Format
To create a new disambiguation page, use the following format (code can be copied directly into the disambiguation page):

There is more than one place called Name of place: ===Region=== * Place (Region) — a town in Region ===Region=== * Place (Region) — a town in Region * Place (Region) — a town in Region

In the above example, the section headings ( ===Region=== ) usually contain links to the country containing the locations, such as United States of America. The article links ( Place (Region) ) are links to the actual disambiguated articles, such as Lafayette (California). The is special markup that denotes a page is a disambiguation page. The markup will leave a note saying that the page is a disambiguation page, and will appear on the page like this:

One of the links in this notice points readers to this page to explain why they exist and what to do when encountering one. The decision about when to create a disambiguation page is left to writers of new pages.

A link to the disambiguation page at Wikipedia can be added using Wikidata. This is optional. This will add a link to the related Wikipedia disambiguation page in the left column. For additional details on adding link to Wikipedia, see Links to Wikipedia. Be sure and check the link to make sure it goes to the correct Wikipedia disambiguation page.

Disambiguation page maintenance features
This guideline asks that links that point to disambiguation pages be changed to point to the correct articles. When a link that leads to a disambiguation page is changed to point to a new article, it means the disambiguation page can become unlinked.

Unlinked disambiguation pages show up as orphaned pages. To prevent this happening they should be added to the Links to disambiguating pages page.

Putting disambiguation in articles
See Naming conventions for guidance on how to name (or rename) articles to make it clear which destination the article refers to.

If you have a page that is so much more famous than the other places of the same name that it deserves the simple article name, consider putting in the article intro. This will insert a message like,
 * For other places with the same name, see Paris (disambiguation).

See number 4 in Naming conventions for detailed guidelines on such cases.

Harder cases
Disambiguate unofficial place names for region articles only for articles that essentially have the same title, e.g., disambiguate South West (Western Australia) and South West (Scotland)&mdash;but not Southwestern Georgia.

Include city district articles in disambiguation lists only if the district (or well-known neighborhood within the district) has a well known placename. E.g., include Chicago/Hyde Park in a disambiguation page for Hyde Park, but do not include Jakarta/South in a disambiguation page for South.

Disambiguation pages for topics that do not merit their own article (example: SeaWorld) should be an exception rather than a rule. Disambiguation pages for non-articles should only be created for attractions that are major travel destinations in their own right, that new editors commonly re-create (example: North Sea) or that there is a consensus to create. When there is doubt as to whether a destination meets any of these criteria a consensus must exist to keep a page, otherwise it should be deleted.

Extra-hierarchical regions
Regions that overlap with other regions but are in themselves unique should not be marked as Disambiguation.
 * Geographical regions that do not form part of the hierarchy, for example New Guinea.
 * Historical regions that share common features but are not part of our hierarchy since that is based on modern borders, for example Bactria.
 * When bodies of water and other geographical features have information about them in several other articles, but either do not have a destination guide of their own or have one that does not fit in the hierarchy. An example is Lake Tai.

These articles should be tagged extraregion.