[Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation detector

Thu May 29 09:36:47 UTC 2003

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> Another issue is performance. Perhaps we could help both of those
> issues by making a single link to a list page rather than a set of
> links. But what to call that list is tricky. Is isn't really "related
> pages" because they're only related lexigographically, not semantically.
> Perhaps it could be something like "Other 'Foo' pages".

But this link should only appear if there really are other "foo" pages, 
right? So, we'd have to run a SQL query anyway.

One special case I could think of is that there are a lot of matching 
pages (like the mentioned "USS *" pages). The "Other 'foo' pages" link 
cuold go into effect if there are more than, say, seven other 'foo' 
pages. I'm not sure if the trouble of setting up Yet Another Special 
Page (tm) will pay off considering the expected short number of such 
pages (I think at the test wiki, with all the 'A' articles, "Atlas" and 
variants hit the top, with five pages or so, one of them a REDIRECT).

The feature was *not* intended to replace the disambiguation pages. It 
started off when someone mentioned he'd like to see for a page "foo 
(bar)" if there's a page "foo" (which is often enough not the case, at 
least on the German wikipedia).

For the disambiguation pages, I would imagine something as simple as a 
"{{DISAMBIGUATION}}" variable, which would
* add all the "foo (bar)" pages on a "foo" or "foo (disambiguation)" page
* add the disambiguation disclaimer

But that's another story :-)

Magnus