Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/PTproposal

Is there a primary topic?

Although a word, name or phrase may refer to more than one topic, it is sometimes the case that one of these topics is the primary topic.

A topic is primary for a term if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.

If an ambiguous term has a primary topic, then that term should either be the title of, or a redirect to, the article about that topic. For example: Paris. New York City (title) and New York, New York (redirect).

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:

• Incoming wikilinks from Special:WhatLinksHere
• Wikipedia article traffic statistics or Wiki ViewStats traffic statistics
• Usage in English reliable sources demonstrated with Google web, news, scholar, or book searches (NOTE: adding &pws=0 to the Google search string eliminates personal search bias)

Not "what first comes to (your) mind"

Primary topic is determined without regard to the national origin, if any, of the article or articles in question. Because many topics on Wikipedia are more interesting or pertinent to particular groups, one potential criterion to be avoided is what "first comes to mind". An American might first think of the city in Alabama when he hears "Birmingham", but primary topic belongs to the city in England, which is far more notable and whose article is read much more often. A Scot might think of the Scottish city when she hears "Perth", but primary topic belongs to the Australian city for essentially the same reasons as for Birmingham. "Raleigh" takes you directly to the American city, even though an Englishman may not even know of the city and only think of the explorer when he hears it.

Of course, coming first to mind does not preclude primary topic; Anne Hathaway 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 does "what comes first to mind" to any particular reader have much bearing, either positive or negative, on which topic 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 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.

Sometimes, a disambiguated article title, such as Apostrophe (punctuation), may be moved to an 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}} can 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]] {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}}

When there is no primary topic

For some ambiguous names no topic meets the primary topic criteria, but one topic has much more widely recognized enduring notability than all of the others, and the name is clearly the WP:COMMONNAME for this topic. In such cases the name is used as the title of that topic's article. For example: Apple, Cambridge, Corvette, Mustang, and Worcestershire.

If an ambiguous name has neither a primary topic nor a single topic with widely recognized enduring notability, the dab page for that name should be located at the ambiguous name. For example: Bush, George Bush, Portland.