Clashing Names

In an ideal world pages are set up so that a link to a page always takes you right to the intended page. So a page might say

Blah, blah, blah [[Jack Speer]], etc., etc.

and the link will take you to the important early fan, Jack Speer, that you expected. But what if there are multiple things with the same name? (E.g., "Minicon" is the name of at least six different things.

Here's how we deal with that problem:

Naming Pages

First, each item gets its own page. The page names following the format name' (modifier). The name is just the unadorned name. The modifier follows a fixed set of choices depending on what we're dealing with. (It's important for the modifier to be standardized, so that people can guess the right one the first time.)

For things which are geographical (Conventions, Clubs, Locales, etc.) use the country or, for the US, the state. E.g., 'Unicon (UK)', 'Unicon (Australia)', 'Unicon (MD)'.

For a fanzine or apazine, use the last name of the primary editor. For a convention pub, use the convention name. E.g., 'BEM (Ashworth)', 'BEM ('Kalas)'

Disambiguation Pages

The unadorned name (just plain "Unicon") points to a disambiguation page, like this:

(Did you mean [[Unicon (UK)|British]], [[Unicon (Australia)|Australian]], [[Unicon (MD)|Maryland]], [[Unicon (CA)|Californian]], [[Unicon (KC)|Kansas City]] or [[Unicon (FL)|Florida]] conventions of that name?)

Or do you know of yet another one!
{{choice}}

A disambiguation page will show all the incoming links to that page. We would like to correct all of the links to the disambiguation page to link directly to the proper destination page. This needs to be done by hand.

Windycon

(Did you mean the [[Windycon (NZ)|New Zealand Natcon]]?)

Description...

Windycon (NZ)

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Windycon}}
(Did you mean the annual Chicago convention [[Windycon]]?)

Description...

The DISPLAYTITLE is what appears at the top of the page and in links, so you just refer to [[Windycon (NZ)]] and it will show Windycon on the page.

The (caveat) should be things like (NZ) (Weston fanzine) (clubzine)

Ideally, we would handle them all the same, putting each thing on its own page. The problem with this is that if don't put them on the same page a naive link to, say, "Minicon" will take you to the wrong Minicon five times out of six.

Multiple instances of the same kinds of thing. (E.g., two fanzines with the same name.)

If all of the items are of the same kind: all fanzines, all conventions, all clubs, etc., then they can be listed on the same page with appropriate headers for each. But if even one of the items is of a different kind, then separate pages are preferred.

The Unpreferred Approach

One other solution -- which works, but is in general not preferred -- is to list each of the other possibilities on each of the pages. Looking at "windycon" where there's a long-running Chicago convention of that name as well as a single New Zealand Natcon of that name.

For the page for the Chicago convention:

(Did you mean the [[Windycon (NZ)|New Zealand Natcon]]?)

Description...

And for Windycon (NZ):

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Windycon}}
(Did you mean the annual Chicago convention [[Windycon]]?)

Description...

There are two problems with this approach. First, it gets pretty wordy and distracting if there are several items sharing a name, and secondly, each page must be updated each time a new item is added, which leads to errors.