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Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing a page

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This is a guide to repairing ambiguous links, links in an article that go to a disambiguation page and need to be repaired. This guide assumes you already know which links are ambiguous.

  1. Keep the original page open in one browser tab, and use that to click on an ambiguous link so you can read the disambiguation page. You might want to open the disambiguation page in a new tab.
  2. In another tab, edit the page and try to find the link text in the edit box.
    • Most web browsers allow you to search text in a web page by pressing ctrl+F.
    • To find a link to Vatican, for example, search for "[[Vatican", omitting the closing brackets. This will find both bare links and piped links: [[Vatican]] and any variants such as [[Vatican|Holy See]].
    • If you cannot find the link in the edit box, the link may be in a template transcluded in the article, or there is a deeper problem. See Wikipedia:Disambiguation for further help, or just move on to the next ambiguous link.
  3. For each ambiguous link, examine the articles listed on that disambiguation page to help you decide how to repair the link.
    • It is important to repair links correctly. Usually the correct link will be clear from the context in which it used. If it is not clear, do not guess; instead, put a {{dn}} tag on the link, like this: "[[link]]{{dn}}". Perhaps also explain the problem on the article's talk page. If the disambiguation page is the problem, tag it for cleanup. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation.
    • To repair a link that another editor has tagged {{dn}}, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Fixing links.
  4. Change the link so it goes to the appropriate article.
    • Piping can be used to change the link but keep the text to improve the readability of the article. For example, you might change [[Vatican]] to [[Vatican City|Vatican]] but you should change [[Vatican]] City to [[Vatican City]].
    • Some links can simply be unlinked, by removing the [[ and ]]. Text that is not important to the context generally should not be linked. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links).
    • Some links to a disambiguation page are intentional and correct. Such links usually appear in an article's hatnotes and See also section. To make an intentional link, link to the disambiguation page's default redirect. For example, link to Vatican (disambiguation) instead of to Vatican.
  5. Consider using an edit summary like this:
    Repairing link to disambiguation page - [[Wikipedia:DPL|You can help!]]

Tools are available to help editors find and repair links to disambiguation pages. For more information and help, see these projects and their talk pages:

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