Template:Dablinks/FAQ#How do I fix dablinks.3F

Links to disambiguation pages are generally wrong; they are intended to go to some page with a more specific title that can be found on the disambiguation page.

For example, where an editor writes:

{{quote|{{!mxt|Captain John Smith is remembered for his role in establishing the English settlement of Jamestown.}}}}

They don't intend to create a link to the disambiguation page John Smith, but to the article John Smith (explorer). This is remedied using piped links:

{{quote|{{mxt|Captain John Smith is remembered for his role in establishing the English settlement of Jamestown.}}}}

No. This template is only placed on articles that have a large number of links to disambiguation pages, currently defined as 30 dablinks or more.

Generally, with one of the following tools to help:

• Enable "Display links to disambiguation pages in orange" feature in your gadget preferences.
• Link Classifier is a script that color-codes certain types of wikilinks in an article, such as redirects, disambiguation links, articles up for deletion, etc. By default runs automatically, but can also be set up to run on demand following the usage instructions. Disambiguation links will have a yellow background like this. See the legend for other kinds of links. Note that Link Classifier has been testing extensively only in the MonoBook skin, but may still work fine in the default skin which {{as of|2020|lc=y}} and since 2010 is Vector.
• Navigation popups with the popupFixDabs flag set to true makes it easier to fix disambiguation links in a Wikipedia article. Once you've enabled popups in Special:Preferences, go to your javascript config file and add the following line (but without any leading space).

  window.popupFixDabs=true;

  Then, when you mouse over a dablink, the popup will show your options. Pick the correct article from the list of links in green at the bottom of the popup.

Let's say your article links to John Smith, yet it should really link to an article about John Smith, who is a ballet dancer, but that article does not exist. To solve this, simply create the redlink John Smith (dancer). (See WP:PRECISION in Article titles for how to best name a redlink.)

Links should almost always go to an article instead of a disambiguation page. Most exceptions are in the case of See also sections and hatnotes such as {{tl|otheruses}}. But in rare cases, an in-article disambiguation link is correct. For example: "Captain John Smith is one of many people named John Smith." In this case, the link to the John Smith disambiguation page is intentional, so we mark it as such by making use of the (disambiguation) redirect: "Captain John Smith is one of many people named John Smith." This would no longer come up in the reports for the DPL project as needing to be fixed.

In the case of a disambiguation page lacking the word "(disambiguation)" in its title, it is impossible for the bot to recognize the link as correct. You can follow the lead of John Smith (disambiguation) redirecting to John Smith and create a link with "(disambiguation)" redirecting to the desired (disambiguation)-lacking disambiguation page.

As a last resort, include the {{tl|bots}} template at the top of the page, and deny access to the DPL bot that activates this text, like so: {{tlx|bots|deny{{=}}DPL bot}}. Please use this sparingly, as this means other links to disambiguation pages on the same page will not be patrolled by the bot.

As soon as the number of dablinks drops below 30, you're free to remove the template. If the number of dablinks drops to 25 or fewer, DPL bot will remove it for you. This tool{{dead link |date=September 2020}} will tell you how many disambiguation pages your article links to. This daily report{{dl}} lists articles that are eligible to have their {{tl|dablinks}} template removed.

If the number of dablinks drops to fewer than 25, DPL bot will automatically remove the template. If the number of dablinks is between 25 and 30, you can manually remove the template and DPL bot will not try to replace it. Or you can improve those links.

Please visit the Disambiguation pages with links project.