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 disambig page. For example, where an editor writes "Captain [[John Smith]] is remembered for his role in establishing the English settlement of Jamestown", he doesn'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: "Captain [[John Smith (explorer)|John Smith]] is remembered for his role in establishing the English settlement of Jamestown"
Does every article that links to a disambiguation page get this template?
No. This template is only placed on articles that have a large number of links to disambiguation pages, currently defined as 7 dablinks or more.
How do I fix dablinks?
Dab solver is an excellent tool that helps you find and fix dablinks in a given article. Click the link, paste or type in your article title or URL, and the rest is intuitive. This is your best option. Works best in Firefox.
Dablinks gives you a real-time listing of what disambiguation pages are linked by your article.
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. You can also toggle it on or off with a tab next to the "watch" button.
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). 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.
What if there's no article to link to?
Let's say your article links to John Smith, but should really link to an article about John Smith, the ballet dancer. But there's no such article. To solve this, simply create the redlinkJohn Smith (dancer). (See WP:PRECISION in Article titles for how to best name a redlink.)
But that link is supposed to go to the disambig!
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 {{otheruses}}. But in rare cases, an in-article disambiguation link is correct. For example: "Captain [[John Smith (explorer)|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 (explorer)|John Smith]] is one of many people named [[John Smith (disambiguation)|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. Include the {{bots}} template at the top of the page, and deny access to the DPL bot that activates this text.
How do I get rid of this template?
As soon as the number of dablinks drops below 7, you're free to remove the template. If the number of dablinks drops to 4 or fewer, DPL bot will remove it for you. This tool will tell you how many disambiguation pages your article links to. This daily report[dead link] lists articles that are eligible to have their {{dablinks}} template removed.
This page has less than 7 dablinks, why is the template still there?
If the number of dablinks drops to fewer than 4, DPL bot will automatically remove the template. If the number of dablinks is between 4 and 7, you can manually remove the template and DPL bot will not try to replace it. Or you can improve those links.
I still have questions about this template. Where can I leave a comment?
