Talk:Mavilla

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This is the discussion/talk page for article: Mavilla.

Disambiguation nightmare
09-Jan-2009: The disambig-page "Mavilla" was created as part of a simplified effort to handle about 12 variations of the word "Mauvilla" and the "Battle of Mabila" (DeSoto v. Tuskaloosa), with Maubilla, Mauvila, Maubila, Mavilla, Mavila, Mauilla, Mobila, etc. Of course, the 2008 wiki-search has been able to auto-search for many variant names in article text (without using REDIRECT to each spelling), but disambiguation pages are good when choosing several meanings. The 2 other popular meanings for "Mavilla" were:
 * the Mavilla River (Río Mavilla), on the island of Puerto Rico; and
 * the Mavilla Bridge, on the island of Puerto Rico.

The nightmare of 12 variations, for various things, was due to naming everything in the Alabama area (a river, bay, town, tribe) by the same names, then leaving for 200 years, so the names were never actually used daily by people who needed separate names for each thing. Outsiders began to think something 100 miles away, with a similar name, matched an alternate word also, so the variations developed more variations. With no official source to pinpoint differences, even the spellings could vary, so presto, various spellings of various variations. If the Spaniards could have survived the hurricanes, natives, rain, bugs (and other wonders of Alabama), then perhaps the words would have become more precise during those 200 years, and could be defined precisely in a dictionary.

Of course, a disambiguation page can be fantastic when kept up to date (like Google-search on steroids), listing all related terms in such excellent order, but keeping pages current is lots of work. The goal is to balance a few disamb-pages, with a few REDIRECT titles, and allow wiki-search to find other variant spellings in each article, rather than have 12 pages handle 12 variant-spellings.

Redirections here
09-Jan-2009: There are no redirections to here, so far. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)