Explaining Disambiguation, and it's difference with Aliases

Can someone tell me what should the format of text written in the Disambiguation field be? How is it similar to or different than aliases?

For context, I created this creator page for Michael Crichton, but I left the disambiguation field blank, confused what should be the correct way to write that.

Disambiguation in MusicBrainz (and I’m assuming in BookBrainz as well) is a way to differentiate two authors with the same or a very similar name. So if there was a Michael Crichton who was a 19th century poet, you would add that to his disambiguation and something like “20th century thriller writer” for the other one. Or something like that :slight_smile:

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@reosarevok Oh, I see. :open_mouth: Thanks for the clarification :smile:

And aliases would be - John Smith, also known as Little Jimmy, John C. Smith, and J. Charles Smith.
That way we don’t need to add Little Jimmy as an author, because we already have John Smith listed.

sometimes disambiguation contains the same information as alias, but they are two separate things.

You find aliases often in “public” occupations. John Smith will use a name for horror writing, and a name for romance, and a name operas.

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@justcheckingitout Got it. Thanks :slight_smile: