Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 5

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Links w/in Wikipedia Name-space

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (acronyms)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (aircraft)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (disputed place names)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Iraq war)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (legislation)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (pieces of music)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (protected areas)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (slogans)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (toponymy)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (British railway locomotive and multiple unit classes)

international:

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (anglicization)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (chinese)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (japanese)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)

people:

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (monarchs)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people with the same name)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (pseudonyms)

science, maths, technical

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (biology)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (calendar dates)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (file formats)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (theorems)

"History of X" vs "Xsh history"

What's better: "History of X" or "Xsh history"? This is a dilemma that has plagued Wikipedians since the dawn of time. A new naming convention has been proposed to deal with this issue. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics) for details. - Pioneer-12 12:38, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Inactivity ?

  1. In the "Links w/in Wikipedia Name-space" section of this talk page there are a lot of naming convention links listed. Why have they not been added to the wikipedia:naming conventions page ?
  2. In the "Conventions under consideration" section there are some topics listed. For how long will they be under consideration, can't that section be merged totally with section 2 - "Other specific conventions". I don't see any major discussions happening on those topics anyway. Jay 05:13, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Treaty of ..

Compare Treaty of London with Treaty of Madrid and Treaty of Paris. Two styles are in use:

  • , XXXX
    • e.g. Treaty of London, 1359
  • (XXXX)
    • e.g. Treaty of Paris (1259)

Is there a preferred style for this? --Cfailde 21:04, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer the parenthetical disambiguation form. Makes it easier to hide the date via the pipe trick if desired, for example if you want to include a wikified link to the date along with a link to the treaty. older≠wiser 21:14, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

Article Titles

There's obviously a great deal of emphasis placed on ensuring similar articles follow a template; wickifying. However, what about article titles? This seems to be a problem widespread across Wikipedia, usually on lists of... articles, for example, the following all exist for the National Park articles:

  • List of National Parks in country
  • List of National Parks of country
  • National Parks of country
  • Country's National Parks

The same is true for football teams, rivers, and many more. This means for that many people assume a page doesnt exist because nothing appears when they type in the title that is used on other similar articles.

At the very least we should be activly encouraging users to insert redirects, but should be looking to wickify article titles.

Sorry to go on! rant over :P Grunners 14:17, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Rivers, Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas. Rmhermen 16:58, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)
Amen on consistent titling. I think every list should be entitled "List of X" myself, so as to clearly distinguish non-list articles on the same subject, but not everybody goes along. If there's an associated wikiproject, bring it up there, otherwise "be bold" and do your part to arrange things more sensibly. Stan 15:24, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Consistency is nice in theory, but it doesn't always make sense. National parks of Scotland is an article about National parks of Scotland, not a list of them. Since there are only two of them, and neither are true national parks, List of national parks of Scotland would not be a sensible title. Angela. 03:05, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Starting a title with the word The

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name).

nd's, st's, th's

This article gets grotesquely spaced-out on my browser by all the superscripted 'nd's and 'th's in the main text. I can't find style for this issue, but I hope it can be discouraged. Any advice? Adhib

I don't see any need for superscripts. Maurreen 04:46, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't see the need either. However, there's no need to write out the number either, so plain "82nd" will suffice. Is there a way to change this, or is this the way the article came out? SujinYH 01:51, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Concepts attributed to multiple researchers

What is the proper style for articles about independently or jointly discovered properties? For example, the Hausdorff-Besicovitch dimension is credited to Felix Hausdorff and Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch, but it is often called Hausdorff dimension. Which name should be used? It seems POV to favor Hausdorff over Besicovitch. --[[User:Eequor|η♀υωρ]] 20:53, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I believe the general convention is to use the name by which something is most commonly known. Maurreen 06:54, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Indeed so. The "most-common-name" rule is the way to avoid POV in such cases. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 03:52, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Forbidden characters in page titles

Article says asterix (*) and ampersand (&) should not be used in a page title, but makes no mention of hash (#) and angle brackets (> and <). Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) in its excluded characters list makes no mention of * or &, and says #, > and < cannot be used. Who is right ? Jay 11:27, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please excuse the gratuitous pedantry, but one of the symbols you speak of is called an 'asterisk', not an 'asterix'. --Smack 20:33, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hyphenated multiple modifiers

I moved Hardware random number generator to Hardware random-number generator, because the former usage is grammatically improper. It was then promptly moved back by User:Matt Crypto, who cited a Google test. Is there a policy on this kind of predominant yet ungrammatical usage? --Smack 20:33, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you about using the hyphen. In my view, people sometimes misuse Google. Maurreen 05:54, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I don't have access to my books & papers at the moment, but have a look at Google Scholar, which indexes academic publications. Again, there is a strong trend not to include a hyphen: [1]. — Matt Crypto 10:18, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here a hyphen should be used as it makes the title unambiguous. I know it's about a generator of random numbers. Without the hyphen it could be a number generator that, for some reason, is random (maybe it's jerry-built or something). Although the tendency is for hyphens to disappear, they are often useful, particularly when dealing with multiple adjectives. Where they are useful, we should think of the reader, and keep them in. jguk 10:50, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Actually, the meaning that is meant is that it is a random "generator of numbers", rather than a generator of "random numbers" (using quotes to disambiguate). Contrast with pseudorandom number generator. It is the generators that are random or pseudorandom, not the numbers. For example, 3 isn't a random number, but the act of rolling a dice is a random number generator. So you'd probably want to hyphenate it "hardware random number-generator", if anything.

I think you are wrong. The number is random. If I have a bunch of number generator cards that fit in the card slot on my computer and I pick one at random then I have selected a random number generator.--Gbleem 23:57, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


However, I do think we should follow the usage conventions of the academic literature. Most grammar rules have exceptions. — Matt Crypto 22:40, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
According to our article on randomness, I gather that randomness is a property of a collection of numbers. --Smack 17:54, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
In German we say "Zufallszahl" (=Randomnumber), so I guess randomness is a property as Smack said. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:49, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Ohio school districts

I posted an item for discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. special districts#Ohio school districts on what to name articles on our school districts. I'd appreciate Wikipedians looking at my query and posting comments there. PedanticallySpeaking 18:44, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Help naming Feline/Canine Diabetes article please

Hi all -- I have a new article to write, based on all the research I just had to do on Diabetes Mellitus in Cats and Dogs. (Yes I now have a diabetic cat, and there's a lot out there on the topic, but nothing on Wikipedia.) It's bigger than a section in the "Diabetes mellitus" article should be.

But what to call it?

I feel like the article would work best as a single article, as most of the information about dogs and cats is either common to both or has important contrasts between them. But the names that combine the articles just don't look very Wikipedia-like to me.

So should I write the article and leave the naming to a big discussion later?

Thanks in advance, Steve --Steverapaport 00:43, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I vote for "*Diabetes in cats and dogs". Just sounds better to me. Maurreen 05:31, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Diabetes in cats and dogs it shall be. Thanks! --Steverapaport 15:15, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I vote for putting in redirects, especially from the first two names. I'll go ahead and link to them all to make that easier. I've even got a few more: Feline Diabetes, Canine Diabetes, Diabetes in dogs, Diabetes in cats.--Joel 05:21, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Naming convenion for manuscripts that have no name

An article about an illuminated manuscript was recently listed on VfD for having an "ugly" name. At the time that I created this article I believed that the manuscript had no name, so I created one using the library shelf number as a part of the title. That listing has prompted me to write a proposal for a naming convention for articles about manuscripts without names. The proposal can be found here. Any comments would be appreciated. Thank you. Dsmdgold 11:36, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

Intactivist

I claim "intactivist" is wrongly named because:

  • Any "genital integrity advocacy" should be merged with the existing "genital integrity".

Opinions? —Ashley Y 23:02, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)

I agree, it should be merged and redirected. -Sean Curtin 06:21, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)
Oppose. - As a noun, intactivist does not fall under the naming convention for adjectives. The origin of the term intactivist (intact+activist) and the fact that it applies to a person, not a movement sets it apart from the term genital integrity. Johntex 01:05, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It's worth noting here that activist redirects to activism. There's little that can be said at the -ist page that wouldn't also belong at the -ism page. -Sean Curtin 00:05, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)
Comment - I should point out in fairness that I created the original intactivist article. As far as I know that does not disqualify my vote, but I think it should be mentioned.. Since the article is new, I am sure more improvements will be made over time if we let it stand. Thank you. Johntex 01:08, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I Oppose the merge. The term is notable enough to remain the topic of an independent article. 65.200.8.178 02:04, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ambiguous but seemingly unique names

A user, The Tom, has been changing the names of a number of articles and I am unsure whether or not I agree with his rationale. Mainly, he has been changing the name of political organizations which do not indiciate their jurisdiction in their official title. eg. He has changed the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform to Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (British Columbia).

I am torn here as, to my knowledge, "Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform" is only used in British Columbia, however it could very easily be used elsewhere. So, my question is, should the article be called Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform or Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (British Columbia)? See The Tom's edit history to find other examples of articles he has renamed in a similar fashion.

Also, please not, I do not mean the above as an attack on The Tom, I am just wondering whether this is the right way to go or not -- I am not sure. -- Jord 14:24, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The changes seem needless to me. Maurreen 15:53, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Apologies. In the case of the Citizens Assembly, I was clearing the ground for an article on the similarly-titled organization about to be set up in Ontario. -The Tom 18:04, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'd go even further. Even if the name is ambiguous, if we have only one article that fits that title, that article should sit under that title. For instance, if I write an article about a Joe Bloggs and no-one else has written an article about any other Joe Bloggs, that article should be under "Joe Bloggs". If another article gets written that also belongs under that same title, then some way of disambiguating it should be found. This could be by making "Joe Bloggs" into a disambiguation page, or by making "Joe Bloggs" about one of the (more famous) Joe Bloggses and adding at the top "<sm>this article is about Joe Bloggs, the widget-maker, for other people called Joe Bloggs see Joe Bloggs (politician), or Joe Bloggs (actor), or Joe Bloggs (disambiguation)</sm> or whatever.

To address the specific case in point, if The Tom is about to write about the Ontario Citizens Assemby, fair enough. If not, he should have left it where it is, jguk 00:29, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's always quite so clear-cut. Especially with personal names, there may be other links to Joe Bloggs which are not the same as the one with the written article. Some judgement is required as to the relative notability of the various Joe Bloggs (if such an assessment is possible). In such a situation, if the Joe Bloggs with a written article is obviously more notable (or even if it is not clear, but it appears unlikely that the other Joe Bloggs will have an article written about them anytime soon), then I'd add a {{otheruses}} template to the top of the existing article and try to populate Joe Bloggs (disambiguation) with whatever basic information might be available about the others. If the existing Joe Bloggs article is only a stub, or if it is obvious that other Joe Bloggs are likely to be of comparable notability and there is a good chance there there would be an article created about them, then I'd be inclined to move the existing Joe Bloggs article to a disambiguated title and turn the Joe Bloggs page into a disambiguation page. Suppose for example, the existing Joe Bloggs article is a stubby entry about some a not terribly illustrious post-Civil War politician. And I happen to come to the link by clicking on a Joe Bloggs link for a not particularly notable 18th century British politician. And looking at What Links Here might reveal yet another Joe Bloggs, perhaps a 20th century Australian politician of no great significance. In such a case, I'd probably move the existing Joe Bloggs article to something like Joe Bloggs (American politician) and turn Joe Bloggs into a disambiguation page (and also change links in the articles to link to something link Joe Bloggs (British politician) and Joe Bloggs (Australian politician). 02:04, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) use google to find other things with that name. than make a dab page. This avoids future work. You may have 50 articles linking to Joe Bloggs and nobody knows which Joe Blogg they refer to. It's a mess to fix this later and unecessary. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Category:Insurance companies

Hi all. I am proposing to change the name of the category to "Insurers" and hence Insurance companies of the United Kingdom to Insurers of the United Kingdom, etc.. The reasons are (1) it's shorter; (2) it takes care of non-company insurers, such as partnerships or other structures, e.g., Lloyd's. --JuntungWu 12:21, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Not a good idea. Insurers of the United Kingdom sounds like those who insure the United Kingdom, not insurers who are in or insure risks in the United Kingdom. Also, apart from Lloyd's all insurers must be in corporate form (usually companies or friendly societies), so I'm not sure what the partnership reference is, jguk 13:08, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Oppose as per jguk CalJW 22:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

When the definition of a word is disputed

Sorry if this is addressed somewhere else, I haven't been able to find any guidelines for it. If you're creating a page about a word which can have different definitions, how do you decide which definition to use? For example, "vivisection" means experimenting on animals by cutting them in some dictionaries, but any kind of animal experimentin others. Should the "vivisection" page simply talk about cutting animals, or should it talk about all animal experiments? Should "vivisection" and "animal experiments" be seperate pages, or should they be merged?

I think handling differences in definitions depends on the situation, such as how much information Wikipedia has on each definition and how contentious different defintions are. But they should at least generally link to each other.
In this case, I think they should be different articles. Maurreen 12:05, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps it should go by the primary definition listed in Wiktionary, if there is one present. Miroku Sanna 12:29, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Here's a related question: what if a technical term is used slightly differently by different professions? In materials science, oil and water are the paradigm example of phase (matter) equilibrium, but a solid-state physicist assures me that, despite the stable boundary between these two domains of matter, they are actually the same phase (that is, both are liquid). Should I make a phase (materials science) or phase (engineering) page to cover material on the different usage? Complicating the situation is the fact that in 90% of the definition, we agree, so it would be like writing seperate articles on parallel (euclid) and parallel (projective). Also, I use the term "state of matter" to mean "phase" in the sense he uses it in, but he objects to this due to potential confusion with "thermodynamic state".--Joel 05:35, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Question about preferred article title

I'm going to be starting an article on the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, and wanted to know in what form the title should be. (eg: 1913 Great Lakes Storm, Great Lakes storm of 1913, etc...) It's more often referred to simply as the Great Storm of 1913 (6 times to 1), would that be better? --brian0918™ 01:02, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, looking at Category:Weather, it looks like other similar articles are named something like "Great Lakes storm of 1913". older≠wiser 02:39, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Country and State Names

There is no stated convention on the naming of states or countries. For example for the second year running there is a edit war despute between people wanting to name Wikipedia titles in the format of:

State-Name ( Country-Name, State-type )

and those who wish to use

State-Name, Country

Can someone please clarify if there is a preferred Wikipedia format. Also what about the use of brackets, square brackets, angled brackets, etc.?.--Daeron 13:06, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not aware of an explicit policy on this. But at the state/province level the practice I have seen more often is parenthetical disambiguation. I think the comma-stacked format arose as an EXCEPTION to the general convention of parenthetical disambiguation specifically for U.S. cities and has since become more widespread, but is generally limited to cities/towns, place names, or tertiary political divisions like counties.
There are examples of both types, though I believe the first is more common overall: Georgia (U.S. state), Salzburg (state), Luxembourg (province of Belgium), Konolfingen (district), Montana (region), Dobrich (region)
Or Córdoba Province, Argentina (although curiously the Córdoba (province) disambiguation page lists the link as Córdoba (Argentinan province)), Bolívar, Colombia
Browse Category:Lists of subnational entities for other samples.
Personally, my preference is for parenthetical disambiguation for the simple reason that pipe trick makes it just a little bit easier to automatically hide the parenthetical when typing a link, but really either form is just fine as far as I'm concerned. older≠wiser 14:18, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Could you email me about the type of pipe that you're thinking of. I'd suspect either format is equal for filtering needs.
  • I personally think the non-bracket format is more comfortable to read and type.--Daeron
See Help:Piped link#Automatic conversion of the wikitext (pipe trick) for info on the Pipe Trick. It simply means that you do not have to re-type the link after the pipe--the software automatically removes the parenthetical portion. older≠wiser 12:57, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
A fix may be to allow the "pipe trick" to work with commas as well? eg. [[Launceston, Tasmania|]] becomes [[Launceston, Tasmania|Launceston]] -- Chuq 21:07, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Naming Conventions" naming convention

I have found it misleading that Wikpedia: pages relating to conventions for the names of pages are entitled "Naming conventions". It would be less ambiguous to call them "Page-naming conventions". The ambiguity arises in the case of proper names. For example, the page Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) does not make clear that it refers to the conventions for the title of the page describing a city, rather than conventions for referring to the city in the body of other articles. On which note, where are the latter conventions to be found? Joestynes 04:26, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  1. I agree.
  2. I think there's a wikiproject for cities. Maurreen 06:26, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)


Popularity measure

"Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." In a case where a clear majority cannot be seen, what kind of sources should be used? How is one to measure this "majority"? Also, in a case a name that was prevalent is changed "officially", but obviously google hits or other searches return more (old) entries with previous names, what can be done to reduce ambiguity? The case especially became important with the case of the city "Calcutta", which was renamed (in English) to "Kolkata" by the Government of the West Bengal. A fairly heated dicussion is going on at the discussion page. -- Urnonav 06:36, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ambiguous adjectives

There is a new idea at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ambiguous adjectives). If adopted, this would modify Wikipedia:Naming conventions (adjectives). -- Toby Bartels 08:40, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

The [Name of Country] → [Name of Country]

The following discussion was originally from Wikipedia:Requested moves and has been brought here for further input.

Proposed moves

Discussion from WP:RM

and XXX of/in [Name of Country] → XXX of/in the [Name of Country]

Note: this request is only applicable to names of countries and territories that need the "the" article, such as the Gambia, the Marshall Islands, the Northern Marianas, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.

There was a debate over the title of the article Netherlands, and the article was moved to The Netherlands. Nevertheless, it has been a general rule that the articles "the" are left out for articles titled "[Name of Country]", but to keep them for articles titled "XXX of the [Name of Country]", except the Gambia (see Talk:The Gambia). This request is for the consistence of titles. — Instantnood 01:12 Feb 23 2005 (UTC)

Relevant conventions: Wikipedia:Naming conventions and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beining of name). — Instantnood 03:53 Feb 23 2005 (UTC)

  • As I stated on RM's talk page, I'm growing greatly concerned with the recent precedent of recommending large blocks of pages. In order to keep the moves controllable and accountable, and to give the contributors a scale of how comprehensive this requested move is, would you kindly provide a list of how many (and which) pages will be affected by this move? —ExplorerCDT 02:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • So far, Oppose as it relates to "The Netherlands" because it isn't just one "netherland" if you know the history of the country (that's akin to saying you'd move the article on the Scottish Highlands to Scottish Highland just because you think it's just northern Scotland and because Wikipedia prefers the singular). As to "The Gambia" I know I've only known the name "Gambia" to be inextricably connected with its definite article, but I'll have to check into questions of usage before I walk away from being Neutral - I do know that we don't generally refer to Sudan and Congo anymore under the colonialist "The Sudan" and "The Congo." —ExplorerCDT 05:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Strongly agree. If one looks in a traditiona encyclopedia, one would find both countries under Netherlands and under Gambia. There is no Netherland, I agree, but including 'The' is not necesary. One doesn't move the article Scottish Highlands to The Scottish Highlands. Furthermore, I was surprised that some moved Netherlands to The Netherlands during the discussion on that move with at the same removing the discussion from this page. Gangulf 10:28, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Strongly Agree. The Scottish Highlands example is quite right. Just because we put "the" in front of a name for grammatical reasons doesn't mean that it forms an integral part of the name that has to go in an article title. If we have Netherlands at The Netherlands we ought to move United States to The United States. That would be ridiculous in both cases. In article and category titles like "History of ..." then "the" should clearly be included. — Trilobite (Talk) 00:30, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Since United States is where the U.S. article is, the appropriate names are Gambia and Netherlands. —Lowellian (talk) 01:09, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Jonathunder 01:12, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
  • Support, albeit not agreeing to using "the" at all in some cases (Ukraine, Sudan, etc.) zoney ♣ talk 20:16, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose at present. Please confirm that you have placed the required notice on the talk pages of all the articles you contemplate moving, that there has been ample (weeks) time for discussion and that there is no existing controversy for any of them which has not yet been resolved in your favor on the talk pages concerned. Jamesday 09:03, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC).
  • Please provide a list of pages to be moved. -- ALoan (Talk) 00:26, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  1. ^ and 10:32 Feb 24^ , plus List of hospitals in United Arab Emirates. Thank you. — Instantnood 10:48 Mar 5 2005 (UTC)
  2. ^ , plus List of hospitals in United Arab Emirates. Thank you. — Instantnood 10:48 Mar 5 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The Wikipedia should use official names in all cases for article titles. BlankVerse ∅ 08:37, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Get rid of all direct articles at the beginning of article titles unless absolutely needed for disambiguation or in titles of books, films, bands etc. "Official" names are often difficult to determine in any case. -- Necrothesp 13:59, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • oppose. If The is part of a proper name, it should be used. If it isn't, it shouldn't. There is a country called The Netherlands. There is no country called Netherlands. There is however a geographic reference called Netherlands. So elementary logic requires that the article on the country be at the name of the country, not a bit of the name of the country that can be misunderstood as referring to a geographic reference. This approach exists all through Wikipedia. There are newspapers that use the as part of their name, eg, The Guardian. So the article belongs at that name, not Guardian, which is not a newspaper but a term meaning a guardian. In fact Guardian is a disambigulation page referring to all the meanings of guardian, while The Guardian is recognisable as a specific meaning. Using the definite article can be important to define that one is talking about a specific title and not a generic term. It all boils down to encyclopædic standards. Absolute accuracy has got to be the deciding factor. Netherlands would not be accurate as the name of the country so simply should not be used. In contrast United Kingdom, United States, Republic of Ireland all can be used, because the is a linguistic form for using the name, not part of the name. Similarly, The Irish Times, not Irish Times, is the name of an Irish newspaper. But its main rival, though spoken as The Irish Independent, has as its actual name Irish Independent. The central issue has to be accuracy, not convenience. A blanket dropping of the from names of items, organisations, etc that use it, would produce inaccurate article names and so make Wikipedia less, not more, credible as a supposedly accurate encyclopædia. FearÉIREANN(talk) 22:39, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New discussion

City names, particularly in India and South Africa

There is currently a very spirited discussion in progress at Talk:Calcutta regarding the article name and whether it should be moved to Kolkata.

The city was apparently officially renamed Kolkata in 2001; that is, there's no dispute about what the official name is.

The degree to which the new name has been adopted is variable. Some news organizations may have adopted it; most appear to be inconsistent in their use. The result of various informal tests to determine which is the "most common" name vary, with "Calcutta" often but not always coming up as more common, and partisans on each side challenging the objectivity or appropriateness of the tests that do not give the desired result.

Apparently many city names in India are undergoing changes from those formerly used, and my perception is that the use of the old names is perceived as reflecting a colonialist POV.

At any event, many supporters of "Kolkata" believe that encyclopedias ought to place articles about cities under their official names. One clearly articulated statement is:

  • What we have seen is a flaw in the policy. The policy needs to consider the name change especially since the spelling also has changed; plus it is in English. The policy needs to be refined. Maintaining a rigid stance based on an old policy that certainly goes haywire when dealing with Indian cities points to an upheaval and refinement, especially since wikipedia policies are fluid. "Correctness" or accuracy is a major criteria to be fulfilled if this encyclopedia has to gain credibility and definately a cogent point to consider. Nichalp 20:42, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

So, I want to open a discussion: should the policy on city names be established to state:

Whenever a city has an undisputed official name, but the "most common name" is disputed, the article title should be the official name, and other common names for the city should be redirects to it.

Comments:

I think there should be a "buffer period" before the official change is accepted. A very valid buffer period is possibly the time till the next election assuming that the name change was done by the government of that city/country/state. However, this will pose further problems and get us into issues of more discussion and politicalisation. Hence, an arbitrary buffer period could be used. I would say:

Arbitrary duration rule

If a city, state, country or political/administrative unit's name changes and after any arbitrary duration of time, there is no absolute indication of common usage for either the new or the old name, then after the aforementioned arbitrary duration, the new official name will be adopted and used.

I would propose the arbitrary duration be 3 years from the date of the change. This should apply to new name, spelling, transliteration proposal and all sort of variations that affect the English spelling.

However, should there be dispute as to whether there is an absolute indication of common usage based on consensus, the benefit of the doubt should be given to the new name, hoping for a higher probability of getting the name "right".

Absolute indication

A consensus must show an advantage of the greater of 5 (or more) Wikipedians or 10% (or more) votes over the opposing group in order to be considered an absolute indication.

The arbitrary duration rule supercedes the absolute indication rule under all circumstances. -- Urnonav 02:18, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure about such a rule. It somewhat invites proponents of "official" names to argue there's a dispute (or indeed, in extremis, create one) to trigger such a "disputed" clause. I'd personally be in favour of a more cautious change (or perhaps simply clarification) that for topics specific to given English-speaking countries (with English as an official language, or a significant minority of English speakers), "common usage" should at least in the first instance be measured against the usage of those countries, in line with the MoS. This might not end such disagreements, but it may at least focus them. Alai 02:42, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Arbitrary duration rule takes prevalence in those cases. You will have to wait three (or any other number of) years before you can do the change. So, just because you intentionally start a dispute, doesn't mean the name will change. After a few years, if the official name is still there, it's probably going to stay. I refuse to throw in a clause like "common usage" without defining it. Actually reverting the precedence to make absolute indication rule more important will give proponents an upper hand. -- Urnonav
When I say start a dispute, I mean here on Wikipedia; whether a name change has occurred recently or less recently in official fact is unrelated. Say for example someone decided to start an argument about the official title of New York City, as has already been cited. You may refuse to 'throw in' a clause like common usage, but in fact it's in there already, and I would predict will prove difficult to 'throw out'. Hence my more modest proposal (which would have spared us 90% of the discussion on Calcutta/Kolkata). Alai 09:10, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I like the general idea of your proposal, though I think the language needs tuning. But I have a problem with the three year period. My present understanding is that the official name change to Kolkata occurred in 2001. (Or was that the year in which the city itself changed the name, with some kind of national-level approval occcuring later?) Under your three-year buffer period, applying your rule would amount to changing the name to Kolkata now, whereas from the amount of contention I believe that it's premature. And I think the 5-10% margin is insufficient. The rule of thumb for VfD is that generally a 2/3 majority constitutes rough consensus and I think that's appropriate here. Make the buffer period five years, 2/3 as the consensus guideline, and tinker with the wording and I would agree. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:27, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I would go with a longer buffer and a higher majority in case of cities that do not have official English names. Actually in those cases, it doesn't even matter because we will go with International English. For cities with official English names, I would like to lean a little towards the official spelling for what Nichalp mentioned below - people should be informed of a spelling change in a nonambivalent manner.
I continue to fail to see Alai's point; I'm sure he's making a very good point. Are you saying we should flip the precendence of the two rules? Also, when I say I don't want to throw in the term common usage, I mean I don't want to throw it in without a proper definition. You have to give an objective measurable definition. I tried to define it with the margin of consensus definition above. -- Urnonav 23:52, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The precendence of the proposed 'Arbitrary duration rule' and 'Absolute indication'? No, I wouldn't use either. I'd stick with common usage, clarified to be common usage in the national variety of English, where there is one. Consistent with the MoS. Common usage is the general rule of thumb for naming conventions, I don't see the logic of tinkering with it in some what arbitrary, limited instances. Alai 00:03, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
There are two issues here:
  • How do we measure common usage? What proves common usage?
The usual answer to this is Wikipedia consensus and an arbitrary, but accepted, majority.
  • What happens when there are two or more alternate spellings which are equally commonly used?
This was the main reason why we had to refine the standard.
Your suggestion is good - in fact, great - for cases where a clear obvious common usage is visible, e.g. India (versus Hindustan), Dhaka (versus Dacca), Munich (versus Munchen, in English), New York (verus Nieuw Amterdam), etc. We needed a new standard in the first place because such clear common usage did not exist everywhere. I mean OK, if we use common usage in the case of Kolkata versus Calcutta war, what outcome do we get? Nothing! Why? Everyone has his own measure of common usage. The consensus failed to give a clear result, with Kolkata gaining a slight majority over Calcutta. The consensus being statistical in nature cannot be used in such a close race. Some overriding definitive standard is needed. 'Absolute indication rule' is common usage but with an objective undebatable measure added to it. -- Urnonav 01:40, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
But that debate was conducted in a fog of confusion in which people cited the naming conventions as mandating common usage without reference to what was common usage in Indian English. That clarification may or may not have settled the issue, but as I say, it'd have greatly focussed the discussion. I think my suggestion is a modest conservation improvement, and stands a reasonable chance of acceptance (I'd hope). That it doesn't solve all possible problems is no reason not to make such improvements as are proximately possible. Yours is a total change of system, is self-definedly arbitrary, is far less likely to be accepted, and as I also already pointed out, could produce some very odd results. (Given sufficient "dispute" we'd have to move NYC to "City of New York".) Alai 05:12, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Apologies! I completely failed to see a very valid and in fact very important point. We not only should but must incorporate the idea of native English. So, for city names in India, Indian English must be seen as the ground for common usage. However, I still maintain the need for the buffer period, whose length, of course, is open to further discussion. For NYC and City of New York case, a "sufficient dispute" like in all other cases means a situation where in a consensus the absolute indication rule fails. In other words, if the case for the article location change fails to get an advantage less than a 10% or 5 wikipedians, then we should see when the city name was changed and if the buffer period is over, we should just change it. Actually we might need to work out how the consensus should be worded. For example, the same consensus may be worded "should it be changed" or "should it be changed to some name" and might yield different results.
I know that standards do not always lead to what I or you would consider ideal result, but they do lead to some quick resolution of issues. I would guess you know about the removal of frames from W3C recommendation. I personally would have liked frames, but well it's a standard; it was arbitrary, but it has to be respected unless I can come up with a better proposition. If it not a lot to ask for, could you formally state the standard that you'd like to see being applied? Actually then it would be easier for the rest of us to discuss the pros and cons of your vision. -- Urnonav 19:32, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think a year's buffer would be fine to gauge on the acceptance of the new name especially by government websites owned by the Indian government of India as well as those run by other world governments. I strongly believe that an encyclopedia serves to instruct and if the name is changed, it should be reflected in the encyclopedia. I won't argue on the resons behind the name change, its best not to let politics creep into discussions here. "Common" usage is a point to be debated in the Indian context particularly since 1) many would not know the name change and would like to be informed on the official new name as this is an encyclopedia 2) The name change need not apply to city institutions (many in the -anti camp use it as an incorrect point) 3) The name change is an English spelling as English is an offical language in India and cannot be argued vis-a-vis Moscow, Cologne and other cities. Nichalp 19:39, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
Oh boy, are we going to have fun towards the end of the year when the name of Pretoria (the capital city of South Africa, if anybody was wondering) is probably going to be changed to Tshwane. Not only is English an official language of South Africa (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as South African English) and the name of the city is thus the (South African) English name, but the original name (Pretoria) is based on a Dutch surname while the (proposed) new name is based on a Sotho language word!
There's actually been a lot of (smaller) city/town name changes in South Africa during recent years. Most of them have already been changed in Wikipedia. None of these changes have unleashed a firestorm of controversy similar to that caused by Kolkata/Calcutta. I wonder why? Elf-friend 22:28, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think the basic problem is stereotyping. People stereotype India as a Hindi-speaking country which is as far from true as it can be. A huge number of Indians particularly in the South and East don't understand Hindi at all. I cannot substantiate this claim, but Indians in general will tell you this is true. India is a huge country with several languages and the states have a certain degree of autonomy which allows them to pick their own official languages. Most people are unaware of and/or are unwilling to acknowledge the existence of Indian English, but that's actually rather objectionable on intellectual grounds. It's like saying "USA does not have an official language". It's a bad analogy I know. USA obviously has a de facto official language. If I went today and made a court complaint in Bangla, would that be acceptable? Obviously no. Leaving it unrecognised doesn't make it disappear. Indian English exists and is more frequently spoken than British English arguably. -- Urnonav 23:52, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I don't think stereotyping has anything to do with it. I think it's because Calcutta is famous and so more people care about what its article is titled, and nobody really cares about small cities in South Africa that hardly anyone outside of South Africa has ever heard of. Nohat 02:54, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Absolutely. And I think if anyone tries to change the name of the Pretoria article to a name most people outside South Africa have never heard of there will be an equally loud protest. It's not about what language people in these countries speak - it's about whether people in the wider world have heard of the cities in question. Who exactly has refused to acknowledge the existence of Indian English? -- Necrothesp 13:44, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Of course, all of us on both sides of this issue need to acknowledge the existence of redirects. It is important to keep in mind that the name of an article mostly affects what you see in big bold type at the top of the page. If the page is moved, it does mean that someone will need to edit all the articles that link to "Calcutta"... we really should ask the developers for some kind of automated tool to help with things like that. I don't understand why double-redirects can't be fixed automatically... Dpbsmith (talk) 14:32, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
We continue to see the stress on "Calcutta's" being famous. We saw the consensus results: an absolute fame was not claimed by either of the two names. In fact, if we strictly went by consensus, the article location should have been changed! Native English must be used because of the same basis by which you claim that the name known by most of the English speaking World is used - standard. Manual of Style is just as much of a standard as is naming convention. If an Indian English exists, then why are we still talking about what the British or American English calls the city? According to your reasoning, article on every city in the World that has the word "harbour" in it should be relocated to "harbor". In fact native English should be used. The question is not what an American would call Kolkata if s/he knew the city, the question is rather what an American who already knows the city calls it. Native English is "safe" because well at least people speaking Indian English know Kolkata, but how many people who speak American English know the city? All the opponents in the consensus ironically were aware of the alternate spelling; so, one could very well argue that people who know Calcutta also know Kolkata! -- Urnonav 19:32, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of an encyclopedia should be to inform the reader of current facts, not act as a repository of "common" knowledge. "Calcutta" is, quite simply, no longer correct.

1) Kolkata is just as much English as "Calcutta". It is not the same as renaming "Germany" to "Deutchland", "Venice" to "Venezia", or "Cologne" to "Köln", as the latter is not English, but in the native language (you easily spot Köln, as ö is not part of the English alphabet). The mistake seems to stem from the fact that many languages use the same basic script as English, so some people think that renaming to "Kolkata" is changing the language. This is not true, as Bengali uses a completely different script from English. Moreover it is completely irrelevant as to how the city is referred to in Bengali.

2) Were you to visit Kolkata you would find signs saying "Welcome to Kolkata" not "Welcome to Calcutta". "Kolkata" is the recognized name in Indian English, as well as in the all the official documentation. "Calcutta" is not correct, and referring to it as such is a sign of ignorance, which an encyclopedia should not perpetuate.

3) The naming of the article is not a minor point, as the name is the very first word that occurs in the article, and is given further prominence by being bold, and in a larger font. This seems, to me, to be quite POV in stating an (incorrect) preference.

Following rules such as the "common use" naming policy is fine for most situations, but it simply cannot be applied blindly in ALL cases. Most rules will have exceptions and cases were they should not be applied, and I believe this to be one of those. Making the articles the easiest to find is a laudable goal, but that really does not apply here as there can be a simple redirect from "Calcutta" to "Kolkata" resulting in no meaningful reduction of usability. It should also be noted that both EB and Encarta have changed to "Kolkata" even though they do not have the ease of redirects.

I believe the fundamental purpose of an encyclopedia is to be an authoritative source of current, factual information, and calling Kolkata "Calcutta", just for some vague reason of "common usage" flies in the face of this.

My two cents as a relatively new user. Srs 21:24, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Referring to Calcutta, the city's name for over 300 years, is not "ignorant". Common usage is not ignorance. Confusing the two probably is. And demanding that a name be changed everywhere, and the old name never be used again, simply because a few politicians with an agenda have voted to do so is tantamount to semantic totalitarianism. The usage of names changes over time, not immediately a politician informs the world that it should. Wikipedia's job is to inform of fact at this time, not what those with an agenda would like it to be or what it might be in the future. When more people use Kolkata than Calcutta, then is the time to change. At this time this is not the case and is far from being the case. Ask people what that large city in Bengal is called and I can guarantee that most people in the world at large who have heard of it (probably including most people in India who answer in English) will tell you "Calcutta". That is the bottom line. -- Necrothesp 17:15, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Kindly avoid the arguments; we argued enough on the Talk:Calcutta page and we came to an edit in naming conventions for the very fact that we do realise that the "common usage" rule was not explicitly and efficiently applicable in certain cases, where "common usage" was debated. As for constant reference to Indian Central Government and State Government of West Bengal as "few politicians", I would see that as disrespect to India's government systems; so please avoid referring to the parliaments as "few politicians". Just as a note, opponents to the name change pointed out that the spelling change was done to increase popularity of the ruling party - interestingly, oppositions agreed that the city-dwellers did like such a change. Also, note that it wasn't a few people who supported the change; the decision was carried out unanimously in the state parliament. A proposition to change "West Bengal" to "Bangla" was also made but it wasn't as well supported. So, clearly it's not a matter of political whims but rather a case of actual need to change. The spelling has changed (over time and not by political whim) and people just wanted to see it on paper! In any case, political discussions should not be part of our agenda. We are solely interested in creating a logical convention that resolves this issue. Using either Calcutta or Kolkata on perceived common usage is an obvious POV. -- Urnonav 19:46, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Necrothesp, you're the one who is confused. Srs has hit the nail on the head, something which I have tried to convey all this while. As far as what name Indians use for Calcutta/Kolkatta, might I ask if you are currently living in India? If not please visit India and ask someone what it the official name of the capital of West Bengal. The results will startle you as most people may not use the new name, but certainally use the correct name.
On the personal front, ever since the name change was changed, I was pulled up by my English teachers for using Bombay in my essays and letters. They told me that examiners do cut marks for 'ignorance'. Nichalp 20:13, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Nichalp on the case for Indians' using Calcutta for Kolkata - it is not true! I have not watched Indian television in last two years, but even back in 2003, every channel that I had access to used Kolkata. Televised programmes had the same name and talk shows or hosts used the same name. It was almost difficult to believe that a spelling Calcutta ever existed. Ironically my first knowledge of the entire name change issue came from two sources: BBC and STAR Plus, neither of which is a Bengali TV network! Constant effort to even resist a change to the standard is starting to show a personal favour towards an old spelling - possibly an emotional/political attachment even? -- Urnonav 21:26, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Article names for people with positions

As far as I know, the Wikipedia style is to leave ranks or honorifics (or whatever the correct word is for things like ranks that go with certain positions) out of article names, so we have Ronald Reagan, not President Ronald Reagan, and George Marshall, not General George Marshall or Secretary George Marshall.

However, although I've looked fairly extensively, I can't find where this is written down. First, am I correct in my understanding of what our policy is? Second, is it in fact not written down anywhere (and it's just one of those unwritten things that "everyone" "just knows")? If so, it's probably worth adding something in writing somewhere. Noel (talk) 17:38, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not the world's speediest response, but the answer to your question is at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Honorific prefixes. Noisy | Talk 17:29, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
Maybe I stepped on my own question by using the word "honorific", because I don't think titles like "General" or "Secretary" count as honorifics - or do they? Noel (talk) 23:02, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

State universities

I find an irritating trend of pages on flagship state universities being at locations like Indiana University Bloomington. Whenever somebody says they went to the University of Michigan, or the University of Wisconsin, or the University of Minnesota, or the University of Maryland, they mean they went to the main campus. This is the principal use of these terms, and the most commonly used name, not using the whole name. For instance, in the NCAA tournament, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is just "Wisconsin," while the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is "Wisconsin-Milwaukee". I can think of a couple of exceptions - SUNY doesn't really have a flagship campus, and although Berkeley is the main campus, and it is, in sports, referred to as California, it is so often referred to as Berkeley, that I can make an exception there. But I'd say that in pretty much all other cases the flagship school should just be University of Maryland or University of Alabama, rather than including the full name. Any thoughts? john k 00:24, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

BTW, University of Alabama is as I would like it - that article is the article on the school in Tuscaloosa. The system is at University of Alabama System. This seems the appropriate way to do this. john k 20:53, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ga! Is anyone at all interested? I've posted this here and at a bunch of individual talk pages. All I'm getting back is a bunch of flak at Talk:University of Maryland, College Park. It seems to me that the naming conventions, as they stand, support my position, based on the use common names principle. john k 03:42, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

British Rail Class XX

I have just moved the discussion on what the naming convention should be for these articles to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (British railway locomotive and multiple unit classes) from the talk page of British Rail Class 185. Your comments are more than welcome. Thryduulf 22:02, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Publications

I noticed that in general newspapers, magazines, etc. seem to be named based on the name on their masthead. Is there a specific policy about this? I noticed that some don't follow this convention, however. I'm moving Baltimore Sun to The Baltimore Sun. Is that a problem? --jacobolus (t) 04:00, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

At least as a rule, the articles should use whatever the publications use. I don't know offhand about this specific example. Maurreen 17:11, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Clubs and similar organizations

I just stumbled over this problem: How to name clubs, theatres, cinemas,...

Problems: They have often a non unique name (clubs with the same name exist in different cities). Furthermore, the (non-english) names are often hard to translate and translating such names could be of dubious value they are 'proper' names.

I searched the archives of the different Naming conventions pages but was not successfull.

Propositions:

  • NAME (KIND, PLACE)
  • NAME CITY (KIND)
  • KIND NAME (CITY)

where:

NAME is the name of the organization

KIND is the type of organization: Club, Cinema, Theatre,...

PLACE is the place where it is located (Cityname,...)

Translation policy?

When disambiguation is needed, I would lean toward "name (place)". Maurreen 17:09, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Poll on University Naming Conventions

As a result of unresolved dispute over the name "University of Maryland", a new survey was created to assess consensus regarding naming conventions for colleges and universities. This poll addresses both the specific case of the name "University of Maryland" and asks whether a consensus exists for an amendment to Wikipedia:Naming conventions to specifically address the use of names like "University of Texas" vs. "University of Texas at Austin". Dragons flight 19:11, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Non-typeable characters in article names

Should these pages be moved to an English name?

--KelisFan2K5 20:19, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think typability is an important factor because redirects solve that problem, but I would support moving them to their names instead of symbols (just as pi and square root appear at their names). "AE ligature", "N-tilde", and "O-slash" are descriptions, but not really names. How about using these names:
  • Å: not sure what the name of this one is; might be Å or Aa.
  • Æ → Æsc, Aesc, or Ash (letter)
  • Ø: Tough one; the name of the letter is actually Ø, or Œ, or Oe (just as the name of A is "A")
  • Ñ → Eñe, the letter's name
  • ß → Eszett, I guess this is the actual name, while Ess-tsett is a phonetic transcription (right?)
—Michael Z. 2005-04-1 21:17 Z
I disagree that symbols are bad. We have the W article at W not double-you (the letter's name). W is as much a symbol as Æ or Þ, just because they don't happen to be on anglocentric keyboard layouts doesn't mean we should treat them differently. The only exception to this is characters that can't be displayed in edit boxes or urls other than as the html entity code, e.g. &#357; (ť). Thryduulf 21:36, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Choosing titles has little to do with keyboards or edit fields. Any dictionary or encyclopedia would have an entry titled "W", but not "Þ".
W is a known symbol. Anyone with basic English literacy looks at "W" and thinks "double-yew". Most anglophones look at Þ (or 上海, or бюро, for that matter) and think "what the...?". —Michael Z. 2005-04-1 22:20 Z
English Wikipedia isn't only for those with English as a native language, so you can't only consider, what the anglophones think. Also the letters are precise, their other names are not such. A letter can have several meanings and a meaning several letters. Oe is both Ø and Ö. Ø is both that and a diameter sign. When I see a ß, I think it is some letter. But when I see an Eszett, I takes a while to grasp what it's all about. -Hapsiainen 18:07, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is promoting a solution because it's advocated by anglophones (in fact, it really irks me whenever someone suggests preferential treatment of "native English speakers'" opinions on a subject, or suggests grammar tests). And we're not about to start replacing article titles with pictures of stuff.
And contrary to the idea of the glyphs' precision, they are visually ambiguous. The "o-slash" might be a Scandinavian letter (U+00D8, which, as you say, can be equivalent to Oe and Ö), a stroked figure zero, a circled mathematical division operator (U+2298), or a generic negative symbol, as used in "no smoking" (U+20E0). The Eszett looks like a Greek beta. Unicode has different names and values for all of these, and they are all different things, deserving separate articles. In English, as in other languages, we use unambiguous names to identify them. A picture is worth a thousand words, but article titles are more effective if we stick to just a few. —Michael Z. 2005-04-15 20:07 Z
As resident alphabetician, I would say that I favour the use of <Englishlettername> (letter) for all of these letters which are not familiar to most English-speakers. While the English Wikipedia is not only for English-speakers, neither should English-speakers be disadvantaged by the practice of using these without "typeable" names -- which they are. They are alI say that even though I have developed expert Unicode keyboards for OS X and I myself have no trouble typing such entities. Accordingly, I would recommend the following convention be adopted:
I think it's particularly irritating that MacRoman has no Thorn and Eth, but it's true nonetheless. This policy is already common for Greek letternames: Ρ is at Rho (letter) without even a redirect from Ρ, and likewise Chi (Greek letter). If this policy is adopted, I volunteer to make the changes consistently. Evertype 17:26, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)
A note on typability: I use an American keyboard, even though most of my typing is in languages that use diacritics heavily; German, Danish, and Swedish. So I use å, ä, æ, ö, ø, ß, ü every day, in almost every sentence. (I also use the odd ï and é.) No native keyboard gives me very good support for those three languages at the same time, so I use an American keyboard and a Macintosh, because that OS gives me painless access to all these letters. As it does for millions of other Americans. For example, ø is OPTION-o, and ß is OPTION-s. Just because these letters may be difficult to find on an American Windows keyboard, they are not untypable. (They may be untypable on the most common operating system, and that is certainly a relevant factor.) Arbor 6 July 2005 12:44 (UTC)
I don't think it's that important; the articles are still easy to find and search for; I think the non-US English keyboard titles are fine and strongly support keeping them. — OwenBlacker 22:48, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
To the heroes of the keyboards: What about vietnamese, can you type this? Russian? There are letters that look the same but are not. P is a R etc. I support Evertype. I am NOT english native and can very well type äöü, but greek and icelandic is really hard. I could not read the article name to someone. Eg in a category-page I would see funny signs and via phone I would have to say, oh please click the <circlewithbarButNotfullOnlyLeftandDotToTheRight> Tobias Conradi (Talk) 16:27, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Song titles and extended information

First order of business would be the Heading for "Album titles and band names" in the Music Section, shouldn't this include Song titles as well, something along the lines of "Song titles, album titles and band names"? (since the convention does make explict mention of song titles)

Secondly, what to do about extended information for song/track titles, things like alternative titles, remixes, and featured artists... The convention I, myself, have adopted is "SongTitle (Other Song Name) (Feat. Jane Doe) [John Doe Edit]"

Thoughts? --Mobius 03:29, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

My only thought is that the square brackets could cause more problems than they solve due to them being used in the wiki syntax. You're relying on the software correctly working out that 'John' isn't a hyperlink. I guess it'll be safe for a bit, but who knows how long? (They thought in 1960 nobody would be idiot enough to still be using that old data and software in 1999). I do wonder how many tracks need all of this. Is there any example were the remix couldn't just be part of the main track article? I'm not saying they don't exist, but a concrete example or two would be nice. Hmmmm.... On re-reading I'm not sure that I picked up on the right bit at all - can you provide a link to the pages you're talking about? — KayEss | talk 17:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"Feat." is not part of the proper name and therefore must not be capitalized. I also prefer to write "album edit", "acoustic version", "live", "John Doe remix", "Ramones cover" etc. by normal English case rules and all inside one pair of round brackets. Anyhow, all of these are unlikely to be necessary in Wikipedia article titles, where alternative titles would be redirects. Christoph Päper

Proposal and straw poll regarding place names with diacritical marks

Following a comment by Philip Baird Shearer on my Talk page, I am moving this discussion and straw poll to Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(use_English)#Proposal and straw poll regarding place names with diacritical marks where apparently there has been previous discussion. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:52, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aritcle names for mines

I'm working on expanding list of diamond mines and I am not sure about the naming convention. Should article names for mines be:

Or maybe some other convention?

I would vote for either [Name] [commodity] mine or [Name] mine, since I've never heard of Yanacocha and there are likely some mines that share names with cities etc, but also some without the commodity and the word "mine" in their proper names.--Joel 05:55, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

- Bryan is Bantman 17:54, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Article name for Jem Griffiths

Hey- Recently User:Lee M moved Jemma Griffiths to Jem (Singer). I agree with his rationale, that "Jemma Griffiths" goes by the professional name "Jem" and is more widely known by that name (she publishes records and is listed under that name). Due to the conflict with the existing Jem article about Jem (animated), he chose the "singer" title (there were some issues regarding the redirect, so he used the capitalized word "Singer", which can be easily fixed. Hoewever. My concerns, which I voiced on Talk:Jem (Singer) were that the term "singer" does not properly disambiguate Jemma Griffiths from the Jem (animated), who is also a singer-songwriter, fictional though she may be. As I understand, disambiguation terms are supposed to be the most generic term possible that leaves NO ambiguity with other articles/concepts. Can anyone suggest proper names for these articles? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:25, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

  • My take is that Jem (animated) is fine and unambiguous. In this situation I would expect the article to be at Jem Griffiths with Jemma Griffiths and Jem (singer) to redirects there. I suggest you also mention this at Wikipedia:Request moves. Thryduulf 17:43, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Jem (artist)? We have such page for musician Prince, so it isn't unheard-of. And who could call a fictional cartoon character artist, such a big word? I personally think that Jem (singer) is fine, too, but artist is better, because Jem is a singer-songwriter. -Hapsiainen 17:50, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
    • Hmm, the precedence with Jewel (singer) was to use the name that the artist was commonly known under, published under and cited under, the article was moved several times between Jewel Kilcher and Jewel (singer) where it now resides, and I believe the outcome of the debate was to use the name that the artist preferred. I believe this is the same situation, so I don't think that Jem Criffiths is appropriate. Jem (artist) is still ambiguous, the animated Jem could be considered a fictional "artist", in the same way. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:52, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
The preference on Wikipedia is to go for the most commonly-used name, so therefore Jem (singer) would be the more appropriate choice, with a redirect from Jemma Griffiths... as currently exists. As for the confusion with the animated series, I think adding a line of explanation at the top of Jem (singer) similar to the one at the top of Jem (animated) would suffice to explain the distinction. - MykReeve 20:28, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

odd titles

I have no idea what to do with this page: Maj.Gen. A.0. Mitha. The title is confusing, and should probably be changed. Is there a specific policy on including titles like "general" in a page title? There seem to be several pakistan related articles like this (most of which also could use cleanups to conform to better grammar and wiki style. Anyway, if someone would go ahead and move this page where it should go, that'd be swell. --jacobolus (t) 01:28, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Cast Pages

Various anime, webcomics, etc, have split off their cast pages but there isn't a convention in place for naming them consistently. Do we call them "X characters" (Megatokyo characters), "Characters of X" (Characters of Fullmetal Alchemist), or what? Nifboy 06:14, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Characters of Megatokyo! Obviously, because you also have Politics of the United States etc (check out any major country, Russia or Italy etc and their sub articles) Ambush Commander 02:31, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

What would be an appropriate name for the Biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego? An article already exists at Abednego, onto which I have added a bit, but it's not the right place for the article. See Talk:Abednego. -- Tetraminoe 07:37, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Google most common?

I thought there was a policy - or a guideline - to name articles after the most common occurence of the title in Google. This is why, for example, I thought that Polish-Soviet War:3,940 is preffered to Polish-Bolshevik War:745, or World War II:20,700,000 to World War Two:729,000 or Second World War:4,070,000 (did the check just a while ago for another discussion). I can't find this rule though - I'd appreciate if sb could point me to it or tell me I dreamed it up. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:39, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

This is not really a policy or guideline in its own right, but rather a way of applying others - the best place for an article is generally "what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize", which implies "the most common". Comparing hit numbers on an index such as Google is simply a means of judging which is in fact the more common, as "evidence" during a discussion - and a somewhat controversial one at that. Wikipedia:Google test has some information on the pros and cons of using this kind of statistic, but basically it should only be used with caution and as part of a more general consideration of the name's merits. - IMSoP 20:45, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Klopotec or bird-scaring rattle

What would be the right name for this device: klopotec or bird-scaring rattle or wind-rattle? According to Google, klopotec is the most used term and recognized by a majority of people who know about it, including the majority of English speakers - however, it is not an English name. --Eleassar777 13:57, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

However, I already moved to klopotec - well received by others. --Eleassar777 09:23, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguating by case?

Is there a general consensus on Case disambiguation? What I've seen in a few articles (none of which I can think of right now) is one article called Foo Bar, and a completely different article about a different subject on Foo bar. My opinion is that even though the software allows it, this shouldn't be done - it confuses the reader, and makes it fiddly to link to the right page.--Fangz 10:54, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

It depends on the articles in question. For instance a Vervet Monkey is a species of vervet monkey. However, in this case, the actual articles are Vervet Monkey and Chlorocebus, with vervet monkey being a redirect to Chlorocebus. - UtherSRG 11:42, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
Eek. That's what I am talking about. To the outside observer, there is no way of telling which capitalisation leads where, especially if this person has no knowledge of WP's naming conventions.--Fangz 12:03, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
All such articles should have a link to the other in one way or another to allow the reader to naturally and easily find their path to the data they desire. This form of disambiguation is an ongoing debate, and it is resolved in different ways depending on where in the 'pedia you are. WP:BIRD, WP:PRIM, WP:CETA, and WP:CEPH all follw the same rule of caps for species and lower for larger groups. See the links at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Animals.2C_plants_and_other_organisms for more info. - UtherSRG 13:59, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
This form of disambiguation was rejected by consensus in the specific case of Ice age (the glacial events) and Ice Age (movie) (film about cartoon critters dealing with an ice age). Dragons flight 01:03, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

From under consideration to official

How does a proposal make the transition to accepted policy? PedanticallySpeaking 16:19, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

People names - order convention: surname, given

Names should always be, surname first then comma then given name next followed by middle names in the headers and the opening display of an article. This is a de-facto standard of any encyclopedia, dictionaries, reference manuals, library catalogs, etc. in the offline world. "Surname, Givenname" convention also disambiguate the names when translating from different languages. For example: In Japan and many asian nations, the surname goes first and given name last. So the name Nishikawa Takanori would prove confusing to an uninformed reader. Is Nishikawa the given name? Or is Takanori the given name? If you put Nishikawa, Takanori there is no doubt about the order. If a person has a given name Jeff and a surname James, the name Jeff James can cause confusion as to whether James is first name or last name. But if you put James, Jeff then there is absolutely no doubt that James is the surname, and Jeff is the given name. The positive visual confirmation of a comma proves to reassure the reader of where the first and last name ends and starts. Akosygin 05:38, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

This is fine for most western names and a few other places, but breaks down all sorts of other places. There should be a convention for each country concerned. For example, Thailand always sorts by first name not second name and many people are not known by their given at all, but by a second given nickname. See [[2]]. — KayEss | talk 07:52, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, this naming convention should be for the English version of Wikipedia only. Even if the entry is a Thai name or another country, the English version of the encyclopedia should still go by surname comma given so that the English reader understands that "oh okay, this person's name is surname and that part is given name." The other language versions can follow a naming convention that is better appropriate for that language for their own clarity. Akosygin 04:16, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
There is another problem in that doing the article names as Surname, Given name would mean that almost all the internal wikilinks would become redirects. The ways things currently are on the Wikipedia, if I type Ronald Reagan I can be pretty sure that the link will go directly to the article about the 40th president of the United States. If the article's title was the way that you suggest, then everyone would have to remember to write [[Reagan, Ronald|Ronald Reagan]] to avoid a redirect (which slows database performance, etc.).
A compromise to keep links while maintaining clarity - For linking and the entry heading/title keep it Given then Surname. But for the first appearance of the name as the opening, surname comma given name. So for all searching and linking purposes, retain the current form; but in the article proper where the name is first listed like "Washington, George - (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799), also called Father of his Country1, was an American general and ..." Akosygin 04:11, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Also, your suggestion is only the de facto standard for indexing. For example, the Encyclopædia Britannica article on the famous Japanese director Akira Kurosawa is at Kurosawa Akira (Japanese name order, Surname-Given name, no comma), but Encarta has the article at Akira Kurosawa. On the other hand, both Encarta and Britannica use Yosano Akiko for the noted Meiji era tanka poet (Surname-Given name, no comma). BlankVerse ∅ 09:38, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
This is exactly the point between Akira Kurosawa and Yosano Akiko. Akira is a given name and Kurosawa is the surname, while it is reversed with Yosana Akiko, Yosana is surname, Akiko is given name. To an uninformed reader, it would appear Kurosawa and Akiko are surnames (which is wrong, It is Kurosawa and Yosano). There is no consistency in the name listings in the entries and without the comma, it won't "force" people to ensure that the order of the names is surname comma given; leading to this inconsistency of Japanese name usage where people transpose the two without distinction. A good example of this inconsistency is with the Sakamoto Ryoma entry and the Ryuichi Sakamoto, there are many others more, but the point is that without the comma it leaves the reader guessing. So at some point there should be an area for distinction and the indexing format allows for clarity. Furthermore, once you get to large disambiguity pages along with those category listing pages (of people of a certain birthdate, etc.), putting the given name first would prove difficult to find a name as you have to jump around in the names to find the surname to find the entry you are looking for. Even now in the births and deaths listing, despite the way we put given name first in the text, we group and order them by surname. It would make more sense that we put surname comma given, especially at such category pages and opening line as I have written above in the compromise. This is the reason why indexes are listed this way. Akosygin 04:25, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Then the article can mention which is which, but it should certainly be listed under the name that is most commonly used. For example, many artists are placed under their stage name. I think that the principal we have to adhere to is least surprise. If you put Marilyn Monroe under Mortensen, Norma Jeane then not many people will find it. You could argue that Thaksin Shinawatra should go under S rather than T on the english language encyclopedia, but the agreed manual for style on Thai names already states that it should use the Thai format. — KayEss | talk 08:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
That is deviating from what I am asking. I am not asking that you should use Mortensen, Norma Jeane instead of the Marilyn Monroe name, I am asking that you put it: Monroe, Marilyn. I am talking about order in which names are displayed not which of the person's aliases should be displayed. Akosygin 20:06, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

The basic rule of thumb for naming Wikipedia articles is to use the name that is most likely to be used in English. Thus the Prime Minister of Japan is currently Junichiro Koizumi (using the "Western" name order), because that is the way that he is almost always referred to in English-language publications. On the other hand, Matsuo Basho is almost never referred to as Basho Matsuo, so the title for his article retains the Japanese name order. Your examples of Sakamoto Ryoma and the Ryuichi Sakamoto are two more examples of the use of that principle. The first was a 19th century merchant-samurai, and the other is a 20th century musician and actor. This issue has already been argued ad nauseam on the Wikipedia, and that is what the current consensus is. BlankVerse ∅ 10:47, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I believe the conventionn to list in different order based upon the date of the person is even worst. Not only is it not the best way, it introduces inconsistency. It presumes the reader knows about the entry in question already. This leads to confusion and a presumption that the reader already knows about the person they are about to look up. If the reader only found the name of the person with no other information (short of using the search), they would also need to know the date the person was born and died in order to figure out what they are looking for. Let's say the Japanese naming is applied to the English names, so that I can better illustrate my point: A reader is given a name of Richard, John to look up. In Wikipedia there are two entires: one for an 18th century historian named John Richard, and another for a 20th century pop star also labeled John Richard. Based upon the rules applied to the Japanese names, the reader is going to be very confused as to whether they should be looking at the historian or the pop star. However, if it was an 18th century historian named John, Richard; and a 20th century pop star named Richard, John. Now it is clear who the reader should be looking at.
While the names are Japanese names, this is an English encyclopedia. Even in indexing in an English encyclopedia and entries headings we use the person's surname, given-name regardless of nationality of the name. You don't look up an author of a book in a library by given-name then surname. The naming convention should follow the language for the entry it was written in for the English reader, not the language of the entry concerned. If you go to a library, you don't look up someone by their given name and even for a Japanese name, they will insert a comma to make the distinction. I would agree with you if it was the links of the entry or the text content proper using the name of the person that it should be given first, surname last. But when it comes to headings and listings, it should be surname comma given-name. Akosygin 15:14, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Review / comment

Please see Category:Articles in need of renaming -SV|t 21:32, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Indonesian music

"Gamelan gong kebyar is often referred to as kebyar. Article should be at gamelan gong kebyar with a redirect at kebyar. See other types of Indonesian music."

I moved this here as a convention should apply to more than one article. Hyacinth 20:40, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Greek and Bulgarian geographic and personal names

Is there a standard accepted way of transliterating modern Greek and Bulgarian names from their original alphabets? Right now it's a mess, for instance:

  • Bulgarian ъ is sometimes u, sometimes a,
  • Bulgarian ю is sometimes iu, sometimes yu,
  • Bulgarian ц is sometimes ts, sometimes c,
  • Bulgarian х is sometimes kh, sometimes h,
  • Greek χ is sometimes kh, sometimes ch,
  • Greek υ when it is pronounced i is sometimes written y, sometimes i,
  • Greek υ when it is pronounced f is sometimes written u, sometimes f,
  • Greek σ between two vowels is sometimes written s, sometimes ss,
  • Greek ει and οι are sometimes written ei and oi, sometimes i (as they're pronounced).

What I'd like to see is something like Transliteration of Russian into English. Discussion at Talk:Bulgaria and Talk:Greece. Markussep 15:40, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC).

category: singular? plural?

hi. although singular nouns are listed as preferred, apparently this does not apply to category names. plural seems to be preferred there. maybe this should be mentioned on this page? (someone was a little irritated that i named a category using a singular noun. but i had just read this page.) peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 19:55, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

(just to mention a minor thing: you cant simply use the {catmore} template when there is a grammatical number mismatch between article & category name. — ishwar  (SPEAK) 19:59, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC))

  • I found this in a few places, most notably Wikipedia:Categorization. Not everything needs to be plural, but most are. For example, Category:Opera would contain articles about opera, while Category:Operas might serve as a list of specific operas. Mostly, I find that categories do serve as lists of articles, therefore plural. Does that help? --Kbdank71 20:30, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
And you can use template:catmore1 anytime (it takes the link as an argument rather than inferring it from the category name). -- Rick Block (talk) 21:26, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
hi. ok, so perhaps a link from this page to Wikipedia:Categorization#General naming conventions would be appropriate. i just assumed that naming conventions would all be in the same place, namely here under Naming conventions. so, i suggest either placing some of that information here or an (indexical) link to this information (mentioned above).
i knew about the {catmore1} — it just seems less efficient (i.e. requires more keystroking on my part).
anyway, thank you for your responses. cheers — ishwar  (SPEAK) 01:02, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)
I added a link like you suggested (good idea). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:37, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Autumn and Fall

I'd like to suggest that it be a naming policy that the American usage of "Fall" be replaced by "Autumn". Fall is already redirected to Autumn, which shows some level of pre-eminence given to Autumn.

One Salient Oversight 05:53, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Icelandic names

I don't know if this has been discussed here, or if this is even the right place for it to be discussed, but I've noticed that in some articles, Icelanders are referred to by their last names, like Ásmundur Jónsson being called (after having been called by the full name earlier in the article) Jónsson. This is simply not correct. My name is not Karlsson, it never has been and it never will be, my name is Sölvi. My father bears the name Karl. I am his son. But Karlsson is not my name, and I for one would not like to be called that. Icelandic last names (as is explained in the article Icelandic name) are only descriptions of a person, not their names. There are a few surnames existing in Iceland, but that's not the standard, that's the exception, and it can usually be seen which ones are surnames because they don't end in son or dóttir (like Thorlacius, Thors, Scheving and Waage). So therefore, I think there should be an official policy that says that Icelanders shouldn't be called by their last names (and thereby simply being called the father's son) but their first. Any thoughts? --Sterio 19:05, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That makes plenty of sense and should be Wikipedia policy. I think that articles on Icelandic individuals should get a template at the top (similar to the one on many Chinese individuals that explains that the first name is the surname) that says something like: This is an Icelandic name. The second name is a patronym and not a surname. BlankVerse ∅ 13:37, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The same thing is true for most Scandinavian names during the Middle Ages and many after that (although the upper and middle classes in Denmark, Sweden and Norway more generally started using family names during the 17th century or so), as well as for some other European ethnic groups. I am not sure I agree about putting the template at the top though, but it depends on what it looks like. up◦land 13:47, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
See Yao Ming for an example. None of the Scandinavian countries required Surnames until the early 20th century, so I imagine that there may be some articles on the Wikipedia that are applicable up until then (Denmark 1904, Sweden 1901, Norway 1923). BlankVerse ∅ 16:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Instead of making a specific policy/reccomendation regarding Icelandic names why not just make a naming policy regarding patronyms in general? That should cover it nicely. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:46, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
The de facto policy is already to use Icelandic naming conventions. See almost any article on an Icelander. I changed the Einar Jónsson page to this standard even before seeing this discussion. - Haukurth 23:11, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Non-English band names

I am sorry if this was discussed earlier or I was supposed to easily find it already ;) but I have the following dilemma:

If the article name is a music band name in Serbian (can be any other language or any other name, but this is my concern right now) and has more then one word in it, should the capitalization rules used be that of the Serbian language or English? In Serbian, only the first word of the name is capitalized (unless other words are personal names, etc).

So, for example, band "Električni orgazam" has an article named Elektricni Orgazam with a capital O, though in Serbian that would be incorrect. Should this be Elektricni orgazam instead?

Any thoughts? --Dejan Čabrilo 07:08, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Serbian rules apply; cf Académie française (French, and not a band, but same principle). Joestynes 12:10, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! I've been following that rule, but I didn't want to change other's work (now I will if I run into it, but it's still no big deal). --Dejan Čabrilo 00:09, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Slovenian/Slovene

After an edit war a thorough discussion on using these terms followed. However, when it ended only two users were still present and wrote a policy on this (see Talk:Slovenians#Proposed Policy (2.1). What would be the most appropriate way to implement it as part of Wikipedia:Naming conventions? --Eleassar my talk 28 June 2005 10:06 (UTC)

Language families

Following a proposal and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages), I have added a sentence to our conventions on languages: language families are pluralized. I should note that this is Wikipedia practice already for a long time; nothing controversial here. The rationale can be found at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) and its talk page. — mark ✎ 3 July 2005 10:05 (UTC)

German Names: Carl or Karl?

I have got into problem - I have noticed, that German names are written differently on English Wikipedia. For example, there is Carl Liebermann and Karl Liebermann referring the same person (a German chemist of 19th century - see Crimson and Alizarin). Also the surname is written differently: Liebermann and Lieberman. What naming scheme would be correct with this and other names? DariusMazeika 7 July 2005 07:51 (UTC)

In this specific case, Carl Liebermann is likely to be most correct, as it is used by the most authoritative German biographical reference work, the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). You can search the index both to that and its late 19th century predecessor Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB) at this webpage. In either case, make redirects and/or disambig pages at other spellings, to avoid somebody else duplicating your work. up◦land 7 July 2005 08:24 (UTC)

Entertainer name changes

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump


Is this where I ask questions? It says not to, but I can't figure out which is the "best section". My question is about Wikipedia:article naming policy.

If an entertainer changes his name, must the article about them always reflect that change? Specifically, should the David Sutch article be called david sutch or Screaming Lord Sutch (that was his stage name / persona when he was with Screaming Lord Sutch And The Savages.

Oh, and I'm not disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, although this might be an example of Wikipedia:illustrating a point. I need help, and I don't know where to go, and I'd like an answer, please. (If this request results in fixing the system, all the better. And I'm not a newbie, either. If I can't find my way around by now, something is seriously bolloxed up here...) Uncle Ed July 9, 2005 15:05 (UTC)

Beautiful Uncle Ed LOL! I love it! You've taken be bold to a whole new level. Quinobi 9 July 2005 15:47 (UTC)
Now here's an idea, what about asking at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)? You're right - you ought to know your way around, so why? And you have clearly not read wikipedia:Naming conventions either. Admins ought to know policies, such as the one not of creating articles on your unnotable mate. Dunc|☺ 19:35, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
Without knowing much about the specifics, I would say consensus on the individual article would prevail. Maurreen 18:57, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Did you try clicking on Help? That page is pretty comprehensive. Then click on "Policies and guidelines for contributors" (perhaps that item should be more prominent?), then "Naming conventions", then "Discuss this page". That's how I got here. It's not quick, but it is logical. Shantavira 08:01, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Arab names

I think the Arabic names section needs to be greatly expanded. XXX bin YYY is great, but there are lots of Arabic names that don't fit this pattern. Should "bin" always be written "bin" instead of "ben", even when the other is more common? Should Ramzi Binalshibh and Mehdi Ben Barka be changed? And what of the many other transliteration questions? I'm trying to organize a wikiproject to discuss these sorts of questions and develop standards. If you're interested, sign up at Talk:Arabic name#An Arabic name project. – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 15:40, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Songs?

I'm a little concerned about articles called, for example, Albatross (song) and Apache (song) since these are not songs ("a short musical composition for the human voice ... featuring lyrics", to quote Wikipedia) but instrumental pieces. But what else to call them? Shantavira 17:25, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

"Track" seems to be a reasonable word to use and covers any recording. If it's specifically about the composition though then maybe "Composition" is a better one to use. — KayEss | talk 09:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
"Single" is often a useful alternative (as in both these cases). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:24, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Done. Shantavira 10:05, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

UK Acts of Parliament

It just took me googling to find our standard naming convention for United Kingdom Acts of Parliament (it's at Talk:List of Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom#Summary of naming conventions); can I suggest it be added to the list of formal naming conventions here? — OwenBlacker 23:12, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

As one of those who worked out our convention, and then wrote it down, I'm happy for it to be made "law". ;-) Seriously, further oversight and criticism would be a Good Thing.
James F. (talk) 23:48, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Sub pages?

Is Philip Green (author)/Sources a correctly titled page? I thought sources were supposed to be in the actual article and that the slash was only to be used for User pages. If so please fix. Shantavira 09:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Redirect from Surname, Firstname

When creating articles on people, should we create redirects from Surname, Firstname as a matter of course? There is currently no consistency as to whether these exist. OpenToppedBus - My Talk 15:58, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Names that are both nouns and verbs

The articles Kiss and Squatting present an interesting decision: should we prefer the noun form or the verb form? In my opinion, the gerund verb form should take precedence over the noun form, so if there is an option for a verb used as a noun (eg: Kiss), we should prefer the gerund verb. Hence, Kiss should probably be Kissing. Scott Ritchie 05:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

graphic novels, comics, comic series, and webcomics for disambiguation

For films, the prefered format is:

I am looking for the best names to put in parenthesis when disambiguation is required... guesses for examples:

  • Cerebus (graphic novel)
  • Garfield (comic)
  • Batman (comic series)
  • Digger (web comic)

A list of prefered words for all catagories would be nice (if there is one, where? or if not, I could make one) Ann Vole 17:35, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia:Naming conventions (comic books) answer your question? —Mike 01:08, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Comments and vote?

How does a proposal become a convention? Do we have a vote? Where should I go to receive comments, RfC? The Village Pump? I ask because I want comments on the competing proposals at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (subnational entities). Thanks. --Golbez 22:49, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

You might want to see Wikipedia:How to create policy. And yes, I would publicize the proposal at RFC and the Village Pump, also possibly at related pages. Maurreen (talk) 00:26, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

The general policy is to avoid a vote (see m:Don't vote on everything) in favor of a discussion which generates consensus. -- Reinyday, 14:19, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposing a naming convention

I noted there is no procedure for proposing a naming convention listed on the main page. Does one exist elsewhere or is it an oversight? I note the speedy renaming procedure states that suggestions for new criteria should be proposed on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions. I've been bold and added that to the main page. Hiding talk 13:33, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Redundant or competing pages: Places, countries, etc.

It appears that we have a few redundant or competing pages. There do not include pages specific to categories or specific places. But these apparently do include at least:

Is there any reason all of these should not be consolidated?

Also, in case anyone missed it, Wikipedia:Category titles has been working on titles for categories organized by nationality or country. Maurreen (talk) 16:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

  1. City names: handles naming of cities, real and fictional, and the proper disambiguation.
  2. Country-specific topics: Simply saying, name things "X of Y". Wars of Portugal, History of Vietnam, etc, instead of Vietnamese history and Portuguese wars. Simple and useful.
  3. Places: Cities should be merged into this, yes.
  4. Subnational entities: In proposal stage, deals more with political divisions than "places". Could be consolidated into places as a fallback stage, I don't know.
  5. Provinces: In proposal stage, idle and probably rendered obsolete by the Subnational entities proposal. It should be deleted, not merged.
So I agree, City names and Places should probably be consolidated; Country-specific topics should not, that's different (except in things like "Cities of Canada", but even then, it falls more under this than "cities" or "places" which are concerned with the individual articles rather than the lists). Subnat could also possibly be consolidated into places as a fallback for political divisions, and I still think provinces should be deleted. My take. --Golbez 17:32, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Except that there’s no real advantage in limiting “Country-specific topics” to countries. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:35, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
True; we could have "History of Florida", etc. Still, that doesn't mean it should be merged - it should simply be renamed. "Location-specific topics"? It's a different kind of standard from the rest. The rest are about naming articles about specific places; this is about naming articles about things ABOUT specific places. --Golbez 17:41, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Note: There was a recent poll at Wikipedia talk:Category titles/Archive: Poll started August 4, 2005 during which the subject of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics) came up and the assertion was made that this convention either is or should be deprecated, see also archive 3 and the current debate at Wikipedia talk:Category titles. Thoughts on that issue are welcome, as is input on Category titles and how current policy affects them. Hiding talk 08:26, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Maurreen, after looking at (places) and (cities), I agree - they could absolutely be merged. And the others (except country-specific topics, that's a different convention entirely) could probably be merged as well, into a general locale naming convention. One part about cities, the next part about states/counties/etc, the next part about locations, etc. I'm looking at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(places), and there's a lot of good discussion going on there - discussion that (subnational entities) lacks. I might start chatting over there instead of dealing with subnat entities, (places) seems to be the place to be. And Hiding, I have no clue what that category poll came up with, that page is triplicated and FUBAR. :P --Golbez 15:29, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

  • Please merge the lot of them, or at least the current active ones. One central discussion is better. Radiant_>|< 14:50, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Brand Names for Automobiles

For anyone interested, it has been proposed in the Automobiles WikiProject that all automobiles be named according to the brand name used in their country of origin. Discussion is welcome at the linked page. Dragons flight 02:36, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to add convention to Monarchical Titles

Rule #2 states: Where there has only been one holder of a specific monarchical name in a state, the ordinal is used only when the ordinal was in official use. For example, Victoria of the United Kingdom, not Victoria I of the United Kingdom; Juan Carlos I of Spain, not Juan Carlos of Spain. [3]

This rule does not apply to the naming of William I of England. According to the rule, a specific monarchical name regards names such as "Victoria", "Juan Carlos", and "William". IF only a single holder of a specific monarchical name existed in a state, then the second clause of the rule comes into play. The application of the second clause would apply to William I of England if William II of England and William III of England did not exist. Since there is more than a single holder of a specific monarchical name, the ordinal is used regardless of the periodic officiality of ordinal usage. For example, if there were a Victoria II of the United Kingdom, then Victoria of the United Kingdom would be legitimately removed to Victoria I of the United Kingdom.
The following convention is requested to be added as a clause to Rule #2:
The usage of ordinals where there has been more than a single holder of a specific monarchical name is correct and appropriate.
Adraeus 00:10, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I hate to bring this up, but you are in totally wrong page to propose amendment to that. Go Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles). Besides, you target the wrong clause, seeing the basis of discussion at William I of England. Arrigo 11:20, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you're wrong. That is the correct clause to target. Refer to the following text from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) for why this is the correct location for this proposal.
The following is a set of conventions that have emerged from a detailed discussion on Wikipedia. For the discussions, see the corresponding talk page and, earlier, Wikipedia talk:History standards. If there are wikipedians out there who know more about this subject, please add to the discussion.
Adraeus 01:42, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Request for discussion of naming convention for long lists

I am hoping to generate a naming convention for long lists that are broken up alphabetically. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists) and thank you in advance for any input you might have. -- Reinyday, 14:16, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew and Israeli names

The discussion was moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Hebrew).

<ibri^ (Hebrew), <arabi^, Samskr.ta (Sanskrit), Hellenic, Latin

Proper names from these languages ought to be transliterated with all conventional diacritical marks retained, including accents, macron, etc. In no case, however, ought any digraph to be used in transliterating any character written with a single sign in a native script, but instead a letter with a diacritical mark (or with more than one diacritical mark if necessary). Sequences (orders) of letters of the alphabet conventionally used in native dictionaries of each language should be retained also (instead of forcing the Latin A-Z order on non-Latin words); so that a separate listing ought be given for each language. It would be advisable, alongside with each transliteration, to provide each name in native script (Deva-naagarii or the like for Samskr.ta, etc.). Articles which do not conform to these guidelines ought to be deleted by the editor, until the requisite corrections have been made by the authors. {Sacred words and holy names which are mistransliterated are usually regarded by native speakers as a direct insult to their culture, language, and religion. To mistransliterate will make for bad international relations, at the very least.}

I do not know anything about there being any incorrect transliterations or transcriptions of Hebrew words that would give any offence. I don't know which cultures this comes from. Further, the given suggestions with regards to Hebrew are never used, and the convention in which you write <ibri^ is one I have never seen before at all. Generally, what we are doing here is not transliteration, but transcription, in which case we care about how the word sounds and not that it is accurate letter-for-letter, as in transliteration, where digraphs should be avoided. Digraphs are definitely sensible when this is the most appropriate English sound, and the most common or official convention for transcription of the language. See Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (Hebrew) with regards to Hebrew. --jnothman talk 09:16, 6 September

2005 (UTC) The incorrect transliterations or transcriptions are in the laryngeal and retroflex phoneme-groups, none of which occur in any European language, but which are common in S^emitic languages amd well as (the retroflexes) used in the D.awida languages of India and characteristic of them. Incidentally, your "insert" character-set is apparently lacking in the characters conventionally used to transliterate these phonemes used in languages spoken by hundreds of millions of Asiatics, while containing characters used in languages spoken by negligible numbers of Europeans. This might well be taken by most Asiatics as a deliberate affront to them, and might make for some very bad international relations. If <ibri^(Hebrew)-speakers [for example] fail to raise a protest, it is because they have undergone such progroms and holocausts at the hands of people who differ from them in speech so many times that they fear provoking more of the same by any such protest.24.211.55.129 12:35, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I think you'll find that this is an encyclopedia in English, and so the articles titles and other uses of proper nouns in non-English languages will have to be of some relevance in their naming to English users, and so should not be written with difficult-to-read symbols, otherwise we would have all article titles in their original language and avoid the problem!
  • I don't know how the user-friendly but close-to-accurate spellings of Asiatic words would dent international relations, seeing as Wikipedia is an international project in which even Asiatics are able to edit and guide naming conventions. As such, as a user of Hebrew, more specifically of Hebrew terms in English contexts, as one who will have to read and understand these words, and moreso as one who will write articles with such terms, it is I who have a say in the naming conventions because I will be the one trying to interpret the English characters as Hebrew and not getting confused by <s and ^s.
  • I don't know how persecution has to do with readability of Hebrew words in English contexts.
  • I don't know how the phonetics of laryngeals and retroflexes is really important, when we are talking about transcribing orthography or phonology. In particular, most of these languages have variant dialectal or historical pronunciations, but still retain a single common transcription to English characters.
--jnothman talk 12:55, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps better than diacritics would be the IPA (International Phonetic Association) transliterations, using unique characters for retroflexes [and more]. http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ipa/images/ipachart.gif This can help to emphasize the fact that laryngeals and retroflexes are NOT simply allophones (variants to some other sounds), NOR did they arise out of historical circumstances (but are at least as antique as any other part of the languages concerned). [For example, in <ibri^ the letters s.ade^ & t.e^t are not variants of samek and taw, nor did they historically arise out of them.] To use the IPA system in full would entail discarding [or in some cases simply altering] dozens of diacriticalled characters in the "insert" set, however.24.211.55.129 13:38, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

The articles in English Wikipedia are written in English, and it is common practice for English texts to contain English translations (e.g. "Hebrew", not "<ibri^") and transcriptions (e.g. "tzadi", not "s.ade^") when referring to words in other languages, using regular Latin characters, except, perhaps, for articles related to linguistics, where other methods are used in context. It is not for Wikipedia to propagate the use of diacritics or IPA or other methods of reference to foreign words in English texts.
I see no reason why anyone, "Asiatic" or otherwise, should be offended by how foreign words are written in English texts. Mind you that not all Hebrew speakers are Jewish;nevertheless, as a Hebrew speaker that also happens to be Jewish (and thus, perhaps, as you suggest, bears the scars of millennia of persecution), I can assure you that we never fail to raise protest when it is due, and aparently it is not, in this instance.--Doron 22:20, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
IPA is used for phonetic transcription, and thus would have to assume that all Arabic, for instance, uses the same phonetical pronunciation of words, which is nonsense. Quf for instance may be both pronounced in velar or uvular positions depending on dialect. And still IPA is distanced from the average user. To distinguish characters that sound similar has virtue, but is not generally accessible to English speakers. --jnothman talk 07:00, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

New initiative

I'm one of those who think that the "Names and Titles" naming conventions guideline could be written in a format that makes it sound less as an exception to general wikipedia principles on article namingref.

The issue has been discussed recently on severeral talk pages, and there appears to be a group of wikipedians that neither wants to get really involved, neither is particularily fond of the present complications for naming a "lucky-by-birth stiff who had some pretentions to a hereditary right to rule others or had the remotest ancestral connections to such a person"ref

The problem is, these wikipedians have no alternative: either it's the complicated "exception" rule, either it's only the basic rules that lead to ambiguity in many cases of article naming on persons.

That's why I announce here my plan to start a {{proposed}} guideline for dealing with article naming of articles on people. I think the logical name for such guideline would be:

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)

Using a guideline name differing from the existing ones, as long as it's merely a proposal, also helps not to disturb existing rules (and their talk pages) too much: while in the end it might result in no more than a few ideas of this proposition being "absorbed" by other guidelines (or the other way around). But that's for the wikipedia community to decide then. First I try to cooperate in building a valid alternative, better in line with general Naming Conventions guidelines. --Francis Schonken 11:58, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

conventions for category naming

A proposal for conventions for category naming, including existing conventions mostly from WP:CG and new conventions and rules pertaining to "by country" categories, is at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories). Please read it and discuss on its talk page. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:19, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

Rulerlists article name policy

Does any policy/guideline exist for the naming of such list? Because currently everything is a real mess

Variants include:

  1. List of Sultans of Brunei
  2. President of South Yemen
  3. Heads of state of Algeria
  4. Rulers of Tuscany
  5. Duke of Aquitaine - several styled themselves "King" (+ 1 duchess)
  6. List of Serbian monarchs - Perhaps the one most widely used on Wiki now, but such as the one bellow creates problems
  7. List of monarchs of Naples and Sicily

(for a larger sampling see User:Fornadan/slby)

I think a consistent naming of these lists should be strived for because often you are interrested in comparing several of them. Currently you usually have to guess the right name. IMO they should be moved to "List of rulers of X" or "Rulers of X" since then you'd avoid problems with changing titles & female rulers Fornadan (t) 22:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

language varieties and groups thereof

I find the naming conventions for languages not to be very helpful, since they don't mention language varieties at all. (I'm copying this here from Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages) since it remained unanswered there.)

Take for instance German varieties found in the family tree of the article West Germanic languages: We find the following schemes being used for subgroups of languages (I'm referring to the actual names of the articles, not to the names used on the page):

  1. XXX, for instance Austro-Bavarian
  2. XXX language, for instance Alemannic language
  3. XXX [parent language name], for instance High German
  4. XXX [parent language name] language, for instance Central German language
  5. XXX [parent language name] languages, for instance Upper German languages

In the same family tree, the following schemes are used for individual varieties:

  1. XXX, for instance Wymysojer (what's that?)
  2. XXX language, for instance Limburgish language
  3. XXX dialect, for instance Silesian dialect
  4. XXX [parent language], for instance Basel German
  5. XXX [parent language] language, for instance Pennsylvania German language

With regards to varieties of the English language, there is luckily less confusion of naming schemes, the de facto standard seemingly being XXX [parent language] (that is, XXX English), both for subgroups and for individual varieties, as can be seen on the pages linked on the List of dialects of the English language. There are very few exceptions that use the scheme XXX, such as Received pronunciation (most of the XXX schemes, however, don't link to varieties of English, but to regions or ethnic groups, such as Dorset or Cockney). I have not found any English variety or group of varieties whose naming scheme would include language(s) or dialect(s), which makes a sharp contrast to the varieties of German discussed above.

I favour the de facto naming standard for English varieties and groups of varieties, XXX [parent language]. There are several advantages of the scheme XXX [parent language]:

  • It avoids the delicate term dialect.
  • It does not distinguish between a group of varieties and an individual variety, which is in most cases a question of interpretation (Southern American English can be referred to either as a group of varieties or as a special variety).
  • It specifies at once what language the variety belongs to.

Of course, varieties that are being used as standard languages of their own right should be named according to the existing scheme XXX language, for instance Luxembourgish language or Yiddish language. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 14:41, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

SOME article titles should be plural

This page says:

In general only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English (such as scissors or trousers).

"Always" is much too strong. The article titled The Beatles obviously should NOT be singular, but this word is sometimes singular: Ringo Starr is a "former Beatle", not just a "former member of the Beatles". Joint Chiefs of Staff is another obvious exception. Legendre polynomials, Hermite polynomials, etc., are exceptions because, although one may speak of, for example, the 6th Hermite polynomial, using the singular, the whole sequence of Hermite polynomials is what the article is about, and it would seems strange to regard the fact that a polynomial is one of the Hermite polynomials as of interest in isolation from knowledge of the sequence as a whole.

The word "always" is used too promiscuously here. Someone once wrote on this page that the bolded title word in an article should not be italicized unless it's a word that's ALWAYS italicized. Of course, it should have said unless there's some specific other reason to italicize, i.e. don't italicize MERELY because it's the bolded title phrase. What it should have said is what it did say last time I looked (months ago).

I just moved Bell number back to the plural Bell numbers; my reasons are similar to those that apply to Hermite polynomials. I would do the same thing with Bernoulli numbers and Fibonacci numbers. Michael Hardy 18:20, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Michael Hardy 18:20, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Or perhaps we should rename this page "Naming convention" ;) Enchanter 18:44, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
"Beatles" and "Joint Cheifs of Staff" are examples where the cannonical name is plural. So it would be sufficient to say "plural the overwhelming majority of the time" rather than "always plural". Your mathematical examples are an interesting case, because you might very well say that something is a Fibonacci number, but probably not without having other Fibonacci numbers next to it. Nate 14:00, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Another thing: I just noticed a (red) link to Korean honorifics. I think there are obvious reasons why that one should be plural. Michael Hardy 18:43, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

"Dr"

Hi, I was wondering if the article Dr Marc Edmund Jones complies with the naming convention? "Dr" shouldn't be there, should it? Unless it is a fictional character. --202.156.2.75 02:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Interbank networks

I have taken the liberty of attempting to propose a set of naming conventions for interbank networks. The conventions are the following:

For interbank network additions, please add them to {{Interbank networks}} template.

--Akira123323 12:49, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Authority control

I suggest adding the following paragraph to this policy. It's a helpful hint about consulting existing authority control tools.

Library of Congress Authority Files show how the (U.S.) Library of Congress solves naming problems. They provide a searchable database of names for subjects, authors, and titles of works. In many cases, names are attributed to a specific source. For example, a subject search for "jive music" shows that the Library of Congress would file items under one of the subject headings "Jazz", "Swing (Music)", or "Blues (Music)". Each of those has a note about its applicability or definition. A note under "Jazz" quotes a definition from Webster's Third New International Dictionary, "jive: hot jazz". As of January 2004, Wikipedia's entry jive is a disambiguation. One of its items is "Jive is swing music, or a type of quick-paced and energetic jazz."

--Hoziron 01:35, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Football Club names

Should Football clubs be named by their full names (like Manchester United F.C., FC Lokomotiv Moscow, Juventus Football Club) or without "FC" (or likewise "FK", "F.C.", etc.)? Couldn't find any policy... It seems different clubs use totally different style! --Monkbel 09:42, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Decide case by case, for a given club, whichever name is in most common usage in English. Rd232 14:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
That is not a viable option. Neither the full nor the abbreviated names are most common usage. Eg the Barcelona club is just Barcelona in normal usage, but that is the name of the city. CalJW 22:05, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Pac-Man argument

On the Puck-man history page, there's been a small argument on the redirecting issue. Gerardvschip, who created the page, says that there should be seperate articles and that the Pac-Man article, if anything, should redirect to the Puck-man article, since Puck-man is the original title. This doesn't fall under the listed video and gaming conventions - doesn't this fall under the widely known vs. original argument? And if so, where should Pac-Man go? The current Puck-man article is rather redundant and already repeated in the Pac-Man article, so one has got to be redirected. Hbdragon88 17:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Typography in Article Titles

(Continuing from Talk:We Love Katamari I'm opening a conversation here based on previous topics scattered across the wiki.)

There is apparently no sitewide policy on the use of typographical symbols in product names. This would effect article titles such as:

As you can see, usage is not currently uniform. Previous conversations have taken place at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (films)#Handling of special movie titles, Talk:We Love Katamari, and Talk:I Heart Huckabees. These have not been conclusive.

Arguments against the use of typographical symbols include:

  • "Untypability" - I believe this was adequately refuted above. Any problems relating to this can be easily overcome with the use of redirects.
  • Unicode-compatibility - Wikipedia:Unicode states that client-side Unicode support is a reasonable assumption. In Talk:We Love Katamari, Poiuyt Man offered this link which identifies Unicode-capable browser versions, which may be of interest.

Arguments in favor:

  • Some symbols, such as ♥, do not have a definitive pronunciation - for example, We Love Katamari vs. I Heart Huckabees. Without referring to trademarks (which may cover both pronunciations anyway), it is difficult to determine which reading should be considered definitive. Redirects from both to an article title using the typographical symbol would neatly resolve any argument. --April Arcus 18:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Cuisine

Is there any sort of standard for the Cuisine pages? It seems there should be. Some pages are "X cuisine" and others "Cuisine of X" without any consistency that I can see. Not all of the forms seem to have redirects, either.

I would say we should use "of" to standardize, per Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(country-specific_topics), but others have disagreed in the past. A while ago one editor unilateraly moved most of them to the adjective ("X-ian") version. Of course, in either case redirects are desired. Dmcdevit·t 06:46, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
"X cuisine" is preferable because it is normal English usage. CalJW 22:03, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

British vs American spellings

When writing WP articles is there a preferred spelling for words like colour/color, centre/center, colonise/colonize, etc? I'd be grateful if you could point me to it, if it's documented it's very well hidden. I think as a minimum we should stick to the one rule (don't really care which one) where possible. The ideal scenario would be to have some development and have WP display American or British spellings depending on user preferences. E.g. the author writes {{UK::colour|US::color}}. This is because a lot of time is wasted by some people "correcting" these spelling, and some others "correcting" them back, edit wars, etc.PizzaMargherita 08:50, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling). BlankVerse ∅ 09:36, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Votes in progress

Three requested moves are having their votes stacked with Wikipedia newbies from an external forum. They have political enthusiasm, but little regard for the naming convention. Please consider reading over the following move requests and voting. —Michael Z. 2005-10-30 16:23 Z

School article naming convention: commas versus parenthesis

How to name school articles, specifically how to qualify them with their city and province/state name, is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Schools, where there's a straw poll on. --rob 07:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Zondor's template

{{Naming conventions (Zondor's proposal)|float=right|clear=right}}

User:Zondor/Naming conventions, now moved to template:Naming conventions (Zondor's proposal), used as template (see right), removed from guideline page.

Wouldn't this need a little more discussion, prior to implementation? If it were better in line with wikipedia:usability (for instance, not so confusing about the several "people" NC guidelines, etc...), this might even be a good idea, but of course not on a user talk page, a bit shorter, etc...

--Francis Schonken 08:26, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I think it's too bulky to be practical. This is exactly what categories are for. Radiant_>|< 14:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Guidelines or policy?

Are naming conventions guidlines or policy? Since the main page has a policy tag, some people argue that the individual conventions, as an extension of this page, are also policy, whilst other people believe they are guidelines. Given User:Zondor's recent actions, some conventions need tagging, but I am unsure which way to tag them. Any thoughts? Hiding talk 11:01, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd say:
Note that presently the first sentence of wikipedia:naming conventions reads: "Naming conventions is a list of guidelines on how to appropriately create and name pages." - so that also supports the pages on that list to be guidelines, while the list itself can be policy as far as I'm concerned.
That is not an exceptional approach: for instance: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is policy, a number of pages giving the finer details on how to implement that policy are marked as guideline or essay and/or included in other categories (wikipedia:NPOV tutorial; wikipedia:POV; etc...).
Any toughts about that approach? --Francis Schonken 12:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
That seems reasonable to me, as long as it is understood that conventions on the main page are also guidelines, rather than policy. Hiding talk 12:55, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Sounds good. The fact that we have NCs is policy; the individual NCs are guidelines (mostly because they tend to have exceptions). Radiant_>|< 14:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Archive

Any objections to archiving this talk page? It's getting far too long. Radiant_>|< 14:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Archiving everything older than 1st of November to /Archive 5. Give me a minute. --Francis Schonken 15:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
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