Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 6

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SOME_article_titles_should_be_plural

See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions/archive5#SOME_article_titles_should_be_plural

Russian and Soviet submarines

Articles about these are named "Russian [or Soviet] submarine" and then the number/name of the vessel. Why don't we just call them "RFS" (Russian Federation Ship) and "USSRS"? Because that's the way American and British submarines (and ships) are called. kallemax 18:03, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

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)

if gets too big it can turned into a wide version that goes at the bottom. what inspired me was that if you look in the help desk, there are questions for naming conventions. this navigation can help a lot and makes things more organised. -- Zondor 16:12, 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 /archive5. Give me a minute. --Francis Schonken 15:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
OK, finished. --Francis Schonken 15:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)


"..." articles.

Propose adding to the policy to not start articles with non-alphanumeric characters used for emphasis only e.g. "Book of Trifles". Many of these articles have been updated to be redirects to the same title with out empasis symbols, ", in this case. These articles when used as acutal articles are hard to search for and index for browsing. A possible exception would be for an article about a quotation, but would like to hear more feedback on those implications first. If adopted, this change would make many of the redirect only pages immediate canidates for speedy deletion.

Xaosflux 05:45, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

See User:Xaosflux/Sandbox for exact proposal, please comment here or there if you have thaughts on this. Xaosflux 06:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)


With no objections I've added this to the Policy Page, please discuss removal here before removing Xaosflux 01:53, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Years in titles, revisited again

Topic moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles)#Years in titles, revisited again

Finally I started a new proposal at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates), with a broader scope than only "years" - please have a look, it is quite different from the "years in titles" proposal --Francis Schonken 12:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Country naming convention

There is currently a new proposal for a naming convention for articles about countries: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (countries). --bainer (talk) 00:05, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject naming

A thousand apologies if this is the wrong place for this....but what are the naming conventions for WikiProjects? That is, if I want to make a WikiProject on salt and pepper shakers, would this be WikiProject:Salt and Pepper Shakers, or WikiProject:Salt and pepper shakers? Thanks, PKirlin 05:50, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

First, WikiProjects are completely internal so even if there are specific guidelines for WikiProjects (and I can't find any) I don't think anyone will be too worked up about them (i.e. relax). Lacking specific guidelines, I'd say general naming conventions should apply, so according to Wikipedia:WikiProject the name should be Wikipedia:WikiProject Salt and pepper shakers. This convention is not consistently followed by existing WikiProjects; note, in particular, that the "P" in WikiProject is sometimes not capitalized. Special:Allpages can be used to view all existing names, specifically see WikiProjects and Wikiprojects. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:56, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Ethnic groups by country categories

A naming convention proposal for ethnic groups by country categories has been made at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#Ethnic groups by country categories. Kurieeto 21:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)


Naming of Countries' relations

There are many articles about countries' relations, but with great differences between their titles:

The only stable format that is used is with relations with the United Nations (see Category:United Nations relations)

Anyway there should be a naming convention about these kind of articles. CG 17:57, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Ethno-cultural labels in biographies

I have put a proposal for the Naming convention into the Wikipedia:Naming conventions/Ethno-cultural labels in biographies. Despite a weird name it is dealing with a persistent problem, arising then editing biographies of people from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. I think the problem is universal, but I would especially like to see the feedback from the people of different cultural backgrounds. abakharev 02:05, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Naming convention for roads?

It might be over-engineered to have a separate NC page for this, but as a number of separated renaming debates have sprung up over roads/highways/routes, some degree of centralised discussion might be useful. Specifically, there's much inconsistency over "highways" vs. "routes" in the US (from state to state, and permanent to stub category, etc), and capitalisation; e.g. Category:California County Route stubs vs Category:Washington state highway stubs, etc, etc. This'd potentially affect both articles (e.g., List of California State Routes), as well as categories, so a single discussion at, say, CFD isn't ideal. Alai 09:03, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Cyrillic in Wikipedia

Please see the new page at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic), aimed at

  1. Documenting the use of Cyrillic and its transliteration in Wikipedia
  2. Discussing potential revision of current practices

—Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:49 Z

Continents, subregions, and Template:Region

Hello! I'm in the process of enhancing many of the articles and ancillaries specifically dealing with continents and their subregions; I'm finding much of the content, definitions, or organisation lacking and often POV. This includes the addition of basic data tables for countries in the six (popularly-known) populated continents/regions in their respective articles (see here for Europe, for example). To preclude any ambiguity, countries are being categorised according to UN regional classifications; in instances of transcontinental territories, I am adding notes and indicating rationale to ensure the same data for such regions (e.g., Russia) is not duplicated.

As well, to rectify the apparent imbalance in the categorising of various continents and subregions in the 'Regions' template (e.g., Europe/Asia, yet Americas), I've reorganised it to consolidate Europe and Asia into Eurasia. Another way to do this is to separate out as follows:

or to separately list the four. I'm fine with either or, but a melange of the two doesn't make sense. Thoughts? Thanks! E Pluribus Anthony 12:07, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

No strong feelings here, except that user convenience, and the principle of least surprise, is at least as important as consistency (of course, in an ideal world, the two should go together...). I suspect that not many people will be looking for Eurasia or interested in its contents compared to those interested in Europe or Asia. Also, my main area of interest is the Middle East, and I would deplore its disappearance! Palmiro | Talk 21:18, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. Well, you can flip that on its head: most people on this side of the pond associate America with the USA and clearly distinguish between North and South America. I found the prior setup/template rather surprising, inconvenient, and unbalanced, so it was begging for a shake-up; I believe it's now fine. I kept the Eurasia and America/s because some of the regions are in both: e.g., Eastern Europe, Caribbean by some defs. I do not advocate for the removal of the main areas specified (like the Middle East), only for it to be ... tidier and accurately relay information. :) Merci! E Pluribus Anthony 23:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Mount, Mt., Mt and Saint, St., St

What is the preferred naming for mountains and saints? The most common version I've come across is "Mt" and "St". I prefer "Mount" and "Saint", but uniformity would be better. -- Kjkolb 08:50, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Mt and St are definitely the most common versions. Even in old-fashioned conventions, these abbreviations were written without the full stops (ie, not Mt. or St.). The expanded versions are used as regular words but not part of a name: "St Anthony", but "he is a saint"; "Mt Everest", but "mount an attack". —Michael Z. 2005-12-14 09:51 Z
I see "St." and "Mt." the most often, but "St" and "Mt" seem to have been favored in the past. This is just going off of what I've read, and my recollection, and may not be the case overall. -- Kjkolb 10:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


The traditional rule is that a common abbreviation which has the first and last letters of the word shouldn't have a full stop, for example Saint/St, Mount/Mt, Junior/Jr, Senior/Sr, Street/St, but Esquire/Esq., Professor/Prof. These days, it is more common to omit the full stops when any abbreviation is self-explanatory; examples: (etc, eg, ie, USA, UK, UN). —Michael Z. 2005-12-14 17:05 Z
Can this be adding to official policy? I suppose we should also change the names of existing articles. I notice that Mount St. Helens, Saint Agnes and Saint Louis, Missouri are incorrect. -- Kjkolb 10:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I only know about about articles about people, which takes care of the "Saints", "Juniors and Seniors", "Professors" etc... (not Mountains, etc...).

Anyway, for people the current guideline is different from these new proposals, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifiers not between brackets, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Senior and junior, and some other sections on the same page. Trying to summarize (but see the guideline page for details):

  • For junior/senior the thing is settled as ", Jr."/", Sr." additions to the pagename (except for antiquity where in certain cases it is traditionally "the Younger"/"the Elder").
  • Note that, for example, also Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II and Johann Strauss III exist.
  • For Saints, Doctors, and the like: avoid the epithet if reasonably possible, e.g. "Augustine of Hippo", but "Saint Peter"; if the epithet is used, write it in full (follows indirectly from "no unnecessary punctuation marks" recommendation, and the fact that in names of people abbreviations are always "with" punctuation mark, unlike wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms) for the non-people variant).
"names of people abbreviations are always "with" punctuation mark:" No: Mr X, St Y, etc. often have no punctuation in British English. This difference is another reason to prefer the full form. Joestynes 11:58, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Anyway, instead of these indirect deductions, I'll put it plainly in the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) guideline: no abbreviations in qualifiers. However, this doesn't cover the issue completely yet for the non-person articles, anybody an idea? --Francis Schonken 15:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

So for the "landmarks" I don't know. Apart from that, for example, churches named after Saints do *not* follow the people Naming convention (explicitly mentioned in wikipedia:Naming conventions (Western clergy)#Buildings named after people - see that link for examples).

--Francis Schonken 11:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Eponymous laws

Should all eponymous laws be lowercase or uppercase, or does it vary? -- Kjkolb 08:50, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


Currency units should start with a capital letter.

I reckon that currency units must start with a capital letter - eg: Euro not 'euro. - (Aidan Work 00:59, 18 December 2005 (UTC))

Certainly not as a unit: "I paid ten dollars". But the currency itself, a national institution, as in "the Canadian Dollar" may be considered a proper noun. —Michael Z. 2005-12-18 01:07 Z
Guardian (under "currencies") and Times (under "currencies", "euro", "dollars") style guides say lower case. —Michael Z. 2005-12-18 01:18 Z
See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Numismatics/Style#Article_titles for standard used: Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized (for example: Canadian "Loonie", but British pound sterling). This also and especially applies to the euro.
Does that help? Bjelleklang - talk 01:46, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

When making reference to the denominations themselves (eg; Euro-Cents, it should start with a capital, but not when quoting them in reference to buying & selling. That is where the difference lies. - (Aidan Work 02:31, 18 December 2005 (UTC))

Broadcast callsigns

The current guideline states that article titles for broadcast stations in countries where callsigns are used should use the callsign as the article title (good) but also says that the title should include "-TV", "-FM", etc., suffixes "when necessary" to disambiguate. Unfortunately, this rule is insufficiently specific, and recommends a practice which is simply wrong for many stations. I'd like to propose an alternative wording which I think reflects the consensus of those of us who have been working on these articles.

Radio and television stations in countries where call signs are customarily used, such as North America, should always be titled with the official call sign as assigned by that country's regulatory authority. If the official call sign has a suffix, such as "-TV" or "-LP", a redirect or disambiguation should be added for the call sign without the suffix. For stations which do not have a suffix, if disambiguation is necessary (because the official call sign conflicts with an airport code or acronym), place the type of service in parentheses; for example, "KSFO (AM)" or "KDFW (TV)". Note: all full-power Canadian FM and TV stations have a suffix; most U.S. and many Mexican stations do not. See North American call sign for more information on assignment practices.
The official call sign can be determined by checking with the FCC's Common Database System (fcc.gov), Industry Canada's Spectrum Direct (sd.ic.gc.ca), or COFETEL (cofetel.gob.mx). Be aware that many periodicals and even stations themselves do not always use correct call signs. Also be aware that not all call signs are four letters; in Mexico they often have five or six, and in all three countries they may have as few as three.

121a0012 05:37, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal amended slightly to add another warning. 121a0012 05:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • This proposal, means that at least three formats could be seen for a TV or FM station. This includes ABCD, ABCD (FM) and ABCD-FM. Kind of hard for a user to find the article without a lot of redirects. The problem only shows up if the official database does not include a qualifier like it would if the example I'm using had been listed as ABCD-FM. From some limited searching on the net and in newspapers, it seems common to have the stations listed as ABCD-FM, ABCD or ABCD FM, the content of the FCC data base does not appear to be a factor in what is used. While we normally use the correct name for an article, would this be a case where always using the -FM would make the convention clean and easy to understand without having to resort to searching a database to find the correct title and creating future dab problems? Always adding the -FM would eliminate the need to move articles when multiple uses of the unqualified call sign has several uses which the first editor may not be aware of. If you extend this to AM, you could have two articles ABCD and ABCD-FM. For an average reader this could be confusing. The experts would know that ABCD is an AM station but it is not likely that the casual reader would. Vegaswikian 06:46, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
    • A few more issues with this. TV stations can also be listed as -CA or -LP and maybe a few others. Is my understanding correct that the offical listing can be changed just by requesting a change from the FCC? If so, it makes using the official database more interesting since the station call can change and make the article title wrong. Vegaswikian 22:29, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
The callsign can always change, regardless of the presence or absence of a suffix (with a few exceptions noted below). The FCC charges all of $65 for a call sign change, and the process today is all-electronic; a station manager can go online, request a new call sign, use it for a few hours, and then get another one (or even the old one back). There are dozens of stations changing call signs every month. Often an operator will "warehouse" a call sign on an overlooked small-market station just to secure continued control after dropping it on another station. (This is particularly the case when a call sign has a heritage in a particular market; a station owner may have an interest in keeping an old call sign locked up in a far-away place rather than letting a local competitor snap it up and benefit from the goodwill associated with the old calls.)
The "-CA" and "-LP" suffixes are reserved for certain classes of station, and stations of those classes (class-A television, low-power television, and low-power FM) must use the suffix appropriate for their class. So all told, there may be:
  • KLMN (which may be an AM station, a full-power FM station, a full-power TV station, or a ship-to-shore station, and in addition may be an ICAO airport code)
  • KLMN-CA (which may only be a class-A TV station)
  • KLMN-FM (which may only be a full-power FM station)
  • KLMN-LP (which may be either a low-power FM station or a low-power TV station, but not both)
  • KLMN-TV (which may only be a full-power TV station)
all of which may be under separate ownership and located anywhere west of the Mississippi. There should always be a page at KLMN, either a redirect or a real article (which might be a disambiguation page), to maintain POLA for users unfamiliar with the intricacies of the system (like newspaper reporters or radio program directors).
I don't believe redirects are a problem, since you can swap a page and its redirect. There's no reason ever to edit a redirect from WXXX-FM to WXXX (FM) or vice versa, so if the station adds or drops a suffix it's a trivial move; Wiki is not paper. The difficult case, as you noted in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Radio Stations, is when call signs change in non-trivial ways, such as your situation in Las Vegas where KJUL went away, the call was picked up by an unbuilt AM station nine days later, then after three weeks, the owner of the AM permit swapped call signs with a different Vegas FM, and finally the AM went back to its original call sign, KBET, after twelve days as KWLY.
If MediaWiki provided a way to do it, the best thing to do (for US stations) would be to use the station's FCC Facility ID Number (FIN). FINs uniquely identify every station in the US, and are immutable. This is what I do on my own Web site: articles about stations are named by the FIN, and indexes are made by cross-referencing this to the FCC call sign database. If there were wikicode for "override displayed article title" then this would be reasonable. 121a0012 06:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Literary works and subtitles

Is there an accepted convention for dealing with subtitles in literary works, or is it at the editor's discretion? For instance, if I were to create an article on the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, should I name the article Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln with a redirect from Team of Rivals, or vice versa? --Muchness 15:55, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there is a rule (although there might be one somewhere in MoS) - I suppose generally the article title is without the subtitle, although sometimes for "short" titles, the subtitle might be added for disambiguation purposes. Some examples:
(side note: for subtitles one would invariably end up with capitalisation problems, e.g. why Orlando: A Biography and not Orlando: a Biography? Why A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day and not A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day or A History of Western Philosophy and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day? - the number of redirect pages with capitalisation variations would be near endless and/or one would need instruction-creep type of rules for fixing subtitle capitalisation).
--Francis Schonken 18:10, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, that clears up the issue. --Muchness 03:25, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

American Civil War Battles

The North and South called many of the battles of the American Civil War by different names (see Naming the American Civil War). Some sort of guideline should be established to determine the proper names for pages on these battles. I propose some combination of the following criteria, in order of precedence:

  1. The National Parks Service's prefered name
  2. Most common name in contemporary history writing
  3. Local name for the battle
  4. The preference of the victor in the particular battle--Bkwillwm 05:28, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the place to discuss this is Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Military history --Philip Baird Shearer 21:31, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Adverbs

Perhaps I'm missing it on the project page but are nouns preferred over adverbs? For example, is transpositional equivalency okay or should it be transpositional equivalence? Hyacinth 12:43, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that neither equivalency nor equivalence is an adverb; they're both nouns. It's probably best to go with the phrase that's most common. If that can't be determined, my personal preference would be to go with the shorter term: equivalence. Indefatigable 21:26, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

re-proposing Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)

This is mentioned on wikipedia:naming conventions for some time, and was mentioned on other pages, like wikipedia:current surveys, before. In the mean while several suggestions were incorporated, and others answered at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (numbers and dates).

So, proposing the updated Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates), to be accepted as guideline in a week or so - unless there are still fundamental alterations required.

Note that this guideline proposal absorbs wikipedia:naming conventions (years in titles) (which would become a redirect). Also this is about the last wikipedia:naming conventions topic that doesn't have a "naming conventions" guideline yet, separate from the more general MoS, which doesn't discuss many "page naming" specifics. --Francis Schonken 21:35, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

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