WikiIndex talk:Naming conventions

Choosing a name

If wiki uses various names

• What if the home link has one name and a different name appears in the welcome message?
  • Personally I think we should link to the home link, but it may be a judgement call, SpookyWiki seemed pretty straight forward to me. That text could change anytime, but the FrontPage is always the same, unless there is a code change. MarkDilley
    • I agree TedErnst
    • Yes, and I'd go with what makes for a more "specific" name if it's a toss up --Ray 23:42, 22 Jan 2006 (EST)

If no name apparent

• What if there is no name?
  • AnUnnamedMoinMoinWiki is a problematic name. See also: http://dunck.us/collab/FrontPage
    • We could use the url instead. TedErnst | talk 11:44, 30 Jan 2006 (EST)
    • I agree, and in my humble opinion, some wiki's are not worth having in the system and can be deleted. Of course we have to be a bit careful because sometimes an active wiki is offline for a short period of time, but there are a lot of wiki's that were no more than short lived experiments which are junking up our wiki. --Raymond King | talk 14:37, 30 Jan 2006 (EST)

CamelCase?

All the exampleas are CamelCase, but it is not needed in MediaWiki. Is there a policy of using CamelCase for preference? robinp 14:14, 7 Feb 2006 (EST)

If a wiki doesn't use CamelCase in it's name, do we name their page here using Camel Case? If so, why? And what about the name of the wiki in the template? Is that always the same as the pagename or can it be different? Are their two different conventions? If not, can't we just code that in the template and lose that field? If they are different, we ought to define how so. TedErnst | talk 23:02, 27 Feb 2006 (EST)

As far as I understand the small discussion here at WikiIndex, I think that the WikiIndex page name should be like the name of the wiki. The name in the template is something that I have always made the same as the page name, which is the same as the Wiki. Triple redundancy baby!  :-) Just like the categories! Could we code it? Not I, you? :-) (if so, can you map the logo_url to the wiki_url?) MarkDilley

I can take a shot at coding that. Where's that list of codes? I can't find it anywhere. It had tons of triple curly brackets on it. TedErnst | talk 10:11, 2 Mar 2006 (EST)

found it: Magic Words TedErnst | talk 12:51, 2 Mar 2006 (EST)

I've done it! Template talk:Wiki has the discussion TedErnst | talk 13:06, 2 Mar 2006 (EST)

Also, it's not clear to me what our convention is. It seems we're using CamelCase most of the time, even when the wiki in question doesn't use CamelCase. I don't understand what our convention is. I bring this up not because I care that much, but because you (Mark) pointed out an inconsistency in my work. I'm not even sure I see the inconsistency, but it's something important to you, so let's document how it should be. TedErnst | talk 10:11, 2 Mar 2006 (EST)

more camel case and case sensitivity

Moved from Talk: Guidelines

Could we avoid using CamelCase here? You don't need it in MediaWiki to make links, it looks unintuitive for a newcomer, and many people (including me) find it ugly. Also, people create duplicate pages more easier, when they use CamelCase. They may create an article about WikTionary, and another about WiktioNary etc.

I think that we should capitalize the article titles similarly as Wikipedia does. We should rather write some article than some article or Some Article. The latter form is either hard to link or a mispelling in the text. Several proper nouns like the names of wikis would be an exception to this. We should simply look how they spell their community's name in their wiki, and use that form. Tristram Shandy 09:41, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Ouch, I didn't notice that the wiki automatically capitalizes all words. This is wrong and should be changed. We are going to have articles about wikis that are in other languages than English. And not all languages use this sort of universal capitalization in titles. Examples of such languages: Finnish, Swedish, Russian, Estonian. You are bound to misspell the names of several wikis in these languages if you use universal capitalization. Tristram Shandy 11:26, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Case-sensitivity of the first character

This idea has its drawbacks, but I still support it: the wiki software shouldn't change the page title to start with a capital letter. Then we could spell the names of wikis as their community wants. Notice that the articles that have a common noun as their title wouldn't have it capitalized (like "some article"). But we could make capitalized redirects to them (like "Some article" ­→ "some article"). Non-capitalized common nouns simply occur more often than capitalized, because there can be a capitalized common nouns only in the beginning of the sentence, in a bulleted list, and probably also in some other special contexts that I don't remember now.

The drawback is that this kind of titles likely annoy some people. But also the current practise is going to annoy someone. People in Wikipedia regularly complain how they have article titles like EBay. Case-sensitivity of the first character was turned on in English Wiktionary, so this approach isn't something completely new.

If the first character case sensitivity is turned on, we should still decide how to capitalize the pages outside the article namespace. Would it be "Category:Wiki" or "Cateogyry:wiki"? They use the form Category:Wiki in the English Wiktionary. If we used form "Category:Wiki", would there be "Category:Wiki guides" or "Category:Wiki Guides" then? I think that the "Category:Wiki guides" is better because it is similar to "some article" compared to "Some Article". Tristram Shandy 09:41, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

I created a table to present and clarify my ideas. Tristram Shandy 11:26, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Article title	What it looks like
Common noun	article
Proper noun	How it is properly spelled: Wikipedia
Several words	example article; comparison to Wikipedia
Category title	What it looks like
Common noun	Category:Maintainance
Proper noun	Category:WikiIndex
Several words	Category:Helping WikiIndex; Category:Guides for editors

Naming guidelines discussion can move to CamelCase or Free links or both - I lost in an edit conflict what I had wrote here about the subject, will get back to it later, Best MarkDilley

CamelCase (with some mention of other capitals and of spacing)

Page names for articles about specific wikis

Well, since this is a wiki about wikis, the article names for those wikis should reflect the actual name of the wiki. Many wikis have CamelCase names and I believe we should stick with them in that case. For wikis with free link names, we ought to use exactly the form they use, including spaces and capitalization. That's my thought, anyway. TedErnst 17:05, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Yes that is the standard for wiki name pages but Tristram brings up good point regarding internal links within the wiki. - MarkDilley

I'm talking about internally. We can debate about pagenames for pages that aren't referring to wikis. I just wanted to talk about the most important pages, those for the actual wikis. TedErnst 17:10, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

I meant that you have an article about MeatballWiki in MeatballWiki because the wiki is called MeatballWiki. Sorry if I didn't say it clearly enough. Tristram Shandy 17:19, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

For Meatball, there's no debate, I think. If it were called Meatball Wiki, then our page would be Meatball Wiki. It's clear, yes? (See below next heading for this next pair of sentences repeated with responses:) But what about guidelines and other meta pages? Are we using namespaces for them? Are we using camel case or something else? TedErnst 17:34, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

I agree absolutely - Wiki names (in text and in their own page name) as the wikis call themselves (as far as we can). Example of what not to do: if we got a wiki that managed to get away with calling itself Micro Soft we'd be in trouble calling it MicroSoft! robinp 00:32, 7 Mar 2006 (EST)

(See below next heading for this next contribution - dated earlier than 7 March - repeated with responses:) Trying to clarify, we are currently using both CamelCase and Free Links for our internal wiki page names. This is because:

• We have not decided one way or the other about what a standard would be.
• Because I think it is important to be open to the way people use wiki, not to clamp down on any side. MarkDilley

Other pages

[First a copy of the above paragraphs that seem to be wholly or partly dealing with this subject]

For Meatball, there's no debate, I think. If it were called Meatball Wiki, then our page would be Meatball Wiki. It's clear, yes? But what about guidelines and other meta pages? Are we using namespaces for them? Are we using camel case or something else? TedErnst 17:34, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Trying to clarify, we are currently using both CamelCase and Free Links for our internal wiki page names. This is because:

• We have not decided one way or the other about what a standard would be.
• Because I think it is important to be open to the way people use wiki, not to clamp down on any side. MarkDilley

With utmost respect, Mark, you don't "clarify" 100% if you use an expression such as "internal wiki page names" when we have just been discussing how to write the names of wikis in our pages here. So I've duplicated your comments. In this section we are talking about page names in WikiIndex other than proper nouns (which term includes Wiki names). robinp 00:32, 7 Mar 2006 (EST)

I get the impression from the above that Ted definitely favours the Wikipedia style (sentence case, ie only the first letter capitalised except for proper nouns), as I do, and that Mark doesn't mind and doesn't want to make rules about it.

• I actually prefer CamelCase for internal work, but felt it too hard to argue for it in a "WikipediaWorld." I prefer CamelCase based on my prefered way to show internal links and a good way to help people understand wiki. MarkDilley | talk

I don't mind CamelCase, and in fact, notwithstanding my comments below wishing for a standard, I'm fine with every meta page having a CamelCase redirect. Or redirecting the other way, if that's what we decide. Add a Wiki is the worst of both worlds. I'd prefer Add a wiki or AddAWiki (which brings up the question of the word "a", is it to be capitalized in CamelCase? This is complication I'd rather avoid. TedErnst | talk 11:01, 7 Mar 2006 (EST)

I respect Mark's "open" approach. However, I recommend that we encourage sentence case. Reasons:

• If anyone's "allowed" to capitalise whatever word they think is important, we run a risk of much timewasting from the enthusiastic independent creation of pages such as Help:How to edit images, Help:How to edit Images, Help:How to Edit Images, and Help:How To Edit Images, each of which could attract later contributors and be a near-hopeless job to merge when someone twigged. (The permutations of various CamelCase options additional to those do not bear thinking about.)
• I'm guessing but confident that eventually most of the contributors who start here will be familiar with Wikipedia style and use it without thinking. Therefore a lot of page names will use sentence case whatever our guidelines say (because not everybody reads the guidelines; some because the idea that different wikis have different guidelines would not have occurred to them). So the easiest route to eventual consistency is to recommend Wikipedia styles.

robinp 00:32, 7 Mar 2006 (EST)

I definitely agree with this. I believe it would be an important contribution for someone to move all of our existing meta pages to these sentence-case page names. I've been creating redirects lately, from alternative capitalization versions of meta pages, which can certainly be changed to point to whatever the standard is. Having a standard really helps me remember how to link to a page. TedErnst | talk 10:57, 7 Mar 2006 (EST)

removed from page

I removed this: We name the pages with upper and lower case characters, capitalising each word because I think that we name the page as exact as it is possible to do so. One of the advatages I see to FreeLinking MarkDilley | talk

I totally agree. TedErnst | talk 15:43, 8 Mar 2006 (EST)

Naming Wikimedia wikis

I think that the present guidelines present a problem with naming articles for Wikimedia wikis and any similar wikis. http://wikipedia.org, for example, is just a gateway to wikipedias in over 120 languages. The Wikipedia article should be a general overview of those Wikipedias. I think there should also be WikiIndex articles on at least the Top 10 or Top 20 Wikipedias. For this to happen, the article names should probably be the Wiki's URL (minus http://), so the article for the English-language Wikipedia would be at en.wikipedia.org, the Japanese-languages WIkipedia would be at ja.wikipedia.org, etc. BlankVerse 05:23, 16 Mar 2006 (EST)

I agree with you that the Wikipedia page needs to be an overview, or a disambiguation page of some sort. No one's gotten to doing that yet. Want to get it started? Another alternative to naming the languages would be Wikipedia (English), Wikipedia (Japanese), etc. TedErnst | talk 12:19, 16 Mar 2006 (EST)

I just found Simple English Wikipedia. That would be a 3rd option for naming convetions. English Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia etc. TedErnst | talk 13:42, 16 Mar 2006 (EST)