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Archive 5 | ← | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 |
In the section /Archive 11#The most common name versus the canonical name above [now archived], and again in section /Archive 11#What we've all been overlooking (I think), I offered an argument, and evidence, that in situations where a canonical name is available, Wikipedians will often use it, without giving much thought to what is the most common name. Therefore, I argued, this policy page, which is supposed to be descriptive not prescriptive, places way too much emphasis on the "use the most common name / use the most easily recognised name" clause, improperly raising it to the status of an overarching principle, whereas it is in fact just one of many competing priorities. My argument may be summarised by the following quote:
All over Wikipedia, people are adopting canonical names where they exist. They use gazetted geographic names; they use standardised common names; they use the official names of medical conditions, astronomical bodies and chemical compounds; they use the exact titles of books, films, albums and songs; they use the registered names of companies; they use the registered names of ships and trains; and so on. In many cases they don't give a second's thought to what is the most common name; they simply follow the canonical nomenclature of whatever field they are working in. This is what they do whether this policy page says so or not. This proposal is about making this policy page an accurate description of what people are actually doing.
Progress was made towards resolving this, but this can to a sudden end with the appearance of a couple of editors who wish this policy to be prescriptive. Thus this policy remains an inaccurate description of the modus operandi of editors. I have therefore marked the policy as disputed. Hesperian 02:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
To return to the point at hand, in the hope that Born2cycle will not have succeeded in hijacking this thread, the problem is that
This naming convention places way too much emphasis on the "use the most common name / use the most easily recognised name" clause, improperly raising it to the status of an overarching principle, whereas it is in fact just one of many competing priorities.
Hesperian 05:44, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
There seems to me to already be quite a lot of mention of other priorities than the "common name" rule. My impression is that in most areas of the encyclopedia, the common name principle holds powerful sway among editors, so we are right to emphasize it, though things could certainly be expressed more clearly. Can someone make a specific proposal as to how they would change the wording of the page?-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
I think "encyclopedic" is circular; the whole point of this process is to identify the most encyclopedic name, so that clause is essentially saying "the most encyclopedia name will be encyclopedic": pointless. I hinted as much in my reply to Una, but it has crystalised for me now. Yes, in hindsight I agree that it isn't really chronological.
Based on this discussion, I would be looking for this policy to be structured as something like this:
Hesperian 12:55, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
The Venus de Milo is a prime example of why we should be exceedingly cautious in reviewing names for "accuracy" and "bias". The name of a thing is what it is called, and this statue has been called that since it was found; this is where readers will expect it to be.
But it was found before the independence of Greece. The goddess was then normally called Venus, not Aphrodite, as she would be now; the island was under Turkish rule in 1820, and was (for historical reasons) known by its Italian name Milo, not by its ancient and modern name Melos (also the heavily Demoticized Milos) . Putting those names together would lead us to call the statue Aphrodite of Melos; but very few writers actually do, and it is a sure way to confuse the reader who has heard something about the statue - and is therefore looking it up-, but not much - and will therefore benefit from our article.
A more serious example is the Macedonian snakepit. Greek editors sincerely claim that the only neutral term for the modern country is FYROM or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; the advocates of the Republic equally sincerely claim that the only neutral name for that country is Macedonia. Each then wails about the disadvantaged population of their nationals which is being insulted (in the Greek case, the population of the province of Macedonia (Greece)). We could go back and forth between them all day; but instead we get off the road, and its incompatible claims of legitimacy, by asking what English does.
Changing the question like this at least provides us a holding ground, while the international controversy rages. It doesn't always work, but opening the door to claims of bias would render these insoluble, even in the short term. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
But this page does in fact fairly well represent what Wikipedia does, and while there are dissentients, they are usually a loud minority, which we are just as well overruling; that's my experience from WP:RM. Claims of NPOV violations in proper names are usually nationalist vaporing for some foreign spelling of a name which is differently spelled in English. (See Talk:Novak Djokovic for an extreme example of this, where the name is uniformly spelled without diacritics in English; he's even nicknamed the Djoker.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
I turned thoughtful over the usage of obsolete ethnonyms, such as Zyrians as applied previously to Komi peoples, Voguls to Mansi or Khakas, formerly Abakan Tatars. The issue of Armenian–Tatar massacres 1905-1907 have recently exposed problems over the relevant naming convention. Various hints, including WP:NCON and WP:PRECISION, have been put forward, but none ultimately succeeded. The matter is in the impass so far as the summary of viewpoints, supporting the move to modern ethnonym, have been cast aside again. I propose an addition to the general naming convention or to Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Dealing_with_historical_contexts, restricting the usage of obsolete and misleading ethnonyms in the article titles only to unique names, such as book/film headings. Brand спойт 13:03, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
The above assertions made by Parishan are misleading at best. You cannot retroactively apply a modern ethnonym to a group as diverse as Caucasian Tatars for various reasons. While the bulk of Tatars eventually formed the modern Azeri nation of Azerbaijan under Russian rule, care must be taken to distinguish between the former and the latter. Up until the late 19th century the only thing binding them in one group was religion, there was no sense of ethnic kinship or solidarity. Second of all, many non-Turkic Muslim people were included under the umbrella of Caucasian Tatars (including Kurds, Caucasians speakers, other Iranian speakers etc.).-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 15:45, 22 February 2009 (UTC) Wikipedia is not supposed to process the information but present it as is. Perhaps Meowy's comparison was not complete but should suffice here. Your comparison is inadequate and this was already explained to you a countless number of times; Eskimos are Inuits, just as much as Hays are Armenians. In what regards the Azeri, they are a Turkic speaking people, some Turkic people became Azeri, others Turks etc. You on the other hand have been going back in the Turkic culture tree and calling those people Azeri, when they are the ancestors of different cultures that are still alive. It was also documented that Tatar also referred to Muslims in general in the region and not only Turkic speaking people. To go there and rename things amounts to processing information. I don't know in what other way this can be said to you when multiple sources have been provided already. - Fedayee ( talk) 18:43, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I have put back the word Convention:. It is important to distinguish between the naming conventions and the guidelines to the conventions. My preferred solution is to rename this page but last time it was suggested there was no consensus for such a change.
I have moved the following addtion from the section Lowercase second and subsequent words in titles to here for further discussion:
A notable exception is books, films and other works, which are written in title case. The specific title case convention adopted is to capitalise all words except for articles ("a", "an", "the"), the word "to" as part of an infinitive, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions shorter than five letters (e.g., "on", "from", "and", "with"), unless they begin or end a title or subtitle. For example: A New Kind of Science, To Be or Not to Be.
Is this correct and is it needed in the policy or is it better off in a guideline? -- PBS ( talk) 12:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
This stuff should be sorted out at the capitalisation convention. Once it is sorted out there, all we need to discuss here is to what extent it needs to be articulated here. Hesperian 23:23, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I have put back the word Convention again: It is important to distinguish between the naming conventions and the guidelines to the conventions. -- PBS ( talk) 12:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Okay, it looks like the cat is out of the bag anyhow, so here it is. Following on from the #Disputed section above, I have drafted a proposed rewrite; enter via Wikipedia:Naming conventions/Proposal. As far as I'm concerned only the basic premise is fixed—that a range of encyclopedic values are brought to bear in naming articles, and editors can be trusted to balance those values appropriately. As long as that premise remains immutable I am happy to see the prose rewritten from the ground up. Hesperian 23:21, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I have made lots of little changes in response to your comments. [3] Can I again urge you to be bold if you can be bothered.
At present my main discomfort is around neutrality; I can't quite put my finger on what the problem is, and Septentrionalis' comments about it above don't pin it down for me either. I guess my concern is that NPOV is a "cornerstone of Wikipedia", and is supposed to be non-negotiable; yet we routinely use biased article titles simply because we have no other reasonable choice. An example is the Battle of Pinjarra. "Battle of Pinjarra" has always been its name, and is still its name to most people; but in the last decade or so, a small (but not fringe) minority have strenuously objected to the event being called a "battle", and instead promoted the name "Pinjarra massacre", which really is biased. Given the available names, the only possible choice is the most-accessible least-biased name "Battle of Pinjarra". I reckon nearly everyone who fully understood the context would come to the same decision. Yet the fact remains that the name is not entirely neutral. How do we document this so that our policy does not contradict WP:NPOV?
Hesperian 11:56, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
In accordance with MOS:CAPS and the most widespread use as shown by most UK dictionaries ( Cambridge, Oxford, Collins, Longman), the word "act" is best spelled lowercase when it's a common noun and not referring to a specific act. We might want to add a note that the UK Parliament (and other legislatures and many members of the legal profession) often do not follow this most widespread usage recorded by dictionaries and instead often uppercase "act" (and other terms) even when used as a common noun. -- Espoo ( talk) 10:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
Why does this page have the force of official policy? It is merely part of the Manual of Style and should be downgraded to a guideline. SpinningSpark 10:19, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Questions like this have often been debated before. An answer to a similar question see: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions/Archive 11#Discussion
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Poland/Conventions a proposed new guideline. -- PBS ( talk) 18:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
I think we need to address the changing of television and radio channels, as I cannot find anything on this page addressing this specific topic. To explain, I'm referring to when a channel stops being known by a specific names and starts being known as a new one. Should a page be titled after the new name, or should the page reflect an historical standpoint and make note that the channel is still the same it's just being referred to by a different name now? When Fox Kids started going by "Fox Box", should the article have changed names even those "Fox Box" only lasted a short time before it was canceled for a completely new, and separate channel owned by someone else? Is Spike TV distinct from TNN that TNN should have remained its own page; Spike TV's page be TNN's page since it's been around for over 6 years? Where should we say, ok, this warrants a new page name and this doesn't? BIGNOLE (Contact me) 23:43, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Is there a policy that says how similar article titles can get before they have to formally disambiguate themselves using parentheses?
The example I'm considering here is:
|
|
The difference between an open, hyphenated, and closed compound are relatively insignificant, almost on the order of British- and American-English variants of words. Is there anywhere that formally says that article names are confusingly similar once they get this close linguistically (and thus are required to use parenthesized disambiguation)? -- Underpants 14:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Is there an active naming convention for churches (or possibly other places of worship too)? For example, there seems to be some inconsistency over whether to use "St X's Church" or "Church of St X". Whilst most articles seem to use the former, we have for example in my local area one article at Church of SS Peter & Paul, Aston but various others at St Augustine's Church, Edgbaston, St Edburgha's Church, Yardley, &c. It seems even more confusing where one article is currently occupying a very common page title, as with Church of Saint George which forces all others out to a disambig page at St George's Church. Any thoughts? DWaterson ( talk) 22:55, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
The guide currently says:
However, although this makes sense, it doesn't seem to accord to actual practice, which almost always uses "(song)" for disambiguating instrumentals: Telstar (song), Apache (The Shadows song), etc. Is there really a consensus for using "(instrumental)", and if so, why is it largely ignored? -- Zundark ( talk) 11:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
I would not change the guide and encourage the actual practice itself to change. We aren't here to change the definition of the word "song" for convenience's sake.-- Ultimaking ( talk) 19:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I noticed some inconsistency regarding the naming of historic states named after towns which later changed their name. For instance, historic states in the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea named after towns use the historic name of the town, like the Duchy of Neopatria, the marquisate of Bodonitsa, the lordship of Negroponte, the empire of Trebizond, the empire of Nicaea or the duchy of Philippopolis. The duchies of Silesia however use mostly the current names of the cities, which weren't used when these duchies existed. Is there a naming convention for such cases? Thanks a lot. Karasek ( talk) 08:52, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
The grammatical niceties of the usage of capital letters in the names of sublists has arisen at a couple of Featured List Candidate discussions recently, so I'd invite people to discuss the issue at the above link. Thanks, Bencherlite Talk 00:26, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
The second sentence of the convention "Be precise when necessary" currently says: "If all possible titles have multiple meanings, go with the rule of thumb of naming conventions and use common names of persons and things."
It's a bit more complex than that, though, isn't it? This kind of implies that precision trumps commonness, which I don't think is the intention. In practice I think we would often prefer an ambiguous name, even if it means adding a disambiguating tag to it, over an unambiguous but less common alternative. For example, Mercury (element) over "Quicksilver" (this would still hold even if quicksilver had no other meanings).-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I too believe that Wikipedia has taken a very imprecise direction if it were to follow other English speaking publications, to the cost of a fresh report from the field and from the majority of people living in a certain country!
I think that in doing so, Wikipedia loses touch with present time reality! And fails to represent the majority! And Wiki was founded on peoples reports and articles that represent the majority of reality! Chosing suddenly not to follow upon those reports, blocks Wiki from adopting the semi liquid state of reality that changes in every day changes in the world.
For instance. Why should Wiki neglect the way people in a country name their cities, mountains, rivers, towns etc? Theres a problem of how those names on those countries have been named earlier on, on old publications, or even non properly studied, by not going on the field and capturing a reality today - publications, and Wiki just follows those other English speaking publications, EVEN when there are reports now, and today, that there are those inaccuracies of names, from people living there constantly, even now as you read this!
I propose that the majority of people living on the country must have a say on how their mountains, rivers, lakes, cities are called, and respect their way of naming it, so as they too would be represented into Wiki and not be left neglected!
Otherwise, Wikipedia loses touch with reality of how the majority of people that get to see, touch, hear and taste those places on that country! And I think if we are to add the whole world here, the majority of people's reports in any country shouldnt be neglected at any cost!
DiedonD ( talk) 08:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Most if not all the names I see associated with this church all start with Mar, which is basically the Assyrian equivalent of "Saint". Would it be appropriate for the articles to be titled "Mar (X)" or not? John Carter ( talk) 15:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Which takes precendence? Why? The conflict should be resolved, or at least documented with usual procedure for dealing with it (precedence rules, etc.) Thanks. Zodon ( talk) 08:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I reverted the changes to "Use common names of persons and things" for two reasons.
The first is that the new wording seems to me to indicate a disagreement over the use of "conflict" in the paragraph. Changing "use the naming conflict guideline when there is a conflict." to "Use the naming conflict guideline when there is disagreement over the right name to use" is a different reading of the word conflict it can be read to be a disagreement over the name by two or more editors --the first meaning of conflict in the OED- but the OED has a another meaning "3 fig. Of interests, opinions, statements, feelings, etc.: To come into collision, to clash; to be at variance, be incompatible." IE one can not use the name because it comes into collision with another name, as it is not possible for them both to share the same name, eg orange the fruit and orange the colour, then they are in conflict.
The second is there is a naming conventions guideline to deal with this called Wikipedia:Naming conflict, it is not necessary to suggest looking at the semi detached guideline Wikipedia:Disambiguation in this section, as that is not the only solution available the very next section in the naming conventions policy also helps to resolve the issue ( be precise when necessary).
A SPA has just made major changes and also a rename to an all-caps version of the name, mimicking the "official website", at PEAK 2 PEAK Gondola (see Talk:PEAK_2_PEAK_Gondola#Massive_changes_and_name-change_by_SPA) and also throughout the article substituted the all-caps version of the name. Are brand-names acceptable this way? Noting, as an aside, that in non-"official" copy, e.g. local newspapers, the all-caps version is not (so far as I know) in use. Skookum1 ( talk) 01:51, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Should it be 2009 H1N1 outbreak or 2009 swine flu outbreak? See Talk:2009 swine flu outbreak. MOS:MED conflicts with WP:COMMONNAME in this regard. Dabomb87 ( talk) 03:06, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for slightly convoluted title!
There is an AfD currently underway for Samantha Orobator. As part of that discussion there have been some suggestions to rename to something like Case of Samantha Orobator. I'm a bit undecided as to what the correct naming should be. On the one hand, the article is not a biography as such, in that it is specifically about a person in relation to a specific event. On the other hand, most people searching would probably just look for the name of the person.
In terms of other articles, I note that for Madeleine McCann, the article is called Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, with redirects to that page.
I was just wondering if there was a consensus for how to approach this type of situation. Quantpole ( talk) 12:43, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
It's not that clear if the / symbol is allowed. Please see my comments at Talk:Good_cop/bad_cop#Name.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:12, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
A related issue is # in the name, which does seem to be a problem. See Talk:Bam Margera Presents: Where the#Name. Any advice welcome, and perhaps WP:NC#Special characters needs some expaansion. Andrewa ( talk) 09:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Copied from Talk:Good cop/bad cop#Name
I think this article should be renamed to remove the / symbol from the name. See Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Avoid_non-alphanumeric_characters_used_only_for_emphasis and Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Subpages.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Copied from Talk:Bam Margera Presents: Where the#Name
Wikipedia:NC#Special_characters doesn't mention # but it should. Unfortunately, # is used to identify anchors within the page, that's the problem here. Unsure what the best solution is here, but it's not RM. I'll pursue further, the request is not lost! Andrewa ( talk) 09:39, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
I've made the problems with the use of the special characters more explicit in the Naming Convention.
At the moment the advise given at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Characters totally forbidden in page titles is "However, it may be necessary to spell out the character (e.g. Gtk Sharp instead of Gtk#) or use another substitute" we could add to that "like '♯' for of '#'" Should we add Zundark idea? It seems to me that it may cause more problems than it solves as most people will not have access to ♯ on their keyboard when entering searches in search engines (and would probably not notice the difference unless it was pointed out to them), but after brief check with Google, Google seems to substitute one for the other as it does with many other similar characters (Could someone please verify this?). What do others think? -- PBS ( talk) 15:34, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Aervanath are subpages also disabled from article talk pages? Should we mention in the naming convention that "/" in a name is depreciated unless reliable sources also use "/" in a name. -- PBS ( talk) 15:34, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
What's the preferred way of dealing with this? Currently there's a debate at the Talk:Gay icon page over naming of gay icon-related articles. At present, we have two ways of naming these articles (eg: Madonna as gay icon and Judy Garland as a gay icon), and no one seems to be able to agree or state definitively which should be preferred and why. Exploding Boy ( talk) 21:41, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Currently Ducati redirects to Ducati Motor Holding. Ducati is by far more in compliance with easily most recognized name and use the most common name than is Ducati Motor Holding, and I see nothing at WP:NCCORP that indicates WP:NC policy should be overridden here. The current name seems like an obvious case of unnecessary precision to me. Since Ducati already redirects to the article, there is no ambiguity issue.
As this is potentially controversial, I'm inclined to make a formal WP:RM request, but thought I would do a quick sanity check her in case I'm missing something with respect to company names. Am I? Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
It is English style to name things simply. This reads great (which was Strunk or White's original idea), but I fear often leads to articles with "interesting" titles but are intrinsically pov. Let me take cases that may seem amusing: "French kissing" implies something the French do or know or originate. There is a built-in implication that the French are better at, well something, anyway. I agree that it is simple and interesting.
Another example is "Spanish flu" or "Asian flu." While there may have been health vectors from those places, history has often named diseases after countries or places they didn't like or were even enemies (e.g "German" measles, "French pox").
My point in all this is that there are simple, one word (maybe two or so) subjects that can only be named one way: France, arithmetic, Bill Clinton, etc.
There are larger classes that get us into trouble. I propose inserting the general topic first, the specific target second. So in my joke example above (I'm not really seriously considering doing this, just for example only), the title would be "Kissing by French people", "Flu vectored from Asia". We have had many articles, which I don't want to list here to avoid spilling over boundaries, that would have been easily solved by using these guidelines for titles. These also, BTW, imply the possibility of other articles which the original titles didn't do. Do Swedes kiss? Did a flu bug ever originate in the US? (written before reading subsection above on swine flu BTW).
Unstylistic, but npov. Student7 ( talk) 18:29, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 |
In the section /Archive 11#The most common name versus the canonical name above [now archived], and again in section /Archive 11#What we've all been overlooking (I think), I offered an argument, and evidence, that in situations where a canonical name is available, Wikipedians will often use it, without giving much thought to what is the most common name. Therefore, I argued, this policy page, which is supposed to be descriptive not prescriptive, places way too much emphasis on the "use the most common name / use the most easily recognised name" clause, improperly raising it to the status of an overarching principle, whereas it is in fact just one of many competing priorities. My argument may be summarised by the following quote:
All over Wikipedia, people are adopting canonical names where they exist. They use gazetted geographic names; they use standardised common names; they use the official names of medical conditions, astronomical bodies and chemical compounds; they use the exact titles of books, films, albums and songs; they use the registered names of companies; they use the registered names of ships and trains; and so on. In many cases they don't give a second's thought to what is the most common name; they simply follow the canonical nomenclature of whatever field they are working in. This is what they do whether this policy page says so or not. This proposal is about making this policy page an accurate description of what people are actually doing.
Progress was made towards resolving this, but this can to a sudden end with the appearance of a couple of editors who wish this policy to be prescriptive. Thus this policy remains an inaccurate description of the modus operandi of editors. I have therefore marked the policy as disputed. Hesperian 02:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
To return to the point at hand, in the hope that Born2cycle will not have succeeded in hijacking this thread, the problem is that
This naming convention places way too much emphasis on the "use the most common name / use the most easily recognised name" clause, improperly raising it to the status of an overarching principle, whereas it is in fact just one of many competing priorities.
Hesperian 05:44, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
There seems to me to already be quite a lot of mention of other priorities than the "common name" rule. My impression is that in most areas of the encyclopedia, the common name principle holds powerful sway among editors, so we are right to emphasize it, though things could certainly be expressed more clearly. Can someone make a specific proposal as to how they would change the wording of the page?-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
I think "encyclopedic" is circular; the whole point of this process is to identify the most encyclopedic name, so that clause is essentially saying "the most encyclopedia name will be encyclopedic": pointless. I hinted as much in my reply to Una, but it has crystalised for me now. Yes, in hindsight I agree that it isn't really chronological.
Based on this discussion, I would be looking for this policy to be structured as something like this:
Hesperian 12:55, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
The Venus de Milo is a prime example of why we should be exceedingly cautious in reviewing names for "accuracy" and "bias". The name of a thing is what it is called, and this statue has been called that since it was found; this is where readers will expect it to be.
But it was found before the independence of Greece. The goddess was then normally called Venus, not Aphrodite, as she would be now; the island was under Turkish rule in 1820, and was (for historical reasons) known by its Italian name Milo, not by its ancient and modern name Melos (also the heavily Demoticized Milos) . Putting those names together would lead us to call the statue Aphrodite of Melos; but very few writers actually do, and it is a sure way to confuse the reader who has heard something about the statue - and is therefore looking it up-, but not much - and will therefore benefit from our article.
A more serious example is the Macedonian snakepit. Greek editors sincerely claim that the only neutral term for the modern country is FYROM or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; the advocates of the Republic equally sincerely claim that the only neutral name for that country is Macedonia. Each then wails about the disadvantaged population of their nationals which is being insulted (in the Greek case, the population of the province of Macedonia (Greece)). We could go back and forth between them all day; but instead we get off the road, and its incompatible claims of legitimacy, by asking what English does.
Changing the question like this at least provides us a holding ground, while the international controversy rages. It doesn't always work, but opening the door to claims of bias would render these insoluble, even in the short term. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
But this page does in fact fairly well represent what Wikipedia does, and while there are dissentients, they are usually a loud minority, which we are just as well overruling; that's my experience from WP:RM. Claims of NPOV violations in proper names are usually nationalist vaporing for some foreign spelling of a name which is differently spelled in English. (See Talk:Novak Djokovic for an extreme example of this, where the name is uniformly spelled without diacritics in English; he's even nicknamed the Djoker.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
I turned thoughtful over the usage of obsolete ethnonyms, such as Zyrians as applied previously to Komi peoples, Voguls to Mansi or Khakas, formerly Abakan Tatars. The issue of Armenian–Tatar massacres 1905-1907 have recently exposed problems over the relevant naming convention. Various hints, including WP:NCON and WP:PRECISION, have been put forward, but none ultimately succeeded. The matter is in the impass so far as the summary of viewpoints, supporting the move to modern ethnonym, have been cast aside again. I propose an addition to the general naming convention or to Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Dealing_with_historical_contexts, restricting the usage of obsolete and misleading ethnonyms in the article titles only to unique names, such as book/film headings. Brand спойт 13:03, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
The above assertions made by Parishan are misleading at best. You cannot retroactively apply a modern ethnonym to a group as diverse as Caucasian Tatars for various reasons. While the bulk of Tatars eventually formed the modern Azeri nation of Azerbaijan under Russian rule, care must be taken to distinguish between the former and the latter. Up until the late 19th century the only thing binding them in one group was religion, there was no sense of ethnic kinship or solidarity. Second of all, many non-Turkic Muslim people were included under the umbrella of Caucasian Tatars (including Kurds, Caucasians speakers, other Iranian speakers etc.).-- Ευπάτωρ Talk!! 15:45, 22 February 2009 (UTC) Wikipedia is not supposed to process the information but present it as is. Perhaps Meowy's comparison was not complete but should suffice here. Your comparison is inadequate and this was already explained to you a countless number of times; Eskimos are Inuits, just as much as Hays are Armenians. In what regards the Azeri, they are a Turkic speaking people, some Turkic people became Azeri, others Turks etc. You on the other hand have been going back in the Turkic culture tree and calling those people Azeri, when they are the ancestors of different cultures that are still alive. It was also documented that Tatar also referred to Muslims in general in the region and not only Turkic speaking people. To go there and rename things amounts to processing information. I don't know in what other way this can be said to you when multiple sources have been provided already. - Fedayee ( talk) 18:43, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I have put back the word Convention:. It is important to distinguish between the naming conventions and the guidelines to the conventions. My preferred solution is to rename this page but last time it was suggested there was no consensus for such a change.
I have moved the following addtion from the section Lowercase second and subsequent words in titles to here for further discussion:
A notable exception is books, films and other works, which are written in title case. The specific title case convention adopted is to capitalise all words except for articles ("a", "an", "the"), the word "to" as part of an infinitive, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions shorter than five letters (e.g., "on", "from", "and", "with"), unless they begin or end a title or subtitle. For example: A New Kind of Science, To Be or Not to Be.
Is this correct and is it needed in the policy or is it better off in a guideline? -- PBS ( talk) 12:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
This stuff should be sorted out at the capitalisation convention. Once it is sorted out there, all we need to discuss here is to what extent it needs to be articulated here. Hesperian 23:23, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I have put back the word Convention again: It is important to distinguish between the naming conventions and the guidelines to the conventions. -- PBS ( talk) 12:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Okay, it looks like the cat is out of the bag anyhow, so here it is. Following on from the #Disputed section above, I have drafted a proposed rewrite; enter via Wikipedia:Naming conventions/Proposal. As far as I'm concerned only the basic premise is fixed—that a range of encyclopedic values are brought to bear in naming articles, and editors can be trusted to balance those values appropriately. As long as that premise remains immutable I am happy to see the prose rewritten from the ground up. Hesperian 23:21, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I have made lots of little changes in response to your comments. [3] Can I again urge you to be bold if you can be bothered.
At present my main discomfort is around neutrality; I can't quite put my finger on what the problem is, and Septentrionalis' comments about it above don't pin it down for me either. I guess my concern is that NPOV is a "cornerstone of Wikipedia", and is supposed to be non-negotiable; yet we routinely use biased article titles simply because we have no other reasonable choice. An example is the Battle of Pinjarra. "Battle of Pinjarra" has always been its name, and is still its name to most people; but in the last decade or so, a small (but not fringe) minority have strenuously objected to the event being called a "battle", and instead promoted the name "Pinjarra massacre", which really is biased. Given the available names, the only possible choice is the most-accessible least-biased name "Battle of Pinjarra". I reckon nearly everyone who fully understood the context would come to the same decision. Yet the fact remains that the name is not entirely neutral. How do we document this so that our policy does not contradict WP:NPOV?
Hesperian 11:56, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
In accordance with MOS:CAPS and the most widespread use as shown by most UK dictionaries ( Cambridge, Oxford, Collins, Longman), the word "act" is best spelled lowercase when it's a common noun and not referring to a specific act. We might want to add a note that the UK Parliament (and other legislatures and many members of the legal profession) often do not follow this most widespread usage recorded by dictionaries and instead often uppercase "act" (and other terms) even when used as a common noun. -- Espoo ( talk) 10:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
Why does this page have the force of official policy? It is merely part of the Manual of Style and should be downgraded to a guideline. SpinningSpark 10:19, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Questions like this have often been debated before. An answer to a similar question see: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions/Archive 11#Discussion
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Poland/Conventions a proposed new guideline. -- PBS ( talk) 18:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
I think we need to address the changing of television and radio channels, as I cannot find anything on this page addressing this specific topic. To explain, I'm referring to when a channel stops being known by a specific names and starts being known as a new one. Should a page be titled after the new name, or should the page reflect an historical standpoint and make note that the channel is still the same it's just being referred to by a different name now? When Fox Kids started going by "Fox Box", should the article have changed names even those "Fox Box" only lasted a short time before it was canceled for a completely new, and separate channel owned by someone else? Is Spike TV distinct from TNN that TNN should have remained its own page; Spike TV's page be TNN's page since it's been around for over 6 years? Where should we say, ok, this warrants a new page name and this doesn't? BIGNOLE (Contact me) 23:43, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Is there a policy that says how similar article titles can get before they have to formally disambiguate themselves using parentheses?
The example I'm considering here is:
|
|
The difference between an open, hyphenated, and closed compound are relatively insignificant, almost on the order of British- and American-English variants of words. Is there anywhere that formally says that article names are confusingly similar once they get this close linguistically (and thus are required to use parenthesized disambiguation)? -- Underpants 14:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Is there an active naming convention for churches (or possibly other places of worship too)? For example, there seems to be some inconsistency over whether to use "St X's Church" or "Church of St X". Whilst most articles seem to use the former, we have for example in my local area one article at Church of SS Peter & Paul, Aston but various others at St Augustine's Church, Edgbaston, St Edburgha's Church, Yardley, &c. It seems even more confusing where one article is currently occupying a very common page title, as with Church of Saint George which forces all others out to a disambig page at St George's Church. Any thoughts? DWaterson ( talk) 22:55, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
The guide currently says:
However, although this makes sense, it doesn't seem to accord to actual practice, which almost always uses "(song)" for disambiguating instrumentals: Telstar (song), Apache (The Shadows song), etc. Is there really a consensus for using "(instrumental)", and if so, why is it largely ignored? -- Zundark ( talk) 11:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
I would not change the guide and encourage the actual practice itself to change. We aren't here to change the definition of the word "song" for convenience's sake.-- Ultimaking ( talk) 19:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I noticed some inconsistency regarding the naming of historic states named after towns which later changed their name. For instance, historic states in the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea named after towns use the historic name of the town, like the Duchy of Neopatria, the marquisate of Bodonitsa, the lordship of Negroponte, the empire of Trebizond, the empire of Nicaea or the duchy of Philippopolis. The duchies of Silesia however use mostly the current names of the cities, which weren't used when these duchies existed. Is there a naming convention for such cases? Thanks a lot. Karasek ( talk) 08:52, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
The grammatical niceties of the usage of capital letters in the names of sublists has arisen at a couple of Featured List Candidate discussions recently, so I'd invite people to discuss the issue at the above link. Thanks, Bencherlite Talk 00:26, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
The second sentence of the convention "Be precise when necessary" currently says: "If all possible titles have multiple meanings, go with the rule of thumb of naming conventions and use common names of persons and things."
It's a bit more complex than that, though, isn't it? This kind of implies that precision trumps commonness, which I don't think is the intention. In practice I think we would often prefer an ambiguous name, even if it means adding a disambiguating tag to it, over an unambiguous but less common alternative. For example, Mercury (element) over "Quicksilver" (this would still hold even if quicksilver had no other meanings).-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I too believe that Wikipedia has taken a very imprecise direction if it were to follow other English speaking publications, to the cost of a fresh report from the field and from the majority of people living in a certain country!
I think that in doing so, Wikipedia loses touch with present time reality! And fails to represent the majority! And Wiki was founded on peoples reports and articles that represent the majority of reality! Chosing suddenly not to follow upon those reports, blocks Wiki from adopting the semi liquid state of reality that changes in every day changes in the world.
For instance. Why should Wiki neglect the way people in a country name their cities, mountains, rivers, towns etc? Theres a problem of how those names on those countries have been named earlier on, on old publications, or even non properly studied, by not going on the field and capturing a reality today - publications, and Wiki just follows those other English speaking publications, EVEN when there are reports now, and today, that there are those inaccuracies of names, from people living there constantly, even now as you read this!
I propose that the majority of people living on the country must have a say on how their mountains, rivers, lakes, cities are called, and respect their way of naming it, so as they too would be represented into Wiki and not be left neglected!
Otherwise, Wikipedia loses touch with reality of how the majority of people that get to see, touch, hear and taste those places on that country! And I think if we are to add the whole world here, the majority of people's reports in any country shouldnt be neglected at any cost!
DiedonD ( talk) 08:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Most if not all the names I see associated with this church all start with Mar, which is basically the Assyrian equivalent of "Saint". Would it be appropriate for the articles to be titled "Mar (X)" or not? John Carter ( talk) 15:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Which takes precendence? Why? The conflict should be resolved, or at least documented with usual procedure for dealing with it (precedence rules, etc.) Thanks. Zodon ( talk) 08:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I reverted the changes to "Use common names of persons and things" for two reasons.
The first is that the new wording seems to me to indicate a disagreement over the use of "conflict" in the paragraph. Changing "use the naming conflict guideline when there is a conflict." to "Use the naming conflict guideline when there is disagreement over the right name to use" is a different reading of the word conflict it can be read to be a disagreement over the name by two or more editors --the first meaning of conflict in the OED- but the OED has a another meaning "3 fig. Of interests, opinions, statements, feelings, etc.: To come into collision, to clash; to be at variance, be incompatible." IE one can not use the name because it comes into collision with another name, as it is not possible for them both to share the same name, eg orange the fruit and orange the colour, then they are in conflict.
The second is there is a naming conventions guideline to deal with this called Wikipedia:Naming conflict, it is not necessary to suggest looking at the semi detached guideline Wikipedia:Disambiguation in this section, as that is not the only solution available the very next section in the naming conventions policy also helps to resolve the issue ( be precise when necessary).
A SPA has just made major changes and also a rename to an all-caps version of the name, mimicking the "official website", at PEAK 2 PEAK Gondola (see Talk:PEAK_2_PEAK_Gondola#Massive_changes_and_name-change_by_SPA) and also throughout the article substituted the all-caps version of the name. Are brand-names acceptable this way? Noting, as an aside, that in non-"official" copy, e.g. local newspapers, the all-caps version is not (so far as I know) in use. Skookum1 ( talk) 01:51, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
Should it be 2009 H1N1 outbreak or 2009 swine flu outbreak? See Talk:2009 swine flu outbreak. MOS:MED conflicts with WP:COMMONNAME in this regard. Dabomb87 ( talk) 03:06, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for slightly convoluted title!
There is an AfD currently underway for Samantha Orobator. As part of that discussion there have been some suggestions to rename to something like Case of Samantha Orobator. I'm a bit undecided as to what the correct naming should be. On the one hand, the article is not a biography as such, in that it is specifically about a person in relation to a specific event. On the other hand, most people searching would probably just look for the name of the person.
In terms of other articles, I note that for Madeleine McCann, the article is called Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, with redirects to that page.
I was just wondering if there was a consensus for how to approach this type of situation. Quantpole ( talk) 12:43, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
It's not that clear if the / symbol is allowed. Please see my comments at Talk:Good_cop/bad_cop#Name.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:12, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
A related issue is # in the name, which does seem to be a problem. See Talk:Bam Margera Presents: Where the#Name. Any advice welcome, and perhaps WP:NC#Special characters needs some expaansion. Andrewa ( talk) 09:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Copied from Talk:Good cop/bad cop#Name
I think this article should be renamed to remove the / symbol from the name. See Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Avoid_non-alphanumeric_characters_used_only_for_emphasis and Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Subpages.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
Copied from Talk:Bam Margera Presents: Where the#Name
Wikipedia:NC#Special_characters doesn't mention # but it should. Unfortunately, # is used to identify anchors within the page, that's the problem here. Unsure what the best solution is here, but it's not RM. I'll pursue further, the request is not lost! Andrewa ( talk) 09:39, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
I've made the problems with the use of the special characters more explicit in the Naming Convention.
At the moment the advise given at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Characters totally forbidden in page titles is "However, it may be necessary to spell out the character (e.g. Gtk Sharp instead of Gtk#) or use another substitute" we could add to that "like '♯' for of '#'" Should we add Zundark idea? It seems to me that it may cause more problems than it solves as most people will not have access to ♯ on their keyboard when entering searches in search engines (and would probably not notice the difference unless it was pointed out to them), but after brief check with Google, Google seems to substitute one for the other as it does with many other similar characters (Could someone please verify this?). What do others think? -- PBS ( talk) 15:34, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Aervanath are subpages also disabled from article talk pages? Should we mention in the naming convention that "/" in a name is depreciated unless reliable sources also use "/" in a name. -- PBS ( talk) 15:34, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
What's the preferred way of dealing with this? Currently there's a debate at the Talk:Gay icon page over naming of gay icon-related articles. At present, we have two ways of naming these articles (eg: Madonna as gay icon and Judy Garland as a gay icon), and no one seems to be able to agree or state definitively which should be preferred and why. Exploding Boy ( talk) 21:41, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Currently Ducati redirects to Ducati Motor Holding. Ducati is by far more in compliance with easily most recognized name and use the most common name than is Ducati Motor Holding, and I see nothing at WP:NCCORP that indicates WP:NC policy should be overridden here. The current name seems like an obvious case of unnecessary precision to me. Since Ducati already redirects to the article, there is no ambiguity issue.
As this is potentially controversial, I'm inclined to make a formal WP:RM request, but thought I would do a quick sanity check her in case I'm missing something with respect to company names. Am I? Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
It is English style to name things simply. This reads great (which was Strunk or White's original idea), but I fear often leads to articles with "interesting" titles but are intrinsically pov. Let me take cases that may seem amusing: "French kissing" implies something the French do or know or originate. There is a built-in implication that the French are better at, well something, anyway. I agree that it is simple and interesting.
Another example is "Spanish flu" or "Asian flu." While there may have been health vectors from those places, history has often named diseases after countries or places they didn't like or were even enemies (e.g "German" measles, "French pox").
My point in all this is that there are simple, one word (maybe two or so) subjects that can only be named one way: France, arithmetic, Bill Clinton, etc.
There are larger classes that get us into trouble. I propose inserting the general topic first, the specific target second. So in my joke example above (I'm not really seriously considering doing this, just for example only), the title would be "Kissing by French people", "Flu vectored from Asia". We have had many articles, which I don't want to list here to avoid spilling over boundaries, that would have been easily solved by using these guidelines for titles. These also, BTW, imply the possibility of other articles which the original titles didn't do. Do Swedes kiss? Did a flu bug ever originate in the US? (written before reading subsection above on swine flu BTW).
Unstylistic, but npov. Student7 ( talk) 18:29, 7 June 2009 (UTC)