Wikibooks talk:Naming policy/Archive 1

This is semi-rewrite of policy, amalgamating the more significant parts of WB:NC and WB:HNS. I've named it 'policy' rather than 'convention', in the hope it might sound more authoritative, added more examples to make it clearer, and kept it short so as to not scare off newbies.

I've also changed the introductory examples to hint that the subpage convention is preferable to the pseudo-namespace convention, since newbie's can't be trusted to provide backlinks. I've also altered the distinction to focus on the backlinks only, hinting that the only other distinction is typographic. The previous distinction of hierarchical vs. digraphic usage is bogus. You can use either system with either convention.

Comments? - Aya ^T C 23:58, 4 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Although you can use either system with either convention, we recommend hierarchical with slashes and digraphic with colons, as that's what naturally follows from the delimiter's nature. KelvSYC 05:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps in your mind, but from a technical standpoint the only difference is the auto-backlinks. I don't see why we would want to confuse newbies by convincing them otherwise. - Aya ^T C 20:57, 5 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

KelvSYC is right because from a technical standpoint the only difference is the auto-backlinks. The auto-backlinks enforce a hierarchical organization. AlbertCahalan 13:54, 26 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

It is too strict for templates to have also the same prefix than for books. I agree that we should enforce the use of a naming convention for book-specific templates but I propose to allow in this specific case an abbreviation for the prefix. Rationale: templates are very often used to save keystrokes for repetitive text junks. There are no strong necessities to know to what book belongs one template, as there are for modules. Enforcing complete wikibook names in template prefixes will either promote very short names for books or a recurrent violated policy. For example, in Programming:Ada we make extensive use of templates under the Template:Ada root. These templates are used for external links and for code highlighting. I would not like the book being named just "Ada" or the code templates to become larger. ManuelGR 17:04, 5 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

The abbreviation used for templates should be a redirect to the book main page in the main namepace, e.g. Ada. This will avoid future use of the abbreviation for other books. ManuelGR 17:10, 5 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Although it is an acceptable compromise in general, it may not suit Programming:Ada, as under WB:NP Programming:Ada is a section of Programming, which means for it to be called a book you would have to move the entire book anyways. Since book management will soon be under the auspices of Wikibooks:Card Catalog Office, the office should be responsible for book aliasing. KelvSYC 02:44, 6 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

There seems to be some confusion here. This is a really early naming convention which I have entitled the "bookshelf convention" as per Wikibooks:Naming policy#Historical conventions. All it needs is to be renamed from Programming:Ada to Programming Ada, Ada Programming, How to Program in Ada, or just Ada, or whatever. All its subpages will need to renamed too. - Aya ^T C 03:09, 6 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

No confusion, discussion for a rename are on the way. We are very much in favour on sticking to agreed standards. It is in this discussion that we discovered that the new policy has some hurdles for us in choosing a suitable new name. --Krischik 07:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Forgetting about Programming:Ada, is there any objection against this change to the proposed policy? May we edit the page to reflect this compromise. ManuelGR 23:21, 7 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

I suppose even if your book is named "My Extremely Long Book Title About Programming Ada", but you've created the redirect "Ada" to point to it, then technically, you own that subsection of the template namespace, so any templates beginning with "Template:Ada:" or "Template:Ada/" belong to that book also. Is this acceptable? - Aya ^T C 02:58, 8 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

I have no complaints aside from how book aliasing is controlled. I suggest that the CCO should have an alias registry. You really don't want an obscure and inactive book to have a single-letter alias, right? KelvSYC 03:34, 8 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Good point. I'll allow it in this case, since the Ada book is really quite professional looking, and I don't want to irritate the authors too much. It has a lot of pages, and uses a lot of templates, mostly of the form "Template:Ada/". The programming language is probably the most common use of the word "Ada", and I can't think of another book that would need to fight over this part of the namespace (except perhaps a Wikibook about w:Ada Lovelace herself). But you're right, we do need to keep track of aliases. - Aya ^T C 03:52, 8 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

So, just to clarify, can the Movie Making Manual use MMM as a prefix for our headers now that I've setup a redirect from MMM to Movie Making Manual? For example, is the header name "MMM Header" legal? Dan AKA Jack 14:12, 23 Sept 2005 (GMT)

No, community consensus is needed in order for a book to get an alias. Also, even if you get the alias, naming it "Template:MMM Header" breaks WB:NP. KelvSYC 17:11, 23 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the reply. Sorry, I'm new here... Why does "Template:MMM Header" break WB:NP? Dan AKA Jack 10:22, 24 Sept 2005 (GMT)

For any book book, [[Template:book]] is reserved for a book's internal organization. Thus, to conform you need it to be named (assuming you have the alias) "Template:MMM:Header" or "Template:MMM/Header". KelvSYC 17:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks. Can we have several templates? E.g. "Template:MMM/Header", "Template:MMM/cinematographyHeader", "Template:MMM/productionHeader" etc? And how do I request community consensus for the MMM alias? Thanks, Dan AKA Jack 19:30, 25 Sept 2005 (GMT)

I'm not sure about how to gauge consensus w.r.t. the alias, but I see no reason why you can't have multiple headers (the cookbook does). Kellen ^T 23:05, 25 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

Great, thanks, Dan AKA Jack 09:25, 26 Sept 2005 (GMT)

ManuelGR mentions There are no strong necessities to know to what book belongs one template

I agree. Some templates are useful enough to be used in several different books.

I'm sure I have at least 6 paper books on my shelf that each have a "Appendix: ASCII Chart", and 5 other books that each have an "Appendix: Periodic table of the elements".

• (a) Should such things go into a free-floating "page" without a book name ? (I suppose this is technically the same as a "book" with only the one page, without any sub-pages).
• (b) Or should such things go into a free-floating template as ManuelGR suggests?
• (c) I suppose the third option is to mantain several more-or-less identical copies, each one associated with a single book to give it the "right name". But that would be silly.

--DavidCary 07:27, 13 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

I belive that transclusion is a good answer to that. Often there will be a more general/higher level book which could contain the source and all other books would transclude the pages in. For example see Computer Programming/Control and Ada Programming/Control - of course this is a very complex example - but it shows that the technique scales well.

-- anon

OK, that's yet another option I hadn't considered.

• (d) Associate the text with one particular "general" book, but transclude that text into all others that wanted it.

So the ASCII chart would presumably "really" go into Computer Programming, and all other books that wanted one would transclude it.

So the periodic table would "really" go into General Chemistry, and any other book that wanted one would transclude it.

OK, that sounds like a good idea.

--DavidCary 07:27, 13 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Regarding capitalization, I wanted to promote the case like "The Title of Doom", rather than "The Title Of Doom" (I forget which is title-caps and title-case). I just happened to choose a bad example (i.e. "How To Build A Computer"). If someone can find a good example of a '/'-based 'flat'-style Wikibook with the right capitalization, let me know. I think the subpages (i.e. chapters) perhaps ought to follow the same conventions, but I didn't want to seem too pedantic. :-) - Aya ^T C 03:22, 15 August 2005 (UTC)Reply

Great. To be more specific, we capitalize the first word and all words that are not closed class words. AlbertCahalan 14:05, 26 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

The policy as it stands now only allows for lowercase articles (the, an) and prepositions (of, into, without). What about conjunctions (And, Or) and pronouns (It, Their)? I have at least one printed book with a lowercase "and", though I have not found a pronoun in a title. --Kernigh 20:12, 15 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Guide to UNIX has a lowercase "to", but you could also argue that it is sentence case ("The title of doom") because UNIX is a proper noun. The bad thing is that Guide to UNIX mixes slash convention (Guide to UNIX/Shell Prompt, colon convention (Guide to UNIX commands:File system utilities), and space convention (Guide to UNIX files). The subpages and sections have inconsistent case: Guide to UNIX/Shell Prompt#Finding a shell prompt is a sentence case section name on a title case subpage. --Kernigh 20:12, 15 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

I made several page renames in Guide to UNIX, which is why I striked several of the names above (including one typo). The submodule names are now more uniform. --Kernigh 22:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Talking about conjunctions, I prefer using "and" instead of the ampersand "&". Or is this too nitpicky?

What about situation when whole title consists of capital letters like RANGERS IN COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA? Such case is not mentioned, so it looks like there's a problem. When I asked author of this module to change it name, he replied that current naming policy does not forbid such titles and that it is common in US Army documents. --Derbeth ^talk 22:16, 16 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

My own gripe with the present WB:NP is the ban on the use of abreviated book titles in page names. Long page names look very ugly and hurt the usability of [[:category:]] pages (i.e. the [[:category:]] pages work best if each page name only takes up a single line). For example, I would really like to be able to use the MMM abreviation for the Movie Making Manual, e.g. MMM/Cinematography/Cameras and Formats/Table of Cameras. Thanks, dan_aka_jack 16:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

• The current version would let you register MMM as an alias. However, the requirement to check with administrators is too strict; the chance that someone else also wants MMM (Making Monster Madness? Map of Much Music?) is too low. Instead, any wiki contributor should be able to edit the registry and add MMM. Also, the current version of the naming policy does not allow MMM names for subpages, templates, and categories (Category:MMM/festivals). --Kernigh 20:35, 15 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Please vote Aye it you thing the policy is okay as it is and Nay if you think it needs more work. If the Ayes have it for a whole week then the policy is accepted.

(If you don't like the voting procedure vote Nay and make a better suggestion)

• Since there are 3 things under consideration here, and all 3 seem independent, I guess everyone votes 3 times? AlbertCahalan 14:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
  • I think that we are voting about the current text of Wikibooks:Naming policy, not the proposals on this talk page. --Kernigh 20:39, 15 October 2005 (UTC)Reply
    • Indeed we do - if we where to vote about the Talk page we never finish. --Krischik ^T 08:38, 17 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

1. Krischik 16:07, 12 August 2005 (UTC)Reply
2. This vote for capitalization. AlbertCahalan 14:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
3. ManuelGR 15:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)Reply
4. Derbeth 16:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC) It's just reasonable. I only have some doubts about forcing capitalisation.Reply
5. --Whiteknight _TC^E 01:42, 11 November 2005 (UTC) First, I think that the issue of "title case" for the book titles simply makes the most sense. We are writing books, not encyclopedia entries or magazine articles. Title caps would give the books an air of respect, that I'm sure that authors all want to portray. Next, I think the forward slash convention is the better convention, not only because it creates the backlinks (which are small, and noninvasive), but also because the colon convention could potentially interfere with the creation of other wiki- projects, or other namespaces. Lastly, If we allow for aliases (although we should make it easy for a book to obtain a non-contested alias), the template naming convention makes the most sense: we want templates to be attached to their book, so that they aren't stolen and adapted for other books.Reply
6. I believe this policy has a strong explanation now and should be approved. -Matt 18:36, 26 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

1. - For now. It's not that clear if title caps or title case is preferred for book names, maybe title case would be better, because that's what's generally used for the titles of books. Also, no preference is given to any method of capitalising the titles of sub pages. There is currently a discussion going on over at [[Talk:Cookbook:Policy]] about these capitalisation rules, and it would be nice if we could come up with a consensus for a general policy for Wikibooks as a whole, instead of limiting it to only the Cookbook. Geo.^T 03:04, 15 August 2005 (UTC)Reply
2. I don't think it's quite ready yet. I'm not sure the section on categories/templates naming is clear enough. Image naming is less important. TBH, I'm not entirely happy with these distinct proposed/enforced stages, but I've yet to think of a better method. - Aya ^T C 03:18, 15 August 2005 (UTC)Reply
3. - The caps should refer all exceptions if any. The alias should refer limitations of chars if any, in example the case of the use of "/" like in the Programming C -/- -/- that is under dispute, as a writer :I do think that the use of non alphanumeric chars on titles should be very clear, even more as I defend the use of ASCII hexa in places like where + can't be used and a graphically similar char exist (like the plus minus sign), and that the url of a work may be or not difer from the books title, there are very good reasons, even beneficial to the hole site (wikibooks) in not having human friendly urls more so since they aren't already that friendly for example the "_" = " " can give some problems in edits and transclusions.--Panic 06:13, 13 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
   • That's vile, but so is "C plus plus". Outside of the Windows IDE world, it's somewhat traditional to end files with ".cxx". That's pretty good if you turn your head a bit. It's also short and easy to type. Using "Cxx" is better for the long term, since I think we can expect some sort of title override feature in the wiki software someday. AlbertCahalan 14:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
4. This vote against preferring "/" over ":" in book names. AlbertCahalan 14:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC).Reply
   • I'm sure you've already noticed how "/" creates backlinks on a child page, but there's more to it than that; at some point in time a dynamic TOC feature will be implemented so that child (and sibling) pages can be called by the editor and listed on-the-fly. However it will only work with "/" and not with ":". Garrett^Talk 08:19, 18 October 2005 (UTC)Reply
5. This vote against template naming conventions. AlbertCahalan 14:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
6. This vote is against the ban on the use of abreviated aliases for page names. For example, I would really like to be able to use "MMM/Page Name" for the "Movie Making Manual" and "Research/Page Name" for "The Academic Researchers' Manual". dan_aka_jack 16:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)Reply
7. --Kernigh 20:39, 15 October 2005 (UTC) (Section 1, "page naming" is OK. Section 2 and 3 need improvement. --Kernigh 04:59, 3 November 2005 (UTC))Reply
8. While I'm not completely against writing this policy, I don't think it needs to be enforced strictly as a hard policy like the NPOV issues that could kill a project or a book. It is far more important to simply suggest best practices and to make a clear example of what has already been done on Wikibooks. Indeed, I don't really care how a particular Wikibook is organized as long as the naming convention for pages is consistant throughout that particular Wikibook. It also helps if somewhere on each page you can get back to the "main page" of the Wikibook. Trying to legislate the petty details is pointless and defeats the creative process. --Rob Horning 12:19, 16 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

   What if we include a clause about how harsh a violation of this policy will be for the book. Certainly, we dont want to delete an entire book because they delimit page names with the wrong character, but we should still have a set of standardized guidelines, that people can work towards. If a n00b starts a new book with a completely off-the-wall convention, it should be identified and corrected, to prevent problems. Basically, it's the same thing as how we deal with stubs: if a stub exists, people can find them and fix them, although there is no policy against creating stubs. --Whiteknight _TC^E 01:46, 11 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

   I suggest that instead of an enforced policy that instead it should be a guideline policy instead. Official, yes. A reason to go in and trash the page organization of a Wikibook? No. If a new contributor wants to use ampersands or parenthesis for page naming conventions, why not? I am in general opposed to "article" style names where no naming convention is used, but otherwise I don't think it really matters. The only reason for that is because of ambiguity as to which "Wikibook" the module belongs to. --Rob Horning 02:52, 12 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

9. While I usually appear to be Aya's yes-man, in this case I do think we need to work together on a more solid version before it goes final, kinda like the brainstorming taking place on Wikibooks talk:Policy/Vote. Garrett^Talk 08:19, 18 October 2005 (UTC)Reply
10. While I think a stronger policy would benefit the overall organization, I'm voting nay on the current proposal above for the lack of solidity Garrett mentioned. --Telamon 23:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

# This vote is against the ban on the use of abbreviated aliases for page names. For example, I would really like to be able to use "MMM/Page Name" for the "Movie Making Manual" and "Research/Page Name" for "The Academic Researchers' Manual". dan_aka_jack 16:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

From the comments above, perhaps the policy should say something like

On a case-by-case basis, the community may approve 2 different names for a book. A "short name" such as "Ada" for a book -- (( or even a chapter of a book ???)) -- with a long name such as Programming:Ada. All sub-pages and templates would use the short name. The short name should be composed of one or more whole words, not abbreviations.

If we changed the policy to say that, would you change your vote to approve the policy? (This proposal would allow "The Academic Researchers' Manual" to be abbreviated as in "Research/Page Name", and "Movie Making Manual" to be abbreviated as in "Movie/Page Name" --DavidCary 06:01, 17 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Hi. Yes, I would be a very happy man if the naming convention was modified as you suggest! Thanks, dan_aka_jack 11:22, 18 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

And how about a possible "The Economic Researchers' Manual" - wouldn't they just the same right to "Research/Page Name"? Or "Model Making Manual"? While two books with the same "short names" might be able to share the same template/category this is not possible on the main namespace - hogging and squatting might result if we allowed that. ::--Krischik ^T 09:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Hmm... whilst I agree that the potential for "hogging and squatting" is a concern, I would argue that it is unlikely. And if it does happen, then future books might be able to find their own "valid abbreviation" such as "ModelMM" for "Model Making Manual". Thanks, dan_aka_jack 11:22, 18 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Just to point out an example here, when I started the naming conventions for 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica (Wikisource...not Wikibooks) I realized that it would get very tiring typing in 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica for every link. I shortened the name to EB1911 for most of the articles and template (as well as categories) essentially out of practical need, and the fact that it was fairly obvious what the topic was about. I also added a redirect from EB1911 to the main page. That way if they went to that obvious shortcut it would take you to the main page as well. (It appears as though the redirect was lost on the move to en.wikisource). I think the redirect is a good idea anyway if you are going to have a naming convention shortcut. --Rob Horning 15:27, 18 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

You can always use relative links, i.e. Wikibooks talk:Naming policy/Topic, wen linking inside book pages for avoiding using long book names in links. ManuelGR 18:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Hi. I should explain exactly why I dislike long page names. There are four reasons:

1. Long page names look ugly at the top of the page
2. Long page names make the [[:category:]] pages very hard to use (i.e. if the page names are so long that they line-wrap then it looks really nasty and hard to naviagate)
3. I contribute to an online mailing list about film-making and I frequently like to link to the Movie Making Manual. Unfortunately, this mailing list doesn't allow HTML (no hyperlinks) so I have to cut-and-paste the entire URL into the body of the text. If the URL is longer than something like 70 characters then it line-wraps and breaks the automatic URL-detection in modern mail clients.
4. It's a pain to type Movie Making Manual instead of MMM!

Thanks, dan_aka_jack 10:50, 20 October 2005 (UTC)Reply