Wikipedia talk:Article titles

Earlier dicussions:

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• /archive2
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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

Template:Naming conventions (Zondor's proposal) 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? Steve block talk 11:01, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd say:

• Wikipedia:naming conventions: policy, categorised in category:wikipedia official policy
• All other pages in category:wikipedia naming conventions: naming conventions guidelines. Note that the category of wikipedia naming conventions is a subcategory of category:wikipedia guidelines - I think that categorisation scheme is OK. Maybe Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) could also be policy (as it is now): it is the central place for naming conventions regarding the "category:" namespace, as far as I'm concerned that justifies it to be policy too.

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. Steve block 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:

• Concerning the title format: should we use Sino-Japanese relations or Foreign relations between Japan and China
• Concerning the name of the countries: should we use adjectives (Japanese-Korean relations) or nouns (Japan-United States relations)? Which country name (eg: for the United states is it American (Franco-American relations), US (U.S.-Iran relations) or United States (United States-Venezuela relations)?)
• Concerning the order of the countries: there's no particular scheme about which country is named first.

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:

• Americas: North America...; South America...
• Eurasia: Asia...; Europe...

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:

• Orlando: A Biography, not Orlando (novel) (Orlando is a disambig page)
• History of Western Philosophy (Russell), not A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
• Social Contract (Rousseau), not The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right

(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)

Diacritics in minor planet names

Following a strong consensus outcome in this discussion, I propose that we establish a naming convention that diacritics are included in the names of articles on minor planets and named features of astronomical bodies, following the International Astronomical Union rules on this. This guideline is especially important as many significant astronomy sites don't use the diacritics for technical reasons (you'd be amazed how many observatory computers still run MS-DOS or DR-DOS and/or store their data using 7-bit ACSII), so Google is somewhat misleading.

Unless there is an objection raised to this process here (or someone beats me to it) I will add a proposed standard to Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Conventions under consideration. Andrewa 04:20, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I've added this to WP:UE, as that is the naming conventions guideline that (thus far) centralised info on use of diacritics. --Francis Schonken 12:25, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's helpful. I think it there should be some mention of it at Wikipedia:Naming conventions as well. I'd imagined an explicit mention of astronmical names names, but a section on diacritics pointed to WP:UE would be an alternative. Andrewa 02:25, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Issue removed from WP:UE by user:haukurth, with something I can only see as a "fake" argument, diff - I'm thinking I should start a WP:RfC on Haukurth, for disruption on wikipedia policies and guidelines, and wiki-stalking of myself. Andrewa, would you join me on this RfC? --Francis Schonken 11:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't notice that the idea of mentioning the asteroid names in the UE guideline had already been brought up here and met with some approval. We can certainly work some mention of it into the Use English guideline if that's what people want. Personally I think Andrewa's original idea of making a new convention is better and I would support such a convention as I supported the Gunlod > Gunlöd moves.

Alas, I did come here through checking Francis' contribution log (he wasn't commenting on any of the pages on my watchlist and it occurred to me that he might be addressing the issues we've been discussing somewhere else). I gather from his comment above that he would rather I did not look up his contribution log so I'll refrain from it in the future.

I still hope we can resolve our differences without resorting to the formal dispute resolution process. - Haukur 11:38, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I am (recent) member of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects and I would like to see the cited "guidelines" or "rules" by the IAU! Looking through its web site, I did not find any mentioning of diacritics in any "rule" ([1]). Instead, there is an ASCII based list of official names, which would violate that "rule" if it existed. I myself would keep the non-diacritic name as article title and have the name with diacritic in the text to describe the eponym. Awolf002 15:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for you input. But these issues were already considered at Talk:657 Gunlöd.

Let me quote the URL you give above:

Proposed names should be: * 16 characters or less in length * preferably one word * pronounceable (in some language) * non-offensive * not too similar to an existing name of a Minor Planet or natural Planetary satellite.

So you're quite right, there's no mention of diacritics, either way. See however the USGS Astrogeology Research Program URL given in the previous discussion and we find IAU rule 10: When more than one spelling of a name is extant, the spelling preferred by the person, or used in an authoritative reference, should be used. Diacritical marks are a necessary part of a name and will be used.

The list you mention appears to be in ASCII for technical reasons, as are many others. Again, this was dealt with previously. Andrewa 23:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I read the given USGS page and was confused. These rules are about naming planetary features, not minor planets. How did you decide that this is applicable to this discussion? I can be persuaded to go both ways with diacritics, but I still do not see any IAU rule for minor planets that could guide that decision. Awolf002 23:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Good point that I had overlooked!

So, are there any rules? It would surprise me greatly if they weren't the same for Astronomical bodies as for the features of those bodies. But you're right, we should look further.

I am personally quite happy to go either way on this. My feeling is that either convention will do quite well, just so long as the other name is a redirect, but that it's vital to have these redirects, as both the ASCII and the diacriticised names are in common use. My agenda is simply to make and document a decision, either way, so we don't need to have this discussion repeatedly, and can get on with the job of writing the encyclopedia.

We've had an unproductive diversion into WP:UE, where no consensus seems likely on anything, even on whether WP:UE is relevant to this or any other specific discussion. Hopefully we don't need to follow the circles that people have been running in for a year down there! Andrewa 23:36, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed! We should just find a policy that is as close as possible to the IAU intentions and use redirs to cover all the bases. I will scour through the IAU's web site to see if there is more info available, otherwise we just stick to what we have and write a proposed policy to "fix" things. Awolf002 00:17, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Parentheses

Someone once mentioned to me that the naming guidelines said that unless an article fell into one of the categories mentioned, or had other articles of the same name it could be confused with, that the guidelines were to remove any parentheses. I've been trying to find this in the various guidelines but I can't. --maru (talk) Contribs 18:25, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

In general, it's best to use a qualifier between brackets in a page name for disambiguation purposes only.

I know, we had Islamofascism (term), which stayed at that name after a WP:RM vote recently, but that was far from an "unanimous" vote, and my feeling is that many wikipedians would feel reluctant to extend the technique to other examples.

Neither Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision), nor Wikipedia:Disambiguation seem to call for anything in the sense of passing subliminal messages on a topic via the page name - rather explain the issue (whether misnomer, or political (in)correctness of a term or whatever) in the article in a NPOV way, than trying to pass that info via the page name. --Francis Schonken 09:23, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Alright. Thanks for the reply- I was thinking partially of Islamofascism, as I was, err, involved in it, but mostly I was thinking of how I made Inquisitorius into a redirect to Inquisitorius (Star Wars). --maru (talk) Contribs 01:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Indian Honorific Names

Hi, I am trying to determine the appropriate name for the main article for the 68th Sharkaracharya (pontiff) of Kanchi. The article Chandrasekharendra Saraswati contains a redirect to the article Kanchi Mahaswamigal. Chandrasekharendra Saraswati is the personal name of the pontiff, just as "John Paul" would be the personal name of Pope John Paul II. It is also the name of 7 other Shankaracharyas. Kanchi Mahaswamigal is an honorific title bestowed upon him. It refers to a great learned religious teacher of Kanchi.

To appreciate the issue, note that Mahatma Gandhi is the main page for that person, and Mahatma is an honorific meaning "Great Soul", not a personal name. Similarly, there is a main page for A.C. Bhaktivendanta Swami Prabhupada. "Prabhupada" is an honorific meaning "One who serves at the feet (of God)".

My inclination at this point, to make naming consistant would be to have the main page be named "Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Kanchi Mahaswamigal", and have both Chanrasekharendra Saraswati and Kanchi Mahaswamigal contain redirects to that page.

Please advise regarding your opinion of the correct way to do this.

Also, I note that there is no section in the Naming Conventions page for Indian names, nor for Tamil names, which follow a somewhat different pattern than North Indian names. Should such a section be started?

--BostonMA 16:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

There are several ways this could be approached:

• Start a new project page, e.g. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (India-related articles) - I don't say that should be the name of the page, several other variants are possible, e.g. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people of India and Sri Lanka), etc... depending on what you want in.
• Note that for ancient Romans similar honorific-related issues had to be solved (e.g. "Augustus", which is the name of a single emperor, named after the honorific he received halfway through his career - see Augustus - , but also an honorific most other emperors added to their name - see Augustus (honorific) - without other emperors having that honorific as part of their wikipedia page name). I suppose the "rule" (if there is any...) that has been applied for ancient Romans is that one only adds the honorific to the wikipedia page name, if the person is generally known by that name, see wikipedia:naming conventions (ancient Romans). Hence, e.g. Caesar in Julius Caesar, Africanus in Scipio Africanus, but Tiberius and not Tiberius Caesar Augustus, etc. Whether the same sort of solution would work for people of India and Sri Lanka, I've no idea.
• For clergy/monarchy/nobility-related honorifics and titles, it is also possible to ask the question at wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles)

--Francis Schonken 18:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

See also Portal talk:India#Naming conventions on Indian people --Francis Schonken 08:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Short titles

I think we should insert somewhere into the conventions a note to the effect that short titles are preferable to long titles, since it's pretty much the expected norm and de facto policy. But Francis disagreed with me that the intro was the best place to put it. What do the rest of you think? --maru (talk) Contribs 01:31, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews

Please read the sixteen point introduction at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews: Sixteen reasons why this should become a fixed Wikipedia policy and related discussions at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Proposed amendment: remove all Jewish-related lists. Thank you. IZAK 11:14, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Street Naming

I've just recently begun a project to make articles for all of Paris' notable streets. I was trying to come up for a suitable naming model to follow, and I've been scratching my head at it for a few days now. The names of many of Paris' streets are common to many of France's cities and towns, not to mention in other Francophone countries, and to avoid future conflict it seemed a good idea to put the name of the city after the street in brackets, as in "rue Sainte-Anne (Paris)". Actually my original proposition was to also put the name of the country in brackets - "rue Sainte-Anne (Paris, France)". It was suggested to me that this would be taking it too far.

It was also brought to my attention that in page naming, brackets are only used for disambiguation. What I guess I was actually proposing (without even thinking to disambiguation) was pre-disambiguation - Wiki is still relatively small (as far as I know) for subjects such as these, but I was thinking to the future when other cities will have their "notable areas" articles too.

Does anyone have any suggestions or prior experience with a problem such as this? I would really like to know what options I have - and I don't want to start into something that will make a lot of work for someone later. Thanks for any input. THEPROMENADER 22:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Why not Rue Sainte-Anne, Paris - for places (but I'm not sure that includes roads) I think there are more examples of having the city behind a comma (and not between brackets).

Examples: Victoria Square, Birmingham, Victoria Square, Adelaide, Bloomsbury, London, etc...

Although there's also Queensway (London) and other examples with bracketed disambiguator in Category:Streets of London - note that there are only very few London streets needing a disambiguator, although many of them would be street names also available in other cities/towns. The idea is that you only add the disambiguator when there would be ambiguity with an *existing* wikipedia article.

Yeah, and for Paris, I don't think that - except for the Wim Wenders film - there would be confusion with Paris, Texas if you use a French street name, so no need to add ", France". --Francis Schonken 08:02, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The comma seems the best solution, and more than a good enough one to get this project going - thanks a mil.

THEPROMENADER 12:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Page Titles and POV

What is the convention for naming things and events where there is clearly a division in POV and cultural bias. For example (and this may seem silly), the Vietnam War is known as the American War in Vietnam. To me, naming this the Vietnam War appears to be a violation of NPOV (see this and this). How do we reconcile this difference? And how can we use the Google test without perpetuating the bias? - Spaceriqui 04:33, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Another example, Yom Kippur War see Talk:Yom Kippur War

See Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial#Article names. --Francis Schonken 07:43, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I see that, but how about when there's clear alternatives, that are NPOV? which takes precedence... NPOV or Common Names? -Spaceriqui 18:45, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

In the case of the Vietnam War; the name Vietnam War should dominate on the English Wikipedia; as that is what the conflict is called throughout the English-speaking world. Interestingly enough; on the Vietnamese Wikipedia, it's called Chiến tranh Việt Nam (which I imagine translates to "Vietnam War") rather than the Vietnamese equivalent of "American War". Certainly, the Vietnamese Wikipedia should use whatever name is most commonly used by Vietnamese speakers. (It may be the case that the Vietnamese Wikipedia is primarily used by expatriate Vietnamese; due to official disapproval of Wikipedia by the Vietnamese government.) --EngineerScotty 21:51, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for new naming convention: Latin party names

A discussion is currently going on at Talk:Labour Party (Mexico) concerning translations of its party name. In that back-drop I'd suggest the following naming convention. There are a variety of political party names with similar generic meanings (Labour party, Workers Party, etc.). The usage is, however, generally carries a clear political connotation. I propose the following scheme for translations.

• Partido Obrero - Labour Party
• Partido de los Trabajadores - Workers Party
• Partido del Trabajo - Party of Labour
• Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores - Socialist Workers Party
• Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores - Workers Revolutionary Party
• Partido Obrero Revolucionario - Revolutionary Workers Party

Some comments concerning this scheme:

• Parties called 'Labour Party' in English (like the British, Israeli, Norwegian, etc.) are generally translated as 'Partido Laborista' in Spanish newspapers and litterature. However, to my knowledge there is no party in the Spanish-speaking world using this name, so there is no immediate risk of confusion.
• In the case of PST/SWP, POR/RWP and PRT/WRP these are names commonly associated with the Trotskyist tradition. In all cases groups exists using these names both in the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking worlds. It is clear that the usage of names correspond to international naming convention within that political movement. Of course, PST could literally mean 'Workers Socialist Party', but there is no usage like that in the English-speaking world. The name 'Partido Obrero Socialista' would of course cause a challenge to the scheme, but to my knowledge there is no country were there is both a POS and a PST.
• The convention would hold for French, Portuguese, Catalan, etc. I'm not sure about Italian myself, comments would be appreciated on that issue. --Soman 15:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Sporting tours

What's the best pattern for sporting tour titles? The Category: British and Irish Lions tours are of the form "<Year/s> <team> tour to <touring location>", eg, 2005 British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand. For cricket there is a form "<Team> in <location> in <year/s>", eg, New Zealand cricket team in Zimbabwe in 2005-06. The only other rugby tour I'm aware of is "<Year/s> <team> tour", ie, 1981 Springbok Tour. This last one seems hardly adequate as the location is not mentioned (not to mention the capitalisation of Tour). Use of the word "to" in the Lions tours strikes me as peculiar. In the days when teams travelled by ship they were something of "tours to" but these days (and back then) "tour of" seems more appropriate. Should we have a consistent pattern across all sports? Nurg 06:30, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

See also wikipedia:naming conventions (numbers and dates). What the most appropriate names of the "events" or representation of "teams" are, I couldn't say, what follows regards only how years are represented in the title:

• <Year/s> <team> tour to <touring location> and <Year/s> <team> tour, acceptable, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)#Year in front
• <Team> in <location> in <year/s>, not OK: if the year is at the end don't use "in", but separate with comma, so <Team> in <location>, <year/s> would be acceptable according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)#Year at the end, with comma. Note however that years are preferably not abbreviated, so not New Zealand cricket team in Zimbabwe, 2005-06 but New Zealand cricket team in Zimbabwe, 2005-2006.
• Since the numbers and dates NC guideline became effective some days ago, some prefer to standardise even further, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)#Bracketed disambiguator style would make the last example New Zealand cricket team in Zimbabwe (2005-2006)

PS: The above examples are merely about wikipedia pagename formatting, whether these examples would qualify in terms of Wikipedia notability criteria I couldn't say. --Francis Schonken 08:52, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Naming conventions for disambiguating television shows

I started a discussion of disambiguation of television shows at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation to hopefully establish a convention for naming television shows. (Sorry for the wrong placement) any input you have would be appreciated. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:10, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

A draft version of a new poll to determine naming conventions for television content is available for comment. Relevant comments are here and here Voting for a new convention will begin on January 25, 2006. Thanks for any input --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 22:56, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The poll (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)/poll has begun. Please vote until February 15. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 05:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposed overall policy

I haven't seen this one before. I have seen instances of it (such as use of common English names for things), but how about adapting, as an overriding principle:

Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists.

In other words:

• What is convenient for editors (whether individual editors, WikiProjects, etc.) should take a back seat to what is convenient for readers.
• In particular, renaming of articles (or adapting naming conventions) for the convenience of macro/template writers is discouraged.
• As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, rather than specialist literature, everyday common names should be used for things where possible. Thus, black widow spider over Latrodectus mactans, Hurricane Katrina over Atlantic Tropical Cyclone 11 (2005) (or whatever storm number it was), etc.

--EngineerScotty 21:58, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, sounds good. Can go in Wikipedia:Naming conventions intro as far as I'm concerned. First I thought this would be stuff for wikipedia:naming conventions (common names), but no, it's definitely broader than that. Would work as an over-all principle I gather. --Francis Schonken 07:35, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

"X and Y"

Sometimes 2 related but distinct ideas are discussed under a single article. Some such articles use the form "X and Y" (e.g. Acronym and initialism, Weak form and strong form) while others use only one name in the title and mention the other in the intro (e.g. content word redirects to function word, which is its opposite). Should there be a policy for such cases? Where there are 2 concepts, I think it makes sense to use "X and Y" as title, with each as a redirect, unless one term is overwhelmingly more common. (If there were more than 2 concepts, I wouldn't favour "X and Y and Z" but I guess there would be a genus name to cover all the species.) Joestynes 08:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that certainly seems sensible to me - any guideline should remind editors to create redirects at both single terms (obviously), and at the alternate order (e.g. initialism and acronym - which I just created to follow my own advice) so that anyone who knows the terms are combined into one article doesn't leave redlinks typing it from memory. As long as that's done, this scheme seems preferable for cases where the two terms are equal in status and usage level. One thing to consider is should there be a guideline on which order the terms come in - should it be alphabetical, "whichever feels natural", just completely arbitrary, or...? - IMSoP 12:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Naming convention for Companies and Businesses

Can someone develop a naming convention for companies (I will help)? Clicking on just a few links in any of these lists will show how inconsistent the naming has been

• NASDAQ-100
• List of S&P 500 companies
• Companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange
• Fortune 500

Just a few of the problems

• Inc. vs Incorporated
• Co. vs Company
• Corp. vs Corporation
• Company Name vs. Company Name Incorporated

There doesn't seem to be any consistency in any direction and a naming convention would definitely help. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 21:03, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The simple solution is to use the correct name for the company. That can be interesting in some cases. One company I worked for was offically Corp. and not Corporation. So any policy would need to cover that. For easy of readers, it might be best for the article titles to drop the qualifier (Inc, company) since most people don't know what it is. Vegaswikian 22:10, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that would be one solution, but the "correct" name is not always the one chosen for article titles. Sometimes the most common usage is used over official usage South Korea North Korea. Honorifics and titles are removed for the title (King, Sir, Duke, Saint) though they may be the "correct" name. Middle names are usually not included in titles. In these cases the official name is given in the first sentence. I've been busy with the TV naming convention, but I guess I can start this one up after this. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 05:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget the use '&' or '=' in the name for some entities along with others. I know everyone wants to replace the '&' which is correct, with 'and' which is the guideline but doing that changes the name of the company. When you have the time this would be another mess. I'm still busy with the 'U.S.' stuff and some IATA cleanup. Vegaswikian 23:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Policy v. guideline

Does it make sense that this page has a "policy" notice at the top, when AFAICS all the detailed sub-pages it points to are only declared to be guidelines? Palmiro | Talk 15:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

For more info on policy and guidelines, please see Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, which explains why certain rules become policies. Thank you!--Urthogie 16:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

...and see above #Guidelines or policy? – the same question was asked, and got some answers. --Francis Schonken 17:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Theres your answer, Palmiro.--Urthogie 23:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

So am I to take it, as per Steve Block in that section, that "conventions on the main page are also guidelines, rather than policy"?

This arises from a disagreement between Urthogie and me on how to apply the "common names" guideline, in particular; I consider that the summary on this page has to be interpreted in the light of the detailed guideline; Urthogie has a different interpretation and considers (if I've understood correctly) that the detailed guideline is not to be taken into account because this page is policy. Palmiro | Talk 19:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Which article(s) is the disagreement about?

Re difference between policy and guideline:

• a policy means that a very large part of the wikipedians recommend to do something a certain way;
• a guideline means a large part of the wikipedians recommend to do something a certain way.

This makes a "policy" a little easier to enforce, and a little harder to change, than a "guideline". But unless you're successful in changing the guideline, I don't see a difference why "common names" should be applied when it would be a policy, and not when it's a guideline: that would be a false presentation of the guideline idea.

Further, and that's something I'd like to add to what I wrote in #Guidelines or policy? above, there's a paragraph in the intro of Wikipedia:Naming conventions I definitely think sums up the naming conventions policy:

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

That's policy in the full meaning of the word. Note that also here "exceptions" are not made impossible: the paragraph starts with "Generally, ..." which always implies the possibility of exceptions.

Note that in a previous section on this page (see #Proposed overall policy) it is proposed to add following sentence to the policy formulation:

Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists.

I supported that idea for the expansion of the policy part of naming conventions, how d'you think about that? Would that make the discussion you're involved in now easier? --Francis Schonken 19:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with Palmiro on the discussion if the pages were policy. But they're not. If you get them to be policy, then you'll be correct- until then I'm going to go to work on improving those guidelines. Thank you--Urthogie 21:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity: I still don't know which page name(s) you and Palmiro were discussing about. Would you care mentioning?

Did you consider Wikipedia:Naming conflict? Would that be of any help?

Re. changes to NC guidelines: I'll probably comment on them after I know what all this is about. --Francis Schonken 08:10, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Voting is currently going on at Talk:islamist terrorism. Please vote, thanks!--Urthogie 18:02, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Coats of arms

Is there a naming convention for articles on coats of arms? Is there some reason why nearly every article in Category:National coats of arms has the word "Arms" capitalized? Unless someone can point out some good reason to disobey the general convention of using lowercase in titles, these all should be renamed. dbenbenn | talk 01:35, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Because it is a Proper Noun? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:52, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Help me understand "Avoid non alpha-numeric characters used only for emphasis"

Does this apply to using italics in article titles? For example, I need to how to correctly title this article: The Smurfs and communism or The Smurfs and communism  ? BTW, I'm not trying to be cute. This is a real point of confusion, about a real article! ike9898 16:01, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

"Avoid non alpha-numeric characters used only for emphasis" was something put together by User:Xaosflux (see above #"..." articles.), you can always ask this user.

Although not specifically mentioned at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions), trying to trigger italics in a page name with two accent marks seems not to work: [[''The Smurfs'' and communism]] does not make a link to an article named "The Smurfs and communism", instead it shows as ''The Smurfs'' and communism in article text.

Further, I think there was a recent AfD or something like that (or maybe I saw it at WP:RM, I don't know any more) about an article connecting "Smurfs" and "communism": saying that ''The Smurfs'' and communism doesn't work technically, is not the same as saying that The Smurfs and communism would be a good idea! --Francis Schonken 17:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I authored that section, in a resposne to articles that started with characters other then A-Z or 0-9, when used for no reason other then to bring attention to the article or it's name. Additionaly it dealt with various other issues linking, indexing, or the searching of articles. This was originally proposed to ward off article names such as ***The Smurfs and communism, when generally used to attempt to have them listed in odd places (such as at the begining or end of alpabetic listings). This section also deals with puting quotation marks around things that really don't need them in the title. The goal of this section is not to change the fonts used, although as Francis Schonken said above, it doesn't work. Nothing of this goes to stating what the content of the article should be, and an article title of The Smurfs and communism or References to communism in The Smurfs, etc are all fine article names, quotations or italices are not needed around the title, as the capitilization provides sufficient information as to the context. Please feel free to Talk Page me if you want more of my thaughts on this. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 04:47, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

U.S. Roads naming conventions

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/U.S. state highway naming conventions for the proposal. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 04:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Please note that if this is a proposal for a naming convention per se it should a) be marked as such, and b) be placed in a standard, centralised NC location, not a wikiproject subpage. On the substance of this, there's clearly a need to have some sort on unified discussion of this, as at present what tends to happen is that renames come up on RfM, CFD, and TFD, and typically get no consensus either way, with the result that the status quo of various inconsisent names remains in place. OTOH, a fresh naming convention seems redundant to me, as this is already covered by existing NCs: here and here. The names in question are are not proper nouns, and not "otherwise almost always capitalized", and thus should be lower-case. It's therefore problematic to propose a further naming convention that'll essentially just say "use the general rules", though I wouldn't quite rule it out either, as this seems to be difficult to resolve otherwise. Alai 07:18, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

However, here we are requesting the opposite. We are requesting that the phrase "California State Route" should always be capitalized, whether it is part of a article name, a list name, a template name, a category name, or a stub name. This is because the phrase is "California State Route". The capitalization indicates that we are referring to the specific classification. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 03:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Lenght of a name

Isn't there some guideline that short names are preferable to long ones (not abbreviations)? See Talk:Polish-Lithuanian-Muscovite_Commonwealth#Article title for the context of my question.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 07:47, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

well, the common name is preferred, which is usually short. Unless needed to be made longer for precision.

I started "Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders" a few days ago. Didn't see a way to make that one shorter. --Francis Schonken 10:11, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions/Geographic names

Seems like the discutants have run out of steam. Unless there are other comments, we will probably move for some formal voting soon.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 01:34, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Ohio schools

How does a convention get from proposed to accepted? I proposed Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Ohio school districts) in April 2005. Nobody has objected or commented to it since. I'd like to be able to cite it as official policy as we have a number of articles being created on Ohio schools. (See Category: High schools in Ohio for example). PedanticallySpeaking 16:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

• It seems that the reason why nobody commented on your original proposal was that you never publicised it WP:RFC, WP:VP, and other discussion pages. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:53, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I did post notice of it on the talk pages of several Ohio education related articles. I'm reposting it with notice on the pages you suggested. PedanticallySpeaking 16:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I slightly reformatted Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Ohio school districts), as a proposal. Hope you don't mind. Might I suggest to start comments at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Ohio school districts)? --Francis Schonken 16:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Still a suggestion: there's the WikiProject about Schools: maybe an idea to leave a note at Wikipedia talk:Schools (and/or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools): some of the people of such projects might be interested to get involved. --Francis Schonken 17:20, 1 February 2006 (UTC)