Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 4

message: I am surprised the issue is not discussed earlier. Some nations go singular, some plural. (Some nations have names without this problem: Roma and Sinti, Sami.) Below is a discussion from Talk:Tatars. IMO the issue must be resolved here once and for all. Mikkalai 21:12, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, and note if you haven't already that there is a seperate page dedicated to this rule with its own discussion, to which this discussion should perhaps ultimately be moved. - IMSoP 22:00, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, and note that was exactly my reference, if haven't read my argiments about tatars above: "tatar" an "tatars" are different notions: tatar is a person, tatars is a nation. Mikkalai 22:09, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid the distinction doesn't carry for me: surely one instance of the nation of Tatars is a Tatar, in just the same way that one member of a colony of honeypot ants is a honeypot ant?  I think it is far tidier to use the same convention throughout, and simply use the singular whenever feasible, but I guess I may not represent the majority on this. See also (once I've saved it) a more general comment I'm preparing in another browser-tab as I type this one. - IMSoP 22:39, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name of the article about a nationality: singular or plural (Tatar vs. Tatars) 

message: Lists of pieces has a format borrowed from Lists of solo piano pieces, which lists pages by composer, style or period, and nationality or culture. Now a list of pages itself and every alphabetical page clearly violates the "Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles" convention, example: List of solo piano pieces by composer: G. Do we add lists such as this as an exception to that convention or make the "lists" one list instead of many? Hyacinth 08:54, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Lists of pieces

message: I would like to recommend an addition to the rules for personal names. I suggest we follow the standard practice in the United States, as set forth in the Associated Press Stylebook, and omit any commas preceding suffixes such as "Jr." and "Sr." in personal names as well as suffixes such as "Inc.," "Ltd.," and so forth in company names. acsenray
*That's not "standard practice", it's one of two equally acceptable standard practices, one of which uses no commas, and the other of which places them before and after the "Jr." or "Sr." element. (Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., 6.49). - Nunh-huh 21:00, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jr., Sr., Inc., etc. 

message: How and by whom are the "Conventions under consideration" (Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Conventions under consideration) under consideration? When and how are they adopted or abandonded? Hyacinth 21:39, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think there is a policy on how draft policy becomes policy. Normally someone knocks up a page, with an "is a draft" notice. It gets knocked about a bit for a few days on the talk page and then becomes stable. Shortly afterwards people start refering to it as policy, and the "draft" warning gets quietly dropped. So its a natural organic evolution usually. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:43, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Still I have a question: Specifically, this isn't a page (article), but simply sections (headers) of a page, and there are many "Naming Conventions Under Consideration" which are definitely not under consideration, making it a total misnomer in those cases. Is there a precedent for how long something goes without comment before it is assumed to be unapposed? To provide context, I am specifically thinking of Wikipedia:Naming Conventions#Album titles, Wikipedia:Naming Conventions#Pieces of music, and Wikipedia:Naming Conventions#Identity. Hyacinth 23:38, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I assume it's a sort of thing like Postel's tradition naming Internet standards RFC (Request for Comment). The actual decision-making process at Wikipedia is vague, to say the least, so there's really no point at which it can ever be said that anything is in any state other than "under consideration." I assume that, Wikipedia being Wikipedia, you could always delete the phrase "Under Consideration" and see whether anyone reverts it. Since it's not likely that changing the phrase would have any noticeable effect on how actual editors actually give names to actual pages, it doesn't actually matter much. Dpbsmith 21:25, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like a pretty good assessment. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:28, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Considering Naming Conventions 

message: How should the naming of pages deal with suffixes. For instance, neofeudalistic, neofeudalist, neofeudalism, and neofeudal, could all have articles. Obviously some suffix is required, at the least -al. This has important implications for both the grammar, content, and neutrality of articles. For instance, Neofeudalism has to describe one disputed (in wiki and in the external world) "movement"/"trend"/"goal"/"belief", while neofeudal could describe a variety of otherwise unconnected things. Hyacinth 01:11, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Suffixes

message: If you were to go to List of lemmas, you will find that they are all listed as "XXX's lemma", with a small L.  However, many redirect to pages with a capitalized L.  I know that Urysohn's lemma was actually moved to Urysohn's Lemma.  This all confuses me, and I posted a comment on the talk page there.
What is the convention for titles of theorems, paradoxes, lemmas, and the like?
- RealGrouchy 14:52, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theorems and "lemmas" 

message: The current text of this article section does not reflect real-world usage. It is certainly a well-established practice to follow general English title capitalization rules in the music industry, but it's largely ignored, and has been for quite some time, by music publishers, artists, and indexers (e.g., libraries). The library case is relatively simple — they just lowercase everything except the first letter and proper nouns (e.g., "A long way down from Stephanie"). One might ignore that special situation. But pick up any 100 CDs, and you'll be hard-pressed to find more than a handful that actually follow English capitalization rules. The vast majority of modern popular music albums (in the most generic sense) follow one of three practices:
# Uppercase everything.
# Lowercase everything (including initial letters and proper nouns).
# Capitalize everything.
The remaining albums and/or songs (perhaps 10%-15%) are quite inconsistent in what they do and don't capitalize. My favorite example is The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine", whose songs include "All together Now", "It's all too much", and "March of The Meanies" — three different examples, none of which completely follow "standard" capitalization rules. (I go into more detail about this at Talk:List of songs whose title includes personal names#Capitalization). And I haven't even covered classical music, which tends to favor a unique combination of "standard" English rules and all-lowercasing for some terms.
I would like to propose following one consistent practice that (A) is in much more common use than the "standard" rules, (B) is easy to understand and follow, and (C) doesn't detract from the text in which it is included. To this end, I suggest we promote #3 above — capitalize everything in a title — as the only practical combination of these factors. I invite questions and comments. -- Jeff Q 23:01, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Album titles 

message: I don't know if this issue has been addressed before, but what is the consensus on alphabetizing names which begin with "von"?
Should a name like Baron von Munchausen be listed under "V" or "M"? I've seen examples of both ways. And I assume the same convention would cover similar names beginning with van, du, della, da, de, etc. MK 05:35, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Alphabetizing conventions for names with "von"

message: First, apologies if this is dealt with elsewhere - I have looked ...
I was lookingup genie - to find out whether 'genie jokes' got a mention, and found a story of a feral child, plus a link to jinni. This page was what I sought, indeed it admitted that genie is the English word.
I feel that jinni should be genie - that's what 99.99% of English-language users would seek - I further feel it is more entitled to that title than the feral child. So two questions:
#Assuming for a moment that I'm right, what should I do?
#Where would this advice be found? Not here?
#Where should I best raise this to see what others think?
Thanks! Heenan73 11:27, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've moved the short case-study 'Genie' from the page of that name, allowing that page to take the text from Jinni. Not only was in intuitively appropriate, but some 30 internal links to Genie virtually all refer to genies, not Feral children. Heenan73 18:10, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duplication & Titles 

message: Since the use of diacritical marks (where technically possible) seems to be common for article titles, but the policy is not clearly stated, a proposed policy is being discussed at Talk:Agustin Stahl. --Michael Snow 23:49, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Diacritics in names from other languages

message: The main page was temporarily protected due to this dispute. For the main discussion of the reasons, please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television).
Netoholic. People are still voting. The issue is not resolved. Please stop reverting. Mintguy (T) 19:35, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how it could be. Stop trying to make this a personal battle between you and Mintguy (who has clearly demonstrated that he didn't break the 3 revert rule yesterday), and discuss what's actually at issue here - whether your policy has consensus support. (By all means report him on RFC if you want, but you'll no doubt be told that you're being ridiculous.) Proteus (Talk) 15:31, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Television series and shows

message: Moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places). -- Beland 02:33, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Countries 

message: It's rather interesting that one of the main themes of this discussion is the ongoing attempts to thwart any possible resolution by rushing blindly ahead into various ad hoc solutions. Whether it is out of ignorance or just a lack of knowledge of Wikipedia dispute resolution might be an open question, but apparently there is a need to review the basics.
To get a grasp of Wikipedia dispute resolution those interested in participating could start with taking a look at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. It is perhaps necessary to understand that Wikipedia is not a democracy and that is why building a consensus is always the preferred choice. The first entry in this discussion is less than two days old and possibilities of reaching a consensus on this are only scratched upon, and far from exhausted. However, after that the next step would be to invite third parties to the discussion to help to further it towards a consensus. This should be allowed to the necessary time, without anyone trying to derail the process by forcibly implementing their own pet agendas.
Only if all this should fail a survey would become necessary, and in such a case the procedures in Wikipedia:Survey guidelines should be followed. Among the basic provisions there has to be a consensus on the nature of the survey, like what questions to be asked and when the deadline should be, before any voting even can take place. It is recommended that the process of reaching a consensus about the nature of the survey as such, be allowed to take about a week to determine. When a survey is called it is also to be announced so that it will be possible to participate, etc.
Because the voting called upon above, at Talk:Public limited company, satisfies none of the basic requirements for Wikipedia dispute resolution, any result produced by would be moot and has no hope of acquiring necessary validity. That unfortunate process should be called off, preferably by the one who initiated it and discussion be brought back here as soon as possible. It is important that the fundamental rules of the resolution process actually is respected and cared for by all involved parties. -- Mic 20:40, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded. The proposal is also gratuitously UK-centric, most notably regarding multinationals. 
Susvolans 14:47, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Choking the process