Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 7

message: 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)
thread_title:  Short titles 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews 

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

text: 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)
thread_title:  Page Titles and POV 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Suggestion for new naming convention: Latin party names 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Naming conventions for disambiguating television shows 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Proposed overall policy 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: This alternate order issue is also relevant to things named after a number of people. For example I'm think specifically of the Euler-Bernoulli beam equations (common name) which is more properly (but more rarely) called the Bernoulli-Euler beam theory and sometimes the Galileo-Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. Just something else to consider in writing this guideline.--Yannick 19:14, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "X and Y" 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Naming convention for Companies and Businesses 

message: A new draft poll to establish naming convention guidelines for companies and businesses is available for comment until February 10.  --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 17:56, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies)/draft poll|A draft poll for company naming conventions]]

message: Voting has begun and will continue until March 5.  Please resolve this lagging issue.  --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 22:41, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies)/poll]]

message: 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)
replies: text: Because it is a Proper Noun?  -- ALoan (Talk) 11:52, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coats of arms 

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

message: 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)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions/Geographic names]]

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Ohio schools 

message: I'd like a second opinion on a discussion going on at Talk:Sierra Leone Krio people.  Another editor believes that in order to distinguish from peoples with names similar to "Krio people", it is a good idea to call the article Sierra Leone Krio people.  I think that Krio people would be correct, with a leading disambig line for any peoples they might be confused with. NickelShoe 04:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Sierra Leone Krio people]]

message: I started a vote on naming of Polish powiats and gminas. Anyone interested is welcome to vote Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geography_of_Poland#Vote--SylwiaS | talk 04:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geography of Poland - terminology (proposal) 

message: Why do we have articles at both Braunschweig and Brunswick-Lüneburg? A google test shows a 10 to 1 preference for "Brunswick", but I'm not sure how the vote on that page went... Borisblue 15:53, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Brunswick/Braunsweig

message: I don't know if this is the right venue to discuss this, but I have noticed two problems with the naming convention on wikipedia for Dutchmen whose family name starts with the word "Van" (eg Marco van Basten):
# The letter "v" in "van" is invariantly spelt with a lowercase; however from my knowledge and experience many Dutchmen do have names with a capital "V" in "Van".
# When being categorised "van" would invariantly be treated as part of the given name (ie Marco van Basten would be categorised by means of, say, Basten, Marco van).  However from my understanding the word "van" is part of the family name, not give name (ie "Mr. Van Basten", not "Mr. Basten").
Please let me know where shall we have the above issues resolved.  Thanks.  --Pkchan 16:54, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PPS: That's where the discussion is too; it led to a little expansion of Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting --Francis Schonken 20:11, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming convention for Dutchmen 

message: Do we have a convention about whether kingdoms, phylums, classes, orders and families should be capitalized? Is it different for each? I've only found information on genus and species. If they are only one word, it does not matter for the name of the article, as the first word is always capitalized, but there is the matter of whether to capitalize the name within the article, such as Lepidoptera. -- Kjkolb 01:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All taxa above species should be capitalized. Genus and below should be italicized. Derivitize words should not be capitalized. Eg. Humans are in the Hominidae family. Humans are hominids. - UtherSRG (talk) 01:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kingdoms, phylums, classes, orders and families 

message: Hi there!
I posted this at WP:RFC/P, but was hoping I might get some additional interested people here. There has been an ongoing argument at Flag of Western Sahara about the name of the flag. 
Western Sahara is a region claimed by Morocco and a government in exile of indigenous people, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Both parties control a portion of the territory and both claim the whole of it. The flag is the flag flown by SADR, but it is generally known as the "Flag of Western Sahara", mainly because Morocco does not recognise the term Western Sahara (calling it Moroccan Sahara), so there is no other flag which also might bear the name. There have been extensive discussions about comparisons with Flag of Tibet, and Flag of Taiwan, but up until now no conclusion. 
To break the stalemate, a vote has been proposed here, and we would very much appreciate any and every input. The more the merrier!
Thanks and greets, The Minister of War (Peace) 08:55, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming issue at [[Flag of Western Sahara]] 

message: When cleaning up random pages I came across Garmin ique, but the actual company name is "Garmin iQue."  It makes sense to move the page to Garmin iQue, but is it okay? Akrabbim 02:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If that's the name, then that's what the title should be.  NickelShoe 02:36, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Absolutly, iQue IS the correct form. Qyd 21:45, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI - when a capital letter appears in the middle of a word, it may sometimes be reffered to as camelCase. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:55, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  caps mid-word 

message: A vote on which translation of the Polish word województwo should be used in Wikipedia articles has started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland#Województwa vote. Ausir 13:01, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Województwa vote 

message: In several cases political parties with names like Workers Party, Socialist Workers Party etc. have been moved to Workers' Party etc. While the apostrophe is grammatically correct English, it does not correspond to the actual usage of the names of these organizations. In cases like the US or UK Socialist Workers Parties, apostrophes are never used on posters, leaflets, etc. Thus I propose that the apostrophe is scrapped in wiki article names as well. --Soman 13:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Workers Party 

message: Currently, there is an unending controversy at Roman Catholic Church about whether the article should be named Catholic Church, Catholicism, or stay as it is. Currently, Catholic Church redirects to Roman Catholic Church. Catholicism, which in popular use refers to a specific system of beliefs, is in fact a discussion about the small-c meaning of "catholic" (universality). Confusingly, that's exactly what our article on Catholic is also. 
The problem is, the Catholic Church, which calls itself: "The Catholic Church", is institutionally constituted of several dozen dependent "particular Churches": the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the Byzantine Catholic Church, the Armenian Catholic Church, the Coptic Catholic Church, the Greek Catholic Church, etc., and, alas, the Roman Catholic Church. But the distinction between the Churches is not by any stretch of the imagination an insignificant or negligible ecclesiastical issue, especially when you're writing an article about, inter alia, the structure of the Church! Of course, the Roman Church is the largest, and has the most "members", and the Bishop of Rome is immediately the head of it. But the Bishop of Rome also occupies a higher office: that of Pope, by virtue of which he is also Supreme Pontiff of all the other particular Churches. For more, see here . 
So it is factually incorrect to equate Roman Catholic Church with Catholic Church. Many of us have repeatedly requested to move the article. But the waters are muddied because some Protestant Christians claim to believe in a small-c "catholic Church", albeit in a less institutionalized sense than the Pope and we Catholics believe it. In any event, they claim that making Catholic Church the main article would effectively endorse the Church's exclusivist claim to be "the" Catholic Church. (Despite the fact that we equate the two anyway by redirecting.) 
A compromise that I offered was overwhelmingly rejected. (It consisted of moving the article to Catholicism--since that seems to suggest a system of beliefs rather than "universality" or small-c catholicity--and dictionary.com supports me on that.) 
So this incorrect (and frankly insensitive) status quo continues. I don't believe it's proper for any religionists to use articles on Wikipedia to support or oppose a POV. By naming the article Catholic Church, we would not be endorsing that Church's claims about itself. We would simply be naming it by what it is called! Naming it something that it is not called suggests a POV. And launching into discussions of the "ambiguity" of various terms like Catholicism, Catholic, etc., also suggests a POV. Most people, when searching for those terms, are simply not looking for an article on (what is properly called) catholicity -- and you'll notice there's no article for that. 
Anyway, I noticed the article Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the other day. According to our other article, Latter Day Saints, "Latter Day Saints consider themselves to be 'saints' in the earliest Christian sense of the word, meaning members of the original church that they believe Jesus organized before his death in the First Century, AD." It occurred to me that, as a Catholic, I believe this very thing--about the Catholic Church, but emphatically not about the LDS Church! Should we change the title of the article because other religions make exclusivist claims on the concept of Latter Day Saints? If not, then neither should we name the Catholic Church based on analagous objections. 
We would have to rename our Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Mormonism or Joseph Smith's Church or something like that. But that is absurd. We should stay out of ecclesiological debates and simply name religions after the names they claim, and by which most people know them.
Similarly, if there was a political party that called itself The Best Party, and other parties not identically named also claimed to be "the best party", then should we disambiguate The Best Party article? Of course not. We should name organizations by the names they claim for themselves. If there are two that claim the exact same name, then we can disambig.
I am asking for a naming convention that would ensure consistency here. I look forward to reading your comments! --Hyphen5 03:00, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hyphen5 is correct about the redirect already equating them and the article should either be moved or a disambiguation page should be created. It should be a disambiguation page unless almost all searchers and linkers would be looking for the Roman Catholic Church. In that case, the Roman Catholic Church article should be moved to Catholic Church and link to a disambiguation page should be put at the top. However, since it is called the Roman Catholic Church a significant percentage of the time in formal writing, I suspect that "Catholic Church" is sometimes ambiguous. From the sources I looked at, Catholic Church refers to other churches, such as the Eastern Catholic Church and the Old Catholic Church, and to Christians as a whole. There are also the Catholic Churches within the Catholic Church in Rome mentioned above. -- Kjkolb 05:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI - Eastern Catholic Church is an umbrella term for all particular Churches within the Catholic Church, except the Roman Rite. So, Eastern Catholic Church refers to what I was talking about. Old Catholic Church, as I understand it, is not affiliated with the Pope. I do think that the overwhelming proportion of people who type "Catholic Church" into Wikipedia, or any search, will be looking for that Church of which the Pope is head. Therefore, Roman Catholic Church should be moved to Catholic Church. --Hyphen5 06:25, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religious Organizations