CZ Talk:Naming conventions

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Names of articles about people

I added a sentence about naming articles based on people so that we can be consistant throughout. If this is not the way we want to do it, lets change it fast. --Matt Innis (Talk) 09:28, 1 April 2007 (CDT)

There are a few special cases for personal names which need to have a convention soon:
The conventions don't need to be hard rules - the article on the second Viscount Stansgate may be better titled as simply Tony Benn, in violation of some other convention, because of his notability under that name. Also, there should be redirects from most of the common alternates. I have my preferences as to which ones we choose, but establishing some conventions is more important than my preferred choices. Anthony Argyriou 18:58, 3 April 2007 (CDT)
Nobody has weighed in yet, and trying to track down the discussion at the fora is hard. I'd like to make a few suggestions based on my comment above:

How to name articles about people

The general rule I propose is that an article about a person ought to live at the name at which the person is best-known to educated English-speaking people, with redirects from all common alternates. This will mean some inconsistency measured against other possible rules, but I believe will create the most easy-to-use compendium of knowledge.

People from English-speaking countries

Use the full first name and last name, unless the person is well-known by some other form. If a person commonly is given a middle initial to distinguish them from another person with the same first and last name, use the middle initial. If the person commonly is addressed by or discussed by a nickname, use that. Where more than one form is common, there should be redirects from the others. Thus, some U.S. presidents:

However, some people "part their name on the left", or are known by a stage name, or a single name. In general, the form the person uses in writing is the form which should be used for the article title, with some redirects. For example:

People from other latin-alphabet-using countries

In general, the same rules apply, though care should be taken to get the correct surname when doing default sorts and choosing disambiguation. For example, a former president of Colombia is Julio César Turbay Ayala. His last name is Turbay Ayala, and should be alphabetised under "T", not "A". It may be useful to create a redirect from Julio César Turbay

Note: This is likely more controversial than most of what else I'm proposing Names of people who have diacritical marks in their name should be listed using the diacritical marks, with a redirect from the unaccented version, plus any other redirects which would be appropriate. So, to use a more famous Colombian example, Gabriel García Márquez, with a redirect from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (and remember to list him as Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, not Marquez, Gabriel Garcia). The exception to this is for people who have been much discussed in the English-language press using a spelling without diacritics, thus Hermann Goering rather than Hermann Göring, but Kurt Gödel not Kurt Goedel, because the best-known work about the mathematician spells his name with the umlaut. (Of course, the other choice ought to exist as a redirect.)

People from countries which do not use the Latin alphabet

In general, the rules for English-speaking countries still apply, except for the issue of transliteration. For languages with fairly standard transliteration, such as most of those using the Greek or Cyrillic alphabets, this shouldn't be problematic; except to point out that transliterations should be into English, not German or French: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, not Tschaikowski or Tchaïkovski. Particular carre should be taken with transliterations from Greek, as Ancient Greek was not, according to the scholars, pronounced as Modern Greek is. Thus Eleftherios Venizelos, not Eleutherios Venizelos (nor Benizelos), but Euripides, not Evripidis.

Chinese names should be transliterated in the way most familiar to literate people in the English-speaking world. For people from the Republic of China, or major figures of Nationalist China or the Chinese Empire, that is likely to be the Wade-Giles method. For people from the People's Republic, that is likely to be the Pinyin method. For both, the family name should stay in front. So Mao Zedong (with redirect from Mao Tse-Tung), but Sun Yat-Sen. However, Confucius, not Kǒng Fūzǐ or K'ung-fu-tzu. (As always, redirects should exist from both of those, and from Kong Fuzi and Kung Fu Tzu.)

People whose culture has family name first

Except where such people have come to be known in the English-speaking world with their names re-ordered to the English standard, the name should be written out in the way which it appears in their culture. Thus Mao Zedong, not Zedong Mao. Redirects need not exist unless there is some substantial literature which has the names in English order.

People with titles of nobility or royalty

Here, I propose to follow the system for names and titles that the Royalty and Nobility Work Group at Wikipedia have developed.

In general:

  • Monarchs of nations: "{Monarch's first name and ordinal}, {Title} of {Country}". {title} should be omitted where it is "King" or "Queen".
  • Patriarchs and Popes: "Patriarch/Pope {papal name} {ordinal if more than one} of {episcopal see}". When the episcopal see is Rome, it should be omitted.
  • Hereditary nobility: "{Commonly used name}, {ordinal (if appropriate)} {title} (of) {place}".

A couple of possible exceptions:

Anthony Argyriou 14:49, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

DEFAULTSORT template

Wikipedia has a nifty template we should consider borrowing. Called DEFAULTSORT, it automatically seats an entry in the right place in any catgories into which that entry is included. Thus, the list of categories for Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Rosemary Barkett reads:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barkett, Rosemary}}
[[Category:1939 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Mexican-born United States political figures]]
[[Category:Florida state court judges]]
[[Category:Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:People from Tamaulipas]]
[[Category:Syrian Mexicans]]

The article therefore shows up under "B" in all of the above categories. (note: I am not endorsing this category scheme, just the template).

Cheers! Brian Dean Abramson 20:11, 1 April 2007 (CDT)

Looks pretty useful to me--those who want to use it should be able to use it, no? I mean, I don't see any reason why not. --Larry Sanger 21:51, 1 April 2007 (CDT)

Ah, I lack the technical know-how to make such a template work here - I'll try a copy/paste to see if that does it, but will that work? Brian Dean Abramson 23:08, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
Template is copied over but does not work. Techie intervention would be welcome. Brian Dean Abramson 21:25, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

One Word Titles

We need a much more detailed policy on naming conventions, I believe. For one, I do not think we should ever have any main entries which begin with a miniscule letter; such use flies in the face of any and every reference work I have ever used or contributed to; the first word should always be capitalized. I note that with the example given, computational complexity theory, the actual article does indeed have its first word capitalized!

Another aspect not covered here is one-word entries (Automobile, Novel, Television) which it should be made clear are capitalized (although the wiki itself doesn't mind, consistentcy here looks best, I think).

Lastly, the alphabetical issue is far larger than just names -- we would not want, for instance, an entry on "Fossil Fuels" to index under "Fossil," but under "Fuels, Fossil", and the same might apply to many phrases or three or more words (Trans-Siberian Railway, European Economic Community, or Functional magnetic resonance imaging).

Russell Potter

Thanks for your comments, Russell. As you pointed out, the wiki does not care whether the first letter of the title is majuscule or minuscule. Therefore, I'd say we don't really need a naming policy about it; the system will capitalise everything on its own. What's more of a problem, I think, are the rare cases where the title should not be capitalisd, such as iPod and e (the number).—Nat Krause 15:47, 8 April 2007 (CDT)
Yes, I've since found that out -- though I think we still want to have the first letter capitalized in the initial sentence of the entry, on redirection pages, and such, for stylistic consistency! Russell Potter

There is a template, which has been imported into CZ (and works here), which makes titles lowercase their first letter. It's {{lowercase}}. I've used it on e, and Benjamin Seghers has used it on pH; if we get an iPod article, it should be used there, too. It should only be used where capitalization is clearly inappropriate, though. Anthony Argyriou 13:52, 24 January 2008 (CST)

Acronyms

Just out of curiosity, what about acronyms?

--Paul Derry 23:22, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

I'd prefer, though I may be over-ruled on this, that articles appear under the full name of the acronym, with a redirect as appropriate: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with a redirect from NATO. Many acronyms have more than one meaning, and thus the acronym will require a disambiguation page, and so the specific articles are best distinguished by spelling them out; for example, see wikipedia's ACS page. For far too many more, see Wikipedia's List of TLA disambiguation pages. Anthony Argyriou 14:44, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

Phrases

I'd like to suggest the following convention: an article title should be a phrase that is natural to use when referring to the topic in running text. For example "history of the United States" since it is natural to write "In the history of the United States, the ..."; not "United States: History" or "History: United States". (Compare with the discussion at Talk:World War II: Homefront: US.) -- Fredrik Johansson 11:16, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

. Put the key word forst solves the problem. Everyone has a somewhat different idea of what is "natural"? all these are natural: "American history," "U.S. History," "history of the United States," "American political history" etc. As for style it is easy enough to use [ [ U.S. History|the history of the United States ] ] or [ [ U.S. History|American history ] ] or [ [ U.S. History| American political history ] ] Richard Jensen 06:02, 24 April 2007 (CDT)
I did a study of history titles in journals and major publishers. The form History of XYZ" is rarely used in recent years; it is near-defunct and CZ should not use it. For CZ users, XYZ, history is the natural way to search, as it puts the keyword first, and easily connects to XYZ, bibliography" "XYZ, demography," etc. Richard Jensen 20:24, 3 July 2007 (CDT)

plea for logic and order

I make a plea for standardizing headings. Let's start with countries and states as the topics that will have many sub-articles and can be logically organized. Some people think it does not matter because search engines can solve any problems. Those people who think it does not matter can let the rest of us decide. One way it matters is that the editors have to keep track of what's been done. That means we need an alphabetical list of, for example, all articles dealing with France. Otherwise we will have several editors writing on the same topic with different titles. ("French art", "Artistic trends in France", "Main French artists", "Painters in Paris" and "Arts in France", "19th century French art", etc ). Richard Jensen 05:58, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

The use of piping linkes negates the need to alter the article title for the purpose of organising lists and category pages. For example, at the foot of the article put {Category:History Workgroup|England, history of} with article title History of England. By using pipes we can list the article under 'E' for England in the category and workgroup but still start it with 'H' in the article title.
Also see the potential use of the DEFAULTSORT template above. Derek Harkness 10:04, 26 April 2007 (CDT)
Yes we will have to do that with all the human names, or else we have a list sorted by first name. Which is efficient: setting up a system that does not require piping or spending hundreds of hours fixing tens of thousands of entries after they are written? Of course piping does not help the users any. They can't browse for nearby spinoff articles. Richard Jensen 11:11, 26 April 2007 (CDT)
If we just begin the entries with what the consensus says is the proper, standardized title format, and include the desired abc sort on the Article Checklist as well as piping its main category entry to the way we want it sorted, then we will not have to return to 'fix' them at any point later. The piping will in fact help the users since the article's entry in the tagged category will be sorted in proper alphabetical order. Just so, in the old print model, a book's chapter heading ("The Battle of Gettysburg") would correspond with an index entry of "Gettysburg, Battle of". I think we need to think of the entry titles as chapter or section titles; then the analogy is clear. No historian, I am sure, ever gave a chapter title such as "Pittsburgh, history of"; such a format would be appropriate in a book's index only. Our piping, in essence, is the link from the natural-language title to the indexable title. Russell Potter 13:24, 26 April 2007 (CDT)
The consensus in every reference book I have seen, including non-paper encyclopedias like Encarta, is to put the main keywords first. I have seen no alternative proposal laid out here and explained or justified; we so far have NOT thought out the problems we face. It's a fallacy to hope that powerful search engines will overcome our planning mistakes. Already the workgroups have poorly organized lists--imagine the mess when they are 50x longer. Take this aspect: one role of editors is to see what gaps we have and to assign entries to fill them. When we have 10,000 history entries in garbled order (with people sorted by first name), who's to tell where we are? Richard Jensen 13:30, 26 April 2007 (CDT)
If we name the article Gettysburg, Battle of then every single time I want to link to that article I will have to pipe the link but your category will be nicely alphabetised by place names. But if we named it Battle of Gettysburg then I will only need to pipe the article once, when placing in the category, every other link can be unpiped.
Also, you keep saying 'by keyword'? How do you know what the keyword is? You are assuming that the geographical place name is the keyword but it might not be. Derek Harkness 20:57, 26 April 2007 (CDT)
Derek asks, "How do you know what the keyword is?" The answer is that CZ has experts who know the material, as opposed to the amateur world of Wikiwisdom or the count-the-links formulas of Google. Why else do we have CZ except to have experts who can tell good quality, who know the literature, and who can see what articles need to be added and which need major improvements.Richard Jensen 22:22, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

I agree, it's for an expert to decide. But who is the expert here? That expert should be an expert in Information Technology and usability. This is different form expert in history or geography or biology. We need someone like Jakob Neilsen [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Nielsen_(usability_consultant)]. Or perhaps, defining expertise through previous employment rather than academic study, we could call Larry Sanger an expert in this subject. Derek Harkness 09:38, 27 April 2007 (CDT)

We could ask a librarian--they are in the classification business (I was a department head at the Newberry Library for 10 years). The expertise however we want is content expertise--for history that means familiarity with historiography. For example, in recent years historians and major publishers rarely title books or articles a history of XYZ.' It's considered very old-fashioned. Yet we are starting to get articles like that on CZ by authors familiar with XYZ but not with historiography. And so CZ gets a retro-1970s look unintentionally. Normally the subject-field editor is the one entrusted with assigning topics and titles and coordinating the work of authors. That is what makes CZ different from Wikipedia.Richard Jensen 11:04, 27 April 2007 (CDT)
Since CZ is an online encyclopedia, not a book or a series of books, I don't see that book titles, or book classification systems, are necessarily a model for us. Secondly, since we are an encyclopedia, uniformity of titles across all subject areas is important to us -- and this of course was true in the era of print encyclopedias as well! -- as it gives the site clarity and consistency no matter what subject is being researched. I'm familiar with historiography, and can differentiate between the "longue durée" approach and histories which focus on discreet events or "great figures" -- but I do not think that titling an entry "History of Cleveland", given that such titles have evolved as the standard in wiki reference, are relatively commonsense (a bit more so, I would say, than "Cleveland, history"), necessarily implies one historiographical approach or another. Article sorting can be handled by the abc sort of the checklist and/or by piping the titles in the category link, so that's not a problem. Lastly, as to search engines, as I've noted, the *vast* majority of people using CZ, just as those uping WP or other such resources, will come in laterally from external search engines (Google), and will do so whether we want them to or not. We need a simple standard we can all agree to follow, so we can get back to writing content. Russell Potter 11:17, 27 April 2007 (CDT)
We either buy into expertise or we don't. The experts in history have all stopped using terms like "the History of Cleveland" and there is no reason for CZ to go back to old fashioned terminology. In terms of users we want to build a clientele who understands that the same coding for articles on France applies to articles on Germany, and is set and standardized by expert editors. Some may argue that it doesn't matter because of the search engine factor. I suggest that people for whom it does not matter should please step back and let the debate go on among experts who believe it does matter. Richard Jensen 11:50, 27 April 2007 (CDT)
Richard, I have the greatest respect for the work you're doing here on history articles, but I just do not agree with you on this issue. I would never suggest that people outside of a discipline dictate to those within how they ought to describe the state of knowledge in their field. But I would agree with the earlier posting, that undrestanding how to manage an encyclopedia using a wiki model is also an "area of expertise," and when it comes to issues such as how -- accross all fields -- article titles are to be formatted, that this should be determined by the Editorial staff of this project, in consultation with Editors from various fields of expertise, and only after issues have been discussed and vetted as broadly as possible. And I'd agree that our Editor-in-Chief, Larry Sanger -- with whom I've certainly disagreed with in the past, and vigorously -- is the most experienced editor of wiki-based encylopedias here, and should in this area have the final say. Russell Potter 12:26, 27 April 2007 (CDT)

Cut from the page

put keywords first. Consider for example a series of articles about France. The number of articles may grow to 50, 100 or more, and we want editors and users to find them easily. Thus we can use the commonsense system:

  • France
  • France, arts
  • France, cities
  • France, climate
  • France, culture
  • France, economy
  • France, geography
  • France, history before 1789
  • France, history since 1789
  • France, politics
  • France, regions
  • France, society
  • France, sports, etc.
French art, French politics, French society .... is how I would have started these pages. David E. Volk 15:13, 21 February 2008 (CST)
I would have also. Hate those fiddly commas! We should always favour natural English - Ro Thorpe 15:18, 21 February 2008 (CST)

For a global topic, the main keyword, followed by the second keyword, followed by the geographical unit produces a scheme like this:

We will have several hundred articles on World War II, and we have to plan for the readers who want to browse in different subtopics all related to one country (Japan, say), or one topic (naval battles), or one time period (December 1941).

Why all that was cut from the page

Richard, I've cut that because this is not standard practice for wiki pages or for Web documents generally, and because it it has been our own practice until you arrived.

Richard, you can feel free--for now--to continue to follow that rule in your own history articles that you started, frankly because I don't have the time to persuade you otherwise. But we won't follow your practice generally until the Editorial Council has had a chance to weigh in. --Larry Sanger 20:23, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Repeating ourselves.

Many discussions of this topics have already taken place on the forums. There was a comment above that someone couldn't find the forum discussions. To save us repeating and maybe ignoring the comments made, I have cataloged the relevant forum discussions below:

  • Anthropology - What's in a name? [[1]]
  • Article Policy - Romanization of Chinese: Pinyin and/or Wade-Giles? [[2]]
  • Geography - Naming Irish articles [[3]]
  • Geography - A request for real names [[4]]
  • Biology - Naming policy (four pages!) [[5]]
  • Music - Naming conventions for individual works [[6]]
  • Computers - The Linux "family" of articles [[7]]
  • Article Policy - Articles about titled people. [[8]]

Additionally, some wiki talk pages have discussions on this the topic of Naming conventions. Where possible, I have summarised the topic discussed.

This list is by no means fully comprehensive. If there are any more, please add them. Derek Harkness 12:38, 27 April 2007 (CDT)

Propose change in rule to Surname-first

The first-name-first rule we have is poor, because it is not the logical way to search. It requires searchers to know two names, and start with the lesser-known. (Users are much more likely to know surnames rather than first names--Einstein, Kepler, Galileo, Copernicus, Mendel, Laplace, Heisenberg, Poincaré, Montesquieu, Kant, Hegel, Descartes, Maxwell, Trotsky, Molotov, Engels, Hayek). The first name of a person is far more variable than the surname. Foreign language spellings are a problem. Alphabetizing by initials would be a disaster: in Britain, scholars commonly use their initials (A.J. Ayer, A.J.P. Taylor), and sometimes in the US (C. Vann Woodward-- Comer is his first name, Vann is his mother's name; what does our rule call for??). First names for royalty and aristocrats?? Obviously the rule fails (Lord North, Queen Elizabeth, Earl of Chatham, Lord Beaverbrook). American politicians often are best known by nicknames, (Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Joe McCarthy, Jerry Ford, Bob Dole, Rudy Giuliani, Teddy Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy, Colonel House, Tip O'Neill), which throws off the convention. Furthermore, family members are broken apart when they should stay together. Most important, the editors will be unable to spot articles easily; who will be browing through the Johns to find someone? So I propose we adopt a Surname-First rule. Richard Jensen 19:41, 3 July 2007 (CDT)

Richard, since surname and first names are in different fields actually it is merely a presentation layer, it can be changed in order - I just don't think the developers will be waiting to change every presentation layer into lastname-firstname(s) basis. It can however be done and the info in the database is independent. If you ask to change a presentation layer the firstname-lastname way is the way you address a person. Searches however can be executed based on last names. HTH Robert Tito |  Talk  19:54, 3 July 2007 (CDT)
Searches that require a first name are inferior to searches that do not. We have few enough biographies now that a changeover now will be easy. Richard Jensen 20:19, 3 July 2007 (CDT)
The rule that first names go first--or, more generally, that biographies are to be named according to the way a person's name usually appears in a sentence--is not, quite obviously, a rule that is intended to facilitate search. It is intended to facilitate linking. In the 21st century on the Internet, one does not use an alphabetical list to search. One uses a search engine to search. And besides, it is easy enough to write [[Category:Wonkology Workgroup|Blow, Joe]]. That will result in the result being filed by last name in alphabetical lists.
The proposed change, anyway, is not likely to happen. Our naming conventions have been carefully thought about back in Wikipedia days, and imported here. They are well-suited to a wiki-developed, digital, 21st century encyclopedia project. The arguments for rejecting them will have to address the actual reasons there are for the policies you want to reject, which if I'm not mistaken you really haven't done yet. --Larry Sanger 21:53, 3 July 2007 (CDT)
Wikipedia rules were set up for a non-expert world where thousands of people jumped in and there is no broad oversight. CZ has a different model based on experts looking at what we have and what we do not have. The experts need to know what is covered and what is missing. I did set out some actual reasons: in a word, searching by first name is a poor technique that helps no one.Richard Jensen 23:44, 3 July 2007 (CDT)
There is no 'one size fits all solution for names.' For every format, there must be exceptions that go against the grain. Not all people are equal. There are different formats of name used for different cultural (e.g. china) and political (e.g. royalty) reasons. It gets complicated as people sometimes have more than one name. George the VI was christened 'Albert' and many actors are known by stage names. Instead we need to create groups of formats for the various potential types. So we need a rule that all royalty is named in one format. All Chinese are named in another format that fits the culture.
Returning to alphabetization and surname first, we need to examine what the name is used for. In category lists, names are already supposed to be organized by surname. They are displayed first name first but ordered by surname. If you see a name that is not ordered correctly, then edit the category/checklist ABC so that it is piped to the correct format.
However, category lists are only one use for the name. The name is also used for linking to articles. For this purpose, first name first, as used in a normal sentence, is the logical choice to avoid piping hundreds of links. It's easier to pipe the category than to pipe all the other links.
What role does the name play in searching. Well when searching, the order of the keywords is to a large extent irrelevant. If I search for 'Julius Caesar' the same article is top of the results as if I search for 'Caesar Julius'. If I forgot his first name, I could easily just search for 'Caesar' and the scan the list by eye for 'Julius'. Derek Harkness 06:48, 4 July 2007 (CDT)

Richard Jensen wrote: "Wikipedia rules were set up for a non-expert world where thousands of people jumped in and there is no broad oversight. CZ has a different model based on experts looking at what we have and what we do not have." That's interesting, because I personally took the lead in setting up Wikipedia's naming conventions, knowing full well older ("expert") conventions, and I personally took the lead in setting up Citizendium and its conventions, too. You could say that I'm an expert about the topic you're describing here (i.e., WP and CZ rules). The projects have largely the same naming conventions, which are not particularly "expert" or "non-expert" (the distinction is unhelpful here), but which are useful both to most end-users and to contributors. You say, "searching by first name is a poor technique that helps no one," but again, here's the perfectly "expert" reply, a point made several times before and most recently by Derek: in the computer age, one does not search by manually scanning alphabetized lists. One uses a search engine. And it will help the search engine marginally if the article searched for has the first and last names in the order in which they will be searched for by most searchers. And one does not produce conventions based on what works for (largely outmoded) alphabetized lists!

Encyclopedia entry conventions have changed with technology, and it's right that they have, too. --Larry Sanger 08:09, 4 July 2007 (CDT)

I completely support keeping the convention that biographical article titles should match the name of the person as commonly known in English, which means first name first. I don't know anyone who has a comma in their name; we shouldn't introduce one unnecessarily.
Searches on last names work, both here and on Wikipedia, so that argument is invalid.
It's also obvious that Mr. Jensen hasn't bothered to read the proposal at the top of this page, which details rules to handle all of the cases he worries about. So much so that one of his examples, C. Vann Woodward, is an argument for using the convention proposed above: the article would live at C. Vann Woodward, with a redirect from Comer Vann Woodward and any other variations necessary. That would obviate the need to decide if the fellow's name should be listed as Vann Woodward, Comer or Woodward, C. Vann. (If Mr. Woodward were from a Spanish-speaking country, the answer would be obvious, but it's not quite obvious in English.) Anthony Argyriou 10:32, 4 July 2007 (CDT)

Proposal to editorial council

I think we should have a task force from the Editorial Council to come up with a full-fledges policy here.Richard Jensen 20:28, 3 July 2007 (CDT)

Yes, good idea. I'll be opposed to your "last name first" proposal... --Larry Sanger 21:50, 3 July 2007 (CDT)

I'm not on the editorial council, but I have made a fairly complete proposal for naming of biographical articles above, and would be interested in seeing the editorial council consider it, or something like it. There are some minor differences from Wikipedia policy contained in it. Anthony Argyriou 10:37, 4 July 2007 (CDT)

Another pair of proposals regarding article titles

  1. I propose that articles about a particular aspect of a larger topic be titled Aspect of Topic, rather than Topic, Aspect of, and that there must be a link from within the Topic article, and possibly a redirect from Topic, Aspect of, for easier searching. In the case of specific institutions within a larger one, the form should be Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, rather than Diocese of Oakland, Roman Catholic.
  2. I propose that abbreviations in titles be avoided without very strong justification. Particularly, United States Congress or Congress of the United States, rather than U.S. Congress, and United Kingdom Parliament or Parliament of the United Kingdom rather than UK Parliament. With certain common abbreviations, redirects should be made from the abbreviated version to the spelled-out version.

Both proposals are for ease in searching and reading. Abbreviations are not always unambiguous, and require additional cognitive processing to decode. We should make it easier, rather than harder, to read this encyclopedia. Anthony Argyriou 10:52, 4 July 2007 (CDT)

In the case of UK, U.S. and UN, the short terms have become standard and are not seen as mere abbreviations. (we went through this with NSDAP = standard term for Nazi Party, instead of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). In the matter of indexing, the standard rules are to start with the most important terms, and keep together topics that belong together. We had a case of this recently in history where:
  • Memory of Joan of Arc
  • Joan of Arc, timeline
  • Trial of Joan of Arc
  • Rehabilitation trial of Joan of Arc

were turned into:

Richard Jensen 12:57, 4 July 2007 (CDT)

Citizendium does not have a paper index, and thus the so-called "standard rule" does not apply. While the particular cases of U.S., UK and UN (and also USSR) will be understood by most readers, there is no need to make an exception for those four cases, when there's little additional effort required to spell out a title, and some clarity and consistency to be gained thereby. (Of course, in article text, abbreviations are fine - obvious ones won't need to be introduced, while others will be.) Parallelism in article titles doesn't require the constructions used above, either, as once again, there is no paper index for Citizendium. Usages such as Joan of Arc, Trial should be avoided for the same reasons that Reagan, Ronald is a bad article title. Anthony Argyriou 12:53, 5 July 2007 (CDT)
It's not about paper--that is a red herring--it's about how information is best organized. The "standard rule" I refere to is the one used in electronic library catalogs, for example (there have been no paper card catalogs in many years). Fact is the library world is a leader in online information organization. As for "spelling out a title", that is a poor policy as shown by the poor examples just give us. The "United States" and "United Kingdom": are not full titles, they are shortenings. CZ should stick to the rules that editors and catalogers for ONLINE SOURCES have developed and not invent unresearched and unstudied conventions that are not based on the expertise that characterizes CZ. I suggest looking closely at rulebooks like the Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press Stylebook, which is what electronic media experts use. Richard Jensen 16:17, 5 July 2007 (CDT)

I think Richard's Joan of Arc examples very clearly exhibit the superior naming convention.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 17:47, 5 July 2007 (CDT)

"and keep together topics that belong together." - Keeping them together where? The only place I can conceive of lists like the ones in your example existing in on the page [[Category:History_Workgroup]]. For normal users, such an arrangement of the names will never be seen. The way to keep these related articles together for users (and also for editors) is to use the 'also see' section in the article it's self. Derek Harkness 06:24, 6 July 2007 (CDT)
search engines like google are far easier to use once the user sees the logical consistency. For example, the art historian who knows we have "Germany, Art" will look for "France, Art" and "Italy, Art" and find what is wanted. That will be much harder is we lack a system and have wildly different terms ("History of the Arts in Germany"; "French Art"; "Italian artists"). The way CZ will often work is a student will ask a teacher or librarian for help, and when they know we have a system they can demonstrate it. Richard Jensen 06:32, 6 July 2007 (CDT)
I agree that we need sets of names that obay a certain ruleset and are consistent. But I dissagree as to what that ruleset should be.
You mention google, for google, the name of the article is almost irrelevant. They use full body indexing. The content of the article and who links to the article is much more important than the title that we put on. Derek Harkness 07:06, 6 July 2007 (CDT)

"...and keep together topics that belong together. Keeping them together where?" - Like in Richard's example, above. You have a catalog of Joan of Arc articles that are MUCH easier to follow if like

 —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 03:03, 15 July 2007 (CDT)

A meta-proposal involving sub-pages

Aside from the general guidelines regarding naming of articles (and perhaps of subjects within articles), we will probably want to develop several specific guidelines - there are a few proposals above already. I propose that those specific guidelines which are adopted, however they become adopted, be included as subpages of this page. If the rule can be described in a single paragraph, then it's probably not worth a subpage, but something like the royalty/nobility proposal I presented above would be uch better as a subpage than cluttering the body of the naming conventions policy page. Anthony Argyriou 14:43, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

Proposal for naming Places, buildings and structures

Further to this discussion and this it was suggested that for places - and particularly buildings, most print sources will write St. Paul's Cathedral, London or St. Paul's, Covent Garden, which seems more natural than St. Paul's Catherdral (London). I suggest the following change to the Convention:-

Currently we have:-

Some titles that should always be disambiguated--in particular, those titles that do not suggest any one particular sense. For example, "Georgia" is apt to bring to mind the U.S. state as much as the country in the Caucasus. Or, in any event, in the interests of neutrality, we should not pretend that one sense is the primary one. Therefore, we should use Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country)--or similar, suitably disambiguated titles. What should we put at Georgia (with no parentheses)? At Georgia, we should put a "disambiguation page," i.e., a page that lists and links to the different pages with the title in question.

I suggest this is changed to:-

"Some titles which should always be disambiguated are those that do not suggest any one particular sense. For example, "Brief" is apt to bring to mind many definitions. In the interests of neutrality, we should not prefer one sense over another. Therefore, we should use Brief (architectural), Brief (legal) or even Brief (underwear) or similar unambiguous unique titles. What should we put at Brief (with no parentheses)? At Brief, we should put a "disambiguation page," i.e., a page that lists and links to the different pages with the title in question.
The exception to prove the rule is where we are describing places or buildings. It is the convention in most literature to disambiguate places by listing additional information regarding their location. At citizendium we follow this convention, so for buildings like St. Paul's Cathedral we may have St. Paul's Cathedral, London or St. Paul's Cathedral, Dundee. For places we may have Birmingham, Alabama or Birmingham, England, if a country may cause confusion then list the continent - so we may have Columbia, South Carolina or the country Columbia, South America - for the space shuttle we use the normal parenthesis rule ie. Columbia (Space Shuttle).

I appreciate this will mean we might have to rename some of our articles - Georgia for a start which is a particularly tricky example that might have to be written as Georgia, USA and Georgia, Eurasia - since it's a transcontinental country. But the basic rule seems sensible I hope you'll agree. --Russ McGinn 15:11, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

As a side note, the country is spelled Colombia, and thus does not require the same sort of disambiguation that Columbia does, so that's probably a bad example to use. Anthony Argyriou 15:25, 7 January 2008 (CST)
Doh - good point! I feel daft. I'll try and find a better example as pennance. --Russ McGinn 07:23, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Wikipedia has had some issues with the naming of sub-sub-national units, and it would be good to settle a policy here before we end up in the same sort of mess that Wikipedia finds itself in. The problem usually occurs with smaller, more obscure towns, but it can occur with larger cities. For a long time, the policy was Cityname, State for U.S. cities and towns, and Cityname, Country or Cityname, Subnational Unit, Country for non-U.S. cities and towns, with very well-known, unambiguous, cities being listed as Cityname, with the appropriate redirects. This had some problems. There are quite a number of cities named "San Francisco" or "Oakland", but it's pretty clear that the two located in California are the best-known by those names. San Jose, however, is a problem. Is it the third-largest city of California, or the national capital of Costa Rica? Then there was a big change, so that all cities and towns were Cityname, Subnational Unit. (Except that some articles didn't get changed.) This created some issues - Cartagena, Murcia is, for most people, obviously in Spain, but how many Europeans would know which country Cartagena, Bolivar is in? Should Dover be Dover, Kent, or Dover, England? (Both these examples also cause problems with the unambiguated names - Cartagena in Colombia has more people, but is newer, and could be Cartagena de las Indias. Dover in England is smaller than Dover, Delaware, but only barely.) There's also the problem of distinguishing between New York the state and New York the city, and Mexico the city and Mexico the country. Unlike other issues, I'm not really sure how to handle the issue, though I do think that redirects should be created liberally to handle all the different ways people will try to find articles about places. Anthony Argyriou 16:42, 7 January 2008 (CST)

This guideline article is nowhere near ready

There are some serious omissions here, which really need to be dealt with [particularly concerning capitalization and foreign names]. Other things need to be discussed on the Forum: for examnple, surname first or complete name style. I will try to offer some ideas in the near future...For the moment, it is nowhere near the stage of a Resolution for the Ed. Council. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:23, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

I agree, there is a need for an expansion here. We also need to vote on Richard Jensen's personal conventions for the history articles, to which I am opposed. Generally, names are written as they are normally written in the context of a paragraph --Larry Sanger 17:21, 11 September 2007 (CDT)

I think EB has got naming conventions down perfectly, and we might consider just emulating them. One thing that has not been tabulated much into these naming conventions discussions is how detrimental it is to search engine placement to follow WP naming conventions. If we can do it another way, even if only for that reason, I think it'd be a smart move.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 17:50, 11 September 2007 (CDT)
EB? [9] --Matt Innis (Talk) 19:39, 11 September 2007 (CDT)
I think he means Enciclopedia Britannica. As for these guidelines, I think we need to consider them in groups. Split it down in to little packets of name types. For example: articles about people with English names is one group; articles about people with foreign names is one or more group(s); articles about plants and animals is a group; Articles that deal with a subset of information (e.g. history of... ) make another group; Articles that need disambiguation in names is another group; Articles with more than one possible name; is another group.
We need to discuss guidelines for each of these groups (and more) separately. Some of these issues have effectively been decided. For example how to name things that have Chinese names seems to be settled. Other things need more discussion. Can we split off and officially endorse the guidelines that we have decided and can we restart discussions about the subjects that are not decided and come to some conclusions. Derek Harkness 19:55, 11 September 2007 (CDT)
I can't agree about EB. We have at least two very significant differences with them: first, we are a wiki, which means that linking in a certain way is facilitated. Second, we are not based on an alphabetical, analog, paper encyclopedia, but we can organize articles (e.g., on Related Articles pages) however we like. These are the constraints that I used to produce Wikipedia's naming conventions, which they still use; and those are more or less the rules we should (continue to) follow here, I think. --Larry Sanger 20:50, 11 September 2007 (CDT)
I do agree, though, that it would be a good idea to have each different issue spelled out explicitly. --Larry Sanger 20:56, 11 September 2007 (CDT)


Rivers

I have added some details to the naming of rivers, specifically saying NOT to use River Amazon. However, what should we do with mountains, lakes etc? With seas and oceans, it is clear that they take the form Atlantic Ocean, so I have not added that to the text. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 17:59, 6 January 2008 (CST)

Rivers - I think we should make two specific exceptions to the policy of naming river articles Rivername River: Rio Grande and Río de la Plata. Both of these are known by their spanish names in English. (If Texans can be bothered to use the spanish name for something, the rest of us can, too.) Río de la Plata isn't properly a river, anyway, it's an estuary; but "Plate River" or "River Plate" are just ugly.
Lakes and Seas are harder - there seem to be many lakes which are like Lake Tahoe or Sea of Azov, but many which are like Great Salt Lake or Salton Sea. I think we should defer to the authority of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in general. Anthony Argyriou 15:36, 9 January 2008 (CST)
I agree with the US Board on Geographic Names. Their system is effectively the same as the UK's Permanent Committee on Geographical Names. It is also the system used by my atlas. As per this system, except for major locations where a common English spelling has already come into being, the spelling used by the official mapping agency of the country concerned is used. So if the Rio Grande is so spelt on the maps we reference, then we should use this spelling. My Atlas uses 'Amazon' and 'Nile' without the word river. Other lakes do have the word lake or sea appended to them. Some have at the beginning and some at the end. For example, in Scotland Loch Long and Long Loch are two different places. Some have no lake. For example, Windermere in the Lake districts should not be Lake Windermere as the water is a 'mere' not a lake. Derek Harkness 05:19, 10 January 2008 (CST)

That is all very well, but I certainly do not know whather someone is talking about the region or the river, when they use "Amazon". My point above was that the instructions tell people to write "river" with a lower case amd after the name, i.e. the Amazon river, and not the River Amazon. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 07:26, 10 January 2008 (CST)

Absolutely not. The 'R' on 'River' must be capitalised. That is the correct form for within a sentence. E.g. "I sailed up the Amazon River." If we followed your suggestion, then every article about the Amazon would have to be piped like: "I sailed up the [[Amazon river|Amazon River]]."

It is not my suggestion: it is what was written in the instructions originally, and I made it more explicit that River is not capitalised and that the order is river after the name. I have no objection to capitalisation at all. I suggest you change the instructions, but you'd better check with Larry et al, perhaps. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 11:16, 10 January 2008 (CST)

Martin, I'd like to suggest that you make the change (whatever changes) you think are necessary to this page, and to other policy pages. If necessary, we can vote in case of a lack of consensus. If you (or anyone) makes any change on the page that seems particularly important, then I'd like to know about it, and we should get confirmation from the Editorial Council (if not an actual vote). "Amazon River" is the usual name of the river in English (capital "R" in "river"), I thought. If I am mistaken, we could use Amazon (river), but definitely not Amazon river, which is just bad writing (capitalization). --Larry Sanger 12:27, 10 January 2008 (CST)

By the way, consider the sources that use "Amazon River": http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Amazon+River%22 (including scholars and EB) --Larry Sanger 12:32, 10 January 2008 (CST)

OK, we all seem to be agreed on this, actually. I had assumed that the lower case of "river" is a modern [read American] usage, and didn't really want to challenge it. I'll amend the text now. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 12:38, 10 January 2008 (CST)

Sorry, I'm not trying to be micro-managing, really I'm not!  :-)

I dove in and edited the text. The point of the added sentences, I believe, was simply to say that the word "river" should be included in titles of articles about rivers. That's right; I would have thought it was too obvious to need mention, but fine. If we want to say that, what we ought to do is start a whole new section that gives specific advice about specific issues. If anyone wants to do that, please do! --Larry Sanger 12:45, 10 January 2008 (CST)

I will add something about the order in titles, because River Amazon is a common usage, and we don't want articles beginning with River... By the way, I notice that you reverted all my capitalizations of first letters of titles. The point is, that people have been making links to non-existent pages and the software has had problems with that, as I recall. It is easier to tell people that the first letter is always upper case...Martin Baldwin-Edwards 12:50, 10 January 2008 (CST)

On the latter point specifically, I think you may not be aware of the way the software works: both life and Life will both link to the same article without a redirection page. So the software "doesn't care" whether the first letter is capitalized. It merely displays the titles of pages (all pages) with the first letter capitalized. --Larry Sanger 12:58, 10 January 2008 (CST)

I experienced some problems with links on the "Core Articles" pages, where the wiki didnt recognise that articles already existed if you put the name in lower case; but possibly the upper-case forcing occurs only when you try to create a new article. So, your changes should make it clear. I have added a small section on rivers etc, which seems useful to me. Corrections and comments welcomed. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 13:15, 10 January 2008 (CST)

In the most part, the appendage of 'River' could go either side of the name. However, I have spotted a small number of river names where only one form is every used. For example, the 'River Ouse' in England is always River first. I can't find a single instance of 'Ouse River'. I think we need to have some flexibility in these naming conventions. (Of course, you can just talk about the 'Ouse' with no mention of river). Derek Harkness 02:34, 26 January 2008 (CST)

Hmm, the solution might be Ouse (River). The problem with inviting flexibility is that it requires real expertise to know when it is needed. Possibly, we should just deal with exceptions on an exceptional basis, with the unstated assumption that all rules need some flexibility. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 04:36, 26 January 2008 (CST)

The solution should be simple here: we should use the form of the name that is used by the locals, if English-speaking, and otherwise the name usually given in English, if the locals aren't English-speaking. This isn't a special rule about rivers, either. It's about all geographical entities... --Larry Sanger 07:41, 26 January 2008 (CST)

Well, it isn't quite so simple. For example, the usage "River Amazon" is the one that I am familiar with, and there are many multiple formats of these things. The most common local usage will be to omit the word "river" or "lake" etc completely, so that is not going to help. We need, as do all publishing houses, to have a house format which will loosely structure the preferred form. I think your added sentence conflicts with the "house rule" and will only confuse people.Martin Baldwin-Edwards 09:13, 26 January 2008 (CST)

Well, nothing you've said actually contradicted anything I said. You're familiar with "River Amazon," but "Amazon River" is, unless I'm much mistaken, the more common English usage both in the U.K. and the U.S. Also, I didn't say "the most common local usage," but the most common local usage if the locals are English-speaking--otherwise, the most common usage by English speakers. Let's make that the house rule. --Larry Sanger 10:01, 26 January 2008 (CST)

The point is, to take an example: if the locals call the river "the Ouse", and the maps call it the River Ouse, we have the choice of "River Ouse" or "Ouse (River)", it seems to me. Which one do you want? Martin Baldwin-Edwards 10:08, 26 January 2008 (CST)

I assume you're talking about a Yorkshire stream. I'd say River Ouse, because that is an option. If the locals and English maps never called it "River Ouse" but always "the Ouse," then we might have a problem. For reference [10] --Larry Sanger 16:04, 21 February 2008 (CST)

River (Great/Little - just seen your link!) Ouse, River Thames, River Severn, it's always thus in England. Ro Thorpe 16:18, 21 February 2008 (CST)

Yes, I agree, Ro. I have never heard the Amazon called "Amazon River"; it is always River Amazon or the Amazon. This is probably a difference between US and British English, which makes it all the more useful to define a CZ style. I do not agree with you, Larry, that it is a matter of finding the most common usage: doing that would be original research. I propose defaulting to "X River" and where that is not normal usage, we have the choice of "River X" or "X (River)". I am not enthusiastic about all these things beginning with River, but perhaps on a wiki it doesnt matter. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:30, 21 February 2008 (CST)

Eduzendium pages - name trouble ahead

I foresee problems with Eduzendium articles like http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Biol_201:_General_Microbiology. Assuming that the Eduz. project takes off, we may end up with hundreds of Econ_101:Introduction to Economics, and perhaps repetition within a school when three professors teaching the same class (think freshman chemistry) decide to join in. With this in mind, we should consider placing the University/School name in front and include the lecturer and perhaps semester/quarter, like this:

Duke University:Biol 201:Peterson:Spring2008

But of course we might want to be able to search the class first, so Biol 201:Duke University:Peterson:Spring2008 could be used just as well. We should discuss this, and make a naming convention before the project expands too much. Any thoughts anyone?

An other idea might be to have a catagory tag in the name itself, like the "User:" does.

This belongs on CZ talk:Eduzendium. --Larry Sanger 15:59, 21 February 2008 (CST)

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