Warcraft Wiki talk:Naming policy/Archive02

New Naming policy as of 3 July 2006

Policy ratification vote

Yes

1. Yes Ralthor 18:52, 5 June 2006 (EDT) - (Vote!)
2. Yes Mikk 06:08, 13 June 2006 (EDT) - (Thanks for clearing it up, Ralthor. This matches our reality much better.)
3. Yes Fandyllic 5 PM PDT 13 Jun 2006 - (As succinct as I could have imagined.)
4. Yes ClydeJr 12:45, 20 June 2006 (EDT) - (Looks good!)
5. Yes Kirkburn 16:37, 26 June 2006 (EDT) - (Mmm, naymin roolz)
6. Yes Schmidt 02:30, 28 June 2006 (EDT) - (qualified, see notes under Quests)

No

Comments

• Obtw, I tweaked the "API naming" section a wee bit. It wasn't quite right; it said that whitespaces in function names are illegal, which isn't quite true for object methods, e.g. API Font GetFont. I've now clarified that. I hope you won't change your vote to a no because of that ;-) --Mikk 06:10, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

I actually don't follow the API stuff at all so whatever changes there is someone elses problem ;), I just tried to figure out the naming convention from browing the articles quickly.--Ralthor 13:11, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

• I'm not going to vote No on this one, but I personally think it's dumb to name all the articles exactly as they appear in the game. When does anyone ever talk about Linen Bedsheets with capital letters? (In print, I mean.) Or a Rusty Sword? I think they should be named according to how you would normally refer to the thing in normal English. That makes it so people don't have to pipe links. [Dual Wield] is easier to link than Dual wield. Stuff like that is ugly and. I've seen so many people pipe a link just to make it lowercase. I hate seeing pipes in links, simply because a lot of the pipings don't make sense and it would be better if the displayed text was the name of the article. I wish there were no capitals after the initial word, other than for acronyms and proper nouns such as  [Manslayer of the Qiraji]. But however the vote comes out is the way it is. Everything else looks good. If it wasn't for this point, I would vote Yes. Schmidt 11:45, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

Ptsk. Get me MW1.6 and I'd be able to give you {{L|Linen Cloth}} → linen cloth.   --Mikk 12:24, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

You can't do that now? All you have to do is <span style="text-style: lowercase;">. I'm not positive about what the property name is, but anyways, it's that simple. Schmidt 07:45, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

<span style="text-transform:lowercase;">[[Linen Cloth]]</span> →  [Linen Cloth]. Heh, whaddayaknow. I assumed styles in the links themselves would end up overriding it. Ok, it won't work in every browser out there, but in enough of 'em. I'll just go create template:L then :-) --Mikk 07:52, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

Still that involves piping, and isn't any more desireable, to me. Not only does it involve piping, but also pressing the shift key several more times – once for the braces at the beginning, once for each capital letter for the link, and once for the end braces. It's counterproductive. And what were you thinking when you didn't think it would work on this version? Schmidt 08:18, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

I didn't even consider that solution for this task. I was thinking of {{lc:AbCdeFgh}} → "abcdefgh", which doesn't work.   Either way, we're getting horribly off topic now :-P   --Mikk 13:55, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

I knew you would hate it, I really don't care either way, I just want to have a clear, consistent, enforced policy that will allow people to know how to name pages when creating a new one, linking, & searching for a page. As the policy stands now it is virtually uneforcable. There would need to be a large collaboration of dedicated people to go and move all the pages to their proper name and a strong new pages team actively changing the name of new pages when they are created. It seems like a heck of a lot of work for little gain. Linen cloth is the best example since linen cloth redirects to Linen Cloth contraty to the naming policy and it is used as the example for the naming policy. On a seperate note, one problem I am having with the new naming thing is the quest names. There is a lot of extra punctuation and stuff in the quest names sometimes and that causes problems, which I am not quite sure how to handle.--Ralthor 13:11, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

Tbh, I'm not a fan of twisting proper grammar to make it fit in with the game. Taking the linen cloth example, no-one in their right mind would capitalise the initials without referring directly to the game. It may appear in the game as Linen Cloth, but that is only because of the way titles are written, not inferring it is something particularly special. -- Kirkburn 13:39, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

This is what I was saying some time back when discussing the origin of this policy. On one hand, however, you have Blood Elves and Night Elves, while we would normally say humans (lowercase) for people. Why are Elves capitalized, or Gnomes or Dwarves, or Tauren? What's special about them? What becomes special about Humans? I've heard that the lore supports now having the race names lowercased. I'd like to see that happen around here. If not, then so be it. I would propose that instead of Blood and Night Elves, blood and night elves, or Blood and Night elves. This, except blood and night are not referent to tribes or nations, any more than Africans look similar to each other? They (and Europeans do and used to) commit what would probably be called fratricide in Warcraft lore. But when there's a human band such as the Scarlet Crusade, it's just a common enemy. Wow. This just took a bizarre turn. Anyways, I suspect that Blood and Night might be similar to calling someone European, Asian, or American, or American, and capitalized in that way. How is this relevant to the topic at hand? Schmidt 07:45, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

I'm not so much concerned with making it fit the game as I am with making the policy reflect the content of the site. As it turns out the content of the site reflects how things are named in the game. The linen cloth example is to show how the current policy (Project:Naming policy) has become so completely unenforecable/neglected that the example used to demostrate how to properly name pages, violates the naming policy.--Ralthor 17:39, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

• Suggestion: "Item Articles": Add "It is perfectly acceptable to also create lower case redirects to enable typing e.g. [[linen cloth]] in texts. It also allows visitors to type direct URLs more easily." If nothing else, it'll allow me to shoot down votes to delete useful redirects with impunity :-)   --Mikk 18:32, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

• Oh, and in "Additional naming rules": "It is perfectly acceptable to also create plurality redirects, i.e. Dragons→Dragon if you feel that visitors typing in URLs directly are likely to do so." --Mikk 18:40, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

Implementation Checklist

• [√] Update Project:Category policy re: naming rules
• [√] Move to Project:Naming policy
• [√] Remove vote line from community portal
• [√] Amend page to point at guild page policy for specific guild page naming rules
• [√] Mention quest naming problem with punctuation and possible solutions
• [√] Add in Mikk's suggestions on expanding on case and plurality redirects as above.

While not in the policy page per se, noone objected to my suggestions while the vote was running. I'm taking that as a silent yes. --Mikk 21:49, 3 July 2006 (EDT)

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Naming Policy Discussion

Naming policy discussions began on the Village Pump.

Character Pages

Does this part cover mobs in the game? Or just lore characters? For example, High Executor Darthalia is a major quest giver in Tarren Mill in the Hillsbrad Foothills. When you click on her, it shows both her title and name. Should she just be listed as "Darthalia" in the wiki? I personally think we should try to match whatever is in the game. - ClydeJr 12:17, 20 June 2006 (EDT)

Well, it doesn't say explicity "Lore" or "NPCs" so I'd assume both? But yeah, I'd say that for NPCs, it should be whatever is in-game. I'm being bold and adding that in - the spirit of the policy for other things is "use whatever is in-game" so I assume that has to go for NPCs as well. --Mikk 12:28, 20 June 2006 (EDT)

Sounds good. You have my vote. - ClydeJr 12:45, 20 June 2006 (EDT)

Oh blah I like that better just because it is consitent, but here I am marking NPCs with titles as needing to move. Guess I should go take those tags off if it is going to change soon.--Ralthor 21:42, 22 June 2006 (EDT)

Quests

Ok after trying to link to more quests following these guidelines I can come to realize it is not going to work. There are a bunch of quests with goofy names like -> Ineptitude + Chemicals = Fun Anyone have any idea on how we can go about naming quests with special characters and punctuation? --Ralthor 22:10, 22 June 2006 (EDT)

Beyond that, I'm not fond of having 15 quest articles for one quest line. Maybe some specific quests, if they're odd or difficult to survey, should have separate articles, but overall, the quest line should appear on one page (IMHO) because there's really not all that much information to put out. See  [Lightforged Blade] and  [Archeus] for what I think it should be like. Obviously it could look a little better than that, but it doesn't need insane amounts of (seemingly trivial) information such as other quest pages have. The "The Missing Diplomat" line of quests would probably be good to have on one big page. Note however, there should be some steps in the quest that are peculiar to one step or a group of steps, because it is an immense quest line and some steps are a little funky. Schmidt 02:28, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

I mostly agree. I think we should have redirects set up if the steps have completely different names though. --Mikk 03:44, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

I personally like to have each quest in a quest chain have its own separate page. It helps keep each step distinct, especially when you need to link back to that particular step in the chain. Having all the steps on one page might work for a short chain, but when you have 5+ steps, I think its too many information on one page. For example, if you tried to pack the chain where you upgrade Dungeon Set 1 Belt and Gloves to Dungeon Set 2 (starts with  [60] A Supernatural Device) all on one page, I think it would be just too messy. - ClydeJr 09:22, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

As I was saying, a lot of the information on each quest page is redundant. Pretty much all you have to do is tell when you get the first quest, where you get it, what it entails, and then basically continue to the next quest in the series. If you see who to turn it in to, you know who gives you the next quest (in essentially all cases). If there is anything of note, you note it where it belongs. Once again, check out  [Lightforged Blade]. In that article, I've summed up pretty much all you need to know about that quest line. (Imagine if that quest line was split on different pages as all the other quest lines are! It would be 10 times as long and half as useful.)

For longer quest lines, as I was also saying, you could simply have links to details about how to get to something. On the other hand, you could go so far as to link it to an NPC or mob name, or item name, and if it's just a quest item, you could go into the details on that page. But if an item appears only in one quest, there's no point in having a separate page just for that item (except as a redirect to the particular quest it belongs to).

The example you gave, for the dungeon set upgrade, is either an anomaly as far as this idea goes, or else it may just fit right in. It's really not that long, and wading through pages and pages of quests is kind of needless. The Bazil Thredd quest line may be another story, as is Morbent Fel's quest line, and Abercrombie's quest line which goes on and on, and Stalvan's quest line. (Basically, all of them from Duskwood lol. I can't think of another set of quests that should be split up. I haven't seen such long quest lines anywhere else, and even though they're long, they might be able to easily appear on one page. That doesn't mean there aren't any, but I'm saying most quest lines should appear on one page, IMO. Schmidt 19:58, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

Hm, this isn't a naming discussion really. How about trying to get some sort of guideline up? Something along the lines of "if quests steps are ridicilously short, just chuck 'em in a single page?". Can't exactly make policy from something that calls for using one's better judgement imo?   --Mikk 06:53, 29 June 2006 (EDT)

Punctuation again... There's two things that can work imo. Let's look at "Ineptitude + Chemicals = Fun" and "Hey! What the..."

1. 1 Skip weird punctuation - "Ineptitude Chemicals Fun" and "Hey What the"
2. 2 Replace with hyphens - "Ineptitude - Chemicals - Fun" and ..hrm.. that one just doesn't work

I suppose one could use hyphens where it makes sense to do so and otherwise just skip it? If not, skipping punctuation entirely seems the sanest option to me. Though I can't say I've looked at a lot of quest names from this perspective. Any other good examples? --Mikk 10:39, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

I think that is the worse of them. The punctuation we have to deal with is:

• !
• ,
• ?
• ... (begining, middle & end)
• :
• /
• -
• ()
• . (in abbreviations)
• and the + and =

If we deal with these I think we can cover 99% of quest names. From browsing the lists it looks like most punctuation can simply be removed without it making the quest name look very different.--Ralthor 17:11, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

Capitalization of Section Headings

Another place where there's plenty of inconsistent capitalization is section headers. E.g. Project:Naming policy has: Naming conventions but Category Names. Wikipedia does not capitalize section headers and I'm kind of used to that style. Is there a policy here about this? What is the One True Style™ to use?

Also I find it strange when regular text has class names capitalized (Rogue instead of rogue). Is there a style guide about this?

-- Nyenyec 11:58, 27 June 2006 (EDT)

Overall, I would go for not capitalizing section titles, which is why I don't. However, others feel that it is. Since there's no hard-and-fast rule or policy on it that we have decided, it remains "user style". Since the naming of articles is another issue, that is more critical when there is more than one word in the name. Schmidt 13:32, 27 June 2006 (EDT)

These things should be consistent at least within the same article. Mixing the styles is just really unprofessional in my opinion. -- Nyenyec 16:12, 27 June 2006 (EDT)

Capitalization of Races

→ Moved to Project talk:Policy/Writing#Race name case   --Mikk (T) 12:12, 3 September 2006 (EDT)

Singular listing pages look funny

Druid talent, Mage ability, Warrior quest etc were just moved from pages with plural names, i.e. Druid talents, Mage abilities, Warrior quests... Is it just me or did the page names make a lot more sense before? I mean... we're not talking about a single thing here, it's a LIST of things, hence plural?   --Mikk 01:21, 18 August 2006 (EDT)

I agree. It's good to standardize on singular page titles when possible, but if the primary content of a page is a list... Well, it looks better and just plain makes more sense to make the title plural as well. --Rahskala 14:23, 18 August 2006 (EDT)

A buggerit.. I'll just go ahead and see where this leads. --Mikk 15:25, 18 August 2006 (EDT)

Change Project:Naming policy#Additional naming rules to say:

Article names should be in singular form. Exceptions:

• Names that are always plural, such as the Knights of the Silver Hand.
• Articles that are lists, e.g. "Warrior quests", "Rogue abilities".

== Policy ratification vote ==

Yes

1. Yes Mikk 15:49, 18 August 2006 (EDT) - (seems obvious to me?)
2. Yes Pzychotix 18:52, 18 August 2006 (EDT) - (Same here.)
3. Yes Fandyllic 12:35 AM PDT 19 Aug 2006 - (Makes sense to me.)
4. Yes Ralthor 09:52, 19 August 2006 (EDT) - (yep, good idea)
5. Yes Rahskala 11:52, 19 August 2006 (EDT) - (See comments above)
6. Yes LarsPensjo 01:59, 22 August 2006 (EDT) - (More natural to readers)
7. Yes Emerez 16:37, 23 August 2006 (EDT) - (I'm seeing duplicate articles because of plural)
8. Yes Kirkburn 08:16, 26 August 2006 (EDT) - (Just showing my agreement with this)

No

1. No Aeleas 10:40, 20 August 2006 (EDT) - (See below)

Comments

• Ugu~ page naming seems really ugly right now. Druid tactic? Priest talent? MEH. Pzychotix 18:52, 18 August 2006 (EDT)
• The purpose of giving articles singular titles is to make linking easier. Articles with singular names can be linked to in-text without piping, "Moonkin is available as a druid talent." "This was altered by a retcon..." "Stromgarde was a human nation." If we make them plural, it becomes more cumbersome to link directly to them. It also becomes harder to determine whether an article name will be singular or plural. Is Human nation an article about human nations, or a list of them? Well, it's both, so it could go either way. Finally, if we change them because they "look funny" the remaining singular-named articles will look even stranger, and the same reasoning would suggest moving Orc to Orcs, because there are after all many of them.--Aeleas 10:40, 20 August 2006 (EDT)
  • With tactic, I would suggest that it is so seldom used in the singular that it should fall under the existing exception.--Aeleas 10:43, 20 August 2006 (EDT)

• Sounds to me like setting up a redirect from the singular to the plural is the right way to handle it if you do not want to have a separate page explaining what a "warrior ability" is (which would probably link to the list of "warrior abilities").   --Mikk 05:46, 21 August 2006 (EDT)

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New discussions

Personal Pages

What would people think about a policy that some pages be located in a user's namespace? The main categories I am thinking of are fan fiction, observations, player character pages, and guides in which the author takes personal credit for writing, such as Guide To Azeroth. In all cases, the writer expresses a proprietary interest in the page, and while other users may be invited to contribute, the original author remains "in charge" of the page, which distinguishes the page quite sharply from the main body of the wiki, which is a completely collaborative effort. One's namespace, on the other hand, is one's own playground, and available for whatever projects are desired, and whatever level of outside assistance the writer wants to invite.

With fan fiction particularly, while the banners do a good job of clearly informing the reader that the article isn't canon, their presence in the main namespace can come across as puzzling, like reading through Britannica and finding several articles marked "The editors made this up." Also, the author often is not apparent without checking the edit history, which is a bizarre way to give someone credit for his or her work. Having a page under, for example, User:Aeleas/Fall of the Lion makes it clear that the page is a personal work and not part of the edit-as-you-please main body of the wiki, and it also makes it clear who the author responsible for the page is.

Thoughts?--Aeleas 10:12, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

I would agree with this, with minor reservation. Not all fanfic pages are (or can be) attributed to one owner, so those might have to be left. For other pages that are directly connected with one author alone, it sounds feasible and sensible to me. -- Kirkburn (talk) 11:11, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

I've made a formal proposal for this policy at Project:Naming policy/Personal articles.--Aeleas 13:20, 3 September 2006 (EDT)

A/An/The

It would be good to bring everything in accordance with the policy, particularly with the influx of Burning Crusade beta information we can expect soon. Most of pages seem to have been moved manually at some point in the past, so the Move function won't work to standardize them. I'm not sure if there is a way of overriding this, or if copying and pasting is the only way, which will make it fairly slow going.--Aeleas 01:52, 14 October 2006 (EDT)

I don't agree with the recent edit to the policy that included locations in the exception to the rule against including definite or indefinite articles (the, a, an) in article names. The article preceding a location generally isn't capitalied in standard English, and it isn't capitalized in WoW. "I could send you out to the Barrens to hunt kodo." "Bring the Bundle of Hides to the wind rider master Devrak in the Crossroads." "To make more I need Rethban Iron Ore from the Redridge Mountains."

The advantage of not including definite or indefinite articles in article names, aside from it being standard practice in encyclopedias, is that they will be properly indexed in categories without piping, and can be linked to without piping when the "the" is separated from the name by an adjective. (e.g. "The sprawling Barrens...) The exception is designed to cover only those things which are not correct if incomplete, such as titles of works. (The Catcher in the Rye is the title of a novel, while Catcher in the Rye is not.)

Furthermore, Blizzard doesn't seem to be using any kind of system for whether to include "the" when labelling a place, but is likely just going by aesthetics on a case by case basis. For example, the Crossroads is referred to in quests as "the Crossroads", appears on the Barrens map as "Crossroads", on the flight point map as "Crossroads, The Barrens", and is labelled "The Crossroads" when you actually enter it. --Aeleas 22:30, 22 September 2006 (EDT)

With redirects, there is no problem writing "The sprawling Barrens" even though the main article is at the Barrens. It's true that Blizzard doesn't seem to agree with itself in regards to most of these places, but there are some named that become completely amiguous without the "the", such as "the Park", "the Canals", and "the Mage Quarter" in Stormwind. --Varghedin 11:26, 14 September 2006 (CET)

I don't see the ambiguity in the Park, Canals, and Mage Quarter, particularly the last one, as that's how it appears in-game (though as always, there's no way to tell except to actually go there with your character). True, redirects allow both links to be used, but there are still advantages in ensuring that articles follow the policy, such as making it easier to avoid and resolve double redirects, filing things consistently in categories, and having articles appear in a clean and consistent standard format.--Aeleas 17:41, 14 October 2006 (EDT)

Format

See: User:Zeal/Sandbox/Proposals/Format