User:BilledMammal/Naming convention review

The goal here is to minimize the number of guidelines, in order to address WP:CREEP and WP:DIG issues. This means that we should only have guidelines when they deviate from standard naming criteria, and we should only have deviations where they are widely used and there is a strong reason for the deviation to exist.

In addition, we should attempt to replace large numbers of similar specific criteria that are related to each other but not closely related to a general criteria with a new general criteria.

Conventions to downgrade

 * 1) WikiProject Belgium/Castle, country house, château and kasteel naming conventions - Established without a formal consensus to do so, and almost never used - referenced just once in a relevant discussion.
 * 2) WikiProject Belgium/Alternate language names - Established without formal consensus to do so, and never used. It also duplicates guidance at WP:UE and MOS:ALTNAME.
 * 3) Naming conventions (Egypt) - Established without formal consensus to do so, and never used. Duplicates guidance such as WP:COMMONNAME, and in some sections reads as an essay rather than a guideline.
 * 4) Naming conventions (writing systems) - Established without formal consensus to do so, and only referred to three times. Largely duplicates guidance such as WP:CRITERIA.
 * 5) WikiProject Swiss municipalities/Article title conventions - Established without formal consensus to do so, and only referred to three times. Its usefulness was questioned back in 2009 when it had only been used twice, but the result was promoting it to a guideline rather than downgrading it to an essay. Largely duplicates guidance such as WP:CRITERIA.
 * 6) WikiProject College football/Naming conventions - Rarely used, unfinished guideline. Many aspects don't match what is in actual use.
 * 7) WikiProject Mining/Style guide - Established without formal consensus to do so, and only referred to once. confusingly, only part of the page is an actual guideline, while the rest is an essay.
 * 8) Naming conventions (political parties) - Established without formal consensus to do so, and only infrequently referred to. Can be summarized as "use the WP:COMMONNAME.
 * 9) Naming conventions (operas) - Established without formal consensus to do so, and only infrequently referred to. Generally duplicates existing guidelines, with slight weight towards the official name. Provides some disambiguation guidance, but nothing that requires a guideline; we don't need a guideline to know to disambiguate operas with "(opera)".
 * 10) Naming conventions (Macedonia) - Minimal guidance; instead documents what the title of specific articles should be. With the Prespa agreement now in place, seems unnecessary.
 * 11) Naming conventions (manuscripts) - Established without formal consensus to do so, and rarely used. Duplicates WP:UE and WP:COMMONNAME.
 * 12) Naming conventions (music) - Doesn't deviate from general guidelines; is better suited as an essay describing how those general guidelines relate to music articles than a guideline

Conventions to probably downgrade

 * 1) Naming conventions (video games) Some formal consensus, and widely used (253 talk space mentions), but duplicates existing guidance, such as WP:ARTSINGLE, WP:COMMONNAME, WP:CONSISTENT

Train stations
It may be possible to eliminate these entirely; most can be summarized as an instruction to use the WP:COMMONNAME, while a few say to append "station" to the name if it is not part of the common name. All are infrequently used, and some were established without a formal consensus to do so.
 * 1) Naming conventions (UK stations)
 * 2) Naming conventions (Canadian stations)
 * 3) Naming conventions (Irish stations)
 * 4) Naming conventions (stations in Poland)
 * 5) Naming conventions (US stations)
 * 6) Manual_of_Style/Japan-related_articles

Sports

 * 1) Naming conventions (sportspeople) - Extensive guideline, primarily giving disambiguation guidance by sport. Could be generalized. The section on diacritics should be merged to a guideline on transliteration.
 * 2) Naming conventions (sports teams)
 * 3) Naming conventions (ice hockey) - Largely duplicates existing guidance; the aspects that don't give detailed disambiguation guidance. The disambiguation guidance could be generalized to apply to all sports.
 * 4) Naming conventions (Football in Australia) - Could largely be scrapped; appears to say what the common name of the various football codes are in Australia
 * 5) Naming conventions (baseball players) - Some aspects duplicate WP:COMMONNAME, and the rest give detailed disambiguation guidance. The disambiguation guidance could be generalized to apply to all sports.

Disambiguation

 * 1) Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) - very short guideline requiring disambiguation to be used for every UK Parliament constituency, regardless of whether it is the primary topic. This should be merged into a more general guideline on disambiguation or the UK, or even downgraded - it has only been used a dozen times, and could continue to be enforced through WP:CONSISTENT.
 * 2) Naming conventions (television) - Widely used, but could easily be summarized into a brief table on television disambiguation. Some aspects could also be removed as duplicating existing general guidance; a supplementary essay would be as effective for providing specific guidance in the context of the general guidance without the WP:CREEP issue.

Transliteration

 * 1) Naming conventions (Norse mythology)
 * 2) Naming conventions (Mongolian)

Naming conventions (Tibetan)
Some aspects should be considered as general guidance; Unless there is a particularly compelling reason to do otherwise, instances of the same name or term in different articles should use the same spelling and granting the benefit of the doubt to the name preferred by the local population if the global English language WP:COMMONNAME is not clear but their preferred name is a valid possibility.

The rest should be merged into general guidelines on transliteration and disambiguation.

Naming conventions (plurals)
Largely duplicates existing guidelines. The rest can be summarized and merged into WP:ARTSINGLE as an exception to it.

Naming conventions (New Zealand)
Largely duplicates existing guidance, and the rest can be merged into general guidelines on transliteration and disambiguation. The exception is the guidance on always using the spaced slash for places using a dual name; a suitable location needs to be identified for this.

Keep

 * 1) Naming conventions (technical restrictions)
 * 2) Naming conventions (people)
 * 3) Naming conventions (lists)

Create (from mergers)

 * 1) Naming conventions (transliteration) - A single source detailing how to transliterate from various languages and in various contexts. Should allow for increased generalization as well as making it easier to find transliteration guidance.
 * 2) Naming conventions (sports) - A single source detailing how to title and disambiguate sports articles. Should be mostly generalized, although some specific guidance may still be required.

TBD

 * 1) Naming conventions (West Bank) - created under the aegis of ARBCOM
 * 2) Naming conventions (use English)
 * 3) Naming conventions (U.S. state and territory highways)
 * 4) Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)
 * 5) Naming conventions (ships) - Some aspects need to be kept, while others can be replaced with an essay as duplicating general guidance.
 * 6) Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes)
 * 7) Naming conventions (numbers and dates) - Infrequently used, and appears to duplicate existing guidelines or otherwise be unnecessary.
 * 8) Manual of Style/Military history
 * 9) Naming conventions (Latter Day Saints) - Excessively specific?
 * 10) Naming conventions (languages)