Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 5

Links w/in Wikipedia Name-space

 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (acronyms)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (aircraft)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (disputed place names)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Iraq war)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (legislation)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (pieces of music)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (protected areas)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (slogans)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (toponymy)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (years in titles)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (British railway locomotive and multiple unit classes)

international:
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (anglicization)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (chinese)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (japanese)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)

people:
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (monarchs)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people with the same name)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (pseudonyms)

science, maths, technical
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (biology)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (calendar dates)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (file formats)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (theorems)

"History of X" vs "Xsh history"
What's better: "History of X" or "Xsh history"? This is a dilemma that has plagued Wikipedians since the dawn of time. A new naming convention has been proposed to deal with this issue. See Naming conventions (country-specific topics) for details. - Pioneer-12 12:38, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Inactivity ?

 * 1) In the "Links w/in Wikipedia Name-space" section of this talk page there are a lot of naming convention links listed. Why have they not been added to the naming conventions page ?
 * 2) In the "Conventions under consideration" section there are some topics listed. For how long will they be under consideration, can't that section be merged totally with section 2 - "Other specific conventions". I don't see any major discussions happening on those topics anyway. Jay 05:13, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Treaty of ..
Compare Treaty of London with Treaty of Madrid and Treaty of Paris. Two styles are in use:
 * , XXXX
 * e.g. Treaty of London, 1359
 * (XXXX)
 * e.g. Treaty of Paris (1259)

Is there a preferred style for this? --Cfailde 21:04, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)


 * Personally, I prefer the parenthetical disambiguation form. Makes it easier to hide the date via the pipe trick if desired, for example if you want to include a wikified link to the date along with a link to the treaty. older ≠ wiser 21:14, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

Article Titles
There's obviously a great deal of emphasis placed on ensuring similar articles follow a template; wickifying. However, what about article titles? This seems to be a problem widespread across Wikipedia, usually on lists of... articles, for example, the following all exist for the National Park articles:


 * List of National Parks in country
 * List of National Parks of country
 * National Parks of country
 * Country's National Parks

The same is true for football teams, rivers, and many more. This means for that many people assume a page doesnt exist because nothing appears when they type in the title that is used on other similar articles.

At the very least we should be activly encouraging users to insert redirects, but should be looking to wickify article titles.

Sorry to go on! rant over :P Grunners 14:17, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * See also WikiProject Rivers, WikiProject Protected Areas. Rmhermen 16:58, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)
 * Amen on consistent titling. I think every list should be entitled "List of X" myself, so as to clearly distinguish non-list articles on the same subject, but not everybody goes along. If there's an associated wikiproject, bring it up there, otherwise "be bold" and do your part to arrange things more sensibly. Stan 15:24, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Consistency is nice in theory, but it doesn't always make sense. National parks of Scotland is an article about National parks of Scotland, not a list of them. Since there are only two of them, and neither are true national parks, List of national parks of Scotland would not be a sensible title. Angela. 03:05, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Starting a title with the word The
Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name).

nd's, st's, th's
This article gets grotesquely spaced-out on my browser by all the superscripted 'nd's and 'th's in the main text. I can't find style for this issue, but I hope it can be discouraged. Any advice? Adhib


 * I don't see any need for superscripts. Maurreen 04:46, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't see the need either. However, there's no need to write out the number either, so plain "82nd" will suffice.  Is there a way to change this, or is this the way the article came out? SujinYH 01:51, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Concepts attributed to multiple researchers
What is the proper style for articles about independently or jointly discovered properties? For example, the Hausdorff-Besicovitch dimension is credited to Felix Hausdorff and Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch, but it is often called Hausdorff dimension. Which name should be used? It seems POV to favor Hausdorff over Besicovitch. -- 20:53, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I believe the general convention is to use the name by which something is most commonly known. Maurreen 06:54, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Indeed so. The "most-common-name" rule is the way to avoid POV in such cases.  &mdash;Lowellian (talk)   03:52, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Forbidden characters in page titles
Article says asterix (*) and ampersand (&) should not be used in a page title, but makes no mention of hash (#) and angle brackets (> and <). Naming conventions (technical restrictions) in its excluded characters list makes no mention of * or &, and says #, > and < cannot be used. Who is right ? Jay 11:27, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Please excuse the gratuitous pedantry, but one of the symbols you speak of is called an 'asterisk', not an 'asterix'. --Smack 20:33, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hyphenated multiple modifiers
I moved Hardware random number generator to Hardware random-number generator, because the former usage is grammatically improper. It was then promptly moved back by User:Matt Crypto, who cited a Google test. Is there a policy on this kind of predominant yet ungrammatical usage? --Smack 20:33, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree with you about using the hyphen. In my view, people sometimes misuse Google. Maurreen 05:54, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't have access to my books & papers at the moment, but have a look at Google Scholar, which indexes academic publications. Again, there is a strong trend not to include a hyphen: . &mdash; Matt Crypto 10:18, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here a hyphen should be used as it makes the title unambiguous. I know it's about a generator of random numbers. Without the hyphen it could be a number generator that, for some reason, is random (maybe it's jerry-built or something). Although the tendency is for hyphens to disappear, they are often useful, particularly when dealing with multiple adjectives. Where they are useful, we should think of the reader, and keep them in. jguk 10:50, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Actually, the meaning that is meant is that it is a random "generator of numbers", rather than a generator of "random numbers" (using quotes to disambiguate). Contrast with pseudorandom number generator. It is the generators that are random or pseudorandom, not the numbers. For example, 3 isn't a random number, but the act of rolling a dice is a random number generator. So you'd probably want to hyphenate it "hardware random number-generator", if anything.

I think you are wrong. The number is random. If I have a bunch of number generator cards that fit in the card slot on my computer and I pick one at random then I have selected a random number generator.--Gbleem 23:57, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * However, I do think we should follow the usage conventions of the academic literature. Most grammar rules have exceptions. &mdash; Matt Crypto 22:40, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * According to our article on randomness, I gather that randomness is a property of a collection of numbers. --Smack 17:54, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * In German we say "Zufallszahl" (=Randomnumber), so I guess randomness is a property as Smack said. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:49, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Ohio school districts
I posted an item for discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. special districts on what to name articles on our school districts. I'd appreciate Wikipedians looking at my query and posting comments there. PedanticallySpeaking 18:44, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Help naming Feline/Canine Diabetes article please
Hi all -- I have a new article to write, based on all the research I just had to do on Diabetes Mellitus in Cats and Dogs. (Yes I now have a diabetic cat, and there's a lot out there on the topic, but nothing on Wikipedia.) It's bigger than a section in the "Diabetes mellitus" article should be.

But what to call it?


 * Canine and Feline Diabetes
 * Diabetes (canine)
 * Diabetes (feline)
 * Diabetes (canine and feline)
 * Diabetes in Dogs and Cats
 * ... etc?

I feel like the article would work best as a single article, as most of the information about dogs and cats is either common to both or has important contrasts between them. But the names that combine the articles just don't look very Wikipedia-like to me.

So should I write the article and leave the naming to a big discussion later?

Thanks in advance, Steve --Steverapaport 00:43, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I vote for "*Diabetes in cats and dogs". Just sounds better to me. Maurreen 05:31, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Diabetes in cats and dogs it shall be. Thanks!  --Steverapaport 15:15, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I vote for putting in redirects, especially from the first two names. I'll go ahead and link to them all to make that easier.  I've even got a few more: Feline Diabetes, Canine Diabetes, Diabetes in dogs, Diabetes in cats.--Joel 05:21, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Naming convenion for manuscripts that have no name
An article about an illuminated manuscript was recently listed on VfD for having an "ugly" name. At the time that I created this article I believed that the manuscript had no name, so I created one using the library shelf number as a part of the title. That listing has prompted me to write a proposal for a naming convention for articles about manuscripts without names. The proposal can be found here. Any comments would be appreciated. Thank you. Dsmdgold 11:36, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

Intactivist
I claim "intactivist" is wrongly named because:


 * Naming conventions (adjectives) means it should be "intactivism" instead.


 * Naming conventions (common names) means "intactivism" should be "genital integrity advocacy" instead.


 * Any "genital integrity advocacy" should be merged with the existing "genital integrity".

Opinions? &mdash;Ashley Y 23:02, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)


 * I agree, it should be merged and redirected. -Sean Curtin 06:21, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)


 * Oppose. - As a noun, intactivist does not fall under the naming convention for adjectives. The origin of the term intactivist (intact+activist) and the fact that it applies to a person, not a movement sets it apart from the term genital integrity. Johntex 01:05, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * It's worth noting here that activist redirects to activism. There's little that can be said at the -ist page that wouldn't also belong at the -ism page.  -Sean Curtin 00:05, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment - I should point out in fairness that I created the original intactivist article. As far as I know that does not disqualify my vote, but I think it should be mentioned..  Since the article is new, I am sure more improvements will be made over time if we let it stand.  Thank you.  Johntex 01:08, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I Oppose the merge. The term is notable enough to remain the topic of an independent article.  65.200.8.178 02:04, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ambiguous but seemingly unique names
A user, The Tom, has been changing the names of a number of articles and I am unsure whether or not I agree with his rationale. Mainly, he has been changing the name of political organizations which do not indiciate their jurisdiction in their official title. eg. He has changed the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform to Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (British Columbia).

I am torn here as, to my knowledge, "Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform" is only used in British Columbia, however it could very easily be used elsewhere. So, my question is, should the article be called Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform or Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (British Columbia)? See The Tom's edit history to find other examples of articles he has renamed in a similar fashion.

Also, please not, I do not mean the above as an attack on The Tom, I am just wondering whether this is the right way to go or not -- I am not sure. -- Jord 14:24, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * The changes seem needless to me. Maurreen 15:53, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Apologies. In the case of the Citizens Assembly, I was clearing the ground for an article on the similarly-titled organization about to be set up in Ontario.   -The Tom 18:04, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'd go even further. Even if the name is ambiguous, if we have only one article that fits that title, that article should sit under that title. For instance, if I write an article about a Joe Bloggs and no-one else has written an article about any other Joe Bloggs, that article should be under "Joe Bloggs". If another article gets written that also belongs under that same title, then some way of disambiguating it should be found. This could be by making "Joe Bloggs" into a disambiguation page, or by making "Joe Bloggs" about one of the (more famous) Joe Bloggses and adding at the top "this article is about Joe Bloggs, the widget-maker, for other people called Joe Bloggs see Joe Bloggs (politician), or Joe Bloggs (actor), or Joe Bloggs (disambiguation)'' or whatever.

To address the specific case in point, if The Tom is about to write about the Ontario Citizens Assemby, fair enough. If not, he should have left it where it is, jguk 00:29, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's always quite so clear-cut. Especially with personal names, there may be other links to Joe Bloggs which are not the same as the one with the written article. Some judgement is required as to the relative notability of the various Joe Bloggs (if such an assessment is possible). In such a situation, if the Joe Bloggs with a written article is obviously more notable (or even if it is not clear, but it appears unlikely that the other Joe Bloggs will have an article written about them anytime soon), then I'd add a template to the top of the existing article and try to populate Joe Bloggs (disambiguation) with whatever basic information might be available about the others. If the existing Joe Bloggs article is only a stub, or if it is obvious that other Joe Bloggs are likely to be of comparable notability and there is a good chance there there would be an article created about them, then I'd be inclined to move the existing Joe Bloggs article to a disambiguated title and turn the Joe Bloggs page into a disambiguation page. Suppose for example, the existing Joe Bloggs article is a stubby entry about some a not terribly illustrious post-Civil War politician. And I happen to come to the link by clicking on a Joe Bloggs link for a not particularly notable 18th century British politician. And looking at What Links Here might reveal yet another Joe Bloggs, perhaps a 20th century Australian politician of no great significance. In such a case, I'd probably move the existing Joe Bloggs article to something like Joe Bloggs (American politician) and turn Joe Bloggs into a disambiguation page (and also change links in the articles to link to something link Joe Bloggs (British politician) and Joe Bloggs (Australian politician). 02:04, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

Naming conventions (precision) use google to find other things with that name. than make a dab page. This avoids future work. You may have 50 articles linking to Joe Bloggs and nobody knows which Joe Blogg they refer to. It's a mess to fix this later and unecessary. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Category:Insurance companies
Hi all. I am proposing to change the name of the category to "Insurers" and hence Insurance companies of the United Kingdom to Insurers of the United Kingdom, etc.. The reasons are (1) it's shorter; (2) it takes care of non-company insurers, such as partnerships or other structures, e.g., Lloyd's. --JuntungWu 12:21, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Not a good idea. Insurers of the United Kingdom sounds like those who insure the United Kingdom, not insurers who are in or insure risks in the United Kingdom. Also, apart from Lloyd's all insurers must be in corporate form (usually companies or friendly societies), so I'm not sure what the partnership reference is, jguk 13:08, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose as per jguk CalJW 22:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

When the definition of a word is disputed
Sorry if this is addressed somewhere else, I haven't been able to find any guidelines for it. If you're creating a page about a word which can have different definitions, how do you decide which definition to use? For example, "vivisection" means experimenting on animals by cutting them in some dictionaries, but any kind of animal experimentin others. Should the "vivisection" page simply talk about cutting animals, or should it talk about all animal experiments? Should "vivisection" and "animal experiments" be seperate pages, or should they be merged?


 * I think handling differences in definitions depends on the situation, such as how much information Wikipedia has on each definition and how contentious different defintions are. But they should at least generally link to each other.
 * In this case, I think they should be different articles. Maurreen 12:05, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it should go by the primary definition listed in Wiktionary, if there is one present. Miroku Sanna 12:29, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Here's a related question: what if a technical term is used slightly differently by different professions? In materials science, oil and water are the paradigm example of phase (matter) equilibrium, but a solid-state physicist assures me that, despite the stable boundary between these two domains of matter, they are actually the same phase (that is, both are liquid). Should I make a phase (materials science) or phase (engineering) page to cover material on the different usage? Complicating the situation is the fact that in 90% of the definition, we agree, so it would be like writing seperate articles on parallel (euclid) and parallel (projective). Also, I use the term "state of matter" to mean "phase" in the sense he uses it in, but he objects to this due to potential confusion with "thermodynamic state".--Joel 05:35, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Question about preferred article title
I'm going to be starting an article on the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, and wanted to know in what form the title should be. (eg: 1913 Great Lakes Storm, Great Lakes storm of 1913, etc...) It's more often referred to simply as the Great Storm of 1913 (6 times to 1), would that be better? --brian0918  01:02, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, looking at Category:Weather, it looks like other similar articles are named something like "Great Lakes storm of 1913". older ≠ wiser 02:39, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Country and State Names
There is no stated convention on the naming of states or countries. For example for the second year running there is a edit war despute between people wanting to name Wikipedia titles in the format of:


 * State-Name ( Country-Name, State-type )

and those who wish to use


 * State-Name, Country

Can someone please clarify if there is a preferred Wikipedia format. Also what about the use of brackets, square brackets, angled brackets, etc.?.--Daeron 13:06, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not aware of an explicit policy on this. But at the state/province level the practice I have seen more often is parenthetical disambiguation. I think the comma-stacked format arose as an EXCEPTION to the general convention of parenthetical disambiguation specifically for U.S. cities and has since become more widespread, but is generally limited to cities/towns, place names, or tertiary political divisions like counties.


 * There are examples of both types, though I believe the first is more common overall: Georgia (U.S. state), Salzburg (state), Luxembourg (province of Belgium), Konolfingen (district), Montana (region), Dobrich (region)
 * Or Córdoba Province, Argentina (although curiously the Córdoba (province) disambiguation page lists the link as Córdoba (Argentinan province)), Bolívar, Colombia
 * Browse Category:Lists of subnational entities for other samples.


 * Personally, my preference is for parenthetical disambiguation for the simple reason that pipe trick makes it just a little bit easier to automatically hide the parenthetical when typing a link, but really either form is just fine as far as I'm concerned. older ≠ wiser 14:18, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * Could you email me about the type of pipe that you're thinking of. I'd suspect either format is equal for filtering needs.
 * I personally think the non-bracket format is more comfortable to read and type.--Daeron


 * See Help:Piped link for info on the Pipe Trick. It simply means that you do not have to re-type the link after the pipe--the software automatically removes the parenthetical portion. older ≠ wiser 12:57, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * A fix may be to allow the "pipe trick" to work with commas as well? eg.  Launceston, Tasmania becomes Launceston -- Chuq 21:07, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Naming Conventions" naming convention
I have found it misleading that Wikpedia: pages relating to conventions for the names of pages are entitled "Naming conventions". It would be less ambiguous to call them "Page-naming conventions". The ambiguity arises in the case of proper names. For example, the page Naming conventions (city names) does not make clear that it refers to the conventions for the title of the page describing a city, rather than conventions for referring to the city in the body of other articles. On which note, where are the latter conventions to be found? Joestynes 04:26, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * 1) I agree.
 * 2) I think there's a wikiproject for cities. Maurreen 06:26, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Popularity measure
"Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." In a case where a clear majority cannot be seen, what kind of sources should be used? How is one to measure this "majority"? Also, in a case a name that was prevalent is changed "officially", but obviously google hits or other searches return more (old) entries with previous names, what can be done to reduce ambiguity? The case especially became important with the case of the city "Calcutta", which was renamed (in English) to "Kolkata" by the Government of the West Bengal. A fairly heated dicussion is going on at the discussion page. -- Urnonav 06:36, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ambiguous adjectives
There is a new idea at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ambiguous adjectives). If adopted, this would modify Naming conventions (adjectives). -- Toby Bartels 08:40, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

The [Name of Country] → [Name of Country]
The following discussion was originally from Requested moves and has been brought here for further input.

Proposed moves

 * The Gambia → Gambia
 * The Netherlands → Netherlands
 * The Netherlands (disambiguation) → Netherlands (disambiguation)
 * Category:Elections in Gambia → Category:Elections in Gambia
 * Coat of Arms of Bahamas → Coat of Arms of the Bahamas
 * List of political parties in Gambia → List of political parties in the Gambia
 * Category:Elections in Netherlands Antilles → Category:Elections in the Netherlands Antilles
 * Category:Geography of Solomon Islands → Category:Geography of the Solomon Islands
 * Category:Elections in Bahamas → Category:Elections in the Bahamas
 * List of political parties in Marshall Islands → List of political parties in the Marshall Islands
 * List of hospitals in Philippines → List of hospitals in the Philippines

Discussion from WP:RM
and XXX of/in [Name of Country] → XXX of/in the [Name of Country]

Note: this request is only applicable to names of countries and territories that need the "the" article, such as the Gambia, the Marshall Islands, the Northern Marianas, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.

There was a debate over the title of the article Netherlands, and the article was moved to The Netherlands. Nevertheless, it has been a general rule that the articles "the" are left out for articles titled "[Name of Country]", but to keep them for articles titled "XXX of the [Name of Country]", except the Gambia (see Talk:The Gambia). This request is for the consistence of titles. &mdash; Instantnood 01:12 Feb 23 2005 (UTC)

Relevant conventions: Wikipedia:Naming conventions and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beining of name). &mdash; Instantnood 03:53 Feb 23 2005 (UTC)


 * As I stated on RM's talk page, I'm growing greatly concerned with the recent precedent of recommending large blocks of pages. In order to keep the moves controllable and accountable, and to give the contributors a scale of how comprehensive this requested move is, would you kindly provide a list of how many (and which) pages will be affected by this move?  &mdash;ExplorerCDT 02:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that these kind of issues should not be discussed here, but on naming policy talk pages. If there is a consensus there, someone should move them without bringing them up here. john k 03:37, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * The naming conventions are there with little dispute. This request can be removed once the articles are moved according to the relevant policies. &mdash; Instantnood 04:47 Feb 23 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, conventions are merely guidelines. See Ignore all rules. &mdash;ExplorerCDT 05:50, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * (to ExplorerCDT) The Gambia and The Netherlands to Gambia and Netherlands. There could be more. And subcategories of categories cannot be shown during system recovery of Wikipedia. &mdash; Instantnood 03:58 Feb 23 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd like a list of ALL the articles you want to move, and if a block is consistent, then vote on it as one unit, otherwise it may be necessary to vote on certain pages, individually, case-by-case. Not every article you could propose or apply this to has a cookie cutter solution. I do not want just a general XXX of the Netherlands, I want a list.  I wager the administrators who would end up executing such a move would like to know where they're going rather than have to hunt-and-peck for articles.  Administrators aren't slaves to your request. It's your request...you do the legwork. What articles SPECIFICALLY do you want to change? &mdash;ExplorerCDT 05:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * The Gambia and The Netherlands are the only pages identified. Categories are now disabled temporarily for server recovery. &mdash; Instantnood 06:30 Feb 23 2005 (UTC)
 * The server is now recovered. Besides The Gambia and The Netherlands, other pages include The Netherlands (disambiguation), Category:Elections in Gambia, Coat of Arms of Bahamas, List of political parties in Gambia, Category:Elections in Netherlands Antilles, Category:Geography of Solomon Islands, Category:Elections in Bahamas, List of political parties in Marshall Islands and List of hospitals in Philippines. &mdash; Instantnood 10:32 Feb 24 2005 (UTC)
 * I would say that in this kind of 'in' pages, the would be included: Elections in the Netherlands, see for my general comment below, were I am in favour of the move. Gangulf 13:41, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * So far, Oppose as it relates to "The Netherlands" because it isn't just one "netherland" if you know the history of the country (that's akin to saying you'd move the article on the Scottish Highlands to Scottish Highland just because you think it's just northern Scotland and because Wikipedia prefers the singular). As to "The Gambia" I know I've only known the name "Gambia" to be inextricably connected with its definite article, but I'll have to check into questions of usage before I walk away from being Neutral - I do know that we don't generally refer to Sudan and Congo anymore under the colonialist "The Sudan" and "The Congo." &mdash;ExplorerCDT 05:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Strongly agree. If one looks in a traditiona encyclopedia, one would find both countries under Netherlands and under Gambia. There is no Netherland, I agree, but including 'The' is not necesary. One doesn't move the article Scottish Highlands to The Scottish Highlands. Furthermore, I was surprised that some moved Netherlands to The Netherlands during the discussion on that move with at the same removing the discussion from this page. Gangulf 10:28, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Strongly Agree. The Scottish Highlands example is quite right. Just because we put "the" in front of a name for grammatical reasons doesn't mean that it forms an integral part of the name that has to go in an article title. If we have Netherlands at The Netherlands we ought to move United States to The United States. That would be ridiculous in both cases. In article and category titles like "History of ..." then "the" should clearly be included. &mdash; Trilobite (Talk) 00:30, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. Since United States is where the U.S. article is, the appropriate names are Gambia and Netherlands. &mdash;Lowellian (talk) 01:09, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. Jonathunder 01:12, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)
 * Support, albeit not agreeing to using "the" at all in some cases (Ukraine, Sudan, etc.) zoney ♣ talk 20:16, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose at present. Please confirm that you have placed the required notice on the talk pages of all the articles you contemplate moving, that there has been ample (weeks) time for discussion and that there is no existing controversy for any of them which has not yet been resolved in your favor on the talk pages concerned. Jamesday 09:03, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC).

User:Zondor/Naming conventions, now moved to template:Naming conventions (Zondor's proposal), used as template (see right), removed from guideline page.
 * Please provide a list of pages to be moved. -- ALoan (Talk) 00:26, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't this need a little more discussion, prior to implementation? If it were better in line with usability (for instance, not so confusing about the several "people" NC guidelines, etc...), this might even be a good idea, but of course not on a user talk page, a bit shorter, etc...

--Francis Schonken 08:26, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I think it's too bulky to be practical. This is exactly what categories are for. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 14:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Guidelines or policy?
Are naming conventions guidlines or policy? Since the main page has a policy tag, some people argue that the individual conventions, as an extension of this page, are also policy, whilst other people believe they are guidelines. Given User:Zondor's recent actions, some conventions need tagging, but I am unsure which way to tag them. Any thoughts? Hiding talk 11:01, 9 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I'd say:
 * naming conventions: policy, categorised in category:wikipedia official policy
 * All other pages in category:wikipedia naming conventions: naming conventions guidelines. Note that the category of wikipedia naming conventions is a subcategory of category:wikipedia guidelines - I think that categorisation scheme is OK. Maybe Naming conventions (categories) could also be policy (as it is now): it is the central place for naming conventions regarding the "category:" namespace, as far as I'm concerned that justifies it to be policy too.
 * Note that presently the first sentence of naming conventions reads: "Naming conventions is a list of guidelines on how to appropriately create and name pages." - so that also supports the pages on that list to be guidelines, while the list itself can be policy as far as I'm concerned.
 * That is not an exceptional approach: for instance: Neutral point of view is policy, a number of pages giving the finer details on how to implement that policy are marked as guideline or essay and/or included in other categories (NPOV tutorial; POV; etc...).
 * Any toughts about that approach? --Francis Schonken 12:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
 * That seems reasonable to me, as long as it is understood that conventions on the main page are also guidelines, rather than policy. Hiding talk 12:55, 9 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. The fact that we have NCs is policy; the individual NCs are guidelines (mostly because they tend to have exceptions). Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 14:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Archive
Any objections to archiving this talk page? It's getting far too long. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 14:08, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Archiving everything older than 1st of November to /Archive 5. Give me a minute. --Francis Schonken 15:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)