Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)/Archive 1

Older bits of discussion at:
 * Talk:Mercury - names such as Mercury programming language are recommended for disambiguation instead of subpages (usemod-era)
 * Talk:Euphoria programming language - Larry suggests renaming to euphoria (progamming language) or euphoria (prog. language); no further discussion (usemod-era -- the page in question appears to have been moved from Euphoria at some point)
 * Talk:Programming language - "X programming language" or "X language" is recommended for naming ambiguous cases, no follow-up discussion (usemod-era)
 * Talk:Programming language timeline - someone mentions changing all the links to "X programming language" 'which is supposed the sandard name for a programming language page', no follow-up discussion (usemod-era)
 * Talk:Ruby programming language - disambiguator changed from Ruby language to Ruby programming language for consistency, no follow-up discussion (June 12, 2001)
 * Talk:SQL programming language - the use of "programming language" in the title is called into question based on whether SQL is in fact a programming language
 * Talk:Eiffel - a simple disambiguation case
 * Talk:FORTRAN programming language - mention that content was merged from pre-existing Fortran article, no discussion of the convention itself
 * Talk:Java programming language - implication that using "Java" alone as a noun is grammatically incorrect (but it's a disambiguation case anyway)
 * Disambiguation - Java programming language is cited as an instance of a naturally disambiguating page title
 * Talk:BASIC programming language - Rlee0001 suggests renaming a bunch of pages to suffix them 'with "programming language" for consistency as described in talk:programming language.' Jeronimo agrees. (This does not accord with some people's readings of the latter page.) (July 29, 2002)
 * Talk:C Plus Plus - Norpan asks if it should be moved to C Plus Plus programming language citing the naming convention (but no reasons for it), an anonymous user agrees and moved the page. (July 31-Aug 1, 2002) (Was later changed back to C Plus Plus based on the discussion in the present page)
 * User talk:Rlee0001 - Rlee0001 cites naming convention as reason to rename many pages to include the programming language suffix (Oct 20, 2002)
 * Talk:INTERCAL - Rlee0001 notes that there exist both INTERCAL and INTERCAL programming language articles, notes that the latter is in accord with naming conventions, asks advice. Brion recommends merging the two, makes no note of naming conventions. (Oct 22, 2002)
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)/Archive - Robert Lee supports always postfixing "language", etc. Others support only postfixing when necessary.
 * Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)/Archive 2 - specific discussion of programming languages.

Is this convention still under review? Can we vote yet?


 * affix "language" and "programming language" only where necessary for disambiguation purposes - IE, java programming language, FORTRAN, Sanskrit
 * Martin, Camembert, mav, Brion, Eloquence
 * always affix "language" and "programming language" - IE - IE, java programming language, FORTRAN programming language, Sanskrit language
 * Robert Lee

I would like to add that, where needed, we should use standard parenthetical disambiguation so that we can use the pipe trick. It is tedious to write French all the time when one could easily write French (language) and have that displayed automatically as French. --mav 00:57 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)
 * Other things being equal, I think "French language" is a more natural title than "French (language)", and should be preferred. The pipe trick is useful, but hardly anyone knows about it and it can be a bit confusing for newcomers.  And you can always create a redirect at "French (language)" if you really want to use the pipe trick. Enchanter 01:24 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)


 * But one could also say "create a redirect at 'French language' if you really don't want to use the pipe trick". I mean, it's true that "French language" is more natural than "French (language)", but I think that most of the time you don't want the word "language" to appear in the article at all - you just want to write "French" (at least, this has been my experience). And if you want to just write "French", the parentheses make it easier. So I agree with mav - better to disambiguate parenthetically. --Camembert (I reserve the right to completely change my mind)


 * Lee has already stated that he will change the current behavior of the software that converts French (language) to French upon save to always have French (language) in the wiki code. Therefore newbies will notice this markup nearly as easily as they already notice what ''' does when placed before and after a term. --mav


 * I wonder if there's any studies/theories of keyboard use that will tell us the comparative speed of typing English (language) and English ? It's not clear cut, since brackets are harder to type than normal letters... Martin

The following articles are at X programming language when they should be (according to this convention) at X. Martin


 * Algol, AmigaE, Atlas Autocode, AutoLISP, AWK, Basic, C Sharp, CORAL66, ...

Scripting programming language versus Scripting language has been mentioned on votes for deletion. See Talk:Scripting programming language if you want to weigh in.

The following discussion is moved from User talk:Ruhrjung:

Regarding the naming convention for the Swedish (language) article: I do not doubt your intention to follow it through or the logic behind the construction as a disambiguation. However if it is not implemented swiftly, two different and concurrent standards of naming the language articles will ultimately lead to confusion. Besides, is it really necessary to rename a few hundred language articles and several thousands of links to them because "(language)" looks slightly better than "language"? The benefit of such an effort seems marginal at best. That's my two cents, at least.

On a more general note I think that many of your contributions has brought very good value and raised the level of existing articles. This includes work on languages, ethnicity, demographics, etc. Good show! -- Mic 14:22 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Basically, I would say that I agree with you. I could have said that it's a mistake - but that would be a lie. In particular, I agree that I decided to make the change in hasty mood, which maybe isn't laudable. BUT my impression is that the number of pages linking to Swedish_language/Swedish_(language) and Finnish_dito is relatively limited, and that the whole issue would be doable. In case others would feel the same for other languages, it would be possible to change by means of a simple robot.

I did check that it was a controversial move, an unresolved dispute, so to say. I think small languages (such as Swedish and Finnish) are a better arena for testing and showing. Personally, I think it would be good if all articles were converted in this respect by a script, but for me it's even more important to demonstrate that it can be done and thereby evaluable. -- Ruhrjung 09:08 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Disambiguate: (Language): Why?

Why have you moved some langauges from "X language" to "X (language)". Why the addition of parenthesis? It makes natural language link impossible, ...


 * I don't understand your usage of the term "natural language". -- Ruhrjung 10:34 19 May 2003 (UTC)

... i.e., now people have to do:


 * The Swedish language is a Scandinavian language spoken in Sweden.

When it could've easily been:


 * The Swedish language is a Scandinavian language spoken in Sweden.


 * They can however write:
 * [Swedish (language)|]] is a Scandinavian language spoken in Sweden and Finland (with Åland).
 * -- Ruhrjung 08:49 18 May 2003 (UTC)

--Menchi 08:09 18 May 2003 (UTC)

I see that you've somewhat answered it on the top. But I still don't understand your motivation. What are the benefits of this change? --Menchi 08:10 18 May 2003 (UTC)

First of all, I must report to you that I've seen plenty of occurences of Swedish but only few of Swedish language.

My main motivation might have its background in me, like you, having another mother tongue than English, and hence 1/ being aware of the possibility that "Finnish language" is understood as "Finnic language" or (somewhat less likely) "Germanic language" in the heads of unfortunate writers or readers being mixed with "German language"; 2/ being sensitive for the difference between adjectives and nouns, "Swedish" being a noun, but in "a Swedish language" "Swedish" is suddenly instead an adjective; and 3/ being cautious to differentiate between ethnicity and nationality.

Regarding Finnish it can be argued (i.e. it is argued by people I've met, it is even emphatically argued) that both Swedish and Finnish are "Finnish languages", as both are official languages of Finland, or as the term is expressed in Finland: They are both "Finnish domestic languages".

Additionally, it's in my perception a way to omit to trigger disputes over differences between languages and dialects, and to circumvent sensitivenesses on the issue what Bokmål and Nynorsk "really are".

...then there might be some left-overs from my school too, where (one of) my English teachers had as a pet peeve to remind his pupils that "the name of the English language is English: You speak English, not English language!" :-)

-- Ruhrjung 08:49 18 May 2003 (UTC)

Some, such as ZeroOne, are recommending the use of more descriptive article names solely to make it clear which article is being linked from bare lists such as Recent Changes and Category:Stub. However, most links are not in bare lists without context - to the contrary, policy is that linked items in articles are disambiguated within the linking article, if necessary, either explicitly or by context. If this fails, the first line of the article itself invariably makes it clear. Rather than rename - and repair double redirects for - hundreds of thousands of articles, why not just alter the code generating the aforementioned lists to give the first sentence or so of the article, like Google does with search results?

In the end though, it doesn't matter all that much - it's just a matter of which page is the article and which the redirect, since we all agree redirects should be placed on all alternative titles. Maybe every page should have a "short" (minimally unambiguous) title and a "long" (descriptive) title, and it could be an option in user preferences.

Derrick Coetzee 00:28, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)