Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football Clubs/page name

This is a page to discuss the various possible titles for football club pages on Wikipedia. Add suggestions of models and possible advantages and disadvantages to them all.

Comments prior to creation of this page
From User_talk:SimonMayer: Has someone had at you for the naming of the football club pages? Wikipedia's naming convention - which I'm way too lazy to find & link to here - would tend to suggest the full name should be used. I note that someone started a rather grim Grimsby Town Football Club entry, which I've recently NPOVd, hence discovering the wretchedness of the current naming of all the other club pages. I've got to suggest that if you want to prevent duplicate pages being added, you need to think in terms of adding a couple or more redirects per page - e.g. Manchester United -> Manchester United F.C. , Manchester United Football Club -> Manchester United F.C. . If you have to do this, you might think about the naming convention from scratch, and maybe move all the pages. If this has been discussed to death somewhere, please point me at it. best wishes --Tagishsimon

Response: I've never heard any official debate on it, but ever since I found Wikipedia, originally as an anonymous user in late 2003, the system has pointed towards an F.C. suffix. For simplicity I tried to get all club information onto F.C. pages, using A.F.C. for some exceptions (such as Hull City A.F.C.). SimonMayer 03:29, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

I believe that way back in 2002, soon after I discovered Wikipedia, that it may well have been me who standardised most clubs to use the form XXX F.C.. I see absolutly no good reasons why we should the full epansion of 'Football Club' except for pedantry. I think that it would most peculiar to list AFC Wimbledon at 'Association Football Club Wimbledon' which gets precisely 1 hit on google and only because the page is discussing the fact that some fans like to state that AFC Wimbledon stands for A Fans' Club. I think that there is a slight inconsistency in the use of full-stops between 'F.C.' and 'AFC' and if it came to it I would prefer to see 'F.C.' become 'FC' rather than 'F. C.' or AFC become 'A.F.C.' or 'A. F. C.' This issue hasn't been raised before to my knowledge. Mintguy (T) 21:14, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Meta comments on this page
Hats off to User_talk:SimonMayer for creating this page - very much appreciated. Before thinking further about the well presented options, below, I'd like to suggest that Naming conventions (acronyms) privides the answer by specifying full name and no acronyms in all but exeptional cases, and the liberal use of #redirect to hoover up the many other names people will search by. And that would be Model 5.

Models
The example club for these models will be Grimsby Town.

Model 1
Keep with the current system e.g. Grimsby Town F.C.

Exceptions: Clubs with an A.F.C. name ending e.g. Hull City A.F.C. also AFC Bournemouth, AFC Wimbledon and Runcorn FC Halton

Advantages

 * Simplicity of keeping all articles in the same place
 * Short and tidy name
 * F.C. is a commonly accepted name ending

Disadvantages

 * F.C. does not give the full detail of the club name
 * Full stops can be inconvenient to type
 * The final full stop may be missed out of a hyperlink in instant messenger programs or message boards, would link to Grimsby Town F.C

Model 2
Use the same model with no full stops e.g. Grimsby Town FC

Exceptions: same as Model 1, A.F.C. ending becomes AFC

Advantages

 * Easier to type
 * Shorter/tider than Model 1
 * FC is commonly accepted, maybe more commonly accepted than F.C.

Disadvantages

 * Does not give the full detail of the club name
 * Lack of full stops - now fails to indicate an initialism

Model 3
Call all clubs by their commonly accepted "full name" e.g. Grimsby Town

Exceptions: Clubs with ambiguous names e.g. Barnsley, Chelsea

Advantages

 * Many people would look directly for this page

Disadvantages

 * Many exceptions and a lack of consistency

Model 4
Use a new full name system e.g. Grimsby Town Football Club

Exceptions: A.F.C. clubs e.g. Hull City Association Football Club

Advantages

 * Gives full detail of club name

Disadvantages

 * Long name
 * More prone to type errors
 * Takes a lot of effort to type

I think Model 4 is a complete non-starter. It was meant to be the same as what is now called 'Model 5'. I just made a mistake in the way I worded this section.SimonMayer 02:25, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Model 5
Use a new full name system e.g. Grimsby Town Football Club

No exception for A.F.C. clubs i.e. Hull City Association Football Club would be used

Liberal use of #redirect to redirect variant names to the full title.

Advantages

 * Follows Naming conventions (acronyms) strictly
 * Gives full detail of club name

Disadvantages

 * Long name
 * More prone to type errors (but redirects overcome this)
 * There are too many possible type errors that could occur here - far too many for redirects (May not be a serious problem as most should realise their type errors)
 * The redirects I was thinking of are not all conceivable typing mistakes, but specific redirs for likely searches: Man U, Man United, Manchester United, MUFC all relove to Manchester United Football Club. Whichever scheme we go for, we should redirect the common names of clubs to the chosen name. That, for me, is what the naming convention and redirects are for. --Tagishsimon
 * Takes a lot of effort to type (but redirects overcome this)
 * Lots of renaming work, probably to be done by people called Simon. Just my guess.