Naming pages properly
Naming pages properly is important, because naming them improperly makes it difficult to find pages, and also to create other pages which may have similar meanings. This page will talk some about why this is important, and also give some conventions for good naming. Enjoy.
MAJOR ODIN NUELL
Name / Rank: Major Odin Nuell
Hair: Dark brown [when it is not shaved off]. His hair is genetically nappy and frizzy and falling off.
Eyes: Brown
Mouth: Round with full pink lips Weight: Approximately 176 pounds
Height: 5'8" Build: Medium thin. Odin hits the gym whenever possible, but it's not a priority.
Voice / Way of talking: Calm and logical whenever possible. Odin is highly emotional and "gets off" on talking down to people and being racist.
Family: Alice Nuell, wife [died during the Dominion War]. Barbara Smith, ward [she is the daughter of Nuell's father and mother in-law who died during the Dominion War; he is raising her now but only on the condition that he doesn't adopt her]. Ra Nuell, older brother [Ra is a general in the Romulan military and Odin's rival; since Odin left the Romulan Star Empire to defect to the United Federation of Planets]. Brigadier General Campbell, mentor [helped Odin defect into the Federation and teach him the ways of the Federation]. First Lieutenant Raven McCloud, best friend [Raven was the best friend of Alice and part of the crew who found Odin when he defected to the Federation; she is the god-mother of Barbara].
Ethnic background: Odin is a Romulan from the planet Romulus. Two years after defecting to the Federation, Odin had surgery to make himself look Human. He had his records altered. Now, he is recognized as half Human / half Vulcan.
Schooling: Odin began schooling on Romulas and moved onto special Tal Shiar trainning. He then entered the Romulan military. Before becoming an officer, Odin defected to the Federation. He then entered Starfleet Academy. After graduating, he joined the Marines and graduated from the top of his boot camp at the top of his class. After becoming an officer, he was recruited to Black Ops. Between Black Ops and Tal Shiar, Odin Nuell is a master torturer and has been called into action more times than he's ever willing to admit. Odin Nuell is also a member of Section 31 and the request of his long time friend and mentor, Brigadier General Campbell.
Present occupation: Major in the United Federation of Planets Marine Corps
Past occupations: Marines officer, Section 31 operative, Romulan soldier and Tal Shiar operative.
Hobbies: Learning everything he can about everything he can. Political preference: Odin is racist. He hates everyone. However, he is Republican because that's what his mentor is.
Likes: He likes being alone and watching his enemies in pain.
Dislikes: Being bothered by people and their lives.
Music: None. It's loud and annoying.
Books: Technical manuals, especially on flight since he always loved flying.
Food: Anything that's dead and cooked well done.
Sports: Armed and unarmed trainning. Pet peeves: People who are alive Fears / Phobias: Never having a family and not being able to find a way of adopting his ward without loosing her to the state. The fact that everyone will discover he is really a Romulan. Favorite expression: None. Character gestures: Talks with his hands. Special childhood memory: Being recruited into the Tal Shiar because it was the first and only time his father said he was proud of him. Where does this character live? Odin lives on board the Marines first starship, a Steamrunner class ship called the Century Eagle. However, his home on Earth, What does he want? To end his term in the Marines and live a normal life on Earth with his ward. What comflicts, problems or challenges might he face? Loosing his ward, not having a family, and always being called to do the "dirty work" of the Federation.
Specificity
Let's use an example here, with my character name: Tristan Wolf. I can be known by any number of variations of this, right? Perhaps "Tristan," or "Wolf," or maybe even by parts of my rank: "Fleet Admiral," or "Admiral." If you're feeling brave, maybe even "Fleet Admiral Tristan Scott Wolf."
Now, our goal in naming a page is first, as we said above, to make it unique. But we also need to make it easy to find the page. Sure, search would probably pull up my page as long as you had one of the variations above in it, but search is inconvenient and sometimes annoying because other responses may come up. So we need to decide what is the best variation to use for simplicity and efficiency.
We need to be careful, however, not to be too specific. While my rank, for example, will not be changing because I can't be promoted any higher, just about everyone else in the club is pretty much guaranteed a promotion at some time in the future. So, we probably don't want to include the "Fleet Admiral" part of the name because we want conformity with others, and others don't want to use their rank because that would mean the page name would have to change in the future, which is always bad.
This leaves "Tristan Scott Wolf," as my character name. We probably don't need to use the "Scott" part, because most people don't know that's my character's middle name. So we're down to "Tristan Wolf." But do we do it forward, or backward?
Putting the last name first is usually the best, like so: "Wolf, Tristan." Here's why: because we're using ranks normally in SIM, most people are known as something like "FltAdml. Wolf." Last names are slightly more common in SIM than first names, so people will likely look for the last name first. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, but we simply deal with those on a case-by-case basis.
However, if your character is more commonly known by their "first" name, then we need to change this a little. For example, the staff member "Hollis Caley" is called "Hollis" because he is a Bajoran. So his character page would be called "Hollis Caley."
Lowercase second and subsequent words
Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized (for example: John Wayne, but Computer game).
Due to technical limitations inherent to the MediaWiki software, the first letter in an article title always needs to be a capital letter. Ordinarily this isn't a problem, but it poses an issue when a proper noun's first letter is lowercase (for example, eBay).
Prefer singular nouns
In general only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English (such as scissors or trousers).
Redirect adjectives to nouns
Adjectives (such as democratic) should redirect to nouns (in this case, democracy).
Use gerund of verbs
Use the gerund of verbs (the -ing form in English) unless there is a more common form for a certain verb.
For example, an article on swimming is better than one on swim. The plain form of the verb can be a redirect to the gerund. Existence is an example of such a "more common noun form". (More common than "existing," of course.)
Use English words
Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the English form.
Use simple titles
Remember that a link is the title of the page it links to. Titles should be as simple as possible without being too general. For example, the page about jazz should simply be called "Jazz", not "Jazz music", because "jazz" does not refer to anything other than music, and the simpler title makes linking easier. Adding the word "music" is redundant. On the other hand, country music should be on a page called Country music because the word "country" has other referents besides the musical genre. If we ignore potential ambiguity, the ideal of simplicity can be at odds with the ideal of precision.
Use common names of persons and things
Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things.
Here are some examples:
- George W. Bush (not "George Walker Bush")
- Bill Clinton (not "William Jefferson Clinton")
- Jimmy Carter (not "James Earl Carter, Jr.")
- Occam's Razor (not "Ockam's Razor")
Middle names should be avoided unless they are the most common form of a name (as in, say, "John Wilkes Booth").
Initials in names should each be followed by a period and a space; for example: "H. G. Wells".
Don't overdo it
In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading (For example: "tidal wave" would be a misleading title since these phenomena have nothing to do with tides), then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative ("tsunami", for example). Also, some terms are in common usage but are commonly regarded as offensive to large groups of people ("Eskimo" and "Mormon Church", for example). In those cases use widely known alternatives ("Inuit" and "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"). When in doubt, check a mainstream reference work.
This does not mean that we should avoid using widely known pseudonyms like "Mark Twain", "Marilyn Monroe", "Billy the Kid", or widely known common names of animals and other things. But it does mean that we need to temper common usage when the commonly used term is unreasonably misleading or commonly regarded as offensive to one or more groups of people.
Be precise when necessary
Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously-named title as though that title had no other meanings. For example:
- Apollo -> Apollo program
- Nirvana -> Nirvana (band)
- Pipe -> smoking pipe
Prefer spelled-out phrases to acronyms
Avoid the use of acronyms in page naming unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its acronym and is widely known and used in that form ("laser", "radar", and "scuba" are good examples).
Avoid the definite article ("the") and the indefinite article ("a"/"an") at the beginning of the page name
Except in titles of works ("The Old Man and the Sea", "The Lady or the Tiger?", "A Clockwork Orange") or in official names ("The Hague"), avoid the definite ("the") and indefinite ("a"/"an") articles at the beginning of a page name. This applies even if the subject of the page is usually preceded by the definite article "the" in speech or writing: Thus, for example, "White House" is preferred over "The White House" and "Middle East" is preferred over "The Middle East".
Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles
Since Transportation in Azerbaijan could just as well be considered a subdivision of Transport as of Azerbaijan, do not use a name like Azerbaijan/Transportation. Instead, use "Transportation in Azerbaijan", then categorize in "Transportation" and "Azerbaijan".
Be careful with special characters
Some special characters either cannot be used or can but cause problems. For example you should not use a piping character (|), an asterisk (*), an ampersand (&), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]) in a name.
