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Naming pages properly: Difference between revisions
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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. | 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. | ||
==Unique Names== | |||
Imagine each page's name is its own telephone number (with area code and country code, of course, because we're an international community!). If your phone number is 1 (555) 555-1212, no one else can have that phone number, right? Because if they did, you'd be sharing a phone line, which is never good for conversation. | |||
' | So too, here on the Wiki, each page's name is its own unique identifier. Your first priority in naming is always to keep this in consideration. | ||
' | ==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== | ==Lowercase second and subsequent words== | ||
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==Avoid the definite article ("the") and the indefinite article ("a"/"an") at the beginning of the page name== | ==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". | 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. | |||
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