Powerbase:Naming Conventions

This page is a list of guidelines on how to name pages.

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. Beyond this general statement, the most important sections to read are the first few sections: Simplicity, Precision, Capitalization, and Pluralization.

The purpose of this policies is twofold. First, to allow web users to easily judge from the results turned up by a search engine whether the article is likely to contain information they are seeking. Second, to make creating new pages with appropriate links easier.

Any subject, names, words, or phrases in an article/page that you think should be linked to further information, should be bracketed so that they will appear as links. Following consistent conventions in both naming and linking makes it more likely that these links will lead to the right place.

General conventions

People and organisations

As SpinProfiles is a profile encyclopedia, the majority of articles are likely to consist of titles of people or organisations.

Capitals should be used as normal for people's and organisation's names. For example: Gordon Brown or Labour Friends of Israel

Use a persons full name if possible. For individuals with titles such as Dennis Stevenson who is also known as Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, use his real name for his main article. It is possible that others may know him as his title, but not his real name: so to make it easier for people searching in SpinProfiles to find him, create a redirect so that someone looking for 'Lord Coddenham' will be automatically be directed to 'Dennis Stevenson'. See How to redirect a page for how this is done.

Sometimes more than one person may share the same name. In this case, follow the guidelines given in How to redirect a page

Descriptive titles

It is preferable for descriptive titles to also be created using capitals, after all it is a title. For example: GlaxoSmithKline: Silencing Critics Through Intimidation.

Try and ensure that the title is as clear as possible whilst being short and snappy. The example GlaxoSmithKline: Silencing Critics Through Intimidation makes it easy for a reader to identify that the article is about GlaxoSmithKline, that it is about critics being silenced and that this is through intimidation. If the article was simply entitled 'Silencing Critics' for example, then it would be very ambiguous and unclear what the content of the article actually was.

Ensuring an article title is clear has 2 main benefits: It makes it easier for people using SpinProfiles to browse the site and to find articles on their interests. It also makes it easier for someone using a search engine on the world wide web to spot a Spinprofiles article relevant to the subject they are searching for.

When creating an article, don't forget to give it a category: which keeps articles on certain subjects connected together, as well as making them easier to find.

Lowercase second and subsequent words

Convention: Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun or is otherwise almost always capitalized, do not capitalize second and subsequent words (otherwise known as "title case"). Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) and wikipedia:Canonization.

Exception:Portal names: The names of portals are considered proper names in and of themselves ("The Legislation and Issues Portal") and as such should follow normal title case.

Prefer singular nouns

Convention: In general only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English (such as "economics" or "trousers"). Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (pluralization).

Use English words

Convention: 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. Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

Use common names of persons and things

Convention: Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things. Rationale and specifics: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names).

Be precise when necessary

Convention: Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously-named title as though that title had no other meanings. Rationale and specifics: For example, if you create an article "Legislation" but the content is solely about legislation governing the mining industry in the U.S., readers are justifiably likely to be annoyed. It is also worth remembering that articles with specific titles can be grouped with other articles on a similar theme by the addition of a category tag. This automatically indexes all articles with the same tag so that they can be easily viewed as a group. See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation.

Prefer spelled-out phrases to acronyms

Convention: 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 ("NASA" and "radar" are good examples). Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms).

Legislation, regulation and policy

When naming articles on government policy, use:

• "legislation" when the article is principally covering acts of a legislative body (such as Congress). For example, actions by Congress that affect Medicare are covered in the "Medicare legislation" article;
• "regulation" when the article deals significantly with regulations issued by regulatory bodies and when the article covers restrictive governmental actions. For example, the government restricts what media companies may own so there is an article on "media ownership regulation"; or
• "policy" when the article deals with governmental actions that are proactive/creative. For example, copyright law established protections so there is an article on "digital copyright policy".

Historical names and titles

Convention: In general, use the most common form of the name used in English and disambiguate the names of monarchs of modern countries in the format [[{Monarch's first name and ordinal} of {Country}]] (example: "Edward I of England"). Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) and Wikipedia:History standards.

Movie titles

Convention: Oftentimes movies share the same name as other movies, books or terms. When disambiguating a movie from something else use (movie) in the title when only one movie had that name and (YEAR movie) in the title when there are more than one movies by that name (example: "Titanic (1997 movie)"). Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (movies).

Country-specific articles

Put the name or abbreviation of a country in parentheses at the end of an article title when the article applies specifically to one country. Use (U.S.) for the United States of America and (UK) for the United Kingdom. (Follows Wikipedia convention)

Other specific conventions

These guidelines have been adapted from Wikipedia:Naming conventions]. Additional guidelines can be found there.

Getting in touch

• If you have a specific question that you want answered, post it on the Query page. See also Requested articles

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