FamilySearch Wiki talk:Naming Conventions

This page is for vetting ideas regarding the conventions or best practices we should provide to help contributors create clear, unambiguous, intuitive titles.

Issues

1. Using jurisdictional identifiers (the word "county," "parish," "township," etc.) in place titles
2. The number of jurisdictional levels to include in a place title
3. Historical vs. modern names
   

Principles

1. In writing mailing addresses, users are accustomed to identifying a place from smallest to largest jurisdiction, such as "Rockville, Maryland, United States." Since this pattern is customary, it may be more intuitive for users.
2. Shorter titles can be better, but only if they help the user understand an article's subject matter without having to read the article. So an article titled "Jefferson," while short, would not tell users which of 114 places the article is about.

Resources

General

Category:Wikipedia naming conventions
Wikipedia:Naming conventions
Wikipedia:Naming conflict
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)

Special rules for templates

Spaces in the name are allowed, e.g. {{train topics}}. The first character (only) is not case-sensitive, so {{cleanup}} and {{Cleanup}}are the same template, but {{cfd}}and {{cfD}}are not.

The template name in general should be short. Many on Wikipedia are abbreviations.

Special rules for namespaces

Only a system admin can create a namespace. Namespaces should be created only after much discussion. The name should be a single word.

Headings:
Wikipedia:Manual of Style - Section headings
Help:Section - Creation and numbering of sections

Categories:
Wikipedia:Naming conventions & categories