Wikiversity talk:Naming conventions


 * See also discussion of the /Original proposal/

Proposals
subject, descriptor and subject (descriptor)

Do not overload school and topic namespace pages with educational contents. - Sidelight12 Talk 20:14, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) School: namespace is for organizations.
 * 2) Topic: namespace is for categorical articles.

WikiProject states that "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces are for the Wikiversity equivalent of a Wikiproject. - Sidelight12 Talk 08:30, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Working toward an approval
When I first found the naming conventions, I thought it was an official policy, but later on I found out that it's only a proposal. I think it's time to move forward and work to get it approved. I can see there is also a lot of other (essential) proposed policies in need for approval, but I'll start with this, since there is some things here I would like to question.

I can see there was an original proposal that were much longer and with a lot of discussions, that was rejected as a whole. Instead of voting about a "long" policy, I think it would be better to vote about a short/simple policy first and add to that, or just vote on individual parts separately directly. In the original proposal it says that should be done too, but I can't see any voting for that.

Anyone interested in working with this, and does the above roadmap seems good with a small policy first or just voting about individual parts at once? /Patrik Näsfors (discuss • contribs) 00:37, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Dissapointing to see a valid concern from a member of the community has gone without a response. I was stumbling upon this page to see if there is any rule about having an indefinite article in a title. For example: System --> A system. Obviously, by logic, it does not seem like a good idea, but I'd thought that there would be a rule pertaining to this. Sadly, I was mistaken. I guess I can propose that we should omit "indefinite articles" out of page titles. Obviously, there will be a few exceptions to this-- such as for a title of a book.


 * I agree with you, PatrikN, that we should go ahead and submit this as a policy than allow this page to simply be a proposal (looking at the rate of attention here at WV to these type of things: a proposal for good). I also agree with you on your point here: "Instead of voting about a 'long' policy, I think it would be better to vote about a short/simple policy first and add to that"


 * As the old saying goes, "step by step".


 * I invite Mike for his opinion and what his thoughts are about this since he is the only active bureaucrat here. Thanks. ---Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 18:30, 5 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Given what I've been learning about we might need to start this page from scratch.  --mikeu talk 21:46, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * We've already got a lot of weight on us atm--will keep this page in mind. -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 22:49, 5 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Before starting a community discussion I think that it would be useful for members of our community to share their thought on the subject. Mine are at User:Mu301/Learning_blog/2018-01. Feel free to join the conversation. --mikeu talk 19:33, 6 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I try to use Wikipedia as a naming guide, even when it frustrates me (such as for Subroutine when all current programming languages call them  Function). I'd like to see common names their consistent with common names here. Even if the common name here then becomes a disambiguation page for different resources, such as Python. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:12, 6 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Ideally, and I admit this would be difficult to implement and keep up with, those disambiguation pages could list resources with a brief abstract that describes what the resource is about and what to expect (ie. elementary school or college, introductory or advanced, etc.) That was the original intent of Topic: and School: namespaces. In retrospect that wasn't such a good idea. It was never well defined and was very inconsistent. I'd like to see the ABCs ("primary" topics like Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, etc.) provide some guidance on locating the variety of content we have, rather then be a lesson or resource itself. This feels like a more sensible way of cross-linking our resources to Wikipedia. I'll pick a few projects and try to create a draft of this idea as an example. --mikeu talk 23:35, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Hopefully, i'll check. Thanks ---Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 22:00, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've read most of the content of the page--I don't have an adequate response yet as I'm way too busy to focus on these type of matters (per my info notice on my userpage). I will get to it after Jan 27. Thanks. ---Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 22:09, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Landing page example
I've created an example landing page at Public humanities to gather together some of the learning projects that have developed over the years. It needs cleanup as much of the text is just a c&p from the project mainpages. It is also missing details about the institutions and individuals involved in the work. But, it is a start towards what I was describing as a generic subject page that is a more than just a simple wp style disambiguation. --mikeu talk 03:31, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Full capitalization
Naming_conventions says that title or sentence casing can be used, but do we also allow full capitalization? For example, the subpages of Special:PrefixIndex/Physics_for_beginners/ use full capitalization for their titles, and I wonder if these are accepted because No.3 of Naming_conventions says "For resources in the main namespace, don't capitalize". If full capitalization is OK then the naming convention may need fixes to avoid conflict, and if its not OK then these subpages should be renamed with title or sentence casing. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 17:09, 15 March 2023 (UTC)


 * ALL_CAPS is shouting. There is no reason for us to shout at users with titles. There may be rare cases where the thing being described really is an ALL_CAPS thing. For example, some MediaWiki constants are ALL_CAPS. But unless the thing being described is an UPPERCASE constant, the title shouldn't be ALL_CAPS. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:13, 16 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Can the Physics for beginners subpages be renamed to Title Case or Sentence case? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:15, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course. Do you want me to change the titles? The pages were created so others could comment and/or add further information. In an act of laziness I created the titles by copy/pasting from the author's original pdf  (which uses this unconventional capitalization.)  Now that I have stopped teaching the course the book gets about 12 pageviews per month. --Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 02:07, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Guy vandegrift: Yes, please. I wasn't sure if it would impact anything else, so it was easier (for me) to have you make the corrections. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:56, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Good news and bad news

 * 1) The good news is that I renamed the 40 files to avoid the ALL-CAPS violation in titles. [See https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex?prefix=Physics+for+beginners%2F&namespace=0&hideredirects=1&stripprefix=1 (visit PrefixIndex page)]
 * 2) The bad news involves ALL-CAPS violations in text and navigation.


 * Regarding text, I believe it is best to follow the author's original notation and permit ALL-CAPs notation. Raspanti's original version of the book can be found at https://www.thenatureofthings.info/physicsframe.htm. Note that his convention is #-TITLE (e.g. Chapter 2-HEAVENLY BODIES.) To appreciate why this looks better, visit the page,  Physics for beginners, where you can see that my main contribution to Raspanti's book was the inclusion of a large number of images available on commons that wikitext authors can use in their own contributions.
 * But the big problem is navigation. To appreciate this problem visit the source page to Physics for beginners/08-light, which looks like this.

It's a matter of taste and perception, but I don't interpret the ALL-CAPS as shouting in this context. And, the wikitext of each individual chapter would need to modified to replace caps by no-caps in the wikitext. For that reason I propose that we allow ALL-CAPS on the redirects and in all text in Raspanti's book.

Yours truly -- Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 07:14, 17 March 2023 (UTC)


 * While I am unable to find any authoritative style guide that recommends ALL-CAPS content, I agree that it should be an author's choice. If you believe the navigation links should be upper case to match the original source, so be it. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:08, 17 March 2023 (UTC)