Wikibooks talk:Naming policy

I think that with the new naming convention being in place for over two years now it no longer makes sense to have some of our old books under the old naming convention. I think for consistentency it would be better for the project to have all books under the same system. I would like to open a proposal to remove this clause from the naming policy and invite comments from the community.

Just as a bit of background I removed this clause back in July and following objections from David Carey have now restored my change and am formally proposing it here. Our discussion on the subject can be seen above. As I have said to David I do not want to reopen a debate about which naming convention is the better, that discussion has been had already and I don't think we need to spend any more time on it. What I am proposing is having adopted the slash convention as our choice we should now bring all books under the same convention. --AdRiley (talk) 06:47, 10 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

• I agree because consistency is important, and dependency on it has grown both in the mediawiki software and within Wikibooks. I also believe dependency on the slash convention will only continue to grow. Having read David Carey's comments, I believe "Wikibooks is not paper" is relevant, however maybe we could be trying to encourage the mediawiki developers to either make the DISPLAYTITLE magic word more flexible or add a new magic word to allow changing the displayed heading title completely so the displayed name can be different from the page name without having any side effects. --darklama 12:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)Reply
• We've already had a discussion on the merits of the various naming conventions. Now that we have a decision, consistency is certainly useful, an will likely be needed in the future for software feature requests such as mw:Extension:AllBooks. What we are currently discussing is the grandfathering provision. Given that this policy has been in effect for a long time, I see absolutely no reason that the provision should remain. Any books still lingering should be updated as they are found regardless of age; the provision should be removed.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 13:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

The documentation for mw:Extension:AllBooks implies it already handles books with the "colon naming convention". --DavidCary (talk) 03:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

I don't think it can handle books which use ":" as a normal character while also using "/" as part of the naming convention. --darklama 17:14, 26 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

You may be right. However, the documentation for mw:Extension:AllBooks says "This extension will list all books in a Wikibooks wiki when using two of the most common naming schemes: Book/Chapter and Book:Chapter." --DavidCary (talk) 03:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

• Agree. Massing page move can be done using bots. It would be great having the same naming policy on all Wikibooks projects, this would help developing tools and extensions working on books. --Ramac (talk) 12:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)Reply
• Agree. The benefits (kinetic and potential) clearly outweigh any disadvantages. --Jomegat (talk) 13:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)Reply
• Disagree. Wikibooks is not Wikipedia (WB:NOTWP). "Unlike wikipedia or wiktionary — which are essentially very large books with a single manual of style — the individual wikibooks found on Wikibooks can be written in vastly different styles, according to what best suits the topic and the preference of the authors." -- WB:LMOS. Jomegat alludes to "clear kinetic and potential benefits" -- could someone please spell them out (or link to some previous discussion about them)? I agree that the nifty "automatic backlink at the top of the page" is one good reason for using the slash style, but that alone is not enough to mandate using it for every book. --DavidCary (talk) 05:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

  For example, sysop can move a book and automatically move all subpages of the book; more over, lot of book-related tools need a clear naming policy to work on books (i.e. mw:Extension:AllBooks has problems due the different naming policies used on various wikibooks). More over the manual of style talks about capitalization of titles, categories or so on; following the naming convention has some advantages, and no disvantages. The problem is not the preference of t he author or what best suits the topic, but the software and the organization of books :-). --Ramac (talk) 07:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

  I agree that mw:Extension:AllBooks has problems with some kinds of book organization. How is that is relevant to this discussion about banning the "colon naming convention", which as far as I can tell is *not* a problem for mw:Extension:AllBooks? --DavidCary (talk) 03:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

• comment Rather than "reopen a debate", may I ask for a link to that debate, a link to where "We've already had a discussion"? Years ago, there was a consensus vote to keep the colons for some books (Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines/Vote/Naming policy). Having made that decision, why change now? Has there been some more recent "debate" and "discussion" of which I remain blissfully ignorant? If consensus truly has changed, then that's fine. But when proponents of one option claim that the consensus supports banning all other options, while the only evidence I see (admittedly years out of date) shows that the consensus preferred some sort of compromise -- those claims rub me the wrong way. --DavidCary (talk) 03:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

  David, as I have said above there is no new discussion to link to. This is it. The reason we feel that consesus supports the slash option is that for two and a half years every new book on this project has been created under the slash convention. This means that for anyone who has joined the project in that time (which includes myself) the slash convention is the only convention we have ever known. So "on the ground" the colon naming convention has gone. Further in all the time I have been working on the project and through all the books I have moved onto the new convention this is the first comment that I have seen from anyone on the colon/slash debate. I feel the colon naming convention is part of wikibooks history and it is now time to move forward with one convention, not two. --AdRiley (talk) 08:00, 26 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

I feel I should point out that indignation about policy evolving over time without exhaustive debate and straw polls etc is a bit silly. Policy is what we do - sometimes it is written down, and sometimes it is up-to-date. In the past two years the community has gradually grown accustomed to the slash convention, as well as to changing books which don't use that convention. Changing the policy is long overdue and shouldn't be hindered without good reason, which I have yet to see here.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 15:37, 26 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

I think it should also be pointed out that despite the grandfather clause people have moved old books using the ":" convention to the "/" naming convention without it becoming an issues until now. This suggest that people want old books to use the same naming convention even though the books are not required to. What this means is that there are probably only a few books left now that this clause could apply to. Of course I and others involved in this discussion might be the only ones who've made these moves. --darklama 17:09, 26 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

Some authors prefer the "Book:Chapter" colon convention, and have already listed what I consider "good reasons" (Wikibooks talk:Naming policy#Disadvantage with the slash, Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines/Vote/Naming policy#Disadvantages, Wikibooks talk:Naming policy/Archive 2#Problems with forcing article titles to be computer filenames). Changing the policy to support those authors is long overdue, and shouldn't be hindered without good reason, which I have yet to see here.

I think it should be pointed out that, even though some people think that "The colon convention could potentially interfere with the creation of new wiki projects, and new namespaces.", the evidence is 2 to 0 in the opposite direction. The Cookbook namespace was created from pages with titles that began with "Cookbook:". Then the Wikijunior namespace was created from pages like "Wikijunior:New Title Policy". --DavidCary (talk) 03:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

David, you seem to be straying back towards attacking the slash convention again, which is what I meant when I said I didn't want to reopen that debate. You talk about users who like the colon convention, if these users exist then why have they not proposed a change to the policy to allow both conventions? At the moment do they only work on old books where they can use colons? --AdRiley (talk) 08:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Despite any past issues concerning the use of the slash convention, consensus was that the slash convention should be used for any new books. Most of the past issues seemed to be concerned about publishing books in print form despite that Wikibooks is not paper. Changes to reflect the medium used is not uncommon from what I have seen. The creation of the two namespaces did cause problems, behind the scenes the developers had to correct the entries for all pages in the two namespace because namespaces are referred to by id, rather than part of the page title in order to become accessible again, similar problems existed when Wikiversity was made a interwiki prefix, pages beginning with Wikiversity: had to be renamed in order to become accessible again. Many solutions have been found and proposed for working around any perceived disadvantages to the slash convention. More technical problems exist with the colon convention because of its internal uses within the mediawiki software than is caused by using the slash convention. Can we get back on track as AdRiley suggested, as to whether to remove the Grandfather clause or not. I don't think any consensus on allowing the colon convention in new books is going to happen. --darklama 19:25, 1 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I have been asked "You talk about users who like the colon convention, if these users exist then why have they not proposed a change to the policy to allow both conventions?".

The naming policy -- from the time it was first made policy in 2006 until today (except for 9 July 2008 - 10 September 2008) -- already does allow both conventions, at least for pre-existing books.

Perhaps proposing a change to allow Book:Chapter convention for new books would be a good idea.

The mw:Extension:AllBooks says that Book:Chapter is one of the 2 most common naming schemes. How is that possible if users who like the colon convention don't exist? --DavidCary (talk) 22:59, 4 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'd disagree with such a change. The comment about the 2 most common naming schemes is due to what was observed from a quick look at a list of pages, and didn't consider things like whether a page was a redirect. --darklama 12:51, 5 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I suppose move-subpages is yet another reason subpages are preferred.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

We've converted 2 colon-convention books to namespaces. I am not surprised that some technical difficulties were discovered in that process.

We've converted zero slash-convention books to namespaces or sister projects. I am not surprised that zero technical difficulties were discovered in that process.

I don't see how any conclusion can be drawn from those 2 facts about "more technical problems exist" with one or the other.

Can I draw the conclusion that "users who like the colon convention" do, in fact, exist?

Can I draw the conclusion that the kind of author who creates pages with the colon convention is more likely to be working on the sort of book that grows so large that people convert it to a new namespace or sister project?

Isn't that exactly the kind of author we want to attract? --DavidCary (talk) 16:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I don't know where you're getting your figures. I've personally converted perhaps 5 whole books and at least 20 or 30 partial books from colon to slash convention and had no difficulties. Indeed, once that's done, it's possible to move the whole book all at once. I think that alone is argument enough. I don't see your line of argument going anywhere - nobody else seems to agree with you.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:01, 31 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Mike in that I'm not sure we are going anywhere with this argument: we have been discussing this for nearly 2 months now and I don't think either side seem to be convinving the other to their point of view. Also we seem to have a fairly low number of contributors to the disucsion which I feel leans towards my original thought that the majority of people aren't really that bothered. Would anyone object if we give this discussion another 10 days (so it has been up for two whole months) and then move it to a formal vote? --AdRiley (talk) 08:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'd say there's no need for a formal poll - the discussion here is clear enough to me. Yet another reason to use subpages will be coming once some hardware issues are resolved. The new search supports searching in subpages.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 18:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

OK so I count 5 in favour: AdRiley, darklama, Mike.lifeguard, Ramac, Jomegat; 1 opposed: DavidCary. I am going to close this as carried and remove the clause. --AdRiley (talk) 13:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Since Mike is pretty smart, but he didn't know where I'm getting my figures, I expect that future readers will also be just as mystified. Apparently I was too vague earlier. So I'm going to spell them out:

The Cookbook namespace was created from pages with titles that began with "Cookbook:". Then the Wikijunior namespace was created from pages like "Wikijunior:New Title Policy". Also the Wikiversity sister project was created from pages with titles that began with "Wikiversity:". Darklama, earlier on this section of this page, said that there were "problems" during this process, and I am inclined to believe him.

Total: 2 namespaces and a sister project were created from wikibooks that used a colon.

As far as I can see, zero namespaces or sister projects were created from wikibooks that used the slash convention.

That's where I got the "2 to 0" figures I alluded to earlier.

--DavidCary (talk) 04:49, 15 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Actually Wikijunior books used the slash convention and were named like Wikijunior_Animals before becoming its own namespace. Also StrategyWiki was started from game guides here that used the slash convention. So really its 2 for 2. --darklama 21:15, 16 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

As if it matters.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 22:11, 16 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Doesn't really matter to me, but does seem to matter to DavidCary, so I figure DavidCary would appreciate more accurate information. --darklama 14:33, 18 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, that was directed to him in the first place. For that to actually be an argument, you'd need to prove that these projects' success was actually a function of whether they used colons or slashes which seems increasingly unlikely and irrelevant.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 03:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Just visiting this page, the "tips" section referred to a PDF version of the book being called "Image:bookname.pdf". But as the Image namespace is now renamed to File:, and PDF's arent really images, I've edited this to "File:". If it should stay as "Image:" then please revert. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 17:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

See also the earlier page casing discussion at Wikibooks talk:Manual of Style#title casing. --DavidCary (talk) 12:43, 24 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

The page currently states that both book and page titles must use title casing. While I see many benefits in a consistent casing scheme for book titles, I feel we should leave sub-page casing up to contributors to individual books. Looking through the archives, I could find no discussion that demonstrates any sort of community consensus on this particular issue (though I did not read the entire archives).

Unless someone sees a solid argument for a Wikibooks wide policy on sub-page title casing, I'll give this a rewrite soon. --Swift (talk) 18:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

I know I'm guilty of moving books to title casing, but really now that I take a look, I can't find where it mentions title casing at all in this policy. Perhaps we are both thinking of WB:MOS where it mentions title casing and sentence casing, and how title casing is preferred. IOWs title casing seems to be a community standard assumed to be policy, but which isn't. --darklama 23:32, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

In fact, the MOS doesn't even say that title casing is preferred, it says that some people prefer title casing while others prefer sentence casing.

I think the one MOS section that mentions casing is a section about book titles. It does seem, though, to be trying to say more than it actually does say: it says to "be consistent for books you are editing". This might be construed to mean that the page titles within a book should follow the same convention as the title of that book, but that's not the only thing it might mean. It could also mean that if the main title of a book uses title casing, then a subtitle for the book should also use title casing — and after using title case for the book title one could then use sentence casing for the chapters and sections of the book. In my own non-wikibooks writing I prefer to use sentence casing for section titles, chapter titles, and even paper titles, reserving title casing for book titles.

BTW, we're using — deliberately, at least on my part — sentence casing in the Conlang book (though I see one error, at a glance, and of course the book title is noncommittal since it's only one word). --Pi zero (talk) 12:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Wow, I guess I misread this. Anyway, it seems this could be clearer. I'll leave a note on this.

As for the consistency recommendation, I've always understood it as just whatever combination of title/sentence casing for the various parts (title, sub-pages, sections, etc.) which the book contributors want. Personally, I prefer title casing for titles, and sentence casing for everything else. --Swift (talk) 21:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Title casing for a book's title, as it states on the main page that this talk page corresponds to, avoids conflicts in the category names books use and category names subjects use. See Wikibooks:Categories for a definition of the terms. What you as an editor do with the subpages is up to you. Just be consistent throughout the book. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 02:20, 23 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Please continue the page casing discussion at Wikibooks talk:Manual of Style#title category vs subject category. --DavidCary (talk) 13:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

The whole "slash" policy is misleading, as it is listed in the welcome message left on my user page. I'm contributing to the Cookbook, which still uses the "colon" style. No mention of that is made here, but probably should be. Otherwise, the entire cookbook needs to be converted, which seems silly.—D'Ranged 1 ^talk 06:51, 31 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

You are confusing two things. "Cookbook" (and Wikijunior) is a different namespace so the colon is part of referencing the namespace not part of the book structure. For example, Castles of England/Norman Castles is really "mainspace:Castles of England/Norman Castles". You don't see "mainspace:" because in effect mainspace has a null name. However, in the Cookbook and Wikijunior you need to specify the namespace - an example is Wikijunior:World War II/Blitzkrieg. If I moved this Wikijunior book into the mainspace it would appear as "World War II/Blitzkrieg", in line with the naming policy. QU ^TalkQu 12:13, 31 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

As the title for this section reads, yes, it's confusing. I don't understand the difference between a namespace and a book title, apparently. Isn't "Cookbook" the title of the book? If so, shouldn't chapters be "Cookbook/Acorn Squash", not "Cookbook:Acorn Squash"? There is some discussion above about the Cookbook and Wikijunior being converted to namespaces from the colon titling scheme, but again, it's all confusing. If I'm just reading the policy in the welcome message, and assuming that the title of the book I'm contributing to is "Cookbook", then I read it as saying that my contributions should be titled "Cookbook/Acorn Squash". Sorry if I'm being a pain, but it is confusing! Thanks.—D'Ranged 1 ^talk 04:35, 1 September 2012 (UTC)Reply

Part of your confusion may be because namespaces are a software grouping of pages, while books are a logical grouping of pages.

The wiki software identifies each page in the wiki by a namespace, a colon, and a pagename. There are "magic words" for extracting these parts: {{NAMESPACE}} in the wiki markup of a page expands to the name of the namespace, and {{PAGENAME}} in the wiki markup expands to the pagename. For example, this talk page is in namespace "Wikibooks talk", and its pagename is "Naming policy". One of the namespaces of the wiki is referred to (by people) as the mainspace; its namespace name is actually the empty string, and you can omit the colon between the (empty) namespace name and the pagename. You could refer to, say, the main page of the Using Wikibooks book as [[:Using Wikibooks]], thus: Using Wikibooks.

The software also supports grouping together all the pages in a single namespace whose pagenames all consist of the same prefix followed by a slash and then some other stuff. For example, here are all the pages in Wikijunior space whose pagenames begin with "Solar System" and then a slash: Special:PrefixIndex/Wikijunior:Solar System/.

Books are logical groupings of pages, which are meant to be understood by readers as a coherent whole. Usually, the name of a book consists of namespace, colon, and pagename without slashes in it. Subpages of the book then have the book name followed by a slash and some other stuff. This is taking advantage of the groupings provided by the software.

Just to complicate things further, there was one book so sprawling that we have given it its own namespace, and everything in that namespace is part of that one book: Cookbook. So the entire Cookbook namespace is a single book, while the Wikijunior namespace is a bunch of separate books. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:51, 1 September 2012 (UTC)Reply