Wikisource talk:Naming conventions

Naming convention?
[moved from Scriptorium, and refactored].

As someone who works mostly on non-fiction with many cross-references, I often deep-link into nonexistent works. This requires me to make assumption about how works and sections will be named. Though I have often declared the lack of rules here part of the place's charm, I now find myself wishing we had some documentation of our naming conventions. I am willing to volunteer to write something, if there is support for it.

The meta-question is, do we want to document agreed conventions on how to go about naming pages? Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes to guidance and agreement on the principle what we are trying to achieve —Billinghurst

Another meta-question, does this guideline apply only to main: namespace or also to File:, Index: and Page: namespace ? (I don't think so) File:Descartes - Œuvres, éd. Adam et Tannery, tome 1.djvu
 * File:, Index: and Page: namespace pages are determined by the titles under which files are uploaded, usually to Wikimedia Commons. I don't think we have policy jurisdiction, but I see no reason why we can't give some guidance. Hesperian 12:20, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The potential trouble I see is people trying to apply conventions on already uploaded file with created page on ws:. Renaming a file on commons take a few seconds for admins and can create a complete mess of redirect on wikisource. Bot can fixup them but we are likely to end up with something worst than a simple File: not following a naming guideline. Also many conventions making sense for main doesn't for File: and Index: (no sub-page on File:*) What I suggest if we add guideline for File: is 1) don't apply it on existing works 2) allow more freedom on the naming scheme. This make sense because one motivation for this conventions is to allow easier linking but are we allowing link from a Page: to Page: in a different works or encourage only to links from works in main to other works in main ? Phe (talk) 12:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Here are the naming conventions we have applied on Commons for djvu files:
 * We use commas to separate editor, publisher, date or this kind of informations. Is this to be changed? --Zyephyrus (talk) 23:46, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Fine for me, but does this apply to en: ? Phe (talk) 08:58, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I have named English djvus with the same pattern, for instance:


 * Index:Chambaud - Fables choisies with English-French dictionary, 1828.djvu ‎
 * Index:La Fontaine - The Original Fables Of, 1913.djvu ‎
 * Index:Collodi - The Story of a Puppet, translation Murray, 1892.djvu
 * Index:Rabelais - Gargantua Pantagruel, translation Urquhart Motteux.djvu


 * So, do you think these namings are good? (In the Main space, this last one is three books: Gargantua, Pantagruel, Third Book, perhaps Third Book ought to have been named Third Book (Rabelais), would it have been better?) --Zyephyrus (talk) 13:46, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Omit subtitles unless necessary for disambiguation.

 * e.g. Frankenstein not Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus

Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree, though the guidance should be that if we think that there is the possibility of the need to disambiguate, then we plan for it early, and use a redirect from the shortened name to longer name.—Billinghurst
 * In general this seems sensible, especially for subpages, but descriptive titles are not always easily contracted. If a suitable half title is not given, other author's references may give something manageable: "she conceived the idea of her famous novel of Frankenstein (1818) ... Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:22, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree, but what Billinghurst said - if we can see a conflict brewing, then disambiguate before we have to move a set of pages. Inductiveload— talk/contribs  01:09, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The subtitle, if it exists, is the first choice for disambiguation.

 * e.g. The library: a magazine of bibliography and library literature, because the preferred title The library is ambiguous

Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Absolutely—Billinghurst
 * And should be a redirect if it isn't needed. Preferable as the title in the header too. Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:27, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Second choice for disambiguation is the author.

 * e.g. Love (Coleridge), not "Love (poem)", nor "Love (1799)"

Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, and where the same author repeats a work, then we utilise Work name (Author, YYYY). —Billinghurst
 * We need to presume that for many common words that we are going to need to disambiguate, so start early. Make the disambiguation page, so that it is easy for works to be added, and disambiguated early.—Billinghurst


 * If a work goes through multiple (explicitly numbered) editions, then I think we should use (Author, Ordinal edition). In the case of stuff like poems which can be issued multiple times with subtle differences, without any explicit edition or version number, then yes, the year is best Of course there is also the situation where various versions and provenances of a work have been heavily studied by scholars, who have named the versions; in that case we should probably follow the scholarly terminology. e.g. The Tempest (First Folio), The Tempest (Second Folio), The Tempest (Third Folio), etcetera. Hesperian 12:02, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that the basic premise of Type What You See still follows, and where a naming convention exists for a work or a series of works then that should be followed. billinghurst (talk)


 * Author then edition, or year if problematic as above. There will still be there occasional exception, I have created Shelley (poem) and Shelley (essay) by the same author, I s'pose I could use the year ... or a dab!? I will also note poems by the same author with the same title and year, the verses by Blake called "Song" for example. Rather than add to Song I linked the incipit: ambiguous ToC — Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:53, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that these are the logical exceptions to the rule, as otherwise it becomes Shelley (Author, poem); and any other works can align with the convention, and all works. billinghurst (talk)

Sectional numbers are always given in arabic numerals
Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3,...), not roman numerals (I, II, III,...), nor words (One, Two, Three,...)
 * e.g. /Chapter 4; not "/Chapter Four", nor "Chapter IV"

Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Haven't seen problems here, though can understand that it makes things easier—Billinghurst
 * More important than I first thought. Chapter headings are sometimes removed, they should be retained (verbatim); I don't see the header replacing the content. Cygnis insignis (talk) 22:06, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Neither do I, however, I don't usually reverse them when just cruising doing other's works. Would the same apply to poetry? See some names trimmed out, or not transcluded. billinghurst (talk) 03:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not following, is this related to another proposed convention? Cygnis insignis (talk) 05:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Possibly I am not either. I thought that you were talking about something like Chapter VIII that gets removed from the head of a subpage, and placed in the Section marker.  I agreed that it should stay.  It was an aside that I often see the same thing happening with poetry works where the name is removed from the head of the transclusion. billinghurst sDrewth 05:52, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I thought you two were agreeing that "Chapter IV" may fairly be titled /Chapter 4, but if so then the text heading "Chapter IV" should be retained. Billinghurst was suggesting that "I don't see the header replacing the content" has a broader application than this specific case: e.g. the title of a poem should be retained in the text, not stripped out as redundant to the header. This I agree with; but arguably it is beyond the scope of a naming convention. Hesperian 05:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Got confused, pardon that, I was thinking of another issue. I think this emerged because the header is compulsory and adding the same information may appear redundant. The Page: namespace mostly negated the need to repackage content from other websites, the source of much of our poetry. Cygnis insignis (talk) 06:41, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll agree to it all. What had not been evident to me, and maybe I haven't stopped long enough to think is that the purpose here is to allow easier deep-linking, not so much about consistency of THE LOOK. (We need to make this point more evident for the doofi)  I'm on board! Yes to this dot point. billinghurst sDrewth


 * Not sure. Is it necessary to have "/Chapter 4" when "/4" would suffice?  And I suppose that replacing roman numerals with arabic numerals makes sense, though it will be annoying to have roman numerals in the headers and arabic numerals in the section titles. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 18:48, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It is about future-proofing. The reason that the proposal exists is that when the work does not yet exist on our site, we may still have other works that refer to it. If we are to prepare wikilinks ahead of time, then we need to have a standard form to code, not hope that they choose the still that we have.  Going back and fixing them isn't going to work, hence the proposal to standardise. It took me a little to fully cotton-on too. billinghurst  sDrewth  04:54, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Editions are given in parentheses using "(Ordinal edition)" formula

 * e.g. On the origin of species (1st edition), not "(1st Edition)", not spelled out as "(First edition)" not "(Edition 1)" or "(Edition I)", not "/1st edition", and not "(1859)"

Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree. Cygnis insignis (talk) 22:07, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Use "/Rank Number" for numbered sections
Where sections are numbered, and they cannot stand alone as works in their own right, use "/"-separated subpages with subtitle Rank Number, or just Number if no rank is given.
 * e.g. "/Volume 2/Part 1/Chapter 3"
 * e.g. The Botanical Magazine/Volume 1/13, though one could argue for "The Botanical Magazine/Volume 1/Plate 13"

Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This one has so many components. Where we are talking multi-volume dictionaries and encyclopaedias, do you still expect to see a collection to be a discrete part of a work eg. &hellip;/Volume 1/Family_name, Firstname or do you think that we can omit the volume details, and directly link to &hellip;/Family_name, Firstname.  After doing a number of works in this space, having to identify the volume no. can be problematic with no real benefit.—Billinghurst
 * If the volume information isn't meaningful then I would not likely use it in the page name. But I would probably retain the volume information in the table of contents. For example, volumes in magazines are meaningful divisions. But the volume divisions of an encyclopedia are primarily to keep the size of the books reasonable. &mdash;Mike 21:16, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I disagree with this one as the optimal naming convention for the final form of a work. I can see that, especially for a large work, it's going to be essential for sanity's sake to do "/Rank Number" while it's under construction.  But for  pages will be (accurately) rated higher in searches if the URL is as pertinent to the content of the page as possible.   is extremely important for us IMO because as time goes on there are going to be more and more copies of these works all over the web and elsewhere.  Our editions of them are far better than the ones at Google Books, for example, but unless a member of the public can find our version all the care and effort we put in goes for naught and they end up reading a crappy, poorly-OCRed scanned version.


 * So, I think that in the final, or at least mature, form of a work we should have a preference for naming the article page with the descriptive title of the section, if one is available, rather than "/Rank Number", and preserve the "/Rank Number" name with a redirect. (This is all based on the assumption that redirects do not get the same weight as the "real" article title, but for a variety of technical reasons I would expect both search engines and MediaWiki to tend towards resolving down to a single, canonical URL for the content.)


 * So far I've spent the majority of my effort here at Wikisource on some late 20th century and 21st century works, with many scanned versions of the same works elsewhere on the internet. I've done periodic test searches for the content as I proceed with Wikisource-ifying the work and I gradually see the Wikisource results rise higher and higher, until they're at or near the top of the first page of results.  I would expect that this is partly due to having more error-free text than the OCRed PDFs out there, and partly because the Wikisource versions are full of cross-referencing links, but I believe it's also because if I do a search related to, for example, the Korean War, on Wikisource it's appearing in a chapter/page that's entirely about the Korean War right down to its title and URL.  --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 08:21, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree with "Rank Number/Rank Number". This is the only way, IMO, to clearly delineate a work's structure. While Work/1/3/2 might be pithier, Work/Volume 1/Issue 3/Chapter 2 is so much clearer. Once you see that title, you have a very good idea of the work's structure. Also, having a relativly rigid structure means botting suddenly becomes a lot easier. If I want to bot though a work in order, which I know has 50 chapters, and I know the structure is Work/Chapter 1, it is trivial. If the chapters are "Work/One day Sally went to Town", "Work/Sally misses her bus", I have to get an ordered list of the names, and get all the punctuation and capitalisation correct, or the script will choke.
 * I don't know about SEO, but if we are relying on the exact formulation of the URL for our Google rank, aren't we doing something wrong? We have the title of the page clearly at the top (in the header and/or in the text) and the work title is always in the URL. Inductiveload—talk/contribs   15:01, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Use titles for numbered sections that are standalone works
Where a section of a work is itself a work, use its title, even if it has a number
 * e.g. Transactions of the Linnean Society of London/Volume 10/Characters of a new Liliaceous Genus called Brodiaea not "Transactions of the Linnean Society of London/Volume 10/1".

Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * In serial works, like journals, there can also be a monthly, quarterly aspect. Each can have a recurring section, eg. Book reviews, so we can need to drill down to an issue no. or quarter.  I would like to see us keep the articles at &hellip;/Volume XX/Article name, and the repeating sections at &hellip;/Volume XX/(issue bit)/Book reviews or whatever it is.—Billinghurst


 * Re 6 and 7, I prefer to capture the entire structure, especially when bits are published separately at different dates, as in your Issues example; but the guidance needs to reflect consensus on best practice, rather than imposing rules, so if there is dispute then we had best leave it out. I feel even more strongly that there should be consistency within a work i.e. if you need to include the Issue bit for some article titles, then it should be present in all of them. But again, if I can't convince you of that, it should stay out of WS:NC. Hesperian 10:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What about series Transactions of the Geological Society/1st series/Volume 4 ? I don't understand what you include in (issue bit) ? Phe (talk) 11:05, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * To my mind, "New series", "Second series", etc, indicate a change of volume numbering so they become part of the volume information, rather than a distinct division. e.g The library: a magazine of bibliography and library literature/Volume 5, series 3. Re "issue bit": many journals, magazines and newspaper are given an issue number for each issue, and a volume number for each year. e.g. the February issue of a monthly magazine in a given year might be Some random magazine/Volume 4/Issue 2. Often the page numbering starts at 1 for each volume, not each issue; so Issue 2 might start at page 240. And most libraries would bind all the issues together into books by volume. Thus Billinghurst makes a case that the issue number might not be very important, and one might choose to ignore it when it comes to structuring such a work. Hesperian 11:35, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation about issue. For series, I see Volume 5 a sub-part of series 1, that's why I prefer Series/Volume. If we use the scheme you propose, it must be clarified in the proposal than only Volume 5, series 1 is allowed (Volume 5/Series 1 is really misleading). Phe (talk) 12:04, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see your preference as problematic. Though it would be nice to make titles entirely predictable, so that I could deeplink into non-existent works with confidence that the link will be correct, I don't think that ideal is attainable. There has to be flexibility. Hesperian 12:20, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * In some case the title of the work must be shortened An Account of some attempts to ascertain the angles of the Primitive Crystals of Quartz and of the Sulfate of Barytes, by means of the reflecting Goniometer; together with practical reasons for presuming that the admeasurement assigned by Haüy to several varieties of the parallelepiped and of the octahedron are inaccurate. has been shortened to Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4/On the Angles of the Primitive Crystals of Quartz, and the Sulphate of Barytes (part before '/' is wrong but it's not the topic here). I used the title in the running header of the book, it's more difficult to predict but avoid to invent a title from scratch. It's a corner case that'll cause trouble, if a books contains some titles needing to be shortened this way, must we shorten all sub-works in this book the same way to be consistent ? Phe (talk) 10:43, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've used some running header titles myself in The miscellaneous botanical works of Robert Brown; I say just do what seems best. This naming convention, assuming there is to be guidance, will aim to pick up the obvious, easy stuff. You'll still have to fall back on your own common sense when things get hard. Hesperian 12:03, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Under this convention Brazilian and United States Slavery Compared would be moved to something like Journal of Negro History/Volume 7/Brazilian and United States Slavery Compared and a redirect left at Brazilian and United States Slavery Compared, correct? How about essays in collections, like The Forgotten Man?  Would that be moved to The Forgotten Man and Other Essays/The Forgotten Man, or left where it is?  It only gets more complex from there: Webster's Speech Against Conscription, for example, comes from a work with no real section numbers or titles, and the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 is a famous document, known by that title, but sourced in a standard collection of US government texts.  Would it be renamed Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution/Volume 4/Kentucky Resolutions of 1798? --Spangineerwp (háblame) 19:08, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

When disambiguating translations, use "Title (Author, Translator)"
—Billinghurst


 * If there is a seminal work, eg. Ovid, then we maybe can just use translator alone.—Billinghurst


 * Title (Author/Translator) look like weird if we think it in term of sub-page, main page = "Title (Author", sub-page = "Translator)", should we discourage use of '/' except for real sub-page, meaning "this is a sub-part of" ? Phe (talk) 12:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer "(Author, tr. Translator)", and only when the author needs to be disambiguated as well&mdash;so if someone other than Tolstoy has written a book called War and Peace, call it "War and Peace (Tolstoy, tr. Maude)". If Tolstoy's War and Peace is the only one, disambiguate the translations "War and Peace (tr. Maude)" or "War and Peace (Maude)" (though this last could be confusing). --Spangineerwp (háblame) 19:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree with Spangineer. A '/' would split off a subpage. Inductiveload—talk/contribs  15:02, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Use full names for author pages
For author pages: —Billinghurst
 * 1) Full name to be used, eg. Author:First Middle Familyname
 * 2) Where full name does not sufficiently disambiguate, then use dates of life, &hellip; (YYYY–YYYY) 


 * have found that this is the only reliable means to identify that you have the right person—Billinghurst
 * I prefer the most common name; e.g. I would prefer "E. E. Cummings" to "Edward Estlin Cummings". Generally I do whatever Wikipedia does, on the assumption that whatever they do is more or less right; but I would be loathe to write a naming convention that says "do what they do." Hesperian 10:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * template Header directly link to Author: namespace, so either we will need to follow the same convention as for Author: or create redirect to the name used in Author: namespace, both way are fine for me. I tend to use shorter name if the full name is very long. Phe (talk) 12:36, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Definitely redirects. In the work for DNB, I have come across authors with many variations of their names, especially when you get double-barrelled names, or those with Lord Muck, before they became Earl of Muckyheap. Similarly for married names of female authors. billinghurst (talk) 12:41, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * As luck would have it, the very next author page I see myself to create is ambiguous. I was about to create an author page on the British palaeobotanist William Henry Lang, but this is also the name of an Australian hack who wrote some juvenile fiction and possibly some coffee-table books about Australia, around the turn of the century. I don't know if I can be bothered disambiguating at present—it may be some centuries before a Wikisourcerer takes an interest in the latter Lang—but if I could I would be much more comfortable with Author:William Henry Lang (botanist) than Author:William Henry Lang (1874–1960). Hesperian 12:44, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I personally think that in this situation that both disambigs could exist, one as a redirect. Though totally agree that we would not disambig at this stage.  The issue can be with John Doe (poet) and John Doe (poet_too), father/son combinations, some of the nobility especially where parliamentarians, etc.  From our biographical dictionary work we have been struggling through some of the works, and even though it is unpretty, it was the better of the solutions.  (There are a number of these discussions around which I can find if you so wish.) billinghurst (talk)

Title case versus sentence case
The elephant in the room is title case versus sentence case. Hesperian 06:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC) Style guides and journal guidelines that I tend to refer to basically state
 * I am presuming that you are talking the practice of Maximal or Minimal capitalisation Google search.
 * 1) For titles: maximal for major part(before colon), and minimal after colon.
 * 2) For chapters: minimal
 * Always going to be problematic and it seems to have been so in the works themselves, eg. SBDEL Do your best, be liberal with redirects, and check your back links at author pages. Sometimes we have enough issues getting the right title, so here I am not going to get totally hung up about it. billinghurst (talk) 12:14, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, style guides usually recommend maximal; but virtually every library catalogue in the work uses minimal case, including Google books (mostly) and the Internet Archive (mostly). I am very attached to minimal, but I'd sacrifice it for the promise of consistency. Hesperian 12:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * All I see is inconsistency and feel that redirects will fix the problem anyway.  When there is doubt, when one creates a work, create the corresponding maximal <-> minimal. billinghurst (talk)
 * The issue here is that I want to link to A voyage to Terra Australis/Volume 2/Appendix 3 before that work has been created; but I don't know whether the eventual contributor of that work will use "Voyage" or "voyage". The root title will of course get redirects, but it is unreasonable to expect a redirect between A voyage to Terra Australis/Volume 2/Appendix 3 and A Voyage to Terra Australis/Volume 2/Appendix 3. This is the rationale for consistency; as I said to Phe above, it is an ideal and I am not suggesting that it has to be addressed right now, or ever. Hesperian 01:57, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, and regarding the NLA link, I don't see a single maximal on that page. They are all minimal except one wish-washy (i.e. wrong either way) "A Tale of two cities". Hesperian 02:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * One aspect of this recommendation we should consider. Maximal works for titles given in sentences, not a issue when it appears as the page title, or in a list of them, as with a libraries catalogue. Links in our page content would be piped of course. Cygnis insignis (talk) 06:16, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Heh&mdash;seems that these UniLearning folks have figured out an answer to the unending (maximal capitalization) problem of "how long must a preposition be before I can capitalize it?": just call "of" and "in" articles! Brilliant =).  CMS seems to slightly prefer headline style (maximal) but then goes on to give a page of complicated rules ("Lowercase prepositions, regardless of length, except when stressed, are used adverbially or adjectivally, are used as conjunctions, or are part of a Latin expression used adjectivally or adverbially".  Rules for sentence style ("minimal") are much easier: capitalize first word of title and subtitle, and any proper nouns.  I like the look of maximal better, but minimal would be 10x easier to keep consistent, and, as previously mentioned, would be consistent with library catalogs and other reference lists.  Put me down for minimal everywhere. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 19:31, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I am relatively ambivalent as to maximal vs minimal. Personally, I prefer the look of maximal, but I recognise the easier rules of minimal. However all-capitals like "Work/CHAPTER 1: WHY AM I SHOUTING" just because the original work had a capitalised heading is right out. Inductiveload—talk/contribs  15:13, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguating works based on illustrator
Cygnis insignis and I had a recent conversation about works where a later version is illustrated. My suggestion was that where illustrators had a gig that we utilise a similar style to the translators. The suggestion at the end was something along the lines of This presumes that the work will be well enough known to be distinctive about the author, and not needing further distinction about the author in the naming. Otherwise it may need to be presumably we don't need to intermingle semi-colon. — billinghurst  sDrewth  02:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Name of work (illus. Illustrator_name, year)
 * Name of work (author, illus. Illustrator_name, year)

Starting the page
In IRC, Phe asked whether the page should be called Naming Guidelines. I prefer the word Convention, so maybe the page should start with &hellip;


 * NAMING CONVENTIONS
 * Main namespace
 * Page name is the title of the work
 * disambiguation will be required for works of the same name, guidance below
 * where disambiguation is required, the base page will be for disambiguation
 * use of subpages are encouraged for lengthy works


 * Author namespace
 * Page name is the name of the author
 * disambiguation will be required for authors of the same name, guidance below
 * where disambiguationis required, the
 * redirects are encouraged for name variations, for example, pen names, shortened names, married names
 * use of subpages are encouraged to break out long sections of work

OUR GUIDANCE (determination from above would follow) ...


 * Wikisource namespace
 * Titles are kept short, and no disambiguation is required
 * Lengthy pages should utilise subpages or links to similar pages


 * Help namespace
 * Titles to be informative and non-ambiguous


 * File: Index: and Page: namespaces
 * Titles approximating the name of the work are preferred, though variations may be required. Mindful naming is requested when uploading the file to Commons.
 * Names of the works in these namespaces should be consistent to allow for interflow of linkages


 * Template namespace
 * Naming should indicate the use of the template
 * abbreviation can occur though this would be preferred as a redirect to the indicative name


 * I would start with a statement of principles: i.e. we name our pages so that they are easy to search for and easy to link to; i.e. they are predictable. We achieve this by using intuitive, predictable names, such as the actual title of the book or author; and by imposing a degree of consistency in the way we disambiguate, structure subpages, etc. On the issue of starting the page, I say just go for it. If you are worried about being too bold, just put at the top. ;-) Hesperian 13:00, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Framework cut and paste Naming conventions
I have pasted a framework in place, and please feel free to add and subtract from it. In a few days I will start adding the content. — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Is this for here or Help: namespace
Should this be Wikisource:Naming conventions or Help:Naming conventions ? — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:00, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Author's naming: problems to solve
I agree that we need one clear naming rule to be sure that the images on Commons, the articles on WP, the texts on WS, the different languages and so on can be linked to the right person, for instance: Chuang Tsu, Chuang Tzu, Zhuang Tze, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, Tchouang-tseu, Master Chuang, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Zi, Zhuang Zhou, Tchoang-tzeu Zhuāngzǐ, 莊子 / 庄子, Chuang-tzu, Zhuāngzhōu, 莊周 / 庄周). Dschuang Dsi, Tschuang-tse

(one author under all these names but with different transcriptions)

or

Auteur:Charles d’Orléans

who is a very well-known poet under this name but lots of princes named Charles belonged to the Orléans in France through the centuries, even if only one of them wrote:


 * Le temps a laissé son manteau
 * De vent, de froidure et de pluie

and this one is found under different names, for instance

Charles Ier d'Orléans

and

w:Charles, Duke of Orléans

and

Commons:Category:Charles I de Valois, Duke of Orléans

So I am afraid the solution is not easier to find here than for the poet/botanist mixing you were speaking of. --Zyephyrus (talk) 08:15, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Naming, Dickens complete works index creation
Is this naming acceptable ? Index:Dickens - Works, Lang edition, 1897, volume 1.djvu. There are 32 volumes. --Zyephyrus 17:15, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I have renamed it to Index:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 1.djvu to allow easier bot-uploading of the work. The year varies between volumes, which means it will make flipping volumes harder if it is included. This name would have been great if the years were all the same. Inductiveload—talk/contribs  23:30, 5 June 2011 (UTC)


 * On fr.ws we name all the volumes on the first publication’s year, in order to permit the different series to be distinguished. --Zyephyrus (talk) 17:05, 28 August 2012 (UTC)