Forum:Page names

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Naming conventions are at Genealogy:Page names.

As rule 1, we have that Wikipedia takes precedence.

I think this is a bad rule, because Wikipedia's own conventions are inconsistently applied and because Wikipedia is not about genealogy.

Particularly, Wikipedia may call someone "Charles, King of Spain" (first name, job) even though his name is "Charles of Hapsburg". The selection of "job" is varied too: sometimes it's the one held longest, sometimes it's the most prestigious, sometimes it's the one that mattered most for English history.

So, I would suggest that "first_name last_name" should be the priority rule. When Wikipedia uses a different name, we should create a page with that name and redirect. rtol 17:40, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

Let's talk about what Wikipedia really does. There is no Wikipedia article Charles, King of Spain. There is an article on Charles of Habsburg, not Hapsburg as you have spelled it. It is a disambiguation article that refers to 5 different individuals. Because you have proposed an alternative convention, new disambiguation articles like this one would have to be rewritten after they are imported. Are you going to do it? If not, who is?

Are you really proposing that there be no external authority for Familypedia names, both person and place names? If so you are proposing that we be the authority with all the administrative overhead that requires. For example:

You have proposed a naming guideline that differs from that of wikipedia's- one that has been hammered out after years of discussion. How long before ours stabilizes? Years? How many edit wars over competing conventions?

Let's assume that we are smarter than the Wikipedia community about naming standards and we invent our own. After the months of effort to hammer one out say we have a standard by 2010. Now, a standard is meaningless unless it is enforced. Are you prepared to arbitrate disputes in naming over punctuation, style of disambiguation and so on? Are you prepared to rename articles that are not in compliance with the naming standard? Before you answer too quickly, consider the fact that there are well over one million place names and just as many person names that shall be imported from Wikipedia. So just from a practical standpoint what you are proposing imposes a huge workload on admins.

The decision was that these disputes are best taken up in a forum where there is a sufficiently sized community of subject matter experts and the administrative apparatuses to arbitrate these disputes on naming guidelines and enforcement of them. Until then, it's my belief your proposal is a non starter solely on the basis of not having sufficient contributors to carry it out. Certainly if you can get enough people to agree that we should change policy on Wikipedia being the authority, that's fine.

I for one staunchly oppose it. It will create endless wastes of time in divisive discussions, inventing new conventions and manuals on styles when Wikipedia's already exist and are good enough, and suck up administrative resources that we don't have. ~ Phlox 19:22, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the last thing we need is a big discussion. Charles of Habsburg is a good example of the mess at Wikipedia: Charles of Spain; Charles, Archduke of Austria; Charles, Holy Roman Emperor. What's consistent about that? We already have many pages that violate our rules, by the way. Just have a look at Monarchs of England.

I'd be happy to follow the WP naming conventions. I'm not happy to copy WP violations of its own code. rtol 20:25, October 13, 2009 (UTC)