NSWiki:Naming conventions

From NSwiki, the NationStates encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search

Community Portal


Naming conventions is a list of guidelines on how to appropriately create and name pages.

Starting a Page

  • Use Search to see whether someone has written a similar page before you start one yourself.
  • See whether a separate page is justified; perhaps it is better to add the text to a related page (especially if the text is not very long); that page can always be split later, after it has grown.

Starting a page from an existing link

It is highly recommended to start a page from an existing link. (These so-called "ghost links" or "red links" are links that have been made in the text, but for which no article currently exists.) If you want, you can create a link in the sandbox.

Red links take you directly to the edit mode of the non-existing page, which allows creating it, just like editing a blank page.

  • Before following the edit link, decide whether you want to give the new page the suggested name. If not, first edit the link on the referring page.
  • If you'd like to follow-up on your article after you've created it, we suggest you to create an account before creating it.

Starting a page through the URL

An easy way to produce a new URL is editing the last part of the URL of another page in NSwiki.

  • The base URL is http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/

Be careful that you don't accidentally create your page in another namespace by accident: any page title that begins with NSwiki:, User:, Talk: or Template: is in another namespace, and you probably don't want to create it there. Start from the Main Page for best results.

  • Do not create articles in the Category: namespace. Edit in a brief description and create appropriate sub-categories only.

Choosing a page name

Nations and regions

In NSwiki, nation pages and region pages should be exactly the same as used in NationStates.

Your nation name does not include your pre-title. Only the part after the of is your nation name. If you create The Republic of NationName, one of the wiki community will move it to NationName.

Your nation should not be created on your User page. User:Goobergunch is the person, Goobergunchia is his nation. You are welcome to put a link to your nation on your User page, but nations created there will be moved.

One noteable exception: NSwiki cannot use Underscores, so _ Susa _ will link you to the same page as Susa. See {{wrongtitle}}, or contact a sysop to help you in such cases.

Leaders and other characters

Use the most common name of a person that does not conflict with the names of other people. "Ackbar Montezuma" may well be unique, but "John Smith" should perhaps be listed as "John Smith (MyNation)"

Do not use titles as part of the name, except where royal titles become the name. Your leader should not be "President John Smith of MyNation" and should definately not be "Leader of the People and Hero of the Revolution John Smith of MyNation". "John Smith (MyNation)" is enough. You can add the titles and details in the article itself.

Royalty and some species names do include title as a part of the actual name. Speaker-Rrit and Matthew VI of Falastur are appropriate character names. "Sir Winston Riegle" or "Lord John Marbury" typically are not. See Wikipedia:Names and Titles for complete coverage of this most complicated topic.

Languages

Use the common name of the language, such as English, Latin, or Quenya. There is no need to add the "language" suffix.

Races and ethnic groups

Use the plural form of the common name of race or ethnic group, such as Dwarves, Nephilim, or Nekomimi.

Prefer spelled-out phrases to acronyms

Avoid the use of acronyms in page naming unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its acronym and is widely known and used in that form (NASA and radar are good examples).

Be careful with special characters

Some special characters either cannot be used or can but cause problems. For example you should not use a piping character (|), an asterisk (*), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]) in a name.

The following characters are not allowed in page titles:

" # $ * + < > = @ [ ] \ ^ ` { } | ~

Titles should not include a colon except in specific circumstances, as when creating a new Template or Help page. Colons indicate namespaces, and incorrect useage can interfere with some aspects of the wiki code.

Lowercase second and subsequent words

Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized. e.g. use Jamie Huntington but Fractal reality.

Names are case-sensitive

The first character of a NSwiki page will always be capitalised and may be linked in either Upper or lower case, but other than that, case makes a difference.

Note that even the file name extension of an image is case-sensitive. flag.jpg is not the same as flag.JPG.


  • Please don't edit the red links on this page. Thanks.