Following the results of two Requests for Comment in 2016 and 2017, it was agreed that an article name that is a number in Arabic numerals represents the following:
For articles between 0 and 10 inclusive, an article name that is a number in Arabic numerals generally represents that specific number (for example, 1 is about the number 1).
For articles between 11 and 100 inclusive, an article name that is a number in Arabic numerals is generally a disambiguation page (for example, 24 is a disambiguation page).
For articles between 101 and 2200 inclusive, an article name that is a number in Arabic numerals generally represents a calendar year in the Common Era. Such articles give an overview, in the form of a list, of the major events that took place (or are planned to take place) in that year. In general the use of number-only page names should only be used for "Year in Review" entries.
For articles titled 2201 or a greater number, the article name shall be decided on a case-by-case basis as governed by other policies such as WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.
Exceptions may be made to any of these rules if there is a consensus for doing so. For example, the article 911 is a disambiguation page rather than the article about the calendar year (which is located at AD 911).
For years BCE, the format is "<year number> BC", for example 44 BC (or <year number> BCE if appropriate to the article but note that the 'pipe' technique [[44 BC|44 BCE]] will have to be used since all 'year' articles use the Christian style). For years AD where the article title is not the basic number, the title format is "AD <year number>", for example AD 9.
Some numbers that don't indicate a year have a specific meaning, so an additional qualifier or disambiguation technique is needed:
- for articles on a number as such, the bracketed qualifier (number) is added, e.g. 3 (number)
- Other:
- 36 (film), not 36 (a disambiguation page);
- Intel 80386, not 386 (the year the Northern Wei dynasty began to rule China);
- Form 1040, not 1040 (the year Macbeth became King of Scotland);
- Nineteen Eighty-Four for the George Orwell novel, not 1984 (the year Marvin Gaye died);
- 4711 for the Eau de Cologne (out of the "several decades in the future" range).
Note that numbers in Roman numerals are usually pages that redirect to:
- the related number article for lower numbers
- the related year article for higher numbers, e.g. MMVI redirects to 2006
Unless, of course, the letters, not read as Roman numerals, compose a word or initialism with another meaning, e.g. MIX.
There is a unicode range of characters that is specifically used for Roman numerals, for example "Ⅰ" (0x2160) and "ⅰ" (0x2170) - such (individual) characters are redirect pages to the corresponding number page: for instance both "Ⅰ" (0x2160) and "ⅰ" (0x2170) redirect to 1 (number). For other uses it is discouraged to use these characters in wikipedia article page names. Note also that no automatic case conversion to upper case takes place when these characters are used as the first character of a wikipedia page name (in other words: "Ⅰ" and "ⅰ" are two different redirect pages).