Wikipedia talk:Consistency in article titles

This essay was created pursuant to a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles, as an effort to collect widely accepted practices in maintaining the consistency of article titles. bd2412 T 20:48, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Common name examples

Gdańsk is a very bad example to use because it has its own special rules Talk:Gdansk/Vote. It should not even be at Gdańsk but should be at Gdansk by the consensus generated in the "Vote"! So I suggest you leave that one well alone. A better example is Jan Smuts, Early life of Jan Smuts etc -- PBS (talk) 21:27, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I think perhaps the Volgograd example sufficiently. demonstrates the point being made there. I will remove Gdansk. bd2412 T 21:47, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR

WP:ENGVAR covers more than spelling just take a look at transport articles! First come first serve! Tram, Gasoline, or sometimes two different named articles for the same thing Boxcar Covered goods wagon, its enough to make anyone's head hurt.-- PBS (talk) 21:41, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

If there are examples of consistency issues involving these titles, then they should be included. bd2412 T 21:47, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I have added a line showing use of "Trams" in some places and "Streetcars" in others. bd2412 T 16:22, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Project consistency

You seem to ignore (or reject) consistent formatting of titles within project.

Examples, the perennially debated 1 (year) vs. 1 (number); one could easily justify that the year is more common for 2014, but the number is more common for 1. Debate as to where the break should be and the difficulty of having linking templates (e.g., {{year nav}} and {{infobox number}}) ever work if there isn't a consistent naming convention. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:22, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

@Arthur Rubin: I noted the existence of topic-specific conventions on article titles in the lede, which I believe covers this (including Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)); I also stated at another point that "Individual projects may develop their own standards for naming subjects within a given field". Do you think that this needs to be stated more prominently? bd2412 T 16:20, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, we need to have something to counteract B2C's assertion that WP:COMMONNAME and "Consise" are the only article naming criteria, with all else being commentary. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:02, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I am not trying to make a bold foray into uncharted territory here. I am merely trying to reflect established practices, and explain to a degree why they exist, in order to avoid objections like the one raised at Talk:Mikhaylovsky (last name)‎#Requested move. bd2412 T 19:07, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I do think that "Individual projects may develop their own standards for naming subjects within a given field". needs to be specified more prominently, probably with a specific example, if we can find one which isn't controversial. It is the way "we" do things, although it's frequently disputed by B2C, among others. Specific examples which might be mentioned:

1. WP:NCPLACE (which, regardless of B2C's attempts), does specify that, in many countries, comma disambiguation, rather than parenthetical disambiguation is to be used (ignoring the question of whether disambiguation/clarification is to be used more often then technically required).
2. WP:NCNUM specifies which of numbers and years is to be considered "primary" for the purpose of naming.
3. WP:NCFLORA#Scientific versus vernacular names may not be stable, so it probably shouldn't be used as an example, even in an essay.

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:55, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't disagree (and I agree that this reflects our policies). Please feel free to add this as such. bd2412 T 22:03, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Promoting favors amongst the criteria

Consistency in titles means that titles for the same kind of subject should not differ in form or structure without good reason. Where multiple titles are available, and where titles are equally usable in terms of recognizability, naturalness, preciseness, and conciseness, then the title to be used should be consistent with titles used for similar or related topics in Wikipedia.

is a great paragraph. However, the last sentence:

However, while consistency is important it should not be promoted in favor of the other criteria.

is:

(1) Redundant within the paragraph. The premise is already established for a situation where the other criteria are equal.

(2) It asserts, possibly without intention, that consistency is inferior to the other four criteria. If true, this should be stated more clearly. If not true, it has a problematic implication.

(3) Separation of the criteria like this implies commutativity. I don't think it works this way when used properly. Instead, all criteria should be considered collectively, and the evaluation more fuzzy than algorithmic. In some situations, consistency may be more decisive than another criterion, without needing to be more important.

In the end, I think the sentence decreases the effectiveness of the paragraph and is better removed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:52, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Removing that sentence is fine with me. My intention here has been to reflect actual practice, which frequently puts other factors ahead of consistency. It might be useful to have some examples where consistency has trumped other factors - perhaps in the titles used for royal names, like Charles, Prince of Wales rather than the more common and more concise Prince Charles, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge rather than the more common and more concise Kate Middleton. bd2412 T 11:42, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

As you once noted, there can be found a very strong underlying sense of the importance of consistency, such as in John Smith not Smith, John, so strong that it isn't even mentioned. But when consistency conflicts with something else, consistency tends to give way. Unless there is a consistency-enforcing naming guideline. Where naming convention guidelines exist, such as NCROY and USPLACE, they reinforce (reflect, produce?) consistent titling across articles. When there is contested debate, people generally weight more highly recognizability (usage in reliable sources). Arguing "consistency among similar articles" is not much different to arguing "per the guideline", which is very weak when others are criticising the guideline. However, the WP:UCRN arguments are made most strongly when demonstrating consistency in usage in reliable sources.

It's complicated, this question of relative importance of consistency. Can the five named naming criteria meant to be taken individually, or collectively. Are they in order of importance? I think the first is head and shoulders above the second, and then no clear ranking further. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:34, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Consistency comes into play in different ways, though. For example, we have a large number of articles on the geography of countries. We could have "Geography of Germany", "Topology of France", and "Terrain of Italy", but we consistently use "Geography of" for all of them. Any one of those options could be justified as common; we just had to pick one and stick with it, not just for one article, but for the entire project. We recently had a page move discussion about whether to use "last name" in one particular case, where "surname" is used everywhere else (now at Talk:Mikhaylovsky (surname)‎#Requested move), where one contributor was insistent that WP:RETAIN required keeping the "(last name)" title at which the article had been created, because that is where it was created. I think it's very important to outline (as I have on this page) that consistency trumps WP:RETAIN. bd2412 T 13:32, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree. Agree that improving consistency is a good reason to overcome WP:RETAIN, or WP:TITLECHANGES. I'm not a fan of the word "trumps" (the improvement should be non-negligible), but support your good work here. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:08, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I have added explicit reference to WP:TITLECHANGES in the general description section, and I have added the "Prince Charles" example to the topic-specific conventions section, as an example of consistency within a field outweighing other factors. bd2412 T 15:01, 23 September 2014 (UTC)