WikiPOBia:Naming conventions

From WikiPOBia

Current revision as of 20:15, 13 November 2007

The following conventions should be followed when creating new articles or categories:

Article and category naming

• Don't capitalize words in article and category names unless they are proper nouns or acronyms. WikiPOBia will automatically capitalize the first word in an article or category name, both when it is created and accessed. So a page about Molly Harte should have both the M and H capitalized, Molly Harte, but a page about ship's boats should be called Ship's boats and not Ship's Boats.

• Use full, natural names for people, ships or places. For example, use Barret Bonden rather than Bonden or Bonden, Barret.

• For characters whose names change -- women who marry or characters for whom the name used varied in the course of the Aubrey-Maturin novels -- the name by which they are most prominently known should be used -- for example, Diana Villiers, Sophie Aubrey, Awkward Davies -- or, if that is controversial, the first name by which they are identified.

• Novels, stories and other works should be identified by the name of first publication.

• For disambiguated names or names of secondary articles on a topic, the disambiguating text or secondary name should be placed inside parentheses following the primary name and the following conventions should be used:
  • (novel) – for disambiguating book names
  • (character) – for disambiguating character names
  • (ship) – for disambiguating ship names
  • (historical ship) – for articles on the real ships related to ships in O'Brian's work.
  • for other less standard cases (like Jahleel Brenton), as concise an identifying description as possible

Using namespaces

Namespaces allow information in WikiPOBia to be organized according to the type of content. Articles about Patrick O'Brian and his works are located in the main namespace and are identified by simply using the article name. Articles in other namespaces are identified by prefacing the article name with the namespace name. Some other namespaces and their uses are:

WikiPOBia:

The WikiPOBia: namespace is used for documents that describe WikiPOBia policies or explain features of WikiPOBia or how it should be used. Some examples of articles in the WikiPOBia: namespace are:

• WikiPOBia:Copyrights — Explains the copyright and licensing policies of WikiPOBia.
• WikiPOBia:Spoiler warnings — Describes when and how to use spoiler warnings on WikiPOBia.
• WikiPOBia:Rules and guidelines -- Rules of etiquette and content for WikiPOBia
• WikiPOBia:Naming conventions — This document, which describes naming conventions that should be used on WikiPOBia.

Help:

The Help: namespace should contain documents that explain how to perform tasks on WikiPOBia, like editing wiki text. If the article deals with the technical details of how to do something, it should be in the Help: namespace.

Articles that recommend how to name or structure articles on WikiPOBia should be placed in the WikiPOBia namespace rather than the Help: namespace.

Articles in the Help: namespace include:

• Help:Contents

Template:

Articles intended to be used primarily or exclusively as templates — standard pieces of text that can be automatically included in other articles — should be created in the Template: namespace. Examples of templates include:

• {{Template:Disambiguation}}

• {{Template:Spoiler}}

Category:

Categories are very useful ways of gathering links to articles on related topics together in WikiPOBia. If you are reading an article on one topic and it is in a Category, which is shown at the bottom of the article, then by clicking on the Category name you can see a listing of all other articles which have been added to that Category.

Categories are automatically created in the Category: namespace. The categories currently used on WikiPOBia can be viewed from the All pages (Category namespace) (http://wiki.hmssurprise.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=&namespace=14) listing. To add an article to a particular category, you will need to add a piece piece of code at the end of the article:

[[Category:Animals]]

Note there is not a space after the colon. Category names follow the same rules as article names in that only the first letter of the first word is capitalized, unless the category is a proper noun.

Lexicon:

The Lexicon namespace contains articles that define terms, or translate foreign languages. Lexicon articles are on the whole very short definitions, though there is space to add additional information, and will ideally include page refernces indicating where the term is used and in what works. Articles with the same titles can exist in both the Lexicon and the Main namespace, with Lexicon articles following the recommendations here, and Main namespace articles being longer and more expository in nature. If articles with the same title exist in both namespaces, it is recommended that they link to each other.

Categorization of lexicon terms is strongly encouraged, as is cross referencing with other Lexicon terms used in the article. For suggested top level categories, see the Lexicon project page.

If you want to add a term to the Lexicon, you will need to prefix the article title with 'Lexicon:', as in 'Lexicon:Title' (note there is not a space after the colon.) The title should be the same as the term being defined. See Lexicon:Yellow fever for an example of a Lexicon article that contains all of the desired features. However, an article being better than no article, you are always welcome to add terms to the Lexicon without page references if these are not available.

Currently the Lexicon namespace contains extensive entries from the following resources:

• Guide for the Perplexed (foreign language translation)
• Maturin's Medicine (medical terms from the canon)

Recommended category names

• Characters - for the top level character category
  • Historical characters
  • Royal Navy characters - for the top Royal Navy character character category
    • Royal Navy officers - for officers in the Royal Navy
    • Royal Navy seamen - for all non-officers in the Royal Navy
  • British characters - for British characters (who might also be Royal Navy characters)
  • French characters - for French characters
  • American characters - for American characters
  • Women - for female characters (who may also be in some other category)
• Ships - for top level ships category
  • Historical Ships
    • Historical Royal Navy ships - for Royal Navy ships
    • Historical Merchant ships - for merchant ships
    • Historical British merchant ships
  • British ships
    • Royal Navy ships
    • British merchant ships
  • French ships
  • American ships
  • Dutch ships
• Places
  • Historical Places
  • Ports
  • Cities
  • Homes
  • Inns
• Patrick O'Brian's works
  • Novels
    • The Golden Ocean
    • The Unknown Shore
    • Aubrey-Maturin novels
      • Master & Commander
      • Post Captain
      • HMS Surprise (novel)
      • The Mauritius Command
      • Desolation Island
      • The Fortune of War
      • The Surgeon's Mate
      • The Ionian Mission
      • Treason's Harbour
      • The Far Side of the World
      • The Reverse of the Medal
      • The Letter of Marque
      • Thirteen Gun Salute
      • The Nutmeg of Consolation
      • Clarissa Oakes
      • The Wine Dark Sea
      • The Commodore
      • The Yellow Admiral
      • The Hundred Days
      • Blue at the Mizzen
      • The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey
  • Fragments
    • The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey
  • Short stories
  • Nonfiction
• Companion books
• Biographies
• O'Brian's Source Material
• Aubreyisms
• Medical terms
• Foreign words and phrases
• Music
• Food and Drink
• Animals

Meta Categories

• Documentation
  • Policy
    • Legal
    • Rules and guidelines
  • Style manual
  • Help
• FDL licensed content
• Limited license content
• Public domain origin content
• Fair use content