Talk:Article naming conventions

Log of Rules Updates

I did a quick rewrite of the Rules, especially the Naming Conventions, in according with our previous discussion. Someone should go over this to make sure I've got it right and haven't omitted anything important. At some point the guidelines for Categories need to be inserted. Wintogreen 08:39, 26 Mar 2005 (PST)

I changed the "Use Captials" rule to what we've actually been using. Is that ok with you? Here are all my changes.

asqueella

Fine with me. I actually prefer lowercase. I guess the exception to the lowercase rule would be when the article is about an app element that itself uses caps, such as Profile Manager, Junk Mail Controls, etc. --wintogreen

yeah, I had problems with putting that into words, I'd appreciate if you edited that paragraph to be more clear. asqueella

"Use short titles, with key words at the beginning": I added the part about putting key words at the beginning because it will work better when we go to categories, which will be alphabetically sorted. Someone scanning for info on dates in Thunderbird would be better served if the title is "Date display format" rather than "Changing the date display format", even though the latter reads better. --Wintogreen 08:20, 6 Apr 2005 (PDT)

We can create redirect pages for easier accidental links when it makes sense.

But "toolbar customizing"... Doesn't it sound strange? Is "Toolbar customization" a bit better? --asqueella

Mozilla Suite or Seamonkey?

What about Mozilla Suite vs. Seamonkey (the community project's new "official" name)? I guess we'll stick with Mozilla Suite, but that needs to be made clear. asqueella

It seems like it would be good to decide this sooner rather than later. Presumably, upcoming releases of Seamonkey (or whatever it's called) will have new features or differences from the existing, semi-frozen Mozilla Suite. In that case it wouldn't make sense to call something a "Mozilla Suite" article when it only applies to the new Seamonkey. Would it be too much trouble to make/maintain a new class of articles that apply to the new Seamonkey but not the Mozilla Suite? Maybe your template header ("This article applies to...") would help here? --wintogreen

Nope that won't help, as it has the application name as a parameter.

Maintaining a separate class of articles for "Seamonkey" (you're right, I assumed it will be called so, when in fact this isn't known yet.) is a big trouble, I suppose. As is doing s/Mozilla Suite/whatever/g. That's why I guessed we'll keep it calling Mozilla Suite, after all it's a Suite based on Mozilla. And because this decision is obviously far from perfect, I brough it up on the talk page. --asqueella

correction to "Specify the application"

When the article cannot apply to any other application (for example Search Bar - a Firefox-specific feature), the application should not be specified in the title.

I'm not sure, perhaps, we want to change this phrasing "When you create a new article, specify the application to which the article applies by putting "Firefox", "Thunderbird", or "Mozilla Suite" in parentheses at the end of the name of the article."? I mean perhaps most new articles should be start without parentheses, and if a similar article for another application occurs, both articles should get application names in their titles. I'm sure I'm not really clear here, but hope you get the point. asqueella 02:55, 29 Mar 2005 (PST)

Hmm. I think if we're going to go this direction, we might as well go the extra half-step and get rid of the "(application)" part altogether and instead require that every page has "This article applies to..." at the top. In fact, why don't we do that? Benefits: (1) You don't have to worry about page titles or renaming pages if they're rewritten for two or more apps; (2) It will give all the pages a consistent look; (3) the parentheses in titles create ugly URLs when used outside the kb. What do you think? --wintogreen

we can't get rid of "(application)", because sometimes we want to have different articles for different applications. Putting the application name in the beginning of the page, like what we used before (Firefox:Article_name) makes alphabetic lists in categories almost useless.

Ugly URLs aren't much of a problem. They are only ugly in the location bar and in raw HTML source code view. They are ok, when hovering a link, for example. In fact, I never understood why the encoded form is shown in the location bar.

So do you basically agree with this? (I thought the first part - about Search Bar-like articles - was what everybody agreed upon). --asqueella

OK, now I see what you're saying. It obviously wouldn't make much sense to have a page called "Upgrading" that applies only to Firefox when Thunderbird needs (and actually has) its own page on upgrading. We should thus have "Upgrading (Firefox)" and "Upgrading (Thunderbird)". At the same time, we don't need "Global Inbox (Thunderbird)" because the Mozilla Suite doesn't [?] have this feature. Correct? --wintogreen

Yes. We don't want [hypothetically] "Global Inbox (Thunderbird)", because we don't have an article for MailNews, Global Inbox in general makes sense for MailNews (if it has this feature at all), and Firefox doesn't have this feature.

If we decide to create a separate article for MailNews, we'll rename Global Inbox to Global Inbox (Thunderbird) and create a new article, Global Inbox (Mozilla Suite). The original "Global Inbox" may be a disambiguation page or link to Thunderbird variant (ok, I admit this is not fair to Suite users). (Thunderbird) and (Mozilla Suite) pages may link to each other, like "This article applies to Mozilla Suite. Read corresponding Thunderbird article _here_" --asqueella

Asqueela, I'm in the middle of rewriting the Rules for this and want to have a Links (Thunderbird) article to use for an example, but someone unfortunately redirected Thunderbird : Links to Thunderbird links. I don't know the best way to undo a redirect and then redo it. Could you (or anyone) please do it for me? Thanks. --wintogreen

Why don't just move the current article (Thunderbird links) to the new location and fix double redirects by updating all redirect pages to link to the latest page. If that's ok with you, I can do it. asqueella

If you could do it, that'd be great. (I'm getting sleepy....) Thanks! --wint.

done. --asqueella

This and In-House Style

hao2lian: This is not superseded with In-House Style. This was created and edited after the updates on the Style page.

That page deals with style suggestions for page content, this is a guide for naming new pages. --asqueella 09:35, 9 Apr 2005 (PDT)