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''This is a draft of a policy being worked on by the [[Willipedia board]]. It has no effect until approved by board consensus.''
User:05jl/Naming conventions moved to Willipedia:Naming conventions: enacting policy
Titles of articles in Willipedia are chosen to serve two crucial goals which are sometimes at odds.
#Titles [[Willipedia:Policies#Article_Titles_are_a_Promise_._._.|create expectations]], and therefore a title ought to accurately reflect the content that follows it.
#But, on Willipedia, titles are the names that articles are called by. If titles are not succictsuccinct, they will never be linked to, and will fall into obscurity.
'''For an example,''' consider the old article, "How To Procrastinate." This was the first title it had, and it did a good job of creating the expectation of a list of suggestions, which is indeed what the article was. But suppose that someone who doesn't know about this article is writing a related article; his prose is much more likely to contain (and so more likely to link to) the word "procrastination" or "procrastinating" than the full phrase "how to procrastinate." Thus the article is currently called [[procrastinating]].
'''Use a singular noun''' for articles that:
* Explain or define a conceptsubject, e.g. [[crusty]]* Give the history of a conceptsubject, e.g. [[Mountain Day]]
'''Use a plural noun''' for articles that:
* List ''techniques'' for achieving particular goal, e.g. [[procrastinating]], [[skiing cheaply]]
Often you'll want to redirect from the other possible article names. For example, "beer" and "beers" should probably go to the same article, but make the appropriate choice for the primary article ([[beers]]). See [[#Redirects|Redirects]] for more information.
===Sentence-style capitalization===
===Naming students and alums===
Even though it is convention in most Williams publications to include the class year whenever a student or alum is named, on Willipedia, the class year should usually not be part of the title of a page on a person (''ie'', "Joe Freshman" is preferred to "Joe Freshman '09"). This is for ease of linking: in this system, an editor who wishes to link to a person need only know his/her name. If class years were in titles, on one would need to know name ''and'' graduation year to link. You can still, of course, include the class year in your prose, e.g. "<nowiki>[[Joe Freshman]]</nowiki> '09".
===Use full names to be unambiguous===
Another common issue for Willipedia is that we have a lot of things named after people (namely, [[:Category:Building|buildings]]). This creates a need to resolve ambiguity about whether "Hopkins" is an article about [[Hopkins Hall]], [[Mark Hopkins House]], or [[Mark Hopkins]] the person.
The solution in most cases is to use the full name of something, even if it is rare in common parlance. So while it is typical to say, "I'm eating at Mission," the article on this it would have to be "[[Mission Dining Hall]]". Notice that all words in this titles title are capitalized, as it is the proper name of the place.
If you're feeling very helpful, create a [[#Disambiguation pages|disambiguation page]] at the common name that forks to many related pages. The [[Spencer]] and [[Dodd]] pages are examples of these.