Policies » Policy/Naming




BRWiki:Policies

Policy status and phases






policy sign



This page is an official policy on BRWiki.

This policy has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow.
  • Feel free to propose any changes to this policy, but please make sure that changes you make follow the official process and reflect consensus on the discussion page before you put them into practice. Any changes need to be Adopted or Decreed to be enforced as policy.
  • See the Policies home page for an overview of BRWiki policies.
  • See Policies for a list of proposed and adopted policy articles.


Shortcut: WW:NAME

[top]Naming Conventions for Specific Article Types


[top]Item Articles


Articles about items present in Birthright, should have their article named exactly as they are in Birthright, including capitalization. For example, Linen Cloth.

[top]Adventure Articles


Adventures should be named with the "Adventure:" prefix, followed by the exact name of the Adventure. If a Adventure line has the same name for multiple Adventures, the first Adventure by that name should follow the previous convention and further Adventures in the line should be disambiguated with parenthetical text signifying the Adventure part, i.e. (2), (3). If there are two Adventures by the same name, but they are different for parties of different backgrounds/alignments you can:
[list][*]Make an article explaining both sides of the Adventure.
[*]Make two articles, one with the exact name of the Adventure and a second disambiguated with either (good) or (evil) as appropriate.
[/redirect]
These rules ensure that anyone typing in Adventure:Adventure Name will be able to find the Adventure they want. The original icon should have a disambiguation link at the top pointing to the second article. For example, Adventure:Chen's Empty Keg, Adventure:Chen's Empty Keg (2).



"I" icon

Some Adventures use punctuation that simply will not work in the Wiki. There is no policy on the matter, but it seems that often the best thing to do is to just skip those characters. See the policy talk page for more information.

[top]Lore Character Articles


Character pages should be listed under the character's full name, excluding titles such as "King" or "the Destroyer" unless it is regarded as part of the name, e.g. Rhoubhe Manslayer, Michael Roele.

[top]NPC Articles


NPCs (non-player characters) should be listed under the name that is displayed in-game, including case, e.g. High Executor Darthalia.

[top]API Articles


API function descriptions are prefixed with "API " and then exactly as the function name, with the same capitalization and no whitespace. For example, API GetShapeshiftFormCooldown. Object methods use spaces rather than colons, e.g. API Font GetFont. See API Notation and Conventions for details.

[top]Guild Pages

[top]Personal Articles


Personal articles, including almost all fan fiction and player character articles, should be located as subpages of the author's user page.
See WW:PA.

[top]Other Articles


All other page names should have the first word capitalized (which is done automatically) and any additional words in lowercase. The exception is that proper nouns are always capitalized. For example, Starting a new page versus Darien Avan. It will not matter whether the first letter is capitalized or not on any pages linking to your new page, i.e. darien Avan and anuirean will still take you to the correct pages.
These page names should also not include definite or indefinite articles ("the" and "a/an") at the beginning of the page name. For example, use Shadow World to refer to the location, not The Shadow World. There are a few important exceptions to this rule: "the", "a" or "an" is included at the start of an name if that word is always capitalized whenever the page name appears in text. This applies to adventure pages, the titles and chapter names of books or other publications, games, and similar works. The second exception is awnsheghlien like the Gorgon or the Sphinx. For these, include the definite article so they can be differentiated from pages that are discussing the similarly named monsters, i.e. gorgon, sphinx.
For example,
[list][*] Shadow World, not the Shadow World
[*] Cold Rider, not the Cold Rider
[*] Western Imperial Temple of Haelyn, not the Western Imperial Temple of Haelyn
[*] Book of Laws, not the Book of Laws
[/redirect]
But the following do include the definite article
[list][*] The domain turn - This is a chapter in the [[BRCS]].
[*] The Book of Priestcraft - This is the name of a publication.
[*] The Sphinx - This is an awnshegh that is named after a monster.
[/redirect]

[top]Additional naming rules



[top]Plurality


Normally, all articles are named in the singular form, e.g the article describing the general properties and history of dragons is named dragon.
Exceptions to this rule:
[list][*] Names that are always plural, such as the Knights of Avani.
[*] Articles that are lists, e.g. Paladin spells. This may cause extra work in attempting to say "foo is a [[paladin spells|paladin spell]]", but the suggestion is to set up "paladin spell" as a redirect to "paladin spells" if there is no page describing the general properties of what a "paladin spell" is.
[/redirect]

[top]Parenthetical Text


Parenthetical text to distinguish page names, such as in Sword & Crown (adventure) and Sword & Crown (event), should generally be in lower case. Only capitalize it if it is a proper name or title, such as Battle of Deismaar (History of Cerilia), or an acronym such as in Events (API).
As for code in linking to each of these, you can type
Sword & Crown (adventure)| or
Sword & Crown (event)|
and arrive at these two links: Sword & Crown and Sword & Crown. The parser will appropriately cosmetically drop what is found in parentheses.

[top]Subpages and Namespaces


For the purpose of capitalization, after the colon for a namespace is considered the start of the article title. For example, BirthrightWiki:Policy. Additionally each subpage is considered the start of an article name. For example, BirthrightWiki:Policy/Naming not BirthrightWiki:Policy/naming.

[top]Race name case


As per the writing policy, race names ("humans", "dwarves", etc) are written in lowercase in BirthrightWiki. This also goes for when they appear in page names. Note that "nationalities" are capitalized, i.e. "Anuirean".
Obviously, the MediaWiki software will always capitalize the first word in the page title, and there is nothing we can do about that. This rule is only relevant for when a race is mentioned later in a page title.
[list][*] Note that regardless of this rule, articles named according to in-game NPCs are still capitalized as they are in-game, as per the NPC Articles rule, above.
[/redirect]

[top]Category Names


Category names are put into title case, so the link would be to Druid Spells. This makes them easier to distinguish from article names, and should not create a problem with linking since they rarely occur in running text.
For further details on category naming, see the category policy.

[top]Plurality and Case Redirects


[list][*] In cases where you feel that visitors are likely to type in a plural name directly in the URL, it is perfectly acceptable to create a redirect, e.g. DragonsDragon.
[/redirect]
[list][*] For "simple" items, it is also perfectly acceptable to create a lower-case redirect, e.g. linen clothLinen Cloth. Note that the case of the first letter is ignored in the wiki software: dragon is the same as Dragon, no redirect necessary.
[/redirect]



Red exclamation mark icon

Redirects of category pages are never allowed according to the category policy.

[top]Additional Resources


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