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Wikipedia:WikiProject/Naming convention

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This is a proposed naming convention for some of the more common sub-pages of WikiProjects, such as general pages, categories, and templates of WikiProjects across the board. At the discretion of each individual WikiProject when the project needs them; these pages, categories, and templates can be created with ease since they follow the same pattern. This structure would also allow ease of navigation to editors. Please discuss this proposal on the talk page.

If you wish to see if your project is already compliant with this proposal, or how much work your project would need to do to switch; you can use {{WikiProject naming|<project name>}}.

Why standardize?

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There's no question that there would be some grunt work involved with implementing this proposal, which can thankfully be handled mostly by bots and users with AWB. So, it's important to take a minute to examine the many benefits of such a standardization.

Naming conventions are not new to Wikipedia. The Manual of Style springs to mind but there are others. In a huge and swiftly expanding project such as Wikipedia, it is very important to keep things streamlined in order to maintain ease of use, even in pages that are not generally seen by the public such as WikiProject pages. Organizing our pages in a consistent manner will make them easier to find, which encourages greater collaboration. With our pages properly managed, we will not have to spend precious time digging through indexes searching for the right page. We can spend that time on constructive discussion or improving articles.

With our page names standardized, we avoid major headaches for our template writers. At this time it is near impossible to write simple templates that can be used across multiple projects because of the variations in layouts such as projects which put their participant lists as a subheading on their project pages, some as subpages, some call their people members, others participants, etc. This naming convention would fix all that and make things a great deal easier to handle, navigate, and template.

A naming convention just makes sense. It could be argued that this adds layers of needless bureaucracy, but the truth is this is a proposal that is very much needed, and there's nothing bureaucratic about it. This proposal also makes it easier to form new WikiProjects because founders know exactly what they need and helps maintain existing ones as well by making them more streamlined. WikiProjects are about collaboration and getting editors involved. It should not be a struggle to just keep them running and to find the page needed. With this naming convention, those problems will be eased or even completely eliminated, and we will all have more time on our hands to spend doing more important things.

Ease of migration

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With a great many WikiProjects using the WikiProject meta-banner, most of the changes would be easy. The meta-banner would be changed to reflect the naming convention, and all that use it would be converted with little fuss. Those that do not use the meta-banner would still have to change their banners, but since the banners do a lot of the work, this is still easy. After the banners are rewritten, all that would have to be done is the removal of the previously non-compliant categories and the creation of the compliant ones.

As for the template names, a bot could easily go through and replace the non-compliant names and replace them with the compliant ones.

Case

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In all project related categories and page names, the project name should always begin with an initial capital letter as it is a proper noun in this context. Also, the exact name of the project should always be used in any subcategories. So, WikiProject Animals would always have Animals in their categories and other project pages such as Top-importance Animals articles, FA-quality Animals articles, Animals articles that need infoboxes, Animals task forces, Animals images, etc. with the only exception being the Wikipedian category: Wikipedians who like project.

Page names

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Wikipedia:WikiProject Project
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Assessment
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Notice board
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Participants
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Participants/Active
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Participants/Inactive
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Participants/Sympathizers
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Peer review
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Requested articles
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Task forces
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Task forces/Task force name only
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Work groups
Wikipedia:WikiProject Project/Work groups/Work group name only

Category names

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Project
Category:WikiProject Project
Category:Project assessment
Category:Project articles by importance
Category:Top-importance Project articles
Category:High-importance Project artcles
Category:Mid-importance Project articles
Category:Low-importance Project articles
Category:NA-importance Project articles
Category:Unassessed-importance Project articles
Category:Project articles by quality
Category:FA-quality Project articles
Category:FL-quality Project articles
Category:A-quality Project articles
Category:GA-quality Project articles
Category:B-quality Project articles
Category:C-quality Project articles
Category:Start-quality Project articles
Category:Stub-quality Project articles
Category:Unassessed-quality Project articles
Category:Current-quality Project articles
Category:Future-quality Project articles
Category:Needed-quality Project articles
Category:Other Project pages
Category:Disambig Project pages
Category:Merge Project pages
Category:Redirect Project pages
Category:Category Project pages
Category:Image Project pages
Category:Portal Project pages
Category:Project Project pages
Category:Template Project pages
Category:NA Project pages
Category:Needed Project pages
Category:Project articles to be improved
Category:Project articles that need (custom)
Category:Project articles that need a neutral point of view
Category:Project articles that need attention
Category:Project articles that need categories
Category:Project articles that need clean up
Category:Project articles that need copy editing
Category:Project articles that need images
Category:Project articles that need infoboxes
Category:Project articles that need lead sections
Category:Project articles that need navboxes
Category:Project articles that need references
Category:Project articles that need trivia sections trimmed
Category:Project articles that need wikification
Category:Project articles with comments
Category:Project articles with peer reviews
Category:Project participants
Category:Project stubs
Category:Project task forces
Category:Project work groups
Category:Project images
Category:Project portal
Category:Project templates
Category:Project infoboxes
Category:Project navboxes
Category:Wikipedians who like project

Template names

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Banner {{WikiProject Project}}
CoopBanner {{WikiProject Project CoopBanner}}
User box {{User Project}}
Participant box {{User WikiProject Project}}
Main navbox {{Navbox Project}}
Main infobox {{Infobox Project}}
Stub {{Project Stub}}