User:Ruud Koot/Technical solutions to social problems

Naming conventions

Sources

• Wikipedia talk:Article titles#The argument from accuracy
• User talk:Ruud Koot#Protection of numerous pages

Problem description

• Some editors prefer articles to be located at the "common name" in popular literature (recognizability) other prefer articles to be located at the "common name" in academic literature (correctness).
• Article titles currently serve many, at times conflicting, roles: information to the reader, anchors to link to, URL location, ...
• It is can be very difficult to what the "common name" is. There often does not exists a single unique "common name" in different context (especially popular literate versus academic literature, but also between different academic disciplines.) The "common name" might not reflect the "actual name" (for example an object which has been renamed recently).
  • In similar situations the neutral point of view policy would require us to give all possibilities equal weight. With as an article can currently only have one primary title this is not possible. Picking one of the possibilities requires editorial judgement and research, which will always be open to debate.

Possible solutions

• Add a more complex meta-data management system capable of tracking various multiple title (short name, popular name, academic name, full name, ...)
  • Especially in the case of person names it would make sense to be able to clearly distinguish between first name, last name, ...
• Make the title which is displayed a reader choice (some may prefer popular names, others academic names, some may prefer the format "First Last", other "Last, First").
• Decouple the URL naming scheme from the article title.

Open questions

• Although not mentioned explicitly the current "common name" policy and usage seems to be based on the, quite reasonable, question "How would I refer to this subject from an outside article?" and using the answer to this question as the article title. This would be a reasonable, but not conclusive, argument for not naming Gulliver's Travels as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships. The solution above would avoid the need for the discussion on how the name the article, but not necessary on how to refer to them.
  • Referring is always done from a particular context, this may make the problem disappear already as disagreement seems to arise because the options are evaluated in different hypothetical contexts by different editors.
• The solution does not work when there is no choice for the reader, such as how the entry would be listed in search engine results.