Forum:CT Archive/Article naming conventions

Wookieepedia &gt; Consensus track &gt; 

There have been several discussions going on regarding our article naming conventions; whether they should be names given at birth, names at time of death, or simply the most commonly known name. The previous consensus track page on this topic, Article Names: Real vs. Adopted, was formed from a discussion about Grievous' name, and resulted in a verdict of naming "articles based on the character's final or most widely known name." This is fundamentally flawed in that for many characters this is contradictory, i.e. their proper name at death is not what is most commonly known. Accordingly, the last consensus track verdict did not necessarily represent true community consensus in that some who voted for "Final/Most Well-Known Names" meant one specifically. Because what is decided here could affect much of our character naming policy (Aayla Secura, Jabba the Hutt, Thrawn, etc), it is important to get maximum community involvement. RMF 00:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Names at time of death

 * 1) Seeing as names given as birth won't win like last time, I probably have a safer bet with this. And as for Mitth'raw'nuruodo, that would be Mitth'raw'nuruodo, not Thrawn, if this won. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 00:21, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Lord Hydronium 00:23, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) with the provision that the "name at time of death" is a name the character themself used, at least in certain circumstances (i.e., no Aaylas'ecura) Yrfeloran 00:34, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Names which are most-commonly known

 * 1) Since these articles are all written in-universe, we would act just like Wikipedia does to us earthlings. I mean, Wikipedia wants the most common name so the articles will show up better in google. So... we should use the most common name here on Wookieepedia so that the residents of the SW galaxy could find it easier (figuratively speaking, of course). I would assume this being an in-universe article, we would want our articles to show up best on the HoloNet. ;) Adamwankenobi 00:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Absolutely positively the way to go, even when the name is a nickname. Rationale below. — SavageBob 14:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Of course it makes more sense in an IU perspective (and to the users) to go for the most commonly known name. KEJ 21:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Comments
The birth name issue has already been fairly hashed out. On the other matter, I guess it's no surprise what I voted. A few reasons: This just covers nicknames, partial names, or other things that aren't the character's "real" name. Translated or foreign-language names like Aaylas'ecura and Mando'ade are a different matter. I don't fall one way or another on those. - Lord Hydronium 00:23, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * In many cases, like Thrawn and Jabba, the most commonly known name is not their entire name. Using that name would make the article title less specific and less accurate.  I see no reason to title a character by only half of their full name when we have the whole name.  After all, this is supposed to be a Star Wars information site; we shouldn't have the less informative titles.  Why eliminate or sideline important information because not a lot of people know it, when we can make it so people can easily learn it?
 * Using the most accurate name possible at the latest date ensures consistency with our technical articles. In other words, if Jabba Desilijic Tiure were at Jabba the Hutt, it would make just as much sense for Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptor to be at Jedi starfighter, which is a much more vague, slangy name.
 * If the problem is that no one searches for names like Mitth'raw'nuruodo, that's what redirects are for.
 * Wikipedia doesn't adopt this, it's true. However, not only is Wookieepedia not Wikipedia, Wikipedia also has Dooku under Count Dooku, Grievous under General Grievous, and Thrawn under Grand Admiral Thrawn.  I think we can all agree that we don't want a naming policy like that.
 * Well said. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 00:27, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Two things:
 * I want to vote for "The most commonly used name which could be considered the character's full name, as of the last chronological appearance, excluding ranks and titles," but I'm not sure that either of the last two options match that. My criteria would give, I think:
 * "Palpatine" rather than "Darth Sidious", since he used it more often and more openly
 * "Aalya Secura" rather than "Aalyas'ecura", since that's how it was usually written
 * "Grievous" rather than that Kaleesh name I can't spell, since he seems to have adopted and used a new name for the last, and most historically prominent, years of his life
 * "Mitth'raw'nuruodo" rather than "Thrawn", since as Coop keeps telling us, Thrawn was more of a nickname, while using his full name is more like having his first name and surname listed.
 * "Jabba Desilijic Tiure" rather than just "Jabba" (which is just his first name) or "Jabba the Hutt" ("The Hutt" is a title, sort of)
 * "Dooku" rather than "Count Dooku" or "Darth Tyrannus" (see Palpatine and Jabba above for reasoning)
 * "Bane" or "Darth Bane" rather than "Dessel", since he abandoned his old identity (whether Darth counts as a title or as part of the name is a bit of an issue, though.)
 * "Leia Organa Solo" rather than "Leia Organa" or (ye gods) "Leia Skywalker", since she took her husband's surname, and never went by her technical birthname
 * Coincidentally, except for Ms. Secura, this is where all of those articles currently are! 8)


 * Note that this may apply to the names of vehicles and organizations as well. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 00:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree on all those. As I said on the Aayla page, I'm taking more of a Devil's Advocate stance there since I think both names have valid points.  And I think the second option fits that best; I picked that, and I agree with your rationale there.  "At time of death" is a little off as, well, not all of these characters are dead.  A few other articles to consider besides the obvious:
 * Wilhuff Tarkin - Rarely called by his full name, and most often known as "Governor Tarkin", "Grand Moff Tarkin", or just "Tarkin". If we adopt most well-known name, do we pick one of those over the current title?
 * Ditto with most of the first names for movie characters, really. Firmus Piett, Kendal Ozzel, Lorth Needa, Maximillian Veers - should these all be put under their last names?  Winter Retrac Celchu is a similar case for last name; almost everything calls her just "Winter".
 * Non-Thrawn people who go by nicknames. Fixer, Deak, Gryph, Hobbie.
 * Code names for people whose real names are known. Blackhole, Tiree. - Lord Hydronium 00:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. If most-common names win, then a hell of a lot of articles would be moved to pointless titles. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 00:54, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * If we refine it to "most common full names last used" or something, though, it works out better. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 00:57, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Could you give us an example? Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 01:14, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

OK. First off, by "full name", I don't necessarily mean "full, entire name." What I mean is some form of personal name + surname (or, for Chiss, I suppose, the whole triple-barrelled deal with the apostrophes.)
 * So, Winter Retrac Celchu would not be at Winter (not her full name), Winter Retrac (a full birth name, by which I mean both surname and personal name, but not her last known name), or Targeter (an alias or nickname). If, hypothetically, she were born with the middle name "Susan" but she rarely if ever used it (maybe it was mentioned in one comic book issue but never referred to again), she would likewise not be at Winter Susan Retrac, Winter Susan Retrac Celchu, Winter Susan "Targeter" Celchu, etc., because although these would be full names, they would also be very uncommon.
 * Similarly, since Leia is almost always called Leia Organa Solo rather than Leia Solo, that should be title of her article (and not her former names Leia Organa or Leia Skywalker.)
 * This would follow the convention of Wikipedia and other real-world encyclopedias, which usually title biographical articles by using the most common/recognizable form of the person's full name (Bill Clinton rather than William Jefferson Clinton, Dan Quayle instead of James Danforth Quayle, J.R.R. Tolkien rather than John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, etc.) I know Wookieepedia is not Wikipedia, but we can follow their policies anyway sometimes. 8) &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 03:20, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I see your point there. To clarify, what do you count as part of the full name?  First and surnames, obviously, and you include maiden names in there as well.  For Hutts, do the kajidic name (like Desilijic) and the family name (I guess that's what Tiure is) both count?  Nicknames and aliases, I agree, should not be included in the title (no Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi).  True middle names I think are rare enough that we can make special cases of them if need be.  The only one I can think of is Leia Amidala Skywalker, and there's no evidence she still has that middle name, so no need to worry about it. - Lord Hydronium 03:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Derek Klivian, too. Wikipedia standards would put him at Hobbie Klivian; agree, disagree? - Lord Hydronium 03:37, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * We'd include the maiden name for Leia and for Mara Jade Skywalker because that's what everyone calls them: I honestly don't know if that's the case with other married women. My "Winter" example presumes she follows the same practice as Leia and Mara, and uses her maiden name and husband's name as a double surname.  If she were a real person, she might have simply kept her name the same after marriage or dropped her maiden name entirely.  This is something we might have to decide on a case-by-case basis, though with Winter, Beru Whitesun Lars, and Shmi Skywalker Lars, it seems the double surname is what we're using by default. As for Hutts, they seem to have a double family name too. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 03:54, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * As for Hobbie: seems as though Hobbie is a nickname, rather than something derived from his real name, so we'd keep it at Derek unless it's revealed his full name is "Derek Hobbes Klivian" or something. Other special cases: Hekis Durumm Perdo Kolokk Baldikarr Thun is notable for having a long stupid name, so he would be there rather than Hekis Thun.  I'm not sure which part of Hart-and-Parn Gorra-Fiolla is her surname, but her full name is obviously not Fiolla. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 04:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why everyone (well, all four people who have commented here) are so anti-nickname. If it's the common name, use it. Here's the rationale for using the most common form of the name: 1) It increases our Google rating. A page's title counts for a lot in increasing search rankings, and 99% of web users who want info on Thrawn are probably not searching for Meme'Mewtwo'Whosit. A Google Search bears me out. The Wikipedia article (named "Grand Admiral Thrawn") shows up as hit #6 for the search word "Thrawn". The Wookieepedia entry isn't even in the top 50. 2) Redirects, while good things, should be avoided. I've shown that the majority of Wookieepedia editors are already linking to the most common form of a name. I've already posted these statistics, but as of yesterday, Jabba Desilijic Tiure had 97 links, while Jabba the Hutt had 370 (Jabba had 116). Redirects are ugly, and perhaps jarring to new users. 3) Accepted Wikipedia practice is thus for editors who know better to avoid redirects by using piped links like this: Thrawn . I would hope people here would not lean too heavily on redirection as a crutch. Lord Hydronium actually made my point for me in the Talk:Mitheo'dkojei'ioejf page: "I'm sure some of those Thrawn links were written by some of the very people in this debate. Thrawn is just easier to type." In short, precision for the sake of precision is not worth the extra difficulty for people to link to and find a page. There's a reason the Wikipedia page is located at Billy the Kid, and it's the same reason we should be using Jabba the Hutt. — SavageBob 14:24, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Why are you so opposed to redirects? If anything, they're helpful to those searching for Thrawn or Jabba the Hutt. If someone searches for one of those, they'll be redirected to the proper Mitth'raw'nuruodo or Jabba Desilijic Tiure pages, where they'll see the proper name right there in the article. And yes, Thrawn is easier to type, but that doesn't mean that becomes the title of the article. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 20:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Redirected titles hurt our Google rankings. It's great to have a really good article on Thrawn, but if it's located at a weird title, no one's ever going to find it by using a normal search engine. The text of the article is not affected by the article title; keep that in mind. So if you want to call him Mithi'dio'whatever in the first line, that's perfectly reasonable. I'm just arguing against using that as the title for the sake of helping us reach out, get more exposure, attract new contributors. And to make it easier on the editors, of course, so we don't have to type odd, long links to articles. There will always be at least a sizeable contingent of us here who got our starts on Wikipedia where redirects are avoided like the plague. :) — SavageBob 20:49, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


 * While you do have a point, if someone was looking for the Mitth'raw'nuruodo article here, they could just search for "Wookieepedia" or "Star Wars Wikipedia", and then search for Thrawn here. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 20:54, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I think his point is that doesn't help people who've never heard of this site who are searching for info via google. It only helps people who already know enough to find our wiki and want to find Thrawn (or Jabba, or whatever) info from us.  On the other hand, while I understand that it hurts our google ranking, I'm not convinced that the benefits of using "Jabba the Hutt" or "Princess Leia" for main titles outweigh the benefits of using full names where available (even if those benefits are mostly just vague esthetics.) &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 22:37, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * That's the thing. People probably search for "Princess Leia" more that "Leia Organa" in the first place. We can't have it at Princess Leia. So, no matter what's decided, the Google ranking will still be low on some articles. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 23:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Precisely. And "Princess Leia" makes as much sense as "Jabba the Hutt".  For Google searches, there's the same problem with Mara Jade, and all the movie names I mentioned above.  Who's going to search for "Firmus Piett"?  But no one I think wants it at "Admiral Piett", or even worse, just "Piett".  If we're setting a Wiki-wide possibility, we have to think of all the cases.  And adopting "Jabba the Hutt" style titling is logically adopting all those examples I mentioned above.  Again, I don't see why a Star Wars information site should have less informative titles for its articles. - Lord Hydronium 00:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * As I see it, if we rename all these articles, it might increase our Google ranking, but that decreases our status as an encyclopedia. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 01:04, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't work towards the lowest common denominator (google). What we should do is have an active campaign to link articles from wikipedia to here. It won't help our google ranking (which I don't care about) but it will at least let people get to the characters here via google indirectly. Wikipedia being the middle man so to speak.
 * I also don't care about Google. Personally, we should have this Wikicity in mind for this issue, not Google. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 21:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Two or three of you just seem to have your mind deadset against the idea of using common names, so you'll come up with any excuse to not do it. "I don't care" or that it's the "lowest common denominator" and "me too". That's fine, but you are seriously cutting traffic to this site down with this elitism. You also are not realizing that the article title doesn't really mean all that much. You can call the character Jabba Desilijic Tiure (a really dumb name, but whatever, WEG) in the first line of the article and it won't matter one bit. So, basically, if you want to ignore making the site more well-known and more trafficked, by all means, stick with the obscure names that only diehard Star Wars fans will ever search for. I get the feeling that for many of you, this site is more about what you can get out of it (i.e., you having a good time stroking your inner fanboy) than it is about creating a good, accessible encyclopedia that the common, non-diehard Star Wars fan will find useful. Obscure names = obscure website; redirects are ugly. I can't offer much more argument, and if it's the attitude of the two or three anti-common-name people that they don't care about attracting more editors and that they don't care about redirection, then so be it. Your journey to the dark side will be complete. (As if you couldn't tell by that last comment, by the way, anything you may construe as an insult herein is not intended as such; I have nothing but wikilove, and it is not my intent to offend anyone.) — SavageBob 21:33, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Wow, I sense some serious anger issues. Just because you're not getting your way doesn't mean you yell at everyone for voicing their opinions. This is Star Wars Wikipedia, a community where we can vote on things. Now that you're loosing the vote, you get upset. Chill already. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) 21:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)