Wikipedia talk:Page name

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This page was nominated for merging with Help:Page name on October 2011. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Where in an article does one insert a DISPLAYTITLE magic word?

At the beginning? The end? These instruction pages need to be more specific as to where and how such editing is done. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nycdi (talk • contribs) 18:44, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

At the beginning is normal, I believe (though it will work anywhere). I've added a sentence to the instructions.--Kotniski (talk) 09:27, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

65_Redroses

There is a film titled 65_Redroses, note the underscore. How do we get the underscore to appear in the page name? BOVINEBOY2008 22:19, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done (the DISPLAYTITLE has to come after the infobox, otherwise the DISPLAYTITLE from the infobox will override it).--Kotniski (talk) 07:54, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! BOVINEBOY2008 09:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

girls club (TV series)

I'm obviously being obtuse. Girls Club (TV series) needs to be lowercase. I've tried DISPLAYTITLE in many different ways to get it to work. What I want is {{DISPLAYTITLE:''girls club (TV series)''}} Can someone point out my mistake? SmallRepair (talk) 01:42, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You almost had it right with your last attempt... The DISPLAYTITLE needs to go after the infobox. However it must match the title "exactly" otherwise it won't work. Only the first letter of the title can have a different case. So to get the title to display as girls club (TV series) you'll first need to move (rename) the article to Girls club (TV series) with a small "C".--Kotniski (talk) 10:35, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help! I'll start on that today and get back to you. SmallRepair (talk) 19:25, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Worked perfectly, thanks! SmallRepair (talk) 23:06, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested shift in terminology

A while ago (a year, more?) we changed the title of WP:Naming conventions to WP:Article titles. This was due to a realization that the word "name" carried emotional connotations that were causing disputes. "Names" are often associated with political, religious, ideological, or other strongly felt POVs, and we had endless argument over which "name" was "correct" or "official". We resolved this (or at least helped to resolve this) by changing terminology to "title"... a word that was more neutral and did not carry all the emotional baggage of the word "name". I am wondering if a similar shift in word usage would be a benefit here as well.

I realize that the term "page name" is a standard way to refer to a page on the internet. I also understand that this page talks about more than just articles ... but I think it would lessen potential confusion to keep terminology consistent between policy pages. So... how would people feel about shifting to the usage "Page titles" instead of "Page names"? Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't object, although we do have the parser variables PAGENAME and so on, which would be a reason for staying with "page name". Perhaps it would make some kind of sense to use "name" to refer to the actual stored title, and "title" for the displayed title (so EBay is the name and eBay is the title) - or would that just confuse people even more?--Kotniski (talk) 17:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would confuse even more. Blueboar (talk) 23:56, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I guess so. Well, I've no objection to changing "name" to "title" on this page (and also perhaps at Help:Page name). But we should perhaps explicitly define terms like "stored title" (any better suggestions?) and "displayed title", since sometimes it becomes confusing (for example, we currently say that titles beginning with a small letter are not valid - but this is only true if we mean "stored title", not "displayed title").--Kotniski (talk) 11:57, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Remember that <title> is the HTML tag (and name) for the name/title of a web page... naming names, being always a required and at the same time something tricky, needs great attention. Michel Merlin (talk) 19:29, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

DISPLAYTITLE

What can be the problem when {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}} fails to work on a page, but the title of a different one from the same namespace is changed duly? Can a local project be set to react only to cosmetic changes in the title like modifying the font? Thanks. --Microcell (talk) 11:24, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, English Wikipedia is set so that only certain cosmetic and minor changes are possible. Can you give more information about what it is you'd like to do?--Kotniski (talk) 16:47, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem was noticed in the Ukrainian Wikipedia, but there're no detailed descriptions of the option, which made me ask for help here. I guess these settings are the same for both of the projects, not surely though. Could you please give the list of possible title modifications if it's been formed here? Also, where are they set and who normally has access to them on a certain project? Thank you! --Microcell (talk) 18:33, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Basically you can change the formatting (to italics or bold, for example) and you can change the first letter to lower-case. Other things are also possible, like changing spaces to underscores - the condition is that the title on display should still link to the same page if you put it between [ [ ] ]. (Though it's technically possible to "hide" part of the title.) You can ask the developers to take away these restrictions, so that any displayed title is possible, but you'd have to show them a consensus to do that on Ukrainian WP.--Kotniski (talk) 07:15, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again for the explanation, there is no urgent need for technical changes at the moment. Please, elaborate what parts of a title can be changed and in what way, so that I'll be aware. P.S. Maybe, it's relevant for this page and can be mentioned along with the DISPLAYTITLE description, in order to spare the time of challengers like me? :) --Microcell (talk) 09:18, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Discussion closed and moved to merge discussion here: Merge Proposal -- Mike Cline (talk) 16:32, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Page name → Help:Page name – This is a technical help page, not a policy, guideline or essay page. This page fits in with the other "Help:..." series of pages, but the current "Wikipedia" prefix makes this confusing with Wikipedia:Article titles. This page was moved to its current title in Jan 2010 for unknown reasons and a new barebones page was started at Help:Page name; there's nothing on that page worth saving. Recommend this be put back at its original title. Relisting, issues to resolve Andrewa (talk) 09:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC) Station1 (talk) 06:50, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree this should be in Help space, but it looks like the "barebones" page now at Help:Page name is intended to provide essential information to readers and beginner editors, without confusing them with lots of technical details. We wouldn't necessarily want to lose that page.--Kotniski (talk) 10:05, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support; the basic introduction on Help:Page name could be imported and become the new intro to the moved page. Powers ^T 17:23, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- The problem with that is that it makes preserving the edit histories complicated compared to a simple merger, for no obvious advantage. Andrewa (talk) 20:13, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The target page does have significant history with several contributors, and there seems no support for the claim that there's nothing on that page worth saving. So the proposal now seems to be for a merge to Help:Page name, is that the go? Andrewa (talk) 11:04, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

yes, technically this should be a merge, not a page move. Zzyzx11 (talk) 16:00, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Now raised formally at Help talk:Page name#Merger proposal. It seems the normal practise to discuss at the target talk, which is why I raised it there. We need a heads-up on that page anyway, as it's affected by this RM. Andrewa (talk) 20:13, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support, yes, please. The page content definitely belongs into the Help namespace, and this one is much better. --The Evil IP address (talk) 10:34, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But are you supporting a move or a merger? In either case, why? Andrewa (talk) 20:21, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what's there on Help:Page name that can be merged into the new page, but generally I don't mind which way as long as the page is in the Help namespace. Currently, the page in the Wikipedia namespace is better, but it belongs into the Help namespace, as it's a help page. --The Evil IP address (talk) 13:51, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moving pages fwd

I expanded the lead with material that I hope will help terminology. While copy editing the lead, I noticed there is nothing in the article about "moving pages". — Cpiral Cpiral 03:50, 30 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An unhelpful image

The image that shows "Help:Page name", where Page name is labeled "basename" is confusing. Please use another page that does not say "Page name". How about have the image say "Template:Search link" or something and label "Search link" as the "basename". Otherwise, without the "helpful" clue of "Help:", it looks like "Page name" is "basename", because we're teaching "Page name" and the student is trying to learn quickly by looking at that image, and it is confusing. — Cpiral Cpiral 21:00, 1 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I found an image for Help:Categories, and changed it to that. But, indeed Page name is the basename of both the article and this talk page! Wbm1058 (talk) 20:07, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that Wbm1058. I found a confusion (after careful study) between "pagename" and "page name", namely that although "pagename" is always basename, as you say, "page name" (the two-word form) outside of Main is namespace:basename. I hope I have now clarified this confusion. I rewrote the intro. (I also rewrote it 3 mos. ago.) It now contains an explanation using the example "Help:Categories" which corresponds to the image you changed. — Cpiral Cpiral 00:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Small font with displaytitle

Has anyone considered using DISPLAYTITLE to shrink the font of a disambiguation term in an article title? I saw that I could do this with HTML "small" opening and closing tags around the term. Perhaps this approach could help de-emphasize the disambiguation term. It would appear less prominently in the article title. Any takers? Erik (talk | contribs) 19:37, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get it. It sounds like a style consistency decision to make at the MediaWiki software level. Got an example, a link or something? Why talk:page name? — Cpiral Cpiral 06:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Because WP:DISPLAYTITLE is a redirect to WP:Page name#Changing the displayed title. I've since documented Template:DISPLAYTITLE, and its seems to be holding up OK there. — Cpiral Cpiral 23:29, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lesser is a fuller page name

About recent edits to sections zero and one:

I don't think it was correct to say that "The term 'page name' is ambiguous". I don't think the terminology need be ambiguous, esp. the subject title term. So I will fix the confusion this page has foisted upon me and other editors for many years.
I fixed it. It required fixing the rest of the terminology, lowering the frequency of the term basename which is a failed device that added to the confusion in the gallant but failed attempt to save the deceptively simple explanation of what a page name is, if it is to be in any way related to the technical term pagename. I will explain why basename is deadweight below.
This is a technical, project page, not an editor help page. Both namespaces have the same pagename (which, by the way is Page name), but the other Page name is not as technical as this one for the sole reason that pagename has to be explained here, and pagename is a technical term. (Proof: try the search "wp:pagename".

Now what is the terminology we can throw out in the attempt to make an understandable explanation that both clearly, and without apology or appeals to the irrational surrender, promotes learning?

It will be the term "basename" and the term "base name", but not the term "base, name", as I discuss below.
The fix I made already threw out "full page name" and "full pagename". These are quite confusing and quite unnecessary.

The fixes I have made are part of the further fixes that need to be made. The following points are related to both fixes, the past ones and the future ones. (This project is the gradual fixing of a formerly loose description of the linguistic reality of its subject.) Some of the bullet points are appeals to rationality, of reasons help us confirm the terminology is acceptable.

Quiz: Please differentiate pagename from "page name". Use namespace and fullpagename in the differentiation. Do not use basename, "the fullpagename", or "full pagename", or "full page name".

Answer: "Page name", "link" and "title" can be tied together unambiguously:

I can say sometimes say "describe a link", and this can unambiguously be taken to mean I "describe the page". (The exception to this where the link has the "#" character.)
The title is the name of the page. Either can serve as a link.
- so can pagename (The exception is outside of Main.)
- so can the tail of the web page name: The link in the URL is also the title. Please note that the [[basename]] of the URL is a very accurate term for this example of how "link" equals "title". By comparison our choice of the term "basename" turned out to be unhelpful and even confusing at times, as I am trying to explain.
The title (moved or not) always functions as a link. Links are very important here conceptually. Links are why "page name" exists. Proof: "Page name"—of {page name, link, title,} is important enough to require its own web page on Wikipedia. (See How do I make links? for a case in point.)

Those tie-ins lead then to the following points:

Fullpagename, pagename, and namespace are unambiguous terms we could use to describe "page name". The reason Namespace is our term and basename is not is because "basename" is not a term at for which this project page plays a supportive lead-in role. We misappropriated "basename" of the Unix "/" variety to our ":" variety. OTOH "base name" is perfectly normal terminology anywhere as is the deceptively simple looking "page name". :-)
A page name, when some specific title has been changed via {{DISPLAYTITLE}} is no longer its pagename (See 2).
If I type into the search box "help:pagename" it redirects me to the Help namespace page Page name, yet "wp:pagename" does not similarly redirect to our namespace Page name, but redirects to Wikipedia:PAGENAME#Variables. This is interesting and notable. Apparently these redirects are structured to redirect an actual technical term to a very technical page in Project namespace (i.e. the WP), in our case explaining our three variables mentioned (and many more), but that the same actual technical term in the Help namespace redirects to a non-technical page, as if "pagename" did not exist in Help namespace (nor fullpagename). I'm confidently lead to believe that the actual technical term pagename is indeed of major importance here to our general audience: programmers and advanced editors. These folks read and write a consistent terminology {pagename, page name, fullpagename, namespace} for the most part. It is this article that can no longer afford to err if it is to eventually to be of educational value to future technical editors.

— Cpiral Cpiral 08:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A proposal to overhaul the terminology

Meet the terminology in a nutshell:

The following pairs of terms are equal in Main, and differ by a namespace outside of Main: {fullpagename, pagename}, {page name, pagename}, {page name; a titular, base, name}, {page name, basename). (That last pair is tricky. It has to do with the common term "base" as an adjective separated from its noun by a comma if there are two adjectives describing the same noun.)
The following pairs of terms have the same meaning: {"page name", "full page name"}, {pagename, base name}, {basename, base name} (Important: {pagename, page name} are different. See 1.)

The article currently uses both basename and base name. They were meant to help:page name, where this WP:page name came from long ago. Pagename and basename are redundant and confusing. Basename does always equal pagename, "base name" does not equal "page name" (See 1): thus basename and "base name" are as potently confusing a terminology as pagename and "page name". That seemingly "optional" space is not at all innocuous. Ironically the sole benefit of basename/"base name" was that of alleviating (by distancing) "pagename" from "page name". It doesn't work here because of pagename, and our technical mandate to incorporate pagename. So basename has to go.

Currently this project page uses "basename". But because there is a magic word called {{NAMESPACE}}, the figure we use in this project page could say namespace:pagename. That's not at all unreasonable or difficult to grasp for this audience. We could change the six "basename" terms in section one to "pagename" (without the space). This will erase one third of the potential confusion by limiting the terminology, and another third by clearly stating the difference between "pagename" and "page name" (with the space). Most of the remaining third will be swept away with all the sentences that try to train the reader to equate basename with pagename—there are many—and what little confusion remains is inextricable: it is that not-so-innocuous " " (space) character between pagename, and page name. —

Again, I suppose we chose to introduce the term base name because the programmers' "pagename" was too technical for the lay editors' assumed preference "base name". But that before this article was moved from Help (for lay editors) to Wikipedia (a more technical sphere?) Cpiral Cpiral 08:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A few more points to answer some obvious reactions to the proposal:

WP:Disambiguation uses the term "base name" (as the title), to distinguish a page from a more "qualified name" (of a title) when engineering search results. That's the extent of the use of the term (in that sense) except for right here at Page name. Interpretation: no one really uses "basename" except us.
In disambiguation, they need the term "base name". We don't. Let me state how we would describe disambiguation in our terms: "A page name is moved to a more "qualified name". For example Path becomes Path (computing), and the dab page becomes the page name Path. There I avoided the unnecessary use of "base name".
Q. Could WP:DAB and WP:Page name (I'm not asking about Help:Page name) formalize on the terminology {page name, pagename/fullpagename} instead of {page name, base name, full page name}? A. Yes. Dab pages are WP:content, and for content, the page name is the base name (and pagename is the basename from a Unix perspective), so disambiguation doesn't need any term "basename" or "base name".
Q Why does "Full page name" or "full pagename" make no sense? A. Unless it means "full name" or "fully named page", which are meaningless, it simply confuses the meaning of fullpagename, for how can the pagename variable be more full? Is a "page name" to be made more full (as some hidden shorthand way of saying more "fully qualified"? See above for the phrase "fully qualified)? No.
Q. Will "base name" and "basename" go away? A. No. We'll love "base name" in contexts of "further qualifications", just like Unix basename conveniently strips away the dirname where "full qualifications" are not necessary because the context makes it obvious. The following {MediaWiki, Unix} pairs of terms are, respectively, similar (conceptually): {namespace, dirname} {pagename, basename} {fullpagename, pathname}. We'll use basename because it is a programmers way to understand pagename. (But I'm sure basename should not in the graphic, as it is now.)

Q. Should this project page Page name bother to work so hard to study this error that is the terminology {pagename, page name, basename, base name, page-name, base-name, pageName, baseName, namespace prefix}? A. No, but we must exemplify written behavior if when we've gained the understanding. (Some of these terms have already been fixed, as I have said.)

The space-difference between "page name" and pagename could, but should not, also able to be hyphenated or CamelCased, but we can avoid that for the sake of terminological consistency in a realm where it is inherently confusing enough.
Q. Will pagename ever become a compound word like filename/"file name"? (These normally go through a hyphenation phase for some years before the compound word is accepted into the language dictionary.) A. No. A web page user doesn't name the page it views, as a file user must; rather it has, if a writer, a title to cite. A filename (also written as two words, file name) always means the same thing, and filename is a compound word. We don't have that luxury. No "document name", "phamplet name" or "essay name", or "page name" will become a compound word from common usage. (Nor would I predict that page-name or base-name become formal language terminology.)

Our only challenge is defining "Page name" differently from pagename for concepts outside Main.(For concepts inside Main, there is no difference, so there is no challenge). Page name is defined simply as the title, or "what links", as I have explained above.

Cpiral Cpiral 01:06, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

RfC

OK, well, I hope the recent edit that implemented this fully is satisfactory. — Cpiral Cpiral 08:49, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I am not sure whether I agree with what you just said or not... because the language you use is very technical. The same thing is true with your edit. It may be that this simply can't be explained with using such technical language, but we should at least try. So... is it possible to dumb it down a bit, so the rest of us can understand it? Blueboar (talk) 16:22, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking that WP:Page name was technical, and HELP:Page name wasn't. But you are the audience. For your valuable feedback, I will pay a visit to both my above bullet point reasons, and the reverted material. Then I will save the page, expecting that before a similar sequence could happen again, that you will first consider the possibility that your reasoning here is a kind of WP:verifiability issue. (The project page material is sourced only by our discussion material.) — Cpiral Cpiral 19:05, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Now you have really confused me... What does WP:Verifiability have to do with anything? Blueboar (talk) 02:22, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your revert! You basically reverted saying that the explanation as it was, was too technical to defend the edit I made, which is reflective of the technicalities explained. I took that to mean the talk page explanation as it was, was not a "verifiable" source. It was, as you may say TLDR (too long didn't read). But there is no other way to source project page changes if not from a clear rationale on the talk page, i.e. a readable source. I took "readable" as "verifiable". So I have spent the time to rewrite the rationale for the proposal. And as I said, I will take the time to put the newest version back (It fixes remaining self-contradictions in the terminology.)

I have made the source of my page edits "verifiable", so that it can become our project page edits because we are on the same page, the same rationale, the same source, which is now the reworded rationale/proposal in the this section and the section of which it is a subsection. Please read the whole thing. Please tell me if my explanation satisfies you. If it does, then I can put the previous version, that you reverted, into production, and we can both edit it. OK? — Cpiral Cpiral 01:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Now, the above explains the reasons I removed the term "basename" from this newest version. (My previous versions removed other terminology, as explained above.) I made the project page as lucid as I could (until bias inevitably set in). If it isn't too much to ask, please read the current version of the project page without bias, and with care. Then whether because it seems it is wrong from an objective, new view of a fresh reader, or if it seems wrong from a subjective point of view because of the extensive changes, please consider discussion before reverting. — Cpiral Cpiral 12:11, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK... let's start at the beginning and take this step by step... If I understand your proposal correctly, you want the nutshell to say:

"The following pairs of terms are equal in Main, and differ by a namespace outside of Main: {fullpagename, pagename}, {page name, pagename}, {page name; a titular, base, name}, {page name, basename)."

The first question I have is this: what does the phrase "equal in Main" mean? Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For example, "page name" and "base name" (or any possible term for a page) are equivalent in the Main namespace. Equivalence is a tricky term that leads to some excess confusion I'm learning to avoid, and it is this: "equivalent" in what measurable way? For one it is the expectation of "an equivalent output" when said terms are written by programmers, for another it is used when they are used to describe searches that will have "the same output" for the reader, and for still another it is all exposition referring to page names, namely, do we advocate using "pagename" and "fullpagename", writing everywhere "link the fullpagename"? or "link the pagename"? There "equivalent" meant to share an unambiguous (equal) understanding concerning the concept of referring to a page name, specifically whether (in said concept) the namespace aspect is important or not. I would not even mention fullpagename in Help:pagename.

Let's be clear, I am not proposing a {{nutshell}}. I am only proposing a discussion, and I learned that the discussion needed a nutshell. (The effort to compare two terminologies needs all the devices it can get, esp. when each involves a technical-lingo complexity and the added confusion that synonymous and homonyms bring.) This section was a proposal, that for the lack of discussion become an explanation of a bold edit. (It wasn't poetic? Correct.) The nutshell is above has now become just a sort of primer of my rationale for doing so. Thank you. — Cpiral Cpiral 19:59, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah... ok. I think that helps me... If I understand you correctly - the "nutshell" above is not something you want to add to the policy page... and that when you use the words "equal in Main" you are talking about "mainspace". Correct me if I have this wrong.

Sorry, but I must say you are exactly right. — Cpiral Cpiral 02:37, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah... that helps a bit. Just to make sure I am clear ... would this be a correct summary of your concern: Wikipedia uses the terms you list (pagename, basename, etc.) interchangeably... but outside of Wikipedia these terms are not interchangeable (and you are concerned that this can lead to confusion)? Blueboar (talk) 22:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I see where you are coming from. Looks like were almost half-way done slogging thru this mess. I clarified the points you are obviously stepping through for our overall clarification. Thank you. No, I am not concerning this project page with terminology in the field. — Cpiral Cpiral 02:37, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK... if that is not what you are concerned about, then I am still lost. Let's try it again... can you (in a few short and simple sentences) explain what you are concerned about? Blueboar (talk) 04:20, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm concerned with terminology on the project. Major endevours like Wikipedia have a terminology dept, whose job it is to live in the descriptions of how things are, making a consistent set of names that both educate newcomers and silently assist senior members users who use it habitually to communicate quickly and effectively. Bias blinds the entrenched to the plight of the new readers who, like me, who find it difficult to accept that the terminology contradicts itself. Even there is confusion and errors discussed on this talk page that deal with terminology.

How close is the current version, in your opinion, to being acceptable? You said you would step through the above rationale. I'm quite sure you will need to finish stepping through what you've helped me to clarify above, and then look at the previous versions of this project page, and then you will understand and accept the current version. — Cpiral Cpiral 07:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Before I step through your rational... I have to better understand what you are trying to achieve. I gather that you have concern about terminology... but I still do not understand what that concern is. Are you trying to clarify the meaning of the terms?... are you trying to make the terminology uniform across multiple policies and guidelines?... or are you trying to achieve something else? (if so what?). Blueboar (talk) 14:41, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is A:"trying to clarify the meaning of pagename" and adjusting the other terms to match reality of this Project namespace. The reality to now comes from the redirects of pagename, the stated reality of "base name" at WP:DAB and as in section Invalid page names of this project page, and bleep knows where else. I simply see a problem, dive into complexity, and "work up" a rough draft. It is true that I do know the answer is B:"trying to make the terminology uniform", but only like the "Fingers" of Michelangelo's "other policies and guidelines", if you will, consent to edit to taste and (its resulting driven scenery from here and there) rather than revert. It is like an intuition spiral. May we yet proceed to C:? The motives are Happy Editing. There is the stated rationale for content, I thank. — Cpiral Cpiral 03:51, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you've seen our intro, then read Template:Editnotice pagename, where it says "full pagename" which I claimed above is nonsense, then where their ancient 2008 talk page says "confused as pagename... this template is more like fullpagename", then read this:

The elite tolerate confusion to "save typing 'full' in front of pagename". Think about that (remembering pagename is not fullpagename) 1) Only the entrenched know "pagename means fullpagename", which is wrong; newcomers are forsaken. 2)A redirect using "fullpagename" patches the "pagename" error in the title. 3)It's a weak reason for an egregious error, for why not use "template:pgName" to save even more typing? (The newcomers are the redirection.) Tell the newcomers to use "template:fullpagename", and ignore the "pagename" error in the title? No, just move the page to Template:Editnotice fullpagename per WP:Page name and make a redirect via Template:Endnotice. — Cpiral Cpiral 08:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Or see Wikipedia:Requests for page protection, esp. the table and its template docs, like Template:ln. There you will see "full page name", just "page", and "namespace:page name", all of which were never our terminology. — Cpiral Cpiral 10:56, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At "WP:Page protection" I am proposing that the term "fullpagename" be adopted. It's a uniformity thing. — Cpiral Cpiral 01:37, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

RfC II

Here is a major movement of the sections, their titles, and the sentences that made or did not make the stitches. I copy edited the entire page. Please comment. THanks. — Cpiral Cpiral 00:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Still working on it. Looking at the older version, I'm shrinking back seeing some inaccuracies. The newer version will better cover the technicalities, and will give a better rationale for the terminology. I'm working on What is not a page name where I'm explaining the term as a title that is more or less easy, in the software, to use for linking and editing. I'm thinking about using the section heading MediaWiki somewhere, where we'll talk about the namespaces and the databases, oldid and permalink, and the URL generating functions like fullurl. It's expanding. — Cpiral Cpiral 01:09, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Company Prefixes

I have seen some incoherence in some page names. There are pages like Adobe Flash Player that need to be renamed each time it is acquired by some other company, instead of just removing the company name like Flash Player and there are other pages like Firefox that do not have the company name like Mozilla Firefox. Should there be coherency? I do not want company advertisements by having the company name prefix if it not needed for proper identification.

Wikipedia talk:Page name could cause confusion with Wikipedia:Article titles. — Cpiral Cpiral 09:48, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The decision to include a company name in an article about a product has nothing to do with advertizing... it is determined by Wikipedia's WP:Article titles policy... specifically the provision WP:COMMONNAME. This policy tells us to entitle our articles using the same words and phrases most commonly used our sources. In the example you give, the sources routinely refer to the product as "Adobe Flash Player" (probably to distinguish it from other flash players)... that means we use this title as well... however, if the sources called it simply "Flash Player" (ie without the word "Adobe") then we would do that instead.

As far as renaming the article if/when the company changes hands... this is actually a much more complicated issue than you make out. It isn't automatic. To use your example... let's say Adobe gets bought out by the Foobar Corporation (FooCorp)... First, FooCorp may not change the name of the product (brand recognition is important in any market place... so FooCorp may keep the old brand name "Adobe" going, and continue to sell its flash drive under the name "Adobe Flash Drive".) If this occurs, we would not need to change the title of our article.

Second, even if the product is "officially" re-branded (from "Adobe Flash Player" to "FooCorp Flash Player") Wikipedia would not necessarily change our article title to match. That depends on what our sources do... if sources written after FooCorp buys out Adobe start calling the product "FooCorp Falsh Player", then we would reflect that change by changing the title of our article (shifting the the old title "Adobe Flash Player" to a redirect, so someone who searches for the article using the old name can still find it)... However, sometimes sources ignore "official" name changes, and continue to refer to a product using its old name. If this occurs, we would again follow the sources. We would not change the title of our article (despite the "official" name change). Instead, we would make "FooCorp Flash Player" into a redirect, so those who are searching using that new name can find the article. Again... it all depends on what the sources do.

Hope that helps. Blueboar (talk) 15:20, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Page name (with a space) versus fullpagename

I've got a couple of queries about this article, and I would like to have comments from anyone interested.

First of all, lets define Fullpagename as whatever is rendered with the magic word {{FULLPAGENAME}}.

Secondly, page name is defined in the article as "The page name is the title shown on the title line (the top line)."

Point 1: it says in the lead "So page name is equivalent to pagename only when the context is content, but when the context could be any page in the database, page name is equivalent to fullpagename, except for the historical revisions database, where fullpagename becomes equivalent to a permanent and unique oldid number." But when I check the Revision history for my sandbox, which has {{FULLPAGENAME}} embeded, I find that {{FULLPAGENAME}} still renders the same as before. Obviously the URL is different, as it contains oldid number, but {{FULLPAGENAME}} and the page name are still identical. So this seems to be wrong.

Point 2: It says above that "page name is equivalent to fullpagename, except for the historical revisions database". But this is not always the case. For example the article eBay will render the {{FULLPAGENAME}} as "Ebay", while the page name (same as the title shown on the title line) shows "ebay", due to the use of the {{lowercase title}} template. So this is not quite correct. --Mrjulesd (talk) 16:36, 14 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Mrjulesd:, I hope the recent edit fixed that. — Cpiral Cpiral 23:53, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DISPLAYTITLE and template:Infobox ship begin

I've requested a fix to {{Infobox ship begin}} because that template generates a mandatory non-optional DISPLAYTITLE that breaks many pages. The DISPLAYTITLE cannot be set, it is autogenerated, making it inappropriate on some pages, it cannot be turned off either. -- 70.51.203.69 (talk) 11:27, 23 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Recent rewrite of section 1

I added a shortcut WP:FPN to get reference the terminology. But when I read it, it wasn't reference material, as I'd hoped, and it had too many examples, as should be rather at Help:page name.

For example I should be able to write template documentation with instructions

and have it all linked to the references for those terms now with the new shortcut making it quicker:

{{Template|pagename|namespace|fullpagename}} — Cpiral Cpiral 23:51, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

COM LAG (2plus2isfive)

Am I right in thinking that the article COM LAG (2plus2isfive), which is about an EP, should have "Com Lag" written in lowercase in accordance with MOS:ALLCAPS? If so, how can I change the casing in the article title? I've looked around, maybe I've missed something, but I can't find the best way of doing this. Popcornduff (talk) 06:22, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 3 April 2018

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

cities skylines natural disasters Geting mad (talk) 21:52, 3 April 2018 (UTC)cities skylines natural. disasters[reply]

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 22:04, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia DISPLAYTITLE

It says the "DISPLAYTITLE" magic word will change the title displayed above the Wikipedia page. I tried it on my Wikipedia talk page but it did not work. Why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr. Premiere (talk • contribs)

There is a very limited range of display changes which is permitted, see Template:DISPLAYTITLE. --David Biddulph (talk) 18:13, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Exceptions to % rule

On WP:Page name it says:

A pagename cannot contain % followed by 2 hexadecimal digits, unless for a percent-encoded character, although there are exceptions.

Like what exceptions? Can I have an example please? Gioguch (talk) 21:06, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Have removed, appears to have been incorrect. – Thjarkur (talk) 09:53, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lowercase first letter?

On WP:Page name, it says:

A pagename cannot begin with a lowercase letter in any alphabet except for the German letter ß.

It also states at the bottom that this phenomenon is not true for all projects, like Wiktionary, however I noticed something a bit odd. With the exception of DISPLAYTITLE, no page can begin with a lowercase letter. So iPad is technically IPad, it just has a lowercase i because of DISPLAYTITLE. However, if this is true for all Wikipedias, why is it not true for Min Nan Wikipedia? Sorry if this may not be the best place to ask this, but if you go to zh-min-nan:File:Example.jpg, on the top of the URL, it says https://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/tóng-àn:Example.jpg, with a lowercase t. However, the prefix is case-insensitive, but the default is written with a lowercase t. This is confusing, because it contradicts WP:Page name. Is this a bug or is it because that is the grammar of the language? Gioguch (talk) 19:45, 3 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gioguch: "tóng-àn" is the namespace, just like "File" is here. For purposes of that rule, the namespace doesn't count as part of the name, so it's the "E" in "Example" that's required to be uppercase. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:51, 3 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jackmcbarn: But still, it's rare to see a title begin with a lowercase letter on any Wikipedia. I mean, they could totally make the namespace on English Wikipedia "file." So is "tóng-àn" just a grammatical thing? Or is it an error or something? Gioguch (talk) 20:13, 3 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. You'd probably have to ask someone who's familiar with that language. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:16, 3 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Updated DISPLAYTITLE to account for Draft: articles

Edit.

If you revert, please discuss, per WP:BRD. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 21:16, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Mention dash recommendations

Mention the hassle caused by e.g.,

when a simple ASCII dash would have done fine. Jidanni (talk) 00:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

All caps allowed?

I think this page could mention if titles in all caps are allowed or not; this is not uncommon for pages titled after an acronym. fgnievinski (talk) 19:28, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict in displayed title

Hello. So, this Italian newspaper's title should be with a lower i, specifically il Resto del Carlino, as demonstared by the stylisation in the official website. However, when I place the Template:Lowercase title at the top of the article, I get the following error message:

Warning: Display title "Il Resto del Carlino" overrides earlier display title "il Resto del Carlino" (help).

The help page suggests the issue being a conflicting display title instruction, but I can't find such instruction in the article, nor I can suppress the error message via the {{DISPLAYTITLE:Desired title|noerror}} code. Any suggestion? Tanonero (msg) 09:24, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Tanonero: Fixed with this edit. The conflicting DISPLAYTITLE was part of the infobox code. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:36, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@John of Reading: Thank you! Tanonero (msg) 10:56, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]