[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on MANDATORY and OPTIONAL rules on WP

[Ray Saintonge]

Stephen Bain wrote:

>On 11/17/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
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>
>>I've been looking at some pages and noticed that there is a haphazard application of rules on WP, specifically a failure to distinguish between mandatory and optional rules.
>>    
>>
>...
>  
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>> None of those are criteria recognised in the Manual of Style, which sets the simple criteria 'the most common name used in English', not 'the most common name likely to be used in the future', 'the name we would like to use', or 'the name the government tells us to use' but simply the most common name in use as of now.
>>    
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>WP:NC is "policy", which means it is official. But the page does carry
>this proviso:
>
>"It is important to note that these are conventions, not rules written
>in stone. As Wikipedia grows and changes, some conventions that once
>made sense may become outdated, and there may be cases where a
>particular convention is "obviously" inappropriate. But when in doubt,
>follow convention."
>
>It's interesting to note that all of the individual naming
>conventions, for example [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common
>names)]], are specifically tagged as guidelines, and not policies.
>Although they carry much weight, they nevertheless fall into your
>category of the rules that "may" be followed.
>  
>
It follows too that if flexibility is written into the policy then that 
flexibility is as much a part of the policy as its more specific terms.

Parallel to that we also have on    [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use 
English)]] 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28use_English%29> 


> Some cases are less clear-cut. There is a trend in part of the modern 
> news media and maps to use native names of places and people, even if 
> there is a long-accepted English name.

Ec