On 11/17/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden(a)yahoo.ie>
wrote:
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.
...
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.
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made sense may become outdated, and there may be cases where a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.