Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
On Wednesday 19 June 2002 12:01 pm, tarquin wrote:
alternatively, should "naming
conventions" be absorbed into
WikiProjects? the original proposal is about naming schemes as well as
consistent content presentation.
No I don't think this would be desirable. [[Wikipedia:naming conventions]] is
(more or less at least) a policy article and the WikiProject idea has never
been much more than a way for wikipedians to collaborate on a certain set of
related articles (which hasn't been used much BTW). Only part of what is
determined in a WikiProject is what to name articles -- but those names also
should conform to standard(ish) naming conventions.
In other words the WikiProject is really more informal and only enforceable
through bold editing and peer pressure while naming conventions are more or
less part of policy and are enforced in this light. Of course in a wiki the
line between the two types of enforcement is blurred -- but a distinction
should still be made.
I agree that presentation templates shouldn't be enforced on new and
casual writers; partly they're too much to take on, they make newcomers
feel constricted; also because (unlike page naming), it's very easy to
tidy up articles later.
However, they're of interest to more than the group that chooses to work
on a specific project: the many players of WikiRoulette aka Random
Weeding, for instance.
As I said on Talk:WikiProject, it seems to me that we currently have 4
rough meta- areas which overlap somewhat:
* naming conventions
* WikiProjects: presentation guidelines for types
* basic topic pages, eg "[[Music basic topics]]"
* WikiProjects: gathering wikipedians to work on a subject area
ManningBartlett's OO-style hierarchy of pages is clean and neat, and I
think it could be used for naming and style conventions. Whether that's
by seperating presentation guidelines from WikiProjects or somehow
integrating it all together, I don't know. We don't want to make
newcomers feel they're being herded, but when they want to look things
up to ensure they're being as constructive as possible, the information
should be clear and easy to find.
tarquin