[Wikipedia-l] Re: MetaTree

[Daniel Mayer]

On Thursday 08 August 2002 08:20 pm, tarquin wrote:
> The reasoning was fairly simple: Wikiprojects are organized in a
> hierarchy. Naming conventions are increasingly hierarchic too.
> When I create a page, I seek information about how to name it and how to
> present it. It's stupid having to career halfway across the Wikipedia to
> find those two pieces of information.

Then just add links. Example; in WikiProject Countries add a link to the city 
naming convention, in WikiProject Biographies add a link to common name 
naming convention etc. There is also no reason why there shouldn't be links 
on the naming conventions pages (not the main one) to related WikiProjects. 
All naming convention pages are unprotected except the main one. 

I refactored the whole naming conventions page so that it only has one or two 
sentence summaries of each convention with links to the full conventions (on 
separate unprotected pages). Link away, but do make note of the fact that 
WikiProject guidelines are very loose while our naming conventions are 
semi-policy for practical reasons in order to facilitate linking and reduce 
duplication. 

Also keep in mind that the only content policy we have is NPOV (everything 
else is just a 'rule to consider') -- I do not want to have WikiProject 
guidelines even to begin to appear as if they are a kind of content policy 
(which may occur if naming conventions are stated on the same page). 

Also troubling is the term "Presentation Conventions" which is /far/ too 
similar to "naming conventions" and will cause confusion with newbies about 
the importance that naming conventions have in relation to any presentation 
"conventions". As a matter of fact, I do not want us to have /any/ content 
convention other than NPOV -- anything more will tend to stifle innovation 
(consistency is nice, and I do strive for that, but it should /not/ be in any 
way confused with policy). 

Just some things to keep in mind -- please don't think I am suggesting 
anything by my above statements since I still not sure what you want to do 
(although from what I've seen on the meta much of the above does at least 
appear to be founded).

--mav