Forum:Capitalisation

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This discussion is closed. The decision is: Capitalize only proper nouns and game names. Please do not modify this discussion.

I recently heard here that because of the capitalisation of certain pages, one needs to write double the text for a hyperlink to such a page. Now, that may not sound like a lot, but believe me; I've had my share of wonky capitalisation and red links at RSW, and it can be one hell of a bother. So here I propose to put normal capitalisation on the page titles by renaming them, something which I am prepared to do.

Support - as proposer. -Bluefire2 (talk) 08:20, March 21, 2012 (UTC)

I Support and will help as well. Renaming over 1000 pages is not a job I would like to do on my own (of course there might be less, but whatever...)   Random-storykeeper 15:55, March 21, 2012 (UTC)

I support and I'm also prepared to it. Wolriefield ^{WALL • E(dits)} 16:16, March 21, 2012 (UTC)

Thou art oh so kind :D -Bluefire2 (talk) 16:26, March 21, 2012 (UTC)

I support. The main problem is to rename them. Fault Liner 17:57, March 22, 2012 (UTC)

So all we are going to do is capitalize all the words on all the titles of pages? I don't see why not to support it. Emitewiki2 19:37, March 22, 2012 (UTC)

Support --Talk to NOBODY   20:12, March 22, 2012 (UTC)

• Hammer Monkey Bill

OR

• hammer monkey bill/ Hammer monkey bill/ hammer monkey Bill/ Hammer monkey Bill

Cam for Vice president!CandD ^{(Peanut Gallery!)} 01:17, June 20, 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Emitewiki, the proposal is to not capitalize all the words on all titles of pages, names of games and certain characters aside.   Random-storykeeper 21:13, March 22, 2012 (UTC)

Utter State of confusion- Due to my zombie brains, I'm unable to comprehend whatever your talking about. I'm just going to guess that this has something to do with capitalization and doing something. I'de like a page to be like this: Hammer Monkey Bill. If that's what we are supporting than go ahead. Just speaking on a level of legitness here which looks more appealing to you?

Request for closure - No more discussion has taken place over the past week and it seems as though we have a unanimous support so far.   Random-storykeeper 06:08, March 31, 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. This project would be massive, even if it was what I think is correct, and by the time we would think we'd be done with it, I'm betting around 300 pages will still be the old way. The titles should be capitalized because they're titles, and titles have certain rules that say how they should be done. For example:

Always capitalize the first and the last word. Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions ("as", "because", "although"). Lowercase all articles, coordinate conjunctions ("and", "or", "nor"), and prepositions regardless of length, when they are other than the first or last word. (Note: NIVA prefers to capitalize prepositions of five characters or more ("after", "among", "between").) Lowercase the "to" in an infinitive.

23:50, April 8, 2012 (UTC)

Good grief. I don't think I ever got around to replying to this. Well, there's not as many pages to rename with this as you think. For example, all game pages would stay the same (unless they have the disambig (game) attached to their name). Character names would remain the same. Anything with one word or a game disambig would also stay the same. I'm not saying that there's not a lot, it's just not as many as you think.

Besides, there is one good reason to rename titles in this style. I think this will help reduce Randomly capitalized Words in articles, which make all the pages look unprofessional. If we follow this "always capitalize all words in a title" rule, then users will see it as too much work to double hyperlink, especially for those who aren't the fastest typers.   Random-storykeeper 22:07, May 21, 2012 (UTC)

No Support?- Sure it's probably a good thing to make less of a hassle for edits. But it's still a bad thing. It makes the wiki look less legit and more lazy. How would everyone feel if I didn't capitalize names and stuff, it only shows hw lazy we're getting.

so larry, that guy, and whoever else; this is how poor quality this looks!! it's like saying why bother with punctuation.

heres an example from another wiki: DUH!!!!!

see the terrible conditions there!

CandD ^{(Peanut Gallery!)} 22:28, May 21, 2012 (UTC)

Again, we would keep names capitalized, because they are names. What we wouldn't capitalize for titles are any nouns that aren't proper nouns - aka Key Card would be renamed to "Key card" because it is not a proper noun. Anything you wouldn't normally capitalize in the middle of a sentence would also be renamed like this. This doesn't apply to names, and the first letter of a title is not case sensitive (ex. Key card and key card are the same).   Random-storykeeper 00:38, May 22, 2012 (UTC)

Re-launch - Ok. Let me briefly re-cover what this proposal is actually trying to achieve. If there is an item called, say, "Green cake", then if the page for it is called "Green Cake" (note the capitalisation) this proposal aims to change it to "Green cake". However, if there is an item called "Yellow Pie" (again, note the upper case), then subsequently the page should be called "Yellow Pie", and not be changed if it already is that. Basically, we use the names Nitrome gives to stuff, rather than make up our own capitalisation patterns. That way, it's easier to predict what a page will be called when making a link from another page to avoid a red link, without going on the page itself. Hope you understand now. -Bluefire2 (talk) 07:28, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

I agree with this, but the problem is Nitrome rarely names Enemies, Hazards, or stuff like that. They've been doing this ever since they started, so we've been forced to make up our own names for the enemy. --Talk to NOBODY   12:10, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

:O Well, although I've been infamous for not knowing anything about Nitrome, I had a go at it the other day, smashing through all the levels of Rubble Trouble Moscow (took me a while :P), and some people do have names; if I recall correctly, the callouts clearly name the main characters: Barry, Garry, Larry and the Boss, as well as giving names for all the weapons and tools. As for the things that aren't named, the idea is to set up a default notation, which I propose to be a capital letter on the first word (obviously), and everything else in lower case. Basically, I'm proposing the rule to be something like "All page titles must have no capital letters apart from the first word, unless Nitrome says so". So, if someone encountered a green cake while playing a game, which wasn't named, the page for it would be called "Green cake", the like goes for a yellow pie. -Bluefire2 (talk) 12:55, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

So as a follow up to Takeshi's post, I heavily disagree. You said not to capitalise "to" in an infinitive, but to capitalise it everywhere else. While most languages use different word endings to indicate a grammatical case, English either changes the word or places an irregular ending on it (e.g. "Me" is the accusative form of "I"), ignores it and uses word order instead - subject (Nominative) --> verb --> object(Accusative) - or uses an indicator word. If it's not in an infinitive, the word "to" is an indicator of the Dative case in English ("for" can also sometimes be an indicator of the Dative). I don't think that's a reason to capitalise it. Likewise, "of" is an indicator of the Genitive case, and if you notice, it's never capitalised in abbreviations - I can even give you an example of all three: RSPCA is an abbreviation for "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals"; note how "for", "the", "of" and "to" are ignored and not capitalised (yes, another word that's never capitalised is the article). -Bluefire2 (talk) 13:07, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

I suggest capitalizing only nouns. It's simple, and, in the case you showed, it's perfectly according to it. Fault Liner 13:11, May 26, 2012 (UTC)

So you're trying to say, Bluefire2, is that unofficial names should not be capitalized in page titles and official Nitrome names should be capitalized if the names given are capitalized. The only problem I see with this now is the fact that Nitrome makes use of block letters in a lot of their games. If this is the case, then we would have to capitalize all letters in a title based on this rule.   Random-storykeeper 04:56, June 8, 2012 (UTC)

YunoUCS? Just capitalise the first letter of any noun, verb, adverb, participle, adjective and pronoun. -Bluefire2 (talk) 09:27, June 15, 2012 (UTC)

Gee. Why not to only let the first letter capitalized, Unless the title of the Article is the full name of a character. e.gg: Small Legged Blob becomes Small legged blob, Austin Carter stays the same. Simple rule.

I also think the capitalization rule I put here should be ignored in case of a game. In the game page, in the tab's name we can see it's capilatized, so, why not to let it right how it is in Nitrome?

Obviously, the thing here is we need to get to a point. The rules of the renaming can be really easy to do. Wolriefield ^{WALL • E(dits)} 16:52, June 15, 2012 (UTC)

Suddenly, this forum discussion becomes confusing as it seems as Bluefire2 seems to say two completely different things.   Random-storykeeper 02:58, June 16, 2012 (UTC)

_{Reset indent} This is ridiculous! How on earth can such a small topic like this turn into a lengthy discussion?! This is such a simple concept; what do you people not understand?!! @@@@@@ -Bluefire2 (talk) 08:51, June 16, 2012 (UTC)

I still disagree. We should use the rules Takeshi64 posted above. These are the rules for CORRECT GRAMMAR. We should have correct grammar. It is GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT to do what is suggested above. The rules are exactly what Takeshi64 said. We still may have to rename some of the pages to follow these rules, however. NTPYTO ^Gb_Sp^R4

15:42, June 16, 2012 (UTC)

Sigh. I think you have no idea what I'm saying here. For games, capitalise every non-supplementary (etc) word, so "Rubble trouble moscow" is wrong (in fact Moscow should be capitalised anyway, since it's a proper noun), and we should instead use "Rubble Trouble Moscow". For everything else, capitalise the first word only, and any proper nouns e.g. names of characters. -Bluefire2 (talk) 16:03, June 16, 2012 (UTC)

I think that would be good. My idea isn't consistent with most wikis' styles, and it is supposed to be applied to titles, not pages. Bluefire's idea makes sense, because games and books are supposed to fit in the category, while applying it to the game titles would be presumptuous, as that would be out of the context of where we would use the rules.

21:47, June 18, 2012 (UTC)

I do not agree with this because I think instead of decapitalising the pages, we should change the links when we see them. If had a page called "Large Gorilla", but wanted it to come out "large gorilla" in an article, we should change it to [Large Gorilla|large gorilla] instead of changing the name of the pages. It isn't that hard too, and it is much easier than changing all the page names. Emitewiki2 00:48, June 20, 2012 (UTC)

I strongly disagree, Emite. If we were to carry a project like that, we would always have to keep doing such an action of double-hyperlinking every link in pages. When new games are released, and more pages are added because of it, we will have to keep on double hyperlinking as long as the Wiki continues to run. I would also argue that it would be a lot harder because editors actually have to search through each individual page for links, which they will then have to double hyperlink. It makes no sense, looking at the situation from a long-term perspective.

By renaming the pages, we can at least take care of the issue of double hyperlinking for future pages to come. It will also be easier to rename pages because it would require less searching. Users who participate in the renaming project can take on different templates and simply go through to rename them. Again, we wouldn't have to name as many pages as we think - game names, names of characters and any other proper nouns will be left as is. That already covers over 100 pages. Then there's also nouns which are only one word - Robots, at lack for a better example, still remains "Robots" after a rename project commences. This will be a lot more efficient and easier than having to force users to comb through each page, looking for links to double-hyperlink, and having to carry such labour forevermore.   Random-storykeeper 01:03, June 20, 2012 (UTC)

We don't have to go searching for them, we only have to change them when we see them. If you are reading or editing a page and you notice the capitalised name, just go change it. It's much simpler than renaming all the pages. I haven't seen very many capitalised names when editing anyway. Emitewiki2 01:24, June 20, 2012 (UTC)

Or you could use Special:Allpages. --Talk to NOBODY   01:48, June 20, 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's basically saying to forget the problem altogether, and the whole point of this proposal is to solve some of the major issues we face on the Wiki. If we say, "forget it" and just make this double-hyperlinking project a casual thing, we will always have this problem where the odd user forgets to double-hyperlink and thus taking more time. A few seconds may not seem like much when fixing up links on a single page, but multiply that time by about 1000 pages and you will see that double-hyperlinking takes up a lot of time. Therefore, with such a proposal that suggests only chasing down double-hyperlinking is going to be tiresome and won't solve any problem at all.

Also, like NOBODY says, pages are still a mess. Part of the reason, I believe, is because users don't want to go through all the trouble of double hyperlinking and so they just write the page title instead, with capitalization.   Random-storykeeper 15:49, June 20, 2012 (UTC)

@Emite - so, we have 2 choices. Rename a page once, or change the link of that page every single time we see a plain hyperlink to the page. Your call. -Bluefire2 (talk) 06:24, June 21, 2012 (UTC)

What is this I don't even

I do not at all see how such a mundanely simple issue could spark such an argument. It is clear that the two sides do not understand each others' arguments at all. This should have been done and dusted at least 2 weeks ago.

Let me elaborate. My proposal is to capitalise every word in the title of a game, apart from supplementary and secondary words, as described above. For everything else, follow the normal rules - capitalise proper nouns and nothing else. Of course, the first word should be capitalised in all titles.

If you still don't understand, go here. -Bluefire2 (talk) 17:48, June 20, 2012 (UTC)

I was hoping this would get done soon (I want to help while I still have time to), and I didn't realize this issue would become such a heated debate. How are we going to sort this out if we have users who disagree and it's all because of a misunderstanding?   Random-storykeeper 04:43, June 21, 2012 (UTC)

Remember that unanimous support isn't always required (in fact, as the wiki grows, it will almost never happen). If you look at all the support votes, we have enough consensus to proceed with the proposal. -Bluefire2 (talk) 06:26, June 21, 2012 (UTC)

I understand, but I still don't agree. Of course, Bluefire2 is right, you don't need unanimous support. And if you decide to do this, I will still continue to help out at the wiki, and I will also help to rename pages. But, once again, I disagree with this proposal. NTPYTO ^Gb_Sp^R4

01:55, June 22, 2012 (UTC)

Well, this discussion has been going on for far too long. All this time could have been spent renaming pages instead. Since there are more people who support this proposal (and hopefully, those who don't will come to really understand what the point is about), it is now time to close it...I think.   Random-storykeeper 03:24, June 22, 2012 (UTC)

NTPYTO, can you please explain why you disagree? Because I honestly do not get what can be so hard to understand here. If you disagree because of a misunderstanding then I would like to explain as much as I can to you. -Bluefire2 (talk) 07:21, June 22, 2012 (UTC)

Let's keep things simple. Where the article title is a Proper Noun, use the proper capitalization rules Takeshi has pointed out. Examples of these are names of games, staff, websites, characters and other object which have been named.

Unnamed objects, which are given generic names, should be uncapitalized(except for the first letter which is automatic anyway.

In this way, no further double typing is required. Besides, with our auto-fill feature, after this renaming project, there is no more excuse for linking inappropriately.(if the page name is the problem, fix it.)

Team, we removed Pagename because we don't want to be lazy. Surely naming pages PROPERLY should be simple. A prior knowledge of capatalisation guidelines is all it takes.

SQhi•(talk) 12:15, June 22, 2012 (UTC)

I understand. I know exactly what you guys want to do. I disagree because it is grammatically incorrect. If you wish to close this thread, that's fine. Honestly, I'm a little tired of talking about this. It's been going on almost since I joined the wiki. I'm almost ready to support it just to get it over with. Anyway, NTPYTO out. NTPYTO ^Gb_Sp^R4

13:20, June 22, 2012 (UTC)

Support- Using proposed rules to name pages - Perfectly put, SQhi. I think we should start doing it as soon as we can figure out the majority on the issue.

15:24, June 22, 2012 (UTC)

Closed - The two opposers seem to be tired of arguing their point, so we shall get on with it. For all pages, capitalize only the first letter of the title, and leave everything else uncapitalized, except in the case of proper nouns (ex. Game names). A rename project will commence shortly.   Random-storykeeper 15:55, June 22, 2012 (UTC)