In this same manner, every noun can have Person, Place, Idea, Invention, etc. tacked on to its end to identify its type. You might even want to hold this convention for words that already meet the wiki naming conventions, like ThomasEdisonPerson?. You might name the "letter" pages things like IndexA?, which might link to IndexAaAl? and IndexAmAz? (once you get big enough :-).
For example, say I want to link to a page from my site. I have an [InterWiki] prefix set up for WikiPedia on my own wiki. Without going through the rigamarole of actually looking up something on WikiPedia, I have no a priori way of knowing whether to link to WikiPedia:AlAska, WikiPedia:AlaSka, WikiPedia:AlasKa, or WikiPedia:AlaskA. Lather, rinse, and repeat for longer names like AfghanistaN?. If I knew there was an AlaskaState? naming convention, then I wouldn't have to give it a second thought.
The arbitrary naming convention used so far is very inconvenient and doesn't contribute at all to [AccidentalLinking]. At very minimum, you might investigate other wiki engines that support arbitrary link patterns like [Alaska] and [Ward Cunningham]. -- ScottMoonen
I think that ScottMoonens suggestion has great merit. Unless someone beats me to it, I will work on making that change over the next few days.
The argument that this convention makes it easier to search is obviated by the fact that, after all, people will organize all countries, all countries in Asia, all Muslim countries, etc., each on their own pages (in the near or distant future anyway), and more importantly, that a full text search is possible. Why impose a category scheme in the naming convention?
So I would prefer not to include categories in most (not all, I suppose) topic names because that tends to restrict the discussion of the category. For example, if I were to write "FiddleMusic?" instead of "FidDle," then the tendency would be to discuss, well, fiddle music instead of all things fiddle. I could write "FiddleMusicalInstrument?," but then the tendency would be to discuss the fiddle qua musical instrument, and there are many other aspects of the fiddle apart from those directly related to the fact that it's a musical instrument. Generally, I'm opposed to imposing pre-set category schemes: things do not wear their categories on their sleeves (as though they had only one supercategory) and we should not name articles as though they did.
Finally, I think it makes sense simply to capitalize the internal letter of one-word topics which begins the strongest syllable (or next-strongest syllable, if the strongest syllable is the first). Thus: FidDle; AlAska?; RusSia; DoneGal? (yes, in fact that's the strongest syllable, the way the Irish use the name). In cases where there is both one word and one syllable, I'd propose capitalizing the last letter: BasS?; JazZ?; SoaP?. This is the convention I've been following, anyway. And, of course, for multi-word topics, capitalize all the words (except, perhaps the conjunctions and articles?) and mash 'em together.
That's my take, but go and do whatever you like! -- LarrySanger
I have changed my index pages, but so far I have not made any alteration to the country names.
One problem with LarrySanger's proposal, for multi-syllabic words, is that people may not know what is the strongest syllable.
I second this request. I propose that wiki links should be enclosed in double braces, {{like this}}. Of course, we'll have to do some serious re-naming of pages when the new standard is implemented--that might not be for a while, too. Don't hold your breath.
I rather like the reminder of the roots of a term. Sort of an antiNewSpeak? type thing. That having been said, seeing -ism capitalized all over the place has become a bit unnerving. Further, many people don't want to bother learning the roots or be reminded of them.
However, I would like to offer this as an alternative (for some words) to the last-letter idea and read what others think of it. Oh, and the [[word]] seems the best solution since it lets me play with roots and frees the wiki of an arbitrary constraint --PhillipHankins
In most cases this can be codified fairly easily, and so applied without an etymological dictionary. Usually the letter immediately preceding the first O would get capitalized: GeoMetry?, DemoCracy?, PhiloSophy, BioLogy?. Words that end in I stems would have the last I capitalized: MarxIsm?, PolitIcs?, ChristianIty, SkiIng?. Failing those, you could just look for some common stem words: Al-, -Lysis, -Archy, etc.
Note also that high-level taxa could get named differently from low-level taxa: KingdomAnimalia, WolF. Does anyone have any thoughts on how they'd like groups named?
Nah, in my opinion we should be using a method that will allow us to create a link regardless of, but not excluding, the capitalization - much like they do on Everything2, where you create a link by enclosing it in square brackets [LikeThis]. And once this is established we should clean up this wiki for all the obscure and ugly capitalizations we can see today.
My advice is that we implement and enforce this before too long, otherwise it will be a tremendous task to correct the pages and to look up things on WikiPedia. --KlausSeistrup
Sounds great, Cliff. Cheers, mate. --KlausSeistrup
The new free-linking code can allow links with spaces and limited punctuation, like [[John F. Kennedy]]. While I think that the current wiki names (squishing words together with capitals) are often useful to writers, they can make pages difficult to read and explain to users new to wikis.
Should links with spaces be allowed or even encouraged on WikiPedia? Should the existing pages be converted to this form? (Should this page become [[Naming Conventions]] for instance?)
In the end, the preferred link style may become a site policy decision. Before that happens I hope to have some discussion of the issues. The biggest issue I see is whether the WikiPedia should try to follow the wiki-culture from other sites, or whether it should develop its own cultural norms (which may diverge from existing wikis). --CliffordAdams
I'm personally for links with spaces. Maybe it's not very "wiki" (I didn't know what a wiki was till I came here through nupedia), but it's certainly more "encyclopedic" --AstroNomer
I'd appreciate other parties to jump in on the discussion Cliff and I are having on http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?FreeLink. What do you think about the canonicalization (c14n) concept? That would make a link like [[John F. Kennedy]] into john_f_kennedy which would match correctly against [[John F Kennedy]] and JohnFKennedy as well. -- SunirShah