dKosopedia:Page name issue
From dKosopedia
Every dKosopedia page name issue needs to be documented in one place to identify similar controversies. Do that on this page. Should this just be dKosopedia:rename ?
Eventually a list of dKosopedia:naming rules will be developed. In the meantime Wikipedia's are useful to read as they apply to the whole GFDL corpus extending it. So are those of openpolitics.ca which are more focused on action and political projects like this one.
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unhelpful names
Unhelpful name:
- Useful Information. The page creator probably didn't realize that this link would be unhelpful on pages other than the original, where the context was probably clear.
A similarly unhelpful name:
- Other_Voting_Rights_Organizations The other links indicate "national advocacy", "regional and state advocacy", etc., so "other" was intended to mean "miscellaneous".
Also:
internal identity and process issues
- Yearly Kos Convention - is it YearlyKos as in DailyKos? Since it is always a convention (as the name dKosopedians at Yearly Kos suggests), the word "convention" is redundant or just descriptive, and not part of the name, accordingly Yearly Kos convention would be right if the convention is called Yearly Kos. Please set the standard for this, doesn't matter what it is, but it should match the name of DailyKos obviously. So if it's going to be Yearly Kos then the bloggers become Daily Kos... *EVERYWHERE*.
See Talk:Main Page for issues regarding ThinkTanks and presentation of the material to newbies to set good habits, neither of which are strictly page name issues. This page deals only with things where the issue is mostly name.
- ThinkTanks is a bad name, it's both a WikiWord and a plural - even ThinkTank is bad though, an index should look like one. This stuff is really about getting to a better Vision for America and dKosopedia:reframe decisions, a reframe:namespace
- a claim:namespace have been proposed, if it exists, then,
Stuff like Frameshop: PRAs (Personal Retirement Accounts is just wrong. Try reframe:retirement and deal with the specifics under term:PRA and so on.
- Talking_Hawaii_politics,_news,_other_links is a very bad name, this "talking..." prefix is not used in any other page name, and it seems very wrong since everyone knows "talk:" as a prefix imposed by mediawiki. Keep it in present tense, maybe make it "Discuss Hawaii" and leave it at that? Needs more thought. Also the article itself is riddled with toxic overuse of uppercase which will lead to more name pollution. Keep the Hawaii names perfect please!
- In a perfect english speaking world, there would be one understandable english language. However, one can't escape pidgin english in Hawaii, where many cultures crashed into each other, and tried to understand one another. "Talking politics" is derived from "talk story" (google 'talk story' or 'talking story'). To those who live in Hawaii, talking Hawaii politics would equate with 'dicussing Hawaiian politics'. The topic title is too localized, when dealing with a wider audience, clarity is key and grammar important.
other naming issues that may create bad conventions
Planning,_Maui_County is another weak prefix: "Planning,_" ? Hmm... Maui County plan or Maui County planning would be better I think.
- Flash_Carbonization™ is using the trademark character as page name suffix, a very questionable practice. Microsoft thinks it owns "Windows", etc., and trademarks are specific to a field. An advantage of doing this is that people won't link to a term that is proprietary, so maybe it's good, but it need to be discussed more.
putting personal essays and rants in main namespace
- Taxation_and_Capitalism is obviously an essay, put it in personal user page, if you want a general article do some serious research and call it taxation and capitalism or relationship of taxation to capitalism
- I_Hate_Elitism_Part_1 is another essay, put it in personal user pages
- Muslims in Space seems to basically exist to make fun of rigid rituals, it's cute but again belongs in a personal page
If you prefer collaboration, maybe we need a rant:namespace, but that would be subjective, so best to put these in position:namespace or claim:namespace and keep them very specific.
invitations to participate
- Page names like Participation - How To Run For Office violate every standard there is, but clearly address an area we don't have standards for anyway - so we need some
- FrameShop is just a bad name and doesn't state the action desired or ongoing, as a verb like "reframe:free trade" does. This fits with names like term:free trade, position:abrogate NAFTA, and claim:Bush doesn't practice free trade.
Names like Happening Now, Rapid Response, MemeTank and Software Technology Project, The dKosopedia Category Project are all too generic and again do not state the action desired of the user or the scope of the project(s). We need more predictable consistent namespace prefixes with action focus. Something like do:namespace ? So it's do:now for tasks we must "do now" and do:respond if we would say "do, respond!" to the crap the Republicans are putting out.
So names like How To Run For Office become do:run for office with obvious variants like do:run for POTUS or do:run for Mayor of San Francisco.
- else you get garbage like Pennsylvania:_Running_for_Office which can reliably become PA_do:run for office and keep a separate namespace for these specific things. It's fairly obvious that you want to refer to generic pages wherever possible.
simple naming problems
Just take positions here, and offer alternatives if you feel strongly. If the positions aren't challenged, then, they'll just be dKosopedia:renamed.
First, we really really need to keep the Hawaii names absolutely perfect and pure, since they are so complete that others will use them as a template to imitate. So get picky with Hawaii names, and fix them
- Hawaii_Gas_Cap is not the name of the law, is it? If not, then it's the Hawaii gas price cap
- Kauai_Council_Members should be all Kauai Council members (there is no point listing just some of them, even if there's no detail for some of them). But isn't just Kauai Council a better name? or all Kauai Councillors ?
inconsistent plurals
Watch the plurals.
- Book Reviews should become all book reviews if it's a list of all book reviews published here, else it's list of book reviews and can link externally
- Current_Governors should become all governors
- Changed to List of current governors Chadlupkes 13:02, 6 October 2006 (PDT)
- Mayors of Major Cities should become list of mayors of U.S. cities so you aren't forced to list "all mayors" in the US, nor decide what "major" is
- Plurals like Historical Indexes should be cleared, e.g. list of historical indices or (to differentiate those things being created here for which dkosopedia:itself is the origin), (list of) all historical indices.
- Are Fighting Dems an incorporated group? Or just a vague concept that anyone can latch onto or deny being part of at any time? If the latter, then, link it as list of fighting Dems or something.
overuse of uppercase
This is a very serious problem because it prevents casual linking, e.g. you cannot say Mayors_of_Major_Cities in a sentence unless you are an idiot. A non-idiot would write mayors of major U.S. cities in a proper sentence, so you are requiring non-idiots to use a complicated anchor text solution that will lead to errors or fewer links. There are many problems of this nature. Always name pages in ways they can be used in sentences most easily and with as little context as possible:
- Iowa_Statewide_elections,_2006 should be Iowa statewide elections, 2006 and include the gubernatorial, legislative, and municipal elections
using uppercase to define generic concepts into overly specific existence
- Assassination_by_Aircraft_Accident is an obvious example, until this is in anyone's legal dictionary, it's assassination by seeming aircraft accident
- Weapons_of_Mass_Destruction is contentious so term:WMD and weapon of mass destruction is better, but be more specific where possible, differentiate a fission bomb from dirty bomb from fusion bomb for instance.
- Federal_Gift_and_Estate_Taxation should become U.S. federal gift and estate tax as many different statues apply, and many US residents are subject also to tak in other countries (thus need to differentiate the US tax payable)
- Voting Rights and Voting Rights Organizations is abusing a generic into a proper name, they must become voting rights and list of voting rights organizations (redirect voting rights organizations to the "list of", as is standard at Wikiepdia)
- What in the world is the concept of Other_Voting_Rights_Organizations ? See "unhelpful names" link above for discussion of this link and Perjury_Comparisons . A proper name for what is actually in this article is Republican view of perjury.
- Pan-Anglo_Nationalism isn't about "anglos" nor "nations", it's more like Anglospheric imperialism of the Churchill sort. Far better to discuss this under term:English-speaking peoples which Churchill actually really used
- Christian_Nationalism is either specific to the US or not a properly named concept, try Christian rationales for U.S. nationalism or something like it
- Republican_Moral_Values is quite obviously not generic, use Republican claims about moral values and break it down into examined claim statements, or stick to Republican moral values
- People_mistaken_for_Combat_Veterans - is there really such a thing as a Combat Veteran (proper name?) Unless this is legally defined, change this to people often mistaken for combat veterans
- Drug_War is really term:war on drugs, where the idea should be discussed, keep the specific topic of DEA terror in some other page
- Initiation of Impeachment by a State Legislature is just the bad AP titling convention which must be fought everywhere it appears in wikis, the correct name for this using the proper Reuters/wiki convention is initiation of impeachment by a state legislature. When you talk about a specific legislature then you can put it in capitals: initiation of impeachment by the Hawaii State Legislature. Case conventions are followed properly in almost all Hawaii articles, and those should be used for other states.
- Since media bias is a generic term, it should never be capitalized, ever
- Same for Political Ideologies, which is also bad for using a plural in a name. Try political ideology or political movement
- Key Court Decisions is a bad name, key SCOTUS decisions is specific
- State Governments are state governments because there's no one standard for them all necessarily, they all have their own history and some that are effectively state governments, like Puerto Rico, have fewer powers, etc., while others like Hawaii, have more powers for historical treaty reasons
- Political Parties is another bad plural, try political party and U.S. federal political party to stick to Wikipedia's/GFDL conventions.
- Voting Systems are voting system in Wikipedia
- there is no agreement on what the 2004 Ohio Irregularities were, so this is a generic: say "irregularities"
timelines
- Most have uppercase problems. Our timelines are not first class concepts / acronyms nor proper names nor legal definitions, so should never be capitalized. The event they are based on might be capitalized, e.g. Hurricane Katrina timeline, but Secret Prisons Timeline is wrong in every sense:
- There are secret prisons all over the world and the US is implicated in a good many of them and has been for many years - so this title is way too general and needs to be replaced with CIA secret prison timeline
- BartFraden responds: The Europeans are describing the problem as one of Secret Prisons. Surely we should consider adopting conventional article names that permit easy searches.
- With no one watching, there is no reason to believe that the standards of a "prison" apply at all - these must be assumed to be torture chambers, etc., so a more honest name would be CIA secret long-term kidnapping and torture under the Bush administration*The Iranian Nuclear Crisis Timeline is also problematic in several ways, as there is no "crisis" just because Bush says there is, or because Israel does, and the crisis probably has more to do with Iran having too much oil or too much power over Shia in Iraq than it does with their source of power. Iran is nowhere near creating a fission bomb, the crisis is thus quite manufactured. A title like Iran nuclear capability timeline would be much more reasonable.
- BartFraden responds: Q: When are international crises recognized? A: 1) When tanks roll and/or bombs fall, 2) When news media describe them as such and 3) When post hoc conclusions are rendered by historians about a series of historical events. I think we're safely in the realm of "2) When news media describe them as such." Major U.S. and European news media sources are treating this chain of events as a crisis and describing it as such. The IR theorist in all of us wants a crisis to meet the ideal of being a sharp series of unexpected events that demand immediate decisions from those with command authority. Unfortunately real international crisies often build slowly. Lets watch this one before we go downgrading it just yet!
- Warrantless_Eavesdropping_Timeline is another poor name and should probably be more clearly related to National Security Agency like domestic NSA warrantless eavesdropping timeline
redundancies
- The Plame_investigation_2006 is redundant with Plame leak timeline and Before_the_leak:_1988_-_2002. Put all this stuff in the properly named Plame leak timeline
place names
Does Auburn,_Massachusetts need the redirect Auburn, MA or something? Probably not since you end up with things like Ontario, CA which conflicts with the province of Ontario, Canada. Again follow Wikipedia where possible.
The Emperor's new clothes
If you look on the Main Page, you will find this statement: The dKosopedia is written from a left/progressive/liberal/Democratic point of view while also attempting to fairly acknowledge the other side's take. The underlying question here is "What is dKosopedia?" and just as importantly, what dKsopedia is not.
- Are we out to duplicate the whole of Wikipedia?
- No, if only on the grounds of server demands.
- Are we out to duplicate some of Wikipedia?
- Yes, but only where the Democratic point of view needs expressing.
- And what of articles where one is hard-pressed to find a Democratic POV?
I agree there are some name-space issues. Mainly, many article titles are non-encyclopedic, not to mention articles that don't belong here in the first place. dKos is indeed a blog, but dKsopedia is not certainly not. Blogs should be done on dKos, in your own blog space; you are not going to get any more prominence here than you would on dKos. Position papers, requests for debate on a current issues, essays, rants, etc., do not really have a place here; this being a wiki, where anyone can edit, one wonders what the original author of such an article feels like having their original version of such articles edited into oblivion, i.e., having their original pov lost in the shuffle.
The name-space conventions regarding the states and associated articles are established, and only need to be refined and made consistent. Biographical articles, insofar as they relate to politics, are similarly established. These are not a problem.
One of the shortcomings of this and the main wiki is how current events are handled. These are profoundly labor-intensive articles, but once out of the news cycle, editors tend to lose interest and the articles are often abandoned, left to cleanup crews to slap templates at the top demanding rewrites -- rewrites that are often never accomplished. A related problem in such cleanups is the fact the URL references are broken. And when doing a google on older such articles, the best reference tends to be Wikipedia or dKosopedia. Fixing such articles becomes burdensome, even impossible. Creating a current events category is only a partial solution, in that it in turn has to undergo regular maintenance. At the end, quite a few abandoned currrent events articles end up becoming candidates for deletion; it's not that the topic is unworthy, it's just that no one is interested in putting them into a condition fit for an encyclopedia.
Place names have been mentioned. For the state level articles (Iowa, Hawaii, are of course necessary, but if you notice, they are quite diffferent from Wikipedia's. I think city and county articles should initially link to the main wiki, and confine themselves to the Democratic pov, mentioning state and local political issues and personalities. I would follow Wikipedia's naming conventions here. To restate myself, we are not Wikipedia, nor do we really duplicate Wikipedia; rather we supplement it, and even sometimes correct it, from the point of view of Democrats. --Allamakee Democrat 21:15, 29 May 2006 (PDT)