QBWiki talk:Naming conventions

State/state university naming discussion

Perhaps we should include a note about the way to distinguish a college from the state it is in; for example, the page called Missouri for is distinguished from the page called Missouri (state). This seems like a reasonable convention I think we could include, though I'm not sure how many other state/college pairs have this ambiguity. Alex Dzurick 03:39, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd think a majority of states at least have the potential for this conflict; would a better solution be to create the pages for the discussion of high school quizbowl as Missouri High School Quizbowl or something of the sort?--Fred Morlan 00:35, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

You might want to look at what I did at the top of the Illinois page. I may have copied it from another state that had already done the same thing. We might also want to agree on calling the pages from each state the same thing (other than the state name of course). David Reinstein 02:08, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Multiple names

Re: Number of names, I think it's perfectly ok for things to have multiple names when it serves a historical function. (As it does for Maggie Walker, which was not known by that name in the 1990s.) Also, on a wiki it's very easy to make sure the links go to the right place with the | function: Governor's School-- Jeff Hoppes 00:39, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Except that it is confusing if you don't know that they're the same school, and multiple pages use both names to cite that school. It'd be fine within the text of the Maggie Walker page to use the Governor's School name, but if you're on the results page of some 90s tournament and it says "Governor's School," it's unlikely that you'll know what school that is unless you are aware of quiz bowl history or else are from the Richmond area. --Fred Morlan 01:03, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Acronyms

Is WKU referring to ourselves as such really that big of a problem? Our quizbowl team itself will continue to keep using the acronym WKU in our communications with the community regardless of what the QBWiki calls us. This is because our school administration greatly prefers "WKU" to "Western Kentucky", and over the last 4 years our school has went to great lengths to brand ourselves in that way. I really don't think that "WKU" is any less known than acronyms like UTC, UCI, or UCSD. Another example would be VCU, which is reasonably well known now but up until a few years ago (and even in some cases even now) was referred to as "Virginia Commonwealth" by a lot of people.--Nick Conder 03:26, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

It's not about what the WKU team refers to itself as, it's about what the quizbowl community refers to you as. It may be that WKU eventually becomes known as WKU, but I'm not certain that's the case. These things evolve. --Fred Morlan 23:54, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, I'll try to adhere to this for now for whatever I do on the Wiki. At some point either the university will decide that "Western Kentucky" is just as good as "WKU" or it will sink in enough to where everyone uses the acronym. If the latter ever happens, we can resume the discussion then.--Nick Conder 06:51, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

If the latter happens, we move the page to "WKU", search the Wiki, replace all references to the full length name with WKU, and be done with it!--Fred Morlan 14:33, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization

I seem to recall that the old QBWiki had a naming convention by which individual pages were in title case, while only the first letter of the first word was capitalized in categories (except when absurd to do so; e.g., "Category:High school tournaments" but "Category:NAQT" and "Category:Cardinal Classic"). Should we continue this convention?--Dwight Wynne 20:29, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Full forms

I have to say the conventions regarding acronyms/initialisms are very inconsistently applied. I recently tried to change the name of a page from NYU to New York University, but the edit was reverted because it isn't in keeping with naming conventions. However, the decision on whether to use full forms or acronyms are almost arbitrary. The page says that schools such as MIT and UCLA should have pages with that title because they are commonly used. However, BU is a commonly used acronym for Boston University, GMU (or just Mason) for George Mason University and either GW or GWU for George Washington University. However those pages are titled Boston University, George Mason (but not George Mason University) and George Washington instead. "Boston University" is not required to be in full to avoid confusion with Boston College, since BU cannot stand for Boston College. On the other hand, colleges better known by their full or semi-full names, e.g. UC Irvine, are listed as acronyms, e.g. UCI.

Not using full forms in every case can be a source of much confusion, especially when flagship state schools are referred to by just the state or given names (e.g. Illinois and Rutgers), but other campuses are given composite names to distinguish them, e.g. University of Illinois-Chicago or Rutgers-Camden. Why shouldn't all schools be referred to by their full, official names? Flagship school names should include locations, e.g. Ann Arbor or Urbana-Champaign, otherwise the title ( "Michigan" or "Illinois") can be taken to refer to the entire university system and not just the main campus.

Using "common names" and acronyms instead of full forms looks very unprofessional in my opinion and should not belong on any encyclopedic website, however much of a niche site this may be. No one would expect Wikipedia to title pages "Ole Miss" or "Mizzou" just because that's what everyone calls them. I suggest changing all names (at least for colleges and universities) to their full, official forms, and setting up redirects to allow people to reach them by searching with commonly used short forms. The latter is also an area that needs work, since most short form redirects to pages titled with full names (e.g. BU, GW(U) or GMU) do not currently work. -Mirza Ahmed 07:16, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The names are somewhat arbitrary, but they do reflect how the schools are generally referred to in quizbowl. This includes the handling of flagship state schools, and since flagship state schools are generally referred to by the whole system's name in contexts outside of quizbowl too (and there is no reason in quizbowl, as far as I can think of, that the whole system would have to be considered), I'm fine with it. I also don't feel either that the current usage looks unprofessional or that looking perfectly professional is a top priority, but if there is an approximate consensus disagreeing with either of those, we can make the switch. If you want to make the redirects that should work (given the current naming system), that would be great. Jonah 16:05, 27 February 2012 (UTC)