Help:Naming pages

Article titles in MediaWiki are case-sensitive, with the exception of the first character. Thus, Magus and magus are the same page, but "Troupe Style" and "Troupe style" would point to different pages. It's very important that we have only one article about each topic. To achieve that goal and make Project: Redcap usable, we have to adhere to a strict capitalization convention.

Our capitalization and naming rules are:

1. Capitalize each title as if it were appearing at the beginning of a normal sentence. All single word titles are capitalize. The first word of any multi-word title is capitalized. The remaining words are lower case, except for as provided in the rest of the rule. If your article is about learning to play Ars Magica, "Learning to play" would be correct and "Learning to Play" would be incorrect (because "play" is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized).
2. Drop leading articles (such as "the" or "a" at the beginning of an article title) because they make pages hard to find by name. This includes product names. There is one exception to this, as the title of the Shakespeare play is so well known, not including the article at the beginning is more confusing.
3. Capitalize proper nouns normally.
4. Capitalize the titles of books as they appear on the cover: Realms of Power: The Divine. Note that the leading article exception applies to book titles as well, with the exception to the exception discussed in that rule, above.
5. Capitalize game terms as they appear in the latest edition of the rules: for example, Casting Total, Botch die, Grand Tribunal, Lesser enchanted device.
6. Prefer the singular form for nouns: Magus not "magi," Virtue not "Virtues". We make a few exceptions to this rule: for example, the Covenant concepts article has a plural title because it is inherently a list of several covenant concepts; similarly Products is a page about many products, not just one.
7. For pages about specific Hermetic magi, in most cases, use Name of House. For instance, Andru of Jerbiton, not Andru of House Jerbiton. The first use of the name in the actual text may be longer than this, and might include titles, parens, and other elements. It is also good to either do a redirect page of just the name, ie Andru, or if we get more than one Hermetic character with the same personal name, a disambiguation page. Certain exceptions to this are below:
   1. Founders of the order are identified by their name and "the Founder". Thus, Bonisagus the Founder. Right now, there are two other exceptions. Trianoma, although a founder of the Order, is titled only by her name (this may change). Also, Pralix, though a house founder, not a founder of the Order, is only titled by her name. Between formerly being part of House Tytalus, creating the Order Ex Miscellanea, and then leading House Ex Miscellanea without formerly rejoining the Order, it's just easier to use the one name.
   2. Members of House Ex Miscellanea should be titled "Name Ex Miscellanea" because of the Latin grammar. At the time this rule is added, there does not appear to be any pages for Ex Miscellanea magi other than Pralix.

If you follow these rules, it will be easy for other writers to link to your article. If you don't follow them, a moderator will probably re-name your article.

Dealing with Name Collisions

Name collisions occur as soon as two or more pages claim the same name. This is particularly probable for simple words that bear two or more in-game meanings. Name collisions are also likely for common names that have different meanings in different contexts, such as »Bonisagus« — a term that applies to the singular person, the denotation of the House, as well as any member of that House.

The suggested procedure to deal with name collisions is as follows:

1. At first, keep page names as simple as possible, and try to avoid additional specifiers where possible.
2. When this is not possible any more, a page fork should be performed that creates two or more additional pages.

For example, the page »John« might be split into »John (actor)« and »John (writer)«. While the latter two continue to grow, the former is discontinued, and contains just a list of connecting links:

The term '''John''' is ambiguous and refers to one of the following specific pages:

* [[John (actor)|The actor]]
* [[John (writer)|The writer]]

Additional links can be included as soon as the need arises. Page »John« is tagged as »Ambiguous«.

The advantage of this scheme is that

• Page »John« continues to exist.
• Referrers may remain unchanged, but can be changed at any time.
• In the former case, the reader is gently notified of the name collision.