Category talk:Player organizations

Naming convention for player organizations and families

As part of the drive for standardizing page name conventions, we have come to the point we need to decide how to handle the page names of player organizations. Caraamon and I had a very brief discussion and came up with a basic guideline, but now need to open it up for suggestion and comment. What we came up with is as follows:

• Pages for official player organizations will have their page names be exactly as it appears in the Official Player-Run Organizations folder on the official forums.
• Pages for unofficial player organizations or families that have a folder in the Unofficial Player Guilds, Clans and Families folder on the official forums will have their page names be exactly as it appears in that folder.
• Player families without a folder on the official forums will have their page name indicate their functional status as opposed to a nickname or other designation. E.g. "Fancypants family" instead of "House Fancypants" or "The Fancypants Imperium." This includes multiple-family structures.
• Player organizations without a folder on the official forums that do not have a family structure will have their page name be the functional name of their organization without any nicknames or shortened versions. E.g. "Acenamacra militia" instead of "Acenamcrannihalators" or "The Acenamacra Reds."

In short, the suggestion is to have the page name be simply the functional name of the organization/family unless they have a folder on the official forums in which case the page name will be that instead. Note that a page's contents can include any nicknames or other designations without issue as long as they meet general content standards. These guidelines are only for the page title itself.
Again, I stress this is currently up for consideration as part of a general drive for page name standards and feedback is welcome.--ABSOLON (talk) 22:24, 24 January 2015 (CST)

I think the naming standard would certainly be helpful, esp. for those of us not in the major population centers that haven't really heard of the smaller groups or family houses. I imagine you already talked over and dismissed the suggestion, since it isn't listed above, but another way to go about things would be to do similar to what Caraamon suggested we do the Elothean Houses; add in (type) after the names for the different page focuses. For instance, on the House of the Floating Reed page, you will note there is a (shop) for the shop, (location) for the house grounds, etc.

For this project then, it would let each of the groups keep with the name they identify themselves with (using the ex. "House Fancypants"), but the page title would be House Fancypants (player) or House Fancypants (unofficial). If "House Fancypants" was an official order, it could be House Fancypants (order) or House Fancypants (official). And if it was a game organization (I'm thinking about all those Therengian houses the Barony oversees), it could be House Fancypants (SIMU) or House Fancypants (GM-controlled). Or whatever.

I guess I just see that last list item being a bit of a headache over the long haul, when you take the page name indicate their functional status into account. Militias are pretty straight forward, same with triages I guess. But what about things like the Ilithi Trading Company (are they a Trader organization, an Ilithi or Zoluren group, maybe a crafting group? They could fit a multitude of "functions"). It seems like you might have to come up with a pretty long list of possible qualifiers for the "functions", and even then, you might have groups that do multiple "functions" or that fit none of the defined "functions" so then a moderator would need to then be contacted to add in another one to the list or make a decision on which of the ones approved fit best to a group. In short, it would be subjective and not straightforward, yea?

Anyhow, I think the original suggestion works out too, just offering another suggestion and some feedback! --Kythryn 01:18, 25 January 2015 (CST)

Typically parenthesis in page names are there for disambiguation purposes only, so I don't see that as a good solution in this case as it just makes linking harder and requires more redirecting. Categories (see below) would be a better way to do this.

I think the idea is more to have the name reflect what the group actually represents rather than a specific function, so your example of Ilithi Trading Company would be able to stand as is since it fairly clearly defines its function as long as it isn't a family syndicate, in which case it should be listed as a family and the body text can list that the family runs the Ilithi Trading Company. Redirects are useful here, so if someone types in Ilithi Trading Company it would redirect to the appropriate page in the event that the page ends up not being called that.

That said, I had already mulled over non-family organization naming and I can easily see the argument here for non-family groups to just use whatever their official full name is as the page name as long as it accurately depicts the actual scope of the group. A handful of traders can hardly be called a Trading Empire, for example. I think the guild would have something to say about that at the very least. Nicknames should be out of the question either way, except in the body of the page and potentially as redirect pages.

An for easy way to categorize by general function... that would be to expand on the categories that are already there. E.g. Player militias, Player political organizations, Player crafting societies, etc. Specific functions aren't necessary here as it's just a general grouping and groups can belong to more than one if it fits. And these should only be put in place at a level where multiple groups fit into them. No sense creating a category for just one group.--ABSOLON (talk) 03:29, 25 January 2015 (CST)

I'm generally on the same page as Kythryn. I think that player-run family groups should just be Fancypants family, especially to distinguish them from official noble houses. I don't really see an issue with referring to militias with province-based functional names, except in the odd cases where more than one militia is operating in the same province, as was the case in Zoluren with the Vela'tohr and the Steel Gladiolus.

However, for other organizations, I would probably just use their official name (if present on the forums) or whatever they are calling themselves unless there is a good reason not to do so. An example of a good reason not to stick to the original name is the term "empire," which might be confused with actual historical governments.

Some of what we are trying to accomplish with group pages could probably be handled via category. That way, we can designate the group's function without having to work it into the page name. --ISHARON (talk) 14:45, 25 January 2015 (CST)