Forum:Template naming policy

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Any quick glance at our templates will show that there isn't much internal consistency with how they are named. Some have all the words capitalized, some don't use any caps, some only cap words that should be, and the use of spaces between words is all over the place.

For awhile now, the trend has been moving towards a more "natural" template naming style, where the template is named as if it were a normal page (with spaces and the normal use of caps), as opposed to the earlier styles of no spaces and all words starting with a capital, or all lowercase. I'm purposing we actually write this trend down, as I think this makes using them much easier since you aren't trying to remember what runes we decided to use in each instance, and update the old templates to this style. At the same time, I think we should also stress simple names over more complex and/or specific ones where there isn't a need for it.

A few of the templates have already been moved to this style over the last few months, and I don't think we necessarily need to abandon the old styles as redirects for the more commonly used ones either, as making several bot runs, or updating them all by hand, will take some time to say the least.

As part of this, if there are any templates, or "block" of related templates, that people think should be completely renamed, or if you think we shouldn't "officially" move to this style, now would be a good time to bring it up. - Archduk3 18:51, April 15, 2012 (UTC)

I'm wondering if the "edithint" template names can be simplified so that not as much needs to be typed. It doesn't really bother me a lot, but since suggestions were requested.... :) I'd also wonder if the None Selected template could be renamed to something which seems a little more intuitive. Again, doesn't bother me a great deal but it might be nice to change. I might have more suggestions as I take time to consider them. 31dot 19:39, April 15, 2012 (UTC)

"Edithint" was the "pna" for those templates, and shorter versions of them have been brought up before, so I'm still game for that. I think none selected is named that way because it's what would be added if we had the template select on uploads working...or something. It might be worth looking at that again while considering a different name, though I'm not sure what you might have had in mind for that. - Archduk3 20:52, April 15, 2012 (UTC)

"None Selected" is a required name for that one, as the name is built into the Mediawiki software and cannot be changed. -- sulfur 21:16, April 15, 2012 (UTC)

Well, there goes that idea. :) 31dot 21:29, April 15, 2012 (UTC)

Your "eh" (in caps or not) idea from the page you linked to would be an improvement, I think. 31dot 21:31, April 15, 2012 (UTC)

We could also keep the templates with the full "edit hint" name (adding a space as mentioned above or even keeping them without a space), but use redirects with a shorter name, for example "Edithint-vandalism" would have the redirect "vandalism", like some of the pna templates have redirects that drop the pna part. - Archduk3 04:34, April 25, 2012 (UTC)