FamilySearch Wiki talk:Naming a Project


 * FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject U.S. Census is in the FamilySearch Wiki namespace. Its title contains the word Wikiproject to show it is a project within this wiki.
 * Wikiproject US Census is in the main namespace. It contains the word Wikiproject to show it is a project within this wiki.
 * FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Jurisdictions is in the main namespace; however, the use of the colon in the title and the words included before the colon may lead some users to believe that a FamilySearch Wikiproject namespace exists, when in fact there is no such namespace on the wiki.

Examples showing divergence
Some examples that show just how bad it was on 8 April 2009:


 * 1) Maryland Barn Raising Tasks
 * 2) FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Integrating Place Standards Database with FamilySearch Wiki
 * 3) FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives
 * 4) Task to Copy Research Guidance and Help Content
 * 5) FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Articles Needing Revision

Project titles are getting too long
Note that FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Integrating Place Standards Database with FamilySearch Wiki and FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives use the same naming and namespace conventions as projects on Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative music). Sensible conventions, but loooooong titles! Wikipedia's product namespace is simply "Wikipedia" where ours is "FamilySearch Wiki." Such a long namespace title bloats any title incorporating that namespace.

And it may get worse: There is talk among FamilySearch managers about renaming FamilySearch Wiki to FamilySearch Research Wiki because there may be a future need for more wikis at FamilySearch. Can you imagine if all the titles in the wiki's product namespace were all preceded with "FamilySearch Research Wiki:" -- wow, what looooong titles we'd have, Grandma! Ritcheymt 23:10, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Create project namespace?
What if we replaced titles like FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives to WikiProject:Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives or FamilySearch WikiProject:Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives. To do this, we'd need one of two things:


 * 1) A community decision to create a new namespace called "WikiProject." In this case, the use of the string "WikiProject:" in the beginning of a title would place the resulting page in the WikiProject namespace. Or...
 * 2) ...a community decision that we want projects to reside in the main namespace. In this case, the use of the words "WikiProject:" in the beginning of the title would not place the page in a special namespace.

I love G Fröberg Morris' title FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Articles Needing Revision. It captures that the page is about a project and that the project is on FamilySearch Wiki (for outsiders doing a Google search). But it doesn't feel too wordy.

Molliewog and others can probably think of a lot of reasons why this is a stupid idea; I need you to bring me back to reality! Ritcheymt 23:10, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

If FamilySearch is thinking of having more than one Wiki, then the namespace "WikiProject" might be confused with the other Wikis. Maybe "Research WikiProject" would work, but it is long. I hope we get other ideas from the community. Franjensen 15:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)