Naming standards
The RoPlay wiki has conventions when naming articles, every article created must respect these conventions and appropriately follow them else face renaming.
Article
Neutrality in article titles
See also: Neutral point of view
All articles must contain a neutral title and not one meant to slander/dismeanor or attack members/groups/etc within the community. Titles must neutrally but also accurately reflect the articles purpose.
Non-neutral but common names
When the subject of an article is referred to mainly by a single common name as evident through screenshots/chatlogs/etc then the wiki generally follows that and will result in the article being named as such. Sometimes that common name includes non-neutral words that would normally be avoided however would be made an exception in this instance.
Article title format
Use sentance case
Titles are written in sentance case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text.
Use singular form
Article titles are generally singular in form, e.g. Horse, not Horses. Exceptions include nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers).
Avoid ambiguous abbreviations
Abbreviations and acronyms are often ambiguous and thus should be avoided unless the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject (e.g. PBS, NATO, Laser). It is also unnecessary to include an acronym in addition to the name in a title. Acronyms may be used for parenthetical disambiguation (e.g. Conservative Party (UK), Georgia (U.S. state)).
Use nouns
Nouns and noun phrases are normally preferred over titles using other parts of speech; such a title can be the subject of the first sentence.
Do not enclose titles in quotes
Article titles are not enclosed in quotation marks in any circumstance.
Do not create subsidiary articles
Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another: even if an article is considered subsidiary to another (as where summary style is used), it should be named independently. For example, an article on transport in Azerbaijan should not be given a name like "Azerbaijan/Transport" or "Azerbaijan (transport)"; use Transport in Azerbaijan.
Special characters
There are technical restrictions on the use of certain characters in page titles, due to how MediaWiki stores and matches the titles. The following characters cannot be used at all:
# < > [ ] | { } _
There are restrictions on titles containing colons, periods, and some other characters.
English only
The wiki is strictly English only, and so titles must reflect that. However, this is avoided in terms of nouns, all titles must be in the Latin alphabet.
For example: Beijing natively is 北京, it must still be wrote as Beijing. However a city like Ciudad Juárez can be spelt as Ciudad Juárez as it uses the Latin alphabet.
Formatting
Italics, bold text, different fonts should not be used in titles.
Category
Categories are pages that pages can link to, to create essentially a library of topics, example being the templates category that holds templates, that being said, categories should be named according to what they are posed to hold.
Example being the Towns category is for towns, templates category is for templates. However, if someone wanted, they could create categories for their own group. Naming standards for these usually follow this format:
Category:Topic_of_Organization Name
* please note, in this instance "Organization" refers to towns, countries, groups etc. So say there was a town with its own military, a category for that could be
- Military_of_TownName
and that category could have sub-categories such as:
- Army_of_TownName
NOTE categories MUST NOT BE TREATED LIKE PAGES, they are there to act as a library for a specific topic.
Essentially, you just name the category around what is posed to be holding.
Category title format
Use sentance case
Titles are written in sentance case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text.
Templates
Templates need to be named according to exactly what they are, if they are an infobox they need to start with "Infobox" and end with what ever it is for, if it is a list it needs to start with "List" and end with what ever it's for.
Infoboxes
Infoboxes must be named starting with Infobox, for example
Flags
Flag category
All flag templates are to be put under the category of the nation it is based in, regardless of it being a town, city, organisation, group or faction. What ever country it is from/in, it goes into that country's flag category.
For example, the flag of the British coast guard would go in categories: [[Category: Flags]], [[Category: Flags of Great Britain]], all flags, regardless, must go under the [[Category: Flags]] category, regardless of whether it belongs to a country, alliance, group, entity or anything else.
Fictional towns and real life towns may have sub categories in other categories, for example:
- [[Category: Flags of Germany]]
- [[Category: Flags of Berlin]]
or
- [[Category: Flags of Aurelia (fictional)]] IGNORE BRACKETS
- [[Category: Flags of Aurelia City (fictional capital of Aurelia)]] IGNORE BRACKETS
Real life flags of towns and countries
For real life countries/towns you have to name it after their 3 letter iso code, for example, Germany would be {{GER}}, Poland would be {{POL}} and Canada would be {{CAN}}. All spellings must be done in the English characters only.
For real life towns, as there's if no official standard, you have to use the full town name, for example, New York City would be {{NewYorkCity}}, Berlin would be Berlin, Cork City would be {{CorkCity}}. All spaces must be removed and each character must be capitalised. All spelling must be done with English characters else required otherwise. For example Beijing would be {{Beijing}} and not {{北京}} Chinese simplified: Beijing.
Fictional in game flags of towns and countries
As we use the Towny Advanced plugin, it allows for features such as towns and nations also called countries which often use their own unique flags, naming standards is similar however instead of a three letter simplification, towny nations must use their entire name, that is a non-negotiable standard. For example, say there was a fictional nation called Aurelia, the flag template would be {{Aurelia}}, or if there was a fictional nation called Bosfura, its flag template would be {{Bosfura}}. The same goes for fictional towns.
If someone makes a nation/town based on a real life country or uses a real life countries flag, then they do not need to make their own template, they can use the template for that flag. If someone makes an in-game Ireland for example, they may use {{IRE}} instead of {{Ireland}}, or if they had their country be called Celtic Union and they used the Irish flag, then they can use {{IRE}}.
Flag templates of real life countries are NOT to change unless they change in real life, all edits/remakes/alternatives and fictional versions MUST be put under their own template.