Help talk:Naming Conventions

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The following discussions have been archived as subpages of this Talk page:

New Discussion about Naming Conventions and Ship/Paring articles

Because of a lot of further discussion around the naming of pairing pages a new discussion may be warranted.

I like when all the ship names within a category, like Category:Supernatural Relationships are consistent, either full name/full name, or name x name, etc, it makes things more organized and helps to give context to future editors about how the pages in that category should be formatted. I do not love first name/first name titles for ship articles, when full names are possible, because some names are very common, and just because there might be only one well known Sam/Gabriel pairing doesn't mean that there will not be a Sam/Gabriel in a future fandom, they are both very common names, however, I do like any use of a character's names over portmanteaus or smush names. Overall, I am not a fan of using smush names as the title of pairing pages, because they do change over time, for example, the Castiel/Sam Winchester pairing, their early smush name was Sassy for the first few years, especially over on LiveJournal, and it wasn't until the later seasons that newer fans, and fans over on Tumblr, started calling them Sastiel. -- Kingstoken (talk) 18:14, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for starting this off! However, I should mention that when I suggested a centralised discussion, I was thinking specifically about Supernatural ship page names, not general page naming. The fact of the matter is we're never going to have a consistent standard across all fandoms, because different fandoms have radically different naming conventions - and that's okay! Fanlore's role is to be descriptive, not prescriptive. We have had a number of discussions about this internally in the Fanlore Committee and there's never a resolution, because people have different opinions that are held equally strongly and can't be reconciled. The point you make about smushnames is true of Supernatural fandom (in that they can change over time), but isn't necessarily true of other fandoms (like non-western fandoms) where the smushnames used are very consistent.
So I would like to avoid going over the same ground again, but for individual fandoms where there isn't a clear consensus on what ship name 'type' to use, I think it's worth having a discussion about. For Supernatural, for example, we have gone with full names for a lot of the ship name pages but I'm not sure if those reflect actual fandom usage. Fans of Sam/Dean are very adamant that the page retain that specific name, and as Auntags suggested on the Dean/Cas page, Dean/Castiel was the original name used for that ship. With those two cases in mind, I think a first name/first name approach for Supernatural ship pages would be the best combination of consistency and reflecting fandom usage.
However, I would be keen for other folks who are in SPN fandom/edit SPN pages to weigh in on this, to make sure that there is a consensus and that people are on board with having a consistent system, because that will help in fending off future issues XD --enchantedsleeper (talk) 18:56, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
Oops, sorry about that I miss understood, but do think my comments about smush names still applies to the SPN discussion -- Kingstoken (talk) 19:20, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
Firstly, thanks to both of you for centralizing this discussion! If the aim is to find a consistent naming convention for SPN ships, I agree with kingstoken that smushnames may not work. Even the most consistent SPN smushnames have seen variation in spelled. And we have rarepairs with smushnames that would be unrecognizable to most fans. First Name/First Name has always been the norm in SPN fandom (outside Ao3's tagging system) so I think that is a good option. It would also address any moresome pages with very long page names. But, not all SPN pages can be First Name/First Name - Adam Milligan/Michael should probably stay where it is for disambig reasons.
I am wondering if a consistent naming convention is the way to go. Folks were very vocal about keeping Sam/Dean, but there are also editors who want Dean/Castiel to move to Destiel. I don't see anything wrong with having Sam/Dean and Destiel, if that's what editors want. (I would personally prefer Dean/Castiel, but I'm happy to go along with the majority decision)
With that in mind, we need to get a consensus on applying a consistent naming policy, as well as agreeing what that naming convention should be. At the moment editors are looking at one page at a time, rather than the category as a whole. If we can get a lot of SPN editors in this discussion, I think that could change. So could I suggest linking this discussion on the Sam/Dean and Dean/Castiel talk pages to make more editors aware of these proposed changes? --Auntags (talk) 00:45, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Personally, I think it's more important to name ship pages according to what the most common ship name is, regardless of consistency (even consistency within a fandom). A consistent naming scheme might be a fine place to start if you're not sure what to call the pages and just need a place to start writing, but I don't think it should override fandom practices. It makes sense to me that Sam/Dean and Destiel are the ship names--first name/first name was the popular ship name format when the show started in 2005, and smushnames are more popular now.--aethel (talk) 18:55, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Use of virgules (/)

Hi, I hope this hasn't been covered elsewhere, if it has please just point me at the discussion! Is there any way yet when naming a page that includes a pair name such as Kirk/Spock to avoid the odd sub-page links it sets up? I am comfortable with using / to specify sub-pages, am just hoping for maybe some kind of escape character or tagging mechanism that specifies a / as NOT a sub-page marker. Something like the // or !/ in some languages where the usage translates to a simple text /, and the single usage / stays as the sub-page marker. Hope this is making sense. Sahviere (talk) 02:45, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Sahviere I find it impossible to name pages using / without them becoming sub-pages due if memory serves me correctly, to a site code. Some new pages for fandoms made after the subpage doesn't seem to follow this pattern however -- Ellakbhesse (talk) 13:54, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the update. Yeah, it is a known issue and mentioned in a couple of the help articles, I was just wondering if things had changed since I was active here last! :) I know it's very hard to keep help pages up to date all the time so a question seemed ok. Sahviere (talk) 23:45, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

This doubt also plagues me, I think we will have to wait for someone responsible for the site to answer -- Ellakbhesse (talk) 01:00, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Fan Artistry

People might disagree with me that this is a type of fan "work" but I don't know. Anyways there's something where I know what *I* call it... I know what springs to mind when I see it. And that's 'staging'. But I don't know if others have a term for it, and if no one else calls this type of artistry by that name then I feel like it'd be vetoed here. It's where a fan takes a figure (for a character or otherwise; plushies, funko pops, action figures, etc.) and creates a scene as if on a stage (like at a theatre, for a play/skit). I suppose one might also call it 'scene staging', or 'set staging'? Does anyone else have a terminology for this? I'd like it to have a page on Fanlore, personally. It's such a cute and unique way of showing love. -JadedPrism (talk) 19:56, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

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