User:Scott Ritchie/Naming
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[edit] The current policy
Here's what Wikipedia's naming conventions say currently:
[edit] Prefer singular nouns
Convention: In general only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English (such as scissors or trousers). Category names follow different pluralization conventions, see Wikipedia:Categorization#General naming conventions.
Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals)
[edit] Use gerund of verbs
Convention: Use the gerund of verbs (the -ing form in English) unless there is a more common form for a certain verb.
Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (verbs)
[edit] Rational for verbs:
A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action ("bring", "read"), occurrence ("decompose" (itself), "glitter"), or a state of being ("exist", "live", "soak", "stand"). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. It may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments (what we usually call subject, object, etc.).
[edit] Policy
It is recommended that the gerund (the -ing form in English) be used unless there is a more common noun form. For example, an article on swimming is better than one on swim. The plain form of the verb can be a redirect to the gerund. Existence is an example of such a "more common noun form".
Do not use verbs for article titles if there is a more appropriate noun title.
[edit] Proposal
Change this to specify that we favor the gerund form of verbs when there is a verb and noun form that are basically the same, especially when the article is about the action (ie the verb): examples:
- squatter and squat should be squatting
- vote or voter should be voting
- gerrymander should be gerrymandering
- swimmer or swim should be swimming
- runner or run should be running
This helps promote consistency, as we have lots of articles on things like bloc voting or cumulative voting but not voting in general due to this naming convention. It seems extremely ackward to use uncommon singular nouns (eg: bloc vote) rather than the gerund verb form.
Note that in the cited cases the proposed naming conventions would probably follow what has been done with many articles anyway. This also seems to be consistant with the rest of the stated policy for verbs - the example of swim can be used as a singular noun in two ways (I had a good swim, I am a swimmer), yet the preference is for an article on swimming. Essentially, the proposal is just to have the preference for the gerund even when there is a noun form of the verb be made explicit somewhere in the naming conventions.
