Naming Philosophy |
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I'm not sure what to do.
There are two over-riding driving forces:
Other peoples' thoughts would be welcome.
- Colin
I agree - however I would suggest avoiding use titles starting with "The" unless it is a unique idea like "The Riemann Hypothesis" and even then the word "the" could be omitted.
Also pages referring to persons should have the surname or a single name only so that it will definitely be referred to whereas a title like Carl Friedrich Gauss would not be referred to by any shorter name. (good points - colin)
If persons are entered with their forename first they will occur out of the obvious alphabetical order. What about a standard policy of having two pages for all people - (1) Kepler, Johannes and (2) Kepler. Problem with that family of mathematicians - Bernoulli they even share their forenames!!!
- Derek
But this site is not necessarily intended to be used for indexing, so I don't think that matters. I think we should allow that this will be imperfect, and that some problems can be fixed when they become problems. I suggest a single page - surname only - for people, and if there is more than one with that surname, have links to separate pages where the name is used in full. In the case of the Bernoulli clan, list all the individuals with the same name on the same page, in sections headed with their dates of birth and death. Then point back to the Bernoulli page where we can have a family tree. With links. These are just example and suggestions. Remember, this is specifically intended not to be an encyclopedia. We should have a page for a topic or person with just a skim, then pointers to other material. No more pages than necessary to create the required disambiguation. - Colin