Editing Help:Naming conventions

This version of the naming convention guidelines for the Encyclopedia is largely gathered from existing practice. It should provide enough information to create new names consistently without having to examine names of current items.

This document should always reflect current practice, so if you are going to name something, it is important that you either follow these guidelines or update this page.

== Pages ==
=== People ===
''Main article: [[Help:Naming conventions (people)]]''

Pages for people should be named with the "use name" of the person. Use names generally consist of a given name followed by a family name, and frequently do not correspond with full, legal names. [[Manny Ramirez]] is a use name (and proper page name). ''Manuel Aristides Ramírez Onelcida'' is Manny's legal name, and differs in the inclusion of a middle name, matrilineal name, and the correct form of the letter 'í' in the patrilineal surname.

When two players have the same use name, their page names must be disambiguated. If there is a clearly most significant player (frequently, one major leaguer in a field of minor leaguers), that player's page should use the use name, and all others should be extended, with a disambiguation page at ''Use Name (disambiguation)''. If no player stands out, all should be extended, and the use name should redirect to a dedicated disambiguation page. 

When multiple people with the same name were added to the Encyclopedia at initial population, they were disambiguated with their
12-character SABR person key.  This is not a recommended practice (in fact, it's basically impossible for anyone to do now, since
SABR person keys are not easy to find publicly, and are only assigned after pages are created).  It is encouraged that pages
currently disambiguated by this means be migrated to the styles recommended below.

A page name serves functionally as the main URL to which other pages, both internal to the Encyclopedia and on the Internet at large, will link.  Therefore, the chosen page name should be as stable as possible, and not subject to having to be changed down the road because the previous disambiguation method no longer "makes sense."

In approximate order of preference, here are some suggested practices:
# If the people are commonly known using an initial or otherwise modified version of their name, use that.  The best example of this is [[Bobby J. Jones]] and [[Bobby M. Jones]]; since these pitchers played for the same team at one point, there is a pre-existing natural and expected way to disambiguate them.
# If the people are easily distinguishable by the time or place in which they were active, use that designator; for instance, "(Negro League player)" or "(Major League executive)".
# If the person's year of birth is firmly known and unique among people with that name, use that, e.g., "(born 1986)".  Do '''not''' use this if the person's birth year is not certain; this applies to most minor league players before about 1980, for instance.
# If the person's year in which he made his professional debut is firmly known and unique among people with that name, use that, e.g., "(debut 2009)".  Do '''not''' use this if the person's debut year is not certain; this applies to most minor league players in the 19th and early 20th century, for instance.
# If the person's total professional activity is known, use this, e.g., "(active 1904-1906)", "(active 1920s)", "(active 1884)".  Of all the disambiguation methods listed, this is the one where the "stable URL" rule is least important, since it will be used for people about which we know very little.  Disambiguation of this sort is ''tentative,'' and may (and should) be revised down the road if new information about the person comes to light that allows us to use one of the more canonical methods listed above.

=== Teams ===
Team-season pages are currently named with the year, location, and league. The location is the one used to describe the team, and not necessarily a precise, or even accurate, description of where the team plays. For example, [[2009 River City (Frontier)]] is the current name for the River City Rascals, who played in O'Fallon, Missouri. "River City" is an appellation used to signify the team's location in greater St. Louis, and does not correspond to any actual place name.

Team-season page names are planned to change to incorporate team nicknames in October 2009.

There is not yet a formal convention for "franchise" page names.

=== Ballparks ===
''Main article: [[Help:Ballparks#Page naming and disambiguation]]''

Ballparks pages are generally named for the full name of the ballpark. In the case of multiple parks sharing a name, they are disambiguated by adding the city (actual city, not team locale appellation) in parentheses. In the case of multiple parks in one city, they are differentiated using roman numerals. There are examples of both forms of disambiguation in the [[League Park]] disambiguation page.

=== Places ===
Places within the United States are generally named for their place name and state name. [[Cleveland, Ohio]] is one example. Places outside the United States should add the standard short for English name for the country (as defined in [[wikipedia:ISO 3166-1|ISO 3166-1]]).

The standard for whether a place should have a page or be grouped with a nearby city is still evolving.

=== Colleges ===
College pages should be named according to the "School Name" column in [[Help:College names]]. US colleges should be disambiguated by adding the state name in parentheses. International colleges should be disambiguated with the ISO 3166-1 short country name. In all cases where two colleges share a name, the name itself should be a disambiguation page. For example:

* Saint Mary's University - disambiguation page
* Saint Mary's University (TX) - University in San Antonio
* Saint Mary's University (Canada) - University in Halifax
* Saint Mary's University of Minnesota - This title does not require disambiguation, since the official school name includes the state.

In the case of this example, the disambiguation policy is entirely hypothetical, since none of these universities have a page in the encyclopedia.
=== Other pages ===
There are currently no standards for naming of pages that fall outside of these categories. If you create such a page, please document it here.

== Templates ==
=== System templates ===
Templates are named in all lowercase, except for the first letter, with dashes between the words. The first word of a template's name is usually its scope - this generally specifies what sort of page will be transcluding the template. [[Template:Person-page]] and [[Template:Person-infobox]] are both transcluded by people pages. [[Template:Sabrlinks-journals]] is transcluded by "/sabrlinks" subpages.

=== League navbox templates ===
League navbox templates are named for the full name of the league, followed by the word navbox. For example, [[Template:2009 American League navbox]].

== Variables and properties ==
=== Template parameters ===
Template parameters use lower case with underscores, e.g., <code>name_first</code>.  Currently, some of the older templates use the CamelCase style, e.g. <code>nameFirst</code>.  This is deprecated in new templates, and old templates will gradually be migrated over.

=== Semantic properties ===
Semantic properties have words separated by dashes, with the first word capitalized. For example, <code>Person-name-first</code>.

== CSS ==
=== Classes ===
Classes are named in all lowercase, with words separated with dashes.

=== IDs ===
IDs are named in all lowercase, with words separated with dashes.