Separating article page-names and titles

[J. Noel Chiappa]

There's a discussion going on at [[CZ Talk:Naming Conventions#Royalty]] which is basically revolving around the fact that in some sense it's 'wrong' to have an article title like "Charles II (France)" because he'd never be referred to like that in a serious work. The problem is that in MediaWiki, as it stands, the page-name (used by the software to uniquely identify pages) is also the article title. This 'overloading' (to use the computer geekese) is at the heart of our problems.

So. Here's my question: can we edit our skins (where we seem to have available technical expertise, unlike MediaWiki) to either display the page-name, currently displayed at the top in a large font, in a small font, or add something like "Page-name" and put the whole works in a small font - or just not display it at all?

Because if we can do that, we can (sorry Chris :-) add an 'article title' field to the metadata, which the {{subpages}} template automatically displays at the top, in a very large font. (Pages which can use their page-name as their title won't need that field filled in, and can just display their page-name as their title.)

I assume I needn't point out that this would also take a lot of the steam out of many 'what should we name this article' fights, because one camp could claim the page-name, and the other the article title! :-)

Comments?

Noel

[Jitse Niesen]

There's a discussion going on at [[CZ Talk:Naming Conventions#Royalty]] which is basically revolving around the fact that in some sense it's 'wrong' to have an article title like "Charles II (France)" because he'd never be referred to like that in a serious work. The problem is that in MediaWiki, as it stands, the page-name (used by the software to uniquely identify pages) is also the article title. This 'overloading' (to use the computer geekese) is at the heart of our problems.

The page name is also used to link to an article. If the article title is different, then how do you link to it? So the page name will have to be displayed somewhere else, but even then, I think it will be very confusing.

[Derek Harkness]

So. Here's my question: can we edit our skins (where we seem to have available technical expertise, unlike MediaWiki) to either display the page-name, currently displayed at the top in a large font, in a small font, or add something like "Page-name" and put the whole works in a small font - or just not display it at all?

The simple answer to the question is yes it is possible. I can make the title change size, disappear, replace it with different text or even replace it with a picture. In addition it's possible to do it on some pages and not others by adding a line of code via a template on the page to be affected.

The problem is that in MediaWiki, as it stands, the page-name (used by the software to uniquely identify pages) is also the article title. This 'overloading' (to use the computer geekese) is at the heart of our problems.

I mentioned this problem on one thread sometime last year. It's quite ridiculous that we have a system that requires unique names for pages. Clearly there are many articles that have the same names. Plus a manual system of disambiguating them. Every other site in the world seems to have automated this task. I'll add in to the mix that we currently manually redirect too. If the article title need not be unique then we may specify multiple possible titles for each article and have the software disambiguate and redirect for us.

What I'm suggesting would require more tech time than Noel was originally implying. However, when faced with the mammoth task of creating a site the size of wikipedia, I think the tech time outweighs the shear volume of manual labour that will be required to disambiguate, redirect and other such tasks we do now. It is clear form our use of subpages and clusters as well as our approval system, that we want the wiki to work in a manner that is different form wikipedia. We need to fork the software and set this up properly or else as Jitse says, it will all be very confusing. It's time to start doing this properly and build a tech team that can code things the way we need them coded.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

The page name is also used to link to an article. If the article title is different, then how do you link to it? So the page name will have to be displayed somewhere else

Well, that's true, but if we print the actual page name (our internal name) at the top in, say, small italic font, labelled as some sort of identifier, and with the article's title in a large, bold, font, so that the top of the page looks something like this:

  Page identifier: Charles II (France)
  Charles the Bald

  Charles the Bald (823 – 877; Charles II of France and also of the Holy
  Roman  Empire)

I think it will have the effect we want, as well as being clear to everyone. Any Citizen can see instantly that if they want to link to the page, they need to link to "Charles II (France)".

(This is just an example; since he held so many different titles, we might actually want his article at "Charles the Bald". I use it because it's a nice example of how we can chose separately i) the page name where the article is, ii) the title on the article, and iii) what names we want to use for the person in the article).

even then, I think it will be very confusing.

What specifically is confusing about the sample I gave above? (I'm not being snarky, I genuinely don't see how it could be very confusing.) Labelling the "Charles II (France)" as a "Page identifier" should clue most people in that that is not the title of the article - the use of a large, bold font for the title should be enough of a visual clue that that's the title.

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

The simple answer to the question is yes it is possible. I can make the title change size, disappear, replace it with different text

Great! So if we decide to do this (perhaps as an interim solution), it shouldn't be too hard, then...

In addition it's possible to do it on some pages and not others by adding a line of code via a template on the page to be affected.

That would be really useful. For pages in all namespaces other than the main article namespace, the page's displayed title should be the same as the pagename, I think....

It's quite ridiculous that we have a system that requires unique names for pages.

Well, computers don't deal well with ambiguity! It's really necessary to have unique names for each page (i.e. collection of history, linkable destination, etc). Britannica has them too, they're just ugly things like "article-238782"! The mistake MediaWiki made was in using the same name for both the unique page-name, and for the article title.


The rest I'll reply to separately, because it's a separate topic.

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I'll add in to the mix that we currently manually redirect too. If the article title need not be unique then we may specify multiple possible titles for each article and have the software disambiguate and redirect for us.
What I'm suggesting would require more tech time than Noel was originally implying.

I'm not opposed to eventually doing something along the lines you suggest; however, given our limited resources,to the extent we can decompose this into separate stages, I'd prefer to go that way, unless there's some really good reason to keep it in one giant lump.

However, when faced with the mammoth task of creating a site the size of wikipedia, I think the tech time outweighs the shear volume of manual labour that will be required to disambiguate, redirect and other such tasks we do now. It is clear form our use of subpages and clusters as well as our approval system, that we want the wiki to work in a manner that is different form wikipedia. We need to fork the software and set this up properly or else as Jitse says, it will all be very confusing. It's time to start doing this properly and build a tech team that can code things the way we need them coded.

I agree that we are going in a different direction from Wikipedia, and it would be good to have support in the MediaWiki code for our unique methods and structures. I also agree it would be good to have a tech team to do this. However, since we currently lack one, that's why I'm thinking about things we can do now to do 80% of what we need, while only needing  a very modest amount of effort from the level of tech talent we already have on hand.

If the project is to be a success, we have to have content; and so I'm focussed on quickly providing mechanisms (even if they have to be temporary kludges) for getting on with creating the content. As long as we have the right data entered, it should be a "Small Matter of Programming" to later convert it from whatever temporary system we set up to begin with, to something better and more permanent (e.g. from metadata held in a template, to metadata supported directly in Mediawiki). So I'm happy with somewhat kludgy temporary mechanisms, because they allow us to get on with creating content.

If CZ is a success (i.e. if we can get the content), we'll be able to improve the underlying mechanisms later on. That's the way it went with Wikipedia - in the early days, we didn't have a lot of the stuff that got added later.

Trust me, I'd love to have a perfect technology platform, but my guess is that we can't do that, and also work out our content policies, and create actual content, all at the same time, and with so few people!

Noel

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I am not convinced that this is a technical problem. Look at this search from EB: It cries out for a disambiguation page, whatever historians may think. They do not have a monopoly on history: it belongs to all of us


   Charles II
king of Navarre from 1349, who made various short-lived attempts to expand Navarrese power in both France and Spain.
   Charles II
king of France (i.e., Francia Occidentalis, the West Frankish kingdom) from 843 to 877 and Western emperor from 875 to 877. (He is reckoned as Charles II both of the Holy Roman Empire and of France.)
   Charles II
Charles II of Spain, detail of a portrait by Juan Carreno, c. 1685; in the Kunsthistorisches …king of Spain from 1665 to 1700 and the last monarch of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty.
   Charles II
king of Naples and ruler of numerous other territories, who concluded the war to regain Sicily started by his father, Charles I. By making astute alliances and treaties, he greatly enlarged his ...
   Charles II
Charles II, detail of a painting by Sir Peter Lely, c. 1675; in the collection of the Duke of …king of Great Britain and Ireland (1660–85), who was restored to the throne after years of exile during the Puritan Commonwealth. The years of his reign are known in English history as the ...
   Charles II (or III)
Charles II the Great, drawing by an unknown French artist, 16th century; in the Louvre, Parisduke of Lorraine from 1545, whose reign is noted for its progress and prosperity.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I am not convinced that this is a technical problem.

The fact that we can't have two separate, distinct pages with identical titles (i.e. the name in large, bold font at the top of the page) is a technical limitation - one my proposal lifts.

Look at this search from EB: It cries out for a disambiguation page

That result looks just like a disambiguation page! They may not call it that, but that's what it is.

I don't know if it's automatically assembled (by showing the first sentence from every article with that title), or if it's done manually. Derek's post (further up the thread) seemed to asking for disambig pages to be created automatically, from all pages with (roughly) the same 'title'. I agee that would be nice, but I suspect it would require more programming support than we have at the moment.

Noel

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

I am not convinced that this is a technical problem.

The fact that we can't have two separate, distinct pages with identical titles (i.e. the name in large, bold font at the top of the page) is a technical limitation - one my proposal lifts.

Look at this search from EB: It cries out for a disambiguation page

That result looks just like a disambiguation page! They may not call it that, but that's what it is.

I don't know if it's automatically assembled (by showing the first sentence from every article with that title), or if it's done manually. Derek's post (further up the thread) seemed to asking for disambig pages to be created automatically, from all pages with (roughly) the same 'title'. I agee that would be nice, but I suspect it would require more programming support than we have at the moment.

Noel

This was the beginning of many pages of a search that I had to do manually on EB. THe point is that it was an effort, and also I had to ask the question: "How many Charles IIs were there?" That is shoddy scholarship, to leave it up to the reader to work out what MIGHT have been the case and query it.

We can do far better on CZ, and make the whole thing user-friendly. I am still not convinced that we need articles with the same title. In my opinion it will only confuse the readers, and should be avoided at all costs.

[Jitse Niesen]

even then, I think it will be very confusing.

What specifically is confusing about the sample I gave above? (I'm not being snarky, I genuinely don't see how it could be very confusing.) Labelling the "Charles II (France)" as a "Page identifier" should clue most people in that that is not the title of the article - the use of a large, bold font for the title should be enough of a visual clue that that's the title.

Well, perhaps "very confusing" is a bit too much. I didn't expect you to propose to have both the page-identifier and the article-title in the article. It seems a bit of a waste of space (and important space, at the top) for what is essentially an implementation detail.

Nevertheless, the proposed system is more complicated than the current system. So I think the probability for errors increases if we implement this, especially since people sometimes do not check  where the internal links that they add go to. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble; having the "(France)" in the title never struck me as a problem.

I think this is why it isn't implemented in Wikipedia. The DISPLAYTITLE magic word is quite close to what you want, but it has been restricted so that using the article-title as link still works.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I didn't expect you to propose to have both the page-identifier and the article-title in the article. It seems a bit of a waste of space (and important space, at the top) for what is essentially an implementation detail.

Well, the whole point of having it in small font was not to take up much room. We can make it a miniscule font, if you want! :-)

But if that's still too much room for you, we'll drop it, and people can get the page identifier from the URL. (Does everyone have the "Address" bar turned on in their browser, though?) Or wave their mouse over the "Discuss" link and see what it says; or right-click it and "Copy shortcut", and then paste+edit. Or or or....

But I do think it's a bit unfair of you to complain "If the article title is different, then how do you link to it?", and then not like it when we show the information you need to link to it! :-) Which is more important?

Nevertheless, the proposed system is more complicated than the current system.

And metadata isn't complicated? But we put up with it because it has advantages (and note how easily we added sub-groups, and how easily we can retrofit this, because the metadata exists).

especially since people sometimes do not check  where the internal links that they add go to.

That's a separate problem, one that this suggestion will not make either better or worse. But I do have a proposed solution for that one (which I have yet to find the time to turn into a formal proposal, sigh); see this thread). That's been on my to-do list for a long time, maybe I'll try and do that today.

I'm not sure it's worth the trouble; having the "(France)" in the title never struck me as a problem.

I'm going to turn you over the esteemed Prof. Jensen (on that talk: page) to argue that one!

I think this is why it isn't implemented in Wikipedia.

The list of things that are problems in Wikipedia, but haven't been fixed because 'we have always done it that way, and we aren't going to change now' is longer than my arm! Case in point, the very problem you mentioned above - linking to incorrect destinations. Many years ago I proposed a solution, one which most people seemed to like - but it never got done.

I suspect the same happened with page identifiers and article titles. They set things up so that the page identifier was also the article title, and now, 'it has always been that way', so they just live with the problems that causes.

We don't have to!

Noel

[J. Noel Chiappa]

THe point is that it was an effort, and also I had to ask the question: "How many Charles IIs were there?" That is shoddy scholarship, to leave it up to the reader to work out what MIGHT have been the case and query it.
We can do far better on CZ, and make the whole thing user-friendly.

I'm a little lost - exactly what mechanisms would you like to see us add? And don't forget that we are very short on technical capability at the lowest levels (i.e. MediaWiki) so if your answer is something of the form 'change how search works' I'm not sure how (or how soon) that could get done.

I am still not convinced that we need articles with the same title. In my opinion it will only confuse the readers, and should be avoided at all costs.

Again, I'm going to let Prof. Jensen argue this out with you. (Me, I'm OK with "Charles II (France)" - but I definitely do like the flexibility to allow the article title be different from the page identifier; if nothing else, it will take some steam out of those draining 'where should this article be' arguments).

I will note in passing that both Britannica and World Book seem to find it perfectly OK to have several different articles with the title "Charles II".

Noel

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

The fact that EB is a very conservative encyclopedia and breaks no new ground is not news. WE are not obliged to repeat their mistakes.

I disagree completely with Jensen on this point; he also adopts a very conservative position, which the majority of CZ users do not share.

I do not think we need any new technical solutions. We need an editorial agreement on how to name people whose titles are identical but span different time periods and continents. These will then be linked together from a disambiguation page.

[Robert_W_King]

This could be solved with use of the timeline template on the disambig page.

[Argyriou]

Noel says: I will note in passing that both Britannica and World Book seem to find it perfectly OK to have several different articles with the title "Charles II".

Citizendium is not paper. A student opening the C-Ch volume of their paper encyclopedia will quickly find Charles II. When they realize they've found the wrong Charles II, they will turn a few pages forward or back to the right one.  Citizendium has no mechanism for that. There is no "next article" button, and implementing such a thing would be a huge headache. Thus making the change to allow us to have 8 articles titled "Charles II" will serve no useful purpose - someone would arrive at a Charles II article, realize they're on the wrong one, and not know how to find the right one.