NamingPractices
Contents
Should AboutUs wiki pages be named for the domain of an organization, or for the organization's name?
We can answer this question in many different ways, probably even in different ways in different parts of the site. The idea of this page is to document current thinking on page naming.
Reasons to name pages for something other than domain names
- Domain names are historical, in some sense. AboutUs is really more concerned with the actual people and organizations than with the domain names or websites.
- The software can be easily changed to still have the pagename link to the website.
- Domain names are really important while describing the contents of a website (just as the AboutUsBot does by prepopulating the page by gathering information from different sources about a website's contents, languages and contact info etc), but while describing anything other than a website, the domain name is not only of secondary importance, it is often "not descriptive enough," if not outrightly misleading. Consider the following examples from Lasik Portal (First the domain name, then the name of the institute):
- DrSalz.com for "Laser Vision Medical Associates."
- Cornell-Eye.com, for "Beverly Hills LASIK Center."
- NewEyes.com, for "Advanced Ophthalmology Institute."
- DCeyemd.com for "Leonard M. Friedman, M.D., P.C."
- Cepas.org for " Capital Eye Physicians & Surgeons."
- LASIKNYC.com for "Laser & Corneal Surgery Associates, P.C."
- NY2020.com for "New York Eye Specialists."
- LASIKEyeNYC.com for "Park Eye and Laser Laser Vision Correction - Ophthalmologist."
All these domain pages reflect the name and purpose of the institute only very remotely. Important thing is that it's the institute and not the domain page that is our main concern. Similar is the case with The Presidential Election 2008 Portal. May be most if not all people in the US can get an idea of what the page is about when it's titled, JoeBiden.com, ChrisDodd.com, JohnEdwards.com, Gravel2008.us, Kucinich.us, or ExploreHuckabee.com but it's highly unlikely that people outside the US will. Given the particular structure of international power and politics, it can be said with reasonable certainty that this portal is not directed merely at the domestic audience.
- Just like there's a possibility that by naming pages after the institute or organization, we might need a disambiguation page, (see examples above) this probability is even more severe with respect to domain pages. Here are a few examples:
and there might also be ones like
- CDeyemd.com
- EyeCDmd.com
- EyeDCmd.com
- MDEyecd.com
- DMEyecd.com
- DMEyedc.com
- CDEyedm.co
- EyeCDm.com
- EyeCDdm.com It could just go on!
and scores of others, if we also consider the suffixes .info, .net, .org, .edu, and/or country suffixes like .ca, .pk, .uk etc. Since it's not clear from any particular arrangement as to what it stands for, it's going to be extremely hard to find out a certain page until a person knows exactly what he's looking for. (Name of the institute, I believe at any rate, is much more easy to remember than the name of the domain page.) Since the purpose of AboutUs is to facilitate people to find what they are looking for, may be we'd need to have a disambiguation page for the domain names, which to me is much more weird than disambiguating names of the organizations.
Reasons to name pages for domain names
- The current software makes the pagename into a link to that domain, and doesn't if it's not a domain.
- The current software has a "Go directly to site" link above the thumbnail that goes to the domain, only if the pagename is a domain.
- The AboutUsBot prepopulates on domain pages, so when people come here looking for themselves, it's useful for us that they see pagenames that are domain names, so they search for their own domain name, thus creating the page by bot if it doesn't exist. We lose that pattern if we change.
- In some ways, naming pages after domains helps with us not having to disambiguate pages as much. On another wiki, www.mywebsite.com, www.my-website.com, www.mywebsite.net, etc. might have one page name (Just "MyWebsite") that then has to disambiguate to multiple pages. Using domain names, these pages retain their unique identifiers.
- Good idea, adding examples, so here are a few:
Not all organizations are going to be difficult to parse out, but a DomainName gives us a good unique identifier. My two cent :-P MarkDilley
- Here is another example The Wish List and WishListOnline.net
Best Practices
People
In general, people should have pages named with their name, TedErnst rather than TedErnst.com or Ted for example.
LASIK area
Doctors
Pages for LASIK doctors should be their full name, with "Dr." at the beginning and/or MD (and whatever other degrees they have) at the end. Example: Dr. Paul J. Dougherty, M.D.
Providers
Pages for LASIK providers should be the full name of the clinic, center or practice. We will not implement this Best Practice until the tech team allows the page name linking (WeLinkYou to work with this scheme. Example: Dougherty Laser Vision
Presidential Candidates
The Portal:2008 Presidential Election should link to pages named for the actual candidates, not for their websites.
