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PageNameBestPractices ConsensusPoll

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Contents

We're Done When ... edit

We're never done. These PageNameBestPractices will grow and evolve with this website.

How to participate edit

If you don't feel strongly about this issue, please feel warmly welcomed to work on other things.

If you have reviewed the PageNameBestPractices and it seems to accurately reflect your feelings about page naming in the sections of AboutUs that you care about, please put your name down with a YES status.

If you are not yet satisfied that the PageNameBestPractices accurately reflect your feelings about page naming in the sections of AboutUs that you care about, please put down your name with a NotYet status.

If you are feeling ProcessFatigue please feel warmly welcomed to take a break. Before leaving, please consider leaving either a yes or not yet status with an explanatory comment.

Taking a break while leaving a yes status means:

"Given the people who are currently participating, it feels extremely likely that PageNameBestPractices will be of high quality shortly (or already is now). I trust you all to watch out for my interests and come to a good document. If Suzy Trustworthy wasn't actively participating I might feel otherwise. I know that Suzy Trustworthy will ping me if I need to become involved again. So, have at it friends and know that I support your effort in spirit even if I can't actively participate right now."

Taking a break while leaving a not yet status means:

"Given the people who are currently participating it feels like we're a long way from high quality PageNameBestPractices. If Suzy Trustworthy was actively participating I might feel otherwise. But since no one I know from my own personal experience to be trustworthy is involved, I'm going to ensure that the final results are better by leaving my status a not yet.

If the PageNameBestPractices in its current form doesn't speak to you, please directly edit it. No need to explain your every edit, just tweak the icon until it works for you. (EfficientlyExpressedSuggestions)

Status edit

Participants edit

  1. MarkDilley NotYet In the context of the internet, domain names are like RealNames in wiki, and I do believe that at our core, AboutUs is a socially editable domain directory, that core is only the tip of the iceberg potentially, but is still there
  2. Kasey NotYet ... I think Scott nailed it.
  3. Nathan NotYet per Mark
  4. ChrisBabson NotYet I think the page name should stay with the url, but the page title in listings should accurately reflect the name of the clinic.
  5. DrewMyers NotYet I agree with MarkDilley on the RealName convention. Wouldn't the organization name be something that would be more effectively covered with the deployment of portals?
  6. Isabel NotYet Not sure why we'd change the current system- we'll lose the links, and after all we're a domain directory at heart
  7. Blake Hinckley NotYet I agree with Mark.
  8. TakKendrick NotYet I don't even know who Mark is, but I agree with MarkDilley :) There's other points here that I care about keeping Domain Names for, but the domain names are unique identifiers that can't be overlooked, just like [{RealName]]s are.
  9. ScottKeeler NotYet I think the question is fundamentally incorrect. "Should AboutUs wiki pages be named for the domain of an organization, or for the organization's name?" The question forces an either/or, but there isn't any reason it can't be both. Secondly, if you say a domain name is a RealName on the internet, then you must say RedDog88 is also a RealName on the internet. Microsoft.com is not the RealName of Microsoft, Inc. You can't add a qualifier, such as "on the internet" to a RealName without changing the definition of a RealName.
  10. Simon Koldyk NotYet I agree with Scott Keeler on this one.
  1. TedErnst YES Pages should be named for the clinic, with the domain redirecting there.
  2. Asad Butt YES I understand MarkDilley's concern about losing link to the clinic's page, but I still believe that page names should be for the clinic rather than the domain page, also because there are at least two more places on the page where one can reach the clinic's website. But if we can somehow preserve this one link too, after naming the page for the institute, that I think will be the best way to go about it.
  3. Obed Suhail YES I second Ted.

Discussion edit

  • To speak to Isabel's point about linking, we would not lose the links. Brandon said the dev team could easily provide the links no matter what our naming scheme is. TedErnst
  • To speak to the point that we are a domain directory, are we? TedErnst
  • I'm not understanding what Drew is saying about the portals. When someone comes to AboutUs.org and types in the name of their clinic, what happens? TedErnst
  • To the point about "why change?" my answer would be, "why stay the same?" The reason for having this page is to question our assumptions. It's obviously NOT obvious that we should change. Obed moved all the pages from one LASIK city portal from domain name to clinic name, so this conversation began. Wikis evolve as people work on them. He's since moved them back, but his instinct was to have the names be the clinic names. There's no hurry to make any decision with this page, but to evolve options over time. It could be that there's a particular universe of pages at ABoutUs where it's clearly not domain names that's the interest. That universe could be it's own section on this page. Diversity is good. :-) TedErnst
  • Asad Mahmood Butt and I had a conversation, and it seems we are thinking on opposites :-) He likes the idea of redirecting the domain name to the name of the organziation. I like the domain name as the unique identifier on the internet with the name of the organization at the title of the page. One of the ideas Asad Mahmood Butt suggested was that make two pages, the domain name and the organization name. I worried we would have two locations for similar information. We are still trying to figure out the diff. MarkDilley
  • ScottKeeler - when I use the idea RealName on the internet, I use it as a unique identifier to link directly to the item / organization / person that I am speaking or referencing. That is one of the values of RealNames on wiki that I appreciate. So in fact, Microsoft.com is the RealName, on the internet, of the company Microsoft. You are correct, maybe the definition needs to be modified slightly to talk about what a RealName means in the context of the internet vs on a wiki. On wiki my RealName is MarkDilley, on the internet I use MarkDilley.org mostly.
  • Scott and Simon, I'd love to have both! What would that look like? TedErnst

LocalNames edit

  • In response to the question regarding AboutUs being a socially editable domain directory. I continue to believe that is the very core of this wiki. Currently, there are nearly 6 million pages here, 99% of them referencing domains. If we take a LocalNames approach to this question - I think we can come closer to agreement on this issue. MarkDilley
Could you say more about how this idea applies here? TedErnst
As LionKimbro thinks of LocalNames in the context of his space and binding names to url's. We could think of AboutUs as our space, and bind names to url's. I think that makes sense to me. ~~ MarkDilley
Mind if I attempt to restate? If I have a wordpress (we)blog, and I have local names installed, I can type [[AU]] as shorthand and what actually shows up in html is http://aboutus.org. That's awesome! And at AboutUs.org, the same concept means that we have a collective knowledge that develops where we know that when we type [[Google]], we get the html of http://aboutus.org/Google, correct? That's cool! So all this part is clear. What I'm not quite getting (maybe you can say more), is the difference between using [[Google]] (for Google) and [[Google.com]] (for Google.com). They both work, correct? Are they (in our imagined future where everything we do makes sense) the same page, or different pages. Google the company and google.com, the domain (or website) are definitely two different things. Do we care? Thanks for indulging my clumsy attempt at understanding. TedErnst

I think this is where we disagree. I think that Google.com is the same as Google the company. It is their website. Here we use Google as the LocalName, and it redirects to Google.com MarkDilley

Sorry, I'm still not hearing why Google.com is "better" than Google as the place where the text about this company actually lives. TedErnst

Google.com is the internet home for Google, Inc. MarkDilley

I have a couple of thoughts. TedErnst
  1. Google.com is unambiguous. Even if there were another Google that we had an article for (Google.net, for example), the Google.com page would be the home of the company we now know of as Google, while the page Google could be a disambiguation page. This fact seems to support naming our names for domains.
  2. When MarkDilley said above "this is where we disagree," I'm not sure I agree. :-) What I mean is, on AboutUs, I have yet to hear anyone suggest that Google and Google.com should resolve to different places. So we all agree on that. And I completely agree that Google and Google.com refer to the same entity. What I said above about them not being the "same" is irrelevant and I can retract.
  3. At this time, LocalNames is not helping me understand MarkDilley's point of view about naming. Bummer.
Ted, I think Mark wants to keep domain name as its name on AboutUs but its outside-the-web name (real name, as I would call it) to redirect to the same page. LocalNames for example, redirects to LocalNames.org. Asad Butt
I think you're right, Asad. What I'm still not clear on is the "why". I wish I were better at active listening, so I could help Mark speak more about his point of view in a way that we all could understand. TedErnst
Here is me trying to explain my thoughts on this, I know it to be a lame first attempt. ~~ MarkDilley
Thanks for this, Mark. I have a couple of questions about the image, so I can understand. What's WikiHost in this case? And what does the LocalNames bubble near the bottom represent? Thanks for trying to get through my thick skull. :-) TedErnst