What are the various naming conventions for tags? This may include
- First name/last name order in person tags?
- Inclusion of propositions at the front of fiction works (like the-wheel-of-time vs. wheel-of-time)?
Any other possible conventions?
-
See also this question: meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/412/…– Tony MeyerMar 1, 2011 at 10:45
-
For tags naming of authors (as opposed to characters), I believe first name and last name are irrelevant, instead the tag should try to use the name the author's works are usually published under. For books, this means the name in the form it is usually written on the cover of books in recent editions. Ignore any journal articles, because those sometimes have naming conventions forced by the journal. There can still be difficulties if someone is published under multiple names (eg. for different genres, different eras, in different languages), or if we cannot use their name as a tag name.– b_jonasJul 29, 2014 at 16:37
-
Let me note that we shall use tag synonyms for when multiple names of a tag are plausible.– b_jonasJul 29, 2014 at 16:39
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
The current convention appears to be:
- Author names are as you would find them on the cover of a book (i.e. generally first-last, but sometimes with middle initials/names, like orson-scott-card, or only initials, like c-s-lewis). Since the tag search searches anywhere in the tag either should work fine (i.e. if you type "hein", you'll find robert-a-heinlein.
Propositions are mixed at the moment:
- Dropped "the": wheel-of-time, saga-of-the-exiles, golden-compass, and lord-of-the-rings.
- Kept "the": the-way, the-doomsday-book, the-prisoner, the-player-of-games, the-matrix, the-culture, and the-lost-fleet.
- Kept "a": a-clockwork-orange.
In general, shorter tags are better, especially since they are used in space-sensitive locations (page title, tweets) now. However, if they are too short (e.g. "way" or "prisoner") then it's unclear that they are referring to a particular series.
If the guideline was that titles four words and over drop the preposition, then only golden-compass and the-player-of-games don't match.
Unless there is a really good reason, always use singular rather than plural, e.g.
answered Mar 1, 2011 at 14:48
