Wikibooks:Naming conventions

Because Wikibooks encompasses many books, pages such as "Table of Contents" may often result where it is unclear which book it may belong to. Thus, to help distinguish a page belonging to one book from a page belonging to another book, a series of naming conventions must be used.

Existing wikibooks that do not follow these conventions are highly recommended to move their pages appropriately so that they conform to these conventions.

Naming conventions for new books

By convention, each module is associated with a book. The associated book forms the first part of the module's title (for example, Cookbook:Rice is part of Cookbook). The books are thus arranged in a hierarchical manner.

Currently, only two sets of conventions are permitted for new books, and it is suggested that a book be conformant solely to one of the two. It is permissible, but not recommended, for a book to mix the two conventions.

General guidelines

• Do not abbreviate the name of the book in the title - For example, modules that are part of How To Build A Computer should always begin with "How To Build A Computer", and never in an abbreviated form therein, such as "HTBAC".
• Use descriptive titles throughout - Just because a page is solely within the scope of a book does not mean that titles can be generic beyond the first level. It is recommended that titles at all levels should give a good hint to the content of the module.

The subpage convention

The subpage convention is recommended for new books.

The subpage convention, where titles are given as [[Name/Section]], takes advantage of the subpage feature of MediaWiki to automatically create a hierarchical structure. Thus, a page in a book's hierarchy will automatically be linked back to the book's main page (using tags like "__NOTOC__"). This is handy for any book that has a linear or tree-like structure with a narrow, well-defined scope.

Examples of books using the subpage convention:

• Wikijunior Big Cats
• Wikijunior South America

The namespace convention

The namespace convention, where titles are given as [[Name:Section]], has its titles made in the similar of the namespaces found in MediaWiki, with parts of titles being delimited by a colon. This is best suited for books with a more general graph-like structure, or if the book covers a wider and less well-defined scope (for example, Cookbook). However, back-links to the book's main page is not provided by default, and must be written manually to each page. This, of course, allows for flexibility as to how these back-links are created and written.

Note that Wikibooks reserves the use of "WB" for its shortcuts, "Transwiki" for Wikimedia's transwiki conventions, and the use of any module titled "bookshelf" for general book organization.

Examples of books using the namespace convention:

• Cookbook
• Programming
• Wikiversity

Naming conventions for existing books

In general, the naming conventions of a book should be enforced over the entire book, and new additions to a book must follow existing book conventions. If a book does not strictly conform to either of the two conventions above, it is advised that they should be made conformant to one of the two above. Naming conventions that have been previously considered acceptable but have fallen in disuse include:

• The hyphen convention: [[Name - Section]]
• The disambiguation convention: [[Section (Name)]], named for the convention used in Wikipedia for its disambiguation pages
• [[Name: Section]]
• [[Name / Section]]
• [[Section]], where there is no mention of the book name

Naming conventions for templates, categories, images, and other media

For each book with the title Book Title, the template subspace Template:Book Title and category subspace Category:Book Title is reserved for internal use by a book (for example, Category:Wikibooks Pokédex:Normal Pokémon is an category internal to Wikibooks Pokédex). All other templates and categories are reserved for either the Wikibooks proper, usage across multiple books, or future books.

It is recommended, but not a requirement, that images, and other media be named as per the module naming conventions. As such, these pages should follow the conventions of their associated book. The requirement for these pages to conform to naming conventions is less strict compared to modules as they often reside in the background.

In many cases these pages may span multiple books, in which case these conventions need not be followed. Pages relating to the Wikibooks proper (such as policy pages) are also similarly exempt.