User blog:JoshuaJSlone/Wiki Policy: Page Titles

I appreciate that with a wiki format there's a lot of freedom to not have to have everything uniform. It can be a strength that not everything has to be rigidly the same, and it would be difficult to try and make things so. But it can be good to have a normal way, so people don't wonder between multiple possibilities every time it comes up.

WonderBuono! has talked about working on a guidelines page as reference for how things should be done. I know I'd personally find it helpful. For areas that aren't clear or haven't really been done a normal way, I figure it's a good idea to be able to hear users' voices before something is codified.

That said, the first thing I want to bring up are page titles. Two main things currently I'd like to be clearer.

1. What do we do when sources differ on the title?

Usually this happens when the title on the cover and the title given in text at official sites differ. A few examples of pages currently handling this in different ways.

First Kiss - The cover shows "First Kiss", while the discographies use a capital KISS. The page uses the cover version, but notes that it's also known the other way. Melon Kinenbi ~03' Christmas Special Chou Shibu Melon~ - This is accurate to the way the discographies list it. But the cover image clearly shows '03 rather than 03', which makes sense since '03 is how the year 2003 would be abbreviated. Hare Ame Nochi Suki♥ - A kind of tricky case, since even the discographies don't fully agree. The different types of heart characters are often trouble for this. The UP-FRONT discography uses a solid heart like ♥, the Hello! Project discography uses an empty heart like ♡, and the cover uses pink text on a black background so it's a pink outline and black inside. Matsuura Aya Best 1 - Another tricky one, but something that occasionally comes up when a product tries to use both Japanese and western name order. On the discographies (and possibly somewhere on the packaging, though it can't be seen on the cover), it is called "松浦亜弥ベスト１", or "Matsuura Aya Best 1". But the cover does clearly say "Aya Matsuura Best 1".

My take: I think when in doubt, the cover should overrule the discographies. It's the actual product sitting there in the real world. In the case of Hare Ame, I think the empty heart ♡ is closer to intentions since the cover doesn't use the same color for heart outline and inside. I thought about changing that one recently, but thought it would be a good weird case to show off here.

The last one, I'm really not sure about. It's a real conflict between favoring the cover like I said above, and favoring the Japanese name order which is the standard of this wiki. Looking at the page history, I'm not the only one unsure--it started one way, got switched a year later, and got switched back another year later.

2. How do we combine titles of double or triple A-sides?

This has been known as the year of the double A-side, so this seems like a good thing to figure out. Basically we've got a lot of titles where there are spaces on the sides of the slash combining titles, and a lot where there are none. The multi-crazy Up Up Girls have a slew of both types.

Uppercut! / Yuudachi! Through the Rainbow UPPER ROCK / Ichiban Girls! Chopper☆Chopper / Survival Girls Respect Tokyo / Sutorera! ~Straight Up!~ SAKURA DRIVE / Dateline Next Stage / Ano Saka no Ue Made, Ginga Joujou Monogatari / Burn the fire!! / Natural Born Idol

Namen na! Ashi Girls/Marble Hero Summer Beam!/Up Up Typhoon SAMURAI GIRLS/Widol Seven Starry Night/Seishun Buildup Nijiiro Mosaic/ENJOY!! ENJO(Y)!!

My take: I like the spaces. Easier to read, and easier for a browser to split text nicely between lines if it's written in such a place. It's true that the discographies tend to not have spaces, but being the written Japanese language they tend to not have spaces between individual words, either.