Wiki talk:Style Guide

Request for Comment - Hunt Naming Conventions

Many hunts have multiple names that can be used to describe them, often with varying levels of consistency. To make this wiki as consistent as possible in this regard, a naming convention should be chosen (at least for the sake of the initial creation and titling of pages). Currently there are three options up for consideration:

• Full Titles - Using full titles of hunts regardless of commonality.
• Common-Use Titles - Using the "most common" ways a hunt is referred to by solvers.
• Constructor Titles - Using the titles of hunts as they appear on the constructor's official website or documentation.

Please express an opinion on these options below! A bolded Support, Oppose, or Neutral should be appended before writing further reasoning or discussion.

Do not use the "reply" button for initial comments; instead, edit this talk page like a normal page, add a new entry to the bulleted list by starting a line with *, then end your line with ~~~~ to sign your comment with your name and a timestamp. Leveloneknob (talk) 06:53, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Full Titles

• Oppose. By virtue of full titles being...well, long, adopting this as a convention across the board will likely result in Very Long Page Titles, which are already being made long by the subpage system/preemptive disambiguation. While some long-forms are the "best option", many are not. Leveloneknob (talk) 06:53, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Oppose as a default because I can think of way too many instances that are too cumbersome and well removed from both common use and official website usage - For example, "Melbourne University Mathematics & Statistics Society Puzzle Hunt" vs MUMS Puzzle Hunt, "Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League" vs BAPLH, etc - CoreyPlover (talk)

Common-Use Titles

• Oppose. Due to puzzlers having varying opinions on what is "common", I think applying this convention will ultimately result in a lot of case-by-case debate that a convention like this should be avoiding in the first place. Even if this were parsed as "Abbreviated" or "Shortened" titles, some hunt titles don't present well to an outside audience, and still may be confused internally (such as the multiple instances of "CPH", all of which are commonly called as such). Leveloneknob (talk) 06:53, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
• Weakly oppose - Seems open to ambiguity and therefore difficult to determine unless something like a Google search count was used to compare relative frequency of each. - CoreyPlover (talk)

Constructor Titles

• Support. This seems like the most consistent method, as it will allow for hunts to be presented in the form that the creators intended it to be presented. By adhering to the official name, there may be some edge cases where alternate forms may be required for shortening purposes, but it's likely going to be fewer exceptions than Full Titles would cause. Similarly, there will likely also be cases where a hunt presents multiple conflicting names (for example, hunt websites for the MITMH primarily present it as MIT Mystery Hunt, but some site descriptions show it as just Mystery Hunt, primarily 2011-2013). However, these cases will also be fewer and farther between than those that would likely occur with Common Titles. Leveloneknob (talk) 06:53, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. - Most objective and official, gives recognition to the identity desired by the creators, and I believe will result in the least number of exceptions. - CoreyPlover (talk)

Request for comment: Titling puzzle and round pages

Puzzle and round pages need to be disambiguated by hunt in the case of duplicate names, such as Marching Band (in both 2019 and 2020 MITMHs). There are a few main proposals:

• Parenthetical disambiguation with full hunt names (e.g. Marching Band (MIT Mystery Hunt (2019)))
• Parenthetical disambiguation with a standardized set of abbreviations (e.g. Marching Band (MH19))
• Subpages: Have each puzzle/round/etc be a subpage within each hunt page (e.g. MIT Mystery Hunt (2019)/Marching Band)

Please express your opinion on each of these options below. You may bold Support or Oppose to indicate your sentiment towards each proposal. Opinions can change with discussion; in that case, strike out your original bold vote.

Do not use the "reply" button for initial comments; instead, edit this talk page like a normal page, add a new entry to the bulleted list by starting a line with *, then end your line with ~~~~ to sign your comment with your name and a timestamp. ev (talk) 03:17, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Update: The DisplayTitle extension resolves much of the discussions on this topic by providing the ability to set puzzle page titles, search results and Category appearances completely independently of any URL convention adopted. RFQ will remain open for further comments with respect to hierarchy, general disambiguation, or editorial concerns. CoreyPlover (talk) 15:18, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Parenthetical disambiguation (full hunt names)

• Neutral. Not as nice without the breadcrumb links to parent pages IMO, and it's harder for templates and the like to parse, but I can understand the appeal of avoiding slashes in page titles and categories. ev (talk) 03:37, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support (if applied to all puzzle pages). I think category listings or Wiki searches benefit from the Hunt name appearing quite prominently alongside individual puzzle pages and this proposal achieves this very well whilst retaining nice formatting and default sort ordering. However, care may be needed to neatly disambiguate same named meta puzzle and round articles without nested parentheses. CoreyPlover (talk) 04:01, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Having the hunt name right next to a puzzle is certainly a great way for people seeking information to familiate themselves with those hunts, but i'm kind of more neutral-leaning on this one. This style may become kind of less visually useful with long enough hunt titles (of which there are kind of a lot). Marnix (talk) 04:35, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Page names for disambiguated pages would likely be too unwieldy use, especially if applied to all puzzle pages. (This can be ameliorated with DISPLAYTITLE, I think, but that might not be desireable behavior (as e.g. you would need to look beyond the title to see which page you are on) phenomist (talk) 07:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Ultimately, I'm not a huge fan of pre-emptively disambiguating, as it makes for a lot of cumbersome page titles, but putting the hunt name in parentheticals as a way to differentiate between puzzles of the same title has certainly been my ideal vision for it. Leveloneknob (talk) 08:07, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Parenthetical disambiguation (abbreviations)

• Oppose. The abbreviation system is likely to run into issues with similarly-named hunts, such as the CPHs, and may be confusing to those unaware with specific hunts. ev (talk) 03:37, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Every individual puzzle hunt will need its own canonical abbreviation, some of which may become quite unintuitive CoreyPlover (talk) 04:01, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Abbreviations do not necessarily need unintuitive abbreviations: in the case of hunts with the same acronym, the first word can be used. Alternatively, if we want to avoid having to assign acronyms whatsoever, we could just use the first unique word in general. (I would personally argue in favor of giving some abbreviations, cumbersome though it may be. Some puzzle hunts are best known by their abbreviations, but if we really want to avoid this, using just the first unique word is also a pretty common practice). Marnix (talk) 04:35, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Lean Support. I think this addresses most of my concerns for the first option. Maintenance on new hunt name collisions may be higher than the third option though (though even the third option would need maintenance (updating disambiguation pages). phenomist (talk) 07:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Neutral. Only really something I'd be actively in favor of in cases of hunt titles being Very Long, such as Mark Halpin's Labor Day Hunt/Extravaganza, which could be shortened to "Mark Halpin" or "Labor Day 20XX".

Subpages

• Support. We can work with this: having stuff in infobox templates will allow us to prettify things such as the displayed title and sorting in categories. The breadcrumb trail to parent pages is helpful, we can always have redirects and disambiguation pages, and we can build templates with structure (allowing for things like {{L}} for links to items within the same hunt). IMO the only downside is that ugly titles will be visible on category pages. ev (talk) 03:37, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Subpages provide auto-disambiguation and allow for much easier batch processing if needed (such as moving pages or performing a global find-and-replace within a particular hunt). Only issue is that wiki links will need to be piped to ensure correct behaviour with leading "./" and "../"s (i.e. will need to use [[../Puzzle name|Puzzle name]]) [UPDATED] CoreyPlover (talk) 16:49, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Neutral. Admittedly, I'm not super familiated with the intricacies of wiki environments, but the breadcrumb trails subpages would provide don't really do a whole lot. In theory, people would be putting the breadcrumb trails in the descriptions of puzzles/rounds as is. Furthermore, I would argue that this may become a problem, especially if we beautify pages. New users who simply want to create a new page for a puzzle/meta may simply just make that page the way that most pages are made on other wikis, by making a new (non-subpage) page for it. However, if we adopt this, I would definitely oppose putting puzzles into further subpages for their rounds, as puzzles belonging to more than one round is a fairly common occurance nowadays. Marnix (talk) 04:35, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. I think this is probably the most elegant solution. There are a few drawbacks in enabling subpages (e.g. puzzles containing a slash in their name have some subtleties that may need to be worked around). I think that the automatic link to the hunt is useful as well for navigation. phenomist (talk) 07:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
• Neutral-Support. As with Marnix, I don't know the intricacies. While this could be helpful if the community is leaning towards disambiguating all puzzles pre-emptively, it is extra breadcrumbing that may not be needed. That being said, this seems like the best option for that situation, while Parentheticals w/ full name seems like the best option for case-by-case disambiguation. Leveloneknob (talk) 08:07, 25 February 2022 (UTC)