Subject talk:Major Subjects

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[edit] All subjects vs CCO

We are actually listing all subjects in the CCO page and only the top level subjects on the all subject page. The reverse would seem more logical I think. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 17:25, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Originally the "all subject" page did list all subjects. I've moved it to "Major Subjects", because its name was no longer consistent with its apparent purpose. I created a template to list all subjects in order to be consistent with how bookshelves were done, with the intention of also placing it in other places, like subject categories, as well. --darklama 17:07, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. This is just a suggestion but if you want to put all the subjects on the CCO page you could put the major subjects as the first line of your all subject template, that would eliminate most of the need for the "major subject" page altogether and save clicks. Anyway, have a nice day -- Jacques (talk) (email) 19:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Title or sentence case

In response to this: Books use title case, but I believe all categories use (or are being moved to) sentence case. As the subject pages will correspond with a number of categories, sentence casing them would help. I also find it makes more sense as the subjects aren't titles as such (but then again, I use sentence case in module names). --Swift (talk) 18:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I prefer sentence case for subject pages, but if there is a big difference in moving to something standard, I'd be fine with whichever is less work.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 00:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any big difference. Let's use sentence case to avoid conflicting category names where possible. --Swift (talk) 04:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I would like to make a case of Title casing. Currently there are several sub-subjects of mathematics that are using title casing. For example: General Mathematics, Mathematical Modeling, Mathematical Analysis, and (until today) Applied Mathematics. These look would look quite out of place as sentence casing. Why are all categories being moved to sentence casing? If we make exception for book categories, why not make exceptions for subject categories? Thenub314 (talk) 18:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

PS A quick glance makes this seem as if it would apply to Fine Arts, Reading Levels, and a few other subjects. Unless I am missing something completely, which is always possible.Thenub314 (talk) 18:45, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Book categories are not an exception. Book categories take the same name as the book where possible and books titles are normally in title case. If I were talking about the field of medical research, I wouldn't write that I was going to discuss Medical Research. It's just a subject, not the title of anything. OK, you could say that it's the title of a subject page (though others still see it differently), but the argument for title casing is still weaker than for books, and keeping these separate helps keeping book and subject categories separate. See also the topic I started on Wikibooks:Reading room/General. --Swift (talk) 15:11, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

To Swift: Really depends on the way one looks at it. I see things as "categories should be lowercase and use the plural form, with the exception of book categories which should use the same casing as the book". To Thenub314: There could be books named General Mathematics, Mathematical Modeling, Mathematical Analysis and Applied Mathematics. In fact there is a book called Applied Mathematics already. With no difference between book and subject categories, categories would list all pages in a book and all related books which would cause trouble for people trying to find a needle in that haystack, and would make it impossible to use categories to list books on subject pages because all pages would be listed, not just books. --darklama 15:09, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it does. In this case we seem to see things the same way. However, while you call the title casing of book categories an exception, I just think of it as a different rule. --Swift (talk) 16:32, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Casing doesn't really take care of this problem. As I pointed out in the Reading room. Nothing stops someone from naming a book and a category "Algebra." (Or for that matter "Physics" or "Mathematics". It would be better to have a strategy that deals with these conflicts (Such as allowing the book category to have a different name the the book, which is what at one point I thought the category "Algebra textbook pages" was for. Thenub314 (talk) 17:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Casing takes care of this problem most of the time. As I also pointed out in the reading room, casing could take care of this problem all of the time if there was a setting similar to $wgCapitalLinks but limited the case sensitivity to categories. In that scenario, Category:Algebra and Category:algebra would be two different categories. --darklama 14:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about wiping out Swift's edit, not quite sure what I did to cause that. Well, if I understand things correctly, there are three options on the table. Title casing, Sentence casing, and strict lower casing. I like lower case better then sentence case. Thenub314 (talk) 10:25, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

While sentence case won't avoid all possible conflicts, the redundancy in the first character is somewhat useful for links starting sentences because the way the casing is not uniquely determined for all English words. While hardly a critical feature, it allows us to link to a subject both from the start of a sentence and from within one without having to pipe the links.

A simple way to avoid overlaps is to give books more descriptive titles, and/or ones that stick out more in the sea of online resources. --Swift (talk) 10:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes using more descriptive titles would be the ideal even though the majority of books probably don't do that. Casing for words does matter in English sometimes: wikt:Doctor vs wikt:doctor for example. Being able to identify clearly whether what is being referred to is a title or a subject could reasonably be considered another case in which the difference matters. --darklama 13:29, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines here seem to point to book titles being title case and so sentence case for categories avoids conflicts. While subjects can be any name as the category they pull from is in the code, it'd be nice if they match, so that would mean they should be sentence case too. It's why I made the subject category Category:European history to file all the books that were put in Category:European History and that serves as the one major example that defines my stance on that, in the absence of technical changes or policy changes that would prevent another occurrence. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 06:44, 30 April 2009 (UTC)