This page is about the policy for article titles. For section titles, see MOS:HEADINGS. For names in articles, see PBC:FULLNAME. For user name policy, see PBC:U.
This page is considered an official policy on Porn Base Central.
It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone must follow. Except for minor edits, please make use of the discussion page to propose changes to this policy.
This page in a nutshell: Article titles should be recognizable, concise, natural, precise, and consistent.
An article title is the large heading displayed above the article's content and the basis for the article's page name and URL.[1] The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.[2]
The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article, or it may be a description of the topic. Because no two articles can have the same title,[3] it is sometimes necessary to add distinguishing information, often in the form of a description in parentheses after the name. Generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. When this offers multiple possibilities, editors choose among them by considering several principles: the ideal article title precisely identifies the subject; it is short, natural, distinguishable and recognizable; and resembles titles for similar articles.
This page explains in detail the considerations, or naming conventions, on which choices of article titles are based. This page does not detail titling for pages in other namespaces, such as categories. It is supplemented by other more specific guidelines, which should be interpreted in conjunction with other policies, particularly the three core content policies: Verifiability, No original research, and Neutral point of view.
Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. There is often more than one appropriate title for an article. In that case, editors choose the best title by consensus based on the considerations that this page explains.
A good PBC article title has the five following characteristics:
Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize.
Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.
Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.
Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, in the box above.
These should be seen as goals, not as rules. For most topics, there is a simple and obvious title that meets these goals satisfactorily. If so, use it as a straightforward choice. However, in some cases the choice is not so obvious. It may be necessary to favor one or more of these goals over the others.
Redirects should be created to articles that may reasonably be searched for or linked to under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names). Conversely, a name that could refer to several different articles may require disambiguation.
In PBC, an article title is a natural language word or expression that indicates the subject of the article: as such the article title is usually the name of the person, or of the place, or of whatever else the topic of the article is. However, some topics have multiple names, and some names have multiple topics: this can lead to disagreement about which name should be used for a given article's title. PBC does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it generally prefers the name that is most commonly used.
The following are examples of the application of the concept of commonly used names in support of recognizability:
In determining which of several alternative names is most frequently used, it is useful to observe the usage of major databases (IAFD + GEVI), quality encyclopedias (Pornopedia). A search engine may help to collect this data; when using a search engine, restrict the results to pages written in English.
If a topic has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation, the title of its article should use that nation's variety of English (for example, compare Australian Defence Force with United States Secretary of Defense). Very rarely, a form that is less common locally is chosen because it is more intelligible to English-speaking readers worldwide (e.g. Ganges rather than "Ganga").
Otherwise, all national varieties of English are acceptable in article titles; PBC does not prefer one in particular. American English spelling should not be respelled to British English spelling, and vice versa; for example, both color and colour are acceptable and used in article titles (such as color gel and colour state). Very occasionally, a less common but non-nation-specific term is selected to avoid having to choose between national varieties: for example, soft drink was selected to avoid the choice between the British fizzy drink, American soda, American and Canadian pop, and a slew of other nation- and region-specific names.
"PBC:NAMECHANGES" redirects here. For procedures for changing your PBC login ID, see PBC:Changing username.
Sometimes, the subject of an article will undergo a change of name. When this occurs, we give extra weight to reliable sources written after the name change is announced. If the reliable sources written after the change is announced routinely use the new name, PBC should follow suit and change relevant titles to match. If, on the other hand, reliable sources written after the name change is announced continue to use the established name, PBC should continue to do so as well, as described above in "Use commonly recognizable names".
PBC is not a crystal ball. We do not know what terms or names will be used in the future, but only what is and has been in use, and is therefore familiar to our readers. However, common sense can be applied – if the subject of an article has a name change, it is reasonable to consider the usage following the change in reliable, English language sources. This provision also applies to names used as part of descriptive titles.
When the subject of an article is referred to mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources, PBC generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name includes non-neutral words that PBC normally avoids. In such cases, the prevalence of the name, or the fact that a given description has effectively become a proper noun (and that proper noun has become the usual term for the event), generally overrides concern that PBC might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.
In some cases a descriptive phrase is best as the title. These are often invented specifically for articles, and should reflect a neutral point of view, rather than suggesting any editor's opinions. Avoid judgmental and non-neutral words.
The following points are used in deciding on questions not covered by the five principles; consistency on these helps avoid duplicate articles:
Use sentence case
Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text. When this is done, the title is simple to link to in other articles. Note that the capitalization of the initial letter is ignored in links. For initial lowercase letters, as in eBay.
Follow reliable sources for names of persons
When deciding whether to use middle names, or initials, which means using the form most commonly used by reliable sources (e.g. John F. Kennedy, J. P. Morgan, F. Scott Fitzgerald), with few if any exceptions.
Do not place definite or indefinite articles (the, a, and an) at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea) or otherwise change the meaning (e.g. The Crown). They needlessly lengthen article titles, and interfere with sorting and searching. For more guidance, see PBC:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name).
Changing one controversial title to another without a discussion that leads to consensus is strongly discouraged. If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed. Consensus among editors determines if there does exist a good reason to change the title. If it has never been stable, or it has been unstable for a long time, and no consensus can be reached on what the title should be, default to the title used by the first major contributor after the article ceased to be a stub.
Any potentially controversial proposal to change a title should be advertised at PBC:Requested moves, and consensus reached before any change is made. Debating controversial titles is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve PBC.
In discussing the appropriate title of an article, remember that the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is "right" in a moral or political sense. Nor does the use of a name in the title of one article require that all related articles use the same name in their titles; there is often some reason for inconsistencies in common usage.
↑Specifically, it is the
<h1 id="firstHeading">HTML element that appears at the top of the article's page. It should be the only
<h1> element on the page, but because editors have the ability to add any level of heading to a page's text, that cannot be guaranteed.
↑The title displayed as the article's main heading is usually identical (and always similar) to the stored title by which the page is referenced in category listings, recent changes lists, etc., and that appears (suitably encoded as necessary) in the page's URL. For technical details, see PBC:Page name.
↑It is technically possible, but undesirable for various reasons, to make different pages display with the same title.
↑When an article's title is changed, its database entry is altered but not actually moved. For this reason, a title change is sometimes called a rename, although move remains the most common term.
