PBC:File names
 | This guideline documents an English Porn Base Central naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Use descriptive file names. Don't upload files with generic, non-specific file names. |
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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. |
PBC file names should be clear and descriptive, without being excessively long. While the image name doesn't matter much to the reader (they can reach the description page by simply clicking on the image), it matters for editors. It is helpful to other contributors and for maintenance of the encyclopedia if images have descriptive or at least readable file names. For example, "File:Pheonix Fellington Manuel Skye LucasEntertainment 2018 1.jpg" is more helpful than "File:PW6163527162.jpg".
To avoid accidental overwriting of images or other media, very generic filenames should not be used when uploading. For example, a picture of an movie cover should not be given the name "File:Cover.jpg", as sooner or later someone else will try to do the same thing and overwrite the old image. The new image will then appear wherever the old one was used – in this case, an movie article would then show the wrong movie cover.
Good image names
Examples of good file names:
"Nixon SeanCody Solo 15.jpg"- "Adam Archuleta Jean-Daniel Chagall BelAmi 2015 2.jpg"
- "Arad Win Win Lueur Photography.jpg"
- "Jimmy Slavich Ivan Mraz Retro Music Hall 2016 1.jpg"
Examples of bad file names:
"Image01.png"- "Denis.jpg"
- "DSC00001.JPG"
- "30996951316264l.jpg"
- "16022601 12px 0068.jpg"
- "2073631.jpg"
Disallowed image names
Image names may be disallowed either by page protection or by blacklisting the title. There are also a few technical restrictions on what characters can be contained in a title.
Technical restrictions
For technical reasons, file names cannot contain any of the following characters, as these would conflict with wiki syntax: # < > [ ] | : { } / . For the same reason they also cannot contain sequences of tilde characters (~~~).
Like other wiki page names, File names are case sensitive except for the first character, which will always be normalized to uppercase.
Blacklisting
Disallowing may be done via the MediaWiki:Titleblacklist and may then generate a variety of error messages - see MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist. For example, highly generic filenames (such as those produced automatically by digital cameras) produce the error message at MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-custom-imagename.
Generic file names
Some file names are protected to prevent an image being uploaded with that name because they are too generic. For example, File:Image.jpg, File:Image.png, File:Image.gif and File:Image.svg.
What files should be renamed?
PBC:File names describes how files should be named. In general, PBC aims to provide stable file names as these may be being used by tools outside of PBC. Currently there are nine widely undisputed uses for rename requests:
| No. | Aim | Examples (old name) | Examples (new name) | Shortcut |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Uploader requested | PBC:FNC#1 | ||
| 2 | Change from completely meaningless names into suitable names, according to what the image displays | File:22785u9ob807b3c4f4.jpg File:DSC_1342.jpg |
File:Denis_Reed_2009.jpg File:Denis_Reed.jpg |
PBC:FNC#2 |
| 3 | Correct misleading names into accurate ones | File:!My_cuTe!!_MOUSSE.JPG File:1BIGGest_nOSE_everS33n.JPG |
File:Denis_Reed_and_rabbit.jpg File:Denis_Reed_at_concert.jpg |
PBC:FNC#3 |
| 4 | For the main picture of model/actor in the biobox use the article name file name | File:453454302.jpg File:1111111.jpg |
File:Denis_Reed.jpg File:Tomas_Adamec.jpg |
PBC:FNC#4 |
| 5 | Correct obvious errors in file names (e.g. wrong proper nouns or false historical dates) | File:Dneis_Reed.jpg File:Tomsa_Adamec.jpg |
File:Denis_Reed.jpg File:Tomas_Adamec.jpg |
PBC:FNC#5 |
| 6 | Harmonize file names of a set of images (so that only one part of all names differs) to ease their usage in lists | File:5675765.jpg File:TA664A.jpg File:MMM500.jpg etc. |
File:Tomas_Adamec_RandyBlue_2016_1.jpg File:Tomas_Adamec_RandyBlue_2016_2.jpg File:Tomas_Adamec_RandyBlue_2016_3.jpg etc. |
PBC:FNC#6 |
| 7 | Disambiguate files with overly similar names. The software allows for multiple different files to have the same name, but with different capitalization (see ninja example) or different expressions of the same filetype extension (see bunny example). However, these are not ideal situations. | File:DenisReed.jpg File:DENIS_REED.jpg Also File:Denis_Reed.jpg File:Denis_Reed.jpeg File:Denis_Reed.JPEG |
File:Denis_Reed_1.jpg File:Denis_Reed_2.jpg Also File:Denis_Reed_1.jpg File:Denis_Reed_2.jpg File:Denis_Reed_3.jpg |
PBC:FNC#7 |
| 8 | Remove pejorative, offensive or crude language that would not be appropriate in the file description | File:Stupid fat bitch.jpg File:Worstpersonever.png File:Kill that nazi leader.JPG |
File:<Name of the person>.jpg File:<Name of the person>.png File:<Name of the person>.JPG |
PBC:FNC#8 |
After moving the file, please replace all uses of the old file link with the new one.
Additional naming conventions and exceptions from the above list might be discussed for specific projects.
What files should not be renamed?
As a matter of principle, it is best to leave all files with generally valid names at their locations, even if slightly better names may exist. So, for example:
- File:Denis_Reed_SG4GE.jpg should not be renamed to File:Denis_Reed_SG4GE_2010.jpg only because the latter looks a bit better.
- File:Thiswouldbebetterwithspaces.jpg should not be renamed to File:This would be better with spaces.jpg.
However, situations that could cause confusion are to be avoided.