Naming

From Researching Virtual Initiatives in Education

This page describes what we want to achieve, not what is currently achieved in all cases.

It is not a full description. The details of the naming scheme and the penumbra of alternates is really tedious unless you are a wiki editor - things like curly versus straight quotes, commas in names of Universities and ampersand usage.

Note that redirection is used heavily in this wiki to help ensure that it is navigable by those whose first language is not English. A useful tool for checking the number of redirects to a particular page is the What links here menu option.

Naming of countries

1. The normal short name in English of a country is taken to be the name of the country page on the wiki. See for example Sweden, South Korea, Netherlands, etc.
2. Any variants of that short name are redirected to the country page. See for example Korea, United States of America, The Netherlands, Holland.
3. The official full name of the country is redirected to the country page. See for example Kingdom of Sweden, Republic of Turkey, etc
4. The name(s) of the country (both short and official) in any of the official languages of the country are then redirected to the country page, including names in variant Latin and non-Latin scripts. See Norge (in bokmål) or Noreg (in nynorsk); for a more complex example see Libya: Arabic: ليبيا ‎ or Lībiyā , vernacular: Lībya; and for a really complex example see Singapore: Chinese: 新加坡, pinyin: Xīnjiāpō, Malay: Singapura, Tamil: சிங்கப்பூர், Cingkappūr.
5. The same approach is used for supraregions such as Middle East, etc - and for regions within countries (i.e. home nations, provinces, states, Lander etc - such as Flanders).

Naming of abbreviations

Standard abbreviations for organisations, like AOU for Arab Open University, redirect to the "official" full university name (usually as listed in the copyright/legal section on the institution web site).

There is also a list of 2-character standard abbreviations for countries which redirect to the appropriate countries.

From the beginning (2007) we have taken the view that abbreviations are globally unique - in other words that an abbreviation redirects to just one entity on this wiki. We are maintaining this approach into 2011 but it will be kept under review as hundreds of new institutions and other entities are added to the wiki. However, it is good practice if that page then links to pages where other meanings of the abbreviation are given.

What if two entities share the same abbreviation?

• Occasionally two entities will have the same abbrevation, e.g. in the case of the Asia International Open University (China) and Allama Iqbal Open University (Pakistan). Redirect the abbreviation to the most well-known or biggest initiative and place above those similar pages the template {{SimilarName|[[Asia International Open University]] (AIOU) in [[Taiwan]]}} which will result in a "Did you mean Asia International Open University (AIOU) in Taiwan?".

Naming of Programmes

The locus of our attention in Re.ViCa wasProgrammes - various kinds of e-learning initiatives delivered by post-secondary institutions. In VISCED this extends to Exemplars including (but not only) Virtual schools and Virtual colleges. The following discussion applies to both.

1. Where the Programme is not located in an institution - such as a National initiative or consortium or EU Virtual Campus, the entry for that Programme will be found under the Programme (project, initiative or consortium) name. See for example Swiss Virtual Campus.
2. Where the Programme is located within an institution, there are two cases:
   • If the Programme has no name and is institution-wide, then typically the Programme entry will be found under the name of the institution. See for example Sheffield Hallam University.
   • But if the Programme has a specific name by which it is or was known, then typically the Programme entry will be found under the name of that Programme (especially in the case of UNESCO or Gazetteer Programmes) - but this should contain information also on the containing institution and the containing institution should have a page redirecting to the Programme. See for example UNISA Online Campus and University of South Africa.
   • In the unlikely event that there are two or more Programmes associated with the same institution (e.g. perhaps separated by a period of years) then the information on the institution should be on a separate page linked from the Programmes entries but it should not contain a categorisation of the programmes.

Naming of institutions

For universities, the institution page should be found under the name of the institution, if the name (truename) of the institution is in English or another language (such as Spanish, French etc) where the name for "university" is similar to that in English. Versions of the name in other languages (including English if English was not used for the name of the institution page) are then Redirected to the institution page.

For polytechnics, colleges and other instiutions of post-secondary education, the name should be the English name commonly used (e.g. on the institution web site or on Wikipedia). This is because, unlike universities, the name of the institutional type is often not at all recognisable to English speakers and could even be confusing

For schools, the same applies.

In addition, common alternative phrasings (even if incorrect) - e.g. using Leicester University instead of University of Leicester) - and common misspellings - should be Redirected to the institution page.

Naming of ministries, quality agencies, etc

These should follow general principles for institutions. However, since many ministries have the same name (in English) disambiguation pages should be used. See for example Ministry of Education and Research.

The full names of ministries should be in English and should normally follow Wikipedia guidelines unless these appear to be inconsistent with other information. See for example Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.

Naming of individuals

Names of individuals are added in their "firstname surname" form, without titles (such as Professor, Dr, Mr, Mrs etc). Variants and common misspellings will redirect to the default name. If accents exist like for Grégory Lucas they will be added but with natural fallbacks such as Gregory Lucas.

The need for disambiguation

Occasionally two entities will share the same name, e.g. in the case of the University of New England (US) and University of New England (Australia). Disambiguation in wikis is the process of resolving the conflicts that occur in case like this, when articles about two or more different topics have the same "natural" title. For more information about Disambiguation pages in this wiki, please see the Re.ViCa wiki editing Tutorial.

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