Forum:Singular titles

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Page names such as Power houses, Black holes and Treasure chests (Aquanaut) seem unnatural (yeah, sorry I used the same word twice in one night). Each of these items is the objective or goal of the level, and giving such items names in the plural form gives the impression that a player needs to find more than one power house or more than one treasure chest to pass a single level.

My thoughts about playing a level in general: if I'm playing through a level of Space Hopper, I'm collecting all the stars to find the black hole. My focus is trying to find the black hole. Same with a power house: my goal is to find the power house in each level. If a player's focus is on the one objective per level, would they not search for that one objective as well, in singular form?

Maybe there is more than one black hole. Maybe not. But there is only one main objective destination per level. Might I also point out, that most of these "main objective" article titles, currently plural form, end up being written about in their singular form anyways. After all, Rusty doesn't stick his head into more than one power house simultaneously.   Random-storykeeper 07:44, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

The titles don't seem that unnatural to me. The reason why I think those article titles should be plural is because, although they do not appear more than once in a level, they do appear more than once in the game. Most likely, multiple power houses, black holes, and treasure chests appear in the game, as it's not like Rusty will try over and over again to plug himself in to a magical moving power house, or that the astronaut will try over and over again to warp into the same black hole or that the submarine will try over and over again to open up the same treasure chest.

And I think it's okay that the article is written in singular form, as all the power houses, black holes, etc. appear and act the same. Even other articles that have plural titles are written in the singular. I think it is perfectly okay for an article title to maintain the fact that there is more than one power house, while the game information section tells the reader to go to the one power house that is in the specific level they are in. -- http://images.wikia.com/nitromefanfiction/images/thumb/b/be/Auto_peg.png/25px-Auto_peg.png Ayernam 08:13, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with Ayernam. For some reason, it seems unusual to read an article that is singular when multiple of it appears across the game. The fact that an object appears once in a single level of a game, but this object appears once across all levels justifies a plural. --Talk to NOBODY   13:09, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

Huh, the opposite for me. If an article is plural, it always seems like the object would be seen simultaneously on-screen, and if an article is plural, be constantly referred to as plural within the article itself.

But there's another issue I think needs settling as well: pages such as Silkies, Skeleton, Dyna-Mo. If I'm correct, all these were named in-game. "Silky" is actually a name of the enenmy, referring to all these names as plural appears ridiculous, considering how they aren't named "Silkies" or "Dynamos" or my favourite visualisation of a plural: "Mr. Nibbleses". I guess from a searching point of view, searching would most likely start with the given name, from the perspective of someone who's say, unaware of this "plural" business.

And the small fry...all are named singular in-game, to refer to a type of small fry. There may be more than one skeleton in Small Fry, but there is only one type of small fry called the "skeleton". Referring to a small fry as "brains" maybe is a bit unkempt. Maybe, if they refer to a type, stick with the singular form, then refer to each as "type small fry".

It would probably work with the Small Fry pages, but Cave Chaos' naming system overall is an ultimate confusion.

Also, I had a look at Wikipedia's naming convention for plural titles. I know we're not Wikipedia, but I do think the page makes a valid point about titles in the plural form. We always have to refer to linking with double pipes if we want to talk about a single one...   Random-storykeeper 15:45, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

Is there a reason why you think that way? It's not really a rule for articles to be written with the same number syntax as their titles. As for the enemies in Cave Chaos and the characters in Small Fry, I think we should make their titles singular, then say in the first line, for example, "The Silky is a type of enemy in the Cave Chaos series". We would then continue on to write the article in the singular, as in "The Silky appears to look like a spider" and "If the miner encounters a Silky...". Does that make sense? We would then do that with the Small Fry character names too. As for the double linking issue, I don't think it's much of a problem, as it goes both ways. If all the titles are singular, then when we want to write in the plural, we will also have to double link (at least, when the singular and plural forms are spelled differently, anyway). -- http://images.wikia.com/nitromefanfiction/images/thumb/b/be/Auto_peg.png/25px-Auto_peg.png Ayernam 16:51, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

I always thought that stuff referred to as singular, such as in the given example of the small fry stuff and cave chaos stuff, was referred to as singular accidentally, since more than one does appear in the game. Thus, I would think that if Nitrome referred to something as singular when more than one of it appears, then it would be referred to as plural (skeletons instead of skeleton, Silkies instead of silky, etc.).

However, we run into the problem of Mr. Nibbles - his name is already a plural yet it is referred to as singular. If we were to follow the Wikipedia Naming Convention RSK cited, then the name Mr. Nibbles would be both singular and plural (such as Wikipedia's example of scissors). --Talk to NOBODY   18:59, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

(reset indent) Personally, I just don't think it's a good idea to write an article in the plural form on the basis that more than one appears in the game, because each article refers to a particular component rather than talking about a group of components in many cases. It's hard to explain, but because each article explains about a specific type of component, then it should be singular because it is one specific type. For example, there is more than one type of "Skeleton" in Blast RPG, so the page is called "Skeletons" because it refers to more than one type of skeleton within that article. But a page such as "Sporty" from Small Fry refers to a specific type of small fry, so it remains "Sporty". From there, the article could still refer to the small fry as "Sporty small fry" in plural form if necessary.

One reason why singular form titles for an article that refers to one specific type of enemy is the case of linking. Say you want to link the page main character but are referring to more than one main character within a sentence. Typing in [[main character]]s allows the editor to still render the link as main characters, with the s attached to the end of the link. This explains why text too close to a wiki link is often caught within the link itself.

So, in the case of plural form, all that needs to be done is attach an "s", "es", etc to the end of the singular form link, in many cases. Yes, there are some cases in the English language where the plural form of a noun is not simply attached to the end of the word (such as "Fly" becoming "Flies") and a redirect can usually fix that. There might be quite a few pages with such a case, or not, but when a page title is plural, and someone tries to link the page with singular form, they always have to double link to mention it.

Getting back to the question concerning power houses and such in general, the singular form would refer to the fact that they are the one main objective that allows the player to pass a level. Also, I'm not sure if "Silky" would be "Silkies", referring to a noun, or that the spider itself is named "Silky", which in that case, is always referred to as singular.   Random-storykeeper 06:18, April 16, 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like you are suggesting that there should be a major modification to all articles that have plural titles, but are only about a single object that has no other "types" of it. Is that what you are implying? I understand what you're saying about the skeletons, but I disagree. Even if there was only one type of skeleton in Blast RPG, I think the title should still be skeletons, because they appear multiple times in a level, and certainly many times in the game. Basically, I disagree with referring to components as "types" of objects or enemies.

However, I think there are a few special cases, one of them being when Nitrome names a character or enemy in the singular, when really there are many of those characters or enemies running about in the game. In that case, I don't think we should try and guess at what the plural of those names are (especially when they are not real words), and instead write the title as Nitrome stated it in the game. Then we would continue the article as I stated above, saying that the character or enemy is a type of character or enemy in the game.

As for double linking, yes, it would be much easier for all articles to have singular titles, as it would remove a lot of the double linking used in articles. That would certainly be a benefit to not having plural titles.

Also, you made a point about how articles that are about the main objective seen at the end of every level should have singular titles. However, I think that we should look at components and write about them with a "big picture" perspective; in this case, the big picture being the entire game. To me, the sentence, "The power house is the main objective in the game Rustyard", doesn't sound right. Because there is a power house at the end of every level, I think the title should be plural. However, that sentence may sound perfectly fine to you. In fact, in the end, this may just be a subject of opinion. -- http://images.wikia.com/nitromefanfiction/images/thumb/b/be/Auto_peg.png/25px-Auto_peg.png Ayernam 22:14, April 17, 2013 (UTC)

It's always a subject of opinion, Ayernam. Every option has its own set of benefits and setbacks. The question is to answer is what is more practical.   Random-storykeeper 23:23, April 17, 2013 (UTC)

Concerning your points, however, they all sound like more like reasons to rename components to their singular form rather than keep their plural. Yes, it's true, a singular title does not have to always be referred to as singular within its article. The only reason I see to use the plural form is the fact that there is more than one of them in the game. Even if that is true, most of these articles that refer to a single component that appears multiple times is unified - even if there is more than one black hole in Space Hopper, every black hole does the same thing.

Sure, we could refer to black holes in the singular form throughout the article. But what if we wanted the text to refer to a single black hole at a time and wanted to bring that up in a link, like I said earlier, it would always lead to double linking. I just recently edited the power orbs page, and what could have been described as a [[clone scientist]] disguise now had to become a [[clone scientists|clone scientist]] disguise. Maybe that's not such a big deal, considering some singular titles have retained their redirects, but for the case of the clone scientist, a page entitled "Clone scientist" is non-existent. An editor would always have to use [[clone scientists|clone scientist]] to refer to a single clone scientist, as opposed to having a singular title plural, which only requires [[clone scientist]]s. The page editor automatically joins the "s" to the link, making a quicker, more compact code. Singular titles not only allow for more practical editing, they also automatically deal with the issue of "natural singular names" - such as Mr. Nibbles from Cave Chaos, which, in plural form, looks absolutely ridiculous.

So when to use pluralized titles? Well, when the article refers to a list, or more than one type of a component within the same article, maybe. Anything that natural exists plural (like scissors) also remains plural.

The question mainly applies for all future component articles, then. What is the better option for such upcoming articles: singular form, with plural redirects where necessary, or plural form, with singular form redirects? Is it possible to keep one form title one way in case the creation of such redirects is forgotten? And why?   Random-storykeeper 08:17, April 20, 2013 (UTC)

Plural form with singular redirects. Yes, because you don't have to do anything. --Talk to NOBODY   22:05, September 29, 2013 (UTC)

I'm currently editing on a wiki that uses the singular form for page titling and I have to say, it's a lot more convenient to make internal links there than it is here.

I think the case is like Forum:Capitalisation. One idea that was proposed, at that time, was to simply use double linking in order to avoid "doing too much". While that would seem practical at the time, no consideration was taken in to the fact that the project would be relatively short term, and by not renaming the pages now, the wiki would keep on having to double link. Now, you don't have to make double links to remove upper case letters, because we took the initiative to rename them.

Similar to this situation, if you don't want to rename the pages just because you think it's a lot of work to get done, you're not thinking long term. If you keep making plural titles, you'll always have to double link when you first mention the subject in its singular form. And before you try to say, "You have to do the same thing with singular titles!", make sure you give what I said earlier in the forum a thorough reading.

Yes, it would be a big project, considering the number of articles that have accumulated so far with plural naming. But after it is past, linking could be considerably easier, and you won't have to worry about distinct names and such. You might not even necessarily have to rename all pages. If they're lists or something, referring to more than one type of the subject, it would actually be better to keep the plural title. That's something for the wiki to decide upon itself, though.   Random-storykeeper 03:07, November 17, 2013 (UTC)

I actually agree now with having singular titles, not only because of the posts made here by RSK, but also on account of my experiences on other wikis in the past year. My only worry is, like you said, the massiveness of the project of renaming almost every article. -- http://images.wikia.com/nitromefanfiction/images/thumb/b/be/Auto_peg.png/25px-Auto_peg.png Ayernam 16:03, November 17, 2013 (UTC)

The reason I before objected to singular titles was because it didn't seem right - singular titles about something that is more than one. However, I have an idea - we go with RSK's idea of a giant rename of all article to make them singular, but keep the plural tense of the article (essentially, don't change the article at all), and use {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} at the top of all pages in order to make the name plural, as {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} can be used to change the name of a page without renaming it (by using the template, and placing the page's plural name after the : but before the }}). This way, the page's URL and link name is singular, but on the page, the name appears plural. --Talk to NOBODY   03:17, November 18, 2013 (UTC)

_{(reset indent)} But why would you want to mislead users like that? The only way anyone would know that the page leads to its singular form is if they look at the URL in the address bar, and it's another unnecessary hassle to do. Either keep the target page in its singular form without displaytitle or use the plural. Don't try to mishmash the two; it will create additional problems. (By the way, Displaytitle should only be used when a - the page title requires a lowercase first letter, ex. iPhone games b - long subpages where a subpage of a subpage would break up a page title, ex. something like "User:Random-storykeeper/This is my subpage/Isn't it awesome" might use displaytitle so that its page title would only display "Isn't is awesome".)   Random-storykeeper 06:27, November 18, 2013 (UTC)

^ Actually, I'll have to correct myself there. Displaytitle is a magic word that only works with the first letter of a page title, changing it to lower case (my first example). However, I'm pretty sure there's a separate JavaScript code the wiki needs to implement (if it hasn't already) that can affect an entire page title in itself. I would highly suggest not doing this to change page titles from their singular to plural form.

If you rename the pages, of course it's going to look unnatural, because you're so used to seeing the plural forms and have adjusted to this for so long.   Random-storykeeper 06:32, November 18, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think we should mess with DISPLAYTITLE, as it will confuse readers. -- http://images.wikia.com/nitromefanfiction/images/thumb/b/be/Auto_peg.png/25px-Auto_peg.png Ayernam 15:36, November 18, 2013 (UTC)

Oh, didn't realize that with DISPLAYTITLE. I'm fine with renaming page names to be singular, however, will the plural name of the article used throughout the article be made singular (e.g: Skeletons to Skeleton)? I know, it does sound like a stupid question.--Talk to NOBODY   00:53, November 20, 2013 (UTC)

Well, firstly, I think we should rename pages based on RSK's system above. We should rename all pages to singular, except for articles on different types of enemies. Also, I don't think it matters how you refer to a character in an article; it can singular or plural. -- http://images.wikia.com/nitromefanfiction/images/thumb/b/be/Auto_peg.png/25px-Auto_peg.png Ayernam 15:13, November 20, 2013 (UTC)

I think that plural titles should be for types of enemies and any components that appear multiple times in a level (like stars in Space Hopper). https://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140119195727/nitrome/images/thumb/b/b3/Jack_Frost_running.PNG/36px-Jack_Frost_running.PNGEmitewiki2 https://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140119195727/nitrome/images/thumb/9/9e/Purple_Frost_running.png/36px-Purple_Frost_running.png 02:56, January 15, 2014 (UTC)