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page names

Page history last edited by Andrew Alder 15 years ago

the page names in this site aren't all that logical

and we're not all that worried about it

 

What matters is the content and the links, particularly links from index pages and higher-level tunings hierarchy pages.

 

As the site evolves, we learn. We learn new names for instruments and tunings, and add them.

 

We change our minds about what the best name is for an instrument, or whether or not headings should have capital letters, or lots of other things.

 

Often we split pages. But we almost never rename them. It's just not a priority.

 

Advantages of logical page names

 

  • Look pretty. Yes, we do care!
  • Satisfy snobbish, time-wasting purists who never contribute anything much useful anyway, and make it likely that they'll stick around and waste more of our time.

 

Disadvantages of logical page names

 

  • Waste time moving pages, which pbWiki doesn't do too well anyway..
  • Waste more time deciding what the best name is.
  • Risk we'll end up using some diacritics and accents, and blow some browsers right out of the water (hard to tell which, and a waste of more time trying to tell).
  • Dead certainty we'll offend someone by not using their pet diacritic on the name of their national instrument.
  • Another dead cert that somebody else will claim it's their national instrument too, and be very offended if we don't rename the page again, and again, and...
  • Even if a future revision of the pbWiki software were to handle page moves and renames better, there's still a risk of leaving broken links from other websites.

 

Admins at Wikipedia (whose MediaWiki software does page moves really well) spend hours settling this sort of pettiness (or often failing to). Here we don't need to.

 

We do our best

to pick a good name in the first place. We avoid punctuation unless it seems really silly without it. We don't even try to get accents and diacritics right, even in text, let alone in page names.

 

And then we get on with the job

and suggest you do too.

 

If you've found your tuning, and it's accurate, and relevant, and legal, great. That's what we're here for. If you haven't then tell us. We want to improve.

 

If you've found your tuning, and it's accurate, and relevant, and legal, but you think we should do it differently, we're interested. We'd like to do better.

 

But If we find out that by better you mean in a way that promotes your own pet cause against some other, we'll politely suggest you go away and set up your own website, which we'll gladly link to here. From experience, you'll find that suggestion offensive, even with the (genuine and generous) offer of the link. Pettiness is not pretty. So maybe better for us all you just go away without being asked again.

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