Help talk:Contents/Creating Articles

Region title hierarchy

I have some thoughts on the naming guidelines, specifically, the hierarchy of preferred regions in deciding article titles. Firstly, I think our rules 6 and 7 are at least technically contradictory.

5. Use the American title for the game.
• Example: The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time
6. If the game was not released in the USA, use the Japanese title.
• Example: BS Zelda - Inishie no Sekiban
7. If the game was released in Europe but not the USA, use the European title.
• Example: Mr. Gimmick

It's fairly simple to come to the logical conclusion that what is meant is a hierarchy that runs USA > Europe > Japan, but that's not stated all that clearly and ignores games that aren't from any of those regions or which aren't in English at all. I think what we ultimately want is US English > "some other" English (e.g. Europe) > non-English. Formulated in the style of our current guidelines, I'd say we need something like the following:

5. Where available, use the American title for the game.
• Example: The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time
6. If the game was not released in the USA but had another English-language release (e.g. in Europe), use that title.
   • Example: Mr. Gimmick
7. If the game was not released in English, use the native or original (e.g. Japanese) title.
   • Example: BS Zelda - Inishie no Sekiban

The parentheticals could be dropped entirely if they're deemed unnecessary. The main goals are to make clear the hierarchy and make the guidelines better cover edge cases.

As an example of a case this improves, consider the Japanese and German release, Logic Pro (JP)/Croquis (DE). The guidelines as they currently exist fail to specify that English releases are preferred where no USA release exists, just "European"; this would lead to Croquis, the German version, becoming our preferred title. Maybe this is desirable, but it seems silly to me and I feel like we'd probably prefer the game's original title over some irrelevant German localization.

I don't think these changes alter the intended meaning of the guidelines, rather making the intentions behind these rules more obvious through what seems to be the most logical extrapolation. Hopefully they're a worthwhile improvement. — Vague / Rant`

A further note on the use of Mr. Gimmick as an example: our article doesn't actually match the example (it's at Gimmick!, the Japanese title), so as the guidelines are currently stated, the article breaks them by neglecting to favor the European title. However, neither is notably "more English" than the other, so the Japanese version satisfies my revised versions of both 6. ("English language release") and 7. ("native title") and I agree it should be preferred, like Logic Pro over Croquis above. Recommend replacing the example with a more clear cut case like Terranigma. — Vague / Rant 06:50, 24 February 2013 (EST)

Multiple platforms under the same title or not?

You wrote:

1. Use the proper name for the game.
   • Example: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
2. If the game was released on multiple platforms under the same title, add the platform to the title in parentheses.
   • Example: Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis)

But those 2 instructions contradict each other! That's because the first example is a single title for multiple platforms.
So which instruction should be deleted and which one should be kept? -Lwc (talk) 04:48, 29 September 2018 (EDT)

There aren't any other Twilight Princess articles, so the platform doesn't need to be specified. --Hiccup (talk) 13:52, 29 September 2018 (EDT)