Talk:Naming conventions for British units

I used to prefer "UK" as the page name suffix for British units because:

• it's very short.
• "British" doesn't seem to sit well with Irish regiments.

After 2 years' experience of using the site I've noticed some problems with "UK":

• it doesn't seem to sit very well with units that are named after a geographical area outside the UK, eg "Suez Canal Defences" or "Lines of Communication Palestine".
• it looks too similar to "US", which I think we should keep.
• it could be confusing because category names always use "British", and "UK" is omitted from page names if the unit name already includes the word "British".

Now I think it might be better to use:

• "British Army" where a unit was in the Army for most or all of its existence (this still solves the Irish problem).
• "British" where a unit was never in the Army or changed services and was outside the Army for a significant part of its career (eg 63rd (Royal Naval) Division, Volunteer Training Corps units, air units that switched from RFC or RNAS to RAF in 1918).

It's still possible to change this using Special:ReplaceText but it's not something to be done lightly. Does anyone have any thoughts on this issue? --GavinRobinson (talk) 09:09, 8 January 2017 (PST)

If there are no last-minute objections or suggestions for improvements, I'll have time to implement the changes suggested above later this week. I'm also thinking that for the sake of consistency and ease of use, there should always be a comma after the word 'Battalion' in page names. I seem to remember that was the usual practice when this wiki started but I went against it with British battalions because common usage everywhere else seemed to be to not use a comma after 'Battalion'. Now I think it's easier if the same conventions apply to all page names instead of varying by nationality and unit type. People who are familiar with conventional names of British battalions will find them more easily anyway if I create redirects that omit the word 'Battalion', which is already on my to do list.--GavinRobinson (talk) 11:31, 6 November 2017 (PST)

Sounds good to me! --Mia (talk) 10:10, 9 November 2017 (PST)

All done except some redirects will need replacing as Special:ReplaceText sometimes failed to create them when it moved pages.--GavinRobinson (talk) 01:11, 12 November 2017 (PST)