Damn myself, I forgot to push this into a SH after raising the issue on Discord several weeks ago, and I only thought about it after writing Forum:SH:LG:Real-world company articles... I'd like for us to reexamine our approach on how to title real-world companies, something that isn't currently covered by the Naming policy.
Currently several of our companies are titled like this: Lucasfilm Ltd., Hasbro Inc., etc. Those titles includes something called a legal entity type suffixes (other examples: PLC, LLC, GmbH, SARL). It can means various things, and are each relative to the country from which a company operates. For the provided examples, in the US "Ltd." means it's a limited company, and Inc. is for incorporation.
I have two issue with this being included in our articles. First, the practical aspect is that we always will pipelink those companies like [[Lucasfilm Ltd.|Lucasfilm]] and [[Hasbro Inc.|Hasbro]]. Secondly, the suffix is not part of the company name, per say, it's only a suffix providing a complementary information on the company, and is most often used in a very specific legal setting, like a copyright notice (example: TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd.).
My opinion on the matter is that we should get rid of those suffixes in our company article titles. For example, we would not include status suffixes and prefixes (Dr., Sir, CBE, Phd, etc.) for individuals in their article titles. And neither editors nor readers (unless they are lawyers...) would be looking to find and use that name with a legal suffix (it would still exist as a redirection anyway). I'm also going to answer again here to Bonzane counterargument on Discord that we should be consistent with media credits, and while I agree to some extend regarding individuals names, we also follow certain limitations on that, some covered in policy, and some not, like we're not going to title an article Sean Porter, ASC (for American Society of Cinematographers) instead of Sean Porter or Paul "Pablo" Molles instead of "Paul Molles" (just having a quick look at Skeleton Crew's credits). NanoLuukeCloning Facility 15:58, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
- I think I agree with this though. My initial reaction was that the Ltd/Inc/whatnot makes it more official or formal, but in reality it is a suffix situation and not an official title thing. Wok142 (talk) 21:20, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
- We currently have the article Chris "Doc" Wyatt because that is how he is credited most often. While I support dropping the company suffixes, creators should be titled as they're credited (Aside from titles and ofc deadnames) NBDani
(they/them)Yeager's Repairs 21:50, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
- To be discussed on another SH proper then :D . NanoLuukeCloning Facility 22:25, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
- Also, don't think I didn't see it was you who made the move in 2023 :P . NanoLuukeCloning Facility 22:27, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
- Leaving this here as a note for me for when I'm going to draft this, but some companies should be kept with those suffixes if they clearly identify themselves with it. An example of this is CGCG, Inc. who clearly use Inc. as part of its title, as displayed on their official website. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 19:50, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
