Thread:Sasstoreth/@comment-6335668-20130801103238/@comment-30507626-20130801172940

1. On the front page of the Wiki, under Wiki Policies and Disclaimers, is a link to the Article Naming Policies.

Also what is that witchcraft. That does solve a good number of my problems with the issue, and despite looking at the sources for both pages I have no idea how you did it. Please share!

2. I went to Wikipedia not because Wikipedia is the most authoritative authority on everything ever, but because it is kind of the standard by which most wikis are built and judged. And well, you're right: I tried searching for other books on Wikipedia to back up my premise and on my first hit found Wind in the Willows redirects to The Wind In The Willows, completely contrary to the point I was hoping to prove. Obviously I fell prey to my own confirmation bias when my Bible example lucked out, and I apologize for that!

Researching farther afield, the best reference I was able to find was an article from The Indexer which I found satisfactory to my grammar-nerd needs and I hope you might too. It acknowledges the standard rules about dropping articles (or more commonly inverting them, in the case of publication titles) but also recognizes the reality of how people search for items, and ultimately recommends dual-indexing (sorting both with and without the definite article and cross-referencing the entries).

I still personally think it's better for wiki organization and style to skip the definite article in keeping with the established naming conventions and traditional rules of indexing, and I would rather not see full articles beginning with The becoming standard. However, I'm willing to accept an a dual-indexed article with the main article under The (Whatevs) and the article-less article as a redirect (so Biblos would redirect to The Biblos) in a case like this where the original author finds it essential.