Pixar Cars Wiki:Conjectural names

A conjecture is an opinion, conclusion, or name formed on the basis of incomplete, insufficient, or unavailable information. On paper, this might sound like poor practice, but sometimes the use of conjecture is necessary to help deliver what is known. Per our wiki's notability guidelines, a general rule-of-thumb for deciding when a subject needs coverage or not is whether it has an official name – However, situations often arise when a nameless topic might still meet enough requirements to justify its own article. This page offers some guidelines for when a conjectural-named article might be worthwhile, and how best to go about accommodating it.

Conjectural titles

Conjectural page titles are useful when a particular subject would benefit from having its own page, but the subject in question does not have any official name designated by any Cars media. One reason for such importance might be a substantial presence in its respective source: For example, Cars: The Videogame's Abandoned Mine is a memorable set piece within that game, being the site of many in-game events and home to multiple hidden collectibles. On the opposite end, even a briefly-seen subject might prove noteworthy: Chick Hicks' Father appears on one page of an obscure comic book, but helps provide critical backstory for a well-established (and mustached!) character. Essentially, subjects like these are of great utility to the wiki, and shouldn't have to be forgone because of silly semantics.

When the situation arises, our first order of business is to come up with our own suitable title. There are two very important things to consider in formulating one:

1. A title should be descriptive and represent the subject as best as possible. Depending on its reason(s) for notability, this might be accomplished with a physical description, story role, or even its relation to another subject. Sometimes a simple "what it is" does the job best – an example might be Cars on the Road Happy Meal Powerup.
2. At the same time, a descriptive title should also be as concise as possible. That might sometimes seem contradictory, but it's best thought of as a balance: Aim for the most effective description in as few words as possible.

One helpful strategy might be to imagine you were searching for the subject, but didn't know what it was called: What would you type in the search bar?

Once the hard part is over and the article is written, all that's left is to make sure the reader knows when a title is conjectural, so we don't risk confusing or misleading it as an official one. This is done by adding the {{CONJECTURE}} notice template at the very top of the page. In addition to displaying a prominent sign, it will also place the article into a respective maintenance list containing all similar pages.

See also

• Notability