I recently had to troubleshoot a template for a large national retailer where shared parameters are used to schedule quantities of items that have not been modelled per component: http://www.mgfx.co.za/blog/building-architectural-design/revit-shared-parameter-file-management/

For consistency the BIM manager named the shared parameters the same as the items they had already named and used in Excel spreadsheets. This is a logical and prudent course of action. Unfortunately some of these item descriptions were quite long and this caused complications.

• As Revit does not allow the use of aliases for parameters within formulae (i.e. specify symbols to represent a parameters within formulae). This made the compilation of formulae tiresome unless one reverts to Excel and use the concatenation function.
• The dialogues that allow for the selection of the parameters are not adjustable in width. This makes for a trying experience when many parameters must be loaded into a family or selected in formulae.

To manage the inherent shortcomings in Revit I suggest keeping parameter names as short as possible and to keep a separate file describing what each parameter is. If this is not viable or acceptable then vote for this idea: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/improve-shared-parameter-ui/idi-p/6940180

I make the point here that the dialogue boxes controls should be adjustable so that one may see the full names of the parameters, and that one should have the ability to use short parameter names but include a description so know what the parameter refers to.

It is also worth mentioning that there are better ways to handle the allocation of resources to items if one reverts to using Autodesk Navisworks for Quantification.