Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 102

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Move protected

Gonzo_fan2007 (talk) has move protected this page and WP:NAME to prevent move vandals. See User talk:Livitup#RE:Protection_of_MOS_and_NAME. If nobody cares, I'll drop it, but it seemed unnecessary to me so I thought I'd bring it up. Am I being over sensitive? Livitup (talk) 14:48, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I, too, would prefer, on principle, not to move-protect it. Haukur (talk) 15:15, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

See User talk:Gonzo fan2007#Wikipedia:Naming conventions I think this needs further discussion at a central place as it effects a lot of pages. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 16:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive265#Move-protection, feel free to chime in. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) @ 18:05, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

"Criticism" sections

The question of the title used for "Criticism" sections was raised on the village pump. Is there a style guideline on this anywhere? I couldn't find one. My stance is that "Criticism" is too connotative of "negative criticism", as this is the sense in which the word is most often used. User:Gadget850 mentions that many film articles use "Critical reception" or "Reception"; that might not work well for articles about non-artistic subjects, but perhaps there are some other suggested titles we can come up with? --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 08:23, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Not purely a style issue. Responding at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#"Criticism" sections. Shouldn't there be "Praising" sections too?. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 13:57, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Although the size of WP:Words to avoid is a little troubling, I could see the end result of this conversation being an addition over there, if you guys decide that "criticism" shouldn't be used for some purposes. But outside of WP:WORDS, it's been a general observation that not much good is accomplished by trying to tackle "tone" or WP:NPOV issues here; for one thing, those issues involve policy or something close to it, so anything we could say here would be in some sense overruled there. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:33, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Commas between independent clauses

The blah was blah blah blah blah blah blah, and blah did blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Comma, no comma, doesn't matter? I like the comma. NYTM says keep the comma unless the clauses are "exceptionally short". - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm indifferent (personally, I use the comma, as I do in most circumstances in which a comma is optional). But when this turned up on my watchlist, I thought you were going to propose legalizing comma splices, which would have set me off. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Death to comma splices, I only use them on talk pages. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:49, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I only use them by mistake, even in talk pages (I'm a fan of semicolons). Bring me a comma splice, I'll pay for the executioner. Hell, I'll even manufacture merchandise for the event. Waltham, The Duke of 22:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I use a comma if there are other coordinators in the vicinity that might trip up the reader in parsing the sentence. As far as I know there's nothing wrong with it and it's certainly not a comma splice. Strad (talk) 02:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Indeed it's not. You need to balance a number of needs in determining whether a stronger boundary than just "and" without comma is required. Probably, but hard to tell without knowing what "blah" is.Tony (talk) 03:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

In American English (again...sorry, that's all I know), the 3 most commonly used style guides are in agreement when you have a conjunction joining two clauses that could stand as sentences on their own. I would tend to trust Tony's sense and the sense of some of the regulars at FAC that you have a little more leeway on other continents. NYTM says use a comma unless the two clauses are "exceptionally short": "Nero fiddled and Rome burned." AP Stylebook says: "The comma may be dropped if two clauses with expressly stated subjects are short. In general, however, favor use of a comma unless a particular literary effect is desired or if it would distort the sense of a sentence." TCMOS says "...a comma usually precedes the conjunction. If the clauses are very short and closely connected, the comma may be omitted", and gives examples of "The bus never came, so we took a taxi" [long enough to demand a comma], but "Timothy played the guitar and Betty sang". - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes — in American English, a comma almost always comes before a conjunction between two independent clauses (except in rare cases). Without the conjunction, it's a comma splice. Commas are key to clear prose, especially in the concise world of business writing. They are very rarely detrimental to the prose, but some people seem to think that they slow the reader down — I think that's only the case if the audience consists of speedreaders. Semicolons and transitional phrases can be fun for longer sentences, but it's usually best to just use the comma/conjunction, semicolon, or full stop...unless you're in high school, in which case you'll want to impress the teachers with your command of the language :)— Deckiller 04:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The Oxford Guide to Style also favours the comma "to join main clauses that are semantically related, grammatically similar and linked by one of the coordinating conjunctions and, but, nor, or, and yet [. . .]". It says "such clauses are joined by a comma if they are too long, and too distinct in meaning, to do without any punctuation at all, but not separate enough to warrant a semi-colon". It also "permits" omission of the coordinating conjunction in some circumstances (e.g. "I came, I saw, I conquered").--Boson (talk) 05:26, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Just to be clear, I'm not equating the U.S. with North America; it's complicated. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:45, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Paragraphs in block quotations

WP:MOSQUOTE recommends using <p>...</p> paragraph tags around each paragraph in a block quotation. An easier workaround is to nest a single div, then wikitext respects the line breaks correctly. So the example becomes:

<blockquote><div>
And bring us a lot of horilka, but not of that fancy kind with raisins, or with any other such things—bring us horilka of the purest kind, give us that demon drink that makes us merry, playful and wild!

—Nikolai Gogol, Taras Bulba
</div></blockquote>

Result:

And bring us a lot of horilka, but not of that fancy kind with raisins, or with any other such things—bring us horilka of the purest kind, give us that demon drink that makes us merry, playful and wild!

—Nikolai Gogol, Taras Bulba

 —Michael Z. 2008-06-12 04:33 z

Subjects of study

I've just come across "he is a Professor of Biology". Should this be "he is a professor of biology" or "he is a professor of Biology"? Itsmejudith (talk) 12:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

"a professor of biology" IMHO.--Kotniski (talk) 14:59, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

"He is a professor of biology" and "Professor Smith, of the Biology department". In the latter case "Professor" is an honorific and "Biology" is a proper name. Livitup (talk) 20:15, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, very helpful. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:42, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Commas following years

In the (apparently largely overlooked) guideline entitled "How to copy-edit", it is suggested that "when not at the end of a sentence, constructions such as London, England, call for a comma after the second element". Example: "He was born in London, England, during the Great Fire." From what I have noticed, this is applied more often than not, but there is a certain inconsistency; as the Manual of Style makes no mention of such instances, the inconsistency is unlikely to cease.

A more debatable suggestion is the follow-up: "Similarly, dates written in the American style demand a comma after the year unless the date falls at the end of the sentence." Example: "She was active between September 29, 1967, and February 10, 1992." (Off the top of my head; the one on the page is not good, because the "On this date" clause at the beginning of the sentence should be followed by a comma anyway.) This is not applied with any consistency, and I have the impression that American usage actually favours omitting the comma. Up to now, the almost ubiquitous auto-formatting made such usage impossible, and the discussion thereof unnecessary. Now, however, with the changing trends on the matter of date linking, I feel that we need to settle this issue as early as possible.

So, what is the honourable colleagues' opinion on both these questions, and on the potential inclusion in the Manual of a clause encouraging towards one on the other direction? The two appear somewhat distinct, but I think that, whichever way we go, we might benefit from some consistency. Waltham, The Duke of 15:16, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

His Grace raises an issue that needs to be addressed. I personally think that the article "How to copy-edit" should be silent on this issue rather than prescribing the insertion of what in many cases (particularly the US-formatted date) is unnecessary. My view is that there are quite enough functional commas in text without adding to them on the basis of this unnecessary formula. For that reason, I say to use the serial ("Oxford") comma only where it disambiguates, even if this means within-article inconsistency. I apply this to my own writing. The London example is less jarring, but I'd still not use it myself.

If MOS is to say anything about this issue, I think it should be in the vein of balancing any advantage against the potential for interruption to the reader's flow. I don't mind if MOS says nothing, though. Tony (talk) 15:26, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

CMOS, which is at least one American style, requires:

The ship sailed on October 6, 1999, for Southampton.

This seems idiomatic to me; I believe the underlying reason is that 1999 is parenthetical. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:43, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

"Parenthetical" makes sense in this case; the single comma appears to be separating two sentences... While it is not. Anyway, this is just getting interesting... What about other style guides? Anyone? Waltham, The Duke of 08:57, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

If CMOS is running that "parenthetical" line, I think less of it still. I rather think the "6" is parenthetical: "October 1999" (that is, October 6 in that year). It's a silly hall of mirrors. Tony (talk) 09:12, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

No they do not say so, although I believe Jesperson does. Is this an admission that Tony's attacks on CMOS are on a book he has not bothered to read?

The form without parenthesis is The ship sailed on October 6 for Southampton. But 6 can scarcely be parenthetical; The ship sailed on October for Southampton. is an idiom violation. (So is sailed on October 1999; one sails in a month.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

It is "sailed in October". :)--andreasegde (talk) 11:31, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

We should say that it sailed on the 6th of September, 1933, but I prefer to write that it sailed on 6 September 1933, which is easier, even though being a Brit. Americans writing September 6 1933 only do so (IMO) because it is easier to say. (Try saying "September the sixth, 1933", or "the sixth of September, 1933" without spitting over people or sounding like Sylvester the cat... :)--andreasegde (talk) 11:43, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

My taste, for what it's worth, is for no commas after years in such examples, but for a comma after such things as London, England. I think it's because I'm so used to seeing dates written like that, my brain doesn't look for any other interpretation of the comma. I can understand, though, that American brains (which are constantly dealing with "Town, State" combinations) might treat the comma in London, England as similarly unambiguous.--Kotniski (talk) 17:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Apostrophes and Primes

Is there a recommendation to use single and double primes in order to label minutes and seconds (or other units) instead of using apostrophes and quotation marks? I can't find one, but I do think there should be one. ––Bender235 (talk) 18:23, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Straight quotation marks would give 28″; double primes give 28′′, and need a <nowiki> tag.I don't see much difference. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:26, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

First of all, you don't need a <nowiki> tag in order to display double primes; just use its HTML entity ″ (or ′ for single prime).

And second, you might not see much difference, yet there is one. ß (German letter Eszett) and β (Greek letter Beta) might look alike as well, but still we take care not to confuse them. Just as hyphens (-) and en-dashes (–), or plus signs (+) and daggers (†). ––Bender235 (talk) 19:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's not get into dashes. I can see a difference between beta and eszett; I can't see one between the two forms here. Can anybody? If not, should we require unintuitive syntax for something that will make no difference to the reader? Cui bono? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Can you see difference between X (Latin letter X, that is) and Χ (Greek letter Chi)? Or S (Latin) and Ѕ (Cyrillic letter Dze)? Yet, there is a big difference for machines reading those letters, e.g. screen readers for blind (see WP:ACCESS). There's a big difference in pronunciation. Same thing with apostrophes/quotation marks and primes. A screen reader might read Jim is 6'1" and ran a mile in 3'21". as "Jim is six-one quote and ran a mile in three twenty one unquote." ––Bender235 (talk) 21:06, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:17, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

The single character ″ as used in 28″ is, in fact, a double prime and not a "straight quotation mark". Also, you don't need nowiki tags or HTML entities; you can just enter them directly. Strad (talk) 23:58, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

We should use the prime and double prime characters, for the same reason we use the degree sign and not a superscripted letter o, and we use the multiplication sign and not the letter x. We should aim for proper typography, not for ASCII art. --Itub (talk) 11:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we should add this recommendation to the Manual of Style as soon as we reached consensus here. ––Bender235 (talk) 23:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's not. Do we need to legislate? No; revising idiom wherever screen readers may misunderstand things is trying to bail out a spring using a sieve. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Where's the problem? There are recommendations for dozens of things, like using en-dashes (–) instead of hyphens (-), or em-dashes (—) instead of double-hyphens (--). Plus the general recommendation to use proper typography. ––Bender235 (talk) 08:27, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

And most of those recommnendations are the original research of a handful who would like to bully other editors into following their prejudices. We need less of these, not more. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the difference, and I favor the symbols that are actually on my keyboard. Call it lazy, I guess, but it's a lot easier and makes almost no difference. Nosleep (talk) 09:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know which keyboard or which font you are using, but these look completely different to me. The four characters below are 1) single quote/apostrophe (the one actually in my keyboard, which is next to the semicolon in the US layout), 2) prime; 3) double quotes (again from my keyboard); 4) double prime.

' ′ " ″

Now, if you use the curly quotes instead (which are not on my keyboard), they look more similar to the prime and double prime, but are still not identical. --Itub (talk) 11:47, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Here are the curly quotes next to the primes for comparison:

’ ′ ” ″

--Itub (talk) 11:50, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, they look 100% the same to me (not in this edit window, no, but in the article they look identical). Nosleep (talk) 11:56, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Marks as Firefox displays them under Vista. Click for legend.

The image shows the symbols as Firefox 2.0.0.16 (Windows Vista) displays them. I increased the text size in Firefox (CTRL + once or twice) to make the shapes visible. The image page has a legend. Fg2 (talk) 12:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey folks - you'd think someone would have come up with this before, but have a look at {{[[Template:''|'']]}}. Problem solved? (sadly this can't be done for single prime.) Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:36, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

• That should be useful. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Numbers as figures or words

Anderson's attempts to impose his own ideas on this section, and his usual smoke-bomb, the posting of a dispute tag, are evident both here and at MOSNUM. We need to talk through the issues and harmonise the texts at both pages, which have been out of kilter for a while.

Please participate at MOSNUM talk. Tony (talk) 06:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Tony is welcome, here or there, to explain why we should have two different sets of details on this matter. For my part, I would prefer Jimp's recommendation at #Comparable quantities above, of a summary here and details on MOSNUM, but having the same recommendations is a start. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I have temporarily reverted my own reversion of P. M. Anderson's reversion of Tony's reversion of Anderson's insertion of the full set of guidelines from MOSNUM here. I hesitantly agree that it is preferable to display two matching sets than have our guidelines clash. However, I hope for a speedy resolution of the matter, which will bring this page back to a more acceptable state of usability. I find the entire situation particularly awkward and unstable; any sign of a lack of progress with the discussions will make me reconsider my position. I shall, of course, participate in the discussion at MOSNUM and try to help in any way I can. Waltham, The Duke of 22:02, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry to have spent a day off-wiki. I am agreeable to either a short summary or a medium summary; I can tolerate the present situation, since His Grace's revert, of almost identical texts; if I were Jimbo, I would prefer not to try identical texts because it's hard to maintain. This is why I've inserted all three.

I await third voices at MOSNUM; I am restoring His Grace's solution of identical texts until such discussion takes place. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:08, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Anderson used His Grace's comment as some kind of excuse to re-impose his own concoction here. This was an unreasonable assumption from His Grace's posting, and re-introduces vague, patronising, faulty and poorly categorised text. I've reverted to the long-standing text, including the nine/10 boundary for spelling out and using numerals (this appears to be what Anderson is jumping up and down about, but we should discuss it by way of proposed texts here first, point by point, not by huge changes made suddenly and unilaterally on the page itself. Tony (talk) 04:10, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Note that the text from MOSNUM does include the 9/ten boundary. Tony's incoherent and solitary reversion to a text which differs (as it always has) from MOSNUM is unacceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm still not quite following this, but it seems logical that MOS should contain either identical text to the relevant section of MOSNUM, or nothing but a link to the MOSNUM section, or (most consistently with the rest of MOS) a summary of the MOSNUM section. Having two "alternative" texts seems quite untenable. Maybe we should temporarily reduce the section here to one sentence and a link to MOSNUM, and then work on the wording over at MOSNUM; then when that's done, work on a shortened form of that wording for here. --Kotniski (talk) 08:59, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I would be perfectly satisfied with this suggestion. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Page name in references

Do we make an exact copy of the page name we are citing in a ref, or do we follow the MOS? For instance, if a page used for referencing is titled "PLAGIARIZM ON THE INTERNET -- HOW STUDENTS ARE PASSING EXAMS", do we type it in capital letters, or change it to lower case? And if it's the latter, do we use initial capital letters for all words that are not coordinating conjunctions, prepositions and articles, correct the double-hyphen and correct the spelling error, or leave it exactly as it is? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 04:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I would feel free to change the capitalization, since it is common for publishers to change it themselves; the capitalization of the book spine, half-title page, and title page of a book do not always match. I'd hesitate to correct spelling errors, but if the publisher repeats the title several times, I'd use the most nearly correct version. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 04:16, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I recall reading somewhere that it's policy, or if not, then at least strongly suggested that uppercase titles should be changed to capitalizing only the first letter of each word. Gary King (talk) 05:13, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#All caps: "Avoid writing in all capitals". More specifically, "Reduce newspaper headlines and other titles from all caps to title case: Replace 'WAR BEGINS TODAY' with 'War Begins Today'. This is what The New York Times does when transcribing its historical collection." However, "write acronyms and initialisms in all capitals". Waltham, The Duke of 00:10, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I knew I'd read something like that a while a go, I just couldn't remember where. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 16:37, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Quotes and WP:POINT

I've hit this very unexpected bump here, and I need some advice on how best to deal with this before changing anything (assumimg we determine that anything needs to be changed).

At the moment I have Iowa class battleship up at FAR, in part becuase the last time the article was there was in 2005/2006, and as was expected things have changes at FAC since then. When I rebuilt the article back in march 07 I added a section discussing the class' reactivation potential, including two rquote from people on the opposite end of the debate. I now have word that the qutes are a little big for the rquote template, and ought to be transfered to blockquotes, but my concern is that by switching Rquote for blockquote I may end up bumping against both WP:NPOV and to a greater degree WP:POINT; block quote extends quotes across the whole page and can not be shortened to fit into the context of the materail like rquote. I am concerned that adding block quotes to the article may invite edit warring here over the issue. It is in light of the concerns that I am asking for a ruling from those who frequent this page for a more proffessional opinion on the issue before reformatting the quotes. I am also open to alternatives to both rquote and blockquote, if anyone would like to suggest something else. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:57, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the two quotes work nicely as they are.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:39, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree, they look nice like you arranged them (with rquote) and changing them to block quotes would not be an improvement. Haukur (talk) 09:41, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Template:Rquote says: "For longer pull quotes of 50 words or more (in a similar style), use Cquote." What a silly little rule - even the example in the template documentation has 69 words. Haukur (talk) 09:53, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

It's not unreasonable as a rule of thumb; I've rephrased. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:14, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

That was an improvement. I think 75 words would be better but that might be overly precise and thus even more likely to be taken too literally by a pedant down the road. Haukur (talk) 22:20, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

50 or 100 words? I took out the or fewer. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

That works for me. But you've certainly already improved it; the point that the desirable length depends on the length of the rest of the paragraph is also a good one. Haukur (talk) 23:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

MoS bot

Bots that correct MoS issues often come up at WP:BRFA and denied every time. A single bot to correct all errors that can be done safely has been suggested. It would only edit when three or more MoS issues are found (unless it is major) to reduce small edits. I'm willing to do the coding if it has supports. BJ^Talk 20:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I would appreciate extreme caution on this. Much of what MOS says is controversial; much of what isn't controversial has unstated exceptions (for example, there is no consensus to apply most of these rules inside direct quotations); some of the little which is fully stated and consensus still requires intelligence to deal with correctly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I believe it is possible, but it'll have to start small. There are some MoS issues are so superficial that it can only be realistically implemented with a bot. For example, a bot could: convert two hyphens ( -- ) into an em dash ( — ), utilizing en dashes ( – ) for empty table cells, non-breaking spaces for numbers and their units ( either   or utilizing the template {{nowrap}} ; e.g. 17 kg ), and so on. Be sure to check if there is not a bot that already preforms this task. You have my support. ChyranandChloe (talk) 00:35, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

That is the plan, simple changes only. All bots that have tried to get approval for making only one change have been denied in the past for being wasteful edits. BJ^Talk 05:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I recommend against using the nowarp template: it's inflexible. The non-breaking space should be used only between number and symbol (not fully spelt-out units). Be careful that we don't end up with spaced em dashes and unspaced en dashes for interrupters—people might lazily write double hyphens without knowing exactly what they should be. Please be aware that Anderson has been conducting a fervent campaign to weaken the status of MoS for more than a year. That he hasn't succeeded is due only to the efforts of people who realise the necessity of a unifying stylistic force in the project. I'd ignore his mantra. Tony (talk) 05:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

The changes that a bot should make will be decided later if the overall idea is seen as a good idea. BJ^Talk 13:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

• Tony, can you manage to have a discussion without a personal attack? As for the status of MOS: it's a guideline; a handful of pedants have sought to use it, without much success, to impose their personal prejudices. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:19, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
• But the bot should not put in a non-breaking space where spaces will not break: a paragraph beginning "With 3 mm wire," should not have one. Can a bot do this? I doubt it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:54, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

• A bot could take that into account. (Personally I think the benefits of adding these nbsp's are not worth the effort and the less readable code it produces.) Haukur (talk) 06:25, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Be careful with replacing -- with em dashes. Many computer programming languages use -- as an operator. --Itub (talk) 05:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Scrolling in articles

It doesn't make sense to me that this text is buried in WP:CITE, when references are only one example. Doesn't it belong here?

Scrolling lists, for example of references, should never be used because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such lists will display properly in all web browsers.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I've never seen it used anywhere else besides references (it probably exists for some long lists and such though). If someone saw a scrolling list of references then the first thing they would do is check the policy on citations, so WP:CITE. Gary King (talk) 05:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

They are also showing up in articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:45, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The closest thing I am aware of are panorama pictures in city articles and tallest-buildings-in-x lists. Would you care to cater an example? I am quite curious to see what you are referring to. Waltham, The Duke of 00:02, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

No responses, so I'll try again. Does anyone disagree that the text, currently located at WP:CITE, but pertaining to all portions of the article:

Scrolling lists, for example of references, should never be used because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such lists will display properly in all web browsers.

belongs here at MOS rather than buried at cite, since it's a global issue? Scrolling lists are creeping into articles, and they don't mirror, print, et al. An example (since corrected) was at Washington,_D._C.#Demographics (see the version before it was corrected here. The old version doesn't show a scroll bar on my laptop, but did on my other computer, not sure what that's about, but the nominator solved it by converting to a vertical template.) At any rate, I am increasingly seeing scroll bars in the text of articles, there have been many others. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:03, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

• I agree that these shouldn't be used in articles, and that if they are being used, then the quote belongs here rather than at WP:CITE. Hesperian 04:21, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Minor query

Is the placement of the closing quotation mark proper: Seeking to bring Africans into the established political processes, and hoping they would shun the recently formed African National Congress (ANC) parties, Welensky hit out at what he saw as the poor Colonial Office practice of making the situation "[consist] of two opposed policies, black rule and white rule. They naturally prefer to aim for black rule and hope they will experience this, which they regard as the apotheosis of Colonial Office policy". --Efe (talk) 11:21, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Placing punctuation outside of quotations, especially for snipped quotes, is perfectly acceptable. Proper, even. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:42, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

"It was announced that"

The phrase "It was announced that" is rapidly becoming my greatest bête noir on Wikipedia. Typical instances might be

"On 31 July 2008 it was announced that Fred Bloggs had signed for Melchester Rovers FC."

Either it was announced by a reliable source, in which case we simply state it as a fact, giving the appropriate citation, or it came from a dubious source, in which case it has no place in an encyclopaedic project. It is the fact of something happening, not the announcement of that fact, that comprises encyclopaedic content. Occasionally, the circulation of a rumour is worth reporting, but if the phrase is widespread, it ceases to serve as a warning that the press may have been muck-spreading, and simply diminishes the apparent confidence of an encyclopaedia in its facts. Am I right? If so, is there any way that this can be raised to the status of part of the MoS, so that we can free ourselves of this feeling of being uncertain and denying responsibility for what is posted on so many statements? Kevin McE (talk) 14:46, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

This is hardly unique to Wikipedia - it's endemic to the sports press. The problem is that the specific date of signing is not necessarily known; only the date that said signing is announced. Without public access to the contract, there's no way to know precisely. The alternative is simply stripping the exact date off, but that leaves the statement looking mushy and half-researched. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:06, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I would also object to it as passive voice, but that's the easy way. SDY (talk) 17:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

There may be ways to make it less blatant. For example, "the announcement on 31 July 2008 that Bloggs had signed for Melchester Rovers FC marked the end of his ten-year association with Casterbridge United". Barnabypage (talk) 18:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes the exact source of the announcement is difficult to find, because the statement is taken directly from a secondary source and the primary source is not publically available (e.g., you might find a news article saying "In a private interview on 31 July 2008, Bloggs announced his retirement [but we're only publishing this 3 days later]." I suppose that wouldn't be much of an announcement though. Dcoetzee 17:24, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya

Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya

This article apparently uses left-aligned images. I was wondering if such layout is allowed? --BorgQueen (talk) 15:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

We recommend alternating them, unless there is good reason to do otherwise; but the presence of an extremely large right-aligned nav template would make simple alternation clumsy. It may be worth reconsidering the template, but until that is done, the present layout is allowed, although not happily. Another useful fix would be to spread out the images more, so that they were throughout the article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I've done some work on this. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:05, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Minor archiving notes

Archive 101 recently wrapped up, so I've added links to the section headings in the archive. Text searching the main archive page is a good way to find past discussions. Also, I archived the top section, which wasn't archiving on its own for some reason. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:38, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, please don't put links or templates into headings here at WT:MOS. As you can see on the archive page, each section heading becomes a link for easy reference, and embedded links or templates screw this up. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:43, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Groan. "MiszaBot II (Talk | contribs) m (57,639 bytes) (Archiving 3 thread(s) (older than 10d) to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 101, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 100, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 102". Updating counter so that archiving goes to 102. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:26, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Metre: International spellings vs American

When dealing with articles that have a global scope, is the term metre or meter (AE) preferred for article name titles? For example 40 meters, 80 meters? I note the SI spelling is "metre". =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:26, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this falls within the usual "national varieties of English" rules at WP:ENGVAR. Brief summary: If there's a strong connection between the subject matter and one culture, use that culture's spelling; otherwise, use the spelling from the earliest non-stub version that makes a clear choice. --Trovatore (talk) 17:38, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

That may lead to inconsistency. Should spellings listed by official regulatory/advisory bodies be given a priority: ISO, SI, IUPAC etc? =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:01, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes it may; see WP:ENGVAR. Official spellings do not take priority until they become general usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:07, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR is limited in scope. It does not consider a case such as this. In this case, metre is not only the SI spelling listed in ISO 1000:1992, but also has widespread and common usage. So, for a location-independent article, should the titles be moved to 40 metres and 80 metres? See this: [1] under "Units of measurement" after the table. =Nichalp «Talk»=

No, they should not. You wanna start the war of 1812 all over again? People are not entirely rational on this topic (not, by the way, that I think deferring to international standards bodies necessarily is rational; their choices are as arbitrary as anyone else's). In any case, the existing guidelines are the best way that has been found to keep emotions in check. This falls well into the scope of WP:ENGVAR.--Trovatore (talk) 19:54, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

The spelling "metre" is unheard of in America (at least, I've never seen it in American writing, including American scientific journals), so using that spelling in an article which otherwise uses American spelling is inconsistent. —Alex (ASHill | talk | contribs) 20:02, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Since the original question said article titles, I would think metre would be the preferred spelling unless the article clearly had an American subject. The obvious comparison here is Aluminium. The examples you gave all have global scope (even 2 meters is an international band). The issue would then become, for those examples, rewriting the article for consistency and putting it into UK/Commonwealth English, since other American spellings (e.g., summarized) are used in them - or even before that, gaining consensus to move the article, since it would be opposed strongly, as Trovatore notes above. —C.Fred (talk) 20:14, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

There is no justification whatsoever for such a move. The Chemistry Wikiproject has decided to follow IUPAC's lead on aluminum/aluminium, and that's OK for chemistry articles -- they're the experts and I won't fight them on that. For all other articles mentioning the metal, WP:ENGVAR is in full effect. --Trovatore (talk) 20:27, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Unless the Amateur Radio Wikiproject decides to take up the case of the examples given above. —C.Fred (talk) 20:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, the chemistry case is sort of a fait accompli; there's unfortunatly not much to be done about it now. I would oppose any new such intervention. --Trovatore (talk) 20:54, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Once we decided on aluminium (and caesium, which is odder to an American), we did not move them; similarly, articles established with meter should not be moved, unless they have particular associations with metre-using countries (radio waves don't). That's the effect of ENGVAR on titles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:06, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

• Also, we now have 80 meters for the frequency, and 100 metres for the sprint. This is a useful, if accidental, differentiation; let's keep it, rather than risking conflicts. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

• And in this specific case, it does come back, indirectly, to ENGVAR: the US term is 2 meters, but the UK equivalent term is 144 MHz! So 2 meters, 40 meters, 80 meters, in those usages, are American usages, and 2 metres and the like would be inappropriate. By contrast, 100 metres is a track/athletics event competed internationally, so the -re spelling makes sense. And for anything new, I suppose it all depends on the context of the article when it is created. —C.Fred (talk) 21:19, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

The earliest recorded use of the word metre in English was in 1797, although metric units should really be known as SI units. The SI stands for Système Internationale because the system was invented by the French. It can be called the MKS system (for metre/kilometre/second). This is why the British spell metre and litre in the French way. --andreasegde (talk) 11:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm skeptical of your last assertion. Centre, theatre, meagre, ochre and sabre are not part of the SI.—RJH (talk) 15:16, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

You realize that all those words are of French origins right? Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 05:55, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

What this all points out is that we need two different wikis for the two different languages that are American English and British English. If Norwegian gets two wikis, why doesn't English? Caerwine Caer’s whines 05:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

In that case, we'd need at least two Spanish wikis (Spain and the Americas), a Quebecois wiki, FSM-knows-how-many Chinese wikis, etc... Most people have absolutely no problem with it because getting hot and bothered over spelling when there is no barrier to comprehension is a waste of time. SDY (talk) 06:11, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Spelling is merely the most obvious difference between the two main English languages. The most extreme difference is the completely opposite meanings that the verb "table" has in American English and British English. By the way we already have at least seven wikis for living Chinese languages (eight if you count Classical Chinese as semi-living) and IIRC, the main Chinese wiki has the ability for users to choose between simplified and traditional Chinese characters. I fail to see why the languages of American English and British English should be forced to share one single wiki without any means for localization of content. Various minor German, Italian, and Spanish dialects have their own wikis. For the Yugoslav language, we get four different wikis (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian) purely because of political hostility, despite the fact that the varieties are as all mutually inteligible as the national varieties of English are. I am not about to apologize for being proud of my national language, one used by hundreds of millions, and yet forced for no reason to be crammed together with other dialects, when such a cramming together is not forced upon other languages. Why are English varieties being discriminated against? Caerwine Caer’s whines 00:34, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

People exercise their right to spend their leisure time as they please, and not enough people have decided they want to see two versions of Wikipedia, one written in American English, and the other in British English, to make the effort to set it up and create duplicate versions of all the articles. Deciding how to use one's leisure time is a valid and respectable form of discrimination. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 00:58, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should celebrate that most of us can ignore such pathetic and petty differences in order to collaborate on this project. Spelling, in the end, does not matter so long as the message is clear. If it really bothers you that much, you could create a "Queen's English" version to answer the American-only Conservapedia. SDY (talk) 02:13, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Gerry, you are correct about that people do have a right to decide how they use their leisure time. However, under the current policy, because there is no ISO 639 code for any of the national English varieties, no such proposal can be accepted. For now, I am willing to wait what will hopefully be just a few short months until the ISO 639-6 alpha4 codes get released so that I can make a formal proposal for an American English Wikipedia under the current guidelines for doing so. If the proposal is rejected then I shall spend my leisure time elsewhere until such time as either it is adopted or some mechanism to support English varieties is added to the English Wikipedia. I strongly doubt that if given the opportunity, that there would not be at least as many users as of the Simple English Wikipedia. As for duplication of all articles, who says that would be a good idea or even necessary? For one thing, new national English variant Wikipedias could be case sensitive in article names, unlike the current mashed English language Wikipedias. Furthermore I suspect, but am not certain, that it would possible to do as is currently done here for the Image: space and the commons: wiki, and have any mainspace articles not on a national variety of a language to show the "master" document on en:. Yes, localization will involve some drawbacks for editors, but I'm not aware of any major multilingual internet project, except Wikipedia, that uses a hodge-podge of Englishes. Either they choose one variety if they expect that it will be the overwhelmingly predominant usage of their intended readers, or they support multiple Englishes. The end user community that Wikipedia should be serving is the much larger community of readers, not the smaller community of editors. Ease of editing should always take a subservient role to ease of using. (As for SDY's suggestion, of Conservapedia, while my preferences about language may seem to some "pathetic and petty", I'm most certainly neither right-wing nor Creationist.) Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I just bring up the parallel because of the intolerance for anything but the WP:TRUTH of how things are spelled. One of that project's main points is that it always uses American spellings. I think we can have enough respect for our readers to realize that most of them will not be bothered by having the spelling be something other than exactly what they expect. It's a grey zone. Or perhaps a gray one. SDY (talk) 04:05, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I think we should have enough respect for our readers to not think that because something that would better cater to their needs would inconvenience editors it must be inherently bad. While providing support for national varieties, in whatever manner it is rolled out, is likely to mean more work for editors (or at least those of the WikiGnome variety) it definitely would better serve the readers. Caerwine Caer’s whines 07:34, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Evidently, the Chinese languages are mutually unintelligible, and the German dialects are "hardly understandable to someone who knows only standard German". This is not at all similar to these English dialects. If the Yugoslavian "languages" are mutually understandable and were created because of politically animosity that made the project unworkable, that also is not at all similar to the situation on the English-language Wikipedia. As for "table", these two related meanings are used in a specific context and stem from the same basic meaning; if such differences in a few individual words are cause for separate Wikipedias, then we will need many more than two Wikipedias to properly represent the various dialects of English. I propose we need at least eight English Wikipedias, so that English will not be discriminated against by having fewer Wikipedias than Chinese. —Centrx→talk • 03:46, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

As long as there is a viable community of editors, why shouldn't there be a Wikipedia for each variety of English? Or at least some manner of dealing with English varoeties. While somewhat inconvenient for editors, it could be handled via appropriately coded templates and CSS in the skins to handle most cases seamlessly for readers. Something like {{engvar|cheque|US=check}} or {{engvar|check|UK=cheque}}, or redundantly, {{engvar|cheque|US=check|UK=cheque}}, with appropriate template coding could easily handle the two main varieties. Additional varieties could be supported with additional parameters that if not present would cause one of the two main ones chosen to be selected. Assuming the absence of a Canadian parameter would cause a user who wanted Canadian English to see the British English spelling, one could for example use {{engvar|tire|UK=tyre|CA=tire}} to get the appropriate spelling for Canadian English. Systematic differences could be handled with parameterless templates so that one could get the correct spelling of "colo(u)r" with hon{{engvar -o(u)r}} while leaving the template to figure things out for the less commonly known varieties instead of individual editors.

Possibly a more elegant solution than templates that would require changes to the MediaWiki software could be made, but I'm doubtful that such a change would be without side-effects, and it would need someone to code it. So what exactly would this kludge of a solution need?

1. One additional line to the CSS file for each skin so that by default the variety specific Englishes don't get shown (.engvar-us , .engvar-uk {display:none} (with one additional selector for each English variety supported)
2. A few templates, as mentioned above, that would admittedly need to use some complicated template syntax, but not anymore complicated that what some commonly used templates are already using.
3. And if this ever got past the experiment stage, a user preference so that instead of users having to edit their personal skin CSS files, a radio box could handle it.

If we wished to get really fancy, using domain name/IP sniffing to have this also work for many readers who don't have an account, though I suspect that would require some hefty changes to the MediaWiki software.

Such a solution would be very easy for readers, not as easy for editors. Making it easier for editors would either require changes to the MediaWiki code (not likely to ever happen as any editor-friendly code-based solution likely would be at least as much of a resource hog as such rejected facilities as a built-in spell checker) or to have separate Wikis (perhaps just separate namespaces) as that would require no templates to be used at all. Such a solution has the problem of synchronizing the content of the various English language wikis. However, as long as the main English Wiki continued to function, that problem would be no worse than synchronizing between the different languages. Indeed, it should be easier, as most editors would be capable of "translating" between English varieties.

I'll admit there is no obvious easy solution to the problem of English varieties. If there were, it would likely have been adopted already. But if we wish Wikipedia to be judged as professionally competent, especially for the offline versions, Wikipedia needs to deal with the elephant of English varieties in some manner and stop pretending that it isn't in the room. Caerwine Caer’s whines 07:34, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

You know, I've heard a bunch of criticisms of Wikipedia from outside the project. People say that it's not reliable because of the fact that a lot of editors don't know what they're talking about; they say that people push their pet theories; they talk about vandalism. All of these things are, of course, true, though we have ways of dealing with them that are much more effective than one might have predicted. But one thing I never recall leveled as a criticism of Wikipedia's "professionalism" is a lack of dialectal uniformity across articles.

So basically I think you've got a solution in search of a problem. Dialectal nonuniformity across articles is not an "elephant". It's a triviality. Any attempt to address it carries serious costs, and they aren't worth it, not by orders of magnitude. --Trovatore (talk) 08:06, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

No, there is definitely a problem, so I'm not searching for one. Just because you think that the cost of solving it is higher than the cost of not solving it, does not mean that there is not a problem. Nor does the fact that you think the problem is trivial mean that all people think it is trivial. And while I agree that it certainly is a lesser problem than reliability, POV, and vandalism, that doesn't mean that it is not one, and it certainly doesn't mean that it cannot be addressed until those problems are dealt with. So, while I can respect someone holding the opinion that this problem is not worth the cost of solving it, I have zero respect for someone who says that it is not a problem. It certainly is a greater problem for offline usages, such as Wikipedia 1.0, as the offline world has higher expectations of consistency of style, but if a system were put in place to address that specific need, there would be little extra cost in allowing its use to be expanded to the Greater Pedia. Caerwine Caer’s whines 18:11, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

You have zero respect for me then. Like a recent discussion on the village pump about football articles, this seems to be an example of one editor with a pet peeve that thinks the encyclopedia will be dismissed as unprofessional if it isn't fixed. The hobgoblin of little minds, indeed. SDY (talk) 18:31, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Even outright spelling errors would not warrant solutions as drastic and heavy-handed as you have proposed. Templates would drastically clutter articles and discourage casual users from editing; readers are editors. Even if we accept that the dialects be a problem, your solutions are grossly disproportionate. This issue has been discussed before, and these proposals have been discussed before and rejected. —Centrx→talk • 18:41, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, outright spelling errors are far simpler to handle -- just edit them. :) While I understand why a template based solution may strike people as heavy handed for people who view American English, British English, and the other national Englishes as only dialects and not as distinct languages, what would be drastic or heavy handed about having Wikipedias in American English and other national English languages in addition to the current one that uses an undifferentiated English? Caerwine Caer’s whines 22:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be just wasteful. Why divide expert talent, already rare enough, between separate projects, for such a non-problem? But I suppose I wouldn't have much objection to the mere existence of such projects, because I don't think experts would really waste their time with them. My prediction is that they would basically fail; they would be backwaters like the Simple English wikipedia, another project with no good rationale. --Trovatore (talk) 22:51, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

While I have no desire to edit simple:, I'd say that it does have a good rationale. The only knock I have against it is that I think it would have been slightly better to have focused on either children or on ESL readers and not on both. Based on the stats, it appears to be healthier than the Wikis of several major languages, including, strangely enough, Hindi. Caerwine Caer’s whines 23:52, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Have you ever merged a single article? Do you know how much time and effort it takes to merge two articles on a single topic? Or are you proposing that we simply branch and divide editors? Does a reader need to read both articles in order to get the available information?--after all, he can understand both, because it is the same language--Should every editor double every edit? Why would we only have two English-dialect Wikipedias, when the basis for having two applies equally well to having separate Wikipedias for various American dialects, or Wikipedias to represent the increasing variety in worldwide English usage with non-native speakers? This brainless scheme is a non-starter; it has been discussed and rejected before, and continuing this discussion would be a waste of time. If you care so much about seeing the Right s's and re's, you can simply write a skin that replaces words for you; it will be sometimes inaccurate, but we do not need to up-end Wikipedia in order to address them for you. —Centrx→talk • 03:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I have done article mergers; not often, but I have done them. A brain dead auto-word mangler would be worse than the current situation. Applying your logic consistently, I presume that you expect every editor who is bilingual in German and one of the Englishes to check both de: and en: each time he makes a substantive edit to either. Nor do I see why since you seem to think that the American English and hodgepodge English Wikis need to be kept in lockstep as if there could only be one true and acurate article on any subject. As for your point of sub-national dialects, if a community of editors could be found, I wouldn't object, but the differences in non-colloquial written English are found almost exclusively at the level of national divisions. Unless you were intending to refer to various English creoles non-native speakers by definition are not going to have a cohesive and independent set of language rules that could be used to form the basis of a standard. Still, I have come to the sad conclusion that Wikipedia is unlikely to abandon its current muddle of Englishes. Caerwine Caer’s whines 05:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The difference is that a speaker of American English is ipso facto a speaker (or at least reader) of British English, and vice versa, because they're the same language (more precisely, they're mutually comprehensible). Except in rare circumstances the article will not be misunderstood.

By making very minor accommodations, we can avoid most of those misunderstandings, and even keep from grating on each other too much. So for example I don't insist that an Englishman write don't insist that an Englishman write, but he can easily make it don't insist that an Englishman should write rather than the jarring *don't insist that an Englishman writes. And he can avoid amongst and whilst. In return, I'll give up overly (a useful word but not essential), alternate in the sense of alternative, and remember to be careful with table, moot, and stipulate. --Trovatore (talk) 07:36, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Well said that man (or possibly woman: who knows with usernames?), although I would dispute that use of a subjunctive is a matter of Atlantic separation. The most valuable advice in WP:ENGVAR is the least often cited part of it: the suggestion to use 0pportunities_for_commonality, or version-neutral English, as I prefer to call it. Editors can easily, and politely, be reminded to try to apply it: breaches of it can be solved with minor copyedits, and maybe a small project or a page of suggestions could be maintained to improve the vocabulary and mutual understanding that will enable the spread of vnE, as some subtleties will have passed editors by (I was unaware of a second, contradictory, meaning of table as a verb until reading this thread). If Wikipedia is about anything, it is surely about co-operative effort, bringing a wide range of people with particular knowledge together, and finding mutually agreeable language. vnE is not always possible, and that is where other advice at ENGVAR comes in, but to take as an example the case of the question that started this thread, a redirect from whichever article title is not used, and after that as much application as possible of the mutually accepted abbreviation m should make the articles perfectcly acceptable to all readers. Kevin McE (talk) 08:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Bolding

User:Bkonrad (AKA older != wiser) is making the case here that our guidance on bolding should be changed so that bolding is also used to indicate redirects to subheadings. Bkonrad has concerns about what they call the "FAC cabal", so to avoid the appear of cabal-ism, I've taken the discussion to WP:VPP#Bolding; please weigh in there. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The bigger picture

The bigger question implicated by this discussion on bolding is, "So what if that's the style guideline?" I'm bringing up the question at Village Pump#The bigger picture. I'm optimistic; I think we can learn some things from the nay-sayers, and I think the nay-sayers will be surprised and impressed at how many people are basically supportive of the style guidelines, and FAC and other review and collaboration processes. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Exception to restating the title

It has been suggested that there is a special case when the following WP:HEAD guideline may be ignored:

"Avoid restating or directly referring to the topic or to wording on a higher level in the hierarchy".

The particular exception is when the name higher in the heirarchy is a sub-component of a proper name. As an example, the star Sirius consists of two sub-components, "Sirius A" and "Sirius B". Hence these sections repeat the article name, yet represent separate entities. Would it be appropriate to list that exception on the MoS, as it occurs quite often in astronomy for example?—RJH (talk) 21:52, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

What saves us here is that no one listens to us on this point :) I can't remember offhand a single case where someone didn't repeat something that they felt needed to be repeated because of WP:LEAD. Have any astronomers written a subheading called just "A"? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:46, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Does the guideline need to ease up, then? Tony (talk) 04:15, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I tried changing the headings to "Component A" and "Component B", but that received objections. I can see their point too in this case, and I could expect the same situation to happen with some consumer products, for example. I thought a simple exception phrase would work. Something like, "It may be appropriate to repeat the article name in a section heading when it is part of a longer proper name," or perhaps some tighter wording. As for nobody listening to this point, well... I do (after having the point raised during FAC). Thanks.—RJH (talk)

Your reviewer is reading much too strictly. Sirius B is not Sirius; whether Sirius A is is a difficult question. This is not the intent of the section; the intent is that the subject of the article should not be mentioned when it is just as easy not to: Early life v. His early life. I would recommend changing the phrase so as include some condition like that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:25, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Can you come up with wording that is a little more formal? Tony (talk) 15:02, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I suppose one difficulty then is that the guideline is somewhat opaque, at least to me, and could be written more clearly. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that many people are ignoring the statement simply because they don't readily understand it. The example also didn't help at all. No offense intended, of course. =)—RJH (talk) 16:36, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

How about Headers are presumed to refer to the subject of the article. There are often two ways to state a header, as Early life or His early life; the one (Early life) which doesn't mention the subject explicitly will usually be shorter and equally clear; if so, use it.. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:30, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

←It has certain merit, but I'd prefer a shorter text. How about: "Since headers normally refer to the subject of the article, they should not mention that subject explicitly unless there is a clear reason to do so." Tony (talk) 15:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

If RJH finds the present text less than clear, he will find that opaque. The only reason to tweak at all is to communicate better, which trumps brevity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

How about being cheap and taking a page off gender-neutral language's book? "Avoid explicitly referring to the subject or to wording in higher-level headings if this can be done with clarity and precision. For example, Early life is preferable to His early life, because the latter repeats the subject even though it clearly refers to it." Meaningless variations in the wording that will make the first sentence look less of a photocopy of the original are welcome. Waltham, The Duke of 19:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

"Section headers should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article, or to higher level headers, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. For example, Early life is preferable to His early life, because the latter repeats the subject even though it clearly refers to it." Is that enough meaningless variation? (And yet it covers Sirius A: shorter and clearer than Component A.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

• His Grace's version seems perfect. Tony (talk) 09:16, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, it's headings, not headers. They shouldn't be used interchangeably. Also, the initial reference ("Section headers should not...") is not necessary, given the context, but it wouldn't hurt either. Regarding your main change, I am really not sure. I think I'll leave others to comment on it. Waltham, The Duke of 09:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, those appear to improve the guideline. However, the statement, "because the latter repeats the subject even though it clearly refers to it," seems somewhat ambiguous: it refers to it?—RJH (talk) 22:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Section headings should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article, or to higher level headers, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. For example, Early life is preferable to His early life when His means the subject of the article; headings can be assumed to be about the subject unless otherwise indicated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:17, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

That seems clearly written. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 16:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Allrighty then. Thanks to Tony's monthly updates, I came over to see why we lost key wording about not restating wording from a higher level in the hierarchy of headings. I see RJHall's dilemma, but unfortunately, the baby got thrown out with the bath water, and we entirely lost the important concept of not repeating wording in headings, in order to accomodate proper nouns. Can we fix it, please? RJHall was asking for an exception based on proper nouns, yet the entire meaning was discarded.

This text:

Avoid restating or directly referring to the topic or to wording on a higher level in the hierarchy (Early life, not His early life).

was changed to:

Section names should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. For example, Early life is preferable to His early life when His means the subject of the article; headings can be assumed to be about the subject unless otherwise indicated.

Repeating words from higher sections is a very common issue in section headings (and the really bad examples of this that come up are far worse than a repeat of his, here's a sample), and the new version is diluted and not more clear. We need wordings that addresses RJHall's specific example of proper nouns, while returning the baby that got thrown out with the bath water. Can't you just exempt proper nouns? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

• This whole section began with RJH finding the old wording unclear; I can see how he does.
• Proper names have very little to do with the question. Repetition of proper names can be just as useless as elsewhere (our example could be Stevenson's early life and it would be just as bad); attempting to carve out an exception for them will only produce silly arguments on whether Sirius A is a proper name or not.
• Sandy's sample is more definitely prohibited by the present text than the old one: Sources of proteins certainly refers to protein, but it's not (by one letter) verbatim repetition. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Indeed; I cannot see how the current wording is insufficient. The old wording was awkward and unclear, and we have changed it into something easier to understand—"restating" has its exceptions, which were not covered here, while "explicitly referring to" covers more cases and gives some weight to editorial judgement, which we are supposed to trust (to an extent, of course :-D). If anything, we've thrown out the old bathwater and filled the tub with fresh, for the convenience and comfort of the baby. Waltham, The Duke of 09:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Title of articles

""Years of birth and death should not be used in a page title to distinguish between people of the same name." What should be done with James Barry? What is the proper way to distinguish the various Irish MPs? Thanks, Enigma ^message 00:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Interesting -- don't know how else you would disambiguate these. This might be a time to ignore all rules. On the other hand, the articles are just barely stubs -- what did these long-ago MPs do that makes them notable enough for articles? --Trovatore (talk) 02:26, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I would agree with regards to that as well. I originally brought this up with User:Xenocidic, because I view the entire set of articles (created by the same user) as somewhat problematic, and that isn't limited just to the titles. Brought it here at Xeno's suggestion. One hurdle at a time, I guess. Enigma ^message 02:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't mean to use it as an argument, but I have seen lots of articles with birth, death, or both years in the title. The guidelines should be either updated or more strictly enforced; this inconsistency is as problematic as any. Waltham, The Duke of 23:59, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest using titles like James Barry (Irish MP, 1659–1717). That is, "Irish MP" is the primary disambiguation, but since there's still more than one, and we can't easily distinguish them otherwise, we'll just have to fall back on birth/death years (unless someone can think of something better). Oh, and create a redirect from James Barry (Irish MP) back to James Barry (since there's probably no need for a full-blown secondary disambiguation page). And also some redirects per WP:MOSDASH. It's not that much work, just three moves, four redirects and one edit to the dab page itself. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:21, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll take care of it unless there are any objections. Enigma ^message 01:26, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

 Done Enigma ^message 04:39, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Too late maybe, but consider James Bary (Irish MP, Rathcormack), etc...? SDY (talk) 02:30, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

A good idea, but does it work here? One of the other Barries was also MP for Rathcormack. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

List formatting

I'd like to add a sentence to Wikipedia:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists to discourage the addition of blank lines between bulleted items. It makes editing ugly, and I think it's most often done by inexperienced editors who worry that the list won't be formatted as separate items otherwise. (Of course, if you do this in a numbered list, then all the items are numbered 1.) I was thinking of simply adding:

• It is not necessary to leave blank lines in between items in a bulleted or numbered list.

to the end of the existing section, but there may be a more helpful approach. Any suggestions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree that this needs to be addressed for two reasons: 1) editors often are unaware that inserting spaces breaks numbering, and inserting spaces between bullets in, for example, text, references and external links, unnecessarily extends the page, inserting an unneeded space. Editors may not realize the software automatically inserts the carriage return. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Please note, however, that breaking up a bulleted list into subgroups can be useful; most lists of two dozen bullets will simply cause the reader's eyes to glaze over. We do need to remind editors about breaking numbering. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:25, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

If the cause is editors not understanding the system then what is needed is help information not yet another MOS rule.Dejvid (talk) 19:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but if not on this page, where would editors find that helpful information? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:LIST is more likely to be found than one sentence in this indiscriminate mass of information. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

True it is that WP:LIST is the place for this. As for breaking up long list, this is desireable if & only if it can be done with some logic behind the breaks. Lists organised into sublists are good, lists with arbitary breaks are not what we want. JIMp _talk·cont 22:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Precisely. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I uphold SandyGeorge's proposal. Blank spaces in addition to being unnecessary as stated above, also disrupts the Wikicode to XHTML conversion process. The software, in effect, believes that lists in which its entries are separated by blanks spaces are infact separated lists themselves rather. Here is an example (correct method, Wikicode):

* Unordered list entry 1
* Unordered list entry 2
* Unordered list entry 3

Resulting XHTML; note that unordered listed begin and end with the tags <ol> and </ol>. List data entries begin and end with <li> and </li>.

<ul>
<li>Unordered list entry 1</li>
<li>Unordered list entry 2</li>
<li>Unordered list entry 3</li>
</ul>

However when spaces are introduced into the code, the software believes that the example above is three lists (with one entry) rather than one list with three entries:

* Unordered list entry 1

* Unordered list entry 2

* Unordered list entry 3

XHTML result:

<ul>
<li>Unordered list entry 1</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Unordered list entry 2</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Unordered list entry 3</li>
</ul>

If larger spaces are sought in between list entries, the issue belongs in the technical village pump where it may be proposed to increase the list margin. To verify, if using Firefox, simply press ctrl+u to see the page source, for IE7 right click the page and select "view source". Here is a draft we may implement:

== Hyphens in values and units, and the shortcut [[WP:UNITS]] ==

[[WP:HYPHEN]]: "Values and units used as compound adjectives are hyphenated only where the unit is given as a whole word." Aside from the fact that the sentence isn't written well enough for the average reader who doesn't understand what a compound adjective is, is there a limit on the size of the unit when this is no longer used? It says both "9-millimetre gap" and "12-hour shift" are correct. Are the following correct at such large sizes and units?
:* "6,000,000-foot gap"
:* "8,611-metre gap"
:* "5,543,235-mile gap"
:* "40,075.02-kilometre circumference"
:* "54-century shift"

Further down the MOS, at [[WP:MOS#Conversions]] it says "a pipe 100 millimetres (4 in) in diameter and 16 kilometres (10 mi) long or a pipe 4 inches (100 mm) in diameter and 10 miles (16 km) long." Shouldn't this be "a pipe 100 millimetres (4 in) in diameter and 16-kilometres (10 mi) long or a pipe 4 inches (100 mm) in diameter and 10-miles (16 km) long."?

Slightly related to this is that the shortcut [[WP:UNITS]] points to [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement]]. So why is the shortcut also at [[WP:MOS#Units of measurement]] when it doesn't point there and the contents are different. [[User:Matthew Edwards|Matthew Edwards]] ([[User talk:Matthew Edwards|talk]] <small>•</small> [[Special:Contributions/Matthewedwards|contribs]] <small>•</small> [[Special:Emailuser/Matthewedwards|email]]) 07:52, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

:Matthew, yes, the five bulleted examples are all correctly hyphenated; the size of unit and value are irrelevant to the use of hyphenation. We happen to follow ISO in not hyphenating where a symbol (incl. abbreviation) is used, so "40,075.02 km circumference"—but it's not the easiest construction whether hyphenated or not, so you have the option of recasting thus: "a circumference of 40,075.02 kilometres/km". Much easier on the eyes. [[User:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">'''Tony'''</font >]] [[User talk:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">(talk)</font >]] 08:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)



::Your issue with the examples at CONVERSIONS is to do with that "compound adjectives" issue.  In the phrase ''pipe of 4-inch diameter'', there is a compound adjective (''4-inch''), describing the noun, ''diameter''.  However, when we speak of a ''pipe with a diameter of 4 inches'', then the simple, numerical adjective ''4'' qualifies the noun ''inch(es)''.  [[User:Kevin McE|Kevin McE]] ([[User talk:Kevin McE|talk]]) 09:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


== When this is not the famous person of the same name ==

I hate it when we are not allowed to directly mention that e.g., the
Gene Wilder mentioned is not [[Gene Wilder]], see
[[Fear of Music (album)#Additional_personnel|Exhibit A]].
Why is there a stigma against saying it explicitly?

This avoidance of mentioning A != B assumes one has heard of B.
If not, then later when you do there is a danger of thinking they are
the same.

Please set a clear best policy ruling for cases like these, and fix
the page accordingly. Thank you. [[User:Jidanni|Jidanni]] ([[User talk:Jidanni|talk]]) 18:32, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
== Bulleted and numbered lists ==

{{see also|Help:List|Wikipedia:Lists}}

* Do not use lists if a passage reads easily using plain paragraphs.
* Do not place blanks spaces in between list entries since it is interpreted as multiple lists by the wiki software.
* Use numbers rather than bullets only if: 
** there is a need to refer to the elements by number;
** the sequence of the items is critical; or
** the numbering has value of its own, for example in a track listing.
* All elements in a list should use the same grammatical form and should be consistently either complete sentences or sentence fragments. 
** When the elements are complete sentences, they are formatted using sentence case and a final period. 
** When the elements are sentence fragments, they are typically introduced by a lead fragment ending with a colon, are formatted using consistently either sentence or lower case, and finish with a final semicolon or no punctuation, except that the last element typically finishes with a final period.

I hope this helps. ChyranandChloe (talk) 01:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

• I believe we all understand that. The objections to Sandy's proposal remain, however:
  • There are some times when you want to break up a list into sublists; we should not prohibit the possibility.
  • There is no particular reason to include encoding problems here rather than WP:LIST, which already warns of the effects of spaces. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:37, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

How Wikicode converts into XHTML is essential, if it is needed to add spaces in the code window, simply add a comment. Otherwise, I am having difficultly understanding by what you mean about sublist, since this appears to be of an entirely different concern. I also cannot find the section warning of the effects of blank spaces in WP:LIST. ChyranandChloe (talk) 06:54, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Anderson, we can do without your continual bleating against MOS ("this indiscriminate mass of information"); it's becoming plain rude. We got the message a long time ago, and by harping on about your pet peeves, you make yourself look unpleasant and, in interpersonal terms, incompetent. We don't harp on about the indiscriminate mass of words you sometimes insert into styleguides. Add this to your dirt-file of what you like to call "personal attacks", please.

Sandy is proposing nothing to which these "objections" you're cooking up could be relevant. But you may be satisfied with this: "Leave blank lines between items in a bulleted or numbered list only where is a reason to do so". This will cover the problem in which some editors think they have to do so by default, and avoids going into messy details. Tony (talk) 08:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, it actually does solve the problem. All your rudeness only declares your ownership of this indiscriminate mass of information. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:47, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Tony, I understand that we have not in the past been on good terms, I'd prefer that to change; so I won't go there. Pmanderson, please state whether or not you are against the draft or similar, if not then please implement. ChyranandChloe (talk) 04:02, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I've added "Blank lines should not be place in between list entries.", with a brief trickle down in Wikipedia:Lists#List styles. If I'm going to quickly, feel free to revert. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Chyran, yes, I'd like that to change, too. I was, for the record, aghast at a set of sudden, unannounced changes in article titles that were made and proposed, and the inability of Chyran and me to engage in a way that would solve the issue. Tony (talk) 08:11, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

"Placename dropping" in captions without saying where the place is

I hate teasers like

[[Image:Water Flash.JPG|thumb|right|Water reflecting light in [[Crissy Field]]]]

in an article like Water, causing people to have to click to find out where in the world "Crissy Field" is.

There ought to be a law/policy/encouragement saying that no fair "place name dropping" like that without also mentioning more of an anchoring location, e.g., Crissy Field, England, etc. Jidanni (talk) 18:19, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the problem, provided the name is linked. It's not unreasonable to expect the reader to use the link.

Many people read Wikipedia offline on various devices, or print articles for others to read.

The feeling is the same as when one reads a newspaper article with such "teasers"... one is left outside the "in(the knowledge) club". The problem could easily be avoided with a few more bytes, many less than the image or ALT="" description string. Jidanni (talk) 18:37, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

By the way, it turns out that the idea of "Foo, England" is common in American English but less common elsewhere. Some people object to usage like London, England. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but it's better than nothing. As to a hard rule of what "tier", and what "first tier" geographical units constitutes them, U.S. states + other leading brand countries, I'll leave that up to the experts. Jidanni (talk) 18:40, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the common-sense method goes something like this:

• For non-region-specific articles, any mention of locations needs to be specified from a global perspective. So if, for example, the article Climate mentions Fargo, it needs to say Fargo, North Dakota, USA, or perhaps just Fargo, USA.
• For region-specific articles, the location only needs to be specified up to the level of the region. So Climate of the United States would mention Fargo, North Dakota, and Climate of North Dakota need only mention Fargo.

In this specific case, I don't see how it improves the article to mention Crissy Field at all, since the image is being used as a generic illustration of water in nature. Notice that the images of high/low tide, an oasis, irrigation, and a coral reef do not mention any location. Anyone wanting to know where the pictures were taken can click through to their respective documentation pages. Strad (talk) 23:17, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that mentioning Cryssy Field in this caption is an unnecessary distraction. Most other captions don't mention the place. We have "Water fountain" and not "Water fountain in Kennett Square", "Ice used for cooling", not "Ice used for cooling a bottle of XYZ sparkling wine on a kitchen counter in Delft", and "Water can be used to cook foods such as noodles" and not "Water can be used to cook foods such as noodles in a kitchen in Mulhouse" (place names in two of the examples made up for dramatic effect). --Itub (talk) 09:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Too much drama... (faints) Waltham, The Duke of 15:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Diacritics with words imported from other languages

I see we have a guideline that says:

• Foreign words originally written in a Latin alphabet with diacritics (accent marks) are normally written with those diacritics in Wikipedia, unless a form without diacritics has become generally accepted in English. (my bolding)

My question is, have the diacritic-free versions of words like cafe, role, and premiere (both noun and verb) become generally accepted in English? My answer would be: Yes, definitely. The versions with diacritics are rapidly dying out, although they still put in an occasional appearance. Others seem to disagree. I’m having a conversation with an editor at the moment about this: he prefers to use the diacritics, on the basis that that’s the way it’s always (and he stressed always) done in his part of the world (USA). Yet, that’s not my experience at all. Look at any published report of an American movie, play or musical work and they’ll almost always talk about "It premiered in … on …", not "it premièred in …". And a quick google search supports this. That’s American sources. The experience is similar for the UK, Australia and most other parts of the anglophone world (although I could understand if English-speaking eastern Canada keeps the accent). Given the general American propensity for changing the spellings of existing English words (let alone foreign ones) to more ... user-friendly versions, my friend's insistence on using the grave in the case of "première" seems to be running somewhat counter to his own national trend.

My friend also claims the OED does not record the unaccented word "premiere" at all – about which claim I am profoundly dubious, but I don't have access to it to check that out.

My take on all this is that premiere, cafe and role (and many others) have all become fully-fledged English words and deserve a diacritic-free existence. Premiere, in particular, isn’t even the same part of speech as the French original; that was an adjective, meaning “first” (f.), but we use this group of letters as a noun meaning “the first performance” or a verb meaning “to introduce” (trans.) or "to be performed for the first time" (intrans.) - which afaik is not a meaning a French person could get from the single word première; to my mind this is even more reason to not use the diacritics in an English-language context.

I don't want to make this a question of right/wrong, but I would like some guidance on how to counter my friend's argument. Apologies if this has been thrashed out previously, but navigating the archives is ... well, let's just say life is too short. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:17, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Is your friend an editor of The New Yorker, by any chance? I've heard they like diacritics. I checked the OED; it is true that it lists the word as première, but includes premiere in the list of variant spellings. Merriam-Webster does the opposite, and I would imagine it is more representative of common American practice than OED. --Itub (talk) 10:04, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

But the Second Edition did not list premiere, only premier, preemeer. I would not be surprised if they regarded omission of accents as a trivial variation; one of their quotations uses premiere. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:57, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The best way to check the strength of your friend's argument is to look up the word in four or five dictionaries. Iutb - I also thought of the New Yorker when I saw the section title. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for those replies. Merriam-Webster is rather telling. But even in the UK, I think that première would be very much the exception rather than the rule these days. I have a Paul Hamlyn Encyclopedic World Dictionary, published in 1972, which lists only premiere, and has première as a variant. If the grave had become non-standard as far ago as that, I really can't imagine it's been resurrected some time later. No idea about the New Yorker thing, but it would make no difference either way as far as I'm concerned. Is there no more specific guidance for editors of WP pages about these sorts of questions - or do we have to come to a separate consensus with every article? That could mean that some articles have premiere(d) throughout, and others have première(d) throughout. Consistency within an article is essential, but there's also the question of consistency between articles on related topics. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:07, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

My view is that we must learn to live with this; we are a collaboration, and should not pretend otherwise. Articles will differ in many ways, even if linked; an accent grave or two will be among the least important. (Although I find your friend's view very odd; the usual tendency of American, in my experience, is to aggressively omit diacritics: façade is an Anglicism. Perhaps the schoolroom correctitude which afflicts much American is having a resurgence?) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for those thoughts. I'll pass them on to my collaborator. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Dashes in article titles?

A participant in the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/NRHP renaming proposals says that using dashes in titles would be contrary to the WP:MOS. Some of the suggested titles are:

• National Register of Historic Places – properties in colleges and universities
• Category:National Register of Historic Places – properties in Alabama
• Category:National Register of Historic Places – properties related to navigation
• Category:National Register of Historic Places – properties related to transportation
• Category:National Register of Historic Places – bridges and tunnels
• Category:National Register of Historic Places – properties related to railroads
• Category:National Register of Historic Places – properties related to infrastructure
• Category:National Register of Historic Places – properties of religious function

After reading the MOS, I'm not completely convinced that these would be in violation. (Background:We are convinced that the phrase "Registered Historic Places" is incorrect and many article titles and categories need to be renamed.) Opinions about dashes in titles?--Appraiser (talk) 17:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I would always use a dash, which is what WP:DASH says, but I would also create a redirect using a hyphen for ease-of-use – a keyboard has a hyphen button but not a dash button. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 18:54, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Several of the possibilities being considered recast to use no dash or hyphen; for example National Register of Historic Places listings at colleges and universities This avoids the problem, which may be preferable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:33, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes; alternatives have been suggested. I really dislike the ones that follow "Places" with a plural noun.--Appraiser (talk) 19:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind that; but there's also College and university related entries on the National Register of Historic Places for those who do. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

That would need to be Category:College- and university-related entries on the National Register of Historic Places. I'm not sure how good this would be for a category name. Waltham, The Duke of 08:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I've been involved in discussion about this same subject, involving Olympics articles such as the ones in Category:Archery events at the 2008 Summer Olympics (and there are lots and lots more: for each event type and each installment of the Olympics). Instead of dashes, colons could be used, but I felt that hyphens were inacceptable (and up until now, everyone has agreed). We decided to move them all to using spaced en dashes instead of hyphens, which seems to be endorsed by the MOS, after the Olympics have ended, to avoid any inconvenience. Oliphaunt (talk) 13:00, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Notifications of status changes?

There is a bot leaving notices in the policy Village Pump whenever a {{guideline}} or {{policy}} tag is added to, or removed from, a page. On the opportunity of the bot's updating (there were issues with the categorisation of guidelines), there are thoughts of doing the same thing for MoS pages here. The thread is this—nothing has happened yet, but I thought an early notice was in order. Waltham, The Duke of 08:51, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Duke. I don't have much of a preference regarding categorization. Notification (somewhere) sounds like a good thing. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:08, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Capital after colon

We need to say that after a colon there must be lower case letters, not capitals, as the Chicago manual says. NerdyNSK (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems kind of obvious. Is it really necessary? SDY (talk) 05:53, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it is obvious, or indeed true, except, perhaps, exactly as stated by Chicago: The following word is not capitalized when the colon is used within a sentence.

When followed by a paraphrase, as in this paragraph, it should be followed by a capital.

As the Oxford Guide to Style puts it: "Use a colon to introduce direct or paraphrased speech or quoted material more formally or emphatically than a comma would. A capital letter follows: [. . . ] He asked a simple question: Who was first? [. . .]"--Boson (talk) 14:46, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

We need to explain in the MOS what Wikipedia editors should prefer to use after a colon and in what situations. NerdyNSK (talk) 01:19, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

No, we don't. We can usefully quote what OGS and CMOS say; but it's a matter of judgment. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Let us provide a better summary of what other style guides say about this, then. NerdyNSK (talk) 14:08, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Except that I find it useful to format inline titles with a colon, then a proper sentence. This is good where you want to make less fuss over a structural boundary than a whole-line title would.

• Step 1: Pour the flour into the bowl and mix it with ... Tony (talk) 06:37, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Dashes in tables?

What type of dash, if any, should be used in a table cell to indicate the absence of corresponding information? Or would it be preferable to leave the cell empty or write "N/A"? See e.g. the table at Judo_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics#Qualification. Cheers, Oliphaunt (talk) 13:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

This is the relevant discussion, held not two months ago; consensus suggests that you use either an en dash or an em dash (your choice), but in any case only one character (and not something like –– or ——). Also, make sure to be consistent within the article. Writing "N/A" or a hyphen is discouraged; leaving a cell empty might suggest that data is unavailable. Waltham, The Duke of 14:53, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Like His Grace, I prefer en dashes; em dashes are just a little intrusive. Tony (talk) 15:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for digging that up for me—I suppose I could've looked through the archives myself. I think it'd make sense to add this to the MOS, don't you? Oliphaunt (talk) 15:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Depends on the size of the table and its spaces. This is the sort of thing editorial judgment exists for. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

But at least it should never be a hyphen, should it? This at least should be mentioned. Oliphaunt (talk) 18:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

There's a couple of people around here who hate hyphens. Use them anyway if they look best, and ignore this page; we'll never know. But I would use N/A to avoid the chance of confusion with a blank space, unless the table entries were extraordinarily small. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

No, never use a hyphen. WP:HYPHEN says where hyphens are okay. By not mentioning their use in tables, it is implied that they shouldn't be. And in contrast to Tony and The Duke I prefer emdashes, especially in wide cells where an endash leaves too much white space. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 00:48, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:HYPHEN is not complete, not sourced, not supported, and not English. The argument from silence is even sillier there than elsewhere; and it's a fallacy at the best of times. The section really ought to be removed entirely; the least we can do is ignore it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:37, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

• More of Anderson' war against dashes, and, indeed, our commonsense guide to the usage of hyphens? Um ... where else is MoS "sourced"? And "not supported" means, I fear, not supported by Anderson, who is also the sole judge of what is "English". ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Tony (talk) 04:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I know that polls are evil, but would a straw poll give some guidance as to what we could add to the MOS? Better to mention something (even if it is that the point is utterly undecided, and any type of dash and/or hyphens can be used at will) than not mention it at all; otherwise, this question will be raised time and again. Oliphaunt (talk) 13:04, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Hyphens should never be used in tables, and I agree that emdashes are unsightly, prefer endashes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:22, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Magazine titles italicized?

Not specified here. Wikipedia:PUNCT#Italics I know I've seen it both ways in various articles (or both in same article!) but don't see a specific policy here. Would help!! Thanks. Carol Moore 12:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)Carolmooredc {talk}

Customary but not essential for magazines; normal for academic journals; but that's really WP:CITE. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Stated clearly at WP:ITALICS

Periodicals (newspapers, journals, and magazines) such as Newsweek and The New York Times

Why is this page at odds, and why does this page repeat text from that page? We should work on reducing text repeated on more than one MoS page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:21, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm happy for a recommendation that the titles of newspapers and magazines be in italics; the titles of academic journals, conferences, and conference proceedings, IMO, must be in italics; I'm used to their insistence on title case, too, even though I hate it. Tony (talk) 06:33, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

An experiment.

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Lead section TT text and post any comments on its talk page. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 19:56, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I support more transclusion than we do now, but the devil is in the details. G-guy did some related work on templates; see WT:Summary style. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:44, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree (support Butwahtdoiknow's efforts in principle, we need to reduce the amount of text repeated across different pages, but working it out may be tricky). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:15, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Linking months and years

I thought the MOS and MOS:NUM used to say don't do links such as "The Beijing Olympics were held in August 2008". Where did that sentence go? It was handy to quote. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 18:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I think there's something similar to that at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). « Diligent Terrier [talk] 18:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I did too, but I can't find it. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 18:50, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Date elements that do not contain both a day number and a month should not generally be linked; under autoformatting. This is one chief reason to say less: it makes what we do say findable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:49, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps soon to become: "Date elements that do contain both a day number and a month should not generally be linked". Tony (talk) 01:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Hear hear! I think we need to actually organize a proposal or whatever, the end result of which would be WP-consensus request to the developers to provide a means for auto-formatting of dates that does not result in wikilinking them. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:08, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yugoslavia

Resolved

 – Issue went away and not a MOS issue anyway.

I am having a problem with another user about Yugoslavia in the Eurovision Song Contest. He insists that since it was a different country in 1992, than another page Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the Eurovision Song Contest must be made for that year. I informed him that the EBU, who puts on the contest makes considers them both to be Yugoslavia so there should only be one page with a note that it was a different country using the Yugoslavia name. He tells me that we should ignore what the EBU says because it isnt right and they are not the same country. Is there a mos guideline that would deal with something like this? Shouldn't we go by how the contest refers to it. We already use FYR Macedonia, this isn't any different. Grk1011 (talk) 22:23, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

See WT:Naming conventions, which covers article naming. But I am tempted to propose a mass delete for the Eurovision articles; do they serve any other purpose than having Balkan editors taunt each other? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

lol. I reached a reasonable compromise with the other editor. Grk1011 (talk) 23:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Gender

Would someone care to draft a style guide for appropriate pronoun usage for transgender persons? I suggest taking a survey of style guides from leading periodicals in hopes they agree. I suspect most (or all) of them adopt the individual's gender identity as opposed to genetics, but I haven't done the legwork to demonstrate this as the case. I bring this up because of a bit of a tiff on Ina Fried's article (notability notwithstanding). A clear policy would cut such discussions short. Rklawton (talk) 18:34, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

There's actually already a guideline for this. Ilkali (talk) 08:49, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a proposal, not a guideline, and even if it were the latter, it is a naming convention not a style guideline (though it does have MOS-like material in it, that should move elsewhere - the piece is clearly still under development; heck, I just fixed a glaring typo in its opening lines). The MOS should (I'm pretty sure that somewhere it already does, but I forget the exact e-locale) address the basics of this issue, but last I recall there were contentious points. The most contentious that I recall was whether to always use "she" in an article about a M-to-F transgender (for example), or whether to use "he" for early life, and then use "she" for discussion of the subject's life after the change (physical or simply identified, as the case may be), and F/M vice versa. I support the latter, since it is utterly absurd to refer to a young boy, with no concept of gender identity fluidity, as a "she". PS: No survey is needed; it is fairly-long-accepted practice in mainstream Western, English-language journalism to refer to transgendered persons by their preferred pronouns (I can't speak to the issue when it comes to foreign languages or more conservative cultures). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:05, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

And a bit of clarification: American journalists tend to use "he" for men who call themselves "she" sometimes (unless the context is referring to the female persona), and "she" for men who refer to themselves as female all the time. There is no need to "prove" anything or get surgery; only consistency is needed. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:08, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Infobox and other tables solution discussion

Please see the lively discussion regarding the display of infoboxes and other tabular data. This discussion now includes a proposal which may result in major changes to the way text and supporting images are supplemented with tabular data in a variety of venues. The overriding concerns are elegance of presentation, ease of use for casual readers, ease of editorial fact and vandalism monitoring and compactness of information display. Sswonk (talk) 18:32, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Etymologies

Perhaps this is too specific for an MOS, but I'm concerned about the placement of etymologies in wikipedia articles. I'm currently planning to revive Wikiproject Etymology and would appreciate it if there were some consensus here about style, before I try to recruit people to write new etymologies for wiki.

There seem to be four variants;- (1) The etymology is placed after the bolded title of the entry. (e.g. nephrology) (2) The etymology is included in a footnote to the bolded title of the entry (e.g. law) (3) The etymology is included in a footnote to the first sentence of the article (e.g. torts) (4) The etymology is included in an independent section of the article (e.g. theology) Does anyone else feel that there should be a standard here?

I can certainly understand that there may be disputed etymologies for some words, which require an independent section (i.e. '4' should always be a possibility). However, it just seems slipshod to me if we allow (1), (2) and (3) as possible variants. My preference is (1), as it seems standard for almost all print encyclopedias that contain etymological information. Calypygian (talk) 02:49, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution. If the lead sentence is relatively uncluttered (with alternative names, pronunciations etc.) and the etymological information is brief, it can go there. Another possibility is in a later sentence of the lead paragraph or perhaps of some later section. If the information is of only incidental relevance to the subject of the article, it probably belongs in a footnote (my taste is for style (3) rather than (2)). If etymological information is extensive or controversial, it probably needs a separate paragraph.--Kotniski (talk) 06:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kotniski! I totally agree - there is no one-size-fits-all solution and certainly if there is significant debate about the etymology, then it should go in its own section or have a sentence about the debate in the first paragraph. I do, however, think it would be helpful for people wanting to do work on etymology for wikipedia if there was a default. I understand that style (2) or (3) with information in the footnotes looks elegant. My problem with this is that it treats etymological information as though it doesn't require referencing or citations. You can't footnote a footnote, and if we chose (2) or (3) then we would often have to include multiple citations along with the etymology in the same footnote. I think this would not only look ugly, but would be rather confusing.

One of the key problems with etymological information on wikipedia at the moment (as I see it), is that the little etymological information here is frequently not justified with proper references and is sometimes just a kind of folksy conventional wisdom that doesn't connect with the academic etymological research. (If it's not directly stolen out of Merriam Websters Online or Etymology Dictionary Online, more often than not without citation).

One option, if people really wanted (2) or (3), would be that all the academic citations for etymologies should be done in Wiktionary and then the footnote in Wikipedia would link to the Wiktionary entry. This certainly would increase the time it takes to do an etymology for wiki (as for every word you would need to edit two pages). I can see the benefits of this solution, but it really treats citations of etymological research very differently from the way it treats citations of other kinds of academic research. Calypygian (talk) 13:20, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

In many articles about chemical substances and elements, the etymology is included in the History section. This works because the names were generally coined by the discoverer of the substance, so the name can be discussed together with the discovery. --Itub (talk) 13:26, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Itub! That sounds like a really good solution for some proper nouns like the names of chemicals. I haven't read through many of the chemical substances and elements before on wiki, but I just had a brief flick through Helium, Hydrogen and Nitrogen. Just as you said, Helium and Nitrogen included the etymological information in history (although I couldn't find any information at all in Hydrogen, but maybe I didn't look closely enough). However, I do think there are issues with this approach. (1) If it's a little ad-hoc, then some etymologies will just go missing (like Hydrogen) and certainly it's quite hard/time-consuming to find etymological information when you want it (as I found with Hydrogen). (2) Contributors will tend not to give full etymologies. For example, the etymology for Helium given in the wiki only deals with the main stem - it doesn't address the etymology of the -ium ending, or link to an independent article discussing this -ium morpheme. (3) If it's subordinated to the history of discovery, then people will be trying to cite sources for the history of the discovery and may not be bothering with accurate sources for the etymology. For example, the Nitrogen entry at least tries to address both 'Nitro-' and '-gen', but I think the etymology is wrong (I would need to consult some more sources to check, but I think the etymology is from C. 18th French, not Latin, and so far as I know 'genes' does not mean 'forming' in Latin). For these three reasons, I don't think this is a good default solution for Wikipedia, but I do think some categories of proper-noun (like the names of chemicals) should be treated in a way like this. [As an aside on this particular category of articles, in my opinion, it still seems a little bit too ad-hoc at the moment between different wiki articles on the elements and there is an issue with citations (only the Helium article contains a reference, and then only to one etymological source). Itub, are you happy with the way it is at the moment with etymologies for chemical elements and compounds, or do you also feel that it needs some people to go through the etymologies in the element articles and tidy them? Unfortunately Wikiproject Etymology is no longer active, but if you want, contact me on my talk-page and I'd be happy to help cross-reference the etymologies in these articles with OED, Chambers Etymological and Oxford Etymological]. Calypygian (talk) 14:19, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I was just saying that is common practice, but I don't have a strong preference. Often it is better to put the etymology in the lead, and in a few cases, where the etymology is complicated or disputed, it may deserve its own section. It's hard to come up with a universal solution. Regarding your question, I think it would be great if people who know about etymology and care about it checked the chemistry articles. These articles are generally written by chemists who, like me, tend to focus on the chemistry and only pay slight attention to etymology. Consequently, it is quite possible that chemical etymologies are not always accurate and that some folk etymology sneaks in. --Itub (talk) 16:26, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Scottish island articles, where the name may involve four languages, would minimally have an infobox with one or two derivations for the name and a simple Gaelic alternative in the lead sentence e.g. Raasay. This sometimes leads to very cluttered openings I don't like at all, e.g. Islay where there is a Gaelic spelling and pronunciation and an alternative in both English and Gaelic. When things get this complex I prefer a separate Etymology section e.g. Dubh Artach, St Kilda. I don't like the footnote solution myself but I can't see any reason for this page to concern itself with such a varied and complex subject. Ben MacDui 16:40, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Ben MacDui - for another example of a complex etymology (three paragraphs long, plus two more on other names within the drainage basin) see the Name section of the FA White Deer Hole Creek. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:36, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this is not the ideal page to speak about this and would appreciate suggestions as to where to discuss this. At the moment there is no default format for etymologies and people need to decide whether or not there should be. Certainly, different categories of articles have sometimes found more or less consistent ad-hoc ways of dealing with particular etymological issues on their pages. But people shouldn't believe that somehow issues associated with Scottish Island names are somehow radically distinct from, for example, the etymology of place names in Central Asia. It's just not true. If one approaches the issue as an etymologist, frequently very similar problems are involved between different categories. The ideal place to discuss this would, of course, be Wikiproject Etymology. But this is currently inactive, partially because etymologies have been left to people compiling individual pages or, at best, categories of articles. If editors want to carry on with the present situation, that is fine, but editors should realise that due to the frequent lack of adequate citations and the confused placement of etymological information in different articles, Wikipedia is a very frustrating resource for many students of the history of words. As someone who frequently works with etymologies and wants to do a quick cursory search, I often have no option but old-style electronic resources for just these reasons (consistency of format, and consistent treatment of citations). If this is not the correct place to begin to address this, then I would welcome suggestions as to where these issues can be sorted through in a rigorous and collective manner. Any solution to these issues does have rather broad implications for wikipedia. Calypygian (talk) 18:39, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:NCGN addresses an analogous problem (of names in multiple languages cluttering the first line of an article) at some length. It may be worth adapting some of the language; the recommendation is that if you have more than three names make a paragraph out of them and link to it from the first line.

A suggested default format, as there, doesn't have to be one size fits all, but we should be cateful that it can't be misread. Some editors will make an absolute rule out of language that was never intended to be one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:56, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Very bad initial sentence required by this manual

One of todays "Did you know" articles starts like this:

Brazilian traditional medicine is the traditional medicine of Brazil. It includes many native South American elements, as well as imported African ones.

This initial sentence is terrible. But it is required by Wikipedia's rules, which forbid links in the bolded title phrase. One is not allowed to write:

Brazilian traditional medicine includes many native South American elements, as well as imported African ones.

If the article is called "Battle of X", one must not write "The Battle of X was fought on February 32nd, 2050." Instead one must write "The Battle of X was a battle..." etc. Michael Hardy (talk) 12:05, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

There are more options besides linking the bolded phrase and writing a tautological sentence. You could write: "Brazilian traditional medicine is a popular indigenous practice which includes many elements of native South American folk medicine, as well as imported African ones." Similarly, "The Battle of X was an armed conflict between P and Q that was fought on..." There's (almost) always a way to use the first sentence to expand on the title and still follow the MoS guidelines. Strad (talk) 17:49, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Lead section#Bold title: "If the topic of an article has no commonly accepted name, and the title is simply descriptive [...] the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does happen to appear, it should not be in boldface." --NE2 18:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, thanks NE2. "Brazil" is bold in the first line of Brazil, and so is "traditional medicine" in Traditional medicine, but when you string together "Brazilian traditional medicine", it's pretty easy to make the case that this is a descriptive title, and if so, the guideline was changed just last month to say that it's not bolded in the lead. (It was optional before.) The kind of example Michael Hardy gives is one reason for the change. If it weren't for the terrible pun, I'd go with "The traditional medicine of Brazil has its roots in South America and Africa." - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Tracking MOS pages with VeblenBot

I have been asked to track MOS pages with VeblenBot, the same way that policy and guideline pages are tracked. Please comment at Wikipedia:VPP#Updating_VeblenBot. Thanks, — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:06, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Identity dispute (again)

I took a wikibreak before my previous dispute on this matter got resolved, so I'm brining it up again. The present wording on the handling of transgendered persons is, well, nuts. It's totally unworkable and will do nothing but confuse readers or make them think that WP editors are all smoking dope. At the very least, it will lead to "typo fix" editwarring and rancorous debate (this already happening) on article after article after article.

Jane Emily Smith was born January 1, 2001, in Hoboken New York. He attended the St. Mary's School for Girls, and..."

See the problem? It is completely irrational to use the transgendered pronoun outside the scope of the transgendered portion of the article subject's life.

NB: I'm fully supportive of using the transgendered pronoun for the transgendered life phase, provided there is reasonable evidence it is what is/was favored by the subject. That caveat is more important than it sounds. When I lived in San Francisco, I met plenty of TGs, and not one but two of them (both M-to-F) went by "he", on the basis that until they got their sex-change surgery they didn't feel right using "she". While not a common attitude, it exists, and automatically applying "she"/"her"/"hers" to the M-to-F (or vice versa) transgendered, without sources, is both POV-pushing and original research.

PS: See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (identity) for a proposal that still needs a lot of work. I've cleaned it up some, but it still really reeks of self-consciously hipsterish "p.-c."

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Use of nobel icons

It has been determined at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 August 6#Template:Nobel icon and at Template talk:Nobel icon (currently viewable only by admins) that these type of small icons representing that the subject won the award, are not appropriate for use in infoboxes. Take a look at those pages for the rationale behind that assertion.

I propose that the Manual of Style adopt a guideline stating that these icons, including but not limited to: nobel prizes, grammy awards, and pulitzer prizes, are not appropriate. « Diligent Terrier [talk] 20:50, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Last discussion was Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_97#Nobel_prize_image, if that helps. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

There's been extensive discussion since then on this, including the deletion of the template. I believe that since the template was deleted, the MOS should adopt a guideline that follows the consensus. Otherwise, we'll just see the addition of the icon used outside of the template, meaning the addition of the image manually, which will mean there was no point to the TfD discussion. « Diligent Terrier [talk] 21:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Here's an example of what the icon looks like and how it can be used manually: [2]. « Diligent Terrier [talk] 21:15, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

A regrettable decision. No consensus was evident, and a better admin would have so ruled. If I cared, I would go to WP:DRV. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:47, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

i concur with the proposal for explicit exclusion of this and similar iconography particularly when used as decoration. it appears to me to be the consensus, and can be considered as an adjunct to wp:flag. --emerson7 22:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that such a policy would be a logical extension of similar policies, including WP:FLAG. --Clubjuggle ^T/C 22:32, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. Little icons like this may be appropriate for a children's encyclopedia, or maybe for the simple English Wiki, but here we primarily use words. --John (talk) 00:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree as well. Let's keep our infoboxes clean and free of clutter; for awards like the Nobel Prize, there should normally be an appropriate section. In {{Infobox Scientist}}, for example, there is a field entitled Notable awards, produced by the parameter "awards".

PS: I've just had an edit conflict (and silently thanked Firefox once more). I wonder what makes it easier to edit the last section for a new one rather than click on the appropriate tab at the top. Waltham, The Duke of 20:01, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

(unindent)I agree also. Such icons etc clutter up infoboxes and are too POV.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 21:23, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

The only thing worse than infoboxes are cluttered infoboxes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:16, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, but I think infoboxes can still be helpful if we just keep them to useful, notable and relevant information, and that's why this proposal would be an improvement. Interpreting what people have said so far, I see a lot of agreement that these icons should not be used in infoboxes. If no one can provide a valid reason to keep the icons, I'll consider being bold and adding it to the guidelines. If added, should it go on the infoboxes page? Thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks, « Diligent Terrier [talk] 00:09, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The issues have largely already been covered, in a much more general way, at WP:FLAG. I will recommend there that it include a paragraph about medal icons and the like as well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:16, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems a little off-topic to add at WP:FLAG. I was thinking of adding it to the infoboxes style page. « Diligent Terrier [talk] 17:39, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I plan to move Wikipedia:Manual of Style (flags) to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons) to include this kind of material. Any thoughts on that? « Diligent Terrier [talk] 18:23, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

That's probably a good idea. One of my pet peeves is excessive use of logos in the same way flag icons are used, such as on articles like International reaction to the 2008 South Ossetia war, where some editors felt the need to put little logo icons in front of "Caritas Internationalis", "Human Rights Watch", etc. and on articles like Yugoslav wars, where logo icons are apparently needed for every non-national combatant. I think that the "flags" page does not discourage the use of logo icons strongly enough, and a rename of the page might help. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I understand the concerns about using a difficult-to-see image such as the Nobel peace prize medal in icon size, but what do people think of icons that are simply stylized representations of plain text? For example, instead of the number "1" within lists such as Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's Keirin#Finals, or instead of "WR" in results lists? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

NO MORE ICONS IN INFOBOXES, PLEASE!!! I can't believe that people are still doing it after we voted out this template. There's too much info in infoboxes, anyway. Does anyone believe in sentences anymore? I am so tired of this. HuskyHuskie (talk) 18:46, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Moving related page to make way for new guideline

Thoughts on a page move I've talked about above can be expressed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (flags). « Diligent Terrier [talk] 22:22, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikimania video: external review of the quality of WP articles

There is discussion here of a video of a Wikimania address by researcher Dr Bill Wedemeyer, Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University, who conducted an extensive study of the quality of (mainly) scientific articles on WP. I recommend starting at around 8 minutes (the opening is typical conference fluff). The MoS gets a mention at 36 minutes; I don't quite agree with his stance on the role of MoS at FAC. Tony (talk) 10:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I was impressed by the powerpoint summary of his talk at the Wikimania site. Thanks for you summary, Tony, that's helpful. Wedemeyer's assessment largely agrees with all the other outside assessments: Wikipedia is good (especially the science articles), it could be better, and it would benefit from copyediting and fact-checking. The current plan is for Wikipedia 0.7 DVDs to hit store shelves in October; I hope the WMF will come up with some money for some form of last-minute copyediting and fact-checking before then, because we'll be judged more harshly and more publicly for a DVD than an online product. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the idea of DVD publication. It's moronic, and will invite lots of criticism. And I'm not in favour of paying copy-editors to vet it; the money should be spent on making these damned servers work a little faster. Tony (talk) 03:02, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it will cause problems too. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Question about heading levels

This might sound stupid, but do level 2 headers have three "===" or two "=="? D.M.N. (talk) 16:51, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I think I read that the page title is the level one header, so headers (headings? I can never remember which is which either) with two equal signs are level 2.--Kotniski (talk) 16:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The confusion somes from a statement in the "Images" section, which states, "Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes." This seems to indicate that second-level headings have three equals signs. Is the guideline supposed to say third-level then? GaryColemanFan (talk) 16:58, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Let's kill the ambiguity and say "below subsection-level (=== or greater) headers". Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

If this is not a technical problem, let's take it out. There are enough prescriptions in the section already. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

No, it is a problem - I checked and it does look bad. But I support Chris's rewording (though I think it should be headings not headers after all).--Kotniski (talk) 17:14, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

So, does my original question have a clear answer or not? Does a level 2 header have two or three equal signs? D.M.N. (talk) 17:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Two. Hence the name. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:08, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

MOS:IMAGES also says "It is often preferable to place images of faces so that the face or eyes look toward the text." So if a picture is at the beginning of a === section, whether or not the eyes are looking into the text is irrelevant, and it should be on the right anyway? For an example see Degrassi: The Next Generation#Concept Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 18:57, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

If the suggestions conflict, decide which is more important under the circumstances and act accordingly - or find a compromise, like moving the image down a sentence; this is one use for editorial judgment. We should say this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:37, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The original question wasn't dumb at all; I think there's too much risk that "level two heading" will be misunderstood, so I generally resort to something clumsy like "== heading" (with quotation marks) or "two-equal-sign heading" (without). - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:56, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

One, the word is heading. Two, the level is defined by the number of equal signs. Three, I don't know how the guideline came to request right-aligned images for level-three headings and below, but I imagine it was done because level-two headings have a page-wide line which helps define the start of a section. Four, I agree that it should be decided on a case-by-case basis whether an image facing right should follow the rule, but I find that good layout generally has precedence over what at least I consider a minor distraction. I don't think it is a tenable solution to move an image a sentence down, however; perhaps Mr Anderson meant to say "paragraph". Waltham, The Duke of 08:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Depends on the image and the text. A paragraph would produce overhang in the Degrassi article linked to above, but is generally a good idea. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 12:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I moved the image down by one paragraph. On my monitor size and resolution there is no overhang.. I don't know about others though. Moving an image down a sentence is difficult. Does the image coding go in the middle of the paragraph? Even saying to move it the end of a line is hard.. where does a line end on different resolutions? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 07:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Action upon consensus

The problematic sentence has persisted on the page and continued to cause confusion. I have taken the above discussion as consensus to change the phrasing to Mr Cunningham's version. Waltham, The Duke of 07:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Saint/St./St?

I couldn't find anywhere that explains this. Does anyone know which version should be used in an article's title? Craigy (talk) 11:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

There are some provisions about American spelling versus British spelling. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling). Michael Hardy (talk) 12:05, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Err...what? Am I missing something here? I'm fairly sure both versions use the same spelling. What I'm asking is whether or not it should be spelt out in full or abbreviated with, or without a full stop? Craigy (talk)

It's a difference between British and American orthographic conventions. That is broader than only spelling, but I think the same rule applies. Michael Hardy (talk) 12:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't know which policy/guideline applies but my experience of this is that 'saint' is generally not used in the title at all. See for example Category:Italian saints or Category:English saints. Ben MacDui 12:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was aware of that. Sorry I should have been a bit more specific: I meant, say, in the name of churches? Is there a set rule i.e. Saint John's/St John's/St. John's?Craigy (talk) 13:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places), "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize...." I usually follow the convention used by the controlling entity e.g. Saint Paul Public Schools[3]. Churches seem to usually use St. I believe.--Appraiser (talk) 14:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

As a data point, U.S. railroads generally use "St.", for instance Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. --NE2 18:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

AP Stylebook says to abbreviate it as St. for "saints, cities, and other places", except for Saint John, New Brunswick (to distinguish from St. John's, Newfoundland). British English uses fewer periods in short abbreviations. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I have to disagree in the case of Saint Paul, Minnesota. In real life it is more frequently spelled out:City's website, Saint Paul Hotel, Saint Paul CVB, Saint Paul College, Saint Paul Chamber of Commerce, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra so I think WP should name it the same way, even if that violates the AP Stylebook. Was that written to consistently save space in newspapers?--Appraiser (talk) 17:03, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

←AP Stylebook does lean a little bit, but not much, in favor of shorter forms, to make newspaper journalists happy. This is more like giving a snappy, all-purpose answer to save writers the trouble of looking up sources as you just did...which is obviously better, for our purposes. I get 1.3M ghits for "St Paul MN" and 5M ghits for "Saint Paul MN". The WT:NCGN people are the go-to guys for place names, but if someone forced me to guess based on your research, I'd say go with Saint Paul, despite AP Stylebook. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:52, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

P.S. WP:NCGN says: "The United States Board on Geographic Names determines official Federal nomenclature for the United States. Most often, actual American usage follows it, even in such points as the omission of apostrophes, as in St. Marys River. However, if colloquial usage does differ, we should prefer actual American to the official name." BGN gives "Saint Paul". - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Addition to WP:MSH

Apparently we need to add another line to WP:MSH to promote good writing and to document current standards at FAC:

• Omit needless words from headings. For example, choose Books instead of The books.

It might be possible to roll this in with the "Section names should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings" item, but I think it will be simpler to just add it separately. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:25, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion; however, this is covered already in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Article_titles, fifth bullet. Tony (talk) 07:10, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Not so I could tell. That rule explains this change that Sandy made, but not this one. "The" is neither the subject of the article nor present in a higher-level heading. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

This sounds completely reasonable to me, especially given that (per WP:POLICY the principal purpose of guidelines is to codify extant consensus best practices. I undo quite a lot of "The" cases in headings myself. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:55, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Left-aligned image displaces heading, ok?

Can I place a left-aligned image in such a way this it displaces a heading or subheading (first, second, third, fourth-level headings...) to the right? This should be indicated in the MoS. --Phenylalanine (talk) 12:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Like this, you mean (i.e. with the image before the heading)? I don't see anything wrong with it, or any particular reason to mention it in the MoS.--Kotniski (talk) 12:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not taking a position on the issue, only where to put it. There's some overlap between Category: Wikipedia image help and the style cat; look through the image cat, pick the best page from that cat to put it in, and if the page happens to also be a style cat, that's fine. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:23, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Please don't. Aside from looking horrible (have you ever seen this in a print publication?), if it is assumed that the image is meant to be related to the lower section then screen readers will mess up. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:07, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Generally concur with Chris. I try to avoid left-side images, except after the heading, and even then only if the image will not interfere with later headings at 1024x768, full-screen browser window, default font sizes (the most common browsing resolution and mode). It's better to use {{Clear}} or <div style="clear:both;" /> and introduce a little whitespace after the image than to allow it to interfere with headings. See Five-pins#Strategy for appropriate use of left-aligned image. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't really care if it's on the left or right, but if Image X is relevant to Section Y, then it should be right under the header, not above it as used here. Reywas92^Talk 19:40, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, now I look at it more closely, I agree it looks bad. --Kotniski (talk) 07:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Is MoS committed to observing WP:VERIFY?

Please take a look at Talk:The_Beatles/Archive_19#reliable_sources_using_"the_Beatles"_or_"The_Beatles". Thank you, Espoo (talk) 08:54, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

This issue was decided on that talk page on the basis of an opinion poll, not use in reliable sources. Is MoS committed to following most common usage in reliable sources or does WP:VERIFY (WP:RS) only apply to the content of Wikipedia articles? It's quite amazing that MoS doesn't say anything about this WP policy or, in fact, anything about how MoS has been or is supposed to be compiled.

Most WP editors consider decisions about capitalisation, spelling, punctuation, etc. to be trivial, and the professional copyeditors trying to make WP articles follow basic standards used in encyclopedias and all professionally edited material are regularly discouraged by being called nitpickers when they try to make Wikipedia look at least a bit less amateurish. --Espoo (talk) 17:41, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

The Manual of Style is silent about content standards such as WP:V because it is about, well, style, not content. There are other portions of the site that deal with content issues. At the core of the issue is a content dispute (is the proper name of the group "Beatles" or "The Beatles"?) and not a style dispute (should "the" be capitalized?). If you are unable to reach consensus among the existing participants, may I suggest dispute resolution, perhaps starting with a request for comment, as a more appropriate way to resolve the issue? --Clubjuggle ^T/C 18:31, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually no, this is not a content issue. Nobody is really disputing that the definite article is usually part of the name or that the name sometimes occurs without it. The issue is purely a style issue, namely whether or not to capitalise the article when it is used in the middle of a sentence. (Please take a look at the sources at the link provided.) Thanks for your suggestions about what to do next, but perhaps they aren't the best next steps if this is indeed a style issue?--Espoo (talk) 15:28, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

The use of reliable sources only applies to articles (and to derogatory information about living persons anywhere). Trying to decide style issues on the basis of reliable sources can get tricky, because you have to decide which reliable sources? The ones cited in the article? Sources in the same general field in the article? Sources aimed a at a general readership? Style manuals? Dictionaries? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:28, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

In cases where about equal numbers of reliable sources use two or more different possible ways of writing something, Wikipedia and its MoS are of course free to choose any of those ways. But if almost all reliable sources use only one of two or more different ways, Wikipedia should perhaps start to apply WP:VERIFY to style issues (and update WP:VERIFY to include style issues) to stop unnecessary and senseless bickering and stop wasting huge amounts of time of editors and admins and all the good people in the various dispute resolution and arbitration committees. Additional reasons to start to apply WP:VERIFY to style issues in clearcut cases (large majority of reliable sources) is to make WP look less amateur and to not make especially the most qualified copyeditors so frustrated that they no longer contribute to WP.

The specific issue of trying to decide on the basis of reliable sources whether to write "member of the Beatles" or "member of The Beatles" is very easy and not at all tricky to decide since the overwhelming majority of reliable sources found by all members of the discussion uses "the Beatles" in running text. --Espoo (talk) 15:28, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

There is general agreement that naming conventions are more generally applicable than style guidelines (because if you get the name in the title wrong, people might not even be able to find the page), and that WP:NAME is the granddaddy of the naming conventions. In the first section, that says: "Wikipedia determines the recognizability of a name by seeing what verifiable reliable sources in English call the subject." It seems like this makes your case. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 12:44, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

This has come up before (see archives). For some bands (and other organizations) the consensus is that "the" is optional (this can often be determined by finding out what their official incorporated name is, what all their album covers say, or some other primary source) - generally used in referring to them ("the Ramones") because English just works that way, but not part of the actual name. In the case of many bands it is part of the name, and as long as they use it consistently, prefer the capitalization scheme of the band ("Foo Bar and The Baz Quuxes" or "Foo Bar and the Baz Quuxes"), as this is an indication of "official" name. If it isn't consistent, go with most-attested usage, e.g. "The The", even if "the The" can sometimes be found. I have no idea what it is for [[T|t]he] Beatles.— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:19, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Monthly updates

Style cats

Aug 1 – Aug 24 updates for CAT:GEN are at WT:UPDATES; I did them a week early so people can complain if they see something they don't like, and we can work it out before the Sept 1 monthly updates. I'll probably keep doing these a week early. Everyone is welcome to participate, of course. I err on the side of including anything that anyone might think is important; Tony distills the talk page for WP:UPDATES, and does other pages as well.

Sandy would like for someone to start keeping track of WP:ACCESS. It's not in the style cat now, but I wouldn't mind throwing it into that cat and CAT:GEN too, if someone is willing to say that they're pretty sure that nothing in it contradicts current style and image guidelines.

Most of the pages in Category:Wikipedia style guidelines are associated with one or a few wikiprojects, and cover particular article topics, such as math. If someone finds something wrong in one of these "targeted" style guidelines, it would probably work out better to show respect for the relevant wikiprojects by asking their input on the style guideline talk page before making changes. I didn't put any of these pages in CAT:GEN, nor any of the pages in Category: Wikipedia image help.

There are 7 4 other pages in the style cat that I didn't put in CAT:GEN, because the discussions on the talk pages involve a lot more than just style guidelines. There's a pretty heavy overlap with discussions at WT:NPOV, WT:V, WT:N, and similar pages. I think the same thing could be said for most pages in Category:Wikipedia editing guidelines, so if you guys want to add some cat to distinguish these important style guidelines pages from the wikiproject-specific and article-topic-specific ones, maybe we could add the editing cat to the style cat: WP:Citing sources, WP:External links, WP:Footnotes, and WP:Layout.

- Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:55, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I just moved WP:WEASEL and WP:PEACOCK into CAT:GEN; they have an NPOV flavor, but there's a lot more evidence of interest by style people than NPOV people over the years on the talk pages, and they're so close in spirit to WP:Words to avoid that it's hard to justify putting them in a different cat. I think we could justify adding the editing cat to WP:Lists and WP:Manual of Style (writing about fiction), or not. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The Duke added some discussion on my talk page at User_talk:Dank55#Style categorisation. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I've decided that I don't have any recommendation on WP:Pro and con lists, WP:Lists and WP:Manual of Style (writing about fiction); they're too targeted to specific types of pages to be appropriate for CAT:GEN, but I can't recommend them as editing guidelines, either. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Some details on how to disambiguate human names have moved from Wikipedia:Disambiguation to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people), and changed in the process, to permit things like Joe Schmoe (baseball) instead of Joe Schmoe (baseball player). The exact wording of the passage may still be in dispute/flux. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:11, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Update: After editwarring, the issue has turned into a bigger debate about how to specify human name article title disambiguation (or whether to do so in any detail): WT:NCP#GENERAL preference for person-descriptive not field-descriptive disambiguators. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:27, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

New page created here. Tony (talk) 07:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Headings

Why never link section titles? I agree that when, as usual, the link can be included in text without loss, it should be. But this can be said without prohibiting the practice, in peerage articles, of linking the date of creation in the section title.

There can hardly be a technical problem; it's done routinely on talk pages.

If there is a reason, it should be given. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:40, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Probably so. There are several reasons. A few that come to mind:

• Many editors are uncertain how to link to such headings, at #links, properly.
• They make it more difficult to read the heading in the source code.
• They make it more likely that the linked-to term will not be mentioned in the following prose, which may confuse readers who do not notice the link in the heading, and are wondering why the term is not used and linked to in the prose there.
• It just looks weird.
• It mingles the purposes of headings (to very, very tightly summarize what is coming) and prose (to explain things for the reader, directly, and indirectly with links).

I'm sure others can think of more. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

PS: If no one it bitching about the rare exceptions in play, then don't worry about it. If they are, then maybe we should consider adding a sentence on exceptions (that might be more productive than enumerating reasons for the rule in the first place). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:37, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The first couple reasons assume editor incompetence. While all too common, assuming it goes a bit far. (There was a discussion which was effectively bitching about the exceptions, but I'm not sure it had hit article space.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:15, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Assuming that all editors would have these problems, sure, but an assumption that some will is a very safe one. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Currently it says "section headings should not normally contain links". Not a complete prohibition; it sounds about right to me, unless someone can formulate some specific exceptions to make things clearer.--Kotniski (talk) 08:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:ACCESS explains it: "Avoid putting links in section headings, unless the link text is the only text in the title. Screen readers will stop reading the heading title when they encounter a link, and if the link is the first part of the heading title, they will only read the link text. For example, a heading title of "The Simpsons" will be read as "The", and a heading title of "hackers in popular culture" will be read as "hackers"." We must not link headers for this reason. Wikipedia is accessible to everyone (or should be), including those with disabilities. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:20, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I should probably say that I am a repeat offender of this on talk pages, but I always make sure to link the entire header, and screen readers will not go crazy if that happens. I would never advocate in in mainspace though. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:28, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Do all screen readers do that? Sounds like a bug in some particular screen reader to me - I can't believe it's intended behaviour.--Kotniski (talk) 08:49, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Happens with at least two different ones, AFAIK. I don't know whether it's a bug or not, but if it is, we still shouldn't do it. We can't fix the bug but we can work around it. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:58, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Then we should explain it. "causes accessibility problems" would be enough. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

That works for me. Or "causes accessibility problems for screen readers", just in case people ask why. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:45, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:08, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Compulsion

The following edit, on one of our more obscure subpages, reveals a fascinating mindset:

Yes, Anderson, you oppose the whole idea of the MoS, and we're all heartily sick of it. Of course you oppose any strong moves to reform the project that might involve ... that c word ... compulsion. Fine, you've had your say. Many people happen to think that this is important enough to require strong guidance.

(I intentionally omit the signature; the personal issue that preceded it should be dealt with in another forum.) My question here is whether indeed compulsion is the whole idea of the MoS, as this seems to say.

• Is it feasible for MOS to compel the rest of Wikipedia?
• Have we authority to try to do so?
• Is it the best way to get the rest of Wikipedia to improve their English? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:18, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

For contrast, I have presented the idea that there are five approaches to MOS, of which compulsion is only one (and rarely the most effective) on my user page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Manuals of Style that are devoted to a single publication (as opposed to defacto general purpose ones like Chicago Manual of Style) do indeed compell authors; the deal essentially is "follow this style or else your article will not be published". If that is not our intent, we should just delete the manuals of style. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:23, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

But is it the only thing we should do? The approaches I classify are Discuss the possibilities (with their advantages and disadvantages), Make a recommendation, Establish a rule (especially for FA), and Conduct rules (basically don't switch from one established style to another). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:29, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

That seems like a fair enough summary (other than "rules" should not be limited to FA, but even apply to stubs just created). However, the opening question is rather loaded. Whomever you were talking with (I can guess) is clearly using "compel" as a metaphoric shorthand. Everyone here already knows (I hope!) how WP policy and guidelines work, and that WP:IAR is policy, so it is literally impossible to truly force compliance with this or any other guideline, or any policy that does not have a legal requirement behind it. This does not stop this and various other guidelines from using words like "must" and "cannot" and "mandatory". WPians know that "must" in this context means "really, really, really should, unless it causes a problem so severe that you have to invoke IAR in some particular unusual case", and so on. We'd all get sick to death of seeing longwinded but more accurate wording like that in about 5 minutes. I.e., please don't be so literal. It comes across as trying to pick a fight or generate noise instead of raising a legitimate dispute, issue or question, and some might interpret this as disruptive. (NB: I am not labeling you disruptive, as a close reading of WP:DE makes it clear that to do so is a direct accusation of bad faith - far too many people call someone a "DE" without understanding this; what I mean is that MOS is notorious for fractious debates, and tempers can run hot here, so don't fan the flames without good reason.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:45, 29 August 2008 (UTC) PS: The quoted party didn't say "compulsion is the whole idea of the MoS"; those were independent sentences making independent points, so that was a red herring. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that compulsion is really an option, and especially not on enwiki. The sheer variety of articles – both current and future – makes it nigh on impossible to have useful prescriptive rules which cover all of them. Nor could such rules be enforced across all articles, and all revisions… That doesn't mean that MOS is useless either: it is a collection of "best practice", a standard to aim for, but there will always be occasions (even at FA) where it is not applicable. Physchim62 (talk) 23:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Date range rule is no good

"Date ranges are preferably given with minimal repetition, using an unspaced en dash where the range involves numerals alone (5–7 January 1979; January 5–7, 2002) or a spaced en dash where opening and/or closing dates have internal spaces (5 January – 18 February 1979; January 5 – February 18, 1979)."

This seems to be a fossil from a time before Wikipedia reformatted date links according to user preferences. Nowadays, the minimal repetition practice just doesn't work - it'll just give either "5 January–7" for half our users or "5–January 7" for the other half. The standard should therefore be changed to favour each end of the range being given as both day and month.

The spaced en dashes also cause a problem for year pages. I've always done them as

• February 5-February 6 - A tornado outbreak, the deadliest in 23 years, kills 58 in the Southern United States.

since, if the dash has spaces around it, then it becomes too similar to that used between the date and the event description, hence hard on the eyes to identify it as an event covering a range of dates:

• February 5 - U.S. stock market indices plunge more than 3% after a report showed signs of economic recession in the service-sector. The S&P 500 fell 3.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 370 points.
• February 5 - February 6 - A tornado outbreak, the deadliest in 23 years, kills 58 in the Southern United States.
• February 7 - Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on mission STS-122 to deliver the European-built Columbus science laboratory to the International Space Station.

Making this a spaced en-dash actually makes the problem worse, since an en-dash implies a higher-level division than a simple hyphen used as a dash. An unspaced en-dash makes it a little better, but even if this is done, we ought to standardise on at least an en-dash between the date and the event.

OK, so this bit of the discussion is probably better suited to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years rather than here. And it's actually OK to use plain hyphens in the meantime under the "except where common sense and the occasional exception will improve an article" provision. But my first point, about the dates of the year being given in full, is certainly no exception, as dates will nearly always be linked in practice. -- Smjg (talk) 21:29, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, date linking has recently been deprecated (see vast discussions and changes at WT:MOSNUM), so the first point seems moot. I don't like your suggested format with hyphens meaning "to", either - seems highly non-standard. Can't you use a colon instead of a dash before the event?--Kotniski (talk) 21:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I see, that MoS page states "The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now deprecated." Half the problem is that many people probably don't see it as linking them purely for autoformatting, but merely a matter of keeping Wikipedia's look and feel consistent. Probably for years to come (unless some bot comes round unlinking them all and expecting individuals to revert those that should've remained linked) the vast majority of dates on Wikipedia will be linked, and people will continue to follow this example.

Moreover, Wikipedia:WikiProject Years explicitly dictates that dates on year pages be linked. Unlinking them would be a radical change to the format of these pages, as would the other thing you suggest: changing the hyphens to colons. Do you think that such radical changes are worth it - sufficiently desirable and/or feasibly implementable? Maybe it's time for another survey.... -- Smjg (talk) 23:49, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I think bots probably will soon begin delinking full dates, just as they already delink solitary years. So hopefully editors' habits will change accordingly, and "consistency" will come to mean not linking dates for no good purpose. Year pages are a special case, I suppose; if links are desired there, then separate rules have to be established. But I see no reason to allow hyphens instead of normal en dashes meaning "to" - that just looks bad. How is it normally done at the moment? If there is no consistent style then the question of radical change doesn't really arise.--Kotniski (talk) 05:19, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed; it's one of the reasons that date autoformatting was a bad idea in the first place. Smjg, if you encounter this problem, simply remove autoforamatting from the whole article, taking care to view the diff for any false positives the script may produce (these should be reduced to a miniscule proportion soon). Date and year ranges require an en dash, both in main text and article titles. See WP:DASH. Oh, and I can hear Anderson now, fast approaching on galloping horse to trumpet his "do as you please" anti-MoS theory! Chaos would ensue if people took any notice ... Tony (talk) 05:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC) PS And yes, we do need to build into the guideline an exception for the linking of date fragments (not the autoformatting of whole dates) in articles on such fragments. In a year article, links to other year articles should be acceptable; in an article on a month, to other months, etc. Tony (talk) 05:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

• Rudis indigestaque moles... But what would actually happen is that most editors would ignore WP:MOSDASH, as they do now, and that Tony would actually have to persuade them into doing what he wants, instead of threatening them with "MOS breaches". O the horror! Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:26, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

So you're suggesting that, if a year page contains a date range written in a way that breaks autoformatting, all dates on that one page should be unlinked? I'm not sure if this is desirable. ISTM year pages are one place where it's desirable to keep dates of the year linked, what with dates being the whole subject of these pages. (Conversely for the year links on day-of-year pages). If OTOH we do decide to unlink these, we probably ought to increase their prominence in some way, such as making them bold. -- Smjg (talk) 11:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Kotniski, you seem to have got things mixed up a bit. There is a consistent style: linking all dates on these pages, and using a spaced hyphen between the date and the event. The radical changes you proposed affect this. OTOH, there is no consistent style for ranges of dates on these pages. I have been implementing the style I gave at the beginning because it looks tidiest under the constraints of the consistent style that we do have. But if these constraints are changed, then that'll affect what looks right as a notation for date ranges on these pages. I'll see what I can come up with. -- Smjg (talk) 11:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

What do ISTM and OTOH mean? Can you provide an example of a page with this issue? I don't see any advantage in linking whole dates in a single item on one of these chronological pages: a year, perhaps; June 24, perhaps; but why both at once? In fact, convince me that June 24 should ever be linked. Tony (talk) 12:14, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

To Tony's first question: "it seems to me" and "on the other hand", I guess. But to Smjg, if you really insist on continuing to link all the dates (ugh!) and using spaced hyphens (double ugh!), then I guess the best way of doing it without making things any worse is to use some form of piping, like "February 3–23 - battle of..." (I trust the piping overrides the autoformatting.) But we should really be considering a mass change of style for these pages (at least to get rid of the spaced hyphens, which WP:HYPHEN rightly prohibits).--Kotniski (talk) 14:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

It just goes to show that there's no perfect solution. Using piping to override the autoformatting just means that the entries will be in a mixture of day-month and month-day formats for many of us. Thinking about it now, maybe a mass change of style is the answer, as long as we go about it in the appropriate manner (which means, at the very least, taking the discussion over to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years and establishing a consensus). -- Smjg (talk) 15:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Good idea; but let's always bear in mind that "many of us" here means a very very small percentage of our readership, and one which should be even smaller than it is. I see no reason for WP editors ever to work with autoformatting switched on, or any other tool which prevents them from seeing pages in the form the public sees. And the form the public sees must never be allowed to be worsened, even slightly, for the sake of what are quite negligible benefits to that negligible percentage.--Kotniski (talk) 16:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

We should not edit that way, but some of us also read the encyclopedia. Autoformatting was intended for those people, as a perk to become an editor. (I still think it was a bad idea, but we should give it its due.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:55, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Those who have user accounts on Wikipedia are far more likely to be the ones who edit than those who don't. So you think the vast majority of people who have user accounts should just pretend the date format pref doesn't exist? (And while I'm at it, I shall remind you that this pref also affects the way dates display in page histories and the like, which most non-editors are unlikely ever to read.) And "the form the public sees" - what sense is this supposed to make? The public sees what the public sets in his/her/its user prefs. -- Smjg (talk) 18:29, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The public (non-logged-in users; the vast majority) don't have user prefs. What editors do is up to them, of course, I just find it strange that someone who writes something would choose not to see it in the form in which it is going to be generally read. The main point is that in deciding how to format these pages, we should pretty much ignore issues of autoformatting, and concentrate first and foremost on getting it right for the ordinary reader. --Kotniski (talk) 18:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Right. This is a global public encyclopedia, not a private editors' club. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Do lengthy, non-neutral quotations belong in the article?

Resolved

 – Off-topic here; pointers given to controlling policy.

First of all, I am somewhat surprised that the MoS gives no hint as to when should we use quotations. A usage of a lengthy and non completely neutral quotation is being discussed at Talk:Sejny_Uprising#Same_old_business_again; comments would be very much appreciated as at this point we only have two deadlocked editors there.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:33, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Not really appropriate here; that's a content question. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The non-neutrality issue is covered by WP:NPOV as a matter of policy. The topic of "relevance" is not even the subject of a guideline, but is rather a matter of various essays, all of which can be found via WP:RELEVANCE, which suggests that relevance as a WP term has no broad consensus definition yet. I'm not aware of a guideline on "brevity" or "conciseness" either. WP:CONSENSUS policy is also obviously at play; the burden is on the editor who wants to change the article to convince other editors that this is a good idea. See also WP:BRD - if the B and the R are happening over and over again without the D part happening (or happening kinda, but not producing consensus), then the simple flowchart at WP:CONSENSUS is not being followed. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Animals, plants, and other organisms

I often contribute to articles that incorporate references to both flora and different animal taxa. Consistent presentation of the species names with respect to capitalisation is a challenge. I therefore propose the following change to be added at the end of this section:

"For articles incorporating a variety of taxa:

• piped links shall be used to create a consistency of appearance using title case per WP:BIRDS for species names.
• lower case shall be used for entries that are either very common (dog, cat) or are not species such as eagle or bilberry."

This has been used in various FA's and GA's (St Kilda, Scotland, Fauna of Scotland, Black Moshannon State Park, Geography of Newfoundland and Labrador, River Torrens, Fauna of Australia) without any complaint. A short essay on the reasoning behind the proposal is available here. Ben MacDui 11:33, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The place to get consensus on this is WP:TOL, not here. I'm implacably opposed to adding this or anything like it here, unless it has the backing of the TOL people. Hesperian 12:50, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Title case for animal names is just ridiculous in an encyclopedia. If the BIRDS people want to make Bird-opedia, by all means they can then break whatever capitalization rules they want. In a general encyclopedia animals should all be lowercase, all the time (unless the name itself legitimately has a reason for being capitalized, such as a proper noun within the name). DreamGuy (talk) 13:46, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

You'd be right if the birds people had confabulated their capitalisation convention. But in fact they are adhering to a long-established real-world convention within their field. Do you think it is appropriate to prescribe a "rule" that prevents them from writing articles that conform with the conventions of their field? Hesperian 23:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Can we assume you are in favour of the principle, but would prefer lower case? Ben MacDui 16:01, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Hesperian.--Curtis Clark (talk) 15:10, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I am happy to raise the subject at WP:TOL, but history suggests that such support might be difficult to achieve. In any case, I am principally, although not exclusively, interested in geography articles. If birds, mammals and fish are at liberty to have their own solutions, then presumably the same is true of WP:Geography or indeed any of its related projects. Indeed so far as I can see there is no reason why national based projects should not simply agree their own policies creating further confusion. It is a solution I am trying to avoid, hence my posting this here first. My intention is therefore to direct WP:TOL here (as I did already at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (fauna)), not have the discussion there. The scope is much wider than is covered by that Project. Ben MacDui 16:16, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't doubt that this is an important topic, nor do I doubt that it will be controversial. I'd like to provide some context that some other editors might not have considered: In many groups of organisms, and in many countries, there is no necessary connection between a common name and a species. The American Robin is Turdus migratorius, and no other, but although "brittlebush" can be applied to Encelia farinosa, there are other plants to which it is also applied. Ornithologists (and evidently lepidoperologists) worldwide, and most -ologists in a number of countries, have found value in designating a more-or-less one-to-one correspondence between species and certain names in the local language, but this practice is not universal. For plants in the US, it generally only applies to those species given formal governmental protection.

Thus, of the following statements,

1. The American Robin perched on the Brittlebush.
2. The American robin perched on the brittlebush.
3. The American robin perched on the Brittlebush.
4. The American Robin perched on the brittlebush.

only number 4 would be correct according to the proposal (brittlebush not being precisely a species), but it would require some amount of additional knowledge of the organisms to make this determination. And it seems that one of the purposes of this proposal would be to make the extra work of such careful determinations unnecessary.

A quick look at Black Moshannon State Park suggests that the careful determination may not have always been made; some uncapitalized names may refer in that specific area to only a single species.--Curtis Clark (talk) 18:42, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

As one of the main authors of Black Moshannon State Park, I can say that we went by the available reliable sources specific to the park that we could find (as we also did in Worlds End State Park, another recent FA that uses this convention). I also would appreciate specific examples of errors to fix them (with refs, if they are not in the article already, please). I agree with MacDui wholeheartedly - as another person who mostly writes geography articles, it is hard to know what to do about plant and animal names, and some sort of consistent policy would be greatly appreciated. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Are there more than one species of sphagnum, viburnum, cranberry, blueberry, pitcher plant, sundew, opossum, porcupine, and gypsy moth? Some of those are generally understood to refer to only a single species in the US (opossum, porcupine). Others are more generic (literally and figuratively), but may refer to only a single species in the park. I have no argument with the article; I think it certainly deserves its FA status. But I think that the capitalization of organism names doesn't quite work; if it follows the suggestions above, it creates "unreferenced expectations" about the diversity in the park.--Curtis Clark (talk) 04:46, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing these out. I will be the first to point out that I am not an expert on flora or fauna. The sources I use are typically only descriptions or lists of plants and animals present and usually do not say what species of sphagnum, viburnum, cranberry, blueberry, pitcher plant, sundew, opossum, or porcupine are present, nor do they give binomial names in most cases. I will confess that I typically link the name given and look at the Wikipedia article - for all of the examples given, the article says it is a genus or a group of animals or plants, so without a reliable source that said otherwise, I treated these names as refering to a genus and not a species. The articles here also generally just give lists of species in the genus and do not always say which species is present in a specific area. So the opossum article lists many opossums, but only the Virginia opossum article says it is the only one found in North America. I also note the article for Gypsy moth lists a binomial name so I assume it is a species. I am not tied to this system being discussed, but I do think that some way of distinguishing between species and genera would be helpful and useful. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:42, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Ideally, you shouldn't have to be an expert, because the references would give you the information you need. But alas. I think Hesperian's suggestion below could simplify this, but would you consider your article a bird, a plant, or something else? :-) --Curtis Clark (talk) 01:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

PS When I look at the article for Brittlebush, it appears to list it as one species. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The name could well apply to the genus as well; other species are called "California brittlebush", "button brittlebush", "sticky brittlebush", and "Virgin River brittlebush". These are constructed names; none are in use except by land managers, writers of checklists and floras, and the occasional scientist who doesn't know the scientific name.

I understand that you think the article has shortcomings (which can easily be fixed) and that the specific system as proposed has flaws (although I am not sure I understand what you think they are). Am I correct in thinking that if we don't know whether a given Park has a porcupine population or only North American Porcupines that use of the former creates an impression of biodiversity where none exists? Possibly, but if they system were introduced and understood it would potentially flag up the need for further research. I understand the issue, although it does not seem to me as big a problem as the current guddle, which simply creates confusion and inconsistency and makes it easy to hide a lack of understanding. However, and perhaps more importantly, it is not clear to me what you are in favour of. Ben MacDui 08:27, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

1. I have seen no shortcomings in the article, and as I said, it is impressive, as warrants a FA. Application of your suggested rules adds a layer of meta-interpretation, which potentially introduces confusion: names that could have been taken at face value, with nothing read into their capitalization, are now to be interpreted as either species or not-species. I assume that is not your intended goal.
2. Your proposed system (and, sadly, any alternative that I can think of), if done correctly, requires a level of research that is not necessarily directly reflected in the article or its references. If not done right, the errors may not be apparent to the casual reader (of course always an issue in any Wikipedia article). An ideal system would be of simple application (e.g., title-case everything), but also not jarring to experts (I find "Arctic Cotton Grass" as jarring as an ornithologist might find "great blue heron"). So AFAICT an ideal system is precluded, and we'll have to agree to something less.
3. My preference is perhaps extremist, and not likely to gain broad support: Species of birds, lepidoptera, and possibly mammals, herps, and fishes should be in the standardized common name used most broadly in the region (it is my understanding that all of these are title case by convention); if such name doesn't exist, the scientific name should be used instead. All other species should use the scientific name. Higher taxonomic groups can use either a name established by a code of nomenclature (e.g. Peromyscus, Asteraceae, Phaeophyta) or a lower-case common name equivalent (deer mice, composites, brown algae). This has the advantage of being easy to apply (once the mammal, herp, and fish folks have weighed in with their preferences), and of explicit precision (Didelphis virginiana makes it quite clear which opossum). It has always irritated me that Robert Mohlenbrock's articles in Natural History have only common names of plants; I often don't know which plants he's talking about.--Curtis Clark (talk) 20:16, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

It looks like this is destined to be discussed here. Personally, I support the MoS recommending consistent presentation of taxa within an article; but I think you are overspecifying how such consistency should be achieved. The correct way to achieve consistency depends on the context and should be an editorial decision.

There is also a related issue which has been overlooked: the order of presentation of common and scientific names. In flora articles, names are generally presented as "Eucalyptus diversicolor (Karri)". In fauna articles, they are presented as Quokka (Setonix brachyurus). In articles that make use of both, there should be consistency, but whether this should be achieved as

Eucalyptus diversicolor (Karri), Setonix brachyurus (Quokka)

or

Eucalyptus diversicolor (Karri), Setonix brachyurus (Quokka)

or

Karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor), Quokka (Setonix brachyurus)

or

Karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor), Quokka (Setonix brachyurus)

should be an editorial decision per article, not a MoS rule.

Therefore I propose the insertion of something like:

The order of presentation of scientific and common names depends on the context: plant articles usually use "Scientific name (Common Name)", whereas animal articles usually use "Common name (Scientific name)".

and then, to get to the nub of the matter:

The format used should be consistent within each article. For example, an article about a bird should apply the bird conventions on capitalisation and presentation order, to any other animals, and any plants, that it refers to.

Hesperian 00:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

This is fine as far as it goes, but what about geography articles, which is what evidently started this? They neither quack like a duck or clamber like a kudzu.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Who cares, as long as it is consistent? If we make a rule that people have to follow the flora convention, someone will (rightly) complain that they want to follow the bird convention for their article on a bird sanctuary. If we make a rule that people have to follow the bird convention, someone will (rightly) complain that they shouldn't have to follow it for their article on a protected seagrass bank.

If you want an explicit statement, maybe add

Articles on geographic areas and other non-organisms are at liberty to adopt any convention, so long as it is applied consistently. Note, however, that the context will sometimes suggest a convention; for example, an article on a bird sanctuary should follow the bird convention.

Hesperian 03:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, some of these geography articles may list dozens of plants and animals. I also note that the system of capitalizing species and leaving genus and groups lower case is not explicitly explained in the article itself (it is a comment at top if one edits Black Moshannon State Park). One concern I had not thought of until now is that in some cases a genus or group is linked, where a species should be (Opossum vs Virginia opossum). So my guess is the casual reader may not even notice the capitalization or understand it if they do notice it, but anyone who clicks the link gets the less specific article in some cases. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Responses to the above:

• An ideal system is only precluded if members of WP:TOL and its sub-braches put the interests of their specialisations before those of the encyclopaedia as a whole.
• The use of common names in geographical etc. articles is, by convention, always preferred. The issue may need to be addressed explicitly if this is not the case already.
• Geographical and other general articles quack like a duck and clamber like a kudzu. That is the issue at hand.
• In my view it is ludicrous to imagine that a convention can be agreed on an article-by-article basis. There are for example about 200 Scottish island articles about which natural history is an issue of import. There must be tens of thousands across Wikipedia. A Project-by-Project basis might work. Far from ideal but at least consistent with the WP:TOL debacle.
• The bird sanctuary issue is an interesting variant. I (reluctantly) agree that articles that fall broadly within the scope of a WP:TOL project should use the relevant convention for that project.

Several questions seem to be emerging:

1) Is it appropriate to have a system for articles that cover two or more taxonomic groups to have a consistent style of capitalisation for species?

2) Should such articles, if they are of a non-specialist nature, use common names (appropriate to the location they describe) in preference to scientific names where possible?

3) Should articles that cover two or more taxonomic groups but that fall broadly within the scope of a WP:TOL project use the relevant convention for that project e.g. bird sanctuaries use WP:BIRDS?

4) Should consistency for general articles that cover two or more taxonomic groups be applied on the basis of:

a) A Wikipedia-wide agreement

b) A Project-by-Project basis

c) An article-by-article basis?

It may be too early for formal expressions of support, but at this stage mine would be: Yes, Yes, Yes and (in order of decreasing preference) 4a and 4b. (3) may need a little more definition – River Torrens for example may be a body of mostly fresh water, but that does not make it an article about freshwater fish.

Once these general questions are dealt with, the issue of which system to use and how it should be agreed upon, becomes germane. Ben MacDui 15:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I am also a yes, yes, yes, and 4a then 4b person. Just to point out a potential problem with the Bird Sanctuary argument though (3, above), I am currently working on Leonard Harrison State Park (LHSP) Pennsylvania (and to give more scale to the issues faced here, in this one of the 50 United States, there are 120 state parks, 20 state forests, and over 60 State Natural Areas, plus various federal areas). Anyway, LHSP is part of a National Natural Landmark, a State Natural Area (technically it is in two of them), the creek that flows through it is protected as a state scenic and wild river, and the good people at the Pennsylvania Audubon Society have included it in an Important Bird Area (IBA). So would the convention for birds apply as an IBA, or that for fish as a wild river, or what? There are also Important Mammal Areas in Pennsylvania, which can overlap too. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

An ideal system is only precluded if members of WP:TOL and its sub-braches put the interests of their specialisations before those of the encyclopaedia as a whole. Who gets to be the judge of what is in the best interests of the encyclopedia as a whole? If every ornithologist in the world capitalises their common names, then WP:BIRDS are entitled to argue that following that convention for birds is in the interests of the encyclopedia as a whole, since not following would make us look silly to ornithologists.

And the silliness issue is important: many academics are willing to discount Wikipedia even for such simple things as non-standard capitalization. Stupid and short-sighted, perhaps, but there you have it.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

The use of common names in geographical etc. articles is, by convention, always preferred. I dispute this. I have written a number of articles on geographic regions, e.g. Houtman Abrolhos, Warren (biogeographic region); and I certainly haven't encountered or followed any such convention. By 2), I hope you're talking about putting common name first, not using common name only. If you are advocating the use of common name only, then I'm afraid my response would be "absolutely no fucking way".

Although I would not have put it as eloquently as Hesperian, I agree.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

But more generally, I come back to the view that there is no broadly accepted convention in the real world, so any attempt to impose such a convention here is pointless, artificial, and doomed to fail. I've tried to offer you something something less ambitious, that you might have some hope of getting past the TOL people; why you would persist with something that you have zero chance of getting approved is beyond me.

Hesperian 23:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I must say I find it slightly amusing that this proposal would see me put common names first at Houtman Abrolhos#Flora, but scientific names first at Flora of the Houtman Abrolhos. And all in the name of imposing consistency!

I've been thinking about Hesperian's proposal, and it is very similar to WP:ENGVAR, which actually seems to work well in most cases, especially compared to the alternative of specifying a single variety of English.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at the above in more detail when time permits, but my initial reaction is that whilst these additional challenges are interesting and ultimately more detail will be needed in ensuring that unusual situations can be addressed, what is most interesting is your lack of willingness to address the question at hand - namely, how to deal not with the embarrassment of zoologists writing zoological articles, but of geographers faced with the inconsistency of WP:TOL's 'free-for-all' solution. I will re-read some of the above asap- I don't understand the ENGVAR analogy - unless what you are saying is that the answer to question 1 should be 'No' - consistency of approach shall not be required in such articles. "Who gets to be the judge of what is in the best interests of the encyclopedia as a whole?" Apparently, we do, frightening tho' the thought is. Ben MacDui 08:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

You're misrepresenting me. I support each individual article being consistent in the way it refers to taxa; in fact, immediately after you showed the way with this discussion, I went of and imposed consistency on my FAs, e.g. [4]. If you want to be consistent across all the articles that you write, I support that; and if the contributors to U.S. state and national park articles want to put their heads together and agree on writing in a consistent way, I support that. What I don't support is the imposition of a set of thou shalts, that forces people to write in a way that they think is silly, that their readers think is silly, and that experts in their field think is silly. Hesperian 23:22, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Would if then be fair to add your name to the below list as being 1) Yes; 4) First choice (b), Second choice (c)? I am honestly surprised you think it is "silly" for a publication to have a consistent and across-the-board approach to style, but if we are moving towards some kind of compromise whereby projects may determine that within their area of remit that may be something. A problem is that unlike the TOL, our projects don't have an hierarchical structure. Is "Fauna of Scotland" primarily an article about zoology, or an article about Scotland - and who is to decide? Geographers are kindly souls not pre-disposed to edit wars and it may be that there would be few problems in practice. Ben MacDui 07:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've had my quota of having my words twisted around to mean something different. See you round. Hesperian 23:44, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Let me be more explicit about the analogies to WP:ENGVAR. I've listed its subheadings below and discussed how a capitalization scheme similar to Hesperian's would equate.

Consistency within articles

It's either "American Robin" and "Brittlebush" or "American robin" and "brittlebush".

Strong national ties to a topic

A "taxonomic tie" could dictate capitalization (the bird sanctuary example given above), as could a national tie (it is my impression that in the UK plants have "official" capitalized common names, something that does not prevail in the US). This would inform the start of an article, and the items above and below would control subsequent edits.

Retaining the existing variety

Once a capitalization scheme is chosen, subsequent editors will adhere to it.

Like WP:ENGVAR, this has the advantage of easy application. Also like WP:ENGVAR, it will result in some readers being surprised by the article, but at least there's a reason. Frankly, I find it an ugly solution, but an effective one.--Curtis Clark (talk) 12:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

A few more replies. "any attempt to impose such a convention here is pointless, artificial, and doomed to fail." Why? This seems to me to be a quite ordinary idea that simply requires a little compromise for the sake of a better encyclopedia and to avoid endless quibbling. I am not implacably opposed to the use of scientific names, but there use seems to me to be unnecessary in geography articles as it is both hard to read, especially for general readers, and the suggested use is not consistent either. Currently there is clearly a lack of consensus here at least. I am not unduly concerned - I honestly doubt there are many such articles, but I really don't know. Thirdly, I notice the tendency to continually leap to alternate solutions without discussing the principles. Using the above questions I think we currently have.

1) Is it appropriate to have a system for articles that cover two or more taxonomic groups to have a consistent style of capitalisation for species?

• • • Yes
      • Ben MacDui
      • Ruhrfisch
      • Curtis Clark (qualified yes, depending on larger context)--Curtis Clark (talk) 13:34, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

2) Should such articles, if they are of a non-specialist nature, use common names (appropriate to the location they describe) in preference to scientific names where possible?

• • • Yes
      • Ben MacDui
      • Ruhrfisch
    • No
      • Curtis Clark
      • Hesperian

3) Should articles that cover two or more taxonomic groups but that fall broadly within the scope of a WP:TOL project use the relevant convention for that project e.g. bird sanctuaries use WP:BIRDS?

• • • Yes (with some qualifications)
      • Ben MacDui
      • Ruhrfisch
      • Curtis Clark
      • Hesperian

4) Should consistency for general articles that cover two or more taxonomic groups be applied on the basis of:

a) A Wikipedia-wide agreement

• • • First Choice
      • Ben MacDui
      • Ruhrfisch

b) A Project-by-Project basis

• • • Second Choice
      • Ben MacDui
      • Ruhrfisch

c) An article-by-article basis?

My apologies if I am either omitting or misrepresenting anyone's views. Just trying to make a start and see where there is and isn't agreement. It seems pointless discussing the details if we are at odds over the principles.

Finally, I don't grok the ENGVAR analogy or how it fits into these questions. I will have to re-read the above. Ben MacDui 16:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Nope - I don't get it. It is quite usual to see species names capitalised in the UK, but lower case is also used extensively. Different publications seem to create their own systems. It sounds like a vote for 4(b) or possibly 4(c) as I know of no obvious external system to draw upon, which is what ENGVAR is based on. Ben MacDui 16:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

First, I strongly disagree that scientific names are "hard to read, especially for general readers"—nine-year-old boys don't have much issue with dinosaur names.

Second, my whole point in reframing was to show that there were disagreements over the principles. Ben MacDui and Hesperian have both presented proposals (I discount mine as unworkable), and the evident situation that they are not being directly compared suggests that we are all at some level still trying to solve different issues.

Third, I'll try again with ENGVAR: This was an intractable problem at a global level. No one (save perhaps Jimbo) was ever going to be able to dictate a single variety of English for all of Wikipedia. The solution was to let it be decided on an article-by-article basis. Hesperian has suggested much the same for common name capitalization. (Btw, User:MPF might disagree about UK capitalization)--Curtis Clark (talk) 13:34, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a few thoughts on scientific names. First, while I agree with it, the dinosaur example is a bit of an exception because there are no common names for most dinosaurs (i.e. no one says "Really Long Long-neck" for Diplodocus). Second, while I know that a Quercus is an oak and Acer is a maple and Tsuga is a hemlock, that is near the limit of my knowledge - if I see Prosopocoilus biplagiatus I have no idea it is a beetle (I looked up a stag beetle up to get a name). My guess is that I am the exception rather than the rule and most readers know fewer Latin / scientific names than I do. Third, since this discussion started about parks and geography articles, many of the sources for such places use only common names. For example, I just finished working on a state park article where the gorge the park is in has "foxes". Which of the nine genera listed at fox do I put in the article, probably Vulpes as it is in Pennsylvania, and perhaps the red fox? In other words, there will be articles for which no scientific name is known or can be found from reliable sources (at least without doing lots of other work that is not needed otherwise). Just trying to show the other point of view, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The species Prosopocoilus biplagiatus evidently has no common name (most insect species don't), and I don't think any of us disagree that stag beetle, as a name for a group of species, should be lower case. But if one wanted to refer to Prosopocoilus biplagiatus in an article, that's the only way to do it.

But there is a deeper issue than capitalization, what I think of as the evil underbelly of WP:NOR. Let's say I'm writing an article about a park, and my reference on the animals says that opossums live there. A quick check in a general book on mammals tells me that the only "opossum" in that area is Didelphis virginiana. If I substitute Virginia opossum it would seem extreme to call that original research. But what if it also says "foxes" live there. My mammal reference says that both Vulpes vulpes and Urocyon cinereoargenteus are to be expected. I've seen both in the park, and so I include both in the article. But there is no reference that is more specific than "foxes" for the park. Is it original research?

It seems to me that the bulk of organism names in such an article will be either common names of groups of species ("sedges") or common names of species of birds, mammals, and perhaps herps. There will be an occasional plant or insect species, but most of the plant and insect references will be to larger groups. If you were to capitalize when you know it's a species, and lower-case everything else, you'd end up following the rules of most of the projects most of the time, pretty much by default.

The more I think about this, the more I don't see a need for an MoS rule. I think a guideline of "capitalize when you know it's a species, and lower-case everything else" suffices, and leaves latitude for editors to do it other ways if they have a reason.--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:44, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Yup, and reading "fox" makes it clear the author is unsure of the species, whilst "Fox" suggests they have not done thier research.

I still don't get the ENGVAR analogy. I understand how it applies to the use of common names for species e.g. you can call a Great Skua a "Bonxie" in Scotland, and an "Elk" in the US is Cervus canadensis, Alces alces in Europe and Cervus unicolor in India etc. What I don't understand is how this applies to capitalisation, which individual publishers, rather than national varieties of English, will usually determine. Ben MacDui 18:40, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I am pretty much in agreement with Curtis Clark's comments above (17:44, 16 August 2008). How about adding the following guidance at the end of the section:

"In articles that cover two or more taxonomic groups a consistent style of capitalisation should be used for species names. This could involve:

• using scientific names throughout - often appropriate for articles of a specialist nature.
• using title case for common names of species throughout (per WP:BIRDS) and lower case for non-specific names such as eagle or bilberry, which may work well for articles with a broad coverage of natural history.
• using lower case for common names, which may work well for non-specialist articles that happen to refer to various different taxonomic groups."

You'll note that it attempts to make suggestions (which I think are broadly in line with chunks of the discussion above), but is not proscriptive. Ben MacDui 19:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• I would support adding this to the MOS. Thanks for everyone's input, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:40, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

• I can live with that.--Curtis Clark (talk) 15:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Done - thanks for your patience folks. Ben MacDui 07:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm entering this discussion (or rather this variant of the discussion; this debate has raged for years in more forums that can be counted) late, but have to say that I absolutely and most vehemently as possible oppose this ridiculous proper-nouning and capitalization of things that are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized. It makes WP look like it was written by 8-year-olds (or Germans; their language capitalizes many things that Modern English would not). It does not matter that birdwatchers and ornithologists like to do this in books and even scientific papers about birds. Wikipedia is not a birdwatching guide nor a treatise in a journal, it is an encyclopedia for a general audience who cannot be expected to know or understand that birders have collectively chosen, in their own bailiwick, to ignore English grammar rules for whatever reasons. The only rationale other than "we like it that way" that the birder editing crowd has ever offered that I've seen is that is somehow disambiguates. The story goes like this: "If we don't capitalize, no one will know if we mean the species American Robin, or a robin of an indeterminate species that happens to be American." This is of course absurd, since at first occurrence the term would be wikilinked to an article or article section on the species in question or would be followed by genus and species if there was no where to link to yet, and on subsequent occurrences would already be clear from the context. I find it really alarming that a one-topic group of editors are taking a really, really weird terminological micro-convention (not used elsewhere in biological/zoological or other scientific circles, and which looks worse than wrong, even downright ignorant, to everyone else - and it's not even a consistent convention in birding circles, just common!), that they and they alone consider appropriate, for a very particular kind of specialist writing, and have been importing it wholesale into Wikipedia, a radically different kind of work. I don't care at all how birders write in their own publications, but WP isn't one of them. The bad part of this is, it is actually spreading to other zoology articles, because editors are getting the mistaken impression that this is the way that Wikipedia in general wants the common names of species to be handled! Aiieee!

In the very short term, the second bullet point should more explicitly only permit this for bird articles (herpetologists, etc., do not normally do the capitals thing), and should be made the third, not second point, as it is a weird exception not a norm, and enough editors dispute this capitalization of common names in WP articles that it may not survive anyway. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

PS: To answer a question (to someone else) above: "Do you think it is appropriate to prescribe a 'rule' that prevents them from writing articles that conform with the conventions of their field?" Absolutely yes, when their in-their-field convention causes problems (like reader comprehension difficulty and reader assumptions that WP is written by people who have no idea how to capitalize properly, and I can assure you that will be a common assumption among readers of bird articles here) for this out-of-their-field encyclopedia. Someone else wrote, "An ideal system is only precluded if members of WP:TOL and its sub-braches put the interests of their specialisations before those of the encyclopaedia as a whole." And of course this is precisely what is happening (not necessarily at TOL in partiuclar, but all over the place. The birders just want their way, period. In several attempts in various places here, I have never been able to get across to them why this works very poorly in an encyclopedia and is grossly inappropriate. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, we all have our preferences. I myself like title case (although I am by no means a twitcher) and its my assumption (based on watching numerous such articles) that intelligent readers are capable of understanding simple capitalisation conventions. Title case is used in a wide variety of articles that have already passed GA and FA (see above) and whether or not you would choose to use it yourself, it's here. The aim of the additional wording is to ensure consistency within articles so that we avoid sentences like "The Golden Eagles predate on mountain hares who make their forms in the Calluna vulgaris," not to start proscribing conventions that are already established. The most accomplished project in the field is probably Wikipedia:WikiProject Australian biota and they don't seem to be bothered by what you see as "grossly inappropriate". I'd be happy to dialogue about the wider MOS mess and its possible solutions of course, but if you think title case should be banned I suggest you start another thread and invite those affected to join it. Ben MacDui 08:20, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, your rant boils down to:

Premise: Proper nouns should be capitalised; common nouns should not.

Premise: The vernacular names of species are common nouns not proper nouns.

Conclusion: The vernacular names of species should not be capitalised.

Your logic is sound, and your first premise is a trival fact of grammar, but unfortunately your second premise is merely your opinion, and easily disputed. At the risk of oversimplification, proper nouns refer to unique entities whereas common nouns describe a class of entities. When I say "American Robins are birds", I am using "American Robins" as a common noun. But our articles don't say that; they say "The American Robin is a species of bird", in which case American Robin refers to a unique species by its recognised title. In such contexts it is arguably a proper noun. The situation is certainly not so clearcut as you are making it out to be. Hesperian 11:30, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:SG

WP:SG redirects here, so there should be a hatnote to Wikipedia:WikiProject Singapore, and the Singaporean notice board. 70.55.86.69 (talk) 08:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

SG as in Style Guide? I'm not sure we need that redirect; statistics here indicate that last June it was used 41 times, as opposed to 6750 times for WP:MOS, 3990 times for WP:STYLE, and... 6 times for WP:MS. The numbers are all higher for May, but there is no significant difference except for the case of WP:STYLE, which is already known to be used. Now, although practical reasons dictate that we shouldn't delete any of our shortcuts, even if pretty much useless—coughMScough—we could "donate" a little-used one to a project with which it might have a greater relevance.

So. Would the Singaporeans' noticeboard want the WP:SG redirect, and would the Manual of Style people want to give it? I think the redirect would be more useful there than here. Waltham, The Duke of 15:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey, there's a hatnote here about WP:MS; we could certainly hand that over to Wikipedia:Music samples. Waltham, The Duke of 16:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Should I be bold, then? Waltham, The Duke of 22:34, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Yup. Ben MacDui 09:02, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Transactions completed. Waltham, The Duke of 22:58, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

For MS too, I hope. The fewer hatnotes we have, the faster editors get to the gist of the page. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, for MS too. Although in this case I'm not sure how active the project is, the shortcut will be better-used by them than by us. And we are left with one hatnote, the utility of which I doubt. Is there a recorded precedent of people looking for this arriving here instead? Waltham, The Duke of 11:34, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Possessives

There seems to be some disagreement as to what proportion of possessive take an extra <s> after /s/ or /z/ and how frequently they do so. Swamilive called for reliable references to prove the claim that most forms take the extra <s>. Dominus gives us The Chicago Manual of Style. I'd be interested to see exactly what the CMOS says but as far as I'm aware, being a manual of style, it prescribes not describes. WP:MOS is not based on any external manual of style but on consensus. So what do we want? JIMp _talk·cont 08:36, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see that statements about proportions are much use – "some" is most neutral and clearly not wrong. My impression is that modern names tend to take the 's; ancient ones tend not to - I don't know if there would be any grounds for a "rule" along those lines.--Kotniski (talk) 08:48, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Partly an ENGVAR question; American English tends as often to be more regular. In my experience, the possessive of Socrates is pronounced with one terminal sibilant, and it is probably most often spelled Socrates'. The present wording is what MOS should be doing more often; we cannot decide this case-by-case; we don't have room. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Definitely not in my dialect. However spelled, it would be pronounced "Sok-ra-teez-ɘz", because without the extra syllable it suggests the possessive of someone named Socratee. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The Chicago Manual of Style's was being cited for description, not for prescription. Section 7.17 is titled "Possessives: Most nouns" and says "The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s, and the possessive of plural nouns (except for a few irregular plurals that do not end in s) by adding an apostrophe only." This is a simple and accurate statement of the facts. I did not think this would be a contentious point, and cited CMOS as only one of a million sources that would have said the same thing. -- Dominus (talk) 18:34, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm planning to put back language to this effect, since there seems to have been confusion about it in the past. -- Dominus (talk) 13:22, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

There was no objection, so I did this. -- Dominus (talk) 20:36, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Posessives with proper nouns ending in s

From WP:MOS#Posessives

Proper nouns that end with s: There is tension in English over whether just an apostrophe, or an apostrophe and the letter s, should be added to such proper nouns (James' house or James's house, but be consistent within an article). Some forms almost always take an extra s (Ross's father); some usually do not (Socrates' wife; Moses' ascent of Sinai; Jesus' last words).

I was always taught in school (and after double-checking with my mother, an English language professor at a university) that with proper names ending in s, an apostrophe and the letter s should not be added if it creates too much of an ess sound, repeats the ess sound more than twice, or results in more than two ses in sucession.

James's is okay because the s in James is a (soft) z sound, and it should be Jesus', not Jesus's and Moses', not Moses's (results in three esses). However, the MoS offer that Ross's is correct – AFAIK it should be Ross' because that creates three sucessive ses and looks ugly to read.

Is this supported by what other people have learned, or am I way off base? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I think everyone has their own theory about this, including professors;) For me it should be apostrophe+s if you would pronounce an additional syllable (so Ross's, assuming you would pronounce "Rosses parents" rather than "Ross parents"), just apostrophe if not (so Jesus' , assuming you would say "Jesus teachings" rather than "Jesuses teachings"). But then not everyone pronounces them the same way either, so that's not much of a rule.--Kotniski (talk) 08:54, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Hehe, I wasn't saying my mum is right, just that she would have a better idea than I do! Since posting this, I read the article Apostrophy#Singular nouns ending with an "s" or "z" sound, which appears to support the "don't make the ess sound overly repetitive" thing. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 09:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Having had the pleasure of dealing with this my whole life, I wholeheartedly support as few exceptions to the "put an S on the end" rule as humanly possible (preferably none, allowing for possessive plurals). There was a fairly in-depth discussion of this on talk:Fitts's law a while back. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I would pronounce two esses in Fitts's law; omission is for cases like Alcibiades' (mostly Greek names) which voices the terminal s into /z/. For such cases, it is customary; we should not attempt to redesign English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:42, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

You should pronounce two esses in Fitts's law, otherwise you would be implying to any listener that it's the law of Fitt, not Fitts. I think that's what you were saying to begin with, but I'm not sure. Maybe this is a dialect thing, but I don't think I've ever in my life heard someone say something like "Jesus' last words" where this was not prounounced "Jeezussuz last words", despite the spelling. So mom's maxim about how the word is pronounced doesn't seem to really apply, it's just something someone thought of as a possible explanation for the inconsistency. We have weird stuff like "Jesus'" and "Moses'" because a large number of Americans and Britons are big fans of the King James Bible, written in Late Middle English (when was the last time you were "an hungred"?), when ideas of norms of spelling and punctuation were still in flux, and it uses the truncated form, despite the fact that it conflicts with plural possessives. The farther we can get away from obsolete practices like this, the better. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, here is what the Chicago Manual of Style has to say on the subject: "The general rule covers most proper nouns, including names ending in s, x, or z, in both their singular and plural forms". But there are a few exceptions: "The possessive is formed without an additional s for a name of two or more syllables that ends in an eez sound." (Examples: "Euripedes'", "Ganges'", "Xerxes'") "To avoid an awkward appearance, an apostrophe without an s may be used for the possessive of singular words and names ending in an unpronounced s." (Note "may".) -- Dominus (talk) 17:04, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

So I see. The second rule, which alone includes may, applies to French words, like Descartes and marquis. There is another optional rule: Simply omit the possessive s after s, but I don't propose we adopt it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The CMoS is wacky on a lot of things, and heavily US-biased. Other style guides diverge from it, even if they also recommend "'" instead of "'s" for such names, by defining them not in terms of their form, but as being "names from antiquity". I.e., there is no consistency among paper style guides on this topic. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

There is, however, substantial consistency in practice to omit from certain words. The variance is how to best indicate the class where it is idiomatic to do so; we don't have to, but can delegate that to grammars. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:48, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

RFC on September 11, 2001 attacks

Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks#RFC on page title and comma - We need outside opinions on what the appropriate grammar is here. Should the page title and the article start out with "September 11, 2001 attacks" (no comma) or "September 11, 2001, attacks"? A third option is to rename the page to something like "September 11 attacks". We would appreciate comments on the article talk page. Thanks. --Aude (talk) 20:13, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

"September 11, 2001 attacks" is the standard WP style (if the year is included); the comma is used to separate the numbers, not to bracket "2001" as some kind of parenthetical. Further comments at the RfC. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:22, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Where do we say such a thing? Who supports it? The first comma is present because the year is parenthetical, to those who use this style at all; omitting the second comma (unless some other punctuation supervenes) is a soleicism. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Scrolling in articles

It doesn't make sense to me that this text is buried in WP:CITE, when references are only one example. Doesn't it belong here?

Scrolling lists, for example of references, should never be used because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such lists will display properly in all web browsers.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I've never seen it used anywhere else besides references (it probably exists for some long lists and such though). If someone saw a scrolling list of references then the first thing they would do is check the policy on citations, so WP:CITE. Gary King (talk) 05:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

They are also showing up in articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:45, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The closest thing I am aware of are panorama pictures in city articles and tallest-buildings-in-x lists. Would you care to cater an example? I am quite curious to see what you are referring to. Waltham, The Duke of 00:02, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

No responses, so I'll try again. Does anyone disagree that the text, currently located at WP:CITE, but pertaining to all portions of the article:

Scrolling lists, for example of references, should never be used because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such lists will display properly in all web browsers.

belongs here at MOS rather than buried at cite, since it's a global issue? Scrolling lists are creeping into articles, and they don't mirror, print, et al. An example (since corrected) was at Washington,_D._C.#Demographics (see the version before it was corrected here. The old version doesn't show a scroll bar on my laptop, but did on my other computer, not sure what that's about, but the nominator solved it by converting to a vertical template.) At any rate, I am increasingly seeing scroll bars in the text of articles, there have been many others. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:03, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

• I agree that these shouldn't be used in articles, and that if they are being used, then the quote belongs here rather than at WP:CITE. Hesperian 04:21, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm restoring this section from the miserable archiving system on this page after it took me ten minutes to locate it. The issue was never fully dealt with. The text added here was the same as what was at cite. The question is whether we should have scroll boxes at all, including hidden text, within prose. Since no one else has addressed it, I will go edit the page myself, although my mangled prose will probably need fixing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't follow "miserable archiving system"; it seems pretty user-friendly to me. A simple text search on the main archive page will find any word in any heading or subheading for all 97 completed archives, that is, up through archive #101. A text search in archive 102, which isn't finished, will find the rest. Would you like to be able to find words in the text as well without grepping the database dump? (That doesn't sound right, somehow.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:42, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I often resort to Google to find stuff buried in the archives. Something like this will do: [5] --Itub (talk) 11:33, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Excellent advice. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 12:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Scrolling should not be used. in article sections. Full stop. It makes articles more difficult to navigate for negligible gain. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

It makes the page a little shorter so I don't need to scroll down as much to reach the bottom. It doesn't work on my work computer, but it does at my house and seems pretty user friendly. When you click on the numbered reference in the text, it brings you down to the reference and highlights it (I use firefox). I don't see any problem with it. I mean we use the columns too and they also have compatibility issues and make it hard to notice improperly formatted references. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 03:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Anyone agree or disagree? Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 16:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Strongly disagree. "Doesn't work on [some] computer[s]" and "seems pretty user friendly" are mutually contradictory statements, as are "doesn't work on [some] computer[s]" and "don't see any problem with it". What identified problems have been recorded with columnar display, and where? I don't find it hard to notice improperly-formatted references in columnar display, myself, BTW. I think people who spend a lot of time cleaning up refs simply learn to see trouble spots, regardless of the layout. I have to concur with Dank55, et al. - lots of pain, no real gain. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:29, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

However (i.e., in counterpoint to what I've already said above), something probably does need to be done for articles with enormous amounts of sources. It could be scrolling, or it could be the [show] / [hide] trick used by navigation boxes and other templates, or something else. An article like WP:CUEGLOSS, when fully sourced, is going to have a very, very large refs section (the one it has now is already quite large by most standards). If it wasn't using {{Rp}}, the refs section would probably be 10x its current size, due to dependence on an comprehensive book reference that sources probably 75% of the terms in the glossary here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:34, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I was saying that on some computers it looks the same as if you did not have it, not really a problem, the same is true for the columns. For those who can see it, if comes in very handy, the pages look a lot neater. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 19:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Portal

Resolved

 – Pointer given to template for this, with documentation and to guideline.

Where should links to portals within articles go?? (i.e. see Shannara....there is a link to a portal at the top right. Should it go there, or at the bottom of the article? the_ed17 21:58, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

See {{Portal}}. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

See WP:LAYOUT. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:40, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, yeah, but the template points to the same stuff, and is a faster read. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Ampersand vs. "and"

I can't find any MOS page that discusses the use of the ampersand (&) in place of the word "and". Is there no preference? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Other than for titles of railroad articles, I have no idea. I'd certainly use "and" by default. --NE2 22:53, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

The instances I'm thinking of are not in article titles (nor about railroads!), if that makes a difference. (They're not exactly in prose text either, but in table cells, if that matters too.) — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I would only use & where it is in a quote from a reference, or the real name of something. The only other thing I can think of is TV credits:

Written by: Person A & Person B and Person C & Person D.

Persons A and B worked on the script together, and persons C and D worked on the script together, but they didn't all work together as a team. In this case, "and" and "&" have slightly different meanings. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 00:44, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Botanical author citations always use ampersands; i.e. "Banksia sessilis R.Br. (A.R.Mast & K.R.Thiele)" not "Banksia sessilis R.Br. (A.R.Mast and K.R.Thiele)". In general it should be discouragedforbidden. Hesperian 01:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I've added a subsection; see if you like it. Revert or tweak as you see fit. Tony (talk) 02:02, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine; mild personal preference is that "logogram" is TMI for WP:MOS. With this new section, should we delete "the ampersand (&) is replaced by and, unless it is part of a formal name" as redundant? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:33, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Except in quotes, always use "and" in main text. I don't see any problem with using "&" as a shorthand in tabular data, such as tables, infoboxes, and other places where brevity is an issue (such situations also commonly abbreviate country names, e.g. in tables of sports data, and so forth). Have not looked at the new MOS section yet; will let it simmer a while before getting into it, if I need to at all. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:27, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

According to The Elements of Style, the ampersand should only be used be used if its a proper name like the name of a law firm or something like that. Charts and tables as shorthand would be fine, but we should probably say it should not be used in prose. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Over 5 days later

21:48, 27 August 2008 – 23:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I've left this topic alone for some time here, and on returning I see nothing new that addresses the arguments I've raised, only partial rationales that can't get past "but [sic] isn't a reference citation", ignoring the bigger picture, nor any solid rationales for why this change would be a good idea (as opposed to why not changing it is a bad one), with the only argument seeming to be "well, that's how it's done on paper". Arguments that do little but defend against that with which they disagree are weak and don't provide anything substantive with which to work. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

That centuries of Western typographical tradition has developed a way of doing things, that virtually all professional typographers and designers (in print and in electronic media) are doing it this way, and that all English-language readers are used to it—this is a good argument. Any speculations that doing it a different way improves “usability” (or indeed, readability) is B.S.—(until someone presents the results of a verifiable user-testing study). The “long-standing” Wikipedia penchant for superscripting editorial comments is an example of amateur, committee-run typography, and it is Not. Good. To start replacing orthographic and typographical convention with our kaffee-klatsch inventions is not only arrogant in the extreme, but bloody embarrassing too. —Michael Z. 2008-09-04 15:49 z

By the way, WP:NOT#PAPER speaks only about size limitations for articles. It says nothing either way about implementing new hypertext expressions, and is light years away from the topic of style or conducting typographic experiments. It pointedly deflects these questions to the MOS. —Michael Z. 2008-09-04 18:21 z

Again, do you suggest that we also superscript any explanatory or missing material within square brackets in quoted text, and bracketed ellipses for deleted material? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I cannot possibly comment on typographic conventions and the like, as I am anything but an expert in the field. However, I have an observation to make: grouping dispute and cleanup tags with sic tags is something I find unintuitive, considering that they have a fundamental difference of purpose. Dispute and cleanup tags are of essentially temporary nature and are not supposed to exist in the finished form of an article. They are notes for the editors—and perhaps, to an extent, for the readers—so that a problem with the quotation can be known and ultimately dealt with. Sic tags, on the other hand, are permanent and are meant to be read by all readers or confusion might arise; this applies always and in every stage of the article, including the finished product. I don't see why the two cases should be treated identically. Waltham, The Duke of 23:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Weasel

Resolved

 – Just a pointer to a discussion elsewhere.

Several of us have problems with WP:WEASEL. It seems to cover things already covered on policy pages (and their talk pages) such as WP:V and WP:NPOV, and it seems to me that people never really settled on whether the page is supposed to be about "some people say", or about something much broader. I don't like the name of the page, either. On the content side, many people have raised issues, including Silly Rabbit and Johnbod, recently. Feel free to jump in. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:10, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

En dashes and categories

Several 2008-09-01 discussions concern the use of dashes in categories involving a range of years. It has been asserted that WP:DASH does not apply to categories. But surely an article and a category about the same topic should use the same type of dash, no? — CharlotteWebb 22:45, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Using the appropriate dash rather than a hyphen for page titles is a relatively recent change--previously, all page titles used hyphens--so it may not have been thought out in regard to categories. Previously, hyphens were standard or allowed for ease of use. This was decided to be not especially compelling for page titles which rarely change and which can be easily referenced by a redirect with a hyphen. If categorization requires the exact title of a Category, not a redirect, then this reason does not apply to categories because the use of dashes in category names thus makes it much more difficult to categorize any page. —Centrx→talk • 23:20, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Unless things have changed then category redirects don't actually exist, in that articles added to a redirected category don't get added to the target category. There is a bot which corrects these errors automatically but I don't know how often it runs. I think there is a good basis for not changing category titles at this time. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Concur. I don't see much evidence that the bot(s) run frequently at all. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree: with redirects, all category names wrongly using a hyphen should be corrected. Tony (talk) 01:24, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Leave well enough alone. It is preferable that categories, which are hard enough to reach, should use keyboard-accessible characters. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Why have WP:DASH then? Why apply it only to articles and not categories? I don't understand the purpose of having competing style guidelines for different namespaces. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:23, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Why indeed! I suspect I'm about to provoke howls of protest and derision, but WP:DASH seems one of the most pointless and irritating parts of MOS - it doesn't make articles any easier to read for the great majority of users, and it makes things harder for editors, either to know which dash or hyphen to use or how to enter them. Bin it!Nigel Ish (talk) 19:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure I'm not necessarily in favor of having different dashes, but it only compounds confusion by having competing and self-contradictory guidelines. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

←Quick recap on current consensus on DASH issues as I understand it: people are willing to re-discuss DASH issues, but not constantly (we're arguing over fractions of millimeters here, and very few editors and almost no readers even notice). A date of January has been mentioned for the next drag-out knock-down fight (I'm joking). There are supposed to be bots that will automatically create a redirect any time a page or category with an en-dash in the title is created, so that you never have to type an en-dash to get to a page or cat. Have those bots died, or were you guys talking about different bots? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

There has been some opposition to the use of en-dash in category names (not explicitly addressed in WP:DASH). It seems to me that these should be agree with article names (eg Arab–Israeli conflict and Category:Arab–Israeli conflict rather than Arab-Israeli conflict presently under cfd along with many other such.) Occuli (talk) 12:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Having, say, the article Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in Category:Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is nothing short of confusing, and shows sloppiness. And if someone clicks on the category link and goes to a deprecated category name they will see the template saying where the proper category is and, if they are up to it, that they might want to re-categorise the article. The only real problem I can see is when one views the proper category and misses miscategorised articles. In this case, it might be a good idea to have some way of automatically displaying in the category page which categories soft-redirect there, perhaps in the form of a template.

We shouldn't need any such complexity if bots operated regularly, though. I envy the efficiency of the redirect fixer. Waltham, The Duke of 01:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

"No." versus "#" in sports articles

There is a question in FAC as to whether or not the MoS has any conclusion about the use of #1 vs. No. 1 in prose (versus in tables). Quick background: college football and basketball (among others) use poll rankings as a barometer of team success and, in the case of highest level college football, determine a champion. In the current scheduling table, the default is "#". The sports media uses a mix of both, however I've noticed that The New York Times, the bastion of prim-and-proper, conservative writing uses "No." (example). I couldn't seem to find the answer in the archive. --Bobak (talk) 20:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

NYT was also one of the last major English-language publications to give up things like "rôle" and "to-morrow". Not necessarily worth emulating. Wikipedia should use what consensus determines to be "encyclopedic" language, but this does not necessarily equate in all ways to conservative/preservative language, which when boiled down is a POV-pushing prescriptive grammar exercise. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

My impression is that # is regional whereas 'no.' is less so. The examples that you quote all appear to be from one region. It would be interesting to see examples from others. Lightmouse (talk) 20:11, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Both #1 and No. 1 are sloppy writing. In careful writing it would be number 1, or even better number one, just as it is pronounced. −Woodstone (talk) 20:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The hash mark draws attention to itself in running text—I think it would be more suited to a grocery list than an encyclopedia article. Writing out number would be best, but abbreviating no. is fine if it appears many times.

What this is missing is that the use of "#" (and often "no.") in the sport[s] context is essentially a term of art. It is arguably appropriate in that context, as is use of numerals for sports statistics where otherwise we would use spelled-out words. That said, I don't see any huge problem in MOS recommending "no." as clearer. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

If the number is being referred to, then it shouldn't be capitalized. If a player is being referred to, then I suppose he would be called, e.g., Number 99, but isn't it preferable to refer to a person by his name? —Michael Z. 2008-09-05 20:35 z

It's not that simple, and what's under discussion here is mostly positions in rankings, not player numbers on shirts. In some sports the rankings themselves are considered proper nouns (after a certain point), while in others they are not. The Top 16 in snooker is used as a proper noun with great regularity (the top 64, not), but this would not be the case in basketball. I.e., be cautious about making overgeneralized MOS demands when it comes to sporting contexts, because there are many devils in the details, and as the "simple" recent kerfluffle at WP:NCP clearly demonstrates, sports-focused editors will no only entrench in a bloc until they get what they want, they will en masse just outright ignore a major guideline in sufficient numbers and for a long enough time as to achieve a fait accompli if that is what it takes to make them happy. Likewise you will get absolutely nowhere trying to tell a baseball editor that the way they write batting averages should be done a different way. It is better not to push groups of editors to extremes simply to get them to abandon a convention that one personally doesn't understand or appreciate. The simple facts of the matter are that sport[s] is highly statistics-focused, and that the statistics are almost 100% consistently given as numerals (1st place, no. 3 or #3, 5–2 victory, 9 points, the 8 ball, etc., etc., etc.) It actually makes sport[s] writing clearer, by separating context-important statistics from numbers-as-general-numbers (twelve seasons, etc.). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Most recent discussion was here: WT:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Archive_106#Question on #1 vs number one. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The broader question (per the previous discussion) is whether this was ever addressed in MoS? If not, the article complies with WP:WIAFA and is promotable; we're tying to find out if it complies with MoS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:26, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd say the article complies, but there is no particular reason to use "#1" instead of "no. 1" so if someone is having fits about that (sheesh, go take a walk or something, huh?), then, okay, change it to "no. 1" (not "No. 1") and move on. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

The closest thing I can come up with is "Proper names, formal numerical designations, and other idioms comply with common usage (Chanel No. 5 ...)" from WP:MOSNUM. I don't keep up with most of the more targeted style guidelines; I don't even know what sports-targeted style guidelines exist. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 21:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Nor what actual level of consensus any of them represent... If I sound schizophrenic on all this (see various other replies here), sorry, but the issue is a bit complicated. Sports does have a long tradition of using numbers in ways that differ from non-sports prose, but by the same token some sports WikiProjects take the distinction too far and verge on treating WP guidelines in general as if they applied to everything but sports articles (in more ways than just WP:MOSNUM and WP:NC conflicts, too – show me any article tagged with {{Magazine}} and I'll bet you even money it is a sports article 9 times out of 10). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:ENGVAR#Opportunities_for_commonality, the sadly too-often overlooked and IMHO most important paragraph in that section, would suggest that number is preferable: # is not in common use in UK English. Kevin McE (talk) 22:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Ri-i-ight... I guess that clearly explains why "#1", "#3", etc. are used with regularity in snooker (i.e. mostly really, really British) infoboxes, right? Admittedly, snooker main prose tends to use "no." I favor "no.", but my point here is that ENGVAR assumptions are often incorrect. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know who first introduced "#" in the snooker infoboxes, but I can confirm that its use to mean "number" is virtually unknown in the UK - I've always looked on it as a US thing, and was well in my twenties before I even knew what it meant. Worldsnooker.com is currently listing the world rankings on its main page, and simply enumerates them with no prefix at all. -- Arwel Parry _(talk) 17:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

So, striking "#", it seems were now discussing "No." versus "number": we're seeing the AP Style (from the previous discussion, thanks Dank55) favoring "No.", do the English use that as well? Using "number" for ever instance (and there are many in a college football season article) might throw off American readers. --Bobak (talk) 23:04, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I prefer No. over number, and since this regularly comes up in sports and music articles, I do wish it would be addressed in MoS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It shouldn't be capitalized, though. Let's not confuse a 19th century typesetters' convention to use a small-caps "n" and a minaturized "o" with actual semantics of Wikipedia prose. "nº." is really not a serious option here, and it shouldn't be half-translated into "No." I have been regularly converting "No." to "no." at every occurrence I encounter it, for several years, and have never seen anyone revert me on it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

"no."'s fine by me. I agree there's no need to go back to 19th century typesetters, who were nearer the original French numéro anyway. -- Arwel Parry _(talk) 17:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

"No." (capital) is recommended by both AP Stylebook and NYTM (NYTM recommends it by implication, at least in the same kind of contexts that they would recommend "Page 1".) I don't want to research it further or say more at this time, because I'm launching into a big project at WT:WPMOS which is going to require me to keep my opinions largely to myself until we're finished. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Update: We ended up going with "No." capitalized because of the mentioned styles being currently used by the media as well as the confusion for readers (in my neck of America, anyway --Midwest and LA area) with reading the no. in the middle of a sentence. --Bobak (talk) 19:12, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Groan

[Note: This stuff is still important to me, but I'm putting off worrying about style guidelines until the Version 0.7 DVD is out the door.] There are a bunch of things going on with style guidelines at the moment making me groan. They're deep issues requiring buy-in by large numbers of people from all over Wikipedia. There are several ways to try to get people to buy in who haven't been inclined to do it; the surest way is to give them a person or people to complain to that they perceive as honest broker(s) who will give them all the previous discussions on any subject they're interested in and let them decide for themselves. This requires that the person or people have a track record of not spending all their time in any one place (FAC, GAN, a particular wikiproject), and have a track record of supporting different people for different reasons on different issues. The position I think would be ideal involves no pay, long hours, wide experience with style guides and with all relevant project and talk pages, and a willingness to muzzle oneself and serve mostly as an errand boy/girl, fetching all previous relevant discussions, so that others can make the decisions. Not your dream job. I'm willing to collaborate this week with any volunteers who would like to figure out whether this will work and what it entails.

Here are some of the areas where we need people to start participating more than they have. There's a current discussion at WT:GAN about how oppressive the style guidelines are, and how GANs should be clearer about not caring about any of them except the 6 that WP:WIAGA specifically mentions. As McCandlish mentions above, the number of wikiprojects who are trying to "opt out" has been growing steadily. Figuring out whether WP:WEASEL or any other page should be a guideline requires getting everyone to agree to some kind of criteria that people aren't close to agreeing on, yet. There are complaints all over the place that the guidelines need to be indexed and more accessible. I just found out today that, before he left, BeBestBe created a new guideline category and stuck 82 wikiproject style pages in it; I'm SO looking forward to seeing what happens when we try to explain to people that pages that not a lot of people have seen probably shouldn't be in a guidelines cat.

The biggest problem on the horizon is Wikipedia 0.7, which has deadlines coming up in a few days, and may go on sale as a DVD in Walmart in October. For instance, there are 33 robotics articles on the DVD, and I haven't finished copyediting the first one yet. The articles will be checked for recent vandalism and any obvious errors by a few people for 3 or 4 days, and then the results will be sent off to the publisher. The main problem from my perspective is that there hasn't even been a way to talk with the wikiprojects about copyediting for this project; no two wikiprojects have the same set of standards, and I personally don't know anyone who doesn't spend a lot of time at FAC who even knows all the style guidelines, much less cares. I find copyediting at FAC to be relatively easy, because the "buy-in" level is high, but I find copyediting for the typical B-class article to be really difficult, especially if it's for a wikiproject that doesn't care much for style guidelines ... everything is a new issue, everything is a potential fight. I think the reaction to Wikipedia 0.7 may be a little embarrassing. If we're going to fix things in time for the next version, Wikipedia 1.0, we need to find a way to get a lot of people in the same boat and rowing in the same direction.

So ... I welcome ideas. Anyone who wants to jump on board, please do. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:41, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I have frequently thought that we need a 'guideline for guidelines'. For example a guideline should meet at least one of the following criteria:

• address a significant problem. Many guidelines are about rare issues or non-issues.
• address a problem that would not be solved without it. Many defects are fixed by normal editing or by wikignomes.
• have an effect on editors. Many guidelines are never implemented and consequently add no value.
• resolve a dispute.

Those are not proposals, merely examples. Lightmouse (talk) 23:00, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

That sounds very sensible to me. If this does turn into a project, it will have to move somewhere, even though committees are bad and working in secret is bad, because it's too much for WT:MOS; if we give this the attention it's due, it would interrupt the function of WT:MOS as a help page. For people who missed it two sections above: please see WT:WPMOS for discussion of improving and reducing the size of the style guidelines and getting more people involved. It's important, it's hard if you don't know the style guidelines (so please consider volunteering if you are somewhat familiar with them), and it's somewhat urgent because of WP:V0.7. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Dank55, you seem to be very sensible. I agree with virtually everything you said at the beginning of this thread. I would add that the Manual of Style should explicitly be a policy, not a mere guideline, and that people who want it to continue to be a mere guideline not argue that the guideline-policy distinction doesn't exist whenever that argument is most advantageous to their objectives. Tennis expert (talk) 21:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks kindly. Please come discuss the idea of making WP:MOS policy at WT:WPMOS. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The Manual of Style should never ever be made a policy! Policies concern matters that are of fundamental importance to Wikipedia's mission: no original research, what Wikipedia is not, verifiability, neutral point of view, that kind of thing. Furthermore, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit. The house style for quotations, dashes, numbers, etc. is almost entirely irrelevant to the mission to give everyone on the planet access to the sum total of human knowledge. I am shocked that this suggestion lasted 24 hours without being challenged and hope it will not be raised again. Geometry guy 22:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Hookay, I'm going to slooowly back out of the way of this one. When people who rarely talk about style guidelines come to WT:MOS and complain (in this case, about WP:MOS being wielded like policy), what works best is to invite them to the proper talk page. 9 times out of 10, that's the end of it; they don't show up, or they show up and complain a little more and then go away. Personally, I don't have time to argue with people who never really cared about improving the style guidelines in the first place. This is not a swipe at Tennis_expert; I don't know him. I'm just telling you how we keep from going crazy here. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:56, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Update, which I'm very happy to see, last night at WT:1.0, regarding 0.7: "It doesn't matter too much if it comes out in November or even December, but next year would be too late." - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:47, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not either guideline or policy, but rather both/and. MOS has a very light touch on stub/start/C class articles, which in many cases may amount to little more than ensuring the name is bold and there is a category. Prospective Good Articles need to pay attention to the generalities of MOS or the nominations will fail. FA's will not pass unless any and all MOS details known to reviewers are dealt with. In short, MOS is a de facto policy at FAC/FAR. That's as it should be be. We don't want to put off new editors by insisting that their first attempts MUST have & ndash;es. We do want to ensure consistency and quality at the other end of the spectrum - but you probably knew that, so I'll move along. Ben MacDui 12:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Text formatting merge proposal

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting) serves no purpose at all, as it is simply rehash of WP:MOS (and in one place WP:MOSNUM). To the extent it may say anything distinctive that point should be added to MOS/MOSNUM, but otherwise this is just a blank-and-redirect. See also the closely related discussion at WT:MOSNUM#Text formatting math section merge proposal. The merge-from page is inconsistent on many points with both target pages, and its talk page is evidence of a great deal of confusion being sown among editors as a result of this break-away "guideline"'s existence. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

PS: I have edited a few bits of it to comply better with MOS/MOSNUM, but much of it is still messed up. There are probably a few points in it not presently in either of the controlling guidelines (which is why I suggested merges instead of just wiping it).

PPS: We should probably also go over Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters) to ensure it hasn't diverged off into Nonsense Land, too, though it is clearly too large and detailed to merge into MOS. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:32, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

This all sounds good to me. Tony (talk) 06:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

And me.--Kotniski (talk) 07:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

If you can eliminate duplication, I will be happy. Lightmouse (talk) 08:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I also support the merge. Teemu Leisti (talk) 06:07, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Support, per Lightmouse. Ben MacDui 11:16, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't see it. Summarize and link, but (for example) the long list of things that should be italicized will be useful to some people, and should be somewhere, but not here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Reprieve

Now that we've gotten a reprieve on the deadlines for the WP Version 0.7 DVD, I'm trying to whip up support for every single article to be skimmed by at least one person who defines themselves as a copyeditor (and many of these will come from the wikiprojects, and all the articles have already been eyeballed by someone, experienced or not) in the version that's going on the DVD. Currently we're estimating 30000 articles on the DVD, but if good copyeditors are willing to make the case that we need more time or fewer articles to get the job done that needs doing, the Version 0.7 folks are listening (now). Volunteers and comments are welcome at WT:1.0#Copyediting_minifesto. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:56, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I quaver at the task of bringing 30 thousand articles to a standard that won't be savaged in the media, and can't understand why anyone would want to read WP from a DVD rather than from the Internet. Why on earth are they not restricted to featured content, for a start. Tony (talk) 16:02, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Featured articles are not as much better as you seem to think; I corrected an error in the first line of a featured article the other day, which also survived a brisk review after featuring. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

• I see the appalling Names of the Greeks, which is ill-written, ill-typeset, and ridden with error and contradiction, is one of the articles actually on the list - and Featured (vintage 2005). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:37, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
• So is Alexander Hamilton, which I have been trying to clean up off and on for the last three years. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Reminds me of the dog chasing the car: when we catch an article, what do we plan to do with it? I'll respond at WT:1, Sept. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:58, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

←Huah. My understanding is that I'm now the copyediting director (a minor functionary) for the Version 1.0 project. Long hours, no pay, lots of pressure: my dream job. I understand that we can't review all the articles, but my understanding from Martin is that not issuing the Version 0.7 DVD is not an option. Both the German project and Wikipedia 0.5 have been deemed to be a success, and 0.7 is a done deal. However, I believe I have gotten us something like a two-month reprieve and flexibility in the article selection, but only if that's going to get us something: we need to ask some copyeditors who normally might do only GA and FA to look at some of the B-class articles on the DVD, or at least help wikiproject people to identify potential problems so that they can flag us about which articles need special attention. If we can't get some significant help, then there's no reason to hold up the DVD. There's no sign-up sheet; just do something if you're interested. Maybe give your favorite wikiproject a checklist of things to watch out for and volunteer your services if they flag articles for extra attention. The current selection list is here. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:23, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm with Tony on this. The GA Sweeps project has been trying to review 3,000 articles for the past year, and is about one-third the way through. Reviewing 30,000 articles is a pipe-dream, it won't happen. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 00:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll pass this along at WT:1. If the job works out, then I have to be ready to support whatever happens, so I'm going to pass on offering opinions (publicly) until after 0.7. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:57, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest! We have two choices for the next release - soon or never. "Soon" is a matter of debate, but obviously we'd like to have it available in time for Christmas (this year!). Much will depend on our publishers, though. Tony - if you put together a selection based on quality alone, you'll end up with virtually nothing about Africa, and an awful lot of Italian wars, Star Wars, and tropical cyclones. I think people understand that this is Wikipedia, and that we don't have the staff of Britannica; nevertheless, we have to deliver a product that will not embarrass us. It is only a test release, and as such it represents the best we can do at this point; I have already seen a big jump in the quality of many key articles since the last release. The Germans have sold hundreds of thousands of DVDs with extremely crude quality control, whereas we have the most sophisticated quality control system of any Wikipedia. We are limiting our selection to 28,000, mainly B-Class and above, for precisely the reasons you indicate. Anything that is Start-Class or C-Class is a pretty important topic like Gabon, Bavaria, Philosophy, UEFA or density. If there were a group of seasoned copyeditors and style experts willing to help with just the most neglected Start and C-Class articles, that would be a great start! This would improve the articles people are actually reading, rather than focusing a lot of energy on FAs that aren't widely read (<500 hits per month). That MUST be good for Wikipedia. Of course, you may come running back to WP:FAC after you see the horrors of the Start-Class level....! Thanks a lot, Dan, for your help. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 03:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

That makes me fidget a bit, because between "soon" and "never", I know where the votes would be at WT:FAC. I'd like to apologize for my part in getting people worried; there are things to worry about, but I'm going to have a lot to answer for if I'm making inter-project relations worse. I'd like to propose a 24-hour truce while I check with Mike Godwin and ComCom; the main concerns that people have with 0.7 is that it might harm Wikipedia in some way, for instance by giving us a bad image or even leading to lawsuits. It's not really our job to worry about those things; there are committees and people who have those issues well in hand. I'll get back with an answer as soon as I get one. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Update: per Martin, Mike Godwin is aware and on board and may say something helpful in the near future. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:49, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

It's been a really long day, but I'm much, much more positive about 0.7 than I was two days ago. More tomorrow. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• But no one has ever been able to tell me what the purpose of this DVD is. Tony (talk) 02:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• See http://www.wikipediaondvd.com/site.php for a little more info on the previous release. It's not terribly clear there, either, I'm afraid. Maralia (talk) 02:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

TLDR

←I apologize in advance for violating WP:TLDR. This is a topic that hasn't been on some people's radar screens (including mine) at all. We can discuss further at WT:1 if you like. I wish I had more time to investigate, but I've got to give 100% of my time to quality control. I'll tell you what I know.

• Martin mentioned 5 names of people on the board and ComCom (the Communications Committee) who have expressed some kind of strong desire for a DVD. I'm going to talk with two more ComCom members today, and see if I can get some kind of statement from ComCom. I think that's important because it's more or less their job to figure out what's good and bad for the public image of Wikipedia. In December, if we hand them a DVD and they say that it will or won't hurt Wikipedia, I would be very inclined to believe them; they deal with these questions constantly, and they've been thinking about Version 0.7. Obviously, we want to get them as much information as we can sooner than December.
• The bottom line of the board and ComCom is: we're not going to make the call, because it's up to Wikipedians. I don't want to say anything specific about legal strategy, but I'm sure everyone knows the general approach that Wikipedia, Google and others take to avoid liability: they don't control the content. The fact that Wikipedians are deciding to do this DVD and are selecting the articles is important. The only other legal thing that needs to be mentioned is, a variety of people have been looking out for libelous statements (see WP:BLP for Wikipedia's policy).
• This project has been discussed for 5 years, and a lot of energy and thought has gone into it. I really wish I had time to read the archives. Anyone who wants to comment on anything said over the last 5 years is more than welcome.
• Not having a DVD-version of Wikipedia, even if it's only 28000 or fewer articles, is perceived by some as a sign of out-of-touch Western bias. The DVD will be cheap and not make any money (for anyone), and the contents will be downloadable for free. It will be represented as a snapshot of Wikipedia, not as a polished or finished project; thus the name. (The next version, maybe late next year, may be named 0.8 for the same reason.) The low cost and the disclaimers will go a long way towards reducing expectations down to reasonable levels.
• Not issuing the DVD at all is an option, but 0.7 seems to have the !votes at the moment, even if the DVD is not very good. The feeling of many people is: Caribbean gets over a million hits a year, even though it's got problems; some FA about a Caribbean bird (I don't know which one) gets a few hundred hits. To treat the efforts of the Caribbean editors with horror and try to push them behind the curtain, like the young singer at the Olympics opening ceremonies who supposedly wasn't cute enough, is both bad manners and silly, since those articles are already in front of the curtain. (Not that anyone is doing that, but it's important to understand that people are sensitive about this.) Someone needs to improve the articles that get the most hits, and if the DVD serves to focus efforts on some of those articles, that's a good thing. Hopefully people who are experienced at FAC and GAN will at least help train people who are doing 0.7 sweeps.
• Malleus brings up a good point that at the rate GA sweeps were done, reviewing 28000 articles is a "pipe dream", but no one person will need to look at 28000 articles. First, the wikiprojects have spent an enormous amount of time rating, reviewing and culling articles, and they knew there was going to be a deadline sometime around now, and many people would be disappointed if there's a perception that their efforts are unacknowledged or derided. Second, it's not a given, at least in my mind, that there will be 28000 articles. I think, I hope, that if we can make experienced copyeditors available to answer questions for people who are doing 0.7 sweeps, that over time they will see things more the way people experienced at FAC and GAN do (and vice-versa), and they will voluntarily pull some articles. But if they do pull articles, it should be because of their sense of embarrassment, not ours. Third, I hope people will look carefully at GAs and FAs, but I don't personally have time to look at those articles; I need to work with the people who are looking at the articles that have never gone through a review process. Fourth, 1.0 people have been sweeping these articles for some time now, although the final bot-driven article selection was finished just yesterday. (Version selection is still up in the air, and largely up to the wikiprojects.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Superscript sic?

I see that the MoS is changed to say that sic (in quotes) should be written using Template:Sic. This renders "[sic]" in superscript, which is a practice that I'm not familiar with. I can't find any discussion about this and I am tempted to revert. So, what is the reason for using superscript? (Thanks to Dan (Dank55) for the updates, which brought this to my attention.) -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 21:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It is probably undesirable to use a superscript for this; this is part of our intended text, not a tag. There's nothing wrong with [sic], which is the standard typography; it can even be linked: [sic]. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The template seems like a reasonable idea, though the code is a little cumbersome to enter. Bear in mind that the contents of the template can be changed (though currently only by sysops), so the superscripting itself isn't a strong reason not to use it. Ilkali (talk) 22:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with the existence of the template, but it should not be required; what matters is what the readers see, not how we get there. This goes double when the template produces something odd and potentially misleading. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:17, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

"what matters is what the readers see". And use of templates grants greater control over that. Ilkali (talk) 23:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense. Using a template limits you to what the template is engineered to do; not using the template leaves you the full resources of markup. Here you don't need complex markup to do any combination of italicizing, linking, and superscripting you may want. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:18, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

We're talking about different kinds of control. I'm talking about centralised control - change one template, update hundreds of instances. There's very little need to have the full flexibility of the markup language for something as boring as a sic notice. Ilkali (talk) 23:25, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a wiki. We don't need (and should not have) centralized control. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, MOS specifically recommended that the "sic" be italicized and linked, which the template does, so it is actually far less cumbersome. Its superscripting is simply a matter of Wikipedia Style. We superscript inline stuff that isn't part of the prose proper, such as reference citations, while many print works do not. Anyway, if people hate the template-recommending change, just revert it; I only made it to make it easier on editors - "just type these 7 characters" instead of the more complicated manual way. Maybe there needs to be a "sic2" template that is identical but not superscripted if people object to the superscripting. I prefer it, myself, as it indicates more clearly to the reader that it is an editorial interpolation. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Italicizing and linking by hand takes thirteen characters; not linking, which you may want to avoid after the first instance, takes nine; the template is easier in the first case and harder in the second. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:55, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Counting characters is a pretty lousy way of measuring difficulty. But isn't the template reference only seven characters anyway? Ilkali (talk) 23:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

In order to turn off the link, you need to invoke an argument. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:15, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Surely the term [sic] should not be superscripted, precisely to distinguish it from references. The fact that the MoS recommends that it be wikilinked is an indication that not all readers would understand its significance. And heaven forbid that you have to use it more than once in an article! Physchim62 (talk) 23:46, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Consider an article on Sir Thomas Malory, with quotes, which will have multiple sics. (If we are going to simply italicize real Middle English, make that Thomas Chatterton.) But I agree otherwise; I would not, and will not, superscript, for precisely these reasons. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Surely those are two excellent examples of where not to use sic! Indeed, neither of the cited articles does use sic, despite the quote from Mallory with (suspiciously little) Middle English spelling. Sic should be reserved for cases where there might be confusion due to an old spelling, or an original misspelling, not simply to convince our modern readers that we haven't made a typing error. Physchim62 (talk) 01:35, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. sic should not be superscripted. Hesperian 01:54, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

It isn't any more. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 02:05, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with not superscripting. It's nice to get consensus here and then instantly be able to apply the consensus everywhere the template appears. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 03:46, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

... woah woah woah. Why exactly this this not to be superscripted? Superscript is an excellent way of separating editorial commentary from article content. All other editorial notes are superscripted. This change was far too hasty, and should be reverted until the discussion has had more than, like, four hours' worth of commentary. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:02, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

It's a little more complicated than that. I replaced the original hand-coded language here (non-superscripted) with the {{sic}} template for editor convenience (it was then superscripted). Then it gave both versions. Then the template itself was de-superscripted, despite the fact that I recommended that at {{Sic2}} template be created for that (we here don't necessarily know how {{sic}} is being used and where; its de-superscription is probably problematic in some of the places it has been deployed.

The template change should be reverted, since it wasn't discussed at the template, but here.

Whether [sic] should or shouldn't be superscripted is still an open debate (both Chris Cunningham and I in favor of superscripting, maybe others; I haven't read all of the above yet), several against. The MOS should still show both options, and one of them superscrpted again at least until the debate resolves itself here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

We should be doing what people do in the real world. I've never seen [sic] superscripted out there. Ever. Hesperian 01:50, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

By that logic, we should not superscript much of anything but exponents and asterisks, since paper sources do not superscript inline reference citations nor any other form of editorial insertion. We do that with almost complete uniformity and regularity here, because we've decided by wide community consensus that it makes reading our articles easier. I.e., we are ahead of the dead trees pack in usability, which makes sense – web development efforts are generally thinking about usability all the time, while paper publishers are usually thinking about paper publishing traditions. WP:NOT#PAPER. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:42, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) superscripting '[sic]' would not really be correct (though this is a wiki and we might want to do it regardless on stylistic grounds). 'sic' is not a reference; it's an in-text comment notifying the reader that what might look like a spelling error actually isn't. really it's an abbreviated parenthetical - "Goorge Boosh [sic]" is just shorthand for "Goorge Boosh (as the author wrote it)". I'm not sure I like the link in the template, though - it ends up highlighting something that ought to be passed over by the eye. would it be better to scrap the link and put a short definition in as a tooltip? or would that be more distracting? --Ludwigs2 01:55, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Prescriptive grammar isn't very useful here. Wikipedia decides what is "correct" for Wikipedia, because the needs of our readers (and editors for that matter) are different from those of readers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the New York Times or the Spider Man comic books. I think you are looking at this backwards. It doesn't matter that [sic] is not a reference citation. The relationship is inverse. References, just like [sic], are inline editorial commentary, and as with all other inline editorial commentary (including dispute notes, cleanup instructions, etc.), Wikipedia consistently superscripts them to lift them out of the way of the reader's eye-path when skimming the prose rapidly. It's a very sensible usability decision. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:42, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

It also brings style inconsistencies across articles where some editors do not know about the template, and simply type "[sic]". Even sic doesn't say it should be superscripted. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 02:48, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

The article Sic is written about general (and thus generally offline) usage; it is not Wikipedia:Sic. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:42, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I know that. Do you suggest that we also superscript any explanatory or missing material within square brackets in quoted text, and bracketed ellipses for deleted material? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 20:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

It isn't about inline editorial insertions; it is about editorial insertions that indicate the reader must look at the bottom of the page, or the end of the work, to find the insertion, vs. insertions that are self-contained. Asterisks (in almost all publications) and footnote numbers (in many but not all publications) are superscripted, letting the reader know the insertion will be found somewhere else. Sic is self-contained and never superscripted. Mathematical superscripts derive from a different tradition and are not comparable to footnotes, sic, or astrisks. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:02, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I must be typing invisible characters or something. I've already addressed this something like 4 times. Reference citations, with footnotes as the end, are only one kind of editorial insertion that Wikipedia superscripts. All of the inline dispute tags ({{dubious}}, etc.) and cleanup tags ({{clarity}}, etc.) – i.e., editorial interpolations – are superscripted. I'm unaware of any of them other than reference citations that make footnotes or anything else as the end of the page. It was already noted that asterisks and, in some paper publications, citation footnote numbers are superscripted off-WP, so I'm not sure why you are mentioning that again. Your assumption that they are superscripted "[to let] the reader know the insertion will be found somewhere else" is just an assumption, and not backed by history (superscripts go back over millennium, and originated as scribes' notes added to earlier manuscripts – i.e., a general convention for editorial interpolations, and thus the reason for superscripting of things like asterisks even today in paper publications). What does math have to do with it? Unless I missed it, no one has been talking about exponents or fractions; math isn't relevant here.

The relevant discussions are: a) Are [sic]s editorial commentary interpolations? b) Does Wikipedia consistently superscript editorial commentary interpolations to get it out of the visual flow of the prose for our readers? c) Do WP:MOS and other WP style guidelines recommend what usability and other factors indicate is best for our readability and our readers, even if it conflicts with dead-trees style manuals sometimes? d) Are MOS and Wikipedia guidelines generally strongly supportive of consistency and strongly resistant to exceptions justified by little more rationale than that some group of editors would be happier if they had an exception that suited their preferences? And, e) is there something magically special about [sic] that indicates it should somehow not follow the long-established WP convention (that as already noted is part of a design and presentation paradigm that intentionally diverges from dead-tress publishing, for good reasons)?

The answers to these questions are: a) Yes. b) Yes. c) Yes. d) Yes. e) No.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I've previously resisted using the "sic" template because it was rendered as a superscript, which is an unusual and unnecessary innovation. Wikipedia should feel free to invent new styles when the demands of an online encyclopedia call for innovation. This isn't one of those times. Keep "sic" inline, down where the rest of the world puts it. Cheers! —Kevin Myers 20:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

WP did invent a new style, a long time ago, to superscript such interpolations for the benefit of increased readability of the main prose; this happened precisely because the demands of an online encyclopedia called for it. It was overall a huge hit. What's happening here now is some editors are seeking a special exception to this, for reasons that have yet to be logically explained in a way convincing to those who disagree, and without addressing the counterarguments raised against it. I also have to note the fait accompli nature of the unilateral change to the protected template, which was made (while out-standing objections were already on the table) by an admin who is a party to this debate, which seems to be devoid of other admins. This is debate resolution by fiat and a conflict of interest, not consensus. While I won't go so far as to say it was an actionable abuse of admin power, it is certainly a misuse of it.

PS: One might as well "resist" using headings because they only capitalize the first letter and proper names (not usual practice on paper), or "resist" using tables of contents because paper encyclopedia articles usually don't have them, or "resist" writing biographical articles about people who use initials, since "X. Y. Zounds" with spaced initials (WP:NCP's specification) is very uncommon off of Wikipedia. Etc., etc. How about just do what is best for the encyclopedia (which includes consistency, to a much greater degree than most editors think about) and put your pet peeves aside. (Two of the aforementioned, the weird heading style and the spacing of initials, are really, really, really irritating to me, but here I am three+ years later, doing what MOS says, because consistency and consensus in the project are more important (even to me, not just objectively) than me getting my way about nitpicks. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I've seen many publications that use sentence case for headings, and I've seen encyclopedias with table of contents at the beginning of articles. I have yet to see any publication other than Wikipedia that sets sic as a superscript (maybe there's one). Regarding your question above "is there something magically special about [sic] that indicates it should somehow not follow the long-established WP convention?", for me the answer is yes. I like to distinguish what is a "conventional" editorial insertion, as used by everyone else, from "wikipediaisms" such as and , which are only used here and often are only of interest to Wikipedia editors. --Itub (talk) 09:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yup, there is nothing special about an online encyclopedia that calls for us to deviate from standard typography when using sic. —Kevin Myers 01:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

UK units of measurements

This important change seems to have been made by an anon user, and I cannot find any discussion endorsing it. Is this an oversight, or have I just missed the discussion? Without wishing to go over old ground, I would strongly oppose the change - several units in the UK are usually expressed in imperial (e.g. pints of milk/beer etc, miles on roads, etc.) Any comments? —  Tivedshambo  _{(t/c) (logged on as Pek)} 08:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I saw this, and noted it in the Signpost monthly update, just out. Hmmm .... Tony (talk) 12:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Surely this change wasn't agreed? I've reverted it.--Kotniski (talk) 12:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

There may have been a point of confusion in that the wording could have been interpreted to mean "pick either metric or Imperial for everything and use it throughout". That's not quite what was meant. I've elaborated on it. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll insert an editorial comment to that effect at the Signpost. No one noticed the change? Hazzard of wiki life, I guess. Tony (talk) 13:06, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Not quite what was meant by who? This significantly changes the meaning and in a way that is, at first sight, a recipe for confusion. Ben MacDui 13:22, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

If the intended meaning doesn't match my version then feel free to improve it. If there was consensus to make this change then all that's needed is a link to the discussion. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

There are cases where the measurements are exact and we should give them primarily, each converted: X is available both in pint (? ml) and in 2-liter (? oz.) bottles. but this may be IAR, and may also be better addressed by a general statement. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

There's probably a crossed wire here. I am not attempting to defend the anon's change to metric only, but rather query the change to this (apparently) wholly new wording. Ben MacDui 16:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

As I said, feel free to improve it. In my opinion the old wording meant exactly what the current wording does, but failed to be specific. If that isn't the case, please elaborate on your concerns. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:10, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

"Metric or imperial" is not the same as "metric and imperial". I accept that there will be a few exceptions to the former (e.g. pint of beer) but I believe your proposed wording is too loose and could easily result in articles with a bewildering lack of internal consistency. Ben MacDui 08:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I think "metric or imperial" seems to imply that it's ok to leave the conversion out. How about the following:

• For UK-related articles, the main units may be either metric or imperial, for example 23 miles (37 km) or 37 kilometres (23 mi), however the choice of metric or imperial first should be consistent throughout the article.

Anyway, I'm glad the anon change has been reverted. —  Tivedshambo  _{(t/c) (logged on as Pek)} 08:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Ben MacDui 21:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

As there's been no objections, I've made the change. —  Tivedshambo  _(t/c) 06:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

• Tived, there's a false contrast. Can you change it to a semicolon and remove "however", please? Tony (talk) 08:42, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok - feel free to make any further changes if you feel they're necessary. —  Tivedshambo  _(t/c) 17:08, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Lead image size

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Images says, "Start an article with a right-aligned lead image. This image is often resized to about 300px." but Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Displayed_image_size says, "Images should generally not be set to a fixed size". These two statements seem to contradict. What is the recommended best practice for a typical lead image (assuming no other constraint such as an infobox)? --Ed Brey (talk) 17:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The MOS also generally recommends not fixing the size (unless there's a reason to do so). The lead image is one of the exceptions to that. So a size of "about 300px" (people couldn't agree on any more exact wording) is what's recommended.--Kotniski (talk) 18:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Huh? Is there really someone going around changing the sizes while thinking there's no reason to do so?? Or does it mean unless you say what your reason is? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess in practice it means a reason good enough to convince your fellow editors (or at least yourself, if no-one else cares). --Kotniski (talk) 20:32, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Casualty Counts

Resolved

 – Obvious solution, and wrong venue.

While reviewing MILHIST articles for A-Class, I came across a usage of N/A for the casualty count of a battle. As I lost a great uncle in world war II and 11 cousins, once removed, in Vietnam , I find this offensive and think that others with ties to the military would also find the usage of not applicable to be offensive, as it denigrates the sacrifice of soldiers. I am therefore proposing a new Manual of Style providing that where casualty counts can not be ascertained, the word unknown should be used. Geoff Plourde (talk) 21:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

MILHIST is one of our most active wikiprojects, and full of people who have experienced similar losses. I doubt they need for copyeditors like us to help them figure out what's offensive and what's not. Talk with them. If you're not satisfied after talking with them, this is more in the nature of an NPOV issue than a style issue. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

By bringing this here, I am trying to have this established as a style standard. Geoff Plourde (talk) 22:14, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that "N/A" doesn't always mean "not applicable". Sometimes it means "not available". I suggest that this is probably the intended meaning here. --Trovatore (talk) 22:11, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Whenever i have seen it used, it always has meant Not Applicable. Using it for Not Available is laziness. Geoff Plourde (talk) 22:14, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I've seen it used as not available many times, and that usage is even listed in Merriam-Webster's dictionary. However, I certainly support using unknown to avoid confusion. --Itub (talk) 10:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Certainly this would have been an oversight. I suggest you mention it on the talk page for Template:Infobox Military Conflict. The template documentation should make a note of this in the instructions for the relevant fields, so that editors are reminded of the significance of these figures. —Michael Z. 2008-09-15 06:15 z

Agree it should read unknown; agree it is a MILHIST POV-fix issue, not a general MOS issue. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:04, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

An example of a serious conflict

Resolved

 – Discussion should be at WT:MOSCO; both sides have points, but off-topic here.

I present here an example of a serious conflict that flew under the radar: Wikipedia:Sister projects, being elevated to a guideline, while in conflict with WP:EL and WP:LAYOUT. This is exactly the sort of thing a WikiProject needs to identify, putting guidelines in place so that our pages will be in sync. See my posts at the two pages, here and here. By what process did Wikipedia:Sister projects become a guideline, and why was it allowed to become a guideline when it was in conflict with other guidelines, and how can we identify and catalog the conflicts, contradictions and redundancies that exist across all guideline pages? We need a process to manage the process by which pages become guidelines. This page elevates non-reliable content that we wouldn't even allow in most cases as External links to a place within the body of our articles, against WP:EL and WP:LAYOUT (not to mention reliable sources), and opens the door for editors to get content into our articles that our policies would normally disallow (see the Stuttering FAR for an example of advert, COI, non-RS text that simply moved to WikiBooks so it could try to be linked in our Stuttering article). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Comment. I see no real concern here. As a long-time editor of Wikipedia's sister project, Wikiquote, I am familiar with its policies and guidelines. The inclusion standards for content there are clear and enforceable. (NB: I cannot comment on the other projects). If the objection is to remove every Wikiquote link from Wikipedia because it arguably does not meet the WP:RS and WP:EL guidelines on *this* project, I suspect you will meet fierce resistance from Wikiquote editors who also participate here...and rightfully so. It's insulting to the Wikiquote project. More importantly, we have the slippery slope. If we start to remove sister project links in the name of unreliability, the next logical step would be to remove all "wikilinks" to internal Wikipedia articles following the same concerns. Before long, the entire concept of wikilinking to anything will become suspect. I'm not convinced yet that it's the right thing to advocate here. Regards, J Readings (talk) 03:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I think SandyGeorgia and J Readings both raise good points. It isn't really a MOS (as in WP:MOS: The Guideline) issue. Sounds like something for discussion at WT:MOSCO. I will boldly flag this topic as something to resolve there, instead, so we can get back to [hopefully more than] bickering about what WP:MOS itself says. Revert the "Resolved" tag if anyone thinks it needs hashing out here, instead. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Balkanising MOS

Is there a precedent for having mini-MOS's set up by editors with an interest in a topic to create their own MOS for this area? User:MSJapan/Freemasonry MOS‎ is an attempt. I'm concerned on two areas, firstly this is being done in secret and secondly that this will effectively give a small number of interested editors a way of imposing an agenda (for example they call their type of freemasonry "mainstream" and they try to preclude articles on other types of freemasonry). JASpencer (talk) 21:46, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I see the concerns with the "mainstream" label, as there may be POV issues in play. That kind of label seems to me to be beyond the scope of an MOS, except for how consensus in the article/article gorup/WikiProject determines to use the term. To that end, an MOS is only as useful as there is consensus for it. If this is a proposal that then goes to the freemasonry WikiProject, where discussion is favorable on it, then at that point it may become a guideline within that project. (The ice hockey project does similar things, e.g., omitting diacritics from players' names where used in team articles.) If it stays, as you said, a "secret" MOS, then only those who know about it would be using it - which means it is hardly a set of style guidelines for general usage, even on those objects. —C.Fred (talk) 21:59, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

To be fair the secrecy is only in the initial discussion. It's probably unintentional. I'm not worried about the intention but the effect. JASpencer (talk) 22:11, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

There's something amusing about the fact that the Freemasons have their own secret MOS. Anyway, agreed that what I've heard so far sounds more like WT:NPOV and the NPOV noticeboard, not MOS. Also see WT:MOSCO for the current MOS coordination project. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 23:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Symptomatic of an overall pattern of increased WikiProjects' self-assertion of authority that I have commented on here and elsewhere. This will have to come to a head eventually. Could take quite a while to do so, though. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Gasp! You mean they don't automatically give way to our self-asserted authority? How dare they not?!? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:12, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, actually. WP:MOS is highly visible, attracting the attention of a broad segment of Wikipedians from across the entire project. WikiProject "guidelines" are rarely edited (or even thought about) by more than a tiny handful of people, all focused on the same things, and few of these pages are ever checked in any way to see where and how they may conflict with site-wide guidelines. Cf. WP:CONSENSUS: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale." I say this as an author of a topical style guideline. It is not tagged as part of the MOS, and in my view should not be. There probably needs to be some kind of designation for them, as "quasi-guidelines" or something. The issue comes up every so often, but has not settled out. My principal concern with such things is the degree to which they just go off into left field and ignore MOS, and the level of acrimony that the projects responsible for them will often bring to bear in resisting the notion that either their quasi-guideline change to match MOS or they work to form consensus at MOS talk pages to change MOS to encompass the difference they are insisting upon. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Individual users are free to work on substantive contributions to wikipedia in their own user space. It's hardly being done in secret, particularly given how easy it is to use other users activities as leads to what might interest one. I think the question is somewhat alarmist, and marginally OTT.

With respect to the point about specific MoS considerations, given the wide range of topics encompassed by the project then there is a clear need for some tailoring. It appears to me that the issue is the subject of that tailoring, rather than the tailoring itself. It strikes me that if an agreed version can encompass what's needed then it avoids the need to rehash the same debates time and time again, and reduces the risk of a individuals imposing the perspectives of a single entity on a piecemeal basis.

The current work is that of a single individual, exposing it to project level discussion should help lead to some agreement around wording, once the individual is ready to present the work for that review. Should there be no general agreement to apply the tailoring then essentially it goes no further.

ALR (talk) 08:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

So are there any other project guidelines that go under the name "Manual of Style". JASpencer (talk) 18:05, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

OK I've just looked and the Mormons do it. So is the freemasonry wikiproject mature enough to enforce standards across the project? JASpencer (talk) 18:19, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Isn't that something more appropriately discussed when a more mature proposal is brought to the project itself. If the participants agree a form of words which has the potential to be useful, and believe that it can be applied across the portfolio of related articles, then that's up to them. I'll acknowledge that in many cases there will be other projects interested in articles, some of which have the resources to dominate discussion and force through majority opinions, but this is not really the time to discuss it.

ALR (talk) 18:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Would it be too much to ask that any other MoS style proposals are politely requested to either (1) leave a notification here; and/or (2) transclude the discussion here; and/or (3) hold the discussion at a subpage here; or (4) something similar? It's no extra effort, the discussion and guide formulation can still take place, but everyone has then had a fair chance of getting involved and any decisions could be said to be more representative of the community as a whole. Easier than judging Wikiprojects' maturity is giving everyone the largest number of people possible chance to get involved. Knepflerle (talk) 22:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Responding to Sept's comment, "imagine all the people ... living life in peace" was always a pipe dream; where there are people, there are politics. Also, it's really impossible to talk about style issues without sounding somewhat self-important, and it's useful to have any actual self-importance skewered from time to time. I don't mind Sept's comment, there's some truth in it, and more importantly, it accurately reflects concerns that pop up sometimes among the wikiprojects, concerns which we should be more sensitive to. But I don't see this as a political issue, and I don't see any good guys or bad guys here. When I look at the 500 style-related talk archives, I see thousands of questions and answers, and a process that most people are happy with most of the time. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:29, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Good; I dicn't mean to say anything about good guys or bad guys. But I also don't agree with S McCandlish. Most of MOS (especially its subpages) are themselves "rarely edited (or even thought about) by more than a tiny handful of people, all focused on the same things," and if they are checked to see if they agree with site-wide guidelines (or, more important) site-wide practice, it's only because of extraordinary efforts, like Dank's current project to read through them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you kindly, although most of my time is going to copyediting until Oct 20. McCandlish, if you see actions you don't like, continue to point them out. Sept, if you see pages you don't like, continue to point them out. McCandlish, there is a quasi-designation: Category:Style guidelines of WikiProjects, which has 84 pages in it. The best I can tell, pages in subcats of the style guidlines cat (and subcats of the editing guidelines cat, etc) are not guidelines. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Huh? Glossaries?

I'd like to remove this from WP:JARGON, on the grounds that I have rarely seen glossaries in article-space. Does anyone feel strongly enough about glossaries to keep this in?

If it is convenient to bundle all terms and their definitions in a list, the list should use the appropriate definition list markup: Instead of

*'''term''': definition

use

; term : definition

If a glossary is provided, any jargon used in the article should be hyperlinked to the glossary. Be careful to explain any jargon used in the glossary, until you've reached terms that ordinary educated people should understand. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 14:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

There are lots of glossaries, some of them quite well-developed. Actually, there are enough of them these days (I count 143 of them properly categorized) that we should probably come up with some style guidelines for them so that they are all consistent. WP:MOSLIST is probably where to add this.

So yes, some of us feel strongly enough about glossaries to keep it. There isn't much that has been added to MOS pages for no reason. I think most of the genuine instruction creep has been whittled out, with what remains addressing actual cases of usage.

The change of syntax certainly makes sense to me, if the resulting rendered markup at the browser end will be <dt> and <dd>. I'm a big fan of semantic markup. Making a change like this could be complicated for something like Glossary of cue sports terms which has been using === headings. Something CSSy could probably be done to implement it with <dt> but preserve more of the look of the original (if that were desired).

"Be careful to explain any jargon used in the glossary": The solution at Glossary of cue sports terms has been to link jargon used in one entry to the entry on that jargon item in the glossary. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

But this provision doesn't address gloassaries as separate articles; it's talking about glossaries within an article. (Glossaries as separate articles have little advantage over links to wiktionary, but that's an entirely different question.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't follow you. See how {{Cuegloss}} works. It doesn't care whether it is used inside Eight-ball or inside the Glossary of cue sports terms itself. As for the anti-glossary sentiment, that only holds water when the glossary article here only consists of dicdefs. Well developed encyclopedic glossaries are quite valuable, and would not work as Wiktionary entries anyway, because their content isn't simply definitional but explanatory and particular to the context. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree glossaries (many of which are not called glossaries in that glossary cat) can be useful things; I agree that if someone asks us how to do a glossary, we should tell them. The question is, what is a style guideline? Not just that, but what do we want the 6 style guidelines mentioned at WP:WIAGA (including JARGON) to look like? We don't want them to answer every question an editor might ask; I would prefer these 6 style guidelines be functional enough to get someone through their first 5 Good Article nominations, and short enough to make it easy for first-time reviewers to actually read them. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 01:57, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't have answer for the broader WP:WIAGA question, but have just provided a draft answer to the more specific one: WP:MOSGLOSS. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)